I am samurai

On one of our last days in Himeji our friend Yumi wanted to take us out for the afternoon. One of our stops was the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of History. They have a program that allows someone to dress up in period costume, which they do a few times a day. Boys can dress as a samurai, while girls can put on a 12-layer kimono. When we went, we got picked, so Chelsey let me go wear the samurai outfit. You can see how fierce and warrior-like I look.
The rest of the afternoon was kind of devoted to trains, as Yumi thinks I am a train nerd for some reason. (BTW, the Japanese phrase for train nerd is densha otaku). First she took us to a conveyor belt sushi place for lunch. We've been to other conveyor-belt sushi restaurants, but this one had a special catch: when you put in an order, it was delivered to your table by a little shinkansen platter on a special track (elevated from the regular belt, just like the real shinkansen is elevated from the regular trains).
After the history museum, we went down to Himeji station, bought platform tickets and went up to the Shinkansen platform. This spring the rail company opened up a new stretch of Shinkansen tracks, reaching down to the southern end of the island of Kyushu. They also introduced a new Shinkansen train, the Sakura service, which runs between Osaka and the southern terminus. Not all Sakura trains stop in Himeji. The ones that don't reach their top speed while zipping through the city, so we were there to see it zoom through the station. That was pretty exciting!
-Jason

Summer Koshien

Koshien is the name of the stadium the Hanshin Tigers play in. It's one of the oldest fields in Japan, kind of like a Japanese Wrigley. It's also the site of the national high school baseball championships. This is basically Japan's version of the NCAA basketball tournament. It's televised around the country, and is a big enough deal that the Tigers, Japan's second-most popular pro team, have to vacate their stadium for the duration of the tournament.
The tournament is comprised of 49 teams: one from each of Japan's 47 prefectures and second teams from Tokyo and Hokkaido. They then play in a single elimination tournament to determine the champion. Because of the way Japan's school year is set up, a loss means the end of the career for third-year students, although they won't graduate until March. Stars are born at this tournament, much like March Madness. Matsuzaka Daisuke, now with the Boston Red Sox, first became famous in Japan for pitching a 17-inning, 250-pitch complete game in the tournament.
Since it's such a big deal, we decided to go one day during summer. It's actually free to sit in the outfield, although later in the tournament it might be tough to get a seat. The games are all played during the day, so you also have to deal with the hot sun, as there is no covering in the outfield. It probably helps the business of the beverage vendors, although walking around the stands in their uniforms can't be fun.
We got there midway through one game and watched the end. One team had jumped out to a 9-0 lead before we got there, and though their opponents gamely chipped away, it ended 9-4. Just like at a professional game, however, there were cheering sections for both teams, and they chanted on, no matter how hopeless the situation looked.
We stayed for the entirety of the next game, which turned out to be a classic. It was the team from Hiroshima vs. a team from Gifu, although we didn't know that at the time. Each team managed two runs in the first three innings. We then got a full game's worth of zeros - no more scoring through the 12th inning. There was still plenty of action, though, including the Hiroshima team putting the go-ahead run at third base with one out in the eighth, only to have him cut down at the plate. Both teams also had baserunners in extra innings, but failed to get a run across until the Hiroshima team finally scored the winning run in the 13th.
Maybe the toughest part about watching high school sports like this is that you know they are kids and they really wanted to win the game, and after such a classic the losers will be heartbroken. It was probably tough for the fans, too, who were almost as entertaining as the game. We were sitting near the Hiroshima fan section, and they were into it. The school band was playing, a number of other students were there (in uniform) cheering. Some students were wearing baseball uniforms (possibly the equivalent of the JV team) and they were cheering and doing a little dance to support the team. There were cheerleaders, honest-to-goodness pom-pom bearing American-style cheerleaders. Then there were the guys in white gloves. They did what looked like calisthenics in time to the chants and music. It was clearly some kind of cheering, but I've never seen it before. We couldn't see the other team's section as well, but they were also loud and supportive throughout the game (only when their team was batting, of course, as is Japanese custom).
Afterward, I found out the announced attendance at that game was 34,000. Over the complete 15 days of the tournament it drew nearly a million fans. The Hiroshima team won their next game in extra innings as well before losing in the quarterfinals. A team from Himeji also made it to the quarterfinals before losing.
-Jason
There are more pictures and video on the picasa site.

