Thursday, May 27, 2004

The Doctor


On Wednesday night I went for a walk to this island that is out by the bay. The entire hill is carved out and it used to be an airplane factory during WWII. That was going to be my interesting blog post for Wednesday, but I met a more interesting guy while I was up there. He started talking to me by asking where I was from. He said he was a professor at Yokohama Municipal University Medical School, but changed the topic to sports pretty quickly and pulled a stack of pictures out of his wallet. He has pictures of himself with all of the major Japanese athletes that will be participating in the Athens Olympics. He also said that he had participated in the Olympics, and that he had won a medal (gold I think), but a search on the Olympic website for his name turned up only a member of the 1934 hockey team, and he's not that old.

Next he told me that he was on the Yokohama Board of Education, and showed me his ID card. I found this page with a Google search for the Yokohama Board of education. The only one that looks close to him is the second guy from the left, and I think that is the same name that was on his ID card, but he doesn't wear glasses... When we went our separate ways yesterday, we exchanged phone numbers, and he said his name was Sakai.

Those of you who can read kanji will notice that the name under the second guy on the left on that Yokohama BOE page does not say Sakai. I'm not sure if this guys completely for real, but he really has met the Japanese Olympic team, and he really likes to brag. He's an interesting mystery.