Monday, December 29, 2003
Matsushima
12/26/03 - Friday
Today Masato, his mother, and I went to see Matsushima. It's supposed to be one of the most beautiful places in Japan. It didn't take all that long to get there by car. The sun was shining, but it was fairly cold and quite windy.
Matsushima is a bunch of small islands. Some of the ones near the mainland are connected by bridges, and most of these have shrines on them. After walking around for a while taking pictures (Masato and I took pictures, his mom put money in the offering boxes and prayed) we took a boat tour. Before going we'd stopped at the grocery store and picked up some snack food, some of which I was told was to feed to the birds. On the boat tour we went to the back of the boat, and there was a whole flock of seagulls following the boat since there were several people there throwing this snack food to the birds. They sold bags of it in the boat for 100¥ so that you could feed the gulls if you hadn't brought your own.
After the boat tour we went to a temple in the area. They had a museum there, which had a bunch of old writings and drawings. Most of the drawings were old maps of the islands in the area, but one was a drawing of a person. This picture was so well done that you had to look quite carefully to see that it was a drawing and not a photograph of that person. I was quite impressed.
The temple itself was also fairly amazing, in that it was quite elaborate. It was set up as a museum, and you could walk around and look into the various rooms. They had explanations about each room. The walls of all the rooms had elaborate paintings on them, and many of them used to be covered with gold leaf. There was one room that had a bunch of statue/gravestone things that were to commemorate the 12 samurai who committed suicide in that room when their lord died. Outside there were a bunch of caves carved into the rock. According to Masato, monks would go into these caves and then sit there and meditate until they died, which I find kind of creepy. Just outside the temple there was a shop that sold Japanese sweets. We were cold, so we went in and bought something that was sort of like a soup with balls of mochi in it. It was quite sweet, but tasted fairly good.
After the sweet shop we went to another shop and each got a bun with cow tongue inside. It tasted fairly good, but I thought it was awfully small for the amount it cost.
On the way back to the car we saw a really cute cat, but as I was getting out my camera to take a picture a big truck went past and scared it away. I've seen quite a few stray cats here in Japan. I've often seen them around the kaikan, and sometimes on campus.
In the evening Masato and I played the taiko game on the hardest difficulty setting, and eventually managed to pass all the songs except the two hardest songs (rated at 7 stars). When we first started playing I hadn't been able to pass any songs until I played the 1-star song. After that I slowly worked my way up the list, until I got to Rhythm & Police (6-stars). It took me about 7 tries to be able to pass that song, but I can pass it about 70% of the time now. The two 7-star songs that we can't pass are so much more difficult than any of the other songs that it would take quite a lot of practice to be able to pass them. One of them might be doable before I leave to go back to the kaikan, but the other one is about twice as difficult as that one and I don't have any hope of ever being able to pass it. It's too fast to read and has so many beats that my arms get tired before the song is halfway through.
For dinner we had sukiyaki, which was made in a sort of hot pot that sat in the middle of the table. One of Masato's father's co-workers came over for dinner, since it was their last day of work for the year. They work as civilian policemen in the city of Shiogama.
After dinner we showed them our taiko abilities, and they decided they wanted to try it. They were a bit drunk, and couldn't pass the 1-star song, but both played it several times in an attempt to get a better score than the other guy.
Once they were done trying to pass the song, we continued our game of Momotetsu. At this point in the game I was fairly far in the lead, and Masato was doing quite poorly due to some bad luck. Unfortunately, he ended up having some incredible good luck and I got even worse bad luck than he had, with the result that he's really far in the lead and I'm far in last. Unfortunately, I don't see any hope for the rest of us being able to catch him, because he's got enough money coming in now that as far as I can tell with the worst luck possible he'd end up just about breaking even. Each year he's getting more than 5,000,000,000¥, while the payoff for reaching a station is less than a tenth of that and reaching a station often takes more than a year, so we have little hope of being able to catch him.
12/27/03 - Saturday
We slept in, so we had sort of a combined breakfast and lunch. The meal was yakisoba, and it was really good.
In the afternoon we picked Aki up from cram school and then headed over to a photo studio. Evidently they wanted to get photos for Masato because he was 20 years old (or something like that. I didn't really understand why). Since I was there they also wanted to take photos with me. Aki wore here school uniform, Masato's dad wore a suit, Masato's mom wore a dress, and Masato and I were dressed up in kimonos. I got a black one, and Masato got a white one. They had a lot of fun saying that I was the Last Samurai, since that movie is playing in Japan right now. They had a small toy sword there that we asked to use, and when they saw how much fun the family was having taking pictures of me with the sword they said they'd take some pictures of me with the sword for free.
They said they'd have the pictures developed by Jan. 4th so that we could come and pick which one to use before I went back to the kaikan. Everyone also commended me on my ability to smile. The photographer had a hard time getting the others to smile.
