The Graves of the Tigers
So I'm going to be typing this entry while simultaneously working on the presentation for my speech on Japanese and American cuisine. Thus it will probably take twice as long as it would have if I just sat down and did each of them separately, but I'm having a lot of trouble focusing today and my eye is bothering me for some reason, so I need to keep my brain busy by doing a lot of things at once. That way I can lose focus while still getting things done! Hooray!
I was originally scheduled to head to Tokyo for the weekend of June 20th in order to attend a job fair for foreigners looking for work in Tokyo. However, that fair was canceled almost immediately after I had bought my tickets, leaving me with a 9:00pm flight from Sapporo to Tokyo on Friday the 19th. Still, I had planned on going from the fair up to Aizu-Wakamatsu in Fukushima Prefecture anyway, and even purchased a plane ticket back to Sapporo from Fukushima Airport on the evening of the 22nd. Since I couldn't cancel the flights without incurring a penalty anyway, I decided to go ahead with the trip anyway.
So I hopped on a train on Friday afternoon and ended up at the airport 3 hours early, which I spent eating one dinner, then suddenly getting extremely hungry and eating another dinner... and then having to wait another hour because my plane was delayed. I didn't stumble into my hotel in Tokyo until almost midnight, though fortunately I shelled out the extra cash to stay at the hotel *right at the airport* so I didn't have to wander around chasing after trains.
The next day I wandered around Tokyo without doing anything particularly notable, though I did eat at an El Torito restaurant, the first Mexican food I've had in almost a year. Then I just decided to hop on the train heading north, which eventually got me to Aizu-Wakamatsu in the late evening. After dinner at the restaurant in the tiny hotel I stayed at, I crashed for the night.
The next morning I resolved to check out the many sights of Aizu-Wakamatsu, most notably Crane Castle and Mt. Iimoriyama. Aizu-Wakamatsu is famous for being the former seat of the Aizu Domain, one of the domains that held the strongest loyalty to the old shogunal regime in the midst of the Meiji Restoration and the imperialists push to for a new emperor-centered government. The Aizu forces were even charged with the protection of the capital, Kyoto, and given command of the Shinsengumi special forces, a crack team of some of the greatest swordsmen Japan has ever seen and who make ubiquitous appearances in manga and anime.
Unfortunately, at the end of the Boshin Wars, the shogunal forces were decimated and the domains which had sworn allegiance to the shogun were crushed one by one. Aizu, knowing it would face invasion soon, organized the remaining able-bodied men in its domain into 4 corps., each one named after one of the 4 directional guardians, to defend the domain. The most famous of these was the White Tiger Corps., which was made up of boys 16 to 17 years of age who had graduated from Aizu's own military academy, one of the first of its kind. In the closing days of the war, the boys were dispatched on a mission to the south to reinforce shogunal troops under attack, but the forces were defeated and the boys retreated. Worried about Aizu, they returned to the outskirts of the city by way of Mt. Iimoriyama, where they saw smoke and flames engulfing Crane Castle. Assuming that all was lost, the 19 remaining members of the White Tiger Corps. committed suicide together on the mountain, though one boy ended up surviving his wounds. Unfortunately, the castle had not yet in fact fallen, and it was only the surrounding buildings that were aflame. The castle would not fall for another 2 days.
In the end, a huge number of the people of Aizu chose death over submission to the new Meiji government, and there are horrible stories of mothers and daughters, left behind when their husbands went off to fight, slicing themselves open to save their families from dishonor at the hands of the enemy. The survivors, men and women, were then forcefully relocated to what are now Aomori and Hokkaido Prefectures to do heavy labor as punishment for their insolence. Incidentally, my interest in Aizu was first piqued by reading Remembering Aizu by Shiba Goro, one of the survivors of the fall of Aizu who was forced to deal with the suicides of his mother and sisters as well as the harsh winters of Aomori with the remnants of his clan. It's both fascinating and heartbreaking, and I recommend the book to everyone.
