Kyoto: Day 2

Picture of the Day: Taken by Baptiste called Into the Light

 

Panorama of Kamogawa River in Kyoto

Lion Leads the Way

Japanese nicknames are pretty straightforward sometimes.  Baptiste met Lion drinking the night before in a bar.  He’s named lion for his large mane-like hairdo and he offered to take us around to see some modern architecture in Japan.  He explains that he used to study architecture for two years and has recently changed his major to industrial engineering.  Unfortunately, we’re not really sure about his ability and/or taste in architecture and he ends up kind of showing us some lame buildings and taking up a large chunk of day 2.  But oh well, he was nice enough to take time out of his day to show us some new Tadao Ando buildings, so we really can’t complain.  Jacob was kind of bored the whole time since he’s the only one in the group who’s not an architect and I can tell he would much rather go look at graffiti around the city. 

Tadao Ando Hunting

The day starts with an amazing ride along the major river in Kyoto.  Weather.com said that Friday and Saturday would have a 90% chance of rain and as you can see in the pictures, we were blessed with beautiful slightly cloudy skies.  Travelling in the group is a bit of a slow process though.  Halfway through, Jacob runs out of memory for his camera and we end up having to go to a store so he can pick up a new card.  Sometimes he will stop to take a picture of a tag or graffiti and I can tell he is a little annoyed that none of us are as interested and just ride off, but that our group stops at buildings to ogle and take pictures for extended periods of time.  I understand that did kind of suck for him, sorry Jacob.

Geisha Spotting in Kyoto’s Gion District

While randomly weaving through the streets of Gion district, we serendipitously run smack dab into real bona fide geishas.  Gion is famous for having the strongest lasting authentic geisha traditions and practices today in all of Japan.  We spot three geishas off in the distance and us, being the shameless tourists that we were, run and take pictures indiscreetly a few storefronts away.  They probably did not appreciate it very much, but oh well.  They’re like an endangered species!  Checks off* see real geisha off to do list of Japan.  They were actually right outside this large mostly windowless building which Lion could best describe as a geisha training center.  I am still curious about how much a dinner with a geisha would be.

Kiyomizu-otera by Night

Kiyomuzu-otera was one temple that came highly recommended by many people in our youth hostel.  It was also one of the temples from one of the postcards I had bought on the first day and it did look quite amazing.  It’s built sticking out of a hill and is lifted high into the sky with a large wooden support system.  We were told the best time to really view the temple was at night so we went through some smaller temples until it started to get dark.  The area surrounding Kiyomizu is an expansive system of shops and restaurants and weaves and winds up and around the foothills of the mountain Kiyomizu is fitted into.  It was both true and untrue that the best time to visit Kiyomizu was at night.  The view was truly spectacular but everyone else in Kyoto knew this also and decides to all go at night at the same time.  So this temple is grand and great but the massive crowds of people really detracts from the experience and takes out the solemn and peaceful feeling that temples like Kiyomizu are supposed to elicit.  So it was a double edged sword (ha, yes Henry).  There were also these strange giant spotlights all over the temple as if it needed to attract any more people.  Later I found Axel and he showed me pictures he had taken of people crowded around the edge taking pictures of the view and it looked very comical.  But I did my due diligence, fought my way to the front of the crowd, held my ground, propped my elbows up in a defensive position, took about 50 pictures on every high ISO setting on my camera and came out of with some decent pictures.  Later we sort of lose Laura, and in two groups of two, we slowly narrow in on her position until we finally find her in between.   It turns out she had walked back to the bikes (about a 20 min walk) and back and couldn’t find us, woops. 

10:30 PM and Homeless in Kyoto

So because the youth hostel we stayed at the night before was full on Saturday night we had no choice but to go on the road.  So we retrieved our things and we made our way into the heart of Kyoto.  We were somewhat prepared for this since we knew we didn’t really have a place to stay this night and Baptiste could not find a hotel on Saturday on such short notice.  In one of my first weeks here, we met a guy who told us he was staying in an internet café.  He highly recommended it if we were looking for a cheap place to stay and were in a large city.  We met all those criteria and as of 10:30 PM we were still homeless in Kyoto. 

