otaki castle festival

This Sunday I headed down to Otaki for the Otaki Castle Festival! A JET friend was participating in the parade, and the promise of Mexicans, ninjas, and horses was impossible to resist. :D

So to get there I went down to Ohara Station again, where I had actually been just a week before (it felt a little strange to be back there so soon), and then I transferred to the Isumi Railway! This was my first time taking a train that wasn't run by a big company like JR, and actually I really liked it. It was interesting because the way the tickets worked felt more like being on a bus than on a train - instead of just tapping in and out with my Suica, I first bought a ticket from a vending machine (I love vending machines that give out tickets, for some reason) and then had to make sure I took a ticket once I got on the train to mark where I had gotten on, before depositing them both in a little box as I got off. Which is how the buses around me work if you don't have a Suica, so it was interesting doing it on a train. Plus, the railway is Moomin-themed! (Wikipedia about them here). I honestly have no idea why it's Moomin-themed, but with Moomin decorations in the train cars and even some Moomin figures along a lake we passed by, it definitely makes the train really charming and cute.

Then when I got off the train, after being greeted by somebody in a traditional outfit (I think a princess one? Not really sure), I did my first Japanese raffle (or lottery? I'm not sure what to call it). There's a little box with lots of different colored balls in it, and you turn the handle and rotate it until a ball comes out, and the color determines your prize. I just got the default prize (a bottle of sports drink), which wasn't very surprising (though the person in front of me got the grand prize!), but it was pretty fun to try. :)

I wasn't really sure where to go after that (they did give me a map but I am bad at those...) so I just kind of followed everybody else who was around until reaching the elementary school, which was the main festival area, complete with lots of festival food stalls and a stage! It was just about lunchtime so I got something to eat and listened to a performance by a high school band before deciding to head to the castle (it was the Otaki Castle Festival, after all).

It turned out the castle was a little over a kilometer away, but the way there went by a really picturesque river with lots of trees, which is not something you can really see in the city (or at least not where I've been). It was also apparently called Mexican Street (or something like that) - when I asked my friend later about the connection with Mexico, apparently way back when a Mexican ship was shipwrecked on a beach nearby, and the people in Otaki helped them out. Nobody else in Japan knew about it until later some dignitaries from Spain visiting another city mentioned it, and then when they looked it up in the town records they found out it was true! Which is a pretty cool story, I think.

Gorgeous!

So next I reached the castle and found a lot of people in armor! There were even people playing kotos (I think) in kimonos in the background, which was pretty cool. I wandered around for a little bit but decided to head back to the elementary school to watch the opening ceremony for the parade, instead of heading back into the castle. When I got back, the mikoshi started to come in! I'm always impressed at how much energy they have and how much they heave them up and down, especially the women (who also look the most bad-ass, I think).

After that, the ceremony started, with somebody coming in on a horse (in armor!), which was pretty cool. I was right in front of the crowd so I had a great view, which was lucky since normally I am much too short to see anything (even in Japan, haha). Then all the parade members started coming in. There were lots of elementary schoolers, looking adorable in armor and kimonos, along with my JET friend! There were also groups of people who from what I understood made their own armor, which was really incredible - I definitely couldn't tell that they were hand-made. Other notable people include some prinesses, some more people on horseback, and a group in traditional Mexican outfits (sombreros and all). They all marched in and then the ceremony started, with some speeches and the debut of the new mascot, Otakki, who I had actually read about in a newspaper before coming. They also staged a fight on stage and had a demonstration with some guns, which was pretty cool! And then the parade started, though I decided not to follow them and instead just kind of chilled in the festival area watching the mikoshi get carried around again (they were still there) because I was lazy. :P

After the parade came back (I went out a little bit onto the parade path on their way back and was a little amused at how exhausted everybody seemed, though I certainly can't blame them), I met up with my JET friend and another English teacher for dinner! The timing was pretty perfect because right after they had gotten back to the festival area, the typhoon that was predicted for the day showed up and it started to rain. I did feel bad for everybody carrying the mikoshi, though, because they were still out in the rain long after everybody in the parade went home. Anyway, we had dinner at a little cafe where they go pretty regularly, apparently, and I finally got to eat tonkatsu, which I've been craving for a while (but have been too lazy to make).

