Exploring Miyazaki: A Little Bit of Now.

Many JETs pose after the welcome dinner

It is the time of year of welcome parties and summer festivals in Japan, and so lately JETs find that there is always something fun to do. It definitely adds to the excitement of life in Japan for new JETs! And of course it brings us older JETs out and having a good time socializing too ;).

This past weekend was no exception to the busyness of the season, begun with a JET welcome party and then followed by a festival and camping down by the southern peninsula of Miyazaki, Cape Toi.

The one photo I managed...
With an amazing photo bomb!
Boo ya!

To start the weekend off, our local Miyazaki JET volunteer group (MAJET) organized our big annual welcome party for all the new JET arrivals throughout the prefecture. It was a large event of about 75 foreigners getting together this year! There are about 55 JETs within the whole of Miyazaki prefecture and many of them, this year especially, have partners who came with them to Japan, making the party bigger than usual. I imagine unsuspecting locals must get quite a shock seeing that many foreigners gathered at the little ol' "downtown" cross-street at Tachibana Dori in Miyazaki!

Barno2Gatsu pic from their website.

The main event was a dinner with a 2 hr all-you-can-drink (nomihoudai, 飲み放題) at a downtown Spanish restaurant [Barno2Gatsu; バルの２月], which has some amazing red wine sangria! Mmmmm! I was too busy socializing to take many photos it seems, but it was a great time as expected!

A typical izakaya and
nomihoudai experience

By the way, nomihoudai is the timed all-you-can-drink service for you and your party and is started anytime by simply asking your waitress. They will warn your table when your time is almost up and you should do a last call. I've found nomihoudai here are about ￥2,500 (about CAD $30 today) for a few hours and they tend to include beer, wine, umeshu (梅酒 - a sweet wine-like drink made from pickled plums and sugar), shouchuu (焼酎 - a clear distilled Japanese alcohol distilled from barley, rice, or various other things), and some chu-hi (チューハイ - fruity high-ball drinks with vodka or shochu). Nomihoudai is simple, cheap, and common in Japanese restaurants and izakayas (居酒屋 - drinking and tapas bars). It is both wonderful and dangerous. I will miss this sorely when I go back to expensive dining out in Vancouver...

Small private room style karaoke

Japanese parties usually have a nijikai (二次会 - second party), sometimes even followed by a sanjikai (三次会 - third party). There were two options for our nijikai; either going to an arcade and games center or to do karaoke in a large private room with space for mingling. I am usually not the biggest fan of karaoke, though it is definitely growing on me after being here for 2 years and having some amazingly hilarious times with fellow foreigners who don't care if anyone sucks at singing, but just make it fun for all.

Away we go!
行っています！

(Highlights include male friends taking on some Disney Princess roles and a girlfriend doing deep scream-o interpretations of unlikely songs!)

Also, even if you don't want to sing, you can join in with a tambourine or maracas, free to borrow at any Japanese karaoke. These sort of experiences have really helped me to appreciate the Japanese style private room karaoke. Now the Western style on a stage at a bar in front of a bunch of strangers way just seems so weird...

Down the stairs to the left through the torii gate is the
main shrine at Udo Jingu. To the right where people
are standing is where you can throw the undama. 

After a fun Friday night though, the weekend still had more to come. The next day we headed down south towards Cape Toi, where that night a Fire Festival was being held. On the way we stopped at one of the (imo) best shrines in the prefecture, Udo Jingu, which is famous because it is in a cave along a cliff on the Nichinan coastline and so offers spectacular scenery.

Beautiful views over the cliff side.

After some research I discovered that the shrine is dedicated to Yamasachi-hiko (man of the mountain harvest), who is a deity known for hunting and who is also the father of Emperor Jimmu, the mythical first Emperor of Japan. Apparently Emperor Jimmu was either born in the cave or visited it as a young baby, and the many breast-shaped rocks nourished him. Drinking any of the water that drips in the cave is seen as especially lucky for pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing. The shrine is also known to give blessings to newlyweds.

