One more wild week gone by... thank goodness. I've been sick the last few days with food poisoning; but seeing as that is part of the end of my week and I want to tell you about the beginning, we'll leave that subject for now.

Last friday, Yoshino had yet another adventure planned. As far as I knew, it involved swimming. He gave me the option of Beach or River. I chose River, seeing as I'd been beaching it up on my own lately. Anyway, as the day invariably does with Yoshino, it stretched out and out, and will from here-on be remembered as 'Endrene's Wettest Day Ever'. We started out slowly, stopping in a few curio shops that Yoshino was interested in, and a sports store where I purchased a new mask and snorkle. By the time we started zooming out into the countryside and into the mountains, a vicious-looking thunder-storm was moving in all around us. It sarted to rain. By this time, I was determined that we were going swimming, thunder, lightening, and rain be damned. We drove on and on and on, until the jungly roads became nearly impassable for one car-- nevermind two. I started to think, "gee... they're going to have a hard time recovering my body if the car goes over this cliff here..." when finially Yoshino was satisfied with our location and stopped. No river in sight-- oh wait, there it is, over the side of this embankment! Big boulders puncuated a friendly-looking, medium-speed river, flanked on all sides by a richly green, narrow valley. So down we clambered, through razor-grass as tall as me (I still have the scratches on my ankles and on my arms to prove it) and struggled to get across the slippery rocks... thank goodness I didn't take any electronic equipment with me that day, as I had an opportunity to test my flexibility, doing the splits across the rocks, and falling completely in with my clothes on three times before making it across! The swimming itself was peaceful and uneventful-- the water was quite scummy, and not a lot of fish to see, aside from a few sculpins. Then-- the heavens opened! The storm hit in earnest, shaking the high tropical valley with a terrifying force. Yoshino scuttled under a boulder with only my wet towel to keep his miniscule frame warm, while I stubbornly kept swimming... counting the time between flashes and rolls of thunder, until the lightening was cracking right over our heads. At which point I also scuttled under the boulder. We gave up shortly thereafter, trudging back up to the car. I had no change of clothes, so he furnished my chair with a deflated air mattress to protect his apolstrey, and off we went. After a difficult exchange, both of us tripping over each other's native tongues, I believed we had come to an agreement to go to an onsen. "Ahhh, hot water...." I was dreaming! First, we went to a shrine/temple, waa-a-a-a-ay high up on the mountain. It was deserted, but had a lovely view. Miles and miles and miles of green hills surrounded us; only specks of civilization appeared low in the valley. Eventually a monk appeared, and told us that we could gong the enormous bell on the shrine grounds as many times as we wished. I gonged. Then I started to shiver with the damp. What's next? Careening through the high jungle roads (supposedly on our way to the onsen), me shifting slipperely on my plastic seat cover, we both look up in awe to see the incredible long thin veil of a waterfall tumbling down into the valley. It couldn't have been more than 4 feet in diameter, but must have been falling for more than 500 feet. We had to stop... I got out and was surprised to see pale grey crabs crawling about everywhere! Japanese jungle land-crabs! Of course, I poked at them a bit while Yoshino began climbing the ancient staircase to the waterfall. I caught up with him at the top, where the falls were slapping against the black rocks and blowing a cool mist out in waves. He explained to me that a famous monk used to come there-- I remembered reading somewhere that monks would stand for hours with their bare heads under similar waterfalls, palms pressed together, as a sort of meditation or training. "Do you want to try?" he asked me. Well, seeing as I'm already soaked... why not!? There is sort of a feeling of resoluteness and supplication to nature that takes over as the cool water pounds your brain. It was an amazing moment. However, it really only lasted long enough for Yoshino to take a picture; my craving for the soothing warmth of the public bath was starting to overwhelm me. THEN: On to the onsen. Really. It was a simple one, just one main indoor bath with jacuzzi bubbles, where I happily soaked with three grandmas and a 5 year old girl who regarded me with naked suspicion (pun not intended... but funny anyhow)! Then I changed back into my sodden clothes and we drove back into town and went out for dinner at an 'All Natural Viking Style' restaurant. 'Viking Style' is Japanese-English for 'Buffet'. I don't know why. There were all kinds of interesting salads and concoctions that I had never seen before, so of course, I was all over that. Yoshino kept admonishing me for eating the less expensive food. "You won't reach 2000 yen! You eat only 500 yen!" I didn't care. By the time our timed meal was up (90 minutes max. to prevent those who can eat all they want from indulging too deeply) I was wrinkled all over from being wet for so long, and quite plainly demanded to be taken home. Good day, wet day, The End!

