Tottori

A creature called 'Hyoutoku' from the manga Gegege no Kitaro.

You might be surprised how I’ve been blogging “a lot” recently. Well a lot… a bit more than usual. Trying to catch up since I’ve only been blogging once a month. And I even skipped the whole summer vacation. faaail.　（´д｀）

SO. Went to Kyoto recently but the weekend after that I went to Sakaiminato in  Tottori prefecture with a friend and her parents and stayed over at her grandparents’ house.
We only stayed for one night and one day but it was really fun （^〇^）

So on saturday 6 november after school my friend, her parents and me drove to Tottori by car for about 5 hours. Stopped once to eat lunch at a service area. I love service area’s because they usually sell a lot of souvenirs (goods, food, snacks) and you can usually try out the food they sell, which is called ‘shushoku’ in Japan. So me and my friend tried stuff like manju, senbei, mochi and more manju and more mochi and… and…so much more　（－▽ー） Aah I feel like eating manju right now. Like OMG the manju we get to eat during tea ceremony class at school is SO EFFING GOOD!! I love tea ceremony where we make maccha (green tea), eat manju and drink the maccha. Damn I love Japan　（≧∀≦）

Oh right where was I.
We arrived in Sakaiminato at around 7 pm I think, since we left at around 2 pm. Friends’ grandparents’ house was very nice and typical Japanese with only tatami floors. There was even a tea room where we got to eat manju and drink some maccha, made by the grandmother. When drinking maccha you first always eat some sweets that will leave their sweetness in your mouth so the maccha won’t be that bitter. Even in Japan a lot of people (especially the younger ones) don’t like maccha because of it’s bitterness. But I LOVE it. Definitely going to bring some home :)
For a real tea ceremony there are a lot of rules though when making but also drinking the tea. For example you have to turn the teacup 90 degrees to the left in order to not drink on the shoumen, which is the prettiest part of the teacup. And when you’re done you turn it back (90 degrees) and wipe the spot where you drank from with you fingers and wipe your finger on a piece of paper/tissue that should be in your pocket/kimono. A lot of words like ‘kekkoudegozaimasu’ (The tea has been well made, delicious etc) should be said too and when you drink the last bits you have to make a sipping sound. I’ve been learning a lot of it during tea ceremony class which is quite a lot of fun. Especially making the tea where you have to mix the tea with a chasen (looks like a brush) really fast ;D

Our room

Right. So we ate dinner, took a bath, prepared our futons (Japanese style mattress) and then we changed our clothes again and went outside to a rental shop ’cause we wanted to watch a VIDEO. Yes video. The tv in our room only had a video player so we were stupid enough to look for videotapes in a rentalshop with only cd, dvd and blue-ray. So yea ofcourse there weren’t any videotapes. But at least we tried :) It was about 10 pm by that time btw and pretty cold. Also visited a very cheap clothingstore (kind of like the Dutch HEMA, only the clothes there were really cute and had a lot of variation) and a very cheap supermarket.
Sakaiminato is a port town so it was very quiet (and cold) when we hang outside.
Eventually when we came back home we found some videotape with a recording of some drama on it.

The next day we headed into town (although it was just 5 minutes away by car) and visited the Shigeru Mizuki road. Shigeru Mizuki was born in Sakaiminato and is a manga writer who is very famous for Gegege no Kitaro which is a story about spirits and monsters. I love how the main character doesn’t have one of his eyes because that’s his dad who was born out of his son’s eye.

Found this in a souvenir shop. The eye, called Medamaoyaji is Kitaro's father.

Loved the atmosphere with a lot of souvenir shops and maaaany tourists. Checked out a lot of stores and bought some souvenirs. The streets were filled with yokai (Japanese spirits/monsters) statues that were created by Shigeru Mizuki. Although they are meant to be for children, a lot of those yokai are pretty scary, even for me. Like some monster with his bones sticking out through the skin of his back, long haired old lady, woman in kimono without a face except for her mouth, some skeleton with long arms…. Not really the typical “sweet” and “happy” comic characters for kids ( it is a kids manga/anime though).

One of the scary creatures called 'Doro Tabo'.

Even the toilet signs are Kitaro

The town was full with these Medamaoyaji lanterns. I want one!!

With Kitaro, friend and friend's cousin who tagged a long (^-^)

Some event was going on in the afternoon that we came across by chance. Even some characters of Gegege no Kitaro were at the event (dressed up people). It was about this game where you had to work in a pair to pile up a lot of geta’s (traditional Japanese wooden sandals).

Me and my friend in our awesome Kitaro vest

The pair who piled up the most geta’s won and got free Gegege no Kitaro-shaped manju. So me and my friend participated, made up a strategy and won!! :D So that was really cool. The manju were gooood （^▽^）

After the event we went home, ate vending machine fries, onigiri and more on the way (^-^)

Friend and me together with the writer and his creations

You can see the rest of the photos here （＾▽＾）