Kagoshima and Ibusuki

It seems like every town in Japan worth a dot on the map has its own special thing. Ibusuki, down at the bottom of Kagoshima prefecture, has a couple.

Ibusuki is about an hour south of Kagoshima city, so when we went in August, we decided to make it a daytrip. I have a driver's license, so we decided to rent a car to go tooling around. I appreciate my fellow American's perspective, that roads and driving are not, in fact, scarier or in some way worse than doing battle with a small town bus schedule.

This was pretty much the nicest car I had driven in years.

I had looked up the tides the night before, and it turned out we were there during a spring tide (those are full or new moon tides, stronger than other times) and that low tide was to be at 11:45 or so. This meant we could walk out along this sandbar to Chiringa-jima, an island described as one of the most fragrant islands in Japan.

There's the island! 

All we have to do is walk across this little isthmus.

 It was a beautiful day to be at the beach, if you had like a swimsuit or that kind of stuff. Unfortunately, the sunny heat of a beach day makes for a pretty sad sand-hike if you only have 'real shoes' and clothes on. I seriously considered going for a dip clothes and all because I figured I was going to be approximately as soaked with my own sweat. The fact that the little fish looked like puffer fish and no one else was touching the water (not even the kids) is all that kept me out.

It's a beautiful scorching near-noon here on the hot sands.

We never made it to Chiringa-jima. It was too hot and we had plans to be bathed in sweat later. We moved on toward another of Ibusuki's wonders, the swirling somen restaurant.

Naturally, being around lunchtime, we were not the only people with this idea. There was a long line to get in to the restaurant which kept us waiting about 15 or 20 minutes despite the massive number of tables the restaurant seemed to contain.

The place is called Tosenkyo, and it's built in a valley blessed with a cold spring. Using the flow of cool water, every table has a water flow where the noodles swirl around so you can snag them and eat them. It also keeps the air down there relatively cool under the shade of the trees.

There are also lots of fish in the water. These fish are on the menu; always fresh!

After lunch, we headed toward Mt. Kaimon and Ikeda Lake. Ikeda is a caldera lake, and is home to giant eels. Mt. Kaimon is a volcanic peak.

The giant eels on display were just sad. 

Lake and Kaimon!

From there we drove down to Nagasakibana, where there is a shrine and a lighthouse.

The Ryugu shrine is connected to the legend of Urashima Taro. 

Urashima Taro is the turtle dude who opened the gift box containing "the span of a life." If that doesn't sound familiar, check it out here. 

Aaaand there's the lighthouse.

The lighthouse area was really beautiful, and is the southernmost point of... this part.. of this prefecture. Or something.

This is the pamphlet we were using to figure out where to go; there's no way we could have gone to as many things without driving. But the main draw of Ibusuki is its hot sand baths, which are famous as a beauty treatment and for cleaning the blood. It's also supposed to help with circulation and various other maladies, basically whatever is helped by being buried in hot sand (and the subsequent sweating you tend to do). Also it's just really fun -- who doesn't like being buried in sand?

The sand is hot because it's heated from below by the volcanic powers of the island which in this particular area tend to come up just under the beach.

I don't have any photos from our actual burial because you strip down as for any public bath/hot springs experience and emerge clad only in the provided cotton cloth yukata. Then you lie down in a shallow pit with your minitowel wrapped around your head so the staff can throw sand over you with their shovels. They were very no-nonsense about it; I felt like a giddy little kid.

We were up underneath that wooden thing in the background.  (photo cred)

As soon as you are buried, you can feel your heartbeat in you whole body. You're just throbbing from head to foot under the weight of hot sand. It's awesome. The other thing I tried was digging down just a little bit with my hands. Like a centimeter. The sand felt way hotter underneath.

Afterward you feel totally refreshed and look totally beautiful. (photo)

Just kidding. After ten minutes, maybe fifteen if you want extra baking, your yukata is sticking to you with sweat and you emerge, dust off, and go back up to the building for a regular water-type onsen bathing experience.

The hot sand is pretty much the main reason we went to Ibusuki, so once we were done there, we pretty much returned the car and took the train home to Mandi's house.

This is the view from her apartment of Sakurajima. And there it goes.

The next day, we were joined by Laureno just before I had to leave, so we used that time to visit a cat cafe (for my first time) and eat pastries for dinner (which was one of the worst decisions of that month).

I still maintain I would prefer a dog cafe. It would be way more relaxing (for me)!

Dinner.

How I felt on the train and for the next couple days. 

Ganbaru-sugi

In Japanese, there’s a word (sugiru) you can put on the end of another word to add the meaning of “too much.” I hear it a lot in kempo, attached to “far” or “close,” meaning, “You’re too close for that kick to work properly.” But you put it in verbs, too, like “eat,” and it means “to eat too much.”

So ganbaru is the verb for “to do one’s best.” In English it always comes out sounding a little weird, because we don’t have this exact idea. Sometimes kids will translate it as “fight!” which is occasionally appropriate, but in many contexts, hilariously not so. “Do your best!” Sounds a little patronizing and stilted, but it’s close to the meaning of the word. It means to strive to accomplish, I think, most especially in the face of difficulty.

Anyway, from time to time, I’d hear people sticking them together. Saying ganbari-sugiteru. That kid is doing his best too hard. Which was difficult for me to wrap my head around, because if you’re really doing your best, how can you over-do the best? It’s a superlative. If you aren’t giving it everything you have, then it’s not really your best, I mean, not to split hairs and stuff…

Of course it would fall beyond my grasp to get the idea of overdoing it. I like to overdo things. Overdo is how I DO, not always, but enough of the time that it seems normal to me. But that’s just in my nature, so for me, overdoing it a little is just how it gets done. It makes me a little nuts sometimes, but I’m pretty used to dealing with it. It does sometimes have negative effects, mostly stress things, but sometimes for me it’s just better to push myself harder than to feel like what if I had pushed it, but I didn’t, and I wasted an opportunity maybe.

