linterry's blogger

I was at a 2nd hand superstore today in Oroku, and to my pleasant surprise I discovered that they had a huge section with used electric guitars and basses.

Even better, there was practically nobody there and you could try any of the guitars for free... a clerk would grab it from the rack and hook it up into one of the many amps. So I picked a used Fender Strat Squier (20,000 yen), which looks pretty much just like this without the whammy bar



I was initially a bit intimidated sitting in front of such a large amp (some of them are really huge, like the size of a desk) and holding an electric guitar for pretty much the 1st time in my life. I start strumming and nothing comes out but the puny sound from the guitar's natural vibration. So I fiddle with the amp settings and as I gradually turn the volume and gain up, I start to hear a mellow sound and before you know it I'm hearing chords and notes comign from that huge speaker. It kinda feels like somebody put a microphone really close to the guitar, really weird.

The first thing I notice about the sound is that the sustain is so long compard to an acoustic. You play a note and it takes ages for it to die away. So I guess as player it's more important to pay attention when playing open strings and having to mute them before it gets too noisy. The second thing I noticed is how easy it is to fret an electric. Strings are thinner, neck is thinner, strings are closer to the neck. After playing classical for a month, the electric actually feels like a toy. I start playing barre chords all over the neck and they all come out perfectly. I can put my finger anywhere between frets and the note still comes out clean (on a classical I usually have to get right next to the fret). In other words playing an electric is extremely forgiving - some people say it encourages sloppy technique but I'd rather think of it as being more compatible with the average human hand. I feel that if I had an electric I could play so much more stuff without having to hear thuds all over the place from a lack of finger strength.

After 20 minutes or so of trying different amp settings (I unfortunatley didn't know how to get a distortion sound out of the amp, always wanted to try that power chord stuff), I eventually got tired of the guitar, unplugged it, and put it back on the rack. I really wanted an electric guitar up till today but after playing one I'm not so sure... I'm not too fond of the raw, unprocessed sound from the amp... it's too thick and undefined. All the electric guitar sounds we're used to hearing in professional songs have been doctored to perfection during post-recording. Maybe it's all about finding the right guitar/amp combination, or tweaking the amp... who knows... but I think I'll let this desire settle down for awhile and keep torturing my left hand by barring the classical.

So I've been in Okinawa for almost what.. two months and a half now? Haven't accomplished much, and life is just as indeterminate as it was after I left Taiwan a year ago. My gf's father condition is worsening, he's was admitted to the hospital today and things look kind of grim. Meanwhile, I got a few tutoring jobs, but they kind of suck.. all little kids from grades 1 to 4, and I have to teach as many as four kids at once. I'm more a one-on-one kind of guy (preferably with sexually mature females), but since I'm almost flat broke I pretty much have to take whatever I get.

Yesterday when I was trying to go to sleep this strange fear started to overwhelm me. It was kind of intense to the point where I was trembling a little and I just couldn't settle myself down. My girlfriend had to wake up and play Spider Solidaire with the lights on at 3am in the morning because I always sleep easier when she's awake beside me. It sounds really fucked up but I think this is one of the common symptoms of people with general anxiety disorder, because I've heard similar stories first-hand.



I have all these weird scabs on my hands and arms that don't seem to be healing. I don't know what's causing them but it's a bit worrying ... is it malnutrition or something? Hopefully it's something inconsequential like too much scratching from mosquito bites...

Music is keeping my spirits high. It feels so great coming back to a song I couldn't play a few weeks ago and then going right through the chords like butter with improved fretting and barring technique. Sometimes when I play the chords to a song like Karma Police my girlfriend will start singing the melody out of the blue and it just feels so nice to play music with someone so spontaneously. I'm sure playing in a live band must be one f*cking ecstatic experience...

I feel so inexpicably old. I still remember back in univeristy I still felt like so much of my life was ahead of me. Technically, more than half of my life is still ahead of me but it feels like there's nothing really worthwhile left, at least nothing worth getting excited about. I now realize that the only thing that really motivated me to go out and do social things (like finding jobs, applying for exchange programs, getting to know more people etc. etc.)... was the hope that someday, somewhere, I would be able to find a nice girl, get to know her real well, and have sex with her all the time. Well, that came true, and I had my one year ecstatic romp, but now it's 2006 and I have yet to find anything else to push me forward.

Libido used to my fuel, but now after living with my gf, it has become my prison.

