End of the Year Party: You so nassty

Our school's end of the year party, (忘年会 - translated as the 'forget the year party'), was this past weekend, a little earlier than usual. Here is the basic set up of an end of the year party at my school:

• Greetings, everyone real quiet and relaxed
• Vice Principal and Principal give speeches, congratulating everyone on their hard work over the year
• KANPAI!
• Usually someone that's not really good at speaking in front of people begins to speak in front of everyone about the game that is to be played tonight and is roundly ignored by the people now hurriedly drinking their beers
• Bingo (I won a box of Qtips this year)
• Uncomfortably loud senseis become even more uncomfortably obnoxious, alcohol flows
• When it becomes time to wrap it up, everyone stands up and...
• BANZAI!

After the party ends, a lot of people go out to their own drinking places. I always get invited to hang out with the guys who live in my area. Can you imagine how hard it would be to not understand Japanese and be in this conversation?

I try to take notes at these after parties too, because you get the really good stuff here rather than in everyday life. Here's what I learned from my last one.

1. 教授 (kyouju) - Professor
2. 差しでお願いします (sashi de onegaishimasu) - Go head to head, face to face against someone
3. 鬼の居ぬ間の選択 (oni no inuma no sentaku) - Finally being able to say something when the master of the house has left the room/house

I don't know how this came up, but as we were drinking and exchanged our knowledge of profanities, this is what happened. (Watch for language!)

Ride to the Station

This past week, we had our annual ALT midyear seminar. It was cool to see people you don't really get to see, and how they interact with their supervisors and stuff. That morning, I, for no reason other than my own curiosity, decided to film the bike ride from my house to the station. Here it is, with dialogue.

Top of the World Syndrome: A Small Example

I have this theory, and I've had it for a while: Top of the World Syndrome. It's basic principles are, once you have become content with your life, all the parts that make it up, and you are 'on top of the world', something happens which knocks you back into reality. In my life at least, there have been a number of times this has happened. The first time was a little jarring, but I've come to expect it, as it has happened so consistently. Today, I had another small episode with the syndrome.

I rode my bike to school today, in an excellent mood, and was greeted by the baseball team lined up outside the gate, saying 'おはよございます' to everyone that came through. Me, being in the excellent mood that I was in, and with the speed I had achieved from jamming to school (not from a downhill either, on a flat, that's how excellent my mood was), swooped in and gave 'em a 'HOOOOOOooooo Good Morning!!'. They answered back just as heartily. It was a good start.

I put my bike in the bike area and began to walk toward the entrance when I heard two kids call out a big hearty 'Good Mooowwwnnniinnnguu'! I turn around, and two of my boys from the baseball team who were cleaning up the bike area are smiling and waving. I'm feeling good now, so I look at them and, in a loud voice, go, 'WAAAAaaaazzzzaaaaapppp!?!? Goood Morning!!!', shakas all over the place, tongue out, just jamming. Now, in movies and stuff, you usually hear people say 'oof', but I always thought that if I were in a situation where I would need to say 'oof', I wouldn't. It doesn't seem natural. I found it today, that it is, indeed, natural.

Still shakaing and tongue out and looking at my boys, I continued my walk to the front entrance. I can't imagine their horror/excitement, because two steps in front of me was a parked car, right in my path, that isn't usually there. Without warning, I hit my knee on the bumper at a faster than normal speed because I was walking at a trotlike pace, turn just in time to get my elbows up in front of me to stop my face from knocking against the glass, and, still not sure what is happening, let out a 'OOOuuuFFFaaahhh' against this cars' back windshield, head slightly whiplashed. Still disoriented, I look at the car and immediately to the kids I had just said wassup to...and fuckin buuuuusted out laughing. Luckily, it was only the two boys, and not the entire team that saw it, but they t0o busted out laughing.

Top of the World Syndrome...gotta watch out.

Bored at Work: Natsu Matsuri (夏祭り)

This summer, I was lucky enough to be invited to participate in our city's annual summer festival, or 夏祭り. It was the first time a foreigner had taken part in it, so it was a pretty cool atmosphere. Me smarting from the small piece of cloth wrenched between my butt, and everyone else wondering why the foreigner was making a funny face the whole time.


This is us, easing out of the cultural center parking lot. It wasn't so heavy at this time, but we hadn't started running yet. Once we got to the main street, the guys in front started chanting, something that sounded like this: yuuushhhhshooooiieeee yuuuusshhhhshooooiiiieeeee. I got into it to, and we started jamming.

It was a pretty heavy float, and the dude standing on it was jumping around and having a good time. I had a funky weight distribution situation, because I was tall but at the front, so I had to stoop a little and run with a slight bend in my back. All in all though, it was awesome. Just thought I'd share.

Life in a Different Country

I got this from FreeDarko, some French television program following Nicholas Batum through his pre-draft workouts. I can't tell you how many times this happened to me when I got to Japan. It's long, so watch from about the 3:02 mark.

Windburn

The first cold water session ended up not being too bad. It was really windy, and kinda all over the place, but it was fun. Wasn't too cold either. I had just gotten my new wetsuit in, and let Keoki use it. As you can see, Keoki didn't exactly fit real nicely.

山口 was jamming as well, using his new 6'6 shortboard he had bought. Here's his pose to show how excited he was. (He actually stole this from a Japanese comedy duo, はんにゃ, I'll throw the video down underneath).

(Quick explanation: It's cleaning time at school. Neither of them want to clean so they decide to play a game, loser does it all by himself. Dude on the right suggests a game, and it goes from there. You should get it from there.)

After surf, jamming. It was pretty fun, but the next day, I had a weird feeling on my face. Keoki told me later on that it was windburn, something I had never had before. Freaky.

The Goal

I remember right around when I first started surfing, going all the time with Bryce to Barbers, I met this dude, well didn't actually meet him, I observed him. Me and Bryce used to always see this dude, on like a 9'6 or something like that, just ripping, like he was on a shortboard, busting floaters and cutbacks and whatever. We were just in awe of this dude, so we went up to him and asked him how he was doing it. He showed us how he was using just super small fins, only two of them, so he could get wherever he wanted to on the wave. Real nice dude too, super local but super friendly. Anyways, we start seeing this guy out all the time. Then one day, there was a big south swell, and a lot of people came out to Barbers. On that day, I observed the dude I was talking about earlier, who happened to be that longboard ripper's friend. I saw him and the longboard dude talking when I paddled out, and gave him the shaka. I then proceeded to watch the smoothest surfer I had ever seen. His friend was so mean. He surfed exactly like I wanted to surf. Nothing real fancy, just all about riding. From then on, I've tried to surf like that dude. He surfed a lot like this, Nat Young from Morning of the Earth.

The reason I bring it up is because 山口 and 徳永 are always like, why don't you do maneuvers? While there is one very good reason - I usually just can't - I always tell them I just want to ride, which doesn't really translate into Japanese.

So, today, me and Keoki are gonna head out. It's the first real cold water surf experience for both of us, so we'll see how it goes. The air is like 45 degrees, but the water is closer to 65. I'll try and take pictures if I can. With that.