２級 is over

::wrote this on my keitai going to work today::

so the mayor of takahagi just rolled down his window as i was jaywalking across the street to say good morning and ask how the JLPT went. good question. btw the mayor does not drive but is driven in a blacked out Toyota Crown Royal Saloon, nice. very VIP (which japanese tuners ruin by pronouncing "bippu" for some reason.)

so yeah, the test. second time around, and somehow it was even more fun than last time. umm, its hard to really tell how i did. last year was ridiculously hard and depressed me for like a week because of how poorly id done. and then i turned out to have only missed the passing line by 5 percent. this year felt a lot better, but i dont know if thats because im actually better than last year, or if i was just expecting and prepared to take the pain (in other words, i lubed up properly). one thing im proud about is the listening section. it was my best section last year, and i definitely nailed it this year. there were only a few questions i was even unsure about. that especially felt good because a lot of my friends thought that was the hardest section. of course they definitely did better than I did on the other 2 sections.

so, it was tough, but i only needed to do 5 percent better than last year. we'll see.

Something Must Be Wrong With Me

For some reason, I'm watching TV, something something Cherry Pie, and there's an American guy on TV, which would usually prompt me to change the channel immediately. Usually every foreigner on TV in Japan acts like an idiot to reinforce stereotypes (Bobby?) or is there just to be made fun of by the Japanese hosts. This guy Pakkun, although undoubtedly a tool, for some reason doesn't cause me to hate him immediately. I'm more just... kinda jealous that I can't speak Japanese well enough to be on TV.

Performance Enhancing Substances

Hot damn that Viper Extract and Royal Jelly is a killer combo. Chugged a bottle of it last night, and one this morning, and I could barely feel the cold through the overwhelming genkiness flowing through my veins. Got through 6 classes at the loudest elementary school around without problems, even though they made me go out and play with the kids during recess. Of course now that I'm home and sedentary, I feel like I'm about to crash for a year or two... get me some snake juice stat!

I'm gonna die tomorrow

Man when stuff turns on you it really all goes at once doesn't it. This week is the first week in like a month where I have to work a full 5 days. Add to that a wicked head cold that is about to turn into a wicked fever. And finally, tomorrow, already exhausted from being sick, I have to teach 6 full classes at the noisiest elementary school in the area. Basically, I'm going to get to school at 8:30, immediately be surrounded by a bunch of kids, and then used as a human jungle gym while vainly trying to get them to repeat words in English. All until they leave school at 3. I hope I at least get a bunch of them sick.

I don't think I'm gonna get much sympathy from the Board of Education either should I try and pull a sick day. My boss just gave me detailed instructions to go to the local drugstore, get a bottle of children's cold medicine and a energy drink, and chug them both before I go to bed tonight. We'll see how it works!

EDIT: Just got a bottle of "Yunker Kotei" which my supervisor recommended I take. Check out the ingredients:

Viper Tincture 100mg
Civet Tincture 250mg
Bezoar Tincture 250mg
Ginseng Extract 10mg
Crataegus Extract 3mg
Rehmannia Dried Extract 30mg
Royal Jelly 100mg

and then some boring vitamins that don't sound like they will kill me

My Car

It took just about 13 months in Japan for me to finally find a car I like and then get it in my possession here in Takahagi. Here it is:
It's a 1993 Toyota Mark II Tourer V. I want to try and explain this car since most people back home haven't heard of it. It's a 4 door rear wheel drive midsize sedan with the 1JZ-GTE twin turbo 2.5L engine. Trying to compare it to cars people know, in terms of basic layout and size it seems similar to the BMW 5 series or Nissan Skyline sedans of the time. The exterior length is 187.0 inches, width is 68.9, and height is 54.7. The wheelbase is 107.5 inches and the curb weight is 3190 lbs. All of those dimensions put it pretty close to a 5 series of the time, or if you like a '93 Nissan Maxima. Or, what most people most commonly mistake it for... a Toyota Camry. Here's a stock Camry and stock Mark II for comparison:
It has a longer wheelbase, but yeah, lookswise I guess it is pretty close. I think the slight differences do make a better overall image. And, of course, the layout makes it a completely different car, which is why I think the comparison to the BMW 5 series is more accurate. And I don't think MY car looks much like a Camry. The Mark II was a high volume seller for Japan just like the Camry was in America, and you can see many ordinary Mark IIs, like the Grande (lol) above. Context is also slightly different, as a car of this size with RWD was more upmarket and executive in Japan's smaller scale world, whereas the visually similar Camry with FWD was a family car perfectly suited to Americans.

