Where's Ron?
Japan, 1 December 2015 - 24 February 2016
Ron near Rotarua, NZ, January 2015
Bars, Restaurants, Meetings, Trips, People and Food
22 December 2015
Afton, Virginia, USADear family and friends,
While Ron has been exploring his neighborhood in Fukuoka, I've been enjoying my time at home, preparing for Christmas (in the midst of our record-breaking warm weather), doing lots of reading, yoga, and visiting with friends. A big highlight of the past week was the 32nd annual North Branch School production of St. George and the Dragon. North Branch School is the small independent school for nursery through 8th grade from which our oldest grandson, Leo, graduated in June 2014 and from which our youngest grandson, Simon, will graduate in June 2016. St. George is an heirloom patchwork of poems, stories, songs, and dances, both ancient and modern, celebrating the Winter Solstice and the efforts of humans over the centuries "to drive the cold winter away." Every student in the school, nursery through 8th grade, participates. This year, we were all justifiably proud of Simon, who was the star of the show as St. George. For a few photos of this amazing production, click on the St. George link below.
Several people have asked for photos of Ron's apartment. After some experimenting, I figured out how to create a Web page using the AirBnB photos for the apartment, see the link below. Remember - Ron says it is much smaller than it looks in the photos!
I send all of you Christmas greetings and best wishes for peace, health, and happiness in the New Year!
Love to all,
Ellen
While Ron explored Fukuoka, Ellen was attending North Branch School's 32nd annual production of St. George and the Dragon. To see photos, click on the thumbnail at the left.
Bars, Restaurants, Meetings, Trips, People and Food
To see photos of Ron's apartment in Fukuoka, click on the thumbnail at the left.
22 December 2015
Fukuonk, JapanHello, my dear,
Some ups and downs since the last report, but still having a ball in Fukuoka.
Last weekend I started getting a cold, and remembering the American one I had before coming here, I started on aspirin and chicken soup. The cold has progressed but I am getting better. I spent more time in my little apartment and curtailed some of my long walks on the coldest or wettest days and had to avoid inside activities where my sneezing, coughing or sniffling would be offensive. But I read, wrote and used the Internet extensively.
Which led to my second disturbing problem: my Internet slowed down to a crawling speed where it is even difficult to do Web mail, which requires an Internet connection and a lot of back and forth interaction with the cloud. On my phone, Goggle Maps works because Google uses satellite and other wifi signals to locate where I am.
There is a conversation going on between the apartment owner's agent, the owner and myself which seems to tell me the owner has upgraded the level of service (paid more) but I have to wait because I used to much. How long I must wait is not specified.
But life continues without Internet.
I would still venture out in my neighborhood to see who I could meet. There appears to be an unlimited number of bars and restaurants in my neighborhood - as well in every neighborhood I have visited, including right in the center, with all the high rise buildings and department stores. So I started at my building and continued up the street. Walking in and introducing myself, early, before they were doing much business, and explained I was living here for three months, where I was living, hoped to meet and understand Japanese culture and had some train passes to go and see Japan but to return to my apartment to live in Fukuoka.
There is a bar in my building - actually three (5 - I just discovered two more), two with restaurants. I have already talked about the one directly over my head which every late afternoon and early evening I hear furniture being dragged around to set up for the evening. I also met one of the chefs in the elevator, who goes into an apartment on a floor below me with trays of food. I suspect they are using one of the apartments as a secondary kitchen (which must be bigger then the one I have).
On the ground floor as I exit my part of the building there is a bar and restaurant, so one evening I entered and ordered a coffee. There were two young ladies there, one was working for the bar and the other was opening a sake (Japanese rice wine) store nearby in January; she gave me a card showing where the store was and invited me to visit the store. I could never find the store, even when I enlisted people to help and had the card with a map. I have seen the lady that works in the bar a couple of times going and coming but have not met the one opening the store.
Accessed the same way, from outside my building but using another elevator to the third floor is a "Girls Bar". I found the name interesting and when I first visited one evening early there were about 6 very large (around, not tall) "girls" of mixed ages, if not sizes. They were actively hanging Christmas decorations and I told them I would return later to see their final work. When I did return later I found several drunk men having a ball. I have returned a couple of times in the early evening when the activity is slow and tried to communicate. They are very friendly and don't seem to care that I am not drinking and can not speak Japanese.
