2/24-26 Takamatsu

2/24

After 2 months, it is already time for Christian camp again. However, this one will be much smaller as it is only for students on Shikoku. Once again, I had to take the super long local train all the way to Takamatsu. Riding this train made me lose faith in the allure of rail transportation in Japan. But anyways, after about five hours I made it. The same guy from last time, A-chan picked up two girls from my club and I from the station and we immediately went to the store. We were going to be having a "curry party!" So, we needed to buy ingredients to make the best ones.

The two girls from my club were Misaki and Rinka. Rinka is a drummer who performs at her church and can speak some English, she's got a very "cool" personality. Misaki is very friendly and was the one who invited me to her church. Another girl named Yuka showed up later, because she was hiking on the nearby Shodo Island.

We were very early to arrive, as I believe the others were out shopping. I meant one person though, his name was Jun (like June) and he plays guitar and loves rock. He was a little shy at first, but I tried to talk to him and we bonded over rock music. I saw the piano and went and played the first part of "Komm Susser Tod" which earned me a little bit of clapping to which I was embarrassed. We waited for the others to trickle in, and began preparing the curry (well, I didn't do much to help but I tried). There were only going to be 12 people this time, including me and our two supervisors (which included Atsuki).

Anyways, the two teams made a reddish curry and a garlic/eggplant curry. I think that the reddish curry won. I don't think I was on any team in particular. We did some icebreaker games, even though most of us already knew each other, which included the supervisor Toshi. Afterwards, we ate dinner (which I don't remember) and did a Bible study. We read a passage and had to answer questions. It's less intense than the American ones that I've experienced. There was one girl, Hee-yon, who was Korean. So the two of us and any other students became the "international table."

After study we drove to the local bath house. The tiny church we were staying at had two bathrooms, but no bath. We were left with no choice. I wasn't looking forward to it, but this was gonna be the second time I was going into a hot spring with other people (that means I had to be naked). Anyways, I shaved, took a shower, and hopped into the medium-warm bath with the others and we talked. As we talked we noticed that one of the baths was very green and so we called it "cha-buro" or tea bath. Apparently there were special healing herbs in there to help you but it looked so artificially green. 

I am not sure if I had described it before, but Japanese hot springs are an orderly process. First you take off your shoes and put it into a shoe locker, next you go to the staff and buy or rent whatever you need (such as towels, shampoo, etc). Then you go into a locker room, put all of your clothes and bags in a locker, wrap the key around your wrist, and go wash yourself with a spigot and bucket on the floor in front of a mirror. Only after that can you go into a hot spring bath. It is a fun experience, but every time I went people would stare at me.

As we were leaving, I noticed that I could not find the key to my locker. I had put it in my upper jacket wallet pocket, but for some reason I could not find it. I gave the operator 1000 yen for payment. After that we went back to the little church, and all the boys slept on futon in the tiny third floor kindergarten room. They all stayed up playing games, while I very tiredly made notes for my online class. Then I said goodnight and went to bed.

2/25

In the morning, as I was getting ready I found the locker key in my jacket pocket exactly where I had put it. The thing though, is that it way up, almost to the top of where my shoulder would be. Then I thought of my recurring catchphrase "I never lose anything, it's just misplaced." After we all got ready, we got into our 2 cars and drove to an udon restaurant for breakfast. So, the prefecture we are in, Kagawa, is often called "Udon Prefecture" because people say there is nothing interesting there except for udon. Anyways, we all walked into this place and stood in a line (cafeteria style) and as we went down we grabbed what we wanted into our udon bowl. I also grabbed an "aji-fry" or fried fish and a croquette potato. We probably had some sorta fun conversation, but I don't really remember.

After that we were going to the Ritsurin Garden. It's a very large Japanese garden with TOO many koi fish, and is historic. We saw a whole bunch of koi fish swimming in a line and I said it was like ducks and someone else said like school children (that hold hands when they cross the street), and it was very ironic because then we saw a school group crossing a bridge. Apparently we learned that there was a zoo there quite a while ago through the interesting sculptures. At the end we all stuck around the store and bought tons of things. I think that I bought a little fan charm because it represents the area. The pictures below can do a better job describing it than I can.

Next we headed over to Mt. Yashima. The characters 屋島 means "Roof Island" because the top is a plateau that makes it look kind of strange. Although it is called an island, it is actually connected to land after develop of the city of Takamatsu for so long. It was also a battlefield during the Sengoku era. Well, anyways we drove for a while all the way to the top parking lot. From there we walked through a mix of forest and Buddhist temple, which was funny. We awkwardly walked through the large Buddhist temple grounds (because we're Christian) and went through this weird artsy area to the observation area. From there we got a great view of the city of Takamatsu and the Eastern side of the Seto Inland Sea. There was also a game there, where for about 500 yen you could get three roof tiles and could throw them through hoops. We all struggled to get them in. 

For lunch, we went to a fancy noodle restaurant where I finally got to eat good soumen noodles. It felt like the table we were at was very long, because there were 12 of us. We shared a little bit of our food with each other, and it was a good experience. Then we headed back and relaxed for a bit before doing more Bible study. After that we had a barbecue, and made "s'mores." however with no chocolate.

When we went to the bath house again after dinner and I returned my key to get my 1000 yen back. This night, the tea-bath was replaced with a purple colored sleep medicine bath. In there, Jun convinced me to try going into the ice bath after the sauna. I tried and noped myself out of there. He told me if I tried 5 more seconds it would feel good. So we went back into the sauna and burned ourselves again and I did it again. It was more tolerable but I can say that I am not a fan. We went around and tried as many baths together as we could before our time ran out. There was a very small open-air bath which was pretty cool.

When we got back, I again had to work on homework while everyone played games. It was tough but I finished my notes, and then immediately went to bed.

2/26

Today was the last day of the trip. For breakfast we had simple dry-foods and had an early morning worship and Bible study before cleaning the church building and returning it to normal. We put all of the benches and desks to their proper area, replaced all of the AV equipment, cleaned out the fridge, and all of the fixin's. For lunch we made our own udon noodles from scratch and then dipped it into some dashi and maybe katsuo. It tasted really good. They brought out some  "Mexican Taco" flavored Doritos, and were talking about tacos to which I said "it's God's gift to the world" and they started laughing. Hee-yon said that I am better at making Japanese people laugh than Japanese people.

People gradually kept leaving until I did. I made sure to say goodbye's, especially to Jun. Atsuki took me to the train station and made sure I got my ticket. I had totally learned my lesson this time after taking the long train to Takamatsu, so I bought a 2 hour quick-train ticket. He had to leave, but since I had time to kill I walked around the fancy station. That was one of the funny points about me to the other students. I said that Takamatsu is a fancy city because of how nice the station is, but everyone was quick to educate me that immediately beyond that everything is run down. After checking out all of the shops and winning a commemorative Takamatsu Station keychain, I got on my quick-train to Matsuyama, and that was it.