Mada Ikiteiru

Still alive, dudes!  I know that if there were an International Blog Police Force, I would be a wanted fugitive from justice.  This winter as a whole has had an incredibly lethargic effect on my higher brain functions; I wake up and go to work for a bit every day, and occasionally vague memories swim to the fore, like...a goat full of beer, or something?  I must really be losing my mind.  Anyway, I hired a creative consultant to whom I plan to devolve the duties of thinking of insightful things to say, inserting dick jokes where appropriate, and proofreading.  Score!

To get on to the actual writing, permit me to share with you a list of ways in which I troll my kids.  You know, for international exchange.  Here they are:

-Whenever I pass out worksheets, I tell them to get pumped and dance/flip out at the front of the classroom.  ...I usually only do this when I'm teaching by myself.

-Sometimes my kids repeat things I say in a goofy voice; when they do, I like to amplify that effect over repeated iterations until I just start making loud, unintelligible noises.  One of my fifth-grade classes find this so hilarious that they've begun to ask me to repeat every sentence in a Yogi Bear-like fashion.  Everything.  (That one might've backfired on me.)

-Occasionally, when a student comes up to me to get an answer sheet, or if I pick up something they've dropped off the ground, I rock-paper-scissors them for it.  If they lose, I tell them goodbye and turn away from them, wait just long enough until they turn to their friends in bewilderment, then give them the contested item.

-Whenever at least one boy and girl are taking a little too long of a break from the task at hand, or are being disruptive, I politely ask them to please stop flirting so much.  (Middle schoolers love this.)

-The girls are absolutely smitten with One Direction.  One day, they asked me if I know about them.  I respond by singing a bit from one of their songs, and they duly flip a shit.  Then, I took off my glasses in dramatic fashion and asked, "So do I look like them?"  But here, I was counter-trolled with a cogent "NO" spoken in unison.  These kids can get sassy.

-When my kids see me around town, it's usually with Amanda and Carly.  Additionally, whenever a young foreign guy and girl are seen together, they are automatically assumed to be dating if not married with children.  However, seeing one guy and two girls confuses my kids.  They ask, "Which one is your girlfriend?" To which I always, always respond with, "Both of them are."  Some kids get it; other kids fall into an almost crestfallen silence, as if thinking, "I don't know what's right anymore."  But the winner is the one kid who, after I told him that I don't, in fact, have two girlfriends, turned to his buddy behind him and muttered fiercely, "I told you he wasn't a player!"

NEXT TIME:  Whoa dudes whoaaa don't box me in to talking about next time yet.  I've got some ideas cooking; maybe something about how, once again, I'm trying my as hard as I can to fit in at my middle school, or maybe something about hanging out more with my teachers.  Probably that second one.  Worse comes to worst, I'll make a haiku entirely out of cuss words.

Kogai Ni

Being outdoors, dudes!  It's a thing, as I've recently learned.  You won't recall me talking about my first camping trip here, because I so deftly skimmed over it.  That was about a month ago, I guess; we went to go see this badass taiko drum concert on Sado, an island just off the coast beyond Niigata City, with a bunch of the other Niigata JETs.  We brought our gear with us to the island; after the concert, we set up camp on the beach, made a bonfire, checked out the stunning night sky--I saw more shooting stars that I ever had in one night--and generally mucked around like the college students most of us are deep down.  (Okay, maybe it's just me.  What?  I've been out of school for less than a semester now.)  Being sort of out in the countryside as it is, I'm not too starved for contact with nature, but it's still nice to really bust outta Dodge.  You know, get away from the sounds of people, breath in some really fresh air, and get your ass woken up at six by the sunrise.  I would like to emphasize that that latter item really did happen.  I was confused because it looked like broad daylight outside, and also because I had netted myself  something like three hours of sleep.  It took my tent mates a few solid minutes to fully persuade me that it was, in fact, death o'clock in the morning.  After that, I stumbled into the surf--this proved to be a good way to wake up, one I wish I could replicate at home.  (Maybe if I hauled in some sand, flooded my bathroom…wait, this sounds suspiciously familiar.)

