S-pulse vs King Kazu

The guy in the first pic ture is from Shizuoka. He is now 40 years old and is the oldest player in J-league.

When nobody thought it was possible for a Japanese guy to play for a foreing club team, he went to Brazil and was pretty succesful back in 1980's. He has played in Italy too.
All the soccer fans in Shizuoka were(I hope they still are) proud of him.
He was the King of Japan's soccer for a long time.
He was a super star. All the ladies out there really loved him too.

Well, yeah. Past tense.

He is kind of a joke now. Quite different from Nakata, who retired when he could still have played, Kazu still continues to play as long as there is a team that needs him.
He plays for Yokohama FC now, who is in the last place in the rankings.
I guess they just needed his drawing power as a well-known player.

But I guess I still like him. I took a lot of pictures of him without really realizing it.
He should quite playing real soon though. He is getting too old.

Anyway.
I was happy that I got to watch the game on Wednesday night.
My favorite player in S-pulse scored and they won. After the game there were even fireworks outside the stadium. It was probably the last fireworks I'd seen this Summer.

Orange lady

S-pulse is the name of my local professional soccer team.
Their uniform color is orange. Yes, the color of mikan(mandarin oranges), which is one of the few things that Shizuoka has to offer.

If you go out to watch a S-pulse game at Nihondaira you might see this lady in the stadium.
I've seen her twice already. She is easy to recognise, thanks to her hair that is died to orange.
She is a hardcore fan indeed.

Miss teen South Carolina

I wacthed that video on youtube.
First I thought "hmmm, I need to improve my English more. What she is saying doesn't make sense to me."
Then I found the one with English subtitles.
Looks like I was not the only one who needed them.

If something like that happened to a Japanese teenage girl, she wouldn't probably have the balls to appear on a TV show a few days later. Maybe she would stop going to school for a few days(or a few weeks) till everybody forgets what happened. Even if she did decide to be on a TV show thinking that it would be a good chance to justify herself, she would be talking about how embarrassed it is to be called "dumb" or "retard" by the whole country with tears in her eyes.
She would probably not be able to make herself look confident and say "I made a mistake, but everybody makes a mistake, right?"

Well, at least that is what I personally believe.

Miss South Carolina seems never let any chances to become famous get away from her hands.
Good for her.

More from Kanazawa(film)

I took these with my film camera.
Wonder if they look different from digital.

almost a month, almost a year

I saw a three-legged dog walking today.
Its owner was too busy texting with her cell phone to realize that the dog wanted to take a break from walk.
I believe that she usually takes good care of the dog, but I felt restless afterwards.
Poor dog.

Hey Dell

I thought you might like this hybrid band called Monkey Majik.
Those two gajins are brothers from Canada. The basist and drummer are Japanese.
The guy with a hunting cap originally came to Aomori-ken 10 years ago as an ALT!

They are now very popular here.
Why don't you come back and become a singer like them?? :-P

Micro

One of the bartenders at the club that I often go to looks so much like the guy, Micro, in this video.

I didn't realize it until I saw him not standing behind the counter but dancing on the floor the other night. He looked cooler when dancing. Maybe it was because he was unexpectedly good.

This song is kinda gay just like any other songs of Def Tech, but I like it.
Sometimes I want to listen to cheesy songs that I would have loved when I was a teenager.

Things that I realize since we've been separated
Things that we didn't grasp as we tried to get closer
I hear the hearbeat
and I am feeling restless

Often you find loneliness around you
but you've got to face it
blah blah blah

Weekend

This past weekend was relatively eventful.
It made me realize how much I like talking to/meeting people.

A friend took a slow train here from Tokyo on Friday.
On his way, he got off the train at Yui and then walked to the next station, Okitsu, to enjoy the scenery of those old houses in the area and got back on a train from there to Yaizu, where his parents live. I found it a crazy thing but also a fun thing to do. No surprise that he got tanned and looked almost red even before we started drinking.

Next time I would like to meet him in Tokyo and would like him to show me his cameras.

-----

I ran into some of my friends that are DJs before meeting up with him.
They said that they were waiting for me to show up at their club two weekends in a row and that I had been missed. How sweet.

-----

Saturday night was for clubbing, not at said club though.
I met some cool new people who knew how to party. Man, it was a lot of fun.
In a small city like Shizuoka, it was almost surprising that the club was full of foreigners. I liked the international atmosphere.

-----

A friend made his DJ debut on Sunday night so I went to check him out.
He was so freaking nervous that he could barely look down the dance floor.
The club only gave him one hour to play and I guess it was fair enough. I think he did a good job.
After he was finished, he came up to me sweating all over and told me enthusiastically how tense, but at the same time, how excited he was in the DJ booth.
I could tell that he felt truly alive when talking about his passion for music and DJ.

I was motivated to keep trying what I've been trying.
It was a good weekend after all.

Fish Market

東茶屋街 in Kanazawa

Summer festival

盗撮

I took this photo because 1, I liked the way she dressed. 2, The bag she was holding was from Zara(I like it). 3, She didn't seem to care at all about the festival going on in front of her and kept talking on the phone and I found it funny.

She didn't know that I took a photo of her. This could be 盗撮?
I don't think she would have cared even if she knew though.

But if I was a guy and she knew what I was doing she would not have liked it I guess.

I saw this TV show this morning about guys who were video recording some girls in bikinis at the beach.
(I think it was the same TV show as John was talking about here)

Since it is a TV show the TV crews don't confront the creepy dude by themselves or take him to the police station right away but took the girls with them that were being shot by him and then make them say something to him.

Something like "You f**king loser, don't do it again, delete that video right now in front of us!"

It was funny that one of the girls said "I don't want this to happen again, but I guess I gotta deal with it. It can't be helped."

I think she got a point.
If you hang out in a public place like beaches wearing a sexy bathing suit maybe you should know that you attract attentions not only from young hot surfers but also from creepy dudes with their cameras.

Every prefecture has a regulation which bans any actions that give someone trouble.
It's vague I know. It can be applied widely.
Selling concert tickets at a ridiculous price, touching a girl's ass in the train, or touting for customers on the street to an adult-entertainment establishment violates this regulation.

Taking pictures of women for sexual purpose without their permission is then illegal, but not in all cities. It depends on what kind of local ordinance your city/prefecture has against it.
In 27 prefectures, 盗撮 is banned and specified in the regulations now.

(but you often see a TV news where girls in bikini are hanging around the beach and the narration goes like "today was the hottest day this summer and the beach/pool was crowded with people as you can see in the video......." i don't think they ask the girls for permission.)

Anyway.
There was no such regulations in Wakayama prefecture until 2003 and a bunch of those losers went to the beaches there during the summer, with their cameras.
It must have been a paradise for them.

Now they have a regulation that bans indecent actions like taking covert pictures.
Accordingly Wakayama is not a paradise for them anymore.

An old restaurant downtown Kanazawa

It's been there since 1960.
There was an oil-stove placed right behind me in the middle of August.
I'm glad the air conditioner was on instead of the oil-stove.
A provocative painting was hanging on the wall and I couldn't stop wondering if she was Japanese or Filipina or something else.
I liked it there.

More from the museum

21st century museum of contemporary art, Kanazawa

The crushed ice shop

reminded me of my childhood.
Seemed like it hadn't changed at all since 1970's.

Crushed ice, before and after

My first kaki-goori this summer.

Kenroku-en（兼六園）

One of the three greatest gardens in Japan.
Since it was rediculously hot there was not a lof ot tourists.
Maybe you should visit there either in Spring or in Winter so there will be less sweating.