A Japanese Carol

It is relatively easy to forget that you are living in Japan. Having spent the evening speaking English to Roland over some Mc Donald’s and British sitcoms and the morning drinking five roses tea and getting a text message from Ducky, highlighting her opinion on the latest ridiculous development in a certain celebrity’s life, I have more often than not stumbled through my fist `Ohayo Gozaimasu*` of the day as I greeted the office lady while my mind somersaulted back into Japanese.

Oh but there are moments where Japan hands you a pair of chopsticks, sits you down on your ankles, motions to a bowl of rice in front of you and tells you to start eating. When tradition does enter stage left, it goes big or it goes home.

As if taking a page or two from a Dickens` classic, tradition enlisted the help of two Japanese ghosts to remind me this past week, that there is still more to this country than Starbucks and Mc D`s.

Don`t get me wrong, I still love `Staba` as the kids call it.

The first was dressed in red and white battle armor, skillfully bordered with gold leaf. While adorned as a warrior he seemed at absolute peace, he was beauty and balance and his name was Hachiman. On a barely born Spring Sunday, he invited Roland and I to come see his home at Usa jinju, an offer made hard to refuse by his hand resting on the hilt of his blade. Usa Shinto Shrine is one of the most important places of worship for those who follow the Shinto religion. It is dedicated to Hachiman, the god of warriors, archers and martial artists but everything about it quiets your soul and inspires you to fight about as much as a warm bubble bath does.

Even at the entrance to the temple complex, small packets of pellets, clipped onto a string, served to remind me of the severe contradiction between Japan and my home country. It is based on the honor system and you are expected to place 100 yen into the box after taking some food to feed the already enormous Koi swimming under the ornately carved wooden bridge. In South Africa the instructions may as well have read: please take some free food when you see nobody is watching.

I would love to say that the two of us serenely drifted through the colossal temple grounds but the truth is that my foot (sensing immanent exercise) decided to develop a dull ache, causing me to limp like a grumpy bear who just escaped from a trap past the soothing waterfalls and century’s old red temples.

It was surprisingly moving watching Japanese families clap their hands together three times and pray in unison at the base of each temple and unsurprisingly funny watching little Japanese children disobey explicit orders to place a few coins in the provided box, instead opting to throw it a great distance and watching it ricochet from beams, usually landing under an ornament, probably making some poor shrine maiden feel decidedly less Zen that afternoon while finding coins everywhere but the box.

I purchased my first Daruma doll at the temple, accompanied by some broken English instructions from the kind salesman. When you start a goal (in my case to learn a hundred kanji characters), you paint in one of the dolls blank eyes. He then looks at you and motivates you for however long it takes for you to complete your goal and give him back his 20/20 vision by painting in the other eye.

Daruma

As we strolled (or limped) past moss covered stone lanterns, standing near perfectly preserved red and gold, wooden structures we felt more relaxed than we had felt in a long time. As the god of war, Hachiman had failed miserably to boil our blood or inspire us to raise an army and conquer the nearest 7/11 but it will be a good long while before we tell him this to his face.

The second ghost was conflicted; she was proud and confident yet shy and filled with shame. She was a bonsai tree placed in front of a crisp white flag telling the story of the rising sun and her name is `Kimi ga yo`**. This was the scene of my school`s graduation. My principal, a usually jolly man looked like a president delivering a national address with the Japanese flag, for the first time this year hanging impressively behind him. The audience of teachers wearing suits, mothers wearing kimono and third year students facing the freedoms and responsibilities waiting just outside the school gates, all sat in silence, not once applauding for a full hour and twenty minutes. You have no idea how powerfully the Japanese anthem rings out after nothing but smoothly executed speeches broken only by absolute silence.

 

This was the first time I had heard `Kimi ga yo` being sung at my school or seen the flag raised in assembly and the reason is as complex as a bowl of rice is simple.

