School Trip

Minamiaiki, Nagano Prefecture, Japan
February 18th

The day of the school trip had arrived. With half of yesterday to prepare, Tamamo, Maria, and I did the best we could. In an emergency shopping trip, we mainly bought clothes and jackets for the cold winter weather in the mountains. Finding clothes for Maria was easy as she was excited to finally see some real snow. Although she had been here for a while, my sister, who is confined to the hospital, wasn't allowed to go outside to see it. Since she's a normal person, it was just a matter of finding something she liked. Tamamo, on the other hand, at first thought of going in her kimono, but after a good talk, we managed to convince her to wear western clothes like everyone else, as they were much more comfortable for walking in the mountains and warmer as well. She could hide all nine of her fox tails and ears whenever she wanted, which was rare, so it wasn't much of a problem. The real problem, as always, was me - I don't have the ability to hide my kitsune features like she does. It's even worse when it's really cold, because my tail tends to grow to help me conserve heat, so I need clothes that at least have room for my tail and my massive breasts. After searching all the stores, we finally found something in a cosplay store. After that, it was just a matter of buying things for the trip. They took care of buying candy and snacks. I managed to buy a military compass, a survival knife, a first aid kit, a flashlight, a gas lighter, a flint lighter, a water filter tube, a survival hatchet, and an ice axe. Tamamo and Maria called me paranoid; I prefer the term cautious, especially when it comes to being in a tunnel or on ice.

When the day arrived, we got on the bus with the rest of the class for a trip of more than 120 kilometers from Tokyo to Minamiaiki, Nagano, in Gunma Prefecture, a journey of more than three hours. The three of us sat in the back of the bus so as not to be disturbed, although Maria used my tail as a blanket when she realized that the winter cold wasn't as pleasant as the movies made it seem. Tamamo, on the other hand, took out four of her tails to lend to me and keep herself warm as well.

Teacher Xian also joined us on the trip, but for some reason she drove her own car. During the trip, Tamamo was very happy to look out the window at the countryside and see how things still looked like she remembered, with traditional houses and rice fields. At one point, she said she spotted a sweet shop that she had visited over a thousand years ago. That's incredible - this store was over 500 years old when Christopher Columbus discovered America, or when the country I was born in was founded. Now I was curious to visit it someday.

During the ride, Haru and her friend sat in the front seats and seemed a bit curious about our condition as foreigners.

"What do you like most about Japan?" Haru asked looking back.

"Well, in my youth I really liked anime and novels. I read a lot of them in my spare time."
"The typical fantasy story fan visiting the place of his dreams, only I stayed here to live instead of just visiting for a week."
"I also like the culture and the feeling that almost everything has a thousand-year-old legend here and there."
"Where I come from, there's also history, but it's mostly about indigenous people living in the mountains and things about nature, like distant things."
"Here, it's more like: this broom has been sweeping the halls of this temple every day for 500 years, or this fan was made before Japan was founded, but it's still being used without any problems.
"Everyday things that are also ancient.
"In my family, the closest thing we have is my grandmother's house, which is still made of clay, and her iron stove," I replied.

"Oh, interesting."
"And what do you like least about Japan?"
"Don't worry, be honest, I promise I won't get mad."

"Well, if there's one thing I don't like about Japan, it's the size."
"Everything feels cramped and small, there's just not enough space."
"In Tokyo it's a nightmare, but even outside it's the same problem."
"The streets barely have room for a compact car; how do they manage to pass without getting stuck?"
"And the same roads are used by both cars and pedestrians! Where are the sidewalks? Did someone steal them?"
"The other day I was almost run over when I went to the grocery store to buy bread for breakfast."
"Also, the houses or rooms - I don't understand how it's okay to use just one room for almost everything."
"Perpetual claustrophobia, I think, is the right word."
"I've spent a good part of my life in a tunnel against my will, and I hate not having space."
"You know, my grandmother lives on a piece of land the size of our entire school in Tokyo, and that's nothing special."
"As far as I know, my mom's house here is a little bigger than where I lived, only with a second floor, but by local standards, it's a mansion," I replied honestly.

"I have to admit that although the traditional culture valued space, design and art, it's true that there was a lot more space and room for things back then. Today, the population is so large that space is a luxury that can't be wasted," Tamamo added, offering her perspective as an ancient deity of the place.

"Well, you're right. Even for me, how cramped everything is can be annoying."
"Although I think living here all my life has given me a little more tolerance than foreigners."
"But even so, that feeling is still there, like when I had to add a fifth shelf next to my bed just to have room to put my clothes," Haru said, sharing her point of view.

