Arashi's Waku Waku School 06.16 Saturday Night
If you’re an Ohno fan, tonight was definitely the night to be there. It. Was. Wonderful. ^_^
I had hoped to buy goods before, but they’d sold out of the clear files, so I decided to try my luck tomorrow. They were doing final checks until 3:30, so everyone was waiting outside on the stairs.
The first things I noticed as I got to my seat were the three small swimming pools set around the outer edge of the circle that was this year’s running course. They even had a goal set up, but as I stared at it, it looked strangely like it was set on top of a track that could move it further away. It didn't do anything tonight, but I wonder if it will tomorrow. The motto sign “Hibi Kore Kidzuki” made me think the boys must have done the calligraphy for it because of how the brush strokes looked. They had staff working on fixing part of the monitors for a while until they went backstage through the door Arashi used to leave.
We waited for class to start, although the “school clock” was forever stuck on 10:13. One of the girls in the row in front of me was drawing a sketch of the stage. There were a lot of girls in school uniforms too.
When the bell rang to start school, the balloon hand on top of the stage holding a hand bell waved back and forth. A video played of 5 lights coming from space and I couldn’t help thinking it looked like the old episodes of “Power Rangers”. And that's what it ended up being!
First they showed Jun in a gym "in training". He looked around and noticed a muscly guy in a shirt that had the Arashi school logo on it, and then he pulled out an "Arashi badge", a purple light flashed while he spun around, and he transformed into his teacher-self. Aiba was on break from Mikeneko Holmes about to eat lunch, but when he opened the lid, the Arashi logo was in seaweed on the rice. He did his transformation and the video changed to Sho in News Zero talking about the weather on Ichimen. He pointed towards the large monitor and the logo appeared. His "Ho!!" of surprise was very cute. Nino was "in transit" in a van playing his DS. He looked up and saw the logo on a large outdoor screen, stood up in the aisle and transformed. Ohno was "in a meeting" wearing his Enomoto glasses in a blue sweater. He grabbed a packet of sugar to pour into his coffee, but it swirled around and changed into the school logo.
Live feed from a hallway backstage showed the five of them ready to come out. Jun told us it was time to start the 2012 version of Waku Waku Gakkou and Nino said, "Let's do this." They each had a bright t-shirt on under their lab coats of their color. The teachers waved at us as they made their way to center stage.
Sho said, "Ohno-sensei, if you will." Ohno called for us to stand up and Nino commented how nice it looked when we did it all together. Ohno announced the start of this year's school session.
Turning to Jun, Aiba prodded, "Matsumoto-sensei, tell them about how this started last year." Jun gave a short explanation of how the concert had been changed at the last minute because of the Tohoku earthquake. Aiba joked that there were so many "new students" who wanted to join their school, so they did it again and added many other venues, like Fukushima.
Sho wanted us to clap to tell them if it was our first time to take their lessons or if we had graduated last year and returned for another lesson. There were a lot of claps for the latter, so he said they were touched we'd come again. Nino told us how the school worked, being teachers as well as students, then Jun drew our attention to the banner with the school motto on it. "It sure has a handmade touch, doesn't it?"
Ohno jumped right in, asking, "Did you notice?"
Jun nodded along with him. "Last year, we did quite a few things."
Sho smiled. "This was our challenge to you" But the others didn't think they'd really meant to "challenge" us.
Right before the VTR, Ohno said, "It was in one of the bathrooms in the dome." The video showed one of the stalls and the cameraman pushed the button that makes the water sound when you're using it. Truth was, the members had made the sound themselves by pouring water into buckets. Jun and Aiba poured normally, but Ohno stared right at the camera while he did it. Nino and Sho were sitting to the side on seats with these silly wide smiles on their faces as they did nothing.
Ohno told us that they'd already been removed so there'd be no point going to the bathroom to record it now. Sho asked, "You think they'd really want something like that? So who actually noticed? Okay, you're ready to graduate." Jun yelled, "It's only been 10 minutes!"
It began with Nino's lesson. "So this is the second year that I've gotten to go first. Now I'd like you to watch a VTR. What's in it are people in white t-shirts and black t-shirts passing basketballs around. I want you to watch it and tell me how many times the white team passed their ball." I watched it carefully, but with the people weaving in and out of each other, I got confused and made it to 14.
"I have no idea" was Sho's guess.
Aiba laughed. "From when couldn't you tell?"
Raising his hand, Jun spoke up. "The guy in grey in the back, he looked a lot like Leader." An annoyed Nino told him, "That's not the point." Jun couldn't leave it alone. "But it does!"
Nino called on Ohno to answer. Unsure, Ohno looked at him. "I'm pretty sure I got it. Is it okay to be right? Is it really okay?" Nino said it was, but Leader asked again, "Is it okay to say the right answer? Well... 18 times."
Jun answered 19 and Nino was about to skip Sho because he didn't know, but Sho said quickly, "17." Jun didn't think he actually counted anything though.
Nino said, "And we can skip Aiba too..." In the end, Aiba got to give his answer of 18.
Nino announced that it was in fact 18 times. "But the point was, when did I go through the video?" I didn't have the fainted clue when that had happened, but apparently Jun had. "I saw it. You were in a white shirt eating ice cream."
Nino seemed surprised, "Close. Very close. Let's watch it again."
They showed the video and paused it to show Nino. He had calmly walked into the middle of the dribbling and stood there with his ice cream wearing a black shirt. "It's not your fault that you couldn't notice it. Your eyes had focused in on one color and completely ignored the other."
Jun joked that Nino's yellow hair should have been easy to spot. Nino ignored him. "You concentrated too hard on one thing and couldn't notice the other things around you. It's because your mind isn't flexible enough." (Kachi kachi = stiff or in this case, one-track thinking).
The staff brought out a short set of stairs that led to a red door. Nino ordered, "Aiba, stand up. I want you to go to that door and bring the fire extinguisher on the other side back over here in ten seconds or it'll blow up." Of course, Aiba thought it would be an easy task but when he got up to the door, he turned the knob and nothing happened. He fumbled with it for a few seconds as the timer was counting down, then by some miracle, he slid it a little to the side and pushed it the rest of the way open. Aiba grabbed the extinguisher and came back in a hurry. "CLEAR!" appeared on the screens, showing he'd accomplished his goal. Cradling the extinguisher, he held it like it was something precious.
Nino stared at him blankly for a moment before launching into his complaints. He must have expected that something like this could happen since he'd chosen Aiba to do it, but he was still annoyed. "What did you do that for?"
Aiba started, "But-!" and Nino cut him off. "You're supposed to mess around with it and go 'Ah! It won't open!' and then it blows up."
Aiba whined, "But it moved!"
Nino glared. "Cheater. It shouldn't have opened. You were supposed to focus on just turning the knob."
Again, Aiba tried to explain, "But I pushed on the door to open it and it didn't move, so I shook it around to see if that would help and it slid open. I guess I shook it too hard."
Nino gave up on scolding Aiba for ruining his fun and launched into an explanation of why things like that happen. He said it was due to the human's sense to assume certain ideas because of facts that we know. Nino told us that when we see the signs for toilets, we usually judge by color; pink for girls and blue for boys. They had experimentally changed some of the signs to blue for women in the dome. I hadn't noticed seeing them. "We get too used to things easily. Then we become confused about what to do when something is unexpected. Okay, go run."
The other members were definitely confused, but Sho resigned himself to their fate quickly. "He just had to go and say that."
Jun asked defiantly, "Why?!"
All at once the boys started moving. Aiba and Sho raced for the box first while Jun shoved Ohno in the opposite direction and ran away towards the box too. Nino was teasing Aiba, so Aiba took a swing at Nino's head and missed.
Ohno got number one, Sho number three, Aiba four, and Jun two. I was quite happy Ohno was in front of my side! Nino told them, "I want you to run as fast as you can to the goal. When I say 'Yoi, don', go."
Sho said, "Okay, we're ready."
Nino held up his starter gun and said "yoi". Ohno took off after he heard the gun shot sound. Like last year, Aiba was the one that gives me the strongest impression of running full out.
The guys finished and began walking back towards the center while panting, but Nino stopped them. "Wait. I didn't say 'Yoi, don.' You have to do it again."
They all stared at him in disbelief. It was true. Instead of saying "don", it had been the sound of the gun that had been what started them off. Clearly annoyed, Jun said sarcastically, "There are teachers like that." (That do evil things for fun)
Sho gave up. "It's true, he didn't do anything wrong."
Still confused, the tennen pair asked, "What?" and Ohno, "When did he say "don"?"
Nino snorted. "I didn't."
Jun asked, "So we have to do it again?"
