Pistons, o fair Pistons, how do I love thee? In big heaps. I watched most of the second half in a Yodobashi Camera in Shinjuku today. It was an absolute delight to watch a team actually play like a team and, in so doing, absolutely pummel the vaunted lineup of The World's Largest Baby, Kobe, The Glove, Captain Elbow, Walton Junior, and some other guys. The Pistons played so well and beat L.A. so convincingly (needing a mere five games to win a series no one though they'd even manage to make watchable, much less competitive) that by the end I found myself rooting for them not out of spite for the Lakers, but because they played like champs every single game.
OK, enough basketball for now.
Spent the last six days in Tokyo. Lost my wallet in a taxi the first night. Whoooooops. Bless friends and their no-interest loans. Furthermore, bless wonderful Japanese people. The proprietor of an internet cafe near my ryokan quickly became my best friend by making well over ten billion calls for me in an attempt to track down my cursed wallet and the over $600 + credit card + bank card + Yodobashi and Bic Camera point cards + alien registration card + my precious Sapporo library card contained therein. The damn thing hasn't turned up and, alas, probably will not at this point, but I still owe the guy an arm and leg of his choosing. Japanese people are fantastic in general, but this guy went well beyond the call. If you're ever in Tokyo and in need of sweet internet action or just someone to make phonecalls for you, check out Photon.
Tokyo is pretty incredible once you learn to navigate the labyrinthine little universe that it is. And, in light of the fact that it's the rainy hot deathly humid season in Tokyo, we were lucky lucky lucky - beautiful weather every day. So beautiful that I skipped most of the meeting to be outside.
Oh yeah, the meeting. We were in Tokyo for a meeting of all re-contracting JETs (that is, first-years who are staying for a second year). What did I learn? Something I already knew: there are a lot of very very angry JETs. On the first day we had what amounted to a Q&A session featuring three Japanese panelists whose positions related in one way or another to English education in Japan. The amount of bitterness directed at these three unlucky individuals was nothing short of sickening. Yes, clearly there are problems with English education in Japan, far too many to bother enumerating here. But the system is changing, slowly. Apparently far too slowly for the Angry JET Mob who apparently came to Japan expecting to be young Robin and Robyne Williamses, inspiring their young charges to proudly bellow Wordsworth from the top of their desks by day and smoke joints in the local hollowed-out tree by night. What the fuck, people? Were you not expecting challenges? Hardship? Even occasional misery? Instead of interrogating three Japanese guys as though they are the personification of everything you hate about Japan, ask yourself why in the fuck you're staying on for another year. Yeesh. Sorry, that likely made no sense to any non-JET, but the amount of bellyaching and whining that goes on in this program is unfuckingbelievable sometimes.
Time to wash away the bad vibes with happy pictures!
| (L to R: Naomi, Ben, Tim, Laura) There is nothing quite like drinking in public, which is completely legal in Japan. Suddenly every park with a convenience store nearby becomes a big grassy bar! In this case, our pub of choice was Yoyogi Park. |
| After some drinking, we were accosted by college (I think) students doing some sort of survey on what makes a member of the opposite sex marriagable. If you look closely, you'll see that Guy Number One is the obvious choice, girls. |
| While wandering around one day I found a Buddhist temple complete with graveyard. I'm not sure what the wooden slats are for - possibly burning? In any event, it was pretty cool. Also, I'm pretty sure this is the best picture I've ever taken. |
| No trip to Tokyo would be complete without a visit to one of Akihabara's many nutty gaming shops. If I hadn't lost $600 two days before finding these Cactuar cellphone charms, I probably would've blown the 1575 yen necessary to have one. |
| Shibuya Crossing at night. |
| (L to R: Laura, Ben, Myles, Tim) On the sauce again in Shibuya. |
| Saw this terrifying sight through the basement window of a beauty school. |
| The hat. The first time I saw this hat (when I first arrived in Japan) I decided that I have to wear it before I die. Didn't get up the gumption to chat the guy up and make my dream come true, but a picture is a start, I guess. |
A number of activities have helped me stave off insanity during my expatriatastic experience here: snowboarding, ultimate, learning japanese, drinking, and so on. One thing I've failed to mention thus far is rock climbing. We The Denizens of Shiroishi-ku are lucky enough to have an outdoors store complete with a large bouldering wall in our neck of the woods. Tim and Laura - who are essentially my surrogate parents here, having also introduced me to the unspeakable joy of snowboarding - convinced me to come check it out last fall and I've been hooked ever since.
For the uninitiated, bouldering is basically climbing rocks but not going very high. Sound boring? Then you are dumb, because it's fantastic. First of all, because the wall is perhaps twenty feet at its highest and there is a nice cushy mat to fall on, ropes are entirely unnecessary. Thus, all the madness with the ropes and the tying of knots and the belaying and the trusting and the "omigod my best friend's femur is jutting out of his leg because rather than paying attention i was trying to loosen the overly tight harness which was completely restricting bloodflow to my crotch" are things of the past. Also, it's weight-lifting - in disguise! Despite Chuck and Colin's best efforts, I hated weight-lifting at the gym. When it comes to fitness (and most things, really), I require an almost-immediately attainable goal. While certainly noble, "benching an extra ten pounds" and "becoming attractive to members of the opposite sex" are goals that simply cannot be achieved in an evening. On the other hand, "climb to that rock fifteen feet above you" can, perhaps several times in a matter of minutes! And when you get there, at that moment, struggling for breath, looking over the vast landscape of quality tents and camping furniture for sale at a reasonable price, thinking of all the other men and women who have struggled to reach this point but ended up falling to the squishy mat and walking away unscathed, you become the Sir Edmund Hillary of the local bouldering gym, and let me assure you, the last thing on your mind is the physical exertion it took to get you there. But climbing is actually a pretty intense workout. At this point, I'm pretty sure I can bench an extra ten pounds (a tenfold improvement). As for the other one, well, there's always _____________.
