I knew there was a reason why I only scheduled classes for 3 days a week.  Although the Yokohama 150th anniversary as opening as a port city is an ongoing event, the main day with fireworks happened to be on one of my no class days.  There’s nothing like sleeping in, casually getting ready, and heading off to someplace you’re never been to before.  (…and it wasn’t just someplace I’d never been to before, I was also going by myself.  Traveling alone or with very very few others is my most favorite way of traveling.  I can’t stand large groups)  Yokohama is the second largest city in Japan after Tokyo and is only about 18 miles away.

In any case, by now I’ve become a master of the Japanese public transportation system, so getting to the Yokohama station wasn’t a problem.  And since practically no one ever talks on the trains, I could just watch out the window and relax on the way there.  Which is, by the way, very conducive to philosophical thoughts apparently.

“…I’m over here.  You’re over there.  Which is true.  But it’s not the whole truth because we’re all connected…When you get the blanket thing you can relax because everything you could ever want or be you already have and are.”

Leibniz, anyone?

Anyways, being preoccupied with the interconnectedness of the world on a train ride to a port city is a great way to start a Tuesday afternoon adventure.  Highly recommended.

I got off at the Yokohama station and followed the signs that read Port side exit.

Yokohama, check; port side, check; map, …negative.  I new the event was in Yokohama and it was at a port, so I should be able to walk there easily, right?

Not quite.

I didn’t get very far.  When I walked out of the station all I could see were highways.  Nothing looked remotely like a port or anniversary celebration.  I tried asking a man that was walking by how to get there by writing “Y150?” on a piece of paper, but either he couldn’t understand, or he didn’t know how to get there.  Not a big deal.

I found my way back into the station (the size of several football fields) and eventually discovered an information booth with people that spoke English.  Turns out I needed to take a separate train (conveniently located next to the information booth) to get to the event.

Oh, and I got a map.  The Yokohama station is a bit of a long hike from the event itself.  (flash forward to when I met up with some friends from the dorm later that night.  They walked from Yokohama station to the event and reported that it took them about 3 hours including stops.  Yeah.)

I took the train all the way to the last stop so that I could start at the end and work my way through everything.  Conveniently, there were plenty of English signs pointing in the direction of the event from the station.

Before going to the actual event, however, I planned a pitstop along the way.

Chinatown.

Yokohama happens to have the largest Chinatown in all of Asia. (outside of China, naturally.)  The whole place was jam packed with restaurants and little shops.  Everywhere.  Interestingly, not a lot of people seemed to speak Chinese.  Not that I’m that familiar with the language, it’s just that I only heard the shopkeepers saying their usual greetings in Japanese.  Also, if you love dumplings and pandas, then this is the place for you.  Chinatown was a great place to tuck away the map and get lost for a few hours.

Eventually, I made it back out to the main street that headed towards the port event.  (I’m still not quite sure how I found my way back)

I ended up first in a park that went right up to the water.  In fact, being able see the sea and the giant ships led me to purposefully take the long way around the park.

The events that were happening there weren’t particularly interesting.  In fact, there was an surprising lack of events from what the map made it out to be.  Most of them you had to pay to see.  There were exhibits about I don’t know what and tents full of people trying to sell you things you’ll never use.  There were some expensive looking cars displayed, some tents with nothing but a few chairs inside, and some expensive food stands.  Not that it mattered, anyways.

You could smell the water and the trees.

And the view was more than enough.

There is one main advantage to turning 20 years old.  You can drink legally.  That is, if you happen to be in Japan.

When this happens to you or someone you know, the first thing you should do is gather a group of people and head to the nearest karaoke place to drink and sing and enjoy all sorts of hilarity.

I just so happened to be in Japan during my friend’s 20th birthday (Lauren is her name).

So, ten of us from the dorm assembled and began to make a trip to the nearest karaoke place to celebrate this event.  (There’s a million karaoke places in Japan, so one close by wasn’t too hard to find).  Luckily, two people in the group (Alicia and Chris) spoke Japanese pretty well and were able to make lots of gestures and point to pictures on the menu to get us a room and order some drinks.  The linguists of the group deciphered that it was about 375 yen per hour (almost $4).  Not bad.  There was a special for 3,000 yen (a little over $30) for all you can drink and singing for 2 hours per person, but everyone decided against it ’cause it seemed like too much yen for too little time.  5 minutes of a combination of Japanese, English, and hand signals and we were set up for some karaoke.

