Finding Tochigi Prefecture

We did plenty of exploring in Ashikaga, and we also visited some of my favorite nearby cities as well. A big thing on our Ashikaga list was the Ashikaga Gakko.

It is the main tourist attraction of the whole city. The place is marketed as "the oldest university in Japan", but in a much repeated pattern, most of the original structures on the grounds were destroyed by fire with only a couple small original structures remaining. I believe most of what is currently standing was built sometime in the 70's. The school functioned as a Confucian academy in its day, with a couple really old likenesses of Confucius still on display. Upon telling Angelica that I had become a Confucian master and rattling off some fake "Confucius says" proverbs, Angelica replied that I was more like a master of confusionism. Funny funny.

A statue of the big man himself.

The main gate of the gakko is a symbol of the city.

"Seated Confucious dated 1535. Muromachi period. Wood, crystal eyes. Height 78.0 cm", stated a terse little sign.

"Seated Ono-no Takamura. 18th century, Edo period. Wood with polychromy, crystal eyes. Height 71.5 cm"

It seems that this place is owned by the city, which means I can have one of my bosses call ahead of time so that my guests and I don't have to pay for tickets to enter. This is really nice, and it definitely takes the edge off going to the place so many times. I would be sad if I had to pay even after my 5th visit. English explanations of the buildings are available but limited, so I'm sure that I don't know the whole story. The buildings themselves, though, are very classical, with few other examples existing in the city that I have seen so far. Walking through the buildings gives me a nice relaxing feeling. Its very tranquil, but sometimes I pretend like I'm a ninja and hum Kung Fu music as I try to sneak up on people. You know how it is.

The roof on this building is kinda cool. It seems to be one big compressed mass of straw.

Here is a place to lock your umbrella. You can buy an umbrella at 7-11 for like 2 dollars, so I rarely even bother to carry one from home. More trouble than its worth I think.

A peaceful little pond with an island at its center.

Here's one of my favorite shots from the whole winter vacation. I'm so dramatic and deep sometimes.

I had to show Angelica the big local electronics store. There are a few entertaining oddities to see. Here Angelica is test driving a horse riding machine. I think it is supposed to tone your leg muscles or something, but it seems kinda silly.

We were super hungry from all of our touring, so I took Angelica and a couple of friends to an okonomiyaki place a block away from my apartment. Here she is behind the counter with the staff.

Me, Ang, Tung, and Holly from Canada, respectively.

11/20/07 Some Three-Person Wandering

I did my best to show my parents around Ashikaga when I got home from work. I took them to pretty much all of the shopping districts in town so that they could buy souvenirs or whatever and be entertained at the same time.

One of the big shopping areas is mercifully close to my house. A decent sized mall along with many smaller separate stores is only a few blocks from my house, and its a breeze to get there by bike. Its also where you can find a McDonald`s and a KFC, so while I only took my parents there a couple of times, I suspect that they snuck over there to pig out while I was at work.

There is an interesting cultural thing happening with the Kentucky Fried Chicken`s in Japan. First of all, most of them have a life-sized statue of Colonel Sanders. That by itself is pretty amusing. One of the restaurants in Kyoto that I remember always had their statue dressed up in a funny manner. Sometimes he was wearing a kimono, sometimes he had a little hat on, and so forth. So when Christmas time comes around, colonels all over Japan are dressed like Santa Claus(I think that Santa`s wiki page is a pretty interesting read, by the way). Another interesting KFC phenomenon involves holiday feasting. Everyone sees Americans eating gigantic birds for the holidays and assume that they are chickens, because there are no turkeys to speak of in Japan. I don`t know what the deal is, but I have just never seen or heard of them existing or being eaten at all. Anyway, so when Christmas comes around, I hear that everyone flocks(hihi) to KFC to get a big rotisserie chicken to take home. Christmas and KFC are intertwined to the point that I have heard of people confusing the Colonel with Santa himself.

Tom and Mom chilling with the Colonel. Are you down with the Colonel?

Woa, this gets better. So I was just taking a peek at the Colonel Sanders wikipedia page, and it linked to the `Curse of the Colonel`. Long story short, whenever the Hanshin Tigers (Osaka area professional baseball team) win big games, the fans would jump off the ebisubashi bridge in downtown Osaka into the river below in celebration. Well in 1985, after a championship win, fans threw one of these Colonel statues into the river along with the usual non-statue type people. And they haven`t won a championship title since! Bum bum bummm. You have all been warned.

So after that sidetrack... oh, I also brought my parents to school with me on Wednesday. They got to see a couple of my classes and witness all of the glory. They also had the chance(were forced to have the chance) to have one of our delectable school lunches. It was pretty tame, no fishies at all... they really lucked out. The Principal took us to Ashikaga Gakko (oldest school in Japan), and we did an abbreviated tour of the grounds.

This cool looking suit of armor belonged to someone by the name of Ashikaga. Funny it would end up here.. It was displayed in the visitor center for the Gakko(gakko means school, by the way).

Oh there`s more. So much more. Too much more, you might say. Let`s all meet back here later, shall we?

One last picture for your consideration. This is another list of rules, this time for a local Pachinko hall. Its even better than the video arcade. Give it a look.

Good Morning Campers!

Actual classes at my school of employment don't begin until early next month. So, along with introducing myself to countless people, we also have the odd little assignment to take care of. The latest was to serve as a sort of summer camp counselor for a few days. Apart from a 2 hour segment when the foreigners were in charge, we mostly just led the kids around and did random classic camp-type activities.

One of my favorite parts of this camp (no pictures unfortunately) was the fishing. This amounted to the people in charge blocking off a small bit of a shallow river and filling it with fish. The children then proceeded to run around, chasing the fish and catching them with their hands. We carrying the fish back to camp in buckets, cleaned them, and cooked them for lunch. I think everyone had fun with that.

A typical meal at camp.

The students were all forced to get up ridiculously early in order to do morning exercises. I took this picture while standing in my room, in my pajamas and half asleep.

A few days earlier we did a bit of sightseeing around Ashikaga. I guess one of the reasons that Springfield is their sister city is that we both are cities of some historical significance. We like to emphasis our Lincoln heritage, and the Ashikaga clan ruled over Japan for some 200 years.

This is the main gate of the Ashikaga Gakko, the oldest university in Japan.



Here's a shot of one of the building interiors on campus. This picture has so many rectangles...


I don't know the significance of this building.. that happens when you can't read.