The Week Where I Can’t Really Remember What Happened

I’m writing this from a small hotel room in Kobe, near a train station called K Computer Mae.

This is where I will be housed until Friday of this week, so expect next week’s entry to put you to sleep because there’s not a heck of a lot I can get up to while I’m here.

Onto the week where I’m honestly having trouble remembering what happened. Probably because when I came home after posting the last entry, I was put in a situation where I had to ask myself a question.

The question was, “What would you do if you had super-slow-motion cameras and a Japanese TV studio?”

Why, this of course…

So, yes, they threw water balloons at overweight comedians who weren’t wearing shirts and replayed it several times over.

I chose these two pictures from the ones that I took because of the picture-in-picture shots in the top left-hand corner. This happens on just about every variety or panel show in Japan, of which there are many. I’ve never quite understood it, but I guess it’s an effort to show the audience that the people taking part in the show are exposed to the same thing you are. Unless people watching TV in Japan are just as confused as I am half the time and the purpose of having someone else’s face on screen is directly implying to the audience that this is how they should be responding to what they’re seeing. That said, look at the expression on the guy in the second photo. He looks, dare I say it, turned on.

Speaking of confused…

This sticker is kind of hard to read. It reads “Wholesome food in a healthy climate makes a healthy man”.

Ummm… Wha?

Now I remember why I can’t remember anything occurring this week. Because it rained all day and all night Wednesday and Thursday – 48 hours straight. Even the times where it felt like, “Oh, the rain has stopped. Time to go outside!” it would just start bloody raining again.

Then it rained some more on Friday, a touch on Saturday and – you guessed it – more rain on Sunday. Typhoons are jerks.

So I watched a few films from 1964.

Revenge (Adauchi) – a film that has a non-linear plot, which is somewhat unique for its time. The director, Tadashi Imai, was known for critiquing Japan’s class structure in many of his works. Revenge is another example of this, as a low-ranked samurai defeats a samurai of a higher-rank in a forbidden duel and the defeated’s house demands a revenge duel. How the story unfolds is not by swords clashing every five minutes, as one may expect. Rather, the audience is treated to a cast of well-developed characters blended with critiquing the political machinations of a bygone era and what it really means to ‘save face’. Recommended.

Kwaidan – a collection of four different ghost stories. It runs for three hours long, and if you’re expecting big scares, you may want to avoid this film. These ghost stories are a bit more of your suspense-driven, slow-burn variety. Two of the films in particular have these amazing, elaborately painted fake backgrounds. The colour palette of each film has a distinct feel and flavour to it, which makes for an interesting watch too.

I watched a bunch more, but decided not to bore you with writing about them. Perhaps I should just start a Japanese film podcast.

I drank one of these!

You’re probably wondering what this is called. It is called a Kingyo, or Goldfish. I’m not sure what the alcoholic base is for this particular beverage, but they add shiso barley and chilli to it (See, the chilli makes it look like a goldfish!) and all I can say is that is has one of the most unique aftertastes of any drink I’ve encountered in my lifetime – be it alcoholic or not.

Another night last week was spent out with Nakamura-san. I’m very fortunate to have a housemate like Nakamura-san, because I’m always going to see a different side of Kyoto each time I head out with him. There’s a croquette bar/restaurant right near our house that I’d been meaning to check out for some time. Alas, the opportunity presented itself one night last week, so we headed there. We shared a bottle of wine, had some deep-fried goodness and got talking to the bar master.

This particular bar master is one funny guy. Kyoto has a knack for attracting really unique individuals, in case you didn’t know or couldn’t tell already.

Most of the night, he was talking to me about how much he loves rock music. Especially AC/DC. Then when business had died down a bit, he finds some clips on YouTube and starts rocking out to it behind the bar. The other customers at the bar were just kind of wandering exactly what in the seven hells was going on.

But then we got talking movies, Japanese movies, to be specific. My knowledge on this particular topic is apparently impressive. I think I still have a ways to go before it can be called that. But this topic somehow transformed into more YouTubing. But not of films or movie soundtracks, but Japanese idols from the ’70s and ’80s – why? – because many films in those days would use Japanese idols as lead actors to not only sell the film, but sell the soundtrack as well. Tie-ins are MASSIVE over here, even today.

Once the master decided it was time to shut up shop for the night, he invited us to a bar nearby (well, not too close) which was a rock and blues themed bar. The bar downstairs was full, so we took the upstairs portion. We were treated to a wall full of amazing LP covers from popular bands, two cherry red sofas and our very own music that differed to the downstairs aural offering. Some interesting conversations flowed on while we were there, but we decided to head to Kiyamachi at 2am instead.

Fast-forward to… Me drinking at a bar while working on a writing project on my tablet PC at 3am in the morning.

Well, this hurriedly-written claptrap should come to a screeching halt for now, because I think I’ve exhausted my capacity for this week. Training so far (two days in) has been pretty good to me. There’s 11 other people training, all Japanese, and me. This made one of the trainers yesterday say this exact phrase.

“So this week we have 11 Japanese instructors…and Paul.”

I feel like now everyone should use my name in that context.

Person A: Hey! We went out the other night.

Person B: Oh, cool! Who was there?

Person A: Let’s see, there were five of us out…and Paul.

Person B: Oh…

NOW FOR SOMETHING RARER THAN BIGFOOT BEING BITTEN BY A HEN DURING A SOLAR ECLIPSE…