After that I managed to make it home safely despite the typhoon (which luckily seemed to be letting up right as I was leaving) and the delayed/cancelled trains it caused. The Otaki Castle Festival was definitely different from all the other festivals I've been to in Japan, so I'm really glad that I went! If I go again next year I think I'll definitely want to go take a look at the castle, too.

chiba city sights

Yesterday I got to tag along as my coworker took our office's guest to a couple of places in Chiba City, which was great (even more so because it was totally unexpected!). We went to the Kasori Shell Mounds Museum, Shimoda Agricultural Fureai Center, and the Chiba City Folk Museum, none of which I'd been to before.

Our first stop was the Kasori Shell Mounds Museum, whose name I am sure to remember in both Japanese and English because it came up in my first interpreting job but all I could say was 'shell mounds' instead of its proper name. The shell mounds there are the biggest ones in Japan, and I think some of the biggest in the world, too. They are split into the north and south shell mounds, and actually the area where they are is open to the public all the time (only the museum has hours), which I think is pretty cool. When we got there, we got to go on a guided tour led by a volunteer, who explained a lot about the shell mounds for us.

I was a little bit surprised because the majority of the shell mounds are actually left exactly as they are without any excavation, which means that when you look at it you mostly just see the grass and plants that have grown up on top of them, with the slight elevation being the only indication that the mounds are there. Apparently they have decided not to excavate any further than they did in the 1950s, in the interest of preserving them. There are several places where you can see where they did excavate, though! They're basically cross-sections of the mounds behind glass, and it's really interesting to see just how many shells are piled up there. In the southern mounds, you can also see animal and fish bones mixed in, as well as ashes from (cooking?) fires.

After looking at the mounds from both the outside and the inside, we went into the museum, which I found pretty interesting. There was a lot of information about shell mounds in Japan and the people who lived around the Kasori Shell Mounds (and created them, I suppose), including things like their jewelry, pottery, living spaces, etc. As our tour guide was explaining things to us as we walked through, I was too busy trying to pay attention to what he was mentioning at the time to really take a full look at everything on display, so I'll have to go back some time and take my time! Admission is only 60 yen for adults, so I think it's definitely worth it. 

Shells and some ashes in the mounds

Our next stop was the Shimoda Agricultural Fureai Center, which was established to give citizens of the city a chance to get closer to the local agriculture. There's a little market where you can buy local produce, as well as a restaurant that uses all local produce in its dishes. We learned about a program they did with elementary school students, where the kids went on field trips to farms in the area and then created a map that included the places they went and things they saw. It was a really impressively well-made map, considering it was done by 10 sixth-graders, and I thought that having that kind of program was a really good idea.

We had lunch in the restaurant there, which was really tasty! It was buffet-style and there were a lot of different options, so naturally I had to try them all. It seemed like it was the kind of food that you would normally eat in a Japanese home (as opposed to a restaurant), which was a nice change from everywhere else that I've been eating lately.

Our final stop was the Chiba City Folk Museum, which is in a building that looks like a traditional Japanese castle. Despite what a lot of people may think, though, it isn't a real castle that people lived in (like all of the other castles you can visit in cities like Nagoya, Osaka, everywhere) - apparently it was constructed in 1967 on the site of the original Chiba Castle (not sure what happened to it) to be a symbol of the city (or something). I was pretty amused that this wasn't a real castle (though it does look impressive), just like I was amused by all the various works featuring Chibanosuke Tsunetane, the leader of the Chiba clan and apparently a pretty big deal, that all looked different because nobody knows what he actually looked like. The museum is all about the history of Chiba City, and their current special exhibit is of the clothes that people wore when delivering things from or working at certain shops, which were kind of like their brands and so unique to every place (from what I understood of our guide's explanation, at least). My favorite was one for a sushi place, where the logo looks like a shrimp but is actually made up of the characters for 'sushi'.

As with all castles in Japan (or at least all the ones I've been to), we were able to go up to the top and go outside on a little veranda that went all around the castle, to see a view of all of Chiba City. Unfortunately it was a rainy day and not very clear, but it was still cool to look around and try to find the places that I knew (which is admittedly not many, haha).

Apparently the folk museum also has a monthly event when you can try on traditional clothes and armor, which sounds like a lot of fun. You do have to apply for it, but really it's just submitting your name/address/phone number to their email (kyodo.EDL@city.chiba.lg.jp) so that they can do a lottery in case there are more people who show up than they have outfits for. Admission is only 60 yen here too, so I might want to come back and try on some armor sometime!

