So this weekend I headed to a couple of local xmas parties. The first was in Nakajima, and was pretty low key. I was pretty drunk within about and hour of arriving, so i probably dont have a great recollection. I do however remember having yakiniku =) and also having a rather boisterous debate with the token American about private health care vs public health care. Im pretty sure i won, his main argument was that supporting public health care makes you a socialist.
The next day i achieved nothing except crawling in a ball trying to get over a hangover. But i woke up in time to head the second and more populated xmas party in Hanawa. This partied featured many guests from over the border in ?? they were mostly Interac people, not JETs. They are quite obviously a different breed, but I met a couple of nice ppl.
The main attraction was the thieving secret santa thing. This is how it works:
- Everyone brings a gift and places it in the pile.
- Then they do a lottery to select the order in which people choose.
- The first person takes one from the pile and opens it, so everyone can see.
- The second person then has the choice of stealing the first persons gift, or taking one from the pile.
- This repeats till all gifts are gone.
- If your gift gets stolen, you can either take one from the pile or steal another one (you cant steal yours back)
- Each gift can be stolen only 3 times, so the third person to steal it keeps it.
obviously this means its not good be at the start (cos your good gift will be stolen), but also not good to be at the end (cos all the good ones may have been taken 3 times already). I was 30th out of 40, which is pretty good. cept i wanted this pudding-shaped cushion and it was already stolen 3 times before we got to 30 (grr). I stole some awesome slippers, then had them stolen, then picked some Arnie DVDs from the pile, then had them stolen, then stole the slippers back ftw!
Other items which got triple stolen were: a Totoro pillow, a cat hot water bottle, in a Jack Skellington bag (which i brought) and a Virgin Mary blanket (which my friend was for some reason obsessed with. she almost cried when she didnt get it). and also one of those pellet handguns (which i totally almost picked)
Other crap items were: a giant box of sugar (and only sugar), a potty putter (for putting whilst on the loo, it got stolen once, i have no idea why), a box with meat in it (not a dick-in-a-box, but a chunk of raw meat) as well as tons and tons of useless christmas mugs and other holiday junk which will go straight into someones trash.
I also managed to obtain some guy's jacket. Its like the ugliest jacket in the world. Its a thin hoodie which provides no warm, and was once described as what would happen if you killed cookie monster and made a jacket out of him. Im not really sure what ill do with it.. it looks pretty ridiculous even for me =p
Monday, December 15
Wednesday, December 10
+1 test of epic fail
I went to Morioka in Iwate-ken this weekend to do my JLPT test. it was mostly composed of epic fail. blergh im about 90% sure i failed it. cos ill probly get close to zeron in the listening test. and i doubt the other sections can cover that.
Morioka is a nice-ish town. but it was minus 2 when i was there, blergh. There was a pretty cool 2nd hand clothes store there called Don Don Down Wednesdays. I have nfi what that means.. but the guys in the stop were pretty cool. they were all like "ehhhh? nihonjin janai? honto ni? omoshiroi!" i bought a couple of uninteresting items there. The priced things with food items. so something with a strawberry on it cost say 2000円 but something with a mushroom would be 1000円
i bumped into some other fuku-ken ppl there who led me to catch the highway bus home instead of the shink. it takes like 3 hours longer, but costs less than half as much. So the bus ride home was reasonably humourous, and i sorta got over feeling terrible about the exam.
Morioka is a nice-ish town. but it was minus 2 when i was there, blergh. There was a pretty cool 2nd hand clothes store there called Don Don Down Wednesdays. I have nfi what that means.. but the guys in the stop were pretty cool. they were all like "ehhhh? nihonjin janai? honto ni? omoshiroi!" i bought a couple of uninteresting items there. The priced things with food items. so something with a strawberry on it cost say 2000円 but something with a mushroom would be 1000円
i bumped into some other fuku-ken ppl there who led me to catch the highway bus home instead of the shink. it takes like 3 hours longer, but costs less than half as much. So the bus ride home was reasonably humourous, and i sorta got over feeling terrible about the exam.
Wednesday, November 19
tanjoubi omedetou
so it was Mickey Mouse's birthday yesterday. which also happens to be mine =)
he turned 90, so i don't feel quite so old turning 28.. although my knees feel about 90.
on the weekend i pretty much had the same drinks/j-food/karaoke dealie as i would normally have in Sydney.. but in Japan so it was doubly awesome. theres not much to tell, it wasnt really all that newsworthy, so heres some snaps.
on my actual bday we headed to Jusco to go to a small restaurant which features the "Special Super Jumbo Parfait". It was large.. but it didnt have as much ridiculous additions as id hoped for. i mean it had ice cream and cream and fruit and corn flakes and jelly, but sadly no ice cream cone, or creme caramel pudding or slice on cheesecake in the top. We'll have to find another bigger parfait some place =p
afterwards we got purikura, the machine was pretty lame as it had these templates designed for 2 ppl.. and we had 6 ppl. blergh. It did have the cool feature where you can send each picture to your phone by IR, so you can get an e-copy of them too. plus it was only 300円 so i guess i cant complain too much.
this week i learnt that the head of the english department at my school is exactly one day other than me, his DOB is 17-11-1980. Head of English department in a medium sized japanese town.. seems like he may have achieved something in his 28 years.. and i have um...
