Exploring Honbetsu

After checking out two tiny houses there was still plenty of time to explore this small remote city. Since Kondo-san grew up here, he was happy to show us around. First he showed us where the best onsen (hot spring) and sentou (public bathhouse) were supposed to be – they were closed unfortunately. Next we were on our way to a popular Chinese restaurant at Honbetsu’s Michi No Eki. Sadly, that one also was closed, which meant we had to go look for another place.

At least, I found this cute creature at the Michi no Eki. His name is GENKI-kun, which roughly translates to LIVELY Boy! Because Honbetsu does a lot of bean (豆) farming, their mascot is also a bean. Surprisingly, if you use Line, you can even get a sticker set of GENKI-kun. Considering the city has less than 20.000 residents, a number which keeps shrinking, they still ardently promote their city.

On our way through Honbetsu we passed this store. The vintage design and the fact it was closed down, filled my heart with some kind of nostalgic sadness. Lovely shops like this had already been bullied out of business by big super market chains long ago or were suffering now in the global economic crisis. It would be great if these small family run shops could somehow come back to live.

Finally, Food! Everyone was hungry and exhausted so finding this ramen shop, which was actually open despite the unfortunate time slot in between lunch and dinner time, was a great relief. The interior is very simple. As with many places, you get to choose between bar seats, western style tables (+chairs) or Asian style floor tables. The staff was lovely but I think the restaurant relies mostly on the quality of their food. While eating Toshi, Kondo-san and me had a talk and figured out what else we would do afterwards.

This is what I had. Since I’m intending to have a separate food-related section somewhere on my website I refrained from posting pictures of ramen and the such up to this point. But I felt like you might want to see this now. The Yasai (/Vegetable) in the dish’s name might give you the idea that they wouldn’t put pork meat slices into it, but that is not true for most ramen shops you will encounter. Like in this case, it may also refer to just the base, which in this case is made with vegetables and miso paste.

Here we are, at our last stop, Honbetsu Jinja. I requested to visit there, because I wanted to get a permission by the local kami-sama regarding my upcoming stay at Sophia Farm, Honbetsu. Apart from that I also wanted to draw omikuji, which are Japan’s popular fortune lots. You will get a detailed description of your upcoming luck and best practices in various fields such as relationships, financial questions or imminent challenges. These detailed accounts are superseded by a general luck level, going as follows:

• Great blessing (大吉, dai-kichi)
• Middle blessing (中吉, chū-kichi)
• Small blessing (小吉, shō-kichi)
• Half-blessing (半吉, han-kichi)
• Future blessing (末吉, sue-kichi)
• Future small blessing (末小吉, sue-shō-kichi)
• Blessing (吉, kichi)
• Curse (凶, kyō)
• Future curse (末凶, sue-kyō)
• Half-curse (半凶, han-kyō)
• Small curse (小凶, shō-kyō)
• Great curse (大凶, dai-kyō)

Some places don’t use the full spectrum of the above, while others may even add super, mega and giga level blessings of lucks and curses. It is, generally, the rule to have more fortunate lots in the pool than unfortunate ones. I’ve read that the split is around 70/30, but it likely changes from place to place. What’s funny is that I have always gotten dai-kichi so far, and I wasn’t disappointed this time either, GATCHAAN DAI KICHI! It was a cold day, and we had to knock on the window to get the friendly priest to open up his cozy room to the freezing air. Yet, it was totally worth it, because of his in-depth explanation about various shinto topics and drawing the lucky fortune. Kondo-san, by the way, also got a sparkling dai-kichi! Since you’ll see plenty shrines in Japan, you might as well try your fate and draw your omikuji for the year to come :]