Taiiku Sai!

Oh my gosh, today was so freaking sweet. First of all, awesome taiiku sai (physical education festival, or sports day) events that were even cooler than they were during practice all week. Add to that an awesome bento (Japanese pack-away meal) for lunch. Plus, one of the English teachers bought me not one, but TWO different kind of tako-yaki (octopus dough balls) makers, electric AND griddleYES! Then I paid him back the 100 yen (less than one dollar) it cost! He had got them at the festival bazaar, or I guess flea market, which is this really cool thing for which the students go around the city's houses and ask people if they have anything to donate,
which they then sell for really cheap and then the school uses the money for school activities and clubs. Sweet, right?! So, after that, I bought some towels for my natural face, upon which I then
received like 6 more towels for free since the bazaar was closing up and they were trying to get rid of things. Then, I asked if I could buy a Swiss Army knife and the woman just said she'd give it to me. MORE THAN ANYTHING!, I finally got to really help out and do a lot at my school. I helped organize all the goods for the bazaar yesterday which took a lot of time but was really cool, and I got to know the school accountant with whom I did all the organizing. Then today, I was able to get down to work and help take down tents and move a huge (like...pretty a lot...yeah that much) from the excercise grounds all the way around the school, then inside the school building, then up to the second story into some random classroom. So I felt happy and energized to be doing some actual work finally. It was great.

Oh yeah, and I also received these today.
The two food booths at the festival today, one for tai-yaki (red bean in gold fish-shaped dough) and the other for tako-yaki, had too much left at the end of the day, even though the tai-yaki place had already given a pack to the teachers room. And so THIS was the result.















No, unfortunately we did not receive trophies from the tai-yaki people. Instead, we got over 100 delicious, little doughy fish completely empty of organs (but maybe not a soul?) and full of mushery, tasty red bean. Ahhhhh. One bag went home with me it did.















I like being young, because you're still kind of a kid, especially to adults working at school, and I can excuse myself for being indulgent and taking a lot of food home after only being told twice. :)
















As I write this, the tako-yaki you now see on the top of that pile is gone, now in my stomachmmm.

My electric Tako Dome!
















Griddle Style!
















Smiling students















(yeah, green hachimaki)
(i think their class, maybe second year group 2...seventh grade group 2 that is, got second or third place in the festival out of 6 classes.)

Dancing students
















Marching students
















Fighting in a traditional game that recalls battling horsemen students
















Massive jump-roping students
















Also, holy shnikes...Beach House
is
incred
ible.

I love them.

So much.
All you have to do is watch this video and you will become completely obsessed with them. That's what I did at least. It's like there's some kind of spell in the recording that enters through your vision and lives in a room inside your brain.

http://pitchfork.tv/videos/beach-house-gila

Watching this made me (re-)realize that I really do want to spend a significant part of my life devoting myself completely to art and music, and that I've really been missing that, especially in Japan...which is weird because this is time I've set aside to just make a living and spend the rest of my time thinking of, working on, and experiencing music and art. So maybe I should just get into it and do what I want to do. I'm probably getting used to being in a different society with different norms. However, I just recently (re-)realized that I follow almost no social norms in the U.S., which explains a bit why I was feeling a bit frustrated at trying to follow social norms here in Japan. I don't live that way; I think it's more fun to twist or do away with social norms, adhering to a few things, like just being a good person to others (which actually isn't really that much the norm, is it?).

Really, I miss being weird and living obviously separate from most of the normal world, which I realized when I was talking to a really good friend and bandmate last night. So, I'm going to try to bring that side of me out more again. It's just weird when I'm in an environment I don't know as intimately as home. And maybe there's not as much a satisfaction with shunning it, haha. It's also weird being constantly separated from the people with whom I feel the most comfortable, and enjoy the most, being insanely weird and outside normal behavioral and communication patterns (...?...okay...).

But back to the video! It made me think again about how what I really, really want to do at this point in my life is push the boundaries of what I'm capable of, in art/music, by delving deeper and deeper into the possibilities within myself. Possibilities for freeing my state of mind, or exploring new ones, and going far beyond what is perceived as normal (or not perceived at all because it is so normal) to where that doesn't even matter. I want to live completely differently and channel it into an artform. And now I am really looking forward to being reunited with my two bandmates with whom I definately am able to do this best. Even though that won't be for a while, I can't wait. I'm excited to take this to the next level.

Listening to Beach House, Devotion, into Liars, Drum's Not Dead.