My saga weekend - part 2

For those of you just tuning in who missed part one, check it out HEAH.

Edit: fixed the pics that weren't working!

Okay, so I'm a little torn on what to do about pictures today! Not only do I have a BILLION, but I want to post them all, I have very few that I don't want to show you guys! So I think what I'm going to do is not post the thumbnails of all of them as I usually do, but just post the link that you guys can click on - it'll save us all time, you in loading, me in dragging and dropping. Hoo haa!

The day that we trekked to the ninja village was a grey and droopy one, but much to our luck it never actually rained so if anything, we were saved a sunburn! At the gate was this mascot, who was actually incredibly cute and seemingly enthusiastic about its job. Nothing better then a big, felt ninja-cat who is happy to see ya.

Some of you may know that I worked at the Ontario Rennaissance (I know I'm spelling that wrong but I can't be buggered to look up the right spelling atm) Festival for a number of years. Welps, this village reminded me of the Renn Faire constantly - the people, the layout, the weather even! It was like a Japanese version of the Renn Faire, it was great. Much less people worked there though, I think there were maybe half a dozen actors on staff, plus the handful of merchants, but what I really liked about the park was the set up. Though its a little run down, it was still really cool to see these Japanese buildings that were meant to be recreations of Edo-period architecture. There were lots of little touches, like the water-wheel there on the left, that I really enjoyed seeing, it added a lot of charm to the place.

>Here is a side view of one of the buildings, and the little garden that was set up around it.
>Another shot of a building.

There were also a lot of those standies where you can insert your own face into a picture set up around the park, so of course we had to partake.

I've learned that I also really like the look of bamboo, as it is often arranged or is seen to grow in these areas. Here's Gill posing next to the wall that lined our path, with a lot of the tall bamboo growing up behind it.

In this shot you can see some of the great view that we had from the park, as it was located at the top of a tall hill that looked down over Ureshino. You can also see one of them any little statues that were set up!! I have a couple pictures of other ones, they were adorable.

The park was set up to follow a circular path, much of it uphill that we had to hike up, but it was still quite pretty (despite the bare trees and grey day).

Alot of the 'attractions' of the park were passive ones, buildings where you could wander into and look at displays that were usually information about the Edo period (from what we could gather/guess). This was the exterior of one of those buildings, you can sort of see some of the display inside.

This sign post stood outside the building as well, and though I didn't know what it said, I liked it enough to take a picture. oooh, excitement.

An activity that was offered was to paint your own pottery! As I think I mentioned before, Ureshino and Saga are very famous for their pottery and porcelain, so there was some for sale here, and the opportunity to decorate your own inside. Though we didn't do that, I bought two really lovely cups for dirt cheap. Off to the side were some old looking ovens, which might have been used at one time, or is just a run-down display, either way it was quite neat.

Right next to the pottery shop was a this thing, a huge....chunk of tree, in a box. We had no idea what it as but it was massive, and therefore picture worthy. I later asked one of my JTEs what it was, and he explained that it was something that if you pray too, will help your prayers be fufilled. I asked why it was so special, and he said it was because it was so old. All I figured is that the whole tree must have died, so they took that part of the trun and enshrined it. He nodded and seemed to agree, so there you have it! The wish-tree.

Here's Megan trotting off in search of something or other, and you can see more of the path that we trotted up.

On the right of that last picture you can see this statue, which I found incredibly cute. A sign that translated the Japanese description into Korean and English was near her, and it said that she is a divine maiden of love and beauty, and also gambling I think. She had a few different things attached to her - a multi-tasking maiden (ark ark).

Embedded behind some bushes was this statue, who was quite striking with the huge red flame behind him. There was no translated sign for him though, so we had no idea what he was about, but I really liked him. I'm learning that I'm a fan of statues!

>Another building, which was particularly large.
>A shack where a couple of games could be played, including archery which we later hit up.

