Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is - Bhagavad Gita

Fall was a very busy time for me. My weekly schedule became all of a sudden completely filled as I started to teach some private lessons on the side to two groups of older women. Both came to me without searching them out at all. For one, a woman ran after me after I bought some vegetables at a corner store, and the other after talking with the owner of a very cute café. Although the lessons have taken away a little bit of the free time I had on the weekdays, what I get in return from being with these funny and quirky woman has made my experience here, richer and fuller. We mostly talk about our days and life happenings while drinking coffee and eating little sweets so it doesn’t actually feel like work at all (which I like in a job). Apart from that, I am still taking part in my own Japanese class which I go to once a week, where the tables are reversed and I am the one stumbling over my words. It is an excellent way to keep humble and in touch with the language learning process. On Wednesdays I go to Chika’s café and have dinner with her and her mother and eat wonderfully prepared food and then help put the café to sleep for the night. Normally her mother shows up with bags and bags of fruit and vegetables and left-overs which I then have to bike home with. She always gives me new vegetables that I have never cooked with and it is really fun to experiment and see what I can do with them. It is really amazing how much I am able to stuff into that front handlebar bag that I made for my bicycle. There seems to always be room when she hands me the bag upon bag of apples or potatoes. I really appreciate that most people here have an appreciation for where produce comes from. An apple is not just an apple but rather an apple from such and such prefecture and is special for such and such reason. Either way, it is still heavy.

One interesting part of Japanese culture is gift giving at weddings. Normally if someone you are close to gets married and you go to the wedding you are expected to give them a sizable amount of money, normally around 300$. The couple uses this money to pay for the wedding, which is normally pretty darn fancy, but then also to give you a gift in return. So in a way you are paying for your own present, and it is normally not something you really want or need, like a 100$ towel or plate set. Lately though, wedding couples have been giving the invitees a big magazine from which they can pick their own present. It is a little strange, expensive custom here that I have only had to pay for once, which I was happy to do, to be able to experience a Japanese wedding. I received two juice tumbles and some very expensive juice.

Some time ago, Chika’s grandmother had given money to a couple and received one of these magazines in return. Chika was then re-gifted the over 100 page magazine filled with just about anything you could possibly think for around 60$. Chika said that I could January 7st, 2015 help choose what gift to buy and I was happily surprised when I turned the page from spa packages and blenders to hotel rooms. I convinced her to turn down the hour long spa treatment and instead reserved a hotel room in an onsen town that I had always wanted to visit for the two of us. We booked our room and departed on a day trip in November to a place called Hakone, which is one of the more popular places for tourists visiting Japan to come to and enjoy hot springs. Some of the highlights of the trip were taking a cruise around a crater lake in a fake Caribbean pirate ship, eating eggs boiled black by volcanic water on top of a volcano, visiting one of the most famous old hotels and wandering around it’s gardens all by accident and enjoying our own private outdoor hot spring overlooking a river and a bamboo groove. We were also able to visit a really interesting outdoor sculpture museum which was one of the best museum experiences I have had in my life. The whole park overlooks mountains and winds through beautifully manicured gardens and wooded patches. It is filled with enormous and sometimes interactive sculptures from artists from all over the world made from just about anything one could make a sculpture out of. It was so interesting to be able to enjoy sculpture outdoors, in the sunlight with it interacting with a dynamic natural environment. The park also included a huge Picasso permanent exhibition where I learned all sorts of things about the artist and his life. He had lots and lots of lovers is what I mainly took away from it.

The end of October and the beginning of November ended the bike season for us with a couple of rides, all but the final one marked with some sort of crazy weather event. The first brought us from Lucas’s home in Gunma prefecture to another onsen town which we had all wanted to visit called Kusatsu onsen. We were in the path of a big Typhoon which never really affected us too hard in this region but did cut our trip short by a day for fear that we would be stuck somewhere in a really bad storm. The town turned out to be really amazing and one that I hope we can make our way back to soon. The whole place has mini hot springs spouting out incredibly hot water which you can wander around to for free. Most are too hot to enter for people not used to the water, but others are just spectacular and in really old wooden buildings. In fact the whole town had an older and more traditional feel that I remember seeing yet here in Japan.

On Halloween, the four boys boarded a train at midnight from Tokyo which dropped us off in the mountains of Nagano at 3 in the morning in the rain. We knew about the rain but expected it to clear up during the day which it certainly did not, which gave us our first glimpse at biking all day in cold rain in Japan. We ended up taking wrong road after wrong road until eventually we were meandering down the most beautiful logging road, clearly marked no entry, though ancient trees covered in almost phosphorescent green moss. Right as we noticed our brakes had completely disintegrated, it is starting to get dark and Ben has two flat tires in the pouring rain, Lucas and Ezra come back and shout that there is a huge camp-fire going completely unmanned in the middle of nowhere on this road. I could not think of a better surprise after sleeping for 3 hours on a train and climbing mountains on a bike in the cold rain all day. We eventually got out of the mountain and a very helpful bus office called a hotel to set up a reservation for us in the next town. The rain even stopped for about 30 minutes, allowing us a quite view of the stunning Autumn leaves we had come to see. After a quick shower, change of clothes, and quick exploration of the town I had the deepest sleep I can ever remember having. We decided to cut the trip short again after finding out that it would keep raining, but did enjoy a very beautiful little ride the next day just out of the city before taking a bus home.

Our last ride of the year was almost completely uneventful, on flat ground around the Chiba Peninsula and it was such a treat after having such difficult rides the whole month before. We were able to go fast, on light bikes in good weather eating at some of our favorite wonderful little cafés.

The end of November and the beginning of December was packed every weekend with some sort of end of the year party before I eventually made my way back to Wisconsin to spend time with my family. They were held with my co-workers, with friends, at a children’s hospital, with my Japanese class and finally at Chika’s café where lots of random people from all over my life here assembled to say goodbye to 2014. In the meantime I put together a quilt which I wanted to give my new Nephew, Jonah, who was born on Oct. 17th for Christmas. It involved more planning, cutting, mistaking and trips to the fabric store than I anticipated but in the end I was very happy with how it turned out. I grew up using the same quilt for all of my childhood and I hope that he can have the same experience. If not, or if he becomes a giant, which may happen, I’ll just have to get back at the sewing machine again.

I’ll write about my experience coming home again during the holidays in a separate journal but I thought it was important to write about my fall before I couldn’t remember the details any more. Before I departed for home, I was handed my contract for next year from the school wishing to have me back again. I declined it and will now end my job with the school in August after three years of living here. My friends and I had already talked about it quite a lot and I have already begun to put together plans for what will come next, but it was still a moment of intense angst signing and later turning in the papers to the principal. Working at this school has been a great job, but one that I am ready to move on from. Now the search for what comes next becomes much more exciting because it is finally real.

Happy New year to all of you and thanks for keeping up with me. I am so sorry for not being very good at responding to letters recently. Sewing Jonah’s quilt and getting everything ready for my return trip took up all of my time until now, but I will hopefully have some time to write some letters during the cold winter here sitting at my little heated table with my trusty green tea and mandarin oranges at my side.

In the meantime, Keep healthy, keep loving, keep living,

-james