Sunday the 29th, 2004: Big Smile

Yesterday, having been invited by a teacher and having little else to do, I headed up to a town called Komoro for this...festival-thingie (gosh, what a good writer I is). A bunch of Japanese guys were there playing some Senegal-influenced, bongo-heavy folk music, which was actually pretty cool. Call it harsh stereotyping, but I always find it pretty weird when I find Japanese music that is actually good. I mean, this is the country that, perhaps paradoxically, both birthed the boy-band/trashy pop-idol and serves as the last remaining safe haven for the likes of Whitesnake. Thus, with expectations as low as mine, it's always kinda surprising when I find Japanese musicians playing music that does not fill me with rage nor uncontrollable fits of laughter.

Okay, that's not counting the song whose chorus consisted of "HAP-PY SONG! HAP-PY SONG!" sung over and over and over again. But I think that one was meant for kids anyway.

Anyway, I was up there with a bunch of kids and teachers from my special school, so that combined with the actual non-awful music put me in a pretty decent mood. At several points during the concert some of my more peppy kids would drag me up and make me start dancing, which is an activity I loathe enough even when performed with partners I could at least potentially sleep with without careening head-first off the Cliff of Morality. Along with sports, sex, and finding lifelong happiness, dancing is yet one more thing my body appears just not to have been built to do. However, I like my special kids, and as I said I was in a good mood, so dance, dance, horribly dance I did. Even when a guy with a big-ass camcorder was walking around, I showed none of the appropriate shame at my lack of ability, figuring he was just one of the teachers at the special school, or at most just some guy affiliated with the band.

Thus you can imagine my surprise when the teacher whose house I visited afterwards excitedly turned on the Nagano evening news, only to find that the guy with the camera yes, worked for the evening news, and there I was on the screen, gyrating pseudo-rhthymically like a great big tool for the entire prefecture to see. Luckily none of my JET friends saw it (least I don't think so), but I bet each and every one of you $10 that one of my students or teachers brings it up as soon as I go into work on Monday. Oh, man. On a side note, that broadcast marks the first occasion I have appeared on a news program while still wearing all my clothes.

Also of interest at the festival was the arts and crafts sale being put on by the special school kids, which featured all sorts of nice ceramic items that, while really quite decently well-made, were still, I'm sorry, very clearly made by retarded children. Most of these wares were teacups that, as an exact opposite of fine china whose usage is reserved only for guests, would in fact only be broken out for visitors that you really wish would leave as soon as possible. Fewer people than I would have thought were actually buying the things, which made me kinda sad, since 100-200 yen an item was all it would take to make these kids just so happy. However, this was a bittersweet kind of sadness, since after all, every teacup that went unsold meant a teacup spared the fate of being carelessly placed atop a child's desk or bathroom sink resigned to holding pencils or toothbrushes for the rest of its inanimate existence.

Of course, there was one item whose failure to be sell left me quite shocked and insulted. This item was, naturally, the Clay Galvin:

Now, despite its being a masterwork of expert craftsmanship and dealing with subject matter that is as timeless as it is big-penised, the item just simply would not move. And while there are many possible explanations for this, none of which cast any doubt whatsoever on the sheer awesomeness of the product, I like to think that art like this is simply ahead of its time, much like when Da Vinci did that Bukkake version of the Mona Lisa to explain why she's smiling (originally titled Mona Lisa 2: Bukkakalisa). Great genius, it would seem, is just never appreciated in its own time.

Friday the 26th, 2004: Been A While

And now, for your amusement, I present of a girl wearing a Bumblebee costume:

Robots can't smell flowers, idiot

Now, I know that, in the past, I've been somewhat...unkind to people who take to dressing up in giant robot outfits and prancing around in public. But all of those people, well, they were men. And despite those peskily persistent rumors that have been dogging me ever since that twelve-volume bootleg video series of some Galvin look-a-like who happens to be my exact height and weight and possesses the exact same distinguishing scar on his right lower back 7.3 centimeters above his hip bone performing all sorts of un-Biblical acts on a veritable parade of increasingly-endowed moustachied men...I assure you, I usually prefer women. And not just any kind of woman. Me, I need a chick that likes to dress up like a giant cartoon robot now and then. Granted, the chick in the picture above has the kind of face that comes from the Salvation Army but hey, throw a giant Bumblebee costume on her and I'm ready to bang her up the Autobutt so hard her transforming cog ruptures. And that's y'know, really hard.

...no, I do NOT need a girlfriend, thank you very much. Shut up.

(Photo used with permission from Paul Segal)

Wednesday the 24th, 2004: We Rub You Mr. Chom

The fruity March-ending Japanese school year is drawing to a close, and thus some of my less crap sixth-grade students have begun to say good-bye to me. Today the end of my workday was a scene of madness, as I was mobbed for autographs for over ten minutes in what will probably be their last happy memory related to English before they go on to junior high school where they actually have to study it for real. Much as I hate to admit it, I do believe I shall miss some of them. The rest of them, of course, I will simply miss severely beating.

