Mai is a sweet girl I met in Arao. She is a family friend of my host family and we are close in age. When I first met her we visited the local amusement park over the summer. So, when I came back to Arao we hung out again!

We visited Dazaifu Tenmangu Shrine which houses the god of literature and calligraphy. It was packed when we went. Just to give our respects of ten yen and make a wish we had to wait. My host mother was saying that, in the new year last year, she waited an hour to give thanks to the god because there were so many people in line. Normally you toss money into a large box, maybe three feet wide, by two feet tall, but they had a whole barrier around the front of the shrine where you could toss money so there wouldn't be a line just for the box.

We visited here specifically for Mai's game match. She plays Hyakunin Isshu which is essentially a card game made up of matching poem card. I really can't explain this game and couldn't figure it out from watching, nor from reading descriptions. It's fast paced and players slap and smack the cards in front of them. Cards go flying so it's entertaining to watch but I have no idea nor understand how to play.

Mai is on the left

Sitting like that takes a lot of strength, as it kills your legs after only a few minutes. It's a super intense game and lasts a while! To be honest I can't tell how people win either. It's very formal so no long sighs from the loser, no big smiles from the winner.

After that, we got the local specialty sweet which is Ume ga e mochi. Which is plum (flower) picture mochi. It's mochi, with a picture of a plum on it. We went to a small Japanese style cafe, where you can sit outside with hot tea, on the same table you eat off of.

Left is the mochi, you can see little indents. Those are the plum flowers. There is anko (sweet red bean paste) inside.
The green stuff is green tea which I love very much. It is bitter and goes good with sweets.
The two little things are umeboshi. Pickled plums. I don't like, but I ate anyways because it's fun to pucker!

Mei and I!

It's fun to speak English and Japanese with Mei, as she doesn't know much English and my Japanese isn't perfect of course. I had so much fun with her! When I come back to Japan I will come to Arao to visit my host family and Mai!

My host mother is a lovely cook. We always eat so much when I am with them but it consists of such healthy foods, a bunch of vegetables and fish! On New Years day, for dinner we had Tai (red sea bream). I really have no idea how she cooked it, as she simply pulled it out of the fridge, so it was cool. It's difficult to eat, but soft and using chopsticks makes it easier but I can definitely see how someone who isn't used to chop sticks could have a lot of trouble!

The following day we ate crab! Cold water crab from Hokkaido (the northern most island). Within two days we ate all of these. Who ever said Japan has tiny portions lied. We first just ate them cold, with a little lemon juice. We had to use scissors to cut into the crab legs. We had crab utensils but it was easier to use chop sticks and scissors!

My host mother also made sukiyaki which is probably my favorite Japanese food ever. It's like a soup, served hot post style. It's on top of a hot plate that keeps it warm, but it is cooked before hand. There are many vegetables and meats in it, usually beef or pork. The soup is soy sauce, sugar and mirin which is a sweet cooking sake (alcohol). It's very sweet tasting! It's good in the winter. Usually you dip the vegetables in raw egg (which is in the little dishes).

So much crab, I think about 20 shoulders each with like, four or five arms on them. They were the best things I've ever eaten, aside from sukiyaki.






Lastly, let me tell you about why the US is not up to my standards. There are no Kotatsu. In Japan most people sit on cushions on the floor around tables. Low tables are super popular and I like the idea. Kotatsu are tables with a heater under them. The blanket is super soft and keeps in the heat. I want to live under this kotatsu.

お節料理! Osechi Ryori! (New Years feast!) I tried my best to label things that readers wouldn't know by sight maybe. The main focus of the dinner was the crab, but there were many delicious foods! We did make a few things, but mostly it comes in a large stacked box resembling a set platter of food! We separated it into smaller boxes too.

Kamaboko: Processed fish cakes made into loaves and are pretty colors! They have a festive look, don't they? (Left)
Takoyaki: Is a ball shaped snack with a wheat flour-based batter. On the inside is octopus! (Right)

Kinpira Gobou: Carrot and Burdock root (gobou) sauteed together in soy sauce. We made this! Very easy and tasty! (Burdock Root, Left)
Karaage: Basically fried chicken, famous in Oita! (Right)

Tamagoyaki: It's basically scrambled egg made into a loaf and cut in an aesthetically pleasing manner. (Left)
Edamame/Kuromame: Beans! Kuromame are sweet black beans. Edamame are soy beans.

Mochi and Dango: I typically eat it when it's in a sweet/candy form, covered in, or filled with something sweet, but it can be used in soups, or grilled, basically anything. Here is what Wikipedia has to say: "Mochi is Japanese rice cake made of mochigome, a short-grain glutinous rice. The rice is pounded into paste and molded into the desired shape. In Japan it is traditionally made in a ceremony called mochitsuki."Dango is made from a mochiko, related to mochi. Both are very chewy and glutinous!

