My friend Lindsey landed at Kansai Airport last Tuesday, May 29th and took a bus all the way to OKC. I saw her near the fountain in front of the station, which wasn’t difficult because she was the only white person around wearing a pink scarf (not that there were many white people around not wearing pink scarves). I shall never again underestimate the value of a familiar face (not that I have underestimated the value in the past, to my knowledge).
Anyway, Lins was kind enough to bring me dry socks on Wednesday after I got completely soaked in a tempestuous downpour when I had nearly arrived at school that morning. By the time she arrived I was mostly dry, but I still wasn’t wearing socks. She looked around Wake in the sunny afternoon after the skies had cleared and took peeks at the couple shrines we’ve got in town. She came to the evening conversation class with me and tried to make my students understand that her mother creates expensive teddy bears for a job. She went grocery shopping with me and learned, firsthand, why I tend to buy the same things over and over again, because I have no idea what about three-fourths of the things in the grocery store actually are. Later on, she observed that “Japanese food is weird,” and I informed her that the sky was sometimes blue and water is wet, just in case she wasn’t aware.
On Thursday, May 31st, Lins came to elementary school with me. It went well, I think, although Lindsey was not nearly as excited as Shannon and Nessa had been to play with elementary school children. We played fruit basket and other basket games and Lindsey got to see first-hand how insane Japanese first-graders are, which I think was a valuable lesson. She asked a few students their names and I, at least, was happy she got to see part of what I do here.
Later, we answered questions from the 5th and 6th graders and then played some clapping game I’d created.
We ate lunch with them too.
Lins and I packed up and were ready to go to our Hanshin Tigers baseball game by the afternoon, and we arrived at Koshien Stadium with plenty of time to wander around and look at cakes in windows.
And we could pose in front of the ivy covered stadium as diehard Tigers fans wafted into the stands.
My first baseball game in Japan! I was excited. I don’t particularly like baseball, but I think going to baseball games is fun, and I thought it was a cultural event (although one they stole from Americans) that I should see while I was in Japan. We got some okonomiyaki and had plenty of beer.
They were playing the Seibu Lions and were beating them by a few runs by the time we left (The Tigers won 6-3).
The game was fun, and people often broke into a common song to which they all knew the words, and they beat little sticks together to create some rhythmic, mesmerising, chant. Then, without warning, everyone took out balloons and began inflating them. Lindsey and I looked around in wonderment and commented on what the shape of the balloons most resembled. As would only happen in Japan, a couple behind us offered us some extra balloons, so then we had our own to blow up, in preparation for the imminent release.
During the 7th inning, no one sang “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” but instead hummed “Auld Lang Syne” and later on released the balloons, to fly and hiss and whistle skyward. It was pretty.
Pretty soon thereafter we had to leave the game, although it wasn’t over yet, to get our train to Kyoto. Luckily, we didn’t have far to go. We arrived in Kyoto just after our hostel’s reception closed, but we checked in with no problem and made our beds for the night. Lins was sleepy and I wanted to walk around town and go have some drinks. We walked to the Kamo River, very near our hostel, and looked out over the placid, shallow water interspersed with grassy tufts. Lins won in the end, and instead of going out drinking all night, we returned to the hostel to sleep, vowing to wake up early the next day.
On Friday, we woke up late. Or anyway, we didn’t leave the hostel until late. We rented bikes and rode over to the Higashiyama area, which holds quite a few of the big sites in Kyoto. We tried some mochi along the way, and Lins fell in love with them, but thereafter each mochi we tried just wasn’t good enough for her.
Since we were riding past Sanjusangendo (the Hall of 1,001 Buddhas), I suggested we stop in to take a look. I still think it’s amazing, and it was sunnier inside the hall than in December, which made the statues glow even more.
After seeing so many Buddha statues, we rode over to see more temples. We walked our bikes up the long hill that led to Kiyomizu Dera temple, certainly a must-see for any Kyoto trip. Lins stopped to look at every shop along the way, of which there were many, and I was stopped by junior high schoolers on a class trip who asked me questions in English and took my picture as part of a class assignment. After all these obstacles, we finally reached the front gates.
Once inside, we were stopped by still more junior high schoolers, from the same school, who asked us the same questions. We all posed for a picture.
And we spent a very long time in Kiyomizu. There were about a thousand students on class trips clogging up every available space.
We also drank from the three streams, which are supposed to bestow luck in some area of your life; I’m just not sure which one.
After finally leaving Kiyomizu, we abandoned our bikes and strolled on the Higashiyama Strolling Path, looking for things to buy and maiko (geisha apprentices). Once again, maybe they were real, maybe there were fake, but these didn’t have digital cameras with them.
Up at Maruyama Park, we sat by ponds and enjoyed a cool late afternoon breeze.
Lins wanted to see Gion, so we went through Yasaka Shrine and I tried to find the entrance to Chionin Temple.
It was closed when we got there, so we made our way through Gion and turned on picturesque streets when we had the impulse.
