Swimming

So I went to a water park, of sorts.  I finally met up with Madoka again, and she managed to group four of us together.

The group was a rather interesting mix.  Me and another guy, with two girls.  Madoka is a serial casual employment pursuer, that is to say, she is forever accepting jobs that allow her flexible hours in order to continue with volunteer work, and helping her friends out with their myriad businesses.  She essentially exists to help those around her - in my view she's amazing, if not for her lack of selfishness then for her ability to exist without sleep (she gets around four or five hours a day.)

The other guy in our group is a singer by profession.  He also plays a number of instruments.  He hadn't been swimming for a number of years however, and his shorts were too small by far.  It took him a good ten minutes to finally fit into them, only for him to split them.  Luckily I had a pair of non-swimming shorts handy to cover his embarrassment.  One of the funniest things of the day was seeing him, ass-out, jumping around trying to get those shorts on.  Goddamn I was close to wetting myself then.

On a side-note he has a fantastic voice, a great sense of humour, and is a massive perv.

The final person in our group (disregarding myself) is a self-proclaimed 'lucky weather girl,' (working translation) who works for Honda.  She is an engineer who works to improve the efficiency of vehicles.  Something to do with fumes is involved, as she was particularly insistent on that word.  Maybe the Japanese for exhaust is fume?  Who knows.  She does volunteer work, can play the piano, violin and guitar, loves folk music and Ireland.

This was my face (sans microphone) when hareohne (lucky weather girl) (christ knows if that's spelled correctly)  likes Ireland and folk music.

Oh, and she built a human-powered plane in university.

Yeah, I'm just going to let that sink in.

My face when she said she was team leader for the human powered flight project.

So amazing company and splitting pants aside, it was great fun.  I had previously wanted to hit the beach on account of it being a bajillion degrees (and the Japanese do love dressing down for Summer beach wear) and what with me not having visited a beach for some months now (previous attempts in Korea were unfulfilling to say the least).  It was a tiny 'park,' with a few pools, a few slides and a single hot-tub/jacuzzi thing - but it suited the requirement perfectly.

Testament (I hope) to the fun, we were there for hours.  Just hitting a ball around, swimming, heading onto the slides and whatnot.  While we were enjoying ourselves, a group of miscreant children approached.

Now, I have no prior experience with groups of Japanese children outside a formal school environment, but they were unusually boisterous.  I have a feeling that should these children belong to one of my classes, they would undoubtedly fall into the 'possible ADHD patient,' category but I digress.  What I found particularly interesting was the interaction between these boys and the women in our group.

Japanese people are notoriously awkward around those of the opposite sex, and I was expecting them to be somewhat shy around our group.  They were absolutely contrary to my initial expectation, and I was amazed at how freely everyone interacted - considering we were in essence a random group of strangers, everyone got on swimmingly.  Of course I've had experience like this from being a child on holiday, but I hardly expected the same from an asian country; Japan of all places.

The further you travel, the more things stay the same.

Overall the kids were pretty cool, although my inner teacher crept out as I scolded one of them for being a little too boisterous and endangering the dignity of the women within our group - as boys are wont to do I suppose.

There was also a hollywood esque moment where I realised that one of the boys had a crush on one of our party.  I can only imagine that, in fifty years time, during a montage scene (hence the hollywood reference) he will recall the childish infatuation while recounting his lifelong adventures; possibly to his grandchildren, but more likely to his poker companions.

Recounting tales of yesteryear while gambling his pension away - that kid in fifty years.  Probably.

The small jacuzzi was a scene of comic relief throughout the day, as dozens of patrons would squeeze into an area roughly 2.5 metres in diameter.  I literally mean dozens, too.

An hour or two before the park closed, however, the tub emptied and we jumped in.  At this point we were serenaded by the singer, with his repertoire of Ghibli theme tunes, and dragonball.  Ghibli is a studio that created cartoon movies such as 'Princess Mononoke,' 'Spirited Away,' and 'Ponyo.'  Dragonball is a Japanese cartoon that has a cult following all over the world.  I won't lie - I was impressed.

Listen to this, and imagine a spoof version sung by a man with torn pants in a jacuzzi with two girls and another guy, while the sun sets; you'll have a vague idea of the absurd situation, and why we were in stitches.  This was pre-ceded by a word-perfect version of the dragonball theme tune, in its' entirety, sung by everyone in the tub except me.

People in Japan are, apparently, massive nerds regardless of gender.



As a side-note, I found out the Belgian way of pronouncing my family name today.

No!  Ich wir Sam De Roeck, not you!

I wonder how the English pronunciation came into being, when it's so markedly different from the Belgian?

Swimming

So I went swimming for the first time in Japan.  I went to a small local pool.  It had half a dozen lanes set up in the normal way.

One lane was set up for the elderly to walk around, one lane for practice, and the others for people of varying speeds.

What interested me was the fact that everyone was slow.  Regardless of lane, everyone moved at a snails pace.  There were very few people in the pool, luckily, which meant I was able to go for 50 metres, duck under the lane and carry on in another.  This allowed me to get a bit of fitness in, while not stressing my bruised foot.  Prior to this I visited the gym.  Jumping into the pool after being in the gym is a glorious feeling.  They also have an entire ceiling shower feature, so you walk through a wall of water before you hit the pool.  It's quite cool.

What wasn't cool: a brother/brother combination intent on being social rejects.  They were incredibly bad swimmers, and would wait for me to reach their end of the lane before setting off, forcing me into a different lane.  Realising their tactic of stopping me swimming in a single lane wasn't working, they split up between two lanes, hoping to stop me entirely.  Luckily, there were three free-moving lanes, and I simply hopped into the free lane whenever necessary.  Let's just hope they don't have another brother.  (One was eighteen, the other fourteen.  Kids in Japan lack the maturity of Western counterparts, that is to say, when you meet an eighteen year old in Japan, he's actually mentally sixteen.  Extremely annoying.)

This aside, I had to go to the gym on my crappy backup bike, because I got another puncture.  This time it was a five centimetre staple.  Nice.

In related news, it was thirty-three degrees indoors, with a humidity hitting 95%.  I had three ice-cold showers yesterday, and I would still be sweating within ten minutes of leaving them.  I'm talking ice-cold, dropping my core body temperature to hypothermia levels.  I would come out shivering and still be sweating.

I don't think I've ever had heat affect me this badly before.  In Korea everyone has air-conditioning.  In Japan, my room doesn't, and schools refuse to turn theirs on because they have no money.  With my pay, I can believe that they're broke.

The upshot is, headaches every day.  Sweating when I wake up, having been sweating when I was asleep, sweating in the shower, sweating on the bike ride to school, sweating in class, sweating in the teachers room.

It's extremely hot.

Baby Laptop, Say Goodbye

So my baby laptop has died again. It won't even recognise a boot disk now, so unless something amazing happens I'm going to have to assume this is the end for the little one.

It happened at a frustrating time too, as I have some 600 photos that were taken over my Summer break. You'll have to wait a while longer for those. It's okay though; only a few are good...

I might go swimming tomorrow, that's as exciting as my life is, now that the holidays are over.