Anyway, I’d like to tell the story of my latest ganbari-sugi adventure, because it’s the first one in my memory where I knew immediately that it was a ganbari-sugi thing; no retrospect necessary.

It started with the bus, the bike, and the broken car: I had a sore throat and a bunch of bike time under my belt that I was calling ‘training.’ I had a decision to make. If you’ve ever seen me make a decision, you know that this not only was painful but also took forever. I prevaricated right up to the train ticket vending machine, which is saying something, because to get to the ticket machine I had to drive an hour all the way to Himeji, bags packed and everything. Parked, packed, eye on the train schedule, I still wasn’t sure I was going.

I mean, I wanted to go. I wanted to meet new people, and spend a weekend biking because I never had before, and I was thinking about doing the PEPY Ride, and because I had worked up the training. I knew it meant a sore butt and legs, and probably sunburn, and that the trip there was expensive. The extra factor was that damn sore throat which had not gotten better, though it had not gotten bad enough to ground me entirely. I stood up and crouched back down about eight times. Finally, picturing what I might spend my weekend doing if I did NOT go, I bought tickets. Once I bought tickets I kind of had to go. So I went.

I’m not a cyclist, and I didn’t know much about the Oita Ride’s chosen charity before they mentioned it. I seem to get into a lot of bike charities, but it’s similar to my ski trips: I go because shit is worth doing. (That was the motto of the first Himeji Ride, actually: Shit is Worth Doin.) And if you don’t do it, you may never know HOW worth doin’ it is.

Our host for the night was a really nice volunteer, upon whose floor I fairly promptly passed out. She ended up hosting five people that night, and even gave us breakfast in the morning. On the train to the ride start area there were a lot of bikes in bags (apparently you have to take the wheel off for it to really be luggage. If you don’t, it’s just a bike in a bag) belonging to people with the t-shirts (or cycling jerseys) and stories to prove that they were far more serious cyclists than I.

Yeah!

We occupied the MaxValu parking lot in Sakanoichi, and although I was offered a road bike that would probably have made good time, I picked a mountain bike instead because I just liked it better. We weren’t going to be off-roading, but I prefer the solidity of the fatter tires and shocks to the nimble speed of a road bike.. I didn’t need speed, I was taking the slow scenic route. I never so much as considered anything else.

After orientation and information, route maps and optional detours were explained, and we were finally on our way. I fell in with another who didn’t really know anyone there who planned to take the slow route and we were joyfully off, glad to be on bikes moving down the sidewalk, hearing the sounds of several elementary sports day festivals as we went by.

At a road-station along the sea, where we encountered our first bike casualty.  I didn't have my camera (sand repairs post-Korea), so I took a couple shots with the phone.

It was like a cycling picnic for me. There were support cars that would park here and there along the route to provide directions, refill water bottles, pass out healthy (and not so healthy) snacks, and generally just give the sense that you were not on your own out there even if you were the very last of the riders (which we were not quite). Someone had made the most delicious cookies in the world (or so they did seem at the time) with imported ingredients from Costco, and there was fruit in abundance, along with Clif bars, and a bunch of other stuff I haven’t seen, much less eaten, in years. Spotting a support car was usually cause to hit the brakes. Woo! Snacktime!

This is them loading up in the morning.

We didn’t get lost and we didn’t feel beat that first day. The air smelled like blooming flowers and like the sea, the vistas were great, and the sky was overcast by turns, making it just cool enough to enjoy. I was riding with some cool people from different parts of Kyushu. Joanna and I made a detour to see the Stone Buddhas of Usuki, where it was nice to get off the bike and walk around a little.

With Joanna on the road. This is early in the ride because I'm still actually wearing the backpack.

There was one major hill on the route, which I wouldn’t call steep, because it was certainly bike-able, but it was a hell of a grind. I’m proud of myself in that I did the whole thing. I think I heard it was 12km altogether, 6 up and 6 down, which is grueling and seemingly endless upward, steep enough to put you in 1^st gear and make you hate it. I did stop twice to drink some water, but I biked the whole hill at my own pace.

At the top of the hill was the hill tunnel. Now, we were informed that the second day would not contain the hill because we would take a tunnel instead. A very scary tunnel nicknamed TOD (tunnel of death) because it was a narrow thing 2km long with no sidewalks and peopled by drivers that didn’t give much heed to bikers. So we had a healthy fear of TOD, but since TOD has such a reputation, it was incredibly well-handled by our support cars this year. The hill tunnel was therefore the scariest thing ever.

On the way up the hill, I was loath to stop unless I really had to, because I just couldn’t let go of my momentum. There were cars on the hill but I skipped them. There was a car at the hill tunnel entrance, and I didn’t realize that the tunnel was the top or I might have paused in my relentless pursuit of the summit for a second to receive more information from them than “Wait! Well, just be really careful in the tunnel.”

It was dark. Most tunnels have some lighting, you see, dim orange glowing things set in the ceiling. Not so this almost makeshift looking hill tunnel. It was short, or fairly short, but very narrow. It wasn’t heavily traveled, but there were these trucks that would pass us on the hill going up or down, maybe coming from the cement factory on the other side. I went into the tunnel and I turned on my light. By its illumination I saw that some of the gutter covers on the far left were missing, which means the gaijin trap was set and open. I didn’t want to fall into THAT; it also made me realize that there might be pits anywhere in the road that I wouldn’t see. I moved more toward the middle (insofar as I could tell where the middle was), and then a truck entered the tunnel coming toward me from the far end. I swallowed and for the first time since I’d started the hill, a thought made its way into my mind. That thought was, I might die.

Luckily, the rest of me didn’t care much for this thought and just did what it had been doing for the last 6km, which was keep your head down, find the right path, go fast enough to get the ef out of there asap, but not so fast that you risk shit. And soon it was over, and I was back out in the sunlight, and more than that, the road was curving down. Sat on the side of the road to get my senses back, and until Joanna appeared out of the tunnel too.

