Day 11 – Strange Days

Last night after Sokes class, we went to the Onsen again. There’s a huge difference between an onsen and a sento. A sento is more of a bath house where people come to wash themselves. The water is just tapwater that gets recycled all the time, sometimes with some ingredients added. An Onsen however is the real thing: this is pumped up water from a source deep down in the earth, full of rich natural minerals and the hot temperature is because it stems from deep under the ground.

It’s important to let your body have the necesary rest. If you don’t do this, the chances of ending up injured raise consideberaly. It’s important to keep your mind fresh. So sleep enough if you can. Some people take a few days off training and than instead of relaxing, they go hiking through the whole country instead. We just had a long sleep and when we finally got up, we finally did our laundry. I was looking forward to a fresh t-shirt and my raincoat was reeking so much that even the Japanese on the train got up to sit somewhere else,.. so it was time indeed. After, we went to Asakusa again. We had nice conveyer belt sushi in the evening and then left for the ryokan.

In Japan, you see all kinds of ingenious inventions applicated in real life. This makes Japanese society very unique in a way. Who else has a waterfall on the sidewall of a hotel? Who else has mirrors in the front of their cars? Who else has a green line on the floor to wait behind it in line on the next train? Or left on the stairways is just standing, and rigth the passing through and upholds those rules? Who else has a GPS for pedestrians on their cellphone? Who else wears mouth masks to protect others from their germs. (The germs will escape on the sides of the mask anyway, but hey: it’s the gesture that counts I guess?) Who else has an umbrella parking where you can lock it until you need it again? Or what about a heated toilet seat with a build in bidet (with different options) and even a sound button for covering up your toilet sounds with flushing sounds. These are just a few of the miriad things that make your experience of the Japanese society very strange.

The Japanese are a strange kind of people indeed. We could never begin to imagine that people could have jobs like singnaling oncoming pedestrians. Or calling the train that leaves and arives, or the liftlady that explains in a few words what you can buy on every floor. In EVERY metro and trainstation, there are people employed to sell tickets, to check tickets, to be there for the travellers if they need any assistance. We saw workers on the street buzy with fixing a fence that wasn’t broken in the first place, okay; I always give both people and things the benefit of the doubt, but the next two days we saw the same worker sitting in fudosa on the street, ocasionally hammering the fence once or twice. Most of these street workers are old men, you’d think they are retired but apparently not,…

Despite all these efforts, there are still numerous people living their lives out on the streets. They gather together in the evening (I guess it’s for safety and comfort) to put up their cartboard boxes. In there they spend the nights. To see people having difficult lives is always hard to see and we can only be greatfull for all the chances that we got and opportunities that we took. Opportunists as we are. Where we see openings we hit the right spot. Even here you can draw parallels to your taijutsu. It’s a lifesaver!