Based on your desired feeling, please fill in the blank by choosing one of the following:
DEEPLY OFFENDED: "blind chicks"
TAKEN ABACK: "whores"
RUFFLED: "the latest issue of Barely Legal"
DEEPLY PROUD OF YOUR SON: "my mother, who will love me in a strictly platonic way even if I become one of those fat shut-ins you see on Springer"
By now it should be clear that I enjoy climbing. So this weekend, Tim, Laura, and I entered the "fun class" of a local bouldering competition! It was, indeed, big heaps of fun. There were fourteen climbs in total, any of which you could attempt on any of your fourteen chances. A climb is a marked sequence of holds/rocks whose use you are restricted to on your way to the climb's "goal" hold. A chance ends in either a successful ascent (getting both hands to the goal) or a fall. I managed to finish a whopping four. Tim and Laura, both more athletically gifted than I could ever hope to be, finished ten each! (Only a few guys finished all fourteen.) The best climb was definitely what we dubbed "Mission: Impossible" (Tom Cruise movie, not the TV series), in which you had to start with an awkward step-up move facing away from the wall. To add to the cinematic effect, a spotlight was aimed at you! Pretty funny stuff. I couldn't finish this climb, but I did manage to get the start on my first try, which felt nice. Throughout the competition the other climbers were really encouraging, constantly shouting "ganba" (short for ganbare, which is the imperative form of the verb ganbaru, meaning "to do one's best". It is used to incredible excess in Japan (it has been used at least once in literally every single sports interview I've seen here)) when you were having trouble and cheering when you got a hold.
Today we watched some of the open class (highest-level climbers) preliminaries and all of the finals. Sweet Jesus. Those guys flung themselves around like flying squirrels in a nature film.
As usual, I failed to photograph this extremely cool event. But I'll be back next year, and hopefully I'll fare a little better than tied-for-second-to-last!
A complete lapse in the month of May? Terrible. I can only blame my anxiety at being less than thirty-one days away from the big two eight, which has now come and gone without so much as a stroke, heart attack, or broken hip. Suck it, AARP, apparently I ain't goin' down without a fight. All in all, my first Japanese birthday was dandy. The highlight was, naturally, the evening of foolishness.
Relevant aside. I bought a mama-chari last week. It's a style of bike that, were you to be anything other than an old woman, and were you to be riding one anywhere in America where you could be seen by another person, that person would yell "nice fucking bike, dork!" and throw something at you. But Sapporoites are mad for them. This actually makes sense: the city is almost completely hill-free, the sidewalks are really wide (this may be by bike-friendly design), and they're incredibly cheap. Mine was 4000 yen (about $40). I have no idea how I lived without one for so long. The 10-minute deathmarch to the subway station is now a 2-minute joyride. The grossly overpriced 240 yen subway ride to Susukino (debauchery/bar district), a 20-minute jaunt. This thing pays for itself!
Anyway. Rode beloved mama-chari into town and proceeded to do a three-hour nomihoudai (all-you-can-drink) with most of The [snow]Boardo Crew (present: Tim Laura Myles Naomi Ben. absent: Merek Mark Paul. All lovely people whom I really ought to have pictures of.) and a few other folks. The bar gave me a free wacky birthday sundae, which contained everything from corn flakes to ice cream cones (not making this up). Good times. After the kegs ran dry, we headed home. Being semi-drunk and generally uncoordinated, I managed to get into a mama-chari accident with Ben in the middle of the street. Fortunately, booze + the general ridiculousness of the situation overrided the pain of the newly exposed flesh on my hands and knee. I was laughing so hard I didn't notice the passers-by on the street who stopped to gawk and yell "nice fucking bike, dork!" at me in Japanese.
What else? The snowboarding season finally came to an end in early May. We spent most of Golden Week (week in which four national holidays occur) at the nearest resort trying to hurt ourselves. I actually managed to get better! I can now do the following incredible things: a 180 (if I'm going slowly on a gentle slope), the world's lamest grab for roughly 0.2 seconds, and I can ride the funbox (a box 10+ feet in length and about 1.5 feet wide topped with something easy to slide a board on that looks like plexiglass). Budding filmmaker Tim has video of these incredibly lame achievements and is in the process of editing them into a video featuring The Boardo Crew, to which you will all be subjected at some point.
What else? I went on a fieldtrip with the first-years today! We went to a park, cooked, then came home. (The second-years and third-years take longer trips which involve one or three nights, respectively, on the road.) It was actually pretty fun and I took some pics.
| After arriving at the park. |
| Decending to the site of pickinick madness. A sea of blue athletic uniforms! |
| Now that's a fire! Fans are an integral part of the Japanese grilling experience, and these kids seem to know what they're doing. |
| Apparently soda cans are excellent rice-cooking vessels. |
| Let's enjoy cooking! |
| Let's enjoy eating! |
| Let's enjoy banner! It says: "First-year slogan: eternal friendship, sun [clan/family]. Slogans are huge in Japanese schools. Every class has one, every grade has one, and I believe every school has one as well. Coming up with a slogan is just one of the countless "group unity" activities kids have to do at school, presumably intended to bolster the group-before-the-individual ethic that pervades Japanese life. |