Sleeping Jellyfish

So of course I would leave my camera in my room when we went out on Saturday for our friend Katrina’s birthday. I remember walking to the bus when it pulled up and thinking, “crap, I think I left my camera in my room”, but there were plenty of other people with point-and-shoots so I will just steal some of their pictures in an attempt to capture the evening.

I think the place that we went was maybe a bit atypical of many of the other Karaoke places in Japan. From talking to other people, it seems like the Karaoke clubs are a bar and/or restaurant with rooms that you can rent by the hour to sing to your hearts content, with the Karaoke being the focus of the establishment. The place we ended up was in what I think was the Red Light district of Akita, where there seemed to be 3 types of shops: Ramen/Udon/Soba Noodle Shops, “Hostess” Bars, and regular bars. Now when you take a group of over 20 gaijin and try to fit them all into a tiny Japanese bar it doesn’t really work out all the time, so we walked around for quite a while until we found an empty place that we could all have a few drinks at. Luckily, it also had a Karaoke room. The Japanese system for many drinking establishments is that you pay a flat rate for as much as you care to drink for a few hours, and at this particular place it was 3,000￥ or about 30$US. Many of us didn’t want to pay that much and because A) we had already been drinking on the train and on the way to Karaoke and B) we just wanted to sing and have a few drinks, so we were able to compromise and settle on a pay-per-drink system like whats normal elsewhere.

Here we are just having gotten off the train at Akita Station. You can see the determination in our faces. We intend to sing our lungs out to the best that Akita’s Karaoke scene has to offer. Actually it looks more like someone just told a good joke. Anyways, we were all really excited to celebrate Katrina’s birthday with a more recent Japanese tradition, Karaoke.

I think this is a pretty good portrayal of how the evening went. In this picture we are a motley crew of American, South Korean, Czech, Norwegian, and Mongolian. Canadians, an Australian, and a Russian girl are around somewhere. We had a few Japanese friends with us, a God-send when our Japanese skills deteriorated over the course of the night. Great friends, good drinks, and as many top 40 hits as you can sing. We tried a few Japanese songs as well but they weren’t as accessible to everyone as the American pop hits that everyone knows.

If you notice the time, it is just past 6am. One thing about Japan is that you can not depend on anything to be open 24hrs. Except 711. Most ATMs close about 6pm, the last train home is about midnight, so it is important to plan things out as much as possible. Now in our case, we planned on staying till the morning train, and many people who go into the cities from outside do, because of the “last train” factor. Many Karaoke bars (and bars in general) are cheaper past midnight, so we did not leave AIU until about 10:30 in the evening. The place we went stayed open until about 4am and then we were let loose on the streets until the morning train.

And that was our first Karaoke excursion. Well, the first for most of us, some of the people had gone before, but obviously its fun enough to warrant a second round. As for my second sampling, I will remember to bring my own camera, and hopefully nab a few more good photos.

Any questions, comments, complaints, please leave a message!

Last week I was lucky enough to be invited by my Japanese friend Riyo to go up to Kokunodate to see a festival. Riyo’s Kiwi boyfriend Dylan talked the festival up a lot and I am happy to say, it far exceeded my expectations. He described these big siege-engine type carts that people pull around the streets and then they face off and ram into each other. And then there’s tons of food and dancing and all the other cool things you would expect from a Japanese festival. Bear with me as I continue to figure out this blogging tool a bit better and try to space and organize things better so it is easier on the eyes. OK, ready, set, pictures!

Here we have the paper maché Samurai on top the of the carts. Some of them were pretty scary looking, others were seeming in better spirits, but they were all amazing in the detail that was put into them and the float-carts in general.

Here is the map in the middle of town where they conduct their “negotiations”. I asked Riyo what they negotiate, and she wasn’t really sure. Regardless, you can see the little arrow chips representing each neighborhood’s cart, and they are moved around the board in accordance to where the cart is in real time! You can’t really see, but the Kanji for each neighborhood is written on the chips to differentiate them.

I wish I had a picture to more accurately describe the impressiveness of the Japanese commitment to alcohol. After they would pull the cart down the street or around the corner, everyone would just sit down in a circle and drink. Each neighborhood had their own booze cart they would bring with them. Truly astonishing. Old and young, men and women. The funniest people to watch were definitely the old men, drunk off their bums, ordering the younger people around with such youthful vigor. But, anyways, here we have what I think is the best job. Not only are you constantly served drinks and food, but you just get carted around in a siege engine and get to play music. Its my dream job!

This is the good part. When two carts square off, everyone gathers on the side of it and pushes on of the beams or pulls a rope to ram the other team’s cart. Then then put a wooden beam underneath the front to stabilize it, seeing as there are still the musicians and the team leaders on top. The leaders where a special band and use the lanterns and whistles to coordinate pulls and pushes to try to push the other teams cart out of the way. Every now and then they stop for a little song and dance and then get back to it. Its all every entertaining.

Here you can see the mess of people all pulling on the carts with these huge ropes, while the guys on top coordinate the “attack”. They also used these wedge things behind the back wheels probably both for support but also as a sneaky way to inch the cart forward. You can also see a couple guys on the black team and further in the middle a few girls on the maroon team.

Kids being kids. What is their to say? They were adorable, doing the same motions and whistle blowing that their dads were doing. Grandpa is in the back, and half of grandma on the side. Mom, Dad, I should have asked for a ninja outfit for Christmas when I was 5.

