Hitting the pavement without our trusty guide

October 23

We tried to book a room in Beppu (a balmy resort town of unique hot springs, pachinko parlors and sex museums).

The telephone makes the already daunting task of communicating with a japanese speaker completely impossible. Without the back-up of hand signals I was quickly discouraged. I could use the phrase book to ask questions, but then couldn't understand the answers given.

The woman on the other end hung up on me.

Breakfast with Champions

The manager of our hotel took us out to breakfast at a local cafe. He only knew a handful of english words, but was determined to communicate with us. We were able4to gather that he's 60 years old, and that when he was 17 he competed in Judo for the Tokyo Olympics. He said "World Champion" a lot and laughed. He showed us his cauliflowered ears proudly. Years of grappling made them unrecognizable. He told us that his son is a boxer in Las Vegas (later, his wife proudly showed us a magazine picture of him, she's so cute when she beams like that!).

As we hit more language barriers he enlisted the help of two cram school students sitting a few tables away. They helped him to ask Matt about his job and schooling. They discussed science and technology. The boys giggled and smoked constantly.

I let them talk and concentrated on the breakfast that has been brought to me: pizza toast, weiners, a salad of iceburg lettuce and wakame (seaweed) with mayonaise dressing. It's not my usual morning fare, but it's tasty. Familiar and foreign all at once.

  Museums and the like are normally closed on Mondays, so we just went to the castle park and an electronics store with Dave. A fun, mellow day, but still too much walking. I felt like if I looked down at my feet I'd see that they had worn away to stubs.

Dave had to work in the evening, so we were on our own for supper. We were totally intimidated by the idea of walking into a new restaurant by ourselves so we chickened out and went back to the sushi chain restaurant from the night before. Sushi is so much better here than back home!

We tried some new things, most of which we could not identify (but we did not try the things that looked like aliens). I managed to order a pair of beers. The waitress giggled. How can my accent make the word beeru sound funny?

I used a hand signal I had found in a book to order the check. More giggles. I found out later that it actually means "no, stop it!".

Culture shock was starting to settle in.

Damn it!

I had naively thought that being ready for it this time would prevent it. Not so.

The sound of japanese words started to grate on me. I couldn't stand to have the TV on in our room that night. It felt like such a burden to even be there, surrounded by people I couldn't talk to. I started to panic.