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. 

Wrecks and Unwrecks

So lately I've just been doing a lot of chilling and grilling.
Okay not that at all. I have no idea.
Things are just in a holding pattern. It's why I haven't written anything new in a long time. The days are much like the week before.
Except, maybe not at all.

After I got my black belt, I was in a tournament. Being in the tournament felt a lot more like a coming-of-age than the actual test. For the test I was kind of a nervous ball of wreckness, but the tournament was pretty awesome. I got to wear the special uniform over my gi, and where last year I was in like an event and a half in our city taikai, this year I was in four things!

Two were just like the things I had done last year, by-yourself kind of kata, and group kata. The special things were that during the opening, just after the warm up and before any of the actual taikai competition style events, I got to present the 'mohan embu.' I don't quite know what that means, except someone explained it's like an example form, a presentation to be a sort of example for the kids and perhaps the others present. Basically an exhibition by black belts to kick things off. For this embu, we just re-did the kumi embu (paired form... so like we have these moves memorized and go through a sort of choreographed pattern of attack and defense) that I had to do for the test. It was fun as hell. Like, doing that for show and not for testing purposes, moving through it more fluidly, it changed the way I do paired embu.

The other thing I got to do this time was fighting, which was also awesome, if a little scary in the moment. Beforehand, I hardly gave a thought to the fighting; it was not something you could prepare for, it was going to be a reaction thing, catch as catch can. It was going to be the high school boy that rides the same bus. He was strong. Too strong for me. I won, I think, the match, but in a real fight, I would have lost pretty hard. He was nervous, and it made him less in control. I broke a toe and got some astonishing bruises on my forearms.

 Since then, the kempo trajectory has changed to focus on the Hyogo prefectural tournament, coming up on the 24th. It's going to be another paired embu set, but after furiously memorizing everything I could for the test, the techniques I have to learn aren't so far from me, and after doing that mohan embu I'm way less freaked out by the idea of doing embu as a presentation. So I've really tried to focus on working with my partner to help her feel the same way. To feel the timing, the give and take of distance, the naturalness of the motions. I used to sometimes skip kempo if I was tired or didn't feel like going, but lately I've been going whenever possible, in preparation for these trifecta of stuff (testing, then citywide taikai, now prefectural taikai).
So there is that.

In the meantime, work continues apace, trying to plan out an arc of what I want to do and where I want to land, elementary-school wise by the end of the semester (and the end of my work here). Keeping up with the middle school shuffling and observation days and games and demonstrations.

Spend the kempo evenings enjoying kempo and the non-kempo evenings doing random things like firefly hunting, or consuming TV shows/books/other media.

I've also discovered a website called unfuck your habitat, which is pretty nice, and I've spent some time over the last week or so gently trying to clean things up. There is a lot to do, but I've managed to accomplish things that got shunted to the "do later" pile for like.. years. As well as stuff that tends to just get overlooked because it's not immediately noticeable and isn't on my mental roster of How to Clean House.  So all this is good.

I've been watching a lot of Avatar, the Last Airbender, because it's the best thing Nickelodeon ever did, and I've only recently realized this. It goes together with unfucking the apartment because I work for twenty minutes on something, then get to watch about half an episode. Twenty more minutes of work, and I get to finish the episode! The episodes are like crack which I am watching basically whenever I am not doing something else.

 I redid the potted garden because the pansies died in the heat and looked so sad I couldn't hold to this concept of not doing/changing/buying more stuff when you are not far from moving out.

I hear there's a hurricane (or two) a-coming, so this might have been a stupid idea. But yesterday was just so sunny and warm I had to. For the first time in a long time, I had a whole weekend of downtime, and it was pretty much the best thing EVER. The last several Sundays have been taken up almost entirely by kempo and while those are good times, so is drinking not-mosas, playing vidjagames, zoukin'ing, gardening, scrubbing laundry with a brush, and watching Avatar.

