Thursday, May 27th: Moments of Zen

I was eating lunch at the special school yesterday -- miso ramen, if you're interested -- with a bunch of particularly retarded second graders when Takashi, an almost impossibly tiny boy sitting across from me, took a short and abrupt break from staring at me as if it were a necessary part of the chewing process to have his body violently rocked by a pair of typhoon-level sneezes. And I'm sure this anecdote is already sounding very exciting -- "Wow! Retarded children sneezing!" -- but let me assure you, these were by far two of the most simultaneously beautiful and disgusting sneezes EVER. See, on the first sneeze, out comes a long, twisting, slimy tendril of snot, which proceeds to dangle precariously from his left nostril, reaching well below his mouth. On the second, coming after the first with such impeccable comedic timing it bordered on the acrobatic -- out shoots an incredibly disgusting, half-chewed, yet still intact, ramen noodle.

Moments before the greatest sneeze in the history of the Earth

For a couple seconds after this, he goes right back to his normal routine of staring blankly at me; only now with a pair of nearly indistinguishable slimy nose nose jewelry hanging from each nostril. I tell you, it was one of those things that was just so very absurdly disgusting that it was almost a transcendental experience. It was as if I was staring into the very face of God Himself; that is if the Almighty were a retarded second grader paying little heed to the Eleventh Commandment, Thou Shalt GOOD GOD WIPE YOUR FUCKING NOSE JESUS THAT'S DISGUSTING. Oh, and the best part, he just goes right back to eating his noodles afterwards, paying little to no attention to his monstrously gangly dragon whiskers, with me too frozen in nauseous nirvana to even think of offering him a tissue or something.

Anyway, I almost wish I coulda gotten a picture, but really it was the sneeze equivalent of an 80-car pileup and I was paralyzed in slow-reacting slack-jawed awe. So you'll just have to settle for a picture of me and Takashi in the middle of playing Mister-Sticker-Face, a game we both thoroughly enjoy, instead:

Man, probably my favorite part about going to the special school remains the fact that nearly all the methods devised to entertain the kids are conveniently designed to be just as engaging for the adults in charge as they are for the kids, if not more so. Seriously, if some teacher in America found me after sticking dots on a mentally disabled kid's face for half an hour, how fast would I be fired? Here though, they embrace such things -- I mean, as long as the kids enjoy it themselves, there's nothing wrong with the teachers having a little fun as well, right? Right, goddamn it.

Which brings me to your Moment of Zen for the day: a pair of movies depicting the fun that can be had with just one oversized plastic turtle shell and one small retarded child:

In Progress | Starting Up

Whee! Pretty mesmerizing, wasn't it? Such fun, it should quite literally almost be illegal.

Tuesday, May 25th: Sho-ryu, Sho-Me

I went into Tokyo to catch a Sumo tournament this weekend, a situation that I was rather surprised to find myself in since I hold somewhat dualistic feelings for the sport. On the one hand, I find it boring as Mormon dirt. From what I've seen on TV, the average Sumo match consists of 5-10 minutes of pre-match ceremony and posing followed by roughly 3 seconds of actual fighting. Oftentimes I've almost felt sorry for some of the poor bastards who put all that time in throwing rice and performing the ritualistic leg-lifting poses only for the actual match to begin and then SHOVE they go flying out of the ring in the only direction gravity must inevitably take something of that size. That said however, even though I've not much love for Sumo as a sport, it nevertheless embodies pretty much everything I love about Japan: which is to say that, while other countries were sitting around coming up with sports that all, rather tediously, involve getting some sort of ball in some sort of goal, Japan rose defiantly to its feet and said to itself, "Hey look, fat people! Let's strip them down to their underwear and make them fight for our amusement!" Then before you know it, it somehow becomes an integral part of their culture, and *BAM*, just like that, life suddenly becomes that much more difficult for overweight Asian children growing up in American grade schools.

Anyway, even though I wasn't sure how much interest I had in actually seeing Sumo live, I decided to go anyway because let's face it, surrounding someone who writes a humor website with this many half-naked fat people is like giving a career arsonist a lifetime supply of flamethrowers.

Friends 4-ever

We arrived at the stadium a little later than we wanted due to assorted ticket and seating problems, but sat down just in time to see absolutely nothing of consequence happening in the ring. Yeah, okay, so it was during a break, but the problem was, other than the complete lack of competitors and judging official in the ring, I could barely tell the difference. This, I think, is my main problem with Sumo: the fact that the level of activity in the ring during breaks and the level of activity during matches is not at all that different, except for the aforementioned three seconds of actual wrestling, that is. I'm sure I'm coming off as somewhat (somewhat?) of an ignorant boob here, since I know there must be all sorts of subtle cultural significance in all the "boring" pre-match ritual that I am completely missing out on. I can appreciate that. However, I didn't come to marvel in silent awe at the purifying connotations of rice scattered across the ring, I came to see BLOOD. Imagine if before every boxing match the competitors stood around throwing about hunks of bread and flexing their muscles for ten minutes and then having a bout that consisted of a maximum of three punches followed by a ten count. There'd be a riot, and rightly so.

