Exploring Kumamoto.

Public holidays are a wonderful thing in Japan, so here I am, with a mid-week day off, sitting down with a cuppa to reflect on my little adventures.

Last weekend Kumamoto City Hall offered a free sightseeing tour to various hidden gems within the mountains to the west of downtown. Most of these places were areas with many historical ties, from teahouses to paved roads leading through bamboo forests to Tamana, a city not too far away. The locations were beautiful, and a reminder of how “inaka” Kumamoto is, with most of these places unbeknownst to me before this little trip.

A place of real beauty was Reigando, a cave surrounded by 500 statues of Buddha, each one with a different expression. This cave is famous for Miyamoto Musashi, a very prominent character in the city, who confined himself to the cave for one year and wrote “The Book of Five Rings”. According to our wonderful little ojiisan tour guide, Reigando cave was the perfect place for him to compose himself, meditate and do so until the completion of the book. 

A large stone sits within the cave, which was where Musashi was once believed to sit and meditate. I was lucky enough to get a chance to sit there myself, and with the sun shining on me, it was easy to envision the aura that he must have also felt. Musashi was eventually buried in a tomb in Musashi-zuka Park, not far from where I live, so my next mission is to finally explore there and hopefully capture its beauty during the height of autumn.

Following a beautiful and long hike through some mandarin groves, we were treated to the most beautiful sunset overlooking the ocean, after feasting on the sweetest mandarins I’d ever eaten in the most adorable little cafe.

Our day was an interesting one, as two famous comedians from Kumamoto and a TV crew also joined us. That’s something I’ll never quite get used to here; the infatuation we hold to people sometimes, and how they love to hear our thoughts on their culture. I was interviewed twice that day, with Billy saving me from further embarrassment by translating all the difficult things I wanted to get across.  While I’ve probably made a show of myself on TV, it’s not the first time, and Billy is going to try and get a DVD of the actual TV snippet that was aired on Tuesday. If that happens, I’ll share it with you all to laugh at my expense, but until then, Happy Thanksgiving.

Bonfire weekend, the less traditional way.

On Friday, I attended a workshop where I got to make traditional Japanese sparklers for the first time.  I thought it was pretty fitting, with it being Bonfire Night this weekend, and it’s one of the few foreign festivals here ignored in the wave of Christmas that follows Halloween. Bonfire Night is definitely a time I miss back home, but this little event made me feel like I still had that part of home with me.

Tsutsui Tokimasa’s shop and factory are located in Miyama City, Fukuoka, and it’s actually one of only three factories of its kind in Japan. They’ve been in business for 90 years, and one out of the 6 staff, Ryota, is Tokimasa’s grandson. 

It’s truly a family business through and through. This is definitely a craft that has been passed down through generations, which can be seen in the precision and care the staff take when it comes to making each individual sparkler.

During the demonstration, they told us it took months to be able to make a sparkler to that quality, and I’m not surprised. You’ve certainly got to be dextrous, and when it comes to fiddling tissue paper filled with gunpowder, that is definitely not a skill I had. I didn’t do too badly though, and my sparklers began to improve drastically into uniform colour gradients similar to the originals. 

I’m not claiming to be a pro, but they have officially been tried and tested from my balcony this evening, when I introduced Kohei to the whole Bonfire Night affair. 

It was different, in the sense that the sky is dark, little sound surrounds my apartment as always, and it’s seemingly like any other night in Kumamoto, but I’m happy I got to celebrate nonetheless. Even more so that my sparklers created the most beautiful atmosphere against the blackness tainted by the glow of a full moon.