Summer in Japan

It sucks. it's hot, sticky, wet, and miserable. but all the agony makes us appreciate the small reprives from the heat as we step into (gulp!) work, a department store, or anywhere else that uses air conditioning. it is also the time for summer festivals as you can see here. this is a picture of me and my friends on sunday when we went to the Ueno Park Summer Festival after work. i was so impressed and proud that everyone wore their japanese garb (i personnally dressed all but one of the girls and the boys). and despite the heat and the confininf nature of the yukatas, we still had a great time. Ueno park has a beautiful lake which we walked around after consuming some terrible festival food from the concessions stand (sidebar: festival food is actually quite bad. it's grilled corn on a stick, octopus balls, giant wieners on sticks, yakisoba, etc which is food that is actually good when it doesn't come from a festival stand. but the awful nature of the festival food is part of what makes the festival, the festival. bad festival food reminds me of my dad for some reason. consequences of a warped mind.) the walk way was lined with antique dealers and other vendors which made the stroll around the park fun.

my friends and i always end up at some dodgy izakaya and i get plastered and it makes for an embarassing nite for me (albeit a funny one for them). so when i read about this festival, i thought it would be great to actually get a bunch of us together to do something together rather than just get drunk. my friends and i do things when we're one on one (see movies, make dinner, go shopping, bowling, etc.) but it's tough when we're in a group. so we decided that it would be good to try to hit a festival every week if we can (no sense in letting our yukatas go to waste) and certainly we can wear them in september when the obon festivals start! now that will be fun (and hopefully a bit cooler . . . .)

summer also means fireworks. last year i went to the very famous Sumida River fireworks display. it was hands down, the WORST fireworks show i'd ever been to. the sheer number of people, the way it took me 2 hours to get home, the way we all got separated from each other, the madness! AAAARRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!! so never again. i'd rather watch it on TV or go to a smaller show. that would be better. maybe we can go to the park and do our own fireworks this year. that would be fun too! picnic and fireworks!

hopefully, that wasn't too boring. i'm trying this thing where i'm attempting to be less negative (i just read on the internet that pessimists die a lot earlier than optimists. not that i want to live forever or even too long, especially at the rate i'm going now but it can't hurt to try new stuff from time to time). we'll see how long this lasts.

Friends Who Marry

damn it! people are getting married again. don't get me wrong, it's all happiness and flowers and romance and crap but geez! does everyone have to be getting hitched? ok, so that's an exaggeration. my dear friends Joel and Rika and getting married (thank god cuz i love them both and i love them together and when i first heard that they had news, i thought they were breaking up). well, they've already gotten married (on paper) but there will be a wedding in Guam come september and if yokes can swing the money and the time, she's going (and hopefully she will be invited as well).

Joel enlisted my help to find his bride a ring (he reckons that i wanted her to have one as much as she wanted one) but i haven't the first clue about rings. i've never been shopping for one and have never really considered what i would want (never been close enough to a situation where anyone wopuld propose). you may recall that i had this ring dilemma a while back when i surveyed a bunch of people about rings. is it really that important? joel and rika will be apart for a month or more for the first part of their marriage and the ring shows their commitment to each other so i suppose that's ok. i question though, is the ring idea ok now beacause the issue at hand is a wedding ring instead of an engagement one? i feel like yes, it is different. my question now is, why is an engagement ring more expensive and more of a serious undertaking than a wedding ring? should not the actual marriage be more important than the promise of marriage? afterall, promises are broken all the time. sometimes they're not broken intentionally but they just are. people can promise a lot but making a promise is different from delivering on it. being engaged is different from being married. BIG DIFFERENT. GIANOURMOUS DIFFERENT. i think being married means putting your partner first, even when you have kids. and that's why i think getting married is such a huge deal. as a single parent, i'd have no problem putting my kid first. but putting my husband first and knowing he'd have to do the same for me? that's huge. and i don't think i could marry someone that wasn't prepared to do the same for me.

At the same time, i wonder though, am i placing too much importance on an institution that most people regard as not that sacred anymore? am i not changing with the times? is my thinking too old fashioned? perhaps. marriage seems like sport these days. women seem to chase strong, rich, handsome men. men chase skinny, pretty things that will cook their meals, wash their clothes, raise their kids and clean their houses. and if you look at a person and think, "hmmm, i bet i could live very comfortably with this person for a good few years," what's wrong with that? am i looking for permanancy in a temporary world? isn't that illogical if not downright moronic?

but i think that's the part of myself that i can't part with. the stupid side of me that i don't want to compromise. we all cling to our dreams, our fantasies. and perhaps this one's mine. i want to get married. i want to have kids. i want the whole nine yards. and if it doesn't happen, it will be but one bead in a string of dissapointments that i am to experience during my time on this planet. but if it does happen, it will be on my terms; not on the terms dictated by a transient, faceless, and jaded society.

So with that, i toast to my dear friends who i have lost to marital abyss. Joel and Rika, may you love with all abandon.