Kagoshima: new years family trip

Kagoshima, located at the most southern part of Kyushu, feels like a lazy city to do some good chilling and catching up with friends and family. We drove down to Kagoshima from Kumamoto for 2 hours to enjoy our new years family trip here. We had this spectacular view of Sakurajima from our hotel window! FYI, we stayed at Castle Park Hotel, which was a very very nice hotel located above the city.



One of the famous shochu (Japanese rice or potato alcohol) of Kagoshima up for free sampling! A nice sweetness to it compared to other shochus.



Mochi-making in the courtyard of our hotel.



Fresh soft mochi with kinako (soybean powder) after the guys in blue punched the crap out of it!



Cute kids running around the fountain :)



I think we got a good shot of us jumping in front of Sakurajima. (Left to right: Misa, me, Mama)



Tunnel to the hotel.



Peace.



Ten Park St - shopping arcade.



Fluffing up to get warm.



Kagoshima at night.

Osechi at Ueki

We had osechi (the new year meal normally eaten for three days) with my Papa's grandma who lives in the countryside called Ueki. This is a photo of my host family with my host grandma with all that delicious osechi cooking! She made most of it, such a genki grandma! You may notice my host brother and dad is missing from the photo because they arrived late after running/walking from our house to hers...which took about 5 hours!




This is possibly the biggest variety of food I've had at once. We had food from fried chicken, sashimi, egg rolls, to marinated lotus roots! The list goes on!



Crab filled with macaroni cheese. So good!



Cute corner of the house. Everything you see (the bucket, owl, fan) is made from catalogues.

We stayed the night and headed out to the hot springs at around 5am in the morning. I know. No, but it was worth it. 5am+countryside+hot springs=umph!

Okay my new year hasn't ended here yet, I will try to keep posting but I'm falling behind lots. I still have to post more about Japan and Taiwan, but I'm in Korea now! Busybusybusy. Until then, keep the awesome year rolling in!

Kumamoto: toshikoshi

Here I spent the new year with the my first host family. The new year tradition in Japan goes like this: eat soba, visit the shrine, pray for a good year, buy a lucky charm, head back home and sleep. All this takes place in the course of 31st Dec -1st Jan.

For dinner, we basically slurped down two bowls of soba. We, after a long day, were lazy and opted for instant dashi as base for the soba. Nice and simple.

We just made it to the entrance of the shrine at 12am, but oh how crowded it was!

Stuck in the crowd trying to get to the end point to throw in any coin with a hole (5 or 50 yen coin), into this wooden box and pray. I swear this process just takes 1 minute. And we were stuck in the crowd for over 40 minutes.

After praying, we headed to this side to buy our lucky charms. Mama chose it but my host grandpa bought me a lucky charm for travelling (as I will be travelling to Taiwan, Korea and Hong Kong before uni starts again for me! ).

What I really looked forward to was the pathway to the shrine filled with food stalls buzzing with a festival-ish atmosphere. We had taiyaki (custard/chocolate/anko etc filled pancake-like hot things), okonomiyaki on a stick, toffee strawberry and fairy floss!

In the process of making okonomiyaki on a stick.

Cute! Toffee (strawberry).



The night spent wonderfully with Mama (middle) and Miyu (right). We've become closer than ever before :).

Happy new year!

Kumamoto: New Years preparations

I headed down to Kumamoto, a country-like city south of Fukuoka, to visit my host family after my few days in Osaka, Nara and Kyoto. It felt so good to be home again with the fam, all exchange memories sort of came rushing back and I began reminiscing about how good Japan was.

I spent the new year with my first host family and here's some of the preparations for it.



My host mum changing the paper for these paper doors. Everything is usually replaced with something new for new years. Preparations for the new year is sort of like spring cleaning...of course I tried to avoid as much cleaning as possible! In our home, we have a tradition of always changing into newly bought underwear for the new year, though I'm not sure if all Japanese households do the same.



Decorating the home with a hand made wreath.



You cannot believe how many postcards my host dad wrote and sent to his friends and employees....over 200! Writing postcards to people you know to wish them a happy new year is a definite must-do for all Japanese.

There was like an adrenaline build-up to complete everything before the new year began!

Kyoto: what it's famous for

No doubt about it - food in Kyoto is the best of Japan. I believe this is part of the reason I love Kyoto so much. Though I didn't get to much, wagashi (Japanese sweets) like anko, macha, cherry-blossom flavoured mochi are popular souvenirs amongst Japanese travellers. For dining, I suggest hitting up a restaurant that serves traditional Japanese food, like we did.



Yuba-don (anything stuck to the word 'don' means it's served on rice). Yuba is paper-thin tofu, silky and smooth. It is amongst the tastiest and one of the more famous ingredients of Kyoto. Served on top of rice, biting down a spoonful makes you oohh after some tiring sight-seeing.



Meals are served with a variety of nibblers like preserved radish/kelp/plum (umeboshi), soup, rice, tempura, the list goes on. Ain't the little flowery designs cute!



The menu on display in 3D! Plastic food is a common way for Japanese restaurants to show how appetising their menu is. On top of that, it makes it much more easy for foreigners to identify what they want to eat ;).



Also located in the station, is this wonderful modern Japanese/French cafe called Malebranche. We stopped by in need of something sweet before I headed home.



Clean, crisp & crafty interior!



Really straight macha (green tea powder) mixed with water. Intense flavour, but not the intended order. My friend wanted it with milk, and unfortunately I do believe it would have tasted better with it.

Macha cake soft serve. A macha soft serve topped with moorish macha cookie pieces. This was so damn good! There was a nice good cool creaminess with a lovely lovely lovelyyyy macha taste. Not to mention classy presentation! Kyoto is the bomb for some good ol' macha.

Oh, Kyoto!

A hub buzzing with a traditional or yet heart-warming Japanese culture, Kyoto is my favourite city in Japan. My 2 friends, Azusa and Mei (Azusa whom I met in Nara and Mei whom I met on the day!) made this a very lovely trip for me.



I bought a one day pass (1600 yen) to travel around the Osaka, Nara and Kyoto area, which proved handy as I had to get from Nara to Kyoto and back (and not to mention I forgot my luggage in the lockers in Kyoto = another half trip back down there) , then to Osaka for my night departure to Kumamoto. I recommend grabbing the one-day bus pass (500 yen) to go sightseeing around Kyoto, whilst not forgeting my clumsiness, I lost this pass after only one bus trip...which might explain why I didn't visit the famous Kinkakuji (Golden Pavilion). But we did manage to visit 3 places before I had to leave. Really, all was good since this was my second visit to Kyoto ;).



Some shrine, can't remember the name but it's near Nijo Castle. Very petite and pretty.



Story goes, if you walk across this bridge (towards the camera), your wish comes true! On another note, Azusa is so cute!



Apparently you pick out these fortune-telling papers and if they're bad (or really once you're done looking at 'em), you tie them onto this pole thing.



Nijo castle: How did people from the Edo period create such intricate details! I love the colours and the design. The inside was much more mind-blowing, and unfortunately you can't take photos inside so you'd just have to see for yourself!



Beautiful scenery from the top of Nijo castle ...apparently buildings cannot exceed a certain height (of about 7/9 floors or something) to preserve the unique landscape.



Toji Temple: listed World Heritage Site.

The famous 5-story pagoda part of Toji Temple - highest wooden tower in Kyoto.



Thought this was a cute taxi sign!



Everywhere you walk is so Japanese! Love Kyoto.