Gosha Shrine's summer festival

Heeeeeeey, everyone.  It is grossly hot here.  It is so hot that I am literally dripping in sweat.  There is literally swear dripping off me.  IT IS DISGUSTING.

Anyway, have some random purikura pictures from a million years ago (I'm really unclear on why Blogger highlights things randomly):

(These were taken during Louki's birthday.  Someone had the smart idea of picking the ~sparkly eyes~ setting, which, uh, made our eyes sparkly.  These are some of the less disturbing results.)

(Also, for anyone who can't read Japanese, our names are written on our foreheads, so we have:
Meredith (purple), Gitari (pink; that's his nickname), Ashley (light blue), Grace (blue), Hali (yellow), me (green), Louki (red), and Mariko (dark purple-ish).)

(Also, I totally stole this picture from Mariko because I am a THIEF.)

ANYWAY, Sunday was the summer festival at Gosha Shrine!  And I am all about summer festivals, so I headed on over.

Fortunately, it wasn't raining!
Unfortunately, that meant it was about a million degrees at 8:30 in the morning and everyone just wanted to go home and hide in dark holes.

A bunch of stands were already set up when I arrived:

They had a stand selling a bunch of used clothes and dishes and books.

Taikoooooo.

This, by the way, is the shrine office where I have calligraphy class!  And since the doors were open, you can now see the beautiful interior~

There was a short purification ceremony that mostly only the soudai and the performers participated in, and then a girl sang a song and then Nakano-san's daughters (who are the shrines' miko) performed a dance.

And then the main performances started.

Taiko!

So this was at about ten in the morning.  As you can probably tell, it was CROWDED.

The next group of performers were a bunch of little girls from a baton-twirling school.

They were kind of adorable, in the way that small children who never turn the correct way generally are.

There was also a group of older girls who were performing.

(This was the oldest group of girls.)

Tambourines are batons, right?

And then the little kids came back with pom-poms...

This was literally all that I could think of...

The next group of performers was a storytelling troupe...

They set up a tent so that they wouldn't die in the baking sun.

Unfortunately, their entire audience was dying in the baking sun instead...

Unfortunately, they were having some serious microphone feedback issues...

They told the story of Susanoo and Yamato no Orochi and also the story of Okuninushi and the rabbit.  Definitely the best version of the Yamato no Orochi story I've ever heard.  It was so exciting!  (Apparently I was one of the few people who actually enjoyed it, 'cause a bunch of middle schoolers told Nakano-san that it was boring.  Ohhhh dear.)

One of the older women at the festival turned to me after the story was over and said, "...are you actually interested in these kinds of stories?" to which I had to respond, "YES," because who ISN'T into stories about Susanoo fighting a giant dragon with his future-wife-turned-into-a-comb in his hair?

So then I bummed around the shrine for a bit longer, talked to some people, and got some ice cream so I didn't die of heatstroke did research on festival food.

A bunch of kids were shooting each other with water pistols, much to Nakano-san's consternation.

These kids are super ball fishing, which is the more animal-friendly version of goldfish fishing.

This random guy was selling vegetables...?

These kids were selling homegrown grilled corn.

...this was the line for ice cream.

It was really hot, okay?

Aaaand here's the front of the shrine, where all the special lanterns were hanging.

So, yeah, that was the festival!

On Tuesday it was Pay 1,000 Yen for Movies Day, so I went to see the new Spiderman movie!  It was interesting.  I feel like there were some things that were definitely better than the old version, but there were things that were definitely worse.  It's much closer to the original canon, which...isn't...necessarily...a good thing.  I also feel like it didn't come together as well as the old version, 'cause there were some things that were giant question marks at the beginning and still giant question marks at the end.  Gwen is kind of amazing, though (although I have a lot of FEELINGS about her last scene, bah).

I had calligraphy class yesterday, and Itou-san dropped by,* which led to the largest concentration of Shinto-nerding I have ever seen in a small single room.  We had a big, long discussion about how kids weren't considered human until they turned 7 in the Edo period, and how that led to a lot of interesting stuff like legal infanticide and shortened funerals for kids.  Hurrah for interesting discussions!

