skank_zero

Today was one of those "Only in Japan" sort of days.

This morning a friend of mine who works in Owase, the city an hour north of me, called: "Hi, I'm bored, let's do something today!" So we decided to meet halfway in Kumano (which isn't really halfway since it's a lot closer to me, but it's the next decently-sized city between us).

I got to Kumano about 20 min before her, so I had enough time to run to the yarn store and pick up another skein for the beach coverup-sarong-thingie I'm crocheting. Then she came and we started just wandering around, figuring we'd find stores or something to interest us. There must be some sort of election coming up because campaign cars and their crews were out in full force, which are really, really annoying, so we cut up towards some stores off the main drag. Then it started to rain and we didn't have umbrellas. We came across a cafe, but it happened to be temporarily closed. We waited it out a bit, then continued walking, figuring we'd wind our way back to the station eventually.

This is where the story gets interesting. While we were walking we passed an absolutely beautiful garden in front of a house or store or something. There was a woman outside who came up and started speaking to us in English, and she invited us to her home for tea and offered us umbrellas. Since this is small-town Japan, we said sure, why not? She took us a few houses down to another home with a smaller but no less lovely garden and introduced us to her husband. The other place was called "Alice Gardens" and they own it, they're retired and now specialize in flowers. Their daughter is studying English in England, and they've been to Europe several times. They make a habit of finding foreigners on the street and inviting them in to chat, they had a little notebook which they have everyone sign. The most recent before us was an Australian guy on his way to Hokkaido who stopped by in March. They were talking about ALTs from 5 years ago. They said to come by again, and when our families are visiting to definitely bring them by.

After about 2 hours, with 100 yen umbrellas in hand, we finally went on our way back towards the station. We wanted to get dinner before we went home, and there happened to be a little takoyaki-ya (well, they had other stuff like noodles and okonomiyaki too) tucked in an alley right by the yarn store. The owner ushered us in, turned on the heater for us, and gave us the karaoke controller (a lot of little places have karaoke machines behind the bar). She was talking to us A LOT, and if I ever need my ego stroked, all I have to do is go back there. First she asked where I was from, she thought I was Russian because according to her Russians have beautiful skin (she was basing this off a Russian girl who used to live in Kumano). She also thought my friend was a Japanese high school student (she's actually from Hong Kong and lives in Canada), she kept gushing about how young she looked. Then she kept saying we were such pretty girls, all the guys would want to meet us. Then her husband came home and said I looked like a model. That's a first for me. I spoke a lot of Japanese today, especially since my friend doesn't really speak it yet so I had to translate a lot for her. Overall, today totally gets two thumbs up (cold, wet feet excluded)!