2-13-02
Pointless Update #2 is here!!! I hope everybody is ready for another journey into the waters of theme-less.... uhhh....website-ness (I really must stop making up my own words all the time and use the ones that are already there). I'm just gonna write whatever comes to mind until there's an update's worth of material on the page. Everybody ready? I don't care either way, so let's just go. ;)
So as I mentioned last time, I got a haircut and bleached what was left instead of going the afro-route, much to Fletcher and Rory's chagrin. It actually got an enormous reaction at school which kind of surprised me. I figured most everybody would just say, "Oh, there goes Scott, being a gaijin again," and forget about it. Yeah, right. It was like the first day of school all over again, people crowding around and mumbling to each other. The best part was when one student came up to me and said, "It's very cool! It really makes you look American." I was totally deadpan as I replied, "Well, you know, I was actually American before too." She stroked her chin and pondered this fact as she said, "Yeah, I guess so, huh?"
Here's a picture of the bat that was sleeping on the side of my apartment building the other day. Yes, I did, in fact, say bat.
We also have a couple of new offerings in the Engrish section.
A few weeks ago, Angela, Phil and I met up in Fukuoka and went to see Jamiroquai in concert! Talk about Phun(which is similar to just plain old 'fun' but has a much higher Ph content. [Again with the wordmaking! When will it all stop!?!])!! The funkdified soul-swing-sounds of these badass-boogie-brothas had us dancing our sweet asses off all night!!
I
think we must have caught some kind of boogie-bug that night,
cause we've been going out dancing every weekend since. And while
I can't speak for the others, I've been a non-stop dance machine
in my apartment whenever the stereo is on, which is always.
The other night, as I mentioned briefly in last weeks update, was Phil and Tonia's birthday party, so we all met up at Hard Rock Cafe - Fukuoka where I indulged in an obscenely huge American-style hamburger, and Tonia indulged in a tasty looking fajita wrapped in the horror that is known as the Hard Rock Cafe Tortilla Shell. The words classless, offensive and chaps come to mind (Wait....what?? I was made to say chaps!! Really!!)
After that, we ended up at a place called Club Zoom, where the voracious booty-shaking once again resumed, this time to the tranced-out, techno sounds of DJ Iforgotwhathisnameis. Despite the fact I have no idea what his moniker might have been, this guy was rocking our worlds. We just couldn't stop!! Angela turned to me at one point and said, "I just can't stop." (See? I told you.) It was so good that I was totally dehydrated from sweating so dang much and really needed some water at one point, but it wasn't until an hour after this realization that I was actually able to drag myself off the floor and get some. Awesome!
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And as if that wasn't cool enough, in addition to the DJ mixing away in his booth, there was a separate booth where a couple of dudes were using a pair of laptops to create the psychedelic video/light show that was being projected on one wall and other numerous TVs scattered throughout the club. The best part was that the laptops in question were a pair of Titanium PowerBooks, which looked awesome in the dark club with the Apple logos glowing off the back of either screen (as you can imagine, this went over well with me). So in effect, what you had was one booth mixing the audio and another booth mixing the video. How sweet is that? I want to get up and dance right now just thinking about it. All right, I'm up!! I'm dancing!! Does it please you when I dance? Dammit, what the hell am I talking about!? I think somebody spiked my tea at lunch today. :O
Since we seem to be on the topic of dance music, now is as good a time as any to bust into yet another...
RANDOM MUSIC MOMENT
So, I picked up the new Chemical Brothers album, Come With Us and have been forced to pontificate the following Koan: Is it possible for these guys to make an album that doesn't rule? Evidence to this point seems to indicate HELL NO!! (Okay, so it's not really a Koan, but it made me sound smart. Shut up.) They're four-for-four(oooo, that sounds like "444"!) at the moment and seem to show no signs of slowing down. If anything, they're just picking up steam.
On Come With Us they continue to hone their skills and their sound has fermented, for lack of a better word, into a truly masterful cacophony of electronic 'noise.' As usual, their versatility amazes me; they can knock you over the head with some hardcore techno beats, like It Came From Afrika and Galaxy Bounce, which are, in true Chemical Brothers style, sprinkled with samples of real-world noises taken from only-God-and-the Chemical Brothers-knows-where, then they can turn around and make a beautiful, slow track like The State We're In with the kind of building momentum and inspiration that makes for great early-morning, I've-just-woken-up listening. I can't name too many techno artists capable of making the claim that they can make tracks as soft as they can hard (although Underworld springs to mind).
