Friendly Fukuoka – Nakasu Matsuri, Momochi Beach, Canal City and Showa Style Pub

On friday there was a matsuri, Japanese festival, going on in Tenjin. It’s something that most of us had always wanted to see, so of course we couldn’t skip it! During the day I didn’t do much though. So in the evening a lot of the JTW students and students went to the matsuri. During these festivals a portable shrine is usually carried through the city to the main shrine. Usually men do this, but this was a special matsuri where women had to carry the shrine. They wore some special traditional attire that I had never seen before. They looked so cool. When they were carrying the shrines they were shouting in unison and they looked so bad-ass. On the shrines there were standing four girls to encourage and keep the pace of the shouting and walking.

After they were gone some Japanese girl group gave an performance. It was funny to see because it’s such a typical Japanese thing to have crazy fanboys shouting and dancing with their lightsticks to a group of too cute underage girls. When they were gone a group of young taiko drummers gave a performance. And man, they were so cool! I wished I was that cool at that age. They played very seriously with a cool posture. When they were finished another group of drummers came up, but they also did some traditional singing and dancing along with the drumming. It was so beautiful, and very traditional. But during their performance we left to get food. We went to a pretty expensive izakaya but didn’t drink this time around. After dinner we moved on to karaoke (oh my god, maybe I am addicted), but only for an hour. After another satisfying evening we biked back to the dorm and went to bed at a reasonable hour.

Cute little boy!

Saturday we finally went to the beach! There are a lot of beaches in and near Fukuoka and I had been looking forward to go there since, well….. since the day that I knew I would be going to Fukuoka. It took us a while to go there because we went by bike, but during the ride there we saw a lot of Fukuoka which was a big advantage. I really need to go exploring by bike more often because there are a lot of nice places to discover here. The beach itself was very big and with the pier it really had a wow-factor.

Sadly there was a typhoon on its way to Japan so the wind was very strong so it was too dangerous to go swimming. But the water surprisingly warm despite it already being october and the strong winds. I think it was even warmer then the water in Italy a few weeks back. I keep thinking about the sea and how badly I want to swim there! So instead of swimming we just stood there in the undeep water and got splashed by the high waves so my one of my friends and I ended up being soaked by the water anyway. No need for swimming. Most people felt cold because of the wind (which wasn’t that cold to me). I could have spent hours there but they wanted to leave and get lunch, so that’s what we did. We went to some Udon place and after that returned home with full bellies and a little bit tired.

Another day of classes on wednesday. They were just introduction classes though so I don’t know about the real deal yet. In the evening there was a lunar eclipse going on so we went to roof of one of the uni buildings to watch it. It took a long time, but it was beautiful to see. Someone brought a telescope too so we could view the moon in detail! Being there was really fun because it was my first time going up a rooftop here and the airplanes heading to Fukuoka Airport were so close to us! The whole moon-watching on a rooftop scene was just something really special in my opinion and it all seemed so Japanese to me, like I was in a Japanese movie or cartoon or something. And I got to talk to my friend Japanese friend who wants to go to Leiden University next year. But all that moon-viewing took long and we were really hungry afterwards so we hoppe don our bicycles and headed to スシロー, the conveyer belt sushi place it talked about in the post about my first week here (I think).

a friend took these photos with his cellphone

Thursday I didn’t have class because the only class I wanted to attend got cancelled. So we went to Canal City. It is a big shopping centre, but we didn’t go there for shopping. We went there for the food and the decorations! As the name says, there is a small canal in Canal City. There is also some greenery, statues and this time of the year a lot of Halloween decorations. It is really pretty and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a shopping mall like that. There is also a cinema, planetarium and a theatre, so I am sure I will be going back there to check them out. We ate at Gindaco, a place that specializes in takoyaki. For my Dutch family/friends; they are basically savory poffertjes with squid in them and mayonaise instead of poedersuiker. Now you might be wondering, why does someone who hates seafood eat squid-hotcakes? Because they are freaking delicious of you take out the squid! I took out the big pieces of squid and gave them a friend, and what’s left is a delicious, hot, savory mini-pancake. It is sooo good, just like okonomiyaki.

Spiders!!

Are you sure we are in a shopping mall?

Making hotcakes?

Nope, it’s takoyaki!

First robot sighted!!