The very next day Ingrid had a Yukata party... it was a little surreal. Imagine this: You are in Japan. And all around you in a crammed little bar, are white girls in Japanese garb. It was a little like Halloween. At one point Ingrid decided that it was time to 'take a walk'. Three of us decided to come along: A Japanese girl named Mari in a dark blue yukata with a yellow obi (the sash and bow that tie tightly around your middle), me in my navy-red-white number with my red obi (made by Ume's grandmother for me some 12 years ago), and a stunning brunette named Angela in turquiose with a white obi. Ingrid herself was drop-dead gorgeous in a real white-silk kimono... not just a flimsy cotton yukata. She was perfect in every way, right down to her spotless white tabi socks and the white blossom in her dark done-up hair. The four of us sashayed through the narrow streets of the night district, illiciting wolf-whistles and calls of "sugoi kirei!" from the groups of men we passed. I have to admit I soaked it up- it was like being a celebrity on tour! I cooled myself with a paper fan that Yumi from Big Brother's had given to me one hot day; the fan is emblazoned with a Japanese phrase that basically says: "Don't you know who I am? Better show some respect!"... basically, a cheeky sort of Yakuza fan. You can imagine how quickly I tucked it into the folds of my yukata when Ingrid stopped to chat with a real Yakuza during our walk. We went to get our pictures taken and put onto stickers... the first time I've done this since I was here 10 years ago. The technology is much more complex now. After your photos are taken, you can go into a second booth where your photos pop up; you choose your favorites, then use little metal pens and a computer screen to 'decorate' your pictures with various backgrounds and frames and hearts and stars and what-have-you. Too cool! I didn't stay too long at the party after we returned. The circus-style atmosphere was starting to jangle me a bit as there's only so much pseudo-Japan I can take. Besides, the very next night was...

Ashley's goodbye party! Party party party. This was at our usual Nova Izakaya of choice, DomaDoma. Ashley was presented with a GIGANTIC 3 foot cucumber, which had been decorated with ASH in blue pen, and a lot of hearts. Much hilarity ensued. I had invited Yoshino along, seeing as he's always amazed by the antics of foriegners; I figured that it'd be like a free trip to the zoo. He was very happy to sit back and watch as we squealed and drank and laughed. It wasn't long before Tomomi was floppily cuddling everyone and Bani did the haka and the Japansese staff were coyly cuddling Ash's cucumber... I was talking with Neil and our newest recruit, Travis, while most of this was going on. "Man," one of them said, "this is the sort of office party you'd have to have a monday morning meeting about back home..." That's true. Sexual harrassment, apparently, only happens in the office. Once you're out in the world, anything can happen. And most people are polite enough to pretend it never happened the next day. Not to say that anyone was being harrassed. All of us were just drinking too much, and behaving as though we had newly entered adolesence-- pure hormones and crass humor. Yoshino sat madly typing away on his electronic dictionary, looking up 'performance' and 'poor taste/dirty'. He later told me I was nekko o kabuto (I know I've spelled this wrong-- but it means to have a 'Cat on your Head). What he meant was that I was hiding my true self... Jeff's dictionary says that it is "One who acts as if butter wouldn't melt in one's mouth". If that makes any more sense. At any rate, since moving out on my own, I haven't been eating or cooking very much, so I took the opportunity to eat way TOO much, and unfortunately I included some undercooked chicken, and out-of-season sashimi (Bubu later declared that I was "Baka, baka, BAKA desu ne!" for eating sashimi at an Izakaya at this time of year). Which brings us back to the beginning. Food poisoning.

Yup. I won't go into the gory details, but by 8am the next day, I knew I was out for the count, and phoned in sick. My manager called me back at 10:30, pleading with me to come in at 2, as she couldn't find a replacement... I figured if I didn't eat or drink anything until then, I could manage to get through five lessons without too much difficulty. As a precaution, I opted for the black pants instead of the white skirt. The next day I knew I had to see a doctor, as the problem hadn't ceased, and I dragged myself across the street to Bubu's shop. As fate would have it, their daughter Eri was also sick, and so the two of us were bundled into Bubu's jeep and carted off to the doctor like puppies going for innoculation. Which I was-- innocualted, that is. A shot in the arm, and two baggies for of medicine later, Bubu had us loaded back in the jeep. He stopped at his mother's house... still unoccupied, and filled with her belongings. He wanted to tour me through it to see her paintings and studio, and I did as best I could. It was pretty overwhelming, seeing as I was full of drugs, and had eaten the equivilant of a fistful of food in the last 48 hours. Not to mention that the house creepily reminded me of my grandparents Endreny's old house, as it was full of strange smells, dust, stockpiled belongings and unopened gifts. The house where Bubu was born. This 16 room monsterpiece of Japanese architecture... empty! And with the roof peeling back and dropping filth and black mould onto the ancient treasures... I recalled all of the weird dreams I've been having lately. I seem to be in the future, discovering the lost civilization of Japan. Everything is overgrowth and undergrowth, with only a sign for the FUNKY TIME CAFE sticking out here, and some weirdly huge sculptures of racoons and radishes there. I'm starting so see why the low birth rate in Japan worries some of my students; there's a palapable feeling that the society is fraying at the edges. All the weeds in the parks that I thought would have been cleared away by now-- still there. All the beautiful fountains I thought would have been turned on by now-- still empty.

I'm outta steam. I'll leave you with that thought.

Oh, and P.S., I feel much better, thanks!