Places
Oh the places you'll go as a JTW student! Although at times JTW students may ask themselves why they are being dragged to see Fukuoka's massive waste recycling center or a fully operational nuclear power plant in Saga, in the end the experience is one that won't soon be forgotten and students have an opportunity to explore aspects of Japan into which many Japanese themselves might never have ventured. Below are short descriptions, in chronological order, of most of the group trips from the '97-'98 JTW year. You may click on the links below to skip directly to each trip, or just scroll down:
| Mt. Aso/Mt. Kuju/Kumamoto |
This was our first trip together, which we left for only a few days after arriving in Fukuoka. If I remember correctly we first headed down to Kumamoto in the morning and went to see Kumamoto castle and the Suizenji gardens, one of the most beautiful gardens in all of Japan. Unfortunately everywhere we went at Suizenji there were large groups of school children blocking our view, so we didn't really get to see anything, but from the pictures in the pamphlet I could tell it was a really nice place. We did get to see Kumamoto castle just fine, and it was quite beautiful, but upon learning that it was just a recreation of the real thing, we all left rather disgusted. Outside the castle gates we found a really cool guy dressed up in a traditional samurai outfit who was supposed to be protecting the castle from barbarians and silly foreigners such as ourselves.
After taunting the poor bastard for a while, we became tired and returned to the bus, on the way playing with a cute little monkey some guy had on a chain in the parking lot. After Noguchi-san got a bit too frisky with the little critter, we got on our way and headed to a quaint little restaurant that supposedly excelled in the local delicacy: raw horse meat. Yeah, we ate us some horse. Susi found it to be quite appetizing. We were then herded back onto the bus in a hurry in order to make it to Mt. Aso before dark. Mt. Aso is one of the few active volcanos left in Kyushu, and from the top we got a great view of the inside of the crater. However, we couldn't figure out if the sulfuric odor up there that was making us all a little nauseous was coming from the crater or if Woosuk wasn't handling his horse meat too well. After hiking back down to the bus, we raided the gift shops and had some yummy green tea ice cream.
Exhausted from our adventures that day and our tummies aching from the raw horse meat, we got on our way to Mt. Kuju, where Kyudai's very own mountain resort awaited us. Upon arriving, we listened to Mito-sensei lecture us on the joys of using a Japanese toilet and the dangers associated with not paying due respect to the strategically placed crossbeams in the house that were sure to give our poor little atama a good bump or two. Then he busted out the sake and tried to get us all drunk. When his sake supply ran out, we headed up the road to the main hall and found a group of medical students from Oita letting it all hang out. We joined them for a bit of merrymaking and proceeded to take turns singing our national anthems. I personally preferred the Belgian national anthem, which sounded a bit like a drinking song to me.
A good time was had by all, and after failing to go home with the young nurses-to-be, we stumbled back to our log cabin and bumped our heads repeatedly on all the crossbeams. At last we were feeling as though this orientation thing was paying off. The next day we hiked up the nearest mountain we could find and yelled konnichiwa! to passing natives. We grew tired after a while and decided to just sit on a ridge and eat our obentou. By the time we headed back, we were yelling konbanwa! to the natives and still regretting eating that poor horse the day before. After dinner we men had to do our manly thing, so we headed up to the main hall again, got naked, and jumped in a big bathtub together. Woosuk said he had a really good time. We then made our way back to the cafeteria where the festivities had taken place the night before to find students from another school getting piss drunk. I suppose they were there for an orientation of sorts too.
We helped them drink their beer and helped the nice young ladies in the group get back to their rooms safely, and then we again stumbled back to our log cabin and bumped our heads on all the crossbeams. The next day we packed our bags and headed back to Fukuoka. Exhausted, we began to doze off one by one, foolishly believing that the trip was over and that we were heading straight back to the Kaikan. The bus suddenly cut off the highway onto a small two-lane road and pulled into a tightly-packed parking lot nestled into the side of a small mountain. We were told to get out of the bus and begin walking. As we had already been conditioned to keep our mouths shut and obey, we followed a semi-paved path into a small forest with several clearings containing all sorts of beautiful ornaments and statues.
We wandered around for about an hour, and then we walked through a long tunnel that connected us to the front side of the mountain. There we stepped out into a beautiful pavilion with the largest statue of Buddha I had ever seen. It was made out of some special bronze or something and evidently it is quite famous because it is the only statue of Buddha lying on its side. I must say that if you are in the area, it is worth a visit. I don't even think there was an entrance fee. I don't remember the name of the place, but it must have been rather close to Fukuoka and if you really wanted to pay it a visit, I'm sure you could just ask anyone on the street which way it is to the giant 'Lazy Buddha'.
About a week after returning from our "orientation", the powers that be at the JTW headquarters decided it was time to take us on an official tour of Fukuoka. Seeing as how most of us were not yet too capable in the Japanese language, and since most of us had never lived in Japan before, they figured we needed to be shown around like little children. Well, they certainly were right. As it turned out, not too far into the tour one JTW student was misplaced and left for dead on the roughest streets of Tenjin. He barely made it out alive. This is his story:
It all began on a cool Thursday morning, with the usual herding of JTW students into an undersized bus for the big 'Tour de Fukuoka'. Little did poor Johnny (real names have been withheld to protect the poor bastard who got left behind) know what he was in for. The plan was simple: take the students to Mitsukoshi in Tenjin, where the American Center resided on the third floor of an auxiliary building. Take the students through the department store up to the walkway that leads into the auxiliary building. Introduce the students to the director of the Center, and allow him to give his little talk on what the Center has to offer the students. Show them around and let them look at all the pretty stuff, but no touching. Get them out of there as quickly as possible and to the nearest bus stop. Board library-bound bus and take students for a tour of the fabulous Fukuoka library. Show them around and let them look at all the pretty stuff, but no touching. Get them out of there as quickly as possible and to the nearest bus stop. Board Kyudai-bound bus and get them back there as quickly as possible.
Somewhere along the way, however, a mistake was made. A very BIG mistake. Johnny was left behind. It happened at the American Center. Everything was on schedule, but upon leaving the chaperones realized there was only one elevator out of the place, so they would have to go down in several groups. Knowing that this would take some time, several guys in the group headed for the bathrooms to relieve some bladder pressure. Johnny was one of them. There were only two stalls, and as Johnny was the last one through the door, he waited until everyone else was finished to use the pisser. Taking a little longer than he expected to fully relieve himself, he washed his hands and hurried outside to catch the last elevator. He turned the corner to where his peers had earlier stood, but instead of finding a rambunctious group of students he found an empty lobby. Trying not to panic he hurried back into the American Center office and asked the director the fastest way out of the building. The director pointed him to the stairs and Johnny took off in a flash.
He took five stairs at a time, his heart pounding and his head filling with thoughts of anger and hurt. He hit the street running, but not realizing he had come out the back side of the building, he headed the wrong way in search of his companions. By the time he realized what he had done, it was too late. He rushed back to the other side of the Mitsukoshi building and found the busstop, but nobody was there. Trying not to panic, and at this point trying to avoid thoughts of whacking Mito-sensei over the head with an obentou, he headed back to the directors office to find out how to get to the Fukuoka library. Unfortunately, the director had already headed off to a meeting, and as the secretary didn't speak enough English to explain, Johnny reluctantly headed back out into the streets of Tenjin alone. Scared and shaking, he wandered around trying to make sense of the signs at the busstops, but it all looked like Chinese to him (for good reason I might add).
Luckily for poor Johnny, he had come into Tenjin the weekend before with his JTW friends and remembered the bus number to take to get to the Kaikan. All he had to do was find his way to the central post office, from which the bus departed. Unfortunately he didn't know how to say post office (or much else) in Japanese. He looked around for a while, but couldn't seem to find it. Frustrated and tired, he finally gave in and just started yelling frantically at the top of his lungs "Where the hell is the stupid post office in this town!" After many strange stares and a few nasty comments from passersby, a fellow foreigner came up to Johnny and pointed him in the right direction. After kissing the girl repeatedly for her help, Johnny set off on his long journey home. An hour later, he opened the door to his Kaikan room and stumbled into bed, sure that someone would call any minute to find out what happened to him. They never did. In fact, they never even noticed he was gone.
Although Johnny barely made it home alive, the rest of the group had a splendid time touring the library and checking out the adjacent Fukuoka museum and Fukuoka tower. I'm sure they really enjoyed themselves, but I wouldn't know, because for some strange reason I wasn't there =0)
Although this wasn't really a 'field trip' per se, it did turn out to be another one of our big group outings, though not quite as enjoyable for most students as the other JTW trips. Although never really explained to students, the primary purpose of this testing was to make sure that foreign students weren't bringing in AIDS or any other nasty diseases to Japan to contaminate the poor Japanese. A few of us were a little bitter about that at the time (especially me since I'm not too fond of having blood drawn), and I still wonder what they would do with a foreigner who did turn up positive for AIDS or some other disease they were trying to detect. Anyway, we all headed out to Kyudai's hospital, down the road from the main campus.
Instead of packing into a little bus for this trip though, most of us jumped on our bikes and followed Jun-san (who videotaped us while riding his bike backward, which I was rather impressed with), and everybody else caught the subway. Unfortunately, the hospital was screening all the new foreign students who had just entered Kyudai, not just JTW students, so we had a rather long wait at certain points during the examination. First they packed us all in a conference room and sat us around a big circular table and explained the procedure. This was actually the most enjoyable part for most of us due to the fact that they had nurses with very good personalities assisting with the presentation. After we had filled out tons of paperwork that they passed around the room, we lined up at different stations to have the different tests performed. Most of the JTW students were in the same group, so we first went to have our blood drawn.
Next, they gave us a cup and made us fill it with urine, into which the nurse (who obviously wasn't well-liked at the hospital to get a job like this) stuck a small piece of litmus paper to check the acidity for some sort of deficiency. Next we filed into an examination room where we first had our blood pressure taken, then we were laid out on a bed and had a bunch of strange suction cups applied to our chests to measure some sort of heart activity. As if this weren't enough to qualify us as healthy barbarians, we had to go get X-rays taken (as if we weren't going to get enough radiation from our field trip to the nuclear power plant). I'm pretty sure there were a few other small tests and procedures somewhere in there, because the testing took several hours altogether. I'm just glad they didn't make us go back and do it all over again the next semester.
