Let's Sumo!

The day started with a nice 2.5 hour drive to Fukuoka. A friend Dustin drove us, along with Rhianna and her friend Mike. When we got there we finally found some parking and made our way to the arena. When we first got there there was a (lower class) sumo wrestler there. We got a picture with him. When we went to our seats we were surprised to see how empty the place was. We found our seats with our group. There were probably about 30-40 JETS in our section. We were, as many younger adults are, rather noisy. There was a Japanese man in front of us. He kept turning around and looking at us like we were doing something wrong. We (Erika and I) were not loud at all but because we were speaking English plus 30 other English speakers chatting at the same time, Im sure it SEEMED a lot louder than it actually was. Half way through, the crowds grew until the arena was packed! Everyone one else was just as noisy as us. (for the most part). Eventually our lil Japanese friend in front of us went and got a worker. The worker came to us and wrote a txt and showed it to us that said something to the effect of "It would be good to keep more quiet". So we tried.
Sumo is quite an interesting sport. We learned quite a bit about it. The basic is this: Get your opponent either on the ground or out of the ring. This is actually not as hard as it sounds. If ANY part, other than feet, of your opponent touches the ground - you win. If they step out - you win. Obviously there is skill involved but one slip or trip and you're out.
It starts with about 15 Sumo's coming out and "presenting" themselves. The all come out around the ring, do a little hand jig and then leave. The first two come out, battle then the next two, etc... You only get ONE chance to defeat an opponent. When the two get to the ring, there is a ritual that is completed first. A man comes to the center and sings their names. They enter and stomp a couple times (traditionally to get rid of evil spirits), then throw salt into the ring for good luck. They face each other, stomp again, bend down and intimidate each other facially. Then one stands up, goes back to the side of the stage, the other returns to his side. They repeat the process, stomp, salt, face, stomp, bend over, then back to the corners. This happens about 3-5 times. Finally when they are both ready they run at each other. The match is over within 5-30sec. Preparation usually took about 5 minuets, if not more. To rise in the ranks you have to win. The more matches you win the higher in rank you become.


We had a LOT of fun! There are, surprisingly, very few Japanese sumo wrestlers. Most are from Mongolia, America, Hawaiian, Samoan, and other nationalities. One wrestler told a friend that his breakfast typically consisted of 1 whole chicken, 2 bowels of rice, and 6 eggs. Many eat stews. Their days are long with much training and preparation for their matches. Many begin around 5am and last until 10:30. They typically only eat 2 times a day and often sleep after their meals to gain more weight. Surprisingly, many of the Sumo's, even though EXTREMELY LARGE, are quite strong. They can pick each other up!
The winner (of the top 2 ranking) does a "victory dance" at the end. It was a type of Karate staff routine.

Hong Kong

So this past weekend (Oct. 31 - Nov. 4) we traveled to Hong Kong. For those of you that don't know your history - Hong Kong was under British rule during the mid-1800's. Then occupied by Japan during WWII. In 1983, Britain regained it's control of Hong Kong. In 1997, Britain gave Hong Kong back to the PRC (People's Republic of China). As of now, HK is part of China, but not under control of the Chinese communist gov't. - Just a brief history of HK!

Back in the states, we attended North Blvd Church of Christ. There we had a friend named Stacy Kile. Her parents have lived in Hong Kong for about 3 years now, transferred by her dad's work. We have met them a few times and this last time we mentioned to Stacy's mom, Sandy, that we were moving to Japan. They told us to let them know if we wanted to come to HK and that we would have a place to stay. So, that's what we did.

We flew from Fukuoka, Japan to Taipei, Taiwan (hour lay-over) then to Hong Kong. Sandy met us at the airport and took us home. Their apartment was beautiful! Joy, their domestic helper from the Philippians, had made spaghetti for us! That night we went across the river to Kowloon and watched the light show. Many buildings have laser lights or some other light that creates a symphony of lights coordinated to music. It was quite impressive. We then walked down Tsim Tsa Tsui "Avenue of Stars". There, we saw Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan's hand prints.

The next morning we went to The Peak, the top of the mountain that over looks Hong Kong. From there we could see SO much, it was beautiful. We walked around the path that circles the top part of the mountains. The weather was wonderful. Nice cool breeze and warm sun.



We headed back to the apartment to get ready for church. The church there in Hong Kong is about 95% Filipino women. There are 2 or 3 men there. They asked me to lead a few songs, which I was thrilled to do! It was great to be able to worship with a congregation again!


