May 10th-Ugh!
Yeah, so today…ummmm….right….I think I’ll have to make an official note in the logbook that this was probably one of the most unproductive worthless days of all the time that I’ve been in Japan so far. No, wait, scratch that! I don’t have a logbook. Dag, yo! Well, I’ll just make a careful note of it here then. Well, before we get ahead of ourselves here…too late…I’ll turn the clock back for you a few days…not sure exactly how many. I had been making plans with a friend of a friend to just hang out on Saturday (today). It started out just the two of us, but then some more friends of friends were planning on joining. I didn’t really care one way or the other too strongly; I just didn’t want to be left with nothing to do again on the weekend. By the way, I don’t care what anyone says about the Bee Gees, I still like them. Wow, that was random. Anyway! Yeah, so then I found out that the following Saturday’s (today’s) practice would be an ALL DAY AFFAIR! Well! That sure killed my plans. Great. Stellar. Ok, so I canceled the plans I had made and decided that my commitment to the team were probably more important than just palling around with some people for the afternoon. The reason the practice was supposed to take all day was because in the morning we were supposed to clean the practice area (the place where the boats are stored) up and then in the afternoon we would practice. It didn’t seem too thrilling to me…but if only I had know how fantastic it would actually be, I wouldn’t have been complaining, I would have been out looking to buy a rope so I could hang myself! Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself again! Much to my chagrin I would have to leave the house half an hour earlier than I usually do on the weekend because Tanba-sensei wanted some of us to meet him at school instead of at the station and he wanted us there at 8 instead of at the station at 8:30. So, instead of getting my glorious additional 45 minutes of sleep (I just go wild on weekends and actually sleep all the way until 7:15am!) I got up at 6:30 just like on a regular school day. On my way to school I stopped at Lawson Station (a convenience store) to pick up some food for the day. I asked mom to make me a bento (box lunch) but she didn’t have anything to put in it so she just made me some onigiri (rice balls wrapped in seaweed leaves) and I bought my bento at the store. Despite getting a little late of a start and stopping at the store I was still on time as I approached the school. As I was riding around to the other side of the parking lot where the gate was open, today’s experience of acute displeasure (the other experiences proved to be more obtuse and lengthy) happened. I was riding near the curb and I was heading right for it so I turned the handlebars to the right to avoid hitting the curb and I thought I had steered clear of it…and I had…except for my left foot. It would have been ok, except and I thought I was totally clear of the curb and a good portion of my weight was on my left foot when the curb pushed it out from under me. What made the situation worse is that I was standing up on the peddles at the time. I’m not sure exactly how it happened…but…I was knocked forward and landed on the frame of the bike between the seat on the handlebars. Where did I land? Well, let me just say that if I had landed about half an inch further to the left I would never have children. When I managed to start walking straight more or less I made it the rest of the way to where I met Tanba-sensei and the rest of the kids.
Once we got to the park where we always practice on weekends there were a bunch of other people there. In total there were about a dozen college kids who had been practicing and were just cleaning up and milling around with their instructors. They were all pretty ugly kids…I guess that didn’t make them bad people, but I didn’t like them anyway hehehe. I knew that we were supposed to clean up the whole area when we got there. What I hadn’t been told is that some old ugly fat guy wearing grubby clothes would talk to us for over an hour about very general boating rules and practices and safety and loads of stuff that I’m sure everyone there was already aware of. While he was talking…endlessly…I was trying to decide: what would be better? If I could understand everything he was saying and then I’d be less bored? Or was it better as it was and me understanding about 2% of what he said and I can be just left to my own thoughts? I couldn’t decide. I was too beside myself with boredom. Occasionally I would lean over to Satoshi and ask him to kill me. Or Ippei would whisper the essence of what the dude was saying so I could get a little something about it. Finally the meeting was over. The pain and pointlessness was just beginning though!