Shinkansen museum

On our way back from the Kiso Valley we stopped back in again in Nagoya to go to a new train museum that opened this year. It was pretty interesting. The front of the museum had three train engines: a steam locomotive, a shinkansen engine and a maglev engine. It was the past, present and future of trains, as Japan has plans to introduce maglev service that is supposed to cut the time between Tokyo and Osaka to just over an hour. Incredible. I don't think it will be operational for a few decades yet. We did get to ride in a maglev simulator. It showed us what riding a train at 500 km/h was like. It was amusing when they slowed us down to regular bullet train speed (250 km/hr) to see how slow it felt.
The rest of the museum had cars from different trains in Japanese rail history. It was fun to poke through them. There was also a bus, the oldest extant bus in Japan apparently.
The museum also has a simulator where you can act as the driver of a shinkansen. Chelsey didn't think that sounded like too much fun, since you mostly just drive in a straight line, but I was looking forward to it. Unfortunately, they only let a certain number of people in per day and hold a lottery to determine who gets to go. We did not win the lottery, so I did not get to drive a shinkansen. What a pity.
-Jason
There are more pictures on the picasa site.

Muddy Buddy

A few weeks ago we played in our second mud volleyball tournament. We were a little more organized this year, and had a team dinner the night before where we made t-shirts. We weren't the only team that took it up a notch -- there were several costumed teams. My personal favorite was the Power Rangers.
Even though our team got crushed (we played the team that won last year and went on to defend their title), we had a great time. We particularly enjoyed delving into mud wrestling/mud sumo. Nobody escaped clean.
There are more pictures on the picasa site.

The Kiso Valley

After sumo we headed off to hike the Kiso Valley. This is a picturesque little Valley straddling the border of Gifu and Nagano prefectures. It's famous because the trail along the Valley was part of the Nakasendo, one of the main routes between Kyoto and Tokyo in the pre-automobile days. This Kiso Valley section is one of the best-preserved sections of the trail, including the two towns at either end of the hike, Magome and Tsumago. Both have maintained the traditional style of buildings, at least in the center of town, which gives them a great atmosphere. After reaching Tsumago, one of our friends said it was like being in a samurai drama.
The hike itself was very nice, through woods. We encountered a pair of waterfalls and stopped to take photos and splash in the water a bit. We also came across a "Free Rest Room", which is different than a free restroom. The one we found was a 200-year-old Japanese farm house. As we walked up, the man who apparently cares for the house invited us in. He proceeded to serve us some pickled plums and cucumbers and gave us a plum drink (umeshu) that is popular in Japan. He also sang us a traditional local song. It was quite the unexpected experience.
We finished our hike when we reached our ryokan (inn) in Tsumago. It was a really nice place; we got three bedrooms plus a meeting room for our use. The stay included a really nice dinner. It included raw horse meat and one dish that the waitress wouldn't reveal to us until after we ate it. It turned out to be wasp. I thought the wasp was pretty good, and Chelsey thought it was good too, once she got past the idea of eating wasps. She ended up hiding them in her rice and then eating them, since the rice and the wasps were roughly the same size and then she didn't have to think about it as much.
Our good fortune on the trip continued; we had been lucky enough to see the decisive sumo bout, and now it turned out we had come into Tsumago on the night of their summer festival. We watched many of the festivities after dinner, including the carrying and jostling of a shrine that we have become familiar with. A new twist at this festival was that the men would run with the shrine for a ways, then turn around and do it again. It was pretty impressive to watch them run with it - except maybe for the one time when a couple of guys stumbled and the shrine veered off into the bushes, almost running over Matt and Tara in the process. Those things are dangerous. Eventually I helped pull the shrine back up the mountain to where it lives. Immediately after the men got the shrine put back in its shelter, it started to rain.
-Jason
There are more photos on the picasa site.

treats!

Here are a few delicious summer treats that we've tried recently.
1. An apple pie ice cream Popsicle. It was amazing!!
2. Frozen shaved peach. They take the pit out and then run the whole peach through a processor. It was very refreshing.

goodbye Toyotomi ESS

I used one of my free mornings last week to go back to my first school (the one I love!) to say goodbye to my students. I'd been helping the English club with their play for the fall, and they wanted to give me a sneak preview performance. It's Hansel and Gretel and they did a great job. It was really hard to say goodbye to those kids and it made the fact that we're leaving soon really start to sink in.

ikebana #17 (last one!)

Here's my last ikebana. We used peppers! I love the extra color they added.

sumo video

Here's the scene after the top-ranked wrestler lost. Everyone is throwing their purple seat cushions.

Go Wahawks!

You can imagine my surprise when walking around in Kobe Jason saw a guy wearing a West Waterloo High School t-shirt. That's where my parents went. I think the Japanese guy thought I was crazy.