Despite it being an unhealthy lifestyle, it seems my mind naturally gravitates towards finding the easiest way to just dick around with my gf 24/7. Sometimes, when my gf gets really upset about my complacency or how we seem to be going nowhere, I get all fired up and for the next few hours I'm like applying for jobs online and shit just to let her know I'm still in business... but once thing settle down we return to our usual living patterns like clockwork. This is intertia at its best. Like a tree that's been given a little too much time in a particular pot, I feel that I've grown roots into this lethargic lifetstyle and that any attempt to change that requires a monstrous amount of effort that I cannot generate.

OMG, who in the world is Bonnie Pink!?!?! Where the hell did she come from? I have listened to my fair share of Jpop over the last eight years or so and I have never even heard of her.. until today, when my girlfriend was rummaging through youtube.com listening to old songs she liked as a kid.

This particular song "So Wonderful" is like... 12 out of 10 on the "hit" scale. It's very pop and girlish, yes, but the songwriting, the arrangement... it's just impeccable. Catchy catchy catchy... just total maximum catchiness. Not to mention that the choreography is unbearably cute. I watched practically all of her videos on youtube.com but "So Wonderful" was definitely the unanimous winner... catchy to viral proportions, IMHO.

The chorus is so damn good it just wouldn't get out of my head. Since there is mysteriously no tabs whatsoever for Bonnie Pink on the net, I grinded out the chorus chords like a madman on the guitar (which is a lot harder for me since I'm used to doing that on the piano). A, G, D, E. Yep, that's it. All the magic is in those four letters. Just like GLAMOROUS SKY and SEASON'S CALL, chorus starts on the sub-dominant (maybe this is some "magic trick" for hit-song writing?). From there, it gets real special...whole tone modulation down, then circle of fifths, then a whole tone modulation up back to the tonic.

The incredible thing is... Bonnie Pink is apparently a real songwriter. Plays the piano and guitar, and even producers end up her giving her credit because she's so knowledgable about music production. Not too bad looking either...

She also goes on streaks of depression... one of those manic-depressive geniuses maybe? In any case, I'm become an instant fan. I don't get how she doesn't get more media coverage or hit the charts. Maybe it's her name?... "Bonnie Pink" conveys images of a clueless Californian "wut-ever" valley girl but she is anything but that.

I was watching the MTV World Countdown today and the first thing I have to say is: the Japan chart just kicks so much ass. There's a lot more melody and harmonic movement... and less mindless beats and repetitive synth riffs. Whenever they start showing the charts from Europe or America.... it's like this huge wall of rap and hip-hop... when they come back to Japan... melodies and beautiful chords.

One song on the chart today just took my breath away... SEASON'S CALL by HYDE.



HYDE really knows how to write beautiful, moving, choruses. He used to be the former lead singer for L'Arc en Ciel, and ever since he started going solo he's made a lot of amazing hits. The other song that comes to mind is GLAMOROUS SKY (sung by Nakashima Mika) which was the main theme of the movie Nana. HYDE wrote the song and performed the guitar parts.... that song also has a spine-chilling chorus... if that C#min9 chord in the 3rd bar doesn't move you, then you must be made of stone.



Of course, with all the songs I like, I must investigate the chords, and like I thought, these two HYDE gems don't disappoint. GLAMOROUS SKY is a little less special I guess, the chorus progression is really nice but the exact same C#min9 chord is used in the chorus of Utada Hikaru's PASSION. SEASON'S CALL however... is something else. Here are the chords for it... the Fmaj in the chorus is really nice... and the modulation between Bmin7 and B7. The original key is also in Bb, which is not a popular key for guitar... don't know if that adds anything butt it might. I guess the main trick is that both songs start the chorus on the sub-dominant of the key and then move up from there, which most likely gives it that "emotionally moving" feeling. Song-writing aside, for SEASON'S CALL I just love that wailing guitar effect in the intro and that huge monster slide, makes HYDE look damn cool too.

Well, if I manage to accumulate any amount of cash with tutoring, the first thing I'm going to buy is an electric guitar. I've realized that playing stuff on the guitar just has a profoundly different emotional feel than striking ivory keys on a piano. Chords have interesting shapes on the frets, the guitar seems to "favor" certain keys more than others (unless you barre everything, which is something I am committed to learning), and the amount of ways you can embellish a simple line with slides, vibrato and what not is just amazing. It's such a fascinating instrument and I'm sure I could spend so many hours just dicking around with one of those babies....

