November

my new collar and trying on glasses

The Monday after my birthday I went to fla and then sonia met me in sannomiya and we went to the internet cafe for a little bit, had lunch, and saw this movie called Ichie which was in japanese, but not too difficult to understand because there was a lot of action. it was really good. Sonia spent a couple more days with me and then she went home on the 29th.

The next weekend I had 3 days off. On Sunday I spent the day in sannomiya. Early early i went to the internet cafe and did some doings on the computer and then i went to this little area called TOR road west where i like to go sometimes. it's a little like queen street but in more of a square shape. and in the middle there is this little park where i like to go sit sometimes except on this day there was a free market there. it was really cool there were all these people which i call kids in my head cause they looked like a bunch of art students or people around my age. and they had all this stuff (crafts i guess) that they had made spread out or tarps all laid out on the ground. alot of the stuff was really pretty and all the poeple were really nice. i blue and pink hair bow from a girl and she seemed really happy about it and took my picture. and i got a blue and purple collar from another girl who was really nice too and took my picture. i ate some orange and chocolate cookies some other people were selling and a chocolate scone from another lady. i went to this vintage jewlery store i like and the girls there were really nice and they talked to me in English and they said they liked my collar. when i told them i got it from the market they told me they made some skirts there and i bought a grey skirt with silver sequins on the bottem from one of them and i was her first customer ever which seemed pretty special. and i had to wait a while but there was this girl with a red jumper on and a red curly clown wig drawing peoples pictures and she drew mine. i love it. it makes me smile all the time. it's really colourful and she drew little fairies over my head. it looks like me all over. i'm smiling really big like i sometimes do and she drew the creases that i get in my cheeks and the way my nose gets all pointy. its wonderful. its my favorite thing i have bought in japan. it's my favorite thing i have from japan. i think i'll start collecting portraits from people drawing pictures on the street and stuff. i have one from one time when we went to New York but i don't think it looks like me as much it's too perfect... that kind artist made it with a fuzzy glow. i have it set up on my dresser and it's beautiful. the lady was really nice and she talked to me while she drew my picture and when she was done she gave me her business card and told me where she lived was really cool and to call her if i went there, so maybe i will. and the girl sitting next to her is a pastry chef... a patisserie maker??? and she said she really liked Canadian cakes which was quite cool... their impression of Canadian cakes was that they are very colourful and sweet which in lots of cases is pretty true i guess particularly compared to cakes in japan which are usually less sweet and more creamy and fluffy.

it was a good day.

Oh! and i bought a new book too... really i picked the thickest one i could find to last me through 'till i get home and i can go to the library again (although that didn't work out 'cause i'm already half way through and it's only been a week). the book is "Kafka on the Shore" by Haruki Murakami and it's really really good.

happy halloween birthday

I had a really really good birthday! It was perfect.

