The dumpling king, a tale in 2 parts (Part 1)

I'm not sure how busy and tiring I thought being a tour guide was going to be, but I don't think I came within a bull's roar of it. Correct answer: bloody busy, stupidly tiring. It's been fun, but in a too-much-all-at-once movie marathon kind of way; by this stage of proceedings I don't care whether the good guys win, I just want to go home to bed. Like all movie marathons, this one has some good stories to go with it. Let's go get the inevitable McDonald's breakfast and I'll share the highlights.

I'm going to pretend I've been virtuous and not skipped out on my blogging duties - this is "last week's" post. Part 2 will be posted once I'm back in the swing and can no longer stand "Blog notes.doc" watching me from my desktop (very soon).

Dean arrived on Thursday and kicked off his first international trip with what was supposed to be a quiet night at our favourite BBQ place. A quiet beer to go with it perhaps, we figured, before seeing that 1 beer was 500 yen and infinite beers were 1000. Never ones to pass up a bargain or a terrible decision, we opened the trip account with an all you can drink and probably used up most of our stamina on the first night. I blame Dean.

Friday we headed to Harborland with Dean and I found in him a new UFO catcher acolyte. He had a go on the mechanical giraffe and seemed to enjoy himself as much as anyone could, particularly when I pressed the reverse button and it started making truck reversing noises. This started the first of many "What did you do in Japan?" "Rode a reversing giraffe"-kind of jokes. Kym's farewell was that night so I went to an apparently quite famous French restaurant near school for dinner and drinks. After several fairly emotional speeches, we downed the last of our beers and abruptly decided we needed far more; luckily one of the other teachers was on hand to drive us into Sannomiya where we met up with Lisa and Dean again. I remember having a very in-depth, beer-soaked conversation with one of the teachers there, or at least in-depth enough for me to try and find the Japanese word for "assimilation" (eventually just giving up and flailing my arms around a bit). In a rare display of good judgement, we got the last train home which I found causes a lot more money to be in your wallet in the morning.

Saturday we finally managed something of cultural significance by heading out to Kyoto where we visited nijo-jo (the imperial palace), kinkakuji (the golden temple) and ryoanji (the zen garden). The sun was roaring that day which made sweating, frowning, drinks and ice cream breaks necessary during the long stretches of walking outside. Niji-jo was the only thing I hadn't been to before, the most interesting part of which was "nightingale floors" which squeak loudly as you walk over them. This was to ensure that lots of swords got in between the shogun and any would-be assassins, but Lisa insists she's too light to set the sound going. We may have to grab her a ninja costume. Amusingly, in every room the shogun sat in, two of the sliding doors behind where he sat had red tassels tied to them which indicated guards sitting inside ready to chop heads off if necessary. I called them "cupboard guards" and imagined them squeezed in between coats and vacuum cleaners which probably only amused me.

Dinner was had that night at the Kyoto Ninja Restaurant, where we were treated to waiters dressed up in all their gear, scrolls for menus and magic shows at the tables. There would be blood-curdling screams from behind one of the walls every few minutes and eventually I asked where they were coming from. "The labyrinth", said one of the ninja waitresses, barely masking her glee. "300 yen for one go." 300 yen later, we were wandering around a series of dark hallways with torches around our necks, looking for kanji characters to mark off on our "bingo" cards. After exactly the right amount of nothing, a ninja leaped out in front of me and I said something that sounded like whuurnh, followed by a long bout of swearing. Dean spent the next 5 minutes nearly dying from laughter, as did the ninja, whose mask couldn't disguise his towering amusement. "Look at him, he's still laughing," I said as we moved on, "giggling his ninja arse off". Having had such a good reaction from me, he climbed said ninja arse up on to one of the rafters and swung down as we approached again. Dean, out in front at my insistence and not expecting anything to come from above, said whuurnh. It was a dish best served cold. All up it was well worth 300 yen, particularly for Dean, who won some ninja cookies for his troubles. I think the ninjas probably enjoyed it as much as we did.

Sunday we donned our yukatas (casual kimono things) and jimbeis (short sleeved and panted versions of the same) and went to Tenjin matsuri, the least fireworky fireworks festival I've ever been to. The entire thing must have been meticulously planned and run by someone who hates the people of Osaka, because I don't think a single one saw any of the fireworks - behind buildings, behind trees, over hills, behind bridges; their accuracy was astonishing. I think I saw some smoke at one stage though. The boat procession was kind of cool though - long temple boats shearing up and down the river merrily banging gongs and one very excitable man with a huge pyre that he would throw explodium on every now and again, to the delight of onlookers. This was a good thing because it gave everyone there something to look at; the nearby hill crest had been soundly roped off, otherwise it would have resulted in people being able to watch the fireworks. Instead, we spent most of the night wandering the festival food stalls and games. Dean wanted to win a turtle but I talked him out of it because I felt sorry for them and their little leggies.

Monday we had a lazy start and meandered into Kobe for some shopping. Dean was delighted to find some bizarre Engrish t-shirts for his friends - I'd love to know what the Japanese think "fuck" means, because they seem to use it like "and" when it comes to their fashion. Dave arrived in the afternoon and was immediately accosted by a tramp, who spent a while complaining bitterly in a very strong American accent about all the Aboriginals in Australia asking for money. He then shamelessly asked for 170 yen for a train ticket to the beach. Once we had managed to escape, Lis headed off to work and I took the lads to a sushi restaurant. A suspiciously dark red fish turned out to be the whale I thought it was, so Dean had a chance to tick that off his list. "It's just kind of chewy", he said, looking like he was chewing on a doorstop. By this stage Lis had finished her shift so we headed to our local very posh bar and sipped our beers in the back room. We were all shattered by this stage, particularly Dave after his red-eye flight, so we headed home and shuffled beds around until we all fit. The lights went down; the movie marathon had only just begun.