Saturday, January 16, 2010

A Day of Display

Today I went to Rokushou-en looking for the mergansers again in the afternoon after a long-night party and karaoke with all the Taiwanese Week staffs. Studying in an international university really brings in opportunities to join in many different cultural activities, which is a really good thing IMO. APU has sort of made this small town of Beppu become a multicultural city despite its very countrysidish characteristic. There are Europeans, Africans, Americans, Mexicans, Asians and lately even Pacific Islanders. All the oba-chan and oji-chan here are already becoming familiar with the differences they see in daily life and are not so surprised to find out that many people who look like Japanese but actually not Japanese; Korean, Chinese or me for example, but cannot speak Japanese at all or almost.

Okay, let's get back to the mergansers topic. It's a nice afternoon, which is strange because the whole week was like dull and grey. I was so happy to find that there were 2 drakes today. Both of them seemed to be competing in a display competition in front of the other 2 females, so I had a good time observing them doing these ridiculous acts, and since the weather has become so lovely, tomorrow I think I'll go to Oita to look for more ducks.
They look a bit like dinosaurs.

2 comments:

Stuart Price said...

Nice Merganser shots. No displaying up here yet, too busy trying not to freeze to death............

Beppu sounds a lot more cosmopolitan than Hakodate does........

Ayuwat Jearwattanakanok said...

Hmm yeah...
I think it's the most multicultural city now in Japan...with students coming from almost a 100(90 something I think) different countries all over the world. Last year it held an event which gathered one or two students from each country and do the 'world bath'(they called it that but it's actually like going to public onsen because the city is so famous for that) and was signed into the world Guinness book also hehehe.