That evening we took a walk through the park, right in the heart of HK. Bob and Sandy treated us to a very filling 'Western Meal' at Dan Ryans. After that we went to the Temple St. Night Market. We found many things we had been looking for, almost got squished by the crowds, and saw many interesting and useless items for sale :)


The next morning we went on the Longest Escalator in the world. It's actually a series of escalators but it was still very neat. It spans a distance of 2,600 feet (790 m). In the morning it travels DOWN (for residence getting down to the city) then it stops and goes UP for the rest of the day. If you go up and want to come back down it will be around 600+ steps. We stopped by a temple where they were having some special ceremony. The red carpet was laid and police were standing by. We got to go in for a bit but the smell of incense got too strong and we decided to head out. After lunch we visited Tian Tan, the world's largest sitting Buddha at Lantau Island. To get there you take the Ngong Ping Skyrail for about 20 min. It's a beautiful ride. It just so happened that we decided to go on an extremely windy day. lol. We were a bit scared a few times hanging over mountains, rocks, trees, and large bodies of water. Once you make the breath-taking skyrail, you walk about 15 min to the actual Buddha, then up 268 steps. The Buddha sits 34 metres (110 ft) tall and weighs 250 metric tons.



The next day we went to the Stanley Market, Jade Market, and the Ladies Market. It was basically a day of walking around, exploring and shopping. Wednesday morning we explored around the Escalator again. We had a wonderful time. Sandy got to come most places with us. She was a great guide! Bob and Sandy just found out they will be moving back to the states in a week. We JUST made it - if we came any later the Kile's would not have been there. So it was nice for her to be able to go do all the touristy things one last time.

It was very interesting. When doing any type of construction the Hong Kongese would use bamboo scaffolding. Quite scary looking but I guess it works!

We took the same route back home. We got home to Oita City around 12:30am Thursday Morning. We went to go get our bikes where we had left them.... They were NOT where we left them. We were so tired and now we don't have bikes. After searching around a bit we found them. People often move bikes because they need to get to theirs and can't but normally they'll move it over... not 15 feet away! We were very relieved! We went home, ate, and went to bed!


(Market stuff)
(5ooth Step)
(rawr!)
(goose, chicken, etc...)
(Bamboo scaffolding)

On your mark.... Get set... WHEEL!

This past weekend was the 29th Annual Oita International Wheelchair Marathon. We have started taking a Thursday evening Japanese class. Last week class was canceled and we were invited to a dinner in honor of the Marathon participants. We met a few of the racers and ate and talked with them.

Race day: The weather was bad. Cold and wet! But once the gun fired, signaling the start, there was no time to whine. The racers started on their long journey up hills, across bridges and through the city of Oita. A long 42.195km race! The racers had trouble finding their grip on the wet surface but all managed to cross the finish line. We stood there waving our German flags, a girl scout had given to us. "GANBATTE!" we shouted to the racers, which means "Good luck!" or "Doing a good job!"
There was a gentlemen we had met, at the dinner, named Peter Hawkins. He had been paralyzed in a bad car accident at the age of 18. During his senior year of HS. After a party he was drunk in the back seat, sound asleep. His friend driving the car, decided to drag race another friend. They hit a bump and the car flipped twice. Peter was thrown out of the front window and woke up days later in the hospital. He has spent many years of his life giving talks to HS students around the states. "It would never happen to me! I was a football player, popular, muscular, good looking, ... I'm invincible!... But then it did." He tells kids that even it was not DIRECTLY his fault, his decisions caused him to be in his position.

After a trying 2 hours and 36 min, Peter Hawkins crosses the finish line exhausted in 75th place, tired and disappointed. We greeted him after his race and reminded him that it was the fact that he RAN the race and finished. We shared a smile and said our goodbyes.

That day we shed a few inspired tears knowing that these men and women are doing the best they can with their conditions and doing a GREAT job at it! For more info visit http://www.wheelchair-marathon.com/

Well, Saturday morning (Halloween) we head out to Hong Kong. We will be staying with the Kyle's, parent's of a friend from college and church. Will have pictures up soon!

