The Food Fiasco

May 5 cont...

Seeing how unrealistically far away the lodge I was booked into was, Iwamoto San immediately insisted on canceling it and booking me into where we were now headed. The relief that we didn't have to walk up this precarious winding road was the only preoccupation my mind could manifest to overcome the threatening obsession of remembering whether I had updated my will or not.
It also felt a little bit like when the two teams were being picked and you were the second to last one to be chosen. While standing in the line looking back at the last person, there was that guilt lined relief that you weren't them but empathy with their torture. I was feeling like the guilty relieved person when I realised the friends we had just left behind were going to have to walk this tomorrow.

The lodging was another rustic two storied wooden place complete with attic stairs that lead up to our rooms.

Checking in always reminded me of my skiing days. The urgency to get comfortable was foremost on everyone's agenda so check-ins were usually a hyped up exchange of crucial survival information. Akemi San had translated for Myoko San who had said that I'd better ask any questions I could while I still had Akemi San because I was on my own in the language department once we left her - but I couldn't think of any right then. The only one I had now was whether I was booked to have dinner (having requested no meals at the other place) but it didn't feel appropriate to ask when baths and bedding were the obvious topics being negotiated right then.

Carrying a useful lump of concrete up a rock face was preferable to the torture of getting my backpack up those cute, harmless looking vertical attic stairs. With the state my body was in, I would have happily slept in the empty bathtub on the ground floor if given the choice. Luckily, due to my adroit ineptness at putting on the slip-ons and maneuvering all of my material entourage, I was the last to go up them so no-one witnessed my head almost being detached from my neck in the process.

When I finally did get to my room, I just wanted to collapse, forever, but I had a room mate. I had seen Miyuki San a number of times a few days earlier when I was traveling with Yahiro San. She was thrilled to finally meet me and launched herself at my phrase book with a gusto I found disturbing after such an arduous day. She must have realised that my eyes were cast down, not because I was in deep contemplation of everything she was saying, but of the orange warmth of my inner eyelids that were seducing me to stay, because she suddenly said I probably wanted to unpack and relax.

Just then, Myoko San arrived wearing her yukata and urged me to get my laundry. I was wearing most of it, so I hurriedly changed into my yukata and followed her down to the twin tubs out the back. They were so old that there was a hole in the side and I could see the chamber. My tired brain looked at it with perverse fascination, imagining the carnage if it detached itself while on the spin cycle, when I realised Myoko San was now urging me to have my bath.
I was so tired, rather than resist, I just got my shower things and went to the bathroom - deciding to work it all out when I got there. It was spectacularly easy and pleasant and I felt like the latest model fresh off the shelf when I emerged.

When I got back to the room, not being able to hold out any longer, I ate a rice ball left over from the lunch settai. Just as I was finishing it, Miyuki San said it was time for dinner. Feeling like the little girl from the Creme Eggs ad with the telltale signs of cheating down the side of my mouth, I discretely wiped my face as I followed Miyuki San down to the dining room.

Everyone, including another gentleman who we kept seeing during the day, was seated waiting expectantly as we walked in. As I was following Miyuki San, I kept thinking, this could be very good or this could be very bad.

At first scan of the table it took a monumental effort to hold back the motherload of tears that wanted to explode from my face. All I could see was deep red slabs of raw fish, baby octopus tentacles and other things still too foreign for me to launch my vegetarian taste buds into anything but reverse.
The owner had obviously spent a lot of time and thought on the preparation and by the way she was hovering, I could see she needed to know if I was going to be able to eat any of it, or whether her husband should leave now to get to the local MacDonalds 70kms away before closing.

The one safe bet was always gohan. Rice.

To stop my stomachs threatened appearance, I accepted the bowl of rice Myoko San offered me, then slowly found things that, if not recognizable, didn't look like they could grab hold of my tongue as they went down.  Just when I was gaining confidence that my charade of heartily devouring the food was working, and everyone's attention went to their own plates, my sneaky rice-ball came back to haunt me.  I was very full very quickly.  Much too quickly for my companions sense of an adequate sized meal and I spent the next hour fending off the numerous unsolicited food advances being thrust at me like a Ninja on nightshift...