Groundhog days, Sashimi displays, Festival craze

A collection of short stories/highlights from the last few weeks. Been doing some groundhog day esque routine so not a lot of excitement unfortunately.

Firstly the school lunches - what an incredible collection of delicacies. I have eaten all manner of unidentifiable squidgy vegetables, seaweeds and tofu concoctions in the last few weeks. By far the most exotic thing eaten though is an entire fish including brains, eyes, skull, bones, tail and fins. Whatever way it was prepared, it had been marinated for so long or so intensely it softened to the point where every single thing you would usually avoid had been turned to a pleasant mush that was not only chewable and viable to swallow, but incredibly flavourful as well. At risk of sounding like a psychopath, the brains were the most delicious part and i imagine it was entertaining for the locals to observe the foreign alien gnawing on a fish skull for the first time as well. Not even a week later, another full fish was presented , this time a little more surgically altered - no brains or innards:( Just a softened skeleton and the attendant meaty parts. Still delicious though a little chewier, especially the fins.

Secondly, some of the sounds heard from the neighbours at certain times can be questionable to say the least. I was unceremoniously awoken one saturday morning to the sounds of the loudest hedge cutter in existence. A V8 engine of a hedge cutter at 7/8 oclock, no need for any alarm clock just the sounds of industry directly outside your window. Not complaining, just the shock of hearing the ambience of mechanised destruction drifting into your waking dreams first thing in the morning can set an odd tone to the day. Another Saturday, cue the loud screams and moans of a man from the inside of a house. Do not believe anything untoward was afoot because there were no police or anything like that but the lovely calm afternoon was being punctuated by what sounded like enraged ramblings (possibly sports related) drifting from an open window, somewhere very close by followed by almost satisfied moaning sounds (bdsm related perhaps?). Unnerving to say the least. Cut to 20 minutes later and it becomes an almost incessant dribble of interspersed ramblings and satisfied yells from outdoors now. There were some yells from another apartment at some point as well, so quite the community cacophony outside the window. This should tell you a little of the uneventful nature of the last few weeks that i am detailing fish heads and yelling.

Nice little festival in the town recently, just a one day event but drew quite the crowd, mainly tourists i would have to guess. They have some traditional floats built in the 16/17/1800s, made by hand and maintained for generations by the same families i believe, so a fairly impressive culture and heritage attached to them and the locals i have spoken to about it do display a lot of pride and reverence around them. They are also happy to have so many people from outside the city coming to share the festival which is nice, brings a buzz into the place before the winter. Spoke to a few tourists around the area at this time and, disturbingly, the reason they found the city in the first place is from tiktok algorithms! Leaves one to winder just how much power these algorithms could have if purposely directed and massaged - the ability to direct literally thousands of individuals into mountainous, off the beaten path towns and cities and probably the ability to hide other places from ever being seen as well. Implications could be a double edged sword. Might result in a massive glut of people one year followed by years of no footfall for many different smaller locations, depending on what is trendy. Did not take any pictures for a couple of reasons, mainly there was no space and secondly there were just hordes of phones sucking in the scenes like dementors from harry potter which is always a disturbing sight. It was like a wall of phones between me and the actual event, pretty mental - would a designated photo and video taker for these types of things work i wonder, just a few people posted up at the best spots and angles and then everyone who attends the event can just log in and geta few photos assigned to them or something. It is getting out of hand the need for everyone to have their own photo of the exact same thing, just to prove they were there or what? Most of the photos you take yourself are dogshit anyway and you are just missing whatever is going on trying to get your own little digital slice of it. Seems a bit unnecessary and wasteful, degrades the value of any one photo when you have a gazillion others just like it all from the people beside you and around you. Make an app or something with a designated photo taker and then they do a nice job, everyone gets the best possible picture and nobody has to stand on tiptoes peering over the literal digital wall blocking everyones view. That could be another aspect of it, it just turns into a domino of people holding their phones up at the front and then the shorter folk have to hold theirs up to see what is going on at all and it just continues all the way to the back to the point where it is just a sea of shitty phone screens taking shitty videos of the cool thing that is actually happening, it is like some weird photography feeding frenzy. Just sucks the life out of whatever is going on really. I dont know who needs to hear it but just because the iphone camera has 7 gazillion pixel zoom doesnt make you a photographer and definitely does not mean anyone wants to see you struggle to get the perfect shot or really see the result. People are filling up their camera rolls endlessly with absolute shite. Anyway I am no different really, just a hypocrite in every sense of the word, i like to think i am not so obsessed with it as others but i am guilty as charged. the irony is i had a brief spell of reading national geographics and entertaining the idea of being a photographer for them. perhaps it is some sort of self denial at play. Regardless, the floats and the little markets lining the side of the river were absolutely mobbed with people and at one point i spent at least 25 minutes going less than a hundred metres, just stuffed like a sardine in the little human stream. Good food, good atmosphere, good fun overall.

