*damn, no images can be posted right now. Imagine a beautiful view of Sakurajima right here*
I noticed from my visitor map that someone from Kyushu might have visited my blog. The map isn't that exact to tell for sure, but it reminded me of something that happened in Kyushu five years ago. Everyone is warmly welcome here, but I have a special place in my heart for Kyushu and the people there. One of the only trips I could afford to make in Japan was a round trip around Kyushu by local trains. The people I met, at random, were so lovely and guestfriendly that what was supposed to be a long weekend turned into over a week. People took me in to their hearts and homes in a way I have never experienced since, and writing about it is a good way to never forget Kyushu - my beloved.
It was June, and I was university student in a small town in Saitama prefecture, just north of Tokyo. My best friend Susan worked as a post-doc researcher at a major pharmaceuticals company, and she was to present a paper in Oita, in Kyushu. She was planning on spending the weekend in Oita and Kumamoto before returning back to work and she asked me if I wanted to join her there for a couple of days of sightseeing and drinking with her colleagues. She generously gave me money for the ticket and said I could stay with her in her paid-for-the-company hotel room (she knew I was a piss-poor student and she was earning millions of yen), and so on the Thursday that week I got on the night bus to Hakata, located in northern Kyushu. Arriving in Hakata around 10 am on Friday, I took a train to Oita. It seems small on the map, but is a castle town and home of the great Meiji man Yukichi Fukuzawa. The weekend with Susan was amazing. We drove with a couple of her colleagues to Mt Aso, which is still the only close encounter I have had with a volcano. There was a contrasted freedom in driving around the countryside: my life in Japan, living with a Japanese family in Saitama just north of Tokyo, was a little restricted socially and VERY university centered. I should post about that sometime.
The fun started when Susan and I went drinking on Saturday, the night before we would travel together to Kumamoto for sightseeing. We had certainly never seen as many
sunakku in one place as we did in Oita. The streets just behind the station were full of
sunakku signs, and naturally there was one on every floor of every 5-storey building: literally hundreds of them. Oita counts as a city, but it's not THAT big, so we did wonder how male Oita dwellers managed to support all this local business. For those not in the know,
sunakku (comes from 'snack', as snack foods are always served with drinks) are hostess bars, some seedier than others. Some are more like karaoke bars, others are more like whore houses, the only thing they have in common is that they're all presided over by a Mama-san and her cute little helpers who pour you drinks and charge for chit-chat. And sometimes these cuties offer more than just chit-chat for money, but that sort of stuff doesn't really take place within the establishment itself. It's a place to meet people. My
salaryman friends took me to these bars quite often for some reason. However, Susan and I resisted the lure of Thai and Filipino ladies and $50 drinks this time and found a nice little bar on a side street, not far from the station nor our hotel, which would have been easy to find in any weather anyway: it boasted a big white statue of the great Fukuzawa on the roof!
- Irasshaimasee-EEEE!!!Japanese pubs and bars are great. When you step in through the 'curtains' hanging over the door, your presence is always acknowledged by staff SHOUTING a WELCOME at you. We had entered a small restaurant with a bar, behind which the chef/owner, in this case called Yoshi, stood ready to serve. He was the only member of staff, this is how small it was. We parked our arses by the counter, partly because we weren't going to eat, and partly because it gave us privacy to sit with our backs to the tables. If we would have sat at a table amongst other customers, all male, they would have started talking to us. Not because either of us are stunners, but because people, especially when drunk, are more ready to talk to you, and if you stick out through being a foreigner it happens all the time. This was, in our experience, more a rule than an exception in Japanese pubs. It's fun most of the time, but this time we would just have a quiet drink and a chat. How wrong were we?
Yoshi was obviously a little surprised when we only ordered beer, as the Japanese always eat while drinking. But we had just eat, and just wanted the beers. Susan didn't speak much Japanese yet, so I got to do the talking and the obligatory 'but how come your Japanese is so great?' -conversation. After that we were left more or less to our own devices. But after the fourth Asahi Super Dry or so, Yoshi became interested in us again. He was, after all, cooking just in front of us, and was clearly miffed that we just drank without eating. He entered the conversation and started asking us why we were in Oita. We explained, and of course it emerged then that it was our first visit to Kyushu, that we weren't 'just' English teachers at the local NOVA, but tourists who have come all the way from Saitama.
But if that's the case, said Yoshi, you can't
possibly leave without trying some local specialities!
Chotto matte, ne? And he gets busy behind the counter. We know what's about to happen, and I try to explain that it really isn't necessary for him to fix us anything, we are a-okay with beers only, but resistance is futile if and when someone wants to give you something in Japan. So when the first dishes arrive, we just thank him profoundly. We have no idea what's in the bowls, but I glean from Yoshi that it originates from whales. It's white and grainy... Blubber? Sperm? Your guess is as good as mine. Susan, the poor thing, is a vegetarian, and she went white as a sheet when she heard what we were presented with. But brave and warm smiles all around, and I start shoving the stuff down my throat. It doesn't really taste of anything. Susan, bravely, pretends to eat. Yoshi is satisfied and gets busy with something else, and when he turns his back I wolf down Susan's whale as well. Yum!
We thanked Yoshi and continued our beers only policy. But wait! There is more. Second course: some sort of raw fish. I can't remember what twist made it especially local but it was lovely, and I got to eat it all. Yoshi, however, was getting suspicious of Susan's appetite, and after much interrogation and lies about being not that hungry she crumbles and confesses: she is, in fact, a vegetarian...
sumimasen.-
Eeh? Vegetarian? But why didn't you say so? Miso soup okay?
- Er, no (made with fish stock).
- Surely fish should be okay?
- Well, no: it's FISH.... and so on.
Susan's eating life in Japan was difficult, to say the least. a) the Japanese do not quite know what being a veggie entails, and b) most Japanese 'normal' food has meat or fish in it. Sure, Buddhist monastery food in and around Kyoto is an exception, but the monks rarely own pubs.
Susan promptly got her own food, a tomato salad and fried potatoes, a combo she was sick of, because it was so often the only purely vegetarian food pubs offered. I, on the other hand, got a right feast! By this time we were getting drunk and chatted quite happily with Yoshi. He had been really generous and friendly and was now telling us about Oita in such detail that I did what I did when I didn't understand a word: nodded and smiled. It's possibly the most useful skill I have ever learnt.
Suddenly a young man enters our conversation. He's sitting with his friends and colleagues at the table just behind us, and he couldn't help noticing that we speak Japanese and everything. Would we like to join them? They've got food and
sake! At this point Susan and I surrender: we join the blokes at the table. It turns out that they were the teachers of the local primary school. We drank and struggled with language, ate, laughed and drank some more. Yoshi brought us more food and, probably needless to say, Susan and I paid for nothing. We tried, but resistance was futile. It was the best night I have ever had. People in Kyushu seem to have a way of forking their way into even the most jaded heart. Both Susan and I had encountered a lot of weirdness just due to our foreign nationalities and looks, and therefore where at times suspicious of any objectification of foreigners that occasionally took place. It's not fun to stick out like a sore thumb, as Susan put it. I got used to being at centre stage, not least because I was the only westerner at campus in Saitama, but I, too, occasionally felt almost exploited, just because I was a foreigner. But this, this was so relaxed, so overwhelmingly friendly and genuine in emotion that we were completely sold. And my travels in Kyushu were only beginning. There's more, and although I was used to being treated for meals in pubs by complete strangers, what followed was absolutely amazing.
(will absolutely be continued, just wanted to post this first...
)
