Secret Practice is Secret
Jun. 15th, 2008 10:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flameravenYou know, if things keep up like this, I’m really going to have to buy proper shoes.
Today was our usual Sunday practice. I’d skipped last week’s since I wasn’t feeling well, but this week was the “new student test” for “Matcha,” the Shingegumi’s signature song and the one we’ve been working on for the past three weeks. Or so I was told during Friday’s practice.
I got up around ten, after staying up until after three working on various projects, and had leftover okonomiyaki for breakfast. I debated making up some excuse to go in just a little late, because we were supposed to do more jogging to start off this practice, but in the end I just went in on time, and simply didn’t try too hard to actually jog.
However! As it turned out, we actually never had practice at all. After the others finished their two-mile jog, we did stretches… and then we went, collected our bags… and headed out to the field again to play kickball. It was an epic game of kickball, actually, because it lasted something like two hours. Of course, sandals weren’t ideal footwear to play such a game in, but I did alright despite that, and scored one or two runs. Our team utterly trashed the other team, with a final score of 23-9, (and I think they actually miscounted a few innings, so it might’ve been as high as 26-9).
Because we won, the other team bought us drinks, which was fortunate for me as I had only 50 yen to my name, and was rather dehydrated after all that running about. It was close to four by the time we’d all had our break, and I thought we’d finish up then, but instead we hopped the fence (yet again; I think I climbed that stupid fence at least eight times today), and went back out for another game. They changed up the teams a bit for the second round, and changed the rules as well, making it a lot easier to get “out.” The final score for that game was 6-2, but I’m honestly not sure which team won. I think it was us again, but I really don’t know.
So it was closer to five than four when we finished, which was a bit of a problem for me: I’d planned on going to the station after practice, to get more cash from the ATM (since yesterday’s dinner was the last $10 I had on me), and to do some shopping since I’m running low on a couple things. However, the ATMs close at five on weekends. Since we finished up at roughly quarter til, there was no way I was going to get to the station in time—even if I hadn’t been too tired to even think of biking anywhere.
There were plans to go to Jun’s house after practice, though, and watch some movies, and that sounded all right to me. We stopped over at the 7-11 to pick up dinner and snacks (Techi graciously loaned me sen en so I could get food; the konbini didn’t take cards as I’d hoped they might), and, after a bit of waiting while the boys presumably cleaned the place up, we went inside.
Jun has a room at the same boy’s dorm that Chris and Brian stay at, and this was the first time I’d actually been inside one of the rooms. I… no longer feel like we have anything to complain about. Their rooms are about half the size of ours, and their kitchen and bathroom are on either sides of the entrance hallway, not separate at all. It was quite tiny; I’m actually pretty amazed we managed to fit everybody in there.
There were just five of us at first (myself, Kazue, Techi, Kazu, and Jun), so we sat and watched what appeared to be some sort of high school play with various shingegumi members. Then the rest of the group showed up. We watched a video the 2008 Yosakoi So-Ran, which was apparently a national contest of the same sort of festival dancing we do… but on a much larger scale. All the groups had about ninety or a hundred members, with rather more elaborate costumes and choreography. It was actually quite interesting—on the one hand the individual movements seemed to be rather less difficult than what some of the advanced members like Rika or Techi pull off in our group, but the bigger groups did a lot more overall choreography. And the use of color in the costumes was quite stunning. I didn’t know this festival dancing existed on such a huge scale, so that was really cool.
Afterwards we started watching various other movies—unfortunately we didn’t watch any one movie through, we just watched bits and pieces, skipping to the “best” scenes… or something. I didn’t really get the rhyme or reason behind it, but whatever. We started out with what turned out to be The Grudge 2, but that started skipping only a few minutes in, so we switched. (Not really a bad thing.) Then we watched something like the first fifteen minutes of Raiders of the Lost Ark. That was the one I really wanted to watch, as I’d only ever seen bits and pieces, but alas, it was not to be. Just as they were introducing the plot, they switched it out for Matrix: Reloaded, and then Matrix: Revolutions. (Rewatching these only confirmed what I’d thought of them before- the cinematography of the fights is beautiful, and it’s wasted because the plot is laughable, when it’s there at all.) Finally we watched the ending of Ping Pong, which is your typical underdog sports movie.
That ended our evening, as it was already 8:30, so everybody headed out, and Kazu dropped me off at my apartment again.