The other day while walking down Kokusai Doori in central Naha, I saw this band called "Tabin-chu" doing a live street performance.



... and shit, I was just totally blown away at how good they sounded! Vocals were spot on, bassist and guitarist played really well... it was so damn professional that even on an empty stomatch, I stood there for 30 minutes just enthralled by the performance. I don't think a single onlooker left the show after it started. Their songs were... what can I say... cliched but good, with a bit of sunny Okinawan flavor thrown in (official website; sample 1, sample 2)

I've been practicing on and off with classical guitar recently and I've gotten to the point where I can barre chords in the Amin, Emaj, Emin forms... unfortunately it takes me so much time to prepare a barre chord that it's difficult to use them real-time, not to mention that I don't always play the chord "clean". I am still in disbelief at how much a person has to contort their hands in order to play the guitar effectively, to play the same chord voicings on a piano is like effortless. Given the fact that barring is almost like a pre-requisite for playing 95% of the songs out there, the guitar really isn't a beginner-friendly instrument at all. Still, I have to admit the guitar as an instrument just has that "cool" factor going for it... don't know why, but when an Asian guy plays Chopin on the piano, it's like "not again....",

I was actually thinking about buying a used electric guitar... I've played around with a few at a music store in Naha and I was shocked at how much easier it is to fret an electric. The strings are thinner and much closer to the fretboard making it so much easier to get a clean sound. I never really liked the sound of overdriven or distortion guitars but I will take easier fretting with extra mayo any day of the week.

A couple of English schools called me back, I had to turn one down promptly because the guy who interviewed me was like this redneck from Oregon who spoke English in this screwed up accent and was just plain and simply suspect... the other one was this new school that interviewed me like two months ago... don't know if things will pan out with that one but I guess it wouldn't be too bad if it was a 1 on 1 with a nice Okinawa gUrL...

As far as labor work is concerned, it looks like the backbreaking field work has temporiarily come to halt recently... all that's left is the occasional plant watering which can take almost an hour since my gf's dad has like a zillion plants scattered across three different locations. I actually like plant watering though, there's just something nice about it... I always come back in a better mood after I finished watering the plants.

I just watched the old 1993 movie "Falling Down" with my gf and her dad. If you've forgotten, it's the one where Michael Douglas loses his emotional sanity during rush hour and goes through a GTA-style rampage of sorts through the slums of Los Angeles.

My girlfriend told me that when she first saw this movie in our last few months in Taiwan, she nearly cried because she thought I was just like the crazy guy played by Michael Douglas. She was worried that I was going to end up just as deranged and do something really stupid. Well, I don't think it ever got to the point where I'd start collecting SMG's and bazookas and firing them at random people, but I think I did have a similar "Falling Down" emotional collapse last year which caused me to behave rather... erratically.

Anyways, it looks like I'm on my way to recovering from the bronchitis and chest pains. Still hurts like a bitch when I cough. I've put like three years worth of cold medicine into my body over the last month, sure hope that's the end of it all.

Henry signed a 4-year deal with Arsenal the other day, for 110,000 pounds / week. Looks like I'll still be cheering for the Gunners for quite awhile...

We went to Senaga Island today... it's not really an island per se since it's connected to the mainland by road, but it is a retreat of sorts with practically no buildings and a nice beach by the ocean. A lot of people come here during the day to take a nap in their car, and at night sometimes you can catch a few ppl having car sex in the pitch black parking areas.



Rush hour on Highway 58 in Naha City



Military aircraft descending near Senaga Island


Far shot of the ocean floor during low tide.



The ocean floor during low tide... looks almost like a desert pattern.



A really screwed up fish we found beneath one of the rocks of the ocean floor... it's like... only 20% of it's body is there, the rest looks like it's been sucked away by a parasite or something. It was fairly gross, since it was still alive (barely) and kept convulsing randomly.


My gf scouring for living things on the ocean floor

So, the Champions League finally has a winner, and in case you're one the unlikely few who are still downloading the game (like I did, bloody thing took ages to get properly seeded), hit the back button real quick, cuz you'll find out soon who came out on top.

As an Arsenal fan, I'm really disappointed with the result, but let's face it... they deserved to lose. Even if they managed to scrape away a 1-0 win by turtling for sixty some minutes, that would not have been a convincing victory. If Henry converted that golden chance in the 2nd half and made it 2-0, then it would have been a totally different story. But for the most part, it felt like Arsenal just got lucky off a set piece (coming off a really iffy foul, no less) and then started hanging on for their lives.

