Alex Quinn's Japan Journal

9/18/2004, Kyushu trip, day 1

(This is the first installment of my story about going to Kyushu.  The second day is here.  The third and final day is here).

On the weekend of 9/18/2004 (Saturday) to 9/20/2004 (Monday), I went down to see my friends in Kumamoto, a city on the island of Kyushu.  My friends are Tooru, Sakiko, and Yuki Masubuchi.  Yuki is their daughter.  She is 6 years old this year.  They are old friends of Fumi, my conversation partner in Seattle.  Kyushu is in the southern part of Japan.  Kumamoto has about the same latitude as San Diego, California.  It is known for some exceptional Olympic judo wrestlers and delicious raw horse meat, among other things.

Here's an accidental picture of Sakiko that I rather like.  We were playing with my cell phone and I guess it went off accidentally.

When I arrived in Kumamoto, I met them at the train gate.  Yuki-chan was there with an envelope for me.  She is so cute.  She knows it too, which is also cute.  She had a lovely picture and some origami she had made for me.

After lunch, we went to their house and settled in.  From there, we stopped by a cafe for coffee.  Before I went to Kumamoto, they asked me what I wanted to do.  I said I'd like to keep it low key and maybe explore the small coffee shops in the area.  I said I missed the nice coffee shops in Seattle.  So, they took me a to a beautiful one.  It only seats about 20 at the most.  Everything in dark wood.  Nice smells.  They don't roast their own coffee, but they have their own blend.  It was really nice.

For dinner, we went to an izakaya (Japanese-style bar with good food).  We had delicous sashimi (raw fish), yakitori, and lots of other good Japanese food.  We also had some shouchuu (Japanese hard liquor) and beer.

Sakiko and Tooru were kind enough to write down everything we ate, so I could put it in my web site.

From reading this, you probably get the idea I really enjoyed the food while I was in Kyushu.  It's true.  They treated me to some really tasty stuff.  They always help me order things that I might not think of by myself, so I get to try some new stuff.

One interesting aspect of this trip was language.  In general, they are not English speakers.  When I visited them last year, we spoke almost completely in Japanese, despite my limited ability.  However, I knew they had studied English quite a bit because when I couldn't think of a noun, they often knew it.  Over the last year, Sakiko has been attending conversational classes at GEOS, a big company.  She has gotten really good in a short amount of time.  I think Sakiko and I spoke about 1/3 English and 2/3 Japanese.  Of course, it was all Japanese with Tooru and Yuki-chan.  As always, they were quite generous about teaching me things in Japanese.  They are really a pleasure to be with.

That night, I stayed at their place.  Their home is spacious, beautiful, clean, and comfortable.  I'm not sure whether a pleasant home leads to pleasant people or vice versa, but I do suspect some kind of connection.

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