Camping at Lake Motosu

A few weekends ago we went camping with about 10 other families in the Fuji 5 Lakes region at Lake Motosu. In only about a 90 minute drive from the center of city we felt like we had completely escaped the city sprawl of Tokyo. It was a wonderful long weekend away.

Shelley and I aren't quite sure we're camping people - or at least in the camping stage of our lives. People were pretty amazed that an 8+ month pregnant woman was choosing to go camping. Hey, I didn't force her to go folks! We like camping, but don't do it often...maybe once a year. But our kids were Jekyll and Hyde this weekend. For as bad as it was on Saturday and for as much as we wanted to pack it in and go home, Sunday was its equal in fun and relaxation. May I present the evidence.

We were camping by a lake, so we decided to take a walk around. The really easy, paved and flat walk around the lake turned into two hours of parental torture. For some reason Anthon has an extreme aversion to walking as a means of transporting himself. In his mind that's what cars, trains, strollers and a parent's arms/shoulders are for. If his attitude were a song lyric, it would be "Walking in LA, only a nobody walks in LA" from "Walking in LA" by Missing Persons. Talk about a meltdown. Crying, whining, yelling, everything. We had incident after incident. And mind you, this is flat, paved road.

Contrast that with Sunday. We rolled the dice again and took Anthon on an off-road, steep, slippery hike up a mountain. He must have viewed this as fun, because this hike was tiring, even for me, and much more difficult. Yet we didn't hear one peep. Not a single complaint. He was talking, he was joking around. He was having fun. So I guess we've learned that walking on pavement = functional and boring. Walking on dirt = fun and enjoyable. Good to know. Maybe we need to bring dirt everywhere we go and sprinkle it in his walking path so that he thinks he's hiking instead of walking from point A to point B.

The aforementioned hike was beautiful. There were two intermediate "peaks" before reaching the top. Each stop had its own view of Mt. Fuji. But for the last 2/3 of the hike you had completely unobstructed views of Fuji and the valley below as it sloped up and formed this most famous of views. I don't think I've ever seen Mt. Fuji so right in my face like this.

So I think Sunday made up for Saturday. We left Monday morning thinking we had a good time overall. Maybe we just need to be smarter campers. But soon with three kids 4 and under, I wonder how much more camping we can do for a while.

Trip to Kyushu: Kurume & Fukuoka

Our last stop on our trip to Kyushu were the cities of Kurume and Fukuoka. I lived in Kurume for 7 months as a missionary. As a tourist destination it's not much. But this place houses a lot of great personal memories for me. One of the great memories was teaching a person who worked at the first Subway sandwich shop in Kyushu. And we as missionaries, longing for a decent sandwich, would frequent this place. The other main reason to frequent this place was a guy, nicknamed Gonchan, who was interested in the missionaries and then eventually joined the LDS church. Gonchan was our age and had boundless energy. He would call us when his boss wasn't there to tell us to come down and he would make us sandwiches. He even made me a Subway nametag and got a uniform to fit me and I was able to be "sandwich artist" during our lunchbreak.

The only other things that make Kurume somewhat famous are 1)a gaudy and 200ft tall statue of Kannon the Goddess of Mercy; and 2)the Ishibashi family. You may not know the name Ishibashi, but you've probably heard of Bridgestone Tire, the largest maker of tires in the world. They are from Kurume and started the company there. As a side note, the daughter of the founder married a future prime minister of Japan. And one of their sons is the current prime minister of Japan.

Our time in Kurume was spent with Gonchan and seeing other friends that I knew in the area. It was great to catch up. For those of you Fukuoka missionaries, I have to tell you that we dined at the best tonkatsu place on Earth, Hamakatsu. For those of you who don't know what tonkatsu is - it's a flattened, breaded and deep fried piece of pork (usually pork, but also chicken). It's served with a cabbage salad, miso soup and rice. You dip the katsu in an Asian style barbecue sauce and it's wonderful. As missionaries we used to lust after this restaurant. We would always get the chicken katsu and we would go to town on the all you could eat cabbage salad and rice. It was a decent sized chain 15 years ago, but nowadays it's absolutely everywhere. We had to stop in to eat there once. It's so good. Anthon loved it so much he downed a whole thing of tonkatsu, then threw it up in bed with me later that night. In what was undoubtedly major inspiration, I woke up, sat up and moved out of the way literally a split second before Anthon spewed half-digested tonkatsu everywhere. I escaped the sickness. Yes!

