Sunday the 28th, 2003: A Farewell to Fuckbots

It's the end of the year, which means it's time for me to leave all you jerkholes behind whilst I head off to Kobe to ring in the New Year's. Why Kobe, you ask? To eat lots of insane beef. Also because I've never been there. At any rate, with any luck it will end up being a wild, madcap journey that will find me on many an adventure. And by "adventure," I mean "whores". If I don't talk much about it when I get back, you can assume that either it was boring and uneventful, or I was just lazy. Could go either way on that one.

Also, I note that by the time I get back, the results for the Asian Blog Awards should be in. So I should probably hedge my bets and say right now, for the record, that I only lost because everyone else cheated and is dumb. And if I didn't win, I sure hope this guy did, if only because he hates blogs too, and openly mocked the specific competition, which is awesome. Carry on, you iconoclastic bastard!

Well that's enough uselessness from me for a while. Happy New Year, fuckbots. Now get off my lawn. | message board

Wednesday the 24th, 2003: To All My 34th Street Bitches

It's 11 at night and I realize it's Christmas Eve. I realize that I have played "soft-volley" (volleyball with a half-inflated kickball) with the same kids in the same mountain school, two Christmas Eves in a row now. I realize that instead of the traditional meal of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, pie, etc., tonight I ate fried rice, just as I did Thanksgiving this year. In short? I realize that I am forming some FUCKED UP holiday traditions, and quite frankly I would like them to stop right now.

There's another holiday tradition I started today that hopefully, by next year, will prove NOT to be a holiday tradition: my supervisor, upon hearing of my Christmas plans of completely ignoring Christmas and playing videogames and eating fried rice instead, stopped off after work bearing a care package of a slice of cheesecake and a ten-dollar bottle of 7-11 sparkling wine. I probably sound sarcastic but I assure you I rather appreciate the gesture. It's just that to me, Christmas is a time to be with family, to let yourself be 10 years old again, and I don't know, watch A Charlie Brown Christmas or something. To me, if you can't do that, it's not Christmas, so it may as well be ignored, or at least postponed until you can do it right. Either way, it's definitely NOT an occasion for me to eat cheesecake and get drunk on convenience-store wine by myself; although again, I appreciate the thought. Still, seeing as I'm creating a number of new traditions this year, I thought what the hell: cheesecake makes a fine companion dessert to greasy fried rice, and well, half a bottle of wine later, it's feeling like a bit of a Merry Christmas this year after all.

Let me review my day for you. I went to school with the full knowledge that I had NO lessons left to teach these children. My procrastination powers have gotten so great/low that I'm no longer waiting until the night before to take care of responsibilities, oh no, I am now waiting until the five minutes immediately prior. I've gotten quite good at stalling/thinking on my feet. I walk in, realize I'm boned, but do I panic? No. Because then I decide is a good time for the children to spend a few minutes reviewing old lessons. Hey, I have an idea: who wants to say "My name is _______." for the class? All right? How about five people. And after that, let's find five more people to say "I like ______." And don't worry children, even though Chow-sensei may appear to be frantically running about the room looking for items to make games out of ("...I know, animal noises! No, I already taught the bastards that...oh, I know, the 'Eraser Game' where I shout a number in English and they need to toss the eraser that many people ahead of them...oh wait, that's stupid. FUCK"), rest assured he really is listening so FUCKING HELL WHY DO YOU ONLY HAVE TWO ERASERS make sure to do your best!

Anyway, the game I eventually came up with was a modified version of the "Ostrich Game", which comes from Genki-English.com. In this game, you get two kids, stick pictures on their backs, get them in a circle, and make them run around trying to see the picture on the other person's back. But see, the best part about holiday lessons is you can modify old lessons to include shit like "Santa" and "Elf" and "Ruth Bader Ginsberg" and all of a sudden you're not just teaching kids useless animal or fruit names, you're teaching them culture. Hence, make the pictures on the kids' backs Christmas pictures and it's no longer just the Ostrich Game, but an entirely new one I chose to call "Hopping Christmas" because fuck if I could think of anything else. Anyway, in what is becoming a both increasingly alarmingly and impressive habit, I managed to blow through preparations for this game in five minutes, and by the time the first bell rang I had prepared sixteen pictures ready to schwack onto kid's backs. Among them were your standard Santa, sleigh, reindeer, tree, and candy cane, but what with my being both a) cripplingly narcissistic, and b) enamored with religious irony, I included two additional items that always seem to creep into my lesson plans. Those two things being, of course, myself (dressed as Santa Claus), and your Lord and Savior and mine -- unless you're part of one of those weird religions -- Jesus Christ:



Galvin Claus and his good friend, Jesus

I'm not sure why, but to me there is preciously little else funnier than Jesus Christ looking all doofy-happy and giving a thumbs up. Even as I grow increasingly spiritual, in my own special way, my defining theological tenet is that if there IS a God, he's got to have a pretty good sense of humor what with how the everyday world works. Either way, I have a hard time believing an omnipotent being would care what I think, or more importantly, that he couldn't take a joke. As for the Santa-me, well, like I said, I fucking love me and thus my kids should too. Plus, you'll note that I found a relatively subtle way to essentially give all my kids the middle finger.

Anyway, I guess the point is, it hasn't really been...Christmas...this year, but that's not to say it hasn't had its good points. For instance, my landlord calling me and telling me he'd been mistakedly charging me $300 too much rent over the past year, thus giving me some cash to fund my upcoming New Year's trip; or as I mentioned, my supervisor showing some human concern, even though it resulted in my first time drinking alone ever. I'd be lying if I said a large part of me didn't wish I was home right now, at the time I feel that everyone SHOULD be home. The first time I decided to spend Christmas in Japan it was because "who knows how many times I'll have to chance to spend my holidays in Japan." The second time, I spent it with a girlfriend and a good friend; which while different from my usual definition, made it quite the enjoyable holiday anyway. This year, my third Japanese Christmas, I spend it with a $3 Santa outfit and $5 worth of a $10 bottle of 7-11 wine. One of those things that's best not to spend too much time dwelling on I guess; but, much like the past year and a half in general, I know the difference between where I'd like to be and where I feel I must be, and accept each of those places for what they are. So yeah, I'm skipping Christmas again, for the third time now. But the nice thing about holidays is that if you miss one, well, there's always next year...

Okay, it's late, I'm drunk, and I have to work tomorrow. Before I go, I'd like to sincerely wish all you fuckbots out there a Merry Christmas, or whatever weird non-Christmas December holiday you celebrate, which I shall now sensitively condense into a single holiday, Minorikwanzakuh. Enjoy your turkey, your tree, your Bing Crosby songs, and your holiday specials. Seriously. As for me? Well, there's a couple minutes left in MY time zone's X-Mas, so I shall celebrate it in my own, special way.

...by which I mean, of course...NAKED!

So, just like the flashing gut-neon says: Merry Christmas, fuckbots. And to all, a good-enough night. | message board

Thursday the 18th, 2003: L-A-W-S-U-I-T

Another day, another kid ending up with blood gushing from his knee as a direct result of one of my classes. Man, really quite an inordinate amount of my lessons seem to end up with kids either crying or bleeding. I really am almost cartoonishly bad at this job.

Today's injury came during a game of 'Body Alphabet,' where the kids lay on the floor and spell things out with their lithe, supple bodies. This is a game that the kids are generally really into regardless of age; partly because I split them into teams of Boys vs. Girls to exploit prepubescent sexual tension as a shortcut to varied and engaging learning material. All the 'experts' suggest introducing new games every 15-20 minutes; but you'd be surprised how long the desire to prove one's own gender as the better will keep kids going. Actually, one could argue that every single facet of society springs, at least on some level, purely from a primal urge to provoke some kind of reaction, be it positive or negative, from the opposite sex.. I'd go on about this, but really I'm digressing rather quite a bit so I'll just skip to the end and tell you I was going to make a joke about the presidency; which probably sounds pretty lame in encapsulated form, but I assure you if I didn't have an important online journal entry to get back to I'd lay that joke out in full and you would be fucking floored.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, Body Alphabet. Possibly my favorite game, at least of late, pretty much for no reason other than while it's one thing to see a kid mess up the alphabet on paper and write an "R" backwards or something, it's quite another to see a gaggle of kids sprawled on the floor supposedly spelling "SISTERS" when in reality their stubby makeshift flesh-letters are all pointing in vastly different directions as if some kind of giant floor-bat were emitting a grotesque corporeal version of sonar. Overall, though, I think it is actually a pretty good activity since by the end the kids really do seem to have a much better idea as to the general orientation of English alphabet letters. If played purely by the books, it's an activity I'd highly recommend for all the rest of you unfortunate enough to be similarly trapped in the Elementary Level of this particular circle of Hell. Where the child-crippling insanity comes in, then, is as always with my own personal tweaks; innovative little injections of myself into formerly harmless activities that keep the kids guessing in that 'what will our crazy foreign teacher do next' kind of way but also, like I said, end fairly frequently with students dripping some kind of bodily fluid, be it tears or blood (and no, not that third one, sicko). Today's innovation was, instead of having the kids lay on the floor from the start and form the letters when I wrote them, I figured it might be fun if I had them run from the very back of the room and dive to the floor in groups of 16 at a time. Yes, clearly I should be a licensed educator.

