So people have been complaining that I haven’t posted much here recently… Sorry. But I just finished 2 posts chock-full of photos that I had started back in mid-August and never got around to finishing. In my defense, August and September have been extremely busy. My schedule at work has become so full that it’s not even funny anymore, and I’ve been busy otherwise cleaning or dealing with hospitally stuff.

For now, my friend Angel from Florida has come to visit me. We’re having a lot of fun — and it’s nice to finally have a visitor (she visited me before even anyone in my family did!) as well as an excuse to tour around.

With the cost of plane tickets back home this winter, all this sightseeing, and hospital bills that I don’t even want to imagine, this will probably be the last time I get to travel or do anything fun for a loooong time. After this, I need to start saving for next year when I become a starving artist and try to earn an income painting.

I’ll post photos and more updates of what I do in September after the month is over and Angel leaves.

After Osaka I came back to Takefu and rested for a day, then danced in Takefu’s Furusato Matsuri like I did last year. Actually, the night was almost exactly like last year’s… I met the new JETs from Fukui prefectures as they came to Takefu to dance, I helped out with some translating and festival organizing, and I got free McDonald’s. The main differences were that this year I had an iPhone, so I was able to take better pictures, and this year I wore my own yukata, which was a nice feeling. I also was able to have real conversations with Japanese people outside, and I helped an old woman find a bus.

A dragon float

Lining up, getting ready to dance

Another float and dancers

After the dancing, I went to my room and painted. I was exhausted and sweatier than a Turk in a sauna. I started to get a slight sore throat by the end of the night, and when I woke up in the morning I had a full blown horrible fever from hell. I thought I would just rest it off in bed, but by noon I knew it wasn’t going away so I forced myself to go to the (dreaded) hospital — something which I had promised myself I wouldn’t do again. Luckily it wasn’t crowded, and I was able to speak with the hospital staff fairly well. I got an IV drip and they told me to come back twice a day, every day for 3 days — luckily since I live so close to the hospital I didn’t have to be admitted overnight. After that first trip I went home to take a nap when I realized I hadn’t had a chance to go shopping yet — there was no food, let alone vitamin drinks and such (which I had been told to drink by the doctor). I tried to go out, but I nearly collapsed, so I had to call my coworker Mayuko to bring my some food. I felt so horrible, but she brought me some drinks and a sandwich from the grocery store, and then that night Hitomi came back from Osaka to take care of me fore one night, then return to Osaka the next morning… Talk about an amazing girlfriend. That night was so awful — I was hallucinating and having fever spasms and all sorts of awful that I can’t remember — but Hitomi took care of me and wrote down all of my symptoms on a piece of paper for me to give the nurse the next day. The doctor and nurses were pretty concerned when he saw that, so they said maybe I should get my tonsils out. The infection apparently had come in through the canker sores I get almost monthly on my tonsils. (I think I’ve been mentioning that for years in my blog, so that’s nothing new.) I was so happy to finally hear someone mention taking them out — I had asked my doctor in the US 3 times if taking my tonsils out could stop the pain, or if I could do it at all, and each time I was told it was not worth doing, and I should just learn to deal with the horror of recurring throat ulcers. Bah. Well not anymore!

Anyway, just like last year, later in the week there was a fireworks festival at the Hino river. However, this year I was horribly horribly sick, so I didn’t go. I just played Civ 4 and watched them from my window. Luckily I still had a good view.

Fireworks from behind my prison bars

And that was pretty much my summer vacation. Hitomi came home that weekend and took care of my until I was better. Then on Monday we went to the Fukui Prefectural Hospital (the only hospital in the area that can perform such “major” surgery) and scheduled a tonsillectomy (October 8th, for the record). By the time I had to go back to work I was feeling better, but man that was a rough week.

More than a month after I began this post, I’m forcing myself to sit down and finish it. This was supposed to be part of my summer vacation update, which was cut short due to my hospitalization.

This first group of photos was from the Aeon trip to Katsuyama Ski Jam — our summer vacation party. We took a charter bus from Takefu to Katsuyama on a swelteringly hot day. The trip was about 1.5 hours through beautiful countryside and mountains. The site, Ski Jam, functions as a ski slope in the winter, and a tourist trap in the summer. Everything was so expensive it made Disney World seem like a bargain. The food was fine, though, so no complaints there, and it was the first time I was able to find “dark beer” in Japan, which was delicious.

It was *waaay* too hot though, and being a ski slope there were not really any cool tree spots to take cover in — not good for a summer bbq. We did get to play on the grass sleds (300 yen for 30 minutes — oy!) which was fun, but not fun enough. The hill wasn’t very steep and grass just isn’t all that fast for sledding. I had to be a jackass and stand on my sled, which drew a lot of eyes but made the experience entertaining enough that I didn’t mind spending that much.

