Halloween in Japan

Well Halloween is now over, and what a wondrous festivity it was this year for me and mine. I sorted out my costume quite a while back, actually, but didn't really sort out where we were going until much later- Halloween afternoon to be precise.

What was I, you ask? Well let's see how well you pay attention:

I've actually written about this guy before:

He is none other than Hokkaido's mirthful ball of excited algae, Marimokkori! Since I brought it up last year, however, I have noticed that the mokkori madness has caught like wildfire all across the nation with local flavors galore. The first of these fellows I ran across was one from Nikko, which is quite well known for its monkeys... which is in turn why I just had to go there. Next I noticed it up in Sendai, where they had a Date Masamune version which I dubbed Date mokkori. Then this past month when I was down in Ishigaki I saw what seems to be the next level of mokkorism. They have taken the traditional Okinawan Shiisa and mokkorified it to bring you: Shiisa mokkori. Old men shiver and look away as babies run in fear from... Shiisa mokkori.

...ok yeah, they tried to make it as cute as they could, but in the end it's still a lion-dragon thingie with a boner.

So anyway, that was Halloween - more pics, as always, can be found at my flickr page. Now that Halloween is over, of course, this can mean only one thing in Japan: it's Christmas season. Back home there's that nice buffer of Thanksgiving between the two commercial juggernauts that are Halloween and Christmas, but over here we are not afforded such a privilege and are thus subjected to pretty much straight commercialism from last month all the way through Valentine's Day, and probably beyond if I think about it.

Luckily for me, I'm too busy with work to focus on it too much... thank God.

Ishigaki: Your Next Vacation Destination

Ok, been rather busy lately, as you may have noted by my absence from any and all things blog-related as of late. On the plus side, the less I'm writing here the more I'm finding new and interesting things to write about! So without any further ado, allow me to present the topic of this entry: a little island I recently had the pleasure of visiting called Ishigaki. If you live in Japan, I highly recommend that you make this your next vacation destination!!

For those of you not in the know, you are in for an absolute treat. Before I get into the nitty gritty, just take a look at the picture above - look at that water! You can see all the way to the bottom in what is some of the clearest water you will find anywhere on the planet. The color that is there is mostly a pale blue to green, colored largely in part by the copious amounts of corals that abound, sometimes mere inches from the surface. Seriously- this was the only place I've ever been where you could see tropical fish swimming around your feet by merely wading in a few meters from the beach! Tiny little bright blue fishies (and one big gray guy they kept nibbling at my back), one big jump from the shore on the northern beach of Ishigaki.

Ok, so now that I have your attention, a little background. Ishigaki is the highest populated island in the Yaeyama island chain, the most southern and western cluster of islands in Okinawa (and Japan, for that matter). Okinawa itself is closer geographically to Taiwan than it is to Tokyo, and Ishigaki is another hour's plane ride from the main island of Okinawa. Here's a nice little travel guide of the area I found.

So once you get down there, what is there to do you ask? Well besides the clear waters that are perfect for diving and full of all kinds of coral everywhere and manta rays if you go to the right part, there is a culture that is about as far removed psychologically from Tokyo as it is spatially. These guys are laid back, and they can cook to boot. Champuru is probably the most famous Okinawan cuisine, and it's great down here whether you go with the goya (see right) or tofu variety. To drink, you either have your choice of Orion beer or Awamori, Okinawa's version of Shochu. For those interested, I've looked up a rather decent tofu champuru recipe which I will more than willingly translate and share with anyone.

So that's all rather common knowledge for anyone who knows anything about Okinawa, but what isn't that common knowledge is that Ishigaki is also home to a huge number of Black Angus cattle and a great local beer, named rather simply but aptly Ishigaki Beer. Yes they take orders online, and I highly encourage you to flood their inbox with requests for their Weitzen, modeled proudly by yours truly on the left. I can think of no better way to try it out than to head out to a steak house in the sticks run by a farm and use it to wash down some succulent beefy bits of... beef. It's still what's for dinner. So now you have your choice between goya and steak, Orion and Weitzen, check.

What about the sights? Well personally I liked the caverns there, but more than that are the other islands that come with the package, some as close as a 10 minute ferry ride away. Yaeyama basically just means "8 islands", so take your pick and hop on the boat. I saw two others, Iriomote and Taketomi. For info on the other islands, check the guide referenced above.

First off for me was Iriomote, home to 75% of Japan's mangroves. This place is almost totally jungle and totally amazing, wildlife and everything. There are also some great waterfalls to go along with the crazy trees and vibrant wildlife - they are also known for their cats, the yamaneko, and have some great lizards and butterflies around. An all day jungle tour here with some optional diving is a great way to go. Here we also stopped off on Barras island, but really calling it an island is generous. It's basically a mound of coral that is barely visible at high tide, but at low tide juts out high enough for you to "land" there as a jumping point for diving or snorkeling.

