SMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASH!!!

I was looking forward to going to Elina's house for a sushi party on Saturday night, but because it turned out I had to work on Sunday, this plan was dashed. This was quite the blow for the party, since I planned to bring my Wii along and bust it out during the mid-party festivities. This is a special weekend for Wii players in Japan. While all the fanatics cry about it in American forums, the Japanese (and me, by default) are busy playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

Since I had Friday afternoon off, I joyously went to the city (boat, bus and footwork) to pick myself a copy. I'm always afraid of spending money in these instances, since Japanese media outlets are a cornocopia for japanaphiles. The gaming store has CDs, manga, DVDs and games from the NES era to the present day. Really anything I could ever want or hope for. They have this classic gaming corner with all the RPGs I grew up with, but in Japanese. Chrono Trigger? In the original Japanese? I sigh a lot lately, but I sigh there out of pleasure.

But Smash. Nintendo has got to be on the greatest streak in the world. It's perfect. The story mode, once you get past the audacity of its fan fiction qualities (Link meets Yoshi in the woods, Fox has tea with Zelda and Peach, Link and Zelda team up with Ganondorf despite his obvious desire to do them bodily harm), serves as a Nintendo grand tour. I came to admire it after awhile. There is no dialogue or explanation as to why these characters are together, yet they're distilled to their essences and play out their destinies according to their own internal logics.

The story mode took about eight hours to complete, and there's still more to it that I haven't quite puzzled out. But between the event matches, the single and all-star modes that you need to push 35 characters through, the stage builder, the trophy and sticker collection and the blessed online brawling, there's simply a wealth of activities.

A note about online brawling: I've never felt more satisfaction at having my ass handed to me. Despite my love of video games, I'm not that great a player, and it's telling in the online arena. But since it's anonymous and there's no ranking that would place me as the #1,673,294 brawler, I've found it's the best way to improve your game. I've seen characters used in ways I hadn't anticipated (someone trounced me and another brawler with Zelda last night using mostly long ranged attacks and some amazing evasion skills), and altered my play style accordingly.

Fun times, and I'm playing it a month before it's released in America. And I can't help gloating a little. It's too much fun not to.

a bit

Yamaguchi-sensei is absent this morning, so I find myself without any classes. I'm rather pleased with this, as it allows some time to prepare for others. I didn't work at all this weekend and instead spent it cleaning and organizing and trying to finish The God of Small Things. Enjoyable but colander-like, I can only read in bits and spurts before I move on to something else. I'd prefer to finish In Cold Blood, which I've been reading for over a month and a half, but keep setting aside for more pressing books.

More and more I've found that my priorities are shifting: Though by no means have I stopped procrastinating, the occurrences have lessened. I take a certain amount of pleasure from striking stuff off on a mental list: studying, reading, exercising and gaming. Even writing, which you'll see here in due course. I work on that a bit each day as well. But only a bit.

Vanishing

I got off work at three, hopped a ferry to the mainland and then caught a bus down to central Nago. As I tend to carry more and more distractions with me (books, iPod, DS), traveling has become increasingly easy. I'm encased in my own little world of audiobooks, word games and fiction. The iPod in particular has paid for itself; you can go further and longer when you're not bored tearless.

Elina picked me up at the game store in Nago where I snatched up a copy of Mario Strikers to play in downtime I increasingly don't have. Between writing thank you notes to my Japanese friends, the pile of reading I brought back for myself, exercise and all the myriad details that scream their importance, there's been little time for gaming. But I'll gravitate back toward games when I get tired of reading. I can already feel the pull, but I'm enjoying my books too much.

But reading was why Elina picked me up Nago. This month's book was Starship Troopers and for a novel with no plot, I was completely engrossed. I'm not sure if that's an endorsement, since I could say the same thing about the last four books I've read and am reading: Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, A Disorder Peculiar to the Country, Starship Troopers and currently Salem's Lot. This either means I've picked good ones lately or I'm looking for some escapism. I think the latter, perhaps.

There was a problem, however, with this month's book club: our meeting place Celluloid Cafe had vanished from this earth in the span of a month. In honor of this cozy, seaside locale, I present the obligatory "wtf photo":



We reconvened at a burger joint down the street, where I enjoyed a tasty goya burger and a spirited discussion of Troopers. Fascism and Nazis were absent from discussion, but American--and a touch of British--military policies were at the forefront. Our discussion was concise. Either people liked it or hated it and they could tell you why and probably go off for five or ten minutes, lost in their own thoughts.

It was a short meeting though, since we then hightailed it to one of the three movie theaters in Okinawa for a showing of I am Legend, which had been discussed the previous month. I'd seen it before, but this time I had the pleasure of a frightful young lady clutching my arm.