Next is that last part of the nameplate, the Tourer V. I'm not sure where they got the V part from, but it means that the Mark II Tourer V is the sportiest sedan Toyota made at the time. Two other Toyota sedans could also carry the Tourer V badge, the Chaser and the Cresta. Actually, all three cars (collectively called the Mark II brothers here in Japan) were basically the same, with slightly different front and rear lights and grille, and other minor changes, like the Cresta's full frame doors. The Cresta was considered the most luxurious of the three, and the Chaser the sportiest, with the Mark II in the middle, but mechanically all three cars were identical in terms of engine, drivetrain, and suspension. People complain about GM badge engineering identical cars under different brands, but at least they had different brands. Toyota sold three cars that were exactly the same under one brand! Back to that engine... the 1JZ-GTE is a twin turbo 2.5 litre engine that also saw duty in the last model year of the 3rd gen Supra here, as well as the fastest Toyota Soarer. A non-turbo version of this engine was in the Lexus SC300. The block of the 1JZ is actually pretty close to the 2JZ, the all powerful heart of the 4th gen Supra. There are of course other differences. The 2JZ-GTE's turbos are sequential, and the 1JZ-GTE's are not, which means the 1JZ-GTE has much more turbo lag. Both the 1JZ-GTE and the 2JZ-GTE were listed as 276 hp factory, both at the legal limit for Japan, and both considered lower than the actual power figures, although the Supra's 2JZ-GTE was probably the more conservative of the two. Sorry for the crappy comparison picture, but I don't have a scanner so I just had to use my camera to get this pic out of my copy of Hyper Rev for the Mark II. Drivetrain and suspension changes rounded out the upgrade to Tourer V status, but I don't have a lot of hard info on what changed there exactly. I think that's enough for now, even though I haven't actually said much about my own car, just the Mark II model. But I wanted to give everyone a good idea of the car itself before I talk about my car specifically. Here's one more pic of my car until next time:

惜しいなぁ

My life these days:

USS Auction

Toyota -> Search
CORONA MARK-2 -> Go
More Info -> Go
Model -> JZX90
Transmission -> MT

Toyota -> Search
CHASER -> Go
More Info -> Go
Model -> JZX90
Transmission -> MT


Toyota -> Search
SOARER -> Go
More Info -> Go
Model -> JZZ30
Transmission -> MT

Bid

Lose

:(
Right now I'm trying to decide if a heavily modified Mark II is a good deal for me. It's got a full roll cage, GT wing, full aero, intake, exhaust, coilovers, racing seats, intercooler, gauges, 18" alloys... it's pretty hot. Oh also almost a year of shaken. Issues? Yeah there are plenty of those too, not all the fault of the car though. It's not in the best shape exterior wise, plenty of dings and scrapes, plus a bit of rust in one of the wheel wells. It's rated R on the auction site, which means it could have been in a crash, or just that adding all those parts qualifies as "repairs." I'm not sure how much I really need to be concerned with the condition of the car though, really. Unless it's going to need major repairs that will cost me, I think what's more important is figuring out what the resale value of the car will be in a year or two, and how much of a hit I am willing to take on that. But besides that, I was looking forward to getting a relatively clean stock car and choosing how to modify it myself. This would be buying a car already in the last stages, with all the work done for me, but no longer really "my" car. The other issue, unfortunately, is that I don't think it would be a very good idea for me to drive around my inaka town of 30,000 people in a car that would draw that much attention. I already get more than enough. But it's frustrating, because if I was living anywhere else, I wouldn't care, because I could still be anonymous. I guess I could just throw like a 5% tint on all the glass? What probably would end up happening is I would remove the wing and probably the roll cage, which wouldn't be that bad of a compromise. I dunno.

