The Return of the Aoki Clan

Two weeks ago, I met up with Aaron Jones, his wife Hiromi, and super cute and cool kid, Beau. You may remember them from their last year's visit (the crazy underwater ninjas that ate raw octopus on the beach). Bummer that my camera was out of order this time around, but I had a good time hanging out and seeing them again.


(I managed to snap one with my cell phone... Check out this Handsome Stud. What's up ladies?)

So this year we had a more mellow time, we met up in Kyoto, and had lunch with a couple of friends of Hiromi's, who were really cool! We had a picnic lunch at a temple, and strolled around the grounds. Hiromi's friend is a travel writer, and he was really knowledgable about the area. Afterwards, we went to a sushi restaurant in downtown Kyoto, which was one of the best meals I've had in Japan. Definitely top 10 of all time.



We had this awesome blowfish dinner: everything had blowfish in it - the appetizer was Blowfish skin, lightly fried, the sashimi course (oh man it was awesome - octopus, sea urchin, blowfish, squid, tuna... all super fresh and great), deep fried blowfish (kinda like fish and chips... for rich people) for the pre-main, and an awesome blowfish "nabe" for the main. Nabe (pronounced "Nah-Beh") is a wintertime dish, it's basically a hotpot in the middle of the table, and you add meat, vegetables, tofu, and noodles to it. Afterwards they take the broth and make a rice-soup for the final course. Oh man you better believe I passed out after that meal.

Anyway, all I could think about during dinner was the Simpson's episode where Homer eats the wrong part of the blowfish and thinks that he's going to die. Ha man I love the Simpsons, and man I love blowfish, and man I love it when the Aoki clan comes to town. Thanks Jones-san!

Wanna go to the Pants Party?

A couple of weeks ago, I went to the Himeji Fighting Shrine Festival (Himeji no Kenka-Matsuri), which was a wicked fun day out in the sun, watching naked dudes carry and crash giagantic, heavy shrines into each other. There are a lot of festivals this time of year because of the rice harvest and the seasons changing, the Japanese of olden days would carry these shrines around their rice fields so that the crops would be blessed and the local god of the village could take a tour of the land. It's a total contrast to the ceremony I went to last year, which was somber and religious - this one has more of a carnival atmosphere with lots of food/drink stalls, and tons of tourists - they even sold tickets for stadium style seating!

Here's some pics, courtesy of Sara Revell, since my camera has been out of order:


This was the scene of 99% of the dudes at the festival. They had been drinking all weekend - getting ridiculously tossed, and having a ball. The thongs they are wearing are more casual versions of the ones sumo wrestlers wear, and are called "fundoshi." I bet you the sunburn takes the fun right out of the fundoshi (sorry, I had to).


I dunno how many, it may have taken like 50 or 60 dudes to lift and carry one of these things. I'll post my shots later, and you can see the agony on their faces as they are straining to avoid death by 2 ton shrine. After they hoist them up, while chanting "YOOO-YA-SA!" (it's supposed to power them up, like the mushroom in Super Mario), they crash them into the opposing team's shrines, in an ultimate display of Japanese manhood. As if the funny underpants weren't enough.


East meets West. Nobody told me abou the dress code!


Even the kids get into it.


I love the look on this guy's face. This is during the lunch break, all the shrine-bearers take lunch and lounge around for awhile, and re-whet their whistles for the final showdown.

... You know it just occurred to me how similary this festival is to the Folsom Street Festival in San Francisco. FSF is a bondage/S and M/kinky sex festival in San Francisco, and it's basically throngs of dudes dressed in leather chaps, harnesses, exposing their bare asses and getting ridiculously hammered all day. I guess Japanese and American culture aren't so different after all!

Gakko-Enkai

Gakko-Enkai is Japanese for "school drinking party," meaning that you go out and get smashed and stuff yourselves with your co-workers from school. I've been doing this for the last two days and man my liver is starting to hurt! Enkais are common culture with Japanese co-workers, especially at the "salaryman" level - they'll often go out with co-workers, clients, etc. on a weekly basis. Since school teachers are super busy, we only do ours about once every few months. It's a great time, because the teachers that never speak to me are super chatty after they get a few in them.

On Friday, I went out with my Junior High teachers, about 12 of us, to get "tabehodai" (all you can eat), and "nomihodai" (all you can drink for 90 minutes), at this yakiniku place. Yakiniku is Korean BBQ, but with a Japanese name. They have grills in the middle of the table and they bring out plate after plate of meat, veg, meat, meat, and more meat. It's awesome, it's like the 4th of July, but everything is bite sized and there are a bunch of small sauces to dip the meats into. Yum.

