Beach Bum

What's up everybody! I'm walking out the door right now, headed to Thailand for Spring Break!! 10 days of sitting on the beach, eating awesome Thai food, scuba diving, and working on my tan. Life is good!

Hope I don't get the 'rhea.

I was going to write about graduation, spring time and the plum blossoms, my trip to Kyoto, my trip to India, yakiniku (Japanese BBQ), and all sorts of really interesting stuff, but I've been too preoccupied thinking about my $5 massage and $12 beach bungalow and the grubbin' pad thai I will be mowing down on.

Stay tuned, I'll write about all that fun stuff when I get back, tan and happy.

Peace out!!
-m.

Mr. Ohashi

Speaking of simple things, I ran into one of my students, Mr. Ohashi on my way to the train station. Mr. Ohasi is 13 years old and he's in the special ed class. He's super energetic and really funny, and to tell the truth, I don't see why he's in the class (I asked, and it's because he's got a low IQ and a short attention span... like all the rest of the monkeys in the regular classes).

Anyway, this kid is funny. He goes out of his way to say hi to me and was one of the only kids to show up for my English club. When I ran into him, he was watching a backhoe loader in the parking lot of the recently closed grocery store. Just chillin,' pimpin' his lowrider bicycle, and enjoying the weather by watching a big machine smash stuff.

It made me think about the simplicity of being a kid again, when you could idle away the hours and not stress out about stupid things.

For a 'retarded' kid, Mr. Ohashi sure does have it figured out. What a guy.

The simple life...

So lately I have been catching myself reflecting on life and sighing with contentment, usually when I am biking home across the bridge. I pass the Ibogawa River everyday on the way to and from school.

The river has become kind of a companion to me, like the Old Man and the Sea. Hi River, Bye River. I usually stop on the way home to check the water level, the speed of the river, the color, the waves, and generally, it's tempermant and how it's doing. It's a lazy, shallow river that doesn't like to do much (insert Narcissus symbolism here, ha!).

Anyway, during one of these Garrison Keeler moments, I realized how much my life has changed in the last couple of years. It's really slowed down in these last 7 months, which is super cool! Nowadays, I get to watch the river, sleep in, travel, chill out in Zen gardens, explore castles, play sports, learn Japanese, eat weird food, and ride around on my mama-cherry bike. Life is good!

This is my view everyday. It would mellow you out too!

Ko-su Outo aka Backcountry Powder!!

... a few weekends ago, sick of the rinky dink hills here in Hyogo, I took a trip to Nagano, site of the 1998 Winter Olympics in search of big mountain riding... and boy did we find it. The main ski area is a two mountain range called Hakuba47-Goryu, meaning White Horse/5 Dragons. Well deserved names considering what an epic weekend it was.

On the advice of a local snowboarder, we spent the entire weekend riding "Course-Out-o" (out of ski area boundaries), which resulted in 40 minute runs through 2 feet of fresh, untracked powder snow. At any given moment you would be cruising knee deep in snow though trees, down bowls and valleys, natural halfpipes, and singletrack runs through the woods. It was amazing!

Sunrise on the way to the mountain.

The Ubiquitous Cute Japanese Cartoon Mascots

Maikeru scouts out the terrain. "It looks dangerous over there - that's where we should ride."

Keep Out in 3 languages. I betcha that's where the good runs are!

Uh, make that 24 Variable Courses (Merle illustrating our single run of the weekend). Love that new snow!!

If any of you ever make a trip to Japan in the winter, I highly recommend a trip to Nagano - I can see why they decided to have the Winter Olypics here, hot damn!

Testu-jin

So in this installment of `Required Listening for Japanese Students` I decided to shake things up a bit. The damn kids always listen to their weiner-J Pop, or their weiner Dancehall-Reggae (it`s low-qual stuff), so for class yesterday I decided that I would teach them about good old straight up Heavy Metal Rock and Roll. And who better to do that with than Black Sabbath?

It was really funny.

First, I showed them a band picture (Ozzy looking really scary) and an album cover (Grim Reaper) and explained that Black Sabbath was a band that wrote songs about Evil Things and told them about the story of Ozzy biting the head off a dove on stage. My teacher was a little reluctant to translate that into Japanese but she did... `EHHHH?!` was the reaction.

