Culture Explosion!

Hey ya’ll.

So an exciting weekend was had in several different ways. On Friday was the aforementioned “party” that was thrown by TUJ for all of the students. They held it at this super smoky club in Roppongi and had a whole bunch of “culture-y” events for our viewing pleasure. We saw koto and shamisen (traditional Japanese instruments) player s, calligraphy artists, these two guys that painted pictures of you based on your “aura” (no idea what my aura would look like, but I’d guess it’d probably look like some sort of pile of dirty towels or something…), and more. The Sakura Blossom Queen (pictured with me, below, on the right side) also made a showing. I’m not quite sure what is so special about being said “Queen” but she gets to travel to different Sakura Blossom festivals and wave with her tiara on. By far the best part was John Gauntner, “The Sake Guy”. I mean, this guy knew EVERYTHING about sake imaginable, it was quite unreal. He brought us through the history of sake, how to tell good from bad, what prices to pay, etc. I’ll pass on one piece of advice to you guys: remember the word “Ginjo”. If the sake has “Ginjo” anywhere in it’s name, its good quality, according to him. They then had samples of 7 types of sake that you could try, and you were SUPPOSED to cross out the ones you drank on a card to prevent overconsumption, but obviously, that didn’t happen with many a-people.

Saturday I ventured off to Ueno Park to see some museums. The Western Art Museum happened to be closed, so I went to the Tokyo National Museum and saw a bunch of cool historical relics and junk like that. By far the coolest part of the day is when I happened upon a huge crowd of people in the middle of the park that were there for an event thrown by the Japanese Baseball League. There were 5 or 6 pro Japanese players there playing catch with a bunch of kids. It was really cool – I hung out for a while and took some pictures, even though I really didn’t know who any of the players were. According to the Japanese I talked to, one said “I hate baseball but I like crowds” and another said “Oh that guy is super famous but I forgot why” and another said “Baseballs sort of look like flying onions”, though I think something might have been lost in translation (not the movie!!!) there.

On Sunday me and my friend Dave decided to go see an Asian (yes, Asian) Hockey League game between the Seibu Prince Rabbits and the Nikko Ice Bucks. It was QUITE the experience. Most of the rules and stuff were the same, but the atmosphere was totally different. It was kind of like a soccer crowd, in a way, because everyone had huge flags and bass drums and were screaming and were lighting bonfires (not really) and basically just having a great time. In between periods, there were these little 5 year old cheerleader girls that sang some song and danced around and looked really cute. It was certainly a lot of fun. I’m quite excited for baseball season to start here in March so I can go and see what that is like as well.

Today, I started my internship at the Tokyo International School as a 6^th grade volunteer. Nothing TOO exciting happened, but being there definitely puts some energy into you and it was nice meeting a bunch of the kids. I go back on Thursday for “Humanities” lessons. They are learning about the brain. And you KNOW that it is a super-liberal school when the teacher I work with came up to me and pointed out the bulletin board where the kids just post any philosophical questions or riddles that they have for other people to ponder.

Fun!

I was told, also, that my blog needed more pics, so I put in some more for your viewing pleasure.