This trip was to an archeological excavation site not too far from Fukuoka where remains of ancient Japanese earth dwellers had been dug up. To be perfectly honest, I didn't find this trip very exciting. The JTW professor who took us out there as a part of his class seemed really fascinated with it though, so that was good. I guess archeology just isn't my cup of tea, because I really don't have too much to say about this trip. We took our little bus out to the site, got off and relaxed a bit at the gift shop (unfortunately they didn't have any green tea ice cream), and then the archeology professor took us around the site and showed us all the old huts that had been recreated there to simulate the lives of some of the earliest known people in Japan.
I liked the little huts. They reminded me of the little forts I used to try and make out of sticks and pine needles with my friends when I was little. After walking around looking in the little huts for quite some time, we headed indoors to see the little museum they had there. They had some 3D projection display set up which showed how these peoples daily lives supposedly went. They had some little girl gathering sticks for a fire, and a boy helping his father skin some sort of disfigured animal, while the mother was of course in the house cooking supper and washing clothes (things just never change in this country, even after 2000 years). As most of us didn't speak much Japanese at the time, nothing they were saying really made sense. Actually, most of it was just grunting, so I'm sure the Japanese visitors had a hard time understanding too. That made me feel better. After checking out the little museum, we walked across the street to a trail that led nowhere. When we got nowhere, we turned around and went back to the bus. We were very amused.
This was definitely one of our better field trips. We got to see one of the most historically important cities in Japan, visit a very famous shrine, tour a museum, watch real Sumo wrestlers practice and then eat their high-calorie lunch with them, visit a beautiful private garden, and take a jaunt through the woods to see a quaint little temple and some special tombstones.
This was our first trip in November. We met at the Nishitetsu train station in Mitsukoshi and headed south. Dazaifu was the last stop, where we hopped off the train and followed Mito-sensei down a large cobblestone street with shops on either side and large torii (the large arches that almost look like pi characters and are famous in Japanese architecture) along the way. We arrived at the shrine first and checked out all the neat stuff there, including the little food stands and a big flower extravaganza outside the main entrance. After admiring the shrine and its surroundings for a while, we went and talked to one of the head priests and he told us a bit about the place. Then we toured the adjacent museum, which was filled with all sorts of artifacts and information about the history of Dazaifu and its great importance in ancient Japan.
One of the priests then led us up the hill to a small barn, and this is where the fun really began. Inside we heard scuffling and deep grunts, and upon entering we found about twelve dirt-covered Sumo wrestlers standing around a circle on top of a large mound in the middle of the barn, with two wrestlers inside the circle engaged in a rather violent match. As soon as one of the wrestlers hit the ground with anything other than his feet, or was forced outside the circle, the next competitor would enter and face-off with the winner. This went on for well over an hour (and probably had started many hours before we arrived), and almost every wrestler there was bleeding somewhere on his body and one even had a huge gash in his nose. I must admit that before that day, I had this image of Sumo wrestling as a bunch of short,
fat Japanese Pillsbury Doughboys just bumping bellies with one another until one toppled over, but after having the pleasure of watching the real thing, I earned a great respect for the wrestlers and the sport itself. First of all, none of these guys were short; almost all were over 6 feet tall. Secondly, none of them were fat. Sure, they all carried a lot of fat in there midsection, as this gives them an advantage in fighting, but to carry that kind of weight around with agility, they certainly have to have a lot of muscle, especially in their legs. Also, these guys were not only incredibly strong, but they were tough as hell. This sport involves a lot more than just pushing your big belly into another guy and grunting a lot until he falls over, it involves using everything from face slapping (and don't think it's like your momma does to you... it's pretty vicious stuff)
to throwing guys off the mound head-first into the hard floor. This may be one of the toughest sports around in my personal opinion, and it's a shame it hasn't gained more international respect. The guys we saw practicing weren't even close to the top ranks, meaning they aren't near as big and strong as the best wrestlers that are seen on Japanese TV and placed in the premier group at the tournaments. Yet these guys were tearing each other apart at a practice! Also, there is a lot of technique involved in the sport, as there are close to a hundred different ways to throw or knock your opponent out of the circle. Evidently the guys we watched practicing were very fortunate to be there in that barn, because as we found out later they were training with a retired yokozuna wrestler, the highest rank in Sumo.
Only about seventy people have reached this rank in the long history of the sport. Anyway, after watching these guys beat each other to bloody pulps, we stepped outside with them and took tons of pictures and joked around for a bit, then we headed down to their quarters together for lunch. This was the house where they ate and slept, which had a nice garden out front and many traditional rooms inside. We waited for them to shower and prepare our lunch in the main room, which was a traditional Japanese tatami-style room. Then, despite working out all morning, these guys served us lunch and beer and waited on us hand and foot. They were incredibly nice, and as it turned out, most of them were actually younger than us. We ate a delicious meal consisting of various dishes all with extremely high calorie content.
I suggested they mix a little raw horse meat into their diet, but they weren't too keen on the idea. After eating, we wished the big guys good luck at their upcoming tournament, then made our way a few blocks over to a Japanese garden of high renown. The garden was actually part of an old house that had been preserved as a museum of sorts, and you could walk around the house and get several different views of the garden. It was especially beautiful at this time of year, because many of the leaves had almost a purple glow about them. There were beautiful white rocks running like small streams between the grass, and large stones jutting up from the ground. After enjoying the serenity of the garden for a while, we walked across town to an area surrounded by quite a few trees,
where there was a small temple with a graveyard kind of aura to it. We then proceeded up the road to a small path that led into the forest, where some guy we brought with us explained the history of some sort of alter or tombstones or something. I really didn't catch that part. By that point we were all pretty exhausted anyway. So after cutting through a big field with some big rocks that looked almost like a miniature Stonehenge, we found our way to the nearest train station. As it was a rather long ride back to Fukuoka, most of us fell asleep on the train with visions of Sumo wrestlers dancing through our heads.
| Genkai Nuclear Power Plant |
Like poor Katrina here, many of us were frightened at the prospect of visiting a nuclear power plant and decided to wear our thickest clothing. Ok, actually we wore the thick clothing to protect us from the bitter cold, as it was the second week of December. We rode our usual little bus into Saga prefecture, adjacent to Fukuoka prefecture. On the way, the JTW folks thought it would be a wonderful idea to stop off at a little beach to get a nice view of the ocean, neglecting the fact that the wind-chill factor out there had to be in the negative numbers. I must admit it was a rather beautiful beach, but one that I would have been more interested in visiting in June or July. After walking around the beach for a very chilly fifteen minutes or so and posing for Jun and the JTW videocamera, we all piled back into the bus and headed for Genkai. Just as we stepped off the bus at the main entrance to the visitor center of the plant, snow began to fall. It was beautiful, and for many of us the only snowfall we would see in Japan.
The power plant was situated right on the ocean, as they used the ocean water to cool the reactors. It wasn't all that bad of a view either, and I'm sure if there hadn't been a nuclear power plant there, a few oceanfront resorts might have set up business along the surrounding coast. We first ventured into the visitor center, where a nice old man gave us the official tour of their informative little museum. After that, we were taken to a back room for our typical field trip fare: obentou. Upon finishing these yummy little boxes of wholesomeness, we made our way by a little bus to the starting point of the real tour. We first had to go through a bomb-detector and through a special sealed room to make absolutely sure. After disabling the small bomb Andy tried to sneak in inside his underwear (he claimed he was going to get even with the "damn Japs" for World War II...
when we explained to him that Germany and Japan were allies, he didn't seem too happy), we were allowed to continue. I don't remember the exact order in which we saw everything, but they showed us several different reactors, the cooling system, the main control room, the uranium storage pools, waste disposal areas, steam turbines and power generators, and just about everything short of the insides of the reactor cores (Mito-sensei begged the tour guide to let us in there too, but he firmly refused). By the end of the tour we were fairly exhausted, so we declined Mito-sensei's offer to stop by the beach again for a bit of swimming on the way back.
This was more of an extracurricular outing (ok, actually it wasn't sponsored by JTW at all), chaperoned by the beer-guzzling Dimitri-sensei. Although attendance was rather low (only Jason, Colinda, Robby, Paul, Sebastian, Andy, Dimitri-sensei, Aya-chan, and myself came), a great time was had by all and many of the students were later quite sorry they didn't join us. I believe Jason was the one who found out about this place, and he had talked about it for some time until we agreed to go as a group and check it out. Asahi is one of the largest beer producers in Japan, and this was basically a restaurant connected to one of their breweries or distribution centers (I'm not sure which). The deal is you pay 3000 yen (about US$30) for two hours of all the meat and vegetables you can eat
(which you cook yourself on the stoves in the middle of the tables), and all the Asahi beer you can hold down. We took the JR train one stop past Hakata-eki (I forget the name of the station) and walked about a block to the factory. They had a really shnazzy entrance, which I forgot to get a picture of. We rode the elevator up a few stories and took the walkway over the street below to the restaurant. When we entered, we found ourselves in the corner of a gigantic meal hall, with a high ceiling and many long tables. I would say the place could seat a few hundred people at a time. Upon verifying our reservations, the hostess led us to our own table and gave us some time to order (the two hour time limit begins when you place your first order). We selected our type of meat (the only choice to make besides what type of beer you want) and placed our order,
everyone setting their watches for two hours of massive consumption. Robby quickly took the lead in the beer department, finishing 4 large mugs in the first 20 minutes. After a while we all lost count though, so there's no telling who drank the most. About 30 minutes into our meal, Andy began flirting with the Japanese guys at the table behind us, and soon several of us were over there laughing and enjoying our inebriated state together, drawing quite a few stares from the other drunken patrons. We returned to our meal and continued cooking more and more meat and vegetables. I must admit that I had probably never personally consumed so much meat in one evening before. As we continued further into the meal, more and more people got up and left for the bathroom, either because the beer had already worked its way through the system
or because the meat wasn't even going to try. We all had a very merry time, and even Aya-chan managed to take down a few beers and get a bit sloppy with us. With about 30 minutes left, most of us were trying to relax our stomachs in order to fit a bit more meat and beer down in there. Then a small group at the table on the other side of us struck up a conversation while they were waiting for their first order. Those of us who weren't feeling so well anymore warned them of the evils of overconsumption, at which they laughed a good bit. Then to our dismay, our waitress came to tell us our time was up. We all looked at our watches (though most of us were unable to read them at this point) and realized we still had 5 minutes. Well Dimitri-sensei, oh great leader that he was, would have none of that.
