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The Weekend That Will Not Suck, Part 1 - Volleyball
I have officially declared that this is the Weekend That Will Not Suck.
Today I started off by signing in at work and then spending my "lunch hour" over at the Sports Authority, where I found a pair of sneakers that suffice as "indoor gym shoes" so I can play volleyball, for about $40. All things considered that's pretty cheap. They're white Asics sneakers with white soles, size 26.0, and they had removable insoles so I could stick my Superfeet in them. The lady at SA was really amused, I asked her for help measuring my feet and she's like "hmm... you are 25.5 or 26.0..." I said, "That's men's sizes, right?" and she said "Yeah... women's only go up to 24.5 or 25.0... well, we have some cute men's sneakers too!" I explained the situation and she helped me try on a bunch of sneakers until I found the ones I wanted.
My student who works at the Science Museum in Ueno came to class today for the first time in a while and she gave me free tickets to see the Darwin exhibit and the Japanese Women Scientists exhibit! Only catch is that I have to use them by 4/30. Anyone want to go with me?
I didn't have a 6pm or 7pm class today -- a rarity to enjoy -- so I went down to Takadanobaba station and wandered through the area around Waseda University campus to the Shinjuku Cosmic Sports Center to go play volleyball with a group called Intervoll at 7pm. It is a pretty international group... kind of. Everyone there seemed to speak English and Japanese at the least, although, now that I think about it, despite it being pretty much completely balanced male/female, I think I might have been the only not-Asian-at-all female there, though there were plenty of non-Asian guys. After warming up for about half an hour, they split us up into 7 teams, by basically just making a line of guys and a line of girls and counting off 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 among people. My team had two Japanese-Brazilian guys, an American guy, a Japanese girl, and a Japanese-Brazilian girl. (Seriously, so half the time they were talking among each other in PORTUGUESE.) Our team was apparently one of the better ones -- we played round robin against every other team, 20 points to win a game, rally scoring, and we won 4 times and lost twice, IIRC, but I wasn't really keeping track.
I guess not playing volleyball for 8 months or so, I haven't really lost any of my reflexes -- and I can still totally do some of my crazy tricks like the bump back set -- what I lost was my ability to hit hard. I actually CAN still overhand serve over the net and that was very satisfying, but something about my timing is totally off for hitting. I mean I hit the ball and it goes over all the time but I only got a few really satisfying spikes in. The other annoying thing was that the two Brazilian guys on the team were major court hogs and so I kind of had to be pushy to get them to stop stealing the ball and covering for me when they really didn't have to, etc. Fortunately, the Japanese girl on our team spoke fluent English and was really funny and during our bye round she taught me all the things to yell -- "KABA", cover, instead of "help", just yelling "hai hai" or "oi oi!" instead of "I got it", yelling "onegai!" instead of "set me!", etc. "Outo" is still out... although when asking if the ball was in or out, it's like "haitta? haittenai?" We use "ushiro" and "mae" for back and front rows, too.
There was this one Japanese guy there (not on my team) who was like the most amazing player ever and he was totally quiet and shy too which was just plain weird. He had a floater serve to die for. I wanted to tell him how awesome he was but oddly, despite this being a fairly friendly game environment, people didn't seem to compliment the other team on great plays/serves/etc. There were no high-fives after games either. I'll probably go back sometime, though possibly not until May 18th since I can't play on a Friday and the game after that is when I'm in Hokkaido. Oh, also, we had to pay 1500 yen ($15) as a court fee, though for 3 hours of volleyball I guess that's not bad.
The games ended at 9:50pm with the announcement over the speaker of basically "you are all getting kicked out of the building at 10pm". None of the women in the locker room were taking showers, they were just getting changed and getting out, so I figured what the hell, I'd just do that too. I walked back to the station -- about 1.5 kilometers -- got on a train, and realized that FUCK I WAS REALLY HUNGRY AND HADN'T EATEN SINCE NOON OR SO but oh well, shouganai, I came home and ate curry rice around 11pm and watched TV.
Speaking of which, apparently the Chunichi Dragons banned a few ouendan groups and as a response, all the other ouendan groups are refusing to lead cheers. Which sucks. I hope they get this shit straightened out by the time I can go to a Dragons game. On the other hand Morino hit a home run!!!!!! so yay for Dragonbutt!
Anyway, it was good to play volleyball although my arms are already KILLING ME and I don't entirely look forward to waking up in the morning with the inevitable aches and pains.
Wait, yes I do -- tomorrow is SHUNSUKE DAY!!!! and I am going down to Chiba Marine Stadium to celebrate it with some people. Hopefully that will be Part 2 of the Weekend that Will Not Suck. (Though instead I may just make a complete ass of myself. We'll see.)
Also oh my GOD I just saw a TV commercial preview for Sushi Oji the movie, which takes place in NYC, and it had Domoto Koichi saying "I will CRUSH YOU!!!" in English which is just too fucking funny.
