Winter peonies in Ueno Park, Tokyo

Kobe Matsuri

Quite a while ago, I think in the middle of May, the Kobe festival took place. I went there with a Chinese friend from the dormitory. It was very Kobe-ish, because it mainly consisted of a parade with a great variety of acts. There were several samba groups, some antique cars, folk dance groups from Korea, Okinawa, and China, and a lot of majorettes.

At one point a group of Jedi and those white soldier people came along waving their light sabers. A Sith was menacing the crowd while Emperor Palpatine (or what`s his name) was waving from the back of a pick-up truck. Next to him some guys where rocking their guitars. It was a group from Save Nippon, which I think is the main donation campaign for the earthquake disaster. There were more groups urging for donations, but this one was the most entertaining.

Though a group of people dressed up as food, from the city of Himeji, beating their drums was also very amusing.

While I tried to capture the fun on camera, I discovered I failed in my attempt. Most photo`s are focused on the crowd in front of me (even though most of them were smaller than me), so there`s not much to see of the parade.

The parade was pretty international, but there were a lot of food stalls, which made it very Japanese again. There also was a small train which children could take a ride in. A disproportionate number of uniformed conductors were standing in the middle of the track, which looked very funny. I wish I took a photograph of that.

Taiwanese food & tea

Already a new update! This week it’s Golden Week in Japan. Due to a string of successive holidays, a lot of Japanese have the week of. Many people plan trips during this week, but hotel prices are also higher and everythings' full. So I’m staying put. I’ll just go to Kyoto tomorrow.

Anyway, I'll write about yesterday for now:

My Taiwanese friend May and her boyfriend Fuu recently told me about high quality ulong tea from Taiwan. Apparently this tea sells for so much that tea farmers are the richest people in Taiwan. According to Fuu some farmers transport their crop in a Mercedes Benz…

So when they invited me to have lunch with them on saturday at Sageikanten, a place that serves Taiwanese food and tea, I was looking forward to trying the tea. May knows the Japanese owner, Miyata-san, who is a tea connaisseur. He was planning a trip to Taiwan to see the tea farms for himself, and after the other customers had gone May and Fuu gave him some tips and pointers. Fuu wasn't able to introduce the owner to a farmer in his hometown however, because it would have too much social implications for Fuu himself. It would involve a lot of gifts and dinners and such apparently. Makes social relationships in Taiwan seem even more complicated than those in Japan...

They had also brought some tea from an acquainted farmer and the owner poured us the tea to compare the taste. On the picture you can see the difference in color. Even though it was all tea from the same sort of tea bush, the darker one was harvested in winter, and had a stronger taste than the other two, who were harvested in spring in the same year. It never freezes in Taiwan though, so winter isn`t really cold.

The food was really good by the way! It was a lunch set consisting of several courses of steamed dumplings, rice porridge, a steamed meat bun and so on. You could choose from several kinds of tea from a menu, and the one I had was really fragrant.

The Miyatas were really nice. I asked if I could take their picture. Miyata-san offered to teach me Taiwanese cooking so I could start a chain in Holland. Might not be a bad idea. I said I would think about it...

I also discovered bapao is a Taiwanese/Chinese word. I told them that I eat broodjes bapao all the time in Holland. May called it something like baa pa~o. I thought they were Indonesian, but according to Wikipedia they originally came from China and were introduced in Holland through Indonesian cooking. Just an interesting fact.

arrival etc.

First post about my second year in Japan! It took a while to get internet on my laptop. So far Kobe seems to be a terrific place. The flight was pretty crappy, since our connecting flight in Paris had a problem and we had to change to another plane. This took several hours so we arrived later than planned.

I took a ferry from Kansai airport to Kobe airport, from which, I could take the port-liner to Port Island, where my dorm is located. It was very sunny and the fair city of Kobe lay sparkly white against the mountain on the other side of the bay, so I had a good impression right away.

The first week has been very busy, and most of it seems spent on asking people for directions. The stations I have to pass through are complicated enough, but the campus is terrible. I was shown the way to, and around the university, but of course I couldn’t remember any of it. And you have to walk way up a mountain slope. But as a payoff you get an extremely nice view.

There were a lot of orientations, of the dorm, my faculty and for international students in general. These were very Japanese, with lots of warnings to put your trash in the right bag, not use drugs, etc., everything illustrated by pictures of cute animals.

My faculty tutor is a master student from Taiwan. She took me for lunch and helped me pick my courses for the coming semester.She`s really nice.

Overall I really like being back in Japan. Everyone is friendly and eager to help. Eating out is still a lot cheaper here than in Holland but as a trade-off supermarket fruit and vegetables are very expensive. Also speaking Japanese for a whole week already seems to improve my level. And I don’t feel tired anymore when using Japanese for a whole day.

As a side note: I forgot how loud it can be here. In shops the staff constantly shouts irrashaimase!,and almost every machine talks to you. And there must have been local elections, because on Port Island cars were riding around the whole day long with people shouting things like “Thank you kindly for your support!” through a megaphone and waving to passersby. Somehow I can’t imagine this will win over any voters.

the pictures above are first of the harbour and Kobe`s landmark Port Tower; the last three are the view from my portliner station, and from my window and the night view from the kitchen balcony. You can see the lights of Kobe sparkling against the mountain! Last one is the view from the international student center.

update:

I`ve been in Japan for almost four weeks now so there`s a lot more to tell. Maybe I`ll update more in the coming week. I decided to write this blog in english so my non-dutch friends could read it too and because I need the practice. I hope this won`t be a problem. You all can read english right!? ;)

okinawa

Het semester loopt alweer tegen het eind, nog een weekje les en dan zijn we vrij. Alleen nog een presentatie voor de docenten en mensen van het centrum voor buitenlandse studenten en de tutors op de 27ste juli waar ik niet zo heel veel zin in heb, maar goed.
Ik heb maar eens de moeite genomen om de foto's van Okinawa te plaatsen.
eerst een tempel bij het enige echte strand van de hoofdstad Naha. En dan het strand zelf. Het rode kasteel is het vroegere kasteel van de heersers van Okinawa en ligt ook in Naha. Op het eind foto's van een park aan zee, waar een authentiek okinawaans dorpje was nagebouwd. En dan ons uitstapje naar een eilandje in de buurt op de enige dag dat het echt goed weer was. En een typisch okinawaans graf op dat eiland.