Mega-update v1.0 (fix)
Well, it has been quite a while since I updated last, but that's not to say that nothing has happened. The last week has been pretty busy, so that is my excuse for being an awful blogger. So, heres whats been going down...
- Last Friday: I agreed to go with my host family to a Fall Festival or something where they bring a temple spirit up a mountain in a mikoshi. Unfortunately we got there late and had to walk all the way up the mountain just to see the closed doors of the shrine. wa waa waaa. Heres a pic from that (It was hard to get a good picture because it was so dark...)
- After the (missed) festival, I rode my good ol' bike back down to Hirakata and wandered around for a bit, trying to find this club I was told about called "Mono." Supposedly, the bangin-est club in the area. I found it, but I can assure you it was not bangin' and left much to be desired. I knew I was done when they played two Micheal Jackson songs (Billie Jean and Black or White) back to back. The guy's a genius, but in a modern day club there should never be two MJ songs back to back. Just no. Heres a dynamic pic I took inside the place. Yep, disco ball.
- Alright, so Saturday was the day of Danjiri Matsuri, a big festival about 45 minutes away from Osaka where guys pull these big mikoshi (called danjiri) aound the streets of the city. Apparently 2 or 3 people die every year in the festival. I actually didn't have any idea how to get there, and when you live with a host family, if you don't make explicit plans or have a cell phone, you better plan on a solo mission. Anyway, after asking just about everybody in Osaka how to get to the festival (in my sad, sad broken Japanese, I seriously would just go up and say "Danjiri" with a quizzical look on my face) I made it. It was pretty exciting, but I'm not sure I get what the big deal is. I guess the most exciting part is at the corners, where I think they try to drift the Mikoshi around the corner (you know, the Japanese and their drifting) and people secretly hope that it crashes, like in a NASCAR race. At night they roll out the giant Danjiri with lights all over them. weirdly, it seemed at some times like he people around me were more interested in staring at me than the Danjiri, but I guess thats just how it goes. Luckily, i met up with some cool people from Kansai Gaidai a little later, so I wasn't by my lonesome the whole time (one of the guys was actually from one of my Japanese classes at University of Florida). Here are some pics from the festival:
- Alright, Saturday night, probably the crappest weekend night I've had in Japan. I made the miscalculation of going back to Hirakata after the festival was over, around 8pm. Thinking back, I should have just stayed in Osaka, but I didn't have anybody to roll to the clubs with, so, there you have it. I couldn't find anyone that I knew around, though, so I decided to just head on back to the town where my Host family lives. On the way back though, I decided to check out the surrounding area, and found a bar nearby. The place as basically empty, save for one guy that was already drunk, and the bartender lady. I chatted with them for a bit, bought the guy a drink for his birthday, and took a shot of the most diabolical Vodka ever: Spyrytus Rektyfikowany, which was 96% alcohol. daaaamn. A few of the dudes friends came in later, but I was already out 4000 yen and not having fun, so I peaced out with a promise to come back. It should be noted that this place was playing what sounded like 70's lounge music. ouch. All in all, I'd call this night a major L, and I really felt swindled when I left that bar.
- Sunday: most of sunday I chilled with the family, we went down to Nara Deer park, where tha Daibutsu (big Buddha) is housed in the largest wooden structure in the world. I was pretty crazy how the deer just freely harassed people for food, and hilarious how the little kids were terrified of the deer. Oh, and it finally happened: a group of high school kids asked me to take a picture with them. And I totally sold myself out and did it. Sigh. Believe me, that will never happen again. Unless it happens to be a group of hot chicks and I'm having sex with them at the time. Anyway I got a lot of good pictures out there and it was a good cultural experience (yeah, finally I got one of those instead of just going to clubs and bars every weekend). Later that day, I had the honor of being the first exchange student to have dinner with my host family's grandparents. They made this huge feast of sashimi (thats raw fish cutlets, I think they got this because the day before I had said that I don't like fish because of the bones, but I love sashimi) and Chawan-mushi, an egg soup of some sort. It was pretty cool though, I go to see the Bhuddist altar in their house, and they had this sweet gold blade (I think it was a tanto, the small saurai sword) hanging up, and a katana in the corner.
So thats basically what went down last week. I'll try to update again on Sunday I think.
PEACE
sorry...
Lots of stuff going on, massive update TOMMORROW
Here we go again
So, it's the end of my first week living with the Shirakawa family. I think its going well, but I really can't tell. I do know that I lost some point with them on Saturday. Let me elaborate.