And then I went home and submitted all my papers for Fulbright except for my research paper, which is 15.5k and still growing uggggggh.  I need to turn it in within the next week, so I'm just trying to clean up what I have right now and hoping that it turns into something semi-coherent.  I think right now I'm only missing the conclusion and some transitions in the middle, so it's not a huge amount of work left...

In final news, remember how I decided to fly out of Tokyo so that A) I could have my exit interview face-to-face rather than over the phone (I HATE PHONE CALLS, especially extended ones; it's so hard for me to figure out what's being said without being able to see the other person) and B) I could FINALLY go see the Ghibli Museum?  Well, within the last 24 hours I just found out that Dr. Satterwhite, who does the exit interviews, will not be available when I was planning on being in Tokyo, so I have to do a phone interview, AND that the Ghibli Museum is sold out of tickets until mid-August.  AUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH.  Excuse me while I flip over the UNIVERSE.  I am fairly sure that I am going to wind up going to the Ghibli Museum when I'm a million years old at this rate.  WHY?  WHYYYYYY?  So now I'm trying to figure out when to go up to Tokyo.  BAH.
</drama>

Well, I should get back to my paper...gosh...

*Why she dropped by is a long story involving a guy giving her a bunch of calligraphy sets years and years ago and telling her to give them to foreign students...?  Oh, and then she's supposed to take a picture when she gives them to the foreign students and send him a picture so that he knows that the set is going to a good home.  And apparently she hasn't managed to pawn all of them off yet, so when she found out that I've been taking calligraphy she was like, "YOU ARE TAKING ONE OF THESE."  So I got a calligraphy set!  Thank you, mysterious benefactor man!


EDIT: Oh my gosh, I just went to check keywords people have used to find my blog, and, uh:

"break up with boyfriend to become fulbright scholar"

I'm crying from laughter here.  Why was someone searching that...?  DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH MY QUOTE ON THE TECH HOUSE QUOTES PAGE?  'CAUSE IT'S NOT TRUE, YOU GUYS.

Giant update dump of DOOM

Okay, let's try to go for a real update this time.

First off, in case you thought I was kidding about Dutch licorice, the internet has once again proven me right.  I especially like the Japanese guy's reaction.

Anyway, dang, so much to write about.  This is going to be kind of brief because I have a lot of catch up on, and I've already visited basically everywhere in this post a bunch of times, so you can go back to previous posts to find pictures.

Let's see...

So last week on Wednesday I went with Kim and Louki to Ise, because they wanted to see Ise and I am always okay with visiting Ise.  It was pretty exciting, but since it was my fourth time at Ise I will not really write much here.
...also, Kim and Louki got a bunch of my friends from the dorm to make a little book for me with pictures (INCLUDING A PICTURE HALI DREW OF ALL OF US AS OUR RESPECTIVE PONIES IT IS NOW CANON) and little letters and I might have cried a little but you can't prove it and Kim definitely doesn't have photographic evidence shhhhh.  It was basically one of the nicest things anyone has ever done from me and oh my gosh yes.  I will treasure it forever.

On Thursday morning I helped out at the tsukinamisai at Susanoo Shrine, at which there was much excitement that I shall not write about but it involved someone nearly passing out, and then afterwards I got FREE LUNCH and also got to listen to a long and complicated discussion about the shrine's finances and their relationship with a couple of important neighborhood organizations.  Basically, it was good stuff all around.
Thursday evening I went to pick up my dad from the airport, and managed to get him food without killing him* and got him to his hotel.

On Friday morning I met up with my dad, showed him around some sites near my dorm, like Koushouji and Gosha Shrine and the super awesome bakery in the Valor.  I also filled out some paperwork so that he could come up into my room and look around, and I am sure he will tell you how COMPLETELY SPOTLESS and NOT DISORGANIZED my room is.  Right, Dad?  Anyway, he also got to meet Louki and Grace, which was cool.
...aaaaand then I had to run away to class.
But after class we met up with Itou-san, who came by in her car to pick us up!  We were going to go to Nagoya Castle, but the traffic was really bad, so we wound up getting there right before they closed.  We decided to save the castle for another day, and we walked around Meijo Park and the castle moat instead.  I would just like to note that the koi in the castle moat are INCREDIBLY CREEPY and I am pretty sure I am going to have nightmares about their creepy mouths.
ANYWAY, after that we drove past the City Archives, which are housed in this building that looks like it belongs on the Harvard campus. Not even kidding.
And then we went to Kawahara Shrine to see adorable baby turtles and definitely not to show my dad the shrine or anything.
And then we went to dinner at a really good Chinese restaurant, and Itou-san made endless fun of my dad for eating less than me.  And then Itou-san totally stole the check and SOMEDAY I WILL WIN AND PAY FOR A MEAL.  I am planning.  PLANNING, I SAY.
Anyway, it was all around a very nice day!

