Last Saturday

Today was my last Saturday in Sendai. Until who knows when. I woke up late after staying up to continue the process of moving out of my apartment. It was difficult sleeping last night for two reasons: first the people above me seemed to be having an all night party since the bass was still pumping at 6 AM, and then a few hours later it was massive lightning and thunder outside. Oh yes, and then the gas man woke me up at 9 AM to tell me how to shut off my gas valves and tell me to give him money for my last gas bill. I did my best to sleep in after that. After waking up, running to the ATM and convenience store, and riding my bike around in the drizzle, I went to school for my last Saturday dance practice. Most of my favorite people were there so it was nice. It was raining almost the whole time and I said some goodbyes before going home. I packed more and then set out for the dance event tonight at Neo Brotherz.

I got there just as the first showtime was starting, which included Wax, one of the teams from my club (since three of the members are on hiatus, it was just Hiroko and a new member, Yoshimi; and this time they danced house instead of hip hop. If these details seem unnecessary, it's more for my memory than your information). They hadn't finished choreography until the night before and it kind of showed. And because all the other teams were hip-hop girls, their house dancing seemed a little out of place, but I did realize that Hiroko is a really, really freaking good dancer (which she should be considering how much she practices). The second showtime was really impressive and varied. First up was LP (Lupan, Ono, and Yakou from my club), and they were the only old school team performing, which meant once again they seemed out of place. Then another house group performed, which was the only new school team in the second show time. After that was a string of five straight middle-school hip hop teams (think early 90s, House Party kind of stuff) and it was really impressive. The best team before the last team was probably this team of four guys and two girls called Mission - there music, choreography, and solos just had such great showmanship. The last team, Special Unit, was the best, since they were the guest dancers and are apparently among the best middle-school dance teams in the country. They were definitely cripser when performing, but they really killed later during the battle after the show. The local kids, as hard as they tried, couldn't match some of these guys' shit.

Sendai is pretty into this street dance shit; apparently its one of the hop spots in the country for dancing with something like 500 kids just doing locking. And tonight both before and after the event the streets were overloaded with boys and girls in hip-hop-ish girl, including my eternal favorite: LA Cholo, complete with collar-only button style and those black sunglasses.

It was pretty sad tonight because it was definitely the last time I'm going to see some of the members of our club, so when people were going home like they normally do after an event, I had to say goodbye to them for good. I know I'm not going to see most of these kids again even though we say we'll keep in touch. Yakou and Koro bought me drinks (even though I definitely should have been buying them drinks) and afterward, Lupan and I went for one last post-event McDonalds run. Oh yeah, and some of the foreign kids were there tonight and the Swedes kept hugging me and giving me kisses on the cheek. Silly Europeans.

I came home and packed up since the Shimizus are coming in a few hours to help me move my things back. This is going to be my last entry from Sendai. And the weather is finally nice today - I can tell because the day already started outside my window a few hours ago.