Continuing on

I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say about school. It’s still going on, we’re trucking through at the same pace we’ve been going, it’s still not boring.

Fukumoto-sensei’s replacement, Hosoi-sensei, turns out to be a pretty cool person. She lived in Italy for a long time and is fluent in Italian. It doesn’t matter a whole lot in the long run, she only teaches on Thursdays and there are just three more Thursdays left in the semester(!). So this upcoming week is my second to last full week of classes. The final exam falls on the following Friday, with that week’s Monday through Wednesday being public holidays.

On Friday we had the much-anticipated bus trip to Chiba prefecture. We went to Shimizu park, which has three “adventure courses” set up. It’s like an obstacle course, where you go from station to station and give yourself points based on how well you do. I had a great time, because when someone says “obstacle course” I get excited. It seemed like I was one of the only people in my class who was actually excited about it. Many of the girls especially were pretty squeamish about physical activity, and spent most of the time at the park sitting around the lunch tables and wishing they were elsewhere. I thought it was cool though, and there was one section that was set up above a lake. Most of the stations had the danger of falling in the water as a key attraction point, and many people (including Encaron) did.

From Shimizu park, we then drove to a grape farm where we had all-you-can-eat grapes. I sure talk about grapes a lot in my blog, but they sort of just keep popping up randomly. These grapes were far better than even the best that I bought from stores over here. We ate heartily, but didn’t make much of a dent in the grapes at the farm. I bought two bunches for 700 yen to take home.

On Saturday, we had our last culture class, and I wouldn’t say they saved the best for last. The topic was Japanese business, and it was every bit as boring as it sounds. It was also just half a day, so there was no tour associated with it. At 12:00 we all just went home.

This weekend I’ve been doing a few things: working on my senior project(s), studying for a test on Monday, and relaxing. Sorry that this entry isn’t terrible exciting. On September 11th I have an Oral exam, on the 13th we have a “Special Class” that has yet to be explained, and then there’s the Final Exam on the 25th. I have tickets for the Ghibli museum again for the 27th, and Tanaka-san told me that I would likely move into my new housing at the beginning of the week of the 28th. 66 days and I have 137 days left. In other words, in about two days I’ll hit the 1/3rd mark.

I uploaded some more pictures to my Flickr page.

Enoshima & Kamakura trip pt. 2

Breakfast was scheduled for 8:00, but if we felt so inclined, we could meet at the entrance to the ryokan at 7:00 and go hang out at the beach for a while. I felt so inclined, because waking up after 6:30 would be way sleeping in for me. So a number of us walked back to the beach on Sunday morning. The weather showed no signs of deviating from the perfection that it was the day before, and the beach was relatively empty. Looking back, it was really empty. It didn’t really occur to me before I typed this up, but there must not be many people waking up early on a Sunday to go to the beach.

Compared to the awful beach in Odawara, this beach was quite nice in the daytime. While some collected shells or started wading, I took full advantage of the opportunity to do nothing. Having seen the itinerary for the day already, I knew that this day wouldn’t be any less tiring than the last.

At 8:00 we had breakfast. Again, it was unlike anything in America. There was a wide selection of fully-intact fish. Some dumpling-like things, some egg-ish things. I wish I knew the proper name, but I don’t. I snagged a great deal of rice, some salad, and the dumpling and egg-ish things. At 9:00 we left the ryokan, and headed out toward the station again.

We wound up at Kamakura station, and then took a bus to our first stop: Hokokuji temple. Although it contained a temple, the big draw was its large bamboo grove. I’ve actually got a large picture of a bamboo grove in my room back home, so I was excited to go to a real one. It didn’t disappoint, and I found it to be an awesome place to take pictures because of the compositional possibilities. I was able to latch onto some of the stalks with my tiny tripod and take some long exposure shots as well, which allows a very deep depth of field.

Our next stop was Tsurugaoka Hachimangu. This was a very large shinto shrine that featured a 1000 year old Ginkgo tree. There also happened to be a shinto wedding happening on a raised stage in the middle of the shrine grounds. While the music going with it felt like it were taken directly out of a Kenji Mizoguchi film, there wasn’t much going on. Especially from the distance that we were, it was nearly impossible to appreciate.

We also got a chance to draw lots (おみくじ), which are pieces of paper that have a fortune on them. We’re not talking about your wimpy fortune cookie fortunes. These ones will actually make a claim. Mine happened to make the bad luck claim. The paper itself breaks things down into eight catagories, including work, school, relationships, illness, etc. All of them were either bad or neutral. I believe there is something worse than the simple bad luck one that I got, and I want to see one, because it’s pretty funny.

Now, what you’re supposed to do if you get a bad luck fortune is to tie it to a tree or a apparatus in the shrine designed for that purpose like this. But I’m taking mine home. I wonder if the shrines put a disproportionate number of bad luck ones in there so that more people will “decorate” their shrine with tied pieces of paper.

