Nightlife

Thought I'd give you guys a bite-sized sample of the night life here. If I'm going out, this is a pattern I like to follow. Seeing as how the sun sets at about 4:45 in the afternoon these days, you have plenty of time to start things early, so sometimes I do a bit of sightseeing to start things off. Here's Tokyo Tower at night:

Some views from it: This is toward Shinjuku and the skyscraper district. Kind of surreal looking that way and seeing this sea of the red lights that they require on the tops of really tall buildings.

Toward Ginza - that bright strip is the main road, Ginza Chuo Dori.

Another clump of skyscrapers in the distance there.

This was bad photography, but I thought it still turned out cool. The city is an electric fire! And you know what, it kinda is.

Next, I'd like to get some friends together to hang out or something. This was a karaoke night we had after one of the Sakura House parties. You see that guy in the corner? That guy is a clone of Nick Becker, for those of you who know him. Maybe the Nick of a few years ago, but the resemblance was still startling.

And finally, we'll end up at a club or something. The best place to go for the big clubs in in Shibuya, but there are all kinds of smaller clubs all over the place. I kind of like the smaller clubs, to tell you the truth, more intimate, and you feel like you can talk to people.

At one of the smaller clubs, this was going on, and I found it really cool. Black light painting!

She started out with a black canvas, and as the evening went on, it got more and more complex.

Meanwhile, DJ Satoshi is laying it down.

Finished product, just about.

So that's an ideal evening. Hopefully, there will be another one of them tonight! Have fun, everyone!

BTW, hopefully everyone had a good Thanksgiving. Didn't really celebrate it over here, too bad. Ah well. I'll just have to make up the missed calorie count over Christmas and New Years.

Sup everyone. In this installment of the amazing adventures of Kafherii-san (how I have to spell it in the darned phoenetic alphabet they use here), our hero takes a trip back to his old stomping grounds in the Gunma prefecture, where he spent a year.



I arranged to meet Miyuki Hoshikawa, one of the voluteers I taught with, and she took me around again. It was great to see her, she spent a lot of time in Australia and her English is really good, and we talked a lot. She drove me all over the place.



First, to the schools I used to teach at. This is me at the entrance to Toyoaki Elementary School, where I used to spend one day a week. This is where Miyuki used to help out - she was a volunteer, and that was okay since she was only doing it once a week. At Kanashima Junior High, where I spent 4 days a week, I would help out an actual English teacher in the classroom.



Nice to see the old places again.



Next place we went was up to Mt. Haruna, the biggest mountain overlooking the city. This is a photo taken from near the summit - it was nice to see the surrounding landscape in autumn, when the trees are at their most picturesque. It's really nice right now, I'm looking forward to Kyoto, it should be spectacular and right at the peak of the season.

That's the hot springs resort town of Ikaho there in at the bottom.

This is Miyuki, she's really nice.

The lake at the top of Mt. Haruna, with all the boats for rental.

View from the summit, we took a cable car up to the top

The Ikaho Ishidan (stone steps) - the town is kind of built around them, they are a relic from the Edo period. Been refurbished since then, of course, but still there. There are lots of little shops lining the path, too, and a shrine at the top.

The steps were built at various times, and the height and width of them varies. There aren't handholds everywhere, either, and I bet it's slick when it rains. I hope there aren't many accidents.

They were constructing an additional series of steps at the bottom of the existing set - it makes me wonder if they have plans to continue doing that. If I were to come back in 50 years, would it be stone steps all the way to the bottom of the valley?

She took me to Mizusawa-dera too, a Buddhist temple nearby. It was nice to see the place again, I'd only been there a couple of times.

A giant bell, with the kind of horizontal log ringer that you swing up against it. I remember when the ALT's got together at New Years when I was here for a year, and there was a line an hour long at midnight to ring the bell. Yes, we waited, and yes, we rang in the New Year properly.

Well, that was a fun day! I'll post again soon. Hope everything is going well back in Florida, cheers!

Some stuff I've been up to lately, part 2

Hey again all! Trip to Ueno park this time.
This was the giant lake surrounding the Ueno shrine. You can kind of imagine my surprise when I am expecting a pristine mirror lake, and I see what looks like a water lily plantation when I come up on it. I guess it's hard to annotate on a map when a body of water is choked with water plants. I'm sure it's that way intentionally, but still. I'm also sure the reason for this condition is explained on one of the many signs around that I was unable to read.

