This picture is pretty much too good to be true - Alice the Aussie singing Men at Work's "Land Down Under." If I ever go to Australia, I am quite confident that I will sing this song the entire time I'm there, or until the natives beat me into submission with a variety of whimsically Australian blunt objects, like koalas.
There was a nationwide relay race today held in Hiroshima, so I went with Yukie to go see that. The race was pretty nifty as far as that goes, but better than that were the various cultural demonstrations from the different parts of Japan. Being an extremely old country, of course, all the different parts of Japan are fiercely devoted to their regional cuisine and rituals, so this was a good chance for all the various prefectures to show off the goods. There were booths from each of the prefectures where they hawked their wares with amazing energy and force. Japan may be a modern country, but at fairs and the like they have happily retained the fishmonger-style calling of old markets. They were bellowing so forcefully and cheerily that they even unhesitatingly addressed me in Japanese in a manner that expected a response, which just about never happens. In that almost every booth sold some variety of the local liquor, a fair number of people got fairly tore up so that they could enjoy the race all the more. One of these came up to me and insisted on touching my beard, which actually happens fairly often, and then proceeded to prattle on in drunken Japanese for a while; after deciding that I apparently passed muster, he then started physically dragging me to his daughter so that I could date her and teach her the secret ways of Tengu Husbandry. I slipped away using the secret Tengu technique of Being Sober, but I still think wistfully of the drunken marriage that might have been.
- Gyaa! I'm give up
Naka-ku, Hiroshima
730-0803
JAPAN
