turnip the volume!

what have i been doing in the long month since i last wrote? mainly watching too many dance shows and trying to figure out how to keep life from feeling mundane. i never thought living in japan could feel mundane (to be fair, even after 3 1/2 years, daily life is still a thrill), but i guess i need a job that suits me a little better. that would probably involve teaching a subject i'm more passionate about than grammar to riveting individuals over the age of 15. i like assorted little kids in my classes; some of them are insanely cool, but the rest of them are just insane...and they make me insane. one thing i have learned about children is that they are born with the innate ability to push your buttons, regardless of the language you speak. i've gotten better at the "don't even think of disobeying me" look, but sometimes it clatters uselessly to the floor and i have to just accept i can't wring their necks. then, just when i think my face is going to melt off in indignation, a kid will show up docile and sweet and sit on my lap, and my heart will melt instead.
i do like teaching; that's one thing that has been cemented here. i love talking about culture and slang, and i don't mind explaining grammar and punctuation either, but i really want to just USE english to teach something else. i want to talk about accomplishing something greater than choosing the right verb tense.
the adults and teenagers in my classes are awesome, though. they keep my head from exploding. they also take me fun places, bring me thoughtful souvenirs (everything from fresh turnips to fluorescent pink underwear), and often exceed my expectations in kindness. hopefully i've learned a little about that here too.

i live on the third floor and have a nice little balcony. what i wanted now that it's spring was something green to look at. i didn't really want to pay for a pot and a huge bag of dirt and plants and all that, so i decided i'd just plant a little cup of grass. i miss the smell of cut grass in the summer anyway, and it ought to require very little attention. what i didn't really have access to was dirt. most little corners in japan (when you're in the city, at least) belong to someone and are pretty well-tended. the last thing i wanted to do was scare or offend some nice granny by digging up a corner of her yard, so i asked an elderly gentleman student (who loves gardening) instead. my only request was, "would you mind bringing me a little bit of dirt so i can plant something." and what did i get? a full, alphabet-coded gardening kit, including hand-drawn illustrations and english instructions!
pot, drainage rocks, dirt, fertilizer, scoop made from a plastic bottle, gloves...


my favorite drawing is for step 7. "push. push."


after all the work he put into it, i couldn't just plant grass anymore. today i settled on a compromise: a wild strawberry plant surrounded by grass. that way if the strawberry croaks (you never know with those hardware store plants), i'll still be able to have my grass and cut it too.
after a far-too-intense bug incident in mie (i'm still traumatized), i am hoping for potted plant peace on the third floor.

red-handed

as i mentioned previously, some toes on my left foot went white and numb twice last week for no apparent reason. fearing that i was developing Raynaud's phenomenon, i looked into any dietary changes i could make that might help. niacin was recommended to help open the blood vessels, so i bought a supplement and began taking it. when you take a lot of niacin, it dilates your vessels and you get what's called a niacin flush...your hands and feet turn red. so these days you can pretty much always catch me red-handed. har har.

for about, oh, three years or so i've been wanting to get my hands back into some clay and play around like i did in college. ceramics was never my main medium, so it was just a relaxing, but still creative activity, while i focused on painting and printmaking. however, all my efforts to turn up a place where i could throw some pottery on a wheel came to nothing. finally last week fern agreed to take me to a little studio in a small pottery town called tokoname to sling some mud...but first we had to find it!
we set out on a circuitous "pottery studio" path in the rain and took our time, content to get lost, which we did. we shopped in some little glass and ceramic studios, bought some delicious bread at a bakery, ogled a cute young artist filing beautiful metal cups in his phone booth-sized studio, and ran into an old woman who bemoaned our visit was on such a gloomy day. when we responded in japanese, she expressed delight that we could understand and gave us each two oranges. we staggered down some steep stairs...and ended up back near the beginning! after several damp map consultations, we managed to find the place.

pottery bottle wall


i liked this white meter/black wall.



fern had been a few times before, so she had a good rapport with watanabe-san, the artist. rarely do i like someone as much and feel as comfortable with them as i did with this 60-something, twinkly-eyed rascal. his ease and good humor made me relax right away, and he both helped us enough and left us alone enough. i felt a little nervous because i realized it had been about nine years since i last threw anything, and i didn't want to mess up! however, it felt good; it was exactly the kind of experience i've been longing for!
my first bowl was ok but a little on the inelegant side, but my second one was much better. i'm afraid it was all over too quickly. for the price, we got a certain amount of clay, i guess, and he will trim, fire, and glaze it (to our specifications), and then mail the finished bowls to us! fun!

