Waseda Sai

This weekend was the annual school festival at Waseda. Supposedly 160,000 came through to visit, and it sure felt like there were something close that many people. Waseda is not a large campus, and the place was packed from end to end. Just getting through from the front entrance to the middle grounds took forever because of a ridiculous crowd watching male cheerleaders. These weren't the Ouendan. They're seriously a male cheerleading group called the Shockers; they do the throws and everything...all guys.

And that's basically what the Waseda Sai is. There are literally hundreds of student clubs at Waseda University and all of them were showing off their respective talents. I was there with these three and kept calling various classmates all day in an attempt to meet up but never ended up finding anyone until the end. This was V's first time on campus as well and she had a somewhat good time reliving some of the scenes from Hanamizuki.

We got there at around 1:30 PM and were all pretty starved. So we decided to head to the food stalls and grab some stuff to eat. We probably spent most of our time checking out all the respective eateries. The problem was that out of the fifty or so food stalls run by students, you only really had at most four options: yakisoba (lots and lots of yakisoba), yakitori, sausages, and tapioca (bubble tea). We ended up having a couple servings of those and tried to hold out til dinner. There were a couple other options including crepes and okonomiyaki, but anything remotely rare had ridiculous lines.

For some reason there were a ton of people dressed up in costumes and cosplay. I'm guessing it was a ploy to grab attention and draw in customers and such. Probably the best group there was the random Pokemon Center. I have no idea what they were doing there; it's possible that they had a real function. We also witnessed a pokemon tournament going on in a different area: nerd central.

At variously strategically positions, stages were present with a full schedule of performances. Some notable ones were these "Japanese samurai" (as Izumi called them) doing forms. Izumi, what other kinds of samurai are there?

These guys were an a capella group with a decent following. They had some chairs in the front where some of the older population was seated. Clearly some students had their parents in attendance as well.

The rest of the day we visited various exhibits that had been set up inside the buildings. The girls had picked up a directory while I waited in line for some yakitori; they quickly picked out some clubs that seemed interesting.

First stop was this relief effort club who had visited Nepal. V had another Hanamizuki moment as we look at the pictures and postcards they had of their trip. This club seemed like it was for real as they distributed free postcards and even had free Nepalese bags available. Fairly impressive.

Actually, the entire floor we were on appeared to be humanitarian efforts with clubs named "Save the World" and "Refugee's Agenda is Mine." One thing I've noticed in Japan is that they'll often take very literal translations and treat them like it makes complete sense. The entry and exit forms in the airplane use the terms "embarkment" and "disembarkment" to refer to departures and arrivals. Seriously now. At the festival, one of the clubs used the term "redetention." Blogger spell-check is telling me that's not a real word...

One of the last places we went to was the lomo photography club. They built all these interesting collages out of the photos, but I feel like they could have blown up a couple of the cool ones as well. This is totally the type of thing Japanese college students do though. Schoolwork isn't exactly rigorous, and most students join a couple eclectic organizations and spend most of their time doing club activities.

I saw these signs outside the bathrooms in one of the buildings. Some girls walked by the first one and said, "Yama otoko." Hmmm, what is wrong with this picture?

I got a chance to try one of those lottery things that you see on TV, as well. We filled out some surveys for the sole purpose of spinning the wheel and successfully won nothing. Well I'm totally unsure of what happened, but I think we might have just won the consolation prize which included a bag of chips and a small bag of goodies. The girls were given a slightly bigger bag which included feminine products, and I was miffed that all I got was fun-size Snickers bar.

We took a small break before we went to track down some people. Apparently there was a huge show going on at the front entrance and sure enough a billion people were watching what may have been a broadcast program. There was some sort of comedian competition being judged by who I learned later to be female celebrities.

Yeah it was weird. I had no idea what they were talking about. Actually, I have a difficult time understanding Japanese humor in general, but comedians are huge here. There are even famous comedian academies in Osaka.

I eventually found my classmates Wei, Micah, and Sophie near the stage. We were supposed to meet up with Diana and her friends in Takadanobaba, so the seven of us walked up Waseda-dori looking for a restaurant that would seat ten. We ended up at a horumon-yaki place called Atsuta and ordered some drinks before trying to decipher the menu.

Three of us ordered the set menu which came with horumon sashimi. I think what I'm eating below is raw heart. It tasted pretty good, but now that I'm writing about it, it makes me feel a little strange.

Unfortunately, I didn't know V isn't partial towards horumon, so I found the most normal looking thing and ordered it for her. The misuji below is apparently shoulder meat. I failed to take a picture of it raw, but it was the most marbled meat that we have ever consumed. Fat is delicious.

Diana joined us with her friends Lucky and Khai. I don't know if that's how you spell Lucky's name, but Diana has all these friends that she meets through like acquaintances of acquaintances and then adopts into her circle.

Khai quickly became V's best friend since he has absorbed Taiwanese culture like no other Vietnamese has, ever. I envy him and his perfect Chinese. We left the restaurant and went to the Takadanobaba station to try to find a place to get some drinks. We came across a Kirin City and stepped in for some dessert and beer.

I can't say I really enjoy most Japanese beer, but Japanese beer companies know what their doing. They create products that the public wants to buy and the public wants pale lagers. That doesn't mean they can't make other beer. So the Brau Meister, Stout, and Half and Half at Kirin City were all pretty good though not quite mind-blowing.

Kirin City closed at 11 PM; Miwa and Izumi left us and the rest of us took the party to Shinjuku in search of a wine bar. We hit up a place that Diana has been before and enjoyed a bottle of Cotes du Rhone before Diana and Lucky had to book it to Shinjuku station to catch the last train home.

Sat night was totally one of those nights that I spent the entirety of indefinitely drunk. I was constantly imbibing something and between the giant beer, nihonshu, additional three beers and glasses of wine, I sustained a happy state for a good six hours or so.

Khai is staying in a hotel on Shinjuku Southern Terrace and we all headed in that direction looking for the ramen cart. The old man wasn't around today, and we just ended up standing on the corner talking until Khai successfully goaded me into going to find some other ramen.

I wasn't sure what would be open after midnight on a Saturday night, but there were actually plenty of choices. I decided this would be a great opportunity to try out Mouko Tanmen Nakamoto. Nakamoto is the shop that did the fusion with Ippudo at the ramen show, and it was promisingly popular late at night.

I ordered what appeared to be their signature dish, the Mouko Tanmen. It's not really spicy at all and clearly retains a heavy Chinese influence. Yeah it was totally delicious, but in my opinion tanmen is kind of a different beast from normal Japanese ramen. Nakamoto also has ramen so I might have to come back to try that as well.

Waseda Sai was quite the experience and coupled with the after-party, V and I are totally sapped. That tentative plan is to take Sunday off and then go do some stuff on Monday. some stuff.