Turning the big 3-Oh with big, half-naked guys?

Yep, I dunno what's more shocking: turning thirty or seein' big, nakey (nearly) guys wrastle! I'd like to think of it as a tie.

But first, I absolutely MUST share with you the day before my birthday. Since my birthday shares the same day as a holiday (Veteran's Day), and it fell on Tuesday, I intended to take Monday off. I mean hey, four day weekend man! But Daniel convinced me to take the Friday after Thanksgiving off instead. He reinforced it by saying, "Whattr u gonna do with Monday off anyway? you're prolly just going to stay home, laze away and work on your blog..." Oh how right he was! He pretty much nailed it right on the head ;)

The thought of having a full day to do absolutely nothing sounded divine! But then the thought of having the day off after consuming an ungodly amount of turkey and stuffing sounded absolutely neccessary!

Anywho, with that said, I went to work on Monday. It was like any other day... until

the lady with the flowers and balloon came. Me, thinking this was a mistake asked the lady if she was sure it was for me. In her best Engrish, she said, "

Are you Matsuosan? [I nodded]... den deesu for you!" I could feel the heat spread throughout my face, I knew it was all red.. I just KNEW. My co's, watching the whole ordeal, confirmed it as they laughed :\

I opened th

e attached card: "Happy Birthday to you! From your hubby" Awww how sweet... but wait a minute,.. this isn't Daniel's handwriting! This left me with some questions. I called Daniel...

[me:] "Hi babe, thanks for embarrassing me at work! Nah nah, thank you for the flowers, you totally caught me by surprise."

[him:] "Yah, that's why I really wanted you to go to work today! That woulda sucked if you took the day off!"

[me:] "Ohhh okay, well you did a good job convincing me.. but hey, what's with the card? It's not even in your writing!"

[him:] "Oh, yeah, so what's it say?"

[me:] Hu-whutt?! you don't even know what it says?

[him:] "Uh.. well, I just told her I'm your husband...So what's the flowers look like?"

[me:] WHAT?!?!?! DANIEL! You didn't even pick out the flowers? What about the balloon?"

[him:] "Balloon? Oh yah, that's right, they said if I paid a little extra I could get a balloon to go with it."

[me:] DANIEL! Damn dude,.. so what part were you involved in all of this?"

[The doodoo head:] "Uh,.. well I asked them to put some purple flowers innit cause you saw that field of purple cosmos at the park on our last field trip and you said they were really pretty..."

[me:] Awww Oooookay, at least you referred to SOMETHING I said.. that's pretty sweet for you to remember...

[him:] "Yeah, see, I'm sweet! But fo reals, they make it so easy! All I did was call them and tell them I wanted flowers and where I wanted them to go and they just picked out everything! I didn't have to really do anything! All I had to do was give them my credit card num...."

[me:] "Ahem, daniel...DANIEL! Just shut up and say, 'I'm glad u like them, Happy Birthday.'"

[him:] "Oh okay, Happy Birthday ~luv you!!"

*sigh*

Anywho, my co's were really sweet too, They sang happy berfday to me with big, lit-up 3 & 0 candles atop a choco-banana cake. It was pretty tasty too! Light and fresh..I helped myself to two pieces. Holy shit guys,.. I'm 30! But as I sit here, with my 30-year-old fingers typing up this blog, I vow to all of you that until the day I die, I will proudly state my real age to anyone who asks. Of course not without asking the asker how old I "look" first! On that note, judging just by my writing ability, I'd say I'm about 13 ;D

Onward to Sumo!

Sumo is actually a whole lot more historical and respected than I ever imagined! but I wont go into the historics -you can find that out on Wikipedia ;) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumog/wiki/Sumo

What I can tell you is what it was like watching one live!

The tournament started from as early at 8 in the morning. Our tour bus got there at 3:30 in the affernoon. The high-ranking sumo wrestlers were set to start at 4 o'clock, so we came just in time to see to the best guys. I tell yah, these big guys are amazing. Did you know that every one of these guys can do the splits?! We watched a video of them training in their "stables" and doing the splits. Everyone on the bus was like: "Woah...no way!" Apparently, despite their size, they are extremely flexible, and after watching them, pretty darn fast too!

I thought the way they had it set up was pretty trippy. The sumo wrestlers entered the same way the public entered, so people were able to see each wrestler in traditional kimono (actually, I think they're call it something different for guys -but whatever) walk in with his small entourage. They really are big when you see them up close! Such presence!

There was even an opening ceremony for the high rank guys. They all came out and stood around the ring. Each wrestler wore an elaborate (and probably very heavy) mawashi. I think that's what they are called... That's what the regular thong-looking things are called.

