The main reason I came to Japan this time (and the last two times) was for Awakening To Presence workshops.  This year there were two workshops I attended.  The first one was an all graduate workshop with 20 people from four classes, both Japanese and Americans.  It was so wonderful to be with everyone, five days of living in the present moment with such beautiful people.

Since my body decided 5:00 – 6:00 in the morning is a good time to get up (even though breakfast isn’t until 8:00), I was able to get a walk in every morning.  A lot of my pictures are of beautiful scenes or flowers from walking near the retreat center. 

After we were done with the first week, it took three taxis to take us from the retreat center to the nearby town.  The first taxi was a van and was directed to come down to the farthest building to pick us up and take us up to our suitcases half way up the hill.  It scraped on trees as the driver tried to turn it around making horrible sounds of tree branches crushing metal.  It probably didn’t crush the metal, but I assume a lot of paint was scraped off and replaced with deep gouges.  The people that walked up the path beat the van by quite a bit. 

Then there was a lot of flurry as suitcases were moved around and put in the van.  I watched my suitcases go into the van so I followed them and got in the van.  Peggy and a bunch of the Japanese followed me into the van.  This left the other two Americans looking a bit lost, holding their luggage by the side of the path.  I’m sure they will end up in the same place.

When we got up to the main road, we found the other two taxis who were lost.  There was some conversation, probably around the lines of, ” don’t go down there, you can’t handle it”.  So we and all our luggage were booted from the van and moved to another van and off we went to the town of Ueda.

The original van and a car went to get the rest of the people and they did show up in the same place after us in Ueda.

My suitcase rolly handle broke.  I had been strapping my duffle bag to the top of my rolly carryon suitcase and the set up was awesome until it broke.  I could still roll the bag on semi flat surfaces, but I had to pick it up when the ground was uneven.  And now I had to carry the duffle.  It was all do-able, but definitely an upper body workout.  I looked for tape and couldn’t find any duct tape.  I tried a craft tape, but it was similar to electrical tape and worked for three minutes.

After a three day break, I went back for the second workshop.  I took an hour long bus ride hoping I was on the right bus.  I followed along on my map as we went and when we didn’t turn the wrong way at any forks in the road, I stayed on.  I did get off a stop or two early.  I think Google maps lead me astray.  It does pretty good, but has led me wrong before and most likely will again.  I watched the bus head off in the exact direction I needed to go.  I limped off behind it for three blocks with my broken suitcase and duffle bag in hand. 

Then I took a train to Tokyo and as I was waiting on the platform for my second train, I heard “Rraine!”. I looked toward the voice and there was Rika.  Rika is one of the other ATP graduates.  She was also headed to the second workshop.  She asked which train car I was on and I said “11”.  She said “Me too”.  We looked at our seats and she had the seat in front of me.  She looked online and found that no one had booked the seat next to me so we sat together on the ride.  She gave me half her lunch.

This second workshop was a new committed group of students.  I was one of the assistants along with Rika and Yuri.  There were also three more assistants who are just starting their assistant training program.  The workshop was intense and wonderful.  It was the smoothest most grounded group of assistants I have worked with.  A true joy.

There are a lot of unspoken rules at the retreat center or maybe not unspoken, but lost in translation.  In the hall where we meet, each sliding glass door had five doors – four glass and one screen.  When someone is going to do process work, the doors get closed, but I’m not sure why – we are on the side of a mountain in the forest – no one to disturb.  Then part way through the emotional processing, the doors get opened.  I can’t seem to figure out the doors.  You’d think five doors would be manageable, but I seemed to always have three glass doors on one side and one on the other or two and two, but not the right two so shortly later, someone would fix it.  I gave up trying after a couple days.

Another confusing thing was laundry.  I wanted to do laundry on the third day here.  It had to go up the chain of command.  Then I was told at least four different things by different people.  Maybe the 8th or the 9th.  Maybe 8:00, 9:00 or 10:00.  I decided to be ready and wait until some one said, “laundry now”.  I got shown twice how to do and where to do laundry.  No one was going to let me go un-laundried.  I so appreciated people making sure I was taken care of. 

Every day was a similar question about bathing.  When do you want to bathe?  They have two Japanese style public baths and it was quite the process to figure out when and which bath to use.  But, again, I was not going to go unbathed.  When I had to do laundry a second time, I didn’t ask, I just snuck off and did it.  There were rules about washing dishes – I figured those out by watching and mimicking.  There were rules about getting clean towels and turning in the dirty ones – I messed that up once.

One of my favorite things near the retreat center was a field (farm?) of azalea bushes.  During the first workshop there were some pink and some orange azaleas blooming.  By the second week, other shades of pink, red and white started to bloom.  Each day, there seemed to be more.  One day as I approached the azaleas I noticed them humming.  It seemed as if they were singing to me.  Of course, every bush was covered in happy bees and other pollinators.  It was actually the insects humming.  I decided not to walk through the bushes.

Bugs.  The forest is full of bugs.  Each day I tried to sit out in the sun after lunch.  Each day I went to the afternoon session feeling all itchy.  Inside the hall there are stink bugs – the prehistoric looking bugs that move v.e.r.y slowly.  There are spiders and ants inside too.  Each room had a small brush and dustpan for scooping up bugs and taking them outside.  There seemed to be less than I remembered last year so I was grateful for that.  There were some cool looking moths and butterflies too.  One night I was getting ready for bed and heard tapping on my glass door.  It startled me.  I looked out and saw a big green moth about four inches wide trying to get in.  I turned off my light in hopes he would find another better light to fly to.  During the second workshop there was a small room that no one was staying in adjacent to my small room.  There were at least four to five stink bugs in my room each night.  So when I went to take a bath, I would leave the light on in the empty room, turn my light off and open the door between the rooms.  It worked sometimes to draw the bugs out of my room .

And last, but not least – the bear.  A bear was seen in a nearby area, but not at the retreat center.  It still seemed to be close enough to be of concern.  And Japanese bears have been eating humans lately.  Huh? At dinner we had the bear talk – What to do if you came across a bear.  It appears you should curl up in a ball on the ground and cover your head.  I’m going to stick with the plan of walk slowly the other way.  We should avoid going outside at night or in the early morning.  The next afternoon I was sitting in the itchy spot and quite a few students were amazed that I wasn’t afraid to sit outside – what about the bear? 

That night I had to walk in the dark by myself to the bath house – remember Rraine will not go unbathed.  On my way back, only fifty feet from my building, I heard something large in the forest running, rustling the leaves.  Even though it was obvious from the sound that I scared it and it was running away from me, it startled me so bad I jumped and ran to the porch of the building .  So, my plan to walk away slowly didn’t work.

Overall, a couple of fabulous weeks in Japan.