Every hell we went to had their own little gift shop (from which the goods could be shipped). They were all more or less the same, but each one was personalized for the specific boilin’ hell it was located at. We bought presents!

This hell had a geyser which was (according to Cassie) not as impressive as Old Faithful, but (according to me) still kinda cool.

Photo ops were abound

At this hell some dude yelled at us through a megaphone, “Hey! I wonder if you understand Japanese!” in Japanese. To which we responded, not through a megaphone but also in Japanese, “Uh, a little,” whereupon he came up to us and lit a cigarette, then jabbed it towards my face. Eventually I understood he meant for me to blow on it. So I did. Then the mud bubbles went all smoky! Neat trick cigarette smokin’ megaphone dude.

I don’t know why there’s fruit in this wading pool. Would it help to know that it is native to the region? That’s pretty important to Japanese people, but still doesn’t explain these aquatic circumstances.

Yeah, Japanese mannequins are creepy. And caucasian. Especially this one.

Welcome to Beppu! This is a view of Beppu from our lovely and sprawling hotel on the hill.

Our room was large and luxurious. We were upgraded! It included two beds, a table for sitting at and chatting, and a whole tatami area! Amazing, and too much. But nice. Cassie really likes hotels, especially nice ones. She was positively giddy, as you can see.

Beppu is a hot springs town. People either come here to get in them, or look at them, or both. There are nine famous ones, called jigoku, which means “hell". These pictures are from the first one we went to, and one of the more famous ones, called chinoike jigoku, “blood pond hell". Apparently the name put Cassie in a bad mood.

People aren’t allowed to get into the jigoku, but at almost every one there was a little wading pool that people could stick their feet into. It just felt like warm water though. Not like the Blood of Satan. Which is kind of what I was hoping for.

On Saturday morning Cassie and I went to some kind of happyokai for the kindergarten/daycare that she teaches at once a week. A happyokai (pronounced hap-pyo-kai, not happy-o-kai) is something where kids show their parents all the stuff they’ve learned at school, which in this case is singing and dancing. It’s basically all of the band concerts and plays and choruses and shit American kids do in school rolled into one several hour long event involving the whole school. At the daycare, they even make the babies dance and fumble around with tamborines.

Also, it’s apparently used as a tool of gender indoctrination where the Japanese train girls at a young age to be polite and quiet geisha types,

and train boys to be awesome Power Ranger Samurai.

Coming up, Cassie and I’s lovely trip to Beppu.

Small town Japan is something else, man, I tell ya. Recovering from a nasty case of the bird flu, I walked down to the nearest vending machine in the middle of the afternoon for a can of sprite. On the way, some middle aged dude flagged me down and started running after me. In a mixture of extremely bad English and some Japanese he asked me if I worked at the Junior High School, etc. We talked a bit more.

He has an office right across the street there where he buys land certificates or something. I mentioned I had a cold (I didn’t want to say bird flu in case he would get scared and run away), and that’s why I was out of school today. He asks where I’m going and I say to that vending machine over there. Well, he starts walking in that direction, and I think, “Ok, he’s going to walk me to the vending machine.” But instead he starts veering away, motioning me to come after him. So, I do. He leads me into some car dealership and tells the secretary to summon the boss. Then we all three sit down and chat about nothing over tea and biscuits! The conversation went something like this:

Then I politely excused myself, and guy number one and I went outside where he promptly ran into his land certificate buying house and brought out some oranges for me as a gift. “Vitamin,” he said. “22,” he whispered in disbelief to his wife, rubbing my hand between his farmery calloused ones over and over again.

So there’s this program, Adobe Lightroom. It’s really quite amazing. It’s what I’ve been using to edit photos for the past few posts. It’s in beta right now and free to download. Zachary says that it’s going to expire at the end of February, which is really disheartening. It’s made editing photos so much more fun and gratifying. It almost kind of seems like cheating. If it costs under $200, I would honestly consider buying it. It’s that good. Ben, you should check it out if you haven’t already.

Today’s photos are the result of messing around with Lightroom. I took a walk today after work because the light was really nice and I wanted to take photos of the mountains in the distance because they have snow on them now! That’s correct, it snowed today. I was so happy when I was riding my bike to work, I was singing Christmas songs. Of course, none of it stuck really (except on the mountains) cause it’s freaking 40 degrees outside and sunny. It may be freezing inside the apartment and inside the school (there’s no custom of central heating in Japan, you see), but today I realized that it’s just not that cold outside, and it never will be.

Something is making funny noises outside the house like holy crap maybe something just got blown off the roof. I knew that there was snow forecast for tonight, but I did not know it was going to be snowy with a chance of typhoon. Sweet! I just looked outside and it is, in fact, snowing! And really really windy! It’s kind of scary. Today is one of the two often mentioned days of the year when Saga gets snow. The days are not specified beyond that there are two of them. But, February is the coldest month here. Starting March, it’s just gonna get warmer. I’m not looking forward to that.

These pictures are from a bar in Omura (which is in Nagasaki-ken) called The Spot. It’s run by a white guy from America who graduated from Macalester if you can believe it. It’s a pretty cool place, quite cheap, and even cheaper if you’re a foreigner. The only problem is it’s a bit of a drive. The guy in the first picture is a Scotsman who said, and I summarize here, “You have the best Scottish accent I’ve ever heard from a non-Scotsman.” Well, that made my day, about a month ago which is when I was at the bar.

But back to the present. I spent my afternoon and evening today being creative sort of for creativity’s sake. I’m always on the look out for ways to improve myself in a sort of behavioral way, which is probably not healthy psychologically speaking. I read an interesting article in the New York Times magazine about food and stuff which you should read. I also read that Kurt Vonnegut essay/lecture about creativity (from Best American Non-Required Reading, quite a good anthology) which has at least briefly inspired me to be more creative. So I recorded a big ass full guitar wailin’ version of Ride Your Bike, which you can download at the bottom of the page. Also, I almost almost almost recorded a video. Like, a video blog video. Kinda thing. Almost. But then I didn’t. Mostly because I’d have to record it with Cassie’s computer camera, and I can see no future with that since I’d want to video other parts of Japan outside of my apartment. I would use either of the two camcorders I have, but of course they’re both broken. Both of them! So I didn’t record or post anything, which is probably for the best. However, I will take special requests, for example if anyone wants a guided tour of the apartment or a stumbly and nauseating walk around the block.

Ride Your Bike Full of Guitars

Note the above file is m4a, meaning I think that you’ll have to download it for it to work properly. Sorry.