She has a huge house, very conveniently right next to the school that she works at. I think it used to be a cafe, so as such, it has fairly large and open space where people would have sat in and a big space where the kitchen is to.
She, and some of her friends I assume, made a fantastic effort - placing little images of 80s icons on the cups, plastering posters of all-things-80s everywhere. TVs playing 'The Karate Kid' and 'Die Hard' on repeat.
The cafe area become a very decent sized dancefloor playing everything from the 80s from Annie Lennox to % (a poor impression for the symbol of 'The Artist Formerly known as Prince').
Everybody made a lot of effort with regards to costumes. One guy went dressed with as many allussions to 80s paraphenalia as he could fit on him! The Rubiks cube, The Karate Kid, Pacman, Back to the Future etc.
In terms of finding costumes and such, I ran out of inspiration a little bit - so I had to think a little bit out of the box...! My costume was quite a radical idea, but for one night it was quite hilarious. Even more hilarious was walking from Kaitlin's small little town of Kawanishi, catching the train to Yonezawa city, getting a taxi and walking past a police station to get to the party dressed as I was!
Eri, Satomi, and Cyndi Lauper, having some fun in the 80s!
Rebecca and Brigid, loving the license to use extreme colours in their costumes!
The following day, me, Kaitlin, Siobhan and Brigid decided to take a bit of a road trip and get out of Yamagata. Specifically, we wanted to find a beach, and we had heard that Niigata is the place to go for some nice enough beaches. Sadly, we forgot to bring a map with us, and as a consequence we found perhaps the worst beach in Japan - the sea looked dirty, there was rubbish on the beach, concrete everywhere, and the weather was cloudy (there was also a strange couple who seemed to decide on embracing there - not really the place for a romantic rendezvous?!)
After the somewhat disapointing beach trip, we thought Niigata City might be a bit more promising....it wasn't. We found nothing there! The whole place looked a bit dilapitated, outside the train station there was one of those big screen TVs blaring sound and adverts out, that (typically) big cities in Japan like to have - and typically they are a sign that lots of shops surround its area, and that their location is considered a central part of the city (Yamagata City doesn't have a big screen TV...) but around this TV there was nothing! It kind of felt like the city had packed up and moved else where, forgetting to switch their TV and their electricity off!
So we had a little look around, had something to eat and then made our way back home. The highlight of the trip was probably a stop at a Starbucks before we went back into Yamagata, being able to cruise around Oguni town, a very spread out, very very rural town in Yamagata with some amazing scenery...and the craziest statue I think I've possibly seen so far! We were driving back towards Yamagata when all of a sudden Siobhan gave a scream which gave us all a big jump. She was pointing at this GIANT statue of what looked like a monk - standing on top of a building, by its self, surrounded by fields and Japanese countryside! We were certain that we were driving back the same way we came, but we never noticed this huge concrete-looking structure! It was scary because it's eyes looked like they were staring at you, and it look angry, as though any minute it would unfreeze and starting lurching towards you, in an attempt to stamp on you! Anyway, a stop was practically mandatory! Despite nobody else being there, we had a few moments of fun with it!
3 comments:
Thanks for the veteran bit. *Sob*
And it was me, me, me who decorated that damn house! Gaaaah! Stress!
Glad you had a decent time though.
There is a nice beach in Niigata ken that we found last year. I think you might have gone a little pre-season though so they probably hadn't bothered to clean up the rubbish yet.
And I liked your photos with the statue.
Oh yeah, and Niigata City doesn't have much to offer except for a nice park with a cool shrine, and the occasional Cos Play event.
Oh Cindi Lauper should have had a chest wax! Hmmmmmm
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