Happy New Year! Episode III, Revenge of the...hmm. I hope no one's seeking revenge...

Well, I could go in chronological order, and update this blog according to the list I made earlier, but I'm much too excited to tell you all about my wonderful New Years Eve to do that. so here we go, out of order.

Saturday, December 31st- Sunday, January 1st.
Ahhh New Years. It seems like I have been rather short on good New Year's Eve experiences, most of them having been pretty lame in the past. So this year I was really excited to do something fun. My first thoughts were to go to Nara or Kyoto, join in the throngs of Japanese people out ringing in the new year and ancient shrines and temples. I just had to find someone to go with, as not to be alone. Well, it turned out that everyone wanted to go to Oooosaka clubbing. Scratch shrine visits. Taube, Julian, Mac, and their visiting friend Gwen from back home, had headed out to Osaka already on Friday. Lex and I joined them Saturday afternoon.
We spent the afternoon and early evening wandering around the shopping districts and in and out of arcades, where I saw one of the most bizarre things yet. Electronic Horse Racing. No, they are not betting on horses via computers, they are betting on virtual horses. Check it out:
There was also a big table, where little horses ran around a track, apparently by magnets, which people also bet on.

After wandering around with Julian and Mac, we regrouped and split up again. Julian left for the airport to pick up another one of their friends coming in, Shay. However, his flight got cancelled and he didn't make it in until Sunday. Anyway, Lex and I split off and had dinner, Lexi convinced/inspired me to get some awesome (read- hilarious) big yellow sunglasses, which I am both proud and embarrased to say I wore all night. I am starting to confuse the distinction between really ridiculous and a good idea. Then we met the rest of our crew outside our chosen club, the Underlounge. it's apparently a big foreigner bar, but it was our Japanese friends who were meeting us picked it out (Koki and Hanako).

Anyway, we had to drop our stuff off in a locker outside, so unfortunately I have no further pictures for you all. Maybe Taube will put some up on her webpage, I think she brought her camera in. I didn't want the baggage of a purse and coat and things in a crowded and hot bar and dance floor. So we all finally get in, after checking all of our stuff, and get our first drink of the night (yay!!). I pretty soon joined the growing throng of people on the dance floor, occassionally making it out to Kampai (Japanese for Cheers!) with everyone and pretty soon was pretty toasted myself. The crowd on the dance floor kept growing and growing until no one at all could dance, and it was like a big cheery happy mosh pit. All anyone could do was jump up and down together, and randomly throw hands in the air to chants of what sounded like "Oi Oi Oi". It was great.

I couldn't believe what happened next. Gogo dancers and crossdressers. The club had apparently hired them to dance on the bar and this elevated table/dancing top thing at the back of the dance floor. The guy guys were huge, and not in necessarily a good way, but were wearing weird stripey outfits that were cut like high school wrestling uniforms, and they wore funny hats. The "girls", or maybe crossdressers, wore sort of space agey rocket girl outfits and would occassionally shoot little laser like toy guns at the crowd.

Right before midnight I realized I had to find Mac and the gang, but there was absolutely no way to get to the bar from my position, so I stayed with the crowd. There were a couple of Japanese dudes around me who kept grabbing my fist out of the air to the chants of Oi Oi Oi. So when Midnight struck I might not have had someone to kiss, but I did have someone's arm around my waist and ended up getting a mouthful of confetti. I think I might have swallowed some of it. And here I thought Japanese boys were to modest to touch in public, especially strangers.

So after midnight, everyone kept drinking, Gwyn and I made numerous forays out onto the dance floor, and the crowd dissipated a bit so there was some room to dance. Lexi suggested we, "we" including myself, climb onto the stage on the back and dance in front of everyone. I guess this would be another example of me confusing "ridiculous" with "good idea", but we had a lot of fun. I guess the gogo dancers were on break, but they came back and wanted their spots back, so we climbed down and explored the rest of the club. In the back, we came across a crowd of people playing pass the bottle of champagne (later we would find two of the boys dancing on tables without their shirts on), more people wearing sunglasses inside, and a fellow JET! He was sort of mean though, so I didn't talk to him much.

After a while, Lexi split and headed out to another club to meet some other people. I was coming out of the bathroom (more on that later) when some random dude comes up to me. He introduced himself as Donnie (I think it was really Tony, but over the music and accent, I couldn't really hear). Tony was French, but he was in japan for kickboxing, muay thai to be precise. I thought it was strange, I mean, I would be in Thailand if I did muay thai. But I didn't ask, we got some champagne and joined Mac and the crew. We finished our drinks and headed to the dance floor. After dancing together for awhile, I thought he would get a kick out of one of the fine features of the club.

So we headed to the bathroom. Now, the women's bathroom has a bit of a corridor for the line. The men's bathroom has a big long mirror above the urinals. Now, this is no ordinary mirror, it's one-way. It cuts off at about chest height, but if a girl were so inclined she could watch all the different expressions on boys' faces as the pee. Some of them are really hilarious. There's the "ahhh, thank god, finally!", the "okay, let's get this over with", and of course the "checking myself out, hairs okay?" face. So I explained this to Tony, and he went in the men's room to check it out. There was no way he could get to the women's side to see what was going on, so after he was done peeing, he banged on the mirror, and I banged back, thus causing all the Japaneese dudes still peeing to flip out. All to the amusement of the Japanese girls watching. Don't worry, don't worry, the mirror cuts off at the chest. The way to and from the bathroom passes the VIP entrance, which I had been ignoring, until on the way out Tony grabbed my arm and we walked in.

Spread out on several couches, taking up virtually the entire space were a bunch of huuuuuge dudes. Tony introduced me and poured me some more champagne. They were all French. There was a Jerome, a Christian, a Mark (I later found out he was Canadian or American- I forget which), and a couple of others. After talking to some other people in the room, I found out the French dudes were really really super famous K-1 kickboxers in town for a big match earlier that night at Oooooosaka Dome. Oh. Alright. The lounge was pretty quiet, so I dragged Tony back out onto the dance floor for awhile. We returned to the lounge (I am by now, quite drunk) and the French contigency decided it was a good time to find somewhere else to go.

I alerted Mac and the others that I'd be following the French for awhile and we headed out the door. We got outside, and stood around while figuring out where to go. I started talking to Mark, and it turns out he did Aikido! Yay! Aikido! He trained some French version, which sounded softer than the American Ki Society. So while we were discussing the myriad versions of Kotegaishi (sp?) the others in my new group decided that they wanted to go back in the Underlounge. Okay. So we went back in. The night wound down, I found my way back to Himeji, Tony to his hotel and an early morning flight to France.

Getting back to Himeji, I paid a visit to the local shrine and then climbed to the top of the castle. Then home, a few phone calls home, and finally bed at 10 am.

Yesterday I googled "Osaka Dome Kickboxing," and I guess one of the guys I met is Jerome Le Banner, who apparently is one of the best fighters in the world. I mentioned this to my supervisor, Iizuka sensei, after aikido tonight. He was really excited and immediately translated it into Japanese for the rest of the dojo. A lot of the aikido people were really impressed. Iizuka Sensei told me that all Japanese people know who Le Banner is. The things I miss not having a TV. I guess if I ever run into them again, they will remember me as the totally clueless drunk girl wearing ridiculous sunglasses. Wait, by "ridiculous" do I mean "totally cool"? I have no idea anymore.

Lanterns set up for the New Year visits