Duuude, I did WHAT?!

Now many of you know that I was never into the whole jogging/running "phenomenon." At this point, I've lost count of how many people I have expressed to regarding my hatred of running. I'd say that the only time I'd run is if I was playing a game or being chased by a rabid dog...

With that said, I did the unthinkable...

On Saturday, May 23rd, I, the self proclaimed anti-runner, took part in Fukuoka's 12hr Relay Marathon.

But first, my training:

I had about one month to transform into a runner. For all you real runners, I'm sure you agree that this is a relatively unrealistic goal. Turning a person who HATES running into a marathon runner? Ridiculous!

But I was determined... Well, sorta.

One might ask WHY in the world would maggie sign up for such a thing?

Well I will answer you in 3 phrases:

1. 12hr ALL NIGHTER (Which means camping with a bunch of friends! =Fun!!! Which also leads me to the next two...)

2. Lots of Food!

3. Lots of Booze!

This was not an opportunity to be missed!

But even with my motive slightly askew from the rest, I did not want to be a useless team member, and so I ran. I ran 3 times a week (Yosakoi and Yoga filled the other 2 weekdays). It was tough. The first week's attempts were aweful. It was on the treadmill at the base gym. I was only able to run continuously for a max of 5 minutes. For three days it was 30 minutes of stop-and-go running. Not only was it difficult, it was rather shameful. On every trip to the gym, I'd encounter a few teammates in training -everyone of them running effortlessly on their 'mills like freakin' gazelles! Even Daniel runs with ease! Okay, I going to need to get more serious.

I have two co-workers that run. Sara, a seasoned runner (A fabulous girl from my hometown -who is also on our marathon team) and Fee, a born-again runner. They both agreed that finding the right breathing pattern with ur run makes all the difference.. Oh and the right music really helps too. With that, I cleared everything out of my ishuffle and refilled it with faster adrenaline pumping music. The next week, I foregoed the treadmill and decided to run on the track of the base park. In two warm-up laps, Daniel helped me figure out my most comfortable breathing pattern and speed. Three times around the field equalled a mile -I was only able to manage a single mile. But I gradually got better in the following weeks. I found that running was MUCH easier when I was plugged into a really good set of songs.

*pause*

[inserting tangent here]

I'd like to take a moment to make a "shout out" to Charlie of Kaiju Audio for sending his fabulous mix -Every other step that hit the ground synced perfectly with the beat -muchos mahalos!

[Aaaaand we're back.]

...So anyway I kept at it, eventually increasing my non-stop runnability to 2 miles...and then 3. Gir served as a great running partner. If I ran too slow, he would get distracted and start veering off the path. He was such a big help that I wished so bad that I could run with him in the marathon. Next thing you know, the marathon was upon us. Ohhh crap.

With 3 measly miles mentally noted in my portfolio, I was a bit worried. I didn't want to be "that" person. You know, the one everyone has to wait for... the one everyone secretly wishes wasn't on their team but is too nice to say! But I did design our team shirt -so at least I can say I was good for something!

Note: The shirts say SRF Hashiri Crew. Most of the guys are from Daniel's workplace -SRF (Ship Repair Facility). The fun part is the Hashiri Crew part. The kanji of it roughly translates to "Going mad from running." Yay!

Saturday, May 23rd, Noon. It was finally the day. 6 hours from now, we would be camping and competing against 50 other teams to see who would reign supreme. In 2 vans and 1 car, we packed 14 runners, 2 alternates, 1 chef (just a guy at daniel's work who likes to cook), 1 cheerleader (Our buddy Cary) and a team mascot (our Gir -we were so happy we could take him with us!) The runners were broken up into 3 groups arranged by time slot. Team A took the first and last 2 hours of the 12-hour marathon (a 6 p.m. - 6 a.m. affair). Team B (The team Daniel and I were in) went from 8 to midnight. Team C went from midnight to 3 a.m. I'd say it's pretty clear that my group had the most ideal time slot!

