Last weekend I attended the HAJET (Hokkaido Association of JETs) Summer meeting in Niikappu. Three times a year HAJET meetings are held, and this one is always a good time because it's warm, many other JETs from all over the island show up, and it's held right before the returning JETs go back to their home countries. So in some ways it's a final farewell. In other ways it's a chance to reconnect with people you haven't seen in a while.
The summer meeting kicked off with a HAJET meeting on Saturday morning. My friend Katie Plummer graciously drove her car to the meeting, so I had a ride there and back. The meeting was a typical meeting - nothing that interesting or shocking was discussed. Instead a lot of good ideas and suggestions were tossed about. After the meeting, though, I began feeling a little bit sick.
To stay alert during the meeting (Katie and I left Sapporo at 6:30AM), I drank a can of cold coffee. But I think the coffee was tainted or something, because I began to feel really cold, a headache set in, and my stomach felt like the coffee burned a hole through it. I don't believe it was the acidity of the coffee, because I ate breakfast that morning and had a full stomach. Instead I think it was literally tainted or something. Anyway, it made for a difficult start to the weekend, as I was in no shape to take part in some of the fun stuff.
One of the fun things was a sumo match between JETs. Bry organized it and made it a fundraiser for HEC (Hokkaido English Camp- an educational charity event organized and run each year by HAJET). Because I wasn't feeling good, I wasn't able to participate. but watching it was certainly fun! The first round started with the girls. Bry started things off by wearing a Stitch outfit and a sumo nappy (diaper thing meant to resemble the Japanese sumo mawashi). It was really funny to watch people wrestle, because the MC would say, "Go!" and nobody charged each other really fast like you're supposed to do in sumo. Instead one person would slowly creep forward, laughing all the while, and try to grab the other person's leg or back. Then, finally, the action started when the opponents tried to throw each other out of the ring.
Sumo might look easy, but it's really not. If you stand up to high, you lose your low, protective center of gravity. If your opponent can get under you, there's a high chance they can upset your balance and throw you out of the ring. On the other hand, if you manage to reverse someone's hold on you, you can counter by throwing them off balance and swinging them out of the ring using your own body weight. This is how many of the matches were decided.
After watching the girls, it was the boys turn. Wearing nappies, a number of my guy friends were bit bit more ferocious in wrestling their opponents.The day did have one casualty, however. Once of the guys was pushed backward. As his body was being pushed backward, so were his feet and toes. Only one toe got trapped under the foot and snapped upwards. The guy didn't even realize something had happened to his toe until the match was over. Then he looked down and saw his third toe sticking up from the rest.
After calling a time-out, he was taken to a local hospital where they said the toe was dislocated and had a minor fracture. The doctors snapped it back in and gave him a splint. Luckily it was nothing major, so he was able to return to the party and enjoy the BBQ later that evening. And to top it all off, he said it wasn't even painful!
After sumo, I still wasn't feeling too well, so Katie and I drove out to a nearby onsen (hot spring). This onsen was up on a hill at a horse ranch (Niikappu is a very famous horse ranching area of Japan). It overlooked beautiful pastures, and to be honest, it looked exactly like areas outside of Lexington, KY: rolling hills, green pastures, lots of horses, housing subdivisions, etc. I relaxed in the water for about an hour, which did help me feel a little bit better. When we got back to the campsite, I took a nap for about an hour and a half.
The nap made me feel a little better still, and it was soon dinnertime. Because dinner (and the drinking) kicked off at 6:30, I decided to try drinking some booze to see if it might make me feel better. (Not for getting drunk, but rather to purge whatever was in my system.) Well after drinking a chu-hi (pre-mixed alcoholic drinks in cans), I did feel much better. For whatever reason, the alcohol killed what was ailing me. I was back in action!
Dinner was one of the best I've ever had at a HAJET event. Being a vegetarian at these events is often difficult, because organizers tend to bring mostly grill-able meat and a very limited supply of veggie-friendly foods like veggie burgers or tofu salad. But at this meeting there were about 10 vegetarians, and excellent foods were available to them, including: veggie kabobs, cous-cous salad, grilled shiitake mushrooms, 2 Indian curries with flatbread, potato salad, bread, bean salad and tons of regular salad. The rest of the meat-eaters had an abundance of food too, from hamburgers and hot dogs to grilled lamb and cabbage (gengis kahn), and God knows what else. And to top it all off, there were kegs of beer, sangria and hard liquor! All the food and booze was included in the price, which was only 2,600 yen (~$US26) if you brought a dish to share. (3,600 yen if you didn't). Needless to say, everyone was stuffed!
After dinner we started "Drunken Scrabble." One of the organizers created a huge Scrabble board and we divided into teams. Each team was given some letter tiles and had 5 minutes to make up a word that's either a real word in the English dictionary, or is a very creative "Engrish" word. (A judge decided on the Engrish words.)
The game started off fun, but soon groups weren't adhering to the time limit, and the game kind of got unruly. (A consequence of much booze and food...) I ended up leaving the game to mingle with other people, and just had a nice time catching up with everyone. I saw a lot of people I haven't seen in a while, and I also got to say goodbye to some of the people who are leaving this year. (tear!)
At about 10PM, we started lighting off fireworks in a nearby field. Combine drunk people with fireworks, and you're asking for trouble! But surprisingly there were no injuries, and it was fun to watch. Then there was a campfire, where the folks who were still up gathered and talked a bunch of nonsense until the wee hours of the morning. Because I had been up so early that morning, and I didn't feel very well that afternoon, I turned in at about 1:30AM. Sleeping in a tent, wrapped up in my warm sleeping bag was just what my body wanted. I slept in really late - till about 10AM the next day. I was still feeling tired, but at least that coffee-related illness left my body! (Thanks, alcohol!)
After packing up the tent, Katie and I said our goodbyes to our friends and drove to the local convenience store for some breakfast food and drinks. Overall, it was a very nice weekend, and I'm glad to have been around so many friends. Friends are what make us JETs feel connected here in Hokkaido, and they're indispensable when it comes to maintaining sanity and blowing off steam.
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