Audible Oration-Fest

For the past 5 weeks I have been a language coach to a Japanese, first year NUFS student. His name is Mashushi Hattori (of every relation to Hattori Honzo.) I was helping him prepare for the "NUFS Reading Aloud Festival 2006! *Boom, Kshhhh, SHUP-SHUP-KRAKOO!* (Those were my poor imitation fireworks noises, give me a break, jeez.) So anyway, the contestants in the festival had to pick a short english passage to practice and subsequently read in front of an audience. Masushi decided to pick the lyrics to a song by none other than the angel-voiced William Smith. Its title: "Tell Me Why?"
Now, I hear you asking, why did he decide to go big Willy style? Hmm, I don't know? Maybe it's because the master musical technician known as Will Smith has produced such timeless classics as "Girls Ain't Nothin' But Trouble," and "Nod Ya Head (the Remix)!" And who could forget the song that veritably defined the 90's "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It." Needless to say I shed a tear of joy for my pupil's appreciation of the fine arts.
So I got right to learnin' him some English-speak and he took to it like a 3 legged mule in a skipping contest. (Note heavy southern twang.) My coaching basically consisted of us meeting every week for about a half hour. In our earlier meetings we tackled the differences between "th" and "s" as well as the infamous "r" and "l". It was really nice though, because every week he showed significant signs of improvement. By the end of our time he was reciting Will like only the freshest of Fresh Princes could.

At the competition the atmosphere was that of an underground Brazilian cockfight; tense, and emotionless. We showed up early so I could give him a few last minute pointers and also fasten razor blades to his already deadly chicken claws. But seriously, the Festival was a really cool thing. There was a surprisingly large number of Japanese students participating and there was a very supportive feel of the whole affair. Other people decided to read excerpts from such classics as "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" by Dr. Seuss, "I Have a Dream" by MLK, and "Jesus Walks" by Kanye West. Needless to say it was a mixed bag of readings.

Masushi took the stage with a bang, and it was really great to see how far he'd come from the beginning of our meetings. He seriously wowed me with his pronunciation and carefully rehearsed timing. The lyrics of the song are about how Will Smith dealt with the tragedy of 9/11, so young Masushi did his best to channel those feelings. He clenched his fists, spoke to the heavens, and more than once reduced the audience to near, near tears with his angst-ridden voice. Here is a picture of young Masushi in the midst of his orative splendor.

Unfortunately Masushi didn't win the competition, but he will always be number one in my heart, right behind the girl who actually won, she was quite good. In all seriousness my time with Masushi was really great. It was awesome to see him improve so much and to see how seriously he was trying to learn to speak my native language. He actually gave me a Japanese style fan as a present for all my help, so I'll have that as a reminder, which is nice.
I actually just realized that I only have 15 more days before I'm back in the states. So everyone, mark your calendars and be ready to bring out the fine champagne that I will no longer be legally able to drink! I'll try to put up about 1 or 2 more posts before I go so be on the lookout for those. Thanks again everyone for all your support while I've been here, and I'll be seeing you all soon.

Kinkakuji

I promised a picture of the Temple of the Golden Pavilion and here it is:And just for good measure heres a great picture of Miyajima shrine as well:
Alright, enjoy the pictures and be sure to read below about my great trip to Nagano.

Nagano way this trip could have been better

Just this past week, I, and four of my good friends took a 4 night ski trip to Nagano. The group consisted of me, Andy, Dan, Mel and Lana. Our trip started at 5:00 AM on our first morning of break, and took about 5 hours of train rides to get there, but we eventually made it to the mountain. Our mountain of choice was Hakuba 47, the mountain where the Olympic Skiing Long Jump took place when Nagano hosted the Olympics. Here's a picture of me right after we got off the train (Note my super pumped up-ness.)

