25/10 Kimono, shopping and Yamanote Halloween

When someone says Japan, what are the images that usually pop up first? Sushi, pop culture, samurai and kimono are all things that are commonly associated with this country (according to my non-fact-based assumptions). So when I came here, I of course wanted to experience all these aspects! (Well, except for the samurai part. What would that even mean? Getting your head sliced off by a cosplayer?)

I didn't think I'd actually get a chance to ever wear a kimono, but the staff at the university are really nice and seem to do their best to make sure that every student gets to experience as much as possible. So when A and checked out the notice board a couple of weeks ago and saw that they had posted about a kimono-try out session, we didn't hesitate even one second before we made the arrangements!

Because A and I both have a bad sense of direction, we decided to go early. The place wasn't that hard to find but we still had to walk around looking lost for a bit before we found it. Which means that everything was going as planned. :D

We had expected this to take at least an hour, but as soon as we got to the right floor and met the ladies who were going to help us, we were all just kind of thrown into it all. No welcome phrases or chit-chat or anything like that before we started. That doesn't mean that they were rude though, they were all nice! Just felt kind of "Oookay, so was this it?" after it all ended.

Don't trust old ladies with cameras... Most pictures turned out blurry and unusable. I hadn't fixed my hair at all for this, even though we went out to buy accessories the day before. We kind of expected to have some time to get prepared before putting the kimonos on, but oh well!

In case you're thinking that I look kind of stiff - I was! The ladies kept commenting about it too, but I just couldn't relax. Something about the air... And the fact that you know that you're being looked on (although v(^_^)v pictures don't count!) always make me uncomfortable. Huah.Well, as long as I have pictures of me wearing kimono!

The "underwear" for the kimono.

After this, we went to Sunshine City (in Ikebukuro, where the kimono pictures were taken as well) which is a mall with lots of cute clothing stores! I kept cursing myself for not bringing enough money, but we're going there again soon, so I'll be prepared next time. :D And do I even need to mention that we had crepes again? (We were at Harajuku the day before and ate crepes there as well. Oooh why is it so good? It's just a pancake stuffed with ice cream and whipped cream!) We walked around the mall for at least four or five hours and still don't feel like we've combed through every part! Nevertheless, we were starting to get tired and wanted to go home and drop off some stuff before we headed out for the legendary Yamanote Halloween Celebration!

On the way back to the station, we got this:

It's a huge single takoyaki ball! Normally you have several small ones on a skewer, but this was just one single enormous ball of goodness. *_* Mine was curry flavored.

Got home, got ready in five minutes and then went out to Shinjuku to meet up the others for the Halloween train party. So what is this Yamanote line celebration anyway? It's a tradition with a short history, having started about four years ago? (I'm not sure about this fact, heard something about it being started in the 80s but I have no idea, so don't take my word for it!) The point of this festivity is to dress up, get some alcohol and then ride the Yamanote line all way round being squeezed to almost-death together with other dressed up people drinking beer on the train. I heard that last year and the year before were pretty big, but this year wasn't that impressive at all. Almost all of the people I saw dressed up that day (usually only foreigners) were from my student exchange programme, so that was a shame. I heard though that something went horribly wrong last year, so this might be why not a lot of people came this year. Nevertheless, it was still packed.

Police everywhere! I was surprised they actually took measures against this, so it must mean that it's been quite a big deal before. They didn't let us on when the first train arrived and held warning-signs saying that any people proving to be a threat to the safety would be punished, so it was taken quite seriously. Also, see that some people have super system cameras? I read later (will post link) that these guys were from 2chan (!!) doing reports on the event.

1. My fellow JLSP coursemates, today dressed up as FinnMan, GerMan and JapanMan to save the day!
2. The heros and I!
3. We had to get off at one point to switch trains (I thought the Yamanote line went round and round without stopping?), at which chaos ensued and people split up everywhere and started to go different ways. When we got out at the station and waited around, regular salarymen and 2channelers took their chance and snapped a couple of pictures. By the way, I was squeezed right beside a guy with a bigger-than-normal video camera before getting off here, I think that he was probably from 2ch as well?
4. People, people, people everywhere.

I lost A and the group I got on the train with after the first stop already. Luckily I had FinnMan, GerMan and JapanMan to follow around, they really stuck out from the crowd so I kept looking for them whenever we moved about. After a while, we all decided to get off at Ueno (where we went to the zoo I wrote about) and go to a bar. I wasn't really feeling for going, so we parted ways there. While I was waiting for the right train to come, a couple of policemen seemed to recognized me and made a comment about why I was being left out. How did they even manage to recognize me?! I didn't dress up or look particulary out of the ordinary. Hm. Anyway, so on the way home, I bumped into a couple of other exchange students and a random fellow foreigner dressed up as Mario. He looked the part! If anyone's interested, here's an article about the event: http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=6868 Most of the costumed people you see on the pictures on the site are JLSP:ers!

The day after, I heard that JapanMan got drugged and collapsed when he was on his way home from the bar, so he had to spend the night at a hospital. (He's alright now!) I mean, of all places in the world, Tokyo is the one place you wouldn't expect people to do things like this, right? Urgrh. Good thing I didn't go... Because some people got stalked on their way back home too. They were luckily a whole group (guys and girls mixed) so no one was harmed or molested.

So after having experienced the Yamanote Halloween, I don't feel like I have a need to go again. The crowds! And it was not even as lively as the years before but this was much worse than the usual morning rush. I'm certainly not going to ride a sardine-packed train like this on my free will again! :D;;;