I have a cold, a nasty one. AND, I have tooth pain from hell that I've had since Saturday but can't get fixed until tomorrow, because Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week were all national holidays. I mention this because I think that those are two factors that are likely to detract from the coherence of this post. Sadly, both things are seriously messing with my head and I'm finding basic motor functions to be far more difficult than they should be. But, this post really shouldn't be put off. So here goes.Monday of this week, was an event called the Uesugi Matsuri. This is a festival held in the town of Yonezawa a city a few hours drive away from Tsuruoka but still in the same prefecture (which for those who have forgotten is Yamagata). This festival sports a few events (I think) but the best event (in my opinion) is the Kawanakajima battle reenactment. If you've heard of the civil war reenactments back home then you kind of know what I'm talking about, only this has way more samurai, way more katana, and way fewer confederate flags. Or to put it another way, it's a thousand times cooler. This year Corey and I (and a fair number of our Gaijin compatriots) formed part of the reenactment. We were the Foreigners' brigade. I'm not entirely sure if there really was a foreigners' brigade in the actual battle or if some kind Japanese folk just decided to let some of the nerdier gaijin participate. Either way, for the last few years (at least) a number of foreigners have been taking part in the battle reenactment. So, anyway, Corey and I participated. This happened because Corey got an e-mail saying "hey there are only 10 spots left in this cool chance to dress up like samurai and wail on people with plastic swords" to which he immediately responded with "sign me up, and sign my girlfriend up too!" He told me about it after he had done it, he didn't consult me at all. I consider this a sure sign that we are meant to be together. He knew, without asking, that the immediate answer to the question "Virginia, do you want to dress up as a samurai and wail on people with plastic swords?" would be "Does the pope wear a ridiculous hat?" In other words: scheduling conflicts be damned, other plans be forgotten, we ARE going to dress up like samurai and wail on people with plastic swords.And Monday of this week, the day was finally upon us. At 9:00am we reported to a local middle school to don our armor and started getting ready for the big day. An awesome band of local volunteers helped us get dressed. Turns out, even putting on fake armor is tricky enough to need help. The Armor: For those who are actually interested in the details of this kind of thing read on, for those that only want to know what happened when the action went down feel free to skip to the next paragraph: we were wearing a cotton gi like top that went underneath a very baggy pleated set of pants (similar to hakama - for those that do martial arts- or koulats - for those that don't) that was the basic underwear. Then we wore tabi socks with tabi shoes that had softish rubber soles and managed to look like socks still, on top of those we wore traditional straw sandals the name of which I am completely ignorant. Then we donned very light armor. It was essentially thick canvas with small metal plates sewn at intervals across the fabric. We donned these on our arms (from shoulder to back of hand), chests, backs and shins. Then we had a tiny piece of metal sewn into a headband to protect our foreheads. I sincerely hope that samurai wore more armor than we did. Though I will grant you that our range of motion and lack of heat stroke was far superior to our leading officers who were donning the more elaborate gear. The action: There was a lot of standing around. Perhaps not dissimilar to real war, there was a whole lot of nothing that went on between fights. And really, there was only one main battle, but we did some practice marching first. That part was certainly boring, but messing around with our swords while waiting for things to happen was a lot of fun. Anyway, we were officially "involved" in this activity from 9am until 5pm. Yet we were only doing the actual reenactment from 2pm until 3pm. But we got a free lunch out of the deal so I felt that made up for a lot of the waiting. Anyway, when it got down to the real battle we did the following: We stood around while our commander drank sake and decided what he was going to do. We cried out some EH-EH-OHs to raise moral before the fight. We ran off to the other side of the river to prepare for our sneak attack. We waited for a long time while the rest of the battle happened until we were signaled. We lit torches that blew a bunch of smoke into our faces and made running and breathing rather difficult but which seemingly did nothing to our enemies. We ran across the river (and by across, I mean through it, we were up to our thighs in water at some points) and "surprised" the enemy forces. We fought them for a bit. I took on a few guys with cavalry spears and made them spin a lot. I fought some other people who were really surprised that the white foreign chick seemed to know which end of the sword was the pointy one. We retreated to our main force. We charged the enemy with our main force for the final battle. The foreign brigade formed a flying V and penetrated deep into enemy lines. Then we turned around to fight them all from their own ranks. We "killed" many an unsuspecting Japanese high school student. We battled heroicly, we died gloriously. I took out quite a few opponents (including a general or two) but was finally encircled by six enemy troops, some of whom were wielding spears. I took a few of them down, but was eventually stabbed in the leg and decided that it was time to begin my death sequence, I limped to charge a second foe and while striking him was yet again stabbed, this time in the ribs. I decided the next blow would be the one to fell me so I engaged a final confused teenager and tempted him in to stabbing me again as I cried out and ran him through as my final act. It turned out I had conveniently died next to a good friend of mine and we were able to chat while we waited for the battle to end. I coughed a lot. (Did I mention all the smoke from the torches?) After a few more minutes the announcer chick (did I mention the announcer and the freakin' film soundtrack that were rolling the whole time? probably not, but I should have, they were epic) said something about what an epic draw the battle was and how said all the