Anyhoo, that little hook to keep the kids interested in the last 5 minutes of the last class of the day really wouldn't have ended up being as bad an idea as it sounds, had I noticed that little chunks of the floorboards were, inexplicably, missing. I'm sure they were perfectly safe, barely noticeable in fact, to kids just y'know, walking around on them on two feet. But try having a kid who, by the way, was QUITE large for his age skid on to the floor and jam his knee into one of those little divets, and well...*GUSH*. It really wasn't that bad -- other than my reacting in my usual dizzy, light-headed manner whenever faced with blood -- the school nurse put some gauze on it to stop the bleeding and that was that...but still, sometimes I wonder if the other, real, teachers, wonder if I'm intentionally trying to find ways to somehow suck even more at my job. Ugh.

Oh, and one last caveat for this game? The overwhelming temptation to have the students spell out words that are, ah...well, let's just call them inappropriate for a school setting, and leave it at that.

"B,U,S...T?"

Wow, can you believe I I intended NOT to write an actual entry today? Really I only started writing this to plug...the brand-new, bigger, better, CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE NON-ADVENTURE I just finished. Well, technically, it's not brand-new, since I originally wrote it this August for Japanzine, a Japanese magazine devoted to foreigners. One of the editors looked at my site, liked the original Choose-Your-Own-Adventure article and asked if I would like to try submitting an extended version for the magazine. Anyway, like I said, that was back in August, and seeing as the article has been in editorial limbo ever since, I figured I may as well get some mileage out of it and put it up here. Think of it as my little thank-you for voting in the Asian Weblog Awards. Which, by the way, I am winning in both targeted categories but NOT BY ENOUGH SO VOTE IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY. Hopefully it provides some measure of distraction for the horrible, horrible Final Exams many of you are no doubt taking around now. Well, anyway, that's it for me. Time for a beer, if for nothing else than to wash the blood off my hands. | message board

Tuesday the 16th, 2003: The Best Two Deadly Sins

No matter how many times I say it, I can't say it enough: I frickin' LOVE the special school. Today's ENTIRE morning itinerary: making popcorn. Yes, quite a strenuous, full plate of activities, I know; I can't believe I managed to get through it somehow, what with a dozen mentally handicapped high school kids making popcorn for two hours whilst I did little more but eat it in fistfuls and tell them that yes, we have popcorn in America, too. Technically I was supposed to be bagging the popcorn so it could then be sold to school visitors, but hey -- Point A, they only sell them for 30 cents anyway, so clearly the sales aren't out of any dire financial straits; Point B, you can't put a chronic snacker like me in front of enough popcorn to fill five pairs of a fat woman's underpants and expect me not to eat some. That's like taking a nymphomaniac to a sex orgy and saying 'here, you can just work the camera all night.'

Then came lunch, which consisted of ramen noodles, possibly my favorite food, for which I got quadruple portions because half the class was sick. Of course, since I was still full of popcorn actually eating all this would have caused me to vomit violently, but hey, no one ever said wild hedonism was easy.

After that, we had the only portion of the day in which I was actually required to work: some time aside for the kids to ask me questions in English. As you might imagine, properly answering questions made in English by a handful of mentally handicapped children is a feat that requires no less than WEEKS of prior preparation (sample answer: "Yes." sample question: 'Do you like steak'), but somehow, I managed to get through that grueling fifteen minutes to reach the last and final part of the school day -- exercise. True, we had already spent 20 minutes earlier in the day trotting aimlessly about the gym to the tune of every Mickey Mouse song ever known to man, but it appears the kids were feeling peppy enough today to handle an entire extra gym period. Naturally, the game we ended up playing turned out to be the most unintentionally deranged activity I've played in recent memory.

