A day with rain

Finally it rained in the Kyoto rainy season.  All night, just about and into the morning.  You don`t have to like rain as long as you`re happy for me.  I like rain and I like summer rain best and in the summer I like morning rain best of all.  I woke up just before 5, as usual, and the rain that had been in my head all night was real outside.  What a soft sweet sound, and my window is right up against the street. 

Center-top poster on the right.  Part of the "Jaywalking 3"

I came down to the station and spotted her:  the Kyoto serial crosswalk criminal.  I decided to follow her and sure enough, she crossed against the light several times.  She`s I think near the top of the kyotonokeisatsukan (Kyoto Police)`s most wanted and I would have turned her in but I have yet to learn the Japanese for "really don`t want to get involved" so I just let it go for now.

Tomorrow, Sunday for me, more tea learning and another class at Ippo-do, my home away from home. 

I have a second to talk about yesterday.  I was in a little town called Arima which is outside Kobe which is, oh well, Kobe is really its own city, and kind of a cool one.  Arima is sort of resorty; well, let`s just, for a change, be honest.  It`s a resort, and I feel pretty guilty about that because anyone who knows anything about "culture" knows that whatever it is it doesn`t for a second include rich people.  But there were kimono and tea and onsen just all over the place, so as unclutured as it was it felt to me a lot more like culture, pardon me PLEASE pardon me than sitting on the subway watching a bunch of people with earphones jammed in their ears playing some game I don`t understand on little electronic handheld devices. 

Mine was cooler because I bet I didn't look that geeky

Yes of course I love Japan but I love the Japan I want Japan to be and you know, not necessarily the part that wishes it were underground Philadelphia.  Whatever that means

So back to what I was saying yeah there were kimono and obi and onsen and no one admitted to understanding much less speaking English and it seemed to hearken back to a day before what, the Meiji Restoration when eating meat was anathema.  This is the Japan I like to imagine, perhaps the way Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best are the America the Tea Party likes to imagine, though I consider it at least possible that this Japan once, at some place, at some time, existed, whereas Leave it to Beaver never really of course did.

Sounds more soap-boxy than travelogy.  Anyway, all this and rain kind of took away my homesickness for the time being.  In fact, again for the time being, I am kind of doing ok in that regard.  And at some point this morning I passed the half-way point in my trip to Japan.   Ii desu, it`s ok.  Lots of tea in the future and I`m considering going to Nara on Tuesday or Wednesday.  I feel a little pulled apart taking day-long trips because they get in the way of what are, the trip to Arima aside, maybe my two favorite Things to Do here, Ippo-Do and a daily posting on Sumimasen, my blog.

Oh oh oh, and I learned a new apology today.  This is huge, you know, for me.  Because every nuanced level of apology gives life new meaning.

I don`t even know whether, and I don`t have time to look, I don`t know whether I have given you the account of sleeping through my railway stop and the wild situation after that, walking up to my ryokan, my lodging, at 11:45 or something with an 11:00 curfew, but the silver lining was that it was giving me the chance to practice the utterly most profoundly abject apology, moushiwake gozaimasen deshita which if there`s a more abject one I seriously need to find out about it. 

But I don`t think I did tell that story yet and right now with 2:45 left on computer B I don`t have time to do it.  So, my newly-learned apology today: (polite form of course, what else) Machigaemashita -- "my mistake."  I have absolutely no clue where this fits in the pantheon of Japanese apologies right now, but it`s a new one and I sure am going to find out. 

So, sumimasen, I have about half a minute left now and I`m signing off.  My tea class tomorrow is in this very room so I should be here for this too.