Evidently I've been in one of those low-update periods lately, so please bear with me. My urge to update seems to go in pretty even patterns, so I'm sure I'll be back to updating almost every other day soon enough.
Took a road trip with some friends up to Tokyo this weekend to check out the weirdness of the 2003 Tokyo Game Show. The show was scheduled for Sunday, but we went up Saturday to hit the town at sleazy bars and clubs where STDs and off-duty servicemen are equal in number (which is to say, a lot). It was a fun, yet surprisingly uneventful time. In fact, perhaps the most eventful part of it was that I managed to have a night out in Tokyo without almost getting into a fight. This is somewhat of a first for me. Taking that into consideration, "uneventful" suits me just fine. The worst thing I can remember is some sales-whore of a waitress goading me into buying a $5 tequila shot. I hate tequila.
On the other end of the spectrum, probably the highlight of the evening was derisively observing this European goon decked out in full 50's greaser outfit erratically gyrating about the dance floor. Picture James Dean and Fonzie having a son that somehow turned out to be the uncoolest guy on the planet, and that's pretty much him. Naturally, however, all the Japanese girls were eating his act up, due to the famed geeky-white-guy-in-own-country-transforming-into-ladies-man- in-Japan phenemonen I'm sure you all know about. I swear, it's like they enter this country under some kind of Lameness Protection Program. If geeky foreign guys are kids bringing home report cards full of D-'s poorly forged into A+'s with a marker of an entirely different color, then Japanese girls are their naive, colorblind parents.
And no, I am NOT privy to the above phenemonen, because I am not white. And why do I get the feeling I just helped cement 7 or 8 geeky white guys' plans to visit Japan?
Anyway, the bar was okay, but to be honest the part of the trip I probably enjoyed most was the car ride up. It's the first time I've ever taken a car up to Tokyo since usually it's much easier just to hop the bullet train. However, this time there was enough of us to split the tolls that opting to take the train would equate to financial masochism. So, I think we left at about six PM, meaning it was just a little before eight o'clock when we first got the idea to try shooting ourselves in the legs with BB guns. Now, put four young people out looking for that proverbial good time in a car for three hours and eventually the collective intelligence level is bound to start dropping at some point in the name of entertainment. However, put the same four people in a car for three hours along with a pair of legal yet still potentially quite painful weaponry, and you've got a whole new level of idiocy. Thus whenever we were in the car this weekend a pair of voices could almost always be heard having some variation of the following conversation in the backseat:
(Simultaneously)"Ready? 1...2...3...*click*AUUUUUUggh! Fuck! Fuck! Auuuugh! FUCK!"
See, things started off just shooting ourselves in our pants-protected legs, but by the end of the weekend we ultimately embarked on some kind of sick sado-masochistic tour: "Hey, I bet it would really hurt to shoot yourself in the back of the neck!" "Hey, you're right! *CLICK* FUCKFUCKFUCK OWWWWW". From personal experience I can tell you that being shot in the forehead with a BB gun at point-blank range is probably one of the most painful things you can do. Afterwards I looked like either a hummingbird had barreled full-speed into my head, or I had one odd case of acne. Other painful area included the nipple, inside of the elbow, cheek, and as fellow Saku-ite Paolo can tell you, under the chin. But hey, this is one of those cases where seeing is definitely better than reading, so luckily I took the liberty of recording one of our experiments in stupidity on film.
Click to watch video
In case you were wondering, I am the one howling like a female hyena trapped in a helium factory. Now, I know that little 'click' may sound like much, but trust me, those fuckers HURT. You can tell since we never summoned up the courage to shoot ourselves in the groin as was suggested countless times. Anyway, wasn't that enlightening? But as for why we even had the BB guns in the first place, well, that'll have to wait until I get around to writing about the Game Show itself...and I figure I'll get to that soon enough. Eventually. | message board
I've had a cold for like the entire past month. I think it's something I picked up on the plane ride to America -- planes being nothing but suspended germ incubation factories, after all -- and since then a great portion of my time each day is spent coughing up a quantity of phlegm equivalent to roughly six basketballs. It started off as just my throat hurting, but seemingly with each new day that passes my body finds a new cavity to fill with snot. A couple days ago I literally could barely hear anything, my head was so stuffed up. I did go to a doctor while I was in the States, who said it was bronchitis and prescribed me some antibiotics which then proceeded to do shit -- all doctors are quacks anyway -- and since then I've decided the best medicine is to remain bitter about it and perceive this as yet more proof that God hates me. Also, as befitting a person of my occupation, I've also been devoting some time at work each day seeing if I can't pass on this illness to some of my more annoying kids. I mean, lord knows how many times the little bastards have unloaded diseases on me; what with their open coughing and sneezing and crawling all over me and making me brush their teeth (the last one being special school only). "Chow-sensei, how do you say 'basukettoboru" in English?" "Come closer, little Takeshi, and let me HACK HACK COUGH SNEEZE CHORT. Yeah, right in the FACE.