Ronaldinho... Ronaldinho Ronaldinho, this guy is the real deal. He didn't score in this game but it was his pinpoint through ball to Eto'o that resulted in Lehmann getting a red card. Sometimes comparisons are drawn between Ronaldinho and Henry... my personal opinion is... Ronaldinho is much more valuable to a team because he is a creator. He makes things happen when nothing is happening (which happens a lot to teams) with his unbelievable dribbling and sublime passing. It's funny how defenders stand back from Ronaldinho instead of tackling him... they know just how easily he could undress them if they commit to a tackle. Henry on the other hand is a bit more of the finisher type... he does beat defenders occasionally but mostly his style is a couple of delicate touches and the quick finish.

Yeah, definitely, Barca deserved to win, they were by far the better club... Arsenal's defense was stubborn and probably with 11 men and Lehmann in goal they could have held on (I presume that's how they got to the final... with stubborn defense). That second goal by Belletti shoudn't have gone in, but that's Barca's reward for splitting Arsenal's defense clean in the 1st half and getting Lehmann a red card.

Henry moving to Barcelona... seems like the English bookies are already favoring the odds of a transfer. Quite honestly I'm not quite sure how I feel about him leaving Arsenal... I'm so used to seeing him in that red and white kit, and I don't think I'll even bother watching Arsenal matches if Henry isn't there. But I personally think he'll leave, just like Vieira, because I really think Arsenal is on a downhill slide... and Henry is just too world-class to be stuck on a sinking ship.

Just as my cough seemed to be going away, boom, I get struck with another two ailments: a running nose and some serious chest pains. I think the amount of time I've been sick in Okinawa is now exceeding the amount of time that I've actually been healthy.

The running nose I can deal with, no prob. But the chest pains, ow... it feels like I've fractured my ribcage or something from all those weeks of coughing because even the slighest movement will cause me to wince. If I cough, it hurts so much that I'm pretty much in tears from the sharp, jabbing pain. Thank goodness I'm not coughing like I did a week ago because if so, I think I'd need to be anaesthesized in a hospital.

Yeah, of course I wonder... why am I going through all this physical suffering for... the answer is pretty much that I don't believe in long distance relationships. Of course there are variances between couples, but general from what I've seen, long distance relationships lead to breakups more than 90% of the time. I don't know exactly how it happens or why... what I do know is that couples initially go LD with the best of intentions, yet a few months later their relationship is stressed as hell and they are one argument away from a breakup. It's kinda like those inevitable phenomena of life... It's hot -> you sweat. It's cold -> you shiver. You and your better half go LD -> breakup's imminent in two months. I'll just leave it as a black box phenomenon.

Anyways, to combat some of the misery from all the physical ailments, I've been playing a lot of music in my spare time. There's a piano in the living room that I play in the afternoon when few people are at home, and there's that classical guitar of course that I play mostly at night. The incredible thing about playing music is that it makes me forget that I am sick. I could be sniffling like crazy or coughing my guts out, yet when I'm lost in a Chopin Etude none of that bothers me. I also get the same panacea-like effect with video games, sex, and believe it or not, masturbating. It must have something to do with having an accelerated heart beat or adrenaline or something.

The last few days I've been working for hours on the fields, busting my ass off in hopes of gaining a few brownie points with my gf's dad. I'm not even sure if he knows I'm helping out in the fields. So far, he's never even said "thank you" or even acknowledged my help, but according to my gf that's just his personality. He did remark that I'm pretty good with an ARS saw knife and since then everytime something needs to be cut he calls my name directly. Otherwise, he pretty much acts like I don't exist. If there's anything he needs, he pretty much calls my gf 99% of the time. Hmm, doesn't sound too good. To be honest though, I sometimes look a bit lost on the fields, like that guy who's never played a pick up basketball game in his life and never gets the ball because he's always in a useless spot. Sigh. If only he was the kind of dad who'd like to have gigs of porn burned on a DVD instead of having trees cut down and sorted into piles... life would be a helluva lot easier. AFAIK, my gf's dad has never touched a computer even once in his life.

Anyhow, my gf and I got this afternoon off, so we headed out to the ocean to chill. We found one kickass place called Cafe Yabusachi. It wasn't right beside the ocean like the last place we went to, but it was close enough and the interior was a lot more modern. The food was pretty decent as well, and not too pricey.















