Hamamatsu weekend
Hi!
This post was to be the second-last post of this blog, but instead this will actually be first of a few posts I will make about the last few weeks. Still, there's already less than two weeks left of the journey, and looking at my statistics, once in 2-3 weeks exactly how fast I should be expected to squeeze out one last post. Yet, it seems like I will try to do several in a few days. You'd think I would know my own capabilities better at this point, and act according to them...
Speaking of capabilities, you might remember how in the very first post I was claiming to begin a quest to do my best to flood my social media with stuff, just to see what it feels like. As a result, I now know that I either am not efficient enough at it or I'm just too nit-picky - the few Instagram posts and Snapchat stories I managed were stressful and fatiguing to produce. I'm sure I could get better at it and learn to be much more photogenic and easygoing about posting pictures of myself, but I think I've found the medium I'm most comfortable expressing myself in. I've started to seriously concern about continuing writing in some form - if not in the form of a blog, then in some completely other way.
There's been some other moments of self-discovery. The time I've spent here has given me perspective of how even here, where I'm mostly all by myself and free of the normal comings and goings of my life, I'm still lazy and tired, and I'm still feeling like I should have more time to do more, despite already doing many cool things with the time and drive I have left after a day's work. I'm starting to see and truly understand how it's not the amount of time I have in a day that needs to change, but the way I think and deal with the things I do during a day. Hardly my own idea, since I've been told that by different people for years, but it's something to really start feeling it.
But, hey, that's that, but now would be time to cover the last three weeks or so of my stay here. There's been quite a lot of stuff,but I'll do my best to cover it all well enough and before I fall asleep but as I'm already about to fall asleep, I'll just tell you of a lively weekend, and tell the rest later.
By the time I posted my last post, I had actually spent the weekend in Hamamatsu with my host family of the first week of my stay in Japan. We had already planned it for a few weeks, as we didn't have that much time for sightseeing during my stay at their place because I was so jet-lagged during the weekend we would've had time for any.
This weekend certainly made up for the first weekend. I left early in Saturday morning (this would be the 25th of August) to go to Hamamatsu with a local train, meeting Yu and Huji-san, the host mother, at the station. Yu was quite excited, but despite this, when he ran up to me, do you know what was the very first thing he said to me?
"Your belly has grown."
Despite this painfully fact-filled reunion, the three of started the day off visiting a bird zoo. It was a great place, with most of the birds roaming free in big halls, the different kinds of parrots landing on your hand to be fed and carefully petted. There were also peacock, a few albatrosses, this creepy huge bird that mostly just stands still whose name I can't think up, and outside also some emus in a pen and swans in a pond. Yu liked it greatly, and even braved up to take a bird to sit on his and after some convincing. Me, I hadn't been to a zoo of any kind for quite a while, and it surely was a refreshing experience.
Next up on the itinerary was a Buddhist temple, or as Japanese people call them, temples. Osakabe-san, the father, joined us here, he'd skipped the bird zoo to get some well needed sleep he'd been missing because of work. At the temple, we had lunch, supposedly the same stuff that the local monks eat as well, and so the meal was completely vegan. Most of the food in the two trays laid before each of us was exquisite to say the least - such different and full tastes! - but I will have to say that some of it was a bit too tough for me. For one, I still haven't gotten used to eating plain tofu, and another thing is that some Japanese foods are just too slimy for me to appreciate. It was worth taking a bite of some less thrilling foods to taste the rest, though. Afterwards, we strolled through the temple, which was quite large, containing all kinds of artwork, altar rooms, and curiously an escalator seemingly for ease of access to the main altar room high on the side of a hill. The main courtyard was a wondrous sight, filled with small, colorful wind chimes hanging form scaffolding covering the walkways, filling the air with sound and color.
