Extreme Free Hugging or those bloody Monkeys

"Shu-hey, my friend", I slurred in Japanese, "tomorrow is my last day, unfortunately...". After 6 days straight of Free-Hugging in the evenings, I sadly announced my premature departure away from Tokyo to all the Free-Huggers I had the pleasure of meeting. A whole week of dedicated Hugging has had its toll on me I have to say... I became happy once again, but I sadly knew that the feeling of home wouldn`t... couldn`t last forever. Every passing day Shibuya had felt more and more like the right place to stay for good. But every passing day drew me closer to the ending point, where I would be forced to part ways once again.

And so it was, that on the seventh day, I hugged for the last time, and, to my surprise, the other permanent huggers handed me one of their free hugs sign as a gift, and some pictures of them and me in good times. to tell the truth I was quite touched, and the Brazilian girl I met who also had to leave back to her country cried non-stop. I guess for both of us it was an opportunity of enjoying a good time with good people, while trying to... well, you can call it "spreading the love all around"... Especially in Japan, since Hugging is quite the rare commodity in the Japanese scenario.

A picture's worth a thousand hugs

While on my way to my new destination, I decided of opening up a new extreme sports - "Extreme Free-hugging"... basically it just trying to offer free-hugs in some unusual and unexpected places... like the place I was about to go to, the Monkey Park.


But before that.

I arrived on a cold snowy noon to Nagano station in Nagano prefecture, which is located about 3 hours west of Tokyo. Taking the train towards Matsumoto to meet with my first Couch-Surfing host, I had the pleasure of viewing the surroundings of Nagano; surrounded by what people call "The Japanese Alps", Nagano is known to be one of the best places in Japan to go skiing, snowboarding, and mainly freezing to death. the whole area, especially Matsumoto, functions as a giant refrigerator due to the way the "Alps" are closing in on the poor city. Still, the scenery is gorgeous.

There I met Nunung, an Indonesian medical student who got a japanese scholarship and stayed at the dorms next to the university. Since she had another visitor in her tiny room, she arranged for me a room that belonged to a friend of hers who happened to be away at the time, and for two days I enjoyed her and her friends company. Mostly there isn't anything worthy to do in Matsumoto, especially if you're not a ski fan or a fridge fan. But like I told Nunung- "its not the places you go, its the people your go with".

two days later, I returned to Nagano proper, in order to achieve my main objective ever since Okinawa, which is to see the darn monkey park, with the monkey onsen. After taking the bus, I had to follow a snowy mountainous road practically littered with tall trees I know not of their names all around. And finally, FINALLY! I had the pleasure of looking at those funny critters bathing in the hot spring and wandering around the beautiful park. I guess the Catharsis wasn't as exciting as I believed it would be, but it was indeed a beautiful day, adding to the beautiful spot. So, yes... it was very enjoyable.

Taking a good picture of them is SO easy!

Monkeys looking at Monkeys

EXTREME FREE HUGGING!!! any Monkey wants a hug?

returning from the mountainous region, my next stop was Kanazawa, which took my some good 4 hours of train switching to get there. There, Majeed, my second couch-surfer host welcomed me to his humble apartment. Majeed, 23, an american (half Iranian for those who wondered of the name) , is an English teacher at a local high-school. The day after, I asked Majeed if It would be alright to join him to see how the school looks like, and maybe sit in an English class... you know... just to see why do Japanese suck so badly in English. Although a class I didn't get to see, Majeed showed me the premises of the school, and talked about the psychological pressure these poor students have to go through; This specific high-school was a "Business school"... in other words, a High-school for students who didn't get good grades on the finals of the 9th grade (age 15...). So, basically, all the students practically know that their future is behind a desk at a convenience store, or some gray accountants position. Not only they know, but also the teachers know, and they just give up on the kids even before they get to know them. It was pretty instructive (and sad) to learn about the deprivation of the capitalist dream factor which enable every one of us at least hope and act for a better future. Maybe I just imagined it, but I think I could have seen despair in the students eyes as I was walking past them in the gloomy halls.

The rest of the day, while Majeed was at work, I spent around the city of Kanazawa, jut walking around like good old times, trying to assess the uniqueness of that city. But, alas, I found nothing special... If my sources are correct, Kanazawa is proud to be the only city on the west coast who hasn't been bombed during WWII, so instead of new and safe buildings, they still possess a lot of those old-rusty-going-to-fall houses.

Later on that evening, after a relatively bad onsen experience, a friend of Majeeds, a girl named Candy from Trinidad, offered me to join her into what would be an educational study of Kanazawas night life. I followed her to a deserted club, where the music was pretty nice, but we were practically alone. Fortunately, it took about an hour till several people showed up into what you can call "a lame night out partying", but, still, it was extremely instructive for me in more than one way - first, I got a private dancing lesson from Candy, and I'm talking about the stuff you see in dirty rap music videos... it was pretty neat...
secondly, I got to witness a futile attempt of a couple of Japanese girls to hit on these couple of weirdos. One of them was actually trying to pull one of the guys onto the dance floor, while he was squirming and shying away... it was pathetic and (frightfully familiar) to me, so Candy and I decided we needed to help them, so I took the girls, and she took the boys, and we tried making all of them move... It was hopeless... 2 minutes later they all went back sitting, while giggling uncontrollably. I guess it took them some drinks to even dance for a while... mostly they danced by themselves, which was really frustrating... oh, there was this one time I got close to this japanese chick, you know, doing my thang and all, and since it became pretty hot from all the dancing, all I had was this sleeveless shirt to dance around with. As we gotten pretty tight, she reached out her hand towards my chest and just started caressing my chest hair for a while, and than she bursted out laughing. That was like the GONG chime for the nights ending, as well for the ending of my Ego... I guess it was pretty instructive, and I enjoyed the dancing in total. So it wasn't that bad after all.

The following morning I waved Majeed good-bye, and made my way towards the bus for Kyoto, my final destination in the chapter called Japan.