SUMO!!!!!

yeah, this is going to be the best post yet...well not really but its really good. so on the 22nd of march we went to the Osaka grand sumo tournament. It was kick ass times 2000%. we got there for 10 am and were stocked with ammo. We bought super bento boxes from sun kus, a big water, desserts from the bakery, and some japanese deli specialities. We were set!
Ammi, shiv would like you to know that he bought a deli pack of about 20 little fish, whole fishes ( with the eyes still in). They were battered just like achi ammi used to make them, and he wanted you to know that he ate them.

Background: shivs grandma used to make deep fried fishes for breakfast when he was a kid and he wouldn't eat them cause they grossed him out. But now he eats fish and he wanted his mama to know that!

PS. i cooked fish in our fish griller. mum you should be proud. Omega 3 for life!

So back to sumo, when we got there it was just me and shiv, and the place was pretty sparse, so we ate some food and sat back and watched the amatuer sumo. It was great, some sumos we super small and pitted up against sumos that were double their size, it was amazing. Sumo wrestlers are big time celebs here in japan and people scream at them like its brad pitt or something.

Later on in the day the rest of the nova posse rolled in and the stadium was still not packed so we were able to go down to the lower levels and sit right up in the money seats and see the fight up close.
highlights of the day were
1) seeing that famous white guy sumo
2) seeing all the sumo boys come out in their traditional garb. (each outfit costs thousands of dollars and are hand made and embroidered with their localities picture from raw silk.
3) seeing this really big sumo put his leg up and over his head
4) seeing the yokozuma in real life ( hes on Tv alot) so its like seeing a movie star!
5)shivs favorite moment was when a security guard said "sir you cannot stand here taking photos, you will have to move to the front if you want to take photos". (OK!!)

great day hope you enjoy the photos. luv jan and shiv!

Our busy week and the lantern Festival in Kyoto.

This week has been the true meaning of busy for me and shiv. It seemed like every day we did something or had something planned or something. So heres a run down on the DL of what we had going down.

so last thursday we shopped around for the day time parts, then told yuske-san we would meet him in the evening at 7 oclock. poor yuske. i dont think he has ever had ethnic friends, because he was waiting for us early at about 645, and at 645 me and shiv were still watching tv, chillin at home. we met yuske at about 740 ish, when converted to EST (ethnic standard time), we were only running about 10-20 minutes late. Yuske didn't know about EST, so according to him we were just super late. Hes catching on though.

On the wenesday of this week i had the worlds funniest student. Her name is setsuko and she is the bomb. she is a 65 year old house wife, who loves nova lessons, cant speak a lick of english and has short term memory. Stupidly i tried to attempt at teaching her a lesson, but when i started to tell her that we were going to learn about comparitves and superlatives she was looking at me like I had 2 heads. Well its a sad fact i didn't know what a superlative was untill i started teaching english!!
any ways, not only did she not know what a comparitive and superlative was, neither did she know what "do you understand", "lesson", or "example" meant. I was in for a fun ride.

I started to ask her questions like "what do you do in your free time", "do you have hobbies" and i got responses like-- "do you have kids" "do you like beef".

here is a little sample convo
jan:so setsuko what are you doing after nova lesson
SET:do you like apple juice
jan: yes i do, do you like apple juice
SET:......... my husband gets pay in today
jan: oh thats nice, what does your husband do for work
SET: are you a salary woman
jan: yes, does your husband work?
SET: i like beef
jan: me too, lets look at the board, can you read this line for me
( she starts to read 2 words ..then)
SET: do you have children
jan: no i dont, do you
SET: i like jetskiing
jan: you jetski? that seems dangerous
SET: i weigh 65 kg's, you look slim style, i not slim style i fat
jan: no you are not, you look great
SET: no.........do you like OM-rice

and basically the converstaion went like this for 40 minutes. i thought i was being punked by nova, but she was really nuts. i was laughing out loud at parts cause she was so short term memory crazy! ps OM-rice is omelette rice....

Back to Yuske on thursday, we met him, went for the most boombastic korean spicy soup ever!! then went to this cute coffe shop art gallery showing that chopstick was having. We drank super pricey Euro hotcholates, and shiv decided to be extra euro and have an expresso. By the way, shiv cannot do expresso, because regular coffe keeps him up for 1.5 days.
That night shiv went to bed the next morning, heard noises that i couldnt hear, roamed the halls searching out the "noise" and found an armoire/shelfing unit in the halls and dragged it to our apt at 5 am.

Well im glad he had that expresso, other wise we wouldn't have our new shelves! later on that night we went to BLOW bar, that cool surf bar that has the wave noises, good drinks, jerk chicken and guy that wants to take us surfing!! it was fionas b day, and it was nice to see every one out for it. good night, but i was tired and cranky, so we didn't stay past the last train.

The following sunday we met up with a large posse of novites and parlayed down shinsai bashi and went to PADRES, i think thats what its called, and had a supeb mexican meal. not LA quality, but hey, we are in japan. met some new peeps and ate tons.

