Advertisement
Published: September 12th 2005
Today with a group of guys I met from Union college which may be in New York I toured Himejijo or for the laymen Himeji Castle. Ok Ill stop being a prick but It was a beautiful castle. Originally A fort was built in its present location in 1333 but the castle in its current form was completed in 1609. It has been lived in by many famous Japanese such as Tokugawa Ieyasu. The castle was amazing, from the architecture to its, sheer overpowering size. But the real highlight of the day was the party we ran across before we went in the castle. In front of Himejijo is a park, and in the park on this day there just happen to be some kind of international friendship party group, it was a party of maybe 40 or 50 Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans, but when they saw a group or 9 or so Americans walk by they started waving us all over to sit down and join them, we were a little hesitant at first but once we came over we were offered free beer, food, and sake. So we knew they were good people. It was a strange, strange party
but it was good. There was one young very attractive girl singing, I think she may have been paid to sing, many old women and men doing horrible karaoke and some guy dressed as a samurai who also took the mic a time or two. And here is the best/weirdest part, towards the end of our stay at this party they kept wanting us to dance with these old ladies and one of the guys from Union, Mike did dance with them a bit and then a little later they asked us all to get up and dance and for some reason we all did, we danced some traditional Hokkaido fisherman’s dance, not that any of us knew it but some girl stood in front and enthusiastically led us through the motions as she sung the tune as well, so here we are 7 American college guys dancing in front of 50 mostly old Japanese people an dthey loved it they didn’t even laugh, I think we were the only ones laughing they loved it. It was maybe one of the weirdest things I will do in this lifetime. After all that fun we toured the castle and after touring
the castle we went on to Kobe to walk around and eat dinner, the waterfront district in Kobe was beautiful at night and the china town was pretty interesting, many cheap souvenirs and really expensive places to eat. But all in all it was a memorable day.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.086s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 6; qc: 55; dbt: 0.0525s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
deleted_6757
deleted_6757
tiny dancer
sounds like you needed to buff up on your karate kid part 2... do a little bone dance for the people. just gotta look out for the bad guy sneaking up on you from behind as he slides down the lights while you're eyeing the cute girl showing you the moves in front of you.