After being out in the fields so often, I relished this opportunity to kick back and relax, so I grabbed the blanket from the car (weather's been a lot cooler lately) and dozed off.

We then went to a nearby beach and goofed off for awhile





When I got home, I found that my gf's sister bought some IKEA style PC table for my gf's dad. I'm pretty good at assembling these things, so I wasted no time in asserting myself and getting to work. When it was completed, my gf's dad was still half conscious, so I don't think he even knows I built the damn thing for him. Maybe I'm trying too hard to get his approval...

Today, at about 3:30pm, I decided to get some work done at my gf's father's fields. As I mentioned before, this just invovles a lot of cutting, carrying and sorting wood into piles.

I was not prepared for the sheer physical torture that was in store for me.

Imagine being out in the hot afternoon sun, wearing long pants and a jacket because there are way too many mosquitoes. Already without even moving a finger, your entire body is drenched with uncomfortable sweat, and every physical movement rubs the sweat deeper into the skin, causing irritation. Then, you have to carry heavy piles of wood, some of them covered by miniscule spikes that will prick your skin and cause it to bleed. Fatigue starts to set in real quick, and yet you have moved nothing but a few piles of wood. You look around you and it's just an unimaginable mess. There are long branches, short branches, thick branches, that all need to be sorted out in one specific place. The mosquitoes have already found a way through your clothes and have taken numerous bites, causing uncomfortable itching in the arms, neck and legs. All of sudden that boring office job in front of computer all day doesn't seem so bad anymore... at least compared to this. The heat continues to pound down, and you start feeling faint... yet you trudge on, needing to feel like you're somebody, needing to feel useful. It's a battle against how much physical punishment you're wiling to take and how much you want to impress everybody.

Yeah, that pretty much sums up the 45 minutes I was able to work out there. Unlike previous sessions where the weather was more forgiving and the work involved more cutting than carrying, this work session was nothing but a sheer physical grind. At about 30 minutes I started to feel nauseous and I started coughing out some phlegm. At about 40 minutes the coughing got so bad I sort of puked a bit of my lunch out. At that point I decided that it's just not worth it to continue. The misery was just too tall, too oppressive, too much of a fucking climb.

I get back home, and it's like, my brain has completely turned off. It's trying to contain all the frustration from the uncomfortable sweat and irriating mosquito bites. I just want physical relief, in the form of a shower and changing my clothes. That's what I do... and it didn't really feel as good I as thought. It was more a feeling of relief, like you have this unbelievably massive headache and you take Tylenol and it clears up somewhat.

I sit down in the living room, and even though it's hot and I'm still sweating, somehow, it doesn't bother me anymore. At least I can rest, have a drink, and basically shut my body down. That's homeostasis for you. Subject someone to pure misery for even 40 minutes, and he'll have a newfound appreciation for all the things he's taken for granted - for the next hour.

So I think... wow, my gf's father, he's been doing this kind of sweaty, uncomfotable, manual labor summer after summer for years. It doesn't faze him. He's basically conditioned to endure tons of misery, and that's why he can still be so entertained by boring TV programs. The difference between working out in the fields on a hot day like today, and sitting down in front of the TV with a ice cold drink in your hand - what can I say, it's just ginormous.

Someone like me, who's accustomed to central air, who's accustomed to getting wonderful Fukien dinners cooked day after day, who's accustomed to eating whatever he pleases at lunch, and plays whatever games he wants anytime.... just sampling that miserable manual labor is enough to blow my mind out.

I think, it's simple really. If you want your kids to appreciate the value of hard work, and want to train them to be endurable and resilient, don't give them a good life. Don't let them play video games, don't let them watch TV, and send them to the military when they're young.

Ok, now for something fun!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1566751416966025770

Totally.... awesome.... it's like watching a gnome breaking it down!

After kicking out my gf's sister and paying a monstrous 9300 Yen to clean out the fungi, I finally have access to a AC unit.

The thing is, I feel really guilty. I had to bitch and moan and complain. If I didn't say anything, I'd most likely still be sweating non stop and going through five t-shirts a day. I just don't get how the rest of the family gets by with such unbearable humidity.

In the shower, I was thinking... a couple of years ago, when I stayed over at Okinawa for the first time, I thought this was the most kick ass place ever. I don't ever recall bitching about the AC, heck, I don't even remember whether the room I stayed in had a functional AC or not. It simply wasn't an issue. The only issue I had back then was getting laid on a regular basis. That's all that mattered.

