Disney, Kawagoe, and RIP Lucky Dube.

Hi, everyone!! I hope you are all feeling well and having a great day. Here is an update for you.

Last weekend, we went to Tokyo Disneyland. I've now been to both Tokyo Disney theme parks. That's how cool I am! Here's some pictures.

Our best impression of Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse.


Posing in front of the Halloween decorations.


At the end of the night, there was a parade of all the Disney characters made out of electric lights. It was pretty cool, and I don't think they do this in America. If they do, then we missed it when Amy, Nikki, Jonathan, the girls and I went there. This picture came out pretty radically.


This is Manami as seen through a...well, you decide.


This picture is from a few weeks back when Manami and I spent the day in Shimokitazawa, a college student area of Tokyo. It made me realize just how freaking cute westies are and how much I want when I can handle my own dog.

Oh yeah, then my Swedish friend Johan met up with us and we went to a cheap-ass nomihoudai (all you can drink), then got the last train to Shibuya and drank more. Including this- KARAOKE!

We did karaoke till 5 in the morning when the trains started running again. Needless to say the next morning, my throat hurt and I threw up twice with a terrible hangover. Oops. Oh, and the dude singing is Evan. Cool dude, he's a model in Japan. Is it just me or does he look like Makris? Makris, I think you could make money and get lots of dudes if you came to Japan. You are into dudes right?

Yesterday, we went to Kawagoe, a city about 20 minutes from where I live and also where I work part-time sometimes. There was a reportedly one of the top-three biggest matsuri (festivals) in the Kanto area of Japan. You know what that means. Or well, you probably don't. But what that means is yatai. And yatai are food-stands (like at On The Waterfront) that serve some of the best food in Japan, including jagabata-

Oh god that shit is good. It's a heart-beat and blood pressure-threatening concoction of steamed potato, heaps and heaps of butter (the bata in jagabata is the japanese pronunciation of "butter), mayonnaise, salt, corn and miso paste. God it's so good and it's reason enough to make the trek to any matsuri.

Some festival pictures.





This is the famous bell-tower in Kawagoe originally built over 400 years ago, this construction was from around the late 1890s. And for a fairly interesting, but short, story about the significance of Kawagoe, click here


Manami hugging the sweet potato samurai man.


One of the stalls was completely devoted to marimokkori (you can find out why he's funny on the entry below). Here's manami pointing that out to you.


And here's me pulling on marimokkori's penis, causing him to convulse and giggle in a really high-pitch. I shit you not, they have this on full display, and the elementary school students walking by and yelling "MARIMOKKORI!" obviously love it.


Let me end this blog on a fairly somber note and perhaps introspective note. The following does not have to do with Japan, might get rambly, and if you don't want to read it, it's understandable. However, it's important to me and I feel it's worth mentioning.

I was watching my ABC news video podcast I usually watch every day to catch up on the latest in American news, and at the end of each episode they have a little feature on google searches that have been popular for that day. Well, when they stated "Lucky Dube" was on the list of rising searches, I had no idea what was going on and was fairly shocked just to hear his name on the news. What followed shocked and saddened me more than anything has in a while. Lucky Dube, who in the past year has become hands-down my favorite reggae artist, was carjacked randomly in his hometown in South Africa, shot and murdered in front of two of his teenage children. He tried to escape the scene, but presumably died soon after and finally crashed into a tree.

Granted I haven't listened to his music for that long, considering his career spans two decades, but his smooth and somewhat angelic voice quickly became one of my favorite things to listen to when I wanted to relax. In Mustique last year, Jonathan and I would joke about how his songs sound like "glorious reggae" and we had good laughs about it. Listening now, it's only more heart-breaking. His beautiful voice and songs about love, freedom, racial equality, and spreading knowledge to those younger than us were seeped in positivity, while never giving into the reggae stereotypes of praising marijuana and the like. Now that voice has been silenced by the horrific and random acts committed by a couple of men, who I have now found out have been arrested, in South Africa. So for now, I wonder, as Dube says in "Put a Little Love," "Why do bad things happen to good people?" It's times like these that I feel lucky to have such great family and friends, and also to be able to live in a place as safe as Japan and Illinois.

I had a dream last night that I was in Mustique, and dad and I broke the news to Tyrone, the butler at Tetta Rosso and also a huge fan of Lucky Dube. Actually, Tyrone is the reason I became familiar with Lucky's music. Anyways, when we told the news to Tyrone, his eyes filled with tears and I think my dad and I were crying. It's weird because usually I don't have dreams that correlate so directly with what's going on in the real world. Obviously, his death made an impact, and my heart goes out to his children that watched the horrendous act going on. I'll end this now with a beautiful quote I found on an African news source.

"Fare thee well Dube. You gave it all and the world paid you in shame. But for those who valued your contribution, we know your song; Remember me. So, wherever we are, we shall remember you, in whatever you do, we love you."

-Ryan