He marched over there and explained in his fabulous Japanese to the frightened waitress that we still had time left. She apologized and came back over to see if we wanted to place any last orders. Despite the fact that most of us were about to burst or were already foaming at the mouth, Dimitri-sensei ordered another round of beers for everyone just to spite the Asahi people. He sure showed them. Oh how we loved that man. Anyway, the beers came and a few of us actually tried to take them on, but quickly surrendered to our aching stomachs and headed out of there. Walking back to the train station, we stopped at every other alley for somebody to relieve themselves. After finally arriving at the station, we found two very long rows of steps we had to ascend to the platform. Dimitri-sensei, taking one long, drunken look at the steps, decided he needed to get rid of a little extra weight first and went behind the steps to vomit. Another student wasn't feeling much better than Dimitri-sensei, but he figured he could hold it until he got home. After waiting slouched over on a bench about five minutes for the train, however, he lost it there on the platform. The train didn't do much to help our stomachs either, and from the look on everyone's face on the way home, it was pretty clear that we would not be going to Asahi Beer Garden again anytime soon.
If Guilin can be called the Venice of China, then Yanagawa certainly deserves the distinction of being called the Venice of Japan. Yanagawa is a quaint little town in Saga prefecture famous for the beautiful canals that run through its streets and the deliciously prepared eel of its restaurants. We got to sample both, as well as visit a local sake factory. Not even the pouring rain could stop us from having a great time on this trip.
We began the trip with a visit to a Sake factory somewhere on the way to Yanagawa. It was cold and raining outside, so when we got off the bus we sprinted through the front door, nearly trampling the owner of the factory and other workers waiting out front to greet us. We were taken to a small meeting room upstairs where I assume they met with prospective customers, and there waiting for us were pamphlets about the company and an illustrated list of all their products. I didn't realize up until this point that there were so many different kinds of sake. To help us understand the difference in taste and price, they had four green sake bottles, each marked with only a letter, on a table at the front of the room, and after they gave us a formal introduction to the company, they let us go up and try each one. The idea was for us to go back to our seats and write down on a piece of paper the order in which we thought each sake was priced,
based solely on the taste. Things would have gone smoothly, but Yoriko downed the first bottle before the rest of us got to try any, so we only had three choices at that point. Andy and Amy were the only ones who guessed correctly, so they got little sake pourers to take home as souvenirs. We were then led downstairs to begin the tour of the factory. They showed us just about every single place in the factory. They began by showing us where and how the rice was stored, and then how they refined it to use in the sake. They showed us their big firing oven, and I'm still not exactly sure what that was used for. They had a special room where certain workers had to put on their uniforms in order to protect the wine from contamination. They took us up some old wooden stairs to a platform built on top of the vats
where the sake was refined or something. They opened the top of one and let us look inside. Those suckers were pretty big. Finally they took us to where they actually bottled the wine, which consisted of several large machines with a conveyor belt running through all of them carrying the bottles. We tried to snag a few bottles as they were coming out of the final machine, but Mito-sensei grabbed us and told us he had already snagged plenty. It turns out it wasn't necessary, because upon leaving they gave each of us a souvenir bottle of sake. Unfortunately I never drank it, but it did add some life to my Kaikan room.
We then set out on our way to supposedly the best eel restaurant in Yanagawa, where our meals were already waiting for us. The restaurant had one small tatami-style room with mats for us to sit on, and two long tables to accomodate all of us. Most of us had never tried unagi before, but we were pretty hungry so we dug in anyway. Only a few people really couldn't stand it, but the rest of us finished it off just fine. It began to pour really hard while we were eating, and I figured the boat tour of the town would surely be canceled. However, the fearless JTW staff pulled out a box of plastic panchos and gave each of us one to wear. We walked across the street to the canal, where two long boats waited for us. We couldn't get Ohta-san in the boat because he was too scared,
so we promised him if he was a good boy and got in the boat we would buy him some ice cream afterward. The boats were really neat. They had no engines, only a guy at the back with a really long pole. He would run the pole to the bottom of the water and then push off to propel us. The one in our boat had a real sense of humor... he even laughed at Ohta-san every time he started crying. The canals ran a rather long distance, and along the way there were several bridges that ran overhead. The canal, unfortunately, was not wide enough to allow for these bridges to be arched, so there was about three feet of clearance between the water and the bottom of each bridge. Every time we came near a bridge, the guy pushing the boat would yell "Get down!" and we would all duck our heads and glide smoothly under the bridge.
After awhile, Anders figured this boat-pushing thing would be easy, especially for a big, strong guy such as himself. So the guy pushing his boat gladly agreed to switch out, and Anders found out just how difficult it really was. Sebastian, in the boat behind Anders, also figured this boat-pushing thing would be easy, especially for a big, strong guy such as himself. So switching out with the guy pushing his boat, Sebastian tried his best to make it look easy. After almost falling in the water a few times, he kind of got the hang of it and was quickly gaining on Anders, who really didn't care much for a race anyway. Then he screwed up... he dropped the stick and it would have fallen completely under the water had it not been for the boat guy. He reached down just as the very end of the stick was about to go under and snatched it up. Sebastian was fired, and Anders was relieved that he didn't have to worry about Sebastian ramming his boat from behind. After a few more bends in the canal, we came to an exit and everyone in my boat helped carry Ohta-san, who had been curled up in a fetal position since we went under our first bridge, up to the bus.
| Fukuoka's Waste Treatment Center |
Basically, this place was a hi-tech Japanese dump. Well, they did recycle a lot of stuff that came through here, so I suppose it does serve a greater purpose than a regular old dump. Anyway, this was another one of those field trips I just wasn't too sure about, so I'll keep the description short and sweet. This trip was led by Fujikura-sensei, who I personally felt was one of the better teachers in the program (and certainly the most humorous). While a lot of the stuff we saw was actually quite interesting, there were a few parts where I just scratched my head and wondered what we were doing there. A perfect example: right when we got there, they took us up to a really nice conference room to show us a video on their massive screen with hi-fi surround sound audio.
While the room and the equipment were state of the art, the video left something to be desired, especially considering the purpose of our visit. It was about how wonderful Fukuoka is, and how it has won so many awards for this and that, which had absolutely nothing to do with the facility or the tour. I'm sure the video would have been great to show to a group of visitors from a multinational company looking to set up business somewhere in Japan (why they would visit a waste treatment center, though, I'm not quite sure), but it had nothing to do with us. After the video, a plant official spoke to us for what seemed like hours. Fujikura-sensei translated, but even his good sense of humor couldn't keep most of us awake. The presentation was just extremely boring. Once we actually got to go walk around the facility, we had a pretty good time, as there was plenty of really fascinating machinery to watch and we got to see some of the trash burn. Fire is always entertaining for large groups of young people. I guess the other good thing is that Ohta-san didn't cry on this trip.
Oh, good old survival camp. It was touted in JTW literature as a true test of our Japanese ability. It said we were to spend a weekend outside Fukuoka where we would stay with Japanese families and visit an elementary school and speak nothing but Japanese. There were supposedly strict penalties for anyone who spoke anything other than Japanese during the weekend. Well, I wasn't too surprised when they didn't enforce the bit about speaking in other languages once we got there, but I was a bit puzzled as to why everything was conducted in English after our arrival. I was even more puzzled when I was assigned to a family whose father was American. They all spoke perfect English! Well, even though the weekend wasn't quite what we pictured, we had a blast playing with the little kids at the school,
staying with their families, attending a traditional Japanese tea ceremony, and holding an international festival for the kids. The fun began on a Friday in February, when we traveled about 25 miles outside of Fukuoka to a small town called Sasaguri. We went straight to Sasaguri's elementary school and met with the principal. Mito-sensei had made every one of us prepare a question for the principal in Japanese, which he then printed up and made random people ask to the principal. Then we were assigned in groups of two to a certain classroom. Susi and I were assigned to the third graders, whom were so very adorable. Everyone split off to there respective classrooms and fielded questions from the kids. Then lunch was served in each classroom and we ate at the miniature desks with the children.
The trays they ate from were so small that I had to get four servings. I felt kind of bad for little Yuuichi because I ended up stealing the rest of his food once the main supply ran out. He stopped crying after I shook him around a little bit though. After lunch we had a little break before we had to take the kids out for recess. Man, those kids ran us into the ground. Being the avid soccer fan I am, I braved a game of soccer with some of the kids, but after having my shins kicked in about 30 different places (they may be little, but a kick in the shin is a kick in the shin!), I decided to retire to the swings and flirt with the little girls. I actually got a phone number from one of them, but I figured a long distance relationship just wouldn't work. Next, we met back with the JTW staff and went on a quick tour of the elementary school.
All I recall seeing was the special education room, where one of the girls kept throwing things at me, and the library. After our little tour, we walked several blocks away to some sort of Japanese culture center to engage in a proper tea ceremony. Since the room was rather small, we broke up into two groups and one group went in while the other waited in the lobby and recovered from recess. Inside the tea room, we were seated by several women in kimono. We were supposed to sit in the seiza position (where you sit on your knees), but most of us, including Mito-sensei, only lasted about 5 minutes before we just plopped down on our butts. There was one lady in the middle who gave us a demonstration of how this tea thing was supposed to work. I never realized you could make drinking tea such a complicated process, but the Japanese sure have done their best. I don't remember the actual procedure, but it went something like this:
- Pick up your sacred tea cup with the right hand, placing your thumb on the bottom and your fingers around the edge
- Gently caress the top edge of the tea cup with your left hand, looking into the tea and chanting "I am one with the tea... I am one with the tea"
- Now run your tongue around the top edge of the cup, this time chanting as best you can "I love the tea... I love the tea"
- Next you are supposed to place the cup in the palm of your left hand
- If I remember correctly, you are then supposed to spin it one complete turn to the right, two complete turns to the left, and then one complete turn back to the right so that it rests in exactly the same position it started in
- Next you balance the cup on your head and chant "The tea brings me life... the tea brings me life", then clap your hands five times
- Finally, you remove the cup from your head, hold it with both hands by the sides of the cup, and if there is any tea left in the cup, you drink it one slow sip at a time
Ok, so that may not be exactly how it went, but it was something like that. Anyway, a lot of Japanese get a big kick out of this little ceremony, but I just wasn't too excited about it. Besides, spilling hot tea all over my head just didn't feel too good. Oh well, at least it was a good learning experience. I felt like I had a much deeper understanding of Japanese culture after leaving that room. When everybody was done with the ceremony, we walked back over to the elementary school. We went back to our classrooms and were told which child we would go home with that night. That's when I met Yumi-chan, an adorable little nine-year old who was half American, half Japanese. Despite not speaking any Japanese with her family, I had a wonderful time and actually went back and visited them a few times later in the year.
