Sao Paulo: Party city

Only my second day here in Sao Paulo and I´ve totally fallen in love with this place. There is so much to do here. I´m so happy to be in the city again, after the Pantanal. The snorkeling we did in Bonito on the last day there was great fun -- swam alongside giant purple fish, tiger-looking ones, salmon and a school of others. I did well considering I´m a crap swimmer. Halfway through we had to get out and walk to another part of the river to avoid some roaring rapids, but when we got back in, the current was still strong in that part, so we were swept a few meters down the river without too much help. I thought it was exciting trying to dodge rocks and branches though. The guy from Michigan in our group who was hyperventilating for the first 30 minutes didnt think so though.
Sao Paulo is surprisingly expensive, more than the smaller towns Ive been to in Brazil. I´ve already had to resort to busting out my old student I.D. for one of the museums (handy for entrance fees), the Museum of Art Sao Paulo. Quite a nice collection once you ignore the really blah, soporific 15th century church artwork and the French and British schools of painting. God, they didnt have much fun back then. The MASP has a few Picassos, Cezannes, Manets, Monets, Renoirs and a Bosch that I havent seen before. The two particular pieces I saw by Cezanne (the names of which I dont know because they were written in Portuguese and I couldn~t translate them) were emotive, a quality I havent found before in his stuff.
I am also happy to be in Sao Paulo because there are a ton of Asians here. Mostly Japanese, sure, but throw in a few Chinese and you´ve got a slanty eyed short person passing you every 2 seconds. I didnt realize how much I missed diversity, something I take for granted living in L.A., until I got to this city. I cant describe the feeling I got when I finally saw people who looked like me.
So Sao Paulo has the largest population of Japanese outside of Japan (or is it the second largest, I dunno), which means my top priority was to visit their Little Tokyo. I had a couple good laughs. Menus written in Portuguese. They call ramen here ´´lamen,´´ which sounds aloud like a FOB saying ´´ramen.´´ It´s really funny. I stopped at a lamen house and had a great giant bowl of miso lamen and wolfed it down... I´ve been looking forward to Sao Paulo since the beginning of the trip because I miss Japanese food so much. I asked around for a Vietnamese restaurant, but that´s sadly lacking (or should I say ´´racking´´?) here. I´d love to open a Vietnamese restaurant, any investors out there?
After that meal, I went to the Japanese supermarkets and I let the saliva dripping off my lips help navigate me up and down the aisles. Curry, those fruit gel candies, Calpisco drinks, roasted and salted seaweed... I felt at home!

I am staying in Bela Vista right near a large commercial district focused around a major boulevard called Paulista, and it´s in a pretty swanky part of town. Reminds me a lot of Ipanema in Rio. The only place around here to avoid at night is downtown, which was a surprise to me because all I´ve heard about Sao Paulo is how dangerous it is. Tomorrow I am heading to the largest park in the city, Parque Ibiraquera, for two more museums and to buy my ticket to Skolbeats. Skolbeats is a major annual dance music festival that happens every April or May, and this year the Prodigy are playing live (not that I care), with LCD Soundsystem heading another tent. I will be in the drum & bass tent all night though. DJ Marky, Andy C and a bunch of other d&b DJs Ive always wanted to see will be commanding the decks. Going to this event kind of throws a kink into my schedule though. I´m going to have to return to Sao Paulo in a few weeks and then fly from there to Salvador to continue my journey northward. I´ve actually changed my itinerary somewhere in between the restless bus rides. If I dont have Aysha´s iPod to save me from myself, I end up thinking about stuff I probably shouldnt. Anyway, different tangent for another post, maybe. So yeah, I am spending 2.5 months in Brazil, which means I have to cut out Colombia. It was that or Ecuador. I need to move here to keep traveling!
I hope to go out tonight or tomorrow, but man, it is expensive. Getting a taxi here and trekking to another part of town, you expect to pay $10 just one way because of traffic and the large distance between sections of the city. Then there is the entrance, which shouldnt be too much, but there are drinks to be had and then the issue of getting back. How do the Paulistas do it?
Also, I am shopped out. Diesel costs 2 times as much here as it does in the States, due to the 50% tax that´s added, so the clerk told me. I tried on a pair of $400 jeans at the store. If I move here, one of you guys is going to have to be my pusher for Mac and electronic stuff, magazines, Diesel ...
Speaking of partying earlier, Aysha has been making fun of me for the way Americans say party -- with a ´´d,´´ and moreover, that we use it in the way we do. She´s been starting to talk like me though, despite that, and ´likewise, I cant strike the words ´´proper´´ or ´´quite´´ from my vocabularly. This is what happens when you hang out with Brits for too long and vice versa...