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Published: March 8th 2006
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Fire...
Da da daa! FIRE! Well, just had a great day... And by great I mean that I did not freeze. The weather was rather pleasant in fact, though the sun was that insipid northern hemisphere you-can-see-it-but-you-can't-feel-it type of thing. The weekend's weather was good too. There is hope for my toes afterall.
Enough boring mumble... About my weekend. It started on a jolly note on friday night with a trip down to one of the local Izakayas (not sure how close that is to romanji spelling). One of my mates celebrated her birthday on thurday so we had to celebrate it the Japanese way: SAKE all the way! Tried out several Japanese bar snacks, a lil more interesting than the conventional bowl of peanuts! We had deepfried tofu with veg in some saucy stuff, salty soybeans in pods that you snap open (surprisingly delicious) and potaytofureyes (no prizes for guessing what that was like). After Terhi's musical antics (many different shaped vessels + hashi + one tipsy finn) we pushed our bikes down to a Karaoke (yes indeed) place and sung our hearts out. I did it, believe it or not, girls! But in a booth, of course. No Firkin. We rounded off the
Gambatte!
A New Yorker, a Finn, a Nihonjin and a Tenneseeean.... Note that the only one not drinking sake is the only actual Japanese person. Makes you wonder...
evening by watching the antics of locals and other foreign students in the games arcade. Very Japanese entertainment, I must tell you.
On saturday morning I biked down to Hirakata City for a haircut. I've been fascinated by the current trend in girls haircuts since I got here. They are all pretty and layered (hectically layer - SA's got nothing on how they do it here). Since it was long overdue, I dived in, had my golden locks chopped and survived. I'm quite pleased with the result, actually, but the process was the real adventure! Think Japanese hairdresser with very elementary engrish skills, Kim with pre-elementary Japanese skills and my roommate (thank goodness) who can actually converse in a fair bit of both. Between the three of us we avoided shaving all my hair off. Note though, that Steph had to leave me by myself in the hair salon for quite some time... After two hours in the hairdresser's chair I emerged all shampoo-ad like and beautiful. Then I climbed back on my bike and rode a coupla kms home. Needless to say that the effect was not quite the same when I got back to Seminar house 4.
Haircutto
Chop Chop. In the afternoon I went to Geeksville, ah sorry, Den Den Town with a friend. Den Den Town is a shopping street famed for its cheap electronics and videogame related stuff. Ie shops of several floors packed with animae character figurines, costumes and other strange paraphenalia. Not quite my scene, but it was interesting nonetheless, especially coz I had an accurate running commentary from Levi. I saw some of the most amazing audio equipment I've seen in my life. Speakers that looked more like beautiful abstract art pieces, editing equipment for susan to drool over and some all round cool stuff. We had coffee in a lil Kissaten called "Holly's Cafe" which had the coolest coffee making thing. It looked more like a chemistry set than a coffee maker. It was supposed to be Dutch coffee. Not quite sure how the Dutch make their coffee, but anywho. That really made the trip worthwhile for me, I'm such a nerd, I know! Before Den Den Town we made two interesting discoveries. 1 - an exhibition of "moleskine" notebooks that were given to various artists etc, from graphic artists and musicians, to preschoolers. We stumbled across it quite by accident in
LALALA
1st attempt at turning the camera on myself... Yes, I'll admit that I did edit the image before posting... a beeg bookstore. 2 - we discovered an ornate, fancy smanchy hall inside the subway! A perfect example of the Japanese having so much money during the 80s that they couldn't find sensible ways to spend it all. It screamed: "Hey, I was built coz some dude said : why not waste money on a marble floor in a dingy subway, just coz we can..." The irony : I only saw about 4 people walking through it on a busy Saturday.
Sunday I emerged from my futon way too early for a field trip to Nara for my Architecture class. We went to the Todaiji again, which I thought would be pretty boring since I'd already seen the famous beeg Buddha, however, with a running commentary from my professor I actually paid attention to all the details ( * have to write a 5 page paper on this complex...*) and actually learnt a lot of interesting stuff about Buddhism. After the sight-see cum lecture I explored Kasuga shrine (not "Kasouga" - the place I go on holiday in the Eastern Cape) and the Nara Park which is really beautiful. It reminded me of the forest in Tsikamma (?), very
peaceful and full of old growth trees. We stuck around for the fire festival in the evening. For the first two weeks of March the monks at a nearby shrine put on a spectacular display with torches made of long bamboo poles. It has to do with a cleansing ritual, involving washing a Buddha at about 2 in the morning. Don't think I'll get round to seeing that part of the ritual for some reason.
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Lynda Sprong
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Hi Kim, your hair cut looks great! Lynda