Had an interesting visit from a couple of squiggly little fuckers who crawled out of some horse chestnuts i had on the desk beside me here as well in the recent past. The horse chestnuts were gifted to me by one of the teachers so i kept them there as a nice little decoration. Good fiddling material as well. But then one fine evening, i notice a little bit of movement to my right and it is a fucking dirty little maggot chewing its way out of the chestnut. one of the filthiest organisms to ever exist surely, the absolute epitome of decay and rot. obviously i stared with disgust at it for quite some time, trying to find a good reason for its existence in the world. It is literally just alive to feed other things, what a pointless existence. Of course you will say 'well what are any of us here for huhhhh why are you different to the maggot huhh' well i am not being planted into horse chestnuts by some dirty little bluebottle who got knocked up just to go and get eaten by some tiny brain bird or chicken am i. We evolved not to get gobbled up by some animal, we are not still living in the wild getting eaten by bears and all the rest. Bluebottles have not done anything. They just linger around rotting food thrown out or killed by someone else and nibble it down then go and lay their eggs in a corpse or a horse chestnut apparently. Anyway after finding no real reason to let it wriggle around beside me or eat it for its massive caloric density i disposed of it. Went back to get rid of the chestnut and there was another little wriggler on the table and a third one wriggling out of the little hole in the chestnut. it really was the epitome of the yin yang symbol thing. here you have this beautiful chestnut, with so much potential and capacity for life but then the darkness inside it slowly consumes it and eventually decomposes all potential. then out of the beauty comes this dark little symbol of decay and death but nested within that darkness is life itself and the capacity for it to fuel other life which could eventually circle its way back to another beautiful chestnut. Any way no chestnuts for decoration and no rotten bluebottles emerging from those larvae anytime soon god willing so an equal tradeoff?

Had the oppurtunity to join the colleagues for a japanese drinking party. Had my first taste of sake, rice wine, which is served warm in a little clay or ceramic pot and poured into small bowls. It tastes pretty nice warm, can see the appeal of it. Not so strong but warms the cheeks. Delicious hida beef, yakiniku style, with some sashimi as well as deep sea, deep fried fishies, you eat everything except the head with these ones. Last dish was karagei (spelling?) which is basically fried chicken but whatever spices/salt/sugar theyre putting on those ones is brilliant. No shoes, socks only and the seating situation was just on the floor with a low table which was interesting. Plenty of Asahi to go around of course, will not comment on the differences in alcohol tolerances but you can imagine. Interesting talking points from the evening: What exact blood type are you? Everyone went around and listed their blood type and did a cheers to each one nearly. Another interesting one, one which i had thought went out of fashion, is your cranial measurement? Apparently the number of heads which divide equally into your body is some sort of measure of ???? who knows??? Unclear. I am apparently '7 or 8 heads'. The question is posed as 'how many heads are you?' which i honestly had no answer for, thought i was being set up for a gag, so i answered 'just 1 i guess' before having it explained to me. This was the most bizarre one to me, i am really struggling to find a comparative topic or small talk point with anywhere ive been before. perhaps you could enlighten me dear reader. Anyway, post dinner entertainment was karaoke in some semi-sleaze 'snack' bar called 'cats' or something like this. Apparently the town has been referred to as 'snackayama' because there a lot of these snack bars, which are basically just places you go and pay an inordinate amount of money for some women who work there to come up and talk to you. Nothing else apparently. Will not be venturing too far into that avenue despite my bafflement, it sounds like the scam of all scams though which i always appreciate. nothing like a good scam where both parties know its a scam and yet still follow through and fall for it. interesting component of psychology.

Attended a semester closing ceremony for the school. Incredible amount of formality and discipline involved. A lot of bowing. Bow once to the teachers, once to the stage/flag and once to the crowd before speaking and same again after speaking. Lots of forms to be followed. Naturally i had not a clue what was happening and stroll into a staff room dressed in full formal wear with normal attire. Classic foreigner blunder, i imagine my social credit score dipped well below zero. Anyway, very different, never seen such a level of rigid formality observed before except for army marching displays or something like that, even the students walk in formation to go sit down. impressive if slightly unnerving. A lot of socialisation to follow orders, maintain structure there, i imagine everyone can picture what that can potentially be utilised for. Good to a certain point though i think, ability to move and organise as a collective body.

Right that is it for now, enjoy yourselves.