You'd think they're about to fight, but they'll assume and abandon this position approximately 7 dozen times

Anyway, despite all my reservations (read: bitching) about the potential thrill level of seeing Sumo live, much to my surprise things started to pick up rather quickly. True, part of that was due to the fact that I was with a bunch of my friends and we had beer -- as we all know, alcohol and general stupidity make pretty much everything better -- but mostly, I think it was due to the atmosphere. The stadium was absolutely packed -- the crowd would erupt in cheers for almost every match; even more so for the big-name wrestlers. My friends and I began making 100 yen ($1) bets on the matches, with me making my bets based on an increasingly complicated and nonsensical system that took into consideration such important athletic characteristics as body hair, presence of sideburns, color of thong, size of man-boobies, and whether or not it looked like, from several hundred feet away, they had "fire in their eyes" and wanted "it". I'd rather not say how much I won or lost, but for future reference in case any of you end up betting on sumo in the future, I should warn you that an excessive amount of shoulder and back hair does not render an athlete as invincible as a couple of beers might make you think.

At any rate, to give you a small idea of what the atmosphere was like, I took a movie of the match featuring Asashoryu, one of the most popular sumo right now, for you to see. But frankly, I don't think it will really do it justice, as our seats were so far away you probably won't even be able to make anything out. Oh well. Watch it anyway (Helpful guide: he's the one that wins).

Lastly, for the sake of satisfying dramatic structure I should mention that sometimes, if it was a really popular wrestler, the crowd would go almost as nuts for the pre-match posturing as they would for the match itself. One guy, apparently, is famous for beating his chest before matches to intimidate his opponent. I was told this about two seconds before he did it, and sure enough, the crowd popped huge for it. So there you go, despite my earlier reservations about Sumo being boring, I found that, by actually seeing it for myself, it could be quite exciting. I think we've all learned a very valuable lesson today. Which is of course, that a whole lot of Sumo lined up in a circle around one judging official,

looks very much like some kind of ritual pre-match Sumo Bukkake session.

Thursday, May 20th: So You've Decided to Throw Your Life Away

Today I sat down to write an office-mandated Friendly Welcome Letter for my imminently-arriving JET successor; who will, as you might expect a successor to do, be taking over all my schools (and apartment) when I leave at the end of July. Here is the first draft of said welcome letter, verbatim:

Dearest Successor:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Boy, are YOU screwed.

Your loving predecessor,

Galvin B. Chow

P.S. I broke the television before I left.

Sadly, I chickened out on sending this one in on the grounds that the legendarily stodgy JET higher-ups might deem it "unprofessional". I don't see why, though. In fact, it's probably the most concisely informative document regarding JET that anyone has ever written. The longer, comparatively touchy-feely, yet still vaguely foreboding letter I ended up sending in did end with the rather awesome line of "The best thing about JET is, even if it totally sucks, it only has to suck for a year," but I still feel that I compromised my morals on this one.

Tuesday, May 18th: A Single Conspiracy Nut No One Will Believe

So today I walk into Saku Higashi Elementary School to find that I only have three classes scheduled; which of course, is reason enough to celebrate on its own. Turns out some special speakers were scheduled to come in and give a presentation on traffic safety. As if I could give a shit. Like I said, all that mattered to me was that I had to do less work than usual. They coulda had someone come in with 400 full-color slides for a presentation on toenail rot for all I cared. What struck me as odd though, was that the presentation was scheduled to take up two whole periods. I mean, seeing as even the dimmest child -- and believe me, as an elementary teacher stationed in the middle of BFE Nowhere, Japan, I know a thing or two about dim children -- could learn that being hit by cars is bad with only the aid of some very distasteful sock puppets within a 10-minute period, I couldn't imagine why they would need that much time. Little did I suspect just how grand a presentation they had planned.

The first period was devoted to a lecture on how to properly cross a road (read: without getting run over, schmucks), delivered by, of all things, a ventriloquist. Odd how little kids aren't keen to listen to the warnings of boring old flesh-and-blood adults, but put a freaky wooden boy with a hand up its ass in front of them and suddenly they're all ears. Now this was entertaining enough, in a corny sort of way, as I've never seen a ventriloquist act before and I've always thought they were kinda neat. In fact I've secretly always kinda wanted to learn ventriloquism myself, if only so I could throw my voice and fool people into turning around so I could sucker-punch them in the spine, or at least become the most unpopular funeral guest ever. That would totally rule. But I digress. The real main event came during the second period, when the whole school headed out to the athletic fields, lined up and apparently waiting for something.

