Fun in Tokyo

Very fun, I walked my feet off but saw a piece of Tokyo! The kabuki was extremely interesting. For 400 yen I was able to hear the tragic stories on an English headset, which was very good as I'm sure I wouldn't have had a clue otherwise. The first play was the story of two lovers from different warring families. When the guy's family attacked the girl's family, they demanded the head of the princess, but the head of his girlfriend was taken instead. He was devastated and killed himself. Their great love then allowed them to meet for a while in the dreamland of the flowers and butterflies, but ulitmately they were both dragged away and burned in hell. Set two was a bit lighter, with a man who made a doll in the shape of a woman he admired. The doll came to life but moved like a man because he had put his own soul into creating her. When he gave her a mirror, however, she began to move and dance like a woman. The story then took a left turn that I missed and suddenly a bunch of samurai showed up and demanded the head of a princess that the doll-maker was apparently hiding in the house. The princess escaped and the man fought off about 12 carpenters that did flips as he attacked them with various carpentry tools. It was about 1.5 hours total, standing room only at the top of the theater, and I think it was the highlight of my Tokyo trip.

After the kabuki we (two other people from the EAPSI program and I) headed for the river in Odaiba to watch the fireworks along with thousands of other people with the same idea, and two hours of spectacular fireworks commenced. There were smiley faces, hearts, cat shapes, UFOs, incredible color combinations, and multiple rapid-fire sequences that we only see as the grand finale in the U.S. We had seen enough after an hour however and tried to head back onto the mainland early to beat the crowds. No such luck, we waited in line for around 40 minutes before getting crammed onto the train like a bunch of sardines. Eventually we met up with another EAPSI person and her Japanese friend and we all rented a karaoke room for an hour. Tooooooo much fun! When everyone has had a drink, it sounds pretty good. Noooooo I didn't get drunk mom!

I stayed with a girl in Tokyo and arose the next morning for a day of endless walking that included visiting some huge shrines and a 5-story pagoda, taking a long ferry ride on the river that was still too hot, finding out we weren't wearing nice enough clothes to eat at the New York Grill, eating lunch at an Indian restaurant that played 80's American songs, and finally heading back to Ueno station. Everybody went separate ways around 4pm, but after a good Starbucks kick I headed over to Ueno Park to see what I could see before the long trainride back to Maebashi. I climbed the hill to the park to find a concert of some sort going on -- lots of different groups singing Acapella. Nice! I guess they were singing about love. "Ai." It's a good guess anyway. When that was over I was adopted by an older man from Greece who was speed-walking the park in an attempt to see absolutely everything before dark. He could barely speak English and was glad I could at least help find the shrines that had an English label on the map. At each one he would stop and take a video, reading from his Greek tour-guide, then quick pack up and race to the next one. He wore me out, but it's not every day I get to hang out with a guy from Greece so I stuck with it until dark and then headed back to Ueno station for some MacDs dinner and 1.5 hours of standing on the train that was jam-packed until we got to Takasaki, at which point all but about 6 people remained for three more stops to Maebashi. Just before getting on the train a guy from Peru came over and asked me if I could speak Spanish. "Hai, sukoshi," I said, in Japanese. The next half hour was then a painfully confusing work-out for my poor tired brain that twisted Japanese and Spanish around in a sad mangled way that eventually turned into assuring him that the train to Maebashi would stop at Honjo, where he wanted to get off. Mid train-ride I heard him speak some Japanese to another person, so then was confused as to why he tried to ask me about the trains... and then he asked if he could take my picture and I moved into creep analysis mode. "Porque?" Ahh. Because I was very pretty. I appreciate the compliment, but was glad he got off at Honjo. If not I would have had about 8 stops to figure out how to say "there is a creepy guy following me" in Japanese.

At long last I found a bus to take me home, confused the bus driver again in my attempts to put the money in the right place, finally resorting to holding out my had and letting him pick up the money and put it in the right slot. I stopped at Saty for some food, took a very long cold shower, and died for a good 11 hours. It is exhausting being a tourist.

So today was Monday, back to work for everyone even though it is officially a holiday. At 7pm everyone but Dr. Kuromi headed up to the roof with beer and watermelon to watch the Maebashi fireworks display. Amazing, once again. There were two hours of them, so after about 45 minutes Atsuko, Tamura-san, Jiamei and I headed for the Tone River to watch them up close and see the lighting of the bridge. Most of the ladies were all dressed up in their Yukatas, so I had as much fun watching them as the fireworks. At last I tried the tako-yaki (octopus cake), and it wasn't bad. I think it could be better without the octopus. The guys making the tako-yaki like to hold up boiled octopi and yell at people. It's a new experience for me, I've never had anyone yell at me while waving a boiled octopus.

On the way back Tamura-san spotted a snake crawling up a tree by the sidewalk, grabbed it by the tail, then walked it around the sidewalk until he could catch its head. Ooooooooh that was not nice. It was the biggest snake I've seen in a long time. But I've never seen Tamura-san that excited about anything. The guy just loves snakes. He had Atsuko take his picture with it and then he let it go and we found Jiamei hiding up ahead. From there we went and visited Tamura-san's family of magnificent bugs and fish. Beetle larvae are pretty cool. They are fat and they have many legs.

Gotta scram, I'm going to make tacos for the lab and will get ingrediants tonight. Tomorrow I will have lunch with a guy from France. We call it the "Gajin connection." When you meet a foreigner in Maebashi, you bond.