Tiny People

The people here are fucking tiny.

I'm trying to buy shoes online, using the Japanese version of amazon.  No one here has shoes that go over size 9.  No one.  The online retailers literally have no option above size 9.  There is not a person in Japan that has feet longer than 28 centimetres.  Size 9 is the biggest their feet ever get.  No one in the history of japan, its entire history, has ever had feet bigger than size 9.  No one.  Ever.

I went for a run yesterday, and my knee was a little sore.  I'm going to give it another week or so to recover, and instead I'm going to focus on gym work.  This got me thinking about my shoes though, as I've been pounding these trainers into dust for months now.  Time to get new shoes, I thought.

Anyway, I've bought a pair of the biggest shoes I can find for thirty quid, so let's see if A: they turn up and B: they fit.

It's funny, because when you talk to the locals, they will tell you they're drowning in foreigners.  All these foreigners walking around, destroying their ways of life, taking their women and jobs etcetera.  That many foreigners is a hefty market to be leveraged, and if I know my humanity, any exploitable resource will be shanked immediately upon being discovered: therefore one of two things is true.  Either, humanity isn't as transparent as I've been led to believe, and this massive market of foreigners isn't being tapped - or this massive market of foreigners doesn't exist, and the market therefore refuses to cater for them as it would be too costly.  You decide which is true.

It's also snowing a veritable shit-ton, but it's forecast to start raining soon.  Hopefully it won't rain and they'll cancel school (it really is precipitating vociferously).  Of course, now I've written this it'll stop.  Damnit.  I want to run outside and make a snowman, but it's warm enough that I fear it wouldn't last the night anyway.

Oh well...

On a side-note, I have some pictures to upload.  One of them is a picture of me, as drawn in a japanese cartoon style by one of the kids - the other is a collection of more pictures from when I was pelted by beans.

Sleeping

For some reason I woke up about ten times last night.  Those are the ten times I can remember, which leads me to assume that I actually woke up more (I don't often remember much that happens in the way of sleeping, dreams and whatnot).

My shoulder is still sore; as a result I've not been to the gym so far this week.  That makes it a week and a half or so which isn't too bad.  I'll hit the gym tomorrow (not literally) after a run tonight.  I assume my bizarre sleep is a result of excess energy on account of my body storing fat in anticipation of it being burned off, which it hasn't been as I've entered recovery mode all week.  My knee is still sore when it's fully bent, but aside from that I'm fine.  There's training at the weekend, with the second leg of the knockout competition the week after.  We've knocked out one of the biggest names, so why not go on and win this thing.

It's Wednesday today, so if I run tonight, then hit the gym tomorrow (rinse and repeat) I'll have a week and a half to get into shape.  Considering I couldn't go to the gym for a week before the big game (illness) it'll be interesting to see how much I weigh now.  In related news, my aim is to get into the overweight category in this BMI calculator.  I thought it would be cool to be in the obese category, but for me that would entail being 105kg's.  That's not going to happen in this lifetime.  Something I found extremely interesting was how close I am to being 'overweight.'  I was, prior to looking at this particular graph, quite far into the overweight category.  Now I'm skirting the normal line.  This can only mean one thing - figure massaging!  People in England are getting fatter, and instead of tackling the problem (like, say, america where obesity is now 33%) they've moved the goalposts.  At some stage in the near future I'm going to be normal, which means I'm going to have to shrink, or put on weight to get back into the overweight category.  Goddamn politicians.  I already eat enough, thank you very much.

I also used the height measurement of feet and inches, but the weight measurement in kg's.  Thank you very much, stupid imperial England of the past.

Game Day

The match review is up on the gaijin website.  Check it out here.

One of the supports took a large number of pictures, and I was in a few.  To view them full-size, click on the picture.

Nearly away, so close.

Look at that hair.  Look at it.

Now I look at this, maybe this is how I got a dead leg.

I included this one because of the faces.  Instantly freezing faces for a moment in time makes for situations like this.

All of these star me, of course.  This one looks like I'm going for a stroll, waist deep in Japanese people.

I might or might not have made it past this guy.  I can't remember.

Straight through the middle.

I hope there wasn't anything happening in there, because I'm chilling out at the back doing nothing.

Wow, I'm pretty short in this one.  Look at the prop making like a bowling pin.

About to be hit, hard.

Stretch the legs.

Taken out off the ball.

This may or may not have preceded one of the previous photos.

These aren't in order...

See you later, I'm gone.

Sitting down on someone.  Comfortable.

I borrowed the socks from someone, and forgot to give them back.

The guy with the stupid hair was probably about 100kg's (give or take), but was tackled out of the game.  By the end, he wasn't up to anything.

Scrums were a problem throughout.

I think this is one of the breaks.  I think I made it past those guys.

The flash.  The flash with the hair.

In the backs line, ready for some work.

Today, I'm Feeling It

So yesterday we played a game against on one of the top amateur teams in our area.  Considering our area is Tokyo, they're probably respectably placed on a national level too.  They're called mandara (or mandala, I can never tell with Japanese pronunciation) and are the biggest cheaters I've ever seen.  I don't know whether the referee was overtly racist, or whether he was simply bought off by the opposition; but the result was the same.

To put into perspective the dire refereeing - before the match even began, the ref said 'I've refereed your team (us foreigners) before, and you're always offside at the ruck.'  Guess what the first penalty was for?  I don't know the exact penalty count, but in the first half we had all of two penalties awarded to us, with over a dozen against.  We were penalised for having hands in the ruck, to then be penalised for not retreating back ten metres, continually.  At one point we marched back thirty metres off the back of consecutive penalties while the ball was in play for around two seconds at a time.  Whenever we got into their half, the referee penalised us back onto our own line.  The criminality of the situation was exemplified by one incident where an opposition winger dropped the ball over the line; he was a foot and a half above the ground.  The referee awarded the try.

Imagine being so bitter, so unfathomably racist, that your only outlet is to screw over a bunch of foreigners, just to make yourself feel better.  What is wrong with these people?  All that pent up nationalism manifests in bizarre ways.

The only advantage the opposition had was in the scrum.  They were dominant and our pack struggled.  Ironically the ref kept giving them penalties during scrumtime too, the only part of the game where they didn't need the help.  To credit our forwards, by the end of the game they were overcoming the opposition, and by the sixtieth minute the platform was even.  The lineout wasn't great, but whenever we won the ball the referee gave them a penalty for something anyway, so it was a pretty pointless endeavor.

