In an effort to keep my "do more blogging" pledge, I will blog about this weekend! Are you ready for this one? Because it’s a doozy of a read.
Probably a lot more exciting than most weekends, I've had, this weekend started off with another Shinnenkai (New Years Meeting, if translated literally). It's basically a fancy term for New Years party, where you drink, eat and talk with other people. I've had about 5 of these this month, which means drinking hard for at least one day a week. I’ve had a Shinnenkai for the Rotary Club, Board of Education, Junior High School, the district which I live in and finally the Kamikawa Workers Union. All of which are fueling my raging alcoholism. Sweet.
In fact, about a couple weeks ago, when I had the Shinnenkai for my city district, which started at 12:00pm and lasted till 3:00pm, I was invited to someone’s house to do more drinking. So basically, I drank from about 12:00pm to about 10:00pm. Of course there was a break in between where I took a nap (or passed out) after the Shinnenkai. But I woke up again, only to start another round of drinking and eating shortly thereafter. Fun times in
My Shinnenkai last Friday, was for the Kamikawa workers union. It consisted of people that were working and that had joined the union, which surprisingly, is not very many. I think there were 100 people there, which is significantly small for a town of 4500 where I’m sure two-thirds the population or more are involved in some sort of occupation. Perhaps there were people absent, but I don’t think many people tend to skip things like Shinnenkai as they’re pretty important in Japanese work culture.
We started off at Coming Hall, the place where my Board of Education is located, and then moved on to a restaurant called Kyoshi, and finally to Manly, a karaoke bar (though we didn’t do much singing). By the last destination I was pretty hammered and didn’t feel so good, almost falling asleep on the sofas. I somehow managed to hold it together, stumble home, drink a few glasses of water and fall asleep.
Saturday was a lazy day, as I just stayed home, cooked food, watched TV and played the guitar all day. Right now I’m debating as to whether I want to put on a pickguard on my Les Paul, as it involves drilling holes in the wood (which I’m kinda scared of). Of course if I decide to do it I’ll go ask a professional technician to do it, rather than do it myself. The lack of a pickguard means there are a few scratches on the finish, nothing that can’t be touched up. But on the other hand a pickguard looks so much cooler on a Les Paul (especially if you want to look Jimmy Page, but don’t play like him).
Sunday, I didn’t even want to get up as I had stayed up pretty late just playing the guitar (thank god for amps that let you plug a set of headphones in, otherwise my neighbours would be hollering at my door). But I had to get prepared for Winter Flag, which is basically a race to retrieve a flag. The track is 1/3 ice and 2/3 snow.
The rules of Winter Flag is pretty simple, it’s about a 60 metre dash to the flag. You start off lying on the ice, facing away from the flag. At the sound of a gun (not a real one of course…) you get up and run to towards the flag(s). Starting on the ice is the hard part as it’s hard to get the momentum going, but once you hit the snow part of the course, you can really get going. Usually retrieving the flag requires diving for it, as races are usually pretty close. If you get the flag you make it to the next race, don’t and your out.
There’s also another version called Lucky Winter Flag, which is the same thing, except there’s a flag for everybody, but the flags have a slip of paper saying if you make it to the next round or not. Basically it doesn’t matter how fast you are, you just need to grab a flag that allows you to advance to the next round, where the Luck part comes in.
I invited two Nayoro ALTs, Jenna and Jill. By the way, if you’re a Hokkaido ALT, sorry if I didn’t tell you about Winter Flag, it was sort of a last minute thing and there was registration to be completed. Definitely, next time I’m going to send out invites on Facebook or something, so free up your schedule near the end of next January if your interested! I should mention there is a total cash prize of 100,000 Yen. Oh! You also get a free ticket to the onsen just for participating.
None of us did too well. For Winter Flag, I only barely made it past the first round and was out by the second round. In Lucky Winter Flag, only Jenna made it past the first round. Which proves that I still have no luck what-so-ever.
Despite not winning we definitely had a fun time. Though the boots we had to wear for winter flag made standing in the cold almost unbearable, as they were just rubber, with no insulation. Luckily, there were heating rooms in which you could warm your feet.
There was a food stand, where you could buy meat buns and ramen. There was also an ice slide that they made, which had a Mario bros. theme (I’m going to steal that picture you took Jenna! I really need to start brining my digital camera to these things). I was impressed, since the ice slide had you going pretty fast. Though the bumps on the slide didn’t feel too good on my Arse.
After that we went to ramen at Asahishokudo restaurant, the best place for ramen in Kamikawa, in my opinion. I tried the Maboroshi ramen, on the advice of another Nayoro ALT who we coincidentally met at Asahishokdo. It was really different than anything that I’ve had. It had a different broth and allowed you grind up your own sesame seeds and add them into the ramen (as well as pine nuts and leeks) to your own liking. It had delicious nutty taste. I only wish there was more meat added into it.
After that everybody went home. I had a nap, and then went to the convenience store to buy dinner. That was followed by sitting on my arse and playing guitar for about 4 hours.
We have two songs that are decided for the band. “My Sharona” by the Knacks and “Ame agari no yozora ni” (雨上がりの夜空に)By RC Succession, a Japanese Rock Band in the 1970s. I really some classic rock songs but I’m not sure if the vocalist can handle it, as some of them you pretty complicated English pronounced pretty fast. We’ll see what they decide on at the next Band meeting.
My goal is to get the solo part down for “My Sharona” (no matter how slow), “Let it be by the Beatles” and to be able to play a few Led Zeppelin songs. I’m currently working on “Heartbreaker” minus the solo part, as that’s going to require a many months to be able to play that up to speed.
Anyway, I’m hoping that my guitar skills will grow enough so that by summer, I’ll to be able to put on a decent sounding concert with my band come this summer.
Congrats if you to the finish of this blog. As it’s really really long. It fills up about 3 pages in word. I’ll end it here, because if I go any further, my blog is going to turn into a novel. Till next time!
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