:: vocabulary words ::
Jusco ジャスコ = a depaato in Shirakawa 白河
depaato デパート = department store
purikura プリクラ = sticker photo
he turned 90, so i don't feel quite so old turning 28.. although my knees feel about 90.
on the weekend i pretty much had the same drinks/j-food/karaoke dealie as i would normally have in Sydney.. but in Japan so it was doubly awesome. theres not much to tell, it wasnt really all that newsworthy, so heres some snaps.
on my actual bday we headed to Jusco to go to a small restaurant which features the "Special Super Jumbo Parfait". It was large.. but it didnt have as much ridiculous additions as id hoped for. i mean it had ice cream and cream and fruit and corn flakes and jelly, but sadly no ice cream cone, or creme caramel pudding or slice on cheesecake in the top. We'll have to find another bigger parfait some place =p
afterwards we got purikura, the machine was pretty lame as it had these templates designed for 2 ppl.. and we had 6 ppl. blergh. It did have the cool feature where you can send each picture to your phone by IR, so you can get an e-copy of them too. plus it was only 300円 so i guess i cant complain too much.
this week i learnt that the head of the english department at my school is exactly one day other than me, his DOB is 17-11-1980. Head of English department in a medium sized japanese town.. seems like he may have achieved something in his 28 years.. and i have um...
:: vocabulary words ::
Jusco ジャスコ = a depaato in Shirakawa 白河
depaato デパート = department store
purikura プリクラ = sticker photo
Thursday, November 6
this weekend was a super long weekend, as it was a public holiday on monday and then i had mid year conference on tuesday and wednesday. Jojo came to visit on friday nite, and i took her out to karaoke in koriyama, not so much cos its exciting but more so she can see what its like to live in Fukushima-ken. i.e. where theres nothing to do cept karaoke.
on Saturday we had a pretty easy day, just explored Shirakawa a bit, and visited Kominejo. We went to Segaworld to take some purikura, and it was swarming with my JHS students. Most of whom exclaimed something like "eeh?!? ian-sensei no kanojo?", so embarassment. One group proceeded to take multiple photos of us. Although one of them was kind enough to show me how to get purikura sent to my keitai.. which is awesome. They turned out amazing btw =)
That night we just had quiet one, cos Jo needed some resting. We watched the new Futurama movie, it was a D&D / LOTR spoof. I found it a bit disappointed compared to the first 2 movies.. but I take whatever Futurama i can get really. Could it be that ive outgrown the nerdiness of spoofs of the fantasy genre? maybe ive finally grown up.. or maybe it just wasnt very good =p
Sunday morning I went to play ultimate in Yabuki and Jo rested and Skyped at home. It was a pretty light session as i had to leave early, and they were too busy preparing for Gaia cup for me to get any real practice in. I also mildly sprained my ankle *sigh*.
After that i headed home to take Jo to a sweet potato party. It was at the home of a lady in my eikaiwa class, unfortunately i had no idea where that was. I did find it eventually, it was like way out of town somewhere.. i couldnt find it again if i tried.
Anyways the party was really fun actually.. we ate a lot of home cooked j-foods.. and talked about how my Japanese isnt any good.. and how my sister can sorta speak chinese, but i cant... and we played with Mark's daughter Monica.. who is 2 and speaks a bit of english, a bit of chinese and a bit of japanese. Jo also got to try on a Kimono.. which see seemed to enjoy.. =p
I sorta wasted Monday by missing the Shirakawa Ramen festival, because i was curled up in a ball in bed trying to keep warm. I did make a brief appearance at Round1 in Koriyama, although i wasted a lot of my minutes trying to break the high school on this uber lame snowboarding game. I managed to get 2nd place.. grr. Other games of interest were the photography game, sorta like point blank, but with a camera instead of a gun.. and the balance game where you just have to balance.. thats it.
I crashed out in Nihonmatsu so that id be closer to Fuku-city in the morning for mid year. I had sadly caught a cold from the sweet potato party.. grr. So i felt pretty terrible all of the first day, and probably shouldnt have gone out for drinkies that nite. Especially since we ended up walking around in the circles in the cold for like hours trying to find a Indian Curry place which turned out to be closed.. blergh... we did end up at a cool jazz bar which was pretty nice to chill out.