The day was slowly turning into an afternoon, but what I now would consider the main event of the day was still to come. We went to spend a small breather in a huge shopping center to grab some light eating and relax before driving to a nearby bay for the final event: a fishing trip! At the bay, a fisherman came to pick us up around 7 or so, when the sun was quickly making it's way over the horizon. All four of us boarded the tiny boat, only a meter wide and maybe six long, and the fisherman (I think we basically called him Chief) sped us through the bay closer to sea. We ended up at a shallow area near the mouth of the bay, where we stopped, and waited for the dark to fall. Then, the Chief lowered a stick with several light bulbs on one end to the water, illuminating the sea floor (only a meter below us) at the front of the boat, and started pushing the boat forward with about a 4 meter pole. A pole with a trident on the other end, that is. The fishing had begun.
For the next hour or two, Chief would push us through shallow waters and occasionally speed us to another spot, and all of us would do our best to catch us some dinner - anything that would end up in the boat, we would eat. The main target for the trip were crabs, that you would stab with the trident and lift to a small holding in the middle of the bow of the boat. The hard part was, that while the light lowered in the water made the waters very clear and easy to see, the crabs were really hard to spot, as they were all partly dug in in the sand. Basically, the family wasn't able to catch anything, despite Osakabe-san getting really close, and I managed to with great effort and focus catch two. Chief though? He caught some 12 crabs, 2 large fish, a squid, and even a puffer fish, that he immediately shook off the trident after seeing what it was. While our own achievements were small, it was great to see Chief work, spotting things that I never would've and very precisely handling the trident.
When bored, there was also a chance to enjoy a fireworks festival some kilometers away on the coast, which, even if far away, pretty much blew my mind. I really regret that the fireworks festival I was invited to was canceled, because if it was anything like the massive crowd of colors and forms in the night sky as this one, it would've been the best experience of my trip. From what I saw in those fireworks and understood from the casual way the family talked about them, Japanese fireworks are on a completely different scale than the ones I'm used to at home.
After the fishing was done, we headed up to a group of rafts tethered to the bottom of the bay and with tents propped on them to give cover. Some were already occupied by other people who were having their own small parties. We transferred from the boat to the raft, and Chief started cooking, boiling the crabs and making tempura out of the fish and squid. It was REALLY good. As one could imagine, it was as fresh as a fish (or a crustacean) can be, and really some of the best seafood I've ever had. Afterwards, Chief took us back to the shore, I thanked with all the Japanese words for "thank you" that I knew, and we went back to the host family's place, where I slept in the same bed that I slept my first week in Japan in. This had been a really great day.
The Sunday was good as well, though only a half of a day. We went for breakfast to a grape farm, where you could pick the grapes yourself and eat all you wanted for a fixed price (you weren't allowed to take any with you with that price though). Then we went to another temple, which, while not quite as big as the previous one, belonged to a historically interesting clan, and I was lucky enough to get my hands on some pamphlets in English about the place's and the clan's history. There was also a wonderful zen garden at the back of the temple, which was explained it detail through a playback Japanese narration, and in less detail in the pamphlet.
The final point of interest on the Sunday was a 15-minute visit to an aviation museum. It may sound like a ridiculously short time - and it was - but it ended up being just enough for my interests. Why? I find that when it comes to aviation, even though I do have an interest to it generally, I have a special interest in second world wars aviation history, most notably because of my dad's fascination to it. This museum did display the Japanese Zero, a famous fighter plane from the second world war, but that was the only war time plane in the whole hangar of planes on display. In fact, it was the only thing that even hinted at the war - all the pilot equipment on display was more modern, and the stories were about the post-war air force. Even the placate for the Zero didn't mention anything about it's role in the war, or war at all for that. I can understand why the Japanese wouldn't want to remember the war or remind their people of it - Japan did suffer horribly from the war, but it also just fits the Japanese mentality. Learning this was maybe not as great as tasting a freshly caught crab, but it was quite a powerful realization.
After the quick aviation museum visit, I was quickly taken to a train station, as the wait for the next train would be too long for my timetable. Yu again asked me to stay, as he had a few times during the weekend, but he was a bit more lively when I did finally step out the car and run to train. By now we've agreed to meet one more time with the family, two days prior to my departure back to Finland, so one more time I will meet them for sure!
After taking the train back to Shizuoka, to go back home quickly, before continuing towards Tokyo the same day. There, an interesting hackathon was waiting for me...but more on that later! :)
Stay tuned, I guess?
