Fukuoka and Kumamoto

Hi! Right now I'm just finishing a week of vacation for the Obon holidays. It's been nice having some time off and it gave us a chance to spend a long weekend in Fukuoka and visit a couple who used to live here but moved in April. We went to Fukuoka Sunday morning and spent the afternoon at Canal City, a big shopping center. We went to the ramen stadium there, which is a big, crowded area with many shops selling ramen. Fukuoka is famous for a special type of ramen called Tonkotsu where the soup is made from pork bones, I think, so it's white. The shopping center also had a "dessert museum" but it wasn't very impressive - just a few coffee shops with expensive cakes. That evening we traveled to Omuta where our friends live. The next day we went to a beach outside Fukuoka, which was a lot of fun, though I got a small sting on my foot from something in the water. Tuesday we went to Kumamoto to see the castle there. It's a really nice castle with lots of things to look at and English explanations of everything. We came back last night (Tuesday night) and I have one more day off before starting work again tomorrow.

The first picture is of the restaurant we ate at in the ramen stadium. We waited in line for maybe 20 or 30 minutes then bought tickets at a vending machine and then waited a bit more before being seated in the restaurant. Next is a picture of Kumamoto Castle from the outside and then an example of the English explanations they had (this is for the gun windows in the guard tower). The last picture is a view of Kumamoto and the guard tower from the top of the castle.

Thanks for reading!

Summer Festivals

Hi! Sorry again for the long silence and thanks for checking back, anyway. Not much has been going on lately, just trying to get through the unbelievably hot summer. There are lots of summer festivals and fireworks in Japan, and yesterday we went to the festival in Okayama, which involved stages at various places around downtown and a big parade. It was so hot and crowded that we couldn't really watch much of the parade (I'm not much of a parade person, anyway, and I couldn't help thinking how hot the performers must have been in their beautiful costumes so it wasn't such a big loss) but it was fun to watch the dancing.

Here are a few shots of a dance we saw at about two in the afternoon outside the station. I think it was about 110 (no joke) and very high humidity so I have no idea how the dancers all managed to look so cool and sweat-free, but they did it. We saw a few groups of dancers sitting in the shade later after their performances and they were starting to show the effects of the heat and exertion then, but they were all smiles onstage.

After two more days of work I have a week off for the Obon holidays so we're going to visit friends in Fukuoka, and I'll write an update after that. I hope you're all enjoying the summer!

Cate