There I was just minding my own business on my laptop in my room when some clown decides to shake the whole damn building…
Nevermind, that was definitely an earthquake!
The yellow ring on the last map is my approximate location, I can actually see the epicenter from my dorm window. We got a nice 3 or 4 second shake, not enough to worry anybody but more than enough to get your attention.
Kazu and I are competing in a bass fishing tournament on our favorite lake on June 18th. As such, we now of course must practice as much as possible, heh heh. So under the guise of disciplined and diligent tournament preparations we blew off work and headed back to the lake on Wednesday.
Saturday rolled around and it was time to blow off some steam, so the usual suspects were rounded up and plans were drawn. It was going to be a typical sushi & karaoke outing, but with a twist – we were going to visit a brand-new SCBR that had opened a few kilometers west on the same road as the one we usually patronize… bit of foreshadowing here for you: we were not going to be disappointed.
Perhaps two or three weeks ago Jessica, the Taiwanese Representative of the YonKaiChiimu, came to my room USB drive in hand in search of photos chronicling “American life.” After ensuring that there weren’t any pictures she could find that might get me arrested, I left her alone with my vast and bizarre array of digital camera photos that I’ve taken while traveling hither and yon in the past 3 or 4 years. When asked why she needed said photos she mumbled something about an exhibition or some other such nonsense. Frankly, I wasn’t really listening…
So you can imagine my surprise when a week ago people I ran into on campus started telling me that they really enjoyed my pictures, or alternately, that they had spotted me in “the exhibition.”
So I ran into Kazu in the halls of AP House Thursday night around 11pm or so… and to make a long story short he breathlessly invited me to go fishing the following morning at an absurd 4am.
What sort of advantages Kazu seeks to earn by departing at such unearthly hours are unbeknownst to me. Perhaps he thinks, in that twisted mind of his, that if we arrive early enough we’d actually be able to simply pick the bass up out of the water, such would be the depth of their slumber.
Who knows… In any case, never one to pass up an opportunity to abandon work and embrace the nirvana of watery pursuits, I accepted.
Saturday I returned to the Oita “Big Eye” Stadium to join the blue maniacs and wildly cheer on the Oita Trinita for another two hours. This time Satoshi, Jane, and Jessica had other things to attend to – or simply just didn’t want to sit next to a screaming idiot for that long again so they were scratched. However, I did manage to talk Michelle (my RA / buddy) into going and the adventure was on!
Let me begin by reiterating that these recordings ARE NOT ME PLAYING. Having said that, I present to you four excellent tracks from a cd that came with a shamisen songbook I recently purchased. I must also point out that what you are about to hear is not the style of shamisen I am currently studying with Ishikawa-sensei.
