Again sorry for delay. Not only I'm
very little at home I'm also having trouble uploading pictures fast.
Somehow it takes like 15 minutes per picture. Not sure why is that.
Not trouble with my internet speed which has very fast upload rate.
On Friday I decided to head for the
Yamadera(literally mountain temple, for rather obvious reason). Trip
started less than stellar as 45 minutes was NOT enough to get to
train to Shinjuku from Shimo-Takaido(sheesh these crowds). Was
banging my head to wall(literally) from frustration at one point.
This caused me to miss the train I was supposed to take delaying
arrival to Ooyama enough that I was juuuust in time for the train.
Was walking on escalators up past other Japanese, my wrist clock said
9:23, had seen moment ago note that the train I was supposed to go in
leaves at 9:22 and heard ”doors closing”. AARGH! Not even
thinking jumped to first train I saw when I got up and just as I got
in doors closed. Then time to figure WHAT train I had jumped. Of
course the wrong one...Oops! Maybe should have just take time to
verify train even at the cost of it leaving without me(if this HAD
been right train verifying would have meant missing it for sure).
No idea where I was going except place
name and no idea if I could get to destination from there so decided
to simply hop out of train next station and hop to reverse train.
This caused all together in the end hour and 10 minute delay to
arrival. Good thing I'm scheduling my travels pretty loosely and this
wasn't particularly long trip in a first place so I would still have
plenty of time.
The Shinkansen I was supposed to hop
into stopped into Sendai(yes THAT Sendai. The one struct hard by the
Tsunami. And incidentally train also passed by Fukushima. Yes THAT
Fukushima. The one with the Nuclear Reactor gone awry. Dunno how
close I came to it but doubtful there would be multiple shinkansens
each day going dangerously close anyway). Don't know how badly the
stations surroundings was hit but if it was hit hard it's been pretty
well repaired by now. Maybe the mass gravestones(I think that's what
they were) are from the tsunami? In that case they were most visible
remnant of the tsunami.
Arriving to the Yamadera first thing
that hit me was that it was raining. Hard. And guess who had left
umbrella home...So time to find new one which luckily was found
around the corner.
Arriving to the temples foot
gate(guided by helpful signs of where to go) it was time to enter
temple. But you don't just enter from gate to this temple oh no! This
one is bit trickier as it requires you to take 1000 step stairways
all the way up. Well I don't know if that's REALLY 1000 step stairway
or is that figure of speech but I can tell for sure it was a lot of
steps. Step after step after step of climbing higher and higher.
Pretty soon I was not only one showing signs of exhaustion. Luckily
taking puctures gave good excuse to take a breathing pause.
After what seemed like forever I
started to think are these endless stairs when I arrived to level
area where lots of Japanese were taking breather(all huffing and
puffing. Seems even for fit ones this was arduous climb). I saw big
building ahead and was thinking this must be the last sprint and
people are just taking breather to enter the temple area relaxed and
was so to speak patting myself to back for making it. Then I heard
blood chilling word spoken aloud: ”hanbun”.
Hanbun? That was a joke right? RIGHT?!?
I quickly asked person next to me was this place ”hanbun”. ”Yeah,
roughly hanbun”. Oh christ. I was only HALF WAY up.
Well after bit of a breather resumed
the climb and eventually(after a lots of steps) arrived finally to
the temple. But looking back I had no regrets of climbing this
stairway as despite the clouds the view was absolutely stunning(I
seem to use that word a lot when describing views here. But having
lived in pretty flat country in a flat area I don't get often chance
to take a good look from this tall place). Unfortunately taking
pictures from the interior of temple was as usual forbidden.
Then it was climb back to down. Took at
least less time than the climb up though had to be careful to not
slip. Could get dangerous or even deadly to fall on here.
For lunch I bought several...food items...from nearby store. Not quite sure what they were except two were some meat in sticks and other were hard plates. Reminded me bit of "näkkilepä" actually. The red one was HOT! I ate it and gulped down lots of tea down. Spicy spicy SPICY!
Saturday I was supposed to meet with
Japanese for trip to Onsen but his friend(with whom we were supposed
to meet) said he couldn't make it for the day after all and asked if
it would be okay to post pone. Unfortunately day he asked I had
booked with another person but luckily even though it was on a bit of
a short notice it was not a problem to switch the meetings 1=1.
Therefore I would be meeting with another friend of my Japanese
teacher.
Unfortunately I was tad too
overconfident on my kanji ability and hadn't copied email with
directions to my Japanese text editor(with bigger font) and the
smaller font in browser made me misread kanji which caused bit of a
confusion regarding meeting place. In panic I rushed to find place I
could use Internet which I found but which opened precisely when we
were supposed to meet. Quickly rechecking email(should have copied it
to my phone. Argh what a stupidity. Got too comfortable!) I found out
precisely where I was supposed to meet and rushed back at the
station(good thing I have been visiting to gym for over a year. This
running would have been impossible before). Then I remembered that in
all our email conversations I had not shown single picture of
myself(and reverse though pictures of Japanese don't really help me
to recognize them in a first go). ARGH! Luckily again being so
notably non-Japanese paid off as she was able to recognize me.
Saved!
