Joshua Zimmerman

Taiami Festival 鯛網

Posted by Joshua - 02/06/09 at 11:06:31 pm

Every year the old historic port city of Tomonoura in Fukuyama hosts the Taiami Festival 鯛網 during the month of May. The Taiami festival centers around a display of traditional Japanese fishing, and if you’re lucky, you can go home with a souvenir fish of your very own. In case you were wondering, ‘tai’ are the type of fish they catch and ‘ami’ means net. Thus the name of the festival.

We decided to head out on the very last day of the festival to watch the fish catch. Our trip started out quite good as we caught the historic tourist bus out to Tomonoura. The bus itself is over 50 years old and is one of the original style buses used throughout Japan.

I always like the look of Tomonoura. Sure, it is mostly ugly, but there are a few nice historic streets around for viewing.

Continue reading Taiami Festival 鯛網…

A Whale of a Time in Kochi

Posted by Joshua - 02/06/09 at 11:06:45 pm

My first year on JET I spent Golden Week on a Beach in Kochi Prefecture, watching as my friends attempted to surf. It was fun and very low key. For my forth Golden Week I decided to drag Judy along on a trip to Kochi where we would attempt to go Whale watching (not eating). To get to Kochi we traveled by train to Okayama, and then got another train that went across several bridges and through some very lovely mountains. It was about three hours of a very rocky train ride, and we both felt a bit motion sick at the end.

For our first day in Kochi we hit up the local aquarium at Katsurahama beach. The aquarium was a bit ghetto. They had one dolphin, which looked depressed, and some very smelly sea otters. One redeeming feature was their children’s petting area where you could pick up a sea cucumber or a sea slug. I did both. I even managed to get Judy to pick up a big sea cucumber. She was not amused.

Continue reading A Whale of a Time in Kochi…

WHY! WHY WHY WHY!

Posted by Joshua - 30/05/09 at 05:05:19 pm

Sigh…..

I spent some time this afternoon upgrading my version of wordpress to a newer version. During this process somehow the file with all my images in it got deleted. Every image. From every post. All 840 of them. From the past 6 years.

So if you’re browsing around and wonder why there are no photos in any of my posts that would be why.

I guess I’ll have to go back through and put images up on the posts again. Most of the photos are ones I took myself, and thus, are in my iPhoto library. I guess I do have a lot of time on my hands so its not a big deal… its just insanely annoying

I honestly don’t know how this happened. Curse you EVIL SERVER!!!!!!

Chilling in Okayama City

Posted by Joshua - 03/05/09 at 10:05:08 pm

Judy and I had some time to kill over Golden Week so we decided to head down and check out the neighboring city of Okayama. Located just an hour a way from Fukuyama by train, you’d think that I would have spent some time there over the past 4 years. I can count the number of times I’ve been there on one hand.

So the first thing we did was check out the very nice park, Korakuen. Something I did last Spring as well. Though the weather was a bit overcast, the temperature was very nice.

I also saw the same cat in a box I saw last year. It was in fact alive.

So while walking around the city we happened to come across this random shop called Crispy Bacon . The shop’s motto is “Always give crispy gifts.” There was in fact no bacon to be found in the shop.

For your viewing pleasure here are several old ladies playing Koyo to some heavy beats in the park.

Hanami on Osakikamijima

Posted by Joshua - 14/04/09 at 11:04:46 pm

This past weekend I had the pleasure of spending some serious Cherry Blossom viewing time with Judy on her island of Osakikamijima, which sits out in the middle of the inland sea. Which means it’s in the middle of nowhere. But on the upside it does make a nice getaway for viewing the many cherry blossoms that are out right now.

On Friday Judy, Nobuko, and I drove out to a local shrine to see it all lit up. As expected there were several groups of Japanese people out enjoying the hanami season even at night. As expected one group offered me food and drink (I always expect this, the girls think I have some super power over Japanese people) as I probably always look hungry to them. I was in fact hungry.

The next day we took a long walk back out to the shrine to see it in the daylight. Along the way we passed by some massive carp wind socks hanging in a neighbor’s front yard. Granted this is the same neighbor who puts up a massive Christmas light display in the winter that can probably be seen by passing planes, so it wasn’t all too surprising.

While the cherry blossoms are quite pretty they only last a week, and when we got to the shrine we were showered by random cherry peddles. It kind of looks like snow. Small children were running around throwing handfuls at each other. Those darn kids.

Oh blossom season. I still stand by my theory that its just part of a big Japanese holiday tradition of making of excuses for getting drunk in public. (Though I do like getting free food.)

How To Properly Use A Train

Posted by Joshua - 14/04/09 at 10:04:10 pm

I’ve been studying up on how to live in Tokyo in preparation for living there and I came across this fun filled train PSA.

Sure, you laugh. But I’ve seen all this happen around my city before, and it is really annoying. Nothing I hate more than some random guy looking at porn on a train while throwing up on someone.

I also like how the signs are in English as well. For the .05% of the population that speaks English as a first language. I don’t know whether to feel embarrassed or insulted.  The best things about these signs are that they don’t address any of the real problems facing Tokyo train users, such as the horrible Japanese past time of groping females on trains.  Or the upskirt pictures.  Always with the upskirts.

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