Birthday Party and Day in Iwaki, Fukushima!

6/2/2017

This weekend my friend Liang was celebrating her birthday, so I made my way down to Iwaki, Fukushima to join her in her celebrations.

She had her birthday party in a local Indian restaurant, Purnima (or Purunima.) This place is pretty famous in Iwaki for having delicious Indian food and having a friendly owner. The owner’s name is Baba. I learned that many JETs have their birthdays at Baba’s because he is super friendly, speaks English very well, and gives these super long, heartfelt speeches.

I arrived to the party a little late so I only caught the tail-end of Baba’s speech. But I still heard nearly ten minutes of it. Apparently he will give 30 minute + speeches on a regular basis. When I entered the door he called me “stunningly beautiful.” I thanked him and he asked me to sit down. About five minutes after I arrived, Cormac arrived at the party in the middle of Baba’s speech too. Baba greeted him warmly and shook his hand, but then Baba got distracted and continued on with his speech while still holding on to Cormac’s hand. Cormac stood next to Baba holding his hand until the end of the speech. It was a funny kind of awkward. An entire room of foreigners listening to a speech while Cormac stood behind Baba and just held his hand. Another person at the party, Chais, attempted to distract Baba at one point in an attempt to get him to release Cormac’s hand, but it did not work. It was pretty hilarious.

 

And this is the Birthday Girl giving her speech. It was much shorter.

After the speech, Baba told us that he loved meeting new people, talking with them and learning about their lives. He said he would like it if everyone who attended the party would set aside a short time and come talk to him one-on-one. After that we were allowed to eat some of Baba’s delicious Indian food, all vegetarian from what I remember. 

I socialized with many people, including people that I had never met before. I had so much fun talking with everyone, I had a great time.

At one point in the night I found myself talking to a guy named James. James is a pretty nice guy and I think he’s pretty cool to hang out with. Sadly, he made himself a social pariah this year with his open support of Donald Trump. I personally don’t care who people do or don’t support politically. I don’t care enough about politics to give two shits. But a lot, and I mean a lot, of people on the JET Program this year were bothered by this and refused to socialize with him and talked bad about him behind his back. I felt sad about this. Nobody deserves this treatment, regardless of whatever politician they support (imho.)

James is in the blue shirt on the right.

I got talking to James and found out that he is a Pagan/Wiccan believing person, although he doesn’t associate with any particular religion. It is more like he picks what he likes from various belief systems and combines them into his own spirituality.

Being a lover of religious studies, I spoke with him for a long time learning about what he believes in and telling him stories of my own dabbles in the occult. He’s a pretty interesting dude.

At one point I had to pee and on the way to the restroom I saw that the line to talk to Baba was currently empty, so I thought I would make my time to talk with him right after I got out of the restroom.

I greeted him and his first question to me was my name and where I lived in Fukushima. I told him, but that was the last question he asked me. He then went on and on about how beautiful I was that I started to become a little uncomfortable by it.

He took a selfie with everyone at the party. This was before he made me super uncomfortable.

He told me that I needed to go to France and become a model. He said that Tokyo would also work as well, but I should really do it in France. He said that walking down the street I would get offers to do modeling shoots from strangers with business cards, and that they were totally legit. I should trust them and they would help me get a modeling career. I told him that I thought that in the best case scenario the photoshoot would be a scam, or dangerous in the worst case scenario. He told me that I shouldn’t think that way, that most people are good and honest and that I absolutely had to trust people like that. I had to tell him that I would definitely do that someday in order to leave the conversation. I was so uncomfortable by this point.

I appreciate that someone finds me attractive, but on the other hand I was offended that that was the only thing Baba saw in me. He asked other people about their lives, about their ambitions, about their opinions, but for me he only saw my face. He saw nothing else in me as a person. I left that conversation feeling pretty hurt and annoyed.

When I returned to the table, James was being pretty cold towards me, for reasons I won’t get in to. So I left him alone for a short while so he could calm down a bit.

When he had cooled off a bit, he showed me his tarot cards and he did a reading for me. It was pretty fun and interesting. It was during this time that Cormac went to have his conversation with Baba.

James and I talked a bit more about the occult for a while, until it was time for me to leave. Cormac and I were staying at my friend Mitch’s apartment, so we left together to walk to Mitch’s apartment.

