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so the days following new years were pretty tame.. record hunting and hanging out mostly. i found a tiny second hand record shop in terramachi and found "leadbelly, the early years 1935-1940 narrated by woody guthrie" in good condition for about 10 bucks. score.
the night of the fifth, emy, noaad, victor, bensan and i went to kyoto eki and hopped a night bus to nagano for our snowboarding adventure. as usual, we were the only foreigners standing about waiting for the bus and solicited some curious stares. once on the bus, we traveled for 7 hours to nagano, making occasional potty breaks for the dude in front of us who was blowing chow the whole way. we arrived in nagano at 6am (a memorable quote: "where are we?" "hell... frozen over."), to about 7 feet of snow and subzero temperatures. ben-san (who is japanese.. that's his "western name" his japaense name is akihiro), managed to find our ryokan (lodge) and we all set off dragging our luggage up and down the streets of nagano through the snow in the dark. the owners of the ryokan stuck us in a back room that felt the same temperature, and we tried to sleep for an hour or so before we set out to pick up our equipment. ben was awesome enough to lend us all snowpants, coats, goggles and gloves, so all we needed were boots and boards. nagano happens to be a maze, so it took us a bit to find the place, but we eventually gathered our boards and hit the sloaps. turns out, i'm not the most skilled snowboarder in the world, but as i told bethany, thankfully my face was there to break my fall. i had a hell of a time simply trying to get myself up on the board, but once i was there i was alright and able to turn left and right and get myself around. i took a couple nasty spills (when i said my face was there to break my fall, i'm not joking.), but overall i had a lot of fun. we stayed out until about 3 when we were able to check into our ryokan, and headed back. turns out, our lovely ryokan only let us turn on the heater in our rooms for about 7 hours a day, you had to pay for the tv, etc etc. we spread all of our futons out on the tatami and layered as many comforters as possible on top of eachother and huddled in the cold. i think the people who worked there were getting really irritated with us towards the end; they would announce dinner by knocking on our door and saying SHOKOJI DOOZO, but everytime they came around, we were all asleep and it'd take us about an hour to get down to dinner and by that time everyone else was finished and had left. it became a big joke to us, we kept yelling SHOKOJI DOOZO through out the trip. poor noaad got really sick with the flu or something the first night and spent the second day inside.. i spent some time inside as well.. i could barely move my arms or legs after wiping out so many times. we visited some super tiny onsen (communal baths) and hung out and played cards at night. saturday, the last day of the trip, we had to turn in our equipment and check out at 10 am, but our bus didn't leave until 8pm. ben went snowboarding while the rest of us attempted to walk around and find onsen and sightsee, but in the freezing temperatures and massive amounts of snow, it was quite difficult. our feet were all wet and we were pretty miserable, so i treated everyone to breakfast and we managed to buy some omiyage before retreating back to the ryokan and camping out in front of a portable heater we managed to procure. the afternoon was spent playing cards and talking.. the only time we ventured out again was to the convenience store for food and plastic bags to wrap our feet in to keep them dry. we caught the bus at 8, arrived back in kyoto at 4:30am (the bus kept making really really long stops.. dont know why), and i was in bed by 5am. short, cold, but very fun trip. a good opportunity to get to know the kids i was with.. ben is now one of my favorite gaidai students.. he laughs like whiney the pooh and talks in his sleep. he's also probably the fastest sleeper i've ever met.. he'd be jumping off the walls hyper and snowboarding like crazy, then we'd come inside, he'd lay down on his futon fully clothed and be snoring 2 minutes later, no joke.
us all on the bus out to nagano
nagano when we arrived at 6am
!
emy taking a picture of victor laying on a snow bank
ben passed out as noaad studies
"victor you look like a ballerina! do a ballet move!" what?
emy and ben at dinner. the ryokan provided the food and all the guests ate at the same time in the same room.
one of our meals. we had the same smoked salmon every meal.
our really messy room, futons wall to wall
nagano the day we tried to explore
"ok boys, say 'i'm cold!'"
emy and i
some little girls and the snowbunnies they made
emy modeling our sexy plastic bag footwear
so, i slept until about noon yesterday and then spent the day running errands before i met kuriharo-san for another meeting. his wife was supposed to come with this time, but he said since she went to a shrine last night, she couldn't come. i'm not sure if that means she was tired or sick or isn't allowed to go out two nights in a row, or as rebecca suggested, was hitting the sacrimental sake a little hard or what. supposedly she's coming next time. anyway, kuniharo-san and i went to gion to a restaurant named nobe which was only 3 tables and a small bar. and there i ate..... FUGU. read this link if you don't know what it is.. but basically it's a super poisonous blowfish that has to be really specially prepared or else you'll die, and so it's like at least 100 bucks a setting. it was pretty good.. we had raw fugu, and fugu skin that you dip in a sauce.. fish egg sacs (i always forget that name), and a really good rice and fish soup called ojiya or something.. we also have sakanayaki, when you take raw fish and grill it on a little grill on your table. expecting it all to be boneless, like sashimi, i stupidly put an entire piece in my mouth and had to pick the bones apart. THEN i realized what i was eating was, in fact, fish HEAD. i realized this when i noticed one of the pieces had an eye. japanese people would sooner die than eat american beef, but they don't bat an eyelash while they are devouring stuff like that. my god.
after the meal and some fugu sake, we went to the ebessan matsuri in gion, a festival where people go to pray for good business in the coming year. we stood in a mass of people waiting to get to the shrine where i rang the bell and prayed for goodfortune for my family in the middle of a gazillion japaense people who were staring at me because i was speaking japanese. on the alter was a huge tuna for some reason.. not sure why. but it was big. at this matsuri, everyone gets large bamboo branches with all kinds of stuff hanging off of them that represent different wishes for the coming year, and they walk back from the shrine holding them high above their heads. i got one with a little mobile with people on it that is supposed to bring good friends to me in the current year, or "many boyfriends" as kuriharo was saying. i also got a maikochan keychain and a really cool apron made our of parts of a recycled kimono (everyone wears aprons here when they cook.. it's weird.) after that i headed home and today was the first day of class. we all have presentations due in intercultural awareness, but we've all also pretty much boycotted the class and plan to make up our presentations on the spot. we're forced to enroll in that class so japanese people can practice speaking english with us.. it's in no way beneficial for the foreign students. this presentation is a 10 minute speech on something to do with japan, and a 1 page paper all in english. so i'm going to get up there and ramble about the music scene for ten minutes and call it a night. i hope i'm in enda's group.. he's doing his presentation on beer and has samples!
people waiting to pray at the alter of the ebisu-sama shrine
the mobiles representing good friends
people walking around the matsuri with their bamboo stalks