Then, I showed them how to do the Ronnie-James Dio `Devil-Hand` Metal-Power symbol (for those of you who don`t know, make a fist and then extend your index and pinky fingers, and then pump said fist into the air as you are rocking out). The kids were actually good at this, seeing as how they love to make peace signs when posing for pictures.

After that, I taught them how to Head-Bang, by doing the Devil-Hand at the same time jerking and snapping your head back and forth while rocking out. They got a kick out of that one!

Anyway, I had the junior Metalheads in rocking position, and then I qued up Iron Man (Tetsu-jin in Japanese), and explained `Okay kids, as you are listening to this, imagine a big metal robot that kills people chasing you, okay?` My teacher looked at me and said `Um, I can`t translate that. It will scare them.` Oh well.

So finally, I cranked it up full volume and lit it rip. The kids had no idea what to make of it and I think I totally weirded them out. I was sure that I was weirding them out when I started playing air guitar/drums and running around the room doing the Angus Black double leg scissor kick, but man that shit gets me so ammmmped!

Anyway, I guess kids are changing these days. I used to listen to Def Leppard, Sabbath, Guns n Roses, Metallica, Zep, and all those great rock bands when I was a kid. I blame all the TV and Internet. No appreciation for good music!

Next installment - `Essential Japanese for Devil Worship.`

J Pop

... also known as Japanese Pop. Dominating the music scene like a tasteless behemoth, the Industry (capital "I" like how The Man is capitalized) churns out pre-fab music performed by pre-fab artists, which is then eagerly gobbled up by the consuming masses, which comprise a good majority of my student body.

In burning CDs for my students, I have a rule that they have to bring some music for me to listen to and tell me about it. Usually it's this J Pop stuff and I tune out after the kid is talking for about 15 seconds and start daydreaming. 99% of it is total crap, to tell the truth.

BUT... There is this one song that is SO DAMN CATCHY!! I heard it EVERYWHERE I went for and finally broke down and bothered to ask what it was. It turns out, it's the best selling single of 2005 and is called "Seishun Amigo" (Youthful Amigos). AND man, can you really snap your fingers to it.

You can see the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NOX3RrlIa8&search=Seishun

It's performed by Shuji and Akira, who are characters from a TV show. It turns out the whole damn song is a promo for their TV show! The real guys are these two dudes named Tomohisa Yamashita and Kamenashi Kazuya.

I know it's bad for my health, but I can't help. It's my J Pop guilty pleasure. Whooooooooooooooo!

Worst Kancho of My Life - part II

So I saw the super-kancho kid again today at Elementary school, and he tried to pull the same shit, but I was ready for him this time!

So the little f'er came sprinting at me, and I faked like I had no idea what was going on, hand raised, ready to receive his deadly 1-2 high-five/front-kancho combo. At the last minute, I moved into blocking position, repelled his blow, and grabbed the sonofabitch.

Side-note: In Japan, there are no school custodians, so the kids do all the cleaning after their lunch. For about 20 minutes, the kids all do various jobs around the school. It's pretty cool, the kids take a little more ownership of the school and don't trash it as much as we did our schools in America.

Anyway, I put the kid in a headlock and noticed that he was riding a broom, witch-style (which he was supposed to be cleaning with). So I grabbed the broom at the front and the back (kid in the middle) and gave it a 2 foot rocket-boost into the air!

Super-broom-kancho!! Man I think his eyes almost popped out of his head. Ah, sweet sweet revenge...

Soy Sauce

So one of the things that my town is famous for is The "Higashi Maru (Western Circle)" Soy Sauce factory. They make some potent ass soy sauce - I ride by the factory every morning and if the wind is just right it's so strong it can almost knock you off your bike.

On Tuesday, a couple of dudes came in from the Soy Sauce factory to give a demostration on how soy sauce was made:

"This is the soy sauce that Godzilla uses on his sushi."

