–- SEYRUUN HIGH JINX -- 10 year Reunion Story –-2004-08

"Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives." – C. S. Lewis

Chapter Sixteen: Convergence of Wills

"Human nature is largely something that has to be overcome." -- Rita Rudner

Next I needed to get to do some skulking and look into Xelloss' agreement with the Cephied Believers when he gave away Wolfpack Island. Something wasn't kosher there, I felt. When I mentioned it to Amelia, she grew very excited at the idea.

"Let me! Let me! I can get it and I can understand a legal document better than you!" Amelia cried out.

"Fine. Let me know before you do anything...incautious."

"Oh, I will be careful. Nothing illegal at all!"

What she did was rope Lina into setting up a meeting with Luna. They had a very interesting discussion, the best parts of which, I was given to understand, went unsaid. There was an undercurrent of apprehension and suspicion Amelia couldn't grasp exactly, and which, I assured her, was all I too had gleaned from my meeting with the two sisters. However, careful examination confirmed that the Island was in Filia's control. Meaning, that if she wanted to, she could leave the clan and take it with her, so to speak. They all agreed that this could be very useful leverage, should Filia choose to exercise it.

"Yeah, but why hadn't Xelloss ever mentioned it? He's sharp. He woulda figured out the same thing," Lina muttered.

"He must have forgotten about it or maybe he wanted Filia to figure it out herself? Who knows?" Amelia asked.

"When it comes to him, you never can tell," Luna said vacantly. "But he doesn't often do something that convoluted without a reason." Her mind was elsewhere mulling over another plan with different objectives and geared towards helping out her little sister.

To which Lina snorted, "Think again. He's out there a lot of the time."

Before the next gig, Amelia and I determined to put our plan to action-- our plan to help Xelloss exit his hasty-stupid marriage. If she and I would ever have a chance at a life without Xelloss in our care, we had to get him back into a steady relationship—be that with Lina or, as we suspected, Filia. We didn't know how it would all turn out but believed that in the end... the truth would come out. First, I needed to talk to Xelloss again.

"Make sure Shanna comes along on this gig with us."

"Okaay..."

"Then send her to talk to Amelia and me."

"Ah..."

"Send Shanna to talk to us about your...marital problems, Xelloss." I didn't want any confusion to mar the plan.

"But she doesn't know you that well."

"Amelia's taking her out to lunch today."

"Ha! Sending out the little charmer of the pair first?" Xelloss chuckled.

"That's right. She'll be her best friend in no time. Oh, and you can tell her about how well Amelia and I get along in our...platonic-only relationship and how I'm a psychiatrist, nearly, all right?"

Xelloss raised an eyebrow in question and nodded slowly. "How well are you getting along in your...relationship these days?" he smiled.

"I'm not telling you everything; I just want to make that clear from the start. But, we haven't had a fight all month. Arguments, but nothing destructive. However, that's not what's important now. What you have to get straight is what you need to do..."

"Are you living together in Sairaag by chance?" Xelloss stared into my eyes to test me. "Platonically, of course."

"No." He wasn't going to let me off until I told him more I could tell. "We have separate apartments in the same building, side-by-side in fact."

Xelloss smiled broadly and drew me into a hug, "Congratulations. I hope things work out this time."

"Thanks," I mumbled. "Same goes for you."

He released me and sighed, "What's your plan?"

"I can't tell you. You need to be completely ignorant of what's up for this to work. Oh, except that you have to imply that I'm not attached to Amelia romantically. That's all. It has to go its own natural course."

"So, you are telling me that, it's a secret?" he smiled again and even chuckled slightly. "Okay, I'll trust you, Zelgadiss. No one could screw up my life any worse than I've done already, and you've always kept your word and been there to scrape up the pieces."

"It will be risky for everyone involved, but Amelia thinks it will work, and I've come to trust her judgment as well."

"My, you two have come a long way lately. Okay, I'll bring Shanna. She's been dying to go to one of our concerts and I know she's unhappy about...me. Knowing Amelia's charisma, Shanna will snap at the chance to share her woes with her. I...ah... really appreciate what you're doing for me. I've never told you everything; I can't, but you help me anyway."

"That's what brother's are for, Xelloss. We pull for one another in spite of what jerks we are. They go where even best friends won't go."

He nodded his thanks and said he had to go. He knew how much I hated to see a guy tear up...still...if it was unnecessary.

Xelloss' wife, Shanna, burst into our hotel room crying, "Oh, Miss Amelia! I have to talk to someone! You are the only ones I can trust. My family, friends...they are so far away. And...it is so embarrassing..." Shanna looked at Zel, "And you are a doctor...you may know..."

"Ah, I think the best place to start..." I began uncomfortably. Now that the plan was underway, I was anxious to get it over with. I was feeling sorry for this young woman unfortunate enough to get caught up and sucked into the vortex of the chaos-kid.

Shanna just began telling us about Xelloss' 'dysfunction problem', not stopping until Amelia handed her a glass of water. "I think you should go next door and speak to Lina and Filia first. back to us. It's really better that way. I promise they will know just the right thing to tell you; that is, one of them will."

When she had gone, Amelia and I crossed out fingers and waited. "I hope she comes back soon, I hate waiting," Amelia admitted.

And one of them did talk to Shanna. Less than fifteen minutes later, a distraught young woman barreled into our room, looking wide-eyed and genuinely fretful.

"Miss A-a-amelia? He almost married that Kiki woman? And you stopped it by...by... and Mr. Zelgadiss, you... you are gay too? I thought you two were a c-couple?" she pointed at Amelia and myself, and then began hiccupping violently. "I mean, I didn't think Xelloss meant that when he said you were just 'friends'. But I guess... It's just that you don't look gay."

Thank the gods for that bit of confidence building. "Well, I hide it well."

Amelia took my deep blush as her cue to exit, "I'll be right back with a glass of water."

I asked the question whose answer I had been waiting for, "Ah, so who was it that told you that? Lina or Filia?"

"Miss Filia. I don't think Miss Lina wanted me to find out, but I'm glad I know now. It explains everything. Xelloss must...you both cover up... that... awfully well. I couldn't tell! But it's so icky. I just can't continue with this...this farce. I want no part in it. It's...sicko. I...I want out..."

Amelia stepped back in from the adjoining bathroom, catching the end of her rant. "Here, hold your breath, sip ten gulps of water and hold it until the hiccups go away," Amelia instructed. "Better? Good. I can see how you might not want to remained married under those conditions. Now, you come with me and let's talk. I'm a lawyer you know and I can help you out of this. I'm sure Mr. Xelloss will be just and most generous with you."

While Amelia led the obviously shaken Shanna out to the hotel coffee shop, I went to pay my friends a visit. I knocked on Lina's door first.

Lina shouted, "Yeah, we're decent!"

"Decent? Then I must have the wrong room," I may have led off with a smirk. "No, I see, it's Lina and Filia, just the people I wanted to see," I caught Filia's eyes first, "What did you say to her?"

"Why?" she asked evasively. Perhaps she thought I was mad at her.

"Well," I looked at the edge of the bed, "mind if I sit? All right, well for starters, Shanna came into the room looking for advice. I recommended that she speak to the two of you. She then returned to our room and asked about the wedding-that-never-happened, which Xelloss had neglected to mention to her."