Erika's 25th Birthday

Erika's day, Sept. 28th, started off as every day does. Get ready for school, ride bike to school, go to teachers room... On this certain day O'Hara Sensei (teacher) was not at school. O'Hara Sensei is the English teacher Erika works with the most. The VP of the school told Erika she would work with her today in O'Hara's place. (The Vice Principal is also an English Teacher) The day was going fine and normal. During the last class of the day the VP asked Erika, during class, "Oh, I left the tape and tape player upstairs, would you mind running up and getting it." Erika went upstairs to look for the left items. Unable to find them anywhere she went back downstairs. When she got to the classroom, all the children were gone. She slowly walked into the room, looking around. Then from out of a side room they all came walking out singing "happy birthday". One kid carried a fake guitar, another was wearing a sumbraro. They all gave her cards and gifts. The kids, on their own - without knowledge from teachers, had decided to use the weekend to get some gifts and make some cards for Erika. When they found out O'Hara was not going to be there, they asked the VP if they could use the last half of class to have a party for Erika. It was very special!

Erika came home to her amazing husband, Thayne, who had been running around ALL day, so busy he was unable to eat any breakfast or lunch! He had, ALSO, been planning a surprise party for her. Tina, a good friend, had agreed to let Thayne use her apt as the party site. That morning he picked up her keys from her and went to her house. Due to the fact that access to an oven was a no, Thayne had to come up with another plan. He decided to make a cake in the rice cooker. He did. Tina had made an awesome birthday sign for Thayne to hang. After many store runs and slaving over a rice cooker, Thayne did a few more errands around town, gave the key's back, and returned home with only 30 min to clean the house. When Erika got home from work there were flowers, chocolates, and a gift awaiting her arrival. After opening her presents she shared her day with her husband.

Thayne made dinner for them and they had a nice relaxing meal. They had planned on meeting Tina and David for cake at Tina's house at 8:30. Erika, Thayne, and David biked over to Tina's house and went in. Tina greeted them at the door and we all took off our shoes. Erika noticed the sign hanging in the kitchen. "Awww, how sweet!" She said. Then she noticed something else. Josephine crouching behind a table. "That's odd that she's hiding!" Erika thought to herself. Josephine realized she had been spotted and stood up. Then from the other room shouts of "HAPPY BIRTHDAY! SURPRISE!!" greeted her. Chloe, Alex, Chris, Sam, David, and Katie came out of the room. Some laughs, hugs, and gifts were exchanged. Just in time for cake, Tomek shows up. Yay, he made it.
Thayne was a bit apprehensive about the cake but it proved to be decent. It was a chocolate cake. It turned out to be VERY ... dense. Almost a brownie-souffle. Not bad for a rice-cooker cake. Tina made a delicious cream cheese frosting for the top. We had some snacks, laughed, and talked for a while. When it got late people left to go home.
Erika's birthday proved to be a memorable one. It was nice there were many people to celebrate with and enjoy the celebration of a magnificent woman, Erika Washburn.

Top(R-L): David, Katie, Chloe, Josephine, Chris
Bot(R-L): Alex, Tomek, David, Tina, Erika, Thayne, Sam

Thank-you to all the JETS that made this possible!
And a special thanks to Tina chan who let us use her place! Love you guys!

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Silver Week

Silver Week is kind-of a made up holiday. Apparently Japanese don't want to take vacation so the gov't made them take vacation! From what I've researched, There is a law: if there is only one non-holiday in between two public holidays, that day should become an additional holiday. The first (Monday) is Respect for the Elder day and Wed. is Autumnal Equinox Day. So in between they add this "citizens holiday". It's called silver week for the elderly (silver hair). Plus they have a "Golden week" so it works.

We went to South Korea for this week. We traveled to Fukuoka, a large city nearby in Japan and hung out a few days there. Then flew to Incheon, South Korea. We traveled around a bit, enjoying different things and seeing some friends.

FUKUOKA: This was a lot of fun. Kelsey, a friend picked us and David (another close friend) up in Oita. We drove (trying to figure out the right roads) to Fukuoka. We stopped at Costco. Yes, they do have that here - we just found out (not near us but...) Its JUST like American Costco's except Japanese writing on most.. but not all. The lines were JUST as long. They had samples everywhere. It was nice. We got a few things!
That night we went to a place called Canal City. Its a big mall type place that has many stories. It has a canal running through it.

We had a nice time there. We met some of David's friends, Sarah and Mary Margarette. They were lots of fun to hang out with. Because of the vacation time, we couldn't find a place to say so they let us crash in their hotel room. We had 6 people crammed into this little room and trying to sleep. Lol!

We ate near the river at these little food stalls. We had Ramen. It was SOO good!

