Grapefruit Schnapps for the Debilitated Soul

This past weekend we were invited to Ritsumeikan University by the schools English language speaking club. Friday night was devoted to the modest yet enjoyable drinking consortium and Saturday we got down to the discussions in English. All and all it was a fun time though not very productive for my Japanese as the focus of the events were primarily English based.

In other news, my morning hour-and-change long commute (each way) had begun to wear quite on me but I recently discovered the unexpected enjoyment of the "podcast". "Blog", "Podcast", I'm really not a big fan of these new net slang for they always feel like nothing more than trendy buzz words. Anyway I've basically been listening to some very interesting science shows originally broadcasted on NPR and the BBC and also an enjoyable Wine-centered podcast done by two well-informed Australians. The fact that these shows are anything but amateurish makes them quite bearable to listen to. Coupled with the fact that they're all free and automatically downloaded to my comp via iTunes make them a new and welcomed partner to my daily commute.

A night to remember why I forgot it

Wow was this past weekend amazing. Max's host family invited him and some of us to join in their area's yearly Matsuri. In a nutshell it is a festival annually carried out in order to show the local gods a good time. Half of it involves a bunch of men going around the neighborhood in traditional costume carrying a weighty palaquin (Mikoshi) via two long wooden beams. Every now and then they stop and they begin to pump the shrine up and down in the air shouting "Wa-shai!". I am proud to say that, this year, I was one of those men. Yes, MEN! haha but it really was a great time.

The other half of the ritual involves eating a huge dinner and drinking tons and tons of Sake and beer the night before until about four in the morning in the accompaniment of family, friends and later the area's elders. Needless to say, I got hammered. I had to; would YOU want to piss off the gods?! I also couldn't help it. We were suited up in traditional clothing and taken to a temple where we proceeded to sit in an open-air enclosure in which women constantly replenished our sake and beer for hours. Behind us were two massive (HUGE) bundles of bamboo, which were eventually set ablaze in the course of the night. It stands as the most amazing thing I have done while in Japan and perhaps elsewhere.

Unfortunately, and perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of the night gets hazy after the fire started really ripping into the bamboo. Yes, I drank far too much and I suppose I'm a little ashamed to admit that that night I bowed toward another god, one of porcelain. However I didn't drunkenly kick over, urinate on, or desecrate in any other way anything sacred so I consider that a big plus. It was all worth it. True, I was pretty exhausted the next day when I got with the Mikoshi-ing but the "carrying" was for the most part more like wheeling as it was resting on, erm, wheels. Fortunately every now and then we'd all take a break and be fed more beer; I, however, opted for refreshing and headache fighting water.

Well I'm going to try and get the pictures up as fast as I can so you can see all the crazy stuff that went down last weekend. Though all of Japan is amazing I don't think anything is going to top this. Well I'm out.

A word about Skype

I'd like to take a break from the usual Japan trip whatnots and bring light to an amazing instrument of communication that many of you now or in the future will desperately need and love. I'll try not to get too commercial on you but believe me when I say that it's really worth mentioning.

What I'm talking about is Skype. Skype is a program you use on your internet connected computer that lets you talk to other members of the Skype community (such as your family) from anywhere in the world as long as you want in startlingly clear quality. And it's Free. 100% free to use. Free to talk for as long as you want. Think of it as AIM (ie. free) but talking and with ridiculously good audio. As you might know, right now I am living in Japan which is a bit of a stone's throw from the Northeast United States. However, I am able to have long and appreciated talks with my family without any concern for minutes running out or ears getting too sweaty. Yes and I mentioned it was free right? Free to talk to someone thousands of miles away with out greedy phone companies getting in the way.

Most of my friends here who, unfortunately, are without an internet connection at their house have gone and purchased contract free cellphones ($50) along with international phone cards ($40 a pop) in order to talked with loved ones and while not exorbitantly expensive they have admitted that the cards are not an overly fair deal. Plus once a card runs out it's forty more bucks to drop. Now I'm probably coming off as a bastard with my tongue out at them and the truth is that they really don't have a choice. Skype is through the internet and we're not living in internet ubiquitous dorms so it's up to fate to doll out the bandwidth. I've been fortunate. Some have not. The plus side for them is that they can reach each other more easily that me so they've got that on me. Also, when they call home they usually tell their parents to call them right back so they talk for free while mom and dad front the bill. And to be as fair as I am able to be when using Skype there is a very slight delay that takes one or two goes to get the rhythm down but it's really nothing that will bother much, if at all.

I'm posting all of this so that you can now know about this great money saving deal AND IF YOU ACT NOW YOU'LL... Sorry; I know I promised. But this thing does save you a ton of money when abroad (for, you know, books or....a lot of beer), it's got great quality, and it works anywhere on earth with an internet connection. So those of you thinking about-or already are-traveling abroad, computer in toe, here's an invaluable tool to get into.

