Actually, it REALLY felt like a rollercoaster today since I rode 2 of them.
Twice.
Each.
But it's weird. The days are getting longer again (which usually makes my sun-dependent personality quite giddy) AND we've had stellar weather in Japan. The sun has shone every day for the last two weeks straight.
As my brother Ben will attest, that's quite a blessing when you're from Colorado but don't live there anymore.
It's only sprinkled twice, the clouds have always burned off, and it hasn't even been that frigid. It's been more like a beautiful New York November around here lately.
The leaves are finally gone, the wind's picking up again, and maybe the realization that winter is here is triggering my less-than-super-genki self into action.
(Reminder: for those not truly in tune with Topher, even his bad days are still pretty darn sunny and bright and happy, because, well, that's his disposition, so don't worry that things are too depressing for him. I mean me. Dope! I'm writing in the third person again.)
It's just weird. I rode rollercoasters today for crying out loud! (Isn't it nifty the way the italics kinda make it look like a rollercoaster?) And I was just blah. I've been blah the last two days. My weekend. Very indecisive, very anti-social (in the I just wanna hang out by myself sort of way), very hermit-ish.
And I'm not sure why. Maybe it's the long week ahead of me I'm dreading... Maybe it's the end of the holidays and too much sugar and alcohol and junk in my body. Maybe it's the return to regular shows. Maybe it's winter doldrums and the realization of how soon I'll be leaving this place.
Or maybe I just miss American culture.
I'm not sure. But I'm indulging myself by hiding from the world and hoping I snap out of it soon.
In the meantime, I'm blowing my budget on awesome Japanese fashion (on sale, of course) and all the internet bills and errands that arrive before a major holiday weekend where everything is closed.
But back to the coasters.
For those Coloradoans, imagine a park in 2009 that basically combines the atmosphere of the old school Elitch Gardens (with a zoo involved too) with the ghetto-ness of Lakeside. Yeah.
The Tobu Zoo is GHETTO. Fun, but old school ghetto.
I mean, their two coasters are pretty awesome, but I'm not sure what the rest of the 4300 yen was really supposed to cover. And that was the off-season price!
Besides, who, besides me, would be crazy enough to go an hour out of Tokyo in the middle of winter to ride rollercoasters?
Yeah. Sometimes I really am a baca gai-jin.
It was pretty awesome to ride a good old-fashioned wooden rollercoaster, and the steel coaster (opened last year) has some awesome air-time.
And I rode the swings. While singing "I'm Flying". Twice. Because, well, that's pretty much the perfect example of the essence of me. If you didn't already know. And don't worry, there's no video to watch this time.
And I went on the Africart jungle safari in a right-side driver giraffe-d out Jeep go-kart. You should be jealous, just FYI.
And I hung out with the hippos.
'Well not those. Those are just the entrance statue hippos. I didn't remember to take a picture of the real one.
Which probably doesn't mean anything to you unless you were slumming through it in Alexander Technique junior year in the upstairs lobby of Hartke every Tues/Thurs afternoon with me.
I'll explain. There was this little magical exercise we were enlisted to endeavor through about halfway through the semester. Basically, after getting to know us rather well, our teacher assigned us an animal. And we had to go to the National Zoo (which was WAY better than this awful place today -- and free to boot!) and study our animal for at least half an hour to fully understand its movement and sounds and quality and being.
Yes, it may sound quite strange, but the next time you visit the zoo, actually sit down and spend at least 10 minutes (instead of the requisite let's-see-if-this-one's-doing-anything 10 seconds) simply observing the animal in its environment. You'll find it surprising how many people rush on by and miss most of the qualities that make the animal interesting enough to be held in captivity.
Anyway, in case you haven't figured the point of this digression out yet, I sat in the National Zoo for over an hour watching a hippopotamus.
Because the whole point of the exercise was to study an animal that is physically the opposite of your nature.
Yeah. Now y'all get it. I'm much more like a meerkat or giraffe or ostrich...
So the professor assigned me the hippo.
And let me tell you, some of the best performance work I ever did in college was studying and becoming that hippo. For real.
Hippos are incredibly interesting animals. They can move through water incredibly fast, and their attacks are quite deadly, even to humans. Yet most of their time is spent at rest, yet in studying them, you will notice crazy things like their eye movements, this cool swivel their ears do, and the way their tale flicks away insects.
But coolest of all is their bellow. Seriously. The only word close to describing the noise they make is a bellow.
And I'd never know that if I hadn't stopped to watch one for an hour.
So, there I was in class, connecting with the essence of a hippo, on my hands and knees, breathing more richly and deeper than a human does, taking up the space and presence of several tons of animal, and exhaling this bellow previously alien to me.
And it felt amazing. Because, whatever the rest of the class saw (which I remember to be a great performance), I actually felt like I was no longer anywhere near skinny, genki me, but the sheer size and power of a hippopotamus.
Since then, I feel incredibly connected to hippopotami. Because I've studied them. And became one. If only for 30 seconds. So, I made sure I stopped at spent 10 minutes with one today.
On a side note, I attempted to recreate my performance on this silly night, and failed miserably. Guess I'm not well-studied in hippo anymore.
Just fond.
And now, I'm spending the night in my humble abode escaping into one of my stories, be it literary or television-ary, I haven't yet decided.
Maybe that'll make the rollercoaster stop. Preferably at a high point.
