Interlude

Things I forgot: I was rather amused (if slightly worried) when the ryokan owner in Kagoshima showed me how to climb in the lower window if the door was locked...

I finished His Majesty's Dragon and quite enjoyed it though it felt too short and now I'm going to have to decide if I should spend the money to buy the next book or hope my need for it dies down over time.

I can't decide which is funnier - a Buddhist monk on a Vespa, or a Catholic priest on a Vespa. Opinions?

Why do all ryokans have those weird crumbling walls? (even if the one I'm in has cool gold and green and purple specks in it)

I like Sakurajima but I'm not sure if I could ever live on an active volcano. I kept seeing all the volcano shelters and thinking of Herculeaneum.

All of the maps I'm using are rather out of date, and have no accuracy on a smaller scale. This makes navigating rather interesting, though I think the worst is trying the read the map while driving. I actually don't ask for directions that often, but I do make many illegal mid road turns.

Convience stores are gods, though there is never one on my side of the road when I need one.

My motto for this trip has been "Because it's Japan". This is the only way I've been able to answer hundreds of little questions that come to mind as I'm driving.

I feel really bad when talking to people in Japanese here cause they can ask me all these interesting questions cause I'm obviously not from around there, but all I can ask is what their job is and a few other boring questions and I wonder if they think I'm being rude because I'm not asking about them as much as they're asking about me.

Kotatsu are so cool! (Okay, so I'm currently using it to dry my underwear quickly, but still...)

The place where I spent the evening talking, eating and listening to live Okinawan music (the chorus to most songs being haai yaa se se) is called Cafe Moon Garammasala which I'm not sure is much better than Moonsong...).

The aquarium in Kagoshima breeds piraruchu (sp?) which are the largest freshwater fish (to be found in the Amazon river). I know of them from playing Amazon Trail, and it's kinda odd to discover that just like me in the game, the hunters are hunting the fish to extinction.

They've got everything set up for winter down here with heavy covers and the futatsu. Even my yukata at the ryokan has an extra winter overcoat I can throw over it. It all seems rather silly though cause it's warm down here compared to Yamaguchi. I had to switch out of my winter coat and back into my autumn coat.

I had kaiten sushi last night then a purple sweet potato sweet and a hot suyu drink (bitter lemon, as far as I can tell) at a green tea cafe. I then watched the first part of Hogfather and remembered why Susan was so annoying in that book, though her actress is good. The director needs to stop wandering behind pillars with his camera though...

Interlude

Things I forgot: I was rather amused (if slightly worried) when the ryokan owner in Kagoshima showed me how to climb in the lower window if the door was locked...

I finished His Majesty's Dragon and quite enjoyed it though it felt too short and now I'm going to have to decide if I should spend the money to buy the next book or hope my need for it dies down over time.

I can't decide which is funnier - a Buddhist monk on a Vespa, or a Catholic priest on a Vespa. Opinions?

Why do all ryokans have those weird crumbling walls? (even if the one I'm in has cool gold and green and purple specks in it)

I like Sakurajima but I'm not sure if I could ever live on an active volcano. I kept seeing all the volcano shelters and thinking of Herculeaneum.

All of the maps I'm using are rather out of date, and have no accuracy on a smaller scale. This makes navigating rather interesting, though I think the worst is trying the read the map while driving. I actually don't ask for directions that often, but I do make many illegal mid road turns.

Convience stores are gods, though there is never one on my side of the road when I need one.

My motto for this trip has been "Because it's Japan". This is the only way I've been able to answer hundreds of little questions that come to mind as I'm driving.

I feel really bad when talking to people in Japanese here cause they can ask me all these interesting questions cause I'm obviously not from around there, but all I can ask is what their job is and a few other boring questions and I wonder if they think I'm being rude because I'm not asking about them as much as they're asking about me.

Kotatsu are so cool! (Okay, so I'm currently using it to dry my underwear quickly, but still...)

The place where I spent the evening talking, eating and listening to live Okinawan music (the chorus to most songs being haai yaa se se) is called Cafe Moon Garammasala which I'm not sure is much better than Moonsong...).

The aquarium in Kagoshima breeds piraruchu (sp?) which are the largest freshwater fish (to be found in the Amazon river). I know of them from playing Amazon Trail, and it's kinda odd to discover that just like me in the game, the hunters are hunting the fish to extinction.

They've got everything set up for winter down here with heavy covers and the futatsu. Even my yukata at the ryokan has an extra winter overcoat I can throw over it. It all seems rather silly though cause it's warm down here compared to Yamaguchi. I had to switch out of my winter coat and back into my autumn coat.

