Another Target Women, my new fav?

Haiku

At all the lovely, and not so lovely, JHS's in my city, the standard English textbook is One World. Not sure if I should be thankful for that considering what I've heard about the character Anne Green from the other text book, whose name escapes me.

Anyway, lesson three in One World is studying and writing Haikus, in English of course. And I always get asked to write one along with the students. I'm not sure how many I've actually written, since I never actually kept them before. Here are four of the nicer ones, and by nicer I strictly mean shareable, PG, etc. Don't expect greatness here...

Sticky fingers:
The end of a long day.
Watermelon peel.

An ALT's Job:
A beautiful flower.
They do nothing.

(this was at a reallllllly boring school)

A rainy day:
The beginning of summer.
Drip, drip, sweating.

and lastly, my personal favorite.

All surrounded.
I'm the beginning and the end.
Blue, green force of life.

Target Women.

My two favorites!

Open Mic and Concert Night!

YES! Another weekend post!

The best recap for the concert is in video form!

Friday night's concert featuring Moss, Wind Beat, SNAS, Japanese Koto, Hawaiian music, Irish music, and more! Plus dancing to the last band, great times were had by all!

Following the concert's end was of course a series of after parties. One of which was at a Hamburger Van. Which is just that, a van that sells hamburgers, well at least Japanese style burgers with Japanese wasabi mayo...yuck!

The second after party was a rather boring bar, supposedly a dance club, but not only could you not hear the crappy music, there was no space to dance!

Yet another late night in the Inaka of the Rising Sun, and another night of three hours of sleep! If nothing else, at least I'm very consistent.

Short and sweet for a change.

8 Amazing holes

something that has nothing to do with Japan for a change...

http://www.tom-phillips.info/images.a/8.amazing.holes.htm

Ohki Beach Olympic Synchronized swimming/dance

Here are the vids!

Ohki Beach Olympics.

It's become a habit really, to do something every single weekend. And it has become a worse habit to only sleep about three hours for either Friday or Saturday, sometimes both. Sunday is all about "me time," and interference is not appreciated. By the way, the post is of Olympic proportions, you've been warned...

Anyway, this weekend was the Ohki Beach Olympics, where most of Kochi prefecture ALT's and some Ehime ALT's get together to compete in the most outlandish of Olympic games. It is an event of epic proportions, to witness this event will leave your mind crying out in amazement for years to come, so awesome is this thing.

This event started on Friday night with BBQ and camping, and probably some skinny-dipping. But since I turn into a monster if I don't sleep two days in a row and have too many people close by, I chose to skip out on Friday night activities. I was sure that Saturday would have more than enough fun to make up for it, and I wasn't disappointed. Racked up to the beach at 11:30a and immediately indoctrinated myself into Gaijinmura, or the designated name for the camping area we took over. I didn't actually bother to count how many tents there were, but the picture will give you a general idea. The picture itself is fairly early so about 20%, if not more, of the tents are still not there. Next to our tent city was a small flowing river that wound its way to the beach, which was great for us for getting rid of sand without having to do the quarter mile hike to the beach itself.

The day was spent with BBQs going all the time, booz consumption, swimming, and of course the Olympic games themselves. The first part being breaking off into 5 teams, each team having approximately 10-11 members, that gives you a scope of how many participants there were present, plus spectators. The teams were Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, and Pink.

The awesomest team was team Red of course. We named ourselves Red Rubbish, which in Japanese is "Aka Gomi", which is a bit of a pun on "Aka Gumi" which means "Red Team." Our motto was "We're Red, you're dead!" Our cheer was "Akakakakakaka" which is evil laughing but which also says in Japanese "red red red red," ingenious I tell you. We even had a team song:
Team Blue, you smell like poo
Team Pink, you like it in the stink
Team Green, you're the worse team
Team Yellow, your ass is jello
We're red, so we're gonna kick your ass.

The last line doesn't rhyme on purpose. The other chant we had was a bit more interesting:
We're red, you're dead, we're good in bed, give us some head. Akakakakaka.

So all that along with body paint, and face markings made us a fearsome team!
<---Check out the Strength of Red. Check out 'em muscles yo!

The other teams had interesting cheers and names as well, Team Blue's name was "Ow!" which is another play on words, in Japanese "Ao" means Blue. I don't actually remember their cheers or chants though. Team Green was Wasabi, their motto/cheer was "We hate your face!." Team Yellow had a really long name, "Yeah nah fuck you we're pirates and shit." And finally Team Pink's name: Tiny-i (There's nothing you can do to prevent terminal illness).

Let the games begin!!

The first Olympic game was a 6 step relay, in which all team members had to participate.
Step 1: blow up the balloon
Step 2: two team members would wheelbarrow the balloon to the first cone
Step 3: after hand off, the next member would crab walk the balloon to the next cone
Step 4: after hand off, two members from the team would do a three-legged race to the next cone
Step 5: no hands hand off between 5 team members
Step 6: to lastly hand off the balloon to a blind folded team member who had to sprint to the last cone.

