What People Done Think

So I'm often criticising the level of English within the population (more often the population of Japan, but often of america too).  People consistently counter with a tepid argument about the English being terrible with foreign languages, something about pots and kettles.  It's a very dull counter, but one that leaves the counter-er open to a counter counter, in that English is a primary constituent of Panglish (which has two definitions as I've heard it so far) and as a result we know two languages before we even start.  Couple that with the inevitable creep of English into other languages and soon we'll be able to understand tons of extra languages, without having to lift a textbook.

Of course, this is all a precursor to the inevitable future where English is the only language spoken in the world.  A lot of people say this is a bad thing, but think about all the professorly man-hours of research into dead languages like French and German.  You could create entirely new fields of study,  presumably named not-quite-as-old-as-Latin-but-still-extinct language study.  Append romance or east-asian to that, and you'd have a title worthy of any tenured academic.

You might well ask why I raise this point now.  Well; I accidentally crushed a very kind little old lady today.  She was an English teacher, and today was her last day on the job.  She was hired as a kind of mentor, her years of experience were a method for her to earn a pittance (I may well have written about her before) while conveying some of that knowledge to the youth of today (the teacherly youth, not the rioting, out of control youth).  The problem is that things have changed since she retired.  Kids don't listen to teachers any more, so it's entirely a case of classroom management instead of teaching.  Unfortunately her ideas were simply swamped by the terrible behaviour within the class - but at least she tried and was valiant in her efforts.  I suppose she thought her ideals were somehow reaching the kids.

How I crushed her was entirely accidental.  I was talking to her about improving English within Japan, one of those airy-fairy conversation where I lay down hard and fast rules for improving English, while the teacherate (a conglomerate of uncooperative teachers) tell me the pithy reasons why they are unfeasible.  These include, but are not limited to, the 26 characters of English are difficult to learn.  This is of course opposed to the two thousand kanji (kanji being chinese characters) and 80 something alphabet letters they have to learn.  Those extra 26 are the straw, proverbially speaking.  People also tell me that the English sounds are too difficult for Japanese people to say, therefore learning the alphabet is a fruitless endeavor until they're older and can compute, as it were, the various sounds.

Of course it's already too late at this point.  By the time they're 12 or so, their brains have been solidified, accepting only the limited sounds of Japanese.  V and B are impossible to distinguish, as are R and L.  Of course I can say V, and I can say B, which means those sounds exist; just not if your skin is yellow and you eat a preponderance of fish.  The way to negate this stupidity is to teach the kids English.  It really is a simple thing, it would take about three weeks of actual study to teach them V and B, L and R.  It would take no time whatsoever to learn the alphabet, you can even teach them in primary school!  (Perish the thought).  I know that you can teach children the alphabet when they're five years old, because I learned when I was five years old.

Again, people will say something along the lines of: 'well yes that's all jolly well and good, but you're immersed in the language and it's therefore easier for you to pick it up.'

Well yes that's all jolly well and good indeed, but writing is a skill that must be learned through practice, it's not an innate ability (as spoken language seems to be to me - I find it impossible to describe how people can learn to speak a language when they're children.  I don't even think learn is the correct word, because that implies some kind of conscious effort on the part of the learner, whereas the brain magically soaks that information up.) and must therefore be trained.  How about training kids when they have the magical sponging ability?  We're not talking perfection, ten minutes spent learning fundamental pronunciation or basic writing at the age of six saves hours - and I mean literally hours, later in life.

No no, of course that would take away time from learning how Japan didn't commit atrocities in Nanjing, or how Japan didn't attack pearl harbour.

Well yes, indoctrinating pupils is an important part of any school curriculum; but think about this.  At middle school, right now, the kids are studying four periods of English a week.  Forty-five minute classes combine to make this a full three hours a week.  Three hours a week is a lot of indoctrinating.  I only found this out today.  Prior to this, I thought they studied English once a week for forty-five minutes, and then they were done with it.  In my mind, that was the only way the utter lack of improvement could be justified.  Stupid old government, not allotting enough resources... again.  Except they give ample time to learn.  How can they mess things up so badly? Seriously, I have to ask how someone can study English for three hours a week, for three years, and not even be able to understand the words 'hot,' or 'cold.'  Or be able to respond to questions such as 'how old are you?' or 'what's your name?'  I am seriously baffled.

But that naysayer will yell, 'that's all good and well actually speaking to the children, but all we do is write, mainly grammar.'

If I wrote those sentences down, the kids would mouth the words, possibly say them out loud to themselves, then look up confused without a lick of understanding.

What it basically boils down to is extremely simple.  No government, not Robert Mugabes, not Benito Mussolinis, not even Tony Blairs could be so criminally inept as to sideline three hours a week for language study, and have no perceptible improvement within a three year time frame.

