Last night I went out for a few drinks with my insurance agent and his brother.

My insurance agent, Hiro, is in his early thirties, he has a wife and a one year old son. He helped me get rid of the deathbox of a car that was left to me once the plates expired, and he helped me find and purchase the killer scooter that I can currently be found zipping around on. His Brother is a 26 year old college student, he was abroad getting a degree from North Carolina, and he is back for a few months. Both speak pretty damn fine English. We went to this small, all wooden, traditional Japanese hole in the wall that was down an alley in Toyama City, it was a really cool place, as these out-of-the-way joints tend to be. Early in the night he turned to me and said "you had better tell me now anythings that you don't like." I said I would try anything. He laughed, and fired off a ripid order of four or five different dishes that we could munch on while we drank our beers. One of them turned out to be a slimy radish thing that was all right, another turned out to be some "fisherman food" junk that almost made me barf, etc. etc. We ate while we drank, and we talked about this and that.

Anyway, about two beers and three or so shots of sake later the next dish comes out. It looks red and mushy, clearly a meat of some type.

"What is this?" I ask.
"Try it."
"Ok, but what is it?"
"Meat."
"I can see that, what type of meat though?"
"You can just try it."

So I look at Hiro with a wary eye, shrug, and eat it. It tastes salty, but clean and not even that fishy. I would go so far as to say that I halfway enjoyed it. A bit later, Hiro, a bit drunk, looks at me and smiles.

"Ok, you know that stuff," he says, pointing at the red mush, "its not just meat."
"What was it?" I ask, warily.
"Whale."
"Whale? You mean to tell me I just ate Baby Beluga?"
"What?"
"Baby Beluga."
"No, it's not Beluga. It's a big whale."
"Nevermind."

I guess Raffi never made it over the pacific.

He then turned to me again, pointing at another dish: Raw cow liver covered in sunflower oil.

"This liver, it is cho-umae."
"What's that mean?"
"Well, umae mean great, or cool, or somethings like that."
"And what about cho?"
"Fucking."
"Excuse me?"
"Cho means fucking."
"Fucking?"
"Yes. Like 'fucking cool'"
"Oh, I see. An emphasis."

Conversations like this are part of the reason why I love this country.

Apparently, every year the Toyama Jets do some sort of variety hour for charity. I know nothing about this except that there is a play involved, and that they need actors. It is a musical number. So, being the musical buff that I am (cough) I decided to sign up expressing interest in a part.

Today a man named Tim Lindenschmidt emailed me in response. This is what he said

What I'd like from you is the following:
Name:
Acting Experience:
Talent/Thing you want to do (in the play):


This was my response, word for word.

Let's see, acting experience, acting experience...

Well, in middle school I played a part called "Felix the Feeling Finder" in a play, but I forgot the name of the play. Honest to God.

Also, when I was very little I would record myself like I was on a talk show. With myself. I was about seven at the time.

Let's see, acting experience...

Oh! In 8th grade my class did a wicked civil war re-enactment of the battle of Antietam. I was a Union soldier, of course. We had an amateur film crew film it for our parents. The re-enactment took all day, but the whole thing was cut into about 20 minutes. I, however, made the cut because of a particularly well-acted death scene I did in which I threw myself down a hill. It was glorious. In fact, I think the soundtrack was "battle hymn of the republic."

Thats about it for acting experience, unless you count my entire life now, which is one big fucking sitcom while I'm here.

What would I like to do in the play? Well, if it is at all possible, I would like to shoot a flaming arrow over a giant butane torch, exactly like they did to start the 1992 Winter Olympics in Barcelona.

Failing that, I could do a wicked death scene (see above).

Thank you.
-Brad

Here's to hoping I catch that big break.

A couple of interesting things have happened today, a day of surprises, and its only 10am, so i felt the need to inform all of you.

The first thing was that when I showed up to school today all of the men were wearing ties. This is never a good sign. Also, the kids were cleaning the school at the beginning of the day as opposed to the end. Everything was topsy turvy. I sat down to read the daily paper, just like I always do, except that today, just after I reached the first hysterical anti-Bush diatribe article of the day, and just before the usual solemn doomsday article about global warming shooting the world to hell in a handbasket, my supervisor tapped me on the shoulder.

"Ok so today," he started, "is closing ceremonies-"

Well, that was a quick trip, time to go home. It was fun here in Japan. I met a few people, had a few laughs, and learned some very important lessons about myself...

