Wednesday, July 28th

I've spent the last two days in packing and apartment-cleaning Hell, and I just somehow managed to stay out all night in my dinkhole of a town. I am getting on a plane for home tomorrow, but fuck it, I'll write the last journal entry after I'm back in the States. Anyway, see you on the 31st.

Sunday, July 25th: CAMOUFLAGE PANTS

Interesting weekend.

First, on Friday, I finally had my last day of teaching. I cannot tell you how happy it makes me that my last day was at the special school. Not only because that is the school that has meant the most to me since I came here, but because the entire day's itinerary consisted of cooking and eating curry rice. My, how strenuous. I note that when I cook curry rice, it takes me at most an hour. When 20-odd retarded high school students cook curry rice though, it takes them upwards of an entire school day. Conclusion? I am worth at least twenty retarded children, and that is going on my resume.

In between cooking and slicing, I had appointments to show up at different sections of the school to say good-bye to people. The junior high section sung me a song to see me off, whereas the elementary section saw fit to put me on a pedastal...literally. And not just any pedastal, but a rotating pedastal. I guess they figured a regular, non-mobile pedastal would be insulting. So instead, my pedastal sat atop a large wooden wheel that some of the teachers slowly turned to make sure that all the students could see me. I waved like the Queen of England and blew kisses to my retarded public, fully realizing that it was probably the last time I'd be subjected to such endearing bizarreness for a long time.

Man, if I had the magical power to turn everyone around me into a retarded child, believe me, I would do it. Lacking such talents though, I suppose I shall have to settle for the lobotomizing powers of this crowbar.

One student who seems especially sad to see me go. And who is almost begging to be Photoshopped.

Saturday afternoon I took a drive with a friend. It's almost odd spending time with people by this point, because each time, I honestly cannot say if I'll ever see them again. This particular friend I've only spent time with maybe three or four times since I've known her, so yesterday was assuredly the last time I'll see her for a very long time. Kinda makes me wish I'd put more effort into getting to know certain people around here, but I guess that's usually how it goes.

Anyway, we were supposed to take, of all things, a helicopter ride, which I was absolutely stoked for, but unfortunately didn't pan out. So instead, we drove up to a high point on a hill, made a note of anything that caught our eye, and started driving towards it. First, we found ourselves heading towards a weird-looking tower in the mountains, before we remembered that it was probably impossible to drive that far up the mountains. Then we found ourselves at a giant tree that turned out not to be quite so giant when not looking at it set against the horizon. Finally we started driving towards a building with a bright orange roof up in the mountains way off in the distance, which turned out to be, rather anti-climactically, merely a country club. This country club did have computerized self-driving robot golf carts though, so I argue it was worth it.

After that, we decided that since we'd already come all the way out there, we may as well go a little further. We decided to just turn left at the third road that intersected ours, which turned out to take quite a while on country roads. On the way we saw some pretty cool scenery that I wouldn't have guessed was out here. Eventually, that third turn led us to, of all things, a petting farm; possibly the saddest petting farm in existence, actually, because though it promised sheep, cows, rabbits, etc., it had roughly three of each, with its customers numbering about one less than that. We just ended up eating ice cream and playing on their sad little rusty playground for a while, which really is a perfectly good way to spend one's Saturday afternoon, and one I'd heartily recommend. If nothing else, it produced the following picture, which I now demand to be used as the stock photo for me in every public database in the country:

Of all the awesome components of this picture, you will make special note of my camouflage pants; which are not quite pants, and not quite shorts, and thus "shpants", as termed by Chris. These are not just normal pants either, but pants made for me by the kids at the special school. True, I had to buy it off them for 500 yen ($5), but for shpants this rocking/awesome, it was a bargain, you ask me. True, there's no fly of any sort sewn into them, since I guess that musta been too difficult for the special students. But let me ask you this -- how many of YOU people can say YOUR pants were sewn together by retarded children? Yeah, that's what I thought. CAMOUFLAGE PANTS

Said awesome CAMOUFLAGE PANTS were also worn to the party last night, because apparently, I am not at all interested in appearing attractive to the opposite sex. That's okay, though. It was a pretty great party, with almost twice as many people showing up than I'd expected, packing the lakeside house we'd rented to the brim. I always hate detailing actual social exploits on here, since it turns out I'm much better at writing about nothing rather than something (plus that makes this feel too 'bloggish'), so I'll keep this part brief. Highlights though, included a friend's ex-girlfriend having a nervous breakdown in the middle of the dance floor, people now showing open disregard for parties whose faces they'll gratefully never have to see again in about a week, and me taking out my sexual frustrations by lying commando-style under a table and shooting a friend mid-makeout-session with a BB gun. That last one was particularly great, as I was goaded into it by three other friends, who sat in front of the table I was lying under, moved their legs when I motioned for a shot, and then immediately began dancing wildly, as if they'd been doing that the entire time, to mask my position as soon as the pellet flew and reached its bewildered target. Also, in case this hasn't been emphasized enough, I was wearing camouflage pants, laying under a table wielding a plastic Desert Eagle air gun; which I figure makes me the coolest kid at the party.

