Sports day

It's been over a year now, marked by the passing of my second Sports day. Although it wasn't as completely new and alien as my first Sports Day was, just weeks after I arrived, it was still a fun experience, because we have nothing like it in America, besides old school Field Days and Pep rallies that arent really practiced anymore.

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Oh hey I just realized it's September 11th. Happy September 11th!

greater than the sum of its parts

I remember sitting on the couch with Rosie and Brett back in Worcester, watching Blue Planet, a series produced by the BBC devoted to the amazing life to be found in the Ocean. In the Pacific, they featured are huge schools of small fish. When a whale comes up from the abyss to feed, the hundreds of fish school together into a giant whirling ball of whale-food. The whales feed in passes. rushing through the swarm over and over again until theyve had their fill, and retreat. while apart none of the fish can outrun the whale, most of the school will survive by sheer volume, the group manages to carry on without splitting up.

Meanwhile it is cicada season in Japan. The cicadas (semi) are everywhere and they spend most of their time screaming for sex at the top of their lungs (thoraxes?).. It's kind of mating call that i imagine is similar to what it might be like to stand next to a landing fleet of UFOs. 

Semi spend the majority of their life (often more than ten years) in a larval state below the ground. During maturation, they crawl out of the ground and transform into giant noisy creatures with wings but no mouths, and apparently no sense of direction, as they fly into everything. Their sole purpose, since it obviously isn't eating, is to reproduce. and they do so in humongous generations called broods. 

I should also mention that semi are delicious to most larger animals, some humans included. Therefore, the life-cycle of a cicada is always a prime number of years because it keeps the predators from adapting to a natural flowing rhythm of delicious adult semi wafting through the air. But the main defense mechanism of semi is, again, sheer volume. By reproducing in such huge broods, they ensure that predators can have their fill (it's inevitable really) and there will STILL be enough reproducing individual to keep the population steady.

Bearing in mind these two examples, let us re-evaluate the schooling patterns of another species-- a subpopulation, like the fish, native to the South Pacific.

[photos to come]

While watching practice in the gym today, i commented to my supervisor how interesting the emphasis on group dynamics is to me. I mentioned how seeing everyone move together is so entrancing, and reminds me of the schooling fish.

"To us, this is the concept of absolute beauty."

"You mean complete group coordination?"

"Yes. In Japan, if you lose your individual identity... it's okay."  

Land of the Excruciating Sun

So i'm on Kyushu, one of Japan's southern islands, and therefore nearer the equator. it's hot and muggy here. Like "step-outside-and-water-starts-condensing-on-your-face" humid, & "seems-artificially-heated-like-a-sauna" hot.

I have found that it is, in fact, true what they said about wearing an extra undershirt layer. counterintuitive though it is, an extra layer really does prevent sweat from pooling under your arms, which is a godsend in the war against summer grossness... As a matter of fact, i bought my first クールビズ, i.e. KuruBizu,, i.e."Cool Biz" workshirt yesterday and am loving it.

Cool Biz, actually, is an environmental campaign in Japan, aiming to reduce electrical (AirCon) consumption in the summer. This, apparently is being accomplished by setting a nationally required air conditionor level and marketing lighter professional clothes to the workforce. Most of them are short-sleeved and made of this awesome lightweight material. A lot of people also forego the tie and top button when rocking these eco-friendly office clothes. Even though my new shirt is long sleeved (i couldnt tell when i bought it, oh well), I am all about this comfy and vaguely environmentally-conscious Japanese practice. Of course, unspoken, the short-sleeved business suit design never made it off of the launch pad. Too soon, Japan. The world is not ready for this:



Anyway. During the first few days at work, i kept catching a whiff of some unpleasantness near me. It didnt seem like any my coworkers--Japanese people have a unique type of BO and bad breath. So i checked my armpits and found nothing but Old Spice freshness. After a couple days of this i realized it was my watch. I was appalled. the watch was strapping sweat against my wrist, ew. Now i keep it sitting beside me on my desk while I work, and i'll probably ditch it altogether after my alien registration card finally comes in and i can get a keitai (mobile phone) for telling the time. At least until it cools down in a few weeks. cause yuck, the last thing i need at this point is wrist-odor (WO).