Then again, at least with my sixth-graders, the semi-tearful farewells at least make sense. But lately some of my much younger students have been getting all doe-eyed towards me as well, which is puzzling especially since I've spent so much time teaching them that emotions are for gay people. By this point most of them know I'm leaving in August, but it's not as if I won't still be there again in April when they move on to 2nd or 3rd grade or whatever. True, a lot of the good-bye letters the students have recently been handing me came at the prodding of their homeroom teachers, but many of these kids actually put in candy, cookies, cake, origami animals or cheap plastic jewelry in with their letters. Which seems to indicate, you know, somewhat more than merely the minimum effort. Of course there are also the letters that obviously only were written because the students were forced to, most of which contain one of the seemingly infinite number of ways for Japanese kids to misspell my name (recent favorites include: 'Garbon Tyau', 'Gulvin Chom', and, I swear to God, 'Harubi Cho'). But hey, let's try to focus on the positives, shall we? Take a look at how all these goddamn letters have piled up in my already-cramped apartment:

Apartment shown at actual size

You know when you receive a birthday card from a relative and even though you spend approximately .2 seconds reading it and up to half an hour rubbing the money contained inside all over your naked baby-oil-slathered body, you can never throw the card away because you don't actually want to admit that you're a unappreciative, materialistic shit? Well, that's kinda like this, only ten times worse, because just dumping these suckers in the garbage would not only make me a bad person, but one horribly unfit for my profession, as if I need any more indications. In my defense, when they were delivered to me in a pile at school the other day I actually sat myself down and read every single goddamn one of them, although this was mostly because other teachers were watching me and I couldn't very well just claw through them looking for the ones that contained candy. And besides, even though most of the letters basically say DEAR MR CHOM SANK YUU TEACH US GOODR ENGRISH, some of the kids clearly spent a lot of time on them. I mean, I may vigorously beat students every time they use the vowel I randomly declare to be forbidden every hour, but let it never be said that I have no love for children; or at least the ones that give me free cakes and candy.

Monday the 22nd, 2004: Mockery of the Female Body, Part 2

My friend Chris had a party at his place this Saturday, with the theme of everyone coming dressed up as something that begins with the letter "C". At first I was somewhat unconvinced in the merits of a 'theme' -- I'll skip the cleverness and just get back to killing the brain cells carrying my JET-related memories with alcohol, thank you very much -- but people managed to turn out some fun costumes that made this get-together rather memorable. Among other things, there was cow, construction worker, concubine, Chiba Sonny, condom...all good C-words of course, but none lewd enough for me. I mean, think about it; so many good, dirty words start with C that I found it difficult to decide on just one.

First, seeing as I still had the Sexy Bomber of my last journal entry on hand, I thought I could go as a Cross-Dresser. Then I thought about the Cock, as I after all often do, which I was going to construct by buying one of those 'Bald' novelty skullcaps, cutting a slit in the top, and having Elmer's glue dribble out of it or something. Next I considered "Cumstain," an appearance I figured could be achieved by smashing raw eggs into my hair and letting toothpaste dry on my pants. All of these ideas though, were either too predictable, too much work, or slightly too disgusting even for me, so in the end I decided to just stick a big pink bowl on my face and walk around proclaiming myself a giant Clitoris:

And then I ate nothing but tuna all day and didn't brush my teeth

See, the red sweatshirt is for my 'clitoral hood,' and see...oh, never mind. Initially, everyone thought I was some sort of poorly-funded astronaut but once I pulled apart the carefully-pinned together red flaps of my sweatshirt positioned underneath the bowl and showed what lay inside, pretty much everyone got it. And well, thrusting my arm in and out of the opening while making squishing sounds and later giving "birth" to the Namacha Panda helped clarify things as well. And as I always say, the best jokes are the ones that need to be explained thoroughly and repeatedly.

Thursday the 19th, 2004: Amazing Discoveries

Speaking as someone on a tight budget and with a long, legally indistinct history of cross-dressing, I've often wished that someone out there would invent an easy and inexpensive way of making myself look like I have bosoms. You know, something as a simple, sensible alternative to cutting tennis balls in half or undergoing costly, risky -- and let's just face it -- unreliable cosmetic surgeries. Well, now there is a way -- a brand-new technological innovation that means you and I never having to jam endless boxes' worth of balled-up Kleenex into brassiere we secretly 'borrowed' from our sister ever again. It's called the "Sexy Bomber", or the Sekushii Bon-baa in its native country of Japan. But whatever -- I just call it the answer to all my dreams!

Based in the hard-working, forward-thinking land of Japan -- the country the entire world looks to for firsts in innovative, technological breakthroughs -- the fine folks at the Nansei Company, Ltd. Research and Development Labs have used a combination of creative thinking, cutting-edge technology, and just a dash of advanced space-age presumably ancestral Ninja Magicks, to bring you this, the latest in fine, fake-booby products. And the best part is, it's SO easy -- just three simple steps! All you have to do is...

...stick...squeeze...and POP! Then...

