Golden Turds and Funky Costumes!

Yeah it's been a little while... sorry! Im not nearly as bad as Sam and Aaron, though. But hey, they're getting ready to leave the country -- packing up your whole life from the past 2 years and saying goodbye to everyone doesnt leave much time left for updating blogs I guess! Oh well!

So, this last weekend we went to Tokyo to hang out before we had to go to meetings on Monday and Tuesday for our duties as TOAs (Tokyo Orientation Assistants). The weather was crap the whole time, but that didnt keep us from having a fabulous time! The first day we go there, we were pretty tired from the 3-4 hour bullet train (shinkansen) ride, but we wanted to have an interesting night, so we headed an hour and a half south past Yokohama to Yokosuka where there's a huge Navy Base. Why in the world did we want to go to a military base??? Well, for one, it was a guaranteed interesting time. Number two.... well Angie was craving some non-Japanese eye candy and a little touch of home (however twisted that sounds!). Sure enough, there was PLENTY of yummy eye-candy... I just wasnt gonna touch any of it... them being sailors and all, you never know where theyve been! We ended up talking to a couple guys who then agreed to show us around and show us a good time. We would have had to catch an early train (10:45pm) back to Tokyo but since the guy offered his living room to us we said, what the hell! So yeah, we stayed all night! We had some interesting conversations and experiences to say the least and ended up catching the 1st train back to Tokyo in the morning at 5am.

We were planning on sleeping a bit since we hadnt gotten any, but since we'd booked a super cheap hostel where the rooms were separated by cubicle walls and you could hear the person at the other end of the building breathing, no sleep was possible! So we got up and decided to spend the day sightseeing! First thing I did was call home and congratulate my little brother on graduating!!! Yaayy Kirk! We took some pics of the building with the so called "Golden Flame" on top... more commonly called the "unnko biru" which means "shit building" for obvious reasons... Although Im not sure if its biru for building or biiru for beer. Either one would make sense and would be funny since the building is owned by the Asahi beer company (I think...!).



Here are a couple other pics... the rain really wasn't bothering me that day!





After that, we decided to visit the Sensoji Temple which is supposed to be really cool. However, the main gate which is the main attraction was completely covered in a white tarp and under renovation... darn!



But there were other cool things to see. This lantern was incredibly huge!



Here's a pagoda in the temple area. Too bad Adam's face is so dark. Although, it does give him a goofy yet mysterious look....

As we were walking away, we heard screaming and shouting coming from a tent near the temple so we decided to check it out. We were surprised and delighted to find out that it was a kids sumo tournament!! It was fun to watch even though some of the kids were really scrawny!


This was one guy who wasn't quite sumo sized but had a little meat on him...



Unfortunately, this was his opponent... there's no weight categories I guess. Tough luck for him!



The lil' guy tried his best but was no match for the sheer "whale-ness" of his opponent....

We also wanted to check out the Harajuku Bridge where young (japanese) people dress up in all sorts of strange costumes and just chill all day. There weren't very many there that day, though, since it was raining. But here are a couple (very tame) examples.




Hopefully, when we go back to Tokyo we'll be able to get away for a little while and see some other, more wild, costumes!

Later on, we met up with our friends Kotaro, Yuji and Quinn. Kotaro was a good friend from college and Yuji was also there (although I was in Germany that year). Quinn is a good friend from back home. He grew up on Vashon too.


This is Kotaro and his friend Ivonne. She wasnt there that night... this is an older pic. I didnt get a pic of any of us that night... oops!

Here are some pics of Shibuya in Tokyo.... lots of people and sensory overload in every sense of the word!!






And here's a Kebab vendor... I like the red cowboy hat. Gives him a distinct "only in Japan" look!


Latest news: I've decided to switch phone companies and, therefore, my phone as well. Ill be getting an ECO phone which is NOT made out of plastic in the conventional sense (ie out of oil) but instead plastic rendered from plant fiber -- more specifically, corn! Pretty cool, huh? AND 1% of my bills will be donated I guess to certain conservation activities! Im pretty excited about it! The only unfortunate thing is that it comes in only one color and design: pink with silver leaves... I think its very cute but Adam thinks it might send people the wrong message or just plainly insult his manhood if he got one... Even though he'd like to get a phone made out of corn too, he does have his limits. In this case, I dont blame him!

Here's the link. Check it out!

http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/english/product/foma/701i/n701ieco/index.html