Chihiro's tanjobi

A friend of mine came up with the coolest idea for a birthday present EVER. Well, that's the way it felt, anyway. Chihiro and I went to a posh hotel for a private onsen and lunch. When we got there this little old lady showed us a choice of three baths, all on balconies, made from wood, stone and ceramics, respectively. Of course we chose the wood, and then she left us to our own devices with room, shower and onsen at our disposal... The lunch was pretty good too =)

Pictured is the fantastic cake that Chiyo made - eaten at a local bar with plenty of alcohol and karaoke as accompaniment.

TLC for trees

Almost forgot - this I love! Now that winter is here, all the trees get fitted out with wicker body-warmers to keep em snug and healthy.

...and the best-behaved ones even get hats! ki-boushi I call them, to the amusement of my girlfriend...

Christmas in Japan

no need to wish for a white Christmas! This fell last night, and I'll be going three hours further North for Christmas Eve & Day, so many feet of fluffy, powdery goodness is assured =)

The Japanese take on Santa! A surreal experience, with huge-headed reindeer (OK) and also purple chickens (?) and almost drum n bass-y music interspersed in with the expected Christmas tunage.

Last of the hanami

OK, have to wind up on the Hanami pix, because there's too much cool stuff going on in my life right now and I'd like to catch up to the present eventually!

Buddhists may have some fucked-up ideas, but they always look cool, even when posing next to shell-suited grannies.

Lawrence I haven't seen for ages - bit of a recluse, but Kate is a good friend of mine. Both work in local highschools and both speak better Japanese than me. Damn them.

Photography got a bit trickier after all that shouchu and nihonshu (potato and rice wine, respectively) but the BBQs continued late into the night. Some of my Japanese friends got jobs working the commercial BBQs that sprung up, and they were nice enough to harvest lots of left-over alcohol and food for us, as well as allow the use of a spare gas range - so this was possibly the first BBQ I joined that wasn't hosted by random people - bonus!

Matsumae castle

Matsumae castle is the only real castle in Hokkaido, and is quite unusual as it was designed with artillery in mind. These days it's mostly filled with graves and temples though, andthis is a reconstruction of the central tower.

and here it is at night.

Japanese graves are always fascinating, but in the rare instances when they look a bit ramshackle and run-down they are even cooler. Japanese are usually buried after a partial cremation, with the bones still mostly intact, hence the square, closely-packed graves.

Edo period village

There was also a recreated period village with a bunch of arts, crafts, and diorama to see, including these bored samurai guys.

We didn't get to take part in the dressing up, but the kids seemed to take to it.

I especially liked the explosive popcorn-oven, whose detonation occasionally cracked out across the village making everyone jump.

Iaido sparring in Matsumae

Knackered and hungry, we stopped by a soba shop for some breakfast and this old guy tentatively approaches us and asks - in English - if we'd like to watch an Iaido demonstration nearby. Sure enough, next time we saw him he'd changed from denim to his lopping-heads-off-gear and we got to see some sword-swinging action with cherry blossoms and drizzle. Was cool.

The really fast sparring was done with mock wooden swords...

...but the real things looked plenty sharp enough

and these guys were just scary.

Moving

Am moving to a smaller, cheaper, one-room apartment on Sunday morning, so a web hiatus will be in order.

Preferably for a few months.

So I can actually get some studying done.

Damn the internet.

Snow!

Back to the present, and we have snow! Not just a light dusting like last week, but some real snow... I'd forgotten how cool it looks when it swirls around on tarmac, especially in car headlights. Snowboarding soon =)

On the way to Matsumae

This is where we stopped for some really ill-advised ramen...

Yay! 90kays and we're on the outskirts of Matsumae

mm. blossoms.

Hanami continued

So bright an early one morning, Blake and I headed off to Matsumae to do some cultural stuff. I was hungover, but it took us a while to realise his hangover was more like food poisoning from some dodgy jingis kaan consumed from the barbecue the night before...

90+ kays with diarrhoea is pretty hardcore.

A gorgeous ride though. If you're in any state to enjoy it.

Oh, you can't see his leggings here, but they were beautiful, I assure you.

Encounter on the road

This guy cracked me up - and didn't do any favours for Blake either...

The obligatory cultural comment:

These pix all took place during hanami, which literally means flower viewing, when all the cherry blossom trees in Japan bloom in a Northward-moving swathe across Japan. In Hakodate, where I'm fortunate enough to live, this coincides with a week-long national holiday.

So, it's one long week when *everyone* can cut loose and get wrecked in the beautiful parks under the pretense of being there to view the cherry blossoms - a truly beautiful time =)

It's quite possible to float from barbeque to barbeque all day and late into the night, if you're a waster like me, and a good time is had by all. Things to see: incredible clouds of white and pink cherry blossoms; semi-naked (the hat stayed on) sumo wrestling instigated by local students; a whole lot of jingis kaan; gaijin being stripped by suprisingly forward Japanese women (OK, maybe that's just me); impromptu shamisen, tanko and drum playing, and Japanese other than salarymen getting stinking drunk.


Right now winter is well under way, and although I'm looking forward to the snowboarding, I do hanker for the beautiful spring, and the 30C summer. Just a little.

mm

Welcome all, to this, my retrospective blog of my first year in Japan. I'll catch up sooner or later, but here's a few snapshots of life as a gaijin in a strange land...

How did she get it *off* in front of all these people?

...and how did she get it on *me*?

The results ain't pretty...

I still don't remember how all this happened. I know I wanted to pay my respects to this lass for wearing such a cool (read: revealing) dress, but how I ended up wearing it is lost in an alcoholic daze...