"What did you say?"

"I didn't say much. Amelia's with her now, but we confirmed all you said."

"All?" Lina asked.

"All, yes. It seems that story established both what you had told her and what she suspected about her husband. So... you told her Xelloss was gay?"

"Yes. It seemed kinder for her to believe that than that he didn't find her desirable, don't you think so?" Filia asked defensively.

I let out a big sigh. "Yes, Amelia and I thought so too. You know, he didn't want to marry this one, but she caught him at a low point and manipulated him somehow into believing she could make him happy, I guess..."

Lina broke in. "He must have been nuts."

That had been a low blow. I gave her a hard look and she blanched, "Sorry... I know he was really...ill."

"He was in a vulnerable state and maybe he hoped it was true—that Shanna could be of help to him. But...when he saw you back with the band..." I smiled at Filia, "He came out of his depression overnight. He and I had a talk. Filia, I have to know how you feel about him."

That must have distressed her, because she sat up so abruptly that she lost her balance, fell off the other side of the bed and hit the floor hard. "Owwwww!"

"She's still got a thing for him, Zel. The two need to talk about their problems and, say...can you get him in here while you and I go for a walk. I gotta idea," Lina asked.

Filia croaked from the floor, "Zel? Please, just do this one thing for me. Just let Xelly-bean know... I care still."

"He will get the message," I promised, convinced now that she still did.

While Amelia and Xelloss' wife met in the hotel's coffee shop for some tough girl-talk, I searched out a nervously twitching, anxious Xelloss by the vending machines outside his room.

"Done," I said with smile and a thumbs-up sign.

"Really? She wants to leave me then? I can go talk? Does she want to...speak to me?"

"Yes, if it makes you happy, your wife can't wait to dump you," I smirked, then more seriously added, "Right now, Shanna's with Amelia discussing terms. She'll keep the damage to a minimum. And...ah...who is it you want to talk to?"

Xelloss paled, "Filia, of course! Doesn't she want to see me? Is there a problem?"

I let out a huge breath of air, "Not at all. She wants you to know that she, and I quote, 'cares still.' Go for it, Xelloss. You have a lot of problems to resolve with her, if you want to re-establish any kind of friendship. Lina, too, if I read her rumblings about your 'idiocy' correctly."

"I know. Believe me... I know."

My next stop was with Lina, whom I ran into outside her room. "Lina, Xelloss is on his way to talk to Filia."

"Zel, your place empty for now?"

"Yes. We haven't much time until we need to get back over to the concert hall, but come on in," I said.

" 'S'okay. Sylphiel's on it for me. She'll let us know when to get moving."

I reiterated how Amelia's plan had worked, that Shanna and her were drawing up the basic separation papers at that moment and how it seemed both Xelloss and Filia were ready to re-build some kind of friendship, but to what extent and to what degree, only they would know.

"You seem overly interested in Xelloss' affairs," Lina observed.

"I want what's best for him, naturally, but I want to move on with my own life and I can't while his is in such turmoil."

"Humph! You want someone else to take care of him so you don't have to shoulder the responsibility for the rest of your life, is that more like it."

"That too," I admitted.

"If Filia wants to, she can try and force the clan to allow Xelloss into their training program. All she has to do is say she's leaving and taking Wolfpack with her."

"You've talked to her about that already? She truly wants to get back with him?" I asked.

"Ah, too many questions, there, Zel. I thought I'd see how this part worked first before informing Filia of her Island privileges. And I don't know what will become of them. Why get her hopes up if he can't get divorced or whatever, ya know?"

"I agree. I didn't mention it to him either, just in case. But I see at least one major obstacle in the way, besides Xelloss himself."

"Oh yeah? And that would be?" Lina frowned.

"Val, what about him? Is he stuck on Filia again? Will he be a problem? I haven't had a chance to even wave to him until this morning."

Lina smirked, "Val stuck on Filia? Ha! Not to worry, I'll handle him, plus I think I can get Val to pressure the clan in the same way."

"What? He'd mess with his Ancient Clan holdings to help Xelloss?" But just a moment here... Hadn't Val been willing to intercede on my part with Lina before? Whoa... It was nice to know those two had been keeping up their friendship, since I felt cut off from Val the past few years. But, for Lina to think she could strong-arm Val into jeopardizing his property rights and alliances with the park system was extremely doubtful. It was Lina, however...and at least she wasn't ordering me to do the dirty work...

Lina's expression turned sly, "In a manner of speaking... Anyway, here's what you have to do. If they seem gung-ho, just get Filia to tell Mil she'll leave the clan if something isn't done!"

"Is that all? Why me?" So much for leaving me out of the loop. Apparently there was plenty of browbeating and coercing jobs to go around.

"You wanna tackle Val? Huh? I didn't think so. Nobody but me'll do that. In the meantime, Gourry and Sylphiel are doing all my band stuff, and Amelia's busy with Shanna. Which leaves you free to..."

"I get it, Lina. Fine. I'll talk to Filia later, if I get the 'all clear' from them."

My sigh must have said more.

"Hey, bud, it'll all turn out just great and in time for our reunion party. You'll see. For a cold, heartless, guitar freak, yer getting pretty good at this 'being in love' stuff."

With a smirk I replied with my customary wit and brilliance, "I'm about to become an expert at it," and left Lina wondering what I meant by that.

Wolfpack Island did not come as a surprise to Filia. She was aware of that blackmailing trick. Xelloss, too.

"So, what you might do," I proposed, "is use that as leverage over the Supreme Council. Let Xelloss join, or lose the island, the ultimate ultimatum; that is if his joining the clan is still what you guys want. I don't know, but it's an idea Luna and Amelia noted in their lawyer-like capacity..."

"Zel-bob! That's it! I'll give it a try and if they don't care, then the hell with them all. The clan can stuff it for all I care. I've given them years of my life and they can't see fit to do one tiny, little thing for me. Well, I'll just quit. Xelloss is far more important to my future than them!And Luna had better act as my deux ex machina in this or I'll... I'll think of something!"

I had never heard her vent so much hostility on her beloved clan before. It was looking more and more like a sure thing, which worried me all the more.

The annulment, however, took no time at all-- credit going to Amelia. For good or evil, the odd couple extremis, Xelloss and Filia, were on again, and attempting to rebuild their relationship long distance, since Xelloss skipped off abroad immediately after securing his release papers.

In private, he told me he had agreed to accompany Miss Shanna back to her home and 'finish up' a few details regarding his un-syndicate work. Also, he wanted to distance himself from the Wolfpack Island blowup. He knew it would be messier if his involvement were put into question. He would return in time for the reunion party, he promised. What he didn't tell me at that time was that he was planning on applying his own brand of pressure on the Volphied clans to ease off him. He was not pleased to be their fall guy in Seyruun and their combination biggest hero and greatest enemy in certain parts off-continent.

So, fall loomed nearer and nearer and no ruling came overturning the previous denials of Xelloss' admission to the Cephied clan. This left my future uncertain, as well as Xelloss', Amelia's, and Filia's. We had this huge almost-ten-year-reunion party planned just for our band, to be followed by a concert where 10,000 tickets had already been sold! I hoped the gods would have mercy on us and make everything turn out all right.