The rest was kind of a blur. After the hill I felt more ‘done,’ and I could no longer take a deep breath without inviting a small coughing fit. I knew that didn’t bode well, but I also knew that if I needed it, there was a kei-truck into which my bike could be thrown, so we just kept on. Eventually after what seemed like (and was) a long way, we made it to camp, which was a collection of cabins on a rough beach. Stretched, showered, ate, tried to stay up socializing and avoiding mosquitoes, failed, and passed out on the small pile of blankets I’d folded up in my bunk.

Day one, complete.

Day two, staato!

Sunday though, Sunday. I didn’t feel fresh and hot to trot, but I knew that no one must really feel that way. Everyone had a sore ass already, who wants to mount up then? I did let someone know that my cold had kept up with me (I could take deep breaths again after I got warmed up that morning though) and I might not finish the ride. Then we rolled out! That day’s potential detour was the Marriage Rocks (Futamigaura), for which we missed the turn and I actually voted to backtrack to them because they were the only thing on my menu for that day other than just go back to the starting point.

They were nice.

The rest was just riding back, in a little more pain with a little less juice than the day before. While waiting for TOD, we met an old man with about four teeth who was digging up take-no-ko (“bamboo’s children” .. it’s a food) on the slope below our car pulloff area. He gave us a whole bag of them, and added he would give us the second bag, but he had to give it to his girlfriend or she wouldn’t let him do naughty things. Laughing, he drove away.

After TOD, I began to lag more and more behind our small group which was still one of the last one or two. I couldn’t imagine where they were getting the energy to keep up the pace they were going. At some point, I might have pulled over and given my bike back to the truck, rode along in one of the cars that stuck with us slower riders, cheering us on.. but I never did because I’m stubborn or stupid or tough or all three. By the very end, I was the second to last person to arrive back at MaxValu. I promptly began to cry, which is embarrassing but motivated entirely by exhaustion. I heard it being discussed that maybe they were tears of joy at having finished the ride, but I didn’t know how to explain that it wasn’t really joy, nor was it pain or sadness or any kind of negative thing.

 I didn’t feel negatively, nor positively.. didn’t feel hungry or much of anything else either, just tired. I had completed 140km over two days with a cold and during a bad time of month. It’s something to be proud of, I’m sure, but at the moment I didn’t feel that either. Normally after adventures I arrive home wanting three things: a shower, some dinner, and to go to bed. None of them can be done simultaneously, unfortunately. At that moment, though, I was almost too tired to sleep. It’s a really strange feeling that I’ve only had a few times in my life. I feel like there’s something special about giving it so much of your everything that by the end you really are just emptied.

All in all, I really am glad I went, and I would do it again (preferably in a better state, and maaaybe with more training under this belt), because that shit was definitely worth doing. Even over-doing.

I don't quite remember this..

When I got home to Shiso, I discovered a bunch of mosquito bites on my feet that I must have gotten while sleeping. For the rest of the week I looked like I had the pox!

the bike, the bus, and the broken car

I just love the way that things come together and the way that they fall apart. I want to tell this story for very little other reason than that it's funny to me. It's long as hell, so if you skip this one, I'll understand. ^_^

So first, let me refresh you on our cast of characters. First, The Bike:

China Downtown. Nowadays she is a little more rust-spotted, and the front basket is all bent because this one time we had a typhoon which sent her crashing to the ground.  Her story is here.

I had thought about biking to school before, especially when the weather was nice. I see high schoolers doing it all the time, which speaks to me that it isn't really all that hard, and come on Lem, you are certainly fit enough to do it if they are, aren't you? I mean, aren't you? I even did bike up to Ichi a time or two, for afternoon events where parking would be hard to come by. But there was always a reason not to do it, that reason mostly being time. It takes longer to bike than it does to bus, and I have a hard enough time catching the bus some mornings.. the idea of leaving early enough to make it to work on time by bike was daunting, and always ultimately overthrown.

But on nice mornings, as I watched high schoolers biking by from the bus window, I would sigh and think, if only I could get my shit together. Alas.

As you already know, I have a weakness for charity bike rides, as best evidenced by my twice-yearly leading of the PEPY Ride Himeji since the spring of my first year. So of course I was interested in the Oita Ride, which sounded cooler and cooler the more I read about it (and also more and more insane for someone like me who cannot really call herself a cyclist). There are a lot of issues with this, mostly being the ride is in OITA and though it is on a weekend, the logistics of getting to and from Oita in the time available is a bit daunting (and expensive). But ticket prices be damned, if Japan has anything, we have speedy trains!

So I signed up (shut up brain). And some of the emails were like, you should do some training, bike some more, try to spend some time biking, and I knew that biking to work would be a good way to get that time in... because it would serve so many purposes at once and would even be kind of good for me; still I could not get my crap together and budget that extra 40 minutes.

Unrelatedly, I had to go to the BOE a couple of times to ask about visa things and return plane ticket request forms. At the end of my second visit, my BOE contact added, something to the effect of, oh, one more thing, don't drive to school, only bus. And I was too surprised to say anything but yes.

(Cast member the car: Robin Red:)

My tiny and oh-so-recognizably red vehicle.

But later, that 'reminder' began to stew for all its implications.

First of all, I get that taking the bus is better for me and the environment in a lot of ways. The bus gives me time to chill out, read, look out the window mindlessly, sometimes even nap awkwardly. It gives me a good excuse to leave earlier than other people (I don't make the schedule! I just gotta follow it... ^_____^ heh, bye guys!) at work, and removes the carbon footprint I'd leave k-car-ing up to Ichi and back every day. It's true.

But there are times and places in which it just makes more sense for me to drive. One is when I plan to spend the whole day in Ichi (when I have adult class from 7:30 to 9, as there are no buses after 9, I have to drive myself-- but if I am going to be driving there and back once anyway, why waste the time of busing back home and driving back up there between school and the evening class?). Another is when I go to small elementary: rather than either rush a connection (making bus connections at all  ;_;) or wait half an hour for the connection (which gets me there late anyway..!), it's way less stressful to just handle it and bring myself to school at whatever time I think is necessary or important based on what I am doing and what materials I need time to arrange.