Nino replied shorted, "Yes." While he'd been talking with Jun, Ohno had made it back to the center stage and Nino noticed. "Why did you come back for? Get back over there!"
They decided to do it in reverse this time, with Aiba starting at the goal line, even though he'd already broken the tape. Ohno was very confused about where to start from and somehow ended up at number two, having to run two sections to the new goal. Ready to go, they were much more careful about listening for when Nino said "Yoi, don!" As Sho and Jun were running, they were randomly shouting out each other's names. Ohno was still confused and cried, "Where?! Where should I run to?!" Jun ran beside him for part of the way, "cheering" him on. By the end, Ohno was running like Serizawa had during Kagi no Kakatta Heya. I was dying from laughter by that point. =^_^=
Returning to the center stage at last, Jun commented to Nino, "I thought this last year, but why don't you run?"
Aiba was massaging his legs coming up the stairs, saying they felt swollen. Nino pretended like he hadn't heard him and said, "What?"
Aiba told him, "Urusai!" (Oh, shut up!)
Jun was still surprised that they hadn't noticed at all that Nino hadn't said "don".
Nino explained, "That's why I had you run. Not as a joke, but to show how that kind of "assumption" works. For example, when people buy clothes, they buy a lot of similar clothes to what they have. Like, one person may buy parkas, and only parkas. They think 'maybe this won't suit me, so I won't buy it.' You should be adventurous. It will take you to a new world. Did you know that chickens have the potential to fly? Have you ever seen them do it? No, but they could. 100 years ago, humans couldn't fly either. You have to take a mind that is stuck thinking one way and make it more flexible. In closing, remember this. 'If you get rid of 'assumption', it will open a new door of potential.'"
Sho's lesson was up next. He told us to take our pet bottles and take a drink. The members did, but he did his old "Renaissance!" joke.
Sho said, "Did you know that the body is made up of about 90 percent water? Have you ever thought about how much water you use in a day? How many people brushed their teeth today? How many took a bath? How many bought water at a store to drink? There seems to be quite a few. Then, if you're having fun, put your hands up!" We did our customary "Yeah, yeah, yeah!" and raised our hand up.
Jun laughed that if there were any small kids in the crowd, they probably were thinking, "What the hell are they doing?"
Sho introduced his "goku goku" lesson by gulping down his bottle of water and promptly choking on it. The video that played showed the city of Takashima, where most of the residents have a kind of system called "kabata" where river water flows into a small pond they have set up in their yards which has two layers to it. One can be used for washing vegetables or dishes and the other had koi in it that helped keep the water clean as it flows back out into the river side. Jun commented that the water really did look clean.
"We have ways of recycling water in Tokyo too," Sho said. "Today as well. With the rain outside. At Tokyo Dome, it falls on the roof and filters down to pumps underground where it gets used for toilet water. It saves about half of the amount that they would have to use otherwise." He held up a regular sized bucket full of water and had Aiba test to see how heavy it was. "This bucket here is about 5 liters. This will equal 1 Arashi."
The staff brought out a set with a mannequin inside a clear shower room with a large tube on top for water to be poured down. Taped over the mannequin's face was Jun's. Matsujun saw it and said, "I don't have purple briefs like those..."
Sho announced what the experiment would be. "Let's find out how many Arashi's we need to take a shower. Matsumoto-kun, please take us through all the steps you usually do when washing your body. The rest of you, you'll be bringing the water from the pools with the buckets set up there."
While complaining, Ohno, Aiba, and Nino each picked out a pool to use. Jun put on a rain coat to wear over his clothes. Nino looked back long enough to notice that Aiba trying to take the full bucket Sho had used for his example to save himself some of the trouble. "Teacher! Aiba's trying to cheat!"
After they were all ready, Nino told Sho he'd have to say "Yoi, don" before they'd go.
Sho said, "Yoi, start!" Four of them had stayed still, but Ohno walked off towards his pool. They yelled at him to come back and Jun shouted, "What did we just study?"
Ohno lightly apologized and Aiba called him "Mr. Kachi kachi".
They started properly the second time and "Happiness" played while the boys struggled to bring back their full buckets of water. Ohno was the first to make it to the stairs. Aiba tried to pick up four buckets at the same time before crying, "Impossible!" Nino had the strategy to drop off a bunch of buckets at the center stage and kept going back to his pool.
Jun started washing his mannequin. "I start by rinsing off everything. Then begin shampooing."
Aiba darted over to steal the buckets Nino had left at the edge of the stage. Nino saw it and yelled, "Cheater!"
Jun announced he was at the rinsing stage for his hair.
Nino said, "You don't have to bother doing that!"
Next, Ohno went over to "help" Nino carry his buckets up the stage stairs. Nino shouted, "Cheaters! All of you!"
Jun continued with his shower. "Finished with the hair. Next is the face. Then the body from the upper left."
Aiba went to steal Nino's buckets again and Ohno helped Aiba carry them up the stairs to the top. An alarm went off to signal that they were running low on water.
Jun picked up the mannequin's left leg. "Okay, the body's done. Next is here."
The siren went off again as Ohno had gotten to the bottom of the stairs, so he went back and took Sho's example bucket of water to pour in, then went to "help" Nino carry his up the stage stairs. The three of them were really tired by that point. But they managed to finish and gold confetti shot out while Sho congratulated them. Aiba panted, "Now, I want to take a shower."
Nino glared. "What I want to know is why I had to take my water over to "mizu otoko" and "blue man" over there." (Mizu otoko - water man). Aiba and Ohno were stretching together, trying to seem casual about doing it while ignoring him.
Sho asked, "Blue man, do you have something to say?"
Ohno replied, "Nope."
Nino complained, "And why did you pour that bucket in? That one was off limits."
Agreeing with him, Sho said, "I was disappointed in that."
We all counted the number of buckets they used. It added up to 18 Arashis, or approximately 90 liters.
"If you turn off the water while you are washing with shampoo or soap, you can save nearly half the amount. Did you know that if you do the laundry, it equals to 14 Arashi? Brushing your teeth equals 7, doing the dished is 7, taking a bath is 40, so for a full day, it's about 64 Arashis. If all of you here were to use this much, it would equal 2,880,000 Arashis. And what about curry rice? You might just think it's the water to cook it in or wash the vegetables, but really, there is a lot of water used during the production of the different foods used in curry rice. It would be over 255. And to make a t-shirt, it would be 600." They showed a girl in the crowd who was wearing a Kaibutsu-kun t-shirt and was busy taking notes. Sho talked about how a large lake that had existed in 1973 had nearly turned into a dessert by 2009 due to overuse of water.
"In the world, there is only 2.5 percent of fresh water. And of that, only 0.01 percent is usable for us. There is a limit. We should try to do what we can to help. To close, please remember that one shower equals 18 Arashis."
Aiba was next. Nino was quick to pick on him. "Teacher?"
Aiba looked up at him. "You aren't wearing your coat."
He said, "Eh? That's because..." Then he looked around frantically for the staff person carrying it and slipped it on. "It's the first day, so things happen. Anyway, aren't you guys hungry now? Please close your eyes and count to 15."
No one actually closed their eyes, so he ducked down behind the stand, switching his jacket and putting on a hat. He popped back up in his sushi chef outfit. "We're going to talk about everyone's favorite food. Can you tell?"
Sho guessed, "Soba?" and Nino "Chinese?", so Aiba just told them, "It's sushi. We'll talk about sushi today."
Jun asked, "So it's going to be like last time?"
Aiba nodded. "Yeah. Let's go over to the set. You know, I learned how to make sushi from a chef in Ginza."
Sho said, "I thought it was pretty hard to learn how to do it."
Aiba replied, "It is. Yesterday, I practiced for 30 minutes." The way he said it made it seem like he'd practiced it for the first time then and only for 30 minutes, so they laughed.
Aiba asked what kind of sushi they wanted him to make and they shot out their random answers.
Nino: Hamburger.
Ohno: Hayashi rice.
Jun: Soba.
Sho: Mabo tofu.
Aiba ignored all of their requests. "Okay, Salmon it is. If you answer the quiz right, you can eat it."
The question was "What kind of meat is Salmon?"
A. Red meat B. White meat C. Orange meat D. Blue meat
Jun, Ohno, and Sho guessed "A" and Nino guessed "B". Sho didn't seem confident because both him and Aiba had mistaken sushi when they'd eaten it on "Bet de Arashi". Aiba asked Nino why he thought it was B. Nino answered "presumption", the point for his lesson.
They showed a video of how fish go through the process of laying their eggs, but all seriousness was lost seeing Aiba wearing a funny cowboy hat while telling us the story. The final answer was B.