The next day we met up with Tina another Oita friend and tried to check out the "Fish Market". BUT... when we got there... it was closed!
So, bummer. We were exhausted from walking all day so we sat and had a nice lunch. We had a really nice time with Tina. She is from Hong-Kong, but has lived in America most of her life.That night the three of us flew out to Korea. Many of the Oita Jets were going to be there but they had a different flight. But, Tina flew with us.













We got into Incheon late at night. and the hotel came and picked us up. As usual, the first thing you do after a flight is go to the bathroom. Erika and Tina were SO excited to find out that in Korea, unlike Japan, the bathrooms had REAL Soap, and paper towels! It was funny.

In pictures: (left) Tina pointing at a sign that says "Please Queue Here" and (right) Erika holding a paper towel.I was also a VERY happy boy because they had Dunkin Donuts in S.Korea!!! YAY!!!

We finally got some sleep and hung out in that area during the day. We went to China Town (lol) and then to a little fair/boardwalk type thing.

Tina left for Seoul (capital) and we went on to DaeJeon, where we met up with Laura, a friend from USF who is teaching in S.Korea. She was an amazing host and we had such a great time talking and hanging out with her!We went to school with her in the morning to meet some of her students. They were the most adorable kids ever! And SOO smart. Their English was VERY good! That day we biked around the city. It was great because the city "rented bikes" but turns out you didn't have to pay, nor give them your passport or anything. Just HERE! bring them back when you're done! I think I found out why they didn't care. The bikes were horrible. Erika's wasn't too bad but Thayne's; The chain fell off every time he coasted. He had to change it literally, at least 15 times. He was not too thrilled. That evening we met up with Laura (far right side of picture) and some of her friends for dinner.

The next day we headed to Suwon to see the "Korean Folk Village". It was actually a BLAST! They were a self-sustaining village: Grew crops, made silk, had chickens and other animals. We saw a couple different performances. Like balance beam artists, Korean folk dance, horse-back riders! It was fun. The coolest thing, I think for us BOTH, was watching a lady make silk. It was Strange and looked VERY complicated! (picture) We had a nice time. There were people that spoke decent English but by this time we were actually missing Japanese. We started to realize we actually know a decent amount. In Korean we could say "Thank-you" and that was about it!

SEOUL, the capital of Japan. We got in mid-day and went straight to our guest house. It was back in, what seemed like, the middle of no-where! But it was a cute place, very traditional and quite cheap! A lot of the other Jet's were staying there to. There were about 10 or so rooms. We met a guy, from Italy who is working in Japan, near Tokyo. He was very nice. We put our stuff in our rooms, took showers and then went to meet up with our JET friends. We had a hard time finding a place to eat. It seemed every place we tried to go, the prices were crazy! Even though outside it looked, from their signs, that it was cheap. Korea is a VERY cheap place. Food was pretty good priced: A good size meal would run you between 3-5,000 Wan (=3-5$). Clothing and items were also very well priced. I got a traveller size bottle of eye solution from Japan (12$) - SAME size in Korea (4$). Our money went a long way here. We ended up eating at a little stall outside. We had a seafood pancake (picture). It wasn't too bad. Then later we met up with Chloe (picture), an Australian - Jet from Oita. We stopped again, we were hungry, and had some vendor food... it tasted like... do be nice, poo. NO ONE would eat it. The Koreans next to us, who had the same thing, seemed to be enjoying so! We defiantly got scammed there (you do have to be careful of that). The Sushi Roll-thing Erika got was 2$. Chloe got some fried dumplings. I had the poo stuff. We figured maybe 8$ The lady came over and charged us 19$. UGH - if there are unmarked prices ASK FIRST!!! (our fault for being naive - In japan, we don't worry about that... we just KNOW it will be expensive-haha). We slept well that night. Cloe and Alex (another Oita JET) left early that morning (5;30am). Erika, Tina, and Thayne explored some more. We went on a tour of a nearby castle. Here we had a tour guide but she was.. mm... lacking in enthusiasm. So we didn't really pay attention and just hung out and took pictures.



Later we went and met up with Laura again. She came into Seoul to see some friends and to see us! We ate lunch and then went to this big street seller place. We looked around there for a few hours. We all bought a few things. Many stores had girls standing outside begging you to come in. They would be offering free items to come in. So.. we would.

After we got a free hug we had to head back to Incheon to catch our flight the next morning. We got in pretty late and then had to wake up nice and early to be at the airport.

Overall we had a wonderful trip!