Those of you who avidly watch sports and are into TV trivia in general will know what the title of this blog entry refers to. For the rest of you, a little history lesson. On November 17th, 1968, NBC was broadcasting THE football game of the season up to that point. It was the New York Jets (7-2) at the Oakland Raiders (7-2), the two best teams in the league at that point. With the score 32-29 Jets and 65 seconds left in the game, the Raiders scored to TDs to win the game. However, the network cut away before the TDs to instead show the start of the movie "Heidi" because the game had gone a little long and they needed to start the movie.

 

Needless to say, this decision didn’t go over very well for millions of football fans and all American networks have since made it policy to show all sporting events until their conclusion so that such a travesty should never occur again.

 

Apparently Japanese sports & news channel NHK missed the memo.

 

This weekend, I watched the entire Red Sox and Indians game 2 of the ALCS through to the bottom of the 10th inning, at which point NHK cut away to the middle of a meaningless mid-season Japanese league baseball game. What ‘s the point of showing me 10 innings just to pull the rug out from under me at the most crucial point? On one hand, I’m ecstatic that the Japanese are into American baseball enough to show the big games live, but on the other hand…what’s the point without the conclusion? Interestingly, they use the American announcers, but then when you guys get comercials between innings, I get Japanese commentary while the camera stays on the pitcher during his warm up tosses. The commentaters are actually there at the game, they show them occasionally, but they apparently only talk between innings. This sort of matches with what happens for broadcasts of Japanese games. There is absolutely no commentary during the game. You hear the crowd cheering, and the ball hit the catchers mitt and so on, but no comentary. It’s ubelievably dull to watch. Even though I can’t understand Japanese, it still helps to give you a sense of excitement of what’s going on. Seems strange to me (as do a great many things in my life lately in this land of unusual).

 

Today I went to the Navel hospital on Camp Lester because it was the third straight day I have been suffering from food poisoning and I haven’t improved. I took Monday off from school after being sick since Saturday eveing. Here it is Tuesday evening and I still feel awful. The doctor seems to think it’s viral rather than bacterical, but we did a culture anyway just to be sure.

 

[WARNING: the following paragraph content is not for the faint of heart, but it is a funny story I have to share]

I went to the lab in the hospital and picked up my culture kit. She explained to me how to put the appropriate amount of material from the stool sample into each of the three vials and what to bring back in the bag and what to toss because they did NOT want it back. So, I asked for the nearest bathroom and she said that I didn’t need to do it just then, I could go home and bring it back at my convenience. Any of you who’ve been following my posts know that there is nothing convienent about getting in your car and driving somewhere around here. I wanted to get it done. Also, in my current state of ill health, to come up with such a sample was not a difficult task. Getting to a bathroom in time was more of a difficult task. At any rate, I found a restroom, took care of the the sample and brought it back to the lab. The same technician was still there and saw me come in and said, "Holy crap! That was fast!". I let her know that it wasn’t a big deal, at which point her words sunk in a bit and she immediately back pedaled significantly when irony of her statement hit her. I had a good chuckle.

 

I’m finally feeling a bit better tonight, but still trashed and weak and have to be careful about what I eat to keep it down. I HATE being sick and missing work. It’s a waste of everyone’s time for me to be gone, and I feel so awful that I can’t get anything done at home on the computer either. Also, it’s a drag not having a signficant other around to help. Trying to time the trip to run to the store to buy Pepto-Bismol so that you are near a bathroom when necessary is a challenge that nobody really wants to go through. I can’t wait for Gina to be here.

 

By the way, the Japanese don’t perforate their toilet paper. I wondered for a while why all of the TP holders here have a metal cover on them and I’ve finally figured out that it works as an edge to tear the TP against, because it isn’t perforated. So, every bathroom, no mater how fancy, has this cheesy little tin metal lid on the TP holder because of this. They can make a toilet that will automatically wash and dry your backside (really…I’ve seen them…haven’t tried one yet), but they can’t cut notches in their TP? Go figure.

 

Before all this illnes set in, I did a fantastic bike ride on the northern part of the island on Saturday. Steve and I rode about 62 miles with 3000 of total climbing from Nago to Hedo Point. It was the most incredible ride. This part of the island is very sparsely populated and only has a few small villages. Consequently, there is virtually no traffic. Also, I’d estimate that 40 miles of the ride were within 20 feet of the ocean. It was the most incredible scenery. It takes about 90 minutes to drive to Nago, but it’s worth the drive because the riding up there is so much nicer that the urban riding around here. The down side from the ride is that I have an annoying bottom bracket creak that has become epic in my bike and after taking it all down except the bearing cups, it’s still there. According to my repair guide, either the bearings need to be reset in the cups, or the cup threads are stripped. The former is not a big deal. The latter means my frame is toast. That bites. The tools I need to disassemble it and find out for sure are in the mail. I’m crossing my fingers that the frame is okay.

