Busy Weekends Part 1

First a riddle.

The class of three a couple years of the fifth hour of tomorrow becomes one hour.
The class of two pairs moves for three years in the latter half of the fifth hour within the latter half of the sixth hour.
There is a class of three a couple years for one hour, and say, please when there is a class that the teacher wants to do.



The answer: a fax I received entitled ‘for tomorrow’s elementary school class’ from the English teacher. Her English actually is better than this makes it seem. These faxes are quite common but this one was particularly mind boggling.


Busy Weekends
I’ve been making the most of my weekends in the last month or so: two weekends in Tokyo, one in Nagoya, and this past weekend, I stayed in our prefecture, the Nebraska of Japan, the wonderful Ibaraki.

Not only am I in an infamous prefecture, I’m also in the sticks of that prefecture. In many respects, I prefer this location; it has far less strip malls and chain restaurants, good weather, lots of rice paddies, it’s a bit more insular with regards to Japanese trendiness, and of course, it has the ocean. I like to call it contemporary rural. However, unlike the rest of Japan, public transportation is not my town’s strong suit.

The nearest train station is over a half hour bike ride away, in another prefecture, and on the other side of Japan’s widest river, the Tome. This weekend was my first time really seeing what’s on the other side of the river. After crossing the km+ long toll bridge (20 cents for bike) I entered shi-ishi-ba. A town left behind by time: narrow streets, abandoned businesses, antiquated wooden housing and little backyard vegetable gardens. Two and a half hours, four trains, or an episode of the Wire and at least two listens to Radiohead’s new CD later, I was in Fujishiro, in the heart of Ibaraki, staying with Scottish Emma, who had a spare futon.

The plan was to climb Mt. Tsukuba (like SCUBA) the next day. As legend has it, thousands of years ago, a deity descended from the heavens and asked two mountains for a place to spend the night. With its great summit and almost perfect cone, Mt. Fuji refused, believing with pride and arrogance, that it does not need the deity's blessings. Mt. Tsukuba, on the other hand, humbly welcomed the honored guest, even offering food and water. Today, Mt. Fuji is a cold, lonely, and barren mountain, while Mt. Tsukuba bursts with vegetation, and is filled with colors as the seasons change.

We arrived early at the meeting spot and were ushered into a log cabin by an almost too hospitable stranger to wait for the two other JET’s and a Japanese lady who brought to our surprise, 20 little kids. Twenty six long minutes into the main part of the hike, we came to a clearing, which was the top of the mountain. Souvenir shops, cell phone towers, and a rotating restaurant awaited us. There were two peaks on either side of this top, each having a shrine dedicated to one of the progenitors of the Japanese deities and even the Japanese people. One peak was for the male deity, the other for the female deity, and both took less than 10 minutes each to climb. Well at least we didn’t take the gondola to the top.

Then we had dinner with the Japanese lady in her family’s 80-year old house. It had six square rooms, divided by sliding rice paper doors, and a walk around the outside. It was right out of a samurai movie. They even had samurai swords. One room had a Buddhist shrine, more like an armoire, to the ancestors of the house, and every day they are given fresh rice and tea. Then we had an amazing temaki (hand sushi) feast. Just grab a seaweed piece, spread some rice on it, then top with a myriad of seafood: octopus, shrimp, three types of tuna, egg, salmon, mock crab, and natto, which is fermented soybeans and Ibaraki’s specialty food, but also known as not-to food).

Such a great day, but I had to head back to my town for a Halloween party in which I was a guest of honor Sunday. And a midnight ride home in the empty and silent, drizzling night.