Sunday, October 14, 2007

A low-quality video is worth 30 pictures a second.

Nirasaki School Festival this past weekend. Proper write-up should appear tomorrow. Here are two teaser trailers:




He's so intent on wiggling the arms!




There's just enough cowbell.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

I already used that festivus quote.


An Irish guy in a samurai suit? It's a little too Heroes (season two, chapter I) for my taste. So blame Dave for being a walking, Japan-flag wielding NBC cliche. And it doesn't take a Japanese history major to notice that his hat is totally pre-Shingen. Wee-ooo, wee-ooo, wee-ooo. Here comes the anachronism police!

Sunday in Nirasaki, muskets were fired. How else do you celebrate the homecoming of Takeda Shingen's son? The musket men (musketeers?) were surrounded by a few policemen standing in a rectangle with rope stretched taut around their behinds. They moved as the procession processed. A dog yelped after each shot. (Speaking of dogs, Lauren mentioned never seeing a mutt in the two months we've been in Japan. I'd agree. Either there are some serious breeding/spading/neutering requirements in this country or Bob Barker is a god here. Neither would surprise me.)

Some highlights:

An old man cut me in the snowcone line to buy snowcones for his grandchildren. Ethicist, what say you?

Seth bought a frozen, chocolate-covered banana only to discover the banana was room-temperature and the chocolate was some sort of waxy, choco-substitute. I'd buy him four more just to hear him complain.

Even at festivals where people are constantly buying crap, there's still no trash cans! Double you tee eff.

Lauren bought a crepe the size and shape of the Olympic torch. The "fire" was whipped cream! Remember Whatizit aka Izzy? Double you izit!

The largest spider I've ever seen (outside of a zoo) was spinning a web between trees that were about six feet apart. I do not have a picture of this. I will never have a picture of this. I cannot sleep because of this.

I bet you think this post is about you, don't you?

What follows might only appeal to two people who read this blog. One of them is Jon Levin and the other one does not read this blog.


This is the Japanese translation of "Favorite Song," a song we wrote together in college. It's Jon's favorite song of ours. I find the lyrics (my own) a tad trite, though when translated into Japanese, it will cause a high school senior to cover her face and shriek in fake (I hope) pain. I think it was a good thing.

Now the idea of spending an entire class period translating one of my own songs into Japanese could come off as egotistical. I will counter this argument by pointing out that you are reading a website entirely about ME. I am full of it. That's not new. In fact, this lesson only came about because a student asked to translate the song after hearing it during my (required) self-introduction speech. Ergo ego. (That last phrase doesn't make any sense, but I like the sound of it. I might go as far as saying it's my, umm, favorite sound.) Oh! Schnap! He did not! But he did. He definitely did.

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

soccer boppers, soccer boppers!

On the last weekend of September, the JETs from Yamanashi steered a five-car caravan to Athens in pursuit of Olympic Gold. And by Olympic Gold, I mean a case of beer and a trophy. And pride. And by Athens, I mean Nagano.

It started with a road block. Sachi's Nissan Laurel was resting (<-- get it? huh? huh?!) too long in front of Shereena's, and the delayed pickup disturbed a man in a home. He called the police. If foreignors gather in a parking lot in Japan, does anyone hear? Yes.

About an hour later, the group was an hour late to meet Dave, Charlotte, Chris, Kelly, and Kevin at a Chinese restaurant in Anayama. The on-time birds ate fried rice and gyoza and freaked out kids with the color of their skin. The irony of Kevin not having anyone to speak Chinese to in a Chinese restaurant is not lost on him.

With the complete caravan finally in tow, the JETs reach Nagano after two hours, two konbini stops, a 700 yen toll, and a lot of stopping at yellow lights. It's courtesy.

They discover that Nagano is cold. Nagano is wet.

In preparation for the following day's three games, the girls team goes to sleep. In preparation for the following day's four games, the guys gather in the lobby for beers. Excitement outweighs exhaustion.

Judging by this photo (taken by Lauren Cox), I am a soccer and human giant. I clearly scored 11 goals in six games and took home the beer trophy. This picture is not from the tournament. Do not judge by it.

In fact, the only goal I scored in six games was the one I put in right before game one started, when I managed to pull my right hamstring. It bothered me all weekend. Yamanashi was far from gigantic.

It is difficult to be giant-like or even giantesque when there are teams comprised entirely of 6-foot, 200-pound Irish and English men. It is difficult to win games when your team gradually falls to injury, player by player. It is. So at the end of day one, we were 0-2-2. Second division (read: loser's bracket), here we came.

But then it was night.

I saw white people dancing.

I had packed my shoes and my cripwalk, so I did that.

