Jason | Last Week in Kyoto

June 19

I was riding my bike home from school and on the way to the coffee shop, I saw Mrs. Koizumi. When I passed by her, I greeted her and said, "Koizumi-san, I'm in the coffee shop." It felt like I was in a Japanese drama. Well, it was fun.

Xiaoquan is a customer I met at the coffee shop. She is 73 years old. She has been to Shanghai on a business trip. I met her when she was paying the bill. She saw me using Duolingo. There were many people in the shop at that time. I was sitting at the bar near the cash register. She thought it was funny and started a conversation with me.

The next day, after dinner, she asked her friends to leave first and sat opposite me to talk to me. This was my second Japanese friend.

June 20

Today is the last day of school. My deadline was due two weeks ago, but the teacher made a mistake and extended it to the end of the semester. I like to go to class anyway. I wanted to use the 20 days to travel.

It was probably the last day, and the school was filled with a relaxed atmosphere. Today's class was mainly about exams, with a listening test followed by a stage test, and a few days ago, there were essay and dialogue tests. I am a short-term student, so I don't have the pressure of going to college. Others do, and they are actually doing well in their studies, so they will pass and not be held back.

I got full marks in grammar in my stage test, Xiang was very surprised. When the get out of class was over, the teacher gave certificates to the three of us short-term students, me, the French girl Sabrina, and the British girl Casspa. I told everyone that we would not come next semester. There will be new students joining this class next semester, and it is also possible that we will be transferred to other classes, and she didn't know. Some people were a little sad, and the Canadian girl Elody couldn't help crying.

Yesterday, Ito's class was the best among all the teachers. Everyone liked her the most. She had real passion and was very good at teaching. Sabrina said that when she said goodbye to Ito, she cried. She is really a very emotional person. I also wanted to say it, but I didn't have the nerve to say it. I regretted not letting her hear this.

Yesterday we made an appointment to have dinner together, but not everyone wanted to go. Sabrina, Elody, Tom, Simone, Xiang and I. Sabrina brought her sister Cindy along, she came to play. The place we made an appointment to go to was "Saizeriya", a cheap Italian restaurant, but the food was really delicious. Moreover, the inside and outside of this restaurant had the atmosphere of the weekend life of local young people, with all kinds of people coming in and out, it was really great. The atmosphere of daily life is always more attractive to me than a specific famous restaurant.

From ordering to checkout, everything is self-service. It's delicious. I want to go to this restaurant next time. The cheap Hama Sushi that Xiang took me to last time was also delicious.

June 24

I woke up at two in the afternoon. I watched the Japanese drama "Hirugao" last night until after five in the morning. I use it to learn Japanese. When I see interesting sentences that I don't understand, I take a photo of the subtitles and send it to AI. It will give the translation and grammar analysis by default, which is very convenient. The plot is also very interesting. It tells the story of a housewife who is tired of her boring daily life and goes to find her own love. The life of a boring person who doesn't get real attention is really terrible. But to improve or find love, on the one hand, it is difficult, and on the other hand, even if you are lucky enough to find someone, at least you cherish each other at this moment. But it is also very difficult to escape from the current hopeless life. In the originally dull daily society, the people around you who didn't care much about you can suddenly burst out with great power to abandon you or stop you.

Aya Ueto performed very well and looked very good. When she was troubled, she rode hard and it was very contagious. In Japan, housewives are good at riding bicycles, and they ride smoothly and beautifully.

It's very realistic, it's easy to get bored, and often not cared for. Deep emotions are very rare. It's much harder to get rid of the status quo than you think. Most people are rookies, and they will be beaten back after a flutter. Even in the process of getting rid of it, you can find some desirable aspects of life that you didn't notice before. In short, it's not easy to feel happy.

Because I went to bed in the early morning and woke up at 2pm. I rode my bike to the coffee shop and found that it was a day off. After school, I get up in the afternoon every day, go to the coffee shop, wash my face with a hot towel, drink coffee, eat, smoke, and learn Japanese. Then I ride my bike to the mountains and look at the valleys. I go home when it gets dark, go to the nearby Bandai supermarket to buy groceries, and go back to the sharehouse to cook. After dinner, I study, watch TV series, and watch political gossip on YouTube.

The day was almost repeated. I didn't want to travel anywhere else at all. Instead of going to some big place, I felt that I would rather get to know the nearby valleys, streams and forests. There would be more unexpected discoveries and surprises.

Without the coffee shop today, I would have missed several important parts. I feel like I can’t start the day properly. The coffee shop is my most important nest in this place, the most relaxing place.

I could only ride my bike and wander around. There were no shops like that on the way to the mountain. I passed a cafe by the river, which only sold coffee and black tea. There were outdoor seats, so I chose this place. There was no customer. The owner was an old lady. I asked for coffee. It was the rainy season, and it was hot outside, but I wanted to smoke, so I sat outside. I didn't bring a lighter, so the old lady went in and looked for matches for me.

After a while, she chatted with me and asked me where I was from. Gradually, we talked about how this coffee shop had been open for fifteen years. It used to be called another name, with a different decoration, and sold more things, such as desserts and ice cream. Because of her poor health, it now only sells coffee and tea. My daughter works in Tokyo, she is thirty-seven years old, got married three years ago, and has a wedding photo album. There is a photo of her studying abroad in New Jersey at the age of 16. She worked at JP Morgan and Google. She showed me a photo of her in New York forty years ago, and she looked like a middle-aged person. We talked in simple Japanese and a few English words.

