Sorry about that, Hill.

Of course, the homework marches on; I’ve been in class for a year now, and this should continue for the rest of my natural life. And it’s not like I’m dropping the drug that is WoW. For the first time, I’m even really treasuring raiding. But that’s just Mondays, and while I hope to pick some RP back up soon, it’s not going to be there as constantly as it used to.

So, what to do? The thought process begins.

• Write? In addition to this second (third? fourth? Do I count LiveJournal and OpenDiary as blogs? Whatever.) go at blogging, NaNoWriMo is coming, and thanks to falconesse’s helpful reminder, I’m considering actually doing it this year. (Yes, Hill, I know you did one earlier, I’m slow, okay?) I’m deciding between my murder mystery-type novel, my non-haunted house in a world where all houses are haunted (which would take some work because I don’t remember half the premise), my betrothed children who grow up to be ninjas novel (series? Dunno), and my obligatory magic-in-forest-with-strange-forest-people-and-a-princess-oh-look-I’m-copying-Tolkien type novel. (Look, Sam, I remembered the fourth one!) I have zero doubt that I wouldn’t finish any of them, but NaNo is something I’ve long wanted to try, so I figure I might as well.
• Train? I took aikido on and off for four years before I moved to a house and never ever went again. I’ve finally reached the point where I rarely dream aikido moves anymore–I used to use the ikkyo pin in my sleep all the time. Going back would be starting over in many ways, but my husband still wouldn’t go with me because he doesn’t feel like we’d be doing it together due to our differing skill levels–he’s never trained. But bujinkan? There’s a twice-weekly class not two miles from us that he’ll go to with me. And seriously, how can I say no to becoming a ninja?
• Sing? I have a bachelor’s degree in music, and the most I’ve done with that is win a karaoke contest at work and sing for the citizens of Feathermoon. Do I continue that? Force Taelli to get up there with me? Do I try to teach myself guitar to add to that? Or do I just learn The Doll Song and go prancing about the house frightening the cat?
• Compile. No question about this one. I have six years of RP logs strewn between four or five computers. That’s six years of writing I’ve been doing. I want it where I can read it without having to weed through yells and trade chat and accidental stretches of the FlagRSP channel. I want it ready to share. Yes, this is a definite. Just not immediately.
• Program? A year ago, Bricu suggested that a bunch of us get together, learn some HTMLs and PHPs and Javascripts and what have you, and make us Riders a website. The Wildfire Riders notably still do not have a website, but I think it’s still a great idea. I’ve dabbled in HTML since college; maybe now’s the time to really learn the stuff and make something I can put on a resume. Granted, I might have to tell the employers I was hired to make it.
• Game? Other than WoW, that is. I mean, hey, maybe I’ll actually finish Dragon Age: Origins.
• Family. I know, this isn’t a verb. But my sister had a baby three months ago, and I get to meet her in two weeks. The baby. I already met my sister. Plus, my brother and I are conspiring to start recording some of my parents’ stories. It’s morbid to say “we have to do it now before it’s too late,” but the fact is that you can’t take time or people for granted. One ultimately takes the other away.
• Pray. Also not optional.
• Not go to India. There will be a post explaining this. It will be amusing and hysterical, though these adjectives are not related.
• Cheat. Because I always cheat.

But before all that…perhaps a new template for the blog. Hmm.

Today’s song: Listen To The Music.

I’ll still love you.

So! Nikko. We owe the whole trip entirely to Miyu–thank you, Miyu. And I apologize for my unjust summary ahead.

This was the first time I’ve traveled by car in Japan. It’s surprisingly easy to adjust to the whole driving-on-the-left-side-of-the-road thing, particularly when you’re in the back seat and not the one driving. The drive required some highway time, and I noted just how very clean the highway was. Neatly landscaped, well walled off. It’s the sort of thing I should know not to be surprised about by now, but I’m so used to highways in…well, Illinois. Illinois: famous for endless roadwork that does absolutely nothing.

I love my state.

Anyway, so we went up a mountain. I wish I knew the name of it, but as I’ve said before, you can’t spit without hitting a mountain in Japan, and there are hundreds of mountains on the map in the vicinity of Nikko. I can tell you, though, that this was…

...a real...