The next night we went round to kimu and dom sans apt for what kim calls spag-ball. when she 1st invited us round i thought she said spy ball, and i didn't know what she was talking about, but agreed, cause i like food, and kim wouldnt poison us....
i like kim cause when she gets excited her real accent comes out and you can sort of understand what shes saying, and you feel the need to smile through the parts you dont really understand cause you just love that irish accent that much!
So spy-ball is actually spag-ball wich is irish for spagetti bolongese!!! love it!!

and kim did it up great. we had that and french bread and butter and wine with a side of comic relif a british comedy dvd, that showcases live acts from "Little Britian".If any one hasn't seen little britain, go rent it now. its that good.

On the Tuesday we went to kyoto after work, just me and shiv, to see the lantern festival. Kyoto is really pretty especially at night. I like excursions with shiv, this was another good one for the books! we got to kiyomisudera ( a wondeful temple) conplex, and realised we had to pay extra to get into it. we ( being ethnic) decided to take photos from the outside, of the inside and save our selfs some money.
glad we did because when i looked in my wallet i had 210 yen, and the bus back to the station was 240 yen. i went through every nook and cranny and could not find any more money.
poo!
so i decided to look for a banl machine, no bank machine, i decided then to walk around and see if any one dropped some change.
A man did drop a whole ton of change, but he picked all of it up (greedy). so after all that walking i still didn't have enought money, so i decided to as the japanese for some spare change. This was indeed funny because japanese people are so shocked/pertrified to see a foreigner come up and talk to them, and second: i dont speak japanese very well.

In the end, i asked the door ticket men for help. i had to empty out my change purse count it out for them, tell them how much the bus cost, them say the difference. They gave me change for the bus and we became quick friends. so nice of them.
me and shiv had a good laugh about that incident. i thought we would have to sleep in kyoto for the night!

shiv got some grat pics, i panhandled in kyoto and we had a great evening.
xoxo

Move your ass gozaimas!

Today after work me and shiv,kim,dom,alex and sheila got on some trains and headed to Nara. We were going to see the ouizomisudera festival. It has something to do with the new year and the coming of spring. It happens at a gorgeous huge wood temple in the city of Nara and the monks of the temple run clockwise around the balcony of the temple holding huge fire torches. Yes i repeat: monks run around a huge wood building carry huge fire torches. It is anyones guess how the temples hasn't burned down by now!.

The got to Nara pretty early to ensure our selves a good veiwing location for the fire show. But japan has alot of people, and im pretty sure every one had the same idea going on too. So when we got to the temple we had to wait in a blockaded area until the festivities began. There was a small TV at the front of the crowd that showed live video of another large group of people. We hoped that the video feed was really our selves being video taped and not another huge mass of people who happened to be closer to the temple. As time wore on ( and it did like nearly 2hrs), we figured out that the video was of people in another area of the temple complex who were closer to the temple (poo...)

so, 730pm rolls around, and the festival is meant to start at 730. Sort of pissed off and paniced that we are going to miss it, we look at the TV and there on the TV are monks running with fire. THIS IS CRAP! we have to watch the festival from a small 20 inch TV with 1000 people sqished into an alley??!!??

And then a weird thing happened, people started clapping and laughing and getting all happy to watch the festival on tv. i thought i was in an alternate universe. Is this how festivals are done in japan? watching the event on TV with 100o strangers freezing in a park??

i was so pissed of. But then the police lifted the baricades and let us walk closer to the festival. It was like the running of the bulls. YEAH!!! we were going to see the festival! then it stopped. They put the barricade back down, we had moved about 10ft, and i was 10ft closer to the TV. I could not believe this. Did they just move every one up so the people in the back could get a better veiw of the TV screen?!?!
madness.

But after a while the cops lifted the barricade for real and every one went charging up the stairs in the direction of the temple. It was crazy, all of us got a little bit separated in the stampede and squished too. Japanese people are known for being super quiet and polite, but when it comes to festivals and fire they become crazy. I nearly got run over by a older japanes lady who was creaming "move move". The japanese may act all coy and sweet, but they know enought english to get you to move out of their way!. It was crazy mad crazy. Even the cops were getting every one to speed up, take less pictures and move along. The festival was nearly ending and they needed every one out of the park.

The festival It self was really neat to see because the minks had these huge torches full of dry wood that dropped flaming embers onto the ground (and people) below. It is said that if you get hit by an ember, its good luck. Some think good luck i think, good lawsuit, any ways...

a fun and interesting night had by all. We walked back through the town past many cool temples and shrines, i think shiv got the best pics of this event by far!! www.pbase.com/shivdesilva.
photo1) every one looking at the TV (jan so mad..) 2) Every one charging towards the temple 3) little girl cooking taco yaki 4) my picture of the gates of todaiji temple

Two great bands at Pena.