All in all, I had a great day going from place to place - it was definitely more exciting than sitting at my desk translating all day! :)

ohara hadaka matsuri

And then on Saturday, I went down to Ohara, which is further south along the coast, for the Ohara Hadaka Matsuri! It's apparently one of the biggest events of the year, and it was pretty exciting. For those of you that don't speak Japanese, 'hadaka' means 'naked', and while I didn't actually see anybody celebrating naked (for which I am thankful), all the male participants were shirtless, which is definitely unique among the festivals that I've been to, at least.

So Saturday morning I hopped onto a train, and one transfer and an hour and a half later, I was in Ohara! (Trains are one of my favorite things about Japan. So great.) There were a lot of JETs/WI-ALTs who were planning to go (I think it was like 15-20 people, which is a huge group, especially of foreigners), so we met up at the station (after waiting half an hour for the person who invited us all to show up, haha) and then spent some time at his apartment for a little bit before heading to the festival. I always love seeing the rows of food stands that are always set up at the festivals, even though it's always the same kinds of stands and they repeat every few feet, since seeing them means I'm at a festival!

After getting some festival food - I tried something called buta-tama (I think) which was kind of like okonomiyaki in a more compact, pancake form (and tasty) - we went to the beach for the main event! At almost all festivals, carrying mikoshi, or portable shrines, is a major event, but at the Ohara Hadaka Matsuri, they carry the mikoshi all the way into the water! It was pretty crowded and so it was kind of hard to see, but I did manage to see them, and it was pretty cool. While they were waiting to go in the water, other groups with mikoshi would also toss them up in the air a few times, which I thought was really impressive!

After that we wandered around eating more festival food and just kind of hanging out along the street for a little bit until the parade started. It was pretty impressive to see all the shirtless men carry the mikoshi (though there were some women too!), since that meant they were basically carrying these really heavy wooden shrines on their bare shoulders (whereas usually people have at least sleeves and maybe even extra padding) - there were even a few people with humps that I presume came from years of carrying mikoshi.

The parade ended at the elementary school, where they then all ran in a huge circle, while still carrying the mikoshi! It was definitely too crowded for me to really see anything this time, but I could kind of see the tops of the mikoshi go past at a surprisingly fast pace. They continued running for about ten minutes or so (I think), which again was just plain impressive.

So I'd say the Ohara Hadaka Matsuri was definitely unique among the festivals I've been to, and it was lots of fun! I also got to meet a lot of other JETs/WI-ALTs (and see the ones I already knew again), which is always great. :)

qiball planetarium

This weekend I went to some new places both inside and outside of Chiba City, which is pretty exciting! For the sake of not having one super-long post, I'll be splitting up the weekend into a couple of posts instead.

On Friday, I went to Qiball for Aroma Night at the planetarium! I'm not sure if I can describe Qiball in one term, but it's a place that has a planetarium, science museum, business support center, child raising support center, and a children's exchange center (or something like that; sorry for the awkward translation). It's also where we had out Chiba orientation right after coming to Chiba!  We tried to go to the planetarium after orientation, but the last showing for the day had already ended, so when I found out the planetarium was having Aroma Night, I definitely wanted to go. Aroma Night is basically a show at the planetarium that is also accompanied by various scents - it's a monthly event, and every month they use a different aroma for the show. September's blend was grapefruit herb, or something like that.

So I met up with two friends, and none of us had been to the planetarium before so we were all really excited! I wasn't sure how crowded the event would be so we showed up a bit early, got tickets, and wandered around the museum shop for a bit before going in. When you're in the atrium of Qiball, you see the bottom half of this big globe way up in the air, which is actually the planetarium (which is on the 7th floor), and it's really cool to think that you were just in it.

When you walk in, the part of the planetarium that you watch is the top half of that giant globe, and all the seats even recline! We were all just sitting in our seats getting excited until the show started, and then it did! The lights dimmed and the stars and the scent came out, which was very relaxing. The show lasted 45 minutes, and it was basically 45 minutes of somebody with a very soothing voice explaining things to us about constellations and the moon. I thought it was cool because I could tell that it was a real person reading to us and pointing things out live, instead of a recording, which I thought was impressive.

