August Catch-up

Just got back the other day from a nice little trip through Kyoto (京都) and Kagoshima (鹿児島), but more on that later as I just wanna do a quick little update for August.

Though I've forgotten most of what happened last month already!

Well, luckily Roomie writes down a lot of what we do on her calender, so if I can just decode it...

Ah, looks like a fireworks festival the first Saturday of the month- the Ichikawa Fireworks Festival (市川花火大会).  Roomie, Ash, Yuu, and a couple old friends (we'll call them Aya and HS) from UW all went.  Wore our yukata/jinbei, brought lots of snacks and drinks, enjoyed the not-too-hot evening by the river, then came back home to play with sparklers and stuff on our balcony.

Look, got my hurr all did up and everything!

The sunset, and the crowds waiting

The following weekend was a surprise party for HS.  Lots of food and drinks and fun again.  And some crazy dancing.

Sunday the 25th Roomie and I met up with Gaki-chan, Ma-chan, and S for some delicious Korean foods and crazy mango creme-filled taiyaki in Kichijoji (吉祥寺; the restaurant is 韓味楽, decent priced and soooo good, definitely recommend going during lunch time), followed by the big festival in Azabu-juban (麻布十番祭り).

Other than that, August was mostly just work, a couple other random outings with Roomie, a few dates here and there with the Boy..

Mmhm.  You know, same-old same-old.

And now I'm at the final countdown- only a week or so before I leave and it still really hasn't hit me.  And I still have so much left to do.  Why am I sitting here writing silly blog posts??

Oh that's right.  Yes, I don't mean to brag but I happen to be an expert procrastinator.

I'll get this post up so I can go procrastinate some more.  :D

Sumidagawa Fireworks APOCALYPSE! And hide Museum.

When I found out that the hide Museum was being temporarily re-opened (it was initially open in Yokosuka, Japan from 2000 to 2005) I knew I had to go.  I was crushed when I found out they were closing the original museum back in 2005 and didn't think I'd ever get a chance to see it.  BUT luck was on my side.  Ash agreed to join me last Saturday on my pilgrimage to respect The Man- The Man who was (and is) a huge musical influence to many, who wrote such awesome amazing songs as "Dice", and who may have been part of the main reason I almost always had pink in my hair.  Until work no longer allowed it, that is....

Dice- the first song of his I fell in love with

If you had any qualms about my pink hair, parents, it's him you have to blame

The museum was a bit smaller than I expected, but filled with greatness nonetheless.  So many of the outfits he wore for photo shoots and shows; memorabilia; personal items like his contacts prescriptions and fake nails (ew?); handwritten lyrics, notes, and doodles by him; his many many guitars (including the famous yellow hearts one you see in the picture above)...  And at the end you were seen off by a life-size replica of him, made with such intricate detail that if you looked close enough you could see each individual eyebrow hair and even the fine hair over his face.  If cameras had been allowed I would've taken a picture.

I didn't buy any souvenirs, as the ticket stub and memories were enough for me.

After the museum, we met up with Roomie at Asakusa Station and decided to rent a karaoke room so we could change into our yukata (summer kimono) while we waited for Yuu.  When he showed up, we walked around trying to find a place to eat, ended up over at the Solamachi shopping area around Sky Tree (after stopping by this awesome park to slide down the really long roller slide, which was really fun but made me feel like I got rug burn on my butt), then headed back to the river to try to get a decent spot to watch the fireworks for the Sumidagawa Fireworks Festival. You should read about it, it's got quite a history.  And as the article says nearly a million people show up for it annually so it's a bit of a madhouse.

The spot we ended up getting was worthless as the buildings blocked our view.  However, when the fireworks started, they started taking groups of people across the bridge so everyone would have a chance to see them.  Our plan was to cross over the blue bridge, find S who was meeting us there after she got off work, then cross back over on the red bridge to see the fireworks being set off further down the river.  The bridges become one-way for pedestrians during the event, so if you cross over and then want to get back to the other side, you have to walk over to the next bridge.  However, just as our group started getting led across, a crazy typhoon-like storm blew in, complete with thunder and lightning and wind and torrential downpour.  We did get to see some pretty cool fireworks up-close as we were crossing, but by the time we had reached the other side they had cancelled the rest of the show.

We had already gotten completely soaked during our short walk across the bridge- umbrellas worthless against the wind- and had to tread through the flooded streets and sidewalks along with hoards of others trying to make it back to the main area of Asakusa.  We finally met up with S, and tried to decide what to do from there.  The station was so packed, the lines of people were gushing up the stairs and out of the station and down the street.  There were police officers shouting that the crowds were so bad they didn't know how long of a wait it would be to get on the train, and were suggesting people to walk "about 20 minutes" down the road to Ueno Station.  We took the suggestion and herded off with tons of other displaced, soggy people.  The streets were still barricaded off, police were running around trying to direct the crowds, trampled mushy trash littered the street, people were still huddled and taking shelter under store awnings...  It was like a scene from some doomsday/apocalypse/disaster movie.
The "20-minute walk" was more like 40, but when we reached Ueno we all went to grab some food before we parted ways.

