Hanshin Tigers

26th May, 2007

In Japan baseball is very popular. The Hanshin Tigers is one of the most popular teams here so naturally we wanted to go and experience a game. Getting tickets was the hard part. We asked a number of different people to try and get us tickets and finally the baseball coach at Lauren’s school was able to get us 4 tickets. So Steve, Marie, Lauren and I were on our way to the baseball!!

It took us about 20 minutes to get in once we got to the stadium as there were so many people there and the line up was huge. Once we were in and found our right seat we got comfortable and enjoyed the game. The atmosphere was terrific – very pleasant and lively. There were no arguments, brawls or bad words uttered amongst the crowd, the fans just cheered happily for their team. There were people blowing trumpets, people playing drums and others hitting mini baseball bats together to make noise. It was amazing because there was a rhythm that the whole entire crowd followed. The drummers and trumpet players led the rhythm and the crowd followed. It didn’t take us long to pick it up and so we joined in the spirit of the baseball with our mini bats (which Marie and I bought and Lauren bought a fan).

Now what’s a baseball game without a hotdog? Luckily we were able to buy these here – so we ate our hotdogs and drank our drinks out of plastic cups just like you would imagine. They were actually pretty good hotdogs too.

At one stage of the game we noticed everyone blowing up balloons. We weren’t sure what was really going on. A lady next to Steve was kind enough to give Steve and I a couple of spare balloons that she had. I struggled to blow mine up but I eventually got there. Anyway pretty much the entire crowd had blown up these balloons and were cheering with them until it was time to let them go. Everyone somehow knew to let them go at the same time and all you could see were hundreds of balloons flying into the air. It looked fantastic. At one stage of the game Steve looked at the TV screen and noticed that the four of us were on TV. We were on for a good minute. It was a close up too. Of course we waved and carried on for a bit – we couldn’t help ourselves. We probably stood out like sore thumbs so they zoomed in on us.

The Hanshin Tigers ended up losing to the Orix Buffalos 7-0 which was disappointing but I still enjoyed the game nevertheless. I hope I get the chance to see another game.

Cake Attempt Take 2

Lauren bought a Hello Kitty Cake Mix and it was the cutest cake that I have ever seen. The only ingredient that this cake required apart from the cake mix was 3 tablespoons of milk. The cake included a tin in the packet which was used to cook the cake in the microwave. Here are some pictures of the steps we used to make this cake.









How cute is it??

Gym Junkies!

Those of you who know Marie and I well would know that we are fitness freaks. Any chance of exercising we can get is fantastic. Before I came to Japan I was exercising 6 times a week. When I came here the gym was too expensive so that went out the window. I could not hack doing no exercise so I have resorted to running and recently I bought a skipping rope so occasionally skip and use a fit ball.

Being the ‘gym junkies’ that Marie and I are, we decided to start up our own aerobics classes in our residence. People were interested and it was very enjoyable. We were soon told that we could not hold the classes in our residence. Everyone was very disappointed. Marie and I were determined to find somewhere to continue the classes. We were on a mission! We did some investigating and some research and finally decided to ask a nearby community centre. After explaining to them what we actually wanted to do they agreed to give us some trial sessions. They even put a note in the newsletter to let the locals know about it. So far we have had 3 sessions which have consisted of about 12-15 people. The sessions seem to be a real goer which is fantastic. The locals love it and it is a good way for us to meet new people while at the same time keeping fit!

Here is a picture of one of our sessions…..

A Fantastic Hike

20th May, 2007

Kakagowa is another town one stop away from Himeji, which is where we headed for the day. It is such a beautiful place kind of like a country town. There are beautiful mountains surrounding the town and we were fortunate enough to be able to climb Takamikura mountain. The first part of the hike was fairly steep. That part went for about 20 minutes or so but then after that the rest of the climb was fairly easy. These sort of activities are right up my alley so I thoroughly enjoyed it. We were lucky to have such a beautiful day too. We finally got the top after about an hour of climbing and the view from up there was amazing. I could have sat up there for hours just looking at the scenery.





