Saturday, Dad and I went to Inuyama to see the castle and the other stuff in Inuyama.  The castle was much warmer than it was when I went with Nick, but the stairs were still as terrifying.  We also went to this cool little puppet museum that is just outside of the castle grounds.  And then I introduced my dad to soft cream (it's like the much better version of American soft serve), which may have been a mistake because he might be mildly addicted to it now oops.  Anyway, after that we went to the temples on the mountain, and met this Buddhist priest who showed us around a tiny recreation of the Shikoku pilgrimage.  The Shikoku pilgrimage is a route of 88 temples located around the entire island of Shikoku, which takes approximately a month to complete on foot.  There are hundreds of recreations of the pilgrimage, usually which employ sand or dirt from each site and some sort of sacred object from each site.  This particular recreation had little pots of sand below the floor and a scroll from each temple.  Anyway, I got a pretty long explanation from the priest, because he was pretty excited that I understood what he was talking about.  So that was cool.
After that we were going to go over and check out the Monkey Park, except it turned out to be an amusement park?  A really expensive amusement park?  I dunno.  So instead we headed back to Nagoya, bummed around Osu Kannon and bought AMAZING MEAT BUNS, and then went over to Kanayama to grab curry for dinner.
So that was Saturday!

Sunday, Dad came to my dorm to drop off his bags for the day, and then we went to Nagoya Castle and actually managed to get inside this time.  We also visited the Tokugawa Art Museum later that day, which had a big collection of popular books from the 18th century, including, weirdly enough, a bunch of guides to the red light district.  I don't even know.  There was also a new exhibit on the possessions of the merchant class, which was pretty cool, although I don't know why I would want a tea bowl that cost that much if I were a merchant.
Then we went to the Tokugawa Gardens, which were significantly greener than they were last time I visited, but also had fewer flowers, weirdly enough.
We grabbed dinner at Pastel, aka that weird restaurant that only sells cake and pasta, and then I took my dad to Nagoya Station and said bye.
Upon returning to the dormitory, I discovered that Abbie had spent the entire semester saving one yen coins so she could go to the Lawson (convenience store) and buy a teriyaki burger using only one yen coins (one hundred five of them, to be exact).  It was potentially the most epic and trollish thing to ever occur in a convenience store.  The cashier at our register managed to get through the entire thing with a perfectly straight face, although the other cashier looked like he was going to die from holding in his laughter.  He was turning bright red, not even kidding.
ALSO, Ashley bought cell phone charms for all the pony girls and THEY ARE THE COLORS OF OUR PONIES AND WHY IS THIS SO GREAT.  Anyway, I have a tiny bell with a ribbon hanging from my cell phone now, and it is in Twilight Sparkle's colors and it is great.

Monday morning I woke up at an ungodly early hour to say goodbye to Meredith and Hali and Ashley, all of whom were leaving for the airport.  Then I saw an annullar eclipse, or, really, I tried to take pictures of it, failed, and then spotted the people across the street who actually had sun filters, and asked them politely if I could share.  Thank you, nice people across the street!  Anyway, it was amazing cool and I will be incredibly disappointed if I don't develop super powers.  And then after that I collapsed into bed and slept for a while, because I was running on four hours of sleep.

Tuesday was Kim and Louki's last day in the dorm, and due to a long and complicated blood pact, Kim had to watch an episode of Sherlock with me, so we (Abbie and Kim and Louki and I) did that.  And apparently I spent the entire episode grinning like an idiot, but, HEY, IT'S SHERLOCK AND YOU CAN'T STOP ME.
Then we went to Mountain, which is a sort of infamous restaurant by the dorm.  It is infamous because A. it has the largest serving sizes you have ever seen and B. it has the weirdest pasta you have ever seen, like green tea and red bean.  Yeah.  But I got a parfait so all was well!  Although my chocolate parfait had a prune in it, which was...odd.
And then we had a Roommate Dinner, which turned out to be more like a Roommate Plus a Whole Other Chunk of the Dorm Dinner, which was fine, because it meant that we got to hear about why not to be a politician in India and how the Netherlands doesn't have a government right now and other exciting things.

