Hello again and welcome to the umpteenth instalment of Yuri's frenetic blogging. Brought to you by time and the Toshiba Satellite laptop which is better traveled then a lot of my friends. While that sounds like a plug it isn't. (though I do very much like my laptop!)
Over the weekend Will and I went to visit a friend of his in Kobe, Jun. So, we duly hopped onto a bus, watched the driver wave enthusiastically to every other bus driver during the entire 2 and a half hour trip, then pulled up into Kobe's Sannomiya Station. Having been a small town for the past month, the crowded streets of a big city were almost surprising. That and seeing more than a two lane highway was also quite titillating, though the congestion was something I don’t miss.
Our first night was spent with the Jun’s family where we were welcomed with great hospitality and a home-cooked meal that didn’t end. When I say this I mean that food was constantly being cooked and brought out to us. I’m wondering if I should’ve left food on my plate to signal the fact that I was full and no longer needed to eat anymore. After the food fest, I watched the two guys consume large amounts of alcohol and then we went to sleep on traditional futons.
The next day we were up and off to Nara, a place where there are many temples, a lot of natural beauty and alot of...deer! Oh yes indeedy, deer deer deer at every corner and every turn. Of one of the main roads anyway. I'm not sure what kind of deer they were either. I had thought only fawns had the white spots on their bodies but these deer all had them, whether they were big or small.
Now here is how it worked. The deer were trained to want these special deer crackers. You could buy them from the vendor for 150yen. The deer were apparently trained to not want to eat the cracker's lying on the vendor's cart but once you had them in your own hands, hoo boy, watch out! As most of you know male deer have antlers, and they use these antlers to stab at you until you give them some crackers. No, it's not very nice but telling the deer this does little to make them stop. I even got nipped by one of the does and she left a bit of a bruise. You can make the deer follow you around by holding crackers up in the air and feel like the King/Queen of the world! The deer automatically gravitate towards humans until they realize you have no crackers, then you're left severely alone and shunned by these creatures. Most of the afternoon I watched several people trying to feed the deer though it usually resulted in them trying to avoid being butted and bitten. Some actually ran away, screaming, from the ferocious animals. By some, I mean me. Well, I didn't scream, but I did back away.
We also saw some temples too. I'm not sure what to say about them, being a temple snob since I've seen so many in the past 2 years.
Another thing that I did on this trip was goggle at the unusual fashion sense I saw displayed by both the males and females. Generally, I saw no young Japanese with their natural hair colour. No, it was various shades of brown, red, orange and blond. If they did have their natural colour it was overwhelmed by insidious streaking of the aforementioned colours. Not to mention that the mullet seems to have come back into style here. What starts off as a thick head of hair on most girls (and is sometimes teased into a huge pompadour), ends in thinned out trails. Now, yes, I'm in Japan and I realize cultures are different, blah blah blah, but a mullet never looks good on ANYONE. Not 80s hockey players nor trendy Japanese youth. *shudder* Make up was done with painstaking care. Powder, eyeshadow (alot of green) and lots of mascara. I wanted to know how they applied the makeup without having it run off the face as soon as you stepped outside.
Clothing was another thing. In order to be fashionable here you need to layer like there's no tomorrow. Girls would commonly wear:
1. a thin light coloured tank top
2. a slightly thicker more abrasively coloured tank top, and sometimes
3. a thin, short sleeved button down top, but left unbuttoned
Jeans were usually worn with these layers and in this weather I think that's nuts. During a summer where I'm constantly plotting how to jump from one air-conditioned place to another, jeans are just not an option. Girls also usually wore very girly sandals which I very much liked. No really, I sound sarcastic but I really liked them. I want metallic pink strappy sandals with big blue flowers too! (again, this is not sarcasm)
Men sported alarmingly similar hairstyles to the girls, to the point where sometimes I couldn't tell who was who and would commonly wear:
1. a tank top, and sometimes
2. a short sleeved button down top, left unbuttoned or just the tank top
They also paired their shirt/shirts with jeans. You've already read what I think about that. Men usually wore huge near-platform sneakers on their feet. We won't go into what I thought about that.
So to those of you who wanted or expected the lowdown on a Japanese city, sorry but this is what I noticed more. I also want to say once again what great hosts we had. Only in Asia have I met people who are quite so attentive to their guests.
No comments:
Post a Comment