Partying at the Buddhist Temple

This weekend was Mitoku-san. (In Japanese, you call a mountain 'san'. It's the same as saying 'Mt.'). The idea was to check out an incredibly old temple on top of a mountain, or so was said. It's supposed to be one of the culturally amazing areas of the prefecture, and is in the runnings for becoming a Unesco World Heritage site.

Saturday starts with us waking up @ some ungodly hour – 10 AM – so as to make it to the train station and hit it up. Lo and behold, as many a friend will attest to, with nearly an hour to get ready, I somehow made it out the door with only ten seconds to spare. Perhaps I do take a long time to get ready... That's a mull for another time. We make it to the station; however I realize that I do not have enough coin to get me there and back and who knows if there's a bank @ a Buddhist monastery. A slight detour found me at the bank and before an ATM where frustration confounded me before long. I kept putting in my card, entering my pin, selecting withdrawal and the amount, and then the blasted machine would spit my card back out at me with no money dispensed. This happened maybe four or five times before I gave up in resignation, and was forced to borrow money from a friend (Jay would later inform me that one has to select withdrawal, THEN insert their card. Who knew?).

Needless to say, we in Kurayoshi without hitch after we caught the train. A quick reunion with all that other kids spread 'cross the prefecture and we were on our bus up into the mountains. The journey took only a few minutes, but reminded me of winding through the hills of Jamaica. Granted there are guard rails in Japan and the roads aren't as wide as a Mini, but I felt a little nostalgic.

We finally get to the temple, and then immediately set out upon our trek up the mountainside. It was an arduous affair of literally grasping for roots and rock to propel yourself up the mountain. At some points, there are no handholds at all, and it's almost like spelunking without harness – a tricky endeavour. So a few hundred meters up we go, tooth and nail at times, but the climb is pleasantly interrupted by sporadic Buddhist edifices here and there. A small shrine here, a temple there. And the thing is, you can walk around them, but there are no guardrails of any sort. So you've got about a foot and a half allowance before a drop of a hundred feet or more to the mountainside below. I got quite the case of vertigo peering over the side and thus remained as close as possible to the wall lest I feel dizzy and take a little spill. We eventually saw the temple itself that we came to see. Can't remember the name of it, but it was something in the order of 1,300 years old. I can't really describe it, so I'll hopefully be able to post a picture.

We descended in about half the time the ascent took, and returned to the visitor's centre for a shower and relaxation. Dinner soon followed, which rocked the llama's socks. All the while here, I think that the dinner's that I eat are twice as good as any Japanese food that I ever had back home. Seriously, if you want the best Japanese food in life, it isn't too much of a stretch to believe that you can find it in Japan.

After dinner, we had a band play for us, then each nationality that was there had to do a little cultural presentation on something that exemplified their culture. This was nowhere near the level of a formal thesis presentation; more for entertainment. The English played Blind Man's Bluff and sang a song, the Aussies and Kiwis gave a talk on how New Zealand has now become a part of Australia, the Americans did the Electric Slide, the German taught us how to cheers a beer, the Canadians sang, “If I Had A Million Dollars”, the Filipinos put on some sort of dancing game involving bamboo poles, and the French did a Can-Can.

This occupied most of the night, and for the remainder, we drank beer and sake until we passed out. For the most part, we all slept in a communal room, except for a few other smaller rooms that were filled. Thankfully I didn't snore (although I still don't think that I do), though Jay did right behind me, and I had to all but slap him in the head to get him to quit it.

We awoke at around 6 for meditation at 6:30. This was quite the effort as we retired around one or one thirty, and we'd been consuming many alcoholic drinks during the evening. Moreover, 6 in the morning is something that most of us usually know not of, so imagine our surprise when our watches showed us this fantastic hour.

Because of the number of us, we staggered meditation and breakfast: Half would do one, then half the other, and we'd switch. I ate breakfast first, which included white rice. I'm not accustomed to eating steaming rice at 6:30 AM, but when in Rome... Meditation was cool. The resident monk taught us about why they meditate and what it means to them, and followed this by showing us how to meditate. At one point, he slaps you on the back with this big stick, and it sounds as though he's tearing up your vertebrae, but it doesn't hurt all that much.

