A Blast from the Past

So I typed up this post a few weeks back and I didn't get around to publishing it until now:

The weekend of October 10th through 13th

Last weekend was eventful as far as typical weekends go in Hikone. There was another national holiday this past Monday, a Sports Day, so we had a long weekend. Friday brought about the usual relaxing and lazing about. I roused myself around six in the evening to catch a train with Megan to Minami-Hikone, one stop south, where there are two sushi restaurants. We met Adam, Austin, and Shawn at a mall and got sushi at the cheaper, noisier restaurant. Afterwards we blew some money at the arcade. The arcade games in Japan seem to be geared more to the novice player than seasoned experts. I ended up playing a racing game while Adam improved his score in the Gundam game. For those not familiar with Gundam, it is a giant-robot anime from the 1980s. In the arcade game, you sit in a cockpit and get a card that tracks your score for you. The Gundam game is ¥500, which is a little steep for me.

On Saturday, I went with Katherine to Shiga University, where we have our economics class. The director of JCMU, Dr. Reagan, delivered a lecture on one of the feudal lords of Hikone: Ii Naosuke. We joined about ten of our fellow students there, taking up positions in the back of the old lecture hall built in the late 1890s. Midway through the first half of the lecture, Dr. Reagan was bored with the format and decided to have the Japanese engage the students in conversation about the topic of the arrival of the Americans in Japan in 1853. Before Katherine and I could beat a hasty retreat Dr. Reagan saw us, and with my history background, there was no getting away. I’m thankful that we stayed, because my group of five Japanese pensioners was actually very interested in what I had to say. Luckily, two of them spoke English; unluckily my Japanese is still to poor to communicate the concepts I wanted to. I started with Manifest Destiny, and then went into the Mexican-American War and somewhere in there, I got lost. When Dr. Reagan came by to see how the groups were doing, I was able to get him to explain the whole thing. Right after Dr. Reagan resumed the lecture by answering the questions of the group the second lecturer of the day publicly yelled at Dr. Reagan for using English to talk with the American students. Apparently, Dr. Abe was of a different opinion about Naosuke than Dr. Reagan, and the lectures were intended more as a contest between the two viewpoints. Since Dr. Abe is apparently a staunch nationalist, Dr. Reagan offended him by talking about Naosuke as a great reformer by working with America to modernize Japan.

The whole episode had greatly disturbed Dr. Reagan, who really is quite a passive person. In attendance at the lecture were some friends of Dr. Reagan from around Hikone, amongst them were Dr. Reagan’s dentist, Nakajima-sensei, and his wife Tomiko-san. The couple took seven of us, and Dr. Reagan, out to dinner in order to cheer him up. Our group went to a Chinese restaurant, Ryu Rin, in downtown Hikone. Adam and I arrived late since Dr. Reagan came back to JCMU to collect us; when we arrived, dishes had already been placed on the tables and alcohol had been served. Nakajima-sensei and Tomiko-san ordered us food and beer for a few hours. I had some excellent beef as well as some new spices that suite the Asian palate.

On Sunday, I roused myself early and got to Kyoto at ten in the morning. Adam was still sleeping off the round of drinking we held after the dinner at Ryu Rin. I walked for miles along Kawaramachi Street, which runs north to south parallel to the Kamo River. While I did not find the fencing store I had intended to find, I had a great walk and found more shopping districts. I walked down a shopping arcade full of fishmongers, another for fabrics, and a few more arcades selling typical tourist wares. I found a book at the Random Walk bookstore in the Teramachi Arcade and made my way to a McDonalds to wait for Adam, where I promptly fell asleep next to my book and coffee.

Once Adam found me at McDonalds, we called the ladies (Bethany, Caitlyn, Liz, and Megan) who were at the Heian Shrine. There was a festival that Sunday; the temple precinct was full of small stages where student groups performed synchronized dances and cheers. Each team had their own music, choreography, and cheer making the whole festival a loud, confusing, and thoroughly entertaining. At the shrine, Megan ran into our friend Joram and together the eight of us walked south into Gion where we met up with Eleanor and Ryan. Eleanor, Joram, and Ryan are all English teachers for a private company and they spend their weekends in Kyoto as the surrounding Kansai region is boring compared to the city. We spent the rest of the evening hitting a few ex-patriot bars in the city.