Well, we are in the throes of the major semester-ending tests right now, which aren't really all that important because there are three semesters a year, somewhat precluding the use of the word semester, and since this is only the first semester they have a lot more time to screw up more severely later. But there aren't any classes right now, so until we get the tests all sorted out and I have to start grading them, I have nothing to do. This is also not quite completely true, but zero classes versus five or six a day sure frees up some time to post. So I will run down what I have been up to recently.

I practiced judo again on Saturday. Every Saturday I start to consider quitting judo, because my body gets this kinda lazy, queasy feeling in anticipation of judo practice. Especially in this heat, judo practice really makes me ill, a feeling which actually starts several hours before practice. But this time it wasn't so bad actually. The weather has been really up and down recently though. The humidity is always really bad, but the temperature has been fluctuating between broiling and merely sweltering. The other day I was at an elementary school for an all-day visit and during recess, it was so hot that the kids out on the playground just stripped off and ran around playing tag naked or in their underwear. Of course, soon after that a typhoon came through. It didn't hit us too badly but it still brought a good afternoon's worth of horizontal rain and the like. But on Saturday it wasn't above 28° so judo wasn't too bad overall. Another factor in the relative tolerability of this week's practice may have been the fact that I got to practice with a guy my own size instead of the big hulking black belt I usually practice with. On top of that, we mostly practiced our technique instead of fighting a lot, so it wasn't quite so thoroughly wearying.

Of course, the next day was much hotter, and I went to a ska show down in Tokyo. I used to listen to a lot of ska when I was in high school and maybe starting college, but I had no idea it was still around in Japan. I believed it had by and large been supplanted by swing and the like. But it's still alive and well, if not exactly popular. Fortunately I have some punky underground friends who knew about it. The band we saw, named Doberman, played some pretty authentic ska, without too much crap mixed in. It was all in Japanese, with the exception of the obligatory cover of the Specials' Enjoy Yourself (It's Later Than You Think.) They were good too; I was impressed. It was a pretty small audience but the club we were in was packed with Japanese rudies and other such ska-heads, wearing the closest things to fedoras that they could scrounge up. I got so sweaty that I had to buy a new shirt just to ride home on the over-airconditioned subway without catching a cold. I wanted to buy a Doberman T-shirt, but the show had already cost 3500 yen, so I didn't want to lay down another 2500 for a T-shirt, especially since none of them were particularly cool. So I went to the Don Quixote and got a cheap-ass one instead. Don Quixote is a pretty cool store, full of really cheap crap, so it's a lot of fun to browse through. Problem is, it's all so cheap because it's all crap.