Now me, I showed up a bit late, because chocolate is good and I wanted to eat some. But when I got there, I saw the students lined up around a pair of disturbingly lifelike dummies, dressed up to look exactly like first, maybe second or third graders. On the dirt of the athletic field were drawn parallel white lines; which I quickly surmised because I are smart, represented a street. This was all to my right. To my left, then, on the far opposite end of the field, awaited a lone automobile, with its engine conspicuously running. Then the lady in charge, calling for our attention, pointed to one of the dummies and said to all the children: "Imagine this is you!"

Now, I'm sure you can tell where this is going, and at that point, obviously, I had started to put two and two together myself. However -- maybe I just haven't been in this country long enough -- that doesn't mean I wasn't still surprised when the car suddenly came gunning down the field towards all of us. It was only going about twenty miles an hour when it slammed into the formerly amazingly lifelike dummy, so instead of sending it soaring through the air it merely sucked the dummy under the front right tire and dragged it a few yards before sliding to a stop. The car then backed up to reveal the splayed dummy laying face down, stuffed limbs all akimbo, in some very grisly tire tracks. A few of the first graders started crying. I, meanwhile, was doing my best to suppress shock and hysterical laughter. I barely had time to gather up my shattered sensibilities before the car backed all the way up the field, only to come roaring back again at the second dummy. This time, it was going at least 40 miles an hour, sending the child-dummy flying and taking about eight yards to skid to a stop. But oh, it wasn't over yet. Not by a long shot. That was when I realized in exactly what way the four other dummies strapped to bicycles parked at four corners of the field, and the large flatbed truck sitting in the middle of it, would interact.

You know, every morning before I leave for work, I look at my digital camera and wonder if it's worth dragging it along for the day on the off chance that something interesting will happen. More often than not, I end up leaving it behind, and more often than not, I end up highly regretting it. Today, however, was probably the grand prize bull moose winner of camera-less regret. I could walk into my bathroom tomorrow to find the Loch Ness Monster and Andy Kauffman stuffing Jimmy Hoffa's corpse down my drain, only to find my camera's battery drained, and I still couldn't say I'd regret it more than the documentation opportunities missed today. My God. I am so depressed, I swear to fucking God, I am going to cry. I am going to break down, fall to my knees, and sob like a little girl with a skinned knee and her lunch money stolen. Because let me tell you, I will never, ever, EVER -- until the day I day, even if I live a million years -- forgive myself for not bringing a camera to school today.

Anyway, it was for this reason -- the simple, innocent act of forgetting my camera -- that the otherwise joyous sight of a six-wheel truck running over fake children strapped to real bicycles filled me with an awful sort of sadness, of failure. I mean, what good is witnessing perfectly good bikes crushed in the most awesome and psychologically scarring way possible if you can't share it with other people? At one point, part of the bike actually got almost completely wrapped around one of the truck tires, making it necessary for the driver to go back and forth several times before a team of four teachers actually had to go under the truck to yank the damn thing out. All I could think of us was how great a picture, or movie file -- God! What a movie file! -- that scene woulda made. It was like managing the biggest, veiniest, most impressive boner of my life, and yet having no one to share it with. All I was left with was an empty sense that something that was merely satisfying could have been absolutely mind-blowing. I mean, none of the other teachers seemed to appreciate the day's events on the same level that I did. The principal came up to me afterwards, asked me what I thought of the presentation, I responded "awesome," he immediately walked away; true story. Later when talking with a teacher and telling him how hilarious I thought the whole thing was, he started laughing too, but not without adding a nervous "Yeah, because they were just dolls, it can be funny, right?" Jesus Christ. I laugh at a school full of children crying at the sight of dolls being horrendously maimed by trucks and somehow I'm the psycho.

On a side note, I would gladly kill several of you reading this for the chance to to see the yearly budget records for the group that organized today's little event. I bet it'd make for very interesting reading: $6, Hammer. $23, new eye for ventriloquist dummy. $3000, bicycles to totally crush under wheel of big fucking truck. I mean, I can't imagine they run a very inexpensive operation, what with the wanton destruction at all, so hopefully all the kids today learned some valuable traffic safety lessons. Not the least of which, of course, is that running over shit with cars is totally awesome.

Sunday, May 16th: Detour

There's not too much going on worth writing about lately, so I decided to make a third, likely final Boring Photo Album with some purportedly interesting photos of my Golden Week trip to Hokkaido. And hey, St Mongo updated her section of the site as well, so don't say I'm slacking in my quest to give you stuff to read while waiting for your porn to finish downloading.

