September 2001

I have read several parting articles in this newsletter and now it is my turn. I have to say good-bye now. I am happy about going home, meeting my family, my friends, and dog, and visiting around all the places which are familiar to me. On the other hand, I will miss Japan very much because I like a lot of things here: theatre, matsuri, jinja, o-tera, food, and people - both gaijin and Japanese.

In this school year, I was a scholarship student at Wakayama University. You may know that Wakayama Uni. is on the top of a hill. That will become important data a little later.

I arrived here last October. I arrived one day and from the next we started commuting to school every working day. I used "we" in the last sentence because there were two of us here from Hungary.

When the two of us rode our bicycles it was like an adventure. I can never forget the approaching Japanese ladies who occasionally put up their umbrellas in case of rain, or in case there was a possibility of rain. You can imagine how happy I was when 'tsuyu' finished. I thought, "No rain means no umbrellas!" But now I know that was a false hope. As the weather turned bright and sunny, the ladies used their beautiful but dangerous umbrellas even more often. Why do they use them instead of sun cream? If you, my reader, are a practiced cyclist, you know how frightening these one-handed umbrella riders can be.

Whilst riding our cycles, another repeated obstacle we had to get over was the road repairs. We passed through a road works very often, where some kind man helped the pedestrians, mostly running late, to cross that road section.

Beyond the ladies and the road works, I have to mention the "kokosei occurrence". These youngsters are used to riding their bikes side by side. This was one of my favourite scenes. At least I felt like a warrior from the Middle Ages. More accurately, I mean that situation when the good warrior (of course me) and the enemies start fighting and run against each other. So let's imagine a bridge, let's name it Kitajimabashi, where the pavement is narrow, and from the opposite direction at least two, but commonly three or four guys are coming side by side. In the first days I was frightened as at that time I had not even made friends with my bicycle yet. So I stopped at the widest place on the pavement, giving way to them with a shameful feeling of taking to my heels. But fear not, it has changed. After a few weeks, or perhaps months, I never stopped on the pavement side again. When I saw the "kokosei phenomena" coming closer and closer to me, it would get my adrenaline flowing. In most cases they would make an Indian file before passing beside me.

This little 'everyday adventure' to school took us thirty minutes. Then we parked our pedals and started climbing the university's hill. If you are in a hurry, the hill climbing in a forced march takes ten minutes, and then another ten minutes to get to our building on the campus. If the weather is hot, we get very wet before we reach the campus where the air-conditioning means the danger of getting a cold. When the weather is chilly we put on a lot of pullovers, but because of the cycling and the climbing, we get sweaty again.

Maybe you know or have experienced that Japanese schools are not heated well, or not as much as I need, so we sweaty riders start to feel cold again very, very quickly. If I learned any lesson from this weather / bicycle / University triple connection, it was to always have an extra shirt and 'nodo-ame' with me when I attempt to visit Wakayama Uni.

I racked my brains as to what to write before leaving. I had very many happy moments, beautiful days and so on here. Nevertheless, 'cycling to school' was my most common daily routine so how could I forget it?

Emily Typhoon

Posted on September 2001 in the following categories: Opinions, Stories and Information | TrackBack(108)