Soy here's how soy sauce is made:


- Water
- Big Beans, called "Daizu"
- Weed, called "Weed"
- Salt
- Ferment for 6 months
- Serve and enjoy with your favorite fish-flavored cuisine

It was cool because my kids taught me all kinds of new word during the lesson, like how to say "this looks like diahrrea," and "this smells like diahrrea," and "poisonous mushroom" in Japanese.

Worst Kancho of My Life

So this week I'm doing a teaching marathon at Elementary school - three days in a row, which is nearly Herculean, since just doing one day usually wrecks me. Since I rotate around 3 different schools, I get to each about once a month, so it make the kids super hyper and they get AMPED when they have a "maikeru sensei" spotting.

Typically, this means they run up to me and want to high five, and that's what I thought was going to happen yesterday when I saw this one kid, Yosuke. The little fucker spotted me from about 30 feet away, and ran full speed towards me with his hand in the air, as if he was going for a mega-high-five. I was in a good mood and so I let my defenses down (I usually walk around school with one hand over my junk and one hand over my butt), and while his high-five hand is distracting me, he hits me good and square in the nuts, dead-center bullseye.

Immediately my eyes started watering and I started seeing stars. Man it sucked!

A funny thing happened on the way home...

A couple of months ago, I was riding the train home from Osaka. I had been there all day and had to book it to make the last "rapid express" train of the night, which I caught with seconds to spare.

The train was packed butts to balls with Japanese "salarymen" (suit types), fresh from their after work binge drinking sessions.

*Japanese salarymen/women work from wicked early until fuckin' late, and usually once a week they go out for dinner/drinks with their co-workers, and get super trashed.

Usually the last train is packed, and on the trains Japanese people (usually polite and demure) turn from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde. This goes doubly for the denizens of Osaka, who are busy "salt of the earth" types. I've been cut you off plenty of times by obaa-chan (grandma) with a well placed elbow to the midsection. The image of Japanese sardines should be conjured up here (see previous post - how to Tempura Fry Sardines).



So there I was, swaying to and fro in a sea of stanky cigarette and booze breath. The place reeked. Just as I was trying to tune out, there was a gurgling sound behind me, glug glug glug. I turned around just in time to see this salarywoman burp up a little bit of purple puke and catch it in her hand. Whew, close one lady! Too much red wine at the enkai, methinks. Then, to my astonishment (picture this happening in slow motion), she covers her mouth to stifle the mass exodus of purple used-to-be-sushi-rice-seaweed-godknowswhat-mixture. Have you ever put your thumb over the end of a garden hose? You know how when you do that, it increases the pressure of the water and the distance of the stream?

This is what happened to the lady.

Luckily, I was to her left, and avoided most of the carnage... and unluckily for the people standing in front of her. This was like watching the Japanese Train version of The Exorcist! Hoooooaaaaaaahh! This one poor guy, his entire suit changed color from grey to purple-chunk in an instant. About three people were completely doused before the shower ran dry. Gross!

Then funniest thing happened - nobody did a thing! Nobody starting screaming, "Ew gross" and the people who got doused didn't say a word. AND, nobody helped out the woman at all (I gave her tissues, and a plastic bag). It was so strange, everybody acted as if nothing happened. This other guy, who had it all down his back and backpack rode the train for another 40 minutes, just standing there as is. I know that in the US, if this had happened you would have a whole train car screaming bloody murder. Weird huh?

So since then, I've been wracking my brain on why nobody did a thing. Here's a few of my thoughts:

- Maybe some Japanese people are super polite and don't want to make the woman feel like even more of a dipshit by making a big deal of it.
- Maybe some Japanese people get too embarassed (shared embarassment?) and it's stops them from helping somebody in distress.
- Or maybe some Japanese people don't want to stand out by making a stink of it, or help somebody if nobody else is doing it.

Anyway, I'm still thinking things over, but it was an interesting experience.

Funny thing is, this Japanese guy Masa, who has an awesome website (http://masamania.com/) took photographs of the very same thing happening. I highly encourage you to check out his site, it's got some very interesting (and funny) ruminations about Japanese life.

credit to: http://masamania.com/

Well, I certainly learned my lesson on that one - whatever you do, don't ride the last train home!

Su-No-Bo-Do (Snowboarding) Japanese Style!!

