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Today was the final day of the Kyushu Grand Sumo tournament. This has been a pretty exciting tournament for us, being able to attend everyday. There were still box seats left during the week so we upgraded on Thursday and Saturday, too. On all three days, we were sitting beneath the camera, about 9 rows up from the dohyo and center ring. It put us about twice the height of the dohyo from the floor and made for spectacular viewing.

The box seats had the added benefit of being more Locutus-friendly. We found that he would stay put and watch sumo for longer sitting in the box than in a seat, because he could roam a little within the box and chat in his way with our neighbours. On Saturday, we had families with children in the boxes on either side of us, so he was well entertained and we were free to enjoy the penultimate day of sumo.

And what a day of sumo! If you’re a sumo fan, you’ll know what I’m talking about. And if you’re not a sumo fan, you won’t care. So I’ll leave it at that. But some highlights…

• I think we were featured on NHK on Thursday. We were rather enthusiastic cheering on Shohozan (a new favorite). Jenn noticed the mobile camera folks pointing our direction and talking.

• Tonight we were part of a cheering section for Yoshikaze. The guys behind us had signs and everything, so we turned our section into the Yoshikaze fan club. And then he won! The crowd went wild.

• It turns out everyone loves Shohozan! The last few days, regular chants of SHO-HO-ZAN would emerge from the crowd. Normally, sumo fans are rather complacent, so this was awesome and we joined in heartily. He won the Fighting Spirit prize!

• Ikioi beat Chiyotairyu on the final day. More insult to injury!

• I gave a smile and nod to Kotoyuki as we passed in the hallway. And I ran into Jean Luc Shimpan in the foyer while walking my son around. And Hakuho is massive up close.

• All of the staff knew us by the end of the tournament. Or, I guess more accurately, knew us as those people carrying around the adorable Locutus. But they were very friendly and quite accommodating as our son walked us around the stadium, day in and day out, for hours at a time.

On our previous trip, Miyajima was a good spot for souvenir shops. And so it was again. Only, many of the shops are the cheap tourist stuff, clearly aimed at the hordes of school children that visit the shrine with limited funds. There was a fantastic shop with carvings that would have been great, had they not been improbably large and difficult to transport.

We did find a lacquer shop and managed to get a couple of items off our shopping list. So, moderate success. And Locutus was not eaten by a deer, so…that’s good, right? I guess we’ll call this one a win.

“Hi! My name is Jenn and I’m adopting you into my sumo education association!”

That’s actually how I started a conversation this afternoon at the sumo tournament. You see, I like talking sumo and educating people. So I’ve been trying to find people at the sumo tournament who look like they probably need some information about sumo (i.e. other gaijin/foreigners).

It ended up going really well and Lance and I had some really good conversations with a bunch of interesting people. It started with a couple from Belgium and their 18 month old daughter (whom Locutus terrorized a bit with his brazen advances). Then we got to meet a couple of couples who were on a sumo trip up from the military base in Sasebo. The other day we really hit pay dirt when 100 JET teachers attended the tournament right next to where we were sitting. And then today there was a family, again from the military base from Sasebo. If we visit Japan again, we’re supposed to look them up. They’re into Judo quite a bit so the sumo was also very interesting to them.

The next time we come to Japan in order to see a sumo tournament we are going to further expand our sumo education association into a full-fledged tour guide operation. We’ll advertise on various travel sites and attend sumo tournaments with other foreigners, giving them info about sumo while we watch, for a modest fee (this isn’t a plan to make money, since we’d be there anyway, and we’d probably spend the money we get on snacks for the group.)

Every day we take Taihaku dori from Hakata station to the International building where sumo is held. We usually walk the distance – it’s perhaps a couple kilometers – but if we’re in a hurry there are frequent busses that run the length of the street.

Located a block from Taihaku dori at around Gionmachi is Shofukuji temple. It was one of many temples we happened across during our early days of wandering Fukuoka. It’s a zen temple. And it’s active, though the active parts are well secluded from the visitor parts.

