Cherry blossom season

Sakura no kisetsu

Formation Drills

Dantai koudou

Year of Requirement Part 4

P.E. was separated into girls’ and boys’. Like I mentioned before, Classes 1 and 2 had their class together and classes 3 and 4 had their class together, but we were Class 5, so we had P.E. by ourselves. In American Suburbia, we had Girls’ P.E. in junior high school and co-ed P.E. in high school, and I really didn’t think it was that big a deal to have separate P.E. classes from the boys.

The first few P.E. classes, we had what was called a “sports test.” It was basically a physical aptitude test, where they timed you on 50 m sprints and a longer run (1500 m for the boys and 1000 m for the girls) and counted your pull-pus (for guys) and half-pull-ups (lame pull-up on low bar with your feet extended in front of you) and so on and so-forth. I did very badly on everything but the flexibility test (there’s a joke there somewhere).

Then, P.E. classes proper began. The guys did track. The girls...marched. No, seriously. We marched. We practiced doing “about face” and “march forth” and counting off. I was thinking maybe I was in North Korea or some other communist country where military exercises were part of the required curriculum. Or maybe I’d entered some kind of time warp into 50 years prior when they’d been part of the required curriculum in Japan as well. The P.E. teacher yelled at us if we were out of line. This happened a lot when we tried to run in formation, or turn in formation. I guess the final goal was something along the lines of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38-pBOUJ7iA

There is generally a fragment of truth in every stereotype. The amount of truth in lack of individuality stereotype of Japan was, so far, proving itself in its entirety in a P.E. class for 15 year-old girls.

What was really different was swimming. In Suburbia, swimming was what you did in winter because the school grounds were covered with two feet of snow and you couldn’t play soccer. In Japan, it was what you did in the hottest days of summer because if you tried to do anything else, you’d die of heat stroke (the gymnasium didn’t even have fans). Which was fine, I guess, but remember what I said about not having locker rooms? The elaborate technique involved in getting ready was off the charts. It involved towels stitched into elastic waist skirts. The one my mom made for me was chucked long ago, but I think I have one that I made for the Pumpkin Princess...

The big thing we had to do was swim 500 meters nonstop. I did this fairly easily, and when I finished, the PE teacher said “your swimming would be great for when the ship you were on sank.” Whatever that was supposed to mean.

I never managed better than a “3” (of 5) in P.E. It brought down my GPA.

The Decor of Dreams

Yume no interiya











Tiny Storm Trooper has got his hands on Daiso art canvas (100 yen each). Given his (somewhat one-sided) devotion to Tiny Vader, things should get interesting. Stay tuned...

The season for departures

Wakare no kisetsu

Here in Japan the school year begins and ends in spring, as does many other things. Tax season is in spring, and so is moving season. Last week, I ate out three times (lunch at work not included). Once as a lunch party, once as a dinner for a guest at work, and once as a farewell party for someone I've worked with almost all of my adult life. Time to move on and greener pastures and all that. I wish him well and hope he will visit soon and often.

I was hoping to run off the excess calories, but that didn't work as well as I'd hoped. I ran on Friday and today, 6 km each. I ran 8 km the Sunday before, and my body hated me until around Wednesday, and it rained Thursday morning. Yes, I know, excuses. This is why I don't think I'll ever run a full marathon.

I've developed a morbid fascination for high-traffic fashion blogs. It used to be that I had a (comparatively) healthy interest in them. They let me see pretty clothes for free (as opposed to shilling several hundred yen for a fashion mag) and if I looked long enough, I could find someone built someone like myself and get ideas on what would be most flattering on my middle aged body. Then, I realized that blogs seemed to have a life cycle. They'd start out as a creative outlet of sorts, run by people who had real jobs and real budgets and real lives and genuine passion. Then, people start to see how cool they are and follow them. Once they get a large number of followers, fashion brands and chain stores start to reach out to them and send them their products to review or include in their blogs, sometimes for a price. The bloggers, of course, are flattered by the attention and the (usually) cool free stuff, so they will include them in blog posts. Their original style and relatability (is that even a word?) deteriorates. Sometimes the ad revenue becomes sufficient enough for them to leave their real jobs and blog full time. When this happens, they will blog for profit. They will write about the products they are paid to wear and endorse, and they will post fewer DIY alterations and crafts (because sewing supply stores have limited advertising budgets.). The blog will more or less begin to fold into itself.