fern and mr. watanabe


wheel action


tools


our greenware


after we washed up, his wife (more discerning, so though generous, i felt a little less comfortable around her) offered us shako from a straw basket. peeled, these critters are not so bad-looking, but i had never seen them still in their bodies before. can i just say...dude, sick! they look like disgusting ocean insects. to top that off, the wife showed us how to break off the tail and suck out he juices, break off the head and suck out the juices, and then she handed the same one she had sucked on to fern to eat! i wouldn't budge. i'm sure it would have been fine, but i don't care much for any shellfish (unless we're talking cajun shrimp), so why bother? i feasted on parinko crackers instead.

...a little more fyi on shako, from wikipedia: "Oratosquilla oratoria. Called "sea locusts" by ancient Assyrians, "prawn killers" in Australia and now sometimes referred to as "thumb splitters" by modern divers — because of the relative ease the creature has in mutilating small appendages — mantis shrimp sport powerful claws that they use to attack and kill prey by spearing, stunning or dismemberment. Although it happens rarely, some larger species of mantis shrimp are capable of breaking through aquarium glass with a single strike from this weapon."

taking procrastination to the next level

15 followers, 1000 profile views, and last night a dream that my blog was being published as a book! that would literally be a dream come true on many levels. i even remember what the binding was like and how thick it was. it was a well-done book. the pictures were all on recycled-looking paper, so they weren't super glossy, just a little bit. it had the feeling of a thick, artistic periodical.

i'm trying, for heaven's sake TRYING, to get some new year/christmas/update cards sent off, though to say they're late would be a massive understatement. i bought these cards the year before last when it was the year of the cow (according to the chinese calendar, which has been adopted by japan), but now it's the year of the tiger! since i stamped the cards but never wrote on them, i decided to give them a little face lift so i wouldn't have to buy new cards and stamps....heh heh. however, i still haven't sent them, so i probably should just paint rabbit faces over the tiger masks to get ready for next year!

i'm 31 flavors, and then some.

last week i turned 31. when i came to japan, i was 27! true, celebrating here (in my new city) just isn't the same as being surrounded by family and old friends, but i was still blessed with a lot of generosity by my students and new friends.
my gray hairs are coming in more insistently these days, but thanks to oily skin, i'm not too wrinkly.
before the day, i was taken out for sukiyaki by one class;


given a wonderful, thoughtful surprise party by another class;


treated by kj to karaoke at the fancy place with a column of bubbling water;




and joined by some friends for lunch, card games, and Baskin Robbins.
(deana, fern, jason, kjersten, me, matthew)



fern baked me some gorgeous cupcakes.


mom and i had a skype party. see the candle?


on my actual birthday i went shopping with my friend matthew, we had some delicious burgers, and i did some 1-person purikura.






thanks, everyone!

stages

i love watching things change over time, especially seasonal changes over fields and trees. i've only been in this house for six months, but the rice field nearby has already gone through several picturesque looks. i have yet to get a picture with snow because i usually don't have my camera when i take my trash to the corner, which is when i pass the field.
finally the days are getting noticeably longer again, though it's still cold. recently i seem to have developed something like Raynaud's phenomenon in my toes, which is alarming. with relatively no provocation, the veins in my toes freak out and constrict, leaving my toes white, chilly, and numb. i'm hoping this doesn't happen often (never again would be nice).

without a filter...

some things just shouldn't be made into cute, approachable characters. i've seen some wierd ones in japan: cartoon hamster faces made into little cold cuts, marimokkori, the mascot of hokkaido with an overactive, um, algae ball, and the ubiquitous poo stickers...but recently megan brought a new character to my attention, tobacco-san. now you can get a whole notebook full of smiling cigarettes promising "adult taste" and suggesting you "light me." you can even cut out the paper into a cigarette pack envelope and roll up your cigarette memo! yikes, guys!

