29 April 2009

Training and Thai

At the end of March I went to Hamamatsu, an hour west of Shizuoka City by local train, for a four-day training session for work. Training left something to be desired, but I met some great, fun people and found Hamamatsu to be a pretty interesting city.Hamamatsu Castle was surrounded by cherry blossoms, and the lanterns strung through the trees gave the paths around the castle a sweet pinkish glow.
Hamamatsu is a sister city to Warsaw, Poland, and world headquarters of the Kawai and Yamaha musical instrument companies!
Highlight of the trip: the last night of training, we went out for Thai at a tiny restaurant down a narrow alleyway near our hotel. There was one cute lady running the place, Nina was her name, I think, and the seven of us filled every seat she had. I'm pretty sure she loved us. We loved her. She served up the Singha, stir-fry, and pumpkin dessert, then sat down with us to chat, smiling and laughing and speaking a mix of Japanese, English, and Thai. So cute!
There were photos on the wall of Nina when she was younger, dressed up all fancy: She was such a spitfire, we should have taken her to karaoke with us.Yes, after dinner, we trainees went singing...at a “Karaoke and Rent-a-Car” facility. And the people who walked in the door in front of us were actually there to rent a car, ridiculous.

***There are, however, some people in Hamamatsu who are far less awesome than Nina. Check out this story and Mr. Jiro Kawasaki’s plan to boot Hamamatsu’s foreign workers (the city has a huge Brazilian population) due to the recession: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/business/global/23immigrant.html

25 April 2009

Guinness Book!

While waiting for some paperwork at City Hall in Shizuoka, I perused an area guidebook and read some tidbits of prefectural pride that I already knew: Shizuoka is famous for green tea, wasabi, melon, eel, oranges, and the list goes on. The most surprising fact, however, was that Shimada, just a half-hour train ride west of Shizuoka, is home to the World's Longest Wooden Bridge! We planned a trip.

I started work the week before our visit to the bridge, and had to get suited up and go bow to and drink green tea with all sorts of people at the Fujieda Board of Education. When the superintendent mentioned commuting to work in Fujieda from Shimada, I told him I was going to see the World's Longest Wooden Bridge, and he got so very excited. "Guinness Book, Guinness Book!" he nodded, beaming. The Horai Bridge (Horaibashi) spans the Oi River's very wide basin. I say "basin" because for most of the distance, the bridge crosses dry land. The vast majority of rivers in Japan are dammed for water use and electricity generation.

Guinness Book stats: This bridge is 897.4 meters long and 2.4 meters wide, and now primarily a tourist attraction, though it was formerly a well-used agricultural route. The toll is 100 yen round-trip per person...an extra 100 yen for bringing a bike. And dogs are allowed!
This bridge was so long, we had to stop for a snack:
Tatyana points out how easily we could plummet to our deaths. This was probably the most unsafe place I'd seen here in Japan, the land of a zillion warning signs and safety net overuse. The railing was only about 1.5 feet high and would be way more likely to trip someone than keep him/her from tumbling over the edge.
The crew: Jackson, Tatyana, Jess, and Davin.Nearing the opposite bank, we heard music in the trees...
Long indeed.
The music, which was a strange Russian-Japanese blend (no vocals, just whirling harmonies, possibly balalaikas), was coming from huge speakers on this rickety stage by the bank. One man sat in a torn-out automobile seat, music blaring right next to him, gazing out over the river. The scene was completely surreal.
We could not have asked for a more beautiful day to visit this lovely record-breaking landmark.

22 April 2009

Shinkansen Sushi Happiness

This restaurant chain is the fast food of sushi, as far as I can tell (cheap, convenient, and of lower quality, I’ve heard…I’m no connoisseur); however, it is completely awesome. As expensive as food is here in Japan, only 104 yen per plate makes this joint a steal! And it’s 94 yen per plate during sushi happy hour. A giant conveyor belt wraps around the entire restaurant.
If you don’t see what you like, you can order off a touch screen at your table.
Then your specially-prepared treats come rolling out atop a shinkansen (bullet train), on a different track! A bell rings, you remove your dishes, and the shinkansen barrels back to the kitchen.
So much to sample…
Okra rolls! Slimy goodness.
For real.

