When I wrote the first entry to this blog in from an internet cafe in Saigon surrounded by hoards of little kids intensely cranking some online teen dancing game, I assumed that I would continue to regularly post new material when I returned home. Eighteen months and only five blog posts later, it seems that I never managed to fulfill those ‘lofty’ ambitions. Now that I’ve moved to Japan however, I have fresh material to post and I’ll endeavour to continue keep posting once I settle in - not that I’ll run out of sweet new things to write about anytime soon. But when I do, there’s plenty of non personal-adventure related topics to obsess over. Anyhow, this ironically titled blog is officially re-open, and I’ll do my best to keep it full of fresh material.
Much has cranked in the last month-and-a-half. Seriously, the weekends have blurred together already. Roughly 800 new English teachers attended the Tokyo orientation, which involved staying in the genuinely supple Keio Plaza hotel in Shinjuku district in central Tokyo for three nights, attending seminars on ‘how to teach’ during the day and cranking the central Tokyo nightlife in the evenings (after attending ‘functions’ at the New Zealand embassy full of red wine, pictures of John Key, and multiple speeches about not doing drugs in Japan because you will go to court and be deported and it will be a horrific and expensive and embarrassing experience).
The first day of orientation pretty much consisted of walking around the hotel in sweet attire and generally blissing out at the the massive chandeliers and grand function rooms. At some point during one of many Keio Plaza elevator rides to and from seminars, someone mumbled something about “making sure we get to see as much of Tokyo as we can”. Or, if I was being completely honest, it was more like: “my girlfriend came to this orientation last year and she said everyone should go wild in Tokyo because it’s awesome”. Challenge accepted.
I should mention at this point that there were a lot of rumours flying around in those elevators. From the blatantly untrue like: “oh my god I’m pretty sure this is the hotel where they filmed Lost in Translation”, to the potentially true : “I’m pretty sure this is where The Beatles stayed in the sixties” to the definitely true: “the Japan beauty contest is often heldhere”.Through all this however, the statement about cranking Tokyo stuck. It pretty much inspired a small epiphany within me. I was spending three nights in one of the most massive, fashionable and happening cities in the world with 800 other well dressed, well educated and like-minded people. In three days we would be shipped off to all corners of Japan, most of us to relatively small and isolated locations to teach English for a year. There really was no other option. So myself and some fellow comrades from the Wellington JET contingent - including two others from the same street that I used to live in (Epuni represent) - headed up to the bar on the fourty-somethinhgth floor for a drink and a view of the apparently never ending Tokyo skyline. Jetlag could wait,there were good times to be had.
I’ll get around to Tokyo in a later post; too many other good times are fresh in my mind right now. It was a bad buzz that the brief but cranking Tokyo times had to come to an end after only a few nights. Friends had been made however, and there would be more time to crank Tokyo later in the year. Some people were heading to their designated posting via train, but myself and the other new Hokkaido JETS had to mission it up to the norther hinterland on a plane. Hokkaido is roughly twenty percent of Japan's land mass, but only five percent of the population. It's full of premium ski-fields, national parks, bears, farms and Onsen (hot springs). So if there is any part of Japan that bears any resemblance to New Zealand, it's definitely Hokkaido. It's where all the supple fresh produce grows: non-radioactive produce that is.
Things get pretty trippy in winter too. The entire island gets plastered with powder that comes in from the vicious Siberian weather fronts to provide six months of white-out. Which could be utterly suitable to make you deranged, or, if you can ski slash board, it is pretty much awesome (so amped for the ski season!). So, if you're teaching on this island it's pretty much a separate community. Getting to mainland Honshu and beyond is fine, it's just going to be a bit of a mission getting in and out. Hanging out with other Hokkaido JETS is blatantly key if you want to enjoy yourself, especially if you want to survive the extreme winter. With that in mind everyone ripped in up and had an amazing time at Sapporo orientation also. Sapporo is such a sweet city, right in the middle is a massive garden which converts into a HUGE beer-garden come festival time, which is like, three or four times a year.
