The Value of No Planning

I think I'm starting to feel old, as my crazy acts get spaced farther and farther apart. I remember in my first year heading off to Tokyo, clubbing all night and doing it again the next one, simply on a whim. That same year, Albert and I took a midnight walk across the bridge to Fuji, two towns away. Last night (and a girl from Australia) reminded me of how fun it is to be impetuous.

For the last week and a half, my former Australian exchange student, Jessica, has been staying at my house. She was the exchange student in my first year and she and I got along and managed to keep in touch since then. She arrived with her friend Kay last Monday, and though Kay went back last Saturday, Jessica's still here as my temporary roommate until the end of the month. Despite being 7 years younger than me, we get along well and it's fun having another person in the house. Back to last night...

I had come home from work amazed that it was Thursday yet again, and wanted to spend a quiet evening indoors due to the rainy weather outside. I was planning on making soup for dinner, watching a movie and catching up on the sleep that I seem to be constantly missing these days. Things didn't go according to plans, to say the least.

First, though I had laid out my ingredients for the soup I was going to make, I kept getting distracted by entering into conversations with Jessica about people at Ihara, friends and friendships, and differences between Japan and Western countries. Eventually, I got to the point where I didn't want to make the soup after all and was contemplating busting out one of the instant Korean ramen packs that I had purchased at Kaldi over the weekend.

Jess brings up sakura-ebi (the tiny cherry blossom-colored shrimp that my little town is famous for) and how she wanted to eat it. I mention wanting unagi (grilled eel) because of passing by the unagi restaurant the other day and seeing the bentos (boxed lunches) that the teachers had ordered yesterday from the place.

We decide to see if we can get them to deliver to the house, since they have both sakura-ebi and unagi, but since I didn't have their number or didn't remember their name, we embark on an online search for the restaurant. Somehow, we manage to find it and miraculously, they have a website. We spend some time looking at the menu and trying to make out the items listed. Finally, we call the place, but they don't deliver at that time. However, they ARE open for another 40 minutes. I suggest the possibility of taking a cab and we run with it. I call a cab, change in a whirlwind 5 minutes and we're out the door and on our way.

We were the only two people in the place, but we paid no attention and enjoyed the deeply satisfying meal. We left the place realizing how close it was to Shin-Kambara station and that we could've saved ourselves the cab-ride and just trained it, but such is hindsight. We begin walking back to the eki, feeling full and accomplished, but I spy the sign for 696 Cowboys and point it out to Jessica.

I had told her about it a little: it's the only bar in Kambara, cowboy-themed (yes, I did say that: COWBOY-themed), and owned by a friend of a friend who loves Elvis. She wanted to check it out, so we head in. She falls in love with it and we decide to get a couple drinks. The drinks multiplied and before I know it, Yan (the owner, who is a professional caricaturist) has done caricatures of the both of us, and managed to get me up on stage to sing "Born to be Wild" and "Country Roads" with him, the waiter (who plays drums apparently) and some other customer on bass.


We headed home on last train. Jessica's decided that she's going to make it her regular haunt while she's in town and I'm definitely planning on coming back again. Sometimes, spontaneity pays off.

Houseguests: Retroactive Post

So, I've realized that I kinda suck at playing tourguide, but luckily, my friends are forgiving and we still managed to have fun this weekend, despite crappy weather, getting a bit lost, getting on the wrong train and bus and missing the last buses. Anyway, this past weekend, Chika came from Nagoya and Branden, a fellow Seattle JET, came from Chiba-ken to visit me.

They both got in late Friday night, we stayed up catching up and begining L'Auberge Espagnole. I made breakfast on Saturday and introduced them to Albert, then we headed out to Shizuoka to go to Nihondaira. Unfortunately, it started to rain, and then we missed the bus, so we stopped to check out the new Parco (a department store) that just opened, ran into some of my students and then caught the next bus. Unfortunately, we soon realized that that bus was not only the last bus going TO Nihondaira, but it was the last one coming FROM it as well. So, we had to get off the bus at the next train station and go to Shimizu instead.

We barely caught the shuttle to Dream Plaza and spent the afternoon hanging out there, then met up with Sean and Rebecca for yaki-niku at this restaurant next to the station. This is of course followed by drinks at the Hippy Shake, where they got to meet the infamous Taka-san and have a couple tequila shots with him. We catch the last train back to Shin-Kambara, pick up a bottle of tequila at Max-Valu and continue with the shots back at my house, since they insisted that I must drink more. Albert joins us drunken fools until we all pass out while watching more L'Auberge Espagnole.

Sunday, I manage to wake up and make another breakfast and then Chika, Branden and I head over to Okitsu to check out Seikenji (a Buddhist temple). It was really different being there because it was one of the first temples that I had been to where there was no one else there, so it felt more like a temple than other ones that I've been to. There weren't a ton of tourists snapping pictures or kids running all over the place. It felt serene. After that, we tried to go to other temples but most of them close around 5, so instead we went to Kenkoland, which is an onsen, like Utopia in Nagoya, which I've described in an earlier blog. It was really relaxing with all of the different baths and massage chairs, and I even managed to get them to try the fish that eat the dead skin on your feet! Then we headed home and fell asleep.

Monday, I headed in to work, and then showed Branden and Chika around my school in the morning. Afterwards, I took the afternoon off and we went to the seawall to look at Fuji-san and the water. We took the train to Kusanagi and had lunch at this cute restaurant out on the veranda in the sun. Branden headed home and Chika took the train to Shimizu once again, and caught a bus to Miho. Miho is a black sand beach, that is the site of a pine tree in a famous Japanese folktale, Hagaromo no matsu, and managed to get a pretty good view of Fuji-san from there as well. We mostly just chilled out on the beach and then headed back to Kusanagi station where we parted ways.

All in all, an excellent weekend with the company of two good friends here in Japan. They reminded me that there are tons of cool things to see in my area, if I just look for them off the beaten path. So, to Branden and Chika, ??????????!????????! HOUSEGUESTS ALBUM