Confessions of A Working Girl

The Kamakura trip started bright and early Saturday morning. That is—we had to be at KCP at 8:30 am…which for me meant leaving by 7:30 am. I was not exactly thrilled with that, especially since the plan from 8:30 to 11:15 was to listen to a lecture about Kamakura. In English, but still. Sensei (which is the Japanese word for teacher) broke it up a little though, by having us read information about a certain part of Kamakura that we were planning to visit, and then give short presentations on it.

            11:15 to 12:15 was lunch, and we met up at the train station. We had to switch train lines once, but then it was an hour train ride to Kamakura. We looked at the train tickets we’d been given and were shocked—it was about 8000 yen!

            Unfortunately, this next part isn’t exactly going to be in order, since some of the places were sort of similar…but what we did see on Saturday included a garden named Samuel Cocking Garden. It had been one of the first places to have a greenhouse (at least, that’s what I understood) but the greenhouse had been destroyed in some earthquake…the foundation was still there, and you could see parts of it—it sort of reminded me of Shakespeare’s house that way—foundation, dirt, signs saying do not enter…

            The garden had been somewhat recreated in 2003, in order to have as many of the original types of plants in it as possible. There was also a 59 meter tall tower in the garden, which we climbed—well, we took the elevator up, then climbed down. (But from the information can you guess what my groups 15 minute presentation was about?)

            That was on Enoshima island…then we headed to where the hotel for the night was. We walked through so many twisting streets that I don’t think I could find that hotel again, at least not without a guide. We did pause at the beach first, a couple of us got to complain about sand in our shoes, then we actually got to the hotel.

            At the door, we had to take our shoes off, put them on a shelf, then put on slippers. But when we were shown to our rooms, we had to take the slippers off before entering the room. That was because the room’s floor was of tatami mats and you apparently cannot wear slippers on tatami mats. I was in a room with the 5 other girls on the trip. We took a short tour of the hotel, I forgot where everything was immediately, and then was dinner, which I took pictures of because everyone else was so I figured that I might as well.

            But I didn’t take a picture of the steak that was there too…I don’t think I’d ever eaten meat that was almost the same pink as my sweater before. It was a little darker maybe, but not by much. And, because it was steak, it was hard to bite. I have a small mouth, so I couldn’t even put most of the pieces all into my mouth and chew them that way unless I wanted to choke. Chopsticks don’t work very well for holding steak while you try to bite it (well, at least not the way I use chopsticks) so I reverted to hands and hoped that people wouldn’t mind too much.

            After dinner, Sensei came by with a deck of cards, and we played a game called ‘moa’ or ‘mow’ or something like that. I’d played before with my girlscout troop—it’s the game where they hand you your set of cards, don’t tell you any rules, say ‘game start’ and then everyone stops talking. If you talk you get penalized. This time, we were told why we were being penalized, though I don’t remember my troop doing that the first time I played…or am I remembering wrong?

            Anyway, that night we slept on futons. Small mattresses with one blanket (a thick blanket) on top. Like the one at the host family’s house—only that one is raised off the ground cot style and the one at the hotel was on the floor. We had to get up early again the next morning since breakfast was at 8 and we were leaving the hotel at 9.

            More train rides…we visited a temple…there were stairs…we visited another temple…we had lunch…oh, and after lunch, I tried an interesting flavor of ice cream which I didn’t have time to take a picture of. It was soft serve, pink and green. And it was ‘Macha and Sweet Potato’ flavored. The pink was sweet potato, and macha is the Japanese green tea.

            The last thing we visited was a humongous statue of Buddha. It only cost 20yen to go inside, and KCP handed us the 20 yen, so I went inside the statue. It was interesting. What I also thought was interesting, and what I forgot to ask about was the fact that in little corners here and there, above my eye level, below, there were one yen coins. In one little crevice, there was a whole handful!

            After that we had a little bit of free time…I bought paper weights to give to my host family since I was informed that some small omiyage (that is, present) was technically sort of required. For myself I bought a shuriken. Which I should take a picture of at some point…anyway, I also bought two of those weird boiled egg shapers—and I was so mad about it too. I found them in the 100 yen shop!!! The two I have at home that I bought online cost about $7!!!

            After that we took the train back to Tokyo. I got to have a nice conversation with one of the boys that I hadn’t really gotten a chance to talk to before—and he’s also here till June. I think I have more phone numbers in my phone here than I ever did at home…well…I just looked. Currently I have 19 phone numbers and 15 email addresses. All of the people I have email addresses for I have the phone numbers for…o.o and nine of the numbers are boys. XD

            I wasn’t sure where to mention it, but we saw a lot of cats on this trip. First were the cats that were just chilling on blankets, letting people pet or touch them without bothering to move (and yes, they were really live cats, and they were alive, not dead) Then there was the suicidal cat, who was standing on the edge of a platform that was on the way down from that tower in the garden.

            The other animal that we saw a lot of was hawks. At least, I thought they were hawks until we saw the sign that said ‘beware of kites’. Either way, there were tons of those…one of the kids in my group actually got his sandwich stolen by one!

            Let’s see…that wraps up the trip…I’m not going to mention the midterm because I didn’t like it…it was better than I thought, but that doesn’t say much since my expectations were sort of low…everyone seems to think that I understand and know more Japanese than I actually do… >.<

1 Comment » AUnt Roz:

February 28th, 2011 @ 6:16 pm Why did you visit Kamakura? I mean, what are some of the things you learned in the lecture about it?

I would guess the money in the Buddha were gifts - Like little prayers of fruit, etc. that are usually left at the alter in a Buddhist temple. Did you ask your host?

What was your midterm on? What is your course about? Is it only one class?

Great to hear about the boy numbers - Any social life at night in Tokyo