Other less legit reasons include having stuff I need to do, like wanting to hit the bank or post office or grocery store for lunch in the middle of the day. Or having stuff to do on the way home. Or suspecting that we might get out early and wanting to be able to just go when the VP gives the word. Perhaps less legit, but they have been reasons all the same.

But mostly, the 'reminder' was upsetting because it implied more than a lack of sense. It meant, we know you've been driving, and we take enough note of it to say something about it.

See, in Japan, they have this handy way of dealing with stuff. There is the official line, and then there is what actually happens. Back home, this line is a bit blurred most of the time. Everyone knows there is the Way It's Supposed to Be, and then the Way It Is, with the Supposed to Be actually being a sort of ideal that is hardly ever achieved. In Japan, Supposed-to-Be is more like a set of rules that may or may not make sense, and then the Way It Is is just the thing that happens while the higher ups cheerfully look the other way. Which has been the way this whole driving thing has been handled by everyone here for a long time.

I know that other JETs have also been driving daily when "not supposed to," and that no one ever said anything to them. My own teachers and staff have sometimes joked with me about how "it's a secret" that I drove that day. It's not a secret; everyone knows, we just don't talk about it and pretend I take the bus every day-- I drive rarely enough that it's not predictable anyway!

The other irksome thing is this. I'm a grown-ass woman. I do my job and I don't make trouble. Most people around here like me, and those who don't at least don't have it out for me. After three years, trust me to handle this. Because really, I got this. I do need help in some things, but in a lot of others, I think I can be allowed to make the call, because I'm not a little kid anymore.

The other paranoia-inducing part is, this must mean someone sold me out. Because I highly doubt that the BOE people are concerned enough about it to ride by my house and note when my car is missing during a weekday. So this leads a person to stare shiftily around the staff room wondering which of these two-faced jerks is perfectly nice to my face but in the evening sells me out to the higher-ups, and for what?

Basically it made me really, irrationally mad. And was also the little push of rage I needed to start biking to school! Don't drive, you say? Only BUS, you say? What about my bike, jerks?! I'll show you!!

..yeah. I'm not really showing anyone. But I did start biking to school, because I finally got over being embarrassed about being seen doing it (the one time I had brought my bike to school after going to fall festival, the kids completely missed the part where they were supposed to be impressed with my strength and power and were more making fun of my bike for being a 'mamachari' -- which I now know actually includes the word mama, which is just what it sounds like, and it means instead of gaining cool points, I lost them for not having a sporty bike, wtf) the day I put "please donate money to Oita Bike Ride" flyers on all the desks and a colorful donation box on my own. Now, it might all make sense. Emily bikes to school not because she is insane, or stupid, or irrationally mad and trying to stick it to the man, but because she is training for her upcoming event!

On the day I went to small elementary, it was raining, so I took the two buses I am supposed to take. As I dolefully prepared to go home, the principal of that school asked me, "Are you going to drive home now?" to which I replied with a sad sigh, "No. I'm taking the little bus."

"Oh," he said, "I think it's better." 

Aha. Of course. The guy who is always like "Are you driving home now?" and then "Be careful." What are you worried about? That the road is too narrow, this road I've taken six dozen times? That I can't drive well? Why, because I'm a woman? Because I'm a foreigner? Because I learned on the right? Because I left that "beginner" sticker in my window out of laziness and because people are generally kinder to you when you have it, even though I've been driving for almost a decade? Do you think it's others I will hurt with my car, or me? Why don't you believe in me?!

The irrational anger was back with a rage-spiced vengeance for this poor guy who is only trying to look out for me by telling the BOE to tell me not to drive to school, as I now believe happened. Nonetheless, the discovery did help me feel more at ease about my upcoming days -- days on which I wanted to drive because I wanted to skip out early, mostly (all errands or departure for Oita, actually).

One of those days was Thursday. Because of inconveniently timed rain, my poor bike remained in the large-elementary parking lot (more like parking pit, kinda) Wednesday night as well. I drove to large-elem Thursday, but on the way noticed that something about Robin Red didn't feel quite right. Usually, I notice a smell or a sound first, but this time it was a feel. She had been acting a little weird when idling, sometimes running high in RPMs for no reason, but I had never driven her farther than to kempo or Jusco, both approximately six minutes away, and I hadn't called the car people about it yet. I studied the dash for a moment. Shit. The temperature gauge was high, not quite in the red zone, but way higher than normal and way higher than okay.

I was almost to school, so I figured I'd just try to make it there and turn her off so she could cool down. She died right in the road when I stopped, waiting to turn in to the school driveway. I managed to coax her to restart while all of Thursday morning traffic waiting, and nudged her down into the gravel parking pit, where she came to rest right next to China, shuddered, and died parked at a funny angle.

I hopped out and looked around. Shit shit shit. Not supposed to even drive to school, having done so for shady reasons, needing a car that afternoon to "go and come back" running errands-- but this time all the way to Himeji, goodness. I thought about procrastinating the phone call to the car people, because they might not be open yet, it's before 8am, and there might be a Scene, and the school will have to openly acknoweldge that I drove, and...

Sucked it up, called them anyway. The car people are kind of personal friends of ours these days, so I told them as best I could what had happened, and about how I needed to use the car later that day to.. do some stuff... "We'll give you a loaner," she explained, "but the only one we have right now is a bigger car than yours. Like one that six people can ride in. Is that okay?" Blink. A real car. No, more than that, a van. They're giving me a van! Question of how I think I'll get China home when I planned to drive both Thursday and Friday? answered.

After school, I walked down to the parking pit and was pretty much flabbergasted to see the van neatly parked between China Downtown and the edge of the gravel area by the wall where Robin had expired at a funny angle. Someone has maneuvering powers. I was delighted; I rarely get to drive a real car here in Japan these days.

