Shashinjutsu 10

a few more shots from friday: some rocking out, the trophy as presented by the enigmatically pulchritudinous yoshimi, the champion sharing his take, and the best shot i could find of some of m'ladies from friday night - from left - nyonyo, lisa, and serena.

Shumatsu Wa Nani O Shimashita Ka?

hullo. i'm avoiding work, and i thought a good way to do so would be to put a little thing up here about the fine goings on of last friday night. so. yes. friday night, the first annual aiu air guitar competition was held in a small hot room crammed with about 15 contestants and spectators. the lights were turned off and the people holding the competition used some little clip lamp for atmosphere while they videotaped the happenings and hosted it like one of the crazy japanese karaoke shows that always seem to be on. the competitors were introduced and then waited for the song to be queued up on somebody's laptop, posing and strapping on the nonexistant guitar and checking monitor levels and such, and then some japanese metal shitstorm would come out of the speakers and they would flail around for a while until the music was cut off, and then they would introduce the next person. the winner got a giant chocolate chip cookie with frosting on it that said aiu air guitar champion 2007, which he shared with everyone and then did an encore. it might have been the sunglasses that did it for him, or maybe because he did the most drastic back bends. anyway, it was spectacular.

after the air guitar, i went to a birthday party for a taiwanese fella. of course all m'ladies were there, and just about every other taiwanese and chinese student in the school, along with a smattering of white folks. i had some melon soda, some sweet taiwanese jerky stuff, played wii tennis, and got my ass handed to me in some cut throat taiwanese rules uno. a fine night to clear the head like a snort of vick's vapo rub, just what i needed.

Shashinjutsu 9

some more shots of festival happenings...

Shashinjutsu what, 8,9? no, 8

so, aiu fest round one: taro-kun rocking the karaoke competition, the minnesota booth, the mummiez, and some wacky whatnot happening on stage. now round two...

Ashita Tabun Ame ga Furimasen

hey, dudes. a post is long overdue. i have not been in a decent 'blogging mood' of late, but i'm not gonna let this thing go stale. so: aiu festival, then... the first day was a rainy bastard. what the blazes did i do? wandered up and down the row of student run food booths eating everything in sight. "minnesota" soup made by some japanese students who spent a year at st. cloud state, gyoza from m'ladies, taco salad, some japanese crunchy sandwich type thing called takose, a s'more, and a pita sandwich from hina's friends. derrrr... went up in the school to see some friends in their room, which they called the "art pu cafe", i guess they just liked the sound of the word "pu" and didn't know it meant a steaming dumpski. turns out i did'nt make it past mr. aiu round one to the part where i would have anything to actually participate in. not mr. aiu material, i guess. helped sell some frankfurters for a while, and when i was doing that, a big gust of wind knocked over part of the stage and all the outdoor stuff had to be cancelled for the first day. stinky.

second day, woke up early to catch some rescheduled bands in the auditorium, namely taro's band the mummiez. taro's pretty damn amazing, if somewhat lacking in polish, which is better anyway. crazy bastard. watched the first year students perform in their homeroom type groups. there was a competition for best performance, one group did some kind of super mario sketch, another did the thriller dance and dressed like zombies, suchlike. hmm... played some john fucking denver with the guitar club, sold some more frankfurtersssss... no one really bought any, we still had 100 left over afterward. the closing ceremony was really long, but pretty great. the japanese love their ceremonies. there were more performers, dances mostly, some acrobatic stuff with human pyramids, fireworks, and some student videos. pretty damn fine. it rained all weekend, so the field out front turned into a mud pit, and there were clumps of the stuff all over the school all week long. i think some students must have stayed up for the entire thing, and they were up all night after the closing ceremony tearing things down and cleaning. they were wearing the same clothes and staggering around the next morning. so that was the fest. i'll post some pics and then maybe do another post about last night's goings on, which were pretty coo.

