Sayonara #4

Sunday was busy, crazy and beautiful. I woke up reasonably early for once and went to say goodbye to Akate Sensei and Akate Sensei, my shodo senseis who have tried hard to transform my dodgy unbalanced squiggles into something approaching a decent attempt at representing the Japanese character set. Sometimes my blodgy lines even made pretences at art. I rushed back to have lunch with my landlords, and I might add, the best landlords I have EVER had the pleasure of doing business with. It’s a pretty rare and top be treasured circumstance when you become friends with the people you pay money too. We went over to the local wood fired pizza place where they have made a pretty good attempt at reconciling the western and Japanese palates for western food. I think the giant burger monopolies are one of the only other establishments to have imported a cuisine and not completely bastardised it. Not that Asian food in the west is any less guilty of masquerade! However we all emerged from the restaurant fully deffuts and barely able to walk as we entered the sun fired oven that is Japan in August. Which was lucky because then I had to go over to Yukas and get my hair cut for the last time.

In the evening I went out with the senseis from karate; it was possibly the most fun night out I've had in Japan. We met up around eightish, and spent the next hour driving around Marugame looking for an izakaya that wasn't full, because it was Obon and everyone who had come home for the weekend had chosen this particular evening to go out drinking with their mates. Obon is a shinto festival where it is practically obligatory to go back to your "born house" where you meet up with you family and pray at the shrines of your ancestors. This its also a really good opportunity to catch up with all the school friends you haven't seen since you all moved off to different big smokes.


Eventually we found somewhere and spent the next few hours doing some serious eating and drinking. It never fails me how expansive Japansese people become in an izakaya and an normal going out for dinner always turns into a mini banquet. An izakaya is like a cross between and pub and a restaurant. At the former you go to eat, and maybe have a glass of wine or beer on the side and at a latter you go to drink and perhaps eat anything from a shared bowl of chips to a full gourmet meal on the side. but its still a pub, a place for drinking. At an izakaya both seem to have equal priority, and anyone and everyone orders what they feel like, when they feel like it. In some places like this one, you have your own little room with shodo paper doors and a bell on the table to summon an attentive waiter.

At others, tables are crammed on top of each other and service is achieved with a very loud "sumimasen" yelled at the number of employees running around frantically. Ironically, the "sumimasen", which literally means excuse me, becomes more and more belligerent sounding at the night wears on. Even more amazing is how the seemingly endless array of dishes that pours through the door generally gets finished.

As a goodbye present, the guys had got me a pair of cool leather gloves for fighting. And I foolishly wanted to try them out at my last training session. Stay tuned.

I already miss these people sooooo much. Thanks for everything guys.

clockwise from back left: Irikura, me, Kunikata, Hiro, Yumi, Kunishige.