Kyushu

 We visited Kyushu, the big southern island of Japan, for the first time. Over three days we hired a car and wandered around a most beautiful place. Parts of it are very green and wild and it has a different feel to the rest of Japan, more like SE Asia in some ways.







One of the great specialties of the region is pottery. There are many famous kilns in the towns of Arita and Karasu and indeed dotted in towns and villages all over the place.

 Here a 400 year sloping kiln used by the one family business until recently when they built this one:

And the marvellous stacks of wood ready for use neatly tied with bamboo.












Pottery is for sale everywhere and I have to admit to being a bit of a dunce where it is concerned. "I don't know much about pottery but I know what I like."


For instance you will see something very beautiful and it will cost perhaps $30 and then you will see this tea bowl:

A steal at $12,600.











 Like Murano in Venice with its glass, many of the towns were totally closed to the outside world to protect their secrets. There were customs gates and no-one was allowed to enter or leave. This town is located in a blind valley deep in the mountains.

They are very good with clay:  here a road gutter outside a house. We saw this sort of design using old roof tiles etc, many times.











The roof beams of one of the buildings.

We went to a marvellous tofu shop with a little restaurant attached. Peaceful, simple, and everything made from tofu and soy milk.

On the walls there was a simply painted bird on  a twig design , the ink even running over the woodwork.

 

For dessert amazingly large white strawberries, only available in this town.

In a another soba noodle restaurant some wheat stalks embedded in the walls, such an effective decoration

Steam rising from the hotsprings.

A temple where students come from all over Japan and many other countries come to pray for good exam results and leave hopeful messages to the gods. Long ago a teacher was exiled to this region. When he died the authorities in Kyoto felt they were being haunted by his soul so a magnificent temple was built to calm the spirit. One of the features are trees that are now more than a thousand years old.

 Fukuoka is a pleasant and lively city, not as mad a Tokyo. A long-time trading gateway to the rest of Asia it somehow has a more Asian feel to it compared to other parts of Japan. One of the features are the Yatai, mobile street carts that are set up at night and serve a fantastic range of food and drink. Much like you see in SE Asia. In the morning all is quiet and clean and the little restaurants have disappeared







There were dozens of them doing a thriving business along the river across from our hotel.

A local specialty, Mochi Mochi gyoza.

Cultural Absorbtion and Mascot Horror

The Colonel has never looked so good has he? Although I imagine there may be a few former GI's in good old Kentucky rolling in their graves.

This gem was outside the KFC in Chuo-rinkan.

Of course Japan is famous for absorbing, and at the same time completely transforming, things from other cultures. This can seen in the food, the language and the music, all  which I'll examine in another post.

This time I want to look at a terror that stalks the very heart  of Japan, the mascot.

Somewhere along the line, I suppose post war and largely with Disney to blame, the Japanese developed a diabolical obsession with mascots. Unlike Australia where the awful things crop up at the odd sporting event, here they are everywhere.

 Every town, prefecture, large company, high-school team, event and social club has a bloody mascot. I have yet to see one that is even remotely cute or attractive.

I imagine what we are trying to promote here is a televison that eats your brains and surprises rabbits.

As reported recently by Rocket24 News in Japan: Not to be outdone by neighbouring towns, the city of Okazaki in Aichi Prececture recently launched a new mascot called Ozakaemon. It looks depressed and very scary and seems to frighten children extremely succesfully.

Japan recently set a Guinness world record for the most mascots dancing at one time, 134 in all. If you are feeling brave you might like to watch the video below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEZ35BT2LwQ

I found this fellow in the train station near my school. He's from the Red Cross and wants to make you donate blood. I think they would have more success with this other chap.

Making Plastic Food

One of the favourite things for first time visitors to Japan is all the the plastic food on display in the windows of many restaurants.

In the past we have bought quite a bit of it and it now adorns our Christmas tree each year along with more usual decorations.







 Some of it is incredibly realistic and some of it looks like.....plastic food.






The centre for the production of much of this in Japan is in Kappabashi near the Tokyo fish market. The area of Kappabashi covers many large town blocks and it is exclusively occupied by restaurant supply shops.

It's a most wonderful area to visit, there are shops that only sell every imaginable sort of chopstick rests, others only wooden spoons. With the plastic food you will find shops that only sell a myriad of different onion rings and capers.

For the first time instead of the usual grammar and Kanji grind our class had a school excursion and we went to a company that makes this remarkable stuff. We were allowed to make some ourselves and I made a rather miserable lettuce and a passable piece of eggplant tempura.

This is how the expert did it:



 First making tempura batter. The water bath is at 43 C and the wax is at 60 C. You then do a dip and roll action to coat you piece of vegetable.

The lettuce a truly marvellous thing to make. Thin layers of white and green wax are made by pouring the hot wax onto the water in one go and then spreading in out in a sheet with the bottom of the ladle. You then submerge the sheet, starting at one edge and as you pull it out it turns into a sheet of lettuce. The trick then is to wrap is slowly to the left and right repeatedly.

 Their window display featured this marvellous piece: