This is now the third time today I've opened up the blog editor, but I keep getting deterred by feeling that we've had both nothing going on and too much. I suppose this, however, is the sad story of our year. The weekdays have almost too much free time for us to handle: wake up, breakfast, café for writing, dinner, home. The weekends are usually quite busy, with a combo of research outings and then samba rehearsals. I've also been working to get my dissertation into some sort of readable form and not just a mass of notes and scattered analyses. It's all really quite taxing. (Sorry, I realize deadpan sarcasm doesn't telegraph well in text...)
But now I'm finally writing (and you reap the benefits) because we are finally having a few days of relaxation after a busy several weeks after we got back from Okinawa. Our relaxed weekdays have been invaded by lessons and other responsibilities and then our weekends have gotten even busier than usual. There was a pay-off though, which was our two days of performance in the Kobe Matsuri (festival) with our samba group. For this event, as will be the case for the others we are in, Rachel was singing and I was on guitar (and yes, we were super cool). We had something of a hiccup with my instrument, however, when the pre-amp I brought appeared to be broken. We managed to carry on, but my contribution to Saturday's performance was rather quiet. (Side note: we performed that day on the "Anpanman stage".
Anpanman is a superhero, whose head is made of a sweet bun filled with red bean paste. It's both an awesome pastry and unbeatable hit with the under-5 set.)
Then on the Sunday we had the parades portion of the weekend and were greeted by rain. I've noticed that weather forecasts here usually oversell the possibility of rain and we have adjusted our behavior accordingly. This time, however, the rain did come when expected and in the amounts they expected. Feathers needed to come off of dancers costumes, the drummers need to constantly wipe the water off of their instruments (with a supplemental hair dryer session in between our two parades)... We, however, got the best part of the deal with a sweet ride in the audio system truck, which was kinda surreal.
Oh, and did I mention the gold-lamée caftans we wore? Well, it was quite a look, and I'm sure Rachel will later post some here for your laughter enjoyment.
We also made a small jaunt to the town of Otsu on Lake Biwa. Biwa is north and east of Kyoto and is the largest body of fresh water in Japan. The landscape is pretty awesome and struck me as a stereotypically Japanese: a scattering of large domed mountains and hills with flat plains in between. Anyway, we had a pretty good time and managed to act like real adult tourists; we rented bikes, saw several temples, ate lunch on with a lake-view, bought local pottery, etc. Our most heroic feat was a long descent from about half-way up Hiezan, which is a mountain shared by Ostu/Biwa and Kyoto. It has some rather old Buddhist temples (at the top, which we didn't see) and is the home to one of the early
esoteric sects of Buddhism. The descent was longer and more demanding than we had expected, mostly because it was labeled as a "nature trail" but ended up being a poorly maintained temple access foot-road that wound back-and-forth and up-and-down the mountain. When we emerged back into town the rain had begun to fall steadily, but we were ok with our rain jackets in tow --- nonetheless, we were inquired after by a woman in her car, who offered to let us have her umbrella.
We politely declined.
Anyway, Lake Biwa is quite nice, and only an hour away by train, so I think we'll be up there again soon.
Other highlights of the past month include: baseball (impromptu trip on a weekday night), a salsa festival, and a plan for more baseball and research trip to Tokyo.
