Happy Holidays in the Boso.

Christmas Eve found me back in southern Chiba to spend some quality time with friends.

After a very busy December, it was time to take advantage of the lovely weather and explore some new places!

First stop was Mantokuji Temple ("萬徳寺"), which is right around the border of Tateyama and Minamiboso.

Admission is 500 yen per person (adults).

The highlight of this place is this giant reclining Buddha!!! I've heard it's the only reclining Buddha statue in Japan...I don't remember where from though, so please don't quote me on that though. :/

This is one of the last things you would expect to be sitting (laying?) on a tall hill right behind a 7-11...pretty cool! They also had people there to tell you how to properly pray there, step-by-step. After offering up incense at the alter in the middle, you follow the steps up. But the steps are actually a long slope that loops around the statue, so by walking around it 3 times you will naturally wind up at the statue's feet! It's said that praying at the feet of statue can help injuries/illnesses in the legs and feet.

We drew mikuji, or fortunes. Very ironically, mine told me I really need to brush up on my English.

You can also enjoy a lovely view of the surrounding area from the temple! They had free tea too. XD

Our next stop was Tateyama Castle! It's so photogenic.

View of Tateyama Bay from the top of the castle.

With admission to the castle, you also get admission to the Tateyama City Museum, so we decided to check it out!

I am not actually whether or not you are allowed to take photos within the museum (sorry)! I did look for signs saying that photography is prohibited, but I didn't see any...

But whoa!!! They had an entire house inside the museum!!! It was a super cool exhibit. You can actually go INTO the house and look around inside it too.

And the explanations for this exhibit are written in the Boshu dialect!!! The lighting is kind of in the way, but it is really neat to try and figure out how the explanation should be written if it were in standard Japanese.

We finished off our day of exploration by going to Hojo Beach in Tateyama to take photos of the sunset! You can't really tell, but the lump right in the center of this photo is actually Mt. Fuji.

Way too much fun playing on the beach even though it was freeeeeezing.

Anyway, I'll be going back down again tomorrow to bring in the New Year's!!! I can't believe there's only one day left before 2012.

CHI-BA+KUN Ambassadors in Sakae and Narita.

So Chiba Prefecture has this really cool project called the "CHI-BA+KUN Ambassadors" going on right now. Well...the project has a much longer name, but we usually refer to it as 「チーバくん大使」or even  just「大使」.

The CHI-BA+KUN Ambassadors are exchange students and other foreign residents living in Chiba Prefecture who have been appointed to promote Chiba Prefecture!! Specifically, they do this by writing Chiba-related articles in their personal blogs, facebook, etc. This year's ambassadors hail from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, U.S., Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brazil, Kazakhstan, and Hungary!

English page about the CHI-BA+KUN Ambassadors on the Chiba Prefecture website:
http://www.pref.chiba.lg.jp/kokusai/english/information/residents/ambassadors.html

Anyway.... as a part of the project, the CHI-BA+KUN Ambassadors can participate in specially organized regional tours of Chiba Prefecture! So this post is actually about their first tour, which I had the pleasure of tagging along on :D (Please conveniently disregard the fact that this post is about three months late.)

We went to Boso-no-Mura in Sakae Town and then Narita Shinshoji Temple and its surrounding area.
That might sound a bit familiar...but that's because I took my parents on the same route when they visited in October - I actually mimicked this tour because it was such a perfect day trip!

Anyway...here goes a photo summary of the tour:

This place is full of subjects for awesome photos!

We kicked off the first leg of the tour by looking around Boso-no-Mura, an open air museum that recreates the scenery of what businesses, farmers' houses, etc used to look like in Chiba about 150 years ago.

Even the insides of the buildings were made down to the finest details to reflect their history.

Hunting for the fine details.

 We were all really curious about these random objects, which turned out to be talismans to ward off bad spirits. They took the shapes of something that looked like a cross, an octopus...even dice!

"Rakkasei" peanut harvesting, one of Chiba's most famous products!

After looking around, everyone branched off into groups to do some hands-on stuff. The variety of activities they have at Boso-no-Mura is pretty amazing!

Weaving a coaster the old school way.

After I trekked back from watching the weaving, some people had already gathered a giant harvest of peanuts!

The peanuts are of course raw though, so no one could actually taste them there tho....haha.

Shortly after, Mi-san had just finished her coaster too!

After all of the frolicking though, everyone was just about ready for lunch - so we were off to Narita!

Down what looked like a very random alleyway...

But actually, the (tiny) entrance to the annex of a very lovely Japanese restaurant was hidden here!