The DJ played Nelly but not Nelly Furtado.

I approached a girl and called her "Cauliflower." That is the name she put in my phone.

But then it was closing time. Finish your Suntory or beer.

Sleep was splendid, and Kim tried to slide open the wall in the middle of the night to pee.

Day two was a knockout round, and the dreary Irish climate made everyone want to get knocked out early. Everyone but Irish Dave, who flourished. For Yamanashi, trying to lose means you win 4-0. Onto the semifinals (of the, cough, non-winner's bracket).

We faced Saitama, who tied us in the last minute of a game yesterday. This time they beat us in the last minute. *Shakes fist to the northeast.* You are the Murdoch to our MacGuyver, Saitama-san.

The best cure for the soggy, cold blues? A plate of curry and a trip to the onsen.

In other news, the girls won the whole entire tournament and Shereena broke her ankle. They beat Saitama in the final. It appears anything we can do, they can do better.

-------

Technically related to soccer:
As I was taking the down escalator exiting Kofu station, a middle-aged woman was escalating upwards. She wore a navy blue shirt with no designs, just one word across the top in white: "BALLS"

Monday, October 1, 2007

Todo sobre mi madre

My mother is a fan of onomatopoeia. When your plate has food stuck to it, you must "scrabble" it clean. When things go a bit haywire or space is cramped, it is "crunky." My family loves this about her.

And here we are:


Crunky Chocolate. It tastes very much like Nestle Crunch. It's new!

It's a festivus for the rest of us.

Much has happened since I last checked in. Much can happen in a Yamanashi minute.

Let's begin with Friday's school festival at Norin.

Classes were shortened each day for the past few weeks so that the students could have time to prepare. There was dancing, there was singing, and there was this:


If the picture itself does not cause a kya, kya, kya (that's how Japanese laughter is written), I will divulge a few facts. The man chasing the chicken looks EXACTLY as he does in real life. The man chasing the chicken just happens to teach farming techniques, for Norin is an agricultural school. The egg being chased by the chicken also looks EXACTLY like the teacher it portrays. Ya know, if that teacher just happened to be an egg. (This would be the perfect spot for a joke relating interoffice dynamics to the chicken-or-egg-first paradigm, but I don't really know which came first.) I do know that many more of these paintings were made, and many more of them were brilliant slash risque.


Look, the steering wheel is on the right side of the car! That is so cragy! What next? Portable telephones?

There were a few other paintings that I wanted to photograph, but an entire classroom exploded with "Kevin sensei! No!!!" when I aimed my camera. I think the artist was a tad embarrassed of the drawing, or maybe it was fear of the Patriot Act.

For the singing and dancing portion of the festival, all the students gathered in the gym. Over the course of three hours, there was karaoke and choreography. There were three songs total that I could understand. The first was Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend," the second was Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend," and the third was Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend." To be fair, the third time it was actually scoring a movie showing students doing Tae Bo. Actually, that's not fair at all.

Speaking of movies, this was one day I wish I owned a digital camcorder. I'm pretty sure I witnessed the greatest air guitar performance of all time in the whole entire Earth planet. It was done by a teacher. He did backflips, leg kicks, played with his teeth, played over his head, fell all over the stage, played dead, resurrected himself, played alive, removed clothing and moved clothing around. This lasted for roughly ten minutes, and when it ended, the applause was lackluster. It was one of those Truman show moments where you look around and start yelling. Did anyone else just see that?! You rub your eyes. There are world championships for this sort of thing, and the greatest would-be champion to ever pick up an air guitar is giving the performance of his life on the small stage of an agricultural and horticultural high school in a small Japanese suburb of the prefecture's capital that's two hours outside of Tokyo. In the arrested words of Gob Bluth, "C'mon!"

At lunch time, they opened the school courtyard to allow students to sell some of their food creations. (They teach "Food Science" at Norin.) During the foodcourt smorgasbord, a band played Japanese punk-rock covers. I can't say with absolute certainty that they were covers, but the lead singer had trouble hitting all the high notes.

Next, there was this guy on the left:


Notice the towel in his back pocket. Notice the backward-turned, flat-billed, Yankees cap. Notice the Timberland shirt. He was... a really good rapper. He didn't quite carry the crowd, but this is the same crowd that yawned while the greatest air guitarist in the world left his heart on that stage. C'mon! My favorite part was when he freestyled: Japanese, Japanese, Japanese, "party people," Japanese, Japanese, Japanese, "motha fucka," Japanese, Japanese, Japanese, "West side. East side. South side. North side." I can only assume he was talking about Kyushu, Honshu, Shikoku, and Hokkaido, respectively.