DJ PitStain in da house

Anyway, that's how my last weekend as a JET went. Now, all that's left is the packing. Which, naturally, I haven't even stared yet. Meh.

Thursday, July 22nd: Endgame

I finished up my last normal school today, leaving only the special school tomorrow before I am done with this job forever. After today I'll never have to teach a non-retarded child again, and after tomorrow I'm done with the whole deal altogether. I can hardly believe it.

If you need me, I'll be over here, swiftly running out of places to touch myself.

Wednesday, July 21st: Oh We've Got High Hopes

Today I said good-bye to possibly my second-favorite school (behind the retard school of course): Izumi Elementary. It's odd that I can call it my second-favorite school when I in fact despise at least half the children there. I mean, I don't like to exaggerate, but if they all showed up on fire one day and I was some fantastic half-man, half-fire-extinguisher hybrid life form, I would merely laugh my half-mechanical laugh and then go eat a cheeseburger.

This is of course, excluding the third graders. I tend to complain a lot about how nightmarishly horrible Japanese kids are -- and don't get me wrong, they are -- but these kids are like the exact mirror image of the awful majority. If I could teach these kids every day, I swear I could do this job for years and years. These are the kind of kids that are so unbelievably well-behaved that they are almost a bad cartoonish parody of well-behaved kids. Imagine a classroom full of Ned Flanders' children, except with all that Christian bullcrap and other assorted annoyingness, and you get a decent picture of what these third graders are like. These are the kids that will happily and enthusiastically sing show tunes for an entire bus trip while all the normal, non-possessed-by-Satan kids are all busy playing their Game Boy Advances and trying to have sex with each other. I love these third-graders so much that today I made a special point of coming to see them before I left, and I didn't even teach them today. This is an absolute first for me, coming to see kids when I am under no contractual obligation to do so, but with these kids, it was worth it.

I had barely entered the classroom when almost immediately I found myself being fed cucumber slices with miso paste (better than it sounds, and not unlike 'Nachos Flanders Style'), kids actually good-naturedly fighting with each other over who gets to give up their cucumber slices for me to eat. Then, in a surreal moment that made me feel like I was in the middle of the Children of the Corn but in a good way, one girl actually shouts out, "Hey everybody, let's sing Chow-Sensei a song!" and they all actually cheered in agreement instead of you know, shooting her and calling her a fag like normal kids would. There was a bit of a tiff over exactly what song to sing -- with almost too perfectly, nine kids voting for one song and nine for the other -- but it was resolved in the manner of the following dialogue:

Student 1: I want to sing "Hometown"!
Student 2: I think we should sing "Becoming the Wind"!
Student 1: "Hometown"!
Student 2: "Becoming the Wind!"
Teacher: I know, why don't we all sing him both?
Everyone: YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!
Me: *masturbates furiously*

Yeah, I know in my last entry I said I hated hearing these songs by now, but these kids...after the first song, one of the kids noticed a student from the other third-grade class walking by, so in the manner of some ditzy saccharine mid-morning children's program he shouts out, "Hey Tomoki, we're all singing Chow-Sensei a song. Why don't you have your class come over here, and we can all sing together?" and they actually DID. So suddenly I'm now surrounded by nearly sixty children all singing happily and swaying in unison, all taking turns shaking hands with me and actually making sure to get out of the way immediately afterwards to make sure everyone got a chance to do so. I'm telling you, there is no way these kids are from this planet. But if this is what Pod People are like, then sign me up to trade in my first-through-third-borns fresh out of the uterus.

Despite the entire surreal farewell experience with the pleasantly pod-like people today, that's not even my favorite experience I've had with them this year. That came last week, when for my last class with them, they decided to hold a ten-minute concert for me. Two songs they sung, and the last they played on the -- get this -- recorder. I don't think I've ever mentioned it before, but much like the unicycle, the recorder is one of those things that Japan for some reason forces ALL of its small children learn in elementary school. I think they realize that no one else in the world is sufficiently out of their freakin' mind to even bother touching the thing, so it's easy for Japan's kids to become the very best in the world. You know, kind of like soccer, or women's basketball.

