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Clearly I'm past the initial infatuation stage with Japan because more and more my posts are about normal thoughts and they don't sound like diary entries. I think this is good. Looking over old blog entries from last year, I realized I like my writing better when it's conceptual.
So here I go with an entry about bowling as a medium for expressing different personalities.
It sounds corny and maybe a little obvious, but nonetheless it's interesting. Last night we had a "Teacher's Recreation Night" where we went bowling and then out for a big dinner with beer. It was nice because this was the first real teacher party I've had. I was a little nervous, because sometimes when I bowl I barely break 30, and other times I get more than 130 and you never know what kind of a day it will be. It didn't help that this time it was with the teachers, most of them being 40-50 year old men who don't speak English, and that my lane cluster was two 40-something bookish fellows, a boisterous 50 year old gym teacher, and our 60 year old Majestic Principal.
It all began with the gym teacher making jokes about waiting for everyone (he was the first one to arrive, you see) and then proceeding to talk about what people usually do wrong when they bowl (I took mental notes). The gym teacher was to be my partner during the pair game in the second round, so his knowledge made me nervous, and I felt a lot of pressure to live up to the average I'd told them before the tournmanet. Still, I was probably most nervous about the presence of the principal. He's like a noble king - he's stoic but not arrogant, strong but subtle, and he always glides in wearing a suit with his hands folded behind his back. I feel like his most natural environment would be the crowded ballroom from Cinderella.
And when we started all of our personalities popped out in our throws. The Principal was still in his suit because he'd come straight from school. He picked up the ball carefully and with great effort on account of his age. He took it back, and released it with such grace that I was almost moved to tears. He set it down on the lane in one smooth movement, like he was planting a flower with one hand, and it was the slowest ball I'd ever seen. Yet slow as it was, the speed stayed constant and straight, never wavering from the line he set it on. He didn't always get strikes or even spares, but never in my life have I seen such straight and consistent throws. It was as if someone was pulling it on a track from the other side, because you just couldn't imagine that perfect ball came from someone's hand.
When it was the gym teacher's turn, he threw the ball down and I was relieved to see that he could get some strikes and spares but in spite of his earlier lectures, he was mostly like me, pulling very medicore scores. Even though his points were mine, because we were a pair, I was glad he wasn't breaking 100 and I was glad he wasn't doing worse than I was. We always love the safety of similarity, don't we?
As for myself, my first four throws were gutters. I was nervous and horribly embarassed and the ball always went to the same spot in the gutter, just to the left of the leftmost pins. Truth be told, this was exactly what I'd been afraid of all week from the moment they asked me my bowling average. I used to be pretty decent, but for about the last 3 years I've developed the habit of turning my wrist at the last second and swinging the ball way left, and I haven't been able to fix it. After those wretched first throws, I finally got maybe 3 pins and I was disgusted that that was considered a triumph. It was unacceptable, so I sucked it up and concentrated like I've never concentrated before. I wasn't going to give my body any other options. At that point I managed to absolutely cement my wrist...and I got a strike. (WTF right?) In typical Me style, from there on out I'd usually get about 6-9 pins, every once in a while throwing a gutter or a strike depending on how confident I was feeling. If that's not a perfect display of my sensitive and self-conscious but aggressive personality, I'm not sure what is. And afterwords teachers kept coming up to me saying I had a beautiful throw, so you can take that as you will ;)
Of course one of the bookish men showed the controlled confidence in his bowling that he expresses to me every day working hard at his desk. The wonderfully sweet bookish teacher was largely mediocre but every once in a while he'd throw a strike and light up the room. On the other lanes, Batman threw some strong balls which was highly effective sometimes but other times not and I could tell I made him a little self-conscious when I came over to watch. Ichi-sensei was glowing with nerdy confidence, just like he does in the classroom, and of course it gave him a good score even if he was unpleasant to watch. The frumpy, glasses-clad, house-wife-looking lady who manages the science experiences and whom I never see because she doesn't have a desk in the teacher's office, well, she'd throw the ball down the lane and it would meander toward the gutter, and then halfway down it would curve around and make a perfect strike - definitely not what you'd expect.
I only had two regrets. The first was that Yama-chan was in another room so I couldn't watch his undoubtedly adorable take-backs. If his office demeanor is anything like his bowling, I'm sure he was taking pages out of Fred Flinstone's book for his throws. The second was that the adorable geography teacher joined us only after bowling was finished, because he's the one who usually runs around the office making a hilarious noises like a strangled bear when something goes wrong. Or right. Or when someone is eating soba. I'm sure he'd be very entertaining!
We went to a yakitori pub after and I made sure to sit with people I wanted to get to know, out of the reach of the ever-translating English teachers, and I practiced Japanese all night and made a lot of friends. I can't wait until our "Forget the Year," party in December!