Nino said smugly, "Owner. Make me my salmon sushi."
Aiba explained how you are supposed to do it, but pushed pretty hard when making the sushi and Nino told him so.
On the other end, Sho started coughing. Jun asked him what happened and Sho pointed to his plate. "The ginger." He'd tried munching on it, but it must have been too strong for him. ^_^
"What sushi is next then?" Aiba asked.
Nino: Curry rice.
Ohno: Omelet rice.
Jun: Natto soba.
Aiba ignored them again. "Okay, tuna."
The second question was "What percentage of bluefin tuna make it all the way to adulthood?"
A. 1/100 B. 1/1000 C. 1/10,000 D. 1/10,000,000
"By the way, it takes about 7 years for the tuna to make it to an adult." Aiba told them. That didn't make things any clearer, so Aiba gave them the following hints to help them figure out what kind of percentages those were.
A. Getting hit on a bike B. A girl falling in love at first sight C. Finding a four leaf clover D. Winning the lottery
They all guessed "C" at first, but after seeing that, Nino changed his to "D". Sho followed, changing to "B". Ohno looked back and forth. "Okay then, A."
The answer video played, telling us that the tuna's eggs start out at 1 millimeter and 99 percent of those end up eaten. The ones that survive travel to America where many get turned into canned goods. "D" was the right one.
"That's two wins."
Nino smirked again. "Owner. Make me my sushi."
Aiba did and Nino savored it. "For the next one, there won't be a quiz. It's anago (eel), special just for you guys."
The VTR played again, showing Aiba outside at the crack of dawn with a fisherman. At 4 AM, he'd met up with Suzuki-san, the father and son team that would take him out next to Haneda Airport to check the traps they'd laid the night before. Aiba pulled them up out of the water, checking each. Every single one was empty. Suzuki said that it does happen sometimes and offered to go find clams instead. The spot that they chose to find them was so~ close to the airport. The planes that came down to land where so near that Aiba couldn't help being distracted by them every time. They brought their catch back to the shore and had a barbecue. Aiba talked with the fishers about why they had problems catching different things and how the number of fishermen had dramatically decreased from what it has used to be like.
The guys had moved back over to their desks where they had miso soup with clams in front of them to try. Aiba asked if they thought it was good. They all said it was delicious, even Nino. But Jun said, "Nino, you aren't good with clams, right?"
Nino didn't bother hiding it. "Yup."
Aiba talked about how you needed to have strength if you're going to be a fisher. And there will be times when you can't catch anything. "You definitely couldn't show something like that on TV, but you'd still have to have the courage to go out and do it. For our second Waku Waku Gakkou, I chose to do the "paku paku" lesson again. I want you to understand how important food is to us. Why fish? Japan is supported by the many kinds of fish that we catch. We usually eat our food without thinking about it, but if you research it, it will taste even better." His closing comment was 'Gochisousama. Arigato.' (Thank you for the meal.)
Jun-sensei was fourth period, talking about origins. He asked us if we were taking memos or not. "Do you happen to know where the pencils you are using came from and when they were invented?" Unfortunately, I was using a pen. He explained how they had came from England when a sheep farmer found a small chunk of what I think was coal 400 hundred years ago and experimented writing with it.
"So how many kids are here with their parents?" They raised their hands. "How about we ask them some questions?" He chose a pair that the camera had zoomed in on, but the lighting staff had trouble trying to get the spot light on them. Jun directed the light. "There. Over there. No, there, there, there. Yes! There!"
The staff brought them microphones and they introduced themselves as Takako and Nanae. Jun asked the daughter, "Have you ever asked about when you were born?" Nanae said she did, because she'd heard the story that she'd been sick as a baby. "Do you know why you got that name?" Nanae laughed, so he asked her if he'd said something funny, but Nino said it was probably because she was nervous.
In the end, she said she didn't remember why, though she'd asked before. The mother answered that they'd like the way it had sounded and that her husband was fond of the kanji for her name and good and writing it. Aiba asked Nanae if she liked art and she said she did, but when he asked if she like drawing, she said "no".
Jun's lesson was about the things that we don't know about our origins. In the VTR, he followed Yajima-san, who is a midwife with over 4200 successful cases. Jun met with a family that was expecting their second child. They had had a little trouble during the birth of their first daughter and were a little worried about the second one.
They hadn't decided the name yet, bouncing between two: Yuu and Miri. The father asked Jun which he preferred, but it was too much pressure for him to be able to answer. Jun helped them with making the baby bed and playing with the 2 year old daughter that day. 18 days later, the midwife got a call at midnight to come over. At 6 AM, the next day, Jun showed up to offer his support. 8 hours had passed, but the mother was still having contractions and the baby wasn't ready to come out. The family wanted to wait for a natural birth, but it wasn't until 3 hours later that the baby finally came out. Jun was smiling widely at that. The father called out "Yuu-chan", the name which he had liked better, so we all laughed.
Sho was surprised that it had taken so long. (About 12 hours) "When my siblings were born, my mom just went to the hospital at night and that was all I'd known of it. I didn't know it was strenuous."
Jun corrected, "Well, not all moms have troubles like that, but it is a lot of effort. My mom also did her best. Just as yours did. In secret, I've done some research."
Nino cried out, "Stop! Don't say it!"
Jun smiled. "Tonight, it's about Ohno-san. I talked to Leader's mom."
Ohno could only say, "Really?"
The questions that he had asked came out on the screen along with his mom's answers. The first one was "Do you remember well when your son was born?"
Her answer message was written up on the screens. "We'd had trouble when he was born because he couldn't breath properly right away. But afterwards, I believed that this child will be strong."
Jun asked him, "Did you know about this?"
Ohno nodded. "After I was born, they couldn't get me to cry. They had to hit my butt for a while until I could."
Sho said, "So you'd heard the story before?" He nodded again.
"Do you know how she decided your name?" Jun asked.
Ohno told them he did. "I asked. She said there was an idol from a long time ago that she really liked and used that name. When I heard that, I thought, 'Was choosing my name all that meant to you?' They brought up a picture of the idol, Kishida Satoshi, and played one of his songs.
"By the way, did you know that if you'd been a girl, she would have called you 'Satomi'?"
Ohno shook his head at Jun's question. "I didn't know that. Why?" I think she'd just liked the sound of it.
The third question was "What was he like as a kid?" Apparently, he'd been kind of accident prone. When he was five, he got his leg caught up in part of his bike (the gears, I guess) and ended up with a bad wound that needed 15 stitches.
Ohno just nodded. "I also got my fingers smashed in the bathroom door. You know how if your parents tell you 'be careful to not get them stuck in the door' that you want to try to do it? I was like that. But I do remember that accident."
Nino asked, "When you were five?"
Ohno told us about how his leg had gotten stuck and his dad had dissolved into a panic and he remembered the best how after they'd gotten to the hospital that the nurse had stuck some kind of thin sheet of paper over his leg and told to wait. He'd been bleeding pretty badly, but they'd said, 'Oh, he's okay. He can wait.' Ohno remembers that still.
His mother added, "He would never calm down and he would never listen to us. 'Bikkuri!' (It was such a surprise to me!) If he was told 'don't cross the road because it's dangerous', he'd cross it. I couldn't understand his way of thinking."
Ohno agreed with that too. "I still have scars from those times. Then I got rushed back to that same hospital."
Sho started giggling pretty hard at that. Nino seemed stuck on that fact that Ohno had been so stubborn back then.
Jun spoke up, "But he changed a little in elementary school. I have here his report card from when he was in 3rd grade, 3rd class." Jun held it up and Ohno looked really surprised to see it.
Nino asked, "Is it okay to look in there?"
Jun said carefully, "I was told... it was okay."
Shoving his fingers through his hair, Ohno scrunched his brow together as he tried to remember what he'd been like back then. "I was drawing then... Or at least I'd started to... And I was awful at math."
Jun cracked open the report book and told us that it was split into three grading categories; very good, good, and needs work. "As for "very good" marks..." (We all 'ooh~ed' in anticipation) "... you don't have a single one." The crowd cracked up and the other members started bowing to him.
Turning back to the book, Jun read, "Under 'wants to express himself', there's 'good'."
Ohno was still mumbling about the lack of 'very good' marks.
"The teacher wrote that you didn't study, although they hoped you would. You know, you haven't changed much from that. Eh... also, during the first semester, they wrote you didn't make friends or talk to others, just sat alone, silently drawing in the class room during break. During the second semester, you'd managed to make some friends and you were trying your best at math. The last note was that you were making an effort and they hoped you'd continue doing so."
Ohno said wistfully, "Yeah, I remember that I always just stayed at home a lot."