SPPPPROOING-G-G-GG!!! From Androgynous Annie, to Busty Barbara, in literally seconds flat! WOW!

Still not convinced? Look how greatly the Sexy Bomber DWARFS this ordinary, unusually large banana!

BEFORE | AFTER

Trust us -- After you've been "Bombed", no one will be trying to keep their banana away from you!

Now then, how much would you be willing to pay for this amazing technological breakthrough that could change your entire life as well as your bustline? 300 dollars? 500 dollars?? A THOUSAND???!! No, try again -- how about no more than 100 cents American! You heard me right! For the same price as a 2-liter bottle of off-brand soda or some really flimsy eyeglass frames, you can become the life of every party! So what are you waiting for? All you need is for some Australian people to point you towards your local 100-Yen Shop, and in no time flat, you, too, can start taking hideously disturbing, Senate-barring photos of yourself wearing fake boobies in the bathroom! What are you waiting for? Act NOW!*

*Sexy Bomber brand fake bosoms not available outside of Japan. Presumably because no other country is even close to being that deranged and perverted.

Monday the 16th, 2004: Sailor Moon Looks...Different

Well, it's Monday, and it was another typical day at the special school. In the afternoon we made clay sculptures, some kid predictably ended up eating the clay and a teacher had to practically jam her hand down his throat to get it all out, and I made homoerotic 'muscleman' sculptures of a teacher that he surprisingly didn't appreciate as much as I thought he would. Yep, just another typical day on the job.

As for the morning, then, we watched the tape of the school musical I've been jabbering on about for the past coupla weeks. Counting this tape and the initial run-through, I have now been exposed to this musical and its various songs no less than four times, and believe when I say that slurred, off-key Japanese singing is far harder to get out of one's head than all but the very most insipid of Top 40 radio tunes. I mean, if you thought Hakuna Matata was a fucking brain-drill when The Lion King first came out and the fast-food tie-in merchandising blitz hit, try being trapped in an auditorium listening to 17 retarded children garble-sing it in Japanese and your brain begins to handle cohesive thought about as well as a three year-old juggles greased cannonballs while wearing mittens.

Watching the tape today proved to be much more of a cringe-worthy experience than I anticipated, actually; not necessarily because of the children but because of me. Now, despite being a hopeless narcissist, and despite having the absolute lowest standards of any narcissist in the world besides (which explains all the half-naked photos of me on this site), I absolutely hate watching myself in video form. It forces me to see myself in the third-person for a change, without the benefit of my inner beer-goggles, and well, it's like hearing your voice on tape for the first time and going, "My God, am I really that much of a dork?"

Of course, on this particular video, I'm dressed in a sequined blue blazer, giant pink bowtie, and big freaky red-yarn wig leading a parade of 17 prancing retarded children in a chant about raising 'mourning wood' while about a hundred decidedly non-retarded and therefore harshly judgemental local junior high students look on in disbelief. So, I guess I have more of a reason to be embarassed than usual. And no, you can't see the video.

Anyway, getting to what the actual play was about...well, each grade got 40 minutes to themselves.. The seventh graders, from what I could tell, put on a story about a princess in ancient China trying to find a groom. This set the stage for all the male students to come out on stage and participate in a sort of Dating Game, trying to win over the beautiful, drooling princess by performing feats of physical skill, all of which seemed to involve jumping either over or on something. Like so:

'Kevin!!'

As you will see, this trampoline gets a lot of use

Hey, minimal jumping (Note the patronizing applause at the end)

Yes, wasn't that enthralling? Part of the problem I think here was that I first saw the dress rehersal for this, with my mind still working exclusively within the confines of the special-school mindset, I thought this was a really super thing for the kids to do. Put it in front of again, 100 non-retarded junior high kids though, and I can't help but get more of an outside perspective that sounds more like, "Woo, way to jump and not fall over, champ". I mean seriously, if they wanted a supportive audience, I can think of about a million better places to look than a freaking junior high school. Putting a bunch of dancing and singing retarded kids in front of an auditorium full of conflicted-by-definition junior high students is like delivering a guest sermon in a Catholic Church about how nothing really seals the sanctity of marraige like doing it in the butt.

Butt (ha!) I digress. Anyway, like I said the plot of the 7th graders' play involved a bunch of boys trying to marry a princess, so where does that leave the girls, you ask? Well, that's probably the same question the 7th grader teachers probably asked themselves, before they decided heck, let's just throw Sailor Moon into this for no particular reason.

Click for a not-very-interesting clip

Like I said, not a terribly engaging clip; but hey, the black-clad teacher leading around the barely-aware-of-where-she-is Sailor Moon is kinda hot, yes?

Moving along, the eighth graders put on a story about a bunch of farm animals being kicked out by the nasty old farmer for wanting to do things like play sing, play guitar, or jump on a trampoline instead of their intended tasks. Then they assemble at this giant Welsh-looking house that unfortunately has been taken over by a band of robbers dressed as witches. Hey, I don't writes 'em, I just brain-hemmorage on 'em. Anyway, click the following photo to watch the kid dressed as a chicken sing:

And, because they apparently paid a lot for that trampoline, and because well, this kid (dressed as a dog) really can't handle much else...MORE JUMPING!. Set to a timeless classic, no less.