It was on the walk back that Mac told me about the disturbing conversation he had with Baba.

Now let me say one thing. Mac and I had joked that “by looking at the way we interacted at the party, you would have thought we didn’t know each other.” This is because we barely talked to each other the entire night. Not for any other reason than we were busy talking with people we don’t get to talk to often. Just keep this in mind.

Mac said that when he went to go speak to Baba, they talked to each other for a bit, and then the conversation turned to me. Baba said he knew some rich Arabian men and that he could totally sell me to one of these men and he would split the money with Cormac. He said it as a joke, but What The Actual Fuck?!

Baba doesn’t know Cormac, and he would not have known that Mac and I knew each other by the way we interacted at the party. So, Baba asked some random guy at this party, with no obvious connection to me, that he’d like to sell me to some Oil Baron and split the money.  It really makes me wonder if he made this joke/offer to other random people at the party. Is it just me, or does this sound like he is only “joking” because he thinks nobody will take him up on this offer and is just testing the waters with people? ‘Cuz that’s what I think right about now. Even if it was a joke, it is freaking disturbing and not funny at all. Considering that he wants me to trust all photographers who want to make me a model, and sell me to a rich Arabian, I just think Baba wants to get me into the sex slave trade, one way or another. So I would like to say one thing. If any pretty girls go missing from the Iwaki area, please look at Baba first. Just…. Fuck.

So we walked to Mitch’s house and socialized for a while before retiring for the night. Over all, I liked socializing with people and seeing friends that I don’t get to often see. But my night was seriously tainted by Baba and by the thing with James that I don’t want to get in to (I don’t want to publicly shit on James.) I can’t really say it was a great night. It was mostly disturbing and agitating.

6/3/2017

The next morning when the three of us awoke, we got ready for the day and decided to go grab some breakfast from a bakery down the street from Mitch’s apartment called "Bakery House My Tokuji". It is the type of bakery where they make a variety of bread foods and desserts. You walk in, grab a tray and a set of tongs and go around picking the foods you want yourself, you then take your tray of food to the register, they wrap it up in paper for you and you can take it with you.

We decided to eat breakfast at the bakery, they have tables outside the entrance on a small porch in the front of the building. I decided to get this big, BIG bread roll with ham and cheese wrapped in a spiral inside the large roll. It was absolutely massive and I was only able to eat half of it, so I wrapped it back up and was able to eat the rest of it later in the day. But it was freaking delicious!

While we were sitting there, there were a couple of kids at the surrounding tables with their parents and they were very vocal about their surprise to see a bunch of foreigners in public enjoying a meal. They were not rude, and the parents were doing a good job of educating the kids to be nice and to treat us (foreigners) with the same respect they would treat anyone else with.  At one point I dropped something on the ground and turned around to pick it up. While I was doing so I caught the eyes of the kids and waved to them, they smiled and waved back. They were cute and the family was nice. It made me feel good to hear a Japanese parent explain respect to foreigners to their kids.

After we were done eating we walked back to Mitch’s house and grabbed our stuff. Mitch had other plans, so he refused to join us in our adventures around Iwaki this day. So we said our goodbyes and made our way to Iwaki’s Aquarium called Aquamarine Fukushima.

Aquamarine Fukushima is a very large aquarium with many large tanks and attractions.

The aquarium has a few big rooms where there are trees and plants and dirt and rocks that make up the nature “themed” rooms. The tanks in these rooms are ponds in between the rock walls and the tree roots. It is a creative way to display fish tanks and I liked it. 

There were also a good amount of large tanks full of fish. There is a tank that you can see it from above/body height looking down and it is full of silver fish swimming in a large circle. You continue through the aquarium for a while and you pop out at the bottom of the tank looking up. From here you can still see the silver fish but you can also see the tank is full of rays. This tank also has a large triangular walkway where you can walk underneath the tank, look up and see all the fish inside.

I love this picture.

There is also a large tank full of at least two sea lions. They were active when we were there. The male was absolutely massive! He would swim around his tank, breach the surface and roar! It was such an amazing sound! I stayed in the area watching them for longer than any other place in the aquarium. I loved hearing the sea lion roar and I lingered for quite a while.