Aiba laughed, "Although, your mom said you couldn't sit still."
Still thinking back, Ohno said, "And I only really drew stuff during the breaks..."
Jun told us, "You should be grateful to your mom, Ohno. And all of us to our mothers. Tell them thank you. I've seen just how important life is and witnessed a mother trying her best to bring a new life into the world. Mother's have to fight to give birth to their children. But it's because of the fact that children can't be born easily that they are precious. They're miracles. In this dome, we have about 50,000 miracles here. So please go home and ask about your origins, think about how it's the same for others. To close, 'If you think about your origins, everything becomes precious.'"
Lastly, it was Ohno's turn. "Okay, let's start. So we've finished four of the lessons. Are you having fun? (Yeah!) Have you been laughing? (Yeah!) This lesson is about smiling. Aiba, smile." For a moment, he was so confused at the sudden order, we all laughed. He did smile, but it so corny, we laughed again.
Ohno ordered them all to laugh together and they did do it, but it sounded so funny how they were forcing out the breath from their stomach that the crowd cracked up just at listening to that. Sho asked, "Teacher, is that enough now?"
They showed another video to demonstrate how the brain is affected when you laugh. Ohno had a very funny looking gadget around his forehead that had a ton of wires sticking out from every angle. Naturally, we couldn't help giggling at that. The device was there to measure his brain waves to see what happens when he properly laughs. And the thing that he prepared to help him do so was a video of chimpanzees. He smirked and snickered at them and just watching that made me want to laugh too.
The doctor explained how when you laugh, the graph showing colors of the active parts of your brain all light up red.
The next experiment was whether you'd get the same kind of results with "fake laughter". Ohno sounded so silly laughing like that. Towards the end, it definitely resembled Kaibutsu-kun. The graph also reacted similarly, just not as extreme. "When you laugh for 20 seconds, it's the same as if you rowed a boat for 3 minutes. Also, it can improve your immune system."
Sho confirmed, "So we should laugh a lot?"
Ohno said "yes".
He attempted to make the members laugh by waving his arms in front of his face and switching between his "normal" face, a goofy smiling one, and back to his "normal" face. They tried not to laugh, but we didn't hold back.
Like last year, Ohno wanted to make a new "beam". This one was named the "Gera Gera Kousen" (the laughing beam). Aiba asked what happens if it hit them. Ohno answered flatly, "You laugh. I guess you haven't heard about this. Come here. Get in front of this camera. If you show it your laughing face, it'll choose whose is best."
The members moved over to the camera, but between Nino's yellow hair and the lights shining on his face, you couldn't see much of him at all. "Teacher? Can this thing really recognize my face?"
Ohno said, "You're just too yellow."
Sho and Nino traded places, but that didn't do anything for him.
Jun asked, "So it's supposed to recognize our faces?"
Ohno told them, "Yes. And then a bird will come out." They all repeat him. "There's a little bird that will come and land on your shoulder if you have the best laughing face."
For the "Gera Gera Kousen", Ohno danced around, alternatively putting out one of his hands in front of himself. ^_^ The running track from before lit up with blue lights that flashed too.
But... nothing happened. There was a little bird sound and the picture froze like it was taking a picture, but no bird appeared.
All the guys yanked at Ohno's jacket, pulling him away for a talk.
Nino: "Get over here."
Jun: "So... there was a sound."
Nino: "We tried our best to laugh..."
Nino and Jun: "What was the point of doing this?!"
Nino: "Where's the bird?!"
Ohno: "Well, it came close by......."
Aiba: "Where?"
Sho: "It just didn't land here?"
Ohno: "It just wasn't enough... So...."
Nino: "What should we do about this?"
They all "glared" at him and he tried to come up with something. "Well, I can tell you who was the best. It was Nino. Even though his face was white, you could tell he was laughing. It had impact. How do you feel at winning, Nino?"
Nino gave a wry laugh, "We tried our best to laugh and it came out to this. I'm thankful to my mother."
Ohno valiantly tried to explain his way out of the mishap, but gave up after a while. "It's best just to laugh. Even if it's fake. Everyone, let's laugh together." He turned to the others. "You're all going to do it too." He pointed at one section of the stands. "We'll do it clockwise from here."
Jun was having trouble keeping up with the randomness. "What should we do?"
Ohno said simply, "Start from your right hand. 3, 2, 1!"
Then the boys did the "Gera Gera" dance all the way around the center stage, chanting "Gera Gera" the whole way. It was hilarious.
Ohno ordered the members, "Go sit down."
Sho asked if we'd actually laughed. He'd been so busy dancing around, he couldn't tell.
Ohno commented, "That was REALLY fun."
The next section was called "Laugh at my failures". He told them to get a story ready. "It's time to choose a victim."
Jun repeated, "Victim? What?"
Ohno said, "One of you will become a victim. You'll have to tell an embarrassing story and be laughed at. When you hit the "Gera Gera button", the crowd will know it's the right time to laugh."
Nino asked, "Then wouldn't the point be to hit it randomly?"
Ohno halfheartedly scolded, "Don't say stuff like that. You'll have to decide when you want them to laugh."
Jun and Nino kept repeating his instructions, trying to wrap their head around what was going to happen.
The staff had brought out the same stand from last year for one of the members to stand alone on, but there was a button attached. "Go stand over there. Tonight's victim is... Sho!"
Sho shouted, "Great! I love that stand!" He probably didn't think so afterwards...
He said hello and gave a short introduction while changing part of his name and immediately hit the button, but since not everyone probably caught what he said, we didn't laugh much. He panicked and started telling a story about putting on orange underwear by mistake while he was changing after a concert. The one who cracked up the most at that was Aiba. Sho tried another story about a time when Ohno forgot to get the bottom part of his costume on and went out in his boxers, noticed, and ran back. Sho saw that and couldn't stand being on the stage by himself, so he ran away too. Then no one had been left.
He hit the button a lot of times during his story telling, but he confessed he couldn't tell how much we had laughed at it.
Ohno said, "At least, we sure laughed at that back then."
Sho replied, "That's because we couldn't help laughing at it."
Ohno started to wrap up his lesson. "If you laugh, then something that would have been a failure or embarrassing suddenly isn't anymore. Humans are called the laughing animal. Did you know that the expression you make when you laugh is close to the one you make when you are angry and yelling. Originally, it used to mean the same thing, but it changed. It came to mean, 'I don't want to hurt you, I want to play together with you.' That's why we should laugh together, and laugh with our families too."
"That's why I'm going to sing for you 'the laughing song'."
And that's precisely what he did. The melody was reminiscent of something, but I couldn't place it. The lyrics were VERY simple and clearly something he randomly came up with. They went along the lines of:
"Egao sore wa daiji Egao sore wa suteki Egao sore wa taisetsu
Dakara Minna egao ni nare Minna egao motto nare
Minna egao Minna egao Minna egao nare~~~~!!"
(Smiling is important to do Smiling is wonderful Smiling is important
That's why Everyone, smile Everyone, smile more
Everyone, smile Everyone, smile Everyone, smile!!!!)
When he belted out the last "nare~~!", we were all clutching our stomaches from laughing too hard. I'm praying a recording of that will surface sometime.
Jun asked him, "What was that?"
Ohno answered, "It was something I created right before we came out."
"Laughter is something that only humans have the talent to do. Everything should start from laughter."
Jun told Leader 'good work' for finishing his song so boldly.
They all stood up and asked how the night had gone.
Aiba: "While I was watching the other lessons, I could tell I was learning something new. And then there was Leader's song..."
Jun: "Everything was very different for us. And I think I learned a lot."
Nino: "It was fun. Quite different from doing concerts."
Sho: "We definitely made some new discoveries."
Nino: "Lastly, we'd like to sing our school song."
Jun: "Furusato."
Aiba: "Included in the song are some of the things we hope you'll take home with you."
Jun: "Please sing along with us."
The members each walked out to the edge of the running track to sing and wave to us. At the end, the moving carts came out and they rode around, waving to everyone. Aiba and Sho had jogged to get on theirs, but Nino walked lazily until it had caught up to where he was standing already. Jun and Ohno were on the other one. They shouted out random things from their lessons, like Sho's "Taking showers are fun!" or Ohno's "Laugh, even if it's fake!" One last cute moment was when Jun stood behind Ohno and grabbed his arm, waving it around for him.
They thanked us for coming and left through their special exit, finished the event at 7:30.
Since this was the first night and there is always so much to explain and so much dialogue, it took about 5 to 6 hours to write this out. I'll be happy for the other nights having less to write about. Sort of. Anyway, my hands are tired and I want to sleep, so I'll proofread this later. I think most of it is fixed now.