Internet… Café… hostel?

So go to two internet cafes before deciding to settle down.  Apparently, this is a very normal thing in Japan and internet cafes are open 24 hours, 7 days a week and expect many of their guests to stay overnight.  They offer many accommodations including “rooms” for 1, 2, 3 or 4 people.  I say “rooms” because they’re not really rooms, more like cubicles.  There is one large room with 30 foot ceilings and rows of cubicles of different sizes.  Each are equipped with either a single recliner, massage chair or Japanese style tatami mat and a computer or television.  Other rooms for multiple people have couches and multiple TV’s and computers for more people.  It does cost a little extra for the larger rooms for more people (about 5 bucks).  Other accommodations include two walls of manga, magazines and books, a small slot machine area, an unlimited drink bar stocked with sodas, juices, teas, coffees, Italian syrups and even corn soup (I had like 4 cups), a bathroom, and a single shower that comes with personal soap, towel and even a little individually wrapped razor like a hotel.  The center of the large room also had an awesome glass bottom floor with a Japanese rock garden underneath and the room was filled with strange posters of food.  The room is dimly lit but each room is provided with its own light and pretty much everything you need including slippers.  So each cubicle really was like its only little mini hotel room.  I did spot some couples around and I assume couples might use internet cafes as a kind of cheap hotel room, although it is a bit awkward since there is only a sort of false sense of privacy and everyone can still hear noises.  But there is also a calm track of classical piano music playing on constant repeat.  At first the music is relaxing, but after a few hours of hearing it, it begins to get a little eerie and the fact that the room never changes in light or sound makes it really surreal.  Without a watch, you can really lose yourself in that place with no sense of the outside world.  The room I chose was a single with a massage chair and a TV.  It was a good idea at first cause I enjoyed a very nice massage for about 45 minutes but I later found out the hard way that sleeping on a massage chair is actually a very uncomfortable thing.  And though I didn’t sleep too well that night, the shower was warm, the soup was hot and I’m glad I’ve tried an internet café at least once.

Panorama of Kyoto at Sunset

Kyoto: Day 1

This is a long one.  I'm going to do Kyoto day by day because there's just too much to do at once. Please enjoy.

Backpacking through Kyoto

So I've never actually been backpacking before.  I've been on road trips, I've travelled and I've brought a backpack, but never have I packed everything I would need into a rucksack for 5 days and just stepped out the door with everything on two feet.  There’s really an overwhelming sense of excitement literally walking into the unknown that you don’t feel driving in a car or hopping on a place.  For one, I now know it’s a much better way to get to know a place.  You really get a chance to become familiar with the streets, the people and become much more familiar with a place, faster.  There are so many places that you would just zoom by in an automobile without a second glance or even taking the time to notice.  I also kind of suck at packing light.  I had the largest backpack out of everyone (including Laura) and I really only brought the bare essentials I needed.  I’ll work on that.  I also realize one of the worst things about travelling in America is that it’s terrible for backpacking.  Going from major city to major city would take hours and using the public transportation of a major metropolitan city like LA would be useless.  I’ve talked to a lot of people who have visited LA, (tried to) use the public transportation system and hated LA for it.  I understand why.  With that said, I also strangely find myself much more patriotic here.  The mere fact that there are so few foreigners here and that I’m one of them makes me really identify more with America.  I find myself defending it, explaining our philosophies, political and domestic situations even though I barely cared before when I was in America.  I think it has something to do with me either defining myself as an Asian American who is learning Japanese as an excuse for my crappy Japanese or having no excuse at all for being a mute Japanese, so I choose American. 

