On festivities and festivals

Man, this weekend, you guys. It's been completely off the hook. So much going on! And so little time to do grown-up things like dishes or laundry. The way a weekend should be, that is. That being said, I'm completely exhausted and feel pretty drained. Natto, my cute Japanese-Australian coworker was over at my booth today, going "Have you slept okay? Not that you don't look good, but you look kinda out of it," which I guess is true. I was feeling dazed today. Ever since the typhoons, bookings have been less than stellar at work, for a lot of people.

Hopefully the work I put in at the Halloween party ends up paying off. I mean, it was an alright event, even though I can't say I could distinguish it too much from actual work, but whatever. Free food, free drinks, and lots of cute tiny Japanese girls who wanted to pose with and hug the Snorlax. Life could be worse.

Colleagues, more or less in focus.

Students, more or less intoxicated.

Ladies love the Snorlax (and Andrew wishes he had my moves).

Seriously, the girl on the left was like stalking me for most of the parties. "ELLIKA! KAWAII! *hug*"

Mark looked pretty over the whole thing.

I look stupid drunk, but Yuji was stupid hot as a police officer. Sorry, not sorry.

Damn ears kept falling down though. That's Natto in the middle, by the way!

Another instructor went "HUG! HUG!" and then took forever to take the picture. So we just kinda stood there, awkwardly holding on to each other. "It feels like we're a couple." And that's the moment the awkwardness was cemented.

But fuck it, party!

Now granted, I probably should've gone home after the whole thing was finished. Given how up and down I've been the past week, drinking myself into a stupor was probably not the best idea, but it turned out better than I thought it would. I spent a lot of time with Franco, the viking-looking Australian dude. He's fun, but the kind of person where you understand why his ancestors were banished from civilized society. He's the most obnoxious and inappropriate person I know, but taken in the right doses, he's quite entertaining.

The evening progressed with drinking in the park like fancy hobos, and then, once people started leaving, Franco picked up three Palestinian dudes, and we all hit an izakaya and stayed out until three in the morning.

Fancy hobos with awesome live music out of nowhere!

Because Tokyo is exactly the place where you'd expect to meet three Palestinian actors.

Hitting the sack and then getting back up four hours later kinda sucked though, but it was totally worth it. T and I had made plans to go to the Kawagoe festival, and I wanted to get there early to beat the crowds. It was my first real festival, not counting fireworks festivals and things, and it was huge - approximately 200 000 people came over the weekend, according to T. It was awesome. Completely awesome. I probably acted like I was five years old, but I couldn't help it. I was extremely excited. T didn't seem to mind though - he'd been to the festival many times before, so he just seemed happy to introduce it to someone for the first time.

The Kawagoe festival is basically over twenty huge carts called Dashi being pulled around town, where they play drums and flute, and dance wearing traditional outfits. There's one for each part of town, and they're all lavishly decorated. Some are seriously old as well - over two hundred years. Seeing them around felt really special, like one of those things that makes you feel like you've been lifted into a completely different universe. It was amazing, and so much fun!

And oh my god, the food. The food!

Grilled squid is delicious, but probably one of the messiest (and chewiest) things ever.

I ate this weird bun that was solidly burnt on the outside...

...and filled with sweetpotato and what I think is sweet red beans on the inside. I'm pretty sure it was first invented by accident. No one fucks up candy like that on purpose.

Such balloons. Very festive. Much wow.

Before heading out, I'd stopped by T's place to dump some stuff and was kitted out with an old-school camera with actual film. Walking around the festival area, taking pictures like some hipster chick, actually made the festival even more fun. Every picture suddenly mattered, and that 'click' of the shutter and the whirr when pulling the film forward just fit in so well with everything going on. It made it all timeless, or rather, it was like all times were happening at once, and I was loving every second of it. Festivals are kinda magical, especially since the people dancing on the carts are all dressed up to be gods and spirits. Kinda got that Spirited Away-feeling, you know?

Being kinda dehydrated from the night before, I felt exhausted after walking for a few hours, so we went over to a shrine (with a tree with extremely smelly fruit) and just hung out in the afternoon sun. It's nice to see T hang out with animals too - he's a rather independent guy who can tend to come off as a bit harsh and unsympathetic as he seems to find most people to be idiots, but he really softens up with animals. It makes me feel a little sad on account of Japan, culturally teaching its men that they're wimpy if they're soft. I don't get it. I'd taken a kitten-smitten T over grumpy T any day of the week.

We headed back to the festival area, stopping to do that time-old anime featured goldfish game (which is way harder than it looks, by the way), and getting some weird kind of hamburger from southern Japan.

Fox gods are pretty terrifying.

Me being a complete idiot, I went "Of course I want to take it with me home!", only later remembering that I don't, in fact, own an aquarium. Curse you, impulsiveness.

Phone for scale.

This burger was gargantuan, containing two beef patties, ham, cheese, cabbage, onions, fried egg, ketchup and mustard and god knows what else, sandwiched between two giant slices of bread. The thing was a monster. T scarfed his down, but I managed about half before feeling like I was going to pass out. Apparently it was created sometime after World War 2, because the Americans at the nearby military base missed their burgers. Granted, this tastes pretty much nothing like a burger, but hey, points for creativity, right?

The face of someone ready to devour a burger.

After some chilling out and studying, we headed out to the festival again, because apparently, night's the best time for giant Dashi battles.

Let your baby be patted on the head by strange fan-wielding men in drag. It's for luck!

Most adorable ice cream machine in the entire world? I think so.

Goldfish game. This shit is ridiculously hard!

Dog spirit with fantastic hair.

Dance battles. Literally, ancient Japanese dance-offs.

The dance battles were pretty awesome, even though it was hard to know what was going on. Even T had no idea. "Someone wins, but I have no idea who the judge is, or what the criteria is. They just... win." By 9.30 P.M., things started to die down, and we decided to call it a day. An exhausting, but extremely exciting day.

And so yeah, that thing I was saying about irresponsibly getting two goldfish while not having a tank?

Yeah, oops. T and I caught a few more goldfish, keeping them in this makeshift PET bottle aquarium for the night, before making the trip to Ikebukuro in the morning to get them a more permanent home. I've wanted a goldfish tank for a long time, so I guess this was just my way of actually getting it done, but I could probably have handled it in a way that wasn't so similar to that of a five year old with no impulse control.

We named the silver one Gin-san, the five regular goldfish The Tomson Five and the two telescope eyed ones: Deme-chan (from the Japanese word for telescope eyed goldfish, or 'Demekin') that T caught for me, and Debu-chan (from the Japanese word 'Debu', which means 'fatty') that I caught myself. Unfortunately by the morning, Deme-chan had met his demise, and it was pretty clear that the whole PET bottle situation wasn't going to end favourably. Festival goldfish are notoriously weak, but still, it made me feel a little guilty.

We split the remaining fish into two groups and I carried them on the train in two separate PET bottle aquariums (while people stared with confused looks on their faces), leaving them in a makeshift bucket aquarium (probably only marginally better) and then rushing off to the store to see what could be done. Because of the time crunch to keep these little critters alive, I didn't have time to browse plants and decorations like I would have liked to. T promised he'd bring some proper gravel over from his place next time we hang out, but I'm going to have a look for some plants and stuff by the end of the week to try to make their home a happier one. They all kinda hang in the right corner now, gravitating towards my plants. 

So yeah, I bought an aquarium on impulse today. What did you guys do?