I had kaiten sushi last night then a purple sweet potato sweet and a hot suyu drink (bitter lemon, as far as I can tell) at a green tea cafe. I then watched the first part of Hogfather and remembered why Susan was so annoying in that book, though her actress is good. The director needs to stop wandering behind pillars with his camera though...

Saitobaru and Ikime

Today was uniformly excellent. left Kagoshima around 9ish and took the expressway back to Saito. By virtue of speeding, I made it there by a little after noon (I am now thouroughly convinced that the actual price you pay for the expressway has nothing to do with building fees and is simply a fee for speeding since you never actually see anyone going to the speed limit (between 70 and 80 kmph) and even when I was cruising along at 110, people were passing me.) It was a fast trip and easy since the highway is very well maintained and there aren't too many cars. Anyway, I took the precaution of grabbing a quick lunch from a 7-11 knowing that I would forgoe it if I didn't get it right then. It was lucky I did since I wasn't actually finished with the mounds until around 4pm and you couldn't have torn me away from the place for the world.

The weather was ridiculously nice. It felt like spring and I had to keep reminding myself it's the end of December. I stopped first at a covered example of an excavation of the side of a key hole shaped tomb. It had several tombs in it and they'd left it open and clean for people to look at (you can tell I'm an archaeologist because my first thought upon seeing it was "damn, that must have been a bitch to clean"). I then stopped off to peer into the woods at the two biggest tombs, thought to belong to the kofun jidai (period) prince and princess. You couldn't get any closer since the place is considered sacred and reserved for the Imperial family. I then headed to the museum and found this high tech crazy place that was filled with archaeological information. It was free too! I came in and they offered to let me use their audio guide system (for four dollars...). I expected the usual CD and headset, but instead they pulled out this crazy looking vest. I was told to walk along this railway on the right side of the corridor and if you looked up you could see little sensors on the ceiling so that when you walked past it trigered the speakers in the collar of the vest making for a surprisingly comfortable audio guide, even if you did have to walk rather slow in places. If you wanted to rewind you just went back to the sensor and triggered it again. It was really cool. I've been so impressed by the advances in museum tech I've seen on this trip.

The museum itself was nicely arranged in this windy pattern that went vaguely through time though it got confusing at the end. There was a decent amount of English and the guide was informative, though I could have done without the random dramatic narratives. I cannot for the life of me figure out why the guy doing the reading pronounced 'sword' "schward" the whole time. Is that an accent I'm not familar with it or was he just too stupid to realize it was a typo? There was lots of hands-on stuff and computer points (not in English) plus some great effects. It was actually pretty creepy the way they showed the inside of a tomb and had the image of the warrior and various artefacts fade in and out (done the same way they do the ghosts at the Haunted Mansion at Disney if I'm not mistaken). I was really fascinated to see other tomb paintings, though in this case, etchings since I've only seen the ones in Nara. They're much more crude in Kyuushu, but I could recognize a boat once I squinted a bit. Also, the armour from this time period was actually pretty impressive. (And the bronze mirrors were so obviously Chinese influenced, it wasn't even funny.) They seem to have painted human skulls red sometimes too (red keeps the evil away). They had a whole room full of skeletons and skulls. I was jealous.

It actually hurt to be there near the end since there was so much information on everything I wanted to know - but it was only available in Japanese. It makes me depressed just thinking about it. It'll be years before I can go back and explore the place properly. *sigh*

So, I came back down and was met by this older guy who seemed to manage the floor. He was obviously bored since no one was visiting the museum so he took me up to the observation deck, took my picture and answered my questions. I thought that would be it, but he led me outside and to another nearby building where they did crafts - making haniwa (clay figurines found on top of kofun) and stone pendants and stuff. He showed me around, and into the pottery shop (where they were making pretty advanced stuff, though I laughed to see some middle schooler had made a clay mask of Anpan man). There, I saw my first hand loom with weights being worked on by a child to make a coaster. I've never seen one in action so it was an unexpected bonus. He brought me back into the main room and insisted I dress up in one of the costumes that were lining the walls. So I dressed up as a Japanese princess and he took lots of pictures (with my camera so I have no idea what he got out of it). It was kinda fun but I'm also blushing from embarassment in most of the pictures. I then expressed an interest in the soapstone pendants (they look like claws) that they had there and asked to buy one. They went searching through a box in the back and pulled out one that was raw, a huge one that was already made, two stone beads and a clay claw on a string and gave them all to me, helping me to make a necklace of the large claw and beads. I wanted to pay but they wouldn't let me so now there's a kofun era style necklace hanging from my mirror in my car. The guy wanted to be very sure I had fun which I assured him I had and asked him to show me the gift shop where I bought one advanced book on the kofun period in that era and one children's guide book (with furigana) which I can practice with (and therefore teach myself basic archaeological vocabulary).

