Blogs from Mie, Japan, Asia - page 3

What better way to wave goodbye to the end of August and sticky hot summer days than with a festival - more specifically a Pirate Festival! This weekend I took the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Onomichi, and then took a ferry to the island of Innoshima to attend their yearly Suigun Matsuri (Pirate festival). It had pirates, huge ass torches, many, many adorable Japanese children, dancers and taiko drummers. All in all it was immensely entertaining and really a fabulous time. I'm definitely going back next year! I couldn't get enough of the pirates - I took soo many pictures. It seemed like the locals couldn't get enough of us either. Our host was telling us that they never have so many foreigners on the island at one time so we were like mini celebrities to ... read more

Japanese TV is full of some weird shit. I came home from a night out with other ALTs in the area, all of whom seem awesome and chill, to find that the only show on TV at the moment is some drama featuring a superhero maid who decides to take on a fetishist and a dominatrix with her sakura charm to rescue her fellow maid friend. Oh Japan... It doesn't need to make sense as long as it's entertaining :) With the exception of some interesting dramas and animes like Naruto or Bleach, every other show seems to feature food. Close ups of food. Features on restaurants. Groups of people eating food and shouting "Oiishii!" (delicious!) It's really quite different from TV back home. And definitely not something you want to watch while hungry hahaha I ... read more

I took some time for myself over obon and headed to Mie prefecture all by my lonesome to Ise-Shima National Park to see the Ise Grand Shrine, the most sacred Shinto Temple in Japan. However the Grand Shrine isn’t just one shrine, it is divided into two complexes the Outer Shrine and the Inner Shrine. The main Inner shrine is dedicated to Amaterasu, the sun goddess, and is the temple everyone really thinks of when they think of Ise. The main outer shrine is dedicated to Toyouke Oomikami, goddess of lives’ basic needs (i.e. food, clothing, shelter). It’s a bit confusing how they refer to all as if it were one shrine when there are really two separate complexes. Fun Fact: Somewhere in one of the many buildings in the two complexes the Yata no Kagami ... read more

Apparently there was a huge earthquake in Japan last night...around 7:00 PM or so and I... didn't feel a thing? I don't know if that means I'm just dense or turning Japanese quicker than expected. Hmmm... There is also reportedly a Typhoon about to hit or maybe blow right past us? Last night it was incredibly rainy so that might have been part of it, but the sky doesn't look too bad right now so who knows? The rain last night was actually kind of nice because it cooled everything off, but unfortunately I was stuck walking in it with no umbrella. I no longer wonder why the Japanese seem to carry umbrellas with them wherever they go! After a bit of exploring yesterday I discovered a 24 hour manga/web cafe and the adjacent 100 yen ... read more

Waterfalls ... ... ... ... ... ... Unbeknownst to me, Danilo has a thing for waterfalls. This I discovered while we dropped into school bearing gifts of clip-on Koalas and crunchy Tim-Tams. Danilo got to talking with head teacher, asked him about waterfalls in the area, and lo and behold...Akame Yon Ju Hachi (Akame 48). It is a trail in Mie prefecture (south of here) which includes 48 waterfalls, each ranging from 3-20 metres each. The trail itself is about 4 kms long, a distance which was much shorter in my mind, than in real life. The journey to the actual trail was much shorter in my mind as well. Perhaps this is because we jumped on the wrong train at the right platform, and travelled 9 stations in a limited express train before having to ... read more