Miyakonojo

So things are going well here. I still have yet to settle in to my apartment though. This weekend I was planning on doing some organizing and cleaning up, but plans came up and I left for out of town.

Friday night, some of the Japanese guys at work wanted to go out for a night of food and drink at the top of the local mountain. I had really wanted to go and do this ever since they took us there for a tour in the daytime. I'll be heading back there in November for some hang gliding also! The 4th and newest member of our ALT team arrived that day also. Pictures are up!

Then Saturday we left for a road trip down south to Kushima. In Cape Toi every year, they do a "Fire festival". This consists of a pole that's 9 stories high, with a basket full of fireworks at the top. They get a bunch of guys drunk and then give them these balls of fire on a rope, which they twirl around and then launch into the air trying to make it in the basket. Once somebody makes it, which can take as long as 90+ minutes, some fireworks in the basket goes off and everybody cheers. Then the pull the 9 story (90 feet) high wooden pole down.

Wanna know the fun part? The crowd is about.. 85-90 feet away in a circle. So the first danger is when these fireballs go off on a tangent. I mean its on a rope, so its really easy to accidentally let go at the wrong time and have that thing go flying backwards. Which happened. This year only 1 went wayyyy off course. It managed to nail my friend also. It would have hit him in the head, but it was pouring rain the entire time, so it just caught his umbrella on fire! Then when they pull that thing down, you gotta run for your life again or get crushed. That was Freaky! This festival would have been banned in the 1950's for being too dangerous if this was the U.S. Luckily Japan ROCKS. I've got no pictures of this, because it was pouring rain and I didn't want my camera to break. Next year maybe.

Later that night we drove down to a little tiny beach area and camped out. We had our tents up in the sand, made a pretty large fire, I bought some fireworks and had some fun and we sound of crashing waves sent us to dream land. Or they should have but it was so freaking muggy and hot, especially inside the tents, that I really only got 2-3 hours of sleep. It was fun though. And then going for a swim in the morning was pretty nice.

We drove back Sunday afternoon, and then stopped at a tiny little place that fed us, and let us use their bath and hot spring. I don't actually know if we stopped at a little bed and bath place, or a retirement place, or what. But it was nice and the atmosphere was very relaxing.

Oh, I forgot to mention that before we headed back on Sunday we took a little detour to check out Kojima, otherwise known as Monkey Island. I have not got my pictures up on Flickr yet, but they should be up soon. Pretty much it's a tiny island that has a bunch of monkeys. And since people go to visit all the time, they are completely used to people. Also, since your not allowed to feed them, or touch them, they ignore everybody. Much better than monkeys who go nuts for people food and try to steal stuff from everybody. You could get within a few feet of these guys and they would just ignore you. Here is a little taste of some of the photos I took:



I have not started teaching yet. That happens next Tuesday I think. Looking forward to it!