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Published: October 16th 2006
Thinkers
Mak and Caitlin, this one's for you!Konnichi wa. It’s Sunday the 15th of October and this marks the first time in a long time that I haven’t gone to church. It’s also the first time in a long time that I’ve been able to get a good night’s sleep a few nights in a row.
Thursday morning the group left mid morning, without going to school, to travel north to the tiny little town of Awara. We hopped on a bus at about 9:00 and rode the 45 minutes that it took to get down to the eki or the train station. Once we got there we had about an hour to explore the massive Kyoto eki which has an entire shopping mall below the tracks, restaurants dotting the entire layout, a chapel where we saw someone getting married, and a mini park on the top floor (complete with benches, bamboo shoots, as well as regular trees and bushes). It was during this time that I finally caved. I had a Java Chip Frappuccino.
Once we had met up again we hurried to the platform in order to catch our train. Linda had warned us that the trains are ALWAYS on time and they’re in the
Kinkakuji
This is the beautiful golden pavillion. station for maybe three minutes. Well today, the train pulled up and we had about 90 seconds to board before we were on our way to the prefecture of Fukui.
The train ride was a lazy two hours. Most of us did our homework for Monday so that it would be out of our way because we knew we had a busy Sunday ahead of us. We pulled into the Awara station ran around to catch some dinner in no more than 15 minutes and caught a bus (basu in Japanese) to a working zen temple called Eiheindo. From there we caught another bus that would take us to Awara Onsen or the Awara bath house.
Awara Onsen is like a little spa hotel that resides in a fairly plain building but packs a pretty big, relaxing punch. Over the course of the weekend we took nearly 15 baths, however, unless you’ve been here you probably can’t imagine what I mean when I say “bath”. By bath I mean that the nine guys on the trip all don Yukata, or Japanese robes, go down the elevator to the first floor, and sit on little wooden stools while we
Ryoanji
This is the rock garden at Ryoanji (temple) bathe and only after washing slip into a huge pool that’s no more than two and a half feet deep of natural hot spring water.
And meals were interesting. Other than eating with the Geisha this was the most interesting food that I’ve had on this trip. While there I ate raw tuna, raw squid, raw salmon, uncooked egg, cooked squid (tentacles and all), a snail, natural scallops, a whole fish, tofu, seaweed, vegetable custard and other gooey, slimy things that I’m still not exactly sure of what I ate.
On Friday we had one of my favorite days of the entire trip so far. We started off the day visiting a company called Fukui Byora which manufactures tiny metal parts. It was extremely interesting to me. After that we took a trip to the coast and I spent the rest of the day at the ocean climbing all over sea cliffs with Coop, Reeves, Jasmine, and Dan. It was a blast!
Well we got back Saturday in the early afternoon to the Kyoto eki and spent a little time there eating lunch, shopping for an umbrella for Heather and chilling at Starbucks. After that we went
Contemplations
Heather and Dan contemplating the deeper meaning in the rock garden that by admission of its creator has no meaning. back to the Pense in order to get packed up for our homestay families. While in Fukui we learned about the families that were going to be hosting us. Mine has both a mom and a dad in their early 60’s, a 33 year old married son, and a 22 year old daughter. And that’s all I knew. I didn’t know English background or anything. I did, however, know that I was fairly close to school which was a great comfort.
At around 4:00 I saw everyone else off to their homestay families because my family couldn’t come until later on in the night. Linda, Dan, and I went out for dinner and returned to the Pense so that I could get packed up. The three of us were just sitting down to watch an episode of the Office when the lobby called and said that my family had arrived.
The Terao family is extremely sweet and not only does Okasan (mother) Terao speak English very well but also Italian so she can sympathize with my Nihongo/Español confusion, although Kenji san, the dad, doesn’t speak a word of English but not only that, he only speaks in traditional Kyoto
Birthday Party
Me, Coop, Court, Dave, and Christian taking a photo with a group of girls out for a birthday party. Yeah we don't know them. dialect which is next to impossible for me to understand. Besides that thought lingering in the back of my mind, the night was great. Okasan and I sat at the kitchen table talking about everything. I gave my gifts and they were curious as to what a cardinal was because I gave them St Louis Cards hats. I showed her where Belize was on her atlas and found out a little bit about the house. At one point we were talking about calligraphy and trying to write certain words and she wrote my name, erikku, and then she said if I were to write my new family name it would be a combination of the symbol for temple, TERA, and the symbol for tail, O. And she put my first name with their family name. The very first night she accepted me as part of their family.
So this morning I woke up in my very own room that they had prepared for me. Almost immediately I realized where I was and a smile crossed my face, because in order to have a home stay you have to feel like you’re at home and I can honestly say that I
Photo Op
We are going to come back with the exact same picture 18 times for everywhere we go. do.
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Jim B.
non-member comment
Foolin' Nobody
E- Your mission to be photographed hugging each and every gal on the trip seems to be progressing well. We're keeping tabs here!