Day Eleven: Giant Squid

Six-thirty mornings are so not my forte.

Of course, it could have been a seven-thirty morning if I’d read the clock right.

I woke up in a panic at six-thirty-four because I thought my alarm hadn't gone off for seven-twenty-five. After practically throwing myself off the bed, I nearly had heart failure at the sight of a giant squid in my room. It was pale, bigger than a man, and was floating in a tank of water. A woman poked its eye and it twitched!

Oh, it was also on the T.V.

It turned out that I’d left the T.V. on overnight, and when I woke up there was a giant squid on the news. So much for not running into one, mother! Irrational fear my foot! I sure proved you wrong!

I had rushed through my entire morning routine before it even occurred to me to check the clock. When I saw how early it still was, I sulked by myself for a few minutes, annoyed over my stupidity. Then I had a swift recovery when I realized that waking up so early meant I had time to watch more Kamisama Hajimemashita.  So I guess it turned out to not be such a bad thing after all.

The first place we visited was the space museum. I know that it was about satellites because that was what we went to look at in the museum itself, and that was what the first video we watched (which was in English) talked about. This was where Tomo decided he was going to be an astronaut when he grows up. I really don’t know what he’s thinking. He’s a horse. Horses don’t get to go up in space. But I just don’t have the heart to tell him that.

I don’t know if I’m getting an inflated sense of self-importance here, but it feels like I’m an object of fascination to a lot of people. They seem very interested in talking to me and occasionally getting pictures with me. And I know that I’m not terribly photogenic; I have a tendency to look either really sleepy, or like I’m planning to kill the photographer in his/her sleep. I also give off this “I’m awkward. Please don’t try to talk to me, you’ll only regret it. Despite being asked the same questions more times than I can count, I still don’t have good answers. I also don’t speak Japanese. In photos, I tend to look like I’m plotting murder. I’m not, really. It just looks that way,” aura. For this reason, it’s a complete puzzle to me as to why people seem to want to talk to me. (I bet that by the time you reached the end of this sentence, you had to re-read the beginning because the middle was so long you’d forgotten what it was about.)

Another long drive later brought us to the Nikko shrines and temples. The amount of people there annoyed me, but it was still really neat. The temples were incredibly detailed, and you had to take off your shoes before going in which was fun. I am completely in love with the shrines, and I want to move to Japan so I can live near that shrine in the park. Or maybe I’ll live in the shrine. That might be a stupid idea, but you've got to admit, it’s still a little stronger than the “I’m going to live in the forest and eat berries” plan I've been considering for a while.

And for the grand finale of the day, we went to stay with Otosan’s and Okasan’s son and his family. They have three girls all under the age of twelve, and they were adorable! They played a board game with me. Everyone has two characters, and you move the characters around the board according to the number you get after rolling the dice. When someone rolls the ghost, everyone panics and the ghost moves three squares. He has to come out of the corridor first, but after that he proceeds to hunt everyone down while you all try to run for cover in the other rooms. I won, which was kind of awesome.

I’m truly terrified that someday I will find out what happens when a girl with cephalophobia (a word I made up for a fear of giant squids) comes face-to-face with a giant squid. I suspect it will involve fainting and the unfortunate release of bladder contents.