day 22 - one long entry

25/06/07 24:21
today was the day in atami that i looked least forward to (or: that i feared the most, to be honest). the schedule was:
morning: diving
evening: y`smen meeting with speech.
as some of you might know, i`m not a big fan of speaking in public. in fact, it goes as far that i`m trying to avoid such situations as much as possible. well, the y`smen pay for just about everything here so i guess i`m kinda obligated to speak whenever they want me to. this was my initial image of what today would be like.
well, what should i say. it turned out to be my best day here in atami so far. this morning we left the house at about 10 am to go to atami harbour. the diving was to take place on the island of hatsushima, 20 minute away by ferry. the ride over went smoothly. the island itself was quite small, and its 100 inhabitants seemed to live by the tourism. there even was a school over there. we had to wait about an hour for the diving instructor and i read a good portion of murakami`s "wind-up bird chronicle". then we (aka aoki-san and me) had to change into the diving suits. it would be an understatement to say that it was a tight fit, but i got in alright. i was positively frightened by that point. i`ve never been more than an everage swimmer and i could barely move in that suit. plus i`d have to wear an o2-tank. and i knew that as a diver you had the water pressure to reckon with. you`d have to "blow your nose"/clear the ears, whenever you got deeper. pressure balance or whatever. i had once done this in a swimming pool (you know, holding your nose shut but still trying to breath out of it with all your power till your ears go -POP!-) and it hurt like hell. anyway i didn`t want to admit that i was afraid, so i figured i just might go through with it. aoki-san turned out to be just as afraid as me and bailed out, said he couldn`t do it. great, he wanted me to go alone, thanks for boosting my confidence. i swallowed my fear, however, and went in. i had practised breathing through the mask for a minute, when we were outside, and it worked alright. the pressure thing went fine, too. the diving itself was nothing but amazing. under the sea there really is another world. we swam deeper and deeper, through algaes etc. and it was great. there were fish everywhere. the small kind. i guess you never realize this when you go swim in the ocean, but a few meters under the water there are thousands of fish. we swam around and around, the instructor always leading me (and making me feel safe) and i saw lots, swam a little bit with the fish swarms and so on.
aoki-san and me took the ferry back to atami, had lunch and went home for a bit. i prepared my speech for the evening, but since i didn`t know what to say it didn`t amount to much more than a minute. i put on my suit (with the tie) and we took a taxi to the hotel, where the meeting was to take place (oh am i gonna hate myself for this tomorrow when i`ll have to transcribe it) (edit: yeah, three damn pages, what the hell WAS i thinking!?). the atami club is one of the biggest clubs in japan with close to 50 members. i`d say that most of them were there. i got a special seat next to the speakers` podium. there were the usual introductions, the y`smen hymn, and then i was introduced. after that i held my wannabe-speech (i`m blah... been here for three weeks... very intersting... thank you very much). there was dinner and some more formalities that i did not understand. after that it got pretty interesting. the official party was over, but most of the guys _(including me) went to some kind of club/bar. now this is something which i personally like very much: getting out of the usual environment that i am living in and taking a peek into something completely different. the whole experience was totally unfamiliar to me. never had i been in such an etablissement (pardon my french). the interior design was cozy. sofas, soft and comfortable. the strange thing was, that the waitresses of the place were not just there to bring drinks. they were more like entertainers. they were all rather scantily clad and (i know this sounds like pervert talk -_-) one had to make an effort not to look under their short skirts. the whole thing seemed pretty shady to me, but maybe i`m just too conservative, i don`t know. i guess it was no unrespectable bar or anything, some of the guys even brought their wives etc. well, they kept refilling my beer (oh man, this entry keeps getting longer and longer) (edit: yeah, thank you.), and even made me drink whiskey at some point. the girls seemed to be enjoying themselves but i couldn`t help thinking of them as some kind of prostitues (lite?). anyway, we left the place at 10pm. i thought the evening was over, but no - we went to another restaurant (now only the aokis and me. we drank more beer and it was really fun since there was another customer who spoke a bit of german (aoki is fond of the language, too) and we talked about germany and in german and so on. the great thing about japan is that even when you decide not to hold back with your drinking and go at it the whole evening, you`re still pretty conscious in the end. yay for the genes! (11939)