This last weekend was spent up in northern Hyogo (my "prefecture" - like a State (ie. California), in the US), in an area called "Tajima" at Hachi-Kogen Mountain (http://www.hachi-hachikita.co.jp/), having a forkin' awesome time people-watching the crazy Japanese skiiers and snowboarders, carving up fresh powder tree runs, and eating more crab than you can shake a claw at.

My first trip to the ski resort was two weeks previous, where I had taken a 5 hour bus-commute to arrive at 100% humidity (read: pouring rain) conditions that majorly sucked, and ultimately gave me the flu for three days (hey, I'm at the mountain, I gotta ride it, right?!). This time proved to be MUCH much better.

The trip was part of a big JET Ski weekend, so about 70 of us English teachers rented out a slopeside lodge and made a big weekend out of it. Day One was spent riding around cutting up the trees and dive-bombing Larries in a snowstorm, and then eating two dinners back to back (first was Pizza and Ramen, second was Crab Nabe - Japanese Hot Pot).

(Zainabu and I are about to wrassle for who gets the big claw. Look this HUGE plate of crabs! Between 5 people, we ate the entire thing... and 3 orders of fried chicken, a huge plate of veggies and tofu, and a big cauldron of hot-pot soup. DANG!)

(Here's a shocker - I ate way too much and am about to pass out... again. Nikster get this crab away from me!!)

After being subjected to some of the worst kareoke known to man (a bunch of old Japanese dudes crashed our hotel room and started belting songs out on the kareoke machine), I got a few hours rest, ready to take on the blue bird (super sunny and nice) Day Two. The morning was spent teaching Nikster and our friend Zainabu how to snowboard, and the afternoon chasing down the last runs of the day (our buddy John videotaped on his "follow cam" - I'll try to post the videos later, they are wicked funny).

(It's a Japanese Larry Convention!)

Japanese people love to do things in groups. Usually when they travel, it's through a travel agency that books a package tour - this was probably a "Learn how to Ski" tour group - I saw several of them on the hill this weekend, same clothes, same skis, an army of accidents just waiting to happen. It was really funny to see all of them stretching out in unison in the morning, and then going through the same exact motions when learning to ski. Snowboarding in the US is all about individuality - different art on your deck, the way you dress, the style that you ride, and here in Japan they are building a uniform army of skiiers. Cracks me up.

(PS - "Larry" is a Michelle Mikulic-ism for a lame-ass on the slopes that either 1) is sitting around and gets in your way, 2) rides out of control and gets in your way, 3) falls off the lift and makes it stop, thus getting in the way of your riding, 4) a yard-sale skiier, or 5) anybody who clogs up the lanes and somehow impedes your day.)

(Who let the skateboarder on the mountain?! (photo by Markane)

(Nikster says: "Skiing is for pussies!!")

(My Japanese riding crew: Yuka "Ninja Style" Aoki, and Markane "Ground Tricks is Where It's At" Sipraseuth)

(It's your boy - last one on the hill, closing out the mountain, riding off into the sunset...)

Can't wait for the next trip!! God I miss the free Tahoe lift tickets in SF. Mikulic and Bort you guys had better be appreciating it! Peace and think snow, - SHU.

Kyu-shoku (Japanese for "School Lunch")

This is what I had for lunch today. It's a "donburi" which is Japanese for "rice bowl." This kind of rice bowl is called a "Hanjuku-don" because it's been stolen from the Koreans and then modified and enhanced by the Japanese (like so many things here).

It's rice, then stir fried beef (spicy), and then a poached egg on top. When you get the bowl, you poke the egg with your chopstick, releasing all of the runny yolk onto your rice and beef, and then you stir vigorously with your chopsticks while smacking your lips loudly. That's pink pickled ginger there in the corner (gross, I know, I threw it out).

It's quite yummy. I am trying a new o-bento (lunch box) every day for the month of February. More to come.

Engrish III

Here's a "love letter" I got from one of the 8th graders today. Her Engrish is actually imroving from the last love letter!













Pet Shop in Osaka -for the relaxation of dogs gallery... What!?









"Man this chocolate tastes like...."