Anyway, all was fine during the first two songs, but during the third song (with the recorder), I noticed one kid rubbing his eyes, and I thought "What? He get something in there?" But soon other kids start doing it too, and more after that, until they were all doing it. That's when I realized that they were crying. Every single one of them, bawling their eyes out, just because they hated having to say good-bye to their dorky English teacher who has only taught them, no exaggeration, no more than four times total in the past two years. And of course, this would have been an honestly touching, extremely moving scene...if not for the fact that they were still all playing the recorder. Even though some of them were loudly and openly bawling, they were still trying their damndest to keep musically blowing into those ridiculous things. Some kids were red in the face, tears streaming from their eyes and snot pouring out their noses, and yet still their recorders remained firmly jammed between their lips, as they battled onwards by continuing to woefully, defiantly, almost angrily toot those things. It was an almost cosmically absurd image. They were feeling so many deep emotions, and yet their chosen instrument could only express it with sounds like PHWUURRR. I really was honestly very touched but the juxtaposition of innocent emotion and the fucking recorder was just too much and I couldn't stop myself from laughing; it was like showing up to a funeral only to find the corpse laying in the casket brandishing one giant-ass hard-on.

And man, vague feelings of sadness constantly shattered by interjections of absurdity -- if that doesn't sum up how I feel about leaving Japan in general, I don't know what does. . Funnily enough, turns out there are some kids that I will miss after all.

*Sigh* Two schools and one week to go.

Tuesday, July 20th: Man on Fire

If ever the world's supply of folded paper animals starts running low, let me know, for I will come running forth bearing 1700 metric shit-tons of the things, resplendent in functionless glory. In the past few weeks I've been bringing home armfuls of the little origami bastards every day, to the point where the idea of burning them is no longer so much a moral dilemma as a question of whether I have any matches left and if I should pee on them first. It's not that I don't appreciate the kids making me these little things, but somewhere around your literal 24th batch of them feelings of gratitude and sentimentality begin to transform into psychotic mental images of all the trees that had to die screaming painful deaths for the sake of making these things. That and I simply have no damn where to put them. Either I pay a ridiculous postal fee to send home boxes full of ornamentally-folded paper back home, throw them all out, or soak them in expired melted cheese and leave hundreds of them hidden all around in the apartment in hard-to-reach places for my JET successor to find. It makes me feel like a bit of a bastard, but it's like having seventeen children; the first 10 or so you'll play catch with and help them earn straight A's, but after that, all you'll really want to do with them is dish out Pavlovian beatings until all you have to do for them to scramble to get you a beer is exist.

At the end of every period now, I get handed a giant envelope full of letters and the aforementioned origami animals, and maybe the kids will sing a song or something, before they all line up for handshakes which almost invariably transitions into the usual kids getting worked up and crawling all over me. This becomes fairly intolerable enough on its own after the first few times -- I try to stand there and look touched, but it's difficult when I already did the same thing the previous three periods, and every period for every day since weeks before that -- made all the worse by a combination of annoying physical conditions I've been suffering lately.

First of all, I'm currently horribly sunburned, looking somewhat like a lobster that crawled out the business end of a large intestine. This is somewhat of a new experience for me. Usually my natural pigmentation keeps me from getting burned; the only time it failed me before was when I was 14 years old. It was such an unfamiliar experience for me that when I noticed all that disgusting peeling skin on my forehead, I immediately grabbed a warm wet towel and vigorously scrubbed all of it off. That seemed like a pretty great idea until about twenty seconds afterwards, when I felt such intense burning pain that all I could do was run downstairs to where my mom was growing her prized aloe plants, rip them to shreds and smash jagged cool chunks of them into my searing forehead. This time looks to be even worse, as I am burned all over my body, and will not be a pretty picture in a few days. As you might imagine, in this condition, whenever a kid sees fit to give me a friendly slap on the back or shoulders I feel the only appropriate response is a Hurricane Kick to the pancreas.

Secondly, the mosquitoes are now out in full force here, and partly because insects get so damn big here (seriously, there are some moths here that look like flying burritos with wings), and partly because I am slightly allergic to mosquito bites, my legs, back, and arms now look like they have goddamn NIPPLES growing out of them. This is especially fun when children grab onto me with their sweaty grippy paws and swing their legs up into the air, leaving me to support approximately one child per each bite. God, I hate them.

Lastly, due partly to my having so many drinking parties lately and also to my finding myself rather strapped for breakfast items lately and thus eating heaping bowls of Eazy Mac for breakfast, I have been having myself some utterly horrendous shits lately. You know that kinda shits where it's like you're peeing poop-water out your ass? Yeah, it's kinda like that, except so bad that I've become convinced God is using my excretory system to transport demons to the underworld. The other day, I was sitting in front of class waiting for the kids to finish playing Battleship ('YUU SANK MAI BATTORUSHI-PPU!!!') when suddenly, the burning struck. I motioned to end class a bit early, mostly because any other motion I made would force poop-water into my pants, but the teacher stood up smiling, saying "Wait Chow-Sensei, the children have a surprise for you!" So there I stood, squirming desperately in front of a classroom of 3rd-grade children singing me a purportedly touching song, wondering if a warm, squishy brown phhhrbt sound coming from my pants would sufficiently express the feelings I was having for them right then.