Sonia came home for my birthday and we went out on the 25th to celebrate. while toddling around Osaka she fell in love with this big very strapping looking British guy and invited us to a Halloween pub crawl that he happened to mention in around Namba in Osaka. Sonia was great. She went to Osaka earlier in the day while i was still at work and got us costumes... there were wigs and big earrings, dresses and headbands it was awesome. we found the people from the pub crawl and go our tickets and list of pubs and such but the bathroom at the bar upstairs where everyone was was much much too small so we went downstairs to this completely empty bar- but for two women and the bartender- where we used the much more conveniently sized bathroom to change. afterwards we talked to the bartender and the women for a little bit... one of the women spoke english and had a drink. we drank chu-hi and when he found out it was my birthday the bartender gave us these really yummy japanese alcohol drinks that tasted like uzu (japanese citrus and lemony green tea). the bar was really cool cause they has a projector and a big white screen and they were playing a peice from this modern dance company... i forget what they are called but sonia found the dvd in Tokyo... they aren't japanese, it think they're scandinavian perhaps. in one part there was just this one lady in the woods dancing around and around in a circle and she was so graceful and in another part there were two women and they were really really beautiful and very synchronized. the bar had some cool books too, i liked it. when we heard all the people from the pub crawl starting to leave the bar upstairs (there was a whistle) we downed our drinks and ran after them. eventually we found the next bar and the night went on. at some point i think we went to some kind of underground performance bar with a bunch of girls dancing on a pole... but they were all clothed and not taking anything off so it wasn't a strip club, just dancing. at some other point there was a lady dressed up in an indian costume that reminded me a little bit of babeeta from sick kids who said happy birthday, which was nice (it was the glasses). there were girls with orange hair, and costumes galore. i think it was the last bar... or maybe it wasn't... that had a dance floor which was nice because i haven't been dancing in a long time and secretly it's really all i ever want to do. we surveyed all the boys and had lots of fun. some people bought me birthday drinks which was very nice of them. at around 4 or 5 am i think it was we walked over to the nearest subway entrance in a nearby arcade with a boy i don't remember the name of who not so secretly loved sonia and sat on the ground waiting for the subway to open so we could go home. we got on the subway and then on the train i sleepily went back home. i think we got home around 7am. it was much like that time and david went out all night in tokyo, and the with aaron... hmmm... sonia slept and slept and slept, but i woke up at 11am (only 4 hours... alcohol wakes me up early). i don't know what i did all day... i watched tv with a volume of 1, read possibly, and when i was getting almost too exceedingly board and fidgety sonia woke up around 3pm.i called ayako to ask her about dinner 'cause she had invited me to her house for a birthday party! her mom"s birthday is the day before mine and when she heard it was my brithday she invited me to her birthday party! it was awsome! i love ayako's family. they're something i'm gonna miss the most about japan (i might have almost cried a little). ayako and her brother and sister-in-law and neices picked me up in the station and i played the littlest girl sat on my lap and we poked our heads out the window and felt the wind and waved at people on the sidewalk and i played with the other little girl and it was so nice. i love them to bits, they're adorable. we picked up their brother and then we went back to ayako's house and i met her other brother and neice for the first time... she was shy for a bit and then when i started giving the girls piggy backs and tossing them around she lost all sense of reserve and clambered on my back to be raced around. AND we had a SUSHI PARTY!!!! have i ever told you i love sushi and that i was dieing for some sushi at that point. it was perfection. it was so cool. the little kids who are at the most four used this sushi roll making contraption thats really quite simple where you put a layer of rice on a peice of celophane and then the ingrediants you want in it like cucumber or tuna or egg and then another layer of rice and then you close it and slide a square of dried seaweed paper in and do a little twist an presto magico you got a sushi roll. the grown ups cut up all these delicious things like salmon and tuna and lots of other fish i don't know the names of and octopus and veggies and egg and sausage and we made rice and ripped up seaweed paper and so all you have to do is clump a bit of rice and whatever you like on a peice of seaweed and dip it in some soy sauce mixed with wasabi (they were impressed with my wasabi tolerance) or mayo and you have the bast thing you could ever eat. it was soooooo yummy. i ate lots and lots and it was great. and we had delicios soup too. and then when it was time for cake they set up the candles and sang happy birthday to both of us and we counted '1 2 3' and each blew out one side of the cake and it was soo sweet. the cake was this famous kobe cake and it was cream and strawberry fluffy white cake and it was really good. also, i played wii fit and it was really fun. i played the hoolahoop which i think i was pretty good at and boxing which i wasn't too too bad at and this soccer head-butting game which i was terrible at. it was funny everyone was very enthusiastic about me playing especially ayako's mom and and helped me do all the stuff. and then around 8pm or so we cleaned up (well ayako and her mom cleaned up, i played wii) and they gave me ride to sannomiya station where i met sonia and had dinner.

it was a most spectacularly perfect birthday day.

Pictures to go with October

October

October, October, who would not love October...

One night I was just sitting at home minding my own business when I hear what sounds like the beating of drums and chanting. So naturally i went to the balcony and i saw a float going by carried by a baunch of guys. so i got dressed and ran after them. I managed to catch up and i met this little boy who's mamiko's friends son (one of the kids i went to the beach with) and we followed the float to junpu where i met mamiko and she told me they were carrying the float to the festival grounds for the next day. In the morning I went to the festival one town over with Mamiko. From what I could understand it is for Autumn and a good harvest. Some of our students were at the festival too. We saw Chie and her sister Mika was a drummer in one of the floats and Yuta was helping to carry one of the floats and his sister Ayumi was a drummer in their float. What happens is this: depending on where you live there are clubs of guys and maybe girls i think and everyone where's the same colour little shirt thingy... it could be a yukata but i'm not entirely sure... and all these guys, young and old, that for the most part seem to be entirely drunk hoist this huge float (a minaturized shrine) made out of wood onto their shoulders and carry it around the temple three times. Each time they go around they take a turn lifting part of the float into the temple and doing this thing with a temple guy which i can only assume is same kind of prayer and they lift it over their heads and jump around and make a lot of noise. PLUS their are like four children (of the size of like 8 year olds) inside this shrine float that they're carrying around beating this big drum. It's crazy... i was very proud of my student who was helping carry the float. There are all of these old men sitting in a huge line of chairs in front of the temple watching the guys carrying the floats and they seem to be a little board and they seem to be maybe a comittee or something overseeing the ceremony. It was really cool and my first local festival. We ate fried chicken and cheese poof fried doughy things that were really good.

