The Awesomeness which is.

This weekend! Wahooo! So, as you may have deduced, this weekend was amazing, and must be broken up into several segments. So here goes.

I. FRIDAY- more buttcheeks than you could ever imagine
So Friday night there was a local festival in the nearby town of Aboshi. After a few delays of finding someone to go with me, I found my friend Lexi and we boarded the train and took off. We exited the train, and took a look around- we had no idea which way to go. So, we wandered out of the station, and towards some cops directing traffic- when in doubt, look for a crowd of people and follow. Well, we found a crowd, and no ordinary crowd was this. It was a huge mass of men in a circle, wearing traditional loinclothes (fundoshi) in the cold, holding long bamboo sticks. In the middle, one guy was singing/ chanting, and at certain moments, everyone would answer. Then suddenly, everyone on the outside of the circle would rush in, bang their sticks together, and form a huge mass. Within the mass, they would try and push each other, still with sticks raised, then suddenly it would dissolve and everyone would peacefully go back to the edge of the circle. After awhile, the mass of fundoshied men would proceed down the street to the next major intersection to hold up the maximum amount of traffic. So we followed the "booty trail" and fell in with the rest of the town that was trailing them. We then befriended this hilarious drunk old guy who was running around trying to irritate everyone he could find it seemed like. First he ran up to this lady, "my wife"- she yells at him. This other old guy "my father"- who then proceeds to whack him with his bamboo lantern. Then he bought us some sake, and gave Lexi a beer, and we stopped and watched the circle stick whacking singing thing again. We stopped to meet up with some other friends at a 711, and lost our old guy, but then a new group came after the first group. This group had a gian, 7 foot tall lantern in the middle of the circle. When it was time to rush the circle again, they all rushed in and beat the crap out of the paper lantern until it was smithereens. Lexi and I decided we should follow this group, cause they had another lantern we wanted to see smashed, so we set off after them. We soon found ourselfves out in the middle of nowhere, between two ricefields in the dark. We kept getting all these strange looks, I think because it was a country town we fell in with, and there weren't any other foreigners around. Eventually we stop, and people trade in their bamboo whacking sticks for identical sticks but with paper lanterns attached. While all this is happening, a few of the older men start talking to us- the standard, where are you from, where are you teaching, etc etc. but then they hand us our own lanterns on bamboo sticks, and now we're part of the town! yeah! So they push us up front to be with the junior high school kids (all with their own lanterns) and we go marching along, until the path opens up, and suddenly we're in the middle of this bright huge festival in front of the shrine and all these camera crews show up to get pictures of the foreigners with lanterns. I tried to ignore them and act "natural" but then they shouted at us to pose, I'm a celebrity! So we push our way through and realize only the boys have lanterns. So all the JH school boys make a circle, and start banging their lantern bamboo poles on the ground fiercely, causing the candle to go out, then on some signal, they all rushed in and completely smashed their lanterns to pieces.
We managed to lose that group again and headed for the festival food stands. I tried some excellent little balls that were covered in sesame seeds and had some sweet red bean paste in the center. Something else called "hashimaki"- or chopsticks roll. It was like a flat piece of dough with Korean kimchi (spicyness!) in the center, rolled up on the chopsticks, with some sweet sauce on the outside and grilled. Gooey goodness! Although early, we had to head back to the station to catch the last train, so we started to leave and who should we find? Our drunk old dude friend!
So we started following that town again, and they gave us their happi coats to wear while walking with them and tied theiry bright yellow bands on our heads- this of course attracted more cameras who wanted to take pictures of us. So then the next time the group stopped, they had us pose with the mikoshi (portable shrine) and act like we were carrying it. So we finally left the procession, and about 5 or 6 of the dudes walked with us to the train station, which was great beacause we were totally lost. They insisted we keep the happi coats- which was really really nice of them, and they gave us these necklaces with a wooden square that says the town name on one side and "protection" on the other.
So Lexi and I made it back to Himeji, which was completely dead, and we stayed up far too late cruising the bars, looking for any people out.

