A Quick Rundown

Been real busy recently.

Seems like I'm gonna be busy until the summer time, with Nick's wedding and the Hawaii trip right before that, and right before that, the exploratory Yamaguchi surf trip with Keoki and Steve. Work is pretty exciting too, we have a Hungarian exchange student that's gonna be with us for an entire year, going to classes and living the Japanese life. She doesn't speak a word of Japanese though. No surf recently. Did have a basketball tournament though, we were humbled in the championship game. Here's some pics and quick captions/stories behind 'em.

Had our area basketball tournament the other day. Because we had won our C-level league at the last tournament, we were moved up to the B-level. First game we were lucky to pull the other weak team, and beat them. Then proceeded to get murdered in the championship. I got a lot of points, but all after the game had already been decided. (We started the game down 19-0!)

The pictures above are from the tournament after party. It was held at the team captain's house, Ryuuji. He has that keychain, and is unsheathing the sword up top.

These are from the other day. I had gotten off work early and wanted to check out the surf, even though I knew it was only going to be knee high. The second picture is me reacting to the light changing and missing the picture of the landscape I was about to take.

Slid up to Kokura this past weekend to get nots with the boys, and Ash. After talking trash about everything from OIA/BIF/ILH rivalries, if smoothies are gay or not, and my impregnable trump strategy, I got really drunk and passed out.This is the only picture I feel comfortable showing.

Mongolian Studs

The other night, a couple of friends and I hit up a Mongolian restaurant. The story, in pictures.

Where the trouble started.

The first level.

Mongolian, (probably not actually).

Level two. Points of interest: And1 shorts rolled up, ridiculous headonly tan. And, I don't know how Brent got that last shot.

My dad would be pissed...I let him get the wrist angle. Lost.

Bored at Work: Wow

Stole this from Truehoop today, but man, how nuts is this?! My measurement was 7 inches. Try yours.

Compare hands with Al Jefferson.

Satoshi's Wedding

This past Saturday, a good friend of mine, 聡 (Satoshi), got married to his long time girlfriend, ゆき (Yuki, don't know her kanji). I know Satoshi from my basketball team, the G Suns. He's the resident big man on the team, and always throws nice outlet passes.

This also happened to be my first real Japanese wedding. I had been to a bunch of 二次会's (nijikai - wedding reception-type party) before, but I had never been close enough to the couple to actually be invited to the real thing. There's a lot of etiquette involved in a Japanese wedding's preparation (RSVP, special envelopes, real polite language), so I was kinda surprised to see the actual ceremony.

(On a side note: I had talked to my boy Nick Riley about this a while ago, but somewhere along the line, we had become Japanese snobs. In the sense that, when we came to Japan, we didn't know one Japanese phrase. To be honest, I am pretty proud of my Japanese, but I really shouldn't be critiquing other foreigners' Japanese, as there are other people who are ridiculously better than I am - Joel, Sean, Tim. But, when I hear someone say they are very good at it, and then proceed to be terrible...it's like nails on a chalkboard. Really.)

The wedding had Western and Japanese elements to it, which was cool. What was interesting though, was the Japanese interpretation of the Western style wedding. In the chapel, there was an American pastor, who was doing the service in Japanese, which was pretty interesting. (See above.) What is lacked though, is the solemnity of a traditional wedding. The entire time cell phones were out, pictures being taken, conversations held. I was a little surprised, but, when in Rome.

After that, we moved on to the reception, which was awesome. Satoshi and Yuki were seated at the very front of a big ball room, with all the guests seated by affiliation. (I was with the ballers.) There were slideshows, speeches, crying, and the team had a little routine set up. Our point guard, Ryuji, got a golden basketball and had all of the team members sign it. (I signed, we gotta protect the lane!). We lined up around the room, and passed it around to all the members until finally, it got to the front where Satoshi was sitting, and the captain of the team handed it to him, saying, 'For your special day, since you lost your balls, heres a golden ball.' It was awesome.

After that, we headed to the afterparty, from where things get a little blurry. A bunch of stuff went down, but these were the only things that I got pictures of. Good times.

Brent's Week of Nonsense (and The Many Faces of Karaoke Clint)

Brent, hollering. Me, trying to hang on.

Brent, the ALT from the year before, came back to Fukuoka to see the graduations of the school's he was teaching at. He was hanging out at the spot for about a week, and literally everyday we did something. I, at various points during the week, literally felt myself getting fat. There aren't enough pics to document all that went down, but this is the general feel of it.