The next phase was cleaning. What was there to clean though? I really wasn’t sure what needed cleaning so I asked Ippei what exactly we were going to do. He motioned to the entire area inside the garages where the boats are kept and to the boats themselves. He said that all of it was dirty. With a puzzled skeptical look on my face squatted on the floor and wiped cement with the palm of my hand and then looked at it to see what I’d picked up. There were a few flecks of dust and some flakes of rust from the ceiling. I looked back at Ippei and explained to him that the entire place was already clean and that there was no need to clean it any further. I even explained that the floor was clean enough to eat off of. The first year girls started sweeping the clean floors while we took out some of the boats to wash them off. I got close to the boats and examined them carefully. They looked clean, smelled clean….but did they taste clean? I tapped Ippei on the shoulder and brought him over to the boat. I looked down at it and ran the pad of my index finger over the boat and then licked my finger. I told him it was clean and that there was no need to wash it. He didn’t believe me and assured me it was very dirty. I think what this all points to is that Japanese people are just gluttons for punishment. They set up very high standards of conduct and social behavior and then they force themselves to live by them, even if they don’t like it. I’ll give you another example to help illustrate my points. Remember on the field trip when we had to sit in the blazing sun for so long listening to every class give their introduction? I don’t think the teachers enjoyed as much as the students did, and the students were sitting there fading away from heat exhaustion. So, my question is, why set up all these rules and standards if you’re not happy living under them? If you’re in charge of your own level of behavior, just lower the standard and then everyone, yourself included, will be happier!!!! I guess that’s an American perspective. I tried to explain to them the American way of thinking when they asked if Americans don’t care about cleaning. I explained to them that if it’s actually dirty, then it should be cleaned. But if you have to really look for the dirt, then it’s not worth it and you should do it when it’s actually needed! We spent about an hour and a half cleaning needlessly. Then we had lunch.
After lunch, the real kickers were going to come in. For over an hour, I was with Ippei while he tried to make the proper adjustments to the oarlocks on the boat. Why did adjustments need to be made? Because the oarlocks on this particular boat had been removed for transportation purposes. For some reason, Ippei was having a lot of trouble getting the measurements right. I wanted to help him, but since I didn’t understand what he was doing or why, it was really hard for me. So, I just spent a good amount of time pacing around and being impatient or lying in the shade. When I could help, I did, but there wasn’t much for me to do. Ippei was really tired and frustrated just like me. All the other people who were going out in boats had already left. Meanwhile, I was just sitting there doing absolutely nothing. It was so stupid. Throughout the day I must have wished two dozen times that I knew how to say things like “pointless” “unproductive” “worthless” “waste of time” and “sit around doing nothing.” Those words would have been so handy. Meanwhile, Tanba-sensei was making adjustments on the 4 person boat. There were three elementary school kids and a little boy, about 4 I would guess, who had showed up with their mother. I had know idea who they were, but Tanba-sensei was showing them about the boat. Just then, he called me over. The next thing I knew we had brought the boat to the water and the oars were in it and we were all about the get in the boat. At first I thought he was going to put me in the boat with the 3 elementary school girls and the little boy. If this was going to happen, I was fully prepared to refuse. But instead Tanba-sensei got in too and sat in the stern and the little boy sat on his lap. The girls were quite spastic and we almost tipped over several times. What made the situation worse was than the were a very healthy breeze blowing us down the canal away from where we launched the boat. I only took, in total, about two strokes with the oars. Tanba-sensei decided that we should turn around. So, he got out of the boat where it was shallow enough and he turned the boat around because the wind was too strong to row it in a circle—especially when the girls had no idea what they were doing. Then he put me in the stern. That didn’t make much sense to me because had I still been rowing and he put one of the girls up there; at least I could have helped him row us back against the wind. He ended up rowing us all the way back basically by himself.
I don’t know how the next few hours past. I was in a bad mood though because although it was sunny, it had gotten cold. Also, on our way back, I saw Ippei paddling around with another guy…I guess they’d finally gotten things to fit right. Then the cleanup of the boats and the area and putting three of the boats back on the trailer and actually leaving took FOREVER….OH MY GOD!!!! It was so ridiculous. The simplest things took so long. And want to hear another kicker? Those boats that we spent so much time “cleaning” in the morning….those were the ones that we put in the water today and they got full of sea water and sand again! Good gracious… When we finally left at 6pm (I’d been told we’d leave at 5) we only got about 5 minutes before we had to turn around because Satoshi had forgotten his cell phone. We made it back to school around 7pm. Practice was finally over at 7:15. It was almost dark by then and I rode my bike home without incident. We had dinner and watched some idiotic Japanese television. I hope tomorrow will be a little bit more productive. I might be going to a famous shrine. If it rains though, I’ll have to change my plans. Ok, I need to stop thinking about how lame today was. Good night.
-Maikeru