While my students and teachers are fiercely proud of being Japanese, the flag and anthem are linked to infamous invasions into neighboring countries, outdated imperial ideologies and a crushing defeat at the end of world war two. For every Japanese person who is reminded of Japans status as a world power despite its size and lack of many natural resources by the flag, there is another who sees only the atrocities committed in China or the first two atomic bombs decimating Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

The spell cast by all this stiff tradition was drawing me in rather nicely, until I looked over at my second year boys, sitting in the very last row, all fast asleep on each other’s shoulders. I was sad to see some of my third years walk past the line of teachers with tears in their eyes but at the same time I always knew they were never really mine. They belonged to my predecessor who had been teaching them since their first year of high school and would always be their real ALT. I was just thinking of this slightly sad reality when I heard one of my 1st years say `oh, Freda Sensei, look` while he proudly showed me the playing cards (he was not meant to have at school) with the anime character on that we both like.

I fear the year that my king Bobs and my loud karaoke girls make their way down the aisle leading to their futures. It will most definitely be a double edged samurai sword when `my` students finally say goodbye.


* Good morning
** The Japanese national anthem

The three seasons.

For a little less than three months the same question has been patiently waiting for me at my cluttered grey desk. As I sit down, the equally grey haired Math’s teacher asks me with unwarranted sincerity if South Africa ever gets as cold as this particular Japanese day, and always reacts with noticeable joy as I say `oh no, this is far colder`. The weather in Japan is an institution as sacred a game as bureaucracy and the Japanese like to win at everything they play.

As I am racing towards spring with plum blossoms in my hair, I thought I would take a look back at the three seasons I have met.

Winter

Winter time is illumination time.

The warm sting of the kerosene heater was streaming past the back of my heels as I pulled one of the three layers of warm clothing over my head and in the process bumped the low hanging light in the lounge. As light swished around the room I stared at Roland sitting at his computer desk and without warning started to cry.

I have never cried over the cold before but I knew that beyond that door lay a frozen corridor and a bathroom floor that was no better than an ice-skating rink. The three degree air would burn my skin as I waited for the water to heat up and ten seconds would feel like a Siberian year. A fusion of amusement and alarm flashed in Roland`s clear eyes as he grabbed my hand and two towels on route to the nearest hot spring.

Those tropical flowers are real thanks to the warm onsen air.

As with all other Japanese phenomena, winter likes to add a little contradiction to the cake mix and on a different day you find yourself standing in a deserted temple courtyard, covered with freshly fallen snow. Only the stark red beams of the Tori gates avoid the white onslaught as four best friends stare up at the crumbling sky, trying clumsily to catch a snowflake on their tongues. God`s paintbrush proves superior as you see crystals clutching tree branches and frozen waterfalls convincing you that time has stopped.

 

I still squint my eyes in thought when I think back to how beautiful the valley circled with mountains in Kumamoto really was. I stood in the middle of a quaint Japanese town, all the ornate roof tiles covered in a soft duvet of downy snow and all around me rose a coliseum of frozen rock and ice. When I tell you that it was breathtaking, I mean it quite literally as even now I automatically stop breathing for the slightest second when I think back to that day. We went volcano hunting and stared down the temperamental caldera of Mount Aso, a few days before the neighboring volcano in Miyazaki blew its top.

Hiding from the lava

As I drove to school today I saw two or three trees covered in pink and white plum blossoms, each gleefully hitting the last nails into the coffin of winter. Soon it will be the season of Sakura and I will experience this week of cherry blossoms in Tokyo, the heart of my new home.

Autumn

Ah, what a blissful state of equilibrium. The harsh heat of summer has finally fizzled out and winter still looks promising through naïve, snow colored glasses.

Beppu hells in Autumn

As Roland put my favorite chicory tainted coffee by my bed, my English teacher phones with a fine suggestion. Why not go for a bout of `Momiji ga` or autumn leaf hunting. We needed no better reason to hit the road and headed into the mountains. I know it is a bit odd but I always feel extra grownup while traveling a decent stretch of road on the way to a mini adventure. I am usually desperately content chatting and eating snacks until we have to stop at a dodgy mountain toilet that is more often than not of the traditional variety. I am skilled enough to use them but I don`t exactly throw a party in my head when I see them.