Meanwhile, the blog fans start to wonder if they can run a "successful" blog for themselves. "Successful" means lots of followers (and hence, potential ad revenue). So they try to get the attention of potential readers by posting comments in high-traffic blogs of  a similar genre. Thing is, you can't always say something interesting about a series of photos of the blogger wearing the same dress striking similar poses in front of the same building, so the comment will go something like "Love the dress! (blog link of commenter)." As will the 30 other replies to the post. Which is kind of silly and also kind of pathetic, but relatively harmless.

There are more disturbing stories. The most disturbing is the idea of credit card debt for blogging. Blog content for fashion blogs means new clothes and accessories. There are only so many photos you can take of the same pair of skinny distressed jeans. New items are a must. So some less cerebral would-be bloggers see their fashion purchases as a professional investment, when in fact they are about as reliable as investments as sending your much-too-talkative six year-old to intense tennis lessons in the hope that he'll become a world-class tennis player. The net (pun intended) result would be the same: lots of debt, and not much else.

(Though the six year-old might learn focus and discipline and become the tennis team captain of a shit xxx school team in university and play in a shit xxx school league as he earns his technical degree and graduate and be his boss's tennis partner and kick some xxx @$$, which might help his career. This is unlike rowing, which very few people do after graduating university. But I digress. I should probably add that since this is Japan, the six-year-old's chances of getting a full athletic scholarship into a decent school to play tennis and study something worthwhile are much slimmer than in the US).

Another disturbing (but less harmful) story is the blogging community and the social scene. They put on the guise of being friends, but have a tangled web of failed friendships and romantic relationships. The saddest pattern is when a would-be male model is hanging on a big-name blogger for financial reasons and the potential to associate with fashion brands.

Anyway. My fascination with high-traffic blogs has become a bit twisted. I don't see anything like this happening to me anytime soon, unless the makers of Tiny Vader want to sponsor me and send me a Tiny New Order Storm Trooper when it comes out.

Changing clothes

Kigae

Year of Requirement Part 3

The public high school I’d attended in the US was a good-sized school with about 800 students per year. The building was fairly large and we had two gymnasiums (not including a gymnastics room, indoor track and weight training area) a heated indoor pool and a big auditorium. If you had Biology first period and P.E second period, and the gym was on the other side of the building, you had 4 minutes to get to the other side of the building. Of course, the gym and pool had gender-separate locker rooms with showers.

In my new school, there were about 5 classes of about 42 students for each year. The classes were identified by a number (I was in Class 5, or “Go-kumi,” or 3-5). The students stayed in the same (numbered) classroom while the teachers came to you. And when I say the students stayed in the same classroom, I mean it. Every single one of the students, from the kid who had very recently been mainstreamed from the Special Ed program in a neighboring school, to the kid who’d later go to Kyoto University and major in physics (and also get a master’s in nuclear physics from the same school), would take the exact same classes in the exact same group.

We went to the music room for music, we went to the science lab when we had science, and we went to the gym for P.E. P.E. was interesting because we had to change for it, but there were no locker rooms, so you changed in the classroom. Classes 1 and 2 had P.E. together, and Classes 3 and 4 had P.E. together, and the class was divided into Girls’ P.E. and Boys’ P.E. So for those classes, the boys changed in an odd number classroom and the girls changed in an even number classroom, so no one saw each other.

But I was in Class 5.

To change, each gender more or less shifted to either side of the classroom. I learned quickly that I should wear my P.E. shorts under my skirt every day. The P.E. shorts, called buruma or “bloomers,” were awful. They were basically navy blue panties in a thick synthetic knit. It was like wearing just the bottom half of a leotard. They didn’t have legs, so if you weren’t careful (or sometimes even if you were), you would be showing butt cheek and cellulite (and in my case, stretch marks). They were also very hot, especially in the humid Japanese summers.

To change into your shirt, you pulled the shirt over your head and around your torso, then undid the blouse buttons and pulled it off, without pulling the P.E. shirt up. It took skill to change without flashing bra line, and even more skill to do it without flashing navel. The P.E. shirts themselves were o.k., but they were made of a thick cotton-poly jersey that was hot in summer, especially if you were wearing it under your cotton-poly uniform blouse.

During the cold months, we could wear our long track suits over the whole thing, but when it was warm, we were required to take them off, resulting in 15 year-old girls giving their  teachers and classmates (which would, of course, include 15 year-old boys) a full view of cellulite and butt cheek. You really have to wonder about the teachers who made those rules. Most public elementary and junior high schools switched to knee-length shorts and synthetic fiber shirts shortly after I graduated from university. I am happy for today’s kids, but also a bit jealous.

Jealousy

Shitto

Thirty six hours later

Sanjuu roku jikan go

My body hates me.

The hatred is especially strong from the glutes and quads.