Weekend wrap

Last weekend was unusually devoid of commitments, with no soccer practice on Saturday and nothing booked on Sunday.

So we did the obvious thing and headed out to the shopping centres. Our main mission on Saturday was to finalise a set of formal clothes for Ruby’s graduation on Wednesday. The Japanese love a good ceremony, with all the clothing and finery that this implies, and the graduation outfit has proven to be a major undertaking, mainly because we weren’t too certain on the dress standards, having had no experience in the matter. Of course, you can guarantee success by lashing out and spending $200 on a highly formalised jacket and skirt combination; but instead we made it hard for Ruby by insisting on buying clothes that were more reasonably priced and that she might actually be inclined to put on again at some point in the future.

But Felix, as you might imagine, is not particularly keen on hanging around looking at Ruby trying on skirts, so we decided to start the day with a bit of fun by heading over to the game centre and wasting a bit of time at the air hockey tables (Felix beat me again!) and the Print Club sticker-making machines (where Ruby and Eleni spent a good 40 minutes on a single sheet of stickers). There’s a huge array of noisy machines at the game centre, including a depressing number of those mind-numbingly boring ones where you chuck in tokens and try to push the chocolate bar into your chute knowing all the while that the odds are hopelessly stacked against you. Or the ones where you try to pick up a cheap stuffed toy that you don’t want with a set of pincers that you know don’t work properly. (I am proud to report that we have successfully brainwashed the kids to stay away from these ones.) There is even a Japanese drumming video game complete with a set of drums and massive sticks; I don’t know how you’re supposed to do to win. Do you have to yell out at regular intervals?

We had lunch at the supermarket. This isn’t as tragic as it sounds. The Japanese are right into take-away foods, and supermarket lunch boxes are of exceptional quality and really cheap. For just ¥400 you can get a big tray filled with all sorts of goodies: meat or fish, salad, pickles and condiments, and a big wad of rice. And of course there are sushi rolls, fried foods, sandwiches, even pasta dishes. There is even a little corner area where you can sit and eat your trays and order a coffee (it wasn’t too good though).

We looked around for some graduation clothes and finally settled on a skirt, but couldn’t find a suitable top so decided to head over to Mihara’s other major shopping centre on the far side of town (if you can call ten minutes far).  On the way we stopped in at Mihara station to watch the Shinkansen trains go through. Again, this may sound a bit tragic, but a massive great 16-carriage train whizzing past at 250 km/h is quite a sight when it’s only about ten metres away. Even Ruby was impressed.

At the second shopping centre we were finally able to locate a suitable top, and now we can all rest easy in the knowledge that we have successfully prevented potential shame and embarrassment on Wednesday. We also came across an enormous suit sale and I managed to pick up a rather handsome suit for less than $100, which Eleni has pronounced to be “spunky” as well as a bargain. It’s the first suit I’ve bought since getting married; I figure if I’m going to get out of the house and do some interpreting work I’ll need to look the part. When in Rome etc. I plan to give the new Bag of Fruit a test drive at the graduation ceremony on Wednesday.

To offset all that indoor shopping centre action, the head of the household (that’s me by the way, at least officially here in patriarchal Japan) decreed that the family should do a bit of Gadding About In Nature on the Sunday, so we headed off in the car to discover a couple of waterfalls on our tourist map of the Mihara region. The first waterfall was hidden away on a lonely road through the mountains and took a bit of tracking down, but that was part of the fun really. The second waterfall was located in a national park that comprises Hiroshima Airport, of all things. Somehow they’ve managed to shave off the top of a mountain and carve out a runway on it, and then build a national park around that. It sounds like a ridiculous idea—trying to enjoy nature with planes roaring overhead—and yet, either because there aren’t many planes or the noise is well shielded, you don’t hear a thing. It’s an impressive park too, with hiking trails, barbeque areas, sports grounds, and a bicycle rental service with a network of cycling trails to explore. And it wasn’t even that crowded. We’ll definitely be going back when the weather’s a bit warmer.