Silver Week and the beginning of the Barry’s Nippon Trek
Wow, just looked at my last update and there are a bunch of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors! Go me! God, I HATE when people have errors in stuff they’ve written but because I immediately assume their intelligence is sub-par, but for me I think, well, whatever, I just hit a wrong key somewhere in there, no biggie. This is because my intelligence is clearly superior to that of a mere mortal with or without errors and it must come through regardless? Obviously I am not at all delusional.
With that little blurb over with, last week was Silver Week, much like Golden Week in April/May, but shorter. A new law was enacted that said that if a holiday fell on a day where there was one day between say a weekend and the holiday, the day in between would be viewed as a holiday as well. An example being, if a Tuesday was a national holiday and everyone was supposed to work on Monday, instead the Monday becomes a holiday as well. Pretty sweet deal eh? So…last week was the first time EVAR(evar spelled that way on purpose) that this law came into play. Monday was Respect for the Aged/Elderly day and Wednesday was the Autumn Equinox, so Tuesday became a random national holiday! Sweet deal, 5 day weekend!!! We didn’t really get up to much, a good friend of ours, who came the same year I did but left and has now returned came up to Fukushima on the Sunday, after quite a Saturday night of drinking. He stayed for a few days, so, my time was spent playing x-box and listening to Mo talk to him about movies and tv shows (cuz that’s how they roll) with drinking sprinkled throughout his Fukushima adventure in the evenings.
On Wednesday we rocked out to Alex’s town’s samurai festival. It’s the same day as the gigantic samurai festival in Aizu-Wakamatsu, which I’ve been to a bunch of times, so we decided to head to rural Kunimi and check out this tiny festival (The Kunimi Machi [国見町] Yoshitsune Matsuri [義経祭り] ). Also, Alex dressed up as a samurai (Musashibou Benkei) in the and walked on geta for the whole procession. It will be turned into a video eventually. Hopefully I make some pretty pictures appear below.
Why both Mo and I have our hands on our hips, I don't know.
Friday was the arrival of the Barry Clan. Mo’s sister, along with her parents were arriving in Japan. So, I as the lovely gentleman that I am volunteered to go and pick them up from the airport. The day began as a disaster and was pretty much disastrous throughout. I had agreed to work for the first two hours of at my visit school on Friday because I teach an Oral Communications class of 7 students and I love that class, so I didn’t want to miss it. The deal was that I’d teach until 10:30, then catch the train out of Fukushima and bam be in Tokyo in time for the Barry’s arrival at 3:35. I knew it was a bad omen when I woke up at 8:44am, seeing as my class starts at 8:50, in Nihonmatsu, a 15km drive. So, I showed up 40 min late for my 2 hour day and taught my 1 and a half classes. After that, I made it back into Fukushima and onto the Shinkansen no problem. I would be at the airport with plenty of time. PLENTY OF TIME!!!
So, here’s the twist, with all the planning Mo had done with her father, there had been one little detail that was neglected, any of the details of the flight had not been discussed…other than that it got in at 3:35. Mo and I both figured, ahhh, no big deal. They’re probably flying Air Canada, I’ll just get there and sort out what flight they were on. Ya…this didn’t go as planned at ALL! I arrive at Terminal 1, totally chill. Look up at the board and here we go…one flight from Toronto arriving at 3:05 and one flight from Vancouver at 3:30. Um, no 3:35 flight…but did Mo maybe mess up the numbers? The only flights at 3:35 were from Bangkok and Washington. So…definitely not those. Did the Barry’s fly from Ottawa to Toronto and then to Japan? Mo’s sister lives in Toronto, maybe that’s the deal…or maybe they took separate flights and met in Vancouver and then came over…to make everything worse, Mo was working, so I couldn’t even talk to her. I was still pretty chilled out and figured alright, they’re gonna come out, the time is just messed up…but you know me…not very chilled in a situation like that. So, soon, I start to freak out. I’m pacing the airport, checking my cell every 8 seconds. To make matters worse, some random sketchy Canadian dude who has apparently been abandoned at the airport has attached himself to me cause he doesn’t know what he’s gonna do if his “girlfriend” doesn’t come and pick him up. GOD GET AWAY FROM ME DUDE!!!!! MY GIRLFRIEND’S PARENTS ARE ARRIVING OR HAVE ARRIVED SOMEWHERE AND THEY’RE SITTING AROUND THINKING, WHO IN THE HELL IS THIS IDIOT WHO’S DATING OUR DAUGHTER????
As I watched the Vancouver flight disappear from the board I knew drastic measures needed to be taken. This happened as I was talking to Mo’s boss, Dane, on my phone and my phone died…cuz sketchy Canadian dude kept asking to use it to call his “girlfriend” who did eventually show up. So, I hopped the shuttle to the other terminal and as I walked through the doors, there were the Barrys. YES!!! So I grabbed them and we got the hell outta dodge. We made it back to Fukushima by about 9:30, checked the Barry’s into their hotel and headed back to the apartment with Kathleen, Mo’s sister. The weekend was full of dinners and drinking and we headed to Shiroishi Castle in, believe it or not…Shiroishi. Which is just over the Fukushima border in Miyagi, it was nice because it was somewhere that Mo and I have never been.
It has been interesting watching another family dynamic. The way Mo’s family operates is very different comparative to well, my own. The fact that Mo’s father is probably the smartest human being I’ve ever met in my entire life is a bit daunting and being around him is like well, I don’t even know how to put it. I mean, I learn about a zillion things from him in about an hour, so that’s cool. It’s just amazing how much stuff he has packed in his head and how he can just recall anything at any time. I can barely recall the plots of movies that I watched last week, whereas he can quote a 5 min monologue from a movie he watched in 1978, tell you everyone that was in it and then discuss the impact that movie had on society as a whole. WHAT??? His specialty is supposed to be math and computers shouldn’t he be giving me the hundredth decimal place in pi and leaving the humanity type stuff to me? The fact that his Japanese historical knowledge far surpasses mine is um, like I said…daunting. I can’t even begin to fathom growing up with that…I guess that’s why Mo is smart. How intellectual a statement of me eh? Der derr…mo is brain is good…derr derr…
Mo’s mom is just straight up fun. She and I get along wicked and I get to joke around with her so that’s a ton of fun. It is interesting how totally different her parents are. One moment I’m debating the socio-economic repercussions of an agricultural based society in Japan and the next I’m talking about how 1000 yen for an umbrella is too much or trying to persuade someone to try sushi.
Mo’s sister, is well, her sister. They’re like best friends and have spent their time talking about how fat this celebrity is or how good this one looks. Creating all new inside jokes and you know, just generally being girly, as one would expect with sisters. So far this trip has just made me miss my own family and after a very drunken phone call to mom and a drunken email to brother dear, Drew’s going to come out again for Golden week, which I am TOTALLY STOKED about. My friends weren’t as excited as I was the other night, which lead to me repeat it, over and over again. But then again, if they said, wow, my sibling that you’ve never met is coming over; I wouldn’t really give a shit either.
Anyway, I’m at a visit school today, with no internet, hence is this blog is 3 pages and it’s only 9:33am. What will I do with the rest of my day? Good thing I have 4 classes after this. Mo’s family leaves for Kyoto tomorrow and then we’re meeting them in Tokyo next weekend before they head to the Philippines. Nothing really big after that planned. Like I’ve said before, just trying to lay low, I’ll upload pics later tonight and hopefully there will be links to them below. p-p-p-peace!
p.s – like the new theme? I like it more, cuz it highlights the titles of the blogs a bit better and you can tell where one stops and the next begins.