See, the game we played was called "Tail Pull," which had the students stuff one end of a yellow ribbon into the back of their pants, thus forming a "tail," and then running around trying to pull other students' tails off. If your own tail is pulled off you're out, and whoever has the most tails by the end is the winner. Good clean fun for everybody, right? Well, not quite. See, unfortunately, what the teachers had seemingly failed to consider is that generally, tails are located on the ASS, and by instituting a game wherein students are supposed to grab at each other's "tails" they had essentially handed them free license to run around feeling each other up for a half-hour. Which is, of course, what we did. And trust me, you, my friend, have not LIVED until you have seen a gym full of 30 or 40 retarded high schoolers running around desperately lunging at each other's asses. Making matters worse was the fact that most students stuffed the ribbons REALLY far down their pants, and wore oversized sweatshirts; leaving the only exposed part of their 'tails' being a tiny swatch of yellow dangling right between their legs. Well thought-out, this game was not.

Making matters even WORSE was the fact that the TEACHERS were playing too, and quite zealously, I might add. Come to think of it, maybe the horrible potential ramifications for this game weren't quite so unintentional after all. At least, that's what I'd like to think, seeing at one point in the game I turned around in response to an ass-grabbing and found one of the younger (read: HOTTER) female teachers standing there, the obvious perpetrator. She had only just realized what she had done, but by then it was too late; we fell into each other's arms and sweatily produced the proper genetic circumstances to construct six human babies right there on the gym floor. Okay, what actually happened is she turned red and ran away, whereas I lost my footing due to running around in slippers on the gym floor and fell over, nearly tearing my groin in two. But hey. If a guy who spends his work day eating popcorn and grabbing his students' asses can't indulge in a little fantasy, then by God I don't know who can. | message board

Sunday the 14th, 2003: Gladiators and Samurai

Friday evening was the end-of-year party with my Board of Education; which, predictably, was a night of karaoke, insanely heavy drinking, and of course, the male head of my BOE repeatedly trying to kiss/dance with me. I've got this secret theory that 'Samurai' culture, if you get me, has never really quite left the Japanese, only been repressed, and every time I have a meeting like this I am proven unfortunately right. When the top guy for the city's entire Board of Education is forcing you to sing "You Are My Sunshine" while dancing with you and finally managing to kiss your ear, in terms of the Emasculation Scale you are only two short steps away from being made to lay naked upon the ground while he eats sushi off your chest. Some people like to say that Japan has a problem with sexual harassment in the workplace, but I merely wipe the lipstick letters spelling "B-I-T-C-H" off my chest and tell these people that they're crazy because THE WHOLE THING NEVER HAPPENED NOW LET'S DROP IT ALL RIGHT.

Seriously though, the party did prove to be a pretty fun time, as it took place in this really posh hotel equipped with hot springs, awesome restaurants, and wonder of wonders, an AIR HOCKEY TABLE. My supervisor (who is really just another schmoe in the BOE, and not to be confused with the actual top guy) got absolutely TANKED and demanded I play him, and despite being barely able to stand he somehow managed to absolutely thrash me two games in a row. Still, after the "cup of pee" fiasco that took place at my physical earlier this month, the timeliness of this little male-bonding experience was quite appreciated. That is until we went to the hot springs afterward where, deprived of my glasses and thus nearly blind, I spent almost 15 minutes coming up to other naked men and squinting at them to see if they were my supervisor. Also, call me a prude, but being an American who was never part of any organized sports team in high school, I still don't feel particularly comfortable being around dozens of naked men, especially not the people I work with. I mean, when I introduced myself to all my co-workers way back at the start of this job never i my wildest dreams did I imagine I'd eventually see almost all of them naked. This lead to further uncomfortableness with my supervisor, as when I finally found him and sat next to him I became CONVINCED he was staring at my penis and privately singing "We Are the Champions" to himself in his head. Oh well, nothing another seventeen dozen games of air hockey or so won't fix I guess.

Anyway, all in all the party was a pretty good experience, as I got to see all my serious, button-down coworkers in a new, relaxed, drunken light. I mean, the BOE's second-in-command literally scares me, he's so strict; but looking at this picture of him, could you ever believe it? Also, I failed to mention that I also came away from the party with fabulous prizes won in the giant office-wide Rock-Paper-Scissors Tournament. Of course, I actually lost the first round in, since again, I never win in anything, but they gave the prize to me anyway since they interpret pretty much everything as "cultural exchange." And what was that prize, you ask? Well, we're in Japan, so what would you guess? That's right, an ENTIRE CARTON OF CUP O' NOODLES:

Now see, I don't know if this particular gift is an ironic commentary on stereotypes or merely a jab at my purported eating habits, but either way I must thank the Chinky-Dinky Rat-Men I work with for providing me my dinners for the next twelve days.