And the merriment began.  Almost.

Surprisingly, the room was large enough to fit all of us comfortably, but the temperature was that of a sauna (Apparently that’s an extra feature of the karaoke room).  So, while one person fiddled with the temperature controls on the wall to try to make the room less like the subtropics, the rest of us were thumbing through the phone book sized songbooks to find the 10 pages of English songs and trying to decipher how and to what extent the various remote looking things worked.

No English buttons here.

My self appointed task was to figure out how work the remote.  Common sense would guess you used it to choose the songs you wanted to perform, but how if you can’t read the buttons?

Trial and Error.

I could try to explain what happened when I pushed what seemed like every combination of buttons, but I’m not sure what, if anything, happened when I did.  In the end, though, only one combination mattered.  The one you did to choose the song you wanted to sing.

And then I figured it out.

All I had to do was enter the number of the song and press the green button.  Simple.

I guess being in a country where you are suddenly illiterate cuts down your common sense meter when it comes to figuring out to work the karaoke remote.

The merriment began at last.

The cool thing about karaoke rooms is that they have a phone that goes directly to the front desk so you can order drinks or food or tell them you want more time to sing.  (If you’re really good you don’t even have to interrupt your song).  Lucky for us, when the guy brought us the first round of drinks he also successfully adjusted the temperature to a more normal level.  Problem solved.

The combination of sitting in a dark room with friends just drinking, learning to ignore the depressing Japanese videos that had nothing to do with the songs, singing as loud as you can, playing with the tambourines, and turning the volume all they way up (while others outside were thankful for the invention of the soundproof room) was a great way to loosen up and enjoy the moment.   Really.

Not one of us didn’t have an awesome time.

When the front desk called our room to tell us our time was up almost no one wanted to leave.  But alas.  Limited yen and school the next morning brought us to the front desk to pay up and conclude the wonderful evening.

The bill.

Almost 30,000 yen (about $300) was the total for ten people and two hours of Karaoke.

Naturally, everyone was surprised at the amount.  Since it was all one big bill we each chipped in for the amount we thought we owed; the 375 yen per hour, roughly 600 yen per drink etc.

Short by half.

After further confusion and bewilderment the linguists discovered that they actually misread the rate for the room.  It was actually 375 yen per half hour not per hour.  So, everyone put in accordingly.

Closer this time.

I put in my two 1,000 yen bills (about $20 total) to cover my one drink and the two hours of singing.  Once everyone figured out how many drinks they had, how much they put in previously, and all that mess associated with paying one big bill, the pile of money was ready for one last count.

We hoped it was enough this time.

The linguist turned banker (Chris) thankfully discovered a 10,000 yen bill (about $100) in the pile.  Someone accidentally put in a 10,000 yen bill in instead of a 1,000 yen bill.

Guess who? Me.

Yes.  Thinking my 1,000 bills were folded together I saw the first few digits of the bills and instinctively thought they were the same without counting the zeros.  10,000 and 1,000 are only one zero apart, you know.

Whew, crisis averted.

Although the cashier would’ve seen the error, it saved us (me) further embarrassment and allowed us to at least do one thing correctly on our awesome karaoke adventure.

Karaoke is a fabulous time I look forward to doing many times this summer.

Things to remember for next time.

1. While it’s extremely handy to travel with people that know the local language, it helps if they are really good at correctly deciphering Japanese, or aren’t completely new to the karaoke scene in Japan.
2. Check your money when you are paying and save yourself the embarrassment of of accidentally putting in a very large bill, giving the unintended notion that you are picking up everyone’s tab.   Count. the. Zeros.
3. Bring your own booze.  The 3,000 yen might be a deal if you drink a lot, but either way it’s much easier (and depending on how much you drink much cheaper) to just buy it yourself and bring it with you.

Karaoke take two should be smooth(er) sailing.

Our group was walking down the street when one of them walked right by us.  I couldn’t help but stare a little.  Because I had never seen them in real life, I felt like I had arrived at the zoo to look at a new species.

Sumo Wrestlers.

They were taller than me.  If not taller, then just as tall.  I was surprised that they just walked down the street with everyone else to the event.  You would think they would have bodyguards or paparazzi around them or something, but they didn’t.  Then I realized they probably wouldn’t need bodyguards anyways.  They just walked quietly to the back entrance.  More like a saunter, really.  Just sandals and a robe shuffling down the sidewalk.

