06.10.05, Himeji

The flu is not quite as bad as the day before, and the weather is lovely. Himeji is a city of one tourist attraction, but that attraction is the biggest and most beautiful feudal castle in Japan. Even signs at the station point to the castle.

I leave my luggage in a locker at the station. Amazing how many lockers there are in Japan, and sometimes not just at the stations but in the streets.

I walk by the tourist info office and am surprised by a woman who tells me in perfectly comprehensible English that here's the map, and the castle is right over there, just walk down this street, about 15 minutes' walk. I thank her and follow the directions. There is indeed a wide boulevardgoing straight from the station to the castle.

On the way I buy Baskin-Robbins' green tea ice cream and decide that it is not nearly as good as Häagen-Dasz green tea ice cream.


I am not good at describing castles. Better go look at the pictures. But this castle was everything I expected, and more. Big and white and beautiful and with a special little building for harakiri. It also had a few noisy school groups who greeted people with "Hara! Hara!", although one kid totally surprised me by saying "Ni hao" instead in a fairly good Mandarin pronunciation. A lively conversation ensued among the kids, from which I only understood the words "Chinese" and "American".

On the way back to the station I see a Peruvian or Equadorian band much like the ones you see in Helsinki playing in the street. Suddenly a guy who surely must be Japan's most senior citizen tries to drag me to dance, all the time explaining in fairly passable English that he wants to dance with me. I try to refuse politely without stepping on him in the process. He might've been cute if he were 60 years younger and had 30 more teeth, and in an appropriate mood I might have danced with him even if he were not cute, but I don't think it is safe to dance with a guy who was too old to fight in the Russo-Japanese war. Extricating myself from the situation takes some times and makes Japanese women around us double over with laughter.

I get back to Ookayama at eight, and Joy and Krabak are not there yet. They come a bit later. Krabak is in a foul mood, and describes some experiment of his in unprintable words that I haven't heard since some of my aunt's experiments went wrong.

Bugger.