Today I started off by signing in at work and then spending my "lunch hour" over at the Sports Authority, where I found a pair of sneakers that suffice as "indoor gym shoes" so I can play volleyball, for about $40. All things considered that's pretty cheap. They're white Asics sneakers with white soles, size 26.0, and they had removable insoles so I could stick my Superfeet in them. The lady at SA was really amused, I asked her for help measuring my feet and she's like "hmm... you are 25.5 or 26.0..." I said, "That's men's sizes, right?" and she said "Yeah... women's only go up to 24.5 or 25.0... well, we have some cute men's sneakers too!" I explained the situation and she helped me try on a bunch of sneakers until I found the ones I wanted.
My student who works at the Science Museum in Ueno came to class today for the first time in a while and she gave me free tickets to see the Darwin exhibit and the Japanese Women Scientists exhibit! Only catch is that I have to use them by 4/30. Anyone want to go with me?
I didn't have a 6pm or 7pm class today -- a rarity to enjoy -- so I went down to Takadanobaba station and wandered through the area around Waseda University campus to the Shinjuku Cosmic Sports Center to go play volleyball with a group called Intervoll at 7pm. It is a pretty international group... kind of. Everyone there seemed to speak English and Japanese at the least, although, now that I think about it, despite it being pretty much completely balanced male/female, I think I might have been the only not-Asian-at-all female there, though there were plenty of non-Asian guys. After warming up for about half an hour, they split us up into 7 teams, by basically just making a line of guys and a line of girls and counting off 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 among people. My team had two Japanese-Brazilian guys, an American guy, a Japanese girl, and a Japanese-Brazilian girl. (Seriously, so half the time they were talking among each other in PORTUGUESE.) Our team was apparently one of the better ones -- we played round robin against every other team, 20 points to win a game, rally scoring, and we won 4 times and lost twice, IIRC, but I wasn't really keeping track.
I guess not playing volleyball for 8 months or so, I haven't really lost any of my reflexes -- and I can still totally do some of my crazy tricks like the bump back set -- what I lost was my ability to hit hard. I actually CAN still overhand serve over the net and that was very satisfying, but something about my timing is totally off for hitting. I mean I hit the ball and it goes over all the time but I only got a few really satisfying spikes in. The other annoying thing was that the two Brazilian guys on the team were major court hogs and so I kind of had to be pushy to get them to stop stealing the ball and covering for me when they really didn't have to, etc. Fortunately, the Japanese girl on our team spoke fluent English and was really funny and during our bye round she taught me all the things to yell -- "KABA", cover, instead of "help", just yelling "hai hai" or "oi oi!" instead of "I got it", yelling "onegai!" instead of "set me!", etc. "Outo" is still out... although when asking if the ball was in or out, it's like "haitta? haittenai?" We use "ushiro" and "mae" for back and front rows, too.
There was this one Japanese guy there (not on my team) who was like the most amazing player ever and he was totally quiet and shy too which was just plain weird. He had a floater serve to die for. I wanted to tell him how awesome he was but oddly, despite this being a fairly friendly game environment, people didn't seem to compliment the other team on great plays/serves/etc. There were no high-fives after games either. I'll probably go back sometime, though possibly not until May 18th since I can't play on a Friday and the game after that is when I'm in Hokkaido. Oh, also, we had to pay 1500 yen ($15) as a court fee, though for 3 hours of volleyball I guess that's not bad.
The games ended at 9:50pm with the announcement over the speaker of basically "you are all getting kicked out of the building at 10pm". None of the women in the locker room were taking showers, they were just getting changed and getting out, so I figured what the hell, I'd just do that too. I walked back to the station -- about 1.5 kilometers -- got on a train, and realized that FUCK I WAS REALLY HUNGRY AND HADN'T EATEN SINCE NOON OR SO but oh well, shouganai, I came home and ate curry rice around 11pm and watched TV.
Speaking of which, apparently the Chunichi Dragons banned a few ouendan groups and as a response, all the other ouendan groups are refusing to lead cheers. Which sucks. I hope they get this shit straightened out by the time I can go to a Dragons game. On the other hand Morino hit a home run!!!!!! so yay for Dragonbutt!
Anyway, it was good to play volleyball although my arms are already KILLING ME and I don't entirely look forward to waking up in the morning with the inevitable aches and pains.
Wait, yes I do -- tomorrow is SHUNSUKE DAY!!!! and I am going down to Chiba Marine Stadium to celebrate it with some people. Hopefully that will be Part 2 of the Weekend that Will Not Suck. (Though instead I may just make a complete ass of myself. We'll see.)
Also oh my GOD I just saw a TV commercial preview for Sushi Oji the movie, which takes place in NYC, and it had Domoto Koichi saying "I will CRUSH YOU!!!" in English which is just too fucking funny.
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Occasionnally my apartment building shakes, or whatever, but I honestly sometimes can't tell if it's an earthquake, a storm, or just a really big truck driving by.
I mention almost all of the exciting stuff. Honest. Just wait until my next entry :)
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Ulas offhand doesn't sound familiar but it's always good to know other CMU people in the area.