Fancy Seeing You Here

Another wonderful Japanese long weekend. Perhaps I should just stay at home and catch up on my sleep, do a little cleaning, maybe leisurely see some friends and catch up.
...
No, that'd be too easy. Instead, let's go traveling. After all, it's a long weekend.

Fun thing about traveling here is you just kind of think to yourself, "Hmm. Where's a city I have visited yet? Okayama? Well then! Let's go!", and off and away you go. I get the feeling that that’s how my friends decided this weekend: Throwing darts @ the map, and then playing Janken to decide the winner (I could write an entire blog about Janken [And in fact, I think I may in the future], but for now http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janken). Just like that, Okayama beats out Hiroshima, and we're off!

Strangest thing I found about being in Okayama was how it reminded me so of Toronto. The size of the streets, the buildings, and, of course, the streetcars. Okayama is one of only a handful of cities in Japan to still feature streetcars. And so seeing it made of think of it as Japan's TTC. It was quite surreal to walk the streets, but they carried with them that nostalgic and melancholic feeling all at once.


First thing: The park.　The park was incredibly lovely, and was juxtaposed to other Japanese parks in that it had large expanses of grass, which apparently here is unheard of. It any event, it reminded me greatly of home. Funny thing happened in said park. As we're meandering around on a hill, we happened to spot two other foreigners way across the field. You may think, "Oh, always on the lookout", or something, but you have to realize that being here amongst millions of black haired people causes blond to stick out like a pink elephant – One's eyes are just drawn to it, I suppose. Anyway, we innocuously thought nothing of it and continued on. Minutes later, we were walking passed them when we realized that we knew that blond! @ least, one of them. It was a friend of ours from Tottori, but one who lives on the other side of the prefecture and we rarely get the chance to see. She was showing her Australian friend from Shimane around before the latter returned to the Land Down Under in several weeks' time. A whiles of catching up and we moved off to check out the castle.

It was no sooner that we were not five meters from exiting the park, when I caught the immediate gaze of yet another foreigner walking right passed me. We stared at each other for what seemed an eternity before we pounced upon one another like a pair of oppositely-charged magnets. For you see, this particular girl – a Canadian I might add – was a friend of mine that I had met on the airplane sitting across the aisle. We hung out all during Tokyo orientation and that was the last time I saw her. We talked over MSN, but since she lives north of Tokyo, and this several hundred kilometers from me, I knew it would be the longest while before I saw her again. And so you can imagine my surprise @ running into her at a random park leagues from both our houses as she was down for the weekend visiting her friend.

Nothing particularly noteworthy thereafter – walked around the shopping area, ate bbq-esque burgers, and sat @ Mister Donut for several hours. The girls went the internet café to sleep (I’ll explain in a minute), and I met up with my friend and her best friend for drinks at a Canadian bar. Thereafter, retired at aforementioned internet café. Now, this is not such a phenomenon – we have them back home too. But! The scope of which they're going on here is something else. So... you can rent what are basically private rooms at which you can watch more movies than do exist or read more manga than are contained books in a university library. A few places – this one in particular – allowed for one to rent a room overnight.

So for ￥2000, we got a "room", about the size of a sofa plus leg space, a TV with maybe 10 channels, a PS2, a DVD player, a computer, and unlimited internet. And from this you could choose to watch literally thousands of movies all for free and immediately onto the comp. Considering they also throw in breakfast in the morning, a blanket for you to use, and a towel should you wish to use the shower (They have shower facilities), it all isn't bad for $20 CAD when all one wants to do is rest their head for a few hours.

Next morn, we did the Okayama Prefecftural Museum of Art, which was featuring work done by local artists in the area. I tell ya, the human mind still amazes me that people can come up with some of the things that they do. Simply stunning they were.

And as fast as it began (both the trip and the blog), it was just about over. Nevertheless, I do intend to hit it up again in force come spring when the parks are in full bloom.

(Short entry this time. Ray's 疲れた [tired])