Wednesday was a total write off as I was barely lucid from the minute i woke up. My head cold was pretty awful.. i struggled thru the first session, but eventually gave up and went home at lunchtime. One of the teachers there was telling me that i should go to the hospital, because thats apparently what japanese people do when they get a cold. weird. i guess their public health system isnt as insanely inefficient and congested as the Australian one. I guess that happens when your government isnt controlled by kickbacks =p
.. in other news: i got a (very close to) max pay rise, back in Sydney. if you remember correctly im technically on annual leave atm, i havent quit my job. The new salary will probably start when im on leave without pay, so i may never see it, but its another point to consider in my re-contracting dilemma. my new salary is approximately insanely too much money. like the kind of money that grown ups make... eep!
on Saturday we had a pretty easy day, just explored Shirakawa a bit, and visited Kominejo. We went to Segaworld to take some purikura, and it was swarming with my JHS students. Most of whom exclaimed something like "eeh?!? ian-sensei no kanojo?", so embarassment. One group proceeded to take multiple photos of us. Although one of them was kind enough to show me how to get purikura sent to my keitai.. which is awesome. They turned out amazing btw =)
That night we just had quiet one, cos Jo needed some resting. We watched the new Futurama movie, it was a D&D / LOTR spoof. I found it a bit disappointed compared to the first 2 movies.. but I take whatever Futurama i can get really. Could it be that ive outgrown the nerdiness of spoofs of the fantasy genre? maybe ive finally grown up.. or maybe it just wasnt very good =p
Sunday morning I went to play ultimate in Yabuki and Jo rested and Skyped at home. It was a pretty light session as i had to leave early, and they were too busy preparing for Gaia cup for me to get any real practice in. I also mildly sprained my ankle *sigh*.
After that i headed home to take Jo to a sweet potato party. It was at the home of a lady in my eikaiwa class, unfortunately i had no idea where that was. I did find it eventually, it was like way out of town somewhere.. i couldnt find it again if i tried.
Anyways the party was really fun actually.. we ate a lot of home cooked j-foods.. and talked about how my Japanese isnt any good.. and how my sister can sorta speak chinese, but i cant... and we played with Mark's daughter Monica.. who is 2 and speaks a bit of english, a bit of chinese and a bit of japanese. Jo also got to try on a Kimono.. which see seemed to enjoy.. =p
I sorta wasted Monday by missing the Shirakawa Ramen festival, because i was curled up in a ball in bed trying to keep warm. I did make a brief appearance at Round1 in Koriyama, although i wasted a lot of my minutes trying to break the high school on this uber lame snowboarding game. I managed to get 2nd place.. grr. Other games of interest were the photography game, sorta like point blank, but with a camera instead of a gun.. and the balance game where you just have to balance.. thats it.
I crashed out in Nihonmatsu so that id be closer to Fuku-city in the morning for mid year. I had sadly caught a cold from the sweet potato party.. grr. So i felt pretty terrible all of the first day, and probably shouldnt have gone out for drinkies that nite. Especially since we ended up walking around in the circles in the cold for like hours trying to find a Indian Curry place which turned out to be closed.. blergh... we did end up at a cool jazz bar which was pretty nice to chill out.
Wednesday was a total write off as I was barely lucid from the minute i woke up. My head cold was pretty awful.. i struggled thru the first session, but eventually gave up and went home at lunchtime. One of the teachers there was telling me that i should go to the hospital, because thats apparently what japanese people do when they get a cold. weird. i guess their public health system isnt as insanely inefficient and congested as the Australian one. I guess that happens when your government isnt controlled by kickbacks =p
.. in other news: i got a (very close to) max pay rise, back in Sydney. if you remember correctly im technically on annual leave atm, i havent quit my job. The new salary will probably start when im on leave without pay, so i may never see it, but its another point to consider in my re-contracting dilemma. my new salary is approximately insanely too much money. like the kind of money that grown ups make... eep!
Tuesday, October 28
a rather timid week by previous standards.
at Eikaiwa this week we did dates and birthdays and one of the high school kids in the class had the same birthday as me (exactly 10 years younger than me) and she reminded me that we have the same birthday as Mickey Mouse. a tidbit of information that had previously known.. but somehow forgotten, possibly because its not something that would i would be able to squeeze into many conversation pieces =p
but i did sorta have a long weekend, in that i had monday off school. but it wasn't really a long weekend cos i had to go to school on Saturday for school festival. School festival aka bunka festival in Japan is like a big deal.. for the students anyway. It's a day when the students put on this performance, comprising of singing, dancing, skits, short films, bands playing etc.. you get the idea. I went to two of my schools' festivals, and they were both pretty fun, but im still surprised at the poor attendance by parents and families at these sort of events. In Sydney like every kid would have both their parents and their siblings there.. but here it seems like 1 in 10 students has either parent attend. Like at my big school (500+ students) there crowd was barely a couple of rows of parents there with video cameras. weird..
