May 18-Blisters, Rain Drops, Spaghetti, and Swordplay
It’s been a long time since I’ve written a journal entry. Actually, it’s been about a week I guess. Well, it’s not like there hasn’t been time, but it’s more like when there is time, I’m not really in the mood to write a journal entry because I want to relax or do something else and I don’t really feel like sitting down and just writing out something like I’m doing a school report or something. Well, It’s not like I don’t enjoy writing journal entries. I really do. It’s just that I’ve proven to myself that I am incapable of writing a concise, bare bones, just the facts, journal entry. All my journal entries need to go on diets…just like me. Well, they don’t REALLY need to. I like the fact that I just sit here in my chair for an hour or two and just write about whatever comes out of my head about the day, week, or anything that I’ve been noticing or has been on my mind. I don’t know whom exactly I’m writing these journal entries too. I just kind of right as if I’m talking to someone. I suppose that when I read all of this 50 or so years from now to remind my aging gray matter of what exactly I did in Japan when I was a punk 18 year old about to start his life. Or am I really about to start it? Well, I guess I started it about 18 years and 10 months ago but even as fast as things change when you’re young, I’m convinced that my biggest adventures and experiences are still yet to come. At least…they’d BETTER BE! I really shouldn’t complain though, and I’m not. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve already lived more in my brief time on Earth than many people live in their entire lives…I guess that’s pretty cool. I’ve seen and done things that even people just like me would never dream of even having the chance to do. I guess that’s one of the reasons I wanted to come to Japan—to feel like I was getting something out of my time on Earth. Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I wasn’t doing anything in New Jersey before I left. The months leading up to my departure made up the most enjoyable time in my adolescent years. I had made new friends that always wanted hang out with me, together we had all of our own inside jokes and things we did together. My old friends stayed loyal and they were always there for me to depend on. My girlfriend was crazy about me and I about her. I had a cute zippy little red car with a license plate frame that said “All Your Base Belong To Us.” I didn’t really do much schoolwork, but when I did, I got all A’s. What else could an 18-year-old guy ask for? Well, I asked for more. I asked to make the last 4 months of my senior year unforgettable. I really didn’t have much support for what I wanted to do. In fact, just about everyone I can think of was against it. I knew what I had to do, and I after working on it for about a year and a half (from first getting the idea until actually realizing what my little dream) I managed to do it. What does this tell us about me? If I really want to do something enough, I can do it. No, I didn’t get above a 1420 on the SATs. That would have been nice. But I guess I just didn’t want it badly enough. I don’t have any regrets though because as it is I’m going to a great college with a solid reputation and lots of smart kids. The two colleges that rejected me are at a loss for doing that and they’ll never know it, so it so it’s just too bad for them. Anyway, what I’m trying to get at here, is that I like making these journal entries as long as they end up being because if I type something out here, it means I’ve got something to say, even if no one is listening, and someday I’ll be able to come back to this and find out exactly what was going on inside my fuzzy head and feel the tickle of youth again. Hahahaha…wow…I sound like I’m dying or something the way I’m writing now. Well, I guess I could really die any time…any of us could, so I guess it’s a good thing that I’m making the most of all of this. Gosh, that’s depressing…if I died…like…I guess I wouldn’t know it if it happened, but nevertheless, I have a lot of big plans and that would hamper them…especially because I don’t buy into the whole afterlife bit.
Well, while we’re still among the living in the tangible world, it’s 9:32pm on a Sunday night. Miss Onitsuka is belting out another award winning ballad on my shiny silver CD player, my stomach is filled with rice, Japanese stew (assorted vegetables, tofu, chicken, and wieners), and Chips Ahoy cookies that my Mommy sent me. What a nice Mommy I have. Well, my mom is nice here too, and that’s nice, but I don’t think anyone can ever replace my real mommy. What other woman would mail me books, my DVDs, and a box of cookies just because I felt like having that stuff. Mmmm…cookies are good…I think I’ll eat some more. Mmmmmm…this is heaven. I think I’ll talk about food for a little bit while these cookies make love to my taste buds. I think that the foods that you fall in love with as a child and grow up on will always be special. Even when you’re old and gray and wrinkly like some parents I have, you can still enjoy foods you did when you were a little kid with the same amount of pleasure. For me, those foods would be things like Doritos, tuna fish sandwiches, Cheerios, Chips Ahoy cookies, French toast, and apple juice. I was RAISED on those foods! Oh wow those cookies were good. I’m thinking about killing someone for a cold glass of milk right now…but…it’s pointless because there is no decent milk in this country. They don’t really have any cows in Japan because there isn’t room for livestock of any kind, and all the milk you can buy is very processed and tastes gross. Anyway, back to childhood foods. Whenever I eat any of the things I mentioned above, especially if I haven’t had them in a while, a sea of memories and sensations floods over me. A few weeks ago as I had made the decision to eat my last bag of Doritos, that my mommy had sent me, as I was riding home from school I was engulfed in a deluge of images from my youth…lying by the pool near my grandmother’s house eating Doritos, sharing a bag of Doritos