How I Spent My Christmas Vacation

by Blake Davis

Hey everyone. It seems like not long ago I made yet another crazy promise regarding posts and the like, so today I'll do my best to recount the experiences of my Christmas vacation in a fairly concise manner. I did take a bunch of pictures over vacation, especially in Shikkoku. I took a few short videos as well. You can expect me to post those as soon as I've got them online.

So my last day of school was spent out at Hikimi, my school that's about an hour away, and it consisted pretty much of the end-of-year ceremony. The students got out of school at noon, and the teachers left not long afterward. As soon as I got home, I rushed to get my things packed. In a flurry of action, I tossed a vast assortment of random clothing items into my backpack, hoping they would sustain me for the duration of my short stay in Osaka.

I met the other Hikimi teachers at the Hagi-Iwami airport at about, uh...okay I don't remember that part. Early evening, let's say. It was an incredibly small airport. It might have been just a little bigger than my apartment building. It was actually really nice, though. For a small airport, it had a disproportionately large parking lot, which meant I had no trouble getting a parking space, an ironic circumstance in Japan.

The flight to Osaka took about an hour, and once we got there, it was probably about another thirty minutes by monorail from the airport to our hotel. We checked into our rooms and then left together for a big night on the town. Said night began at an excellent steakhouse where we were served a five-or-six course meal, which ended with an awesome steak, the first I'd had since I've come to Japan. From there, it was off to karaoke, where I distinguished myself with an excellent set of songs, finishing strong by following up Aladdin's "Friend Like Me" with Megadeth's "Peace Sells". In case you were wondering, heavy metal guitar solos don't transfer well to a karaoke environment.

Next we visited a small jazz club whose name I never learned. Playing that night was a trio of two middle-aged men on drums and bass, and an older man on piano. The music was great if you're into that kind of thing (for the record, I am); you could tell the guys just felt it, you know? The gent on bass in particular attacked his instrument with great vigor.

Our last stop of the night, if I remember correctly, was a fast-food ramen joint, where I got an unexpectedly enormous bowl of ramen and left half on the table. A quick bit of advice to anyone who is, like myself, prone to making poor decisions due to a lack of foresight: eating a huge bowl of ramen at three in the morning and then immediately going to sleep is a course of action to be avoided, if at all possible. The end results can be disastrous.

The next morning's story is one of terrible stomach pain and marine biology. It was raining that day, so I didn't get to take very many pictures for fear of getting my camera wet, but I and a couple other teachers visited Osaka castle, which seemed appropriately castle-like. The whole thing was surrounded by a huge moat, which I thought was cool. Moat is kind of an uncommon word in English, one most people typically don't use from day to day. When you think about it, it makes sense that Japanese people, even people who might speak English quite well otherwise, wouldn't know a word like moat. What this meant for me that day was that Hikimi's English teacher had to resort to unorthodox methods of description to tell me the castle had a moat. We had the conversation as we were still walking toward the castle and I couldn't yet see it for myself. She eventually settled on telling me that Hideyoshi (the dude in charge at the time, presumably) had built a river.

After that, we headed to Kaiyukan, Osaka's aquarium, where I beheld the majesty of Jinbei the whale shark. I'm still not entirely sure whether jinbei was the shark's name or just the Japanese word for whale shark. I suppose I could look it up online easily enough, but I like for some things to retain an air of mystery. For my money, though, the most impressive thing I saw at the aquarium were the enormous manta rays. There were actually several different kinds of manta rays at the aquarium, of various sizes. The smallest one might possibly be worn as a hat, while the largest looks like an underwater stealth bomber.

What little time we had left in Osaka was spent eating lunch (we had okonomiyaki, a kind of vegetable-noodle-pancake thing; it does not receive the Official Blake Seal of Approval) and looking around for souvenirs. I didn't really find any souvenirs, although I did pick up some really boss Spiderman and Spongebob stickers I plan to use as prizes in class at some point. After that, it was off to the airport and back home. Upon arriving back at my apartment, I went to sleep for three full days.

Christmas itself was strange. It felt really odd waking up at around eleven and then just kind of going about my business as usual. The first half of the day was spent in a fruitless attempt to get my phone to work. he second half was spent at Ryan's house, playing Guitar Hero 3 on his Wii. Issues with the difficulty curve notwithstanding, it probably has the best tracklist of any Guitar Hero yet. The first two certainly had their hits; Guitar Hero 2, with songs like "Carry On My Wayward Son" and "Sweet Child of Mine", was especially good. But both of those games also had several baffling song choices that I ended up playing through once and then never touching again. Guitar Hero 3 doesn't just bring the hits; it brings them consistently. The tracklist as a whole is a great mix of the '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s and today, and each set is packed with quality songs.

