Sports Festival, First Year

In Australian High schools there's sports day; I remember it well, and even with a certain fondness- there's totally nothing wrong with no class and no homework when you're between the ages of 13 and 17. I admit I wasn't completely into the actual sports side of thing; running fast, jumping high and throwing far have never really been great aspirations of mine, but I remember liking the hair spray and talking all day with my friends.

In Japan there's sports festival and it's uhhh... different. Not that there aren't sports; it's just... different sports, and group displays. Yeah; LOTSA group displays. I've already mentioned the cheerleaders and coloured board displays that turn groups of people into sort of living LCD readouts, but the boys also do this thing with synchronised pole twirling, and then there were a ton of groups doing everything from traditional drill team stuff to these intense martial arts displays.

There was running too, but it was definitely a side-show next to the parts where people dressed in full Kendo gear competed with people carrying longbows to carry random objects around an oval, or the teams of 20+ people trying to race with their legs tied together, or the aforementioned Kibusen battles. Seriously, I sat in the teachers tent (in between rounds of tug of war and ball tossing anyway) with a fairly droopy jaw most of the day.

A massed display of students. I don't know what this gesture means, but I'm 100% sure it has nothing to do with Naziism... probably.

Anyway, upsides to sportsday include an excelent cardiovascular workout, an awesome tan (although seriously dramatic should you happen to see me shirtless... or watchless), and a free staff shirt. The biggest plus was the enkai (roughly translated as 'work party') after the event; we went to this seriously classy conference venue, ate a lot and drank a lot, then moved on to a kareoke bar and ate not much and drank a lot, then went to an isakia and ate a little and drank a lot. We also sang songs (both kareoke and otherwise) and I somehow managed to converse with people with virtually no functional command of English. I guess all that study time must be paying off. Seriously, any language learner will tell you your fluency goes through the roof after the first 2 beers.

This pic is for my parents; yes, this is a cafe for dogs and cats- It's on my walk to school. There are in fact small tables and menus of pet food and drinks. They have things for humans too, I had a coffee there the other day with a charming beagle.

Today I'm going to Fukuoka to a) become a legal worker and b) get in some quality girlfriend time. Can you guess which one I'm excited about? If you need a hint- I hate filling out paperwork in big, dull government offices.

So I have a train to catch, bye fo' now peeps!

Shaun

Novocaine, Bowling and Changing Clocks.

Happy end of daylight saving everyone! (or at least those of you who are S.A. residents) I'm not sure that an 'extra' hour in bed really makes up for the hassle of changing all the clocks and smoke alarm batteries in the house, but hey; at least it gives us a chance to reset all our timepieces to the correct time and make sure that our smoke alarms are actually working right? After all, we all know that the rules of irony dictate that a house with a working smoke alarm will likely never catch fire.

Speaking of preparedness, my trip to the dentist was routinely scary; everything was fine until there was a spontaneous decision to update my x-rays (just in case my skeletonised jawbone washes up on a shoreline and needs to be identified presumably), at which point it was declared that I needed a filling replaced. Cue injectons, scraping, drilling and a whole bunch of strange Geiger-esque equipment jammed in my mouth; an experience much like this.

Afterwards I went into town to see Emma (who has her own far more substantive blog here, check it out!), drink coffee and get more travel stuff planned; that all went well despite my Novocaine-induced Bells-palsy look (actually it was a help with the coffee, having a numb tongue means you can drink scalding hot water without the pain). While it turns out that exchanging paper money isn't half the hassle I'd be led to believe, unfortunately QANTAS only lets you haul 20kg of luggage when you fly to Japan, so I've got some serious boxing and shipping to organise, unless of course I wear 8 layers of clothes on the flight itself (which might make me immune to snake-bite at least).

Yesterday my jaw still hurt somewhat so I made the decision to have a 'quiet' day, I finished unpacking some shirts, fiddled around with the laptop a bit and finished watching Texhnolyze (frankly, I still don't get it, but it was fun to watch and very 'relaxing'). In the evening I went out bowling down at Ingle Farm; I found out that years of non-practice hasn't improved my bowling technique, but there was much fun anyway, even if Rebecca did blow us all out of the water (the girl has bowling in the genes obviously). Peter managed to get the jukebox to play every Mandy Moore song it had in sequence, then followed it up later with Vanilla Ice which was pretty sodding hilarious. Great night!

Today I'm resolving to tidy up somewhat around here, 'cause I'm getting just slightly sick of living amongst giant, constantly tottering piles of paper, (I had this seriously weird dream last night about pushing a filing cabinet through one of those aquariums that have the giant glass tunnels so you can see all the sharks up close and personal; I think it's a sign). That and I'll get back to learning some Japanese because my progress has lagged just a little lately; more hours in my day might help, but hey, I'd probably end up sleeping them away too. *sigh*