Interesting Tidibts: White Day

Happy White Day, everybody!

 Oh, where you unaware? You don't know what White Day is, you say?

I don't think this quite gets my good side.

  Everyone knows White Day is the second part to Valentine's Day, of course. At least, here in Japan it is. Allow me to explain how it all works in this country.
 You see, on Valentine's Day, in Japan, women give chocolate to men. That's just the way it is. Hell, women even give chocolate to men they don't even like, labeled as giri choko, or obligation chocolate. It's a trend that's seen in most workplaces. Even I received chocolate from the kids during my otherwise not very eventful Valentine's Day.
 But you see, it goes a step deeper than that, even. One month after Valentine's, on the 14th of March, comes White Day, where men are expected to return gifts two to three times more valuable than what was given to them. Cruel, how things work, isn't it. Especially considering that White Day, unlike Valentine's, has no religious or historical significance whatsoever. It was made up and commercialized by sweets companies. And the people gobbled it up.

 No pun intended.

It's Valentine's

My likeness on the bottom left!

...And nothing really exciting happened over the course of the day! Mostly I've been receiving gifts from students though, notably chocolate, a few cards, and in one case a T-shirt, even.
  Of course, the big problem is I can't read a card received from a Japanese child. It's hard enough to read the language regularly, but add on top of that the whole 4-year-old's handwriting aspect and I'm done. I tried passing the card along to one of my coworkers who couldn't do it either.
 Sorry, Rino-chan, I tried. I really did. But I'm no cryptographer. Your gift was heart-warming and I appreciate it no less.


 "Sean, you fart-head," says you. "Why didn't you confess your undying love to some girl?" Well, it doesn't work like that in this country. I promise I'll explain that on the second Valentine's day thing that happens on March 14th. I'm not even kidding. Japan kind of took this whole commercial holiday to a whole other level.

So what did I end up doing?
 Well I got together with Millo and Ken and Kazue and we played Monopoly.
How unromantic.
I actually lost first, which goes to show that my skill at Monopoly hasn't increased in the last fifteen years. If you have to know, Kazue won. Fitting, because she sees herself getting into the business of renting out houses and such.

Painting the Town Red

Happy holidays, folks! In comparison to last year, I've had a very busy Christmas Eve 2012. Christmas in Japan is kind of a couple's thing, as opposed to the family thing it is in America, and I have neither a significant other or family in this side of the world. So, lonely as I am, I wasn't expecting to be doing much on Christmas. But luckily enough, Aala had plans, and I soon found out that Lo and Neal were both in on it. It didn't take much convincing on his part to drag me out for an all-nighter in between two work days (alarmingly enough.)

Neal, Lo, and Aala

 So I join him in Shibuya's Hachiko Square and find him dressed as a panda/Santa Claus (which doesn't surprise me at all, for some reason.) Before him are gathered ten valiant soldiers, ready for a mission: that of placing a Santa Claus hat atop as many statues as possible in Tokyo. Joining these brave missionaries, I become the twelfth member, and at last the group is split in two halves of six: East Tokyo and West Tokyo. Our team, East Tokyo, is formed of Aala as a Panda, Lo, wearing a frankly terrifying black mask, Neal, who also joined me for the Nichitsu raid, the dastardly crazy haired Kenichi Kato, and a very random, quiet woman approaching her middle age, named Keiko.

 As the clock struck midnight, we set off for our first mark, Ueno Park. Aala and Kenichi, who had organized and taken part in the same event last year, respectively, remember the placement of the statues, and we made short work of the famous Takamori Saigo statue. "There's another one," said Aala, "a little deeper into the park. But this one's impossible. It's twice as tall." Pwah!
 Damn right I put a hat on the statue of Prince Akihito. And the thirty foot tall mural in the museum courtyard while I was at it. That Christmas eve, I became a climbing machine.

The mural, Saigo, and Akihito

As the night drew on, we progressed down Akihabara and towards the Imperial Palace, transforming a few statues along the way. I actually managed to climb (and hat) every statue I saw, with one exception. There was the one near Shin-Nihombashi where I accidentally stepped on top of a sleeping homeless guy inside a box I failed to notice. He woke up screaming and cursing at me, and I frankly felt terrible about the ordeal. We ran off before he called the cops.

Despite it being a good night for us, though, we later found out that West Tokyo Team pretty much covered only a miniscule area and didn't even want to meet us halfway at the break of dawn. It figured, though, since we had thrown a bunch of young women into that group who had joined in just so that they could be doing something during the eve of Christmas. Unfortunate!

And that, my friends, is how those Santa hats ended up there. Merry Christmas, and whatever!

New Year at Roppongi

My December 31st had me lounging around at home with Mori for most of the daytime. I hooked up the PS3 to the common room's 3D television, and it was nice to just kick back and relax in the spacious sun-filled room. Julian was out working, picking up dog shit or whatever, so the day was pretty quiet and otherwise uneventful until he arrived home and we kicked off our New Year's Eve celebrating. Mori, who works at events throughout town, couldn't join us for the night.

You can see Tokyo Tower in the back!

We met up with two of Julian's friends, Kaz and Yasu, in Roppongi.
Most adult Japanese people tend to avoid this part of town. It's known for its concentration of foreign embassies, and therefore, of young gaijins who just want to go clubbing all night every night. The streets are bustling with girls who want to hook up with tall white guys. There's no shortage of those in Montreal (both the former and the latter,) so I can't say I'm too fond of Roppongi in general, but this is where things were mostly happening in Tokyo on New Year's Eve, so this is where we went.
You can see Tokyo Tower from here! It's a giant rip-off of the Eiffel Tower, serving as a broadcast antenna.

I think this was Yasu's default face for the night.

The cover fees to get into the bars and clubs on New Year's Eve was pretty ridiculous, ranging from 25$ to fuckin' 63$. We went into a bar that charged the cheaper end of those fees, called Motown House, and, to our dismay, it catered mostly to middle-aged south-east Asians, with only a few exceptions here and there. I can not blame Fumi for not coming when I tried to invite her. Well, you get what you pay for. It was fun none-the-less, and we had our countdown here.
Yasu parted with us shortly after, having drank a drop too much.





We then headed out to a karaoke place. Kaz and I tried inviting some girls to join us (Julian being too shy to try!) But we weren't tall or white enough, so that didn't work. Curse you, Roppongi. But we ended up going in anyway. The room was way too big for a group of three, but we had a nice view on Tokyo Tower, so hey, why the hell not.
Aaaaand that about sums up my New Year's!




Oh, and a special thanks to Marianne for contributing the banner up top! Geez, she was the only one. You would've thought I graduated from Economics instead of Illustration & Design. You guys are lazy bastards (but I still love you. Please don't flood the comment box or my facebook wall with excuses!)
Also, a "special" special thanks to Self (not myself,  but the guy named Self) for making me a banner featuring me being sodomized by Godzilla while Nicholas Cage watches. You need help, but I love you too.