it takes 72 muscles to smile and say good morning

Yeah, I made that fact up. But, this Tuesday, although I was scheduled to work at a school, I instead had to show up bright and early at the train station in the middle of town for a "aisatsu undou" aka exercising greetings. This basically consisted of me wearing a smart little red sash and white armband, both proclaiming my allegiance to my town's Board of Education, and giving an enthusiastic "good morning!" (in Japanese of course) to everyone that passed by the train station entrance for a good 45 minutes. It was pretty hot for 8 AM, and the sun was in my eyes the entire time, but I still kind of enjoyed myself, certainly more than I would have if I had to teach that day. (I still love my main school.) That afternoon I got to go watch the tail end of the basketball tournament for all of Takahagi, and I got to see my kids beat up on another school. That was literally the entirety of my job duties for that day. Say hello to a hundred or so people in the morning, then watch some 15 year olds play basketball in the afternoon. It's great. I feel guilty that I don't help out more with basketball though. The old basketball coach got transfered to elementary school (which is hilarious, this guy does not seem like he is well suited to dealing with 10 year olds at all) and the new coach is one of the Japanese Teachers of English, who asked me to help her with the team, but I've been shirking that responsibility way too much. Luckily the boys basketball team is ridiculously strong (they beat every other team by at least 30 points) so they will be moving on to the northern prefectural tournament without my help.

Despite my only going to basketball practice 3 or 4 times in the past 2 months, I was still invited to the victory drinking party just now. My main school actually did really well, ending up as the champion for boys basketball, soccer, baseball, table tennis, and a bunch of others. I'm proud of my kids! These days I am getting something out of my job that I never really thought about before, when I was having so much trouble deciding whether or not to continue working in Takahagi. I really feel connected, like I am part of a group, when I go to Takachu. Just now at the drinking party, there were a bunch of speeches given by each sport's coach. Despite my limited involvement they still wanted me to speak. And then we all stood in a circle and put our arms around each other's shoulders and sang the first verse of the school's anthem. Enkai over. Good times.

questions and confirmation

In the past couple weeks my job duties have gone a bit downhill. But really, any change was going to be for the worse, since up until now I've been at my main school, my favorite one, every single day for a month. And it was great. I got to be with the new ichinensei from their very first English class, and after two weeks Yatabe sensei, the JTE for the first years, said "they think of you as a regular teacher," which made me quite happy. I also was placed in charge of the new 3rd year select English class. I got to go up with all the normal teachers and explain what the class would be about to all of the sannensei, and then the kids that wanted to be in my class lined up in front of me. That made it a lot easier to figure out who my favorites this year would be. ;)

But, I was informed last week by my BOE that from now on I would be visiting elementary schools at least two days a week, every week. Now, its not that I don't like the kids at elementary school, theyre funny and cute, but I just get tired of spending entire days teaching 10 words over and over, especially when I was just starting to actually matter at takachu.

A lot of that comes from the feeling of belonging at takachu. At takachu, the kids and teachers are used to having me around, and I feel more like a normal teacher, especially this school year for the reasons I said above. Contrast that to every other school I go to. From the moment I walk in the door and say my ohayo gozaimasu, I'm treated as some kind of special guest, offered coffee senbei etc. It's very nice, but it also puts every teacher in the staff room on a "this guy is not one of us" wavelength, and I once again end up suffering through small talk with the same people, again, about how good my Japanese is or how good I am with chopsticks. Thanks.

