Daizaifu

Weekend! Time for field trips. Today I went to Daizaifu. Today it's a small town outside of Fukuoka, but during the 8th to 12th century it was the most important administrative and military centre in all Kyushu. After the Mongolian invasian Hakata (=Fukuoka) became the most important town in Kyushu.

Today it's a huge park-like recreation area which also hosts a number of museums and temples.

This is one of the bridges leading to the Shinto shrineTenmango. This shrine worships Sugawara Michizane (a 9th century sholar) as "God of Scholarship" who was exciled and spent the last two years of his life in Daizaifu. After his death they built a temple to calm down the ghost of Sugawara Michizane who was obviously responsible for a series of catasthrophies.

Although in folclore the God bird "Kiuso" was worshipped (looks like an owl) there are definitly more turtles here than owls. They are everywhere in the ponds and lakes of this site, there are numerous statues and even the big water basin in front of the temple is featuring the 'kame-sama'.

You have to look closely at the bottom of the basin:

A little shrine in the Daizaifu park area:



A wealth of little shops is plastering the street from the station to Daizaifu proper and one thing you definitly have to try is a toasted mochi, a specialty of the area. It's a rice cake filled with sweet azuki bean paste. Try it hot! Oishii!!!

Famous Food in Fukuoka

Tonight I went to the cinemas. As everywhere American movies dominate the scene. Since I didn't want to watch an American movie in Japan (and apart from that I already watched all the blockbusters) I didn't have a big choice. So 'Naruto' it was. It's an anime and based on a very popular manga. Unfortunately there were no subtitles, but since it was the same old story about the good and the evil it was ok. I guess it was good for learning Japanese and it was actually nicely done.

http://umauma-y.com/eiga/Poster/no3151-001.jpg

On my way back I watched a film team at one of the side street restaurants 'Mutchan':

To be honest, I don't even know what kind of food they are offering, but it must be pretty famous, since a TV show camera team showed up. The only thing I know is that they cook something on a hot plate. Hm....maybe I will go there one day and have a closer look.

Canal City

Canal City is a huge shopping and entertainment complex situated along an artificial canal. The modern architecture alone is worth a trip to Canal City:





Kids have their fun here, too:

and there are regular performances on the Canal City Stage:

The best thing, however is the dancing fountain:

Fukuoka City Museum

The City Museum of Fukuoka opened only in 1990. It was used as the official exhibition hall when the Asian Pacific Expo Fukuoka 1989 (Yokatopia) was held in Fukuoka.

Fukuoka City Museum Entrance Hall

Fukuoka City Museum View from Entrance into adjacent Park

It gives a good overview over North-Kyushu's prehistory and history and houses for example the famous gold seal of the kind of Na:

Unfortunately photography wasn't allowed in the exhibition halls, which means I spare you the archaeological details.

Yoshinogari (3)

If you have thought that I finally came to an end with the archaeology part, you are wrong. But this is the last thing you will hear about Yoshinogari. On both sides of a road leading to the main tomb there were more than 2,000 burial jars:

In the tiny but excellent museum on the site you could see the real thing. Alltogether there were 15,000 burials in Yoshinogari. Not bad for a village that was alive for a mere 200 years.

Lets have a quick look inside and than you are done with all the boring archaeology (that is for today :) )

Yoshinogari (2)

Unfortunately a large part of the area was under construction and although they told me it's an excavation I have my doubts, unless you use really really big machines to excavate in Japan:

Like everywhere else, archaeological work is dangerous! Abunai!

They are also growing rice in paddy fields as part of their experimental archaeology:

But beware of the dangerous Japanese water snakes:

Yoshinogari

It's saturday and I was in an adventurous mood this morning. So I took the train and went to Yoshinogari, a Yayoi site, roughly an hour from Fukuoka. Fukuoka train station looks like any other train station in the world and luckily it also works like any other. So I found my way around quite easily without having to know too much Japanese.

Yoshinogari is an archaeological park with a rebuilt Yayoi settlement. Sometimes the reconstructions lacked professionality (the moat being the most horrible concrete reconstruction I have ever seen) but the atmosphere of this beautiful facility redeemed everything. Here an overview:

And some details:

Kumazemi

It might not look too good - but it was delicious; lotus root salad and my all-time favourite, an o-nigiri with umeboshi plum.

Tonight a Kumazemi ('bear cicada') choose to die on my balcony. Its last song was so loud and pityful - not only did I wake up, I jumped upright out of my bed because I thought an ambulance is rushing through my room.
I know they are loud when they are sitting in a tree and chirping their souls out but this was different. That's what she looked like (roughly 6-7cm long) and here is a sound file (just look for Kumazemi) http://kimoto.cc/ykk/semi.html

Fukuoka Tenjin District

Not really much is happening during the week. We have lessons, and because of the heat you try to stay indoors (or in star bucks - lots of cool drinks and a fantastic air conditioning) as much as possible. Yesterday we had a maximum of 40.9 degrees. Today it was much cooler already, maybe 38 or 39°C. But since some people are complaining (!) I went out this afternoon and risked my life (I might have got a heat shock, you know) to shoot some pics of the Tenjin District where my school as well as my little flat are situated.

This is the little park at the back of the Solaria Plaza building, which houses a hotel, a cinema, shops, restaurants and the nice Café Otto with great salads and snacks.

But the Tenjin District is not all business and shopping. Sometimes a tiny spot between the tall buildings harbours a gate to another world:

A little spot of tranquility between all the hustle and bustle outside:

This is an Omu-ya (short for Omurice shop), a little restaurant specializing in Omurice (which is a kind of Omelette with rice and mostly chicken in it). I will definitly go there and ask for a vegetarian one :)

Fieldtrip Disaster Prevention

Today we did a fieldtrip to the "Fukuoka Citizens' Disaster Prebention (sic!) Center".