I said goodbye and thank you to the guy and headed down into the fields to do a tour of the place. They really outdid themselves. There was one tomb where you could look around the inside by use of two remote controlled cameras outside. And another kofun allowed you to climb inside and see the burial chamber. Not to mention every tomb had an explanation of it in both Japanese and English. I was very impressed and esctatic *L* I had meant to see every tomb, but then I learnt there were over 300 of them so I limited my time to the major tombs and excavations. There was only one square tomb there which they set up with haniwa all over it - very cute. I also liked seeing the kofun without its dirt covering. It was interesting to learn that the builders of the kofun knew which local dirt to use (in alternating layers) to make the most stable tomb.

With barely enough time left, I raced the sun set to the town of Ikime where I had accidently seen a sign that pointed towards a tomb group. I nearly didn't make it since the signs mysteriously disappeared a kilometre from the place , but they didn't count on me being able to ask the locals for directions and I parked in the middle of this neighborhood and climbed up a very steep hill to find a group of about four (maybe) large tombs, keyhole and circular. I'm pretty sure they were in the middle of a rescue excvation since all but the largest of the tombs was under excavation and even that one was being cleared of trees in prep. (Rescue excavation means surveying and digging before destruction since someone wants to build there.) I wandered around. They had a lot of the outer ramparts of the tombs open to the air (they must have been excavating today or at least yesterday) but the only features of interest were potential rows of rocks. Methinks those signs to the tombs won't be there for much longer. I was glad to see it at least and the sunset, as usual, was beautiful, especially when watched from on top of a kofun.

I then had the choice of cutting across country to Kumamoto, which was definately shorter as the crow flies, but I knew it would take me until around midnight to reach Kumamoto city. So instead, I headed south and west in a lazy loop and up the western part of Kyuushu to Kumomoto city. I reached town around 8 and found my current hotel around 9. It's a little expensive but the parking is free (which is a first) and there is free internet in the lobby which I'm currently using (and this is coming from someone who feels guilty for spending thirteen dollars on dinner last night). So life is good. I had a brillant day and tomorrow I intend on going kofun hunting again, this time in north west Kumamoto-ken and then hopefully spending the night around Aso. Ja ne!

Saitobaru and Ikime

Today was uniformly excellent. left Kagoshima around 9ish and took the expressway back to Saito. By virtue of speeding, I made it there by a little after noon (I am now thouroughly convinced that the actual price you pay for the expressway has nothing to do with building fees and is simply a fee for speeding since you never actually see anyone going to the speed limit (between 70 and 80 kmph) and even when I was cruising along at 110, people were passing me.) It was a fast trip and easy since the highway is very well maintained and there aren't too many cars. Anyway, I took the precaution of grabbing a quick lunch from a 7-11 knowing that I would forgoe it if I didn't get it right then. It was lucky I did since I wasn't actually finished with the mounds until around 4pm and you couldn't have torn me away from the place for the world.

The weather was ridiculously nice. It felt like spring and I had to keep reminding myself it's the end of December. I stopped first at a covered example of an excavation of the side of a key hole shaped tomb. It had several tombs in it and they'd left it open and clean for people to look at (you can tell I'm an archaeologist because my first thought upon seeing it was "damn, that must have been a bitch to clean"). I then stopped off to peer into the woods at the two biggest tombs, thought to belong to the kofun jidai (period) prince and princess. You couldn't get any closer since the place is considered sacred and reserved for the Imperial family. I then headed to the museum and found this high tech crazy place that was filled with archaeological information. It was free too! I came in and they offered to let me use their audio guide system (for four dollars...). I expected the usual CD and headset, but instead they pulled out this crazy looking vest. I was told to walk along this railway on the right side of the corridor and if you looked up you could see little sensors on the ceiling so that when you walked past it trigered the speakers in the collar of the vest making for a surprisingly comfortable audio guide, even if you did have to walk rather slow in places. If you wanted to rewind you just went back to the sensor and triggered it again. It was really cool. I've been so impressed by the advances in museum tech I've seen on this trip.