Hell even if you're not ever going to leave your own State here's a great tool to get into. So go to the website (www.skype.com), watch the cool informative video they have on the main page and give it a try with some of your friends or family. Apparently Skype even works with people who only have dial-up but I honestly wouldn't expect the same quality I've discussed if pursuing a call with it but it's worth a try anyway. If you would like a monetary figure on how incredible Skype is Ebay recently purchased it for something to the tune of 2.6 billion dollars. Yeah I would say something worth that much capitalist toilet paper is bound to have some use in store for you. I know I'm coming off as a lame shill for the company but I'm willing to suffer through it so I can turn a few people on to something that's free and will benefit them greatly. Good day.

He points up to warn us of that which is dropped from the sky.

Miers to Bush: "ZOMFG BFF!!!!1"

Blogger is bein all dumb shit at the moment and won't let me upload my pics. Hopefully it'll get with it by tomorrow.

Man I've been closely following the events unfolding in Washington recently and it's certifiable insane. I really don't know anything about Patrick Fitzgerald other than what we've all read recently but the he seems like definitely the right guy to be doing this investigation. Apolitical, not one to hold spotlight grabbing news conferences, AND even Bush has said he's carrying out the investigation in a "dignified manner". How the hell are conservatives gonna go after this guy after their leader compliments him? Honestly, even though there's massive talk about indictments and now looming conspiracy charges going all the way up to Cheney and the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) I can't help but think they're slimy enough to get off despite their blatantly underhanded tactics. I mean, think about if Cheney is brought under charges; It's like trying to comprehend how much a million of something really is: I can't do it. Well at least with someone like Fitzgerald carrying out the investigation I believe that whatever happens the decision will be made by someone completely qualified to make it and not some fuckwad crony.

A Dream Where Sadness Rhymed With Everything

Well this post comes in rather late but I just had too much free time on my hands the past two days to do anything but lounge around and read up on news that I'd been missing. We arrived back in Kyoto Saturday afternoon from our week long excursion around the Southern part of Japan and it was certainly a worthy time. Both the Nagasaki and Hiroshima peace parks and museums were indeed sobering. Though the Nagasaki museum was less expansive as the more visited Hiroshima I feel that it succeeded in painting a more subjective picture of the destruction, fear and tragedy brought forth by the bombs. In Hiroshima, however, there was much more of a visual relic of the hell unleashed in the form of the Genbaku Dome which was located directly under the midair explosion of "little boy" and though it was not fully leveled by the blast all that stands is a broken and scorched structure, which serves as both a reminder of the past and possibly a glimpse of the future.

After two nights in Hiroshima we departed, via boat, for Matsuyama. Though Matsuyama was not the most exciting portion of our trip, the fact that the castle we went to see was under heavy renovation was a let down, it represented what one would consider a more typical type of Japanese local than say Tokyo or Kyoto. Though this won't help to convince you it wasn't a boring time we did also visit a dye museum famous for making a blue dye found only in Japan.

Finally we took a train to Himeji and then a bus out of the city for an overnight stay at a fantastic Japanese spa, known as an Onsen. Man was it relaxing. There was about three separate baths to partake, including an amazing one outside, and during my stay I doubt I've been any cleaner, or relaxed. Though rumors in the states abound about gender communal baths the truth is that they were largely phased out in order to please the God-created-genitals-AND-CLOTHES West back in the day so you'd probably have to go deep into rural Japan to find one of those relics. During the course of the night I polished off a delicious bottle of milky sake and thoroughly enjoyed both the expensive dinner and my stay. Saturday morning we Went to Himeji castle, which was quite a beautiful and grand piece of history.

Well now I'm back in Kyoto and ready to start the second half of my class sessions. ...whooo. Actually it shouldn't be bad at all. I'll get some pictures from the trip up here in a day or two also.

So our vacation has begun and not a minute too soon. We took the Bullet Train from Kyoto station and about six hours later we arrived at the Nagasaki trainstation. Our hotel, a very nice one at that, is right in front of the station and we really couldn't be happier. Nagasaki is actually quite an interestingly laid out city. It's built among a few small mountains (maybe they're actually big hills). Plus the people aren't so jaded to foreigners as they are in say Kyoto or Tokyo so it's cool.

Today we went an interesting museum type area that is focused on the settlement of Dejima which was a man made island used to house the only foreign trade settlement in Japan during its period of isolation. It was used by the Dutch and has quite an interesting history. They Shogunate kept the Dutch on this island and forbid them from learning any Japanese mainly because he wanted to curtail the spread of the violent virus known as Christianity. It was the only place where any Western trade, ideas and technology were allowed to enter Japan.

Anyway we're headed to the Nagasaki peace park among other places then we leave for Hiroshima on Tuesday. It's so good to have this break. The test sucked and it will be the small mistakes that bring me down. Oh well.

I'm gonna shove off so I guess this is it for now. *sniff*