I love the feeling and smell of early summer, and while it's still not quite right to still be in school, I've even gotten used to that. I can't tell if it's really rainy season yet and we are having some sunny days in the rainy season, or if we have just had some really rainy ones in a still not-yet rainy season.

Ichijo-ji, Temple 26

Well, the first day of spring was sunny and only a little chilly, so I took to the road, with a brief stop to gather a traveling companion, and we set out for Ichijo-ji, the 26th temple of the Saigoku Kannon Pilgrimage.

I had forgotten everything I knew about pilgriming in the hiatus known as winter, so I missed out on a few of the offerings scattered around the temple grounds, and didn't conduct myself quite as protocol would have me do.

However, it was a pleasant day, and the things we did see were lovely, so I'll go over it nonetheless.

Ichijo-ji was situated in what felt like the middle of nowhere. It was possibly the first temple I have driven to on the pilgrimage, as the others have all been part of a larger trip or excursion (and even Engyo-ji, the closest one to my house, I biked to from Himeji station!). So we started from the parking lot, rather than the front gate, and that threw me off a bit.

The parking lot is right next to the Jizo-do, or the part of the temple dedicated to Jizo, who is the helper of babies who do not survive pregnancy. This Jizo-do was larger than ones I have seen at the other temples I've visited, and a little less austere as well. The one at Engyo-ji is rows and rows of little statues, all outfitted with knitted things or other accouterments, but these areas were full not only of statues with bibs and collars and knit things, but also toys, a few clothing items for babies, pinwheels, and other such dedications. There were three hexagonal sections like this.



From there, we wandered up the hill behind an Important Rock to what we realized was the Miko Daimyojin, the shinto (not Buddhist) area of the place. I found the Inari area, but did not see the statue or "Welcome Home" sign as described in the website. This side was very pretty in the dappled sunlight, and felt very peaceful, nature-y.

After that, we took a sort of side/back path that led us to the area where is found the Benten-Do. I totally wanted to put a coin in there and give a nod to a water deity of eloquence. I would be worried about it if I didn't think (currently) nah, it's cool, we hang out all the time so no big.

We continued on a back path that ran uphill parallel to the main temple (which was to the left). We found the path to the Okunoin roped off with a big sign in all kanji. Mir deftly convinced me that it was worth ignoring, and so I followed her up the slope toward the small founder's temple.

The reason for the sign was quite clear even from the path below. The whole area had been washed out, probably this past fall with all the rain in the Kansai area, and a landslide had washed a bunch of mud and rocks down around the Okunoin. I took some pictures of the sides of it, where you can see the mud marks. They have cleared around the small temple itself, but the path leading up to it is still in disarray, and the upper part of the mountain whence came the mud and rocks is pretty obvious.

From there we wound our way around to the main hall of the temple, from the back, where I failed to look up at the rafters and also was kind of plebian when I went to get my book stamped and calligraphed. We looked out over the Sanjuto and sighed with gladness that spring is finally coming, then made our way down to the front gate to head out. Ichijo-ji does not have a gate in the same way as other temples, but there was a not-blooming cherry by the entrance.

A badass old tree. 

Not my best exploration endeavor, but I'll do better next time now that I remember how it's done.

This Post Has No Photos; Camera's In the Rice Bin

What's upsetting is, it's a brand new camera. I'm worried about the water damage it might have taken yesterday evening when I went out to get photos of the flooding.

Typhoon Talas moved through (finally) after sitting just south of middle Japan, inching up towards us at like 12km/h. I was told, and this is unprecedented, that I needed to leave my apartment because of its proximity to the visibly out-of-control river..! It looked even higher than it did two years before.

Everything is okay where I am, though two years ago when I had just arrived in Japan, Typhoon Melor did some horrible stuff to areas north, in Ichinomiya, Haga, Chikusa, and Sayo. In Yamasaki, it was mostly just mud damage, lots of tatami being replaced.

