Okay. I`m not seeming to get enough free time to sit down and write this blog in one go this week so we`re going to take a piecemeal approach starting with an amusing anecdote about my walk to school this morning.
As I might have mentioned previously, it takes me about 30-40 by foot everyday to get to the train station. This route takes me through the park so I at least get to enjoy the scenery. I`m am walking around, minding my own business when I feel a sharp pinch on the top of my head. I immediately look up to see a crow flying off, looking slightly abashed for mistaking my nice full head of hair for, I don`t know...a toupee? Crows have always been associated with mischief and perhaps it was this crow`s little prank on an aging society. Speaking of aging, I thought I was too young to worry about crow`s feet. Said crow crow and a companion of his follow me down the street for a little ways, perhaps exchanging in snarky comments about me and my admittedly somewhat poofy hair. Finally, they left me alone after persistent use of my dirtiest looks.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Monday, May 23, 2011
Kick off your sunday shoes
I didn't update last week due to a Japanese midterm I was studying for. Apologies.
As per usual my weeknights have been pretty bleh. So let's skip straight to the juicy weekend material.
Weekend 1: What we have here is a weekend of nigh perfect weather. This my be one of the few ones left as we are getting into the rainy season and it just breached 80 degrees during last week. I was determined to make the most of it. Sirobara dominated my Saturday, but nothing too exciting happened this time. Sunday, however, I went for an outing in the park for a intercultural event my local community center was hosting. The day was themed around a scavenger hunt of local emergency relief locations (actually more fun than it sounds). We were split into teams of around 5 people and given a set of questions and a list of locations. The questions were really easy if you found the location. For example, we had to record the name of a museum we passed by.
The tricky part was twofold: 1, there was a location where we were given any questions to answer. We were just told to memorize it and we would be quizzed later. Due to my cheatin...err..quick thinking, I took photographs of everything for later review. We managed to get 100% on this one. The second difficult part was the time limit of 90 minutes. Every minute over or under was points off our score. Trouble was we weren't told that the time limit was 90 minutes. We were simply told that it existed and not to hurry too much. Long story short (too late) my team took 5th place out of around 16 teams and were rewarded with a flashlight each. I have no idea what the grandprize was as none of the winning team opened their's then. The other prizes were handed out to everyone in the top 5, 7th place (lucky number 7) and second to last place (a sort of well, at least you weren't those guys prize). Sucked to be in 6th place.
After the scavenger hunt people were invited to an all you can drink yakiniku (think bbq chicken shishkabob) restaurant to celebrate another successful year. God I love chicken. Here I ended up having several weird conversations with my drunk hosts including the finer points civil law. It took me about 5 minutes to figure out what we were discussing. One of my limited vocabulary doesn't tend to know the Japanese words for tort and district court of the top of one's head. However, I don't think I embarrassed myself too much once I got the gist of the conversation.
Weekend 2: We (shirobara) again went out drinking. And when I drink, I drink a lot...of orange juice...and tea. Which brings me to the topic of the sexist bathrooms present at our usual dive. The is no boy's room. There's a girl's room and a unisex toilet. This means that not only are us guys jockeying for position with our own sex, but also the opposite one when attempting to relieve ourselves or puke in private. One may argue that girls take longer in the bathroom and thus could use the extra option. Additionally, the male constitution has evolved an ability to "hold it" while those of the female persuasion seemed to have given it a skip. However, my clients (my bladder and those of my fellow members of the unfair sex) will seek to prove that it is for these very reasons that we should be afforded our own private bathroom. Firstly, us men, on average, down more beverage than girls do. Be it a point of pride or a matter of weight ratios (insert Holy Grail reference here), we make sure our livers are put in there places (or, in my case, whatever part of the body absorbs vitamin C). Our famous skill of waiting it out is not a failsafe, but rather the default mode. That is too say, when we gotta go, we gotta go. Just ask Tycho Brahe (a scientist whose bladder exploded while waiting to be excused from the table). Therefore ladies, it is not just a matter of convenieve for us men, our lives are on the line when we are forced to wait.
The next day we went to Sweets Paradise. Imagine, if you will, a typical buffet. Fairly low quality food, but a metric ton of it. There were about 50 different dishes to choose from. There was spaghetti, Japanese curry, some sandwiches. That's 4. The rest were sweets. I'm surprised I got out of the restaurant before having a diabetic attack. I can't even begin to describe have the things I ate. I tried to sample one of everything that looked good, but in the end my strength deserted me (heh).
There was also a drink bar with my favorite Japanese soda, Calpis. This frothy white beverage may leave residue on the upper lip akin to that of a milk mustache. This is colloquially known as being pis faced or pised for short. Along with the drinks there were a number of additives including peach flavoring. Thus, I would like to introduce the world to Peach Pis (working title until I can come up with something ruder).
