Drag Racing, Driving through Fukushima, Meeting the Govenor of Fukushima, And Charity Pub Quiz in Koriyama!

6/11/2017

The next morning the three of us woke up, got ready and started out to our first destination, the Fukushima Drift Racing Track.

Cormac had gotten a hold of three tickets for the drift racing while his friend was here, and since I had never seen any racing of any kind, I was interested to try it out. Because Fukushima has quite a large drifting racetrack, it is fairly common to talk to people who either participate in drift racing or watch it for fun.

We arrived around noon and took some time walking around the cars and looking at their interiors (colorful and minimal to save on weight,) the engine and hood/trunk (usually had slatted holes running along the hood and trunk to help with airflow and keeping the engine cool,) and the exhaust (usually had exhaust pipes coming out of the engine, through the interior of the car and exiting out a funnel attached to the side windows.) A lot of them were really pretty colors and they were covered with sponsor stickers.

When we were done looking at all the cars we still had some time left before the races started so we stopped at the little restaurant next to the track and got something to eat. I got some soba noodles that were served cold with a broth that was separate from the noodles. You were supposed to dip the noodles into the broth one bite at a time and then eat it. The broth was really good, and the temperature was great for the hot day, but it’s not my favorite because the texture of the cold noodles is not great.

When the races started it was exciting. I did a quick search on the rules for the drift racing we were seeing. What they were showing that day was called “tandem drifting” where you have two cars; a leader and a follower. The leader is trying to execute the perfect drift and not crash with the following car. The following car is trying to mess up the leading car without crashing into it while also trying to execute the perfect drift. If a crash does happen it is the follower’s fault. The rules seem simple, but I don’t quite get how you would ever, ever run as the follower. Because the leader has only one goal, to execute the perfect drift and does not need to worry about losing the match, because if a crash happens it is the follower’s fault. Whereas the follower must not only try to achieve more, but could be sabotaged by the leader if the leader tried to crash to make the follower lose. It seems so one-sided that I wonder how it is a fair sport, so I must be missing something.

We watched the races for an hour/hour and a half or so and then decided to head out.

Look at the size of that camera!

I had gotten tickets for a traditional music festival in Minamisoma, so we got in the car and started driving towards my town. Shane was curious about the exclusion zone, so I told him that Namie had recently opened up and that we could drive through that town on our way to the music festival. Because of this I took a different way home than I normally do.

We were driving through the Fukushima countryside intending to drive through the mountains and pop out in Namie and then drive north to Minamisoma. But halfway along this mountain road we ran into a roadblock. This was when I realized that while the center of town, where most of the people lived had been opened back up for habitation, the more remote parts of the town limits were still cordoned off. As I approached the roadblock and realized what was happening, the man in charge of guarding the roadblock held out his flashing light-stick and just shook his head at me. He didn’t say anything, just stood there shaking his head at me. I pulled over to the side of the road did a 3-point turn and started driving back the way we had come. We had gone quite far down this road, so I was quite sad to have lost a total of about 40+ minutes of our day driving that way. But oh well. We drove through Itate town and saw the beautiful scenery of that area. I hadn’t seen it before, so I thought it was nice. Sadly we didn’t have enough time that day to show Shane Namie.

When we got to my house and I picked up the music festival tickets, I realized that I had mis-remembered the start time of the festival and it was long over.

We were running out of daylight, however, so I took Cormac and Shane to go see the 1000 year old stone reliefs of Kannon and the Buddhas to the south in Odaka. These would be the same relief statues that scare me, so I was excited to go see them when I was not by myself.

By the time we got to the relief statues, the sun had set and the sky was growing dark. But Shane was impressed with the reliefs. I think he enjoyed seeing them a lot. That trip was also good for me too, because that time I didn’t feel as much fear as I usually do when I see those relief statues, and the darkness outside greatly lessened the glare that shone on the windows in front of the Buddhas, so I didn’t have to get so close to the glass to peer through. All-in-all it was a good trip.

When Shane had his fill of the stone Buddhas and Kannon we went to Minamisoma Beach. This was more for Shane. He had just been in San Francisco a few days before, so we thought it would be cool to visit the Pacific Ocean from the other side. It was super dark and we could barely see anything. But it was fun.

When we were done looking out at the black ocean we stopped at a family-style restaurant in Minamisoma (Coco’s Family Kitchen) and socialized while eating delicious food.

After that I drove Shane and Cormac back to Fukushima City. Sadly in our misadventures and loss of time we had missed the last bus that could take them back to Fukushima City. This ended up being fine because I was still sick. I decided that it would be ok because I would go to the hospital right next to Cormac’s apartment and get some medicine to help me. So the next day I went and got myself some medicine and called in sick to work. I spent the next 4 days in bed. My illness kept getting worse and worse.

