Tokyo After Mom

There are a few video worthy events in this post. Check em' out!

lolita girls. the one on the left's hair is redics

our whole school had to go to this hospital in shibuya to get chest x-rays for tuberculosis....at the same time. Notice how everyone is chinese? you will be noticing more of that wherever you are living soon too.

tsukemen i think. anyway you grind up those sesame seeds with the stick, add them to the broth which you dip the noodles into and slurp away. yumm-ay

the first part of july was super sale time in tokyo for some reason. this is the shibuya 109 add.

look at this super lame sukiya advertisement in the store. I still love this place

boojil on the left is an illustrator in japan. she is so cool. she is super ecclectic and busy all the time. I don't know how she does it. she had a party to celebrate many things. she is working with some company who made a drama about her trip to Laos and Thailand. the production value was pretty high. she has a new line of T-shirts or something. she had an exhibition, which is not news she has an exhibition somewhere in the world all the time. and she played ukulele and sang and invited like 200 of her super cool weird artsy friends. This all added up to the coolest party i have ever been to in Japan. her website: http://boojil.ojaru.jp/

her band friends played steel drums, ukulele, chimes, guitar, misc percussion instruments, etc... the singer was like bjork. later a famous ukulele guy played with them. they same a huge super happy fun time song at the end. Video below

the party was held in this pretty big restaurant/lounge in ebisu called NOS.

she even sewed dolls of her and her boyfriend.

some of the cool people we met

gross ad using a not attractive specimen for that treatment where fish nibble the dead skin off your feet.

roppongi, view from an opened up izakaya. looks like india or something

i was walking down my street and heard a thunderous sound coming from over yar so i investigated and it was this awesome mini awa odori festival! what an awesome thing to chance upon! check out intense vids below!

I love that drummer girl

everyone's jumpin' in!

oh thank you.

our school had a big schoolwide BBQ. only it seemed as if they didn't want anyone to go because they made it start at 9:00am and end at 2:30pm on a saturday on the riverbank of someplace in Saitama which is 1.5 hrs away. couple that with it being swealtering hot and you've got the right equation for most of your school not going. Anyway a bunch of people still did go and it was swealtering hot so it was kind of a downer. BBQ's should start at 2:30pm not end then! what is wrong with everyone!

my previous level 2 teacher Eguchi sensei who looks like an elementary school student. an elementary school student who can drink A LOT and like to copy me everytime i say F**

some poor class of little karate kids had to practice in the sweltering noon day sun on the riverbank.

i haven't seen the movie "Inception" yet but is mt. fuji in the movie? on this poster its in the background. i know for the book of eli they changed to poster to denzel walking down a destroyed street in japan which bob said is def not in the movie. i mean they can do watever they want but don't japanese people feel gyped when they found out japan has nothing to do with the movies?

somewhere in ueno park has the biggest lotus flower lake i've ever seen. it is quite expansive, oh my.

i like ueno koen cuz its more like a real park. it has homeless people. it has weirdos. it has the metally ill. it has imperfections. this guy had two cats tied to his basket. they were pretty cute with their little paws sticking out. the guy smacked one of them on the head so that's why the orange one is whimpering down in the basket. Eun Jung didn't like that. then i smacked her in the back of the head and she freaked out on me. hahaha

we were walking along and then i see Cho Lenka from out class working at her part time job in Ueno at a Korean restaurant! she is Chinese? Korean? i dont know but she is mostly chinese but speaks korean also. and now japanese. and some english.

restaurant in ueno with a lit up giant sai. you know the weapon of choice for Raphael of the teenage mutant ninja turtles fame.

Momma Raish in Tokyo - The Endings

we went to tsukiji. this sign is new. it says: They have no mannors, they take a picture without permission, i mistake by flash, i cannot go forward

I need to bring fishes to my shop fast. Oh! I must go there!

the guys in the market are too nice for the most part. I mean we are in their incredibly dangerous and narrow and busy work space taking pictures and looking like idiots and some of them even say sorry when passing you. and these guys even put their tuna cutting knives out for us to photograph.

after that was down the street to hamarikyu gardens. these things are for tanabata festival, you write your wishes on them.

Mt. Fujimi. Eleveation: about 3 meters.

look at this huge list of things that aren't allowed. this is Japan for you.

duck hunting blind. they would lure their domesticated ducks into a narrow canal by hitting a wooden block, the wild ducks would follow and then they would throw a net over all of them.

a huge aloe plant or something.

hey mom, trying to get a picture of a beautiful butterfly and flower only to have it ruined by a hideous smiling gorilla at the last second? hahahahah that's too bad.

kabuki-za

the Tokyo Sealife Park

I could stare at saltwater tanks for hours.

that is the size of a bluefin tuna.

this guy crooned buddy holly songs for us on the bank of the lake in inokashira park while we were in a row boat. Anyway we crammed a ton of stuff into a week, most of it was not pictured here because you've seen it already. See you next year mom, wherever i end up.

Momma Raish in Tokyo - The beginnings

So a week after bob left my mom came to tokyo. Her and my dad came to beijing last year so it's been a year since i've seen her. Papa raish just had surgery on his knee again so he couldn't make it.

There aren't a lot of pictures of stuff because i've been here for 10 months so you readers have already seen lots of the big stuff. This is my 5th time to kyoto. I saw these rice harvest rings all over the place. you're supposed to circle through the thing like the picture shows below.

3 beans to appease watever kami

first time i've seen this.

along the river in kyoto. an awesome spot for a drink

i love poindexter the parking turtles unflappable attitude

Meiji Shine, this is the empress's iris garden.

global warming polar bears in odaiba.

Akari and my mom hanging out. those two.

she took an ikebana class. this is the instructors piece. below is mamma raish's

Debbie, Salish, Fu, and Jennifer got these things made in the shinjuku metropolitan building when they came so this time we got some made for our whole family. Momma had pics on her cam of all of us so we were able to make all 4 collectible figures.

and who would have guessed she would be super into decorating our purikura sticker pictures? she was!