One week ago today, I gave a talk about my monitor tour at an International Fair in Imabari City. The local media came out and did a story on it. Here’s my amateur slapdash attempt at translating the newspaper article that was published in the morning edition of the Ehime Newspaper last Tuesday. Many thanks go to reporter Fumihito Tawa for coming out and covering the event. I’d also like to proffer my thanks to the photographer who snapped that incredible “A-ha!” finger pointing gesture. The team made me look good! Click on the thumbnail for a larger view.

Caption: Mr. Richardson (right), an American whose theme was using foods like yakitori in a plan for promoting tourism in Imabari City.

Enjoy Imabari Even More

Increase the amount of foreign language information on websites to promote short-stay food tourism

Proposed by a sightseeing foreigner

Let’s rediscover Imabari’s tourist attractions from a foreigner’s point of view. The International Fair hosted by the Imabari City International Exchange Association (ICIEA), took place on the 7th at the JA Saisaikiteya farmer’s market, where the townspeople were able to learn about local attractions as well as ideas for drawing foreign tourists to the area.

The ICIEA received a request from the city, and so set out on a project to have 7 foreign residents undertake monitor tours from June of 2009 to February of 2010. The fair was designed to showcase the results of these tours for the people of Imabari CIty.

Deas Richardson (26), an American assistant language teacher, said of food tourism with a focus on Imabari’s famous yakitori, “Of course it is not really a reason unto itself to visit, but it could easily be a reason to stop (here) on the way to another destination.” He expanded upon his ideas, putting emphasis on using short term stays centered around culinary attractions to bolster tourism to the area.

He also raised the example of websites which anyone can edit (wikis) and are frequently used by foreign travelers, citing the fact that the city’s English and Chinese language information was scarce. He encouraged the audience, saying, “The Japanese page introduces yakitori, but there is no explanation in English or Chinese. Since anyone can contribute information as a volunteer, I would really like us to try to do so.”

Mr. Martin Samoy (44), a Belgian photographer who has lived in Imabari for 15 years, presented some of his pictures of scenery around the city. Mr. Samoy’s acquaintance and coworker, Ms. Mizumi Ide (5), also of Imabari, said “I was moved by the way that he photographed landscapes so familiar and ordinary to Japanese people with a fresh perspective.”（Fumihito Tawa）

Well, folks, my tourism project with ICIEA has finally come to a close. It was a lot of fun, and I’m thankful for the experience. I created a video to precede my talk to the crowd gathered at the international fair we held on Sunday last weekend. It was a pretty fun time. I enjoyed looking over the posters and photography from other monitor tourists before showing my DVDs and then getting up to speak. Those videos have been arranged in a playlist and embedded above. The first 2 in the playlist are available in full 1080p HD, so don’t miss out. The remaining 4 have been previously featured on this site.

Anyhoo – I was asked to deliver a bilingual speech, so I frequently repeated myself, I’m afraid. I’m fairly sure that both the Japanese people and the English speaking foreigners in the crowd were able to follow me reasonably well. My take: Imabari should play up its unique food heritage in a play to put itself on foreigners’ radar. I explained the concept of food tourism, and how most foreign people who go to Hiroshima go there in order to take in the history, the museums, and the sights. But they’d be foolish to miss out on some okonomiyaki while they’re there. (Am I right?)

Imabari is the crosspoint of 3 major arteries of transportation, yet people no longer stop here on their way elsewhere on Shikoku. I urged them to think about the slogan thought up by my friend Harry; “Shikoku Starts Here.” Great slogan! If only we could get some people to take a break from their travels, spend a night here, and eat some yakitori. That’s right, yakitori. Imabari is currently the #2 city in all of Japan for yakitori, and it has a unique take on it, at that. In Imabari, shops make yakitori on sheet metal griddles and handheld steel plates instead of on skewers over charcoal. It’s said that this type of yakitori started because Imabari people are impatient and they want their food lickety-split. (It’s also likely that the ship building industry’s presence meant that loads of scrap steel plates were readily available…) DELICIOUS, by the way.

Anyway, my other recommendations were for people to get online and add information to the English language Wikipedia and Wikitravel entries. (I also told them they could pay me to do it….semi-facetiously. Got some laughs. The offer still stands, if you’re reading this, guys. Ha ha. ) All in all, I think my suggestions were well received, and I think the event went well. I want to say kudos to the other foreigners who volunteered their time and to all of the Japanese staff who worked so tirelessly on this project. お疲れ様でした！

I may or may not bring this topic up once more on this blog. It seems there may be some newspaper articles coming up out of this. And it’s also possible that I’ll post a song about Imabari’s yakitori. (No joke. It was made when we were the #1 city for yakitori. Perhaps with the aid of foreign tourism, we can reclaim the title?)

