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.

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.

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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"

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.

Ventforet olay olay!

After getting my hairs cut Saturday, I went to Kose Sports Park with Tiffany to see Ventforet battle the "bad boys" of Hiroshima. I've never witnessed a soccer game outside of the U.S., so expectations were high.

I was not disappointed. What follows is a list of cultural learnings:

1. Remember the Chicago Bulls entrance music that was catchy enough to single-handedly fuel the sale of not one but several sports music compilations called Jock Jams?

Ventforet comes out to, oh, "Pomp And Circumstance." The last time I heard that song, I was in a stadium filled with peopl... Forget it.

2. The various crowd chants are delivered to the tune of American classics such as "Copa Cabana" and, wait for it, "O Christmas Tree." I am not funny or rich enough to make this stuff up.

3. When the chanting stops, it is dead quiet. Granted this only happens for about thirty seconds every thirty minutes, but it's eerie. The next time I go to a game, I might literally drop pins to see if I can hear them. See if I can hear? What is that, synesthesia?

4. Ventforet is french for "wind forest." Why!

5. NO ONE wears anything other than team apparel. No one but Tiffany and Kevin.

6. Ventforet's mascot is a wolf. When little girls wear wolf-ear barrettes, it is cute. (Sidenote: Kawaii is cute, whereas kowai is scary. A fellow JET once made a little girl cry by confusing the two.)

7. When the concession stand runs out of yakitori, the girl behind you in line will yell "yakitori!" and then moan as if her heart has been broken. It's chicken on a stick.

8. When Kevin's stomach processes the concession stand hot dog, the concession stand hot dog will flip out and kill Kevin's stomach.

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Ventforet won the match 2-1 in the 87th minute, thanks to a goal by Alberto de Souza.

As the team circled the stadium for its victory lap, the collective chant of "Alberto!" silenced all existing pins.

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(Photos by Tiffany Minaret Sakato)

Getting cut up

A man walks into a bar(ber shop). He inserts a 1,000 yen bill into a machine by the cash register. A card slides out of the machine. He grabs the shiny card and takes a seat. He does not literally "take" the seat, but he is using American slang. Bear with him. The man now notices a sign under the machine that took his 1,000 yen bill.

"Sorry, We can only serve people who speak Japanese. Once the haircut begins, we cannot change the hairstyle."

The man panics. He is very keen on changing hairstyles once they begin. He also does not speak Japanese.

He reaches into his bag for an English-Japanese dictionary. He cradles his body over it, hoping no one will notice his illegal operation. He memorizes key words: onaji (same), ue (top), katto (cut), buza de yobu (with buzzer), inchi (inch). He closes the dictionary and then opens it again, believing he has forgotten what he has tried to remember.

"They are totally on to me," he thinks to himself. He realizes he says or thinks the word "totally" a lot, and he becomes self-conscious.

One of the barbers is now available, but it seems the man has made an error. He never signed in. He understands namae, so he nervously scribbles his name down in kanji. Lo Strange Glory, indeed.

The woman hands the man a 10 yen coin, for the haircut is only 990.

The man sits down and says the words from the pocket dictionary. What is the penalty for not speaking Japanese? Just take him away now, for he will fail.

Inches? The man has been ruined by the standard system of measurement. A curse upon your stubborn house, Americatown!

Fortunately, he knows the word for "more." The barber cuts and then cuts some more.

Thirty minutes later, the man meets a friend.

"It looks the same," she says. Onaji.

Hey, wolves. Meet Kevin after I've thrown him to you.

On Wednesday morning at 8:15 (fifteen minutes before school started), I felt a vibration in my left pants' pocket. I reached into said pocket to retrieve my cellular phone, the source of said vibration. I had electronic mail. My co-teacher (who I teach three classes with on Wednesdays) was letting me know that she was sick. Would I be able to teach my classes alone? Surely, you jest. This is dramatic irony of Shakesperean proportions. Where is the laugh track? Where is Ashton Kutcher? Who would play me in a sitcom? John Cho, please.

Even better, I was ready to unleash by pronunciation lesson Wednesday, one that would supremely benefit from translations for tongue and teeth placement. It's OK. I had pictograms. I had my English-Japanese dictionary. Time to consult.

With a combination of repeated hand gestures, miming, laughing, poorly pronounced Japanese (also ironic considering the topic of the lesson), I survived. Did the kids learn anything? No way to know 'til test time.

The most interesting part of the lesson was that "L" and "R" were not simply hard to distinguish, but the students consistently chose the wrong letter. Any time I said "grass," they swore it was "glass." Vice versa forever.

I also enjoyed "V" and "B" because I got to cross out "Kebin" on the board and see the look of astonishment on thirty faces. "Girls wear vests! We all want to be the best!"

On Friday, I got another go of the lesson with the co-teacher in place. Also in place were both vice principals, as Friday was evaluation day. Honestly, I think it was much more for the co-teacher than myself, and I got a kick out of the vice principals trying to say "right" and "light." Oddly, no students slept for long in this class.

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I apologize for today's sudden blog-iarrhea. Speaking of which, is there a letter arrangement more suggestive of its meaning than diarrhea? The word simply looks uncomfortable!