At the skyway we saw a small temple and had a gorgeous view of the city. Also, in Japan, when something say it leaves at 3, it really leaves at 3 within about 10 seconds or so, including our skyway tram, which became a problem this time. After a bit of delay, we headed over to kabuki where we saw men dressed as women exhorting their troubles. Their flowing costumes and the classic Japanese backgrounds were gorgeous. They also had little shadow assistants who would come and give the actors chairs or attach new layers to their clothing. Of course we understood nothing of the actual plot and Pete wasn’t much help as apparently his Japanese isn’t good enough for that either. One of Pete’s fellow English teachers was there, but we didn’t see her. Before the third and final act we snuck out to a chicken yakitori place because we were darn hungry and it’s really hard to concentrate on something you can’t understand. After that, it was off to Pete’s house, where I did some mild travel planning. At home, I didn’t plan anything after Tokushima other than our destinations, so I had a lot to do when we got to Tokushima :). Unfortunately it turns out that thanks to Japanese wrestling ticket machines not returning seats when people cancel their reservations and because the wrestlers were involved in some crazy gambling scandal, there was no way for us to watch sumo wrestling even if we went to Nagoya, which was a bit sad.
The next day we got a really late start after 12 and so decided to take it easy. We headed out to lunch at the train station at Lotteria burgers. I had egg and teriyaki sauce on my burger which was a little meh. We then went gift shopping so I got my mom a solar powered waving cat and I got a froman handkerchief. The Benjamin equivalent here (¥10000) we refer to as the man since he looks so self-assured on the bill and also because man in Japanese means 10000. We call the guy on the ¥1000 note the froman in reference to the man and because he has a sweet fro going on. From there we went to the book shop to find a hiragana/katakana book to teach ourselves a little Japanese but I couldn’t find anything in-between a textbook and a phrasebook. We then headed to the roof and found a little amusement park with its own little shrine, right on top of the super commercial shopping center. Very Japanese. From there we headed to Mister Donut and got some green tea donut hole like things. At the supermarket we marvelled at the expensive melon sand bought candy with names like For Men and Black Ghana, as well as potato sticks like fries. Heading home, we saw 90 minute reviews of Attack of the Clones and The Phantom Menace which were pretty hilarious. We ordered in pizza in our boxers - thanks America for that innovation! We had the choice of some truly crazy squid pizzas with A cheese or B cheese. I think we ended up choosing something like pepperoni with B cheese. I’m still not sure whether or not B cheese is the cheese that didn’t make the A team, but it tasted okay.
On Friday, we started our day with a trip to Pete’s school. We met a bunch of students there who said hi and saw Pete’s fellow English teachers as well as the head English teacher who lent us her bikes. One girl was particularly excited to greet Peter sensei but was shocked speechless when Raynor and I followed behind him :). Not too many gaijin in Tokushima, it turns out… Everyone was hard at work as there were clubs and it was teacher interview day, even though it was summer vacation. The work ethic in Japanese schools is impressive! We also met the school’s mascot cat who was pretty cute. My flip flops broke here as well after surviving Vanderbilt, China, and Europe, so I had to wear running shoes for the rest of our trip. We then went to Pete’s favorite sushi and sashimi place. We got a firsthand illustration of the kindness and politeness of Japanese people when after ordering a bunch of cucumber rolls, salmon, and tuna, our bill was only ¥3000. The owner and his wife were very interested in us and where we were from and must have comped us some food and drinks, although our waitress seemed a bit anxious about the fact that we didn’t understand any of their combo dishes and just ordered individual items. After lunch we headed to Naruto city to see the whirlpools and the Onaruto Bridge, which is like the Golden Gate bridge but longer and not as red. This experience also taught me that the anime Naruto apparently takes place near a real location! We took the local train (yay Rail Pass) and a taxi to get there. The whirlpools were feeling a bit lazy that day but everything else was great. A kindly old man even gave us a free set of postcards on the way out! On our way out we got mixed up with some cute Japanese girls who wanted us to take a picture for them. Back in town we headed to an izakaya to eat and then headed to bed after some more travel planning for Hiroshima and more Red Letter Media reviews.