Like Schoolgirls...

J, my buddy from Chicago, left Japan yesterday, bringing an end to a whirlwind 10 days of hosting and traveling. Our adventures were too random and too numerous to post individually, so instead I'll try to synthesize the experience with one word: laughter. Maybe it was the emotional exhaustion induced by visiting the A-Bomb Dome in Hiroshima, or the fact that we spent two solid days temple hopping in the pouring rain in Kyoto, or perhaps it was that we both spent obscene amounts of money paying for Shinkansen train tickets (me) and highly-addictive Starbucks Green Tea Frappucinos (him), but we took the high road in the laugh-or-cry paradox: J and I spent the vast majority of our 4-cities-in-10-days Japanese excursion giggling.

Like schoolgirls.

(See picture above for an illustration of said schoolgirls, taken at Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Temple in Kyoto. These gals peppered us with questions in rapid-fire Japanese while we were visiting the site, which, of course, also induced fits of laughter.)

Granted, most of our adventures were funny in a maybe-you-had-to-be-there sort of way. Like when we both failed to find the deeper meaning in a Zen rock garden called Ryoan-ji in Kyoto, and instead took stupid pictures with potato chips and caught dirty looks from our fellow garden-goers. Or when we ended up in a literally nameless hole-in-the-wall Hiroshima bar with four seats, being served by an already-drunk, Pantera-loving bartender and his four random friends. Or the fact that all of the pictures from the should-be-somber A-Bomb Dome in Hiroshima feature me wearing a ridiculous sweatshirt with the words "Chant a Spell: Do-Vi-Do-Vi-Do" written on the front. I bought it for 800 yen at a second-hand shop in town.

Again. Maybe you had to be there.

J and I spent our last afternoon drinking coffee on the island of Miyajima, watching the sun set over a bright orange tori gate set out in the deep blue bay. We laughed and reminisced about our random experiences together -- and lingered a bit too long on the island. We were late getting to the eki to catch the trains to our next stops -- Tokyo for him to fly back to Chicago and Fukui for me to return to work. J got stuck in Osaka overnight, and I rolled into Fukui at 2:15 a.m., only to be up four hours later to teach a full day at school. Oops.

Missed trains? Gotta either laugh or cry. We, of course, chose the former.