We spent the next day taking a train to a mountain town called Nara, which is famed for it's old temples and tame deer roaming the streets. I had no idea how absolutely breathtakingly beautiful it would be though.
Nara is home to both the largest wooden building in the world, and the largest Buddha made of metal. Nothing can possibly compare to seeing them in person, but here are some pictures I took in my feeble attempt at trying to encapsulate their beauty:
Hundreds of tame deer also call Nara home, which was funny at first. They did get a bit pushy once we were out of deer cookies though, and I actually had my ass bitten by a few angry ones.
Deer video shot by Scott; you can now witness it bite my ass!
We are so lucky to be here in the fall, and the colors of the trees were so awe inspiring. Nara was like a magical wonderland to me; I honestly wouldn't have been surprised if a unicorn had walked through the woods in front of us.
Back in Osaka, we spent out last night having a mini kuidaore again in Shensekai, and prepared to head to Kyoto the next morning.
We woke up early our first morning, about 7 am. Scott had to go out and take care of some banking issues (Bank of America put a freeze on our accounts, lame but understandable), so Aiden and I got ready for the day and watched insane kids' shows on TV. I mean, really crazy. Like, this crazy:
We wandered around Minami-shenju for awhile until we smelled good things coming from inside a small restaurant, so we stepped inside to eat. Troy took Japanese for several years (which has been really helpful so far), and asked the man "what's good to eat?" The cook just laughed, as Troy ended up actually saying something along the lines of "what do I like to eat?" He mimed his way through showing us how to order what we wanted. For the three of us, we ordered three miso soups, one fried onion croquette, two big bowls of rice, and three hot teas. The total was $6. And here we were worried about the high cost of eating in the city. It was really awesome food too; the miso soup was the best I've ever had. It had cabbage in it along with all the regular ingredients, and that made it so much tastier. We said thank you to the cooks and decided that we'll have all our breakfasts there while we're in Tokyo.
We got on the train, and after a few missteps and backtracking made it to our sight seeing destination for today, Electric Town. It was busy, but pretty cool. Lots of anime, gadgets, DVDs and toys. Lots of shielding Aiden's eyes from cartoon boobies. The only bummer was no one wanted to eat, and I kept passing all these amazing looking food places. Next time I'm just going to pig out anyway. I can't pass this stuff up.
Our plans for tonight are to eat dinner, and hit the karaoke bar down the street. If we get enough sleep, we're planing on heading to the Tsukiji Fish Market tomorrow morning for the best sushi breakfast in the world.
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Last night ended up being so crazy that I have to write about it.
On the recommendation of the hotel staff, we went to dinner at a traditional family restaurant down the street. It was the type where you took off your shoes and kneeled on the floor in front of the table. We ordered sake and asked the owner to give us what she thought we would like. We ended up ordering a simmering hot pan, cooked on a stove on the table, of tons of veggies, tofu, and pork. It was so amazing; there aren't even words. We had a ponzu sauce to dip it into that gave it a really nice, crisp after taste.
Aiden was the star of the restaurant though; he quickly gained the attention of the chef, who continued to bring him out goodies from the kitchen and visit with him. He even got two desserts, some ice cream and then a darling little chocolate/cake piggy.
We finished dinner and walked several blocks to a temple we heard was in the area. I had no idea what to expect, and it was so beautiful beyond anything I could have imagined. I'll let the pictures do the talking here:
In another display of the amazing Japanese hospitality, a random business man took us under his wing while we were at the temple and explained every last detail of it to us. It was truly awesome; we learned things we otherwise would have had no clue about, like the fact that we happened to be here at the time of a festival for the Buddha. This is one of the only times a year that the temple is actually open to the public, and though it was closed last night, we got to do some of the rituals, like "shaking hands with the Buddha" via a long series of ropes. That was pretty special.
He took us to a game in front of the temple, where you draw a stick with a number, open the corresponding drawer, and receive your fortune. I managed to draw a good fortune, which he was very happy for me about.
We said "arigato gozaimasu" to him, dropped Aiden and Scott off at the hotel, and hit the karaoke bar around the corner. And what a little karaoke bar it was.
It was clear from the start that it was a local bar; there were about four or five old men in there, one younger guy, and the woman owner. She gave us beer and some snacks, and we ate while listening to some of the super song stylings of our new friends. Of course we had to sing as well; we got several good songs in throughout the night. Bohemian Rhapsody, Killer Queen, Mack the Knife, Like a Virgin.
Part way through, a drunk and stumbling dude came in and sat right down with us. He said he was from Czechleslovakia (here in he shall be referred to as "The Czech"), and began yelling loudly that he wanted a beer and to sing David Bowwwwwwwwieee.
He started singing, and that was about the time Lindsey turned to me and said "this guy's full of shit, he's not Czech." She was 100% right; we called him on his crap and he admitted he was from America, especially after Troy read his work visa to him and told him where he was from. He was drunk and annoying, but a relatively big guy, so we basically put up with him and his weird stories/sexual advances the rest of the night.