So there's a lot that I'm skipping over from that trip--notably, how I ran into one of my coworkers while hefting a one-liter bottle of beer, plus hanging out with this one guy who's been teaching English for fourteen years! --but I must push on, lest I wind up writing about mid-October on my winter vacation.   This camping trip marked our official, prefecture-wide welcome party, the culminating event after a bunch of smaller-scale welcome shindigs we'd attended both in Gosen and elsewhere.  The venue, the ground zero of our jubilee, was a campground a couple of hours south of us.  After a quite scenic drive, we arrived some three bajillion hours before the festivities were to commence.  As the only three people there, Carly, Amanda, and myself began setting up camp.  Permit me one moment to describe the place.  The first of two general parts was the actual grounds itself, a small, open area of neatly manicured grass.  Connected by a short bridge over a small creek were the cabins and other stuff (office, bathrooms, etc.) arranged around a paved communal area.  This bland description doesn't do much justice to the place, but suffice it to say that it was a pretty sweet deal, quite conducive to a large social gathering, and better kept than I would expect a campsite that's further in the countryside to be.

We began constructing our sweet tent, borrowed from our friend and de facto host mother, Rumi.  This was the same tent we had used on Sado; then,  we were forced to delay setup until midnight after a solid night of, well, concert, and so did not efficiently nor one hundred percent effectively put our tent up.  (Also, sand.)  This time around, however, we had the leisure to properly erect a veritable fortress, the envy of our fellow campers.  Carly was pleased, Amanda doubly so--as I understand it, the average Minnesotan spends thirty weeks out of the year camping.  Our frequent companion from the town next to us, Kristyn, was amazed beyond words when she arrived later--which is to say not literally "beyond words."  Kristyn fills an important niche in my social constellation, that of an avid purveyor of dry humor, which is, shall we say, not as common as rice in Japan.  She's an excellent foil to my style of outrageous hyperbole and embellishment; so when I began to expound on the great toil we had endured, she adroitly cut me off with a terse sentiment along the lines of, "Uh huh, sure."  Borderline sardonic, maybe, but it hurts good.  Also we talk about beer in a scholarly fashion, a hobby I miss much from the halcyon days of my college career.  You know, like six months ago.

We went to scope out a nearby park and shrine before the rest of the nerds began to arrive.  On this expedition, we accrued, Katamari-like, an entourage of small children who happened to be playing while we visited.  They were very interested in America, although we had to disabuse one of them of the notion that America and Japan are geographically contiguous and also the same country.  Another persistently inquired into the logistics of currency exchange.  "Do they hold the money for you until you come back?"  Now that would be a sweet deal, you guys.  In short, they were quite adorable.  When we left, they followed us back to camp, which was something of a cause for concern on my part.  I was rather unclear on the protocol regarding unaccompanied minors following strangers around; I know that the American legal code classifies that as a "party foul" worth ten years in the pen.  (In all seriousness though, it's interesting how much autonomy they give little kids here.  I haven't any facts or figures to persuade you, but outside of school these small fries roam quite freely.)  As the rest of Foreigner Squadron Alpha began to drift in, we played tag (or as it's called here, oni gokko, "play [at being a] devil") with the kids.  I only visit my elementary schools for half-days each, therefore I haven't had the opportunity to participate in after-lunch tag with students.   So I was mega blown away at the energy these kids had; they were firing on all cylinders all the time.  Eventually one of their mothers came by to pick them up, much to the relief of my exhausted body.  Now, it was time to get down to the serious business of socializing.