The first half was a litany of contrivances designed to destroy the morale of our team.  It was a farce.  In my experience, in all the games I've played here and in England, this is by far the worst abuse of refereeing power I've ever seen.  It was pathetic, immature and racist bias.  It was everything rugby should strive not to be.  Sepp Blatter would have been proud of this moron, that's how bad it was.  I don't want to keep dwelling on this as my pulse will soar and my veins will burst, but please keep in mind the incredible advantage our opposition held throughout.

So anyway, the game proper began much later than previously appointed, with an eleven O'clock meeting.  Somehow the message wasn't passed to everyone however, and there were a few who turned up at seven in the morning.  I probably would have gone home, to be fair to those who stuck around.

Before the match began, we had a referee meeting to laboriously describe the game of rugby in all its aspects.  This meeting began with the aforementioned warning, and varied dread and foreboding from the assembled foreigners.  It was obvious we were going to be screwed over.

So the match began, to a penalty against us for being white, and black, and yellow, and every shade between.  Then another penalty for being non-yellow.  Then another penalty to ensure we were on our line for five minutes.  At which point they spread it wide and the winger dropped the ball.  First try for the opposition.  They were mandara rugby club, if you fancy hitting this link and letting them know that they're the worst kind of disgusting, cheating, xenophobic scum.

The second penalty barrage came from the next kickoff, some number of minutes into the match. They had our scrum on the back-foot and just pushed us over our own line.  Prior to this the referee had given them a penalty for the scrum wheeling 90 degrees on their own put-in (which should give us the ball), then given them a penalty for an early engage by us, then given them a penalty for our team not being back ten metres, then given them a scrum because they knocked on.

After this fiasco we had a period of holding them back in defence.  At this point I had done nothing all game, so when they finally kicked it over to me (playing at full-back) I was delighted.  I took the ball up through two defenders (both were either side of me), scything through them like so much hot knife - handed off another and as I was tackled, off-loaded to one of my teamates.  He then took it up, did the same and the third receiver jogged over the line for a try.  At all points I expected the referee to blow his whistle to ensure we were denied, but he refrained.

So many performances are built upon strong forward work and set-piece play, but broken field and counter-attacks were definitely our allies in this match.  That's not to disparage the immense effort of the forwards, it's simply more difficult to penalise open, broken play.  Every time we hit a ruck the referee deemed it illegal, and every time they hit a ruck the referee deemed it so legal, it somehow made us illegal in the process.

Immediately after we scored, the referee set about cheating them to another two tries.  I don't know how they happened, and frankly it's irrelevant.

We went into the second half with a deficit of either 5 tries to two, or four to one.  I'm not sure.  Early in the second half (I think) I broke through their backs and managed to evade almost everyone, I passed it to my outside man only to realise that the guy who was in the middle of tackling me had slipped off.  In passing it back I allowed them to tackle that guy, when I was clear under the posts.  I should have had more confidence in myself to take it through.  The flip-side, of course, is that missed tackle might not have been, and I would have been selfish and stupid.

That particular break was actually extremely fulfilling, because I used the referee as a blocker.  The inside defender couldn't push the ref out of the way fast enough, so I pushed the outside defender into the dirt while the ref covered the side with the ball.  Thanks ref.  You fucking racist prick.

After that, we managed to get the ball out of the scrum and actually had some possession.  I doubt we had 20% of the ball in the first half, and that was telling.  The forwards ground the opposition down, taking them from dominance to parity in a hard-fought display.  The props deserve mad props for their work, so I present them this:

Mad props to the props.

Our inside centre scored a fantastic solo try, beating everyone and their grandmother from the halfway line.  He broke through on a number of occasions, and was the catalyst for a huge number of gained metres.  He scored again in the second, but I admit to being on the floor and completely unaware of the circumstances surrounding that try.

When we started to get ball in the second half, the backline began using me as an inside running battering ram.  This is something I'm not particularly used to, being only 90kg's (nearly) in the English game means not being a blunt instrument.  I made a few metres, got a few hand-offs and broke a couple of times, but mostly was ineffective.  Interestingly I became less effective as the game wore on, originally I assumed they 'd simply telegraphed me.  Now I think back, I definitely seem to remember more defenders in the inside channels I like to hit, but I also think my fitness degraded quite sharply towards the end.  I became, at best, ineffective.  At worst, I gave away two penalties for holding onto the ball while on the floor, because the tacklers most certainly bested me in those situations.  I will admit to one being a penalty, but the other was given as a penalty for holding onto the ball before I was even on the floor.

There were two key areas where I felt I made a positive impact, and that was from the long kick into our territory, and in defence.  Again, however, my positional play was not good enough.  Their fly-half had a few very good kicks for touch, (which on the surface we used (3g turf, a synthetic grass) had an eminently predictable bounce) that I could have stopped.  I will grant him one particular kick which was fantastic, but the others I should have caught on the full.  In my defence (which is a limp-wristed, rather pathetic excuse) several players on our team had caught balls, knocked them backwards (we're talking two feet backwards before it bounces) only to be given as a knock-on; with the reverse being true for the opposition; I was essentially terrified of not catching the ball because when the stakes are raised to 'catch or free-kick against,' suddenly every muscle becomes that much more tense.  Like I said, it's a feeble excuse.

I took the ball up from the back a number of times.  I was destroyed in one particular tackle (I think it might have been a turnover) because I was caught in two minds.  In another instance I broke outside the cover defence, skipped back inside and passed it to one of our team.  This general pattern continued, despite a couple of eye-watering clashes that left me on the sore side of the encounter.  Generally I made good ground, beating a fair number of players.  My total carries would be fairly high, with ground gained also being respectable.

