2011-09-30 00:54:00
What with the 29th being Kaj's birthday we all wanted to do something together. The original plan was to visit the Furusato onsen on Sakurajima island (or "peninsula" actually, after a few volcano eruptions), followed by dinner at Ichi-ni-san to feast on Japan's famed black pork.
We took the Sakura down to Kagoshima, arriving there around 11:45. With the sun beating down upon us we set out for our trek to the Sakurajima ferry: ten minutes by local train, then another ten to fifteen minutes walking. The ferry ride was great though: lots of shade and a brisk, fresh breeze. The best thing: theoretically you could ride that thing back and forth a few times because you only pay at the island end of the ride. Great on a hot day. And if you get the right boat (not the one with the dolphins on the side) they'll even have a few nice drinks vending machines on board.
Having arrived at Sakurajima we were initially a little lost on where to go. Since Marli and I craved lunch we decided to look for the visitor's center, imagining it might have some food available (which it did not by the way). But since we couldn't find it, we stopped at a small resort for lunch. Turns out the visitor's center was right next door and they had a nice, little display about the island's active volcano. The young lady at the desk also offered to phone the Furusato shuttle bus to pick us up, but as it turned out they were closed for the day. ( ; _ ; )
So! Instead we settled for the public footbaths, with a view of the ocean. And I must say, while it weren't no "real" onsen, it really was very relaxing. The hot water on my legs, the fresh breeze from the sea and a great view with friends: it all made it worth the long trip there.
After that it was the whole trip in reverse: take the ferry back to Kagoshima, take the local Y150-bus to Kagoshima-chuo station, take the Shinkansen back to Hakata. There we took the rear exit and had dinner at an izakaya that Michel had been wanting to visit for a while now. Every time he's walked past it in recent years it'd been chock-full of people and the food smelled great, so it -had- to be good (this is the place by the way, apparently called やぶわかぶわ, "yabuwa kabuwa", no idea what it means). And it was! It was one of those places where you're seated on cushions at low tables and eat together from a small bunch of dishes, kind of like what we westerners know as a tapas joint. Among the stuff that we ate was grilled mackerel (which even Marli enjoyed!), beef tongue, chicken and chicken skin skewers, fried onigiri, and both gyoza and shiumai dumplings. Good stuff!
kilala.nl tags: japan, travel,
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2011-09-29 13:53:00
At 01:00 I was greeted by a very cheerful "Hello daddy!". "Hello jetlag" is more like it! Dana was wide awake and it took her almost two hours to fall back asleep.
We'd planned on taking today slow, what with it being our first day in the country. We however didn't count on it being -this- slow ^_^;
After breakfast at the hotel (I really enjoy the traditional breakfast of miso and onigiri, while Marli and Dana stick to buns and oats) we decided to stomp around the hotel's neighborhood a little bit. We paid a visit to the local temple and then took a long way around back to Hakata JR station. We had lunch at a katsu shop and then headed back to the hotel through the underground tunnel connecting Gion to the station. The air was pretty stale, but undoubtedly it'll be comfortable during heavy rains.
Marli was feeling a bit headachy, so I took Dana for a stroll while she took a short nap. We went back again to the JR station, to go down to the subway and get two Hayakaken IC cards. While you can pay all public transport using coins, it's much easier to use a chip card and admittedly it works a hell of a lot easier than the system we have in the Netherlands. I made a mistake in reading about the card though: I understood it to work in Osaka as well, while the website explicitly mentions that it works in -Suica- area as well, not Icoca. So that's Tokyo and others, not Osaka. Doh!
On the way back I turned bright red and got a burning sensation. Initially I thought I was hyperventilating, but then I wrote it off to sunburn. The weather over here is pretty incredible! Bright, bright sunshine and temperatures around 30 degrees. The city even has humidifiers set up around the station to put a mist of water in the air. Wow! In the end it turns out that I -was- hyperventilating! Good thing I wrote it off as something else, 'cause otherwise that'd have been my second panic attack of the day. =_=
In the afternoon we took a trip to Fukuoka Tower, and met with Kaj and Michel. On the trip there Marli actually proved more succesful in navigating to the bus stop AND in picking the right bus. Without any legible signage whatsowever! I was damn impressed! The tower is boasted to be one of Japan's tallest towers, at 234 meters. It's mostly for show, since the lower 108 meters are nothing but a hollow, triangular shape through which the elevator goes up. The panorama deck gives a beautiful view of the city and the bay/sea.
Dinner was… *ponders* Ah, McDonalds, would you believe it? And I have to say, it's a lot better than the western mickey-D's. Marli and I shared a teriyaki burger and a tamago (egg) burger, both of which were good. The tamago one was excellent actually! After that, back to the hotel, for nap-time. This time around Dana didn't fall asleep immediately, and instead kept me up for 1.5 hours.
kilala.nl tags: japan, travel, anxiety,
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2011-09-27 14:00:00
To say that our digs in Fukuoka are "spartan" is... well, exactly right. Toyoko Inn is a chain that runs dozens, if not hundreds, of business hotels in Japan. These cater to the business traveler who needs to be in town for a few days: you get your own bed and bathroom and that's about it. Breakfast is usually plain: rice balls, miso soup, salad and coffee.
