#lemme marinate these thoughts again. and then go back & forth on it who cares !!!! i can do whatever!!!

[flovverworks]

i need to make a proper rf verse for akira too but separating them from the wizards always makes me. ugh

[mysynthfetish]

3 Days With Ondekoza (part two)

The story continues, me brothers. Day two began at around 05:00, when I woke up just because I can’t sleep as well as I used to, and am always up around the crack of dawn. I have an aunt named Dawn, so I’ve always found that saying borderline incestuous. Anyway. Heh. Yeah so I was up before anyone else but just sat on the sofa zoning out, still not quite yet having come to grips with the fact that I was with Ondekoza. About 05:50 I see a few members pass by the staff room heading out the front door, so I peeked out, saw they were in running gear, and was like “gimme a sec and I’ll be changed and ready to go.” And so I was, and so we ran.

That’s a screenshot of the course we ran I snaped off my Garmin Connect app. 4km and a smidge downhill, U-turn, then 4km and a smidge uphill. I started last, but finished first. That was unexpected to say the least. I just ran as I usually do and before I knew it, I had almost caught up with Yahiro, who was in the lead, and is of Italian-Japanese heritage. He’s a little taller than I am, and thus has a longer stride, so he had an advantage. But just past the 3km mark, he quick ducked into a newly built public restroom (the schoolhouse has old, Japanese-style squat toilets, so maybe the new place has western-style heated-seat deals with warm water showers for your bum and all, hey this IS Japan so of course the toilets are high tech affairs, duh!), and then I had no idea where to go, or where the turnaround point was. So I paused there, waited a few minutes til the next guy caught up, and off I went. Reached the turnaround, then just set back into my usual pace and again was alone before long. I arrived back at the schoolhouse and walked around for a few minutes, when the others started to trickle back in, and when they did they headed straight through the front door without slowing down so I thought uh-oh, time to work already. But as it turned out, that wasn’t the case. See for yourself:

Sorry it goes sideways there but I wasn’t really thinking about what was going on, more like mesmerized that they were doing this, and kinda freaked in a deja-vu way as the generation of Ondekoza I spent tine with in the 90s finished their runs the same way. Being at their HQ, in super rural Japan, well, it made for a very special, almost mystical experience. Then it was shower, breakfast, and prep prep prep, until BAM it was noon already. I was asked “do you cook?” To which I said “yup,” and was promptly made one of the three members in charge of taking care of lunch. I was given salad duty. Half an hour later, everything was ready, the table was set, and lunch was served. After a very quick bite, it was back outside and back to work and then POW it was time for the show. Lemme see if I can throw in a link to the video I shot of the show.

Yeah it worked. There was a point in the middle where Seizan Matsuda (the group director) was like “Where’s White-san? Ah. He’s originally from the US. His ties with the group go waaaaay back, he’s been here since yesterday helping out with everything. It’s like destiny! We’ll get you down here and see if you can do something with us, how about it? Yeah.” YIKES! In the end, I lucked out and was left to my own devices and just shot video til they finished. But then Mr Matsuda motioned for me to come down (I had hauled an old desk out from behind the school and was standing on it to shoot video from a better vantage point), so I did and was allowed to stand in line with the members and take a bow.

Spot the whitey. Hahaha yeah me in my UniQlo TR-808 shirt. Being allowed to stand there was a real honor. Dream come true. But then Yoshi started telling the audience about my experience with the group, and my parents threatening me with disownment and death, and that I’d been living in Japan since 1999 and semi-active with a local taiko group for a while, and so on and so forth. And, that I was going to be in the area at least for that day and the next, so if any locals spotted a foreigner wearing all black roaming around the hills, not to worry or call the cops. Haha. He actually said “He’s not a suspect character at all!” but I quickly threw in “No no, I’m pretty sketchy so you should watch out!” and got some laughs, so that was nice. But goddam, being introduced like that and then taking bows with the band.. It blew my mind.

Next it was a slow cleanup while the crowd gradually dispersed, and then finally a BBQ dinner of venison and wild boar that a local hunter had caught, prepared, and marinated for a few days. Simply amazing. I was full after a short while but the members ate like there was no tomorrow. Which I suppose is a given considering the show they’d just put on. We thanked the locals who hung out til the end, and then cleaned up what was left to clean up, including inside, and gradually ended up in the staff room. A guy I hadn’t seen before was there, and they kept referring to him and bank-boy. Seems he currently works in a bank but is going to quit soon and join the group, after a year and a bit of working there, negotiating with his parents the whole time. Haha! In the end they said ok. I can’t say I’m not envious because I totally am. If I didn’t have a family to support I’d be there myself in less than half a second.

Photo from just when we were finishing the BBQ and enjoying the fire we had cooked over. It got pretty cold pretty quick there.

And after everyone had hit the shower, we drifted off to bed, and day two with Ondekoza came to a quiet end.