She Got A T.V. Eye on Me, She Got A T.V. Eye

the atmosphere around here tonight is really great. everybody's working their dang hearts out getting ready for the fetival this weekend. i can see about five groups of dancers flailing around in the second floor windows as i wander around the quadrangle, (or i guess yard in a dinky little school like this'un) ten other groups crouching on the floor and meticulously carving little shapes out of cardboard with boxcutters or pasting photos together or painting something or playing some instrument or other, and in the cafeteria, they're making an ten foot tall three dimensional clown out of cardboard boxes, shredded pink plastic, sparkly shit and sheer determination. through it all i've been wandering around in my poofy hat and feeling like a lout because they're all working so frigging hard and seem to be having a pretty decent time even though they're half crazed with exhaustion, and all i do is stand there and say "derf! clown! fnur!" and snap a photo. feels like i'm kind of a guest here, more than a student. i'm fine with that, i guess, i just feel really oafish when i see the japanese students putting so much into stuff like this. feels good, though, too, to be around all that positive energy and action.

Tokidoki Eiga wo Mimasu

lets us see can i get this down right. sunday, was it? woke up around 11:30, got preened and prepped, went out to the cafeteria, loaded up on semi palatable gruel, and immediately after plopping down in my chair, max, the australian fellow who used to have a mohawk and still has a car axed me did i want to drive off and try to find some gorge somewhere. so, slipped the food down my gullet, (now i'm remembering it was actually pretty good: gyoza and eggrolls) got my hat and my camera and set off with max and 3 other gaijin to track down this gorge place. we were doing pretty good until the veins on the map started getting more and more atrophied, and eventually dissapeared altogether. we rolled into a dead end at the base of a dam with a large terraced park where the local community was having a little festival. we parked in the grass next to the 50 or 60 other cars, popped out into the alcove park area and got gawked at by an entire town. there was a really beautiful stream next to the park, widened because of the dam, where a bunch of folks were casting lines in their rubber pants. walked back up the bank of the stream, bought some vendor stuff, got oggled some more, and decided to go find the gorge. we tried a few directions until we ended up on a gravelly road with big ass rocks bouncing up and hitting the undercarriage of max's crappy little car, but we kept going, i think because we figured it had to pop out onto a regular road somewhere. it just kept winding around on a narrow precipice, though, and getting rockier and tinier. we finally found a slightly wider patch of the road where two of us had to get out and negotiate the about face of the car so we could bounce back over the road and get back onto a paved street, and when we got out to the street, no one cared much if we saw the gorge, so we just headed back to school.

back at school, i caught a cab out to the mall and met up with m'ladies (the taiwanese crew, remember?) for one of their birthdays. we went to a japanized itallian restaurant and had some decent pasta, but the real attraction at this place is apparently their dessert bread cubes (no idea what the hell they're called). big bricks of really soft warm bread heavily draped in honey, chocolate or caramel and topped with a scoop of icecream. if you want more topping, the waiter comes out, sings a song about your topping, and drizzles it on until you tell him to stop. damn fine. the japanese version of pizza is pretty good. this place's toppings included corn, big strips of bacon, and a complete fried egg smack in the middle. after the food and the whatnot at the restaurant, we went to the arcade to take pictures in a type of photo booth called a "puricura", a squashing of the words "print" and "club". in a puricura, people crowd into a photo booth with a green screen background that can be changed from a big list of choices, snap the pics, and then walk around to the outside of the booth where they can take 27th century electro-laser pens and write all over the photos. when they're printed out, they have sticky backs so you can paste a tender memory somewhere on your stuff. so, after the mall antics, came back and, as far as i can remember, shuffled around a bit, finally got around to doing homework, and went to bed.

aiu festival this weekend, should be super magic time. the japanese students have been working their dang asses off getting ready for this thing for the past month while us int'l students bobble around and whack eachother in the junk and whatnot. there's a promotional poster for the festival that a bunch of students including m'damn self posed for which is hanging up all over the city, in the train station and mall. apparently the whole community gets pumped and comes out to watch the students perform and make food and speeches and stuff. gonna be good, i think.