with the seagulls at Jones Beach when I was probably about 5, or just lying in the yard at home in New Jersey as the summer breeze blows through the trees and carries worries, doubt, and notions of time with it as the cheesiness consumes my senses and carries me aloft with the wind. I close my eyes and the swaying branches covered in green leave become a gentle surf sloshing up onto a sandy beach….Another one of my half-cocked theories is that the season that people are born is becomes their favorite season. I don’t think this theory has much ground to it though. I guess it’s true for me though. I was born in July (definitely the best month of the year) and summer is totally my favorite season. Notice that all my images above are from summer. Also, most of my childhood memories are from summer time. I wonder why that is. Most of those memories take me back to Central Park or to my grandmother’s house in Heritage Hills. I think that might be why I associate Cental Park with youth and innocence (mine at least). Last spring when I was totally going insane over SATs and then SAT IIs, all I wanted to go was go to Central Park and lie in the Sheep Meadow or rent a rowboat at the pond and paddle around or buy a pretzel, hot dog with mustard from a street vendor, and a can of Coke. I don’t care what anyone says…those are beautiful things. I think those times were times when I didn’t have anything to worry about so nothing could be easier. Well, last summer I did get to lie in the Sheep Meadow and I think I bought a pretzel, but I didn’t get to do the boat. I guess it’s pretty lame to rent a rowboat by yourself. Maybe I can do that with Helena when I get home. That would be nice. Well, I could go on and on about all of this for a long time, but the hour is rapidly advancing and I’d better get down to what I did today. I intend to write a few other journal entries about this week, but I’ll have to do that another time. For now I think I can just get to today. It’s possible you gave up already, but I guarantee when you started reading this journal entry you couldn’t wait for me to get to the explanation of the title. Well, I guess I’d better get into that now so we can get an explanation in before it REALLY gets too late and I have to go to sleep. Actually, if I were 100% sensible, I’d go to sleep now, but we all know that sensible is not one of my many fine qualities. Wow, I’m stalling, here we go.
So I had to get up at the regular
time this morning (7:15am) because of boat practice. Yesterday was a real treat.
I didn’t have to set an alarm or anything because practice wasn’t until
1pm! Woohooo…that was intensely
enjoyable, but I’ll get into that another day.
Anyway, after about 10 minutes I managed to get myself out of bed and I
stumbled downstairs to take a shower.
After I got out of the shower I realized that I had to eat breakfast,
get my stuff together, get dressed, and leave the house all in 10 minutes
otherwise I’d be late and might miss everyone and not be able to go to
practice. That would have been
disastrous. Luckily Mom was still
asleep and she had bought some doughnuts and left them on the table as she said
she would. I must say it was a bit of a
relief to be able to switch on the TV for 5 minutes, watch what I want, not
worry about talking to anyone about nothing, not asking myself if I remembered
to say, “Itadakimasu” before I started eating, or worrying about what
might be floating in my miso soup (something I still haven’t gotten used
to). I only had time to eat two of the
doughnuts but I wrapped up the third and brought it with me. While I was getting dressed I got an e-mail
from Satoshi. At first I thought it
said that because it was raining, today’s practice wasn’t mandatory. That totally didn’t sound right so I whipped
out the kanji dictionary to check out two kanji (Chinese characters) that I’d
never seen before. A couple minutes
later I realized he was just telling me to bring a change of clothes because it
was raining…great…I totally wasted valuable time checking out something that I
was going to do anyway. I managed to
get out of the house just after 8am…not cool…especially since it takes at least
30 minutes to get to Miyazaki Station and the last time I got there exactly on
time everyone had already gone inside. As
I waited at a traffic light I sent an e-mail to Ippei telling him that I was
almost to the station and that he should wait for me. I only found out 5 minutes later that he was even later than I
was and was the last one to show up. I
ended up riding in the van this morning instead of taking the train. I think taking the train is more fun, but
the van is ok too. Tanba-sensei can be
a bit of a maniac behind the wheel and that makes it a bit more interesting. Today I found out that our good man Tanba isn’t
married. Apparently he has a 恋人 (koibito) [lover] though…what a stud
hehehe. Well, we know that his van is a
total pimp-mobile hahahahaha so I guess it’s no surprise that he’s got a
girlfriend. By the way, I’ve given up
on explaining to the Japanese kids what a “pimp-mobile” or what something “pimped
out” might be like. Even if I could
explain it, there is no way they would also understand that I’m being sarcastic
and mean the exact opposite. I’ve
decided that sarcasm is the most difficult emotion/sense of meaning to convey
and to pick up…at least when people with different language and ethnic
backgrounds are communicating. So much
of communication is dependent on a set of ideas and common experiences that the
two people talking need to have in order to completely understand each
other. And….when the two people have completely
different backgrounds, the communication suffers because they don’t share that
common ground already. I think that’s
why sarcasm is hard. Sarcasm depends on
the other person knowing what you truly mean or intend despite what you say and
the fact that you say the opposite only strengthens what you really mean…interesting
isn’t it? Well if you don’t think so,
you’re a loser and you need to use your head more often and think about things
you never even considered. I have to do
that every day!!!!
