きれいな所
[8/16]
It’s 4:39, and I have to catch a 5:46 train to Toyooka. So I give myself, oh, twenty-five minutes to write. Okay, then I’ll put on Picture Perfect World, and when it ends, my time’s up.
Right now it’s raining, pretty hard, but fortunately I was left two umbrellas, which should be more than enough to get me to train station without too much water damage. And meanwhile the rain is beautiful, especially the sound it makes on all the roofs. (I always want the plural of that word to be rooves...but it isn’t, is it? Pity.)
I don’t know what the hell my predecessor was talking about when he said there wasn’t really anywhere nice around here to walk or just sit. Sheesh. Today Yumi took me around to a bunch of places, starting with Okami Kouen (that’s 岡見公園...a park from which you see hills, I guess?), which was absolutely lovely.
(Speaking of lovely, I just had to take a break from writing to go open the window upstairs and watch the rain for a bit, because it started absolutely pouring...すごいきれいよ。)
Anyway, 岡見公園 is a little spot on the top of a cliff near the water, with a couple of benches, and an odd stone structure that must have some sort of traditional religious significance or something...when I asked what it was, Yumi said she’d never really thought about it. It just was. Which is sort of cool. I took a picture on my phone (my camera, I discovered, is pretty much out of batteries...oh well). I wonder if there’s a way to upload pictures from my phone to the computer...できるかな...I know the phone came with a USB chord. Maybe that will enable the transfer of photos. I’ll try that out sometime soon. And grass! Grass grown in odd little squares, at least partly. There were people having a picnic down on some rocks by the water – how they got there is beyond me, though. I guess you could scramble down the side of those cliffs if you really wanted to; there was sort of a path. But not in the shoes I was wearing...I already injured my ankle by tripping in the parking lot of Toyooka station. I think that suggests that picking my way down rocky slopes might be a somewhat bad plan.....
And it looks out over the water, to the west, so Yumi said it’s the best spot to watch sunsets. I think I could walk there if I were willing to walk for twenty minutes or half an hour or something. I’ll have to test it out. In any case I want to go there a lot, to just sit or read or draw or whatever. At least before it gets too cold...
Well, we did a bunch of other things, but the record has already finished – what with watching the rain and getting a call just now from the guy who’s picking me up at Toyooka station when I get there, I didn’t get to write much. Oh well; more later! (Or tomorrow, if I end up crashing at someone’s house in Toyooka...)
またね！
....................
Okay it’s tomorrow, aka Sunday. I just got back. Nice that coming back to Kasumi feels like coming home. I am absolutely starving, having eaten nothing since a light supper yesterday of half a quesadilla, a few nachos, and salad, but while the water boils I can start writing. The party last night was...interesting, but I think it will be more interesting in email form, just to be safe. Heh.
Meanwhile back to yesterday afternoon. After the park, Yumi took me to a temple in Kasumi, whose name I forget. It’s got thirteen rooms with painted walls, mostly painted by some relatively famous artist from Kyoto. You walk in through huge gates, past a couple trees that we were told were 1000 and 500 years old, and then there’s a statue of someone – a man – at which you light a little green stick and put it in a big pot filled with sand. And throw a coin into a wooden box. I find I love rituals like that. I even love tiny rituals like taking your shoes off before you enter places. One of the rooms upstairs in my house, the tatami one, feels for some reason to me like a slightly sacred room – maybe because of all the tatami, and a little raised wooden platform in one corner that looks like it should be some sort of shrine, and the fact that you have to go up a small step to enter the room – so I bow before I enter it. There’s something really comforting about all of that...I don’t know how to explain it. Anyway, then we went in to the genkan and took off our shoes, and then entered the sort of entrance room, where you kneel on the floor and writing your name and address in a book. The woman at the counter was very impressed I could write my address in kanji and my name in katakana, and speak a few easy sentences of Japanese. Then a youngish guy took us on a tour, on which we were joined by a Japanese family. They gave me a little information pamphlet in English, but it had much less information that was being explained in Japanese by the tour guide. Yumi translated some of what he said, and some I think I managed to follow. For example, in one room, where the walls are painted with koi and turtles swimming around a little river or