Another Happy Note

Sub-Topics: All-nighters, Culture Day, and Moments of Bliss

All-nighters: Apparently, the life I have chosen to live doesn't involve sleeping on the weekends. Is this common for Japanese youth? I blame the existence of the last train (why do they have one anyway?) and the misconception that you can stay overnight at certain places… Despite my weekends being extremely tiring, they are always interesting and/or fun. I have basically stayed up all night the past three weekends in a row with each weekend being more extreme than the last. I believe I have already written about the night a few friends and I stayed out and eventually slept a couple hours on my friend’s floor. The next all-nighter I want to write about happened two weekends ago. It was very fun! I met a group of friends at L&L bar and we had a couple drinks and some snacks. I invited my Ken who I have already told you about. It was nice to see him again. After that, the group split up and a few of us went to a dance club called Club Joule. That night Takkyu Ishinno was DJ-ing and the music was really good! There were a total of six of us and we danced and drank for a couple hours. One girl didn't want to miss her last train so we walked her to the station. I was planning on leaving too when the others asked me if I wanted to pull an all-nighter. I wasn't planning on it since the weekend before, I missed my last train, but I decided to do it since everyone else was. I forced everyone to do purikura (Japanese photo booths) first before deciding to go to an all night karaoke bar haha. We sang karaoke for like 5 hours! Also, some of the people we had split up with before the dance club came to do karaoke all night with us. It was all you can drink alcohol and soft drinks so it was pretty interesting haha! I ended up getting back to my apartment at about 7:30 in the morning. I had intentions of sleeping the whole day even though I had made plans to go to Oktober Fest. However, after sleeping like 4 hours, my friends coaxed me to join them at Oktober Fest. I ate some German food, but didn't drink any of the large selection of German beer because I was sick of alcohol after the night before and I don’t like beer. We hung out, talked, and listed to traditional German music. It was fun! I even made a new Japanese friend! So I am glad I went.

German festival.

The next all-nighter happened last weekend. Right now, my friend from Ohio (C.J.) is visiting me. He flew in to Tokyo on Saturday. I took the Shinkansen to Tokyo in the morning. For the first time, I actually could see Mt. Fuji from the window! It only took me 4 tries haha! I met my him in Ueno, and from there I took him to Asakusa to see Sensoji Temple. I finally found a damn chasen (tea wisk) at a store I remembered! I’m so happy!!! When we came back from Tokyo, I made six bowls of maccha (Japanese green tea)! After Sensoji, we went for kaiten sushi  (sushi on a conveyor belt). I sat next to a Taiwanese man who told me not to speak to him in Japanese because he is from Taiwan lol. He kept watching me while I ate to see if I could use chopsticks and to see what fish I was eating. >_< After dinner we went to Shinjuku and literally just messed around. We ate at like 3 more freaking restaurants!!! We played in an arcade, did purikura, and looked in shops. I showed my friend the red light district of Shinjuku called Kabukichou. I would never go there unless I had someone with me… So, it got pretty late and my plan all along was to stay in a mangakissa (comic book cafe). They are popular because they are very cheap and you can shower and sleep in a private cubicle that has internet and TV. You can also read manga to your heart’s content as well as drink all you can drink fountain drinks. I have never stayed in one before, but I have always wanted to. Here is the problem… It’s about 3:30 am on a Saturday night in Shinjuku, Tokyo which is like the New York of Japan, and everyone who is out, has missed their last train which was probably at about 12:30 am. We try going to two or three different mangakissa, and they are all full. Also, we didn't have a hotel reservation since we planned on staying in one of these places. In Japan, front desks aren't usually staffed during the night (unless it’s a fancy place). So you can’t just go to a hotel and get a room at 3:30 am. My last thought was that we could go to a love hotel. They are hotels specifically designed for doing you know what. You usually just pay a fee for about 3 hours, but you can stay the night if you pay a bigger fee. At that point, we didn't really care if we could only stay 3 hours or more. We just wanted to shower and nap. Alas, all of the hotels would not allow you to enter between like midnight and 5 or 6 am. This makes absolutely no sense. They don’t want the love hotels to be used as actual hotels, but you would think that between the times of midnight and 6 am, doing the dirty would be common. Anyway, we waited until 5 am when just a few hotels opened, and none of them had availability. At that point we just decided to say screw it and stay up all night since it was already past 5 am. We got to see the sun rise which was fun. You began to realize that at 6 am on a Sunday morning, the people who are walking around aren't up really early; they just never went home. You’d be surprised at how many people were out. We saw some interesting things by staying up all night. For example, we saw rats fighting, a man laying in the street in his own puke while sobbing, people falling over and screaming at each other, transvestites, an extreme amount of litter (I thought Japan was clean until that moment), and who knows what else I’m forgetting. If I knew that all the magakissa and love hotels were going to be full, I would  have suggested going to an all night karaoke room like I did the previous weekend at like 3:30 am, but by the time we realized we couldn't get in anywhere, it was like 6 am. We were debating on whether or not we should just keep waiting until stores started opening, and we could go see the strangely dressed people in Harajuku, but after much debating, we decided to just take a 7 am shinkansen back to Osaka. We slept a little on the train, but it wasn’t the most comfortable. It was so nice to get back to my apartment. Even though it was only like 11 am, we felt like it was super late at night. We took showers and I napped for like 2 hours (my friend slept a lot longer lol) because I didn't want to not be able to go to bed at like 11 pm because I worked the next day. I cooked us dinner and showed my friend the supermarket nearby before calling it a night. What an adventure! I will probably write another post after my friend leaves to tell you about the other stuff we do while he’s here.