With all the stops we made on our drive, we ended up reaching the marathon site at 4. We quickly set up our tents and settled in. Our chef, Ishimarusan started up the fire and began cooking our first meal. The first runners however, quickly ate their packed musubis, rested for a bit to digest, then hopped to their feet to do a warm up run. 5:30 was the opening ceremony, and it was awesome. After a few minutes of incomprehensible speechery, a japanese-speaking Ronald McDonald saunters up on stage and leads us thru a wonderfully silly warm up stretch. I wouldve taken more pictures, had I not been joining in on the fun! And yes, I did find it a bit ironic that McDonalds was sponsoring this event.

And then it was 6, and the race/marathon had begun. My team had 2 hours to wait for our turn. We were anxious. But it was the hanging out and waiting at our camp site, that made me realize that this event was more serious than anticipated. With coolers chock full of beer, and chu-his, everyone opted for the water and gatorade. And with mouth-watering, perfectly seasoned baby back ribs sizzling on the grill, most people opted for small bites of chicken. Then after eating, some people went straight into their tents to rest up!

And then, when I was just getting used to the idea of chillin' out, we were a half hour away from our turn to run. I popped into the girl's tent and almost ritualistically prepared myself. I changed into my favorite track pants, slipped on a pair of extra cushiony new socks and put on each running shoe with great care and consideration. Then I put my hair up in the smoothest possible ponytail, strategically placing clips to hold down any strays. This took 3 tries.

The wind blew my ponytail as I stepped out of my tent -I felt ready.

This was our strategy: For 4 hours, the 4 out of 5 of us elected to run 2 laps around the course before tagging the next person. Since the course was one mile long -I elected to run once before tagging the next. Daniel was the 4th runner and I was the 5th.

The first run was going to be the deciding factor of whether or not I could really do this. I needed it to be good. I needed to stay motivated. I needed to pick the right song. I cheered and chatted while the first 3 runners ran their hearts out. When Daniel got tagged, I knew my turn was coming up soon, so I started shaking up my limbs, hopping in place and trying to warm up. The cold and windy weather did not help. I popped in my earbuds to find the right song. I settled on a classic: It's a Fine Day by Miss Jane. I pressed pause and waited.

Then, there was Daniel, about 40 feet away, approaching fast. I could feel my heart pounding. I quickly got in "transferral" position. Shouting at him to "Go Go Go!," I pressed play and started running as he ran up next to me and passed me the relay sash.

With sash thrown on, I focused on the run. I tried to pace myself, but the adrenaline made me run faster than I had been training. Much to my dismay, the first half of the course was at a 15 degree incline. I ain't gonna lie, it was pretty hard, but I was determined to keep my pace to the beat. When I hit the decline, I knew I was going to be able to do this.

It was estimated that each person would take approximately 10 minutes per lap. Without doing any math, this figured that each of us would have 3 turns. Four of us would run 6 miles and the 5th, being me, I would run 3. Sounded perfect to me! ...Fortunately and unfortunately, my team mates ran a lot faster than planned and we were ahead of schedule! This meant 4 of us needed to run ONE FINAL LAP. And with me being the 5th runner, I was in the clear... but then the unthinkable occurred: Daniel got a mean cramp.

Koutaro, the first runner from Team C, volunteered to run in Daniel's place and start their time slot early...but that's not what happened. Because like some cheesy heroic moment, I stood up with conviction and said: "I can do it!"

But inside I was a little worried...I was pretty tired, My body felt kinda messed up from the running and stopping. Burning up while running and freezing from the cold air and wind between runs took it's toll. I looked at my tired teammates who busted their ass running TWICE as much as I did and thought, dude, I gotta run like heck for these guys! I stretched out, shook myself off and waited for Matsunaga, the 3rd runner. In no time at all, he was turning the corner running towards me. I pressed play. It was decided that John Legend's Green Light was going to get me thru this. But then that song lasted only 4 minutes and I wasn't quite done yet,... so without slowing down, I skipped thru a couple songs and hit the jackpot with Green Day's Burnout to take me to the end.