Today I woke up at an ungodly early hour to take Kim and Louki to Nagoya Station with Dheeraj and Grace, which was exciting even though all of us were sort of falling asleep.  (Okay, Grace was literally falling asleep.)  Once we saw them off, we fought through the sea of people who decided to ride the subway at rush hour (IT WAS AWFUL I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DIE AUGH) and somehow managed to get back to the dorm without being crushed to death.
Also, I apologize if this post is more incoherent than usual 'cause I think I'm running on roughly three or four hours of sleep.  I'm coming down with something, which means that it feels like someone's been sandpapering my throat, so I kept waking up in the middle of the night and thus got lousy sleep.  Ugh.
Anyway, yeah, that's what I've been up to, basically.  I'm gonna go collapse and drink some more tea now.  Oh, and eat more of these crazy plum cough drops, which are the greatest thing I have ever found.

*My dad is allergic to shellfish, which is...problematic, if you live in a port town like Nagoya.

Adventures in licorice

In case I haven't already pounded on your door in the middle of the night (sorry, Louki) and you haven't been notified by Tech House's vast and somewhat dizzying information network* and you haven't, I dunno, talked to my parents, I GOT INTO HARVARD.  It's pretty exciting!  So I'm going to be touring there during my crazy East Coast tour thing in two weeks.

Aside from that, I haven't really been up to anything terribly exciting.  On Tuesday I had lunch with Itou-san, which was really nice.  She's so cool, and, yes, I've said this a million times, but it's STILL TRUE.  Also on Tuesday, Louki and I cleaned our entire common space.  Yeah.  The entire thing.  I think it was the first time it had been cleaned in about a million years, from the amount of grime that had collected.  (Literally.  Hi-chan didn't know where some of the stuff we were throwing out had come from, and she's been living in this room for more than a year!)  We also wound up with about seven bags of trash.  Louki did most of the work, to be honest, because she is crazy intense, but I did most of the kitchen, which I think we can all agree was horrifying, because there was LIQUID SLUDGE IN THE STOVE BURNER.  I don't even have words.  There was a point, while I was scraping handfuls of oily sludge off of various objects, that I began to wonder whether it would be physically possible for our kitchen to be any more disgusting.  But it's cleaner now, so yay!
Also, Itou-san showed up at some point in the middle and gave us warabi mochi,** because she is so awesome and also she's taken a shining to the girls in my dorm.

Today I had penmanship class, and listened to a very long discussion about whether or not Gosha Shrine is actually being haunted by ghosts/angels.  It was pretty exciting.  (Also, the three-year-old son of one of the women, who normally just sits quietly and hangs on his mom's arm, became incredibly talkative when ghosts were mentioned, and informed us all gleefully that if you go into dark places ghosts will get you.)  I was also told that the reason I like research is because my parents' smartness is embedded in the DNA of my soul.  The more you know???***

In other news, Louki has discovered the joy of feeding Americans Dutch licorice.  If you have never had Dutch licorice, let me tell you, you are probably better off that way.  I am unsure why anyone believes it to be edible, let alone a sweet.  Louki takes great glee in coming to my door with a giant bag of licorice and watching all the color drain out of my face.  I have been very good, though, and tried everything she's given me, and I've only had to spit it out because I thought I was going to die once.  Salt + licorice = DEATH.
(However, I got revenge on Louki by making her eat death mangoes, which are actually dried mangoes dipped in chili powder.  She turned bright red and keeled over.  REVENGE.)

On a final note, it's currently White Day, also known as Valentine's Day Part Two, in which dudes who got chocolate from girls have to give white chocolate back to them.  It was baaaaaaaaaaaaasically a holiday invented by chocolate companies to sell more white chocolate, and it worked, except that some people thought it would be funnier to give panties in return 'cause those are also white.  Way to go, you guys.  I'm hoping that All the Chocolate goes on sale tomorrow, because that would be awesome.

