The next day, a little worse-for-wear, we ate breakfast at a little diner across the street from my friend’s house called Coco’s. It had freshly made breakfast food as well as any breakfast drink you could want! I wasn’t able to eat much, but what I did eat I found tasty. After that we picked up some friends from the place they were staying and headed back to Fukushima City.
Cormac, Felipe and I had plans for Thanksgiving with a friend of ours, Mercedez. It was a second thanksgiving for Felipe and I, because we had gone to one a few days earlier in my town of Minamisoma, and since Cormac is Irish he had never celebrated Thanksgiving before so he was excited to experience this American holiday.
Mercedez started out the evening by playing a song for us on the shamisen! She had just started taking classes the previous month and we wanted to see her in action!
Here was some of the food that we ate.
And as we were all relaxing on the couch in a human-pile I was struck with the idea to create our own Renaissance-Painting-style photograph. Behold!
We talked and laughed all night. We did the tradition of going around the room and saying what we were thankful for. All of us felt some respite from the loneliness that can strike people living in a foreign country during the holidays. I think we were all grateful to have each other.
Here are some pictures from the Thanksgiving dinner we had on Wednesday 11/24/16 in Minamisoma.
Here our two Japanese guests (Aki and... i dont remember the girl's name) tried their hand at the thanksgiving tradition of breaking the wishbone.
Aki wins! What was his wish? We'll never know.
Happy Birthday to Olga!
At this one everything was homemade, and everyone contributed to the meal. I made the plate of cookies. They came from a package and tasted meh. Felipe made this amazing Colombian Rice with Chicken and stuff in it! So tasty!
My sad contribution to Thanksgiving.
But all in all we had a wonderful time. We all found something to be grateful for this holiday season.
This trip started early in the morning on Saturday the 26th of November. It was organized by my friend Kris and her boyfriend Josh who live in Aizu-Wakamatsu. They were nice enough to show us around their amazing town! We had a jam-packed day so we hit the ground running and we didn’t stop. It was my kind of day!
The first place we stopped was Iimoriyama which has the sites of the Tonokuchisekisui Shrine and Sanso-do Buddhist Temple, as well as some Nazi statues (which I will get to. Don’t worry, Baby Birds, I will feed you.)
The Tonokuchisekisui Shrine is a small Shinto shrine next to a river that flows from out of the inside of a mountain. It is the site of the famous story of the Byakkotai Warriors.
The story goes that during the Boshin War in 1868 there were special groups of young sons of local Aizu samurai between the ages of 15-17. Tsuruga Castle (also known as Aizu-Wakamatsu Castle) had just been put under siege, which was the beginning of the Battle of Aizu. During the battle of Aizu twenty of these Byakkotai (White Tiger Company) warriors were cut off from the rest of their squad and retreated into the Iimori Hill through the river that springs from within. They were looking for a way out the other side of the mountain through this hole. They didn’t find a way out so they turned around and came back out the way they came.
When they emerged they looked out across the valley and saw a lot of smoke and buildings on fire in the area of the castle. They believed the castle was on fire and that they had lost the battle. The believed that their lord and families were dead, and that they were going to be overtaken by enemy forces. These 20 boys then decided to commit Seppuku to avoid being taken by the enemy and dying with honor. 19 of the boys were successful and one of the boys, Iinuma Sadakichi, was unsuccessful in his attempted Seppuku. He was found by a peasant and mended back to health. It is because of him that the story of these 20 Byakkotai warriors are known at all.
He learned that while much of the town surrounding the castle had been set aflame, the castle itself had not, nor had the castle defenses even been breached. The lord and the families of the 20 boys still lived, and the war continued.
After a month long siege the Aizu officials surrendered and the samurai population were sent away to PoW camps. Iinuma Sadakichi continued to serve in the army (retiring with the rank of Captain) and lied in Sendai until his death in 1931.
We continued on and found nearby the graves of the 20 Byakkotai warriors and many Nazi memorabilia statues. During WWII, Mussolini himself heard about the story of the 20 Byakkotai Warriors and was greatly moved by their loyalty to their lord and to their cause. He arranged to have a great monument, which consisted of a column from Pompeii, sent to Iimori Hill to honor the fallen samurai boys.
The burial site of the 19 boys who commit seppuku.
This is the burial site of Iinuma Sadakichi.
After Japan lost WWII and America came through Japan, the most offending Nazi and Fascist iconography on the memorial was sanded off, but the memorial itself still remains with the Fascist eagle at the top.
This is a statue showing the Byakkotai looking out over the valley and seeing their castle on fire.
Also on the site is the Sanso-do Buddhist Temple. It is one of the most beautiful and unique buildings I’ve ever seen.
The floor plan of the building is pretty much a continual ramp that circles up the building in a spiral, meets at the top with a small bridge and then circles back down in a spiral on the other side. In other words, the ramp in the building is in the shape of a double-helix that meets in one floor at the top. The ceilings were really low. Even I sometimes thought I'd bump my head.
This is the top floor/bridge that connects the two sides of the double-helix.
How the top floor/bridge connects to the ramps.
This is the ceiling of the temple. Its covered in Buddhist prayer and charm stickers.
The inside of the temple has some small alcoves that have wooden statues of the Buddha and some monks, and there are thousands of Buddhist prayer stickers posted all over the walls and ceilings of the temple. It is truly gorgeous!
This was a small passage halfway up the building that cut across to the other side of the double-helix.
After that we hopped on a bun and ran over to the Rekishi Kandou (Exciting History) Museum which featured an Aizu Samurai Residence on display for people to come see.
