weekend at mabuchi's

Right now, Ashley and I are witnessing for only the second time, thunder in Japan. Last night there was legitimate lightning accompanying it as well as the torrential rain of a proper storm, and for the first time this trip, I felt at ease.

Yesterday as you are aware by now, we had our first midterm, and after we had gotten our fill of internet provided entertainment (alas, this does not mean that I was able to watch an episode of SYTYCD. I didn’t think of it until I was out of time) we set off to the famed Bell Road near which Jenny’s host mother lives.

Being the college kids that we are, and so smart that we are, we headed out on bike for a 30-40 minute trip with empty stomachs in the heat of the day.  That’s right. The apex of the 85 degree heat with a humidity too high to mention lest it tempt the darn thing back for another day. We let Jenny lead us into Hikone from JCMU, and after a quick stop at a post office (finally) to pick up some stamps for our postcards that we have been buying through our travels here, we reached Jenny’s homestay house.

Ashley and I parked our bikes as close to the house as we could in the little suburb, while Jenny hesitantly called out “Sato-san?” and wandered behind a sun curtain and out of our sight. We heard lots of rustling in the house (slightly alarming..) as Jenny kept calling out for her host mother, until finally whoever was in the house replied. The most startling thing wasn’t that it sounded like Sato-san was ripping the house to shreds on the inside, but that as soon as she had noticed Jenny was home and they started talking, it was completely in English.

Jenny soon brought her outside and Ashley and I introduced ourselves in Japanese and talked with her for a bit. This early in the game, I was already getting sunburned and of course had sweat through the back of my shirt since I was stuck carrying my backpack with us everywhere, and Sato-san commented that Jenny and I both had to wear sunscreen or else get all red, and then promptly turned to Ashley and said, “But not you. Why is that I wonder?” to which I said, “LUCKY.” and we all moved on from there. She was very nice, a fast talker, and extremely busy, but I liked her in the short time we got to meet. Jenny dropped off her backpack, and away we went back onto Bell Road in the search of some place to get lunch/dinner. Or rather we tried to, but Jenny decided it would be much more exciting to get ALMOST HIT BY A CAR.

Meet Jenny.

She is a greenhorn bicyclist, easily distracted and got very very very lucky.

We were talking to her about how she needed to stay on the left, because that’s where you’re supposed to ride bikes in Japan, and so trying that out for a bit, she jay-biked (?) across two intersections with only the thought of reaching the other side and traveling on the left in her mind. Did she check for traffic? No. Oh no she didn’t.

Ashley and I could only watch horrified as she blasted out into the street as a car was speeding down the lane. Luckily for her, the driver saw her and threw on their brakes. Unfortunately for the driver, as soon as Jenny noticed she was in danger, she, too, threw on her brakes. The result was two completely stopped vehicles in the middle of the street and Ashley and I staring bug eyed at them, our words caught in our throats.

Eventually Jenny finished biking across the street, and Ashley and I followed after (when it was CLEAR). Trying not to think about how bad that incident could have been, we hurried to the closest restaurant that we could (happened to be a ramen shop) and got out of the heat and the sun’s rays.

Needless to say our appetites were now long gone, but we were there and seated so we ordered food anyway. This time the preference sheet for how you like your ramen was all in Japanese so the three of us guessed away and ordered the minimum amount of food that we could get, all the while downing glass after glass of water. As per usual here in Japan, the service was quite fast and the food just begging to be devoured. We weren’t sure if we got the right orders, having handed the server all three of our slips at once, but it was still delicious. As good as in Tokyo? Nah. But still very good.

Across the street just so happened to be a delicious looking cake shop that Jenny said was very good, so instead of hopping on our bikes again so soon, we fled to the haven of sweet pastries and other similar delights. Being the overwhelmingly adventurous person that I am, I once again had what the Japanese call their strawberry shortcake. It was extremely good, and this time didn’t end up all over my backpack and the floor. Bonus.

At this point we still had an hour or two to kill before having to head back to school by 5pm for the movie (Ponyo!), but we were very very very tired of being in the sun. So, with directions from Jenny, we made our way back to campus and then collapsed until the movie began.