Anyway, the rebuilt Crane Castle is absolutely spectacular, and inside are fascinating exhibits detailing the political and military history of the region. Mt. Iimoriyama is now a tourist center as well, with a museum dedicated to the White Tiger Corps. featuring their old uniforms, portraits made of them at the military academy, etc. There was even, oddly enough, an autographed picture of the anime singer Nakagawa Shouko at the museum, which indicated that her father was involved in organizing some of the displays there. That was... odd. But of course, most powerful were the graves to the boys themselves, built close to the spot where they saw the flames engulfing the city on that fateful day. All the graves were positioned so that they would face towards the castle to represent the boys' absolute loyalty to their domain.
The next day I didn't have to be at Fukushima Airport until 7:20pm, so I took the opportunity to take a train to Inawashiro Station, the entryway to the Ura Bandai area of Bandai National Park. That area is most famous for the "The Ponds of 5 Colors Hike," which only takes about an hour and is less of a hike and more of a nature walk than anything. It was still quite lovely, and some of the ponds were an incredibly striking color of bright blue, only some of which was really captured in the pictures I posted on Facebook. At any rate, it was a lovely little walk and a good way to spend some of the day that I otherwise had nothing to do during.
Then I was in the city of Kooriyama for several hours, wandering around the station area and yes, buying yet another video game book at the Yodobashi Camera store nearby. There was only one bus to the airport, at 5:25pm, so I had to just hang out until then. Finally I was able to get on the bus, which took about an hour to get to the airport. Upon arriving, I received the frightening news that weather in Sapporo was awful enough that they might be forced to cancel the flight. More specifically, we would take off in Fukushima, but if we arrived in Hokkaido airspace and couldn't land, we'd have to turn around and land in Tokyo, *farther from Hokkaido than when we started!*. ANA promised to cover the costs of the new flight and the necessary hotel stay in Tokyo, but that would mean I would have to take another day off of work. I only have 4 days off left, and I want to save them in case of a real emergency. Luckily, however, the flight landed as scheduled, and I made it back to Asahikawa around 11:30pm that night after the long 2 hour train ride from New Chitose Airport all the way back here. Despite the late arrival, I was reasonably functional the next day at work, which is good because I've been busy as hell.
Alright, I've reached the halfway point of my speech presentation now. I don't think it's very good, but at this point I'm starting to care less and less.
Yesterday my coworker Emmy helped me out immensely by driving me to the post office with my hundreds of pounds of books. We decided to use the 特別郵袋印刷物 method, a method of shipping which uses special bags to ship large amounts of printed material for dirt cheap prices. Unfortunately, neither Emmy nor I realized that you actually have to shove the boxes of books *into* the bags to send them. We assumed that you could just pour the books into the bags, or that you'd fill the bags with books and then package up the bags in the boxes. Nope, both assumptions were wrong, so we were able to get one 20 kilogram box to fit into the bag, but the other two boxes were just too big. So were were stumped as to what to do, until the post office guy pulled out an old box they had in storage to see if that would fit. It *just* made it, and when we combined the contents of the two boxes we had brought, the total weight came out to 29 kilos... just 1 kilo under the limit! Sweet! So in the end, instead of sending 3 boxes I only sent two, and despite it being 50 kilos worth of books or 110 pounds... it only cost 20,000 yen or about $200 to ship back to the US. Yes, you all probably think that's expensive, but shipping 110 pounds across the ocean? Costs a fortune. $200 is a *steal*. So I'm really happy I was able to send it all so cheaply and that I no longer have a massive pile of books looming over my head. All that's left for me to do is slowly but surely ship my clothes home, and figure out what the hell I'm going to do with my PS2 and my X-Box 360, and then I'm all set.
Except for the fact that I have no job and a lot of my friends seem to think I'm a total loser for moving back to the US. Well, I couldn't find a job, so what else is there for me to do? ... It's not like I'm happy about the situation either. ::sigh::
Anyway, I'm leaving for my weeklong trip to Shikoku tomorrow. Hopefully my eye will have fixed itself by then. Otherwise I might have to go to the doctor on the island randomly. That would be less than ideal. I will try to find a net cafe during my trip to keep people updated, but until then, I hope you all have a good weekend.