I went to Osaka because I was out of Oatmeal and there is a foreign foods store there. I ended up buying skirts... well oatmeal too. I had fun trying on pretty things and drinking coconut bubble tea... i've gotten used to those chewy boogeryish tapicoa brown bubbles and i don't even spit them out anymore.

I went up the mountain at the park in Suma. I love Suma park. I had to take a cable car up the first bit and at first i was all smug like 'oh this is nothing' and then we got up a little higher and higher and i started getting a little nervous like 'well this is pretty high'. The next part was this little elevator type contraption where you had to sit in a chair built for two (the man was quite surprized that it was just me) and a conveyor part takes you up another little way. Then i got off and there was a park and a lookout place with a game centre and a restaurant and lookout deck which was really just the roof. I sat in the park for a while and it was just like fall. The leaves were all browny orange and crunchy scattered all over the ground and it was kind of crisp but not too cold and everything seemed clear and beautiful and just right. I sat at a little picnic table across from the slide where all the kids were playing. I started reading another Hemingway book but Ican't remember the title right now... it had something to do with ...Sunrise... i'm finished it now... it wa spretty good it was about these American's living in Paris that decide to go to Spain to see the bull fights and all their sordid love affairs. Hemingway is a lot different than I thought... first of all he wrote in the 30's and i thought he was a lot older than that and his writing style is a lot more straight forward and easy to read than i thought... he reminds me of jack kerouac and a lot of the beat generation writers and a even little bit of steinbeck. anyways, i sat there and began hemingway and ate oranges (left over from when i went to the park in akashi that i had put in the freezer... tangelos are sooo yummy from the freezer) and it was quite nice. mostly probably because it was a perfect day, but maybe partly because i always feel like starting a book is kind of sacred and the first page is always my favorite (best first page this year was lolita). and there were all these stray cats (apparently they have a problem with that in japan) and two of them started running around and fighting and screeching away and scared the bajeeberz out of me. after a while i decided to go to the little park accross the way so i took the chair lift thingy over the gap. the chair thing was really just a chair... no straps, bells, or whistles, that you sat on while it took you over the mountain... really it wasn't that far or high off the ground, but i found it a little daunting being the me that i am... anyways i saw a little kid on it so i figured i must do it. i think it helped that it was painted with bright colours. on the other side there were a series of little ledges and gardens running down the mountain and paths through the woods that took you up. at the middle level there was this ride where you go on a manual two-person bicycle and pedal it along this track thats raised up above the ground on a bunch of stilts. At first when i went up to go on and headed straight back down and shook my head and said no way! it was because although most of the track isn't too scary because there are all these bushes and stuff under it so it doesn't really seem like you're off the ground, part of the track doesn't have anything under it and it's the part looking down the mountain so all you can see is the city and the sea and the long long way down the mountain below you. i took a walk around and say some really pretty purple flowers and peeked into a bamboo grove just beyond a community garden and then i made up my mind to go on the ride... i mean i came all this way. so i climbed the stairs and paid my $2 and the man strapped my in and tied my bag up and off i pedaled. after the initial heart thumping it wasn't bad at all, it was actually pretty wonderful. the part that seemed scary was really cool; since there's nothing under you except the sky it's like you're riding a bicycle on air. it reminded me of the part in E.T. when E.T. and that boy ride up to the moon. i went around twice and my favorite part was the part where i got to ride in the air and look at the ocean which was so pretty with sun sparkling all over it. There was a part in the park where it was kind of like a little ledge path covered with grass and i went there and laid down and read for a little while and i don't know why but for some reason it reminded my of alice in wonderland and the part with the queen of hearts and how she got really mad about her rose bushes and wanted to cut everyone's heads off. oh! it was because when i was on the bicycle there were these flower bushes underneath me at one part that reminded me of rose bushes and made my thing of alice and the queen of hearts. when i heard an announcment that i thought might have been saying the park was closing i made my way back down the mountain and off to akashi to meet mamiko, ayako, nami, and john for dinner and drinks. it was a good night. we went to this restaurant/bar that mamiko knew from one of the mom's from amity and ate a yummy dinner and had drinks... i had a little but strong margharita, and then we went to this bar that was sooo small. it was very very thin.. haha, it was so funny. and it was a rasta bar and the bartender was a dj and it was really cool and nice and comfy we all quite liked it.

anyways i gotta go cause the cute guy in the apron just informed me they were closing but i will finish up october and post pictures later

see you later alligator

Me and Sonia in Tokyo

I was late meeting Sonia in Tokyo. I think she was awfully worried. We stayed in a nice hostel just outside of Shinjuku, the name now escapes me, but it was a nice area. The first day we spent walking around Shibuya and Harajuku. We went to Yoyogi park next to Harajuku station and walked around for a while… we saw a couple of traditional weddings with the whole procession and everything or taking pictures which was kind of nice. It was raining all day sporadically. In Shibuya we went to a bunch of used clothing stores which were pretty spiffy and tried on stuff etc. They were all much too expensive for my liking. That night we went to Shinjuku and had dinner at a Hawaiian restaurant of all things… it was very good. And later while Sonia slept I went for a walk in the neighbourhood around our hostel and it was really nice; one way was very residential and neighbourly and the other was a nice, comfy little arcade and I decided it would be a good place to live.

