Smiled

Today, I continued my streak of being able to wake up early and got up at 8, two hours before my alarm was to go off! I made breakfast, cleaned up around the apartment, got dressed, and started with the things I had planned on doing since the night before. I went to go pay my water bill at the gas station next door, owned by the landlord of my apartment and recently under renovations which include the addition of a car wash! Then, I went to the bank and withdrew some money, mailed a postcard off, and got to the bus stop 14 minutes ahead of time to wait for the bus that would take me to my next destination...

Himeji! Yes, I was off to the nearby town, the nearest place you might actually call a "big city," to look at books! I had had the craving to surround myself with lots of interesting, cheap books and look through them thoroughly one at a time for the past week and it was about time I got out of my little town, so I was off! I fell asleep about halfway through the ride, then woke up when we were almost at the end. I got off at the second to last stop, because it leaves you off not at the train station but right in front of a huge 100 yen shop that connects to a massive used bookstore! I went straight inside, and headed right to the rows and rows of books and just dove right in.

I spent a pretty good amount of time there and boy was I happy I had come. There was a special deal going on for all the books that were re-priced at 100 yen (which was about half of them) which lowered their price to 50 yen at one and 100 yen for three! I was so excited, I felt like a little child a little bit. I also felt like a huge nerd because I was walking fast all over the whole store seeing if I could find any other 100 yen books. But I also felt like a thrifty nerd, because I thought of how fun it would be to play a game in which I try to get the best three books possible for only 100 yen.

Looking around, I had a chance encounter with my past when I noticed a lot of books by an author named Yamada Amy. Most of the books seemed like they had to do with her relationship with African-Americans. I looked her up in my phone (technology can be useful sometimes) and found out that she's a celebrated Japanese writer who feels really connected to African-American culture and writes a lot about it. Then, I remembered that I had read about her when I was writing my thesis senior year of college. The author of the article I was citing had used her work as evidence of the prevalent, condescending attitude in Japan toward blacks, calling Yamada's books more akin to racist pornography than the bold, taboo-defying work it was said to be. Looking at the titles of some of her books, such as Animal Logic and Make Me Sick, I could see what the author had meant. Nevertheless, if she's such a prominent writer in Japan today, and the books are already used and only 100 yen, I figured I would do well to find out what her work was like for myself. Plus, one of her most celebrated novels, like much of her work, isn't about African-Americans at all, but the youth in modern Japan, so I bought that one, too. Alright, I was set with two books, After-School Music and Bedtime Eyes.

The third book was a little harder to find - once I started actually looking for names, I lost momentum - but I ended up going with the only Oe Kenzaburo book in the store, Until the Savior is Punched: The Burning Tree, Part 1. This one didn't feel as good as the first two, mainly because it looked way harder to read taking into account the length and the complex, abstract, psychological topics Oe usually deals with. But I wanted to get a work of his, so I went with it. Maybe I'll read it one day. On my last search around the store, I found a little book called I Worked as an Office Lady for Ten Years, which looked like really interesting and funny light reading, so I got that, too. Yeah! Four books for 150 yen! That's $1.67 for all you U.S. people out there. Very nice!

I left the bookstore in a good mood, checking the 100 yen shop on the way out to see if they had any take-fumi (little pads you can step on to massage your feet and improve your circulation), but they didn't. So, I headed on down to the station, picking up a delicious and huge chicken sandwich for pretty cheap from a Brazilian food cart on the way. I had recently been inspired by a friend of mine who listens to language tapes whenever he drives and is constantly studying languages. I found, when I went for a ride with him, that I could understand his Chinese and Russian instructional tapes, even though they were based in Japanese, and got excited to try getting some tapes of my own to listen to while I'm doing other things. The bookstore at the station, bigger than the last one and only dealing in new items, had a few for the languages I was interested in (Korean and Filipino), but they were really expensive and not worth the money. While I was there, I also searched for anything else that would be good in my study of Japanese, but didn't find much. I left the store with nothing, but still had a hard time getting out, as I do often with bookstores - there's just so much to see.

After that, I went to a store called Mujirushi Ryouhin (or Muji, for short), which sells clothing and household goods store and was right below. I needed some pants. I found some great black levis, too, which then turned out to be a little over 4,000 yen, which was waayy over my price range, so nothing came of that. I found a cool long-sleeved shirt that was striped green and gray, but the neck was too low. I left and went to the underground shopping mall.

I decided I need a break right then and there!, so I went to a little bakery/cafe place where I got a yomogi-red bean bun and brought it to the register.