That Friday (06/16/20179 I was able to rally enough to go to a Leaver’s Conference where they gave out information about what we needed to do in order to leave Japan. It was a good meeting and it had a lot of valuable information that I needed to know, so I made myself get out of bed and attend.

The conference was in Fukushima City and it had the governor of Fukushima there to award us with “Ambassador to Fukushima” awards and listen to our thoughts about Fukushima.

While we were giving our speeches he listened quietly and thanked each of us for our service and dedication to helping Japan. There were a few television crews there with cameras who were filming us, and we were going to be on television the next day. I was towards the back of the room, so I was one of the last people to give my speech. As a result I listened to what everyone else was saying, and I started to feel super emotional. I started crying and struggled to keep it together.  As a way to combat this I tried focusing on what I was going to say in Japanese. This distracted me enough that I was able to stop crying.

My turn came and I started my speech in Japanese, and about halfway through I forgot some things and had to switch to English (this was ok because there were translators there who were helping if we needed it. Switching to English meant that I didn’t have to concentrate as hard and I started crying. Instantly all the television cameras all turned to me and filmed me crying and trying to finish my speech. I was a hot mess and I was the catalyst for others who were keeping  it together to start crying too. I know I made it on television the next day. I was unable to watch it, but I know I made it with my ugly, crying face.

After the conference was over, we rode our shuttle bus back to Minamisoma, where I started getting ready for the next day, where I had a whole day planned to spend in Koriyama.

6/17/17

The next day I woke up early so I could drive to Fukushima City to show my car to a woman who was interested in buying it from me. After letting her test drive it for a while and telling her all about it, she decided she did want to buy it. What a relief! I am so grateful, it is such a load off my mind.

This weekend Cormac had gone back to Ireland to participate in his Ph.D Graduation Ceremony, so he was absent from all the fun times.

After organizing things we needed to do to get the car sold and transferred into her name, I went to Koriyama to meet with a group of people there. We were doing a blood drive. I had signed up to do the blood drive a couple weeks prior. I have never donated blood before, and I don’t know my blood type, so I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to find out and do a good thing.

Because I was sick the previous week, there was a question as to whether they would let me donate at all, but I had to try. They asked me when the last time I had taken cold medication was (the day before) they double checked to make sure it was all safe, and then they have me the ok to donate. I was so happy! I found out that my blood type is B+.

Because I am a small person they only allowed me to donate 200ml of blood instead of the normal amount of 400ml. But that was ok, I still felt good to do my part.

When you donate blood the center gives you a bag of goodies including a box of tissues with the blood drive mascots of Tohoku, a hand towel with the mascots, and a pin that has hello kitty on it with your blood type, so mine had a large “B” on it.

I met a girl in the waiting room of the blood drive. We got to talking for a while and got to know each other. She was a high school student in Koriyama. We took a picture together. She LOVES snap chat filters!

After our group was done with donating blood we split up for a while, I went and got something to eat, a sashimi rice bowl with salmon roe. It was delicious! We then regrouped at a Charity Pub Quiz.

People brought things they wanted to get rid of and sell, but instead of taking the money yourself, you donated it to a charity to help out Kumamoto from their big earthquake last year.

I brought some things I was planning on selling, and things I needed gone from my apartment. Many other people brought clothes and books they were looking to get rid of. I had no intention of buying anything else, because I already have so much to get rid of, but I did find a rabbit fur coat someone was selling and I couldn’t help myself.

You can see me in the corner of the table on the left.

We formed groups and started the quiz portion of the charity gala. There were rounds that involved geography, entertainment, movie themes, numbers, general trivia, and colors. It was all quite fascinating. I was in a group with my friends Christina and Shaggy (John) and one of their friends who I had never met before. We all had such a different area of knowledge, that we fit well together and did a good job. It was so much fun! Christina knew that the character of Tarzan in the book also went by the name Lord Greystoke. Shaggy knew all the colors of the Olympic rings and knew that the black one represented Africa (colors category.) I knew that the scientific community removed Pluto from planet status in the year 2006. We all helped with entertainment and movie themes. At one point we were asked how many of Snow White’s dwarves’ names ended with a “y” and what were they? We could not remember Sneezy, but all brainstormed and were able to recall at the last minute. These were the most memorable moments, although there were many more, fun questions.  We did so well, although we all thought we were doing poorly. But it didn’t matter, because we were all having so much fun!

"Big Mike" is in the blue with his back to the camera.

