The weekend was really nice! A night in Shizuoka and a night in Shimizu.

Shizuoka was nice. Met up with Brent, Natasha, Kath, and Kath’s co-teacher Emi for a night of eating and singing. We started at a nice izakaya which Natasha and Kath had been to earlier that day, in an effort to collect Amelie-style photographs for friends and boyfriends back home. They got a snap of the sushi chef holding “Happy Birthday!” signs. Good food and fun conversation. We moved on to another bar, where Brent quickly dropped his beer on the floor in response to an offer of green tea ice cream from Natasha. That place had good selection, but was way too pricey - an average US$7.00 cover charge! So we moved on to karaoke. 2 hours of top hits of the 70’s and 80’s left us feeling pretty happy. Late late night, ended at Kath’s house, who happened to live in Shiz.

Brent started the day right for us with his “action adventure” pancakes. He made shaped-to-order pancakes for us. After some lazing about, we got a train to Shimizu to check out Natasha’s and Brent’s home city. We decided to try an izakaya that Natasha passed every day on her ride to school. A truly truly small place - sat about 8 people, so when we walked in, we were half of the clientele.

Clearly, the two kind older ladies running the place weren’t expecting hungry forgeigners. We ordered some delicious gyoza - the greasiest gyoza I’ve had to date, and 4 yakisobas. Well, they opened the fridge to find enuf ingredients for only 2 yakisobas. We switched to two orders of pan-fried marinated beef. Half way thru the yakisoba, one of the ladies walks out and whispers to me that they don’t have any gyuniku (beef), but would umaniku be ok? Well, considering that they didn’t really have anything else of substantial volume on the menu, horse would have to do.

Heh, the other eaters got a good kick when the slabs of horse, complete with rib pieces, came out from behind the counter. It wasn’t too much longer before they were requesting us to sing. (Every bar/izakaya/eatery has a karaoke system - it’s prolly a zoning law of some sort.) Brent, fortunately has a singer’s voice (musical actor back in BC), so he surprised them all with some smooth tones.

One of the men there was a firefighter, and chose me to go outside with him so he could show me his car. He had a pretty nice custom van - trim lights, track lights on the inside, DVD, and all sorts of crazy mods. Even an English-speaking car security system!

Well, we finished up and then rented a movie and watched it at Brent’s. I love the Triplets of Belleville. Go rent it now!

The next day, Brent and I went to the port area and relaxed and talked a long good while. Way way back, I was talking about missing a catalyst element in my local life, well, Brent certainly has come to be a good friend. He’s a traveler (saw most of Central and South America), and very relatable. I’m glad to have a close friend close by again!

Unfortunately, I didn’t use my camera that much this weekend (I’ll have to copy some photos from the others), but I’ve put up two.

Well, the last three-day weekend took me to Osaka for the dance festival. I danced for two nights, but didn’t have the energy to go to the final all night dance. The live bands (one all expats from various places, and one all Japanese) were really good and loved playing for dancers. The Japanese band played dancable songs (ie ones that didn’t make you want to pass out).

The attitude of Osaka is really friendly, but the scene leaders reminded me of Alex’s (from Melbourne) concise summary - he’s the one who coined the phrase “Feckin’ Lindy Hoppers!” Sure, attitudes were high cos it was the yearly party, but maybe I was just a bit too grounded or critical.

The rest of the city has a smaller feel (only 5x more populous than Shizuoka city). You can get from edge to edge rather quickly (twice as fast as in Tokyo). The food is very good - excellent Korean avaible, and Asian fusion, too.

During the days, I toured the area. I went to Nara on Sunday and saw the world’s largest wooden structure (yes, there are pictures), and a massive 16m solid bronze buddha statue. And about 1564 deer. Nara is filled with deer, tremendously tame, completely dependent on tourist-handouts deer. Some of the wise old ones even figured out a way to get tourists to come to them, while they were sitting, to feed them (while the young ones were chasing every stale-bread-holding hand in sight).

On Monday, I went to Kobe and managed to grab an interview for my documentary. I got some uni students (the old-folk were surprisingly gruff), but still need a few more to round it out. Kobe was nice - there was a ropeway to the top of a small mountain that had a great view of the city. At the top was an herb garden, quite large, that made for a tourist attraction. Never before had I seen rosemary and sage as key-note attendees to a garden, but the Japanese were all about it and of course the inherent ‘health’ benefits. The immediate benefit was the food. I ate at a restaurant with amazingly flavored pizza. The best pizza I’ve had here!

Just finished a 3-day work week, and now I’m headed into another 3-day weekend! Very nice, and this one should keep me local. Gotta rest.

So the weekend was relaxing. Another water-based location, more eating, more drinking. This time? In a river bed (sans a river) under a bridge (for shade, of course). The organizer even had satellite radio, so we were beaming all those warm-fuzzy 80’s pop hits from the US. natsukashiina! A few of the choicest shots (as you’ll see, I wasn’t in my photo-taking prime).

Classes have pretty much gotten into full swing, with some homerooms being a breeze and a joy and others, well, not. The work load isn’t as bad as last term, so things are more relaxed, and I’m able to deal with the stress more easily.

My hakama is about 6cm too long (and there isn’t a place to try on, you just have to go by the height spec’d in the catalog. I’m 180cm, but apparently, my legs aren’t proportional to a 180cm individual), so I need to get it tailored. Nothing is ever done the first time or done easily here…