The Ueno shrine - it's on a, uh, peninsula I guess? I wanted to say island, but there's a land bridge there. Actually, I guess there's a smaller one on the other side too, so I guess technically it's on a perfectly ordinary body of land separating two lakes. Islet? Fjord? I dunno. Nice, though.

The other, clearer lake. This one, I guess they keep clear by virtue of implanting water jet pumps into the bottom of the lake. This was nice and peaceful. There were ducks.

Nice walkway of torii gates.

The national museum of art, west gallery

Main building of the museum. You know, I never stopped to count or anything, but there are a LOT of art forms that are associated specifically with Japan. This is driven home when there's a building with a hall dedicated to outstanding examples of each individual form, and it takes three and a half hours to walk through it. Fun afternoon, though! I especially liked the galleries of lacquerware, kimono, folding screens, and calligraphy-style paintings. Side note: there was an entire hall devoted specifically to calligraphy, but I didn't spend much time in it, because of two things. One, I don't feel like I can appreciate it without having the language skill, and two, because it mildly annoys me that the Japanese have elevated bad handwriting to an art form.

Huge bridge over Ueno station - not an important sight or anything, but I thought it was cool simply because of the acreage significantly above the street and the tracks, and the surrounding buildings making me feel like I was in a valley between steep mountain ranges or something.

Also, here's some shots of my apartment.

Taken from the far corner of the tatami room. It's only 6 tatami mats in area, not very big. I'd like you to note that when I was doing the initial inspection of the furnishings with the list they gave me, it said that there was a desk and a table. I established that the 'desk' was what I would call a high-end folding TV tray, but okay whatever. I was annoyed, though, because I didn't have a table, and it was going to be a bother. After complaining to the apartment complex, I later determined that THIS was the table they were talking about. I wouldn't even glorify that with calling it a nightstand.

Also, if that thing goes missing, they're going to charge me $140 for a replacement.

Taken from the other corner of the tatami room, the one with the 'table'

Taken from the kitchen area. See the ironing board? It's traditional to do the ironing while kneeling. I guess because most homes don't have room for a standing ironing board I guess? Whatever the reason, it's kind of a pain.

A shot of the kitchen. You know, the only stoves I've seen in Japan only have two burners. I wonder if they would even know what 'putting it on the back burner' means.

I'll do another mini-post soon! Have a good one!

Some stuff I've been up to lately, part 1

Hi all! I realize it's been a while since my last post, but I told myself at the start of this trip that I wasn't going to apologize for lack of much content. Updating my blog feels a bit less urgent since I'm only going to be here for a couple of months, and time is more at a premium than it was when I was here for a year. Therefore, here's stom stufff, but I make no promises on the delivery date of the next stuff. Cope. ^_^ That said, I'll try this week to make a few mini-posts rather than combine into one post, because honestly Blogger's photo uploading UI is a POS, and a PITA. Uploading more than 5 or so photos in one post quickly becomes like pulling teeth.

So. Mini-update number one. Meiji Jingu shrine, a week or so ago. Yes, I've blogged about it already this trip, but this time there was a festival going on, kind of a shichi-go-san type deal. Shichi-go-san means 7-5-3, and the deal is that you take young girls of the ages of three and seven, and young boys of age 5, and dress them up nice in kimono and take them to the shrine to pray for their future. Lots of pe0ple were there, it was a nice family event. I went with one of my neighbors in my apartment complex, Andrew. Here he is in front of the main Torii gate at the entrance to the temple complex:

If you're having trouble spotting him, he's the goofy Gaijin wearing jeans with his arms in the air like he just don't care. ^_^

I felt bad photo-sniping children in their kimonos, and there's just something weird about stopping a whole family just to take a photo of their kid... anyway, I didn't get many pics of kimono-clad children. Here's one I got, though, and it's pretty typical. They looked cute!

Interesting to note that the elderly Japanese woman nearby on the right is not all THAT much bigger than a seven-year-old.

In front of the main temple. Those trees bordering the temple are amazing, and it must be a job and a half keeping them looking like that, and also keeping the square swept clean of tree debris.

Rows of O-mikuji (I think?) under one of the trees - little wooden placards that you write your wishes down on, and every so often the priests take them down and burn them, so their ashes can ascend to heaven. We both did one, and it was also kind of fun reading what other people wrote.

People praying at the main temple

Priests leaving the complex after the completion of observences

Well, that was a fun little outing. I'll do another mini-post soon!