After our one day in Kurume, we spent a half day in Fukuoka, killing time before flying home to Tokyo. Fukuoka is the 8th largest city in Japan and doesn't really hold any real special feeling for me, except for the LDS temple that was built on the site of our old mission home. A friend of mine from the mission, Greg Peterson, and I were able to fly back in 2000 for the dedication of the Temple. It was surreal to think that the old home that we would visit on the large plot of land was now a temple. From my LDS perspective, what a blessing that is for the members of the LDS church in Kyushu.

Our final stop in Fukuoka was Ohori Park - a large park created on the old castle grounds. We devoured McDonalds hamburgers and fries and let the kids run. I think our vacation went a few hours too long because in what should have been a fun ride on the paddle boats turn into a nightmare of crying by the children. My attempts to get us back to the dock to stop the madness were futiles as we were paddling against the wind and it made our trip back not only slow but very physically taxing on my legs! If you like hearing kids scream and cry, then please feel free to watch the short clip Shelley took below.





As always click on any of the pictures to be taken to a gallery of the few shots we took in Kurume and Fukuoka.

Trip to Kyushu: Kagoshima

Stop number three on our week-long trip was Kagoshima. I served here as a missionary in two stints to start my mission (5 months in the city of Kagoshima) and to end my mission (3 months in the suburb of Taniyama).

For you Japanese history buffs and Tom Cruise fans, Kagoshima is the home to a guy by the name of Saigo Takamori, who is a local hero. Saigo, once a military man closely allied with the imperial government, he resigned his position in a huff because the government didn't go along with his proposal to attack Korea over their failure to recongize the newly formed Japanese government. He returned home to Kagoshima and with 40,000 disaffected samurai, and local soldiers, he led what is known as the Satsuma Rebellion. They got as far as Kumamoto, burning the castle, before being driven back to Kagoshima. The final battle was the basis for Ken Watanabe's character in the Tom Cruise movie The Last Samurai.

Kagoshima is also known for it's gigantic, and quite active, volcano Mt. Sakurajima. It's quite a spectacular sight! It sits 15 minutes by ferry across the bay from from Kagoshima and dominates the view from almost any part of the city. The volcano used to be an island until an eruption in 1914 poured enough lava and rock to bridge the watery gap between the island and the nearby peninsula. Ash is spewn daily from the volcano and on particularly heavy days, if the wind is just right, it can feel as if a light rain is falling on you...but not a refreshing rain. As missionaries who would have to bike in this kind of environment, our shirt pockets would fill with ash and if we had a cold or allergies, the phlegm would be black. And let me tell you, when it actually did rain, the mixture of water and the ultra fine ash made for slippery roads. Good times.

We decided to stay two nights at the Furusato Kanko Hotel, on the volcano itself. The hotel has a famous hot spring that backs up against the bay. We enjoyed the expansive views the sounds of the lapping waves. The hot spring also has a shrine inside it, which meant that so as to not offend the kami (god of the shrine) we had to wear cotton robes to cover our nakedness. The benefit was that it was a mixed gender pool so we could enjoy the hot spring as a family. They even had tiny robes for Anthon and Ella, which was so cute. Spending that time in the hot spring was definitely a top 5 highlight of the entire trip. The hotel can be a bit pricey, but it's worth it. Dinner and breakfast are included and each night you dine in your own private tatami room. The food is quite good and focuses on local cuisines (pork, sashimi, etc.)

Our time in Kagoshima was spent touring the volcano (which has a large park filled with large fiberglass dinosaurs of all random things) and traveling south of Kagoshima to see the massive tea fields outside of Chiran. We also spent time in a museum dedicated to the kamikaze pilots who at the end of World War II were sent to die as a last ditch effort to prevent defeat. More on that later as it deserves its own lengthy post. And above all it was nostalgic for me to be back in Kagoshima.

Click on any of the pictures to be taken to a gallery of photos.

Trip to Kyushu: Kumamoto

Stop number two on our trip was Kumamoto. I spent 7 months here as a missionary in 1995 and in the process had some great experiences. I’ll share some of my experiences in a later post.

From a travel perspective, Kumamoto typifies everything that’s great about Kyushu. There are some beautiful seaside towns with views to tiny islands that dot the bay. Then as you head east you run into the city of Kumamoto which has a surprisingly international feel. It has really made great strides to welcome foreigners to visit, study and work there. Finally, as you head further east you scale mountains and volcanoes and enjoy hot springs, rivers and gorges. It’s really a diverse area.