Now, that's all the footage I got, but there's a reason: for the ninth graders, I was actually in the play, so I wasn't available to film ill-intentioned clips of it for my website. As for the remainder of the 8th-grade play, well...see, the gang of robbers dressed as witches I mentioned earlier were dressed head-to-toe in black, which is a striking visual statement to be sure, but unfortunately when someone went to put sheer black pants on one of the girl students, he or she forgot to check if aforementioned sheer black pants were TRANSPARENT. It looked all right when she was standing in back, but whenever she would step into the spotlight, it'd be like *BAM*, retarded eighth-grade panty show. I felt like I was pretty much the only person to notice this, but I sure as hell wasn't about to say anything: "Say, Baba-Sensei, I wanted to tell you, during the play I happened to repeatedly notice that young naive Chie's lucious white panties were visible the entire time; an observation that for all you know stems not from genuine concern but from the fact that I am a great big child-molesting pervert. Just wanted to let you know!" No, I rather think not. I mean, like they say, the show must go on. Thankfully, this was fixed before performing in front of an actual audience, but still, the very memory prevented me from filming any part of the entire scene.

Finally, that brings us to the ninth graders. Unfortunately, like I said, I wasn't able to film any of the ninth graders' play since I was in it myself; but in case you were wondering, their story was about a Sakura (cherry blossom) tree that, as it grew throughout the ages, symbolized their maturation. Unfortunately, one night a terrible storm hits, symbolized by their hilariously twirling around on stage for seven full minutes while scary music plays, and their only recourse is to track down Super Dimensional Magic Forest Magician Mr. Galvin (okay, so I just made that name up, but I'm sure they'd come up with something similar), who resides in a mystical forest consisting of a milk crate and a piece of plywood tacked to the wall. Fortunately, Magical Mr. Galvin is indeed able to raise the tree, and the kids are all happy again, happy enough to sing We Are the World while all the junior high kids in the audience stand up and look around uncomfortably, probably wondering when they can go back and just learn algebra again already. It was all rather cute, really. All the special kids dressed up as professions they'd like to be in the future -- doctor, police man, racecar driver -- which of course are all very nice dreams for them to have. Up until you remember of course, that in the actual future, they will instead all still be retarded.

Man, if I wasn't going to hell already, that last joke probably just about put me over. Let it never be said that I, too, do not suffer for my art.

Thursday the 12th, 2004

Ran through the dress rehersal for the class plays at the special school today. Tomorrow's the actual performance, which I think will be attended by actual, non-retarded junior high students from visiting schools, so I anticipate it being a disaster. Media to follow shortly, as soon as I get over my current moral crisis over posting such things. Oh, heck, here's a preview, which got cut off prematurely due to an unplanned molestation courtesy the fat kid behind me.

Anyway, just a quick note-post to point out that we have a new, hopefully semi-regular feature available for your reading pleasure: reader and occasional message board poster St Mongo's Tales of Sin, a collection of anecdotes from her job at a pornography store. That's the kind of situation that writes itself, so hopefully you'll enjoy reading it. Oh, fair warning, it obviously includes some adult language, that, come to think of it, is only like one level either above or below the language I normally use anyway so never mind.

Lastly, my board of education just renovated their web site, so of course they thought it'd be a great idea to give me my own little section for all the ones and twos of viewers that undoubtedly go to such a site. You can view it at http://www.pref.nagano.jp/xkyouiku/sakukyou/newpage29.htm. In case you're wondering, I'm not directly linking it just in case they check where their traffic is coming from, so you'll have to cut and paste if you want to see just how bad my Japanese is, that is if you can read enough Japanese to tell. And I suggest you do go to the page, if only because it contains two of positively the worst photos of me ever taken. And given how many half-naked pictures there are of me on this site, that's saying a lot.

Wednesday the 11th, 2004: My Condorences

Hey, I updated the Engrish again. Consider the apocalypse signaled. And belated thanks, Michelle of the Gun-Limb.

The #3 Boss (Kacho) in my Board of Education's mother just passed away, and quite frankly I don't really know how to react to it. Not that I knew the woman, or even know my Kacho all that well, but that's precisely the point -- I really don't know the protocol for this type of thing, how to act or what to say when I next see him. I mean half the time even in regular conversation I elect just to keep my mouth shut for fear of making some awful cultural faux pas. I'm terrified to even make small talk with teachers because I'm afraid I'll ask them something innocent like "so how's your wife?" only for my balding, fattish conversation partner to suddenly burst into tears about how he's doomed to be alone forever and then, y'know, kill himself right in front of me. In fact, the one time I did ask a teacher about his family he responded "Oh, I just divorced my wife last month." Not that there's anything wrong with divorce -- in fact, while I never wish to get married I'd LOVE to be a divorcee, since I think it would greatly enhance my cynical aura -- it's just that divorce is far less common here than in the States, presumably because people here are already well-accustomed to putting up with loveless marraiges, so I was unsure of how to properly respond. Hence, failing to come up with any comment even remotely appropriate, I just let the conversation drop in a big, dark, awkward hole instead. I mean, what was I supposed to say, "Hope you took the bitch for all she was worth"? I think not.