Actually, it is getting a bit disturbing how openly vindictive I am becoming with children. Before I only used to take passive aggressive little shots at them like pretending the woman I see being gang-demeaned in Japanese porn videos are their mothers. On a side note, I'd like to take a moment to mention that the only real sexual fantasy I have remaining is to make it with one of my elementary students' mothers (preferably one of the really annoying ones) so I could toss him some lifelong psychologically scarring Polaroids the next time he's being bratty in class and scream HOW DARE YOU DISRESPECT YOUR NEW FATHER. Anyway, perhaps it's not so much the open vindictiveness that disturbs me so much as my generally negligent attitude towards nurturing their young minds. For instance, today we were playing a game called "Color Basket," in which everyone sits in a circle and has to run around and change seats whenever their color is called. Normally, whenever I play this in class I institute a "Baatsu Game" wherein if someone ends up seatless too many times they have to sing a little song or do a little dance. I also give them the option of saying the name of the person they like (and not just like-like, but like-like), but naturally no one ever goes for that. But that's not where the negligent part comes in. That part came when today, partially because I was cold-medicated out of my mind, openly lied to the children about my assigned color just so I wouldn't have to get out of my nice comfy chair and do the Baatsu Game. Someone called my color but I didn't react in time so instead I decided to sit there and just pretend I had a different color. "Aren't you yellow? Why didn't you get up?" they asked. "No no, I'm white," I feebly protested, with no further argument. I am the worst liar in the world.
See, normally my kids can barely SAY 'yellow' let alone remember that that was my goddamn assigned color, but surprisingly these other yellow kids were observant enough to notice that I'd always been moving when they were. I continued on with my really quite pathetic "No, I'm white" protests but these kids were so persistent I knew the jig was up. Thankfully most of the kids found my blatant lying so thoroughly transparent that they thought I was just trying to be funny, and the rest I won over with a stirring rendition of a popular folk song, but somehow I doubt the teacher was quite as convinced. She came up to me later in the teacher's room and said, "You must have been tired today, Chow-Sensei", leaving the second part of the sentence, "which explains your telling 5th graders bald-faced lies so as not to lose at a children's game," unsaid but fully implied. Anyway, I just kind of coughed, wheezed out a "yes," and then just to be safe, coughed some more. Somehow, though, I don't think all the sympathy phlegm in the world will make that teacher look quite right at me ever again. It's times like this that make me glad I go to so many schools that I'd have to try really hard to wreck ALL of my working relationships.
As a funny postscript, I've noticed that if you read over this entry interpreting the stated colors racially, you get a fairly incisive allegory for my status as a non-Caucasian foreigner in Japan. Man. Sometimes I can be so deep that even I don't realize it. | message board
Hey, anyone out there wanna take a crack at designing the "...And I'll Form the Head" banner that will top the page for October's entries? Since I am so obviously crap at it myself.
So it's a Monday, and even though I'm just in the office, I'm feeling a bit down. Lately I just haven't been wanting to get up and go to work in the morning, and for a bit I thought that was because I really do loathe my job, but I think the real problem is I hate just even having to have a job. Why do I have to get up in the morning and go to work? Why can't I just wake up in the mid-afternoon to a Guardian Angel with giant breasts and fistfuls of thousand-dollar bills falling through my roof and promising to take care of me for the rest of my life? Why don't I have a personal rocket-ship-riding talking pony that is capable of granting my every wish in non-ironic ways? Why do I have to work for my Awesome instead of it just being? Why, God, why?
Yeah, so I'm having trouble being a grown-up lately. Visiting home for three weeks injected me with a crippling loathing of not being able to be a child for the rest of my life. So sue me. I know you are but what am I. I need to stop watching Office Space. Fuck you I'll burn this place to the ground.
Pardon today's entry. We hope to have our already tenuous connection to reality re-established by the end of the week.
