Catching Flies with Chopsticks:
Galvin's Japan Journal
My parents have been here the past few days. They're in Kyoto right now, my favorite city in Japan, but I couldn't go because a)I gotta work, and b)according to my economist father, it makes little sense to pay $300+ round-trip for a one-day visit when I'll likely be heading some other time anyway. And he's right on that second count, but the first still seems a mite weird. Just cements that I now primarily spend my Responsible Time on an occupation, which unlike classes, unfortunately cannot be blown off whenever anything fun comes up. Rite of passage, I suppose; though forever shall I long for the days when I could skip Calculus II class to play the Legend of Zelda in my underwear. Actually, this year marks the first time in as long as I can remember that a)I actually feel my exact age, and b)my existence feels concrete. Pardon the flaky philosophical-high-school-student tone here, as well as the parallel paragraph structure, but permit me elaborafication (ditto the making-up of words). Since at least senior year of high school, I had ALWAYS felt like I was 2 or 3 years younger than I actually was. Even in college: when I was 18, I felt 16. 20, well, still 16. Maybe by 21, 18. You get the idea, and some of you probably know what I'm talking about, even. Much of my life, actually, has me feeling like I was yanked out of the womb with a shoehorn. I suppose with each new stage of life, it just didn't feel like I should quite be there yet. This contributes to the dream-like, hazy-headed feeling I've had at least for the last four years (well, I'm guessing certain substances may have helped too). I never really got over the shock of graduating high school. Right up till graduation, occasionally the realization that I was IN COLLEGE would just absolutely blow my mind. Perhaps this is because my formative years were spent with parental vocalization of college being the ultimate goal constantly in my ear, when I actually got there, my mind didn't know how to handle it. I mean, what does one do when one actually attains a long-term goal? Come to think of it, that's how I felt when I lost my virginity, too... Distracting tangent -- similar to the guided-to-the-desert-but-left-without-a-map feeling of college, due to the harmful effects of too many stupid romantic comedies I used to feel the exact same way about relationships. Sure, John Cusack, Richard Gere, Mark-Paul Gosselaar and whoever may make it look like that getting into a relationship is the greatest thing in the world to their pre-teen/teen audience, but then the credits roll and the subject of what to do THEN is never addressed. No one ever tells you that it's fucking WORK even after you perform a winning, heartwarming serade of "More Than Words" from the tree outside her bedroom window. This is why so many whiny high school kids think it's the most important thing in the world to 'get involved,' and then act like complete fucking flakes when they finally manage to con their way into one. Sure, everyone whines about the effects of violent movies on young minds but everyone ignores the seriously harmful effects of more touchy-feely pop-culture on young minds; to wit, never have I been inclined to don a bladed glove and murderously invade people's dreams, but I HAVE had my life thrown into complete fucking disorder for months on end because someone said 'no.' To close this disjointed tangent: Julia Roberts is a wide-mouthed disease upon society who makes me want to stab my gentials with scissors. What was I saying? Oh yeah. Here, in Japan, at this job I occasionally hate, I for the first time actually feel my age AND feel that I am supposed to be here. I'm 22, and it's not a shock every time I realize that; I feel neither too young nor too old, too immature nor too crotchety. I actually feel clear-headed, my feet firmly planted in the present for once. I like where I am now, and it's not even an idealized perspective. No one's making me be here, and I can leave whenever I want, within a relative degree. Sure, I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing next year or the year after that, but I think that has a lot to do with it -- for the first time in my life, I don't have a concrete, long-term, imposed goal hanging over my head. And while this might be a frightening prospect to many people -- and I'm not exactly thrilled at the prospect of unemployment and starvation either -- I have NEVER felt this free, grounded, or...realistically, naturally content in my LIFE. I made my own damn decision to come here, and for once I really feel like from here on, I can do ANY. FUCKING. THING. I. WANT, and that INCLUDES punching myself in the stomach if I continue to babble like this much longer. Ahem. See, toldja I was grounded. Well, in closing, the humor-to-psychobabble quotient for today is toppling decidely to the right, so to make up for it: blahblahblah Japanese are silly blahblahblah Japan is funny because blahblahblah cock cock dick ass fart. Thanks for reading. So according to my Yahoo! Site Statistics page (but lord, I hate typing that exclamation point), the top three phrases used to find my web page from a search engine are, in ascending order, "fuck japan," (18%) "interesting thing about japan," (38%) and "japan sex game show." (44%) From this data, I can gather that, a) I say "fuck" even more than I thought, in a ratio apparently equal to how often I mention Japan, b) 18% of my search-engine traffic MUST be fellow JETs, c) 44% of my search-engine traffic end up very, very disappointed. I'd like to know exactly what the "sex game show" people were looking for anyway, 'cause I, apparently, have been watching all the wrong channels. I realize few other people are interested in this, but I am compelled -- Geocities now tells me how my article on the Tokyo Game Show is indexed by search engines as well, and it's absolutely fascinating. And disturbing. Let's not forget disturbing. Take a look for yourself. It's wonderful to know the type of audience I'm culling: People who want to see Samus Aran from Super Metroid naked tied to a pole while having her mouth shat in by a dominant Godzilla. Also, I find it epicly amusing when people expect search engines to find what they're looking for by typing in some random string of non-keywords like Google is run by the fucking Bat-computer or something: "Computer! Search 'metroid pictures chick hot'!" In non-masturbatory, non-site-statistic-related events, today I bid my parents adieu after a week of not paying for my own meals, and also one of my junior high girls led me into the boys' bathroom during "cleaning time". That's