procrastinate? me? never!

6/27/08

Today I had a real life adventure.

It was a holiday so myself and several other TUJ students had signed up to speak English with Japanese high school students. It was a lot of fun. Many of them were very nervous but they were also very good at English. Part of the program was to do a cultural exchange so a few of the Japanese students played a song on recorders (oddly enough it was country roads take me home...not very Japanese) and then a group of girls did this traditional dance from a fishing villages. Our demonstration of American culture was the cha-cha slide. Also, one of the guys in our group could beatbox. He was really amazing! It was fun to see what a japanese high school was like 9surprisingly anime-esque at times) and to interact with the students. Also, we each got paid $50.

After that is when I had my adventure. My friend Liz wanted to go look for Totoro's forest (this is from an anime by Hayao Miyazaki) since we were already near Saitama because of the teaching. I'm going to preface this story by saying that there is no way to do it justice and you'll just have to trust me that it was the most amazing night. Since I'm lazy I think I'm just going to copy and paste the e-mail that some of you have already read. Though I might add a few things and try to make it more coherent.

From the station by the high school the two of us navigated through the train system to where we wanted to go, acquired a map from one of the people at the station, and started walking. We didn't stop walking for about 7hrs after that. Basically all our information came from what Liz had found on wikipedia and our map that was all in kanji. On the map were several walking trails that supposedly led you from the station to the forest and various other points of interest. As we started it was already almost dusk but we were determined. We more or less had no idea where we were going and no real way to figure out our map. Our first big break was right after we found a shrine in this town (were we had both prayed for guidance) and as soon as we turned around we saw a conbini and some store called yamato-two of the few landmarks we could actually decipher on the map. We regained enthusiasm and kept walking. After a few more interesting sights (including a dragon slide that went down the mountain for 70m). Eventually we ended up on a trail in the forest and even though it was starting to get dark we weren't going to let that stop us.

There is really no way to describe most of the night because even the parts that should have been mundane (the endless walking , going to a conbini, etc) were amazing. We had a real legitimate adventure. I'll give some of the basics of the coolest things that happened as we walked through a forest in the dark in Japan. The first big thing happened as we were getting to were we could barely see when out of nowhere lights appears. We had found another shrine lit by several lanterns. This one had nobody around and was in the middle of the forest. Just imagine how cool and moving and beautiful shrines look during the day and then multiply that by a thousand for how completely, overwhelmingly amazing they are at night. It had a very spiritual/supernatural feeling. We decided we couldn't stop there, we had to explore more. We both had hiking experience, Japan was a safe country, the path was (for the most part) wide and easy to navigate, and we could see by the moon or if necessary my penlight I had in my purse. So as you can see we had plenty of logical reasons for why it wouldn't be bad to keep going but really we both had got a taste for an adventure and had no desire to stop. It really became like a quest when markers started appearing. We realized we were on the hiking path because these old fashioned looking signpost were showing up. They were rock and wood and had only kanji (which matched up with what was on our map) and and how many km to the next thing it was pointed to. They weren't always very noticeable so we had to constantly search for them making it like a quest for the next clue. We just kept walking, not always following the main path, but making sure we could get back to it, and finding interesting things-a graveyard, a playground, something that looked like a training ground, and many other things. It was really neat how our course took us through this tiny town that had pockets of ancient Japan in it as well as through the forest which just reeked of older times.

One of the weirder occurrences of the night came near the end. We still weren't sure if we in Totoro's forest (there were several different ones and even when we "knew" where we were we didn't really) As we were walking in the dark, holding hands to make sure we stayed balanced and didn't lose each other, we both saw something white up ahead in the darkness. At first I thought it was a rock sign post (think one of those calf high rocks in Spirited Away) but then it moved. As it ran forward we realized it was a completely white cat. After we had both jumped Liz said her first though was that it was a kodama (one of the bobble head forest spirits from princess mononoke). We went down the path it had ran down and found at the end a sign that said we were in Totoro's forest: Hachikokuyama. Also at the bottom was another cat sitting and staring at the sign. It didn't move, it barely looked at us, it just sat there as we started at it and even as we took pictures of it and the sign. From that point on we had several other cat guides. It was really weird how they would pop and go in the direction we needed to, half the time I'm sure they were just running from us in a direction that happened to be straight ahead but there were a few times that it was just exceptionally coincidental that they went in a direction that was "showing us the way". Plus, it's just so much cooler and fitting with the feel of the adventure to say that we had an animal guide or a kodama showing us the way. ^.^

Well I didn't do the adventure justice because there is just no way to convey how awesome the night was. Just think about what it's like to walk through a forest at night with only one other person (who, because she had read just as much fiction, watched just as much anime, and played D&D, was also very easy to convince to make the evening as amazing as possible) and now imagine what that would be like in Japan with shrines and graveyards and animals thrown in with our overactive imaginations. At the end of the night it really felt like we were stepping out a fairytale. Throughout the whole thing we both couldn't stop smiling and saying "this is so cool, so freaking awesome" over and over again. When we woke up the next morning we each were like "did that whole thing really happen? did we really do that?"

My only regret is that we were there so late that we had to run to catch the last train to Ontakesan dorm (there was no way I was going to make it to Chiba before the trains stopped running) and as we were running my camera fell out of my pocket. I turned it on and it was still working so we kept running. But when I went to look back over my pictures of the day (and night) I found that my memory card had fallen out. Luckily I had just imported all of my pictures onto my computer the day before and I had an extra memory card but it's still really annoying to have lost the shots from the high school and the night.


6/28

Since I spent the night with Liz I joined her and some of the other people in the dorm to go to Yokohama to go to the little amusement park that's there. We had some issues with our tickets because they only spoke Japanese and this was another one of those situations where what those of that could speak Japanese knew didn't really cover what was being said. Eventually we figured it out and we rode a log ride, a giant Ferris Wheel (the ride was 14min. long), a roller coaster, and we went into a haunted house. I bought another keychain for my phone. This time I got Ace from One Piece from one of those machines where you put you coins in and turn the knob and out pops your prize. After that we went to an art show that some Temple students were in. It was okay. I went home then and watched the rest of Hana Yori Dango. I cried so much, it was soooooo good. I can't wait to go see the movie here.


Pictures:
Us (minus Kat taking the picture) all posing. (Tony, Cynthia, Liz, Christina, Alex)

The park as we were approaching it. You can see the ferris wheel and the big pink coaster we road.

The reappearance of Cynthiachu. Too bad my eyes were closed.

Everyone in the Ferris Wheel. Somehow you can see us all (more or less).
(back: Tony, me front: Kat, Alex, Liz, Christina)

The view of Yokohama from the top of the Ferris Wheel.

This was a ride that we didn't actually go on, but this was a photo op I couldn't miss.

This was at the entrance to the haunted house ride we went in. I think Kat was probably scarier looking that anything in the actual ride. (me, Tony, Kat, Christina, Alex)

The best game ever. We didn't play but of course Japan would have a Cup Noodles themed game.

This is me and my host mom (Okada Hiromi-Japanese style so her family name is first). I look pretty bad in the shot but she's very adorable so you can all see the awesome lady that is putting up with me this summer.