"We the dope boys of the year, drinks is on the house."

I never wrote about my 24 hours of fame, so I'll do that now. Here. I will combine the twenty-six agreed upon drawings in order to tell you how I feel. This way, you can access my thoughts from a box that sits in your home. You're doing it right now. I can see you, %n.

At the end of November, the teachers of Nirasaki Technical played Nirasaki High in its annual rivalry soccer match. "Your kids might be smarter than ours, but let's see who can kick a sphere into a rectangle! With your feet!"

Like most things in Japan, the game started exactly as scheduled (16:45), so I missed the beginning due to working at Norin that day. When I arrived, a fellow teacher took off his jersey and handed it over. He gave me the shirt off his back. I warmed up and stretched, but I wouldn't be going in until the second half.

We were down 1-0 at halftime due to a blown call by the referee, one of our own students! He signaled for a free kick as a result of a defender passing the ball back to our keeper who allegedly handled it with his handlers. But he didn't! He crouched down to pick the ball up before he remembered the rule and backed away! I was flipping out on the sideline while everyone else was passively accepting the call. This is no time to be Japanese, Japan. Think of the stakes. Does Nirasaki High deserve the kids who perform better on standardized tests and the teachers who perform better at organized sports?

The momentum shifted in the second half after I scored the equalizer. The soccer team's assistant coach played a nice through ball that I cut across the keeper's body before slotting it into the open net. The crowd went wildish. I was lifted into the air by teachers I had shared only a handful of words with.

"Nice shoot," they said.

Ignored tense confusion, I did.

Actually, "nice shoot" is just one of many mistranslated phrases that have entered the Japanese vernacular. It's the same reason people say "see you" rather than "see ya" or "see ya later." (Trust me, it's quite jarring when you hear it.)

We possessed the ball for much of the second half, but we couldn't score another goal. Which is why we went into the penalty shootout. This being Japan, the penalty shootout would more closely resemble a row of five women from each school lining up to play rock, papers, scissors. By closely resemble, I mean this is exactly what happened. We lost the first round. We lost the second round. We lost three rounds in a row.

But there's always the after party.

Teachers from both schools caravan'd to a local izakaya, and we kampai'd for the occasion.

Several dishes were set before us, including a fried appetizer described as kaki aka persimmons. I bit into it expecting refreshing fruit only to get oyster. Ah, yes. Kaki can mean either.

I have mentioned this before, but it is uncustomary to refill your own glass in Japan. This is code for: If you're a foreignor, you will never see the bottom of your cup because teachers and principals who rarely ever say a single word to you will constantly come over saying "nice shoot," pour you more beer, produce English that has never been heard before, give you food, call you a friend, say they like you, ask you if you're married, ask you to stay another two years, be really surprised that you like sushi, make you take your glasses off and hand them to a fellow teacher because apparently there has been an inside joke for several months that you look exactly like this guy, only he wears crisp suits to work while you wear sweaters over your wrinkled dress shirts to avoid having to iron them and he doesn't wear glasses so you should let him try yours on so that everyone can laugh at how similar you two look.

The next day at school, several students who watched the game approached me to say "nice shoot." I appreciated the sentiment, but a bitter taste lingered in my mouth because of both the bad free kick call and the whole deciding-the-game-by-rock-paper-scissors thing. I stared at my supposed twin and decided that he doesn't really look like me. He doesn't even wear glasses.