Ten hour bus ride to Kyoto was surprisingly not that bad.  I lucked out and got two seats because the seat next to me was free.  The bus attendant half way through tried to explain to me that I was in the wrong seat, but if I had moved, I would have had to sit next to some guy and there would have been 2 free seats, so I just played dumb (gaijin) and he eventually gave up and I continued to sleep.  We awoke to the chilly morning air of Kyoto at 7 am.  The station is a massive hub of transportation and shopping with a gigantic open air atrium space.  The station is a made of a expansive triangulated monocoque structure that supports a glass roof and terminates at an open sky park.  All good stuff except the station was really freaking cold.  After we figured out where we were going and took a small coffee break to warm up and get ready for the day the intrepid travelers were off to our first temple, Toji Otera (Temple).  This was our first and remains in my mind as one of my favorite temples from the whole trip to Kyoto.  The temple is about a 10-15 minute walk from Kyoto Station and is shamelessly mixed right in with the rest of modern Kyoto.  Separated by a short wall, Toji Temple is an expansive ancient temple ground with two major building shrines and also has the tallest wooden (Pagoda) tower in all of Japan.  The reason it stands out in my mind is because the temple really did elicit feelings of tranquility and beauty.  Although I encountered many other beautiful temples in Kyoto, this one was not too crowded, I could really enjoy the open space, the natural landscape surrounding the structures in the temple and to top it off, it smelled just like gingerbread cookies.  I must have walked by the kitchen and gotten a whiff of lunch, but it made it all the more pleasant an experience.

Stroll Down Philosopher’s Walk

Our next destination was a riverside walk down a path awesomely named, Philosopher’s Walk.  It’s lined with Cherry Trees and numerous temples line the path.  One of the most notable temples on the path was Ginkaku-ji AKA “Temple of the Silver Pavilion”.  This was considerably more crowded the Toji Temple, but it was also a smaller temple.  There was some beautiful sand sculpture art and one mound that was kind of a gigantic sand castle.  It’s built up against the edge of a foothill and is surrounded by beautiful autumn colors of red, yellow and green.  But actually this was one of those times that I think I enjoyed the journey more than the destination.  

Night Temple

The last temple we saw before we called it quits we saw at night.  I don’t know the name of it and maybe I never will, but it was enormous.  I kept walking and there was just more and more to see.  Eventually I walked by myself passed a large (roman style) arched aqueduct and a few large empty temples and decided I better turn back cause it may never end.  We made our way back to the main center of Kyoto, walked a bit, retrieved our bag from the lockers in Kyoto Station, took the subway to where we thought our youth hostel was (key word: thought) and got lost.

Lost in Kyoto

So 95% of the time I’ve spent in Japan has gone pretty smoothly but once in a while, Japan does get a little annoying.  Case in point, Japanese people are so bound by their need to always be polite that it can be frustrating sometimes.  Let me explain how always being polite can actually be a bad thing.  When we had no idea where we were, that we had walked for half an hour in the wrong direction and that the last thing we should have done was walk towards the river, we asked for directions from people on the street.  Three times we asked various people and each time we got a different answer.  They didn’t know the answer, that much was clear.  But because they didn’t want to seem rude and tell us that they simply didn’t know, they would rather just point us in the wrong direction.  So we wandered around Kyoto, lost, tired, cold and hungry.  Everyone’s feet were pounding and eventually we somehow found the right street.  We actually walked right by the youth hostel without knowing and finally a kind old lady actually walked us to it.  And so begins our first of two nights stay in my first youth hostel in Japan.  It deserves its own article because it was such an interesting experience.

