Hindsight

David Beckham has had a huge following here in Japan. For those of you who haven’t heard of him, he’s only the people’s favorite gaijin soccer figure here in Japan. He was a Manchester United soccer player that recently made a contract switch to Real Madrid.

You can tell from that last paragraph that I have no clue how to talk about soccer.

Takashi sensei’s get together today was fun. Food galore.

Among the many discussions he told us that the elementary school kids he taught recently called him “Bekkame”. “Bek- as the first syllable of David Beckham’s name and “Kame” because Takashi is Takashi Kameyama. Good times.

Today’s company included Dion, his friend Natasha, Livia and I. In addition, Maki, Steven and Marcus joined us. Dion and I knew Maki from the elementary school workshop we had to attend last year - Steven and Marcus were new faces but very, very cool fellows from Australia who we had a great time talking with.

The piano took center stage as Dion performed, among other things, Canon in D and his own personal creation. Later we found out that Marcus did singing and performing arts (among many, many other things) before coming to Japan. He gave the piano a try. We were treated to a great contemporary piece of music…. that he composed himself. I wanted to talk to him more, but I was in discussions of Japan with Natasha and later with Steven, Maki and Takashi sensei’s son Shun.

Shun just graduated to high school and still enjoys the good video game or two. He asked me (through Maki), “why is it called a video game? we call it terebi (TV) game”. I spent a foolish amount trying to explain why it was “video” and not “TV”. We went into a short discussion about why I thought Final Fantasy VIII was not good (different battle system from the others). He told me why he liked it (most other FF battle systems were too similar).

After the night was over, Takashi drove us up to a mountain in Wakamatsu. There were quite a few kids who had to have been drinking in the area, but they are (shall I say) mostly harmless.

The view was clear, beautiful.

Kitakyushu at night. Smokestacks were scattered about the cityscape. Towers filled up the rest. Hives of people. The most interesting thing that caught my eye were the smoke towers that I could only see because of the flashing strobes embracing them. My eyes panned the horizon and I noticed them - beacons of industry.