T-SHIRTS: part 2

Heres a great one…



“Naked heart is always hopping it can change of my lifestyle” If you figure it out, let me know.

I saw a guy with the shirt “Property of ACOUSTIC MUSIC Phys Ed. Dept.” I am not sure if the creator just made this shirt naively… or had irony intended. Is that even irony? Friggin’ Alanis. Ruined it for everyone.

KANAZAWA …continued

Woke up and took these pics.




Graeme had to work again, so I spent the day enjoying the city… the weather was much nicer, so adventuring was a must.

First Stop, The 21st Century Museum. A perfect Circle from above. a little panarama collage perhaps...



It actually proved as interesting and beneficial architecture.

No photos allowed inside, except an installation called Leonardo’s pool. Where an illusion exists. Seemingly you are looking into an ordinary pool… till you see someone walking around down there. It actually looked quite convincing! It seems I didn’t take a pic from the top…but here I am drowned at the bottom of the pool… at least to onlookers. I pretended to die at one point actually. Japanese love them some gaijin ham.




Overall it wasn’t that 21st Century. Not that I could tell you what 21st Century is, other than a still accruing 100 years. Though half the place was gutted an in the middle of a installation renovation. Say that ten times fast.

Headed to the much lauded “Kenrokuen Gardens,” supposedly Japans most famous, respected and loved Garden, but to be honest, I have heard people say that about 8 other places.

Some pics…













It was actually gorgeous there, and really made me miss company. Sometimes beauty is best seen solemn. Yet sometimes, you just want to explore this kind of place with a loved one, or friends in just as much awe…

So I made some friends!!





Meet Reika and Raiko! They became my guides… they spoke a little English, I spoke a little Japanese and we met somewhere in the middle. Turns out they were in Nurse School together, one was visiting the other from Osaka.

Reika, the Kanazawa native, showed us the Gardens…



…and the Castle




we had some tea and talked about the beauty and challenges of life… in very simple words. They had to get going, I needed to meet up with Graeme soon, so we walked to the bus stop. Didn’t think to exchange e-mails, which is dumb… cause those girls took like 200 pics with me.

That night Graeme, myself and a very cool guy Remmie all drank, partied on the town and forced friendship with a large group of White people. Which I was pretty against at first… I mean, I didn:t come to japan to hang out with white people. I really didn’t.

We got pretty smashed. Graeme ending up asking some blonde chick if she was Russian. Which it seems is the international way to accidentally ask if someones a prostitute.

Her expression was awesome. PRICELESS infact. She turned out to be this brash and brazen Australian chick. And had quite an earful to share.

Slept.

Got up… ate breakfast, said “adieu” and made my way back to Nakano.

Graeme’s great. Missed that guy. Hope he doesn’t wimp out and not call me in Tokyo when he picks up his bird from the airport.

CHERRY BLOSSOMS: Part 3

sakura...

SASHIMI ANYONE? (Kanazawa pt. 2)

We wander around for a bit, and Graeme remembers he has a 1000¥ coupon for a great little sushi/sashimi bar. So there we go!

Say hi to the folks at home Graeme!



The assortment of knives the chef used were rather… sharp. Oh and the one I liked most was the baseball bat, which had a famous Japanese baseball players’ number burned into it. “55” for “Matsui.”






oh and we drank this entire bottle of rice wine vodka. We did stumble a bit on the way home.

I posted the vids we took on youtube.

“kanpaii!”

This is not working at the moment. Gomen.

“…It tastes like raw seafood”

This is not working at the moment. Gomen.


Oh and some japanese dude came in and found us, the only white people in the bar and was like "do either of you speak french" and I say "I speak highschool french!" but graeme says "yes!!! i do!!!" and he does! Graeme has gone to Quebec several times on learning adventures, most specifically immersion based experimentations. Anyways, so this french dude comes in and we start to chat with him, and hes from paris and as soon as he hears us speaking french, he wont speak french with us anymore... Parisian jerk. Our french wasnt good enough for him... you know i never knew what people had against the french, and really I might understand it now... they merely hate french people for hating them first.

the sushi chef also turned out to be semi famous... he was our age. We bonded and he fed us all kinds of treats and chunks of octopus and other raw fish... which was easy stuff after i just got over the stupid mental hump of eating exotic and alien sea-dwelling creatures.

KANAZAWA BOUND!

Yuriko drives me to Yaotsu, saving me like 30 bucks in travel costs. We travel, I kid you not, through the mountains of japan, along farstretching highways and through tunnels that are kilometers long and finally end up at Yaostu. Actually… before we went in one tunnel is was gently raining, came out somewhere half way up a mountain and it was like HEAVY SNOWING. Anyways, moving on, the place is like a ghost town. As if, at one time, people flocked there, after a while, were bored by the scene they had created and simply found some other seaside hamlet to popularize, and eventually drain of beauty further down the road. Maybe I am completely wrong and its more of a Summer place… who knows.

