I swear this blog isn't dead yet. There's just so little of import to write about these days.
Hi ho, to the three RSS subscribers I have who haven't yet abandoned this cobwebby page. I spring forth from the shadows bearing news:
I got a job.
Of course, I'm pretty sure anyone who reads this page already knows this, but whatever.
It's hardly the glamorous or career-path employment I had been hoping for; in fact it's very well embedded in the "well, it's a job..." category. It means for 9 hours of work every day I get a (quite meager) paycheck and a (very meager) sense of having a place in the world. I guess these days with the economy in flames, it can't hurt to have a job, no matter how boring or pointless.
But I digress. What having a job also means to me is that I have a slightly more elevated sense of purpose in life, a condition that hopefully will lead to a more regular set of updates for this poor neglected weblog.
It also doesn't hurt that I'm working at a Japanese organization, which for you, my loyal reader, means continued anecdotes about Japan. I promise they'll be interesting ones.
kikoku. It means to return to one's home country. As of a couple weeks ago, I've done just that. I spent a month back in Japan tying up loose ends, saying goodbye, and either giving away or shipping all of the stuff I built up over the course of three years.
Now, in the interest of both myself and my readers, I'll try not to bash too heavily on the country I've returned home to. The fact is that I'm not entirely thrilled about being back in the States, but for reasons almost entirely out of my control, I'm stuck here for the time being. So I might as well make the best of the situation. Some things helping me do just that:
- Super Tuesday. Massachusetts votes today, along with a couple dozen other states, to choose one each of the democratic and republican candidates vying for privilege of cleaning up George W Bush's heinous mess. I voted today. Did you? I appreciate this chance to take part in the democratic process which allows the unwashed masses to choose our next figurehead. At least, that's what The Man tells us we can do.
- Snow. I lie. I didn't miss snow at all. Massachusetts is a grey-white-brown limbo in winter, where everyone is just aching for spring. Sadly, it takes spring twice as long to get here as anywhere else. At the very least I did get to enjoy a small amount of nostalgic sledding over Christmas. My friend, having never been "real" sledding, shrieked like a little girl. That in itself was worth it!
- Projects. My father has a kickass wood shop. I've already made a table and have some other ambitions as well. A few of them involve lugging a chainsaw into the woods to find a suitable log...
- Job hunting. Something I'd thought I'd escaped when I was offered the marketing job in Japan. Before, that is, my visa was rejected. I can't tell you how much I love searching for jobs. I can't think of something more fun than the constant humiliation and self-doubt that come with looking for employment.
I've spent a lot of time fashioning this blog into something that focused on commenting on life in Japan. Now that I won't be able to do that, I have to rethink my direction. Hopefully I can find enough entertainment in the wilds of Western Massachusetts to put up here, but honestly I kind of doubt it. This is the kind of place that no one leaves and no one comes to. But hey, stranger things have happened...
One of the "benefits" of my Japanese visa taking much longer than anticipated to come through is that I've been stuck in Western Massachusetts in my hometown for far longer than originally intended. It allows for me to pursue such stimulating pastimes as catching up on all the quality reading material stacked up in the bathroom. One such thing I've been reading lately is the local town newspaper. It includes the monthly police blotter. This is the section of the newspaper where all happenings involving the town police are painstakingly documented. I decided to reproduce a few entries here for your pleasure. These entries are 100% true to the original source; I haven't altered anything.
- "Report of stolen property from Suburban Drive; property identified as fake rooster stolen from front lawn of residential property. Officer sent; civilian subsequently located rooster and it was rescued from Neighbors Store roof." (I know exactly whose fake rooster that is. Every time I drive by that house I think there's a rooster watching traffic go by.)
- "Report of a raccoon staggering down Main Street; unknown emergency. Officer sent; raccoon was gone on arrival."
(What would the charges be? Public drunkenness?) - "Report of a raccoon 'acting strangely' on Main Street. Officer checked the area; report unfounded."
(Misbehaving raccoons are apparently becoming quite the problem in this otherwise law-abiding town.) - "Subject called complaining about a raffle at the Fall Festival; party said he purchased a $5 raffle ticket for golf clubs. He won the raffle, but retrieved an item which was used, not consistent with the item he submitted for; he believes raffle was a scam. Matter still under investigation."
