郡上祭り (Gujo Festival)

I don't know why I've decided to always write my titles in Japanese and English lately. But I have, and so there it is.

Anyhow, so after our lovely day at Ise Shrine, we slept in and had a lovely lazy day. Abby made okonomiyaki, so I got to try to first real vegan okonomiyaki, and it was delicious beyond belief. It makes me want to move to Gifu just to have them around more often to make me delicious food. (I'm a user, what can I say?)

For those of you that don't know, okonomiyaki is basically a Japanese vegetable stuffed pancake. Usually, it's stuffed with cabbage, but Abby's version had none. It did have this delicious green leafy Chinese vegetable thing, though. Yum!

Then we had the perfect ending to a lazy day (during which I did my best to attempt to study)! Abby's friend Shio came to pick us up to bring us to her house, where her mother put us in yukata. It was SO cool - her mother had TONS of old yukata and a huge box of obis. She seemed quite experienced at obi tying, and she tied a different style bow for all of us - me, Abby, Shio, and Riho.

The boys decided not to wear yukata. :-(

Around 8:00 PMish, we headed over to Gujo for the all-night dancing festival. Gujo's a pretty small but extremely gorgeous town which is famous for it's all night Obon Dancing festivals, during which, instead of dancing Bon Odori, you dance the Gujo Odori, which is really quite similar, but somehow much more difficult. We danced until about midnight (which was long enough to leave me exhausted beyond belief, and I literally fell asleep the second I hit the futon when we returned to Matt and Abby's).

Despite being there for approximately 4 to 5 hours, I think I only managed to pick up on one of the many dances (which I promptly forgot). I did, however, manage to step on the feet of about 10 different people and almost elbow some poor woman in the face. Apparently dancing is not for me. Which I knew beforehand, but what can I say, quite like singing, I love it anyway!

Abby and Shio dancing it up!

Matt and Abby's friends were super great, and we had an absolutely fabulous time just hanging out in Gujo and dancing! Even if I was slightly intimidated by Abby and Shio's mad dancing skills, since Riho and Shio's husbands were in the same lacking the coordination necessary to dance boat as I was.


Both of these are things you're probably NOT supposed to do in a yukata. And my shoes - definitely shoes you're NOT supposed to wear with yukata!

A definite success of a night, and I am looking forward to my next all night dancing festival! :-)

We were all basically dead when we woke up the next morning (and I'm sure Matt and Abby won't appreciate me taking a picture of our deadness, but I'm doing it anyway).

I was feeling kind of sick and headachy, so I headed home fairly earlyish (which was around 4PM, but we woke up late, so it felt early), and when I got home, I had some delicious vegan Doughnut Plant doughnuts waiting for me that Alexis had brought back from Tokyo. There were three, and I ate two and immediately felt better. Then I made peanut butter cookies and ate about 12 of them. I think I might have been in overly hot Gifu sugar (and maybe protein) withdrawal.

As is becoming usual when I do things with Abby and Matt, Abby's blogging of the event is way more interesting and comprehensible with better pictures. SO check it out!

And with that, お盆休み、以上です。

お盆休み (Obon Break): 伊勢神宮 (Ise Shrine)

Obon is on of the biggest holidays in Japan. It's basically a big festival in order to honor the deceased, and it's pretty much the ONLY time of the year that most Japanese workers can be guaranteed a full week off.

I, of course, only had off Friday and Monday, so I decided to head over to Gifu to hang out with Abby(fine, I'll spell your name right) and Matt for my four day weekend. I was originally planning to just spend one night with them, but somehow that turned into the whole weekend.

Normally, it takes 40 minutes on the train to get to Gifu, but there were some train problems (a suicide, it seems :-( ), and it ended up taking me two hours. My first Japanese experience with train delays (and I was even in Tokyo the day after the earthquake)! There was something kind of exciting about it! After heading up to the top of a super tall building and getting a lovely view out over the city, they brought me to this DELICIOUS Italian restaurant where their friends work - they have tons of gluten free options for Abby, and they were very obliging in whipping me up some vegan pasta and a vegan pizza. Now I need to go back to Gifu again just for the deliciousness of this restaurant!

Then we woke up super early on Saturday morning, met up with Martin in Nagoya, and headed all together to Ise Jingu in Mie Prefecture. If you want a well put-together blog entry with lots of info, check out Abby's post, as you're probably not going to get that from me.
It's this amazing shrine complex that is dedicated to the goddess Amaterasu. I guess she's apparently enshrined there, but according to Matt, she's also enshrined somewhere in Nagoya, so that's weird.
There's an outer shrine and an inner shrine, and while the outer shrine itself was nothing overly impressive, I can't even remember the last time I felt so peacefully surrounded by nature. There was this HUGE hollow tree, and despite Abby's lack of desire to meet a spider or get bitten by a mosquito, I managed to convince her to go in with me! She left quickly, but it was my first time actually INSIDE a tree, and I practically had to be dragged out. I could literally stand up inside and look up all the way through it. It was amazing!

