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.

Comment The defeated Kerry may have called for unity last week, but already radical elements inside and outside of the Democrat party are arguing for the abandonment of the old ways of cosy consensus. One such organisation, formed even as the last queues for the ballots ebbed away, styles itself “The New Democrat Outreach Program.” The Register has been contacted by one NDOP activist, styling himself Commandante Camembert, with an early draft of the organisation’s first communique to the nation. “We must,” says Camembert, “learn to speak to all of the people. But we mustn’t be afraid to sneer when we do it.”

We think they’ve got that right already, although the “outreach” may need some work. Anway, here it is:

An open letter to the Red-State victors:
With hard work and superb organization, you have triumphed over John Kerry and the forces of Blue-state paternalism. Congratulations. The multinational corporations that hold you in bondage remain free to profit off your sweat nearly tax free, while their overpaid senior execs continue to pay a pittance in personal income tax.

Your primary and secondary schools will continue to turn out third-rate pupils with limited opportunities, while you enjoy the satisfaction of making it on your own without health care when a catastrophic illness bankrupts your family.

Your agricultural universities will continue issuing Ph.D.s in football, and bogus Protestant Evangelical and Fundamentalist theology, and how to jerk off a bull safely. Your children will learn to borrow enough money to erect chicken houses so that they, like you, can take custody — not possession, but custody — of Tyson’s chicks, feed them, rear them, assume losses from those that fail to thrive, and in the end earn just enough money to service their endless debt, and realize a profit of perhaps $12K a year. Your bank thanks you; Tyson thanks you; George W. Bush thanks you; and I thank you.

You can continue sending your sons to die in Iraq on a fool’s errand. When you bury them, you can console yourselves with Bush’s platitudes about their heroic mission to defend America from weapons of mass destruction.

You can savor the deficit spending that stimulates commerce today, but will cripple the US economy in ten or fifteen years’ time when the bills come due with interest. Perhaps a Democrat will be in office at that time, who can be blamed for W’s delayed economic fiasco.

You can continue believing, as Republican Party brainwashing has persuaded you, that we, your neighbors, are your enemies. You can believe that we have no morals; that we pimp out our teenage daughters for Internet porn; that we eat babies; that we are all gay; that we are cowards on the battlefield; and that we want to run your lives and give you AIDS.

Here’s a clue: we are not your enemies; we are your countrymen. Your enemies are the greedy multinationals that the Republican Party bends over backwards to accommodate. Incidentally, most of them are based in Blue states, as are their Republican owners and major shareholders.

Here in the Blue States, Democrats and Republicans alike generate the lion’s share of America’s wealth, although it is you Reds who provide the lion’s share of the stoop labor. You are our Mexicans, so to speak. We could not have accomplished the economic miracle that is America without your willing capitulation to a system that lies to you and fucks you over at every turn.

Look at economic output and educational achievement on a state-by-state basis: it’s painfully evident that we Blues are immensely more productive and better educated than you Reds. We have lots more money. We live longer. We eat better. We work less. We fuck more. We do cocaine and smoke fine Canadian buds, not the homebrew crank and cheap Mexican headache reefer you guys are stuck with. We drink French wine and Stoli martinis, not Budweiser. Our children rarely bother us: we’ve got them on Ritalin and Prozac. Our teeth are straighter and whiter, our necks longer, and our fingernails cleaner. And many of us are the Republican elite who have just punked you.

It’s good to be a Blue, regardless of which party you join.

Understandably, you resent us, so you’ve fabricated an imaginary measure of superiority: Christian “values.” Yet you talk about values the way a pre-teen girl talks about “love” in fan letters to Ashton Kutcher. You recycle quasi-religious platitudes and received slogans. You know nothing of moral theology, a rigorous philosophical pursuit that hardly exists outside the Catholic Church and its elite universities. You make of the Bible what you will; you attend prayer meetings with other semi-literates, where you reinforce each other’s sloppy understandings of the text, and combine them with half-digested bits of old-timey Hallmark-card “wisdom.” And when you spout gibberish, you call it “speaking in tongues.” You actually fancy that you’re saints, you silly, narcissistic creatures.