"-Term closing ceremonies," he continued.

I see.

I quickly buttoned the top button of my collared shirt, straightened out a few wrinkles in my ubercool linen pants, and aligned my buttons with my belt buckle in an attempt to make myself look as formal as possible. I then followed the throngs of kids to the gym to listen to some people talk for a while. With the notable exception that some too-cool-for-school little punk got kicked out for running his teenage mouth when he should have been listening, it was a hell of a lot like the opening cermonies, actually.

The second thing i found out was that apparentlythere are no classes today. Nor are there classes tommorrow. Nor the two days after that. I have no classes for four days. Now, you would think I would be jumping for joy, right? Except that I'm a teacher, now, see, I teach. If I were a kid, I could run home on my vacation and go play with my GI Joes, or my Polly-Pockets, or whatever the hell high-school kids play with nowadays, but since I'm a teacher I have to stay here for these five days and do nothing. I could lesson plan, I suppose, but I feel i do my best lesson planning work when the deadline is fast approaching, not six days away (four plus the weekend). Don't get me wrong, I'm getting paid, and I could be doing a lot worse things for a lot less money, but the chair I sit on makes my ass fall asleep after half an hour, man! Also, I start to fall asleep myself, and in an embarrasing way, not all quaint and practiced like the Japanese. When I fall asleep sitting up I fall asleep awkwardly, my face droops dangerously near the desk, and any limbs i might have elevated fall loudly to the floor. Also, I might drool.

Nonetheless, I could get some reading done, perhaps walk around a bit. Chat it up with students or teachers, or whatever. I'll just have to play with myself. Not in any way that could get me fired, of course.

Also, I laughed out-loud at a Garfield comic strip today for the first time in probably ten years. I told you it was a day of surprises.

This is the second of two back-to-back three day weekends for all us teachers. Last weekend I went to Osaka, you can read all about that little adventure in the previous post. This weekend there was a mass-exodus to Tokyo. I held back, however, because I think it is high time to explore the natural beauty and wonder of Toyama. For instance, I will be exploring the natural beauty and wonder of Toyama Golden Bowl today, when Geoff and I bowl five straight games. When that bowling ball hits those pins, and those pins fall down in a tinkling melody, you bet your ass I'll be thinking, "Isn't Toyama beautiful?" Plus, Tokyo is for suckas. I'm a homebody.


Also, I'm pretty much too busy celebrating my birthday to do anything else. Some of you know me fairly well, and some of you don't, but I tend to drag out my birthdays until they've got nothing left in them. Days and days. I beat people over the head with my birthdays. I'm talking several days of 100 percent Brad, here. I, for one, feel i deserve it. I started getting into my birthday mode when I was in Osaka. I would rationalize things in terms of my birthday. I had internal dialogue that went as follows:

"Brad, do you really need to pay eight dollars for a beer?"

"Of course I do! It's my birthday! Plus, we're in a karaoke joint. I deserve a beer."

"O.k. then, one beer. But do you really need to buy the fried octopus balls too?

"Um, hello? It's my birthday. How could you even ask me that question? I need those octopus balls."

"(sigh) All right then, octopus balls it is."

And so on.


Now, on my actual G0d-given birthday I went out to eat with 15 or so JETs and had a wonderful dinner that was paid for, I would like to thank all of them once again.

Later, I went out with a different crew for my Birthday, again. I had a wonderful dinner that was paid for, I would also like to thank all of them, once again. At the table I had a conversation with Rich, an English fellow, that went something like this:

Rich: So! Happy Birthday!
Me: Well, actually, it was a couple of days ago.
Rich: Oh really?
Me: Yeah, but, you know, it's like a timezone thing, It probably still is my birthday back at home.
Rich: I'm not so sure about that, what is the time difference? 12 hours or something? I think that would still put you a bit late...
Me: Um, I believe it is something like 25.
Rich: 25 hours?
Me: Yeah, Colorado is like that. I don't understand it much myself, but I prefer not to ask questions. So yeah, It's still my birthday! Happy Birthday to me!

Needless to say, I will be further celebrating my birthday today, splurging at the lanes. Strikes and Gutters, baby.


In closing I would like to show you all first hand the kind of difference that I am already making in the lives of Japanese schoolchildren. Take a look at the little girl sitting between Adam and I.
And there you have it.

Before it flits out of my mind, I suppose I should say something about this past weekend and Osaka.

