I Spent The Weekend in Morioka & My Internet is Back

Like the title says, I was getting down in Morioka for Friday and Saturday. Morioka's the capitol of the prefecture I live in, Iwate. Its about 2 hours by train or bus from my town, so its not all that convenient to get there, nor is it a day-trip destination; you make a weekend of Morioka. Honestly, its not all that big, with a population of about 300k I think in the city proper. Iwate is funny like that - it is 100% a middle-of-nowhere kind of place, where even big cities are laughably small in comparison to the real thing.
Anyway, I met up with one of my coworkers and her boyfriend, who then had us all meet up with his friends/coworkers, and we all ended up at a club named Players Cafe (odd...) on Friday and Saturday. A few of their friends were guest DJs, so we all got in for less than the cover. Its funny stacking Morioka clubs up against Tokyo clubs: the latter tend to have a few stories, each devoted to a separate genre of music, with a cover fee of anywhere from 3.5k-6k, multiple DJs, lounges, and stupid expensive drinks (upwards of a base of about 1k). Morioka clubs have one room, really not that big, a cover of around 2k, free drink tickets, and like 3 DJs max. Its a totally different world.
In addition to the whole club scene, I got up there on Friday at about 7 so we didn't do too much else that night, but I got up at 9 Saturday morning, and:

Walked around the main drag, Oodoori, and got some seriously banging mushroom and spinach indian curry (with a bit of a kick too, which is a hell of a surprise in Japan);

Scoped out the tattoo parlors to see if theres any I might consider going to in a bit, and was pleasantly surprised with at least one, called Futurism, that does the whole traditional stick & poke thing;

Went to an art museum that was having a showing of a bunch of historical items from the latter half of the Tokugawa regime (so around 1730/50-1868) including some woodblock prints;

Got some okonomiyaki with Emily & Rylan;

Went to a rockabilly show... Holy hell were there some pompadours showing that night. Nice bar, with an owner stuck in his own fantasy of being a rockabilly legend, making all the patrons listen to his awful but admittedly well-intended attempts to cover various songs from the 50s. He's got his whole crew up front with their leather jackets RIDICULOUS hair snapping along, dancing, and cheering him on. Its kind of surreal, but I've gotta give the guy credit for, despite any objective short comings, constructing his own fantasy world and living the hell out of it. And of course, there were these 2 Japanese business men covering our tab.

Ended up back at Player's after that, and did my thing there. Grabbed a cab to the station this morning, where I had the best fucking fresh oysters 定食 (that's Tei-shoku, which is basically a set meal (for example, in this instance I got some fresh oysters on the half shell, a bowl of rice, a bowl of miso soup, a salad, 12 oysters fried in pairs, and some pickled cabbage and cucumbers) for a late breakfast (is that weird?), and caught the bus back here, where, upon arriving, I discovered that the internet source I'd been stealing from is once again working. Good weekend.

So this is Morioka station, and all of these igloos and snowmen were apparently built by some elementary schools or something.


Me at the "Rock-Splitting Cherry Tree" (How the hell do I rotate the video?)


Making Okonomiyaki #1&2