*I have gotten the strangest set of emails from Tech Housers in the past 48 hours.  Some of them were normal congratulations and some of them were Tech House-style congratulations and some of them were expressing glee at the potential opportunity to insult me for living in Massachusetts.  You know who you are.

**If you've never had warabi mochi before, it's somewhat difficult to describe.  It's kind of like jelly crossed with mochi, covered in ground soybeans.  SO DELICIOUS.

***Also in the last 48 hours, I was told that I owed it to humanity to have children with Nick, because with our combined DNA, all of our children would go to Harvard.
UM.
I don't even know what to say to that except AWKWARD and also HETERONORMATIVE.
'kay, I feel like a Brown student now.

Beans and Bums

Note: Some people will find the content of this post offensive.  To discover whether you will be offended by this post, please read the following sentence:

BUMS BUTTOCKS BEHINDS BACKSIDES BUTTS BOTTOMS DERRIERES REAR ENDS  FANNIES TUSHES

We good?

Okay.

So Friday was Setsubun, which is a holiday that falls on February 3 every year.  Basically, you're supposed to chase out any bad luck from the old year and welcome in good luck for the New Year.  The way you do this is by throwing beans.
Yes, beans.  Soy beans, to be exact.
When celebrating at home, the father (or other male in the household who doesn't mind a little pain) will usually dress up in a demon mask, and the kids will throw beans at him while yelling, "鬼は外" (oni wa soto; "demons out") and then throw beans inside the house while yelling, "福は内" (fuku wa uchi; "luck in").  Then everyone has to eat the number of beans corresponding to their age plus one (for luck).

Anyway, I decided to check out a couple of different Setsubun festivals in the area.

First stop of the day was Ueno Tenmangu, for an 11 a.m. ceremony.  There was already a pretty big crowd by the time I arrived.

As you can probably tell from the pictures, they had put a banner up along the edge of the roof, and were preparing to throw beans from there.

They also had some people from 7-Eleven selling a special kind of sushi that you eat at Setsubun.

People on the roof!

Since the festival was in the middle of the time when most people are at work/school, most of the attendants were retired or young moms.

There's been an explosion of dolls at the shrine since the New Year, probably because the dolls come with omikuji, and buying omikuji is a common activity during the New Year's festivities.

Someone made a snowman.  Can you guess what it's supposed to be?
(If you need a hint, just keep looking through the pictures.)

All ready to go!

BEANS!

(They were in little plastic packets, so people didn't have to worry about how sanitary it was to eat them.)

They also threw candy.

The only guy who shouted anything was the guy with the microphone, and I think they were supposed to throw in time to his shouting, but that mostly failed.

Catching beans is serious business.

I caught one!

Big black print: good luck bean

Red print on right side: safety in the family

Red print on the left side: opening luck beckoning good luck

Everybody counts up his/her spoils...

So then I took some pictures of little dolls, because THEY ARE WORTH TAKING PICTURES OF.  Or something.

THE DRAGON HAS CAPTURED THEM.

And is drooling on them.

Apparently.

Uh...did you guys get lost?

One of these things is not like the other...

So that was Ueno Tenmangu.

Second festival of the day was at Shiroyama Hachimangu at 4 p.m., so after the time when all the elementary students (and college students) got out.

They also had a convenience store selling sushi, but this time it was Family Mart.  And one of the employees was wearing a demon wig.  'cause, you know, you want to buy sushi from demons.

There was still a fair amount of snow on the ground.

I arrived about half an hour before the actual bean-throwing started, so all the bean-throwers were filing into the honden for a purification ceremony beforehand.

This guy was making announcements during the ceremony on a microphone.

So many people!

This was the first set of bean-throwers.  There were three sets total, probably because the balcony around the shrine wasn't big enough to accommodate all of them at once.

FLYING BEANS.

(They also had a guy on a microphone chanting, but they weren't throwing in time either.)

There was a kind of dangerous amount of pushing going on...although fortunately nobody got knocked over.

I caught some!

There were a bunch of little kids with demon masks, so I think that probably a preschool in the area was making them that day or something...

SO MANY PEOPLE.

So that was Shiroyama Hachimangu.

