Lost in Ogawa

Fall is here. Well, it’s been here for awhile and it gets colder by the day. Winter is quickly approaching if not already here. Recently while I was sitting at my desk in the teacher’s lounge studying Japanese, I took a minute and just looked out the window and noticed something I should have noticed earlier. The leaves on the tree have changed colors either to a shade of orange or a shade of yellow. Some of the trees are nearly naked because all the leaves have already fallen. Why didn’t I notice this earlier? Isn’t it funny how sometimes we fail to see the obvious. All I had to do was just stop what I was doing and take a look around me. Autumn in Japan is quite a different scenary than autumn in L.A. It’s definitely a pretty sight not to be missed. Then again, Fall brings forth previews of the chilly wind that is soon to be expected and that’s not a good thing!

The Autumn wind also brought with them my parents from L.A. They actually stopped to visit family in Taiwan prior to visiting me in Japan. This was good because they brought me goodies from Taiwan and L.A. In fact, my parents and I spent what would have been Thanksgiving in the States in my nice cold apartment. Obviously it didn’t feel like Thanksgiving because there was no turkey or football on TV. Worst of all, while you folks in the States were kicking back at home, I was at work teaching the future of Japan. Nevertheless, explaining to my students about Thanksgiving was very nostalgic but at the same time very important for them to understand why we treasure Thanksgiving so much……..the 5 day weekend we get right?!!

For the first time in my life, I gave my parents my money to use and to spend willingly. It took a big hit on my bank account though! Oh well. I took them to Nikko, a rather famous place to visit in Japan known for the historic shrines and the beautiful views of nature. What I was hoping to show my parents were the various colors of the leaves on the trees but instead all we saw were mostly naked trees with a pile of leaves on the ground. Apparently, Nikko is higher up in the mountains where the weather is colder and the leaves change colors faster and die sooner than those in Tokyo. We stayed overnight at an “Onsen” (Japanese hot bath) hotel where we relaxed and cooked ourselves in burning water until we were nice and toasty. Going to bed after a visit to the onsen makes sleeping a whole lot better. While my parents were here, I felt a little stressed. For some reason I felt their visit was more of an inspection and I worked long and hard the weekend before to clean my apt. from top to bottom. They were satisfied with my situation but they’re expecting me to come home after a year of JET. I told them we’ll need to discuss that later…
My parents are back in LA now but Fall is still here and its freaking FREEZING in my apartment. The morning and night are the worst. I can barely feel my toes! Every morning I watch the news only to see the “high for today” is 15 deg. celsius. Somebody help me when Winter is in full swing!! Brrrrrrrr

Pictures from Nikko
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/tonykao0627/album?.dir=1f61

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 1st, 2004 at 2:01 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.