Lunch was at the Kikuya ("Chrysanthemum House"), a local and very nice restaurant famous for a Narita area speciality, unagi (eel)!

I snuck a picture of someone else's food. I don't think the unagi had actually been served yet though. ^^;

I am actually not a big fan of unagi because while it doesn't bother most people, I am really conscious of the tiny fish bones so I can't actually concentrate on the delicious flavor...*sigh* I did had tempura and it was amazing!!

After lunch, we were off to Narita Shinshoji Temple, one of the best known temples in the Kanto Region!

Tiger.

This is a zoom-in of one of the sculptures within the Somon gate (pictured in the previous photo). If you find your zodiac animal and walk under it, it will bring you good luck!

On the way up to the main hall of the temple, we were all super amazed by this! I couldn't get the lighting down very well, but the rock around the center of the photo is shaped like a TURTLE! And it is covered it turtles (that just look kinda like oval rocks...)!!!  So cute <3

I totally forgot to take a picture of the main hall...as I was wandering around the back of the main hall, I found this! If you look closely, there are little green statues all over the place - it actually stretches way further off to the right...I wonder how many statues there are in total??? I love discovering random things like this!

Pagoda!! This is a National Important Cultural Property, as are many of the other structures at Narita Shinshoji Temple.

Phew...it was a really hot day! And after this we went to Tokyo Game Show too.

Anyway, it was a really awesome first tour!


I am actually hoping to go back to both of these areas sometime over the next few weeks and do some further exploration. Particularly, I can bet that Narita will be swarming with worshippers going for hatsumode, or their first temple visit of the New Year - but it will be fun nonetheless! I STILL need to eat that mochi waffle at one of the cafes nearby the temple. :D


Hope everyone is enjoying the holidays!

The Boshu dialect (房州弁).

I've posted this before on facebook, but somehow the topic of Chiba's dialects came up at work on Friday, and I decided I needed to repost this on my blog.

I was speaking with a coworker, and she mentioned how once when she was traveling in southern Chiba, she asked for directions and had NO idea what the person had told her because the dialect was insane. I mentioned my love for Boshu-ben ("Boshu dialect," aka southern Chiba's native dialect)...to which she replied she didn't even realize it was called that!

No no, I could not allow that! After some discussion about Boshu dialect, I remembered this quiz. I tried to show it to her but it was blocked, so I will satisfy myself by posting it here:


房州弁検定だっぺ｜けんてーごっこ
http://kentei.cc/k/556835

As with most dialects, there will be variations even within the same dialect. This quiz was made by someone from Kamogawa, so it might be somewhat different from how someone in say...Minamiboso or Otaki speaks. It is fun to check out anyway though. Searching for "房州弁" online will come up with all sorts of dictionaries and what not.

I got 9 out of 10... I still need some more work. :)


Slightly unrelated, but this topic got me longing for Kamogawa so I went over some of my old photos and came upon these:

Ahh...I really want to eat some mikan right now!

Around this time last year, I was finishing up my 2 year course on tourism/being a guide. This was from our practical,  where we led a tour around Kamogawa.

Then people picked mushrooms from here (the set of logs leaning against each other)...

And immediately roasted them on this charcoal grill, along with other goodies like fresh veggies and onigiri !

It was a pretty cool tour (although from the side of the people doing the planning, it really is a LOT of work). The theme was winter in the mountain countryside. I think there's this image of the countryside being bleak and full of nothingness in the winter - which is true, at the first glance, but if you look a lot harder, there are actually a lot of fun things to do!

Prepping the hay.

Hay? Yep - since it was the end of the year, we also made New Year's decorations, old school style! Back in the day, people (mainly farmers) made them from leftover hay, but most people nowadays buy them from the store.

We were making shimenawa (lit. "enclosing rope"; are said to mark off sacred spaces and ward off evil).  You have to take bunches of hay and twist them together. It sounds easy enough, but it's actually pretty difficult to do it nicely...and is really really tiring. It was a pretty new, cool experience though!

This was mine, minus the paper decorations that would make it complete. For my first time, supposedly it was actually pretty good - except that I was too naive when I was twisting the hay, apparently. Practice makes perfect, I guess?

This isn't mine, but what the final product with the paper decorations looks like. You can buy the paper decorations, but the guy who was teaching us how to make the shimenawa made this himself. Talk about living tradition!

Just one week till Christmas, then two weeks till New Years! Hope everyone is having a good December.

Christmas CHI-BA+KUN!

One of the perks of working at the Prefectural Offices: getting to go see random events like this one!