Some cool things at school festival were parody's of tv shows (i didnt know the shows, but it was still hilarious) and science show (this year's involved a demo of how to blow smoke rings, out of a cardboard box) and hand made soba.. which the students made. oishii!
oh and we also had the lamest enkai ever. It was like just a formal presentation ceremony. Barely trashy at all.. relative to other enkais. Also got asked "can you do an introduction speech? you're up next" .. *rolleyes* luckily everyone was pretty drunk so they could understand my very broken japanese mixed with broken english. For some reason when i speak english, i assume that no one can understand me, so i leave out many joining words which seem cluttery. Commonly left out words include "will" and "to", eg. "Tomorrow I go Tokyo".. and "is" e.g. "my brother living in Tokyo" .. and ""
On Saturday i intended to go to Aizu Wakamatsu uni to play frisbee. I was supposed to be on the 7:29 train, so i woke up at 6:30am!! and got ready. To make sure i wasn't late, i drove to the station, only to discover that the car park is closed on Sundays!! gah! by the time id driven around to find another car park id already missed the train *sigh*. I ended up catching a later train an arriving about 2 hours late (blergh). Frisbee was awesome though, i played pretty awful.. my high backhand has desserted me. but im pretty out of shape still. *bloats* hopefully i get better as i start playing more.
Monday i went to obtain a "permission for re-entry" aka reentry permit. So i can leave the country and return without having to deal with some sort of visa red tape. It is annoying theres only one place in Fukushima where I can obtain such a permit.. and its in Koriyama, but no where near the train station. Its near the shiyakusho(市役所) aka city hall, if you ever need to go there catch a bus from the number 9 bus stand at Koriyama station, it should be 220円.
We walked all the way back.. cos we had nothing better to do. This didnt really include anything interesting, we stopped at "The Mall" but it contained nothing particularly worth mentioning even in a blog which contains many uninteresting things. I ended up buying a bunch of things from that weird clothing store in Ati. Some headphones, some badges and 2 tshirts. I only intended to buy one tshirt.. but the one i wanted was 2 for the price of 1, so i got another random one thrown in.
:: vocabulary words ::
oishii = delicious!
soba = noodles
bunka = culture
Ati = a shopping complex next to Koriyama station.
in other news: a japanese student choked on bread at school and died! one of over 4000 deaths from choking in japan eash year..
http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/boy-who-choked-on-bread-was-among-more-than-4000-annual-choking-deaths
at Eikaiwa this week we did dates and birthdays and one of the high school kids in the class had the same birthday as me (exactly 10 years younger than me) and she reminded me that we have the same birthday as Mickey Mouse. a tidbit of information that had previously known.. but somehow forgotten, possibly because its not something that would i would be able to squeeze into many conversation pieces =p
but i did sorta have a long weekend, in that i had monday off school. but it wasn't really a long weekend cos i had to go to school on Saturday for school festival. School festival aka bunka festival in Japan is like a big deal.. for the students anyway. It's a day when the students put on this performance, comprising of singing, dancing, skits, short films, bands playing etc.. you get the idea. I went to two of my schools' festivals, and they were both pretty fun, but im still surprised at the poor attendance by parents and families at these sort of events. In Sydney like every kid would have both their parents and their siblings there.. but here it seems like 1 in 10 students has either parent attend. Like at my big school (500+ students) there crowd was barely a couple of rows of parents there with video cameras. weird..
Some cool things at school festival were parody's of tv shows (i didnt know the shows, but it was still hilarious) and science show (this year's involved a demo of how to blow smoke rings, out of a cardboard box) and hand made soba.. which the students made. oishii!
oh and we also had the lamest enkai ever. It was like just a formal presentation ceremony. Barely trashy at all.. relative to other enkais. Also got asked "can you do an introduction speech? you're up next" .. *rolleyes* luckily everyone was pretty drunk so they could understand my very broken japanese mixed with broken english. For some reason when i speak english, i assume that no one can understand me, so i leave out many joining words which seem cluttery. Commonly left out words include "will" and "to", eg. "Tomorrow I go Tokyo".. and "is" e.g. "my brother living in Tokyo" .. and ""
On Saturday i intended to go to Aizu Wakamatsu uni to play frisbee. I was supposed to be on the 7:29 train, so i woke up at 6:30am!! and got ready. To make sure i wasn't late, i drove to the station, only to discover that the car park is closed on Sundays!! gah! by the time id driven around to find another car park id already missed the train *sigh*. I ended up catching a later train an arriving about 2 hours late (blergh). Frisbee was awesome though, i played pretty awful.. my high backhand has desserted me. but im pretty out of shape still. *bloats* hopefully i get better as i start playing more.
Monday i went to obtain a "permission for re-entry"
We walked all the way back.. cos we had nothing better to do. This didnt really include anything interesting, we stopped at "The Mall" but it contained nothing particularly worth mentioning even in a blog which contains many uninteresting things. I ended up buying a bunch of things from that weird clothing store in Ati. Some headphones, some badges and 2 tshirts. I only intended to buy one tshirt.. but the one i wanted was 2 for the price of 1, so i got another random one thrown in.
:: vocabulary words ::
oishii = delicious!
soba = noodles
bunka = culture
Ati = a shopping complex next to Koriyama station.
in other news: a japanese student choked on bread at school and died! one of over 4000 deaths from choking in japan eash year..
http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/boy-who-choked-on-bread-was-among-more-than-4000-annual-choking-deaths
Wednesday, October 22
東京に行くべ！
This weekend i headed to Tokyo 東京 for a number of different reasons, but mostly to meet up with my brother who i managed to visit in the first 10 weeks or so that i've been in Japan 日本.