With grape flavored soft serves in hand, we rode the cable car up the mountain of many seasons (we have seen Mount Tsurumi exhibiting three of the four) and marveled at the bright red trees, that when hit with a ray of sun looks like it is on fire. Every leaf looks like a candle flame and some trees are colored in sunset hues moving from a red top, down to orange, yellow and finally lime green. This is a relaxed time of year where the Japanese start to eat persimmons and chestnuts are found everywhere. There are fire festivals and naked festivals and picture perfect sunsets. You cannot design better weather and I am desperately hoping that spring will deliver more of the same.

Autumn Braais are always amazing

Summer

Watching summer fireworks from a restaurant boat.

After wearing socks and sandals for months on end you start to look like a German on the beach and you start to feel decidedly claustrophobic. Nothing is more satisfying than coming home and taking off those offending socks and extra layers of clothes required for work and throwing it in the general direction of the laundry basket. This is followed by flopping down on the couch with a Hello Kitty hand fan battling to break the heat with a little breeze.

Summer days are hot but filled with freedom. It is easy to walk down the sandy beach skirting Beppu Bay and watch the fish jump over the jellyfish nets. Winter limits you to a computer and a warm blanket but now you are free to play in water parks and lay down in immaculately kept gardens while drinking fruity cocktails in full view of the local police. You pity your baseball boys and your softball girls but you dare not leave the comfort of the air-conditioned office.

Summer time is carrying the Omikoshi time.

The one thing you do not want to be is what Roland and I both were at the exact same time. I have never been as miserable as when the two of us hit our first Japanese flue during the height of summer. We could barely move as our bodies battled a Japanese bug for the first time. Roland used all of his remaining strength to walk (no car insurance yet so no driving) to the pharmacy to get us medicine, while I used mine to put cold towels all over a burning Roland when he got back. Our health insurance cards were still in the post and so we decided to muscle through it. We played it down for the parents so as not to add more worries to their already long list but we were both petrified and still flinch when we think about that hot, humid weekend of horror. By that Monday my fever had broken enough to go (mask and all) to school and make a slightly better Roland some tuna salad when I got home. Also keep in mind that throughout this tribulation we did not have internet yet and were forced to watch nothing but Japanese game / cooking shows the entire time. Nothing gives you more bizarre fever dreams than slipping in and out of consciousness while watching crazy Japanese television.

While this was an ordeal and a half we did have a fireworks filled summer and since time disguises that hellish heat with memories of braaing and camping plans, I am looking forward to that time of year again.

One can always find ways to cool down.

The Japanese usually start a letter by talking about the weather and so I thought I would leap into spring with a bit of a recap. I will be spending spring with my family, friends and cherry trees and I could not be more excited to complete my set of seasons and put to bed an incomparable year.

Only 3495 left to try.

Onsen and I have a little understanding; I am permitted to bask in its delicate, soft, warm waters as long as every time I do so, it reserves the right to reduce me to a one man band of incompetence. Onsen, for those of you not schooled in the art of getting your kit off in front of random people, is Japanese hot springs. These glorious pools, of which my neighboring town has 3500, are volcanic fissures of undiluted bliss. So as to comply with the spice of life mantra, Onsen come in many flavors, indoor, outdoor, private, public, hot enough to boil an egg, swimsuit wearing ones where everybody relaxes together and ones where you birthday-suit up and boys and girls get their own pools. It is the last of these choices that inevitably leads to Roland saying `ai, my poor bunny` as he looks on in mock sincerity while I regale him with the tales of my misadventures.

It all started with a red curtain covered in Kanji I could not read at the time. An old hand at onsening had asked me along to try this very Japanese pursuit of relaxation and I was keen to tag along. As I was about to pull the red curtain aside and enter the dressing area I heard my new friend shout `no Freda that onsen is not for you, that is for the sempai or people who have been to an onsen before, you should go into the blue curtain. It goes a long way in showing how gullible I really am, that I was nearly completely into the boys dressing room before my friend called out, through tears of laughter to get back to the girls side of things.

My encounter of the second kind went equally well. I found myself alone this time in a room that I was desperately hoping was the all female dressing room. As the saying goes `when in Rome get naked really fast and shove all your clothes in the locker provided` and as I am not one to argue that is exactly what I did (I am aware that the latter part of this statement is far from true but allow me some literary license here). I peered into the next steamy room and was relieved to see a few more naked ladies. So far, so good. I walked nonchalantly and with way more confidence than what I actually possessed, to my washing station and started to scrub up. Once clean I slid into the water buzzing with soda-stream jets and got my relaxation on. I even braved the outside pool where I could see water turning to grassy planes to stormy seas and finally to a bustling city beyond the bay but nobody could see me.