14 April 2009

Camping Kume-jima

Naha's ferry terminal was lined with ships, and we boarded one of the biggest; Kume-jima was a four-hour ride away, but we chose it for its remoteness, after all.
It looked as though we'd have calm seas on this sunny day, and shortly after departing Naha, we passed our ferry's twin headed the opposite direction: About halfway into our voyage, the wind picked up, the sky darkened, and the waves churned more violently. My photos don't capture the experience very well, but it was wild!Tidbits you probably don't want to know: first, Davin saw a guy puke over the side of the ship. I sought to settle my stomach by relaxing in the indoor seating area, then the lady next to me started puking into a bag. Back outside for me, even though rain was blowing in onto the deck.
We were thankful to arrive at Kume-jima, and a great lady at the ferry terminal even gave us a ride to Shinribama, the beach where we planned to camp, after we discovered the bus had already made its last trip for the day.
Windy, but beautiful.
We took a walk around the Shinribama area and discovered one small grocery store, lots of farmland, a few scattered houses, and—surprisingly—an airport. Papayas, sugar cane, and some awesome friendly goats...I loved this place!
Okinawan shiisa (lion-headed-dog guardians sold in male-female pairs; the female smiles to invite happiness into the home, and the male’s mouth is open to swallow bad spirits that may try to enter) could be spotted on almost every single building, either perched on a corner of a roof, kneeling on a front stoop, or in this case, cemented atop a pedestal near a driveway.
Mysterious messages...in English?!
Quite serene...until a jet came in to land. I could not believe there were enough people traveling to tiny Kume-jima to necessitate so large a plane. Admittedly, however, we found our dinner this night at the airport souvenir shops (no other options).
There was a little bar area connected to the restrooms at the camping area; we were the only people camping, but there were two locals hanging out at the place, drinking cups of awamori and passing the snakeskin guitar back and forth, playing traditional Ryukyu tunes.
Another day, another beach to explore. We left Shinribama and waited over an hour at a nearby bus stop, for a bus that never came. Passersby stared at us, strangers with huge backpacks...and eventually a guy stopped and said he didn't think the bus would be coming for another few hours, so he'd give us a ride to where we needed to go. Score!

He had a very small car (with a lot of Lilo and Stitch décor inside). We had large backpacks. He had his granddaughter along, and had to make a stop along the way to pick up another granddaughter from school. The two girls then shared the passenger seat (one of them smashed up against the windshield), but we were all laughing about it and no one seemed to mind. And there was a melodica in the backseat of the car, so it was meant to be.
He dropped us at Ifu beach, then we walked the rest of the way to “tatami-ishi”—a rock formation only seen at low tide and named for Japanese tatami mats, because the rocks seem to fit together geometrically, like the woven straw mats in Japanese homes.
Harvesting seaweed, which we saw in many dishes and for sale at the markets.
That evening, we gobbled sashimi tacos and rice at a Mexican café in Ifu and camped near the tatami-ishi beach. And the next morning, for the first time in Kume-jima, we waited at a bus stop for a bus that actually came to pick us up.

***The night before, we went to the Mexican café shortly after 6, according to Davin's watch, but the place wasn’t open yet (although the sign on the door said hours were 6-10 p.m.). We were sad because we wanted those tacos in the photo on the door; I even may have made some snide remarks about businesses running on “island time” and busses that only pick people up whenever the drivers aren’t busy scuba diving or hanging out in hammocks. A man in the adjacent shop noticed us staring at the café door, and called, “It opens at 6!” We thought, “6? It’s past 6!” But then Davin checked his cell phone. Only quarter past 5. This may have been the reason we’d been waiting for busses that never arrived. Of course, I don’t even wear a watch, so…
The ferry trip back to Naha was vastly more pleasant, and we even got to witness a great send-off for a young guy from Kume. Don’t know where he was going or what he was all about, but a crowd had assembled for him, long streamers unfurled from spools held by children on land as the boat eased away from the dock, and he was just beaming—it was great entertainment.
We monorailed to the Naha airport the next morning, and were met by brisk air in Tokyo. Sadly, the last vacation for a while, but it's definitely time for work.