the writing-off has been unwritten

(13 followers!)
i'm sure you could tell i had kinda written off shin, right? after a lot more texts, he invited me to go out again. as i said before, i'm down with being his friend, so i said sure. i kinda wanted to give the guy a chance since i did have a good time the first time we went out. this time i didn't obsess about being kidnapped. that's progress! anyway, we met near my house, rode our bikes to a restaurant (high school chic), and then tried to assess the place. neither of us had ever been there, but i had chosen it because he said he wanted to go to an izakaya, and it was the only one i had seen nearby. the owner was coming out as we were locking up our bikes, and he was extremely warm and polite, so we decided to go in. the thing about japan is you never know what you're going to get based on the outside of a building. some apartment buildings look like post-apocalyptic jail bunkers and are gorgeous inside. some restaurants are like that too. the only thing you can see is a doorway with a noren hanging outside to show that it's open. so we walked in and this is what we got: a tiny, dirty, smoke-saturated room with a handful of characters already three sheets to the wind. one bear of a guy (about 50?) sleeping on the bar was wearing a furry hoodie with embroidered flowers, and another guy was sporting a fluffy gray mullet. the owner had cleared one of the only two tables for us, and everyone else was sitting around the bar. clearly they were regulars. only in japan can you walk into a situation like that and feel perfectly safe and welcome. we got some curious glances, but they weren't hostile. the owner went to great lengths to make us comfortable, turning the heater in our direction and apologizing profusely for keeping us waiting while he made our dinner...but...shin and i agreed we never wanted to go back. after that we rode our bikes to a much more sterile establishment: some plain, cozy dessert chain, and shared an ice cream waffle. wake up cinderella, it's already midnight! and i had such a good time! it wasn't awkward or boring even for a moment. we said goodnight quickly (it was frigid outside) and pedaled home.

my dirt-eating minions

i have twelve followers guys, twelve! and four of them i don't even know! that's popularity. can you even handle all the exclamation points!? seriously though, thank you very much for reading!
it's a cold, clear day here and i'm feeling encouraged after yesterday's doctor visit. for about two months i've been having knee and hip pain on one side, but the knee x-ray showed no bone problems. at least that's something. i'm more than a little dubious about japanese health care and doctors, but sometimes you really do need to see someone. of the four or five doctor's visits i've made in japan, all to different individuals, i've never been asked 1. if i'm allergic to any medications (i am), 2. if i have any pre-existing conditions (i do), or 3. if i'm taking any medication (i am). it doesn't exactly inspire confidence. if you need a refresher, read about my first doctor visit in japan.
the best part, however, was the whole visit (including a giggle-inducing ride on the moving x-ray table...like a very tame amusement park ride) cost me $16. there are some things i'd like to get checked out while i'm paying prices like that, but with the horror stories i've heard about extremely painful tests with no anesthesia or gloves, misdiagnoses, and mixed up test results, it makes me wonder if i'd be better off without them.
however, i should definitely invest in some new running shoes. the ones i'm using, though they haven't had consistent use all the years i've had them, are now at least um eleven years old. how is that possible!? the past two years i've been using them a lot, so they must be spent. i'm kind of humiliated to admit how long i've had them. they still look pretty new, so i never thought about it.
i've gone running twice since i saw the doctor (and purchased a knee brace as he suggested), and things seem to be going well. i haven't had quite as much trouble with stairs, and my hip isn't feeling so strange. fingers crossed.
i'm coming up fast on my birthday, and each year around this time i choose a new theme to live by. my first year i was aiming for "different mistakes." last year it was "bold." part of quitting JET but attempting to stay in japan, move to a city, and find a cute apartment were fruits of the boldness campaign. now i've settled on this year's hue...with abandon! in other words, i want to live more and hold back less; i want to be all in. this will doubtless be a very good challenge for me, the controlling girl. it doesn't mean i want to make poor decisions, of course, but i would like to say yes a little more often and get better at trusting. i'd like to have the courage to speak more honestly about my feelings. once i was admonished by a guy who i was crazy about for not talking about my feelings enough. i mean huh!? the sensitive 90's guy (remember him? i think he became a metrosexual, don't you?) rears his well-groomed, good-smelling head.

i really think so: airing my clean laundry

happy new year! check it out: it's 1:01 pm on 01/01/10. it feels so...binary.

when i was a senior in high school, my AP english teacher brought his guitar to class one day and did an unexpected rendition of that Vapors song "Turning Japanese" for us. i had never heard it before, and i think most of us believed he had written it himself. ordinarily a slow-speaking, deliberate man (imagine a non-evil, rounder-featured version of alan rickman's severus snape), he put a lot of energy into his performance, leaving us overly-conscious highschoolers feeling a bit awkward. i mean, what was it supposed to mean? years later i realized he was only covering a song that had been out since 1980.
though i later discovered some less-than-savory things about this man (look at me being mature...i decided not to air them publicly), he was a creative and intelligent educator. i was in the theater troupe at my school, and during performances, we could always hear him laughing from the audience at the highbrow jokes no one else caught. anyway, this is all by way of introduction to this morning's breakfast...it pretty much couldn't have been more japanese; homemade miso soup, rice with pickled plums, genmaicha (toasted rice tea), and black beans with a chestnut. delicious!


snow has been falling steadily since yesterday. i met a friend in nagoya before it began...i hit the town in ruby red...