I recently had several classes re-caption several webcomics. I did this for a few reasons. Using comics in class to have students develop dialogue is far more interesting / engaging than asking them to roleplay what has already been written in the textbook. It’s also far more challenging due to its unfamiliarity. These students do not know the characters from the comic, have a mere 3 frames to grasp the context of the situation, and are often pressed to be super creative when faced with these issues. I love that. I thrive on that. I like to hear the gears in their heads whir as they do something out of the ordinary. Plus, it benefited me in a way, too – I also happened to use this activity as an example in a cruddy mediocre talk I gave at our prefectural midyear seminar to other high school ALTs.

I first got the idea for this project when I saw it pop up on the blog of a former CIR here in Ehime. His Japanese examples are pretty funny, by the way, though you can tell they’re a bit dated from the jokes (not just the URL)! Anyhoo, I then traced it over to this site, which is where I saw the potential for high school kids to pull it off.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Penny Arcade, you really should be. It’s a hugely popular webcomic built around gamer interests that’s updated thrice weekly. The guys who make it, Mike & Jerry, rock out with their socks out, so go hit them up. Having said that, I feel like it’s important to offer up a note here. Note: Penny Arcade is NOT appropriate for class. The subject matter is super niche and the language alters between course, archaic, and highly sarcastic. The art, however, is perfect – highly emotive and often curious.

You can visit the source comics via the following links: 1, 2, 3, 4, & 5. That’s right. 5 comics. Examples follow. Please feel free to read them. Sorry about the poor legibility – the ditto machines are ancient at school. Ask questions and make comments if you’re so inclined! But above all else, enjoy.

Allow me to open this short entry with a quick quote. I’m stealing from myself here, when I posted my Tainan pictures. “Tainan is way cooler than Taipei for the lazy casual cultural tourists. … Here’s an analogy for you SAT-prep nerds out there. ‘Tainan’ is to ‘Taipei’ as “Kyoto” is to ‘Tokyo.’” You see, if you’re not a person who wants to shop, you might run out of stuff to do. Granted, I got to stay at a super trendy boutique hotel, eat lots of western food that I’ve missed so much, and generally feel pampered. But it wasn’t a particularly “Taiwan-y” experience. It was the same experience you can get in any large city anywhere. I loved the museums and temples that we got to see, but at the end of the day, I really wished I’d spent more time in Tainan. Incidentally, I’ve heard the same from friends who’ve also traveled to Taiwan. Oh – one last interesting thing that happened is that I bumped into some JETs from my area at random in the middle of Taipei. I was chillin’ out at Cold Stone Creamery (for the second or third time) and they walked right in front of me. I shouted out to them and we caught up for a second, but we were all sort of shell-shocked at the abrupt coincidental meeting. Ha ha. Seriously, what are the odds that that happens unplanned?

This was so weird, it really deserved its own post. No but(t)s about it. I went to a restaurant in Taipei called 便所主题餐厅 in Chinese, or “Modern Toilet” in English. It is exactly what it claims to be. A restaurant themed entirely around toilets and other bathroom fixtures. You can visit the official English site here or the official Japanese version here. Here’s a quick video that I whipped up.

Here are the stills from the video clip again. Ha ha.

It was an interesting experience all around. All of the tables are converted plumbing fixtures, most surfaces are tiled, the dishes are all special ceramic novelties, and the real bathrooms are relatively difficult to find thanks to their inadvertent camouflage. Ha ha. Specialty teas come in urinal cups, but you can purchase a take-home pee bottle to go. while I’m sure it was, I actually found it hard to feel like the place was properly sterilized / clean. Kinda makes sense, I guess.

The main dishes in the toilet bowls were great. (I actually realized that the bowls are self-contained chafing pots when I watched this video! You can see a little bit of flame under the lip of one of them.) I had the Thai curry and made a bad poo joke about how my meal won the prize for resembling its eventual end state. Oh,come on, dining in a place like that you can’t help but make a few bad poo jokes. Don’t judge me.

