Pirate Race!
It’s about time I told you about my time as a pirate in Japan’s Seto Inland Sea. Forget that it was a one-race outing for me, and listen to my tale. I’ve got 30 pictures here, and a video at the end of the post for your enjoyment. So, avast me hearties, shiver me timbers, and batten down the hatches, or something. Then click the more link to continue.
Oooooh, what fun I had being a pirate. I’ve decided that I’ll definitely join in again next year. I might even try to get some other ALTs to join up. It was hilarious. I got up ridiculously early in the morning. I think we met at about 7:15 in the parking lot and carpooled over – thanks goes to Kiyokawa-sensei for being my designated driver, a must in any frenzied alcohol-involved boating-in-costumes outing that you may have. Mostly due to the involvement of alcohol. Though some of those costumes were pretty out of control and could have benefited too.
We arrived, registered with the desk, placed our placard on the bottom of the brackets (where it was doomed to remain), and I believe the first beer was cracked open at 8:14. Crazy party goers, I know. I had coffee before I had anything else, cause I wanted to wake up. The veterans jumped straight into the merrymaking. Anyway, after sitting in our tarped area for a while, taking pictures of the more hilarious themed teams, watching a volley of arrows completely miss the targets (maybe they opened their first beers at 8:14 too), and checking out the food stands as they set up, the first race began.
My team was gleefully ignorant about the workings of the race. None of us had practiced. None of us knew where to stand. None of us knew how to row. Turns out, that wasn’t a big problem for me. My job wound up being different. When our race came up, we bravely took our positions. Tamada-sensei and I had the unfortunate nerve to volunteer to attempt to plant our flag in its holder. These flags are draped over a bamboo upside-down L-frame. On each dragon-helmed boat’s bow there are 2 iron ringlets through which you thread your flag’s bamboo shaft. That is, provided that your bamboo fits. Ours didn’t. Tamada-sensei and I made a valiant effort at ramming that sucker in, but we only managed to get it through the first ringlet. With our very unsteady flag, we called to the event organizers for advice, and to our dismay their reply was the sound of the starting gong. Therefore, it became my duty to keep our flag upright as we pitched and heaved through the water. It was not easy, but it was pretty funny.
We wound up coming in 3rd place in spite of the chaos. My head was spinning. By the end of the day, I’d given 3 separate filmed interviews in Japanese (craaaaap), been given 4 or 5 meals worth of free food from snack stands after chatting with the folks running them, eaten 2 snow cones (Blue Hawaiian and Melon), cheered our student teams onward, lost my voice, and laughed until my stomach hurt. It was a great day. Can’t wait until Oshima’s 2008 Suigun Race. By the way, I’m doing everything in my power to get a copy of the chunks of dialog that aired on TV Ehime last week while I was at camp. If I can figure out how to do it, I’ll subtitle it (provided they only show me speaking relatively odd Japanese instead of the completely incomprehensible gibberish I’m pretty sure I used most of the time) and put it up here. 
Yay! For now, please enjoy the following video montage.