***********UPDATE************
This entry needs some levity, so here's a picture of fellow Miniskirt Police watcher Paolo riding some sort of magical mechanical dog:
By God, I think I've found a use for my next few months' salary. | message board
Pardon the lack of updates this week, but it appears God was against it. For example, I meant to update Thursday night but He decided it would be a better use of my time to go get drunk instead. You know, for a while I was worried my increasing drinking habit in Japan was some kind of subconscious pain-numbing dealie, but it turns out that Japanese beer just tastes that much better. While I was home last month I went to a bar, ordered a Heineken, and practically spat out my first sip. I don't remember it tasting like such swill. Here, the beer is nice and smooth and tastes like liquid happy. Also the inflated sense of self-esteem is that much bigger.
Anyway, I also meant to update the past two days as well but my computer's been kind of on the fritz and when it gets to certain webpages, including the one I use to update this page, it gets really aggravatingly stuttery. I ran scandisk, defragment, a spyware scan, and a virus scan, but it's still the same way. Finally I decided just to wade through the stuttery mess to this specific page I am using to update this journal, and it's fine, but other pages are still fucked. Does my hopelessly vague description give you computer savvy types out there any ideas?
At any rate, this week if nothing else taught me I should start carrying my goddamn digital camera to work because nearly every day yielded some sort of happening worthy of capturing for posterity. For instance, yesterday I spent much of my day at work playing soccer with the kids at the special school. This may make me sound insensitive, but I must say that am a little bit disturbed that many of the kids that attend the special school are actually better than me at sports. I mean, okay, playing sports better than me is, admittedly, an automatically achievable task for pretty much anyone upon reaching the age of six, but these kids...goddamn it, one of them spent the entire time running around the field shrieking with his wrists flailing and snapping wildly yet, I'll be damned if he couldn't kick a ball better than me. I also note that none of the other teachers participate in these games, presumably so as not to offset the balance. Yet they seem to have no qualms about slotting ME in. It's as if they're like, "Okay, the Yellow Team has five kids with Gigantism stuck in wheelchairs, but the Red Team has Chow-Sensei. Hmm, maybe we should forget to give the yellow team their medication, just to make it even."
I may not have mentioned it, but I'll be spending a lot of time at the special school this year. Of the 10 schools I've been assigned to now, I'll be spending nearly a fourth of my time there. In many ways, of course, this is a boon, seeing as I will often spend classes there stomping on bags full of aluminum cans (like I did yesterday for half an hour) rather than teaching. On the other hand, this also means I am more tempted to write about them, and given my particular writing style it's hard to tell whether I'm just making harmless jokes about funny situations in my life, or just flat-out making mean jokes about handicapped people. It's a fine line.
This seems like as good a time as any to link to the "Tard Blog". Personally, I think the author can go a bit too far, at times overstepping that fine line I was just talking about. I dunno, maybe I haven't any right to talk, but she strikes me as just a bit too mean-spirited sometimes. Regardless, I think many of you will appreciate it.
Still, gotta admit, trading in my junior high for the special school? Interesting wrinkle for Year Two, if I do say so myself. Let me know if I go too far. | message board
I am happy to see that within the three days it's been up my new message board has already degenerated into my poorly-chosen moderators going mad with power and abusing all who would dare question them. But oh, someone gave me ten dollars. Carry on, then.
This weekend I was at a barbecue at my friends Steve and Rebecca's with pretty much every other JET in the area. The sunny, carefree atmosphere brought upon by this environment meant we were all able to just relax and soak in the cameraderie brought about by large amounts of alcohol and unanimous loathing of the daily forced spoonful of shit that is our jobs. It was a good time all around, but something I think I realized is that, out of all the JETs that were there, perhaps no one hates their job as much as I do. This was illustrated very effectively at the barbecue, inasmuch as two of my students were there and by the end of the night the littlest one took to violently beating me about the head and shoulders with an empty ginger ale bottle. It was a very emblematic as throughout this recyclable barrage I just sat there with my usual sense of defeated resignment while fellow child-hater Paul just laughed at me and said, "Galvin, your life sucks." I nodded and continued to sip my Chu-Hai. I was just happy he hadn't decided to fill the bottle with rocks.
I'm not sure what it is about me but either I just happen to get the absolute rowdiest students in the prefecture or as Paul suggested I have "ABUSE ME" written across my forehead in magical marker that only small Japanese children can read. I mean, little kids in general here don't tend to be terribly respectful of foreigners ("Hey! He's slightly different from us! Let's get him!"), but, and maybe this is just my self-pity talking, I feel like I get a larger length of shaft than most other JETs.