We then watched a slideshow on all of our countries that took a good two plus hours or so, to which we lost many to sleep.

Then we all piled into cars and headed home. The end. :)
Sort of an anti-climactic wrap up, but I'm tired of writing. I've been working on this post on and off for about two weeks. Frankly, I don't want to see it anymore.

The Bells and Whistles of Tokyo

**Note: This is not the be all and end all treatise of Tokyo. It's just the extremely limited exposure that I had with only a few free hours each day. If you’re interested in/going to Tokyo, there's TONS more than this; it's only a scratch of the surface**

An aside back to Tokyo, if you will, as the memories are still fresh in mind with only a little more than a week's worth of dust on them. As Mike was so fond in pointing out, Tokyo in many ways reminded he and I of Toronto - If you can imagine the GTA on steroids and multiply it by 8. But past the ridiculous amount of people, apparent lack of garbage cans (Outside of the hotel, I saw two garbages the entire time. Then again, Tokyo was also ridiculously clean. Go figure), blond-haired Japanese kids, and no jaywalking, it almost could have been University or Queen or Bay. For the most part, the little that we did see of Tokyo was the inside of the Keio Plaza Hotel, which in and of itself isn't TOO bad considering it's a stupidly nice hotel.

So I got to my room first (us JETs had to double or triple up on rooms. After all, paying for 1,000 separate rooms is a bit much), and took the time to relax and catch my breath after being up for just about 24 hours (it was about 5 in the afternoon, so I still had a full night to go yet). First thing I did, as many people do after a trip, is use the washroom. There I had my first subtle taste of culture shock. Now, I couldn't find the lever to flush the toilet (I would soon discover that it was on the side of the sink) so here I am looking like a kid in front of a new toy touching every this and that with the hopes of getting my desired result. There was a small pad with buttons – yes, buttons on a toilet – but I decided to steer clear lest I blast the bidet sky high. In my confused stupor, I accidentally bumped the side of the toilet seat with my hand and all of a sudden the water inside starts recycling and moving about and such. Considering my next-to-no knowledge of Japanese toilets aside from what I saw once on the Simpsons, I half expected this thing to sprout arms and legs, come to life, and flush itself or something. I mean, I just touched it and it was making like it’s performing a systems check for mission control. My darting eyes found the lever just then and that was that. You might think that it's a little embarrassing that a toilet would give me so much difficulty, but it just serves to show that many of us would have similar experiences with machines, conventions, and people that back home we wouldn't think twice over (don't get me started on the washing machine...).

The first night was rather straightforward. We met up with Teru, our old TA from university who has since finished and is now living in Tokyo. Went to a little hold-in-the-wall-in-the-basement restaurant where we sat on tatami (Japanese straw mat that's found just about everywhere. Houses, restaurants, etc.), ate I don't even know what except for the fact that it was awesome, and drank beer by the mug. A typical Japanese evening out.

Evening came, morning followed. Orientations ran, JETs slept. The second day.

So after discarding our formal whatnaught for our comfortable civvies, we hit the town again mid-afternoon with the original plan of checking out the Imperial Palace and Akibahara (Akibahara is the electronics gadget section of Tokyo. The Mecca of nerds worldwide. All the best stuff that won't come out for years in the West is to be found here). That was the plan, anyways. After some deliberation and slight uncomfortableness, the group split in two and those I was with went to get some lunch. We popped into this tiny place, space for maybe a dozen or so, where we're on stools sitting more or less around the chef. At our head level is a conveyor belt system that goes through the kitchen and out. For those who've never seen this sort of place, I'll explain:
The chef makes individual-sized portions of food and puts it on the conveyor belt, which circles around and passes in front of all the customers. If you see something that you like, you take it off and eat it. You stack the plates that you've eaten into a little pile. When you're finished, the waitress tallied you bill by checking the plates – the colour and texture of the plate determines the price of it (anywhere from about $1.05-$3.50 CAD). Oh, and on the belt, there are prices before the plates so you know what you're paying for. This gets mad thumbs up because you can stop eating whenever you want, catering to those after a quick bite or a full meal, and also you can eat only what you like and skip those things that would make your stomach turn.
I dropped about $7.50 for a full meal of about six or so plates, which the dudes I was with piles up about nine or ten.