So today at work, they had a lighting ceremony for this lovely Christmas tree. This tree was made by students (including these kids dressed in blue) from a high school in Togane City.

I realize that most people will never reason to visit the Chiba Prefectural Offices...if you are in the area, the tree will be on display until December 23.

But what excited me the most was チーバくん ("CHI-BA+KUN") was totally decked out in his Christmas gear!!! CHI-BA+KUN is Chiba Prefecture's super awesome and adorable mascot character.

Ready to light the tree up!

So...cute...!!! On a side note, although he's all blurry, the man in the gray suit is Kensaku Morita, Governor of Chiba Prefecture...and one of my current favorite people. :D

Here is CHI-BA+KUN's official website:
http://www.pref.chiba.lg.jp/kouhou/miryoku/chi-ba-kun/
It has lots of super cute wallpapers and stuff too, and it looks like they even added some images to us for nengajo!

Anyway, happy winter holidays everyone!!!

Winter Illumination at Tokyo German Village!

A little blurry, but wheee! Clovers!

Now that winter's upon us in full force and Christmas is right around the corner, it's also time for another one of my favorite events - the Winter Illumination at Tokyo German Village (東京ドイツ村)! Despite the name, this place is tucked deep in central Chiba Prefecture. By day it's a quaint little theme park, but at night during the winter months (November to early March), this place is lit up with countless lights!

This year's theme: Smile of Hope - cheering on Japan after 3.11!

I wasn't able to capture it very well, but the lights here are really amazing! This photo and the one above were taken from the ferris wheel in the park.

Tunnel of light! It forks off two different ways...did it always do that?

Like I mentioned above, Tokyo German Village is tucked away in the Chiba countryside.
It looks like they have a free shuttle bus running to/from the park to JR Sodegaura Station every 20 minutes or so, but car is by far the best way to go. If you go by car, admission is only 1500 yen (2000 yen from December 1-January 9) - whether you drive a 4-seater mini car like mine, or a giant van that can fit 8 people.

My other advice is that if you go by car, they'll have people directing traffic in giant parking lot that wraps around the whole park. They may tell you to park somewhere around in the middle, but IGNORE THEM AND PARK NEAR THE EXIT! Especially if you are going on a weekend or another busy day. Last year I had a friend who apparently parked up top (nearer to the park, seems like a good idea) as she was told to, and then had to wait over 2 hours just to get out of the park because it was that crowded. :/

Pig-shaped steamed bun! Yes, there is pork inside there...and it was delicious!

We stopped for a break for something hot and delicious. Tokyo Germany has a surprisingly awesome variety of delicious foods!

I especially recommend their bakery!!! They bake everything in the bakery located WITHIN the shop, and so if you hang around just for a few minutes, they often bring out breads straight from the oven...so good!!!!

We had a chocolate croissant (left) and strawberry cream cheese bread (right). The latter tasted just like a toaster streudel!

In the plaza, every 30 minutes or so they had a show of lights timed to music! During this show, everyone would chase after the giant bubbles from the bubble machines set up all over the station. I think the bubbles have chalk or something in them, because when they popped they would dissipate into what looked like white smoke! I tried to capture it on a photo, but this was the best I could do!

Then, we wandered into the giant clover (pictured in the very first photo of this post). It's so cute to look at up close too! I really like these needle tree things!

Ducks!!! But more importantly, see the awesome landscape in the back?

Last but not least, my favorite scene from this year's illumination! We had wondered what exactly was "in" the clover when we were looking at it from the above, since each of the leaves had different patterns but we couldn't make out what they were from afar.

Anyway, this was my third year going - and I think my 6th time or so going to see this, but I never get tired of it! It's awesome whether you are with family, friends, or someone special. My only other advice is to DRESS WARM! It gets reaaaaally cold at night, so wear lots of layers!

Chiba University + Bay FM Radio + Family Mart = "Chiba Genki Project"

Family Mart + Chiba University collaborative obento! Featuring Chiba's fusakogane rice and Chiba grown spinach.

I dropped by Family Mart on my way home Saturday night. After spending 10 minutes pondering what to eat for dinner, my eyes rested on this and I knew we had a winner! After all, I am a huge sucker for ご当地 (stuff special to that area) foods. How could I pass this up? I swear, CHI-BA+KUN was calling me.

Next time you're looking for something to eat at Family Mart, consider this!
"Chiba Genki Project" Cream Sauce Pepper Chicken Bento

Apparently they had a Tartar Sauce Tonkatsu Bento back in August...can't believe I missed it! I will have to keep my eyes peeled...