Actually, come to think of it, other JETs aren't exactly making things easier for me, seeing as my quote-unquote ass-bastard friends have taken to rolling down the window and shouting out "Galvin-Sensei!" at every small child they see while driving around here. Reportedly, most of the time this results in the kid whipping his head around going "Where? Where?" only to see a couple of white guys passing by in a car laughing hysterically. Okay, so that is pretty funny, but it's one of those things that would be funnier if it wasn't me.
But no, I think the root of my lack of respect probably has to do with my teaching style, or um, abusing-children-in-the-guise-of-education style. In the beginning, I made a conscious effort to try to be more the children's friend rather than their big scary Teacher, and that may have backfired: as a result I believe my children perceive me as in terms of social hierarchy as no different from them other than being slightly larger and also apparently retarded. This is probably where the problem lies, but now that I think about it, I much prefer this than to actually being thought of as an actual teacher. I hate being looked upon as any sort of authority on ANYTHING. The implication of responsibility makes me uncomfortable. So thinking about it, I'll take an endless amount of ginger ale bottles to the head with a smile, given the alternative. Which is good, since that's what I'll be getting for the next 11 months anyway.
At any rate, I got some measure of retribution at the barbecue because later in the night someone decided to pick up the kid and toss him in the swimming pool, which caused him to launch into the biggest tantrum I've ever seen for the next twenty minutes. Even his mom was openly laughing at the sheer degree of his hissy-fit. This was probably because even though he was flailing his arms about in anger, he was still holding these big shining glowsticks, making him look like a miniature raver trying very hard to find the beat. I'm not sure who at the party took the initiative and dumped him in the pool, but whoever you are, I thank you from the bottom of my cold, black heart.
Finally, here's a link for you to a site of my friend Mark who has started his own site. It's much more serious than mine (since it's actually supposed to be for professional use) but there's a good article offering a peak into junior high life that's worth a look for all of you tired of me talking about children 12 or younger. Anyway, give 'er a look, eh? On a side note, Mark is engaged to a girl named Michelle, and if she takes his name, her name will be Michelle Limb which is close enough to Michelle Branch for me to want to stop hanging out with the both of them forever. DOOSH! | message board
Looky looky, the 2003 Tokyo Game Show is coming up, and my attendance is practically mandatory. Doubt I'll write another article about it, but at the least it should be worth some pictures. Any fellow Nagono-ites out there care to tag along, hmm? Sadly, I am without Mooney this year, as he is currently stuck at Haverford College, the good old alma mater. Let us take a moment to laugh at him for this. Haha. Hahaha. Ha. Anyway. Any takers?
So the current drama in my life involves the closing of the English night school at which I tutor. Those entrenched in the "know" are aware that unlike my regular school visits, I actually find my tutoring sessions very rewarding inasmuch as I actually feel as though I am having some sort of positive effect on my students there. Sadly, however, my two students, plus the other teacher's two students, are not really bringing in the necessary income, so the classroom is closing at the end of the month. I actually have rather mixed feelings on the subject, since to be honest I've kind of been tiring of teaching in all forms lately, but mostly I'm still sad to see it go. My latest student especially is swarthed in all shrouds of awesome. I don't even have to prompt him and he can launch in 15 minute tirades on anything from Stephen King's It to the war in Iraq. The other day he went off on how he thinks that in World War II the Emperor of Japan was worse than Hitler. I'm impressed that an 11th grade Japanese boy is even capable of expressing thoughts like this in a second language. Actually, I'm even more impressed that given his environment, he's even allowed to display such independent thought.
Another thing I like about this kid is that he's very serious, but not geekily so. The only time he's ever taken notes on something I've said is when I offered to teach him "natural" ways to call people stupid in English so he could stop calling people "fools" or "bad heads" like some kind of posturing foreign supervillain. It was a list of five words, but he especially took a liking to the last one and my proclaimed favorite, "dumbass". Okay, so he often uses it in ways he shouldn't and pronounces it more like "Dumas" but he says it with such gusto I haven't the heart to tweak his usage of it. I did have a rather embarassing situation the other day where he met the other teacher at my night school, Candice. She asked him what school he attended and he answered, "Usuda High School. It is a very dumbass school". I didn't know whether to put my face in my hands or laugh.