Of course, there are some things that make me feel good about continuing here. I was walking down the street and saw a group of high school boys. Turns out they were some of my ex students who had just graduated. One of them says to me, "Bryan! Gum! Last piece! For you!" I gladly accepted and wished them all good luck in high school. I saw another ex student at the train station coming from who knows what high school, who wanted to stop me specifically to tell me how much cooler I am than her new ALT. That made me feel good since maybe it means the kids dont like me just because I'm a gaijin. Then, on the day before my current third years went on their school trip, one student came up and asked what I wanted as a souvenir :)

Maybe this will turn out for the better though. I will have more control over what I teach the younger kids, and maybe seeing the teachers at the elementary schools will eventually give me a "normal" teacher status there too. I just gotta work at it! ...still wish I was at takachu every day though.

Return

Finally. Last week was a rare opportunity to live completely responsibility free, remain just barely in control, and eat and drink way past my limit, just like I did when I was "studying" here at IES Tokyo 2 years ago. It's no surprise then, that what prompted this backslide into youthful indiscretion was the return of one Ari Dybnis to Japan. I think it's a rule that any time more than 2 of the original A Team get together, chaos and destruction will follow. Me, Ari, and Anthony provided plenty of that last week. Could Japan even survive a full reunion?

So I managed to eventually meet up with Ari after I wrote that last blog post while riding the Joban line. I completely forgot how much taller he is than me, and I relished the opportunity to relinquish my circus sideshow like ability to stand out in Japan. A random waitress even stopped him to ask how tall he was, in English! She had some brass ones lemme tell ya. We met up with Anthony and Blanchard in Chiba, went to perhaps the cheapest nomihoudai ever, and then all night karaoke. I tried to help Brian as he sang/yelled at everyone walking by our room. Unfortunately apparently all that we succeeded in doing was getting some creepy Japanese guy to come over and put crappy music on our machine. That is definitely all I remember that guy doing.

Once the trains started running again we slept at Anthony's for a bit and then went to a Montgomery Flea Market conveniently being held at the Makuhari Messe. At least that's what I think it was called. I spent most of my time looking for a mascot from the 2005 Aichi Expo, but all they had was the same crap over and over, mostly women's clothing and disney stuffed animals. Oh and I seriously considered buying a Land Rover. After an amazing omurice lunch we toured all the arcades of Makuhari, and I got a bit better at the new Initial D game. Met up with Shin san that night, and how awesome is IES when they have a guy like that working there. He's gonna help me out with planning stuff for Ibaraki JETs to do next year. We had a chill time at an izakaya, and it was good to relive memories. Oh plus my phone went off and Shin san recognized the ringer.

After crashing at Anthony's again, I realized that I had left my house 2 days ago with exactly no extra clothes, toiletries, etc. So I had to buy an entire new wardrobe at a 7-11. Ha. And I got a bizarre phone call from one of my JTEs while changing in the bathroom of a Kappa Zushi warning me not to buy a new bike anytime soon. oooooookay.

Monday night? It was what I was waiting for for 2 long years. To finally Return to Y's. More than anything else, going back to that place brought back all the euphoric invincible feelings I had when I was here before. I couldn't stop smiling as soon as I walked in the door. I was also really happy to get to introduce Y's to Jay and Angela, 2 of my best friends here in Ibaraki. It was tough to describe what made Y's so special. Of course 2500 yen for all you can eat and all you can drink for almost 5 friggin hours is awesome. But so much more is tied up into that place for me. I guess Y's just epitomizes what Fall '04 was all about, not caring about anything, least of all how much you've had to drink already. Yeah, so I went a bit overboard last Monday. Ha, I had to. It wouldn't have been a proper return any other way.

. . .

I think I knew as soon as I got back to NU after IES that there were certain things that I had lost forever. I had an amazing time not studying at Kanda Gaigo, but all that awaited me were the exponentially tougher classes at Northwestern. I fell hard for a girl that I had an amazingly shallow relationship with in Japan, and then ended up in an incredibly complex relationship with a girl that fell hard for me back home. Study abroad, at least at IES, was nothing close to real life. College already is nothing close to real life, and study abroad doesn't even approach the level of maturity required to graduate from NU. Heh, that's why Shin san will always have a job holding the hands of clueless American "kids" aged 19-22. Given that, getting back to NU, having to actually pay attention and work hard for classes, all to graduate and start looking for an actual job, was a little more than I could handle. I started wanting to go back to Japan almost immediately. That resistance to maturing and entering the real world only brought about negative consequences. I barely passed my remaining courses at NU, graduating but with a demolished GPA, I hurt someone very important to me repeatedly and seriously, and all I had to show for myself after 6 months of looking for a career was a retail job at a store that was going to close after a month.