I missed one tackle in the game, right at the end.  This actually let them score, as the guy bounced off me (not the other way round!) and span into another set of tacklers to my left, whom he broke through.  Elsewhere, I defended extremely tight.  Normally I try to stay as fluid as possible, making up gaps where needed.  This requires exceptional amounts of trust on behalf of the other players; if I don't turn up where needed everyone involved looks right stupid.  They only spread it on a few occasions however, and I wanted to help the forwards because they were under the kosh the whole match.  This manifested in me dismantling their fly-half, not five minutes after he'd been pulverised by one of our fijian back-rows.  I shot out of the line as fast as I could, and in the five metres or so was damn near top speed.  He was in the act of passing which meant he was relatively low down and completely unprepared for the hit.  All my frustration (up to that point) was focused onto my right shoulder and I hit him with glee.  Delight.  He went backwards like  a limbless sack, but I couldn't hold onto him (I had wrapped my arms as per regulations) so I ended up sliding my shoulder along his ribs, up into his face just as his head hit the floor.  It was glorious.  It was a completely legal tackle, there was nothing even remotely out of place.  He got up protesting that it was late (vocally, I might add) but as he reached his feet he suddenly became quiet and went down onto one knee again.  The big Fijian (I think it was big Joe, and he is big) set it up, and I knocked him down.  Or vice versa.  Either way, he isn't going to work today.

The other tackle of note came near the end of the match.  One of our players had kicked it through right into the corner of their 22.  I was at 75% throttle chasing it down, expecting him to take it with ease, but when he let it bobble I hit the straps, hunting him down on full-turbo.  As he picked it up and turned he was faced with a decision: be demolished with the ball, or without.  So he stepped to one side, hoofed it away and got smashed.  It must be said that our team manager (I think he's officially the manager) was on the sideline along with all our supporters and both of these tackles elicited an amazing response.  Being aussies and kiwis they love a good tackle, and the buzz you get from pasting someone, and having it be acknowledged by your team and supports is bested by nothing. Big hits are better than scoring.  There, I said it.

But to their credit, after a bit of fixing up the fly-half was on his way; and the full-back carried on for the remainder of the game.  I would like to say that neither were as prominent from then on, but the truth is that what felt like amazing tackles had no effect whatsoever.  Must try harder next time.  I wasn't able to strip any ball from the tackle area simply because the one time I managed it, I was penalised for something.

So far this post has been a complete hodge-podge, not so much a match report as a stream of consciousness.  Therefore, let me continue from the second half once more.

The score is 4-2 or 5-3 in tries, (the point being we were 2 behind).  We were under serious pressure for the first ten minutes, despite having one against the run of play.  We managed to get in behind the defence with greater frequency, and our carriers were grinding hard yards.  After a few more minutes, it could be argued that we were in the ascendancy, and we capitalised.  A few breaks here and there gave rise to a try out wide (I don't remember the specifics because I was either too far from the action, or had my face ground into the ground).

At least I tried to protect myself by putting my hands down

This put us only one try behind them, but still a referee down.  With about twenty to go (again, none of this is concrete, only what I remember) one of our forwards rumbled through a gap, off-loaded and the great machine was moving once again.  A couple of breakdowns later, with a cameo from the inside centre who tip-toed through the defence all game, someone went over.  I distinctly remember not remembering who went through because I was convinced they'd turned it over, and I had retreated to the halfway line.  I was involved somewhere along the line, either in a buildup crash ball or in the tackle area, but I can't remember the specifics.  Needless to say, I didn't feel particularly involved in these parts of the game.

That drew us level on tries, still trailing a referee.  With around ten or fifteen to go, the same thing happened.  We rolled through them for another try to put us in front.  At this point we were all riding high, and unfortunately I don't remember how it happened, but we scored a further try to bring us to thirty something total points.  With five minutes to go, the referee decided he'd had enough and put us onto our own line.  We defended and defended, holding a two try advantage.  I will put my hands up and say, categorically, that it was my missed tackle that handed them a try in this period.  He bounced off me because I was too weak (by this point I'd joined the forwards because we were all knackered and they weren't using the backs).  I was trying to help them in the closing minutes, to ensure nothing got through.  I was leaving the backs to help the forwards, and I messed up.  I think my decision to provide an extra man was correct, my execution was poor.

They very quickly took the conversion, and with one try the difference between the two teams, the ref blew his whistle.  It turns out that this is the first time we've beaten them in sixteen years, which is nice.

Now I've written all this down, I find myself more inclined to sympathy for our opposition.  Everyone in Japanese rugby are buddies, and our team might well have representatives, but we'll always be the foreigners.  The white men who steal all the jobs and women etcetera.  Cronyism is the byword for Japanese politics at all levels, so the referee may well have been acting on his own to secure the glorious rise of the Japanese empire.  It's still bullshit.

Speaking selfishly (as I have been all post, of course) the aftermath was incredible.  I went into the game with a cold that had been kept at bay through voodoo and willpower.  When the game stopped, I was man-hugged by the fijian forward of tackling fame, congratulated, then had to lie down.  My legs absolutely stopped working.  They didn't turn to jelly, they turned to wood.  They were solid.  My shoulder hurt like hell (I landed extremely heavily on it, and I think it either stretched something it shouldn't have, or moved it out of the joint) and does right now.  My knee hurt.  I'd broken my finger and not even noticed.  My third finger on my right hand now points outwards, previously pointing inwards.  I had a headache the size of planets.  Everything stopped working.  I started coughing.  I honestly don't know what happened.  I hadn't used painkillers, there was no artificial masking agent.  I just stopped working.  Today, the day after the day before, I found out that I have a dead leg, on the leg which no longer bends at the knee.  I surmise that my incompetence stems from multiple simultaneous injuries rather than brain damage - the human brain can only allot so much processing power to injury, the most painful taking precedent.

There's an american novel, in which an isolated family send a son and their horse to the nearest town to get a religious man for some kind of death rites.  The son rides the horse through deep snow, and upon returning the horse is never the same again.  They end up taking it to the knackers because it's just a spent shell.  I woke up this morning, and everything hurt even more than yesterday.  By rights I should probably have a heart-attack tomorrow.  I couldn't bend my knee, and I don't even know which tackle caused that to happen.  I was fine in the match, and then I just fell apart.  I had a small sob in the shower because I've seen into the future; I know what it's like to be ninety-nine.  I perked up again after the hot shower eased everything off, but I was a wreck.  I still am.

Please don't play rugby with a cold or the flu, especially if you're going to be giving everything you've got.  It's fine when you're playing, but stopping is torture.  It is, absolutely, the worst comedown from a game I've ever had.  I often hurt after games, I usually lack all energy and enter a zombie trance, but that was just awful.  I'm just glad they don't have a knackers for people.

