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Published: July 21st 2018
Hello my fellow travellers!
After a truly spectacular day yesterday in Atami it was now time to take another small trip, this time to Kakegawa where we stayed with Junko's husband Shōkichi in his beautiful traditional home. I was a bit tired on the drive up since I was woken up quite early by the neighbourhood morning exercise routine, which was quite fun to watch from the window even though I didn't participate. The Japanese surely are a healthy people and the exercise was quite well attended.
Once we had all woken up and had some breakfast me, Junko, Takae and Anzu got in the car and drove to Kakegawa, or rather (I think), a small village outside of the city of Kakegawa. This is as rural as you get in Japan with only the occasional house dotting the rolling hills covered in forests and tea plantations. It's a truly breathtaking scenery, an image far removed from the bustling city life that I've experienced for the last week in Tokyo.
Shōkichi's Home is an avatar of what you'd expect a Japanese home to look like, a traditional home with tatami floor mats and
shōji, the paper sliding doors,
both of which are quite a traditional image of Japan. Shōkichi greeted us warmly upon arrival but I didn't get much opportunity to talk with him for the moment because we pretty much just unloaded the car, leaving Vivian, Takae and Anzu here before Junko and Shōkichi brought me down into the village below to meet her students.
The first time Junko told me that she was an English teacher I had this flash in my mind of a Japanese classroom filled with young schoolchildren sitting in row upon row and me introducing myself up by a blackboard in a classical way. Nothing could be further from the truth though, we pulled up by a bar and went inside where a very varied group of students awaited us. I had learned of the age span before hand but it was still fun to see them ranging from their early twenties all up into their eighties. I don't think I've ever come upon a more varied student group.
As I've mentioned before Junko is teaching them for free, driving here at her own expense once a month to teach them for a few hours and spend some time with
her husband who is busy managing the city.
When we arrived we were all fitted with name tags and a delicious feast was set up for us by the proprietor and we all got acquainted over dinner. Them using what English they knew and me using what Japanese I knew and Junko filling the gaps in between. After we had eaten they surprised me with an abundance of wonderful gifts, from Erimi, the youngest of them I got really beautiful Origami that she had made herself. From Masaaki I got amazing postcards that he has hand painted himself, he is really talented and these will certainly be framed and go on my wall when I come home. From Haru I got a really beautiful set of
hashi, chopsticks, these are to beautiful to use but will go into a cabinet at home.
The most amazing thing I got though was probably from the proprietress who gave me two towels featuring sumo champions as well as a truly splendid tea set with the official sumo logo on them. This is not available to the public and she only has it because she's a close friend of a Sumo champion.
I'm not sure if it might even be Hakuhō Shō who is perhaps the greatest sumo wrestler in history. He's the first in history to win three straight championships and he the most championship titles through history at 36 titles. Receiving this is a great honor for me and I will treasure and cherish this set for the rest of my life and then hopefully leave it for my children. I'm amazed and extremely humbled that she would give it to me, a small Swede whom she'd only just met.
With dinner and gift time over and done with we returned to Shōkichi's home and we brought Vivian out for a walk, although she had already managed to spill a bit of pee on a tatami mat in excitement and land a little happy dumpling on the concrete floor by the door. Shōkichi took it all in stride though and happily cuddled with her, I'm very impressed by this calm and harmonic Japanese mentality, when one of cats peed defiantly on rug when she was pissed at me I flew of the handle and she didn't dare to come out of hiding for several hours. I felt a bit
guilty afterwards but at least she's never done it again since then.
All of us except Shōkichi took a walk around the area, taking in the nice scenery and enjoying the fresh air while letting Vivian do her thing and getting some much needed leeway to run around for a bit, she has way to much energy and never stops wanting to play catch.
When we got back from the walk we rested for a bit before some of the neighbors came over for dinner, I didn't know they were coming and I must admit that by now my energy was a bit low so I rested in private for a little while before joining the others and we had a really nice evening together after that. They also brought me some really beautiful origami folding paper with famous Japanese artwork as motifs, these will also go into frames once I come home.
I was also given some
momiji manju to taste, it's a delicacy from Miyajima outside of Hiroshima, a place I'm also planning to go on this trip. It's a pastry baked in the form of a maple leaf and filled with different kinds of
stuffings.
All in all it has been a really amazing day and meeting everyone has been such a wonderful privilege and I look forward to seeing them all again soon.
Tomorrow we will drive to Fukuroi which is a larger city than Kakegawa located not that far from here. there we will meet a good friend of Junko, Yasuyo and her husband Hideyuki who is the mayor of Fukuroi. Yasuyo will show us around in Fukuroi and I look forward to it a lot.
Until tomorrow I wish you all peace and happy travels!
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RENanDREW
Ren & Andrew
Beautiful people
Thanks for writing about the momiji manju! My Mum brought a few back when she returned from working in Japan... I loved them but never knew how to look for it again (I found ones in other shapes, but they didn't taste the same). I love this culture of gift giving. It was something we were taught to do as kids, but we seem to have lost the art of it along the way. You've inspired me to start doing it again :)