Familiar Faces. Ramen. Yukata. Tea Ceremony.

I’m not even really sure where to start retelling this week. There were no ferret orgies, for one, so it seems like entry has absolutely no chance of matching the last.

I did see a ferret chase a cat and screech at it, though. Reginald has been missing in action for the past week.

Another photo I took last Sunday was this one.

So part of this festival was all the parents in town dressing their children up in this traditional outfit and walking them down the main street of Arashiyama. While I took this picture, I still had the soy ice-cream (pictured in last week’s entry).

Imagine, if you will, a procession of kids dressed up rather fancy on a really hot day while a massive white dude stands there with an ice-cream and takes a photo of you. I sympathise with the expression on this one young girl’s face – jealousy, resent and discomfort.

Copy and paste that expression several times over.

Moving on.

Tuesday was spent preparing sauce and meatballs for dinner that evening. The end result was delicious.
Maybe I should just open up a tiny Italian restaurant while I’m over here.

Wednesday night a friend from Melbourne was visiting so I took him and his friend out for a night on the town and some awesome ramen. How awesome, you say? Why, this awesome.

It’s basically pork-on-pork-on-pork action – Tripork or Pornk, perhaps. And it tasted amazing.

The next day Greg and I committed carbocide – meatball subs at my place and some beer from Yamaguchi followed by burgers under Kyoto Station and then an 800ml beer that costs 550Y ($5.50AUD or thereabouts) and then a number of hours complaining about the self-inflicted damage we had caused.

Once we were able to walk again, we came across this. The pose just seemed right.

For the record, ‘Paul’s Boutique’ was a great Beastie Boys album. ‘Shake Yo Rump’ and ‘Hey Ladies’ – brilliant.

You may notice I’m holding some shopping in this photo. In preparation for a tea ceremony that was being hosted at my house, I purchased a yukata from Chicago, a second-hand store in Teramachi arcade that Uwa-chan works at. Much time was spent perusing what yukata and kimono were available. Many terrible ones were hand-picked by Greg on purpose, but the one I chose is pretty damn neat.

We dropped into Ishimaru Shoten after that to chat to Ishii-san. We met a Canadian guy named Tami and we chatted a while about what he wanted to see while he was in Japan. A conversation from earlier in the day led to determining where we would have dinner. Nakamura-san called Greg and said that we would go to Yama-chan because his friend was working there that night.

Yama-chan is a famous tebasaki (chicken wing) restaurant chain from Nagoya. I sampled their wares (or wings, I guess) last time I was in the country and I became addicted. I’m not really sure how one can feel a sense of nostalgia wash over them while eating chicken wings, but I sure as heck did.

Friday consisted of me trying to fix my smartphone. Why? Because I dropped it on the kitchen floor and cracked the screen like an idiot during the week. I may have to buy the parts and fix it myself, which could be interesting.

Later I witnessed one of those natural phenomenons you’ve only really heard about until you get to see it – fireflies.

This is the best photo I could take with my cracked screen smartphone. That bright line is the firefly, and you can see the reflection below in the water. This occurs  on occasion in the small man-made river that flows through Kyoto behind my house. I can only say that it is quite beautiful to watch 20-30 fireflies dance along the river. Expect better photos when the next sighting occurs.

Saturday rolled around and I decided it was time that I got a haircut. Thankfully, there’s a barber literally 2 mins walk from my house, so I decide to throw myself into another round of ‘Paul can’t speak Japanese well enough just yet, but let’s see how this situation plays out all the same’…

I’m pretty certain I made this barber’s week. Now, I know what you’re thinking – “It’s just a haircut, Paul. Shut up and show me more funny pictures.”

NO. YOU WAIT FOR PICTURES NOW. IT WASN’T JUST ANOTHER HAIRCUT.

Yes, all the elements of having one’s hair cut by a barber were there. Elderly man, clippers, scissors, comb, razor, sterile atmosphere with a TV on in the background –  all of the elements.

Anyone that knows me (or has seen pictures of me) can tell I’m one of the more hirsute specimens this world has. Not quite the missing link, but not really missing hair either…

However, I am now able to comment on the differences between my experiences of barbers in Australia and Japan.
At one point during the service, I was given a two-handed massage around my shoulders and neck, delivered karate-chop style.
This barber made at least four passes – initial clippering, scissors, smaller scissors, razor and then tidy with the scissors again.
Two rough head massages.
And my ears were shaved.

MY

EARS

WERE

SHAVED.

I didn’t even know ear clippers existed until Saturday, June 1, 2013 in a small barbershop in Kyoto, Japan.

I’m a hairy guy, I admit that freely. I didn’t even know my ears had enough hair to warrant being shaved. And it wasn’t just like, the inner ear, it was the outside of the ear too.

I spent my afternoon being tutored in katakana by Nakamura-san’s friend Miki-chan, because she was at our place once I returned and can’t speak much English. And before I headed out for the evening, there was some quality viewing on TV.

This TV show, Shimura Zoo, seems to be a weekly exercise in overdosing viewers with cute. This chimp and bulldog went on an adventure together to Nikko. All sorts of madness ensued, but then it got a bit…

That’s the bulldog taking a photo of the monkey. That’s not a joke, or a trick. Because the monkey took a photo of the dog before that. And he even took a selfie. YouTube Shimura Zoo if you have the time just to try and wrap your head around exactly what happens on that show.

Saturday night I don’t really want to recall. Well, I do for at least one reason. Emily (who I met in Nagoya last year) came to Kyoto and Greg and I decided we’d head out and have a few drinks. See how I said the words ‘a few’?

Blow-by-blow recap of Saturday night – kushi katsu dinner and one beer. Walking around Greg’s neighbourhood waiting for Emily. Meet Emily. Highball at Greg’s unusually quiet izakaya. Large beer at Bungalow. Tetsuro joins us and informs us there’s a place that does 100Y drinks ($1AUD) so we go there for – grapefruit and whisky soda (times two because if you kept the grapefruit, they just refill the whisky and soda for free), ginger highball, sangria and something else. Emily returns to her hotel at 2am. Greg, Tetsuro and I head to a whisky bar for one drink. Back to Kiymachi (drinking district) for caipirinha and more whisky. Daylight. Chicken ramen and deep-fried chicken. Greg’s house. Sleep.

I returned home at 1pm on Sunday, a few hours before the tea ceremony was due to start. Some more work had to be done, but once the preparations were complete, I had time to take this ‘selfie’ as the kids call it.

My yukata, as it turns out, has tigers on the sleeves and the names of former sumo wrestlers all over the front. Gangster. And you get to see my new haircut. Birds. Stone. Done.