Monday, July 19th: Mr. Sandman

What a weekend.

Saturday evening there was the Gion festival in nearby town Iwamurada. I've no idea what Gion means; but luckily, I also do not care. It doesn't really matter since like every Japanese festival it just boils down to people putting on traditional Japanese-style clothes for once and walking up and down the streets getting as hammered as subhumanly possible. Personally, I wish people here would wear traditional clothing more often because not only is it elegant and unique but it also prevents people from donning the acid-washed jeans and sleeveless T-shirts that they seem to veer uncontrollably towards when left to their own fashion devices. I mean, it's not as if I want people to walk around in rice paddy hats or full Samurai regalia. I just want them to stop walking around dressed like giant flashing billboards that read THE 80'S WERE AWESOME. Oh well, what do you expect from people who are forced to wear nothing but boring school uniforms and laughably neon jumpsuits that are just screaming to be accessorized with head/wrist bands throughout all of their formative years? Okay, I suppose traditional Japanese clothing can be a little impractical, but does that have to mean it cannot rock? No, I think not. I mean, check me out here:

That's me in my jimbei robe and wooden geta sandals that conveniently enough, were given to me as gifts the previous day from two entirely different people. Admit it: am I not hot, as the presences of the similarly reasonably hot Mami and Tai would seem to attest? Let me tell you, I enjoyed wearing that jimbei thing so much I'm half considering wearing it for my last few remaining days of school. It's light, cool, and breezy (not to mention stylish!); wearing it is like enjoying all the best parts of being naked without all that pesky penis-displaying fuss. My only regret is that my jimbei did not rock as hard as Chris' which was emblazoned with so many dragon designs there must now be some kind of shortage of them.

One particular highlight of the festival:getting interviewed by some vapid TV/local newspaper/trash magazine bimbo about how it feels, as a foreigner, to wear jimbei:

This interview featured such probing, in-depth questions as "Where did you get that jimbei?" and "Is this your first time wearing jimbei?" and "How does wearing jimbei make you feel?" and "Do you realize the only reason we bombed Pearl Harbor is because you cracker assholes don't wear enough jimbei?". With such hard-hitting questions like these, I can only imagine what kind of articles will be produced.

On Sunday then, me and a bunch of other JETs in the area went to the beach. It was great;but because of it this entry is going to be a lot shorter than I intended because good GOD I am tired. Now, I love the beach; it's possibly my favorite place to be and living near it someday represents my only real semi-concrete goal in life. But nevertheless, waking up the next day still on the beach laying on a damp, dirty towel laid over lumpy rocky sand getting peppered by sporadic raindrops as absolutely insane Japanese beachgoers and their loudmouth children show up at 6 fucking AM is NOT the best way to start one's day. It's not NICE to wake up and have your first conscious thought be dear God where am I how did I get here and what did I do to deserve this?. Which is not necessarily to say that I do not wake up asking myself this every day, because after all, I am a JET.

Thursday, July 15th: Part of a Complete Breakfast

But my, I am drunk. Three days, three farewell drinking parties. I ain't gonna make it.

As for school...I've had a lot of special classes lately, which helps soften the blow of my not having been mercifully beaten into a coma for my last couple weeks in this country. Wednesday's class wanted me to cook something "American" with the kids. I can't cook for shit so I had no idea what to do for this. I mean, what counts as American food anyway? Hamburgers? Hot dogs? Bread? Yeah, those are real special. Real tough to find those things in every other country but America. Anyway, luckily I remembered that I still had a couple boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese left, which of course led to the perfect solution...feeding them all a big slap to the face while I sat at home and ate all the Mac and Cheese myself. Fuck, going home in two weeks or not, like I'm gonna waste delicious mac 'n' cheese on a bunch of elementary school retards.

Of course I am kidding; it is a documented fact that I love retards and of course would like to feed them one of my all-time favorite foods. At first the teachers weren't sure what kind of mental disease I might have to voluntarily eat this glowing nuclear-orange pasta, let alone force-feed it to retarded children; but I explained to them that many American college students eat mac 'n cheese because it is cheap, filling and delicious, just as poor Japanese college students eat many a cup o' noodles because they are cheap and have pointy eyes CHINGCHONGCHINGCHONGCHINGCHONGCHONG. Anyway, I was a bit embarassed to be using a 79-cent box of awful powdered-cheese pasta as my final cultural exchange with these kids, but it turned out pretty good. Even Takuya, this hyperactive kid I normally want to hammer-throw into a tree shredder, absolutely loved it and in extremely polite language, asked that I please bring a box the next time I come (despite my no longer coming to his class being mentioned at least 5,000 times during the 40-minute period). One teacher even saved almost half the batch so she could take it home for her kids to taste. That's what she said, anyway, but of course, you and me know she just wants to take it home and show her kids how poor everyone eats in America.