While the room is clean and comfortable it doesn't provide for much space, so we were very happy to see that Dana's airbed fit next to my side of the bed. Also, because the provided cabinet next to the door was literally useless (20cm deep and no shelves) we had to live out of our suitcases, which were stored under the bed. We all slept quite well, but it's good that this was for only one week :|
Evenings were spent downstairs, in the hotel lobby. Marli and the boys played Rumikub, while I went through the day's photographs and did some blogging.
kilala.nl tags: travel, japan,
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2011-09-27 13:19:00
I've been up for thirty hours straight and it's time to hit the hay. Sadly I haven't taken any real pictures, due to exhaustion and keeping an eye on Dana. For day one, there's only a few camphone pics of people sleeping ^_^
So! What a journey! All times below are CET.
kilala.nl tags: travel, japan, anxiety,
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2011-09-25 17:31:00
Aaahhhhh ^_^
On the day before our holiday mother Nature decided to grant us good weather. Nice :) I reckon this was my last chance at sun bathing this year. Marli was off to a market in town, Dana was over at a friend's house and I had an hour to kill. I love our yard ^_^
kilala.nl tags: life, awesome,
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2011-09-25 17:16:00
To speak with the parlance of today's youth: FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!
Tomorrow we'll ship off to Osaka and beyond, by ways of KLM's 14:40 KL867. Just like our flight to Kopenhagen we thought we'd do the early Internet check-in to get a jump on the crowds. Based on advice from seatguru.com we were shooting for seats 40A-C or 40G-J, since they provide a little extra legroom for zero extra euros. So, exactly thirty hours before our flight (as indicated by KLM) we hop online, check in and... wait... no, we don't check in! :(
Instead, we are thrown the ever-so-generic error: "U of een van de reizigers in uw groep kan wegens een incheckbeperking geen gebruik maken van internet check-in. U wordt verzocht op de luchthaven in te checken". Or in plain english "We can't let you check in and we're not telling you why! You'll have to check in at the airport desk". There go our hopes of grabbing some good seats, which we really kind of need, what with Marli's length and weight. It's not often that airlines encounter people over 1.91m!
So! Hop on the phone with their customer support not once, not twice, but three times!
So. Three phone calls, two unhelpful ladies, one big moment of "FFFUUUUU!", one very helpful gentleman and 720 euros later we're set up with a return flight on "comfort economy" seats for the three of us. Of course we could've gotten one EC seat for Marli, with me and Dana back in Economy, but where's the fun in that? :(
That'll teach me to properly read my airline's website for a few hours. I'd wrongly assumed that the procedures for intercontinental flights were the same as for continental.
kilala.nl tags: life, travel, meh,
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2011-09-23 10:15:00
In recent weeks I've noticed that Dana's vocab and grammar have been changing. For example, instead of saying "I have ball!", followed by grabbing movements of her hands, she now says "I'd like having ball please". Nice!
On the other hand she still insists on putting her own name in sentences as a double subject, like "Dana would like hugging Dana".
kilala.nl tags: baby,
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2011-09-18 20:36:00
We celebrated Dana's birthday this Saturday and we had oodles of friends and family over for cake and drinks. The house hadn't been this full in months, if not years!
I'd been wanting to make her a cake for a few weeks now, so I left work a few hours early on Friday and we got cracking in the kitchen! The sponge cakes came out perfectly and in the end I spent little under a hour rolling fondant and marsepan and adding colored sugar drawings. Presto! It's an Team UmiZoomi cake! I really enjoyed working together with Marli in making these cakes. ^_^
What's Team UmiZoomi? Yet another kids' show from Nick JR, this one focusing on maths and numbers (video).
kilala.nl tags: baby, creative,
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2011-09-18 20:29:00
This weekend was Dana's birthday, but Kaijuu even got me a little something!
A few weeks back he visited a Danish anime convention where the lovely Humon, of Scandinavia and the world, was also signing and selling her stuff. Knowing of my Finnish descent, Kaijuu got me a signed sketch of the ever-silent, ever-grumpy and ever-murderious Finland.
GLEE! ^_^
kilala.nl tags: comics, awesome,
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2011-09-15 05:53:00
Last Saturday we finally got the new kendo season in Almere off to a start! A week late, but we enjoyed it nonetheless. Turn-up was good, with roughly fifteen students and two teachers present.
