Christmas Vacation

hangin out by the water in Yuasa
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Well as usual a lot has happened since last entry. Leaving off at the Jazz nomikai, the saturday afterwards was a relaxed day, nothing exciting but the Sunday (18th?) there was a christmas party that i attended that was held by a group of students from Kyoto International University. It started off fairly unexciting because there were only about 20 people but as time went on and people started chatting it got better. We ended up playing bingo for prizes, having a secret santa-like thing where we stood in a circle and passed prizes around while some music played and then when the music stopped we stopped passing (musical chairs anyone?). I ended up with no present in my hands when the music stopped aha, so i had to find a person in the room who had two and get one of them. Interestingly enough the person who had 2 was holding my present and the present that a friend of mine bought, so i ended up with my friend's present, which i inevitably gave to another friend since the present was an ashtray and i don't smoke. After that we made a Christmas cake, just a couple angel food cake pieces some fruit, icing, and chocolate. Ours ended up being some face with a unibrow and sticking its tongue out, pretty funny looking actually. It was fun, a little bit laid back, but got some good japanese practice in.

AJ relaxing in Shirahama. It looks deceptively warm here.
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A few days later on the 23rd we had our I-House 1 christmas party. It was fairly similar, and actually somewhat reminiscient of a grade 7 dance i thought. We had food (and plenty of drinks at this one), and made more cakes etc. It was fun for a bit, but the real fun was the afterparty. I'd always wanted to check out this club called metro which has a massive selection of music, everything from rolling stones nights to hip hop and trance music. It just so happened that on this night there was a funk/jazz band with a saxophone lead, in other words pretty much exactly what i love. Fortunately a bunch of the other people came out as well, including some of the chinese people in the dorm which are usually reserved about going out with us because of the bigger language barrier etc. It ended up being an amazing night thanks to the good company and the excellent music. Everyone else said they had enjoyed it equally as much. After the set, i got to talk to the saxophone player for a bit and asked him if he knew/knew of my favorite sax player Sam Kininger, he said yes but the conversation didn't really go anywhere from there since other people were trying to talk to him as well. AJ, interesting as always, typed a text message on his phone saying something like "Hey can you try and play the theme song for 'Rosanne' =)" which cracked me up since i totally used to watch that show everyday, though i couldn't for the life of me remember what it sounded like aha. Unfortunately he didn't play it though aha. Afterwards we headed for some cheap food at one of the 24-hour restaurants and ended up coming home around 5am.

AJ and I after drinking with the random Japanese guy
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On Christmas Eve we had a relaxed potluck dinner at our Dorm. It was nice to have everyone together since our dormmates are the closest family we have at this time. The rest of the night was spent with a few other friends, including some tense videogame soccer matches with 4 other people in the dorm, then me staying up until about 5am playin guitar in my room for some reason.

Christmas itself was very relaxed, though i seem to remember going shopping for some CDs or something since in Japan on Christmas it's business as usual. The days following christmas were mostly boring, me sitting around the dorm playing guitar, reading, listening to music etc.

Drunk....
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However on the 28th AJ and I decided to takeoff on a winter vacation and that's where the real fun started. Our plans were to go down to this peninsula south of Osaka (Kii peninsula) which is mostly made up of Wakayama prefecture and known as a beautiful area with many beaches and gorgeous coastal scenery....in other words a good place to go in the SUMMER. However, we didn't really care since we didn't really know where else to go that would be interesting but also wouldn't be a big city or something, so off we went. The first day we travelled through Osaka south down the coast and ended up in a little village called "Yuasa" where we stayed in a youth hostel. On the way there we saw all sorts of cool scenery, some snow, and millions upon millions of mandarin oranges (mikan). Getting off the train we were greeted by a massive rainbow. We walked about an hour to find the dormitory, but on the way we took in some excellent scenery, including an excellent sunset. Shortly after i managed to drop my camera down a 10-15 foot ladder but it works completely fine so no harm done! (i also just got back from the store with a brand new Nikon D40 5 minutes before writing this =).

