SUNDAY, DECEMBER 18th
----Midnight Update----

Continuing from Friday's post...

No, I got no presents at work. It turns out that my students are all either very horrible people or have lives of their own. Either way, they're all failing. I did, however, continue telling them throughout the day that it was my birthday, in the hopes that they'd throw something together, give me their cell phones, some spare cash, whatever, but all I got was a repeated "Ahhh?! You?! Your birthday today?!!", followed by enthusiastic clapping.

By the time I was heading to work, I was under the belief that about seven people had confirmed that they would be coming out that night for my birthday. People were being a little suspicious, though, in that sense that you kind of know that most of them aren't really planning on showing up, and only two of them actually ended up coming. It was ok though, since I really wasn't feeling like entertaining a large crowd and the two that came were of very high quality (thanks Steve and Mark).

First we ate some dinner at a Japanese tex-mex place I spotted in Shinsabashi. It was pretty funny. Seeing Japanese people striving to imitate Americans is, for some reason, one of the greatest joys of Japan. One of the workers was dressed in a cowboy uniform and I got my picture with him.

We spent the rest of the night at a club called Pure. Pure is a hip hop club with "all-you-can-drink for 3,000 yen" until 5am. These kinds of hip hop bars are all over the world and, although it was fun, I'm pretty tired of them. It was fairly ghetto and had a ton of foreigners (the most I've seen since the movie shoot). There were a lot of Japanese people with slanted hats and gold chains and Soon after we arrived there was a fight between some of the bouncers and a huge Maori guy, who got kicked out (actually, I noticed a lot of people getting kicked out throughout the night). I saw a Spanish girl get dragged out after picking up a pool ball and angrily heaving it across the room. After the Maori guy got kicked out, Mark explained to me the situation with Maoris in Australia (they're the native people of New Zealand). He says they'll often just go from completely calm to a fit of rage in seconds, fight some bouncers, get sent outside, then five minutes later will be back in the club shaking hands with the bouncers. This is exactly what happened.

We met a number of people there... a few Americans and Europeans, also a group of Japanese people who kind of surrounded us once we stepped out onto the dance floor. One of them had a hat that may have been part of a panda costume and I got to wear it for a while (it was my birthday). There were little rooms that kind of resembled igloos and Mark and I stepped down into one that said "Reserved" and all the people inside hurried out, I guess thinking it was ours, so we made sure to maintain it for the rest of the night. Anyway, the night ended up at some kind of all-night noodle shop and I didn't get home until 7.

Saturday I got up at 2:30pm and made my way downtown to see King Kong (after my father's rave review) with Steve. King Kong went on forever (like any of Peter Jackson's movies), though it was really impressive and makes me want to watch more movies.

Mark sent me a text message while we were in the theatre that he was on his way to Balabushka's, the pool and dart bar, so Steve and I went to join him once the movie was finally over at 10pm. We were challenged to a darts game by a Japanese couple, one of whom completely destroyed us repeatedly. Next we were challenged to some games of pool by a Vietnamese hotshot and somehow ended up beating him and his friend three times. Suddenly, I took a look at my watch and realized it was midnight and I had already missed the last train. Shit.

So we ended up hanging around and exploring a few local bars and just sitting around or wandering until the subway started up again at 5:20am. This is getting to be a bit easier, but really exhausting. I probably shouldn't complain since I live relatively close to Umeda, but I wish I lived within walking distance of downtown.

Sunday was another recovery day... got up at 12:30pm and did a lot of wandering around intertwined with little snacks if I saw something interesting. I don't like eating as much here. I think it's just more that there are other things to do than eat and I avoid having any food whatsoever at home (except for breakfast).

I finally bought a wool hat.

I had originally agreed to go to a bar with Suzanna (New Zealand girl) and her friends Sunday evening. I was really not in the mood for anymore drinking and reluctantly agreed to live up to my promise. Then I changed my mind once I got a call from Italian Davide who invited me to go see the Luminarie in Kobe, realizing this was my last chance before Christmas since I had to work all week.

Kobe feels like a real city to me. It has a lot of European influence and is built right on Osaka Bay, so it has what seems to be a really nice harbour area. The city is now famous for its 1995 earthquake that killed over 5,000 people, but has been a big centre for Japan's foreign community for centuries. It supposedly has the best foreign food in the Kansai area and has a huge Chinatown. The city is only about half an hour by express train from Osaka.

I met up with Davide at the train station and we walked through Chinatown. Chinatown was really impressive and had people selling food all along the street. I bought a dumpling and tried speaking to them in Cantonese, but they just stared at me blankly and continued speaking Japanese.

We contiunued walking for a really long time in really cold weather to "Harbourland", Kobe's waterfront. Tonight felt really, really cold, and I can feel some kind of cold or flu creeping up on me (note to science majors: please don't comment on the fact that coldness doesn't cause colds, I've heard that already). Kobe's waterfront was great, definitely European influences but without all the dirty Europeans (joking - I don't know who's reading this). There was a big tower, a huge ferris wheel, a funnily-shaped luxury hotel, and everything was draped in Christmas lights. I also found a Wendy's. I was going to request we stop for chili or a baked potato (remember those commercials where it was really cold and people ate those and everything suddenly became better?) but thought it might offend Davide, as Italians tend to prefer to eat in restaurants that don't feature Junior Bacon Cheeseburgers.

We took the subway back towards the train station to see the Luminarie. The Luminarie is a really famous display of Christmas lights in Kobe every year designed by some famous Italian person. The streets were packed with people who came to see it, and as we turned the corner to the decorated street, it was incredible - massive light structures going on for blocks and blocks. It kind of looked like a cheap casino, but was still impressive.

We took the train back towards Umeda. The Japanese people standing next to us were talking about us in Japanese and Davide was able to translate into French so that they wouldn't notice. We were just a starting topic, but their conversation moved on to making fun of foreign students. Once I saw what I was confident was Juso, I smoothly got off the train, only to realize that I was at some distant outpost called something like Sawaji. I just waited for the next train, grabbed my bike that was parked at a nearby pachinko parlour, and biked home.

On my way home, I remembered I had to return a video I had rented the previous week and ran upstairs to grab it. On my way out the door, I dropped my keys in the porch and though, 'Hey, I just dropped my keys on someone's shoe', then apparently just left. Once I got outside I realized what I had done and wasn't able to unlock my bike or get back into the building. So I waited.

Living in a building with over a thousand people, you'd really think that there would be people coming in and out every minute or so, but no. It was just after 11am when I realized I was locked out, and I ended up waiting around for at least 20 minutes before someone finally came in and I was able to sneak in behind them.

I returned the video and have now made my way to the local internet cafe. I plan to give up this habit soon enough, but in the cold I keep thinking of the free hot tea that I'll can enjoy as I type this... but today I had some trouble with the tea. The first thing I thought would be tea turned out to be hot chocolate, the second one corn soup (??), but finally, I found it. Until the staff add some English labels to the drink machines or I learn some more Japanese, there are going to be a lot of wasted drinks in these places. Well, not really wasted... I still technically drink them all, I just don't enjoy them.

I'm tired and am really looking forward to a relaxing week... Talk to you soon,

Ryan