Gong Shi Gong Shi

... that means Happy New Year in Chinese! Chinese New Year is one of my favorite holidays. Everybody gets together and on the eve of New Year, the house is cleaned so that old spirits and the past year's energy is swept out of the house, and the family bids the past year adieu, and then the next day the family welcomes the New Year into the house. Huge meals are eaten, kowtows and greetings are exchanged, and my favorite part - the red envelopes are given out to kids and the juvenile minded (that's me). Whoo!! Bring on the cash-eesh!

The current Chinese New Year exchanged by my family goes like this:

Hsing Nian Kwai Loh (Happy New Year)
Gong Shi Fah Tzai (Happy New Year)
Wan Sui Ru Ii (Luck and blessings upon you)
Chian Bow Na Lai (Now Bring on the money!!)

HA! The past few years, my New Year tradition was to go to San Francisco's Chinatown the night before and have a big huge dinner with friends, and then the next day get stinking drunk at the Chinese New Year parade through downtown SF/Chinatown. This year... I ordered a "Chinese Rice Bowl" for my lunch and am ordering Chinese takeout since I'm working on lesson plans tonight. A little anticlimactic, but I plan on making it up next year by heading to The Mainland (China, that is), or going to Taiwan to hang out with some family.

Past years have been really fun growing up - one of my favorite memories was celebrating Chinese New Year with the Chinese community in Potsdam (upstate New York, where I grew up). All the Chinese in town would turn out of the woodwork (all 10 families) and we'd have a huge dinner together, followed by a talent show. One year, Scott Shen and I dressed up like twin Fu Man Chu's and went around bowing to people and reading New Year's proclimations from scrolls that we carried in our robes. Aw yeah, the good old days.


(One of my life's goals is to grow a Fu Man Chu that's this badass.)

Anyway, Happy New Year everybody, and yes, the blogging will resume. I got a little sidetracked with this new video game I got over winter break, Explosive Diarrhea from India, my superhot girlfriend moving to Japan, trips to Osaka and Kobe, and of course it's snowboard season (videos to be posted!!). Thanks for all the emails checking in and demanding more misadventures, I'm surprised that people are actually reading this drivel! Just goes to show, a little T&A and you can sell anything.

Christmas Card Lesson

Kitty-chan wishes you a Merry Christmas!

You know, the students really crack me up. Today I did a lesson on Christmas and the meaning of it and blah blah blah, and for our activity we did home-made Christmas cards. There were some really funny ones!

The boys usually drew really screwed up pictures, like an anorexic Santa with crazy eyeballs and face saying "Do you want Present?! How about wakame and meron pan (seaweed and mellon flavored bread)?!?!" Then you open the card and it says in big letters "ARE YOU HAPPY!?" Weird and totaly non-sequitor. But funny.

One of the most popular questions from my students is, "Do you have a girlfriend?" and when I answer, "yes, I do," the usual reaction from the boys is to start airhumping (see previous entry, Haado-Gei), and the girls usually start squealing and run away. So anyway, after class today, a couple of the girls came up to me and gave me Christmas cards, to give to Nikki for Christmas. Cute, huh?

That's me on the left, Nikster on the right. Supposedly.

This one is my favorite. Open up and...

Funny, huh?! The mustache would be more realistic if it only grew on the sides and not in the middle. The buck teeth have got to go. Clever kids...

Aki-Matsuri... Autumn Festival

Fall is a really awesome time in Japan. The weather cools down and it's a comfortable autumn temperature, great for doing just about anything (so sayeth the Japanese). The leaves start to change, and being in the countryside there are a whole lotta trees, so it's very scenic and beautiful.

The coolest events in the fall are the Aki-matsuri's (lit. Autum Festival). This year I had the chance to attend two very different events - one, a serene, traditional religious ceremony, and the other a raucous drunken melee.

I was invited by the Vice Principal of my school to the religious one - in addition to being the VP of my school, his weekend job is farming - his family owns a large area of land that he "cultivates." Cool, huh?

("Oh Kyoto-sensei, how was your weekend? Ah, it was no good Michael, I had to cultivate my land this weekend.")