Today it snowed a bit, but most of it melted when it hit the ground. In the evening it got cold enough that the melted snow froze again, covering the ground with a thin layer of ice, which was very slippery. This was my first time being in the car when the father was driving, and I'd been told by the others that he's a really reckless driver. If that's what Japanese thing is reckless driving, they'd die if they saw the way people drive back in the states.
After the photo shop we took a tunnel under the mountain and ended up in downtown Sendai, where we dropped Masato off for a high school reunion or something like that. By that time it was time for dinner, so we headed over to a kaiten zushi place. Kaiten zushi is a sushi place where they have a conveyor belt that goes past where you're sitting, and you take the plates of sushi you think look good. When you leave you pay based on how many plates you've taken. Since I don't like wasabi they ordered several different kinds of sushi for me without wasabi. I didn't like most of them, but the octopus was OK. It didn't have much taste, but the suckers felt interesting in my mouth. They also had some boxes of juice, some cakes, and some melon on the conveyor belt, which I used to time the belt. It took 7 minutes and 40 seconds for it to make one rotation.
12/28/03 - Sunday
In the morning Masato's father took me to go see a fish factory in Shiogama. He said that Shiogama has the most sushi shops per capita of all the cities in Japan. There's also an open fish market there where the prices are so cheap that there are tour busses that bring people from other cities (some which are several hours away) here to shop at the fish market. I saw about 7 of the busses as we were driving through the city.
The fish factory was closed that day, so there wasn't much for me to see. On the way back to town we made a brief stop at the police station where he works, and he showed me his desk and the dojo they use to train. I took a picture of his patrol car as we left.
I was dropped off at church a little late (traffic coming back from Shiogama was a bit slow), so I missed some of the songs at the beginning. The sermon was something about the two thieves who were crucified with Jesus, but I didn't really understand much more than that. After the service they once again had tea time, and this time a bunch of the Japanese people there came over to talk with me (in both English and Japanese). After a while the father came to pick me up again.
Later that afternoon we went over to a neighbor's house where I was shown a bunch of traditional Japanese stuff, and then we made mochi. Mochi is a Japanese rice cake kind of thing, that is somewhat similar to silly putty or gum or melted mozzarella cheese. It's traditional to eat it around New Year's, and every year there are a bunch of people who choke to death on it.
Some time during the day the picture place called to say that they'd finished printing the pictures and we could come and look at them when we had a chance.
Today Masato, his mother, and I went to see Matsushima. It's supposed to be one of the most beautiful places in Japan. It didn't take all that long to get there by car. The sun was shining, but it was fairly cold and quite windy.
Matsushima is a bunch of small islands. Some of the ones near the mainland are connected by bridges, and most of these have shrines on them. After walking around for a while taking pictures (Masato and I took pictures, his mom put money in the offering boxes and prayed) we took a boat tour. Before going we'd stopped at the grocery store and picked up some snack food, some of which I was told was to feed to the birds. On the boat tour we went to the back of the boat, and there was a whole flock of seagulls following the boat since there were several people there throwing this snack food to the birds. They sold bags of it in the boat for 100¥ so that you could feed the gulls if you hadn't brought your own.
After the boat tour we went to a temple in the area. They had a museum there, which had a bunch of old writings and drawings. Most of the drawings were old maps of the islands in the area, but one was a drawing of a person. This picture was so well done that you had to look quite carefully to see that it was a drawing and not a photograph of that person. I was quite impressed.
The temple itself was also fairly amazing, in that it was quite elaborate. It was set up as a museum, and you could walk around and look into the various rooms. They had explanations about each room. The walls of all the rooms had elaborate paintings on them, and many of them used to be covered with gold leaf. There was one room that had a bunch of statue/gravestone things that were to commemorate the 12 samurai who committed suicide in that room when their lord died. Outside there were a bunch of caves carved into the rock. According to Masato, monks would go into these caves and then sit there and meditate until they died, which I find kind of creepy. Just outside the temple there was a shop that sold Japanese sweets. We were cold, so we went in and bought something that was sort of like a soup with balls of mochi in it. It was quite sweet, but tasted fairly good.
After the sweet shop we went to another shop and each got a bun with cow tongue inside. It tasted fairly good, but I thought it was awfully small for the amount it cost.
On the way back to the car we saw a really cute cat, but as I was getting out my camera to take a picture a big truck went past and scared it away. I've seen quite a few stray cats here in Japan. I've often seen them around the kaikan, and sometimes on campus.
