Szkandelous.archive.september1_26

Okay, it's not really 9/25, it's 9/30 and I'm going to summarize what I've done during the last month. hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. It's time to look at my photo collection. I guess since the 13th all I've done is moved to my new apartment in Setagaya…which, of course, a means that I had all of my orientations for Keio this week...including an amazingly boring two hour lecture on harassment in under-amplified Japanese. Not much else here.

Let's see what my photo's say now. Hey, look, sometime around the 13th I did this cooking class where I learned how to make oyako-don. You can't tell, but that’s really a messed up name. Oyako-don is made of fried chicken cooked in miso broth and then mixed with something kind of like scrambled eggs. What "oyako" means is parent and child, like chicken and egg. Thinking about it immediately makes me feel like I've committed my own little chicken holocaust. I'm sorry Rock-a-doodle.

Anyway, the last couple of days we've had this massive typhoon that, in spite of its massiveness, didn't inspire Nichibei Kaiwa Gakuen to shut down school. I've had wet shoes for the last couple of days. And wet shoes means wet socks. Man, I hate that.

Well, as a result of the typhoon, the sunsetturned out quite beautiful. Also, since the typhoon cleared out the air, from my vantage point on the 19th floor of the Ikebukuro public center (I think) I managed to get my first shot of Mt. Fuji. Look carefully in the background of this shot. Anyway, there's now a whole gallery devoted to the sunset.

The last couple of days have been quite busy. It started when a couple of days ago we went to one of the highest-ranked training houses in the sport of sumo. It was phat-like-Konishiki fun and we got to see one of the top sumo wrestlers in the world, Musashimaru (actually, it's his dojo). Unfortunately, they wouldn't let us take pictures so your going to have to take my word for this. I haven't seen many fat people since I’ve left the United States. And even still, these were agile fat people so it was kind of different. There was one guy who seemed to be having a bad day because he kept messing up and had to repeat most of the exercises. Of course, all I could think of was the Weezer "Hash Pipe" video.

The day after that was the rescheduled baseball game (is that proper English, I can't tell anymore). I didn't know how loud Japanese baseball games were. Each team has a theme, and with every batter the crowd sings out, and plays with hideously loud trumpets, the team’s song. At the end of the 7th inning instead of the 7th inning stretch everyone let go of these long balloons. Since they were untied, the force of their air escaping their rubber bowels caused the balloons to fly haphazardly around the stadium, hitting many a first grade boy in the head.

The home team lost pathetically. In fact, the first pitch was a home run (away team at bat). Despite the effervescent nature of Japanese baseball fans, by the end of the game the side of the crowd devoted to the home team was about as active as the crowd in NBA Jams.

One day later, everyone from JLI got together and celebrated the end of the intensive period. We went to a nomi-hodai place (you pay $20 and drink as much as you want). I was supposed to go to a dance club afterwards, but was too tired. Man that was fun. Here are pictures from the nomi-hodai.

I am actually in Harajuku, writing this. To be exact I am in a small pavilion next to the Meiji Jingu train station surrounded by an ever growing group of people which look kind of like they are waiting for a parade. I came here originally to study, so unfortunately I did not bring my camera. You’re going to have to believe me on this, I am surrounded by Japanese goths.

"How gothic?" you might ask, like crazy ass clown makeup and these black and white leather maid dresses. And piercing this group of dark angels, tourists! Like you have never seen before, tourists taking pictures left and right because it's actually quite weird, even for Japan. I think the tourists are actually starting to out-number the goths. In fact, I'm pretty sure that the goths came here to be photographed by gaijin in some sort of strange co-dependant relationship, so I guess it's better that I didn't bring my camera.

previous entry - next entry