Finally, you will now notice that I'm going to start posting my email at the end of every entry to make it that much easier for you all to contact me and let me know how much you like anime. Also, in a move I'm almost certainly going to regret either because no one posts there or the people who do are afflicted with crippling stupidity, I've set up an ezboard message board for you all to sound off about how much I suck for not liking anime (if you haven't already, I suggest you install the Google Toolbar to quash those pop-ups). Anyway, it's there, so feel free to comment away. Just try not to be COMPLETE tools and force me to quietly sweep the whole thing under the rug in two weeks and pretend the whole thing never happened. God help me. | message board
Yesterday at the special school the teacher read the students a children's book called "Mochau! Mochau! Mou Mochau!" which basically translates to Holy Crap I'm Going To Pee Myself. It was a charming yarn about a little kid in a department store who really needs to take a long, violent piss, and thus is desperately searching for a bathroom. The first bathroom he finds is out of order. The second one is on a much higher floor, but the elevator is broken. Now, here is where the story gets really weird, as it transforms into a kind of bizarre, excretionary version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, as after he ducks into the stairwell he then encounters a series of toilets that just are not quite right.
First, for whatever reason, he meets a giraffe, who takes the boy to his bathroom, where the urinals are too tall for the boy to use. Then he finds a friendly bat, who takes him to a bathroom where the toilets are upside down, and thus unable to be used. Now it gets really disturbing: he then finds a skeleton, who takes him to a bathroom where the urinals are made out of fucking HUMAN BONES. Of course, the boy's problem is not so much with the remains of the dead being used to construct crude piss receptacles, but with the fact that they do not do such a good job of catching said urine. So finally, the boy meets a ghost/demon thing that takes him to a bathroom where the toilets have fucking TEETH and POINTY TONGUES. I dunno about you, but if I were a precocious youngster having this story read to me, my reaction would be HOLY FUCK TOILETS HAVE FUCKING TEETH and then stick with diapers for life since I've never seen a children's book depicting those of capable of biting off my wang.
Anyway, in case you were wondering, the story ends with the boy waking up to find it was all a dream, only to realize he actually does have to pee. So he runs to the bathroom and has a long, satisfying whiz, only to REALLY wake up this time and find that THAT was just a dream, too. Then, of course, in a Twilight Zone-ish OR WAS IT ending, he finds that he is indeed sitting in a puddle of his own urine. Lovely. My favorite part of the book was that after every page it prompts the children to stomp their feet and scream the title, which again I rather liberally mentally translated as Holy Crap I'm Going To Pee Myself. Seeing a roomful of retarded children screaming this and stomping their feet led to tons of guilty entertainment.
Actually, this reminds me of another children's book I once read at the special school. It starts off innocently enough, with the first 10 pages of so introducing a little girl named May and all her different outfits but then abruptly transforms into a cautionary tale about pedophiles. First it's all like "This is May! This is May wearing jeans! Jeans are used for play! This is May wearing a bathing suit! Bathing suits are used for swimming!" and then suddenly the next page shows shadowy cartoon hands reaching for the bathing-suit-clad May with the text suddenly reading something like "But some people want to touch May where her bathing suit covers!" Then the rest of the story is about how to scream real loudly if anyone ever tries to remove your clothes. Obviously a good lesson for children, buy boy did that come out of nowhere. It's like the author had a child of his own sometime before he completed Page 11 and then saw Happiness and got really, really paranoid.
So anyway, if you ever again wonder why the Japanese sometimes seem strange, well, you need look no farther than their children's books. Oh, in case I forgot to mention it, there is a popular children's book character named, and I am not kidding here, "Niko Niko Poon", which roughly translates to "Smiling Widely Poon". Hmm. I bet she has a Chinese neighbor named Thickly Crying Wang.
You know, I've seen a lot of gross things in my life, but the following link provided, again, by Ms. (Mister?) Fantric, pretty much takes the goddamn cake, and then vomits said cake all over the head over an unexpecting schoolgirl. Now, I do tend to exaggerate, but this honestly is one of the absolute mind-bogglingly grossest things I've ever seen in my life. I won't describe it here partially not to ruin the surprise of those willing, but also because, now that I think about it, it's not that gross in description but only when you watch what appears to be a normal video clip and then OH MY FUCKING GOD WHAT ON EARTH IS SHE DOING. Now, it's not sexual, or violent, or anything, although there is for whatever reason a woman wearing what appears to be nothing else but netting. Still, like, totally Ew Factor 5. Anyway, without further ado:
Not for the weak of heart (or stomach...)
