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!
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7 comments:
Snow and Yosakoi-ing? You should try Yosakoi-ing in the snow, prolly a good way to keep warm.
If they create a "Japan's greatest dance crew" and they play it on NGN, I promise to leap into the twenty-first century and purchase cable.
So do they have a different Yosakoi stylee in every prefecture? Like I know my peeps in Yamagata do that Hanagasa hat dance thingie.
I think it's like every Yosakoi team has their own stylee. When they had the Yosakoi festival in Sasebo there were teams that danced all kinds of weird stuff like there was one that did like an african, lion king-y dance and another that did some kind of sexy mediterranean style(which personally, I didn't really care for -it was a bit TOO weird)
I got lucky tho, my team's style is like a cross between Bon Dance style with some martial arts influence! While practicing, I couldn't help but notice how many similar moves I practiced in Karate! ...not to mention how incredibly SORE my legs were the next day!
Haha are you still a Netflixer? I miss that. Over here we just go to the theater if we wanna see a movie ($3 -not bad right?) or we just BUY the movie!
African, lion king-y dance? Hehe, reminds me of the time we used that elephant kite to do the Chinese Lion Dance back in the day. Dude, that real Chinese Lion totally got served. So awesome!
Naw, don't do the Netflix thing anymore, haven't been watching too many movies lately. I actually am buying a new TV, maybe a smaller Bravia. I kind of figure if I have a nice TV maybe it is worth it to get cable? No sense having a nice TV and just watching moobies now and again.
By the by all of my post responses from now on will start with a question. I don't know why, but I looked back at my previous post and noticed a trend. The trend being I am redundant and kind of lame ;)
Oh my god, the elephant kite dance we did kicked ass! Oddly, two of the major details I recalled were getting scared for a second when the "lion" got all hyphy with us...and the fear of getting tiny fiberglass shards in my hands from the rods! Oh I hears ya on the cable tip... dude, cable's pretty much the one motivator for going to the gym! -they got 60 channels!.. at home we gots 10 :\
10 channels? Anything in the double digits is pretty impressive to me. I live on PBS.
Speaking of PBS, I saw yer parents this weekend (I know, nice segue, huh. But if you think about it, Clifford the Big Red Dog is on PBS and yer Dad's name is Clifford, therefore it makes sense). I gave yer mum their Christmas present and she said how nice, but you don't have to worry (I guess meaning I don't need to get them anything). Then your Dad came up behind us and said, "No, you got to worry". It was the best thing I ever heard.
LOL That's my dad! Always doin' them "passerby comments" even tho he has no clue what's going on!
"What's so good about Koreans?" heehee
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