Rick's Hood
Finally made the trip up to Iwaki (Fukushima-ken) to visit Rick on the weekend. Took the 2.5 hour bus ride on Saturday morning. Shortly after I arrived we went to his school where they were busy with preparations for the kids halloween party. He did mention this briefly to me, however I was unaware that there were going to be 135 kids & their parents and that I had been volunteered as be a group leader to take the kids trick-or-treating. Rick & his brother had suitably impressive costumes, sumo wrestler & daikon (Japanese radish) respectively, so I had to be a team player and wear the leftover costume bits, which were a dracula cape & a pumpkinhead hat. So I was the "Pumpkin Vampire", luckily in Japan they don't celebrate halloween so nobody questioned the existence of such a character.
It turned out to be quite fun, we just had to walk around with the kids, make sure they didn't get run over and try to encourage them to say "trick-or-treat" & "thank you". It was very cute, unfortunately I had to hold our teams sign so I wasn't able to take any photos. Then back at the school the kids ate eyeball cupcakes & (real) cockroach jelly, played various games and sang a halloween song. I mostly hung out with this one kid who took a shining to me & some of the teachers Rick works with. Two of them are highly cute but (unfortunately for him) taken. Then it was to an izakaya for after work food & drink.
Sunday was mostly spent in a car as we had to drop his brother of at a nearby town, but he managed to show me a bunch of beaches, a park with a wicked slide & the local look-out mountain where people go to make-out. Iwaki is a nice place, very country & quiet which is good for hanging out, surfing & living the simple life. Some of the beaches are actually pretty good. After visiting two other ones in Japan (Kamakura & Chigasaki) I thought all the beaches here had shitty waves and dirt for sand, but a couple of them in Iwaki are pretty respectable. Made me wish I made the trip out during summer.
So that's that. Eri is back from L.A. so she will stay at my place for a few days and then we're off this weekend to Hakone or Yamanashi. Should be grand.
It turned out to be quite fun, we just had to walk around with the kids, make sure they didn't get run over and try to encourage them to say "trick-or-treat" & "thank you". It was very cute, unfortunately I had to hold our teams sign so I wasn't able to take any photos. Then back at the school the kids ate eyeball cupcakes & (real) cockroach jelly, played various games and sang a halloween song. I mostly hung out with this one kid who took a shining to me & some of the teachers Rick works with. Two of them are highly cute but (unfortunately for him) taken. Then it was to an izakaya for after work food & drink.
Sunday was mostly spent in a car as we had to drop his brother of at a nearby town, but he managed to show me a bunch of beaches, a park with a wicked slide & the local look-out mountain where people go to make-out. Iwaki is a nice place, very country & quiet which is good for hanging out, surfing & living the simple life. Some of the beaches are actually pretty good. After visiting two other ones in Japan (Kamakura & Chigasaki) I thought all the beaches here had shitty waves and dirt for sand, but a couple of them in Iwaki are pretty respectable. Made me wish I made the trip out during summer.
So that's that. Eri is back from L.A. so she will stay at my place for a few days and then we're off this weekend to Hakone or Yamanashi. Should be grand.
posted by Dave Tran at 10:52 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home