In any case, if you've ever liked a Chemical Brothers song, or even a techno song for that matter, Come With Us comes highly recommended by little ol' me. (And Todd, if you don't have it yet, I'm telling you now to go get it!! I owe you for Crystal Method.)
I also took the initiative to upload a Spooman track to the Music section for anyone whose curiosity was peaked my my mention of them last week. (It's not up yet actually!! Check back on the weekend!)
Now that that's over with, let's head back to those fearful waters of relevancy...
Gakunen Ryokou (Teacher's Trip)
Last weekend I packed my bags and headed out to Saga prefecture for a weekend out with the rest of the 2nd year teachers (as in 2nd grade of middle school, not their 2nd year on the job). It looks like it's a yearly occurrence with school staff in Japan to have a random outing together to help harmonize The Group® and smooth the wheels of mutual ass-kissing for the year to come. It was pretty fun actually, and was also my first opportunity to observe the infamous Japanese vacation in action.
"Now what could he possibly mean by 'the infamous Japanese vacation,'" I hear you ask. Well, I'll tell you. It's one of those vacations where every last second is planned out from the get-go and there's always a leader shouting "C'mon dammit!! Hurry up and relax!!" Granted, I got a lot of neat pictures taken, but I'd hardly call the affair relaxing.
Anyhoo, we started off by stopping in the charming little town of Karatsu. It's a coastal town with a neato 16th century castle you can tour. Well, in reality it's a circa 1960's castle since the original burned down and the whole thing had to be rebuilt, but it still looked neat. The coolest part was the display of all the artifacts they had found on the site, including pottery, swords, samurai armor, documents, and my personal favorite a pair of "uniform" shirts that had been taken from(presumably) dead ninja. How cool!!
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We continued on to somewhere (I was sleeping in the car and when I woke up we were already there), where there were a pair of shrines embedded on the side of a hill. There were a TON of people there all getting their shrine on (see the Holiday Recap) and there was a lot of pretty woodwork going on. It might have been more interesting if I knew where it was, but it was pretty neat nonetheless.
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We chilled out that night in a Japanese Inn, called a ryokan. I always like staying at these places because they invariably have hot springs, or onsens (and it did), and you always get to wear the traditional Japanese clothing, yukata (and I did). I got a picture of me in one for those who are thinking they'd like to see such a thing, but it wasn't on my digital camera, so you'll have to wait until I can get a copy and "scan" it into the ol' 'puter (i.e. use my digital camera to take a picture of the picture. Lame, eh? I know).
The next day we went to the town of Yobuko which is famous for it's ika. That's squid for all you non-speakers out there. Sure enough, as soon as we pulled into town there were street vendors all over the place hanging squid from wherever they could. You can see one of the squid boats in the picture below. Apparently they do most squid-fishing at night because it's easier to catch them then. The boats turn on these bright lights which lure the squid to the surface where the fisherpeople (damn this political correctness!! "Fisherpeople," really!!) then bore the squid to death by showing them Ally McBeal episodes. You can see in the photos how ruthlessly efficient this method really is.
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This day's theme was apparently "insanely crowded restaurants," because we parked the car and headed into, you guessed it, an insanely crowded restaurant. Raw squid is the speciality of this place, which perplexes me, because how can it be a specialty if it's not actually cooked or altered in any way? Whatever. Anyway, "How raw was the squid, Scott?" I hear you ask. Well, imagine a squid still squirming around on it's plate when it's brought to you and you'll have your answer. Yeah....raw. The first time I saw this, I couldn't bring myself to eat it. It was just a little too unsettling. Fortunately, that was a few months ago, so this time I was good to go and we chowed down. Squid isn't really my preference, but it'll do in a pinch.
After another few hours of driving, we ended up at our last stop of the day, an eel restaurant. An insanely crowded eel-restaurant as a matter of fact. Don't believe it was insanely crowded? Check the picture showing our waiting accommodations! Anyhow, I thought this place was much tastier since the eel was cooked in some kind of teriyaki sauce and served over steamed rice. Mmmmmmm.
And that brings us abruptly to the end of this week's update. I've got another trip coming up this weekend, this time with the people from the Fukuma Town Office, so you can look forward to another late update detailing what is sure to be yet another absurd adventure. See you then!