Kumamoto Castle
This is one of the premier castles in all of Japan. While it’s a replica, it’s a stunning piece of architecture that is THE signature building in Kumamoto. It sits on a bluff and overlooks the town. We made our way there on a hot Sunday afternoon and didn’t really get to enjoy enough of our time there since the kids were tired and cranky.

Mt. Aso
The Mt. Aso region is one of the world’s largest volcanic caldera and according to sources it’s also the most densely populated caldera in the world...which has got to be nice since it's technically still an active volcano. Admittedly, Aso did most of its damage more than 100,000 - 300,000 year ago.

You can drive to the peak of the active crater and peer into it. We went on a national holiday and were happy to leave early in the morning because it was busy. I kid you not, we were within 5km to the parking lot of the crater and it took us 90 minutes to travel the last 5km. Talk about ridiculous. And we were the lucky ones. There were drivers who, I’m sure, had to endure two hours just to get into the parking lot. It was a great reminder that no matter how rural one gets in Japan, one is still in Japan…great lines of people will happen everywhere!

Boshita Matsuri
Animal rights activists and my Korean friends might not like this festival, but the Boshita Matsuri celebrates the pillaging of Korea hundreds of years ago and involves parading large horses with phallic symbols strapped to their backs. The horses are fed beer and prodded to a point where the horse will often times run wild through the streets or rear up and buck. Many years ago, some of the horses would then be killed and the meat of the horse would then be served raw, which in fact is a local delicacy called basashi.

Watching the procession is really fun. People parade around town for hours in their summer festival clothing (happi) and are impossibly drunk by the evening (when we got there). They’re chanting and singing and looking like they’re having a good time. Ella got into it and due to her being impossibly cute she got quite a lot of attention from the passersby who wanted to give her stuff – glow sticks mainly. Anthon was instantly jealous. He took a cue from Ella, started to act cute and soon saw glow sticks come his way.

Kikuchi Keikoku Koen (Kikuchi Gorge)
This is one of my favorite places and is off the beaten path. If you don’t have a car, then you’ll likely not get a chance to come here. The gorge is on the back side of Aso, to the north, and is a set of hiking trails that meander up a river with a series of beautiful waterfalls. Tons of trees shade the trails and it’s a wonderful place to hike, picnic and play in the water. It would have been the perfect outing except of course Ella lost her shoe while trying to resist being picked up by Shelley. The shoe dropped from the bridge to the water. We tried to track it down the river but we lost it.

The drive to and from Kikuchi is great because you pass by a ton of fruit farms and fresh fruit stands. We stopped by a vineyard that sold gigantic purple grapes. Behind the stand were the vineyards. You could tell the fruit had just been picked. I don’t think I’ve ever tasted grapes that good ever.

We love Kumamoto. Click on any of the pictures to go to a gallery of shots from our three days in Kumamoto.

I See God!

While looking out over the Nagasaki bay from Glover Garden, Anthon looked through the binoculars and proclaimed, "I see God!"

Gotta love the kids.

Come one, come all to see the foreigners!

For as much as we've come to see China - its culture, historical sites and wonderful food - there is part of me that believes one of the experiences of coming here is being seen by the Chinese.

When we're out in public, without fail, we're stared at, pointed at, talked about, and stopped by kids, parents and teenagers asking for photos. It's dangerous for us to stop too long in any one spot or else the hordes come out of the woodwork. So, we could be disciplining one of our children and we'll have 5-6 people watching us. Talk about the pressure to keep your composure! I feel like a celebrity being following around by a TMZ.com camera. And for as nice as the people have been to us, they are extremely forward. We're used to the more reserved style of the Japanese who definitely respect one's personal space! The men and women we've encountered in Beijing have no problem coming up to touch, grab, tickle or try to hold our kids. Anthon, who hates being touched by strangers, is at his wits end. He handles it by making his hand into a gun and shooting people. Ella, on the other hand, seems to really enjoy the attention, which led Shelley and me to wonder whether or not Ella gets enough attention at home!

It's an odd interaction. They don't speak English. We don't speak Chinese. We say the few words we know in each others' language and then we sort of turn our attention inward and stop truly interacting. We talk about them and they, I'm sure, talk about us. We become like two infants parallel playing but with no real interaction outside of a few smiles and gestures. For us it's all a very strange and new experience. But one we're quickly becoming used to.