Fear and loathing in Otsu

My dad called tonight. It was good to talk to him. He asked me about class and I told him about my morning class which went like this. I come into the room and Fukuhara sensei is there, as is the rest of the class. He's discussing something with one of the notorious girls. She wants to leave. He says stay. She continues to move toward the door and argue. He keeps saying sit down. (By the way I'm assuming this is what they're saying, because it's all in Japanese). Finally we have the "Hai please stand up!" and the students stand for the greeting. "good morning class-" I begin to say but Fukuhara sensei asks me to wait. The girl is in the hall and he's trying to negotiate her in. I ask her "please". She smiles for a second but it doesn't matter to her. We manage a greeting and the girl is flopped on her desk. As Fukuhara sensei begins the lesson she walks over to her other desk and flops overtop it, her butt in the air, rummaging for her books and pencils. Then as I start reading out passages, she complains to Fukuhara sensei. During the first ten minutes of class I just have to speak over her voice. The other girls are amused at her audacity, but the class is not with her on this one. So that was that.

Later today I went to Otsu due to a surprise granting of permission to get my re-entry visa immediately. By 1:00 I was finished with my business so I wandered down to the waterfront and sat on the rocks, looking out on Lake Biwa. The sky was a flat grey without any evidence of individual cloud forms, but they stood sentry against the sun. The lake, which seemed a sea, rose and fell in thousands of choppy waves. I began to feel it draw me in, in the very pit of my stomach, so I rose and walked along the waterfront. I wandered dizzy and thinking of many strange things, till I found myself in a small open amphitheatre. It was made from cut stone in the side of circular bank, and I walked up the few steps and sat at the top. It was quite empty. In the centre stood a lone tree, and concrete columns marched off from the opening of the theatre. What plays where held here, and to what drama would it one day be stage? I thought of these things as a helicopter roared in the sky, and looked for all the world like a goldfish, swimming perfectly straight, a thousand metres up in the air.

I began to feel unfixed from humanity's affairs. And so I took the train up to Ishiyama, which is quite close to Otsu, and paid Veronica a surprise visit at her school. She said I knocked her socks off with the surprise of it all. It was great to see her. She put me back on track and made me laugh. I took the mid-evening train home later, reading my latest book.