Until tomorrow.
<3
I had hoped to buy goods before, but they’d sold out of the clear files, so I decided to try my luck tomorrow. They were doing final checks until 3:30, so everyone was waiting outside on the stairs.
The first things I noticed as I got to my seat were the three small swimming pools set around the outer edge of the circle that was this year’s running course. They even had a goal set up, but as I stared at it, it looked strangely like it was set on top of a track that could move it further away. It didn't do anything tonight, but I wonder if it will tomorrow. The motto sign “Hibi Kore Kidzuki” made me think the boys must have done the calligraphy for it because of how the brush strokes looked. They had staff working on fixing part of the monitors for a while until they went backstage through the door Arashi used to leave.
We waited for class to start, although the “school clock” was forever stuck on 10:13. One of the girls in the row in front of me was drawing a sketch of the stage. There were a lot of girls in school uniforms too.
When the bell rang to start school, the balloon hand on top of the stage holding a hand bell waved back and forth. A video played of 5 lights coming from space and I couldn’t help thinking it looked like the old episodes of “Power Rangers”. And that's what it ended up being!
First they showed Jun in a gym "in training". He looked around and noticed a muscly guy in a shirt that had the Arashi school logo on it, and then he pulled out an "Arashi badge", a purple light flashed while he spun around, and he transformed into his teacher-self. Aiba was on break from Mikeneko Holmes about to eat lunch, but when he opened the lid, the Arashi logo was in seaweed on the rice. He did his transformation and the video changed to Sho in News Zero talking about the weather on Ichimen. He pointed towards the large monitor and the logo appeared. His "Ho!!" of surprise was very cute. Nino was "in transit" in a van playing his DS. He looked up and saw the logo on a large outdoor screen, stood up in the aisle and transformed. Ohno was "in a meeting" wearing his Enomoto glasses in a blue sweater. He grabbed a packet of sugar to pour into his coffee, but it swirled around and changed into the school logo.
Live feed from a hallway backstage showed the five of them ready to come out. Jun told us it was time to start the 2012 version of Waku Waku Gakkou and Nino said, "Let's do this." They each had a bright t-shirt on under their lab coats of their color. The teachers waved at us as they made their way to center stage.
Sho said, "Ohno-sensei, if you will." Ohno called for us to stand up and Nino commented how nice it looked when we did it all together. Ohno announced the start of this year's school session.
Turning to Jun, Aiba prodded, "Matsumoto-sensei, tell them about how this started last year." Jun gave a short explanation of how the concert had been changed at the last minute because of the Tohoku earthquake. Aiba joked that there were so many "new students" who wanted to join their school, so they did it again and added many other venues, like Fukushima.
Sho wanted us to clap to tell them if it was our first time to take their lessons or if we had graduated last year and returned for another lesson. There were a lot of claps for the latter, so he said they were touched we'd come again. Nino told us how the school worked, being teachers as well as students, then Jun drew our attention to the banner with the school motto on it. "It sure has a handmade touch, doesn't it?"
Ohno jumped right in, asking, "Did you notice?"
Jun nodded along with him. "Last year, we did quite a few things."
Sho smiled. "This was our challenge to you" But the others didn't think they'd really meant to "challenge" us.
Right before the VTR, Ohno said, "It was in one of the bathrooms in the dome." The video showed one of the stalls and the cameraman pushed the button that makes the water sound when you're using it. Truth was, the members had made the sound themselves by pouring water into buckets. Jun and Aiba poured normally, but Ohno stared right at the camera while he did it. Nino and Sho were sitting to the side on seats with these silly wide smiles on their faces as they did nothing.
Ohno told us that they'd already been removed so there'd be no point going to the bathroom to record it now. Sho asked, "You think they'd really want something like that? So who actually noticed? Okay, you're ready to graduate." Jun yelled, "It's only been 10 minutes!"
It began with Nino's lesson. "So this is the second year that I've gotten to go first. Now I'd like you to watch a VTR. What's in it are people in white t-shirts and black t-shirts passing basketballs around. I want you to watch it and tell me how many times the white team passed their ball." I watched it carefully, but with the people weaving in and out of each other, I got confused and made it to 14.
"I have no idea" was Sho's guess.
Aiba laughed. "From when couldn't you tell?"
Raising his hand, Jun spoke up. "The guy in grey in the back, he looked a lot like Leader." An annoyed Nino told him, "That's not the point." Jun couldn't leave it alone. "But it does!"
Nino called on Ohno to answer. Unsure, Ohno looked at him. "I'm pretty sure I got it. Is it okay to be right? Is it really okay?" Nino said it was, but Leader asked again, "Is it okay to say the right answer? Well... 18 times."
Jun answered 19 and Nino was about to skip Sho because he didn't know, but Sho said quickly, "17." Jun didn't think he actually counted anything though.
Nino said, "And we can skip Aiba too..." In the end, Aiba got to give his answer of 18.
Nino announced that it was in fact 18 times. "But the point was, when did I go through the video?" I didn't have the fainted clue when that had happened, but apparently Jun had. "I saw it. You were in a white shirt eating ice cream."
Nino seemed surprised, "Close. Very close. Let's watch it again."
They showed the video and paused it to show Nino. He had calmly walked into the middle of the dribbling and stood there with his ice cream wearing a black shirt. "It's not your fault that you couldn't notice it. Your eyes had focused in on one color and completely ignored the other."
Jun joked that Nino's yellow hair should have been easy to spot. Nino ignored him. "You concentrated too hard on one thing and couldn't notice the other things around you. It's because your mind isn't flexible enough." (Kachi kachi = stiff or in this case, one-track thinking).
The staff brought out a short set of stairs that led to a red door. Nino ordered, "Aiba, stand up. I want you to go to that door and bring the fire extinguisher on the other side back over here in ten seconds or it'll blow up." Of course, Aiba thought it would be an easy task but when he got up to the door, he turned the knob and nothing happened. He fumbled with it for a few seconds as the timer was counting down, then by some miracle, he slid it a little to the side and pushed it the rest of the way open. Aiba grabbed the extinguisher and came back in a hurry. "CLEAR!" appeared on the screens, showing he'd accomplished his goal. Cradling the extinguisher, he held it like it was something precious.
Nino stared at him blankly for a moment before launching into his complaints. He must have expected that something like this could happen since he'd chosen Aiba to do it, but he was still annoyed. "What did you do that for?"
Aiba started, "But-!" and Nino cut him off. "You're supposed to mess around with it and go 'Ah! It won't open!' and then it blows up."
Aiba whined, "But it moved!"
Nino glared. "Cheater. It shouldn't have opened. You were supposed to focus on just turning the knob."
Again, Aiba tried to explain, "But I pushed on the door to open it and it didn't move, so I shook it around to see if that would help and it slid open. I guess I shook it too hard."
Nino gave up on scolding Aiba for ruining his fun and launched into an explanation of why things like that happen. He said it was due to the human's sense to assume certain ideas because of facts that we know. Nino told us that when we see the signs for toilets, we usually judge by color; pink for girls and blue for boys. They had experimentally changed some of the signs to blue for women in the dome. I hadn't noticed seeing them. "We get too used to things easily. Then we become confused about what to do when something is unexpected. Okay, go run."
The other members were definitely confused, but Sho resigned himself to their fate quickly. "He just had to go and say that."
Jun asked defiantly, "Why?!"
All at once the boys started moving. Aiba and Sho raced for the box first while Jun shoved Ohno in the opposite direction and ran away towards the box too. Nino was teasing Aiba, so Aiba took a swing at Nino's head and missed.
Ohno got number one, Sho number three, Aiba four, and Jun two. I was quite happy Ohno was in front of my side! Nino told them, "I want you to run as fast as you can to the goal. When I say 'Yoi, don', go."
Sho said, "Okay, we're ready."
Nino held up his starter gun and said "yoi". Ohno took off after he heard the gun shot sound. Like last year, Aiba was the one that gives me the strongest impression of running full out.
The guys finished and began walking back towards the center while panting, but Nino stopped them. "Wait. I didn't say 'Yoi, don.' You have to do it again."
They all stared at him in disbelief. It was true. Instead of saying "don", it had been the sound of the gun that had been what started them off. Clearly annoyed, Jun said sarcastically, "There are teachers like that." (That do evil things for fun)
Sho gave up. "It's true, he didn't do anything wrong."
Still confused, the tennen pair asked, "What?" and Ohno, "When did he say "don"?"
Nino snorted. "I didn't."
Jun asked, "So we have to do it again?"
