Happy hour, Old Friends and Gion Matsuri

I started writing this entry from a bar which many foreigners make the effort to travel to in Kyoto, a bar called Ruins. Drinking got in the way and I’m now sitting at my local cafe finishing this thing off.

So this week was pretty eventful, for a grand total of three or four of the days of the week. Even though I posted last week’s entry a bit later than usual, a few events had transpired that I didn’t particularly feel like writing about, as the tone was a far cry from what I usually write.

Sunday night last week I was lucky enough to catch up with a woman I was tutoring in Melbourne and her friend. It was great to catch up, as any reminder of home is welcome.

On Monday, Greg and I met up at 3pm for happy hour at a place that Greg had been raving about.

Happy hour consists of beers and various other alcoholic beverages for 190Y. That’s less than $2.50 a drink. We were drunk before 6pm. Thankfully, the food there was amazing too, so we’ll end up visiting again in the near future. Especially when we read about two hours all you can drink and eat for around $40AUD.

One of the guys that works at the restaurant has a pen in the shape of a lobster claw. And it has a button that when pressed, snaps the claw shut. Pen envy is a very rare condition, but I swear I have experienced what it feels like. A stumbling walk home to drink some water, let Greg play some piano, consume some plain crackers and remark about how great these plain crackers tasted and pick up Greg’s umbrella that was left at our house many moons ago (but is still with us even now somehow… Perhaps because point a – drunk and b – bees) and then a drink at Ishimaru.

The rest of Monday night was spent sobering up at Gion Matsuri. For those of you not in the know, Gion Matsuri is one of the most famous and traditional Japanese festivals that runs in Kyoto for most of July. It also means the city gets ridiculously packed.

SEE!

This section of the festival runs for three nights in a row. There are street stalls on every side street and a large portion of the city centre is blocked off for foot traffic, which makes perfect sense. The picture above was taken on a four-lane central city street.

The gist of the festival is there’s a number of mikoshi (or portable shrines) that make their way around Kyoto. They all rest in one particular spot for a week, and then they are moved back. Something to do with several gods warding off evil spirits from specific locations. It’s honestly pretty crazy. The foot traffic is immense on the popular nights, but I’ll definitely be going back next year. Especially when I get to pose with people in hamburger suits. That picture is on my Facebook somewhere should you want to see it.

It still doesn’t feel like I should be able to say the words ‘next year’ and know that I’m going to be in Japan still. Pictures of floats and things!

This next picture was taken on Wednesday night of this week. All the mikoshi were set in their resting place for the next week or so, and I was lucky enough to catch the end of the ceremony as they lifted the last mikoshi and placed it alongside the other two, only to realise that the one in the middle was slightly out of place, so they decided to move it to make it a bit more symmetrical. It was the equivalent of the largest audience watching someone re-park their car several times because it just wasn’t quite right.

And now the picture you’ve all probably been waiting for. Well, not really as there’s a similar picture of me that has served as my profile picture for the past three years. But here’s a photo of me in all my yukata glory.

I can’t honestly remember how many times I was complimented on just how well I wear yukata. Perhaps it can be my ‘look’ when I move back to Melbourne.

And one more for good measure. I swear I wasn’t actually trying to make these photos look like alcohol advertisements, it just kind of played out that way.

That picture was taken later in the night back at Greg and Uwa-chan’s house, where we gorged on a great deal of watermelon. We left to meet up with one of the local bartenders who had a stall at Gion Matsuri, where I got to try Mango flavoured beer. And yes, it was just as delicious as it sounds.

I experienced another first this week – teaching English to a Japanese kid. This female student is only 10 years old, so I tried my best to make the class as interactive and interesting as possible. I was the first Australian she had ever met. I found a picture of my nephew Lachlan on Facebook to show her and she thought he was really cool because he plays the drums. I then explained that while it is summer in Kyoto (and very damn hot and humid, might I add) it is actually winter in Australia. This fact blew her mind. And so did showing her a picture of a platypus.

That’s one part of my job that I’m enjoying more than anything. The simple things we sometimes take for granted when it comes to cultural communication. Witnessing that lightbulb moment is pretty rewarding.

However, there’s those moments where maybe you haven’t quite got the message across as well as you’d hoped and the expression is more akin to “Why did you just kick my puppy across the room?”  and further failed attempts at explaining are met with “OK, you kicked it and I’m OK with that now. But why did you have to stomp on it?!”

And to close out this entry, here’s a selfie I took on one of the Gion Matsuri nights. It was something like 33 degrees and humid as all heck. I don’t know why Kyoto has an illuminated unicorn outside a restaurant, but have a gander all the same.