It wasn’t the perfect weather to go to the beach, but for me, living where the nearest large body of water is Lake Ontario, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to visit the Pacific Ocean. So off to the beach I went.
I wrote this about the day:
I could have spent much more than the two hours I was there had I been able to sit. The weather was cool but quite comfortable in my winter jacket. A group of adults were there with their children, one of which–a two year old boy–was completely naked. Not something you’d see in Canada.
Soft, deep sand and gentle waves… Again I was warned about the hawks, but the crows were in abundance. The highlights of what they were eating were a stingray and a small (2-2.5 ft. long?) shark.
The conch shells were many – giant clam shells and starfish as well.
The next day it rained, but nothing was going to keep me indoors. I walked with my umbrella to Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Shrine, where there was a wedding going on. I didn’t get any pictures of the bride, but I did spend 500Yen to make a wish and write it on a wooden board. It’s probably still hanging there.
Some pictures:
Near the front gate
Autumn colours in December
A reflective pond
I wrote:
I want to go shopping in Yokohama, but I’m reluctant to leave the quiet of here. Five days in Tokyo will be busy enough.
Note: The following is something I posted yesterday as a Guest on HarsH ReaLiTy. Apologies if you’re seeing this in duplicate.
I went to Japan for five minutes and thirty-six seconds. I’m not talking about a virtual trip on the internet. I’m not talking about astral projection. I’m talking about an eleven day trip which included 25 hours of flying time from Toronto to Tokyo and back for the sake of a five minute and thirty-six second long song.
I fell in love with it the first time I heard it. It moved me to tears and I knew deep inside that I HAD to hear it and see it performed live. I was that passionate about it, about the man who wrote it and sings it – about the deep meaning in the lyrics and just the way he sings it and how utterly beautiful it is… So I made it happen. I couldn’t not.
Before you write me off as insane, please consider…
Merriam-Webster’s definition of Passion, ganked off the internet:
pas·sion
noun \ˈpa-shən\
: a strong feeling of enthusiasm or excitement for something or about doing something
: a strong feeling (such as anger) that causes you to act in a dangerous way
: a strong sexual or romantic feeling for someone
Passion is something we humans share. It’s responsible for much of the world’s most beautiful art in all its forms; it is the cause of some of the most heinous crimes. It gives us the ability to love deeply and to hate with seemingly every fibre of our being. It’s something that our children have also. And how scary can that potentially be?
You can say to a ten-year-old, “Son, there are things you will be passionate about when you grow older. You may feel like killing someone one day. Don’t,” but what’s the use? Because in the heat of passion we lose all reason. Logic goes off into the stratosphere and all that is left inside of us is pure emotion.
Passion is one of the things I believe we can only teach our children by example. For instance, if we talk about killing the guy in the car that cut us off, they will learn that passion can turn us against one another. If we follow our passion and turn it into a career, we will teach our children to follow their dreams.
And so I come back to my adventure – my trip to Japan. Aside from personally needing to make the trip, I feel in doing so I showed my children that if they want something badly enough, they can make it happen, no matter how unlikely. And no matter how insignificant it might seem to someone else and no matter how they may be judged for going for it; just do it.
The song? It doesn’t really matter. But here’s another one by the same band. It is appropriately called “Passion.”
The lyrics, in English, can be found by clicking here. But if you read them, don’t do the stuff he sings about – just sayin’ 😉
If you’d like to read about the absolutely incredible experience I had at the concert, click here. The post includes a picture of me, taken by the lead guitarist of the band from the stage during the concert!
From Yokohama Station I hopped on another train which took me to the little seaside town of Kamakura. I’d done my research online before I went – it’s a place with lots of Temples, a little shopping street (by little I mean narrow, not short) and had what I thought would be a nice, inexpensive place to stay. In a word, it was beautiful.
Villa Sacra in Kamakura is a little inn with several uniquely decorated rooms. A very old, traditional Japanese house, the floors creak, the ceilings are low, and the hospitality is fabulous.