KARAOKE FACES

It was pretty much a week of drinking, laughing, and not sleeping. Great times.

A Taste of the Japanese Sushi Restaurant Experience

I'd write more on this, but I don't really have time. Just check out the people's reactions.

My New Year's Resolution Is...

I wished him good luck.

Bored On Wednesday Night

Nobu, jammin'.

Really?

I was talking to my friend the other night over dinner, and she was like, "You look like someone...who am I thinking of?" She then said ジョンレンオ (sounded like John Lennon). It took me a while to figure out what she meant. Finally, I had time to look it up. This is who she meant...

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000606/

I'm not sad, but then again, I'm not happy either.

Stupid Stuff

Here's two little dumb stories that have happened to me in the last couple of days.

Hard cross in front of Grandma

I've been reading SLAM DUNK, and really getting into it. In the book, there is a part where 赤木 (Akagi) and his couterpart 魚住 (Uozumi) are going over how they really stressed fundamentals before they became really good players. Footwork, passing, dribbling, they drilled everything into the ground. This struck me particularly because I'm the type that normally either skips fundamentals entirely, or skims it briefly. This usually leads to me looking like I am good at something until someone who actually is good at it puts me in my place. I've been wanting to have my fundamentals down in everything, that's been my goal for a while, so have that in mind as I continue the story.

I had just gotten home from Germany and was coming home for lunch on my first day at school. My house is pretty close, but there are a lot of small little streets you have to take to get there. There's usually no one out, so with that in mind, I decided I wanted to channel my inner 赤木 and rock some dribble drills and look at my footwork. I start dribbling a ball that's not there, and

went ahead with it. Hesitations, cross-stop-crosses, fastbreak moves...I was doing it all, and doing it real deliberately too, to see where I could find the faults in my footwork and correct them. I was real sure to notice everything I was doing, but, one thing I didn't notice was the old Grandma at the end of the street watching the retarded dancing white boy advance up the street towards her. Our eyes met. I stopped mid-double cross, looked straight ahead, and walked right past her. I'll stop juking in public from now on after the look I received from her.

Wig as Weapon

After coming back to Japan, I had a lot of money to exchange, dollars and euros. So, I went to the bank to change it. They sat me at a booth and took a while to get all the papers together, and during that time another person was seated across from me and was told to wait as well. I looked up and was a little surprised by what I saw: a middle aged Japanese man with what looked like Alopecia wearing an amazingly ill-fitted wig. I reasoned it was Alopecia because the man had no eyebrows, no sideburns, and no hair flow going into the wig. It was just propped atop his head. It was something that your eyes were just magnetized to, whether you wanted them to be or not. That wasn't the weird part though. His customer service guy came back earlier than mine, and I wanted to watch to see how he would react to the wig. As he was sitting down, he didn't really look in the man's direction, and the man began to talk about his situation. The bank guy blinked, and was naturally going to look at what it was that had landed on his customers head, for maybe a milisecond, but in that milisecond, the wig man had caught him on the way up. Almost like getting caught looking at a girl's tits, it was like that, that kind of feeling. He had caught the guy red-handed, and was now going to punish him for it. He had the customer service guy right where he wanted him; he then proceeded to speak in an authoritative tone. It looked almost planned. Was this a way of establshing control? How long had he been doing this? The whole thing had me intrigued. From then on, I decided to be careful around men with ill-fitted wigs - they might be that way on purpose.

Traveling

The other day, I had finally gotten back online to check some stuff after my Germany trip (more on that later), when I saw my boy Joel had had some trouble getting home this Christmas. Reading his stuff, I fully sympathized with his situation. This holiday season has been by far the most stressful traveling season I've ever dealt with. Here's the, at times embarrassing, details.