Today, then, I had another farewell eating party, for which I was asked to bring in some "American snacks". Again, what exactly is an American snack? Cookies? Potato chips? A Little Jeno's Pizza Roll? Again, kinda tough to bring in something that'll impress the kids since nearly everything Americans like to munch on is already over here, just in much, much smaller serving sizes (every single American without exception being disgustingly fat of course). I suppose I could have brought in a bag of Salt and Vinegar chips to show them how American chips' flavor selection differs from theirs of seaweed, consomme, and mayonnaise (AKA disgusting, Disgusting, and Fucking Disgusting), but sadly I had none. What I did have, instead, was two boxes of Fruit Roll-Ups. Because apparently, I am a twelve year-old child; or at least you'd think so by looking in my cupboard. Hey, food I ate when I still watched Ninja Turtles is comfort food, all right?

Before I gave them the Fruit Roll-ups though, I had to go through my own little "initiation" to Japanese culture, by putting on a blindfold and tasting things in various bowls placed before me. I was a little worried they'd serve up something like the fucking locusts or baby bees again. Luckily though, Japanese people tend to think everything they eat is disgusting and unusual -- and not just sushi and sashimi like you'd expect; I swear there's been one or two teachers who've flipped out at my tolerance for eating rice (instead of bread). Hence, this blind taste-test I was bit nervous about at first essentially boiled down to me sitting there and biting into items about as strange and mysterious as a Ritz cracker and saying aloud "My, how unusual!" so as not to betray their expectations.

Okay, I've now sat here for 10-some minutes trying to think of a clever ending line, but fuck that, I'mma go to bed. Screw you all, tomorrow is another day.

Monday, July 12th: Kenta World

Today I had some strange dealings with a weird little kid named Kenta. The kid's just a odd little nut, no other way to put it. So strange and clingy and non-sequitur spouting that even some of the teachers try to limit their dealings with him. Today he was milling about the teachers' room brandishing a strange little notebook asking people if they wished to enter "Kenta World". Naturally, no one took him up on his offer since it's generally not a good idea to enter anything an odd bouncy little smiling midget like Kenta tells you to. That didn't seem to dampen his spirits any, however, as soon enough he began pawing at female teachers whining that they should enter Kenta World, to the point where I was eventually felt obliged to interrupt my busy schedule of reading every article in my newspaper at least three times so as not to go insane from boredom to drag the little weirdo out into the hall. I seem to end up performing such functions a lot at my job, for some reason.

While out there, the Responsible Educator in me took over as I decided to humor Kenta by saying sure, I'll go into Kenta World. That was, of course a bald-faced lie, since really I was just bored out of my lumpy little skull and therefore insanely curious as to what the nut "Kenta World" actually was. Upon hearing this, the apparent proprietor of Kenta World clutched his notebook a little tighter and cautiously asked if I was serious. I couldn't quite bring myself to totally lie to him so I said, sure, maybe I'll enter Kenta World, but maybe just for a few seconds, perhaps a bit longer if it turns out we are not indeed talking about his anus. I said that I'd stay even longer if he'd just show me what was in the freakin' notebook. He didn't go for this however: he would not say what Kenta World was unless I actually entered it; what was more, if I entered Kenta World I had to stay for a very long time. How long, I asked. He responded, "Until you die. You have to stay in Kenta World until you die."

I believe that was the point at which I opted to back slowly away and then, several minutes later, sit idly in the teacher's room passively watching Kenta chase the 23 year-old female music teacher up and down the hall, screaming for her to enter Kenta World. So I never did get to find out what Kenta World was; but something tells me I'm probably better off not knowing.

Wednesday, July 7th: Painful Farewells

Yesterday I had my last day at perhaps my least favorite school. I'm not sure what exactly is wrong with it, but overall, the teachers, the students, the general atmosphere, even the architecture -- they're all just kinda gloomy. I was expecting to get out of there at the end of the day without the slightest bit of acknowledgement or fanfare, but surprisingly, during the 2nd-period break the principal took it upon himself to gather all the teachers and make a little speech on my behalf. Other than mistaking the number of years I've been at the school, it was, I suppose, a nice tidy little speech, if a bit standard. The reaction of the teachers, however: staring straight ahead, combined with utter and total silence. Which actually, is standard as well, since that's pretty much how they always act. I of course felt obliged to stand up and say a few token words of my own, which I shall transcribe and concisely editorialize here:

Honorable-Everyone,
We have now been teaching together for two years (true),
an experience for which I am very grateful. (lie)
Although I go to nine different schools in the area (true)
I always looked forward to the days when I would come to this school. (BIG lie)
And though I must now return to America (Thank GOD)
I shall remember all of you always (not if alcohol has anything to say about it, I won't)
and look forward to the day when we meet again (laughably unrealistic, GIANT lie)
Thank you. (technically cannot really be a lie, but nevertheless still feels like one)

To punctuate the end of my time at this school: after my last period of the day was over, I walked over to the teacher, offered him a handshake and said "thank you". In response to this cordial gesture, the teacher began staring straight at the floor and walked across the room without saying a word. I guess he doesn't like the way I teach Bingo or something.