The temple grounds are quite popular with locals. On our first and subsequent visits, we’ve said hello to many folks using the grounds for walking, running and jogging. The temple isn’t large, but it does feature some nice landscaping, wide-open and level paths, and is relatively secluded from the bustle of the city.

We keep coming back to Shofukuji for the same reasons. More importantly, it features some excellent walking courses for Locutus. There are stairs, uneven ground, dirt, leaves and bollards…all the makings for an excellent playground. We’ve walked the steps up and down from the main building many times, trodden the simple paths over and over, and been appreciative that such an excellent location for our son to explore is so conveniently located.

 

 

 

 

The weather here has been absolutely unbelievable. After Nagasaki, we decided to take another day off from sumo and go visit Hiroshima and Miyajima for shopping.

We got off the train in Hiroshima and walked to the covered shopping arcade. We had hit up Wikitravel for the ‘best’ shopping places for arts, crafts and unique gifts in Hiroshima, which was an area near the Peace Park. We’d been there before and knew where to go. The shopping arcade is actually on the Hiroshima tram line, but since we were hunting for shopping opportunities, we decided our best bet was on foot. Besides, we’d already used the trams a lot.

We walked the length of the shopping arcade and discovered kimono shops, 100 yen shops, drugstores, clothing shops, electronic shops, video arcades, and restaurants. In other words, all the same shops we’d been seeing everywhere else. And all the same stuff we’d been seeing.

The shopping was obviously geared towards the locals, who didn’t need unique and interesting souvenirs to win friends and influence people. 0 / 1 for wikitravel thus far. But wikitravel had an ace up its sleeve. The danbara something something. The name was long, so I only memorized part of it. And writing things down is so gauche.

After reaching the end of the shopping arcade we hit up the information booth. And there on the map was the danbara shopping centre. Ha! Danbara! It was listed as a cool place to find unique and one-of-a-kind textiles, ceramics, you name its!

We set of on foot, yet again. We walked along the Peace Promenade. Belatedly, before we left, we remembered to snap a photo since we hadn’t been to that part of Hiroshima before. Phew! Disaster averted.

Danbara was on the other side of a forest. We climbed some magical steps above a tunnel and entered the fantastical forest!

The fantastical forest had a map in the parking area, and we were able to find a path that led across the mountain. Higher and higher we climbed, eventually reaching the penultimate peak! When at last we felt we could walk no further, when our energy was gone and our bodies broken husks, we discovered the Skywalk. We were saved!

The Skywalk was a random escalator in the park that runs for a good kilometer. Yeah. Weird, huh. It doesn’t actually go to anything that we could tell, but it got us down the mountain in a hur…well, it got us down the mountain. Speed was not its strength.

At last! Danbara something something! Only…the Danbara we’d read about was two stories. The shopping center was nine. We wandered up and down but found no cool shops. We wandered down the street, up the street, around the block, around more blocks, back up the tower, over some other streets. There were no cool shops here. It turns out, Danbara is the district. It’s like being told a shop is in Vancouver, vaguely over there. And try as we might, we could not find it.

Disappointed, we decided to walk back towards the station and catch a train to Miyajima. On the way, we found it! The Danbara something something! Only it sucked. It wasn’t a unique shop with blah blah blah. It was a bunch of second hand shops with some random stuff in them, nothing too spectacular, unless you were into swords. Because one shop had actual katana (the plural) and some very nice furniture items that would be impossible to transport home.

We gave up. Shopping was not meant to be. Around the corner, the tram line had a convenient stop. We hopped on the tram for the station and headed to Miyajima. When we got home later, I mapped our walk. We covered just over 10km in Hiroshima on foot, not counting the five department stores (and 40 floors) we visited.

We bummed out to Nagasaki to check out the Peace Park and do a little shopping. There is no fast way to get to Nagasaki by train. Even by limited express – the fastest option available – our transit time was almost two hours.

Perhaps because the train was a little slower, Locutus showed an interest in looking out the window for a substantial part of the journey. And what a view! One side is ocean, the other mountain. Lots and lots of hills, covered in bamboo forests and orange groves.