I stepped inside the changing room to find the usual, dressed ladies blow-drying their hair, bottles of body lotion, towels drying over locker doors and a man lying down with his chest and face covered with a little towel and the rest of him covered with what I was sure was men`s underwear. Oh no what do I do, do I rush back to the pool, do I make a dash for my towel in the locker, what if more men show up in this obviously shared resting room which only a slow foreigner could possibly imagine to be a ladies room. However, before I reached the very bottom of my crazy spiral, `the man` started to talk with a distinctly old lady voice to her granddaughter standing by the bathroom scale. We all got dressed and I met Roland in the lobby for a helping of `ai bunny, such an imagination`.

Since my first few waltzes with these wonderfully warm temples of letting go, I have somewhat improved and no longer step on quite so many toes. This is just as well, since a few days ago all the water pipes at my flat froze and onsen provided an attractive opposing option to washing with a bucket in the frozen wasteland that was my bathroom. Few things truly compare with gazing out over the ocean or looking down from the roof of a high-rise building over the lively city while relaxing with friends in temperate water, sometimes even watching a few flakes of snow drifting slowly down. It has even been enough to elicit the odd comment of `ai bunny can you believe that this is our lives` from my usually quiet companion.

Merry Christmas Santa San.

10 minutes is all it took to take the cable car up the snow covered mountain, two minutes is all it took to drape on double socks, hats and scarves and 10 seconds is all it took for me to fall ass over ears on the soft powdery snow that laid waste to nobody else that day but me. The mountain was a roughly iced cake below our feet, while above us God sprinkled some icing sugar over our heads in order to comply with the cooking instructions so often given by the folks from the food-network. We were also sure not to spoil as the temperature was a balmy -5 degrees Celsius.

A JET from Miyazaki had joined us for Christmas this year and as soon as we saw some snow falling outside we headed for higher ground. By the time we were done snowball fighting, photo taking and for some of us, falling on our bums, we were covered in snow and soaking wet. Our discomfort was however immediately overridden, as a big group of us stood around a kerosene heater, drinking hot chocolate and eating soft dumpling shaped buns filled with warm minced meat. There was a subtle camaraderie as everyone bonded over phrases of `samui desu ne? ` (it`s cold hey) and `hai, totemo samui desu` (yes very cold).

Christmas eve this year was a little bit country and a little bit rock and roll, a little bit traditional and a little bit Japanese. Miss Miyazaki, Roland and I went to Beppu bay to see the annual Christmas fireworks being set off to the tune of everything from `chestnuts roasting on an open fire` to `Hey, hey you, you I don`t like your girlfriend` and these are not your grandmothers sparklers either, these are building shaking, sky igniting, Japanese rockets that explode into hearts, smiling faces and fiery flowers that fill your entire field of vision. The insane spectacle was almost enough to distract us from the fact that we were slowly freezing from our feet to our forefingers. We only thawed out once there was Christmas cake (no, not the fruit and booze variety) in our bellies and presents in our laps.

The next day we roasted a chicken that was surely stolen while on its way to tiny Tim`s house because it looked more like a prized turkey. We then proceeded to befriend a bottle of South African wine and tipsily caught the evening train (no driving even after only one sip of alcohol) into Beppu to go have a look at the 50% off Christmas sales. Roland just, just managed to stop me from face-planting on an escalator, when I tried to travel up on one heading down and all three of us sang carols all the way back to the station.

We all missed our families and friends but the snow, fireworks and two oceans white wine went a long way in giving us a very merry Christmas indeed.