...and when i returned, i had to unbury my bicycle at the station. brrr!


back at home i faced the dilemma of a japanese winter: trying to get laundry dry...when it's freezing.

date 2: the sequel

hey everyone. thanks for pestering (er, asking) me to write; it's nice to know people want to hear what happens. *grin* time flies like crazy math, doesn't it? a few days after our date, shin said he had a friend who was jealous we had gone out, and did i have a girlfriend who might be interested in having a drink with us? i liked the idea because i could get a friend's perspective on shin and... we would be far less likely to get abducted. hey, bonus.
fern agreed to come with me, mainly out of curiosity, i think. were they trying to get girlfriends before the romance-heavy Christmas Eve? did they just like the idea of foreign women? i still don't know. when the night rolled around, we agreed to meet in the main train station, and i spotted fern first. i didn't know what shin's friend looked like or what direction they'd be coming from, so the two of us stood restlessly among the coming and going like big, foreign targets. at last they showed up, and we made quick introductions and headed off for some food.
shin's friend, youichi, made a valiant effort at conversation, but the bottom line was he seemed nervous (and unused to talking in english), and the rest of us weren't. he made a lot of old man jokes and we had the Interviewing a Foreigner 101 conversation. i don't really mind those, but that was one of the reasons i liked shin in the first place, we could skip to things that are actually interesting. the friend was also interested in western bands from way before our time, so he seemed older than his age. poor guy. i wasn't having a bad time, not really. it just lacked those things i would hope for in a date: excitement, connection, um, fun.
naturally karaoke was suggested, and fern and i shrugged "why not?" i wanted to check out one of the fancy places near my house, so we headed that direction in the back of youichi's car. i stood in awe inside the karaoke palace. so unlike the dark, lumpy-seated places of the countryside, there was a huge reception area, nice wallpaper, and chandeliers. the sound was GREAT too; i've never sounded better. that's not saying much; i don't exactly have the voice of an angel, but i can sing on key when the planets align correctly.
surprisingly, i wasn't really that nervous, and we all had some good songs to sing. shin and i did a duet of the song he had asked me to interpret during our first meeting. fern told me later he said "it has special meaning to us." excuse me? is that the sound of someone getting sentimental about something that i'm not? it doesn't seem possible.
shin's on the right. his friend doesn't normally look so much like a zombie.


karaoke was by far the best part of the night, truly fun. it was over a bit too quickly, but we had to get fern to the train station. i headed home content, but i felt like perhaps i could see the problem with the idea of dating shin: there doesn't seem to be enough conviction, fire, passion, intensity, gravity (whatever you want to call it) in him, and that is definitely something i need in order to be attracted to someone. i don't need a tough guy, but i do need strength. it could be hiding, true, but i suspect we are passionate about very different things, and that would also be pointless.
for days i didn't hear from shin, and i figured he also felt the lack of something and was dropping the ball. i couldn't get up the motivation to care, but then he picked that ball back up and started throwing it again. so i'm hearing from him again every day, but we have no plans to hang out. i'm not opposed to being his gal pal, but that's about it.

