13th post: Golden Week, the story so far

So, Monday I couldn't be bothered getting out of bed so I didn't get the train until 8am - there was hardly anyone on it!  It was so awesome, I thought maybe I will just spend all of Golden Week riding around on the train in peak hour!  Say what you will about the Showa Emperor but if his birthday clears out the trains, he's okay by me!  I was the only one in class (again), so mostly me and Hirayama-sensei just talked about food.  Met up with Liam to study and then I had history.  We were talking about Perry's arrival in Japan and how much impact it had on Japan in reality, which should be interesting, and it was kind of interesting, except that the teacher approached it from a very American perspective, and he didn't know some basic facts about the Bakumatsu period.  Like his fundamental understanding of the Sat-Cho alliance is wrong.  Thinking back on it on the way home, I became very angry and decided I wanted to drop it, but I think it's too late.  I might email my academic advisor about it though.  Anyway, Monday night we just went to Gutso for a Mt Fuji of chips and watched Ohno's drama and that was that.

Tuesday the trains were crowded again.  D:  I had grammar in the morning and I was the only one in class (again again), which was kind of good because we were doing revision and so we just revised the stuff I needed to.  And talked about food.  After that, I was on holiday, yays!!!  I met up with Kathryn at Shinjuku - we were actually on the same train which was weird but funny.  We went to look in Studio Alta and tried on lots of different make-up, and looked at the cute stuff in Swimmer, then went to sushi train for lunch.  The point of our going to the Jukes was to go to Sekaido, which is this massive art supplies shop.  There are 6 floors of stuff, it was very awesome, we were in there for about 4 hours!  I wanted to take up many different sorts of art, painting and sculpting and blowtorching stuff, but in the end I decided to get a sketchbook and some of those really cool texta/ink things with the brush end, and I am going to write shoujo manga.  I am not sure what about yet, but I have time to think of it while I practice drawing.  Probably about some girl who has to dress as a boy for a very sketchy reason and become part of some boy-only group, wherein she has sexual tension with all of them.  She will probably have some very important dream, and maybe an overly-passionate teacher and some sort of wacky companion - maybe a talking dog?  Anyway, I bought one of those wooden model guys to practice drawing bodies because I'm not very good at it.  He was the smallest sort, 00M model, so his name is 00M-kun. You probably saw him on FB actually.  We were going to go to karaoke but decided to come home instead.  I made curry rice and we had it with pickles and cheese, omg it was amazing.  We watched crappy tv because there was no Arashi on, that was Tuesday.

Today, we met up with Kathryn's friend Kirstie to go to Shibamata.  I was already pre-disposed to like her because she gave us toothpaste and other useful things when we first moved in, but she was also nice in person and showed us all the sights of Shibamata.

Shibamata is very Showa-style and is where Tora-san from the Tora-san movies came from.  I didn't know anything about Tora-san at the start of the day but now I do.  Apparently it is the longest-running movie series ever, there's like 133 or something, and I guess it sort of tells the history of Showa Japan because the movies were made over many years, until the actor who played him died.  He travelled all over Japan doing stuff and fell in love with different women in every town but they always dumped him.  Anyway, there's Tora-san stuff everywhere in Shibamata, and also a temple.  It's a Buddhist temple though, not a Tora-san temple.  From the station to the temple there are all these shops selling different foods (mostly dango but other stuff too - there was an awesome pickle shop, they had this pickled garlic that tasted like beetroot), and also souvenirs.  There were a lot of souvenir statues of giant gold poos.  I don't know why.  I wanted to buy one for my mum but they were very expensive.  One of the shops had these Showa-style game machines (and also Galaga!  Which is guess is from Showa too), which is where I won my Nino card!  I didn't take a picture of the card but you probs know what he looks like anyway.

At the temple there was this hilarious old guy with this dog that looked a bit like Nubbins:

The dog posed nicely for us to take photos when the man told him to!  There was also a guy with a monkey on a lead, and a beagle in a raincoat.  I think it was take your pet to the temple day.

The temple was full of these really amazing carvings of Buddha stories and dragons and stuff.  I took a photo of this plaque about one of the Buddha carvings because I think it was information that I need to know.  I am going to track down one of these!

The temple gardens were really pretty and you also got free cups of tea!  It was raining but it was still all really pretty and very green.  You've probs seen the photos of that on my FB too.  Anyway, in one of the temple buildings was one of those well things where you wash your hands and get purified, and all around it were these statues of white snakes - with gold poo!  I don't know why, but the snakes seem pretty happy about it.

They had these machines near the temple gates to get your fortune.  There was a mechanical... one of those guys, you know that are like dragon things but puppets and they have them in festivals and probably kabuki and they're kind of freaky looking hunchbank things?  He sort of does a dance and then picks out your fortune in his teeth and drops it in the slot.  If you get bad luck you can tie it up at the temple so you don't actually have bad luck.  Kathryn got good luck and I got small good luck.  I am going to attempt to translate what it actually says later.

Because it was a temple, they were selling charms for stuff.  You could get charms to protect your pet, so I bought one for Gemma.  I wanted one for good health and the lady said they all gave you good health, so I was going to buy a bracelet one, but the lady said that one was no good and I should get this other one which was for youyaku.  When I looked it up later, youyaku apparently means "leaping for joy", so I will keep you posted on how that goes.

After that we went for lunch, where I had a very yum curry rice, then we went to this tea house place in this old Japanese building.  It was a lovely building with a very beautiful garden but I didn't take photos because my camera died.  There were lots of people sitting around having tea and I think one lot were having a haiku meeting or something.  Then we went to the Tora-san museum.  The lady asked where I was from and if I'd seen the Tora-san movies.  She looked a bit disappointed when I said I hadn't and I felt like I should've lied and said I had.

There were lots of awesome dioramas and like a small recreation of the town, so we got to walk around feeling like giants!  There were recreations of the set and stuff too and in the gift shop you could even buy his outfit!  After that we headed back to the big smoke and went to the excelsior cafe in Nippori, then came home via Akabane so we could catch the train with Kirstie and catch the bus from there.  We figured this would save walking in the rain, not thinking we'd have to wait in the rain for the bus!  Oh wells, it is still good to catch new and exciting train lines!

Liam and some of the exchange kids are going to Yokohama tomorrow but I think I will stay home and rest, or possibly go to karaoke.  I should probably text him and tell him.  I actually don't want to do anything for the rest of Golden Week that involves getting out of my PJs!!!