For lack of better word, the "ritual" they do before the actual pushin throwin' is a bg part of the sport. The lower rank guys get right to wrestling, but the higher rank guys have up to 4 minutes of tossing salt and staring eachother down until actually fighting. The fight itself lasts for only 30 seconds or less. I dunno if it was our new found appreciation of sumo, or the anticipation of each fight after waiting up to 4 minutes... (maybe it was both) but it was actually pretty exciting to watch!

In the end, the winner of the tournament immediately does a solo performance. I'm not sure if all the winning wrestlers do the same show, but I was pleasantly surprised to see him use what looked like a japanese bow. His movements were so fluid but very controlled. I thought it was beautiful :)

It was dark outside as we left the center, and the wooden structure at the front entrance was now lit up and occupied by a taiko drummer. I wished I couldve stayed to watch him do his thing but our bus was getting ready to leave so I didn't even get a chance to shoot a picture of it. Oh well, that's okay, I was here to see Sumo ...so I was satisfied :)

Halloween in Japan! *ahem* ...and some big balloons.

Halloween weekend was quite amusing. On Friday, I went to Harbor View Club's (the "nice" restaurant on base) very first Masquerade Ball. There were three reasons why I was already stoked about this event.

1. I got to design all the media for it! This includes banners, flyers, posters and even tickets! I had free reign to design it however I wanted. My direction from Luis, the event coordinator was: "I want it dark and eerie, but elegant!" I even went ahead and designed the tickets to look like masquerade masks. People raved about those :) But they were quite the project -since we had to hand-cut every one of them. And for even MORE fabulousness, each ticket had 3 little crystals adhered to the outer corner of one eye.

2. Planning only for a small, intimate event, they sold nearly 100 tickets! yay!

and 3. The "ball" encouraged guests to dress up. Whether it be all fancy-like, accompanied by a mask -OR- wear a costume. I decided a "dressy-costume" would be best suited for myself.

Even though last year I had made Daniel a Daniel Larrusso (Karate Kid) costume and a Cobra Kai costume for myself, he REALLY wanted to be Cobra Kai this year. I didn't mind, since that would mean less work for me (since I'd obviously be making HIS costume too) and more time to do my costume! What kinda sucked was how much better he looked innit than I did! :\

I decided to go with a futuristic, space-girl look. And so I ordered a simple (more importantly, cheap) A-line bridesmaid gown and altered the heck out of it! Before I was finished with it, I had a skype session with my girls, Heather and Sarah. I showed it to them and Heather exclaimed "Oh! you're going to be Cinderella!" ...hrmm... not the reaction I hoped. I told them it was going to be a "space dress" and they both looked a bit puzzled. That's okay, that just meant I had to work on it sommore! Because no matter how cheap that bridesmaid dress was, if I didn't wear it at all, it'd be a total waste! -it's not like I can wear a bright aqua-colored bridesmaid dress on just any old occasion! ;) ...and so, I managed to finish my costume a week before the ball. I proudly called it the "Cyberella."

Anywho, onward to the Ball!...

After getting dolled up, (or in Daniel's case... just getting dressed) We both decided it would be best to catch a taxi to the event. When we got there, we met up with Cary and 5 local japanese friends in the lobby. Cary was dressed as a Rastafarian Car Salesman and everyone else had cute halloween hats on. Except for Yuki, she wore a cape and devil horns -which I thought was awesome for her -since the others seemed to be more on the shy, "un-costumey" trend. When we stepped in we were all in awe. The place looked awesome! Like Luis said, it was dark and eerie but elegant! In hindsight I wish I took pictures of the place, but I was more focused on talking stories, enjoying all the fantastic "horrors" d' overes, drinks and atmosphere. And I really DO mean fantastic! The hors d'oeveres were SOOO good! Among them were these tasty mini quiches, tender & juicy slices of BBQ tri tip beef (I swear I could not stop eating those -Sarah don't freak out, they were SMALL slices) chicken salad croissant sammiches, little sticks of teriyaki chicken, macadamia nut crusted chicken, some kind of lemon butter grilled fish, and a couple more I can't remember.

In the beginning while people ate, they projected the movie "The Haunting" on 3 large screens. Great idea in concept, but since most people were talking and eating, the movie seemed a bit too quiet. I think a subtitled, muted version of the movie, overlayed with cool eerie music, would have been a better choice. After the movie ended, there was a magic show. Well, actually, it was more like a guy doing silly tricks and trying to entertain with slapstick comedy rather that real magic. His starting trick was dropping his hat on his foot then kicking it up -catching it on his head. His ending trick was getting out of a straight jacket while riding a tall unicycle. Even with that said, our local Japanese friends were totally entertained! I'm guessing watching a live, american magic show (that is probably better suited for kids) was quite a treat for them!

