Fun Weekends!

So this past Friday (the 17th) was Jeff ‘s big 21st birthday (one of the only other two counselors from Iowa). We went to TGIFridays in Roppongi for dinner which actually, quite surprisingly, made me feel like I was at home. Embarrassingly enough, I really felt like I was on Westown Parkway… Is that weird? The food was exactly the same, but the prices were about tripled, but $25 for four cheese-sticks and one drink was worth it to see Jeff so happy. Jeff must have been feeling ok after the two giormous strawberry daiquiris the group got him because he decided he wanted to spend the rest of the night singing karaoke. We got a room at a cool little place and had a blast.
Saturday morning Shirley, Lena, Rachelle and I took off for Niko. It took a couple hours longer than we thought it would to get there, so we didn’t get to do the temples on Saturday, but we did go to an onsen (a hot spring public bath). It was an absolutely relaxing and incredible experience. We stayed in a really nice, very Japanese hostel. There was a shoe rack where we left our shoes at the door and plenty of nice bamboo sandals for us to wear inside. There was a really cool shrine on the balcony upstairs, and a very nice kitchen and living area. A couple American guys stayed with us. One was from Pittsburg and the other from just north of Cheyenne, Wyoming- a fun little connection that was (Jenny).
We got up a 6 on Sunday to be sure we would get to see everything we wanted. We took the first bus up to Lake Chuzenji and Kegon Waterfall. The waterfall was beautiful, but the lake was even better. We hiked up a small mountain until we came to a clearing, and wow. I honestly have no words for how beautiful the valleys and the lake were from up there. It was just SO refreshing to be out in the wilderness. We didn’t see a single person for two and a half hours. No roads, no sidewalks, no buildings, or car horns, or stinky city air. It was just the bamboo and us. It was perfect. We headed down and ate lunch (ok, I guess it was more of a brunch at 10:30 than a lunch) by the lake. We walked around and looked in some of the shops which was really nice. Nikko is known for woodwork, so I really enjoyed looking at all of the intricuate pieces and meeting the artists (well, communicating with them as best I could). After that we hopped on the bus and headed to the Toshogu Shrine to see the “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” Monkeys. I was quite surprised to see that they were actually only a foot or two tall and were just carved with another dozen monkeys into the side of a small hut amongst all of the beautiful ornate shrines. I really cannot figure out how they became so famous, or why someone picked those three of all the monkeys on that hut… very interesting. So after we checked out the garden and shrines we headed back to Tokyo. On one of our train transfers we stopped for dinner at our first sushi-go-round. All I can say is I need to find one of those MUCH closer to here, and someone needs to hurry and jump on that idea in Iowa stat.
So, now it’s back to the grindstone. The kids are basically all new this week. I think they are really downsizing the American Embassy, and A LOT of the families are moving back to the states, so we only have a few return embassy kids, otherwise it is all Japanese. We are fully booked this week (actually overbooked) both morning and afternoon, but the kids were pretty good today (except for three who literally screamed the full time they were there – the morning kid screamed an hour until his nose began to bleed… which strangely did not calm him down. And one of the afternoon kids screamed until he puked… four times, I got him over the garbage can about half a second before he started. I guess I am getting used to that stuff) So, hopefully it will be a good week.
Hope you have a good week too!!