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Fire Eater
Cool multi-purpose fire dancer / eater. Observe his awesomeness. Written on Saturday
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Vegan Meal
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We had a Vegan meal today that was nothing short of amazing. Funded by the generous Mrs. Bing, we ate at an extremely beautiful restaurant that was in / was a Buddhist a temple. Apparently in China, Buddhist monks developed a vegan style of cooking over centuries that focused on creative preparation, color, and of course, exquisite taste. What was served to us was the luxurious version of that. After entering the temple, we took off our shoes and padded around the soft wooden floors to the inner gardens, where we were given an indoor room with glass walls. We arranged ourselves and sat down at the tables, enjoying the meticulously prepared meal that was brought to us course by course. It lasted around three hours, and had (I think) nine courses. The food was quite amazing, despite being vegan, and gave me a chance to try some crazy things I've never eaten before, from fruits I've never seen before and probably have no natural English name to the exquisite purple tree blossoms lightly tempura-ed. Good times, all in all.
Ridiculous luxury enjoyed: someone came and turned around all our shoes to
The river
A picture taken of the people down by the river. Everyone there is socializing, and people extend much further than this flash radius. face the exit so that when we returned to the front they were conveniently pointed in the correct direction.
Friday Evening
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After the meal, I walked back to the center with two guys I don't talk to that much, and had a great time just chatting. They both had some really interesting insights into Japan, and a few ideas about what I want to do in the future began germinating in that conversation. In any case, it was a delightful, relaxing walk through the city. I hung around the center, then, until a couple of us decided to head out for dinner before meeting up with everyone else. We went to Shakey's Pizza, which may or may not exist in the U.S., where we had an all-you-can-eat pizza and spaghetti buffet for only like $9 (a fantastic deal here). The pizza wasn't fantastic but definitely interesting ("Are these potatoes?" "Wha - mayonnaise?" "Chewy, chewy - uh, octopus?"), but it was great to get full for a change. Then we met up with everyone else and started another long and crazy evening, which began at a Karaoke place. It was the first one I've been to since the first
Sparklers.
Sparklers and fun! week here, but it was inexpensive (nomihodai + karoke 700 yen per hour). And the booth they gave us was nice, the songs had actually instrument recordings instead of MIDI notes, and they made drinks quickly and strongly. We had a fantastic time singing (I left for the bathroom, and when it became quiet between muzak background songs, I could vaguely hear a bunch of foreigners yelling "Y - M - C - A"). We got delightfully inebriated, paid for one hour when we stayed for two (don't know why they gave us a discount), and left to go down to the river.
The river is a happening place. When we arrived, there was a fire dancer who subsequently ate said fire, but over the night there were at least two music groups, the fire dancer, sparklers and fireworks, lots of socializing, and dancing. Check out the various pictures. We, by chance, ran into another group of SCTI students, and I left with them briefly to go light sparklers. I enjoyed that tremendously, despite the difficulty both in lighting them and keeping them lit. At some point we began talking to other people and I rejoined the original group.
Carel
Carel talks to Sang and Han with a UC Davis girl in the background. We found this guy Reagan from Indonesia who had some interesting stories, met a few locals, and found a group of UC Davis girls who joined us for the rest of the night, along with two awesome guys by the names of Toby and Carel. I was very confused when we first started talking to the UC Davis girls because I assumed Japanese was the lingua franca of the place, but they had only been studying it for a month and couldn't understand what I was saying. Eventually I figured out that they weren't trying to talk to me in English because I was American but because they also were, and was given the pleasure of English elocution for a change.
Eventually, we left the river and went to some dive in a back alley. It was really minimalist with lots of plaster, stucco, and a long, candlelit bar crenellated with bottles of various alcohols. Our group of 12, though, was too large to be contained by this place, so we left and headed for "Bar Isn't It." Yeah, that's really the name. This is supposed to be where the sleaze of Japanese society oozes towards (despite a large percentage of said ooze being female) and was warned by Toby to save my money and not pay the cover charge. So Toby grabbed a bottle of a decent Chilean wine and he, Han, and I talked outside the club for a couple of hours while they danced within. Eventually the UC Davis girls left, except for the two who were being most aggressively pursued, and members of our own SCTI faction drifted back home, except for Han, Max, Sang, Stephen, and I.
We returned to the river and stayed out until the light of dawn, the hum of the first subway, and the light drizzle of the morning rain before dispersing.
But wait! Toby and Carel are cool enough to merit their own paragraph.
Toby and Carel are in some sort of worldwide charity exchange program. I didn't get the full details, and forgot to follow up later on to flesh them out, but they lucked out. They've been living in a Buddhist temple for eight months now, performing such monkly duties as cleansing, sweeping the grounds, and cleaning the temple. Carel is from Holland and is roommates with Toby who hails from North Umberland (I may have been waiting my whole life for an excuse to say North Umberland) in the U.K. They've become really familiar with the place, and are both quite young - 19 and 20 - but well traveled, cosmopolitan, and good people. Although they declare themselves "too Bohemian for cell phones" we have their email and it would be fun to have them show us around at some point in the future.
~Danny
P.S. Curses! I have no good pictures of Toby and Carel yet, nor of that cool circle shack. I promise I'll get some.
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dk
non-member comment
Snap!
Maaan it looks like you're having a fantastic time there! Hope everything continues to go well. I just want you to know I'll be disappointed if I don't start reading about the new hit sensation sweeping the Japanese nation known as "The Danny Neil Experience," composed primarily of you and one of those bitchin double guitars. That is all.