Oh, Happy Thanksgiving, by the way :)
So here I go with an entry about bowling as a medium for expressing different personalities.
It sounds corny and maybe a little obvious, but nonetheless it's interesting. Last night we had a "Teacher's Recreation Night" where we went bowling and then out for a big dinner with beer. It was nice because this was the first real teacher party I've had. I was a little nervous, because sometimes when I bowl I barely break 30, and other times I get more than 130 and you never know what kind of a day it will be. It didn't help that this time it was with the teachers, most of them being 40-50 year old men who don't speak English, and that my lane cluster was two 40-something bookish fellows, a boisterous 50 year old gym teacher, and our 60 year old Majestic Principal.
It all began with the gym teacher making jokes about waiting for everyone (he was the first one to arrive, you see) and then proceeding to talk about what people usually do wrong when they bowl (I took mental notes). The gym teacher was to be my partner during the pair game in the second round, so his knowledge made me nervous, and I felt a lot of pressure to live up to the average I'd told them before the tournmanet. Still, I was probably most nervous about the presence of the principal. He's like a noble king - he's stoic but not arrogant, strong but subtle, and he always glides in wearing a suit with his hands folded behind his back. I feel like his most natural environment would be the crowded ballroom from Cinderella.
And when we started all of our personalities popped out in our throws. The Principal was still in his suit because he'd come straight from school. He picked up the ball carefully and with great effort on account of his age. He took it back, and released it with such grace that I was almost moved to tears. He set it down on the lane in one smooth movement, like he was planting a flower with one hand, and it was the slowest ball I'd ever seen. Yet slow as it was, the speed stayed constant and straight, never wavering from the line he set it on. He didn't always get strikes or even spares, but never in my life have I seen such straight and consistent throws. It was as if someone was pulling it on a track from the other side, because you just couldn't imagine that perfect ball came from someone's hand.
When it was the gym teacher's turn, he threw the ball down and I was relieved to see that he could get some strikes and spares but in spite of his earlier lectures, he was mostly like me, pulling very medicore scores. Even though his points were mine, because we were a pair, I was glad he wasn't breaking 100 and I was glad he wasn't doing worse than I was. We always love the safety of similarity, don't we?
As for myself, my first four throws were gutters. I was nervous and horribly embarassed and the ball always went to the same spot in the gutter, just to the left of the leftmost pins. Truth be told, this was exactly what I'd been afraid of all week from the moment they asked me my bowling average. I used to be pretty decent, but for about the last 3 years I've developed the habit of turning my wrist at the last second and swinging the ball way left, and I haven't been able to fix it. After those wretched first throws, I finally got maybe 3 pins and I was disgusted that that was considered a triumph. It was unacceptable, so I sucked it up and concentrated like I've never concentrated before. I wasn't going to give my body any other options. At that point I managed to absolutely cement my wrist...and I got a strike. (WTF right?) In typical Me style, from there on out I'd usually get about 6-9 pins, every once in a while throwing a gutter or a strike depending on how confident I was feeling. If that's not a perfect display of my sensitive and self-conscious but aggressive personality, I'm not sure what is. And afterwords teachers kept coming up to me saying I had a beautiful throw, so you can take that as you will ;)
Of course one of the bookish men showed the controlled confidence in his bowling that he expresses to me every day working hard at his desk. The wonderfully sweet bookish teacher was largely mediocre but every once in a while he'd throw a strike and light up the room. On the other lanes, Batman threw some strong balls which was highly effective sometimes but other times not and I could tell I made him a little self-conscious when I came over to watch. Ichi-sensei was glowing with nerdy confidence, just like he does in the classroom, and of course it gave him a good score even if he was unpleasant to watch. The frumpy, glasses-clad, house-wife-looking lady who manages the science experiences and whom I never see because she doesn't have a desk in the teacher's office, well, she'd throw the ball down the lane and it would meander toward the gutter, and then halfway down it would curve around and make a perfect strike - definitely not what you'd expect.
I only had two regrets. The first was that Yama-chan was in another room so I couldn't watch his undoubtedly adorable take-backs. If his office demeanor is anything like his bowling, I'm sure he was taking pages out of Fred Flinstone's book for his throws. The second was that the adorable geography teacher joined us only after bowling was finished, because he's the one who usually runs around the office making a hilarious noises like a strangled bear when something goes wrong. Or right. Or when someone is eating soba. I'm sure he'd be very entertaining!
We went to a yakitori pub after and I made sure to sit with people I wanted to get to know, out of the reach of the ever-translating English teachers, and I practiced Japanese all night and made a lot of friends. I can't wait until our "Forget the Year," party in December!
Oh, Happy Thanksgiving, by the way :)
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