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Day 0 (Airport Day)

I spent most of the day in a sort of daze, given the almost total lack of sleep and airports, which never help with clarity. It seems both weird to actually be here and incredibly tangible, which is a nice change from daydreaming about it and prowling through Google Maps.

On the plane, it was hard to stay still, which is a bad thing to say about being on an airplane for 13 hours. I watched three movies I'd watched before, filled two pages of my sketchbook with doodles, and took a pretty big chunk out of Mrs. Sherlock Holmes, but by the time we got to Narita Airport, I really just wanted to climb something or do a flip.

The hostel is nice—the beds are surrounded by curtains and have both an outlet and a light inside each one, so I could spend a day there quite comfortably. I've read a lot and slept some, so I'm not completely falling over, and that's preferable to the alternative. Still, jet lag is hitting me like a bucket of bricks.

Day 1

Woke up at six to my alarm and headed for the onsen. It's really nice to shower in the morning and there were a few other people there: mostly older Japanese ladies. I felt extremely overheated in the morning, which informed my decision to leave my hoodie behind, but not well. I was cold, later.

We went to teamLab Borderless, a beautiful museum of different sensory experiences and creative use of projectors, light, and tactile sensations. It was here that I finally got the exercise I desperately needed in the form of a ropes course! It was super fun to swing about from one bar to another and try to race from one end to the other.

From teamLab, we went to a mall and ate pancakes. We had a small mishap in that the reservations were for a $50 per person meal and we definitely didn't need all that food, but it was sorted out and negotiated down to a price that didn't murder our budget as much.

In the Peony Garden, I also wrote a haiku about crows, though it really only works in Japanese.

I'm having a hard time putting my thoughts about this into words. On one hand, it's a different perspective on the atom bomb and in that way, it is academically interesting and provides new insight into a landmark event of history. On the other, it's hard to read because the pain of the people affected by the atom bomb is so evident and the shift from anger and grief to hope for change is a something recognizable on a smaller level and something that I can empathize with. I think this particular part of the shrine was more moving and personal than almost anything else I saw; this is a part of history that people have protected for over 70 years and that they have harbored as a symbol of their world. The word "beautiful" seems almost inappropriate given the context of the fire, but it was beautiful. Chains of origami cranes framed the dove and the dove itself is made of gentle lines. It was a beautiful place, like the rest of Toshogu Shrine, but I could connect to this in a way I couldn't for the flowers or the building itself and that was because of the emotion spelled out in the story of the flame's collection and maintenance.

Day 2

It was raining. It was raining when we woke, it was raining when we left the hostel, it was raining when we went to Meiji Shrine first thing, and it was raining every single moment after that. While at the shrine, I don't doubt someone asked for the rain to stop, which some irresponsible entity took only as a challenge.

Personally, I like the rain, but it did throw a not-insignificant wrench into the rest of our plans for the day.

Meiji Shrine is not like Toshogu. Toshogu was built during the Tokugawa period after the Shogunate overthrew the Emperor and it, as can be seen in the pictures above, has gold everywhere. It drips, just within the realm of tasteful beauty, from every orifice and seam of the temple. Every line that could be black when painted is gold. Even the catfish are not immune to the excited gilding that persists in the similar designs lining the wall of the temple, though it is more around than on them.

The Meiji Shrine was built 8 years after the death of Emperor Meiji and is much more austere. This years marks its centennial and it seems that little has changed, save the "no drones" signs and wheelchair ramps. The tori, the gate at significant junctions of the shrine campus, is massive, but made of plain wood with sparse metal. It is not painted. There is no Winter Peony Garden or Flame of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There is the shrine, some museum-style information boards that had much more information in Japanese than in English, and crows. Even the crows are quieter here; at Toshogu, they called and squawked almost non-stop, wheeling about in the sky on graceful, specialized wings. At Meiji, they still call and squawk and fly, but they seem to also have a kind of cap on it all. Their conversations were cut short more often, were shorter, were less like the argument of Toshogu and more of a polite discussion of the local buffet's newest all-day special: tourist detritus.

We observed some men in suits (I thought maybe they were business men, but Mr. Van Krey said they were probably dignitaries) participating in a rite at the shrine before Mr. Van Krey briefed us on Takeshita Dori (a shopping street) and set us loose.

About two hours later, we reconvened at the train station to make our way to Shinjuku, where we went to the Samurai Museum. I was very excited to go because I study kumdo, a Korean variation of kendo and know a fair amount about swords. Our guide asked us the main differences between European and Japanese swords and that was all stuff that I had researched previously, out of personal curiosity, but I also learned a lot about the military development of Japan.

At this point, we were done at the museum and had one more major stop on our list: Yomiuriland. Unfortunately, Yomiuriland is an amusement park in which roller coasters feature heavily. Due to the rain, we decided against going, since that part of the park would have been shut down. Instead, we made our way back to the Robot Restaurant, which advertised itself with psychedelic images of people dancing and of "robots" making their way across a stage.

There weren't so much robots as there were dancers and remote controlled floats with judicious use of pyrotechnics, but it was certainly enough to hold the attention of 20 high schoolers for 90 minutes.

It was also loud and bright and not without smoke, so I survived through use of my inhaler and some noise-cancelling headphones.

