Ninja restaurant

I went to a ninja restaurant a longggggggg time ago (it was only a week ago but it seems like a long time ago) for my birthday dinner.

The ninja restaurant is in Akasaka. When you walk by the outside it looks like a black ridgy wall. The waiters and waitresses were all wearing black or navy blue and have a cloth over their mouth (therefore looking like a ninja). The entrance was a small room with nowhere to go. The greeter called a ninja from a secret door by clapping and he came out. He led us through another secret door and through the "path of training ". There were little displays of ninja and traditional Japanese stuff. One of them was golden statues in a pond. Then there was this river (with glass over it). The guy/ninja snapped and a drawbridge came down. The inside was like a maze with low stone walls surrounding tables so it looked like a village. We got to the main part/ninja village and was assigned a house/table. We had to find a hidden button to call the ninjas to order something else. The hidden button was under the table by the wall.

The food was really interesting. I had the kids meal. It was 4 pieces of sushi, kara age (fried chicken), tempura (shrimp fried in batter), mini hotdogs with ketchup, and a ninja star cracker. The interesting part was my parents food. The appetizer was ninja star shaped crackers. They came on a dried plant with a duck liver paste. My dad had a turban shell bomb for his course. The shell was there on a platter and the waitress lights these two things on fire. Then she blows on them and the shell catches fire. The soup was really interesting. They came and made it at our table. First the waitress cut leafy vegetables into two bamboo cups. Then she poured cold soup that looked like liquid cheese into a big pot made out of bamboo. Then she dropped two very hot stones into the pot and let the soup cook. When the stones touched the soup, it made a lot of steam and hissing sound. Then we had dessert. The staff came out and sang happy birthday etc etc but it was good. Then I got my birthday strawberry. I got a medium sized box with smoke coming out of the cracks. Inside the box was a ninja towel present. The smoke was coming from dry ice hidden in the box. I had my strawberry and mango cake. My dad had a cheesecake (looked like a frog ). My mom had mango roll cake with a snowman ninja on top.

After that a magician came to our table. He was also a comedian. First he turned a 10 yen coin into a 100 yen coin in my hand. Then he did this long trick with a puffy ball. He made me squeeze it in my hand and then it turned into two balls. Then he asked me how many I want, and I wanted 7, he repeated the process you see above except for seven balls there was one big one. The final trick was a card trick. He did "pick a card any card" on me but he kept stopping me picking the card to be funny. Finally he said any card but he pushed a card out and I took a different one. It was 9 of clubs. He said to write your name on it with this "small" pen so I did. He put the card on the bottom of the deck, snapped and it was on the top. He did this again. Then he did it but said people think it will be on the top but they are wrong. It was 3 of diamonds. Then he did the same thing again but the card was in his headband.

When we left the waitress came out and had two signs. She yelled out in the middle of the street even though we were far. One said thank you and the other said happy birthday. They were ninja-y scrolls.

Rugby game 日本 たい イタリー

I went to a rugby game in Aoyama-ichome, a station two stops from home on the Oedo line. The game was Japan vs Italy. It was a lot like football but different.

Same -

The rugby field is about the same size as the football field. Like American  football there is a field goal thing on each end of the field. The balls are the same shape and teams can tackle in both sports.

The players of rugby and football both try to score by getting the ball to the other end of the field. In rugby a "try" is like a touchdown. A try is 5 points and the followup conversion kick is 2 points, a total of 7,  like football's touchdown + extra point.


Not the same -

Players can only pass backwards or sideways in rugby, but they can pass any number of times.  In american football the clock stops so much after a play, but in rugby the clock never stops (except for a really serious injury) so the play keeps going. There is no hiking in rugby and people pile up on you, then they just slip the ball out of the pile to a teammate. Sometimes people run strait to the tackle then slip the ball out.

In America you have 4 attempts to go 10 yards. In rugby you have infinite turns to go the whole way, until you score or lose the ball. When the ball goes out there is a throw in. Sometimes the teams will lift someone up to catch the ball which is cool that it worked.


