The Last Samurai...part deux

I could very well have also titled this post "a weekend of gluttony." It started out on Saturday with Jon and I heading to Bellmart, the Brazilian grocery store where we pick up the acai berry paste for our breakfast concoction. It also happens to have a small restaurant attached to it, which serves some amazing food. After having a late breakfast, I still decided to order the lasagna, as I was actually craving some Italian. Apparently there is a brazilian (or at least just this place) twist on lasagna-namely, no tomato sauce and then a layer or two of deli ham in the middle. It wasn't what I was expecting, but it had loads of cheese, which kept me happy. We also bought ground beef to make tacos that night...but after getting back home I got a message from Ellie (who lives several towns east of us) saying her and Anna would be in town to go to a buffet restaurant and wanted us to come along. A huge warning flag in my head went up as the only buffet restaurant that came to mind was Stamina-taro, and I was not in any shape to thrown down at that place after the massive lunch at Bellmart. I asked Ellie if that was the intended destination, but she didn't know. Jon and I meet Ellie and Anna at Ogaki station to find out that Anna had had a different, apparently healthier buffet place in mind, but after hearing about Stamina-taro, they wanted to go there. I couldn't believe it was happening myself. Stamina-taro twice in the span of 10 days...this is not what a sane person does, especially considering I wasn't anywhere near hungry.

Thankfully, stamina-taro is good 45-50 minute walk from the station, but even after that I wasn't even close to hungry. I tried more sushi this time, but mainly hit up bowl after bowl of Purple, with a little bit of green tea and orange sherbet just to mix it up. I was let down, though, seeing as they weren't putting out the seasoned fries that I gorged on last time. I also noticed that the Purple is seasonal, so it won't be around forever. NOOoOoOOo! I was beyond stuffed...and not exactly proud of my decision making that day, but whatever, Anna and Ellie don't get into town too much and it was fun catching up with them.

That being said, we did end up hanging out with Anna and Ellie again the next day, but this time we all made the trip out to Sekigahara, where my friend Ozzy lives. The "trip" is actually a mere 10-15 minutes on the train going west, but it was my first time heading out there. Sekigahara is the site of one of the most famous battles in Japanese history, and this battle basically sealed the deal in terms of the Tokugawa clan seizing power and being able to set up their shogunate. Once a year, the townsfolk do a re-enactment/dramatization of the events preceding the battle and then the battle itself. So we all went to see that.

It was quite cool in that the garb all the performers wore was rather detailed. We found some of them rehearsing before the real deal in a side area of the park and watched for a bit. We asked for a picture with them, and then one guy let us hold an old fashioned teppo musket/gun. While I was holding the gun, the one guy put his helmet on me, which made for quite the photo opportunity. At the same time, I know it looks ridiculous on me-something that Tom Cruise was apparently blissfully ignorant of when he made The Last Samurai. I have a beef with that movie...and Tom Cruise...and especially Tom Cruise trying to speak Japanese-my ears bleed uncontrollably at his every utterance.

We eventually made our way to the open area where the main event would be going down. They started it off by firing the old fashioned guns off numerous times, and then had an entire play/re-enactment of the battle of Sekigahara. They had the pre-battle strategy meetings and whatnot, too. The actual battle scenes left a bit to be desired, but these are mainly locals, not professionals, so I'll give them pass. Besides Ozzy, who lives in Sekigahara, Anna and Ellie came as well. It turned out Ellie had a friend back from university coming to Nagoya, and so we ended up meeting her and having dinner in Ogaki at Chorky's, the american-style diner, which rounded out my weekend of gluttony.