(wtf.) - "Report of a loose donkey and horse at Suburban Drive residence; officer sent. Donkey and horse moved back into field."
(Sadly, I also know whose donkey and horse these are. They happen to also own the fake rooster.) - "Check the welfare request on Main Street; female reported as lying on the lawn. Officer sent; no emergency found. Female fell asleep while reading."
(Main Street, as you can see, is a veritable pit of depravity.)
There you have it folks; small town excitement. Who needs a city of lights, gourmet restaurants, and nightclubs when you can have this?!
So first off, the reason for my incredibly long absence from making any posts in the past (more than a) month has been my move back to the United States. I finished off my contract with JET (the program with which I spent three years teaching in Japan) in the end of July and headed home on August 3. As you can imagine I was very busy packing and tying up seemingly infinite loose ends, and one of my last priorities was posting.
So now I'm back, relaxing in the green hills of western Massachusetts, and thinking about the things I'd so much (and so little) anticipated about being back home.
Some observations of my first days back:
Everything is so green. Endless swathes of grass, trees ... you name it! I flew from Detroit to Hartford on a small jet and in looking out the window I remember thinking we were flying over a huge body of water. Turns out it was just endless trees. Awesome!
Vegetables at home are fresher and tastier. Don't even get me started on the fruits.
Sadly living up to my expectations, people here are enormous.
It's cold. Everyone keeps talking about how hot it is, and I suppose midday it gets to be pretty hot, but I haven't once felt like I was going to die of heat like I felt every waking minute back in Gyoda. I really think it's the oppressive unending humidity there. Here it gets hot for a day or two then tempers. There, it lingers for weeks.
Jet lag has hit harder than ever this time. I pass out at 9 every evening, only to wake up at 6 or 7 every morning. I feel 20 years older than I really am. I must break this cycle...
I have plans to go back to Japan in a few months, though they aren't decided yet. In the meantime, I hope to have a good long relaxation period before I go back to that frenetic land.
I've made a big move from one hosting provider to another. With any luck, everything will go smoothly without any sort of loss of this page.
If you see anything weird (particularly in the images area, I'm still working on ironing that out), please let me know.
Look forward to a photo gallery and summary of my just-past Korea trip!
Today in an attempt to get away from my day-long apartment cleaning frenzy, I wanted to do something with the rock hard marshmallows I bought last year for a camping trip.
Note to the curious: Marshmallows, despite the fact that they are sugar, do not "melt down" to form anything remotely like caramel.
I know it's been a very long time since I've posted anything here. Sorry for that, by my life has been rather chock-full of business and crappiness (in equal measure, as a matter of fact).
To tide you over for now, here's a photo gallery of my trip back home to Massachusetts. Enjoy.
Today I'm going home for the first time in 1.5 years. I'm not looking forward to the reverse culture shock. I am looking forward to seeing my family.
Wish me luck.
Break out my slippers and my bathrobe, because it's uncle-land for me!
My sister this morning (evening in the States I guess) gave birth a month early to a healthy baby girl. Woohaw and OMG at the same time!
And thus the frantic search for a pre-Christmas plane ticket begins. Wow.
Yes, I know I haven't written anything remotely like "substance" recently, but it seems like these days all I have are complaints and I don't want to inundate the blog with that garbage.
I do have a huge amount of pictures I want to post, but my hosting company is being ridiculously unresponsive about giving me more space, despite their selling point of having "no space limitations." So much for that.
I'll see if I can squeeze some pictures in.
For a while I've been thinking about trying to come up with a Japanese-language journal for the sole purpose of practicing my Japanese. They say that cataloging your day in a foreign language is a good way to fill in holes in your vocabulary.
In the spirit of that, I've opened 武勇伝(buyuuden: brave story) to frightening public scrutiny. I'm wondering if any of my Japanese friends are on the internet enough to actually take a look at it. Here's hoping.