I drank sake out of a crab head. Apparently that's a thing. According to my host family, crab and sake go hand in hand and I can assure you, they do. Hot sake is best. For the new year, of course there were fireworks. Always fireworks. In Arao, there is an amusement park that shoots of fireworks. We didn't go into the amusement park, but we went to a shrine near it and watched the fireworks from there. They were short, but very pretty. After that we visited the shrine we watched from and asked for good luck/health/fortune for the new year.

On new years day we visited a local shrine. Yotsuyama Shrine which was built nearly 1000 years ago. It's a shrine that has a god for small business owners. So at the beginning of the year many shop owners go there to pray for a good year. It's a small shrine up a small mountain. It's a steep walk, but many elderly people still made it with ease. By elderly I mean like 80 and 90 years old.

Yotsuyama Shinto Shrine

In front of a 5 yen coin!

I prayed for a happy new year for my friends and family, as well as good health! I hope I got that, because the fortune I got said I'd have a bad year with money. I got the worst one for money. Go figure! I hope everyone had a lovely New Years!

I took the Sunflower Ferry from Beppu port to Osaka. I enjoy the ferry but it arrives a little too early for my tastes. Unfortunately there is not much to do at 7am in Osaka except barely find a place to get breakfast.

I was going to head to the history museum, but it didn't open until nine.
I grabbed a small breakfast at a small breakfast restaurant. (2 pieces of toast and a hard boiled egg and coffee).

Due to the printers at APU deciding not to work for a few days before I left, I had no maps. Somehow I still managed pretty well actually. Although you can travel pretty easily in Japan without knowing Japanese, I suggest at least knowing how to read the hiragana or katakana. Not their meanings, just how to read them. Sometimes the subways stations on the map are only written in hiragana.

SO DESPITE ALL OF THAT.

I walked around Osaka Castle park really early that morning, killed some time there. Still all beautiful all that. I didn't go inside, since I wasn't here to visit the inside of the castle. Osaka is not my favorite city, maybe my least favorite. Not much to do except eat and I am on a budget. Eating comes second.

I visited Namba, Dontonbori and Shin Sai Bashi which is a long shopping district with modern things such as clothes, kitchen stuff, etc, etc, nothing I wanted to buy. Killed time, killed time.

The real reason I stayed around in Osaka instead of going right to Kyoto was for the Osaka Castle Illuminations which were beautiful!

It's Christmas Eve here and I can't help but feel a little lonely. I know my family would have loved to see these lights and gone out for breakfast. I think they would enjoy themselves here and I want to show them around one day. I hope they have a wonderful Christmas and I miss them a lot. It just doesn't feel like Christmas here, although I am enjoying myself.

Compared to Kyoto, Beppu does not have temples or shrines really. It has onsens and pudding so that's okay. All that white smoke is actually steam from the dozens upon dozen of onsen in Beppu. I believe there are at least 36 onsen, but I am pretty sure there are over a hundred baths.


I am living in the city of onsen (hot spring), but I haven't spoken much about them. Today was cold so of course onsen! I went with a friend to a famous onsen in Beppu, only a 15 minute or so ride from my school by bus. Very cheap bus ride, rather expensive onsen but it was so much fun. That symbol to the left is the onsen symbol. The map below shows all of the onsen in Beppu. (Look for the symbol in blue!)

Beppu has the most rich and natural onsen in Japan. In Beppu there are 8 different springs which are now towns and onsen areas within Beppu. They are named Beppu, Kannawa, Myoban, Kankaiji, Hamawaki, Kamegawa, Horita and Shibaseki. I have visited onsens in Beppu, Kamegawa and now Kannawa. From sulfur baths, to clay, to salt, to special mineral water for your skin, there are many natural onsen in Beppu. There are also other onsen that are 'man made' such as the carbonated bath and the electric bath that gives you shocks as you sit in it. I have tried all of those and maybe the clay is my favorite and the shock one is my least favorite.

Indoor 

Onsens are not expensive typically (in Beppu at least). Maybe a few hundred yen (a few US dollars). There are indoor spa type baths or outdoor ones that look like beautiful pools of water. Some are small, with only one bath for both genders. Then there are some with saunas, outdoor, indoor, sulfur, clay and normal baths, those are the expensive ones.

Very Pretty Outdoor

Onsen water isn't just good for your skin, but you can boil stuff with it! Go figure. Onsen Tamago (onsen boiled eggs) are delicious, as well as sweet Purrin (Pudding).