Once we got to the mountain we actually decided to do a little half day of snowboarding. We all rented boards and boots and got out on the mountain by about 1:00PM. Everyone was a beginner on the trip so the first half day worked well in providing some time for everyone to get the basics down. The weather was pretty nice and sunny as you can see, but the cover on the mountain was really sub-par. So instead of complaining, I decided to get GIANT CRAZY AIR, ON SKIS!!!!!

That Japanese girl to the right has no idea how sick my air was, she's just smiling because she has no idea what ridiculous tomfoolery I'm pulling right behind her.

So that was the first day of skiing. After that we got on a bus and took a short ride to our pension. It was basically a small hostel/house owned by an incredibly nice guy. Our room had three beds downstairs and a loft with space for two futons, so the men stayed on the first level and the ladies stayed up in the loft. It turned out to be a really perfect living situation. But the best part of our lodging was definitely the food. The caretaker person would cook us both breakfast and dinner, as they were part of our lodging expenses. Not only would he cook it up fresh for us, he would ask us when we would like to have it, and phone up to our room when our victuals were ready. It was, as the mormons would say "da bomb shiggity."

Our second day we had a nice surprise. We woke up to rain coming down outside our hostel and decided to go up to the mountain anyway. What we found was that the rain had turned to snow at the high altitude, and subsequently had a great day of snowboarding in lightly falling snow.

Our third day, though, was the charm. We woke up to literally a foot of fresh powder snow that had fallen during the night. Not only that, but it continued to pour powder on the mountain for the entire day. Here's a picture of just one of the amazing views I was able to capture on that day.

At this part of the mountain, the clouds were just swirling so I was able to sneak in while there was a break in the snow and snap some really beautiful pictures. It was absolutely one of the top 10 ski days I've ever had in my life.

One particularly interesting thing about the mountain itself was the lift ticket system. At the beginning of the day you are given a little plastic square with a chip inside that you have to keep in your coat at all times. The reason for this is that to get on the lift, you have to pass through a machine that would read your card, and tell you how much time you had left until that lift closed for the day. It was a whole lot better than waiting in all the lines back home, and the reassuring "Bing Bong!" that came from the machine pleased me more than it probably should have.

Our last day was just a great clear day, and everyone had a blast on the newly packed snow cover. Here's a picture of all of us on the last day.

From left to right, it goes: Lana, Andy, Mel, Me, Dan. This was taken right next to where we got off from the gondola, at the lowest ski-able part of the mountain. Overall, the trip went off without a hitch. We all had a great time, didn't get too sick of eachother, and had some amazing snow to snowboard in. It was really an incredible time.

Alright I probably won't be posting another one until after Christmas so I just want to wish a Merry Christmas to all those people who I may not get to say it to on the actual day. So I hope everyone has an awesome Christmas and a great ending to this past year.

Love,

Gorilla Monsoon

Visitations

Long time no talk. I would love to tell you all that I've been incredibly busy, and I have barely had a minute to reach the computer, but that would be a bald-faced lie. I have been marginally busy and I would attribute the wait to a combination of TV, Friends, Video Games and Ham Sandwich.
So I will give you an update on an event that passed not a mere three weeks ago and remains sharp (such as the sharpness of a Local TV Program viewed on a standard TV in a passing Bullet Train) in my mind. I just typed "ming" and seriously thought of not changing it to mind, but in the end, clarity won out over hilarity.
This event is the visiting of my parents. They were kind enough to travel all the way over here and stay in a hotel in Nagoya City. Nagoya City is about an hour train ride away from school and my parents were able to master it in only about a day, so it was very nice to have them, and their wallets, so close. (J/K!!!! But seriously I'm poor.)
One of my favorite trips we took was an overnight jaunt out to Kyoto, the old capital of Japan. The city gives you a great taste of what older, more traditional Japan looked like. Here is my parents in our hotel room.
This next picture is of me and my Dad, posing next to one of the billions of shrines around Kyoto. Literally, I think old Japan was just a bunch of shrines dedicated to every local deity people could think of. I can see a bunch of Japanese elders, drinking green tea, puffing on English opiates and exclaiming "Bathroom Sponge Deity!" and "cloud that looks like Noam Chomsky Deity." But I digress. Meiji Era Japanese People also had turtleshells and shot ink when threatened. Fact.
Here is a picture of one of the highlights of our trip. Right outside the gates of the Kinkakuji, or Temple of the Golden Pavilion. It is a 3 story temple covered in gold leaf, sitting on the banks of a very tranquil pond. The original temple was burned down about 200 years ago by a monk, but this new version is an exact replica of the first. We had a gorgeous day to go see it so it was basically the ideal time for us to be there.