Anyway, it was definitely an experience and I'm glad I went! I still haven't seen the science museum at all, which I want to (and probably won't be able to resist going to the the planetarium at the same time, haha), so I'm sure I'll be back at Qiball again sometime. :)

umi hotaru, nokogiri-yama

So this weekend one of my friends invited me to go for a drive in Chiba (Prefecture), because a couple of her old friends from France were in Japan and she wanted to show them around. I haven't been anywhere other than Chiba City since I got here, so I gladly accepted her invitation and we were off!

After some deliberation, we picked Nokogiri-yama as our destination, which is about two and a half hours away from Chiba City by car. I'm not going to pretend to know as much about it as I did for the BIB and Chiba City Museum of Art (who I thoroughly researched for work) - in fact I hadn't even heard of it until we decided to go there, though it's probably quite well-known.

We started out from Soga and decided to drive there using regular roads, instead of the highway, so we could see more of Chiba. Halfway to our destination, the Tokyo Bay Aqua Line came up in conversation, so we decided to swing by and take a look. The Aqua Line connects Kisarazu, Chiba to Kawasaki, Kanagawa, across Tokyo Bay. There's a bridge that goes until a service area called Umi Hotaru (sea firefly) about halfway across, and then the rest of it is an underwater tunnel. We only went as far as Umi Hotaru, but it was really cool to cross the bridge and be surrounded by beautiful water as we drove. When we got to Umi Hotaru, we spent some time admiring the view (I've included a picture below) and trying to find notable sites like the Tokyo Sky Tree (which we did find!). There are also restaurants and game centers there, along with lots of little vendor stalls, which was cool.

The view from Umi Hotaru, facing Chiba!

Then we stopped for lunch at a seafood restaurant near to Nokogiriyama, called Kanaya. Apparently it's been featured on TV before, so when we got there there was a bit of a line, even though it was around 2:00 in the afternoon. Since it's right by the seaside (we were lucky enough to sit at a table right by a huge window by the sea), obviously the seafood there is very fresh. but I was told that in fact they keep their seafood live in basins until it's ordered, making it even fresher! I ordered a dish that involved eggs and various shellfish and shrimp over rice, which was quite tasty. :)

The view from the Nokogiriyama Ropeway

And then we were finally at our destination, Nokogiri-yama! We decided to take the cable car, the Nokogiriyama Ropeway, which gave us a really great view (though it was a bit crowded, haha). The view where the cable car left us off was also really amazing, and we spent a few minutes admiring it before deciding to go see the giant Buddha at Nihon-ji, which was on the mountain. Unbeknownst to most of us, who had never been there before, this was the start of what ended up seeming like a never-ending series of stairs! On the way there we saw a lot of stone figures, but many of them were missing their heads, which is apparently the result of an anti-Buddhist movement that happened in the Meiji Era.

Headless figures

When we reached the giant Buddha, it was really quite impressive - it's the largest stone Buddha in Japan, at 31.05 meters (or almost 102 feet) tall. I'd seen the Buddha in Nara when I studied abroad two years ago, which is apparently only 18.18 meters (60 feet) tall, so this one wins! After that we climbed up a little bit more to see the view from the Ruriko Observatory at the top of the mountain (amazing) and the Hundred-shaku Kwan-non before heading back down on the cable car. All in all it was a little bit tiring to hike up and down stairs to go from place to place, but the views were gorgeous and it was definitely worth it! I would definitely recommend it to anybody interested in going.

The largest stone Buddha in Japan

 After that we stopped by the beach for a little bit, to admire the sunset and relax a little bit after all our exercise. Even though where I live in Chiba City is actually very near the ocean, I haven't gone by the water at all (I'm not sure if there are beaches, really), and it was really nice to just relax by the waves for a little bit. It really made me realize how I'm now living on an island country, with lots of beautiful beaches that I'll have to try and visit during my stay!


On the drive home we took the highway this time, and stopped by a very tasty ramen shop (Menba Kuradashi Miso Kikuya) near Soga station for dinner. This was the first time I've had ramen since coming to Japan this time, and it was delicious (of course)! It was a shop that specialized in miso ramen, so I had their most popular Hokkaido miso ramen, and I can see why it was the most popular.