On my way back to my dorm, I ran into Kocchan, who had apparently texted me the previous day but my phone, being amazing, didn't think to deliver her text until about ten minutes later.  Anyway, she's interviewing for a job teaching English, and part of the interview is writing an essay in English in fifteen minutes.  Yes, fifteen minutes.  It's insane.  Anyway, she wanted to know if I could look over one of her practice essays, and I said sure.  It was pretty exciting.  She also writes better essays than some college honors English kids?  Yeah.

Anyway, after that I put on even more layers than I was already wearing and headed over to Gosha Shrine for their 7 p.m. Setsubun/Star Festival combo.  There were only about thirty people there, mostly the older gentlemen who are the shrine's soudai, but there were also some women from the neighborhood and a bunch of little kids.  There was the standard purification, and then Nakano-san asked everyone who had been born in the year of the dragon (it was two kids and one woman) to step forward and offer a tamagushi together.  Then everyone who attended got to throw beans and yell, "鬼は外、福は内."
After that was the Star Festival, which is for one of the kami (a star kami, if you didn't already guess) enshrined at Gosha Shrine.  It was a fairly standard ceremony, except that Nakano-san's younger daughter was there to perform kagura, which was cool.
Afterwards, everyone got a little bag of beans and hot amazake, which is a kind of sweet sake.  BUT the kind that they had was non-alcoholic (so the kids could drink it), which meant that I could drink it too.  And it was DELICIOUS.  It makes me wonder whether the alcoholic stuff tastes as good...but I'm not wondering hard enough to try it.

I made it back to my dorm without tripping and breaking my neck on the icy sidewalks,* which I think is an achievement.  There I ran into Louki, who asked if she and "some other girls" could come to Hadaka Matsuri with me, and I said sure.

Well, as it turned out the next day, "some other girls" meant eight girls total, which meant we were a female gaijin SWARM.  Apparently no guys were interested in coming to the festival.  Why?  Well, here's where the bums come in.

The festival is called 裸祭, which literally means "naked festival."  No, it doesn't involve any actual nudity, but it does involve guys running around in a special kind of loin cloth...which, as you will see shortly, gives you a much more...expansive view than normal loin cloths.

ANYWAY.

When we made it to the train station, there was a poster up for the festival.  And there were apparently special trains running to the festival too?  It was exciting.

This is what it looked like when we hopped off the train.

Soooooooo many people!

There were food stalls set up on pretty much every street around the shrine.

The first of the semi-naked dudes!

Each group of semi-naked dudes was carrying a pole-like structure.

Which they would occasionally set up and then (sometimes) one of the guys would try to climb it.

It should be noted that it was only slightly above freezing, and they were dressed like THAT.

This would be why so many of them were really, really drunk.

Well, also, they had to drink sake as part of the purification ceremony before the festival.
But they kept drinking throughout the day, which meant that the groups got significantly more drunk as time went on.

Also, while carrying the pole, they'd swerve back and forth between the two sides of the street.

We wound up moving down to get a better spot, and also I got some fried satsuma imo dipped in sugar, which sounds bizarre but is delicious, I swear.

All the groups had to pass over this bridge, but because it was slick from mud (and got increasingly slippery over the course of the day), people kept falling on the way down.

IS THIS NOT THE CUTEST MASCOT?

If you'll notice, almost all the guys are wearing headbands and most of them are carrying other scraps of cloth as well.  A big part of festival is that the guys will rip off strips of cloth to pass among the audience.  The strips of cloth are like omamori, and are supposed to protect you from bad luck for a year, so you want to gather as many of them as possible.
Basically, this means that every time a group of guys passes, everyone starts yelling, "Oniisan, choudai" ("oniisan" is a polite way of saying "big brother" and "choudai" just means "please").

There were little kids running around semi-nude too.

Abby, Kim, and Meredith, all having a good time.

Meredith and Kim, being the members of our party who looked the most gaijin, definitely got the most attention.

These guys were having a blast.

If you'll notice, some of the guys had stuff written on their backs and fronts and arms and faces and...just generally all over.

Climbing...

...and climbing...

...and climbing...

YEAH, HE MADE IT!

Here's one of the guys who gave us strips of cloth.

Also, that carton he's holding is full of sake.

It's the REALLY COLD little kid team!  Some of the poor kids looked really miserable.

