Hojoya Festival is one of the big three festivals in Fukuoka.  It is held in mid-September every year.

“I have been to many Japanese festivals, but I think I liked this one the best. It was big enough to make a whole day there worthwhile, but small enough to not be over whelming. It’s good to know that Fukuoka has its own festivals of this nature. And it was amazing to see people from all over Kyusyu gathered in one spot.

I enjoyed the shrine, and the flower arranging displays, but my favorite part was the food!!

There were so many food stands from all over Kyusyu, and even some Tokyo style treats. Luckily for me, there were foreign food stands as well, so I got to eat some amazing tacos!!  I met a lady at a cheese boll stand that was so impressed with Japanese that she gave me a とくべつ(special) service. The food was truly amazing. Everything was home made. For the tacos, they made the tortillas from scratch, it looked and smelled so good. Before deciding what to eat, I walked through the entire festival, and took notes of what I wanted to try. Cheese balls, chocolate covered bananas, yakisoba, tacos, blended grapefruit, and fried potatoes!! I ate it all. At a lot of stands, if you ordered something you could play rock paper scissors with the owner to win a prize! For dessert we found a stand that sold Turkish ice cream!  It’s very sticky and elastic, and the owner used the stickiness to play sticks on the customers. He had a long metal pole that he used to scoop the ice cream, the stuck the ice cream to the cone, then put the cone in front of the costumer. When they tried to grab it, he would pull it away fast! That ice cream was so delicious. It was the perfect way to end a perfect day.”

“As this year’s summer starts to wind down, we celebrated the ending of summer at the Hojoya festival.  Hojoya is one of the big three Fukuoka festivals and is held every years from September 12-18 at Hakozaki-gu Shrine.  Hojoya is a Buddhist festival that serves as a reminder to be thankful for our life and the lives around us and be thankful for all the animals and plants that sustain our lives.

As soon as we got out of the station we were able to see many food stalls and souvenir shops and the huge crowd of people.

First, we headed to the shrine for photographs and good lick souvenirs. Also, anyone that wanted to pray for safety and blessings could do so at the shrine.

Next, we headed to the food stalls. There were over 200 stalls selling traditional Japanese food as well as a few western food stalls. I had a slice of pineapple, a fresh grapefruit, a chicken taco, and Turkish ice cream.

I didn’t eat Japanese food at the Hojoya festival because I wanted to try something different and I’ve already eaten a lot of Japanese food in my 3 months here in Fukuoka. The chicken taco was very good, but my hands got messy from eating it. Fortunately, the chicken taco came with a towelette to wipe my hands clean. The vendor selling the Turkish ice cream put on a little performance form everyone buying an ice cream. We wanted his performance and then we each bought an ice cream. The Turkish ice cream vendor’s performance started with him using a long stick to get the ice cream from the container and swirled it around my head on the stick. Very interesting and he didn’t drop the ice cream. Finally, we finished off the night by visiting an air soft gun target game. I did pretty good at the air soft gun game.

I made one of my last memories here at Hojoya before I go back home.”

“The Hojoya festival was a massive gathering of people from all over the Fukuoka province. As we emerged out of the subway we were immediately greeted by an ocean of people coasting along the endless rows of shops. Yakitori and Hello kitty and Yakitori and plastic masks and Yakitori and ice cream and Yakitori and Yakiniku and Yakitori. The shops all lead up to a temple. Upon entering the temple, you wash your hands at the basin with the ladle then wash out your mouth. Inside the temple was many many lined perfectly manicured flower displays. I mean that literally, these flowers where so perfectly artistically displayed that even pictures couldn’t do them justice. Inside the temple courtyard was also a line of Omamori shops(lucky charms), selling charms for good luck, health, money, or protection. The shops in the main strip consisted of many different food stands and some toy or souvenir stands. The food was stuff like Yakitori (the infamous chicken on a stick), Yakiniku (the lesser known beef on a stick), elastic ice cream from Turkey, Tacos ( though these where more like a Japanese style crepe with taco fillings), and shaved ice. Amongst the food stalls there where also toy and souvenir stalls with cute trinkets or inflatable toys to play with. And then there where the game stalls, ranging from fish catching games to gun shooting games. Speaking of games, the food vendors loved to play rock paper scissors, if you won you got a free extra whatever you bought. All in all the festival was an amazing experience and I’d defiantly want to go to another!”

NILS students in the Short-Term Program enjoyed making their own kumihimo, a traditional braided cord.