Fukuoka~

In Solaria Plaza I waited for my Japanese friend who I hadn’t met in two years. She lead me to a place where we would eat, but first we took purikura together (You know how I roll). Since she has a Japanese cellphone she can download the photos, so I can finally show you what purikura looks like, to give you an idea. She picked out an izakaya in Showa style. Showa is a historic period from the 1920s to the 1960s. The place was filled with old posters, food containers, lanterns, old tvs. The decoration was spot on and the atmosphere was just right. It was small but cosy. The prices are really cheap for an izakaya and they sell some popular dishes from that time. The yakitori for example was only 52 yen which is not even 40 eurocents. They even had some fried cheese dish which was so good and reminded me of kaaskroketten. I miss cheese! But this place has some awesome fried cheese to curb my cheese cravings. With one particular dish that a client ordered the whole staff started singing some song in really loud voices, it really added to the atmosphere of the place. And the staff was very friendly too. I think it is the best place that I went to so far. I am very thankful to my friend for introducing me to this place and the fun evening we had.

heavenly cheese on a stick.

And some purikura for the curious people;

Basically a photo machine which makes your eyes big and skin beautiful, and afterwards you can decorate with a lot of cute and weird things. Decorating is the fun part!

There’s already so many pictures and writings in this post that I will stop for now ! 🙂 Next week’s post will be more toned down as I had some quiet days when the typhoon came.

Friendly Fukuoka – Ryumon Falls, Aso Farmland and Kumamoto Castle

This will be a long post as it covers the first field trip and the opening ceremony of the Fall semester. So I apologize in advance for the many photos and long texts! Hang in there 😉

On sunday morning we gathered at the International Student Centre. We were going by bus on a two day ‘Welcome Trip’. The highways in the city are built up high, very different from those back in the Netherlands which are just ground level, so we had a nice view over the city and the sea on one side and mountains on the other side of the city. What a view. I can’t believe I managed to go to a beautiful place like this and felt very lucky.

After a fun but also slightly sleepy bus ride we arrived at our first destination, Ryumon Falls. At these waterfalls usually a shinto ritual takes place, which is the ritual of purification. The thought is that by standing onder the falling water your impurities will be washed away along with the water. But the stones are very slippery and dangerous so we weren’t allowed to climb them. We could go in the safer part of the water, but it was crowded and with my camera I didn’t want to take the risk. It was a beautiful place in the nature and it oozed tranquility.

We ate lunch in a restaurant near the waterfall. It was traditional style; we had to sit on the ground and the food we ate was some kind of soup with noodles, smoked fish and unidentifiable vegetables. The restaurant was very quaint and cute and it was nice to experience a real rural and traditional place like this.

And some photos made by the staff and friends 🙂

Selfie stick!

We then continues our bus ride through rice plantages, quaint villages and way up to the mountains. The nature in Kyushu is so impressive, it feels so organic, like it has been like this for thousands of years. The second place we visited that day was Kokonoe suspension bridge, which is the biggest in Japan according to our teacher. I never walked on a suspension bridge like this. The fact that it slightly swinger from left to right was interesting. Not for the faint of heart though. The views were spectacular as was to be expected. On the other side of the bridge some of us ate some soft ice-cream. It’s not as good as the ones back home, but they are delicious anyway and ice-cream is always welcome. One of my friends brought a ‘selfie-stick’ with her. It’s a trend in Asia lately, but I never saw one in real life. And it is actually a very useful thing! Making group pictures has never been easier. After this trip I am convinced that I should get one too…

At the end of the day we went even further into the mountains until we stopped at our ‘hotel’. It is a facility that belongs to our university with sleeping rooms, a gym, conference rooms, a cafetaria and hot spring baths. Soon after we arrived we had another short information session until dinner was served. We got some curry with rice and fried chicken. It was an easy meal but I really liked it. I just love curry. In the evening we had free time! I had an appointment with one of the professors about my bachelor paper, but after that I want to the gym. It was just a big sports hall just like back in elementary and high school. We played badminton, basketball, volleyball and things like that. It felt good to do some exercise after all those days without any exercise and eating a lot of food. And the reward; soaking in a hot spring bath. At first I wasn’t sure about going because it is scary to be naked in front of strangers. But I just went at a time when it was quiet and together with a friend we said we just look away from each other haha. But it wasn’t all too bad!