During the trip, the bus stopped briefly at a rest area near a park to rest, stretch our legs, and eat lunch. We were each given a boxed lunch, which was quite tasty and varied, but being the perpetually hungry person that I was, I couldn't resist the temptation to go into the convenience store to buy some more food. At that moment, I think I saw something through the window; it passed by very quickly, but I thought I saw someone hiding in the trees across the street. Probably because I had been listening to Momo talk about these apparitions, my mind was playing tricks on me, like the lingering effects of the sounds of claws and death in the darkness of Atlantis. After that, the bus continued its journey until we arrived at a ryokan and hotel where we would be staying. We were assigned our rooms; in our case, Xian arranged everything so that our group would be Maria, Tamamo, her, and me, making sure that no strangers would see that my fox-girl features were completely real, while next to us was Haru's room with her friends.

A little later we were called for a guided walk along a trail, a small hike around the area that explained the geology and ecology of the place and gave some insight into why the site was chosen for the hydroelectric dam. Tamamo was very interested to see how water could be turned into the electricity that is so essential to today's civilization. For a magical being like the Goddess she was, it was truly incredible to see the ingenuity of humans to accomplish something similar using completely different methods and simple tools - how humans, with nothing more than observation and curiosity, managed to master something that should have been beyond their natural reach. But for Maria and me, it wasn't such a big deal, because where we came from, natural electrical plants like this powered our home. Everything came from the water, the sun, the wind, or the mountains themselves, because in our land, nature was queen. That was the lesson of our ancestors.

When we returned from the walk, the day was beginning to fade. According to the schedule, it was already our free time, or rather, it was the moment of the real problem - it was time to bathe in the public onsen baths. Of course, this meant trouble for me, because despite staying at the Urakaze Hotel, I didn't have the high self-esteem to be naked in front of others, let alone my classmates. And as appealing as it might sound to go into the women's bathhouse, having been a man before ending up as a kitsune girl, I had the problem of trying not to be discovered by others-they couldn't see that my fox tail was actually attached to the end of my back. Tamamo and Maria didn't have as many problems; for the Moon Goddess, being Japanese herself, it was part of her culture, so it was natural for my wife. Meanwhile, Maria, who had spent so much time in the hospital and depended on others for her survival, didn't mind being seen. As for me, I had to come up with a last-minute improvised plan to get out of there, simply by pretending to really enjoy the massage chairs, so I stayed there for a long time, waiting and keeping track of how many people had come and gone, in order to choose the right time to bathe. When I saw the last group of girls leaving, it was my time to act and I asked Xian to watch the entrance for a few minutes.

What happened next was the Streisand effect, where trying to hide something only ends up attracting more attention, because although I tried to be as quick as I could, Tamamo came back in to help me bathe, as she had seen in a manga I had bought. The men shouted excitedly while the girls tried to get in to see, so fearing for my secret, they entered the sauna and closed the door until they got tired and left me alone again. I had never done such a stupid thing before because I was on the verge of fainting and I felt completely cooked. In the end I was so sweaty that I had to take another shower. To end the story with how big our fox tails were, the fur absorbed a lot of water which took a long time to dry, in the house we used a dryer which we did not bring and we had to wait a while for it to dry, so the rest of the class left. Damn, if they would have done that I would have stayed in the massage chair and later I would have walked and come back the same way. Besides, all that nonsense just to keep them from seeing me and talking about my tail or ears, when with Tamamo that issue had already passed and now everyone takes it for granted. Really, I should ask myself if hiding them is a better option than continuing to suffer this every time I try to hide them.

After the bath, it was time for dinner. We were all taken to a large hall where we were served a traditional meal made with local ingredients. While to me it looked like the same food that Japanese people eat all the time, Tamamo found it pleasant and interesting to see how people here ate and how they produced their food. When dinner was over, Xian had scheduled one last event before the end of the day - a short walk around the area. This time, the goal was to reach a nearby grassland-area and look at the stars at night. She had borrowed some telescopes for us to use. I took it upon myself to start a small campfire to warm the area, using it as an excuse to use some of the survival gear I had brought along.

The other students were quite interested in the moon and stars, especially Maria, who had never used a telescope before. But when it came to talking about stars and the night sky, who better than Tamamo? An expert, she easily found constellations and even showed us how she could tell the date and time without a watch, just by looking at the sky. She was also fascinated by the telescope and Xian's explanation of tools like the sextant. Others took the opportunity to be very affectionate with each other, like Keisuke and his girlfriend Utagawa, and enjoyed the scenery to make the poor lonely souls even more miserable.

After it got quite late, we returned to the hotel to finally rest and prepare for tomorrow. The men and women were assigned to opposite sides of the hotel, with several teachers occasionally checking that nothing got too affectionate or that there weren't any intruders. But apart from separating the lovebirds in the early morning, nothing else happened during the night. The next day began with breakfast and a final review of our itinerary, which included a visit to the Ueno Dam, followed by a tour of the hydroelectric plant and its section of long underground tunnels.