I climbed aboard this beast and was instantly rewarded with songs of flight and power. It achieved so effortlessly the speeds which Robin shrieks and whines to attain. China Downtown fit into the back without so much as touching the front seats. And I felt like I had just gained like 600 more badass points, not to mention I was now driving incognito! No one who has seen Robin Red will expect to find me piloting this beast, this boat, this whale of a car, which for the time I have it, I will be calling Diesel (because that, my friends, is the type of fuel it requires). And if anyone is like, "why wasn't Robin parked at your house the other day?" I can be like, "Because she is in the shop!" I only wish I had some kind of party to take all my friends to, because when I drive Diesel, I feel like I'm driving a bus. And I kind of am.

This car is twice the size of Robin. TWICE.

So IS any one part of this a blessing, or a curse? I can't really tell. It's complicated and silly. The icing on this long and nearly pointless tale is, I have developed a sore throat and I might not be able to go to Oita this afternoon after all. And I'm not saying that the sore throat is a result of any particular thing, but in my experience, I only get sick when I get stressed out/unhappy. So, there's that. I would call it irony, but I think irony is more like layering, and this story is more like interlocking pieces. It may be that I can't actually afford to go to Oita (timewise? money?) and am stubborn enough not to care, so the universe is forcing me to reconsider. Still, the event sounds awesome and I if I miss it, I will be very very sad.

Kagoshima by the Skin of my Teeth

this is the last of the entries I wrote, or mostly wrote, on the train to Tokyo. It's the most fun of them, though! ^_^ Er. The most fun to read, not to experience.

October 7^th, 2011.

It was a three-day-weekend. One should know better.

I began my journey into well-paid-for hedonism by taking off work early. The situation was nearly perfect: with four morning classes, then lunch, I should be basically free to go once lunch was finished on Friday afternoon. I would have been, but for speech contest practice all the damn time. But, begging out of that, and giving my heartfelt yoroshikus to those in charge, I slipped off while the third years took their tests in what would have been, for me, a post-lunch fog of dreadful sleepiness.

Having left work early, I enjoyed enough time to finish packing and preparing my house for departure, distracted only a bit by the re-Japanated Miriam.

She is only a little distracting.

On a good day, it takes 45 minutes to get to Himeji, so I made sure I had at least an hour and 15. I wanted to be on the 4:30 bus to the airport, although since domestic flying in Japan suggests you check in at least 20 (twenty) minutes before your flight is scheduled to leave, I figured that in a pinch, the 5:30 would get me there at 6:50, which was just enough time for my 7:15 flight to Kagoshima City.

Oh, naivety.

  

I made great time until about halfway up the bypass highway, when I met traffic so hideous, it drove me to exit and try my hand at the surface roads instead. Riddled with stoplights, they were not much better. I watched 4:30 arrive but blocks from the bus station, aware that I still had to park and walk to the gate anyway. Shit. Oh well, there was still the 5:30.

I parked in the cheap section and dragged myself and my bag to the bus terminal. 4:48. Fuck it, I thought, I’ll go have a donut and eat this banana I carried along with me for some reason. The donut was subpar. I sat around for a bit, took a call about speech contest skit preparation from my former vice principal, and sat around a bit more before I heard some kind of announcement regarding airport buses. I couldn’t understand enough of it to know what was going on, but I did see that my bag was the only one in the airport bus line. It was 5:15 I poked my head out the door to see if I could see the airport bus, worried that the announcement had said “Well if there isn’t anyone who wants to take the airport bus, we ain’t sendin it!” No, it was far worse than that.

An oldish bald dude appeared as if from nowhere, and asked me where I was going. When I said Itami, he asked me what time my flight would be. He did all this in more than passably good English. I told him 7:15 and he said regretfully, “I don’t think you can take your flight. The highways are very crowded.” Well no shit, I had seen that myself in attempting to make it to Himeji on time. Of course. “You should take the shinkansen,” he said, “that is the best way. Only take shinkansen.” I thanked him and went outside to try to call my Wervs, in distress over the idea of spending 200 bucks on a shink ticket to Kagoshima when I’d already thrown 110 on a flight thinking I was saving money by doing so. At this point I was wondering, should I even go? Was it worth it, after a week like the one I’d had, and before the week I knew was to come? Was this a sign that I should just give in and take a damn rest for goodness sake?

I didn’t have her number in my phone, so I texted her instead with a plea that she give me a call.

But then it dawned on me that the little old man might have been talking not about taking a shink to Kagoshima, but rather to Osaka, and from there getting myself to the airport via train. Trains run at the same speed no matter how road traffic is going. With this revelation, I looked around to ask him, but he had vanished as mysteriously as he had appeared.

I power-walked to the train gate at Himeji station and asked a train guy what the fastest way to Itami was, and how long it might take. He gave me a wishy-washy answer that amounted to, I’m not sure you’ll get there as soon as you want to.

I dithered for exactly one minute more, then thought, fuck it, I will be way more upset if I don’t at least try my best to get my ass on that plane. I can deal with whether or not to take a shink to Kagoshima and spend a ton of extra money once I have really missed my flight, because I haven’t really missed it yet.

And thus began my training for the hit TV show, The Amazing Race.

I bought a nonreserved ticket from a machine and hotfooted it to the platform, taking the first Nozomi to come down the track. I was on my phone’s browser for the entire duration of the half-hour ride, figuring out exactly how to get from Shin-Osaka to the airport. Turns out, you have to take the subway from Shin-O, then connect to the monorail from the subway.

Thing is, connections never mean you hop off one train and onto the other. Usually they involve walking through a station, then through a tunnel or walkway of indeterminate length, then into a new station, where you wait on a platform for the next train to come. It takes way longer than anyone (I) ever reckons because all that time, one is in motion; so while time spent on a train is felt as time passing, time spent moving to a train is less easily felt. 

But I knew, this time, that it would be there, and would make all the difference. So I jogged from the shink/JR area all the way across Shin-O (which I quite thankfully know rather well by now) station and to the red subway line, bound for the outskirts of the city. I never got a seat on any of the trains that came after, but that’s how weekend (especially long weekend) travel is. I texted Wervs to tell her it was giri-giri (going to be close!).. Then I jogged (with all my shit on my shoulders, mind you) from subway station to monorail station, a farther jaunt than I liked. Then I basically bolted down the walkway from the monorail to the airport doors, aware that by then it was 7:00 and my flight was leaving in fifteen minutes, and holy shit.

