Japan Revisited: Day 4

Monday, March 13, 2006

Today with a chilly day so i put on four layers and then Sam and I hopped on some bikes and rode through town. We stopped at a temple in Chichibu and then had noodles at a local ramen shop with Adam, the kanuk. He has been teaching English in Japan for 3ish years now. That is Adam in the red reading glasses at the post office. They just have those glasses around for anyone to use. It began to rain as Sam and I were tooling around town on our bikes. So Adam drops us off at the train station and we decide to take it all the way to the end and see if we can hop on the tram to the top of Bucosan Mountain. It is beginning to snow, the higher we go up. The train is practically empty and we keep our eyes open for our stop. Turns out it is the last stop on the line. Once we get there it takes us about five or ten minutes to work up the courage to ask how we can get up the mountain. After about ten minutes of pantomiming, we figure out that the tram is not working today. So we hiking around a bit and end up climbing on someone's property through a steep footpath. Once false step would have been detrimental! Across the road is a white apartment building where a woman is peering out her window very intently at us and probably wonder what those weird gaijin are up to now?!

As we are waiting on the train for the ride back into town, we make acquaintances with a young man who practices his english with us. He gives us a post card and we give him a drawing. He was very nice to us. It amazes me how you can be anywhere in the world and there is always a kind soul willing to help you out or make a connection.

Tonite Yoichi's mamma made us homemade curry and breaded pork. Yoichi's sister is a 'serious eater' as her mom puts it. This made me laugh alot. She is a soccer player too and studies like mad and writes really tiny. I wonder if it is to conserve paper or just to get ready for carpal tunnel when she works at some company? This girl gets no sleep. And she was very excited to see my pajama bottoms that I brought on the trip--a gray pair of pants with the Rolling Stones' logo printed all over it (the lips with the tongue sticking out). She told me that she, Yoichi, and their other sister were all going to the concert in Tokyo in a few weeks. Consequently, she inherited these pjs.