After a relaxing soak in the bath we went up to our rooms and chatted for a while until the other came back from the gym and the bath. We then gathered with a big group in the hallway and played games and chatted until late in the evening. It really felt like a bonding trip. And the hotel had great wifi so I finally got the chance to Skype with my parents, even though it was just for a short while and it was a chaos with all the noise in the hallway. But it was such a fun evening.

Next morning I had to get up early even though I hadn’t slept at all. There was just so much noise and it was hot and generally I can’t sleep well with a lot of people around me. But I wanted to make this day another good one so I ignored the fact that I was dead tired. After breakfast and packing our things we continues our trip. We went up the mountains again to go to Mt. Aso. On the highlands of Mt. Aso we got of the bus. The first thing we saw there was a performance by a monkey. The monkey was so cute, but it was also very sad to see. It was so scared and confused. But moving on…. There was an awesome view over the valley beneath Aso. There is a lot of farmland there, and you could see it neatly divided in rectangles of all the same size. As someone from the Netherlands, mountains and views like this still impress me endlessly. After a bunch of group photos we headed to the valley of Aso.

There we reached Aso Farmland which is basically a huge supermarket complex with ‘local products’. I was expecting fresh fruits and vegetables, but it was the typical Japanese sweets and other products packed in their pretty packages. These packages are so gorgeous but I was hoping for fresh products. They also sold some ice-cream and other home-made products though. I went to take a look at the cheeses (I miss cheese!) but the prices made me want to cry. Everything was too expensive there so I didn’t buy anything in the end. When everyone was back in the bus we headed to Kumamoto, for the castle but first lunch! The lunch was really nice and we all got a mini-stove which was so cute. And again it was kind of a traditional lunch which was nice. What was even better; the focus was on meat and not fish this time.

With our bellies full we made a short bus trip to Kumamoto Castle. This castle was on my bucket list for Japan, so I was happy to go there! Sadly we only had an hour there so we kind of had to rush through the place. What makes Kumamoto Castle so special is it’s black exterior. The rest, well, I wouldn’t know well. I didn’t pick up much information there because I didn’t have time to read the information signs. Instead, just enjoy the photos 🙂

Friendly Fukuoka – First Week

Hello everyone!

I am starting a new series on this blog about my life as an exchange student in Japan. I joined the JTW Program of Kyushu University in Fukuoka. I will stay here for ten months to study (and party ;)). I wanted to start this series mostly to let everyone at home know what I am doing here. But I hope that I can inform my international readers about the fun and fabulous Fukuoka. And I can use it in one of the classes that I intend to attend which requires to keep some kind of diary about my life here. Now that’s what I call three birds with one stone! I am calling this series Friendly Fukuoka because the people in Fukuoka are known to be very nice people and until now it has proven to be true 🙂

So I took a direct plane by KLM from Amsterdam to Fukuoka on the 22nd of September. Ten hours later I landed in Fukuoka Airport in the morning. My first challenge was to catch a taxi to Hakata station to go to my hotel. There were different kinds of categories, like deluxe and standard taxis, so I was kind of confused which one to take. But I ended up fine and well at my hotel near Gion station for a reasonable fee. It was way too early to check in so I just left my luggage and went to the shopping malls around the station. This was not the best idea ever because I already bought some things within an hour of being in Japan. After a few hours of wandering around and having a drink in a cafe I could finally check in at the hotel. Now I was hoping to take a rest and get ready for dinner but I couldn’t get my suitcase to open! I spent an hour trying different ways to open the lock and in the end I just tried every single code possible from 000 to 999. Luckily it opened somewhere in the 200’s.

I then had to rush to get ready because my lovely Japanese friend came to pick me up for dinner with a few of her friends. We went to an izakaya which is a Japanese kind of bar where you can get some drinks along with a range of small dishes. We had things like yakitori, sashimi, pizza, salad and more. The nice thing about these small dishes is that you can try a lot of different foods. It was really nice to meet an old friend and make new friends on the first day because I immediately felt like I belonged here and didn’t feel lonely at all. I also got to drink some wonderful umeshu again, which is a sweet plum wine and I absolutely love it. But I hadn’t had sleep for more than 30 hours and had a small jetlag so soon I grew tired and speaking Japanese after a break of almost four months was a little bit of a challenge. One of the friends, another old friend of mine, was late and came when we were just leaving. He has a car so he brought us home by car, so nice. I had a lovely first evening and these nice people set the tone for the rest of my stay in Fukuoka.