 

Here are some pics from the ride (note the color of the water in the last two pictures):

 

 

Unfortunately, because of the illness, I didn’t get to go to the Tug o War, but I did watch the live coverage on TV. It was very interesting. The rope starts in two sections, each about 300 feet long with a big loop at one end. The rope it self is about 5 feet in diameter and hundreds of small ropes for pulling coming off of it. There are several displays of dancing and drumming before instructions are shouted out to the 250, 000 people there to pull on the ropes to bring the looped ends together. Once together, they put one loop inside the other and bring in a huge polished log to stick through the loop to lock the two rope sections together.

 

I wish I could tell you what was next, but they decided to cut away to a 45 minute info-mericial and then the news. I never saw anything about it again. I don’t get it. Show me everything about the Tug o War except for…

 

I’m still planning on getting you that photo gallery of unusual car names….it’ll happen. Also, I’ll post MP3s of my first concert. Some good stuff to be proud of is in there, but we have a ways to go still.

 

I’ve been neglecting my blog. It’s not that I’ve run out of things to write about, it just that I’ve been doing too many other things and then am too tired to want to write in it by the time I’m home in front of the computer. A lot of interesting cultural events have happened, and a few work events, and a few bicycling events. I’m sure I’ll miss some of them here, but I’ll do my best.

 

My Fall Concert is tomorrow night. I have an Intermediate Band (mostly freshmen), an Advanced Band (all upper classmen), and a Jazz Band performing. This ‘every other day’ schedule is catching me a little off guard and I’m not as prepared with the students as I’d like to be, but that’s okay. We originally were to have the concert on October 18th, but my only tuba player in Advanced band had his jaw surgery moved up to the 17th and I switched concert dates with the choir director so I would have my tuba player. The choir director was ecstatic to get three more rehearsals. I wish I had three more rehearsals. Today in our final one, the Intermediate Band finally made it all the way through Overture for Winds without stopping for the first time. Needless to say, we are all a little nervous about the concert. They sound great when it works, but we tend to lose focus occasionally. I’m not too worried about the Advanced Band, but that only means we are likely to have some awful train wreck since I’m not concerned. The Jazz Band was a little rusty today. We hadn’t played for over a week because there was no Seminar period (when jazz rehearses) on Friday and Monday was a holiday. Those two combine to make a week between rehearsals and we had to knock a whole lot of rust off the tunes today. I’ll post MP3s after the concert so you can hear for yourself what it sounds like.

 

Pre rode the race course this weekend with Steve (a marine that will be racing the same division as myself). It’s 30 miles and billed as ‘flat’. It is relatively flat, but there are three distinct hills that will separate the race quite well. It’s a good thing too because the field is 300. I hope we get both lanes of the road. It will be impossible to pass in a field that big because the first 10 miles are all flat and it will stay bunched up if you aren’t near the front. Steve and I are going to try to figure out a way to make sure we are near the front of the start line. I think I’ll enter the 50 mile race next year. It has more climbs which suits my strengths.

Tim took me to lunch at a Soba restaurant this week. A Soba restaurant is roughly analagous to a corner cafe back in the states (think Mel’s Diner). That’s the category I’d put it in at least. That is also were the similiarity ends. The outside looks kind of dumpy while the inside has mostly little tables on tatami mats (bamboo knitted together). These are the tables you sit on the floor at after removing your shoes. To order, you put yen into a vending machine that has pictures and descriptions on the meals available. Then the machine spits out a ticket stub that you give to your waitress and she puts in the order for you. The soba noodles are NOTHING like what you can get in the states. They were homemade and amazing. My meal was soba noodles with a beef stir fry mixed together. I also had a type of sea weed soup, although I don’t recall what it was called. It was also very, very good. Overall, it was a great inexpensive meal in a place I never would’ve given a second look at on my own. Very cool experience. Check out the photo of the food samples near the front door.

 

On Saturday, Tim and his wife and dauthgter and I all went to Octoberfest at the NCO Club on Kadena AB. I have to give the military kudos in doing a lot around here to keep up the morale and offer family activities (although I doubt that German Oktoberfest is very family oriented). However, that being said, it just wasn’t quite what I think Octoberfest would really look like. There was a band playing 70′s rock and during their breaks, an MC would give away prizes and conduct the chicken dance. (see the photo) There was schnitzel and brats and beer and a generally good time. It just seemed contrived (duh…octoberfest on Okinawa with Japanese barmaids and 85% weather???), but it was something different to try.

 

This Sunday, I’m going to the "Tug o War". Okinawa is in the Guiness book for this event in that it is the biggest tug o war rope ever. They make a different one each year and I’m told its about 200 yards long, but it is also about 6 ft in diameter. Here are some pictures from last year’s event. They say they’ll be 250,000 involved with the actual tug. Individual ropes are connected to the main rope. After the tug is over, tradition is that you cut your piece of rope off and save it for good luck. They say to bring gloves. I ‘ll do my best.

 

My unaccompanied baggage is arriving on Friday which means I get:

 

A real office chair
My guitar, bass, and saxophone
My kiting equipment
My mountain bike
my camera (just in time for the tug o war)
the rest of my clothes.

 

Yes! Now if I could just move into a real house instead of this hotel room, I’d really be set.

 

I’ll try to get some good pictures of the tug o war this weekend and post them here. Drop me a note if you read this; I’m curious who is still keeping up with it….