Inside the cave shrine area.

Try to throw your stone in the pool
in the rope for good luck!

One of the things to do at Udo Jingu is to try to throw clay stones you can buy at the shrine (undama) into a water pool on a rock below, distinguished by the shimenawa rope around it. You can buy 5 of the little stones for ￥100 (about CAD $1.25 today). Of course you can also buy omikuji (fortunes) and omamori (good luck talisman) at the shrine.

The priest reading blessings towards the alter and the
assistant in the corner. As far as I know, because I was
not photographing the alter area, it was alright for me
to take this photo. 

When we were there we were lucky enough to see part of a Shinto ceremony performed on a woman, presumably blessing her (or perhaps her unborn child?). She was kneeling down with her face prostrate on the floor in the center of the room while the priest first sang / read some blessings from a scroll. Next, he moved around her waving a big golden instrument with bells and leaves over her, and a young female assistant either played the flute or beat a taiko drum in one corner of the room. It was incredibly beautiful to see.

Next, we were off to the Cape Toi Fire Festival, which I got to experience for the first time! In my first year it was canceled because of rain, and last year I was away back home in Vancouver for a visit, so the pressure was on for me to finally get to this festival in my last year! Luckily the weather reports of storms were wrong and Amaterasu (the Sun Goddess) seemed to favour us :)

Our new friend who gave
us some of his salt!

Fire wielding men
dancing around the pole!

After setting up camp at the beach on the way and making a new friend of a local salt farmer, we drove up and got to the festival just in time for the main event. The legend behind the festival is that the local village had been terrorized by an awful serpent until a monk killed it by throwing a torch into its mouth! Now, a 30 metre wooden pillar is erected upright while men dance around and throw fireballs up at it to set off some fireworks in a bucket on the top of it.

As you can see, I stayed a fair distance
away from the fireball danger zone ;p

The stage to the right.

As you can imagine, this is not in accordance with most other countries' safety standards; many miss-throws happen and the crowd has to be careful! In the hour or so that it took the men to light the pole, two people in the crowd were apparently hit with fireballs! One was a child! o.0 !! Luckily we heard that both were fine!

The snake pole is
finally lit!

Yay fireworks!

To add to the atmosphere of the flying fireballs while the snake is trying to be lit, kids chant in Japanese about banishing the snake on a nearby stage while beating taiko drums. Also, there were food stalls around selling the typical festival snacks, such as 焼きそば (yakisoba - fried soba noodles),  蛸焼き (takoyaki - fried octopus dumplings), イカ焼き (ikayaki - grilled squid on a stick), 焼きともろこし (yakitomorokoshi - grilled corn on the cob), フライポテト ("furaido potato" - french fries), かき水 (kakigori - shaved ice), and of course ビール ("bi-ru" - beer).

The ferry drops you off here and there
are suddenly monkeys everywhere!

That night we camped out at the beach across from Koujima Island (幸島) and visited the island the next day via a local ferryman / fisherman who takes you across for ￥1000/person (about CAD $12 today). While this may seem expensive, it's worth it at least once because Koujima, also known as Monkey Island, is famous for having "cultured" monkeys.

Quite an end to a weekend! 

Pretty place to be anyway!
Even without the monkeys!

In the 1950's it was observed that the monkeys there washed their food before eating it, and so since then many studies were done about primate families and animal acculturation. These days the ferryman feeds the monkeys as he brings a boatload of tourists and so they come out and are used to having people around.

Unfortunately, according to a news article from a few years ago (see link below), it seems that over-feeding because of the tourist aspect has led the monkeys to lose some of their "cultured" ways.

They are by no means tame though; you still have to be careful not to look them in the eyes or touch them, but it's exciting to be able to observe these semi-wild creatures in such close quarters. Especially cute was when we had three little siblings playing "king of the castle" and vying for top position on an old white torii gate - a more challenging jungle gym for them because of the smooth and straight edges!

(Kojima Monkeys Still Draw Scientists 5 Decades On).

In my next post;
Summer Vacation & Motivation