not as dirty nor sketchy as I would lead you to believe; you see at each of my schools, there's a group of kids that are more or less my fan club (whereas the rest are merely indifferent, there's even a few that downright dislike me), and this girl happens to be the biggest one...y'know, this isn't making me sound much better. But it's still not what a tiny part of me wants you to think -- apparently the boy's bathroom in question is where the third-year kids go to hang out when they feel like ditching cleaning duty, and my #1 fan apparently feels that I am enough NOT a teacher to let me in on this little secret society of custodial truancy. Of course this is not how any OTHER kids who entered subsequently seemed to feel; there was a steady stream of self-satisfied-looking students strolling into their secret laziness hang-out, only to have their dreams of Not Scrubbing The Floor With A Rag For 10 Minutes shattered by finding their English teacher standing there. They would then stand there shocked for a second, suddenly pretend they had to pee so they could pretend that they no longer had to pee, mutter something about "back to cleaning!" and excuse themselves. I think I may have disrupted a bona-fide institution at that school today. Oh, and just in case you think Japan is slipping too far downhill, rest assured, even in the apparent offical cleaning-time-skipping room, sure enough, one of the kids was in there, scrubbing the urinals with all his might. Man, that's why Japan is so far ahead of the US: even they're slacking off they do work. Hrrm. In one of those inexplicable, vaguely-down kinda moods. Maybe just 'cause it's Sunday. My Friday was spent a few cities away, in a town called Matsumoto, for one of these mandatory JET meeting thingies that really serve no purpose other than to make the organizers of the meeting feel useful. This was one of those seminar-type-dealies that I imagine are fairly popular in the business world. Basically, I and my fellow JETs sat there for hours while speakers droned on about topics that are either useless and covered by pure common sense ("How Not to Freeze in Japan" -- actual topic), or topics that are useful but more or less impossible to address in any sort of practical, applicable fashion ("How to Be a Part of Your Community"). All in all, I'd almost rather be teaching. Almost. This little meeting did have the a nice little surreal quality to it though, simply because I haven't been with this many JETs (or foreigners, for that matter) since the last meeting at the end of August. Seeing everybody again made it feel like I was either at the end or back at the beginning of my little contract; it didn't help that they handed out a "yearbook" of sorts, complete with everyone's pictures and personal info. I almost felt like I should've taken out a little purple pen and went around scribbling "Remember last summer always!" or "5th period study hall ROCKED" in other people's books. Then again, that IS just about the approximate maturity level of JETs when there's that many in one place at once, as evidenced by the drunken party that followed in the evening. It's actually been a few weeks since I last drank so the diversion was welcome, but at the same time, recently I've been wondering if people ever actually grow up. Seeing drunken foreigners my own age acting like horny, stupid 17 year-olds is bad enough, but seeing 30+, married people acting the same was well...disheartening. I know there's something to be said for letting all out and having good drunken fun, but I the only one who feels like it's going to get old sometime? Let's look at a random sampling of actual quotes heard in the bar Friday night: "Dude" "Grab my ass!" "Dude I am so drunk." "Hey there, big boy, wanna buy me a drink?" "You just know she wants the c***" "DUUUUUUUDE!" And that's only the quotes attributed to ME! Imagine what other people must've been acting like. Seriously though, I've noticed that whenever I drink lately, every so often I'll just start wondering if I'm ever supposed to grow up. Like between ecstatic yells of drunken stupor, if I get a quiet moment, I'll picture a little man in my head sitting on a couch, wearing a party hat, waving a flag, saying "whee." through a straight-lipped smile. That's ME, right there, that's me in my head; I'm the little man with the flag! Have a drink for ME, the little man with the flag! Gosh. How Salinger. Right then, I'll just go and shut up now... Ugh. My worst nightmare has happened. Well, perhaps not "nightmare," per se, more like an alarm clock waking you from a wet dream during the really good part. You see, I am what is known as a "One-Shot AET" (insert own humorous variation of that term here -- I suggest "money shot") in JET-speak. This means that instead of having a base school where I spend most every day, I travel around to a bunch of different ones, 7 to be exact. Compare this to my friends, who are stuck at mostly one ol' boring school all the time, or the other One-Shot AETs, who travel from anywhere between 20-40 schools constantly. So despite my complaints about the job I've been pretty happy about this aspect of my arrangement. But now, my whole world has been thrown outta whack: another school has come calling, and now my number of schools has increased to 8. Now, I'm sure this may not seem like much of a big deal. 7, 8, what's the difference, right? WRONG, idiot. What, did you fail math or something? Let me explain something to you. It's not as if I've been assigned to go to that eighth school on some magical new eighth day of the week the Emperor created just for me; nor have my original 7 schools each reluctantly relieved me of duties for a few of their own days so I'd have time to go to the eighth. No no, these days have to come out of somewhere, somewhere where perhaps, I could stand to be a tad more productive. And the somewhere in question happens to be what are known as my "office days." For the benefit of new readers, even though I'm pretty sure I have a fairly set audience by now, allow me to explain something. Office Days are days where I go sit in the City Board of Education all day, where my only responsibilities are to wear a tie, not leave the building, and not fall asleep, and I've wormed my way out of all three of those by now. Essentially, I go in there, I drink coffee, I read my paper, do the crossword puzzle, snack on convenience store food, and dick around on the internet for eight hours, and this counts as WORK. One time I took a nap for three hours, and this counts as WORK. Another time I brought in $15 worth of convenience store food -- a pizza bun, an egg salad/tuna