We were on a mission by this point, because when we'd first entered the park we'd been told to make sure we made it to the ninja show at noon, and since the time was approaching we went seeking the theatre. Lo and behold we did find it!! It was placed on a high point of the hill, so we had to make our way up what appeared to be a no-longer functioning conveyer belt, that had enough traction for us to use it as a ramp. Yeeaaaah, the village had probably seen better days. It was all good though, because there to greet us were ninjas!! Ninjas make everything better!
Inside the theatre was this neat stage, where the drama occured! The two in the left picture were in it obviously, the guy in red being the 'hero' from what we could figure out. Masked-ninja guy was a baddie, one of two going after some kind of scroll the red ninja had. I ended up nick-naming him 'Gopher' because throughout the whole show he kept popping out of places - secret openings in the walls, doors, windows, etc. to try and take a stab at the red-ninja. Gopher also became my favourite. Its the masks, the mystery makes me swoon!

After the show was over all the kids in the audience were invited on stage to try and find three ninja-stars, and those lucky three got prizes. Second prize were tickets to an onsen though, and while I think the mum was happy, the little boy who got it looked a little put out that he didn't get a fake sword like the other two kids. *laughs*

As we exited the theatre to take up the path again, we were way-laid by actors and merchants to come play their games. Since every game was only 100 yen (about a buck) we were seduced, and ended up playing a throwing-stars game! An actor who had played the second baddie during the show ran this game, he was a hoot. I wasn't too bad, actually! The first two came really close to the target, but in my excitement over the third try I whipped it into the dirt. Curses!

Also like the Renn faire, there was a booth where you could have your palm read and fortune told. As always I got that small tinge of temptation, but this time I was able to squish it must faster after I realized I wouldn't know what the dickens was being said to me.

I'm not totally sure what this structure was, but I really liked it and had to take a shot of it.

In another display inside a building was this diorama thingy set up, with information on I think traditional Japanese calligraphy. It was kind of odd, but the guy painting his tongue still makes me laugh.

By then we decided it was time for foodles, and lucky for us (and vegetarian Gill) there was a store selling soup! The inside was quite cosy actually, with a huge tv that was playing "the Last Samurai", fully dubbed over so there was no English. We bought slightly over-priced meals and small glass bottles of coke, and got to relax a little. It was a nice break!

So then came one of the most fun parts of our visit! The dress-up photos. I hadn't known we were going to be doing it, but when I caught up with Megan after she'd trotted off ahead of us, there they were in the small building where you could get you picture taken in 'traditional' Japanese costume! Rather like the Renn Faire. :3 But much cheaper. The girls opted to take their photos together, and the woman who ran the booth spoke a little touch of English and was very friendly. She was also incredibly fast with putting on the costume, whipping that stuff off the racks and onto our bodies at lightning speed! Megan chose the 'Princess' dress, and though we're not totally sure about Gill, she must have been some kind of Noble-woman or goddess of some kind. They both looked fantastic!

I chose the 'Maiko' costume, which is the word for Geisha-in-training. I just wanted to use the umbrella. Unfortunately I had started to laugh when my photo was taken, and so all the dignity and loveliness I was hoping to keep just melted away from me, and so I give you, MY most embaressing picture ever. My stupid head was too big for the wig to really fit properly, so my hairline in this picture is waaaay too high. I still have this up on my wall though, I like that it makes me laugh at myself a little - you don't want to get too serious out here, you'll just get depressed. ;p

After my 'shoot' was over the girls tried taking a few pics of me without the wig, but we were in a hurry so unfortunately I don't have a non-blurry one. Still, I like it much better than the 'professional' one I have! *laughs*

As I mentioned before we also hit up the archery game, since it was cheap and looked like fun. I have to admit I did like how the game-guy helped us out so eagerly! He even made sure the suckers at the ends of the arrows had a better chance of sticking to the targets by wetting them with a sponge before we shot! Megan even won a prize - a little storage box of some kind that we later saw sold in the gift for 1000 yen! She felt pretty slick after learning she'd gotten a ten-dollar prize, at that point.

There was a house set up that we could stroll into and through, and it was lovely, so I took a lot of pictures while in there. As far as we could tell it was meant to be a recreation/display of the home of a wealthy lord/family. I realized when we were in there that during the park's prime there may have been actors whose job it was to educate visitors on the home, but by now they had been unfortunately replaced by mannequins. Just a guess, but there were a *lot* of mannequins throughout the park.

The home had a really large garden, that looked unkept by then but we could still imagine how lovely it must have been when someone was still able to tend it.

Standing on the porch over looking the garden, I found myself really enjoying the overall 'feel' of the home. I don't know spit about Feng Shui, but there was a feeling of calm that I got that I really rather liked, that I felt had something to do with the way the house was laid out. Also might have been gas.