Usually, wind isn't so much an issue around here (which is why it was so weird a few months ago when the wind was whipping through, taking things apart and throwing Pachinko Parlor pieces onto cars!), but the rain overload becomes dangerous. Landslides can happen in the mountain areas, and flooding in the lower spaces by the ubiquitous rivers.

Everything I could think to, I put up on top of something (tables, the bed, chairs, etc.), then grabbed my computer and some clothes, and went to Monzen. Before it got dark, I saw that the river had come up just below our apartment complex, and the bottoms of the cherry trees on the bank were underwater.

Day before, someone had stolen my favorite umbrella (!) but it turned out okay, because it was rainin' sideways, and I just wore my rainjacket everywhere anyway. My phone is also in the rice bin. I hope they recover. I'll be very sad if they don't.

Though it might be time for me to get a phone that can access google maps. So I spend less time being lost on Japanese roads!

And now for some more geography:

First, look at this map to remember where I live.

Next check out the track of Talas here.  I know, right?

In terms of things that have a direct impact on my immediate reality, this was a fairly big deal (it changes my weekend, and in some very minor ways, my life). The funny thing is, almost no one outside Japan asked me about it! Everything is relative.. some things that hugely impact Japan don't actually affect my immediate circumstances, and then some things that no one hears about have me replacing my shit and crashing refugee-style on higher ground!

Stay dry, everyone.

This is your life

So I’m at an age where people around me are always doing things. Weird things, monumental things, making decisions, planning ‘the rest of their lives.’ People are getting married, getting jobs, getting pregnant, getting on with things I never even imagined (just got a totally unexpected email from a friend who is moving to Liberia next weekend).

And I try, in this blog, to give a slice of my own life. I started this partly for the folks back home to enjoy, partly for my own self to have some way to storytell, and partly for my successor, whoever he or she may be, that s/he might have abundant commentary and resources when it comes to being here.

It’s almost June, which means it’s almost rainy season, and after the rain comes the summer sun, and that’s when the ball rolls right to the end of the JET calendar, and all the leavers leave, and all the newbies come. And I, in a sometimes ridiculous attempt to use old/save new nenkyuu (vacay days) make my trip to America right smack in the middle of it all, thereby destroying any possibility of being “productive” at “work” during “summer vacation.”

But by now, I’m kind of okay with that. It’s still the Year of the Truce, baby, and I don’t need to make any big plans. I’ve started, kinda, to write my “novel.” I am still amazed by what I don’t know about it, ten years later, and amazed sometimes by how much information I do have.

I’m going to be working at Tokyo Orientation this summer. I’m going to be presenting on independent Japanese study for JETs. I’m actually rather proud of this; it’s one of those things they don’t just hand out, you see, even though maybe a lot of people would think more than twice about going to Tokyo to work through a weekend and all kinds of crappy hours too in order to welcome the neophytes. I do things like that because I think they’ll be cool, or interesting, or more fun/cool/interesting than my desk during “summer vacation” anyway. Not that I have much love for Tokyo, though.

This coming Sunday will be my first Shorinji Kempo taikai. I’ve been practicing hardcore narrow-eyed determined because I’ve been in a martial arts tournament before and I know what happens to me.. confident or scared, I get in there and basically do fine other than the few minor mistakes that matter to no one so much as they matter to me. It’s a small taikai, just for our city, and all the people evaluating me, I guess, will be the people who have watched me practice every other night the last couple weeks anyway.

Last week, the other group of 4^th graders were simply great. Pub Quiz trivia was fun, too. It rained almost all week, and certainly all weekend.