I ran haplessly past a lit sign that proclaimed the check-in for my flight was officially closed and called out to a woman who looked like she was on her way somewhere. “To Kagoshima!” I whimpered, helpless against the motion of time.

“Do you have a reservation?” she asked, moving toward a check in counter, “Do you have ID?” I basically threw my driver’s license at her as I shifted my bags. “Is this okay for carry-on luggage?” I asked, still panting, still sweating.

“It’s fine,” she confirmed, “gate 23, go!”

The line at security was too long for me to wait in. I showed my “hi, my plane leaves in ten minutes” boarding pass to someone near the line and she pushed me to the front, asking the pardon of people behind me, who nodded sagely, perhaps pitying, perhaps silently tsk-tsking this panting, sweaty foreign girl-child.

Once through security, I jogged the remaining length of the airport (because gate 23 was, for some reason, at the end of the entire thing) to find the tail end of the plane’s boarding line still being processed. I dropped into my airplane seat, wishing I could take off my shirt. Since domestic flying allows you to take along a water bottle (provided they take a smell of it, and why shouldn’t they, when you can take all those things on a train and go to the same place?), I chugged some water and sent a quick text to Wervs to tell her I had made it.

Having no checked baggage let me waltz out of the airport as soon as we landed, and I was one of the first in line awaiting the bus back toward the city center. I stuffed a combini egg-salad-and-ham (yeah, I dunno either, Japan) sandwich into my face because in the mad dash I had had no time for such trivial things as dinner. From there, Wervs met me and we took the bus back to her apartment, where I plopped down onto her couch and passed out into oblivion.

So you would think that at this point, we were done. Wervs had it under control from here. Yeah, we thought that too.

We had reserved tickets on the 10am Toppy speed boat to Yakushima. We figured if we left around 9, that should give us plenty of time to get to the port and sort it all out and settle into our seats before the boat sailed. It was all going to be perfect: our hostel was right next to the port on the island, and we could rent a car just meters from the dock. It was all going to be just. perfect.

So we got out of the house at 9, and we got the 9:10 bus toward the city and the port, and by 9:45 Wervs was getting antsy, but I was old hat at this game by now, and I, without knowing exactly what bus stop we wanted, or exactly how far that bus stop was from our current location, or thereafter exactly how far it was from bus stop to port, was convinced that we would make it. We would make it or… well, we would make it. The bus stop appeared. 9:50. Time to start jogging again.

Wervs said, “there’s always one in a few hours.. and it only takes an hour longer on the water..” I began to jog. “I can’t run!” she insisted, her hiking boots hindering her. I didn’t know what to say to that. I might have said “I’m sorry,” I might have said “I know,” but whatever I said, I kept running, sure that if even just one of us made it to the counter by the water, they would hold the boat long enough for both of us to climb aboard.

I kept glancing at my watch and what I saw there was encouraging. It was only 9:55 and the port was in sight. We would make it to the island in time to spend more than just the night there, today.

At the counter, Wervs presented the paper she’d printed out regarding our reservation. The woman began asking if we’d already paid for the tickets, and we explained we hadn’t, and wanted to pay her now.

If you didn’t pay for them, she explained, they don’t exist. She pointed to a line of kanji-ridden Japanese that must have spelled out what she said next. You have to pay within 4 days of making the reservation, or it gets canceled automatically.

We glanced at each other, then turned back to her. “Okay, that’s fine. Let’s buy new tickets.”

I’m afraid the 10am boat is sold out.

Naturally. Another exchanged glance. “So we’ll be on the 1pm?”

That one is also sold out.

A breath. The 3:15 would get us to the island around sundown, just in time to not do anything outside or see anything interesting. But what else could we do?

The next available opening is the 3:15, she pointed out on the schedule, would you like a reservation there?

We readied our cash. Since we’d been getting round-trip tickets, and our returning boat reservation had also been canceled, we had to settle for the only open boat coming back on Monday, the 7am. If anyone cancels for the 1pm, we will notify you and you can take those seats, she offered helpfully.

“That would be so great!” I enthused, shrugging some of the run-to-the-port sweat off my brow.

We shouldered our shit and began to back away from the counter, but just then she called out to us again. Apparently, something was changing.

There is another possibility, it seemed like breaking news, there are two spots.. they are very narrow and uncomfortable. But these were the faces of two young women who did not give a crap about that, at this point. All we wanted was to be on that boat. Let me perch atop my baggage in the aisle for all I care.

In the spot where they write the seat number on the ticket, she wrote something like “ho 2” and “ho 1” on ours, and an attendant jogged (yes jogged) us out to the dock to catch the boat as it was just about to leave. 

The cabin attendant led us to our seats. One was the jumpseat in front of the back door on the first floor; the other was the jumpseat in the back of the second floor. They were pretty uncomfortable, but I just couldn’t believe our good luck that there were exactly two such fold-out fake chairs on the boat, and someone thought to let us use them. I wondered again if this was what it felt like to be on The Amazing Race.

Add Wervs has a brighter, more open jumpseat; mine was wedged behind the last row of chairs on the first level.

From Kagoshima by the Skin

By 12:45 we were on the island. But… Yakushima has two major port cities (I say that like they are major port cities.. they are the two ports on the island, and perhaps the two largest cities there). One is Miyanoura, location of our hostel and biggest little city on the place. The other is Anbo.

Guess which one we're at.

From Kagoshima by the Skin

There was, however, an Orix up the road from the port, so we began to walk. We passed a small rent-a-car company and paused, considering it, watching the old dude in charge set groups up with little k-cars. We thought maybe the other place might be cheaper, so we began to haul our stuff in that direction. As soon as we came to anything even remotely like a hill, and my phone told us we still had a five minute walk ahead of us, I stopped to question the wisdom of this venture.

