JAPANEXILE

3rd November - This update has been a long time coming. I’ve been really bus as of late so just haven’t had the physical strength to move my wrists enough to type. But right now I’m feeling strong enough to break a toothpick, so thought it was a good time to do some writing. This will likely be a long post, in fact I’m going to have to split it into two parts, yet I still think I’m not going to be able to write as much as I wanted, jikan janai! (No Time)

Noboribetsu (a town I have incorrectly been calling Noroibetsu up until now) is Hokkaido’s largest and most famous hotspring resort. Yet quite surprisingly (I was surprised anyway) I didn’t get chance to go the Hotsprings there. No, our reason for visiting was a cultural and historical one. Following the advice of Neo (aka Shiro) our first stop was the relatively recently constructed mock Edo Period town, the name of which escapes me. Since it it nearing the end of the season it was pretty much a ghost Edo Period town, which in some ways is better as it means no queues and we can get special treatment for being exotic gaijin. The town is amazingly well done, looks incredibly realistic, so many good photo opportunities…which of course I was unable to take advantage of due to forgetting the battery to my camera. A fact I was cursing the entire weekend. Anyway, first on the activity list…

Ninja Show! Sit in a darkened room, and well, its a ninja show. Actors/Ninjas jump around the stage fighting to fast paced music. Although most of the action happens on the stage up front there is a gangway through the crowd which ninjas pop out of every now and again, as well as appearing from the darkness above for the extra shock value. The show lasted about 15mins, the first 5 being the training and ‘graduation’ of this new ninja. The rest following said Ninja on his first mission. The whole thing was so well choreographed, definitely something I would go to see again, and in fact it has made the shortlist of things I want to show my family when they come out here at Christmas. I wish it had been possible to get some photos or videos of it in action, best thing we was us posing at the end of the show with the actors, although rather embarrassingly I did the Ninja sign wrong, so I pretty much ruined what would have been an great photo. This town is definitely all about Ninjas tho, and other than the Ninja show the best attraction is the Ninja house. Historically Ninja houses are designed to be very difficult to attack/move through once inside. This one being no exception, featuring mazes, swinging boulders, fake doors, darkness, etc. Most importantly and interestingly for us were the sloping floors, which are really good for doing silly poses on, making it look like gravity no longer applies to you. So after all that excitement we wandered up to the Samurai museum to have a look and read about sword making and samurai in general, a line I particularly liked from the Spirit of the Samurai text talking about a teacher and a famous samurai, I cleaned up the translation a bit as the one the museum had used didn’t really make sense. “These two men had nothing in common with each other, except, perhaps…the Spirit of the Samurai”

Back out in the street a strangely dressed woman and her rather creepy looking friend ushered us inside to watch their performance. It was a show about upper class geishas, we had the opportunity to act in it but were unfortunately beaten out of the chance in a heated “Rock Paper Scissors” match with an elderly Korean man. Despite that blow the show was still pretty cool, despite understanding very little, the costumes were amazing, and Japanese humour from what I’ve seen to far is very much slap stick in nature, so you can generally the gag.

Shiro insisted we had a go at pretty much every game whilst we were in town, be it Japanese archery or Shiruken star throwing. I wasn’t too bad at the Shiruken throwing, at least I hit the target. The archery…well I’m going to blame the equipment. Give me a real bow and I’m sure I would have risen to the occasion. My real talent was in the ‘poison dart through a pipe’ game, which after spending 1000Yen on I managed to hit the centre target, and won…a 500Yen voucher, redeemable only at the other game stores. What a pointless prize. I was cheesed off, especially after Craig’s unbelievable luck earlier in the day. For a thousand Yen a go you turn the handle of a large box, a coloured ball pops out, the colour you get determines what prize you get. I won some bouncy balls. Craig won a f***in sword. Worth 9000Yen. First the camera and then that, not my lucky day for sure. I ended up buying a sword anyway, which was a lot of fun at the time and for a few days after, charging down the samurai guard at the town gate was particularly funny. It hasn’t seen much action since then however, perhaps when I’ve had a few kendo lessons Craig and I can up the stakes by using metal swords. Its definitely a good souvenir whatever, I’d like to get it engraved with my name in Kanji if I can as well, though Neo seemed to think that wouldn’t be possible. Not sure why.

Changing the theme of the day completely we then headed over the the castle. Yes castle, not in the style you’d expect tho. It is in fact a near life size replica of some castle in Denmark, in honour of some trade agreement from the past. As quite suitably there is an aquarium inside. I do like aquariums, although I’ve now been to quite a few, and a lot of fish look pretty damn similar to me. Still, this one had some stuff I hadn’t seen, a massive Octopus in a pool far too small for it, and lots of touch pools. Which are always nice…sting rays are so soft its unbelievable. Peculiarly there was also a lizard section which made a nice change of pace. After having a look at some thoroughly depressed looking penguins (I couldn’t help but think of that movie “Happy Feet”) it was on to the dolphin show! Easily the highlight was where I was able to go up to the platform and control the dolphins using the commands the handlers taught me. Why more places don’t allow you to do that I don’t know, even more confusing was why no-one else from the audience apart from Craig volunteered, don’t the Japanese like controlling dolphins? Part 2 (and potentially 3) coming up soon. Until then, a ridiculous amount of photos that Craig and Shiro took available here. (I’ve actually written the other parts already, but I’m going to release them throughout the week to make it look like I update more regularly)