The room, however, was quite small. I spent most of my time out wandering the shopping street, eating at Mister Donut – hey, it was cheap and free refills on the coffee! – and walking. Oh boy did I walk. I’d estimate about 4-6 hours a day, rain or shine.
I was in my room for the only earthquake I felt. At first I thought it was someone leaning against the wall behind me. The walls were thin enough that I could feel the people in the next room, but the rumbling sound and the extensive swaying of the entire room led me to believe otherwise. When I looked it up on the internet (I had excellent WiFi), sure enough I was on the outskirts of a quake. It wasn’t nearly as frightening as I thought it might have been, probably because if the house had been standing that long already, it wasn’t likely to fall down while I was there, right? Right.
Besides, I had other things to worry about. I wrote this in my notebook over coffee:
December 9th, 2014 – Mister Donut, Kamakura
I’ve been sitting by the window for about 20 minutes on this lovely bright sunny day and so far only one person has walked by in sunglasses. Okay, now it’s two. But that’s among hundreds. This must be a nation of people with eyesight issues.
Not that that’s the biggest danger here – every 3rd hydro pole has a sign that says “Be careful of tsunamis,” stating that here we are just a little more than 5 meters above sea level. Be careful – as though if you see one, just step around it.
I think I’ve been bitten by a mosquito. In December. Life is good.
After that I took a day trip to Enoshima. It is, apparently, the honeymoon capital of Japan. In a way this seems appropriate, like if you can handle the uphill climb here, you can handle being married.
December 9th, 2014, Enoshima (Island)
An island carved in rock and surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, yet not too far from land that one can’t walk here across a bridge, it is populated by shrines and hawks. I’ve now seen my very first “Beware of the Hawks” sign.
I tried to get a few pictures of the hawks but they’re fast fliers.
I managed to nab this one in a tree.
The weather was gorgeous – in the tens to low teens, celsius the entire time I was in Kamakura. The food was fantastic and very inexpensive – I managed to eat for between 500-1000 yen ($5 to $10 Cdn.) most days. Lots of seafood, as you can well imagine.
I was going to write about my entire time in Kamakura in one shot, but there’s still so much to tell. I’ll try to write again soon!
Right on the heels of my trip to Japan, I’ve already started planning my next adventure. No, not London, or Paris, or even Beijing. I’m going to beautiful Kingston, Ontario. Less than an hour’s drive away. In July.
Call me crazy, but I wanted to make sure I get a good, cheap room close enough to downtown that I’ll be able to walk to where all the action is – to the Busker’s Festival and on my annual pilgrimage to the setting of my novel, The Great Dagmaru. This will be my third year in a row if you count the hospital-ridden disaster last year was. Which brings me to my next point.
Booking.com. I decided to try them out last year, taking them at their word that if I booked a hotel with them I could cancel any time. Well, last year I had to cancel. At the very last second. And it didn’t cost me a cent for the hotel. So I thought great – I’ll take a chance and book with them again for my trip to Tokyo. Again, smooth as silk. All my bookings were exactly as planned, no upfront fees.
And that’s why I already have a B & B booked for July 9th at $140/night and two nights at the Queen’s University campus in a two bedroom suite for $99/night.
What kills me? The most I paid in one of the biggest cities in the world – Tokyo – was less than $90/night. The cheapest, and it was a nice hotel, came to $66 for the night.
Canada is damned expensive. Even if you book half a year in advance.
After my horrotacular first evening in Tokyo which you can read about here, I rose early the next morning, got my shit together, and headed off to the train station. Fortunately it wasn’t the same station from which I’d wandered the night I arrived; it was much easier to find. You can bet I asked for detailed directions from the hotel staff when I checked out though.