Up the top was Takamikura Shrine. This was also amazing to see. How they got to build the shrine on top of this mountain was beyond me. I was glad that it was there though because it was fantastic to see a shrine in the middle of nowhere.

Once we had seen the shrine we hiked to another temple where there were Yamabushi – which are mountain priests. These mountain priests apparently do a lot of fasting. I am not sure how long exactly they fast for but I know they do it. Anyway as we were walking towards the temple we could hear the sound of a conch. The mountain priests were blowing them. It was really cool to hear it while we were walking through the mountain. We finally reached the section where the yamabushi were and we discovered that they were performing some kind of ceremony. It was very interesting so we stopped to watch for a while. The yamabushi were chanting various words, using a bow to fire arrows into the air, blowing conch horns and they also lit a pile of leaves which was meant to take everyone’s sins away. This ceremony only happens once every 50 years so we were extremely lucky to have been in the right spot, on the right day and at the right time to get a chance to see this. It was absolutely amazing to see.

After we watched for quite a while we walked back around to where we began our hike which was in this magnificent park with lots of sheltered areas, playgrounds and grass for people to play, relax and have BBQ’s in. We had packed a BBQ lunch and were very excited to experience our first BBQ in Japan – Japanese style. Instead of the usual gas BBQ’s we were using a coal one. There was no traditional sausages, chops, patties and salad – instead we had a feast with: wieners, kebabs, chicken, carrots and beans rolled in beef, squid, corn, onions, eggplant, pumpkin, rice balls and I’m sure I have forgotten some other food. It was a very different style to what we were used to. People were just cooking things and eating off the BBQ. I enjoyed this style of BBQ just as much as the traditional ones at home. I tell you what – there was no coming away feeling hungry after this was over with. The food just kept coming and coming. The BBQ was chocker block full at all times. It was fantastic!

After feeling very full we headed to a temple located near the park we were in. To get to this temple we had to walk through the largest Tori gate in the world. This Tori gate was made out of titanium. It was massive. The temple was also very cool to look at. There were lots of interesting things around this temple for us to look at.
























I really enjoyed everything that I experienced today. It was definitely a full on day and I was exhausted by the end of it but I had a terrific time and I might even go so far as to say that this was one of my most favourite things that I have done so far.

What a View!!

We went up to the top of the Egret Centre for the first time and got this amazing view…..

Shrine Festival - Himeji

19th May, 2007

There are many festivals that happen in Japan throughout the year and I am determined to see as many as I can while I am over here – especially if they happen to be in Himeji. It is fantastic to see so much Japanese culture and celebration events that people can actually attend for free. That’s the part that gets me!!

So today was a shrine festival. We headed to the main street to watch the parade of portable shrines being carried into the castle. These shrines looked amazing. There was so much detail on each one and they were all decorated slightly different. Each shrine weighs one ton and there are about 50 men in costumes carrying each one. The bottom half of the costume is similar to the sumo outfit. On top they were either wearing a shirt or nothing. Inside the shrines are 4 boys who play a drum and chant. I think there were about 10 shrines parading down the street. As the shrines were being carried they would stop and toss them into the air a few times and then keep moving. The people carrying them must be so fit and strong to be able to lift the shrines the entire way. All up I reckon they had to carry them for around 2 kilometres.

Once all the shrines had entered the castle we were allowed to go inside to have a look. There were thousands of people just wondering around having a look. We asked a lady the meaning behind this festival and she basically said that it is a celebration for harvest. I think there is going to be a similar festival later on in the year – maybe around August.

As there was a festival there were many food stalls set up in a nearby park. We headed over there to eat some lunch. The set up reminded me of the Glendi but of course all the food was Japanese. We tried a variety of things including: barbequed oysters, fried chicken, takoyaki (which are little balls filled with octopus) and then we had some toffee strawberries. It was all very tasty.