Well, anyway, boat practice today was
mega-important because Ippei and myself have to do some serious
practicing. Exactly one week from today
we have the competition. Yes, I’m going
to be in a competition. No, I’m not
ready. Yes, we’re probably going to
lose. Well, let me just say that if a
week from today, we row like we did today and yesterday, it’s going to be a
miracle if we don’t fall out of the boat.
Apparently we are going to be able to get boat time on Tuesday too
though. That should be good. One thing that definitely worries me is the
fact that we still haven’t rowed the full length of a race (1000m) before
without stopping. I’m definitely
getting better but I would say that the biggest problem I’m running into is my
grip on the oars and how they enter and exit the water. Here’s what happens (I went through HELL
trying to explain this to Ippei while we were sloshing around in the boat today
but I think he got it in the end)….after a while my grip on the oars begins to
weaken. Then, the precision with which I
flip the oars around (either standing up and down for entry into the water or
lying down on the back stroke) starts to get sloppy. When it gets sloppy, the angle with which the oars enter the
water also gets less precise. This
leads to the oars going in at an angle and going way too deep into the
water. It also gets much harder to pull
them out of the water and sometimes they drag because the angle is all messed
up. When I’m on the backstroke, the oar
blades sometimes slap the water because they aren’t flat enough and that messes
up the timing even more. By this time we’ve
almost tipped over a few times and my strokes are all garbage. I definitely have some fresh blisters on my
hands today from the oars. But that’s
good though because when they stop hurting, I’ll be able to have a tighter grip
on the oars and keep them under control.
It only rained a little
bit during practice so that was nice.
It was cloudy the entire time though.
That was probably good too though because the sun wasn’t blinding me and
I didn’t get another sunburn today. That
was nice. When we got back to the train
station I met Chie who had been waiting for me for a little bit. As planned we first went to get some food
since I hadn’t eaten anything since the doughnuts this morning. We went to a café on the top floor of one of
the shopping centers in downtown Miyazaki.
I had チキンからあげ (turned
out to be some little pieces of fried chicken and French fries…I thought it was
a salad since it was listed in the salad section) and some spaghetti. Chie had some…gosh…what was it…I can’t
remember. It was one of her favorite
things but she didn’t finish it because she got too full. After that we went to look for a birthday
present for her brother. It wasn’t easy
at all because almost all the stores are geared towards female shoppers. Chie also didn’t know what her brother likes
and apparently he hadn’t asked for anything.
That doesn’t make things easy at all.
We ended up in a store that sold used T-shirts from America. They had some interesting things in
there. I really wish I knew how they
got the t-shirts (which I’m sure most were really from America). They had shirts with the names of elementary
schools on them, Boy Scout shirts, US Navy shirts, soccer team shirts,
basketball shirts, you name it, they had it.
She ended up getting him some yellow shirt with a knight on horseback on
it. I found a shirt that I really got a
kick out of. It’s orange and on the
front it says in big letters, “Let an X-Ray Technician Expose You!” It was laughing for about 5 minutes about
that one so of course I had to get it.
Unfortunately, when I got home to try it on it discovered it was a bit
too small. That’s ok though. It will give me extra incentive to lose some
weight. After the shopping we went to
see the movie that I had wanted to see ever since I saw the previews for it
when I went to the movies with Hiromi in Osaka—あずみ (Azumi).
It was about a young girl who was a genius with a samurai sword who did
battle against big bad guys (also with samurai swords) along with the help of
her friends. It was a rather strange
movie, but it was entertaining. There
was certainly no shortage of blood and gore in it. When someone was slices with a sword the blood literally squirted
out across the person who the sliced or the person who did the slicing…quite
realistic I imagine. I didn’t really
follow the plot, but there was enough action that it didn’t really matter I don’t
think. The differences in Japanese cinematography
and American cinematography were also interesting so that was good. During the movie I was worried that Chie
wasn’t liking the movie because there was a lot of violence and it seemed to me
that it was much more of a guy’s movie than a chick-flick, but when it was over
she seemed happy and said she liked it, so that was good. If you want info on this peculiar movie, go
to http://www.azumi-movie.jp I’m sure
you can get your fix of Japanese sword violence there. Anyway, after the movie was over, we walked
back to the train station where I had parked my bike and I rode home. I really had to hurry because the trip to
the station that morning had taken just under 30 minutes and I had 30 minutes
before my bloody curfew was up….and….the way home always takes longer because
it was getting dark, it had started to rain lightly, and there is the hill of
course. Well, I never cease to amaze
even myself and I made it home at 7:28…nice….nice. Now, since it’s definitely getting late and I’ve been writing
this thing for almost an hour and a half I’d better go to sleep. I definitely have a full day of school
tomorrow. Oh, speaking of tomorrow, I’m
supposed to start in my new classes tomorrow…I think. Well, if I do, I’ll be sure to let you know all about it. Ok, I’ll talk to you later. Byebye…
-Maikeru