Youth Hostel

The youth hostel had character.  It didn’t have a floor in the shower, soap, solid windows or doors, more than one floorboard separating the second story from the first or insulation, but it did have character.  Masa-san somehow found us this super cheap hostel, 2,000 Yen of about 20 bucks a day.  The only problem was that we could stay there on Friday night and Sunday night but not Saturday night.  So we ended up moving everything to the hostel, from the hostel and to the hostel again.  Fail.  The hostel itself was a very old building.  The wooden beams were made of the twisting trunks of tree trunks and it made traversing the upper bunks trickier.  The shower was downstairs and could only be accessed by walking through the garage.  The floor was stone and there was a rickety old wooden board to place clothes.  And in the corner of the shower was a large rock which I was told was used to sit on and shower.  I did not sit.  The first story was for showering, and was also the main communal space and eating area with a kotatsu.  A kotatsu is a low table placed either on the ground or on a raised tatami mat usually with a blanket under the solid surface where everyone can tuck their legs under while eating and socializing.  The second floor was a large communal sleeping area with boys and girls area separated with traditional sliding paper doors.  Let me just say that whoever thought that paper doors and windows was a good idea didn’t really think it through.  You don’t get any sound or heat insulation and their ridiculously easy to break.  But I guess that makes them just as easy to repair, but still.  Cool but kind of dumb.  At night you can see some light peaking through the floor board and sometimes even the walls which was probably why it felt so cold.  But we were all equipped with a sleeping bag and 2 blankets provided by the hostel each and a meager sleeping mat which was honestly all we really needed.  We were so tired we were just glad to have a roof over our heads.  There was also a private tatami room that was separate from the second floor sleeping space, although it was on the second floor.  It had a secret access to the bathroom through a window.  It’s hard to describe the exact layout of the hostel, but Baptiste, Axel and Jacob slept in the private room on Sunday night so we played around with hopping in and out of the window a bit.  I met a lot of different people and I find that most young travelers are very friendly and very welcoming.  I met a guy (from Tokyo) who was travelling with a girl (from Seoul) in Kyoto and they had met each other while travelling separately in Tibet.  Youth hostels are just a breeding ground for awesome adventurers.  All and all, I slept just fine, I met a lot of very interesting people and actually really enjoyed my stay in the hostel.  First day of Kyoto adventure is officially a success.


Panoramic View from the Sky Garden in Kyoto Station.  And yes, that is my reflection in the glass.

Back from Kyoto

Hey guys, I'm back home safe from my short but incredible adventure in Kyoto.  Good news is I survived my first actual backpacking trip and am now much more confident about travelling within Japan.  Bad news is... it's really cold now, lol.  Okay so maybe that's not really bad news, but it does make me just hide in my room.  I got a lot to tell and even more pictures to prove it.  It could however take me a while to organize, sort, categorize, collage and/or label the 800 pictures I took over the course of the weekend, so please bear with me.  Thank you.

Going to Kyoto

I'll be going to Kyoto this weekend from Thursday-Tuesday so sorry no new posts till I return.  But hopefully I'll have lots to report when I get back.  (Assuming I survive the 10 hour bus ride each way x_X)  I'll take as many pictures of the beautiful autumn leaves as I can.  Yosh Ganbadimasu!

Presentation Day & Hilde’s 21st Birthday

First Architecture Presentation

On Saturday November 7^th, we were scheduled to present a new public facility that we were introducing to the town of Tsuyazaki to professors and the actual residents of Tsuyazaki were invited to come critique our ideas.  This is a unique opportunity in architecture presentations to actually present and get feedback from the people who we are actually designing our (hypothetical) project for.  So at 8:30 AM on Saturday we left school and went to Tsuyazaki to present the projects we’ve been working on for the last 6 weeks or so.  All of the foreign students said at least one or two sentences in broken Japanese because we wanted to make an effort and show we were committed to trying to fit in and assimilate the culture.  With the help of my tutor Gas-san he helped me translate my concept on my presentation board entirely into Japanese and write it out into Romanji so that I could read it out on presentation day.  Sounds easy enough except even to read it fluently and coherently and to make it sound like I didn’t just come down with a serious case of the hiccups is not an easy task.  So I practiced the 5 minute speech over and over for an hour the night before until I could say it in about 2 ½ minutes.  The style of presentation here is slightly different than what I’m used to back at home.  They allow everyone about 2-3 minutes to speak and they hold all questions and comments from the professors and other critics until the poster session which is a 45 minute walk-around of all the pinned up boards and they ask us questions directly which we can explain in further detail afterwards.  I was the only foreign student who had a prepared speech and had rehearsed the night before so I had an unfair advantage.  I was also the only one who did my entire presentation in Japanese and despite I read my speech as I had down 50 times before careful not to mispronounce any syllables and trying to keep a calm but appropriately hasty pace.  Afterwards the professor came up to me and told me that I had perfect pronunciation and that I was the best foreign speaker.  He only notices a second later that he is surrounded by the other foreign students and tells them that they were very good too.  I take it as a good thing, even though I had no idea what I was saying, apparently I can at least fake speaking Japanese decently.

