Carpe Some Diem - Part II
4th trip to the most magical place this side of the Pacific. Chisato and Gavin at DisneySea.
The FIBA World Basketball Championships were way back in September but I never mentioned them. We got tickets for the championship game fully expecting Team USA to meet us there. We were hoping to hang out with Carmelo Anthony after the game. They were well on their way until they surprisingly lost in the semis to Greece. So we ended up watching Spain pummel Greece in the finals. It was still a great experience.
At the Yoshida Jinja festival, some drunk Japanese guy came up to me and said, “I don’t speak English…I speak Irish.” Then he tried to kiss me. Don’t worry, he wasn't about to get any. Last year at the very same festival some drunk guy gave me a mask so I put it on and started doing my interpretation of a “traditional” festival dance, then he tried to lick my mask. I didn’t know that move. I decided this is definitely the last time I ever go to this festival even though I’ll only live in Japan once.
The Yabusame Festival is held in Kasama near Mito. It’s one of only a couple festivals held in Japan like this. Following the traditional samarai martial arts of kyudo, people decked out in samarai garb ride sprinting horses while shooting arrows at wooden targets. Wish they would have given us a chance to ride.
On Halloween night a few of us went karaoke-ing in our Halloween costumes. Since Japanese people don’t really celebrate Halloween we decided to go out on the town in full garb. I paid my bills at 7-11 (which is how we pay bills here) and we went around to a couple of restaurants and actually got some candy trick-or-treating. It was pretty funny because you could hear people lock their car doors at stop lights as we walked by. 
A group of about 80 of us went to Fuji-Q Amusement Park. Seriously they have THE best roller coasters I’ve ever ridden! And a great view of Mt. Fuji (on clear days).
Don't ask me how, but I got the high score of the day on this laser gun shooting ride.
For the first time here Japanese friends ate with us Americans (and Aussies) at our Thanksgiving dinner. We had over 80 people share together. Someone mentioned it was like how the pilgrims invited the Native Americans to their feast because they had helped them survive in the new foreign land. I think it was only fitting we got to show our thankfulness to them. I made pumpkin pie for the first time. Look out Martha Stewart!
My favorite day trip sightseeing spot in Japan is a place called Nikko. I’ve been 7 times now…but what’s one more trip? They have monkeys there, but I’d never ever seen them. Until now. I’ve always wanted a pet monkey. We pulled over the side of the road because there were around 30 monkeys hanging out licking each other.
Long exposure shot: Ghosts in Nikko
Eight months of waiting and I finally got to see U2 live in concert. Originally we went in for a lottery with 12 friends. It was a going away party for everyone leaving last April. Well U2 cancelled their Japan Tour. Fortunately they put it back on for the end of November . We had to enter another lottery to be able to buy tickets and only 2 of us ended up going this time. We ate at Hard Rock before the concert and they even randomly put us in the U2 corner.
The concert was amazing! This concert just further proved why they are the greatest band ever! 
posted by Denver at 2:44 PM
3 Comments:
Good for you for carpin' some of that deim. (Rusty's hilarious!) Good attitude to take on it. I wish I had had that chance in Japan, but hey, what can you do. It's fun to virtually live through your adventures.
Actually we were kind of in bizarro worlds. I went to the FIFA women's championship game in Brazil. The US didn't make it to the final there either. But it was still awesome. :)
Keep having fun! Hope to see you when you come back to the States!
ps-- I hope you're already prepared for a million people asking what you're going to do now.
Glad to see you've been carpe-ing some diem (and it's good to hear the spirit of Rusty still haunts the Land of the Rising Sun). Wish I'd done a bit more of that toward the end of my Japan stay. I must say the photo that made me the most jealous, though, is nowhere close to truly Japanesee--finally got to see U2, huh? Very nice, very nice. Enjoy your last few months there.
Oh, I guess I am pretty torn up about missing the Halloween costume-karaoke party... Those are one in a million. Later, man!
Dude, really glad somebody go to see U2. Don't know when that chance will ever come up again. The ghost pic at Nikko is spoot-tacular. Get it, 'spook' and 'tacular.'
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