life on a stratovolcano ^{oshima edition}

Note: I began writing this last week, so there are a few anachronisms.

Second note: This is ten pages long, so you might want to grab a beer.

Holy crap.

The past few days have been a serious test of the limits of the human body’s capability for travel. Not only did I travel by all of the methods listed above, but I also managed to make it to three different prefectures in two days.

It all started with the announcement that the “Mid-Year-Conference” was coming up. I sort of freaked out about this, since they notified me that both myself and Mr. Tanaka would have to make a presentation on “team teaching.” Unfortunately, I’ve never been very good at the whole team teaching thing, as I have the tendency to be pretty much run the classroom by myself.

The day of departure for the conference came around, and I left work at lunchtime so I could finish packing. The day was unbelievably dreary and entirely too cold for a so-called “tropical island”. Hell, the volcano actually had SNOW at the top!

I wanted to look my best for the conference, so I threw on my new suit, and zipped over to the port to meet Mr. Tanaka. I briefly wondered how nasty the sea would be, but then casually dismissed the thought. After all, they had canceled the jetfoil once before because the sea was rough, so they were at least slightly concerned for our safety, right?

My first warning sign should have been the fact that the jetfoil’s gangplank was moving from side-to-side when I tried to jump onto it. “Meh, no matter,” I thought. We stumbled through the crowded, swaying ship, eventually making it to our seats.

As soon as I sat down, I realized that the boat was rocking pretty damned hard. Luggage was rolling around the cabin, and the people around me looked vaguely unsettled. I turned to my right to try and make smalltalk with Tanaka.

Me: “So, the sea’s a bit exciting today, huh?”
Him: “…”
Me: “Ha, I hope the waves are big!”
Him: “…”
Me: “Hey, are you okay? You look a bit –”
Him (completely calm): “I am going to throw up now.”
Me (less completely calm): “Uhh, don’t do that! You’ll get better when we get out to sea!”

The funny thing is, I actually believed what I was saying. What a damn fool I was.

We began to pull away from port, and after picking up speed for a few seconds, the strangest sensation washed over my body: we were climbing. I felt like I was in the cabin of an airplane taking off; the gravity had shifted toward the back of the ship.

Mr. Tanaka: “Uh-oh.”
Me: “Wha–?”
The Sea: “HAHAHA YOUR PUNY BOAT IS NO MATCH FOR ME!”

And we were airborne. Not “airborne,” but airborne. I felt the sensation of weightlessness for what seemed like a very long time, followed by the inevitable whiplash-inducing, luggage-throwing, lunch-losing crash. The whole of my body was thrown forward against the seatbelt so violently, and the sound was so deafening, that I thought we had crashed right into another ship. I shooked my head, touched my stomach, and tried to recover. I then spun my head around to look out the window and at the not-so-subtly-freaking-out-Tanaka, and noticed that there was not air outside, but rather water. The boat was in the most torrential downpour that I’d seen since the chaos that was the typhoons. Before I could form another thought, I felt the G force of the ship’s ascent up another wave. This time, I braced for impact, grabbing the armrests of the seat and smothering the headrest. The crash came again this time, the same as before, but everyone seemed to expect it, and with a quiet desparation, resigned to their fate.

The next morning, I woke up, threw on my suit, got my bearings, and headed out toward the meeting. I stopped to get some breakfast first, and when I went into the 7-11, I looked up at the clock, which was 15 minutes later than my watch.

Me: “Umm, excuse me, is that clock right?”
Clerk: “Yup.
Me: “Shit.”

So I bought a rice-triangle-thingy, a bottle of tea, and proceeded to do the grossest thing I’ve done all month — enter the 7-11 bathroom and down both of them. You see, it’s considered really, super-bad form to eat in public in Japan, and I couldn’t really figure out how I would do it while running, so I whoofed it down right there and then.

I burst out of the bathroom, fixed my tie, and began my gaijin-smash sprint across Shinjuku in a business suit. Much jaywalking ensued. Now, I don’t know if you’ve been to Tokyo or not, but one of the more peculiar things about it is that huge crowds of people will patiently wait for a crossing signal to change to green, even if it’s a tiny side-street with absolutely no cars coming. I gaijin-smashed my way through the crowd, sprinted across the street from the horrified J-people, and beelined it to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building.

The weird thing about the building is that it is two separate towers connected by a walkway. I was maybe two minutes late, so I was freaking out quite considerably. There was a receptionist in the lobby. She was wearing a comically oversized bow around her neck, just like the women that check you in at the airport. I ran up her asked in my best out-of-breath-and-panicked-Japanese which building the meeting was in. She looked at me, puzzled.