Anyway, those of you who are into that Japanese-language thing, please do go take a look. It's by no means anything special, so keep that (and my bad Japanese skills) in mind, and try to keep the temptation to condescend at a bare minimum.
NOTE: Since the whole purpose of 武勇伝 is to learn, of course I welcome any comments correcting my Japanese.
A copy of Martha Stewart Living mysteriously appeared in the bathroom a few weeks ago.
I know this is going to sound incredibly lame, but it has become my toilet-time magazine of choice.
As if learning the Japanese language, with its 3 character systems and sometimes countless ways of pronouncing just a single character, wasn't hard enough, they just made Chinese that much more attractive.
I've heard you need a working knowledge of 2500 kanji characters in Japanese to get by at a fluent level. Whether or not that is true is unknown to me, but it sure as hell makes 900 characters enticing. If I could learn just 900 characters and be able to read 90% of media publications ... that would be awesome.
Of course, it does make things easier when said media is controlled by the iron fist of the State.
I just got the COOLEST CARE PACKAGE EVER from THE COOLEST PARENTS EVAR!!!
Crazy thanks and so much love go out to my incredible parents.
Pics of my pant-shitting surprise here!!!
Note: I did not literally shit my pants.
Lost in Japan / Archives / Previewing IKEA in Funabashi Japan
IKEA is in Japan? This is both awesome and terrifying. I love IKEA, but I have this sinking feeling that the Japanese will love it more. The sudden infusion of IKEA stuff into the Japanese lifestyle atmosphere will, I predict, be staggering.
And all across Kantou, home centers with crappy kit furniture quake in fear.
Of late I've posted absolutely nothing at all (as if you hadn't noticed). I've been on spring break, during which my parents visited me here in Japan. It was a great visit, and I trust that they had a wonderful time. Mom absolutely blew away my expectations in terms of stamina and ability to 頑張る (ganbaru: to try very hard) through a whole range of foreign foods.
I have about four billion pictures to post, so those will be going up after I get them color-balanced and so on. Until that time ... hang in there.
On mom's suggestion, I took a listen to a short NPR piece about "colleges that change lives." It suggests that there are institutions that go beyond the fluff and conceited self-aggrandization of the big name and Ivy-League schools (and often their students). My college is featured!
NPR : Book Touts 'Colleges that Change Lives'
The idea is that while the big name schools can be great, they're often overrated because of their big-draw name. I've certainly found that to be true since while I was extremely impressed with Harvard's grad-students, its undergrads did quite the opposite.
The book that the piece references: Colleges That Change Lives
I know, I know, too many links recently, but I'm in a bit of a creative slump. Maybe I'll write something later today that's been on my mind.
For now, we have Why Everyone Hates The Music Industry, which is a good read about why the monopolistic music industry is going downhill.
Just when I'm settling some of my angry points with Japan and enjoying living here again, something incredibly boneheaded has to come roaring out of the gates. I've been reading about this for a few days, but sheer disbelief and the vast stupidity of this law has prevented me from talking about it.
I can't wait to see perfectly working but "too old" TVs clogging up the already garbage-choked rivers.
The hypocrisy with which this country claims an "earth-friendly" stance boggles my mind.
Akihabara News - 2nd hand electronics sales will soon be illegal in Japan
Matt sent me a real eye-opener this morning. You know my policy on links (not too many in a given week) but this one was both scary and funny at the same time, so I had to share it. Plus it's the weekend and I'm not creative until I'm in between classes at school.
As he said, it's unbelievable that someone said this completely seriously:
"I know a lot of people are concerned about Big Brother, but my response to that is, if you are not doing anything wrong, why should you worry about it?"
That there folks, is a true sign of ... intelligence.
Honestly I have little to say about this. This has to be one of the least intelligent people I've ever heard of. Absolutely brilliant. I haven't done a link in a while, so enjoy this one.
*snip*
Grace Sium rang the [police station] at 3.15am last Saturday enquiring as to where she might acquire some blow. Despite the dispatcher's repeated protestations that "selling and possessing marijuana was illegal", Sium persisted. Accordingly, the dispatcher admitted the cops had puff in the witness locker, and said if Sium swung by they would "hook her up".
