The Eye of Patrick

You are probably thinking after I posted about the Gaidai Festival that my golf related posts would be over. But I realized that after I had Gaidai festival, we had another golf related event. That was the OB/OG. For the people out there who don’t know what and OB/OG party is i will explain, from what i learnt in the golf club. An OB/OG is an party that is held every so often in a club. Where old club members (students that had graduated) and current students (like me) come together to have dinner, and chat.

Our party started with us all getting dressed up as this was a formal thing. I had to bring out the suit, (I knew there was a reason i brought it to Japan) and put on my tie my friend had given me and we met up in front of the school. All the club members that I had seen only in golf clothing were now wearing suits and ties and looking ever so cool. We had to board a bus that would take us to the yakuniku place, which i learnt just yesterday that if you have atleast 10 people that most Yakuniku places will provide a bus to pick you up and take you home. The reason is that they believe you will be too busy having a good time to remember to drink responsible.

So we boarded the bus, and everyone was in high spirits looking forward to a night of excitment. I was slightly hesitant to go on this evening as it would involve me hanging out with most people who did not speak english that well and my Japanese is not the greatest. But then I thought to myself if i had came all the way to Japan and I only hung with people who spoke english well then I would not get the chance to truely experience Japan. So i got on the bus with the hope of a good time.

As I said in previous postings I have only had good experiences with them as even though they do not speak english that well, they are friendly and inviting.

But part of the reason that I was so nervous was because this was a formal event, so this meant formal Japanese cultural behaviour which sadly my Japanese classes had not taught me. But group memebers helped me with the rules and such. Like having to go up to Sanpai and pouring beer and making small converstation, while sitting sezai (spelt it wrong probably). The first time I was so nervous that i could not probably talk to the leader of the club, so i made akward comments. It was strange as when i went up to talk to him the first time everyone went slient and listened to me. But with that over, we began eating, i was lucky as i got to sit with the youngest members of the club, which were also the group members that I am also best friends with. So we chatted away, I learnt some of my friends were allergic to beer but had to pretend to drink it as if they didn’t it they would look like bad team players. So me being able to drink beer was required to help them drink their beer so they could pretend to be drinking.

It was great though as we all paid one fee and we could eat all the yakuniku you wanted, so i made sure to eat as much as i could. We started eating and eating and eating, i went beyond my normal eating to eat even more because I knew chances like this did not happen much. Being a foreigner was good because as much as i was required to involve myself in the socializing aspect I was not required to speak kego or if I made a unknown mistake.

We eat as much yakuniku as you could and then somemore, I in my entire life had not had that much meat and it was so yummy.

Then after we left the resturand and all the meat in the above picture uneaten we headed out. We were going to a traditional Japanese Bar and do some more drinkng and eating as we had dropped the older members of the club. This meant that it was less serious. We ordered naba and other assorted japanese bar food delights and started drinking and eating. I am usually the one at the party who does not drink to much as I must make sure the other people who drink to much do not hurt themseleves and this would not be another nite that would not dispoint me.

It was interesting to learn that in Japan the difference between japanese people when they have not had a drink and when they have, according to my friends they say that they feel more free when they drink. Like anything stupid they do they can blame on the drink and everyone must forget whatever happened.

for example hehe

But I had a good time, and here are some more pictures to show before I start a post about another event.

That is my latest photoblog, any comments are appricated. Also if anyone can help me set up a similar blog to Jeff I would greatly appricate that, as at the moment i have one but it is simple, http://www.livejournal.com/users/patrosoft.

I know i have not been updating this lately so most of you have probably stopped reading this, but that is ok. I have been so swamped with school work and other stuff that i have been unable to find time to update my journal. But seeing my holidays began i now have the chance to update it. I will use my pictures as a reference point and update according to the pictures i have taken.

Kansai Gaidai Festival is the first one I will be talking about as it is the oldest pictures I have not talked about. Since coming to Kanasai Gaidai i wanted to get involved in the Japanese culture so I decided to join a club. When you join a club in Japan it is a major commitment as you will be required to dedicate a lot of your time to club activities unrelated to the purpose of your club. In my case i joined the golf club because i have golf before in my life but i have never actually pratice to much so i thought why not pick up a good skill set for future job applications. Also i thought it would be a good way to meet new Japanese people and break away from the many Japanese at my school who are simply trying to become friends with foreigners because it is cool or they want to speak english. My first time at the golf club was great everyone was very nervous including me, but they had such a friendly vibe to them that i decided to come back the next practice and had continued to do that for the last while. Clubs are an important aspect to any school and as a result when my school had their name sake day, Kansai Gaidai Days, my club and many others opened little shops around the school and sold stuff. I think there was atleast 20-30 different clubs and booths selling stuff, this was no amature operation as the equipment that was used by these groups was sometimes very complicated.

We started day day before the festival getting ready, we had a meeting at our club house and discussed what we were going to do and sell, my club had been selling baby castellas for the longest time (Baby Castellas are small balls of cake with chocolate inside) So we got to work painting and decroating the stuff that would be covering our booth, i was held responsible for writting some of the english signs as we made the booth as billingual as we could as we had many different people attending and we were unsure of their japanese or english ability.

Then the next day came, it was a saturday but we had to be at school for 8 am to set up, even though the festival was not till 1 pm that afternoon. When i woke up that day i questioned the reason why i joined the golf club hahha…. so i got to school earlier then i ever had before. All my golfmates were there and starting to set up, so i pitched in and helped.

Then we realized that one of the local food stores was selling eggs at a discount compared to other stores, there was just one catch and that was you were only able to buy 2 per customer. We got around this by going in a group of 4 and going through each checkout line, i think there was like 14 lines so we were able to get many eggs. It was worth it, as a penny saved is a penny earned as the saying go.

Other actitives were going on at my school while i was there. My school has a cheerleading squad and they wree doing some stunts, they were different then what I was used to in Canada, as they did more dancing then gymnastic kind of actitivites. But still to watch them was so interesting and exciting.

Before the festival started i was unsure on the number of people that would come to the festival as my school in canada has hosted similar events and the turnout to be say to be poor at best. But that was not the case, even with the poor weather we had, which was rain, many people came. I was in charge of selling to english speakers, so this meant that every foreigner that entered the school was required to talk to me. Plus I had to go up to Japanese people and speak japanese to them and shock them into buying my product, this worked a couple times. If you know me i am shy person so this was hard at first, but it got more fun as time progressed.

Here is a funny picture i took, it is a picture of the takoyaki machine that we used to cook the baby castellas in… in this picture it looks like the devil.

And as i had to go to class I went to the washroom where i was able to get photos from the roof.

So all in all it was an interesting experience that has taught me a lot about Japanese culture that I would have not experienced had i not decided to break away from the confines of my gaijan life.

Sorry for not posting but i will,

I have pictures from kyoto, osaka, kobe, tokyo and chiba to post.