Yesterday, I was supposed to go to Himeji for shopping and writers’ group, and I was supposed to possibly go to Aioi for the dragon boat races, and I also had the option of a hike out on the east side somewhere… but all this got typhooned out. To salvage our early afternoon, the girls and I decided to go to a little coffeeshop up the river a bit, but when the gusts of wind threatened the integrity of the car’s road position, we turned around and went home to close up the shutters. Stuff fell over and flew away all evening in a baffling display of hurricane-ish weather. I could feel my apartment brace against the windbursts (being in the end unit on the wind side). I actually lost a potted plant! Across the street, that damn poster that catches the wind on normal nights and slaps loud against the building where it hangs stopped making loud cracks because it was totally shredded by the wind. The iron thing high atop the pachinko parlor fell off and landed on a car. We saw a guy perplexedly picking up a large plastic object as if to say, “What is this thing?” then turning it over to discover that it was the front fender of a kei-truck.

Where I’m from, we sometimes have severe thunderstorms and even occasional tornadoes in the area, so I thought, surely all this can’t last more than a handful of hours. That’s.. just how tornado weather is, it blows up and blows out very violently and very quickly. And this wind, when I stepped outside to grab something, or see how it was going, was always a surprise in strength. But it took all day and into the night to roar off and away. Even this morning, it was still windy. I’d never closed my giant shutters before; it was like waking in a cave.

Today has been pretty normal, other than the grogginess that hung on me almost all morning from that.

I know there are things I cannot do right now, because I’m in Japan. I know that there is a part of my future inaccessible to me as long as I am here. But I also know that there is a part of my life inaccessible to me as soon as I leave this place. I’m not hanging out here to delay the start of my real life. This is my real life. This is who I am. I want this to be part of my story. I want to be that (insert job title here) that did stuff like live in Japan for three years. And majored in Latin. It was never “What are you going to do with that?” but always “What does it do for you now?” And it was always doing something.

 I never want to stop being the type of person who lived in Japan for three years. I always want to be the type of person who wants to learn Japanese/kempo/the best places to go walking in Shiso. There is no magic moment that starts ‘the rest of your life’ and leaves behind ‘all the prep work,’ and if there is, then it’s only right now. These years are not a precursor to my real life, they are my real life. Which will of course change as it goes, and will maybe make “use” of my previous work experiences, but certainly will make use of who I am because I was the type of person to have them.

Friday the 13th

(and the following Saturday) : banishing the rain.

So I'll skip right over the middle of last week because all I would have written then anyway was "omg itsstillrainin" (oh wait, I did). Friday the 13th came like a breath of not-so-humid air. Hazy in the morning, the air felt bright despite the “sand from China” hanging about the valley. I looked at the board at work to see that no one had any classes at all, everyone was on various field trips (the 3^rd year Mice in Okinawa, the 1^st year Fish somewhere else closer, and the 2^nd years were around, just about to go on their one-day adventure). I suddenly did not want anything to do with the busy work I’d made for myself, thinking I would have a normal staff room atmosphere. It was not to be a normal staff room atmosphere. I would be the only person there, aside from the one they leave to answer the phones, and it was the first sunny day after three straight solid heavy rain days.

Who, tell me, wants to sit at their computer on that day? Sure, I had plenty to do, but I no longer relished the empty day in which to do it.

To my joy, the band teacher asked, “Emily, what are you doing today?” I gave her an innocent and hapless look and shrugged. Nothing. I’m doing nothing. “Wanna go with the 2^nd years?” Um, YES. I love the second years (the Frogs). They are still my new favorite class. We stood under starling nests and gave instructinons, aAnd with that, we set off at a walk up the hill toward Sponic Park where the kids were to draw landscape sketches for the first part of the morning.

kids at work

From 2011_05_13

I wandered around a little, got bit by a leech for the first time in my life (those things are gross; but seriously, leeches, get some anesthetic to go with your anticoagulants, or you'll never be as successful with me as your brethren the gdmf mosquito) becuse they were living in the damn grass (what with all the rain). Some students were kicking them off their shoes as well, jumping on them to make them "kanpeki shinda" (I swear I heard that.. the first word is "perfect" and the second "dead"). Also saw a mukade (the poisonous Japanese manypede), all of these sightings/attacks were in the same area, too. The students jumped on the mukade, but it was not made perfectly dead before it was flung away off the hillside. We also saw a deer just chilling rather close to where we were drawing.