Lunch came around eventually, and we had some options. Considering I wasn’t terribly hungry and I didn’t want to spend a lot of money, the most appealing option for me was McDonalds. So, for the first time since coming here, I went there.

Although McDonalds has an awful reputation in the states, it seems to have a different atmosphere over in Japan. It seems to be a legitimate hanging-out place, the restaurants don’t feel dirty, and one doesn’t have to feel ashamed when entering it (as I do in America). I got a teriyaki burger. The entire meal was 650 yen, which is cheaper than MOS burger. It didn’t taste nearly as good as MOS burger, but it was good enough.

Stephen and I killed the remaining time given to us in the lunch hour by having what has become our trademark, highly-referential conversations that flows smoothly between philosophical musing and non-sequitur.

After lunch, we went to Hasedera temple. So, just to make sure things are clear, a shrine is a Shinto building, a temple is a Buddhist building. The main draw in this temple was a 30 foot tall carving of Buddha from a single tree. Unfortunately, I had already seen the world’s largest carving of Buddha from a single tree which happens to be in Beijing. Jaded!

The final stop was the famous Daibutsu, or Great Buddha. This is one of the more famous sights in Japan, and the biggest tourist attraction in Kamakura. It’s about 13 meters tall. You can actually go inside the daibutsu. I’m glad that I did because it was very cool and I got a good picture, but it was really, really hot. You could imagine how the inside of what is essentially a large copper box gets after being struck directly by the sun for several hours.

We got our group photos in, did some souvenir shopping (I bought… a coke), and walked around the temple that houses the daibutsu. As it was getting late in the day, the troops were getting a bit tired, so we soon packed up and got on the train to Shinjuku. All in all, a very nice trip, and what I would call “sightseeing done right.” We did a ton of touristy things, but it never felt touristy. There was a nice variety of sights, so despite the fact that we essentially just went to a bunch of temples and shrines, it didn’t feel like we just saw the same thing over and over. The teachers were great through the whole process, and I would love a chance to do another trip with them, but alas, the culture class is drawing to a close and I’m not allowed to take it again next semester.

Foreground (left to right): Jared, Trisna, Lori

Before we got on the train, we parted with Kato-sensei, who actually lives in Kamakura. It seemed like an awfully far away place to live for someone who worked in Tokyo, but then I remembered that it was only about an hour away from Shinjuku, which puts it about in the average commute time for Japanese who work in Tokyo.

On the train ride back, I had to stand the whole time and and attempted to read. It was nearly impossible. Maybe I’ll learn to read on a train someday, especially if I wind up in a homestay, but there were way too many things going on including a very confusing poster for me to concentrate much on the book.

I went directly back to the dorm after arriving in Shinjuku and started the work of sorting out all my pictures and preparing for the inevitable blog entry to recap the trip. That task is finally over, and I can put the trip behind me and look forward to summer vacation, which starts next week.

Enoshima & Kamakura trip pt. 1

On Thursday we were given a packet of papers that laid out the schedule of the upcoming Kamakura trip. We would arrive at the school by 8:30 am on Saturday, have a lecture in the morning and then head toward the train station at noon. Tanaka-san went over some guidelines and made some suggestions of what to bring. He also mentioned, in a tantalizingly hushed voice, that for the first night’s dinner we would be having steak. If I wasn’t excited about the trip already, I certainly was now.

The lecture in the morning was taught by Kato-sensei. Of the English speaking staff members at KCP, I have the most experience with Tanaka-san and Michiko-san, who work in the offices on the first floor and talk to the American students whenever there’s something important. Kato-sensei teaches the English support sessions, which I should really consider attending some time. I’ve heard from a number of Americans that it’s an invaluable resource for getting questions answered and clarifying things heard in class. Still, I hadn’t dealt with her much before this trip.

She went over the key places we would be visiting, explained some history that explained the significance of Kamakura, and at one point showed us an English video that appeared to be made in 1991 showing some of the places that she talked about.

After my lunch, which consisted of several breads, we headed to Shinjuku-gyoenmae, the typical jumping-off station for the various culture class excursions. We then took that to Shinjuku station and got on the Odakyu line. We spent about an hour on the train, which was moderately crowded. Around the half-way point, I was able to get a seat and started doing homework. Before I was able to accomplish anything significant, the train stopped at Enoshima.

As you could tell from the name (shima meaning “island”), Enoshima is an island south of Tokyo. It’s about 4 km in circumference, and is particularly packed with the sort of things that tourists love (without seeming too touristy). On this particular day, it was rather packed. Tanaka-san mentioned that it was the most crowded he’s seen. It didn’t really affect how much we enjoyed it, and it certainly didn’t hurt that the weather was about the opposite of my last ill-fated trip. We walked about a kilometer from the station, across a bridge, and onto the island. Everything was lush and green, and the interesting sights were close together in the way that you imagine famous cities to be.

We went to a number of shrines, passed many souvenir shops, and took many pictures. I think I actually took more picture on the island than I had taken combined in the previous month. Amazing what good weather can do. I dumped all my pictures onto my Flickr site if those that I’ve included in this post aren’t enough.