I had never run that hard in my entire life...98% of me was screaming at me to slow down. I ran so hard that I felt out of control. So much so that he other wickedly stubborn 2% of me was getting worried that my feet wouldn't hit the ground right and I'd gribble royally. And yet, with flailing arms, a painfully dry throat and legs aflame, I managed to overtake 3 runners before I tagged the first runner of Team C. Even with music blasting in my ears, I could hear my team mates cheering me on as I growled and pushed thru the last stretch. It felt great. By the end of our time slot, we were at 17th place out of 50. Hey, I was cool wit that!

After our team was done, we mustered enough strength to cheer on Team C for their first laps. We then stumbled back to camp, dranks lots of water, ate some of Ichimaru's "made-just-for-Team B", garlic fried rice and crashed right out. Even with the hard floor (due to limited space in the van, we didn't bring any cushiony luxuries), the constant music and exuberant announcements from the emcee on the loud speaker and the wind whipping the tent, I slept okay. Gir in particular was very useful, he served as a fuzzy body pillow :)

Conveniently, I suddenly woke up at 2:45, just in time to cheer on the final laps of Team C. Team C, a power house group of avid runners, boosted the Hashiri Crew to 12th place when they were thru!

The hardcore Team A, gave us a strong finish and solidified us in 13th place on the board. Nothing like lucky number 13! :) Ichimarusan welcomed the morning with a wonderful breakfast of 2 different pastas (one Garlic vegetable and the other Alfredo mushroom), toast and vegetable soup. Karato, a speedy fellow from Team C commented that Ichimaru was our MVP -everyone unanimously agreed.

In 12 hours, we ran a total of 98 miles. Darn, so close to 100... Oh well, I suppose we'll have to shoot for that next year! I sguess that also means I kinda like running now -scary yah? :)

My first dance recital...at age 30.

So remember when I said that I joined a Yosakoi team? Well this past Sunday, a small group of 9 Ikkijyu (our team name) members, Daniel and I hopped on a big bus, along with members from other yosakoi teams, and rode 2 hours to Nagasaki. We were set out to perform at the "Yokabai Yosakoi Matsuri." Daniel came along to record this momentus maggie event. (More like catch me acting a fool on film.)

[note:] Yokabai is pretty much Sasebo/Nagasaki slang for saying "It's all good!"

Anywho, I have to tell you how hard I practiced the week before! So 4 days before my debut, I FINALLY got real props to practice with. The props included 2 fans and 2 narukos. Narukos are these wooden clapper things. Lemme tell yah, practicing with the real stuff is A LOT different from faking it with my jazz hands! I practiced every night till that fateful day. On one of my practice days, I whipped open a fan so hard that it flung out of my hand and flew nearly out the back door! :O You can imagine the new anxiety I developed after that happened! But by Saturday night, I was feeling pretty confident and ready to just get out there and do it!

On Sunday morning, the only thing Mami (the team mate that got me in all this madness) told me to do was to make sure I put my hair up when I got there. No problem I thought, I can whip my hair up in a high pony in a matter of minutes right? But when I got to the place where everyone was meeting THEN I understood what she meant. She meant make it NICE. All the girls had their hair done up perfectly -It looked like one of those cute "prom" hairstyles. PLUS they all had fantastic makeup on! ....And here's me, the super-sized japanese-american (yes, I can honestly say that I am pretty much bigger than EVERY member of the team -guys too!) with my sad little ponytail and barely a lick of makeup on. Damn.

Luckily the girls had some spare hair pieces. They were made like scrunchies, hairy scrunchies. They all had a good laugh when they put it on me. The thing looked really fake since the color didn't match with my natural hair color at all. Even so, it still looked better than my sad little "real hair" sprout!

We got there at about 10 a.m. Our first performance was at noon, so we had 2 hours to kill. So what do they decide to do? Get drunk. :\ hoo boy.

