Spring sneak preview

Last week was one of those gorgeous and elusive late-winter weeks where the sun comes out, the temperature rises, the winter coats come off, the mood increases. It was awesome. Until Sunday came. And it's been snowing ever since.
Give it up, Niigata!

Anyway, the weekend was a good one. Partially because of the great weather and partially because Chieh (Aaron's predecessor and my good friend) was back in Japan for his spring break from law school. Friday night, Kate, Kayvohn, Aaron, Kristi, Chieh and I went out in good old Maki Town. First stop was Samurai Star which has pretty cool decor and definitely doesn't look like it belongs next to a random convenience store in a random small town. The food is pretty good and the drinks flow (kinda) cheaply, so we hung around for a couple hours chatting, reminiscing, catching up and, uh, breaking cameras (ahhh, shit!).


After dinner we headed to Maki's local karaoke haunt, BanBan, which is run by a weird group of thuggish, yakuza-wannabe, blond haired teenagers in sweatsuits. And frequented by all their friends. Awesome. Karaoke was pretty sweet cause we snuck in all our own booze so when the thug employees came into our room we had to hide the cans - freshman dorm style! With Chieh in the house, we sang a lot of songs from last year that I had forgotten about. I kept being like "Ah! This is an Emily song!" "This is a James song!" "This is a Pearl Jam song!"　
なつかしかった！
I miss this guy!

I assume we're rapping

Some people didn't want to leave!

And others weren't so entertained...
lame!

Saturday was awesome. It was one of those days where everything just falls into place. Errol had free tickets to the Niigata Albirex game at Big Swan for that afternoon. It was my first game (shameful, I know) AND the weather was absolutely fantastic, so I was pretty excited.

For those of you who don't know, Albirex is Niigata's soccer team. Recently they've been upgraded to Division 1, so they tend to lose lots of games, but you'd never know it by their crazy fans. Seriously, you will never see so much orange at one time as you will during a home game at Big Swam. It's crazy! On Saturday we were playing Tokyo FC.

Funnily enough we found ourselves seated 4 rows behind Warrick, JP, Nuria and Luke. What are the odds?

Anyway, we settled into our free(!) seats with beers where I did lots of trash-talking and Kayvohn and I made up a song to the tune the Niigata's fight song about how lame Tokyo is. It was freakin awesome and went something like this:
"You Tokyo hitos,
You might have a big subway system,
But we don't even like Tokyo Tower,
It's just one big Eiffel Tower rip-off.
And it's shorter than Mt. Kakuda,
So suck my balls!"
Yeah!

And what was even sweeter was that Albirex actually won the game 2-0!

After the game, we met up with Phil, who just happened to be in Niigata too, and headed out for some dinner. We decided on yaki-niku (Korean-style barbeque where you grill your own meat at your table) and Errol negotiated our way into a 2-hour nomi/tabehoudai (all you can eat/drink). It was so so so delicious.


After that we stumbled over to a Canadian-themed (yes, you read that right) bar around the corner called Northern Lights. This place came complete with Canadian flags, hockey sticks, Canadian beer, a giant red Canadian pilgrim hat (see below) and a Canadian owner. Kind of surreal but pretty sweet at the same time. Next time I'm going on an empty stomach so I can eat the Canadian burger...
Kate and I. I'm still in my orange Albirex-supporter shirt!

Look Ma! I'm Canadian. Or, GW has finally pushed me over the edge...

We experimented with my camera and the self-timer mode. Quite amusing, I do say.



Sunday were going to head down to Tochio, a random mountain town that had a penis festival going on. I missed it last year so really wanted to check it out and confirm the rumors of a 6ft wooden penis that the women ride on through the town... Like I said before though, it started snowing on Sunday and I really wasn't up for a two hour drive. Here's the website though, if you don't believe me:

http://www.tochio.net/hodare/index.html

Anyway, instead of the penis festival, Kate, Kayvohn, Errol and I spent the day at Jonnobi Spa on Mt. Kakuda. The day involved hours of onsen, eating lunch and ice cream and lounging around in the towel outfits they provide. It was a really nice way to spend a snowy Sunday.

__________

And, in travel news:
Only 3 days till my China Adventure begins! Can't wait!