The next day I met my Japanese friend again when she picked my up at the hotel to move my luggage to the dorm. I was finally moving in! I had to fill in a lot of documents and then had to check my room for abnormalities. Besides a moldy fridge and a chair that’s had it’s best years my room is fine. There is a lot of closet space and I have my own tiny bathroom, which is really convenient. There is a desk and a bed where I sleep on with a futon, Japanese style! It’s a very boring room but slowly but surely I am decorating and filling it with things I bought at the hundred yen shop. Those shops are awesome; you can find almost anything and everything costs maybe about 0,80 euro cents. So I ended up with a lot of useful and cheap things. Going there is a little bit addictive though because everyday I think of something that I need and then I go there and come back with a bag full of things.

This is also the day that I met my tutor. She is a sweet girl who will help me with all kinds of difficult things like paying bills at the post office, getting a phone or registering at the ward office. I had plans to meet up with my friend from Belgium who was traveling through Japan and was in Fukuoka at that moment. My tutor helped me to go the place where we would meet, the aquarium! Marine World is an aquarium in the suburbs of Fukuoka, about an hour away from Hakata station. When my friend arrived we said goodbye to my tutor and went to the aquarium. It was not the biggest or most beautiful aquarium I have seen but it was fun. Sadly I forgot my camera so I had to make do with my iPhone.

We first ate something in the restaurant from where we could see the dolphins. And then we watched all the fish, penguins and sea lions. The seals were so cute! They kept looking at us and swimming towards us, such curious animals. And we could also feed them 🙂 We then went to my friend’s hotel to take a shower (because it’s so hot and humid here) and dress up. We met the Japanese friend who helped me with moving in the morning, and another old friend of ours. We had another night of drinking and eating delicious food at an izakaya. Really, the food and drinks are great and there is so much variety, so you can never get enough of izakaya. It was nice to meet them again and catch up. The Japanese girls had to work the next day though, so we said goodbye to them after going to the subway station through the pouring rain. And we went to karaoke until end the night with some singing. Because I mean, we’re in Japan after all.

I stayed at my friend’s hotel where we talked until deep in the night, or morning, and had to get up at 10am to go back to my dorm. There we had to gather with a group of about 15 students and a few tutors who would help us to apply for residence cards and register our addresses at the ward office of Hakata. This was the first time meeting some of my classmates and we had to wait very long at the ward office so it was a nice opportunity to chat with them and get to know them. They are all awesome and sweet people and I know I’ve already made some friends for life. After the whole thing was finally finished I made some plans with my classmates to meet up in the evening and eat together. I then went to meet my Belgian friend one last time before she would leave for Okinawa (and after that back to Belgium). We ate some cake at the hotel restaurant and took purikura (photo stickers) at an arcade hall. Time was quickly running out and I had to say goodbye to her. When I came back to the dorm I bumped into a friend from my university back home. She’s staying at the same dorm and uni, but is in a different program. I invited her to dinner with my classmates. We all went to a shopping mall near the dorm and ended up eating soba noodles in a restaurant there. It was nice to have some more bonding time with them and I think by then we were already friends haha.

On the friday I went shopping at the hundred yen store with my new friends, because we all needed some essential things like cutlery, cups, bowls, dust bins and what not. We also took a quick look in the arcade hall there and took purikura. We had to hurry back though because in the afternoon we had orientation day at the university. Basically it is just a lot of information being told in a few hours. It was tiring but important. And because we all don’t like to be alone we went to dinner again with a big group. This time there were even more people than the day before, some who I hadn’t met yet and there were also some of the tutors going with us. We went to kaitenzushi, which is basically sushi in fastfood form. A conveyer belt runs along the tables and on this band theres all kind of sushi which you can take from the belt. You pay by the amount of plates you have. It’s quite cheap, about 100 yen per plate and there’s vegetarian options too.

The saturday was a day off before our Orientation trip around Kyushu in the weekend. The girls and I went to Hakata in the afternoon for some more shopping. I needed some things from the electronics store and we also went to the hundred yen shop again because the one at Hakata station has a bigger collection than the one near our dorm. We also bought snacks for the weekend trip there. We also played some games at the arcade hall on the top floor of the electronics store. The electronics store we went to is Yodobashi Camera and it is huge! You can find almost anything there. So I usually go there when I need something for my computer, camera or mobile phone. The collection of iPhone 5 cases is the most extended one I’ve seen so far, so I have bought a pretty Japanese iPhone case. In the evening we met op with Carol and went to eat at the top floor of the station’s shopping mall. The restaurants there looked so nice, but the prices were too high. We ended up in a ramen restaurant where the prices were very reasonable. I tried tonkotsu ramen which is a specialty of Fukuoka. It was super delicious and I can recommend it to anyone!

