iroironakoto

That's one fly dog

Just trying to keep this short here, or as short as I can. A lot has happened since I last blogged. I think looking at my pictures and my videos will give a better picture (and videos... get it?!) of my experiences here. The captions below the pictures are a must-read if you decide to head over there.

From the 2-4th of November there was a school festival (Koyama festival). Due to this, we had no school on Friday the 2nd and no classes were taught after lunch on the previous Thursday, in order for students to prepare for the festival. The thing was huge in magnitude. There were booths or stalls set up everywhere around campus and students would sell all kinds of foods through them. Sort of like 17th of June, downtown Reykjavík, but only more intense and more compact. Everyone tried to push what they were selling so walking around was a bit of a hassle, especially when you are white and stick out of the crowd so easily. It took us about 1.5 hours to walk a circle around the campus, something that usually takes probably around 10 minutes. They sure have some delicious foods here... I tried deepfried icecream for the first time and I just have to report that it was amazingly good. There is a small video in my webalbum which shows the crazyness that was going on.

There were also performances all over the weekend and we caught some of them. On the Friday night we watched our American friend, Heather, win the Karaoke contest. That was pretty cool. She speaks good Japanese and she was singing a song in Japanese so that gave her an edge over the others. Japanese people like when stupid gaijin speak their language. She would have won either way though, she's a helluva singer.

Have you ever heard of a phenomena called "Double Dutch"? Well, I had never heard of it. It's jump rope, but with 2 ropes and there's a lot of dancing involved, highly concentrated towards the break dancing part of the whole dance spectrum. It's amazing to see these people do their thing. You can see sample videos of that as well.

We decided to give the festival a break on Sunday and went instead to visit the Imperial Palace. That weekend it was open for the public. It is open like that 2-3 weekends a year I believe. For tourists it is easy to get permission to get a tour whenever, but for the Japanese it is much harder and they have to order a tour several months in advance before they are finally allowed in. So, on these weekends when it's open for the public, then it gets kinda crowded. It didn't affect us much though, crowded places is just something to expect here.

Seeing it was interesting and especially seeing the Imperial garden. It is extremely tranquil and beautiful and one can only wonder how peaceful it is when there aren't thousands of people walking the grounds.

On the 6th we were given tickets to see traditional Japanese theater, Kyogen and Noh. It was... interesting. I had heard that it would be hard to sit through and boy did I hear correctly. I didn't understand a word of what was being said. The Kyogen play wasn't all that bad, at least there was some action going on, but the Noh play.... sheesh. It is aptly named Noh though, as all you can think of while watching it is "NOOOOOOOOH!". OK, there. I just insulted a roughly 400 year old Japanese tradition. Sorly!

Fun to have tried this at least.

These days I'm experiencing some weird shit with my cellphone. Spam mails sent to cellphones is not something you hear about, or at least I hadn't heard about it back in Iceland. I'm getting bombarded by spam! I supspect it being due to me having the address typed up here to the right. I will therefore have to change the address in the coming days. It shouldn't be a problem though as I can (ONLY) change the address 3 times a day.

To end it with, here is another disturbing dog clothing picture for you.

If your dog is getting married, why not dress it up in a wedding gown that has a fake hand attached to it:

Oh man, this looks just wrong...