“Today’s activity took place in Akasaka, where we supposed to make our own Kumihimo. But what’s that exactly? What I could understand from the lovely Japanese lady was, that this kind of cord can used a belt or was used in the ancient time for the samurais as a gadget for their sword cases.
To be honest, I didn’t really have an idea, how it would look like, until we started to make them. Taking eight single threads and weave them together produces a cord. However, there are different types of making them. We did two. The first one to start with wasn’t that difficult to make, but time consuming. For a 15 cm long cord we needed about 40 minutes to make them.  From now on, I appreciate such traditional handcraft work even more. We did it during sitting on the floor. For us western people, or probably me only, it is ok sitting about an hour on the floor doing the work in the meantime. That shouldn’t be understood as a complaint at all, it is, I think, worth mentioning, that sitting on the floor for a longer time can afterwards make it hard to stand up again, because you get a little bit stuck in the sitting position. However, being productive and creating a nice omiyage for our families and friends counts way more than having (only) something bought.”   —Dennis-san

“We took a train from Ohashi station to Tenjin and from there a bus to another stop. And then we walked a little ways through the downtown, until we arrived at the kumihimo class. Kumihimo is making these strap sort of things that are meant to be accessories while wearing traditional Japanese formal wear. A mere string that’s tied in a complex way. We made two of these each, one more complex than the other. These are made using a stool – like tool with a hole in the top. A weight anchoring down on the strap as it’s being made, pulling down the fibers that are being anchored from the outside by their spool. Actually making these you have to make move these spools in a pattern on the outside, making the thread in the middle tie together. The first being a bunch of flipping back and forward to the opposite side, the second me in moving two spools in two sets clockwise then another two sets of two counterclockwise. Although confusing for a while, you eventually build into a rhythm. In the end you have a strap with a pattern based off the technique and colors you used, pretty ones at that. At the end they gave us a small cup of coffee and an interesting type of cheese cracker and a gift for using their store.” —Hunter-san

NILS offers you a variety of cultural activities, and you will definitely have a wonderful experience!

We visited Dazaifu Tenmangu Shrine and Kyushu National Museum in early September.  Students enjoyed Japan’s ancient history.

“Dazaifu is a famous place in Fukuoka area, which is definitely worth visiting.
To reach their shrine you have to pass a realy nice road with many Omiyage shops and very good-looking restaurants. At the shrine area you should follow a specific way to wash your hands and pray, which ones introduced, it isn’t so difficult. At this place the shrine was build for poeple who wanna pray for getting better in their studies.
After that we headed to the Kyushu National Museum, which contained many interesting objects like vases, ancient katanas and maps painted mostly from Europeans, discovering the Asian countries in the last centuries.”  —Dennis-san.

NILS students in the Short-Term Program went on a bus trip to Kumamoto and Miyazaki prefectures last week.

Here is the comment from one of the students.

What a wonderful treat! Beautiful landscapes, fresh air, quiet, contemplative shrines in secluded parts of the countryside, mountains, rivers, and much more… including local wines. One of the best class outings, and one of the best trips out to the countryside I had during my stay in Japan.

Kumamoto prefecture is located at the center of the Kyushu Island, about 150 km south from Fukuoka city. Natural parks and nature preserves cover about 20 percent of the prefecture. The entire area is known for its scenic beauty.

We took a locally operated bus from near the Tenjin station in Fukuoka, which took us all the way to the center area of Kumamoto. A very comfortable ride in an air-conditioned bus, with plenty of short stops on the way, to stretch our legs.

The further away from Fukuoka we were getting, the more beautiful and scenic the landscape was becoming. We were passing through small villages surrounded by countless, geometrically shaped rice fields, small vegetable and flower gardens. The bus began to climb higher and higher into the hills, and we found ourselves in a lush, green forest. The road was winding between steep volcanic mountain peaks covered in thick forest. Looking through the bus’s windows into the valleys below us, we could see small village houses, and countless terraces of rice fields hugging the steep mountainsides.

Around noontime, we arrived at one of the local farms, where we were treated to a wonderful buffet of freshly prepared food using local ingredients. What a great feast that was! There were about 20 different dishes to choose from, variety of teas, and delicious desserts. On the way out we could purchase preserves and other local products.

After lunch we were on our way again, this time to visit local shrines. We stopped at Heitate shrine, Amanoiwato shrine, and visited Takachiho Gorge with its picturesque waterfalls, bridges, and famous shrine. We had a chance to admire local architecture, peaceful locations of Shinto shrines secluded in remote areas, away from city noise. We had a chance to walk through the forest, over mountain rivers, into caves carved into the sides of a mountain that housed many small shrines. We also got a chance to witness some of the ceremonies, and had a guided tour of one of the shrines. At the end we were able to purchase some souvenirs, local foods, and locally made wines.

This adventure took almost entire day. In the late afternoon, we claimed back into our confortable bus and filled with great memories rode back to Fukuoka.

One of the first things I noticed about Japan is that many restaurants have their menu in the form of plastic foods showcased in the display window. I found this quite interesting as back home. You usually have to ask to see the menu once you’ve entered the establishment. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, the menu is posted in written-form in the window. So I thought it was very interesting that a visual form of the menu was available for potential customers to see.

