I Win!!!

For real this time, not just because some rabid Japanese teenagers chasing me down the road say so.

Today was our neighborhood bowling tournament, and I didn't walk away empty handed. Well, nobody walked away empty handed, but I actually won something.

The tournament itself only consisted of two frames. Chieko and I were paired with the mother of the family who lives across the street from us, Kuo-san. She's a really nice lady, probably in her late 30's, and about 4 1/2 feet tall. If she's amid a swarm of neighborhood children, it's not hard to mistake her for one of them.

Kuo-san proceeded to smoke us at bowling, rolling strike after strike in the most gentle way you could imagine. The organizers of our tournament give two first prizes; one for the best score among the women, and one for the best score out of everyone. Kuo-san won them both. She got some prizes which were wrapped up so I'm not sure what they were, and also a trophy that was about the same size as she is. I want to make that trophy mine next year.

Prizes were also give to the 25th ,20th, 15th, and 10th best scores. Yours truly managed to land 20th place, and for that I was rewarded with a small, wrapped prize. I shook my prize around to get an idea of what it could be, but didn't have any ideas. When I got to the car I unwrapped the package to find a handsome blue box.



I'll have to do another post someday on the awesomeness of Japanese packaging in general, but I'm particularly fond of the boxes many gifts come in. They are high quality and stylish, and I still use a two-tiered box that held a selection of individually wrapped cakes and cookies when it was given to me (it now holds my guitar maintainence supplies). Anyway, I still wasn't sure what was in the box because I was blinded by box lust and I'm more or less illiterate, so I cracked it open and let the dissappointment wash over me.



Seaweed. A Japanese person (like my wife) would be psyched to get this prize. Alas, I'm not a Japanese person. I'll give the seaweed to Chieko and keep the box for myself. As such, I sit here with a dead right bowling arm and a desire to whoop up that tournament next fall. I hope Kuo-san doesn't find herself with any unfortunate injuries that would keep her from defending the trophy around this time next year. That would be a shame.

Another interesting thing happened to me today while I was driving home from the gym. I was scanning the radio for something entertaining or that I could understand when I heard one of the crudest songs I've heard in a long time. I don't mean to sound like I was offended or anything, I was just taken aback a bit because the song was completely unedited, and it was RUDE. You'll hear some swears/ethnic slurs pretty regularly on Japanese radio or in places where they play popular hip-hop tunes by American artists (like toy stores, for example), but this was on another level. I've heard a cleaned up, MTV version of this song, but I wasn't familiar with this rendition. Here, have a listen. I urge you to go further than the opening chorus because there's all sorts of good stuff in this tune. Enjoy!