Alright, so it’s been a long time since I updated this thing but I have been extremely busy. Ok, maybe just lazy but don’t judge me! The important thing is that I’m back for this amazing post which I am calling “Eddie’s Holiday Spectacular!” This is pretty much covering October – January. It’s gonna be a HUGE post so bear with me.
OCTOBER
Soooo in October sometime I got invited to welcome BBQ at Osako-san’s house (my Eikaiwa Circle’s leader). I decided to rep my Hawaiian roots and wore an aloha shirt to this party. What I didn’t know was that we were going on a mushroom hunt that morning. I pretty much got my ass handed to me by a bunch of old men in mountain climbing. Also I seemed to only be able to find poisonous mushrooms and no edible types.
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| Rambling |
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| Climbing Group |
Covered in sweat, dirt, and reeking of shame, we returned to Osako-sans house and kicked off our party. The food was delicious and we even got to eat some of the mushrooms that we found on the mountain that morning. We ended the day with somen nagashi (basically a waterslide made of bamboo that you put somen in and catch before it hits the bottom) and picking sweet potatoes from Osako-san’s garden.
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| Mushrooms! |
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| Drunk People Singing in German |
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| Somen Nagashi |
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| Sweet Potatoes |
Also, in October sometime, I moved into my new office. The new office is a lot nicer than the older one but lacks that officey feel. To help break in the new office I hosted a Halloween party. I felt really uninspired at the time so I just put on an aloha shirt and board shorts and brought my ukulele to school, which was a bad idea because it was a cold ass day; luckily, I live only like a minute from school.
To celebrate my first pay check from HJU I decided to splurge on something I really wanted. Incidentally, I found a Bathing Apes store in this city so the decision was pretty easy. I got me some Bapes.
During that weekend, my alcoholic friend Sam came to visit me again and we went over to my friends place to celebrate Halloween. This time I dressed up as Totoro and Sam went as Cookie Monster. We got fairly drunk and walked down to the grocery store in costume. I’m pretty sure the people working there got a kick out of drunken Totoro and Cookie Monster buying beer and umeshu.
NOVEMBER
After being in Japan for 5 months, I’ve only been to kaiten sushi once. It’s a shame but here is a picture of the damage we did after one visit.
Skipping forward couple weeks or so we arrive at Thanksgiving! On the actual day of Thanksgiving I went to an Irish pub with a few friends for dinner. It did seem strange how an Irish place had Thanksgiving dinner but I wasn’t complaining. That weekend I went to visit Naho and Sam in Onomichi. Sam and I (mostly Sam) made a Thanksgiving feast for Naho’s family, including home-made stuffing, ham, salad, pumpkin pie, and a bunch of other crap. It was dericious.
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| Our Feast |
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| Onomichi |
DECEMBER
December was actually really busy for me and I emerged from that month broke as shit.
It started with me meeting up with my friend Matt (Australian Matt) that I haven’t seen since we studied abroad at Kansai Gaidai 3 years ago. He told me about a beach party on Miyajima that a local hostel was throwing and I jumped on that idea so hard. However, once we got on the island we couldn’t figure out which beach it was at. After wandering around the island for a couple hours in complete darkness we gave up and went home. On the ferry ride to the island we also made a couple friends that we dragged along with us, only to be disappointed. Haha
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| The Gaijin Noose we Found |
In December I attempted to make brownies for a Christmas party pot luck. I consulted the venerable Christine Nishida and she gave me a few pointers. The brownies came out great with the only down side being that it took about 6 hours to make one box.
December was also the month where my friend Sam was finally getting kicked out of the country for loitering too long without a visa. To send him off correctly we drank a bunch: Surprise surprise. We actually started hanging out a lot toward the end if his stay and we did a bunch of fun things like clubbing and going to Hiroshima castle but I don’t think I have any pics.
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| I lied, here's one from the castle |
Now we arrive at Christmas. I bought a Wii for Christmas since I was such a good boy. I also spent about 9000 yen on 3 Christmas cakes for a Christmas party that I had to throw for English lunch time. This is why I am poor now. We had classes up until Christmas Eve this year so after class we all went to eat shabu shabu and look at Christmas lights.
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| Wii |
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| Christmas Party |
After Christmas, my friend Aleisha came to visit for a day. Naho came back from Taiwan that day too so we went to eat okonomiyai, it was kinda like we were back at Pacific U.
Right after Aleisha left, my super good friend Shizuka came over for a few days. Most of her visit was a blur of drunkenness from which we emerged with messed up sleep schedules and matching Bape mugs. I vaguely remember killing it on some Teriyaki Boyz at karaoke and tearing up the dance floor at a club.
Finally we reach New Year’s Eve. My friend Alexis invited me to go to a festival at night on Miyajima. Then she proposed that we climbed the mountain and waited to watch the first sunrise of the New Year since that’s what Japanese people do apparently. I agreed, LIKE A FOOL, since I figured it was a once in a life time thing.
Anyway, we get there late at around 7pm and miss the festival completely. Luckily one booth is still open so we grab some food then attempt the climb the mountain.
What we didn’t know was that there are 3 different paths to go up this mother, and we chose the hardest one. It was also pitch black and we had to use my cell phone light halfway up the mountain. Luckily we ran into this guy who was climbing the mountain and let us borrow a couple flashlights as we climbed the mountain together.
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| My Hero! |
Once we got to the top we had about 9 hours to freeze in negative temperatures before we got to see the sunrise. The view was simply amazing. In the end it was worth it, although I don’t think I will ever do that again.
Jesus Christ I'm finally done. I probably left a bunch of important things out like taking down 3000yen parfait with Sam, Naho, and Jin Suk, but too bad. As part of my New Year's resolution I'm gonna try and update this sucker more often. Anyways, thanks for reading.
- Ed-boy
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