Throwback Thursday: One Year in Beppu

 

I’ve gotten really behind with posting again, and I apologise for that. I’ve never been good at sticking to a routine, no matter how hard I try. But I’ve been wanting to make a post for a while about how I’ve now completed my first year in Japan!

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Hi No Umi Festival

Last weekend was Beppu’s biggest summer festival – the Hi No Umi (translating roughly to ‘sea of fire’) Festival. It takes place every year at the end of July, and has festival stands selling food and toys, music and dance performances, and the main event – fireworks!

Throwback Thursday: Sakura in Beppu

Sorry for the lack of posts recently, I returned home for a week to visit my family so that prevented me from writing for 2 weeks and then the last two weeks have just been very busy. I’ll try to catch up and get back to the regular schedule~

This week’s Throwback Thursday is about sakura (cherry blossom) season, a much anticipated time of year in Japan and a time when everything is cloaked in a beautiful layer of pink.

Throwback Thursday: Christmas in Beppu

I’m finally getting to the end of last year’s planned posts! I was going to post about a course I went on as part of work-related training, but as I don’t have access to the info I need right now and also since I posted about CIR stuff last week, this week’s post will be about how I spent my first ever Christmas away from home (as even on my year abroad I went home for Christmas).

Throwback Thursday: Shrine Illuminations

Although I’ve already written about one illumination event that I went to, I thought I’d write my experience of another one as around Bonfire Night (5th November) there was an illumination by teamLab at Usa Shrine, the shrine I talked about visiting before.

Throwback Thursday: Halloween

I’m gradually getting through my backed up post ideas from last year and now we’re finally at Halloween! I’ve always loved Halloween, and any excuse to dress up really, but Halloween’s the big one so I wanted to do something really fun. I’d say that from what I’ve seen, a lot of Japan seems to celebrate Halloween, either by having big Halloween parties in the local community or just in local nightclubs, or by having Halloween themed English lessons (mostly thanks to all of the ALTs over here who love sharing their own countries’ events with their students). Since I don’t teach, however, I mostly shared my Halloween spirit with other foreigners, which was still really fun.

Onsen Festival: wild horses, demons and tons of water!

Last weekend I attended my first ever festival in Beppu and one of its biggest events – the Onsen Matsuri (hot spring festival). This is a festival held to celebrate and give thanks to Beppu’s numerous hot springs (Beppu has the largest number of hot spring sources in the whole of Japan, and these sources discharge the highest volume of hot spring water in Japan as well) . This year there was a large variety of festivities – the Onsen Matsuri actually ran from around the 1st to the 7th April, culminating in the main events at the weekend. I only attended the Sunday events, but this was arguably the highlight of the week.

Throwback Thursday: Illuminations in “Hell”

In Japan, there are a lot of places that do illuminations and light displays, they’re very popular as ways to enjoy and enhance an already picturesque place in a modern and enchanting way. I’ve been to two such illuminations during my time here so far, but today I’m going to write about the first one I went to – at Umi Jigoku, a popular sightseeing spot in Beppu.

Throwback Thursday: Usuki

My first trip to somewhere other than Beppu when I got to my placement was a city called Usuki, located about an hour to the east of Beppu. Usuki is an old castle town, and has some lovely traditional stone-paved streets still, near the old castle. It is also home to some amazing stone Buddhas, statues carved directly into the stone face of cliffs many many years ago.