Amanohashidate

  Miyazu, Kyoto-fu, Japan
Saturday, May 31, 2008

With only a few weekends left in Japan, I'm in a rush to pack in all of the things that I want to do before I leave. This weekend I crossed Amanohashidate off of my list of things to do. It is a famous sandbar, connecting two sides of the tango peninsula (Monju and Fuchu) in the northern part of Kyoto prefecture.

Amanohashidate means 'bridge to heaven' in Japanese, and is known as one of Japan's top three scenic views. It is approximately 2.3 miles long, 600 feet wide, and is supposedly covered with 8,000 pine trees, though I'm not sure who took the time to count them all.

I took the train straight from Tokyo after my Peace Boat interview, and arrived on Saturday a few hours before my friend Shannon. It was an excellent way to relax and clear my head after a stressful week leading up to the interview. The area of Miyazu was very quaint, and very much in the middle of no where. (3 hours from my home in Kobe.) I took a bus across the peninsula and surprisingly had no trouble finding my youth hostel that was tucked away in the mountain. I immediately noticed how kind and friendly people were. Everyone seemed to be interested in why I was there, and had all the time in the world to stop and chat with me.



I enjoyed a lovely evening roaming around the port and pine grove, trying to catch sunrise, which I inevitably missed because of the cloudy weather. (Inevitable only because I seem to be having the worst luck with sunrises and sunsets these days.) One man caught me snapping pictures at the port and invited me back to his house (he lived about 6 meters away.) He had all sorts of questions about why I was there and what I was doing in Japan. I did my best to answer him, and exclaimed how lucky he is to have such a beautiful view from his house. "Oh this, this is nothing, you should see it on a good day," he told me. He later introduced me to his wife, who showed me all of her homemade crafts, dolls, bags, pictures, flower arrangements, wall hangings, etc. I wonder if I'd be as productive with my time if I had a view like that to wake up to each morning...



We got on the subject of my job, and she informed me that her middle aged daughter had started taking private English lessons in a nearby town. Oh I must know her daughter's English teacher, she exclaimed (because I'm a foreigner living 3 hours away AND I speak English.) I told her I was pretty sure I didn't know any private English teachers in the area, but she called up her daughter to get the name of the teacher just to check. A few minutes later it was confirmed that I did not in fact know the man who had been living in the boondocks teaching English for 4 months. Cheers to you if you come across this Marco!



Later that night, I started to get hungry and went in search of a restaurant or even a convenience store. I walked and walked and walked, but everything seemed to be shut down. Finally I happened upon a western looking shop called St. John's Bear. The woman was closing a back awning but when I approached her to ask about store hours, she beckoned me in saying it wasn't a problem.

She seated me, asked how I was doing, and gave me a menu- ALL in Japanese. But when it came time to order, she suddenly seemed to forget that I spoke Japanese and insisted on having an excruciatingly painful conversation in what she thought was English. I have never in my life been so utterly confused by a single conversation.

I tried to make things simple by ordering the daily special, which she told me was sold out, but then told me I had to get it, only to later inform me that the chicken was cooked in yoghurt (which causes my throat to swell up), so I couldn't get it after all. I tried to ask if there was anything without dairy, but she just kept saying things like "umm, one, say, off, I, cook, umm, leaves, read, umm." GOOD! These words were mostly in Japanese, with a random English word here or there.

I couldn't understand why she was speaking such short, childlike Japanese with me. I tried to tell her that I spoke Japanese, but she kept talking to me like I was a two year old. Then I wondered if perhaps she wasn't actually Japanese and maybe that's why she wasn't speaking to me in Japanese. That feeling of guilt left quickly when her husband came out and they spoke to each other in fluent Japanese.

Upon hearing their conversation, I tried to tell her that I'd just take anything off the menu that didn't have dairy but she wouldn't hear me out. She kept talking over me with her husband yelling things in the background, and waving around a chicken breast. Finally it got to be too much. I stood up, went to her husband, explained my allergy, and asked what he recommended. He told me that he'd just cook the chicken in a different sauce, no problem. WHEW!



The food came in a blink of an eye, and I ate slowly, trying to pass time until my friend Shannon's train would be getting in. 30 minutes later the husband came out and brought me my self-serve coffee himself, and proceeded to stand there waiting for me to drink it. I thought this was a bit odd, but the town was dead, all store lights were still on. Perhaps he was just bored and curious about the new foreigner in town and wanted to offer her the best of his services. I quickly tried to finish my coffee, despite the fact that it was scalding hot, and got up to pay. He seemed relieved and I asked him what the store hours were.

He bashfully told me that they had actually closed at 8 (15 minutes before I even entered the restaurant) but continued to apologize to me for the inconvenience. I felt awful for taking up so much of his time, and for riling up his wife, which sent me into a long winded Japanese style apology (loads of bowing and repeating the same thing over and over.) He assured me that it was fine, and even sent me out the door with two free hard boiled eggs, from his very own chickens, to eat for breakfast the next morning.



A few minutes later my friend Shannon, arrived in some Japanese person's car, because the buses and ferries had all stopped. Thank God for good Samaritans. We cozied up in our lovely hostel for the night, and awoke 4 hours later to catch the sunrise down at the pier. We enjoyed our homegrown eggs, as we played Where's Waldo with the sun that occasionally peaked through the clouds as it climbed its way up into the sky. It was still rather cold out, and nothing was open yet so we went back to our hostel and caught a few hours of sleep before heading out for the day.



Later in the morning we rode chair lifts up the mountain to Kasamatsu Park, where we took in the view of the sandbar mata-nozoki style. Apparently when one bends over and looks through their legs at Amanohashidate, it appears as if it is a bridge leading to heaven. There are 'mata-nozoki' stands all over the place where you are expected to try out this theory. I tried, and while it was beautiful, I'm not sure it's the route that's going to get me to heaven. I later found out that the sandbar got its name not so much from the view, but from an old Japanese legend. Long, long ago the God, Izunagi-no-Mikoto, and Goddess, Izanami-no-Mikoto, used the sandbar as a bridge to come down from heaven in order to visit the Konomiya shrine in Fuchu.



Either way, it's a lovely view. We took the chair lifts back down the mountain, and rode speed boats over to the other side of the peninsula where we rented bikes and rode back across the 2.3 mile sandbar.

The weather was beautiful and the bike ride was very refreshing. We picked up lunch at a supermarket and stopped to eat along the beach on our way back across the sandbar. Just as we were packing up for the day, and getting ready to catch our train home, our friend Brenda arrived. Really bad timing- but all I can think to describe it is 'zannen.' Maybe equivalent to "shucks" or "it's too bad."



This is just the start of me being lost in translation. Soon I will be back in the States, away from Japan and all those speaking Japanese. But that doesn't mean that these Japanese phrases will immediately stop popping into my head, nor does it mean that I will be any better at explaining them in English. Living in another country not only offers the experience to study a language, and experience the life of a local, but it also allows the chance to start thinking like someone else. In my case, I've started thinking like the Japanese in many ways.



I've gotten use to extra packaging, public transportation arriving on time, and people being courteous. I have come to expect excessive apologies and bowing, along with chopsticks and warm toilet seats. I speak passively and have forgotten how to tip. I think it's normal for girls to wear leggings in the summer and I shudder at the sight of a guy in baggy clothes. I throw peace signs in my pictures. And I cannot avoid certain Japanese phrases, even when I'm speaking English, simply because they're better said in Japanese, and take on different meanings when translated into another language.



BUT... that doesn't mean I'm not looking forward to coming home and seeing all of you!