Red team came in second for this one, but we did the fastest three legged race, and the fastest 5-member hand off. Great team work team!

The second event was a water balloon toss. Two team members would take one step back and toss each other the balloon, if it popped you were disqualified.

The third event was my favorite non-sport event. It was synchronized swimming/dancing, of which I will post the video's when I get home! They are awesome!!! We had about 30 minutes for the whole team to come up with a dance routine. So, five teams, five dances. Red had Britney Spear's Toxic song, Pink had Michael Jackson's Smooth Criminal, the rest I don't remember until I hear the vids again. The best dance was without a doubt the red team's dance, and I'm not just saying that because I was in it, but once you see the video's you will understand. Enough said until you see the videos.

The fourth event was a type of Japanese tag, where you have a strip of something, in this case our team color bandanna, stuck to your pants. The goal of the game was to eliminate as many teams as possible and collect as many strips as you could in a type of free for all team thing. It was fun.

The fifth event was after a sort of lunch break, a capture the flag game. My favorite team activity of the day. It was divided with two teams on each side, and Pink team split in half to join both teams, since they were the loosing team and would get points either way. Luckily this was a two-hand touch event, makes it more challenging. I enjoyed dashing in to the enemy jail across the field to rescue my team mates, and I thoroughly enjoyed avoiding about 5 different sets of hands to make it to the flag safe zone, along with our other two fastest runners. In the end, Zapita mad-dashed back to our side of the field winning the game for our teams. It was an amazing run.

The first night event, and the 6th event of the day was Beer Batting. In this game you would fill a plastic bat with beer, chug it down, spin 8 times, then try to bat the crushed beer can. I completely and totally sucked at it, as did most people, some of which went spinning across the field and crashing into other people.

The last event was individual Sumo wrestling. I lost my first round versus an Ehime girl, but I managed to win all the other rounds except the final. By the most part, this was a all out yet gentle/mindful of others type of wrestling, except the Ehime girls were seriously trying to kill us. Thus my loosing of the last round flattened under the weight of one of them. I think she did judo or something. It was lots of fun to participate in though.

That was the end of the Olympic games, and winning teams were awarded, which I don't remember who won what by the way. But the night was far from over! In fact, it was only the beginning. And also the beginning of torrential rain! But what is rain to us hardened Kochi-ites, nothing I tell yah! We gathered under some gazebos and umbrellas, and in my case just stuck to roaming around with my bathing suit. We managed to get a BBQ going under one of the gazebos, so food was taken care off, drinks are never an issue. There was some night time swimming taking place, more skinny-dipping, and all sorts of drunken shit going on, including a round of singing that lasted well into the night. Tents got flooded, sand fleas made an abundant appearance, and a light-up Frisbee made for more entertainment.

Memorable moments of the evening, while standing chatting with some Ehime girls, one of them rather close to me turns her head and licks my torso from bottom to top, I think she was totally drunk. My only reaction at the time, in the middle of my conversation was: "holy fuck!" I was caught completely off guard.

If you read last weekend's post, there was that one girl that propositioned me and someone else for a threesome. Well, we had an interesting conversation again, and I'm pretty sure she was drunk again, but not as drunk as last time. So said girl was a bit offended that we didn't take her up on the offer, um...what do you say to that? I ended up just saying that we didn't want to take advantage of her, no mention of course that perhaps I'm not a threesome type of girl, wonder if she thought of that? She proceeded to approach me several times to tell me "you can't say no now." Um...again, what do you say to that? One of those times, she had two pointy party hats on her boobs... It was very funny at least.

After swimming around midnight, I know me swimming in the dark is a miracle, and spotting awesome bio-phosphorescent plankton, me and two other people proceeded to run into a wall of sand by the small river, it was about thigh height and impossible to see in the dark. The timing was great, me and Martin ran into it at the same exact time, and a few seconds later someone else did and then dropped their phone into the water, ouch. The whole thing was funnier than it sounds.

Finally around 1am I called it quits, showered, and headed off into my thankfully-dried tent, it was still pouring down elephants and giraffes though, so sleeping was hard to come by, not to mention the singing group of drunk people. Overall, it was a great event, and I can't wait for the next one. Even if I'm sore as can be, have blisters on my feet from running in the sand, and only slept three hours. Thank you all who planned it!

Up next weekend, ALT open mic and concert night!

Sayonara Party, year two.

The next weekend of exciting summer weekends is a repeat event from last year, the JET Sayonara party. The summary of Friday and Saturday would be: Amazing, completely, unquestioningly amazing.

The day itself was a regular work day, even worse it was a day in Hell with 5 classes. Thankfully, it was from fairly early in the morning so I was able to take off one hour early. This year's party had no theme, but we were mostly dressing up for the event. Since my last party-party I did the totally feminine Michelle Obama thing, this time I figure I'd turn the table a bit, and be a bit more masculine in appearance. Gotta keep the crowd guessing. This time I had a white shirt, dark blue jeans, a purple tie, and Martin's mafia hat. See below for a better idea.

