Japan 2010 Gallery
After returning from my study abroad experience back in 2004-2005, I finished up college and entered the workforce as a data researcher at a local hospital. The memories of my time in Japan stuck with me, and in 2010 I decided it was about time to return to Higashimurayama and pay a visit to my host family and friends.
So from July 14th to the 28th I braved the sweltering Tokyo summer heat and humidity to rejoin my "relatives"... and it was like I had never even left. Awesome folks, awesome place.
Higashimurayama summer festival #1 (2010-07-17)
Standing around with part of my host family at the Higashimurayama summer festival. Once again, I'm the only guy around so I look like I'm someone's father or husband. According to my host mom, I threw a lot of people for a loop in this fashion the first time I went to Japan as well!
Higashimurayama summer festival #2 (2010-07-17)
Someone said it I should jump between the shoulder slats of the Higashimurayama Mikoshi for a photo... so I did.
Higashimurayama summer festival #3 (2010-07-17)
Quite possibly one of the strangest pictures in a while. The poor girl had no idea who I was... and her face shows it, eh?
Higashimurayama summer festival #4 (2010-07-17)
There's a huge drum that is pushed around as part of the festival. I was a bit surprised at first when it was casually pushed over some train tracks; I guess I was expecting that terrain to be too bumpy or dangerous or something. But nope, the show must go on!
Higashimurayama summer festival #5 (2010-07-17)
You can hear the music from this cart coming from a mile away, and the energy is infectious.
Dinner with the family #1 (2010-07-17)
My "host brother-in-law" got a hold of my glasses, so I snatched his. Okay, we amicably traded them to see what would happen, and actually I think it worked out pretty well!
Dinner with the family #2 (2010-07-17)
My host parents said I reminded them of the Terminator when I wore my host brother's glasses, and I can't disagree. I'll be back.
Dinner with the family #3 (2010-07-17)
Several friends of the Yoshitakas' current host student were over that evening, so we all took a foriegner-full photo together.
Dinner with the family #4 (2010-07-17)
And now to add in more family members and friends; starting to get pretty crowded!
Dinner with the family #5 (2010-07-17)
Still more! As is usual with the Yoshitakas, it was quite the large party!
Summer festival kickoff (2010-07-18)
The morning after the dinner party we went to a nearby shrine where another summer festival was undergoing its opening ceremony. It was a very formal and reverent start to what I'm sure would become quite the party; we didn't stick around for the actual festival activities on account of being zonked from our own party the night before!
Ikebukuro buildings #1 (2010-07-18)
I saw the label for floor 7 and said "No way the whole floor is just for Gundam stuff!" Upon inspection, I was pleasantly surprised to learn I was wrong. So much Gundam!
Ikebukuro buildings #2 (2010-07-18)
A random building in Ikebukuro with a rather interesting side. For a second it felt like a glitch-in-the-Matrix sort of thing. No Agents were spotted.
Rare flowers (2010-07-19)
Mrs. Onishi took me to a temple where a special service was going on, and on that day a lotus plant happened to be flowering so she hurriedly got me to stand by it for a picture lest it suddenly disappear. Apparently the flowers were super-rare and it was unbelievably fortuitous to have happened to be there on that day; I just wish I could remember the full story of its meaning and significance!
Lunch with sensei (2010-07-24)
One of my Japanese teachers from college, Kishi-sensei, happened to be in the area while I was visiting, so we met up at a train station and bopped over to her recommended restaurant for lunch with another friend from Case. Fun memory: on the train ride to the restaurant, we got so absorbed in conversation that we completely didn't even notice we had blown by our stop, so we jumped off at the next station and caught the train that was going in the opposite direction!
Drinking with Papa-san (2010-07-24)
This has got to be one of my favorite photos from the trip... or rather, one of several photos taken in burst mode. I was originally holding the beer with the label pointing away from the camera, so Mama-san swooped in and spun the can around in my hand while Papa-san and I kept motionless. The resulting sequence of photos looks like a silly stop-motion claymation kind of thing and somehow captures our goofy shenanigans at dinner parties. In retrospect, I don't remember if burst mode had been enabled on purpose or not... but I'm sure glad it was on right then and there!
Karaoke craziness (2010-07-25)
Full disclosure: during my study abroad I never actually participated in karaoke, unless you count the one song I tried to sing with a friend during the filming of a video class project. This time around, though, I went to not one karaoke night, but two! Everyone was shocked and amazed when I started singing "I Will Survive" in all-out falsetto, as back in 2004 I was very much not the kind of person who would do such a thing. But six years will do a lot to change a person!
More karaoke craziness (2010-07-25)
Probably the goofiest photo I've got of me together with my host mother. I'm pretty sure after that night of singing, she got a rather different impression of me... crazy, yes, but also willing to cut loose and just have silly fun with everyone, which was something I didn't really do much of back in college and something I now wish I had done more of!
Gundam Café (2010-07-26)
I thought this was the craziest thing when I first saw it (crazier still the long line of people waiting outside to get in). Later I realized that in Japan, this kind of stuff is rather quite normal.
Akihabara (2010-07-26)
Back in its heyday, Akihabara was known as the electronics, gearhead, and otaku capital of the world. Times have changed and while it's still certainly a geek magnet, it's not THE geek magnet it once was. Still, it's full of far-too-many-stories-tall electronics superstores like Yodobashi Camera (pictured here) and plenty of places for geeks to enjoy themselves.
The Onishis (2010-07-27)
I also got a chance to reunite with the Onishis, or at least everyone except Kazuki who was off pursuing higher education at the time. While I was in town I helped Keisuke buy a new laptop, and I also got a new digital camera myself (if you look really carefully at the photos in this album, you may be able to tell which were taken with my camera from 2004 and which were taken with the new one!). Glad to have met the Onishis; great folks!