...damn...

...mountain.

That’s right. No walking tour of this mountain unless you have a good full day to do it. We’re talking long winding roads, scenic panoramas, holy-hell-I’m-on-a-real-damn-mountain kind of mountain. Those are views from a point where we stopped maybe halfway up. As you can see, it’s a real damn mountain surrounded by real damn mountains, and covered with cast-off luggage and television sets.

Typical garbage landscaping.

Maybe that’s why I was surprised the highway was so clean.

The road, as I said, was long and winding (though it did not lead to your door), and every major curve–the 180° type–was marked with a Japanese letter. Miyu played a game with us, encouraging us to come up with words starting with each letter. With our limited Japanese, it was a fun challenge. Miyu will be a wonderful mom someday.

This mountain, it has a town on it. Moreover, this town is on the shore of a sizeable lake formed in a large basin.

The lake, for your viewing pleasure.

This was the closest we came to seeing one.

Now, it’s really cold up there. That snow that could be seen on all the other mountains? It was on this one too, and we were up there with it. Sure, it was all in the slow process of melting, but I was still glad anytime we stopped somewhere with a kerosene heater in it. And they’re always kerosene heaters, because central heat is a concept that has never caught on in Japan.

Dragon's Head Falls.

We stopped to see these, and they were really pretty. Rainbow in the splashback and everything. Moreover, there was a shop overlooking them, and it had a kerosene heater. It also had food.

Tea and odango omnomnomnomnom

Miyu drove us all over this town for sightseeing. We tried to go to a foot bath–that’s going to be your sulfurous, naturally heated spring channeled for ideal foot baking and cleansing–but the one that she had taken Cory to before was closed. So we did a few other things.

We fed some ducks.

Ducks were treated to barbecue flavor potato chips.

We did not ride the swan boats.

This lunch was no ordinary lunch. It was something Miyu had reserved for us well in advance; a meal at a very nice little steakhouse. I’m not usually the sort that goes in for gourmet types of food, but this was really amazing. I didn’t take pictures–again, figured that’d be rude and may have been specifically forbidden. But it was a several course meal. They brought out two thin slices of smoked meat with some AMAZING sauce–they explained what everything was, but in Japanese and somewhat broken English, so I don’t recall what it was precisely. Then there was a small salad–and by small, I mean, like, palm-sized. But it was pretty amazing too. The steak proper was on a rectangular metal plate, almost like a very small skillet.

This sentence is alone in its own paragraph in testament to how good that steak was.

Once we finished our steaks, they packed our tiny skillets with fried rice to follow up and get us to eat all the leftover juices, and then we got scoops of ice cream on cold plates that looked like ice. To close, we were led to a sitting room and given Really Excellent Coffee. Mind that I am not a coffee drinker, but MAN was this stuff good.

And then, it was time for sightseeing.

We’re in Japan, so you can’t spit without hitting one. Tochigi city here has Ohira-san, which is not big, by mountain standards, but it is a mountain nonetheless, and we did walk up it. Beware: many pics, handle it.

Walking tour available.

Bamboo on one side...

...woods on the other.

Now, mind that this was nothing akin to mountain climbing. It’s mountain hiking at best. Or worst, depending on your point of view. Most of it was meandering up these little two-inch high, two-foot deep stairs, though there were some plain old hills involved, and we took one side path that had normal sized wooden stairs. But still, no matter where we were going, it was up. Moving in this manner kind of gives you a feeling of increased gravity, as though you’re walking normally but you’ve gained an extra twenty or fifty pounds. And you begin to regret every last one.

Fortunately, there are regular Scenic Views, where you’re rather expected to take breaks. There was a tiny little cemetary, first of all, with maybe ten or so graves in it. I didn’t take any pictures; I figured it would be disrespectful. But it was interesting, just kind of tucked in beside the road winding up this little mountain. It didn’t seem ages and ages old, either.

There were also some sakura trees.

They weren't quite in bloom yet.

Our first vista was southward, where, on a clear day, one is supposed to be able to see Fuji-san.

A-like so.

Not so much today.

