I have had a packed schedule these last few days. After class, I attended a marketing forum on Thursday about using social networking as a marketing tool. It was a pretty good talk, but the aftermath was much more interesting. There's always a catered networking session after these things, and I ended up talking to a variety of new people I hadn't talked to before. I actually talked to a head-hunter, but he gave me the impression that for him to find me any work in Japan, I really needed to speak Japanese fluently. I told him that my superior command of English more than makes up for my lack of Japanese language skills. No, not really.
I talked to a bunch of other professionals as well, but my most interesting new contacts were actually students. When I was walking into the talk late, one of the students manning the door said I looked familiar. To which, another told her that I was an exchange student here. But that's not actually where she had seen me, amazingly, she recognized me from Shinjuku since we live in the same building. Amazing how out of all of the places to live in Tokyo, we are co-occupants of Prospect Axe. I still love that name.
Even more amazing is that I met a girl who graduated from Cornell with my sister. Apparently, she was scanning Facebook and saw that our mutual friends were one of the students here and then my sister back home. You can't even call it a small world anymore. What are the chances of that happening?
I went to sleep fairly early in order to get up at 4 AM so we could leave to go snowboarding. I ended up waking at 2 AM and couldn't fall back asleep. So, I just effed around on the computer and slowly got ready, until I left at 4:10 AM. We were meeting up at 4:45 AM at Takadanobaba, and I had the brilliant idea to ride my bike there. Long story short, I got lost, rode around for over an hour at 4 AM on the only day of snow in Tokyo. In my defense, two drunk guys both gave me the wrong directions...
As a result of my retardedness, we left a little bit later than planned, but I'm not sure if that made a huge difference because the traffic was ridiculous. I think because it was a national holiday, everyone was taking three day trips, and a lot of people appeared to be headed to ski resorts especially. A 2.5 hour drive took us 6 hours and it wasn't until around noon we hit the slopes. Luckily, the weather and traffic was bad enough to deter a lot of people from going, and the resort itself wasn't obscenely packed.
It was a bit overcast and snowing the whole time, but overall conditions were better than what I'm used to in Wisconsin. Some of the areas were pretty icy, but we managed to go out of bounds a couple times where we found fresh powder. The resort was decent sized and included two gondolas that took us fairly far up the mountain.
Yeah, Rob and Moe were thrilled about the gondola. It had actually been a solid two years since I had last gone snowboarding, and I was disappointed to find exactly how much my skills had deteriorated. I didn't even attempt that many jumps since just regular riding proved to be difficult. Alas, I spent a lot of the day looking something like this:
Naeba was pretty beautiful, and I wish I had more time to try out some of Japan's other resorts. I've heard of some pretty amazing places around Nagano and Sapporo. Even though this was only a day trip, I'm glad we managed to squeeze it in. Snowboarding in Japan is actually pretty convenient, as you can rent everything from the boards to the wear. My boots gave me problems all day though as they were so loose that I felt like I could just pull my feet out of them.
Possibly the best part about snowboarding at Naeba is the foot bath and beer afterwards. Amazing combination after a hard day of riding.
I think the drive back was fine, although I can't really say for sure as I was passed out the entire time. And then of course, I had to bike home afterward. Biking...brilliant idea.
Saturday was the last day of my first intensive course. Class all day for five straight days is pretty rough I have to say. Moe and Winston were leaving for good in a few days, so we organized a small outing at a cheap local drinkery a.k.a. izakaya Wasshoi.
Beforehand, we met up for dinner at some place I don't remember the name of. I wish I did since it was pretty good. I met some new buds, Mike and Paul, over food and a couple of beers. We bailed quickly in order to make our reservation at Wasshoi.
The night was all downhill from there. Another new friend, Jimmy showed up and said, "Where's the hard stuff?" And from then on it was shochu all night.
A couple pitchers of beer and a number of bottles of shochu later, and I'm ashamed to say I was the first to kick the bucket. I always forget how dangerous that stuff is and when it hit me, it hit me hard and fast.
See what happens when you try to take pictures while you're swaying. Casey kept us going hard all night with his brilliant drinking game, and although I was the first, I'm sure I wasn't the only victim. It was pleasant to find all these pictures on my camera that I don't remember taking.
Because I didn't take them of course. Actually, most of the pictures are much more unsavory, and I don't feel comfortable putting them on this forum. It's too bad a lot of the guys are leaving soon, but I'm sure when we meet again years down the road, we'll gladly repeat the same mistakes.
Til next time.
あばよ
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