After Party

After we finish the project, everyone, teachers and students alike are relieved and everyone is invited to go out to eat hotpot and nomihodai (all you can drink) together.  So we all go and I meet many of my classmates for the first time.  Most of them are very reserved and they’re pretty hard to approach, speak to or befriend in class.  It was nice to talk to them in a social setting and alcohol loosens them up a little too.  I learn one of my professors spent 13 years studying and researching in Arizona and I’m honestly a little surprised his English isn’t better but I guess he’s forgotten a lot since he’s been back in Japan for quite some time.  It’s strange to go out eating and drinking with teachers and students, but it was a nice new experience.  I reluctantly leave my new friends but I promised Hilde weeks in advance to celebrate with her on her 21^st birthday.

Hilde’s 21^st

This is beginning to be a costly night with two parties but both events were things I didn’t want to pass up.  I was also pretty tired but Hilde is a good friend who I didn’t want to disappoint so I eventually get back to her room where there are about 10 people.  They’ve been cooking, eating and drinking already for a couple hours.  So I eat some food, take some pictures and soon we’re on our way to Tenjin.  We go to a new club called The Godfather.  It’s in a really shady part of Tenjin that I actually thought was ghetto. 

//To Connie Lo:  I’ve seen my first piece of litter, actually in the part of Tenjin where this club is, there was a lot of trash everywhere.  It was a lot dirtier than many parts of LA, so Japan is no longer the untainted land free of litter and bad human habits.  They are human too. //

The Godfather

The building this club was strange… REALLY STRANGE.  It’s only accessible winding through a couple long winding alleyways that smelled of dried urine.  It is sandwiched between taller buildings on all sides and the columns on the façade look as if they’re made of dinosaur bones.  It’s very reminiscent of Gaudi architecture which is also very strange if you don’t know his style.  Don’t be afraid to google it.  But despite all these things, it apparently had two very popular clubs.  The one we were going to was on floors 3 to 5.  Each was pretty small but still impressive that it was a 3-story club.  The third story was for live music where a rock/jazz band was playing, the second floor was a lounge with a bar and dj and the first basement floor was a darn psychedelic house club.  We worked our way down slowly and eventually ended up in the house music portion.  House music/dancing for those of you who are unfamiliar is a relatively new dance/music style that takes a lot of elements of other popular styles like the load slow tempoed bass sounds of hip hop with the repetitiveness of techno music.  All this is being played with two large projection sheets on both sides of the dance floor displaying strange and trippy clips of the most random things you can ever imagine.  It’s hard to describe how weird some of the images were, but there was a lot of colors, things and jerky motions that happened the whole time strobing and blinking threatening everyone in the room with imminent and inescapable seizures.   So when we entered the dance floor, there were people there, but they weren’t dancing.   People were moving from side to side, but I don’t think you can call what they were doing dancing.  Most of them just rocked back and forth with a very miserable look on their face as if they were having a terrible time and hated their lives but nobody left.  It was strange and everyone was zombie-like but we didn’t care and our ragtag group of gaijin and Japanese people just started to dance as crazily and obnoxiously as we’ve danced everywhere else and eventually people started to move a little more.   The music was surprisingly good and actually relatively easy to dance to, but its deep bass sounds and constant repetitive patterns with a lack of any harmony parts in any of the songs gets hypnotic and you kind of just slip into a strange trance of moving and bobbing.  Perhaps that’s the real goal of house clubs, but it was definitely my first experience doing it.  And most people thought that the music was actually better than the majority of clubs that we’ve been to and I don’t disagree.  Everyone started to enjoy themselves and Elena, Ena, Ai and most importantly the birthday girl had a great time.  The club however, I did not like as much.  The only discernable pattern that was consistent in the club was one single theme: WEIRD.   The place was weird and it just attracts weirdos.  I can’t remember any specific examples except for one guy who collapsed on the ground while dancing, was pulled into a chair, and then immediately got back up started dancing and started flopping limply on random walls.  We left shortly after he started pulling those crazy shenanigans.  It was an interesting night to say the least, I was dead tired and I slept until 5 PM the next day.  And I was still exhausted at 5 PM, but I felt compelled to get up and be active or risk not sleeping at all the next night again.  That was a crazy 24ours, that’s right, that all happened in 24 hours.  O_O

