From the Yamabeguchi Bus Stop

Leaving day. Shigemi drove me up into the mountains so I could see a spectacular view of the town from above. Rice paddies were stacked like a giant staircase up the hillside. It’s hard to imagine the effort that must go into growing food up there on such steep terrain, and the enormous amount of work that went into leveling these “steps” out in the first place, hundreds of years ago.

On the way up the mountain, I saw a house of similar age and architecture to the one I’ve been staying in the last five nights, only the one I spotted had a straw, rather than a tin, roof (Shigemi told me on the day I arrived that the tin roof had been installed about twenty-five years ago). There is a different kind of life going on here, one that I don’t usually get to witness in the booming metropolis (or so it now seems) of Moka.

The amazake that I spent eleven hours making yesterday turned a bit sour, which means that the temperature dropped below 50°C while it was cooking. I don’t mind the sourness so much – in fact I rather like it – but I know it’s not the way it’s supposed to taste, and so I feel a bit bad that the family is now stuck with the rest of the batch.

I’m waiting at the bus stop now. The bus should be here in about ten minutes. It feels like I just got here, and yet the time before I arrived (i.e. Nagasaki) seems so long ago.

Waikiki

After leaving Japan at 9 PM Friday evening and, five hours later, arriving in Honolulu at 8 AM Friday morning, I did exactly what I promised: I checked into my hostel, dropped my bag in the room, changed into my swimsuit, and headed straight for the beach. And--as one might imagine would be inevitable after a long day of work, a long trip to the airport, and an overnight flight--promptly fell asleep in the sun. I have nothing but words of praise for the folks at Banana Boat for creating a sunscreen that somehow miraculously kept me from burning to a crisp while I lay snoozing and fully exposed to the elements (It was a gloriously sunny and clear day here in Waikiki, with a high of 80 degrees, the perfection of it all augmented by a persistent, pleasant breeze.) for a full hour and a half.

Still, after my trip to the beach I was ready for a big bottle of water and a propper nap, so I headed back to the hostel and helped myself to a generous helping of both. A cool draft passing through the windows of the dorm room provided natural air conditioning while I lay back and relaxed on the bed. Despite my heavily jet-lagged condition (or maybe partly because of it), I was euphoric.

And tonight, as I often do when I'm travling by myself and I don't have to feel guilty for even suggesting the idea to fellow travelers, I splurged on a fancy shmancy dinner. Very close to my hostel, they have one of those super cool rotating restaurants on the top floor of a tall building; so, as you enjoy your dinner, you get a full panoramic view of the city. I took the elevator to the eighteenth floor, marched up to the front desk, gave my name, and was promptly seated. In that moment, I felt fully vindicated for the time in Kuala Lumpur when Jennifer, Josiah, and I attempted to have desert in one of these types of places and were laughed out of the joint for not having made a reservation at least two days in advance.

My meal: Tea Smoked Ginger Duck l'Orange. Ever since I first tried it a few years ago in Oxford, I've had this crazy little thing for duck. Which is weird because, in the past three years, I could probably count on one hand the number of times I've actually eaten this animal...yeah, I can...five times, including tonight. It gets even weirder because, as many of you well know, I'm not totally crazy about eating meat. Josiah put it quite eloquently and indeed accurately a few days ago when he called me a "closet vegan." But the duck I had tonight was absolutely sublime: tender, sweet, wonderful. And to top it off, I indulged in an overpriced Mai Tai, a drink that I've always associated with face-lifted old ladies in animal-print bathing suits, lounging on pool chairs. So yummy.

And so my winter vacation kicks off to a perfect start. It took all day, but I think that the sunshine has successfully melted away all the stress of the past few weeks. Insert emoticon here...

:)

I'm All Shook Up

This morning, at about 5:40, my own little prefecture of Tochigi was graced with a 5.1 magnitude earthquake that quite literally shook me right out of bed. As the preliminary tremors nudged me awake, my first thoughts went to the heater on the wall above me. If it fell it would crush my skull. I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, but as my bed began to shake back and forth, I felt less like a baby being rocked to sleep and more like...a baby being shaken. At this point I was wide awake, so I figured it would be okay to get up forty minutes earlier than usual.