Anyhoo, in other, more masturbatory news, my traffic has TRIPLED just from being nominated in this Asian Weblog thing so it's looking like quote the boon even if I don't win. Of course I'm currently in the top spot, meaning at least half that traffic is spite-traffic coming from other sites; but hey, the important thing is I'm meeting new people. Anyway, even though I'm winning at the moment, who knows how many of those votes are fradulent repeats from the legion of fanatical kindofcrap fuckbots, so if you haven't done so yet, VOTE!. I mean for me.

Oh, I'm also up for "Funniest Blog", and even though the frontrunner only has 49 votes at the moment thus making it look like an easy win, it's also a blog run by a hot girl with boobies who is actually quite funny so I'm thinking it's a lost cause. Still, I kinda think she's purty so maybe if I link her site maybe she'll say "hi" to me after next Study Hall. Personally, if I wasn't such a hopelessly vain narcissist I'd probably vote for her too. Because I mean, if the two of our sites were equally appealing delicious lunchmeat sandwiches, but one was made by a hot chick in a bikini, and the other by a short flabby nose-picker who actually remains in the bathroom five full minutes after he's done his business just to savor the aroma, which one would YOU opt for? Yeah, that's what I thought. What was the point of this paragraph again? Oh yeah, VOTE FOR ME in this one as well if you like, but keep in mind that I don't look very good naked. | message board

Wednesday the 10th, 2003: Vote for Me

It appears some kind soul has nominated me for "Best Japanese Blog" in the first ever Asian Weblog Awards. What are the Asian Weblog Awards you ask? Fuck if I know. Someone I don't know has nominated me for an award I never knew existed until this morning for a prize that appears to be entirely inconsequential if not completely nonexistent. But the point is, I want to win. Nay, I DESERVE to win. Because god damn it, I never win ANYTHING. I literally never even won a single freakin' game of Bingo until the 12th grade and only then because I cheated. So the way I see it, I'm due. I mean, look at those other sites on the list. How is there even any other choice? They may all look high and mighty with their actual programming knowledge, artistically taken photos, non-insane color schemes and clever writing, but consider that I say "fuck" a lot and constantly talk about how little children interact with my dick and anus; which in my mind is an undisputed recipe for hilarity. Think of me as the underdog; an underdog with a cripping case of brain stupidity who pieces together his humble and awesome webpage from stray bits of knowledge picked up from the two weeks I actually paid attention in World of Computing class which of course was only taken for the science credit. Vote for me, because goddamn it, something has to validate my life and this may as well be it.



Remember, a vote for me is a vote for Awesome.

Also, it appears that if I'm found to receive multiple votes from the same IP address, I get kicked off the competition; so none of that ballot-box-stuffing I would otherwise encourage. I mean, that the people currently ahead of me, like SushiCam, Antipixel, and Yongfook would encourage. All of whom, incidentally, rape babies and are made of poo. Just thought I'd mention that. vote for me. | message board

Monday the 8th, 2003: Eleven Herbs and Spices

One 'cultural difference' of this country that I never will be able to get over is the almost frightening curiosity of the cock young children appear to display from a very young age. Let me just say that if any American elementary school experienced the same amount or even a tiny fraction of the penis-related incidents that occur on a daily basis in any given Japanese elementary school, I am sure it would fall under very harsh and very federal investigation in no short order. On any given day spent in ELEMENTARY school, I can count on at least one of the following happening with almost mathematical certainty:

The list goes on, but quite frankly if I continue to type the word 'penis' I'm going to lose what little remains of my already tenuous grip on heterosexuality. But the point is, and maybe I'm glossing things over, I certainly don't remember MY childhood being characterized primarily by a perpetual preoccupation with the penis. I seem to remember having other interests, such as oh, I don't know, steam shovels, and remembering what time each day a sweaty construction worker across the street would enjoy a Diet Coke; either way, whenever a visitor came to my class I definitely would probably fire through at least four digits' worth of questions before I even occured to me that maybe I should ask him about his penis size. I swear, if tomorrow a space alien landed outside one of my elementary schools, the children would have two questions to ask him before anything else, which would be something like

#1) Where is the alien penis
#2)How big is the alien penis also may I kick it

before they got bored and moved onto the subject of how it is humorous because he/she cannot fluently speak Japanese. I'm sorry, but kids sneaking into the bathroom to get a good look at me using the urinal -- that's not 'cultural differences'; that's called being fucked the fuck up in the fucking head. A) Why are these kids even aware that penis size has some significance other than how snugly it fits inside their Underoos (AN-DAH-ROO-SUUU!!); B) What the fuck kind of bedtime stories are their parents reading to them that makes them that mindful of the rumors about foreign men? "Okay Shinichiro, this story is called Goldiwhores and the Three Multiethnic Bear Cocks: 'This one is too Japanese! This one is too Black Man! But this white one -- this one is juuuuust riiiiight...'"