Interestingly, it was mostly in English, not Japanese, which reflected those who came to see this. Most people in the audience were at least English-speaking, if not American, with only a few scattered Japanese people. Mr. Van Krey told us later that this probably reflected what Japanese people thought foreigners would want to see or what they expected, rather than what most Japanese people would actually want to view for their own entertainment.

I love that humans value the demonstration of their own ideals in non-human animals. Balto, though acting under the person in charge of the sled, was remarkably tenacious and brave. Hachiko was loyal and stubborn. These dogs each did something memorable and touching, so much so that the people around them felt the need to honor them, and that belies a wonderful inclination of people to admire and find the soft edges in life.

Day 3

We spent most of the day in transit, so I think I can safely skip to our arrival at Oirase Keiryu Hotel. I have no photos, sadly, of the most impressive part of my stay, but I'll describe it to the best to my ability.

After a buffet which served wonderful food, I sped away to the onsen, where I was the only person. It was dark and raining when I opened the door to the outside hot spring and there was about a foot from the door to the steps into the onsen, dusted with snow that was now being rained on. I made my way to the far corner of the spring, where there's a dome-shaped rock that is actually a fountain with scalding hot water that burbles innocently even when you try to hold in a shriek at the heat. Surrounding the spring is ice, lit from below. Near the center of the spring and maybe a yard from the deceptive rock is a tree, surprisingly.

Here, I was reminded of a Korean word I learned in the context of being clear-headed for sparring, which is "pyoungsangsim." It means having an empty mind, specifically the absence of any mental contaminants called "sagae," or the four poisons of the mind: fear, confusion, anger, and doubt/hesitation. I meditated near the rock in the manner I'd been taught also in kumdo and felt wholly at peace.

When I opened my eyes, the wind was whipping the steam towards the door and I followed it out. By the time I reached the stairs, it had reversed direction and obscured the onsen in a thick fog, with only the silhouettes of the rock and tree visible.

Day 4

Our main activity today was snowshoeing, for which I was the second group. The first left at 8, the second at 10, and the third at 3:15.

After lunch, we went to a ski hill, with the apparent goal of going up to see a shrine.

This did not happen in the slightest.

After an impromptu snowball fight just outside the hill's small store for which we were chastised (I think someone nearly hit the building instead of each other) and during which I hid near Mr. Van Krey, since no one wanted to hit him, Mr. Van Krey and Yokota-sensei got us ski lift tickets and we went to the top of the mountain for better snowball fight spots.

We found one almost immediately, just by the ski lift and right by the side of the mountain. It was mostly untouched snow, so while it made good snowballs, we all sank though a foot of snow at least once. Personally, after the third time, I just stayed in one place and pelted everyone within range with snowballs after shaping an arsenal of them. A few times I hit someone and they didn't think it was me, which I counted as a great victory, but this didn't happen too often. A few times, I had to tug myself out to race out of range of someone else, but I managed to avoid the thick of it.

After a bit, though, a man on a snowboard-bike (where there might have been wheels, there were snowboards) told us that we had to move over to this other spot, which we proceeded to do.

It was a terrible place for a snowball fight.

Sure, it was out of the way and near a little Bunny Slope sort of thing, but there wasn't much good snow. It was all packed down from tons and tons of people walking this very way and we had to scramble just to find viable materials for our snowballs of mass destruction.

After a bit more snowball fighting, Yokota-sensei and Mr. Van Krey decided we should try and get a cool photo that looked like we were all blown backward by the superpowers of Mr. Van Krey. This took a while, with varying degrees of success. At one point, Evan offered to literally through me through the air, which I agreed to, but I guess that falls under the category of "massive risk to insurance," so Mr. Van Krey had put the kibosh on it almost as soon as I could say it sounded cool.

We walked for about 15 minutes back to the hotel with sopping wet clothes (gloves especially) and an absolutely ecstatic feeling.

Day 5

I woke up a little later than usual (which isn't saying much; it was still around 6), but we already had tons to do: we went on a day-lit reprise of our first tour around Oirase Keiryu hotel and got a lot of great photos, which was far easier to do in the light of about 9 in the morning than it was at 9 at night.

I was overcome with the sudden urge to climb every rock within 100 feet of me, which was shut down immediately not by the teachers, but by my peers, who perhaps rightfully thought that this would be too much of a hazard for any sane person to permit. It was icy, after all, and probably more than a little difficult even in optimal conditions.

Still. It had been a while since I'd really climbed something.

We then made our way to Kumoi Waterfall, which was interesting to me in part because I'd learned the word for it (taki, 滝) just the other day and it was exciting to understand more of what the guide said.

We glanced around the river we'd seen the other night, then raced back to the hotel to hop on another bus to a mystery destination. (It's possible we were told, but I didn't hear it if we were, and it's possible I forgot. Anyway, the point is that I spent the ride staring out the window, entranced by the snow-clad trees, until I fell asleep and I had no idea where we were going.)

When we stepped outside of the station to look around, I couldn't see anything but white for at least half a minute. Not only was everything colored in snow, the glare from it blinded me. It was overcast, too, so even the sky had no variation to contribute. It was white, white, white, and lumps that could possibly have been trees that were also white. A mound of snow loomed around the door and we had to scramble up it to get to the trees. Once there, we could barely open our eyes. The wind, which is responsible for the otherworldly shapes adopted by the evergreens up here, was vicious.