We walked to the nearest convenience store and stocked up on beers, chu-his and snackies. Is it just me, or do you get buzzed faster when you drink in the sun? I felt totally relaxed. And then it was 11:50. At this point, I felt surprisingly okay...not at all as nervous as I expected to be. We did a quick stretch and then huddled together for a pep talk from our coach/sensei Miyuki. She said to just have fun, don't worry about messing up and ....Gambare Maggiesan on her debut! And everyone agreed and told me to gambare.

Woah. After that, the ONE butterfly in my stomach decided to multiply. We ran up on stage and made formation. This was it!

~Look out into the audience and smile maggie, SMILE.~

CHEEEEEE........
Two booming pounds of the taiko starts our song. I must've practiced dancing to this song at least 20 times that week, but this time it was different. To the beat of the taiko, my heart felt like it was a big ball, bouncing against the inside of my chest. It was a cool feeling.What added to it was the fact that the stage was set up along the harbor. As I danced, My eyes scanned over the people watching us and out to the water... it was beautiful! I didn't panic about the moves at all... kinda felt like my mind was detached and my body was just goin' on without me! Well, it was like that up until the second segment! That's the part with the fans!

I knelt in position, holding my closed fans, waiting for the exact moment to whip them open....

*fwap* First fan opens...success!

[close fan] prepare for finale...

Here it is, let's do it -both fans open!

*fwap* *fwa...* Uh oh. Right fan opens all the way. Left fan, only halfway.

I spent the next series of movements trying to pry it open with my pinky. No success. It's the end of the song and we have to do a final pose with the fans before we bow to finish. Daniel, captures a priceless moment ...I really need to work on being more discreet :O

After that, we ate lunch, shmoozed with other teams, drank more chu-his and performed again at 3.

All in all it was a great day. And I have the headband tan to prove it :)

Kampai!!

Oh Yes, We were Amused.

My boss Alz, and her husband James invited the marketing team, along with some of her closest, funnest friends to celebrate James' birthday.

That morning, a tour bus, complete with driver waited to wisk the 26 of us off. During the ride, we enjoyed some mega-loaded snack packs lovingly arranged by the couple and watched the family friendly movie, Madagascar 2. After the movie was over, the guys snuck in about 10 minutes of UFC. And then, we had reached our destination: Greenland Amusement Park.

Right as we unloaded the bus, we had a clear view of one of GAP's roller coasters. It was a rather frightening sight with its riders screaming and their legs dangling as they are whipped around, twisted about and turned upside-down! hohoboy.

Even tho there were only like 3 kids in the group, everyone looked pretty excited. I think I was even skipping to the entrance.

We made sure to ride every ride that looked like it could make us pee our pants...along with some good ol' fashioned classics like the merry-go-round.

I can say with confidence that I am a new fan of the roller coaster. I say "new" because I don't think the rollercoasters I've ridden at the 50th State Fair or the Punahou Carnival quite measure up to the ones I've ridden here.

After about 5 hours of awesomeness, we left with our pants still dry,... but totally pooped. Most of us knocked out during the ride home. Greenland Amusement Park, you get a high five :)

Woah, u just blew my mind.

Guys, if you ever get the chance to see these guys -DO IT.

http://www.blackviolin.net/
2 violinists + 1 turntablist = AWESOME

They came and did a FREE show for us in lil' ol' Sasebo... after the trio thoroughly blew everyone away, I think it's safe to say that everyone felt like they should have paid. Which would explain why they sold out all their CDs that night.

(Geez, sure wish that guy took a better picture of the trio rather than focusing on us!)

Snowcone for Gir

When we first moved here last January, we thought it was crazy cold! Taking Gir outside was quite an ordeal. Every "Gir-ing" meant piling on layers of clothes and trying to keep your teeth from chattering -Daniel and I would always bargain with eachother to see who would have to take him out. The most it ever snowed last year was just a trickle -enough to see the very tops of the mountains turn speckly white. The locals here say that the winters here get cold enough to snow -but rarely ever does!

