Weekends - the last and the current.
Last weekend was pretty awesome. I went to Kamakura with Chie to attend a large neighborhood party that her family invited us to. Her father is like a community leader or something so was kind of the M.C. of the event.
So of course I was all nervous about the family being there, and all the neighbors just added more acid to the ulcers. But it turned out to be really enjoyable - and extremely remeniscent of making maple syrup back home with my family.
The party was held in like a small park in the middle of Kamakura (which is considered a small town, even though an hour’s worth of city sprawl connect it to Tokyo). There were a bunch of fires burning away with smoke blowing into everything, and a bunch of weird wooden pots setup in the middle of the event. We were fed immediately upon arrival lots of tonjiru, a kind of hearty soup make from miso, pork and vegetables. Good stuff.
It turned out that the freaky wooden pots were actually for pounding rice cakes with massive wooden mallets. Of course, within five minutes of my arrival everyone was praying that the one foreigner in attendance would give it a try. And I did, and it was cool. I hammered away at that fucking rice like no tommorow, gouging a few big chunks from the lip of the pot. And each swing that I brought down was accompanied by a chant from the people watching - numbered somewhere in the twenties.
Once that was finished we actually ate the rice cakes, and they were good. Like I said though, it was eerily reminiscent of making maple syrup in Iron Bridge. Both events contained:
- Open fires cooking various good-smelling things.
- Lots and lots of family.
- Healthy quantities of alchohol.
- Swinging around large dangerous objects, usually with some of the aforementioned alchohol in your system.
- Family members feeding you until you’re ready to vomit.
Oh, and I almost forgot. There was a band of high school students playing the tycho drums for us all traditional style - it was so excellent.
After that Chie and took her parents car for a spin around the ocean’s side and checked out Hayama County and Zushi City.
Like I said, good times.
This weekend is a little depressing though - dental visit at 8:00 AM on a Saturday morning. That sucks. I didn’t even know dentists were at their offices so early - shouldn’t they be out golfing or something?
Ron said,
November 28, 2003 @ 11:32 am
I had no idea that Iron Bridge had a website, or had once had one… some of it’s links are now broken down (with time I presume).
Sounds like you had a good time… makes me miss that stuff, not that I needed much encouragement.
As for this weekend, I’m having some amusing imagery of what Japanese dentistry must be like after hearing your tales of their doctors. Little Shop of Horrors, anyone?
Luke said,
November 28, 2003 @ 11:34 am
Guess who made the website seven years ago? That’s right - me baby, me.
Ron said,
November 28, 2003 @ 11:48 am
Yeah, I recall. That seems like such a long time ago. Back then, you were like, The Internet Guy in those parts. Did you do all that research on Iron Bridge?
That was the dawning of the Internet Age for me, thanks to you. Access to the world wide web blazing in to my pulse-dialed line at 2400 baud through the Algoma Mills welly-net with the DOS Lynx text browser opened up a whole new world of education for me. Not to mention Porn, Software Piracy, Intellectual Property Theft, and unrestrained access to the Anarchists’ Cookbook. Thanks!
Luke said,
November 28, 2003 @ 11:52 am
Did we ever actually download porn though? I seem to recall we were too geeky even for that.
And I don’t remember piracy from the Net specifically - I remember downloading shareware Doom and Doom II. I remember the piracy taking place mostly at school, maybe I’m wrong.
I pulled all the research from a history project I did in like grade 8. So probably most of it is wrong, yet thanks to the Internet that misinformation can propagate at light speed.
Ron said,
November 28, 2003 @ 1:29 pm
I think we scraped the porno surface, mostly by looking up stuff like ass dildos and thinking how funny it would be to send them to our teachers. Still the exposure was there.
The piracy, yeah we did some at school, but somehow we had full versions of Doom, Doom II, DCK, and a whole pile of other shit that I know I didn’t pay for. Out of This World, Rise of the Triad, Civilisation, and Descent all come to mind… but you were the main source. I guess you’d know where it all came from.
Still, there was hard proof that the internet was at least partially harmful to us, with respect to the anarchists’ cookbook.
Heh, who’d ever think that ‘Iron Bridge’ would ever be used in the same sentence as ‘propagate at light speed’? Good one.