And yeah, I totally hope I come back from my trip to find a lovely e-mail from some lovely company that has finally decided to hire me. That would solve a lot of my current problems. But I suppose I shouldn't hold my breath.
I was originally scheduled to head to Tokyo for the weekend of June 20th in order to attend a job fair for foreigners looking for work in Tokyo. However, that fair was canceled almost immediately after I had bought my tickets, leaving me with a 9:00pm flight from Sapporo to Tokyo on Friday the 19th. Still, I had planned on going from the fair up to Aizu-Wakamatsu in Fukushima Prefecture anyway, and even purchased a plane ticket back to Sapporo from Fukushima Airport on the evening of the 22nd. Since I couldn't cancel the flights without incurring a penalty anyway, I decided to go ahead with the trip anyway.
So I hopped on a train on Friday afternoon and ended up at the airport 3 hours early, which I spent eating one dinner, then suddenly getting extremely hungry and eating another dinner... and then having to wait another hour because my plane was delayed. I didn't stumble into my hotel in Tokyo until almost midnight, though fortunately I shelled out the extra cash to stay at the hotel *right at the airport* so I didn't have to wander around chasing after trains.
The next day I wandered around Tokyo without doing anything particularly notable, though I did eat at an El Torito restaurant, the first Mexican food I've had in almost a year. Then I just decided to hop on the train heading north, which eventually got me to Aizu-Wakamatsu in the late evening. After dinner at the restaurant in the tiny hotel I stayed at, I crashed for the night.
The next morning I resolved to check out the many sights of Aizu-Wakamatsu, most notably Crane Castle and Mt. Iimoriyama. Aizu-Wakamatsu is famous for being the former seat of the Aizu Domain, one of the domains that held the strongest loyalty to the old shogunal regime in the midst of the Meiji Restoration and the imperialists push to for a new emperor-centered government. The Aizu forces were even charged with the protection of the capital, Kyoto, and given command of the Shinsengumi special forces, a crack team of some of the greatest swordsmen Japan has ever seen and who make ubiquitous appearances in manga and anime.
Unfortunately, at the end of the Boshin Wars, the shogunal forces were decimated and the domains which had sworn allegiance to the shogun were crushed one by one. Aizu, knowing it would face invasion soon, organized the remaining able-bodied men in its domain into 4 corps., each one named after one of the 4 directional guardians, to defend the domain. The most famous of these was the White Tiger Corps., which was made up of boys 16 to 17 years of age who had graduated from Aizu's own military academy, one of the first of its kind. In the closing days of the war, the boys were dispatched on a mission to the south to reinforce shogunal troops under attack, but the forces were defeated and the boys retreated. Worried about Aizu, they returned to the outskirts of the city by way of Mt. Iimoriyama, where they saw smoke and flames engulfing Crane Castle. Assuming that all was lost, the 19 remaining members of the White Tiger Corps. committed suicide together on the mountain, though one boy ended up surviving his wounds. Unfortunately, the castle had not yet in fact fallen, and it was only the surrounding buildings that were aflame. The castle would not fall for another 2 days.
In the end, a huge number of the people of Aizu chose death over submission to the new Meiji government, and there are horrible stories of mothers and daughters, left behind when their husbands went off to fight, slicing themselves open to save their families from dishonor at the hands of the enemy. The survivors, men and women, were then forcefully relocated to what are now Aomori and Hokkaido Prefectures to do heavy labor as punishment for their insolence. Incidentally, my interest in Aizu was first piqued by reading Remembering Aizu by Shiba Goro, one of the survivors of the fall of Aizu who was forced to deal with the suicides of his mother and sisters as well as the harsh winters of Aomori with the remnants of his clan. It's both fascinating and heartbreaking, and I recommend the book to everyone.