Recently it came to light that there will be four of us left staying in Japan for the 3rd year of the JET program. Will, Pete, Roy, and myself are all taking the plunge. That being known, I thought "gee, we need a cool name or something." Hence it came to me: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen! So with little fuss (the fuss would be on Roy's end) the name was approved though we have yet to have a cool secret handshake. These things take time, you know.
But do you know what the first order of business was? Mutiny! The members got together and outvoted me, 3-1, in order to force me to get a Live Journal account. If you know me, you know that in the core of my soul, I hate Live Journal. Hating it was almost like a personal religion of mine. And yet, here I am, the shameful owner of a shiny new account. Go me?
The first order of business was to relegate all blog-silliness like memes (still hate that word) and other nonsense to LiveJournal. The "real" posting will still go on here.
Without further ado, Live Journal memeage!
After a very very long time since my last post, I'm back on the ground running with a new design. I hope you like it. There will still be changes being made slowly as I tweak things, but this is what it's mostly going to be like for now. I had to retool the commenting system because it wasn't remembering any posters (and now it is!), and I wanted a new design anyway.
Now, before you say it sucks, or such-and-such should be changed, or I'm gay because there are flowers in the design or something else ... shove it. No seriously, if you have any suggestions, drop me a line. I always appreciate feedback, regardless of whether or not I follow it!
If you're still under a rock and using the steaming pile of poo that is Microsoft Internet Explorer, please do yourself and the rest of us a favor by downloading/using a real standards-compliant browser like Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari or even Netscape. If you are using Internet Explorer, I'm sure you've already said to yourself "what kind of junk redesign is this?" I assure you, thanks to IE's inability to adhere to web standards or render png files correctly, this page looks like crap. Please try it on another browser.
Most of all, I hope you enjoy the new look. I wanted to include elements from pictures I've taken in my town 行田 (Gyoda), and 桜 (Sakura) was the way to go. Also enjoy the new-ish commenting system, in which once you've entered your information, you'll never have to do it again unless you delete your cookies. Woohaw!
I hate those crappy websites that have those "Under Construction" animated gifs and stuff. At least I won't stoop to that. Anyway, I'm messing around with a redesign, in hopes of fixing the ever-annoying fact that my commenting section won't "remember you" regardless of what you click on.
So though 99% of you won't see the site since you use RSS, I apologize to those of you who do have to see the crappy growing pains. I hope to be finished soon enough while I figure out how to get the comments working correctly.
(everything, including comments, will work perfectly fine, they just won't look nice)
Not long ago, I was terrified of public addresses. In high school I hated giving presentations, and during college I warmed up to it a bit but still found myself insanely nervous and sweating. Now, naturally, fate would have it that it's my job! And I think I do a damn good job too. I can sit there in front of a bunch of people talking about whatever with hardly a quiver of the stomach or a sweaty palm.
I've come leaps and bounds in the field of "public" urination as well. I don't mean peeing on people's driveways (no lawns here in 行田) but rather stepping up to the task of peeing while a bunch of people are watching you. It's called "Stage Fright" and I think a lot of men get it while sitting standing there trying so hard to pee at a urinal while everyone's waiting for their turn and watching like vultures. Believe it or not, this does happen, and it sucks. But I've conquered this too! Why?
I've wanted to write about this for a while, but haven't had the time really to go around taking pictures of my school's bathroom. I also didn't want to have to explain to any wandering teachers/students why I was taking pictures of the boys' bathroom. That would be weird. So today in the middle of a class period I snuck most stealthily to the bathroom and took pictures. Naturally one of the teachers caught me and literally was falling over in her weirded-out-ness. I explained, with as little blushing as possible, that at least at my high school we didn't have enormous picture windows in the door. Thanks to this viewport, I try to take my pee breaks whenever classes are in session, thus minimizing hordes of students passing by and peeping.
Stage Fright becomes a thing of the past when you have to pee at these for more than a year. Trust me, squeaking girls outside the door is a much tougher audience than a bunch of other men. Get used to that, and you're good as er ... gold.