After more shopping and looking, we found our bikes, somehow, and went towards downtown looking for something to eat. We found a Thai restaurant before we got downtown, biking down a quiet street next to a canal, and had a great meal.
On the way to the restaurant, we came across this very fun looking restaurant. Are you my white lover?
Oddly enough, I actually kinda enjoy riding bikes now, so I wanted to use every minute I had with our rented uncomfortable bikes. We took sexy pictures on them in the night.
It was a Friday night at 10 when we had to return our bikes to the hostel, but Lins only wanted to sleep. I wanted to go out, drink in bars, sing karaoke, go to dance clubs, wander around and terrorize combinis, anything! But, Lindsey only wanted to sleep. I was disappointed and made a point of telling her so, but she only promised we’d go out the next night and fell asleep in our hostel room with two Chinese guys.
On Saturday, the 2nd of June, we made a plan over tea to go to Northeast Kyoto and check out Ginkakuji, the Silver Pavilion. We got bus passes, and boarded a bus bound for Ginkakuji. We got off along the way to see the Heian Shrine, and once again were accosted by people who wanted to speak English to us. A couple students from Kyoto University of Foreign Studies stopped to see if they could give us a free tour of the shrine so practice their English. I really can’t refuse, so we acquiesced to the tour and walked around with them while they didn’t quite know what to say. It was funny though, and we learned some information that we couldn’t have received anywhere else, and then took our picture with them.
As the day grew hotter and hotter, we hopped on a bus to the Northeast, getting off at Eikan-do Temple to look around. The grounds there were as beautiful in June as in December. Taking pictures was easier than in December, because we weren’t challenged by a dusky rain (although the dusky rain made our surroundings lovely and misty).
We climbed up steps to peer out over Kyoto, basking in June heat below us. There, we paused to eat some snacks and empty our collective water bottle.
The Path of Philosophy lay between us and Ginkakuji, and we walked along the stones besides the deep canal ditch rather listlessly and hungrily, anxious for food but relieved to be in the shade. We found the approach to Ginkakuji full of people, shops, and plastic food restaurants, and stopped to eat.
Ginkakuji is a place that was prettier on a wet December day than a humid June day. All the same scenery lay before us, but without the golden leaves or mist of late autumn, there was something missing. Lindsey was also disappointed to learn that the Silver Pavilion wasn’t actually silver, although I’d apprised her of that fact before we arrived.
I ardently believed we could reach Kinkakuji, the Golden Pavilion, before it closed, so we got on a bus and reached Kinkakuji about a half hour later. By late in the afternoon, the sun was obscured by clouds, so the gold on Kinkakuji lost some of its shine. Still, it’s a stunning site, I think, and it was on Lindsey’s list of things she really wanted to see.
We walked around it and out the front gate, just as they were closing for the evening. The bus ride back was long and took us through seemingly every street in Kyoto, with an endless parade of old people and families and tourists and students. Lins wasn’t taking any chances with falling asleep early, so we rested as soon as we arrived at our hostel room in preparation for our night out.
Before dinner we took some purikura and Lindsey loved it. She said something like “that’s one of the best experiences of my life,” and she may’ve been right. After purikura, Lindsey chose a kaiten-zushi (revolving sushi) restaurant that was the exact same one I’d eaten at with Amy about 6 months ago. It was good, even the second time around.
We met Tiffany and her English teacher who were in Kyoto just for the night and had a drink at a bar. They left after a little while and Lindsey and I were left to our own engrossing conversation.
That bar was a lot of fun, the company and the music were good, and we probably could’ve stayed there all night. But, the smoke was filling the air and it was getting hard to breathe.
We stopped into a happy mushroom bar by chance and it was a tiny little place with a big happy bartender with hair like a friar and it was difficult to tell which decade we were in. Lins looks sufficiently happy for the mushroom bar but I look a little worried.
We wandered around after that, trying to avoid bars with covers and expensive drinks and any bar Lindsey didn’t like the look of. That didn’t leave us many choices, so we ended up sharing a combini-bought beer and walking back to our hostel.
Sunday, the 3rd, was the last day in Kyoto, and I really wanted to see the monkey park. I’d heard there was a monkey park in Arashiyama, which Amy and I had somehow missed when we wasted hours in the visitors’ center in Arashiyama. This time, I wanted to be sure to see the monkeys, after so many failed opportunities. We took the bus out to Arashiyama and found the monkey park with ease. We passed through torii on our way up the mountain with the monkeys.
At the top, there were a bunch of monkeys hanging out. We had great views over Kyoto, for we were pretty high, and I just couldn’t stop taking pictures of monkeys.
Then, we went inside a house and fed monkeys some apples. They could reach inside a chain link fence and pluck the food from our outstretched hands. For reasons beyond my comprehension, I was delighted.
I liked watching this monkey interact with some large koi in the pond and splash water at them.
This monkey was resting.
This may be the best picture I took all weekend.