I feel so ashamed in myself. Like my whole life has been relegated to simply basking myself in creature comforts. I've become so fussy about so many trivial things. Remember how I wrote about my flight to Japan - how I was so happy that I had three seats to myself? I used to never care about that shit. In fact three years ago, in order to save like $80, I actually went on a much longer flight to Taiwan (going through Newark). This year, I paid $200 extra just so I can fly at night and not have to stay awake for eight hours on the plane.

Is this a sign of aging? A sign that I no longer have the energy and resilience of youth? Or is it because I've been living to easy a life for the last few years to the point where all the small things bother me? I really have no idea. All I know is that I am empirically far more crankier than I used to be.



Ok, to close things up for today, here's a totally random pic. Good timing on my gf's part to catch me waving my t-shirt in the air. Notice that my size 32 pants are drooping down... I've lost weight since coming here... two waist sizes to be exact. It's so funny how my body establishes such a predictable equilibrium - Canada:Size 32, Okinawa (or Taiwan): Size 30. I'd much rather be fatter, if anything, just in case being underweight was one of the contributing factors to the nightmarish insomnia I had last year. Anything but that again...

These last few weeks, it has gotten real hot in Okinawa, to the point where I am basically incapacitated from doing anything. I'll sit down at home, just focusing all of my attention trying to contain the annoyance generated by the heat & humidity. One might think "gee Terry, that's what the AC is for".... except at my gf's house, it seems using the AC is striclty taboo. You're just not supposed to use the AC except before bedtime because it's too wasteful. Not to mention there's a real problem with the AC in my room, the air coming out of it stinks like mad (must be some kind of fungal growth within). If I go to the living room and turn on the AC there, I am politely told to turn it off.

In short, my gf's house seems predestined to be a fucking sauna, and there's nothing I can do to change that. How about some AC relief in the car? No dice there, the car we always drive happens to be the one with a busted AC. Ironic isn't it, that the one person who is crying out for an AC is assigned the one car that doesn't have a working one.

Combine this unbearable heat with the fact that I'm still fighting a nasty case of acute bronchitis, and that's one extremely cranky Terry. My arms and legs are chock full of mosquito bite marks, and my arm joints are currently suffering from a really bad rash from all the sweating.

At night, instead of walking from one end of the house to the other just to get to the bathroom, I just open the slide door and secretly piss on the roof. How backwards is that. I would go downstairs except my gf's father has a lot of problems sleeping nowadays, and can't tolerate any distuurbances. So instead of having to walk like a ninja and feeling extremely guilty everytime I make a small noise, I just piss on the roof. You'd think after a couple of days it'd smell really bad but actually the piss kind of just disappears by itself - you can't smell anything and nobody can tell.

So here I am, typing this up not at home, but at Tsukazan shopping mall. You cannot imagine how wonderful it is to walk into a buildling with some fucking climate control. All of a sudden the brain clears up and I feel like I have more control over myself. Rational thoughts emerge again and I feel so liberated.

I really want to go home. But as I thought, I can't, not until my gf is ready to go with me. She's like a bad habit that I can't let go of.

I have an interview in a few hours at some random English school. As expected, the total enthusiasm level for this job is zero.

This is where I was at pretty much the whole day. As you may know my gf's dad is a horticulturalist of sorts who grows all sorts of plants and trees and sells them to god knows who. Since he's about to retire he has to return all the land he's borrowed, but before he returns it he has to get rid of all the trees he planted.

So that's what I've been helping out on - getting rid of the trees. It invovles a lot of cutting, carrying, and sorting wood into piles. Sometimes when I sitting there, baking in the afternoon sun with an ARS pruning knife in my hand, I think to myself "life is so fucking random". Just a few years ago I was in Taiwan with my own job, my own place, and I was writing kids music for a TV show. A few years before that and I was studying things like NP-completeness and graph theories. Now I'm sitting here on some remote island, in the middle of nowhere, unemployed, living with my gf's family, holding an ARS pruning knife and I'm cutting down trees and engaging in backbreaking manual labor.

Well, at least I'm not going crazy trying to fall asleep.



Manual labor isn't all that bad I suppose. Like normal exercise, you eventually get into a rythymic trance and you sort of like do all the work automatically like a possessed demon. So I guess it's fun once in a while, but if I had to do this every single day I think I'd go nuts. Everytime I come out to work in the fields, the following day I feel so spent and my muscles ache like hell with all kinds of cuts on my body.



