7.5 | 5.45 p.m.

I’ve been practically unplugged for the past two days. It’s been weird. But, so fun.

After school on Friday, a group of friends was going to our final Hanshin Tigers game. I had some time to kill beforehand, though, so I went shopping. There’s a huge mall nearby that’s having it’s summer sales, which in Japan, they call Bargains. I bought a couple cute tops and a dress. Then, I met Chris for dinner. We had our usual McDonald’s pre-game meal.

We then met Laura and Daphne. The day had been nice and sunny until a couple hours before the start of the game, so we were nervous if the game would be cancelled. On the train, we didn’t see many jerseys or noticable fans. However, once we got to the station near the stadium, it was obvious the game was on.

We got pretty wet, but then Daphne bought us all Tigers ponchos. The rain eventually cleared up around the fourth inning. That was probably the most fun of the all the games. It definitely ranked with the first one. And we won!!! Which is amazing, because last week we won against the one team with a worse record. This time we won against the second best team! So, it was quite amazing and exciting.

We knew we had to get up early for a field trip, but we decided to stay out a bit later anyway. It was probably not the best idea in hindsight. I ended up only getting about four or five hours of sleep.

So, when 9 a.m. came and I was headed to Kyoto with my culture class, I was tired and a bit sick feeling. It was a long trip. The sun was especially hot. It made walking around castles and shrines unpleasant. However, we made it fun for ourselves. The final part of the trip was making a type of sweet. Daphne took pictures of mine, so I’ll steal the pics from her. I’m not saying I’m good or anything, but they didn’t look as bad as hers… jk. But, really, they weren’t.

Anyway, I then went home, had dinner with my host family, and then promptly got ready to go back out again.

Oh, my host brother came to dinner and dropped off the soccer tickets for this Saturday. So I gave him the candy I made. Maybe that wasn’t really a fair trade, but it’s the thought, right?

So, after dinner I took a shower and tried to take a nap, but just laid down and rested for a half hour. Then, I got up and dressed and left to go all-night clubbing.

However, I missed the bus because, apparently, if there’s no one at the stop, the bus will just leave. However, I was on time, so there must have been no one at the stops before mine. Which, is weird to me, because I would’ve assumed the bus would at least wait until the time the schedule says it will be there.

So, I ended up running down the mountain I live on to get to the station, because I was already running late. It’s like a 20 minute run. I was sad that I was all clean and dry, and then got sweaty trying to get to the station. Thus, I also could only take a local train to Umeda, which stops at seemingly ever tiny little station on the way.

By the time I met my friends and we got to the club, it was about 11:30 -45. The club was still pretty quiet at the time. I mean, in terms of people. It was by no means actually, audibly quiet. Very soon, though, it was packed.

This was also a gay club because I went with my gay friend Taylor. And frankly, I was glad to not have to worry about creepy Japanese guys, if they were to try to hit on me in a non-gay club. Nila and Laura also went along with a couple of Taylor’s Japanese friends.

I danced a lot. The 6 hours we were there seemed to fly by. I almost didn’t go because I was so tired before and it was raining and I missed the bus. But, I’m so glad I did. A Japanese drag queen lip-synched the “Star Spangled Banner,” which was worth the trip in itself. Another Japanese guy did a dancing tribute to Michael Jackson. I was picked up by a gay, sweaty, shirtless Japanese guy and carried around the stage during “Dancing Queen.” Which still makes me laugh thinking about it.

There were several small shows during the night and one of them included a drag queen who then took off his makeup and costume halfway through, which I know has been done as a sort of statement about being proud of coming out and defiance against oppression.

I don’t know if that was what was meant, but it was cool, all the same. It was interesting to me, though, that much of gay culture appears similar in Japan. You can even see the stereotypes acted out here as well. Obviously, there’s as much variation in gay culture as straight culture, but it was interesting to wonder if it’s just TV and movies or what has influenced similar mannerisms or behaviors in Japan as in America.

So, we left around 5 a.m. when the trains started running again. For as tired as I was, I made it through the night easily and was still doing well until halfway through the train ride when adrenaline or whatever. I then brushed my teeth twice, peed, stripped down and slept for about 9 hours.

I am so incredibly sore. I forgot how sore dancing makes me. Oh, the days when I used to dance regularly. Once, my wifey/roommate Erica and I tried out for a hip hop dance team. The first day of practice for the tryout was fine and we were into it. The next morning, we both woke up barely able to move. It was literally one of those “muscles I didn’t know I had” moments. Breathing hurt. Sitting hurt. Thinking of moving hurt. It was terrible. However, we did go to the tryout and both did terribly. More terrible than our practices. That’s such a funny memory to me.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand, I’m sore. And tired. I did taiko. I ate dinner. I talked to my host fams a bit. I wrote this blog. And now I’m going back to sleep. It’s about the reverse of the past two days. I’m only awake for 8 hours in the midst of sleeping for 20.

This was probably one of the best Fourth of Julys I’ve had.

Oh, what made my day. I almost forgot this wasn’t a ramble blog for a minute. A song from the musical Rent played at the club last night. That made me very happy. Oh, California, can’t you see that if you lead the way, America will follow?

Tags: all-night, baseball, club, dancing queen, drag queens, fourth of july, gay, hanshin, hot, Japanese, kyoto, okashi, people, shrines, soccer, sun, sunburn, sweets, tigers