Lina was incommunicado at this time, leaving me messages to the effect of, 'F---off'. So, maybe it was Val who was answering her e-mail.

Oh, and of course I had my last year of residency to face...and more tests. After completing a residency or fellowship, I had to obtain a medical license so that I could practice medicine. Becoming a board certified physician in a specialty involved the completion of my residency in psychiatry, then completing a comprehensive exam, written and oral, naturally. The workload only got wors

OKAY! That's enough from Zel.

You don't want to read more about his hours of commitment and boring life at the hospital. Take it from me, I read it and... boring! So, I did a little editing and, okay, so I could go back and clean up that last line and put in a nice neat little segue into my story, but after that flat out lie misleading you readers about me and him having some kind of a day and night of unlimited passion in my bedroom, well he's lucky I didn't cut him off at the groin, if you get my point. You think I wasn't going to read that or something? Oh yeah, and don't you think that some anti-harassment clause will keep you safe from me, Zel-GA-diss! Have a little talk with Amelia and learn about my justice system, if you need to.

So with that out of the way... I feel so much better now. I'm Lina Inverse and now I'm gonna set you straight on a few important details about the past nine and one half years. Maybe a few more, depends upon how much I get out of all this.

First thing I noticed was that everyone skipped over our trip to Japan, leaving that for me to tell, I guess, since I kept a journal and took photos. Well, actually, not too many photos, I'll get to that as we go along. So, to start...

The flight to Tokyo was long and boring. The plane did have a great in-flight entertainment system, even for Economy Class passengers... remembering that, we were essentially locked up in our assigned seats for 14 hours which just wasn't much fun to begin with. I think Zel shot Xelloss with a tranquillizer gun to put him out. I never heard a peep, giggle, or whine out of him. And if you have been paying any attention to my stories in the past, you know that that was an amazing and fortunate occurrence in such close quarters.

I discovered that there was something good about being 'of reduced stature.' All I had to do was look over at how miserable Gourry and Val were all folded up like pretzels to fit in their tiny cubicles and I felt much better.

Ah, what else... oh yeah, the food was okay but in these way too small servings. And it wasn't Seyruun faire. In fact, when the food came, there was a snail on my plate, but before I could pull a panic attack, Kiki gleefully grabbed it from me and ate it. I never could decide if it was there on purpose or crawled there by accident. Kiki said it couldn't have crawled because it was cooked, but that might have happened when they microwaved the plate. I don't know. I don't like snails though.

Tokyo, Japan. All hail and bow to the needs of the small and mighty! Our first look at our modest hotel rooms screamed just that. All except for Gourry and Val, who, thanks to Subaru's forethought (yeah, I knew he had prescience stuff going for him) had these more expensive rooms with specially ordered beds for giants 'Kyojin'.

I crashed in the room I was to share with Amelia. But then I couldn't sleep. It was closer to 11:00PM, Tokyo time, and I was not only ravenously hungry, but exhausted and wide awake at the same time, so I dragged Amelia out onto the streets – although she was more than ready to go to sleep - in search of food. The streets were crowded and we didn't want to get lost, so after 30 minutes of looking around, we stopped at a convenience store, picked up some snacks and returned to the hotel to go to sleep.

Before I continue on, let me describe the hotel and our room a little. Our rooms were all scattered about on the twenty-first floor. There were no balconies, and the windows were sealed shut, except for a small three-inch wide slot that could be opened for ventilation. Our room had only one door, which was locked, but 2 sets of curtains, thin ones that could be drawn and still allow light through and thick, plastic-backed ones that could block out all the light. When I went to bed, both sets of curtains were drawn, blocking out the constant glow from Tokyo. Nothing fancy but clean, got that? Our room even had one of those infamous Japanese electric toilets that will... um... clean you up without the aid of toilet paper. The jury is still out on if that's a good idea or not.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah, first night. So then, I awoke between 3:00 and 4:00AM, starving. By 4:00, it was bright enough to see, and I could get my first good look at Tokyo from our 21st floor window. As far as the eye could see-- which wasn't all that far considering how dim the sky was at that time of night or...day-- there was nothing but gray, multi-story buildings, expanding out beyond the range of sight. A skyline of buildings without end, and from this height, not many buildings obscured the view so it was a long vista. Not to put too fine a point on it, it was downright ugly. However, as the sky lightened, I could make out weird shapes. In one direction there looked to be a Ferris wheel—more than one which must have been parts of buildings. Was I seeing things? But then I was starving and not well rested, so...not at my best.

"Hey, Amelia! You up?"

"Uh...Miss Lina? Is something the matter?" She sounded groggy, but up.

"Nah, just feeling hungry," I was nearly dressed.

"You can't just go out all by yourself!" she cried as she slumped out of bed and into her clothes.

Then we took to the streets to look around and locate food. My first order of business was to get a good solid GPS (Global Positioning System) lock on the hotel in case Tokyo's legendary ability to get people lost tripped up Amelia and me, at least I'd be able to get a good bearing back to the hotel.

The 7-11 near the hotel had a selection of sandwiches and bento meals that, frankly, didn't look too appealing under the fluorescent-type lights, and I guessed none of the selections would be very substantial either. However, as with our previous other earlier food run, nothing else was near at hand, and hunger overcame reluctance so I purchased a 'I-don't-know-what-this-is' sandwich, and headed back to the hotel. The sandwich turned out to be a fried chicken patty and wasn't too bad, but I was left wanting more after five steps.

"Look! Miss Lina, there's Mr. Xelloss!"

It was Xelloss and Subaru, actually, although neither one of them stood out in the Tokyo crowds—yes, even at 4 AM there were lots of street people milling about. If Amelia hadn't been so sharp-eyed, we'da missed them for sure. We waved them down.

"Hey, next time drag Val, Gourry or Filia along so we can spotcha better," I suggested.

They had been sent out to look for us. They were carrying food, probably to lure me back to the hotel.

"It looks like a box," I said mistrustfully at the carton Subaru was offering me.

Subaru opened it to prove to me that it was in fact a container of food. "It is a 'famous' mixed bento (box) lunch, with rice with nori (dried seaweed) and a light broth to be poured over the rice."

It was very good, but I couldn't quite figure out what made it all that famous. Some things were just to remain mysterious.

Subaru had a meeting with some of his local cohorts that day so the rest of us had scheduled a half-day tour of Tokyo offered through the hotel when we reserved the rooms. I hadn't asked for a bus tour, but, with the limited time we had in Tokyo, it made sense that we'd at least get to say we'd seen a few things that we'd never get to on our own. Besides, part of the tour description said we'd be doing a 'drive-by' of the Diet (Japanese parliament) building. I wasn't sure when they were going to hand out the guns, but it sounded like an interesting way to spend the morning.

Our instructions were to meet at the hotel lobby at 7:20 AM to meet the 7:30 AM tour bus! That gave me only a couple hours to sleep!

I made it to the lobby on time. On the bright side, Amelia pointed out to me, with the sun out we could appreciate the brilliant colors and plantings. I replaced those first gray impressions of the city with these new ones. Tokyo was strikingly beautiful.

Naturally, someone who had signed up for the tour was late so we didn't get away till nearly eight, but I didn't care, we were on the move and starting our tour.

Nearly...

In fact, we had to stop at 6 more hotels to pick up more tourists, which took two more hours! Needless to say, I was not pleased.