The grill was fired up as we foreigners accumulated, and we congregated in the common area by the cabins.  At this point there's not much more I can say other than we had a right old time; grilled noms and beverages aplenty, someone's iPod blasting from somewhere, nerds jamming out on guitar, frequent trips to pee in the woods (in spite of the fully functional toilets), a dance party, s'mores cooked over an open fire.  What began as a duel of good old fashioned Wizard's Staff between two friends turned into a campsite full of wizards, culminating in an actual wizard battle (which I did not realize was stipulated in the rules).  It was just a good time, you know?  Like, pick a good party you hit up at school.  (Maybe one year at Don't Mess with Texas, or an O-Week crawl.)  The crazy thing is how immersed I find myself in our big get-togethers.  Part of it, of course, is that during the week I don't see people or go out, on account of how spread out we are and this crazy new schedule I'm trying out wherein I actually manage more than six hours of sleep.  But just being around my JET friends, hanging out en masse, I experience two things:  First, I nearly forget that I'm Japan.  This is a little ridiculous--especially because there are usually some Japanese friends-of-friends whom I end up chatting with-- but regardless, that's the sensation comes over me.  Second, I sort of quietly marvel at how normal it all is.  Coming to Niigata, I had a hunch that it would be an active bunch, so I guess I should've anticipated that there would be some proper partying going on.  But, as with so many things here, it's what's similar and familiar that stands out more than the big differences.  I think that's because, even having had some experience with Japan, I've mentally (perhaps unconsciously) positioned myself more on a footing to anticipate and process the differences, which of course are abundant.  But that apparatus has no function to account for the similarities I find in my lifestyle.  I don't want it to sound like I'm paralyzed by massive cognitive dissonance every waking second, because I'm not.   Rather, it's a vibe that's there in the back of my head.   When I zone out sometimes, it hums a little louder, to the tune of, "Whoa, I'm in Japan.  So much is different, but sometimes I can't even tell because I just feel…normal."  That's something I experience in small ways, like hanging out in our happy little threesome at the end of the day, and in bigger ways, like this rad camping trip.

Oh, and I nearly forgot to tell you about the first burger I had since I've been here.  Man.  Okay.  Gotta back it up a little bit.  We went to the mall a little ways out to pick up gear for camping, right?  I'd already been to this mall before.  We weren't sure what we felt like for dinner, so we wound up at some place in the food court that sorta had everything.  Among other items on the menu were, you know, burgers.  I thought about it.  I went for it.  And man, it was good.  I mean, the burger itself was tasty--not like a Perigord, but better than a fast food thing--but rarely have I had a single item of food affect me so profoundly.  I just felt good, like my whole body had just been massaged.  I hadn't even realized how badly I'd wanted a burger until I put my mouth on it; at those specific coordinates in space and time, that was exactly what I needed.  Amanda put it well when she noted that eating a meal like that is a completely different kind of full from the usual Japanese fare we have.  And I could feel that in my stomach, so forgotten yet so familiar, like going home over the summer and seeing your high school friends again.  Since I was on such a roll, we went to Baskin Robbins afterwards.  Did I mention it was pay day that day?  We were in a mood of excessiveness that night.  The cherry on top was discovering Paulaner hefe-wiessbier at the big grocery store downstairs, which I grabbed for emergency use.  I left the mall in a pretty okay mood.

Okay, now fast forward! We're at the weekend after I went camping.  I woke up on Saturday morning at 2:30 in the morning.  That's right kids, this was the day we went fishing with our boss.  Our first move was to go to the convenience store, where our boss bought us beer.  Japanese has a specific word for this phenomenon--asazake, or "morning alcohol."  Then we hopped over to the city, picking up hooks and bait on the way, went out to the water, and, well, fished.  (P.s., my boss had brought the rods and other such gear.)  I don't have a whole lot of fishing experience under my belt, so I wasn't completely sure what was going to happen, or whether I would grievously harm myself in what would be a hilarious accident if it happened to someone else.  Here's how it went down.  We set up shop on a pier, not right on the sea because of the sea walls (where the hardcore nerds were fishing from) but jutting out into a calm body of water.  Like I said, I know jack about fishing, so this will be a laughable description, but instead of just one hook at the end of the line, we used a string of small hooks?  No clue what it's actually called.  Anyway.  The strategy was simple enough:  Bait, then plunk the rod down and wait for a tug.  The fish were, to my surprise, quite plentiful, and quite dumb too.  Every time I dropped my line, these little guys would be eagerly tugging at the line mere seconds later, as if begging me to deliver them from their boring existences as fish.  (Wow.  That got dark, yo.)  But we had quite a haul, maybe a few pounds or so of fish.  After napping all afternoon, we enjoyed our catch for dinner at our boss's house.  They turned out delicious; his mother (who lives next door) had fried them up, and we munched on them.  That was just a super pleasant evening; the boss is a secretly hilarious guy.  (Incidentally, one of the best feelings in the world is getting a joke in another language, like this morning when I asked him what to do if I see a bear [bear sightings being common in the fall] and he told me to just play dead.)  We learned that we're the first JETs they've ever invited to their home, which was a little surprising but very satisfying.

