One ticket to Osaka Please . . .

Hello Family, Hello Friends, and all avid readers,

It has been as eventful week since my outing to the epicentre of Kyoto night life at the WORLD club. The very next night I found myself in the same neck of the woods, but instead of being accompanied by girls of the Swedish and French variety, I was with a bunch of Canadians, a few British folk, and a German, it was the Germans birthday. We started of the night by wandering aimlessly throught the labyrinth of the Sanjo area right next to Kamogawa (the big river that runs through the centre of Kyoto). Surprisingly enough, it is quite difficult to accomodate a walk-in party of 14 people on a saturday night at 2200, wierd. We stopped at a salsa bar for a drink, but the place made me bug out, for two legitimate reasons. First, Roberto, the supposedly Mexican DJ, was playing some of the corniest salsa music I have heard, or I guess since Azteca was still big in Seattle. Second, sitting and drinking expensive drinks and watching Japanese people salsa, however impressive and sexy they are is not my idea of an eventful satruday night. This is not to say that our stop at the salsa bar hadn't contributed any excitement to the evening's activites.

The place we ended up settling was much less noisy, much more practical, and no where close to the pseudo-salsa environment, thanks Roberto. On the banks of Kamogawa, which is strikingly similar to that of the L.A. river, our group settle down with some Umeshu (delicious plum wine) and were treated to a live (free) performance of Hiodori (hi, meaning fire and odori, meaning dance). The performers had the support of a solid rhthym section, consisting mainly of drums and other percussion instruments. The performance consisted of a wide variety of fire eating, flaming ball swinging, flaming sword totting Japanese men and women. It was very exciting, to say the absolute least.

The better part of this past week and the lack of my detailed recognition of it has made me realize that I am in the midst of yet another school year. When days run together, one knows that a regimen has set in. However, highlights are highlights nonetheless. On monday, a new friend of mine, Daniel from Toronto, CAN, and I went to the all you can pile on one plate breakfast on campus. There are two ways that one can covney the concept of all-you-can-eat in Japanese. One, is tabehodai (tabe, is the eating part and hodai, the all-you-can part), which is spelled using a mix of kanji (characters borrowed from Chinese, and hiragana, which are individual letters that represent individual syllables). The term in baikingu (spelled in katana, third system of writing in Japanese, used for words adopted from other languages). The word baikingu, I have been told, stems from the word Viking. Apparently all-you-can-eat buffets have the stigma of being associated with savage, blonde warriors of the Netherlands.

More about what happened last night. I was invited to go to the birthday party of one the Japanese students at Ritsumeikan whi has been helping all of the exchange students get situated and what not. Her name is Eriko. No matter how unique a persona she carries about her, she dresses like the other 11,000+ Japanese girls at Ritsumeikan: beautiful long hair, dyed and permed; ridiculously short shorts (nice legs), thigh-high boots, and ever-changing halter tops of all shapes, cuts, and colours. She's great and her english is phenominal (ly sexy cause she has a New Zeland accent), although I have recently requested that she refrain from talking to me in english, for purposes of my much desired Japanese proficiency.

The party. A train to Osaka from Kyoto is 390 yen; this is cheap, and it makes sense. We arrived at Umeda station in Osaka and were escorted to a restaurant; Barbara Market Place. As one walks in the grand entrance, fake deli meet hangs in front of the posh light fixtures as the faints shouts from the kitchen mix with the dull chatter of the restaurant floor. The high ceilings and red velvet drapes dissipate the sounds quite well and are very useful for creating more personal dining experience, or in our case a private party. I've found that this is the way that many Japanese throw parties. They rent out a place, charge a somewhat reasonable cover charge and treat their party guests to a very nice ten course meal and essentially an open bar, yeah. Before the dining commenced a friend of Eriko's, Yusuke, made a very nice speech, which I could almost decipher, and we all joined together in a hearty KAMPAI (cheers in Japan, or ganbei in China, see www.zwilliams.blogspot.com). Let me tell you, I didn't fill my own glass once the whole night . . . get it, I'm still in Japan guys and girls. The Japanese have mastered the dry beer technology, let's just leave it at that.

The food. I hadn't had cheese in Japan until the first course came out; cheese . . . score. Next was kabocha, which is very similar to butternut squash, but the Japanese call it pumpkin, very delicious. After the sweet kabocha, we had a small savoury salad followed by very thinly sliced bruschetta style meat, whoa. Shortly after this we had some amazing shrimp served hot whole, with the shell and all. Chopsticks aren't the best de-shelling utensils, but hey I always love a little chiton in my diet . . . chiton is exoskeleton for all you non-biologist types. The next dish was funny; french fries served in Japanese restaurants will some how always taste a bit like tonkatsu (breaded and fried meat fillets). A really nice pesto pizza followed the shrimp and fries. If that wasn't enough, we were served two more, way less Japanese dishes. Chicken, very tender, served on top of bay leaves and spaghetti, mmmm. The meal was almost over.

After Eriko collected everyone's student cards and shuffled them, we all switched seates and had dessert: a small croissant cut in half with ice cream, whipped cream, and chocolate sauce. By this time I had switched my drink of choice to Umeshu (plum wine, remember?). Also, upon switching seats I met the tallest Japanese man I have encountered yet. His name was Kengo and he was 185cm roughly, I think I am about 187-90cm. Either way he was way cool and we talked about how we can both almost slam a dunk a basketball, we were on the same level, you don't understand us tall guys. He also taught me some kansaiben (kansai, being the Osaka-Kyoto area, and ben being dialect).

The night was great and yes, the train ride home was still cheap. My favourite aspect of the Japanese way of life (nihonseikatsu) as I have said in previous bloggings (man I hate that verbage) has been travelling within Japan. Zipping by the countryside between Osaka and Kyoto is an amazing sight. In fact those same images were the exact same as my first visit to Japan in the spring of 2005. Which brings me to the close of this blog. I have forgotten to shout out in the past few weeks, moushiwakearimesen (there is no excuse). This week's shout out was inspired by my recent train ride through Japan.

Sensei Tashibu. I owe so much to my high school Japanese teacher it is almost unthinkable. To teach a foreign language is one thing, but to maintain an engaged class that is both excited to learn and is inspired by the language's country of origin is another thing. Sensei not only familiarized me with Japanese, a language I have learned to love and respect, but she also brought me closer to an opportunity of a life time. The ten short days that I spent in Japan with Sensei, from Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, Miyajima, Himeji and back to her classroom at Roosevelt in Seattle was an invaluable experience and I owe it all to Sensei. Watashi ni nihongo wo oshietekurete hontoni arigatougozaimashita.

Peace.