Our last stop was at this one hotel where an Atlas City couple boarded the bus. They sat behind us and I was mildly entertained while the husband proceeded to bitch to his wife how we 'were 10 minutes late picking them up and now the tour would be delayed'. Frankly, I wish the SOB had gotten on the bus 2 hours earlier so he could have suffered with the rest of us as he deserved - he was getting off easy. (I mean, really, if you're going to gripe about stuff, why not just set up a web page and do it right?)

Actually, he was a real comedian. He filled the miles explaining to his wife things that surprised him about Tokyo, most of which were not worth noting, but one thing was: vending machines. Apparently, he had heard the same tales that everyone had that anything was available in vending machines in Tokyo. He had not witnessed this, having only seen soda and beer. I started thinking about it and realized that I could add lots to the list of things I had seen in street corner vending machines and I'd only been looking around for an hour tops! Of course, our friend also pointed out to his wife that one only saw vending machines on the back streets and never on the main streets. He said this oblivious to the fact that we were on THE main road and driving past a bank of 6 machines as he spoke.

Admittedly, I've got superior skills of observation, and so, I determined that I'd catalog everything I saw. So... I give you a list of odd things you can buy in a vending machine outside my hotel...

1) Beer and Sake, in king size glass bottles.

2) Realllly hot canned coffee, tea and corn cream soup.

3) Cigarettes

4) Condoms

5) Video Games

6) Porn videos (I have heard reports of a certain porno machine

outside of a boys' high school that sells out every day.)

7) Hot meals, i.e., hamburger, fried chicken, sea breem. Made while you wait.

8) Comic books, for kids and dirty old men.

9) Uncooked rice and fresh eggs.

10) Batteries

11) Men's shirts

As it turned out, the machines were like a sacrificial altar to some people, the way they left tokens of many coins at them. Zel was into Blendy coffee drink in a can with Crunky Biscuits. Sylphiel started collecting some other coffee drink in Art Deco designed cans, while Amelia was obsessing over this awful drink called Qoo-- some fruit drink with a 'cute' mascot thing the school girls were nuts over. I found it to be disturbing. Very disturbing. Although, food from machines everywhere and anytime was great. Which got me thinking... yes...I was beginning to think about breakfast and how I had missed mine.

With everyone on board, the tour began. We drove by the Diet building and we could see there was a field trip of school children there, then we swung by the Asakasa Detached Palace and stopped for a few moments.

The Asakasa Detached Palace was in use as the Royal Guest House. Originally, it was built during the Meiji period (Late 1800, early 1900s) and intended to show the rest of the world that Japan, freshly out of 200 years of isolation, was a progressive, modern society. It was designed similar to the palace of Versailles, and as such, didn't offer any great insights into Japanese-style palaces. Sigh, I was fast becoming bored and hungry.

Our next stop was the Meiji Shrine. Built in honor of the late emperor Meiji, it was set in a huge, beautiful park in the middle of the city, populated with over 200,000 trees, all of which were donated from all over Japan. So dense were the trees that it was hard to believe that it was an 'artificial' forest.

At the entry to the shrine stood the largest wooden tori gates in Japan. (I suspect that means the largest in the world also.) According to our tour guide, each gate pillar was from a single Japanese Cyprus tree. Of course, they didn't have trees that big in Japan and they had to be felled in Taiwan. (The guide didn't mention that was probably done during the Japanese colonial occupation of Taiwan in the first part of this century.) The shrine was packed with tourists, including a group of school children on a field trip; I couldn't tell if they were the same ones from the Diet building or not.

When we got to the Meiji shrine, we discovered that a wedding was in progress. The bride and groom in all their traditional Shinto finery were walking through the courtyard. The tourists, including ourselves and a flock of...yes...Japanese school children, were snapping away with cameras.

This was where I discovered that the 35mm camera my sister lent me was dead, possibly a victim of the Seyruun Airline gorillas that bounced our luggage around. If I was lucky, its problem was just a dead battery. Anyway, I let everyone else take the pictures.

Our next stop was the Tokyo Tower, or would have been had I not made a fuss about the NEED TO GET SOMETHING TO EAT! The tour guide rushed us all to a local restaurant that made 'o-musubi' - basically, rice balls, with stuff in the middle, wrapped in nori, the seaweed they use for sushi rolls. It was totally cool, this was the only thing this restaurant made (well, they served miso soup, and pickles with your rice balls, too.) They had some 30 varieties of stuff to put in the middle, so we could, and I most certainly did, choose whatever I felt like—some of everything. YUM! We need one of these places in Seyruun.

Before we got back to the tour, I demanded time to go into a tiny store across the street from the restaurant. I was writing notes to folks back home all the time, unlike the others in my band. I had picked up some really cool paper supplies, but when I went to address them, I noticed something strange: the Japanese envelopes I had, had no glue on the flaps. This meant that I had to have some glue to send a letter. Luckily, glue came in these nice tube things, and I found a spiffy one with a wide applicator at one end, and a thin one that applied a line of glue at the other.

I love Japanese office supplies. Make a note of that, heh, heh...

So, then we went to Tokyo Towers, which was 333 meters tall, or approximately 1100 ft tall. I probably annoyed Amelia by constantly repeating a line from a presentation we had made in Japanese class a few weeks back (I know I annoyed Zel because he was glaring at me at the time.) "Tokyo Taawaa wa sanbyaku san neetaa desu." (Tokyo Tower is 333 meters.)

The tour included a trip to the first level observation platform (also known as 'the gift shop'.) Nonetheless, we had a great view of Tokyo from there, after fighting our way to a window, past yet another group of school children on a field trip. Don't the kids in Japan ever just sit in a dumb classroom like we always had to?

With a 360 degree panorama of Tokyo there was nothing to be seen except high-rises as far as the eye could see. Tokyo was huge. The sky was growing heavy with dark clouds, of course, and so we could not see far enough to get past the city itself. My hopes of seeing Mt. Fuji from Tokyo were crushed forever. We found out that what we were observing was rain and lots of it from a typhoon, which gave the island a near-miss and swung south.

We lost a few people at Tokyo Tower and that put the tour off schedule while the guide tried to track down 3 or 4 people in the crowd of hundreds. They had broken from the tour and paid to go to a higher observation platform so it took awhile to find them. To the tour company's credit, at least they didn't ditch them at the tower - although they did deserve it. I sure as hell would have.

Next we headed to the East Garden of the Imperial Palace, the only part of the palace open to the public. The palace was surrounded by a moat, in which people were floating around in rented boats and fishing. Beyond the moat, the grounds themselves had fortified castle walls. The stone walls were at least 15 feet thick and 20 feet, or more, tall. Inside was another beautiful garden with, Zel noted, azaleas and irises in bloom and there were many photographers out trying to capture the beauty.

Not me of course. Every school age child within a five mile radius was snapping pics, but not me.

