Freedom

Hard to believe it's 3 weeks since I became gainfully unemployed (even though I haven't worked for 6). This morning I had my last day of school, and I walked out of class with my laptop and a daypack and headed straight to the train station. Goodbye Okazaki. Not that I'm sad to leave this fine example of bland Japanese urbanity.


I took the slow trains to Nara, ensuring plenty of train hopping and amazing views of rice paddies and mountains once I got safely through Nagoya. The shinkansen is great for getting places efficiently, but there's something pleasant about sitting on local trains and watching the passing show of life hopping on and off before you. After two years of intense busyness it's nice to be entering a period where I have an abundance of time, and it makes not having an income totally worth it.

As if on cue, autumn arrived today. I may have mentioned before that seasons change in Japan with the flick of a switch, one day you just know that you're in a different season, just as ants know when it's going to rain. I could feel the countryside taking a fulfilled sigh of accomplishment and begin to relax, much like that moment at the end of a busy but productive day when you sit down after accomplishing everything you wanted to and feel a great wave a contented tiredness roll over you. That was today, and the sense of autumn nostalgia in the late afternoon sunlight was only added to by watching a fat, round sun gently ease itself behind the mountains as the courtesy bus took me from Nara station to the hotel.

I checked in, and crashed on the bed drinking green tea before heading down to the bar where they have huge windows fronting onto a traditional Japanese garden with a waterfall pouring into its midst.
After finishing my self-congratulatory beer and gloating over the hordes of suited Japanese businessmen finishing up the day's deals, I headed down to check out the onsen, where I have just spent a pleasant hour lolling from hot bath to sauna to cold bath to hot bath whilst amusedly watching the little old ladies vigorously striding around and around the cool walking bath.

There's nothing like the ritual of an onsen or a swim in the sea or a river to formalise a change of circumstances. Am going to miss the silky feel of my skin after an onsen very much.