A bunch of guys were SUPER EXCITED to see gaijin and came over and tried to talk to us in English.  It would usually go something like this:
Guy: HARRO!
Us: Hi!
Guy: WHERE ARE YOU FROM?
Louki and Kim: The Netherlands!
The rest of us: America!
Guy: I AM JAPANESE!
Us: ...okay?
Guy: HERE.  *thrusts a bunch of strips of cloth at us*
Us: THANK YOU!
Guy: HAVE FUN BYYYYYYYYYYYYE.

These guys were tearing strips off their flag for us.

WHERE ARE YOU FROM?

Sometimes people would pose for us.

People falling up the bridge...

...people falling down the bridge...

At about this point, this random group of guys stopped in front of Meredith and Kim, whispered among themselves, and then screamed, "BEAUTIFUL!" at them, before running away.

REALLY LITTLE KIDS.

Let's face it: that kid has amazing hair.

Aaaaand falling down the bridge.

It was impressive how many of the guys were covered in mud/blood.

HOW WERE THEY MANAGING TO SLEEP THROUGH THAT?

D'awwwwwww, small children.

This guy tore a strip off his loin cloth for Meredith.
Apparently it's really lucky?

This guy had "onna zuki" ("likes girls") written across his chest, and, of course, a couple of the girls in our group started screaming, "ONNA ZUKI!" at him, so he came over to talk to us.

He also had his phone number written on his arm.  Just in case you wanted to get in contact.

This guy is having fun, even if he's probably FREEZING.

SUDDENLY A TIDE OF SEMI-NUDE MEN.

A tide of FALLING semi-nude men.

At some point in the proceedings, a guy proposed to Kim.  Not even kidding.  He apparently told her that she should marry him because it would make him happy.  I don't think that's how marriage is supposed to work, but what do I know?

Does this picture make you feel awkward inside?
Or have you gotten used to it by this point?
As one of the girls put it, "I have seen so many butts today that now I don't even notice them. IT'S LIKE THEY'RE NOT THERE."

LOOK AT THE GAIJIN OVER THERE!

(That was actually what he was saying too.)

Anyone who has seen Madoka will recognize what's on his back...

The unfortunate thing about drunkenness + mud is that it means a lot of falling over.
Mud and blood, like I said.
A couple of guys fell down the bridge and face-planted right in the mud.  Ouch.

Yes, that guy has Chopper on his back.

And more phone numbers.  A lot of guys had phone numbers written on their backs, actually...  Some had addresses too.

SUDDENLY, A FLOOD OF MEN.

That is a cask of sake.

Like I said, some people were REALLY DRUNK.

WHOO, YEAH!  THROW YOUR ARMS IN THE AIR!

A bunch of the girls on the left side (I was on the right) got called "bijin" (beautiful people).  They also got SO MANY omamori.  Like DANG.  Some of them got whole flags and headbands.

Also, the groups that were passing us kept high-fiving all us gaijin.

SLIPPERY.

LOOK AT THE GAIJIN OVER THERE.

...then some guys started trying to kiss the girls on the left...

Most of the girls were pretty okay with kisses on the cheeks, but apparently a guy called Kim a "baka gaijin" (stupid foreigner) for not wanting to kiss him on the mouth.  And Grace had a guy grab her and kiss her.  EW.

...so glad that most of them didn't notice me.  Probably helped that all the other girls looked waaaaaaaaaaaaay more foreign than me.

This guy was an English teacher who came over to talk to us and then posed for us.

Poor little kid wearing a jacket...

...you don't want to know the story behind this one.

Let's just say oh geez oh geez.

Dang, these kids have MAD SLEEPING SKILLS.

It might be hard to tell from the picture, but this was the second guy who was carried away on a stretcher (that I saw).  Alcohol poisoning = not fun.

LOOK, GAIJIN!

We were getting really cold at this point, so we decided to head back to Nagoya.

Ashley decided that the best possible thing she could do with her haul was use them as hair ribbons.

By the end of the train ride, her ENTIRE HEAD was covered in pieces of cloth.

After that, a bunch of us wound up going to the onsen in Ueda, which was fun, and then we went to get parfaits, because we are totally responsible adults and responsible adults eat parfaits.

So that was our Saturday!
Man.  That post took a really long time to upload.

*Has no one in Japan heard of salting the sidewalks?  I mean seriously.  Some people were hosing them down.  Because, you know, that's such a great idea.