Jes Visits! - Jeff's Party

One of my teachers is a rather famous guy in this area and is a published (he has, like 13 books) researcher of intercultural communication. He also teaches English to a lot of people, and he hosts parties at various times to help give his students chance to interact with each other and to practice the languages that they're studying. To aid this end, he used a lottery to figure out seating, which made sure everybody was nice and mixed. Jes was at the center table of three and I was at the South table, where the population varied widely. Hidemi, at left, was one of the people at my table.
[Edit: I guess I forgot to mention that he has a couple of television shows and he teaches at his own English school. To quote Anchorman: He's "kind of a big deal".]

I took some pictures, as I am wont to do, though almost all of them came out a little blurry. Once I pulled out my flash, there were no problems, but before that the light level was too low even for my fast lens to get sharp pictures.

Stupid physics, stupid optical levers, stupid 50mm.

Anyway, as long as you look at them really small, it's not so easy to see the blurriness, so here's what I've got. It's mostly me and Jes, but she's cute and my parents always want pictures of me, and Jose's apparently a photographer. He was drooling over my camera, in any case, which is a little weird - it's kind of backwards - for me.

First up is a picture of Jes with Jose, who everyone calls "Josie", using the girls' name instead of the Spanish pronunciation. I think this is weird, but maybe that's his actual name. Who knows.


At far left is me setting up my tripod. I like this picture, because I'm decently far enough away that you can't see how doom I look.
The next picture I'm not so happy about, but I think it would look pretty good if I weren't so tired. It was nearly 1AM at that point, though, and we had gotten up around 7AM to take Jes to church.

I think this may be the first picture on the blog of me in my blue shirt, which is one of my favorites. It's pretty much my favorite color, though it looks a little different in these pictures.

At right is Jes being cute. That's really all that needs to be said. I wish that I could say I took this picture, but I think Jose took it.

Moving on.

We did a gift exchange that was... weird. Everybody brought a ~$10 present and then we sang a song and passed it around. I got a nifty blankety thing.

No real idea what's going on at left. Maybe it was when he was saying how she had prepared all the food. I remember that she was the one who did it, and apparently on really short notice, but I dunno if this was when he said that. The food was good, by the way. Speaking of food, this is one of the sweets that was brought out, along with about two hundred creampuffs and a huge box of very, very good mikan, which are known as satsuma oranges in English, I think.

This was the group of people who stayed until fairly late. Remember I was setting up that tripod earlier? I've got the remote in my right hand in this picture. I used the two-second timer to hide it. From left to right: Jeff, guy whose name I don't know, David, Hidemi, Jose, me (Will!), and the kitten (Jes).

To finish the night off, Jeff played his Japanese flute for us. Calling it a "Japanese flute" really doesn't do it justice, but I don't remember the special name it has. It's got a special name because it's longer than the normal flute, known as a shakuhachi.

It was interesting, though a little slower-paced than I was expecting. I was excited to hear him play it and Jes really enjoyed it as well, apparently, because she got to learn about new musical stuff.

It Doesn't Go?

From the party last night. I'm still recovering and don't have much to say about it.
Mun is holding the flash off in the distance, which is how that nova happened.

Hamid's Last Katsuragawa Party

We had another party up on Katsuragawa tonight, and we actually planned to have a fire from the beginner and were much more prepared. Bryden and I go there about 45 minutes before everybody else, so we explored a little and gathered up some firewood.
Once Hamid and everybody else got there, it got a lot more fun and we put some food on the fire to cook. We cooked up some sausages, but didn't have anything to put them on to put them in the fire, so I sharpened a piece of bamboo a little bit and used that.
Here's mostly everybody sitting around the fire at right. starting with the two people who are standing and working counterclockwise, we have Bryden, Soujong (crouching in green shirt), Robert, some guy, Hamid, Alessandra, Melinda, Martin (blue shirt), Rafael, and Aaron Poulliot.

I didn't start taking pictures until pretty late, but here you can see Sara trying to not get in the frame while I'm taking this picture and catching the flash at half power in the face from four feet away. Teach her to try and give me chocolate!
Tasty chocolate, by the way.

Apparently, Valeria will be singing in a band when she gets back to Italy. The obligatory stardom jokes were swapped, and you've got this, which is a pretty decent picture of the two of them. Actually, with my night vision gone due to looking at the LCD and whatnot, I had no idea they were posing. Last I could tell, they were facing the other direction. I imagine I looked pretty funny when I looked at this picture.

Not too long after this, people starting getting ready to go, and you can see them (very) slowly working their way towards that end here at right.

On the way back, I gave Melinda a ride back on the back of my bike. I didn't know she was there until about when we left, and I don't really have any good pictures of her face. Here's this, though, 'cause it's what I've got. Left <-- If you take a look at the picture at the right, you can see the waviness of a favorite of people's clothing caused by the temperature differentials in the air above the fire. When I first saw this, I was thinking my camera was being weird, but then I realized what it was.

I just spelled realized with two Ls and a W, so I'm going to bed. It's way past my... Zzz...