The post match awards were handed out.  My personal man of the match was one of our props, who, as mentioned earlier, was placed upon an anvil by the ref, and hammered into dust by the opposition.  There aren't many sports, activities or games where you can be bullied by the referee and your opposition player for sixty minutes, then redeem yourself in the last quarter.  There aren't many people who have the strength to do that, so he was certainly my man of the match.

The inside centre was awarded man of the match, along with me, for breaking the game up and letting running rugby rule the day.  I've already highlighted my shortcomings, but I've also shown that I don't really remember the specifics of the match, so I may well have done more work than I accredit myself.  The inside centre deserves plaudits because they didn't break our back line, and he instigated tons of great play.

This is the most I've written ever, so I feel now is a good time to stop.

We won, we beat mandara (a top team) despite the referee, and I have a week to recover before a friendly next week.  I might well have to miss it in order to recuperate, because right now, sitting in my school, holding my limbs together with willpower alone, I feel like shit.

But we won.

The Big Game Illness

So it seems to me that whenever I get particularly excited about something, shit happens.  Usually on my face, from a great height.

Previously I'd wanted to play as a representative for our league, against opposition from another league.  That fell through because I completely monged my hamstrings.

Some other stuff happened, too depressing to get into at this stage.

Now, as we're (the gaijin rugby team) facing up against the stiffest challenge of the year (top five amateur team in Japan) I catch a cold that's put my lungs on hiatus.  They have gone wandering, as has the pain cancelling function of my brain, which has taken it upon itself to make every joint ache and scream.  This, coupled with my brain seeking every avenue of escape, means I am a walking, slobbering wreck.  I want my chance.  I want my chance to play in a real game of rugby with the best Japan can offer.  I want to test my mettle.

I'm going to play.  I'm going to play as hard and fast as I can, even if I can't breathe with anything other than an open mouth and no gumshield, even if I don't actually have any cardiovascular system (I get out of breath when standing up in the morning).  I'm going to play even if it kills me, because I've had enough of this shit happening to me.

Fuck you, universe.

#EDIT#  Evidently the gods are listening, as I left work an hour early on account of my diseases.  They then gave me a puncture, ten minutes into my journey.  This made my laborious thirty-five minute bike an hour and a half trek.  This meant that far from arriving home early, I actually arrived home later than normal, completely knackered, with a flat.  I just spent thirty minutes (hopefully) fixing the flat, so I've lost an hour, despite leaving an hour early.  Incredible.  Proof positive that the universe is vindictive.

Rugby Update

Here's the match report for the last games.  A couple of changes to be noted - I scored six, not five.  I also took two kicks, one of which was successful.

This picture isn't from that particular game, it's from a while ago.  It's also the only picture I've got from the past six months.  I think it's me, but I'm not sure.

It's also good to see someone on the left, post nut-scratching.  Really livens up the piece, I feel.

That's it for today.

Enforcers

So I've got a sore throat.  That wouldn't be particularly worrying in of itself (considering the incessantly cold weather and lack of heating in my house) but it's encroaching.  It's heading downwards, inexorably towards the lungs.  The only time(s) I've experienced this have ended up in great heaving lungs of mucus, the kind you don't simply clean with a cloth, but scrape off with trowels and heavy equipment.

Ironically, it came about because I was shouting particularly loudly at training (I think) which left me with a throat-of-nails to begin with.  This coupled with the weather (or my notorious hygiene) has left me in a position where I'm going to be fighting just to keep fit for the game next week.  That's the reason it's ironic, by the way.  If there was no game, there wouldn't have been training and I wouldn't be ill, chicken and egg kind of thing.  Or something.

So today has been a particularly interesting day.  One of the reta... I mean kids; went to have some kind of spaz attack.  He was clearly aiming it at a little old lady who comes into school once a week to impart knowledge unto other English teachers, and whose soul (sic) purpose is to help (she is rather dedicated).  This is obviously untoward, and I stepped in, quelled the child without saying a thing (unlike back home, these guys have the sense to realise that someone four times bigger than them can do serious damage - also unlike back home they still fear the threat of physical violence, despite not being enacted for at least half a century) and went on my merry way.  It occurred to me that this was an isolated incident (no one has the stones to actually follow through on threats, once again unlike England) but the entire school has the discipline of a gaggle of swans.  Such an apt metaphor, I feel no further explanation is necessary.  Hint - not all is well in the swarm.

I've wondered what the reason for this could be.  It's worse than England.  I leave almost every class knowing that no one learned anything.  I leave a class knowing that every kid is perfect Macdonalds fodder.  They're terminally stupid, and this is the problem with a group led mentality.  Once the group decides to be sardines, everyone gets canned equally.

In Japan, all the teachers change schools every few years.  The idea being free exchange of ideas and whatnot.  What actually happens is no one builds up a tenure long enough to build respect.  There are no enforcers in Japanese schools, so when a kid does something bad there's no recourse, no repercussion.

I find it hard to muster up even the slightest inclination to care, however, as the vast majority of the kids want to be hairdressers now (a new cartoon came out I think) so their aspirations are at least in-line with their abilities.

There's one kid who wants to be a doctor, and he might well be able to pull it off.  Good luck to him.  He's also lucky because I'm tasked with actually teaching that one, not just telling him to sit down/stop rubbing himself/stop climbing out of the third floor window, as is the case with all the other kids.

The Gay Files

So Sonny Bill Williams (the name of a 'hick,' if ever there was one) recently won the New Zealand boxing thing. Interestingly, he fought an american who replaced the intended victim - on account of drugs charges, no less.  It's good to see the good name of boxing keeping clean.

Anyway, in happening upon this article by the BBC, I noticed something.  Sonny Bill Williams (henceforth referred to as 'SBW,') is ripped.  His musculature is so incredibly defined, as to defy comparison or categorisation.  His physique is a sight to behold, and in case it wasn't completely obvious by the title of this blog; I admire him immensely.  He's not a world-class rugby union player, regardless of what's said they (the all-blacks) have others who are better suited to the centre positions, but the fact that he is competitive in two sports that are so wildly different is testament to his overall sporting ability.  You could make the case that both sports are extremely aggressive, but beyond that (and the inevitable brain-damage created from exposure to both sports for a long period) they share nothing in common.  The techniques are non-transferable.

