Kumamoto

2014年05月18日

Today, お母さん and I went to Kumamoto, a city not too far from here.  I got to ride the Shinkansen, or "bullet train" for the first time!  I'm also happy to report that streetcars are still somewhat common in Japan.

In Japan, most cities have mascot characters to represent them, and among the most famous is Kumamon, from Kumamoto.  In Japanese, "kuma" means bear, which explains his appearance.

You can find Kumamon's face on just about anything, even outside of Kumamoto.

Our first destination in Kumamoto was Kumamoto Castle (熊本城).  Japanese castles are quite different from European castles, but still just as beautiful.  I am only posting one picture here, but more can be found in the photo album for which a link may be found at the top of this page.

Afterwards, we visited Suizen Park (水前寺公園), whose name roughly means "temple before water" (here "before" refers to location rather than occurrence in time).  It was extremely beautiful and had some of the cleanest water I have ever seen.  I even had koi eat directly from my hand while I pet them.

While at the park, we visited the aforementioned temple.  お母さん taught me the proper etiquette for visitng a Japanese temple, which begins with washing one's hands: fill a water scoop, wash one's left hand first, then one's right, pour some water into the cleaned left hand and take a sip (from the hand, not the scoop), then allow the remaining water to run down the handle of the scoop.

Hands cleaned, one may approach the temple shrines.  At a shrine, one makes a monetary offering (5 yen coins are considered the luckiest), bows twice, claps twice, makes a wish or prayer, and then bows again.  the Japanese temples are very interesting and beautiful, but custom prohibits photography of the sacred areas, which are the most elaborately decorated.  

Later that night, back in Fukuoka, I skyped with Amalia, who had done a homestay with お母さん for 10 months.  She lives in Germany, and the instant we started talking, I was speaking German as fluently as if I had been in Germany the past week, rather than Japan.  I guess that's how you know that you speak a language "well enough.". One day, Japanese...