This past weekend was a long weekend for us JETs, monday was a national holiday of some nature. With the extra time, I and several others decided to take a trip over to Osaka. The others were leaving early in the morning on Saturday, but I had to work that Saturday, so I didn't book a train with them. Last minute, I decided to take a half day of my vacation time so I could get out early as well and perhaps meet up with them sooner than I had planned. So, I file the necissary papers for a half-day vacation, they get stamped by the six proper authorities, I stamp them myself with my official little stamp, then I'm all set to take off the half day, which technically translates to about three and a half hours. Effectively, I had to file for vacation time to nix the work I would have had to do on Saturday, which I normally have off. Whatever, I don't care at this point, I'm gonna be able to get up early and go to Osaka, right? Wrong.

At the last minute I'm told I absolutley have to go to this hip-hop night in town. It's offered only once a month, and it's a "hell of a time." I think to myself, "self, you have to get up early to go to Osaka, but you can go out for an hour or so, have a drink, and check out this hip hop whatsit that all the kids are into these days." So I go. Naturally, the "one drink" turns into many more, and the "hour or so" turns into a solid eleven hours. I end up having to take the first train out in the morning at six AM, get to sleep around seven AM, and get up at 11AM to take a train to Osaka, kicking myself the whole time.

For what it's worth, the club itself was a fun time. It was a dance club: you dance, you drink. Pretty standard. The one notable exception was the "hip hop show" that they had at around 1AM, where all these groups of Japanese kids come up on a stage and perform these routines that they have been practicing all month. You can see a picture of one of the performances to the right. I would like to draw your attention to the rapt audience of Japanese kids sitting crosslegged on the ground. How very Japanese of them.

Then I went to Osaka. Osaka is a killer city, a true Japanese super-city with millions and millions of people and bars and restraunts and shops. Each night we went out we stayed past our last train, and had to get the first one at seven in the morning. With nothing else to do between the hours of midnight and seven in the morning but dance and drink, you tend to spend a lot of money, and feel not so good in the morning. Regardless, I never got very tired until I walked out of the clubs and saw the sun up, then it all hit me. The picture below is of a main street in Osaka. The sheer volume of humanity is staggering.

The first night we went to this place called Club Pure, which was a foreigners haven. I don't think that there were more than maybe six Japanese people in the whole club, which was rather strange. The music was deafening and the drinks were bottom of the barrel, so after a while you had a bit of a headache regardless of what you did, but all in all it was a fun time. It made me realize how sloppy us westerners can get. Two of our company were puked on, and one of our company puked on someone else. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. I, of course, was in control the whole time.

We slept until 2pm, and got up to find some food and prepare for the next night's activities. I strongly advised against going back to club pure, since I had had about all i could take of that style of club. Instead we wandered around Osaka hoping to hit a hidden gem, and we did. The first bar we went to was this tiny joint called Mojo that advertised "Let's stepping back in time to pay tribute to the oldies," or some equally awkwardly phrased tagline. Inside there was a tiny middle-aged Japanese woman with a white blazer and bell-bottoms on, wearing huge bug eyed glasses, and spinning tracks by the beach boys, and other late sixties artists, the type of stuff Quentin Tarantino prefers in his wierdo movies. Dancing to it were five Japanese people, one of them, presumably gay, kept thrusting out his ass in our general direction and backing up into Bryan and Justin, two of our company. We had some drinks, some laughs, but we had to go. As Bryan said, it was our "buffer bar": The bar in-between bars.

From there we went to a Japanese hip hop club called strawberry on the advice of two girls loitering in a shady alley. Unlike Club Pure, in Strawberry we were the only foreigners. Low and behold, as soon as we got inside, a hip hop show started up, just like the one I saw on Friday night; seriously coreographed, and about thirty minutes long. It occured to me (and validated by the vetran JETs) that these people (the Japanese thugged-out hip hop crew) are a very tight nit community. They are also hilarious in their attempts to be ghetto. We realized that, ultimatley, we were intruders in their little world, so we decided to leave.

