Coming ‘Round The Mountain and Back Into Nara
Though I had decided to spend my day off once again lounging back on the futon and poluting my brain with an endless marathon of blood and gore from the horror movies I’ve downloaded for the usual monthly marathon the sun outside was shining just a little to bright and the sky was just a little to blue to ignore and so I grabbed the game, grabbed the coat (a little chillier these days) and headed out for a walk. Didn’t plan on going far and really if I hadn’t seen those spiders there wouldn’t be much to talk about here and we’d just be moving on to the Nara move in today but…
The trees aren’t changing. The days, though chiller as mentioned, are still pretty warm. Damn that Al Gore and his Global Warming! I’ve been wanting photos of blazing autumn leaves and I’m just getting green. But the rice crops are being harvested and the fields that were tall and plentiful a few weeks ago are now barren leaving behind on the rice teepees and the remnants of the harvest: tire tracks and scattered plants. There are a few fields awaiting the grainer, though, and they are a stunning yellow especially when gazed at from the distance under a blue sky backdrop providing a colorful contrast in this beautiful pallet. I guess I could have just looked on up to see that the mountain wasn’t getting much less green but I was out, I was walking, might I was go all the way and so I get to the mountain by the park, kids are playing the park and the leaves on the trees in the park have changed, fallen and are now being crushed under their feet making those crunching sounds but the mountain leaves…they ain’t going anywhere. You know, I think to myself, I haven’t walked much father then this point at the mountain bass. I’ve always gone up and gone down but never around. Why not walk around the mountain? Yeah, I answer myself, why not and so I start walking and I keep walking and man this mountain is bigger then I thought but it’s not so much the mountain as it is the area and woods around it and so about thirty minutes into walking I come to the realization that this road isn’t turning. Just a straight stretch that likes being a straight stretch. 
I start to turn back and I start noticing the spiders. Now I’ve seen spiders here outside of the apartment but none quite as big as these bastards. Horror movies are made about this spiders. If that creepy dude from Silence of the Lambs had spiders in his creepy dude apartment it would be these spiders. I don’t know what they are called but I have named them the Japanese Death’s Head Spider because of the face that resembles a skull if you sort of squint, look sideways and imagine that you are looking at a skull. Freaky looking thing to stumble upon, I tell you. A dozen of them in giant webs, ladies and gents, is horrifying! If you don’t have an arachnophobia maybe walking into a nest to these things will give you one. Yipes! Just yipes! Of course that didn’t stop me from getting up nice and close for a series of photos. Geeze, I hope those things weren’t poisonous. 
Cut a day ahead and I find myself back in Nara for a day with yet another new teacher to our group. He’s from Canada and has a wonderful Japanese girlfriend whom he met back home. He came to Japan to be with her. Lovely story, really. I need romance in my life. Just me and spiders, folks. Okay, so we start things with a confusing trip to the realtor’s office which on my Japanese map was a bitch to find. I get there and, of course, nobody speaks English, I don’t speak Japanese and I have to break out the mime act again to get across that I am there to pick up a key. I get my point across channeling the spirit of the late Marcel Marceau, I snag the key, down some free tea provided by the cute desk clerk and I have an hour to kill before I have to meet this guy at the train station and cart him off to an apartment where I had no clue where it really was. Wait? Did I? The map I was holding seemed to indicate that the apartment was right next to my old Nara classroom. Well, how do you like that, folks? That would have been a fine score back when I was teaching there. Then again, this guy will be teaching at the classroom around the corner from mine so I guess we can consider that be square and even. I met him in front of the Lawson store by the train station along with his Japanese girlfriend. He’d been there an hour. Wonderful company calculations can always be counted on to fall flat on their face. His place wasn’t bad although I think a touch smaller then my own with a higher rent price tag. We joked about the small tub on the floor by the door that resembled a foot bath. Neither of us could figure out what it was for (later we realized it was for the washing machine) along with the mysterious peep hole included at the top of the door to the bathroom. Very strange, folks. 
Turns out this guy is a pretty down to earth dude, sense of humor matching my own and after we dropped off his baggage I too him and his gal on a tour of Nara. It’s been a month. Nothing has changed, as I said, except there were less dear as many of them have been penned this month for a ceremony which gets their antlers removed. On the street by the apartment we meet two pretty girls from Scotland who had lost their way. You got to love Scottish accents. Something about them makes everything said sound so nasty. I lead them to the tourist office who in turn pointed them towards their hotel and we’d run into them once or twice more during the day. My flirtations didn’t get me far. The new teacher suggested I get a shave and a haircut. I suggested he stuff that notion. We came to a mutual agreement of silence.
I did the normal tour loop taking them to a few temples, through the deer park and to some lesser seen attractions I’d discovered during my Nara walks. He’d never been and she’d last visited Nara at ten so it was a lot of ohhing and ahhing. You’d think she’d have remembered the assaulting deer, though. Ignoring my warnings she purchased some of those deer cookies and we attracted one or two stalkers for portions of the walk. It being a gorgeous day Nara was pretty packed and these times are not my favorite times to be walking around. It is far too crowded, crowds mess up pictures and it is enough to have to avoid all the deer let alone the people. I had planned to linger longer but when it came time to head back to the apartment so the two could await their electricity and gas I tagged along. Because this was a new company apartment they received their furnishings and appliances in one delivery. “It’s like Christmas,” he said all giddy over his box containing a new frying pan. I don’t have a new frying pan. Maybe I should request a new frying pan.
We unpacked, the sun was sinking and all three of us were hungry so I took them down the main shopping arcade to show them their closest grocery store, bank and post office along the way. Dinner was at a place I normally use for take-out purposes carting my Bento up to the ruins of the palace grounds but we’d had enough walking and so we took a table. I ordered a rice set and some chicken pieces which came with a bowl of sesame seeds and a strange sex toy looking crusher. Many rude jokes were made. You have to crush the seeds and then poor in a selection of sauces to dip your chicken in. It was the best dipping sauce I’ve ever had. McDonald’s had better check this stuff out! The new teacher picked up the tab as a return favor for my touring them about. Again, great guy, and we parted ways by the train station saying we’d see each other soon enough. This should be true as he teaches in my city and, of course, we have that damned seminar coming up. This reminds me…I really should be working on my speech but damn it there’s horror movies to watch and what a great surprise when I returned home to find a package of candy from back home. Thanks mom! I’ll send my dentist bill to you. 