There was a building off to one side of the aquarium that had some Fennec Foxes, beetles and snakes. This was a building to show some animals from the Middle East. This building was here in the first place because after the 2011 Tsunami disaster, some rich men from the United Arab Emirates donated a lot of money to repair and expand the aquarium. Not only are there displays of animals from the Middle East, but there are also posters and information on the walls of the building that explain the culture, food and clothes of the Middle East. It was not too interesting, and the foxes were sleeping when we were there, but it was cool anyways.  I got this picture of a fox while it got up to shift its position and sleep more.

There were a few other types of fish in the main building. 

There is a tower at the aquarium where you can take an elevator to the top and look out at the ocean, the docks and the surrounding area. Here are some pictures of the view.

On the way out we walked through a room that was closing down, but it had a small tank close to the floor that had sea creatures you could touch. It had lobsters (why would you have these in a petting tank?!) as well as starfish and some pokey, black Sea Urchins. The lobsters scared me, but I was able to pet along the back by the tail, steering clear of its claws.

After we were done we ate some food from the café in the aquarium. Mac got some curry and I got a doria with lobster meat on top. It was quite good.

On the way out we walked through this room that had tanks with curved sections so you could stick your head “in” the tank. 

There was also a lobster and eel tank where you could craw through a hole under the display and pop up under the rock and see the lobsters and eels up close. 

I didn’t know there could be blue lobsters before. I guess I always thought they were black or brown before, but I didn’t know about bright blue. I thought that was fascinating.

There was also a good amount of "Engrish" at the aquarium. Always good fun. 

We spent a long time in the aquarium looking at all the animals and fish and views. We took our sweet time. We had initially intended to go to the fossil museum after the aquarium, but the aquarium was so fun and interesting that we felt no need to rush. We spent about four hours or so there, and I don’t regret it at all. So fun!

After the aquarium I wanted to go see a Shinto shrine near the sea on the north side of Iwaki, the name is (波立薬師, Hattachiyakushi?). I drove past it on my way to Iwaki the day before, and I had driven past it once before while returning from Tokyo back in January. (Most of my photos of this shrine are missing.)

We arrived and walked around the grounds for a short time. There was a monument to one side of the shrine that told the reader about how the shrine was badly damaged during the 2011 tsunami and how it had been remodeled. The roof was especially damaged and had been repaired. The top of the shrine and pieces of the shrine that were recovered after the tsunami were moved over to the side in a small memorial. Its' a neat looking memorial, but that photo is sadly missing.

There were also quite a few statues of frogs at this shrine (photos also missing.)

From the shrine you can see across the street, on some rocks leading out into the ocean from the beach there is a torii gate. It has a path you can walk along to go to the torii gate, but we could not get there because the bridge you need to cross above the street was blocked off and a sign said it is dangerous to cross on it. So we just looked at it from a distance.

We walked around to one side and I saw some ema hanging from a rack. They were all different, they were blank plaques and had their own, different designs painted on them by individuals. A few of them had a picture of the torii gate sitting on the rocks out in the water.

A few had pictures of flowers and other various things. I liked seeing the unique art on the emas.

The sun had set while we were at the shrine and the sky was quickly growing dark, so we made our way back to the car and started driving back to Fukushima City. We had to get a good night’s sleep so we could wake up early to go to our plans the next day.

Tea Ceremony and the Five-Colored Lakes

5/28/17

The next morning I went with my friends Cormac and Ody to a local Tea Ceremony class.

When we arrived, we were in a room full of Japanese women and one boy and two girls. When we walked into the room we were met with a gasp and an “ooooooohhhhh!!!” From all the women. They were so shocked to see three foreigners had come to learn tea ceremony. They all had the biggest smiles on their faces and they all pulled out their cameras to take pictures of us. I felt a bit like an animal in a zoo, but I know they don’t mean it to be offensive or mean, so I let things like this pass.  And yes, it happens all the time.

Mitsue getting things prepared for the tea ceremony.

A woman named Mitsue who was a master of the Tea Ceremony. She spoke quite great English and was nice enough to explain the ceremony to everyone attending in both Japanese and English. There were about 12 people including the three of us learning both sides of the tea ceremony.

Mitsue, and her assistant Yoko,  were dressed in a kimono. I loved the design on Mitsue's obi.