Look at that swimmer guy.  He won fifty-six-thousand-million-billion medals at the olympics because he can swim.  He is good at one thing, and he got a bajillion medals for being good at that.  Congratulations to him, for being born with feet like a platypus.

SBW has excelled at two sports with vastly different skillsets.  I am extremely impressed.

I don't care that he's never going to be a world heavyweight, or that he's not the best international ever.  He's good enough to make money from both sports, and that is good enough in my books.

Well done, you freak.

Sleeping With a Leg Out

I'm sure I've accidentally stumbled upon a euphemism of sorts with the title I've chosen; but it's literal, if nothing else.

The Tokyo Gaijin played a match against a French ex-pat team yesterday.  I played at full-back, with the opposition team foregoing human beings, substituting gutless halfwits instead.

Needless to say, we won by an awful lot.

It's disappointing for several reasons.  This match was extremely near my house, being only an hour and a half away (two and a half hours on the return journey, on account of me missing a train.  They only run once an hour to my little town.) by two trains.  To get anywhere in this country, you're normally obligated to get at least three trains.  That or buy a car, in which case you're obliged to debt for your entire existence.  There's a reason why the population has accrued debt equivalent to twice their GDP.  Not to worry though, everyone else will soon catch up.

Another reason for the disappointment is our next encounter.  We're playing one of the top amateur teams in Japan.  If we beat these guys, there doesn't seem to be a barrier for us rolling over the rest of the country.  The last time we played them (before I came to Japan) we lost by thirty or forty points.  To call it an uphill struggle would suggest a chance of winning.  This team, where everyone is at least thirty years old, with a penchant for smoking and drinking their bodies into submission.  By all accounts the opposition will be fit, drilled and keen.  Their downfall is, however, inherent in every Japanese system, from schooling to government:  They're Japanese.

They lack any ability to play the game.  They see a game of rugby as scenarios; to be overcome with dogged training, vociferous calls to perfecting each scenario.  Working extremely hard to overcome obstacles, patting themselves on the back even when they fail.

The rest of the world laughs and strides past them, flicking dirt from their boot-heels into the eyes of would-be Japanese tacklers.

Put more simply, they have a distinct inability to play what's in front of them.  They cannot adapt.  They refuse to adapt.  The Tokyo Gaijin play a brand of rugby (whether the forwards like it or not) that relies on short passes, off-loading from the tackle, breaking the line at every opportunity.  We tend to keep it away from the deck, running is the key.

This may seem in line with the Japanese mentality.  Having watched a few Japan games and a few top-league games I can vouch for their frenetic nature.  It's like watching a game of sevens.  While extremely entertaining it lacks purpose.  When someone misses a tackle (they refuse to tackle, absolutely preferring to allow the opposition through, on the acknowledgement they will do the same) they resign themselves to their fate and meander back into what may or may not be called a defensive line.  When the first person breaks through, he often (75% of the time) refuses to pass, preferring the age-old start-a-ruck tactic.  Drilled to perfection.

So this is the advantage the gaijin team have.  We play fast and loose, and we have the forwards to back it up.  Everyone is able to play what's there, on the pitch.  When things go wrong, we are able to sort it out because we don't rely on pre-taught ideas.  Our one saving grace is that we're not Japanese.

Whether it will be enough to ensure victory in two weeks time, I don't know.  I don't think we're fit enough.  Fitness means tackles, and missing a single tackle will lose us the game, it's that close.

Referring back to the title; we played against the ex-pat french in a game we eventually won by some one hundred points.  During the match I grazed my knee, causing it to ooze and fester in a manner unbecoming to conversation, so I slept with my leg out from under the duvet in order to ensure no healing into the duvet occurred.  It was minus five degrees last night, which means it was minus four degrees inside my house (there is no insulation in Japanese houses, I can fit my hand in the gaps around doors, windows and the like.  Not to mention the single pane, millimetre thick glass.).  This made my leg rather cold.  So cold in fact, as I stood I wasn't aware that I had a second leg with which to balance, and promptly fell on my face.  Quite embarrassing, but luckily there was no one to see.  I don't really know why I wrote it down.

So during the match I made one tackle.  One tackle.  I was playing at full-back (a fact I might have previously mentioned) and came to score six tries.  Apparently this is a club record, and one that I'm proud to hold, despite it being against poor opposition.  Two or three of them were long-distance breakaways, one was a kick through which I dotted down, and two were passed to me for a step over the line.  I won't write about them at length, as it seems masturbatory at best.  I'll link the official match report at a later date.

I've played about five games for the gaijin so far, totaling roughly sixteen tries.  As far as I can remember, I've scored a hat-trick in every game bar one, in which I scored one.  If you include the game where I destroyed my hammies after ten seconds, (which you legitimately could) that would be sixteen in six.  Not that I'm counting.

I just thought of an alternative title, 'Hundred Points War Comes to an End.'

I don't know which I like better.

Also, thanks be to the person who informatively posted on my previous entry.  I wasn't aware that my body temperature may or may not rise or fall directly in line with air temperature.  I thought I was a lizard.  Praise be to informative posts!  (Thank you for posting)

The End.

Devils

So I'm pretty sure I'm the only person in the world who can sweat at minus five degrees.

It's getting down to minus very cold as of late, around the minus eight degrees mark to be exact; yet I still sweat when I'm on my bike.  How is it possible for that to happen?  Admittedly it's not that cold when I'm riding my bike, but it's nowhere near sweating temperature.  HOW IS IT POSSIBLE TO SWEAT IN SUB-ZERO TEMPERATURES?

Anyway, I was pelted with beans for a couple of minutes during break time.

There's a tradition to usher in the new year, involving hundreds of soy beans.  They dress up an unlucky fool, giving him the costume of a devil (notice: a, not the, they're not mental christians here) and pelt him with beans.  I don't know why they choose beans, I don't know why they do it now; I don't know.  The holiday is called 'setsubun,' (or maybe setsubon) so feel free to look it up.  They also eat a number of beans corresponding to their age.  I don't know.

With this meandering preamble completed, here are some pictures:

They also gave their peers a mask and plastic ice hockey stick, with the aim being to brutalise the  thing hanging on the stick, rather than their classmate.  It's a good job we don't do this in England.

