Thursday, October 11, 2012

A Day in Himeji (big trip part 2)

I hate you Blogger!
Why do you warn that things won't be saved but then save them anyway?

Anyway, after Blogger messed up my notes for this post on Monday, I was too angry to write.  But now I'm back and will attempt to tell you about August 6th.  Wow, that was already over two months ago.  I really need to type faster...

Mikey and I were a bit tired from our journey to Hiroshima the day before so we decided to hang around Himeji, explore, and take it easy.  It was another brutally humid day so we started out by going to an air-conditioned restaurant to have some brunch.  There I introduced Mikey to the amazing substance known as Japanese-style curry.  It's quite nice, in fact it's one of my favorite Japanese foods (though originally from India it tastes pretty different from Indian curry and often comes with pickled vegetables that you can eat to cut the spice).

We looked at the map that had been given to us at the hostel (one of the owners had circled some of the more interesting places and restaurants for us).  We decided to skip the nearby village where a portion of "the Last Samurai" movie had been shot since neither of us had seen the movie- and instead to try to go to the local aquarium (since they are cool and would definitely have AC)...  We stopped by the tourist information center next to the shinkansen station to find out which bus we would have to take and a very nice lady (with excellent English) listed several possible buses for us.  We got on the proper bus but of course we missed our stop and got off at the next one with the intent of walking back.  The map told us that we were at the Himeji Tegarayamachuo Amusement Park.  We looked inside the gates and saw that it apparently had a water park, the Himeji-shimin Pool, as well!

Mikey loves water parks and I think they can be pleasant, especially on hot days.  So... we decided to go in and check it out!  The water park section was absolutely packed with people and had a couple of slides and one of those lazy rivers that you can float around in.  We walked through the amusement park section too which mostly just had rides for younger kids (and all of them required additional tickets as well- which weren't cheap).  We decided to go back to the hostel to get our bathing suits and then to hang out at the water park.  As we were leaving I asked one of the admission-ladies if we'd be able to leave the park and come back in later.  She said it wasn't allowed so I told her that I had forgotten my bathing suit (well actually I said mizu-fuku "water clothes" since I didn't know the right word).  She got the idea and gave Mikey and me a special tag to show when we got back.  As it turns out I wasn't that far off when I guessed the word for bathing suit - the real word is mizu-gi (gi is just a different word for clothes, just like the gi that practitioners wear for karate).

We went back to the hostel as quickly as possible and we were ready to swim about an hour later.  We spent most of the time floating around the river and chatting and I've gotta say the water felt very refreshing.  There were tons of kids swimming around though so Mikey and I had our fair share of getting bumped and splashed.  I was glad I had my sunglasses since it prevented most of the water from getting in my eyes at least.  Around four o'clock we decided to go back into town and see what movies were playing at the local theater.  The Amazing Spider-Man was still there and it had a 6:30 showing- there was certainly enough time to have an early dinner beforehand.  Mikey thought that one of the restaurants from the map sounded good so we headed there but we had a hard time finding it.

 I ended up asking an old lady working at a Japanese-sweets shop where the restaurant was and she explained that it was located in the same building as that very shop but it was closed for the day.  She asked us where we were from and so I ended up having a short conversation with her, I was surprised to hear that she knew of Massachusetts since one of her friend's daughter lived there.  Mikey was impressed that I was able to understand much of what the old lady said but I could tell that I definitely did not understand one of her questions since after I answered she gave me kind of a puzzled look (which I'm kind of used to seeing at this point).  [Mikey said he noticed that expression too.]  But as we were about to leave the old lady told us to wait and then went and got us a couple of mochi to take with us (what a nice lady!).  She told us that it would be best to eat them soon (since it was closing time for the shop I think that they were destined to be thrown away in the near future).

We went to a different curry place for dinner (what can I say, curry is great!) and then continued to the movie.  I liked it the second time around as well (I guess it was a three or four-month movie for me after all) though Mikey fell asleep during part of it.  Well, it was nice with the dim lights and AC and the poor boy was still getting over his jet-lag and we had just spent several hours swimming in the sun, so I couldn't really blame him. 

You've probably noticed that Mikey and I spent a lot of the time looking for ways to keep cool...  My hair is a bit long at the moment so I ended up just keeping it in a tight braid for the beginning part of the trip to keep it out of my way and to prevent it from sticking to my face.  Many people in Japan carry around small... sweat towels I guess you'd call them... so they can easily pat their faces and necks dry.  I carried around a towel for that purpose (and lent one to Mikey who actually seemed to really get into the practice so I ended up giving him a towel to take back).  In Japan there is a special word for that feeling you get in the summer where you feel tired and gross (and maybe even get a fever or feel ill) - natsubate, where natsu means "summer" and bate comes from the verb bateru which means "to be exhausted."  I'm definitely a sufferer of natsubate which is why summer is my least favorite season.  Oftentimes on hot and humid days I feel very worn out and I can barely eat anything without feeling nauseous - definitely natsubate.

The next day (August 7th) we planned to wake up early and go to Kyoto to see monkeys and other cool things.  All I can say is that I really was feeling OK (though hot and tired) before I fell asleep that night...

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