Hotel Day By Day Hamamatsu

... t involve techno-music, bright lights and glow-sticks. Gathered here were about 30 to 50 parents and children, taking turns cheering on the costumes and various dances that were being presented to them. Scattered throughout, the local students and children wear elaborate temple-gear and perform intricately complicated dances. And, three times during the night, devils come out, dressed in red with large-nosed, very, very scary painted ogre-masks.

This is Hanamatsuri.

This ...

... my coaches, and tried my best to act natural and ignore the camera 4 feet from my sitting spot.

I think I'm getting used to this celebrity business out here in Japan. It all starts with expressing your interest in something. But perhaps being the only foreigner within 50km from this village of 1500 might have something to do with it.

Interview is on Thursday and I'll do my best to obtain a copy of the story, which could run anywhere from 2 to 10 minutes. I have no idea.

... back into that calmness of familiarity. But does the fish really know what's outside the deep, dark blue of his home until he hops out for a peek, or gets caught by a hook? I'm sure I've swallowed the bait, hook and all by now. But I think the less I've struggled to get free of this feeling of awkwardness, the easier it's become to adjust to it.

Oh and on a side-note: I've managed to make my very first, solo-sushi this evening. Freakin' delicious!

... be slowing down on the videos I post. I got my internet bill, and despite how freakin slow the speed is, I guess they took record of how many bites I sent (or received). Yea, no more $100 bills. So some things might just have to wait for a 'welcome back' presentation, and the such.

As for the hike I hinted at, I'll wait until I get the pictures up before I talk about it. It was AMAZING. It even compares with Alberta's hikes, albeit a bit more dangerous...

... Now just to make it harder, I'm going to stick rivers, mountains, trees, and piles of dirt between you and the hole. OH, and did I mention, that you'll have to wack at this wee ball with a wee stick? Har har har" and all that jazz. The point is, it's fun because it's a pointless challenge. Back in the days before telegrams or camel-riding, some poor sucker who was quicker on his feet than others had to deliver messages, well ...

... It was scary. I had these Karate fathers CARRY their kids in one hand, and drop-fly-kick anything that moved around them. I had bruises! But I didn't pop my balloon.

There were other races, of course. Relay races, 100m dashes for the kids, a massive 60+ tug of war, and many, many others competitions. I was exhausted by the end of the day, having spent the night before drinking in Toei with some of my buddies at the local bar (that's another story, oh boy ...

... the last few steps to the temple.

I saw this same procession on a much larger scale in Toei's festival, which, if you recall, involved a larger number of people and a larger temple. Toei has hilly roads, too. Ask me what I prefer, and I couldn't tell you; there's no way I'd willingly like to participate in the Taguchi festival's shrine-tugging practice. That might either make me feel bad for drinking them all under the table, or really sick. Probably a combination of both ...

... culture: an acceptance of the different.
A friend told me once that in Japan, "the nail that stands crooked, gets hammered straight". I hate using encompassing metaphors, but I would gladly nail this one to educational system.
Well, enough ranting. I respect it, yet it's so foreign to me still. Got to love what foreign experiences teach you.

So I spent the majority of the day wandering from school to school, saying hello to students, teachers, cheering mothers ...

... Japanese and was born in the US. Also, according to a couple of websites that I read (dunno how true they are, they were supposedly doing a literal translation of the actual japanese lawbooks) things like interrogation with "physical coercion" read: beatings, are legal in Japanese jails. No such thing as Writ of Habeas Corpus here. They should study more latin.. Basically, don't get arrested by the Japanese government. However, this is apparently quite easy - There ...

On Sunday Ewa`s husband Makoto had the day off, so kindly volunteered to spend it driving us around the region. We drove towards Mount Fuji ("Fuji-San"), but it was a cloudy day and the volcano is notorious for its shyness. Only a few kilometres away, we still couldn`t even tell in which direction to search the sky. We gave up the hunt for the mountain in favor of a ...