The mask they constructed (from a paper bag, corrugated cardboard and yellow paper) kept falling off, which would render me defenceless.  This was bad for a reason I'll explain later.

That's how cool kids wear scarves.

The devils being as scary as possible.

Obviously it's apt that a foreigner is the king devil.  Being chased and bombarded with beans is a great metaphor for the average Japanese reaction to seeing a white person invade their island - combined with the devil mask, it's essentially an uncanny look into the Japanese psyche.

Cynicism aside, the whole thing was rendered farcical for a simple change that's happened fairly recently.  The tradition states beans are to be thrown.  But thrown beans create an awful mess, which is obviously a problem in a school.  The solution is simple, and one that destroys any illusion of this being an ancient tradition.

They buy the beans in small plastic bags (as you would any sweet or confectionery item).  They don't take the beans out.  They just leave them in the bags.  So they're not actually throwing beans at each other, they're throwing bags.  That just happen to be filled with beans.

Not only is the sight ridiculous, it's painful when you get hit.  That's the reason I was afraid to let the bag/hat/helmet slip, getting hit with a bag of dried beans hurts.


Alas they didn't supply a papier-mâché codpiece. 

Shin Splints, Or When to Buy New Shoes

So there's a kid sitting behind me, bleeding profusely from his hand.  He cut himself while throwing a ball (he caught his hand on a corrugated roof) and promptly headed into the staff room.  Upon entering (blood pouring forth) the teachers blazed into action, strapping him up like the proverbial Egyptian mummy.  The only problem I saw with their method is the strength with which they tied up his hand. Within four seconds his hand was bright purple.  Bright, purple.

I've been cut a fair number of times, and lost a fair amount of blood (in my time) and I know for a fact that purple is an unnatural colour.  I tried to point out that his hand will fall off within the next fifteen minutes if they don't sort it out, but they ignored me and let him off into the rest of the day.

So regarding the title, my trainers are worn out.  Every time I go running my shins ache, then hurt, then burn.  Then my calves follow the same trajectory, and I cry like a baby.

I need to get a new pair to ensure I don't do permanent damage, but that entails heading to Tokyo and praying they have trainers in my size.

In other news, I've started wearing a scarf and gloves.  I know, I'm a girls blouse.  A big girls blouse.  A girls blouse the size of a tent.  When I'm wearing my coat, I look like a snowman.

Rotund would be the word I would use to describe myself.

A bit like this.



At least I'm warm!

Tax, Oh Tax

So I just filled in my tax form.

I'm fairly certain it's all nonsense, but I completed it to the best of my ability.  The form is one page long.  The accompanying booklet is about fifty or so pages.

For every line on the form there's a page in the booklet.  A whole page.  A page per line.  Each line requires inputting around eight characters.  Eight characters require a page.  If ever there's a case for overhauling a system, it's when a line of eight numbers require a page of writing to explain their use.

On the very first page there's this warning: PENALTY FOR UNDERSTATEMENT is, in principle, imposed when an amended return is filed after submission of a return within the due date, or when the District Director of the Tax Office makes a correction because of deficient tax declaration... Provided that the increased tax amount of exceeds either the tax amount filed within the due date or 500,000 (yen), whichever is larger.

So I'm going to be fined 4 grand.

They're very much welcome to try and fine me four thousand pounds, because I don't actually have four grand.  Go for it Japan, try your best.  (Please don't steal from me, Japanese Government.)  That last part was capitalised because the 'District Director of the Tax Office,' felt it necessary to emphasise his own importance.  Fat bastard.

There are millions of exemptions very specific to this region.  One of them is health insurance (not unique, but the percentage of cost covered versus amount paid, will certainly be specific to Japan) along with life insurance (why do you get exemptions for that?) and earthquake insurance.  That last one made me laugh, because everyone would presumably buy into that, and the country would go broke every time there's a quake.  Oh wait, they are broke.  Never mind.

Anyway, everyone in Japan is really old, and everyone is single.  The men are so disgusting as to be repellent for everyone and everything - while the women are insular to the point of demonic vanity.  Don't believe me?  Check out this article from the BBC.

Obviously this is going to mean huge taxes.  There's no way it can end any other way.

The funny thing, when I tell people here that the high earners in England pay 40%, they balk.  Now that I've perused the tax system; their high earners pay 40% too!  Of course VAT here is 5%, not 20%.  Of course, they don't pay taxes on breathing, we do.  Of course ancillary taxes in England are massive, whereas they're moderate here.  I guess no one here earns any money (hence why no one has ever seen the 40% tax, and why the extra taxes are so small (they'll never get any money out of them if no one buys anything!)).

Poor Bastards.

Bacon

So holy moly, I've forgotten what tea tastes like.

Mum sent me some English tea as I requested a filling breakfast one day.  Everyone knows that a filling breakfast requires tea, which you cannot find in Japan.  Of course you can find the green variety, but that simply doesn't cut it with a real breakfast.

The upshot is that I tried some tea for the first time in an age, and didn't like it.  I had to drink five or six cups to get the taste back, which I find peculiar.  You'll be happy to know I did eventually get the taste back, through much grimacing.

In other news, I found a few pictures as an extension to the previous post:

As someone commented, the person who took this photo really didn't like the kid.

On the flip-side however, I assume the commentator expects that child to belong to the photographer.  If I saw a random child doing that, I would probably stick starburst up its nose and take more pictures.  The nose of the pig, not the child.  Although that would probably be funny too.

During the allotted cleaning time I was sweeping the floor, while one of the kids was hoovering.  I asked the kid to hoover the broom (it was covered in crud) by saying 'suck it off,' which I'm glad no one heard, and even if they could, I'm glad they can't understand anything.

I'm Bandwagoning

So there's been a lot of talk about Bill Gates on the BBC website today.  I imagine there's some PR stunt being pulled, maybe the Windows 8 release is imminent?  Anywho, I've always said that people eulogising His Highness Jobs are idiots; whereas those praising High King Gates are somewhat more rational, purely because he has given more away in his life than the whole of England have ever given away for red nose day.


If you think you are relevant, you are wrong.  So wrong.  All the money you, your friends, your company, your family and everyone in your town ever give are insignificant.  It's nothing.

Consider the following:

Or you can think about it the other way round.  Your pittance pays for the staff who work at the charities (shock horror, not all your money goes to the needy, even if they say it does) leaving the many billions Bill donates to pay for the actual treatments and whatnot.

