Culture Day

(Click photos to enlarge)

This past Friday was what they call "culture day" for Aomori JETs. Held in Aomori City, the goal of the event is to educate all JETs, old and new, on the local culture of the prefecture in which we live. It turned out to actually be a pretty cool event, not counting the fact that it presented yet another excuse to see the bright lights of the city and generally cavort with my comrades.

Upon arriving in Aomori, I was greeted by quite the sight for sore eyes. Indeed, local technophobe Leo proved to us all that he is alive and well, emerging from his internet-less, cell phone-less cave, possibly to forage for food. What's more, he presented himself in the finest of attire, perhaps the most hilarious "engrish" shirt that I have seen yet:

They let us select what workshops we wanted from a list, so luckily I didn't have to threaten my (already precarious) masculinity by making stamps or candies or any pansy shit like that. My first workshop involved a crash course in the Tsugaru shamisen, an instrument that I've always been curious about. It turned out to be surprisingly similar to a guitar or any other stringed instrument for that matter; so much so that when I broke a string I was able to fix it myself and thereby avoid being reprimanded by the elderly shamisen master. He was actually pretty (unintentionally) funny-take for example this choice quote: "The drum of the shamisen has the best sound when it is made from the hide of either a dog or a cat. Unfortunately, they don't make many shamisens like that anymore because people nowadays think those animals are too cute."

My next workshop was kendo. While we were able to practice using shinai, the real fun was when the two badass dudes below busted out their katanas for a demonstration.


Finally, I attended a zazen meditation workshop. We did two sessions of twenty minutes each, roughly half of the normal time normally allotted to a session. If we moved, the priest hit us with a paddle. I fell asleep during the first session. What can I say, I was relaxed.

Afterwards, Matt, Leo and myself set out in search of all sorts of trouble. Luckily, we happened upon the Aomori Plaza Hotel, which offered us single rooms for $50 a night and was located right on the main drag. If you're ever in Aomori on a budget this place comes highly recommended; Matt even claims that they serve the best complimentary Western-style breakfast in Japan (which I, lamentably, slept through).

Really the only amenity in which this place was lacking was complimentary television (if you even consider that a necessary amenity). Talk about Pay Per View! (cue laugh track)

Well, after securing lodging for the night, all that was left to do was hit the town. We eventually made it to Akhbar's famous (among JETs, anyway) Indian restaurant. Here we encountered such luminaries as Aomori's only internet celebrity, Jamie Patterson. I had to curb the urge to ask for a autograph.

Our next stop was the ritzy bar of the Aomori Grand Hotel-the place that we can only afford to stay at when someone else is footing the bill. The bar was really nice and afforded a great view of the bay bridge, I regret that I was unable to capture a suitable photo to prove this. The bartenders (rightfully) made fun of the three foreigners who walked in and ordered three Guinness.

The skyline of Aomori is dominated by two huge structures that sit on the bay: the Aomori bay bridge and ASPAM, the triforce-shaped, official tourist welcome center for all of Aomori prefecture. Both are illuminated at night and the color of the projected light seems to change every hour or so. Sorry for the streaking on the second photo, it was unfortunately taken from the observation deck of ASPAM while it was raining outside.


This is a pretty self-explanatory photograph.

In Japan, gambling is illegal. However, as with most things (prostitution, anyone?), people have managed to cleverly subvert the anti-gambling laws. The most famous example of this is probably the inexplicable national pastime of pachinko. However, there are plenty of other ways to "gamble" without really breaking the law. Most arcades devote roughly 50-75% of their floor-space to curious machines where coins are inserted into a slot with the hopes of dislodging other coins so that they might fall out of a slot into the player's hands. These are similar to the types of token machines that one might encounter at Chuck E Cheese's albeit far more elaborate. Somehow, Matt and Leo managed to get addicted to a particular dinosaur variant of this game. The t-rex pictured occasionally vomits coins into the playing area of lucky individuals. Seriously.

On the train ride back to Shimoda, Matt decided that we weren't terrifying the other train passengers enough with our foreignness, so he decided to put on his halloween mask a little early.

After a brief stint in Hachinohe, the mystical journey ended in Shimoda, with a deeply satisfying meal at Papageno's, the "Italian" buffet. I use quotation marks because last I checked, hash browns and chicken nuggets, while delicious, were not Italian, per se.

That's unimportant though, because as any good American knows, a buffet is defined by only one thing: make your own sundae.

Finally, just for Mark Baffa, a photo of the enormous Gundam robot section at Jusco. Note that not only is Jusco a department store (as opposed to being a toy store) but also that this section consists of 5-6 full aisles and is always full of people ranging from the ages of three to thirty. The last photo is of the largest Gundam they sell, apparently a 1/24 scale model of the imaginary robot on which it is based.