We attempted to see the Osaka Hanshin Tigers play against The Giants from Tokyo. Unfortunately it poured and the game got canceled after the first inning. We only saw a few plays, bought a poncho, and luckily were refunded. The trip to Osaka was worthwhile because we went to Kobe before the game to eat Kobe beef. I’ve been eating occasional meat when it comes to trying food when traveling.
Random Spring Stuff
Cherry Blossoms/ Sakura
I went to both Nishiyama Park and Asawa River for cherry blossom festivals in Fukui. It’s always nice to see people just enjoying themselves because people often seem so stressed at work. I don’t think it’s just teachers but the social norms that you are supposed to be at work for a long time: quantity over quality and productivity.
Camping and other Weekend Fun!
We went camping in Ono, a mountainous town in Fukui that is on the way to Gifu. We managed to swim in the freezing cold river before it rained the rest of the day. We took a break at an onsen and bought burgers to eat in our tent for dinner. The next morning we had to leave early because a bunch of local caretakers came to weedwack all the high grass. We headed over to Lake Kuzuru and a small waterfall before heading home.
Biking along the river.
Nishiyama Park
A flower ring from my 4 year old neighbor. The kids in the partments all started to play outside and usually unsupervised so they have started to talk to us.
Botanical garden and anko (red bean) ice cream.
Hyakumangoku Matsuri
Every year a festival called Hyakumangoku Matsuri is held the first weekend of June. This was my first time to go and really the first full parade I ever watched in Japan. A local festival in my town was canceled the first year due to rain and I was back in America the second time. I never made it to Fukui’s main festival because of other events at the same time. I really enjoyed seeing the different costumes and events. We (Kalen, Fiona, Victoria, and me) drove to Kanazawa and found parking near the park and found a spot to sit and watch the parade. It consisted of fireman performing acrobatics on ladders held by other people, “ninja” performers, groups of girls/ women in kimono dancing, and men dressed in samurai clothes. There were even people dressed as lords on horses. I think the best part was that people actually waved and said hello to the crowds, including us, and we were “killed” by samurai at least five times. We took a break taking photos at the 21st Century Art Museum and because Fiona and Vistoria hadn’t been before. Later we watched “oban” or traditional festival dancing. I finally found my favorite food stall snack, sweet potato fries (in sugar), which I haven’t seen since I first came to Japan. We met up with some other friends and went to Kenrokuen to see a woman play the flute in the pond and see the garden lit up for the evening (usually it closes?).
Golden Week
This year Golden week holidays fell on the first Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of May. There are many festivals and events throughout Japan but it is also a crazy time to travel, so I stayed in Fukui and experienced some local culture. I went to the Azalea (tsutsuji) festival at Nishiyama Park. Student brass bands from the local junior and senior high schools performed. The park was busy with many visitors so we rode our bikes there. I also went to the Washi Paper Village in Echizen. I went to buy more Japanese paper to bring home and I wanted to see the actual festival procession this year.
In Japanese, kami can means god or paper. The festival is related to the history of paper. It is believed that usually the paper goddess, Kawa-Kami Gozen and the two local gods stay up in the mountain, but for the festival, they will come down to the Otaki Shrine for three days.
I went on the final day. On the last day, people carry the gods around town to other shrines in a Mikoshi. I didn’t stay for the very end because there was a two hour break. But at 8:00pm the ceremony begins for the gods’ departure. They carry the Mikoshi up the mountain and back to Otaki Shrine. When they stop at shrines along the way, they run around with the Mikoshi. It looked exhausting and difficult.
Sumo
I went to Osaka to see sumo. We didn’t have tickets, so we had to wake up early and get in line for general admission tickets sold the day of. We didn’t get tickets the first time, so we woke up early again and luckily got them for Sunday!! The matches are quick and it was fun to watch!!
We went to the movies instead on Saturday and watched Sing. We also saw a St. Patrick’s festival and ate Mexican food.
On Sunday, we went to a garden and found a rooftop area with a fake grass picnic area and took a nap and hungout before heading back into the sumo stadium.
Winter in Fukui
Winter this year has been mostly pleasant. It snowed a few times but never too much to cover the roads for long. It’s been cold but I use my heater all the time and my electricity really isn’t that bad. I got to go skiing twice this year. The first time was night skiing at Imajo 365 in Fukui. There weren’t lines for the lift and it wasn’t too cold. A lot of other people went. I also went to Ski Jam again. It was great because it was a super sunny day. I’d go more but without my own ski gear it’s too expensive.
Most weekends this winter were spent painting, relaxing, hanging out with friends or starting job application work.
Taiwan
This year for winter break I wanted to go somewhere somewhat warm and also somewhere where I could travel easily. So I went to Taiwan with Kalen for winter vacation. We spent Christmas and New Year’s there. We spent the majority of the time in Taipei, but we also went to Beitou, Jiufen, and Hualien.