Sunrise at Kushimoto
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The hostel was nice and all, the manager was kind enough to drive us back into town to get some food from a supermarket since it was kind of far and we hadn't eaten yet. The next morning we left and the manager gave us some oranges for our journey since there are so many around. After that we took about 2 hours to get to a place called "shirahama" where one of the most famous beaches in japan,"shirarahama", is located. We hopped off the bus and decided to walk the town, figuring it'd take about 4 hours to do a loop and make it to our final destination Kushimoto before nighttime. Off we went, walking around the coast so we'd inevitably end up at some sort of cool beach. On the way we saw some weird hotels, lots of cool scenery, little village houses etc, very cool. We continued walking on when we heard this voice from behind us asking us to 'come come', we looked back and saw some japanese guy, who'd come out this italian restaurant he owned, waving to us to come over. We were kind of skeptical that he was asking us to buy something, but turned around anyway out of curiousity and because he was being fairly persistant. We sat down inside the restaurant and in broken English he asked us a few questions about where we came from, why we were there etc before asking us if we wanted a drink, insisting it was free. We accepted reservedly not really knowing what we were getting into. When he came out, he was carrying two big boxes of wine and a couple glasses. The first glass he poured for us must've been 4 inches tall or so, at which point AJ and i looked at each other thinking "uhhhh okkay". The guy tried to pour himself a glass and managed to dump it all over the table ahah, so AJ and I figured he must've been drunk as well, but we were never 100% sure aha. When the conversation switched to what we were drinking, the guy thought it necessary to bring out another 2 or 3 bottles of whisky and before we knew it, one of the bottles was empty, 2 hours had passed, and AJ and i were totally drunk....again. We took some pics with the guy and stumbled out of the restaurant to continue our journey, but this time it was to find a bus stop since we were running behind and needed to get to Kushimoto on time or risk having no place to stay. We walked along the coast and took some more pictures, asking all sorts of people to take pictures with us as well since we didn't really care what we were doing haha. We found some weird peninsula thing, walked out onto it and started talking to some fisherman and then 4 or 5 girls who'd come from Tokyo. Of course we inevitably ended up taking pictures with them. We continued on and found the bus stop....somehow, i can't remember. Unfortunately (fortunately?) there was a beer vending machine at the bus stop so we couldn't resist and ended up having one more before hopping on the bus. I think we scared a few people in the process but i don't really remember. We got off the bus at the train station and managed to find our way onto the right train to where we wanted to go, and fell asleep right after we got on. Miraculously AJ managed to wake himself and me up at just the right time at the stop we needed to get off at, so we quickly hopped off.

Rika and friends
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At Kushimoto we went to teh supermarket to buy some sushi rolls and karaage chicken since we figured it'd be best to eat something (it should be mentioned that when we drank at the guy's place we were almost on empty stomachs, not good!) so we don't feel like crap later. We had to take a taxi to the place, but got there fine and all, albeit a little pricey. The hostel was a bit pricey, but fairly comfortable, though we wanted to bitch about the lack of hot water in the bathrooms after showering in water that was probably a few degrees above zero aha. By 11pm we had small hangovers from the days events, but fell asleep around midnight or 1 so that we could wake up and catch the sunrise since at this point we were at the southernmost tip of Japan's largest island of Honshu.

Us with Rika's family
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We got up at 6:30am and walked down to the beach across the street then continued on elsewhere to get a better shot. The sunrise was excellent, made better by all the small islands in the water, and the fisherman whose livelihoods are based on using those islands for points from which to catch fish. It was really good to watch. The only thing i wish i had was a better camera to show how excellent it looked. We didn't have a lot of time to enjoy the morning though since we had to hop on a bus by 8:50 to make a train that would take us to our next destination, Rika's family's place.

Rika's a friend of mine who studied at UBC last year as part of the exchange program and she wanted to invite a couple international students over so i quickly agreed and dragged AJ along since i knew it'd be an awesome experience. However, to get there was a 9.5 hour journey by train and took our whole day, hence the leaving at 8:50am (and arriving just after 6pm). Nevertheless, getting there is always half the fun, and along the way we saw all sorts of coastal scenery from the comfort of the train, including various small fishin villages, every one of which was very peaceful looking.

