The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Dateline: Labor Day Weekend! On a whim, I remember that the Missouri Botanical Gardens is having some sort of Japanese Festival! I say to myself, “Self, you never fucking DO anything. Sure, spending all weekend playing the excellent Red Faction: Guerrilla would be time well spent, but shouldn’t you go DO something?”

So I called some people, and sure enough, on Monday, Spaeth and I ended up going to the Japanese Festival. Yep.

It was pretty neat! I mean, the Botanical Gardens is, honestly, a pretty cool place to begin with, and I hadn’t been there in years. A plant zoo sounds potentially unexciting, but it really is a pretty place, and there is just all kinds of stuff to look at. Spaeth hadn’t been there in forever either. So it was pretty neat just to walk around.
That said, I kept trying to use the map to take us on “shortcuts” that involved us getting extremely lost. This happened all the time, the worst part of it being when we got lost in the English Forest for like 15 minutes, only to end up about 5 feet away from where we started. It was excitement, let me tell you.

But yeah, we got to see a lot of cool stuff. We got to see some people practicing the classical art of Koryu Bugei, which was pretty interesting, especially with a guy there to explain it. We got to see a huge explanation of the art of Sumo, and saw a couple mock fights. We got to see a performance of a bunch of Taiko drummers, which I took a shitty Qik video of here, if you care to see.

During all this, we walked by more people with cat ears than I’ve ever seen in one place before. Granted, I know of several places I could go where I’d see more of them? But I almost felt out of place! Should have brought some ears.

The excursion ended with me wasting money on some cute dolls because “fuck it, I’m on vacation, sort of.” And then, of course, the required stop by J in the B. It was a pretty fun time!

In any case, I took some pictures with my cell phone, and you can look at them here, if you want. But yeah, it was a nice change of pace, going. I’m glad I did.