A Day of Museums

In the morning, the first thing we did was a meeting with the Handa City government, including Mayor Sakakibara.  We each introduced ourselves and gave a short speech about how wonderful it is to be here, what we want to learn, and what a great opportunity this exchange is.  Nick gave Mayor Sakakibara two letters: one from Tina Van Dam and the other from Mayor Donker.  He also gave everyone a Midland pin.  We all got pins of Gon the fox, Handa's city mascot.  A representative from the newspaper was also there and a story will be printed in the news tomorrow.  I hope I can get a copy to bring home with me!

us with the council members and Mayor Sakakibara (in blue)

After the meeting, we went to the Nankichi Niimi museum.  Nankichi Niimi is an author who was born and raised in Handa City.  The people here have many holidays celebrating him and the 100th anniversary of his birth is in six days.  There was a lot of good artwork and I enjoyed the stories very much.  All of the stories were interesting and I think I will remember them for a long time.  In the gift shop I got a bag of persimmon-flavored candies with Gon the fox on them.  I also got a commemorative coin from a machine and stamped my name and the date on it.  It was kind of expensive (¥430), but it was worth it.

paper art depicting Gon the fox

dioramas of scenes in the short story "A Fox Called Gon"

Nankichi Niimi, the author who inspired the museum

After seeing the Nankichi Niimi museum, we went to lunch at a small restaurant.  There was an American flag hanging on one wall next to a saxophone and there was slow jazz music playing.  I liked the atmosphere very much.  Below is a picture of the main meal.  In the bowl to the far left is miso soup.  The goblet-like glass has a seaweed vinaigrette.  The top right of the large dish has a salad and an omelette. The bottom right has fried pork with (barbecue?) sauce.  The top left has raw tuna and a piece of octopus.  The lower left corner has tofu ad something like a salad.  Everyone had a bowl of rice (with beans and sesame sees) which turned out to be quite good.  Dessert was matcha (green tea) mousse with sweet red bean paste.  The mousse was different from what I think of as mousse; instead of the whipped cream consistency it was more like a cross between pudding and jello.  I liked it a lot.  We all got our drinks after dessert.  I had green tea with milk.  I think it was the best drink I've ever had.  I definitely want to find a way to make it back at home.

the main meal

me about to have my green tea with milk

After lunch we went to the Handa Museum.  We got a tour, but it was in Japanese so one of our interpreters translated everything for us.  I think the coolest thing that we saw was one of the festival floats.  It is around 18 feet tall and 3.5 tons!  Over 20 people have to work together to pull the float through the streets.  There were also dolls that had strings to put a mask on their face.  Each of us got to try pulling the strings and making the mask flip up.

the doll that "changes its face"

us with the festival float

Next was the vinegar museum. I never thought that learning about vinegar could be so interesting!  We learned about how vinegar is made from sake lees, the rice much left over from sake production.  We watched a video (in English!) and got to drink some vinegar.  I was expecting it to taste like what I know as white vinegar and was hesitant at first, but it turned out to be completely different from what I had expected.  It was a blueberry drink that tasted kind of like our pomegranate-cranberry juice but with a little bit of sourness.  It was very good.  At the end of the tour we got some apple-flavored vinegar in juice boxes.  I haven;t tried it yet, but I am expecting it to be very good.

a wheel showing scenes of the steps of vinegar production

red vinegar

us with our tour guide

us outside the vinegar museum

Today was so exciting and I was very happy to experience so much of Handa's culture.  Not only did I learn about the lifestyle and traditions here, but I learned some Japanese characters as well: 半田市 (Handa City).