the date dress

last year i bought a dress i thought seemed like the perfect date dress: interesting and attractive but comfortable. considering my dating history (i can definitely count the number of "real" dates i've had on one hand) i had no reason to believe it would ever be used for its designated purpose. however, the dress and i went on a First Date saturday.
rewind to the halloween party. i met a cute (english-speaking) japanese guy who had attended a short-term class at the other branch of our school. my first thought was, "how soon before this guy tells me he's married," but he never did. we talked for a few minutes and then caught up again later when some of us headed to a bar to wind down. he was thoughtful enough to refill my water when he got up for a new drink, and he didn't touch a cigarette the whole night. now that i think of it, my last--i'll call it an entanglement--began when a guy brought me water... anyway, his next question was solid laurenbait, "what do these lyrics mean...'she acts like summer and walks like rain?'"
he asked me to sing a song (perhaps i should mention that every party in japan becomes a karaoke party by the end of the night), but i had been sick that week and was barely squeaking out a conversation. he sang, though, and he did a fine job! thank goodness he isn't one of those singers you have to endure.
at the end of the night he seemed interested in talking some more, but i think a guy should have enough guts to ask for my info if he wants to hang out again, so i waited to see what would happen. after talking about going to karaoke sometime when i could actually sing, he did get around to asking, so i gave him my text address and headed home. when i hadn't heard from him by the end of the night, i figured i never would.
i was wrong.
for the next few weeks we exchanged several messages each day. i doubted that he would actually suggest doing anything concrete, but once again i was wrong. one evening he replied to my email with, "let's go out for drinks." we set a time, and i didn't really think about it much until the day before. that's when i got down to the business of freaking out and being paranoid. in western dating culture, you can fall back on some assumptions: we will do the "how-much-do-i-owe-you-for-dinner-oh-thank-you dance" and the "how-will-we-negotiate-the-kiss/no-kiss-goodnight-thing dance." i wasn't sure what to expect, but that was soon overshadowed by another fear. let's just say i've watched too many episodes of Law and Order, and visions of murder were dancing through my head. had i misread him completely? was he a psycho? i got so nervous i was wearing my shoulders as earrings.
the next day i got a grip and made an effort to look forward to it.
as i tried not to look awkward waiting in front of the grocery store where we were meeting, i wondered if i would still find him attractive (i did only see him once) and if it would be weird that we talked only in text messages for several weeks. i also typed out a "save me; i've been kidnapped" message on my phone and memorized how to send it without looking. seriously.
when shin (pronounced "sheen") walked up, my first thought was, "i'm going out with that hot guy??"
attraction: check.
we walked down to a kushiyaki (food on skewers) shop and spent the next several hours (ok, it was four hours) talking and joking. it was really fun. i tried not to be too distracted by his sexy mouth. we walked back to his car and i got all flighty, so i gave him a preemptive hug, bid him goodnight, and flew away on my bicycle. a few minutes later i got a text saying he had fun talking with me and would like to do it again. the date dress and i high-fived and went to sleep.

hardware sunset

i'm a slocker: using english as a weapon of hilarity

the invisible pen: bright orange and enormous. i guess they're redefining "invisible."


shirts for your children: my favorite is the one on the left. next to the peeing chimpanzee, "give a sigh of relief. i think i'll visit the restroom before i leave." (thank you for telling me about it) "if you're too hasty, you'll get into trouble." (i suppose that's true).


seriously!? a kitchen knife for kids?


an interesting place for the word tape to be clipped...

fall falls slowly

...next to the electronic billboard.

connecting the dots

gaah; it's already been a month! it's hard to remember to update since i'm no longer sitting in front of a computer for 8 hours every day. i have some pumpkin muffins in the oven, so instead of washing the dishes, i'll write.
it's been over three months since i left my old life in kumano for my new life here, a fourth of the year gone in a flash. in that time i've been settling in but also feeling a bit untethered. new city, new home, new job, new friends (since, for the time being, i've been too poor to see my old friends). most days it doesn't really bother me...i like exploring japan and this IS what i wanted for so long--to really experience city life.
however, i'm also a familiarity junkie. i like to know my environment: where to find every little thing, how to get everywhere, where to eat; i like to have a history with the places i inhabit. it's in my pack rat personality to also file away information, and i spent three years in kumano memorizing the places i could buy american sweet potatoes (only in november), tortillas (random liquor store), a light-bulb socket that plugs into an outlet (yes, i've needed several), watch batteries... now i have to start over from the beginning.
with nothing familiar, i have felt completely cut off from the last three years of my life, though i am a negligible distance from where they took place. my heart has been aching a bit, mourning the sudden separation from hundreds of important, life-changing, sometimes warm, sometimes frustrating memories and the people i shared them with. there hasn't been much i could do about it until last weekend, when i finally had free time and enough money to get me back to kumano.

