Retreat to Karuizawa

Karuizawa is a cold, mountainous region about three hours from where I am in Tokyo. Yesterday morning we were set to meet in front of the Big Box in Takada-no-baba (Big Box is a huge shopping center -- it's really big but it is fairly boxish, too).

I rushed through the station and ended up making it there at about 8:58, we
did not leave exactly at nine but it was close enough that I admired my own accomplishment in arriving on time instead of very early or very late as the trend has been of late.

Karuizawa is colder than my place in Tokyo. The view(s) were really beautiful, driving through a mountain range, I got a few great photos of the clouds that I think look really cool.



We arrived and had a meeting, then moved our things into our bedrooms. There were a total of five rooms and the one I stayed in was the size of a large closet, had 4 bunk beds, a desk with 2 chairs, a window, and a heater. The other rooms were mostly tatami-mats and just had lots of mattresses laid down on the floor, room for twenty people (which was all used). Our group is about 40 people.

We had lunch and had free time to do whatever we wanted. Our choices were to walk around the area (for which they cautioned "look out for bears and wild boar") or we could go to an On-sen which is like a therapeutic hot bath usually existing at hot-springs but not a requirement. We didn't have too much time to decide but I decided to stay around base-camp and go on a walk with a few people.

The place had a ping-pong table sitting outside our dorm-like-building and, after returning from the promenade of mass-delight, autumn chill, and seeing the first tree with orange and red leaves in all of Japan, a few people played some ping-pong (including myself) and realized that they were really bad at it (just me on that one).

There was dinner, a meeting, and then a party in the classroom where we had the meeting. There were a few Japanese students from Waseda who had already studied abroad which was cool because they were all really good at English.

After making a total fool of myself in broken Japanese I retired (as did everyone) at a fairly late hour, to be awoken on my un-made bed (I did not bother putting the sheets on the mattress) by a voice saying "breakfast time!" According to people in the larger rooms, classical music was played and then a soft voice came on to announce breakfast, all I heard was the voice and I don't know if my roommates heard any music either.

Breakfast was quite a chore, I have gotten sick and being sleepy is like double sleepy when you have an illness.

We had a break to do whatever we wanted again, I laid down in the sun with some friends and we had a good time talking, all of the people in Japan Study are really nice and most of them are really good at Japanese and being cool people so it's all good.

Not much time had passed, someone brought out some frisbees, badminton rackets, and a soccer ball. I learned how to throw a frisbee today, I still can't do it correctly all of the time but at least I have been taught that you make it spin with your wrist and the better the spin the straighter it will go. Probably an obvious statement but I found it profoundly helpful.


We had lunch, I couldn't think I was so sleepy.
We had a meeting, it was about our cultural practicums in the Spring. I signed up to work at a ski resort (and was warned many times that it is not nearly as glamorous as it sounds). Although it sounds difficult, I'd really like to see the ski scene here, and I hope I can learn how to snow board while there. Of course, we might not be able to get our first choice so they had us pick three. My other two were an elementary school and then as a worker at some medicine company, it sounds like a very logistical job, maximizing production and such. Hopefully I can get to go to the ski resort but any of them would be fine really, all the options were good, I thought. During that meeting an ant had found his way in and was sitting near a friend's foot. There had been a bunch outside and when I was laying down a few had crawled on me, I think he might had fallen from a wandering pant-leg perhaps.
"Don't move," I said as I pointed down to the ant.
He looked briefly and then lifted his foot;
I did not know what he was going to do.

He crushed him with his heel, my heart filled with regret.
I blurted something under my breath, inaudible any way due to the waspishness of my voice.

He craned to stomp on him again and did so.

I have forgotten that people kill bugs; I haven't done that since childhood.

Culture shock at its finest: and the only thing that it has to do with Japan is that it took place on Japanese soil.

There was another break period, some frisbee.

We cleaned up our rooms and returned to the final meeting. When that was over we jumped onto our bus again. The way to Tokyo, the views once again grand in the great bus of ours, only now that we had seen them no one gasped or leaned over their seats.


My attempts at taking great pictures were full of betrayal and deception. "What a beautiful mountain ran-- side of a truck traveling at the perfect speed to completely encompass my view for the trigger duration."



I witnessed, today, the first Western Car. It was a dark blue Mercedes, steering wheel on the left-side of the car (In Japan the wheel is on the right-side and the correct lane is the left lane).


Karuizawa in Nagano is cool.