Happy Mardi Gras!

We celebrated early this year at a party the weekend before last (although to be honest this is the first year that mardi gras has ever entered my consciousness).

We're gangstas. Or something.

Nothing says mardi gras like a... white leotard.
Cheese!
Don't worry, Dan does not support cannibalism- that's a lemon chu-hai he's drinking.

Sagicho: Festival of burning

No culture is complete without a festival where they burn piles of stuff. Not quite as cool as the giant straw cat monster burning festival I saw in Italy where flaming piles of hay were falling into the crowd, but pretty good.

Those ain't mallows. That's mochi-- gummy balls of rice paste-- the taste of which resembles nothing even remotely food-like. Despite the 10 foot sticks you still had to get close enough to melt your face off in order to cook the stupid things.

Dan and me.

Tania and Dan.

Taiko guy.

Dancin' in the street. The best part was when we were coerced into dancing and banging sticks together with these kids in front of the taiko stage for a good half an hour in the rain. I saw thousands of novely photos of dancing foreigners being taken.

I love this country.

Tonight I got abducted in the street by a Japanese lady. I was just starting to feel hungry for the first time in about a week, and getting tired of soup from a packet. Since my car has a flat tire, I decided to venture out on my bike to get some quality conbini food instead. Four days is a long time to spend alone in bed, I’ve discovered, and I was feeling quite restless in my quarantined state.

So when someone behind me in the street yelled “Keitorin-san!” I whipped around hopefully. It was a lady I’d met before at city hall, who had kindly invited me to a party at her big mountainside house. It’s sort of the equivalent of having dinner at the farm back home—lots of homegrown vegetables, traditional recipes, and a nice old-smelling house.

When I saw her this time, she didn’t say, long time no see, or, how have you been, just, what are you doing right now? You should come to my house. I think she saw my desperation. So we loaded my bike into her car, picked up a cake, and went home. I helped with preparations, ten other people showed up, and we had another amazing dinner party, with some of the most giving, open, genuine people I’ve ever met. This is what I’ll miss most about Japan.

Episode 11: Wellington

All right. Maybe it seems silly to still be talking about my trip at this point. Get on with it! you’re all shouting. Check it out, we don’t even care anymore! I know. I know. But it’s a matter of principle at this point. Here it comes, the big finish!

It’s going to be sort of anticlimactic though, because at this stage of our travels, Tania had fallen headlong into a nasty cold, and had also tripped and slammed into some guy at a bar, severely twisting her foot (à la mom) . As she limped around sniffling, I too could feel the first hints of sickness, as was to be expected with the two of us living in such close quarters. (This was January 2nd, officially the last day I can remember not having a runny nose. Today is March 2nd. That's two really snotty months. Sorry I keep talking about snot.)

This meant that most of our visit to the north island went something like this:

“Mmm, that’s pretty.”
“Mm.”
“Wanna sit down?”
“Mm kay.”
“Maybe we should eat something.”
“Mmm. Soup?”
“Mm.”

Despite this, we still managed to have a good time, and see some pretty stuff.

After our last night in Nelson, our gracious hosts drove us to the ferry (thanks again guys!) for the journey to Wellington. This was a much more classy (and expensive) deal than the Seattle ferry that I'm used to. It had something like 5 restaurants and a casino.

Pretty water.Pretty building. She's Italian. In New Zealand. It's funny.
We had heard that Wellington was windy, but we found that it was really really windy.
Really really really windy.

I should have seen it coming. It was only a matter of time. I’ve got… duh duh duh… The Influenza. (The non-bird variety).

It’s surprising that a country so fond of abbreviating words in the most nonsensical ways (remocon = remote control, eacon = air conditioner, conbini = convenience store, jipan = jeans pants-?) hasn’t figured out how to shorten influenza to flu. So that there’s always talk of half the school having “The Influenza,” and I imagine the medieval body wagons rolling in.

So here I am, camped out in bed, armed with Kleenex, beverages, and all kinds of medicine. I even have this prosthetic hand so that I can control my heater without getting out of bed.

This is what my temperature felt like yesterday. Actually, it was an impressive 102.38 at the doctor's office.

