Slow Weekend in Nachi

Finally getting out of Wakayama City, although I did go to Kamitonda last weekend, makes me feel a little bit more like myself again. What do I mean by that? Ok, the sound of gulls chattering among themselves on a peaceful, slightly rainy, but cool Sunday morning. Speaking with locals in the countryside, catching about 25% of what they say in their slurred, colloquial Japanese. Listening to music that touches me, not music that unsettles me with the fact that I have heard the same Japanese pop song on average four times a day (these four times happening in the hour and a half I spend at the gym). I can only commiserate in my imagination with the friends I have made at the downstairs Family Mart, who are exposed to the incessant soundtrack of advertising tunes that drone away at the vending booth offering tickets to just about everything in Japan (if I could learn how to use it I'd probably be at a concert now, or a baseball game, or maybe in the audience at one of the comedy variety shows in which Koike Eiko stars). That is, not wasting my time in a bar drinking away money and time that I could be spending, saving, or savoring some other way than alone, murmuring thoughts to myself in the Bird Bar or some other, at best, uninspiring venue. But all of these images are recent, and I talk about them like that is all there is in Japan that I am seeing, doing, being seen doing, etc. Even though no one reads this blog, or close to no one, it is still important to keep writing. Perhaps I will print it all out someday and read it when I am bored and working at a convenience store back home, one which plays no music at all; reading and listening to the soft humming of the refrigerators and the echoes of all I have been through and go through still...