Part of the problem is that I'm not really too up on the different connotations that all the ways to say "sorry" in the Japanese language carry. As you might expect, perhaps similar to how the Eskimos have like thirty-seven ways to say 'snow', there's at least 40 million different ways to say 'I'm sorry' in Japanese that I can think of right now, each with further variations carrying different degrees of formality. In English, if a coworker's relative died, saying something like "I heard about your mother, I'm sorry" would be appropriate, but in Japanese I run the risk of the direct translation coming across as either incomprehensible or something that is just plain horribly inappropriate. For all I know the guy was real close to his mom; I'm sure the last thing he needs is for Mr. Doofy Foreigner to come wandering up in his big doofy too-big pants stuttering out something like Honorable mother listened excuse me justly. Another coworker told me a good thing to say would be "okaasan zannen deshita" which translates to "too bad about your mother." But seeing as "zannen" is usually a word I hear uttered by sarcastic game show hosts, meaning that's probably the subconscious reference on which I base my own pronunciation of it, I'm afraid that when I go to say it to my Kacho I'll make it sound like I'm consoling him for incorrectly guessing the price of a toaster rather than for the loss of his mother. Or you know, all I have to do is miss a syllable and suddenly instead of offering him comforting words of heartfelt sympathy I end up having him challenge me to a duel.

And yes, I am aware that I am a dick for sitting here worrying about yet another wacky cultural difference introduced into my life seeing as, y'know, someone's mother just died. In my defense, though, it seems despite the stereotypical 'revere the elderly' thing this country's supposedly got going on, the Japanese seem a lot more...nonchalant about this kinda thing in general. Once, I bumped into a teacher I realized I hadn't seen in about a week, and he greeted me all smiles and sunshine, genuinely happy to see me, and when I asked where he had been recently, he responded, plain as day, that his mom just died and he'd been on the requisite one-week leave. I mean, I'm not saying I wanted him to burst into tears in front of some idiot foreign guy he barely knew, but I must say I found it a bit off-putting the way he delivered the news so casually; in the same tone of voice that one might use to order French fries or declare the shade of carpeting he'd decided on for the living room. I've read in some probably-horribly-researched books that open displays of emotion here equate to losing face, but still...it just seems weird to me, to deliver news like that, plain as day.

Anyway, when it comes down to it, the next time I walk into the office I'll probably just end up saying absolutely nothing to the guy. As I said, I tend to be over-cautious about this kinda stuff, so no reason to stop now. They say that all that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing; but really, when your batting average is somewhere in the negatives, sometimes it's probably better to keep right on sitting comfortably on your thumbs.

Monday the 9th, 2004: Oink Oink, Baby

For those of you that are mindful of spoilers, I suggest you skip the next few paragraphs because I am going to reveal the winning teams of the 2004 Karuizawa International Curling Festival. Yes, I know, with an event of this magnitude I imagine you'd prefer to find out the outcome yourselves, so for those of you who taped or TiVoed it but somehow haven't yet gotten around to watching it, here's fair warning. Ready?

SPOILER WARNING

...oh wait, I'm sorry, I'm confusing this for something someone might give a crap about. Anyway, it was Canada. Yeah, Canada finally decides to get good at something, and it's fucking curling. Way to go, fellas. As for me, I'm somewhat good at wiping my own ass.

Anyway. This is exactly the sort of attitude I was desperately attempting to repress last night at last night's Curling Festival Farewell Party. Spending some time in a foreign country has made me pretty careless with my words, since I'm so used to no one around me being able to understand my snide remarks. This almost got me in trouble a few times when I visited home this summer, most notably when I was in a store standing next to a morbidly obese fellow and, honestly not used to seeing humans of such dimensions in Japan, loudly commented on his weight and all but took commemorative photos of this monument-sized man before finally remembering what country I was in. Of course, I wasn't in individually-wrapped foil packages so thankfully he didn't seem to notice me; but the point is, other than I am an asshole, is that oh yeah, I am an asshole and could really use to remember that a few other people in the world speak the English language besides me. At any rate, putting someone like me in a room full of curling players is like putting a professional tapdancer with hubcab-sized feet in in a room full of bear traps.

Therefore, fearful of opening my big fat mouth and letting internal monologue accidentally transform into faux pas, before the night even began I decided I would speak to the players as little as humanly possible. Of course one might say that not talking to curling players is really just little more than pure common sense, no additional motivations needed; but keep in mind that last year A) Many of the players were just illogically hot and B) Even though I'm not much for trying my luck with women way, way, waaay out of my league, my drunken co-workers, who of course need someone to translate their advances, are another story. Last year's party brought about some of the more uncomfortable experiences of my life, as for seemingly hours I'd stand between a co-worker and a Hot Norwegian Curling Babe relaying bits of 'conversation' back and forth like "he wants to know if you like skiing" and "Jesus Christ put that bach in your pants yah". And, given that my co-workers had already been asking me to teach them English pick-up lines all week, it looked like my work would be cut out for me.