Nino replied shorted, "Yes." While he'd been talking with Jun, Ohno had made it back to the center stage and Nino noticed. "Why did you come back for? Get back over there!"
They decided to do it in reverse this time, with Aiba starting at the goal line, even though he'd already broken the tape. Ohno was very confused about where to start from and somehow ended up at number two, having to run two sections to the new goal. Ready to go, they were much more careful about listening for when Nino said "Yoi, don!" As Sho and Jun were running, they were randomly shouting out each other's names. Ohno was still confused and cried, "Where?! Where should I run to?!" Jun ran beside him for part of the way, "cheering" him on. By the end, Ohno was running like Serizawa had during Kagi no Kakatta Heya. I was dying from laughter by that point. =^_^=
Returning to the center stage at last, Jun commented to Nino, "I thought this last year, but why don't you run?"
Aiba was massaging his legs coming up the stairs, saying they felt swollen. Nino pretended like he hadn't heard him and said, "What?"
Aiba told him, "Urusai!" (Oh, shut up!)
Jun was still surprised that they hadn't noticed at all that Nino hadn't said "don".
Nino explained, "That's why I had you run. Not as a joke, but to show how that kind of "assumption" works. For example, when people buy clothes, they buy a lot of similar clothes to what they have. Like, one person may buy parkas, and only parkas. They think 'maybe this won't suit me, so I won't buy it.' You should be adventurous. It will take you to a new world. Did you know that chickens have the potential to fly? Have you ever seen them do it? No, but they could. 100 years ago, humans couldn't fly either. You have to take a mind that is stuck thinking one way and make it more flexible. In closing, remember this. 'If you get rid of 'assumption', it will open a new door of potential.'"
Sho's lesson was up next. He told us to take our pet bottles and take a drink. The members did, but he did his old "Renaissance!" joke.
Sho said, "Did you know that the body is made up of about 90 percent water? Have you ever thought about how much water you use in a day? How many people brushed their teeth today? How many took a bath? How many bought water at a store to drink? There seems to be quite a few. Then, if you're having fun, put your hands up!" We did our customary "Yeah, yeah, yeah!" and raised our hand up.
Jun laughed that if there were any small kids in the crowd, they probably were thinking, "What the hell are they doing?"
Sho introduced his "goku goku" lesson by gulping down his bottle of water and promptly choking on it. The video that played showed the city of Takashima, where most of the residents have a kind of system called "kabata" where river water flows into a small pond they have set up in their yards which has two layers to it. One can be used for washing vegetables or dishes and the other had koi in it that helped keep the water clean as it flows back out into the river side. Jun commented that the water really did look clean.
"We have ways of recycling water in Tokyo too," Sho said. "Today as well. With the rain outside. At Tokyo Dome, it falls on the roof and filters down to pumps underground where it gets used for toilet water. It saves about half of the amount that they would have to use otherwise." He held up a regular sized bucket full of water and had Aiba test to see how heavy it was. "This bucket here is about 5 liters. This will equal 1 Arashi."
The staff brought out a set with a mannequin inside a clear shower room with a large tube on top for water to be poured down. Taped over the mannequin's face was Jun's. Matsujun saw it and said, "I don't have purple briefs like those..."
Sho announced what the experiment would be. "Let's find out how many Arashi's we need to take a shower. Matsumoto-kun, please take us through all the steps you usually do when washing your body. The rest of you, you'll be bringing the water from the pools with the buckets set up there."
While complaining, Ohno, Aiba, and Nino each picked out a pool to use. Jun put on a rain coat to wear over his clothes. Nino looked back long enough to notice that Aiba trying to take the full bucket Sho had used for his example to save himself some of the trouble. "Teacher! Aiba's trying to cheat!"
After they were all ready, Nino told Sho he'd have to say "Yoi, don" before they'd go.
Sho said, "Yoi, start!" Four of them had stayed still, but Ohno walked off towards his pool. They yelled at him to come back and Jun shouted, "What did we just study?"
Ohno lightly apologized and Aiba called him "Mr. Kachi kachi".
They started properly the second time and "Happiness" played while the boys struggled to bring back their full buckets of water. Ohno was the first to make it to the stairs. Aiba tried to pick up four buckets at the same time before crying, "Impossible!" Nino had the strategy to drop off a bunch of buckets at the center stage and kept going back to his pool.
Jun started washing his mannequin. "I start by rinsing off everything. Then begin shampooing."
Aiba darted over to steal the buckets Nino had left at the edge of the stage. Nino saw it and yelled, "Cheater!"
Jun announced he was at the rinsing stage for his hair.
Nino said, "You don't have to bother doing that!"
Next, Ohno went over to "help" Nino carry his buckets up the stage stairs. Nino shouted, "Cheaters! All of you!"
Jun continued with his shower. "Finished with the hair. Next is the face. Then the body from the upper left."
Aiba went to steal Nino's buckets again and Ohno helped Aiba carry them up the stairs to the top. An alarm went off to signal that they were running low on water.
Jun picked up the mannequin's left leg. "Okay, the body's done. Next is here."
The siren went off again as Ohno had gotten to the bottom of the stairs, so he went back and took Sho's example bucket of water to pour in, then went to "help" Nino carry his up the stage stairs. The three of them were really tired by that point. But they managed to finish and gold confetti shot out while Sho congratulated them. Aiba panted, "Now, I want to take a shower."
Nino glared. "What I want to know is why I had to take my water over to "mizu otoko" and "blue man" over there." (Mizu otoko - water man). Aiba and Ohno were stretching together, trying to seem casual about doing it while ignoring him.
Sho asked, "Blue man, do you have something to say?"
Ohno replied, "Nope."
Nino complained, "And why did you pour that bucket in? That one was off limits."
Agreeing with him, Sho said, "I was disappointed in that."
We all counted the number of buckets they used. It added up to 18 Arashis, or approximately 90 liters.
"If you turn off the water while you are washing with shampoo or soap, you can save nearly half the amount. Did you know that if you do the laundry, it equals to 14 Arashi? Brushing your teeth equals 7, doing the dished is 7, taking a bath is 40, so for a full day, it's about 64 Arashis. If all of you here were to use this much, it would equal 2,880,000 Arashis. And what about curry rice? You might just think it's the water to cook it in or wash the vegetables, but really, there is a lot of water used during the production of the different foods used in curry rice. It would be over 255. And to make a t-shirt, it would be 600." They showed a girl in the crowd who was wearing a Kaibutsu-kun t-shirt and was busy taking notes. Sho talked about how a large lake that had existed in 1973 had nearly turned into a dessert by 2009 due to overuse of water.
"In the world, there is only 2.5 percent of fresh water. And of that, only 0.01 percent is usable for us. There is a limit. We should try to do what we can to help. To close, please remember that one shower equals 18 Arashis."
Aiba was next. Nino was quick to pick on him. "Teacher?"
Aiba looked up at him. "You aren't wearing your coat."
He said, "Eh? That's because..." Then he looked around frantically for the staff person carrying it and slipped it on. "It's the first day, so things happen. Anyway, aren't you guys hungry now? Please close your eyes and count to 15."
No one actually closed their eyes, so he ducked down behind the stand, switching his jacket and putting on a hat. He popped back up in his sushi chef outfit. "We're going to talk about everyone's favorite food. Can you tell?"
Sho guessed, "Soba?" and Nino "Chinese?", so Aiba just told them, "It's sushi. We'll talk about sushi today."
Jun asked, "So it's going to be like last time?"
Aiba nodded. "Yeah. Let's go over to the set. You know, I learned how to make sushi from a chef in Ginza."
Sho said, "I thought it was pretty hard to learn how to do it."
Aiba replied, "It is. Yesterday, I practiced for 30 minutes." The way he said it made it seem like he'd practiced it for the first time then and only for 30 minutes, so they laughed.
Aiba asked what kind of sushi they wanted him to make and they shot out their random answers.
Nino: Hamburger.
Ohno: Hayashi rice.
Jun: Soba.
Sho: Mabo tofu.
Aiba ignored all of their requests. "Okay, Salmon it is. If you answer the quiz right, you can eat it."
The question was "What kind of meat is Salmon?"
A. Red meat B. White meat C. Orange meat D. Blue meat
Jun, Ohno, and Sho guessed "A" and Nino guessed "B". Sho didn't seem confident because both him and Aiba had mistaken sushi when they'd eaten it on "Bet de Arashi". Aiba asked Nino why he thought it was B. Nino answered "presumption", the point for his lesson.
They showed a video of how fish go through the process of laying their eggs, but all seriousness was lost seeing Aiba wearing a funny cowboy hat while telling us the story. The final answer was B.
Nino said smugly, "Owner. Make me my salmon sushi."
