Another holiday?!

It seems that the Japanese has at least one holiday every month and this tuesday we have now run into Culture Day (I haven't really found out if it means I can get into museums cheaper or something similar ^^) So I'm jumping on my rental bike and taking a look at gardens and parks today.

My trip on the ferry from Okinawa wasn't so bad this time because I had food with me.
There were a couple of re-runs of people:
-The cool biker chick was back and I spent a lot of fun time trying to teach her to play The Good, the Bad and the Munchkin (I actually think the language barrier made it more fun!).
-Also on board was a guy I refer to as "Mr Stare"; an extremely creepy man who kept watching me when I slept. The last time around I kept telling myself that I was imagining things and maybe he just had very bad eye sight so he focused on the darkest spot in the room; but this time I tried to move out of sight and he followed me ... twice o_O
-There was a little girl on board who last time had looked at me a lot too and this time she had worked up enough nerve to approach me. Really cute. She had seen Little My and Snufkin on my jacket and she had decided that the best way to make contact with the big gaijin was to sing the theme from the Moomins cartoon series. Kawaii ^^ It worked. We had our own little singalong and managed to get through a lot of Disney songs and a few Ghibli :)

I looked through my pictures and realized that I hadn't taken that many on Okinawa and none of people! It's too bad because I met some very colourful characters; my hostel was full of hippies, street preformers (among others a firedancer who gave a preformance that kicked ass; he's the best I've ever seen), surfers, soldiers, globetrotters. I liked it ^^

After getting very lost in Osaka (it involved about 10 japanese people who all tried to help me before someone finally found an english teacher from Australia - who ended up offering me a job because "we need brave people" :D) I was late for the Halloween celebration with Mochan's new couchsurfing group. And then I got extremely smashed.

We all went back to Mochan's house in Shizouka and arrived at about five in the morning. I hadn't really slept on the ferry due to a combination of bad weather, snoring/snorting old guy, and Mr Stare, so you would think I would be able to sleep at Mochan's ... but no. The alcohol in my system was making my world sail and I didn't manage to fall asleep before people started getting up again. The house was buzzing (along with my head) all day and we left at midnight to make it to Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo and I didn't get any sleep on the bus either. I finally got a bed at 11 monday morning and had pretty much been awake since thursday. Talk about feeling your age all the sudden. Gah! But I doubt that I have ever been happier to go to sleep in a crisp bed before ^^

The fish market was quite the show by the way. And it cemented my resolve to never touch meat again.

I'm back at Khao San (yes, like the backpacker street in Bangkok) in Tokyo. And here I'm going to enjoy my last days in Japan and pick up a few last souvenirs.