Speaking of pictures, a significant amount of time during the trip was spent getting group pictures. And whenever there was one group picture, every other student would hand the teachers their cameras and a nine-picture smile-endurance challenge would commence. Because my camera is complicated, I didn’t force anybody to take a picture with it except for one time. But I’ve already talked to some in the group and they will be sharing some of the pictures from the trip in the future, so they might resurface at some time.

Although there was no way to disguise that this was one of my least favorite ways to travel — being led around — it somehow didn’t feel constricting and frustrating. The teachers gave information that we would never have figured out on our own, gave us the freedom befitting 20-somethings, and never made us stay anywhere too long or made us leave before people were ready.

Tanaka-san explains something. Brian listens passively.

The island had a number of gardens, and as we got further away from the shore and the souvenirs (and higher in altitude) the views got much better. Depending on how much we wanted to climb stairs, we were able to go to the highest part of the island that you could walk to and it was a quite nice place.

There was also an observation tower in the middle of the island that we were able to scale via an elevator. At the base, there was a plaza with a stage that seemed to be devoted toward practicing musicians. While we were walking to the tower, there was an a cappella group practicing, which was entertaining, if surreal.

At the top of the tower, you could really appreciate the good weather. Although it’s theoretically possible to see Mount Fuji from the island, it must have been just hazy enough that it wasn’t visible. If you squinted in the direction that it allegedly was and used some imagination, then we might have been able to see a trace of it. Fuji or no Fuji, it was a great view and everybody got their group pictures in.

On the way back, I got a kakigori (shaved ice), which is about the perfect summer food ever. I don’t know why I don’t take advantage of shaved ice during the summer in the states (besides that it’s not nearly as convenient), but you should go have shaved ice right now. We crossed the bridge back toward the station and got on the Enoden line to Kamakura station.

(left to right): Trisna, Kato-sensei, Tanaka-san, Joyce, Me

At Kamakura station, we changed to the Yokosuka line and went to Zushi. There, we followed the teachers through the least easy to navigate series of roads ever. One of the Americans noted that if we didn’t have teachers leading us, there was no way we would ever find where we were headed, and I would agree. After turning down several roads that looked like every other road, we arrived at our destination: a Ryokan.

To put it simply, a Ryokan is a traditional Japanese “hotel.” All the staff wear kimonos and the doors have those sliding paper doors that are so “Japanese.” It also had a large backyard by American standards, and a huge backyard by Japanese standards. After walking around for a good portion of the day, everyone embraced a few minutes of chilling in the individual rooms. But at the same time, we were eager to get onto dinner.

I don’t know what you visualized when I mentioned in the first paragraph that we would be having steak, but what we were given was a little surprising. Yes, there was a steak. It was perhaps 5 ounces, pre-sliced, and looked delicious on its own merits. But surrounding it was the sort of traditional Japanese food that made the overall dish look much different than steak at Outback in America. A shrimp with its head and tail still very much attached to the body stared blankly off into the distance.

Despite my hesitation on the shrimp, sashimi, and sushi, I’m happy to say that I ate it all. I wouldn’t say that it was delicious — it’s not the sort of thing I would seek out in a menu or have a craving for — but it wasn’t bad. The steak was great, and there was plenty of rice. Definitely the best meal I’ve had so far over here.

After dinner, it had gotten dark. To finish up the day, we were going to the beach. The first thing we did was play a watermelon smashing game. There are two teams and they take turns blindfolding one of their members and trying to use their voices to help their representative smash a watermelon with a bat, while the other team tries to give purposefully wrong directions.

Our watermelon was very difficult to smash, and despite a direct hit from Stephen M, it stood firm. Finally it yielded from a hit from the other team, but by that time I had started trying to take long exposure photographs. Using my tiny little tripod, I was able to have some pretty good results, including this picture of Stephen M, which I absolutely love. There’s really no good way to get a picture as dark as it was without doing long exposure, so I was happy that I had some experience doing it and was able to get pretty decent results.

The entire night was very fun. Tall Stephen and Jared kept us laughing, and the fireworks were a nice way to finish it up.

Back in the Ryokan, it was about 9:30. Many of us went to the bath. You wash yourself around the edges of the bathroom with these shower-ish things, and then just relax in the bath. The water was way hotter than I’ve ever experienced, and I’m used to hot baths, but it was relaxing in its own way. Tall Stephen got in between Stephen M and I and said “chotto atsui desu ne” which made both of us crack up. Whenever Tall Stephen says “chotto [adjective] desu ne” it’s something like a catchphrase. You just have to be there.

Though we slept on the floor on a futon, it was much more comfortable than my bed in the dorm. I tried to get to bed as soon as possible because I knew the next day wouldn’t be any easier on my legs. I’ll post about that tomorrow.

I want to give a shout out to my friend in Nampa, Jordan Freiburghaus, who just got engaged. I’d hug ya if I could, Jordy. Congrats!