There was a holiday weekend because it was Culture Day on Friday. I went into Matsumoto with Luke. He was in some kind of kimono fashion show at the art museum. He wore a pretty styling men’s kimono. There was about 15 foreign people who all came out and dressed up. There was also about 40 japanese women in various styles of kimono as well. There was a timed portion of the event where they watched people tying the obi or the middle wrapping piece of the kimono. They could usually do it in about 7 minutes. It can be quite elaborate and there are many styles you can choose dependant on the formality of the kimono and your age and stuff like that. While they were doing these obi tying demonstrations, they did a survey of all the foreign people to see if they liked kimonos and what colour their eyes were. This was a bit strange but everyone seemed fairly interested in what they had to say.
I walked around Matsumoto before the thing got underway and had a delicious pot pie from the Old Rock. It was a white stew with puff pastry topping. The weather was beautiful for walking around and there was a nice little parade as well. The Girl Guides were out as well as the Scouts selling old clothes and vegetables. Kosa came down from Ueda about midday and I met him in passing when I got home from Matsumoto. He was on his way to Tokyo and so were we. We went out and got some bus tickets and headed out around dinner time. Luke and I went into Tokyo together and had dinner at a Spanish place. We met up with Kosa and a girl he met and then headed off to a club. We went to a club called Harlem in Shibuya district. It was really packed after a while which I like in a way because it's nice to go somewhere really big. The music was good too I thought, good for dancing. Kosa was feeling pretty tired at that point so we dropped him off in a capsule hotel. I couldn’t stay there because they don’t allow women but I wasn’t really ready to sleep then anyways. Luke and I hit the karaoke for a while but I quietly got tired and fell asleep. After an hour or two I woke up and we headed out to walk around the neighbour. We visited a pond and a park where Luke had a bit of a cat nap on a bench while I penned a letter and had a walk around. Some guy came to the same little park but he wsa on the other side of the pond. He took off his pants and hung then on the railing beside the pond and then sat down to read the newspaper. Maybe they had gotten wet or something. I don't know. Since it was morning by that point we looked around for a place to have breakfast and found curry place called Little Spoon. The curry was a bit too spicy for me and I wasn’t super hungry either but I ate most of it. Then we waited for more stores to open and went to a book store. I bought a copy of the Little Prince in the original French. I think it is time for a bit of a brush up on my French skills. Kosa called us at about 10 when he had checked out so we walked up to the station to meet him. Then we headed over to Akihabara where I finally got a NEW CAMERA! Yes! I am so happy to have the camera back in my life. I can once again start filling up my computer with hundreds of meaningless shots that I will look back on with nostalgia in a year or so. I got a fairly good deal because Kosa still doesn’t have foreign residency status so he could buy it duty free for me. Thanks Kosa! You’re a peach! We had a little lunch at a Korean place and then made a game plan for the rest of the day. I wanted to go to a museum so we went to the Natural History Museum which was featuring an Egyptian exhibit from the British Museum. We went in but the museum was so packed it was impossible to get close enough to see anything without waiting in a very slow moving line. We eventually just got tired of fighting the crowds and went out for a crepe instead. The first picture is of the giant whale statue outside the place. Museums are never that crowded at home! It was ridiculous. We were pretty wiped out after that and had been away for quite some time at that point. I wanted to go back home and so did everyone else. Kosa headed back to Ueda and Luke and I got the bus home, intermittently napping all the way. We got home around 7 or 8 and Tom and Dec were ready to go out so after a brief down time and shower, we headed out again and had dinner drinks and karaoke. We also joined the wedding party for some Japanese friends of ours. I got back home around 4 and finally went to sleep around 5. We got up at about 10. I took many pictures of the kittens and had many cups of tea. Dec headed out for the day and I came back home to try and get the house into some kind of order. The kittens peed on a pile of clean and folded laundry that I hadn’t put away yet. Very irritating! They are almost trained though and don’t do things like that very often. There was about 1 million dirty dishes as well although I don't really recall making them that way. I had some classes to prep for too but I got very little work done on that. It was a beautiful day so I went to Sky Park with Tom and Jason and we played basketball. I am complete crap but the guys were fairly ok with that. It was fun and a good day to be outside.
Last weekend was Halloween and I joined the festivities in Shiojiri. I couldn't get the old octopus costume together in time which was fine. I was a scary angel instead as I already had the costume. I thought I might work in the haunted house but I ended up working in the games room with the preschool kids. My costume was a bit too real and scary looking for them. I don’t have pictures of that right now but when I do I’ll put some up. I didn’t want to do two Halloween posts in a row anyways. Other costumes included Gisela as Batman, Declan as a bottle of milk, Tom as Frankenstein and Luke as the Swedish Chef. We had really great makeup artists and professional stuff for them to work with. On the Sunday, Dec and Luke and I went to a somewhat crappy glass art museum and took a long walk around the lake. It was a gorgeous fall day. Declan and I wore toques and large glasses and pretended to be a Scandinavian couple for the day visiting Suwa. Needless to say, people were a bit confused, Luke included. Confused might not be the right word.
The time between this weekend and last was insanely busy and I was glad when this weekend finally came around. I haven’t had time to phone people back home lately but I am definitely thinking of you all and will get onto it as soon as possible. In the meantime people, please write me and stay in touch! I want to hear from a bunch of you! Thanks Mom and Nana for the recent packages and letters. The dark kitten is Jack and the one with white feet is Vic.