Let the show begin!
So this is a 7 year old girl dressed as a Geisha, taken from the Ogaki matsuri (festival). There are 2 festivals here every year (you may remember the autumn one, where I got drunk and carried a shrine around town all day). The spring one is significantly lamer - just a bunch of tents set up along the streets downtown, 90% of which sell the same foods (octopus dough balls, jerky, fried noodles, etc.) The other 10% sell cheap masks and other really cheap toys for kids. Seriously, nothing of note, at all, except for the big floats being pulled around town with various people in traditional clothing on them. Most of them didn't do anything (and the floats weren't particularly interesting to look at, either), but this one had a bunch of 7 year old girls - there was a sign indicating their age - who would come out and do traditional Geisha dances to music. It was really cute/kind of creepy.
(On a side note, the best festival I've seen thus far happened in a nearby town called Godo, where from midnight to about 2am a bunch of drunk people in loincloths ran down the streets carrying bamboo bundles. Bamboo bundles lit on fire, that is. Then they'd dump them on a big bonfire and act crazy, and afterwards some old Japanese did a little parade in samurai garb. Unfortunately, I don't have pictures of that one.)
Next up we have this lovely picture of downtown Osaka, one of the biggest cities in Japan. I went maybe a month ago with my coworker Michael, who I also went to Shikoku with (see: facebook photos). We got tickets to baseball game there from our Japanese coworker, who had tickets but couldn't go.
Japanese baseball games are a lot like American ones, but there are a few differences. First off, it was in a dome - not necessarily different from in America, but a contributing factor. The dome, while impressive from the outside, was actually pretty small inside, and everything just seemed kind of...artificial. Not just the astroturf, but I guess the Japanese-ness of it (I'm also pretty sure their fields are smaller). Still, it was fun seeing all the fans decked out in jerseys - just like in America! - and eating a little mini Domino's Pizza, which I would never do at a ballgame in America, helped make the whole experience a little more familiar. Then again, the unfamiliarity was perhaps the best part - for example, instead of singing "Take me out to the ballgame" after the 7th inning, everyone buys balloons and blows them up real big (or real long I should say - they look like giant...well, guess) and then lets em go all at once, on cue, and the stadium fills with a giant wheezing sound while little balloons sputter about like...well, guess. (I forget Michael's direct quote, but it was something like "watching an orgasm from the inside.")
Here we have a sign for "Club Sean," which I did not go to, but obviously should have. Since Osaka is about 3 hours by train from Ogaki, and me Michael didn't want to leave right after the game was over, we decided to stay out all night and party instead. We paid quite a bit of money to go to a club that he went to a few years ago, when he was studying abroad here. Finding it was quite the hassle - all Michael knew was the name (and addresses here are pretty much nonexistent, so we had no means of looking it up). We didn't even know what area of the city it was in. We just went to the downtown part and walked around for a few hours, following Michael's instinct (this looks familiar! this looks familiar! let's go...that way!) until, lo and behold, we found it (quite near to that first picture, taken on a bridge in the heart of downtown). And what do you know, it was celebrating its 5 year anniversary! For 40 bucks, you could come in and drink all night for free - open til 5am! It was fate. There was only one catch: you had to wear shoes to get in.
Obviously I was wearing shoes (I hate sandles). Michael, however, was not. The bouncer directed us to a nearby shop, however, that was selling very cheap shoes, so we made our way amongst the other people trying to replace their footwear and after a short 15 minute excursion we were ready to go. The place was pretty fun at first - the music was decent, and we danced around (if not exactly with) some girls - but by 2am it was packed, mostly with dudes. So we broke for some ramen and wandered around a bit before we got bored and made our way back. I moseyed my way up to a girl who, while not exactly stunning, didn't shirk my advances, and we danced for awhile. But her lack of resistance quickly went from encouraging to slightly creepy, as I realized she was too drunk to even respond to what was going on around her. So I went off to look for Michael, letting another guy (literally) slide into my place - with no acknowledgment of the shift on her part...
By the time I found him it was about 4, and we were pretty tired of this place. We had some time to kill before first train back though. That's when we somehow came across this English speaking girl (maybe Canadian?) who suggested some other bar nearby that her boyfriend worked at. So we went over there and hung out for a bit, talked about how Japanese girls are crazy, drank a beer and then made for some early morning ramen and a 5 hour train ride home. Then I slept all afternoon and swore off drinking for one whole day - I think it was a good one but, ironically, I can't remember it.
This is a silly little picture I took on the way to a new school branch one day. It looked a lot more exciting on South Park, don't you think? Casa Boni-ta! Casa Boni-ta! dododododododo...
Props to Japan for having both ridiculously cheap cigarettes and widespread public smoking, as well as one of the most awesome anti-smoking campaigns you could imagine. I mean really, why does that man throw out so many cigarette butts all at once? (Alternatively, this is probably why so many people in Japan still smoke).
This is...uh...an exotic butterfly hiding in the leaves. I took it on the way to work. Maybe this is what that creepy caterpillar thing from my previous ketai picture post turns into?
And this is my friend Shino. He drums for Darge, who are possibly the best metal band I've ever seen (though that doesn't particularly say much). This is also the band Rafa is in (you may remember them from our mountain trip with the marijuana-loving Baka Nihonjin, though probably not because that was months and months ago). He played the whole show with this ridiculous hippo mask on, which I think speaks pretty loudly about how awesome he is. This show was on Saturday, and also featured Scandalar, another of the top bands in the area. We'll be playing with Scandalar at our next show, and Jacob is trying to set up a show with Darge. Should be fun, providing we don't fuck up.
Well, it's 1:30am and that's about it for recent cell phone photos. Looking back, I sure do have a ton though. Got some camera pics I wanna upload too (if not here, look for them on the facebook in the near future). And now I am off to sweet dreams of Casa Bonita...
Casa Boni-ta! Casa Boni-ta! dododododododo...
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