Us in the tree!!!! As amazing as everything about this day was, this might have been the highlight for me!

When we got to the inner shrine, which was infinitely more impressive, there was this big box thing, which supposedly contained something that the goddess once touched. Except that it's never been opened. And when they move it they don't open it. And so it's just been told over and over again over the generations that it contains something that the goddess has touched, and you've just got to believe. I like believing in things like that, so I've decided to believe.

Apparently the buildings are changed fairly often, so what we were seeing wasn't old. You can read all about it in Abby's blog, but I guess they just dismantle them and then rebuild them every few years or so. I guess the Shinto's don't believe in permanence, and really, why should they? The world is an ever-changing place, after all.

After exploring the shrines, we walked a little bit around the small shopping district nearby. It was very old style Japanese, and we bought some akafuku, which is basically like reverse daifuku - the red bean paste is on the outside, and the mochi is on the inside. It was utterly and absolutely delicious! The picture to the right is the akafuku shop - I have no idea for real, but I'm just going to say that maybe they make some of it in those vat looking things! :-)

And that was our day in Ise! We stopped in Nagoya on our way back for some delicious Indian food (it's wonderful that Indian food can almost always satisfy both the gluten free diet and the vegan diet) and were basically exhausted beyond belief upon our return home (well, Abby, Matt, and I were - I can't really say for Martin)!

Theoretically, ends always turn into beginnings

So, we're only three weeks into this term, and I already feel like somehow an entire LIFETIME has passed. I've barely had a second to breathe, but I can't really figure out what I've been doing. Other than going to school all morning and then working all evening and afternoon everyday Monday to Friday. I've managed to keep myself busy the weekends, too!

First of all, it was Martin's birthday on July 14, and I'd been telling him I would go to this all night gay dance party with him, so we finally did the Saturday after Cathryn left. And it was SO MUCH FUN!!!! Even though it required staying out till 5 in the morning. I was worried, because, well, I don't stay out that late. And, contrary to when I was in Montreal, when in France, I really hated going out dancing.

a picture a new friend took of us walking to the station at 5ish. We look (and are) tired!

Then the next Friday, we celebrated with the class, and we all bowling!

Me with Cesar, and Martin and Rin in the background!

I love bowling!!!! This was only my second time going since being in Japan, though. As usual, I won the first game and then BADLY lost all of the following games. It's as if, while everyone else is getting into the groove of things, my arm is deciding that, no, it's done.

Of course I forgot my camera, so I had to steal that picture from Cesar. We also got a purikura, which I was SUPER excited about, as it was my first one EVER!

Then that Saturday, I headed to Gifu to hang out with Abbie and Matt, friends of Kristen's from Colorado that are living in Gifu now. They came to see me in Okazaki, and I finally found time to return the visit.

Abbie made vegan gluten-free banana pancakes, and they were DELICIOUS! We also decided to buy matching-ish hats, and I sort of love mine! They brought me to this place called Donkey Hodai (I really can't remember what this place was called, and I know it wasn't Hodai, but it was definitely Donkey something), which had to be the craziest store I'd ever seen. Everything was EVERYWHERE! And when I say everything, I mean EVERYTHING, as this store really did sell any possible product I could ever think of.

Good times were had. I left on Sunday eveningish and headed to Nagoya, where I saw my FAVORITE Japanese (well, really they're pretty high up there on the general list as well) punk band, Special Thanks.



I've definitely written about them before, and I was SO excited to FINALLY get to see them live! It was AMAZING! Unfortunately, I think that it could have been MORE amazing. It was the last show of their tour, and you could tell that they were super tired. And I got the feeling that there was some major tension going on between the bandmates. I can't imagine how AMAZING it would have been, had they been on. I'll obviously just have to stay in Japan long enough to find out.

A band called Stompin' Bird opened up for them, and they were also TOTALLY amazing! How did it take me so long to realize that punk in Japan is where it was in the late 90s in the states? How am I ever going to leave?

The the next weekend, I went to Sakae Oktoberfest on Friday.

It was cool, and it was HILARIOUS seeing all of these cute little Japanese girls dressed up in what I assume was supposed to be German costumes but which looked far more like Swedish milk maid costumes.

Then I went out dancing at Club ID, and I had a fabulous time! Two times going out dancing in three weeks, and two times having a great time! Obviously there was something wrong with me when I was in France. Or, rather, there was something wrong with France.

Then Saturday, I went yukata shopping with Naruse and Miyoko, as Miyoko seemed to DESPERATELY want to see me in yukata. She even bought me some geta and made me some yukata undergarments. So anyhow, now I have a new yukata, and if things go as planned (and I can find someone to teach me how to put it on), I'll wear it to the Okazaki fireworks fest next week. And then you'll see pictures!

Then last Sunday I went to Nagoya Freedom. And it was so awesome that it deserves its own entry.