Vicarious Japanese: Altered State of Mind

Coming to you live from my futon...however my mind has been positively affected by alcohol. Tuesdays are my first days of work each week and, while the number of classes is fairly low, I have the most students of any day on Tuesdays. Every class I have is high energy. The first two little people act like a rambunctious married couple - where the boy is smart and participates half of the time...the girl is just as smart, participates more and, more or less, rolls her eyes at the boy. After a little break, I have two little dudes - maybe four or so...one of whom is named Shogo Togo. If you find me a better name than that, I'll give you a cookie. Actually I will probably just say that your name is not nearly as cool, feel bad about offering and then rejecting your attempt at the cookie and mail a cookie to you. I suppose it works out nicely if you share a kickass name.

After Shogo, there is a four student class with a hyper girl named Nene. Even though she's super-smart, all I can think of when I see her is Denver Nugget center Nene Hilario -

Once that class concludes I am feeling pretty genki and amped up for the rest of the day - and then I am hit with the class of five insane girls. Individually four of them are really smart and will actively participate...but once they're interacting with each other, all bets are off! They'll either completely silent and unresponsive or they'll be excitable but fight with each other - but in a playful way...for instance, they will laugh and whip bean bags at each other. I haven't figured out girls at any age.

So not only am I left lethargic after that class, but I am ready for drinking. Fortunately or, perhaps, unfortunately my co-worker is always amenable to that suggestion. Tonight we had a few at a little izakaya (Japanese version of tapas) and then went to the foreigner bar. They are not hot-blooded. Anyone get that?

Let me tell you about my weekend. My blog entries seem to indicate that I am a drunken fool all of the time. While I cannot dispute the 'fool' part of that, I don't drink THAT much here. But, that said, I drank to excess on Saturday night. Beer pong will serve beautifully as a conduit between American and Japanese drinking culture, I needed something else to supplement my drinking time and the power hour was that alternative. Whoa, I use bigger words whilst inebriated. For those unfamiliar, a power hour is basically taking a shot of beer each minute for an hour. The alcohol consumption is rough for that hour but the killer of the power hour is the amount of air you swallow...so the key to survival is burping. I am skilled in this art. Anyways, we made some changes to the standard power hour...we took two shots of beer for each song on a 38 track, 75 minute kids' cd that we use in class each day. And part of the idea was to act out the appropriate actions dictated in the song. That night I discovered that karaoke was not the only way to end a night and consider it great. Nope, apparently you can add drunk-dialing your grandparents. Sorry Gom and Pop but I was just not sober when I called. After I called Gom and Pop, I tried calling my parents...got Mort on the phone and he told me he wouldn't have known I was drunk if I didn't tell him so that's nice. You know, right now...my left armpit smells a little better than the right (there you are, Aubrey).

Moving on, after a Sunday of unimportance a gaggle of us met at the castle for...I don't really know what - a gaijin convention? First we broke out some sidewalk chalk and drew on the sidewalk of the castle. This, predictably, was not received well. Some of my friends made nice drawings of animals...my lack of artistic ability combined with my six year old sense of humor took over and my contribution was to ensure each animal was pooping. Thanks Mom - for both of those traits! Well, the castle protectors approached and asked if we were the defacement culprits. Their language was more simplified - "You animals?" Point taken...and we cleaned our chalk. Upon finishing, we got high fives from the men in uniform. To quote IAABP co-founder Mike, "You know, it's just kinda fun to get in trouble in Japan." The night wound down and I went to find my bike....and, no bike. A lot of Japanese bikes have locks built around the back wheel that you unlock with keys. Stupidly I left my keys in the lock - not thinking anyone would even be around...and, even further, it's Japan - they are not really thief types...except when it comes to bikes, I guess. Ok, the bike is crappy, so that being stolen wasn't gigantic but my house keys being attached to the same key-ring was a bit of a problem. After spending the night at Brenna's, I went to her balcony and discovered that she has an emergency ladder that goes directly to...my balcony!! So I lowered that ladder and was able to get to my apartment. Maybe this wasn't MacGyver because it was just a ladder and I followed directions, but I felt pretty adventurous and proud.

The remainder of the weekend wasn't too eventful but I was told by IAABP co-founder Mike that our attendance has been requested in Kobe for a beer pong event on Sept 14th. To make things better, we really have no idea who invited us. A friend of our's met someone who visited a hospital in Kobe and told the nurses about our exploits and got them interested enough to want us to bring our show on the road. Worldwide expansion is underway! In the upcoming weeks, you'll read about whatever dumb things we do at the final Himeji beer garden event on Sept 7th and then the trip to Kobe on the 14th. Please stay tuned and comment away...let me know where ya at!!