Thankfully, however, with this year's batch of curlers came a rare stroke of luck: as compared to last year's well-nigh supermodel-level beauties, this year's female teams looked more like, well, um...okay, here, try this: picture what you thought women curlers looked like before I started to go off on how paradoxically hot they were. Okay, that's what they more looked like this year (okay, so these ones were alright). My co-workers were naturally quite disappointed, but just as well for me, since quite frankly I had more important things with which to concern myself. By which I mean, of course, the FOOD:

Left: Heaps of Japanese, Chinese, Italian, German, and American-ish delicacies. Right: PORK BREAD

Now see, the hotel at which the reception was held, the Karuizawa Prince, is quite a posh one so the food there tends to be, oh, how shall I put it...ass-shittingly AWESOME. I suppose my choice of words might not make it seem all too appetizing, but trust me, brother, in this case, shit that comes out of asses is a very tasty thing indeed. Uh, don't quote me on that.

Actually, it probably wouldn't have even mattered if the curling girls were hot again this year, because the food was so damn good that even if one of my coworkers tried to drag me away to go futilely hit on some Nordic curling lass I probabaly would have just snarled and snapped my teeth at them until they went away. I realize I probably sound like some kind of fat pig (as opposed to you know, the skinny kind), and probably one with suspect sexual leanings at that, but honestly, the food served at these things is some of the best I have ever had in my LIFE. The way I see it, I have probably the entire rest of my life to be shot down by hot chicks with accents, but eats like at the reception aren't likely to come around too many times for someone of my projected post-JET income bracket (read: Zero). Maybe it was just the wine talking, which after all I was just using to wash down food rather than waste time chewing, but at one point late in the evening I seriously considered going to the bathroom and making myself throw up simply so I could eat a little more. They had tables full of sushi, spring rolls, and sandwiches; bowls of ramen, pasta, and sukiyaki all made to order; trays stacked with tortes, mousses and cremes. Oh God, if only you could have TASTED the pork-bread, a hunk or roast-pork baked inside a whole loaf of bread presumably to seal in flavor, which beat out even last year's similarly shorts-shatteringly sumptuous turkey-inside-a-bread. It may look like a giant turd in the picture above but believe me, even just thinking about it now makes me want to...oh...oh...oh god...um, if you'll excuse me, I and this piece of pork I snuck out in my suit pocket last night need go disappear into the bathroom together for several unexplained minutes.

At any rate, given that my stomach is still pleasantly aching even now, I'd say this year's International curling Festival Farewell Party can be considered a rousing success. Sure, at one point I actually did snap at a coworker for attempting to take me away from the food and towards a group of girls; and sure, I made something of a spectacle of myself all but shoving a bunch of Finnish fellows out of the way of me and the pork bread. At least they'll have something by which to remember the name of...hey, wait a second...

CALVIN Chow? Hey! Big hoighty-toighty event like this and they can't even spell the name of the Opening Ceremony's main translator right? Bunch of idiots! Can't I go anywhere to escape this lifelong mistaking-a-G-for-a-C epidemic?

Ah, well. Long as they keep pumping out eats like that thar pork bread, they can call me Susan for all I care.

Saturday the 7th, 2004: A Curling Life for Me

As I'm sure you all know -- because who wouldn't -- the 2004 Karuizawa International Curling Festival kicked off on Thursday, and once again yours truly was there to serve as linguistic intermediary between local elementary school students and teams of *snicker snicker* Olympic curlers from around the world. It was pretty much the same dealie as last year, with me just translating the opening/closing speeches and directing teams where to go and what to do during the recreational activities. That probably sounds like a big deal but keep in mind I'd prepared the speech translations beforehand and I probably got on the microphone no more than a half-dozen times to instruct players. In short, then, it was a pretty good deal for me, particularly since being there meant I didn't have to be teaching. However, not all is sunshine and daffodils in the land of kindofcrap, because lest you forget, spending eight hours at a curling competition also means, unfortunately, that at some point curling will likely be played. Do you have any idea what spending an extended period of time exposed to such a thing is like? Tell you what, watch the following two video clips over and over again for your entire workday and then hold a headbutting contest with a pile of cinderblocks. After that, you may have some slight concept of how many human rights violations a day like this is mired in.

Curling 1 | Curling 2

Insane yet? Good. Including the new festival-induced additions to the cast of voices in my head, that makes seventeen of us.

