The last two weekends have been great, mainly because I have pulled myself out of my apartment and gone out to experience different parts of Japan. When I arrived, I was all about touring, and seeing what there was. Unfortunately, I think many of us tend to establish a routine and pretty much stick to it. As one of my friends here said, I mainly just live in Japan. I don't really know the places to see. When I visited Tokyo a couple of months ago, a Tokyo native friend of mine took me to the Royal Palace and admitted that in her 62 years she had never been there before.Last weekend, my neighbors, L'Shawn and Doug had heard about a festival in a town about 1.5 hours away where they had floats with mechanical puppets on them. L'Shawn went on-line and found us a volunteer English guide, and away we went. What a delightful Sunday! The Japanese guy was beyond generous. He wanted to pay for everything including lunch and an expensive cake set in a ritzy hotel. He also batted a bamboo good luck charm my way when the folks on the floats were throwing them into the crowd. It is now hanging outside my house, bringing me good fortune as we speak. We also bought a cute little bottle of sake and walked around town drinking it. You're not in Kansas anymore. The town was located north of Kyoto on the shores of the largest lake in Japan, so it was truly lovely.The next day was a holiday, and though my school didn't observe it, I only had 1 class after which I ran out of the building and met my friend for tennis, lunch and an exhibition of Okinawan dancing. Very interesting, and at one point one of the dancers came down the rows of spectators, so I snapped a photo. That caused him to drag me out of my seat, hand me a drum and have me dance with them. As an Okinawan dancer, I make a good English teacher, but it was fun anyway.Yesterday, Saturday, I went out geocaching again with Jon. We went to a park near Suma beach. It was both lovely and odd. We took a ropeway (gondola) up most of the mountain to the park. At the top, there was another people moving device going up a bit further. It was kind of like a vertical bumper car set up. Quite different. At the top, they had an observation building complete with 1980's video games, a fascinating Rube Goldberg machine which we watched for about 10 minutes. Then we went upstairs to the snack bar and the 360 degree view of the ocean, mountains and beach. I told Jon I felt dizzy. He said he did too, and we realized the floor was moving. It was not exactly a ritzy hotel at the top of a skyscraper--it came complete with a statue of Snow White and 2 of the 7 dwarves. But it did have a great view. We hiked down the mountain, found the cache, and then toured the longest suspension bridge in the world. They have a walkway with some glass flooring, so you can look down to the ocean below. Quite impressive.Today I played tennis from 10 to 2:30 and am sore from stem to stern. Life is good.
