Untethered

Ah yes, what a grand weekend adventure. Saturday began with a few hours of organizing and cleaning my apartment in preparation of a friend from the Izu peninsula of Shizuoka, who was coming for the festival and then staying the night. The entire day I heard what I assumed was the “practice” fireworks, and since they are shot off very near my apartment. Around afternoon time a fellow teacher arrived near my apartment with my brand new XC bike, which I have been looking forward to all week, since really walking in this humidity can be incredibly miserable. The traffic officers for the festival were hanging out at the end of my road where I met the teacher to get the bike, since they were obviously not allowed outside traffic in, and they all were oohing and ahhing over my bike. One of them asked if the seat was too high, which I got at the bike shop too, but I have long legs and this topic seems to come up quite often since in comparison, my legs are just a lot longer than I think what most of them see. Sometimes I feel incredibly tall, and I usually feel tall in the States, but feel even taller here since I am taller than a lot of the men as well. Needless to say, I love my new bike, as it is fast and light and I was sad that I didn’t get to try it out that very day. However, I did try it out Sunday night, but will return to that momentarily.

So I walked to Aino Station to pick up my friend, and the entire sidewalk, from my apartment to the station, was packed with people. This essentially remained the same the rest of the night, as the festival is a popular event. Some people had commented that I had not seen a crowd until I went to this festival, but I must argue that Seattle is definitely a metropolis and sees its own similar crowds for these types of events, a la Gasworks Park on the 4th of July, Bite of Seattle, Seahawks games, etc etc. I laughed because really it felt much the same crowding as I would experience back home.




Nonetheless, my friend and I wrestled our way through the crowds to try various food items at the vendors lining the park near my apartment. Chocolate-dipped bananas, okonomiyakis (a pancake type thing with lots of random stuff mixed in, vegetables, seafood, etc), crepes, and candied apples (it was a baby apple and I really wasn’t sure what was inside the candy part so wanted to try it). The fireworks were also quite impressive, many just like home and so somewhat boring to me, but there were quite a few that were a lot different, larger, and with various effects that I have not seen before. It was pretty amazing to watch and I was sad not to have my digital SLR for this event.

Well Sunday was more exploring in Hamamatsu, what seems to be my comfort city as of late, and another visit to Mister Donut. Due to my frequent visits, I now have a Japanese friend there, who is very nice and laughs all the time like I do so we get along well.

On Sunday night after my friend left to go home I decided to go for a quick jaunt around the neighborhood. This jaunt soon turned into a couple miles south, and since I have GPS on my phone, I can easily figure out where I am. So, in light of the beautiful evening, a sunset in the west and a thunderstorm in the east (I love all the thunderstorms here right now – my absolute favorite weather), I decided to bike it all the way to the beach. The beach of, yes, the Pacific Ocean. Now, really I think it was only about 3-4 miles away, and counting my various stops and slowdowns to avoid being driven off the road by crazy drivers, took me around half an hour or so. The moment I arrived though was incredible, as there was just a glimpse of daylight left, and as I rode through all these trees, that felt like the jungle, wondering if I really was going to see the ocean tonight, suddenly I came out onto a sandy beach filled with surfers (at that moment I thought how much my sister would love to be there) and large, rolling waves slapping the shore. I absolutely love the ocean, the smell and the movement of it, and so it was a perfect reward for my intense ride to find it. I wanted to stay and sit awhile but since it was dark, and all the surfers were packing up, I thought it best to head back to my apartment. I have to say I am very blessed to be so near the water and mountains, and even just the park near my place with the fantastic view…its really more than I thought I would get but suits me well. There are so many hills and mountains around here that I plan on exploring the trails soon – I did pick up a walking map but its all in Japanese so I’m not sure how helpful it will actually be. So much excitement comes from exploring though, and just venturing to new places and getting “lost” in order to figure out how to get back. It makes me feel like a kid again in some ways, just having one adventure after the other, except it’s real rather than imaginary.

On that note, my friend and I tried purikura on Sunday in Hama, which is basically like photo booths that really only girls can do (or a girl and a guy but I can’t imagine guys wanting to do this) and you take all these pictures in the booth, then decorate them, then print them out. Well, we really had no idea what we were doing and so the first time thought we had lost our photos since we didn’t know they came out of the side. We also saw the time going for us to decorate but had no idea how to so we sat there pressing random buttons. These nice girls found our photos and brought them to us, of course as we were trying to do another set, once again messing up even though we were sure we had it that time. We had a sheep background, which we really wanted, but since we are incompetent at purikura, we lost our sheep photo, but did get one of us with a cat…. I hope to scan these in at some point. We also struck up conversation with some high school girls, or rather they came up to talk to us. We also got our Taiko drum game in – one of my new favorite games.

I hope to get out and bike and hike around more in the coming weeks, but plan on checking out some random place this weekend if possible…and hopefully plan a couple trips in September. Oh and, considering climbing Mt. Fuji the end of August – that is if I can get in shape in time, but I kind of like the idea of the challenge right now. Sort of symbolic almost. I am amazed that it has only been about two weeks, and so much has happened and everything is incredibly new and exciting and different and interesting…. So off I go on another adventure for now!