Nevertheless, you are fellow Americans. The Blue Republican elite encouraged you to vote for George W Bush, because they quite simply own him, and they know that his administration will make policies that help them, even if hurt you. We Blue Democrats voted for John Kerry because we believed he would minister to your needs better than Bush. A President Kerry would have shared some of our wealth with you, assured your health care, raised the minimum wage, and checked the rapacious greed of the multinationals that hold you in thrall.

President Kerry would have helped us to help you, which is all that we ask. It pains us to see you in wage slavery. It pains us to see you so ignorant and uneducated, and so eager to place yourselves in bondage. Yes, we live better; but we wish you to live better too, even if it means sacrifice on our part.

What we wanted for you would have been far better than that which you, in your ignorant pride, demanded for yourselves. Oh, you defeated us all right, but only to your detriment.

We Blues will come out of the Bush era no worse for wear, although you Reds will come out very much diminished, deeper in debt, and less able to improve your circumstances by your own powers. But because you wish to be flattered more than helped, you will be grateful for your ass fucking from the Blue-state Republican elite that is laughing behind your backs today.

We did not wish it so. We honestly did want to help.

On 2 November, you thanked us by electing a shrewd, manipulative handmaiden to corporate America who panders to you while ruthlessly exploiting your ignorance and weakness for the benefit of his patrons in the national plutocracy. There is nothing we can do about that. You won fair and square.

We should let you rot. We should secede and leave you to fend for yourselves. Then you will see firsthand just how dependent you are. We are sick of fighting for you by fighting against you. Perhaps, when you see how dreary your lives have become without us, you will finally develop the spine to fight for your basic, human rights. And then we will gladly confront the plutocracy alongside you. We need your help to defeat the Blue Republicans, who, I assure you, are just as decadent as we are, though often richer.

But until you finally learn to respect yourselves, we can’t respect you, and we therefore can’t be bothered to give a rat’s ass about you.

So let us secede, Blue America and Red America. We can handle the Blue state Republicans, so long as we don’t have a lot of ignorant Red state lemmings frustrating our efforts and screwing themselves in the bargain. Secession will enable us both to live as we have chosen without the other’s interference. We will prosper, and you will get a clue.

But do stay in touch after the borders slam shut. When you finally tire of living on the modern, corporate plantations of Cargill, Tyson, ConAgra and Smithfield; when you tire of shopping at Wal-Mart and sending your daughters to sling hash at Denny’s in hopes that they’ll meet the nicer sort of truck driver; when you tire of sneaking into Blue America as illegal white-trash wetbacks eager for casual work dusting our parlors; and when, like men, you finally rise up in rebellion against this immoral usury — then, and only then, let us talk.

We’ll gladly get your backs. But first you must grow the brains and the balls needed to profit from our help.

Today was an interesting day to say the least. I woke up in the morning for classes as usual. But the weather in Japan has been poor lately, like we have been having a lot of typhoons. So I did not feel like going to school and I missed my morning classes. But then I would later learn that classes were canceled. So I did not have to go to school in the afternoon.

This meant I was able to stay home and do nothing. Well I decided to do something and that was to order pizza. I think since coming to Japan i had not had American style pizza, and as a result the first piece i ate, i made sure to suck in all the grease. Normally i would be disgusted by such behaviour, but i did not care The pizza was expensive i realized after, i think we paid 6900 for 3 large pizza’s. But every once and a while it is worth it to go out and enjoy food from back home. Don’t get me wrong, i really enjoy Japanese food, i think i have gotten hooked on eating rice every day, but sometimes i just miss the variety i can get back home. So when the chance arises and I can get good western food i will strike.

Then after that i spent about 2 hours researching my trip to South East Asia. At Christmas this year i will be unable to stay in my dorm and to find other places to stay in Japan would be too expensive. Well that is the fake reason i give myself, the main reason is that i want to see South East Asia while i am here. So i spent time researching and seeing what costs would be like. I have read many places were you can supposely have a good time for 20 dollars a day, and i can not believe that. But hopefully it is true as i have decided to budget 60 dollars a day. This will be my first solo trip so i am fairly nervous and excited. I hope I do not run into to many problems, but even if i do, that can be a learning experience.

