On this weekend I was super excited to spend this holiday with my best friend in Fukushima, and my token Irishman, Cormac!
I drove out to Fukushima City after work on Friday where I met Cormac and Felipe, and one of my new friends, Andrew, on the top of a building in the city to play soccer. I am absolutely garbage at soccer, and I really was only there to run around and distract everyone else. It was super fun; it’s been a while since I ran around like that. Towards the end of the game my good friend Katie showed up and spent the rest of the night hanging out with us.
After playing soccer we went out to an Irish bar a few streets away where we drank Guinness and bullshit each other all night. The bar was having a special where if you bought three beers you got a fourth for free. And when we left the owner of the bar gave us glasses with old Guinness advertisements on them. I picked one that had a man pulling a horse sitting in a cart. It was really nice of that bar owner to go out of his way for the holiday that only foreigners celebrated.
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| Perfect pour. |
After that the boys were getting really hungry and wanted to go out to eat. Katie and I felt no such hunger and wanted to go out to karaoke. As a compromise, Katie and I went to karaoke and got all the girly songs out of our system while the boys went to eat gyoza and they would meet us at karaoke later. We did just that and had a wonderful time that night. I left my car in the city and we all caught a cab back to my friend’s house where we crashed.
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| I love this advertisment! |
The next day we dispersed because we all had various plans. I caught a bus back to the city so I could retrieve my car. I spent the rest of the afternoon updating my blog. Later that evening I met Katie in Iizaka, a little town to the north east of Fukushima City. We had intended to get a group of girls together and have a nice dinner, but it didn’t really work out that way. I was late and a few other people were unable to show up. And the gyoza place that we had chosen was super busy and another was closing soon. So instead of eating out there, we drove back to Fukushima City. As we were walking back to my car I saw this view of the river and the buildings lining it. It was too dark to see properly, so I made plans to return the next day and get a better look at this cute, little town.
We chose to eat at Saizeriya, the surprisingly delicious chain restaurant of Italian/European food. After eating, Katie and I decided to watch a movie and have a girl’s night in. It was at this point that Cormac called me. I hadn’t made plans to hang out with him because he was going to a birthday party. It just so happened that he fell asleep on the couch and slept through the last bus to the town where the party was being held, so he was suddenly facing an empty evening. So we invited him to join our movie night. We watched Smiley Face with Anna Faris, and then spent the rest of the evening talking. We didn’t leave Katie’s house until after 1 am. I then crashed at Cormac’s house. We had a big day the next day too.
The next morning, 3/20/2017, we woke up and had a whole lot of nothing to do until the evening. I suggested going to check out Iizaki, the small town to the northwest. I had met Katie there yesterday, and it looked like such a beautiful town, I wanted to see more. But the sun had set and it was too dark to see any of the sights in that town. So we got ready and head out to Iizaka.
Here is a manhole cover for Iizaka town:
Our first stop was a shrine high on a hill. You had to hike a short distance to get there. When you reached the top you could see the city of Iizaka and the surrounding area spread out below you. It was a beautiful site, although the shrine itself wasn’t anything too special.
We walked down another short trail on top of the hill to another small stone shrine. This one was super old, but it too wasn’t too interesting. I lifted the red curtain in front and saw that this was what was inside.
From here we walked a few streets away along the river running through town.
Running along one side of the walkway and flowing into the main river was a little canal or creek and it was flowing underneath the arch of a rock. The rock was called the nostrils because of the shape of the arched rock and how the roots of the trees along the river started out thick, but the further towards the end they got they looked more hair like. So it looked like there were “nose hairs” all along the river, but especially on the arched rock.
We popped out a ways down the river and crossed the bridge, and it was here we could see the entire river as well as all the buildings lining the river. Most of them are hotels in this little hot spring town.
We walked down the opposite side of the river from which we had come and walked towards a viewing place along the river. Along the way I saw this little waterfall flowing from the same creek that came from the Nostrils. It was falling right next to a building. It was pretty neat to see.
The viewing place along the river has a public foot bath and a lovely shrine built right into the side of the hill. The walls were made from a type of aerated, rough, spongey rock. I think it was a volcanic rock of some kind.
‘Mac and I relaxed in the foot baths for a while, admiring the view of the river.
