This year, thanks to the influence and involvement of the two new southern ALTs on the island, my life has been dramatically different, mostly in good ways.

The three southern males have a beach bonfire.

Their strikingly adventurous nature has led me to do some light cliff-like jumping paired with more frequent visits to the beach, join the indoor football (soccer) group that practices and scrimmages once a week, and even give karate a try.  And now, we seem to be building a habit of partying the weekend away together.

At the cost of bad skin for a week, I won all three rounds of Texas Hold ‘Em poker last weekend. This, dear readers, is in stark contrast to my history with the game.

Some have a habit of going all in somewhat prematurely.

Sadly, my luck and ability to strike fear in the hearts of the other parties seems to have faded, for this weekend’s two poker sessions left me with no wins.  Two of the northerners joined us and we all crashed at Shane’s, playing two nights in a row because the first quickly devolved into a wrestling match that seemed by all accounts loud enough to wake the neighbours.

This and the male genitalia drawn on my face (as punishment for going to deep sleep a little too early in the morning) may perhaps explained by pent-up testosterone and consumption of a certain from of depressant. (Apparently, I’ve joined another fraternity.) All in good fun, t’was.

The five of us also took a nice hike of the most scenic and almost tallest mountain of the island, Mt. Shiratake, on the unexpectedly beautiful Saturday afternoon preceding our second night of gaming.  The wind strength did not prevent us from taking a rest and lunching on the peak, though it was indeed frightening to stand up for long.

The best view on Tsushima, on a hazy day.

As for indoor football (soccer), it is both a blast and a challenge. The group meets at a community centre gymnasium and we play on the space of a basketball court.  The game’s very twitchy nature, seemingly best suited for forwards, throws me off a bit and I would still say I prefer playing outdoor, which offers more variety and elevated kicks.  Still, it’s great fun, and a few of the locals are quite good.

The night I acquired Puma shoes specially designed for the sport to be light and have improved traction, not only did I seem to have unlimited energy, I also scored a pretty sweet goal and played decently for my very rusty ability.  I have since modified these shoes via permanent marker to change two of the three red stripes to black and the third to an edgy “grunge” dirty-red, partially because Duncan bought the same ones first. They definitely translate to fashion sneakers!

Futtosoru shoes, enhanced.

Special emphasis in Japan is put on having shoes exclusively for use in gymnasiums, which mean one wears a different pair for outdoor use and changes on arrival.  Yet at the same time, there’s a lot of hypocrisy involved when people take a break to go outside and don’t bother to change back into the outside shoes or at least take off the gym shoes. When we took breaks between scrimmages, for example, most of the guys did just this to go out and smoke or grab a vending machine drink.

One sees this at schools, too. Everyone has shoes exclusively for use in the school, and even a separate pair for use in the gymnasium.  Paths connecting buildings go outside and often intersect with areas that vehicles ride over or where people walk with outside shoes.

Karate was far from what I was expecting.  We started off with shadow-boxing, pairing up with a different person for a couple minutes and punching, kicking, or blocking in a sort of dance that left me embarrassed and completely confused.  The practice moved onto drills of punches and kicks that were pretty easy to follow.  From then on, the rest of the time we essentially just spent exercising.

Toughness training, as it has been referred to, involved letting people punch you in the abdomen ten times and doing the same to them.  Everyone moved into a big circle and went from one person to the next until everyone had punched everyone.  Then, we did the same thing except we jumped or just stomped on each others’ abdominal region. One of Duncan’s high school students is in the class, and has crazy, rock-hard abs to the extent that one could tell this just from stepping on them.

After the shocking smoke break in which most of the guys actually did smoke, we split into two teams for an exercise routine competition of push-ups.  For the second competition, we did push-ups and abdominal leg-arm raises. One by one everyone in the team would do as many reps as they could and then the next person in line traded off.  The losers were required to do rapid squats or push-ups for a few minutes, and sadly I was on that team both times, though in the competition there were some questionable head-bob push-ups.

I thoroughly enjoyed the single-leg go-up-on-your-toes calves exercise, for weighing not so much it didn’t create quite same burn as those emitting cries and grunts. We otherwise did a lot of crunches and push-ups.

Really, what I liked best about the class was the workout, though it was neat to watch some of the guys who really know what they’re doing spar for a few minutes at the end. I’ve just decided, however, that I won’t be continuing.

The trade-off to this dramatically different routine of late is that I’ve been really getting behind on my Japanese language studies and ignoring the side job.  On the weekends, too, I’ve been spending quite a lot of time with the guys and speaking English. Time to strike a balance.