The Saga Begins

In this case, Saga is actually the prefecture where I've been the past few days though. Sadly, I have not developed force powers like the title might suggest.

So... Saga. Saga is the prefecture where Mary lives and works as an English teacher. She has opened up her apartment to myself and her parents, and we've been meeting her friends and co-workers. Saga is not a tourist area by any means, but Mary's friends (Who so far have mostly been little old, extremely generous Japanese ladies) have been taking us out and showing us around.

Tatara-san, (One of the little old ladies Mary knows from doing Tea Ceremony) took us to two towns famous for their pottery, Imari and Arita. Imari was actually sealed off for hundreds of years and all the people there were forced to continue making pottery for the Emperor. So much of their history being cooped up as potters has lead them to be some rather fine craftsmen. And although they still do a large quantity of work by hand (for a justifiably high price), nowadays you can also buy printed works for a more moderate cost.

(An artisan hand painting the design on a piece of ceramic ware)

(An artisan throwing vases on a wheel)

(Mary perusing one of the many shops filled with hand made pottery)

Yesterday was the spring festival in Takeo. Beyond spring, I'm not exactly sure they were celebrating, but they had a large number of mobile shrines being carried around the town, and the street vendors were out en-mass. Also dancing. Lots and lots of dance groups were doing performances. We only saw a few of them, but it was neat seeing all the people done up in costumes both traditional and modern. After all the shrines made it back to the main area, the celebration was concluded by the members of the organizing committee getting up on top of the main gate and throwing mochi down into the crowd. Not a bad way to end a celebration in my opinion.

(Synchronized dance. The best way to celebrate!)

Today I'm taking as a rest day. All the traveling around and lugging my luggage has not been terribly kind to my back, and it has been complaining for a couple days now. So today I rest, write, and upload photos. In two days I'll be headed to Oita to get settled in. I imagine that's about when I'll be updating next too. Take care until then.

But before I go, a couple more pictures for the fun of it!

(Sakura has just started here in Saga. We walked with Mary's boss, Hashima-san and enjoyed them some)

(KOI!)

~Daniel

P.S. If you see a string of numbers somewhere in my posts, it's not a formatting error or a secret message. That's just me writing down the numbers of the photos I want to upload and forgetting to delete them afterwards. I usually write these updates at night before I go to bed, and don't always get around to editing them.