As usual, me and Martin carpooled together to the city for the event. This event was of course a beer garden, which I found the food rather untasty, and the booze marginal. Until I discovered the premixed gin and tonic that is, that tasted a lot more like margarita than anything else. That was my poison of choice for the duration of the beer garden until about 9pm. This place was a lot of mingling and socializing mostly. And I got drunk enough to discover that I am a kissy drunk now. Notice the 'now' for it wasn't the case before. I think I ended up kissing 6 different people, two of which were other girls. I asked most of the people for permission, except two, who didn't seem to mind anyway. Either way, you won't hear me complaining either.

From the beer garden we moved to a place called Hirome, which is a giant food court that has a great selection and tons of alcohol. I think I only had one more drink in this place, I was too drunk already to do more than that, and I don't like being totally sick drunk when crashing at other people's houses. I don't like being sick drunk at all actually! While here my tie disappeared for a while and roamed amongst the crowds that wanted to learn how to tie a tie, or just wanted to have a picture with it, or whatever else. I was just happy to eventually get it back. It being a 100 yen tie, didn't matter much, but I do love its color.

After that after party, we moved on yet again to another after party. It seems I am also becoming a party animal...? This was the same dance club from the previous weekend, One Love. Once again, lots of dancing, lots of drinking (water in my case), lots of drunk friends, some even sleeping on the benches, and lots of flirting. I had several moments of "how did this just happen?" and though a bit surprising now that I think back on them, totally enjoyable, again no complains from me.

One memory I have from last year's sayonara party is a picture I took with the person I would miss the most. And though that time I took many similar pictures with other people, that one picture with Tuk always sticks out in my mind. This year had a similar session of picture taking, and once again I have a picture that sticks out from the others, and I found it interesting that it is almost an exact copy of the one I have with Tuk, just a different person.

I randomly just remembered a reaaaaaaaaalllllllyyyyy drunk friend (who probably doesn't remember) propositioned me and someone else for a threesome. hahahaha wow, I have to make sure I never drink enough to actually proposition someone like that!

Anyway, on the way home, we made a stop at a combini to get our last two drinks. The friend I was staying with figured the two of us could end the night with some sort of fruity drink, good idea! In the process of paying, there were some really neat looking key chains on the counter. And though I was no longer drunk at this point, well not mentally drunk at least, I knocked the whole display down while trying to examine one. It was funny, and had I been more conscious of what I had just done, would probably have been embarrassing. Then again, I'm not one to care.

The rest of the post will just have to be chopped off, in part due to my laziness, and in part because there's no need to go any further. I went to bed for several hours, and cursed the sun when it came streaming through the window.

Here's a few more pics!


<--- There was some serious flirting going on here, I just don't know who on who =P











<-- The roaming tie along with four gorgeous babes!





I don't remember, but I was probably already drunk.--->

Terminator Marathon and Tosa-ben Genki Musical

Catching up time again! It's been a few weeks since this stuff happened, so it will probably be a short entry...

Friday the 12th of June was the beginning of the beginning, the Terminator movie Marathon. Consequently, this was also a girl's night party. The location was some three hours away from my town, so I normally don't hang out with this group, though I wish I could, and unfortunately all but one of them are leaving Japan come the end of July. It saddens me greatly.

Anyway, after chatting, drinking, and consuming pizza we finally popped in the Terminator movie. It's so cheese that it's great, the effects...ouch, but I guess not bad for it's time. We spent most of the time criticizing the movie the horrible acting. Immediately after that, we watched Terminator 2. Improvement, still had a lot to crack on though. As much as we wanted to watch Terminator 3, we were just too tired and couldn't, so off to sleep we went.

Saturday Morning found us watching Terminator 3. It is such a funny movie! Had me going for a good long laugh there. The only issue was the car chases, half the movie was car chases that were mostly pointless. Come on, a 15 minute car chase is just way too long. The ending of the movie (yes, spoiler alert!) has the beginning of Judgment Day when Cyberdine Systems launches the nukes to exterminate humanity. That part of the movie coincided with noon in Japan, in which old WWII raid sirens always go off. So it was kind of creepy to have the movie launching nukes and a raid siren going off in real life, awesome timing though!

The rest of Saturday was spent relaxing and chilling, waiting for the start of the Tosa-ben Genki Musical DVD Viewing party!

We finally got to see ourselves in action, and for the first time I could actually see the whole musical, and all the funny parts I missed. I love it! It is a very well done musical, and the fight scene looks freaking amazing. I got copies for those who want, it has English and Spanish subs, plus bloopers, ranting, and other special features.

I'm desperately trying to remember the after party here...or after parties...? There was definitely karaoke involved, and I distinctly remember us doing the Celine Dion song My Heart Will Go On in katakana. so it sounds more like: rabu kian touchi asu uansu taimu ando rasto a raifu taimu... ando mai harto uiru go on ando on, on ando on.

There's a bit more to this story, but for now it will remain here...

Above: My hair does its thing, attacking unsuspecting prey!

The Big Hair group!