So I just realized that my description of my Christmas is really more of a short discussion on Guitar Hero than anything. Strangely enough, it feels pretty fitting, so I guess I'll leave it the way it is. Apologies to all those interested in neither guitars nor the heroics that one might engage in with said guitars.

As a final note on that, though, I was really happy to see Stevie Ray Vaughan return to Guitar Hero. I loved Texas Flood in the first game.

Okay, so the bulk of my winter vacation was taken up by an epic road trip Ryan and I took through Hiroshima and the Eastern half of Shikkoku. For practicality's sake, I shall record the events of this trip chronologically.

December 27th: Ryan and I left Masuda for Hiroshima. It's not far away at all, but we got a late start. That was compounded by the absolutely monstrous traffic in Hiroshima itself, and the end result of those circumstances was that by the time we got into Hiroshima proper it was really too late to see or do anything. We walked around the Peace Park and checked it out, but it was already getting dark. We spent the rest of the evening in Hiroshima's arcade mall, which was pretty cool. It was here that Ryan and I both bought our first air soft pistols. It was also here that we began our tour of Japan's arcade taiko machines.

December 28th: We left Hiroshima at around ten and headed out for Shikkoku. This actually entailed hopping across a number of other, smaller islands on a series of bridges. It was a nice trip, and the view was really cool. By the time we got to Kochi that evening, most things were closed, so we wandered around Kochi's arcade mall, played the taiko machine and then called it a day. Back at the hotel room, we sampled some incredible Japanese comedy on TV.

December 29th: We spent the day walking around Kochi, checking out shrines and the like. We went to Kochi castle, but it was closed in preparation for New Year's celebrations, so we only got to see it from the outside. Later in the day, we went out to the Ryuugado caves and took the tour. Turns out there are some pretty cool rock formations in those there caves. Evening saw us return to the arcade mall where we did some shopping and played more taiko.

December 30th: Kochi actually has a Sunday market every week, so that morning we got up and walked through the market to see the wares on offer. It consisted primarily of produce and cutlery, but Ryan and I both found ourselves backup air soft pistols. I fear it may have been the beginning of an unhealthy obsession. After checking out the Sunday market, we left Kochi and headed to Ikumi, a bustling community of about five people. What Ikumi lacks in its native population, though, it makes up for in travelers. You see, Ikumi is right along the coast of Shikkoku, and it's a great place to go surfing, apparently even in the winter. It was freezing the day Ryan and I got there, and as we pulled into the hotel where we were staying, we looked out the ocean and found that it was full of surfers. It occurred to me that Patrick Swayze would be proud. That night we ate at "Aunt Dinah's Ethnic Curry", a restaurant that really nails the classic southern atmosphere and hospitality, but completely misses the target with its menu. This isn't to say that "Aunt Dinah" doesn't serve good food; I just don't think anyone's real Aunt Dinah has ever served them piping hot curry rice and miso soup.

December 31st: We got to Tokushima sometime in the afternoon and spent most of the rest of the day shopping and checking out the city. That evening we watched a brand new Gaki no Tsukai on TV (if you don't know what Gaki no Tsukai is, look it up on Wikipedia; it's probably the finest television program Japan has ever produced) and then headed out in search of a shrine, since we had heard that that's where New Year's is typically celebrated in Japan. We never did find a shrine, and thank goodness. Instead, we ended up in the middle of a big park in the city where there was big New Year's party/concert going on. Getting there, I was overwhelmed by the presence of something I hadn't really seen since I had started living in Masuda: people my own age. It was really refreshing and the atmosphere was great. At midnight, everyone let go of balloons they had been holding and let them drift into space, and then in what seemed like no time at all, the crowd dissipated, leaving a a dark stage and snack vendors. It was probably the best day of my entire vacation.

January 1st: It was on this day that we were struck with the realization that we wouldn't be able to withdraw any money from the bank for the next three days. In America, where debit cards have become the norm, this wouldn't be a problem. In Japan, where hardly anyone accepts cards of any kind, it's a huge problem. Long story short, Ryan and I both became incredibly stingy. I did, however, allow myself the purchase of twenty cans of soda; ten root beers and ten Dr Peppers. I found them in a small grocery store, and I simply wasn't about to pass up the opportunity.

January 2nd: We went to Takamatsu this day, but without money, we weren't really able to partake of the many wondrous treasures on offer there. I hope someday to return to Takamatsu and do right by the city. It seemed like a pretty wicked place.

January 3rd: We headed home on extremely limited funds. In the end, we had just enough left for gas and lunch. We got home and I pretty much just crashed until school started again.

And that's how I spent my winter vacation.