Sunday, Mel and I took another MWR tour, this time to Yanagawa, the Venice of Japan. This town used to be home to a castle. Like most old castles around here, it burned down a long time ago. (I guess that's the disadvantage of building primarily out of wood.) The moat, however, still remains, and it attaches out to a river and a few other canals. In the last century or so, someone got the idea of taking tourists punting on the moats. The idea took off, and now it's the primary reason people come to the town. This experience was similar to punting on the Cam in England, but with an Asian flare, of course. We were offered the conical Asian straw hats to rent out for the trip, so most of us were wearing those. We were required to take our shoes off before entering the boat since the floor of the boat was covered in tatami mats (minus the under padding) and was where we all sat. Instead of a regular wooden pole, our driver used a bamboo pole. He was an older man, and I don't know how he managed to push all of us Americans for the next hour without falling over from exhaustion. He did it though, and he sang and told us about the canals, some of which are over 400 years old, while he did it. Quite impressive.
After the boat ride, our tour guide took us to a traditional Japanese garden, which was lovely, but crowded. Then we went to a "Western Style house" from the early 1900's that's been made into a museum. The interesting part about that was that it was also made from wood, where as most museum houses I've been to in the States are brick. Also, it was attached to a more Japanese style house, which is apparently the trend around here. If you want a western house, you attach it to your Japanese one. Also, we were required to take off our shoes before we went in there, too. They provided plastic bags for us to carry our shoes around in, and that way we had them when we left. There was also a museum which displayed dolls from hundreds of years ago that were used in the Girl's Day celebrations back then.
When we had finished looking around in these places, the bus took us to a shrine dedicated to "love affairs," meaning all things related to romance. I got a refresher course in Shrine ettiquette, and we got to laugh while some of the single people on the trip checked on their fortunes. Good times.
We got home after 8:00 (we think we got lost on the way home), and I've spent all day today working on my research proposal. It's finally in and submitted so that's a big weight off my shoulders, and tomorrow I start a class that is completely unrelated, so I get a break from worrying about it.
I also recently discovered the hole in my wall through which Mushu the gecko and a bunch of nasty bugs since then have been entering my house to torment me. There was a screw loose in the pipe that connects one of my AC units to its thingy outside (I'm so technical). The screw was stripped, so I couldn't just fix it myself. So today I managed to pass this information on to my landlord, who sent someone out to fix it. Now there's no way anything's getting in there. I just hope I didn't trap too many bugs in the unit. If so, I guess I'm in for an interesting evening when they come out. All the same, I'm proud that I managed it despite the language barrier, and impressed with the quick response.
Zack is still doing well based on his e-mails, though the stress level is rising again.
And tomorrow is Dory's birthday!
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