Anyway, the rebuilt Crane Castle is absolutely spectacular, and inside are fascinating exhibits detailing the political and military history of the region. Mt. Iimoriyama is now a tourist center as well, with a museum dedicated to the White Tiger Corps. featuring their old uniforms, portraits made of them at the military academy, etc. There was even, oddly enough, an autographed picture of the anime singer Nakagawa Shouko at the museum, which indicated that her father was involved in organizing some of the displays there. That was... odd. But of course, most powerful were the graves to the boys themselves, built close to the spot where they saw the flames engulfing the city on that fateful day. All the graves were positioned so that they would face towards the castle to represent the boys' absolute loyalty to their domain.
The next day I didn't have to be at Fukushima Airport until 7:20pm, so I took the opportunity to take a train to Inawashiro Station, the entryway to the Ura Bandai area of Bandai National Park. That area is most famous for the "The Ponds of 5 Colors Hike," which only takes about an hour and is less of a hike and more of a nature walk than anything. It was still quite lovely, and some of the ponds were an incredibly striking color of bright blue, only some of which was really captured in the pictures I posted on Facebook. At any rate, it was a lovely little walk and a good way to spend some of the day that I otherwise had nothing to do during.
Then I was in the city of Kooriyama for several hours, wandering around the station area and yes, buying yet another video game book at the Yodobashi Camera store nearby. There was only one bus to the airport, at 5:25pm, so I had to just hang out until then. Finally I was able to get on the bus, which took about an hour to get to the airport. Upon arriving, I received the frightening news that weather in Sapporo was awful enough that they might be forced to cancel the flight. More specifically, we would take off in Fukushima, but if we arrived in Hokkaido airspace and couldn't land, we'd have to turn around and land in Tokyo, *farther from Hokkaido than when we started!*. ANA promised to cover the costs of the new flight and the necessary hotel stay in Tokyo, but that would mean I would have to take another day off of work. I only have 4 days off left, and I want to save them in case of a real emergency. Luckily, however, the flight landed as scheduled, and I made it back to Asahikawa around 11:30pm that night after the long 2 hour train ride from New Chitose Airport all the way back here. Despite the late arrival, I was reasonably functional the next day at work, which is good because I've been busy as hell.
Alright, I've reached the halfway point of my speech presentation now. I don't think it's very good, but at this point I'm starting to care less and less.
Yesterday my coworker Emmy helped me out immensely by driving me to the post office with my hundreds of pounds of books. We decided to use the 特別郵袋印刷物 method, a method of shipping which uses special bags to ship large amounts of printed material for dirt cheap prices. Unfortunately, neither Emmy nor I realized that you actually have to shove the boxes of books *into* the bags to send them. We assumed that you could just pour the books into the bags, or that you'd fill the bags with books and then package up the bags in the boxes. Nope, both assumptions were wrong, so we were able to get one 20 kilogram box to fit into the bag, but the other two boxes were just too big. So were were stumped as to what to do, until the post office guy pulled out an old box they had in storage to see if that would fit. It *just* made it, and when we combined the contents of the two boxes we had brought, the total weight came out to 29 kilos... just 1 kilo under the limit! Sweet! So in the end, instead of sending 3 boxes I only sent two, and despite it being 50 kilos worth of books or 110 pounds... it only cost 20,000 yen or about $200 to ship back to the US. Yes, you all probably think that's expensive, but shipping 110 pounds across the ocean? Costs a fortune. $200 is a *steal*. So I'm really happy I was able to send it all so cheaply and that I no longer have a massive pile of books looming over my head. All that's left for me to do is slowly but surely ship my clothes home, and figure out what the hell I'm going to do with my PS2 and my X-Box 360, and then I'm all set.
Except for the fact that I have no job and a lot of my friends seem to think I'm a total loser for moving back to the US. Well, I couldn't find a job, so what else is there for me to do? ... It's not like I'm happy about the situation either. ::sigh::
Anyway, I'm leaving for my weeklong trip to Shikoku tomorrow. Hopefully my eye will have fixed itself by then. Otherwise I might have to go to the doctor on the island randomly. That would be less than ideal. I will try to find a net cafe during my trip to keep people updated, but until then, I hope you all have a good weekend.
And yeah, I totally hope I come back from my trip to find a lovely e-mail from some lovely company that has finally decided to hire me. That would solve a lot of my current problems. But I suppose I shouldn't hold my breath.