This is where the leeches live.

From 2011_05_13

Oh, mukade, you tiny dragons of the forest.

From 2011_05_13

After our juice break, we set off for part two, which was a walking "quiz rally" around the area. Kids were in their groups, all had maps of the checkpoints, and at each checkpoint there was a question. Lots of Japanese riddles, some kinda random questions (What number is equal to the ages of all these listed teachers combined?), for which kids would get points based on how close they got to the real thing. I carried my little parasol and wandered around with them, which of course led me to discover (as I had hoped it would) some new interesting points in the area.

Then we all ate lunch outside. After lunch, they went in to color the sketches, and I got done just a little of the work I had planned to spend all day on.

That afternoon I went back to the fuji, but it was pretty much destroyed by the rain. I stopped at Osaki-san's, and she gave me manju and cocoa, then I went to Miriam's, and she gave me some kind of apricot tart cake, then I went home, and really intended to eat a real dinner, but never did.

Saturday was really nice too, we're talking perfect weather. I spent a little time on the garden, then we had a little group picnic down by the river on the road to Himeji. Went home just in time to wash up and go to Young English Enkai, which went better than I expected it to go! The food was great, and everyone was very game. I thought only about half the group (err.. mostly the ALT half) would end up at karaoke, but actually everyone came but one! 

Strawberries!

From 2011_05_14

From 2011_05_14

From 2011_05_14

Happy Monday

Monday, May 9th, was like some kind of anomaly in the world of Mondays.

I had the day off because it was my school's "Foundation Day," which fortuitously came at the end of the Okinawa trip. If I had known about the day off in advance, I might have tried to extend my stay in Okinawa yet longer, but as we have seen, that would have been a not so good idea. So, instead, I just had an extra day to recover from vacation before heading back to work.

Monday was dazzlingly sunny and quite warm. These are perfect laundry conditions. In the winter, laundry takes about a full day in the sun to dry. More often than not, it would end up hanging from my closet door while I ran the heater at night. One thing I like about spring and summer (rainy season excluded) is the way you can hang laundry out more frequently, with much faster results.

So I did some laundry, and I finished unpacking, and I made a foray into the garden which had somehow lost all its color (other than greeeeen) during my absence. And there I discovered 8.6 zillion motherfucking aphids on each cluster of leaves on my little plum tree. Any kind of insect, especially large numbers of very small ones, which is eating something in my garden makes me really, really, irrationally angry. I want nothing more in the world than to end their lives as quickly as possible. Because how dare those little bastards be destroying my poor innocent plants that are not hurting anyone and that are tenuously enough holding on to life as it is? The little flowers and trees out there are just tryin' to grow, and they are bright and a beauty and a joy and anything that brings harm to them must instantly cease to do so, or die.

From 2011_04_30

This murderous rage was the only blot of negative energy on the whole morning. The rest was spent relishing my plan to visit the Thousand-Year Fuji (wisteria) of Yamasaki. I decided to go and see it on a general foray into town by bike, the usual, bank (what's the damage, Okinawa?), post office (packages to pick up, letters to send). Osaki-san had said the best days of the fuji blooms were usually right through Golden Week (3rd - 5th of May), but I had resolved to go check it out as soon as I could get over there after getting back from Okinawa.

Of course, as with any season-dependent plant life, dates only give general ideas of when the best time will be. There are photos on display at the shrine by the sen-nen fuji showing it in full bloom on May 10th, and another year, April 28th. People come from far and wide to see this thousand-year fuji (recall our own pilgrimage to the thousand-year sakura tree in Yabu), from Osaka and maybe even beyond, so I figured I was pretty lucky since I could just bike a few blocks.