Going to Fukuoka via Bloemfontein

The first thing I could focus on was the condensation, clinging to the car window. Then it was eyelashes and eyelids as my attention diverted back to the improvised pillow that was once my fluffy jacket. Finally my ears caught up to my eyes and I heard Ducky colorfully curse the town we were in as Roland giggled behind the wheel as is his habit when I spin off into haphazard tirades brought on by the annoyance of the moment. I woke up, sat up and rubbed the hour long nap from my eyes, just in time to hear the ass-end of a narrative called `we are going to run out of petrol in Kusu`. Although I feel I am jumping the gun a bit and since I can barely jump a pavement this does not sound like a very good idea.

It all started, as most ambitious voyages do, with some ink laden leather charts, or in our case google maps. The three musketeers (if the famous frenchies wielded computers instead of swords) spent the night before going to Fukuoka (the main city of Kyushu) scouring the internet for maps with as little Japanese as they could lay siege to. Even so my job as `anything but the navigator` did afford me a front row car seat to the other two giving directions as follows: 30 minutes straight, then a slight left into kanji, then turn into kanji, but only after passing kanji, then kanji should be just opposite the kanji.

We opened the door to the ice planet Hoth and raced to the car, only to drive for 10 minutes before having to turn back for a certain blue eyed boy’s international driver’s license. We had barely broken our previous record when Roland missed a turn and we made it halfway back to Ducky`s pond before hitting the express way with a sonic shattering 80 km/ph. It is odd to think that when we hit 90km that I was traveling at the top speed I had reached in a car in the last four months. We spend a few hours mocking Roland for missing the turn, even though neither one of us had seen the sign, which on our way back turned out not to exist at all.

Due to the fact that I have a bladder akin to that of a pregnant woman carrying twins, we had to stop at a service station on the side of the road. Not only was my cold bum rewarded with an electronically heated toilet seat but I grabbed a bagel and a can of hot coffee at the shoppie next door. Frost had settled all along the road and it made me feel for my inland homeys since Hiji is cold but not yet brittle and white.

Ah, and then there she stood, the bastion of foreign food and libations, the bulk buying 7th wonder of Japan, the Costco. For all the tannies reading this, Costco is the American version of our Macro but even cheaper and when you have been eating plastic with a cheese label pasted on for four months, way more exciting. We filled our trolley (that happened to be half the size and twice the power of our car), with huge bottles of tomato sauce, olives, smash, chips, vitamins and man sized bricks of real gouda and mozzarella. I can`t wait to take my mom there, so I can pretend to protest while she buys me proper food and not just toasties and snacks as she refers to my cooking.

After luring Ducky away from the free apple strudel samples with the promise of real pepperoni pizza at the cafeteria, we paid for our wares and dropped a pizza and Fanta filled Duck off at the Sumo. Roland and I then hijacked (we are proper South Africans after all) her car and hightailed it to a 6 story electronics paradise. This place would give our gadget admiring fathers a good old fashioned endorphin breakdown and we would probably never see either of them ever again. On our exit however Roland and I were educated in the school of crazy expensive parking in Fukuoka when our ticket said 600 yen after our hour and a half visit. We ended up spending 3500yen (R350-ish) just parking at a few different places that day.

Once we located the main mall called Canal city we started our (mostly window) shopping with much vigor but a million levels later and hours of nipping into anime Mecca, Barbie boudoirs` and many fashion houses we became expert in the art of loitering. The trick is to park your patootie on one of the many fancy leather couches in front of a trendy little shop and pretend that the lady trying on her fifteenth bag is a good friend of yours or to sit on the little plastic chairs in the basement and hope that people will assume that somewhere in the huge arcade your kids are running around, being valuable customers.

Then it was time to meet some proper South Africans for some proper Indian food in proper Japan. There was much talk of rugby and SA perspectives shared over cheesy naan bread and spicy curry. Every now and then a stukkie Afrikaans would infiltrate the conversation and as can be expected from 6 Saffers our table was by far the noisiest in the restaurant. Then with some overly dramatic hugs (much to the amusement of some Japanese ladies) we said goodbye and still being in happy South African mode, neglected to put in petrol in the main city for surely there shall be on the road.

Ah ha ha, how we overestimated the closing times of most gas stations. Thankfully after passing thousands of deserted petrol pumps a kind 7/11 worker directed us to the only 24 hour station near the town as the needle hit the bottom of the gauge with a sigh. We made it home and had a fantastic trip which will hopefully be matched by our weekend in Nagasaki in a few days time.