This evening we went to a nice small hole in the wall club called Pena. It was really nice, and stangely had many buzz light year figurines throughout the place. Kim's student , Kimikp told us about the event, and we are so happy we went because it opened us up to a genuine Japanese musical experience. Every one exept us was japanese, but we were warmly welcomed at the club. Kimiko's husband was the gituarist for the main band that played that night, as well he is a gitaur teacher for the opening band that played that night. The 1st band was called "soul explosion" and the lead singer had a great voice.

The music was really good, sort of rock and ballads mixed to gether. I understood few words, but i did understand the word "anata" that means "you". So i could undersand that he was singing about some one, possibly a lover...maybe a woman. So It was great. The main band was amazing, sort of rock-a-billy, jazz, rock altogether. The lead singer has 2 gorgeous little girls that me and shiv are planning to steal later on this year.

The band sang twist and shout in englsih, and we got the lace going by singing and dancing and screaming for an encore. The engish songs that the band sung were really interesting to listen to because I think some japanese singers memorize engish songs by phrases, so when they sing the phrases, many words run into one another. When this happens, you cant really understand the word, although they are in english. But its the thought that counts, and the effort was amazing. we danced the night away, then dragged our selfs to work at 730 am the next morning. I dont feel so young no more....

ps in the picture with dom and shiv dancing...yes that is a pooh bear swinging and swaying from shivs pocket!!

vacation in kirishima!!

we were in well need of a vacation, i was telling sarah, my state of affirs before we left on vacation.
If i saw a student log into lesson, i would swear and mutter under my breath that they dared come to class. Shiv would try and jinx his connection, so maybe it would make his students magically not show up for lesson.
i was so happy to go an vacation, and it was very worth it. we left the house at about 530 am and took 3 trains to get to kobe airport. our flight left at 8 35 am, and it was quite nice to finally go some where on a plane.
the plane ride was nice, and it was sunny in the air the whole way to Kyushu, the sunny happy ibe set the tone for our whole vacation. We met a nice japanese man on the plane who spoke super little english. He told us that he was going to kagoshima to pray to his family ancestors.
we got to the air port, and found out that it was a little more expensive to travel around from the airposrt than i had thought, so we took a shuttle to the hotel and decided to plan our travels from there. The weather was amazing. about +20 and not a cloud in the sky, for sure t-shirt weather. It was all i dreamed of, cause Osaka when we left was grey and pretty cold.
kagoshima was so green, it looked like the interior BC sort of, but with way more hot springs.
Our hotel was way up on a green treed mountain, and it was surrounded by this odd garden with weird plastic horses and sculptures. i think the japanese garden architect envisioned a french provincial garden, but threw in a little japanese animation and plastic horses... i dont know. it was weird and super crappy looking

the hotel on the other hand was awesome and really posh. I love ther posh life.
the hotel room was on the top floor and it looked out over the valley. At the bottom of the valley was the city of kagaoshima, and across the bay was Mt sakurajima. an active HUGE volcano, that regularily explodes and smokes.
we took a walk around the property, and down the main road to see the sources of all the hot spring water. boiling sulfur water was basically spewing out of the mountain, and the air smelt like egg fart.

. Before dinner i went to the onsen. It was so amazing, the best part was sitting in my own personal stone tub full of hot spring water, outside facing mt sakurajima. amazing! That night we had a massive japanese style dinner that was brought one amazing plate after another to our table. the next morning we had a buffet japanese/western breakfast and then set out to ebino kogen. ebino kongen is a volcanic lake hike that consists of 3 really blue green lakes in the mountain range of kirishima. once we got back dow to the visitor center there was hot springs foot pool to dip your feet in. We highly enjoyed the ice cream and kyushu ramen!!!
yeah! vacation.

i'll give you the time of your life gozaimas!!

i think the best thing about down town osaka is the thriving host culture. Its like nothing i've ever seen. i have not been able to get a sharp photo of the hosts without then fully knowing im taking a picture.
hosts are female companions, sort of like male prostitutes. Women pay for these men to accompany them shopping, to the bar or as a male escort. Thats fine and dandy. But if you were to see these men... they are sort of like the physical love child of farrah fawcett, rod stewart and cher (during her scandalous biker phase).

These men are so well manicured, from head to toe.
here are some physical musts that most hosts have. 1) blond orange farrah hair, teased and hair sprayed to the max
2) orange brown bed tan, many hosts are darker than me 3) no facial hair, maybe a tiny violater mustache 4) green/blue/grey unnatural contact lenses 5) tiny fitted bazer 6) little attache breif case, or big purse (louis vitton or prada brand) 7) tiny skin tight distressed jeans/ or tight disco pants 8) super long curly snake boots/shoes

it is a sight to behold!. they satnd in groups, in areas where there are high people traffic. when a woman ( who looks like she is in need of attention) walks by, they start talking to her, trying to sell them selfs, bowing and walking realy fast alog side the women. me and shiv would LOVE to know what they are saying. its a great scene!
Today we saw a first! a host dressed in normal guy clothing, he looked just like a university student from kobe. normal normal. but we saw him standing at a busy cross walk trotting alongside any girl that crossed his path trying to sell himself. We love it!! but we have to admit. the regular hosts put in much more effort!!