Nobody Likes You When You're 23

Saturday 27th August

It’s my birthday, and I’ll sleep in until 8am if I want to (it’s a sad day when that’s considered getting up late). Mooched around at home and finally got around to posting my blog (which I am still behind on – I’m writing this entry on the 31^st…)

The agenda for the evening included catching the train to Nikaho where Alyssa bundled myself and her friend Aki into her car, drove us to Yokote (90mins north…a little longer as we may have taken a couple of wrong turns) where we parked the car, walked 20 minutes to the train station and caught the train to Omagari. Omagari being the location of the 90^th annual national fireworks competition, so no surprises it was PACKED, hence parking in a neighbouring town instead of trying to battle the traffic.

None of us had any idea where to go so we found a parking lot, shifted our picnic mat when we realised that the coaches parked there were obscuring our view, and got comfy for the 2 hour epic.

These shows have music to accompany the fireworks, which is fine when you’re sitting right underneath them, but it doesn’t take a genius to realise that if you’re sitting a couple of k’s away and light travels faster than sound…it doesn’t make much sense. Accompanying music included: Japanese opera (which the drunk guys behind us were having a grand old time wailing to), Amazing Grace, a string arrangement of one republic, a dubsteb remix of Michael Jackson, Skrillex and the Star Wars theme…

18,000+ fireworks to draw a 700,000+ crowd, not a bad way to spend your 23^rd birthday.

Sunday 28th August

Some JETs talk about going to church on Sundays, I personally prefer spending it at a beer festival suffering through harsh reminders that Japan’s humidity has quite the effect on how much booze I can consume. All that training that my liver went through during uni seems to have worn off.

Thanks to Konoura being east jesus nowhere – the trains don’t run al that frequently (as I may have mentioned previously…). Google had nothing to say on how long the ride would take or what time the it would reach Akita city so I braced myself for what was probably going to be a 90minute trek, and armed with my 3^rd generation ipod nano (the little trooper is still going strong 8 years later) I headed off to the station. My 90 minute session of worrying what on earth shuffle was going to turk up next was abruptly interrupted when the train pulled up at Yurihonjo station and a wild gaijin came flying into the carriage – said wild gaijin turned out to be Liam.

Caught up with the other JETs at the festival – It’s been far too long since the last time I had a craft beer. 1500 yen got you 4 tickets for drinks and a further 800 got you a souvenir glass which (now that it has been washed finally…) is proudly sitting in my cupboard.

Met one of the few other Kiwi’s in the prefecture, Josh, and had one of those “Oh god is that really what I sound like” moments – it gets to you when you spend the majority of your time around Japanese, Americans and Brits.

As one of the new comers the lads kindly introduced me to a fun little game This involves planting Smirnoff ices around the place and the poor sod that finds them has to drop a knee and skull. Not that we abuse the fact that it’s not against the law to drink in public places in Japan…