I sat across from Enoki Sensei, who I have never had a conversation with in my life... so, to break the ice I asked him how to read a Japanese character that was on the menu, and he responded in Engrish! Not only that, but we chatted throughout the entire meal, we talked about snowboarding (he's a bigtime skier), being married (he hates it), students (the kids are always talking shit), American beer (I explained that the big companies are crap, and that I would try to get some Newcastle for him), and other stuff that drunk people chat about. His favorite phrase was "Maikeru, speed up, speed up" as he pointed to my beer and then his watch, indicating that we should drink as much as possible during the nomihodai. I was like "Dude! I didn't know you spoke Angrish! We should'a been hanging out a long time ago!!" He and I are planning to go skiing/snowboarding together this winter. Cool, huh?

And... tonight, as I was walking back to the train station after frisbee practice, I ran into the principal of one of my Elementary schools and a couple of teachers - they were going to dinner and invited me along. This was a "special dinner - Kagoshima style," which is the prefecture that my principal is originally from. As we sat down in the restaurant, he explained that the house he grew up in also had a chicken farm on it, and that people from his neck of the woods eat every part of the chicken - from the rooter to the tooter! SO, I had my 2nd experience of raw chicken tonight, liver, heart, and a bunch of random parts that I couldn't identify but were super chewy and tasty occasionally. It was weird, but kinda fun. We had a bunch of other courses, chicken for the most part, and a special Japanese potato-liquor called "Sho-Chu," which is like whiskey, but not brown. It tastes like crap, to tell you the truth, but it was cool hanging out with this old Japanese dude hearing stories about back in the day.

Anyway, that's it for me. I gotta go, I think I got the runs from the chicken!

Bo-ru-rin-gu

I went bowling last week with 3 of the teachers from school. Man did I get my ass kicked! I bowled an 86 (alltime low score) and a 126 (meh), compared to a whopping 176 and 165 from momo-chan (means "little peach"), the school nurse. WTF?

Momo-chan, rubbing it in my face that she beat my ass. "Go home and practice, Maikeru. You need it."

That's Hagitou-sensei on the left, and Shirai-sensei on the right. Hagitou-sensei is a PE teacher, and she beat my score by a healthy margin. Shirai-sensei and I teach English together. We tied.

Man I gotta get some more practice in before I embarass myself anymore. I can't believe I lost!

Sports Day

Here's some pics from Sports Day at school. Finally got them uploaded. It was funny to see the Sports Festival the second time around, it's still interesting but it's the first of my "repeat" events going into the second year of being here. It wasn't that big of a deal to watch the events this year, I actually ended up horsing around with the kids all day. It was cool!

This year, the weather forcast was for rain, so we made these "Tero Tero Bozu," which you are supposed to hang in the windows to appease the weather gods to give us sunny weather. This one is mine. Cute, huh?

This is a 40 man, 20 leg race. This is one team, and they all have their legs tied together. They all have to cross the finish line, and usually there are some pretty spectacular wipeouts, followed by the prone person being dragged by their feet across the finish line. Ouch, talk about some wicked road rash.

Here's the fighting event again. Man this one still freaks me out, thank god no kids cracked their skulls open this year. Man, look how high that kid on the right is!

My artsy shot of the mucade race - the one where they tie their legs together and run like a Japanese centipede.

This is Saori! She is a 3rd year and captain of the tennis team. Super smart and nice girl. She's carrying a spear that has all the ribbons that the school's tennis club has even won.

Here's Imoto (l) and "Perfect Body." I keep forgetting Perfect Body's real name, but that's his favorite English expression. Imoto has a dimple in his chin, and so his nickname is "ketsuago" - literally meaning "ass-chin." Kid are so cruel.

Here's my boys! On the left is Takeomi, who is a big loudmouth 3rd grader. He has a great sense of humor and is funny as hell. One the right is this dude named "Shu" (!!). He is also a 3rd grader, but his girlfriend is in high school (and taller than him). He's pretty much the stud of the school, all the girls love him (of course, he's named Shu).

My boy Kazuki. He's another 3rd year and captain of the soccer team. He learned all of his English from hip hop records and our typical conversation goes like this:

Kazuki: Maikeru, what's up?
M: Nothing what's up witchu?
Kazuki: I-mu just keeping it real.
M: Oh cool. How's the hip hop?
Kazuki: H to the Izzo, V to the Izzay.
M: Cool man, see you Kazuki.
Kazuki: Peace out Maikeru.