• Leave Fukuoka for Tokyo on the 22nd to catch my flight on the morning of the 23rd. Catch a flight in the afternoon and arrive at Narita Airport Hotel at around 830 PM. They ask me for my passport. I spend a solid two seconds looking for it before that funny feeling that I had on the plane and train to Tokyo that I had forgotten something was terrifyingly realized. Immediately remember that the passport is on the table in Fukuoka. I go about finding out how to get a new one, get the number to the American Embassy, they say no can do. Best you can do is go back to Fukuoka, pick it up, and come back.
• Change flight to Amsterdam, have to cancel the connecting flight to Germany, and go to sleep knowing that I have to go to Fukuoka in the morning.
• Get on shuttle to airport, buy ticket to Fukuoka, go, get on the train to my house, get my passport, get back on train, buy another ticket to Tokyo, renew my hotel for one more night. Left at 8 in the morning, arrived back at hotel at 930 PM. Sleep.
• Get up early to make absolutely sure that I catch my Christmas Eve flight to Amsterdam. Catch it. 11 hours, no sleep.
• Get to Amsterdam, still not relieved though, gotta get that train ticket to Nuremburg. Get it, have one transfer. After I transfer, I'll be able to get all the way to Germany and the party that's waiting for me at my mom's house. My train is at 6:45 PM and I have a 15 minute cushion between trains.
• First train delayed 15 minutes. As I'm pulling up, the train I was supposed to be on starts to pull out.
  
• Run up to station master, explain the situation, she says only one way to Germany as that was the last train. Gives me piece of paper and tells me my train leaves in two minutes from Gate 8. I run, and make it.
• Original train would have gotten me to Nuremburg at 1035 PM. New improved train schedule gets me to Frankfurt, 3 hours away from Nuremurg, at 133 AM. I have 5 transfers. No thoughts of sleep. At one of the transfers, a Dutch station officer sees the book I was reading, The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman. He asks for my ticket in Dutch, I say I don't understand and he asks again, in hurried English. I give it to him, and as I'm walking away, he says, "Ann you know my fren, I tell you sumsing...the world is not flat." I smile and walk away.
• Make all my transfers, and arrange with my stepfather to have me picked up from Frankfurt. Drive three hours to their house. He and his friend have already driven three down, and are driving three back up.

So, that's how it was. From that first 50poundweightinthestomach feeling, to finally, finally getting there. The time and money spent was...sickening, but it also felt good, in a way. It really made you think on your toes, think with a purpose. It sucked from a financial standpoint, but it was a challenge to say the least. I was happy though, because in the morning, I woke up to this.



Introducing, my little sister, Isabella Marie Lenzini. I have never said, "Hey, I don't play that" more to one person in my life. More on the actual trip later. On with the travel theme.

• Spend a mean week and half in Germany and get on my plane in Stuttgart to Amsterdam, then make my plane from Amsterdam to Narita. So far, so good.
  
• From Narita, catch train to Tokyo for my Shinkansen to Fukuoka. Train from Narita to Tokyo station takes an hour and a half. Luckily I had set up my train for later in the day. Happy with my foresight in that decision.
  
• Get to Station, put ticket into machine, doesn't work. Doesn't seem to be working for anyone, I go to the manual line, the man takes my ticket and stamps it. I get on the train.
• Putting my luggage on the rack, a man comes up and says that I am in his seat. I take out my ticket, and show him that Car 6, 14 C is actually my seat. He looks at the ticket and says, in that incredibly irritating Japanese tone that anyone who has lived here long enough can hear from a mile away, "三日？三日？！今日は四日ですよ。フォウア。" (The third? The third?! Today is the 4th dude.)
• Stop and immediately realize that while my flight to Europe would have gotten me there on the same day, East to West travel gains you time, that West to East travel has you lose time. I was a whole day late with my Shinkansen ticket. I thought I arrived on the 3rd, but had actually arrived on the 4th.
  
• Immediately take stock of my situation: I have a ticket for a train that left yesterday, but the man at the gate had already stamped it. I've at least got that stamp, which says that I am supposed to be on the train. Usually, after every stop on the Shinkansen, people walk up and down the aisles and check the tickets. Once they check you though, you're good. I ran through my options: 1.) find an open seat in the car, wait for the man to come through, hope he doesn't notice the wrong seat and date, and be good from there. Knowing Japanese thoroughness, this would not fly. 2.) Find a seat in the unreserved car, wait for the man, and explain my situation. This would have been ok, but also had the added danger of having to pay for my entire trip again. After all the money spent on wasted trips, I was not in the mood to spend another dime on wasted travel. 3.) Elude that man every time he comes down. This was especially difficult to do, as the dudes that walk up and down are especially curious. I also had a huge suitcase. There was also the added danger of the dude that was sitting in my seat and staring at me as I was hashing out my situation; he could blow the whole thing up at anytime. I decided to jump into the inbetweencars car, and thought it out.
  