This is the wicked basketball court I was talking about the other day. Nice colors huh? In case you're wondering, Harumi didn't show up. I was really disappointed of course, but then again, we never formally arranged anything, just a "I'll be here tomorrow at about the same time" thing. It's for the best really. God knows how deeply infatuated I get with girls and let it control my whole life. Better take any chance I can get to let things cool down.



This was a skateboarding/BMX area next to the basketball courts. I never really got into the whole ESPN Extreme/Tony Hawk thing, but I have to admit seeing people do 360 jumps on their bikes leaves a real impression.



This was at a random arcade on Kokusai Doori. This guy is playing Pop'n Music, some reflex game like DDR or Guitar Heroes where you push the buttons at the right time according to the music. The level that Japanese people play this game at is just insane. This machine is actually hooked up to a nationwide network so people can play against each other. I watched the match carefully - all *3* people got a string of 421 consecutive perfect hits. This guy ended up winning though, because he had slightly more "Cool!" Perfects than the others. Just insane.

Recently I found a total gem of a basketball court: beneath the highway passing through Haebaru, a real kick-ass person converted tons of unused parking space into a full-fledged sports area. For ballers, we're talking two brand new basketball nets with perfect meshes that still swish. There's also a skateboarding area, a pitching area, two tennis courts - and it's all free!

Well today on my 3rd visit as I just finished another lame game of 21 with my gf, this really cute girl comes in all by herself. Nice face, great skin, great hair, body a little on the heavy side, but she looked quite healthy and athletic in her t-shirt and sweatpants. You might think she was like a super-aggressive she-man, but that couldn't be further from the truth. She was actually more elegant and demure than anything else.

Anyways, she sits with the crowd for a moment before coming over to my court and politely asking whether it's ok to shoot around together. Just to let you know nothing was happening at this point because of couple of other dudes asked me the exact same thing and they were just coming and leaving as they pleased - so I didn't think much of it at this point. On a side note, Japanese people are extremely polite when they ask strangers anything. It's like they're handling a bomb or something, don't want to touch any loose wires or anything.

Anyways, this girl, she was pretty good - her dribbling was natural and fluid and she was hitting up an unusually high shot percentage (way higher than mine at least). I'd figure she must be in some basketball team because nobody hits shots that consistently without at least some proper training. but only after twenty minutes she just sat down by herself and watched other people.

I have to say in this day and age it's extremely rare to see someone that good looking sitting all by themselves doing nothing. Either they bring along some people to kill the downtime or they lose themselves in their cell phones sending another zillion text messages to all their friends. So I kept glancing at her of course, but she was mostly just staring out into space, zoning out or something.

Still, and I'm sure you guys know how this is, I couldn't stop glancing at her, you know, about a rate of, say, 5 glances / minute. I should also mention at this point that my gf had already left by this point because she had to pick something up at the cleaners, so that made it a little bit more fun.

About 30 minutes later, the people from the other court left, and the girl immediately got up and started shooting over there. I thought she was sitting down cause she was tired - apparently she was waiting for her own private court to open up. Guess she's the loner type. I personally prefer that a few other people are using the same court because it causes distractions which is good for training the in-game shot.

So there she is again, shooting all by herself, draining shot after shot after shot. At one point I just completely stopped and started counting how many shots she made in a row... 6... 7... 8.... 9... oops missed one.... and these are not cheezy take-10-seconds-at-the-FT-line shots, but off the dribble, off the drive, etc. etc. And there was elevation too, not a pure "shoot at the peak" jumpshot (that would have been too unbelievable), but a "jumping set shot" if you know what I mean.

Anyways, I was already sick of just shooting around, so I started entertaining the notion of challenging her to a 1 on 1 match. Of course, as you guys must know, this is part where apprehension and indecisiveness rear their ugly ends. Will she just shy away from me like I'm a scary monster? Will she think I'm a dork? Will she end up kicking my ass so hard I'll look so stupid? All of these irrational thoughts cloud the mind and make me hesistant to take action.

Just about that time, my gf came back from the cleaners. Whew I thought. It wouldn't look good if she came back and found me playing a semi-contact sport with another girl. But whenever I have no confidence, I use my gf as an advisor. "What do you think about me challenging that girl?", I say. It doens't matter what her reply is really, what matters is that I have someone to bounce my thoughts off of, which instills me with confidence, because if I get embarassed, I can just run back to her and whine.