II. SATURDAY-
Started off as the most relaxing and peaceful day imaginable. I biked around town awhile, it's just the start of fall and the weather here is perfect. I wandered down to starbucks, wrote some letters, studied Japanese and waited around for Lexi to call me. I needed her help- desperately one might venture to say. I needed Lexi to help translate at the hairdresser for me. I haven't gotten my haircut since leaving the US, about 3 1/2 months ago, and things were out of control. I made it into the salon chair, and sat horrified for an hour as more and more hair started flying off. We had figured out that we would keep it long, but- we didn't establish how much hair to keep long. Yes, I now have a Japanese hairstyle. Parts of it are still long, but most of it has been severely layered so that most of it is still short. It will be less work I imagine, but I already miss my hair. It made a huge pile on the floor, they had to do a mid-cut sweep. I'm a bit sad- I wanted to donate my hair when I finally got it cut- but it happened without expeciting it, and I didn't know quite how to tell them that I wanted to take my hair with me.
Anyway, I'll take a picture and post it- then you can leave your comments. I missed aikido Saturday, due to a combination of the haircut taking forever, my dogi (uniform) still being wet from the wash, and not feeling well. So I was going to stay in and go to bed early, make sure I didn't aggravate whatever I was fighting, but then my friend reminded me about the Mitsubishi party. Mitsubishi party? you ask? Indeed. So my friend Makoto picked me up and we headed over to our friend Mike's apartment, who lives in the same building as all these foreigners who are here working for Mitsubishi. Let's just say that Lexi and I were the life of the party. We had a great time amazing the Japanese guys with 1- my sad attempt to speak Japanese and 2- Lexi's ability to speak Japanese. I don't know how it works both ways, but who cares? Anyway, so we arrived, and there was this guy without his shirt on out on the porch- it's raining and really cold out. We could already tell this guy was going to be a riot. While he still had his pants on, most of the guys made fun of him and tried to drop ice down his pants. When successful, he would hop around the kitchen until the offensive piece of ice fell out. So throughout the night, he ends up losing most of his clothes, and is just walking around in his boxers. I think some of the guys wanted to strip too- but they were too shy. Mad props to naked judo guy. So I made it home by 2:30, thanks to Makoto for the lift and went to bed, which leads us to...

SUNDAY- much less interesting than the last 2 days, but maybe worth a mention.
Ahhh, sunday, the day of the week where I call my Japanese tutor and cancel on him. Well, today I couldn't get a hold of him, so I went to meet him anyway, although I could only stay for the first 1/3 of our time. I had an aikido date to make. I showed up at the Sanyo train station 10 minutes early to meet my dojo contact, but alas! no show! so I called my aikido translator, who informed me that crap! I was at the wrong sanyo. I was supposed to be at Sanyo junior high school. crap crap crap. So I biked like mad to get there, then ended up waiting 'cause my contact had already left. So my translator called, said someone would come and meet me, so I'm waiting for my ride, and a dude on a motorcycle shows up. Awesome! I was so excited I would get to ride on a motorcycle! But no, this was not to be, I was to follow the motorcycle on my bike to the other dojo. Crap! Again! So I had another mad sprint on my bike, this one uphill and chasing a motorcycle to get to the dojo. I show up, now 45 minutes late for lunch, and while finishing up my shrimp and egg ricey dish, I find out that today is no ordinary training! Today was apparently 2ndkyu and up (I'm 1st kyu- or blackbelt minus one test) training. Which means we beat the crap out of each other. I was soooooo lost and confused and in pain. Ahhhhhhh. So then I came back, had a work meeting, and cooked some dinner- something with these konnyaku noodles, eggplant, carrots, onion, and some wierd Chinese sauce I bought. It was delicious! And now I'm heading to the shower and bed.
And, lest anyone forget- today is Courtney's (my sister) birthday! everyone call or write her and wish her a happy 25th!!!! So, goodnight everyone!