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