It had some furnishings and wax figures so you could actually have an idea of what life was like back then.
There were beautiful displays of Japanese Chrysanthemum flowers all over the place.
There was also a nice little pond that had fish in it. I took this lovely photo. You can see the leaves that little the bottom of the pond as well as the reflection of the tree on the water.
There were many little signs that helped describe the scenes that were created in each room. I won’t type them again, but I’ll let you see.
This was a toilet where the leavings were collected and examined by a doctor to determine the health of the lord and his family. The little wagon was filled with sand and the doctor could move the wagon out from under the house. Pretty interesting design.
Moving onto the rest of the house we came upon this sad story. The samurai’s wife and other women in his life didn’t want to be a bother to him while he was fighting the Boshin war. So the women killed themselves and their children for the cause.
This scene depicts one woman in a room full of the dead who cannot kill herself so she is asking an enemy soldier to show mercy and kill her. It’s a harrowing scene. The bodies under the sheet are children, in addition to the dead child you can see on the lap of the dead mother in the middle.
We also got to see a mill where they ground rice and wheat, as well as a shed where they kept their cooking equipment. There was also an old-timey bath on display there as well.
At the end of the tour of the grounds there was an archery range. A bunch of people got to try their hands at Kyuudo. I didn’t get to try because I was dawdling behind, plus we were running out of time before we had to catch our next bus.
But my friend Cormac was able to hit a bull’s-eye!
And here’s my friend Feipe trying his hand.
After this we went to eat lunch. I ate butter ramen. They put a whole chunk of butter in your ramen and you melt it into your broth. It is sooooo good!
Don't they look cute!
After that we all had to run for the bus, and we made our way to a little shop next to Aizu-Wakamatsu Castle. In this shop they have a side room where you can paint your own Akabeko! An Akabeko (red cow) is an old-timey children’s toy that was given to kids when they were struck with a pox or became sick. The spots on the Akabeko are important because they are said to be the mark that will remove the spots from the child. These toys were famous in the Aizu region of Japan and it’s where they were originally created.
Some of the people I had come with had already painted Akabekos before, or didn’t want one, so there are other options of things you can paint. There are black and white cows as well as other animals from the Chinese zodiac, including horses, dragons and monkeys.
After we painted our Akabeko we walked over to Aizu-Wakamatsu Castle.
Found a vending machine with a helpful diagram for foreigners that aren't familiar with Japanese currency.
Aizu-Wakamatsu Castle has a path up to the castle with steep walls where an attacking army would have to pass through in order to get to the castle. This would allow for archers on top of the wall to shoot down into the path and kill the enemy as they had bottle-necked themselves.
The wall also features a huge rock that is called the "Dancing Women" rock. It was so huge and such a trouble to move, that they would have women dance on the rock while the men moved it to give them motivation! It doesn't look too big, but it is cylindrical and it is quite long.
The grounds around Aizu-Wakamatsu Castle are beautiful it has many trees that were bare at the time but I hear are absolutely gorgeous during the spring and summer. It was beautiful anyways, even without the leaves.
There were a few small Shinto shrines on the grounds as well.
One area of the grounds were dedicated to practicing combat on horseback. There is even an old horse troth on the grounds as well.
Along many point of the outer wall there used to be towers. One was used to keeping expensive tea ceremony equipment and artillery equipment and one was used for social visits and monthly Moon-viewing parties. Moon-viewing ceremonies and parties were quite popular in Japan around this time. The concept is simple; you socialize while you sit outside at night viewing the full moon.
This portion of the outer wall is called the “Falling Ninja Wall.” It is the steepest wall on the grounds and it is said that even ninja’s couldn’t scale it. While we were looking out at the wall we saw a man on the bridge walking a rabbit on a leash! My picture is garbage, but that little white blob at the foot of the man is in fact a rabbit.
There was also a shinto shrine on the temple grounds. It was quaint.
Trying to take photos of the castle and I get hit by the master of photobombs!
First try.
Second try...
Finally!
Aizu-Wakamatsu Castle itself is very large, and it is famous in Japan for its red roof. On the inside of the castle we weren’t able to take pictures and the rest was more information on the history of the Battle of Aizu and the Byakkotai Warriors. What was impressive was the view from the top. It was absolutely gorgeous!
After that we hopped on a bus to a cute little traditional street in Aizu-Wakamatsu. There were a bunch of cute little shops lining the streets. We spent a half hour walking around and made our way back to the city.
People split up to get their luggage and cars, and we regrouped at a little Korean restaurant. The food was tasty and the staff was nice.
The face of a drunk girl having the greatest time.
We were having a wonderful time, but soon some locals came in and were really put out at having to share the space with a bunch of foreigners.
Our evening was cut rather short because of some passive-aggressive behavior on the part of the other patrons that clearly told us that we were not welcome. It did put a damper on our evening. Way to go, you prejudiced people of Aizu-Wakamatsu! Way to represent! Now a bunch of foreigners have some bad impressions of the people in your town. How does it make you feel?
Well we weren’t going to let those super-mean people ruin our entire evening, so we got out of there and about 15 of us headed to a local karaoke place where we sang and danced the night away. We drunkenly stumbled our way back home in the wee hours of the a.m. happy as clams.
I don't know a single person in this photo. But they arrived to karaoke as we were leaving and they were so excited to meet the foreigners!
My friend has cats and they loved me! It had been so long since I had held a cat!
Here are some manhole covers for the city of Aizuwakamatsu,
