A day in the city
Dear Diary,
Geoffry and me just got back from a nice quiet day alone in town. (Well, alone except for a samurai guard, anyways. I sure am getting tired of having guards underfoot wherever we go! I’d never make a good princess – I get too tired of being surrounded by guards and servants all the time.)
I wore my white sundress with the pink trimmings, the strapless one that’s kept up with elastic around the bodice. It flows so prettily in the breeze, and Geoffry said he just loved how it looked on me. He also took every chance to brush my shoulder all day long and walk extra close to me, so I reckon he really must have liked it.
We went to someplace called Rikugien Park. It’s on the outskirts of the city where there ain’t so many big buildings. In much of the park you can’t see anything of the city at all which makes it easy to imagine yourself out in the countryside. Well, out in the countryside if the countryside were so pretty, anyways. All the landscape was so well managed – the grass was all trimmed to a perfect length, feeling spongy underfoot, and the flowering bushes were bright and cheerful without a dead blossom anywhere in sight. It must have taken a lot of work, but all we saw of that was a couple little old men with small clippers trimming plants here and there and keeping everything nice.
The park had a little lake with an island in the middle of it. We went out in a boat and visited a small shrine on the island. It was pretty, a soft-brown wood with one of them funny little arched tiled roofs that the temples have here. We lit a stick of smelly stuff to the local gods before wandering off down a pretty little path.
We found a soft tussock of grass on a slope looking down over the lake and lay down and watched the clouds fly past. (I was worried about getting grass stains on my dress, but Geoffry took off his jacket and let me sit on it, then put his arm behind me and let me rest my back on him so I wouldn’t get stained at all.) The sky was a deep blue like my Geoffry’s eyes, with the occasional puffy cloud setting off the color.
We talked for a long time about all sorts of things. About my friends from home, and how strange visiting Hawkinsville had been, and all the things Geoffry wanted to do someday. I told him how Annie had stayed in Antioch after the wedding and gotten a job as a waitress, and he told me about his two best friends Daniel and Benjamin who he’s known from grade school right on up through medical school. All that talk got me homesick for our friends and for a place where everyone don’t turn their head to look at the gaijin walking by, where a girl can lie on a hillside with her feller without a swordsman keeping an eye on everything. It’s been nice visiting Nihon, but I suppose I’m just about ready to go back.
But it was awful nice to have a day out with Geoffry, even if we can’t be completely alone. Having him ask me about myself, being so curious and really wanting to know what I thought, sure was nice. I don’t reckon I ever had anyone so interested in me, who wants to know all about me. And Geoffry’s about the smartest feller I know, which makes having him pay me so much mind even more special, though I can’t help but feel that all my prattle must bore him at least a little.
I wish life could always be like that, lying on a pretty hill under a clear blue sky with my Geoffry’s arm around me keeping me warm. Though maybe without any samurai around.
We finished our day in the city at a pretty restaurant called Cherry Blossom. It was paneled with rich wood and the waitresses were all dressed in pretty pink kimonos. We sat at a quiet table and had some tasty Nihonese food. I even tried some of that raw fish that they eat here. It was pretty good, little pieces of fish on small blobs of sticky rice, with other pieces of fish rolled up in rice and seaweed. I wasn’t expecting to care for it, but it was really good.
Geoffry kept smiling at me all through dinner, his eyes bright in the dim lights. He didn’t even mind when I laughed at him struggling with them chopsticks they use instead of fork and knifes here. I got the feel for them pretty quick, but Geoffry was a mite clumsy, which was awfully endearing on him. But by the end of the dinner, when we had ice cream flavored with odd Nihonese fruits, he had figured it out.
We finished our day in the city strolling through the brightly lit streets under the twilight sky. I felt like I was glowing, and I wished we didn’t have to go back to the court and complications and sleeping all alone in a little cubicle. But go back we did, watching the last rays of the sun over the water from the ferry. A pretty ending to a wonderful day.