Her: “What meeting?”
Me: “The JET Program one, for Tokyo JETs”
Her: “Hmm…” (she’s slowly flipping through papers)
Me (exasperated): “63rd floor. Which tower is it?!”
Her: “Oh, the north one.”

So I sprinted off toward the North Tower elevators. If you’ve ever been to the TMGB, you’ll know that the elevator system is extremely confusing, with some 16 elevators that skip floors, a few that will only go to certain floors, and some that just fall when you get into them. After about two minutes of deliberation, I chose the most promising one. I jumped in there, and slammed the 63rd floor button. I glanced at my watch; I was seven minutes late.

The metal doors opened to reveal the same sterile, off-white color that the entire inside of the building consists of. I made my way down the hallway and found myself approaching a circular room with four entrances, with round, off-white couches on all the walls. Rachel and Rob were sitting there, with some unidentified Japanese guy.

Me: “Where is everyone?”
Rob: “I have no idea.”
Unidentified Japanese Guy: “Paulette is late.”
Me: “Everyone’s late!”

So I sat down, and waited for a good fifteen minutes for the rest of the Tokyo JETs to arrive. We pushed our way into a small meeting room, and began our meeting, which, for your sake, I will not write about in any way shape or form.

After our meetings for the day, a bunch of us decided that we would go out for some Mexican food. I was only dressed in my suit, which was completely inadequate for the hellishly cold landscape that Tokyo had become, so I took Rob’s phone and told Paulette that I’d call her when I got to my hotel room to find out where they were.

I made my call after I had changed, and found out that they were on the south side of Shinjuku Station, next to Japan’s only Krispy Kreme. Shinjuku’s Krispy Kreme is incredibly famous throughout Japan for two things: donuts, and stupidly long lines. And I don’t just mean a “Damnit I have to wait thirty minutes for a single donut” line, but rather a “Holy shit even though it’s raining outside and everyone’s getting soaked the sign still says three hours” monstrosity. They have one of those mazes outside a-la Disneyland in order to funnel the people through and to keep them from blocking traffic. Amazing.

Back at my hotel room, I prepared for the super-long trip by putting on my running shoes. They had been waiting for me for quite a while, and making your way from the north side of Shinjuku Station to the south side is no easy feat; in fact, Shinjuku Station is the largest train station in the world, with 3.5 million people moving through it EVERY DAY. And you thought Market Square was busy on Thursdays.

At a dead sprint, I gaijin-smashed my way to the south side of the station, taking extra care not to make a wrong turn. In Shinjuku Station, if you get lost, you might very well find yourself in Dublin.

Lucky for me, however, I made it through. Bounding past the huge, snaking line at Krispy Kreme, I entered the building and ran down the escalator, stripping off layers of clothing as I went.

I looked at my watch, and I had made it to the restaurant in about seventeen minutes. That may have been the proudest moment of my life. I started searching around the place, and quickly spotted the table full of loud, obnoxious gaijin. Ahh, it was like salmon returning to it’s birthplace.

After dinner, we headed out for drinks and karaoke, of which I promise I’ll put pictures up later. Karaoke in Tokyo is just one of those things that you MUST do, and words cannot do it justice. If American karaoke was a horse, it would be one of those tiny ponies that you can’t even ride. Japanese karaoke, however, is a giant, proud Clydesdale, carrying kegs of beer, ready to give it’s delicious alcoholic goodness to anyone lucky enough to be there.

Afterwards, the mainland Tokyo JETs wussed out, and, after a series of really strange goodbyes (Rob knows what I’m talking about), I bent one of the mainlanders over, fake-kissed him, and then when he jumped, startled, a Japanese businessman literally shoved him out of the way, sending him tumbling down the street.

The next day, we had more meetings, of which I will share only one detail with you: one of the more experienced (read: jaded) JETs decided to play a game of charades as his presentation (as we were all required to give them, but he just decided to be an exceptionally lazy bastard), and one of the answers was “killing children”. From a middle school teacher. With glee, I watched the administrators from TokyoMG, and the other ALTs, silently freak out.

That day, we made our way to Haneda Airport. On the train, we almost missed our stop, thinking that the train would make another stop at another concourse. Rob, the saint that he is, said “Wait, doesn’t that sign say concourse two?” We panicked, jumped through the closing doors, and, with a certain deftness in our step, made it in time for our flight to Osaka. The plane trip was relatively uneventful, except for the fact that there was a ridiculously cute baby in front of us, which immediately caused Paulette’s ovaries to explode.