I was on my way to Kamakura, but the plan was to stop at Yokohama Station to meet Jay Dee, most famous from here on WordPress at I Read Encyclopedias for Fun. Here’s a link to his latest post. Fortunately our meeting went as planned, and we had a lovely chat over coffee (for me) and cocoa (for Jay). After that I hung out at the station for a while. Here’s what I wrote afterward, and a picture I took from inside the station:
Having a couple of hours to kill before I was due at my next hotel, I found a nice pillar to lean against and I just stood there for about twenty minutes, enjoying the mild temperature blowing in from outside. In the air was the aroma of cocoa and as I watched the people walking by I felt as though I was floating comfortably in a sea of humanity. It struck me how incredibly safe it is here — children as young as perhaps seven years old, one with a four year-old trailing after her, passed by unaccompanied by an adult.
Yokohama Station, from my pillar
Eventually I left my post and went to speak to an information clerk who told me how to use one of the ghastly train ticket machines. I did so with no problem though. I wouldn’t have had any idea had I not been given instructions.
So off to Kamakura I went. It’s a wonderful little town south of Tokyo and I’m so glad I decided to spend the next four days there. I’ll write more about it next time.
Before I went to Japan I dropped in to my local cell phone provider’s store to inquire about a package deal that would allow me to use my mobile in the event I couldn’t get online while I was away. They were offering a deal that included something like 40 minutes talk time, 150 texts and 20mb of data for $70. I asked what would happen if I wasn’t able to use my phone in Japan and was assured that it wouldn’t be a problem – if I didn’t use the service, the company would refund the $70. What could I possibly lose? So I went for it.
Today I called the company to let them know I hadn’t been able to connect to a wireless provider while I was in Japan and could I please get my money back. No, I was told. There was no way they could refund the money. They don’t do that. So I asked to speak to a manager.
Armed with the fact that I have 6 phones on my plan, and have been with the company for about 20 years, I formulated my response to the next guy I was to talk to while I waited on hold. After five minutes my speech was at the ready. The gentleman who answered was polite – he said he’d check in to the matter, and would I please hold for a moment longer. Eventually he came back and told me that they don’t normally give refunds for travel packages, and the store shouldn’t have told me they do, but he would make an exception for me since I was a long-standing customer and he agreed to remove the $70 charge from my bill.
Now call me suspicious, but I wonder why I had to go through all that. The store told me I could have my money back. Was all the tension-building just a strategy to make me believe that the company is, in fact, wonderful and cause me to tell all my friends to go to them because they are kind and forgiving if you’re loyal?
Every once in a while I find something that changes me. Often it’s a thought, an idea that will niggle its way into my consciousness and take root. Often it doesn’t last; I’m relatively sure this won’t either.
This particular change in me was brought on by my vacation. I woke up this morning at 5:40 and I decided to get up. Just me, on my own. I was tempted to go back to sleep: sleep is a rare commodity for me. But today I felt like I needed the solitude that followed me around for eleven days in Japan.
It was strange, being alone with so very many people around. An experience unique for all of its sameness – because really, aren’t we all alone? When I consider the fact that at any given moment, I am the only one who observes what I am observing from my perspective I have a profound sense of being alone in the world. When, in Japan, I took that thought one step further to realize that all the people around me have grown up and experienced the world in a foreign setting, with few of the same cultural experiences, I am taken to a new awareness altogether. I don’t believe I really lived until I had this feeling – and it’s one I truly revel in, as long as I feel safe. From what I’ve seen and how I felt, Japan has one of the safest societies on earth.
And so one of my most treasured experiences while I was there was walking countless times across the street in Shibuya, Tokyo, amidst hundreds of people crossing in every direction.
panoramic view of Shibuya crossing
Ah, the humanity.
Life-changing. For me.
And yet for so many it is simply life. Routine. They come out of the Hachiko exit where the famous statue resides on the entirely indescribable side of the train station (there are two “south” entrances on different sides of the building) and they go to work, or meet a friend, or… or… whatever. I was simply wandering around this vast part of a vast world, all alone. No one I knew knew exactly where I was at that particular moment in time.
Just like when I’m having a coffee at 5:45am, all by myself in my living room.
I wrote this about the day:
lindaghill.com 