Lift Up Your Hearts!

We slept well last night and felt better this morning, which is a good thing because we had another busy day ahead of us. After making a leisurely start to the morning, we took a long bicycle trip (fortunately, these are getting easier all the time). The destination was the Kose Sports Park to watch a kyudo (Japanese archery) competition. When we walked through the main building, we had our shoes off (no slippers provided, we just walked in our socks), but the competition itself was outdoors, so we had them on most of the time. The temperature was surprisingly warm, given how cold it was yesterday.

Kyudo is ballet with potentially deadly consequences. Form and procedure are as important as accuracy, and it's beautiful to watch. The audience was silent except for the cheers that went up when a target it hit, and applause for each archer who hit the target on every one of his four attempts. After watching the competition for quite a while, we went back into the main building and met with some of Janet's students, who were taking part in the competition. Janet is learning kyudo with them, but is chafing under the restrictions that she must wait three months before shooting an arrow, no matter how much she learns, how hard she works, nor how often she practices.

On our way home we stopped for the lunch buffet at Maman Pumpkin's. Now I can say that the very best French fries I have ever eaten were at an Indian restaurant in Japan! The food was recognizably Indian, but with a definite Japanese influence. For example, the breaded, deep-fried potato patties served with tonkatsu sauce. Tonkatsu is specifically a similarly-prepared pork cutlet, but the name also appears to be applied more generally to all sorts of breaded, deep-fried food. In any case, the potato patties were delicious.

After a brief stop back at Janet's place, we once again made the walk to Ryuo eki. This time the train ride was a long one, to the Kiyosato area (northwestern part of the Yamanashi Prefecture, in the Yatsugatake Mountains). This delightful countryside is where Janet's friend and fellow Eastman grad, Kasia, teaches. It was a friend of Kasia's, however, who picked us up at the train station, because Kasia herself was busy preparing for a concert—the impetus for this trip.

The concert was an intimate one, held at a sake brewery. The sake from Kiyosato is famous because of the excellent quality of the water from the mountains. We were settled down in a small room and offered various drinks; Porter tried the sake, and I can attest to the wonderful taste of the mountain water. The concert itself was great:

• Sonata for cello and piano (Debussy)
• FantasieSuite op. 75 (Schumann)
• (wonderful encore from a Bach Unaccompanied Cello Suite)
• Intermission, after which Kasia and the pianist were joined by friends playing guitar, saxophone, and electric bass
• Song of the Birds (Pablo Casals)
• A-TIN (Lee Eigyoku, who doubled as the guitar player)
• Michelangero 70 (Astor Piazzolla)
• Libertango (Astor Piazzolla)
• (Encore of Libertango and something else I can't remember)

After the concert we moved upstairs to a traditional Japanese dinner. (Fortunately, we sat Western-style at the table.) There were many, many courses of mostly unidentifiable food. I tried everything, but didn't feel bad about not finishing everything, as there was so much food that would have been impossible. For example, I ate only 50% of my baby squid, tiny little things with a decent flavor though a rather unpleasant crunch to the head, I thought. There was tempura, but made with vegetable I'd never tasted before, "special spring vegetables" a local, seasonal delicacy. The man across the table from me asked if I didn't find them bitter; they were, but that didn't stop them from being good. There were all sorts of different pickled vegetables and fruits, and many other dishes I can't remember. There was so much to eat I didn't even finish the very delicious noodles. It was a pleasant experience to eat just what I felt like eating and to stop when I was full. Somehow with American meals I feel obliged to eat what is set before me, either in order not to insult the hostess, or because (at a restaurant) we're paying for it all. Not that we weren't paying for it in Japan, but it was a package deal (concert, dinner, hotel), it was paid in yen (the bills look less like "money" to me than dollars), and we weren't keeping as close an eye on the expenses on vacation as at home. I could probably lose a lot of weight in Japan before adjusting!

We spend the night in Kiyosato, not only because the evening ended late, but in order to experience a Japanese-style hotel. This was located just down the street, and we were escorted there by the bass player, who incidentally built his own instrument, and is excited about getting together with Janet to play Irish music.

It appeared that we were the only guests in the hotel. We never saw anyone else, and there was only one bath prepared instead of one for each sex. This is as close as we got to an onsen on our visit. It wasn't as nice, and the view wasn't as good, but at least we had part of the shower-outside-the-tub, soak-afterwards-all-together experience. A real onsen wouldn't have been much fun for Porter, as there the men and women are separated and he would have been alone.

We were provided slippers when we entered the hotel. (Once again, we left our shoes at the door.) There were also separate bathroom slippers in the communal bathroom…I mean toilet—it was completely separate from the bath. The bath was on the first floor, but the toilet on the second, across from our room. You wear your own slippers into the facility, but switch to the specialty slippers before entering the toilet area. In our own room we left our slippers in the entryway, as even slippers are not allowed on the tatami mats.

The centerpiece of the room was a low table set with tea and snacks. Later, that was moved to the side and our futons and warm, fluffy quilts set out. There were a television set and a telephone in the room, although we used neither. Yukatas were provided for our convenience (although they were all too small to be quite convenient for me), along with toothbrushes and shaving supplies. Once again the source of heat was a kerosene heater. As usual, we switched it off at night, but the futon quilts easily took up the slack. By this time we had become pros at sleeping on the floor, and so had a good night's rest. My only complaint was that some of the previous occupants had obviously been smokers, as the tatami retained the smell of cigarette smoke.