As soon as the magic show was over, the costume contest started. But this wasn't one of those stand-up-on-stage-and-look-pretty contests. This was a dance-while-judge-floats-around-eliminating-people-one-by-one. Since Luis, the host of the party pretty much knew everyone, he decided it would be fair to pick a random person from the party to be a judge. The judge he picked was a japanese lady (looked like in her 40's), wearing a puffy pink tulle dress. I had no idea what look she was going for but I figured she'd be a fun judge -Boy was I wrong!

She proceeded to eliminate pretty much every creative and original costumed character on the dance floor. My co, Sarah, who came as a greek muse (the girl in white, pictured above) and her friend Dora were eliminated right in the beginning.. then Daniel got axed... then me. Waah. What she did end up with were 5 people/couples dressed in what cleary looked like store-bought costumes. A pair of pirates (there was a BUNCH of people who came as those!), a pimp & ho, a french maid, who's costume looked JUST like the one they sold at the NEX) a lovely "masquerade ball" dressed girl (who BTW is a friend of mine, so it's was okay for her to be up there..hehe nah, for reals, her's was pretty nice.) and a beer bottle. And who ended up winning? The Pimp & Ho. *sigh* I guess the japanese lady didn't "get" what we were supposed to be :\

...What?! Noooooo, I'm not all salty about losing! :P

After the contest ended it was "everybody dance" time. That was pretty fun.. until they started playing a string of salsa then reggaeton.. then country music? Hoo boy. We decided it was a good time to leave. Luckily the taxi got us back right at midnight so I turned into a pumpkin at home.

All in all, for a first-time event, it was "alright"... but on that same token, a few days later, our Japanese friends told us they had so much fun, they were already thinking about what costume to wear to the Ball next year!

On Saturday, I volunteered at the Haunted House & Carnival. Even tho we worked for 6 hours, it went by super fast. We had to quickly set up all the games, run the games for the hundreds of kids flooding in, then break everything down at the end. It was funny hearing all the kids screaming from the nearby haunted house. Some of the poor kids were too scared and redeemed their house entry ticket to play a carnival game. I manned the "Add 'Em Up" game: you know that game where you have to roll a bunch of balls down a slope into numbered slots? But instead of regular balls, we had ping pong balls painted as eyeballs :)

Anywho the coolest thing this weekend was Sunday's Saga Balloon Fiesta! After enduring a 2.5 hour drive filled with the constant, glass-shattering screams of two toddlers (both from the same parents) who sat 2 seats behind us, everyone was relieved and happy to finally reach Saga. Iwanted to kick myself for not bringing my headphones to play PSP.

After getting off the bus, we realized that we had to walk quite a ways to get to the food and souvenir tents. It must have been at least a mile or 2 long. When we got there, the booths seemed endless! An endless row of Yakitori, Tako Yaki, Grilled Corn, Yakisoba, mini candied apples and other fruits (which I thought was weird at first), Okonomiyaki, French Fries and so on...

We didn't want to make the same mistake of buying from the first booth we saw because last time we did that -and it sucked! And then we saw like FIVE other booths selling the same thing for cheaper and looking like theirs probaby tastes better! And so, with that in mind, we walked thru the whoooooole stretch. By the time we got to the end, we were starving! Daniel got desperate and almost bought a pack of stale-lookin' fries. Cary and I had to stop him and coax him out of this nearly devastating move.

Then there was an excited stir around us. It looked like the event had started. With packages filled with well-thought-out food choices, we headed back to a long open grass field that we had passed on the way in. We set up pikinik on a small steep patch of hill. It was pretty uncomfortable, but the place was crazy packed, so all the prime real estate was already taken.

We looked up and there were a bunch of hot air balloons in the sky, approaching pretty quick! Balloons would come down one by one to the field in front of us -it was then that we noticed the big bright pink "X" marked in the grass. We realized that this was an actual competition! The balloon that dropped it's marker the closest to the big X would be the winner of the fiesta. After realizing this, the event was much more exciting! The black balloon (pictured here) came the closest to the target and when he dropped his marker, (almost a bullseye hit) people were cheering, "Yatta! Yatta!" (You did it!" x2) While some balloons drifted slightly away from their desired course and nearly hit some of the spectators! -That was awesome too ;)

We even visited one of the balloons that crash landed in a different field. Even tho the fiesta is called the "International" Balloon Fiesta, we were still pretty surprised to discover a Hungarian pilot!

Cool event, it's likely we'll be checking this out again next year :)

Have a great weekend folks!