Some of the other students got rather interesting homestays. The most unusual was Sebastian, who went and stayed at a Buddhist temple with some monks. So the rest of the day was spent with our homestay families, where we were all on our own. The next morning we each accompanied our new little friends back to school to prepare for an international festival of sorts (together we could only represent four or five different countries, but I'm sure it was more international than these kids had ever seen). Several of us paired up to prepare our little booths, which were supposed to teach kids something about our country. Jason taught some kids how to play ice hockey.
Anders, though not Brazilian, taught some kids how to do a Brazilian dance. Andy, with German flags adorning the wall behind him, taught some little kids a few German drinking songs. A few of the guys thought it would be a good idea to teach the kids a little football, until the kids started getting a little too rough with them. Woosuk taught the guys how to pick up chicks the Korean way. The kids had a blast, and even though their first international experience may not have been too international, they still learned good, wholesome stuff and nobody got hurt (except for some of us). After the kids went home, we cleaned up and got the hell out of Dodge.
In my opinion, this was the best trip that JTW put together for us. Kyoto and Nara are the two most historically important cities in Japan. They were even saved from bombing by US forces in World War II by the efforts of one historian who realized the great loss that would be brought about by destroying any part of these two cities. Unfortunately he died before we made our visit, unable to stop the blanket of mass destruction we were soon to lay over the two cities.
Day 1:
This was the only trip we went on as a group that required our boarding an airplane. We flew into Osaka's new Kankuu airport, which is the first offshore airport of its kind. After arriving and finding our way to the tour bus, we were introduced to the driver and our tour guide, a young lady from Wakayama who thought she was so funny. Most of us didn't find her too hilarious at first, but she turned out to be okay in the end. She did enjoy speaking the Kansai dialect to us, which Koyama-sensei and some of our other chaperones got a real kick out of. So we drove through Osaka with this girl yelling stuff at us like " Shibaitarou ka, BOKE! and laughing hysterically, occasionally remembering to do her job and point stuff out to us. As Kyoto is only 40 miles or so north of Osaka,
once we got out of Osaka we arrived in the southern part of Kyoto in no time. We first drove around the city a bit, and Mito-sensei took turns with our crazy tour guide on the microphone telling us all about the little temples, shrines, monuments, statues, and restaurants we were passing. This town really was full of some pretty interesting stuff. Now I'm not too sure the order in which we visited all the sites, nor do I remember the names of all of the different temples and shrines we managed to see. I believe we started with one of the most famous tourist attractions in Kyoto, if not all of Japan: the Kiyomizu Temple. Founded over a thousand years ago around the time Japan's ancient capital was moved from Nara to Kyoto, this temple contains nearly 30 structures. The most impressive, and certainly the most widely photographed,
is the main hall which is made almost entirely of wood and built into the side of a hill, overlooking an exquisite garden below. After making our way through hundreds of other noisy tourists enjoying the peaceful serenity of the temple, we headed back down the main walkway back to the parking lot. Here there were at least 50 small shops selling all sorts of souvenirs, food, and anything else eyecatching enough to draw in tourists. We also ran into some maiko, which are young women dressed in a geishaesqe style walking up and down the streets and smiling at the tourists. After we took a picture or two with these nice young women, we loaded back on the bus and headed for the famous Golden Pavilion. Known commonly as Kinkakuji (or more formally as Rokuonji), this temple was originally built about 600 years ago but had to be rebuilt in 1955 due to a little arson incident.
This is also one of the most widely photographed structures in Japan, and I don't think I saw a single tourist here who didn't have their camera out the entire time they strolled the grounds. We took our share of JTW shots in front of the temple and made our way along a winding path toward the exit. On the walkway, a small group of Chinese people struck up a conversation with us (actually only one of them spoke any Japanese, so he did the talking). It turned out they were circus performers and they lived and performed in Osaka. They were quite an amusing bunch, and after doing a few tricks for us and posing for a few pictures with us, we were on our way. The rest of the day we stopped off at a few other temples and shrines, the only one I remember being Ryoanji Temple.
This place is quite famous for its many gardens, especially its rock gardens. These consist of several big rocks placed in a rectangular area full of white gravel. The gravel is meticulously combed and smoothly flows around the larger rocks placed in its way. There is one main path we followed that circles around the central pond and takes visitors through the various gardens before dumping them back in the parking lot. After finishing here, we took our tour bus to the hotel JTW had reserved for us. It was actually a really nice hotel, and despite its traditional external appearance, the rooms were quite modern and roomy. After getting our room assignments and moving our luggage into our rooms, we split off in groups and set out into the surrounding area to find food. Prices were noticeably more expensive than Fukuoka, with the average 'inexpensive' meal costing about US$10.
Later, several of us wanted to explore Kyoto's night life, so we sat at the nearest bus stop and let Kevin talk to all the cute girls who walked by about where the good night spots could be found. Following his lead, we crowded into a packed bus and rode around Kyoto for about an hour. Finally we decided we were lost and several guys had to pee, so we jumped off the bus and found us a nice dark alley to take a quick break in. We walked about a mile until we came to Kyoto station, which we figured out was on the opposite side of town from where we wanted to go. We consulted several maps and a few bus drivers, and finally decided to take a bus to Gion. We got a little lost again, but managed to walk around for a bit and finally ended up in Gion. There were plenty of bars and neon lights here, as well as a wide selection of adult entertainment.
Brian figured he'd be a smartass and try and get into one of the 'adult shows', but even after flashing a bunch of money to the guy out front, he was told that foreigners were not allowed. It turns out that this is actually the policy at most places of this type in Japan. Its funny how places like this in almost any other country in the world would be eager to attract foreigners (and more importantly their money) to their establishments, but in Japan they get all pissy if you even get near their front door. So we walked around for a while looking for a good bar to hang out in, but we really didn't find anything special. Several of us decided to catch the last bus back at this point, not wanting to pay for a stinkin taxi. We got on the last bus supposedly going back to our hotel, but it stopped about halfway there at a bus center. We asked the bus driver what the hell he was doing, and he told us that the last bus always only runs that far. So we walked back out to the street and set out on foot for the hotel, despite the fact we really had no idea how far it was or exactly which way to go. Eventually everyone made it back okay, but we were dragging a bit more than the rest of the group the next day.
Day 2:
We started the day with a visit to Ginkakuji Temple, which had a beautiful garden and some fabulous structures. After this place, we went and saw another temple, although I can't remember the name anymore. At any rate, the thing I remember most about the rest of our stay in Kyoto that morning is the restaurant we ate at just before we left for Nara. I personally wasn't too fond of the food there, but it was a very remarkable restaurant. It was a famous (and very expensive) tofu restaurant that served round after round of different kinds of tofu. The inside was beautifully decorated, and all of the rooms looked out onto a huge garden elaborately landscaped in traditional Japanese style. After eating, most of us went out and roamed around the garden to burn off all the tofu we had just consumed.
We then set off for Nara, where we would stay one night and then fly back to Fukuoka the next day. Once in Nara, we visited several historical sites. The main place we visited was the Yakushiji Temple in the Nishinokyo area. Upon entering the main courtyard, we found a large group of middle school girls taking pictures in front of the central temple. As we were walking around taking pictures, they got very excited seeing so many young foreigners. When they spotted Matt, they all rushed up to him yelling and screaming excitedly, begging him to take a picture with each and every one of them, a few even asking for an autograph. The rest of us stood in awe. I think it was the single funniest encounter of the JTW group, and to this day I can still see Matt standing there with this perplexed look on his face
and the rest of us standing around laughing at him. Afterwards, we walked to another heavily wooded temple and the adjacent Yamato Bunkakan museum, which housed some nice Buddhist statues and ancient artifacts. After finishing here, we went and checked in at the little ryokan we were staying at that night. Many of us thought at that point we would be free to roam around Nara that night much like we had in Kyoto the night before (even though Nara has absolutely no nightlife). However, the JTW staff had a special treat in store for us. It turned out there was a special ceremony taking place at the time of our visit to Nara, known as the 'Water-Drawing Ceremony'. Performed on the balcony of one of the buildings belonging to the Todaiji Temple, which we would visit the next day, this ceremony was a splendid display of ancient Japanese ritual.
Using long, thick poles with a massive clump of dried grass or something equally as flammable attached to the end, young men dressed in appropriate attire would light the clumps at the end of the poles, carry these huge burning poles up the main stairs to the balcony, then role the poles along the railing from one end of the balcony to the other. This made for a terrific effect, almost like a giant burning ball was floating across the balcony. Despite the large crowd it attracted, this ceremony was certainly worth pushing through a bunch of people to get a good view. After it finished, we headed back to our rooms and watched the JTW staff get drunk on sake.
Day 3:
Our last day we began with a visit to the famous Todaiji Temple, which houses one of the largest statues of Buddha in the world and has the largest wooden hall in the world. After checking out all the neat stuff around the temple, like the large pillar inside the wooden hall with a hole big enough for Andy and Matt to climb through, we made our way up the hill to Nara Park. This place is actually more commonly known as Deer Park, due to the over 1,000 tame deer it is home to. We bought a bunch of special biscuits they sell in the park to feed to the deer, and they were more than eager to eat from our hands - or even our mouths. After they rapidly depleted our supply of biscuits, we walked through the park and up a hill to the Kasuga Taisha Shrine. This shrine is considered one of the 'Three Great Shinto Shrines' of Japan, and is rebuilt approximately every 20 years (it has been rebuilt 57 times total). After finding lunch in central Nara, we made our last expedition of the trip to Horyuji Temple, one of the most impressive places in Nara.
This temple is home to some of the world's oldest wooden structures and over 40 buildings. It also houses a very famous five-storied pagoda, which I believe they said is THE oldest wooden structure in the world. After looking around and being accosted by the many vendors who line the walkways of the grounds, we headed back to Osaka to get on a plane home to Fukuoka. I do remember the plane ride back being the scariest I've ever experienced, as we hit a lot of turbulence midway through the flight. In the end, we all got back okay with a lot of good pictures and memories of two of the most impressive places in Japan.
I don't remember the purpose of this field trip, nor do I remember exactly where we went, but I'm not sure I knew these things at the time we took the trip either. I do remember that wherever we went, it was somewhere near Shimonoseki. Despite its small size, Shimonoseki is quite famous in Japanese history for a treaty that was signed here concluding the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-1895, which forced China to cede Taiwan and the Pescadores to Japan, beginning the formation of the Japanese empire. What this had to do with our field trip, however, I'm not too certain. Our first stop was actually pretty cool. Shimonoseki is located just across the bridge connecting Kyushu, the third largest island in the Japanese archipelago, with the main island Honshu.