The countries i have decided to visit are S’pore, Thailand, Malaysia, and Cambodia. I think it is possible as they are all very close together and I will have 25 days to cover them in. Possibly longer if my father does not decide to visit me.

This Friday in Kyoto there will be a fire festival, it is a festival where they burn stuff on the side of the hill. Supposely it is very interesting, i am mostly going to it so i can take pictures. I love how there seems to be so many new and different places to take pictures.

Well i am getting tired so i will go to bed

Post comment if you want

Patrick

Above: A simple shrine that I found in a street. I love the beautiful but simple nature of it.

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Above: The Danjiri, look at all those people, you can almost see the excitment.

Above: Just a street in the part of Osaka we went, you can see how narrow those streets are.

Above: This is the Danjiri that my teacher supported and the one that we went back to the club how to celebrate with. The old guy he has such interesting facial expresions.

Above: Some local childern we met on the street, they helped to give us directions. I love the inocents in them

Above: Some of the people involved in the danjiri matsuri, they were funny, and friendly. I ahd to take the picture as the teacher ran out of film.

Sunday nite and another day without my computer, i am starting to create a rythem for such an evironment. It just means rather then waste my time doing endless chats and continous news reading i spend it living in the real world. This weekend was one of those weekends that reconfirmed my faith in Japan. On Saturday i went to an Danjuri festival near Osaka. It was with my Japanese anthro class. My roommate was suppose to come too as he is in the class, but he had to “study” so i went alone. Which was not a problem as i wanted to remember Japan for what i accomplished rather then staying back in my dorm hearing others stories. So i arrived at the train station worried that i had not caught the right train, then i ran into an Italian from my class, he was nice and friendly, which was a change from the stupid italian who is in my Contemp. Business class. We ran into our teacher, and he gave us a quick run down of what was expected and stuff. I was slightly worried as i am a shy person, so to go into a new situation alone was scary as it seemed everyone was in groups. (I am uploading pictures as we speak) We made a tour of the area and he told us lots of history as he had lived there for a very long time before. Supposely it was the Yakuniku capital of Japan because it has the largest number of Yakuniku resturants in Japan. (Yakuniku Japanese BBQ where you cook the food in front of you) So as we walked the street you could just smell the meat and wish you could go in. But we had made plans to eat at 6 so i decided to wait. He took us on a tour of Korea Town and that was interesting, as supposely Korea Town is only a new thing. Like it was there before, but it was only until recently was it socially acceptable for Koreans to show pride in their heritage. So that when they started to make offical Korea towns, the local people some of them got upset, and so rather to flame more flames they decided to change it from a Town to a Korean Street. But slowly the social status of Korean’s changed and as a result it was able to offically become a town. But then even then, only 2 of the 3 areas that the government wanted to name Korean town’s became Korea towns as the other areas did not want to be associated with Korea. The Korean’s in Japan are an interesting bunch of people, as they have been here for a while, but even then they are not considered Japanese to a degree because in Japan, the term Japanese is usually associated with race, rather then birth place. Then we went to a Korean resturant for dinner as we were all getting hungry and needed to get some food to fill us up. So the teacher took us to a resturant, where it was different then what i was expecting. I was expecting a korean bbq, but we got instead was a more seafood style resturant. We had squid with noodles, octopus and other sea creatures. It was nice and interesting. I had a beer with a teacher which was an interesting experience as i have never had a drink with a teacher before. But many people were drinking so it was not a problem. Then… after that we went out in to the streets as the festival was really starting.

“A danjiri is a traditional type of wooden float, decorated with various ornaments, that is drawn around the town during festival days. Depending on the festival and locality they may also be called dashi, yamagasa or yatai. Around 30 massive floats made from unpainted wood play the major role during this festival, and, it is known as the Danjiri Festival.

From early in the morning to late in the evening of September 14th, groups of young people draw around the town the floats that are the pride of the neighborhood in which they live. If they should run into a danjiri from another neighborhood, the participants compete to ram the floats into each other in encounters. This is why the Danjiri Festival is often referred to as fighting festival. “

It was such an interesting and awe inspring experience i must say… it made me feel like i was in Japan, as you saw all these little kids and adults celebrating the festival, with such a live and exciting spirit. My teacher made an interesting point, that may be the reason that they are able to let there childern go so crazy is because Japanese culture is so rule driven that when they test the limits of society that everyone knows where it is, they are able to stop. This was great… i feel felt a part of Japan. (seeing my pictures won’t finish tonite i will show them later)

But after the festival we were invited to the club house of one of the Danjiri floats and there we had food, WOW is all i can say, the food was some of the greats food. They had chicken nuggets that were made of white meat, fries, sausages, and so on… i was amazed and other stuff.