After that, though, came the awesome part. Everyone split into groups to try other various activities. Some people played on the zip cords, some people played table tennis, and some people just escaped to the air conditioned lodge. One of my coworkers, Hitomi, and I, however, went to the wooden bridge walk. The picture on the brochure wasn’t much — I thought it would be a walk in the woods with one rope bridge… but it turned out that they had built a whole network of rope and wood walkways up in the trees, so you could walk around a small foresty copse all high above the ground.  Plus in the forest the air was cool and pleasant — nothing like under the sweltering sun. The photos can’t capture the beauty of the trees or the amazing views it offered, but suffice it to say it was one amazing forest walk. The whole time I felt like I was back playing Myst for the first time. While everyone else was sweating in the heat, the three of us actually took a nap on a platform above the forest floor. Very cool.

I lost my balance trying to stand on the grass sled; that's my sled halfway up the hill.

The forest walk felt like a level in Myst.

Good view of the mountains from the tree tops

Hitomi in the trees

Hitomi’s aunt had given us two tickets to a Noh performance on the same day, so after the BBQ, we hurried out to the village of Awatabe, near Takefu. Noh is hard to describe, but it’s a traditional type of play with very distinct vocal patterns and movements. It’s beautiful and surreal.

The Noh we went to see was performed by Nomura Mansai, a very famous Japanese actor. I remember back when I was working at the JASGP he came to Washington DC to perform Noh, and I really wanted to go — but not by myself. So this time I was able to go with Hitomi for free, and the performance was outdoors at a shrine. It was such a fantastic experience.

The previous night Hitomi had explained the Japanese story summaries for me so I wouldn’t be so in the dark during the performance. There were a few Kyogen performances too, which are also very old and traditional and hard to understand, but just a little bit less difficult. With Hitomi’s explanation the night before, I was able to follow the stories. They were actually pretty funny. One was about a rice merchant from Sado island who bumps into a rice merchant from Echigo on their way to the capital. They start having a bragging contest that ends up a debate over what a fox looks like. The Sado merchant didn’t want to make Sado seem more backwards than other prefectures, so he bribed a local lord to tell him what a fox looks like and then vote in his favor while acting impartial. It was pretty funny. The second Kyogen was about a servant charged to buy some sake for a festival, but his master gave him no money and ran out of credit at the store, so the servant has to trick the shopkeeper into giving him the sake. Not as funny as the other one, but still good.

The Noh performance was the final one, and absolutely impossible to follow. Hitomi said she also couldn’t understand the difficult language. It was a story about a man who is charged to forge a sword for the emperor but has no partner. He prays to Inari, the fox god, who sends a child to help him forge the sword. The chanting and music were haunting, and the costumes were so complex and beautiful… the whole event seemed like some kind of fantasy. It was really cool.

The entrance to the shrine/park where we saw Noh

The Noh stage

Lanterns in the shrine area around the stage

The next day we went to Osaka. Hitomi’s summer vacation was nixed and instead she had to go to a study meeting in Osaka. (We had originally planned to go to an onsen in Ishikawa… sigh.) But to make the most on it, we went to Osaka a day early and did some sight seeing. It was another swelteringly hot day, so the line at the aquarium was out the door and a 45 minute wait. It was a painful wait under the burning sun, with no shade at all. But the Osaka aquarium was really nice.

Afterwards we went to a mall nearby and had dinner, visited a tiny mall petting zoo, and saw a really awesome ninja shop. We went through a ninja maze in the mall, too, which was a store converted into a tiny little funhouse with a ninja theme. It was fun, but I don’t think Hitomi could understand why I thought it was so cool.

The Osaka Aquarium

Super awesome octopus!

Kaiyuukan has 2 whale sharks and a giant manta ray in a huge tank.

Crabs from the ocean floor that look like they came from outer space

Hitomi and a sheep -- too cute!!!

This monkey really wanted whatever was in Hitomi's bag.

Japanese book stores are filled with such amazing art. I wish I could buy it all!

The next day I had planned to go to Osaka Castle by myself while Hitomi went to work, but I was just too exhausted. So I rested a lot and then went to the electronics shop and drooled all day. We went out to dinner and explored the book stores around the station. Big city bookstores in Japan are amazing! They are literally floor-to-ceiling with books, and some aisles are as narrow as 1 foot! Most of the books aren’t even labeled (let alone in English), and some of them are well over 100 years old. You can find packs of pre-WW2 post cards and just tons of amazing treasures. Collectors would be in heaven. There are also tons of woodblock prints. The mustly smell of these shops and the cramped feeling of them is an amazing experience, and I love it. I wish I had tons of money to buy all of the artwork though…