I go home in one week and my finals have ended.

I am making sure to see all my friends before I leave. I've met so many wonderful people while here and I am so happy!

I went to a farewell party for my Japanese Professor whom I've had for two semesters now. Although sometimes he was strict, he is definitely one of my favorite professors throughout my college years and my favorite professor at APU. He kindly invited us to his home and we cooked and had pizza! (Haven't had pizza in a while!!)

My Japanese class has always been a small bunch. This semester we were less than ten and everyone was from different countries. (Indonesia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Finland, Uzbekistan and South Korea.) We have become very close friends and I hope I can visit them all again one day!

My professor will no longer be teaching in APU so we are his last students! I wish him luck in the future and with his move! (Let's keep in contact!) I also wish everyone else good luck in their studies and future jobs!

I may or may not have cried when the party was over...

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!

This post won't be as long. Although a fun day, we went to one major place: Osaka Castle. This beautiful castle has a museum in it (that you could not take pictures in). It was a total of 8 floors that we walked. The very top is an observatory where we took gorgeous pictures. Again, there only a few clouds in the sky and it was hot, at least 40 degrees, again. (100 F).

Osaka Castle

View from Observatory

Osaka is about the size of the city of Boston (just the city, not the suburbs around it or the water). 86 sq. miles. To me it looks as though it goes on and on and on. The streets are clean, compared to what I've seen in cities (New York I'm looking at you) and it's exciting.

I will say I enjoy Beppu City much better. Why? Well, walking down the street you can say Ohayogozaimasu (Oh-Hi-Oh Go-Zai-Mas) to people on the street. (That means good morning!) People are friendlier and less city like in Osaka. I still love that city though, very fun and exciting.

Downtown Osaka

Takoyaki Restaurant

We then parted ways with Akane and met up with her dad and brother who took us through downtown Osaka which had amazing restaurants and shops. All name brand stuff including Fossil (a brand on Newbury street in Boston!)

 For dinner that night we made Yakoyaki! Which is very very good. It's a ball of wheat flower with octopus in it. Sometimes beef, with corn, cheese maybe and green onion. Really, you can put anything in it. It's made in a ball shape, smothered in takoyaki sauce and Japanese mayonnaise (which is nothing like American mayo).

It needs a special pan with little holes in it. It's really fun to make and they taste so good! Definitely my favorite snack type food. It's healthier when home made of course, but it really is a festival, going out snack type food.

Chee-no-eekay Ji-go-ku and Ta-tsu-ma-kee Ji-go-ku

Yesterday I visited two of the eight Jigoku Hells. The Jigoku Hells are hot springs that will probably boil you to death if you stepped foot in them. They are located in the Kannawa district of Beppu. The ones we went to are actually located in the Shibaseki district of Beppu, not all that far. We walked about a mile and a half from Kannawa instead of taking the bus, on a pretty road. It was cold and windy unfortunately, but the rain held off and it turned out to be a beautiful day, I think.




We went to Tatsumaki Jigoku first, which is a boiling hot geiser that shoots off every half hour or so. It's protected by rocks, otherwise it would shoot up over 30 meters. This was the smelliest of the two and reeked of sulfur, but that's only if you decided to walk into the steam. Just the steam was hot enough to send you back a few feet!



















Next we went to Chinoike Jigoku, also known as the blood pond hell. The clay in this hotspring makes it appear a blood red color. When the steam blew in your direction, step back! This one was very hot, even when I got the picture from at least 20 meters up. This one smelled a little like clay and if you looked into the pond, you could see the hot clay at the bottom. The water was very clear and only the bottom was red.

For lunch I got takoyaki from a small vendor across the street. Eight for 500yen! Takoyaki is octopus, in a soft, squishy wheat flour blend then fried in a special pan to make these little balls! It's then topped with tempura flakes, bonito flakes and japanese mayo. They are very much a comfort snack here in Japan. (This is not my picture, I ate mine too fast to take a picture!)

Takoyaki Recipe