That was where the tour ended and they left us. I got a good GPS fix on the Ginza subway station so we could find our way home and we headed off in search of lunch or dinner or whatever meal was next. Time for another amazing, in-depth analysis from me: food prices in Tokyo seemed to vary wildly. At one place, we had $3-Seyruun-meal which cost us 1500 yen (or about $12.50). In other places, we found that the same meal might cost 1000 yen (or $8.35) or even a bit less. I never saw anything that wasn't twice as expensive as I'd expect in Seyruun. Some things were so expensive that you had to look three times at the prices to believe them. We saw some meals that cost over $50 that shouldn't have cost $5! One must have been paying for an awful lot of ambience at those restaurants, although they didn't appear to be swanky places at all. And all the bickering from me couldn't change the prices one iota! Not a dime, or yen or whatever. It did send Xelloss into a flurry of embarrassed chatter and bowing 'excusing' my audacity, which nearly got his lights punched out by me on one occasion. But moving on...

By this time Subaru was back from his 'work' and greeted us at the hotel. He took us to dinner at a local tonkatsu (deep fried pork-cutlet with shredded cabbage and a rich sauce) restaurant and I had to concur, it was delicious. This dinner was the first occasion of many discussions entitled 'So What Will Miss Lina Eat?' My protestations of 'really, anything,' (Let me qualify this statement at this point, and I will tell you why later. Anything except natto, made from fermented soybeans) 'I like Japanese food, honest' were met with nods and 'ah, soo desu ka' ('oh, really') from the servers. Until I proved that I could both use chopsticks and happily eat just about anything they put in front of me, the waiters around me were worried that I wouldn't get enough food. I showed them!

Full of stomach and lagged of jet, we all found our beds after that and didn't move until late the next afternoon.

The next day I left the camera behind for good. New batteries didn't fix the problem and I could buy disposables in machines anyway, if I wanted to. And I really didn't. Mostly I found that photography was best left to those unable to record the details via pen, like Amelia who loved shooting digital pictures and downloading them to Zel's ubiquitous laptop (with help from Zel, naturally) each evening. It was almost 'puke-cute'. Zel was promising to become a well-trained monkey...er...in the boyfriend arena, that is.

We all went to the Tobu department store, the largest in Tokyo and second largest in the world. Tobu, and nearby Seibu were once the #1 and #2 largest in the world, but Seibu opened a larger store in Yokohama. Who'd guessed that?

I scoffed at the bravado at first, and then I saw the place. I found it really hard to believe there could be a larger department store. Tobu was huge; it spanned three buildings which have been merged together at every level to create a long, single building. But how big was big? Well, take a large size department store in Seyruun or Atlas City; Tobu was like that - on one floor. Tobu had 8 floors, and 3 basement levels, with a subway station in it. It would have taken us days to look over the entire store. Instead, I decided to head for the toy section. The boys all decided that would be fun and followed along, except for Subaru who had to accompany the other girls because only he could be coerced into doing so and he spoke the language like a native, because he was a native.

When I finally located it, I was instantly annoyed that I was camera-free. The superhero Ultraman was entertaining the kids in the toy section along with Red King. My guess was that these were real costumes from the TV shows and I was struck at how short Ultraman really was. Wasn't he actually BIG? He should have been about 30 meters tall, but was actually only about 5'5". Red King, a Godzilla-like monster, was also smaller than he seemed on TV and had a long tail with a 'minder' following him around to prevent his tail from wrecking the toy displays. Later, Ultraman and Red King were replaced with a mecha-robot that I could not identify.

After that, I'd had enough of department stores; although Filia and Sylphiel hadn't so they dragged Xelloss along with them to visit that Seiku place while I went with Gourry, Val and Kiki to get some food. Be wary when you see the word 'pizza' on the menu. I discovered that there were certain popular pizza combinations everyone should try while in Japan (this is a cynic speaking, remember), like the 'tuna and seaweed' special, or the 'Potato Queen' with potatoes, corn, and mayonnaise. Hey, I won't eat everything on every menu! And don't let someone try and tell you differently!

At the end of that day, I finally crashed big time, and managed to get a decent night's sleep. Before that, my body had kept waking me up about once an hour to tell me to get up, what was I doing sleeping in the middle of the day? The 13-hour time difference took a while to get used to.

No diary of Japan would be complete without at least one comment about the toilets. I shall make several, this being...my second. The toilet down the hall in Xelloss' room (don't ask why I had to use his!) was a marvel of engineering. It was set up so that when you sat down, the room fan started up, and stayed on for a while after you left. There were about 5 different controls on the thing (you could heat the seat to the desired temperature, for instance. This might be nice in the winter, but seemed a bit odd to me in June, so I turned that feature off) and I couldn't even figure out most of the other controls. Just amazing.

And yet, public toilets (for instance, in train stations) were pretty grubby. It's my pet theory that this fancy-toilet thing was some sort of emotional overcompensation for the less-than-elegant old fashioned systems. As long as you've got all this high tech stuff, you might as well use it to pamper yourself, or something. I dunno...

The next day we all headed for a different store called Tokyu Hands. Imagine combining a great hardware store, a toy store, and a few other craft places, and put them all in one building. That was Tokyu Hands. Needless to say, I had fun, and managed to find just about everything on everyone else's wish lists. Just wandering around the Ikebukuro district in the morning was cool, too. It seemed like everyone in Tokyo was out shopping, and Ikebukuro had some huge department stores.

I managed to nab a quick pre-lunch of ramen (Chinese-style noodles) that I could have prepped myself at home for half the price, but I wouldn't have had the same fun little man selling it to me.

Not to continue the toilet theme, exactly, but so far every single piece of plumbing and bathroom-related hardware I had seen was made by a company called 'Toto.' I was forced to go through the entire visit with songs from The Wizard of Oz running around in my head, as a result. ('And Toto too?')

Mid-day we headed to a local sushi shop which was rated among the five best in Tokyo, and I found out why. The food was amazing. The chef was a real artist, and a steady stream of small bowls and plates full of interesting tidbits, and pieces of sashimi (raw fish) and nigiri-sushi (fish on a little patty of rice) flowed from behind the counter and from the kitchen. I can't even remember what all we ate; it was mostly new to me. The chef was thrilled that I was not only willing to try everything, but that I enjoyed it, too. As a joke, he made a tiny rolled sushi (about 1/2 inch in diameter) with a tiny strip of tuna in the middle. In return I asked for a piece of nori (that's a kind of seaweed dried in sheets) cut into a square and gave it to Sylphiel. Sylphiel folded a crane out of it, much to everyone's disbelief. Nori is a bit hard to work with, but it came out looking like a crane, at any rate. Bunches of people took her photo holding the seaweed crane. I bet if we went back there, one of those pictures would still be hanging on the wall there. Sylphiel's a pretty capable lady, once you get her out of her old high school environment.

While I'm on the subject of odd food, I should mention the Japanese fondness for slimy, textured food. Fish, too, but the slippery-slick-jelly-thing was my point here. There's no other good word I can think of for it, and unfortunately 'slime' has nothing but negative connotations, especially for me. One of the sushi dishes involved the leaf buds of a pond plant, each one encased in a little bubble of this...interesting...substance. It sounds completely horrible, I know, but it was really good. Guess you had to be there.

No doubt more on the subject of slime, later.

Um... did I ever mention that I hate slimy things?