So I do it.

I step up to this lovely marksman, and ask her :

"Sumimasen, shiai to ka shimasen ka?" (Excuse me, wanna play a match or something?)
"Un, ii yo!" (Sure, ok!)

I was surprised at her immediately positive reaction. No hesitating, no "umm, well, I'm just here for practicing" (this is the most common reaction) I could tell she would much rather play something competitive rather than shoot by herself. So I continue:

"Ja, nani o shimasou ka? Ichi tai ichi ka, Shoot to ka" (So, one on one? Or some shooting game?)
"Docchi demo ii yo" (anything's fine by me)
"Sou ka, watashi mo hontou ni nan demo ii yo, anata kimete kudasai" (anything's fine with me too, why don't you choose?)
"ja, ichi tai ichi shimashou" (ok then, let's play on on one)

Whoh, I thought. This girl means business. I was sort of expecting she'd want to play something more passive like 21 or something.

"Ja, watashi kara hajimatte ii desu ka?" (so, is it ok if I start first?)

Game's already starting. Good job Terry, you got yourself in a sweaty one on one match with a cute Japanese girl! How often does that happen??? Truly, Big Monk in Small Temple, and Japan is one of the f*cking smallest temples in the world.

Now, I don't remember all the details of the match, of course, except for a select few details. One thing, as I suspected, is that this girl didn't shoot well in pressure situations. I didn't do a good job of covering her shot but all that wonderful accuracy she had during solo practice just went down the toilet. I think she only nailed one shot in four.

Second thing, she was smart. She knew I was right handed, and when she guarded me, she would stand slightly to my right side, daring me to go left. She played aggressive defense too, couldn't do much about blocking my shot because of the height diff, but did a real good of staying close.

The biggest highlight though, was on the third possession.

With nothing but simple head fake to the right off the triple threat, she goes the wrong way, tries to get back but loses her footing and slips to the ground, allowing me to completely blow by her to the left. To be the fair, the ground was still a little moist making it somewhat slippery. So before going for the layup, I slow down and ask if she's ok. She says she's ok, so I finish the layup. Yeah, I'm not the greatest gentleman, but I'm not going to let an ankle-breaker go to waste without a proper finish.

(On a side note, this marks the second time I ever made someone fall down in basketball. I did something really similar to some Taiwanese guy in Basketball class in NTU four years ago off the triple-threat, but that was probably the peak of my pitiful basketball career. Now I can probably only make girls fall down)

The other highlight was when she totally pump faked me out of my shoes off those ubiquitous post-up turnaround pumpfakes. I had to admit that was really embarassing but she couldn't even finish the shot so that softened the blow a bit.

She totally blew by me on the right side with a change of pace at one point and nailed the layup.

I managed to land a few jumpers and a contrived left-handed layup since she started to overplay my strong side, leaving a lot of space to drive left.

Anyways, I got so tired at one point, I was basically hunched while defending and told her "ok, that's it, last point", and she was smiling of course, looking like she could go on for another 15 possessions.

At that point, I started to make conversation with her. Things like, are you on the basketball team, high school or university, etc. etc. Turns out she is in the basketball team, and she's still only in high school. She asks me where I from, I think to myself "here's where I lay down my stupid trump card", and I say I'm from Canada. She then goes "Really!?! I'm going to America on a transfer student exchange in July!"

Since I was looking for tutoring jobs, I thought this was a chance to get a (very cute) first student.

I ask her if she's looking for an English tutor, she's like nodding her head in excitement, smiling like crazy. So we talk about how to arrange meetings and stuff - I was originally hoping to go to some neutral spot like Mister Donuts or Starbucks and have a lesson there but it turns out she's still in high school and can't even drive, so that's out of the quesiton. Apparently she wasn't really looking for much more than a conversation partner because she was eager to just meet again here and just have conversation like friends.

So tomorrow, I'll go back to that spot and hopefully Hiromi (the girl's name) will be there, and it will be the start of a ... sexually-fueled (but deny that of course to public) "friendship"-oriented language exchange.

On the way home I have to admit I kept thinking about her. She was a really nice girl - a very simple personality and it reflected in the way she dressed (totally athletic) and the accessories she carried (pretty much nothing). Ahh, what am I to do... except watch porn with high school Japanese girls and try to release these incessant desires.

This video is really eerie, I just love the moods it evokes.