OK, so Tokyo and Sapporo orientation were awesome, as was getting to my apartment, meeting all my fellow staff at Shizunai, Shizunai agricultural, and Biratori High School and in general, getting used to being the only Westerner in my town. The introductory festivities were not over however. HAJET, a group of second and third year JETS, organised five welcome parties all across Hokkaido, five weekends in a row. Of all the welcome parties that I attended (three out of five) the second was the superlative affair. The party took place in a camp ground near the supple semi-alpine town of Noboribetsu, an hour or so South-west of Sapporo, famous all through Hokkaido for its supple Onsen. On this particular night there was a sweet festival (the 'hell festival) going on. By 8pm the streets had packed out with people dressed as daemons and other mischievous fiends. At some point during the drunken festivities, I stumbled down a side street and, to my delight, found a pack of people going absolutely nuts. These videos are a little dark and wobbly, but they still have the sense of euphoria that was present at the time. Pretty much the best fifteen minutes of Japan so far.
Seriously, how raging do those whistles and little trumpets make things? Everyone was going spastic, like Japan had just won the football world cup or something. Except we were actually celebrating hell/death in a small town in Hokkaido. It was like Cuba street carnival times 100 (but with no corn. Philip, what up). Raging times.
The festival took place down one, long lantern lined street. Earlier in the night the festival was 'opened' by the Mayor, then this dude in a Satan suit jumped up in this Olympic style flame thing.
Check him out! What a sweet part time job: being the guy that goes mental inside a Satan suit at a hell festival.
By this time the streets were well packed out. Unlike at home, there was no liquor ban so everyone was merry making in the streets.
Everyone was whipping out their traditional Japanese costumes. Authentic as bre:
By this stage, heaps of peeps had started up a soft but steady chant. At the time I didn't realise it was a precusor to the euphoric raging times that would happen later on. The parade was pretty boss also.
The rainbow marching band warrior school team was apparently a curtain raiser for more Satanic float revelry. This one was pretty chilled out, drinking from his little zen bowl.
Although I defs wouldn't let my (hypothetical) child hang out near this fiend.
As we were crusing up and down the streets this dude kept persuading us to buy these magical little balls he was selling. Heaps of kids were getting them so, despite the fact that we had no idea what they were, we picked some up.
Yeah, they were heinous. I Still have no idea what they were for. It only seemed natural at the time to eat one. Fail. They tasted like stale jelly. So heinous yet.... so shiny. What a bad buzz, just carrying around little shiny balls in a clear plastic bag for the rest of the night and just not knowing what to do with them. By this point the parade was getting well intense. This guy was getting all amped up on some kind of Lord of the Rings invading Gondor buzz. Not only was he standing up on the top of yet another Satan statue, he was also whipping it and cranking his whistle as a kind of bass line for the thirty or so chanting dudes below carrying him.
I'm pretty sure we bumped into the same guy later on, on far right. Potentially.
The sweetest thing about the whole festival though, was that everyone could just get amongst and revel. By the time the Satan floats settled down, everyone was getting into the drums. Grayson Gilmore much?
From seven till eleven it was all rage, but after that everyone just bailed all at the same time. The streets were pretty much empty, so we crused back to the camp site. The week before at the central welcome party we had gone for a crunken swim, but this time it got taken to the next level with a full on skinny dip. Represent.
PRE-DIP.
(DIP)
POST-DIP
Cleansed, but slightly cold, we still had a twenty minute walk along this creepy as bush path, so we turned it into a jog which was all good, and to our delight found that the camp ground was full of merry revelers, so the party continued into the wee hours of the morning.
Much respect goes out to all the entire HAJET posse for organising such a mint weekend. Respect must go to Tuan too, for giving me a ride there, and then dropping me home in Shizunai on his way back to Urakawa.
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