It is therefore a plain and simple case of active isolationism.  It is this country trying to escape the inevitable tide of English, sweeping across the world in a homogenized wave to victory.  When the whole world speaks a mixture of mandaringlish, Japan will stand alone as the only non-speakers.  They will have even lower test scores than they do now, because they will have perfected the art of willful ignorance.  I've said that the locals took 1984 as some kind of country running pamphlet, what with doublethink being their motto, but it's absolutely true.

So how did I inadvertently crush this poor teacher?

I showed her some stats from a decade ago, showing the test results of Asian countries.

But wait, says the ever-present contra advocate, 'Japanese is entirely dissimilar to English, it's not fair to compare...'

I will hush him before he finishes, because this is a list of Asian countries.  Countries that have as much a dissociation as Japan.  More so in some countries, as they might not use so much bastardised English in their advertisements and in their everyday language.

Without further ado, let's check this old list out:

1	Singapore	1318	603
2	India	33,586	581
3	Philippines	8738	577
4	Brunei Darussalam	45	567
	Bhutan	50	567
6	China, People’s Republic of	79,964	560
7	Pakistan	9,850	538
8	Sri Lanka	2,983	537
9	Malaysia	9,530	530
10	Hong Kong	22,343	523
11	Korea (ROK)	103,674	522
12	Nepal	2,153	521
13	Myanmar (Burma)	1,244	518
14	Indonesia	16,538	517
15	Afghanistan	376	516
16	Cambodia	321	514
17	Macau	1,070	512
18	Vietnam	3,251	511
19	Bangladesh	5,703	510
20	Taiwan	52,826	508
21	Laos	135	506
22	Mongolia	243	502
23	Thailand	31,403	502
24	Korea (DPR)	1,611	498
	Japan	146,439	498

#EDIT#  This list has more information on the right, but for whatever reason it won't display



This chart shows the scores of people taking a TOEFL test from a decade or so ago.  I can't find anything more recent that actually has a founding in reality (I've found two more recent tests, one which puts korea last and Japan third or so, and another which puts Japan middling and china last; neither of which are therefore credible).

The reason I show this chart is because I find the outcomes credible, for the most part.  The Singaporeans I've met speak a bizarre hybrid of English and another language (I don't know which) that suggests English is a massive part of their daily lives.  Non-speakers will therefore be exposed to it regularly, and may be forced to communicate in it often.  India has massive ties with the UK, and of the thousands of languages spoken, English is prevalent.  The same theory applies as above.

As we work our way down the list we see Afghanistan at number 15.  We've all seen Bin Ladens henchmen give out speeches ad nauseum on't tele; so we all know how good their English can be.  Whether it's uniform across the entire population, I would suggest not so much nowadays.

Bangladesh and Vietnam both have reason to despise English, (thanks america) yet I presume they realise the importance of it as a language of trade and commerce.  Their limited resources are well spent on this.

Mongolia is often perceived as being one of the most rural places in the world.  It has a GDP of roughly ten billion dollars.  Sony, the Japanese corporation that sometimes runs the country, has around 85 billion dollars worth of assets.  Japan could buy Mongolia eight times over, if they sold Sony.  A third of Mongolia lives below the poverty line.  I would say it's a safe bet that any Japanese government official looking at this right now, wouldn't cringe.  They would stonewall, mumble some infantile excuse about statistics being wrong, then point me to one of their secondary school history books where they forgot to mention about the second world war or korean occupation.  Then he would probably run away.  They're very good at that, they're like ninja.

Then, the one that absolutely cracks me up.  The statistic that makes my sides hurt, and mortified the pleasant old lady sitting next to me - the DPRK.  The democratic peoples republic of korea.  That isn't the south korean bit.  That isn't the capitalistic haven of crime and debauchery. That is north korea.  That is the part of korea that no one visits because there be dragons and nuclear warheads.  That's the part of korea that hasn't seen metaphorical daylight in fifty years, the part in which millions died during a great famine, and the part in which tens of thousands continue to die because they can't produce enough food.

The last communistical haven of the dear leaders loins, North Korea, scored the same as Japan.

I had to write that several times because I kept missing the keys, I was laughing too hard.

There are absolutely no problems with English language teaching in Japan, if they keep making charts that show Japan in-line with the DPRK with regards to English ability I will carry on teaching here.

Long live our dear leader!

#EDIT#

I just received this letter from one of the third years, they're graduating so they give their teachers letters, and flowers apparently.  I'd prefer socks like last year, but I'm not complaining.

Anyway, the letter talks about (I had one of the native teachers tell me what it said in Japanese (I can't read the thousands of chinese characters)) me speaking English in an understandable way, about having fun (this is a lie) and asking me to continue teaching.  Or I missed a negation and it actually asks me to stop teaching; it's difficult to tell.  Here it is for all to see, but for far fewer to understand.

Feel free to translate it and tell me I got it all wrong, and it's actually telling me to die in a fire.

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.