Kirishima
This weekend I went to Kirishima with a group of teachers from my Junior High School.
Kirishima is in Kagoshima, the prefecture below Kumamoto, and is a region famous for its dramatic scenery and various onsen’s. The area is volcanic, and at a fairly high altitude - driving through the winding path to reach our hotel, steam seeped gracefully from holes in the ground and the peaks of the mountain were enveloped in a blanket of cloud. Although this paints a pretty picture, the image was slightly spoiled by presence of natural sulphur in the water, meaning that the whole area smelt a bit like fart.
To start the weekend getaway, we had an extremely elaborate meal in a tatami room. I was informed by my co-workers whilst in my 6th minute of masticating a raw clam that this was “very good food”. I think the Japanese definition of ‘good food’ falls into three main categories:
1) Things that are not food at all 2) Things that are not pleasant to eat 3) Things whose vibrant natural colourings are interpreted as a prohibitive warning by the rest of mankind and the entire animal kingdom, but as a challenge by the Japanese eg. Fried Bee’s.
Food that fell into these three categories at this meal included:
Fish bone tempura. Something which looked like snot. A kind of alcohol, the appearance and viscosity of which was not unlike semen. Soup with a bitter ‘local herb’ in it. In England we call this grass. Eyes.
Politely refusing more alcoholic semen, me and a few others went to relax in the onsen. I quietly enjoyed the irony in the fact that the whole trip was centred around visiting an onsen, but in reality one can only bear being in an onsen for a maximum of 15 minutes before your heart starts palpitating and your eyeballs start to throb due to the heat.
As the night went on, everyone became extremely drunk. I spent most of the night talking to the art teacher about old video games (a particular favourite drunken topic of choice, for me) and playing the “what-can-I-focus-on” activity whilst looking round the room. Before you could say “osaki ni neru”, I was sleeping like a baby on horse sedatives.
The entire next day was spent rushing around buying omiyage. Omiyage are souvenirs and every region in Japan worth its salt, from the tiniest mountain village like shoushoushoushoushoushoushousanjou-mura to sprawling metropolii like Tokyo and Fukuoka will have some kind of small edible foodstuff that it is famous for making, and will hock them to tourists in attractive gift boxes. Omiyage are like gold to the Japanese tourist. If you didn’t buy the omiyage of a place you went to, you DIDN’T GO THERE. Thus, sod the 1000-year old temple, the waterfall, the castle, the samurai museum, the Dodo sanctuary, the actual remains of Christ Jesus, the monolith on which is carved the true meaning of human life - lets head down to the omiyage shop and buy some of those little ball things with custard inside! Its ok, as the wrapping has a PICTURE of all those things mentioned above!
Thankfully though, shopping for omiyage was in fact all you could do in the region of Kirishima, there being very little else in the area other than onsen’s, hotels and fart gas.
A good weekend.