So yes, like everyone else I was setting this trend before it became a trend (the trend of praising his Billness).

Of course this is all very depressing, so here is something to make you forget about all that.

Ow, My Brain

So I took a couple of knocks to the head in the game yesterday.

It was a relatively short-order affair, becoming known to me only days before the actual event.  It was, however, a lot of fun.  That being said, it was somewhat disheartening to see a few of the incidents that transpired on the pitch.

Immediately after the match I couldn't tell you how many I had scored, with that in mind I'll split the difference between the one I am certain of, and the five I could possible have, to give me a figure of four (sic).

Two minutes (quite literally) into the match, after a couple of rucks, I was given a crash ball (or a switch, who knows) with which I made fair yardage and gave a respectable off-load; for a further gain.  As I was on all fours looking towards the play (and getting up) one of the opposition took it upon himself to give me a knee to the back of the head.  We're not talking a tap, we're talking a sprinting knee to the back of the head.  As you may imagine, my brain rattled (it being the size of a pea inside a football sized vessel) and my head ached.  Bizarrely, this wasn't the event that took its toll.  I had a blinding headache thereafter, but I am quite sure I remember most of the events for the next ten minutes.

Our team didn't want to tackle, maybe because of the cold or the opposition being complete dicks.  At some stage (my timeline is mucked up because of their foul play) I had my opposite number (I was playing 12 and 13 for the whole match) in my face (or as I prefer to say: all up in my fizog) for some reason.  I can't remember why he was inches away from getting punched, but he was most certainly all up in the face.

At another point, I had the tackler lying on me, trying to wrench my non ball carrying arm from its socket.

Now, I do things when the referee can't see, but only to those who have done wrong unto me.  You will have to take my word for that.  This team deserved all the punches they got, and fifty more.

So the guy who was trying to maim me got a palm in the face and a small knock to the head as I got up.  This may or may not have been the guy who was 'all up in my face,' before or after this event.  Who knows.

Then, in a separate occurrence, me and a yellow player were chasing a ball, I knocked him out of the way as I dived on it, for a penalty to be awarded against me for getting the ball.  In Japan you're not allowed to compete in any situation.  Not in the defensive tackle situation, nor in the lineout.  They just don't like competition.

And the referee was a blatant racist.  Of the thirty penalties the referee gave away, two were for us.  Maybe three, if I'm generous.

So I ended up giving away dozens of penalties, one of which I will say was a fair cop.  The others were utter garbage.

It was such an untenable situation that our captain (or manager, I'm not sure which one) was yellow carded for a shoulder charge, after a penalty that shouldn't have been awarded.  Frustration was the name of the game.

The referee was awful, the opposition team was foul, the game was rather entertaining.

Unfortunately I can't remember the timeline, but I did score a few tries.  One was a cutout pass where the opposition player shot out of the line, giving me a massive gap to go through, beat a few defenders and scored.  This was from the ten metre line or so.

Another one came from inside our half, I got the ball, ran sideways far too much, broke a few tackles and scored.  As one of the guys said after, 'it would've looked good to take a photo with all the tacklers on the floor.'

The third try of possibly five or possibly one try(ies) had something happen.

I have a headache.

Being my own blog, it's all very egocentric and not a fair reflection on the other players (we did play quite well for small portions of the game) who did extremely well.  The Man of the Match award went to one of the new guys, who absolutely demolished their scrum (in all the scrums they were awarded, they only got clean ball twice, testament to our superiority).

All things considered, it was a fun game, and now a night has passed I can remember a fair amount of what happened (I think); just not the order in which is happened.

If this is your first time reading this blog, please don't take this psychotic rambling as my usual style; take, well all my other posts instead.

I Raise You a Stupidity

So I've come across two forms of stupidity in the news today.

Both have their merits, but I'll leave the politically motivated form for later.  Firstly, let's focus on why the zodiac-challenged among us are superior human beings.

This article from the BBC shows several things.  It shows that chinese people like to be born in the year of the dragon.  It's auspicious.  There are several problems here - not least that their zodiac only contains twelve animals.  This means everyone shares their sign with a few other people, and by a few I mean more than five hundred million others.  Clearly, not everyone can be successful, or angry, not everyone can demonstrate the traits of their animal; thus rendering this entire belief system pointless.  It's almost as pointless as worshiping (worshiping doesn't look right, I think it needs two p's) a deity who rapes a woman every two thousand years in order to create a son who dies and magically comes back to life after a few days, but not quite.

Having derailed my own thoughts with that aside, I feel it important to note that this website debunks the myth that global warming has consensus among all scientists everywhere the world over.  In the states there are thirty odd thousand scientists who aren't employed by Al Gore, so presumably there will be a few more knocking around Europe.  Then again, scientists are people too; I expect all European scientists to have been swept into a carbon frenzy like the lay person (you and I) and be frothing at the mouth at such outrageous suggestions.  Frothing at the mouth, like the whole of humanity will be when we poison ourselves in an endless quest to dig up the planet in search of minerals and resources that we can re-use and recycle.  But of course, combating the natural tendency for this planets climate to change is more important than giving everyone cancer.

Anyway, half a billion people being identical in zodiac terms isn't enough apparently, so mainlanders are trying their best to create even more dragons.  I can't see anyone actually trying for a child at this juncture just to make sure their sign is dragon orientated.  Sure, being Dohvakin might be fun for the first few hours, but all the shouting will ruin your throat pretty quickly, not to mention the blocky faces and ugly textures.

Sorry, I slipped away from reality again there.

The point of all this is simple:  superstition and religion are stupid.

I find the spiel accompanying each animal extremely interesting reading, not for their accuracy, but for their use of description.  They describe people so well (just not the people associated with the signs).  It's obviously an art that bears fruit from watching people (obviously) but I do wonder how they spent aeons looking for characteristics and traits without being sucked into the oblivion that is humanities' stupidity.  Maybe they did, maybe this is the true fruit of their labor.

Anyway, the other stupidity on display today was demonstrated by the americans.  Of course, the two biggest groups of idiots are the two superpowers.  Or the one superpower, and the aging old fart who is in so much debt they have to invent new numbers to describe it, while feeding it fried chicken to keep the obesity from dying down.