Saddest part of the entire day? Ashley and I were the only two who came to watch the movie. Iga-san, the dorm student coordinator and advisor made popcorn and brought down drinks for us as we watched the movie, which she does every movie night there at the JCMU. I felt like a glutton eating it all, but she went to all of the effort of doing it for the students and we were there, so why not. Eventually, towards the last 20 minutes of the movie, some kids did come down and watch, eating the remains of the popcorn Ashley and I just couldn’t stomach, but once more I felt like the students at school don’t appreciate or respect a lot of what the staff does for us.

After the movie had ended and everyone dispersed again, Ashley and I collected trash and then headed out to our bikes once more for the ride back to Nagahama. It was getting dark at this point, so we had to turn on our headlamps on our bikes as we rode to Hikone Station. We made the train just in time, but strangely enough the night train dumps the opposite section of its cars than the afternoon train does when it stops at Maibarra. This meant that despite getting lucky with a car that had enough seats open that we could sit down for the first five minutes of the train ride, we had to stand amongst a crowd once we got bumped to the other side of the train for the rest of the trip.

In Nagahama we also discovered that our bikes from our homestay don’t have functioning headlights (which is illegal in Japan). We weren’t really surprised. When we got home, we ran upstairs, took showers, and attempted to write postcards despite our sleepy states induced by too much sun exposure. I only finished one of the ten I have to write before having to go to bed. Being on the second floor is nice in a lot of places, but not in Japan when they don’t use AC. We got lucky last night with the storm bringing down the night temperature down a little, but otherwise everything just bakes up there in our room.

So far today we’ve been working in the main room that I had pictures of in the last post that is down stairs between the toilet and the shower room. It’s our oto-san’s art gallery, but also where our oka-san studies her English once a week and it has a nice long table for working on (despite having to sit on the floor to do so). It’s much cooler down here and we have a fan, easy access to the bathroom, and privacy for the most part provided our host parents don’t think that we’re trying to avoid them by being in here. I was writing out more postcards (which by the way, the stamps in Japan aren’t pre-adhesive or something. They’re very strange and Ashley and I are guessing that you just wet them and then adhere them? We’re going to ask our oka-san when the time comes to mail them out.) but I got distracted by the storm and then this monster of a post resulted from it. So, I will get back to writing to all of you lovely people, and write again after Jenny has found her way out here to Nagahama to go night shopping with us (it’s a help the natural disaster areas promotional sale kind of thing) and we have taken lots of pictures of the surrounding area.

It is now ten minutes to ten pm, and Ashley and I only got back about a half an hour ago from the train station after making sure Jenny made it on to the correct train to head back to Hikone.

Let’s back track for a little bit, shall we?

Before dinner today, Ashley and I walked around Nagahama and took pictures (since it was overcast-ish) within about a 15 minute walking distance of the homestay. Here are some of the better ones

Ashley and I have been snatching up every feather we find this trip. Like cats, they seem to signal a good day.

At 5 o’clock, we made sure to be back and cleaned up for dinner, which was ramen and shrimp dumplings for those of you who are curious, finishing up at about ten to 6 because that’s when Jenny was supposed to be on her way to Nagahama station to shop at the covered strip of shops between this house and the station. 

Being a little late for walking to the station, our oka-san offered to drive us there so that we’d get there before Jenny. We of course accepted and got to the station with a few minutes to spare before Jenny was supposed to show up. And so we waited right across from the ticket check machines.

And waited.

And watched as all of the train lines showed anywhere from a 3 minute to 30 minute long delay on arrival. A sign to our left kept cycling through all of the train lines in the area with a message saying ‘delayed, human damage accident’.

After about a half an hour or so, Ashley called Jenny who apparently was about to call her and was in hysterics. She was somewhere out in the boonies at a station that sounded something like Obama (we think it was Obu) and not on the right line. Ashley succinctly instructed her how to get back to Maibara station (a large enough station that most lines stop at regardless of whether they are a local train or an express) and that we would meet her there to bring her to Nagahama. As a little treat I suppose, we got a little air guitar performance by a Yan-san at the platform on our way there. Everyone else was avoiding him just as much as they avoid us, maybe even more.

