My Apologies

Sunday, November 12, 2006

It seems that my blog has taken a turn for the worse and for that I would like to apologize. When I first began in September, I had high hopes for how I wanted to conduct this blog. I wanted everything to be typo free with correct grammar and I wanted it to be free of personal or embarrassing information as well as be emo free. Unfortunately, not only has it been riddled with typos and misspellings over the past few months, it has also become a complete rant of things that I seem to be having problems with rather than anything that people would find interesting. I have a journal to write personal things in, this blog is meant to be interesting and funny.

So let's get back to the basics!





I was meaning to write this entry since before I left for Japan.

Here are some basic facts about where I live:

This is a map of Japan and the dark brown spot is my prefecture. The island that I am on is called Shikoku and it has 4 different prefectures, mine being the largest of them.












This is a Google earth picture that I scrapped together. The white line around the map is the border between Kochi prefecture and the other three prefectures on the island. #1 is Tosayamada where I live. Off to the right is #2, Odochi. It was too small for google earth to find so I had to guesstimate where it should be. It's about right, I checked it out on some other maps. Finally, #3 is Kochi city. The whole area if Kochi prefecture but Kochi city is in the center of it all. It is the largest city in Kochi prefecture. Tosayamada is a town and Odochi is only a village. It takes about 40 minutes by bus to get from Tosayamada to Odochi (20-30 minutes by car, depending on who's driving) and it takes about 20-40 minutes to get from Tosayamada to Kochi depending on which train I take at which time.

The grey area is a great representation of the population. Kochi city is huge (comparatively to the rest of the prefecture. It's tiny compared to the rest of Japan). As you get further out, you can see that Tosayamada is right on the edge of civilization. I'm lucky because I'm the last train stop before complete nothing. I can still get into the city relatively easily. Other people that live further out than I do can't get there as easily and therefore are pretty much stuck in the their town or village unless they have a car which most do because you can't get to anything by bike alone when you're out that far. Further out from Tosayamda is Odochi which is truly a one stop light town. Also, it is a one restaurant town though it occasionally has a ramen truck that occasionaly drives through...but only occasionaly.

The population of Kochi city according to Wikipedia is 335,341 people. The population of Tosayamada is 22,160 people and Odochi has no information about it so I can't really say.

Kochi prefecture is famous for Katsuo Tataki which is the Katsuo fish seared on the outside and raw on the inside, served as sashimi on a bed of shredded radish with a special soy sauce and plenty of onion and garlic. It's delicious!

Kochi is also famous for Anpanman which is a nationally famous childrens anime. Basically Anpan is a type of sweet roll that is filled with anco. Anco is a type of sweet bean paste made from black beans. The first time I tried it I hated it but now it's something that I really enjoy. The story of Anpanman is that he flies around Japan helping people in need, i.e. people who are hungry. He then feeds them part of his head after which he flies back to his bakery home where the baker will make him a new head. His arch enemy is the equivalent to a germ or cavity. Basically, the story is super strange and I'll never get over that but it's very popular among very young children. The stories help to reinforce proper nutrition and grooming habits...I think.

Most trains in this area have Anpanman characters drawn all over them and Kochi is very famous for the Anpanman museum which I pass every time I visit Odochi. I have yet to visit though it's on my list of things to do.

The next thing Kochi is famous for is Sakamoto Ryoma who helped bring Japan into the modern age. He studied in America for a while and helped bring some American ideas into the Japanese system. If I remember correctly, he's the first Japanese person to teach English or at least one of the first. He has a statue in Kasturahama where I went with Ikuo and Sayuri and the Kochi international airport is also named after him.

That's about all I can think of right now. I'm sure there are many more interesting facts about Kochi but these are the basics. Sorry it took so long. I promise to work on the typos and grammar but I realized after writing this post just why things were going so down hill. It takes a long time to write well! I have to actually think about what I want to say before I type it and then reread it to get rid of all my mistakes which I usually don't catch half of! I started writing this post at 10:30 and after trying to find maps and information plus editing my work, it is not past midnight! Who has that kind of time?!

1 shared their love:

Angelo Villagomez said...

Don't worry about spelling and grammar. You can go back in 40 years and fix it when you write your memoirs. Sounds like you are doing pretty well. There are two UCF grads down here in the CNMI. One works as a news reporter and the other one plants trees on an island south of Saipan. Small world, huh? How far are you from Osaka or Nagoya? I'm thinking of taking a hanami tour in April...how do you feel about hosting random internet friends from the town where you went to college?

 
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