Penalties are very different also. After a minor penalty in rugby, they have scrum. A scrum is where players from both teams get in a circle shape and the ball is rolled into the circle. The teams push against each other to get the ball to their teammates. Rugby players get sent off the field if they do a major foul. They come back after 10 minutes, but until then it is 14 on 15.

Players wear no gear in rugby. Making it a more dangerous sport in my opinion. In rugby there is no offensive or defensive players, everyone plays both for basically the whole game, with only a few sub players.

At the end of the game, the alarm sounded but the players had to finish the scrum/play. They finally did, and Japan won!

I hope to see rugby again and that because of this win Japan made the top 10 teams.

ぼくの おたんじょうび おめでとう （my birthday party)

I had my birthday party at spo-cha (I mentioned this place, the big arcade, in Jan 11 blog: Odaiba City.) . I had a small but all day party. I invited Mackay, Josh, Thomas from nishimachi, and Me, ルーカス　ウィレット.

My favorite thing was the cake. We had cake back at my house. We ordered it from an ice-cream shop in Roppongi called Cold stone. It was an ice-cream cake, cookies and cream. I thought it would be cookies and cream ice-cream and cake/cookies. It was actually cookies/cake and vanilla ice cream. The cake was really good but the slices were big.

My second favorite thing was the 4 player Pac man at spo-cha.  Everyone had their own guy to control. Every time a whole set of dots where eaten more would appear. The ghosts were not a problem, your friends were. When they eat a big dot they can eat the ghosts and you. It was really exiting. The game was really fun. 

The worst part was when we had a Nerf gun fight at my house. Josh wanted to be on his own team and he was sneaking around the house. He would lock himself in the bathroom until we went away. Then he would sneak around, if he heard us he would come back and lock himself in again. Over all we caught him in the mud room. So it was funny. 

The second worst part was when we were in the arcade at spo-cha. We could race with mini motorcycles which would have been best. We had all the forms ready when the guy asked my mom if she was all of our parents. He needed the parent to sign so we could not do it. 

Over all my birthday party was a success.  I can't wait until my next birthday!

Tag Rugby

Why?

This summer I have to do something to practice my Japanese. Since I am not in school I might forget it, and my parents say the best way to learn is to use it. My choices were to go to actual Japanese school, a private tutor, or other activity in Japanese, and that's it.

What we did

So I chose 'other activity'. The activity I chose was tag (flag) rugby. Basically the park district for the place we live organizes a tag rugby group on Sunday mornings at 10am. We go to 4 different schools a month to use their fields. The fields are artificial turf, not real grass.

First the class warms up with passing the rugby ball and playing monkey in the middle games. A rugby ball is like a football, but bouncy. Next we got into groups of 5 and do relay races to keep warming up and practice passing the ball. Then we got our belts and flags on (like capture the flag flags) and started playing games.

The first drill/game was where everyone just runs around trying to grab other peoples' flags. The second drill/game was where a couple of kids in the class had rugby balls and everyone else tried to pull their flag, to get the ball. If you pull someone's flag then you get the ball and people will start chasing you!

Then we organized into actual teams and started playing half court rugby. Both kids and grown-ups were playing. My team was only kids.  My team was good. We played two games against 2 different teams. We won both games! A touchdown is called a 'try' in rugby. I scored a lot in both games.

What I thought

Tag rugby was really fun. It was my first time ever playing rugby so I learned about the game and rules (you can only pass backwards, you can kick forwards, when you get " tackled " you have to pass and you must put the ball down to score). I also did get to practice my Japanese. The kids and coaches were all Japanese and spoke only Japanese. The communication was hard but I figured it out by using the Japanese I already know and hand-signing. They were very nice and we all had fun. I want to keep doing it - I was going to do it today but... the school where we were supposed to play at was having Sports Day (remember my blog about Sports Day?) so we couldn't use the field. Boo hoo. I hope it won't be cancelled next week!

Compared to other sports, rugby is the most like handball. I like it because you get to run around and chase people. I think I will keep playing even after I go back to school in the fall.