Cracked Sign

Kagoshima put in these advertising signs along the streets all around Tenmonkan, so I see them all the time. This one's down by the Volunteer Center. One afternoon, I was walking by, and the sign looked weird, like it had been frosted, or something.



Actually, it had been completely shattered. Evenly. Over the entire surface. Like a basketball backboard, or the side window of my old minivan on an extremely hot Texas summer day.



I mean, like the Rolling Stones song.
Kind of pretty, though.

Lotteria Niku no Hi Nov. 29, 2018

The number "29" can be written as "ni" (2) and "kuu" (9), which sounds like "niku", or "meat." A number of fastfood joints will have a Niku Day toward the end of the month, where they sell bigger burgers for around 500 yen. Lotteria pretty much does this every month, but they'll change up the sandwiches each time, and the prices may vary. I've had a couple of the meat day burgers before, and they haven't been that good. I knew what I was getting into, but I also wanted to get a hamburger again (it's been a while). The choices were a "rib" sandwich, a burger with double patties and a hash brown thingie in the middle, and a double chicken sandwich.



I got the burger set (the coffee and fries brought the total price up to 950 yen ($9 USD)).



These things never look like the advertising. There was so much grease that the hash browns turned mushy as I was eating it, and the oil dripped on to the wrapper to form a large pool. I may have shortened my life by a month with this one meal. The upside is that I don't need to buy another one for maybe 6 months now.

Dec. 2

Togara Fest


I had to do a lot of shopping that I'd really have been happier putting off for later during the week, when nothing else was happening. Unfortunately, it wasn't my decision. Part of the shopping took me to Yamakataya, in Tenmonkan, but not until 3 PM. I made a deliberate run to the open area in front of Lotteria, in time to take a few photos of the Tokara Fest. The Tokara Islands are an 81 mile-long chain of small islands located between Yakushima and Amami.



The main selling point at the event was the Akuseki Island boze. Akusekijima (the name means "evil rock island") is a very small island within the chain, and cannot sustain many tourists. 5 small guest houses can hold only up to 65-66 visitors, and the only drinking water is rainwater. The "boze" is a traditional local god, and the islanders put on boze masks and costumes during obon (the 1-week period during August when dead ancestors visit the living) to frighten the children into having good health.



Photo cut-out board.



There was some kind of an announcement stage, but I didn't see anyone in a boze costume, so I guess the main reason for it was to give the advertisers some place to stand when they talked.



There were maybe 50 people sitting at the tables, eating lunch. But, the food tables were being cleaned up, and I didn't see a menu or prices. I went into Yamakataya for lunch myself, and when I got back out at 4 PM, the rest of the tables and booths were being torn down. I would have liked to try the food, or seen what the stage events were. Sigh.

Amu Plaza Amami Marugoto Fair


I wasn't able to finish up shopping and everything until just before 5 PM. By then, the Marugoto Fair at Amu Plaza (which was apparently for Amami island), was also long over. Looking at the schedule, most of the live performances were PR of some form or other. Friday did have two shows by female pop singer Sachi. I've seen her before, and she's ok. Saturday was the Amami Sisters, who do traditional folk music (I uploaded a video of them to youtube a few weeks ago for the event down at the Volunteer Center). I kind of like them. And on Sunday was A Taste of Honey, a Japanese big band that I don't care for that much.



Either way, I would have liked to have taken more photos of the foamheads (if any) for the blog. Double-sigh. A frustrating weekend, knowing that things are happening and not being able to watch much of any of it. At least, I got some nice photos of a heron.

Dec. 1

Veggie Market


This past weekend was event filled and incredibly frustrating. I had to work weird hours on Friday, which kind of messed me up for going to Amu Plaza for the Amami Marugoto Fair that day. On Saturday, I had a lesson in the morning, then had to squeeze in my milk shopping for the week before going to the English school for lessons starting at 2 PM.



On my way to the school, I encountered the Vegetable Fair (or something like that) in the open space in front of Lotteria. This was kind of an odd combination of children's activities, educational displays for adults, food booths, and food from the Jacob's Curry mobile kitchen truck. Above, children try to move beans from one plate to another with chopsticks.



They even had fresh veggies and honey for sale. Did you know honey is a vegetable. Truth.



The educational part included exhibits of Satsuma imo (potatoes and sweet potatoes), and sugarcane. Sugarcane is also a vegetable. It's amazing what you can learn.

From here, I continued to the school.


Farmer's Market


My afternoon lessons got shifted forward a few minutes per lesson as I had to start each one when the student showed up (cutting my breaks between lessons to nothing), but the upside of that was the last lesson of the group ended 10 minutes earlier than scheduled, and I got out at 4:40 PM, when it was still light out (overcast skies, though). I knew from Friday (because I'd swung by in the afternoon) that there was going to be a farmer's market Saturday and Sunday. Unfortunately, as the sign shows, the hours on Saturday were 10 AM to 4 PM. So, the place was pretty much abandoned when I got there.



A couple people stuck around for clean-up, and making sure no one snuck into any of the tents after-hours.



To me, a "farmer's market" is a way for farmer's to sell produce directly to consumers at prices cheaper than in the stores. But, this is looking like a market aimed at farmers.



Leave it to the Japanese to make cute tractors.
As a side note, I had to do more shopping on Sunday, at the opposite end of the city, and wasn't able to return to Dolphin Port before the Market ended at 3:30 PM.


