Monday, November 29, 2010

Going to Fukuoka via Bloemfontein


The first thing I could focus on was the condensation, clinging to the car window. Then it was eyelashes and eyelids as my attention diverted back to the improvised pillow that was once my fluffy jacket. Finally my ears caught up to my eyes and I heard Ducky colorfully curse the town we were in as Roland giggled behind the wheel as is his habit when I spin off into haphazard tirades brought on by the annoyance of the moment. I woke up, sat up and rubbed the hour long nap from my eyes, just in time to hear the ass-end of a narrative called `we are going to run out of petrol in Kusu`. Although I feel I am jumping the gun a bit and since I can barely jump a pavement this does not sound like a very good idea.

It all started, as most ambitious voyages do, with some ink laden leather charts, or in our case google maps. The three musketeers (if the famous frenchies wielded computers instead of swords) spent the night before going to Fukuoka (the main city of Kyushu) scouring the internet for maps with as little Japanese as they could lay siege to. Even so my job as `anything but the navigator` did afford me a front row car seat to the other two giving directions as follows: 30 minutes straight, then a slight left into kanji, then turn into kanji, but only after passing kanji, then kanji should be just opposite the kanji.

We opened the door to the ice planet Hoth and raced to the car, only to drive for 10 minutes before having to turn back for a certain blue eyed boy’s international driver’s license. We had barely broken our previous record when Roland missed a turn and we made it halfway back to Ducky`s pond before hitting the express way with a sonic shattering 80 km/ph. It is odd to think that when we hit 90km that I was traveling at the top speed I had reached in a car in the last four months. We spend a few hours mocking Roland for missing the turn, even though neither one of us had seen the sign, which on our way back turned out not to exist at all.

Due to the fact that I have a bladder akin to that of a pregnant woman carrying twins, we had to stop at a service station on the side of the road. Not only was my cold bum rewarded with an electronically heated toilet seat but I grabbed a bagel and a can of hot coffee at the shoppie next door. Frost had settled all along the road and it made me feel for my inland homeys since Hiji is cold but not yet brittle and white.

Ah, and then there she stood, the bastion of foreign food and libations, the bulk buying 7th wonder of Japan, the Costco. For all the tannies reading this, Costco is the American version of our Macro but even cheaper and when you have been eating plastic with a cheese label pasted on for four months, way more exciting. We filled our trolley (that happened to be half the size and twice the power of our car), with huge bottles of tomato sauce, olives, smash, chips, vitamins and man sized bricks of real gouda and mozzarella. I can`t wait to take my mom there, so I can pretend to protest while she buys me proper food and not just toasties and snacks as she refers to my cooking.

After luring Ducky away from the free apple strudel samples with the promise of real pepperoni pizza at the cafeteria, we paid for our wares and dropped a pizza and Fanta filled Duck off at the Sumo. Roland and I then hijacked (we are proper South Africans after all) her car and hightailed it to a 6 story electronics paradise. This place would give our gadget admiring fathers a good old fashioned endorphin breakdown and we would probably never see either of them ever again. On our exit however Roland and I were educated in the school of crazy expensive parking in Fukuoka when our ticket said 600 yen after our hour and a half visit. We ended up spending 3500yen (R350-ish) just parking at a few different places that day.

Once we located the main mall called Canal city we started our (mostly window) shopping with much vigor but a million levels later and hours of nipping into anime Mecca, Barbie boudoirs` and many fashion houses we became expert in the art of loitering. The trick is to park your patootie on one of the many fancy leather couches in front of a trendy little shop and pretend that the lady trying on her fifteenth bag is a good friend of yours or to sit on the little plastic chairs in the basement and hope that people will assume that somewhere in the huge arcade your kids are running around, being valuable customers.

Then it was time to meet some proper South Africans for some proper Indian food in proper Japan. There was much talk of rugby and SA perspectives shared over cheesy naan bread and spicy curry. Every now and then a stukkie Afrikaans would infiltrate the conversation and as can be expected from 6 Saffers our table was by far the noisiest in the restaurant. Then with some overly dramatic hugs (much to the amusement of some Japanese ladies) we said goodbye and still being in happy South African mode, neglected to put in petrol in the main city for surely there shall be on the road.