I slowed down a bit to get a better view.  I could see the comb lines in their hair, the way their hair was tied on top of their head, their thick hands.  I felt rude taking pictures because no one else was.  I really wanted to talk to them or shake their hand or something. Instead, for about 5 feet I walked next to one.   I realized that that moment was probably one of the only times in my life I’d be able to be that close and witness their size and strength in person.

You could feel their presence as they walked down the street.

Maybe it’s because I’ve never seen sumo wrestlers in person that made me feel that way.  I like to think not.

You could see these flags along the sidewalk on the way to the entrance.  I was told that the names of the wrestlers were on the banners.

After handing the ticket to the attendant at the entrance you had to get your hands sprayed with water or sanitizer or something to be cleansed before you went in.  The reason I say ‘or something’ is because I didn’t know what it actually was.  By the time I realized they were spraying everyone’s hands I had already walked past ‘uncleansed.’  I went inside anyways.

The entrance hall was filled with flowers.  I liked to assume the writing on each of the arrangements were the names of people.  But I can’t read Japanese.  It was a relief to get through the crowd of people in the front hall though.  There were the ones aimlessly milling about, and the ones signing up to get a ribbon with writing and a bow on top to wear on their pocket (I learned later that these marked the people privileged to cut a piece of Tamakasuga’s top knot off).

The event started with a pair of Sumos doing a sort of comedy sketch.  Mainly a parody of actual sumo wrestling.

Then the real wrestlers entered.

A man stood at the corner of the Dohyo.  He tapped a wood block and announced each wrestler as they walked in.  You could feel the silent awe fill the arena.  Although we sat in the second level, the distance did not diminish their presence.

The matches started.

Since none of us knew anyone’s names, we’d call out who we wanted to win by the color of mawashi they were wearing.  These guys were big.  Not just fat big either.  You could see the muscles in their legs.  Since we were pretty far away, our group would make up commentary for what was going on down there. “oh, not enough salt.  need more salt.  not purified enough.  false start, 10 yards.”  Our own heckling from afar.  And even sometimes, when kids weren’t whizzing by as they ran down the aisles, it was quiet enough to hear the smack when the wrestlers collided.  Or, you could hear them grunting and yelling as one picked up the other and put them outside the circle.  It was a fun time.  Especially since none of us knew much about what was going on in the event.  Plus, we didn’t have to be too concerned with bothering people around us because there wasn’t anyone close by.  And still yet, because some of us took advantage of being allowed to bring alcohol inside.

There was a long list of events associated with the retirement ceremony for Tamakasuga Ryoji.  After the series of matches they rolled out red carpet onto the Dohyo.  Literally.  There were speeches, and chants, and cheers, and a marching band, and then the main event.  The cutting of the top not.  When a sumo wrestler retires he gets his top not of hair cut off.

This is when I learned what the ribbons with writing and bows on them worn on the pockets were for.  The men that had these got to cut a tiny little piece of Tamakasuga Ryoji’s top not.

It was pretty exciting, for the first 15 minutes.

There must have been over a hundred people signed up to do this.  People just kept lining up.  They would announce a name, the person came up, cut a piece, bowed, left, announced another name, the person came up, cut a piece, bowed, left.  Seeing the guys come up and get the scissors and bow got boring after a while.  Instead, I watched Tamakasuga Ryoji.  He jsut sat there.  Unmoving.  But then I noticed something happening.  Every so often you could see him pull out a little white cloth and dab his eyes.  He was crying.  I wished I wasn’t sitting so far away.  I couldn’t even imagine what he must have been feeling, but I was convinced if I got a better look at his face I could’ve learned more.  But I couldn’t.

This lasted for an hour and a half.

I couldn’t help it, but I fell asleep for the last half hour or so.  Then, a much louder and longer announcement woke me up.  Something was about to happen.  A man walked up to the Dohyo.  He was dressed much like Tamakasuga Ryoji.  (Another, possibly higher ranking sumo I can only assume)  he was obviously going to be the last one to cut the knot.  Cameras began flashing.  This was it.  The somber feeling in the room was quickly diminished.  Now excitement and anticipation.  Relief.  The man took the scissors.  He lifted the knot with the other hand and began to cut it.

And it was done.

(here were little sumo boys in training bringing flowers to Tamakasuga Ryoji after his top knot was cut)