It turns out that his cousin is the local head priest of the area and so he invited me (and Markane and Nancy, two other JETs in this area) to get the VIP experience. It was cool! The ceremony we went was meant to welcome the local god to come out of his shrine and survey the ripening rice, and give the farmers a blessing for a good crop.


Under the full moon, and we marched with a big group of farmers (wielding big huge cool lanterns) to the temple.

At the temple (we got to sit inside, right next to the actual ceremony area), the priest sang songs and recited prayers to move the "essence" of the god from the temple into a "portable shrine," which was to be carried out around the area's farms and land in the next few days.

It was a really great opportunity to witness the development of culture - that a traditionally agraian society still carries on the ritual of times past (I mean, you can buy the stuff in huge bags anytime at the store, and ironically, this year's rice crop was early so it had already been harvested before the festival). That's such an indicative example of the duality of Japan - beautifully traditional while at the same time ultra modern.

SO... a couple of days later I attended another "Aki-Matsuri" in Mitsu-cho, which is a small seaside fishing village where my friend Zainabu teaches. The festival was also at night, and it was pretty much a bunch of really wasted Japanese dudes (it seems like everyone in town had been drinking all day), wearing hapi coats (those little jackets), and thongs made of thick white rope. They were carrying huge bamboo poles and smashing the shit out of these enormous lanterns in front of the local temple. It was crazy!

(October's cover of Kansai Time out, a local English magazine. These guys are carrying a portable shrine, which is a really popular thing to do at this time of year. Man I bet the rope burn really sucks!!)

Literally called the "lantern beating festival," they would hoist a gigantic lantern up and run laps around it, and then all of a sudden they would all come together and start beating the hell out of the lantern. Some of the dudes even set fire to them, lit fireworks, and stomp them into little bits and pieces. Very different from the previous Aki-matsuri, huh?



The meaning of this festival was to scare away evil spirits, and I'm sure it worked. When I was shooting the photos that night, there was a ton of dust flying around in the air from the dudes kicking up the dirt.

Initially I had written it off as just dust, but Nikki pointed out that sometimes these random orbs pop up in pictures because they are spirits that the camera catches... cool, huh.

Elementary School

Elementary school students love horsing around, especially when there is a camera involved. I brought mine with me on Friday to show a fellow teacher my pictures from my recent Taiwan trip (blog entry coming soon...), and the kids were all like "picture please!" So we had a little photo session...


The view from above...
...and below
... and up the nose.

This is a mentally handicapped girl named Kana, who can't really speak that well. She's also physically challenged and has a hard time walking, so I give her extra high-fives and piggyback rides whenever I go to her school. Now every time she sees me, she comes sprinting and gives me a big bear hug. She was a little too over enthusiastic on Friday, the little f'er headbutted me in the nuts 'cause she was running out of control. Thanks a bunch, Kana!!

Maikeru sensei, the human jungle gym.

Making a difference, one Shu at a time...

Hey Y’all,

This Christmas holiday, I’m volunteering to go work on a volunteer project in Andhra Pradesh, India for 10 days. The area I’ll be going to is very poor and depressed, and also was heavily affected by last year’s Tsunami. That said, the Indian government doesn’t give a lot of priority to helping these folks who are viewed in a lower social caste, so there is a lot of work to be done.

While in India, the main goals are to teach and work with the villagers on creating better living conditions. I’ll also be teaching English and working in medical camp, providing free healthcare to the needy.

Here’s the website for more info: http://www.go-mad.org/projindiarelief.php

Cool, huh!?

So the group I’m a part of (Go M.A.D. “Make a Difference, mostly comprised of teachers from my program) is fundraising so that we can make a donation to the village at the end of our period of volunteer work.

SO… I’m hitting you guys up to help me out with this – “anything helps” (I feel like I should be on Market St. in SF with a cardboard sign), so break off whatever you can and if I can smuggle some cool souvenirs out of India, you’ll be first on the list.

You can either donate through PayPal – send to my email address, shu.mike@gmail.com, or email me and I’ll give you deposit instructions to an account that I’ve set up with Wells Fargo. Make sure to leave your name and address and all that good stuff too.

Thanks in advance, it’s people like you that make the world a better place
(Aw I think I just shed a tear).

Love you guys!!
-SHU.