Next on the agenda was Taketomi, the butterfly island. At only a 10 minute ride from Ishigaki port, you'd be stupid not to check this place out for at least an afternoon. If you rent a bike, you can make your way around the entire island in about 3 hours, which basically consists of a tiny village with a population of 350 residents or so, probably 50 times as many butterflies, and beaches. Some of the beaches have coral sand shaped like little stars, and the village itself has sweet architecture which is nothing like you'll see anywhere at least in mainland Japan. This is a great place to spend a totally relaxing afternoon on the beach and just zone out.

So plenty to see, and because Japan is goofy like that you can spend a week seeing all this for about the same price as you would pay to rent a car and drive from Tokyo to Hiroshima with a few stops along the way... I did the math. Next time you wonder why so many Japanese people travel more abroad then they do within their own borders, ponder on that one for a few.

Here are a few other choice photos I took in my travels, with the full album available on my flickr account.

View from Sunset Beach - NW part of Ishigaki

Shisa statue on Taketomi island

Taking a drink at Pinay Sara (sp?) falls, Iriomote island

A cow put to manual labor, pulling suigyuu duty. These are most famous off of Iriomote, but this picture was taken on Taketomi.

Another shisa, just because they're that cool.

New Pictures and videos.

Hey all, so the first round of new pictures and videos is up for your perusal - this time from my snowboarding trip up north. More to come soon.

photos
vids

Back by popular demand...

Ok, I would hereby like to apologize to my apparent fan base back home - I have been asked by no less than 5 people in the last week when I'm going to update this blog. Yes I've been absent for the better part of 2-3 months now, and it's not because of a lack of anything new for sure... quite the opposite. There's plenty to tell, just not enough free time budgeted to updates here.

A few tidbits:
-back into capoeira the last couple months - good times
-moving to downtown Tokyo - more good times
-I'm now 29 - good times (pics uploaded)

The rest will have to wait until substantiated answers can be provided, so patience. Once the move has been completed it'll mean my commute will be cut at least in half, providing me with more of the sleep that my body craves more than crack but also placing me smack dab on 2 of the main lines in Tokyo for the uber-convenience that people dream about and I need. Hopefully this will mean more time for updates too, so keep your fingers crossed.

In the meantime, I've uploaded pictures of my birthday party on flickr - the rest can be viewed on facebook if you're into that sort of thing. Ok, won't be 2 months this time, promise!!!

Kanamara: the Japanese Peni-fest

Hey, so long time no post... first I didn't feel like posting anything, then I was just too busy, but this one's just too good to pass up. I'll probably tell the full story of the past month or so eventually as it is pretty damn amusing once I can distance myself from it a little more, but for now I'll just say that the last month has involved a girl, a girl, capoeira, dancing with many girls, pajamas, drinking, flowers, a train, capoeira, more dancing, a drunk girl, more flowers, yet more dancing, a little tequila, a crazy girl, Britney Spears, tomatoes, another club, guys dressed up like girls, a shrine, and penis-shaped candy. If you got the joke mixed in there then you're one of a growing select few, and if you followed the whole thing then come and get your prize. ;P

So... now on to the main attraction - what you may have heard of referred to as "that Japanese penis festival", Kanamara Matsuri! For the linguistic breakdown, 'kana' is a variation of the word metal and 'mara' is a seldom if ever used word meaning phallus. And there you have it. If you're like my dad and can't even utter the word 'penis' in public or if you just have the attention span of my 2-year-old nephew, you can just skip right to the pictures here. Here's a little taste:

So is this for real you ask? Why yes, it in fact takes place every year on the 1st Sunday of April in Kawasaki Taishi at the Kanayama Shrine (金山神社）and has been doing so since the Edo Period. The purpose? Well, it's supposed to be a shrine for people to pray for protection from STDs... and from what I've heard young Japanese people don't pray too much anymore. Oh, and according to Wikipedia...

"...There's also a legend of a demon that hid inside a young girl and castrated two young men on their wedding nights before a blacksmith fashioned an iron phallus that was used to break the demon's teeth, leading to the enshrinement of the item."

Wow. So before there was Bobbitt, there was giant pink penis demon guy, interesting. Another fun thing about this is that people on the other side of the world are more likely to know about it than people that live even in Kawasaki, the city outside of Tokyo where it takes place. Most Japanese will stare at you in utter disbelief if you try and tell them about this, unless they're the type to feel shame on behalf of their country because of it. The cool ones embrace it and find themselves scattered in amongst the gaijin-filled crowds, grinning ear to ear with the rest of us and taking pictures as they giggle and chortle to themselves at penis pops and phallic floats. Lots of foreigners do show though - I went alone ahead of the roommates and ran into no less than 4 foreign friends, including a couple that has gone together for the past 3 years and counting! The people that run and come to this festival are more laid back than the majority of the populace though and have embraced the foreign element. The festival is currently used to raise and fund research for HIV research.