...well? WELL? Was that not pretty fucking goddamn gross? Or am I being a sissy? I mean, at first you think you're watching some kind of weird fetish in action, but then the girl says "ramen" (Chinese noodles) meaning it's some kind of game show where the contestant has to GUESS what's being...ew! Ew ew ew! I don't even want to think about it anymore. Every time I think I have this country figured out, I see a video of a girl eating ramen and then, EW! Ew ew ew ew ew (further girlish protestations) EWWWW!!!
There, I finally updated the Engrish section, with a whole second page now since the first one was getting a wee bit lengthy. Okay, so it's a mite sparse now, but I have enough back reserve of Engrish to hopefully update it fairly responsibly now. Probably. Happy now, Paolo?
Also, I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that in reality I am FAAAR more buff, ripped, and manly than I appear in the new/old frontpage photo. Really. The camera takes away like, 10 pounds. Of muscle. And while we're at it, penis. Can you tell I'm trying very hard to suck in my gut in that photo? Christ, I need to hit a gym or something, or at least stop putting potato chips in my cereal instead of milk.
Lastly, and this has even less to do with anything, but take a gander at this photo I snapped of a jumprope while in the States:
Now, I've been told I have a dirty mind. So is it just me, or does this girl look disturbingly like she's being primed for a premature career in gangbang pornography? Yeah, that's what I thought.
First of all, here's a link I received before my vacation featuring, believe it or not, Hello Kitty Tarot Cards from someone named "Fantric". Oh, and while I'm plugging, go buy yourself a lovely new kindofcrap mousepad that the frontpage is ever so subtly hawking. Come on, you deserve to treat yourself, and you can sleep easier knowing that I am that much closer to the several tens of thousands of dollars needed for that chocolate yacht I've always wanted. Admit it, YOU OWE ME!
Anyway, if you couldn't tell by my posting even more useless things than usual, I have an office day, a glorious office day, today. My first one, in fact, since starting work again, and believe me when I say that it truly is wonderful to be back here and having my work day consist of checking my email for 8 hours. The BOE is definitely someplace I don't have much trouble settling back into. My coworkers greeted me with big smiles, called me fat (rightly so), asked if I had trouble with the blackout, and then I found moldy chocolate in my desk that I probably shouldn't have left in there since October. Believe me when I say I couldn't imagine a better day at work. Which probably gives you an idea how my non-office-day work days have been going. I realize that the chocolate in my desk has been here nearly as long as I have, and even though it's caked in disgusting white spots I can't help but wonder if it's passed the time better than I have.
The entry before this one is somewhat exaggerrated but the inspiration is true enough: in my three days of teaching since I've been back at least once a period I find myself standing at the front of the class wondering exactly what the Hell I am doing up there. Five days back and I've already come to like living in Japan again (Noodles! Video games! Korean hookers!). Rather unfortunately, however, I don't seem to be reacclimating to the actual job quite as quickly. It feels as though I've been gone way too long, and at the same time, wasn't gone nearly long enough. I stand up there looking at a roomful of blank, dumbfounded faces and think how the jesus did I ever do this for a year? I know this sort of thinking will probably correct itself in time, or at least be forcefully repressed; but until then, I am counting the days till my next vacation.
Of course, much of my foul mood probably can be attributed to the heat, as anyone who knows me can probably tell you that I turn into a big grouchy baby if the temperature reaches anywhere above Eskimo toilet bowl seat. While it's not quite as bad as last year, it's still pretty fucking awful; in fact were there any freaking foliage in this country I'd half expect jungle apes to start leaping out of it. Of course, this isn't helping the job much either: kids don't tend to learn very well when their brains are melting out of their ears (or when certain English teacher steal their fans for their own use). And hell, I just teach in a T-shirt and slacks now. How the hell did I ever handle this wearing a shirt and tie every day?
On the lighter side, however, the combination of this heat and teaching have produced a few good things: namely, enthusiastic child slaves. Every so often I teach a class of 3rd or 4th graders that become so enamored of my wacky foreign ways that they erect tiny Lincoln Log shrines to worship me. Case in point: on Tuesday a group of 3rd graders came to the teacher's office just to see me, and after one offhand comment about being hot, pretty soon the little turds were literally fighting over who got to fan me. Then another kid found a back massager, causing them to fight over who got to use THAT on me. Then someone else found ANOTHER fan, which only gave them one more thing to fight over. Eventually they settled on taking turns, while those waiting in line instead got to massage my shoulders. So there I was, surrounded by about a dozen children, with two kids fanning me, one using a back massager on me, and another kneading my shoulders, all while I read my newspaper. A few other teachers walked in and just burst out laughing at the scene, saying "What good service!" See, now this is something I could get used to. I'm just glad they didn't find the dildo drawer.
