LAST WEEKEND:
- Hadaka Matsuri (Naked Man Festival)
It's a 1300 year old tradition...basically there's only one naked guy, the hundreds of other lioncloth-clad men fight to touch him. The idea is that he will absorb their bad luck, and then later he is taken outside Nagoya to release all of it and cleanse the city. We were only there for the lead-up to the naked man's arrival, but we got to see them getting ready. And Jenna made a couple of friends...
- Universal Studios!
Okay, so maybe not the most uniquely Japanese experience, but it was fun! Many thanks to Emily's host family for taking me!
- Nara!
It was the capital of Japan for about 70 years in the 700's. There are some very old and very beautiful temples and shrines. Definitely the most cultural place I have been so far in Japan, the recently reconstructed Nagoya Castle just didn't quite do it for me...Nara is also famous for the deer that roam all over the place! You can feed them and everything...though they do get a little pushy sometimes.
THIS WEEKEND:
Three days, two concerts, and my host sister came back from Canada for spring break. Anyway, sadly no concert pictures because I guess Japan has some sort of thing against photography during concerts. :(
- Versailles Concert!! On Friday I went with Brett and a Japanese friend of his to the Bottom Line to see Versailles, a visual kei symphonic metal band. The ticket was a last-minute, completely spontaneous purchase. Visual kei is genre of music that is probably best characterized by elaborate makeup and hairstyles, as well as crazy costuming. It is very artistic -for example Versailles performs Renaissance-era clothing. I saw it as a now-or-never kind of a deal...
On a side note, I'm getting reallyyy good at spontaneous decision making. see: naked man festival. My host mom just shakes her head at me now when I tell her my weekend plans.
...yeah, believe it or not they are all male. You can laugh all you want at the guy dressed like a girl, but damn can he play the guitar. And you have to admit that he does make a rather pretty girl as well. Either way the concert was, in a word, awesome. The music was great, their sound might have been a little harder than what I'm used to, but for the most part it was amazing. Their whole stage presence and the atmosphere was what made the concert, it was completely different from anything I've seen before.
-Motion City Soundtrack with Ore Ska Band! Second concert of the weekend! I can't compare them at all to Versailles, but they were great! And I love Ore Ska Band, their music is so happy you can't help but smile all the time. Plus one girl had a purple trombone - how much cooler can you get??
next weekend: OKINAWA. I can't wait for some beach and NATURE.
No comments:
Post a Comment