久しぶり – or, I venture out (February 26-27)

Dear readers,

By the combined power of my friends, family, and degree from my Supreme Dictator, I have been hauled out of my laziness seclusion.  Until last weekend, very little out of the ordinary had been going on.  Last weekend, though, the weather turned nice – and Lauren and I ventured out. 

Last Saturday, we climbed a mountain.  And I mean legit climbed, none of that ropeway stuff.   (…in the interest of full disclosure, the ropeway was closed.)  The mountain was Kinka-san, Gifu’s main mountain and the home of Gifu Castle (unspectacular, but fun).  I can see it from my house easily, but had never ventured closer than the occasional pass-by on the bus.  Lauren hauled me out of the apartment, and we explored Gifu Park, which is located at the foot of the mountain, munched on dango, and petted the local stray cats.  I wheedled Lauren into going into the Insect Museum, but beetle-induced nausea quickly chased us both out.  Bug museums – fun in theory, bad after lunch. 

(In “It’s-a-small-world-after-all” news, I was hunting down a pharmacy in search of ibuprofen while Lauren chilled at the park, and ended up buying it from a nice lady pharmacist who had lived in Beaverton, Oregon, of all places.)

After the motrin kicked in, we headed up the mountain, via the “Meditation Trail,” rated easy.  Easy on what scale, GOD ONLY KNOWS.

It was an hour of scrambling up almost-vertical jagged rock-faces without the benefit of rails.  Lauren sustained a few shin bruises and I almost followed some rocks down the mountainside at one point, but we eventually triumphed, and celebrated with green tea-flavored ice cream.  The squirrel village(!) at the summit was closed, unfortunately, so we didn’t get to feed them, but next time!  Gifu Castle, again, was unspectacular, but our 200yen admission netted us the MOST RIDICULOUS Oda Nobunaga keychain I’ve ever seen.  He was bright green, with a face consisting SOLELY of two bright red eyebrows and a small triangle beard.  One of my third years lost it laughing when she spotted it in the middle of class.

Anyway.  The next day, we biked from my house to the main Gifu train station, which we’d been afraid to do before.  It’s only(?) a 6k haul, but given Gifu’s hilliness, we weren’t really eager to try.  It turned out to be much more doable than we thought, though, and discovered a quirky “natural cafe” on the way, with a massive white turtle who lived on the front porch and decor that reminded us of The Tao of Tea in Portland.  Lauren dropped a knitted glove somewhere along Gifu’s main drag and was most distraught, so we frantically retraced our steps only to find that some nice person had left it on a utility post along the sidewalk – back where we started.  Yay Japan!