I just had a great chuckle last night when I heard Roland read off his Christmas list to his parents and all that he had asked for was an English GPS.


PS. So by the by Ducky is responsible for the cool new blog picture at the top. Ah it pays to have talented friends.

Too many tea-candles!

The petite, pretend princess, self-consciously plays with the coil of rope in her lap while her eight or nine year old eyes dart to the left every few seconds. Her lips are red lacquer painted on porcelain and her red kimono is folded like an origami crane around her shoulders. She does not move as thousands of flashes are set off in her direction. Her eyes alternate between timid and strong and her little toes curl over her wooden sandals. She is the first of three princesses in the parade and she is finally coming home.

The story goes that a mere portrait of the aforementioned young lady was enough to have one of the emperor’s sons travel all the way from the capitol Nara to the city of Usuki to marry this vision and live happily, if not forever after. You see the prince left his bride behind to give birth to their baby girl and went on ahead to wait for her but as is usually the case with stories that inspire festivals, the princess did not make it through the tragic storm that blocked her way and so every year thousands of bamboo lanterns are lit to guide the lost girl back home. 

Red, green, yellow, white and blue carved bamboo lanterns are put up all over Usuki city and if you asked me a few years ago where I think I would be on the 6th of November 2010, I would not have replied with, climbing an ancient, castle stairway lined with flickering fires, muted by paper and bamboo. My word, it is atmospheric, you don’t even notice the new chill in the air as you look over the castle wall at foxes and flowers built with light.

Still had my old camera so instead I stole this superior pic from a friend Her blog

I think I spotted almost every JET in Oita chatting and taking photos of all the little lights. After saying hi, Roland and myself set off on our usual culinary adventure, but we have not exactly been big winners this week as we ordered two plates of fried stomach by mistake, hot on the heels of Roland accidently munching some whale this last Thursday. Oh many free Willy jokes were made but Roland did not find any of them particularly amusing. We did however score some tasty festival food in the end and went to the Japanese version of the Spur for a waffle when we got back home. As we climbed our familiar steps Roland voiced his concern as to whether his stomach will be able to digest the stomach he tried earlier.

One of the stone Buddhas.

Even before going to the festival Roland and I took in some local sites and went to go see the famous stone Buddhas carved out of the mountain. As we hiked up the path lined with towering bamboo and covered with leaves, Roland tried as always to scare me with ghost stories, although this time incorporating a Japanese flair and as always, as we hiked down the mountain he spent his time saying “ok sorry, please don’t be mad, I won’t pretend I heard a scary little girl laughing in the distance again”.

This photographer captured the feeling well.

Instead of saddling up our favorite beast of burden, the ever exhilarating train, we rather gave “ouma” some running shoes and took our little Honda for a brisk walk up a mountain pass. It is just not Japan! It is just not what you think of, if you ever think of this country. It can’t be dense jungle and sun shielding bamboo with not a neon sign or a high-rise building in site. We only saw one other car on our hour long journey up a very winding, narrow road, affectionately christened “the road of death” by Roland. We took the road literally less traveled in order to avoid the toll road but after seeing how scary it is we responsibly decided to not be cheap and take the expressway back.

Our lack of a sense of direction and confusing Japanese road signs had other ideas however and before we knew it we were back on the road of death, only now in streetlight devoid darkness with only those scary trees drawn by Walt Disney to keep us company. I was still halfway through a fast moving complaint when we just stopped. There on the left side of the road, looking straight at us stood a rare, Japanese, wild boar (the same one from princess Mononoke) and her four little piglets. It was absolutely surreal as the five of them with no real haste trotted back into the forest leaving us both speechless and then talking nonstop for the rest of the journey. It was unnerving and enthralling, almost religious but then at the same time it was only five little pigs standing by the side of the road. I don’t really understand why we were so surprised by this scene but either way we were both glad that we had gotten a little lost in the woods.

