The Castle and The Water Festival

Saturday, Aug. 6

Woke up slightly hung over today. Nothing a little cup-a-noodle couldn’t fix though. I got dressed and as it was past noon I knocked on Tricia's door to see what she was up to and how she was feeling. She was in fine form, studying no less, and so we decided to hop on our bikes and see a bit more of Shimabara before we had to meet Kayoko at Shimabara castle at three. We wandered around the ‘arcade’ (a large street with tons of shops), drank from the natural spring water that can be found all around the town, saw the carp stream and went to some more of the big stores. We dropped the groceries back at our places and made it to Shimabara castle just in time. Kayoko met us and gave us an amazing 2 hour tour. She really knows her shit. Basically, a lot of the local history is related to Christianity in Japan and while I found it rather interesting, I won’t go into too many details as I know most of you would be bored to tears. If you really want to know more about it you can always email me, but I won’t hold my breath. In any case, the views from the top were gorgeous. Afterwards, we went for a quick snack at a local coffee shop and then headed to the Mizu Mitsuri (I think that’s what its called…basically its supposed to mean the water festival) which was being set up on Old Samurai Road. Well as far as quaint local festivals go, this one kicked ass! They had beautiful candles and lanterns set up against the backdrop of old samurai houses and cobblestone, with a stream running through. There were also people in costume and you could just wander around, gather free stuff and enjoy the light displays. The best part though was the noodle catching. Let me explain what this is. Basically, they have a long open slide made of bamboo and they fit it with a hose so there is a stream running down it (i.e. a water slide type set up). Then they hand out cups with sauce and chopsticks to everyone there and people line up all along the bamboo slide. One person then starts pouring cooked Somen noodles down the slide and everyone tries to catch them with chopsticks and put them in their own cups with sauce. It may not be the most sanitary thing, but holy crap is it fun! The noodles ain’t bad either. We ran into quite a few people at the festival as well and I was also introduced to yet another Japanese teacher, Fumi, who I think will give me Japanese lessons and is quite eager to teach me more about Japanese history (yep, I’m a geek, I know). At this point though, it was around 10pm and I was quite exhausted. Trisha and I said our goodbye’s and headed back to our apartments where we experimented a bit more with Japanese alcohol and showed each other pictures of our friends back home, thus managing to depress ourselves a bit. We agreed that it’s lucky that we live next to each other though, as that is certainly not true of any other JETs that we know of. Laying on my futon later, I went over the day and all the awesome things I’d done and I fell asleep with a feeling of satisfaction.

Sunday, August 7th

Today was pretty laid back. I went to the Hyaku-en (100 yen, or $1) store and bought some wrapping paper for my omiyage (presents for the teachers). I also wrote some journal entries and read a bit. In the evening Trisha and I made our way to the waterfront to see the ocean. There are sadly no beaches in Shimabara, but there is a nice little port and a lighthouse. On our way back we stopped and bought some American movies with Japanese subtitles and went back home to watch them on Trisha’s multiregional DVD player. I went to sleep pretty early as I wanted to be in fine form for the Iaido lesson I’m getting tomorrow. I can’t wait!