Omuta Bowling Night

It had long been on the cards - a staff and instructors bowling night in Omuta. The last one I went to was back in the autumn of 2004, where the main protagonists were Pete, Linda, James, Christine, Mayumi, Mariko, Maki and me... this time, only me and Maki were survivors from that first time, and we were joined by Nicole, Stephen, Tarah, Travis, Dorry, Rie, Chie and Mikiko.

It was a good night... we split into two lanes, and had two games... on one side, Nicole, Stephen, Tarah, Rie and Chie. On the other, Travis, Dorry, me, Maki and Mikiko. Things got off to a bright start, and over on our side, everybody managed to break 100.



One of the best things about bowling is that you can compare styles... Travis has a very elegant reverse roll, whereas his beau, Dorry, sends her ball thundering down the lane from a standing start like a wrecking ball. Stephen gets down low and sends it hard and straight, like the Kentucky Bourbon he was drinking on the night, whereas his beau, Tarah, gives a slow roll with plenty of flip at the back end.

As to be expected, a fair proportion of the evening was spent by the girls discussing which student they thought was the best looking (incidentally this is exactly what happened last time, and it was the same student too!)




The night wouldn't have been the same without a bit of "Ahh, Japan"-eseness though.. when we went to get our shoes, we found that from 27.5cm and up, there was only one pair available... by some strange coincidence, Travis, Stephen and myself have shoe sizes 0.5 of a cm apart... but going for a night out with a gaggle of foreigners could have proved problematic...

A very pleasant day...

With both my wife and I having a day off, we decided to go out in the car for a bit of lunch, and perhaps some cake..

First port of call was a great little Italian restaurant near JR Kurume called タベルナ石 (taberu na ishi), and a very reasonable lunchtime set for 1000yen.



Next we decided to revisit the shrine at which we got married, 篠山神社 (sasayama jinja)..

After that, we drove all around the back streets of 小郡 (Ogoori) to get to a very famous cake shop, Nico. My wife has been there countless times, and one of her best friends lives a stones throw away.. I am a rather old fashioned chap, and on the whole I am traditionally English in that I consider food something to be eaten, and don't really care much for fancy stuff. Given the choice between expensive delicacies and all-you-can-eat, I'll mostly go for the latter. However, the following cakes...

were ABSOLUTELY incredible, and well worth the 300 plus yen they each cost.

With the eating over, we headed back to Kurume, and passing alongside the nishitetsu train line, I spotted one of my favourite sights of the city...

Yes, a little old metal bridge, now rendered useless due to a wall... rather quaint and sad... I often like to spend a moment or two there whenever I pass by..

A couple of things...

A classic piece from Brass Eye... not polishing the brass moustache was unforgivable!




Here is possibly my only claim to fame, and a tenuous one at that... my dad was in an episode of Tales of the Unexpected, playing a guy called Sebastian... he makes a couple of brief appearances, at 3:30 and 7:05 respectively...

An idea for Japanese cell phones...

Technology is big here in Japan, and cell phones are no exception... some of you may be surprised to know that a great many phones in Japan have a "flower mode". This has something to do with the lens of the camera, and makes for clearer, brighter photos when taking photos of roses, etc.

Well, useful as that is for millions of females in Japan, what about some other options for other demographics? For purely selfish reasons, I would like the following:

- awful wig mode... that is, with the flick of a switch, my phone would be able to clearly depict the many barnet disgraces I see during my travels around Kyushu.

With this, I would have been able to better capture the brass-necked chap in the photo below, whose wig, in the words of Travis Waugh, was "quite the example of what not to do".

More entertaining TV!

Well, well... what a treat this was! Put pretty but essentially stupid girls in bikinis, put them on slippery slides above a vat of flour and then ask them basic general knowledge questions, increasing the steepness of the slide when they answer incorrectly, until all three eventually slide screaming to a powdery demise! Superb!

Stupid they were, but very plucky and happy-go-lucky... some of the questions they got wrong... "name 3 Japanese pro baseball teams", "what's the name of the Prime Minister"... and one of the few they got right.. "what is this a picture of?" (it was Tokyo dome)...

So who won? Well, after a dismal start, it seemed a shoe-in that the girl in the blue helmet would be first down the chute, as she was already having to (ahem) spread her legs to grip the sides...

but it turned out to be the yellow helmeted idol that prevailed, with the girl in red snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, shooting down at quite a click to end up with a face full of pre-cake...

But the final word should go to the girl in the blue, who was by far the dimmest of the three, and the program ended with her grinning into the camera and saying that the flour was "sweet!!"

Just one of the characters that frequent Omuta you me town...

There she is, the bag lady of Omuta (or one of them at least)... every weekend, without fail, I see her struggling along the road, mumbling to herself about random things. And then there she is, hours later, in the supermarket, still mumbling and carrying around a big red stained knapsack. Who is she? What's in the sack? WHAT IN THE NAME OF GOD IS IN HER SACK??

Random English seen in Kurume...

First of all, from the 100yen shop near Narita-san...

And next, from the new second hand clothes store on the kamitsu bypass.. I say!

The one and only Molly Ringwald...

My wife has a couple of pinups, the foremost of these being Johnny Depp and Tobey Maguire (surprise surprise! well, she is Japanese....)

And me? Molly Ringwald...

Ah, Molly Ringwald...

I'm not really sure why I like her so much... perhaps it's because she's in two of my favourite films (The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles)... perhaps it's because she's from the mid 80s, one of the scenes I like to feast on during my nostalgia binges... whatever the reason, she definitely has something about her... and when I see her she dance in The Breakfast Club the world seems a perfect place...

A very Japanese hairstyle...

Ah yes, the combover, or the barcode head as it is called here in Japan... admittedly, this guy does have quite a lot of hair at the front, but just look at the glaring bald bit at the back.