i had one of those moments thursday night...you know the feeling, where everything pressing just fades away, and there's just the now. i'm still kind of buzzing from it. after "work" and a superb lunch of yakiniku at a local hole-in-the-wall restaurant, i rode home and tried to take a nap. that pretty much failed. i guess i got my fill of sleep at the town office. :-/ i'm trying to stay away from massive amounts of green tea now that i've found out that it contains a metric buttload of caffiene, and i wanted to get through another chapter of my tcp/ip book, which is apparently a pretty powerful narcotic. anyway, i headed over to the town gym to work out, and, while the weight has some equipment, a good deal of it is pretty dilapidated. but i can't beat the price, so it suits my purposes for now. i'll have to see what's available in furukawa...after doing sets of bench presses, curls, and triceps extensions, i got a basketball and started shooting on the court in the gym. unlike the weight room, i have absolutely no complaints about the basketball court. there are two full length courts, and i spend some time working on my behind the back dribbles, just trotting around the court. at around 5:30 or 6, the town volleyball team showed up and started practicing, as well as the table tennis team. so i went over and played some takkyuu (table tennis)...the guy i played against, naturally, was a lot better than i was, but i am pretty rusty. he had the wicked spin going on with his topspin slams. and i used a really sweet paddle to play him, so i really had no excuses. i think i spent a good 3 hours at the gym, which made me happy. :-) anyway, on the way back, riding on a bridge overlooking the naruse river, i saw some boys on the bank setting off fireworks, so i decided to stop and watch them for a bit. it was just after sunset, with clouds to the southwest, so i could see the mountains in the distance. this made me really happy. :-) it was soooo pretty, and being the cool day that it was, standing there was just heaven. i just wish i had brought my camera...maybe tomorrow. certain things about sanbongi remind me of durango...aromas come wafting through that trigger memories of all the summer i spent in colorado. they comfort me, but they also remind me of all that is now so far away. i miss home.
upon returning to my apartment, i cooked up some spaghetti and watched _scream_. about midway through, i had a vicious calf cramp while sitting on my floor. guh. the movie itself is obviously a labor of love, but it totally ruined the suspense knowing from seeing the ads for the sequels that neve campbell wasn't going to bite it. still, the movie is pretty well scripted, with lots of nice touches (the reference to "wes carpenter", the way the movie broke a lot of the "rules" mentioned, the immediate death of drew barrymore's character...) i should note that the flaccid cover of "don't fear the reaper" playing during one of the scenes, although a nice tip of the hat to _halloween_, sucked. how could anyone *do* that to such a great song? i do think it needs more cowbell, though...i would like to point out that the moby song at the end ("first cool hive" or "anthem", i think...) raised my appreciation of the score immeasurably, in the same way that hearing "God moving over the face of the waters" at the end of _heat_ allowed to enjoy that movie a little more. from an e-mail i wrote, concerning _scream_: "it's one of those movies that's just there, i guess is the best way of putting it. it's kind of like _titanic_ in that you have this rabid mass of scream fans, who are just enamored by it, and when you yourself see the movie, you're forced to admit that's it's a decent picture, but the whole groupie, fan boy, "best horror film ever!!!1!" thing just leaves you feeling kind of hollow inside, just like the whole groupie, fan girl, "best movie ever!!!1!" thing does with _titanic_. one of the caveats of pop culture, i guess."
on friday, i spent the morning at the junior high stabilizing the teacher's room computer, with some help from the designated computer guy (a teacher at the school). i'm thinking that one of the teachers downloaded/installed something that undermined the integrity of windows 98, as i got a ton of blue screens of death whenever i tried to surf the web before. after reverted to just windows as its associated programs, though, there were no more problems of that sort. so i d/l-ed all of the available patches from microsoft (kludgekludgekludgekludge), then went and played basketball with the junior high b-ball club kids. around lunch time i came back, and, not being all that hungry, worked on e-mail for a few hours. the principal or vice principal came out and said i could go home if i wanted, so i explained that i couldn't use the internet for free at my apartment like i could at the junior high...upon coming home, i diddled around for a couple of hours before grabbing a shower and heading up to furukawa for the get-together of the local jets. after wandering around the meeting place for 15 minutes or so, i ran into a few of the people in the group. after everyone arrived, we proceeded to a local restaurant for food, drinks, and karaoke. schweeeeeet. i pulled out my best axl rose impression and hammered out "sweet child o' mine". guh. next time i'll take advantage of the special tuning feature that allows you to bring the key down a few notes. my larynx was pretty much hammered after that. the karaoke version is rather amusing, as it features about two minutes of actual singing interspersed with four and a half minutes of cheesy synthsizers imitating slash's rather banal guitar solos. and, before moving on to the rest of the night, let me observe that the lead singer for a-ha must have been a castrati or something...
after that, we headed to nam bar, where a sizable fraction of the group proceeded to get smashed. since i was pretty much out of money, i didn't even order a beer or anything, but some of the group i was talking with gave me the remnants of their heinekens, unasked for. there was even some discussion of old school rap, to boot, which made me happy. i also talked with a kiwi about rugby, weight loss, and injuries, whereupon i got browbeaten by him and this american jet about how the camradrie (sp?) that exists in rugby doesn't exist in other sports. just because i don't care doesn't mean i don't understand... anyway, the guy seems pretty nice (he's got a really cool sword, and he knows how to use it, and he's a fantasy fan to boot!), it's just that i don't take too kindly to being double-teamed and having opinions force-fed. but i overstate my case. after the nam bar, we headed to a place called captain t's, owned by a former jet who's been in japan for about 12 years, i think. there, i saw what my life in japan had been missing until now: sportscenter. drool. i talked football with an american jet, the keeper of the miyagi-ken ajet library (if you don't know what the various acronyms i toss about mean, don't worry about it) and a nominal kansas city chiefs fan. he hadn't really been keeping up with american sports since coming over, though, so i described with relish the past couple of super bowls. he was deeply saddened when i told him that derrick thomas died from injuries incurred in a car accident, though...after chatting for a while with him, i went over and played uno with a japanese women, who thrashed me soundly. eventually, i went to the library keeper's place to crash with a few others. after a trip to the nearby 7-eleven and extensive discussion on the value of sticking with japanese study, i basically konked out on a couch. this next morning, after more witty repartee and a breakfast of an ice cream sandwich, i was driven to the furukawa station by a quebecois jet and his wife, both of whom seemed really nice. i think i've really lucked out with my placement here...all the jets are super friendly, and not a bad apple that i've met yet. the rest of saturday i spent sleeping and reading, and today i finished a book i've been working on for a couple of months. i went to the town gym and worked out/played basketball, then came home and took a shower and soaked in the tub. thoroughly exhausted, i napped until 8 and then made dinner. not very exciting compared to friday night, but i'm satisfied with my weekend. and tomorrow's payday. :-)
been listening to: weezer, the promise ring (secretly the same band as weezer), moby, the pixies, public enemy, and pink floyd