pond, the guide had us first stand on one side of the room, and then on the other, to look at a couple of the animals: one fish, for example, if you looked at it from the right side of the room it looked like it was swimming away toward the left, and if you looked at it from the left side of the room, it looked like it was curving toward the right, swimming toward the other fish. And a similar thing with one of the turtles. In another room, which depicted puppies playing under a tree, two of the puppies seemed like they were staring straight at you wherever you stood. One room had a big ceramic jar with slots in the top for you to put in coins, and when you dropped a coin in it made a beautiful, echoing musical sound. Anyway, I think what was mainly innovative about these paintings was the way they worked with the space of the rooms and didn’t expect the viewer to be staring directly at them from the front all the time. Which is pretty cool. I didn’t take pictures, because no one else was; I didn’t see any signs saying not to, but I didn’t want to be the obnoxious America tourist taking pictures of the sacred temple paintings. So if you want to see them, you’ll have to visit me. ;-P
When we were done with the eleven downstairs rooms, they offered us a tour of the two upstairs rooms, which apparently they don’t always include on the tour...I’m not certain, but I think the woman said they only show them specially, so like, they were taking me there because I was a foreigner, or something. In the first room upstairs we started chatting with the woman who had taken over the from the guy for the upstairs part; she said she had a daughter my age who was really good at English and had gone to New Zealand for a month or so once, and then they’d hosted an exchange student from New Zealand. But that student didn’t like Japan very much and got really homesick and would cry every night and refuse to eat Japanese food. Which led to a conversation about whether I like Japanese food, which of course led to vegetarianism and another episode of going through lists of food and determining whether I can eat them. Apparently her daughter is now in Tokyo doing some sort of musical.
The last room depicted a group of monkeys, or rather apes, hanging out around some rocks, and I think it was my favorite room. The apes were so playful. That room, the woman pointed out, had a low ceiling so that you couldn’t draw your sword in it. That’s comforting. The woman told me that if I ever had any problems, I should come down to the temple and talk to her and she’d help me. Isn’t that sweet?
I really wanted to buy something at the little gift shop (aka, stuff displayed around the counter)...but until I get paid (Wednesday!) I’m trying not to spend money that I don’t in some sense have to. But I am certain I’ll be back there, and then I’ll buy something. On the way out we walked around the area outside the temple a bit, where there were some other very beautiful buildings and little shrines and gardens. Then we went to a sweets shop right next door, where they have a bunch of sweets out on a table that you can sample for free. I felt bad sampling and not buying anything...but I really didn’t need any sweets, even though some of them are quite good. But Yumi bought something, at least.
Next she drove me over to the famous railroad bridge. Which, uh...isn’t really that exciting. It’s a big red bridge. I suppose it’s an impressive construction. I’d be slightly more impressed if a train hadn’t fallen off of it about twenty years ago, killing both passengers and people on the ground. Now, apparently, they don’t drive the trains over it when it’s too windy. Somehow I would have wanted a more extreme reaction to that event...can’t wind start to blow while a train is on the bridge? Well, I’ll probably take the train to Hamasaka at some point while I’m here, so let’s hope there aren’t any sudden gusts...
There were many Japanese people standing around pointing their cell phones up at the bridge. I guess it’s a tourist attraction?
After that she gave me two choices: keep driving further toward Hamasaka for more sightseeing, or go back to Kasumi and eat cake. I chose the cake (it sounded like that was her first choice too...). So we went to a cute little café/bakery in Kasumi, near the water. By the water there’s another park with even more grass, and a sidewalk near the water to walk on, which I’m sure I could walk to. But it was raining by then, so we didn’t go there. The café had big stuffed animals of Elmo and Snoopy and some other random animals I didn’t recognize. I got some sort of ice cream thing with fudge sauce, bananas, and strawberries. It wasn’t bad. We chatted about music and she told me some of her favorite Japanese groups. After that it was getting close to when I needed to catch the train, so she brought me back here, and I wrote the first part of this post and then headed out to the train station.