This is now the third time I've written about curling on this web page, so I guess I don't really have too much new to add. Still, I simply must again say -- who on EARTH decided this should be an Olympic sport? I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm sure it takes a good amount of skill. I mean, I tried it and I certainly did suck at it. I'm sure it must be a fun, relaxing way to spend an afternoon or two, maybe even if the TV isn't broken and every other living being on the planet hasn't died along with all the board games and mind-numbing drugs. And I'm sure that, like many things, it can be an immensely rewarding pursuit given enough time and devotion. That said, it should also be made clear that I could say pretty much the exact same things about me sitting on the toilet after eating a giant sack of raw meat and cream cheese for breakfast, and you certainly don't see me lobbying to make Marathon Loaf-Pinching an Olympic-level activity. Why don't we have an Olympic hop-scotch team while we're at it? Bombardment? Horseshoes? Freeze tag? Yo-yo? Connect-Four? Come on, geek clubs of the world, if the frickin' curlers could do it you probably can too.

The funny thing is, I'm pretty easily starstruck, so I'm pretty sure were it any other sport possibly excepting Trampoline and Synchronized Swimming, I'd be extremely excited about meeting teams of Olympic athletes from all over the world. I mean, you're talking to someone who once swiped Marisa Tomei's water bottle and then chased after her limo. So I'm sure normally, meeting Olympic athletes -- even if I don't know their names, I know they're famous -- would make me soil my pants with at least three types of stains. But curling? That's like some kind of cruel, emotionally manipulative joke, like telling your five year-old son you have a great birthday surprise for him and then punching him in the face. Like having your birthday party played only by Art Garfunkel, or hearing that Alanis Morisette was in a horrible car accident, but lived. Like making a baby and then actually having to keep the baby. Or like the second and third Matrix movies (Ooh, burrrn!). I mean, it's just not nice to get someone's hopes up like that.

Anyway, I've got a formal reception with the teams coming up on Sunday, so stay tuned for my curling-related adventures after that. But again, with any other team, I could have mentioned such a reception in a snooty voice and acted like I'm someone important. But, since it's curling...well, what should be an exquisite evening schmoozing and boozing with some of the top physical specimens in the world instead transforms into an exercise of willpower over whether or not I can go the entire night without purposely kicking dirt on them. Feel free to wish me luck, but I make no promises.

Wednesday the 4th, 2004: Window to Stupidity

Today I walked into class, did my customary greetings, made five kids each say their name and something they like, split them into teams to play a game, had them decide the order in which they'd play the game, got the first players to come to the front of the room...and only THEN, a full 15 minutes after class started, did I finally get around to actually planning what game we were going to play. See??!! THIS is why I'm quitting.

Moving right along...I've mentioned this before, but I only watch TV here literally about once every two months. Mostly this is because every time I do get brave or stupid enough to turn on my TV, I'm pretty much guaranteed to see something so infuriatingly asinine that I want to shit out my brain.

My favorite commercial back when I was doing study abroad in Tokyo was for a certain brand of pre-packaged bags-o-wieners. Japan as a whole has not yet gotten around to realizing that hot dogs are absolutely abhorrent so it's possible to present them as delicious and nutrionally valid in this country without even the slightest hint of irony. The best part of the commercial was when the smiling housewife went to prove how delicious the wieners were to her children by picking one up and snapping it in half, thus producing the same whip-crack sound as a fresh raw cucumber and spraying suspiciously sparkly wiener juice everywhere. And this was supposed to make me run out and buy a bag of wieners. I like to imagine that shortly after that the husband came home and screamed "You made fucking wieners again? See, this is why I frequent the whores" but I guess their market research people didn't go for that.

A more general reason I avoid Japanese TV is because literally every other show is a god damn cooking show. This in itself wouldn't be so bad, inasmuch as I am a fan of eating, but what really makes it unpalatable (pun not intended) is that they feel the need to staff every show with a vacuous celebrity panel that has the two-part job of A) sitting there and and basically haviving tantric orgasms over every single ingredient added, no matter how mundane; and b) making me realize that there really aren't enough crazy people going around stalking and killing celebrities. Seriously, if you close your eyes when watching one of these shows all you will hear are oohs and ahhs sandwiched between exclamatory sentences like OH MY GOD HE'S USING A CARROT!!! and HE'S POURING THE SOUP INTO A BOWL!!! delivered in again, the utmost seriousness. Then they make a big production of the celebrities actually tasting the finished product; all of whom wait for a moment of stunned suspense before delivering the inevitable verdict of "Delicious!!" Yeah, like these paid celebrities are instead going to take one bit and then throw it in the face of their house-slave in disgust.

Today's little bit of television stupidity, then, possibly takes the cake even over that time I watched that show where they hooked up a girl's skirt to a loom to see how many spins of the wheel it would take to unravel it. I accidentally hit the 'video' button after watching a DVD and suddenly found myself looking at a half-dozen housewives standing on a stage using tape measures to determine the distance from their mouth to where their chins meet their throats. This in itself is stupid enough, but they had to go one step farther by having an expert come out and claim she could reduce the size of their chins with nothing more than...wait for it...some vinyl tape and a regular 99-cent umbrella. Myself, I kept hoping the solution would consist of binding the volunteers with the tape and beating them to death with the umbrellas, thus eventually shrinking their chins via the magic of decomposition, but sadly this was yet another great idea of mind that went unheeded. But no, the real solution consisted of taping two of their fingers together and having them hold the umbrellas behind their backs with their arms, thus setting off a complex muscle-contraction chain reaction that theoretically would cause their chins to indeed shrink. And sure enough, when the tape measures were brought out again, the housewives' chins did indeed shrink by a full one centimeter, thus causing many of them to tearfully proclaim it, and I am not even joking, "a miracle"; without again, and say it with me now, even the slightest hint of irony.

