Up the Mountain

SATURDAY, AUGUST 7

Woke up early, and lounged around in bed for an hour trying to sleep more. Eventually I got up and got on with the day's activities. Elizabeth had talked about cleaning this morning, and honestly, it was time for me to do so, too. Mother, stay with me, don't faint.

I have done a bunch of laundry. It took a while. The machine is all in kanji, so I pulled out my amazing kanji survival guide and translated most of it. Elizabeth had also told me how hers worked, and it seemed similar. I put the soap and clothes in, pressed start and, while the machine made noise, nothing happened. I gave it time, the start button did have “wait a bit” written under it. But after I had done dishes and showered and nothing had yet happened, that was more than a bit. I was just about to give up when I realized that there was a spigot over the machine. As my apartment has been vacant for so long, many things (gas, etc.) had been turned off. I turned the knob, pushed start again and everything worked perfectly.

Japan air-dries, which is good for the environment, but something I'm not used to. I've discovered that people stretch poles between what I thought were two plant hanger metal bars, and hang clothes off those. I need to acquire that. My teachers were nice enough to give me a hanging thing with 18 clips on it. My socks are currently outside hanging there, while my panties hang off door frames inside the house. I hope I don't have visitors anytime soon.

I picked up a few more things from the hundred yen store, such as tupperware and cutlery to match my bento. I finally now have a towel in the toilet room, which is fantastic. I hated having to walk over to the bathroom to dry my hands. I also finally got a much-needed broom and probably looked really, really funny biking back, holding a broom in one hand.

I really need to find shelves and what-not as the second tatami room is getting worse by the day.

Elizabeth and I met up at 3 to get me a mobile. I've been looking with Mama, but the best deal around, which I have only now be informed of, is to get a prepaid phone from SoftBank. Elizabeth speaks enough Japanese to get us by, so I went and for 8,000 yen, I got a phone and two months of unlimited texts. It is unfortunately very, very expensive to call, but 300 yen for a month of unlimited texts is very good, and it's free for people to call me. So, I shall tell people to call, or text them to call me.

After that, we changed and packed up our gear and headed off to climb the local mountain. Okay, there are lots of mountains around, but this one is in town-ish and has a shrine on it. I can see it, towering over town, out my window.

I hadn't wandered in that direction yet, but Elizabeth works over that way, so she led the way. We passed her school on the walk over, took a stop off at two shrines, and walked along the canal a ways. We even came across a small festival at a shrine with Hawaiian leis and music. Eventually we reached the base of the mountain.

There is cable car, for lazy bums, but we hiked it. It wasn't terrible, but still a good workout. I was glistening by the end. At the top was a gorgeous view of Lake Biwa, and to the other side our town. We could pick out the big department store near where we live.

The cicadas are out and HUGE here. They were quite loud on top of the mountain. They also look like small birds when they fly. Usually, they're about two inches just sitting there. I had one on my screen window as I went to take a bath. Terrifying little buggers. Bugs should not be big enough to eat a small child.

I snapped a million photos, especially as the sun began to set.

Now, I'm home, and starved. It's a stir-fry night as the end of the veggies need to be used up before they go bad. I'm lucky I waited to sweep until tomorrow, as the floor's certainly going to need it.