Man.  That's just the end of September.  I'll hit pause for now.  I'm probably missing a lot here too, especially since I've mostly been talking about the weekends without bringing up the Interesting Things that go on during the week.  I'll throw you one such bone:  Occasionally, my kids will ask me when I'm returning to America.  One such time was when I was eating lunch with my sixth-graders; I told the kid that I had just shown up, dude, and I wasn't planning on leaving just yet.  The kid next to me chimed in that I couldn't go back.

"Why not?"  I asked.

"You don't have a home there."

"What about my family's house?"

He thought hard about this.  "They died," he decided.  Pure gold.

When I was leaving school this past Friday, as I was leaving I told another student that I was going on a trip over the weekend.  His response?  "Oh, to America?"  Yep.  See you on Monday, kid.

 

One more:  We were doing timezones one day, and, pointing at Australia, I asked them what country I had indicated.  Now, I was already well-acquainted with my students' command of geography, so I wasn't surprised when they responded, "Germany!  America!  Africa!"  It was just their fearless, almost reckless bravado, the heroic enthusiasm with which they spitballed (and so magnificently failed) that caused me to seize up with laughter; I literally had to stop teaching, and wasn't sure if I would make it through the rest of the lesson.

 

 

These and other hilarious things are pretty much par for the course at the elementary school.  Honestly, my middle school days are more laid back because I teach fewer periods a day.  Teaching itself is still going pretty well.  I'm more or less on a regular schedule now, but I'm still working on getting completely used to it, particularly trying to balance being active and taking charge in the classroom versus keeping to a supporting role--my title, of course, is assistant language teacher, so you could say I'm trying to figure out when to be more "assistant" and when to be more "teacher", all the while trying to account for cultural differences.  But that'll come in time; I mean, it seems like forever ago now, but I've only been teaching for right under two months now.  Even so, it's not as weird as it used to be when people call me "sensei."

Quick review:  There were absolutely no dick jokes or bad words in this post.  At least one very specific reference.  Alas and alack, I failed by my own criteria.  Although I am digging this meta-writing.  Maybe in some future post I'll do a roundup of all such meta tidbits and see how well I'm doing on those, and so on until infinity, or until you snap, fly over, and shoot me in the kneecap.  Bring jerky when you do!

NEXT TIME:  A long weekend of shenanigans with Japanese pals old and new, and my stunning debut on the court at the biannual basketball tournament.  I should just quit my job, 'cause maybe then I would catch up on my blog.

