Japan Wizards Competition (Part 1 of 2)

* Names have been changed to protect the privacy of person(s).

** Warning! This post ended up being so super long and useless because I tend to blab a lot so you can just skip it and read the second part (will post later) which will actually announce the results of the competition. (I suck, I know. XP)

The day has finally arrived. On the morning of the Japan Wizards Competition, I groggily forced myself out of bed at 6:30am and arrived at the parking lot in school at 7:50pm. Surprisingly, Keith* and Damien* were already in the backseats of the advisor's car, doing some last minute studying. We arrived at the Sheraton Waikiki hotel a little after 8:00am and registered at the Maui Ballroom. We received a bag filled with goodies (yay!) and a free t-shirt, which we had to change into.

From the very beginning, I knew we would not win. I know that having no confidence of winning before even entering a competition as important as this one is never good, but it is the truth. Our advisor was not exactly the best, nor was she the most helpful or supportive. Damien only started studying for the competition a few days before it took place. He claims to have taken a lot of notes but they're all useless if he doesn't remember them. It may seem like hard work to him, but what is a few days worth of studying compared to other teams who I've heard have been studying for years? I can only appreciate his effort, but I don't think he realizes what a big deal this is.

Keith was supposedly our team captain, but he knew the least. This really doesn't make sense because the team captain holds the responsibility of representing his team and answering the questions for his team. In this case, the team captain usually knows the most information as he leads his team through the competition. I suppose he was elected captain because he was a senior (Damien is a junior and I am a sophomore) and is currently taking AP History. Now that I think about it, it may be possible that he didn't study for the competition at all! After all, he's always busy with driver's ed and "other projects." (Hell, as if I didn't have enough to do myself.)

I am sorry to say this because I usually try to like people and I generally do, but Keith's personality that really annoyed me. Whenever I ask him questions (relating to the topics he was supposed to study), he would look elsewhere, put his head down, and scratch his hair furiously as if the answer would magically appear if he scratched hard enough. The only sounds coming out of his mouth were, "Uh..." or "Wait, I know this..." Not once did he prove to "know" anything. *cries*

As I have said, our team was hopeless from the beginning. I felt tense when the announcements started and especially nervous walking down the hallway to Waimea Canyon, the room where our competition was held. I know what that feeling was - stress. And you know what that means. Stress = Upset stomach.

The questions weren't too bad. During the first round, there were a total of twelve team questions and four sets of questions. Team questions can only be answered by the team captain and for almost every single team question, I would need to whisper the answer to the team captain.

The one question that made everyone burst out into laughter was, "From what anime is the yellow-tailed hamster named Pikachu from?" Damien wouldn't leave us alone about that one. In fact, he groaned loudly and made quite a scene about it after the questions were asked. Another question that I thought was obvious was, "What is the name of the blue cat with a pocket in front who likes to travel with his friend, Nobita?" I've never read the manga, nor have I watched the anime, but you don't need to be a fan to know that it was Doraemon. These were the few questions that didn't require studying at all... it was unfair because the question directed at our team was on an anime I've never heard of. Keith gave a part of the answer, "Puffy Amiyumi" but incomplete answers didn't count so we received no points. The correct answer was supposed to be, Hi Hi Puffy Amiyumi. They asked about Pokemon and Doraemon. You would think that they'd follow up with Sailor Moon or something.

I later realized after the competition that the trick isn't memorizing a thousand different facts about Japan. When studying, you had to really know and understand the information. The questions asked weren't necessarily the facts I studied but I could still answer a majority of the questions because I understood and was familiar with the Japanese culture. For example, there was a question asking what appeared in a jidaigeki. I didn't know what jidaigeki was, but I knew jidai meant historical so my answer was samurai. I was relieved when the judge announced, "Correct." (By the way, did I ever mention that the judge looked a lot like Tate Donovan? Only better looking because I don't think the actor is good looking. XD) Another example was when they asked about where a certain piece of Buddhist art [insert name here] originated and Damien told Keith, "Korea" because we all knew Buddhism was introduced to Japan through Korea. At least someone was using his brain even though he didn't study much.