Luckily, aforementioned teacher didn't see me taking pictures of the toilet stall itself. See, this looks like a relatively (if a little cramped) normal toilet stall, right? I guess it would be, if not for the ice they made the seat out of . The window open to the outside doesn't help matters. I've sat down to ... do my thing ... on occasions, and the cold seat was enough to prevent my thing from ever being done. It really is a sad state of affairs.
Finally, the piece de resistance. The depth of view in this picture isn't the best, but hopefully the included hand gives you some idea of just how cramped this stall really is. The tips of the fingers are touching the opposite wall, which just happens to be literally half an inch away from my knees. This is obviously a simulated situation, but believe me it's no different than the real thing (aside from frigid butt). It's not so much of a problem when you're actually on the john, but it makes the partial-disrobing process beforehand infinitely harder than I ever thought was possible in a "civilized" bathroom. I'm by no means a tall person. I pity anyone taller than I forced to use this thing. Sometimes I've actually given thought to standing on the toilet itself to get some more room. Before the actual deed, I mean.
In honesty though, as much as the toilet stall is cramped, I'm sure glad there's no window on the door. There are some things you just shouldn't have to do when a window is involved.
I'm back. I realize it's been a long time and my readers have just been absolutely slavering for a new post. That's right, slavering. You see though, the reality is that I do most of my posting in my short breaks between classes or when I have free time at work. Of course, I couldn't interrupt my movie or shopping marathons of winter vacation, could I?
This past weekend I went on a trip to 札幌 (Sapporo) and it was great. Lots of snow (totally nostalgic, there), beer, and hostess bars. Note that we didn't partake in the latter, though we had no choice about the former two. Not like there's ever a choice when it comes to beer.
To top it all off, we rode home on a Pokemon plane!
Pete also has a gallery entry (but you'll need a login to view it), as well as Will.
Yesterday I was looking at this stuff called "miracle clear" or something like that. It promised to erase the ever-increasing age- and stress-induced bags under my eyes. Japanese skin care products have a reputation for being excellent and also extremely varied, so I thought it really was some rejuvenating magical stuff that would make my face younger ... or something. I shelled out my money in haste.
It turned out to be makeup.
I went shopping for a few last-minute items for the chicken I plan on roasting sometime over the next few days. I took my usual route down the beer and carbonated-beer-flavored-beverage (発泡酒: happoushu) aisle and found to my delight that my favorite beer was a whole fifteen yen cheaper than normal. That's about 12 cents.
You may scoff, but this is a huge deal. As any foreign beer-drinker living in Japan will lament, real beer is very expensive and not particularly tasty here. You see, there's a specific tax on barley, making beer far more expensive compared to other alcoholic beverages. I've also never seen more than a 5 yen price difference between stores, and beer absolutely never goes on sale. If you prefer beer, you're screwed and stuck paying the equivalent of $45 for a case of not very good beer. Your other option is the above-mentioned 発泡酒 that is priced like beer back home but tastes much much worse.
So maybe in time for the New Year, in which everyone gets together with their families and drinks and eats a lot, the beer price (at least in giant-ass bottle format) dropped. I was so happy I bought two bottles to save for a future occasion. Huzzah!
It's the small things in life. o(^-^)o
I just finished the majority of my Christmas shopping yesterday, trying to get significant and/or interesting things for my family. Below, you'll see just how interesting one of these things turned out to be. This is probably the coolest, weirdest wrapping job I've had to do yet.
Yeah, the Japanese characters are upside down. Oops. But it looks like a house with a chimney doesn't it!
Last week I posted with my first six (five ,really) pages of my translation of the popular Japanese comic Keroro Gunsou. I've added three more pages. This week starts out at page 7.
It's hard to find good places to stop until my next posting, so page counts will vary each time I make an addition. There's also a lot of prepwork to be done to get everything looking decent enough, so please have patience!
Mail me if you are looking for the original Japanese scans for comparison or study. Or of course if you really like the comic, go and buy it!
Notes:
- It's in your best interest to remember that "Gero" means "ribbit." Keroro Gunsou says it quite a bit.
- Shiiiinnn indicates a long silence.
Enjoy!
