Life in Miyazaki City: Long time no post!

Hello everyone! I've been very busy the last month, and finally got time to sit down and write.

Mainly I've been busy helping the school debate team. I coached two teams, first year and second year, and we had the initial contest two weeks ago. My second year team made the finals (yay!) so I have been coaching them after school...I usually don't get home until 7 or 8. They are awesome kids and I hope we can do well in the next round!

Aside from school, I have been making quite a few fun trips with other ALTs. On October 9th, I went to Nobeoka...that is a town about 2 hours north of Miyazaki City. There was a Noh play in the auditorium going on that day, and I met up with some other ALTs there. For those of you who don't know, Noh is a very traditional, slow-moving, hypnotic Japanese play. Of course, it was all in Japanese (and I heard it is archaic Japanese....kind of like modern English speakers watching a Shakespearean play), so I had to guess what was going on by using visual cues. It was very beautiful to watch, but very long....three hours to be exact. I am definitely glad I had the cultural experience, though. That night, I went to an izakaya with some friends. An izakaya is a kind of restaurant in Japan where you can order a lot of beer (yesss) and eat a lot of delicious, unhealthy and fried foods--chicken namban (fried chicken with a tangy sauce), pizza, spring rolls, fried rice....yum!
The next day, Stephanie and Kieran and I walekd around Nobeoka. We ended up seeing the ruins of Shiroyama castle, which were up a very steep hill. After the long climb, the view was definitely worth it.

We also drove around the countryside, and I got some great pictures:

That night, we went to Takanabe town for a lantern festival. This was soooo awesome. It was at night, and it was in this forest clearing with torches and all kinds of people dressed in traditional clothes, so the atmosphere was wonderful. We climbed up a hill, guided by small lanterns, and found ourselves in a forest clearing FILLED with gorgeous, handmade lanterns. It was absolutely stunning. I think I want this at my wedding reception....

The next weekend was equally awesome. I went on a trip to Kagoshima, a nearby prefecture to the south and west of us, with Asha and Ben. They were both awesome travel buddies, and we had a blast. We didn't really make plans, we kind of just went with our instincts, and it worked out really well. We took a train to get there, and the first thing we did upon arrival was wander around aimlessly looking for a hotel. After running into a couple of sketchy ones, including one where the receptionist was clearly inebriated, we found one that suited our fancy, and proceeded to go to a restaurant and get drunk at 3 in the afternoon. awesooommmeee....
Then we decided to go to an onsen, since Kagoshima is famous for them. What with getting off at the wrong stop on the train, and then not being able to find the sand onsen once we made it to the area, it took us a couple hours to get there. But when we did, it was totally worth it!

Basically, we wrapped ourselves in these robes, and then went down to the sand pits on the beach (the actual seashore was steaming, because of the heat below the surface!) and then laid down while people buried us in the warm sand. It was a strange sensation, since the sand was so heavy...I could feel my pulse beating in every part of my body. But it felt really nice.

The next day, we took a ferry ride over to Sakurajima, Kagoshima's active volcano. We spent the whole day on the island, enjoying the views, stopping at a public spa, and enjoying more beer...haha. The volcano was smoking the whole time we were there....I felt kind of like a Hobbit....

This weekend, I went to Saito for the annual fire festival and flower viewing. The first thing we did was wander around, looking at the cosmos flowers. I live in a place where the flowers bloom in November...how lucky am I?? The fields were surrounded by mountains, and there were also some really old burial mounds...we actually walked inside one of them and were slightly creeped out...It was really narrow and low, and the stone walls were covered in moss. We also found some adorable kids who kept following us and trying to talk to us in English. :)

Burial Mound

Then we watched the fire festival. We got to see a replica of a house being burned and some men and women dancing in gorgeous traditional attire...plus a lot of sword and torch wielding. From what I understood, the girls represented the most beautiful princesses in the land, and then the prince had to choose one princess to marry (after this the house was lit on fire....symbolic of the wedding I think) and there was also a reenactment of a battle.There was beautiful music (mainly flutes and drums) as well. Afterwards, we also watched some amazing Taiko drummers.

Now, for some random tidbits I'd like to call "Only in Japan..."
1. It's Colonel Sanders....dressed as Santa Claus! Apparently, in Japan, a lot of people eat KFC at Christmas time. Also, Christmas decorations are already out in the stores....see video below.