enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

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Reminiscences of...not a geisha.

Back again.

Still haven't cooked anything. Haven't grocery shopped, in fact!

Am feeling much, much better though! Brilliant! I suppose I have turned a corner, finally. It was rather gruesome to be feeling ill whilst feeling sad.

So now I'm no longer particularly ill. I don't feel particularly sad, either, but that is always lurking I suppose.

So...I was reading a couple of Anna's entries that I've missed in the last couple of days. I do hope that she writes her book!

She reminded me of something. She mentioned the Japanese saying that I used to hear all the time when I ran there: "Fall down eight times: get up nine times."

It made me giggle.

It is true: I did hear that when I ran in Japan.

I always had such odd experiences in Japan, though. It makes it seem like such a mysterious world, don't you think, when you are gobsmacked by true cultural differences?

I mean, there were many things that were unusual there to a Westerner. Going into various "public" baths completely naked is one thing. Giving up one's clothes and other worldly possessions for a robe and then sleeping in the same room with a bunch of men and women (men at the front of the room; women at the back on cots) in one of those "baths" places is another of them.

But the one that always makes me giggle is the experience that I had with my massage therapist.

It seemed that whenever I was in Japan in the last two years that I was competing seriously, I had some sort of an injury that would flare up. Typically it was my piriformis muscle, which sort of rotates the butt and through which the sciatic nerve often takes a rather winding course. It can be quite a painful injury, simply because the muscle tightens up around the nerve.

So often I would get to Japan, and after sitting on the damn plane my (ass) would be scrunched up.

We never traveled with a massage therapist, so we would use the massage services provided by the race organizers. There were always dozens of massage tables lined up in a row. I really can't remember at all if there were curtains around the massage tables. No idea.

So the funny thing is that, of course, with an ass injury, one would always need to disrobe. You can't exactly sort out a piriformis injury (especially since mine was always gripping the attachment of the muscle under the butt, i.e. if you can imagine the hamstrings attaching to the leg bone you'll have an idea of what I mean) without working the muscle directly.

So...I seemed to always end up on each trip with the same massage therapist. This didn't seem particularly unusual, since the Japanese are quite well-organized. This guy wasn't at all communicative, and I think in fact that I had a translator to explain the injury to him. I don't remember that he did a particularly good job (not sufficiently aggressive: this injury needs to be dug out).

So here's the funny part. On my third and last trip to Japan in 1999, either my translator or one of the other cute university student translators that they had hired to help out with the race came up to me when I was lounging about somewhere (maybe in the dining lounge at the resort). She had a message from my massage therapist: He was madly in love with me and would I be with him? (Oddly enough, the translator delivered the message with a straight face.)

Ha!

Can you believe the awkwardness of that!?

Talk about getting up nine times...

Sooo not the message you want from your massage therapist.

The Japanese are rather funny. I have tremendous admiration for them. I like quiet, polite people, as a rule. I also like people who work hard and who treat honour as a high art. I mean, it goes too far for a Westerner, obviously. But I always liked that "fall down eight times: get up nine times" thing. I think it's true to life. I think you can be happy if you get up again. Again and again.

The thing that I remember perhaps most about Japan is that when you would run along the race course you would hear them screaming: "Fight-uh. Fight-uh."

Yeahhhhhhhhh!

7:57 p.m. - 2009-06-03

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