Anyone ever mention...

This country can be kinda weird.

During my break today I wandered over to the nearby SMBC branch to take out some money. This path took me past a trio of hand-out-free-stuff people--except this group was kinda special, cuz it comprised three white guys dressed up in rather unamibitious Santa Claus outfits, crying out in their native English: "Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas!" They were handing out cute little red and white envelopes, and everyone who took one was thanked with a word, which I can only render as, presento.

This might need some explanation. You are of course familiar with the English word present. From this we may derive the katakana-ized Japanese version of the word, purezento. Make an average English-speaker--without a particularly good grasp of Japanese pronunciation--try to say this word, and that yields presento, a word as bastardized as any word can be. In essence: the phonetic equivalent of running a text back and forth through Babelfish.

(Essential: The audio equal amount of the thing which moves the text back and forth due to Babelfish.)

So anyway, I took one of these cute little red and white envelopes. (And when I ask, in my perfect English, "Thanks, what is this?" I get back an automated "Presento!") Back to the staff room, open it up--and it's yet another pamphlet about the Bible. (We've already had JWs twice at home.)

God works in messed up ways, especially in Japan.

(God works without the Japanese stand with the method of being done, especially.)

Later on, after work, a bunch of us head over to this small bar that's run (in part) by the girlfriend of one of our coworkers. Inside is a cramped crowd of Japanese hipsters (mostly young women; at one point I relayed a message from one of the servers that any single guys should hurry on in), watching.... Well, it's like this. There's an electronica DJ with a drumpad, grooving along. There's a small projector screen playing some video involving lots of artsy naked boobie shots, accompanied by Japanese subtitles. Then there's what seems to be the centerpiece: a young woman, doing flower arrangements while half-sorta-dancing to the electronica music. No, you wouldn't call this ikebana, that's like, you know, traditional. By the end she was painting a bunch of the leaves red, again whilst kinda-sorta-dancing. She stopped painting after making it about a third of the way up, and then everyone clapped. And the whole thing was recorded for posterity on a handheld digicam that I could probably fit through one of my belthoops.

Pure awesome radness.