That’s it for the first week ! I wil tell you about my orientation trip and the rest of this week in my next blog 🙂

Folkloristic market of Zoutelande, the Netherlands. Part Two.

This is the second and last part of my story about the folkloristic market of Zoutelande. This one is less text orientated and more of a photo post.

The best part of the market was the ‘klederdracht show’. Klederdracht is the Dutch word for traditional costumes. I’ve always found the regional costumes of Zeeland to be gorgeous but you can rarely see them anymore. Now and then I would see a very old lady wearing one but the last time was years ago. During the show they showed the popular costumes how they changed through the time and told about the differences between the different villages and ages. One thing I know about the hair dress of my hometown is that a big poofy cap is for a unmarried girl while a small simple one means that you are married. Other than that… let’s just say there are a lot of differences! Originally this place was a very religious one so that meant full body coverage with lots of reasons. That is the main reason that we don’t wear it anymore; it takes to much time, there are too many rules and it is hot, especially in summer. Besides that it is expensive and very hard to find. I literally don’t know any place where I could get those clothes. I talked about this with one of the guys from the performing group and he told me that I should join there group so I could find a costume for not a lot of money. And you know what? That actually didn’t sound bad. It has always been a secret dream of mine to own or at least wear those traditional clothes once and I could learn even more about my birth place. I should keep it in mind in case I ever return to my home town for longer than just a holiday or weekend.

When there is a traditional market in Zeeland, ringrijden can’t miss. Ringrijden a kind of sports and competition where you ride a horse at full speed and try to catch a ring with a lance. As the match progresses the rings get smaller and harder to catch. Whomever gets the most rings wins of course. Usually the horses get dressed up nicely with braids and ribbons in their manes. This is actually kind of a popular sports and nice for tourists ti watch at the some time. I especially love the announcer, it’s always the same guy. He speaks in the local dialect and uses weird local expression and uses a lot of passion when speaking. A few weeks ago I was working while there was a ringrijden match in the main street and the announcers’ booth was close to our bakery, so I could hear everything he was saying. I always snicker at his comments but this time he said something especially amusing; ‘Noe breekt mien klomp’ which translates as ‘My wooden shoe breaks now’ and means ‘What the f*ck is he doing?’. It’s the first time I heard that one. Loved it.

Got it!

Putting up the ring for the next contestant

Win!

testing the lance

Notes;

One part of the caps the ladies wear is made of almost a thousand folds. It is a difficult technique and the last lady who still made them recently stopped.
Klederdracht is expensive, difficult to put on, heavy and hot. But it looks gorgeous.
Every piece of clothing has rules regarding wearing it. Each piece also holds a different meaning. Big cap? Unmarried. Small cap? Married.
I’ve always liked the golden curly things on women’s caps
My favorite part is the necklace. My grandmother also used to have one and gave it to my niece on her wedding day. How I wish I got one too. Since they are made of corals a lot of Chinese and other Asian tradesmen have bought up a lot of the necklaces so they are difficult to find now and expensive.
Ringrijden is a typical sport of Zeeland.
There is another sport just like ringrijden, called sjeesjesrijden. The horse pulls a car with a man and his wife, both in traditional clothing, while the man steers the woman tries to catch the ring.
I am not good at the local dialects. Every village has its own dialect, but I grew up in the capital of the province where ‘BBC Dutch’ (let’s just call it that ;)) is the standard.
‘Noe breekt mien klomp!’

Dutch Folkloristic Market at Zoutelande, the Netherlands. Part One.

I wanted to take a little break from writing about my Japan trip with this post about the folkloristic market of Zoutelande. Don’t worry, I still have a few Japan post left and will continue writing about it of course! Anyway, I think that in any country a lot of old traditions fade away or disappear completely as modern times progresses. It’s something I think is really sad, but at the same time it is difficult to prevent. One way to at least not let old crafts die out is by organizing something like a folkloristic market. At the same time it educates both foreign and local people about the local crafts and traditions. So when there was a folkloristic market (mostly for touristic purposes) in my hometown I decided to take a look around because I didn’t have to go to work that day anyway.