The next day we woke up at four ’o clock in the morning (gasp!) to go to the fish market and catch the early morning auctions because that’s when all the really big tuna go on sale. Alas, the market was closed once again. I should have known! The whole reason I had a long weekend was because it was a national holiday so of course the fish market would be closed… sigh. We walked around the empty market for a little while inspecting things and then we took the subway back to Harajuku. It was still much much too early. Nothing was open. The only thing was a TGIF restaurant on the corner so we went there to pass the time and have some breakfast. I had my first grilled cheese sandwich in a long time and it was delicious! I love grilled cheese sandwiches. And they had an unlimited tea bar so we drank lots of tea… I like mine milky with two sugars. After a while Sonia noticed the sun. (it had been raining forever so the sun was quite special although that is not to say that it isn’t always very special). We walked around Harajuku for a while and went back up to the park and decided to go to a restaurant with a nice big window view of the park and Harajuku station for something to drink and ended up eating cake. It was banana and cream cake and it was very delicious. After that we headed for an art gallery we had a pamphlet for that was hidden somewhere in the smaller back streets of Harajuku. The art gallery was sooo cool! It was like a shining beacon of light. It really was quite often. It's this space where artists (of any callabre...be it student or genius) can rent out a room to display their art for $5.00 a day! It's really, really colourful and bright and there's a big nose sticking out on one side. It put me in a very good mood. A lot of the artists around displaying thier stuff seemed like students and they were really nice and some of them spoke english very well. There was one artist I really liked that made this really colourful paintings that were a collection of all these little faces smushed together... they were really, really bright, and colourful, and pretty. Me and Sonia had lots of fun walking throught the buildings and I decided that if I lived in Tokyo I'd like to draw pictures and write stories and plaster them all over a wall 'cause it would be fun but also because I wanted to make friends with all the other people there 'cause they seemed really cool and nice. After that, we kept walking along this little street in the back alleys of Harajuku and it wasn't too crowded. Then Sonia was hungry so we went back to this little cafe/restaurant we saw that was really pretty. It was an Indian restaurant and me and Sonia shared dosas and spinach curry which was really, really good....mmm i love curry. We sat at the counter by the window and watched all the people walking by. Since it had been such a long day already, we went home and Sonia went to sleep and I did some doings on the internet.

The next day we woke up late and played around for longer than we should have. When we were finally through, we set off for these cave's that i had wanted to go to when mom and aaron were here but had never got the chance. They are only a short train ride away from Tokyo at a stop that I can't remember the name of on your way to Kamakura. The place was a really cute, pretty, nice mountain town. After a few unintended detours on the bus we found the temple with the all mysterious and alluring cave, but alas it was no longer open at that late late hour (of 5:oo) that we arrived. Oh well... I looked into the mouth of the cave through the bars and it was soooo scary! It was so so dark and i felt like there was a big, monsterous, fierce wolf ready to jump out and eat me... one of those really gnarly ones. I hope that david and aaorn come back with me in the summer so we can go to the cave because i'm not sure if i could make myself go in there by myself, but it sounds really, really cool with carvings and statues and mystery and everything. Me and Sonia walked around the temple and the little graveyard for awhile and there were sooo many huge gangly spiders! The looked like the slightly evil, poisonous kind, that would have a really bad bite... imagine how many of them would probably be in the cave, and you couldn't even see them only feel them crawling up your neck or down your pants! actually i'm sure there are none in the cave dave, i'm sure they keep it very very clean and dust for cobwebs regularly. On the way back we walked through a rice field and the sunset was really pretty and there were all these scarecrows in the fields and i'm pretty sure some of them way far off in the distance were shaped like anpanman. When we got back into Tokyo I got the shinkansen and headed home for work the next day and Sonia stayed in Tokyo.

p.s. the glasses are on account of the fact that when me and sonia were walking in furious rain in the little street in Harajuku thats always really busy we ducked into this little glasses store and we both picked up some dorky glasses frames and i insisted on wearing mine the whole time even though sonia said her's made her eyes hurt. officially i got them for dave to put real lenses into if he wants.