Natsu no Owari

It's the end of the summer, my nerds!  You know what that means--that means the shit is starting to get real.  As I so tantalizingly alluded to in my previous post, it's been a hell of a few weeks.  The menu's running long today, so I hope you brought your appetite.  Since the last installment of this esteemed publications, the first thing I did was enjoy a 72-hour gauntlet of festivals over a long weekend in mid-September.  I'm only slightly exaggerating; our schedule was punctuated with sporadic breaks for eating and sleeping, but otherwise it was pretty much full throttle.  Let's back it up to the Friday when it all kicked off.  We had practice for the first event we'd attend, the fall festival in our town, Gosen.  The actual shindig went as follows:  Each part of town has a small float that they pull along on ropes, making stops to pay their respects to old dudes hanging out at specific landmarks along the way to the terminus of the procession, a larger shrine in the town's center.  Oh yeah, and in front of the floats are people playing flutes and small taiko drums on wheels.  So Friday night was "practice," which for me meant following the people who were actually doing stuff on our route and…not much else.  Everyone thought Carly and I were married, which was hilarious; basically if a guy and a girl are out together, they'll assume the two are an item, and that's doubly so for foreigners.  Throw in the fact that everyone gets married about two seconds after they graduate university and boom, they start to see foreigner couples errywhere.

So anyway, we walked for about an hour.  The reward for our strenuous activity was nothing other than Japanese grandpa drinking time.  (Hang on, I need to back up and say that I got to hit on the drums a bit, which was good fun.  I have a secret, unrealized love for percussion instruments, and as far as those go, taiko drums are pretty swell.)  So we had some Japanese grandpa drinking time at the house where we had originally gathered for the evening.   We sat at low tables stacked high with all manner of Japanese noms--shrimp tempura, pickled veg, kara age (basically fried chicken) and potato salad (which to my persistent amazement is much loved here).  Dominating the skyline were towering bottles of fine Japanese beer.  This, of course, was the main attraction.  At this point I should belatedly clarify that the overwhelming majority of the party ranged in age from old to older; we owed the festivities to these elderly patriarchs who had so diligently retained memory of the old ways.  So we celebrated the successful transmission of a centuries-old tradition the usual way--good food, good beer, and (inevitably) good sake.

The following evening was the fall festival for realsies.  Where our practice night had been dim and quiet, the festival proper was alive with the beating of the taiko, the streets illuminated by the floats rolling by; they weren't huge, but they seemed ponderously massive relative to the narrow streets teeming with human bodies and booths selling food and toys.  My role in all this was the very traditional, very respected position of "dude who directs traffic around our parade."  Really.  Right before we left, one of the men in our group handed me a rod much like a short, flashing lightsaber for the purpose of directing any cars near us to kindly not mow down any of our party members.  Amanda got one too, and we immediately commenced our duel.  I don't know why they saw it fit to charge us with the safety of a few dozen people, many of them young children.  Nonetheless, we proceeded on the route, quite casualty-free; we took in the sights of the festival and watch other floats go by.  At some point, I was handed a can of Asahi--and that's when I learned that the float, being pulled along mostly by small children, had a full cargo of beer.  I was stunned by the ingenuity of it all; I was basically on a traditional Japanese crawl.  Upon reaching the shrine and watching the short ceremony there--more music and dudes in the regalia of Edo-period Japan--I abruptly shifted functions.  I was handed one of the two paper lanterns mounted on bamboo poles and placed in the vanguard of our party.  This was a little more badass than my previous occupation, so I happily complied.  After wending our way through small back streets and eventually on to the main road--literally on the road, I should add--we eventually made it back to the start, where we commenced round two of Japanese grandpa drinking time.  As it is with any group I socialize with for the first time, they told me how great I was at Japanese/using chopsticks, and I talked about my interest in Japan and life in Gosen.  You can imagine that covering the same ground over and over again can get old, but the fact that my community is genuinely eager to get to know me and include me more than compensates for that.  It's pretty great.