Once we landed, we jumped on the “mildly air-conditioned” monorail into Osaka, and checked into our “hotel”. Calling this thing a hotel was a little bit of a misnomer — it was more like a hostel with walls, but I guess that’s what you get for twenty bucks a night. Rob and I set our stuff out in our room, while Paulette and Rahchel got ready for the evening.

When we met back up in the Lobby, there was an extra person in our midst — I was slightly confused, but then remembered that Rachel had invited her friend David from high school. I would like to take this time to point out that both David, Rachel, and I, were raised in Tennessee. The weirdest part, though, is that my family hails from Dover, Tennessee, a city of 2,000. Which is exactly where Rachel and David came from. Weird, eh?

Anyway, David plays Frankenstein in a musical production in Universal Studios: Japan, so he’s a pretty big dude. We were also warned that he’s absolutely knock-you-on-your-ass awesome at karaoke. Fair enough. The five of us jumped on a train and headed for the restaurant district. Our conversation about where to go for dinner went something like this:

David: “So, what do you guys want to eat?”
Rachel: “INDIANFOODINDIANFOODINDIANFOODINDIANFOOD!!!!!!”
David: “Anyone besides Rachel?”
Us: “Nah, Indian food sounds ok.”
Rachel: “INDIANFOODINDIANFOODINDIANFOOD!!!”

So we made our way through the confusing twists and turns of Osaka’s streets, and found ourselves at the Indian Restaurant. I opened the door, and the greys and blacks of the outside world were suddenly transformed into a bright, gold-colored light. On the right, there were about a dozen Japanese people eating at a table, so we took one of the farther ones as not to disturb them. Menu specials covered the walls in both English and Japanese, and the sheer amount of colors and smells in the place was almost overwhelming. On a flatscreen television above our heads and to the left, a screen played Bollywood extravaganzas slightly off-sync to the music in the store.

As was par for the course by this time, I let everyone else decide what we were going to eat. A few moments later, however, my uselessness as a navigator and decision-maker on the trip thus far was completely redeemed. “Excuse me,” I asked the waiter, “But do you have a nomihodai?”

Everyone at the table went silent and stared at me. “Nomihodai” is Japanese for “all-you-can-drink”. Basically, you pay about twenty bucks, and can drink all the booze, cider, and liquor that you can for two hours. They’re excessively dangerous, as you always want to get your money’s worth.

Rachel: “Are you sure you want to drink that much?”
Me: “Can I please see the nomihodai menu? Ah, hey Rachel, they have wine.”
Rachel (in the tone of an IV drug user): “GIVE ME THE NOMIHODAI!”

Rachel is a huge wine snob, so she was instantly sold. The law of “stupid twenty-somethings at a bar in Japan” states that when two people order a nomihodai, EVERYONE orders a nomihodai. Don’t ask me why; it’s just science.

Two hours later, with full bellies of some of the most AMAZING Indian food on the planet (Bombay Kitchen, I think? Tell me if I’m wrong, guys), we stumbled down the street into the party district of Osaka. Bright lights were everywhere, and we took some pretty fantastic pictures. Paulette saw this guy’s bike and somehow gaijin-smashed her way onto the back of it.

Me: “So, what do you guys wanna do?”
Rachel: “How about karaoke again?”
Rob: “We did that last night.”
Paulette: “You can’t EVER have too much karaoke.”

At this point, Paulette’s logic seemed absolutely infalliable, so we hopped into the nearest karaoke bar, and started ordering pitchers. Things were going fine until David picked up the mic. “Friends in Low Places” came up on the screen, and he poured himself another beer, sat back, and proceeded to blow all of us completely out of the water. For some reason, it didn’t occur to me that a guy who sings for a living would be great at karaoke. This might seem redundant, but holy shit, that guy can SING!

Later, after I finished a quite embarassing episode with “Tubthumping” (where I actually got knocked down, and then got back up again, and then down, then up, then down, then up, then… well, you get the point.), we decided that it was most definitely time to go back to the hotel. David decided to crash with us because the trains stopped running.

The next morning, we woke up and David was gone, presumably to go to work. Our lot decided that we would go to Spa World so that we could rest up and get warm before going to Koya-san. On the way, we spotted a street-clothes-vendor, and proceeded to try on everything that he had. I ended up getting an awesome Paddington Bear-type wool coat, and a used winter kimono. The woman that we bought it from was, quite possibly, the oldest person I’ve seen since coming to Japan.

We didn’t stay for a terribly long time however, as our final destination, Spa World, awaited. We climbed the stairs of this 9-story megaplex dedicated to all things decadent, bought our tickets, and went on in. I ended up having to rent a swimsuit.