At the end of the night when all the scores were totaled, we found out that our group placed second out of everyone! As a result each of us got a tote bag with Aizu’s Akabeko-chan on it in the place of the heart in “I (heart/Akabeko) Fukushima!” We also got a bag of snacks. It was so much fun! I had been wanting one of those tote bags ever since I saw one last year!

This is the Akabeko-Chan mascot of the Aizu region of Fukushima. If you put this in the heart's place in "I [heart] Fukushima." you can imagine what it looks like.

We said goodbye and I gave my friends Mercedez and Katie a ride back to Fukushima City. Katie was nice enough to let me stay with her that night. She also agreed to join me on my adventures the next day when I invited her along.

We talked for a while when I dropped Mercedez off, but when the end of the night came, I crashed hard. I needed to get enough sleep to make it through the next day.

Daikannon and Kizuna Festival in Sendai, Miyagi.

6/10/2017

This weekend one of Cormac’s friends from Ireland was visiting Japan for vacation. This man’s name was Shane, and he was going on an extended vacation all around the world. He had just come from America; he had gone to New York, Las Vegas and to San Francisco. He stopped in Japan to see Cormac in Fukushima as well as go to Kyoto and Osaka later on.

I first met him Friday night and he joined us for our fun times that weekend. He is a cool guy and I was pleased to have him along.

We woke up Saturday morning with plans to go to Sendai. There was a big festival happening. It was called the “Tohoku Kizuna Festival.” The festival started six years ago as a way for Tohoku to pull together and create bonds to unite Tohoku after the 2011 Great Tohoku Earthquake that devastated the Eastern coast of Tohoku. As a result all the different Tohoku prefectures came together and created the Kizuna (Bond) Festival to show solidarity. The motto of this year's festival was "Passionate Kizuna Bonds Unite Diverse Tohoku." I got a plastic fan with this printed on it. The Kizuna Festival is a mixture of each of the major summer festivals from each prefecture in Tohoku.  That was the goal, but I will tell you about that when we get there.

A flier from the 2017 Tohoku Kizuna Festival.

A close-up of the Kizuna Festival logo, although this particular picture is from the 2018 event.

This flier showes some of the different events from each prefecture.

Before heading to the festival we decided to go to the Sendai Daikannon. It is a large Kannon statue in Sendai City where you can go inside and up most of the way.

We arrived and started walking around the base of the statue, taking pictures of the other shrines and temples around the parking lot and messing around.

Lookin' Fly As!

I have no idea what I'm doing, but I feel it.

From another angle, Pipe got a good one!

When you first get inside, you can see a few miniature models that show the outside and insides of the building, so it's easier to see how the building is built. 

You start off walking around the the outside of the lowest room. You walk clockwise around the center of the building, where the elevator and stairs to the upper levels are. There are also some smaller alters with many gold Kannon statues in the middle, but they were roped off and we could not go take a closer look. The circular room has dozens of statues lining the green walls. They were all different and all so pretty!

There are 12 statues made from a dark wood lining the inner wall that each represent one of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals. And there are many statues of Kannon cared in many different styles and personas. These are carded from a light wood and are painted in parts with many colors. It was so pretty! It was my favorite part of the Daikannon trip.

One of the purposes of this temple.

From here you are able to go up a short flight of stairs to go out onto the roof of the lowest floor, before you get up into the Kannon part of the building. We messed around a bit up there too.

From here we had to take the elevator to the top floor where it spit us out at a lovely altar. It is gold and ornate, yet less ornate than you typical Buddhist altar. It had large gold flowers in the front and a large fat Buddha to the side. It was a really pretty, rather unique altar.

A man who got to the top before us rubs the belly of the buddha. He also gave a short prayer after this.

You rub the belly of the Buddha for good luck.

The view from the top floor of the temple.

From this room you can go out and see the surrounding city from small windows in the walls. You can follow the path around the perimeter of the building which takes you down level after level of floors. At the floors you can take a path to an inner circular level where there are displays of Buddhas, Kannons, Monks and other demons and supernatural beings from Buddhism with the Hindu influences. I am not sure what or who all the beings are, but they were made from white stone and they all looked amazing. I’m sure my description of the floor layout of the building leaves much to be desired, so here are some pictures.

And here are some close ups of the statues that I found interesting. There's quite a few, but I liked them.

This one is seated on a dragon.

"On the catwalk, yeah
I shake my little tush on the catwalk!"

Do you even lift, Bro?

 

 

This one, when looked at from one angle, looks like the profile of a human head.

This Kannon is the patron saint of forgetting your sunglasses on a sunny day.

When we were done looking at all the Kannon and Buddha statues, we left the Daikannon and headed towards downtown Sendai to go see the Kizuna Festival. 