A short train ride to Maibara for us, and we unloaded into the unexpectedly spider infested station of doom. They were literally dripping from the ceiling/rafters of the platforms and I immediately grabbed Ashley by the arm and told her to stare at her feet as she walked. Once we were safe upstairs in the station, I let Ashley know just what was all over the place and she tried really hard not to freak out.

At Maibara we called Jenny again to let her know that we had arrived, and then proceeded to wait and wait some more, at one point walking through the entire station looking for ice cream and finding NOTHING but more of Ashley’s favorite things. Jenny did show up though. At a quarter to 8. Going to the covered shopping was no longer an option and we talked for a bit about Jenny’s adventure and then sent her onto the correct track and headed off to our own.

…Where we basically ran into a brick wall. The trains were all going out of service and platforms were being switched back and forth and there were huge delays, all of those things being strange and rare for the Japanese train system. So, while we shuffled with the crowd of confused Japanese people from platform to platform watching trains roll by adorned with ‘not in service’ signs, Ashley took off her glasses and pretended to be blind/Toph from Avatar: The Last Airbender to avoid getting too paralyzed by the swarms of spiders creeping down from above. I swear there must have been thousands of the things. But we navigated safely without any additions to our party of two, and eventually made it cleanly onto a train headed the right direction.

We ended up walking through the covered shop area as everything was closing, but managed to buy a crepe each for our walk home. And as everyone knows, crepes make your whole day better. (And apparently make cats appear! We saw a whole pride of them on our way home.) Oka-san had waited up for us when we strolled in the house at a little after 9, and we said our goodnights and cleaned up for the night.

Another thing we ended up learning from today was how much it costs to take the Shinkansen from Maibara to Tokyo, round trip. 23100 yen ($270 or so). I will not be riding the Shinkansen again for as long as I am in Japan.

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SUNDAY - JOURNEY TO HIKONE CASTLE

For  starters, today was bound to be a good day because we saw a cat almost first thing when headed to the train station at a quarter to 1pm, but before that even we had a surprise (for us, Oka-san already had it planned and just let us know a minute before he arrived) visit from a Buddhist priest who dropped by to pray at the very nice altar that our host parents have in one of the nicer rooms of the house. We both got to sit in on his prayer and have our legs go numb on the tatami mat while he talked to us and asked Ashley about Christianity (a good choice on his part). Immediately following that (after Ashley learned how to walk again and both of our legs had proper blood flow) we got to talk to the priest’s younger sister’s children Kokoro-chan and Yuu-chan who were learning English. We also had a carpenter stop in at one point this morning while Ashley and I were working on our postcards (which are now sent out! Hopefully they reach you chosen few out there!)

Our main event of the day though was touring Hikone castle with Rory, his host mother Yoko-san, her two children, Ko-chan and Ha-chan, as well as Jenny and a kid from our class, Rizza-san. Together we clomped around the castle grounds taking pictures of everything in sight for somewhere around three hours. It was wonderful. The weather fell together to be just bearable enough with overcast skies, occasional drops of rain and a strong breeze, and we were able to peruse the museum as well as the castle itself for free since we were JCMU students. I’ll photo spam at the end of this post as there are bound to be many shots that I want to share.

There’s something to be said about how tough Japanese kids are. Ha-chan was 2, and older brother Ko-chan was 5, and every time they would fall and scrape something on the rocks as we climbed upwards in our journey today, there were no tears, no screaming, just careful pause to make sure they were still in one piece and then moved on with their day. Little Ha-chan was scared out of her mind and screaming going down one of the sets of stairs in the castle itself (stairs similar to the ones in our homestay…) and by the second set, she had emboldened herself and stayed quiet (though still visibly scared). I was very impressed.

We topped off the day with ice  cream, laughter, the sighting of black swans in the mote around the castle, and dinner/shopping at Al Plaza. It was a very pleasant and tiring day, and a great way to end the weekend.