Anyway, we liked the sushi place so much that after an afternoon snooze we returned for dinner, at which point the prices doubled, unbeknownst to me. The bill was something that got totaled up at the end based on the number and color of those little serving dishes, as before. Unfortunately, since I couldn't even see over the top of my stacks, they just rounded to the equivalent of $200! Val covered for me that night. Hell, he had the bucks but it was damned embarrassing and he just went and did it without consulting me first! To shut me up, I suppose, he took me out sake tasting. Well, everyone else came along too. It wasn't just him and me.

So, I had sake for the first time. Different kinds. And since Amelia was the sake-cup collector, she ended up with a whole assortment of sake cups in front of her place by the end of the evening, each with a different type in it. Of course, by the end of the evening I had pretty much forgotten all the names of the stuff we were drinking...Ah well. I did discover, and remember the name of, a wonderful snack to accompany sake - it was, if you can believe it, grilled dried stingray wings, served with a spicy mayonnaise dipping sauce. I loved it.

We were all feeling pretty much back to normal by this time (read that as: still awake) and so when the conversation turned to karaoke at some point, and there were lots of places to do karaoke in Japan, we of course had to go. Now in Seyruun, most of the karaoke places make you stand up and sing in front of the whole restaurant. Here, however, they had these little 'karaoke boxes' which were tiny rooms with their own sound and video system, allowing you to show off only to yourself in front of a relatively small number of people—too bad!

So, I tried a couple of songs alone and with others in the band who I could stuff in the 'box' with me and sounded mostly terrific. It was especially nice for me to have company and a fun night out.

On the way back to the hotel that night, I got to experience (again) one of the strangest Japanese train-riding habits - sleeping. Really, everyone sleeps on the train and the subway. It was as if the whole country didn't get enough sleep (which, given their work and commuting schedules, is probably true.) Even on the subway, many, many people, regardless of the time of day, just sat there with their eyes closed, and at least napped. In the evening it was much more noticeable. There was something still really odd about sitting there that night in that silent train car, surrounded by people with their eyes closed.

Now to completely change the subject, sorry, but it's toilet-related: it appeared that most Japanese toilet paper did not have any perforations. Almost everywhere, there'd be a metal or plastic plate that sitting on top of the roll, and you'd rip it off against that. This was a ridiculous thing to notice, but I couldn't help it. Another odd thing... There was this product I wish they had in Seyruun - sugar syrup, in little containers. Maybe we have it, but I've certainly never seen it anywhere. Well, a few restaurants sometimes serve it in little pitchers with ice tea in the summer, but that's it. It's everywhere, in Japan, and they always served it to you with ice coffee and tea. I ended up buying a case of it in the grocery store, and mailed it home to myself.

I think it was the myriad tiny differences, like those, that made things feel so different, in Japan. On the surface, cities, houses, and people looked just like they did in Seyruun (well, ok, there are some obvious differences, like the writing system, etc.) But, scratch the surface, and you'd notice that everything underneath was different!

Most interesting.

Well, not all the gang thought so, Kiki was for a short time a little homesick and Gourry and Filia seemed bewildered like birds with no gravity. However, one thing we agreed all about: the most disgusting Japanese food that we had ever run across was natto. We were told in a smug sort of way, that it was made from soybeans which had been allowed to go bad, then covered in mucus, and (to be authentically Japanese) mold. Nice, huh? Let me tell you about my first and most memorable encounter with the foul stuff.

So the night before I had ordered a Japanese breakfast in advance, ya know, so I'd be sure to get some fortification early. When I went down to the eatery in the hotel, I presented my ticket, and sure enough got breakfast. It consisted of a bowl of rice, a grilled fish, some pickles, some seaweed, and, of course, a small packaged bowl of natto.

I had downed the fish and rice with a tea wash, and was picking at the other stuff, eating slowly, when the waitress came over and informed me that, well, the drift I think I got was that I should have eaten the natto first, and wasn't I happy with my breakfast? How come I didn't dig right into the natto? Didn't I know I was supposed to eat the natto first?

Well, naturally I thought I was going to mortally affront this waitress if I didn't eat the damned natto.

I examined my 'treat' with curiosity and growing disgust. It was packaged in a single-use cup, with a top layer of plastic in case the underneath layer ruptured, and some little condiments (please - give me anything to make this taste a little less like natto) and then a bottom layer. I peeled off the plastic, and dumped the condiments in and stirred at it vaguely, dispersing the covering coating of mold. I thought of all of the odd things that I pizza, fried egg sandwiches, day-old, maybe moldy, cheese sandwiches...well, nothing quite approached natto. I thought of not eating it. The waitress was still waiting. If I didn't eat it, she might do something odd, like go off in the corner and commit suicide. Did I want her to commit suicide with those long fancy knives I'd seen used in Shogun movies?

As appealing as that might seem now, at the time it was only close. In the end, I ate it. The waitress relaxed and went away. You know, it was just as bad as it had looked. But after eating the natto, let me assure you that I was as awake as if I had drunk two strong espressos.

Subaru chose this time to enter the room, fresh from his shower and perky-sad as always. I waved him over and he joined me at my table.

"Y-you like... n-natto?" he both stuttered and choked.

"Hell, no, but if hadn'ta eaten it that woman over their might had killed herself."

He smiled slightly and said, "Most Japanese outside of the Tokyo area consider natto as disgusting as you do. I usually excuse myself by claiming that I am allergic to it, and don't have to eat it."

"Swell," I snorted and pushed the cellophane packaging out of sight. "So, you wanna tell me what I just ate?"

"Oh, well, ah...natto is made by inoculating soybeans and water with a special bacillus, traditionally by covering an open vessel with straw, and leaving the container in a warm place, say... next to a brick oven or kiln, for about a week. You were supposed to put it over your rice," he added hesitantly. I guess he was afraid I might make him eat the remainder if he got me too mad.

"Ugh! What, and ruin a perfectly good bowl of rice?" I took the last swig of my tea to wash away the awful taste in my mouth. "So, what are you having?"

"Pancakes. Made with rice four and with a plum topping," he smiled. "I'll share."

"You'd better believe it!" I laughed.

So the mystery of what food Lina would not eat (in great quantities) was solved, but only Subaru and I knew it.

And, in the mysterious department, we went to see a sake brewery after lunch at a great soba place that day. They only made sake in the winter, it turned out, so we couldn't see the process, but we did get a wonderful tour. The process was very organic, and they used a special mold to start the fermentation. There's a lot of emphasis on good water, and good rice, and Ogawamachi was famous for both, they claimed, so they made good sake. There were a lot of superstitions about making sake, too; apparently women aren't allowed in while they're brewing (first off, it was really hot inside so nobody wore much in the way of clothing, which was one reason) but there seemed to be some superstitious thing to it as well, which embarrassed Subaru too much to explain it properly. And Xelloss was in one of his pensive moods and 'couldn't say.' In any case, none of that spoiled the place or occasion for me. The whole place smelled really interesting, not unlike a winery in Zephillia, just different. And of course, afterwards we got to taste things, just like at a winery.

On the way home we all stopped by one of the large department stores, and bought bento suppers at one of the shops in the basement. One of the neatest features of larger department stores was that the whole basement, usually, was one huge food-court, filled with deli-like counters that sold all sorts of food, from prepared meals to raw ingredients.