Aiba explained how you are supposed to do it, but pushed pretty hard when making the sushi and Nino told him so.
On the other end, Sho started coughing. Jun asked him what happened and Sho pointed to his plate. "The ginger." He'd tried munching on it, but it must have been too strong for him. ^_^
"What sushi is next then?" Aiba asked.
Nino: Curry rice.
Ohno: Omelet rice.
Jun: Natto soba.
Aiba ignored them again. "Okay, tuna."
The second question was "What percentage of bluefin tuna make it all the way to adulthood?"
A. 1/100 B. 1/1000 C. 1/10,000 D. 1/10,000,000
"By the way, it takes about 7 years for the tuna to make it to an adult." Aiba told them. That didn't make things any clearer, so Aiba gave them the following hints to help them figure out what kind of percentages those were.
A. Getting hit on a bike B. A girl falling in love at first sight C. Finding a four leaf clover D. Winning the lottery
They all guessed "C" at first, but after seeing that, Nino changed his to "D". Sho followed, changing to "B". Ohno looked back and forth. "Okay then, A."
The answer video played, telling us that the tuna's eggs start out at 1 millimeter and 99 percent of those end up eaten. The ones that survive travel to America where many get turned into canned goods. "D" was the right one.
"That's two wins."
Nino smirked again. "Owner. Make me my sushi."
Aiba did and Nino savored it. "For the next one, there won't be a quiz. It's anago (eel), special just for you guys."
The VTR played again, showing Aiba outside at the crack of dawn with a fisherman. At 4 AM, he'd met up with Suzuki-san, the father and son team that would take him out next to Haneda Airport to check the traps they'd laid the night before. Aiba pulled them up out of the water, checking each. Every single one was empty. Suzuki said that it does happen sometimes and offered to go find clams instead. The spot that they chose to find them was so~ close to the airport. The planes that came down to land where so near that Aiba couldn't help being distracted by them every time. They brought their catch back to the shore and had a barbecue. Aiba talked with the fishers about why they had problems catching different things and how the number of fishermen had dramatically decreased from what it has used to be like.
The guys had moved back over to their desks where they had miso soup with clams in front of them to try. Aiba asked if they thought it was good. They all said it was delicious, even Nino. But Jun said, "Nino, you aren't good with clams, right?"
Nino didn't bother hiding it. "Yup."
Aiba talked about how you needed to have strength if you're going to be a fisher. And there will be times when you can't catch anything. "You definitely couldn't show something like that on TV, but you'd still have to have the courage to go out and do it. For our second Waku Waku Gakkou, I chose to do the "paku paku" lesson again. I want you to understand how important food is to us. Why fish? Japan is supported by the many kinds of fish that we catch. We usually eat our food without thinking about it, but if you research it, it will taste even better." His closing comment was 'Gochisousama. Arigato.' (Thank you for the meal.)
Jun-sensei was fourth period, talking about origins. He asked us if we were taking memos or not. "Do you happen to know where the pencils you are using came from and when they were invented?" Unfortunately, I was using a pen. He explained how they had came from England when a sheep farmer found a small chunk of what I think was coal 400 hundred years ago and experimented writing with it.
"So how many kids are here with their parents?" They raised their hands. "How about we ask them some questions?" He chose a pair that the camera had zoomed in on, but the lighting staff had trouble trying to get the spot light on them. Jun directed the light. "There. Over there. No, there, there, there. Yes! There!"
The staff brought them microphones and they introduced themselves as Takako and Nanae. Jun asked the daughter, "Have you ever asked about when you were born?" Nanae said she did, because she'd heard the story that she'd been sick as a baby. "Do you know why you got that name?" Nanae laughed, so he asked her if he'd said something funny, but Nino said it was probably because she was nervous.
In the end, she said she didn't remember why, though she'd asked before. The mother answered that they'd like the way it had sounded and that her husband was fond of the kanji for her name and good and writing it. Aiba asked Nanae if she liked art and she said she did, but when he asked if she like drawing, she said "no".
Jun's lesson was about the things that we don't know about our origins. In the VTR, he followed Yajima-san, who is a midwife with over 4200 successful cases. Jun met with a family that was expecting their second child. They had had a little trouble during the birth of their first daughter and were a little worried about the second one.
They hadn't decided the name yet, bouncing between two: Yuu and Miri. The father asked Jun which he preferred, but it was too much pressure for him to be able to answer. Jun helped them with making the baby bed and playing with the 2 year old daughter that day. 18 days later, the midwife got a call at midnight to come over. At 6 AM, the next day, Jun showed up to offer his support. 8 hours had passed, but the mother was still having contractions and the baby wasn't ready to come out. The family wanted to wait for a natural birth, but it wasn't until 3 hours later that the baby finally came out. Jun was smiling widely at that. The father called out "Yuu-chan", the name which he had liked better, so we all laughed.
Sho was surprised that it had taken so long. (About 12 hours) "When my siblings were born, my mom just went to the hospital at night and that was all I'd known of it. I didn't know it was strenuous."
Jun corrected, "Well, not all moms have troubles like that, but it is a lot of effort. My mom also did her best. Just as yours did. In secret, I've done some research."
Nino cried out, "Stop! Don't say it!"
Jun smiled. "Tonight, it's about Ohno-san. I talked to Leader's mom."
Ohno could only say, "Really?"
The questions that he had asked came out on the screen along with his mom's answers. The first one was "Do you remember well when your son was born?"
Her answer message was written up on the screens. "We'd had trouble when he was born because he couldn't breath properly right away. But afterwards, I believed that this child will be strong."
Jun asked him, "Did you know about this?"
Ohno nodded. "After I was born, they couldn't get me to cry. They had to hit my butt for a while until I could."
Sho said, "So you'd heard the story before?" He nodded again.
"Do you know how she decided your name?" Jun asked.
Ohno told them he did. "I asked. She said there was an idol from a long time ago that she really liked and used that name. When I heard that, I thought, 'Was choosing my name all that meant to you?' They brought up a picture of the idol, Kishida Satoshi, and played one of his songs.
"By the way, did you know that if you'd been a girl, she would have called you 'Satomi'?"
Ohno shook his head at Jun's question. "I didn't know that. Why?" I think she'd just liked the sound of it.
The third question was "What was he like as a kid?" Apparently, he'd been kind of accident prone. When he was five, he got his leg caught up in part of his bike (the gears, I guess) and ended up with a bad wound that needed 15 stitches.
Ohno just nodded. "I also got my fingers smashed in the bathroom door. You know how if your parents tell you 'be careful to not get them stuck in the door' that you want to try to do it? I was like that. But I do remember that accident."
Nino asked, "When you were five?"
Ohno told us about how his leg had gotten stuck and his dad had dissolved into a panic and he remembered the best how after they'd gotten to the hospital that the nurse had stuck some kind of thin sheet of paper over his leg and told to wait. He'd been bleeding pretty badly, but they'd said, 'Oh, he's okay. He can wait.' Ohno remembers that still.
His mother added, "He would never calm down and he would never listen to us. 'Bikkuri!' (It was such a surprise to me!) If he was told 'don't cross the road because it's dangerous', he'd cross it. I couldn't understand his way of thinking."
Ohno agreed with that too. "I still have scars from those times. Then I got rushed back to that same hospital."
Sho started giggling pretty hard at that. Nino seemed stuck on that fact that Ohno had been so stubborn back then.
Jun spoke up, "But he changed a little in elementary school. I have here his report card from when he was in 3rd grade, 3rd class." Jun held it up and Ohno looked really surprised to see it.
Nino asked, "Is it okay to look in there?"
Jun said carefully, "I was told... it was okay."
Shoving his fingers through his hair, Ohno scrunched his brow together as he tried to remember what he'd been like back then. "I was drawing then... Or at least I'd started to... And I was awful at math."
Jun cracked open the report book and told us that it was split into three grading categories; very good, good, and needs work. "As for "very good" marks..." (We all 'ooh~ed' in anticipation) "... you don't have a single one." The crowd cracked up and the other members started bowing to him.
Turning back to the book, Jun read, "Under 'wants to express himself', there's 'good'."
Ohno was still mumbling about the lack of 'very good' marks.
"The teacher wrote that you didn't study, although they hoped you would. You know, you haven't changed much from that. Eh... also, during the first semester, they wrote you didn't make friends or talk to others, just sat alone, silently drawing in the class room during break. During the second semester, you'd managed to make some friends and you were trying your best at math. The last note was that you were making an effort and they hoped you'd continue doing so."
Ohno said wistfully, "Yeah, I remember that I always just stayed at home a lot."
Aiba laughed, "Although, your mom said you couldn't sit still."