[Edit: This post is more coherent than I thought it would be, given that I was asleep when I wrote the last three paragraphs.]

"Jeff"

There's a prof at 京都外国語大学 (my school) who has, as far as anybody can tell, entirely too much cash. Whether or not that's the case, I have no idea. Maybe he's just very frugal.
In any case, he invited all of the foreigners to his place for an end-of-semester party that was pretty cool. We had nice company, good food, and I think everybody had a good time.

House is huge, 180 tatami mats, if memory serves. And beautiful: old-style paper doors, some of which have sumi-e on them. It dates from the Edo period, I think he said.

Oh, and it has its own alley.

It's kind of designed for... Japanese people, so the stairs are a little dangerous if you're over 5'6", but he has a nice view of the river and Gion. We did the whole party out on his veranda that's on the Kamogawa river (the main river in Kyoto), where the wind kept us nicely cool. As it would turn out, they take down the outer veranda every year at the end of summer, then put it back up at the beginning. This somehow makes it slighlty less illegal, I guess. In any case, it's the norm for the houses along the river, if I got what he said right.

As an added bonus, there was another party going on next door, and we got to see some maiko (apprentice geisha), which was pretty cool. They even posed for me! It's hard to get them to let you take their picture, but as you can see, three posed in this one! And they look kind of cute, even, which rare among geisha.
The teacher managed to accidentally make some new contacts, and by "some new contacts", I mean three Japanese men who all looked pretty well-to-do themselves. This happening was what confirmed my suspicions: diplomacy.

That's his secret, as far as I can tell. He's probably the most diplomatic person I have ever met. When people talk to him, they always walk away smiling or laughing, and he does a very good job of playing up his foreign-ness when it will help, and downplaying it at other times. It's... impressive, to say the least.

As a note, I toted a Japanese girl for a picture, but someone else took it, so I don't have the shot.
Here's an example of how to completely miss your focus, though.

Also, I got my first shot of a Japanese policeman. Normally, they get flustered and run away when I try to take a picture, but this guy was really excited. I took a couple, but his vest combined with me using onboard flash kind of completely blew out, as you can see.
Notice the glow on his vest?

Friday night: "Sam and Dave's"

After writing that far-too-long post about the Gaidai summer gala, this will be shorter than it otherwise might be. But I'm lazy, so it's going to be short.

After an hour of sitting around and shooting the breeze with Aaron Dean, he, Monique, and myself all headed down to the station to meet up with everybody else. The three of us were probably the 10th/11th/12th people there, but as we waited, more people came. In groups of three or four, we eventually had a mob consisting of about fifty people.

So gathered, we headed east, to Sam and Dave's.

Once we got there, we all stood outside for a bit to wait for the others, and there was a shallow stream that runs by the street. Naturally, I was wearing my Danner 453 GTX boots (the short brown ones that are oh-so-soft), so, naturally, I stood in the stream and took some pictures.

Aaron at right is wearing my fuzzy green shirt, which appears to actually fit him. My shoulders are a little too wide now, but I still wear it sometimes because it's one of my favorite shirts. Got it from my grandparents, too.

So, we were about to go in.

Now, I should warn you that this was first time going to a club. Not just, "first time going to a club in Japan" or something like that. I'd never been to a club before. The reasoning for this is as follows:

• Clubs are places where you dance.
• Clubs are places where you drink.
• Clubs are expensive.

I can't dance, I don't drink, and I'm not rich, so it really doesn't seem like something I would like.
That said, I wanted to go just so I can have gone to one. In the end, it was a two-story bar with a dance floor a little smaller than our two Chamith house's living rooms combined.

So, we went in. There was rather steep $20 entrance fee with one drink* for men, $10 for women. I spent most of the time wandering around, just kind of watching people. Used my drink ticket to get a glass of mango juice, and later paid $5 (!) for a ginger-ale and mango juice blend that the bartender thought would be silly. It was tasty.

*I understand that it's usually a much better deal, as there's a student discount if you make it before midnight, so it's normally free for women and $10 with two drinks for men.

Umm...

I played some pool, and that started everybody else playing pool, which was kind of cool.
Here, Roy (the enviously attractive and well-built guy with the pool cue) just made a double-bounce shot, but I think it was n accident.

After a few more rounds of pool, everyone started dancing.
I tried to take pictures, but between the flash-nuking and the dancing it all just came out as a lot people in weird poses. I did get to see some salsa action, though, as Sandy and Melissa sort-of started doing salsa. Sandy's only been doing it for a few weeks, but he's pretty good. Melissa's got actual dance shoes, which I think says everything.

I discovered this poster, and loved it. If you look in the middle, it says "The woman who comes in yukata or bikini is free".

I took this picture on the way out. Apparently, the foreigner registration card has glow in the dark lettering on it. I would've never known if it weren't for the fact that they stamp your hand with a UV-sensitive stamp. Because of that, there are black lights at the entrance and in other areas at random.

The card isn't really that color at all, but I did what I could to bring out the glowing text, which reads "gaikokujin touroku shoumeisho" in katakana.

