a long weekend!!

we had a 3 day weekend recently - renkyu in japanese. starting thursday, we wanted to get full advantage of our time off. so little free time it seems to be able to do things we want to do. i often wonder where the time goes, as i’m sure so many other people do as well. we started off with drinks at this bar called hag. it’s become a favorite after a slow start. not many foreigners go there, which is one of the reasons we love it. it’s tiny inside with 5 or 6 bar seats and 1 table at which you can sit. we always like to sit at the bar, where is where most people tend to sit. being that small and intimate, most customers tend to be insiders in the industry – owners and bartenders of other bars in the area and many regulars. the bar is tended by the same two men every night – the boss and the young bartender, and they work from about 8 until 6 in the morning 6 days of the week. sunday is their only day off. talk about hard workers!! and this of course isn’t abnormal – you’ll find this all the way across japan. one night, we were curious why they chose the name they did for their bar – hag. so we asked, and it turns out they had originally wanted to name their bar hug, but didn’t have one of those handy professional english speakers, ahem ahem, to check their spelling (i knew we had to be useful for something). they innocuously spelled it wrong, and ended up with a word used to describe old, decrepit, ugly, single women – hag. we had a good laugh together, and there budded a beautiful bar relationship with the young barman. the owner we’re working on. we had previously decided he was a little cold and untalkative man – not wanting to chat. we recently reversed our decision and observed he’s just shy and most likely nervous. he really tried a couple of nights ago to talk and even spit out a couple of english words. of course we were the only people in there so he had no need to get embarrased in front of his japanese friends


the next day, as early as we could drag ourselves out of bed and get our stuff together, we piled in carrie’s car and headed to niigata city, our capital city and most fun place to party in our prefecture. the trip took about 2 hours. we drove directly to an art exhibition – our main ambition for the day. we met with a friend, katsushi, outside the building and queued up together. inside was a body art exhibit. the original method was created by a german man, and we didn’t know until later that we actaully saw an imposter’s work. there were several bodies - real bodies - at which we could look eye to eye, inches away, and stare at every organ and part of their body. eyes, fingernails, internal organs, brain and scalp, and even remnants of sparse hair all were included. the artist had preserved the bodies, evidently imitating the famous german artist’s methods, making different cross sections on different bodies to show different systems. i held a brain – a real, gray, deceivingly simple looking brain. i touched a real, preserved body – his flaps of muscle, his shriveled genitals, his horribly eerie skin, and his fingernails. they had fetus’ ranging from 3 months – no face and alien-looking – to full term. I stole this pictures from tiff’s blog


we were excited


after we exited the exhibit, we headed downtown to the main shopping area, and went off to search for a friend’s exhibit we’d been invited to. my friend, russell, had let me know previously he would be having a furniture exhibit that whole next week. we found it and examined his beautiful work. all four pieces looked individualistic and like a lot of love and hard work had been put into each. after looking around and leaving, we came across the need for a decision. go home for the evening or find a party and some dancing in the city? without clothes for the night, we decided to rough it. getting ready by parking lot glow, we headed to dinner.


two hours of drinking and dinner later, we fantastically found out the party we wanted to attend was just a staircase decent below us – incredibly convenient. it turned out to be a long night – around 5? 6? we headed home, carrie heroically driving once again. i was passed out, completely horizontal in the back, for the first half. tiff fell asleep, head back, in the front for the last half. i have no idea how carrie managed going from wild night party to driving into the sunrise, speeding home. unflattering at best and funny, here’s a shot of us when we finally arrived home the next morning – we were still pretty drunk i believe – tiff and i were (carrie didn't drink because she was driving)


then saturday night, there were 2 dance parties. the requirement for the first dance party at nest, our favorite internet café by day and one of our favorite dance spots by night, was to wear a ‘one piece’ – their words for dress. i would say about half of the attendees dressed up – dancing at nest first, we walked to nova, our favorite dance club stand-by in joetsu. the only thing bad about nova is they’re only open once a week on saturdays. this is an ok idea i think because it tends to draw many people out on the same night. if they were open all the time, the small amount of dancers would be dispersed on different evenings, making nova not very busy




i don’t why she was squatting behind the stool


this girl crept up behind me, wanting to be part of the action