I was rather pleased with this.

Yesterday I made a speech in Japanese to the other teachers at the regular morning meeting. These meetings happen every Monday and Thursday and largely I just listen. I've had to speak around five or six times total, usually when some event is coming up and I need to tell the other teachers. The last time this happened was in October, when I was part of the International Beach Clean-up and was searching for some volunteers.

Speaking off-the-cuff in front of twenty teachers makes me nervous, even when I've prepared something before hand. However, sometimes there is no preparation time. By now, though, I typically know when I'll be expected to say something. I have some prepared phrases that I looked up especially for those circumstances. Not for this one, though.

Here is what I said:

今回は、急な出来事があってみなさんにご迷惑かけたにもかかわらず、あたたかいみなさんの急力があり、無事帰って来ることができました。本当にありがとうございました。

konkaiwa, kyuuna dekikoto ga atte minasan ni gomeiwaku kaketa nimo kakawarazu, atatakai minasan no kyuuryoku ga ari, buji kaette kuru koto ga dekimashita. hontou ni arigatou gozaimashita.*

"At this time, there was a sudden disaster and it caused trouble for everyone. Regardless, with the warm support of everyone, I was able to return safely. Thank you truly."

Chaiki-san, who works at the board of education, helped me prepare this statement. I wanted to get it right since everyone was so supportive when my father died.

*Since I did not use romanjii when I learned japanese, I'm not sure if this is the proper way to transcribe it.

Japanese Notes

迷惑をかける
meiwaku o kakeru:

v. to trouble； bother or annoy

急な
kyuuna:

adj. sudden

出来事
dekigoto

n. occurrence

拘らず
kakawarazu

regardless of

協力
kyouryoku

n. cooperation; help

無事な
bujina

adj. safe

Headed Back

Leaving in a few hours for Japan.

The site will be changing in the coming month. I think it may be time to do it properly. To do a lot properly.

Josh out.

Return

I am back in the states.

"Okinawa's war time wounds reopened"

My island itself was invaded by Americans; I've met people that experienced it. The wounds are still there, so to speak. And I've felt guilty, being an American in Japan. Guilty for the bomb when the 9th graders make their yearly trip to Hiroshima. Guilty when an American causes trouble for Okinawans.

I feel guilty for this too, because I'm feeling indignation over it and I know that America's deeds in Okinawa aren't without shame.

My Beach Project

As part of the "My Beach Project", I served as "beach captain" for a stretch of beach on my home island of Ie.

We cleaned the beach and tallied the garbage we collected. Akiko-sensei and I ended up doing the majority of the work, seeing as the boys would pick up piece of trash then sit in the sand and stare out at the ocean.





Beggars can't be choosers, and I was pleased with any help I could get.

I'll spare you the environmental spiel; there was a lot of trash and it was shameful, shameful, that it accumulates as it does. Even in Okinawa, with their close connection to the ocean, trash is everywhere.

Token "Mission Accomplished" photo:

Welcome to the Galaxy

I have quite a bit to post from October, but I've been busy playing Super Mario Galaxy in my free moments. I've wanted to gush about it to someone and Okuma suggested Takeuchi-sensei, but I think he just wanted to see the look on Takeuchi's mustachoid face when I brought it up. It's not the first time the teachers have ribbed him for looking like Mario.

My gaming habits have changed--particularly in terms of Mario games. Instead of helter-skelter running around, skipping to new worlds with the bare minimum of stars, I instead play each level (galaxy) through as many times as possible, stripmining it of goodies before moving on. This works most of the time: occasionally a comet blows by a galaxy and opens up a new star and I must return to a previous galaxy I thought I'd conquered.

I haven't played a game in a long time where I had almost complete, unending joy even when a level is being frustrating. I exclaim and curse and have laughed my ass off at various points. It's just a pleasure to play!

That's enough gushing for now.

In Which You Learn More About My Current Weight

I am 84 kilograms now, which equals about 184-185 pounds.

I'm getting a little impatient. The rate is constant at about a kilogram (2.2 pounds) a month. This is both quick and slow. I wish it would go faster; it wears you down.

I exercised 24 of 30 days in September. The days I didn't go I can say I had a legitimate excuse: some event always interfered.

Bored enough? Time for karaoke pics and videos!

Take Two

A large part of Okinawan culture is eisa dancing. There are multiple dances, but the junior high students concentrate on a specific set of movements involving taikos (drums). I learned this dance over the summer--all twenty minutes of it.



Throughout the dance, several of the students in costumes and heavy makeup move throughout the dancers.



The drumming can be heard all over the island and you can feel it shake the ground.