The final stop in our night was an African bar that we passed up earlier because we thought it was a brothel, situatued as it was in between two very shady hostess joints. Turns out that it was a family run, very friendly establishment owned by a father and daughter from Ghana. They told us that we were welcome to their little slice of Africa, and that as long as we were there, we were home. The patrons kept pulling us out of our seats and pushing us to the dance floor, where we got jiggy with ourselves. We liked it there, so we stayed on a while, and near the end they gave us each a free shot of a hemp infused native African drink that came out of a bottle full of what looked to be woodchips. It was very kind of them to offer us the free drinks, and we took them graciously, but they were, unfortunatley, godawful. Like I said, woodchips. Also, as a cherry on the cake, the Japanese bartender threw up in his own mouth right after taking the shot. He quickly covered it up with his hand but not before a fine little spray hit me and Bryan. We all had a good laugh, but after the bartender pukes you know its time to leave. We went to sleep around 8am, and got up at 11am to leave for our train home.

On the train home I tried very hard not to move, put on my headphones, and listened to Enya. Thankfully, her melodic humming, and her magnificent synthesizer work mercifully lulled my frazzled body to sleep. I listened to five straight albums of Enya and awoke when we arrived back home.

In conclusion, I feel I should say that if I continue to maintain this caliber of nighttime activity whenever I go outside of Toyama, I will surely die. I was happy when there, and glad when it was done. Just like life should be.

I saw two things the other day that, for one reason or another, seemed very Japanese to me, and I thought I would share them with you.

What is the first one, you ask? Was it a gorgeous Bonsai tree, pruned to perfection, a tiny model of reality? Was it an exquisite flower arrangement? Was it a Ninja? No. It was a 65 year old man in a jumpsuit pissing in the middle of the street at noon. Believe it or not, this has Japan written all over it. Men, especially old men, are given free reign to whizz wherever they damn well please. This man wasn't drunk, he wasn't even tipsy, he was just elderly, and pissing in the street.

The second one I'm not so sure about, it could just be my school, but it struck me as odd, and most odd things that happen in Japan happen for a reason and that reason is Japan. I was leaving my school to go home for the day, saying my goodbye's to the various students still hanging about, and I came across a teacher, a full grown man, getting his back massaged by a third year high school student in baseball regalia. Can you fault me for a double take? This is not a homosexual thing, it is a question of decorum. The students are the students and the teachers are the teachers; there are walls that should not be crossed. Think about your High School English teacher. Mine was Mr. Siekmeyer. Now think about giving him (or her) a back massage. How does it make you feel? Not so good, right? I would never have given Mr. Siekmeyer a back massage. At least not during school hours, for crying out loud!


Oh well, to each their own, know what I'm sayin'? Cultural differences abound.

My opinion changes often on this point, but right now I'm going to have to say that Himi is the bitchin'est town in Japan.

I'm not going to lie to you, despite the fun I had last time I went out there, I wasn't that pumped to make the hour and a half treck by train. I was feeling a little queezy from the night before, I had slept through dinner, I had forgotten to get out money before the ATM's all closed at the rediculously early hour of 7pm, in short, a lot of things were working against me. Not to mention the fact that when I purchased some soba noodles at a random soba shop in Takaoka, after I gave the worker lady a ticket that I thought was going to get me a coke and some change, she instead took my soba away from me, cracked a raw egg over it, and handed it back with a large smile on her face. (In all fairness, the egg was pretty good.)

The point is, the night wasn't boding well. However, as soon as I saw that little one-car train, all painted up in happy blues and yellows and greens, with little cartoons all over it, I thought to myself, "Brad, this could just shape up to be one hell of a night," and you know what? It did.

Himi has three main things going for it. The first is the PR campaign that the whole city tirelessly runs. Every season they put up little signs reminding you of how nice Himi is in said season, for instance, "Autumn... A Beautiful Season" was the one I saw this time. Also, the city has created and patented a series of mascots that they pepper the city with, things like fish with tophats, and manta rays with tophats, and octopuses with tophats, and flying fish with tophats. I think you get the idea. These little statues have motion activated recorded voice-overs, which I sure as hell can't understand, but which I appreciate nonetheless.

The second thing Himi has going for it is Manyo's, the sushi joint with pizazz. I forgot the name of the proprietor, but he speaks very good english, and has a rockin' hippy haircut. Also, he makes a spicy tuna roll that makes your mouth `asplode with flavor. He also throws in different, new, and exciting ingredients into every dish he makes. This time, he gave me some miso soup that had bits of a 100 dollar mushroom in it, a very famous mushroom, reknown (amongst those in mushroom circles) for its earthy aroma and flavor. How does a 100 dollar mushroom taste, you might ask? Well, just like every other mushroom I've had in my life, but don't tell him that. The soup, as a whole, was extremely good.