Rob: “You didn’t bring a swimsuit?”
Me: “We were going to go to the top of a mountain. In the middle of the winter. Why the hell did you bring one?”
Rob: “I always bring one when we travel. Well, we ended up here, didn’t we?”
Me: “Point taken.”

As we made our way through the motion-activated showers and up to the sixth floor, we stepped through the obligitory wall of water and were met with quite an amazing sight: a complete, indoor water park. Rob and I, being the ten-year-old-kids-trapped-in-twenty-two-year-old-bodies that we are, immediately got really excited and gave each other high fives. We jumped into the lazy river, and went around until we got to the waterslide.

Rob: Dude, we have to do it!
Me: Sounds good.

I went first, and I’ll be damned if it wasn’t the slowest waterslide I’ve ever been on. I actually got stuck at one point in the twists and turns. “Oh well,” I thought.

Rob’s turn came next, and as I was waiting, I noticed this white thing shoot down one of the tubes up high. All the sudden, Rob came out of the waterslide like a missile.

Rob: “Dude, that was incredible! I actually went over the edge during one point!”
Me: “I couldn’t even get moving — what did you do differently?”

Evidently Rob’s an expert in such things as waterslides, because he gave me a complete lesson on how to maximize your watersliding potential. Everything from minimizing drag and friction to maximizing out your speed was covered, so I went again, and, just as Rob said, I had to actually stop myself from launching off of the edge. Ah, sweet lack of liability, how I’ll miss you when I return to America.

Later, we met up with Paulette, and then with HER friend David at the outdoor hot tub. Eventually, we decided that we wanted to go on this incredibly badass-looking waterslide that shoots up about ten meters and around 70 degrees, and then drops you back down at a high speed. We watched people going on it, and at the bottom they would invariably slow down to a near stop. “No problem,” we thought. “That looks nice and easy!”

Of course, the rafts that were going down had two people on them, not three. And they were small, compact Japanese people, not huge gaijin monstrosities. We failed to take those annoying “physics” into account, and David, Paulette, and myself hauled a three-person raft to the top of the slide. Rob completely chickened out, saying that it looked “dangerous,” and “scary”. Of course, it was, but you know what? Rob sucks.

At the top, the slide operator laughed at us for being so stupid as to think we could do this safely, but I think his sense of curiosity overcame his obligation to safety, and he instructed us, as best he could with his hands, how to sit. It took several minutes because Paulette was being dumb and not listening to him. Eventually, he said, “here you go!”, and we were off to a nice, slow start.

Wait a minute, did I say “slow start”? Because what I meant to say was “G-force-induced-blackout-fast” start. That raft was off like a ROCKET. I’ll leave the rest of the description to Rob’s third-person account from the bridge over the slide:

Rob: “So as soon as you all saw the initial drop, all of your eyes got really big all at the same time, and the only sound you could hear was Paulette’s “OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT!” drowning out the rushing water. Then, as you all launched up the incline, all of your heads turned simultaneously to the left and behind you, and then Tyler tucked his legs in to keep them from being taken off by the incoming wall.”

Back to my viewpoint: after the scary-as-hell wall of death, we were flying toward the swimming pool area at breakneck speed. Remember when I told you that everyone stopped at the bottom of the slide? Well, somehow we managed to go even faster. The guy that was supposed to catch us looked so surprised to see three huge white people shooting at him, that he actually jumped out of the way and let us nearly take the heads off of the swimmers in the pool.

We jumped out, laughing hysterically, and went our separate ways to the spa areas.

Spa World’s spas are divided into two floors: the Asia Zone and the Europe Zone. No, it’s not segregated by race like it sounds, but rather by sex. On odd numbered months, men go to Europe and women go to Asia. This works out well, because everyone is completely naked.

Rob, David and I all headed into the European area, whose opening room was a gigantic Roman-style bath with huge marble statues surrounding it. In fact, everything was made from marble. It was one of the most ornate rooms I’ve been in in a long, long time. I felt like some kind of important ancient Roman senator. Since we didn’t have long, we explored the area, which included a Salt Bath, the “blue grotto” (a cave with blue lights and really hot water), and an Atlantis-themed room with aquariums full of colorful fish surrounding the pool. The most amazing place of all, however, was a naked tapas bar. That’s right. You can eat tapas and drink booze with whomever you want, completely in the buff. You pay with an electronic wristband. It was all super-high-tech and amazing, and I can’t wait to go back.

After much deliberation of whether we’d rather stay at spa world for three days, or go to Koya-san, we reluctantly dried off and beelined it to the subway, where we began our fantastic trek into the mountains of Wakayama-ken.

(I’ll write more later, and once I get home, I’ll add pictures!)