From here, it's about a3.5km walk home, which took me about an hour.

I'll gallery the rest of Saturday's stuff later, I guess. This wasn't nearly as short as I was expecting it to be.

Friday evening: "Gaidai Summer Gala"

Light-ish warning: My jury-rigged hard drive is a little too jury-rigged, it would seem, and it's being fritzy. Because of that, I didn't process these pictures at all, and they're the massive, 10.2MP 2.xMB JPGs my camera spits out. In sum: they will probably load slowly. Especially for you, Wash. I''m hoping to take care of this today, but I'm not sure I can fix my drive and write the other two blog posts in addition.
Maybe I'll just put one up as a gallery...
When I went to this, I figured I would take pictures and be bored pretty much the entire time. "So... why'd you go?" you might ask. I mean, you just might.
In large part because it was the largest gathering of study-abroad students in one place, and I didn't want to miss out on cool stuff.

That there was free food and drinks may have been what clinched it for me, but I'll never tell.

Aaron Poulliot (sp?) did some juggling stuff on stage. He dropped stuff a couple of times, but I thought he was really good. The fact that handled the drops so well only made it better, I think.

You can see him at left, dancing with his juggling clubs, or at right with his recipe for disaster that he likes to call "eggs". I understand he almost threw one into a speaker, but I didn't see it first-hand.


The school had at least two photographers there (not counting me, 'cause I don't get the cool armband), plus a three-person camera crew (at right). And I think every Japanese person has at least one camera. And there about 250 people. So there are plenty of pictures of this event.

From a photographic standpoint, I don't think I had a lot of options, so I used the very high-level, pros-only (sarcasm!) "Nuke 'em till they glow" flash method and turned my flash up to full power for every shot. Went from 80% charge to 30% charge in about 70 pictures, so you can see the drain of the flash on the battery, which can give me 400 pictures on the same amount if I don't use a flash. I had a spare with me, of course.

Here are two of the school's photographers. I call the girl on the left "Canon chick" because, well, she uses a Canon (whose model I can't recall right now) and she's kinda cute.
The guy at right is... I forgot his name, he's the guy that helped me check over my Japanese camera terminology stuff. We took pictures of each other whenever we saw each other, working especially to catch the other by surprise. He's an Olympus shooter, probably a 410, but I didn't get a close look.

This is Asano (at left), one of people who works in the international exchange office, which is what keeps us alive and out of jail here in Japan. They help us with banking, paying bills, laws, and all sorts of things. Her English is pretty good.

At right is Kumada (in the purple), who deals mostly with people who are not yet in country, but she also helps us a lot. She also works in the international office. The thing that surprises me the most is that she's able to pull off so many different fashions, and do a pretty good job of 'em.

About halfway through the gala, I ran into a student from the dual-language class I TA (?) in. I wish my Japanese was as good as her English, but it's nowhere near. Her friend took a picture of us, and here it is. My camera seems to do strange exposures whenever other people take pictures with it, but I don't know why.
I just press the shutter button; they just press the shutter button. Where's the difference?

After they kicked everybody outside, I met up with Bryen, who wanted an action shot. He was trying to flirt with this girl, but she was completely and skillfully cold-shouldering him. "Well played!" is what I kept thinking. We had her take a picture of us in "action poses", and you're all probably familiar with my silly basic stance, but here's another picture, just in case you aren't.

Don't worry, I'm almost out of decent, relevant pictures. I'll finish up in just a couple more paragraphs. Hopefully.

Ran into Chise, my student assistant a couple of times. She is looking good, as she is wont to do.
I'm trying to get her to introduce me to her boyfriend, 'cause he's a gamer , but he's apparently hard to pull away from his many hobbies. Or something.

I met a British guy who will be here for another two weeks, and some of his friends. He was pretty cool and we got along very well. We talked largely about accents and comedy; in particular, Dane Cook and Eddie Izzard. He snuck off at some point and I haven't seen him since.

This is Catherine, one of the Swiss girls I mentioned a few posts back. She's in kyuudo, which kind of like archery, but only in that involves both a bow and an arrow. The similarities end there, and I'm not really joking. She works in IT back in her home country and is 24.

Here's a portraiture tip: apparent nose length/size in a picture has very little to do with actual length or size. The key that makes or breaks (ouch.) noses in pictures is whether or not they break the line made by the cheek behind them. You can see her nose is inside her cheek-line (above-right picture), as opposed to breaking it at left.

Surprising difference, isn't it?

Her nose is just fine, by the way.


Well, that wraps up the gala. I think I may have spent more time writing this post than I did actual time there, though.

Clubbing

I went to a club for the first time tonight. At a club you drink, and you dance.
Three guesses at two things I don't do.
...
There was a pool table, though. Overall, it was fun. $20 to get in was too pricey, but I wanted to try it and I didn't think I'd have the courage to go on my own, and my group here is going to break up in a few weeks.

Gala

There's a gala tonight at the school that I intend to go to. It's semi-formal, even, and in spite of that, I'm going of my own free will. And not just to mack on the women.
...
I'll admit that the free food was a pretty convincing argument.