My favorite non-school example of Japanese kids' penchant for precockupation (*rim shot*) was about a year ago, outside a Kentucky Fried Chicken. Y'see, outside of pretty much every Japanese KFC is a life-size statue of Colonel Sanders (only here he's called "Emperor Sanders"), and every year at Christmas pretty much all of these are dressed up like Santa (Christmas is a very lucrative time for KFC, since some extremely effective marketing convinced the entire Japanese race that eating KFC is what is done on Christmas). Anywhere, last year around this time I was standing around a KFC waiting for a friend, when suddenly a little girl -- couldn't have been more than six -- comes running up to the KFC Santa in the same sweet way a young one might approach a favorite relative or known child molester handing out free candy and puppies. Now, secretly being the sentimental type I was all ready for my eyes to well up with tears, watching this little girl so enthralled by the plastic Santa before her, entranced in the sweet fog of innocent prepubescent wonder. So what was the first thing this little girl did, approximately two and a half seconds after hugging this plastic KFC Santa? Yanked down his pants and peered inside to confirm the presence of a cock. If you've ever wondered if there are any department-store Santas in Japan, well there's your answer right there:

"So, little boy, what do YOU want for --" "HOW BIG IS YOUR COCK" | message board

Wednesday the 3rd, 2003: One Kid Two Kid Red Kid Blue Kid

I re-linked my old screenplay, because I figure my audience has now grown to the point where at least a couple of you will be quite that bored. Anyway...

The thing I like best about the days I go to the special school is it changes my usual repeating mental mantra from a defeated at least I get paid for this to a considerably more upbeatI can't believe I'm getting paid for this and also that kid is wearing a bucket on his head. Today when I walked into the first-grade classroom in which I spent the workday I couldn't help but notice that there was a giant disco ball attached to the ceiling and that the only lights in the room were either of the black, fluorescent, or empty-slide-projector-pointed-at-said-disco-ball variety. Minus the glow-in-the dark Grateful Dead posters, I'm not sure exactly whose idea it was to decorate the room like a college freshman's dorm shortly after being introduced to marijuana; but hey, if freaky-deaky Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was a children's movie, then who am I to question? True, when all the curtains were closed and we spent nearly an hour just laying on the rug watching the lights reflect off the rotating disco ball, one of the kids started screaming something hysterical about ghosts and kept trying to throw open the curtains. Other than that, though, I'd say the effect that room had today on young, undeveloped minds -- by which I mean, of course, mine -- was entirely positive, seeing as well, I got to spend much of my work day staring up at disco ball lights, and again, got paid for it. Is YOUR life as good as mine, on days like this? If the answer is no, you should kill yourself (P.s. The answer is no).

Anyhoo, being an altogether responsible instructor of small children with nothing but his charges' best interest in mind, I thought it might be fun and professionally sound to shine each of the multicolored cellophane-covered flashlights being passed around the room directly into one of my kid's faces to see how it looked on camera. The results, I think you'll agree, are surprising; as well as mildly amusing and in some cases disturbing:

Let's start off with an appropriate color for Asian races...YELLOW, har!



Okay, okay...not too funny...blends in with his skin too much after all...

Turning up the heat a bit...as if he were one big angry zit, or was a cartoon and just ate something spicy...



Bit better...at least oh, Yakov-Smirnov-level funny now...

And finally, the prize peach of the bunch...

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!

Good God, it's Demon Boy! I dunno about you, but that picture's gonna give me nightmares for weeks, as will the looks on the other teachers' faces after I showed them the picture. But hey, if they can go ahead and construct the SmokeNasium in their very own classroom and still be called good teachers, then surely I can shine a blue flashlight in an 8 year-old autistic kid's face making him look like Space Dracula Jr. and be called almost the same. | message board

Tuesday the 2nd, 2003: More Things I'm a Wimp About

The Saku City Board of Education held a free health examination for all its employees today, and naturally yours truly was there bright and early this morning because if there's one thing I'll get up bright and early for it's mooching free benefits off my job. Well, that and it meant I could show up to school a period late, which made the prospect of being poked with needles by people babbling in a still-incomprehensible language seem like an adequately tolerable prospect to me. I mean, at least for once the people poking around my ass would be paid professionals (*rim shot*).