That evening was karaoke.

…

I'm reticent to explain it as it is a common experience throughout Japan repeated thousands, if tens or hundred of thousands of times a night, every night. But in a nutshell, you pile as many people as you can into a room, depending on your price, you order drink by drink or get unlimited and drink as fast as you can. Then you sing, sing, sing. And talk and eat and drink and sing... The beer is what helps encouraging the courage and audacity of many, especially those for whom it should be illegal to hold a microphone. And also those who never want to be caught dead singing in public, i.e. me. Needless to say, Ray plus several hours of free beer plus a mic plus a directory book that has Ne-Yo in it is a very rare (hopefully), messy, and volatile combination. ‘Nuff said.

Evening came, morning followed. Orientations ran, JETs slept. The third day.

The formal was retired and the normal clothes returned, I decided to buy a camera on me last night. Mike, Keith and I hit up this huge electronics store not far from the hotel, and Mike and I managed to score good deals on some camera. We hit up a little (maybe a dozen people big – many restaurants in Tokyo, much like everything else, are economy size for your convenience) soba place for dinner, and sat down. After five minutes of wondering where a waitress was, a tiny obaasan (grandmother) appeared from the kitchen hollering, "Mazu kippu, soshite agete! Kippu, soshite agete", which meant that we had to pay a machine first with our order, and then it would print a ticket with what we wanted that we gave directly to the kitchen. Our dumb gaijin (foreigner) butts got the message and we complied. After dinner, most people just leave, or say “gochisosama [deshita]” (it was a big feast – said when you’re done eating) and walk out. I made a point to pass by the kitchen to thank the chef (s) and the little obaasan and comment on how tasty the noodles were. You should have seen their faces light up and the bowing that returned the comment. I suppose that they were surprised at someone saying such a thing. It just goes to show: make the little efforts here and there, and people respond in ways you might not expect.

We met up with Keith and Mike's friend later on for another dinner, and went to some non-descript place for random munchies. The entire time, Mike, Anna, and I were playing with our new cameras without pause. Those who get new electronics frequently will know what I mean when I say that getting a new gadget is like opening the big present on Christmas morning. Your socks are knocked off and all reality becomes solely what's in the box – everything else may as well be blown to blazes and you're still sitting there glassy-eyed admiring your new toy. Especially if that toy comes straight from Japan and has features yet to be introduced sometime. Remind me to tell you about my cell phone sometime...

It was a quiet evening after which we returned to the hotel to run into a rather inebriated Keith who thought that beer was candy and he was smack in the store, let me tell you. The five or six of us relaxed in Mike & Keith's room to spend our last evening together for quite a while before we left in the morning for our new digs. But you've already read about that, right, and probably don't want to hear about it again.

Did that just really happen?

**Off the bat, I apologize for the length of this entry. I’ve had a number of moments of free time and could think of nothing else to do but to write; and because so much as happened over the last little while, there is much to detail**

It's that dumbfounded, euphoric, recently nostalgic high that you feel after arriving home after a wild night out on the town, or sitting on your bed after a fantastically picturesque first date, or getting back on the plane after a week's vacation from halfway around the world. When you finally stop moving and have time to collect your thoughts to go over what just happened. And you find yourself so overwhelmed that so much happened in so small an amount of time that you think to yourself, “Did that just really happen?”

I can tell you that hundred of kilometers from where I call home, about 2,000 people did just that recently. From all walks of life and all corners of the globe, they descended upon Narita airport in Tokyo in a mass exodus of weary bodies and precariously overloaded suitcases. Some had been traveling for 10 hours. Others 15. Some even still had said their final goodbyes more than 24 hours prior and were just now getting off of their final of three or four different airplanes. And if that is not incredible enough by itself, the majority of these travelers had little more than an hour's sleep on the plane. If that. Trying to get comfortable in economy class sandwiched between two people is a feat in and of itself; needless to say that many became fast friends with a slightly ulterior motive of getting a shoulder or arm to rest on.

And it was that after countless movies and TV shows, impromptu exercise up and down the aisles and incessant restroom breaks (In my case none. Still don't know how I did it), the doors finally opened and we poured from the cramped yet cool cabin into an even more cramped and much hotter Customs line. I'm not entirely sure how the non-Japanese speaking JETs made it through without a hitch, though I hope that they figured out that displaying the JET sticker and saying, “I'm a JET” would meet with a quick “Hai, hai!” and return of the passport.