So we crossed over the bridge into Honshu and decided we needed some grub. We stopped at a small restaurant looking out over the narrow strait separating Honshu and Kyushu, where we were served some pretty weird food. I really liked the restaurant, and I'm sure it would have been very expensive had our meals not been covered by JTW. We finished eating and drove a few miles down the road until we arrived at a small souvenir shop with a big parking lot. I was a little confused when we stopped here, thinking we came all this way to see some silly little store selling the usual array of trinkets and undersized souvenir shirts, but after we unloaded from the bus and used the bathroom, we headed around the back of the shop and started walking down a small trail next to a narrow canal. We followed the path through the back of a small neighborhood, where we ran into a group of small kids walking home from school who were quite eager to yell "HELLO!!!" to us.
Eventually we came to a group of stairs that led up to a small clearing with a few buildings and quite a few odd structures scattered somewhat randomly around the grounds. The weirdest had to be a large mound of earth covered in grass with a small cement fountain or something on top of it. I don't think we ever figured out what it was for, but I think in some cultures it has been shown that these types of mounds were used for burial, so maybe it had dead people in it. It was certainly big enough to hold quite a few of them at any rate. There was also a statue there with a guy on a horse that was supposed to be of some famous general, but I really don't remember who it was. There was a small museum that I think was supposed to be the centerpiece of the place, and we spent more than a little time roaming around inside looking at all sorts of artifacts
that somehow related to Shimonoseki or surrounding areas. When we finished here, we wound through some more small alleys and walkways along canals until we arrived at a quaint little shrine with a surprisingly large amount of open space just outside the main building. Like many open areas in Japan that have not yet been filled in by concrete and commercial or residential construction, most of this open space was occupied by dirt, much like most soccer and baseball fields in Japan. Not surprisingly, there were several kids running around playing here and we even found a large group of chickens and pigeons on one side of the shrine that were running around fighting for food that people visiting the shrine would throw to them. A few chickens thought they would be smart and camp out in a small tree near the masses of birds on the ground below, hoping that passersby would give them food for their efforts, but most of us just laughed at how funny they looked there. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that after we finished here at the shrine, we returned to the bus and drove back to Fukuoka, ending a rather short and unusual field trip.
| Toyota Factory/Yasukawa Robot Factory |
This field trip was a bit more oriented at present day Japan, aiming to show us exactly how it is that Japan produces such high quality goods. We all met that morning at ISC and loaded up the bus, finding instead of our usual bus driver an even smaller, funnier looking guy who liked to laugh a lot, even if nobody was talking. This made us a bit nervous, and for good reason. The guy was a bit shaky with his driving skills, and barely managed to get us to Toyota's Kyushu factory up in Kitakyushu (a major city about an hour north of Fukuoka). It was after arriving, however, that we discovered just how bad this guy was at driving big buses (which I must admit can't be too easy in such a compact place like Japan). He tried backing into a spot in the visitor parking lot, but had to stop and pull forward about 10 times to line the bus up correctly. When he was finally satisfied with the direction he was backing in,
he went ahead and eased the bus in there, but next thing we knew there was a large screeching sound and the bus bounced forward a little bit. We of course were eager to see what happened, so we all jumped off the bus and ran around back for a better look. The driver had evidently not noticed the metal railing behind the parking spot and backed too far in, bending the railing back about a foot or so. The driver came back to look, expecting the worst, but when he saw the bent railing, he just started laughing like it was no big deal. We never saw that bus driver again after this trip. After playing with several little machines and looking at the old Toyotas they had there in a small pavilion next to the parking lot, our tour guide arrived and we began the tour. It was a pretty neat place, and our tour guide, who had lived in Georgia for four years, showed us the obligatory company video and then took us through the entire plant and explained everything in English.
The factory was highly automized and the cars were taken through one long, twisting line starting with just a basic chassis and ending with a fully operational vehicle popping off the line. This factory built several different domestic models, plus one or two Lexus models for export abroad. They produced something like 600 cars a day. It was really neat watching the assembly process, although most of the guys were too busy paying careful attention to the tour guide. We finished our tour, ate lunch, and then waved goodbye to our nice young tour guide as we hit the road. Our next destination: a nearby robot factory. According to the company we visited, Yasukawa robots are known throughout the world and are some of the most highly advanced industrial robots in the world. That is why it was so amusing that we had to wait 45 minutes for the guys at the company to figure out how to get the VCR working so we could watch their little promotional video.
I think even after they got the VCR fixed, the sound wouldn't work, so we ended up skipping the video segment of the presentation and one of the company's representatives gave us an oral introduction, which Dimitri-sensei kindly translated into English for us. We got to ask all sorts of silly questions, to which there were plenty of silly replies. We finally got to go into the factory, being led by a young American girl who was doing some sort of internship program there for Yasukawa. We got to see how they used their own robots to build new robots, which was a pretty neat concept. All I could think about was the Terminator movie though. We then got to see their visitor center, where they had a robot greet us. We went upstairs and got to see all sorts of robot designs for everything from a kitchen worker to a nurse who would ideally someday be able to assist real doctors in hospitals as well as take care of patients. We took our share of pictures and played with all the little gadgets they had set up there, then we bid the robot people farewell and ended the last of our many field trips with JTW.
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This was our first trip together, which we left for only a few days after arriving in Fukuoka. If I remember correctly we first headed down to Kumamoto in the morning and went to see Kumamoto castle and the Suizenji gardens, one of the most beautiful gardens in all of Japan. Unfortunately everywhere we went at Suizenji there were large groups of school children blocking our view, so we didn't really get to see anything, but from the pictures in the pamphlet I could tell it was a really nice place. We did get to see Kumamoto castle just fine, and it was quite beautiful, but upon learning that it was just a recreation of the real thing, we all left rather disgusted. Outside the castle gates we found a really cool guy dressed up in a traditional samurai outfit who was supposed to be protecting the castle from barbarians and silly foreigners such as ourselves.
After taunting the poor bastard for a while, we became tired and returned to the bus, on the way playing with a cute little monkey some guy had on a chain in the parking lot. After Noguchi-san got a bit too frisky with the little critter, we got on our way and headed to a quaint little restaurant that supposedly excelled in the local delicacy: raw horse meat. Yeah, we ate us some horse. Susi found it to be quite appetizing. We were then herded back onto the bus in a hurry in order to make it to Mt. Aso before dark. Mt. Aso is one of the few active volcanos left in Kyushu, and from the top we got a great view of the inside of the crater. However, we couldn't figure out if the sulfuric odor up there that was making us all a little nauseous was coming from the crater or if Woosuk wasn't handling his horse meat too well. After hiking back down to the bus, we raided the gift shops and had some yummy green tea ice cream.
Exhausted from our adventures that day and our tummies aching from the raw horse meat, we got on our way to Mt. Kuju, where Kyudai's very own mountain resort awaited us. Upon arriving, we listened to Mito-sensei lecture us on the joys of using a Japanese toilet and the dangers associated with not paying due respect to the strategically placed crossbeams in the house that were sure to give our poor little atama a good bump or two. Then he busted out the sake and tried to get us all drunk. When his sake supply ran out, we headed up the road to the main hall and found a group of medical students from Oita letting it all hang out. We joined them for a bit of merrymaking and proceeded to take turns singing our national anthems. I personally preferred the Belgian national anthem, which sounded a bit like a drinking song to me.
A good time was had by all, and after failing to go home with the young nurses-to-be, we stumbled back to our log cabin and bumped our heads repeatedly on all the crossbeams. At last we were feeling as though this orientation thing was paying off. The next day we hiked up the nearest mountain we could find and yelled konnichiwa! to passing natives. We grew tired after a while and decided to just sit on a ridge and eat our obentou. By the time we headed back, we were yelling konbanwa! to the natives and still regretting eating that poor horse the day before. After dinner we men had to do our manly thing, so we headed up to the main hall again, got naked, and jumped in a big bathtub together. Woosuk said he had a really good time. We then made our way back to the cafeteria where the festivities had taken place the night before to find students from another school getting piss drunk. I suppose they were there for an orientation of sorts too.
We helped them drink their beer and helped the nice young ladies in the group get back to their rooms safely, and then we again stumbled back to our log cabin and bumped our heads on all the crossbeams. The next day we packed our bags and headed back to Fukuoka. Exhausted, we began to doze off one by one, foolishly believing that the trip was over and that we were heading straight back to the Kaikan. The bus suddenly cut off the highway onto a small two-lane road and pulled into a tightly-packed parking lot nestled into the side of a small mountain. We were told to get out of the bus and begin walking. As we had already been conditioned to keep our mouths shut and obey, we followed a semi-paved path into a small forest with several clearings containing all sorts of beautiful ornaments and statues.
We wandered around for about an hour, and then we walked through a long tunnel that connected us to the front side of the mountain. There we stepped out into a beautiful pavilion with the largest statue of Buddha I had ever seen. It was made out of some special bronze or something and evidently it is quite famous because it is the only statue of Buddha lying on its side. I must say that if you are in the area, it is worth a visit. I don't even think there was an entrance fee. I don't remember the name of the place, but it must have been rather close to Fukuoka and if you really wanted to pay it a visit, I'm sure you could just ask anyone on the street which way it is to the giant 'Lazy Buddha'.
Although this wasn't really a 'field trip' per se, it did turn out to be another one of our big group outings, though not quite as enjoyable for most students as the other JTW trips. Although never really explained to students, the primary purpose of this testing was to make sure that foreign students weren't bringing in AIDS or any other nasty diseases to Japan to contaminate the poor Japanese. A few of us were a little bitter about that at the time (especially me since I'm not too fond of having blood drawn), and I still wonder what they would do with a foreigner who did turn up positive for AIDS or some other disease they were trying to detect. Anyway, we all headed out to Kyudai's hospital, down the road from the main campus.
Instead of packing into a little bus for this trip though, most of us jumped on our bikes and followed Jun-san (who videotaped us while riding his bike backward, which I was rather impressed with), and everybody else caught the subway. Unfortunately, the hospital was screening all the new foreign students who had just entered Kyudai, not just JTW students, so we had a rather long wait at certain points during the examination. First they packed us all in a conference room and sat us around a big circular table and explained the procedure. This was actually the most enjoyable part for most of us due to the fact that they had nurses with very good personalities assisting with the presentation. After we had filled out tons of paperwork that they passed around the room, we lined up at different stations to have the different tests performed. Most of the JTW students were in the same group, so we first went to have our blood drawn.
