I took a half day from work yesterday to head into Brooklyn to audition for the Japanese television show Cool Japan. It’s apparently an NHK (Jap government sponsored) program where in the regular show they round up foreigners who have recently moved to Japan and interview them about what they find cool about the life and culture there. They intersperse the discussion portions of the show with on-location bits featuring the panelists visiting their favorite places in Japan. So here in NY they intend to film a Cool Japan special where they seek out New Yorkers who have found Japanese things they are passionate about right here in NY. I of course pushed the restaurant and sake bar angle. For the audition they worked with 5 applicants at a time. They had us sit around a table and we started with personal introductions which we directed at the camera and followed that up with a roundtable chat about all things Japanese in NY. For food I talked about the various places in the East Village, Japanese markets, and when the lady on my right mentioned the Japanese tea store Itoen, I added mention of the restaurant Kai right upstairs from it. Besides the culinary stuff I also talked about the popularity of the Pride Fighting Championships here, its acquisition by the UFC and my blue belt in jiu-jitsu. Also plugged Korin trading company hoping they might pick me for one of the on-location segments there where I can shop for Japanese knives and whatnot. For my closer, I had to mention my love of Jap doramas and I reached into my pocket and pulled out my keychain. They interviewer and her partner both exclaimed “Aaaah! Goyaman!”. I dunno if they’ll pick me, but I think I did the best I could and they did scribble more notes on my bio sheet than anyone else’s, so we’ll see.

Immediately after the audition I called up Tony da Greek to let him know I’d be able to make it back in time for our pool league semi-finals. I originally told the team I wouldn’t be able to play because of my audition, but since it wrapped up early, I was good to go. Good thing too, because the team we were playing in the semi’s, one of the Woodside Tavern teams, is really the best team in the league; every player with break-and-runout ability. Plus we were playing in their house with their heavy cueball (coin-op bar tables always use either a larger diameter or heavier cue ball). Captain Tony really didn’t want to lose and decided to stack the lineup instead of worrying about getting playing time for all our guys, so I ended up getting to play 4 games. What transpired made me look like a hero in dramatic fashion, but it was really a mix of a little skill with a side of sloppiness, topped off with a huge helping of drama. I won one game by frustrating my opponent with nifty safety play. I won the next with a 7 ball runout when they had run to the 8. The third game I blew the easy runout but recovered with a crazy masse-into-the-rail-first-combo down a long rail. A bartender chick who had been watching our games had started cheering for me and bought me a beer after that game. Sweet. Then the final game, to decide the whole match, my opponent gets to the 8 but misses, and then in a do or die situation, I make my final ball but blow my leave on the 8 because of mad sloppy control over the heavy cue ball, leaving myself a length of the table bank shot. Way harder a shot than I should have left myself. But way more dramatic too :). I stretched across the table, hit the shot perfectly and knew it was going in, so I didn’t even bother to turn to look at the pocket. I stared straight ahead and waited for the sweet sound of the ball going in the pocket followed by all the hootin and hollerin. That was the most fun league night we’ve had yet. A real solid win against real solid competition.