Arriving in Nakatsugawa (where rika's family lives), we went to her place, quickly met her family and then had plans to go with Rika to an izakaya (small restaurant/bar place that usually serves drinks and small tapas dishes) because she had made plans to meet up with 8-9 of her female friends from high school. It doesn't matter what kind of guy you are, knowing that you're going to go and hang out with 10 girls is always a nice thought ahah, though as expected it was very hard to talk to them because they were so chatty and our japanese sucks ahah, but we got to speak a bit and it was overall an enjoyable experience. Afterwards we went back to Rika's and chatted with her dad and brother until 2 or 3am before goin to sleep.

The next morning we got up and wandered into the kitchen where Rika and her mother were already busy working on preparing the traditional japanese meal we were going to eat. In general December 31 is the busiest day of the year around the house in Japan as the house needs to be cleaned completely and various food prepared for the night's dinner. AJ and i helped out with a couple things around the house, but weren't really sure what to do, so probably just ended up making things slower aha. By the time dinner came though we were amazed at the aesthetics that went into the whole thing. We ate off these large red and black trays, apparently a traditional color, and had small portions of various traditional foods. These kinds of foods aren't generally liked as much by japanese people as some of the more modern stuff, but they gotta make them as part of the tradition and actually i thought they weren't too bad. Aside from them we had temaki where you take a piece of seaweed and fill it with rice, crab, fish or whatever. The whole time we were eating, Rika's father would constantly fill up our glasses with beer, sake, or whatever, and we were grateful of course aha. The funniest part was how Rika's grandma would keep filling up AJ's glass with whisky. After dinner we went to a bar close-by that rika's friend's boyfriend worked at and had some drinks, played some darts/pool etc. There were only about 10 people in the whole place including us, but it was nice and we were treated to some soba noodles and sake.

After waking up the following morning, we helped with a couple things around the house and ended up going with rika to a temple close-by to make our new year's wishes. I think the rest of the day was pretty relaxed, though we did go to the small shopping centre nearby to pick up some presents for rika's family since they treated us so well. That night though rika's cousins/aunt/uncle came over and we all made Takoyaki (octopus balls) and Okonomiyaki (pancake thing with cabbage, seafood, egg etc). Of course teh beer and liquor were flowing as well. We essentially spent the night hanging around watching TV and chatting with the various people that came and went from the house, including some interesting friends of rika's older brother. One other fun thing to mention, AJ loves to sing (especially while drinking) and a couple of the nights he ended up singing some irish songs which inevitably led to me being asked to sing something Canadian, but i honestly didn't know anything i could sing without the backing of a band. Related to this, the night before i ended up reading some children's story to Rika, AJ, and her cousins and they thought it was pretty funny. So both things combined, being that i didn't have anything to sing, AJ goes and tells me to read the story again, of course Rika's family agrees aha. So i grab the story and give it my all, doin it exactly like i would to a bunch of kids at a BC Hydro Power Smart event (my summer work for those who don't know). I read the first 10 pages or so, then just went to the end since it was going on forever. Afterwards though Rika's dad, who has some sort of high up position in a children's school, said he'd like to employ me sometime in the future, so who knows, i may have a work opportunity sometime in the future if i'm searching for a reason to come back here. That night AJ and i ended up staying awake until 4am or so and waking up at 8am so we could go to rika's grandma's place where we'd enjoy more company from her family, cousins etc. One fun part  was when Rika decided to (see:accidentally) drive the car over a big bump when we were going up her grandma's driveway, it surprised everyone aha, but no harm done to the car or anything i think.

At her grandma's place we had some snacks, including some tea snacks from one of the most famous places in Japan that makes them that just happens to be located nearby. Afterwards we were going to be taken to an onsen nearby, kind of a request of mine the previous day because i remember going with saori's family to one the year before. We pull up to the onsen and i'm thinking "wait, this looks kind of familiar" and just as you would know it, it was exactly the same place as the year before, just pure chance. After the onsen, we returned back to rika's grandma's place and had this awesome yakiniku (fried meat etc) dinner, chatted for a bit, then hopped in the car to head back to the train station before our 4 hour journey back to Kyoto.

All in all, i couldn't ask for a better winter vacation. Hopefully spring vacation will be even better!