With that said, this past weekend made Sasebo history. It snowed 4 inches :) On Saturday we took a snowboarding trip to Tenzan. On a normal day, it takes about an hour and a half drive to get there. Even with the soft, steady fall of snow all morning, we got there right on schedule. Tenzan was pretty awesome...since it constantly snowed, the slope was pure powder. Every spill was just lovely! Imagine, if you will: Speeding... and then wobbling out of control... and then crashing ...into pure fluff! yay! Coming back, however really sucked. The snow had forced the main highway to close so we ended up in a gridlock on backroads. The drive back took 4 and a half hours! On the way, an unlikely beacon of hope lit us up...it was a 7-11 (yep, we have those here!)

Aaaanywho, when we finally got back, we saw that our car was covered in snow. While our parking neighbor grumbled, sweeping the snow off his car, we were laughing and taking pictures!
The drive home was a bit worrisome (We didn't have snow tires or chains and we lived up a steep, windy hill) but we were really excited to get home and take gir out to see the snow. We took him the park across the street. The park was all white. At first gir was a little nervous about all the white stuff. But then all of a sudden, something in him clicked and he started prancing about and bouncing around like Tigger!

It snowed all night so park was whiter and fluffier the next morning. Lucky for Gir, his good friend Chiro (a Shiba) and his owner, Takeharasan came out to play. They chased eachother around like crazy in the snowy field. We also discovered that Gir has a thing for demolishing heaps of snow and eating it.

Well that's it for our Snow-venture! The rain came and washed away most of the snow. All that's left is just a few slushy piles of snow here and there. I made sure to stomp on as many as possible before I got home -so fun das why!
And with that I shall leave you with a couple of fishing trip pictures of gir. It was really cold out and Gir was shivering so I let him wear one of my jackets -looks good yah?

Oh, and not to be outdone, here's a random picture of miu under a folded towel -Cheers!

New Year's Eve in Fuk's!

Hey hey my fellow friends and familia!

Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu!
(That's: Happy New Year!... of course, I'm sure you would have guessed it even if you didn't speakith japanese)

So while it's still "fresh-ish" in my head...or at least most recent, I will start with our first New Year's Eve celebration in Japan :)

Before our AWESOME plan came to fruition, we were likely going to celebrate ringing in the new year at Huis Ten Bosch (a dutch theme park -In Sasebo? yes. weird, I know.) On new year's eve, pretty much EVERYONE in Sasebo goes there. I hear they have an amazing fireworks show. And from what I heard from Mizu (Her first name is Sarah but we have 2 Sarahs in our department so she told us we could call her Mizu...ANYWHO...) co from Hawaii just today "Oh man, it's like a hundred times better that Ala Moana's!" woah. I no can believe.

I GOTTA see that! So that's prolly what we'll be doing next year. But let's talk about what we did for THIS year!

Daniel , me and 4 new friends (The OTHER Sarah, 2 Johns and a Matt) rented a van and embarked on a journey of partying in the urbanest, hippest city in Kyushu...Fukuoka!

Me and Sawah (nickname!) had to to work that day, so everything was back-to-back! Took Gir to the kennel in the morning -we didn't know how many hours we'd be away in Fuk (That's "fook" for those of u who think otherwise!) and Gir's bladder can only hold it so long! Then Sawah and I spent the work day cranking out a bunch of jobs that needed to be completed before New Year's Day.

Then at 3 (cool boss let us off early) I bolted out the door, picked up Daniel and sped home to feed Miu. (We figured Miu would be better off at home) Got dressed, grabbed everything I thought I might need (which is ALWAYS far too many things) and sped back to base to meet our friends. By 4, we were all in the van, with Wu Tang Clan blasting on the CD player and heading for Fuk!

And ladies, don't try this in van: Putting on makeup in a van on the highway is at a Difficulty Rating of I'd say 9. Perhaps I'm not well enough practiced in the art, but dayum! I swear, everytime it SEEMED like the van was moving smoothly, I'd cautiuosy start applying a little eye liner and *gatunk* ...yeah. liner everywhere =not lovely. Lesson learned.

