Avoidinglife.com fan Ernie (above) and fello Tsuruta resident Mary helped plan and organize this years "Tsugaru Ben Taikai". A special show featuring foreigners speaking the region's famous guttural dialect. I was asked to play the important role of "Tree" in a play by Kate, Angela, Sorcha, Ali and Ewen.




Later that night Hugh and his brother Paul hosted a semi-formal drinking party at the Hirosaki Park Hotel that quickly devolved into binge drinking and alcohol induced drama in Kajimachi.

Follow up:

Friday at Rokkasho High School a police officer visited the school and gave an hour long lecture about street safety. Here he is explaining what the different colours on a traffic light mean. Did I mention this was at a high school? Rokkasho only has one or two traffic lights in the whole village, and pretty much no traffic for them to direct. Maybe this is the only way for the students to learn about the existence of such things.




On my usual Friday night drive to Hirosaki I decided to try a new route and found this golf course and driving range overlooking Aomori Airport. I wonder what kind of a prize you get for hitting a plane.



Thanks go to Kate for this photo of me trying on the costume she made for the Tsugaru Ben Taikai. I would have tried out for the lead, but Kate assured me that my acting skills would be better put to use in this challenging role.




Instead Ewen got the staring role as "The Tokyo Tanuki".



The girls make final preparations before the big show.




An audience of 250 people, mostly elderly townsfolk and gaijin friends of the cast sat beneath a giant crane in the Tsuruta Town Hall.



Despite our best efforts to blow away the crowd, Marvin really stole the show with his amazing one man show featuring famous Broadway show tunes translated into Tsugaru Ben. I'm not sure if it was as fully appreciated by the elderly crowd as it should have been, most of whom have likely never seen a Broadway show in their lives.




Instead of ranking winners from best to worst everyone got different themed prizes, though it was pretty clear which acts the crowd got the most of a kick out of. Even though everyone seemed to get a kick out of my dialogue-free role of "tree", I got screwed out of a gift bag at the end of the night. (It's my own fault for joining up late and not being on any official cast lists)



At the post-taikai party this nice lady in the tie-dye kimono gave Kate and Sorcha nice hand-made purses, then grabbed hold of Kate so strongly that she had to be pried off with the jaws of life.




In the spirit of "internationalization" there were several rounds of obachan versus gaijin chopstick using competitions. For the most part the obchans really dominated this event.



Waiting in the car for Ali to finish socializing. It was a long wait.




On the road to Hirosaki we followed this cool roadster for a few blocks. There's one ride that doesn't need any pimping whatsoever.



Once we got back to Hirosaki it was time for Hugh and Paul's big fancy dress up dinner. Don't we just look stunning?




My former boss Mariko and her friend Midori came to town just for the party.



Marc chats with a yukata-clad Akiko




Hugh lays his debonair routine on Marc's girlfriend Shizuka



Later at the snack bar "Half" Hugh lays his pro-wrestler routine on Akiko




It wouldn't be a night out on the town without good old karaoke



Like Ricky would say, there's nothing better than getting drunk and stoned with your friends. (No mom, we didn't get stoned... only drunk)




Paul and Kat play the "How many fingers am I holding up game"



Hugh was really workin' it that night. Here he tries to teach Sorcha that it's okay to move your arms when you dance



It was really tough picking out photos of the night's events that were interesting, but not likely to horribly embarrass those involved (and I have quite a few of those kind of photo, believe you me). I also have a few interesting videos of the Taikai as well such as Luke singing a great rendition of "Born in the USA" which I will probably post at a later time. Come back soon for part 2!