Wow im having a real spell of regularity here it seems. Im talking about my blogs, not my bowel movements thank you very much.
This month has had its moments but i must keep this blog entry brief, or i run the risk of sitting awake far too late on a school night.
This month found me driving the streets of Okayama with a random stranger and an ongoing miscommunication being suffered with the locals.
There is a photo processing place a couple of blocks from my house, and i have been venturing over there once a week in order to have some of my photos developed....... and blah blah blah.
WHOA!
ok....... I got off to a good start and i was keeping it regular, but i was distracted and ohhhh look a stray dog, you never see stray dogs here in Japan..........
ok ok ok i really have to stop this - its the little things that throw me off and last time i was here i wrote all of one sentence and was side tracked by a roaming canine.
Right so i met a random person named Manabu who gave me a lift home and we ended up eating together and i have dined at his house with his house mates for a little, we are keeping in touch and he appears to be a sound bloke. I could go into great detail about how we met but recently i have other insights i wish to cover in this rant.
I needed to get to the hospital the other day......... except i didnt know how to say "hospital" in Japanese and the word "hospital" is like hearing "take me to gobble de goop" to a Japanese person. So im sitting in the back of a taxi trying to direct the driver to a location im not 100% sure of myself in a language i barely know while both parties are getting frustrated at one another's presence.............. We got there eventually ($40 later) and you would think it would motivate me to learn the language............. sadly no - it motivated me to just learn how to say "hospital" in Japanese.
I went up to Tokyo recently for a mates wedding. Wow its big. A landscape that stretches with an urban jungle for miles and miles.... as far as the eye will let you see. I will get to that shortly...
I went to this wedding and was sitting with the grooms brother before the ceremony began, we joked casually about how everything was so white and pure and how childlike it made you feel. The Japanese put a real emphasis on the idea of a white fairy tale wedding, which with first impressions makes you giggle slightly. A harp player in the corner, with a quartet supporting her,
and dolphins diving toward one another, projected onto a huge white curtain, that spanned from corner to corner of one side of the room to the other, it was uncomfortably cute. But the ceremony began and the bride floated into the room to be greeted by the groom with myself only momentarily distracted by the white curtain retracting and an astounding view of Tokyo appeared to back drop the focus of everyones attention. We ate well and i met some amazing people, there was one family that took me out for an evening in Tokyo the following night that i owe greatly for their absurd levels of generosity.
While in Tokyo i visited the fish markets (overrated smell fest) but had an ulterior motive that arrived later that day. I welcomed Naiyer and was pleasantly surprised......... all be that the methods used in order to meet her were initially a little unconventional inside my own head........ but times have changed and the process means nothing when smiling about the result.
We went to Tokyo tower with the Kimura family and out to tea that evening. I tried to pay the bill, which didnt sit too well with them, although im sure they appreciated the gesture once they understood my desire to do so. It was at this point in the evening that you started to miss making your point while having an English conversation.
The next day arrived, and we went back to Okayama on the train. It was without real event, but not knowing if the train we were getting on, was in fact the right one was a little concerning.
Back home we went out to a "Yaki-tori" restaurant here and i had to bust out my Japanese skills while ordering a meal........... as far as i we know i got everything i ordered and the local cat wasnt cut up and fed to us that night! Yay Kane!
Next we hired a car and ventured south/west to Miyajima, the deer roamed free here and seemed friendlier than my time spent in Nara, so friendly that one decided my cup of flavoured ice i was holding was his, and later the oyster we were eating, was a good start to the $20 dollar bill that the deer in question decided to chomp on.
Again we ate out and to the surprise of the couple sitting near us we acted like full blown children while dining near the site of the atomic blast. Who says i shouldnt be eating dairy and then goes and orders a cheese pizza in front of me?! In her defense - i played it up fully and i shouldn't even be writing about it as it was a non event but it made me smile.
Kurashki called us amongst other moments and we decided to catch the train there. 3 stops too far and i figured it was about time to start paying attention. We back tracked and made it there. Wow what a pretty little village, i have been before but you soak up so much more of your surroundings on a revisit. We went to a museum that had works by Picasso and Fredricks to name a few names inside.......... What strange Japanese names i thought. The day was filled with moments of candid daftness and i asked some posing kimono girls for a photo, the response to this was midly amusing. I took my photo and was asked to pose with them.... "you are super cute and cool too...... i like you" how can you say "no" to a photo request like that ha ha? So after hearing "one more please" more than once, and having 6 or so girls demanding shots with you we left to head back to Okayama, on the wrong train.
I have often have had to stop myself going off on my eating tirades, but we went out for a final meal at the sushi house i had previously devoured whale at....... i dont know why i thought this would impress the girl who had previous recommend the movie "The Cove" to me. We did however eat well and it was nice to pull your chosen dishes off a tray without fear of having to converse in the foreign language im surrounded by everyday.
Well that was the short version of Nai's visit and wedding dramas - im going to pick my parents up now. I thought the last two week were a moment in time, i guess here is another one of those that im not going to forget quickly.