And that was our trip to Kokunodate! My four traveling companions were Rachel and Holly from Australia, which are the two in their kimonos. Well, Rachel’s I think was a pretty legitimate kimono, Holly’s was just a bathrobe. And just ahead of them are Dylan from New Zealand in the hat, and to his right Riyo, friend first and possessor of a Japanese driver’s license and car second. We had a great time and towards the end met a bunch of English teachers from the area who came out for the festival. Its kind of a strange but really neat community that they have, among the international students and the English teachers, but it was great to meet some nice people in neighboring towns. I also had some food, the pinnacle being Sakura (cherry blossom) Ice Cream. Amazing. Wisconsin should be taking notes.

Right now, it is 10pm in the Midwest on Sunday the 14th. That means it is my little sister’s birthday, and so I’m going to try to call her on Skype. Happy Birthday Kailee!

My first week of classes at AIU just wrapped up. As far as reading load goes I think they will be easy, for example I only had to buy two text books, one for the Modern History of China and the Other for International Organizations and Law. In two classes the sensei (professors) just handed out a reading packet, and I brought my Japanese texts with me as I thought that they would be useful to study while I was traveling.

On the other hand, I think most of the sensei expect more of us because we are native English speakers and thus should be able to read and pick up the lectures easier than the Japanese or other international students. I guess we will see when the first round of tests come out. The sensei are awesome though. Just extremely top notch on all fronts, from qualifications, education, working experience, and personality. I’m very excited for this fall term.

I’m gonna try to post up a lot of pictures here and describe them a bit, so get ready. This first one is a shot of the Sun Mall which I cruised around for awhile in Sendai when I was there. I ate at an awesome curry restaurant which seem to function a lot like greasy spoon dinners in the States. You can sit at a booth or the counter, and it tends to be a lot of working class guys, a few suits, and then students and other twenty-somethings. The Sun Mall is a labyrinth of buildings that contain a variety of restaurants, clothing shops, and pachinko parlors. Pachinko is like Japanese slot machines but they are EVERYWHERE. Bright colors, anime characters, sexy advertisements. They tend to bring in a lot of older people and salarymen.

So, yeah, this is a picture of the outside of a pachinko parlor. I have not been in one yet, I hear they are kind of depressing places where people act like robots just dropping yen into the slots. But i think at some you can win money, at others you can win other prizes. I did go into an arcade though and of course got trounced in a couple games of Tekken. I heard that the arcades get rowdy at night because most of them are open all hours of the day so people who are out carousing will stop in for the drunken Street Fighter and such. Some the games are absolutely amazing, just the technology and such, but they also have a lot of old school games like Galaga and Centipede.

They have this fishing guy with a straw hat on everything in Akita, it must be their town mascot or something. Its really kind of strange but its kind of cute too. Akita is very rural by Japanese standards, though I think that it is pretty urban. So I guess its pretty neat that they take such pride in their city, and where they come from. Maybe that should seem more obvious that they have strong pride in their roots with all of the cultural festivals and just the emphasis in general that they place on culture in general.

Here is again with the fish but this time on a bus seat. So yeah, its kind of neat.

At the hostels and the ryokan I stayed at they give you these summer cotton kimonos. I’m not exactly sure what the purpose is but I think they operate the same way as a bathrobe, because they have public baths in most places. Only one hostel had an actual shower in the room. The rest told you where to go for the public bath and gave you the robe.

The picture on the right I think is a pretty accurate depiction of what our evenings consist of. We usually all meet up in the Global Village, where I live, meet any new comers, talk about home, have ‘cultural exchanges’, play music either out of an ipod or make our own, get good and drunk, sing songs, go for a last minute run to the beer vending machine, and usually somewhere between 2AM and 6AM everyone finally rolls into bed. Its a lot of great fun and probably the best way to meet new people. Only good times are had, and it always makes for great stories in the morning. The three guys on the right side of that picture are some of my best friends here. From right to left, Michal Kolmas from the Czech Republic, Peter “Sandy” Edwards, my roommate and fellow American, though he’s from New Mexico, and finally Yong-Tae from Seoul S. Korea. I didn’t know what real laughter was until I cam here, I think, because some nights I am genuinely scared I’m going to die from laughing too much. Its always a great time hanging out at the GV, though almost every night the front desk guy, who can’t speak English, comes out and tells us to quite down, so then we go hang out across the street at the Konbi (convenience store) and then go back the GV, or go walk around. There are a few of the desk guys, and two of them are really nice but there is one that is really mean and we call him “Dame-san”, because when he comes out he keeps telling us “dame, dame” which means “bad”. Anyways, its always a great time and I’ve made some excellent friends in the short time I’ve been here.

The other picture is of the Kanto festival performance that took place after dinner one night. There is a Kanto festival club on campus too. The giant lantern contraption is pretty heavy, and while people rotate in and out on the drums, a few other people rotate carrying the lanterns. They carry it around and place it on different parts of their body, like their hip, or forehead, or chin. Its really exciting to watch and sometimes they get carried away with the momentum and have to run a bit to keep it under control. The other guys in the picture from ,left to right, are Tonatiuh, from Mexico, whose name is Aztec and whose parents and family support help out with the Zapatistas in Southern Mexico. Next is one of the performers, and then on the other side of me the Yong-Hyung and Yong-Tae from South Korea.

I will continue with the pictures and stories as I collect them. I have a lot more pictures and I plan to put them up on a flickr account soon so you can browse them at your own leisure.