Preparty in Hilde's Room (and that's how you fit 11 people into a room for 1)

Ayumi Bringing Back the Macarena























The Birthday Girl






















Anti-Smoking Ad

















Incarnate Ju-ons

















Party Success

Ijiri Town Drunk

So I was shopping in my local supermarket the other day trying to buy the meat that was on sale. Apparently, there was something about the posted 98 yen sign that I didn’t understand and as I was trying my best to use sign language and broken crappy Japanese to explain to the cashier a haggard middle aged man turns around and starts speaking to me in English asking if I need help. I explain (slightly surprised I had found someone who speaks English at all) that I thought the meat was on sale and explains the somewhat confusing system of the market that prices foods cheaper that are closer to expiration dates and harder and harder to sell. He asks where I’m from, I tell him LA, California, USA and his first question to me is “How many guns do you have?” Somehow every Japanese person thinks that every American is a gun-toting cowboy. I tell him thank you for his help and I return to the meat isle to find cheaper on sale meat and he’s there again a few minutes later. This time I realize he’s drinking a beer that he just bought from the market and his breath smells badly of alcohol and I realize there’s something wrong. I see him once more at the cash register when I go to pay for my meat and as I hurriedly try to pay for my food he is muttering things like “This guy’s name is Eric, he says he’s from America…” to the cashier who obviously doesn’t understand English. Still one of the nicest and most helpful town drunks I’ve ever met.

The story continues….

3 days later I go back to the market to do some shopping for the next week and I see him again. I try to pretend as if I don’t notice him this time but I stop to chat with Margaux and Laura who are coincidentally shopping at the same time. As we catch each other up on each other’s dramatic nights, I see him walking towards us. I continue to ignore him but he’s moved right up behind Laura and Margaux and just stands there a couple feet away staring at us. He speaks a moment later and says “Hi, I’m just noticing your English, where are you guys from?” The girls tell them they’re from France and then he asks me where I’m from and I realize he was too drunk the first time we met to even remember we had met. We make some polite conversation and when he walks away, Margaux and Laura look at me with a WTF look on their faces. I explain my last encounter with him and Margaux understands now why he stank of alcohol when he spoke. He’s not a scary drunk, rather friendly in fact, and so far the only other town drunk of Tsuyazaki that John and Jose have met gave them a juice box of sake. As far as town drunks go, I’d say Japan has some pretty nice ones.

Language Tutor & the Most Dangerous City in Japan

So I’ve gotten a language Tutor to supplement my Japanese classes because it’s really just moving too slowly. In the month and one week that I’ve been here, I’ve learned how to ask and tell what time it is, I can talk about how much something costs, and I can tell people what city and country I’m from (and only if they use the one sentence structure we practiced in class). So the last two weeks, I’ve been meeting twice a week with Ai-chan who also has studied abroad in Germany for a year and is very interested in international students and languages. We do tandem lessons with Elena and Tibor who are from Germany and we teach her English and German and in exchange she teaches us Japanese. I learn tons every meeting and somehow our four hour sessions seem like nothing cause they’re still very casual. I’ve learned certain things I’ve been saying make me sound more feminine than I would like to express and I think there’s a hope of me actually learning some Japanese here with her help. Ai-chan also teaches me interesting facts and stories that I could not get from anywhere else. She tells me that the sweet city that I live in Fukuoka has in fact the highest crime rate in Japan. I’ve talked to many people who have praised Fukuoka for being a wonderfully safe city to live in and I was pretty shocked to hear this from Ai. She tells me of the time she had her bike stolen from her house. She was more shocked that it happened then angry, and about four days later, the perpetrator having gotten away with the crime already for some unknown reason returned her bike to her. I think even the most dangerous city in Japan is still ten times safer than a night on the town in LA so I think it will be okay.