This past week I had a horrible cold in which my voice mysteriously got horrible. But you never got to hear what it sounded like at its apex.
To tide you over before my next Keroro Gunsou segment, here are some audio files of my horrible voice.
Enjoy!
Note: If you have a lot of bass in your audio system, turn it down before you listen to these. Some weird bass artifact found its way into the recordings.
My voice has worsened since yesterday and I've thus spoken as little as humanly possible today. It has left me with a lot of time to listen to the conversations that are always buzzing around me. Usually I listen but not actively. Today I have little else to do.
Three teachers were discussing how an "oo" sound doesn't necessarily automatically claim accent in an English word. The first examples, in which they thought it did automatically take precedence, were "shampoo" and "bamboo." But then they pointed out "Liverpool" and a few others.
Finally one of them exclaimed: "Just who decides this stuff anyway?"
Indeed.
Yesterday I went with a huge amount of other foreigners living in Japan to take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. A few parts of it I spanked around like a fine young ass. Others had their way with me. So be it. At the time, I had but a sniffle. The test room was freezing, and perhaps it helped keep me aware for crucial parts of the test.
But I got home last night and my throat had devolved into this scratchy I'm-Tom-Waits-and-I-smoke-three-packs-a-day kind of voice.
Today I was supposed to teach again at the local school for disabled children. I called in sick because my voice had gone from sounding all husky and sexy (?) to sounding like a fourteen year old boy in the throes of puberty. I could sound kind of normal (if scratchy) when I spoke very quietly. But put any stress on my voice (trying to talk fast, or raise it to teach a class) and I sounded like what I imagine a eunuch sounds like.
Tonight, even those sweet painfully rare baritones of puberty (can you remember that time...when you were just begging your voice to behave?) have been replaced by a steady bad crossdresser falsetto.
I never thought my voice would be this high again.
There's a comic series here in Japan that's very popular with children ... and me. It's called ケロロ軍曹(Keroro Gunsou: Frog Sargeant) and actually only became popular as an animated television series. Both are hilarious, cute, and generally awesome. A perfect combination, I thought one day long ago, for learning Japanese.
Unfortunately the language used is more difficult than I expected, because the frog character (hereby referred to as Gunsou or Keroro) speaks in kinda old military-speak. But I've been making slow progress when I have time to be sitting for long periods of time with two dictionaries and a notebook. A quick web search reveals that since there is already substantial fan work being done on translating the animated series, no one seems to have bothered with the printed comic. I prefer the book and I need to learn to read, so why not?
Notes:
- I left the scans in Japanese format, which means you need to read right-to-left and up-to-down. The first two pictures in the gallery are "instructions" pictures. If you're not familiar with the Japanese reading style, make sure you check out those two pictures. They should help a lot. Above each picture you get a detailed description of what to do.
- I also left all Japanese sound-effects intact. I translated them literally and placed the translation next to them. Hence you get some strange effects like my thus-far personal favorite, "Bafusuu," which mysteriously represents the sound of bedsheets being ripped from a bed.
- Quick and dirty pronounciation tip for above-mentioned sounds: Consider that the vowel sounds in Japanese syllables are typically long. Thus the A in "Ka" sounds like the A in "Car" rather than "Cat." If you have any real questions about it (can't imagine you would) you can comment or mail me.
Here you are, the first six pages which just gets to introduce you to the main characters. Enjoy!
Honestly I hate "blog memes." But I couldn't help myself on this one. It seemed like a pretty fun idea. Plus, I have really had almost nothing of mention to write about lately. The beginnings of winter do that to you I guess.
From Smoochdog:
If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now, (even if we don't speak often) please post a comment with a COMPLETELY MADE UP AND FICTIONAL memory of you and me. It can be anything you want - good or bad - BUT IT HAS TO BE FAKE. When you're finished, post this little paragraph on your blog and be surprised (or mortified) about what people DON'T ACTUALLY remember about you.
Actually, I'd say the title is a bit misleading. I'd say the marathon conquered me is more accurate, but at least I made it through. 10.5 kilometers (about 6 miles) is a lot longer than it used to be in high school when I could run that on a daily basis.
