Mega Illustrated Update
August 17, 2003
Oh what a great weekend.
Firstly, Eri had Friday off so we got to start our weekend together one night earlier. On Friday, we woke up a bit late but had a good lunch at this place a couple blocks away. The owner there heard Eri talking in English and was rather curious. He started talking to her and almost completely ignoring me because, well, I’m a crazy foreigner and there was no way I could understand (I understood a bit). He has a son working in San Francisco and thought speaking in English is cool. LikeIgiveadamn. Well, at least if I go to the place on my own next time, he’ll not give me a blank surprised stare when I say in broken Japanese that I can’t speak Japanese. During lunch, I gave this crazy suggestion that we go somewhere far away for a day trip. We got all excited and crap but then realized it was 3pm and the place we wanted to go to would be closed in two hours. So, we went to this butterfly exhibit in a department store. I took a whole bunch of pictures and I’ll put those up later. It was cool. Then we went home and watched Ice Age - it was alright but it’s no Pixar flick.
On Saturday, we again slept in late but it was ok because by the time we ate lunch, it was only 1pm. We headed over to Kyoto and roamed around, are you ready for the romaji… “Toei Uzumasa Eiga Mura”. Toei is a Japanese film company, Uzumasa is the place, and Eiga Mura means “Movie Village”. An English equivalent would be Universal Studios Hollywood Theme Park. It was awesome! There were lots of old style Japanese buildings and many have been used in old samurai movies. There was a haunted house featuring old samurai style victims and live actors that play dead until you walk past them. Eri was freaked but I found it as frightening as the last Scream movie. The best part for me was a live fight scene from some samurai drama series. The hero and the cute damsel in distress fought off about 5 evil warriors and 1 funny evil warlord (with funky green hair). I took tonnes of pictures. The hot and humid weather even subsided a lot today for us to enjoy walking around in the sun.
We left the place at about 5pm and spent the next hour and a half looking for good spot to see the Daimonji Festival. This translates as, “Big Word Festival”. Essentially, they cut out paths on the side of some small mountains in the shape of 4 chinese characters and 2 symbol thingies. Then, they light these paths on fire. The result is you get these beautiful characters glowing really brightly in the dark. It was really awesome. The place we went to consisted of two bridges, a river, and some grassy areas. We managed to squeeze ourselves onto the grass. There were so many people there so we were lucky to be even sitting down. From our spot, we only saw one of the characters - Dai (Big). Actually, there are two Dai’s but we saw the bigger of the two. I took pictures here too but the combination of my camera being shitty and it being night - they didn’t come out too well. Here is a pretty good writeup of what Daimonji is and the pictures here are much better than mine.
The trek home was not fun - on the train back, an old lady was rubbing up against my ass and then when she left, an old man stumbled and slapped his hand on my ass, and then after he apologized, he touched my ass again. It was rather funny. I now appreciate the sexiness and appeal of my ass much more.
It was a great weekend and although we’re both tired beyond sleep, I just had to put this up before I forget any details.
And here’s what you’ve been waiting for - the pics!
- A cicada flew onto my balcony and died. Since I’ve been bitching about them for awhile, here’s to show you guys what the hell I’m afraid of. Keep in mind this sucker has been dead awhile and has shrivelled up a bit. I placed a one-yen coin beside it so you guys can get an idea of how big it is. (A one-yen coin is about the size of a Canadian penny). Too bad I can’t show you guys how noisy these fuckers are.
- The Eiga Mura - the cool, old looking buildings.
- I challenged a samurai and because I, a Canadian, am not used to the hot weather, grudgingly gave in after a strenuous 524 rounds of intense steel clashing action.
- The sword fight scene - the hero (in white) fends off two goons. The damsel will soon be threatened by the goon behind the hero but the goon will be sliced apart. (By the way, she was sort of cute.)
- A ninja travels building to building via a thin rope. This guy’s awesome! Actually, it was a mechanical mockup similar to those teddy bears that ride unicycles across a string in some toy stores.
- Daimonji - BIG. Sorry these are bad pictures.
- Daimonji - BIG 2. Visit here for some more pictures.