They had some drums set up in the park which people could have a turn on. I really wanted to play one so I went over to the area and lined up. This Japanese man called me over so I climbed up onto this wooden frame which had the drum inside. He gave me a lesson on how to use the sticks. The man made it look so easy, but it was much harder than you think. It was fun having a go though. There was a man from the newspaper taking pictures. I felt like a celebrity. Who knows if I will make it to the papers!!

An Interesting Cooking Experience

Lauren and I have been determined to make a cake for some time now and we decided that tonight was the night. Lauren had some rather ripe bananas so banana cake was on the menu. Between us we bought all the ingredients and were ready to go. The ingredients were all written in Japanese of course so we weren’t too sure if we had bought the right stuff and whether or not the cake would rise but we decided to experiment and see how we went…….everything was put together, the pan was greased, the oven was on – the mixture looked as it should so we were good to go. The cake was put into the oven and we waited half an hour. When time was up we checked the cake to see if it had cooked – well there were two brown patches on top of the cake and the rest was still kind of white. When we stuck a knife in to see if it was ready it was done so we took it out to cool. The cake had actually risen – maybe not to its full potential but it was passable. It actually looked quite good. While it was cooling I made some icing. This wasn’t turning out so well. For some reason the icing wasn’t thickening. I kept adding more icing but nothing was changing. I wondered if it was infact icing so I smelt it and couldn’t really smell anything and then tasted it and it tasted like icing so I figured it must have been as good as we were going to get over here. I decided that the icing wasn’t going to get any thicker than what it was so I just poured it onto the cake. It was slightly runny but it was ok. The cake was complete. It looked good and were looking forward to eating it. I made us some coffees and we were set. I went to cut the cake so that we could each have a piece and discovered that it was pretty hard. The knife struggled to get through it. I managed to cut two pieces so that we could at least try it……..well let me just say that it looked better than what it tasted. It was actually pretty ordinary. We couldn’t work out why the cake was rock hard – we did everything right……then we realised that the oven has a microwave setting on it too and that we must have microwaved the cake which would explain why when the cake cooled that it was rock hard. It was pretty funny really. We ate a few bites of our cake and ended up throwing the rest of the cake in the bin. We are going to attempt to make it again but this time use the actual oven setting and hopefully that will make a difference. If that doesn’t work then we have no idea and cakes will be OUT!!

Here is a picture of what the cake actually looked like……

House Keys Saga Part 2.....

After stressing all day about my house keys being in the drain – I left early from work so that I could get home and sort out my key issues. During the day I got my teacher to ring my boss to explain that my keys had fallen down the drain. He then rang the custodian to tell him about it so that when I got home he would know what was going on. When I finally got home I told the custodian that my keys were in the drain and he knew exactly what he had to do. He was on a mission!! He was equipped with gloves, a long piece of wire with a hook and a chisel. He told me to follow him so that I could show him where the keys were. Luckily they were still exactly where I had dropped them. There was some water covering them though but I could still see them (thank goodness for that!) The custodian tried for a while to get them but he had no luck. He told me to wait a minute and he went inside and came back with a flashlight. It must have looked so funny him on the ground trying to get my keys out. Anyway he asked me if I wanted to go upstairs to my room. I said yes please because I had a lot of shopping with me and I wanted to put it away. So he got out the spare key and opened up my apartment. About 15minutes later there was a knock at my door and there was the custodian standing there dangling my keys with a big grin on his face. I was so excited when I saw them and gave him a big clap. He was so proud and chuffed that he had got them out. I thanked him very much for his effort and he was on his way. At least I gave him something to do to occupy himself for a while.

Unlucky!!