Anyhoo i caught the local train down from Shirakawa白河. It takes about 3.5 hours if you are lucky. there are at least 3 but sometimes more train changes along the way, so you really need to timetables to lineup. However it does cost half as much as catching the Shinkansen 新幹線, so If you have the time it saves you a bit of cash.
On Friday 金曜日 night i met up with Yuki, who i have also not visited in Tokyo. she has this awesome pad just outside Roppongi 六本木. Its quite strange as there isn't really a wall between the bathroom/shower and the rest of the apartment, there's only a glass wall which has a curtain on the outside. We had the standard japanese night out, comprised of an izakaya followed by karaoke.
Saturday 土曜日 morning was the run for the curefun run around the Imperial Palace, so i had to wake up earlyish which isn't fun. To make things worse, i had managed to forget my shorts in Shirakawa, leaving me to scamper around Tokyo looking for any kind of clothing store which sold shorts. Sadly i was unsuccessful.. so i had to do the run in boxers =p no one seemed to noticed and/or care so it all worked out. The race had a high percentage of gaijin, maybe half, but thats ok i guess. Normally when i run in races i finish somewhere in the middle of the pack.. but in this race i sprinted out to the front like a w*nker, and seriously not that many people overtook me. This race strangely had no time keepers or listing of finishing positions.. but I guesstimate that i finished somewhere between 10th and 15th out of a few hundred people. We also suspect that Darren finished 5th or there abouts.
Running a fun run is all good, cept when its the first activity in a very long day. And this was to be a very long day. We spent the best part of the afternoon attempting to find a public bath to soak in, but we had no luck and then resorted to finding any place to sleep. We entered a capsule カプスル hotel, but were rejected for being baka gaijin who couldn't speak nihongo. In the end we just headed back to Yuki's, where i managed to have a brief shower, and also coin the phrase "i feel like i've been sleeping under a coffee table". which basically means you feel like your bones/muscles etc are sore from some sort of crampedness. but i got it from actually sleeping under a coffee table =p
Next was dinner with my brother, his gf, Yuki, Chito and Darren. we went to this shanghai dumpling place which we had a lot of trouble finding. but it turned out to be pretty awesome. You don't find a whole lot of decent chinese food in Fukushima 福島 so this was a nice change. We finished a lot later than we had planned, but the schedule seemed to work itself out in the end.
Onwards to Gan Ban 08.. we met up with a bunch of others from Fukushima and some train station which is most of the way to Chiba and we quickly boozed up at a conbini. Inside the concert can best be described as epic.. it felt like it was a mini festival inside like a massive aircraft hangar. The Djs totally rocked out too.. Basement Jaxx and Justice were the ones we came to see with Justice being the most awesome live set ive maybe ever seen or heard. The backdrop was a big screen featuring such trippy imagery as Fantasia and Alice in Wonderland.... seriously Lewis Carroll must've been on some pretty hard stuff..
One of the doods who was with us (i forget his name) was wearing like a tshirt with a graph with jived to the music.. and he pretty much had everyone person in the place come and talk to him about it. he was also a crazy awesome dancer, so usually he was like "get away from me im trying to dance here", even to the super hawt jgirls who came to talk to him.
whilst the concert was awesome.. the trip home was not so much. Apart from only partially lucid, i managed to somehow drop a super cheesy mcdonalds megamuffin all over my pants at about 6:30am. not fun. during the almost 3 hours we were in maccas, there was a single jgirl there sitting right at the end of the bench.. and the whole time we were there (plus time before we arrived, and after we left) she was just doing he hair and make up.. like she had OCD.. it was bizarro.. although probably moreso since i was only partially awake.
unlike D though, i was able to get some zzz's on a table in maccas as well as on the bus ride back to Fukushima. I was kept hydrated by a Thorpedo(tm) drink courtesy of D. In the afternoon.. i had yet more rest.. as well a super hot date.. but more on that in the other blog....
:: vocabulary words ::
Shinkansen = bullet train.. very fast but pricey
conbini = convenience store
Chiba = a city to the east of Tokyo
Anyhoo i caught the local train down from Shirakawa白河. It takes about 3.5 hours if you are lucky. there are at least 3 but sometimes more train changes along the way, so you really need to timetables to lineup. However it does cost half as much as catching the Shinkansen 新幹線, so If you have the time it saves you a bit of cash.
On Friday 金曜日 night i met up with Yuki, who i have also not visited in Tokyo. she has this awesome pad just outside Roppongi 六本木. Its quite strange as there isn't really a wall between the bathroom/shower and the rest of the apartment, there's only a glass wall which has a curtain on the outside. We had the standard japanese night out, comprised of an izakaya followed by karaoke.