sandwich, a box of chocolates, a rice ball, and a fucking BOX LUNCH -- and ate it sloooowly over the course of three hours, savoring the cornu-fucking-copia of delicious tastes and textures made all the sweeter by the fact that I was getting PAID to partake of them -- and this counts as WORK. I don't think I can even properly express how I feel about this to you, that my Board of Ed actually wants to use me in ways that might theoretically be productive, although I suppose bitter, bitter, spoiled despair is a good place to start. Now, the biggest complaints from JETs about our job is a) lack of real, adult responsibilities, b) the harsh reality that our job is in fact a mostly-worthless international dog-and-pony-show, and c) boredom. However, in case you haven't figured it out by now, I'm a bit different from the norm. Those three negatives? Well to me they're just about as POSITIVE as it gets! Worthless job? Nothing to do??! As Kirsten Dunst and a black chick no doubt said in a movie I never saw, BRING IT ON!! But now it's all being taken away from me by this goddamn eighth goddamn school barging its goddamn way in all uninvited and shit! They've already called me with the initial schedule, and it's already eaten up all my beloved office days through Christmas! This is a COMPLETE and UTTER CROCK of brown, blackish, night-after-Mexican-buffet, corn-and-tabasco-sauce-laden, steaming, stinking, slimy, SHIT; my wonderful innocent schedule has been RAPED and DEFILED, and I demand fucking shotgun, lynch-mob JUSTICE...followed by potential psychological counseling. Incidentally, my office days are also when I primarily update this very webpage that you are reading right now. Don't you see? This new, eighth school is a harbinger of doom for all of us! It's the end of an all-too-short era! Excuse me. Though I detect a distinct lack of pity from any of you -- I'm going to go fucking cry my goddamn eyes out now. Yeah, I know, two entries in as many days; but it's my last office day in a while, if I didn't spend eight hours on the internet it wouldn't be right! First of all, I finally got around to transcribing my student Yohei Katazuki's review of The Matrix. You think that movie's popular in the West, you should see it here...actually, come to think of it, it's probably just about equally popular. A lot of my kids sure are into it, though; even in my junior high I've seen kids act out the now infamous bend-over-backwards "bullet time" scene more than once. Anyway, do my faithful ward a favor and check it out. Speaking of the kids I tutor, I simply MUST tell you about my lesson with another one of them, Yuka, last night, simply because it turns out she's absolutely crazy. I mean, she LOOKS like a normal, well-adjusted 15 year-old Japanese schoolgirl but after an innocent line of questioning about her daily schedule I learned she's anything but. We were talking about TV programs we like, and she mentioned that she doesn't watch one of the shows I like because she's usually sleeping when it's on. I found this odd, seeing as it airs Tuesday nights at 7, so I asked when she normally goes to sleep. She responded, "About six" which made me think she was only a little crazy, but not really out of line with the super-sleepy students one can always spot catching naps on the trains, but then she said that she then wakes up at 12 midnight. Needless to say I found this a wee bit odd, and wondered if I was in fact tutoring a vampire, but instead I asked what she did after she woke up at such an odd hour. In retrospect her answer really should have been obvious: "Study." "Uh...until when?" "Five." "Then what do you do?" "Sleep, until 6." "Then what?" "Go to school until 5." I TOLD you she was crazy. The scary part is, it seems like she's actually adhering to this ludicrous schedule of her own free will. I asked her why she lives like that, she said she just really wants to study and do well so she can go to college, and I didn't detect any of the subtle parental loathing that would characterize someone who had none of her own say in maintaining such a schedule. I really think she actually WANTS to be living her life like that, or at least has goals she values highly enough to warrant living such a batshit-loony lifestyle. On many levels that's very admirable...but it's still just plain crazy, and I can't imagine it's terribly healthy. I do have to hand it to her though, other than her vampiric timetable she does appear to be a nice, well-adjusted girl in all other regards. During our conversation lessons she's able to talk about lots of books, movies, and music she likes, mentions things she likes to do and places she likes to go with her friends and family...and she's not really yet at the age where she would find it necessary to feign having a normal, healthy life if she didn't really have one (Trust me, I'm an expert on that one). So I suppose I'm actually as impressed as I am shocked. Then again, she says she wants to study astronomy, of all things, so maybe I take back what I said about her being well-adjusted. (Take THAT, Matt!) Actually, the ironic thing is that before I actually started teaching schools full of lazy, unmotivated, quite-frankly-kinda-dim Japanese students, I actually would have expected many of them to be a lot more like Yuka. Well, maybe not *quite* that extreme, but definitely leaning that way. But the weird thing is, as much as I now pity and worry about someone as young as Yuka living like that, a great big part of me rather wishes ALL of my students were like her. It would certainly make my life a hell of a lot easier. Sure, it would make things infinitely harder on my students, but let's be honest -- I'm a public school teacher! I'm not PAID enough to care about the quality of my students' lives outside of class! Hmm, I can't help but note the lack of any dire change in frequency of updates despite my protests of the time-sucking onset of the Eighth School. Oh screw it, I have a freaking web journal, for Crissake; you didn't expect me to actually have a life, did you? So I'm eating some crispy roasted peanut-flavored puff-curls imported from Germany or Guatemala or someplace right now. They're called "Curly" and they're pretty foul. This has nothing to do with anything, of course, but I figure at least one of you wants to know what I'm eating right now. Why did I start this entry again? Oh yeah, my co-workers, bowling. My co-workers took me bowling the other day. I didn't even know they had bowling alleys in Japan; it seems like such an American thing to me. I'm not much of a bowler but I decided to go since a)it was nice of them to invite me and b)I NEEDED to see how