I have a writeup introducing Kitakyushu in the works, but it’s taking on a life of its own and needs a fair bit of editing and fact-checking. Until it’s ready, please bear with the shorter posts.
Here’s a temple that I pass every day on my way to and from work. It’s on the same chain of hills as the art museum that I wrote about awhile back, in the Takami (高見) area of Yahata Higashi Ward (八幡東区). It’s about a twenty-minute walk from our apartment, ten or fifteen minutes by bike.
Just a quick post today as I’m working on my pictorial guide to Kitakyushu.
While out doing errands on the weekend, I had an experience that made me wonder if I should start wearing my tinfoil hat again. Less than a week after my Ogopogo post, Lia and I saw the beast again. Makes me wonder if someone with access to a large-balloon-animal factory has been spying on my blog.
It’s been fun writing about food all week, but I’ve received a request for pictures of the fine city we live in. So enjoy these food-related pictures while you can—they’ll be the last ones for awhile. Next week I’ll be taking you on a tour of the lovely industrial wasteland of North-Nine-Islands-City, more commonly known as Kitakyushu.
It seems to be food week at the Bog. [For those readers who haven’t been with me through the multiple name changes on this site, please note that this journal is no longer called “the Bog.”—Ed> My original plan was to write briefly about one photo. A short note featuring one of Japan’s celebrity chefs. Unfortunately for my wrists, I wrote a lot more than intended.
Welcome to the Pit of Ultimate Darkness. What vile beast dwells here? No, I’m not talking about Margaret Atwood. What would she be doing here anyway, what with her recent assimilation by the borg?
Borscht. What is it? It’s beet soup. It’s Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, and generally eastern European in origin. As far as I know I’m missing most of the required bloodlines so please forgive me if I screw up the rest of the description. I do have most of the aforementioned regions covered through marriage, though.
Why am I going to subject you to a long treatise on the primary sustenance of Slavic peasants? Simple. We had perogies for supper tonight. I’d made—and frozen—them a couple of months ago when I wasn’t spending all my time duct-taped to the computer, composing novellas about single images from my photo library. Yes, I made the dough myself. Yes, I made the filling myself. No, Henny Penny, I did not grind the grain myself nor did anyone help me and yet still I shared the fruits of my labour. No, I have never seen perogies for sale in Japan. Nor dill, but that comes later.
I’ve decided to keep up the photo posts and continue with the retro comics theme I started a couple of days ago. As some of you know, we live in a part of Kitakyushu called Tobata Ward (戸畑区). About a half-hour walk from our apartment is an older market area called Tenjin (天神). From what I can tell, many cities here have a Tenjin area, in the same way that most North American cities have a Main Street. The most famous Tenjin in Kyushu is in Fukuoka City, about an hour away by train. It’s a district of offices, shopping, clubs and other entertainment.
At the beginning of March, Carly and Margaret—friends from Toronto—were in town for a short visit. We only had one afternoon together but we had a fabulous time, enjoying okonomiyaki (お好み焼き, a kind of pancake with all sorts of savory stuff mixed into the batter), ginger-ale flavoured Halls cough drops, and the “balmy” 6°C-with-snow-flurries weather. Domo-kun was witness to it all. Unfortunately we weren’t able to find any of the seasonal passionfruit flavoured kit-kat bars. Maybe next time.
We took them to Kokura Castle, which is a replica built from concrete in 1959. The castle is quite picturesque and boasts one of the largest paper-doll dioramas in Japan. The diorama is a model of a Kokura as a traditional Japanese castle town, complete with townsfolk and markets, feudal lords, stray dogs, Christian missionaries, ninjas, and an assortment of other nefarious characters. Kokura being a coastal town, the diorama even has people catching blowfish in the Kanmon Strait.
I didn’t think I had time to write a long post today, so I was going to just post some photos I took at school during cleaning time. But I got sucked into the writing vortex.
What is cleaning time? At my school it’s the half-hour or so after the last period of the day, when the students “clean” the school. They sweep and mop the floors, take out the garbage, clean the blackboards, sweep up the grounds, and generally tidy up. I say “clean” because it seems like all they do is move the dirt from one corner to another and back again.
As I said in another post, April is the beginning of the school year in Japan. Today we had the ceremony for new students. Sort of a reverse graduation ceremony. Only the new first-year students—equivalent to Grade 10 in Canada—and a handful of second- and third-year students who had duties assigned for the ceremony, came to school today.
I took quite a few pictures of the new students, but today I’m just going to show pictures of the sakura (cherry blossoms), which are at their most beautiful today.