To top off the weekend I scored…a goal…in soccer. Yeah, after Sweets Paradise we wanted to burn of at least a few of those stubborn calories. Most of the players were amateurs (myself included), but there seemed to be one person there who could juggle the ball with his feet. From this I extrapolated that he had played on a team at some point in his life. With some fancy footwork he could bring down the staunchest opponent. And by that I mean bash them in the head with the ball. He took out one of the female players and nearly myself using the tactic (to be fair they were accidents, I think). The game itself was really fun. It's been forever since I played and getting back into it was very refreshing.
So there you have my two weekends in a nutshell. See you next week.
As per usual my weeknights have been pretty bleh. So let's skip straight to the juicy weekend material.
Weekend 1: What we have here is a weekend of nigh perfect weather. This my be one of the few ones left as we are getting into the rainy season and it just breached 80 degrees during last week. I was determined to make the most of it. Sirobara dominated my Saturday, but nothing too exciting happened this time. Sunday, however, I went for an outing in the park for a intercultural event my local community center was hosting. The day was themed around a scavenger hunt of local emergency relief locations (actually more fun than it sounds). We were split into teams of around 5 people and given a set of questions and a list of locations. The questions were really easy if you found the location. For example, we had to record the name of a museum we passed by.
The tricky part was twofold: 1, there was a location where we were given any questions to answer. We were just told to memorize it and we would be quizzed later. Due to my cheatin...err..quick thinking, I took photographs of everything for later review. We managed to get 100% on this one. The second difficult part was the time limit of 90 minutes. Every minute over or under was points off our score. Trouble was we weren't told that the time limit was 90 minutes. We were simply told that it existed and not to hurry too much. Long story short (too late) my team took 5th place out of around 16 teams and were rewarded with a flashlight each. I have no idea what the grandprize was as none of the winning team opened their's then. The other prizes were handed out to everyone in the top 5, 7th place (lucky number 7) and second to last place (a sort of well, at least you weren't those guys prize). Sucked to be in 6th place.
After the scavenger hunt people were invited to an all you can drink yakiniku (think bbq chicken shishkabob) restaurant to celebrate another successful year. God I love chicken. Here I ended up having several weird conversations with my drunk hosts including the finer points civil law. It took me about 5 minutes to figure out what we were discussing. One of my limited vocabulary doesn't tend to know the Japanese words for tort and district court of the top of one's head. However, I don't think I embarrassed myself too much once I got the gist of the conversation.
Weekend 2: We (shirobara) again went out drinking. And when I drink, I drink a lot...of orange juice...and tea. Which brings me to the topic of the sexist bathrooms present at our usual dive. The is no boy's room. There's a girl's room and a unisex toilet. This means that not only are us guys jockeying for position with our own sex, but also the opposite one when attempting to relieve ourselves or puke in private. One may argue that girls take longer in the bathroom and thus could use the extra option. Additionally, the male constitution has evolved an ability to "hold it" while those of the female persuasion seemed to have given it a skip. However, my clients (my bladder and those of my fellow members of the unfair sex) will seek to prove that it is for these very reasons that we should be afforded our own private bathroom. Firstly, us men, on average, down more beverage than girls do. Be it a point of pride or a matter of weight ratios (insert Holy Grail reference here), we make sure our livers are put in there places (or, in my case, whatever part of the body absorbs vitamin C). Our famous skill of waiting it out is not a failsafe, but rather the default mode. That is too say, when we gotta go, we gotta go. Just ask Tycho Brahe (a scientist whose bladder exploded while waiting to be excused from the table). Therefore ladies, it is not just a matter of convenieve for us men, our lives are on the line when we are forced to wait.
The next day we went to Sweets Paradise. Imagine, if you will, a typical buffet. Fairly low quality food, but a metric ton of it. There were about 50 different dishes to choose from. There was spaghetti, Japanese curry, some sandwiches. That's 4. The rest were sweets. I'm surprised I got out of the restaurant before having a diabetic attack. I can't even begin to describe have the things I ate. I tried to sample one of everything that looked good, but in the end my strength deserted me (heh).
There was also a drink bar with my favorite Japanese soda, Calpis. This frothy white beverage may leave residue on the upper lip akin to that of a milk mustache. This is colloquially known as being pis faced or pised for short. Along with the drinks there were a number of additives including peach flavoring. Thus, I would like to introduce the world to Peach Pis (working title until I can come up with something ruder).
To top off the weekend I scored…a goal…in soccer. Yeah, after Sweets Paradise we wanted to burn of at least a few of those stubborn calories. Most of the players were amateurs (myself included), but there seemed to be one person there who could juggle the ball with his feet. From this I extrapolated that he had played on a team at some point in his life. With some fancy footwork he could bring down the staunchest opponent. And by that I mean bash them in the head with the ball. He took out one of the female players and nearly myself using the tactic (to be fair they were accidents, I think). The game itself was really fun. It's been forever since I played and getting back into it was very refreshing.