Kagoshima Marathon Concert


As I was preparing to leave the Farmer's Market area, I heard someone talking on a PA closer to the main shops in Dolphin Port. I headed over to where the sound was coming from and discovered that they were hosting a music concert for the day. One sign at a table to the right of the photo had what I think said "Fukuoka Marathon Concert", but the red banner at the back of the above photo reads "Kagoshima Marathon". Maybe, the concert is doing double duty. The Fukuoka race (Fukuoka is the big city at the northern end of Kyushu) was held on Dec. 2, the following day. (The Kagoshima race isn't until March of next year).



The music seemed to be largely jazz, with some brass bands. The only one I was able to catch any part of was "Ayaka and..." It started with the above trumpet player doing a karaoke solo over a song from a CD. She was ok, but she did flub a few notes, and the music was copyrighted so there was no point in recording it for youtube.



The rest of the group came up and played soft jazz.





The music was ok, but nothing I really wanted to listen to. After a couple songs, I started making my way back to the school in time for my next lesson, which started at 6 PM. The concert here was to run until 9 PM (my last lesson ended at 9), and there was to be some kind of drawing at 8:30 PM. So, that's another thing I missed, otherwise I would have entered myself into the drawing just to see what the prize was.


Heron at the Aquarium


One of my former students had been cleaning out her closets 6 months ago, and unearthed an electronic film camera that she'd bought way back when, and never used. She cleaned it up, put in fresh batteries, and asked if I wanted to borrow it for a while. I said "sure," and then put it into storage myself because the weather was never good when I had free time, and I didn't have any film. Finally, a couple weeks back, the skies were perfect, so I found some ISO 100 film at the Aeon department store near the main train station, and I began taking some simple photos to test the camera. Unfortunately, because I'd gotten ISO 100, I needed to limit myself to outside shots in bright sunlight. And, the skies kept clouding over when I took the photos. Anyway, I had maybe 5 more shots on the roll, so I'd brought the film camera with me on Saturday. After the concert, I headed to the aquarium a block away to see if I could spot any sharks in the canal by the building (there weren't any), but I did encounter this heron preening itself.



The zoom on the film camera isn't the greatest, so I switched to the little pocket camera, and got some of the best photos of a heron I've been able to take so far. I haven't found a heron this relaxed around people before, and it let me get pretty close without flying away.



Even so, it did keep an eye on me.


Minato Light Up


Finally, the big boulevard in front of City Hall held a "switch on" ceremony for the winter illuminations. People had the opportunity to have their photos taken with the Saigo Takamori foamhead mascot, and there were two bands that played music (a school band, and some adult marching band).



The announcer wouldn't stop talking to let the kids play, so I decided to walk the few blocks north to the streetcar last stop, just to get a little more exercise, and to see if there was something else to take pictures of. After getting to that stop, I turned right and walked half a block to the exercise park nearby. And sure enough, the park was being used to host another Marugoto Fair (all-products from a specific region) for the weekend. Naturally, they had an event stage, but everything was shut down for the night. And, as mentioned above for the Farmer's Market, I wasn't able to return to this part of the city on Sunday. Sigh.



I strolled around for a bit, then headed for the school (I got there at 5:50 PM, in time to prepare for my next lesson) and passed by the City Hall park again. At this point, the bands are gone (that was fast) and the lights were turned on.



They're always the same lights every year, so there's nothing particularly special about them. They just make this part of the city a little less dark in the evening during the winter.

Satsuma Yaki Exhibit, Nov. 30

"Yaki" is a strange word, in that normally it refers to fried foods, but it can also be applied to anything that is burned or baked, including ceramics. In this particular case, Satsuma Yaki is ceramics made in the Kagoshima area. The Satsuma Ceramics Association hosted an event in the Volunteer Center for several days starting from Nov. 30. Largely, it was just a bunch of studios showing off their wares, and trying to make sales. Some of it was very pretty.



The event took up all of the exhibition space and one of the auditoriums.



Another part of the focus was to sell little pig and boar figures, because 2019 is going to be the Chinese lunar "year of the boar."



When people mention Satsuma yaki, the common image that comes to mind, I'm told, is white ceramic tableware. There wasn't a lot of that this time.



Don't be a boar.



Or even two boars.



The lobby area had ceramics for a charity auction, and an exhibition of works by school children.



The auditorium was used more as a showroom for really high-end table settings.



This is Satsuma yaki. Eat up!

Happy UFO Abduction Day

There's a hair salon in Tenmonkan that puts different pictures on their marker sign outside each day. On one side was a cat in a Sakurajima volcano hat, congratulating the Kagoshima soccer team on their latest game.



On the other side was a mention of a TBS TV show broadcast in 1990, and a picture of space aliens.
Have a happy 2nd.

DBZ Movie Quiz posters

Towards the middle of September, I found this quiz poster next to the information desk in Amu Plaza, advertising the new Dragonball movie coming out Dec. 14. I spent half an hour crawling around Amu, looking for the other posters, but I only located #4. The question: What is the name of the character formed when Gokuu and Vejita wear the earrings?



Number 4 was in the movie complex on the 6th floor, back in with the food tables. The question is, "Which kami is Birusu?"

The bottom of the poster does say that #3 is on the fourth floor in front of a monitor, but I must have missed it. No idea where #1 would be. I guess I could ask someone working in the theater for a quiz card and instructions for how to get started. But, I didn't.