My Saga weekend - part 1

Hullo hullo! Welps its Monday morning, day one of the two-day holiday students get after a long week of tests, and so all of us teachers are here, faithfully in attendence. What are we doing? Well, grading tests, shuffling papers, chatting, and in my case, typing (as always) on my laptop. Thank goodness for this thing, without it I would have becoming a drooling mess weeks ago, having counted all of the tiles on the ceiling and every hair on my head. As it is however the number of tiles still remains a mystery to me, and in terms of my head-hairs, I can only say "alot". And that's the way I like it. (The pic on the right is just to take up space - they actually have Hallowe'en stuff here! ....bwah?!)


So this past weekend, Megan, Gill and I decided to foray outside of Sasebo and out into a whole other prefecture! Here is the best map I could find showing whereabouts we went, although the town we visited, Ureshino, is too small to be listed I suppose. Saga borders with Nagasaki prefecture, so it was just an hour bus ride over there and into Ureshino! Saga, and apparently Ureshino is included in this, is famous for its delicious green tea, its pottery, and its hot springs. One of the big benefits of living on Kyushu island are the hot springs - they are multitudinous and glorious! Megan and Gill and I all really wanted to check it out so we made our way there!

With a bit of research we found out that there was a place we could stay in Ureshino that not only offered its own onsens, but a place to sleep! We got the price wrong and ended up spending more than we'd wanted on it, but accidents happen, and at least we know for the future.

Where we were was kind of like a YMCA, I think, with a big pool that you could pay a small fee to use (though it was closed, much to Megan's sincere dismay), and rooms for fairly cheap. There was a samurai show talked about in the pamphlet, that was a drama of some kind where I believe the cast is all men (Japanese drag is kind of frightening). All around the building were these puppets, as well, huge charicatures sittin' around. It was really rather strange, so we had to take pictures. Here are the happy couple that greeted us at the entrance. Later, as we struggled to communicate with the cute but Japanese-only counter staff, I felt as though their happy smiles became mocking. Stupid puppets.

Behind us was a huge arcade, a kick-arse car that we just had to play in. C'mon...its a huge Sonic the hedge-hog police car!!







On the way to our room we also saw another huge puppet, and I just had to pose. I'm sorry, I just had to.


So anywhoo, enough of my ugly mug for a while. Once we arrived at our room we were really jazzed to find that it was traditional Japanese style! Aside from two small bathrooms (one for the toilet one for the sink and bath and such), it was just one huge tatami mat room. The closets wee stacked with futons and the loooveliest duvets for us to sleep with later on. When we got there, hot water and the the makings for green tea for three were set up, as Megan is so nicely demonstrating.

So on that day when we arrived, we decided to hit up the first of our two planned designations while in Ureshino. Our first stop was the Ureshino Sex Museum!! I didn't take too many pictures, and even those that I did probably won't get posted here, as this is a 'family friendly' blog, but it was definetly an experience. The entire museum was a huge display of Japanese (primarily) erotica through the ages - with a bit of Western cheekiness thrown in. It was really bizarre, and a little unnerving, but we all had a lot of laughs while there.

Outside of the building was a huge golden Buddha (though it might have been a Bodhisatva, I'm not positive it was a Buddha because of the wardrobe and posture...I'm probably wrong on this though), who was guarded by two fierce warrior statues. It was hard to take a good picture of the statue as the light was started to die, but in this picture you can see a teeny tiny me in front of it, giving you some idea of the magnitude of the thing.






Here is a picture of the guardian on the right, who I thought looked particularly cool.


So once inside the museum, and after we'd made it through a rather loud and ultraviolet room depicting the Japanese creation story (where two gods got in on and made little Japan-island babies), there was another really lovely Indian-style Buddha that I wanted to take a picture of. Hurrah, it was fully clothed!

Thanks to a bit of high-tech image manipulation, I was also deftly inserted into this racy little scene. Check me out, getting some manly attention and lovin' it!

After we'd made our way through the museum, a little green but a little giddy, we had to wait for a few minutes for a taxi to come and pick us up. Luckily for us in Ureshino everything we wanted to check out was in close proximity to each other, so we never had to spend too much time/money getting around. As we waited, the older lady in the ticket booth encouraged us to take a seat on their convenient 'bench'. I was going to caption this picture, butI decided I would just leave it all up to you to decide what I'm thinking.

That night we forayed out to get some dinner, and hopped from a ramen place to a small little bar, in pursuit of edamame for Gill. We didn't know where anything was, so we just popped our heads into a couple places and asked for edamame. If they didn't have it, we thanked them and excused ourselves repeatedly and booked it. Finally we found a tiny little place where an older lady said yes she had edamame, so we plunked down at her five-person bar. The interior looked like the bar was just a small offshoot from her home, with her tatami living room right next to us, the t.v. still on the show we'd interrupted when we strolled in. She was incredibly sweet though, and we all felt like we were sitting in our grandmother's house. Drinking. So, not sitting in *my* grandmother's house. *laughs*

She served us heated sake, and it was delicious! It tasted more like dessert than alcohol, I was really impressed with it. She did indeed serve us edamame (which just a reminder is salted soy beans still in the pod), and we even got a hard-boiled egg each! We didn't end up staying for too long, not wanting to impose too much, but it was a really nice little place and we all felt we wanted to return. Here's a picture of Megan and Gill that I took just before we got going.

We retired back to the "Juliplaza" (as it was called) where we were staying, 'cause it was time to hit up the hot springs!! They're called 'onsen' here, so I'm going to just stick with that. They're quite common on Kyushu, one of the benefits of being here, and I absolutely love 'em. They're always very inexpensive and clean - you just have to be prepard to get nekkid in front of other ladies. Though I found the idea daunting, I wanted to try it too much and so, in mah birthday suit, Gill and I tried it out. The onsen at the hostel was really big, with a huge indoor pool and a smaller outdoor one, with different pools for different temperatures. Though it might sound a little unsanitary, in Japan you're hard-pressed to find a place that isn't really clean, especially if you've paid to be there. You sit on stools and wash yourself thoroughly before going in to the pool, and the water is changed often. Though we weren't alone, Gill and I braved the looks of the other women in there and actually really enjoyed ourselves. I loves me a nice hot bath.

So afterwards we all crashed back in our room, but not before Gill and I made a late-night run to the convenience store for snacky foods, we were all feeling quite peckish. When we got back to the room I discovered that Gill had bought a maple-waffle cake, and it was my first Canadian-flag siting since I've been here! It deserved a picture. *sniff* Ooooh Caaaanadaaaa....


That night I slept really well, though unfortunately the other girls didn't, and were feeling a bit pooched the next day. We all roused ourselves for the check-out time though, hoping to go swimming only to find out that it was closed! So with the whole morning ahead of us we ventured out to find breakfast and cash, because Gill had accidentally left most of her money back in Saza, so we went in search of an ATM. After much woe we did finally find one, and even managed to use it correctly, despite a lot of random button-pushing. With cash in hand we were able to get some breakfast at a diner called "Joyfull", which is a chain that serves a lot of different dishes, some even western-style. My first pancakes since Tokyo, it was deeeelightful.


Feeling more prepared for the day we caught a taxi and made our way to destination number two, an Edo-period themed park!! We just called it the 'ninja village'. NINJA VILLAGE! XD It was essentially like a Japanese version of the Renn Faire!! It was a little run down, and under-staffed, but still a lot of fun. Here's a preview picture, I'm going to save the village for tomorrow so this post doesn't go on for too long!

Bye for now, next up - frikkin' NINJA VILLAGE!!