Strange green creatures had a larger impact on my life yesterday than they have had since I was a child enamoured with a plastic triceratops model that my dad bought me from New Walk museum in Leicester (by the way, boys in Japan are obsessed with dinosaurs too - my class of seven-year-olds all know the Latin names of the cool carnivorous and flying dinosaurs). We all went along to the kappa matsuri festival - a local shindig celebrating a mythical green half-human, half-frog kappa (Pictured). Anyway, while speeding along the back roads to get there I slammed on the brakes and skidded to a halt (not quite as impressive on a push bike as in a car) because a slinky metre-long green snake was crossing the road, and I thought it would be bad luck to run over the thing, and even worse luck to be bitten by it. We all stopped and watched it disappear into the crevasses of a garden wall. But the show must go on... How do you celebrate a mythical river sprite? Why, by cross-dressing and performing a sort of mass low-impact aerobics routine in the middle of the street. I whipped out my handy digi cam to shoot the hilarious scene... only to realise the camera battery was still in the recharger at home. Oh, you should have seen it. There's always next year. Crestfallen at the lack of publicity potential, we cheered ourselves up with a MacDonalds happy meal and headed home, only to discover giri-no-shacho upset, brandishing a tied up plastic bag. She'd caught a lizard in her room and had Shanghaied it until we arrived home, expecting me to stamp on it. I opened the front door and shook the bag for a good 20 seconds or so, and then I opened my eyes. Given the theme of the day, I was happy the little green fellow had nipped off before I had to do anything his kappa brothers might have objected to.
Sunday 10 August 2008
The ancient Japanese art of low impact aerobics
Strange green creatures had a larger impact on my life yesterday than they have had since I was a child enamoured with a plastic triceratops model that my dad bought me from New Walk museum in Leicester (by the way, boys in Japan are obsessed with dinosaurs too - my class of seven-year-olds all know the Latin names of the cool carnivorous and flying dinosaurs). We all went along to the kappa matsuri festival - a local shindig celebrating a mythical green half-human, half-frog kappa (Pictured). Anyway, while speeding along the back roads to get there I slammed on the brakes and skidded to a halt (not quite as impressive on a push bike as in a car) because a slinky metre-long green snake was crossing the road, and I thought it would be bad luck to run over the thing, and even worse luck to be bitten by it. We all stopped and watched it disappear into the crevasses of a garden wall. But the show must go on... How do you celebrate a mythical river sprite? Why, by cross-dressing and performing a sort of mass low-impact aerobics routine in the middle of the street. I whipped out my handy digi cam to shoot the hilarious scene... only to realise the camera battery was still in the recharger at home. Oh, you should have seen it. There's always next year. Crestfallen at the lack of publicity potential, we cheered ourselves up with a MacDonalds happy meal and headed home, only to discover giri-no-shacho upset, brandishing a tied up plastic bag. She'd caught a lizard in her room and had Shanghaied it until we arrived home, expecting me to stamp on it. I opened the front door and shook the bag for a good 20 seconds or so, and then I opened my eyes. Given the theme of the day, I was happy the little green fellow had nipped off before I had to do anything his kappa brothers might have objected to.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
2 comments:
complately off topic but the post above about Mrunal has made me think of otehr lads from school.marcus collins,where is he now?
Let's see now... Marcus Collins, last I heard, was an academic at some southern US university. Kevin Dolby is married to a Leicester girl, but lives in Bedford, round the corner from Mrunal, and is in IT librarianship or some such for the Wellcome Trust. Everybody else I think you know about through Facebook...
Post a Comment