Upon arrival in Nagasaki we were greeted by a midweek market. It appeared to be a sponsored event of some sort. If we were back home, I’d say one of the local radio stations was hosting an ‘on-location’ type of event day. In addition to the market, there was a stage area set up. Several children groups took turns performing for the shoppers. It was adorable.

The Peace Park was mostly paved. It featured the rather enormous Statue of Peace. The statue was surrounded by the Pool of Peace. There were billions of Origami Cranes of Wishing (for Peace). And it was a gorgeous, sunny day. We let Locutus cruise the park, working on the Steps of Peace and School Girls for Peace, alternately and concurrently.

A tour guide popped over while we were walking Locutus along the Benches of Peaceful Group Photo Opportunities. We chatted for a while about Nagasaki. He recommended visiting the Glover Park. The flowers were currently in full bloom. Because Kyushu does November correctly.

We left the park after a few hours. We took the tram back to the station, but hopped off a few streets early so Jenn and I could shop for souvenirs while Locutus napped in the carrier. Sadly, while we found a lot of great photo opportunities and thoroughly enjoyed the sunshine and summery day, we were unsuccessful in our shopping endeavors.

We arrived back at the station, grabbed some Osaka-style okonomiyaki from the takoyaki stand (Hiroshima style is vastly superior), and then debated visiting Arita.

Imari/Arita is a town in Saga prefecture (between Nagasaki and Fukuoka) famous for its pottery. No fast trains go there, however, and the trip from Nagasaki to Arita is by local train only – a trip a little over 2 hours. Facing the prospect of another 2 hour trip from Arita to Hakata afterwards, and not really wanting to do anything in Arita aside from browse the stores, we decided to throw in the towel and return back to Hakata directly.

As if it isn’t bad enough that Lance’s picks are cleaning up pretty well here at the end, yet another one of my wrestlers withdrew from injury. His 2 and 10 record really showed that he wasn’t able to perform. To make it even worse, the person who got the default win against him was the one wrestler Lance picked that had withdrawn due to injury, now returned to fight again! So now Lance has 10 and I’m down to 7.

We’ve also added another aspect to our bet. Which Lance has already won. We decided that the person who had the most winning wrestlers (wrestlers who got their kachi koshi) would get to pick which leg of the long train trip back to Tokyo they watch Locutus for. As it stands right now, it’s only possible for 2 of my wrestlers to end with a winning record but Lance already has 4.

On the bright side, I’ve definitely gotten familiar with a few more wrestlers in the Juryo division!

We’re 2/2 for castles involving ‘motos in Japan. We visited Kumamoto castle early in the morning. It is a 36 minute hop, skip and shinkansen away from Hakata.

The city features a tram, which courses through-out the city. It had rails and everything. It was pretty cool. We bought passes for the tram at the station. We planned to use the tram a lot.

While the city of Kumamoto wasn’t quite as quaintly quaint as the quite quaint village of Matsumoto, the castle and fortifications were magnificent. Our plan was to stop at Kumamoto Castle to let Locutus storm the ramparts and then zip over to Suzenji Garden for some natural landscapes. Our plans were waylaid, however, when Kumamoto Castle broke out the dance team. But don’t worry, we’ll get to that.

A brief miss-remembered history! Kumamoto castle was built a long time ago by a military type person in Japan. He was a pretty clever guy and built a pretty clever castle. Or, more specifically, he built huge, nigh-impenetrable stone fortifications and turned the naturally-defensive terrain already existent into multiple murder zones, around a rather typical castle. Which was good! Because the castle burned down before the rebels arrived.

And it was rebuilt! For us! With dance teams! But don’t worry, we’ll get to that.

It’s hard to define the castle grounds. Our tour started in sort of an outer area, which I shall call the outer courtyard for simplicity. It was located between the wall over-looking the moat, and another wall, under-looking more walls. The sky was cloudy but it was very warm, so we set Locutus down and let him relocate gravel while we read the infographics.

In the outer courtyard was a reconstruction of a covered well, one of some 160 individual wells the clever lord had dug inside the castle fortifications to withstand sieges. This courtyard featured some lovely trees in a variety of hues, a small garden, and a lot of gravel. After some photography, we began our approach to the castle. The stairs looked a bit tricky so we bundled Locutus back into the carrier and set out on our path.