The good news is that 5 years past my physical prime, I placed 142nd out of 692 boys who are 10 years my junior. As we all get older, we grasp at little positive statements we can make like "my physical fitness is better than that of the average Japanese high school student." Rock.
Living as a foreigner in Japan, you may be tempted to start to see yourself as something rather special. Maybe you think you're better looking, somehow, than you were before. Maybe you think you are so smart because you've only been living here for a year and people just keep telling you your Japanese is awesome. Maybe you think people ask you so many questions because they're truly interested in you.
In an effort (okay I admit it doesn't take much effort at all) to banish such thoughts and more, I simply remind myself that none of them are remotely true. To the majority of the people you meet, you are little more than a passing feature at the Ueno Zoo, something to marvel and point at for a short period of time before the next attraction draws attention. As a foreign English teacher in a public school, you certainly are little more than one more in a long line of continually-changing foreigners. How memorable are you really when people who have seen you daily for two years keep calling you by the last guy's name? Even to your Japanese friends, it is quite possible that a good part of the reason they are your friends is that you are foreign and even somewhat of a "friend trophy."
If you are one of the lucky ones to have command of the language enough to have a decent conversation, you haven't escaped. You definitely have a "specialness" advantage, but as I've heard Roy put it, you're just a talking monkey now instead of a mute one. Nevertheless I envy you horribly. Oh, to impress upon the people I talk to that I do have feelings and a personality to boot! The jury's still out on whether or not that actually works.
People are not looking at you because you're a hot dude(ss). They often have little desire to find out more about you beyond the "weird things" about your home country. They might even use you to the extent that you don't understand the way things work here. Like it or not, as truly special (or not) as you may be, you're still just a passing fancy. Consider yourself the "summer fling" if you will. Welcome to the ever-changing, always-the-same 外人 (gaijin: not-so-nice word for foreigner) roadshow.
This grounding (and bitter, I apologize for that) moment brought to you by shock-e.com
The boneheads in charge of IT at the prefecture level (all high schools in Japan are controlled by their prefectural governmental ministry) run a content filtering app that I am constantly bumping into. Daily you can hear my curses when I'm (usually) trying to find something useful and run into this thing. The things that they do to "protect" the kids from the world, in the end, only manage to make school less educational and more ridiculous. Last time I was trying to find Halloween games to play with my English club. I was blocked from every page because the word "game" was included in the page. No games allowed in school! Enjoying even a moment of your class makes you weak and stupid!
Today I was looking up more about Nanking/Nanjing in thinking about a response I wrote earlier to Roy's comment. Apparently history is also a banned category!
Okay I kinda get censoring the violence part, but history? What the fuck?
Today I was walking back from one of my classes, marveling (not really) at the fact that the halls were frigidly on-par with the outside temperature. At least, as of December, they're allowed to turn the heaters on in classrooms. My thoughts wandered, as they often do, to the lack of insulation in buildings in this part of Japan. For some reason I thought back to living through winter in my own high school days. Thanks to the much colder climate in Massachusetts, schools are insulated and have much better (in theory) heating systems.
What stopped me was that I suddenly realized I had been thinking about my Massachusetts high school classrooms in a Japanese context; all of the rooms had sliding doors and kerosene heaters. It meant to me that I've been here long enough so that my life here has started to color my perceptions, even in small ways, of things elsewhere. I wondered how many of my other memories I had unwittingly altered simply by living here for the time that I have.
I think everyone's memories are certainly colored by their current outlook, but have you ever had a moment of such overt alteration?
In other news, this is the 400th post since the inception of Musings of a Drunken Monk, back in May of 2003 when it was hosted on a computer sitting in the living room of my apartment in Somerville, MA. This also marks the second almost-consecutive month that my site has moved over a gigabyte of bandwidth. Thank you photo gallery (and my awesomely few ... fewly awesome ... whatever ... readers)!!
This morning I had a (quite base) thought whilst 90% asleep:
If "blow job" and "hand job" each describe a sexual activity, just imagine what a "nose job" must be ...
Yeah I know, I don't want to know either why I was thinking this at 7AM.