weird a Japanese bowling would be. I thought I'd go there, and see bowlers standing holding their balls at the end of the lane, radiating waves of yellow energy and screaming for five minutes, only to finally hurl their ball down the lane, which would then be surrounded by speed lines as it picked up speed and slammed into the pins at the other end. The bowler would then look relieved, but then the smoke would clear, revealing that the pins, in fact, had not been effected at all and were still standing. Then everyone would run around all shocked for a while, and then a big robot would arrive or something. It could happen. Sadly the bowling alley turned out to be almost disappointingly un-Japanese, by which I mean, un-freakishly-weird. Sure, there were a few distinctly Japanese touches -- the fact that bowling shoes were dispensed from giant vending machines, for instance, or the constant animations of a little monk flinging fireballs at anthropomorphic bowling pins wrapped up like mummies that would appear every time one rolled a ball -- but overall, it was pretty similar to an American bowling alley. There were even the same exact archetypes of bowlers that are found in American alleys. There were rowdy, slacker high-school kids, there were paunchy groups of middle-aged men, there were groups of drunken businessmen still in nice suits and ties...okay, so maybe that last one is pretty Japanese. Oh, and even the Guy With the Ponytail and Way-Too-Expensive-Bowling Glove was there, acting as if bowling was the greatest test of skill and talent in the world ("Nobody fucks with the Jesus!"). Yes, true intercultural harmony is best reached when hurling heavy balls at slender white objects. Man, I'm not even sure what I'm aiming at with that one. Drunken birthday party for me friend Beth in Ueda tonight. We'll see how it goes. Further proof that Japanese people are weird. Oh, and happy 30th (sweet christ on a bagel that's old) birthday Garrick, while I'm at it. Last night's party was fun and interesting in that it's-never-fun-or-interesting-to-hear-about-other-people's-nights-spent-drinking kinda way. I wasn't really expecting too much out of it but it turned out to be a nice, friendly, relatively low-key kind of affair. As a bonus I met two cool Japanese guys named...uh...crapineverrememberjapanesenames, uh, Watanabe and Sato who live in my area, one of whom was even nice enough to give me a lift home so I didn't have to crash on the floor of someone's house, impeding the sleep of others with my god-awful snoring. At first I was a little wary of accepting the ride since, ah, well, we had been in a BAR all night after all, but never fear, I administered the infallible "stand on one foot and touch your nose with your fingers" sobriety test, and he passed with flying colors. That's an American innovation, by the way; they have no such sobriety gauge here (further proof that he was sober: he didn't even giggle when I made him do it). I think this is because in Japan, any such test would be unnecessary: when Japanese people are drunk, you KNOW they are drunk -- they act like honest-to-god CARTOONS, never letting a second go by without shouting, laughing, or screaming insanely. Also, in the spaces between blinks the Alcoholic Ninja deftly sneaks in and sprays their clothing with a Secret Ninja Rumpling Solution. Or at least that's what I think happens, because man do they look disheveled but quick. Anyway, as it was 3 in the morning I was already super-appreciative of the ride, but it also provided a fine opportunity because I so rarely get the chance to practice my Japanese with people closer to my own age. Usually the people I speak Japanese with (i.e., my co-workers) have at least a good 10-15 years on me, most of them even more. So it was cool to be able to have a nice one-on-one conversation in Japanese on the 40-minute ride home, with someone close to my own age, about topics other than whether I can cook, whether I can use chopsticks, and how cold Nagano is (read: VERY). Of course, this provided its own set of problems, since I actually get kind of self-conscious when speaking Japanese with younger people. I mean when talking with older people, I'm expected to use the more formal speech learned in textbooks, and no one's going to think I'm being weird or haughty when I use the dictionary form of every verb. With young people however, I'd feel most weird; not only that, but most young people talk in a very rough, colloquial manner. It's kind of hard to explain unless you know some Japanese, but basically, it'd be like if every young person in America said "ain't" and "youse" all the time. Now, I COULD speak like that if I wanted to, but basically don't because a) it sounds HORRIBLY poser-y and pretentious, and b) foreigners trying to speak slang NEVER works well, and I don't care if they are FLUENT. Earlier in the year I tried speaking in a more colloquial manner to some of my junior high students and they quite rightly laughed their asses off. Imagine if you taught a Japanese person English solely by way of hip-hop albums and Dr. Seuss books (and, if available, Dr. Seuss hip-hop albums); the way his English would turn out sounding would be more or less how my Japanese slang comes off as. So as much as I appreciated being able to have a Japanese conversation with someone my own age, I felt verbally strait-jacketed -- I couldn't speak the way I wanted to, and even if I did, I'd look like a moron. It's probably just as well, since when the topic of American music came up, he mentioned "Cyndi Lauper, Whitesnake, Poison, oh, and I like Bon Jovi" as representatives, so I guess there were greater barriers to be overcome than just speaking style. In other news, my reader-contribution pool is growing, as underground wrestling superstar/Albany skyline connoiseur Harrison Breueueuer has another gleefully mean-spirited Amazon.com reader review on deck. Also, I will soon begin hosting a separate mini-journal by Terry McMahon, who due to being in a "transitional phase" of his chosen career path (i.e., umemployed), is taking a road trip down the east coast of America (way to shoot for those stars, Terry!), and will be e-mailing me journal entries to keep me, and therefore you, updated on every minute of it. Yeah, I know neither of these has anything to do with Japan, but I figure most of you only read this page to pass the time it takes for your computer to download yet another porno movie, so reading material is reading material, and you probably won't care. I haven't written about teaching in a while, and we sure can't have that. So I had a...pretty good day today. Pretty typical day really, at