Tuesday, May 11th: Case in Point

This evening a co-worker stopped by my apartment to pick me up for an enkai welcome party. I got in his car, and we drove a grand total of about fifty feet before he opened the door to let me out. At first I thought I had inadvertantly done something to offend him, like drop-kicking his pregnant wife down the stairs without realizing it. But no, turns out the restaurant was just really, really close. Seriously, I couldn't have been in the car for more than thirty seconds. And when I sat down at my seat inside the restaurant, I couldn't help but notice that my apartment building was actually visible outside the freakin' window. The distance was such that if I had merely stepped outside my apartment building and began walking in increasingly large concentric circles I would have reached the restaurant only marginally later than I did by car. Hell, I could have walked on my hands, on a tight rope, underwater, while strapped to cartoonish triangular training weights, and I still would've gotten there reasonably quickly. But yet, it still somehow made the most sense to send someone to pick me up and drive me a distance no greater than a two year-old could throw a severed head.

Then, when the party was over, several people offered to give me a ride, and they weren't even kidding.

...do you see what I mean by that 'Cat/Lunatic' thing from yesterday? I'd think they were making fun of me if I didn't already know they think I'm retarded.

Monday, May 10th: Cat or Lunatic?

Yeah, I know this entry is late. Shut up. So, let me paint you a picture of just how much I wanted to go into school today:

Imagine this. You're a JET. You, like most of your peers, despise your job with a hatred so tangible it is almost a sentient entity unto itself. You've just come back from your last vacation of your contract, leaving you facing a final three-month stretch with nary a break in sight. Also, during the last couple days of your vacation, you contracted the Mongolian Death Flu, since you so smartly decided to go spend your vacation in the one place in Japan where it's still freakin' winter just as your own arctic town stopped being so fucking frigid. Finally, the rainy season has just begun; meaning, since you don't have a car, that you have 30 days of wet-bike-seat-stained pants crotch to look forward to. Oh, and you're also a short, doughy, geeky Asian boy with coke-bottle glasses, negligible social skills, and a reproductive organ so very tiny that its very existence serves as an all-purpose, irrefutable counterargument to every single positive thing written in the Bible. Which I suppose is neither here nor there, but let's make sure you have an accurate picture here, hm?

Anyway, self-pitying melodrama aside, I would've called in sick today, since around fourth period I was quite literally almost falling over in delirium, but well, it always looks slightly...dubious to call in sick the day after a week-long vacation. Especially since my remaining vacation days now stand at a grand total of -1 (which I promised my supervisor I would make up on some undisclosed Saturday in June, by helping lead something called a "Frisbee Festival". I have no idea what that could possibly be, but I'm almost certain it will become an entry of its own, whenever it happens). This was one of those days where, during the fifteen-minute ride to work, there were at least 96 instances where I considered "accidentally" slipping on my bike and sending myself flying head-first into a telephone poll. You think I'm kidding, but it certainly wouldn't be the first time I've considered partial paralysis as a viable alternative to work (read: breaking my own hands to get out of marching band). Unfortunately the Gods of Mercy never did send an errant mack truck my way, leaving me -- hooray! -- able to make it into work a hacking, sopping mess. Lousy unreliable Gods of Mercy.

When I walked into work, took off my outdoor shoes, and changed into slippers, my hair was soaked, matted in erratic strands to my face. My pants may as well have been fresh from the washing machine as they had that wonderful paper-mache rigidity that characterizes wet jeans. My light gray T-shirt was actually okay, since I have a decently waterproof raincoat, except for right under the collar where a stream of water had dripped down from my chin, leaving a dark black splotch that made it look like I had unsuccessfully tried to drink a bowl of soup for breakfast without using my hands. In short, I was a mess, which made it all the more fun to wander into the teachers' room to find every single teacher sitting there waiting to greet me since it was my first day back at that school since the start of the new semester. Hooray again.

See, presented with such a sorry sight as me on this rainy morn, Japanese people will typically mentally picture me as one of the following two things:

• An adorable, piteously helpless stray kitten with a heart-wrenchingly big spiky boot-print in its soaking, matted fur; to be pampered and cared for down to the simplest everyday task
• A raving 56 year-old homeless mental patient so hopelessly detached from normal society that he must be euthanized as quickly and humanely as possible, preferably via axe to the colon

You can probably guess how these two choices skew towards age and gender, as most of the old women sat me down, poured me tea and stuffed caramel candies down my throat, while most of the young men in the office immediately scratched 'America' off their mental list of places to visit someday. But I mean, whether you're a kitten with a boot-print in your fur our some lunatic who wheels himself around in a wooden box all day, you're still a freak regardless.

Which, I suppose, is my point.