In the surrounding grounds of the temple there were small rock bowls set up next to the path, where people were encouraged to throw coins. I think we inwittingly happened upon the birthplace of carnie games, and I've never been more scared in my life. I think the Japanese had it right in the first place, they didn't even beat around the bush when trying to steal your money. Even if you did get your coin to stay in the rock bowl, there were no prizes. Maybe the prize is of a more ethereal nature, like enlightenment, or good luck. Personally, I'd rather have a 5 foot high tweety bird to carry around for 4 hours. Oh well.

Alright I've been trying for 20 minutes to load this picture of the temple but apparently the Deity of small computer parts has not been given enough yen recently and so is thwarting my attempts. I'll try to load it up in my next post.

We made this trip from Tuesday night to Wednesday afternoon, and just hung around Nagoya for the rest of the week while I had classes. On Friday though we made it out to Tokyo for the weekend. We stayed at a great hotel in Ginza and got to go see a small portion of a Kabuki the first night. We woke up early the next day and went out to Tsukiji fish market and had a look around. I couldn't help but think that that place is basically fish hell. There are fish being cut up all over the place, and dead fish covering the entire expanse of the market. There are also live fish in tanks with other fish, as well as with their recently departed buddies. It would be a gruesome scene. But it was still fascinating and great to get back.

We rounded off the weekend with a trip to a bar in Shibuya, one of the hotspots for Tokyo nightlife. It was really great to just sit down and enjoy a drink with my parents and I think that time stands out as one of my fonder memories of the trip.

The next day we spent some time getting packed up and I saw them off. Overall it was a great time, felt really good to see my parents. I realized that I hadn't seen them for about 5 months at the time so it was nice to actually catch up in person. Alright, expect another post here soon and I'll be seeing you guys later.

The Rentals

Hey sorry it's been so long since I've posted. I can assure you that I will have a new one up soon. I've been trying to upload pictures from when my family came but the internet here is doing it's best impersonation of the Hindenberg. So by tomorrow at the latest, something of worth should be appearing on this page, and until then here's a brief phrase that's helped me through many a tight situation in my life.

"My power is discombobulatingly devastating I could feel is muscle tissues collapse under my force. It's ludicrous these mortals even attempt to enter my realm."
-Mike Tyson

Smerthquake

I have gotten a lot of e-mails recently about the supposed "earthquake" that recently "rocked" "Japan." Well let me tell you, fine caring peoples, that I am just fine and dandy. Seeing that the earthquake's epicenter was all the way up in Northern Japan (AKA Japanada) I felt not so much as a tremble. Actually, that's a lie. Let me paint an incredibly accurate picture of what really occured. It all started when I was walking out of I-house....

