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March 16, 2005

So much fun, so little time!

I’ve not posted much lately so now I’ve got to much to post. I’m going to start it up again by backing up a bit. The following pictures come from the very end of February. I’ll post a bit more over the next few days, so much has happened and I’ve been more than busy, is that possible?! Ah well, all in the name of fun…


Ekiden Race down south
(February 27th 2005)
The southern town of Shirokawa hosted an ekiden race which consist of running an eleven person relay with various lengths. There was a pre-race party on Saturday night. I ran 800meters, but I’m no runner and it showed especially since my leg of the race turned out to be up hill! Thanks to our better runners the team came in 2nd out of a dozen or so teams.

John, my neighbor from one town over, came over in the evening and helped cook up some dinner before we went to Shirokawa. I thought I might throw in a picture of my kitchen since I haven’t gotten around to showing the rest of my house yet. To summarize John, he’s a sarcastic wit from New Zealand with a zeal for cooking and quite a few other hobbies including languages. I don’t doubt that this kid will have parapara (perfect) Japanese in a year or two!



The moon was huge on the way down to the pre-race party. We had to pull a number of illegal U-turns to get to a good spot to take photos but the night turned out to be to cold to hold our cameras steady anyways!



Most of the gaijin (foreigner) team racers and friends stayed at Sara’s house in Shirokawa. This is the scene right before everyone woke up and made the mad dash to the race after sleeping only a few hours and drinking a bit to much. Other than the all the beer the party also included dog piles, a cool card game called apples to apples, music, dancin’ and a dramatic wedgie.



Lining up for the closing ceremony. Please take note of Yacoub’s ultra-stylish blinding-hot orange shorts and contrasting baby blue jacket topped with calf high grass green socks…classic!



Most of the trophies are reused over and over. Winners keep the trophy for a time, attach a name ribbon to it and pass it along to the next winner when that time comes.



Our two lead runners, Gab and Frank, line up to receive our award. We were all disappointed to discover that we weren’t actually allowed to compete with the other teams but instead were placed in a special category. This is fine, as we didn’t fulfill all the rules, but they also didn’t acknowledge the fastest individual times despite that these two guys held the two top spots over all. That sucked, but isn’t an unusual way to be treated as non-japanese. Hopefully next year the organizing will be fairer!



One of the many parties after the race. Each grouping on the floor contained a different hot pot with a different soup cooking. Sebo is shocked to learn that he’s been in Japan for the past 7 months.


As often happens as the token foreigners we had to entertain the crowd with self-introductions. Everyone managed in Japanese and it was great to see that we’ve all learned so much!



Playing some step-child version of soccer with some local elementary school boys after dinner.



Shirokowa is really contry side and tucked up in the mountains. Almost as much fun as the pre-party, race, or after-party combined, was just seeing the beauty of this area!



I wish I knew why this water is so blue.


Construction and road signs taking a lazy nap in the afternoon.


Stopping along the road on the way back home.

Posted by theinfonaut at March 16, 2005 09:15 PM

Comments

Posted by: Simon at March 18, 2005 02:45 PM

Posted by: lindsay at March 20, 2005 10:49 AM

Posted by: Sebo (make that name stick) at March 28, 2005 09:38 AM