Saturday 土曜日 morning was the run for the curefun run around the Imperial Palace, so i had to wake up earlyish which isn't fun. To make things worse, i had managed to forget my shorts in Shirakawa, leaving me to scamper around Tokyo looking for any kind of clothing store which sold shorts. Sadly i was unsuccessful.. so i had to do the run in boxers =p no one seemed to noticed and/or care so it all worked out. The race had a high percentage of gaijin, maybe half, but thats ok i guess. Normally when i run in races i finish somewhere in the middle of the pack.. but in this race i sprinted out to the front like a w*nker, and seriously not that many people overtook me. This race strangely had no time keepers or listing of finishing positions.. but I guesstimate that i finished somewhere between 10th and 15th out of a few hundred people. We also suspect that Darren finished 5th or there abouts.
Running a fun run is all good, cept when its the first activity in a very long day. And this was to be a very long day. We spent the best part of the afternoon attempting to find a public bath to soak in, but we had no luck and then resorted to finding any place to sleep. We entered a capsule カプスル hotel, but were rejected for being baka gaijin who couldn't speak nihongo. In the end we just headed back to Yuki's, where i managed to have a brief shower, and also coin the phrase "i feel like i've been sleeping under a coffee table". which basically means you feel like your bones/muscles etc are sore from some sort of crampedness. but i got it from actually sleeping under a coffee table =p
Next was dinner with my brother, his gf, Yuki, Chito and Darren. we went to this shanghai dumpling place which we had a lot of trouble finding. but it turned out to be pretty awesome. You don't find a whole lot of decent chinese food in Fukushima 福島 so this was a nice change. We finished a lot later than we had planned, but the schedule seemed to work itself out in the end.
Onwards to Gan Ban 08.. we met up with a bunch of others from Fukushima and some train station which is most of the way to Chiba and we quickly boozed up at a conbini. Inside the concert can best be described as epic.. it felt like it was a mini festival inside like a massive aircraft hangar. The Djs totally rocked out too.. Basement Jaxx and Justice were the ones we came to see with Justice being the most awesome live set ive maybe ever seen or heard. The backdrop was a big screen featuring such trippy imagery as Fantasia and Alice in Wonderland.... seriously Lewis Carroll must've been on some pretty hard stuff..
One of the doods who was with us (i forget his name) was wearing like a tshirt with a graph with jived to the music.. and he pretty much had everyone person in the place come and talk to him about it. he was also a crazy awesome dancer, so usually he was like "get away from me im trying to dance here", even to the super hawt jgirls who came to talk to him.
whilst the concert was awesome.. the trip home was not so much. Apart from only partially lucid, i managed to somehow drop a super cheesy mcdonalds megamuffin all over my pants at about 6:30am. not fun. during the almost 3 hours we were in maccas, there was a single jgirl there sitting right at the end of the bench.. and the whole time we were there (plus time before we arrived, and after we left) she was just doing he hair and make up.. like she had OCD.. it was bizarro.. although probably moreso since i was only partially awake.
unlike D though, i was able to get some zzz's on a table in maccas as well as on the bus ride back to Fukushima. I was kept hydrated by a Thorpedo(tm) drink courtesy of D. In the afternoon.. i had yet more rest.. as well a super hot date.. but more on that in the other blog....
:: vocabulary words ::
Shinkansen = bullet train.. very fast but pricey
conbini = convenience store
Chiba = a city to the east of Tokyo
Tuesday, October 14
YAJLW (yet another japanese long weekend)
They seem to have a lot of long weekends in japan.. i'm not sure how many exactly, but there are 15 national public holidays.. so the law of averages says that at about 2/5 of those will result in a long weekend. anyhoo, enough maths (yeh thats maths not math for all the Americans and Japanese who speak American).
first up, friday night gets bowling in Kagamiishi, where i pretty much bowled how i always bowl, sporadically and inconsistently. I started out with a couple of spares and a strike.. then followed the strike with a pair of gutter balls =p They also had this prize ticket dealie where u grab like a lil piece of paper, which has a number of points on it, and you use those points to purchase items such as cleaning sponges and washing detergent.. weird. we decided to use our points to purchase candy =) The night finished up at an izakaya.. so i don't remember much of the rest...
Saturday we headed to the Koriyama 郡山 international citizens festival. we slaved away at this stall which featured gaijin themed face painting, such as Australian flags and maple leaves. but later digressed into normal j-cutseyness, such as akabekos and halloween pumpkins and Doraemon and a spongebob squarepants which took me like hours. The rest of the festival was pretty fun too.. although i made myself sick by putting way way too much mustard on a serve of sauce katsudon. usually things in japan aren't spicy really.. so i apply liberally.. but this was some serious mustard.. and in hindsight i probably should've stopped eating earlier....
