It may not be unusual for people who lived or worked near Kumamoto Castle, but I spent every day of the past year in the immediate vicinity of Kumamoto Castle. And that year went without a hitch.
Posts
International Party with drinks and food
Joe Tomei here, and in this edition of (the highly irregular) Funky Friday Finds, we salute Amu Amu, a Napolitan pizza place. It's below Ezuko, just off the bypass, and is a 20 minute walk from the Kuwamizu densha stop Just go down and take the first big left after Batten no Yu, one of those super sento places and go about 50 meters. Its on the left with the orange canopy. The picture of the banner is facing in the other direction.
Kirk again. My post about the earthquake came after a long hiatus. I'm afraid my posting will be pretty sporadic in the future too. One reason is that I'm quite busy with another community-building project that is unrelated to Kumamoto (I hope to post about that later this year). The other issue is that the slow decline of Facebook has made posting to it rather ungratifying. Young people are leaving and even old folks like me are getting fed up.
Kirk here with some information about the earthquake warning that woke me up this morning at about 5 AM. I got this huge warning but couldn't feel anything. I ignored it and went back to sleep, assuming it was some kind of false alarm. Well, for my neck of the woods (central Kumamoto City) it was a false alarm but folks to our southwest may have felt significant shaking.
What I liked about this news was that the graduating ninth graders are in their teens to seventies, including two foreigners.
Pop-up Event @ Junction Coffee - Artificer Japan
St. Patrick's Day parade in Kumamoto
Kirk here. First of all, sorry for the long absence -- I've been working on another project.
Cassie here. Just found this reading news. 2 Kumamoto police officers have gotten in trouble.
Kyushu ETJ Convention
＼Winter Light＼
Hitoyoshi Widegame/Rogaining
Hi, Joe Tomei here, passing on some information about Japanese language lessons. Please use the contact below!
Joe Tomei here. Haven't had much to report on the restaurant front as we have our rotation of places and I've been on a diet, however, happy to say that a new restaurant has been added! It's Saigon Pho, it was originally in Nishi-ku, but has moved to in front of the Kengun Jietai base, across the street from Kono's Coffee
Atsuko here.
For those interested, here are details of full-time work in Kumamoto. Please get in touch with Mr. Greg Howes as per the details below 📧
Kirk here. Sonoda is the oldest continuously operating business in Kumamoto -- a business that has been up and running for over 400 years! They make Chosen-ame, a mildly sweet sort of mochi that got its name because it was carried into Korea as food for soldiers when Kato Kiyomasa led troops there at Toyotomi Hideyoshi's behest. They are a luxury item (a sort of dessert) now but at the time they were carried into war because the soft mochi would dry (not spoil) and then simply adding water would make it edible again.
Kirk here. There was a fairly powerful earthquake in Miyazaki. Seismic intensity (Japanese scale) of -5 near the epicenter and quite a few 4s and 3s in Kumamoto. The magnitude was 6.4 and the depth was 30km.