Andale Andale Arriba Arriba

 

There you are, standing ever so still in the middle of the chaotic ebb and flow of an ocean of people. You are narrowly but always missed by a billion bodies vying for a step in the right direction. Only, while all is brass band noisy, you have tripped and fallen head first into some self-reflection. You stand there thinking of how different your life is now. You feel the delayed rush of air as the trains race off like earthbound dragons, late for work and you see so many images per second that you are hypnotized into a dizzy, sleepy state of mind. Only when Roland slides into your field of vision carrying a bag filled with Mr. Donut goods and two vending machine coffees do you snap out of it with an almost audible pop.

A few months back, the voice shouting at me through the train station loudspeaker may as well have been the teacher from Charlie Brown for all I could pick out from the broken bits of sound but now I appreciate it as what train will be at what platform, when. The red dragon on its way to our neighboring prefecture of Miyazaki is the one we are meant to board and while this should be as easy as two foreigners plus train equals ride to land of mangoes and my South African buddy Buttermilk, the equation is bumped up to higher-grade by the addition of two bags, a pillow, chocolate pies and a futon. It is upgraded to university mathematics when you subtract the knowledge of decent Japanese. After much cursing about getting an airbed rather than lugging our futon around with us, we packed all our luggage in the overhead compartment and took our seats. A different world calls for different embarrassments and Roland and I had moved up from `hey look at that foreign couple` to `Hey look at that foreign couple who brought along their mattress, are they planning to take a nap on the train?`

Looking cool

I underestimated Japan and overestimated my level of boredom when I flung a book into my backpack for the three hour journey. As we left at 6am that morning, the only scenery Roland truly appreciated was the inside of his eyelids but I sat back and watched jungle transform into coastline and buildings turn into surfers and sand. I spotted churches and temples, campers lazing by the riverside and even two trees on two islands tied together with one Shinto rope. As my ears popped and the windows vibrated in the 5th or 6th tunnel I spied with my little eye a big city beginning with M.

Miyazaki, unlike other prefectures (looking at you Oita) has proper beaches.

 Not only was Buttermilk kind enough to let us Tatami timeshare her lovely apartment for two days but when I entered her home my boere-senses instantly started to tingle. There on the table stood a beautiful blushing milktart just waiting to be enjoyed with a nice cup of coffee. She had sculpted this exquisite piece of art in her home economics classroom amid many curios faces. As the smell and taste brought countless memories flooding back, it was time to go make some new ones. We piled into her far less geriatric car and headed to the land of the rising moon. The space museum was a blast (it is jokes like these that I will employ to torment my children one day) and thanks to a wonderful English speaking guide no one was injured while we created vacuums and tornadoes attached to great big Japanese warning signs. We spoke like aliens, composed symphonies with light and Roland stubbornly and after many tries, docked a spaceship to a spaceport. We were attacked by a giant squid (more digitally than literally) and I came to the conclusion that my booty might be a bit too bootylicious for an earth re-entry module. It was only a matter of time until hunger caused us to attach greater value to burgers and vanilla coffee than to space exploration and the dinner bell turned into the death knell for our astronaut training.

Milktart

Roland proving he is just as smart as a Robot.

I am still nowhere near over how funny it is to get the old double take if more than one foreigner has assembled in one place and the fact that we were five non-natives in one car warranted many a triple take. The drive to the world`s second highest (not that Japan has removed the sign that says highest) suspension bridge was gorgeous and green and the actual bridge is so serene and beautifully balanced that you forget to get even a little bit anxious.

On the way back Roland stood on an ancient wooden castle and surveyed his lands while the others in our group assassinated an unsuspecting samurai. Although in Mr. Samurai’s defense, his swords were locked away in a glass box and this makes it difficult to avoid attacks from a rolled up guidebook. As is usually the case, a hard days castle climbing steered us right in the direction of our next meal. This turned out to be some very tasty Mexican food in a very, very Mexican restaurant. It took almost all of my self-restraint not to play with the Sombreros and wrestling masks or to speak like Speedy Gonzales while munching my Quesadillas.

This all belongs to Roland now.

Of course on the journey home the next day Roland and I accidently sat down in reserved seating and had to take down all our luggage, including that ever annoying futon and do the walk of shame back to the unreserved seats. As amazing as our little adventure was, I sat down next to Roland and told him that I was looking forward to sleeping in my own bed and getting back home and for the first time in my life, I was referring to Oita, Japan.