Last night's Jamiroquai concert was pretty good. They play very well live, and even though it was an arena concert (meaning you dance in the tiny aisles of seats) it was fun. I do admit that I much prefer club concerts with general admission/standing only.
At the concert the foreign population was out in force. What I noticed was the overwhelming prevalence of foreign guys with Japanese girlfriends, all of whom were sizing each other up. I don't mean the Japanese girlfriends were sizing each other up (though some do that), but rather the guys. I think there's this unspoken competition ... like who has the prettiest girlfriend or something. Certainly, all the foreign guys in my section were staring at each other (and more strongly, each others' girlfriends) quite openly.
It's like the "couple stare" you get sometimes from Japanese people, only more baleful.
I also noticed that there was a huge advertisement (with blaring "new" music sounding exactly like all his other songs) for Bon Jovi on the way in and out of the arena. I guess concert promoters in Japan think that if someone listens to one foreign band, he must listen to them all. Honestly, I can't imagine that anyone who likes Jamiroquai enough to go to an $80 concert would also like Bon Jovi enough to go to a $95 concert. But who knows ... maybe Bon Jovi has some groovy quasi-funk/disco grooves in his songs I've just never discovered.
We had a Halloween party (about two weeks too late, but whatever) for English club. The students carved a pumpkin (it's hard to get them here so I could only find one in the time frame I had), made Halloween cookies, and eyeball punch. It was a good and tiring time.
I'm coming more and more to realize that my life wouldn't be half as interesting if I didn't teach at the 工業 (kogyo: technical) school. Recently, just about every day I have an interesting story to tell about my one daily class I teach there. Naturally today was no exception.
I went to class and my partner teacher informed me that the students were tired due to "Judo day" which was yesterday. I guess they just spent all day throwing each other around in the gym (that, after all, is what Judo is about). So he wanted to make class 10 minutes shorter, as well as do nothing. Being that I need his help to get anything done in the class, I accepted and we started a class which involved me talking to students, handing out my handout, and going to the bathroom.
It was into the bathroom that one of the students followed me. I was mid-piss, and assuming he would just do the same, continued to piss. But apparently he wanted to talk. About my equipment. After inspecting it. Most people know that it's very difficult to force yourself to stop pissing. I had a good one built up, so naturally by the time I was able to pinch off, he had gotten a long hard look at my junk. Waving him away was pointless, as was trying to cover myself properly. In the end, he was amazed that I had no foreskin. He said "because you're a foreigner?" I agreed to make it simpler (plus, though I know the word for foreskin, I really didn't want to discuss the percentages and rationale of circumcision in the USA. Now that I think of it, I think he was wondering if foreigners just don't have foreskins.
I didn't even get to finish my piss, I was so intent on leaving that bathroom.
A few weekends ago we went to 焼肉 (yakiniku: barbecued meat) and the Japanese people in the small group (everyone but me) wanted to try some interesting things on the second plate. There were: pig's tongue, unidenfied cartilage, cow intestine, and cow ovary. Can you guess which is which?
I've noticed this year that every time the seasons change, I feel a bit 懐かしい (natsukashii: nostalgic). I think it's because it reminds me of the first time (last year) I experienced the new season in Japan. Winter is coming, and my mood has been rather pensive as I think back on the past year, and what I was doing (and with whom) at this time last year.
It makes me feel old and sad.
Relatively recently, I've found out some interesting stuff about Japanese relationships (romantic I mean) versus American relationships.
As it turns out, if someone avoids talking about their relationship (which many people tend to do), they are making an attempt to be modest. If they do talk about their relationship, they play it down and highlight the bad parts in another attempt to be modest. Back home, if someone avoids talking about or plays down their relationship, you can be pretty sure they're either unhappy or being shady.
Why is it that talking about (what should be) a good thing, even mentioning it, could be considered rude or immodest? Wow.
Today I was informed by a group of students that I have a small ass. I already knew this, but damn ... to have people other than my close friends reminding me of my embarrassingly small ass ... well it was a lovely conversation.
Then they wondered why women have bigger asses. I told them "so I can appreciate them."
Just kidding. I told them the whole "having babies" reason.