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Ooooook…the long overdue entry is finally arriving. Sorry for the timing. As you can see, I have been making some changes here. (See the previous entry for more information.)
Luke King is the ALT who lives on Iwagijima, one 10 minute ride on the express ferry from Hakatajima’s Kinoura Port. He’s a goofball Australian chap who actually teaches at Iwagi HS more than I do, despite its quasi-official status as “my” school. We frequently wind up teaching together, which is quite entertaining - and great for the 6 students (4 of whom are present on an average day). We discovered that we both neglected to take any action toward making winter plans a few weeks before the holidays were to start. So, we simply decided we’d do something together.
Seriously. That’s pretty much all we did. We had no plan. If you read earlier entries, you know that I had intended to hit Lake Biwa in Shiga Prefecture. Never did. Still haven’t been there. We honestly left Imabari without the foggiest idea about our adventures to come. Ok, we had a really foggy idea - ride the Orange Ferry, get off in Osaka, and mosey on over to Kyoto to crash at J-Hoppers. But that is as far as we got in our thinking. There is something kind of exciting about not having a clue what you’re up to and still having the courage (or stupidity) to go through with it anyway in a foreign country.
For us, things turned out quite well. We wound up staying at the J-Hoppers location for 6 days, despite their popularity and the time of year. We had to extend our stay twice, though, if I remember correctly. Lucky for us, some silly people canceled and we snagged first their spot in a dorm room, and then their private traditional room. Worked for us. Ha ha.
We basically hung out in Kyoto for the whole time, but we did make a day trip into Nara to see the park and accompanying shrines, as well as the famous bowing deer. While in Kyoto we saw the popular sights, such as Kinkakuji (The Golden Pavilion), The Imperial Palace & Gardens, endless shrines and temples, and the inside of at least 2 karaoke companies. We partied it up and had a good time. We also made a day trip out to see Fushimi Inari Taishya, which is still my favorite shrine in Japan - even when compared to Miyajima.
We met a ton of people at the hostel and made friends with almost all of them. The cast of characters for our posse included Clay (a JET in S-A-G-A Saga Prefecture), Chris (a JET in Kagawa Prefecture who is in love with YouTube…except not), Katha (a German gal who is studying in Tokyo), Megumi (a Japanese girl from Shizuoka who is in between jobs and finds herself passing through Kyoto), Josh (an absurdly talented guitarist and singer who I expect to become famous soon), Ethan (an Eikaiwa teacher with Japanese skills that made me really jealous), Yukako (a crazy Japanese girl working at the hostel who I decided to call Giovanna after a conversation about Italy), Rie (the manager of the hostel), Luke (obviously), me (obviously), assorted one-nighters at the hostel, and the assorted random guy from Columbia, SC who I bumped into on the street - sorry for forgetting your name already…
I had great fun on this trip. I left another picture of myself at the hostel. The first one is currently located on the 3rd floor, to the right of the door to the living room. It’s of me and my last hostel-friend, Toshi, eating at the best ramen place in Kyoto. (And yes, it was really really good.) This one is me, having my head crushed by a maniacal Colonel Sanders in front of a KFC in Nara where Luke stopped to buy some chips. No, I did not just make that up. It’s true.
After a wonderful series of 4 a.m. bedtimes and late outings, Luke and I turned our tired bums around and headed home. We decided to take the ferry again, because it is cheap, and it means you can get a good night’s sleep without paying for a hotel room. I can’t complain with that setup. One last thing we did before heading into Osaka to catch our boat…
We woke up and checked out by 10:40, just to make sure we beat the 11:00 deadline. The hostel folks were generous to offer us room to store our bags while we went out for the day. They also supplied me with a few newspaper articles…which I never requested…pertinent to the purchaseability of a certain new video game console…which is not available in Imabari… So, being a complete nerd and a bit of a jerk, I forced Luke to walk for what seemed like hours to find an electronics store from the paper. I walked in, and found that all the systems in question were labeled “Sold Out” on the shelves. Disheartened, I figured I might as well take the opportunity to ask the clerk if it was true - to get the pity stare if nothign else. To my surprise, he turned a sly eye downward and looked back up and said…”We have three.” Without much further ado, I plopped down my yen and bought myself a Christmas present - a Nintendo Wii and the new Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess game to go with it. Like I said - GOOD vacation. 
