Peaceful in the shade
a summer's temple all yours
to hang out with John
Hey Blue Jays Hey Hey!
Hey Blue Jays! Kawasaki!
Hey man! Nice World Cup!
Today's haiku are obviously starkly different. I started my day very early once again, in order to watch Spain face the Netherlands in the World Cup. It was a pretty remarkable game, which made me excited to be a Manchester United fan after a rough year. Seeing Louis van Gaal and Robin van Persie high fiving after van Persie's amazing header was van-derful. After that game I had breakfast while Skyping with a few people and watching the LA Kings win the Stanley Cup. It was nice to see a couple former Flames favourites in Darryl Sutter and Robyn Regehr lift the cup.
I had a pretty relaxing day after that. I went and grabbed some lunch from the grocery store which involved an interesting exchange where the stock boy who had failed to help Aykut and I earlier in the week was training at a cash register and shouted "CHOPSTICKS!" at the old woman teaching him, after they couldn't figure out how to translate "ohashi" and I said the word chopsticks. I took the lunch to our local temple/shrine area, which has some small nice gardens around it there. I ate and read my book, by John Irving, as referenced in the haiku. It was so peaceful and felt like such a nice respite from the heat and the business of Tokyo, which I tried to convey in the poem. I wanted to reference a season as is traditional in Japanese haiku.
The second haiku, is not traditional at all. It's not all that good either, but it is entirely written in actual dialogue that was said to me tonight in Tokorozawa. Aykut and I went to play some ping pong in Tokorozawa for a fun but relaxingly tame Saturday night. On the way we stopped to play a round of the Japanese drum arcade game, this time I took time to appreciate the video screen that superimposes weird faces onto live shots of your body. Not sure though why it also said "High School Love" on the screen above us. Then we played several rounds of ping pong, then a game of darts, then a short game of foosball. We went to grab a bit to eat after. The street was pretty busy and a lot of the foot traffic was clearly from the Hanshin Tigers- Seibu Lions baseball game that day. I had worn my Blue Jays Munenori Kawasaki t-shirt. If you don't know who Mune is, he's a baseball player who has played for the Jays and currently plays for their minor league team in Buffalo. He was a star in Japan and has become famous in North America more for his hilarious personality than his baseball playing ability. A drunk guy came up and talked to me about him once before when I was wearing my Jays hat and a few other people have discussed him with me. I had a zip-up hoodie on so you could only see the front of my shirt. A guy walking past with a group of about eight people started shouting "Hey Blue Jays!" By the time I realized he was shouting at me him and his group were just past us. He then shouted "Kawasaki!" On cue, I flipped down my hoodie to reveal Kawasaki's name and number 66 on the back. Their whole group went crazy cheering and shouting, so much so that other people on the street started looking to see what was going on.
Not long after, a Japanese guy came a slapped me a cool high-five and said "Hey man!" I said "Hey" back to him and his response was to look right at my face and say "Nice World Cup!" I have no idea why he chose to say this, considering I was wearing a baseball t-shirt and nothing soccer related, but I guess he wanted to say something to me in English. It was hilarious. Aykut asked "What did he say?". So I told him, "Nice World Cup!"
No comments:
Post a Comment