Kazu and I are competing in a bass fishing tournament on our favorite lake on June 18th. As such, we now of course must practice as much as possible, heh heh. So under the guise of disciplined and diligent tournament preparations we blew off work and headed back to the lake on Wednesday.

You may recall that the previous outing I was soundly trounced 5 to 1 by my competitor. As we blasted down winding road after winding road at 5am I secretly vowed to defeat my companion or die trying.

With that in mind, things weren’t looking very good for my life expectancy when Kazu landed 3 bass on his first 5 casts… yikes.

There’s a word for just such a situation in Japanese, YABAI, and it conveys anything from “I’m in trouble now!” to “I’m completely fucked!” depending on intonation and volume.

Yabai, indeed, yabai!

As it turned out though Kazu was a flash in the pan this day, and never caught another bass after his stunning start. I, on the other hand, slowly added fish to my tally such that when I caught up with Kazu on the far shore of the lake 3 hours later we were tied 3 to 3.

In a divine act of retribution it was then that I landed my 4th, final, and victory-ensuring bass. And being the consummate asshole competitor that I am, I politely asked Kazu to take my picture holding the fish that sealed his fate.

Fishermen are a cruel, cruel bunch 😉