After maybe an hour or so, we reached our goal: the sakura market. It’s something they set up every year, about three quarters of the way up the mountain. A lot of little shops and tent-shops, all surrounded by lovely sakura trees. Like the trees themselves, the market wasn’t exactly in full bloom yet. It was, however, nice and quiet, leaving us full leisure to enjoy the sights and browse the stores. We even stopped to chat with a few of the shopkeepers; one of them very helpfully explained the first kanji in one of the soft ice cream flavors she offered. It was, roughly, “bean,” and in this case meant soy. The flavor was soy milk. That’s the one I got. Cory got black sesame seed, and Chris got peach.

It was tasty.

There’s a tall platform across the road from the shops–two stories high, to give a nice view off the side of the mountain. It’s a solid thing that’s been there for a while, and Cory realized as we approached that he’d forgotten to mention a little tradition about it.

Locks of love.

We got lost on the way home. We’d decided before we started out that we wouldn’t go up all the way to the top of the mountain; as I mentioned, there’s a shrine, but not much else. Plus it’s another forty meters up or so. But when we left the festival area from the other end, we ended up on paths whose signs we couldn’t read, and found ourselves at the bottom of the steps to the shrine.

So we figured, meh, why not?

That's a nickel on the left.

Anyway, so we finish climbing.

We go through the gate, aaand...

MORE STAIRS!

If you’ve never been at a mountaintop shrine while experiencing menstrual cramps, let me give you a little peek into the mental processes this involves.

• Shouldn’t be at a shrine while on the rag, eh? Unclean? WELL F&$^ YOU I DIDN’T WANT TO BE HERE ANYWAY oh ow ow ow.
• Oh god I have to walk all the way back down? That is a long and winding road. …That leads…to your door…
• It would probably be rude to take pictures, and I do not want the kami to smite me any more than it currently is.

So that’s my excuse for why I have no pictures of the shrine proper. Whipping around a DSi just seemed a biiiiiit too touristy for my tastes, and the last thing I needed right then was a shrine maiden coming after me with a broom. We took the aforementioned long and winding road back down the mountain; Japan is no uncivilized outland, of course you can drive up there. So I limped my way along behind the boys, Cory explaining all the way that this is part of his regular jogging path (my brother in law runs ten kilometers and most of the way up a mountain. Regularly.).

Then I took a picture of this guy.

One thing I couldn’t help noticing along the whole of our walk was the garbage.

It's hard to tell, but that's a chair in that tree.

A scenic mountainside view.

Please, no dumping.

Frat boys.

Anyway, we had to get home fairly swiftly after, because Cory’s girlfriend Miyu was coming over to cook us dinner. Fresh do-it-yourself sushi. Oh so good. The following day, she would take us to Nikko, where our story will continue in part three.

The next day, Cory had work. So, Chris and I sat around, and began to meet his cats. A few pics within.

The felines are coming.

There are six in total, and they’re not really his, per se. They’re strays whom he feeds and adores. They’re named appropriately: Gray Kitty, Orange Kitty, Orange Jr., White Kitty, Broken Tail Kitty, and Mama Kitty.

Gray Kitty is very timid.

Orange Kitty is very friendly.

He is also demanding.

We met all six throughout the course of the day–here’s a shot of four of them–Gray, Broken Tail, White, and Orange. Broken Tail is my favorite. Don’t tell the others.

Note that they are coming over to inspect my new set of Japanese Kit Kats. If you’re not aware, there are a billion different flavors of Kit Kat in this country. Before Chris and I left last time we were here, we picked up a few sakura-flavored ones in a combini. They were delicious. When Cory moved here, I told him to look for one. This has led to him presenting me with every flavor he can find. There are regional specialty flavors, all sorts of bizarre ones–we had some sort of…hot pepper flavor once? It was also delicious. Upon our arrival, I was presented with those shown: Sakura (yesssss finally after three years), milk-coffee, raspberry and passion fruit, and a green tea Big Kat.

I wish I could say that this was not the most exciting thing we did that day, but it really was. We did hit up the grocery for some much needed food (which resulted in a great deal of “oh god why didn’t I brush up on my Japanese” for me), Chris ventured out to hit up a Book Off and begin his traditional massive emptying of secondhand stores into his luggage, aaaand then we watched some TV. We were still exhausted, of course, so it was rather merited.

