More subtleties of the English Language
"Hiyake" (hee-ya-kay) which literally means sunbaked is the word for both a suntan and a sunburn. So when I came into school with a sunburn yesterday (from playing frisbee on Saturday- I just don't think about sunburns in April) all the English teachers were saying "wow you got a suntan," despite the fact that it was all red and painful. Isn't that interesting?
Anyway, this weekend was the big frisbee tournament in Sakawa town which turned out quite well. It was only a Shikoku-wide thing (Rumor has it there will be a nation-wide tournament some time in June. Cool!) organized by Chris (the JET who organizes our frisbee Fridays) but there was a good turnout. Quite a few Tokushima JETs came (Tokushima is the prefecture east of Kochi, see the map from my trip for details).
We started at around 10:30 on Saturday with three teams, who each played each other once. The day was really sunny (obviously, hence the sunburn) but at the same time there were gale-force winds the entire day. Wind and frisbee don't mix. So it made for crazy games with lots of short passes and lots of frisbees flying backwards and rolling forever.
After lunch we had a few more people so we split into four teams and played in a bracket style tournament. We were all really tired from playing two 1 hour long games in the morning, but we had to keep pressing on and play two more 45 minute games. It was really fun, despite becoming really tired, and my team losing every single game I played in.
At five o'clock we finished up and headed up to the top of a mountain where we were going to go camping. Ti and I bought some lamb and vegetables to grill up and some Yebisu (a terrific Japanese beer- try to find some) and shiso shochu (try to say shi-so sho-chu by the sea shore five times fast, it's much more difficult than "she sells sea shells"), sho-chu being an alcohol which can be read about here and shi-so being an aromatic leaf similar to mint often eaten with sashimi (called the perilla leaf in English).
We then made our way up the mountain to find our campsite. We were staying in bungalows while some of the more adventurous types were staying in tents. It was much colder on the mountain than it was down at the field (imagine that!) but we would be spending most of our time around the fire anyhow. There were about 20 of us who decided to stay the night in Sakawa, and after we cooked our various dinners on the grills, members of the winning frisbee team went around forcing people to drink their prize, a bottle of locally brewed sake, while they sang various chants. Eventually though, the good sake ran out and they refilled the bottle with some nasty stuff that came from a carton (never drink alcohol from something that looks like a milk carton).
Then we went up near the tents and made a campfire, where our organizer Chris kept throwing wood in despite protests from other campers who insisted the fire would last for weeks. As the night went on, people began dropping like flies, exhausted from the frisbee. By midnight there were four of us, Ti, Chris, his girlfriend Sherra (who hadn't played frisbee due to work) and I. We stayed up for another two hours, Chris feeding the fire, Sherra expressing her absolute wonder at the fact that her birthday was March 26th, and that she was just under two years older than me, Ti struggling to stay awake by eating raisin cookies, and Matteo, the dog, attacking the inside of the tent he was shut in, keeping the other occupants of that tent awake no doubt.
We stayed up for another two hours playing "hink pink" (a game where you make up a rhyme and then give other players clues to the identity of your rhyme. For example, if I said "month satellite," what pair of rhyming words would I be talking about?) , the fire eventually burned down almost all the wood into nice hot coals, which we experimented with by seeing what a toasted orange would taste like (despite my guess that it would be horrible, it actually tastes like marmalade). We then put the fire out with about fifteen liters of water, and went to bed.
The bed in the bungolow consisted of a tatami board, and I had a sleeping bag and a pillow. It was really cold, so I was shivering, aching from frisbee, and sunburnt, sleeping on a entirely too hard surface. Not the best night's sleep I've ever had for sure. But that doesn't mean I wasn't ready to get up and head back to the field the next morning for more frisbee.
We woke up around 9:30, cleaned up the campsite, and headed down to the mountain back to the field. By now there were just fourteen people, (the exact number needed for two teams) including some who didn't go camping the night before, ready to play frisbee on Sunday morning. The weather was perfect (cloudy with absolutely no wind) and after we got started everyone was finding they had a lot more energy to play than they'd expected. We played a highly competitive game which ended 15-14, and took an hour and a half to play. But this time my team won, the first time all weekend. We finished playing around 2pm and decided that we were done playing frisbee for a while, lest we die. Some of us went to lunch, then Ti and I got on the train to go home. I got home about four thirty, took a shower and slept from five until seven the next morning. It was really a great weekend, and luckily the weather was all right, because for the past two days it's been raining neko and inu. (Japanese lesson)
Plus, that was the last weekend before the new school year; Monday was my first day back at Higashi, and this week classes start. So hooray for that. Don't forget to try to solve the "hink pink" from earlier in this post. Reply with your answer!
