A Tale of Two Sarahs

In my Pacific Rivalries class there is a blonde Sarah and a brunette Sarah. I think you all know the brunette Sarah (as she is writing this blog), but allow me to introduce you to the blonde Sarah.

We became fast friends and decided that we needed to hang out more, hence going to Uji to check out a wonderful thing called a matcha café. Matcha is the powdered green tea Japan is famous for—and it appears in everything from potato chips to chocolate. So we went to Uji (which some of you may remember from my excursion to the Genji Museum with Moe) where we walked along the Uji river and came across some…interesting landmarks.

Commemoration statue for Tale of Genji

Genji is such a creeper

However, it was once we crossed the bridge that everything changed. For one thing, my camera battery died a miserable death and thus my picture couldn’t be taken.

But one Sarah is better than none, so here you go!

After the camera failure, we wandered into a Japanese couple who were also walking around. Learning that we were just aimlessly wandering around, they generously took time out of their day and walked around with us—including up a mountain! It was awesome! The wife was super knowledgeable about all these different wild plants and was telling us all of their names. We also got to see birds super close up because the fierce birds of Uji have no fear of human beings. I only wish my camera had been charged up!

We also managed to make our way over to a matcha shop where I bought some delicious goodies and tea-flavored KitKats (which are much better tasting than they sound).

It was getting late when they took us along the riverside to see the tea plantation. I admit, my first thought at seeing the desolate road and swollen river was, “this is where they hide the bodies, right?” One thing I really wish to stress is how safe Japan is compared to the US. Though throughout the entire trip, I kept a sharp eye out for trouble (and boy how stressed I got as they led us through shortcuts consisting of dark alley after dark alley), but the couple was genuinely nice enough to put aside their afternoon to help two foreign girls see the best of Uji. I think it’s also pretty amazing that both of us went along with this as well—Japan definitely incites a brand of trust that is near suicidal just about everywhere else.

But we had fun, we were safe, and had a very satisfied air as we rode the train back to the station.