Tsukuba Monogatari: 34th post
Inevitably, my time in Tsukuba is coming to an end. After one false alarm, my Japanese friends seemed to sense that this was the real thing. Unable to get everyone together on the same date, they came up with a crafty solution―have two parties on different nights!
Koizumi-san attended Part 2. He was fascinated by the fact that, since Randy had moved from the hotel into my apartment, I was crashing at Jennifer’s place. “Who cooks?” he asked―drawing a scathing look from yours truly.
So, on the morning of February 6, I said my last goodbyes to Tsukuba. Jennifer drove me to Arakawaoki Station before work. I heaved my 3-ton bag onto a 6-cm open space on the seat of the 8:06 Ueno-yuki, risking dirty looks from Japanese men on the train. No way was I going to be able to lift it onto the overhead baggage shelf.
I left the Siberian landscape of Tsukuba behind me; it was still snow-covered from last week’s fall. It was snowing lightly in Tokyo. I settled into my seat on the Shinkansen and was so engrossed in reviewing training materials (I had been enlisted to deliver one last training for a Company guy in the Nagoya office on my way to Wakayama to visit my friend Penny) that I didn’t look up until Atami. I had missed Odawara! Odawara, where I had lived for seven years, from the mid ’70s to the mid’80s.
I had looked forward to picking out all the familiar landmarks: LIOJ, the school where I taught, on top of the hill, overlooking Odawara Castle; the giant bowling pin on top of Nak Department Store. Then I remembered that the Hikari did not stop in Odawara, instead, speeding past it underground. How could I have forgotten that? The Shinkansen had passed directly beneath one apartment I lived in, rattling it like a San Francisco earthquake! Nevertheless, it felt strange to bypass Odawara.
I felt like a cat with nine lives, and I was closing the brief but vivid Tsukuba chapter. LIOJ and my years in Odawara were an earlier chapter. But that is another tale, for another time.
“Mt. Fuji and Shinkansen.” Courtesy of megawheel 360. Licensed under cc by 2.0.
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