Cool, huh?! He's one of my favorites.

This is Ai-chan, she is a 3rd grader, captain of the Kendo club. When she was in elementary school, she won the All Japan championship in her age group for kendo. That's Japanese fencing, where they wear the armor (what she has on) and helmets, and practice samurai swordsmanship. She wants to be a cop when she grows up so she can teach Kendo to people. She's badass.

Here's the two class clowns of the school, Fukumizu and Sho. Sho is a bully and a jock, and dumb as rocks, but he really loves reggae music and tries really hard in my class. He was a big screwup until the Sports Festival, when he got elected to lead his group (purple team), and then became really responsible and a good leader. Now that sports festival is over, he's back to old tricks again. Gotta love 'em.

Here's Sho's little sister, Misuzu. She's super smart and really funny! She kinda looks like Sho with a wig on.

After the sports festival, we had the big teacher enkai (dinner/drinking party) again this year. The all got really wasted and acted crazy - I on the other hand, exercised restraint after last year's debacle and decided to take it easy. The got so drunk this year that they accidentally dropped 65 year old Principal Ikeda on the ground when they were trying to human trampoline him. Jesus!

Even Habatan made a guest appearance, that's Nakae-sensei in the suit. He's a new teacher this year and super cool. We've chilled a couple of times and his English is pretty good. Funny guy.

Dragon Slaying

Man I'm slaying dragons, fighting bad guys, and collecting gold again. Friggin' Markane installed this game, called World of Warcraft on my computer about a month ago and I'm HOOKED!

I have always played video games as long as I can remember, Dan and I even had a Commadore 64, we used to rock out "river raid" and "godzilla" back in the day (man did I just date myself or what).

Anyway, this game is interesting because the level of detail and sophistication in the game - it's a multi-player online game, so you're playing with and against other nerds and 15 year olds from all around the world. They've even recreated EBay within the game, and it's extent is so far reaching that people will actually use real US dollars to buy stuff from imaginary characters within the game. Talk about fantasy creating reality.

The damn thing has me sucked in like a wet dry vac. The funny thing is, that there is a ridiculously high rate of addiction for the game, since technically, there is no 'end,' it just keeps going on and on, just as life would. There's numberous websites dedicated to people who want to quit (yes, I've read them), and even support groups for friends and families who want to do an intervention. The funniest thing is that South Park has even made an episode about the game (go to youtube.com and search for "south park warcraft" and you'll see some funny shit).

Anyway, if you're wondering why I'm not emailing you back, playing sports, blogging, studying Japanese, or leaving the house, now you know why. Now leave me alone, I gotta hunt down the renegade Trolls that keep attacking the villagers. Ahh sweet sweet videogames.

A perfect weekend

Man I love the Autumn weather here in Japan. "Akibara," is what the Japanese folks call it, and the literal translation is "sun shining on an Autumn day." What that translates to me is, good forkin' weather! It's sunny but not too hot, just enough to warm you when your standing in the rays, but there isn't a drop of humidity in the air. It's got a slight breeze to it, enough to ruffle your hair, but not enough to make your eyes sting or anything like that. It's GREAT!

So, in the spirit of good weather, I had an action packed 3 day weekend. On Saturday, I did yoga at home, and then went to Himeji for frisbee - we had a practice game against the Okayama University team. Usually about 15 people turn up for our practices. Okayama alone brought about 35 players, and all of them were really awesome (I found out later that this is the team that took first place at the beach tourney I went to last spring)! We ended up playing for 4 hours, the runs were so good.
It's about a 2 hour drive, so it was really nice that they came down to play us. Otsukare sama deshita! (Thanks for putting in the hard work!)... BUT we were lucky to have height and home advantage, and in the end we spanked them and sent them back to the dorms.

Yesterday I finally got a chance to go to the yoga class in Tatsuno, which took 30 minutes for me to reach by bike, but it was in this really cool athletic area called a "budo-jo," which is a traditional Japanese room used for karate, aikido, kendo, and other ass kicking martial arts practice. It was kinda weird doing asanas and meditation in this room where typically people are beating each other up, but after clearing out all the junk from my brain, it was really relaxing and I had a good session.

Afterwards, I went to Ayame's birthday party in Himeji, where we all stayed up until 5am hanging out and celebrating. Ayame is such a rockstar and has a hard liver man! I watched her pound down martinis like she was drinking coca cola. Atta girl. Needless to say, today was a little slow, and Markane, Quappa, and I went to Ako in the afternoon to have Okonomiyaki and for a long drive along the seaside.

It was a good weekend!