Outside, Gourry became absorbed in watching workers at a construction site. At first I didn't get what had him so fascinated, just a bunch of men in hardhats, right? Well, contrary to what you might expect, Japanese construction workers were not large people. In fact, even for Japanese they appeared to be a strangely uniformly compact and wiry people. It was an interesting contrast with Seyruun, where most people in construction jobs were at least average or larger build (like Gourry, for instance.) It was sort of strange to walk past a group of them (there was a new building going up down the street from the hotel) and be able to see over their hardhats...or so everyone told me. Gourry broke away with Xelloss in tow and loped over to the 'head supervisor dude'. Using Xelloss as interpreter, he asked about how they moved objects (lots of leverage) and reached things (pulleys.) After a few minutes, Gourry and the construction supervisor exchanged cards and bows. Gourry was grinning and proud of starting his own World-wide construction exchange network.

I had heard the film 'Blade Runner' often used as a way of describing Tokyo, and perhaps as far as the Shinjuku and Shibuya districts were concerned, I could agree. I mean, whether you wanted sushi, singing, sex, or salvation, the chances were if you tried hard enough you'd find what you were looking for in those parts. Although sex was probably the easiest option to take. Once it got dark, we headed over to Shinjuku, one of Tokyo's shopping and nightlife areas, to check out the area and look for Tower Records and Kinokuniya Book Store. Japan was alive with people all the time, but Shinjuku was swarming with them. Thousands upon thousands of people were walking around the streets. Fighting against the tide was nearly impossible in places.

Once again despite my having a really good idea where things were supposed to be, we couldn't find Tower Records. We continued walking a straight line and stumbled across the Kinokuniya just as it was closing for the evening. We only had a few minutes to look around and then got kicked out. Heading back I discovered why we had missed the Tower Records store. Looking for the store on the street I had missed the glowing Tower records sign 7 floors up. Tower was also a bust, although they had several fascinating DVDs not available in Seyruun, they were also region-coded so that they couldn't be used on an ordinary Seyruun-type DVD player, and they were also astronomically expensive - the cheapest was $30 for a single DVD, which was far more than I wanted to pay for a DVD I was pretty nearly certain I wouldn't be able to watch.

Walking the streets, watching the lights and the swarms of people, I started getting hungry again. There was a chain hamburger store right down the street called 'Mos Burger'. The local inhabitants didn't seem to know where the name came from, but were very amused to discover that the name sounded to us Seyruun-speakers like 'a hamburger made of moss.' I got a teriyaki burger, something called a 'rice burger' (which had grilled rice patties instead of a bun, not instead of the filling) fries and a coke. It was okay. Filling anyway, which was more than I could say for Filia's lettuce wrapped construct, yuch!

Then it came to pass... day trips out of town by train. For the first day, our choices were Mt. Fuji and Nikko. Both were popular scenic destinations possible to take in as day trips from Tokyo. The near-perfect volcanic cone of Fuji-San was the most well known image of Japan the world over, while Nikko was a popular tourist spot known for its natural beauty and ancient shrines.

Now, ancient shrines interested me and all the priest/priestesses amongst us, though frankly, I didn't care which place was decided on. For Zelgadiss, it was down to which might afford the best look at natural surroundings. Based entirely on second-hand information and with a lot of gnashing of teeth, (okay, so Filia, Sylphiel, and Amelia were priestesses and Subaru and Xelloss priests...and so we out voted the mountain contingency 2 to 1) we opted to go to Nikko rather than to Mt. Fuji.

Our train almost immediately pushed into mixed pine forest and before long we pulled into the town of Nikko, where we picked up a map at the train station and headed out on foot in the same direction as the other tourists and tour busses. No tour vehicles for us, no! At one point 9 tour busses passed us one after the other in a sort of tourist wagon train. Walking, it was easy to tell it was uphill all the way. So, maybe the tour bus package wasn't such a bad idea. Just hop off at the top and forgo the tour part. Too late.

We slogged on, eventually reaching the river and the sacred bridge, which was under reconstruction and completely obscured from view. A plaque declared this the entrance to the Nikko World Heritage area for shrines and such. Super. At the top of a stiff bit of stairs was the ticket booth to see the shrines. They wanted 900 yen for a combo ticket, not all that much, really, but Gourry, Kiki, Zel, and I decided to go hiking in the woods instead. Let the other travelers report on the shrines!

We found a trail guide post and we decided to try a mountain trail up the street a ways that ultimately would lead us back to the train station. See? A bit of fresh air, leg stretch, then food at the station. Good plan. As we walked, however, we just couldn't find the darn trail, which should have been obvious. Zel had the endurance of a demon that apparently never needed to feed. Kiki was long-suffering, I guessed, leaving Gourry my only friend sympathetic to my starvation concerns. We pressed on a few hours longer.

There came a time when my grumbling stomach took all precedence, enough that Zel took pause.

"The prospects of pizza in Nikko look pretty grim," he observed.

"Okay, so it's time to bite the bullet and eat at a Japanese restaurant," I said, all optimism and good cheer.

And with the intention of sucking out as much joy from me as he could, Zel added, "Fine. This should be fun without Xelloss or Subaru or Sylphiel around to translate the menu."

We passed a small family restaurant (with the obligatory plastic food out front.) Noting that they served traditional Japanese food and tonkatsu, which was that delicious breaded meat chop that I quite enjoyed before, I chose that place to eat. That said, it was very yummy, and came with a lot of side dishes. I should hope it was tasty, the bill came to 1,200 yen ($ 10) each! I tried to argue the price down, but my Japanese was bad enough that they just smiled and nodded and sputtered stuff I didn't understand, but what Zel thought was 'you poor idiot.'

Refreshed and re-energized we continued on until it was obvious we had totally missed the trailhead. We were at the turn off for Jakko no Tori (Jakko Waterfall), which didn't appear to be a widely publicized tourist destination, and decided that would be our target.

2.5 Km (uphill) later we arrived at a small but tranquil waterfall in the beautiful forest, totally devoid of all other people. Despite being a hot, cloudless day, the water was almost freezing and we spent time just relaxing, playing in the water and enjoying the day.

Ultimately we had to leave and return to Tokyo. At least the walk back to the train station was all downhill. When we got back to our hotel at last and I was soaking my feet in the sink, Xelloss sauntered into our room refreshed from a shower and looking perky, "Zelgadiss did some calculations and found that you guys walked between 8 and 10 km, much of it at an 8 percent grade! How about that?"

I gave him 'how about that' and he left, the annoying twerp!

The next day I stayed in the hotel room, so did all my other walking mates of the day before, and watched Japanese TV.

Our next adventures out of Tokyo took us to the city of Nara which had this cool deer park and lots of shrine places. Anyway, Nara was the capital of Japan between the year 710 and the year 784. We were going there, Xelloss told us, because, "This trip to Nara is an opportunity to confirm how intricately tied Buddhism and Shintoism are in the life of Japanese people."

"What makes you the expert?" I asked.

He pulled out a map and tour guide booklet from a shoulder bag and went on to tell me why for the next few hours. "You do realize, Lina, that the two belief systems are somewhat complementary: while Buddha tells you that you have to count only on yourself, Shintoism gives you the recourse of a god to pray when in a dire strait."

Maybe so, but it appeared to me that the younger generation in Japan didn't really distinguish between the two, and practiced both seamlessly.

Anyway, as I was saying, nearly half of Nara city was this large deer park which hosted the Kasuga Shinto shrine. This was because, Xelloss told us, "the deity of the shrine allegedly came riding to the area on a deer."