We three foreigners started out on the side of the receivers. We were shown the proper way to pick up and use the chopsticks to take a dessert, and then pass the dessert plate to the next person. We were taught the correct things to say and the proper way to sit and interact with others.

Namely, when the dessert is brought out, you grab a small plate (in our case napkins) and you say to the person next to you “I’m going first.” Or “Osakini.” I was the first person in the row of receivers, so I was the first to learn the proper way, as a result I messed up every time, but was kindly corrected. Mitsue is such a nice teacher.

When you pick up the chopsticks to grab the dessert you must use your right hand palm down and pick up the chop sticks. You then use your left hand, palm down, to grab onto the chopstick at a lower position. This allows you to release the chopsticks with your right hand and grab them again with the palm facing up. You can then adjust the grip of the chopsticks to grab the dessert.  Every movement you make while participating in the tea ceremony is supposed to be graceful and beautiful.

After putting a dessert on your plate (napkin) you put the chopsticks back on the rim of the bowl/plate/whatever and pass the bowl to the floor both in front of and between you and the next person. They then say “Osakini” to the person next to them and you repeat the process until the end of the line.

In this photo you can see Ody using both of his hands to gracefully shift the chopsticks into the correct position in his hands.

And here he is passing the desserts to the next women in the line.

While this is going on the people on the other side of the room are preparing your bowl of tea.

When they are finished they move the bowl of tea a full arm’s length on the floor in front of them and then slide their entire bodies across the floor on their knees to kneel in front of the bowl again. They repeat this process until they have placed the bowl of tea in front of you.

When you pick up the bowl of tea, you are supposed to pick it up with your right hand and place it in your left hand with the fingers supporting it from the bottom and your thumb supporting the side. Your right hand holds the sides of the bowl with the fingers in front and your thumb towards you. You then rotate the bowl 180 degrees using two motions of spinning it with your right hand. After this you are supposed to drink the bowl of tea in two or three gulps, but we foreigners were told that it was fine if we needed to take more, smaller gulps.

When you are done drinking the tea, you are supposed to take about thirty seconds to a minute admiring the bowl that you just drank from. You are usually given a nice piece of pottery to drink from so you are supposed to admire the craftsmanship, the color, possible grooves and swirls in the clay, and the lacquer used. When you are done you place the bowl in front of you on the floor. The makers then slide across the floor on their knees to retrieve it.

After that there was a ten minute break where we talked with some of the other people attending and socialized. I took this opportunity to talk to Mitsue and her friend Yoko, who was also on her way to becoming a tea ceremony master.

When the break was over, we switched sides, now it was our turn to prepare the tea while those who had made it before were the receivers. I have more photos of the other women making the tea, because I could not take pictures while I was making. But, I have a few shots from some of the others in attendance.

This is all you need for a proper Tea Ceremony. A kettle with ladle to scoop hot water. A container for waste water. A tea bowl. A matcha container with scoop. And, finally, a matcha whisk.

This is my set up when I performed the tea ceremony. There was an electric kettle in front of the students that we used instead of the nice kettle.

This time we were given a bowl and we were given a small linen cloth. We were told the proper way to fold the cloth (into a long narrow fold,) and then we cleaned the bowl by filling it with a small amount of water and used the cloth to wipe the inside of the bowl and the rim, we then wrung out the cloth and dumped the used water into a small bowl next to us for waste water. 

You can clearly see the strips of cloth that were used.

You can see Yoko in the middle. She was helping Mitsue with the lesson, while gaining experience for herself for becoming a Tea Ceremony Master.

Mitsue is showing the proper way to clean the inside of the bowl.

And here you can see the electric kettle we used.

We then put the wet linen on a platter nearby in the shape of a Mt. Fuji (i.e. squashed a bit on the base with a mountain point where you would hold it with your fingers.) We then picked up the jar of matcha and the little bamboo spoon, and scooped a large “mountain” of matcha into the bowl. 

Here I am holding the red matcha container.

We then filled it with a little bit of water and used a bamboo whisk to mix the matcha really fast until there was a thick layer of froth on the surface of the tea. 

It was here that Mitsue told us that there are two schools of thought for tea making, one that you gotta have a thick layer of froth on the top, and one where there is very little to no froth on the top.

