It Never Rains in California - Refrain

On the sixth and last day in LA, I still had enough time for sightseeing in the daytime, as my flight to London was due at half past eight in the evening. So I asked Y to give me a lift to Down Town on the way to her office. My plan for the day was to visit Hollywood.

I took the Metro from Down Town and got off at the station, "Hollywood Highland". When I went out from the station, the famous white sign of "HOLLYWOOD" on the side of the hill came into sight. Next to the station was the Man Chinese Theatre. It was a kitschy building with a pretentious oriental taste, which could be seen in many American movies. In the front garden of the theatre, there were a lot of footprints and handprints of the movie stars. I took some pictures of the footprints and handprints of Julie Andrews and other musical actors for my youngest daughter, who is a great lover of musical plays.

As I still had a plenty of time, I decided to go to Universal Studios, which was situated at the next Metro station. The Universal Studios Japan, which opened in Osaka a couple of years ago, is a copy of the original one in LA.

I entered the park by paying entrance fee of c.a. $40. As it was a weekday, there weren’t so many visitors in the park and it was convenient for me to go around the attractions in a short time without waiting in a long queue.

The attraction of "Jurassic Park" was unbelievable for me; the customers rode a boat through the forest of dinosaurs, and at the end of the ride, the boat rushed into the water like a roller coaster. The passenger on the boat was soaked by water in a big splash. If such attraction had existed in Japan, it would cause a problem because some boat passengers could catch a cold by getting wet. But this problem did not exist in LA, because my wet T-shirt was dried after fifteen minutes under the warm Californian sun.

My impression of the park was "childish", and there was no surprise as the park was targeted for children. As I was not keen about artificial sightseeing places, which were made for a commercial purpose, I did not enjoy the place very much and went out after two hours.

Y, who had finished her work, took me to the airport that evening. We could see the sunset from the freeway [motorway]. The red colour of the evening glow in LA seemed to be much darker than one in London. The silhouette of tall palm trees could be seen standing on the red background of the sky.

I was about to say, "What a beautiful sunset!", but Y said it before me.

"What a beautiful sunset!"

During my stay with Y, she always said what I thought a few seconds earlier than I. This crossover could probably come from the fact that we were both classmates and grew up in the same town at the same time, so our thinking pattern was still similar after 20 years. Or perhaps she was good at reading peoples’ minds.

I parted from Y at the airport after spending six days with her. I boarded on my plane and arrived at London in the afternoon of the next day, as there was 9-hour time difference between LA and London. I started working again in London.

Looking at outside from the window of my office, I could only see the clouded sky. When I saw the sky I thought to myself that it was probably going to rain today. For several days after returning from LA, the blue sky of California passed through in my head many times. It was just like an unrealistic scenery which one sees in dreams.