Yesterday morning, I checked the weather forecast before I even started getting ready, hoping for rain so that my exhausted body would have an excuse to ride to school in a taxi. No precipitation predicted. I got ready and dressed for a chilly bike ride as usual. When I left for school, there were dark blue clouds in the morning sky. I thought, "Ooo! How pretty!" Ten minutes later, it started to snow. When I'm ten minutes into my morning commute, it's not worth it to turn around and call a taxi to take me to school. At this point, all I can really do is press forward. So that's what I did, laughing at the absurdity of the situation: a freak December snowfall decides to descend right in the middle of my morning trek to work, ending just a minute before I pull through the school gate.

It's as though the forces of Nature are playing a last-minute "Best of Moka" marathon in my honor. This evening, I will be boarding a plane to Honolulu, and it will be sayonara freezing misery and a warm, welcoming aloha! to sunny happywonderfulness.

I'm sure that after three weeks of traveling in first Hawaii, then Singapore and Indonesia, I'll start to miss little Moka and I'll be ready to come home. But, at the moment, it's hard to imagine. And, as I sit in my own living room with the electric heater blasting, huddled under a blanket and wearing several layers of clothing, including snow pants and a down jacket, I'm not apologizing. I'm ready for this vacation to begin.

京都

The fact is, the longer I put off updating my blog, the more pressure I feel to make a decent account of my long silence, which makes me feel all the more inclined to continue to put if off. A lot has happened since the beginning of March: my third-year students graduated, the school year ended, I went home to California for spring vacation, a new school year started, I took a trip to Kyoto. And here is my attempt to somehow bypass all of that and bring you to the place where I am now. ☺

However, I can’t not tell you a bit about Kyoto. Knowing that Kyoto is there makes me feel better about Japan as a whole. In Kyoto one discovers a wealth of Japanese art, culture, beauty, and history that seems depressingly absent from the Kanto region. Or perhaps just absent from the tract-house-and-chain-businesses-lined streets of Moka. I went during Japan’s “Golden Week,” so called because it’s a week when three public holidays occur three days in a row; and, as a result, all of Japan goes on vacation at the same time. For this one week, the trains are crowded, airline tickets are twice the usual cost, and booking a hotel room less than a month in advance is just about impossible. Everywhere I went in Kyoto was completely overrun with tourists—foreign and Japanese alike. But I loved it. A lot. In four days, I came nowhere near running out of things to see, and I eagerly anticipate my next opportunity to visit.

Hajimete

When it rains in the morning, I have the option of taking a taxi to school on the Board of Education's tab.

Yesterday morning when I left my house, it was not raining. There were ominous clouds in the sky; but, no rain, no taxi. So I hopped on my bike and took off, already running a bit late for my visit to Yamazaki Minami Elementary School.

I wasn't more than two minutes from home when I started to feel the gentle patter of light precipitation on my cheeks and forehead (the only parts of me that were exposed, since the rest of me was securely bundled up against the biting cold). I considered just turning around right then and calling taxi from home; but, for some reason, I'm really stubborn when it comes to riding my bike and I don't like to take a taxi unless it's absolutely necessary (i.e. typhoon), so I just pressed on.

I was cycling like mad in the hopes of making it to school on time (I'd managed to get out the door about fifteen minutes later than I should have), so although my fingers and toes were numb with cold, my torso was sweating profusely. I panted heavily as icy droplets of rain continued to strike my face.

I was about half-way to school when looked down at my arms and realized, with great shock and amazement, "It's not rain, it's snow!" I was riding my bike in the snow! Wet snowflakes had accumulated on the arms of my jacket. They were sparse and very melty, yet unmistakable as snow nonetheless. I became aware of the fact that I was laughing, loudly and delightedly and probably much to the wonder and discomfort of the high school students who passed me going the opposite way on their bikes. At this precise moment, the word that sprung to mind was: hajimete, "for the first time." It was my first time riding a bike in the snow, and I doubt it will be the last.

In other news, on Tuesday I returned from my winter vacation to South Asia. Having spent two weeks surrounded by people from countries in which strangers are friendly and nearly everyone speaks English makes returning to life in Moka especially difficult. But as I look back fondly on my time spent in Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia, I feel my experiences have left me feeling refreshed and determined to face my job again with renewed energy and optimism.

For more on my travels to Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Kuala Lumpur, and Bali, please see my Picasa web page.