Taifun...

EDIT: The pictures that weren't previously working are up and running now, sorry about that!


Yes that's right, TYPHOON'S A COMIN'!! It hasn't hit yet, but I think we're gonna get slammed either tonight or tomorrow. Here's my visual response to that:

"A-pardon?"


So now that I'm almost caught up, I can share things with slightly better reccollection as I've had less time to forget everything. *Laughs*

One of the things Sasebo is famous for, besides the hamburger, is Japan's longest strip mall. They call it the arcade here, and its just one incredibly loooong chain of stores and cafes packed together in the downtown. Its my new favourite place! It makes shopping incredibly easy, which is something that I was previously a little frustrated by. Since there is the navy base close by, its also crawling with foreigners, mostly American soldiers who occasionally have their girlfriends. These pictures don't really show just how far the arcade goes on for, but it gives some idea of it.


These kimono were outside of a shop on display, and I really wanted to take a picture of them. I actually ended up chatting with a girl from Australia who was also taking a picture, who had been an ALT and was just heading home. I got the strange feeling we were each slightly envious of the other, for reasons pertaining to where we were each headed.

So I had found the arcade because I was meeting up with two other ALTs, Jeff from the U.S., and my friend Hitoshi from Toronto. Hitoshi is in an interesting situation, because he's half-Japanese and half-Chinese, so he looks Japanese and has a Japanese name, but is completely Canadian. I think he often has to explain to people that he can't understand when they start to rattle off in Japanese to him.

Jeff is a nice, though incredibly hyper-active, guy from Virginia, who spent $200 on a bike and barely got off of it while we were roaming around. He's an interesting character, because though he's from the States, he was very vocal about how much he hated all the foreigners around the arcade. He wants to be as Japanese as possible, but I couldn't help myself from talling him, "Dude...you do realize that..YOU are a foreigner too, eh?" Then he made fun of me for saying 'eh' and being so Canadian, so that was that.

The backdrop for both of those pictures was a sushi restaurant with a rotating belt, where you pull off what you what to eat and each plate only costs 100 yen (about a buck). In the store was a young American couple, the man a soldier, the girl his girlfriend from Florida, I learned after saying hi to them. At one point, the man tried to ask the waiter/sushi maker for 'water', but he just kept saying "wadder" over and over again, in the fast, slightly mis-pronounced way that we say it back home. "Wadder? Wadder? Wadder?" Just non-stop, and the waiter didn't know what the heck he was asking for! Finally I got fed up and just asked on behalf of him for 'mizu', which is water in Japanese, and then the waiter realized what was going on. "Oh! Mizu-oh!! Wa..water!" I was so frustrated at the soldier, what was he expecting, that 'wadder' was going to pass to someone who can't speak English? Crimeny.

The next day Hitoshi and I met up again to just wander around, and he ended up inviting a friend of his who was from Sasebo, though currently studying in Fukuoka. Her name was Tomoko, whom Hitoshi and met when she'd visited Canada for a little while, and she spoke fairly good English! She brought one of her friends however, a professional pianist named Yuu, who spoke no English at all but was incredibly nice. We all went to a cafe, where they had cheap and yummy cake! This is the only picture I have that shows the girls off nicely, though I look like a mammoth. *laughs* Tomoko is on the far right, Yuu in the middle.

As it turned out, that same night was the 'Obon' festival, which is celebrated all over Japan, just in different magnitudes. The Obon festival is kind of similar to our old "All Hallow's Eve", where it is believed that the spirits of the dead return on that night. Families who have lost a member over the last year buy huge paper and flower boats, then carry (or roll, if they're really big) them down the main street towards a park where they are burnt.


I was told by Tomoko that these boats are apparently incredibly expensive, and some of the bigger ones can cost around $25,000! Just to go and be burnt!






Here is the same boat as in the above right picture, but at a better angle.




Most of the boats were smaller, like this one on the right, but really beautifully decorated. Part of the festival also includes constantly dropping small firecrackers into the street, but I didn't take any pictures of that on account of the fact that for some reason they scared the bejeezuz out of me! I'm not easily scared, but every time a series of them went off I jumped! Even when a small family asked me if I wanted to try setting some off I refused, citing they were too loud and scary. I can't remember the last time I was so girly.

This was the biggest, most extravagent boat I saw, and it was just amazing. I can't imagine the cost though, but I wish I could find out how important the person(s) who died must have been to warrent this amazing thing.





The procession ended not long after I saw that big boat, but the firecrackers kept going off, and kept the air smelling like sulphur for another couple of hours. After we had seen most of the procession, we all headed to "Lucky Burger", our second choice for dinner after the original restaurant the girls had picked was closed. It immediately reminded of the 'America Town' that the Simpsons once spoofed on an episode where they visited Japan and went out to eat. There was vintage style posters all over the walls for Coke and John Deere and other various things, the music was all American oldies, and the garbage can in the middle of the restaurant was a huge barrel painted to look like the U.S. flag.

The burgers certainly weren't what I would call 'American' though, with very little meat and tons of veggies and mayo. It was tasty though!


And on that cheery note, I shall say that's all fer now folks! I'll letcha know what happens with the typhoon. My prediction: rain.