Stories from the last two weekends

The basketball game at Bunkyo High School
Last Saturday (as in the 3rd) I attended the Junten High School basketball club game in Bunkyo High School. The school was pretty easy to find, luckily for me as I could just get on the tram and several stops later I arrived at Sugamo-Shinden, which is the stop basically joined to Bunkyo High School. I sheepishly followed some other guys into the school, as I wasn`t sure where to go and promptly copied them as they took off their shoes (turned out later that these guys were in fact friends, or older brothers or something of some of the Junten players). I walked in and turned a corner and luckily the Junten team were just exiting the hall where the home team`s game was being held. The day was more like a mini-tournament than a single game, so several of the league fixtures were being held on the same day and it was Bunkyo`s turn to host (I don`t know if Junten host one or not, I will have to find out). Anyway, they led me to a large room where they had dumped all my stuff and told me it was okay to leave my shoes there. I left my shoes there and went to check out the game that was going on and to see if I could find the Jutnen coach. The coach was no-where to be found or even seen, so I decided to watch the game instead, as it was quite an exciting, fast paced game of a relatively high standard. The Japanese seem to play very quickly, though, not always fast breaks, just quick offences. Anyway, after standing around until nearly the end of the 4th quarter, the coach arrived and seemed almost surprised (though pleasantly so) to see me. Maybe he thought I wouldn`t show, I don`t know. Anyway, I asked about the team they were playing and he pointed out `Tsukuba` wearing black and red warm-up shirts and trousers. This team`s name I had heard him say in practice and he may have even said it to me before, but I thought this was `Scuba`, like the team was `Somewhere Scuba Divers` or something…this is Japan after all. Another thing to note about Japanese (school anyway) basketball is that all of the teams are dressed in an extensive uniform (included, shirts, shorts, shooting shirt, tracksuit bottoms and even a bag), all the numbers are correct (4-18) and all the teams have 15 players exactly. I was so surprised to see four table officials (young, probably high school students) who could even do the shot clocks and everything, two sets of scores, electronic for the coaches and benches and a flip chart operated by two more students for the crowd (who were sat on benches and chairs and around the balcony of the main hall) and to top it all off there was even 4 extra students in charge of wiping the floor, not only for when players fall over and get the floor sweaty, but at every free opportunity, (namely time-outs and quarter ends etc). The other thing about school sports (so many differences to England!) is that there are two team `managers`. For Junten Basketball club (and it seems for most school and most sports) this job is taken by two senior high school girls. It seemed rather strange to me that they would want to do this (and not play) but they seemed to get very involved. Before the game they gave the coach the team list and sorted things out with the table (everything was very efficient) and carried bags. I was kind of gutted (not to mention shocked) when I asked if I could help and they said no. They had so many bags on and were blatantly struggling. They wouldn`t let me take them off them, and I wasn`t about to use a lot of force (I know how annoying it is when people rip bags off you). They also seemed to be doing scoring or stating during the game, but I couldn`t tell, I was too far away.

Bunkyo won their game by quite a margin and left the hall, along with nearly the entire crowd. The coach told me where I could sit and I sat down near(ish) the guys I had followed into the hall. The game started quite soon after a quick warm up, where Junten showed their Japanese spirit once again with the same things we had done at training earlier that week. The game started and throughout the first half it was very even, one team was always about 2 or 4 points up, or drawing. At half time I decided to go up to the balcony, so after having a really tough time with a vended can (I just couldn`t open it, it was confusing) I headed up and got an aerial view for the third quarter and the start of the fourth. This is where I took most of my video and pictures from (please look once I put the pictures up!). It was also a good angle for me to watch the game as well. Anyway, it was so tight during the fourth quarter I decided to go downstairs and join the sideline cheering team again (the guys I followed in and one mum, so in total there were 6 of us). It came to 70-70 and then after that, Tsukuba went on a 14-0 run towards the end of the game, and the final score was 84-70. It was kind of gutting for everyone from Junten and some took it harder than others. After the game was finished we had to help pack up the hall (finally I could help with something). After this was done I could say my goodbyes to the team and thanked the coach for inviting me. I then went off on a small shopping trips (smallish anyways) and went home so I could get a good night`s sleep, as I had to be up early the next day…