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| This small building and staircase lead to a hidden onsen in the basement of the building on the left. There was a little woman sitting in the building selling tickets into the onsen. |
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| This is Iizaka onsen. It sits right on the river. It is a popular place for locals to go bathe. I hear the water is super hot. |
When we were done relaxing in the footbath, we continued onto a large onsen in the middle of town with a shrine and Kannon-sama statue next to it.
It is believed that if you pour water on this Kannon statue, and then rub the water into a spot on her body, then it will heal that spot on your body as well. Here is ‘Mac pouring water over the statue.
There is also this large tower above the onsen and shrine, but I am not sure as to its purpose.
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| This is another popular onsen in town. It is really old. It is next to the tower and shrine. |
From here ‘Mac took me to the estate of a rich person in town. It has been turned into a museum. At this sight it also features one of the oldest warehouses in Fukushima. It also has a foot bath that is open to the public, and it costs nothing for admittance.
Back in the day, a man’s wealth was measured by how many warehouses he had on his property. The owner of this estate had four that I counted.
There is a little stage and amphitheater on the grounds, as well as a café, but there were no events that day.
There were these gorgeous, little, yellow flowers that were growing right out of the grass that I thought were so pretty!
There were also some beautiful Tsubaki trees as well. The Tsubaki (Rose of Winter) is one of my favorite Japanese flowers. It even has its own yokai myth attached to the flowers. The Furustubaki no Rei (Old Tsubaki Spirit) is an old tsubaki tree that is old enough to have gained a spirit. The spirit of the Tsubaki tree manifests as a beautiful woman and can trick or help people passing by. The Tsubaki yokai comes from the Tohoku region of Japan. Here is a picture that was created by Matthew Meyer (of the website Yokai.com)
A few more photos of the grounds.
We saw this cute little shrine (?) on a street corner. It had little Jizo-sama inside of it.
From here we didn’t have any plans or things to do. So we wandered around the corner and smelled some incense on the wind. It was then we noticed an open gate with many cars parked nearby. We determined that that was where the incense was coming from and decided to go check it out. On the other side of the gate we emerged into the courtyard of a Buddhist temple. It had beautiful stonework on the ground, you could tell was quite old.
We walked through another gateway and emerged into a cemetery. Right in front of us was a memorial that was so old you could see the erosion plainly on the rock. I was absolutely floored. In America, the only things that have really eroded are things that man was not around to build, like mountains and landscapes. But here I was looking at something so old, and yet was built by human hands. It really hit home how ancient this country and culture is. And yes, America has the Native Americans, and their inhabitance and culture are just as old, but they didn’t build anything that would have lasted decades, let alone centuries. Seeing old things is just something I am really not used to, so when it happens, my jaw drops and I am floored.
We turned and went out the way we came, but saw that there was more to the temple. There was another section of ground that was decorated in a checker pattern with stone, and there was another praying shrine next to it.
Further in that direction we saw the proper entrance to the temple, and some smaller, stone shrines to the side.
From here we realized that it was already 3:30 p.m. and we should probably get going. We had a farewell barbeque party that evening for a mutual friend of ours who was quitting JET early to go finish his graduate degree in Yokohama. It was taking place in southern Fukushima, near Tochigi, so we had some ground to cover.
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| Master Photobomber. |
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| This building on the left is an old inn that is over 200 years old! |
The traffic on the way was quite packed, and we had to make a few stops along the way. We arrived much later than we had intended, but that was ok, because by the time we got there the party was in full swing! It was an amazing night filled with good food and good friends.
The next morning we woke up, socialized a bit with others before making the drive back to Fukushima City. Cormac was excited to watch a rugby match that he had missed that weekend where Ireland beat England and killed England’s winning streak. We watched and he taught me a few things about rugby, but the weekend was finally catching up to me, so I crashed on the couch while ‘Mac watched the match.
Later that evening we invited Felipe over and we all watched a Memoirs of a Geisha. I love that movie and it is consistently in my top ten favorite movies. The cinematography is so beautiful and the content is quite accurate. I highly recommend this movie.
The end of the movie signaled the end of my three-day weekend, and Felipe and I headed home. I was worried that my nap earlier in the day would prevent me from sleeping that night as well, but by the time I got home I realized that would not be a problem. I crashed soon after my head hit the pillow. I was exhausted, but it was an amazing weekend and I would have done nothing different.
