The best day in Hamamatsu - notes

Ok. I am so beyond behind with this blog that it's become irresponsible. I apologize. Truly I do. It's hard to keep up with everything and I want to present the best of Japan to all you readers out there - meaning edited pictures, full reports, and interesting things to read about. Unfortunately, I have a bad habit of letting the picture editing pile up...and I'm glad I let it go for the last month of the summer program, to be honest. I really didn't do very well in the school aspect of the Japanese program. If I could redo those two months, I probably would have asked to have a lot less after school activities planned for me and spent more time studying. But the problem with that plan is that I would have missed out on so many incredible social interactions and opportunities to meet new people, something I don't think I would have wanted to trade. I would have definitely preferred not having my grades drop to the point where my prof bluntly asks me what my problem is, but I was happy that I was doing well in the social settings and learning to communicate. The past two months in Chiba have definitely added to the communication capabilities - I'm able to at least understand the gist of most of what is being said around me, even if I don't know how to be a part of the conversation, however, I do know that when I go to Kansai Gaidai in a few weeks that I'm going to need to put in a lot of effort to be just as capable in the classroom as out of it.

All that heavy stuff aside, I do want to tell/show you my last weeks in Hamamatsu and weeks in Ichihara and the week in Hawaii, so without further ado, I give you the week after Tyfoon Suzuki rolled out of Araimachi. I know there's a lot of everyday adventures I had between weekends, but while they meant the world to me, they probably won't mean much to those of you reading this (also, they're running together out of order) so let me start with my most favoritest day in Hamamatsu.

This was the day that earned two entire pages in my journal - a feat, let me tell you, because we had to write in Japanese which was...welll...- and probably earned the most pictures taken in one day with the Yamashitas. Erin and TJ were invited to tag along too, which made it better because Keiji-kun was obsessed from afar with Mr. TJ. We started off going to the castle of Hamamatsu, which is pretty small, only two stories but is still pretty imposing from the ground because of the way Japanese castles are built. The idea of the one with the highest ground having the advantage? Well, if there aren't any hills around, you can make hills. So what the Japanese do is build these huge walls that are almost vertical, but slant just slightly - to a short person, this is pretty imposing. (all the rest of the pictures from the castle will be in the following post, it'll just be purely photographs). The really cool thing about this castle was that despite its size being on the lesser side of things, you could still see very, very far from the top. Apparently, on really clear days (probably in the winter) you can see Mt. Fuji from the highest tier.

Castles like these allowed the ancient Japanese to see far - something which is very important if you want to have the up and up on an incoming army from a nearby shogun with whom you may not be on the best of terms (pre-Edo periods).
From an artistic point of view, I was awed by how beautiful it was, and so intricate - every side, tip, corner, etc of the roof is covered in the symbol of the final shogunate who ruled in Hamamatsu. I was highly disappointed that the top tier where you could look out over all of the city was hedged in by a chain link fence. It just killed the whole kimochi....hmm....feeling? of the building.

After this, we went to the store to get our bento lunches, which Obaa-chan insisted on paying for - Otou-san didn't seem down with that, which I thought was very interesting... rather than eating in the car, we drove down close to the ocean, where there's a lovely park that was full of wind from the Pacific ocean, a very nice relief from the heat of the day. As we were eating, obaa-chan and otou-san explained to us that during the Omatsuri they have every year, they fly massive kites, about the size of the entire dorm room I'm staying in, which require teams of people to fly. This was not only a nice way to celebrate Spring and successfully surviving another year/good crops being planted, but it was also created a sense of unity and teamwork among the peoples under the rule of the shogun. Each team is from a specific neighborhood in Hamamatsu, and a long time ago these neighborhoods would have been farms. Traditionally, farms weren't co-owned, but neighbors helped each other plant, harvest, sell, and eat the food that was grown by all. So if there was a fight between neighbors, this could be very bad for everyone. To help aid this, a shogun decided a looooong time ago that competitions among the various areas would boost this. And these kite flying days get quite vicious. It's not like that scene in Mary Poppins where everyone is just happily lolly gagging about with their kites oooh no. You want to cut the string, well rope really, the string has to be huge to hold a kite this size, of the opposing teams. It gets so intense because of the strength of the winds coming off the ocean that white smoke fills the air. Sometimes it becomes hazy and difficult to see the other kites.
So we decided after visiting the ocean that we would like to visit the kite museum. Yes. They have a museum dedicated to this. It's pretty cool.
Ok, so the Pacific Ocean...wow. I felt like Galadriel's words to Legolas about hearing the cry of the gull and not being satisfied with anyplace in Middle Earth but the sea (and by implication, Grey Havens) were meant for me. I am in love. It's wild and rough and it's beautiful in a way the Atlantic never will be. It was like going to see the ocean in the middle of a Winter's storm - absolutely captivating, dangerous, and irresistible. But before we even got to the ocean we came to the absolutely widest beach I've ever seen. Like. For. Real. It was at least a quarter of a mile before you even SAW the ocean. And the dunes? OMW they were veritable mountains. Ok that is an exaggeration, but they were really high. And of course I kicked off my shoes as soon as I saw the dunes and smelled the ocean because I figured it was right over the dune because that's how beaches work, right? Ooooooh no. No no no that is not how it works at Hamamatsu. And this is apparently half the size it was from 100 years ago but a huge earthquake shifted things and made the land dip off so the ocean could come closer! Closer, HAH!! That was insane. Also, the sand was like lava. I forgot that my host brothers are in that stage where it's not ok for a girl to do something more epically stupid than them so when they saw me running for my life to the ocean (because I didn't feel like dying by foot burnage) in my bare feet they had a "anything you can do I can do better" moment. *headpalm*

When we got back to the house after the ocean and the kite museum - I'll let the pictures speak for themselves for that one - we all collapsed on the floor and slept for a long time. Then it was time to wake up for dinner before going out to walk with the Boy Scouts in the foot hills. You see, it was the night they were to go hunting for fireflies. Which was adorable because a lot of the kids had never seen a lightning bug before, ever. So hearing them light up was the best thing every :)

Now, at this point, we only had a few weeks left in the program and needed to not only keep up with the material we were going over every day - i failed at this - but also write/memorize a paper on anything we wanted in Japanese. Which was a lot harder than I thought. But the thing that made it even harder was that because our time was coming to a close and I barely saw Okaa-san and Otou-san during the week because of their work schedules, they made plans for the whole family. For the entire weekend. That's a lot of time. A LOT of time. So after a day like the above, I was looking forward to a Sunday with nothing to look forward to but homework...only to find out that I had more plans with Obaa-chan and Ojii-chan. So that was a little frustrating, I must admit. But I really did enjoy it. I'll tell you all about it in my next post :) Which will be up in....a day or two!!