Thursday, February 05, 2004
Japan
My Official Best Friend since grade 8 or 9 was in Japan last fall teaching English. She sent some entertaining email then, and told me today I could publish snippets:
I had a lovely vacation in the resort town of Hakone where my friend Yuji lives. Hakone is probably one of the most touristy places in Japan, as it's very famous for its hot springs. Fortunately where Yuji lives and works, it's just very beautiful, set in high in the lush mountains. I truly wished I knew something about trees and nature because I see a lot of beautiful foliage and just say, oh that looks very Japanese. The highlight of my vacation was when I took a funicular (sp?) up the side of a volcano, which was fun enough, but then it got better when there all of a sudden in the distance was Mt. Fuji! It was glorious.
The top of the volcano is all stinky and sulphurous, and you can buy stinky black eggs which have been cooked in sulphur. I bought some to take down and share with Yuji, since I couldn't bring myself to eat eggs in an environment which, albeit very good for the skin and spirits, smelled of rotten eggs. Legend has it that eating these sulphur eggs adds 7 years to your life. I had a few, so I guess I'd really better get going on those RRSPs.
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Here, my life is really coming together as I have started to slate little activities into my days to make a routine (as you may know, I like activties and routines). Now after work on Wednesdays and Thursdays I have a Japanese class at two different community centres.
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The best thing of all, though, is the discovery I made the other day that we have a community gym with aerobics on Friday nights ten minutes away from our house! Liz and I had given up on the gym idea, as we had only found expensive fancy ones until now, but this one is super and cheap. Aerobics instructors are always pretty spunky, but this one is without a doubt the spunkiest I have ever seen. In fact, she's a little psychotic, but her class was great.
We were also pleased that a little gaggle of aerobics people gathered around us after class and showed interest in getting to know us, so maybe we'll pick up some new friends from there. They told us where there was a public bath only a couple of stations away from our house, so we went on Saturday. It was great fun, and I did finally get to check out the electric pool (small jolts of electricity go through the water to help your muscles contract). It was a pretty strange sensation. I was impressed that the sauna had a t.v. in it.
We also went to Liz's friend Kumiko's house for lunch last Thursday, and it was great getting invited to a real Japanese home. Kumiko is very nice-- she found Liz one day trying to investigate cell phone prices and has helped us out ever since. Although the lunch was excellent, the highlight of the visit was getting to use Kumiko's fancy toilet, which was heated and had some other interesting functions.
So now we have lots to do, and soon I'll probably start complaining that my life is too busy. Ahh, sweet routine...
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I'm always amazed by the fashions here. My students, who are for the most part, 18 and 19-year olds, come in the most extravagant outfits. You'd never think that what they're wearing could possibly go together, but they somehow make it work. I don't know about the schoolgirls, though. Apparently, their uniform pleated skirts have been getting shorter and shorter every year. This, with the cold weather, causes Liz and I to sit on the train clucking to ourselves about how, my goodness, those girls are going to catch pneumonia one of these days....
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I haven't gotten to see too much of Japan in terms of geography, but I have certainly gotten a glimpse of some interesting sites. As my colleague, Glenn, repeatedly says, "We've only just scratched the surface." In fact, he has said it so much that Liz and I have a running joke now in which one of us will manage to slip it into a conversation in the teachers' lounge at some point during the day. The best part is when he agrees: "Yeah, that's the truth isn't it?" We've decided that we're both going to write it in a card to him before we leave and see if he gets it. But he's right-- I hope I get to come back soon. I've just started to get really used to everything.