The day trip to Hakone
Well, as promised I had to get up early and did so and we went along to meet Nishimura-san at the train station. After getting the train to Shinjuku with him and Yoshio-san (from my class) we got on quite a cool train to Hakone, though it took a long time. We had a nice cup of tea and a talk about stuff though, which was good. After the train arrived, we got on yet another train (but this time we had to stand up) and eventually we were allowed to queue for some kind of tow-cable train (I can`t really describe it) to a high up part of the mountain where guess what, we were allowed to take a cable car (more travelling…this mountain was massive). On the cable car we were treated to some actual views of the mountain and one very famous mountain. You guessed it, we could see Fuji-san himself. It was an amazingly clear day…lucky! After a sheer photo frenzy, we got to the top and this is where the adventure truly began. We were able to go up to some sulphur gas springs (not sure what somewhere where gas is released is called, sorry) where they cook the infamous black eggs. Of course, the smell was awful all over the place, but the views were great. The sun was out, it was clear and the scenery was amazing. What a place to eat a black egg, I thought. Yoshio-san bought us a bag of six between the four of us. Me and Mike received 2 each and they showed us the way to eat them and had one each. Here are some instructions on how to eat and enjoy a black egg:
1. Take a Black Egg and attempt to hold it. Be careful though, they are very hot!
2. Smack the Black Egg on your forehead and hope it doesn`t smash on your face. You should of cracked it just a little bit.
3. Now it is cracked, take off all of the black shell. Tip: It`ll take ages unless you peel off the membrane too. Maybe this is common knowledge, but my personal egg shell peeling techniques were pretty poor at the time.
4. Once the egg is naked, take a bit of salt and sprinkle it over the egg. Don`t use too much, that’s pretty self-explanatory right?
5. Eat the salted egg and enjoy another 7 years of life! That’s right, just one egg = 7 more years of life…well, or so they say anyways.

Anyhow, after our egg eating and another mammoth picture taking session we went back down the mountain in the cable car (but a different direction) and went to eat. After eating we had a ride across the lake on a pirate-ship-esque ship, though it was a fake. Then again, pirates on a lake doesn`t make sense, so it wasn`t going to be a historical piece. I can imagine the pirates now, `Let`s set sail and get some treasure!…oh damn, this is a lake`. Anyhow we got off the boat (on which I took some cool pictures of the sun…sounds weird but trust me they rock) and got onto a bus where I promptly fell asleep and was woken up so we could go to the onsen. This was our first experience of an onsen and we were a little confused as what to might be waiting for us. We knew some facts: a) Onsen translates to hot spring, its hot water you sit in, b) You go in onsens naked, after all it`s like a bath or something, c) You have to/can wash yourselfs there as there are tap things or something and finally d) You are provided (well, you can rent) a small towel. We also didn`t have a clue about: a) Where you change, b) How to wash yourself at the taps c) Where you look while in the bath… and d) What you do with the small towel. Luckily, we had our two Japanese guides to help us discover the joy that is onsen. Basically, the one we visited had three onsen pools (I think it`s okay to call them pools. Maybe the word bath is more fitting though). One very hot (basically unbearable) and two others which were of similar temperature. We entered into the room and there was simply a row of lockers. The whole place was situated on a kind of balcony. It was like a room, but missing one side, I`m sure you get the picture anyhow (I hope so), it was kind of half inside and half outside. Anyway, you just get naked first and put all of your clothes and stuff in a locker. Now that this is done its time to wash before entering the bath. We had Nishimura-san show us what to do and then entered the bath/pool. We probably looked weird, two gaijin following an older Japanese man around like stalkers. Naked stalkers. Anyways, onsens are really relaxing, though can get too hot, so every so often you can just wash yourself to cool down, or sit on the benches provided with your towel over your crotch. When you`re are in the onsen, the traditional Japanese way is to fold the towel and leave it on your head, but this is kind of hard and mine kept falling in the water, which was annoying, so I chose to just pt mine somewhere. The towel didn`t seem to be for drying at all, even h
though it was a towel. The towel has two basic purposes I think; for washing yourself, for covering yourself while you sit down. While walking around, no-one covers themselves up, so we decided not to either, though I guess it might be possible, though look weird. We spent maybes and hour and a half in the hot spring (the time we spent in there was just about timeless, it was like a time warp. We left the onsen, learnt how to get dry (you just don’t…we, you do because if you know what time you`re leaving you can sit out of the onsen and naturally dry and then leave, but we had it sprung on us while sitting in the onsen. `Hey Ben, Mike, it`s time to go or we`ll miss the train home`). We had a small party on the train on the way home with beer, chu-hi (chu-high, no idea what`s in it) and nuts and things. It was a great trip out and of course we were very thankful to Nishimura-san and Yoshio-san. We got back home at a decent time, only to realize we had loads of work to do for the next day…ah well, we`ve learnt by now the weekends in Tokyo just aren’t as long as anywhere else. This fact is kind of annoying, as there is so much to do!