The first thing I noticed was the deadly silence. No crickets were a-chirping nor sparrows a-warbling nor mantises a-manting. The animals, sensing the impending danger, had turned tail and fled their surroundings long ago. All I could hear was the sound of my own stomach rumbling thunderously. I soon realized that it was not in fact my stomach, but the very earth itself. The earth was rumbling like my stomach! I, deducing the situation with vole-like speed, scampered to the top of a telephone pole in order to survey the intensity of the earthquake I was currently experiencing. After brushing the dirt and splinters of wood off my clothes from the fallen pole I realized the earthquake had gotten pretty bad, and decided to seek shelter. I ran while the earth tossed and heaved beneath me. I leapt lightly from crest to valley of tumbling earth while inappropriately humming "Surfin' Safari." As I ran I saw Japanese women, children, and teenagers staring nonplussedly at their cellphones. Oh the humanity!
I finally found shelter under a building that looked incredibly like a set of enormous metal legs. And if you think I'm going to say that I found myself under none other then Mecha Godzilla himself, you would be horribly wrong. And shame on you all for thinking me so unimaginative as to put a reference to Godzilla in my story! Anyway, I was under the REMAINS of Mecha Godzilla, while Mothra thrashed her wings menacingly overhead. Sensing my impending doom from both above and below I decided to call my giant robot friend from the depth of the earths and gave Mothra the thrashing of a life time. Here is a local artist's depiction of our epic battle.

Mothra's hat was indeed formidable, but my robot's variation of popular 1950s era dance "The Monkey" proved to be far more devastating than it looked. After Mothra was defeated the earthquake sputtered to a halt. I sat, looking through the way-cool sunglasses of my giant robot, surveying the rubble that was once Nagoya. Then I found ten bucks, which was sweet.

So that basically sums up the earthquake in no way shape or form. I hope you found it both educational and intriguing, and you'll probably be hearing back from me soon.

Bloodsport AKA The Club Softball Tournament

Bodies lay littered about a battlefield of mangled rawhide and clinging dust. One team stands alone, stolid, proud, victorious. They scornfully look over their slain opponents thinking "who are these poor folk who dare challenge titans?" The team moves as if with a single mind, softball strategy and situations buzzing constantly in their ears. As their cleats leave the field they recognize the sound of victory trumpets and view the throngs of supporters surging against the fence for just one touch, one taste of the glory that was had. And then my team steps off the bus and realizes that we are way out of our league.
This wasn't seriously how the competition went, but it may as well have. Long story short, we got annihilated in the first round, but that by no means means that we didn't have any fun. Here's a picture of our team, post loss.

See how happy we are!?

We started practicing as a team about 2 days before the actual competition, so that may have been the first strike against us. Actually the first strike was that about only 3% of our team had ever played baseball before, but I initially thought that would add to the dark horse mystique of our team. It turns out it didn't.

Our practices were pretty unorthodox and people would routinely nearly get hit in the face by errant balls. Our one ace-in-the-hole was our pitcher, a girl named Erin who had apparently played "14 years of fast pitch softball." Her pitches were fast, that was a very true statement. Yet what her speed gained us, her accuracy stole, broke, yelled at, humiliated in front of our best friends and then ignited. Outside of softball she's a very nice girl, but if her attitude had been a little better about her pitching, then I probably would be more apt to cut her some slack. Yet whenever an errant pitch would whizz into a crowd of cowering Japanese school girls, it was somehow either: The catcher's fault, the type of ball we were playing with, the texture of the field, a worm sneezing, or Hitler. So that did not make our path to the championships the easiest one possible.

I've been bashing our team this whole time, but seriously we weren't all that bad. We had an amazing time practicing and we definitely had some good fielding going by the time game time rolled around. The actual tournament was played in a single elimination format, with about 32 teams playing. Every round lasted a half hour and the team with the winning score at the end of that time would move on. We, of course, had the amazing luck of getting an easy first round game against the entire NUFS boys and girls Varsity Baseball team. So we had that going for us, which was nice.