It was rare to have so much chat. The owner and his wife of the coffee shop and I didn't have any small talk except "Today is so hot". Maybe there were few customers here, the old lady was running the business alone and was lonely, and I was a tourist, so I seemed to have nothing to do.

As we were talking, it started to rain, getting heavier and heavier. The hot and humid weather suddenly became cooler. The old lady said that a typhoon was coming. She even gave me an umbrella so that I could use it on the way back.

The rain stopped and I continued to go to the mountains. I passed by Lawson and bought a rice ball. Now I have my favorite one - mayonnaise tuna rice ball.

It started to rain moderately while we were eating, so we decided to go home. However, it rained heavily on the road, and we were soaked by the time we rode home along the Arisu River.

June 25

Composition exercises

Yesterday, we took a self-guided car trip to Kaohsiung Mountain, and now we are going back three times. The 1st time is right, the time of the rain is the same, the 2nd time is on the way, the rain is falling.

そして, it started yesterday morning, it started まりました, it was 1 o'clock in the afternoon, it started しました. Jingoji temple temple, self-propelled carriage rides, rickshaw rides, and mountain rickshaw rides. Clear the side of the Takigawa River. It's early summer, it's green, it's green, it's very green, it's beautiful.

It's time, it's quiet, it's time, it's time.気志ちがいいですね.まだ来たいと思いました.

The end point is the village. Jingoji temple temple, temple temple.でも, 1 hour later のバスしかありませんでした, take the りchange えもなければならないけど, 元の道を戻りました.

June 26

I will take a flight back to Shanghai the day after tomorrow. My three-month visa has expired.

From some perspectives, this is one of the best periods of my life, or the most relaxing. After 30 years, I went through school life again. I graduated from technical secondary school in 1995 at the age of 20, and I have never been to a classroom since then. When I was a student, I never had any fun, and I was confused. Now, I am very dedicated to my studies and very happy, although my Japanese is not very useful, and I am not even very good at it, it is very basic.

In a strange foreign city, I didn't know anyone, it was strange but free. In the first week, I lived in an Internet cafe and rode my bike to school with a big bag every day. I didn't care at all and was very happy.

Later, I lived in a house I found online. It was a shared apartment with all kinds of people living there. Graduate students, apprentices, people who came to take yoga exams, visiting scholars, and new immigrants who settled down temporarily. I think it is more interesting than the school dormitory. That day, I told Yao Shi that it is not easy to have such a shared apartment life. Looking back, it may be the only time in your life, although it seems natural now. He just graduated from school and may not understand it. He agreed with my statement that sounded too emotional, perhaps out of politeness. I am 50 years old (I can't believe it), but I am very experienced. Of course, experience cannot be passed on, it can only be learned by yourself.

This time I don't have any pressure on money. Although I have never had much money since I started working, I have always been optimistic. When I only had ten dollars, I didn't really worry. I have been lucky in the past two years and saved a little money, so I have no pressure at all.

I no longer have a long-term rental, furniture, luggage, or any beautiful things I have collected. I only have a big backpack with a few clothes, a tent, and a sleeping bag. And my bicycle. I am free and have no worries. If there is anything else, He Chen takes care of the van, and Zha Mao Li is very good at taking care of it. It has a lot of fun every day.

Where to go next? It seems like I don’t have a destination yet.

June 27

At 10:30 in the morning, the housing company came to check the room on time, and the vacancy was completed in a few minutes. Surya came down to chat with me. I left at 12:00, and he said, "I'll take you there." He said he didn't go to bed until eight in the morning and was a little sleepy, so he would go back to sleep later. "I sleep four hours a day, and most people who do research don't sleep much." He said he was going to Dali in August to see a friend. They were good friends when they were studying. Later, she got married in Dali and divorced a year later. We didn't contact each other for a long time, and she didn't talk about this. It was her mother who told Surya that she was depressed. He said he didn't know how to ask, and I said, there's no need to ask about the divorce, but you have to take the initiative to contact her. It seems that we got in touch.

Last night, Yaoshi made me steamed egg custard. We agreed a few days ago. He said he would make me steamed egg before he left. A few weeks ago, I taught him how to make a perfect egg custard. Noah also joined us. We made three in total, two with chicken, mushroom and celery. Noah is a vegetarian, so there was no chicken.

After leaving the sharehouse, I went to a coffee shop and had my last lunch and coffee. I ran into Koizumi, who was also there, so I greeted her and told her that I was going to Osaka to catch a flight back home today.

I opened Line and received photos and messages from Yaoshi last night: "Ling! Thank you for another wonderful day! I am very grateful to have met you and spent every wonderful day with you. You taught me a lot, and we also cooked and ate together. These are fun memories and a very inspiring and valuable experience! I admire your way of thinking and your positive and enterprising spirit, and learn from you.

I will definitely see you again! Since we fulfilled one promise today, this is our next one🔥"

“i just checked this message. I am touched by it. I have left the sharehouse and having lunch at the Chicha Shop now. The time with you is so precious, I saw a lot of special characters from you. I am sure will meet you again. That is I really feel about the experience with you. I am lucky.”

Today, I am leaving this "three-month dream": going to school, going to the supermarket, cooking, living, riding a bike in the mountains, and going to tea shops in a completely unfamiliar place.