When I applied for JET, I knew the experience wasn't going to be the same as the last time I was in Japan. I know at least part of me wanted it to be, and still does. That's why I enjoyed myself so much last week. Hell, I'd be willing to put up with an entire year of being bored and isolated in Takahagi for another week like last week in Tokyo. But I have also changed myself, at least in that I can see my life now for what it is. An intermediate step, closer to real life and real responsibilities, but not all the way there yet. Thus my goals from here are twofold: enjoy this almost real life in Japan to its fullest extent, and make sure I am ready to enter the real world back home come the fall of 2008. That will be my next return.

まったくのアホみたいに

oh man something is wrong with me. so im supposed to pick up ari from narita in about an hour right? whoops, thats probably not gonna happen on time(；－＿－）
so i woke up a bit late and was killing time instead of getting myself and my apartment ready to leave. i needed to catch a 1300 train to meet up with ari in time. so, of course, i decide at 1230 that i really want to make some banana bread. for some reason. so i did, and actually finished about 5 to 1. only it takes at least 10 minutes to walk to the station... btw i lost my bike after i left it unlocked over an entire weekend at SATY. so i looked up train times on hyperdia, and it turns out there was another train leaving in 20 minutes that would be ok! success! i cleaned up a bit more and left. only to get to the station 2 minutes too late. oops. but! the station board said there was another train in 15 minutes! three trains in one hour? unheard of in takahagi! i got some food at the station kiosk and went to wait on the platform. i was listening to some high lows on my ipod, a great song called outdoor club. thats where the title of this entry comes from. its basically a guy remembering this time him and his girl went to the beach, and laughing at how ridiculous it was to go to the beach on a day when it looked like it was gonna rain. maybe my japanese is actually getting better if i actually understood the song? ill put the lyrics up and attempt to translate it on my other blog. (what? other blog?)

while listening to the high lows and feeling proud of myself for understanding it, and playing solitaire on my ipod simultaneously, AND sitting in a chair facing the northbound, in other words opposite, tracks, i felt a chilly breeze. shivering a bit in my light track jacket and t shirt, my concentration was broken enough to notice something behind me. turns out that breeze came from the train i was supposed to board pulling into the station. i stood up and turned around just as the doors closed and the third train in one hour left takahagi.

the weather got a bit colder, and i proceeded to wait. and wait. i started writing this as i finally boarded a train, over an hour after i first got to the station. ive still got almost 2 hours until i arrive in narita, and aris plane should be touching down right around... now. i hope he has my cell phone number, because i certainly dont have any way to contact him.

this is only the latest of many mistakes ive made this week. on tuesday, i had an enkai (work drinking party) with people from my board of education. thats where i got most of the grief that made me write my last blog entry. afterwards i wanted to relax a bit more by myself, so i went over to wild at heart, the one really cool bar in town. only it turns out tuesday that place isnt open. dammit. so i went to the indian place, had a beer, commiserated with the chef khari for a bit, but left as i was starting to nod off.

so last night was a similar pattern, but pay attention to the differences! i had another enkai, this time with a group of japanese teachers that i really like: nihei yatabe and kuramochi sensei from takahagi, shibuya and sakuyama sensei from akiyama, and suzuki sensei from matsuoka, all awesome english teachers. we had actual conversations! how awesome is that! i was having a great time, but unfortunately it had to end a bit early to give everyone a chance to catch trains home. i wasnt quite ready for my night to be over though. so when i saw onose sensei, a teacher in training that i worked with at takachu and later higashisho, i immediately sat down at his table and ordered a beer. i had to deal with another round of omg how are you so big type questions, but i think onose was commiserating with me there since hes a pretty big dude himself, aroundwise at least. ill have to go get some yakiniku with him sometime.