Next, they gave us a cup and made us fill it with urine, into which the nurse (who obviously wasn't well-liked at the hospital to get a job like this) stuck a small piece of litmus paper to check the acidity for some sort of deficiency. Next we filed into an examination room where we first had our blood pressure taken, then we were laid out on a bed and had a bunch of strange suction cups applied to our chests to measure some sort of heart activity. As if this weren't enough to qualify us as healthy barbarians, we had to go get X-rays taken (as if we weren't going to get enough radiation from our field trip to the nuclear power plant). I'm pretty sure there were a few other small tests and procedures somewhere in there, because the testing took several hours altogether. I'm just glad they didn't make us go back and do it all over again the next semester.
This trip was to an archeological excavation site not too far from Fukuoka where remains of ancient Japanese earth dwellers had been dug up. To be perfectly honest, I didn't find this trip very exciting. The JTW professor who took us out there as a part of his class seemed really fascinated with it though, so that was good. I guess archeology just isn't my cup of tea, because I really don't have too much to say about this trip. We took our little bus out to the site, got off and relaxed a bit at the gift shop (unfortunately they didn't have any green tea ice cream), and then the archeology professor took us around the site and showed us all the old huts that had been recreated there to simulate the lives of some of the earliest known people in Japan.
I liked the little huts. They reminded me of the little forts I used to try and make out of sticks and pine needles with my friends when I was little. After walking around looking in the little huts for quite some time, we headed indoors to see the little museum they had there. They had some 3D projection display set up which showed how these peoples daily lives supposedly went. They had some little girl gathering sticks for a fire, and a boy helping his father skin some sort of disfigured animal, while the mother was of course in the house cooking supper and washing clothes (things just never change in this country, even after 2000 years). As most of us didn't speak much Japanese at the time, nothing they were saying really made sense. Actually, most of it was just grunting, so I'm sure the Japanese visitors had a hard time understanding too. That made me feel better. After checking out the little museum, we walked across the street to a trail that led nowhere. When we got nowhere, we turned around and went back to the bus. We were very amused.
This was our first trip in November. We met at the Nishitetsu train station in Mitsukoshi and headed south. Dazaifu was the last stop, where we hopped off the train and followed Mito-sensei down a large cobblestone street with shops on either side and large torii (the large arches that almost look like pi characters and are famous in Japanese architecture) along the way. We arrived at the shrine first and checked out all the neat stuff there, including the little food stands and a big flower extravaganza outside the main entrance. After admiring the shrine and its surroundings for a while, we went and talked to one of the head priests and he told us a bit about the place. Then we toured the adjacent museum, which was filled with all sorts of artifacts and information about the history of Dazaifu and its great importance in ancient Japan.
One of the priests then led us up the hill to a small barn, and this is where the fun really began. Inside we heard scuffling and deep grunts, and upon entering we found about twelve dirt-covered Sumo wrestlers standing around a circle on top of a large mound in the middle of the barn, with two wrestlers inside the circle engaged in a rather violent match. As soon as one of the wrestlers hit the ground with anything other than his feet, or was forced outside the circle, the next competitor would enter and face-off with the winner. This went on for well over an hour (and probably had started many hours before we arrived), and almost every wrestler there was bleeding somewhere on his body and one even had a huge gash in his nose. I must admit that before that day, I had this image of Sumo wrestling as a bunch of short,
fat Japanese Pillsbury Doughboys just bumping bellies with one another until one toppled over, but after having the pleasure of watching the real thing, I earned a great respect for the wrestlers and the sport itself. First of all, none of these guys were short; almost all were over 6 feet tall. Secondly, none of them were fat. Sure, they all carried a lot of fat in there midsection, as this gives them an advantage in fighting, but to carry that kind of weight around with agility, they certainly have to have a lot of muscle, especially in their legs. Also, these guys were not only incredibly strong, but they were tough as hell. This sport involves a lot more than just pushing your big belly into another guy and grunting a lot until he falls over, it involves using everything from face slapping (and don't think it's like your momma does to you... it's pretty vicious stuff)
to throwing guys off the mound head-first into the hard floor. This may be one of the toughest sports around in my personal opinion, and it's a shame it hasn't gained more international respect. The guys we saw practicing weren't even close to the top ranks, meaning they aren't near as big and strong as the best wrestlers that are seen on Japanese TV and placed in the premier group at the tournaments. Yet these guys were tearing each other apart at a practice! Also, there is a lot of technique involved in the sport, as there are close to a hundred different ways to throw or knock your opponent out of the circle. Evidently the guys we watched practicing were very fortunate to be there in that barn, because as we found out later they were training with a retired yokozuna wrestler, the highest rank in Sumo.
Only about seventy people have reached this rank in the long history of the sport. Anyway, after watching these guys beat each other to bloody pulps, we stepped outside with them and took tons of pictures and joked around for a bit, then we headed down to their quarters together for lunch. This was the house where they ate and slept, which had a nice garden out front and many traditional rooms inside. We waited for them to shower and prepare our lunch in the main room, which was a traditional Japanese tatami-style room. Then, despite working out all morning, these guys served us lunch and beer and waited on us hand and foot. They were incredibly nice, and as it turned out, most of them were actually younger than us. We ate a delicious meal consisting of various dishes all with extremely high calorie content.
I suggested they mix a little raw horse meat into their diet, but they weren't too keen on the idea. After eating, we wished the big guys good luck at their upcoming tournament, then made our way a few blocks over to a Japanese garden of high renown. The garden was actually part of an old house that had been preserved as a museum of sorts, and you could walk around the house and get several different views of the garden. It was especially beautiful at this time of year, because many of the leaves had almost a purple glow about them. There were beautiful white rocks running like small streams between the grass, and large stones jutting up from the ground. After enjoying the serenity of the garden for a while, we walked across town to an area surrounded by quite a few trees,
where there was a small temple with a graveyard kind of aura to it. We then proceeded up the road to a small path that led into the forest, where some guy we brought with us explained the history of some sort of alter or tombstones or something. I really didn't catch that part. By that point we were all pretty exhausted anyway. So after cutting through a big field with some big rocks that looked almost like a miniature Stonehenge, we found our way to the nearest train station. As it was a rather long ride back to Fukuoka, most of us fell asleep on the train with visions of Sumo wrestlers dancing through our heads.
Like poor Katrina here, many of us were frightened at the prospect of visiting a nuclear power plant and decided to wear our thickest clothing. Ok, actually we wore the thick clothing to protect us from the bitter cold, as it was the second week of December. We rode our usual little bus into Saga prefecture, adjacent to Fukuoka prefecture. On the way, the JTW folks thought it would be a wonderful idea to stop off at a little beach to get a nice view of the ocean, neglecting the fact that the wind-chill factor out there had to be in the negative numbers. I must admit it was a rather beautiful beach, but one that I would have been more interested in visiting in June or July. After walking around the beach for a very chilly fifteen minutes or so and posing for Jun and the JTW videocamera, we all piled back into the bus and headed for Genkai. Just as we stepped off the bus at the main entrance to the visitor center of the plant, snow began to fall. It was beautiful, and for many of us the only snowfall we would see in Japan.
The power plant was situated right on the ocean, as they used the ocean water to cool the reactors. It wasn't all that bad of a view either, and I'm sure if there hadn't been a nuclear power plant there, a few oceanfront resorts might have set up business along the surrounding coast. We first ventured into the visitor center, where a nice old man gave us the official tour of their informative little museum. After that, we were taken to a back room for our typical field trip fare: obentou. Upon finishing these yummy little boxes of wholesomeness, we made our way by a little bus to the starting point of the real tour. We first had to go through a bomb-detector and through a special sealed room to make absolutely sure. After disabling the small bomb Andy tried to sneak in inside his underwear (he claimed he was going to get even with the "damn Japs" for World War II...
when we explained to him that Germany and Japan were allies, he didn't seem too happy), we were allowed to continue. I don't remember the exact order in which we saw everything, but they showed us several different reactors, the cooling system, the main control room, the uranium storage pools, waste disposal areas, steam turbines and power generators, and just about everything short of the insides of the reactor cores (Mito-sensei begged the tour guide to let us in there too, but he firmly refused). By the end of the tour we were fairly exhausted, so we declined Mito-sensei's offer to stop by the beach again for a bit of swimming on the way back.
This was more of an extracurricular outing (ok, actually it wasn't sponsored by JTW at all), chaperoned by the beer-guzzling Dimitri-sensei. Although attendance was rather low (only Jason, Colinda, Robby, Paul, Sebastian, Andy, Dimitri-sensei, Aya-chan, and myself came), a great time was had by all and many of the students were later quite sorry they didn't join us. I believe Jason was the one who found out about this place, and he had talked about it for some time until we agreed to go as a group and check it out. Asahi is one of the largest beer producers in Japan, and this was basically a restaurant connected to one of their breweries or distribution centers (I'm not sure which). The deal is you pay 3000 yen (about US$30) for two hours of all the meat and vegetables you can eat
(which you cook yourself on the stoves in the middle of the tables), and all the Asahi beer you can hold down. We took the JR train one stop past Hakata-eki (I forget the name of the station) and walked about a block to the factory. They had a really shnazzy entrance, which I forgot to get a picture of. We rode the elevator up a few stories and took the walkway over the street below to the restaurant. When we entered, we found ourselves in the corner of a gigantic meal hall, with a high ceiling and many long tables. I would say the place could seat a few hundred people at a time. Upon verifying our reservations, the hostess led us to our own table and gave us some time to order (the two hour time limit begins when you place your first order). We selected our type of meat (the only choice to make besides what type of beer you want) and placed our order,
everyone setting their watches for two hours of massive consumption. Robby quickly took the lead in the beer department, finishing 4 large mugs in the first 20 minutes. After a while we all lost count though, so there's no telling who drank the most. About 30 minutes into our meal, Andy began flirting with the Japanese guys at the table behind us, and soon several of us were over there laughing and enjoying our inebriated state together, drawing quite a few stares from the other drunken patrons. We returned to our meal and continued cooking more and more meat and vegetables. I must admit that I had probably never personally consumed so much meat in one evening before. As we continued further into the meal, more and more people got up and left for the bathroom, either because the beer had already worked its way through the system
or because the meat wasn't even going to try. We all had a very merry time, and even Aya-chan managed to take down a few beers and get a bit sloppy with us. With about 30 minutes left, most of us were trying to relax our stomachs in order to fit a bit more meat and beer down in there. Then a small group at the table on the other side of us struck up a conversation while they were waiting for their first order. Those of us who weren't feeling so well anymore warned them of the evils of overconsumption, at which they laughed a good bit. Then to our dismay, our waitress came to tell us our time was up. We all looked at our watches (though most of us were unable to read them at this point) and realized we still had 5 minutes. Well Dimitri-sensei, oh great leader that he was, would have none of that.
