Mar 2007

One of the most enjoyable things in life is hanging with friends. As the temperatures warm, not only do the flowers come alive with colour, trees fill with green and grass returns to the landscape; the Japanese return to an outdoor lifestyle.

And it was with the welcome return of warmth to the landscape that we ventured down to the local park for a BBQ. The plum blossoms had arrived early and my regular drinking friends from [es] were eager to enjoy the spirit of the season.

About 30 of us gathered in the park. We were prepared for a feast, a large garbage bag filled with ice, beer and chuhai at the edge of the blue tarp.

A charcoal BBQ set roared with the sizzle of mushrooms, capsicum and Japanese radish and marinated beef; a familiar smell of weekends lingered through the air.

The drinking and eating continued all afternoon. A football was tossed back and forth while waiting on the next round. Children and families looked on with envy; dogs half barked and panted begging to join us as they desperately tried to drag their masters over. At one point, the football was thrown too far and a small boy spirited it back for us. We kicked it back to him. His friends raced to play with us and soon a game developed as they ran circles around us in our tipsy state. Their parents laughed as their kids screamed out "ball please! ball please"

As the day faded and the beers began to run low, Akira found himself sleepy after a massage.

Why wait for a photo when you can create your own fun and soon we began to pile any loose objects on top of him.

His half buried state provided the laughs as we continued to play a strange Jenka game into the night; the simple rule of finishing your drink if you were the one that caused him to wake up. For my sake, I7m glad he's a heavy sleeper.

It was another cold and rainy day. The sky had been threatening the day before and now, with a whimper, it was drizzling and wet.

I needed to leave the apartment and see something different. The Kansai Time Out, a local English magazine, listed a few art exhibitions and which seemed mundane and boring. I scanned the web for something unique and it was here that I discovered a travel display of Dali works.

K and I, clutching our umbrellas headed braved the gloomy sky, shuffling into Umeda. It was lunch time as our journey began so we stopped off at a local Gyoza museum. Above an amusement parlor, 12 shops splattered around in a darken room with post-war relics displayed their wares. A map of the wall showed their specialties. Gyoza resembles steamed dim-sims and we savored a few shops before heading out to the bay.

The Exhibition was in the Suntory Museum and focused on the variety of the surrealist master. Large desert scenes and melting imagery freckled the walls; scrawling written works caged behind glass, mannequins draped in flowing gowns, assorted scents in in contorted bottles, magazine covers an film set stills; he was quite prolific in his diversity.

The sky was still bleak as we exited. A large display of turtle caught our eye as we released the 3D Underwater show was about to begin. We raced over to buy tickets and, as luck would have it, the cashier remember me from earlier and offered to give us the Dali/3D ticket combo deal, we merely payed the difference.

She handed us a large pair of 3D goggles and to me, a small ticket. It wasn't until we approached the theater's doors that we realized what it was for. I exchanged it for a pair of wireless headphones. We sat in the darkened theatre for an hour, glasses on our face as images of the deep sea floated across the screen; giant green turtles appeared to swim through the movie house; a swarm of jellyfish danced over our heads. I could hear a muffled Japanese voice coming from somewhere behind the screen. Through my headphones, Johny Depp whispered the mating habits of the octopus while Kate Winslet spoke of strange walking starfish that can outrun their predators.