So an overview of the Kizuna Festival is as follows:

In the park there was a large Nebuta Lantern from Aomori Prefecture, and a large straw sandal from the Waraji Festival in Fukushima Prefecture. The sandal is 12 meters in length and weighs two tons! In the shopping district there was a parade that showed a lot of the traditional dances and performances that happen at the festivals every summer. 
Yamagata Prefecture a dance where a lot of women danced with straw hats that had five fake flowers on the top, called the Hanagasa Festival. 
There was a performance in the parade of the Morioka Sansa Odori Festival from Iwate Prefecture. This dance is said to be from a legend of banishing an evil ogre from Mitsuishi Shrine. 
Miyagi Prefecture had displays for Sendai’s Tanabata Festival hanging above the parade route from the ceiling of the shopping center. These are large, colorful displays of paper streamers and flowers in bulbous decorations. There was also a parade dance.
Akita Prefecture had their large lantern display on Sunday (so sadly we did not get to see that one.)

We started at one end of the shopping center with the parade going down the street. First thing we noticed were all the beautiful, colorful, paper displays of Sendai’s Tanabata Festival.

These signs are found all over Japan and they depict a horrifying monster abducting a child. The horrifying monster can be seen to the bottom left of this photo.

As we walked along the first parade performance we saw was the Morioka Sansa Odori Festival from Iwate. I took some video of the performance.

We continued down the street when we saw the second performance of the parade and that was the Hanagasa dance performance from Yamagata. The performance consists of women dancing with straw hats with paper flowers on the top, and bells inside the hats. The paper flowers are representative of Safflowers, the symbol of Yamagata. I was able to take video of that performance as well.

There was a third parade performance, but I am not sure if it was  specific event, but it may have been a Tanabata dance. Either way it was entertaining and I liked the music.

Cool building we passed in Sendai on the way to the park.

From here we started walking towards a park nearby that had a stage set up for dance and music performances. This park also had food and drink stands so you could eat while watching the performances. Sendai’s famous local food is cow tongue, so that is what our group got to eat.

I recorded a few performances at the park, although there were a few that I did not record. I especially liked the women’s group that did the taiko drumming.

There was also this group of women doing belly dancing (although it was quite tame and barely involved hip movements at all because: Japan. but it was still really pretty and entertaining.)

And this performance: Shortest. Performance. Ever.

After we had eaten our beef tongue we left the park to walk to a bigger park where they had the large Nebuta Lantern float and the large Waraji straw sandal.

The park was packed around the Nebuta and the Waraji, so I wasn’t able to get any good photos, but there was also this small,  bamboo lantern display that I thought was pretty. (All photos from this area of the part have disappeared.)

We wandered around a little more and saw a singing performance on a big stage and ate some more festival foods. It was here I found a churro and I was happy. I don’t remember anything about the performance on the big stage. I didn’t record it, I couldn’t see it and I was having too much fun socializing to really pay attention. But after the stage performance was over, it signaled the end of the festivities for the day and everyone started leaving the park.

As we were leaving I saw this large metal Kokeshi Doll statue in the park.

A little ways past the doll statue there is a retired locomotive train sitting in the park as well. Cormac once again let his inner 12 year old out, went into the train and started fiddling with the knobs and levers. We all followed suit because we are not real adults and we only need the barest of excuses to let our inner 12 year olds out as well.

A Bromance for the ages.

After we were done with the festivities we walked to a karaoke place nearby. We chose this karaoke place because it had an ice cream bar, and by that I mean, it offered small cups of vanilla ice cream to eat while you sang.

By this time of night my throat was hurting quite a lot and I lost my voice very early during our karaoke session. I still sang, but I sounded like garbage. But the great thing about karaoke is that nobody cares if you sound like garbage, everyone has fun and sings with you anyways. It is really such a fun time! I sang “Baby Got Back!” with Gabe, and Gabe can’t carry a tune in a bucket, and I sounded bad, but still we had a great time!

The lovely Engrish of a photo booth we passed.

When our karaoke session had ended we were all still in the mood for singing. Not Shane, though, He was still getting his ass handed to him by jet lag and he passed out in the back seat. And I was so tired, so we all decided to sing karaoke songs in the car on the way back to Fukushima City so we could all stay awake in the car. Shane slept through it all, surprisingly. I still couldn’t hold a note, and we didn’t even have any music to back us up, but it is honestly one of my more fond memories of driving at night.

I dropped Gabe and Felipe off at their apartment complex and I took Cormac, Shane and I back to Cormac’s place. We all crashed so hard. We were all exhausted and we had a bunch of plans for the next day.