death was. Then people started applauding and that meant we got to stand up. All of our dead resuscitated we reformed ranks and stood up to be applauded and to let out a few more EH-EH-OHs. Then the masses (and I really mean that, there were 4 or 5 thousand people watching the whole thing) breached the barriers and swarmed us for photo ops. A few small children and there parents wanted pictures with me, as well as a few high school boys and the occasional random 40 year old man. From there it degraded into a whole lot of picture taking with friends etc. and then eventually we were herded back to the middle school in order to hand back our armor etc. And that was it. It was an epic awesome, wonderful Monday. I will of course be posting pictures. There are lots. Many of them will be stolen from other people's facebook pages. I will do my best to credit them, but keep in mind that I didn't have my camera on me so ALL of these pictures were taken by someone other than me. In other words, I'm not taking credit for ANY of them. :-)In other news: Corey's mom is in town. We are having a great time, and we have been taking her to a number of Japanese temples and shrines almost all of which are at the tops of mountains in these parts. So, there's been a lot of step climbing lately, mostly stone steps. Hence the beginning part to title of this post. I hope to write again in the not too distant future to cover all of the super interesting things we've been up to that haven't involved wailing on people with plastic swords, but I fear this post is already long enough. So there you have it. More later, I'm off to blow my nose a few thousand more times. *le sigh*
Wow, it's been a ridiculously long time since I have written anything here. Sadly, that seems to be my latest MO. Ah well, I'm not going to waste your time apologizing for my absence but suffice it to say I've been busy. Busy doing what you ask? Well, therein lies the purpose of this post. Here's the basic run down:Skiing: I may have mentioned a while back (but I may not) that the boyfriend and I purchased Skis and boots and poles for the season here in Japan. It turns out that was a really good call. Our neck of the woods gets a fair bit of snow and the mountains nearby provide perfectly adequate skiing all winter long. Also, brimming with enthusiasm from our purchases we even drove down to Nagano (home of the 1998 winter olympics) and enjoyed a fun filled weekend of skiing there as well. Ski season is still going, though it's now the beginning of the end, as the weather has finally begun to turn spring like in the last week and a half. Working: Yep, I'm still actually teaching English to Japanese people. Despite all the skiing and other recreational activities I've been getting up to, I do in fact have a job. I love my job, aside from the days I have to teach kids (and even that's not that bad, just bad by comparison). My adult students are extremely motivated and lively and just generally awesome.Partying: Shonai is party central here in Yamagata prefecture. It turns out our local scene is where all the happeningest happenings happen to happen. (Just nod and pretend it made sense, ok?) We're the hub of all things social and there have been lots of social things occurring just about every weekend. There has been much drinking, singing, dancing, carousing, and even the occasional wearing of costumes and putting on of funny accents here in the land of dadachamame (our local, famous soybean). Missing the boyfriend while he went to Thailand without me: In case the header didn't make it perfectly clear, the boyfriend went to Thailand. I couldn't go (because of work). I missed him while he was gone.Cooking: Some of you know my propensity for cooking... that is to say, I don't have one. But, I have been cooking more than usual here in Japan. I haven't yet started bread making here (can't find whole wheat flour ANYWHERE) but I have been making pizza from scratch, tortillas from scratch, AND I've been making some of my favorite Spanish tapas. Something that I haven't made in a LONG time. Strangely, I found myself being asked to teach a cooking class on Spanish Tapas about a month ago. I'm not sure how it happened exactly, but it did happen and it went well. There was much garlic. The food was delicious and trying to flip back and forth between Japanese, Spanish and English was quite entertaining. Learning to play the bass: So, the boyfriend purchased me an electric bass for Christmas. This was secretly just what I had wanted, but of course I hadn't told him that. He simply used his powers of awesomeness to ascertain what I wanted and buy it for me. I have been practicing every day since I got it. I'm getting better, but I'm still a complete and total novice. It's a ton of fun though, and we've even put together a band of total noobs. Noob bassist, noob guitar player, noob drummer, noob singer. Good times. We have rehearsals and everything. Teehee.Reading: I have recently read two amazing books by the author Kristin Cashore. If you have not yet read Graceling or Fire I suggest you do so immediately. Warning: the main characters are badass and female, so if women kicking ass isn't your thing then you may not wish to read them. And, most importantly, WRITING: The progress on my novel from November has been quite slow, but there has been some progress. As soon as I finish here I plan to get to writing some more of that novel as I have had some good ideas in the last few days. Also, I have recently received some interest from an editor in turning one of my short stories into a novel for possible publication. Everything is still in the extremely early stages (I still have to write the novel and then he has to like it enough to want to publish it, etc.) but the mere prospect (even if it's such a long way off) is really exciting and highly motivating. So, needless to say that's a project that has been getting a lot of my attention lately. I will keep everyone updated if things start to move forward with that (that is to say, I'll write it quietly, but as soon as I hear anything along the lines of "yes we'd like to publish this" I will let you guys know). And of course, if I get bogged down in the plot there's always a chance I'll blog to bemoan my lack of talent as an author. So, that pretty much wraps up my latest news. I'll try to get better about blogging more frequently in the near future, but I make no promises.I leave you with the following link because it makes me laugh, and I like to think it will make you laugh too. Old Spice
