Blogger changed their layout; I got kind of distracted by this and thus forgot what I was going to post. I'm remembering in bits and pieces, but maaan I wish I just posted first off to begin with. There was a title that went with it and everything. Oh well. 仕方がない, or shikataga nai~ as they say. Can't really do anything about it. So forward I go.
Today was ridiculously warm; it's been like that for the last few days, actually. Last week seemed like something of a dream. Fall was teasing us, badly. I had the pleasure of biking to the station and actually feeling cold monday morning - like, "hm should I have brought my jacket?" kind of cold. It was wonderful.
Now it's hotter than sin, and I can't sit without sweating. It's kind of disgusting. Temperature wise, my school's temperature monitor clocked the temperature around 32.something-high degrees Celsius, which in Fahrenheit, translates to roughly 90 degrees. That's hot, even without the humidity. And then you add the humidity, and the never-ending moisture that exists on your arms and it's just like grooooooss. The last class I taught was absolutely dead, and I don't blame them. They had PE right before English (never a good idea), and I was ridiculously tired myself (knocking out early last night with my contacts still in and waking up at four to take them out and go back to sleep had nothing to do with that, probably). I can only imagine how they felt.
When the end of Monday came, I got a message that Tsukimi, or the moon viewing event, was happening in Korakuen, one of the three most beautiful gardens in Japan. It was around 4:30, so I could get off work, but I had to bike home to get my korakuen pass (25 minutes), then take a train to Okayama (an hour) and then another 20 minutes to get to the gardens themselves (ish), so like, easily over three hours commute round trip. At that point in the day, when it was blazing hot, not attractive. Plus I was tired. I think I had started to whine to my teachers about how hot it was. Bless their souls for putting up with me.
Instead, I decided to head to Polka, the local... super...market department store? It's like a really small department store. It's only two floors, with a smallish supermarket, a couple of restaurants, and a bunch of other small stores (including a softbank and daiso/100 yen store). I mean, I wasn't hungry at that point, but I figured that if I wanted to, I could buy food to either cook or take back with me, and maybe find kakigori (shaved ice). At the very least, I could kill time and wait for the sun to set so that the bike home wouldn't be as awful hot. So, as a tentative "maybe-but-probably-not" I biked the short distance to Polka.
Despite the five minute or less ride, I was exhausted when I got in. I went to browse the super market area for pre-made foods I could take home with me, or sales on meat or other food products. The meat section was having this "three things for 1050 yen" special. Pretty rad. I like the days when they do this, because I'll stock up on stuff and put it in my freezer for later. They have decent things, like 250 g of cut beef stuff, which works well for things like gyuudon (beef bowl) or curry. They have (thinnish) pork cutlets for tonkatsu. They had chicken filets. But it was still early, so I decided, after walking through the place, that I wanted to get shaved ice before I biked back because I still felt disgusting. A quick survey found no shave ice on the first floor (or maybe I wasn't looking too hard), but one of the few restaurants did have soft serve ice cream, and it was one of the restaurants where a couple of the girls I made friends with work at. Plus the old people who run the restaurant are super nice. It was right next to the grocery place. So I decided to go there.
Neither of the girls (both Chinese) that I knew were in; they were probably at the university or like, not out in the sweltering heat, hopefully. But both the old people were. So I ordered soft cream and chatted a little with the old man who was running it.
The soft cream in Japan is kinda interesting, in that the machines are really different. In the states, soft serve ice cream - not that I've seen the behind the scenes machinery, but I'm pretty sure this is the case - has one big thing and comes in large batches that I'm guessing either make their own soft serve after you add in the right things, or they have a giant source that they pull the soft serve from. I dunno, I've never run one. But either way, when you want a soft serve, you pull the lever on the machine, and it comes out the nozzle and you have to attempt to get it all in the cup; some people can make this look prettier than others. Either way, you can add as much or as little as you want (or, in the case of restaurants, as much as the person serving feels like).
In Japan though, especially at smaller places, once you select your flavor, the staff pulls out this cylindrical block of ice cream in a cup thing. It looks kind of like the cup you use to freeze the cylinders of ice in. They look kind of like hockey pucks, but roughly with the diameter of your palm. They put this into the machine, and *then* they crank out your soft serve ice cream. You get as much as was in the hockey puck container.
Anyways, I got it and paid for my soft serve, with 20 yen off from the 240 yen price ($2.40ish for soft serve! T-T *weeps*), aka, "service". The first time I heard "service" being used, my mind went to uh, not so savory and polite places. I was like, seriously, service?! It sounds so... dirty. I suppose only as dirty as you make it though. But I've gotten used to it, using "service" as a way to signify when you get stuff for free or a discount or whatever.
...Actually, I can't think of what we'd say in English. Maybe "discount"? Oh wait, just kidding. We say "on the house." Major English fail.
So after I got my ice cream, I sat down and started to read/study Japanese. I happened to notice though, that the old man had finished the flower arrangement display he had been working on in the back, and was placing it on the main table.
It was absolutely gorgeous. I wish I had gotten a picture of it. The main body of the arrangement was composed of these dark, chocolate colored branches that twisted this way and that; there were three of them. The secondary flowers were some kind of fall-like flowers. Red maybe? And white? I don't remember all the way. But the small flowers opened up in a kind of spray towards the center of the display, with the whole thing shouting "FALL IS GORGEOUS" but in a much quieter, more subtle way. And once again, I started talking to the old man.
He commented on how these flowers, this arrangement was specifically for Fall (which led me to ask when fall was, since, as far as I and the weather are concerned, it's still summer). This in turn led to us talking about why they do ikebana displays in the first place, and what you're supposed to feel when you look at them. He told me that your heart is supposed to become quiet, that you're supposed to feel a kind of inner calm. 落ち着く、or "ochitsuku" translates into, "to harmonize" or "to calm down" or "to restore presence of mind" The seasonal displays, along with the specific seasonal foods, and the flower displays and everything, are done with the goal of just that - to quiet the heart and the mind, and to restore the soul. It's why Buddhists meditate, he told me.
That's why I think Japanese culture is absolutely beautiful. Cause you know what? Looking at the display, taking in its beauty and its simplicity, my heart did exactly that. Where I was feeling grumpy and irritable and restless before (mostly due to the heat), the flower arrangement filled me with a serene sense of calm and peace, as corny as it sounds. That, and I was able to understand about 70-80% of what the old couple was saying (meaning counts for a lot, right?) probably helped too.
After finishing my ice cream, it was late enough to where it wouldn't be ridiculously hot on the ride back, so I packed up my things and said goodbye. I had the pleasure of discovering that my grocery store was now stocking frozen spinach again (it hadn't for a good two months or so), which also cheered me immensely. That, and I swear half of my third year home economics course was shopping in Polka. I saw so many of them! And they either said hello, or stopped to chat for a bit in the curry and canned goods aisle. One girl asked why they had seen me walking to work that morning, since usually, I ride my bike. For some reason, this made me feel pleased.
When I left, it was with a feeling like I could take on the world and all its heat, and that perhaps the bike ride back home wouldn't be so bad after all.
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