Not So Killer Update

Tuesday was Labor Day and hence there were no classes.  I'd been planning for the past month to do something awesome on this day off, but inadequate directions, the insistence of the Interwebs that the place I was looking for didn't exist and the high cost of a train ticket to the general area I wanted to be dictated that I wouldn't be doing said awesome thing.

Said awesome thing would have been firewalking at Hiwatari Gyo at Danichi temple in Nara.  Yes, firewalking as in walking on hot coals.

Instead, I slept until 9, had breakfast, cleaned the fishtank so it could be put away and got on the bus to Hirakatashi eki.  I wandered around ABC Craft for a bit denying myself more yarn before getting a 74 yen package of stuffing to make Konta's present.  I checked out the big Starbucks to discover they didn't have the sweet potato muffin, but the one in the bookstore under the craft store did, so I headed back there and had "lunch" of cocoa, sweet potato muffin and a cranberry bliss bar.

Immediately upon leaving the shop, I was targeted by this Indian guy who had to have singled me out for being foreign and started up a conversation from nowhere; asking where I was from, how long I'd been there, when I'd be going home.  He motioned for us to sit on the planter boxes lining the sidewalk...  said he was working in Japan, that his English wasn't too good, that his name was Alex... and that he lived five minutes from the station.

For his record, I don't know if he was a creeper or not, but it certainly seemed like it, so I pulled out my phone to check the time, said I had to meet friends, got out of there and didn't look back.

The next stop was Saty.  I connected to the wifi with my DS and got the current event Pokemon, a little polar bear cub.  I wandered through a couple of the shops and came across some questionable incense...  There was opium scent, too.

Then it was back on the bus.  I got off four stops down the route and headed to my first adventure: Yamada shrine.  It's pretty tiny, but relaxing.  The stairs up are surrounded by trees full of birds chirping their hearts out.  There was a house for Inari, a rice diety (not a fox, though is usually portrayed as one).

AND THERE WERE CATS.  So many cats!  400 cats!  Not that many cats, but there were quite a lot of them, and while they were interested in playing (I used my headphone cord as a string), they didn't want to be touched.  I sat and played with them for a while and the groundskeeper got a kick out of it.  A priest came out of the building I was sitting next to and went to the main shrine; it appeared he was doing some sort of purification for two people but I didn't stay around gawking.  I did get to see him shake the zig-zag paper wand over them, though.

I walked a couple blocks to one of the staircases I could see from the bus route and discovered what I believe was a kofun, but there wasn't any sort of information, just a little marker in the ground.  Going down the other side, there was a great view of the city, including the rainbow ferris wheel of Hirakata Park in the distance.

A couple more blocks to the next staircase, I discovered a park (one of the many ways to tell you've been in Japan too long is when you accept a patch of sand and maybe something to sit on as a park).  The trees surrounding it were too tall, though, so there wasn't much of a view.

Then it was back home, where I knitted.  And knitted and knitted and knitted and knitted.  The marathon Okaasan was watching ended and went right into the breaking news regarding North and South Korea, none of which I could understand, of course, but pictures made it obvious enough.  As the afternoon became evening, it was the only thing on any station (and Japan only has a maximum of 10 of them from what I've been able to determine).  I think I'd know more about what happened than North Korea if I'd been able to understand it.

I finished the scarf I was working on, though.  Hours and hours of knitting later.  I really do prefer crochet.