The Divine Wind

When the Mongols tried to invade Japan, their invasion fleet was wiped out by a ‘Divine Wind’ as they tried to cross the Korean Strait. In Japanese ‘Divine Wind’ is translated as Kamikaze; Kami means god or spirit and kaze is the wind. Every area has its own Kami. Shrines are built to honor the ancestors or kami who have died in that area. In August, during O-bon, the spirits are welcomed back into their families homes for a short visit before they return to the land of the dead.

The past three weeks have been a whirlwind of activity. Christina led Matt on sojourns across the Kansai area. Many of the places we have visited many times before. Some of the places weren’t of interest to Matt, however he did like Himeji Castle, the trains, and shopping for trains in the hobby and electronic stores.

The shrines and temples weren’t the greatest interest. That may owe somewhat to our attitude. When we first arrived, we were impressed with the shrines spread throughout the neighborhoods tucked in alleyways and between apartments, some not bigger than a dog’s house. Now, after visiting so many of them, we seem to feel that we have seen them all before.

While I was at work, in addition to the train rides, Chrissy took Matt to Kyoto two times; I don’t know how many times they went to Kobe, and they also stopped at many of the local shrines and temples in Nishinomiya. I took several half days off of work to take Matt to places that weren’t of great interest to Chrissy or places that she had seen many other times.

On one of our solo trips we visited Nara. There were several junior high schools from Tokyo in Nara that day and I demonstrated to Matt the basic vocabulary that the students are comfortable with. “Hello! How are you?” As long as you stick to the script, the students are friendly. If you vary the script too much, they don’t understand. One boy, came up to me and took me far off the script. He had lived in Toronto for five years and spoke English very well. His friends laughed and giggled at our conversation. They were impressed with how well their friend could communicate in English.

Matt and I visited Nihonbashi, an electronics shopping district in Southern Osaka. Katsumoto also gave us information about a couple of hobby shops in Kobe and Amagasaki. We also visited a transportation museum in Osaka. The museum is actually under the Osaka Loop Line. As we were looking at actual trains from the last century, we could here trains rolling above our heads.

Some days after work, I would make Matt follow me on expeditions to get boxes and packing materials for our move. There is a large Home Center in Imazu, south of our apartment about twenty minutes by bike. On our first trip to the Home Center, Matt discovered an electronics store with a fairly good selection of trains on the second floor. I didn’t have to force Matt to go there very often. Any time I mentioned going there, he was ready to hop on his bike and go. He even went once on his own the last full day he was here.

One of my goals for bringing Matt to the Home Center was to show him the size of sheetrock that they sell in Japan. The sheetrock here is one meter by two meters. I am certain that the reason it is so small compared to sheetrock in the US is because of the size of the houses. A larger piece wouldn’t fit in most of the halls, up the stairs or under the doorjambs in Japan.

There were several things that we had planned to do with Matt, but we lost time or changed our plan because he was clearly more interested in doing other things. In the last three weeks, though, I have had little time to write anything or even respond to emails. It really has been non-stop.

Now it looks like another Divine Wind will blow again before we leave. We have two more nights to stay in Nishinomiya. Tonight, I will take Katsumoto to Costco for the last time and pack up my suitcase when we get back. Chrissy will stay home and pack most of the other things that we will take home. We need to cancel our cell phones. I don’t know when that will happen. Friday night, Katsumoto wants to go to Spaghetti Factory in Kobe with us for the last-last supper. Saturday morning we are booked on the 9:20 bus for Hiroshima. The Kami have once again risen up against our plans. This morning on the weather, we noticed a typhoon now over Okinawa. It is progressing north and if we keep our travel plans as they currently are, we will rendezvous with the Divine Wind somewhere in the Korean Strait, much like the Mongol fleet. Even though she doesn’t have time, Chrissy is researching alternate ways to make it to Seoul for our flight on the 25th or avoiding Korea all together.