catching up

thurs, cont'd

after a jaunt around town and some eating some food, the contents of which I'm still a little fuzzy, although I'm pretty sure eels and squid were major players in it, I'm back

after the fish market on thursday, we had a serious of lectures, one about the educational system, one about the economy, one about the government and one about kyogen theater. education one was good, and we were all shocked to hear that while we hold japan as this gold standard in education, they are trying more and more to emulate us. the government one was fascinating, as I learned that 1) the prime minister has the power to dissolve the senate any time he wishes and 2) the past two prime ministers just got so frustrated by the lack of cooperation on the part of the legislature that they just quit. also, the liberals who are currently in control are losing power as they feel the political backlash of their prime minister who insisted that they rely on a market economy and lo and behold, well, we know what the market tends to do. interesting stuff

the kyogen theater presentation left me thinking that some things lose value in translation and that was the end of lectures

we took off to the times square of tokyo, an area called shibuya, which has the gigantic intersection where the lights all turn red for the cars and the flood gates open for the pedestrians, which was a truly surreal and humbling experience. thousands of people swarming over the pavement all at once

then we went to some stores, shoe stores and saw some crazy fashions and cd stores and listened to some seriously angry japanese bands. seriously angry

next was a bar that looked and sounded and felt like a reggae bar, but they only had italian food to serve us. and then, after sitting around and waiting, the curtain opened, they sang happy birthday to one of the other 7 people in the bar, and then the frontman, instead of starting to sing, tapdanced. lots and lots of tapdancing, no singing, and we decided it was time to go

by now we were in a new district called harajuku, I bought some octopus balls off of a street vendor, we found a disturbing store named condomania that had condoms in boxes that looked like their target audience was preteens, with pink cartoon bunnies and elephants. harajuku is where all the rebellious, amply-pierced goth teens go to hang out. we saw some exciting stuff

we finally made our way to a restaurant where I met some french people, struck up a conversation, and in the end we exchanged contact information with the promise that if either of us are ever in each other's country, we'll get in touch. end of a very long day