It was a normal school day today. I woke up slightly later than expected but all was ok – I still had time to have a shower and eat breakfast so all was going well. Today was rubbish day – well plastics and paper. I think I must have missed a week or something because I seemed to have a lot of plastic and paper lying around. I collected all the bags ready to head down to put them out. I was going to leave to go to work straight from there so I had my school bag and lunch with me as well. So I was all loaded up. Anyway, I put my rubbish in the correct spot and all was good and then as I was walking to my bike I dropped my keys…….well they didn’t just drop on the footpath did they. They somehow managed to drop into the hole that led to the drain. So there my keys were down the drain. I couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t even a drain that you could lift up to get them out. It was a cement one and it was all set into the footpath. There was no lifting that up. I could see my keys glistening down there but there was no way I could get them out. Fortunately my bike key happened to be on another key ring so I was still able to ride to school. The worst part about it was that Steve had just left to meet his mate Dean and they were going away for the weekend and wouldn’t be back until Monday. So yes he has a key but he wont be home to let me in the house!!! How unlucky is that??

New Fashion!

It looks like the rainy season is on its way. Something that I am definitely NOT looking forward too. I hate being wet so I am going to have to find some way to deal with this season. Apparently it is going to rain pretty much everyday for about a month or so. How annoying!! Remember I ride my bike to the station everyday and then have to walk for 10 minutes to get to school so this is going to be very interesting.

Marie and I got a little taste of it last night on the way to Japanese. It was raining before we left but we did not have time to catch a bus because we left too late so we had to ride. We grabbed our umbrellas and went on our way. Well I opened mine up and some of the plastic bit had ripped apart. Marie was laughing at my deformed umbrella as she had just bought a new one. Well just as she was laughing a strong wind came and turned her umbrella inside out. So much for her brand new umbrella! It was a very funny sight – I had a deformed umbrella and she had an inside out umbrella. We were both wetting ourselves with laughter. As we continued riding my umbrella became more and more deformed until the whole plastic bit fell apart and I was pretty much just left with holding the stem. Marie was cracking up. It was the longest ride to Japanese we had ever had. We got there eventually but we were wet.
As the class went on I could hear the rain getting heavier and heavier. I was not looking forward to the ride home considering that I had no umbrella left. (I threw it in the bin by the way when I got to my class). Lauren was with us for the ride home. We decided to stop at a Lawsons to buy some kind of rain gear. I decided to buy a plastic jacket and pants. Marie bought the same and Lauren bought just the jacket. Well we put on our new clothes straight away ready for the ride home. I thought we looked pretty cool and trendy all decked out in our rain gear!! At least it kept us dry…….. What do you think of our new fashion??

Planet Watching!!

13th May, 2007

Steve organised for us to go to an observatory from 8pm-9pm to check out some planets through a telescope. It was absolutely amazing!! I got to see Venus, Saturn, some stars and a cluster. The telescope that we got to look through was massive and the planets were very clear. My favourite one was Saturn – it was amazing to be able to see the ring around it and everything. I have actually never seen any planets before so this was a first for me and I thought it was awesome!!

Tennis

13th May, 2007

Today I had my first tennis game in Japan. I haven’t played tennis for at least 6 months so it was good to go and have a hit. One of the Japanese people we met organised for us to go and play. It was really fun. The lady was about 60 years old but she was a fantastic player. We had to keep rotating around because there were 8 of us playing. Marie and I kept getting out butts whipped. It was unbelievable. We played for a bout 2 hours. When we finished she gave us some tennis racquets – I don’t know if they are a present or if we have to give them back…….I’ll soon find out guess!!

Huh? Episode 5

Hello Everyone! Welcome back to anoher episode of 'Huh?' These are my latest findings......hope you like them.



This is an already packaged boiled egg that you can buy.



This is someones pet. What is going on here? Are they serious?



Fruit basket eh?



A sandwich with a serve of potato chips. Hmmmmm..........



A whole store dedicated to these........ok then!!



What an interesting name!



A pram for the dogs? What is this world coming too???