Halloween in Harajuku

Hi again! I just thought I'd share with you all some photos from my day yesterday. I figured, it's Halloween, why not go to a place where the fashions make it Halloween every day anyway, and see how they do it? So, I ended up in Harajuku on Halloween! That's the high fashion district of Tokyo, for those of you unfamiliar with it. It happened to be on Sunday anyway, and that's generally Harajuku's big day. The place was pretty packed.

Entrance to the main street

Busy intersection

Store that sells the 'Momo' fashion that's kind of stereotypically big right now, pale pastels and floral prints reminiscent of late 1800s tea parties, I guess? I dunno, I saw a lot of shops selling this stuff, but admittedly not too many girls actually walking around wearing it.

Please, oh please. I have a great need for storage space for all my waterfowl.

But of course, the real show-stealer was the costumes!!

Okay, this wins. Your argument is invalid.

Other honorable mentions:

I guess a group of Husky lovers dressed them up and brought them to Harajuku for Halloween, they were very popular.

I went to the Meiji Jingu shrine right next to the big square in Harajuku afterwards, and stumbled on a festival! I love Tokyo. It was apparently for something associated with Aomori, the northernmost prefecture on the main island. I didn't quite catch what, though. Anyway, it was fun to watch!

People doing a Mikoshi procession, that was kind of cool. From Wikipedia:

"A Mikoshi is a portable Shinto shrine. Shinto followers believe that it serves as the vehicle of a divine spirit in Japan at the time of a parade of deities. Often, the Mikoshi resembles a miniature building, with pillars, walls, a roof, a veranda and a railing. Typical shapes are rectangles, hexagons, and octagons. The body, which stands on two or four poles (for carrying), is usually lavishly decorated, and the roof might hold a carving of a phoenix.

During a Matsuri, or Japanese festival, people bear a Mikoshi on their shoulders by means of the two or four poles. They bring the Mikoshi from the shrind, carry it around the neighborhoods that worship at the shrine, and in many cases leave it in a designated area, resting on blocks, for a time before returning it to the shrine. Some shrines have the custom of dipping the Mikoshin in the water of a nearby lake, river or ocean. At certain festivals, the people who bear the Mikoshi wave it wildly from side to side."

So it says. I find that article to be lacking a certain feel of the procession. The bearers are shouting and jumping in rhythm the whole time, the procession is basically an organized party slash cheer section. I could see it being absolutely exhausting to be carrying on (heh) like that for hours at a time. Looks like fun, though!

This did happen to be the kind of procession where they waved it wildly from side to side. Nice! This procession was all girls - there was one sturdy young woman who braced her back against the bottom of the shrine as they were swaying it. That looked like a workout.

The entrance to Meiji Jingu

This was something else associated with the festival - they had small performance groups demonstrating traditional music, and THIS monstrosity: It was a gigantic structure that looked like a Mardi Gras float, but stationary - Lavishly decorated, bits of it hydraulically actuated, and it blew smoke from several nozzles. Pretty fantastic.

They had this giant lit hollow statue, too - I guess it portrays a traditional hero from Aomori. That's a rabbbit he's stepping on, by the way.

So yeah, pretty amazing display!

More scenes from the square between Harajuku and the Meiji Jingu shrine

I thought it was kind of funny - the kids who were dressed up wild on the bridge in Harajuku had kind of an 'on' area and an 'off' area. When against the railing of the bridge proper, photos were apparently encouraged, but when they left the bridge on one side, I guess it was understood that they were just hanging out with their friends, because whenever someone tried to take a photo in that area, they would turn their back. Huh.

The lanterns represent sponsors of the shrine and the Aomori event. Each one has a company or group's name on it. Asahi and the Coca-cola bottling plant were big contributers.

Performance stage area

Well, a fun day all in all! I think that's my best one here in Japan so far. Hopefully, that is the start of many more. So far, I'm liking my decision to go enjoy myself a bit. There's a song from 'Avenue Q' that sums it up nicely, and I've had it in my head for the last few days:

There is life outside your apartment

I know it's hard to conceive

But there's life outside your apartment

And you're only gonna see it if you leave

There is cool sh*t to do

But it can't come to you

And who knows dude, you might even score

There is life outside your apartment

But you've got to open the door!


I'll leave you with this, I saw it on the interweb the other day and it cracked me up. Peace out, I'll post again soon!