Because the training hall is completely new to us it took us a while to get started. New dressing rooms, a different floor, dust and crap left-over from construction that we needed to clear from the floor, etc. All in all we got started half an hour late, after most students had busied themselves with cleaning, kata or warming up. I chose to do stretches and footwork practice and around 0930 felt like I was pushing myself. Already! Even half an hour in I was hot and tired, how odd! I'm glad that Martijn and I continued practice over summer, because I don't know what state I'd've been in otherwise. I guess it might've been the heat in the training hall, because after said half hour I felt great. Even the extended footwork practice during warm-up didn't phase me, while it usually wears me out. I even had breath enough for good kiai!
Did the summer practice with Martijn pay off? Yes. Probably not in technique, but it sure made me more comfortable actually hitting other people. When doing waza practice I used to take a while to work up into hitting someome; much less so now. ^_^
In the end sensei indicated that he wasn't very happy with the state of everybody's kendo. It showed that we'd had a holiday and many people were being sloppy and rushed. One specific thing that Hillen pointed out to me is that my fumikomi is off: my shinai is always trailing behind my footwork. That's something I need to work on!
Last night I also had another practice with Martijn. It really shows that summer is over, because even right from the bat at 2015 we were already working in the dark. I need to get a better lamp for the yard :(
Because of the dark and because I can't wear my glasses inside the men we didn't get to do too much practice. Martijn did show me an excellent exercise: while motodachi repeatedly strikes men, shidachi will parry each blow and immediately make a do strike. So basically the student practices kaeshi do. It's a fun and useful exercise.
kilala.nl tags: kendo, sports,
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2011-09-07 08:02:00
Eleven months after Marli had her gastric bypass operation she had another checkup at her physician. Aside from getting her bloodworks checked she also had an official weigh-in, which now puts her at 52 kilos weight loss (116lbs for the metrically-challenged).
The above graph is my inept Excel representation of the known data: the X-axis are the number of months, the blue line is the known weight and the pink line is the actual weight loss. I wish I was better with Excel, to make the data points show up on the X-lines, but hey. For now, it'll do.
As you can see around march/april the weight loss slowed down quite a bit, but then (I guess) around june/july it picked up again. In the last month it was roughly four kilos. Anyway... The graph can't be used to predict anything, because a gastric bypass works just like stock: "results achieved in the past provide no guarantees for the future". However, we do expect to see another big shift around our trip to Japan, what with the extra exercise and the rigorously different diet.
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2011-09-05 09:22:00
Attentive readers will notice that Marli is wearing my Arrow Emblem t-shirt, which I'd ordered for the Anime 2010 festival. Also, at my sis' wedding she wore my Arrow Emblem sweater, out of necessity. So yeah... Woman's taken to nicking my clothes ^_^
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2011-09-04 21:15:00
Last Friday, the 26th of August, my sister got married to partner-for-more-than-ten-years Davy. I've got a good feeling about this: they've been through a lot together already, which is a good basis for a long-term relationship in my book. A lot happened on the wedding day, most of which was in such a flurry that I don't even remember it. Let's just say that it was a great day and that my sis is beautiful ^_^
Also, since we had a bit of a family reunion going on that day, here's a picture of my brother looking like a sway, FLC mutha ^_^
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2011-09-04 10:13:00
Yesterday marked the beginning of the 2011-12 kendo season at Renshinjuku Almere (錬心塾剣道 アルメレ). Everybody was rearing to go, excited to try out our new training room at the new Nautilus College building. But sadly it wasn't to be. Sensei had all the keys and everything had been arranged, but sadly he had been given the wrong PIN for the alarm system. So we had to cancel our first day of the new season.
On a nice note: from now on I am allowed to train in bogu! I recently had an email discussion with sensei Ton, about the fact that Martijn and I had been doing some jigeiko, but that we would put it off for now at the fear of bodily harm. Sensei then replied that I could borrow one of the dojo's loaner bogu to get me started, before ordering my own set. So yesterday, in the parking lot, we picked out a set of armor, which I then tried on at home.
The tare (waist armor) and do (belly and chest) are fine, though the himo (ties) of the tare are -very- worn out. The kote look quite akin to boxing gloves, but are comfortable. Sadly, the men (helmet) is not a perfect match: it's too tall (which can be fixed with padding) and also so narrow that I cannot fit my glasses at all. Martijn's men allowed me to keep my glasses on, so I guess it's a matter of finding the right helmet.
Having a short go at jigeiko again I now fully understand what people mean when they say that one would need to relearn all the basics once you start wearing bogu. Your posture needs to change completely and I found the experience of wearing armor so disorienting that I even forgot all basic footwork and strikes. Viewing through the mengane without my glasses is also very confusing: I keep using one eye only for focusing :(
I will put on the armor a few times this week, to grow more accustomed to it all.
kilala.nl tags: kendo, sports,
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All content, with exception of "borrowed" blogpost images, or unless otherwise indicated, is copyright of Thomas Sluyter. The character Kilala the cat-demon is copyright of Rumiko Takahashi and used here without permission.