He marched over there and explained in his fabulous Japanese to the frightened waitress that we still had time left. She apologized and came back over to see if we wanted to place any last orders. Despite the fact that most of us were about to burst or were already foaming at the mouth, Dimitri-sensei ordered another round of beers for everyone just to spite the Asahi people. He sure showed them. Oh how we loved that man. Anyway, the beers came and a few of us actually tried to take them on, but quickly surrendered to our aching stomachs and headed out of there. Walking back to the train station, we stopped at every other alley for somebody to relieve themselves. After finally arriving at the station, we found two very long rows of steps we had to ascend to the platform. Dimitri-sensei, taking one long, drunken look at the steps, decided he needed to get rid of a little extra weight first and went behind the steps to vomit. Another student wasn't feeling much better than Dimitri-sensei, but he figured he could hold it until he got home. After waiting slouched over on a bench about five minutes for the train, however, he lost it there on the platform. The train didn't do much to help our stomachs either, and from the look on everyone's face on the way home, it was pretty clear that we would not be going to Asahi Beer Garden again anytime soon.
Basically, this place was a hi-tech Japanese dump. Well, they did recycle a lot of stuff that came through here, so I suppose it does serve a greater purpose than a regular old dump. Anyway, this was another one of those field trips I just wasn't too sure about, so I'll keep the description short and sweet. This trip was led by Fujikura-sensei, who I personally felt was one of the better teachers in the program (and certainly the most humorous). While a lot of the stuff we saw was actually quite interesting, there were a few parts where I just scratched my head and wondered what we were doing there. A perfect example: right when we got there, they took us up to a really nice conference room to show us a video on their massive screen with hi-fi surround sound audio.
While the room and the equipment were state of the art, the video left something to be desired, especially considering the purpose of our visit. It was about how wonderful Fukuoka is, and how it has won so many awards for this and that, which had absolutely nothing to do with the facility or the tour. I'm sure the video would have been great to show to a group of visitors from a multinational company looking to set up business somewhere in Japan (why they would visit a waste treatment center, though, I'm not quite sure), but it had nothing to do with us. After the video, a plant official spoke to us for what seemed like hours. Fujikura-sensei translated, but even his good sense of humor couldn't keep most of us awake. The presentation was just extremely boring. Once we actually got to go walk around the facility, we had a pretty good time, as there was plenty of really fascinating machinery to watch and we got to see some of the trash burn. Fire is always entertaining for large groups of young people. I guess the other good thing is that Ohta-san didn't cry on this trip.
Oh, good old survival camp. It was touted in JTW literature as a true test of our Japanese ability. It said we were to spend a weekend outside Fukuoka where we would stay with Japanese families and visit an elementary school and speak nothing but Japanese. There were supposedly strict penalties for anyone who spoke anything other than Japanese during the weekend. Well, I wasn't too surprised when they didn't enforce the bit about speaking in other languages once we got there, but I was a bit puzzled as to why everything was conducted in English after our arrival. I was even more puzzled when I was assigned to a family whose father was American. They all spoke perfect English! Well, even though the weekend wasn't quite what we pictured, we had a blast playing with the little kids at the school,
staying with their families, attending a traditional Japanese tea ceremony, and holding an international festival for the kids. The fun began on a Friday in February, when we traveled about 25 miles outside of Fukuoka to a small town called Sasaguri. We went straight to Sasaguri's elementary school and met with the principal. Mito-sensei had made every one of us prepare a question for the principal in Japanese, which he then printed up and made random people ask to the principal. Then we were assigned in groups of two to a certain classroom. Susi and I were assigned to the third graders, whom were so very adorable. Everyone split off to there respective classrooms and fielded questions from the kids. Then lunch was served in each classroom and we ate at the miniature desks with the children.
The trays they ate from were so small that I had to get four servings. I felt kind of bad for little Yuuichi because I ended up stealing the rest of his food once the main supply ran out. He stopped crying after I shook him around a little bit though. After lunch we had a little break before we had to take the kids out for recess. Man, those kids ran us into the ground. Being the avid soccer fan I am, I braved a game of soccer with some of the kids, but after having my shins kicked in about 30 different places (they may be little, but a kick in the shin is a kick in the shin!), I decided to retire to the swings and flirt with the little girls. I actually got a phone number from one of them, but I figured a long distance relationship just wouldn't work. Next, we met back with the JTW staff and went on a quick tour of the elementary school.
All I recall seeing was the special education room, where one of the girls kept throwing things at me, and the library. After our little tour, we walked several blocks away to some sort of Japanese culture center to engage in a proper tea ceremony. Since the room was rather small, we broke up into two groups and one group went in while the other waited in the lobby and recovered from recess. Inside the tea room, we were seated by several women in kimono. We were supposed to sit in the seiza position (where you sit on your knees), but most of us, including Mito-sensei, only lasted about 5 minutes before we just plopped down on our butts. There was one lady in the middle who gave us a demonstration of how this tea thing was supposed to work. I never realized you could make drinking tea such a complicated process, but the Japanese sure have done their best. I don't remember the actual procedure, but it went something like this:
Ok, so that may not be exactly how it went, but it was something like that. Anyway, a lot of Japanese get a big kick out of this little ceremony, but I just wasn't too excited about it. Besides, spilling hot tea all over my head just didn't feel too good. Oh well, at least it was a good learning experience. I felt like I had a much deeper understanding of Japanese culture after leaving that room. When everybody was done with the ceremony, we walked back over to the elementary school. We went back to our classrooms and were told which child we would go home with that night. That's when I met Yumi-chan, an adorable little nine-year old who was half American, half Japanese. Despite not speaking any Japanese with her family, I had a wonderful time and actually went back and visited them a few times later in the year.
Some of the other students got rather interesting homestays. The most unusual was Sebastian, who went and stayed at a Buddhist temple with some monks. So the rest of the day was spent with our homestay families, where we were all on our own. The next morning we each accompanied our new little friends back to school to prepare for an international festival of sorts (together we could only represent four or five different countries, but I'm sure it was more international than these kids had ever seen). Several of us paired up to prepare our little booths, which were supposed to teach kids something about our country. Jason taught some kids how to play ice hockey.
Anders, though not Brazilian, taught some kids how to do a Brazilian dance. Andy, with German flags adorning the wall behind him, taught some little kids a few German drinking songs. A few of the guys thought it would be a good idea to teach the kids a little football, until the kids started getting a little too rough with them. Woosuk taught the guys how to pick up chicks the Korean way. The kids had a blast, and even though their first international experience may not have been too international, they still learned good, wholesome stuff and nobody got hurt (except for some of us). After the kids went home, we cleaned up and got the hell out of Dodge.
This was the only trip we went on as a group that required our boarding an airplane. We flew into Osaka's new Kankuu airport, which is the first offshore airport of its kind. After arriving and finding our way to the tour bus, we were introduced to the driver and our tour guide, a young lady from Wakayama who thought she was so funny. Most of us didn't find her too hilarious at first, but she turned out to be okay in the end. She did enjoy speaking the Kansai dialect to us, which Koyama-sensei and some of our other chaperones got a real kick out of. So we drove through Osaka with this girl yelling stuff at us like "Shibaitarou ka, BOKE! and laughing hysterically, occasionally remembering to do her job and point stuff out to us. As Kyoto is only 40 miles or so north of Osaka,
once we got out of Osaka we arrived in the southern part of Kyoto in no time. We first drove around the city a bit, and Mito-sensei took turns with our crazy tour guide on the microphone telling us all about the little temples, shrines, monuments, statues, and restaurants we were passing. This town really was full of some pretty interesting stuff. Now I'm not too sure the order in which we visited all the sites, nor do I remember the names of all of the different temples and shrines we managed to see. I believe we started with one of the most famous tourist attractions in Kyoto, if not all of Japan: the Kiyomizu Temple. Founded over a thousand years ago around the time Japan's ancient capital was moved from Nara to Kyoto, this temple contains nearly 30 structures. The most impressive, and certainly the most widely photographed,
is the main hall which is made almost entirely of wood and built into the side of a hill, overlooking an exquisite garden below. After making our way through hundreds of other noisy tourists enjoying the peaceful serenity of the temple, we headed back down the main walkway back to the parking lot. Here there were at least 50 small shops selling all sorts of souvenirs, food, and anything else eyecatching enough to draw in tourists. We also ran into some maiko, which are young women dressed in a geishaesqe style walking up and down the streets and smiling at the tourists. After we took a picture or two with these nice young women, we loaded back on the bus and headed for the famous Golden Pavilion. Known commonly as Kinkakuji (or more formally as Rokuonji), this temple was originally built about 600 years ago but had to be rebuilt in 1955 due to a little arson incident.
This is also one of the most widely photographed structures in Japan, and I don't think I saw a single tourist here who didn't have their camera out the entire time they strolled the grounds. We took our share of JTW shots in front of the temple and made our way along a winding path toward the exit. On the walkway, a small group of Chinese people struck up a conversation with us (actually only one of them spoke any Japanese, so he did the talking). It turned out they were circus performers and they lived and performed in Osaka. They were quite an amusing bunch, and after doing a few tricks for us and posing for a few pictures with us, we were on our way. The rest of the day we stopped off at a few other temples and shrines, the only one I remember being Ryoanji Temple.
This place is quite famous for its many gardens, especially its rock gardens. These consist of several big rocks placed in a rectangular area full of white gravel. The gravel is meticulously combed and smoothly flows around the larger rocks placed in its way. There is one main path we followed that circles around the central pond and takes visitors through the various gardens before dumping them back in the parking lot. After finishing here, we took our tour bus to the hotel JTW had reserved for us. It was actually a really nice hotel, and despite its traditional external appearance, the rooms were quite modern and roomy. After getting our room assignments and moving our luggage into our rooms, we split off in groups and set out into the surrounding area to find food. Prices were noticeably more expensive than Fukuoka, with the average 'inexpensive' meal costing about US$10.
Later, several of us wanted to explore Kyoto's night life, so we sat at the nearest bus stop and let Kevin talk to all the cute girls who walked by about where the good night spots could be found. Following his lead, we crowded into a packed bus and rode around Kyoto for about an hour. Finally we decided we were lost and several guys had to pee, so we jumped off the bus and found us a nice dark alley to take a quick break in. We walked about a mile until we came to Kyoto station, which we figured out was on the opposite side of town from where we wanted to go. We consulted several maps and a few bus drivers, and finally decided to take a bus to Gion. We got a little lost again, but managed to walk around for a bit and finally ended up in Gion. There were plenty of bars and neon lights here, as well as a wide selection of adult entertainment.
