Weekend, ya'll
Sep. 27th, 2004 11:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akujunkanThursday was an isolated national holiday, so what is there to do if not hang out with old people?
I've been officially adopted as a daughter by the family I met at the Shishimai a few weeks ago. I went over to their house on Thursday, and they drove me to the next town where this really neat festival was occurring.
Every year, various civic groups get together and make sculptures out of locally harvested vegetables and grains. Can you spot the animistic origins? I know I can.
Anyway, the sculptures were really cute - we had traffic safety, several panoramas of Japan's olympic athletes, Ghibli characters, loads of Ampanmen, and an amazing twenty-foot high sculpture of the thunder guardian.
Of course dumbass me forgot to take my camera, but I do have sh'loads of keitai shots, and the family took their cameras, so we're going to exchange photos at some point soon.
We went back to their house for a light meal, and then they showed me all the pictures of their trip to Italy. It was way neat to see this elderly Japanese couple standing in the same spots I'd stood a few years previous.
I went home at about 6pm, after watching some sumo with them. "Don't learn to talk like me!" said the husband in his thick inaka-accent. Too adorable.
Now, on to the weekend, and what a weekend it was. I made another Korean friend at class on Friday - she wants to learn English and I want to learn Korean, so I'm sure we can work something out. Also, someone my age to hang out with! W00t!
I went out Saturday night for dinner with three other foreigners. Two of them have been throwing parties for the prefecture. We ended up at a pretty cool restaurant near the station, the manager of which was sent from Tokyo to help get the chain started in our ken. He's got pretty good English and is extremely friendly.
He also likes Halloween, and wants to have a costume party in the restaurant, which would be pretty damn cool. He broached this idea to our two party friends.
And man, that made for some interesting people watching. One especially was immediately opposed to the idea. "I just can't imagine a Halloween party here. It would be so stupid. It's totally the wrong place for it." And so on. She does her damnedest (through an interpretor) to convince the guy not to hold the party, but to hold parties she wants to do, later. And she also wants to be paid for them.
It was rather awe-inspiring to watch her ride roughshod over this guy's enthusiasm, visions of yen signs glowing in her eyes. Because honestly, doing parties is way cool, but when it turns into you doing parties so that your (basically captive) group of friends and acquaintances are your built in guest list whose purpose is to use their salary to fund your leisure activities? Yeah, that's not so cool, especially when the AJET people who are actually in charge of some of the parties are doing it for free.
And so the rest of the evening turned into a discussion of the parties she is going to throw, and how it really isn't fair for her to do all this work for them without being paid. And that's kind of lame, because not everyone wants to talk about you, or the great things you do.
In case you can't tell, one of my biggest irks is people who only ever talk about themselves, because that gets old really quickly.
I then moved on to more rewarding weekend activities, namely, sailors!
My crew of male cheerleaders was back in town for the first time in about six months, and much fun was had by all. There's nothing quite like being mobbed by a group of attractive, sex-crazed Japanese boys to add that certain something to one's evening.
(Incidentally, if I was to say the phrase 'jikky jikky' to any of you, would you know what I'm talking about? Enquiring minds want to know.)
A plus to this installment of the sailor fiasco was the addition of an extremely hawtambiguously gay duo, who were very much fun to watch. ("I wonder which one's the top," Hisashi-kun said to me. "We can't figure it out.") Remember, the only thing better than a roomful of gorgeous Japanese boys draping themselves all over you is a roomful of gorgeous Japanese boys draping themselves over you while you watch two of them drape themselves over each other. Yum.
Then it was on to drunken karaoke until I cut out at four in the morning. They were still going strong, but I had to be up in five hours, so shou ga nai.
It should be mentioned here that part of my bike ride home involves riding down the steep and narrow ramp of the pedestrian underpass. Usually this doesn't pose me much trouble, but I was drunk, and fell over. That was so much fun that I started at the top and did it again. Whee! Being five years old again is great!
And then on to Saturday, where I redeemed myself by being cultural.
I made it to the station by ten on Sunday morning, where I was picked up by three Japanese friends from a local university. We drove over to the next prefecture and spent the day kicking around famous tourist sights - a 14th century garden, a castle, and the city's old quarter. They were a blast to hang out with, and very patient with my broken Japanese. (Yeah, you try explaining building architecture in a second language while possessing absolutely none of the relevant vocabulary!)
We ate soba at this awesome old-fashioned (and by old-fashioned, I mean 15th century) restaurant on the city outskirts, and the headed back into town, having made plans to hang out at another big festival later this week.
