giri-giri-ness
((tadaima!)) last time i was in japan, marika and hikosawa-san took a lot of effort to try to explain what giri-giri meant, as they seemed to use it a lot. from what i gather, it means something along the lines of 'at the last second'...

i arrived to tokyo airport with about 2 hours to spare before my flight. cool, had a nice lunch with alan, can chill before my plane takes off, no problem. oh, except for the blinking red lights announcing my flight from NRT to LAX has been cancelled. panic sets in, and i practically jump on the lady walking around announcing customers of that flight to come to the front of the very long check-in line. once at the counter, they started to change my flight from tokyo to chicago, getting in to l.a. around midnight. uh, no, not going to work for me. okay then, how about to san fran and then l.a., arriving 10:30... at night. nope. eventually we found me a seat on a direct flight, arriving around the same time, but on another airline. and oh, they board in 10 minutes, they close the doors in 20, and it's security line, immigration line, and other side of the concourse-away. just go on over to that company and stand in that huge line and get your boarding pass...

can honestly say it isn't the first time you could have seen me frantically running through narita airport.

once inside my tiny middle-aisle, middle seat, i stayed quite awake until the touchdown in los angeles, giving my friends a call to come pick me up now and take me to the tournament? what's that you say? tournament? ah yes, the girl who thinks it would be hilarious to walk off the plane after a 10 hour no-sleeping flight into a karate tournament. hil-a-ri-ous, up until the point i got to the tourney site (we got lost on the way anyway) and was recruited into working the table. while doing that, they announced last call for all adult competitors. no prob, i'll suit up really quick and "warm up". (ha, right). i actually ended up pulling out a decent kata until the third to last move where my leg wobbled... oh well, at least the gold went to my teammate, though i don't know if it's very victorious beating a time-zone fatigued looney like myself.

that's enough giri-giri for me for today... we'll see what tomorrow (back to work!) brings...