So what happens at this festival you ask? Well they have three main giant phallic symbols: the main is a big black steely dealy, next comes the one-eyed pink monster, and last we have the classic woody. The black one and the pink one get to play their roles being paraded down the streets by cross-dressers in kimono and guys wearing sumo diapers (yes I know they're really called 'fundoshi', but "sumo diapers" just has such a nice ring to it) in a traditional practice known as omikoshi. Alas I missed the parade due to no less than 5 of the items mentioned above in the intro, but video of last year's can be seen here. The wooden guy has a more passive role as it camps out and watches the fort, sitting there waiting to be ridden for a great photo opportunity. Again, I showed late and missed out, but there are plenty of examples floating around the internet if you search.

Other main attractions include the crossdressers which are all over the place and the erotic lollipops, with both male and female version to please all. There were so many people in line for the candy that the guy making it had everyone standing around waiting play jan-ken just for the chance to pay him 600yen for a penis (or pussy) pop (his wording not mine). I lost, but will most definitely be back for revenge next year.

Now as I noticed a veritable dearth of information online about this in English, I'll give a recap of the specs of this event in the hope that it will help even just one soul find their way to this wondrous happening.

Name: Kanamara Matsuri, aka "the Penis Festival"　（金まら祭）　

Place: Kawasaki Daishi　（川崎大師）, Kanayama Shrine （金山神社）

Time: 1st Sunday of April, with the parade starting around 12 noon. Be early!!

Getting there: from JR Kawasaki station, turn right and go down the stairs/escalator. Notice the elevated train tracks in front of you and follow them to your left to Keikyu Kawasaki station.（京急川崎駅）
Take the platform on the right labeled Kawasaki Daishi and it's maybe the 3rd stop.
From the station here, go right out of the station and you'll see the shrine which is just around the corner once you cross the street.

And with that, I hope to see you there next year! Mike? ;P

Once again, pictures here!

New videos

Just finished uploading a bunch of videos onto the youtube account - check them out here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/ddurgee

This includes stuff from my Christmas visit back home and my recent snowboarding trip to Hakuba in Nagano, tons of fun!!

Summer of Doug, pt. IV - Okinawa: picture edition!

I love you guys almost as much as I love this fish...

After no less than a 1 month delay, I'm finally getting around to putting up pictures from my trip to Okinawa! As a side note though, this does not yet include the underwater diving pictures, so stay tuned for those. If you give me even more time, I might even comment on what the hell the pictures are about... wouldn't that be something!

Summer of Doug, pt. I

Ok this one's gonna be a biggie, so I'll be parsing it out over a couple posts in the next week or so. First the big news - as of Monday, I start a nice, new shiny job in Tokyo as a translator++ at a big-ass company known as the IHI Corporation! They actually changed the official name recently to IHI from the original Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries, probably because it's just too damn hard to say. So anyway, this means that over the past month or so I finished up my stint as CIR in Shichigahama with most likely the busiest 10 days I had there ever, then took the last few weeks to settle into my new environs with a whole bunch of partying and traveling interspersed between. I'm currently living in (technically) Yokohama, just south of Tokyo with my new roomie and old friend from the Chiba days, Matt.

There's a whole bunch to cover... I've been back to Miyagi, up to Nikko, down to Okinawa, and out to Tokyo a bunch with wrapping up one job and lining up things for another while moving in and all that jazz. This means that I've ridden the shinkansen 7 times, flown twice, and driven the main island of Okinawa from tip to tip, north to south with a whole bunch of stops in between for a grand total in the ballpark of I'd guess 6,000km traveled. It certainly hasn't been cheap (especially weekends in Tokyo), but it has been entertaining! And with that, I'm off to bbq today! I'll be uploading pictures from my last trip and updating you here shortly.

New pictures!!

Hi all,

There's been plenty of material going on lately for me to share with you all, but until I get around to that there are some new pictures up on the flickr account, so have fun with that for now!

Edit: and here's some videos too!


The soon to be infamous monkey video:

Kegon Falls - one of the 3 largest in Japan:

Because words alone totally blow

Ok, so I'm FINALLY getting around to uploading some real pics for youse guys n gals out there - check out my flickr account either here or on the little tab thingie that I'm pointing to right now, but since you can't see where I'm pointing just look to your right. No, other right you putz... yeah, that one. Hopefully that'll be enough to keep you happy for a while. Oh, and in closing Stevie Wonder rocks, and if you don't agree with me then you totally suck. ;P

And if that's not enough for you, here's the Headline of the Century!!! Courtesy of George.