The next building seems to be some kind of private place, so I continued to the next one on my side of the street, which had an elevator up to a bar. The manager and bartender were very friendly, and since there were no customers, took the time to talk with me and show me around, including up a couple of floors where the same manager operated a wine bar. More my style, but I was just visiting. On the ground floor was an Italian restaurant and bar, so I repeated my introductions. The hostess/waitress/manager greeted me in a very friendly manner and we began to talk. Again it was early and there were no customers. She offered to be my guide and show me some of the cultural parts of Fukuoka and explained she worked 7 PM to 5 am but could guide me in the afternoons. We exchanged cards (cards seem to be a big thing in Japan) and therefore exchanged email addresses and phone numbers. She walked me out and tried to convince me she really did want to be my guide and practice her English. Later when I got home I had an email from her again offering to be my guide So the next afternoon I was taken to the main shrine, as I understand it the oldest in Japan, and we had formal tea in a tea house in the middle of a Japanese garden. She also introduced me to the Tourist Center in Rainbow Center which is quite extensive with helpful staff, a large library of English books which can be checked out, and tables and chairs to use the wifi available.
She explained she was off on the 21st and could guide me that day. I explained I wanted to go to Yanagawa, a small nearby town. The plans have now evolved - she bought a special train package and we are going tomorrow with her husband, her sister and her sister's fiance.
Last night I went to the first meeting of the Language Exchange Meetup, which was a special party at a Korean restaurant with a lot of different Korean foods served. I met lots of people, including an older Japanese guy who lived, got married and had kids in the States but is now divorced and has a new wife and kids in Japan. He was explaining the difficulty of being married to a Westerner when it comes to dinner time and he wants to eat sushi and she wants to eat a hamburger. He is a yoga teacher and I hope to see him again. There was also a Chinese lady who has lived in Japan for 8 years and wants to be a traveler like me. She has been to a lot of places already. Also a French guy who has lived here for 9 years and is married to a Japanese lady; and a guy from Sweden, a Japanese lady who went to law school but works as a translator for a company in a southern town but comes to the meetup meeting to talk English, and more and more... I look forward to the next meeting in January.
Last night after the meetup party I was walking down my street and came to a building I have looked at several times. It was around 1 am and there were lots of people waiting for the elevator. I tried asking people what it was all about, and the best I could understand was the 4th floor place was mostly young people and the 5th floor was young-to-old with good music. Not a band but a DJ. They thought the cost was 2,000 yen which would be about $16. So I took the elevator up, got off and paid my 2K and went inside to realize everyone was really young, went back out and asked if I was on the top floor, they said no, gave me my money back and I went up to the top. Much different crowd and the price had increased to 3500 yen, ~$28. Older, some guys may have been as old as I, or close, with most being younger. The guys were dressed - how to describe. One guy I was talking to wore a hat, scarf and had a pair of black gloves in his upper jacket pocket. Most of the guys were dressed in black. If I ever go back I will wear my black outfit. The woman who was translating for him, and who I am not positive was a woman, was one of the most attractive women there. I give up on guessing the ages of the women, who are always much older than I guess. The people were mostly all facing towards the DJ and dancing to the music, in ones. There were occasionally two people dancing with each other, but mostly not. I sensed a blend of mixed sexual identities/orientations, but perhaps that's just my active imagination. Many seemed old friends with each other. I found the evening fascinating, enjoyed the dancing and watching the crowd, with occasional conversations as I drank my white wine. As I left in the wee hours, I tried talking to the manager/doorman/security guy about how often these events occurred and the best I understood his answer to be was the next one would be in March. Was this some kind of very special occasion I had stumbled on? I don't know. But maybe next Saturday I will go back and see what is happening there after 1 am.
>From my apartment if I turn left and then take another left over a bridge I can go to Canal City on the other side and continue on to Hakata Station, which is the main railroad station (about 15 minutes). Or I can turn right from my apartment and go up my street past the bars and restaurants I have been describing. Eventually I hit a main road, and if I turn left it is a very active commercial area. If I turn right I cross the canal and enter the red-light district where foreigners don't seem to be very welcome and the prices I see on the boards outside amount to $160 for 20 minutes for some kind of entertainment. The last time I walked through the area it was all closed up. No explanation.
But if I turn right into the commercial area it is very lively at night with lots of restaurants, bars, food stands, open stores, and people everywhere. One night I just walked into a place because I could not figure out what it was. I think it must be a Pachinko place that our friend Harry was telling me about. There were rows and rows of what I call slot machines. There must have been hundreds but I doubt if more than 20 were being used. I could not figure them out and they would not allow me to take pictures. I found a place similar on an upper floor in the Hakata Station building, with many different kinds of games that put my memories of pin ball machines to shame. There were booths that you entered and closed the door and you were sitting in a command center with all kinds of controls. Impossible to explain. But I did take some pictures. There were also games of chance, the most impressive I remember were some that played with coins about the size of nickels. You would spin them up unto moving pushers which moved other coins over a ledge towards you. There is no way to describe the complexity of this game. There was another place I watched an older guy play soccer on a large screen with all kinds of cards, buttons and controls. Way too complex for me to understand and there was a lot of money involved.
