Friday, Day 6 began bright and early as we caught a morning train back to Beppu to give us time to take a breather before we boarded the overnight ferry for Osaka that evening. I took advantage of the low number of passengers to grab another hour or so of sleep as we quietly zoomed through the beautiful Kyushu countryside.

The weather remained unchanged with it’s slight drizzle and low-hanging clouds, but I’ve always felt that sort of stuff lends an extra bit of beauty to a lush countryside panorama.

We made it back to the safety of my apartment a little before noon and Ma Li and I cooked yakisoba for lunch while my parents sat around.

Mom was kind enough to do the dishes though, so that was pretty cool.

Also, please note that you will *never* see my apartment cleaner than you did in those previous two pictures, ha.

At about 2pm the 4 of us (parents, Ma Li, and myself) hopped aboard a bus and headed over to Kannawa, the onsen district, to visit the Friday afternoon shamisen class. To refresh your memory, on Wednesday’s I have a private 1 hour session with Ishikawa-sensei, but on Friday’s he teaches a group session to a halfdozen or so older women and one man. While I don’t attend every week, I do pop into the Friday class when I can because the other “students” are always fun to be around and dote on me like no other.

Anyhow, I had told sensei that we would try to make it for the class, but had made no promises so when we slipped into the room at about 2:30 everyone was very excited. Practice stopped while we all sat around a long floor table and had tea and snacky-cakes and I introduced my parents to sensei and everyone else. There was some brief discussion regarding our trip-to-date, and then sensei pulled the rug out from under me – he insisted that I play for my parents.

Now, that doesn’t sound all that bad does it? Well, I had explicitly told that sneaky old man that I wouldn’t have any time to practice while they were here, and that if we DID manage to visit on Friday it would be just to meet everyone and listen a bit to the other students play. I hadn’t even brought all my stuff – sheet music, bachi, thumb slider, string bridge, etc.

Yeah, like any of THAT mattered.

Ishikawa-sensei just reached down into his bag o’ stuff and quietly found substitutes for everything I lacked, and to my parents’ delight I was soon seated next to him tuning up a borrowed ax.

The old ladies lined up off to our right (out of the picture) for the vocals and my surrogate grandpa seated himself at the drums and away we went. Ishikawa-sensei is wearing his traditional “casual” wear, note the tabi, split-toed socks.

I’ve seen that guy in modern clothes only once in the year and a half I’ve known him, and I was struck speechless because it was so surprising.

All in all I played ok.

Mistakes were made, as expected, but nothing critical and having Ishikawa-sensei hammering away right next to me certainly helped mask my missteps. He’s a short little guy, something else I never really notice because I always see him seated, but he’s great.

Dad took one big group picture, you can see all my surrogate grandmas in this one, and then we headed back to the apartment to get ready for the ferry.

I love the ferry, absolutely love it. It’s cheap, slow, and cozy to the max. And since it runs at night you are actually saving travel time, since if you took the shinkansen (bullet train) you’d be wasting precious daylight hours.

The ferry sets sail from Beppu at about 7pm, so I don’t have any exterior shots for you – it was already dark – but you can see what it looked like in tomorrow’s entry.

Ma Li accompanied us to the terminal, there was an emotional goodbye for both me and my parents, and then we scampered aboard. I had signed us up for the mid-level accommodations, which set us back roughly $70 per person for the oneway trip. As my mother is so gracefully modeling, you get a nice cozy bunk with your own little lamp and a curtain to draw across the opening.

There are 8 of these bunks in one room, and all 3 of us were in the same room which was nice. Like I said, these were the mid-range accommodations. They get a lot better, and a lot worse!

Once we got settled in we headed out to the leisure deck and found some comfy seats by the window from which to watch our departure from port.

Mom was enjoying herself so much she even waved goodbye to some people she didn’t even know who were in the ferry terminal waving back!

Later on we had a small meal in the diner, then retired to our beds and fell asleep to the ever so gentle rocking of our boat… when we wake up, we’ll be in Osaka!