When you bought a cup of sake they gave you a sticker telling you not to drink and drive.



9:00pm till when?????



What sort of outfit is this????? Geez!!

Hope you enjoyed this episode.........I'm on the look out for more!

Hakata

6th May, 2007

We had minimal time in Hakata but we saw what we could in the time we had. There is a park called Ohori Park which has a really big lake in it. It is fantastic for walking, jogging and riding. It was nice just walking through the park at our leisure. If this lake was in Himeji I would definitely be using it to jog around. There were so many people using the facilities here – it was great!











Just to the side of the park there were the Ohori Park Japanese Gardens which were also beautiful. I think we went in at the right time of the year because everything in the garden was green and lush. It wasn’t a big garden but it was very peaceful and tranquil. We sat down for a while and relaxed before moving on.



















Canal City was one of the major shopping complex’s in Hakata. It was quite interesting actually because it had a canal running through the buildings. Amazingly enough none of us were really in the mood for shopping so we just browsed through the levels and then grabbed a bite to eat before it was time to head back to Himeji.

The last four days were filled with many adventures – I can’t wait to see what our next one will be!!

Nagasaki - Sightseeing

4th May, 2007

Our plan today was to fit as much sightseeing in as possible. We picked a good day to head to the Atomic Bomb museum because it was pouring with rain. After about an hour and a half of looking for the park due to poor signage we eventually headed in the right direction and found it. Well actually a man on a street car helped us find it. Like Hiroshima, Nagasaki also had an atomic bomb dropped onto it. This bomb was dropped 3 days after the Hiroshima one – 9th August, 1945 at 11:02am. The effects of this bomb just like Hiroshima were horrific. The majority of the town was destroyed and two thirds of the people were either injured or killed. Nagasaki had a very different feel from Hiroshima though. Hiroshima felt eerie and mellow especially around Peace Park but I didn’t get the same feeling from Nagasaki. After we entered the museum we looked around Peace Park and the hyper centre, which had many donated statues from all over the world representing ‘peace’. There was also many paper cranes just like in Hiroshima.

Lunch was next on the agenda but like the previous day was very hard to come by. We found a couple of restaurants which were full and so decided to keep on walking. We eventually came to a small, cute little Italian restaurant which had no line up so was perfect for us. The meal was amazing. We got entrée, main and coffee for 1000 yen, very good value. With full stomachs we headed to our next stop – the one legged Torii gate and the Cathedral.



































Spectacles Bridge was one of my favourite things that we saw on this trip. There was a street lined with many bridges where one of them looked like ‘spectacles’ when reflected in the water. It is the oldest stone bridge in Japan built in 1634.





















There are many temples and shrines located throughout Nagasaki. There is a street called ‘Temple Street’ which is lined with exquisite looking temples. We had a look at as many different ones as we could fit in. I find it fascinating that although they are all temples, each one has it’s own style and character which makes it unique from all the other ones. I really enjoy looking at all the different designs and varieties of temples. Among the temples we saw were the Kofuku-ji and Sofuku-ji. These are the most famous ones in Nagasaki. Kofuku-ji was Japan’s first Obaku Zen Buddhist temple and was founded by a Chinese priest in 1623. Sofuku-ji is one of three largest places in Nagasaki for Chinese worship. The temple was founded in 1629. There was a giant cauldron inside the temple grounds which was used to make porridge for 3000-5000 people each day during Nagasaki’s worst famines in 1682.
























We also stumbled across an incredible cemetery. We wondered through here for a while just looking at all the different types of headstones and graves. The cemetery was situated on a hill and just seemed to go on for ever and ever. When you thought it was the end you would see some more steps leading higher up. You could definitely lose each other in this cemetery.

Nagasaki was an interesting place with a lot of history behind it. I enjoyed the range of sights and activities that we experienced during our time here. It is definitely worth checking it out. I’m sure you will love it just as I did!!