The jetlagged-exacerbated whirlwind was finally parted when we saw that first aqua shirt of a returning JET that was there to show us the way. And show us the way they did as perhaps every five meters we would see another, and another, and another, all pointing, “Welcome to Japan! This way. That way. Up there. Down there. Welcome!” We were directed all over the airport and back before finally emerging in the parking area to load busses to Tokyo.

At first, I thought to myself, “Narita's in Tokyo, but there are fields around us. Where are the building and such?” And for quite a while that was indeed the case: small buildings and fields with roads running all this way and that. But I was soon put in my place as it seemed that the metropolis that was Tokyo appeared as if out of nowhere and we soon found the bus surrounded by towering building and being winded like a snake over avenues and walkways.

I should point out that while I say, “we soon found...”, the soon was about an hour and change worth of driving, yet only for a few dozen kilometers. The speed limit on most of the highways in Japan in 90 km/h, and NO ONE seems to break it. Granted, there is the occasional car that may pass at about 97, 98 in the fast lane, but for the most part it is followed religiously. Therefore, as a native of Ontario, where you'd better be doing at least 110 lest you be honked off the road, it felt as though it was taking forever. But, I digress.

Amidst city gridlock and endless driving, we finally found ourselves in front of the lobby of our hotel with our bags in hand. We were directed to a specific room to pick up some information and our room keys, but let me tell you how my back ached just from making it through that relatively simple gauntlet. From before you even make it into the hotel, the parking attendants are bowing at you and saying, “Konnichi wa (Hello)! Irasshaimase (Welcome)!” And then there's the front desk staff that see you out of the corner of their eyes, and even though they're a good 20, 30 meters away, you can still hear their “Irasshaimase” from across the lobby with more bowing. Then you make it up the escalator to the room and there's about four or five people who seem to have the only function in life of motioning you into the room with a “Dozo, dozo! (Please, this way), and – you guessed it – more bowing. THEN you finally get into the room with about fifteen or twenty Japanese people attending tables just waiting for us to arrive. And each and every single one smiles and bows about three or four times with another “konnichi wa”. So by the time I made it to the elevator, I've felt as though I've done about 75 ab crunches, but at the same time as though I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread with all the attention.

Needless to say, for those who haven't gone through the JET orientations, I'll spare you the next two days. There was a lot of mind your P's and Q's and here's what you can/can't do, should/shouldn't do, etc. If you've ever had an orientation at work, imagine receiving a HUGE manual, then going to a three-day event replete with presentations, then flying to Tokyo for two more days of it. Then flying to your city for another day or two more. Then going to your school for another day times however many schools you have. By the time all was said and done, most of us don't want to hear the word 'orientation' for a good six to eight weeks.

So after two days of air conditioned rooms, business suits, catered meals, and endless information sessions – interspersed with free time gallivanting around Tokyo – we finally went our separate ways onto plane and train to head to our host prefectures and cities. After what seemed like a hop, skip and a jump to Haneda airport and then onto a plane finally found us descending into the city that I would be calling home for the next year. A start contrast from Tokyo, when I looked out the window, I saw fields in the place of buildings, green in place of gray. I'd like to say it was what I was expecting considering that when I searched for Tottori on Wikipedia it said that it was the least populated prefecture, but on the other hand, as is with much on this trip so far, it did take me by surprise.

I thought it a good idea to be in full business attire when I arrived so as to make a good first impression, so you can imagine my surprise when my supervisor greeted me in t-shirt, shorts, and sandals. The surprises only continued as we drove from the airport through town, to my apartment (which bears a striking resemblance to my room in residence, in size), and the people that I would meet.

Thus far the people that I have met, both Japanese and non-Japanese alike have been very friendly and tons of fun to hang with and I’m hoping for more of the same as the time goes on. I don't miss everyone back home TOO much, but I think that it's because the gravity of the situation that it'll be a year hasn't sunk in yet. It still feels like a few weeks or so that I'll be gone. However, according to the JET calendar, my longing for home will kick in in a few months, so let's wait and see how close to the mark it gets.