Truthfully, I mostly submitted myself to the physical today mostly because, and this will sound odd in terms of life-long dreams, I've always wanted to get my chest X-Rayed, but not actually pay for it. Okay, allow me to elaborate. See, for one thing, I've still got that annoying lingering cough, so I thought maybe they would be able to see something related to that floating around my lungs. Secondly, I've always had a really ODD thing about my sternum in that well, it cracks. Seriously. You know how most people can crack their knuckles, or their back, or their neck? Well, I can do that with my chest. I puff my chest out, pull my arms back, and *POP* my sternum cracks a couple millimeters outward, in a sensation that feels not unlike being punched in the chest from the inside out by some kind of tiny parasitic chest-mole. Occasionally, such as last night, coincidentally, it'll get all misaligned and painful, making it difficult to breathe partly from the sensation, and partly from my constant repeating mental images of my ribcage suddenly bursting through my chest like the alien in uh...Alien. One time I walked around like that for nearly an entire day before one heck of a huge sneeze popped it back into place. Uhhhh, anyway, point is my body is alarmingly weird and I've always wanted it checked out, although of course not to the point of actually paying for it. On a side note, what with this paragraph and the November entry about sleep paralysis, I really hope this journal doesn't eventually transform into a forum for me to talk about the various weird things about my body/mind.

Anyway, the physical today was a typically bureacratic affair consisting of being sent along to numerous health check stations placed all around the building's five floors. This, combined with my complete unfamiliarity with medical Japanese, added to my general fear/mistrust of doctors/needles/blood, lead to repeated instances of wandering around the building often hopelessly lost thoroughly convinced that the next station, assuming I ever found it, would be the one that took my blood. At one point I was sitting in a room for about two minutes wondering why there were so many people waiting for the urine test until I actually started listening to the person talking in front and realized I was sitting in a room full of people waiting to change their phone numbers.

Other highlights include the doctor catching me ogling the poster of the topless cartoon woman illustrating the proper bra-positioning for women getting X-rayed, and standing next to my supervisor for ten uncomfortable minutes each holding a paper cup full of our own pee. Oh, I can't even express how fun THAT was. Consider this, you may find having pleasant conversation with your boss to be difficult, you may think doing so in a second language even worse; but let me tell you, it is not until you are both standing there in line for a medical station both holding a paper cup of CONVERSATION-KILLING HUMAN EXCREMENT that it becomes apparent just how little the two of you have to talk about: "So, how 'bout them CUP OF PEE I mean Mets?" I kept picturing myself having all sorts of late-90's gross-out-comedy movie moments, like turning my wrist over to check my watch and inadvertantly pouring urine all over his shoe, or forgetting I wasn't just holding really warm lemonade and drinking it to quench my nervous thirst.

Or of course my body could have been wracked by a violent sneeze and subsequently coated the room in a fine, yellow mist; thus exposing sneezing to be a fine double-edged sword of sternum-righting and urine-mist-blowing. I should be a poet, if not a doctor.

I digress. I luckily ended up not having to take the blood test, which was a good thing considering I waited in line for ten queasy minutes watching other men having big syringes jammed into their formarms which looked to draw out enough blood to make a six-liter bottle of really disgusting soda. Uh, vampire soda. You shoulda seen me; I was the perfect picture of girly-mannishness squirming in my seat, getting light-headed, wondering that maybe if I fainted hard enough I could kill myself before they had a chance to stick me (OF COURSE they waited till the last possible minute to tell me I wouldn't have to take it). Other than that though, outside of my imagination the physical really did go pretty smoothly, although I really didn't know what the fuck was going on half the time. I mean, I thought I was a little young for the prostate check they made me take and besides that always thought it was performed by hand and not by another man's penis in the alleyway behind the building, but who am I to question this country's medical knowledge or its weird fruity customs? I'm just some foreign layman with an apparently collapsed sternum, and if that or this entry has proven anything, it's that I don't know nothin' about nothin'. | message board

Monday the 1st, 2003: We'll Have to Get Together Sometime

Hey u guyz I updated the Engrish. For once.