The questions we missed were on sports, religion, politics/government, and geography (which all happen to be Damien's but mostly Keith's topics to study). >_< My teammates knew I studied so they depended on me and expected me to know all of the answers. Because of this, I felt bad when I couldn't answer a question, especially the most simple and basic questions relating to prefectures and regions. Keith was in charge of geography.

His excuse was, "There are forty-seven prefectures. It's impossible to memorize them all so I didn't even try."

The words didn't even try echoed through my mind. Of course, forty-seven prefectures sound very intimidating. I didn't expect him to know it all, but it made me feel upset and hopeless when I heard his response - that he didn't even make the slightest effort. Does he mean to make me do everything? I felt a very heavy burden. I did study some of Damien's and Keith's parts just in case they needed back-up help, but I kept thinking I should have studied even harder. We were asked only baby questions - the most basics of the basics. I couldn't answer them for him. Keith tried to comfort me saying, "It's okay that you got the answer wrong."

The competition ended rather quickly and I felt that we did better than the other two teams in the room. I'm not sure if we stood a chance against the rest of the teams in level II, though. We headed to the Molokai Ballroom which was where the activity center took place. I got to meet Jenny's teacher, Uehara sensei. After hearing so much about her from Jenny, I thought she was a truly amazing teacher. She was part of the reason why I wanted to take Japanese class in high school but she retired before I had the chance to have her as my teacher. =/

The first activity we played was fuku warai. I was excited because I had studied it. It was a game similar to pin-the-tail-to-the-donkey, except that you were pasting parts of a woman’s face. I pointed and shouted, "Oh my gosh! Fuku warai! Fuku warai!" like an idiot. I was so excited that I didn't notice that the three girls standing behind the table were Japanese. I later realized that everyone conducting the activities were volunteers from Japan. =) They offered me the blindfold but I nudged Damien forward instead. It was hilarious when the girls started to call Damien, "Kawaii~" repeatedly when we were telling the blindfolded Damien where to put the kuchi, hana, me (mouth, nose, eyes... Damien stuttered, "C-cute...?!"

Afterward, we headed off to another table labeled Japanese Quiz. Damien was the first to sit down. All I could say was, "We just got back from a tense competition. Why would we want to take part in more tests?" I wasn't up for it and I didn't feel like it. But there were four really good-looking Japanese guys conducting this game, hehe. XP *avoids dirty glanes from "sexy luxury" Junsu* I was mainly terrified because there was a huge threatening map of Japan and its prefectures glaring at me by the tables. Our team failed with geography, remember? I was going to embarrass myself and look stupid in front of these guys! >_< But I didn't need to worry about that. After they welcomed us and we sat down, the guy sitting on the left lifted the cardboard to reveal a miniature drawing of Doraemon underneath. Immediately, I blurted out, "Doraemon! Doraemon! See Damien, it's Doraemon! Everyone knows Doraemon!"

Damien's response was, "No. Everyone knows Pokemon. Oh gosh, pikachu! How could they ask about pikachu???" (He has been lamenting about that for a while know and little did I know that it would continue for the rest of today.)

The guy laughed and said with a fresh Japanese accent, "Yes, it is Doraemon. You know Doraemon?"

Why yes, of course I do. [shuts up]

The quiz was actually very fun and my worries disappeared. We competed against two other teams like the real competition. There was only one girl who stood out from the rest because I remembered she was very aggressive. They asked us fun questions like, "What is ninja cartoon?" to which Damien so excitedly exclaimed, "Naruto!" that he forgot to ring the bell. The other team scored. They also asked, "What is ninja?" to which Damien answered, "Criminal! He wears black, covering his face..." and he continued with lengthy explanations accompanied by wild hand motions. It was funny because all Keith said was, "Spy" and we scored.