Sunday we hit the city for, yes, some more sweet festival action--these ones being in a more modern vein, rather than the traditional shindig I had attended the previous two nights.  First, we scoped out the dance festival.  It seems like just about anyone could form a team and enter, but that's not to say that they didn't totally kick ass.  Random streets were blocked off and open spaces commandeered to accommodate participants and spectators; it really felt like the whole city was in celebration.  We moseyed from place to place watching the dances, and somewhere along the way we caught a random solo concert, maybe a dozen viewers strong.  This dude was just jamming out on acoustic guitar, so we thought we'd take a break and chill out.  My butt had barely made contact with the seat before he started calling us out in front of the audience.  "You guys aren't Japanese, huh?"  No, no we were not.  "Cool!"  We caught a few more songs, then went to talk to him when he took a break.  He was still pretty excited that some foreign nerds had shown up at his show (he actually mentioned it on his blog), and we snagged a couple of signed CDs from him.  There was a lot of reciprocal days being made right then, you guys.  Hey, if you like solo acoustic guitar without vocals, you should totally check him out right here:  http://fujita-shingo.jugem.jp/  (Fuck yes.  I was waiting for the day I could make a shameless plug on my blog.  Now this blog is major league, my nerds.)

Later in the afternoon, we dropped in on what was definitely the main attraction for the day:  the random-ass food festival.  Purveyors of all things edible came from around the prefecture to show off their goods.  After getting our bearings, I made a beeline for a coffee stand.  My rapid advance in that direction, however, was almost completely negated by the velocity at which I was blown away when I heard the coffee dudes speak.  You guys, the stand was run by a trio of Japanese who spoke what is undoubtedly the best English I have ever heard any Japanese speak; unaccented, quick and flowing.  Whereas I normally time most of my time speaking patiently in slowly-enunciated English with my teachers at school, these strange barista-cum-teacher-cum-persons of mystery spoke such fantastic English that I felt myself shifting into the same speech patterns normally reserved for use with my pals--a reaction I'd never had evoked in me speaking English with a Japanese person.  It was insane!  We learned that these guys taught English at a private school in the city; I felt like I should go and learn a thing or two about English.  Dazed, I walked off to explore the rest of the festival.

Lots of free samples!  One of the best was cubes of gelatinous mochi powdered in crushed soy, a favorite treat of mine.  At some point, I spied someone selling brownies; I literally stopped, breathed out hard, and gazed a gaze both tender and sad.  I stood still for so long I was separated from the rest of the crew.  I didn't buy any, just like I didn't purchase anything from one stand selling what they professed to be a Mexican dish; it just wouldn't be the same.  I did, however, score a sweet chicken katsu burger, which was absolutely top; everyone else had a bite of mine and went out to get their too.  It was that good, dudes.  There was also a wall of the venue dedicated entirely to sake.  To anticipate your question, yes, they too had free samples, but I threw off the haters by not imbibing.  (Who knew maturity would set on so quickly?  I feel like I need to do a Keystone out of a plastic bag to stave off impending adulthood.)  Instead, I received instruction in the basics of sake.  Here are my findings based on a conversation I had with one of the vendors:  There appear to be two main types of sake, ginjo and junmai.  A key difference between the two types is that junmai tastes more like rice, while ginjo has a fruiter flavor.  I'm sure a cursory Google search will turn up more useful information than that, but I do want to say this:  If you've ever tried sake and totally hated it, I encourage you to try it at least a couple of more times, because the different varieties and makers really do put out a diverse range of the beverage.  If the bottle's already open, then I'm probably not in a good place to judge, but I do know from the experiences I've had (as a part of my continued effort to educate myself on and integrate into Japanese culture) that, well, sometimes I get sake I hate and never want drink again, and sometimes I get something so good I don't know how anyone could dislike the stuff.  In short, go check it out sometime.

Next up was Monday.  You guys, Monday is when shit got really real.  The first night of the second iteration of the fall festival, we were assigned to help carry an omikoshi, or portable shrine, in the festival procession.  I say "miniature," but the whole thing weighed around six or seven hundred pounds!  Our team was headed by the city's superintendent, so consequently we were responsible for one of the flashiest and biggest omikoshi in the whole festival.  Before the heavy lifting began, we arrived at the superintendent's place for a quick snack, got up in traditional festival gear, and rolled out to the launch site.  I'm not going to lie, I may have been a little blasé when my friends and coworkers warned me that the omikoshi would be mega heavy; after all, these were the same people who had told us that it was too hot to watch kids on their sports day at school (which everyone else did) or that it was insane we ate rice twice in a day (which everyone else does.)  But as soon as we got into position, crouched under the poles, and hoisted it aloft for the first time, I immediately thought to myself:  "Shit."

