Apr 02, 2007 02:25
What an eventful weekend it’s been. One that I will probably not forgot in a long time! On Friday night I had dinner with a few people in order to commemorate the departure of one of the Japanese teachers who is leaving to Canada. We went to an Italian restaurant and didn’t stay for too long since it was an early start for Saturday’s adventure.
Woke up at 8 on Saturday and headed into Shobara to pick up Gerard. Him, Andy and I all decided to take a road trip to the next prefecture over to visit Japan’s oldest shrine and also to see the capital city of that prefecture. We were on the road for about an hour and a half before we came across the world’s coolest children’s playground. I so wish I had been to it when I was a kid. Not only did they have like the longest slide I’d ever seen it also had a sandpit with diggers and sand buckets in it. The slide was amazing because it had rollers on it to make you go down twice as fast. I have to admit, it did burn my bum a little on the second time down it but it was totally worth it!! I went on the slide whilst the two boys played in the sand pit filling up their manly sand buckets!! Hahaha.
We finally arrived at Izumo taishya (the oldest shrine) and had a walk around for a while. It was a really really nice shrine actually and the greenery around it was also pretty. Many of my students go there for the New Years so I can imagine it being packed.
In the afternoon, after stopping off for a well-deserved KFC lunch, we went to Matsue (the capital of Shimane prefecture) and parked the car off to walk around the town centre for a bit. First stop was Matsue castle. Luckily the weather was temporarily holding out for us and we got to look at the pretty cherry blossoms surrounding the castle. When we got to the actual castle building I heard Andy’s name being called out and to all of our surprise, it was one of his students from school. We had traveled 2 hours away and we bump into one of his students?!?! How random is that?
As we were leaving the castle vicinity, it started to rain lightly. We knew sort of where we wanted to have a look around next but didn’t know how to get there. We randomly flagged down a Japanese person on his bike to ask him for directions. Not only did he stop, get off his bike and direct us, he physically walked us to the place we were heading to. This was a good 10-15 minute walk away. When we get to the tourist places, they were all closed. This Japanese guy seemed thoroughly concerned that we had traveled all this way and the places were closed. He then asked if we liked green tea and since we said yes, he told us he would perform a tea ceremony.
Here’s the lowdown on the guy: He is a 20 something year old uni student who is studying flower pigments as a PhD. He speaks amazing English considering he said he didn’t speak it much. He is a member of the uni tea ceremony club. Later I found out that he spent weeks at a study abroad in Canada and Australia which explains his great English speaking skills.
By this time the weather decided to take a turn and pour down. I mean proper pouring with rain. It was also thunder and lightening which once in a while made me jump at the loud booming noise. The guy said he would take us to his uni for the tea ceremony so Andy ran back, in the rain, to get the car and pick us all up. We get in the car and it’s almost impossible to see the road in front let alone the car in front due to the heavy rain. The guy directs us to a supermarket because he wants to pick up some Japanese sweets for us first. Eventually, we made it to his university and it was a lot older and run down than I was expecting a university to look like. We sat in his tea ceremony room and waited for him to prepare everything for us. This took at least 30 mins and the actual tea drinking took a mere 2 minutes!
After the tea, he invited all of us to eat soba noodles with him since this is a specialty in the area. He takes us to a local restaurant and we had some amazing soba. It was really delicious. I don’t think we would have found this place if it wasn’t for him. After it all, we dropped the guy back and parted ways. Oh, he also gave us some more Japanese sweets as a souvenir to take back to Hiroshima with us!
I still find the whole experience just out of this world. If I was back home, I would be more than skeptical about a man who wants to show us around. He is either a) after something or b) going to kill us all. This Japanese man asked for NOTHING in return and seemed genuinely proud of his city and wanted to share it with us lost foreigners. I have never met someone so genuinely kind before and I think if a friend had told me that story, I wouldn’t have believed them because it’s just so rare to find. We got his email address and phone number in case we want to meet up again with him and I’m hoping that one day we can return the hospitality that he has shown us.
Philosophical thought of the day: you can still find kind people in the world and it’s a comforting thought that amidst all the fighting and violence we see everyday, there are still some genuinely good people.