We spent some more time exploring Monkey Park or Monkey Mountain or whatever you’d like to call it, and then descended the mountain towards the river and bamboo forests and souvenir and ice cream shops of Arashiyama. We explored the bamboo forests, which were not illuminated at night, and then got on a bus in sleepy, stifling heat, and reached Kyoto Station with time to get our bags and board a train. With ¥120 tickets we finally reached Wake and ate dinner at 10. I was just happy we’d gotten to see monkeys.
I’d missed Sports Day at Wake JH on Sunday, which was fine with me because I’d rather feed mostly wild monkeys than watch junior high school kids jump rope and run relays and stuff. So, there was no school on Monday at Wake JH, which meant I was supposed to go to the Board of Education at which I was supposed to do absolutely nothing all day but read a book probably, all while Lindsey wandered around Japan by herself. So, I did the only logical thing there was to do and called in sick. Then, Lindsey and I went to Hiroshima.
Lindsey was worried I’d be found out and they’d know I wasn’t actually sick and I was actually in Hiroshima with my friend. I knew I probably would be found out but I didn’t really care. We took the Shinkansen to Hiroshima and arrived by noon. The day was another oppressively hot day and our water supplies were drained shortly. We ate a huge lunch and then, stuffed, waddled our way to the A-Bomb Dome. It’s still there and still looks the same as the last time I saw it. And, so here I am in front of it.
Lindsey, like Amy, also didn't feel right about smiling in front of things destroyed by atomic bombs.
We crossed the bridge (the T-shaped bridge that was the target for the atomic bombers) and went into the Peace Park. School children were singing on the banks of the river and old ladies were ringing the peace bell. We looked at the ever-changing exhibit of colourful Japanese cranes and watched some school children bring their own cranes to the foot of the Children’s Peace Memorial.
We stopped into the Victims’ Memorial Hall, a place I hadn’t seen before, and looked at their solemn memorial surrounded by 140,000 mosaic tiles, to represent the 140,000 people who died because of the bomb in Hiroshima between August and December, 1945.
Then we looked through victims names and pictures, which was all very high tech and saddening.
Afterwards, I went through the exhibits in the A-Bomb Museum, or Peace Memorial Museum, for a second time and re-read a lot of things. This is a before and after picture of Hiroshima from the dioramas they had set up. The A-Bomb Dome is in the lower left corner.
Lins stopped to read everything, which is fine with me, but I had to tell her that the museum might close before we reached the end. So, the second half was a bit more rushed, but we still got to see burned school uniforms, displays of mannequins with their skins melting off, and picture of horribly mangled burn victims and accounts of how radiation affects the body.
We made it out of the museum just before it closed and sat in the Peace Park for a while longer. With plenty of daylight left, however, we walked up to Hiroshima Castle, a reconstruction of the castle was that destroyed by the bomb. With no Himeji for Lindsey, it was her only castle, and it was adequate.
We strolled down Peace Blvd. and argued about where to eat. As night fell on Hiroshima and I suggested okonomiyaki place after okonomiyaki place, we finally decided to eat at home. A shinkansen ride to OKC and a train to Wake brought us back to my place, for a last meal of Lindsey’s week with me in Japan. She would leave for Tokyo to meet her mom and sister on Tuesday, and I would be alone again. And that’s it.
The next day, Monday, the 16th, Audrey and I went over to Koya-san, outside Osaka. That place was pretty cool, and we walked around some old tombs in a shadowy forest with towering trees and rainy mists between the rocks and leaves. It was really beautiful, but I had to leave in a hurry to get back to meet some people at Pizza King. I didn't make it back in time to eat at Pizza King, and for a while I was worried I wouldn't make it back to Wake at all, because all the trains were really really late. But, I finally got on a train bound for Wake and it worked out okay. I found out later that the lateness of the trains was due to earthquakes in the north or a suicide on the tracks near Nara, or both. Here's some photos of Koya-san.
I taught for the last time at Saeki Junior High on Tuesday and said goodbye to all the students and teachers. They all filed out of the staff room to watch me change into my outdoor shoes and waved goodbye as I left. On Thursday there was a closing ceremony at Wake Junior High and it was a kind of goodbye for me too. The principal made a speech and then I made a speech and some students gave me a card and told me how much they enjoyed learning English from me. They also gave me a huge bouquet of flowers, and as I sat there on the stage and the students sang their school song, I surveyed the faces of the bright and eager students who always made a point to talk to me and really really tried hard to learn English (Eri, Kana, Nozomi, Kaede, Miho, Yugo, Mochi...), and I was a little bit sad. I'll miss some of those kids, and I can only hope that the next ALT who comes to Wake will find them as fun to teach as I did.
Then, I had a goodbye party amongst all the teachers of Wake. I met them in OKC for a large dinner and lots of drinks and it was a lot more fun than I expected. They gave me some Bizen pottery (some really expensive pottery that comes from this region) and lots of handshakes and made me make lots of speeches. We went to a tiny tiny karaoke bar after that and I sang some songs and talked to the youngest teacher, Yuki, a lot.