Still thinking back, Ohno said, "And I only really drew stuff during the breaks..."
Jun told us, "You should be grateful to your mom, Ohno. And all of us to our mothers. Tell them thank you. I've seen just how important life is and witnessed a mother trying her best to bring a new life into the world. Mother's have to fight to give birth to their children. But it's because of the fact that children can't be born easily that they are precious. They're miracles. In this dome, we have about 50,000 miracles here. So please go home and ask about your origins, think about how it's the same for others. To close, 'If you think about your origins, everything becomes precious.'"
Lastly, it was Ohno's turn. "Okay, let's start. So we've finished four of the lessons. Are you having fun? (Yeah!) Have you been laughing? (Yeah!) This lesson is about smiling. Aiba, smile." For a moment, he was so confused at the sudden order, we all laughed. He did smile, but it so corny, we laughed again.
Ohno ordered them all to laugh together and they did do it, but it sounded so funny how they were forcing out the breath from their stomach that the crowd cracked up just at listening to that. Sho asked, "Teacher, is that enough now?"
They showed another video to demonstrate how the brain is affected when you laugh. Ohno had a very funny looking gadget around his forehead that had a ton of wires sticking out from every angle. Naturally, we couldn't help giggling at that. The device was there to measure his brain waves to see what happens when he properly laughs. And the thing that he prepared to help him do so was a video of chimpanzees. He smirked and snickered at them and just watching that made me want to laugh too.
The doctor explained how when you laugh, the graph showing colors of the active parts of your brain all light up red.
The next experiment was whether you'd get the same kind of results with "fake laughter". Ohno sounded so silly laughing like that. Towards the end, it definitely resembled Kaibutsu-kun. The graph also reacted similarly, just not as extreme. "When you laugh for 20 seconds, it's the same as if you rowed a boat for 3 minutes. Also, it can improve your immune system."
Sho confirmed, "So we should laugh a lot?"
Ohno said "yes".
He attempted to make the members laugh by waving his arms in front of his face and switching between his "normal" face, a goofy smiling one, and back to his "normal" face. They tried not to laugh, but we didn't hold back.
Like last year, Ohno wanted to make a new "beam". This one was named the "Gera Gera Kousen" (the laughing beam). Aiba asked what happens if it hit them. Ohno answered flatly, "You laugh. I guess you haven't heard about this. Come here. Get in front of this camera. If you show it your laughing face, it'll choose whose is best."
The members moved over to the camera, but between Nino's yellow hair and the lights shining on his face, you couldn't see much of him at all. "Teacher? Can this thing really recognize my face?"
Ohno said, "You're just too yellow."
Sho and Nino traded places, but that didn't do anything for him.
Jun asked, "So it's supposed to recognize our faces?"
Ohno told them, "Yes. And then a bird will come out." They all repeat him. "There's a little bird that will come and land on your shoulder if you have the best laughing face."
For the "Gera Gera Kousen", Ohno danced around, alternatively putting out one of his hands in front of himself. ^_^ The running track from before lit up with blue lights that flashed too.
But... nothing happened. There was a little bird sound and the picture froze like it was taking a picture, but no bird appeared.
All the guys yanked at Ohno's jacket, pulling him away for a talk.
Nino: "Get over here."
Jun: "So... there was a sound."
Nino: "We tried our best to laugh..."
Nino and Jun: "What was the point of doing this?!"
Nino: "Where's the bird?!"
Ohno: "Well, it came close by......."
Aiba: "Where?"
Sho: "It just didn't land here?"
Ohno: "It just wasn't enough... So...."
Nino: "What should we do about this?"
They all "glared" at him and he tried to come up with something. "Well, I can tell you who was the best. It was Nino. Even though his face was white, you could tell he was laughing. It had impact. How do you feel at winning, Nino?"
Nino gave a wry laugh, "We tried our best to laugh and it came out to this. I'm thankful to my mother."
Ohno valiantly tried to explain his way out of the mishap, but gave up after a while. "It's best just to laugh. Even if it's fake. Everyone, let's laugh together." He turned to the others. "You're all going to do it too." He pointed at one section of the stands. "We'll do it clockwise from here."
Jun was having trouble keeping up with the randomness. "What should we do?"
Ohno said simply, "Start from your right hand. 3, 2, 1!"
Then the boys did the "Gera Gera" dance all the way around the center stage, chanting "Gera Gera" the whole way. It was hilarious.
Ohno ordered the members, "Go sit down."
Sho asked if we'd actually laughed. He'd been so busy dancing around, he couldn't tell.
Ohno commented, "That was REALLY fun."
The next section was called "Laugh at my failures". He told them to get a story ready. "It's time to choose a victim."
Jun repeated, "Victim? What?"
Ohno said, "One of you will become a victim. You'll have to tell an embarrassing story and be laughed at. When you hit the "Gera Gera button", the crowd will know it's the right time to laugh."
Nino asked, "Then wouldn't the point be to hit it randomly?"
Ohno halfheartedly scolded, "Don't say stuff like that. You'll have to decide when you want them to laugh."
Jun and Nino kept repeating his instructions, trying to wrap their head around what was going to happen.
The staff had brought out the same stand from last year for one of the members to stand alone on, but there was a button attached. "Go stand over there. Tonight's victim is... Sho!"
Sho shouted, "Great! I love that stand!" He probably didn't think so afterwards...
He said hello and gave a short introduction while changing part of his name and immediately hit the button, but since not everyone probably caught what he said, we didn't laugh much. He panicked and started telling a story about putting on orange underwear by mistake while he was changing after a concert. The one who cracked up the most at that was Aiba. Sho tried another story about a time when Ohno forgot to get the bottom part of his costume on and went out in his boxers, noticed, and ran back. Sho saw that and couldn't stand being on the stage by himself, so he ran away too. Then no one had been left.
He hit the button a lot of times during his story telling, but he confessed he couldn't tell how much we had laughed at it.
Ohno said, "At least, we sure laughed at that back then."
Sho replied, "That's because we couldn't help laughing at it."
Ohno started to wrap up his lesson. "If you laugh, then something that would have been a failure or embarrassing suddenly isn't anymore. Humans are called the laughing animal. Did you know that the expression you make when you laugh is close to the one you make when you are angry and yelling. Originally, it used to mean the same thing, but it changed. It came to mean, 'I don't want to hurt you, I want to play together with you.' That's why we should laugh together, and laugh with our families too."
"That's why I'm going to sing for you 'the laughing song'."
And that's precisely what he did. The melody was reminiscent of something, but I couldn't place it. The lyrics were VERY simple and clearly something he randomly came up with. They went along the lines of:
"Egao sore wa daiji Egao sore wa suteki Egao sore wa taisetsu
Dakara Minna egao ni nare Minna egao motto nare
Minna egao Minna egao Minna egao nare~~~~!!"
(Smiling is important to do Smiling is wonderful Smiling is important
That's why Everyone, smile Everyone, smile more
Everyone, smile Everyone, smile Everyone, smile!!!!)
When he belted out the last "nare~~!", we were all clutching our stomaches from laughing too hard. I'm praying a recording of that will surface sometime.
Jun asked him, "What was that?"
Ohno answered, "It was something I created right before we came out."
"Laughter is something that only humans have the talent to do. Everything should start from laughter."
Jun told Leader 'good work' for finishing his song so boldly.
They all stood up and asked how the night had gone.
Aiba: "While I was watching the other lessons, I could tell I was learning something new. And then there was Leader's song..."
Jun: "Everything was very different for us. And I think I learned a lot."
Nino: "It was fun. Quite different from doing concerts."
Sho: "We definitely made some new discoveries."
Nino: "Lastly, we'd like to sing our school song."
Jun: "Furusato."
Aiba: "Included in the song are some of the things we hope you'll take home with you."
Jun: "Please sing along with us."
The members each walked out to the edge of the running track to sing and wave to us. At the end, the moving carts came out and they rode around, waving to everyone. Aiba and Sho had jogged to get on theirs, but Nino walked lazily until it had caught up to where he was standing already. Jun and Ohno were on the other one. They shouted out random things from their lessons, like Sho's "Taking showers are fun!" or Ohno's "Laugh, even if it's fake!" One last cute moment was when Jun stood behind Ohno and grabbed his arm, waving it around for him.
They thanked us for coming and left through their special exit, finished the event at 7:30.
Since this was the first night and there is always so much to explain and so much dialogue, it took about 5 to 6 hours to write this out. I'll be happy for the other nights having less to write about. Sort of. Anyway, my hands are tired and I want to sleep, so I'll proofread this later. I think most of it is fixed now.
Until tomorrow.
<3