"That'll be 140 yen," said the girl at the register.
"Oh, and I'll have an iced milk, too, please," I added. I called the item by the name I've usually heard it called in these kinds of bakery/cafes, "aisu miruku." As I was finishing speaking, the girl, looking down, motioned up to the LCD screen where the price was written in green numbers. I paused for a second.
"An iced milk?" I asked again. She looked up. Her eyes were wide and she looked very confused.
"Um, do you have iced milk?" I tried again. She looked at me blankly. "Gyunyu?" I used the Japanese word for just milk this time. I laughed a little bit and smiled to ease her what seemed like combination of fear and anxiousness.
"Uhh...all the items we have are written here," the girl motioned geometric-softly up to her right, where there was a chalkboard with drinks written on them. She seemed at a total loss for what to do.
I looked up at the chalkboard, hoping I wasn't going to have to explain what an iced milk was, and found it second from the top: aisu miruku, iced milk. I pointed up and asked,
"Iced milk?"
She looked up and back down, looking even more bewildered than before. Her senpai, or older, employee had been standing next to her since the confusion began, and to her the girl said hesitantly,
"Iced milk?"
The older girl looked down and nodded, biting her lips. A smile was coming out of the corners.
"Okay!" the younger girl said. She snapped back into action, ringing up the order, and the older employee went to the back, called out,
"Iced milk!"
and began to prepare the drink. It was all ready before I even found a place to sit down. I relaxed, snacked on my meal, and looked over my new books excitedly, as the girls talked and laughed loudly behind me. They seemed to be the only employees working at the time, and it looked like they got along well. They both instantly seemed a lot younger as soon they were talking at ease amongst themselves.

After that, I went up a flight of stairs and outside to look for another used bookstore I had seen before on my trips to Himeji but never gone in. I hadn't been able to find it earlier today, but this time I went a little bit further and found it in a little alley! This place was amazing! From the entrance to the skinny staircase that led from the sidewalk up and across every single wall in the small little room, everything was lined with books! I got really excited in this place, too. I was moved all over the place, exclaiming to myself at all the neat books they had (the owner had moved downstairs to the next-door cafe he runs once I got up, leaving the place to only me!). I even found such familiar items as Condorito comic books, works on Nihilism (translated) (There was also a full Nietzsche set in German!), and a Rainbow Fish book! This place was beautiful, and I stayed in there just reveling in it for probably an hour at least. In one corner of the room, I found a beautiful big volume of a book on Latin America with lots of photographs and information for only 100 yen (marked down from 300)! I was tempted to buy it, but figured I didn't really need it, it would be cool if a Japanese person came in and found it and had their interest sparked by it (or something like that), and put it back. After a while another guy came in, and I, also thinking of how I'd been missed buses consecutively in order to stay longer in the store, left after a little bit.

Afterward, I went into the cafe next door and accidentally kicked over the owners wooden "We're Open" sign, which called him out of the cafe and prompted a "Sorry!" out of me. I went in and ordered a coffee. It was a little much, but I reasoned I was paying for the environment and that the money was going in a good direction. The cafe was in a similar state as the shop, lined completely on one wall with bookshelves that leaned like they were ready to fall over onto you but you knew (or figured) they wouldn't. I like that, the way some portions of bookshelves in used bookstores like this look like they're ready to tumble over, while others look as securely and immovably stuck in place as possible. I found out about a photography show that was going to be held in a gallery upstairs above the cafe next week, then I left.

I walked down a ways to a restaurant I like to go to when I'm out in the city and can find it. I ordered a salt-grilled sanma (pike or saury, a type of fish) set meal from the machine, but it gave me a ticket for curry rice. I didn't notice until it was too late, but upon thinking about it a bit I figured I would only bring it up if it was more expensive than what I had originally wanted (a flashing feeling to my life in the U.S.). It was about 200 yen cheaper, so I went with it. A blessing (or hint) from the heavens. I missed the bus I had been planning on taking so I could relax and eat, so after finishing dinner I went back to the first bookstore, which is also attached to a movie and music shop, and hung around for a while there. I was looking for "The Good, the Bad, and the Weird," that movie recently made in Korea, but I couldn't find it. I decided I wasn't going to miss another bus to keep looking so I booked it on down the main street, got and out of the bus station and to the bus one minute before it was set to leave. Good timing.

Entering the bus, the only seat open was the long one in the back, where a high school girl was sitting all the way to the right. I sat all the way to the left. On the way back, I hummed to myself, as I often do on these long bus rides back from the city, confident and comforted in knowing that my vocal vibrations would be drowned out to all others by the sounds of the bus's engines. Somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes into the ride, I fell asleep pretty hard, and then woke up 10 minutes before arrival. I felt nice and rested, but still tired and in that good groggy state. It had been a good day.