So today I visited Hoyoland onsen in Kannawa. This one had an outdoor, clay, sulfur and sauna bath in it. The clay was by far the most fun out of the baths but the sulfur is very nice for your skin. Unfortunately the onsen boiled pudding was all sold out! We then went to get dinner at Myoban which is known for it's thatched roof huts that house crystal making facilities used in bath salts. Now because we are on a mountain and there are hot springs everywhere, including sulfur baths, yes, it smells like rotten eggs. Sometimes when the wind blows up the mountain, we get that lovely smell on campus. I can't get used to it and where a face mask.

Myoban

For quarter break I went to Yufuin which is only a forty minute bus ride from Beppu. I went with two friends from my Japanese class. In Beppu it was pretty warm and I was dying even in a t-shirt but in Yufuin, a quiet mountain town, it was pretty chilly and I was glad I brought my light sweater. The leaves are starting to change color finally! I visited here before and wrote a post about it back in spring semester.

For lunch we visited a Snoopy Peanuts themed cafe. We got to sit with a giant snoopy stuffed animal and got snoopy themed foods! Definitely a super cute cafe why can't we have these in America. I stopped at the Studio Ghibli store here and bought a cute photo frame as well!

I don't typically go to the dining hall on campus, since we have kitchens. But when I have become so lazy and so hungry, I do go there.

It's completely different than American lunches, let me tell you. I got two fried white fish with a sweet egg and onion sauce. The other fish is mackerel in miso, then the green stuff is spinach salad with sesame and for something sweet, candied yams. For drinks either we can get something bottled or there is free hot tea (which I got two of) and cold water. All of this was about five dollars.

If I am lazy during the night and don't want to cook, I get instant yakisoba which are noodles in yakisoba sauce. The black one is dyed with squid ink (note the tiny squid picture) and the left side is just plain.

 In other news, November is already half way over and many of the trees are still green. A few have changed color on campus and some are barren, like the cherry blossom trees. The average temperature is still maybe 60 or so during the day. If it isn't windy it is warm, but the wind can really make it chilly.

So many flowers out still!

I have like, three months until I come home. So basically time to go wild and do all the fun Japanese stuff I didn't already do!

This post is a little overdue.
Our school had a festival! If you haven't realized, Japan throws awesome festivals for anything it seems.

 Cloudy and windy. Rained on and off throughout the day, but it was so much fun! There were so many stalls from different clubs and groups selling so much food. I ended up getting yakitori (grilled chicken on a stick) and tamago senbei which is like a fried egg on a cracker sandwich thing with mayo and sauce and it probably sounds awful to you but it's great. I had it twice.

The festival was two days long, over the weekend and everyone got involved! I really wish schools in America could care enough to do this sort of thing. Student clubs are so independent here and are able to do so much!

 Our club, Xiao sold Peppermint Bark! I was so surprised no one knew what it was. No one knew what peppermint was! It's never too early to get into the Christmas spirit. We ended up selling out early the first day and early the second day! We did so well!

That's not all we did though. We also did a Free Hugs event where we literally just walked around hugging people. Yay hugs! 

 The festival continued into the night time with firewords and music performances including the taiko group. Poor things must have been so cold! Without the wind it would have been tolerable.

So, I am not done with my summer blog posts, but school has kept me busy. Therefore I still am behind on those.

Time to talk about autumn. I mean. The continuation of summer. Daily it is between 75-80 degrees out. On top of the mountain it's cooler, usually 70-75. The humidity is gone and therefore it's bearable to go outside. The sun is almost always out except for the random sunny rain. I don't need to buy a jacket yet nor extra blankets because even at night it's usually 60 or so. The leaves haven't changed yet. It's still green and there are many flowers. Mikan (mandarin oranges) are spotting green little trees, same with persimmon which are much bigger than I thought!


Japan likes to make strange things, as you might have guessed by now. McDonalds has what is called the Halloween Ikasumi burger. It means Squid Ink burger. Squid Ink isn't just a fancy name. It's the reason why the bun is black. Squid ink is used in breads and noodles and other things. This burger is a double cheese burger with a yellow spicy cheese sauce, fried onions and some strange black sauce of some kind. This burger tasted good! I mean, it's from McDonalds, but it was actually a good McDonald's burger. It tasted no different than a regular double cheeseburger except for the fact it had the spicy cheese sauce.

Back in America I think of fall as hot coffee (well... I still like iced coffee...), hot APPLE CIDER and of course pumpkin everything. Now, I will say that's one thing I miss. I can't find a single orange pumpkin here and kabocha (the green winter pumkin) is too thick to make into a jack-o-lantern. I've been busy and haven't even been out much. Until today.

I stopped by Starbucks and had their autumn themed custard and caramel thing and wow. Just. Wow. I love it. I want it more. It will never be in America and that makes me sad.

It's very sweet, but what do you expect from a custard, cinnamon frappuchino?

HAPPY HALLOWEEN