The museum itself was nicely arranged in this windy pattern that went vaguely through time though it got confusing at the end. There was a decent amount of English and the guide was informative, though I could have done without the random dramatic narratives. I cannot for the life of me figure out why the guy doing the reading pronounced 'sword' "schward" the whole time. Is that an accent I'm not familar with it or was he just too stupid to realize it was a typo? There was lots of hands-on stuff and computer points (not in English) plus some great effects. It was actually pretty creepy the way they showed the inside of a tomb and had the image of the warrior and various artefacts fade in and out (done the same way they do the ghosts at the Haunted Mansion at Disney if I'm not mistaken). I was really fascinated to see other tomb paintings, though in this case, etchings since I've only seen the ones in Nara. They're much more crude in Kyuushu, but I could recognize a boat once I squinted a bit. Also, the armour from this time period was actually pretty impressive. (And the bronze mirrors were so obviously Chinese influenced, it wasn't even funny.) They seem to have painted human skulls red sometimes too (red keeps the evil away). They had a whole room full of skeletons and skulls. I was jealous.

It actually hurt to be there near the end since there was so much information on everything I wanted to know - but it was only available in Japanese. It makes me depressed just thinking about it. It'll be years before I can go back and explore the place properly. *sigh*

So, I came back down and was met by this older guy who seemed to manage the floor. He was obviously bored since no one was visiting the museum so he took me up to the observation deck, took my picture and answered my questions. I thought that would be it, but he led me outside and to another nearby building where they did crafts - making haniwa (clay figurines found on top of kofun) and stone pendants and stuff. He showed me around, and into the pottery shop (where they were making pretty advanced stuff, though I laughed to see some middle schooler had made a clay mask of Anpan man). There, I saw my first hand loom with weights being worked on by a child to make a coaster. I've never seen one in action so it was an unexpected bonus. He brought me back into the main room and insisted I dress up in one of the costumes that were lining the walls. So I dressed up as a Japanese princess and he took lots of pictures (with my camera so I have no idea what he got out of it). It was kinda fun but I'm also blushing from embarassment in most of the pictures. I then expressed an interest in the soapstone pendants (they look like claws) that they had there and asked to buy one. They went searching through a box in the back and pulled out one that was raw, a huge one that was already made, two stone beads and a clay claw on a string and gave them all to me, helping me to make a necklace of the large claw and beads. I wanted to pay but they wouldn't let me so now there's a kofun era style necklace hanging from my mirror in my car. The guy wanted to be very sure I had fun which I assured him I had and asked him to show me the gift shop where I bought one advanced book on the kofun period in that era and one children's guide book (with furigana) which I can practice with (and therefore teach myself basic archaeological vocabulary).

I said goodbye and thank you to the guy and headed down into the fields to do a tour of the place. They really outdid themselves. There was one tomb where you could look around the inside by use of two remote controlled cameras outside. And another kofun allowed you to climb inside and see the burial chamber. Not to mention every tomb had an explanation of it in both Japanese and English. I was very impressed and esctatic *L* I had meant to see every tomb, but then I learnt there were over 300 of them so I limited my time to the major tombs and excavations. There was only one square tomb there which they set up with haniwa all over it - very cute. I also liked seeing the kofun without its dirt covering. It was interesting to learn that the builders of the kofun knew which local dirt to use (in alternating layers) to make the most stable tomb.

With barely enough time left, I raced the sun set to the town of Ikime where I had accidently seen a sign that pointed towards a tomb group. I nearly didn't make it since the signs mysteriously disappeared a kilometre from the place , but they didn't count on me being able to ask the locals for directions and I parked in the middle of this neighborhood and climbed up a very steep hill to find a group of about four (maybe) large tombs, keyhole and circular. I'm pretty sure they were in the middle of a rescue excvation since all but the largest of the tombs was under excavation and even that one was being cleared of trees in prep. (Rescue excavation means surveying and digging before destruction since someone wants to build there.) I wandered around. They had a lot of the outer ramparts of the tombs open to the air (they must have been excavating today or at least yesterday) but the only features of interest were potential rows of rocks. Methinks those signs to the tombs won't be there for much longer. I was glad to see it at least and the sunset, as usual, was beautiful, especially when watched from on top of a kofun.

I then had the choice of cutting across country to Kumamoto, which was definately shorter as the crow flies, but I knew it would take me until around midnight to reach Kumamoto city. So instead, I headed south and west in a lazy loop and up the western part of Kyuushu to Kumomoto city. I reached town around 8 and found my current hotel around 9. It's a little expensive but the parking is free (which is a first) and there is free internet in the lobby which I'm currently using (and this is coming from someone who feels guilty for spending thirteen dollars on dinner last night). So life is good. I had a brillant day and tomorrow I intend on going kofun hunting again, this time in north west Kumamoto-ken and then hopefully spending the night around Aso. Ja ne!