The shop was so cool. Just like the fake foods displayed in the many restaurants in Japan, the fake foods in this shop looked so real. If no one told me it was fake, I would definitely have tried to take a bite out of some of them.

Our class was given the choice of either making a parfait or a cake. I decided to make a parfait.

We got to shop around and pick items we would like to put in our dessert. For example, for my parfait, I chose pocky sticks, M&Ms, Kit Kat bars, blueberries, strawberries, and a heart-shaped chocolate cookie. Afterwards, I picked a parfait-cup, poured “chocolate syrup” into the cup, went to a machine and poured some sort of resin that looked like ice-cream into the cup, and then decorated my parfait. I do not consider myself a crafty person, but my parfait looked pretty awesome.

Everyone’s desserts were awesome and so professional-looking. I just wish they were edible.

At the second July 2015 all students from NILS and Hirose sensei headed by bus from Ohashi Station to a nearby kitchen, where our ramen self-cooking took place.

In pairs of two we followed the instructions of the chef-de-cuisine to make our own ramen noodles.

Fortunately all ingredients and cooking staff were already well prepared, so we could focus on the step by step instructions.

It was really nice to see the progress from how our round dough became flater and flater. After cutting the dough in noodles stripes, we were ready to boil them. In addition we prepared some gyouza too.

I wasn’t sure if our ramen would taste, but it was quiet good, to be honest. The ramen you can have in restaurants are of course still better, but for the first time making ramen noodles by myself was a very worth experience.

All in all I can assume that this activity was very well prepared from NILS and carried out from Hirose sensei and the kitchen staff at the location. I fully recommend that program for following students from our school NILS!

Making ramen has a lot of fun. In America, they do not have cooking classes in schools!

So it has nice to see children having fun and learning to make food.

I was surprised at all of the utensils used to make ramen. There were some I have never seen before.

The instructors made the directions easy to understand even if you are unable to understand Japanese very well.

I did not know we were also making gyoza, so it was a pleasant surprise.

Making ramen was a lot like making bread. I felt nostalgic when making the ramen because it reminds me of making bread with my roommate. There was also one time we tried to make noodles, but the ramen noodles were much better. It was nice to make ramen with friends. I felt that we grew closer as a group. I learned many various things about Ray while we cooked, like he was happily married. After we finished making our ramen and gyoza, I took a picture to put on facebook. Overall I think that going to a cooking class with classmates was a wonderful experience and will become an irreplaceable memory. I　recommend this class for future classes.

Many of the class members got up really early (2:30am!!) and took the only train to meet Hirose sensei for the beginning of the Yamkasa Matsuri festivities.

Though people were a bit bleary eyed, it was well worth the effort.

The Yamkasa Matsuri is one of the most famous festivals in Japan and to watch all those men and boys run and carry these crazily elaborate floats down the street with such energy and commitment was a sight to behold.

Hirose sensei got us to walk to almost Hakata Station to a place where she knew we would see more of the festival.

It was a turnaround and the floats paraded passed us and then did a circle and passed us again.

It is never easy to catch a festival in Japan and I am totally grateful for another fantastic cultural trip.

Today is Lorna’s birthday. She started the short term program at 29^th of June.

Teachers and classmates secretly bought the cake, juice and cracker to give Lorna a small birthday party.

Lora was so surprised when she came to the classroom.

Even though they only met in one month, even though they came from different country, but study、activity、Karaoke and shopping together make them became good friends quickly.

They are enjoying the study in NILS! They are enjoying the life in Fukuoka!

“I spent a very memorable birthday abroad, thanks my classmates! Thanks my teachers!  Thanks NILS! ”— by Lora

This week we went to Yusentei, an old Japanese house that was used by a big samurai family.

We found out that Japanese gardens are designed to be beautiful through all the seasons. I really liked that, because in England we don’t see autumn or winter as a time to ‘enjoy’ gardens, just because the weather isn’t as nice. I love nature, so it was great to find out that a traditional garden could be enjoyed all year round.

Because it’s summer, everything was very green. Unfortunately there were some mosquitos too though, so we had to use special spray to protect ourselves! Despite the flies, I loved walking around the pond, which had so many Koi! We were allowed to feed them and pet them, and quite a few were happy to nibble on my hands. It felt very strange, but it was so fun.

Afterwards, we went inside and were served tea in a beautiful room overlooking the water and garden. The tea was lovely, and they gave us some really cute little sweets with it. I had a bit of trouble remembering the correct phrases to say before and after drinking the tea, and my legs ached a bit from sitting the correct way, but it was still really fun.

After having tea, we looked around the other rooms in the house a bit, and found out that they hold weddings there. I decided to buy some postcards to send my family before we left too, as it was such a lovely experience and all the staffs were very friendly.