The beginning of the end

Some days are bad and some are good and some are just downright magical. These magical twenty-four hours began on Saturday with this iaido presentation thing with some of my old students in Otsuki. Last year I failed so miserably at it. I had no idea what I was doing, no confidence and I felt horrible. This year I had confidence, presence and a black belt. I aced it! At the end of it all I was rewarded with a ceremony in which my katana was officially gifted to me by my teacher. What an amazing blessing to have not only learned so much in a year about a martial art I love but also to be able to walk away with the proper equipment to continue training in Canada. I hope Sugimoto-sensei knows how grateful I am.

I should also point out that Saturday was the first day I could consider warm. It seems spring has at last arrived. When the ceremony was over the sun was still shining. I thanked them a hundred times, got changed and rushed to the train station for an evening trip to Yokohama. One of my favourite places to go to Japan at night is Chinatown. Mostly because of the lanterns but there is also this really cool vibe about the place that I always imagined a city at night would have. There is so much activity, the lights are so bright and the people are always in this mode of festivity. The two temples were locked up for the evening but that made them no less beautiful in the golden light. I did a bit of shopping and bought a furoshiki purse which I’d been coveting for two years. It’s a Japanese cloth that can be tied around two wooden rings and made into a bag. I’ve always loved them and now I have one of my own. There were so many cool shops that sold everything from incense to weird food I wouldn’t even dare smell let alone try. As the night wound down, I bought a bento and retired to my shabby little hostel for the night, watched some TV and went to bed.

 

 

 

The next day was easily one of the luckiest I’ve ever had. I woke up early ready to start the day only to find that the single shower for the entire hostel had a reservation list a mile long. I waited outside trying to figure out what to do. I could wash my hair in the sink but after iaido the day before I was badly in need of an actual shower. So I waited patiently and as luck would have it, the person finished their reservation early and I slipped in before the next one. Clean and very happy I set out on my adventure to Kamakura. I’ve been many times now as it’s kinda like the Kyoto of Kanto. When I was trying to plan my one last hoorah it was the place that most called to me. When I got there that morning I would understand why. It was warm, sunny and a few of the early morning blossoms were in bloom. I was simply giddy to see my favourite pink flowers gracing some of the trees. Despite most of them still being a few weeks away I had my fair share of sakura considering it’s so early in the year still and the snowpocalypse threw things off a bit. The Hachimangu shrine was brilliant in the morning light and I flitted around from one blossoming tree to the next like a humming bird seeking sugar. At the shrine I prayed and thanked the kami for three magnificent years and then went to get my fortune. It told me my luck was good and that my wishes would come true if I was patient.

 

I headed back to the station via the lovely little shopping street to look in all the quaint little stores. Everything one would want to buy from Japan could be found along that street and I could have filled a suitcase with all the treasures I wanted but settled instead for a cute little handmade bracelet with a dragon coin. Back at the station now the second lucky thing happened. I have this terrible system of putting things in my pocket with my phone and then whatever is with my phone always falls out when I take it out. It happens time and time again and still I don’t learn. Well out fell my suica card and off I walked only to reach into my pocket and discover it missing. I spun around and raced back the way I came. The strange thing is my gaze caught on a reflection in the glass next to me. It was my card but when I looked to my immediate left I saw nothing. I spun around and found it laying some way off but a trick of light made its reflection first visible. I nearly cried with relief as I picked it up and held it to my chest thanking whatever had helped me reunite with my expensive little train pass. 

After this terrifying but very fortunate experience I walked towards Hasedera. If the best shrine in Kamakura is the Hachimangu shrine then the best temple is Hasederan. Built up on a hill, several paths snake around a garden which on this magnificently warm day was blooming with flowers. Not only were there plum blossoms, which are actually a little late, but there was sakura! The kuwazu type from Izu. I was so happy I could have just stood there next to the little goldfish pond staring at them in awe forever. Instead I wandered around, hopped some stones across a little stream, listened in on a Buddhist prayer ceremony and meditated in a peaceful bamboo grove before reaching the top and gazing out on the horizon for a long time. It was perfect. Another reason I went to Kamakura was that after two years with my first daruma doll I felt my wish had changed a little and thus I burned it at the New Year’s festival so I was in need of a new one. I had bought the first one in Kamakura and found the second one there as well in a little shop selling all sorts of handmade trinkets. I can’t wait to make my new wish and colour in one of the eyes as if the tradition. The second is coloured in when the wish comes true.

 

 

 

There is a fine line between sometimes between staying and over staying. It’s like the games I play with my students. I want to stop a game before they are tired of it but not before they have at least had their fill. It was noonish when I got back to the station. I could have stayed in Kamakura longer but the morning had been so wonderful I did not want to blemish it with staying longer just to force myself to fill the time. In the end I boarded a train back for Yokohama along the fine line that was perfection. Other than Chinatown I’d never really been to Yokohama and got off at the main station to look around. Didn’t find much other than a strange shopping centre on the bay, an Animate where I was super lucky in getting my favourite character key chains and a McDonald’s for lunch. (Don’t judge they have this amazing sakura drink right now that I’m in love with!) However, one station south was where the real excitement was. There, quite by accident, I stumbled upon the tallest skyscraper in Japan. Or it was until this month actually when at 300 meters (4 more than the Landmark Tower) a new skyscraper opened in Osaka. Well I was quite content with my 296 meter sky garden. At the base was an amusement park and the retired ship the Nihonmaru from the 1930s which was reminiscent of the first ships that came into play in the Meiji Revolution. Looking back to the skyscraper behind me I wondered what the ship would look like from up there. I was coming under budget so I thought why not find out. The view was very rewarding and by a third stroke of genuine luck, just as I was rounding the corner to the café, one of the luxurious leather couches looking to the west came available and I was able to curl up with the skyscape and my skyfloat, a blue soda with ice cream. It was one of those moments where you feel like the richest person in the world. I had no worries, no cares, just the simple happiness that comes from seeing the world from hundreds of meters up. Nothing like a little distance to gain some perspective.