I was more amazed at the hospitality, they were so friendly to us, i felt bad as i could not really communicate with them. But even then just smiling and laughing and stuff we were able to have a great time. We chatted about our ages, there was an old guy there who asked how old he was, i said 28 and he thought it was funny haha… i was only joking with them.

I seriously can say since coming to Japan, this is one of the most happiest japanese moments i have, not that the other moments i have experienced were not great, but i do not know, something about being so close to a festival made it seem so real. So yes… i want to go to another festvial

Today is friday… updating my journal again. I got home from golf club a couple hours ago, and i feel exhausted, too exhausted to go out. It is a friday but i lack the energy to even think of going out… how sad am i haha…. But it is ok, today i finished my japanese tests which lasted about a week. It was 4 tests in total, 2 for each class. So it was a lot of studying… but it was good, as i said before i was not taking my jaapnese too serious, but the last few weeks i have and i am making slow but meaningful progress… and i will make even more. Golf was interesting today as it was suppose to be weight training, but we did not do weight training we played baseball, it was fun to play for fun… i got a hit on my first try which was nice, as i am always worried… when i play sports. Then we played cops and robbers, and that was fun, me and my friend Taku-san were really bad at the game, every time we thought we had won, you know with only one left, someone would come out of no where and hit the can and we would have to start over again… finally we won hehe… and we quit. Then there was team pictures, which i did not think i would be in becuase i had only joined the team a few days ago, but they let me get in it, which was kind of them, and made me want to come to more pratices, it was very tiring That is why i am here. I will go to a festival tomorrow, for my class, i will take many pictures. I have decided to add a new part to my journal.

Reflection on Japan

What did i notice today, humm… that Japanese people relative to western cultures are more willing to dicuss personal matters. I made i have had discussions with people i just met regarding topics like sex, to drugs, it is amazing. But then at the same time, there is a more hierachical society, like in my golf club, like the power of positions is more definite. I think the reason that this may be the case is that in Japan there is a less of a worry to embrass yourself, i mean if you look at TV or people you met you notice this, they are less worried to do karoake even when they are bad. It is interesting to richness i have discovered in a culture that is percieved to be one of the more conserative ones

Hello All,

So today… i have a lot to write about.

Today… i woke up early as i had to go school to prepare for my test in Japanese. So i went to school and met my partner who then praticed with me for our converstation. We had to read a dilolugue and answer some questions. It went ok… but still i wish i could prepare more, kevin made a good point, he said even though i did not get them all right, i know it was not because i did not know it for the most part, but because i was nervous i must agree. Then i had to read a text for another class, that was horrible, i was so nervous as i had not prepared for that text so i did not know what to do, so i am hoping she gives pity to me.

After that… i came back to my rez and met Kevin and others and they were watching baseball game, i am not saying i like baseball, but when other people are watching i do not mind watching it. But the Yankees won, they are now my team… i do not know haha… we will see, but 1 game they win, hopefully more to come.

Then… back to school as i was having lunch with my speaking partner, which then i realized that the person i had saw earlier in the morning was her friend who has come to lunch with us before, it was nice, and i felt bad for not recongizing her.

Then…. i had to leave that early as i was going to meet the student teacher in my class, who was going to help me prepare for the test tomorrow. I feel very grateful to know her as she was taking time from her life to help me, so that was great.

Then…. class…. boring

then… golfing! I finally joined the golf club, yeppy! hahah… i never believed i would. I must say i am very happy to join the golf club… I met Taku who is the head of the golf… and we went and got on the school bus to get to the other campus so that we could hit balls. Along the way there i met other people who were members and we talked, i tried to use as much Japanese as i could, but it was slow… then we go to golf place and i will write more tomorrow… as it was fun…

ja-ne

pato-chan