“If we rent from here, we can return it right here, next to the port we’re leaving from Monday morning,” I reasoned, “so even if it’s a few bucks more, I don’t mind paying for that kind of convenience.” Not after all we’d been through.

So we went back. But now, most of the cars were gone from the lot. We watched as a group of five dudes too the last white-plate in visible range. The old guy looked us over, a bit wary. “So you got a Japanese license?” he asked. I proudly threw it on the counter, and was rewarded with a “subarashii!”

I pointed out the 48-hour rental rate and asked if that was what we’d get for a k-car. He said, we have no cars left. This was no problem.. we could just go to Orix, although I was a little pissed that by wasting time, we’d let the nearest-to-Anbo-port car rental get away. But before I could regroup, he went on, so we’ll give you a discount! He then yelled to a younger guy walking around the tiny car lot, hey, clean up that car, would you? And thus we were given the company crap car, and at a discounted rate.

At this point, we were so happy to be in the island, and free. We drove to Miyanoura and checked in, then spent the rest of the daylight hours exploring via the one main road that rings the island, about a three-hour drive around, although we also made some stops. We stopped at a few overlooks, a couple beaches, and some waterfalls, and enjoyed the winding forest path portion of this “main” road.

When we got back to the hostel, the dude there assured us that the hike to Jomon-Sugi (the like 7000 year old tree) was indeed possible, if we woke up at about 5 and got our early. We didn’t even have to discuss that: not bloodly likely; we were going to take it easy (at this point that meant sleeping the hell in), because we were on vacation, dammit.

Sunday, we rolled out at our leisure to explore the hiking trails of Shiratani, famed for being an inspiration to Miyazaki’s work Princess Mononoke.

Overall, I’m going to let the photos do most of the talking for me after this point. The island is pretty much amazing, and my only irritations were that, because of that, it’s pretty popular, so the trails were kind of crowded (of course our timing has something to do with this as well). They do take pretty good care of conservation up in there, though, and the sights were totally breathtaking. Everything in that forest was alive. The trees were alive (even the dead ones), the rocks were alive, the moss and river and mud were all alive. I can see why the used to think of it as a forest full of gods.

At some point a guide-type guy told us that in the old days, when the rulers of Kagoshima used to get their cedar planking from Yakushima's forests, the island's forests were barred to women: only men, and I believe he said important men, were allowed in to work in the sacred space. 

There are no photos of the onsen adventure on principal; I feel bad because it was wervs’ first onsen experience, and it was the most crowded naked space I have ever been in. I’m pretty comfy with onsen etiquette by now, but it’s not the kind of place I would have wanted to be a first-timer.

And that's how I did Yakushima! 

Then I ran myself right out of money

I joked around with the idea of driving to Kagoshima this weekend, rather than taking the classy-world-traveler shinkansen. I mean, it's like a ten hour drive, and ~$125 or so in tolls, plus gas. Plus the rest of my sanity, of course. I'm already plotting a cross-continental USA [andCanada!] tour for when I return to America.. I'm going to have to stock up on snacks, CDs, podcasts, and maybe a new car.

I was only joking about Kagoshima, because honestly I was already kind of annoyed at the way it's going to be a four-hour train ride, which means what with the way I felt the need to come to work this morning, I won't get there til about dinnertime, and I'll have to rush a little even then (BUT, I have no right to complain.. they just finished the Kyushu shinkansen improvements, which are actually shaving more than two hours off my trip!). I came to work on time today because I thought I needed to impress the New Vice Principal (about the loss of the previous one, I am still kind of inconsolable, even though it's great that he went off and became a principal somewhere) but New VP isn't even here yet, and I'm thinking of leaving even earlier than planned. Because getting on my way for longer-distance travel always takes about twice as long as I want it to.

But the joke is on me, because, as I mentioned yesterday, I basically bullied everyone into making their plans for Golden Week (the 29th of April, 3rd, 4th, and 5th of May are all holidays). Which means payment for our airline tickets is due by tomorrow. But two of our companions are currently out of the country. I assured them I could cover their ticket cost until they get back and reimburse me, confident as I am in my nicely padded bank account. It was only after I chatted with a friend about her financial worries that it dawned on me that this might not be true.

I hurried home and managed to scrape together the cash for three plane tickets to Okinawa and train tickets to Kagoshima (the train is quite a bit more expensive, but I'm still unsure how I feel about flying.. or did I never actually finish writing that post?) only by raiding the secret caches of money I have hidden in my life and writing IOUs to the box of PEPY money that's been waiting for the spring fundraiser. And then I had to scrape up a little more for incidentals like the fact that the secretary approached me yesterday to collect on that party we all went to Monday night (was that really a hundred-dollar dinner? I guess..), and any hope I have of, like, eating, this weekend. I'm thanking my luck stars I'm staying with Manderines and not in a hostel, however low-budget!

And I made it, just barely, but I did. And I did not feel smug at all.
So today I logged into my bank account in the US, and then I felt a little better. I don't actually have a lot of money, but I do have a lot more than I ever had on my own before, so that's something. I also suspect that when the world ends in 2012, how much money you have won't matter much.

KobeConference

It’s one of those days where I feel like I have a real job because I dressed all professionally. I took new pantyhose (I like never wear hose) out of their box, put them on under my skirt, and they lasted like a whole 48 minutes without getting a run..!

I just finished my assignment for Kobe conference. And it’s actually pretty damn good, all things considered. All things being, total apathy toward KobeConference assignments (since last year we spent approximately twelve minutes discussing the reports of eight people), a pile of other stuff to do (situation normal), and the directions for the assignment being (and now I’m quoting, because this shit is hilarious) “every participant is requested to prepare one lesson plan that was effective in having students experience a lot of language activities.” The next page details how to format your report (lesson plan? report? essay?) in terms of font, margins, number of words per line and lines per page (no shit). It also provides the title of your.. one page: "”How to Make Team-Teaching Class More Effective in Having Students Experience A Lot of Language Activities.”

I feel like.. if I wanted to poke fun at my mid-year conference’s effectiveness, I could not have done any better. Bless its little heart.