The day came to a pleasant end around four, just as the sun was hitting that golden time of day. Keeping to my fine line of the perfect amount of time spent enjoying myself, I headed back to Yamanashi. I got back just in time for dinner and Kevin and I went out to one of our favourite katsu place. It was the best ending to the best day because we told them we were leaving and they were genuinely sad. I never thought three years ago that I would become family to a local restaurant. It was so endearing how much they wished us well and thanked us for our time in Yamanashi. I’ve truly been touched by these three years. Now I know at the end of three years I’ve found that fine line. I’m not tired or Japan but I have gotten my fill. It's knowing when is when.

The snowapacolypse of 2014

I thought I knew snow. In fact I thought we were friends. I thought being Canadian meant I was prepared for all winter had to offer. I was wrong.

After two months of complaining about either not getting snow or getting not enough snow to cancel school, I was forced to eat my words. There was still snow left on the ground from the week before when over a foot of it had made our trip home from Tohoku nearly impossible. Then Friday morning, it began. I woke up to the beautiful silence of a heavy snowfall. I looked outside and saw a couple of inches had fallen in the night. It was then I made the best decision of the day, I walked to school.

The snow didn’t stop. All day it fell. My teacher’s kept praising me for being a genius for walking. At first I brushed it off. Really it was no big deal I just didn’t want a repeat of Monday where it took two hours to get my car back into my spot. But as school was cancelled halfway through and the kids were walked home in the now blizzard I was so glad to have walked. All I could do was watch mesmerized from my desk as a few inches became a foot by noon and two by the time Kyoto-sensei finally told me I should go home. I waded home and found my car was partially buried already.

Then I curled up for the evening with a good book. Right before bed I looked out the window again. The snow was well past the doors of my car and still falling!

The next morning, my car was gone.

The snow was impossible comprehend. Like nothing I’d ever seen before. Sure, two years ago we had gone to Shirakawago where they boast seven feet of snow but that was over months of collecting. What we had in Yamanashi was a meter and a half of snow from a twenty-four hour blizzard! And the world was silent. No cars. No people. Just the soft sound of a few final snowflakes dusting the mountains that had once been our cars.

After breakfast I bundled up and hurried out to see what had become of the world. By then a few plows had come by so the snow in the middle of the road was only a foot deep but I had to wade through four feet of snow to get there. An announcement over the PA system forbid the use of private vehicles. Cars were abandoned in the middle of the street. The only sound was the wind. It felt like something out of a disaster movie. A few tractors were making dents in the sea of white but the most they’d been able to do was a cut a narrow path right down the middle of the road. When I encountered one, I had to wait for it to stop so I climb through the snow bank passed it. At the 7-11 I found a coffee but all the bread was sold out. Little did I know that was the last time I’d see milk until nearly a week later. I also bought this packaged muffin to feed the fish at my favourite shrine.

The main road from here was now only a single track where people had to take turns passing each other when they met. I took this all the way down to Shimoyoshida and saw the shrine. From the main entrance it would be impossible to enter. I’d have to wade a hundred meters through four feet of snow so I tried the other entrance. Again it was blocked by snow. Not to be put off this time, I climbed over a mountain only to find myself chest deep on the other side. I had no idea it was that hard to walk through snow! It was impossible to get farther than a few feet. A man looked over at me from where he was shoveling the way to his car and laughed.

“Doko made?” Where are you going to?

“Koko made.” Here.

I could get no farther. I was forced to turn around and go back to the main ‘road.’ Poor fish, hope they got food somehow. Exhausted by my efforts I tried to walk home a different route only to come across a waterfall of slush coming down the hill! I have no idea where it came from or how but old men in hip-waders were the only ones able to get through it. Muri.

So I turned back the way I came and spent the next hour totally over the novelty of our new snowy world. At home I curled up in bed and promised I would not leave again until the snow melted.

The proved to be impossible for the next day was the same. Still no cars were allowed to drive, not that I could as my car was a six feet under with no way to get to the road. But the good news was we got the next day off school! This turned into three days off school which eventually turned into an entire week  as the city focused all its efforts on trying to get back on its feet.

It was then I realized I would have to go shopping. It was later I realized that a thousand people had thought the same thing and the combini was now at half-stock. In the next few days I’d realize that Yamanashi was cut off from the rest of the world. High up in the mountains with only a few ways in and out, all blocked because they are at snowy mountain passes, we were on our own. Yamanashi requested military help to dig us out and get food and water to isolated communities. Restaurants, supermarkets and combinis were unable to get fresh stock so supplies began to run low. On Wednesday I waited thirty minutes in line to battle hundreds of others for bread at the grocery store. It sold out in minutes. Still there was no milk or meat and the fruit and vegetables were starting to look a bit sad. It was really crazy to be living like that if even for a few days. For nearly a week I ate only instant pasta and frozen broccoli.

Finally by Thursday the trains were running and I could escape, even for a day, with Kevin to Tokyo. We had a fabulous snow-free day and ate at T.G.I.Fs. and had sakura lattes at Starbucks. Before heading home we both stopped up at a combini and bought milk and bread as there still wasn’t any in Yamanashi.

A week after the snow had first fell, life returned to normal but still mountains of snow are left at the sides of the road and in field. I will be surprised if it can melt before I head home in four weeks! When all is said and done this snow storm broke all the records. Never before, since they began keeping track in the 1800s, had this much snow fallen at one time.