Which brings me to the party, so check your email. ^_^
まっさらな空 どこまでも連れて
限りなく舞い上がるよ
It’s 4:39, and I have to catch a 5:46 train to Toyooka. So I give myself, oh, twenty-five minutes to write. Okay, then I’ll put on Picture Perfect World, and when it ends, my time’s up.
Right now it’s raining, pretty hard, but fortunately I was left two umbrellas, which should be more than enough to get me to train station without too much water damage. And meanwhile the rain is beautiful, especially the sound it makes on all the roofs. (I always want the plural of that word to be rooves...but it isn’t, is it? Pity.)
I don’t know what the hell my predecessor was talking about when he said there wasn’t really anywhere nice around here to walk or just sit. Sheesh. Today Yumi took me around to a bunch of places, starting with Okami Kouen (that’s 岡見公園...a park from which you see hills, I guess?), which was absolutely lovely.
(Speaking of lovely, I just had to take a break from writing to go open the window upstairs and watch the rain for a bit, because it started absolutely pouring...すごいきれいよ。)
Anyway, 岡見公園 is a little spot on the top of a cliff near the water, with a couple of benches, and an odd stone structure that must have some sort of traditional religious significance or something...when I asked what it was, Yumi said she’d never really thought about it. It just was. Which is sort of cool. I took a picture on my phone (my camera, I discovered, is pretty much out of batteries...oh well). I wonder if there’s a way to upload pictures from my phone to the computer...できるかな...I know the phone came with a USB chord. Maybe that will enable the transfer of photos. I’ll try that out sometime soon. And grass! Grass grown in odd little squares, at least partly. There were people having a picnic down on some rocks by the water – how they got there is beyond me, though. I guess you could scramble down the side of those cliffs if you really wanted to; there was sort of a path. But not in the shoes I was wearing...I already injured my ankle by tripping in the parking lot of Toyooka station. I think that suggests that picking my way down rocky slopes might be a somewhat bad plan.....
And it looks out over the water, to the west, so Yumi said it’s the best spot to watch sunsets. I think I could walk there if I were willing to walk for twenty minutes or half an hour or something. I’ll have to test it out. In any case I want to go there a lot, to just sit or read or draw or whatever. At least before it gets too cold...
Well, we did a bunch of other things, but the record has already finished – what with watching the rain and getting a call just now from the guy who’s picking me up at Toyooka station when I get there, I didn’t get to write much. Oh well; more later! (Or tomorrow, if I end up crashing at someone’s house in Toyooka...)
またね！
....................
Okay it’s tomorrow, aka Sunday. I just got back. Nice that coming back to Kasumi feels like coming home. I am absolutely starving, having eaten nothing since a light supper yesterday of half a quesadilla, a few nachos, and salad, but while the water boils I can start writing. The party last night was...interesting, but I think it will be more interesting in email form, just to be safe. Heh.
Meanwhile back to yesterday afternoon. After the park, Yumi took me to a temple in Kasumi, whose name I forget. It’s got thirteen rooms with painted walls, mostly painted by some relatively famous artist from Kyoto. You walk in through huge gates, past a couple trees that we were told were 1000 and 500 years old, and then there’s a statue of someone – a man – at which you light a little green stick and put it in a big pot filled with sand. And throw a coin into a wooden box. I find I love rituals like that. I even love tiny rituals like taking your shoes off before you enter places. One of the rooms upstairs in my house, the tatami one, feels for some reason to me like a slightly sacred room – maybe because of all the tatami, and a little raised wooden platform in one corner that looks like it should be some sort of shrine, and the fact that you have to go up a small step to enter the room – so I bow before I enter it. There’s something really comforting about all of that...I don’t know how to explain it. Anyway, then we went in to the genkan and took off our shoes, and then entered the sort of entrance room, where you kneel on the floor and writing your name and address in a book. The woman at the counter was very impressed I could write my address in kanji and my name in katakana, and speak a few easy sentences of Japanese. Then a youngish guy took us on a tour, on which we were joined by a Japanese family. They gave me a little information pamphlet in English, but it had much less information that was being explained in Japanese by the tour guide. Yumi translated some of what he said, and some I think I managed to follow. For example, in one room, where the walls are painted with koi and turtles swimming around a little river or pond, the guide had us first stand on one