-Ilmari
This post was to be the second-last post of this blog, but instead this will actually be first of a few posts I will make about the last few weeks. Still, there's already less than two weeks left of the journey, and looking at my statistics, once in 2-3 weeks exactly how fast I should be expected to squeeze out one last post. Yet, it seems like I will try to do several in a few days. You'd think I would know my own capabilities better at this point, and act according to them...
Speaking of capabilities, you might remember how in the very first post I was claiming to begin a quest to do my best to flood my social media with stuff, just to see what it feels like. As a result, I now know that I either am not efficient enough at it or I'm just too nit-picky - the few Instagram posts and Snapchat stories I managed were stressful and fatiguing to produce. I'm sure I could get better at it and learn to be much more photogenic and easygoing about posting pictures of myself, but I think I've found the medium I'm most comfortable expressing myself in. I've started to seriously concern about continuing writing in some form - if not in the form of a blog, then in some completely other way.
There's been some other moments of self-discovery. The time I've spent here has given me perspective of how even here, where I'm mostly all by myself and free of the normal comings and goings of my life, I'm still lazy and tired, and I'm still feeling like I should have more time to do more, despite already doing many cool things with the time and drive I have left after a day's work. I'm starting to see and truly understand how it's not the amount of time I have in a day that needs to change, but the way I think and deal with the things I do during a day. Hardly my own idea, since I've been told that by different people for years, but it's something to really start feeling it.
But, hey, that's that, but now would be time to cover the last three weeks or so of my stay here. There's been quite a lot of stuff,
By the time I posted my last post, I had actually spent the weekend in Hamamatsu with my host family of the first week of my stay in Japan. We had already planned it for a few weeks, as we didn't have that much time for sightseeing during my stay at their place because I was so jet-lagged during the weekend we would've had time for any.
This weekend certainly made up for the first weekend. I left early in Saturday morning (this would be the 25th of August) to go to Hamamatsu with a local train, meeting Yu and Huji-san, the host mother, at the station. Yu was quite excited, but despite this, when he ran up to me, do you know what was the very first thing he said to me?
"Your belly has grown."
Despite this painfully fact-filled reunion, the three of started the day off visiting a bird zoo. It was a great place, with most of the birds roaming free in big halls, the different kinds of parrots landing on your hand to be fed and carefully petted. There were also peacock, a few albatrosses, this creepy huge bird that mostly just stands still whose name I can't think up, and outside also some emus in a pen and swans in a pond. Yu liked it greatly, and even braved up to take a bird to sit on his and after some convincing. Me, I hadn't been to a zoo of any kind for quite a while, and it surely was a refreshing experience.
Next up on the itinerary was a Buddhist temple, or as Japanese people call them, temples. Osakabe-san, the father, joined us here, he'd skipped the bird zoo to get some well needed sleep he'd been missing because of work. At the temple, we had lunch, supposedly the same stuff that the local monks eat as well, and so the meal was completely vegan. Most of the food in the two trays laid before each of us was exquisite to say the least - such different and full tastes! - but I will have to say that some of it was a bit too tough for me. For one, I still haven't gotten used to eating plain tofu, and another thing is that some Japanese foods are just too slimy for me to appreciate. It was worth taking a bite of some less thrilling foods to taste the rest, though. Afterwards, we strolled through the temple, which was quite large, containing all kinds of artwork, altar rooms, and curiously an escalator seemingly for ease of access to the main altar room high on the side of a hill. The main courtyard was a wondrous sight, filled with small, colorful wind chimes hanging form scaffolding covering the walkways, filling the air with sound and color.
The day was slowly turning into an afternoon, but what I now would consider the main event of the day was still to come. We went to spend a small breather in a huge shopping center to grab some light eating and relax before driving to a nearby bay for the final event: a fishing trip! At the bay, a fisherman came to pick us up around 7 or so, when the sun was quickly making it's way over the horizon. All four of us boarded the tiny boat, only a meter wide and maybe six long, and the fisherman (I think we basically called him Chief) sped us through the bay closer to sea. We ended up at a shallow area near the mouth of the bay, where we stopped, and waited for the dark to fall. Then, the Chief lowered a stick with several light bulbs on one end to the water, illuminating the sea floor (only a meter below us) at the front of the boat, and started pushing the boat forward with about a 4 meter pole. A pole with a trident on the other end, that is. The fishing had begun.