So there you have my two weekends in a nutshell. See you next week.
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Feed them on your dreams
Welcome to this special Mother’s Day edition of Japan Travel Diaries. How is it special? Well for the first time in a while we have pictures (a few). Also it is special because of this: Mom, I love you. There, you don’t get me to publicly announce that and therefore embarrass myself just any day of the week. Chris, Connie go hug your mother or I’ll kick your teeth in. Seeing as my siblings don’t actually read my blog (those ingrates) and myself being in Japan, I must rely on Mom and my extended family to deliver the message and, if necessary, the corporal punishment.
Additionally I want to send my love out to all the other mothers out there in my family or otherwise. Have a happy mother’s day. Well, technically it was a few days ago (do to technical difficulties) so I hope it was a happy day.
On a much less important note: me and my magnificent ego (who sucking it up today). I did not update last week so you can be sure I have plenty to talk about. Most interestingly was my Sirobara Choir camp. Last week was Japan’s Golden Week, a entire week of naught to do but get drunk and twiddle our thumbs (surprisingly hard while inebriated, or so I’m told).
So, what do we do for camp? Here’s a hint:
We hoof it up to Nigata, who hasn’t been informed that it’s well into springtime yet and embarrassingly come to the party in its winter’s best. Well, actually it was in fairly crappy winter attire. The kind were the snow is on the ground here and there (hard to tell from the picture), but has solidified into a single icy mass that makes creating a decent snowball an annoyingly difficult task (although, I’m sure those on the receiving end of this solid chunk of ice appreciate the effort).
Our lodge in all its glory
Asked for a room with a view. Should have specified of what...
We arrived about an hour late so we decided to skip the first practice and go straight to dinner much to none of our dismay. Dinner itself was an outside barbeque which was all well and dandy except Mother Nature (who, unfortunately I cannot profane due to the holiday) decided it was time for a downpour. Luckily, we did have a large tent over our respective grills (eight in total) and simply stayed as far away from the outer rim as possible. The food was absolutely delicious. I told one of the other members that it was the best thing I ate since coming to Japan
When we all were done eating, we had about four hours of practice before hitting the hay. What I really wanted to try was the public bath at the place we were staying (a ski lodge). It might sound odd, but there is nothing more relaxing after a long day than an oversized tub heated to the brink of my level of tolerance. That and, after 4 months of only showers, the change was welcome. However, it was not in the cards as I had roughly 10 minutes to clean myself (which is done before one enters the public bath) before my roommate returned and needed the key.
The second day we all (mostly) rose bright and early for morning exercises. Breakfast consisted of miso soup and fish, which amounted to the two things I least wanted to eat early in the morning. Must get myself some real American breakfast food, with extra grease.
If you can't tell from the picture this pan of curry is about the size of a small pony and equally delicious
The next 8 hours (with the exception of an all you can eat curry lunch) was devoted to practice. And so we did. This can be mind-numbingly boring because we mostly review the same three songs we’ve been practicing for a month. I can’t wait for some new material, but it isn’t ready until June.
After dinner (seafood again), we gather together to play games. All the part leaders put on costumes and put on a skit. The point of the games was to determine the country that the princess, played by a girl named Roki (I had Eye of the Tiger stuck in my head thanks to this), would study abroad in. Each country was a play on the name of the actor/actress. For example, we had Michi be Michi Mouse and Jackie be Micheal Jackie.
This is tenor (my section) leader Mark...frightening, no?
The first game was a relay which our team managed to fail miserably at. But we pulled out of last place after the trivia section (in which I was no help at all). The next section we had to find all the letters on the back of the opposing five teams backs and rearrange them into words. We had two 3 minute sessions to due this in. This was really fun because you were attempting to hide your letter while looking at others.
For the final game, we had a skit contest. We had to invent a love story between a guy and a girl on our team. The trick was the guy played the girl’s part and vice versa. This was complete with costumes (a Chinese dress and judo outfit for our team). When all was said and done, our team pulled out in first place.
To celebrate, we sung songs for the next three hours (which puts us at 3 AM). For those of you doing the math, that puts us at about 15 hours of singing for two days. That, and when we finally got back in Tokyo
Okay, its past midnight here so I’m gonna wrap up. There will be a lot more pictures coming from the camp as soon as my friends upload them (which may take weeks). I will do a review of them when I get a hold of them.
God help me if the first titular song reference that popped into my head wasn’t Mother’s Little Helper by the Rolling Stones. The one I actually used doesn’t refer to mothers directly, but I think it strikes the proper tone. That and it’s easy enough that my mom should get it.
Monday, May 9, 2011
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