side of the room, and then on the other, to look at a couple of the animals: one fish, for example, if you looked at it from the right side of the room it looked like it was swimming away toward the left, and if you looked at it from the left side of the room, it looked like it was curving toward the right, swimming toward the other fish. And a similar thing with one of the turtles. In another room, which depicted puppies playing under a tree, two of the puppies seemed like they were staring straight at you wherever you stood. One room had a big ceramic jar with slots in the top for you to put in coins, and when you dropped a coin in it made a beautiful, echoing musical sound. Anyway, I think what was mainly innovative about these paintings was the way they worked with the space of the rooms and didn’t expect the viewer to be staring directly at them from the front all the time. Which is pretty cool. I didn’t take pictures, because no one else was; I didn’t see any signs saying not to, but I didn’t want to be the obnoxious America tourist taking pictures of the sacred temple paintings. So if you want to see them, you’ll have to visit me. ;-P
When we were done with the eleven downstairs rooms, they offered us a tour of the two upstairs rooms, which apparently they don’t always include on the tour...I’m not certain, but I think the woman said they only show them specially, so like, they were taking me there because I was a foreigner, or something. In the first room upstairs we started chatting with the woman who had taken over the from the guy for the upstairs part; she said she had a daughter my age who was really good at English and had gone to New Zealand for a month or so once, and then they’d hosted an exchange student from New Zealand. But that student didn’t like Japan very much and got really homesick and would cry every night and refuse to eat Japanese food. Which led to a conversation about whether I like Japanese food, which of course led to vegetarianism and another episode of going through lists of food and determining whether I can eat them. Apparently her daughter is now in Tokyo doing some sort of musical.
The last room depicted a group of monkeys, or rather apes, hanging out around some rocks, and I think it was my favorite room. The apes were so playful. That room, the woman pointed out, had a low ceiling so that you couldn’t draw your sword in it. That’s comforting. The woman told me that if I ever had any problems, I should come down to the temple and talk to her and she’d help me. Isn’t that sweet?
I really wanted to buy something at the little gift shop (aka, stuff displayed around the counter)...but until I get paid (Wednesday!) I’m trying not to spend money that I don’t in some sense have to. But I am certain I’ll be back there, and then I’ll buy something. On the way out we walked around the area outside the temple a bit, where there were some other very beautiful buildings and little shrines and gardens. Then we went to a sweets shop right next door, where they have a bunch of sweets out on a table that you can sample for free. I felt bad sampling and not buying anything...but I really didn’t need any sweets, even though some of them are quite good. But Yumi bought something, at least.
Next she drove me over to the famous railroad bridge. Which, uh...isn’t really that exciting. It’s a big red bridge. I suppose it’s an impressive construction. I’d be slightly more impressed if a train hadn’t fallen off of it about twenty years ago, killing both passengers and people on the ground. Now, apparently, they don’t drive the trains over it when it’s too windy. Somehow I would have wanted a more extreme reaction to that event...can’t wind start to blow while a train is on the bridge? Well, I’ll probably take the train to Hamasaka at some point while I’m here, so let’s hope there aren’t any sudden gusts...
There were many Japanese people standing around pointing their cell phones up at the bridge. I guess it’s a tourist attraction?
After that she gave me two choices: keep driving further toward Hamasaka for more sightseeing, or go back to Kasumi and eat cake. I chose the cake (it sounded like that was her first choice too...). So we went to a cute little café/bakery in Kasumi, near the water. By the water there’s another park with even more grass, and a sidewalk near the water to walk on, which I’m sure I could walk to. But it was raining by then, so we didn’t go there. The café had big stuffed animals of Elmo and Snoopy and some other random animals I didn’t recognize. I got some sort of ice cream thing with fudge sauce, bananas, and strawberries. It wasn’t bad. We chatted about music and she told me some of her favorite Japanese groups. After that it was getting close to when I needed to catch the train, so she brought me back here, and I wrote the first part of this post and then headed out to the train station.
Which brings me to the party, so check your email. ^_^
限りなく舞い上がるよ
posted by Ashila at 1:46 AM
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