One evening I went to a Tao Drum concert in the large auditorium in Canal City. On another late night I had been wandering around when this large group started gathering around an elevator. They didn't seem like shoppers and were all together, so I asked one guy what they were about and he got someone else who got someone else and finally a young lady came who could speak English and explained they were a Tao Drum Group and were going to Broadway soon and she was the manager. I chatted a bit with a couple of the guys and someone pointed out the poster advertising their concert and explained the schedule and prices. So one evening I went and bought the cheapest ticket ~$42 way up in the balcony.
My best description would be to call this event an opera, with the drums replacing the voices. There was a plot (story) that I could sort of follow, a young boy (a puppet with two guys in black moving him around to play his part) was mentored by the lead drummer and grew up to be one the most famous drummers with a lot of interplay between the two which I could not always follow. The lighting was quite professional, with spotlights causing the eye to watch specific things, like the little boy who would appear while the guys in black were almost invisible. People would disappear from the stage without me noticing, and different scenes would appear with me not seeing them being set up.
The costumes and choreography was also very professional. Drums would be lowered from above with one woman really communicating with the drum. There were different sizes, kinds, colors, and sounding drums as well as flutes, and some different instruments including some stringed ones I can only describe as Japanese. There were some dancers and acrobats who would perform, such as doing cartwheels together across the stage, and other stunts to draw your attention to a new scene. I was very impressed by the whole event. And at times the drums really filled up the auditorium.
It is now Tuesday the day after my trip to Yanagawa City, which turned out to be similar to what I imagine Venice to be like. Lots of canals with small boats being poled along going under very low bridges. Some beautiful scenes, flowers, buildings, and some run down parts also.
Ai's sister had found a special package deal with train tickets, bus from the train into the city, boat trip, museum, special lunch in the villa - and I was their guest for the day, along with her husband, sister and sister's fiance. Her husband and sister could understand a lot of English but could not speak it.
This was my second local train trip, so I learned a bit more about the process. The boat trip was very entertaining and I really missed out on not understanding the man who was poling (if that the correct word) our boat with his long pole, telling stories, sometimes singing ballads, and ducking when we were going under bridges, some of which we also had to duck with just inches to spare. We then walked around the town and entered the villa to have lunch. Her husband had spent a lot of time on the train studying the meal choices and pointed out which one we were going to have. From the pictures I understood it included fish. Little did I know....
When the meal was served I looked at my tray and realized the only thing I could identity was an egg, and this time I did not assume it was cooked. There was a small long narrow tray like container with three different bowls - the one on the left was pickled jelly fish, the one in the middle was short small mud fishes, and the one on the right contained sea anemones. There was a large covered soup bowl on my right, which I was never understood what it contained but it was good. Then in front of me was something that looked like a large mushroom with some kind of a candle underneath to keep it warm. Then I discovered the top would lift off and it contained another soup. There was some kind of vegetable which was identified as burdock and the egg was put into this soup to cook. I enjoyed the soup and contents. (Later back in Fukuoka at a grocery store buying supplies to make dinner Ai bought something I had seen in my other visits to the grocery store and I asked what it was. She said burdock roots. I looked closer. There were long, maybe 18 inches, and round about the size of a medium carrot. So they could be similar to the burdock roots that we find are a menace in our garden, which I had never had the slightest thought of eating. Ellen won't even allow me to add them to the compost pile and insists they be put in the driveway where they get driven over and cannot re-sprout.) On my left side was another covered dish which contained eel. Yes I was face to face with the eel I had heard about and everyone, including Janet, says they are very tasty. I did eat one of the two pieces and gave the second to Ai's husband. The pickled jelly fish was much better than I could have imagined, and I ate most of it, along with a dish of daikon radish I had heard about. Of the mud fish, I ate the first one but when I bit into the second, it was the head and I gave up. The sea anemone I tried and ate about half of the first one. Turns out that Ai had not eaten them before (or the mud fish) but cleaned her plate completely.
I have a theory: with less land around a large population they learned to eat what was available in the water, while we, surrounded by lots of land, learned to eat crops and grazed animals.
Several people have asked for pictures of my apartment. Ellen is going to try to provide some from the AirBnB site. If you have other questions or suggestions, just let me know.
Now I could continue for much more, being known for writing long papers, but I must stop or I will never send. But I will add that I have received by way of my mailbox, a new portable wifi and charger, and returned the old one to my mailbox as requested. It seems to work much better and I can even use my phone for voice translating which takes a lot of back and forth with the cloud. For the rest of this month I am limited to 2 GB and after the first of the year, unlimited. So now I have my travel and communication tools back again. If I could get a server setting that would allow me to send my email using Thunderbird again, I would be a very happy camper.
Having a ball, and an adventure. My three months will be over much too soon. Love you and know you are happier not being here doing what I am doing....
Love and miss you,
Ron
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Last updated: 23 January 2016