Nagoya Sumo Tournament

A match-fixing scandal canceled the March sumo tournament in Osaka this year (and if it hadn't, the earthquake would have), so we missed on our chance to see sumo in person again. So we decided to go up to Nagoya to see the tournament there, the last sumo tournament before we leave Japan. During summer, Japan Rail has tickets that allow you to ride regular trains all day for a very low price - a great deal if you have time to use it. Since it was summer vacation, we did.
We bought tickets for the penultimate day of the tournament. For those who don't know (probably the majority of readers), a sumo tournament is not like a tennis tournament. Instead of eliminations leading to a final match between the two survivors, each wrestlers fights once a day over 15 days. At the end of the tournament, the wrestler with the best record is the champion. Ties for the title are broken with playoffs immediately following the last match.
As it happened, though, we got to see the highlight of the tournament: Yokozuna (top rank) Hakuho vs. Ozeki (second rank) Harumafuji. Though we couldn't have known it at the time we bought tickets, this match was going to be decisive: Harumafuji was unbeaten and would clinch the championship with a win, while Hakuho could climb even with Harumafuji if he won (this would likely force a playoff the next day). It turned out to be a great bout, with Harumafuji grabbing an advantage at the beginning and dragging Hakuho around the ring, but he was unable to finish him off. Eventually, Hakuho got back to even in the middle of the ring, at which point I figured Harumafuji was toast. Hakuho was 69-5 over the past calendar year and had won 7 consecutive tournaments, so he usually wins in those situations. But Harumafuji really wanted this and managed to drive Hakuho back and out to claim the trophy.
Sumo tradition says that when a yokozuna loses to a non-yokozuna, the fans throw their seat cushions. An announcement a few minutes prior told us not to toss them, but when Hakuho stepped out, no one else seemed to be listening, so I tossed mine too. Our friend Megumi was sitting next to me and sent hers flying, while down a couple of boxes Chelsey and Yumi both threw theirs. We were downright unenthusiastic compared to our friends Matt and Tara; when we looked at the box where they had been sitting, all four cushions were gone. This is a picture of the last moments of one of Matt and Tara's cushions.
Even before the final match it had been a fun day of sumo. We got there in mid-afternoon, before the higher-ranked wrestlers had started and snuck down to the front row for a little while. It was really neat, although we all had a nervous moment when one rather large wrestler started getting pushed toward us. Fortunately he halted his momentum before spilling out of the ring and onto us. As we vacated those seats, we had to squeeze by some wrestlers who were waiting in the halls for their ring-entering ceremony. This included me walking right by Takanoyama, the only Czech wrestler in sumo and consequently one of my favourites. (There are currently no Canadians or Americans in sumo). Takanoyama later won his match, and I was surprised to discover that he was quite popular in general, as he got louder cheers than anyone else at his rank. I assume this is because he is one of the smaller wrestlers in the world of sumo. Despite that size, he had a very successful tournament and may be in the top division in September.
The two wrestlers we met in Himeji both had so-so tournaments. Kotooshu started off well but tailed off. He didn't threaten for the championship, but he did enough to maintain his rank. Kotoshogiku also started great, including a shocking upset of Hakuho that set up our climatic bout. He followed that up with a couple of bad losses, however, including the day we went. Those losses prevented him from being promoted to ozeki.
-Jason
There are more pictures on the picasa page.

Asian Athletics Championships

About a month ago Chelsey took me to Kobe to see the Asian Athletics Championships, Athletics being non-North American for track and field. It's a notch below Olympic-level track, but it was a championship meet and featured some pretty good competition, so I was excited.
The big star of the meet, from a global perspective, was Liu Xiang, the 2004 Olympic gold medalist in the 110-meter hurdles. Liu was supposed to be the poster boy for the Beijing Olympics, but an Achilles injury kept him from even finishing his heat. He's rebounded with a great season so far this year, though. As he was one of the few world-championship caliber athletes competing, he had little trouble winning his event. He was quite popular too, probably because he was the only Olympic gold medalist there, but he got a bunch of Chinese flags waving in the stands.
The local stars, meanwhile, were Murakami Yukifume and Fukushima Chisato. Murakami won a surprise bronze medal at the 2009 world championships in the javelin. Though that was kind of a fluke, he's become something of a star here because of it, and he was clearly the class of this competition. Fukushima is Japan's national record holder in the 100 and 200 meters. She's not quite ready to break up the American-Jamaican sprint hegemony, but she dominated the 200 here to the delight of the home crowd. Japan also dominated the relays, sweeping all four events. It looked like they might be challenged in the last event, the men's 4x400, when Iraq(!) stayed on their heels through three legs. The Iraqi anchor, however, basically jogged the last leg, allowing Japan to run away with the victory and leaving Iraq to finish last. I'm not sure if there was an injury or if Iraq simply didn't have enough sprinters to complete the team and sent out a discus thrower for the last leg (he kind of looked like a thrower).
A championship track meet has a lot of competitors, coaches and team officials, so they will inevitably spill into the stands, meaning that spectators mingle with them. Chelsey made it her mission to try to photograph the team shirts from as many countries as we can find. Look for yourself and decide which is the most obscure country! The pictures are on the picasa site.
-Jason

last cooking lesson

I had my last cooking lesson last week. I have really enjoyed the lessons and am returning to the US armed with some delicious recipes. This lesson we made hand-rolled sushi. It was interesting to try different flavor combinations.

ikebana #16

My teacher said that I did a nice job with this one -- some of the larger branches required a lot of trimming and she said I did it nicely.