Adventures in Japan

Himejimazing

Carla and I, we are on a little trip starting tomorrow. So I'm going to try to do a little blog catch up. Remember how I mentioned in the last post that we had a really good weekend, and that I should tell you about it? That's what I'm going to do... But the computer what lets us post pretty pictures is still busted so y'all will have to wait on those...

What a weekend! It started out kinda bad, what with me realizing halfway through my three classes on Saturday that I was sick. And I still am. After work, I had a very unfulfilling nap. Carla got home and we commiserated. She wasn't feeling much better than me.

Jon had called whilst I was asleep to see if we were up for going out. Being troopers, we were. So we did. We all went over to Kishen's were he whipped up some tasty, tasty food.

Which we ate up greedily whilst happily downing Strongbulls.

It was around this time that Ben's friend Dave showed up. Dave is visiting from Australia. He and Ben share the same birthday and are both turning the big three oh this year. So Dave thought it would be a hoot and a half to come to Japan to celebrate with his birth date mate.

At some point during the merry making we decided that we should go out to Himeji the very next day to visit the castle and observe some kind of float fighting festival.

So we did.

On the train en route to the castle, we introduced Dave to the wonders of 7 player MarioKart on the DS. On the walk to the castle from the train station, we stopped at a flea market. Not much interesting there except for an exploding popcorn maker.

At the entrance to the castle was this guy.



No idea why he was there.

The castle was as awesome as ever, if you ever come to this country you should go to Himeji castle.



And if you ever happen to be in this country around the middle of October, you should go to Himeji and then go to the float fighting festival.

Oh. My. Heavens.

Heavens was not my first choice of words.

Just mind blowing. The spectacle. The scale. The scale of the spectacle.

Here's the deal. Very big, very heavy, and very nice floats are hauled around by very many men and then they (the men and the floats) clash. There is blood and broken bones and death every year. And there are about 20,000 people lining the steep hills around all this, watching. And drinking and eating.



We got there and we were at ground zero. We were walking, and it was getting more and more crowded and then there was crashing and dust and loudness right next to us.
Right next to us. And above all the fighting and the blare and bombast of the battle, there was an amazing amount of people. It was nuts. A tenth of Regina's population in such a small amount of space. It was crazy. Too crazy. It was too loud, too busy, way too crowded. So we tried to find a place to sit. That took a while. There were a lot of people. And a lot of dead ends.



And butts. The men doing all the fighting and heavy lifting were basically wearing g-strings made out of thick coarse rope.



We eventually made it to the top of one of the hills. Once up there, we were nearly fought over as different groups of folks wanted us to sit with them. We joined a particularly large and loud group of fine folks, and they would not stop giving us food and beer.



It was awesome. You could see the fighting going on down below and also appreciate the view of the surrounding area. And the ocean. It was quite nice.



As the event began to wind down, one of the Japanese men who had been so nice to us invited us to join them again next year. Repeatedly. In very broken English.

"This year. Twelve years old. From beginning start."

Over and over and over again.

Quick and dirty translation: Next year, from noon, let's get an early start.



This is a picture of Carla with the drunk guy.



This is a picture of Dave with some girls we ran into on our way to the train home.