But anyway…
It was another 3 day weekend because Monday was another random holiday – Health and Sports Day. Nice.
There was a sake festival in Saijo City, Hiroshima Prefecture Saturday and Sunday. Saturday morning I took the 3 hour local train with Meng. It’s only about 1.5 hours on the bullet train, but that’s much more expensive. Lucky for me, I live on the Sanyo Line which runs all the way up the coast to Tokyo. You usually have to switch trains a few times, but we managed to catch a train that went straight from Ube Station to Hiroshima Station. We dropped our stuff off at our hostel and then made our way to Saijo. Some friends met up with us there. It was pretty fu
n. You pay 1,600 yen to get into this enclosed area – enclosed by some wall – and you get this little sake cup and you can go around to the booths and drink as much as you want. There were a lot of people there… including children! We got there around 2pm and there were already people passed out – it was hilarious. The booths were set up by region so you could taste the many different regional varieties of sake. What I learned from this experience is that I don’t like sake … nor did anybody else in my group… but we drank it because we paid for it and it was all you can drink!
It went from 11am – 8pm. During the course of our 6 hour stay we all managed to talk to a lot of random people – Japanese and other foreigners… and there were A LOT of other foreigners there. Right before we were about to leave, my friend Ian ran to get his backpack which he had randomly laid on the ground earlier. He came back over and this random, angry, drunk, Japanese man grabs his arm and was yelling. Ian asked me what he was saying because he had no idea what was going on. I thought the man was yelling because he thought Ian had stolen someone’s bag so I was trying to tell him that it was, in fact, his own backpack he had picked up. But apparently that’s not what the man was yelling about. He was slurring A LOT, so it was really hard to understand. All I really got from him was that Ian kicked a paper???... or something like that. My friend Mike comes over and tries to see what the guy is saying because he seriously would not let Ian leave and kept grabbing his arm even though we kept saying in Japanese that we were really sorry (for whatever it was he was pissed off about). Mike got frustrated and started telling the man that he was being rude and un-Japanese and that we couldn’t even understand what he was saying because he was slurring too much. We eventually make our way out the ex
it, but the man followed us and threw his own backpack at Ian! All I know is that I turned around, saw Ian get tangled in a backpack on the ground (which was the guy’s backpack). So Ian picks it up, runs through the exit, and throws it in the bushes! It was hilarious! The man had to leave the walled-in area to get his backpack that he had thrown at Ian, which meant that he couldn’t go back in – because once you exit you’re not allowed to re-enter. It was crazy.On the 35 minute train ride back into Hiroshima City we met these really awesome Europeans who are studying abroad at Hiroshima University for 6 months. Let’s see… they were from Poland, Denmark, Portugal, and a few other places. There was this really crazy girl from... crap , I forget. Oh well. It was a pretty noisy train ride back – considering it was packed with people returning from the sake festival. Most of the Japanese people were passed out because Japanese people CANNOT drink. This woman had the nerve to come up to us and tell us in Japanese that we were being “urusai”… which basically means we’re being rude and obnoxious. COME ON LADY… give us a break, geeze. She got off the train as she was saying it.
I went to dinner with the awesome Europeans. We got Hiroshima Okonomiyaki. It was really good.
I finished out my night at an Irish pub with some Yamaguchi JETs. They didn’t go to the sake festival Saturday because they were planning on going Sunday. I didn’t feel like going to the sake festival AGAIN on Sunday. Don’t get me wrong – it was a lot of fun… but like I said above, I don’t even like the stuff. Ian wanted to go up to Osaka Sunday morning, so I decided to go with him. We took the local train for 6 hours. It was nice to see Japan that way… but it was pretty much an all day trip. However, there’s this special ticket we bought (which you can only buy from around October 1 – 19). It’s only good for local trains from Yamaguchi to somewhere around Osaka. It costs 3,000 yen, but it’s all you can ride – in a day. So we took a 6 hour local train ride for only 3,000 yen as opposed to somewhere around 6,000 yen. The bullet train would’ve been 10,000 yen. So it was definitely worth it – especially because we weren’t in a hurry or anything. We got there around 4:45pm and his friend met up with us. We went to this really cool building and went to the top to see the sun set. It was really nice. Then we had some Italian for dinner, played some pool, and met up with one of my friends. It was a nice, random, trip. We ended up leaving sometime around 5pm Monday. We took the bullet train. It was my first time! It was really fast!! It took about 2.5 hours for me to get home and longer for Ian because he actually lives in Kyushu. ACTUALLY, to be even more specific, he lives in Saga – which is where I did my homestay in 2002!
So that’s the end to my 3-day weekend.
Last night I was on the radio. One of my Japanese friends, Mitsue, called me Monday night and asked me to go on the radio with her because her friend is the one who does it every week and they wanted some guests. It’s a really small, local station. Every Tuesday night from 9pm – 10pm there are these 2 American guys, 1 Japanese guy, and 1 Japanese woman who talk (in English mostly) about American culture. They always have a topic – yesterday the topic was American food. They actually just started it about 3 weeks ago. It was cool. One guy is from New York and has been here about a year teaching at a private school. The other guy has been here somewhere around 10 years and he actually started an English School called Amerigo. He said he plans to be here forever. He was really nice. The Japanese guy was really cool. The woman wasn’t there that night. It was actually a lot of fun. I’ll probably go back sometime and do it again.
Tonight I’m skipping my Japanese class because I’m losing my voice and I needed some time to clean up my apartment and have a night to myself. I’ve been pretty busy, so it’s really nice to be home and get some laundry done, clean up my stuff, and just relax.
Oh, and before I forget… it’s rice harvesting season! Everybody is in the process of cutting down the rice that’s been growing all summer in the rice paddies. After they cut it down they hang it upside down like this:
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