I came home very full and very tired, but also very happy from all that I saw that day. It was definitely a good first foray into Chiba Prefecture, and hopefully the beginning of many more! :D

chiba city museum of art + BIB

So like I said in my last post, I only moved to Chiba City about six weeks ago, but I have managed to visit a fair amount of interesting places already. In the interest of doing every place justice on the blog, though, I'm just going to start posting from the ones I've visited most recently, since I'll be able to recall/describe them better. So I'll start with my recent trip to the Chiba City Museum of Art, to see the Biennial of Illustrations Bratislava exhibit!

This was actually my second time at the Chiba City Museum of Art, and both times have also been work-related. The first time, I got to meet the Vice Director of the museum, who told me a little bit about the museum and the building that it's in. The museum opened in 1995, which means it's still relatively new. It's also actually in the same building as the Chuo Ward Office, which is actually a Neo-Renaissance style building built in the 1920s (plus the additional parts they added on top of it that actually house most of the museum and the ward office). I was really surprised to see that style of architecture in Japan, since with its marble and columns it looks very Western to me (apparently nowadays it's a popular place for cosplay photoshoots, probably for that reason!), but apparently they were pretty common before World War II, when most of them were destroyed (by bombs, I think). The part that was most surprising though, was when the vice director told me that the original building was somewhere else, and the entire building was moved to where it is now! I'm not really sure how you move an entire building from one place to another, but it certainly doesn't look any worse for wear. :D


So the exhibit I went to see was a collection of works from the Biennial of Illustrations Bratislava, which is one of the world's oldest and largest juried competitions for picture book illustrations. Picture book illustrators from all over the world submit their works to be judged at the event held every two years in Bratislava, Slovakia. The BIB awards 12 honors: a Grand Prix, five Golden Apples, five Plaques, and an Honorary Mention to a Publisher. There's also a children's choice award (which is pretty self-explanatory). It began in 1967, and actually the very first Grand Prix winner was an illustrator from Japan! This is in fact the fourth time that the Chiba City Museum of Art has hosted an exhibition of works from the BIB, which I think is really cool.

The current exhibit at the CCMoA involves works from the 2011 BIB: the winners, the Japanese entries, illustrations from Slovakia, and a special exhibit on rare Japanese pop-up books. It was really cool to see the original works that become the pages of a picture book; I don't think I (or most people, probably) had ever really considered picture book illustrations to be art like we usually see in museums. But looking at the pieces, I realized that they really are art - before they get resized and replicated and reprinted into books, the illustrator has to actually make the pictures that go in them, which are very much art. The Grand Prix winner, Eun Young Cho, makes this especially clear in her winning work, 'Run, Toto!' Almost every page uses a different medium, including a page using thumbprints in black ink, which I thought was really cool. They also had the actual published picture books available for people to read, which made me spend a lot longer in the exhibit than I had planned, because I just wanted to read them all (even though they weren't all in languages I could read, haha)!

The special exhibit on pop-up books was also pretty cool (though I'm not sure if pop-up books is really the right translation). They had works dating from as old as the Meiji period, centering around the three main themes of 'moving', 'understanding', and 'jumping'. There were works that looked more like traditional pop-up books but also some where you had to look through them from the front to see a scene (they had a name but I forgot what it was, oops), and more.

The Biennial of Bratislava exhibit at the Chiba City Museum of Art is going on until October 21, so if you get a chance I highly recommend you check it out! Apparently there is also a very small collection of traditional Slovakian corn dolls, crystal, and ceramics borrowed from the Embassy of the Slovak Republic located in front of the entrance to the exhibit. It wasn't set up when I saw the exhibit (since I went on the second day after it opened), but I'm sure it's definitely worth seeing too. :)

Here's the link to the museum's webpage (Japanese only, even though there is a link saying 'English' - it doesn't work): http://www.ccma-net.jp/index.html

self-introduction

Hello! My name is Rochelle, and I'm a first year Coordinator of International Relations (CIR) for the Japan Exchange & Teaching (JET) Program. I currently live and work in Chiba City, Japan!

My plan for this blog is to post about all the travel and events I go to during my stay in Japan, both as a way for me to remember what I've done (because my memory is pretty awful, haha) and to hopefully introduce anybody else following along to the fun and interesting places in Chiba City, Chiba Prefecture, and Japan in general!

I came to Japan and Chiba City about six weeks ago, so everything for me is still pretty new and unexplored - I hope you'll follow along as I get to know what my new home has to offer. :)