Jan Bo was also quite the guy, a younger Japanese man than the other guys in the bar. He challenged us to a lot of singing contests (sadly, he won them all), and also to some arm wrestling (which he also beat me at).
We walked home, and The Czech followed, mumbling that he couldn't find his hotel. He went inside ours and asked for directions; on the way out he kept saying "this place is so much nicer than mine, and cheaper!" I really hope he doesn't show up here.
Later Troy and I were sitting outside on the porch and Jan Bo wandered by and sat down in from of us. He was really trying to tell us something, but we just couldn't understand. We thought at the time that he was wanting us to get him a room here; later, Troy talked to the front desk about it. Turns out he came in and was asking to make sure that we got home ok, since The Czech had followed us. Maybe we'll run into Jan Bo again before we go and buy him a drink.
I stumbled upstairs, got into my jammies, and then decided that a cup of ramen sounded really great. I headed back down the three flights of stairs to the living room, and walked into a pretty animated conversation about Nutella between a Frenchman and the Japanese hostess here. "Do you know Nutella?!" he asked me; heck yes I know Nutella! That got me wrapped up into a two hour long visit with those two, which was really fun and enlightening, since I got to hear two different foreigners' views of America. Alex, the Frenchman, told me that I didn't seem like an American, which actually was a really nice complement considering what they had just told me.
I finally headed upstairs with my cup of noodles at 2 am, took one bite, and decided they were too spicy and just went to sleep instead. I was awakened, very unhappily though very amusingly, but a battalion of Japanese men, marching in formation in the street under my window to a bullhorn. Nice wake up call.
Needless to say, we did not make it to the fish market this morning.
Yesterday I had one of the most fun, amazing days of my life. I was somehow picked and invited to participate in a day of World Record breaking attempts and to be in the new Weezer video for Troublemaker. This post is going to be very long, just a warning to you all before you click! I'm going to put a few pics in here, but I'll link to my photobucket at the end so whoever wants to can see them all. :D
I woke up at 5:30 am, got ready quickly and headed out to the LA Forum, where the day's activities were taking place. Took me about an hour and 15 minutes to get there, and I was surprised at how few people were there so far. I was number 18 to get in; I guess they only ended up accepting as many people as the needed for the various activities. We started with 100 in the morning, and by the big video shoot at the end of the day we were up to 250+.
I had dressed in red (we were told to dress in red or black; the only red I had was an old thrift store shirt, so I'm "Renee" in those :P) to split up into teams, but that ended up not happening and we were just split into 50/50 for the dodge ball game. I haven't played dodge ball since like sixth grade, but it was still really fun, even if our team did lose all three games played.
Next we hung out in the holding pen for awhile, trying to drink water and stay cool as it had heated up a lot by then. I wandered over to the shooting site, and managed to make it on on the tail end of creating the largest Weezer logo out of nachos! It didn't break a world record (the Guinness World Records guy explained "we don't have a category for this!") but it was still really funny.
The band showed up after that, and Rivers was dressed like a cholo, complete with baggy shorts, pulled up socks, a wife beater, hair net, and fake tattoos. Hilarious look; I don't have a pic of him (he wasn't into getting pictures with fans, which is cool) but a friend I made managed to take one at least, so hopefully I can yoink it from her (hi Cristal!).
Rivers did a shot for the video of him "breaking" the record for longest length anyone has pulled a station wagon full of fans with their teeth. Yeah...it was pretty sweet to see that. Then Pat did a record for playing the tiniest drum kit in a music video. It was seriously small and darling, and he had the tiniest little drum sticks ever! Later in the day, Brian did a record for longest cord in a rock video; he was at one end of the Forum parking lot and we were all at the other end. He was rocking out over there all alone, while a camera on a cart ran along the cord at him; should be a pretty cool shot.
We got to break for food finally; the crew bought us Pizza Hut. We were all starving and wilting in the heat at that point, so it was like the best pizza of my life even though it was super greasy and nasty.
Let's see, other awesome things we did throughout the day: world's largest air guitar performance (that was a blast), got to see four dudes break the record for longest time playing Guitar Hero, the Hootenanny (so effectively, I actually played in a band with Weezer! I rocked that tambourine, let me tell you)...there was just so much it's hard to remember the order it all went down!
We shot the video shoot last. Weezer would play through the entire song and we were instructed to "rock out" in the background. I was right behind Scott and Rivers, so I should be in the background there, dancing around like a complete dork.
And the coup de gras, the custard pie fight! There were 120 of us, each with one pie, and we had to go at it for one minute to break the world record. The whistle blew, pie started flying, and it was absolutely insane. I ran up to a dude and said "are you ready?" and he yelled "do it!" so I smashed a pie in his face. Then I found a guy to smash one in my face; luckily I got a banana one and not a tapioca one.
I had to drive through Inglewood to get home, covered in pie, and I was home for about 10 minutes and Scott said "go take a shower, you smell like bananas." Both those things made me laugh a lot.
It was an unmatchable experience all in all. I am so glad I got to go, and I can't wait to see myself looking like a dumbass in the video!