Obviously not every room had accurate displays of what might have been found in a typical noble-home, including this one, which was near as I could tell was a kind of game or training exercise (from what I could gather from the signs and diagrams) where you had to move the bird around the post with the fan. Honestly though I could make neither heads nor tails of the instructions, so that's just a guess.

On another porch, fenced off from the general public, were also these two huge...somethings. This one looked like it might have been a shrine, while the other looked like a very small carriage. Either it was a not-to-scale replica, or it was made for a very petite person. Either way they were both lovely.

Aroun the corner was another 'something' on top of a tall dresser, and though once again I had no real clue as to what it was, I snapped a picture of it.

Finally I came to a replication that actually had a little sign in English, so I didn't just have to hazard a guess! This was an example of the typical 'sunken earth' ovens that families traditionally had, which was obviously used for cooking, but during the cold winters also served as a focus for daily life. Families would spend most of their time around the warmth of this stove, going about their business in comfort thanks to it. That fish is just neato.

I'm not totally sure what this arrangement was meant to be, other than something to take up space, but I really like that lantern.

Here was another little statue, this time showing the god of happiness, luck and...again something else, his name was quite long because it apparently listed all that he was meant to preside over.

There was a weapons museum which had large display-cases full of what would have been 'typical' ninja gear, and I'm pretty sure they were actually antiques that dated back to the period. I didn't get any shots though because it was very dark in there and my flash would've reflected of the glass. I did get this shot of a diagram showing various hand-signs however, which though I know have some old significance, have recently been made familiar to the general public through a ninja-themed anime called 'Naruto' here in Japan, and back in North America.

I really liked this water wheel, which I learned thanks to an English sign was traditionally used to pound stone, as Ureshino's ability with pottery dates as far back as the Edo period apparently! The wheel would power a large mortar and pestal (again probably wrong spelling/usage) that would pound stone into what could be used to make porcelain and pottery. Though the device wasn't really working, the wheel was still clunking along.

Here's a shot of the building that was in the center of the village, right near the entrace, which we never went very close to because got the feeling it wasn't open to visitors. It was still pretty majestic looking though.

On our way around we also came across a gigantic slug, looking mostly dead on the path. Gill put her hand down for size-comparison - it was the biggest slug we'd ever seen, covered in slimey grossness. It was kinda sad though, just lying limp there on the ground. It didn't look squished, but very lack-luster.

Another picture of a pretty little scene, with a few white and pink flowers near the water.

Finally the day was coming to an end, with the park getting ready to close. It was only 3 but since its apparently open all the time, I imagine their days are pretty short! They closed off the day with the throwing of 'mochi' to the visitors. To anybody reading this who doesn't know what mochi is..I'm not completely sure, but when I've eaten it in the past I was told it was rice in some form or another, and when you toast it it puffs up, and becomes very chewy. It tastes literally like nothing, but I always liked it. ^^ First we were entertained by the actor who greeted us at the door, and then he, the girl in pink and the ninja-cat all went up onto the steps and started to throw handfuls of the uncooked mochi towards us.

After that it was time to head out, but we stopped by the souvenire shop to take pictures with this awesome hat. Again, my ginormous cranium foiled my attempt at 'cool'.



Gopher was there at the gates saying goodbye to people, and offered me a great photo op, sneaking up on an unsuspecting Gill while Megan took her picture. Mwaah, I get great joy from this picture.

While we waited for our taxi, Gopher lead us over to a fenced-off area just near the gate, where two really sweet dogs were leashed up, probably waiting for the park to close so they could come out. He called them 'Ninja Dogs', but if they were ninja dogs they were pretty awful, 'cause they were just the cutie-wutest little things.

And nothing melts a girl's heart like a ninja playing with a dog. I mean, COME ON.

Such ended our trip to the ninja village. We took a taxi back to the bus station and eventually caught a bus back to Sasebo. By Sunday night I was oh-so grateful to be back home and able to just crash, but it was a great weekend.

Sorry for the length of this post, but I think I rather like the embedded links technique! I might have to use it in the future.

Thanks for readin', and if you get the chance leave a comment and let me know you've come by, it always makes my day when I get to hear from you guys. Ta ta fer now. ^_^