so this past weekend was hella busy. friday night i went downtown to meet with my travel agent and book my sapporo trip. i ended up getting dinner, accidentaly ordering a bottle of wine instead of a glass. i tipsily ran into (not literally, wasn't that drunk) sandi and dob. sandi went home, dob and i had beer. saturday i slpet in, but then i did a little shopping and then went to a kagura festival at a local shrine (B-T-W shrine is for shinto, temple is buddhism) with carolina.
it was traditional performance folk dance, very interesting. i ate too much ita-yaki (?), which is fish shaped pancake with azuki paste inside. mmmmm...drool. sunday, woke up early, met carolina on the JR and head to saijo. there we joined kate and natalie (and eventually dob and some other JETs) for the sake festival. an all day drinking fest, 1500yen for as much sake as you can handle (although, the teacher that i ran into from school, told me that last year the glasses were bigger). it was a good day of sampling some really nice sake, then chugging some really bad sake--marking each glass off on our hands. (i had sixteen--although 2 were in the form of sake mochi).
and by the end of the day, the coorodened off grounds were mostly filled with drunk gaijin running around being...well, drunk gaijin. sadly my friends and i weren't that drunk, as we paced ourselves and ate way too much food and ice cream. <--perchance why i am broke and don't feel well this week. after the fest we all went to catch our respective trains to respective places of crashing. carolina decided to join kate, natalie and i to stay at natalie's in tadanoumi. we had to shove a very drunk yamagouchi-JET off on Dob, as she knew she couldn't make it home by herself--damn was she drunk. the four of us got to experience a scary interesting part of japan: a man, while looking for the train, fell on to the tracks. it took a moment, but three men jumped down and, very efficiantly, picked him up and put him on the platform. five minutes later the EMTs showed up, and the guy was able to walk away, but he reaked of pot and probably had a pretty good time at the sake fest, too. it made me really mad because it just was reasuring the japanese system of having really strict laws against marijawna. after that excitement, we hopped our train, natalie traded numbers with a canadian living in mihara; i flirted with a cute japanese boy, who's number i shoulda asked for. grr. and we landed in tadanoumi. from there we decided to walk to the fancy pizza place on the highway. now tadanoumi felt much like a seaside town in oregon, a couple places for the tourists, but the rest you would pass with out noticing. we had a very nice walk past nats' (natalie's) school and eventually found the pizza joint to be closed, a couple hours closed and turned around; which i think worked out for the best. back in town we ate at a small little resturant, one that apprently natalie's pre-pre-predesor ate at every night, and we became minor celebrities--completing the day of an interview for saijo university; a photo for my teacher; with, here, an autograph for the kind owner/cook of the eatery.
finally (after i set up and used nats' internet) i crashed. her annoying town-bell woke me at 6, but i rolled out around 9. we then had pancakes and ran (and i mean RAN) for the train, making it by seconds. the day's planned event was a tea ceromony in mihara at a shrine. a very nice woman, who nats was set up with as a contact, met us at the eki and gave us the needed papers for the ceromony and some simple instructions. the shrine was very nice, the ceromony very casual, the sweets reeally good (manju). after this adventure (nats' and kate's first tea ceromony) we went to fuji grand for lunch and had korean bbq--basically you order raw food and then cook it on a grill in the middle of your table, pretty fun, but not my favorite. nextdoor was a mister doughnut, so kate and i decided it was time to try this taughnting establishment.
we over ate. then of course i needed mochi, as it is a cure for the depression that was creeping up on me. more over eating. and finally a walk back to the train station. carolina and slept on the train back to hiroshima, and when i got home i trough laundry in the wash and proceeded to fall asleep. damn, i'm tired ust thinking about it.
No comments:
Post a Comment