As I said in the last post, I caught the 3:51pm on Friday to Gifu. I arrived just after 8 and we headed to the house. We chilled out, talked, ate and planned out what was happening for the weekend. We woke up around 10 in the morning...actually that's when I woke up, Khaleelah was up and at 'em already. We coordinated times to meet Christina at Naka station for 2-2:30pm and headed to Seki for the Sword festival. We did alot of walking, bought some knives, ate lots of junk food and headed to Mino for the lantern festival in the evening around 5:30ish. While at the train stop in Seki, we met up with some other JETs(Japanese Exchange Teachers) and ALTs(Assistant Language Teachers) who were seemingly as lost as we were in regards to what stop we had to get off at in Mino. We found our way there and walked together to one of the main streets for the festival eventually parting ways. The lanterns were amazing, some things I had never dreamed of seeing and they were all handmade. You will see what I mean from the pictures...I took TONS and I don't think I covered a third of what was on display. I bought myself a little handmade lantern for my room. Khaleelah introduced me to "hypertension and high cholesterol waiting to happen" and I loved it. I was basically a huge baked potato smothered in butter, but it tasted oh so sugoy(good) and oychi(delicious)! We left the lantern festival about 8:30pm and headed back to Khaleelah's place. We only had 2 bikes, so K gave Christina a double ride to the house and of course your girl had to pull out the camera. It was quite funny. The plan was to get ready and leave to catch the 11:30pm train to Gifu station, but we got caught up watching "30 dates in 30 days" on Essence's website...all Khaleelah's fault. So we chilled longer than planned and took a taxi to the club. As usual the reggae music was great. The first set of dancers were horrible, I took video for you to see but they were so bad that I deleted them and took video of the second set of dancers who were better. The smoke got to me after a while so I went outside and then stayed in the lounge area eating french fries and a small piece of Jerk chicken (that this Japanese guy brought over to us from the grill) at 2:30 in the morning with Khaleelah and Christina. Madness! French Fries? At 2:30 in the morning? We took a taxi home around 3:30am. It didn't take us long to knock out asleep. Sunday morning came and after both mine and K's alarms went off, we woke Christina up to get ready so K could call the cab to take her to the station. I had planned to go back to sleep, but for some reason my body wasn't having it. I chatted with Sarah for a little bit online and guess what? She's pregnant!!! I was so happy I was in tears because I know how ecstatic she is.....OK now the next plan was for Christina to go home, freshen up and meet up with us again to do the ceramics festival. No such luck, Christina passed out to the point where she didn't hear the phone ring the many times we called her, so K and I made our way to Tajimi for the ceramics festival. All I can say is wicked pieces of art and greaaaaat deals! I bought myself two plate sets and a serving platter. Basically the both of us went crazy, so much so that we went back on Monday to get more. The people we bought from liked us so much that we got great discounts on both days. It was funny, when they saw us walking up on Monday I swear they lit up! I had brought my luggage with me and left it in a locker at Tajimi station. On the way back, we picked up my stuff, headed to Nagoya station and went back to Maharaja for dinner before I headed home to Aioi. On the way up to the restaurant on the elevator, this old man came on and asked where we were from, he was so cute. He gave me a cute little apple and gave Khaleelah a grape lol...I guess that was his omiyage/welcome to Japan gift to us.
I caught the train at 7pm and was in my apartment at 11:15pm. As tired as I was I couldn't go to bed before unwrapping my beautiful ceramics and washing them. I thought the night was done then, but then mums logged onto skype and called with Cassie sitting on her lap. After Cassie serenaded me with "somewhere over the rainbow", hand gestures and all, Shiniece woke up and came to talk to me all groggy. So I went to bed around 1:30am knowing I would be tired the next day.
P.S. HAPPY BIRTHDAY DADDY!!(Japan Time)
FESTIVAL PICTURES HERE!
Gifu Club Video #1-"Always On My Mind"
Gifu Club Video #2
Gifu Club Video #3
Dance & Drum Ensemble Video #1
Dance & Drum Ensemble Video #2
Dance & Drum Ensemble Video #3
No comments:
Post a Comment