It’s getting warmer and it’s getting lighter earlier. About goddamn time. I feel like I’ve done a stint in an Alaskan winter where everyone goes crazy because it’s night for four straight months. I don’t understand how more people aren’t dead here after that. It was a war; a daily battle for your sanity. I half expected May to come and there to be parades and GIs kissing their sweethearts on the streets. What we just went through should be referenced in textbooks where they should speak of it with a muted sadness and refer to it as a terrible chapter in the annals of world history. It was something memorials need to be built for with the words “The Great Winter of ‘Aught Six” laser etched into the marble base of brass statues depicting the gaunt, sallow, pale faced Toyama citizens. There needs to be a JET thrown in there for good measure too. I’m thinking something like the Korean War Memorial, except where that one depicts a unit of twelve life-sized soldiers trudging through the wilderness, ours can picture a group of Japanese wearily walking to work in suits and rain boots, chain smoking cigarettes with one hand and holding umbrellas with the other. My statue can be somewhere in the back; I’ll be shielding my head with a newspaper, drinking my fifth cup of coffee, and shaking my head continuously via animatronics. Over all of us should be a cascading, torrential, fountain-fueled downpour.

But it’s all over now.

It’s a shame when the first hint you have of the days getting brighter is when you hit up that 6am train and it’s no longer dark. I was coming back from some 24 hour Yoshinoya’s and I actually stopped in the street. It was so bright out that I thought I somehow slept through my first train in the restaurant and it was 9:00 in the morning. Fortunately, or unfortunately, it was only 5:30.

Other signs of the great thaw followed: They took away the space heaters at school, the Japanese have untied all of their trees and let them hang freely, the JR train workers have switched to their stylish summer uniforms, everything smells like decomposing crap…

And Koho is in the process of choosing a new ALT to take over for me.

Yesterday Obata plunked a list of 15 names down on my desk.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“One of them is going to be the next ALT.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, the problem is all we get is a name, their hometown, an age, and a relationship status.”

I looked at the paltry list in front of me.

“Are you serious?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“And what do you want me to do with this?”

“Narrow it down to three, then we send it back to the government, and they choose the one. We’re Private. Private schools get to choose.”

“Not much to go off of here,” I said.

“I know. Sorry.”

I looked at the names again, trying to visualize what kind of person might accompany each.

“Is this how you chose me?”

“Yep.”

I shake my head.

“Unbelievable,” I said.

“What’s unbelievable?”

“It was a 10 month application process. I drove all the way to Chicago for the weekend just for the interview. And in the end all it came down to was my name. You just liked my name.”

“It’s not our fault. They don’t give us anything.”

“I know. It’s just, it’s funny. Kind of. It’s ironic.”

So I set about the task of choosing the next Koho ALT. As I did this, I remembered these two poor girls I met at the Chicago Consulate, near tears after “bombing the interview.” I thought of the couples torn apart by JET when one gets in and another doesn’t. I thought of the message boards full of people trying to get in to the program and failing for their third straight year. I thought of the weeping masses who received the rejection letters. And then I thought how it can be that somehow, in this weird, twisted, wacky world, after all of the application nonsense, after all of the recommendation letters and physicals, all of the personal statements and copies of personal statements, all of the return receipt mailings and interview techniques and memorized potential questions and months and months and months of agonizing waiting, how it can possibly be that for fifteen lucky individuals, it all came down to Bradley Griffith.

I couldn’t help but laugh.

The first rule was no girls. Almost 75% of our students are male, and I think it was pretty hard for the female ALT’s in the past here. I was told, therefore, it was best if the ALT be a guy. So I cut every girl on the list. Just like that. Hopes dashed. By Brad.

Next, being an American, I cut every non-American. Tough. Had I known more about the non-Americans on the list, or really anything at all, I might not have cut them, but I didn’t, and I show loyalty. There was only one non-American anyway, and I’ll be damned if he was going to get a spot based solely on his citizenship. You all would have done the same, so stop your whining. What are you, a communist?

After that I cut everyone who was married or put “couple” as their relationship status. You remember when they told you that it didn’t really matter what your status was? Yeah, they lied. That was also an explicit order. Couples are hard to work with. They ask for too much and expect special treatment. No dice. More hopes dashed.

After that I tried to cut every blue-stater. The last thing this program needs is more liberals. Don’t get me wrong, I love liberals, but we’re about full up over here thank you very much. I did leave a guy from Washington, which is blue, because I felt that he would already be accustomed to the weather here. I also advanced a guy from Pennsylvania. I’m not sure why. Perhaps his birthday was near mine. All the rest of them? Gone.

Then I took a good long look at their names. I tested them out, repeatedly. If I thought their name had a good ring, that person was cleared. It had to have pizzazz, staying power, and an easy Katakana spelling. Sure enough, when all was said and done, only three remained. Those three I highlighted, passed back to Obata, and he shipped them off to the Prefectural Government Offices so they could choose the final one.

So to all you poor souls struggling through the absolutely ridiculous application process to get in to this program: should you fail, buck up. Like so many job applications in life, in the end it all comes down to idiots with highlighters anyway.