Ah ha ha, how we overestimated the closing times of most gas stations. Thankfully after passing thousands of deserted petrol pumps a kind 7/11 worker directed us to the only 24 hour station near the town as the needle hit the bottom of the gauge with a sigh. We made it home and had a fantastic trip which will hopefully be matched by our weekend in Nagasaki in a few days time.

I just had a great chuckle last night when I heard Roland read off his Christmas list to his parents and all that he had asked for was an English GPS.


PS. So by the by Ducky is responsible for the cool new blog picture at the top. Ah it pays to have talented friends.

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Too many tea-candles!



The petite, pretend princess, self-consciously plays with the coil of rope in her lap while her eight or nine year old eyes dart to the left every few seconds. Her lips are red lacquer painted on porcelain and her red kimono is folded like an origami crane around her shoulders. She does not move as thousands of flashes are set off in her direction. Her eyes alternate between timid and strong and her little toes curl over her wooden sandals. She is the first of three princesses in the parade and she is finally coming home.

The story goes that a mere portrait of the aforementioned young lady was enough to have one of the emperor’s sons travel all the way from the capitol Nara to the city of Usuki to marry this vision and live happily, if not forever after. You see the prince left his bride behind to give birth to their baby girl and went on ahead to wait for her but as is usually the case with stories that inspire festivals, the princess did not make it through the tragic storm that blocked her way and so every year thousands of bamboo lanterns are lit to guide the lost girl back home. 


Red, green, yellow, white and blue carved bamboo lanterns are put up all over Usuki city and if you asked me a few years ago where I think I would be on the 6th of November 2010, I would not have replied with, climbing an ancient, castle stairway lined with flickering fires, muted by paper and bamboo. My word, it is atmospheric, you don’t even notice the new chill in the air as you look over the castle wall at foxes and flowers built with light.

Still had my old camera so instead I stole this superior pic from a friend Her blog
I think I spotted almost every JET in Oita chatting and taking photos of all the little lights. After saying hi, Roland and myself set off on our usual culinary adventure, but we have not exactly been big winners this week as we ordered two plates of fried stomach by mistake, hot on the heels of Roland accidently munching some whale this last Thursday. Oh many free Willy jokes were made but Roland did not find any of them particularly amusing. We did however score some tasty festival food in the end and went to the Japanese version of the Spur for a waffle when we got back home. As we climbed our familiar steps Roland voiced his concern as to whether his stomach will be able to digest the stomach he tried earlier.

One of the stone Buddhas.
Even before going to the festival Roland and I took in some local sites and went to go see the famous stone Buddhas carved out of the mountain. As we hiked up the path lined with towering bamboo and covered with leaves, Roland tried as always to scare me with ghost stories, although this time incorporating a Japanese flair and as always, as we hiked down the mountain he spent his time saying “ok sorry, please don’t be mad, I won’t pretend I heard a scary little girl laughing in the distance again”.

This photographer captured the feeling well.
Instead of saddling up our favorite beast of burden, the ever exhilarating train, we rather gave “ouma” some running shoes and took our little Honda for a brisk walk up a mountain pass. It is just not Japan! It is just not what you think of, if you ever think of this country. It can’t be dense jungle and sun shielding bamboo with not a neon sign or a high-rise building in site. We only saw one other car on our hour long journey up a very winding, narrow road, affectionately christened “the road of death” by Roland. We took the road literally less traveled in order to avoid the toll road but after seeing how scary it is we responsibly decided to not be cheap and take the expressway back.

Our lack of a sense of direction and confusing Japanese road signs had other ideas however and before we knew it we were back on the road of death, only now in streetlight devoid darkness with only those scary trees drawn by Walt Disney to keep us company. I was still halfway through a fast moving complaint when we just stopped. There on the left side of the road, looking straight at us stood a rare, Japanese, wild boar (the same one from princess Mononoke) and her four little piglets. It was absolutely surreal as the five of them with no real haste trotted back into the forest leaving us both speechless and then talking nonstop for the rest of the journey. It was unnerving and enthralling, almost religious but then at the same time it was only five little pigs standing by the side of the road. I don’t really understand why we were so surprised by this scene but either way we were both glad that we had gotten a little lost in the woods.