The last, but not least, thing Himi has going for it is Wyatt, a one stop bar, karaoke joint, eatery, and hip hangout. Adam and I stumbled into Wyatt totally by divine providence one night after hitchhiking into town at four in the morning. A nice guy picked us up in his pimped out minivan, we said we wanted to go to a bar, he obliged us, and we ended up at Wyatt. Wyatt doesn't really work on normal time, in fact, I would venture to say that the concept of "time" is totally foreign to the barstaff. Adam and I sang karaoke until 8 in the morning, looked up and saw the sunrise, and decided to call it a night. We apologized to the bartenders for keeping them up so late, but they just comped us free booze, laughed, said they were going to hit the pachinko parlors, and then come right back to open up shop.

Last weekend was another winner at Wyatt. People were a little hesitant to break into the karaoke until I did a rousing rendition of California Dreaming that (if I may say so myself) was like a shot of pure adrenaline to the crowd. We sang and talked and drank until the early hours of the morning. Settled up (our bartender was quite generous), said our goodbyes, and promised to return.

Himi is the kind of town I never would have seen if I had been thrown into Tokyo, or Osaka, or whatever, and not sleepy little Toyama. Places like Wyatt are the gems that remind me that one needn't be in a big city, in a famous district, or in a fancy-pants lounge to find good-times. In fact, it is precisley because Wyatt is none of the above that I jive with it so well. I must be careful not to overstay my welcome at that great place, "everything in moderation" and all that, but you bet your ass I'll be back before long.


Three cheers for Himi, don't you ever change.

Like Oz (the KBCO dj, not the wizard) says, it's Finallyfinallyfinallyfinally a Friday. I feel I've earned it, and yet I know that even as I sit here writing, in a blink it will be gone. Today I taught two classes, one of them for (supposedly) one of the most advanced levels, and one of them for a not so advanced level. Now, I don't know who has the final say about which students go into which classes, but I'm not so sure they really have their head screwed on straight. For instance, today we did worksheets (created by me) about opposites and parts of the body. As soon as I passed it out, I had several students fill them both in quickly and correctly, and then fall asleep. This is fine with me, if they get it right they can sleep all damn day as far as I'm concerned, at least they're not running their mouths. The problem is, sitting right next to these whiz kids are several other students who cannot, for the life of them, figure out where a persons toe is, or what a knee is. In fact, with some of them, just a simple introduction is like pulling teeth. I suppose this is what comes with having a very small school, however. With so few classes, we are bound to have overlapping talent. Such is life.

We have trouble makers at my school. It is a private school, one that takes the dregs of Japanese academics; the kids that get kicked out of other schools, or that can't hack it in the public school system, or that have certain learning disabilities. Sometimes this fact is hardly apparent; i have my fair share of classes in which the kids seem genuinley interested to learn, and several students in particular that make you feel like teaching is a good thing. Other times, however, when half of the class is talking or sleeping, I go "oh, rightrightright... I had forgotten about the whole "private school" thing." No student is rude to me or anything, I think the fact that I am tall and male helps with that, but several students just don't give a damn about anything. Or, more precisely, make a concerted effort to get noticed as they are not doing anything, to impress other classmates. In this sense, I suppose the only thing they give a damn about is not giving a damn. The boys aren't so bad. They generally just space out, or sleep. The other day I tapped a boy and he wouldn't wake up, so i hit him softly on the head with some paper, and he wouldn't wake up, so I took out a permanent marker and drew on him. This woke him up. However, as we all know, you can wake a kid up, but you can't make him care.

Now, let me tell you about girls.

I do not understand Japanese High School girls. Quite frankly, i still often have a hard time understanding any girl, but High School girls are bad, and Japanese High School girls can be really bad. Once again, there are many well behaved and polite, happy to learn girls in this school. There are also the tramped out, glitz-girls that the Japanese call "Gal Girls" (a bit redundant, but whatever). These chicks blatanly and fragrantly abuse the good graces of the hard-working teachers at this school. They loudly chat over lessons, and repeatedly check their cell-phones for text messages. (Yeah, I see you, we all know people text you, we get it, Ho.) But worst of all, they will take the worksheets you make before hand, put them away without doing them, and take out their little mirrors and makeup and combs and hair-pins and do their makeup for a solid hour. Every period of class. Nobody, not even the vainest, most self-absorbed, conceited woman in the world needs upwards of four hours to do makeup. Nobody. They pluck their eyebrows, and apply base, and use that little thingy to pull out their lashes, and they put on a bunch of other shit, and then they start in on their hair, all the while giggling and laughing like a bunch of doped up circus clowns. Which is what they generally end up looking like after four hours of applying make up.