In the evening Masato and I played the taiko game on the hardest difficulty setting, and eventually managed to pass all the songs except the two hardest songs (rated at 7 stars). When we first started playing I hadn't been able to pass any songs until I played the 1-star song. After that I slowly worked my way up the list, until I got to Rhythm & Police (6-stars). It took me about 7 tries to be able to pass that song, but I can pass it about 70% of the time now. The two 7-star songs that we can't pass are so much more difficult than any of the other songs that it would take quite a lot of practice to be able to pass them. One of them might be doable before I leave to go back to the kaikan, but the other one is about twice as difficult as that one and I don't have any hope of ever being able to pass it. It's too fast to read and has so many beats that my arms get tired before the song is halfway through.
For dinner we had sukiyaki, which was made in a sort of hot pot that sat in the middle of the table. One of Masato's father's co-workers came over for dinner, since it was their last day of work for the year. They work as civilian policemen in the city of Shiogama.
After dinner we showed them our taiko abilities, and they decided they wanted to try it. They were a bit drunk, and couldn't pass the 1-star song, but both played it several times in an attempt to get a better score than the other guy.
Once they were done trying to pass the song, we continued our game of Momotetsu. At this point in the game I was fairly far in the lead, and Masato was doing quite poorly due to some bad luck. Unfortunately, he ended up having some incredible good luck and I got even worse bad luck than he had, with the result that he's really far in the lead and I'm far in last. Unfortunately, I don't see any hope for the rest of us being able to catch him, because he's got enough money coming in now that as far as I can tell with the worst luck possible he'd end up just about breaking even. Each year he's getting more than 5,000,000,000¥, while the payoff for reaching a station is less than a tenth of that and reaching a station often takes more than a year, so we have little hope of being able to catch him.
12/27/03 - Saturday
We slept in, so we had sort of a combined breakfast and lunch. The meal was yakisoba, and it was really good.
In the afternoon we picked Aki up from cram school and then headed over to a photo studio. Evidently they wanted to get photos for Masato because he was 20 years old (or something like that. I didn't really understand why). Since I was there they also wanted to take photos with me. Aki wore here school uniform, Masato's dad wore a suit, Masato's mom wore a dress, and Masato and I were dressed up in kimonos. I got a black one, and Masato got a white one. They had a lot of fun saying that I was the Last Samurai, since that movie is playing in Japan right now. They had a small toy sword there that we asked to use, and when they saw how much fun the family was having taking pictures of me with the sword they said they'd take some pictures of me with the sword for free.
They said they'd have the pictures developed by Jan. 4th so that we could come and pick which one to use before I went back to the kaikan. Everyone also commended me on my ability to smile. The photographer had a hard time getting the others to smile.
Today it snowed a bit, but most of it melted when it hit the ground. In the evening it got cold enough that the melted snow froze again, covering the ground with a thin layer of ice, which was very slippery. This was my first time being in the car when the father was driving, and I'd been told by the others that he's a really reckless driver. If that's what Japanese thing is reckless driving, they'd die if they saw the way people drive back in the states.
After the photo shop we took a tunnel under the mountain and ended up in downtown Sendai, where we dropped Masato off for a high school reunion or something like that. By that time it was time for dinner, so we headed over to a kaiten zushi place. Kaiten zushi is a sushi place where they have a conveyor belt that goes past where you're sitting, and you take the plates of sushi you think look good. When you leave you pay based on how many plates you've taken. Since I don't like wasabi they ordered several different kinds of sushi for me without wasabi. I didn't like most of them, but the octopus was OK. It didn't have much taste, but the suckers felt interesting in my mouth. They also had some boxes of juice, some cakes, and some melon on the conveyor belt, which I used to time the belt. It took 7 minutes and 40 seconds for it to make one rotation.
12/28/03 - Sunday
In the morning Masato's father took me to go see a fish factory in Shiogama. He said that Shiogama has the most sushi shops per capita of all the cities in Japan. There's also an open fish market there where the prices are so cheap that there are tour busses that bring people from other cities (some which are several hours away) here to shop at the fish market. I saw about 7 of the busses as we were driving through the city.
The fish factory was closed that day, so there wasn't much for me to see. On the way back to town we made a brief stop at the police station where he works, and he showed me his desk and the dojo they use to train. I took a picture of his patrol car as we left.
I was dropped off at church a little late (traffic coming back from Shiogama was a bit slow), so I missed some of the songs at the beginning. The sermon was something about the two thieves who were crucified with Jesus, but I didn't really understand much more than that. After the service they once again had tea time, and this time a bunch of the Japanese people there came over to talk with me (in both English and Japanese). After a while the father came to pick me up again.
Later that afternoon we went over to a neighbor's house where I was shown a bunch of traditional Japanese stuff, and then we made mochi. Mochi is a Japanese rice cake kind of thing, that is somewhat similar to silly putty or gum or melted mozzarella cheese. It's traditional to eat it around New Year's, and every year there are a bunch of people who choke to death on it.
Some time during the day the picture place called to say that they'd finished printing the pictures and we could come and look at them when we had a chance.
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