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Broadcasting to an audience of three (and a goldfish)...
Comment, ramblings and musings... life through the eyes of a Japanologist...
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Sunday, May 12, 2002 |
 Hooray! I'm Googled!
I just checked out of interest, but if you search for 'Washibe weekend' on Google, the first site to come up is... this one! (Mind you, I suppose there wouldn't be many other sites combining the two words, really)
Interestingly, my Japan photos site also shows up under the same search. It can only be a matter of time before the site hits (and brickbats, I bet!) start climbing...
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I started 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay', by Michael Chabon, this afternoon. I actually bought the book in Tokyo on New Year's Day, but it's taken me until now to get round to opening it. The book got some good reviews, though, so I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes.
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Today was one of those once-in-a-blue-moon days. A day during which I didn't spend even one yen!
I suppose I should go to the convenience store and celebrate (this says a lot about life on a small island!), but that would spoil the whole thing...
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The Third doesn't even begin to compare to the Second Symphony, though. The Second is just sublime- and somehow, it seems to suit a Sunday evening perfectly.
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Listening to Elgar's Third Symphony while catching up with this weblog. Loudly (the symphony, not the weblog)...
The Third is, of course, the 'unfinished' symphony, completed by Payne and released a few years back. Every time I listen to this, though (which isn't often enough) I'm struck what a superb job Payne made of this; it really is a wonderful piece of music. I wish I could write (or even play) music like this- but I think it's unrealistic to hope that this might ever be the case. I'll just have to stick to cooking...
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Came home and had a nap- it's that sort of a day.
Anyway, when I got up I decided I'd make some proper coffee (a friend brought back some Vietnamese coffee for me- from Vietnam, obviously), and, as an experiment, I decided I'd froth some milk with vanilla and nutmeg. Well, it's a taste sensation! It's almost as good as my new version of Italian peasant tomatoes (yesterday evening's meal)! But the really interesting thing is that it tastes just like banana...
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The rest of the sports day (well, what I saw of it having recovered) was fun, though. Pretty standard fare for a sports day in Japan, but fun nevertheless. Most of the events were for the Elementary School children, but there were some in which adults could take part. I ended up taking part in the janken ressha, where everyone gradually makes a long snake of people by playing 'rock, scissors, paper', in the bucket relay, where the teams have to pass a little bucket of water along the line to fill a 4-litre plastic bottle, and an interesting (if that's the right word) game called pan-gui kyoso, which translates as 'bread-eating race'. This was a race where the participants first had to blow up a balloon and then burst it by sitting on it (so there's the obvious connection with eating bread, then), and then grab a cake in a plastic bag (fastened to a pole with a clothes peg, by the way) with their mouth. Not much that can be said about this, really...
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A postscript to my unfortunate encounter with Japanese who make their living running stupid distances at stupidly fast paces.
Why do my gums hurt from running? What connection could there be between teeth and sprinting?
Answers on a postcard...
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Sunday sort of weather this morning: warm, but not too warm, a gentle breeze, the palest of blue in the sky, as if the weather too were taking a weekend break.
Perfect weather, in fact, for a sports day, which was the primary (the only!) reason for my getting up at 7.30 this morning. The kodomo-kai in Washibe-ku had organised a community sports day, so I thought I'd show my face. I'm quite surprised, though, that I'm here to write this; the first event was an adults' running race, and being genetically unable to say 'no' to anything, I agreed to run the course, about 400 metres.
Well, I think that it was that most of the people were Naval Officers from the apartments in Washibe; whatever, the pace was fast. And I foolishly tried to keep up with the leaders (I did first first out of all of the non-Naval participants). Bad move. By the time I got to the finish, I felt like I was somewhere way past 'dizzy', perhaps relatively close to 'major cardiac arrest'. Not a good way to start a Sunday morning. Not to mention how embarrassing it would have been had I died there...
Anyway, I learned something from this race. Get fit!
Well, either that or make a point of not running 400 metres at a Naval pace...
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© Copyright 2003 Nathan Duckworth.
Updated: 8/1/03; 7:58:53 pm.
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