Now see, this little program raises several pertinent questions. Among them:

• What the shit
• Who the fuck cares about you and your stupid idiot chins you stupid goddamn fucking idiot clowns
• Why was someone clever enough to figure out how to imperceptibly alter the human body with just an umbrella and some tape not devoting her efforts to something useful like curing AIDS or making me a milkshake
• No seriously Jesus Christ what the shit

That's all I can think of right now; I'm too busy hoping I never date a girl who will constantly ask me "Honey, you'd tell me if my chin looked one centimeter too big, right?" Oh, and of course the studio of audience of course cheered right along with them, the best parts being a little girl exclaiming "How pretty they are now!" who as a result of watching this demonstration will now be anorexic by the time she starts wanting a cell phone instead of a pony, and a little fat boy clapping his globulous hands together with such unrestrained glee that you could tell he was thinking he had just witnessed a demonstration of his very salvation. Sorry kid, not enough tape and umbrellas in the world.

Monday the 2nd, 2004: Bad Song Title Here

Well, I finally did it. My supervisor just came by and I finally told him that I wouldn't be signing on for another year of JET. After I said it he just kind of stood there in my doorway for a while looking at the floor. He wasn't really saying anything so in a fairly uncharacteristic move I felt obliged to fill the conversational vacuum and just kept spitting out reasons. I told him that as much as I like Japan, I wouldn't mind going to live in my own country for a while. I told him that even though the program has been really good to me, I just want to go live a normal American life for a couple years. I told him I had thought hard about it, and in fact was still kinda thinking about it (not a complete lie), but since he asked me right then and there that was the answer I gave him. In short, except for 'it's not you, it's me,' I pulled out every bad, half-assed, half-truth excuse one can make for a patronizingly soft break-up, when in reality the the very sight of the slighted party makes you want to swallow a boot just so you can kick your own ass from the inside.

Okay, so I doubt my supervisor was that upset over it, but I could tell he was kinda disappointed. I'm not looking forward to going into the office on Wednesday to sign the papers either, as that will also entail explaining to another twenty people why I don't want to live in their lousy country any more. Come to think of it, over the next six months I can look forward to explaining my situation to nearly every single teacher at every one of my nine schools while trying not to make it sound like I hate it here. Which, for the record, I don't. I'm just smart enough to know a third year would be a supremely awful idea. I mean, why don't I just sign a piece of paper promising I'll back-bodydrop a child through a second-story window while I'm at it.

Sorry I'm being such a drama queen, but something you should understand about me is that I've felt guilty about quitting every job I've had EVER. Even when I worked strings of one-month, one-week, or even one-day temp jobs, I felt a twinge of guilt at the end of every single one. Leaving a job, even though an obviously fairly frequent occurence in the adult world, always makes me feel like a deserter, like I'm letting someone down. I once had this HORRIBLE warehouse job that had me pulling doorknobs and door accessories off dusty 30-foot-high shelves from 10 AM - 10 PM every day that I stayed with nearly a full month longer than I intended to simply because I felt guilty leaving when the manager was always complaining how shorthanded the place was. In college, I worked at Pier-Fucking 1 for a semester, and when I left there, I left the manager a full-page handwritten good-bye letter thanking them for letting me work there and being part of the, and I swear I wrote this, "Pier 1 Family." And I meant it, sadly enough. Even though pretty much my entire time there I took constant twenty-minute bathroom breaks, volunteered to go get dinner for everyone and then drove to the Taco Bell an hour away instead of the one down the street, and, rather than taking imperfect merchandise to the dumpster to be destroyed like I was supposed to, put them in my car trunk and used them to decorate my dorm room; which by the end it looked like a tacky wicker jungle, at least until we destroyed/burned it all after graduation (at this point I should remind you that everything in this journal is fictional unless indicated otherwise).

But anyway, despite being a model bad employee, despite their saddling me with a 25-hour workweek when I just wanted 10, I honestly felt emotional about quitting. And that's just at fucking Pier 1. The only semi-tangible effects of quitting that job were decreased pocket money and squeezing in my daily half-hour of studying between 8 hours of goofing off instead of 8 hours of unwrapping and shelving wicker furniture. On the other hand, quitting my current job -- my first semi-real, post-college job, after all -- dictates what hemisphere I'll be living in. The stakes seem a bit higher here than when I was deciding just how many more chipped vases or legless statues of pseudo-African fertility gods I could possibly fit into my common room.

At any rate, on Wednesday it becomes official, and I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a sense of relief to go along with all this guilt and uncertainty. Mark your calendars, because I know I sure am: July 28th, 2004, six months from now, will be the day I will probably all tearfully thank you for being part of the KindofCrap Family.

...God, I'm such a tool.