So its Friday night, and naturally, I'm thinking, "No fuckin' way I'm gonna spend my friday night with these damn kids hanging all over me." The obvious solution? Osaka, of course. Something you need to know, though, is that when you live with a host family you have to always plan out when you are going out. I have a feeling that is would be bad news if I suddenly just missed dinner one night. So I come home for dinner, and to tell them that I'd be going out for karaoke that night. Little did I know I'd be meeting that dinner again in a little over 12 hours. To be honest, I really didn't have a plan, but I knew I had to be out that night. I was really going to do a
dolo mission if I had to. But, as luck would have it, I met some friend out by the bus stop to the train station. From there we
gaijin smashed our way to Osaka, back to the club from before, "Pure." Same deal, 20 bucks, unlimited drinks, Game on. It was probably a bad idea to just tell the bartender "give me some strong shit," and maybe a worse idea to just get a cup of straightup Jack Daniels (image one of those plastic cafeteria cups). Anyway, after a long night of dancicng (not quite the resounding success of the other night, but still alright), we reboard the trains and head back to Hirakata (thats where Kansai Gaidai is). While at the train station, waiting for the bus, I remember that I promised the kids in my family that I would go to a sports festival with them. Dammit. But then, I have a great idea! Caffiene will get me through this! So I hit the vending machine and pretty much shotgun three hardcore black coffees. Worst idea ever. I never drink coffee so the caffiene (OK, I don't know how to spell it, I'm sorry) hits me like a ton of bricks. I'm chattering away on the bus, and burning rubber (bike tire rubber) on the way back to my house. I come in the door at about 8 AM, just as everybody is getting ready. Unfortunately, but this time I am back to "dead on my feet" status. I feel like that big, dirty, hungover gaijin again. This has got to be the worse I've ever felt after partying. My family had taken to futon off my bed to, but I was so tired that I didn't even give a fuck. I just laid down on the metal frame and passed out. Normally a gentle soul, I finally got mad at one of the kids in the house (the little girl) when she tried to block me on one of my pilgrimages to the bathroom. PLEASE, PLEASE, never try to stop someone trying to take a liquor shit, especially if you are a 50 pound japanese little girl, and your opponent is a big and hungover. Basically I felt like my choices were either toss this little girl (
zangeif style), or take a shit on the floor. Thankfully, I made it to the toilet before we reached breaking point. Then back to bed. The only things I really remember from Saturday are laying in bed, sweating and basically feeling like that scene out of trainspotting where the guy is going through detox and freaking out, and coming out to vomit explosively in and around the toilet, and apologize to the family that I couldn't eat dinner that night. I blame it on the coffee. So, that was pretty much my weekend.
The "fly honey" of club Pure (this is about the most ass that I've seen here...)
slowly drinking my way towards destruction, featuring Elisa....
The tired, tired trip home, featuring Jason and Hwan
sad, sad day
Damn, why, why did I do homestay? Sigh, the other day it's time for me to do my 30 min. bike ride back home, and whats this I see? A fucking monsoon? Nice. Its not like this has never happened to me before, actually, I have a talent for getting caught in torrential downpour. I like to think that my body is slowly absorbing the chemicals in rain, and I will eventually get my superpowers. But yeah, I pretty much felt like
the saddest thing walking my girls bike home in the rain, soaked, with a broken umbrella. You win, Japan.
The Fam
So, yeah my host family. Basically I made two big ass mistakes with my host family. The first was way back on the host family questionnaire form. Apparently, I put something along the lines of “I love kids” or something like that. I might as well have said “I want to be put into the most fucked host family situation ever. I mean don’t get me wrong, everyone is really nice, but they have THREE SMALL CHILDREN. 2, 4, and 6 years old. I seriously must have been smoking some good shit when I filled out that questionnaire. The screwed up part is, when I first met these kids I was hung over and extremely “le tired.” I was hoping that I’d just be able to slip off to bed, but no. My family had a freaking neighborhood feast planned to show off the new gaijin. I was all I could to not just boot a little kid or fall asleep right on a table. But I figured both are usually considered rather rude in any society, and refrained. The power dynamic in the house it pretty crazy though. The dad spends pretty much all day at work, gets his dinner served to him. But, its pretty obvious that the mother runs the house, big time. I mean, in my first ten minutes here, she told me to sit down when I pee. I wish I was joking. Like this place is on some OZ shit or something. But, like I said everybody is pretty nice, and even though I wasn’t sure if I could live like this for 4 months, I’m going to try and stick it out and make the best out of my time with the family. Hopefully I won’t have to spend too too much time with the kids and their friends, because all kids are naturally loud and also spend about 50% of their time smelling like shit. That’s just the way it is. Not only that, but the other day I almost uppercut the life out of this other neighborhood kid after he called me a “gorira” (gorilla). Homey don’t play that shit. But I decided to let him slide, seeing as 1) he was like 8 years old, 2) this fucker couldn’t even make the L sound. So I decided to save that uppercut, and use it on the next son of a bitch who sees me and does this shitty little basketball mime that apparently all Japanese people are trained to do when they see a tall black guy (this has happened to me like 5 times so far). That’s the word for now.