For Christmas Eve, we went to the area around Taipei 101 for a Christmas market but it was crazy and crowded. We ended up heading to the night market near Longshan Temple and had our first taste of meat buns ( I gave up food restrictions on this trip and actually never ended up sick). On Christmas Day, we went to a church I found online that was having an English mass and nativity performance. I don’t go regularly but wanted to for the holiday. It was not a regular Christian church. They used a nightclub on Sunday mornings for the location, which meant the whole place was really cool looking and set up well for a play to be performed. There was a stage, video screens, dance floor, and booth seating, etc. They also had coffee and donuts. It started off with Christmas/church songs, and then got into the nativity play. It was a really entertaining take on telling the story. It was presented as a group of actors struggling to get ready for their performance of the nativity. They told the story in bits as they rehearsed, but also taught another lesson as the actors learned the importance of working together and helping each other. Later, we had an early dinner at an English pub which had a Christmas dinner set course. It was really good but I could barely move after!
The next day we left for Beitou. Unfortunately on Mondays, all the little museums in the area are closed. We spent most of the day just enjoying the weather outside in the park and sat around at the public hot spring for a while. A friendly Taiwanese guy helped us at the public onsen since Kalen needed different swim shorts. It was fun but some springs/pools were way too hot. I’d say the majority of people were old men. We had a really nice vegetarian lunch and tea before relaxing in the room enjoying HBO and TV in English for a change.
Next we headed to Jiufen. We had planned to do a hiking or waterfall trip during the day and then go shopping and eating at night but because it was cold and rainy, we just walked around, shopped, and had tea and food throughout the day. I definitely spent more money than planned in this shopping street. We tried a famous ice cream treat here: peanut candy, cilantro, taro ice cream, all in a wrap. It was really good! I also tried other sweets and beef noodle soup.
Off to Hualien and Toroko Gorge. Before leaving, we went back into the shopping street to get some photos without any crowds. The train was a little over two hours and only 12 dollars, which is a bargain compared with Japan. I had hoped to go for a bike ride to the beach the first day, but by the time we go there it was going to be a rush before sunset. I also didn’t feel comfortable riding a bike on the streets to the bike trail because of all the scooters and lack of space for bikes. We went to Hualien’s main night market for dinner. It was really cool because the food stalls were permanent and the location was in a park. It was about a 30 minute walk from the hotel. The first night we had some Taiwanese food and some other food. We had empanadas, egg pancakes with mashed potatoes (and cheese and basil). It was an interesting take on the popular Taiwanese breakfast food. The other night, on the weekend, it was much more crowded and had live music. That night we tried gao bao, fried chicken, smoothies, and a burrito like thing.
While in Hualien, we visited Taroko Gorge. We opted to use the local bus (not city or tour bus). While it was cheap and convenient, the bus didn’t usually come anywhere close to the scheduled time and the first day it was extremely crowded on the way back. I’ve never seen so many people squished on a bus. We were standing in the front seat in front of people sitting down.
Toroko Gorge was beautiful! The first day we went to spots that were more popular and therefore filled with tour buses and tons of people at times. We went to Shakadang Trail, which was along part of the gorge and had nice views of the rocks and water below. Then we went to Swallow Grotto. That was okay. The views were nice but you were just on a path along the road. Then we went to the Eternal Spring Shrine that was a memorial to those who died during the construction of the Central Cross-Island Highway. On the second day, we started at the farthest tourist spot in the gorge, TianXiang. There we went on a really nice hike to a waterfall view. There were monkeys along the trail and a lot of pretty foliage. Afterwards, we grabbed a sweet taro bun and got on the bus to go to the next trail. Liushui trail was empty and beautiful. Some parts you walked along a cut out edge of the rock face (it had a guardrail–some of the permit only trails appear to have areas without anything to stop you from falling off). Other parts were farther in with tree coverage. We saw a giant hornet (venomous) but it was dying.
On the way back, we got off the bus at Xingcheng Beach. It’s a pebble rock beach with some food stalls. The day was nice to just sit outside. After a while, we took the next bus to avoid an overcrowded bus back to Hualien. We ate burgers and a nice salad for dinner.It was nice to eat well made American food 🙂
Back to Taipei for New Years! We left Hualien on December 31, took a nap, and then went out to a brick oven pizza restaurant for dinner. It was great and they even had cannolis! We watched the fireworks shoot off of Taipei 101 from a nearby park with a view of Taipei 101 (never got to go up for the view but I’ve been to Skytree so it’s okay). The fireworks didn’t last too long (compared with Japanese summer fireworks) but it was cool!
The last few days we just enjoyed museums, parks, art, the zoo, street performers and food, both Taiwanese and American style food that we can’t eat in Japan. We had a big meal at Din Tai Fung, a popular dim sum restaurant. We visited Shilin night market which was super crowded. We enjoyed free entry to the National Palace Museum and saw a lot of old Chinese art (furniture, pottery, ceramics, jade, etc.) The zoo cost under $2 and had a really great insect exhibit where you were surrounded by butterflies. We also took the gondola to Maokong to see the view of Taipei. We even enjoyed some craft beer at a shipping container/airstream food park by 101. It felt like being in Austin.
Overall it was a great trip and nice to be in a city (break from Fukui countryside).
People were friendly, trains were cheap, people spoke English and there were English signs and guides, studio Ghibli goods everywhere, food was delicious, boba tea (almost) daily was amazing, and the weather was great!
Random pictures from Sabae and Fukui Prefecture
fortunatefukui 
