Kyoto, aka The Land of Sweat

So, I dug up these old gems and realized I hadn't posted them yet. There's one more conclusion post in the works (I've been back from Japan for a week) and then it's onto blogging about adventures in outdoor education! Enjoy:

“We can sleep when we’re back home.”

Kayaking on the Izu Peninsula: left base at 5 am

Climbing Mount Fuji: left base at 2 am

Exploring Kyoto: left base at 4:45 am

So much for relaxing on the weekends.

For our last (!) weekend in Japan, five of us opted to explore Japan’s historic former capital. After catching an early commuter train headed for Shinagawa, we transferred lines to ride Japan’s ever-so-famous bullet train. It was probably the closest I will ever come to flying first class. The legs on my 5’10” frame had space to breathe, the chairs were squishy and comfy, and the windows allowed  you to have a decent view of the landscape without having to awkwardly crane your neck. And, needless to say, the train was FAST.

 

A mere two hours later, we stepped from our wonderfully air conditioned bubble into the hottest weather known to mankind. After consulting with the tourist information desk at the train station, we set off for a bike rental shop, ready to take on Kyoto with everything we had. (Considering how much we sweated over the course of the day, we didn’t have very much of anything. Especially body fluids.) We handed the bike rental man some cash,  he handed us some bikes and some water bottles, and we rode our helmet-less, waiver-less, direction-less selves over to the orange torii gates of Kyoto. Many stops for help later, we arrived to what is probably my favorite site in Japan. Rows upon rows of orange gates with black kanji insprictions lined the hills, creating walking tunnels which hid small little shrines and memorials in the forest. It’s honestly one of those places that can’t be described—you really have to be there in person to truly experience it.

250 yen ice cream and the world’s smallest salad later, we weaved our bikes in and out of sidewalk traffic (aint no bike lanes in Japan, or if there are any, cars hog them) to find the Nijo castle and the imperial palace gardens. Forget the historical sites, trying not to hit every living person that came across my path was an adventure enough. It was like Davis on steroids.

Day 2 brought us to the bamboo forest, which was similar to the torii gates in the sense in that it totally enveloped you in an awe-inspiring sort of way. On the other hand, everyone and their mother wanted to see the Golden Pavilion, which, for me, slightly diminished the awe factor of being near a building leafed in gold. Still, it was a good item to check off the Kyoto sight-seeing list, and I’m glad we saw it before we made our way to our final stop of the weekend: the Gion district, famously home to the geishas of Japan. As amazing as I’m sure this area of Kyoto is, our travel group was far too tired to explore beyond a few side streets. A fruitless search for a glimpse of a geisha yielded no results and an angry policeman, so we made our way back to the station on a crowded bus, bursting into choruses of “gomenezi”s and fits of giggles when I dripped elbow sweat on a poor elderly Japanese women. (Yes, it was hot enough to have elbow sweat. If you didn’t know that existed, you’re welcome.)

 

All in all, Kyoto was a fantastic finale weekend to a wonderful 10 weeks in Japan. I’ll have one more entry summing up my greatest loves in Japan, and then it’s on to blogging about my new adventures in outdoor education in the mountains of Southern California!

War and Peace

Short version: I love camp people.

Long version: For the last three (!) weeks of camp, all 40 of us Yokosuka Camp A staff are engaged in SOCK WARS. At our last staff meeting, we picked our targets from a bag of names, and our PCs gave us the following guidelines: To kill your target, you must thow a sock at them. For this “kill” to be valid, you and your target must be alone, and not at work. Once you have assassinated your target, you aquire their target, and so on, down to the last two remaining counselors.

As I unfolded my piece of paper, I smiled, seeing the name of my gym buddy, the one friend I was alone with the most often. However, getting the opportunity to throw a sock at her turned out to be harder than I thought. The gym is full of people, we work all day together, and, conviniently, everyone hangs out in her room after work. Since the game started, I’ve carried around a bundled up sock in my backpack/purse, waiting for an opportune moment that never seemed to come. But one night, after a Sandlot movie night in the lifeguard lounge, we walked back to the TPU to find her room empty. Adreneline started pumping through my body. Now was my chance! But I had to be schneeky. So I walked down the hall a bit, towards my room. Then I stuck my head back in her door. “Oh, what time did you want to go workout tomorrow?” She opened her mouth to answer, I reached into my bag, and threw the sock at her face! Except I didn’t realize it was attached to my phone. So I threw my phone at her face too. “IT WAS YOU!” Her eyes widened, not even noticing the phone, just the fact that I had eliminated her from the game. “Who’s your target? Who’s your target?” She nodded toward the laundry room across the hall. During my glorious kill, my target’s target had walked into the empty laundry room. “In there? Hold on a second.”

