Winter, Gravity, Haircut

If the title of this post didn’t have commas included, you could mistake the title for some new form of fad whereby your hair is styled to withstand both winter and gravity.

Instead, these are just the things that I have been involved in recently. And basketball.
I’ve lucked out and managed to find two groups of people to play basketball with. Stepping back onto the court after at least six months has reminded me of two things; one – how much I love playing basketball and, two – how much older I am now. Two days after my first 90 minute hoops session, I woke up feeling like the Tin Man had well and truly rusted up. Every part of my body ached while I tried to do nothing except get up out of bed. In other words, getting older sucks.

In other random news, I came across this TV program one night last week. Take every singing competition TV show you’ve ever seen. Add Japanese people from everyday walks of life. Take the music genre in Japan known as ‘enka’, which is kind of like music engineered to express deep emotions, both positive and negative, and never to be taken lightly. Wrap it all up into a garishly-lit, staged production that somehow lasts for more than three hours and is responsible for making me devour a 180g bag of potato chips and this is what you get…

Yes. Everyday walks of life, as in, they made every contestant wear either their work uniform, school uniform or business related attire for the performances. Why? Because Japan. That’s why. In no way does wearing a certain type of uniform or costume improve your singing ability, so the producers just decided, “Well, because he is a construction worker, he should dress as one!” same goes for every other contestant.

Imagine the same on any of the Australian ‘talent’ shows where every contestants collective tales of woe, hardship and overcoming the odds is pummelled onto the viewers with subtletly akin to being forcefed whole French breadsticks with the words TRAGEDY, HEARTBREAK, INSECURITY and COURAGE engraved on them. “Well, this contestant’s parents died when they were a child. I know! Let’s stage every performance in funeral attire and a mock graveyard in the background!”

Here’s a shot of the man above in action…

Moving along.

Winter. I thought I could handle cold weather. Whatever Australia deems as ‘winter’ is not what Japan classifies as ‘winter’ especially in the case of Kyoto. This makes my doorless shower of a morning more and more unappealing as the chill becomes ice and then, soon enough, snow.

Yet I’m excited about this prospect because I’ve never really experienced snow. And I’ve never really had to wear gloves in my entire life.
This may seem like a relatively uninteresting piece of trivia about my life, but actually its interesting on many levels.

1) Typing with gloves is nigh on impossible, or makes you feel like you’re hacking into someone else’s computer for the express purpose of mining sensitive data that could lead to some massive revelation taking place and you don’t want to leave any traces of your presence.

2) If you slightly bend at the knees and put your hands out in front of you, it looks like you’re going to catch something that is being thrown to you. If you do exactly the same thing while wearing gloves, you look like at least 20 times creepier than usual. If you happen to be behind bushes and or other matter that could be considered shrubbery increase aforementioned creep level by 100 times.

3) It makes you realise just how much you take grip for granted. Seriously. I feel like I can’t hold my own hands with gloves on, let alone anything of importance. My nimble dexterity is for naught when I slip some mittens on. Gloves of -20 to DEX indeed.

4) I tend to click my fingers when I have an epiphany or someone I’m talking to guesses something correctly or says something cool. Do you know how much of an idiot you look like trying to click your fingers while wearing gloves? No? I SURE DO. And then you try and click more than once because you’re just like, “No. I got this. I can do this. I am click.” and the idiocy level increases tenfold.

In other events, I recently got to watch Gravity, the new Cuaron film. For the record, I absolutely love Children of Men.

Gravity blew me away. Everything about it was so well done, it was hard to believe that it went for only 90 minutes. I know that Australia got to see this film much earlier than I did, but this is one of the caveats of living in Japan, movies take a ridiculously long time to be released here.

How many films can capture and hold that overbearing sense of dread, fear and hopelessness and maintain it for the better part of 82 minutes?
Not many. I’ve watched many good films this year, but Gravity was easily the most worthy of seeing in a cinema by a long margin. There’s a space pun to be made there somewhere, but I enjoyed the film so much that even reflecting on it now has me remembering the contrast between the horror of the situation this person was in with the stunning backdrop that was the surface of the earth.

And to close this entry out, I got a haircut two or so weeks ago. Now, this again may seem like relatively minor information. But people talk about these kind of things in Japan. Most people I know that I’ve seen since having the haircut have called me (in no particular order) – sexy, handsome, a dandy or said that it is a good fit (wha?), that I look younger or that they didn’t even recognise me. Even the local ramen shop guy mentioned it.

So here’s a photo of me trying to encapsulate all that was said about this haircut.