As you can see our 'kiddies' (= boys) had lots of fun. We learnt what to do when you suddenly notice that there is a fire in your room (= inform the other people in that very room as if they wouldn't notice by themselves). But it involved also practical training, i.e. how to use a fire extinguisher to extinguish a virtual fire:

This is our success story (maybe you should rather walk away and NOT try to extinguish the fire, after all this isn't the Sims):

In case you can't read the screen, it says 'extinguishing failure'.

Another important issue in Japan are earthquakes. I found it very informative that women and children are frightened at a magnitude of 3 whereas men only give up at a magnitude of 6.

Here you can see that our girls are all under the table at a mere 3 earthquake (which confirms the wallpaper information):

Our fieldtrip ended with a visit to the worldfamous baseball arena in Fukuoka, the Yahoo Dome:

Here I also had my very first real Japanese food, an o-nigiri filled with one of these horribly sour umeboshi plums:

First Day at School

Yesterday was a very busy day. In the morning we had exams (didn't I just do that in England?) and an interview and in the afternoon we had lessons till 6 pm. So I was rather exhausted since you just can't sleep if it's too hot and here it doesn't cool down at night. But I shouldn't complain I wanted a hot summer and here it is.

But I managed to get a loan mobile and money! Getting money involved a lenghty and difficult procedure with phonecalls and lots of bowing on behalf of the clerks.

Well the only photo I can offer for this day is my new mobile:

I arrived safely at Tokyo-Narita airport. But there was no time for anything because I had to go to Haneda where the domestic flights from Tokyo are leaving. It was a bad mistake to not take my time and change some money at one of the many ATMs. I went to the limousine bus station at the airport and tried to explain in Japanese where I want to go and a nice and polite young lady even figured out what I wanted. She presented me to the counter, where her collegue was listening all the time and then she said me in perfect English: 'may I have your credit card, please'. She could have told me earlier instead of giving me such a hard time. Anyway, when I received the bus ticket to Haneda I noticed that they gave me one for the next bus which was leaving in 5 minutes. No time for anything. I went straight to the bus stop and two minutes later the luggage and the passengers were in the bus and off it went. Incredible efficient these Japanese people.

In Haneda they suddenly stopped talking in English altogether. Well, in an airport you just follow the crowd and at least numbers I did understand and knew when my flight was announced etc. Not quite two hours later and I was in Fukuoka, where they haven't heard of a language called English. None of the ATMs accepted my credit cards and the girls at the information desks didn't speak English, however, I could coax them into telling me that the banks are already closed and there is no way I could get money now and the underground does not accept credit cards. So there I was, standing around without a single Yen. It was pure luck that some taxis take credit cards so instead of the cheap underground I had to take an expensive taxi to my little flat. But at least I was there. And after an hour wait the extremely charming director and his poodle turned up and let me in.

Now, enough talk. This is my little flat where I will stay for the next three weeks:

This is my even tinier kitchen, but it has got a fridge which is good because if all else fails (and the air con already failed) I can use it to cool down the room:

This is the ultra-tiny bathroom (sorry for the bad pic, but I'm to hot and lazy to do it again):

Vienna

Vienna was wonderful as always. We met friends, went to the cinema (finally movies in their original version), visited the Hundertwasser house, had Sachertorte at the Sacher Café and went shopping. We could even manage an evening at the Schönbrunn Castle.
The best way to get around in Vienna certainly is the underground and it is never boring which is due to the news screens they put up on nearly every station but also because of the 'underground art':

Of couse we went to St. Stephen's Cathedral:

and to the Museum of Natural History to look at the Venus of Willendorf for the umpteenth time:

El Taquito

Yesterday night we were at Karlsruhe, having dinner at a nice Mexican restaurant, which had a decent choice of vegetarian dishes and cactus in some of their recipes. The food was as good as the menue promised, but since it was very crowded we had to wait for nearly two hours till we got our main dish.
Apart from that, we could observe a very odd custom. Female Bachelor parties! Groups of women were wandering around selling roses and wearing strange costumes. It must be a high season for marriages since there were several of them strolling around.

From: http://www.inka-magazin.de/stadtleben/artikel/el-taquito-karlsruhe.html

Homo heidelbergensis exhibition

As you all know (since you are eagerly reading this blog ;) ) there is an exhibition at Mauer near Heidelberg to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the finding of the H. heidelbergensis mandible. The whole event was mostly aimed at kids, with lots of activities centering around 'lithic' man (am I being sexist here?) I cannot write Palaeolithic, because it was a sweeping attack at prehistoric ages covering wildly all ~lithic ages. The children were painting Palaeolithic animals (on paper not cave walls as I may annotate here), were cooking Neolithic spelt soup or throwing a javelin. Prof. Eibner (my dear lecturer and mentor at Heidelberg University) was producing Mesolithic looking flint flakes and not so Palaeolithic looking cores and axes and he also dared to boldly go where no lithic man has gone before. He (unsuccessfully) tried to smelt copper in an open fire. I would have been very surprised had he succeded - in an open fire that is. Still his enthusiasm is unbeatable and I must admit he has a way with kids, always being surrounded by them.

The remainder was more for the adult party. The museum featured the original mandible

photo from www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/heid.htm

And apart from it lots of fossils from the sandpit Grafenrain, where the mandible was found: from voles to rhinoes (sorry, no hippoes though). A short drive or a medium long walk brought you to the sandpit itself where the geology and dating techniques are explained on really nice posters.

The icing of the cake was the evening lecture given by Prof. Eibner. Probably a little bit heavy for the audience present, but nicely done. I wish he had given more of these coherent lectures at uni. But on the other hand his incoherence was his trade mark and the one thing that made him so special and amiable.