More Noheji Gion Festival photos at Noheji.com


Okay, I know I just wrote a few days ago about how I don't like writing

"boring journal style" entries on this site, but for some reason I feel like it today, so here goes...
So Sunday morning, after the big Shichinohe partay I was feeling pretty 'futsukaiyoi', bloody and battered. I drove Kat, Aya and Nate to Aomori (pulling over a few times to get gas and release vomit) and we had lunch at the impossible to spell Caprichossa. Well three of us did anyway as Kat decided after placing her order that her stomach wouldn't be able to handle the food and took off to meet her Yakuza boyfriendo. After watching the Aomori police and fire department torture small children with their scary high ladders, earthquake and car crash simulators I headed home. When I got to Noheji however I was really ready to go to bed, but much to my dismay all the roads home were blocked off because Noheji's Gion festival was going on. Instead I went to the beach and slept under a tree until a gangsta hip-hop dance party woke me up. Normally I'm always up for a Japanese hip-hop party as they are often quite amusing, but I was definately not in the mood this day. Eventually I made it back into town, and found that the road blocks were gone. Before heading to bed, I decided to snap a few shots of the parade. I got the usual stares and weird old guys wanting to shake my hand, but something different happened this time. An old woman came up to me and handed me her camera indicating that she wanted me to change the film for her. I suspected this was just a flimsy excuse to talk to the gaijin, but I cheerfuly did my best to load it. I actually couldn't figure out the mechanism, so she promply showed me how to do it thus confirming my original suspicion. I couldn't understand why this old Japanese lady who didn't speak any English wanted to speak to me so badly, that is until she introduced me to what I can only assume was her Granddaughter. As everyone knows my Japanese is beyond horrible so I couldn't really understand much of what the woman was saying. As far as I can tell her Granddaughter was the product of an encounter between her daughter and a Misawa Airbase soldier named Scott. The little almost blond haired girl looked at me with a big toothless smile, jumped up and down and yelled "English, English!". I tried speaking with her in English, but she didn't seem to understand a word I was saying. I can't help but wonder if the kid thought I was her long lost daddy or something. I felt kind of bad for the kid and wondered how many others like her live in Noheji. Of course for all I know none of what I'm assuming here could be true.


I've added a new experimental feature to the site called [url=http://www.avoidinglife.com/altv.html]'ALTV'[/url] or Avoiding Life Television. It's a streaming video channel of all my video blogs and movies. Actually since you're already here at the site it doesn't really affect you much since you can download any of the movies at any time anyway. It's mostly a way to broadcast to WinAmp users who don't know about this place yet. Actually you'll also find that it will be off much of the time (like my seldom used Jamiecam), and even when it's on it will be hard to connect to. It's kind of useless now that I think of it. Oh well. Maybe I'll figure out something cool to do with it down the road.