Summer Wind Down

Here is a selection of the past few weeks happenings.

last dinner with jonny ribiero. this place in roppongi you always have to wait and they serve their noodles in huge bowls.

i happened across this tunnel near shinagawa station that is so small that i can't completely stand up in it. i had to run through it all ducking down like i was ducking gunfire. pretty rediculous tunnel.

this was at about 1 pm in the afternoon. girl was out. this was on my way to the taxi company. in the end they gave me 57,000 yen ($600). which i then immediately had to give to the apple store after that appointment to fix my computer because the logic board crapped out. you lose some(hit by taxi) then win some(get $600) then lose in the end (apple corp has all my money). O-some

we went to a super fun party and marco was gonna stay at my house (because the trains stop at midnight so if you want to party and live somewhere far you are screwed). someone spilled a lot of red wine on his shirt so he had to wear this nike shirt that he sleeps in. thats super uncool marco.

day after the party we sat at a cafe near my house and saw a lot of things from that corner. including....

Tokyo Maid service. what imagery does this bring to mind for you? if you're a male the first thing that probably pops into your head is scantily clad cosplay japanese maid girls you hentai.

we saw this genius too. look! she is pushing a shopping cart. is this japanese trash? or is it just mental illness? or is it just that japan is another world and i cannot understand? she was def at least 40 by the way and has expensive pastries in that cart from the expensive shop across the street.

i finally asked some guys sitting on this thing in the park near my house what this is, because i thought it was a convertible BBQ bench and wanted to have a BBQ but they said it's for emergencies. upon further inspection i guess its for emergancy cooking. wtf

drug zone

Happy Science. i've seen this building kind of near my house but finally looked up what it is all about. Happy Science is a new religion created in Japan in 1986 by Ryuho Okawa. Okawa claims to channel the spirits of Muhammad, Christ, Buddha and Confucius and claims to be the incarnation of a supreme spiritual being called El Cantare. (wikipedia) they want everyone to know they are different than the new made up religionous group that was responsible for the sarin gas attacks in tokyo in 1995.

our school is part of the neighborhood matsuri. These kind of matsuri's are not so fun. usually they are small, there are no cool drums or bells unless its a huge matsuri, and everyone gets really sweaty because that thing is super heavy. I learned all this on that day. My shoulder is still killing me because you are supposed to bounce the thing up and down for luck or something. so for 2 hrs you walk around the street with a bunch of other sweaty people shouting a word thats just a sound and that doesn't mean anything. This summer is the hottest summer in Japanese history is also something to note.

that is not a real smile. being in the middle is the worst. still it is cool that i got to do this because most Japanese never get to do this cuz you have to be in the neighborhood association or some crap. i'm sure it costs lots of money too.

being on the end is where its at if you must carry one of these.

these ladies were at the resting stops. i guess the neighborhood organizes this thing. i guess you carry the "mikoshi" from the shrine, go around the neighborhood, and then go back to the shrine. usually there isn't that much fanfare going on so these mikoshi matsuri's haven't been that fun for me thus far.

my teacher from last term is so short that she can't even do this. she's the one that looks like an elementary school student. hahahahha

me and marco were amazed. could it be that for once the school gave us something for free? when i think about it now probably the neighborhood association gave it too us for free. there's no way our school would ever give anything for free. they had bento box dinners for everyone when it was all over. I somehow went in the neighborhood people's line and not the students line and got a bento set with beer in it! the teachers saw this and said you can't do that, you have to take the student set with a bottle of green tea. i hate our school. After it was all over everyone just went their separate ways. there was no merry-making or comradery. i hate our school.

the following day on the big shopping street in hiroo. there were two teams, one with guys and this one was all girls. they are really hurtin'. I feel their pain now that i have had the experience. So in the end it was a cool weekend.

an example of how your beautiful culture can get you all hot and sweaty and hurt you

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