Otaki Town - Camping, Festivals, and Hilarious Engrish galore!

So this weekend was a special event for about 15 Chiba area JETs: We went as a big group to Otaki, in southern Chiba, for some camping!  Unlucky for us Choshi ALTs, we had to travel the farthest to get there, somewhere around 3 hours betwen car and train.  A big, big thanks to Kiwi Mike for driving us down...

Otaki is a small mountain town situated somewhere between "not close to Tokyo" and "really not close to Tokyo."  It's pretty quiet, doesn't have a Wal-mart or Wal-mart equivalent, and is the perfect place to get away from it all for a weekend.  Refer to the below map:

The red spot in the southern area is Isumi-gun, or Isumi district, where Otaki is located.  I suppose now is a good time to introduce Chiba-kun to the mix.  As you may have noticed, the above image kind of forms the shape of an animal (if you didn't notice, don't fret, it's a bit strange to see at first).  This is the official mascot (oh boy, a blog post about mascots someday will be fun) of Chiba, and his name is Chiba-kun.  Below, you can see Chiba-kun in all his Chiba-shaped glory:

The "nub" on the left side is a huge, protruding belly button.  And, at the very tip of the ear, you can make out Choshi.  So, to get to Otaki, we traveled "from the ear to the lower gastrointestinal tract."  Using Chiba-kun as a way to describe distances and locations within Chiba is very handy!

Anyway, back to Otaki.

So, now you know where Otaki is located.  What is there to do?  Well, we camped overnight at a campground.  There were cabins with futons for us to sleep on, but they didn't provide pillows.  Plus, it was FREEZING this weekend, so we were a bit chilly.  Ever since Typhoon Roke (see my previous blog post on that matter) came through, the weather has officially shifted into Autumn!  So, seeing Otaki during Autumn, and getting to camp in the beautiful weather made for a great weekend!  I managed to take over 200 pictures in just two days, but I selected a few that are representative of the weekend, starting with the ride there and up to the camping portion of the trip:

This picture and the one following are of my pal Victor doing his best "Bigfoot turns to face the camera then walks away into the woods."

Kiwi Mike (or as I call him, regular Mike, is on the left-hand side there.  On the right side is fellow Choshi ALT Jesse, whom you may remember from the Choshi Primer music video.

DSLR cameras can turn nighttime into daytime.  Incredible.

After camping, we made our way to the お城まつり, or Castle Festival, in Otaki town.  There we saw drunk men carrying floats, cool samurai armor, lots of street vendors, and plenty of interesting people and foods.  Once again, I'll let the pictures do the talking here:

The most commonly found treat at festivals: choco banana.

This was a map of all of Chiba showing what each area is famous for.  If you look closely, you can see Choshi and its fame for Soy Sauce, the lighthouse, and crackers.

Fun fact, Otaki has a sister city, Cuernavaca, Mexico.  Two Mexican representatives also made a short speech at the festival.

One of several hundred thousand pachinko parlors in rural Japan.

Saw this gem on the way back home.  I just love the slogan.

After seeing the castle, we were exhausted, and all headed back home.  We had Monday (yesterday) off as a national holiday, so we had some extra weekend so recover and get ready for another hectic week of work!

Next time, sports!