Oh! By the way, I forgot. There was a typhoon on Sunday. It was pretty bad when it hit Okinawa, but by the time it got to Osaka, it was pretty tame. It just rained a lot and was a little windy. No big deal! I just cooked during it :P That was my first time experiencing a typhoon/hurricane.

Mt. Fuji from the shinkansen window.

Sensoji.

Culture Day: Culture Day takes place at every junior high school. Culture Day along with Sports Day are the most important days of the school year, and maybe graduation lol. Students and teachers spend many weeks preparing. I really had no idea what to expect. I assumed it had to do with learning about different cultures around the world, but I eventually realized that it’s about the students’ culture. The first year students sang songs on stage, the second year students made videos and mosaics, and the third year students did a play with dancing. Also, there was a performance from the guitar club which was really good, and the students' and parents’ artwork was displayed around the school. Some parents came to watch the performances. Among the parents’ artwork, there were legit scrapbooks. I really enjoyed looking at them since scrap-booking is my hobby. Anyway, that is what Culture Day is at a Japanese junior high school.

Moments of Bliss: I will once again point out that it is not fall here yet, and I am envious and sad when people back at home tell me it is fall in the US. However, here are some other things that have helped besides decorating my apartment:

1) I have decided that in the second half of November when the leaves are changing, I am going to go to Kyoto to do fall foliage viewing which is common. Some temples even have illumination hours where they are open extra hours at night so they can illuminate the fall trees with bright lights. It looks so cool.

I Googled this picture so you could get an idea. This is Kiyomizu-dera in Kyoto.

2) I have started buying persimmons. Maybe I already mentioned this, but they are a fall fruit in Asia, and they are good.

A persimmon.

3) Despite hot days here and there, the overall temperature has been dropping.

As the subtitle suggests, I have had moments of bliss because it's becoming fall, I've been staying out all night with my friends, and so There have been times when I am in some situation, whether it’s standing in my classroom of students, dancing in a club in downtown Osaka, or just sitting in my apartment drinking tea, where I have come to a strong and happy realization that I am in Japan. It has taken two months to accept that I am in Japan. Originally I thought I would never realize it, but I have, and I am happy. I know that when I leave here, whenever that is, I will miss things about being here, and I will always want to return.