On a lighter note, the sun’s out in full force today, and it’s nice to be able to sit and watch piles of snow melt from the rooftops.

AND, now I have little else to do besides read my book and update this thing. Watch me go!

New Years Eve started out calm enough...

Then things got crazy.

Rockin' new years eve in Christchurch.

The next day was an all day drive back up to Nelson, where we would spend one last night. It was time to say goodbye to the South Island. And its cows.

This is Lyttelton, a quiet seaside town outside of Christchurch. Also a possible future settling place of me. Package of...
Fish and chips! (Tania's first.)
Can of ketchup.

The standard photo for all college admissions pamphlets.

Actually this collection of buildings which used to be a university now houses a bunch of great galleries and shops and studios.

Christchurch Art Gallery. Very nice place.

When I walked in here, they said "We can tell that you studied art in college, maybe even in Italy, and you seem to be American... how exotic... would you like a job?"

I graciously accepted, and told them I'd be back soon to assume my new position.

Episode 10: Christchurch

a.k.a. future home town of me.

Ok, I've been back a month now, time to power through and finish the reportage on this trip.

I don’t have so many interesting stories about Christchurch, other than that I decided I should live there.

Most of my Christchurch photos are of buildings. (If you don't like buildings, skip this post.)

Like this one. Here's another one. One more.This one's at night.How about a sculpture?

Here are some guys playing chess in the square.

It was in this square that we were accosted one night by a couple of well meaning evangelical youths (was this not to be expected in a place called Christchurch?) who advised us to turn away from our lives of drunkenness and lust, after which we asked them for directions to a bar called Sammy's. They politely, if not sadly, led us there, and we enjoyed some fantastic jazz music (drunkenly and lustily).

Moonlighting

(Temporary sidetrack: will resume NZ trip soon)

As many of you have probably heard, though an elementary school teacher by day, I have discovered the lucrative career of part time singing by night and weekends. This career has manifested itself in a number of ways, including wedding singing (more on that later) and most recently, singing with Kubo-san’s band.

This is Kubo-san. (He doesn't usually dress as a priest. More on that later too. Maybe.) One of the top five characters I've met in Japan. Catch phrase: "Son of a BITCH."

We've performed together many times now. Highlights include playing the "Ono Rich Man Party," ie. an annual gathering of the 100 or so most powerful men and women in town-- company heads, mayor, government officials, etc.-- in a very drunken state (the officials, not us), playing in our favorite bar, and performing for guests in the lobby of a local hotel. That's right, I'm now officially a lounge singer.

Yesterday we did the Ono Yuki Matsuri (snow festival). Our set list is rather... eclectic.

Yesterday's run down was:

It's Too Late

Country Roads (my cold was still lingering, so this featured lyrics like "...West Virgidia, Bountain Bobba...take be hobe...coudtry roads..." They didn't seem to notice.)

Paper Moon

Desperado

Stand By Me

Amazing Grace (our peppy encore piece)

When I heard we'd be playing at the snow festival, I asked where exactly in town we would be.

"Aaah, we play in... to-ra-ku."

"Toraku? Toraku... toraku... track? We're playing on a track? Like at a park or something?"

"No no... to-ra-ku... vroom vroom... (steering wheel motions)..."

"Truck? We're playing in a truck?"

"Hai hai hai."

Since I had no idea what to expect, and imagined us driving around town playing from the back of a pick up, the actual truck was quite spacious, and stationary too.

Kubo-san brings us some fortification...

Little communion type cups of sake, to keep us warm in the -5 degree cold (celsius- that's 23 degrees fahrenheit, folks).

This is me rollin' in the dough.

Despite this serious cash flow, Kubo-san apparently can't afford matches, and must light his cigarettes on available space heaters.

It's not working.
The best part of these performances is always the practice sessions in Kubo-san's practice shack. This is a building composed primarily of tin foil, I think, with a busted window and an ancient space heater which we all crowd around and heat our cans of coffee on during breaks.

Most recent photo of practice shack.

Kubo-san and Hitomi

Hideo (keyboards), Hitomi (drums), and Keitorin

I'm so lucky to get to play with these guys, and I can't describe how much I'll miss it, and them, when I go.