Hello all.
It is a pretty balmy day in Akune today. The temperature is an even 30 degrees and the humidity has climbed up to almost 96%. Some of you may be asking yourselves, ‘Isn’t that like living in an open air sauna, all day, everyday?’ What I am thinking is, ‘Hey, stop reading my mind.' Yes the weather is a factor, among other things, of my new life in Kagoshima, but I thank my lucky stars everyday that prior to coming to Akune this year I had already experience a Japanese summer, and a Kyoto summer at that.
Whenever I mention the heat, I, more often than not, hear in response, “At least we’re not in Kyoto.” It’s true, honestly. Two summers ago in Kyoto I would wake up to the piercing sound of a thousand cicadas and it would already be 30 degrees out. After biking to school and shedding a quarter of my body mass in perspiration it would start to rain, torrentially. Finally after it stopped raining, around lunch time, it would be 35 degrees and I would ride the wave of heat exhaustion all the way home to the safety of my air conditioned cocoon that was my dorm. Much like in Kyoto, Akune summers require perseverance, thin under layers, endurance and durable sweat rag, preferably a dark colour. What happens, though, when it seems like one may actually be melting into one’s tatami mats during dinner? What does one do when their air cooler has been on so long that one fears the next electric bill? How can one beat the heat?
Honestly, to beat the heat, I had to go head-to-head with it: when I wanted a dinner of cold ramen noodles I had to boil them first, and with a small apartment the heat from my gas range took no time at all to diffuse throughout my whole kitchen creating an environment reminiscent of Eilat in Israel; when I wanted ice cream and fruit to make a cold smoothie with the sweet blender I just found last week (yeah!) I had to bike through the dank streets of my neighbourhood to the grocery store with my back pack, nearly becoming my fifth appendage. As I said before, endurance is the key. A perfect example was my trek out to 脇本海水浴場 (Wakimoto Beach) last weekend.
I had a lazy morning in my air-conditioned tatami safe haven, watching Japanese baseball on T.V. (the fans never stop cheering, N-E-V-E-R stop) and decided that the nearly lifeless breeze coming from my air cooler was not going to be sufficient to tackle the heat that the forecast had predicted for the day. I needed an ocean to cure my heat exhaustion blues. I shouldered my MEC back pack (thank you Laura) filled it with fruit, water, flip-flops and a bottle of sunscreen (thank you Mom) and hit the scortching concrete on my way to Wakimoto beach.
With a squinty-eyed look that could put a grandfather in the back row of an I-max theatre to shame, I head north on route 3, hitched a louie on to the 365 and twenty five minutes later I was basking in ocean on the spacious, sandy stage of Wakimoto. I soon learned from a localsporting a skin-tight technicolour getup that I was lucky to have come on that day for if I had come a week later the beach would have been closed due to the start of クラゲ（水母・海月 or Sea Nettle jellyfish） season. Having received that invaluable advice I decided to make the most of my day at Wakimoto and bodysurfed till I could feel the sunburn on my shoulders and face; I have a great tan. The water was the perfect temperature, just like Tel Aviv. The beach was vast and flat, much like the Oregon coast, all I needed was a skim board and I would have been an even happier camper. The waves were just perfect for bodysurfing, but unfortunately did not provide the excitement of the surf like San Diego or Sayulita; there is almost nothing like being pinned to the ocean floor by a surging wall of sea water.
After my utterly revitalizing swim I packed up and headed back to Akune, arriving back home only to discover that I returned even sweatier than I had left. ‘Embrace the heat,’ an omniscient voice beseeched me, ‘and drink plenty of water.’
I made an epic journey yesterday. Well, in comparison to Wakimoto outing it paled in comparison, but it was epic, nonetheless. I took a short bike ride to the Green Sports Centre-‘We Love Sport’-to check out there golf practice range. As I slowly rolled through the independent agricultural operations leading up to the Green Sports Centre I was greeted by the ‘ping’, ‘thwack’ and ‘pitch’ of the range. I had come unarmed, carrying not a single club, under the assumption that I could rent clubs. Luckily there was a huge selection of (tiny) clubs for me to choose from and there was a special going on that evening: 1, 2, or 3 hours, all-you-can-drive. I opted for the one-hour package and hit the range with a tiny pitching wedge and a super retro 3-wood, made out of wood, unheard of to this modern, titanium loving man.
The range was surprisingly full at six o’clock. To my left and to my right, stood tiny Japanese men, chain-smoking and hitting balls as for as the 190 meter fence would allow them. Whoa. I noticed they were hitting it every time. I looked a bit closer, although I didn’t really have too, and noticed that these men, who were maybe eye level with my chest, toted some of the largest drivers I have ever seen. Callaway Big Bertha? Step aside. These men were absolutely creaming these balls with Japanese Godzilla-sized drivers; the sound was amazing. I managed to hit the fence just as high as those around me with my slightly shady Shillelagh. It is, after all, all about the motion in the ocean.
In the face of a wildly different repertoire of golf clubs, chain smoking neighbours and all-you-can-drive deals at the range, unheard of at the Univeristy of Washington or Puetz range, I was reminded of this Japanese proverb:
所変われば品変わる (tokorokawareba, shinakawaru); So many places, so many customs.
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