[Long Aside: the main reason i've been so poor, aside from the thousands of dollars it cost to move and get my apartment secured, is because i transitioned to paying my own health insurance premiums. you're required to enroll if you live in japan. if you weren't enrolled and then decide to, you have to pay for all the payments you "missed," even though you weren't covered. kinda bonkers. i knew i was covered before and would have to begin paying, but i didn't know how much, and i also had ZERO extra money. i have only recently gotten some of my clothes out of the boxes i've been using as drawers. so i didn't pay. then they found me...and sent me a payment plan of $350 per month for the next four months! gulp. i felt completely deflated. not only do i simply not have that much money, but it looked as though my regular monthly payment would be $270 (it's based on your previous year's salary...i was making more then). maybe i couldn't make things work here after all! after all i've invested to stay. it doesn't help that i can't read anything but the amount. i knew right away i'd probably have to borrow money to cover the health insurance payments, but would i ever really catch up!? the good news is that (thanks to the school secretary asking for me), my monthly payments are actually $180 per month, and they'll go down a bit in april. so, though i thought i was almost caught up financially, it looks like it might take a while. the good news is i'm healthy and my car and computer are working; those things make me really grateful!]

in spite of all this (or because of it), i felt i had to visit kumano while i had the chance. not only would it be a beautiful time (and my only long weekend for months), i've felt stranded here because i didn't know how to get anywhere by car. if i finally drove down to mie, i wouldn't feel so trapped.
sunday i packed up my car, and feeling jittery about finding the way alone, i set off. i was tempted to tell the toll booth operator it was my first time on that road just for an encouraging smile, but i didn't. :) the road was clear, and soon i relaxed as i found each junction easy enough to understand. i crossed a wide, green bridge and was back in mie without fanfare. the clean, new cars of aichi were replaced with cars like mine: old, tiny, dusty. the landscape opened up and the late morning light lit up fields and trees. i took a deep, happy breath. finally i began to connect my old life with my new one.
in just over an hour, i passed the landmark i had been holding my breath for: tsu city. everything after tsu i've driven many times, and it all feels like the home stretch. when the expressway ended, i pulled off at a familiar convenience store to stretch my legs. what can i say? still an hour from kumano, i already felt home. a grin took over my face. i smelled the fresh air scented with leaf smoke and damp.
i got back in the car and the rest of the journey sped by in a blur of sunlight and green mountains. a trip i had expected to feel like a long, exhausting journey didn't seem to take any time at all. i pulled into town with my heart beating loudly and my hands shaking. i didn't really want to see any students i knew yet; i wasn't quite ready for reunions with people, i just wanted to see the town i belonged to and enjoy it. i was staying with katie, but she was busy in another town until that night, so i let myself into her apartment and unpacked while i got my bearings. then i headed off to my friend etsuko's house for a visit.
everything made me happy: fields of dripping satsuma oranges, the spiders stretched across eaves (maybe the first time spiders have ever made me smile), the wet pavement. etsuko's house was warm and she had scones baking, so we settled down over coffee and caught up comfortably.




i hobbled out two hours later, almost sick on sweets but happy all the same. i drove to the gym where i finally learned how to love running and just sat in the car while the rain dripped down the windshield. i would have liked to go inside, but i didn't bring my gear (next time). it was getting dark, so i moved on to the grocery store to see if they had those elusive american sweet potatoes in stock yet, and you know what? they did! i glowed with success. the only thing in my basket was $18 worth of sweet potatoes, so the old lady behind me in line asked if they were any good (they're pretty different from the japanese kind). she was nice, so i told her about them and then drove to the cheap sushi restaurant for dinner. it was perfect.
the next day was a work day for katie, so i was left to my own devices. some things never change, eh? the day was gorgeous and sunny, so i went back to the gym to hang out in the park where i used to read and write letters. i think that is what i've been needing more than anything: sun, the smell of the ground, empty hours. i watched the clouds dissolving and reforming across the sky and got some vitamin D. just before heading off to visit my old school, i tried some exuberant photos.


BOING!
i tried not to get my hopes up about going back to school. i knew no one was waiting expectantly for me to visit, but i did end up having some good talks with teachers, and though the students seemed happy to see me, they were in the thick of preparing for entrance exams. i did find out there is a baby sugar due in february, so all my best to mr. sugar and his sweet.
i popped up to see my 80-something-year-old neighbor, and she, more than anyone, looked happy to see me. she just stood in her doorway looking up at me, grinning, her gold tooth gleaming in the afternoon light. she sent me off with a bag of potatoes and onions from her garden and told me to come back at christmas for some fresh daikon.

the next morning i bought a bag of satsumas from the neighborhood honor box for a dollar.


i hadn't had a chance to visit my favorite onsen, so katie and i went the next day, though i was running out of time and still had to drive back. the drive back is a little more complicated as there is a perpetual traffic jam heading north, but i put it out of my mind and enjoyed the brilliant weather and the view in the daytime.



relaxed and energized, i left my kumano as night fell and ate satsumas in the dark car all the way home.