Oh well. If it was up to me, every student would be required to submit their cellphones and makeup and mirrors to an armed guard before class, and then sign for them after school to pick them back up, Folsom Prison style.

As it is, I'll just have to keep making the handouts, and keep reminding them of them as they sit staring into their mirrors, and keep sighing as their gerbil-like attention spans get the better of them and they go back to giggling like idiots. The worst part is, I know they could do it if they actually tried.

I'm convinced that my supervisor is rushing to an early grave.

I haven't yet had the opportunity to introduce my supervisor, but his name is Obata, he's 26 years old, and he's running himself into the ground. Or rather, he is being run into the ground. I think society is to blame. No, really. It was a bit of a running joke back in college to say "society is to blame" for things, like when someone would go, "Brad, I notice you sit outside a lot smoking a cigar and having a beer. Why aren't you doing something with yourself?" and I would answer "Well Mr. Nosy, society is to blame," and we would all have a good laugh and go back to doing nothing. Here, in Japan, society really is to blame. Obata is the newest full time teacher at my school, so he gets stuck with all the bitch work, most notably taking care of my floundering self. Also, putting together superflous newsletters and visiting the homes of students who have zero initiative and don't deserve the time of day, in order to attempt to convince them to come back to school.

The poor guy is at work before me, and stays three (yes, three) hours after I leave. And he makes one half of what I make. Now, I know JET is well respected and quazi selective and all, and if you talk to any of us, I think eventually you will come to the conclusion that we are all overpaid, but for crying out loud, there is something very wrong with this picture, no?

When you couple all of this with the fact that the man is consistently positive, seems to genuinely enjoy helping me out, and has quite literally been my saving grace in this country, you wonder what in the world keeps him going for 14+ hours a day, five to six days a week.

Perhaps it is the seven cups of coffee he drinks daily. I'm sure that helps, anyway.

Now, people will tell me "It's the culture, Brad. It's what they do! Everyone does it!" And you know what I say to that? It's the culture to flog people to death for stealing a loaf of bread in some places. Sometimes cultural norms are problemic. Then those same people will say, "you can't compare cultures, Brad, these cultures have to be examined case by case." And this is usually when I stop talking to these people because I'm getting a headache.

It's true, working yourself to the bone for a living and getting stoned for adultery are two very different things, but that doesn't make them suck any less. Anyway, I'm not out to change Japan, a lot of other countries have a lot worse problems, and this is one stubborn country, but I still reserve the right to cynically critique.

Also, he smokes 20 cigarettes a day, and that can't be helping him either.

Whatcha doin' there Kiefer? Does Jack Bauer need some energy? Is that why he's got that Calorie Mate energy goop?

I see you. Making that extra half a million on the sly, eh? And you know what? I don't blame you, even if you do look angry on that cell phone.

Plus, any true 24 fan knows Jack Bauer doesn't wear his badge around his neck like some beat cop. Hell, Jack doesn't even have a badge anymore, does he?

All of us JETs love finding products in which the Japanese attempt to market using English, because more often than not they screw it up. I guess this is why we are here. I saw this one while I was on my way to the welcome weekend, I believe it was the Japanese equivalent of a processed beef log. Seriously. I've seen some wacked out English in my day, but this one takes the cake. Who the hell Ok'd this one up at corporate? One of my fellow JETs had a theory, which I am inclined to believe, that some smartass American runs the marketing for this sausage company. Can't you just see the conversation in the board room?

American Smartass: "no, no, i swear, Homo is perfect for sausage."
Japanese Boss: "are you sure? It's popular?"
American Smartass: "Oh for sure! In fact, I would say that no American would even think of buying a sausage unless it's a Homo Sausage!"
Japanese Boss: "Well, you are the expert..." and so on.



Anyway, about this welcome weekend I just went through: It was an all day drinking affair, and as many of us know, when you drink all day you often get very drunk, and when you get very drunk you often get in long winded and/or heated conversations with people. Usually, with me anyway, things devolve into politics. Mostly because I seem to constantly surround myself with tree-hugging, bleeding-heart, red, commie, liberals. JET has more than its fair share of these, for sure, and they`re wonderful fodder for debate, especially that charming welshman Geoff, but what is interesting is that now I have another topic that I usually settle on when I`m knocking a few back, one in which the hippies and I are more often than not in agreement: bitching about Japan.