The omikoshi was conveyed by hoisting the wooden beams sticking out of it onto our shoulders.  The main logistical issue for me was the fact that I stood a good head or so taller than most of my teammates.  I had two options:  Either sacrifice my shoulder for the greater good, or stoop down and walk like a fool.  I cycled between fire and frying pan, but damned if it wasn't a workout either way.  Gruntingly sustaining our burden aloft, we set out along the parade route to a real shrine just past the festival grounds.  Like Saturday's festival, that meant navigating through crowded streets festooned with colorful awnings, covering shops selling chicken skewers, light-up plastic katanas (I bought five), and Hello Kitty memorabilia, among many other things.  When we reached the shrine grounds, I noticed a problem:  The shrine wasn't there.  Well, it was, but it was concealed among trees…and was also situated about fifty steps of stairs above us.  Yeah.  As our team marched towards the stairway, my thought process went something like this:

"Okay, we're moving towards those stairs."

"Why aren't we turning away from those stairs?"

"Are we going up those stairs?"

"We're going up those stairs."

"Double shit."

I felt much like I imagine a doomed traveler would feel right before plunging off of Victoria Falls in a raft, only instead we were going up.  Still, exhausted as I was, I couldn't help but smile at the sheer ridiculousness of it all.  We called on a second wind to blast the omikoshi up the stairs and landed it in front of the shrine, and gratefully began our break.  Beers were passed around--it wasn't clear to me that that was the best choice of beverage given the activity, but I wasn't about to refuse the kindness of our teammates.  We socialized for a bit, and I saw a lot of students who were also in the festival.  Eventually we got back to the ceremony part:  An officiator in traditional Shinto garb first inspected our omikoshi, then opened its tiny front door to "put the gods" inside of it.  Immediately following that was our omikoshi battle.  I hate to disappoint, but it involved neither ramming others' shrines at high speeds, nor fisticuffs with opposing teams.  Rather, we picked up our omikoshi again and basically rattled and shook the hell out of it, along with plenty of yelling for good measure.  My sore shoulders begged for mercy, but were soon relieved as I was taken in by the surrounding din, huge structures of wood moving too fast, ornaments jingling and flashing in the lights, battle cries coming from every corner.  In short, it was pretty badass.  We returned the omikoshi to where we started, a sort of large garage that was packed with beer--I hadn't seen so much beer since stocking up supplies for Beer Bike.  We celebrated a day's hard work basically the same way we had the whole weekend; a few of the teams sat together on tarps laid out on the driveway, and we were treated to more light noms and beverages.  Worn down to the bone and with the workweek resuming in less than twelve hours, we excused ourselves after a little while--not without politely turning down invitations to participate Tuesday and Wednesday night.  I still don't get Japanese humor.

We did go back Tuesday night to mill around instead of participating.  One stand was selling what they called "doner kebab,"  but was really more like shawarma.  As I previously suggested, I don't exactly jump at every chance to eat non-Japanese cuisine (for now), but I was overcome with curiosity.  Frankly, I wasn't disappointed; I couldn't help but think back to Amman, where I'd had the best sharwarma of my life, but it was damned tasty nonetheless.  I also scored a sweet banana and chocolate crepe, which, for my fan club, is one of my favorite flavor combinations.

So anyway...OH MY GOD I just realized I have so much more to write about dammmnnnnnn.  Okay.  I'm gonna let all this sift through your brain while I go start the next installment.  Now I know how Tolkien felt.

NEXT TIME:  The best camping trip of all time.  The best burger of all time.  Plus fishing and drinking beers with my boss at five in the morning.

P.S.:  I realize I talked a lot about food in this particular post.  However, I'm not going to apologize because apparently, eating takes up a lot of my time.  Write what you know, nerds.