Second target, destroyed.

As repentance for my murderous ways, I took part in a memorial service for beetles. Yes, beetles. One of my friends had purchased a pair of beetles from a vendor in Tokyo, who warned her that if they were left together, their desire to make beetle babies would be so great that they would die from the increased heart rate involved in such activities. As it turns out, a piece of cardboard was not strong enough to stop the love of these two magnificant creatures, and they died mere days after their purchase. A group of us gathered outside our housing at night to celebrate their short lives together, saying a few well-chosen words for the beetles we barely even knew, all while a navy man looked on in utter bewilderment.

Just a day in the life of 40 camp counselors living together for 10 weeks.

Just Another Day at the Office

Overheard at the pool by me and my fellow lifeguards:

“I’m pretending to be a horned pig!”

“I farted underwater and saw the bubbles!”

“I haven’t farted yet today.”

“Vagina. That’s right, I said it, vagina.” (Said by 7 year-old girls)

“It’s already a massive hernia, and I don’t want it to explode…I think the lifeguard heard that.”

“Why do you look so happy, Mrs. Lifeguard? You should come in the water. I’ll tell all the other kids to get out so you don’t have to watch them.”

“Today we’re going to review our expectations. Can anyone tell me another word for expectations?” “Ketchup!”

I smiled at two 6 year-old boys when they made dinosaur noises as they walked by my lifeguard chair. Then, thinking they were out of earshot, one turned to other and said, “the pool is a great place to meet girls.”

6 year-old boy: "I like to play video games!"

Me: "What kind of video games?"

"VIOLENT video games!"

"Oooh, what else do you like to do?"

"I like to put my face in cake."

Friends Indeed

Once a year, the naval bases at Ikego and Yokosuka open their gates to the Japanese public, where they can play carnival games, eat American food, and dance to live music. The Camp Adventure staff helps run the games (while getting paid a whopping $9/hour!), so I got to be a part of the whole “meeting of cultures” experience.

Each of the American staff worked a game with a Japanese citizen, who acted as an interpreter for the many participants who spoke only Japanese. (While all Japanese students are required to study English, many adults do not retain the knowledge. Kind of like most US adults and their high school Spanish.) Most of my coworkers spoke no English at all, so we amused ourselves by trying to win grand prizes on our own games. (We failed.) One, however, spoke some broken English, which resulted in a pleasant conversation. When I answered the question “Where are you from?” with “California,” his face lit up, and he continued to smile when I told him it was my first time in Japan. Nearly every Japanese person I’ve talked with has asked me if it is my first visiting the country, and they are always so excited to hear about all the exploring and adventuring I’ve done. They truly want visitors to experience everything they can about their homeland, as indicated by their frequent urgings to “enjoy.” At the end of the workday, my Japanese friend found me and bowed, thanking me for working and talking with him. So much gratitude for a 5 minute conversation.

Outside of the carnival booths, more friendships formed over the smallest of shared experiences. My personal favorite: For about two hours, a live band covered top 40 pop songs while a group of fifteen elderly Japanese women called the “Sparkling Spurs” performed line dance steps for the crowd. Picture the Electric Slide performed to “Low.” As in, “apple bottom jeans and boots with the fur” Low. Incredibly intriguing, absolutely hilarious. The music played on, and soon others joined in on the dancing, including a little two year-old boy, who spun and jumped around to the beat as if his life depended on it. One of the Sparkling Spurs branched off from her dance steps to groove with this little boy, forming the unlikeliest of friendships. Meanwhile, the lead singer of the band rocked out to Shakira’s “Waka Waka” and mingled in the crowd, stopping to dance with various people. I stopped for a second to take it in: a Japanese-American singer dancing with an African American woman while performing a song written by a Colombian woman, all while an old Japanese woman danced with a American baby boy. On a military base. To top it off, a fairly accurate Michael Jackson impersonator closed the musical acts for the day, wowing the crowd with his ultra slick dance moves and quick costume changes. A day full of happy encounters, that’s for sure.

It was wonderful to be a part of these unexpected interactions, and strange to think back and know that Friendship Day wouldn’t have happened a certain points in history, especially at an event sponsored by an American military instillation. Friends indeed.