a school that used to be one of my favorites but has since dropped to second-or-third-to-last. Most of my classes were actually pretty wonderful, although I did have a downright awful one as well. Something I noticed, though: I didn't really care about the awful one. And I don't mean that in the woe-is-me, I-don't-want-to-get-apathetic-about-this-work manner characteristic of Me From a Month Ago. I just mean, I think I'm taking it less personally now. A bad class no longer means I am the worst human being in the universe, it merely means that a 45-minute period of my day at work that day didn't go so well. I mean, I used to have plenty of bad days at other jobs (Pier 1, anyone?), mostly due to customers; at least in my current occupation I can come up with a plausible, non-infuriating reason for the customers being mind-bogglingly stupid (i.e., they're eight years old). In the process, I'm starting to notice the good things again as well. As much as they annoy me, as much as they're impeding my progress on my ride home, as hard as I have to pedal to get away from them to make sure none of them get caught in the spokes -- it really is quite a thrill to have 20-30 excited children running after my bike as fast as their stubby little legs will take them on my ride home. On the flip side, I'm even beginning to enjoy my crappy classes, because they give me an excuse to yell at small children. I'm steadily starting to enjoy the emergence of Asshole Authoritarian Galvin (sounds like an action figure), it's quite liberating. Normally I dislike losing my air of cool indifference and getting angry, but when lately, I well-nigh revel in shouting angry cliches like "People who cause a disturbance, get out of my class!" in broken Japanese at bad students. Actually, the only time I really feel like a teacher is when the kids are misbehaving and I get mad. Usually, I'm clearly the former slacker desperately trying to appear responsible for his new role in the 'adult' world, but when I'm angry, and yelling at kids? I'm Chow-sensei. That's right. You may fuck with regular ol' Galvin; I mean, he's lenient and compromising. But inside the classroom? There is no Galvin; only Chow-sensei. Chow-sensei's the kind of guy that'll kick a student square in the face, and another in the nuts, and so on, until he is standing triumphantly over a pile of students clutching either their face or their nuts in pain. He would then lean over to his shocked students, and say, "That's right. I kicked you in the face, and you in the nuts. You know why? Because I'm Chow-sensei. That's right, I'm Chow-sensei, so I kicked you in the face and you in the nuts. I'm Chow-sensei, and I got another one for ya right here" and then he would kick everyone in the face or nuts again, and laugh while doing so. Because that's just the kinda guy Chow-sensei is. You don't fuck with Chow-sensei. In case you didn't notice, I added a title to today's entry because I felt like it. I'll do that again, if I actually talk about a coherent topic for the majority of the entry. And if I feel like it. Oh, if you haven't noticed, I've put up Terry McMahon's log entries from his in-progress road trip. Read them, if for no other reason than I think I did a kick-ass job on the color and design scheme, if I do say so myself, even with my extremely limited HTML skills. In fact, I liked the maroon and white and the general formatting so much I was thinking of stealing them for my own journal come December, and sticking Terry with plain black Times New Roman text on a white background. But Terry must have some sort of undisclosed blackmail on me, so I'm putting his shit up, and making him look damn good while doing so, too. Actually, putting up Terry's entries, then looking at my own, has forced me to confront the question: why do you people READ online journals, anyway; mine in particular? Do you know me personally? Do you have an interest in Japan? Do I just amuse you? Or are you one of those internet voyeur types that just love reading blogs? I mean since linking from Engrish.com my journals get a steady 35-50 unique hits every single day; before that I got 10-15. Even if it's the same 35-50 coming every day, which I somehow doubt, I still think that's a fairly impressive number for some nobody in Japan. Also, I certainly don't have that many friends, so a fair portion of you must be strangers who came here for the Engrish and became interested in the journal. Anyway, I suppose I'm just wondering what makes these boring entries even readable. So, if you don't know me personally (or even if you do, really), and you've got a minute, please mail me at galvinchow@yahoo.com and clue me in on what makes you keep coming back here. Or just stay silent and keep coming here regardless; I'm certainly not gonna complain! Went to the much-maligned Eighth School today, and pardon the awkward usage of the cliche, but well, it "ruled school." Why? Well, for several reasons: For one, this school has never had an AET (Assistant English Teacher) before, so for once I'm working under no expectations. This is quite a welcome change, because it's my impression that my predecessor was some kind of wonder-teacher; I always hear "Well, when Naomi was here" or "Well, Naomi-sensei did it THIS way..." Oftentimes I feel like one of those newborn puppies that are given the same name and therefore expectations of the recently deceased family ubermutt that previously inhabited the household. There I'll be, peeing on an expensive family heirloom or something, and my owners will stand there, shaking their heads, saying "Rex II, why can't you learn to use the toilet like Rex I?" Actually, the kids in this school have never even seen a foreigner before, which lends itself to plenty of fun opportunities. When offered a chair to sit in, I got onto it in a squatting position facing backwards, explaining that that was simply how Americans sat in chairs. And they BELIEVED me. Oh, the potential here, Unfortunately, however, no one over here seems to get "your mother" jokes. Or at least, none of the elementary kids I've tried it on seem to. Kids love to ask me if I have a girlfriend, and sometimes almost reflexively I'll answer, "Yeah, your mother" only for the kid to return a confused look saying, "Huh? What about my mommy?" Dumb shits. However, the absolute best thing about my new school is the fact that I only have to teach in the mornings, and get to go home right after lunch. Not only that, but someone actually gives me a ride, even driving me right to my door. That sure beats biking through frigid temperatures or waiting endlessly for the one-train-an-hour. Also, as much as I love