Recently…
The past week was a normal week except I was a bit ill and had to skip basketball both times, though I went to watch once. There`s a new member of my Wednesday evening class, so I am going to have to adapt the plans again to fit around everyone, but I already have a good idea for this which I hope will work. This weekend had a party at Dave`s house which was a lot of fun. Went shopping the next day but didn`t get anything interesting. Sunday (today) we had advertising, then we tried two out of the three Starbucks new drinks (I had a Crème brûlée latte and Mike had a Gingerbread latte) and then I went on a ticket mission (which I was half successful, I managed to get tickets for a gig at Zepp Tokyo the week before my birthday in January) and then just planning and relaxing. It was a decent weekend, but of course…not long enough…

PS: About pictures, I will try and get some up soon, but as I said I am going to try and sort out a photobucket account。As soon as that is done I`ll post the address on here and then you can all see what I`ve been doing as well as read. Sorry for the delay but as you know I`m busy busy busy. Maybe tomorrow night if I get my Japanese homework done quickly I will be able to get it all sorted. Thanks for reading! – Ben

The Halloween Parties, The Basketball Practices and This Weekend (the possibly ugly)…

The Halloween Parties
Well, for us Halloween came twice and not only did it come twice it came early. We had our first Halloween party on Friday the 26th of October, which was the school Halloween party which we had to organize pretty much ourselves. The party was scheduled to be 3.30pm until 5pm, but after a lot of running around, setting things up, printing things out, cutting things out, drawing things, realizing the work you just spent 40 minutes on was for nothing and general spinning around in circles we were able to start the party at maybes 4pm, I don`t know, I didn`t really want to look at the clock…
Me and Mike were both dressed up and strangely enough, I was glad that one of us had a more traditional costume and the other had a more modern costume. I was dressed as a vampire, I am not sure there is anything more traditional than this so I got to show them the traditional way and Mike was dressed as, you`ll never guess, Pikachu. He wouldn`t ever do a Pikachu impression though, which I was quite disappointed about…Barney was dressed as a cowboy, Shu (one of the returnees) found Mike Paxman`s old ghost costume and wore that, Kento (another returnee) was in a suit similar to Mikes but instead of Pikachu was a pink version of the Disney character Stitch and Michael (from America) was dressed in once again a similar style suit as what appeared to be Marie (from the Aristocats).
Anyway, the party seemed pretty successful, we had made a Halloween quiz, which as a prize for completing correctly (in English of course!) was that they could `Trick or Treat` one of the staff members to receive sweets. We started some games too. We managed to play about 3 games in total in the entire party, though we had planned about 10 games. We started off with a Halloween pass the parcel and in each layer there was an instruction (I got `Howl like a werewolf`, though mike, who was controlling the music, surprisingly didn`t get anything) which if you completed it you got a sweet. This took quite a while as we`d written a lot of layers and there were loads of people, not to mention (some) Japanese people are pretty shy when it comes to doing something, so it takes them ages. The next game we did wasn`t really a game, more just like a fun activity. The day before me and Mike had gone to the 100yen shop and picked up some kind of white/see-thru tape (not sticky though, man this is hard to explain) and we made a spider web with it by passing it to each other and then wrapping it round our waists and so on. When we bought the tape (which claims to be 150m long) I thought we would have to stop it halfway through, thinking 150m was far too much, but in reality, it didn`t seem to last for very long…this was quite gutting, but we had a bit of fun, pulling on the ropes and making certain bits really tight and dancing around in a circle wearing the web (well, I`d given my bit of web to student, but it looked fun anyways). After a while, I had to go and cut off all of the webs with scissors. The last game we did was `pin the wart on the witch`, though, without realizing it at first, I allowed cheating, and was then unfortunately inclined to allow everyone else to, much to my own disappointment that I`d wrecked such a classic game (even forgotten the rules, how terrible of me!). Anyway, quite a few people had a go and we recorded all of the distances. I had a go last and got the worst score ever (200cm, as Barney spun me around and I didn`t know where to go and was actually facing the wrong way and pinned the wart (blu-tack) on a balloon someone was holding. Nakahara sensei got 54cm and I thought that that was bad. Anyway, it was all in good fun.
As well as the games we did a pumpkin carving demonstration using a pumpkin carving kit (thanks Mum!) though, Barney let the STAR members carve it and instead of going in straight lines they tried to cut the top off as a circle, thus bending the cutting knife significantly. Oh well, the carving went okay, but in such a limited time it was difficult to do properly, especially the hollowing out. Everything went good and once we had found something to light the candle with it looked pretty good.
Instead of finishing at 5pm we managed to finish at 5.30pm, which was fine with us and the other staff members, though it meant for our outing (post Halloween party drinking/eating session) we couldn`t get in for TGI Friday`s happy hour so we went to an Izakaya (will try and explain in a later post) and then to Hub (`the English Pub!`). It was a good night and I really enjoyed it, as much as it feels weird to be out with Nakahara sensei (Terry (I mean, Kaneko sensei) and Barney not so much, as they aren`t as strict with us as he is sometimes).

