Mikoshi!

This week was another fun one! I have picked up running again, because I was feeling the urge to run. I ran in the area around my host family’s house. Encountered this super nice river amongst the rice fields, I will have a pictures next week I think.  Or not it is really up to me whether or not I take my camera with me.
All right! Back to the fun and interesting stuff! Well to me at least. Friday I went to a sand onsen called Hyotan in Beppu, this was my first time, and I must say it felt very good. You basically do like you do on the beach, get buried in the sand; however this sand is very hot. The heat comes from everywhere, and I am not quite sure how it works but I guess there is hot water underneath the sand, heating up all the sand, it kind of feels like a walk on the beach when it is really hot and your feet hurt when you walk on the sand. Kind of felt like that, after hiding in the sand for a while, you enter the bathing area, which was pretty good in this onsen, a big waterfall like bath, an outside bath and clean inside bath.

The fun stuff continued the next Saturday, I went to a festival introduced to me as a Yamamatsuri in Nakatsuka, and this was one of the best festivals I have been to yet. It all took place in the small town of Nakatsuka, after arriving a little bit late we were immediately welcomed with the enthusiasm that I am starting to get used to here in the south. Everybody is extremely friendly, and I think foreigners are not that plenty down here everybody wants to talk to you. The usual questions come up, “do you like beer?” “Where are you from?” “What beer is from Holland”, man talk! So after drinking a beer, it was time to carry the mikoshi. This was quite fun, since I am not really prepared to carry a real mikoshi I got to help carry the Kids Mikoshi, don’t think that means it would be light. Thing is still damn heavy, it is just the real Mikoshi, are even heavier. It was a fun night, during which one kid asked me whether or not I was Japanese, I of course said Yes and somehow she did not believe me, hehe. But since I had to go see the boss the next day, at around 11 it was time for me to go home and sleep, which was kind of a shame because the people I had met that night were all super friendly and I would have loved to drunk some more with the people there.

The next day was another busy one, leaving at 10 o’clock to go see my Sacho(boss) speak at a fair for Ryugakusei(International students). The speeches themselves were really hard for me to follow but I managed to get most of the story and it was quite interesting. Sacho talked about how hiring exchange students in the past helped him out in the past, and how it is still helping him out, because one of them is running their sister firm in China, and the other one is my internship supervisor! Quite interesting, however this event was not for me, but more for people with a better grasp of the Japanese language. There were a lot Chinese and Korean people in the audience and only a few westerners.

After listening to the speeches at the fair, Umeki San, Tsuru san and Yamaguchi san and me went to see the monkeys on Mt. Takasaki.

Man this was awesome, it was not quite as wild as I had imagined, but there definitely monkeys there, and I could have taken one to Riverside if I had wanted too. They were really cute too, lots of tiny monkeys, playing in the puddles.

After seeing the monkeys, we went to the Umi tamago, man that was a lot more fun than I thought it was going to be. I guess it has been a while since I last visited the Dolfinarium (I think the last time was when I was about 10 years old?). But it was a good time, I keep getting surprised by the sheer size of animals, for examples sea lions are just these huge creatures, really cute but at the same time they are a bit scary because of their size. I played some catch with dolphins, this was definitely a highlight for me. The dolphins would toss me the ball and I would toss it back, I guess that is a simple explanation of catch, but the fact that it was with dolphins made it super cool.

The big aquarium was filled with fish from seas from all over the world. They really thought about the presentation of the aquarium and you can view it through a giant glass wall, which even extends a little bit into the floor. There were a lot of beautiful fish, and I kept laughing as my co workers asked which fish were good to eat!

So after watching fish all day, everybody felt like eating sashimi for some reason. We went to my new favourite restaurant and ate until we could not eat anymore.

So this was another weekend full of activities, contemplating whether or not I should take a break next weekend, or just keep on trucking. There is still a lot of things I want to see and do here in Kyushu, anyway I’ll keep on posting over here!