So after an hour and 20, we made it to Fuks...at this point we were pretty excited! We even found a overnight parking for 1000 yen -not bad for the city! The first thing we ALL had to do was go to the bathroom! Right there, just a few feet from our stall, the parking complex had a set of really nice bathrooms -I love this town! And then we were off to find La Boheme! We had no trouble finding the place. All we had to do was ask where the apple store was -it was in the same building! Oh yes indeed, the Apple Store... this place is going to be awesome. Here's their website in case ur curious: http://www.qualita.boheme.jp/en/Tenjin/home/location

I gotta say, this night could not have been set up better. The people we were with were all good fun, super cool folks and this place we were headed for was charging only 4000yen for All-you-can-eat-AND-drink for a ridiculous EIGHT hours! (6pm to 2 am) Gee willackers! We were the first ones there so we picked out the perfect upper corner spot in the lounge. And oh yes, as soon as our home base was set up, we got started! Poor La Boheme, we really took advantage of the buffet and free drinkies. The buffet refills would not come quick enough -we were cleaning it out faster than they could replenish! But hey, what can you expect with 6 hungry americans? ;D After the place started filling up, we were still the only table with pitchers of cocktails and beer! At one point, the waiter brought the food to us first before bringing it to the buffet table! But then they got all freaky exotic with the food and brought out stuff like spaghetti with spicy fish egg sauce :\ I think that was our downfall. We stopped eating but kept drinking.

By 11:30, we were all pretty toasted. Conversations got sillier and the music seemed to get louder. Speaking of music, they played some pretty decent stuff... a lot of hip hop, some dancehall, some old skool stuff,.. and Christmas songs? hoo boy. There was one hour where the DJ kept playing a marathon of dorky Christmas songs -not the fun, classic stuff, but the Backstreet Boys/98 degrees kine :\ errr...me no likey. The group sent me the "native speaker" to ask the DJ to play something,..ANYTHING other than this stuff. There were 3 DJs behind a tiny table that just barely fit 2 turntables and a mixer (I think that's what u call it). They happily accepted my request and played some T.I (which Matt totally dug)

By the end of the night, our party increase by 2. We attracted a mellow, big guy named David who is currently teaching english in Korea. And a girl named Bessi (who I think is one of the Johns' friends.) I don't think any of us knew much about her, but it didn't stop her from getting silly with the rest of us!

They even had prize drawings too! Daniel won a bottle of champagne... we gave it to Sawah since she loves the stuff more than anyone. But everybody got served free champagne and sake at midnight anyway! And there we all stood with our fancy glasses, watching a giant screen suspended above the bar, blipping bright pink bubble numbers...counting down from 10...9...8....

Where's Daniel? ...3..2...1!!! YAY!!! Akemashite Omedetou! We hugged a lot of strangers that night :) But where did Daniel go? There he was, stumbling down the short flight of steps in front of me, after spending the final seconds of '08 in the bathroom! *sigh* oh well!

After that we decided to try and head over to the next place -maybe a dance club... but as we walked aroud, we stumbled across a crowded shinto temple right smack in the middle of the city! It was all lit up and lined with vendors selling food, fortunes and good luck charms. We all knew we just HAD TO shake that lound clankety bell and make that wish! I even bought a keychain with a tiny horse carved out of wood. Sawah and John bought white protection arrows.

After that, we were hungry!... Crazy yeah? considering we had all-you-can-eat pretty much all night! So we stumbled into a popular japanese restaurant called Joyfull. Personally I'm not a fan of the place, but it's main appeal is it's open 24hrs..oh and it's cheap! I had myself a katsu curry dish...pretty spicy, but much to my surprise, tastier than I had expected :) Maybe I was desperate? who knows. But it made me burp a bunch of times within the next hour... that wasn't so pleasant. We all crashed out in the van...then Sawah (the superwoman) said she was okay to drive and drove us all back to Sasebo. It was about 5:30 and snowing when we got back. It was so pretty, but crazy insane cold! We quickly drove to the kennel, retrieved our Gir, and went home to thaw and knock out till 2 in the afternoon :)

Happy New Year!