Anyway, this weekend was the big frisbee tournament in Sakawa town which turned out quite well. It was only a Shikoku-wide thing (Rumor has it there will be a nation-wide tournament some time in June. Cool!) organized by Chris (the JET who organizes our frisbee Fridays) but there was a good turnout. Quite a few Tokushima JETs came (Tokushima is the prefecture east of Kochi, see the map from my trip for details).
We started at around 10:30 on Saturday with three teams, who each played each other once. The day was really sunny (obviously, hence the sunburn) but at the same time there were gale-force winds the entire day. Wind and frisbee don't mix. So it made for crazy games with lots of short passes and lots of frisbees flying backwards and rolling forever.
After lunch we had a few more people so we split into four teams and played in a bracket style tournament. We were all really tired from playing two 1 hour long games in the morning, but we had to keep pressing on and play two more 45 minute games. It was really fun, despite becoming really tired, and my team losing every single game I played in.
At five o'clock we finished up and headed up to the top of a mountain where we were going to go camping. Ti and I bought some lamb and vegetables to grill up and some Yebisu (a terrific Japanese beer- try to find some) and shiso shochu (try to say shi-so sho-chu by the sea shore five times fast, it's much more difficult than "she sells sea shells"), sho-chu being an alcohol which can be read about here and shi-so being an aromatic leaf similar to mint often eaten with sashimi (called the perilla leaf in English).
We then made our way up the mountain to find our campsite. We were staying in bungalows while some of the more adventurous types were staying in tents. It was much colder on the mountain than it was down at the field (imagine that!) but we would be spending most of our time around the fire anyhow. There were about 20 of us who decided to stay the night in Sakawa, and after we cooked our various dinners on the grills, members of the winning frisbee team went around forcing people to drink their prize, a bottle of locally brewed sake, while they sang various chants. Eventually though, the good sake ran out and they refilled the bottle with some nasty stuff that came from a carton (never drink alcohol from something that looks like a milk carton).
Then we went up near the tents and made a campfire, where our organizer Chris kept throwing wood in despite protests from other campers who insisted the fire would last for weeks. As the night went on, people began dropping like flies, exhausted from the frisbee. By midnight there were four of us, Ti, Chris, his girlfriend Sherra (who hadn't played frisbee due to work) and I. We stayed up for another two hours, Chris feeding the fire, Sherra expressing her absolute wonder at the fact that her birthday was March 26th, and that she was just under two years older than me, Ti struggling to stay awake by eating raisin cookies, and Matteo, the dog, attacking the inside of the tent he was shut in, keeping the other occupants of that tent awake no doubt.
We stayed up for another two hours playing "hink pink" (a game where you make up a rhyme and then give other players clues to the identity of your rhyme. For example, if I said "month satellite," what pair of rhyming words would I be talking about?) , the fire eventually burned down almost all the wood into nice hot coals, which we experimented with by seeing what a toasted orange would taste like (despite my guess that it would be horrible, it actually tastes like marmalade). We then put the fire out with about fifteen liters of water, and went to bed.
The bed in the bungolow consisted of a tatami board, and I had a sleeping bag and a pillow. It was really cold, so I was shivering, aching from frisbee, and sunburnt, sleeping on a entirely too hard surface. Not the best night's sleep I've ever had for sure. But that doesn't mean I wasn't ready to get up and head back to the field the next morning for more frisbee.
We woke up around 9:30, cleaned up the campsite, and headed down to the mountain back to the field. By now there were just fourteen people, (the exact number needed for two teams) including some who didn't go camping the night before, ready to play frisbee on Sunday morning. The weather was perfect (cloudy with absolutely no wind) and after we got started everyone was finding they had a lot more energy to play than they'd expected. We played a highly competitive game which ended 15-14, and took an hour and a half to play. But this time my team won, the first time all weekend. We finished playing around 2pm and decided that we were done playing frisbee for a while, lest we die. Some of us went to lunch, then Ti and I got on the train to go home. I got home about four thirty, took a shower and slept from five until seven the next morning. It was really a great weekend, and luckily the weather was all right, because for the past two days it's been raining neko and inu. (Japanese lesson)
Plus, that was the last weekend before the new school year; Monday was my first day back at Higashi, and this week classes start. So hooray for that. Don't forget to try to solve the "hink pink" from earlier in this post. Reply with your answer!