They also asked us questions on exactly what we studied (unlike the competition, where I had to do a lot of inferring) so I was very happy. =) For example, they asked, "Who is prime minister?" Damien enthusiastically answered, "Shinzo Abe!" and "Who is first prime minister?" Damien again shouted out the answer, receiving many "Oohs" from the guys who all started clapping. This was one of the few times they looked impressed because otherwise, they looked extremely bored. (I can imagine since they're stuck here entertaining a bunch of high school students, probably asking the same questions about their home country over and over.) Damien looked happy and told me, "This is fun. This is so much more fun than the competition. Why can't the competition be more like this? Gosh, pokemon..."

When they pointed to the drawing of Doraemon and asked to identify it, I happily cried out, "Doraemon!!!" I received laughter. ^^;;; Like Damien, they did ask one thing I learned from studying, though, "What is longest river in Japan?" I remembered that this was the second fact I learned when I first started studying Japan, the first being that Mt. Fuji was the tallest mountain in Japan. The English answer would be Shinano River, but for some reason I'm more comfortable with Japanese than English so the first thing that came to mind was, "Shinanogawa!" I also received some "Oohs" and clapping. ^.~V And oh my gosh, they also had kanji tests! Everyone always groaned when they took out the kanji notebook. I was a bit worried at first because the girl on my right was very aggressive. Her teammates were asking her, "You studied this, right?" and she answered confidently, "Yes. Last year." And I knew my Chinese was bad. But who am I kidding? How could a haole girl beat a Chinese girl at her own language? (Hazukashii!) I impressed them with my knowledge of the character, "春" (haru, spring). XD The next character was "雪" (yuki, snow). The haole girl rang the bell first and answered, "Rain?" and he nodded, encouraging her and trying to veer her toward the correct answer. I said, "Yuki, snow" and got the point. ^_^ Keith said I knew the kanji because they were the same as Chinese, but that is not the case since I also needed to be able to read it in Japanese. "Haru" and "yuki" is Japanese. In Chinese, it would be read "chun" and "xue." I also proved him wrong with the next kanji question, "足." I knew it meant leg even though we wouldn't use that character in the Chinese language for leg. In the end, our team won with six points (whoever wins six points is the winner) and the team with the aggressive girl received one point while the other team had two.

Next, we played two karuta games. We played the first game against that same team with the aggressive girl and won but it was a close match - she and Damien almost seemed like they were cat-fighting because they were totally going at it. The second karuta game required only one team so we played against each other. In the first game that we played, we matched hiragana but this game used pictures as well. They were really cute drawings. I excitedly shouted and pointed when I spotted a drawing of Totoro. The girl laughed, "Yes, is Totoro. You know Totoro?"

As I write this, I realize this sounds familiar. >>; I've been doing a lot of shouting and pointing. I must have looked like such a stupid little girl.

Anyway, the objective is to get as much cards as you can by the end of the game. Keith had two cards, Damien had eleven, and I had twenty-two. ^^; I think this mini game slightly resembles the contribution of each team member during the actual competition.

Lunch was free for all competitors and advisors (yay!) provided by the Sheraton Waikiki Hotel through sponsors (yay!) for the Japan Wizards Competition. They also provided the funds for the top winners to go to Japan. Lunch started with an appetizer. It was some sort of egg drop soup with tofu, ham, carrots, and peas. It was delicious! The main course was chicken, mushrooms, and fried rice. The fried rice tasted so ordinary for a fancy hotel such as the Sheraton, but it was good so I finished it all. The mushrooms were unbearably salty even though I love mushrooms so it was disappointing. =( It was as if the chef unwittingly dumped a bucketful of salt on the mushrooms. I ate it anyway because I don't like wasting food. It was the first time I've had such huge portions of chicken, with a lot of meat and little bone. The chicken was dry and not too enjoyable, though. There were only two pieces of choi. ;o; For dessert, we had vanilla ice cream with nuts and fortune cookies! I loved the nuts! Although I was full, I really wanted to eat the nuts. The fortune from my fortune cookie was, "Great follow-up is the secret to your success."

To be continued...


Babies are so cute.