Snow & Yosakoi-ing

It's been nearly a year since we came to Sasebo and we hadn't ONCE experienced snow. The folks here say that it's rare for it to snow here -even tho it gets so darn cold! But lo and behold, on Daniel's birthday, it snowed! I know he was pretty amused, but I was absolutely thrilled!

We had already decided a few days before that we were going to drive over to Fukuoka on his birthday to check out what is said to be the biggest (and quite possibly, the only) snowboarding store in Kyushu. The journey was definitely not what was expected. With the light, gentle snow sparingly trickling down in Sasebo, we thought the drive would be worry-free. But BOY did we worry! As we drove further away from Sasebo and closer to Fukuoka (upper Kyushu), the snow fall grew heavier and the flakes got BIGGER! So we took a break at a rest stop to stretch out and frolic (okay, maybe the frolicking part was just ME.) Till that point, I had been driving and it was time to switch. Despite the worrisome snow falling on us on the road, it was beautiful! The hills alongside the highway had snow-tipped pine trees. But when we finally got there, we forgot about the scenery and were stoked to git'ta shoppin'! The store is called Power's Surf and Snowboarding and once we walked in, we were in awe... this place had everything!

But then we looked at the price tags :\

Yikes. Sooooo expensive.

They even had some Hawaii brands! -which was weird.. but of course they were like 3x the normal price. And so after browsing the shop for about 20 minutes with our mouths open, we decided to leave empty-handed. Since Power's was in a big shopping mall, we took it upon ourselves to explore a bit. Even after all of that tho, we still left empty-handed. *sigh* oh well! And so we labeled the day as a good "sightseeing" adventure.

Feeling rather unfulfilled, the minute we got home, we hopped on the computer and ordered complete snowboard sets from http://www.the-house.com/

Then the weekend after, we went snowboarding in Tenzan. It's a ski/snowboard run about an hour-and-a-half from Sasebo (damn, why does everything have to be so far away?) My friend Sarah took us there -she's CRAZY about snowboarding. She often jokes that if her BF of two+ years made her choose between him and snowboarding, she'd just tell him "K' Bye." She laughs when she says this, but then she says in a slightly more serious tone, "But he knows better than to make me choose..."

Anywho, snowboarding was the best! The last time we snowboarded mustve been like 5 years ago.. and it was only for a week in Whistler!

So anywho, at Tenzan, I was worried that I wouldve forgot how to board, but yay for me, I still remembered! Even odder, I think I had better control than when I was in Whistler! How can this be? Now I absolutely can't WAIT for our snowboarding gear! I think it's going to arrive next week! *crossing fingers*

And while we're on the subject of "New & Fun Things" I also joined a Yosakoi team! It's crazy how I ended up joining too. Remember that bar I talked about a while back -Yakkyugushi? I think this was my pre-blog days. Anywho, there are a couple of really sweet girls who work there and since we go there every so often, we made friends with not only the owner, but them too :) One day, we asked the girls what they like to do in Sasebo in their spare time, and while others said tennis, shopping or whatever, one girl Mami (24 years old) said Yosakoi.

I didn't even know what Yosakoi was at the time (this was pre-tokyo) and I couldnt really understand the concept. But then I guess while we were in Harajuku, watching the Super Yosakoi, Daniel remembered me saying "Woooow, that looks like so much fun! I want to do that!" So then, a couple months later, when we went back to our favorite bar, a drunken Daniel asked Mami if her team would be open to new members, not only that, a gaijin (foreigner) member -How embarrassing! Anywho, Mami asked me to make sure I was interested -which I totally was! and she said she would ask her team. The following week, I found myself surrounded by local japanese people -dancing! And I'm their first gaijin member! The team, Ikiijyu, doesn't have a video on youtube so here's one that I thought looked most similar to their style:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvHVAbwQEHc

Everyone is good fun... and I am getting PLANNY practice in speaking japanese!

ps. Sorry there's no pictures in this blog but I hope it was still worth the read!