Well, the next day, we had another party to go to and luckily for us there was also a typhoon the same night…fun. We dressed up again and went on the trains to Takadanobaba, Oji to Tabata, Keihin-Tohoku line and then Tabata to Takadanobaba on the Yamanote line. For those who don`t know, Yamanote line is the ring line in Tokyo which goes to all of the major places in Tokyo (just about) so these trains are often pretty busy, especially at night. Walking through town in our costumes (especially Mike) was pretty funny for us and everyone else probably. A couple of people said `Hey!` or `Pikachu!` to us and I waved at a lady in a taxi who was staring at us while we were waiting to cross the road, but mostly the Japanese just stared and said nothing.
We got to Takadanobaba and went to the party in `Ben`s Café`, which was a pretty cool party and then later on we went to Dave`s house for more drinking, watching Mai get drunk and throw up and a good night`s sleep. The next day we woke up pretty late and then went home, still dressed in costume. The thing was, my costume blended in quite well, as I could’ve easily been any average Japanese goth (except, I`m not Japanese) but Mike`s Pikachu costume stood out once again, especially at 1pm in Shinjuku station. We got home and went to Mr. Donut, a common breakfast outing after a night of drinking…

The Basketball Practices
I have been attending basketball practices as much as possible and this week was no different in that respect, except the practices this time were for a game on Saturday (today! I can`t wait!). They started off with one of the regular members (starting five basically) leading us to the line as usually and doing the “Kyousuke…Rei” “Onegai shimasu” (which I think is like, “Quiet…Bow” ”Please teach me” or something akin to this, I`ve never asked because I think its one of those untranslatable Japanese things). After that a war-cry-esque sprinting session started as we did shuttle runs. After that we gathered on the top of the key and kneeled around our free-throw line`s jump-ball circle (don`t think I`ve ever learned the word for these lines in all my years of playing, but it’s the circle that is half solid and half dotted). We then all together shout and tap the floor repeatedly for a while and then all together bang the floor really loud once at the end (and I think shout “Rei!” but I can`t tell).
All the drills just about contained chanting and clapping while waiting in lines. These chants are pretty basic and so are the clapping patterns, but I only clap, as seeing a Gaijin chanting in Japanese would just be kind of weird looking. I asked several people about it and Arieru told me that it was `Japanese Spirit`. I took this as a good answer.

This Weekend
Today is Saturday and it all started with a (well deserved in my opinion) lie in, finally. I got up leisurely and made a cup of tea (my first of the time I`ve been here) and it was pretty good. Mike isn`t in still, as he went to Dave`s last night and I was just too tired (we were out in Shibuya) to go back to his, so I came back and fell asleep straight away (even fell asleep standing up on the train a bit). Later on today I am going to watch the basketball team`s basketball game away in Otsuka. I am so excited, I hope they win and everything goes well for me getting there. Well, I have no problem in getting there, I just hope I can get into the school and the sports hall without being stopped and questioned intensely…as I imagine is going to happen. Later tonight I hope to post a post about the game, hopefully with photos too (Craig has kindly suggested I get photobucket, which I might set up tonight too, so there will be two sets of photos to look at, maybe).

Anyway, tomorrow is Sunday, another holiday day for us and Nishimura-san, one of our evening class members (advanced of course, his English is awesome) is taking us to Hakone (said Hah, Koh, Nay, nearish Yokohama I think) to go to a hot spring. This is the bit that could get potentially ugly, but I think we`ll be okay and just throw ourselves into it (well, maybe not literally, the water is pretty hot). For those of you who don`t get it, you have to go in hot springs naked and all you get is a towel apparently, so me and Mike are kind of skeptical of seeing everyone naked (not to mention each other). This is something else I will make a post about, no doubt (the hot spring trip, not Mike naked…)

Anyways, I`m gonna try and get a lot more posts up starting now, so keep checking back! Thanks for reading!

Ben