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First, if your name is Katsuki Tsuji, Please look hard at the gentleman next to me in the photographs. Remember him?

Now that that is out of the way, please continue.

Oh yeah, Happy Birthday Katsuki!
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Kitasenju station is about a 20min. chiyoda line ride from my home station of kita matsudo, and it is there that I took the top two photos, on two different occasions.
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Saturday I came to school to check the email and then ended up eating a sushi lunch with the school nurse, Mrs. Nakama. After being dropped off in Kashiwa I walked around aimlessly and ended up in a record store buying a used Metallica single and the new eminem album. The afternoon was supposed to be spent in slumber in preperation for Sunday’s trip to Nagoya and back, which would have been great if I could have been able to fall asleep.

Around 11pm I headed over to Kevin’s Leo-palace brand apartment to try and sleep until Kato sensei came to pick us up at 3am on Sunday morning. Again I was not able to sleep and instead opted for some time with his ps2. Once Kato-sensei (a jr. high school gym teacher hailing from Hachijoujima) arrived Kevin and I got in her Toyota Corolla station wagon and headed for the Tomei expressway. Driving through Tokyo at about 3:30am is really interesting- not only are there a lot of people up and walking around, you get to see this overlap of time where people’s evenings are winding down at the same time some other folks are begining their mornings. After a little bit of difficulty, we found the entrance for the express way which runs from Tokyo to Nagoya and ended up only stopping once to stretch and grab a can of coke to keep awake. There is a part of the expressway that goes along the edge of the ocean- and it was on that stretch that we saw the sunrise.

We finally got into Nagoya around 9:30am. My first impression is how much it felt like Kansas City. We swung by Kevin’s girlfriend’s house, picked her up (pictured above) and headed over to the Aichiken Budokan to see what we came to see- The Japan National Women’s Kendo Championship. Kato Sensei has been involved with Kendo since she was 6 years old and the current students from her university’s team were participating in the event.

The matches were held 4 at a time, that meant there were 8 girls on the floor with bamboo swords and three judges for each pair. Her team lost in the first round which was bad but at the same time was good because the ladies headed up to the bleachers and we hung out with our boxed lunches and talked. One girl is set to work for a security company after graduation next year and I am sure that being good with a sword looked great on her resume.

After taking in a morning of kendo matches, we met Greg who had gone down to Nagoya the day before and made our way to Nagoya Castle. I always get a kick out of castles in Japan, not just for the history or traditional culture- but for the whole “tourist experience”. I love the shops stocked with souviners that every good employee must buy for their office (I always look for the best balance between Price and Quantity of food-items inside), the expensive soft serve ice cream, vending machines and shiny gold-colored commerative plastic crap from floor to ceiling. I do not care for a moment if the castle is real or re-constructed either. I just meandered slowly through the picnic/smoking tables in front of the souviner shop and castle grounds and shooting about 8 rolls of film. There was so much going on- kids, old people, guys with a few grand in camera equipment around their neck— even a few stray cats and a moat filled with actual live deer in heat.

Seeing as how we had a 6 hour ride back home ahead of us, around 6pm we dropped Makiko off and headed towards Tokyo. It was dark the whole way and if we were to make an offical Nagoya Adventure Soundtrack, it would include “The girl from Ipanema” (twice), “Simple Man” by Lynrd Skynrd AND an exclusive track of Kevin singing about girls back home in Nebraska (with vocal backups by Greg and I) and several minutes of fake fart noises. We also stopped at a rest stop in Shizuoka. Japanese highway rest stops are amazing and it is almost worth another post to talk about them.

After getting into Tokyo we got on the Shuto Expressway, an elevated highway that slides right through the city- past Shibuya, Roppongi Hills and Tokyo Tower all lit up at night. Chikako (Kato Sensei) was dead tired and had been driving now for almost 12 hours on less sleep than I had- and even after we got to our places in Matsudo she had another hour and a half to drive back the other way to her home in Tachikawa. She said today that she did not get home till 3am. Chikako– Thanks so much!
お疲れ様でした!

I would like to write more but I have been awake for about 74 of the last 81 hours and am about to head home to my futon.