Awaji Soccer Tournament

(My JET Intramural team)

So in the spirit of trying new things, I joined the JET Intramural soccer team of my prefecture, and have been practicing with my team and also with my students. It's cool because the worst students in my class are usually soccer players (they are the dumb jock equivalent), and they really get all jacked up and happy when I come out to practice with them (and they get a chance to try out all of the dirty words they know in English). I've even noticed that some of them are behaving better in class and actually trying harder!

This weekend was the Western Japan Intramural Tournament. It was located on Awaji Island (a small island, in between Honshu (entry city is Kobe) and the next island to the south, Shikoku), on the training fields that were built for England's team during the World Cup. JET/Intramural teams come from all over Western Japan, and the winner of the tournament (not us), goes to the spring Championship in Saitama (and they get to play in the Japanese National team's superdome, cool huh).

(This is the grounds that we played on - mountains in the background, nice manicured grass, and ocean views on the other side. Niiiiice.)

My team was "AC Hyogo," which was the social/"B" team of our prefecture, made up of mostly the beginner players (our "A" team, was mostly big, fast, experienced Brits). We actually never played together as a team before, and it really showed in this tournament!

Overall, our tournament record was 1-3 in round robin play, and we lost the first game of actual seeded play (we won the first game but never succeeded in scoring a goal the rest of the weekend). BUT, it was awesome fun and I managed to score a goal in overtime in our winning game (sweet), got rugby tackled by a big Aussie dude (it sucked, I was seeing stars for 2 minutes), managed to dish out my share of punishment, and came home with lots of bruises and a twisted up knee (sucked walking up the stairs when I got home).

Soccer is fun! I wish I had played in High school! I'm going to keep practicing with the students and JET team and hopefully go out for the A team next year, but for now I gotta ice down my knee, it looks like a big grapefruit. Yikes.

Oh PS, DJ Jeno started his own radio show and is archiving his stuff: http://www.djjeno.com/noisefromthevoid.html it's freakin' awesome music, very ecclectic and cool stuff.

Okay, that's it for tonight. Peace, -m.

Arima Spa and Japanese Bath Houses

(The ubiquitous Japanese "in-come" cat.)

So one of the favorite Japanese past-times is getting completely butt naked in front of a bunch of strangers and soaking in hot baths to relax (sorry ladies, it's men's and women's separate).

Usually you enter these things, put your stuff in a locker and swap out for a tiny towel and some slippers, and then you go into a shower area for the scrub down (Japanese folks get totally clean BEFORE getting into the bath - it's only for soaking). After that you usually have your choice of different tubs, baths, saunas, steam rooms, etc.

Since I've been here I have been to a variety of them, from crappy capsule hotel and backpacker hostel ones, to really sweet set-in-nature, zen garden, healing water types.

One of the best ones I've been to (and one of the most famous in Japan) is at Arima Spa, which is a suburb of Kobe, about 40 minutes from where I live. There is some sort of natural hot spring that runs through the ground there, and there are even little baths that just pop out of the sidewalk - literally you can be walking down the street, stop, take off your shoes, have a seat, and start soaking! Cool, huh.

(Walking is tough! Ayame and I decide to have a soak in the middle of the street.)

The water there is well known because it's got lots of iron in it, which apparently is good for the skin and muscles if you soak in it. It turns the water an opaque, rusty red, and you smell like a rusty pirate sword after you get out. Also at the same spa they had a bathtub that was full of tea water! You soak yourself in this scented tea water and it kinda gives you a buzz. They also have all of these crazy waterfalls that you can stand underneath and the water pressure falling gives you a massage. Rad huh?

So afterwards they have these lounges for you to relax and chill out in. Usually they have massage chairs and you can even hire on a masseuse right there on the spot! They also have all of these beverages you can have - the traditional post-onsen drink of choice is this really awesome coffee drink that comes in these minature milk bottles - and I guess they used to have this old school commerical, so now you're supposed to drink the coffee in the special pose:

(Me and Masa strike a pose.)

Anyway, they're loads of fun until the old dudes start lettin' 'em rip in the water, then the writing's on the wall that it's time to go. Yokorassho!