Part Deux

Edit: Ive gotten the photos onto my flash drive and thus onto the interwebs! Enjoy. I particularly like this one I took yesterday at the landowners manor...thats a mini buddha statue, by the way.

Hey all. Im really freakin sorry that I havent been updating the blog as often as I promised. Youd think that in the middle of technology central that the internet would be widely available, cheap, and plentiful.

That, of course, would be a shockingly bad mistake to make.

So I have to make do with my 3 buck hours in a net cafe in the middle of Shibuya. That would be where the worlds busiest pedestrian road crossing thing is. Id put up a photo if a) I had one and b) I could get photos onto these computers. This is a repeat of Europe all over again. Why is it that only in Thailand, which isnt the most developed country in the world (but is hands down the second best country in the world after Australia), that the internet is cheap and readily available?

So heres the belated photo of Shibuya. Enjoy!

Anyway. There are 36 scholars, hailing from South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, The Phillipines, Vietnam, Thailand, Australia, and New Zealand. Our program actually consists of just us scholars in a room in a conference complex (accomodation and meeting rooms and food halls), where we have a speaker come and talk to us for a while then we ask questions. One thing Im noticing is that whenever any other nationality (aside from the kiwis) asks a question, they always argue their point before asking it. Cant you just ask a simple question? Please? It makes life much easier.

Weve had topics on Japanese culture and language, NGO work in Cambodia, and problems facing Japan. The last one was given by the former undersecretary general for the United Nations humanitarian aid branch, which was pretty cool. The last one was my favourite, but was really subjected to the point I made above about people arguing their opinion rather than asking a question. Obviously some folks want a discussion rather than a lecture, which is an interesting approach.

This weekend we took the bullet train (or Shikonen...shikanen...seriously, my Japanese is so shit Im afraid to even say hello for fear of offending someone so apparently its called a shikansen) out to Nigata and Murakami, where they like to make some salmon. And when I say make, they live for the stuff. And when I say some, I mean a SHITLOAD. We are talking dried salmon here, not salmon fillets or anything. Quite an interesting dish, but if I dont see any salmon for a while, that would be a nice change.

We were in town for a local festival that consisted of hordes of neighbours all dragging excessively large two story wooden carts down the main road in a haphazardly staggered pattern that I first thought was an indication of how drunk their ancestors were when they first did this festival.

At 3pm on the button, though, all the carts stopped, the neighbours put the yokes down, and then from out of nowhere enough booze to drown Zimbabwe appeared. It appears that the ancestors werent the only ones getting drunk at this festival! It was a hot day, and a beer would go down well.

So, being the friendly fellow I am, I immediately checked with our handlers to see if it was ok for us to join in.

And yea, it was good. So I trundled off with a few friends in tow to find the nearest bottleo/convenience store, which happened to be up around the corner. A few cans of Asahi later, we were in the midst of the festival lapping it up. Very random, yet it felt so Australian. I can picture the way it would go down in Oz...
`Hey Jono mate...`
`Yeah man?`
`This cart is heavy. Wanna beer?`
`I thought youd never fucking ask...` *cue the raucous drinking*

We spent the night in a local Onsen or hot spring resort/hotel, which was quite lavish and luxurious. Apparently its the first and last time that this will happen for the JAL scholars, since it was the first year that JAL did this trip in partnership with the national railway providers, so the railway guys wanted to impress. We didnt complain.

An onsen is the same as the naked bath houses. You go starkers into the wash room, sit on this little stool, and scrub yourself clean. Wash all the suds off with a shower / bucket of water, then go and sit in the onsen (hot spring) and chill out like no mans business. We had a view out over some hedges at the sea of japan, just as the sun was setting.

Pretty freakin awesome.

Me, Phil, and Jonny, then Katelyn and Monica in our yukate. Thats what theyre called!

We got to wear...katabe...shitake...wonton...see, told you my japanese was shit. Anyway, we got to wear kimonos except theyre not called kimonos, theyre made of cotton and are worn at less formal occassions and in summer. Got a few photos of us all decked out in the gear, and we may or may not have looked like Jedi. And I may or may not have gotten the kiwis to pose with me with chopsticks and photoshopped a photo of us so we were holding lightsabers.

Im a geek, I know. Ssssh Kit...

At the onsen, we were treated to this lavish japanese dinner that was intricate and delicious. It was apparently a very awesome meal, but since none of us had all that much experience with Japanese food, we had no basis of comparison so the awesomeness was lost on us. This may be what it feels like when I offer some awesome wine to people who just dont get it...sorry gang, didnt realise. :(

After the meal and the obligatory 45 minutes of everyone taking photos and group shots of everyone else in kimono gear, Greg, Phil and Jonny from NZ, and me all went in search of the bar to have a few quite bevvos. Greg and I enjoyed a beer, while Phil and Jonny tried sake.
Jonny passed his sake to me and promptly requested a beer about three seconds later.

Sake tastes delicious compared to the shitty homebrew rice wine we had in Thailand, so as I was polishing off the little bottle that Jonny gave me, in walks two of the Japanese Railway staff. They saw me drinking sake. They thought I liked sake (I can stand it, but I wouldnt choose it). So five minutes later they come over and offer us all some local sake...and I could foresee the night getting progressively downhill from that point. We joined them at their table, and four 350mL bottles of sake later, the Japanese and Greg were rolling drunk (G is half Japanese, he blames his mum) and the rest of us were quite happy. So we thought wed go visit the onsen for the last half hour before it closed. Mmm...warm spa bath while drunk and naked...quite awesome!

Today we visited a traditional Japanese landowners mansion circa 1889, and it was deliciously boring. There was an awesome Japanese garden though, which was a pleasant surprise. We decided that a beautiful Japanese garden was universally beautiful to all nationalities, which brought me to pondering what was it about the garden that made it so attractive? I figured that there is some form of underlying structure and form to it that can be perceived by everyone, regardless of their home culture.

Tonight was supposed to be a quiet night in on the internet back in the complex, as our new dorms were supposed to have internet access.

Of course, the dorms were built in 1972 and internet `access` is a loose term. VERY loose term. So we come to the beginning, where I mentioned I was in Shibuya.

Tomorrow is my free day, and Im about to go plan it courtesy of wikitravel. All I know is, tomorrow night, Im going to the New York Bar at the Tokyo Park Hyatt, and its going to be wonderful. A cigar or two, some beautiful bourbon, the 52nd story of a tower overlooking Tokyo, wood panelling and a dark interior, hopefully some good company...thats what Im talkin` bout.

I hope you dont mind the excessively long post and the necessary skipping of a lot of details. It would take me forever to type up details of the events up to today, but I may keep a daily blog on my laptop and just upload that whenever I need to do a blog post. Might save you guys some eye strain.

Take care.