Yeah, well that was one deer. Now, over 1,000 sacred deer were roaming around, and pestering, er... greeting the visitors. I mean, the deer were all over the place and not just keeping to the park limits. I purchased food to feed the deer while Kiki took my picture. While tame, these deer were a bit aggressive when there was food to be had. A bit of advice: don't place extra food in your back pocket because the deer can smell it and will be nipping at your pocket to get to the food. I know because I've been there and done that! Amelia got her hair ribbon pulled out and she ran around screaming after it, which was dumb because these were Japanese deer and they couldn't understand her, right? Heh, heh. Without much trouble we convinced Xelloss to offer a deer a cracker from his mouth. He did it, but wouldn't do it again for a picture 'cause it breathed on him.

Kasuga Grand Shrine was one of the most famous of all the Shinto shrines of Japan. Built in 768, the shrine was painted a bright vermilion color I could see for miles. I pointed it out to Gourry, "See that?"

"The red building?"

"That's the one. I want my house that color next time, got that?"

"Red? Ah...okay, but it won't be tall like that."

"I know. I can't change the architecture, just the color."

"But it won't look like that, Lina."

"I know, Gour-ry. I like the color, though."

"Oh, okay. Just so you don't get disappointed when it doesn't come out lookin' like that one."

"Why would I think a stupid thing like that?"

He gave me one of his sad looks, the kind he gives me when he knows I'm not going to like what he's about to say.

Zel stepped in to take the heat for him, for some reason, "Because you got upset with him the last time he painted your house because it didn't come out looking like a half-wooded fairytale house."

"That's not... Oh, yeah, well that was different. I wanted the wood and stuff put on the outside. This time I just want the color." I could tell Gourry was not convinced. To be kind, I changed the subject, "Hey, Xelloss, know-it-all guy! Tell us about this place."

Xelloss made a face at me, but did what he was told. He always did. "Since the temple's construction, worshippers have been bringing stone lanterns as offerings to the enshrined deities. Over 3,000 lanterns decorate the aisles leading to the shrine. Over 1,800 stone lanterns line the shrine precinct and another 1,000 are suspended from the eaves of the corridors."

I found all these little pieces of paper stuffed into some of the cracks and crevices of the lanterns.

Subaru stopped me from pulling one out to see what it was. "N-No, please! These tiny pieces of paper contain kind of... s-secret messages to the d-deities."

"Yeah, like: please take back some deer to your underworld!" I joked and slapped him on the back. "Don't worry; I wasn't really going to pull them out! Oh...um, sorry 'bout that..." I hadn't meant to knock the wind out of him. Jeez, some guys were just too soft!

Not to be bested by the Shinto deer lovers, the Todaiji Buddhist temple was also in the deer park. Xelloss translated with amazing fluency from his booklet, "The original, built in 752, was destroyed by fire and rebuilt shortly thereafter, destroyed again during the civil war, and eventually rebuilt in 1692. This latest version stood only 2/3 the size of the original one, but still was the largest wooden structure in the world!" With a grin, he added, "Take it away, Subaru!"

The poor guy blushed, but took the offered pamphlet and read aloud, translating as he went, "It was in Nara that Buddhism first appeared in Japan and reached its peak in 752 when Diahutsu, the world's largest bronze statue of Buddha, was completed in the Todaiji Temple." Subaru cleared his throat and continued, "This temple enshrines the Great Image of Buddha. Diahutsu is immense standing 53 feet high and weighs 452 tons; the largest bronze statue in the world."

And I gotta tell you it was enormous.

We were going to stay in Kyoto that night, so if we were to see more, we had to move on. I said that it was time to head out and we did. We stopped at the Fushimi Shinto shrine.

"A superb gate welcomes the treasured worshippers to its most humble and hallowed grounds," Xelloss intoned reading from some new hellish brochure he'd picked up.

I ripped it out of his hands and poured over the writing. Turning it over I found a translation and scanned that. "Okay, so this temple was dedicated to Inari, the God of business." That was reasonable. I could buy into this temple's philosophy; it had a plausible reason for being. "It was originally built in 816, then burnt down and rebuilt in 1499." That's where the translation left off. "Okay so what's with the foxes, Xelloss?" He was dying to tell us. I could tell he was bursting with enthusiasm.

"Fushimi Inari Shrine is the most famous of several thousands of shrines dedicated to Inari across Japan. Inari is the Shinto god of rice, and foxes are thought to be his messengers. The foxes represent, with their thick and bushy tails, very full rice stems, ready to be harvested. Therefore, many fox statues can be found at Inari shrines." (The emphases were all his.) Xelloss turned the page and continued to read, but I had heard enough. The God of business I could understand but foxes waving bushy tails of rice was too much on an empty stomach, and I was increasingly aware of the empty state of my own.

"Over the years, worshippers have offered torii or gates to this god. Over 10,000 gates make a tunnel along the paths on the shrine's grounds. Theycover the hiking trails of Inarisan, the wooded mountain behind the shrine's main buildings. It takes about two hours to walk along the whole trail," Xelloss read.

Two hours! I was not going to make it without sustenance. Udon, a noodle soup topped with pieces of aburaage (fried tofu), was served at small restaurants along the hiking trail. Naturally I had to try some. "Let's stop in here!"

"So what shall I eat?" Filia asked. She hadn't had too hard a time finding vegetarian food so far. "What's all this kitsune udon about?"

Okay, so I could now read the word 'kitsune' and understand it meant fox. Filia wasn't so adept at languages besides her own.

"Fox. It means 'Fox Udon'," I replied carelessly.

Filia threw down her menu and screeched in a most unseemly fashion, "They serve little...baby foxes...to EAT!" She looked scandalized, and looked at us as if we were dripping blood from fangs set in big beefy hunks of meat.

Zelgadiss, bless his wicked little soul said, "I think that's the Chinese you are thinking of. They eat dog meat, I understand."

"Ooooh!"

I was afraid Filia was going to go into a swoon and knock something over. "Maybe you outta find her something else on the menu," I said to Xelloss ever-present at my side.

"Maybe you'd like the... inari sushi, Filly?" he said with an evil little smile.

Okay, even she got the inari-fox thing... WHACK!

Xelloss appeared stunned by the impact of Filia's handbag to the side of his head.

"You find me something on that menu that I can eat, you slimy piece of sewer trash!"

Oh, Filia must have been pretty wound up to call him that. I thought they'd become pretty good friends. I didn't want to see the look on his face so I buried myself in my menu as the waitress came to our table.

Subaru came to Xelloss' rescue, "Oh, you misunderstand, Miss Filia. Kitsune is the name for fried tofu...it was said to be the favorite food of foxes, so these are all tofu dishes, not meat."

Things settled down after that, although Xelloss was quieter than usual-- which wasn't a bad thing, actually.

Wow, this is getting to be much longer than I'd thought. Of course, Zelgadiss took up the first seven pages or so, so it wasn't all my fault. But don't worry, I'm just getting warmed up here. I got lots more to tell, so hold on. Next time... Kyoto and my exciting adventure touring alone in Japan with an origami bike! Well, something like that.

End -- SHJ Ten Year Reunion-- Chapter Sixteen.