Winter Blues

We're all making a concerted effort to not let post-holiday depression kick in, and beat the malaise which seems to take in it's grip most of the foreigners here. So we decided an all nighter in our favourite Kokura was a step in the reet direction. Emily and I got Sally over, and even Marko bless him drove all the way from the other side of the prefecture. And venture out we did, into the big city lights. As it is January, there's not an awful lot going on.... however, as Sally is a punk rocker, we discovered Ken (Emily's lurrrver) was dj-ing at a punk night, and so we (well, it was mainly me) took a deep breath and went right in. The place was like a fashion parade for exhibitionists of Japanese fashion - they only come out at night you know, they have to hide their real personalities during the day - and it was a mixture of rockabilly and punk. Yes, it was as strange as it sounds. Everything seemed quite tame however, that is until the band started. With the first strum of the guitar and smack of the drums, beer was sprayed out of nowhere and suddenly nihin jins were beating each other up on the dance floor. Well thats what it looked like at least. I guess it was all in jest, but there were still some friendly fists shown that weren't all that friendly. The funniest thing was Stirling, who looked on in amazement for about 5 minutes, and you could see the inner dialogue behind his eyes running behind his head; "can I.... can I really hit these guys???" He was like a kid in an elementary school playground who slowly realises he has free license to push all the other kids about as much as he likes under the guise of being a game. Marko took a video for us - check it out, look for Stirling in the white T-Shirt who throws himself into it with the passion of Rinaldo in a pie shop. He had a ball instigating a good proportion of the punches on the dance floor.



The whole thing was a bit much for me, but Emily and Sally threw themselves into it with complete abandonment. I have never seen such aggressive moshing in my life - at one point there was a naked guy on the floor who was being kicked not so gently by the members of the audience. Rather unnecessarily violent I think.

Anyway, I don't think i'll be repeating my punk experience for a while - who would have thought that dirty hard techno could be considered the gentler option eh?!

On sunday the four of us had a trip out to Akiyoshido where the limestone rocks and caves are - Sally wanted to see them because she'd heard them described in a similar way to our favourite - the Yorkshire Dales. We got there about sun down, so it was gorgeous. The three of us girls entertained Marko with childhood songs. I have you to blame for mine Dad. (Dad, click on the play button twice. Thats TWICE. Good lad!)