For the next hour or two, Chief would push us through shallow waters and occasionally speed us to another spot, and all of us would do our best to catch us some dinner - anything that would end up in the boat, we would eat. The main target for the trip were crabs, that you would stab with the trident and lift to a small holding in the middle of the bow of the boat. The hard part was, that while the light lowered in the water made the waters very clear and easy to see, the crabs were really hard to spot, as they were all partly dug in in the sand. Basically, the family wasn't able to catch anything, despite Osakabe-san getting really close, and I managed to with great effort and focus catch two. Chief though? He caught some 12 crabs, 2 large fish, a squid, and even a puffer fish, that he immediately shook off the trident after seeing what it was. While our own achievements were small, it was great to see Chief work, spotting things that I never would've and very precisely handling the trident.
When bored, there was also a chance to enjoy a fireworks festival some kilometers away on the coast, which, even if far away, pretty much blew my mind. I really regret that the fireworks festival I was invited to was canceled, because if it was anything like the massive crowd of colors and forms in the night sky as this one, it would've been the best experience of my trip. From what I saw in those fireworks and understood from the casual way the family talked about them, Japanese fireworks are on a completely different scale than the ones I'm used to at home.
After the fishing was done, we headed up to a group of rafts tethered to the bottom of the bay and with tents propped on them to give cover. Some were already occupied by other people who were having their own small parties. We transferred from the boat to the raft, and Chief started cooking, boiling the crabs and making tempura out of the fish and squid. It was REALLY good. As one could imagine, it was as fresh as a fish (or a crustacean) can be, and really some of the best seafood I've ever had. Afterwards, Chief took us back to the shore, I thanked with all the Japanese words for "thank you" that I knew, and we went back to the host family's place, where I slept in the same bed that I slept my first week in Japan in. This had been a really great day.
The Sunday was good as well, though only a half of a day. We went for breakfast to a grape farm, where you could pick the grapes yourself and eat all you wanted for a fixed price (you weren't allowed to take any with you with that price though). Then we went to another temple, which, while not quite as big as the previous one, belonged to a historically interesting clan, and I was lucky enough to get my hands on some pamphlets in English about the place's and the clan's history. There was also a wonderful zen garden at the back of the temple, which was explained it detail through a playback Japanese narration, and in less detail in the pamphlet.
The final point of interest on the Sunday was a 15-minute visit to an aviation museum. It may sound like a ridiculously short time - and it was - but it ended up being just enough for my interests. Why? I find that when it comes to aviation, even though I do have an interest to it generally, I have a special interest in second world wars aviation history, most notably because of my dad's fascination to it. This museum did display the Japanese Zero, a famous fighter plane from the second world war, but that was the only war time plane in the whole hangar of planes on display. In fact, it was the only thing that even hinted at the war - all the pilot equipment on display was more modern, and the stories were about the post-war air force. Even the placate for the Zero didn't mention anything about it's role in the war, or war at all for that. I can understand why the Japanese wouldn't want to remember the war or remind their people of it - Japan did suffer horribly from the war, but it also just fits the Japanese mentality. Learning this was maybe not as great as tasting a freshly caught crab, but it was quite a powerful realization.
After the quick aviation museum visit, I was quickly taken to a train station, as the wait for the next train would be too long for my timetable. Yu again asked me to stay, as he had a few times during the weekend, but he was a bit more lively when I did finally step out the car and run to train. By now we've agreed to meet one more time with the family, two days prior to my departure back to Finland, so one more time I will meet them for sure!
After taking the train back to Shizuoka, to go back home quickly, before continuing towards Tokyo the same day. There, an interesting hackathon was waiting for me...but more on that later! :)
Stay tuned, I guess?
-Ilmari
Brave Yu feeding birds
Wind chimes at the temple
Zen Garden
Mitsubishi A6M Zero
Love to read your stories!
ReplyDelete..dad
ReplyDelete