This month's banner/color scheme is a direct result of my increasing unwillingness to do anything even remotely resembling work while at home. Also, I've been feeling particularly expressive this month. Why couldn't you make a banner for me, you lazy idiots?

Anyway, to introduce today's anecdote, allow me to say that yesterday evening I found myself in Toys 'R' Us um, certainly looking for legitimate work-related items and not spending hours divisible only by 11 looking for dolls that are pretty. Anyway, at some point someone accidentally bumped into me from behind (yes, I know; true story!), so I stammered out my usual "suimasen" ("'scuse me"), as did the bumper, and scampered off. Only when my friend pointed it out that I noticed that the person who had just bumped into me was a white person. You know, a cracker. A honkie. I saw that she was looking back at the same time as well, probably also appreciating the irony of two English-speakers bumping shoulders in Japan then reflexively apologizing in Japanese. A slightly less lame observation, then, came when I realized that my ingrained habit of staring directly at the floor whenever I walk around in public had yet again helped me dodge a social bullet: awkward conversation based around the fact that we were both foreigners. If there's one thing foreigners in Japan kinda sorta don't really like mostly, it's bumping into other foreigners, probably; thus my spaciness and general inattentive nature saves me once again.

You ever bump into someone you knew from high school and, having both been unable to successfully pretend you hadn't just looked directly at each other, felt obligated to make awkward conversation about the things you used to very vaguely have in common? Well, the phenemonon I now speak of is kind of like that, only instead of forced awkward conversation based around the fact that you both used to inhabit the same general geographic area it's forced awkward conversation about how you both are not originally from the area you inhabit now; if that makes any sense. Bump into someone from your high school and you'll spend the next few minutes speaking vaguely of old teachers, mutual acquaintances if any, and current life situations, followed by a polite yet mutually insincere suggestion of further co-socialization that really would only willingly come about if there was no one else in the concentration camp. Bump into another foreigner in Japan and you will sometimes find yourself in a parallel, bizarro version of this -- doomed to three-minute conversational purgatory revolving around where you both come from, how you've been liking Japan, and where you hang out; followed perhaps by an exchange of contact information that both parties would use with the same eagerness one would use toilet paper sewn out of live deer ticks. I tend to think this is even more idiotic, because at least with the high school acquaintance you at least have some kind of basis for conversation, whereas with two foreigners in Japan you're basically both standing around going hey wow w're both nt from here awesome.

Now, it should me mentioned that some foreigners hate bumping into other foreigners in Japan simply because it reminds them that they are in fact NOT the only foreigners in Japan, that they are NOT as special and awesome as random Japanese people tend to have them believe via lead-piercing rude stares or bowel-rupturing surprise at the sight of wonderous abilities such as being able to use chopsticks or eat sushi. The presence of other foreigners in your town threatens your semi-celebrity status; status that you worked so hard on by being born somewhere else as probably non-Japanese and then coming here. Not me though, I'm not that kind of superficial, narcissistic asshole: No, I'm not white, so I don't enjoy even half that celebrity treatment/leering anyway. So no, it's just the hating talking to people thing for me.

Of course, many of you are probably thinking I'm making a mountain out of a molehill, but I like to think of myself as a conservational conversationalist; you know, an asshole. I mean, call me l'il Suzy McGrumpypants, if you are so inclined, but when I have a conversation with someone I like it to be because I actually WANT to have it, not just because of some vague sense of obligation. Bumping into high school familiars actually ranks up as a bonafide phobia with me, to the extent that whenever I go home, I avoid crowded public places such as malls, bookstores, and organized hate meetings from the hours of 11 AM through 10 PM just based on the slighest chance that I might bump into someone I used to know. Now, as for bumping into foreigners here, well, that's yet another reason that I am grateful for my ability to blend into a Japanese crowd. If I'm walking around and see a foreigner I don't already know, I'll immediately switch into Japanese-camoflauge mode. Actually, most people already mistake me for a Japanese high-schooler so I don't really have to do anything, but just in case, I'll sometimes transform my lolloping, Goofy-like gait into an apathetic shuffle, or I'll pretend to reach into my pockets for a cell phone/Mini-disc player. Or in extreme cases I will climb into a miniature airplane and scream while crashing it into a little model battleship; whatever it takes to avoid conspicuous foreign-ness.

Anyway, someday I hope to overcome this little pet peeve of talking to strangers that really doesn't happen as often as I make it sound. However, until then, I'll be right over there on the other side of the street pretending not to see you. | message board .





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