Is it bad when I look at a bunch of my elementary students and find myself wishing I had about six more hands just so I had enough fingers to count all the ones that never should have been born? I look at them and in my mind I hear nothing but quasi-biblical phrases like asshole who begat asshole who begat even bigger asshole. I look at them and practically have to stop myself from outright addressing them in accordance with their conjectured reproductive origins: 'Hey you, Spite-Pregnancy. Stop pulling Shotgun Wedding's pigtails. Hey Belated Pull-Out, stop trying to copy off of Dumpster Baby. And Drunken Mistake with First Cousin, if I have to tell you one more time to stop chattering away with Horrible Mixup At The Artificial Insemination Plant, you'll find yourself off to the principal's office just like Neglected Child of Romantically Idealistic High School Sweethearts.' I bet if I hit them with some kind of futuristic devolving ray they'd eventually end up as a big pile of defective condoms.
Yeah, I'm in a pissy mood. Could you tell?
Welcome back to the Japan Journal for the month of September. Or, as I like to call it, "Eleven months left".
Some of you may have noticed that I've been gone for the past few weeks. Or, if my page visitor reports are accurate, everyone who has realized that already left and right now I am speaking to five or six people half of whom arrived here only after running a Google search for "electric sex machine". But no matter. I shall rebuild my audience from the ground up by being twice, nay, thrice as awesome as I ever was before; that is if the laws of physical awesomeness even permit such previously theoretical amounts of awesome to exist. Also many of you are starting school again, and this page attracts procrastinators like slutty flies to a Cleveland steamer. Birds of a feather, I suppose.
So, what have I been up to during this little hiatus? Well, as many of you guessed, I indeed went back home in the States. No, wait. Actually, according to the poll on the frontpage, only about 7% of you thought I went back home while pretty much everyone else banked on my vacation consisting of Sailor Moon and canned beans. So fuck all of you. Anyway, yes, I went home, and let me tell you, it was glorious. Too glorious, actually. I spent about a third of it visiting friends or going to the beach, but the rest of the time I watched TV and ate pretty much non-stop. I can honestly say that during my entire three weeks at home, not even ONCE did I actually feel the physical sensation as hunger. I just never even had a chance to, as A) laying down and chewing don't tend to use up a whole lot of energy, even if you do both at the same time, and B) there was just so much GLORIOUS FOOD that I would only have an opportunity to eat for a very short time. People always ask me what I miss about home, and other than my dog, I pretty much only miss the copious amounts of greasy, greasy junk food one can easily get in the States. My first meal the night I got back was Popeye's Chicken, for crissake, and believe me when I say I was fine with this. Over the course of the next few weeks I hit Burger King, Arby's (repeatedly), Taco Bell, Dunkin' Donuts, Chik-Fil-A...oh wait, I missed that last one. Oh well, there's always next year. I also dined constantly on soft pretzels, pizza, and Slurpees and convenience store hot dogs overflowing with ketchup, mustard, and onions -- Americana itself, I tell you. Sure, all this sounds dreadfully boring, as well as vaguely nauseating, to most of you, but the junk food is pretty much all I REALLY miss about America. I was practically crying the first time I downed a Beef 'n' Cheddar and curly fries. It was like getting back together with an old, still-hot girlfriend, and then fucking the shit out of each other (not literally of course, although I can't say the thought didn't cross my mind). Of course, it now looks like someone injected my face full of billiard balls and I don't remember my stomach looking quite so much like a Simpsons overbite, but love does funny things to people. Like make them disgustingly fat.
That's another thing: boy, you people are fat. I'm speaking mostly to Americans here but I'm sure you Canadians and English aren't such slim hot shit either. You talk about culture shock -- how about spending a year in anorexic Japan then stepping off the plane and immediately laying eyes on dozens upon dozens of people who look like they can only communicate via harmonics. I mean, I can understand a little chunkiness and lord knows I've no problem with rounded-out folk; but Jesus, are you people garnishing your "diet" McSalad Shakers with Bacos and entire cheesecakes or what? How does one ever let it come to that? I'm sure I sound like a real ass, but I was honestly quite shocked. I guess I just plum forgot how big people can get.