And besides, the next day, we walked up a mountain.

1) Like major religious texts, it can be interpreted to say just about anything.

I was doing this research wherein I was checking out herbal teas and their relative safety during pregnancy. Specifically, I was looking at red raspberry leaf, which is often recommended by midwives to help tone the uterus and shorten labor.

Naturally, I wanted to support my information with Science. So I looked for articles that linked to studies. I found this pair of studies. A brief look at these shows that they’re nearly identical; done two years apart, they both had small sample groups. They have the same title, and it looks like one of the people conducting it is the same in both.

Now, I don’t have the full reports to look at; I’m just going off the abstracts here. But it looks like they pretty much got the same sorts of results. Note, however, that one focuses on the positive (“Yep, no side effects, lower rate of forceps delivery, and some other stuff!”) whereas the other focuses chiefly on the negative (“NO YOU FOOLS it does NOT hasten the first phase of delivery! NO NO NO!”). They both found that there were no adverse effects, both found that it does speed up at least the hard part of labor (phase two is the major PUUUUUSH phase). And yet one seems to draw dramatically different conclusions.

And then there was this one, that looked at 12 different studies–presumably including the ones I mentioned above, since it searched the database in which I found them and was conducted eight years after the later one–and concluded that there wasn’t enough information to show any positive effects and couldn’t rule out negative ones. This despite the fact that the only study that showed any negative effects was done on animals. To me, this is like saying that people should stop eating chocolate because it has been known to be fatal to dogs. Yes, sometimes animal research is valuable. And sometimes, it’s bloody well irrelevant. Apparently not all scientists grasp this.

2) You don’t even have to actually do science in order to get published.

This third study I mentioned. Look at what it says it did. It did a search of 5 scientific publishing databases and then did a meta analysis of its results. The authors didn’t find patients, didn’t conduct any trials, didn’t take any risks. They did a compilation and then drew their own conclusions. And it took THREE PEOPLE to do this.

I also love that this meta study frowns on the fact that some of the research was over 50 years old. Right, so…was this study done by teenagers or something? Does being old automatically nullify health studies now? I mean, sure, maybe the older studies weren’t as carefully controlled as newer ones. Maybe. But it doesn’t say that, and it’s really not safe to assume that people were idiots just because they were conducting studies before 1955, so I don’t get why it’s significant enough to mention in a 150 word abstract.

My TOTALLY SCIENTIFIC conclusion from all of this is that, though the scientific method is sound, scientists are flawed humans with biases just like any other.

Also, scientists should not eat chocolate. Fatal to some animals and all.

Some things never do change. Working on a mere two and a half hours of sleep, I was still glad to be on my Japan Airlines flight. Couldn’t repress my grin during takeoff. The plane had cameras mounted in the nose, one pointed forward, one down, and they streamed that inside the plane as an option for the whole flight. The food was excellent, and I finally got to confirm that yes, I do like mild curry.

It turns out, however, that I do not have the physical endurance I had as a child or even a teenager, and that twelve hours on a plane now makes me fairly achy. Not that this was the only thing to make me irritable. Consider the following:

• I forgot, to my present reckoning, precisely two things. One would be my sunglasses, which I removed from my face upon pulling into the parking garage and did not transfer to my bag as planned. This is not a big deal, as apparently the Land Of The Rising Sun has misplaced its namesake behind thick cloud cover for this two month period. The other thing I forgot? To purchase the exchange ticket for the touristy Japan Rail pass, which would have saved us upwards of one hundred dollars on our planned shinkansen run to Kyoto.
• I was alerted to the fact that I forgot this on my third attempt to sleep on the flight. Chris woke me from my rather good run of half-sleep to ask if that was something that had to be purchased in the US. Why yes, yes it was, all that time in the airport and I bloody well forgot. No, it won’t do any good to ask when we land, there’s just no way to get it.
• Quite awake after the adrenaline rush of “Oh shit,” I decided to try something useful. I’d listen to the Learn Japanese mp3s I’d ripped from my CDs, so I’d be slightly less of a stupid gaijin when we landed. Turns out these sound files are in stereo, with the English voice in the left ear and the Japanese in the right ear. Problem? I’m presently entirely deaf in my right ear. So learning Japanese sounded like this: “I. You. Hello.” Yeah. Not so helpful.
• Did I mention I was taking all this on two and a half hours of sleep? Yeah, my fault for thinking I’d be able to sleep on the plane. As mentioned, I got in a few runs of half-sleep, but not the good solid sleep I’ve known on previous international flights. I’m not sure if this was a factor of my creaky nigh-thirty age or the fact that the plane was JAL and therefore intended for Japanese people, but I was entirely incapable of finding any position of comfort.