 
The path took us along side one wall to a set of flagstone stairs. Even here, the inner walls were about 30 feet high, sloping gradually from sheer-precipice to really-sheer-precipice. The stone steps led us up one level to the top of the wall and… from the outer courtyard, you can kind of see the castle, but only the top. The inner wall is rather tall and masks a lot of the visibility. It turns out, it also hides another set of walls. Which, in turn, hide another set of walls and then…a small orchard, neatly placed beneath another set of walls. And all of this is accessible by a nice, open-air stone corridor and more-than-adequate firing lanes.

The final set of castle walls was about 60 to 80 feet tall, featured some wooden fortifications built atop the walls (complete with the usual assortment of murder holes and arrow slits that any well-to-do castle attacker would expect to see), and yet another long set of stairs up to…

Hah! Fooled you! That’s still outer castle wall you saw before. And the wooden building was just the final outer fortifications (now a gift shop!). Good guys are so dumb.

But congratulations! You made it this far, so you can see the actual castle! It’s another 80 feet directly above you! If you just follow this tunnel through the inner wall here and…more murder holes! I can’t believe you fell for that!

But seriously, if you come up these open stairs you’ll get to the courtyard. And now! There! The castle! And it’s run out of walls. It’s your lucky day!

And it was our lucky day, too! Because shortly after we arrived at the summit of Castle Kill-a-ma-bob, they announced that they were doing a historical samurai show. We thought, cool! That sounds like when our friends would dress up in fur hats and dingy coats and stand around in Fort Langley telling people about how cold it was and how to best depopulate entire species in the process of staying warm.

Instead, they put on samurai armour, broke out some kendo and instructed us on historical happenings while beating up bad guys. Then! Then! After finishing the first account of someone dumb enough to think storming the castle was a good idea (yet obviously charming enough to convince other people to come along!) they paused the history lesson and did a dance routine.

It. Was. Awesome.

I mean, they had me at the hackin’ history lesson; the katana-twirling soft-shoe made my eyes misty. The whole demonstration went on for about an hour. But we couldn’t really understand any of it, so after the second history lesson started we let Locutus loose to roam the yard. We let him hold court until he started to get tired.

We wrangled him back into the carrier to explore the castle. I’m not sure when the reconstruction took place because a lot of the inside did not appear to be ferro-concrete reconstruction, which is normal for castles rebuilt in the last century. I have an internet. I could probably look this stuff up. But so do you. And so can you. So stop interrupting my narration.

The museum had some cool stuff: a wooden model of the castle used during the reconstruction process, bits of old things, family history tidbits, and pointy bits of metal. The material was well represented in multiple languages.

The views from atop the castle were spectacular (terrifying) and they even had some of the windows open (more terrifying!) which I was brave enough to lean out of (not even close!) and snap some photos without dropping my camera (totally didn’t drop it!). The castle also featured a photographic list of all the castles in Japan! We’ve been to…maybe six? Only thirty five left to go!

Monday November 19th, we sprang for some box seats (you would have seen us on Sunday night in Canada). Unfortunately, they were on the same side as the internet feed camera is on, so you probably didn’t see us. You might have heard us cheering. Maybe. Probably not.

We got some great photos of the wrestlers and some video too. We’ve even tried to get some stuff particularly for our sumo loving friends. Hopefully we’ll get some time to get those posted/uploaded/emailed soon! And it was a good time to have those tickets as we saw some great sumo.

But this post isn’t really about that. It’s an update on the Sumo betting that Lance and I have going on. We realized we never actually posted which wrestlers we picked, so I thought I’d do that now quickly. So far our Locutus-wrangling time has been fairly evenly split.

Lance’s Picks (mostly based on the wrestlers he’s noticed/followed/liked, though not necessarily on those he thought might win):

• Satoyama
• Sagatsukasa
• Takamisakari
• Sotairyu
• Kotoyutaka
• Kotoyuki
• Tamaasuka
• Takanoyama
• Tenkaiho
• Tokushoryu

Since we’ve settled in to a quieter rhythm in Fukuoka, there aren’t as many sightseeing related things to share, so I thought I’d do up a quick post just about how Locutus is doing in Japan.

