After we visited Kiyoko's friend, we walked towards the beach, there was a path that looked like it was straight out of fuedal Japan. It was pretty cool, kinda made me wish I was wearing my Yukata and the awesome hat.
After walking down the path, we emerged onto the beach, I took my shoes and socks off and ran as fast as I could manage towards the ocean because the sand was scalding hot. Personally, I never walk around barefoot except for martial arts, but thats about it. The water felt so nice after that molten sand.
Nozomi and I waded around in the water for like half an hour, looking around for cool rocks or shells. Kiyoko walked ahead of us scouring for interesting rocks to add to her garden while I looked for some shells. After a little while, I started looking for flat skipping stones and Nozomi joined me, we just started trying to skip stones till we were bored. However, before boredom set in, Kiyoko wanted to head back to where we left our shoes, and trust me, crossing that molten sand was not fun. Kiyoko had already gone ahead of us, and by the time I was ready to venture across the lava fields, she was just standing up on the nice cool stone path where we left our shoes. The sand had gotten hotter and as I was running up towards the steps, I was yelling "Atchi, atchi!!", which in English means "Hot, hot!!!". I was so hilarious that by the time I got up on the stone, Kiyoko was clutching her sides from the laughing.
After we got done with the beach, we walked back to the car and drove to the city's nearby waterfall. The waterfall was small/tame enough that a path had been built so you walk right down to the waterfall. Kiyoko, Nozomi, and Setsuko cooled their feet in the water, I just kinda walked around and took pictures.
Nozomi and I found more skipping stones and we started skipping rocks off the pool after 50 feet away from the base of the waterfall. After a while, we left and went to a music museum. I thought this place was gonna be kinda boring, but I ended up liking it, they had more than just record players, old videocameras, an original Edison phonograph, a Japanese typewriter(that thing was insane), and a few other things. Towards the end of the tour, we got to select a few records from their library of 1.5 million records to listen to. I found The Moody Blues records and selected a record with the song, "Story in Your Eyes", good song. We all listened to a song we wanted to, then decided to get going home and for supper. On the way out, guess what I happened to spot. The infamous Japanese Wasp! These things were featured on the National Geographic channel, and are the largest, most vicious wasps in the world. A few of these things can decimate a colony of a million honeybees. Luckily there was only one, I was trying to tell Kiyoko and Setsuko where the thing was perched, we were a good 20 feet from the thing, and I could easily see it, the thing was the size of my thumb. I was trying to tell them it was not a bee, it was a wasp, but I didn't know what wasp was in Japanese, we looked it up and after they knew what it was, they were like "Ack! Gotta get outta here!!!". I was able to explain to them that the thing was the biggest and most vicious wasp in the world, just had to know the japanese for wasp. Here's some pictures of this last paragraph(yes, I did manage to get a good picture of the wasp from twenty feet away, I love my camera) .
This made me laugh when I saw it...
The Moody Blues section!
After we got back to Nagayo, we went to a sushi restaurant . I didn't take any pictures, but all the plates of sushi were on a conveyor belt, with the sushi guys in the middle making the stuff. Basically, plates of sushi go round and round, and you just snag what you want. At the end, they count how many plates there are and ring up the total. For 4 people, it was only like 5100 yen, talk about cheap!
And so ends Day 1 of Golden Weekend.
On Sunday, I thought I was gonna meet up with 2 people to explore around Nagasaki, however, I found out this wasn't the case after i already hopped on the bus. So, resigning the fact I'd spend the day wandering by myself alone , it wasn't all that bad. I went to downtown Nagasaki, to the shopping arcade known as Hamanomachi. I've been here at least 3-4 times now, but I made a few discoveries I had somehow missed in the past visits. I found a useful electronics store, I didn't buy anything, but it was nice to know I could count on the place if I needed it. And then I also found this cool anime/manga/CD floor in a store I had been to all the floors except the basement floor in the past visits. After that, I visited another anime store I had been to before and took a hard look at some of the stuff they had gotten in that wasn't there last time. I ended up buying some Bleach(anime) stuff and this nifty little screen cover for my cell phone. Basically, only you can see the screen, anyone looking at it from an angle sees a warning alerts from another anime I like. I'm trying to decide whether I want to put it on my cell phone here, or back on my cell phone at home, decisions decisions....
After that, I decided to set out looking for this kimono store my host mother had found and given me their little brochure. However, the brochure had way too many kanji I didn't know and the map was poor, so while I was looking around in the only general direction I knew to walk, I stopped at several stores along the way. I also found some cool figurine shops that I figure I'll blow some of my leftover money at before I leave Japan. I also found this beautiful Japanese paper parasol for 1360 yen. I was stunned that I was that lucky to find something, I bought it of course.
I can't wait till I have my own house, my host mother was saying I'm gonna have like one of the coolest Japanese rooms ever, and I was agreeing with her. It'll just be like one large room, or maybe a basement with all things Japanese, tatami mats and such.
Well, I never did end up finding the kimono store that Kiyoko found, I did finally run across the spectacles bridge. Lots of us wanted to see it but we've never been down this way before, I got a really cool picture too, there's these stone blocks running across the river that you can walk on to the center so you can take a nice picture, which i did so.
After the bridge, I found this store with all these Japanese antiquities. There were kabuki masks, dishes, dolls, and ..... used kimono?! Jackpot, this still wasn't the store Kiyoko found, but oh man, they had some nice stuff here and it was all really affordable. Unfortunately I didn't find any men's kimono in my size. The lady was very nice and patient, and I was able to communicate for the most part in Japanese with her, she knew very little English. After we had for the most part determined there were no kimono in my size, I continued looking at the men's obi(kimono belt) which would fit me, they were only 3000 yen and were very reasonable in price. The lady was still looking through her other stocks of kimono, but still ended up finding nothing. I was now looking at the women's kimono and accessories. All the stuff in this shop were probably used, nevertheless, all of the kimono were in tip-top shape for the most part. What attracted my eye were the formal obis, formal obis are usually extremely expensive, with the cheapest new ones costing at least 200 bucks. Some obis cost as much as the women's kimono itself, or more(which is absolutely insane). In the end, I found 2 formal obis I liked and could afford, along with a tomosode. I showed all of this to Kiyoko when I got home and she was amazed, I seem to have a good amount of luck finding certain things, however, that Kingu-kingu sizu(XXL size) still eludes me. If I find one though, then so help me I'm going back to china town to buy those extra tall geta, I shall be like 6'7" tall, muahahaha! Anyways, Monday I'm going to be digging for clams, random I know, but it should be fun. I got to try the clams we'd be digging at the sushi shop, and they were pretty good. Look forward to the next post, "Golden Week, Part 2...".
Photo Album
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