Saga

The Day

The International Hot Air Balloon Festival is hosted in Saga Prefecture, Kyushu every year.  It is one of the largest festivals in Japan and the largest hot air balloon festival in all of Asia (and Asia’s HUGE).  So with the help of Masahiro-san and Ai-chan we navigate the express train system for about an hour to get to Saga.  Over the span of four days, one million people pass through the open barren rural countryside of Saga to enjoy hot air balloon displays, races and competitions.  We arrive with maybe about 200-300 thousand people there since it’s the last day.  No biggy, I’m from LA, I’m used to insane amounts of people and traffic but it was still the most people I’ve seen in one place so far here in Japan at one time.  There is a huge embankment about a mile long (or 1.61 km in metric) I’m guessing where sit and stand too get a view of the huge open field where balloons descend and where the night’s show will be held.  Daytime activities include a fair-like collection of booths selling tons of delicious food, lottery drawings and game booths.  We saw a kid with an awesome punching glove extender arm thing that looked like it came straight out of a cartoon and was made by ACME that we wanted but couldn’t find the booth for sadly.  By the time we had watched a few balloons come down gently crash into the field and see immediately get swarmed by droves of children after the announcers specifically tell them not to and laughing about it we go for some food.   I still wish I could eat more since there was so much I didn’t get to try but it was still awesome.

The Night

We found an awesome seat somehow and watched a wonderful show of music and fire.  Need I say more?  Music and fire!  Anyways, they lined up about 30 or so hot air balloons into three rows and coordinated them with music as they blasted their igniters.  If I can ever figure out how to get a video up, I’ll upload a video I took.  The end finale ended with fireworks, and for those of you who are wondering no hot air balloons were in the sky at the time that would just be stupid.  I’ll just leave you with not one but two sets of collages illustrating the awesomeness that could never be described as well with words.

Halloween Weekend

Hi guys, sorry I’ve been a little behind on my blogging.  It’s been a little bit of a nonstop week with last week being Halloween, my trip to Saga on Tuesday, Wednesday-Friday working on my architecture project, Saturday presenting in Tsuyazaki and Hilde’s birthday, and waking up on Sunday at 5 pm and still being tired.   But don’t worry I will catch you guys up as always and start another burst fire of blog posts starting with:

 Cheap Gaijin Toilet Paper Ninja Headbands and One Japanese Rabbi

Group Picture of New Friends from Fukuoka Now at Hawaiian Restaurant

Fun Characters

Gaijin Rider Group Picture After a 40 minute Bike Ride Home Through Torrential Rains (SOAKED) + 1 Jacked Jack-o-lantern



Halloween

Partying for Halloween started Friday night and was a today-day event.  We rode our bikes into Tenjin to meet up with Mio-chan and Ayumi-chan at a club called Indigo Club.  Along the way we saw a guy dressed in a giant pink fish costume, a girl in a wedding dress etc.  Actually not all that bizarre since I had tried to prepare myself mentally for what Halloween in Japan might be like.  Not that it was a letdown, but it just wasn’t as crazy as I thought it would be.  The night was decent, there were a lot of people most of whom were nice and fun.  But things really picked up once Baptiste and Ayumi started making out on the dance floor.  (Back-story: Baptiste is my good friend who lives across the hall from me and with whom I have all my architecture classes with and Ayumi is a girl in my lab.  Baptiste is just a fun-loving guy looking to have a good time in Japan.  Ayumi is our new friend who likes Baptiste and is looking for a serious relationship.  …conflict soon to come.)  Keep in mind this is not a large club and contrary to popular belief, Japan is actually more conservative in a lot of ways than America at least in public scenes.  People in the club are really not used to touching other people and freaking and grinding almost never happens.  People have a bubble of personal space and most people respect that space and dance appropriately.  So, it was quite a scene when Baptiste (a blonde haired blue eyed [I’m not really sure what color is eyes are]) Frenchman gaijin starts making out with this Japanese girl.  A lot of people stopped dancing, stared, watched, a lot of the girls giggled and pointed, and the whole place had a good time enjoying the spectacle.  Both of them turned out to be pretty drunk, the night progressed into him picking her up, spinning her in his arms, people laughing, clapping and pointing in approval and it only spurred them on more.  Later we had some dancing circles, Baptiste tells me he vaguely remembers trying to do a handstand and a cartwheel.  I remember both and yes he at least tried.  I think dancing a lot has really given me a lot of time to practice dancing.  Hopefully I can learn to actually pop soon, but 3-hour long techno songs and strobe lights make my amateur moves look pretty awesome.  I had fun trying to pop and it’s a pretty good workout dancing for 6 hours.  We went home trying to beat the sunrise.  Half of us got split up and I think Baptiste and some others remained in Tenjin for a while afterwards because they were too drunk to ride home.  He showed up sometime the next day with a bandaged hand, apparently he fell off his bike somewhere and injured it.  It’s healing up just fine.  All in all it was a pretty legendary night and probably more eventful than actual Halloween day.

