Saturday, March 28, 2009

 Last day in Japan. We were so exhausted last night we fell asleep in spite of the herd of insomniac Japanese elephants in the room above us. The walls here are paper, and the floors creaky, and sound travels. They must have gotten in late, and they made quite a ruckus, and unfortunately they got up early too. Ah well, we don’t want to miss out on a minute of our vacation.

 After a two trips to the onsen, a traditional Japanese breakfast of fish, raw fish, grilled fish and unidentifiable fish, we went out for a walk around the cute little town. Today is quite cold, low 40s, so it looks like we might not venture out to either the Cycle Sports Center, a bike park, or the fake Canadian village with steam train. Too cold and gray. The boys are playing ping pong in a room downstairs at the ryokan, and I’m going to read. We’re looking forward to more sumo, more fun food, and more adventures on our last full day in Japan. Uh, oh, here come the boys!

 It was cold today, so we stayed close to home. Will went to his favorite pop-gun arcade, where the man and woman who run it love Will. They let him sit on the counter and lean way over to shoot the little clay cupids and Jesus-things in order to win small toys. Sacrilege? Nah. It’s Japan.

 We then had soba – Will’s favorite new food. We’re going to start eating soba at home, and we think we can find some converts among his more food adventurist friends – Jimmy? It was also a relief to see the Japanese tourists from Tokyo at the next table watching ME to see how to grind the fresh wasabi root into my dipping sauce. It made me feel better that we’re not along in having to have the food explained to them as well!!! Will also tried some unidentified root-gel stuff, which was quite good. We came back and took hot spring baths – Will and Rick in a lovely indoor bath with thick cedar posts brought in from Taiwan, and I in an outdoor onsen.

 The town and ryokan have become much more crowded; the tea travelers are showing crowds of new guests to their rooms and giving tours of our ryokan. They are walking on the wooden walkways over the ponds that underlie the ryokan; one of the walkways is just perpendicular to our room, so the new guests have a view of the strange foreigners in their yukata watching sumo on TV in their room.

  We felt like waving or something. I asked if we should shut the shoji to give us privacy.

 Rick said, “I don’t care.”

 Will retorted:  “I care for the door to be shut.”  And he leaped up to close the paper shoji doors.

 So we sit with our sumo, and what Rick calls “beero and Sinbad” – translated as beeru and sembei, beer and rice crackers.

 Oh no, our favorite up-and-comer Homasho just lost! Ohhhh! And now the referees have reversed the bout – his opponent pulled his hair. Homasho wins!!! Gotta go hug the boy, who is currently doing the sumo dance.