Kobe Conference, actually, is much more about meeting all the Hyogo JETs, having dinner in Kobe, happy hour with said Hyogo JETs, and being strategically placed near movie theatres on Friday when Harry Potter hits the ground in Japan (armed, of course, with our old graduation robes and homemade AWESOMENESS wands! …Just me?).

Apparently it is also about proximity to the Kobe-Sanda shopping outlets for the weekend.

I mean.. I should be exasperated that I’m going to a conference when I should be teaching elementary school (because I’ll do a lot more good in elementary than I will in Kobe, maybe), but I like playing business sometimes.

I disregarded the instructions for the assignment and made it a modified chart-form like I always see lesson plans laid out, and much like I lay them out for myself every other day when I create them for elementary school anyway. Maybe my radical methods will stand out. My lesson plan isn’t half bad either. I think “a lot of language activities” means all four areas (speaking, listening, reading, writing), so I just pulled/modded a day’s lessons we did with the first year class a few months ago that seemed to cover most of them.

Come on language teachers. Let’s not do more. Let’s do less, and do it better. Kids don’t need to learn a thousand more words. They need to learn how to actually use the thousand they are already expected to know.

There are three kinds of people in this world.

Those who can count, and those who can’t.

In line for Pirates of the Caribbean.

It happened again. I’ll give you three guesses.

Tokyo this weekend was really cool. And by cool I mean hotter than four hundred hells. I had an image in my head of what the “classy” picnic would be like at the American embassy… it was instead a roasting hot sweatfest which had The Italian, Aa-chan, and myself drunkish at 2pm. I was glad I at least had not worn pants.

Shade was hard to come by, but we found a spot by this embassy garden area to generally be American.

We wandered into a shrine just outside the embassy gates with ten-yen omikuji (fortunes). Ours were pretty good.

I felt classy on the way there, though, because I was sitting pretty in my shinkansen seat, watching the morning world go by at bullet-like speeds, looking country-girl chic in my fluffy black dress and little straw hat (like all the Osaka girls wear). Once we got outside it was more like Sparta (see: madness), but that’s just August in.. anywhere.

But it was good to see The Italian (not a JET) and Aa-chan (a retired JET), my “Vanderbuddies,” as I playfully called them, and just sort of feel reconnected. I was worried that I would go all the way to Tokyo and only have a marginally okay time; that wouldn’t be anyone’s fault, really… I’ve been a bit out of it and distracted and on the whole a little emotionally unhinged lately. I assumed that no matter what I did this weekend, I wouldn’t enjoy it overmuch, but that I ought to do something. I had scheduled myself for Tokyo and Disneyland. Might as well.

But actually, it was rather fun. I got to see a bit more of Tokyo (Akihabara, for one), and a bit more of my friends.

We visited the SquareEnix store. Not in Akihabara. This is Sephiroth. IN THE FLOORING. We walked over him once without seeing him because we were staring at the merch along the walls instead.

It's a tonberry. With a lantern. And a knife. Right in the front entrance of the SquareEnix store. (these photos mostly for the enjoyment of my nerdy friends)

We never made it to karaoke, and our legs and feet were dead sore by the end of Saturday, but by the time Aa-chan and I were running around Disneyland like the overgrown children that we are, I was having so much fun that I had thoroughly forgot I was supposed to be miserable.

Lots of parades. This one we ran across in the afternoon. I took lots of photos, but I do love Toy Story's fated aliens.

Another parade, this one all about lights. And obviously a bit later.

Disney was hot, and it was crowded, and we didn’t get there very early, and the lines were long. But there was almost always a breeze, and lots of the waiting areas (for newer stuff at least?) are indoors, decorated to theme, and air-conditioned. The spinning teacups were way more fun than they had any right to be, and always had a wait of about seven minutes.

OMG teacups cause madness. We only rode them like three times that day. It was like a drug.

sea of humanity....

Japan loves Disney, and after visiting Tokyo Disneyland, I suspect that this park is perhaps one of that titan’s most successful endeavors. I looked out over a vast sea of people, and all of them seemed pretty happy. By the end of the evening, little kids were passed out on top of their parents and in their strollers all over the place. The park closed at 10, but my bus was supposed to leave only a few minutes after that, so we figure it would be best to get to the bus area sooner rather than later.

Okay. I thought my bus was supposed to leave at ten. It turns out 20:10? Is not that. There are three kinds of people in this world…

I happen to count in base ten, and I happen to have recently been to Universal Studios Japan, where there was a bus back to my town’s interstate stop; that bus left ten minutes after park closure. In my defense, it’s an easy mistake to make, although a very stupid one. In my defense… I was pretty distracted when I was booking the bus…?

So the lesson is, 20:00 = 8pm, every time, and that is something I will not forget again.

Unfortunately, that left me still in Tokyo, with no more overnight buses heading for Himeji that evening. And “work” in the morning, and out the money for the bus ticket, as well as the shinkansen ticket I would have to buy the next morning. Luckily, The Italian and Aa-chan were still around, so we all went back to the apartment of The Italian to crash. After a four hour fitful spell of sleep, I rolled out of his apartment at 5am to get back as quick as I could. I arrived in Himeji at 10, basically devoid of cash, and continued my mad dash, with a brief ten minute stop at home, to work, where no one said anything about my being four hours late, except to ask if I’d “had some trouble.” I chose not to call in and explain my lateness because I figured they’d make me take vacation time for that, and I did not want that. (I considered doing it and spending another day in Tokyo, but I had an engagement Monday night that I needed to be back home for by around 7pm)

The funny thing is, after days of having nothing really to do at work and wishing only to leave, wondering why we are expected to come in at all during the summer, the act of crossing half a country to get there makes you a lot more grateful to be there. I was actually rather productive in the few hours I was there before my VP suggested I go ahead and go home.

So I guess Tokyo was as it could be expected to be. Lots of fun. Very expensive. A bit of a dash there at the end. C’est la vie!

Just leave it up to The Claw.