The sides that come with the main dishes were really lousy. I didn’t bother finishing anything but the rice and curry from my main dish. The included soft serve at the end was similarly disappointing – and not only because it wasn’t solid chocolate to complete the effect. It’s also non-dairy and you can really tell. It’s super watery and doesn’t really taste of chocolate or vanilla…or anything else, actually. That’s probably due to the fact that they offer monstrous portions in their desserts. I saw a few parfait/sundae frankenstein bowls pass by us, and I’m telling you, you’d need a hungry soccer team to kill one off. No wonder they don’t use quality stuff – they’re going for quantity. It’s all part of the spectacle of the thing. Having said that, the fries were freaking amazing. Worth your time? Sure, it’s a restaurant themed for the bathroom! Take the chance when you get it. After all, when nature calls…

Even if you’ve never been, you’re probably already familiar with the site. It was featured in Memoirs of a Geisha. It was also the inspiration for the art installation “The Gates” by Christo and Jean-Claude. The epic arrangement of Shinto gates (鳥居 / torii) packed so tightly together creates an amazing, surreal illusion – you feel as though you’re walking through an otherworldly hallway.

I’ve been to Fushimi Inari Taisha 4 or 5 times now, and it sure doesn’t get old. It’s sort of like Miyajima in that it stands apart from other shrines and temples. If that sort of thing isn’t up your alley, you may find yourself thinking “if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.” You won’t get that feeling here. Visiting at different times of day, in different seasons, etc. all change the scenery drastically.

I included Fushimi Inari in my old student travelogue from my study abroad days. You can see a video clip that I put together by clicking here (it will open in an overlay) or by visiting the original. I also wrote about it a few years ago when I spent Christmas vacation in Kyoto at the J-Hoppers hostel with friends, including J-Web vlogger/blogger Claytonian.

If you do go, I recommend taking the extra time to wander up to the upper loop past the lakes. I love the view at the top – you can even see Kyoto Tower. Most people tend to go a little bit into it and turn back, imagining that things look the same all the way up. The truth is, the scenery changes. Fox statues, mini-torii and all sorts of devotionals, incense burners, and the like are scattered throughout the area. Perhaps you’ll meet and befriend a shrine cat there like I’ve done on more than one occasion.

The theme for this Japan Blog Matsuri was “your favorite place in Japan.” It’s being hosted by Shane at the Nihon Sun.

I did “take away” some observations, in spite of my total tourist mentality (or perhaps due to it?). 1) Tainan is way cooler than Taipei for the lazy casual cultural tourists. I’ll elaborate on this when I post my Taipei pictures. Here’s an analogy for you SAT-prep nerds out there. “Tainan” is to “Taipei” as “Kyoto” is to “Tokyo.” 2) The ridiculous stuff is often cooler than the famous stuff. I honestly thought the Anping Tree House was cooler than Anping Fort, which is the more historical and more widely known attraction in the same area. 3) The Dutch were freakin’ influential EVERYWHERE. Ha ha. Going through the museums and histories, I often found myself wondering if things had gone differently, would Dutch people rule the world? 4) Night Markets are the coolest thing to do by a long shot. Way cool. Still couldn’t bring myself to try stinky tofu, though. (臭豆腐 = literally “smell” + “bean” + “rot” according to my limited / Japanese understanding of the characters. [Obviously, 豆腐 is "tofu" normally. I separated it for effect.] Whew. Very accurate name.) Most people who’ve tried it say that they love the stuff, but dude…..I had to hold my breath to walk by the little stalls selling it. I’m all for expanding my formerly uber-picky culinary horizons, but I just don’t think I’m there yet. By the way, the English “fermented tofu” seems redundant to me, since tofu is “fermented soy bean curd.” But yeah, that should tell you how pungent it is – it’s twice rotted! Ha ha. 5) Walk everywhere you can. Only take cabs for long distances. You get to see so much more of the city. Anyhoo, like I said, I’m still unfortunately ignorant of a lot of cool stuff in Tainan, but I got to know the city over a few days. Good times. More on the Taiwan trip – specifically Taipei – later.

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Alas, another of my island schools has closed. 今治高等学校大島分校, or Oshima Branch School (attached to Imabari Minami Prefectural High School). I’d taught there for 3 years. I watched this class – only 12 seniors, the only students in the school this year – come in as freshmen. Quite an emotional day all around. Murakami-sensei led his homeroom to the front of the gym, where they received their diplomas in front of the audience, several cameramen, the mayor, and me. The music was provided by the brass band from Minami High School, which sounded amazing as they played their rendition of Angela Aki’s latest hit. The band was roughly three times the size of the graduating class. Ha ha. Next came the official closing ceremony, where the school flag is given back to the city. Afterward, the graduates made their way to their old home room for one last intimate moment. Murakami-sensei delivered a thanks speech, and presented each student with a special certificate, separate from their diploma. He shook their hands, they wept, yelled their thanks to their parents who lined the back of the room, and sat down again. I was really, really proud. I went in afterward and shook their hands and congratulated them individually. What a day. I started with seven schools, and now I’m down to five. But I have great memories of both that closed. Side note: I usually do not show my students’ faces in pictures out of an abundance of caution, but these are no longer my students!