What some of you might not know is that Lance and Locutus caught a pretty rough cold shortly before we were supposed to go. Locutus’s cold symptoms had mostly cleared up, but since babies are susceptible to ear infections following colds, we were slightly concerned. So the Friday before we left, Grandma R took him to the doctor’s office as a walk-in. The doctor checked, saw that they were slightly red, but not enough to warrant antibiotics yet. So she instructed us to come back on Sunday (the first Sunday the clinic was open for walk-ins) to have them looked at again.

So off we went on Sunday. The doctor who saw us that day was very nice as well. He looked at his ears, saw some redness and some fluid and hemmed and hawed a bit. Locutus wasn’t cranky and hadn’t had a fever. Normally he’d tell us to wait a couple of days and come back if he seemed cranky or developed a fever. But we were about to hop on a plane to Japan. So he gave us a prescription for antibiotics that didn’t require refrigeration and instructions to use them if he seemed cranky or got feverish. Luckily Locutus has been totally fine so we haven’t had to use the medication at all – yay!

The plane ride was totally fine. We did give him a bit of Advil before taking off but totally forgot to for landing. He noticed the pressure in his ears, but we did some nursing and lots of miming of yawns and gulping to give him the idea.

He has been very good on train rides as well, though the long narrow aisle seems to be too inviting for him. He just can’t resist being on his feet and running up and down the entire time. It’s more tiring for Lance and I as we try to keep up with his energy level.

We’ve been trying to keep a mix of on the go sight-seeing activities, that keep him more-or-less confined in the carrier, and some relaxing wandering at places he can run around and explore. Japan is great for this since a lot of temples and castles have an area around them with flat wide-open spaces with little fences, stone walkways, trees, and temple stairs (we’ve been doing lots of stairs). He loves the sumo stadium too and actually claps when we go inside. I think it’s because of the many stairs he gets to climb and because there are so many people there who smile and wave at him. Even a few of the lower ranked rikishi (wrestlers) have been enchanted with him (and vice versa as well . . . he was so busy staring at one he almost walked into a wall – hehehe).

Food has been fairly easy to handle as well. I never made the connection beforehand, but we are in Japanese orange season, and guess where they come from??? Yup, Japan! Plus we’ve picked up some kiwi here. So he gets some fresh fruit every day. Yoghurt is readily available along with bread (though it’s mostly white bread). We can get cheese here but it’s either yucky processed stuff or super-expensive good stuff (like regular cheddar being $10 for a small cube). The most difficult thing for any of us is vegetables, but we try to get that at different restaurants and such. We’ve even had a bit of success with a few of the places offering a kids meal that he enjoys. Not necessarily the healthiest options, but not bad for vacation food either.

Locutus seems to have decided that he’d like the distinction of a few teeth that are ‘made in Japan.’ And boy are we glad that we brought along the Advil! We do feel a little guilty about the noise for our hotel neighbours when he does have a rough teething spell though. One neighbour in particular we gave a small peace offering to the morning following. We had heard him stumble in rather late and are pretty sure Locutus’s crying interrupted the few hours of sleep that he got.

He naturally gets lots and lots of attention from everyone everywhere we go. We’ve probably mentioned it before, but people here tend to bundle up ridiculously in colder weather. When we’re still wearing t-shirts, or a light jacket, they are parkas and wool scarves. As such, we’ve gotten lots of comments on how cold he must be. I did forget to bring along the gloves I bought for him, but I doubt that we’d have had much luck in getting him to wear them.

We didn’t bring many toys along to Japan. We had a couple of puppets, a book, and one ‘busy bag’ full of plastic lids. We haven’t really needed to break them out much at all. He manages to keep himself amply entertained playing with the hotel mugs, tea bags, various drawers, the small fridge, empty bottles, hot water kettle, and any bits of paper he can find. We also got a set of bottles from our first hotel with shampoo, conditioner, and body wash from our first hotel that I brought along and that he’s been using as bath toys. They are the perfect size for his little hands to play with and since they are partially full they float at different levels.