Bumming Around Imabari
December 23, 2006
My cell alarm rang at 7:50. I quickly threw come belongings into a bag, put on normal clothes, straightened my hair, and hurried downstairs. Me and my host mom had planned on taking the train from Kochi Eki to Imabari Eki. As my Christmas present, my host mom decided to take me to see my friends and fellow exchange student, Althea Askern, at Imabari in the Ehime-ken. It would be the last time I would have a chance to see Althea as she would have to return home on January 10th. Anyway, my host mom and I piled into a cab heading for the station. My host mom struck up a conversation with the driver and the next thing I knew, we were making the 3 hour journey to Imabari by cab. Crazy. The drive, like all the drives thru Shikoku, was incredibly scenic. Instead of taking the highway, our cab driver took us on side streets that curved around the mountains, passed along the cleanest of gushing rivers, and dipped into tunnels. I listened to my Ipod with a brand new section of JPOP and enjoyed the 3 hour journey across unspoiled Shikoku. When we got to Imabari, I met up at the station with Althea. I hadn't seen her since Okinawa in October. But we caught up instantly. Althea once emailed me this line I absolutely love "It’s quite a thing to come halfway around the world and meet people from halfway around the world again that you just... click with. We now share enough inside jokes to last us a lifetime. " I think that perfectly sums up why I love Althea and Mem. Anyways still at the station, we parted from my host mom, and headed to some Japanese Italian restaurant. Japanese Italian? you probably wonder. Well I'll just say I got Pizza with Shrimp and Octopus on it. That should explain everything. Throughout the meal I bothered Althea with a million questions about how she felt about going home. Excited. But looking at her year, she did so much traveling around Japan and is fluent in Japanese. Lucky. A funny thing about me currently is my great trouble with the English language. I really am having a hard time with speaking English, which is weird because people speak more English than Japanese to me, After lunch, I kind of forced Althea to play tourists in Imabari. Thus, we headed to Imabari castle. Very very awesome old castle. It is actually the only castle in Japan with a mote of all sea water. On the outskirts of the castle is an old playground which we sat around and talked on for a while. Then we went into the castle. I took a bunch of photos of the statues and Torii Gates. I really like Imabarijo, even if it kind of miniature. We didn't climb up into the castle but we walked all along the grounds. Afterwards we just walked and talked all around Imabari. This made me really happy. One of the biggest things I miss about home is just doing this kind of thing. Walking and talking with no particular destination, I guess just walking with friends and talking about randomness. And that's exactly what we did. We walked around the castle, raided a Conience store, continues thru the most deserted mall in the world (yeah it's the day before Chritsmas and I tried to think of what Willowbrook mall would have been like.) and then onto to a Precura Place. Yes we got Precuras!, which are those little sticker pictures. Haha. 2 cute tall pale gaijins in a precura. Pretty funny. But before we knew it, time had run out. We trudged arm in arm back to the station. Back at the station, my host mom called the cabbie, while I had to say goodbye to Althea. It's a really hard thing saying goodbye to someone you really may never ever see again. Though I have a funny feeling our paths will cross again. She has an open invitation to visit me wherever I am in the world and I got an invitation to visit Australia, And here is what I figure: It doesn´t matter how many miles keep exchange friends apart. I´ll always be here for them and I'm pretty sure they were always be there for me. The end of our exchange year doesn´t mean the end of friendships. Because true friendships are forever.
