One Man....

Hello anyone reading this blog,

This is a special entry dedicated to a man who had the courage, to attempt a one man spamming campaign against my blog. He did this in order to counter a previous claim I made that it would be hard for one person to effectively spam my comments page (because I really only have maybe 3 readers). On second thought, perhaps courage is not the right word, its more like lack of a life. Also, in the way he always does, he was able to prove a point without using vulgarity, instead opting to use quotes from what I assume to be from that Avatar show about air-bending or some such thing. His one man assault of my comments page reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from the 80s, "one man can make a difference" uttered by the late Wilton Knight to Michael Knight. So to my old friend Baidol, you've won this round....but you know I'll get you back.

Gambatte,
-DPN

Cementing My Family Ties aka Oh Deer....

Well my loyal readers, this is another extremely late backlog entry. This entry is for Golden Week. For those of you who don't know, Golden Week is apparently the longest vacation most businessmen are given a year. It takes place from April 29-May 5th and is actually a series of holidays strung together to form a 5 day holiday (although to be fair, 2 of those days are the weekend). So Jeremy, I hope this answers your question! As for me, I skipped my club meeting that day and went home early. My host family was taking me up to their second house in....well I don't know the name of it but its in northern Japan. So we packed our things and were on our merry way at 2100 hours. Its a 3 hour trip and I didn't manage to stay awake for all of it, but for all of you people who cannot do math (myself included), we arrived at 1 in the morning. The second house is this really cool cabin, and although it looks small, it is quite spacious. The family stayed awake for a little bit watching TV and chatting. But after such a long drive we all went to bed fairly quickly
The next day, we had breakfast and the family wasted no time going about their daily tasks. My host mother started cleaning, washing and other similar things. My host brothers and host father went about fixing up the outside of the cabin. I offered to help, but they declined. So for lack of anything else to do, and with such beautiful scenery about, I went for a walk. At first I was just going to find my way into the nearest town and go exploring, but I ended up seeing this little stream with with a path to the side of it. So I walked along the path, which eventually lead me to a more rugged path surrounded by woods. Of course, I continued on following this small stream. Soon I decided it would be more fun to get off the literal beaten path and follow the stream by going through the woods. So that's exactly what I did and my impromptu walk turned into an impromptu hike up the hills surrounding the area. At one point I encountered a rock face that I will call the Mini-Lion King rock face. If you remember the ledge/cliff from which baby Simba is held up by the Rafiki, that's what it looked like....just miniature. Of course, being stupid I decided to climb up the side of the rock face. Now, I'm not saying that I was Stallone in Cliffhanger and scaling a mountain while people are shooting at me and Apollo Creed is punching me in the face oops wrong movie (although I do wish I had yelled "DRAGO" once I got to the top). The rock face was maybe 25-50 feet high. But still, I didn't have my cell phone, I wasn't wearing shoes equipped for hiking, and nobody else was around, so if I had accidently reenacted Mufasa's death plummet scene, I would have been in a significant amount of trouble. But I made it in one piece and sat at the top for awhile admiring the scenery. The hill where our second house sat is pretty high, so from my vantage point on the rock face the scenery was really nice. I tried to get some pictures and video (see below), but they really don't capture the beauty of the area. But onward up the hill I trudged.

The Lion King Rock face...



A shot of how far I climbed


As I was scaling another 10 foot rock face I heard a noise from my left. As I pulled myself up I saw 4 gray flashes rush by me. They had short legs and were gray, so I assumed they were some weird deer, wolves, or that Disney was creating android Eeyores and releasing them into the wild to depress the other animals. Now I will admit, that for a second I was pretty freaked out. I didn't know what kinds of animals were in the area so, if they were some pack of wolves or other very territorial animal I probably would have returned to the second house with one arm and a gnawed leg. I managed to snap a photo of one:


The animal is slightly right from the center behind all the trees


Being fascinated by these animals, I decided to track them for awhile. Don't worry PETA fanatics, I had neither a gun, nor bow or arrow by which to hunt them. I was merely tracking them for the sake of admiring them. I stalked these animals for about 30 minutes before I lost them...too bad because it was really fun.
Soon afterwards I reached the top and began the descent down the hill. Again I decided to not follow the trail. However, because of all the brush and trees I was forced to hop and maneuver around areas to reach the bottom of the hill, imagine navigating the labyrinth, but with 10% fewer minotaurs trying to kill you! I finally made it to the bottom and being in a good mood ran and jumped out from the tree line into a clearing by the street with a giant smile on my face. What I had not noticed was that the clearing was the front yard and driveway of a house. I looked to my left and saw a Japanese man standing by his mailbox, frozen and staring at me. I guess I can understand his mindset though, its not everyday that a random foreigner with a smile on his face leaps out from the woods into your front yard/driveway. I probably looked quite mad...so I turned to him, waved, said "Konichiwa" and went about on my merry way.

I returned to the house to find my host mother laughing on the back deck. I went to the deck to announce my return and she waved me over to look. Down below my host father and host brother #2 were hard at work attempting to construct a brick grill. However their masonry skills left much to be desired. They had a brick cemented to a wooden board (my guess is to test out the strength of the cement). As my host brother picked up the brick, undoubtedly hoping that the board would be lifted along with it, the brick lifted ever so easily from the board. At this sight, my host mother and I became hysterical. It really was a great family moment for us all (do you get the title yet?).

Here are some pictures I took of the stream I followed:









Here is a video of my commentary at the top of the Lion King rock face:

I'm a bit winded as I'm making that video so please bear with my rather poor vocabulary and lack of eloquence! Enjoy!


This is a picture of your hero looking rather dashing if I say so myself...





Gambatte,

-DPN

P.S. They turned out to be some type of Japanese deer

Let Me Throw in Some Excitement....

An absurdly late post for April 29, 2008

Hey Sports fans,
Huzzah Dan's triumphant return to blogging! By triumphant I mean dull. Its been so long since many of my adventures that I have almost flat out forgotten when they occurred. Oh well, gambarimasu ne? So a few of the Japanese guys invited me to go to the All Japan Judo Tournament. Not only would I get to spend a Saturday with some really cool guys, but I would get to see a huge sporting event, and to top it off the guys comped my ticket. The event was held at the Tokyo Budokan. I'm pretty sure the term Budokan means "hall of the warrior way" or something close to it. But inside you wouldn't thing it was a place where martial arts events take place. Imagine UConn's Gampel Pavillion and then add an extra floor or two and you'll pretty much have the Tokyo Budokan. I thought the event itself was going to take at most 3 hours, but it was more like 7 hours. I had forgotten that they would do preliminary rounds, this was a tactical error on my part. You see folks, the chairs at the Budokan are less than comfortable, and offer almost zero back support. So for seven hours we sat in a very uncomfortable position watching grown men throw each other around. However, it was cool to see the best of the best Judoka in Japan throwing down. Some matches came to decision because the two opponents couldn't find an opening, but a few Judoka took as little as 14 seconds to seize victory. When the final rounds came about, the stadium became amazingly energized. People cheering, clapping and just having fun (of course in the organized Japanese way). Add to that an appearance by Asashoryu, one of Japan's Yokozuna (Sumo big wig for the laymen) and it was a great time. I will say that I felt like the audience was on the verge of errupting in jeers when Asashoryu quietly entered and watched the matches. You see, of the two Yokozuna, Hakuho and Asashoryu, Asashoryu is the villain. Could it be because he has an attitude? Maybe. Could it be that he lies to get out of public appearances? Possibly. But my bet is that its the wife beating...but as always I digress. The tournament ended with an emotional Ishii taking the title. Now when I say emotional, I mean sobbing and crying. I was EXTREMELY taken aback by this. There's no problem with crying mind you, but I never imagined a hardened Judoka who has thrown and probably been thrown countless amounts of times crying. But it was a very special moment for me since I was able to see such an important event. Many of these men will probably go on to represent Japan in this year's Olympic games so it was quite an honor. Also, quick fact, apparently stadium food is expensive in every country! See, cultural borders are always easily broken when there's money involved.

Gambatte,
-DPN

Today's word is: Nageru. The word means "to throw" and is the informal/plain form of the verb. Usage: Watashi wa Asashoryu ni isu (chair) o nagemasu. or I threw a chair at Asashoryu(I didn't actually because Asashoryu would probably eat me alive...