Shuumatsu (Weekend)

Saturday started like any other school day: wake up at 6:30, be on the bus by 7:25, be on campus by 8 a.m.  The CIE was open, so I stole their Internet for a few hours before hopping on the bus back to Hirakatashi-eki to meet Daniel and Arianna.

Spiral escalator!

Our first exploration goal was an okonomiyaki –ya (like a Japanese pancake, made with shredded cabbage and held together with egg).  We found the food court of the station but no okonomiyaki shop.  So we wandered outside and down a little side street.  We found a bakery and Arianna asked the owner where the okonomiyaki-ya was.  We wandered back the other way and finally found it!

We ordered two small okonomiyaki, one shrimp and one pork with veggies.  They were grilled at the table (one of those types that had the grill in the middle of the table).  Workers came around and added dried fish flakes, mayonnaise and okonomiyaki sauce.  Nori (seaweed flakes) was available at the table like salt and pepper might be.  We each got our own mini spatula to take what we wanted.

Then we wandered around the station shops.  Anime shops and bakeries distracted us.  One of the stores had a super fan from Jump Festa 2010 of Hunter x Hunter.  It wasn’t too expensive and was probably the only HxH merchandise I’m going to find, but I didn’t know how I would bring it home without destroying it.

We spent nearly two hours in the bookstore, Book Off, which had video games (the original Pokemon Pinball for 50 JPY—about 50 cents—if I hadn’t had it already, I would have bought it), movies and books.  I wasn’t going to buy any manga, but I happened across a series that was showcased in the first year of America’s Shonen Jump (manga magazine) that hasn’t been translated.  I bought the first two volumes, since there’s currently a sale that makes them 50 JPY each.

I found a poster advertising Pokemon Black and White.  It comes out in exactly one week.

The three of us ended up at Baskin Robbins again, because the other sweets places were too expensive, and each got a crepe.  The guy behind the counter was totally humoring himself, because he went along with us only as long as we could understand him and then spoke in perfect English.  The crepes were delicious, though.

On the way home, I was going to stop at the post office to withdraw more money for the Kyoto trip tomorrow, but it was already closed when I arrived, even though it was at least an hour and a half before the posted time on the doors.  It seems that only post office ATMs work for international transactions, more on that later.

I sat with Okaasan looking at pictures of the family for an hour or so before she had to start dinner.  She thought dad was particularly handsome.  Seeing the names Daniel, David and Paul as well as the record of first Communions sparked the “religion talk,” which was awkward.  My host family is Christian (which is rare, about 1% of the population).  She asked if I had a religion and answered that my parents were brought up Christian and Catholic, dodging the question.  It was a little more difficult to dodge when she asked if I believed the Bible.  We kinda dropped it after that.

She made spaghetti for dinner, with meat sauce and onions, bell peppers, tomatoes and eggplant, most from her garden.  She included a mackerel (whole save the head, which was removed).

There was a spider in the shower room [while I was showering].  It wouldn’t have been an issue if A) it wasn’t HUGE, B) it wasn’t insistent on coming out of nowhere, C) it wasn’t insistent on not staying washed down the drain and D) if there hadn’t been one just slightly smaller in my room earlier that I had to chase around for a good 15 minutes because it first showed up on the paper windows, preventing me from squashing it.

For Preston.

Today I slept in a whole hour!

I was at Hirakatashi-eki an hour early and started my search for an open/useable ATM, but I had no luck at the station.  Since it was still early, I headed to campus to see if anything was open, but it’s completely shut on Sundays.  The guards signed me in and I went to investigate this (it proved to be true) and then headed across the street to 7-11.  It had an ATM.  It had an ATM that took both VISA and plus, which is what I needed.  But it wouldn’t read my card.  So I got back on the bus and went back to the station.

Double Rainbow~

Arianna and Ayana were there.  Ayana tried to help, but the closest machine wasn’t able to read my card.  Arianna convinced me to borrow 2000 JPY so I could go with them today (I didn’t have enough even to take the train there and back), we met up with Daniel, bought our tickets and boarded the train.

We got off at the same stop as last time and headed to the street where we got dinner last time.  It looked a lot different in the day time.  We went further down and into a department store for Arianna to find a teapot.  No one really had enough money, so Ayana led us to an up-scale department store (Prada, Clinique, Tiffany’s, etc), which had a post office in it with ATMs!  That was open!  And so I had money (and immediately paid Arianna back).

Our goal was to find food but we kept getting distracted.  We turned down the older looking street before the entrance to the temple last time and wandered down it a ways until we found another temple area.  The entrance had the thunder and wind gods (NAMES!), which I recognized from Art and Architecture.  We exited out the back and found a surprise.

An ukiyo-e-ya.   Plain and simple.

Ukiyo-e are what one thinks of most often when they think Japanese art.  Traditional woodblock prints most popular in the 17-19th centuries.  Artists would envision an image and carve each separate part, determined by color, into separate blocks of wood.  They would then paint those carvings and press it onto a single sheet of paper, layer after layer until the image was completed.  The ever-popular “great wave” by Hokusai is one of these types of prints.

The artist showed us his blocks for his own recreation of the great wave.  There were 6 or 8 blocks total, some front and back of the block (to save space), all stained the colors they were used to produce on the final image.

After making some purchases, we headed toward the Kiyomizu temple again and ended up at the base of a 5-tiered pagoda.  Just before reaching it, we looked to our right… and found three maiko.  Of course, we made this discovery at the same time as just about every other tourist in the area, but the maiko seemed to love the attention, rather than shying from the cameras.  They had been trying to take pictures of themselves and Arianna was the first to offer to take it for them.  They were grateful.

Where Ryouma was killed.

We found a moderately-priced restaurant after that (everything around the temple is expensive) and had lunch.  Ayana and I had cold soba noodles with tempura shrimp and pepper, grated daikon (radish), umeboshi (pickled plum) and nori (dried seaweed) strips.  I also had white rice with dried brine shrimp.  You could see their tiny, tiny eyes, but they were still delicious.  Instead of tea, they served us the water the noodles were cooked in, chilled.  They’re buckwheat noodles, so it tasted like barley tea.

Then it was time to head out.  We went out through the shops from last time.  Arianna finally bought her parasol, Daniel and I got melon shaved ice and green tea ice cream, respectively, and we all wandered through the Miyazaki store again.  I stopped in one of the stores on the way back to the station, a gem shop which was a whole lot more expensive than I thought it was last time.  The larger pieces had six zeroes.

We parted ways at Hirakatashi-eki.  Before boarding my bus (since I’d just missed one), I ran to Book Off and picked up the next two volumes of the series I bought Saturday, Wild Half.  Then it was back home, ramen salad for dinner and sleep.

I showed Okaasan today’s pictures and helped her transfer her own pictures to her laptop (luckily it has a card reader, because her cord doesn’t seem to work and she doesn’t have the CD for it) as well as gave her the link to this blog.  She decided she’ll use it to practice her English.

The ukiyo-e prints I bought.