• I choose option 3. Forget paying money, and forget feeling bad about lying. I had had too much bad luck. My train leaves from Tokyo to Hakata, a 5 hour and 13 minute trip. First, I put my bag on the luggage rack on Car 6, when irritating (but correct) dude was not looking. Then, when the train man made his way down the aisles the first time, I was still in the inbetween car, on my phone, arguing in English. (My phone was dead.) He looked at me, stopped, and then walked past. First run, all good. I had like 12 more stops to go. There was no way I was getting out of it. I figure that the next time, he'll ask me for sure, on the phone or not.
  
• Next stop. He comes down again, I take my phone out and pretend I'm listening. He walks right past. How long would my luck last? I was standing in the inbetween car of a reserved car the whole time, they would have to notice eventually. You're not supposed to stand there if you don't have a ticket. Knowing this, I made sure that the next stop would have me in the bathroom.
• Goes right past, while I'm in the bathroom. Had some funny looks from other workers, but ignored and walked on. Only at stop 3, and I'm thinking there's no way I'm doing this the whole way.
• I do it the whole way. Bathroom, phone, whatever I could, I was the (I think) only passenger on that train who did not have his ticket checked. Each stop brought new danger. I stayed in that little inbetween car the entire trip, huddled up into the corner, reading books and pretending to be on the phone. There was one time, when I, alone, was approached by two train dudes. I saw them in the mirror, asking each other whether they should talk to me. They decided against it, and moved on. Crisis averted.
  
• Last stop. Get my bag when no one was looking and I was sure that the man had already come down for the tickets. Wait at the inbetween door. Even though I had made it all the way to Hakata, I still wasn't safe. I needed to show my ticket one last time. Knowing the ticket wouldn't go through the machines, I needed to time my exit perfectly with a man taking tickets. Get off the train and head for the ticket machines. Again, fortuitously, some people having trouble with tickets, go to the manual man. He begins taking tickets. I walk to him, hand him the ticket with confidence, he looks down at it. I walk past, ready to run if need. Get to the escalator, mix with the crowd, and exhale. I'd done it.
  

More on the actual trip later.

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: In Public?

I have never eaten a booger. The idea is just beyond sick and I can't even imagine doing it. These guys, though, apparently, have no problem with it. I love how they try to hide it too.

See, this one could kinda go either way, could've just been a slip.

This though...I knew a dude when I was in elementary, he would peel off his scabs and eat them. Was Kevin Durant like that too? His classmates must be like, 'Oh, that nasty kid from school is doing well now. Feel bad for his teammates though.'



In the middle of the game, god damn...



Totally unacceptable. No mistake here.



Did someone say something to him? What do you do when your congressman eats his boogers? You HAVE to change your vote, don't you?

At that.

Who I Want To Be When I Grow Up

(1:42) "Got me smilin', I don't smile; Got me changin' my expression, I don't express."

Is John Tesh for real?

It really seems like he is. It almost doesn't seem real, but I guess there are actually people like this. Check out the dueling violin/guitar solo at the 2:40 mark.

He Actually is for real.

After I showed mad people the 'cross' video, and after watching it a hundred times and laughing to myself, I decided to look a little deeper. I found a couple more videos, which are pretty good, but don't have the same shock value as the first. Still hilarious though.

'Triple combo. Be tricky, be explosive with it. Old school cross.'

He also has a pretty professional looking site. I'll be honest, this dude can probably ball. He played D1 at Austin Peay, so he can't suck. But...God DAMN, what a character. On the site it says he has trained NBA players. So, the next time we see the 'stepoutcrossboom' in a game, we know who to thank.

StepSealCrossPushAndGo

I would love to ball with this guy. I'm not sure if this guy is for real or not, but he does have a lot of videos up. If you are lazy, just watch from about the 1:10 mark. Unbelievable.

Bored at Work: Slip-ups

I've finished my classes for the day, and the planning for next week, so, again, I explored Youtube when I should have been studying Japanese. 暇人だよね. In class, I couldn't get a couple of words out, and said something I probably didn't mean. For example, today, I had a student whose name was 野崎(Nozaki), but I misread her handwriting, and in front of the class, said 覗き(Nozoki), which, unfortunately means 'peeping tom'. I thought it was hilarious, but the girls in the class didn't really. Here's some other unintentional comedy stuff I found on Youtube.



I like the reaction.



Again, check out Lavin.



Classic.