Hey, America. You Still There?

To be quite frank, it's hard for me to know where to begin. A full season has passed since I last wrote anything here, and while a lot has stayed the same, a lot has changed, too. In this post, I plan to cover the experiences I've had over the last several months, my progress in cultural and language learning, and any quirky tidbits I feel like sharing along the way. I can't be sure that my prose was ever eloquent, but if it was, it has certainly lost that touch. I have not been writing much at all in English, and my English speaking isn't particularly common either. I will do my best to keep this entertaining.

Let's start at the beginning, where I left off: July. At the end of July, my brother came to visit for three weeks and we spent a very interesting time together. The dynamic of the vacation was fundamentally different than any other I had been on in the past. There were moments of good fortune, getting lost, delicious food, and mild anger. First of all, spending three consecutive weeks with only one person would, I imagine, start to wear on one's patience. That said, I guess I'm not really cut out for marriage. Right now, that's definitely true. I can't fathom how I would react if my girlfriend moved in with me. Anyway, it was probably worse from my brother's perspective. I had the option of talking to random people if I really wanted to, whereas he had to typically depend on me for translation. So if I pissed him off enough, that would have gotten weird. Fortunately, those moments were limited. There was stubbornness at some point almost daily, but I chalk that up to our being siblings and possibly my being younger. The main issues came up when I was trying to get us to our next destination and didn't know exactly how to do so. I'm familiar with Japan as a whole, but I was also traveling to most locations for the first time. Kagoshima and Tokyo were more comfortable, as I trusted myself to not get lost. However, I felt responsible for the trip's success or failure, so when my interpretation of street signs or maps or what to anticipate around the next corner wasn't clear, it was time to resort to other people or a guide book. And I confess that it hurt me a little inside to concede to the advice of a guide book. After I recovered my pride, we had a good time everywhere. The worst moments were when we were lost and hungry. We did manage to walk around Osaka streets for over an hour while searching for a hotel extremely tired and hungry and carrying suitcases, only to finally hail a taxi. I also booked a hotel in East Hiroshima, thinking that it was a short train ride from central Hiroshima (most cities are laid out in this way, having cardinal direction + city name as an indicator for nearby areas). It was a very, very isolated area. In fact, there was a free shuttle service provided by the hotel because without a car, there was absolutely nothing to do. I asked the woman in the lobby (what do you call them?! I forget English!) about tourism, and she just kind of smirked and said, "Nah, not around here."

Oh, right, so the content of the trip? Unbelievably, it wasn't all getting lost and stubborn. We started out with a few days in Kagoshima, mainly because it's in the countryside and can demonstrate a lot of what Japan has to offer. There's a city of decent proportions, but not far away are rice fields extending to the horizon (which is separated into two words in Japanese: one meaning land horizon and one meaning land horizon. Learned that last night). I was able to bring us to some of the more interesting spots, like the sand baths in Ibusuki. These are a variation on the more traditional hot springs baths in Japan. Hot springs are often heated with a combination of modern technology and geothermal heat, but I believe that these use more of the former. A hole is dug for you in the sand of a beach, you climb in and are covered up to your neck in heavy sand. You can feel your pulse throb in your extremities, and it is a very unusual but therapeutic feeling.

After Kagoshima, we went to Miyazaki to the north to check out some ancient burial mounds. I was unaware that these were not used only in Mesopotamian civilizations. In the evening, we went to Kumamoto and tried to find some good dinner. Before doing that, we stopped at some famous sites, including some good temples and shrines. Our luck was good, as a seemingly popular summer festival was being held at one. It involved children carrying small portable shrines and being doused by the local equivalent of holy water. It was also raining very hard, so though it was redundant, it was interesting to see. The dinner in Kumamoto was a chance to showcase some famous food I knew a bit about: raw horse meat. It's like beef but a little chewier, and I was ready to share. Kumamoto is perhaps the most famous prefecture for the food, but the restaurant we went to served meat that came directly from my home prefecture, Kagoshima. Kind of a waste, but oh well. After Kumamoto, we headed up to Fukuoka and stopped at one of the country's best national history museums. The night was spent eating ramen, one of Fukuoka's specialties. All of Kyushu is known for its tonkotsu ramen, a ramen that uses a pork bone stock and turns out a very rich broth. It is easily my favorite style of ramen, though many others exist. If you've eaten Maruchan, a legitimate Japanese company, you need to forget about it and try real ramen. It's often a worthwhile meal and ideal as a soup substitute in winter.

We flew out of Kyushu for Hokkaido, which is the northernmost and coldest part of Japan. It was still midsummer, but wearing shorts and a T-shirt wasn't as obvious a choice as in Kyushu. We went to a massive national park and spent a few hours there on two consecutive days. First was a hike through the rain on foot. Second, we bucked up and paid the cable car fee to get near the top of the mountain in the center of the park. We were rewarded with some pretty splendid sights, many of which my brother has on his webpage dedicated to the trip. If I get his permission, I'll post the link to it here. We also had a crab dinner, which was slightly expensive and took a little compromising to have. Hokkaido's seafood is one of its best features, and I was pretty dead-set on eating crab. I dropped around $60 for a meal that is still fresh in my memory. Shabu-shabu, for those unfamiliar, is a meal where you are given a pot of broth brought to a rolling boil and then a plate full of vegetables and meat. You cook the food at your leisure and also choose just how raw you wish to consume it. I have eaten Hokkaido crab meat that was frozen. It's good. But when you pull a large chunk of raw meat out of a leg and plunge it into boiling broth for 10 seconds and then consume it immediately, the taste and consistency is unreal. It was likely the best meal I've had in Japan. Second best in taste wins first place in giving me food poisoning, unfortunately.

Wow, I'm definitely going to have to split this up. I've got four months to catch up on, and I haven't finished the first three weeks. Here's a synopsis up until November though: I got a car; pictures to follow. Talk to you soon, America!