We got to bat first, and after two singles, a double play grounder by yours truly, and a pop out, the inning was over. Then came the real carnage. A rough estimate would be that about 14 batters were walked in this inning, so it made the other team's task of getting runs easier than say, taking candy from an unborn fetus. We were eventually let out of that inning after ten runs were scored on us, and went up to bat again. This time we got about two runs (gimmes) but were out fairly quickly. The next inning we subbed in a new ace and got out of the inning with two slow grounders thrown to first and a pop fly to the outfield. In the last inning we were at bat with about 5 minutes left. I was the first batter and knowing that we were fighting a close one, I decided to belt a home run off of the third pitch. You know, no biggie. But seriously all I did was close my eyes and swing with all my might. All I could think, while watching that ball fly into the sky, was of a young boy by the name of Robbie Lautensack exclaiming "it's like a dream!" So I added another run to our score with that bomb and two of my teammates, Pat and Andy added 2 more runs with some fancy hitting. In the end we just barely lost, the score being Us-5, Them-10. It was a match for the ages.

One last thing, that was most definitely my favorite part of the whole experience. This thing was the name of our team. If you looked closely at the shirts you could probably read out the name. But in case you haven't, it reads "My Dixie Wrecked." Now if you can tell me that hearing about 200 different japanese people say "My dixie wrecked?" in an inquisitive japanese accent wouldn't make your day, then you, sir or madam, would be a damned lyer!

Alright, sorry about the length and I hope you enjoyed reading. I'll be back again with another update around this time again next week so stay posted for the madness.

Meet the Fam

Last weekend I participated in my first fully Japanese homestay, and needless to say I had the time of my life. My homestay parents were Kiyoshi Kato, and Sayoko Kato. Kiyoshi was 58 while Sayoko, the wife, was 56. They have three children, two of whom are actually working in the US right now, and one who is working in Tokyo. Here is a picture of them while we were visiting the historic Nagoya Jou (Nagoya Castle.)

My stay with them started out well. They picked me up on Saturday afternoon and we went to the Nagoya zoo. While at the zoo we got to see normal zoo-like things. We walked basically all over while I spoke with them about me, and all the things I like to do. This was particularly fun because I could only use my Japanese with them, so I really had to struggle through some stuff. But the sense of satisfaction I got after finally figuring out how to say what I was thinking was definitely worth the hardship.

After the zoo, we went back to their house and I got acquainted with their 12 year old golden retriever "Santa." This dog was basically the epitome of old age, wobbling around the house and gazing at nothing in particular whenever it wasn't in precarious motion. For dinner that night, Mrs. Kato made up a delicious tempura meal. With the chopsticks that they so kindly bought me I dug in like a backhoe with nitrous. And if the great food wasn't enough they urged me to sit in their giant Sharper Image style massage chair to watch the Japan series, Japan's World Series of Baseball. So the one night that I was alotted to stay over with them went swimmingly.

For Sunday they had plans to take me down to the shore and see a traditional Japanese fish market, but unfortunately Santa got sick over the night. It turned out that his intestine had become twisted and he had to go into the vet for a quick operation. Mr. Kato had taken him in during the night so we went to see him in the morning after the operation was finished. The best part of visiting Santa was seeing my very stoic Japanese host father cry when he saw that the family pooch was okay. That part of the day was a good indication to me of what a good family I had been paired with. So in lieu of going to the shore we went to Nagoya Jou. Here's a picture of me with the castle in the background. Basically the castle was a museum on the inside, seeing as the original had been burned down during bombing raids (oops!) My favorite parts of visiting the castle were walking around the grounds, and avoiding accusatory glares from old Japanese people, just kidding! Or am I.......

After the castle we went to an Otera (Traditional Japanese shrine erected to local divine spirits known as Kami.) While at the shrine I was actually fortunate enough to see two traditional Japanese wedding receptions in action. It was pretty awesome to see both the bride and groom dressed in such ornate Japanese attire. Between the castle, shrine, and speaking Japanese all day, I'd say I got a pretty good dose of Japanese culture.

I've since e-mailed my host family again and we're planning on doing another trip when I have some free time so I'll be sure to post about that when the day comes. Sorry again for the length of time in between posts, but I've been staying pretty busy. I'm planning on posting another one pretty quickly after this, seeing as a lot of other stuff has happened since the homestay, so be ready for that. Once again thanks for reading and I hope everyone is doing well.