Apologizing for being late(by about 10
minutes) we then headed for a bus. I had little idea what we were
going to do! I had planned to see if I could think up some places I
would like to see around the place but due to the quick change of
plans(I asked if it would be okay to switch on Thursday evening, this
was on Saturday and on Friday I was on the Yamadera which took longer
than expected) had had no time to do that.
First stop was for quick lunch at soba
restaurant where I ate soba with fried(tempura) shrimp. Very, very
nice view from the restaurant. The chairs and table were bit of a
small side though! Next we went for quick dessert. Not quite sure
what the dessert was but it was good and I also got to try macha for
the first time. Very interesting type of tea for sure.
Then we went for bit of a sight seeing
dropping by on Great Buddha(like the one in Nara). That's one big
statue for sure. We also got to go INSIDE the statue! Entrance was
short(I could not stand straight) and narrow particularly in stairway
which caused trouble particularly going down. Luckily person coming
up just when I was approaching the bottom was kind enough to wait for me to get
completely down.
Wonder why there's even such a place
inside a statue?
After this came something I had not
expected to do in Japan. She led me to place where you can try on old
styled clothing like in samurai era. And against my expectations they
did have size for me so after signing contract(which stated obvious
stuff like I'll be viable for damage done, don't push sword into
ground, take care of the clothes and also request to go to bathroom
before starting. Sensible since getting out of those takes bit of a
time!). After these were done I chose small sword, large sword and
fan and then I was led to upstairs where I first removed
clothes(barring pants) and was helped(doubtful you can even put them
on yourself even if you tried) on the kimono. First the Japanese
socks, then white shirt, belt type of thing to tighten it up, then
upper part(those sleeves are indeed big), then parts
below(interestingly put on more like pants). Belt over the waist(even
with my waistline went over couple times to get it all. That's a one
long belt!). Finally hat(I chose the smaller of the two) and I was
ready to go down again. Have to say felt more than a bit peculiar!
Smaller sword went to belt while larger
one had it's own rope that was tied around. Fan inside the belt as
well and outside the Japanese shoes. Then it was time for some photo
taking where I took various poses as instructed by the person guiding
me(I by the way had given concent for the shop to use my picture in
the poster wall they had outside showing pictures of previous
customers).
Then came another surprise. We were going for a walk! By
god. I was going to walk in public in this outfit! And did we take
any QUIET place to walk? Oh no! That's way too easy! So instead we
headed for temple we had seen before which was right next to the
station!
Station being so close we obviously saw
a lot of people and unsurprisingly pretty much EVERYBODY was staring
at me and not even bothering to hide it :D I however decided to take
this with humour and so it didn't bother me(though without her with
me would have been too embarassing!). Actually we were having good
time at the reaction of people. In particular there was group of four
schoolboys who kept taking quick glances at me which I found
particularly funny. Some more photo's was taken by her along with
video.
Only thing unpleasant about the walk
was the scary idea of damaging the clothes I was wearing. I don't
even want to think price I would end up paying in that case. Needless
to say I was taking VERY good care of my steps, particularly when
walking stairs.
Overall fun little experience.
Certainly not something I'm likely going to be able to do in Finland!
After I had got out of the clothes we
went to meet her husband and daughter in car and then to their home.
The daughter is about the same age as my niece and was so adorable.
Reminded me a lot of my niece. I have suspicion those two would get
along rather well despite having no common language. Obviously the
daughter found me bit of an odd sight and kept staring at me(well
that's pretty common reaction from kids of that age here!) but with
some encouragement from her mother did greet me, tell her name, age
etc. At home I happaned to ask what's her favourite toy and turns out
it was the card game Uno. We ended up playing it and she's totally
crazy on that game. ”Once more! Once more!”. First game she won
pretty fast and the smile she had was so awesome. Turns out playing
Uno was good idea as it pretty much broke the ice between us and she
was more comfortable around me after that. All in all evening went
nicely eating(Takoyaki which was nice surprise since I love those.
Don't think I had mentioned that before so lucky happenstance. Also
got to try Natto. The smell is indeed HORRIBLE but taste wasn't
actually that bad. As long as I can avoid smelling it I have no
trouble eating it), playing Uno and talking a LOT. Don't think I have
talked as much in Japanese as today.
Also got bunch more photo's with me and
the daughter, me, daughter and mother and finally with help of a
camera with timer all four of us. And for fun I took the arch-typical
Japanese camera pose of v-shape fingers. First time I did that.
Definitely some of the best memories of
the trip came from this day. Wearing the samurai clothes was fun,
talking LOTS of Japanese was fun(couple times I had to resort to
English but mostly it was in Japanese) and meeting with new people is
always fun. Especially kids! That's a rare treat here.
Sunday goal was to go to place called
Iga to see the Ninja festival that was going thorough April and some
of May but unfortunately midroute fell asleep and went straight past
station I was supposed to get off. With time table being bit
tight(even though Iga wasn't that far off it had lots of traveling in
non-shinkansen trains which eat time) and next day being particularly
long day for which I still needed to prepare I opted to abandon the
trip. I would either have very little time to be at the Iga or would
be coming home past midnight, prepare plans for tomorrow's trip and
then wake up well before 6 am. Neither option sounded particularly
appealing.
Think I screwed up slightly with today. Might have been better to not even go anywhere as I was way too exhausted and tomorrow's going to be another hard day.
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