That was yesterday. Today I had another last day, this time at my one junior high, Nozawa JHS; otherwise known as the school with the most organized and best planners in the world. Why do I refer to it as that? Because well, even though I was only scheduled to go there for a scant 10 days this semester, one day in May I show up to find the ENTIRE English department away on a school trip to Kyoto with all the third graders, leaving me and Mark (the other AET there) to sit around the teachers' room all day with absolutely shit-all to do. Of course, those of you that know me even a little bit know that this is pretty much my ideal workday, so I'm not really complaining. But it still just boggles the mind that they could manage to schedule my visit on a day that I would be of the absolute least possible use. And it's not as if this Kyoto trip was some spur-of-the-moment, last-minute idea whim, it's something they do EVERY YEAR AT THE SAME TIME, yet somehow no one caught this little scheduling hiccup. Couple this with my walking into the school again a few weeks ago, ready to begin a three-day stretch at good ol' Nozawa JHS, only to be met with a look of confusion from Mark, instead of his normal joy in seeing another English-speaking human: "What are you doing here?" Yup, turns out no one knew I was supposed to be there. The head English teacher threw me a couple pacifying token classes to help with, later asking "Oh, are you coming tomorrow, too?" I was very tempted to say no, and just take the next two days off with no one the wiser, but my moral dilemma was spoiled by fucking Mark chiming in with "Oh yeah, and the day after that, too." Fucking Mark.

Anyway, you can probably guess how much of a fuss was made over my leaving today: absolutely none. Hell, I doubt anyone even realized today was my last day there. This is to be expected though, since I really spent almost no time at this school. Plus well, me and Mark sneaking out around 2 o'clock like usual probably didn't help matters much, either. I'm just happy that I get to go a full week now without having yet another "last day". All these heavy displays of emotion you know, they're just getting to be too much.

Current score: Three down, six to go.

Tuesday, July 6th: Troubled Waters

I went swimming with the students at the retarded school the other day, which turned out to be both not quite as fun and not quite as awful as you might, depending on the kind of person you are, expect. Me, I love swimming. It's been years since I've been in a pool; making it all the more of a shame that so many legal and moral concerns prevent me from taking advantage of the pools that every single school in Japan, including some driving schools, comes equipped with. I mean, come on, keeping in mind my usual relationship with most of my students -- they see me as some sort of sentient jungle gym; I see them as crazed prod-moppets for whom only mostly shattered bones will not nearly suffice -- there is no way that I could enter that pool with them and not end up with at least three people dead. My students bleed often enough in my actual classes; you put us in a pool together and that just means I need to get out and kick the asses of whoever tries to give them CPR, too.

My special kids though, are of course a different story. Who doesn't like playing with special kids? Even on the rare occasion I don't feel like playing with them, they'll happily run off and entertain themselves by repeatedly bouncing basketballs off their foreheads or run off to unzip their pants with a power saw or something. And putting all that fun and good nature in a pool? Hold me back! Last one in the pool's a, uh, well, the most retarded, I guess.

Rejected Gilligan's Island Characters, Vol. 6

One thing about the class I had pool time with though, was that this was the class of second graders where 4 out of 6 of the students were in wheelchairs, which made 'playing' in the pool well, not quite the summertime fun that you might imagine. As you could probably guess, kickboards don't really work too well for kids in wheelchairs, so in lieu of splashing, dunking, playing, laughing, we mostly just kinda carried them around the pool like laundry baskets, looking down occasionally to check that we hadn't absentmindedly submerged their faces. Eventually I did ditch this duty since the teachers wanted to make the most of my presence in the pool by having me play with the more mobile children. That turned out to be pretty fun, what with my being bigger and less retarded enabling me to steal all the good pool toys for myself. At one point I was coasting around on this highly desirable floatable piece of styrofoam, making sure to stay just out of reach out of all the struggling, dog-paddling kids who probably could've enjoyed it much more. It's times like these when I really enjoy my life.