my Office Days I always have to stay there until 4, meaning I get home at 4:30; whereas today, I got home at 2. True, I don't have to do anything at the office, but this is almost sounding like an even trade to me now. Kinda figures that it turns out that this is only a temporary school -- I only go there two more times and that's it. I thought they'd be adding more visits, but apparently not. Oh well. Don't get me wrong -- I'm certainly not going to miss it when it's gone, but I sure do I wish I could trade some of my other schools for this one. Also, astute readers will note that Harrison Breueueruer and his Reader Review Reviews have made their triumphant return. Read it, and bask in his acerbic -- not acidic, he claims -- wit. I don't think it happens much anymore, but this site used to crash occasionally due to too much traffic. One way to deal with it that I came up with (that didn't involve paying money, of course), was setting up dummy yahoo accounts to reap the free webspace that each one is entitled to, then linking to it from here whenever I had something I wanted to show you that's bigger than a few dozen k. Anyway, I finally did so, and you can see it in all its minimalist glory here. The only thing on there right now is a funny, Japan-related clip from this week's Simpsons which my brother Garrick sent me (thanks!), but in the future I hope to have some more small files up for you all to see. Don't be surprised if the dummy site itself is down a lot though; even small movies eat up a LOT of bandwidth. But my, this is a horribly disjointed entry. Finally, thanks to Amy Hamiya, James Stuart and Markc (oh, among THOUSANDS of others, I assure you) for answering the call for reader feedback. They are now officially better people than the rest of you. Note 1: I'm restraining myself from titling today's journal before I get convinced that it must be a regular thing. Note 2: Terry McMahon's journal entires have been pulling in some pretty decent hits for a non-Japan, non-me-related piece, so I'm going to try to capitalize on that by plugging it again here. "Terry: He's not me, but faults are what make people lovable." Note 3: A quandry -- is it considered egotism that I am considering expanding this site, i.e., purchasing my own domain name, even though it will likely never go much beyond its current audience? Note 4: In response to Note 3, and as a general disciplining of my sounding like a bit of a self-absorbed, unjustly pompous twit recently (even more than usual, that is), I have just now punched myself in the groin accordingly. Note 5: On an unrelated yet related note, I have noticed that whenever I am talking with British people a lot, I eventually start projecting a British intonation onto my own speech as well. I have given myself an additional punch in the groin for this. Right then, that's enough of the notes...even though the only reason I am writing further is so this doesn't feel like such a gyp of an update. Anyhoo, I've been at a JET seminar for the past couple days, which pleasantly turned out to be somewhat less of a waste of time than I thought it'd be. Much to my surprise I actually did gain a few useful tidbits of knowledge. For instance, my UK pal Tim supplied me with a great game to try with my students. It's a Brit game called "Manchester Mallet," or something else that's ostensibly British; I can't exactly remember. Anyway, the game involves splitting students up into teams and having them face off one-on-one, spewing out whatever English words they know in succession. If someone falters or repeats a word, I hit them in the head with a mallet and the other team gains a point. Of course, the mallet in question is supposed to be of the inflatable variety, but as I learned at the seminar, modifying activities to suit one's personal tastes is key to being a successful teacher, if you get my drift. Which is to say, I shall be heading to the hardware store this weekend to find something that would suit my particular teaching style much better. Of course, as surprisingly non-useless as specific parts of the seminar turned out to be, I still do not regret showing up oh, three hours late for it. You see, in order to be on time for this meeting I would've needed to catch a train at roughly 6:17 AM, and I deemed this to be just plain unacceptable. At least I did when I finally woke up at 7:30 after roughly two hours of hitting the snooze button on my alarm clock via intermittent bursts of consciousness clouded by an overall haze of exhausted confusion that actually had me convinced that my alarm clock was merely playing tricks on me by buzzing. Once I finally got out of bed I looked at the itinerary and saw that the important stuff really only started at 1:30 PM, and given that, coupled with the overall uselessness of these meetings, I decided if I was late, I may as well be late, and took my sweet old time. I got up, brushed my teeth with extra care, took a nice, long, hot shower, made a nice breakfast; hell, I even had my twice-a-month shave. When I finally got on my way it was a little before 9; given travel time I reached my destination of Shiojiri (which means "Salt Butt" by the way. No, really), it was about 12:45. See, I even made it with 45 minutes to spare, and in time for lunch, to boot! Now see, this is one aspect of JET I am truly learning to enjoy: it's so far removed from a real job that sometimes I can't believe I'm getting paid for it. See, if I pulled something like what I described above with an actual, real job, I'd be in deep shit and more than likely have my ass FIRED. With JET though, the only real consequence I suffered was a vaguely disapproving glare from a member of the Japanese staff. And fuck that, by the way -- I later discovered that a girl had actually skipped the first day of the meeting to attend a Pink concert, of all things! Next to that my little act of temporary, musically-inoffensive truancy should be NOTHING. Of course, this sort of disrespect is not something I would want to perpetuate on a daily basis. Though it's pretty harmless now and then, if repeated too often it would build up some considerable ill will between my Board of Ed and those institutions that request my presence. Still, in my own whiny defense, this was a special and justified occasion: meetings like this really are generally useless and masturbatory-not-in-the-good-sexual-way-but-the-bad-metaphorical-way affairs. Plus, the sheer ineffiency in my travel route was simply maddening. Imagine the cities of Nagano, Shiojiri, and Saku as an isoceles triangle: Nagano is the upper, distant tip, while Shiojiri and Saku share the comparatively short bottom