Other than that though, I can't say I experienced a whole lot of the reverse-culture shock that I was expecting. The first time I went to Japan, and then came back to America (if that makes any sense), I was actually quite depressed for a few weeks because well, after a year of novelty, I came right back to the States, where everything was just as boring as I left it, and suddenly my year abroad seemed entirely pointless. I guess this time I knew it was just a short break, so more than anything else my past few weeks in the States just felt like coming home from college in the summer. If I had been there for an indeterminate amount of time, I probably would have been miserable. Knowing it was just for a very limited time, however, well, I had absolutely no problem leading a gratuitously gluttonous lifestyle for a few weeks.
And now, after almost three straight weeks of sloth and indulgence in my home country, here I am, back in my adopted country of Japan. I wish I could say it's nice to be back but well...here's the thing. America was nice. SO VERY NICE. Whenever I'm home, I immediately revert to how I was when I was sixteen years old. This is something I've complained about for the past four consecutive summers, but for some reason, this time, I really enjoyed it. It always used to piss me off feeling like being home invariably robbed me of my perceived accrued maturation, but this time I rather reveled in it. What can I say? I LIKED having absolutely zero responsibilities. I didn't have to cook for myself, clean for myself, pay rent, or anything. I'd wake up at noon, eat lunch, take a sizeable dump, then lay on the couch eating potato chips until my next meal. That was it. And I loved it. Now, here I am back here, where I have to actually work for a living, and have at least some responsibilities that require I act at least something like an adult most of the time, and I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around the concept. To put it simply, home is so easy, but being here, well, it certainly is not without its share of tough times. So it was rather tough psyching myself up about coming back here. In fact, the morning I was to come back, I woke up and thought about facing all those screaming kids and their prodding fingers, and honestly, I very much wanted to cry.
Anyway, I'd be lying if I said I was totally super excited about being back here or something (also, I would be talking like a 14 year old girl). Thinking about it one way, America = easy and Japan = HARD; but you know what? That's the whole damn point. Sure, it was great being sixteen again and leading a completely pampered existence. But it was only great because it was only for three weeks. Had I been leading such a lifestyle with no perceivable end in sight, well, my remaining days in this world would only last as long as it took me to figure out the least painful way to die. I loved being at home but really, this last trip made me realize that it's something I can never go back to for any significant period of time again. I'm not sure why it is, but I really do feel sixteen every time I go home. I don't even feel the slightest inclination to act like a complete person; it's like I subconsciously decide to just cleave off all the parts of my personality that have developed in the last seven years whenever I go home. It's like they don't belong there. And in a way, they don't.
Here, though...well, like I've said many times, it's a life of ups and downs. Even if it's just the language barrier or various cultural differences, a regular day here is several times more trying than any given day spent in the States, and sometimes, you may have noticed, I get bitter about it. But you know what? For someone like me, that's very much a good thing. I am lazy. I am apathetic. I am inertia (and melodrama!) personified and I have what my high school guidance counselor, who audibly sighed literally every time he passed me in the hall, termed a "motivational problem". Well, duh. But at least I'm smart enough to recognize that I'm a lazy shit, and have learned to work around my "disability" to strive for continuing my development as a person. This is the reason I always feel compelled to throw myself into shit situations: I really only learn things when I have no other viable options. If my life is an empty room (now there's an apt metaphor), then America is a soft, comfy $2000 couch, and Japan is a tattered, dog-eared Latin translation of Charles Dickens anthology that switches into French every fourth word and Egyptian Hieroglyph every sixth. And what I really want to do, of course, is lay on that nice comfy couch. Take it away from me, though, then I may as well start trying to read that anthology, since it's not like I have anything better to do.
After all this time, I've decided that all I really want in life is to just keep moving. Forward, if not upwards, but I'll tend to compromise and even accept backwards perhaps more often than I'm comfortable with. I couldn't even really tell you where this constant urge to keep running away from the past comes from, especially since it's not as if there's any particularly bad stuff in it, but if there's one thing I hate it's people who refuse to change. And being in Japan, if nothing else, at least guarantees that when my time here is over, I will not be the same person I was when I first came here. So okay, even though Japan may make me a crazy, violent, child-beating lunatic sometimes, in the end I know it's probably the best place for me to be right now. Despite the constant bitching.
Or maybe because of it.