This article describes the successful elimination of competition within the boundaries of american internet domains.  Except it's not just within their own boundaries.  I can no longer access the site, and I'm in Japan (I think).  This means a pissed off american billionaire conglomerate permanently shut down a website based in Hong Kong (I think) and had civilians arrested in New Zealand at the same time.  This is one of the myriad reasons why the world hates you america - it's also one of the reasons why the world laughs, because your collective fat rolls seem to cover your eyes and at least partially blind you.  Shutting down one website is like banning, er, well it's like banning something that's easily replicated and spread ad infinitum.  Like a website.  So destroying one website and grievously denying the human rights of several individuals is like shutting down a website, because ten thousand will pop up and take its place.  Those ten thousand will host significantly less information, but as a whole will contain vastly more.  Try shutting ten thousand websites, when it took you five years to wobble your way to a resolution on this single site.  Good luck, fatso.

Why this is particularly important right now, is the ill-timed demise of two bills, SOPA and PIPA.  They essentially grant the power for a website to be blacklisted from within the US, despite it being hosted outside the US.  It also grants a number of exceedingly murky powers enabling the usage of individuals to be monitored.

They're essentially asking for more power, which is ludicrous in light of the latest action.  Non-american individuals have been arrested, in countries that are not the U.S, over crimes committed that are nothing to do with them in the slightest.  They run a website, other people upload the content.  If someone drives my car (without my consent, as they regularly take down copyrighted material, not to mention the myriad warnings on their ex-website) into another person and kills them, I'm culpable?  Makes sense to me!

They need more power than they already have, despite having infinite power to do whatever the hell they want.  Sounds like a legitimate cause for concern on behalf of they.  They being anyone who produces content within america, which essentially boils down to a handful of companies (think Time Warner, Sony et al.)

A lot of people (worldwide) are against these bills.  If you live in america, I can understand your reluctance to sign up for this particular brand of skulduggery, but the rest of the world SHOULD FULLY SUPPORT THESE BILLS.

No really, we should be parading around the streets getting this bill passed.  We should raid forums and boards with Pro-SOPA pro-PIPA messages.

The reason is extremely simple.  SOPA and PIPA are designed to ensure that established mediums, such as TV, film, radio, magazines, newspapers and the like (controlled by aforementioned obese billionaires) maintain a monopoly over internet based innovation.  Startups like google, youtube, facebook and so on, would simply no longer exist on american soil.  All these require user generated content and most users prefer to, inadvertently or otherwise, use other products and ideas within their videos/recordings.

The death of innovation within america would create infinite opportunity abroad, as innovators would turn to Europe in order to house, store and create their billion dollar websites.  Of course they would no longer be billion dollar websites, but billion euro websites.  If trends continue, this would obviously be a trillion euro industry, then a quadrillion euro industry, then a pentillion euro industry in-line with the imminent collapse of the value of a euro.

Imagine if facebook (soon to be floated for a hundred billion dollars) were in England.  60% (the going tax rate for those individuals who earn a decent wage in England (of course businesses pay in the region of 15%, unless they're really big in which case they don't pay any tax, but we can all dream right?)) of 75 billion pounds could pay for some of the MP's sex toys and moats, leaving the actual tax money to be spent on bribing FIFA officials.  Imagine that!  We could be rolling in FIFA officials if facebook were English.

So the reason we should be marching and campaigning for SOPA and PIPA is the same reason the american politicians are shooting it down now.  They want more money, we want more money, everyone wants more money.  FIFA will have to continue as a parasitic entity on the sparse millions it's bribed with at the moment.

Those poor millionaires.

The Funniest Thing That's Not Very Funny But Will Probably Be Funny for You

So I just had a lesson with a teacher with whom I didn't have a previous lesson plan briefing - I relied on the teacher with whom I did converse to relay the pertinent information.  Obviously that didn't occur, because I asked her to write the classes timetable on the board, at which point she sent half the class to get a load of tables.  (This was after me demonstrating writing on the blackboard, no less.)

After I saw the kids coming in with tables, I laughed it off (while crying inside) and asked her to write it again.  The only part of that sentence I don't know in Japanese is timetable, otherwise I would have asked in Japanese and been done with it.  Before you ask; the locals are much like the Germans, one mistake in their native language and often they'll refuse to understand what you're saying.  If they're friends they'll puzzle it out, but in a workplace setting they've got an example to keep (for the children, of course) and won't be seen acknowledging anything other than perfect Japanese, lest the next generation grow tolerant of foreigners.  God forbid.

Anyway, after about five minutes of classroom re-arrangement we were good to go.  At which point I realised that I didn't understand anything she'd written on the blackboard, so had to get her to do most of it anyway (only after me bumbling through about four minutes of attempts myself).

#Edit#  I just found out that Ashton is leaving Saints.  He's leaving with a record of 105 games, 95 tries.  That's an incredible try scoring record, and it near enough a try per game as not to matter.  Amazing.  Unfortunately he's going to South Africa.  Sorry, I mean Saracens.  They're all still SA except for a couple of England players right?

Survived!

I survived the day of bad luck (which officially began and ended yesterday).  It was a harrowing day, full of people trying to kill me with their cars (some stereotypes hold up) and things crumbling to dust in my very hands.

Hocus pocus aside, I visited a magical factory of longevity commonly known as a gym.  Within the boundaries of said room were people old enough to be, and I suspect they are, grandparents.  These people weren't milling around like the elderly folk in English gyms, they were running like possessed daemons.  I don't know if there is a marathon coming up soon, but the teachers at my mountain school are even getting in on the running act and one of them, a woman in her early fifties, (at a guess, which is about as definitive as guessing the age of Earth) runs 10km two or three times a week.  This is after she does an aerobics class that I have witnessed (behind a glass barrier, thankfully) and wouldn't wish upon anyone.  As with all these things, the class is only as challenging as you make it, and while some of the participants choose to peacock their way through - this teacher doesn't.  The short and long of it is simple; insanity.  Unfortunately I fear that finding a co-signatory would be something of a struggle on account of me not knowing Japanese, but she really should dial it back somewhat.

I hope the marathon (if there is one) has a seriously long catchment behind the finishing line, because it will take her some time to wind down once she crosses.  At fifty miles per hour.

I also hope they have a fire engine to ensure excess heat is dissipated as quickly as possible.  She might blow a gasket or something.