Culture...and dead goldfish.

Yesterday was a day of culture. The idea was to meet at Kudanshita near the centre of Tokyo and spend the day at a shrine there for something we were referring to vaguely as "that lantern festival". I still don't quite know what it was about but regardless it was cool. It was kind of like this lantern festival thing at a shrine there. In case you didn't figure that out. Anwyays, there was lots of food, and lots of culture. And lots of lanterns. There was also lots of alcohol. A suspiciously large amount actually. And suspiciously overpriced. In Japan if you want to booze up cheaply you head to the convenience store. Super cheap. After finding out that the beers were ¥500 that is exactly what we did. Imagine our horror/disgust/confusion when the usally reliable am/pm store had nothing. Nothing. Jeez. And after much panicing, and mini-theatrics we decided that we would just this once hook into some heinekin at the only convenience store in the area to have any beer left. Carrie (a self declared booze hag - check her blog: www.carrieleasewell.blogspot.com) was none too pleased either, since the Great Chu-hi Famine of July 2005 had just hit Kudanshita and hence there was NONE to be found. This is unheard of. But after careful consideration, and the realisation that she would need to be sobre all day she caved. It was at this festival that we were all introduced to a stupid/hilarious game you play at festivals and stuff, kind of like something you would play at the show to win a prize. It is called Kingyo Sukui and it' a bit nasty. There is a big container of goldfish (some alive, many dead) and each player is given a scoop, which is a plastic handle with a platic ring on it (like a mirrorless mirror) and there is a sheet of paper stretched across the ring. This is the scoop. The challenge is to see how many live goldfish you can scoop up into a tray in a set amount of time before your paper scoop deteriorates. Retarded. Pachinko for children.


Anyways, we got tired of the festival and headed over to the Imperial Palace to check out another festival thing. We got to the gardens of the palace and gave up. We had no idea where it was, the gardens are ridiculously big, there are moats, and buildings, and the size of the property is riculous. I'm guessing about 1km x 1km at least. So we went to the convenience store and bought booze. Another day of culture reduced to public drinking. Beautiful.