So I failed to make it out to Megane
Bridge, due to reasons I'll explain in a bit, but I did have my New
Year's party for riding school which was absolutely hilarious. But
I'd better start from the beginning.
So first off I did finally get my oil
change. I stopped in at Bad Ass Coffee which is actually connected to
a car repair place (how convenient!) and without an appointment they
had my oil change completed before my food even came out! It did,
however, end up costing me about 4000 yen, whereas in the U.S. I
think I paid about $30, and when I lived in Asahi my guy did it for
about half that price. But if I had driven up to my guy in Asahi it
would've cost me about 5,000 yen between gas and highway tolls so it
was ultimately better to get it done near by.
Anyway you know how this story goes—when you fix one thing, everything else starts breaking. My car was looking pretty dirty since it's parked on the street and it hasn't gotten a bath since I purchased it over a year ago, so I decided to give it a half-assed car wash (aka I didn't have any car soap so it was getting scrubbed down with water and a towel, poor-man style). While doing this I noticed that not only has the paint on the front hood faded considerably, but it's actually chipping off in some places! Even one of my co-workers commented that I should get it repainted a few days ago...as if I have that kind of money just chillin' in a stack at home waiting to be used for frivolous things such as painting my car!
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| GIANT cat that lives at my riding club |
Sunday morning I headed off to Chiba
city for riding school where I rode this green mare who was kind of a
challenge for me. She kept going around really hollow and it was hard
to keep her in a frame on course. When she got hollow she would
either break down into a trot or add in an extra stride in front of
the jump so it was kind of difficult. I'd like to have another chance
to ride her again because, well, I can be a bit of a perfectionist.
After a several hour nap in the back seat of my car, I went to my
regular lesson to find out that Parco (the horse I usually ride) had
a leg injury and is on stall rest for a couple weeks. Which isn't a
huge deal since I was planning on switching to a new horse at the end
of the month anyway. So I left it up to the rotation for who I would
ride, and I was given that evil pony from the last time that I had
had a terrible ride! I must have just been having a bad day the last
time though because we went around perfectly fine this time (either
that or I just decided not to take his shit this time around).
Afterward I set up my lesson/show schedule for next month. Which, by
the way, is crazy because they decided to change the circuit from the
last weekend of the month to the first weekend of the month, making
it so that I'm literally showing two weekends in a row on two
different horses! I convinced my trainer to let me ride that one
green horse (Fururu) in the February show, but because he's green
I'll have to drop down a level. So the January show will be 90cm and
then the February show I'll be riding Fururu in 80cm. But if we do
well we can always move back up!
Later that night was the new year's
party! We drank beer and chu-hi's and ate sushi, nabe, and fried food
for a little while. One of the women apparently had found my column,
Kim's Mumblings, had printed out a copy of each edition and was
passing it around for everyone to read! That was slightly
embarrassing. But embarrassment is easily forgotten after a little
nihonshuu (what American's
know as sake). After eating and drinking for a little while, each
team of the riding school had to put on a presentation. Our team
hadn't come up with anything because we were being lazy, so we
decided to just watch the other teams. One team (including my trainer)
decided to put on a rendition of Gangnam Style, and danced one round
for us, before we were all asked to join in (glad we were given time
to get slightly drunk before this). Then two of the teams combined
for the second presentation and did the dance for Golden Bomber's
song, “Memeshikute.” The guys even painted their faces
white! It was pretty funny. At this point we realized we should come
up with something, so the coach for my team decided to do what they
call “guitar samurai.” By the way, I wasn't the only person who
had never heard of this. So being the token foreigner I was asked to
take the mic and introduce him in English with a “ladies and
gentleman” sort of announcement. Apparently “guitar samurai” is
when someone strums the guitar once for every syllable they say.
During this time, they have to single out someone in the audience.
Then, that audience member has to come sit in a chair up front while
the samurai pauses his playing to deliver the punchline, saying
something mean and funny about that person. Kind of like a roast
given in the U.S. plus a guitar. So that was horribly entertaining!
That night I left my car at the riding
club and stayed over in a hotel (since we'd been drinking) and went
back for a 7 a.m. lesson the next morning. I ended up riding that one
horse, about which I believe I previously said that, “I'm
fairly bad at but love riding because I always learn a lot.” Well
anyway I've totally decided that I love this horse now. He's
difficult to ride but I think I've finally figured him out. And he's
blatantly the best jumper in the barn (if you can get him to go
around anyway). I'm kind of considering asking if I can ride him in
the February show too, but I'm also kind of scared because what if I
have a bad ride on him that day... it's sort of iffy. Anyway it was
pouring down freezing cold rain all morning and I got completely
soaked. My spare clothing was just the stuff I had worn yesterday so
I ended up changing into that, and drying my coat in front of the
space heater while chatting with people after my lesson. During which
time (!) it started snowing!! Apparently it hadn't snowed and
actually collected on the ground in a long time, so I realized I
should try to head home as quickly as possible. I got in the car and
turned the ignition, and my car coughed a couple times before turning
on. Then it sputtered. and died. I turned the key over again and
nothing happened...
Back inside the
clubhouse I let them know what happened. One of the trainers happened
to have jumper cables (thank god!), so he and the head of the club
jumped my car for me. Seriously, they are so incredibly nice! By this
time I was re-soaked from the snow and my shoes were all soggy, and
it had been long past time to leave to try to beat the snow storm
traffic. Finally leaving around 12:30, I decided to take the back
roads home. As very few Japanese use the freeway, I figured the
conditions would be a bit treacherous if I went that way. Driving slowly for the first
two hours, I made my way into town about 45 minutes outside of
Minamiboso when traffic completely stopped on a mountain pass. I sat
there for about an hour, watching my windows slowly fog over from all
the wet clothes in my car, and my side mirrors admitting defeat to
the onslaught of rainy sludge, before I checked my phone for
alternate routes. Given none, I continued to wait for another hour,
during which time I had inched forward several car lengths (due to
those in front of me that had turned around). I decided to follow
suit, and turned around on a narrow side road. After backtracking
towards Chiba for about a half hour, I hopped on the freeway towards
Boso. Driving about 50 km/h I slowly made my way back home. The freeway was technically shut down to anyone without chains on their tires, but no one tried to stop me (heehee). And to my
surprise, the storm had hit as far south as Boso as well! The roads
were flooded from the rain of that morning and slick from the snow
storm, but five hours later I made it home at last, drenched and
exhausted.
Then today I
realized that that was the last day of the illuminations on Megane
bridge.