Twenty minutes in, I was really starting to enjoy myself, so I thought hey, let's do something teacher-ish. I was trying to help this one girl Saeka get over her fear of the water by taking her to the middle of the pool and showing her that her feet could touch the bottom with her head still fully above water. No go. She started crying, then screaming, then leapt onto me, wrapping her limbs tight around my torso like some sort of powerful cybernetic koala. She was frightened out of her mind but in truth, the whole thing was really very cute. The other teachers were having a good laugh at it and some of the younger, female ones were even making comments like "Oh, what a good father you'd make, Chow-Sensei, oh ho ho". And then, just because every even marginally flattering moment I have must be balanced out by a corresponding semi-traumatic one, that was when I turned my head towards the poolside and saw a boy three feet away from me with his trunks around his knees just having himself a good ol' piss right there on the concrete floor, happy as day. To him it seemed the most natural thing in the world. I mean, he had to pee, why not just do it right there on the concrete rather than walk the five additional arduous feet to the actual bathroom? I suppose I should be grateful that he had been considerate enough to at least go as far as getting out of the pool. But all it did was remind me that, cute as it was, it probably wasn't the best idea to have a frightened retarded girl with questionable control of her bowels and an unknown quantity of lemonade from earlier in the afternoon wrapped around my torso in a cybernetic koala-like grip.

Sunday, July 4th: The Thunder and the Lightning

I've been heading to the gym on a pretty frequent basis for a while now, in a predictably futile effort to transform myself into somewhat slightly less of a girl-boy-girl. Working out, much like raging alcoholism, seems to be an interest common to almost all JETs, along with of course, the 'yellow fever'. But while nearly all the other JETs in the area go to 'Blue Marine,' an actual, honest-to-God gym, I go to the Kurosawa Exercise Center, which in actuality is a rehabilitation center for old and/or crippled people. How appropriate is that. While Blue Marine is this gargantuan complex with several floors, scads of state-of-the-art equipment, Olympic-size swimming pool and young women in spandex pants, the Kurosawa Exercise Center has exactly one weight machine, four exercise bikes, and a pool roughly the size of two Twix bars laid end to end that normally is packed full with aqua-walking grannies. So, keeping all this in mind, why do I choose to go to the latter instead of the former, barring the always-relevant issues of proximity to my apartment and price? Well, the same reason I only play sports with kids fourth grade and under: for someone with as many self-image issues as me, a level playing field is the very last thing I want. Which is to say, placed against the backdrop of all those geriatrics, I come off looking like Mr. Testes McGorcock.

So, why is it that JETs seem to gravitate towards the gym so much? Well, there are many reasons; not the least of which is of course, to maintain at least a single tenuous finger on that slippery devil known as non-insanity. With a job that alternates between making us feel colossally stupid and merely totally insignificant, copious amounts of physical activity are necessary to pry that sharpened potato peeler out of our hands. There is of course, some percentage of this element in my personal reasons for taking up exercise. I mean hey, it's either bench-presses, or the self-cutting again.

But the bigger reason, at least for me, is very simple: never, in my very short, yet at times unbelievably irresponsible life, have I ever, EVER found myself with so much free time. So much so that even an accomplished goof-off like myself has difficulty finding ways to stave off boredom. I mean, on a typical day, I'll come home from work, screw around on the internet for a bit, cook dinner, eat dinner, do the dishes, screw around on the internet some more, maybe tutor, go work out, have a snack, maybe go have a beer with friends, and that brings me to roughly about 2 PM. And I'm really, only marginally exaggerating. Sometimes it amazes me how I manage to lead less and less demanding lifestyles with each new stage of life. From high school when I never did homework, to college when I never did homework nor went to class, to JET, when a typical workday can run from 9:45 to 2:30 and -- although you'd think it would -- never, ever involves bringing work home. My life after this better involve a winning lottery ticket and fantastic temporal powers, or I'll never keep up this trend.

The last reason I have for getting such an interest in exercise this year is more personal: to get back that which I have lost. Y'see, in college, despite a lifelong history of staunch, pubertologically speaking, underperformance, I suddenly began sprouting these large, bulbous CANNONS sticking out of my shirt sleeves. After a little work done in the college gym, which again I could only go to because my college was filled primarily with Gundam-building vegan nerds, my arms managed to go from "kinda nice" to pure, almost Popeye-level absurdity. Keep in mind that only my arms were developing -- the rest of me still looked like a 13 year-old. You ever take apart your action figures when you were little and stick limbs from one figure onto another? Well, that was kinda what I looked like -- Barbie's kid sister Skipper walking around, having apparently had He-Man's arms grafted onto her in some sort of ill-advised, Frankenstein-esque experiment.

But I didn't care how absurdly disproportionate they looked. They were mine dammit, and they were big. A far cry from my junior high days, spent being mocked for signing up for Elective Art rather than Elective Weight-Lifting. Hell, even the gym teacher was vocally disapproving of having only three boys in my entire grade not sign up for weight-lifting class. But if painting pretty watercolor pictures of happy rainbows and rose gardens makes me effeminate, then color me as having a vagina, that's what I say. I remember that time he tried to subtly punish us by making the three of us go play water-polo with the girls, but instead we just meekly hung out in the showers all period touching each other's boy-parts and talking about how Mr. Ruth is a fucking cocksucker. Yeah, well WHO'S LAUGHING NOW, MR RUTH