line. Now, Saku is not too far geographically from my destination of Shiojiri, and as a straight shot the distance is almost negligible. Unfortunately however, due to the presence of some BIG FUCKING MOUNTAINS between them the only option is to go allllll the fuck the way up to Nagano, then alllll the fuck the way back down, the latter leg being on the world's slowest and least-efficiently-designed train line. This is a train that shares one track with opposing traffic, so after nearly EVERY STATION it backs up onto a short length of different track on the side and stops to await the passing of whatever train might be going the other way for like the next 10 minutes. I found the very thought of making this interminable journey for such a useless meeting so maddening that I actually seriously considered taking out my own kneecap with a tack hammer just so I'd have an excuse not to go. Although, I suppose since specific, specialized parts of the meeting did turn out to be semi-useful, AND since I got a ride back in a friend's car on the way home (driving through the BIG FUCKING MOUNTAINS no less -- which took only about an hour and a half, with rest stops, thus somewhat justifying my earlier whiny rage), maybe I'm glad I left my kneecap intact after all. I still, however, do not regret being late. In fact, I would do it again in a second, provided said second was about 10,800 seconds later than the second I originally stated I would do it in. I would be remiss in not mentioning the state of my lodging last night. Our rooms were actually in the same complex as the seminar itself, the Sogo Educational Center, and as such were not exactly the most posh accomodations. I had no problem with the closet-sized rooms; however when I first entered my room I couldn't help but notice the presence of a huge roll of brown shipping tape on the table. At first I thought that the staff had merely sought to rectify the potentially embarassing scenario that perhaps at some point during the night I would be struck with the sudden urge to kidnap someone only to find myself with nothing to bind the victim. However, soon enough I was notified that the tape was actually there to help me combat the second peculiar thing I noticed about the room: the piles and piles of dead and semi-dead stinkbugs that lay upon the floor and between my blankets. Now, I don't know if you know anything about stinkbugs, but after someone inadvertantly stepped on one I sure do: crush a stinkbug and the ensuing stench will be such that you would prefer a herd of cows stampeded ass-first into your living room and simultaneously passed gas at the exact moment you began inhaling a new breath. In desperation I actually took off my shoe and began breathing into it, and believe me when I say THIS WAS REFRESHING. Anyway, squishing them dead was purely not an option; the tape was there so you could tear off strips to pick up the stinky bastards and throw them out the window or, I don't know, sacrifice them to Jesus or something. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Everyone thinks Japan is this super-technologically advanced, super-cleanly country and everything, but really, sometimes it can be almost abhorrently Byzantine. Before we get started, here's some more weird Japanese goodness, once again courtesy of my brother Garrick. Be warned, this one contains some rather...mature, i.e., disturbing imagery. Huh. Guess where I'm sitting right now. That's right, the office in the Board of Ed. I guess when I made that rabid frothing rant on the 12th, I just kinda assumed this day would be filled in by the turns-out-to-be-only-temporary Eighth School. The moral of the story here, kiddies, is to make sure you do your research before you bitch and moan. This, by the way, is the same reason you'll rarely hear me talk about politics -- because I'm woefully uninformed, and I know it, so I keep my mouth shut. I think the world would be a far more pleasant place, or at least a quieter one, if everyone else would just follow the same philosophy. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about: I went to a suitably liberal small liberal-arts college, where the protocol was to automatically espouse fashionably left-wing viewpoints and form veritable support groups for those poor souls bearing the shame of having conservative upbringings, all as a convenient replacement for individualized thinking. (I'd feel the same way were my campus of the opposite political alignment, by the way) Of course, me being my usual indifferent, blissfully ignorant self was really no better, but at least I knew I was stupid and uninformed. I depise people who believe they can make up for their actual lack of research just by voicing their opinions really loudly. Were I say, at a public stoning, I'd be the guy buying ice cream at a nearby food stand wondering what all the commotion was about, while everyone else threw stones simply because they had one in their hands. And then uh, Jesus and me would do a socially progressive musical number or something. Awful, awful metaphors are quickly becoming somewhat of a trademark here at Galvin's Japan Files. But I believe this marks my first one made with religious overtones. I guess I'm just feeling Biblical today. Aw fuck it, while I'm skirting dangerous waters I may as well go full-on and do my requisite rant on religion. Actually, instead of that I think I'll just tell you about the time I met these Jehovah's Witnesses, because that would be funnier, less inflammatory, and much less cliche. So it was on some random summer day when I was sitting at home, and happened to glance out the window to see a pair of Jehovah's Witnesses coming down the walk. Not wanting to talk with them, I decided to give them a fairly direct signal that they were not welcome in my home: I sent my dog out. The presence of my barking, frothing dog, held back by what I knew to be an invisible electric fence but what strangers may assume to be his last dangling threads of doggie-sanity, served to drive away the uninvited guests, and truth be told I was feeling pretty smug. But then they returned two hours later, bringing with them a secret weapon so effectively LOW that I had no choice but to relent: the dirty bastards had brought a small INFANT with them. And, as is clearly outlined in the rules of the popular children's game dog-baby-religious zealot, Dog may beat Religious Zealot, but Baby beats Dog. I had lost, and was subsequently subjected to a 10-minute mini-seminar on why I was going to Hell. These people had used a BABY, probably their own at that, as a defensive and strategic WEAPON, and I'M the one going to Hell. There's