Yuriko kill some time before the train. Have some lunch too.










Get on the train , and the trip is quite the sight. Enormous snow-covered mountains on one side, the Sea of Japan on the other. Its odd… to me this is almost a complete anomaly in nature… coming from near south east central Canada, but people ride this train everyday, the beauty passes them by without a second glance, as if walking by store windows where you just wouldn’t shop… so why look?




Hit Kanazawa, they have a nice train station…






but, the place looks… dirty and grim. Its also grey-clouded and raining. Go to Graemes work, Aeon, an English teaching school and he’s left me a map and has marked it with “shit you should see.” I thought a few of the marked attractions looked interesting enough, but I was ultimately put off from adventuring due to rain, and overall malaise. I hate grey weather. It also says in the guide/map that there is a famous saying in Kanazawa, “you can forget your bagged lunch, but never forget your umbrella.” No shit.

This interesting sculpture was outside Graeme’s place of work.



Hit a mister donuts for a while, shopped, went to some otaku places… bought some new markers…then poof… like I wasn’t waiting at all, Graeme was done work, and we were off adventuring in no time!

TO BE CON'T...

JAPANESE TOILETS: part 2

Isn’t toilets per sé, but a sub-topic: Bathroom surprises ETC!

I went to sit down on this jon, and saw that my space was compromised by something (not that they have any roomy stalls in this country). It’s a great little device actually. If you’re shopping with your kid, just plunk them down in this sucker, and you can have your bowel movement without worrying about them, or the less elegant, trying to bobble them while sitting down.





This other pic is something so perfect, I don’t know why they don’t exist back home.

A soap like dispenser that contains a sanitizing solution. Pump some of that goodness onto some toilet paper, wipe down the seat… and there you go… all of your public toilet fears washed down the drain… … …and don’t pardon the pun.

NAGANO HERE WE COME!

I left the comfort and speed of Tokyo, for greener pastures and cooler temperatures. I traveled via Shinkansen To Nagano (where the Winter Olympics occurred in 1998). A Shinkansen or “bullet train” is magnetically powered! The magnetism creates a rather frictionless ride, meaning very little bumps if at all. You simply glide along at fantastic speeds (upwards of 3oo KM an hour), never spilling a drop of your preffered tea. A few pics to quench the visual thirst…?






“if I farted, would anyone blame the white guy?”




After a few snags, Yuriko ( or “Jet “ as my brother and I nicknamed her in ’99), wife, mother of 2, and all around party girl picked me up from the Nagano Train Station. Shes probably one of the most generous people I have ever met. And as my stay proved, she gave little option for others to even be considered generous.



We headed to the small city of ShinShu -Nakano, or just Nakano. The Shinshu regards the religion in the area. Which differentiates itself from other Nakano’s thusly.

This is the place my brother taught English, through the J.E.T. program. A supposedly hard program to be accepted into, congrats bro! This is also where yuriko’s house is. She was a student of his in a night class he taught. The rest is history.

Here is my room for my stay… and me in it.





Not moments after I arrived, Yuriko was teaching a childrens English class in her living room. Infact she taught two that day, and does so every day… This is a rather new development, I am very proud of her. A few years ago she was just a student… now she. Is. The. Master!

I was hoodwinked into helping. Kids in Japan are just awesome, and I actually, jumped at the chance to help. I drew a batman for them… Yuriko has adopted an English name for when she teaches… “Emily” …the kids call her Emily. I did however go to high school with about 100 chinese guys named Kevin… so I am glad she chose something a little less… popular.




We found Toronto!! Wow.






Later that evening we went shopping…I caught Yuriko by surprise. Heh. BIKURI!!!





Dead or alive, 38¢ is a cheap price for a fish.

Just so you know, the Japanese Yen to Canadian dollar conversion is really simple. Its approximate mind you, but simple. Add a decimal place, two digits in from the right. 38¥ is .38¢. Or for example… 18599¥ is approximately $185.99 Got it? Good!

After much catching up, I hit the hay, and will leave to visit my good friend Graeme “the man” Lottering in the coastal port city of Kanazawa in the morning. I will return to Nakano shortly.


***Editors note: No one calls him Graeme “The Man” Lottering. Just like no one calls this BLOG author, “bulging biceps Benjamin.”

WOW. I have an editor. HA.

Seriously though, he can be a dick and censor me when I want the freedom to write whatever I want… and however I feel!!! But I look back at my posts, and he’s helped sooooooooo much. This BLOG would be nowhere without him.