Day 2

Of course we had to go out again on the actual day of Halloween, except this time it was just a little harder getting everyone going.  People weren’t fully recovered by the next night but we went out anyway because we weren’t about to miss Halloween in Japan.  By the time we rode our bikes into Tenjin and met up this time with Ai-chan and Kim-san it was 12:30 AM already.  [Back-story:  Kim is a supporter who lives on my floor.  He’s from Seoul, South Korea and has been here 6 months.  He speaks fluent Japanese because he’s studied it before he came and he’s been a great help for me here.  He’s a nice guy and he’s always been willing to help me when I ask him how much 500 ml of water is or how to use the washing machine.  [Even though the first time he helped me do laundry my clothes ended up sitting in a pool of undrained water].  Still, nice guy.  Anyways, this was his first night out [IN JAPAN since he’s been here] and I felt like I owed it to him to show him a good time.)  So we have about 10 people or so it’s beginning to be a problem going out with so many people now because everyone has a preference on where to go.  We went to club # 1, too expensive, club #2 too few people, club #3 someone doesn’t like hip hop music, club #4 (actually the same club we went to the night before, it was more expensive and there were fewer people), club #5 still too expensive, and finally settled at club #6, The Dark Room.  This was actually the first club I’ve been to here in Japan so it was familiar and nice.  We met up with a few more people, Erika-chan told me how she loves Dark Angel and Jessica Alba and I laughed cause she wonders why nobody knows it in Japan.  I tell her people barely know it in LA where it was filmed, it takes place and where it aired.  It was alright, about 10 years ago.  Anyways, after drinking a drink we went downstairs to dance, and one girl was very crazy who danced with Jacob by circling his body like a snake.  She slivered around him and I could tell he didn’t really know what to do but to stand still, but he didn’t seem to mind either.  Kim danced a lot and despite the night’s slow and rather terrible start, I could tell he really enjoyed himself.  I was glad and now he seems to be a regular when we go out.  So maybe we’ve created a (party) monster but at least he’s enjoying himself more.  When we leave at about 6 AM, it begins to rain hard.  Baptiste grabs a giant inflatable pumpkin off the street and uses it to cover his head.  The rest of us: Tibor, Hilde, Jacob and Erika try our best to cover our heads.  I had nothing but my jacket without a hood, no help there.  We get to McDonalds (about the halfway mark home after 15 minutes of light-medium rain and decide to make a pit stop cause a night of dancing usually works up an appetite.  For the whole meal after we’ve ordered and eaten it, we don’t know where Baptiste has gone.  He comes in soaked a few minutes later and says he thought we were going home to eat, woops.  Erika-chan whips up an origami crane out of a napkin after we finish our meal and we procrastinate on riding home because the rain has gotten ten times worse in the time that it took us to eat McDonalds.  We decide the rain did not look like it would let up for a long time and just to fight our way through the rain.  I wrap my cell phone in saran wrap (thanks Tibor for the idea) and make a break for it into the calamitous void.  This is the hardest rain I can ever remember travelling through.  At some point, I was basically swimming through the air with my bike.  I couldn’t really see anything and when I opened my mouth to breath air I would have to spit water out.  About 5 minutes before we get home, I can feel there’s something up with my bike.  It starts to get bumpy and harder and harder to ride.  I’ve gotten a flat but I don’t care.  You tend not to care about things like that when you’re swimming home.  So I push through, riding on my rim and slip and slide my way home.  We get home safe and sound, totally drenched, jeans weigh about 10 lbs (or 4.5 kg in metric) and having the time of our lives.  Excellent adventure accomplished.