Chapter Five: Kamakura and my trip to Shizuoka

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  Shizuoka, Japan
Thursday, March 23, 2006

First of all I have to mention that if you dont know what a Tanuki is, you should look it up because it will be of future use to you. Just kidding its probably not that good an idea...
Right, now I am writing from my friends house in Shizuoka. And no, I have not yet located the apostrophe. I should probably ask Yukiko but its just too much effort at this point in time.
Monday I went to Kamakura and it was awesomely cool. The big buddha is indeed big. He even has flip flops which I took a photo of. Tomorrow Im going to figure out a way to put my photos on a CD, and then put them on this blog. A guy John teaches English to took us to Kamakura in his Merc, which was pretty cool. However, there was a certain moment I had on the way there, which reiterated the question WHAT IN THE NAME OF BUDDHA AM I DOING??
It all started when I left the Kurogawas house on Satuday morning at about 8:30....
We were pickedup by this dude in a Mec. It was all going well until hedecided that music was in order. This is generally not such a bad thing, but halfway though random Britney Spears CD, I decided I had had enough. There is something about driving through Tokyo with oldish man in Mercedes listening to Britney make heavy breathing noises that just doesnt sit well with me. Anyway it changed to The Carpenters after awhile, so I sang along for most of the journey, which may or may not have been excruciating for those listening. I like Mr Postman...
So we get to the Kamakura and I had cherry icecream, which as we all know is aka SAKURA. Tasted just like vanilla to me, but without the vanilla. Maha. Mahaha. See if you can figure that one out. Then we went to see the buddha. It was wicked cool. We went inside and it was okay. We chucked a coin into the coin catching shrine worshiping money collecting box, and made a wish. I wished for oh wait I cant tell you or it wont come true.
We had soba for lunch. I must mention here that soba is not my favorite thing. Especially when you pour the hot water into the soy sauce and drink it. But when I got back someone told me that is just what old people do, and young people dont like it either. So I dont feel so bad about not liking it. But the tempura was great, and the rice that was underneath it too...
On the way home we went to some other places, like an AQUA PARK that was kind of sad. The dolphins that were there were real sad looking. The one guy just lay on the bottom of the pool doing nothing, and the other one was swimming in circles over and over from the bottom to the top of the pool. The pool wasnt that big, and these dolphins were mighty large. Anyway all through the day this dude was taking photos of us in various location, which are apparently going to be sent to my email soon.
So we went to Odaiba in Tokyo for dinner and sadly enough ended up eating at Sizzler, when John and I reminisced about the good old days when Sizzler hadnt been turned into a Blockbuster and Georgie Pie was still the height of coolness.
We went to Fuji TV which wasnt that great as I dont know any of the shows that were being advertised and hadnt seen the famous people on TV who were there. However it does make most people get all excited when I tell them about it. After that we spent some time on the internet trying to find me a cheap way to Shizuoka the following day.
I must interrupt myself here and reiterate how much I detest anything sung by Britney Spears. Thanks.
So the next morning, I set off at 5am in order to get to Shizuoka as early as possible as it was a public holiday and my friend Yukiko didnt have to work. Of course, as you can probably guess, I missed my stop and had to wait 20 minutes at random train station in the middle of nowhere for half an hour until another train came, quite the upset let me tell you. That made me miss my next train and by the time I actually got to the right place I was about an hour and a half behind. There were no seats on the train so I sat on the floor between carriages, where the bathrooms are generally located. It was boring. Everything went relatively smoothly for the next four hours, minus the fact that I was sitting on the floor of a train and couldnt sleep, so when I got to Iwata (Shizuoka Prefecture) I resembled a gaijin zombie in a red hat. Ever see someone walking down Queen Street looking blandly in the same direction while clutching a dirty bag and not even bothering to wipe the drool from their mouth? Dont diss them, they may have just got off a train.
So Yukiko took me around a bit, Hamamatsu city is quite close to here and we did a bit of shopping in this massive mall there. People were staring. At me. Small children get freaked out. In Japanese they call this place INAKA. The COUNTRYSIDE. Where gaijin are few and rice paddies are many. Actually there are tons of tea plantations here too.

Surprisingly, there are quite a few Brazilians here. Like, I have seen some signs in Portuguese. WEIRD. anyways I like this place alot. The people are really nice and I am something of a celebrity. I really like Yukikos family too, theyre so cute and so considerate of everything. In the morning Yukiko brings me cheese on toast!!! So cool. She lived in NZ for one year so she KNOWS my desparate need for dairy products.

Will write again soon

Cherio

Becky

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