Osaka Visit Redux
Okay so now I’m going to relay the story of the fun trip to Osaka. It all started with a rumor that Some Kansai Gaidai students were planning a huge trip to Osaka, where we would spend the whole night clubbing and come back when the dorms reopened at 7 in the morning. This sounded like a great idea to me (except for the fact that I had to meet my host family at 1pm the next day, but I figured I’d just be an angry hung over gaijin when I met them and confirm all their worst fears about black people). So, at around 9pm we left Hirakata, bound for a night out in Osaka. Truth be told as we were leaving I was already sleep, and I didn’t expect to make it very far that night. The club was called “pure” and I think it was somewhere near Namba, a really busy part of Osaka. It was 2500 yen to get in (around $25) and you got unlimited drinks. Let me repeat that, you got UNLIMITED DRINKS, any kind you want. Once I heard that, I made the promise to myself to completely crush this bar. Son, let me tell you, I haven’t had anything to drink this whole summer, and I made up for it all on this one night. The details are fuzzy but I would say that I probably had at least 10-12 drinks. It was serious business in there. But don’t let me fool you into thinking that I just stood at the bar and got fucked up. No, no, no. I danced my ass off. Literally, I looked back and was like, shit what happened to my ass. This was the first time ever for me that I danced so much that my arms hurt (usually it’s just the legs). Actually, let me rephrase that, this was the first time that I danced so much that my soul hurt. I’m pretty sure that I lost a couple years of my life from that shit. But who needs the sunset years anyway. I set a personal record by making out with 3 chicks, as well as…some other things. Let’s just say it was happier than the other night in Osaka, featuring me, three Japanese porn tapes and a box of tissues (Japanese porn is complete shit, by the way). Anyway, by the time we left the bar the sun was up outside, and I was ready to just pass out on the train. And I even had like 5 hours to sleep before I met my host family. But I’ll tell you about them tomorrow.
The Grimiest of the Grimy
Sorry it took so long for me to update, alot of crap has happened in the last couple days. Really all of it revolves around the two trips I took down to
Osaka, on Wednesday and Friday. One could be called a disaster and the other AWESOME. In an effort to decrease the length of individual posts, I just write about the disaster now, and the great trip later (probably tomorrow, or later today). OK, so the first night, the local bar called “Daddy Shoes” was having basically a party: free drinks from 7-8, all kinds of food, and pretty much all the kids from Kansai Gaidai (all 400, in an area roughly the size of a closet). It should be noted that the gates of the KG seminar houses close at 11pm on the dot and, like everything else in
Japan, they are never late. It should also be note that the top of these gates are cover with brutal, middle ages-looking spikes, like they were made to keep the Huns out or some shit. An attempt to scale this shit drunk would most certainly end in tears, unless you were on the lookout for a free circumcision. So, being drunk and late, my comrade Hwan and I decide to make the trip on down to
Osaka, to find a karaoke booth or cheap hotel to sleep in. A couple of cabs and a free subway ride later we were right in the heart of
Osaka, at about midnight. One thing that I learned was that while
Osaka is extremely bright and family friendly during the day, that shit is RAW at night. So we wandered around until about 3 am, talking to pimps, hoes, and what I’m pretty sure were yakuza guys. But even with all these unsavory characters, it still felt pretty safe (we being two big, black gaijin) and it was all good until I felt around in my back pocket and felt something missing.
FUCK
Yeah, that’s right my wallet was gone. So that pretty much ended the fun of the night for me. We looked around for a bit but that shit was nowhere to be seen. When I told the pimp what happened, he asked me if I had talked to the police. The fuck kind of pimp tells people to go to the cops? Only in Japan. Well, at least I had enough cash in my from pocket to pay for a room in what has to be the sleaziest hotel in the world (I dubbed that shit “The Grimiest of the Grimy”). Don’t believe me? They had a giant wall of bootleg movies, and pull that aside and BOOM: what must have been Japan’s national archives of porn (which is the worst thing ever). I picked up a couple, just because I was a dirty, angry, broke gaijin. So that’s that story. And now, pictures.
A bunch of my Kansai Gaidai People at a nearby restaurant (not pictured: crazy Hanshin Tigers fan)
Just an artistic shot of some lamp
Hwan and Sarah, karaoke-ing. I'm pretty sure everybody was drunk by this point ( I was, at least)
I guess some Japanese G's (dude is wearing my jersey, you should have known they couldn't be that fresh)
Me and a real ass japanese pimp (he wouldn't let me take a picture with his hoe though, I'm pretty sure she was like 17)
...and of course, the grimiest of the grimy. Look carefully: beside my shoes you can see a trio of japanese porn, and by the tv....yes that is a box of tissues. Sick.
Until next time, PEACE