Complaints aside, it was a very nice flight. We were plied with ample sustenance, entertainment, and brief day/night cycles despite the fact that the sun did not leave our side the whole way. It was so nice that I understand why JAL is in bankruptcy, and I applaud them for not suddenly cutting the hell out of customer service. Or, y’know. Our flight.

I also managed not to use the onboard lavatory once during the whole flight, instead irritating my husband by delaying our passage through customs upon landing. I apparently timed my urination precisely so as to set us behind the subsequent arrival of two more disembarking flights. No, he didn’t say that, and his irritation, like mine, was mostly borne of exhaustion. It mattered little in the end, since neither of the people who was supposed to meet us was there when we got out and into freedom.

On the topic of immgration/customs:

• As I understand it, the world holds it against the US that after our first real taste of international terrorism, we started fingerprinting and taking pictures of people coming into our country, even from allied nations. Yeah, well, they do it here too, and it’s not a fucking big deal, so cry more, nations of the world.
• Did I mention I got a patdown in Chicago? I was wearing a loose shirt, and forgot to take off my glasses, so after I went through the metal detector I got a nice gentle frisking. No, I don’t feel violated. But then, I’m the sort who would be amused by a strip search. Well hey there, female TSA agent, what are you doing later tonight?
• They searched our bags at O’Hare, presumably, leaving within their friendly little “Hi, we’re the TSA and we’ve been through your skivvies!” note. That’s the only thing that ever unnerves me. I respect it as a necessary security measure, but I always wish I could watch to make sure they don’t take anything. The valuable Jif we were bringing for Cory (my brother-in-law) remained unmolested, though, so I’m not complaining.
• Japanese customs did not stop us or tax us for the $60 in nonperishable groceries we smuggled into the country. We were also unnecessarily up-front about it. Chris even brought the receipts so we could prove it wasn’t black market Honey Bunches of Oats if we needed to.

The journey from Narita airport to my brother-in-law’s apartment in Tochigi took over three hours. And this was the quick route. On this route, I got to experience the full range of Japanese rail transit: A normal, standing room train; a train packed so tightly that I did not actually have to hold onto anything to stay upright; and a train on which I eventually got to sit down and sleep.

I spent most of my conscious time on the train reading signs, trying frantically to remember all my katakana and hirigana. I had some success, finally recalling the difference between sa and chi, and realizing that neither of them is ra. I also can recall enough kanji so as to be unable to count them on my twenty digits, which benefits me in that I know which direction is the small and which is the big flush on the toilet.

It probably says something that one of the kanji I remember is soto. Alternately pronounced gai, it’s the first one in gaikokujin (shortened frequently to gaijin), foreigner. You can’t come to Japan and not feel it–they make sure you do, albeit in their pleasant, non-confrontational way. This time I feel it even more, though. I don’t know if I’m just noticing the subtleties more, or if it’s my own perception based on the fact that I’m an idiot who didn’t brush up her Japanese before coming.

Regardless, I’m surprisingly okay with it. Considering that I spent much of college mourning the fact that outsiders were never to be accepted into Japanese culture, it’s a change to find that I don’t care to even try not to be a stupid American. I’m not going to be an asshole about it, naturally. But I’d be a stupid American to many even were I fluent, so, fine. I’m here, I’m going to eat your food and give you my money and then go away, and we’ll all be happier that way. In the meantime, otearai wa doko desu ka?

Note: all Japanese herein written entirely from memory, you are welcome to ridicule me if I get it wrong, but as a stupid American, I will only snerk at you.

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