Sunday was toiling in the fields of Taishin. We had to harvest the rice to get us through the bitterly cold winters of Shirakawa. in the end about 9 of us harvested a field of maybe 10mx10m then went drinking whilst the machines harvested the rest =p and boy did u drink.. it was one of those japanese parties where some old man or old lady keep telling you to try this beer.. or this sake.. or this special shochu.. or all of the above. i was pretty wasted by about 2 in the afternoon.. would've been earlier if it wasn't for this awesome spread of j-lunch. unfortunately i didn't get a photo.. but there was some pretty spectacular dishes on offer...
next up i had to find my way to Koriyama to be Darrens wingman on his supposedly 7 vs 1 super date with the Sukagawa jgirls.. however it turned out to be 3 vs 3.. but thats still a good enough ratio. I arrived very late and only had time for the karaoke portion of the night.. but it was still fun. and i got to try out of my non-jouzu nihongo.
Monday! (yeh this weekend just keeps on going) the Sukagawa girls took us to the Urabandai five coloured lake viewing. I had no idea what this was before i arrived but it was pretty awesome. If for nothing other than seeing my first northern hemisphere Autumn.. complete with trees of brown freddy the leafs. But sadly we didn't get to see all five colours of this lake because some of the colours weren't there, noticeably the red lake.. which looked a rather ordinary green. I did get another sauce katsudon that day.. which made up for the last blergh.
:: vocabulary words ::
Kagamiishi = a nearby village just north of Yabuki
Darren = a JET from Yabuki, aka D aka Dazza aka The Dazzler
Sukagawa = a nearby city, apparently Shirakawa's arch-rival
Taishin = a nearby village which is technically part of Shirakawa now
Urabandai = another town in Fukushima
shochu = alcohol made from the dregs leftover from making sake
nihongo = the Japanese language
j-go = nihongo
jgirls = japanese girls
j = japanese
jouzu = skillful
non-jouzu = not skillfull
akabeko = the mascot of Fukushima
first up, friday night gets bowling in Kagamiishi, where i pretty much bowled how i always bowl, sporadically and inconsistently. I started out with a couple of spares and a strike.. then followed the strike with a pair of gutter balls =p They also had this prize ticket dealie where u grab like a lil piece of paper, which has a number of points on it, and you use those points to purchase items such as cleaning sponges and washing detergent.. weird. we decided to use our points to purchase candy =) The night finished up at an izakaya.. so i don't remember much of the rest...
Saturday we headed to the Koriyama 郡山 international citizens festival. we slaved away at this stall which featured gaijin themed face painting, such as Australian flags and maple leaves. but later digressed into normal j-cutseyness, such as akabekos and halloween pumpkins and Doraemon and a spongebob squarepants which took me like hours. The rest of the festival was pretty fun too.. although i made myself sick by putting way way too much mustard on a serve of sauce katsudon. usually things in japan aren't spicy really.. so i apply liberally.. but this was some serious mustard.. and in hindsight i probably should've stopped eating earlier....
Sunday was toiling in the fields of Taishin. We had to harvest the rice to get us through the bitterly cold winters of Shirakawa. in the end about 9 of us harvested a field of maybe 10mx10m then went drinking whilst the machines harvested the rest =p and boy did u drink.. it was one of those japanese parties where some old man or old lady keep telling you to try this beer.. or this sake.. or this special shochu.. or all of the above. i was pretty wasted by about 2 in the afternoon.. would've been earlier if it wasn't for this awesome spread of j-lunch. unfortunately i didn't get a photo.. but there was some pretty spectacular dishes on offer...
next up i had to find my way to Koriyama to be Darrens wingman on his supposedly 7 vs 1 super date with the Sukagawa jgirls.. however it turned out to be 3 vs 3.. but thats still a good enough ratio. I arrived very late and only had time for the karaoke portion of the night.. but it was still fun. and i got to try out of my non-jouzu nihongo.
Monday! (yeh this weekend just keeps on going) the Sukagawa girls took us to the Urabandai five coloured lake viewing. I had no idea what this was before i arrived but it was pretty awesome. If for nothing other than seeing my first northern hemisphere Autumn.. complete with trees of brown freddy the leafs. But sadly we didn't get to see all five colours of this lake because some of the colours weren't there, noticeably the red lake.. which looked a rather ordinary green. I did get another sauce katsudon that day.. which made up for the last blergh.
:: vocabulary words ::
Kagamiishi = a nearby village just north of Yabuki
Darren = a JET from Yabuki, aka D aka Dazza aka The Dazzler
Sukagawa = a nearby city, apparently Shirakawa's arch-rival
Taishin = a nearby village which is technically part of Shirakawa now
Urabandai = another town in Fukushima
shochu = alcohol made from the dregs leftover from making sake
nihongo = the Japanese language
j-go = nihongo
jgirls = japanese girls
j
jouzu = skillful
non-jouzu = not skillfull
akabeko = the mascot of Fukushima
Monday, October 6
Nihonmatsu Chouchin Matsuri
yet another weekend where i venture out on a friday night and somehow don't return home until Sunday afternoon. It seems to be a recurring theme.. as usual it involves some sort of karaoke, but this time also nomihoudai, a hip flask of whiskey, a wooden box of sake and a japanese skater who works refilling vending machines.