So anyway, these are the reasons I have come to find myself exercising on an almost daily basis, heading to the gym to work out any number of self-image issues in exchange for any new number of self-image issues brought about by the actual working out. To get back my arms, the Thunder and the Lightning, that the first year of JET robbed me of (along with y'know, my dignity, motivation, confidence, sobriety, and anal virginity), I will gladly deal with the horrors of the Kurosawa Exercise Center. Mostly because, let's face it, in how many gyms on this planet could I legitimately claim to be one of the buffest people in there? I actually get tense and defensive when the rare actual other young person happens by, eyeing him intently in a manner that is probably easily and routinely mistaken for rampant homosexuality but is actually fierce mountain-cat-esque territoriality RAAAHR. I'll keep an eye on how much he's lifting, and, if it's more than me, wait until no one's looking and see if I can lift the same. And the great part is, usually I can. That's another great thing about Japan -- though your average Nip may be small, cunning, quick on his feet, agile like the monkey and possess mastery of any half a dozen major martial art disciplines, odds are that he's still not very beefy. And you gotta love a country where my 5'8" self not only does not have to look up to talk to people for once, but can, with a little effort, become one of the more manly specimens in the neighborhood. In fact, just the other day, one of my teachers commented on how she's spotted me in the gym a lot, and oooh, what a studly figure I've been cutting lately. Of course, she was 52, but the sentiment is worth its weight in masturbation dollars all the same.

Still, copious amounts of free time or no, one has to wonder why JET has suddenly motivated me to take up both weight-lifting and running on a daily basis when up till now I've never done anything more strenuous than twisting apart an Oreo. How much of this newfound interest in physical activity is part of a mature, honest effort to better myself, and how much is merely a transparent bid to stave off insanity? Well, you can draw your own conclusions, but I'll tell you one thing: once I go home, I plan on being the absolute fattest, laziest bastard on the planet, one who only watches the single-digit channels because punching in an extra number on the remote control is just too much effort. Okay, well...maybe I'll leave a dumbell lying amongst the scattered fried chicken buckets and empty Arby's wrappers, just the same.

Saturday, July 3rd: Eight is Enough

And here we are. Welcome to the last month of the Japan Journal. My return date is officially set now; on July 29th I'll be leaving JET, Japan, and the crazy yet lame world of online journals behind for the foreseeable future. It's only just started to sink in that after almost two years of complaining about it, I've only three weeks to go before I'm done teaching forever (yes, FOREVER, dammit). I had my first "last day" at one of my schools on Thursday, and I have to admit, though I was hardly driven to tears or anything, I ended up getting a bit more sentimental than I thought I would. The teachers all lined up to say good-bye and give me a Hearty American handshake like they've seen on TV. Then, when it was time to go, they lined up and accompanied me to the school gate, whereupon this almost apallingly ridiculous ending theme song from a famous samurai TV series called Mito Komon began blaring tastefully from the PA system. Man, leave it to Japan to overdramatize and therefore almost completely ruin an otherwise classy, heartfelt moment.

By the way, kids, when hearing that you're leaving FOREVER, will suddenly transform into tiny gangly angels with soppy doe-eyes whenever they come within six feet of you. "B-b-but Chow Sensei," they'll blubber-stammer, "You can't leave! W-who will teach us English now?" Of course, I'm just like, "Where was this appreciative attitude when you were jamming your fingers up my ass from two years to a week ago?" And then I suplex them through a plate-glass window.

Anyway, the fun part of teaching at nine schools means, I get to do this...eight more times. I'm almost looking forward to the one or two schools which have never really taken to me and will probably react to my leaving with no more than a quick nod before going back to reading the newspaper. Sometimes I think stuff like this proves the universe has some sort of design to it. Even someone as bitter and cynical as I can be sometimes will have a hard time not being sentimental when forced to say good-bye FOREVER to hundreds of children nine times in one month. Maybe this is instant karma for being prodigiously baked during the farewell JET conference yesterday, leaving me in a giggly, barely-coherent blissful haze of stonephoria admist other JETs' open displays of heartfelt emotion. I mean yeah, don't get me wrong, I'll probably be sad about leaving too, but I'm not anticipating any open crying jags about it. Heck, I'm just happy to be able to say that I don't actively regret my time here, that I have halted construction on the fantastic time machine meant to prevent my past-self from ever signing up for the program in the first place. In three weeks I can leave here with a smile on my face, one that's not solely derived from the fact that I am leaving here in three weeks. And that's good enough for me, thanks, without needing to show up to a meeting about it and neatly categorizing my likes/dislikes and positive/negatives about the experience.

At any rate, three weeks or no this sappy, self-important bullshit will get old real quick, so I'll try not to address the fact that OMG LEAVING IN 3 WEEKS too much until closer to the end. Hopefully, Japan will provide me with many obnoxiously stupid things to write about until then.