I think it was a first for me to really want a nice hot shower in the summer, but ohhh it felt so good to take one when Roomie and I finally reached home!  A bit disappointed we didn't get to see more of the fireworks show, we at least have our amazing story of survival to tell instead.  And there's always next year. :)

Oni's Pants and Bean-Throwing

鬼のパンツはいいパンツ

つよいぞ　　つよいぞ

(The oni's pants are great pants

They're very strong   They're very strong)

I've had this song stuck in my head since yesterday.  Tomorrow is Setsubun, so yesterday at both the daycare and the Other Job we had a visit from oni (Japanese demon? Ogre?).

At the daycare we sang the above song with the kids while a couple of the teachers snuck out to get demon-ified.  Granted since the kids are so young the masks they wore weren't the traditional, super-horrifying ones.  They were actually just paper bags decorated with colored paper to make the face.  Quite cute actually.  Each of the kids were given a bag filled with balled-up newspaper- in lieu of the traditional roasted soybeans- to throw at the "demons".  

Very little throwing happened, but there was plenty of wailing and tears!  One of the oldest boys tried his best to stand his ground and threw all the paper balls in his bag with tears running down his face.  The others, though, took refuge with me and the other teacher not acting as a demon, while M-sensei ran around with the camera taking pictures of the kids cowering and fleeing.  There was a great one she got of Yama-kun and Miwa-chan on my lap clinging to me, mouths open with red, tear-stained faces and me with a huge grin.

Oh, the crazy traditions here.  I love it.  Traumatizing for the kids, but great fun for the adults!

Today has been an absolute lazy day.  I've hardly left my bed except to go pee or to fetch food.  No shower.  No usual weekend cleaning.  I haven't been completely unproductive though.  I did do my laundry, got a voice recording done for K and his friend who are working on a song in English, and wrote up a letter for former coworker at the Other Job who is going to court against the company.  Yeah.  Part of the reason I haven't been blogging much the past month.  Just so much BS with that place and I feel like that's all I would really have to write about.  Nothing much else exciting going on.  

Silly internet things have been quite therapeutic, helping ease the work frustrations.  I've always been a fan of Youtube videos (as S and J can attest to!), but .GIFs are awesome too.

Beautiful girls gone... MRRGHFFL!

How I feel sometimes after work

And that's all for now.  Got cornbread in the toaster oven that needs sampling to see if it's suitable for the chili I plan on making tomorrow.  Should probably do a bit of straightening up and studying before bed too.

Just Lucky I Guess

I guess the weather took my misery to heart and cooled off considerably this weekend.  It was absolutely lovely, I actually got chilly during the night and had to use a blanket!  And when Roomie and I went to the festival on Sunday, it was perfect temperature-wise, and cloudy but no rain.  I wish it would be like that all summer.  It is cloudy still today but it's definitely getting warmer again.  Have the fan on my right now.

Now some pics from the weekend.  We were watching the mikoshi parade (same one as last year), and I was wondering if the same group that let me join them last year would be there again.  I was looking for their yellow sign, but they had a blue one this year which I didn't see, until all of a sudden the guy leading the mikoshi was running over to Roomie and I, grabbing our wrists, and telling us to "Come on, come on!" before throwing us into the middle of their mikoshi-carrying group.  A few of the people recognized me from last year, and one guy even remembered my name!

Doctor's Visits and Star Festivals

Spent another enjoyable Saturday morning/afternoon at the women's clinic today, to get the results of my uterine cancer/health check from last month.  I went in shortly after 11am, thinking I'd be in and out rather quickly since I was just there to get the results from the check.  Nope.  Had to sit for an hour and a half before I was called in to see the doctor.  He showed me the paper with my results, told me I had no uterine cancer (yay!) and that all of my blood counts, blood pressure, cholesterol, etc. was all normal.  Though there was a little asterisk next to my BMI and he told me I was "ちょっとやせています" (a little skinny), but that otherwise everything else was fine.  Took all of 1 minute, then went out to wait again for about 10 minutes before they called me up to the counter to hand me the same exact documents the doctor just went over with me, and tell me there was no charge for today and that was it.  Woo.

Today is 七夕 (tanabata, Star Festival).  I'll let Wikipedia tell you about it in more detail, but normally one would write their wish on a piece of paper and hang it on bamboo.  However, it's been rainy all day and it's said that your wish won't come true if it's cloudy/rainy, so I didn't make a wish this year.  Tanabata was the first festival I got to experience when I came to Japan for my homestay 8 years ago, so I am quite fond of it.  Though I didn't make a wish, I did make some of the traditional origami to hang on the bamboo sprig I got from my boss.  :)  I don't have a picture, but here's a website where you can learn to make some origami of your own: Star Festival Origami

Now, just thought I'd upload a slideshow of some pics I never got around to putting up here, from the Thai Festival that Roomie and I went to last month.

Now just some other recent pictures:

Roomie and I met up with C-chan at a cool cafe!

Roomie and I made pancakes at home!  In high school my friends and I would always put food coloring in our pancakes, so for old time's sake I wanted to do it again.  The powdered food dye is a lot stronger than the liquid stuff so the colors came out really amazing.  I don't recommend using the blue though, unless you want hunter-green poo for two days.  That was weird..