Brian figured he'd be a smartass and try and get into one of the 'adult shows', but even after flashing a bunch of money to the guy out front, he was told that foreigners were not allowed. It turns out that this is actually the policy at most places of this type in Japan. Its funny how places like this in almost any other country in the world would be eager to attract foreigners (and more importantly their money) to their establishments, but in Japan they get all pissy if you even get near their front door. So we walked around for a while looking for a good bar to hang out in, but we really didn't find anything special. Several of us decided to catch the last bus back at this point, not wanting to pay for a stinkin taxi. We got on the last bus supposedly going back to our hotel, but it stopped about halfway there at a bus center. We asked the bus driver what the hell he was doing, and he told us that the last bus always only runs that far. So we walked back out to the street and set out on foot for the hotel, despite the fact we really had no idea how far it was or exactly which way to go. Eventually everyone made it back okay, but we were dragging a bit more than the rest of the group the next day.
We started the day with a visit to Ginkakuji Temple, which had a beautiful garden and some fabulous structures. After this place, we went and saw another temple, although I can't remember the name anymore. At any rate, the thing I remember most about the rest of our stay in Kyoto that morning is the restaurant we ate at just before we left for Nara. I personally wasn't too fond of the food there, but it was a very remarkable restaurant. It was a famous (and very expensive) tofu restaurant that served round after round of different kinds of tofu. The inside was beautifully decorated, and all of the rooms looked out onto a huge garden elaborately landscaped in traditional Japanese style. After eating, most of us went out and roamed around the garden to burn off all the tofu we had just consumed.
We then set off for Nara, where we would stay one night and then fly back to Fukuoka the next day. Once in Nara, we visited several historical sites. The main place we visited was the Yakushiji Temple in the Nishinokyo area. Upon entering the main courtyard, we found a large group of middle school girls taking pictures in front of the central temple. As we were walking around taking pictures, they got very excited seeing so many young foreigners. When they spotted Matt, they all rushed up to him yelling and screaming excitedly, begging him to take a picture with each and every one of them, a few even asking for an autograph. The rest of us stood in awe. I think it was the single funniest encounter of the JTW group, and to this day I can still see Matt standing there with this perplexed look on his face
and the rest of us standing around laughing at him. Afterwards, we walked to another heavily wooded temple and the adjacent Yamato Bunkakan museum, which housed some nice Buddhist statues and ancient artifacts. After finishing here, we went and checked in at the little ryokan we were staying at that night. Many of us thought at that point we would be free to roam around Nara that night much like we had in Kyoto the night before (even though Nara has absolutely no nightlife). However, the JTW staff had a special treat in store for us. It turned out there was a special ceremony taking place at the time of our visit to Nara, known as the 'Water-Drawing Ceremony'. Performed on the balcony of one of the buildings belonging to the Todaiji Temple, which we would visit the next day, this ceremony was a splendid display of ancient Japanese ritual.
Using long, thick poles with a massive clump of dried grass or something equally as flammable attached to the end, young men dressed in appropriate attire would light the clumps at the end of the poles, carry these huge burning poles up the main stairs to the balcony, then role the poles along the railing from one end of the balcony to the other. This made for a terrific effect, almost like a giant burning ball was floating across the balcony. Despite the large crowd it attracted, this ceremony was certainly worth pushing through a bunch of people to get a good view. After it finished, we headed back to our rooms and watched the JTW staff get drunk on sake.
Our last day we began with a visit to the famous Todaiji Temple, which houses one of the largest statues of Buddha in the world and has the largest wooden hall in the world. After checking out all the neat stuff around the temple, like the large pillar inside the wooden hall with a hole big enough for Andy and Matt to climb through, we made our way up the hill to Nara Park. This place is actually more commonly known as Deer Park, due to the over 1,000 tame deer it is home to. We bought a bunch of special biscuits they sell in the park to feed to the deer, and they were more than eager to eat from our hands - or even our mouths. After they rapidly depleted our supply of biscuits, we walked through the park and up a hill to the Kasuga Taisha Shrine. This shrine is considered one of the 'Three Great Shinto Shrines' of Japan, and is rebuilt approximately every 20 years (it has been rebuilt 57 times total). After finding lunch in central Nara, we made our last expedition of the trip to Horyuji Temple, one of the most impressive places in Nara.
This temple is home to some of the world's oldest wooden structures and over 40 buildings. It also houses a very famous five-storied pagoda, which I believe they said is THE oldest wooden structure in the world. After looking around and being accosted by the many vendors who line the walkways of the grounds, we headed back to Osaka to get on a plane home to Fukuoka. I do remember the plane ride back being the scariest I've ever experienced, as we hit a lot of turbulence midway through the flight. In the end, we all got back okay with a lot of good pictures and memories of two of the most impressive places in Japan.
I don't remember the purpose of this field trip, nor do I remember exactly where we went, but I'm not sure I knew these things at the time we took the trip either. I do remember that wherever we went, it was somewhere near Shimonoseki. Despite its small size, Shimonoseki is quite famous in Japanese history for a treaty that was signed here concluding the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-1895, which forced China to cede Taiwan and the Pescadores to Japan, beginning the formation of the Japanese empire. What this had to do with our field trip, however, I'm not too certain. Our first stop was actually pretty cool. Shimonoseki is located just across the bridge connecting Kyushu, the third largest island in the Japanese archipelago, with the main island Honshu.
So we crossed over the bridge into Honshu and decided we needed some grub. We stopped at a small restaurant looking out over the narrow strait separating Honshu and Kyushu, where we were served some pretty weird food. I really liked the restaurant, and I'm sure it would have been very expensive had our meals not been covered by JTW. We finished eating and drove a few miles down the road until we arrived at a small souvenir shop with a big parking lot. I was a little confused when we stopped here, thinking we came all this way to see some silly little store selling the usual array of trinkets and undersized souvenir shirts, but after we unloaded from the bus and used the bathroom, we headed around the back of the shop and started walking down a small trail next to a narrow canal. We followed the path through the back of a small neighborhood, where we ran into a group of small kids walking home from school who were quite eager to yell "HELLO!!!" to us.
Eventually we came to a group of stairs that led up to a small clearing with a few buildings and quite a few odd structures scattered somewhat randomly around the grounds. The weirdest had to be a large mound of earth covered in grass with a small cement fountain or something on top of it. I don't think we ever figured out what it was for, but I think in some cultures it has been shown that these types of mounds were used for burial, so maybe it had dead people in it. It was certainly big enough to hold quite a few of them at any rate. There was also a statue there with a guy on a horse that was supposed to be of some famous general, but I really don't remember who it was. There was a small museum that I think was supposed to be the centerpiece of the place, and we spent more than a little time roaming around inside looking at all sorts of artifacts
that somehow related to Shimonoseki or surrounding areas. When we finished here, we wound through some more small alleys and walkways along canals until we arrived at a quaint little shrine with a surprisingly large amount of open space just outside the main building. Like many open areas in Japan that have not yet been filled in by concrete and commercial or residential construction, most of this open space was occupied by dirt, much like most soccer and baseball fields in Japan. Not surprisingly, there were several kids running around playing here and we even found a large group of chickens and pigeons on one side of the shrine that were running around fighting for food that people visiting the shrine would throw to them. A few chickens thought they would be smart and camp out in a small tree near the masses of birds on the ground below, hoping that passersby would give them food for their efforts, but most of us just laughed at how funny they looked there. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that after we finished here at the shrine, we returned to the bus and drove back to Fukuoka, ending a rather short and unusual field trip.
This field trip was a bit more oriented at present day Japan, aiming to show us exactly how it is that Japan produces such high quality goods. We all met that morning at ISC and loaded up the bus, finding instead of our usual bus driver an even smaller, funnier looking guy who liked to laugh a lot, even if nobody was talking. This made us a bit nervous, and for good reason. The guy was a bit shaky with his driving skills, and barely managed to get us to Toyota's Kyushu factory up in Kitakyushu (a major city about an hour north of Fukuoka). It was after arriving, however, that we discovered just how bad this guy was at driving big buses (which I must admit can't be too easy in such a compact place like Japan). He tried backing into a spot in the visitor parking lot, but had to stop and pull forward about 10 times to line the bus up correctly. When he was finally satisfied with the direction he was backing in,
he went ahead and eased the bus in there, but next thing we knew there was a large screeching sound and the bus bounced forward a little bit. We of course were eager to see what happened, so we all jumped off the bus and ran around back for a better look. The driver had evidently not noticed the metal railing behind the parking spot and backed too far in, bending the railing back about a foot or so. The driver came back to look, expecting the worst, but when he saw the bent railing, he just started laughing like it was no big deal. We never saw that bus driver again after this trip. After playing with several little machines and looking at the old Toyotas they had there in a small pavilion next to the parking lot, our tour guide arrived and we began the tour. It was a pretty neat place, and our tour guide, who had lived in Georgia for four years, showed us the obligatory company video and then took us through the entire plant and explained everything in English.
The factory was highly automized and the cars were taken through one long, twisting line starting with just a basic chassis and ending with a fully operational vehicle popping off the line. This factory built several different domestic models, plus one or two Lexus models for export abroad. They produced something like 600 cars a day. It was really neat watching the assembly process, although most of the guys were too busy paying careful attention to the tour guide. We finished our tour, ate lunch, and then waved goodbye to our nice young tour guide as we hit the road. Our next destination: a nearby robot factory. According to the company we visited, Yasukawa robots are known throughout the world and are some of the most highly advanced industrial robots in the world. That is why it was so amusing that we had to wait 45 minutes for the guys at the company to figure out how to get the VCR working so we could watch their little promotional video.
I think even after they got the VCR fixed, the sound wouldn't work, so we ended up skipping the video segment of the presentation and one of the company's representatives gave us an oral introduction, which Dimitri-sensei kindly translated into English for us. We got to ask all sorts of silly questions, to which there were plenty of silly replies. We finally got to go into the factory, being led by a young American girl who was doing some sort of internship program there for Yasukawa. We got to see how they used their own robots to build new robots, which was a pretty neat concept. All I could think about was the Terminator movie though. We then got to see their visitor center, where they had a robot greet us. We went upstairs and got to see all sorts of robot designs for everything from a kitchen worker to a nurse who would ideally someday be able to assist real doctors in hospitals as well as take care of patients. We took our share of pictures and played with all the little gadgets they had set up there, then we bid the robot people farewell and ended the last of our many field trips with JTW.