Friday nite started out being quite timid.. until we (not completely unintentionally) missed the last train. and found ourselves rampaging thru the streets of kori-town passing the time with whiskey swigs whilst trying to find something to do till the first train. I may have mentioned previously that my japanese speaking ability increases exponentially with alcohol.. so we reached the point where i started talking to strangers on the street and doing my stock standard junior high school jikoshoukai (self introduction). This eventually led us to meet these skaters , after i did a very messy/drunken ollie on one of their skateboards they led us to some bar (dooz?) where they said we should party. Inside wasn't really happening.. but i was pretty wasted by then anyway.. so it was at least a place to lie down =p
Many hours later.. one of the skaters, Mitsu. returned to the bar to have a chat.. as well as invite us to crash on the very hard wooden floor of his tiny apartment. which we did.. and as uncomfortable as it was, it was still a roof over our heads.
The next morning I gave up on returning home since i was about to head to Nihonmatsu anyway for Japan's 3rd biggest lantern festival, and Shirakawa is 40 mins in the wrong direction. Upon arrival i crashed out for a couple of hours in preparation for the hours of partying to follow.
The actual festival was pretty massive.. there were so many people there.. and like tons of food stalls and game stalls and toy stalls and such crowded with japanese people. It was mildly entertaining for a few hours.. until the lanterns arrived (well returned actually since they go from town up a mountain and back). These lanterns were actually giant floats with hundreds of lanterns attached and carrying a bunch of people inside with taiko drums as various other instruments. each float had a trail of people behind dancing and yelling "washoi! washoi!"
Alongside the road were festively dressed locals who would oft hand you a small wooden box.. full of sake.. which you had to promptly consume before handing the box back like 5m down the road. As you can imagine this leads to a very drunken Ian very quickly. Later on we met some japanese friends of one of the other JETs and one of those was a girl who used to work at one of the beer places.. and managed to get us even more free booze.. as well as some chips (or furaido poteto) as its called here. The rest of the night was a bit hazy.. but it did involve a kebab at some point. a rarity in Japan.
Im not really sure what i did the next day.. but i cant imagine it was anything more productive than returning home and sleeping for hours.
:: vocabulary words ::
Nihonmatsu = a town in Fukushima about an hour north of Shirakawa
jikoshoukai = self introduction
rampaging = what Fukushima JETs do after being coerced into drinking
kori-town = Koriyama, a nearby city where much partying happens
chouchin = lantern
matsuri = festival
Friday nite started out being quite timid.. until we (not completely unintentionally) missed the last train. and found ourselves rampaging thru the streets of kori-town passing the time with whiskey swigs whilst trying to find something to do till the first train. I may have mentioned previously that my japanese speaking ability increases exponentially with alcohol.. so we reached the point where i started talking to strangers on the street and doing my stock standard junior high school jikoshoukai (self introduction). This eventually led us to meet these skaters , after i did a very messy/drunken ollie on one of their skateboards they led us to some bar (dooz?) where they said we should party. Inside wasn't really happening.. but i was pretty wasted by then anyway.. so it was at least a place to lie down =p
Many hours later.. one of the skaters, Mitsu. returned to the bar to have a chat.. as well as invite us to crash on the very hard wooden floor of his tiny apartment. which we did.. and as uncomfortable as it was, it was still a roof over our heads.
The next morning I gave up on returning home since i was about to head to Nihonmatsu anyway for Japan's 3rd biggest lantern festival, and Shirakawa is 40 mins in the wrong direction. Upon arrival i crashed out for a couple of hours in preparation for the hours of partying to follow.
The actual festival was pretty massive.. there were so many people there.. and like tons of food stalls and game stalls and toy stalls and such crowded with japanese people. It was mildly entertaining for a few hours.. until the lanterns arrived (well returned actually since they go from town up a mountain and back). These lanterns were actually giant floats with hundreds of lanterns attached and carrying a bunch of people inside with taiko drums as various other instruments. each float had a trail of people behind dancing and yelling "washoi! washoi!"
Alongside the road were festively dressed locals who would oft hand you a small wooden box.. full of sake.. which you had to promptly consume before handing the box back like 5m down the road. As you can imagine this leads to a very drunken Ian very quickly. Later on we met some japanese friends of one of the other JETs and one of those was a girl who used to work at one of the beer places.. and managed to get us even more free booze.. as well as some chips (or furaido poteto) as its called here. The rest of the night was a bit hazy.. but it did involve a kebab at some point. a rarity in Japan.
Im not really sure what i did the next day.. but i cant imagine it was anything more productive than returning home and sleeping for hours.
:: vocabulary words ::
Nihonmatsu = a town in Fukushima about an hour north of Shirakawa
jikoshoukai = self introduction
rampaging = what Fukushima JETs do after being coerced into drinking
kori-town = Koriyama, a nearby city where much partying happens
chouchin = lantern
matsuri = festival
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