And finally Kansai-boy emailed me back. I can understand every single word of the text he wrote, but woe, none of the nuance. My kingdom for an understanding of cultural nuance!
That will be all.
I've been officially adopted as a daughter by the family I met at the Shishimai a few weeks ago. I went over to their house on Thursday, and they drove me to the next town where this really neat festival was occurring.
Every year, various civic groups get together and make sculptures out of locally harvested vegetables and grains. Can you spot the animistic origins? I know I can.
Anyway, the sculptures were really cute - we had traffic safety, several panoramas of Japan's olympic athletes, Ghibli characters, loads of Ampanmen, and an amazing twenty-foot high sculpture of the thunder guardian.
Of course dumbass me forgot to take my camera, but I do have sh'loads of keitai shots, and the family took their cameras, so we're going to exchange photos at some point soon.
We went back to their house for a light meal, and then they showed me all the pictures of their trip to Italy. It was way neat to see this elderly Japanese couple standing in the same spots I'd stood a few years previous.
I went home at about 6pm, after watching some sumo with them. "Don't learn to talk like me!" said the husband in his thick inaka-accent. Too adorable.
Now, on to the weekend, and what a weekend it was. I made another Korean friend at class on Friday - she wants to learn English and I want to learn Korean, so I'm sure we can work something out. Also, someone my age to hang out with! W00t!
I went out Saturday night for dinner with three other foreigners. Two of them have been throwing parties for the prefecture. We ended up at a pretty cool restaurant near the station, the manager of which was sent from Tokyo to help get the chain started in our ken. He's got pretty good English and is extremely friendly.
He also likes Halloween, and wants to have a costume party in the restaurant, which would be pretty damn cool. He broached this idea to our two party friends.
And man, that made for some interesting people watching. One especially was immediately opposed to the idea. "I just can't imagine a Halloween party here. It would be so stupid. It's totally the wrong place for it." And so on. She does her damnedest (through an interpretor) to convince the guy not to hold the party, but to hold parties she wants to do, later. And she also wants to be paid for them.
It was rather awe-inspiring to watch her ride roughshod over this guy's enthusiasm, visions of yen signs glowing in her eyes. Because honestly, doing parties is way cool, but when it turns into you doing parties so that your (basically captive) group of friends and acquaintances are your built in guest list whose purpose is to use their salary to fund your leisure activities? Yeah, that's not so cool, especially when the AJET people who are actually in charge of some of the parties are doing it for free.
And so the rest of the evening turned into a discussion of the parties she is going to throw, and how it really isn't fair for her to do all this work for them without being paid. And that's kind of lame, because not everyone wants to talk about you, or the great things you do.
In case you can't tell, one of my biggest irks is people who only ever talk about themselves, because that gets old really quickly.
I then moved on to more rewarding weekend activities, namely, sailors!
My crew of male cheerleaders was back in town for the first time in about six months, and much fun was had by all. There's nothing quite like being mobbed by a group of attractive, sex-crazed Japanese boys to add that certain something to one's evening.
(Incidentally, if I was to say the phrase 'jikky jikky' to any of you, would you know what I'm talking about? Enquiring minds want to know.)
A plus to this installment of the sailor fiasco was the addition of an extremely hawt
Then it was on to drunken karaoke until I cut out at four in the morning. They were still going strong, but I had to be up in five hours, so shou ga nai.
It should be mentioned here that part of my bike ride home involves riding down the steep and narrow ramp of the pedestrian underpass. Usually this doesn't pose me much trouble, but I was drunk, and fell over. That was so much fun that I started at the top and did it again. Whee! Being five years old again is great!
And then on to Saturday, where I redeemed myself by being cultural.
I made it to the station by ten on Sunday morning, where I was picked up by three Japanese friends from a local university. We drove over to the next prefecture and spent the day kicking around famous tourist sights - a 14th century garden, a castle, and the city's old quarter. They were a blast to hang out with, and very patient with my broken Japanese. (Yeah, you try explaining building architecture in a second language while possessing absolutely none of the relevant vocabulary!)
We ate soba at this awesome old-fashioned (and by old-fashioned, I mean 15th century) restaurant on the city outskirts, and the headed back into town, having made plans to hang out at another big festival later this week.
And finally Kansai-boy emailed me back. I can understand every single word of the text he wrote, but woe, none of the nuance. My kingdom for an understanding of cultural nuance!
That will be all.
