House-Warming Party

I am now back in Sendai. During the last week, I went out pretty much everyday with a different set of friends in Tokyo, hitting all the hot spots of the city and packing in lots of beers along the way. The craziest night was when I went out with Reid (one of my sempai from my internship in Tokyo) and a couple of his friends and stayed out all night partying with a bunch of half-Japanese/half-European types and models (apparently they were models - could have fooled me though). These guys seem like they know everyone in Tokyo - celebrities, club-owners, hipster doofuses - and they had some truly nutso stories about what goes on behind the scenes of Tokyo club life. In general, my life is Tokyo is enjoyably unbalanced - I hang out with my typically Japanese relatives on the one hand, my poor college friends on the second hand, and high-rolling banker-types on the ever-elusive third hand. It's a little jerky in the transitions, but it keeps things interesting.

I woke up early today (early for my recent life being 10 AM) because it was my cousin Kaori's seijinshiki, or the ceremony that celebrates becoming a full adult (in Japan, age 20). Think barmitzvah without the party, gifts, and Judaism. So she got dressed up all pretty in a kimono and we went to take pictures (she skipped the actual ceremony, making it really just a day to wear a kimono and take pictures). I was oddly placed in the family picture we took at the portrait studio - odd mainly because (1) I'm not part of the immediate family and (2) I was the only person not dressed formally, since I was only visiting and didn't expect to need a suit. So there I was, in jeans and a gray sweater trying to look as un-stupid as possible. Should be an interesting memory for the whole family (which, in my defense, they said they wanted - that way when they look back at the pictures, they can say "oh yeah David was here!" - at least that's what they told me. Maybe they were just being nice).

My train ride to Sendai took almost an hour longer than I expected and it was unbearably hot in the Shinkansen. It was pretty confusing - I was sitting there, stripped down to my t-shirt above my waist and contemplating taking off my shoes and socks to give my body maximum efficiency in heat dissipation, while the people around me were like still wearing their coats and hats, like the air conditioner was on or something. And then there were a couple of loud middle-aged businessmen behind me who must have crushed like two 6-packs of beer between them during the ride and were pretty drunk by the time we got out of the train and into Sendai.

And oh what a Sendai it is! The city was getting pounded with snow when I got here, and it snowed through the night. I took a taxi home, and I pretty much had to ice skate up my driveway to get to my apartment. My bike is covered in snow and is likely rusted up in all the important areas from under-use the last month. My apartment, which is an absolute war zone, is freezing cold. How cold you ask? I just went to the bathroom, which is in the unheated front half of my apartment, and I could see my breath while sitting on the can. It's basically a meat locker in here.

Taiga, one of my conversation partners, called me up for dinner tonight, so we went to eat sashimi at a joint downtown and then had some nice conversation over beer at an Irish pub that is cleverly named "Irish Pub" (I met a guy there who works at yet another Sendai Irish Pub called "Green Shamrock", which somehow seems even less clever a name than "Irish Pub"). Taiga's a great guy and we have all sorts of plans and schemes for hanging out for the coming months.

Tomorrow is my first time going to class in almost 3 weeks. Hooray.