I will say that I generally am on the listening end of these rants, at least for now, newly arrived as I am. I am consistently struck by the differing stances JETs take when we talk about our jobs here. Some JETs do it for the kids, they love kids, the kids are so damn cute, etc. etc. Now, I don`t like children, so I`m not doing anything "for the kids." If anything, I`m doing the teaching part "for the money." Beyond that, of course, I`m here for the culture and the food. Beyond that, of course, I`m here because they threw a degree at me when I begged to stay for a fifth year at my school.

Another hot-button topic amongst us is foreigners (foreigners being ourselves.) Some people hate 'em, some people love 'em. I spoke with one girl who said that she consistently looks forward to the JET outings because she is simply happy to finally be able to hold an extended conversation with someone, a luxury that her daily life does not afford her. (I got lucky with my supervisors, and can hold a halfway extended conversation when I choose to make the effort.) I`ve spoken to others who assert that "They're not all about hanging out with a big group of white people." Hey, whatever, each to his or her own. These people (rightly) claim that they can hang out with Americans (or English, or Irish, or whatever) at home. Here, they want to hang out with Japanese. Easier said than done, of course, because its all fine a good wanting to hang out with the Japanese, but you must ask yourself if the Japanese really want to hang out with you.

I am of the school of thought that if I can hang out with Japanese people (a.k.a my supervisor) then I will take that opportunity. I have in the past, and I will in the future. At the same time, if I'm going to get drunk and make an ass of myself in a karaoke bar or something, I think I would rather explain myself away to somebody that can understand me. You know what I'm saying?

It seems like weblogs are quite popular in the circles in which i run nowadays. As distanced from our "normal" lives as we all are here in Japan, I suppose that they provide the surest, most economical means of staying in touch. We all flatter ourselves that people actually care to read about our everyday lives, and if we throw in a witty phrase or two, or a funny story, so much the better. I'm not sure who is actually going to read this outside of close friends and family, and perhaps the occasional stray kid who stumbles across it while looking to download music or worse, but nonetheless I think I should start at the beginning.

The problem is, the beginning was a month ago, and I've forgotten a lot of it. Better late than never, however, so I'll provide for you all a brief rundown of the all important, formulative first four weeks of my stay here in the house of the rising sun.

Week one: Flew in to Tokyo, was tired. Went to several workshops tired. Went out to sing Karaoke, pepped up a bit, spent money, and then was tired. Got on a plane, fell asleep and woke up in Toyama, tired. Met my supervisors, who are very sweet, and who realized that I was tired, so they took me to lunch, and sent me home to sleep. That's pretty much the gist of it.

Week two: We had several welcome events, hell, we're still having "welcome events." Of note were the two "beer garden" parties that were designed as ice breakers. Now, a month later, I've gotten to know the vetran JETS who have been here for a year or more, and the other day we talked about these parties, and several of them admitted that they were grumpy at the time and didn't want to meet new people. I'm glad they admitted this, because at the time I got this slightly hostile vibe from some of them. I still think that most of them pride themselves on having lived here for a year just a bit too much for their own good. Most of them rock, though, and I haven't met one who I would go out of my way to avoid, which is saying something, right?

Week three: Every day I sat behid my desk reading until my ass fell asleep. Then I went to go get some lunch and then I sat back down again. It was pretty slow at work this first month. REAL slow. I read, no joke, eight books. Seriously.

Week four to now: Things are picking up, school started, things are movin'. I taught two classes the other day, and realized just how little english these kids actually know. I know at least twice as much Japanese as they know english, and my Japanese is a crock of poo. The kids cant tell me where they live, but they can ask me if I have a "sex friend." Wonderful. Its nice to know where their priorities lay. I don't know for sure what a "sex friend" is, but I have a pretty damn good idea, and I don't want a 16 year old girl asking me about it when all I want is to go get some coffee from the vending machine so I don't fall asleep reading the newspaper. Don't get me wrong, I love talking to the whelps, but how about lets talk about movies or the weather or something? I'll even meet you halfway there in Japanese. Hell, I'll meet you all the way there. Also, stop checking your damn cell-phone during class.

Enough for today. I'll write again when I can. Keep it real.