So all in all, a good day. Kickball was really fun, even if it was also completely exhausting. The thing with the movies was a little random, but ah well. So it goes.
Today was our usual Sunday practice. I’d skipped last week’s since I wasn’t feeling well, but this week was the “new student test” for “Matcha,” the Shingegumi’s signature song and the one we’ve been working on for the past three weeks. Or so I was told during Friday’s practice.
I got up around ten, after staying up until after three working on various projects, and had leftover okonomiyaki for breakfast. I debated making up some excuse to go in just a little late, because we were supposed to do more jogging to start off this practice, but in the end I just went in on time, and simply didn’t try too hard to actually jog.
However! As it turned out, we actually never had practice at all. After the others finished their two-mile jog, we did stretches… and then we went, collected our bags… and headed out to the field again to play kickball. It was an epic game of kickball, actually, because it lasted something like two hours. Of course, sandals weren’t ideal footwear to play such a game in, but I did alright despite that, and scored one or two runs. Our team utterly trashed the other team, with a final score of 23-9, (and I think they actually miscounted a few innings, so it might’ve been as high as 26-9).
Because we won, the other team bought us drinks, which was fortunate for me as I had only 50 yen to my name, and was rather dehydrated after all that running about. It was close to four by the time we’d all had our break, and I thought we’d finish up then, but instead we hopped the fence (yet again; I think I climbed that stupid fence at least eight times today), and went back out for another game. They changed up the teams a bit for the second round, and changed the rules as well, making it a lot easier to get “out.” The final score for that game was 6-2, but I’m honestly not sure which team won. I think it was us again, but I really don’t know.
So it was closer to five than four when we finished, which was a bit of a problem for me: I’d planned on going to the station after practice, to get more cash from the ATM (since yesterday’s dinner was the last $10 I had on me), and to do some shopping since I’m running low on a couple things. However, the ATMs close at five on weekends. Since we finished up at roughly quarter til, there was no way I was going to get to the station in time—even if I hadn’t been too tired to even think of biking anywhere.
There were plans to go to Jun’s house after practice, though, and watch some movies, and that sounded all right to me. We stopped over at the 7-11 to pick up dinner and snacks (Techi graciously loaned me sen en so I could get food; the konbini didn’t take cards as I’d hoped they might), and, after a bit of waiting while the boys presumably cleaned the place up, we went inside.
Jun has a room at the same boy’s dorm that Chris and Brian stay at, and this was the first time I’d actually been inside one of the rooms. I… no longer feel like we have anything to complain about. Their rooms are about half the size of ours, and their kitchen and bathroom are on either sides of the entrance hallway, not separate at all. It was quite tiny; I’m actually pretty amazed we managed to fit everybody in there.
There were just five of us at first (myself, Kazue, Techi, Kazu, and Jun), so we sat and watched what appeared to be some sort of high school play with various shingegumi members. Then the rest of the group showed up. We watched a video the 2008 Yosakoi So-Ran, which was apparently a national contest of the same sort of festival dancing we do… but on a much larger scale. All the groups had about ninety or a hundred members, with rather more elaborate costumes and choreography. It was actually quite interesting—on the one hand the individual movements seemed to be rather less difficult than what some of the advanced members like Rika or Techi pull off in our group, but the bigger groups did a lot more overall choreography. And the use of color in the costumes was quite stunning. I didn’t know this festival dancing existed on such a huge scale, so that was really cool.
Afterwards we started watching various other movies—unfortunately we didn’t watch any one movie through, we just watched bits and pieces, skipping to the “best” scenes… or something. I didn’t really get the rhyme or reason behind it, but whatever. We started out with what turned out to be The Grudge 2, but that started skipping only a few minutes in, so we switched. (Not really a bad thing.) Then we watched something like the first fifteen minutes of Raiders of the Lost Ark. That was the one I really wanted to watch, as I’d only ever seen bits and pieces, but alas, it was not to be. Just as they were introducing the plot, they switched it out for Matrix: Reloaded, and then Matrix: Revolutions. (Rewatching these only confirmed what I’d thought of them before- the cinematography of the fights is beautiful, and it’s wasted because the plot is laughable, when it’s there at all.) Finally we watched the ending of Ping Pong, which is your typical underdog sports movie.
That ended our evening, as it was already 8:30, so everybody headed out, and Kazu dropped me off at my apartment again.
So all in all, a good day. Kickball was really fun, even if it was also completely exhausting. The thing with the movies was a little random, but ah well. So it goes.
