Ekiden
The old “nod, agree, don’t understand” reflex that I have become quite talented at carrying out whilst conversing with the locals has once again landed me in the proverbial crapper.
A few days ago I agreed to participate in my village ekiden on the 1st of December. An ekiden can be roughly translated as a marathon, but it takes place on a relay-type basis, thus several different people cover the distance, in sections. Considering this was a village event with all ages participating, I assumed that these distances would be quite short. How wrong I was.
On Friday my supervisor came to me, elated that I was participating.
“Ekiden! You! Number 8! Ichiban nagai!”
I understood what this meant, but it really hammered home when he proudly stated,
“2 kilometres!”
Needless to say, my mouth dropped and my skin flushed. I had several doubts as to whether I could even walk that far, let alone run against the clock. My supervisor paused and noticed that all semblance of joy had been sapped from my now despondent face. With a concerned expression to mirror my own, his closing remark was “you should practice- “. I nodded sheepishly.
In other weekend news:
Spent Friday night in Kumamoto city, having a few drinks. By far the highlight of my night was when our group of gaijin walked past a crowd of Japanese businessmen. One particularly beetroot-coloured old man thrust his arm up in the air and shouted “THIS. IS. A. PEN” whilst grinning idiotically at our group. That line is a bit of a gaijin / Japanese in-joke, as “this is a pen” was the first English sentence that the older generations studied at school.