After we finished we placed the bowl a full arm’s length ahead of us on the floor. We then had to make fists with our hands and place them on the floor, lift our body weight onto our fists, and then drag our bodies forward on our knees. We then placed the bowl farther in front of us again and repeated the process until the bowl was sitting in front of the person we had made it for.

When the receiving group finished, we retrieved the bowl and thanked everyone for coming. We then started cleaning up.

By the time we had finished cleaning up, lunch had arrived. It was a toasted panini and a coffee from one of the women who was attending and helped organize this event. She made the paninis and coffees in a car out front in the parking lot.  

Cormac and I had avocado, spinach, and cheese paninis and a hazelnut coffee, mine was iced while his was hot.

We sat and socialized for a long while. After our lunch was eaten there was another demonstration.

It is a strange demonstration, so let me explain the background first. It is believed in Japan that many illnesses can be prevented if you keep your abdomen and core warm. So, you shouldn’t let yourself get too cold in the winter, or you will get sick (have you ever gotten sick in the winter? You have? See? Proof that a cold core is the reason!) Even in the summer you are letting your abdomen get too cold, so thankfully there is this device to help you heat up your core every night and keep illness at bay.

It is a small, handheld iron with a long handle. It comes with a cloth that you put on the abdomen of a child, (or adult) which has an illustration of a body and numbered circles on the body. These numbers tell you the order in which to warm certain parts of the body with the iron.

So the mother doing the demonstration had her daughter lie down as she ironed the girl. The little girl was a bit scared of having us foreigners watching, so she covered her face the entire time.

The mom placed the cloth between the child and the iron and moved the iron in small circles on her chest, both sides of her stomach, her legs, lower abdomen (above the intestine,) and the bottoms of her feet, among a few other locations. Each time she put the iron down and moved it in circles it lasted about eight seconds, where she would then remove the iron and use her hand to rub the heat around, or dissipate it, I’m not sure. She would then do it again on the same place. She would work on the same place on the body for about a minute and move on to the next one.  It took about seven minutes or so to warm all the spots on the body. She then recommended you do this at least once every night, and maybe do the process a second time.

Here the mother is using her hand to rub the spot she just ironed.

After the child-ironing demonstration was over, and everything was cleaned up Ody, Cormac and I left the tea ceremony event.

Ody had to go prepare an English lesson for his English school for adults. Cormac and I however had the rest of the afternoon to do whatever, so we decided to go check out the 5 colored Lakes (Goshiki Numa, 五色沼) in the Aizu region of Fukushima. It was only about an hour and a half drive from Fukushima City.

It is interesting to note that these lakes did not exist over 100 years ago. These lakes were created when nearby Mt. Bandai erupted around 100 years ago, and it created great landslides in the area. These landslides redirected rivers in the mountains and snow-melt coming off the mountains. Now these rivers and snow-melt gather in these alleys that did not exist before the eruption. 

These particular signs are located on the far side of the hiking trails when you reach the large lake at then end, Lake Hibara.

When we got there, we parked the car and started walking ore to the first, big lake. It is absolutely beautiful and the water is so blue! It is hard to believe the water can be so blue and the colors so vivid, even when you see them with your own eyes. But rest assured, all of my photos from this trip to the lake have no filter and they actually look that way.

At the entrance to the hiking trail and first lake, there is a picture display of a famous koi fish in the lake. It is a white koi fish with a spot of orange scales on its side in the shape of a heart. If you are able to spot it then you are supposed to have good luck in love. We never saw that particular one, but we saw plenty of beautiful koi fish!

This fish we saw further up the hiking trail. He followed us for a short distance in the water.

The first, and biggest lake in the series of lakes, has a small shack on the side of the docks that will rent a rowboat to you for thirty minutes. Cormac and I thought this would be fun and promptly hopped in a boat and rowed out onto the lake.

The writing on the boat is backwards and upside down. I think it was painted that way so you could see the name in the reflection on the water.

Cormac rowed about fifteen+ minutes down along the lake. It was a beautiful sight and so much fun! We passed parts of the lake that were shallow enough that you could see the bottom. The water was also amazingly clear!

After snapping a few pictures it was my turn to row back. On the way out, Cormac was rowing against the wind, but I had the benefit of the wind helping me along, and we made our way back to the docks with a minute to spare.

First time rowing a row boat. The struggle is real.

