Japan, Day 4: Training, earthquake

Bobby and I woke up early and had breakfast in the café inside the hotel. Their idea of “western style” breakfast is kind of interesting. There was what appeared to be a fried egg...okay, normal so far...except it looked kind of weird and the yolk tasted funny...but whatever. Then there was fruit, two pineapple pieces and a strawberry. That's good. And yogurt, plain but semi-sweetened yogurt with kind of an odd texture. And a little cup of miso soup (by the way, they drink their miso soup out of little tea cups rather than eating it in a bowl with a spoon like we do in America). Kind of an odd choice for breakfast, but whatever. There was also a small garden salad, a small bit of potato salad, a little bit of corn, cooked but cold broccoli with mayo on it (They seem to love mayonnaise here, and they'll put it on just about anything...yuck), bread and butter, and get this – meatloaf – for breakfast! The meatloaf, strangely enough, was actually the best part of the whole thing. Oh, and when I asked for milk for a drink, they asked me heated or iced. I chose iced, thinking it weird that they'd offer warm milk (hardly anyone drinks warm milk in the States anymore, and even so, I'd only heard of drinking it at bedtime). And they actually meant iced. Not just cold, but milk with ice cubes in it. How very strange some things here are.

I went with Bobby to the first ninjutsu class of the day, because a man named Shiraishi was teaching it, and Bobby had been saying that I had to take at least one class with Shiraishi-sensei because he was so friendly. He was, indeed, very nice and the class went slow enough for me to actually catch on to a couple of things, unlike when I was in the other class, so that was fun. Afterwards, we went to this little tabi shop in town. Tabi are those socks that have the big toe separated from the other four. It's like a mitten for your foot. That's the traditional footwear for ninjutsu (they have tabi shoes as well for outside training), and the adorable old woman who runs the shop makes her entire living because the the main dojo for Bujinkan ninjutsu is right down the street. I think that's just wonderful. Then we got lunch at an Italian-style Japanese restaurant in town. I was a little bit afraid of what they thought Italian food was supposed to be like, but it wasn't that bad. Bobby had spaghetti bolognese, and I had something I don't recall that was kind of like a rice lasagna (meat, cheese, and sauce cooked on top of rice). It was all pretty good. They have some strange sodas here, which we both tried. Mine, C. C. Lemon, is this very lemony soda, not very sweet, but still not too sour, and it's got a ton of vitamin C in it. Bobby's was this green soda that was melon-flavored. He liked it, but I thought it was kind of weird. Anyway, it was back to the honbu for Bobby to take a more classes, and I went back to the hotel to do some homework.

Me taking a stance in front of the honbu

Bobby in stance in front of the honbu

At some point in the middle of the afternoon, the hotel room started to shake. I'd felt this before, so I didn't pay it any mind. But then it just kept going. Most of the tremors up to this point had lasted less than a minute. This one went on for probably a full five, and on top of that, the shaking got worse and worse as it went. The other ones I could either barely feel, or they only made me feel like I was on a moving train. This one, however, was big. The whole room was visibly moving back and forth, and I could hear the vibrations in the earth. It was really scary. I think the worst part about it was the fact that I was by myself. Bobby wasn't going to be back until much later in the evening, and it's not like I know anyone else here. I'd heard from Bobby later that he was outside when it happened, and he could actually see the ground moving, like there was a dragon under the surface, is how he described it. There was no damage, though, to the structures around us and nobody was injured. The only after effect on my hotel room was the internet cutting out for a little while. It isn't the best connection in the world to start with, so that wasn't a huge deal. It only freaked me out because it was my line of communication to the outside world and it had been cut off, but it was restored in less than an hour. I was still unsettled for the rest of the evening until Bobby came home safe. There were other tremors almost at regular intervals for the rest of the night, but none as bad as that first one. I found out later that this one was much closer to the surface than some of the earlier ones, so even though the magnitude was about the same, even a little less than the one the night we got here, the one that was further underground we didn't feel as much. The Japanese do know what they're dealing with, though. The modern buildings are all built to withstand violent shaking, and in many places, hanging light fixtures are not to be seen. In my hotel room, for instance, there's nothing on the ceiling that can fall on me, the desk is sturdy, and the mirrors are all on one wall (making it easy to avoid them in case they fall and break). Even the window has solid shutters that close in front of it to keep you away from the glass.