La Japoneisa: I Want to be a Ninja!

A new day came and I opened my eyes into yesterday’s morning. It was still raining as remains of the yesterday’s typhoon of which we caught just an edge. Luckily.
The plan was firm; to clean the disgusting black dust covered beams of the house and all that goes with it, i.e. all the bamboo and ceramic decorations, vases, pots, bowls etc. and get ready for the beast of a typhoon that’s supposed to be coming tomorrow and is said to have its eye right on our mountain (centre of typhoon = typhoon’s eye).
By 9am the troop was up and ready, Annie, Hana chan, Bo and I, scarves on our heads and scarves over our faces, ninjas armed with brooms, cloths and buckets of water we were ready to begin our quest.
Bo chan and I climbed onto the beams and spent the whole day with our legs hanging down, indulging in the excitement from the novel view while reaching for the spider webs, dead caterpillars and other repulsive objects, trying to keep ourselves on top. Highly enjoyable.
By the end of the day my arms and feet were so dirty only nails were shining white in them, my hands were covered in thousands of little cuts, I had one new blister, a moustache and black snot.
The rain persisted and as the grey darkness progressed the front of the house got covered in puddles and Jackie Chan surmounted the porch where he then sat, looking like an old ojichan, with resignation in his confused face of a retarded dog.



Ichioka san turned up on our doorstep again, smiley face hidden under a huge black umbrella as he found the house in a state of deconstruction with a group of crazy Chiiori kids dressed up as ninjas playing with brooms. He brought us the new issue of his Tengo Shinbun (The Idlers’ Newspapers??) and from under his arm he took out (as I observed hidden under the dust on the gallery above the kitchen) a piece of cloth, saying that I might like it since I was looking for more fabric. It was an obi, on one side gorgeous black silk with two little golden engravings and some writing and on the other, strangely enough, pictures of cars and trains. While I hid my disappointment (got so excited about the idea of owning an obi embellished with traditional patterns of sakura in blossom, birds, fishermen and beautiful girls in yukatas), thinking that perhaps it could at least make a nice posh going out handbag with a tacky inner lining, if I keep the black silk on the outside, Annie explained to me how precious this item actually was and how lucky I shall consider myself to be given it.
It comes from the Meiji period, which means the time around 1920s when the Japanese got really thrilled by the artefacts of industrial revolution and thus what are considered to be the traditional Japanese patterns were then replaced by the images of the new inventions of the 20th century. I am honoured and am going to make something for Ichioka san from it.
The girls kept laughing at me every time I took the scarf off my face, “I thought Veronika suddenly started to look very masculine…” and finally at the onsen I had a proper look and there it was. A moustache.
When I was a kid I thought I looked like my grandfather because, frankly, he was the only one I could look like, since except for me, he was the only person in the family to have blue eyes. Though later on I realized that we don’t look like one another at all, even the blue in my eyes was different, perhaps the only thing common in both of us is the love to boss people around (^__^). However now, looking at myself in the mirror, with this Hitler moustache over my lips (cant believe the girls let me walk in public looking like this) I recalled my grandparents’ war time pictures my grandma and I were looking at over the holidays, pictures of when they were both very young, and I appeared to myself like another copy of my granddad.

Before it would get dark Bo and I had a special mission allocated to us. Go down to the log house and board it up so when the typhoon comes we wont find ourselves floating over the clouds, “Hey look Jackie! We’re not in Iya anymore!!’
The aesthetic perspective over the piece of art we left behind us is rather debatable perhaps, though we still do believe it’s the most beautifully done up house in Iya, taking into consideration what one can do with five boards and no ladder (met Omo san on our way down, who, responding to our request, said that girls can’t use a ladder and so he won’t lend us one-fair enough, though if anyone went by they would see one or even two girls hanging out of a window, together with a cushion, nails and a hammer and would very typically wonder about what on earth are the Chiiori kids up to now).
Hurray! Nagoya tomorrow!