When we finished with the rowboat we started walking along the hiking trail. It was around 3:00 p.m. at this time. The trail started out really interesting with many sections of rock and tree roots that you had to climb over to make your way. This didn’t last too long though, and soon after the trail leveled out and it was pretty easy going.

We passed many lakes, most all of them were an amazing stunning blue.

This is the lake we rowed our rowboat on from above. While we were walking past it, we saw another couple in a boat below.

Some had viewing platforms and some had benches where you could sit and admire the beautiful nature around you. Unfortunately I didn't think to get photos of these viewing platforms.

This lake had a river running into, and out of, it on one side. The middle of the lake had a section where it was more shallow than it was one either side. This created a barrier in the lake. One side of the barrier got a constant supply of fresh water from the river, while the other side had stagnant water that turned that side of the lake green while the side with the fresh water was blue. The shallow section in the middle was brown. It made for the most interesting photograph.

 Here is the river running into this particular lake. 

There was a second lake that had a similar thing going on, but this one had slightly different colors.

The river flowing through this owe was a little slower and a little flatter.

We continued on and saw many beautiful views of the lakes.

We were not pressed for time, so we didn’t hurry along and made the most of our time at the lakes. 

By the time we were getting to the end of the trail (that ended at a large lake called Hibara Lake, which itself had its own hiking trail) it was nearly 6:00 p.m.

About five minutes from the end of the trail, before we got to Hibara Lake, there was a small trail with a map on a plaque nearby. The trail on the map looked like it only went a short distance into the woods.  So we decided to see what was there.

We walked for only about three minutes before we came up on this great stone altar and Buddhist shrine in the forest. It was so cool!

We walked back to the trail and made our way to the parking lot of the visitor’s center and a popular viewing point at Hibara Lake. This is where we saw the signs that explained the origins of these many, colorful, lakes.

At Hibara Lake you can see a bunch of ‘Islands’ with trees all over them. You can see them pretty well in these photos.

You can see them mostly on the right side. They are sticking up out of the water.

The sun was starting to set, and we figured we had just enough time to walk back to the car before we were left in the dark. So on the way back we enjoyed the views of the lakes once again. In fact, some of my favorite pictures from my entire time in Japan are these ones below. They are so beautiful and the light from the setting sun lit up the water and the trees in such a unique way. These views were definitely among my favorites. 

When we were pretty close to the beginning as we were walking past a viewing point, I had to stop and take a picture. The sun was shining on the trees so there was a beautiful view of the green and yellow leaves of the trees. There was also no wind, so there was a perfect reflection of the trees and hills in the waters of the lake. It was so beautiful I literally couldn’t even.

This one. This is my favorite photograph from my trip.

We walked along and we saw this beautiful view of the rowboat lake once again, this tie with the beautiful reflection of the trees during sunset

We got back to the car, the sun had just set, but the sky was still light, although growing darker eery minute.

We started driving towards Fukushima City where we could get something to eat. About ten minutes down the road, though we saw a tiny little ma-and-pop ramen shop on the side of the road. We decided to eat there instead and went in.

The owners of the ramen shop were and old woman and her son. They were happy to have us and spoke to us while they walked to and from our table with food.

We ordered some raw horse meat (Basashi) and we ordered some Tomato-Cheese Ramen. It took a long time for the ramen to come out, but we were fine with that, we were talking and relaxing, and we were in no rush. We ate the basashi in the meantime.

When the ramen did come out, it smelled amazing and tasted even better! It had a tomato base, along with pork, hard-boiled eggs, cheese, bamboo shoots and leeks. It all mixed together to create the most beautiful, and exciting meal.

They also served us a tea that I thought was really tasty and was more like a broth than it was a tea. The feel of the tea (but not the taste) was like that of umecha. I asked what the tea was and he pointed to a box of this black pepper, collagen tea. I bought a box of it and took it home. (Update: It is Burdock tea with pepper and collagen.)

Here is a picture I found on Google. You can buy it online. I recommend it. It is delicious.

From here we drove back to Fukushima City where I dropped Mac off at his house and I continued back to Minamisoma.

It was such a wonderful weekend, so many new things happened and I saw so many new and beautiful places. I think the Five-Colored Lakes in Aizu are among the most beautiful hikes I have ever seen. I would love to go back one day.