I’ve kept busy the past couple weekends, doing one sort of party or another. Not to say that the weekday stuff isn’t great, too. It’s hard to believe, but we’re more than half-way through this semester! Starting pretty soon, I’m going to have to start worrying about finals and presentations. Well, I’ll go over some of the highlights of the past weeks.
Weekend before last, we had a bit of a get-together with at Gan’s house with the regular Korean crew: Dae Ki, Paku, Hwang, Gan, Hojin and Yu. Also showing up was Masumitsu, Gan’s tutor. Man, he is a funny little guy. He has this particular pronunciation when using English that makes absolutely anything funny. Anyway, we hung out, had some drinks and then headed over to karaoke until 5 in the morning. It was alright for most of us, but Paku had to stay up to meet with someone that morning. I was really surprised he chose to came along, but it was great that he did because it was my first time singing karaoke with him and Hwang, two of my Korean buddies here at the International House.
The following night, I ended up going out to a dance club with some of the North American ryugakusei. There’s this particular street in Hirosaki, called “Kaji-machi,” which is well known as the nightlife/red-light district of Hirosaki, and we went to this club called “B Booth” right in the heart of it all. It was my first time going out to a club like that in my life. It was a hip-hop affair, with everyone decked-out in the baseball hats and oversize t-shirts. I have to say, I wasn’t such a fan, but everyone else seemed to enjoy it. We went with a good crowd and they ended up staying until about 5 in the morning. I had to get out of there early because I had made a promise with my host family that I would meet them to go to Aomori the following day.
So how was the trip to Aomori then? I went with my host family to this large museum in Aomori, where they had an exhibit called “The Mysteries of the Human Body.” All the way along in the car, they were asking me to help out Riina with an English competition. She had to read a passage in front of a crowd, in her case a tiny snippet of Alice in Wonderland. I was impressed with how well she was able to do for a middle-schooler. Both of the daughters in that family are such hard workers (or are worked hard?) that it puts me to shame. Pretty soon, we arrived at the museum.
It had to be one of the most unusual exhibits I’d ever seen in a museum. It consisted of many, many real cadavers all sliced up and prepared in interesting ways, so as to get a glimpse into the human body from a multitude of angles. It started out a little creepy, but then I eventually got more into it. It was really something to see what we look like from in inside, especially when cut into slices horozontally and vertically. I know, I’m probably not making it sound to great, but really you had to be there!
That leads us to this past weekend. Friday night, I went out to an izakaya and met a student who I was a English conversation partner for the previous year! Hiro is the guy in the picture above, I guess he met Hojin who asked if he knew me, which lead to us going out. A few of the students I know here I first met by being their conversation partners for this three-week intensive English exchange at my school. We did a nomihodai at Hapachi and afterwards did some karaoke at Melody Queen. We also went out with Alex, JJ, Kozue (also in the picture above) and Yukiko. Yukiko ended up crashing during the karaoke:
Finally, I rounded out the weekend by going to see fireworks with the tanken-bu on Saturday. That’s the one cool thing about Japanese clubs: any and all cultural events in town, they will go and (at least in my case) bring plenty of alcoholic consumables. I got there early with a couple of the other members, with whom I helped to set up the grills that we would be using to cook some meat on. It worked out really well for us - we were able to have something of a private area away from the rest of the crowds, because the guy who owned the shop and parking lot we were in was an alumni of the tanken-bu.
I chatted, grilled and drank well into the night, after which Ise started going around asking who wanted to go to the “after party,” which would be at Chiba’s house, one of the first-year students in the club. I pedaled back with Ise and a few others and we chilled at Chiba’s apartment, which was quite close to where I live. I invited Hojin over as well, who was still up at around 2 in the morning. I was totally exhausted when I finally got home. The following day, I went to the onsen with Dae Ki and crew to relax and shake off some of the “hangover,” as it were.
That does it for this one, I’ll see you next time!
また、ね！
