My Last Weeks in Japan; Dates with Haruka

After climbing Fuji, the rest of my time in Japan was spontaneous outings with friends, a lot of them farewell dinners, but primarily spending time with Haruka. Timing got a little out of order with these posts, so let me back things up first.

Haruka (遥香) and I met for the first time at a ランチトーク "lunch talk" event held by one of the international student organizations on campus at Doshisha. These lunches were meant for students of different backgrounds and language abilities to come practice speaking, so I typically attended the Monday lunches for Japanese, and almost always the Friday lunches for English. Haruka and I talked together on the Friday lunches for four weeks straight, and I really enjoyed getting to know her better during this time, so I decided to ask her out on a date! Due to her being very busy with school, working two part-time jobs, and commuting almost three hours every day from Nara to Kyoto, we had to plan our time almost three weeks in advance! But Haruka and I continued to hang out together at the lunch events, sometimes talking with each other and friends, and we even organized a game of UNO towards the end of the semester.

The day finally rolled around, and I was both super excited and really nervous. We met at 10:30 at the Kurasuma-oike station, as Haruka had suggested we go visit Kyoto's manga museum since we both were interested and read a wide variety of manga. The museum was a lot of fun; there were shelves upon shelves of manga from all decades and genres, and a really cool artist exhibition going on that had a special showcase set up. We took our time meandering through the shelves, seeing which series of manga we had in common. The exhibition featured Ryoko Kui, who was the mangaka (artist and writer) of the work that was recently adapted into an anime on Netflix, ダンジョン飯 "Delicious in Dungeon", which I hadn't been watching but had heard was good. I was also quite interested in his debut work, 竜の学校は山之上 "The Dragon's School is on Top of the Mountain", which was a collection of fantasy stories in a variety of settings. I had zero luck finding the physical manga in Japan at stores, likely because it wasn't super popular, but hope to find some way I can read it in the future. Highlights of the display included some cut outs of the cast that I joined in on for a photo, and a replica of the main character's sword from the show.

We were both starving after checking out the museum, so we made our way over to a Mexican place for lunch, one of Haruka's favorite types of food. It was a little expensive compared to a usual Japanese lunch price, but at least in my mind, very authentic, which was awesome because it was hard to find good Mexican food in Japan. In terms of the date, those two activities were all we had planned out, but Haruka suggested we visit Nanzenji, a temple I had been wanting to go to before leaving Japan in Kyoto. We made a few stops in the Shijo area before making our way to the temple though, partially because I was trying to find some manga to buy, and also to wait out the worst of the heat from the sun that day.

The temple was cool, with lots of side areas to explore. My favorite was a small garden we found at the back, with some very pretty flowers. There was an old aqueduct going through the right side of the temple grounds, which we were able to climb up to and discovered that you could walk along the top of the aqueduct along the path of the water. We followed this path for some time and went on a little adventure, before making our way to the closest subway station to get out of the heat. From there, we went to Nijo mall, took some fun photos at the arcade, and watched the most recent Despicable Me movie, which I had to watch entirely in Japanese with no subtitles, but I caught a surprising amount of what was said and still enjoyed it.

To wrap up our date, I took Haruka to my two favorite bars in Kyoto, first RockING Bar, and then concrete. I was surprised by her drink of choice, a Corona beer with the lime! We played Jenga at the bar for at least an hour, and I lost four times in a row. I don't think I'm bad at Jenga by any means, it just turns out that Haruka was way too good at it.

Since we were both pretty busy after the first date, we only had a few planned dates scheduled before I left, but the two of us were able to meet spontaneously a few times as well! We were able to go bowling together, and one evening simply met at Doshisha to both work on our final essays.

For one of our dates, we went to the Otaku center of Osaka, Nipponbashi! There, we explored a lot of anime and manga themed shops, selling all sorts of books, merchandise, and other related goods. We spent some yen on the Gacha machines trying to get the specific prizes we wanted, and played some rhythm games at an arcade before going to karaoke together for the rest of our time that day. Some of the highlights from that adventure include seeing an AE86 Toyota Trueno, wrapped to look exactly like the one in the anime Initial D. We also found a vending machine selling only bottles of Sriracha, and at one of the anime stores, they were selling perfumes scented after different characters. Of course, the one smelling like Captain Levi from Attack on Titan was completely sold out. It must have been popular with the ladies. The picture directly below is from one of the arcade games we played, where upon ending a round it would snap a picture of the players - but I was too tall to fit into the frame! (Haruka also started beating me on these games once she figured out how to play them)

The last two days that I was in Japan are very, very special to me. Haruka invited me to one of her hometown's (Nara) annual summer festivals, which I was super excited to go to with her. It didn't start until the evening of that day however, and she was free, so we took the train up to Lake Biwa and swam for the afternoon. Haruka offered to make lunches for us, Japanese style, also known as bento. We ate them before swimming, and I wish I could have had two, because it was really good.

After swimming, we headed to Haruka's house to have dinner with her mother, who had invited me to eat with them. She graciously prepared for us to have sushi for dinner, where we made our own sushi rolls by putting the seaweed, rice, and fish together ourselves by hand! It was a lot of fun, and Haruka's cats also joined us while we ate. They were super cute.

After we ate, we changed into our festival attire: I put on the jimbe I had bought a few days prior, and Haruka wore her pink and white blossom themed yukata. We rode the train together to Nara Park, where small candles had been placed all around; in the grass, lining the paths, and around a lake. We strolled through the different areas of the park, taking in the beauty of the flames amidst the darkness.

While we were holding hands and walking at the festival, I realized that I had been able to experience all of the fun dates that I had dreamed about before coming to Japan with Haruka, and how lucky I was to spend the time that I did with her in Japan. It was hard to look past the fact that I was leaving in only two days, but I was able to accept that the time that was given to me was precious, and I was so fortunate to share it with someone so amazing. Luckily, Haruka was free the evening of my final day in Japan, which happened to line up with one of the biggest firework festivals held in Japan in Otsu. The next day, after I packed, Haruka and I met and made our way to the festival. There were so many people, but we lucked out and found a spot in the lawn to put down our blanket to enjoy the show. The complexity to the display and horizontal distance that it covered was far greater than any fireworks I had seen in America before, and I was absolutely blown away. So much so that I totally forgot to get any footage of the event, so you will all have to imagine the best you can.

Haruka and I had a bittersweet goodbye at the station the following day before I left for my flight, but I was so glad she wanted to see me off. I cried a lot during the train ride to the airport, and journaled while I travelled. I knew I was going to miss her, miss the friends I had made, and miss Japan. I had lived an entirely different and exciting life from the one I had in America, and a big part of me really didn't want it to end. I had made so many wonderful and exciting memories there, done things I had never thought I would do, and grew so much as a person during my time abroad. Part of me will always be stuck in Japan I think, and for now I have to say goodbye, but I will definitely come back in the future. Whether to live there, or just explore the country again, I can't say yet, but I will certainly return. Thank you to everyone who supported me in making it to Japan and during my time there, I can't express how thankful I am for the life I live, and everyone who has been a part of it.