apparently as much justice in the next world as there is in this one. Come to think of it, I don't so much mind religion as people telling me I'm going to Hell. Actually, let me rephrase that, I don't so much mind religion as I do people TALKING about religion. Being really religious is kind of like having a tediously boring hobby or a disgusting sexual disfiguration: it may be on your mind a lot, but talk about it too much and you won't be left with any friends. Please, don't call me Galvin. Just call me the Metaphor King. Despite what you might think, I actually watch very little television. Part of this is because of my ever-decreasing attention span, helped not at all by the glorious three-TV setup we had in our common room my last year of college. To me, just watching one TV without playing video games on another while watching yet another program on a third TV is just BORING. The other reason I don't watch much TV these days is because Japanese TV shows tend to be, well, in Japanese. Trust me -- after a long day of work conducted completely in Japanese other than whatever token phrases I attempted to teach ignorant children that day, the LAST thing I want to do when I get home is mentally decipher yet more Japanese in the name of relaxation. Then there's the fact that Japanese TV is often so weird that it literally makes me tired. All in all, really, when I come home from work I want to expend no more brain power than your average flesh-eating zombie; just as they tromp around with the single-minded purpose of finding BRAAAAAAAAAINS, I shuffle about desperately avoiding anything that may constitute conscious effort, and that includes going to the bathroom. Speaking of which, there have been at least a couple times where I've been so desperate not to leave the warmth of my heated kotatsu table that I've actually considered just staying here and peeing myself when the need arose. The rest of my apartment (i.e., the parts not under my table) is rather cold you see, to the point where sometimes, annoyed at my bladder's constant need to empty, I think to myself, "You know, would it REALLY be so bad to just urinate all over myself instead of venturing out into the cold?" Scoff if you like, but the decision can be harder than you think, Mr. I'm-in-America-where-we-have-central-heating. Anyway, so yeah, TV. I flipped on the ol' bugger tonight just to check the time, really, only to see something I have not seen in a long time: pro wrestling! I used to be pretty into watching the WWF and as always, it's pretty interesting watching how the Japanese do things. It was pretty amusingly old-school; for instance the big bad guy is a giant black dude named Bob Sapp, AKA "The Beast", whom appears culturally enlightened enough to have taken the time to learn one word of Japanese: "MUDA!" ("Futile!") This is in fact all he would say as he tromped around looking tough. However, this scary, tough-guy image was kind of ruined by the way he made his entrance: flaunting a white feathered boa and dancing around like the World's Whitest Black Guy to a Latin-flavored song called "Celebrate!", while flanked by a sextet of not-terribly attractive Latin backup dancing girls. (On one hand it's nice of the Japanese to depict such casual racial harmony between two races. On the other hand it's entirely possible that they are unable to differentiate one foreign race from another) This particular choice of entrance made The Beast look decidedly...not entirely heterosexual; and though the Homosexual and the Foreign Monster are both classic wrestling bad-guy archetypes, I don't believe I've ever heard of them being portrayed by the same guy simultaneously. Anyway, I actually identified a bit with Mr. Sapp, and no, not just because of my penchant for rolling around nearly naked with sweaty men (cheap, yes, but I just HAD to make a comment like that), because as I watched him angrily yell "MUDA! MUDA!' over and over, I realized something: it is patently impossible to sound threatening or authoritative in a foreign language no matter what you say. Trust me; lately I've been looking for verbal alternatives to quiet rowdy kids down, apart from my usual physical way of throwing them through a wall. As of yet it's proven pretty MUDA. I've written about this before, but it's still pretty difficult for me to strike a balance between dictionary-form-speech (which the kids will laugh at for its stiffness) and smoother, slang-type speech (which the kids will laugh at because I am a foreigner using slang). Granted, were I a 300 pound black man things might be a bit different, but I don't know...Bob Sapp ended his interview with his second Japanese word, "Arrigato gozaimasu" ("Thank you very much"), and it looked so god damn humorously unnatural that I felt like were I there, I could have kicked him in the shins with minimal fear of reprisal. Then again, it is terribly difficult to make Japanese polite-style speech sound intimidating. If there's any 300-pound bikers in the audience, do me a favor and go say "arrigato gozaimasu" to yourself in the mirror, and tell me if you feel like you could beat yourself up afterwards. Anyway, the only way I found to circumvent this lack of lingual authority was to teach them the handy English phrase, "SHUT UP" before doing anything else. I'll walk in there, say good morning, write "SHUT UP" in huge letters on the board and ask if anyone knows what it means. Of course no one does, so to let them know I shout it at the top of my lungs, blowing several veins out of my neck, and what do you know, soon enough they all somehow KNOW what it means. I think when shouting in Japanese I'm subconsciously more concerned with sounding natural over sounding legitimately angry; I simply can not achieve the same amount of could-snap-any-minute authority that naturally comes with blowing out my voice in English. I guess the moral of the story here is not to take the whole cultural assimilation thing too far, since no matter how hard you try there's always going to be insurmountable barriers. And if that doesn't work, you can always teach them a few key phrases from the REAL universal language: ass-whuppin'. Yep, there's just nothing that transcends the cultural barrier like a good ol' ass-whuppin', and if I've learned anything from my four months of teaching it's that it's never too early to get a kid started on learning it.November 5th, 2002
November 7th, 2002
November 10th, 2002
November 12th, 2002
November 13th, 2002
November 16th, 2002
November 17th, 2002
November 19th, 2002: Don't Fuck With Chow-Sensei
November 20th, 2002: Rex II
November 22nd, 2002
November 25th, 2002
November 26th, 2002