I have moved from the island of Kauai to the island of Oahu. What a difference a 20-minute flight makes. For one thing, there are markets on Oahu, and people, and people in markets. I have seen more people in the last 24 hours than I had seen in the previous eight days in Princeville, Kauai. I have also seen a lot of Japanese television. If anyone thinks that American sports are interesting, I suggest catching a few rounds of foot volleyball on Japanese television. That wasn't a typo...FOOT VOLLEYBALL!!!

You have never seen anything so amazing. It comes on Honolulu public access television around midnight. From what I can gather, the rules are the same as regular, boring, international volleyball. The only glaring exception being that instead of digging and spiking with their hands, the players are spiking and digging with their feet. Sounds cool, right? It gets better. One guy on each team gets to hit the volleyball with his face! HOLY CHRISTMAS. Is that a job one aspires to when beginning a career in foot volleyball? Is it a punishment?

I kid you not when I tell you I watched a solid two hours of foot volleyball two nights in a row. The announcers were speaking Japanese and the subtitles were in Korean, so I have to assume what I was watching was what I thought it was. AMAZING! One Japanese guy serves the ball over a waist-high net with his foot. It looks like a pooch punt in football. On the other side of the tennis-like net, a different Japanese guy kicks the ball straight up in the air to set the next guy up, who sets the next guy up for the spike (or the kill). The kill shot looks like a lethal Kung Fu kick and the man who performs it flops onto the ground and screams bloody murder.

Just like in American volleyball, the kill shot has to be dug out and sent back into the sky. Japanese guys are flailing all over the gym sticking their feet out and stretching out their toes...anything to keep the foot volleyball from touching the wood floor. Sometimes, one poor bastard lets the foot volleyball ricochet off his face to save it. That man should be MVP of every single foot volleyball match.

One of the teams called a timeout. All of the foot volleyball players gathered in a little circle and (I guess) spoke strategy for a few minutes. I noticed that on both teams, there were a couple of guys wearing glasses. I prayed that they would have a turn at stopping the ball with their faces. That is a real man. Have a karate-kicked foot volleyball bounce off your orbital socket at 70 mph, shattering your glasses all over the gymnasium floor, then get back to me about how hard it is to hit a major-league fastball.

As far as sports go, foot volleyball is pretty much all that's happening on local television here. Foot volleyball and the Mercedes-Benz Championship. Golf is HUGE in Hawaii. I don't get it -- 99% of the people here are rushing to get on the sand, the other 1% are trying to avoid it. To all the golfers out here, I have a suggestion. The next time your ball lands in a sand trap, grab a lava flow and a towel and just lay down in the sand with it. Take a nap. Enjoy yourself...get rested up for a long night of watching foot volleyball. If I find out where in the hell they play foot volleyball, I am totally going. Without my glasses.

best of lucky,
jay mohr