I was hoping to see some traditional clothing, which I did, a lot! But I will save that for a later post. Other than the traditional clothing I didn’t really know what to expect or what I wanted to see. So I just wandered around the market taking photos and trying to learn about some of the crafts that were shown there. The first stand which was closest so my home (and in front of the bakery where I work) was a booth with babbelaars. Babbelaars are traditional sweets from Zeeland, a province of the Netherlands and my ‘home province’. They are simple sweets with only five ingredients and are basically pure sugar. But they are good! It’s a traditional kind of Dutch butterscotch. Usually they are sold in cute tins with pictures of people in regional traditional costumes or Dutch sceneries. At the booth there were older women, a younger girl and a man all dressed folk costumes and they were making and selling the babbelaars on the spot. First they melt the sugar with the other ingredients and move it to a cold plate where they keep mixing it until it is cool enough to roll it out and make thin strips. They then make nicks in the strips and when it’s completely cooled and hardened they break them and there you have the candies! At this particular booth they also sold special babbelaars with chocolate and cinnamon flavor. I bought them and cinnamon flavor is approved! I am not sure what to think about the chocolate ones though…

cooling the batter

stretching and rolling

making nicks

breaking into pieces

packing the yummies

Just to mention it, ‘my’ bakery also had a stall. My colleagues sold oliebollen there. An oliebol is something like a deep-fried donut. It is Dutch New Years food and I love it! But it is not something I would eat in summer, I think it’s a Dutch mental thing; oliebol is winter food. So I didn’t eat any of them. I did eat some soft serve ice-cream because the ones at our bakery are very good. Sorry, I didn’t take photos of our bakery and the booth. Next were some gift shops booths. One of the was a booth with candles. One of the ladies there was making some candles on the spot by dipping the base in different colors (of wax I assume) and letting the layer dry and then dipping it in the next color. She told me that it took long today because it was too hot and the layers wouldn’t dry very well. But they also shouldn’t get too cold otherwise the next layer won’t hold. Candles are not some old Dutch craft, but at least it was interesting to see. Next to the candle booth was a stand with metal jewelry. A guy was making some of the jewelry next to the booth. This is something I used to do with my grandfather too, but again not traditionally Dutch per se.

In front of the church were some interesting booths. One of them, my favorite, was the wooden shoos booth. Believe it or not, but some people still wear. Mostly farmers, like the shoes are intended for. Other than that, no, people in the Netherlands don’t walk around in wooden shoes. I only wore them once in my life. They are heavy and not so comfortable. It was the first time I saw someone making them though. The guy who was making them was actually from Belgium, but he said that most wooden shoes makers and wearers are still Dutch. There are just not many left though. The shoe he was working on already had a rough shape and he was scraping out the wood where the food has to go in. He told me that there are also wooden shoes with leather which the farmers wear on fancy occasions. I can’t imagine haha. His wife, I suppose, was working with a spinning wheel. That is also something I only saw in museums and the Sleeping Beauty.

The only time I ever wore wooden shoes, and a farmers suit. I even milked cows and ate cheese, it doesn’t get more Dutch except for tulips and wind mills.

There was another booth that I found really mesmerizing, which was one where there were only two home made chairs and an old guy making a third chair. He was weaving the seating of the chair. We used to have those wicker chairs at home, not those hip modern ones or the one you put in the garden, but real classis ones. That’s why it intrigued me so much. I used to always sit on them but it never occurred to me how they were made and how much time and effort that took. And the guy was so concentrated on the weaving, for some reason it touched me. Close to that booth was a booth with different kind of cheeses, not to be missed of course, and a booth where they were ‘smoking’ (preparing food with hot smoke) eels. My grandfather also does this sometimes. It is funny how most booths reminded me of my grandparents because they either did those things or told me about their (grand)parents doing it. I have a new found respect for what they did and what our old traditions are.

Cutting the cheesy goods

Notes;

Seeing traditional crafts of your hometown makes you appreciate and respect your local customs more
These kind of markets are really touristic though
Putting on traditional clothes makes everything a thousand times better
Babbelaars are typical Zeeuws. You won’t find them in the rest of the Netherlands, let alone the rest of the world.
It takes a lot of work to make wooden shoes
Wooden shoes are heavy and uncomfy
Wicker chairs make me feel nostalgic
Yummy, cheese

I will tell you more about the market next time!