Last year, I went to see the place when it was just past its prime. I had heard of it, but didn't even know where the shrine was until it was too late! A few hangers-on wandered in the pleasant shade, and there was the mild scent of dried flowers, some of the fallen petals crunching softly underfoot.

From 2010_05_16

I went a few more times to that shrine just to poke around and enjoy it. I think of it (quite all made-up by me, I assure you) as the shrine to Japanese Venus, or sort of like that equivalent (femininity, growth, fertility, love, etc.), partly because I went there at a time when I was thinking about Venus and new beginnings and healing and growth, and partly because of this statue:

The shrine is called 大歳神社, or "Otoshi shrine" .. and it turns out that is more associated to Jupiter, than anything.

From 2011_05_09

This year, as I rode up the hill to where I thought I should park my bike, the warm breeze wafted a lovely floral scent over me. I realized with a start that it was coming from the wisteria. I was prepared for the color, and the crowds of old people, but I had not thought about the way the place would smell (I, being lately rather sensitive to smells; recall how a whiff of the moldy smell in our condo made me queasy). I went into the main area to sit in the shade and breathe in the fresh gentle smell of it all. It was absolutely awesome. The photos don't do the warmth or smell any justice, but at least you can see some of the blooms (click through to go to the album):

From 2011_05_09

From 2011_05_09

From 2011_05_09

From 2011_05_09

I thought this was cool, the blooms coming out of this vine near the ground! The main trunk in the center of the pavilion did not have this.

From 2011_05_09

I also really liked the idea that I could go run my errands, then come back again and sit for a minute, if I liked. I resolved to do so, and also to stop at Osaki-san's "open garden" (she lives really close to the Sen-nen Fuji) and ask her advice on those gdmf aphids back home.

When I went to Osaki-san's, I didn't know what to really expect. What we had there was, older people, mostly ladies, wandering in in nice dress to take traditional matcha tea (complete with a sweet) in Osaki-san's beautifully appointed tea room, with a view to the garden. Then she walked through the garden with the lady I happened to sit next to and take tea with, and pointed out some stuff for both of us. Before I left, she gave me a nice big bottle of AphidDeath (named by me) to borrow, and also some riceballs, which I took back to the fuji to eat for lunch while basking in the ancient plant's sweet presence.

As I biked home, there were cars lined up all the way to the main road, and people walking along the street between the Michi-no-eki (road station) and fuji. There's really no parking up by the shrine. I felt even more pleased to be on a bike, and decided to visit the fuji every day for a little while, if I could (of course, this plan was foiled by three straight days of heavy rain, which also did their part to take out most of the blooms and leave the display in worse shape than I found it last year!).

I spent the early afternoon doing a bit of gardening, finishing up some chores, and getting ready for the evening. At 4pm I had my second HPV vaccine shot. The paperwork runaround eventually led me downstairs where a nurse with a "I'm new" badge on her nametag asked me which arm I preferred to take my painful injection in. Another nurse corrected her, showing her that it was already written on my form, that these things were all decided ahead of time. I thought, awesome, the last shot left my arm sore for two days. This is going to be hurt like a bitch and a half with sweet nurse Newbie stabbing me.

She was super sweet, though, and as she got ready to stick me (with all the seasoned nurses, including the one who got me last time, standing by in a line against the wall, watching), she said "It's going to hurt, so be brave!" I took a breath and tried not to remember how, when I was 13, a nurse had to try like five times to get the IV in my hand properly because she was new. But just because it was Happy Monday, maybe, the shot didn't even burn like the last one did, and the following day, the muscle was only a little sore (nothing like the time before!).

I hurried home to get ready for homemade okonomiyaki dinner at Heke's dance teacher's house, which was excellent, and of which there was too much food, of course. Wrapped up the night by going over trivia questions with Lester for the Pub Quiz at the end of the month. All in all, an excellent day.