The rants and laments of Fred and his dad: Time capsule post

見たいな

感じで

的な。

I need smilies or emoticons in this blog. Hm.

\o>

Wait don't go, I has pictures!

Q-Gee Chai Kaj

Or, to be more correct, kyuugitaikai. Something like "great ballplay fights".

It's three times a year here, first term, second term and third term. First term ended around July, where the first taikai was held. Volleyball.

We did training in PE, and the guys actually got quite good at it.

We were split in two teams because we were many. Unfortunately, at the real thing, the other team won once but lost twice, so my team never got to play against the other classes.

Didn't matter, means I had plenty of energy to cheer. What's that? Embarrassment? Hah! I moon at your sense of shame!

Luckily I'd taught myself the lyrics to We Will Rock You a few weeks before, so I got to shout that out during the cheering for our

class's girls' battles. They completely whooped the other classes though. AND the other schools in Izumo, my city. It doesn't go national, though.

The picture there is teachers vs senior sports class, the overall winner of the guys. It seems it's been that same class for around 20 years in a row now.

In Japan, when you say when everyone's happy and cheerful, you

say "The tension is high". Reminds me of when my PE teacher tried to explain "rotation" in volleyball for me. "Low tension? What's that? Everyone's really dark and gloomy?"

So yeah, the tension did get pretty high because of the girls' wins, so our teacher wanted to take some classphotos. They're great, the students are actually smiling. There're three pictures, almost the same, but with three you can get three different views of each person.

Lethal vows

This amused me to no end. In Japanese, "martial art" is written with the kanji "fist", 拳, and "law",　法.
Read as "kenpou" when together.

However, kenpou, if the first kanji is different, can also mean "constitution".

I didn't know the latter until after that one history lesson.

It seemed to me that my teacher was going on about how Japanese emissaries went around in the world and studied martial arts from Germany, USA, Russia and the like, to bring back to Japan to make the perfect martial art.

Awesome. Heinrich of the German Fist. Signature move: Strudel Strike.

The triumvirate of cuteness 2: Thrice the mistake

I was invited by Anna to come to another ALT (Alternate language teacher)'s speech thang, about how to hold speeches, for Japanese students. So I pulled Nyuu along, and we by coincidence met the triplets from my school there.

I still can't tell Shiho from Saki, Saki from Risa, or Risa from Shiho. CAN YOU??

Although as Miles told me, their personalities are different. Shiho is always like "Hey!! What's my name (beyotch)???" if she sees me, and I always -got- it wrong, until I noticed she's the "scary one". lol, even other people who know those three think so.

Risa is really cute, and always goes like "Aaaah Fuu-kun!!" and waves wildly if she sees me. She's probably also the easiest one to keep a loose (non-serious) conversation with.

I haven't seen Saki in a while...

Akiyama-kun

Well, I had to join a club some time. Just don't want to go every day, and there's nothing that really pulls my interest for real. So, I joined the art club. The most free club in the school. Haw haw.

Which was a pretty big surprise to everyone in the school apparently, zomg attention!

I was doing a project with a girl from my class, one from the "level-headed" class, and a guy from .. oh, "level-headed" class as well. They're all really nice actually, the guy is one of the most shy guys I've ever met, but he has a kind heart.

The girl from brainy class is also nice, but I wish she'd notice/shave that moustache.... Nerd girls. Sigh.

And the girl from my class.. Ahaha. Oh wow, I have never met a girl like her. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to fish her.

She's just really special. Her name's Akane Akiyama.

Okay, it started like this. After a few days of working on the project (We were carving on some piece of wood, making a picture), I tried to speak to Akiyama. She'd said she'd like to have our history teacher as a little brother (Guy's around 150cm lol), so when he entered the classroom, I leaned over (Yeah, she's seated right next to me) and whispered "There's your little brother!"

No reaction. Ahe.

After school was over, I went to the art club room. As soon as I sat down around the woodboard where everyone were already carving, Akiyama speaks.
"Fuu-kun, I'd appreciate if you didn't talk to me in class." lolwut

"Why?"
"Because I hate guys! It's nothing personal, though!"

lol

wut

"So why can you talk to me here?"
"Because.. we can't do this without communication right?"
"Sooo, why can you talk to Hino-kun?" Hino is the guy from the smartyclass, although the girl is also named Hino, it's confusing.

"Because I don't see him as a man."

lmfao

Man, I feel sorry for that guy, but it's true, ahah. He just can't really talk to... anyone. Especially not girls. And he's one of the worst cases of otaku I've ever seen. Well, so are everyone else in the art club too.

Anyway.

It gets better.

In Japanese, there're different ways to say "I". Bunch of rules and explanation needed here, unless you've watched some animoo.

Basically, "watashi" is used by girls, and "boku" is used by boys, formally. Okay? Good.

Akiyama, female, uses boku.
This is NORMALLY okay if you're about 6-10 years old as a girl, but she's 16 and.. it doesn't make sense. So, I ask her.

"I guess it's a habit from when I was little."
"Why don't you lose it? People'll mistake you for a boy if they can't see you."
"I've had worse. I was confessed to twice in middle school, both by girls."

say wot girl

"First time, it was by a childhood friend. Second time, the person didn't know I was a girl."

Well have a look at that! She refused both apparently.

Oh, and if you're wondering, on the kyuugitaikai/volleyball game classphoto, she's right above the girl with a pink towel around her neck, in the middle.

Mobile HAL

I got a mobile phooone~

And man, it's awesome. I shouldn't really say how much it cost... But it's more expensive than a Wii, excluding monthly fees.

Shock-proof, water-proof, TV, Internet, mails, calls, camera, games, bank, dictionaries..

And it's red. MANPHONE.

On the lower picture, the scope-like thing you see on the screen? That's like, the back

ground visual. It's awesome, bunch of weird stuff comes out. Gauges, curves, statistics, maps, and sometimes there's text and numbers written, although it doesn't make much sense.

Like, something that looks like a city map, and "New Moderate" or "Greenshoal" is written.. I also saw "Distance to Mars 12m" once.

But yeah, I can totally bring it into the shower, hur.

Test week shot

Just one picture from a test week. You can't bring anything

but two pencils and an eraser into the class when doing the tests, so all the bags had to be left outside.

....English.

Click at your own risk.

I think I've said this before, but Anna sometimes writes on this blackboard in the hall, like an English question or something, and then you can write back in English if you want, anonymously.

I think some of the sports class guys came by or something here, after watching Terminator 4, apparently..

Shakou is the name of my school, well, shortened up. Taisha koukou.

Shoop da BOOM

Fireworks!! I went with Nyuu and my contact person to Matsue, biggest city in my prefecture, to see this "fireflower" festival.

Camera's getting shittier I think. Sorry about that. Meh, looks good from afar.

"The Quest"

And now for what you all have been waiting for..

Stuff about girls, love, etc.

It started out as "getting that girl", but I guess it's become something like "getting -a- girl" now, lol, or, "getting the right girl", maybe. Anywho, my netfriends just refer it to as "the quest" now.

"How goes the quest?"

I keep picking up new "objectives", though.. although in the end, I can only go with one..