Yongfook is a web producer and usability consultant based in Tokyo

I’ve done it.

I’ve finally been out of the Ken.

As of late, a kind of whisper-quiet state of alarm has been propagating itself inside my head. Fantastical, hyperbole-laden stories of visits to Korea, Taiwan and distant prefectures such as Fukuoka, Hiroshima and Kyoto by my JET friends had been forcing me to reflect on why the hell had I not even left my Ken in the 4 months I have been here. If my life was a cartoon, at this point I would look longingly into my tattered wallet and a single moth would fly out, reminding me why.

However, this weekend I partook in a little trek across to the other side of Kyushu with a family from my village. We went to watch an Airshow performed by the “Jieitai” - the Japanese Self Defense Forces, in Miyazaki-ken.

On Saturday night I muttered resentfully to myself as I went to bed at around 9pm. I would have to be getting up at 2am, to get myself ready to leave. As soon as my head hit the pillow, I turned round to look at my clock. Somewhere in the time it took for me to lower my head, I had lost 5 hours. Time to get up.

Tanoue-san and his family arrived on the dot at 3am. Being a diplomatic person, I didn’t ask why it was necessary for us to leave so hideously early, but in retrospect perhaps this would have been a good idea. Despite the half-hourly stops to let the children ritually puke up from car sickness, Tanoue’s supervan* scythed its way through the traffic-less mountain roads of twilight inaka, and we arrived at the airshow way, WAY before schedule.

6am. There was already a small queue of cars forming outside the grounds of the Airbase. A row of F-16’s could be just made out in the pitch-blackness, causing the enthused amongst us to climb a dangerously steep and wet grass embankment (”its steep for a reason, guys”) to get a better look. Cue satisfied chuckling as I watch fathers haphazardly drag their children up the hill, ultimately impeding each other, and both tumbling back down on their faces to try all over again.

The Airshow started at 8:30am and went on until about 3pm. The most interesting part for me was watching the Japanese version of the “Red Arrows”. I’m sure every country has a variant - a team of highly skilled pilots who fly small planes in a display, with coloured smoke trailing behind them. The Japanese team was called “Blue Impress”.

On the way back, Tanoue stopped at a conbini to buy beer. At this point, his wife assumed the driving seat and we got drunk in the back. I learnt my first Japanese tongue-twister (hayakuchikotoba) - NAMA MUGI NAMA GOME NAMA TAMAGO. As I drank more beer, I think I got better at saying this. Or at the very least, I said it more loudly and more often than was required.

• The ’supervan’ is something you will see everywhere in this country. Japanese people modify normal family MPV’s to a kind of horrific extreme. Huge alloy wheels. Blacked-out windows. Road-scraping bodykit. The modification does not stop when you step inside, either. Tanoue’s van had an insanely large stereo, neon everywhere, 2 tv screens and a VCR - on the way back from the airshow, Tanoue hooked up his video camera and we watched the footage from the airshow on these screens. I used to laugh at these vans. Now I sort of want one.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 10th, 2002 at 3:42 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.