again though, i was starting to nod off a bit, and rightfully catching some slack for it. "oh bryan are you sleepy?" doh. i bowed out after my second beer, quite tired and quite plastered. ooh, but what happened to be quite close to the restaurant i had just left? the bar i had wanted to go to on tuesday! i decided to get one last drink. man the bartender there makes a strong gin lime. i was probably chatting a bit with the other customers, dont really remember, got halfway through my drink, and promptly fell asleep until 2am. as i regained consciousness, completely bewildered by the fact that it was 3 hours later than i last remembered, i overheard another patron say to his buddy, "is that the ALT?" (＿ ＿；)

i think sometime soon im going to have to tone down the partying. majorly. ive lived next to tokyo for 8 months but i keep going back to the same places: shinjuku, shibuya, and motherfucking roppongi, the expat epicenter of drunkeness. buut, this next week just happens to be spring break, ari is in town (ill get to the airport in about an hour) and the triumphant return to Ys Bar! i guess i will have to wait a bit longer before i cool down.

grr

Sometimes I think it would be better if I couldn't speak any Japanese. At least then it would save me from having the same exact conversation in Japanese over and over and over.


はい、すしは好きです。よく食べます。実は、最近アメリカにもすしは人気があります。

はいはい、箸使えます。子供の時から、アメリカの中華料理屋とか他のアジア系のレストランで使いました。

あ、靴は３０センチです。うん、ちょっと不便です。身長？身長は１９２センチです。そうそう、頭は気をつけなくてはいけません。

ううん、まだまだです。日本語は話せますが、大学を卒業したらたくさん忘れていました。今、漢字あまり読めません。

Sure, I like sushi. I eat it a lot! Actually, these days sushi is very popular in America as well!

Ah, yes, I can use chopsticks. Ever since I was a child I used them in Chinese or other Asian restaurants.

Oh, my shoes are 30cm. Yeah, it's kind of inconvenient. My height? I'm 192cm tall. Yeah, I have to watch my head.

Oh no, I still have a while to go. I can speak Japanese, but since graduating college I have forgotten a lot. Right now, I can't read very many kanji.


Every single enkai and every single elementary and kindergarten visit I rehash this conversation, perhaps mixed in with comments about the weather and "un, nihon wa naratteimasu." I can grin and bear it when I'm introduced to new people. After all, my job is just as much about cross cultural sharing as it is about teaching English to middle school kids. But man, when I have the exact same conversation with the exact same kindergarten principal 2 times in 3 months...

My other concern is that I may just be reinforcing most of the stereotypes Japanese people have about Americans. I can't help it if I'm bigger than all the other people in this country. And dammit, steak and hamburgers are tasty. At least I don't have a thing for guns...

I really want to work on making friends with Japanese people, at the very least so I can move beyond the small talk bullshit. Luckily there are some cool people in Takahagi, but I have to make more of an effort. I think most people here are too shy to actually call me up and do something, and for me its much easier to just call up one of the other JETs or my friends from America. So, I think I will have to make the effort myself to accomplish my goal.

i dont really remember weekends back in the states ever being like this. i think lately weekends have just been a huge production. all week long all of us ALTs are hard at work in our respective towns, pretty much without anything in the way of a social life, since there usually isnt more than one or two other people in the entire city that speaks english. so when the weekend and an opportunity to actually talk to someone comes around, you have to make the most of it. its 8 pm on a sunday night, and im writing this on my phone at a coco ichibanya curry place. i havent been home to my apartment in takahagi since i left for work on friday morning and i am fucking exhausted. i havent showered or shaved or cleaned up really at all since then. ive been through two double A battery chargers for my phone so far. again, i am a very tired individual. incidentally, coco's cheese curry is awesome. they even have a video game about this restaurant for PS2. and, it might not seem like it because the scale goes all the way to 10, but their curry is ridiculously spicy even at level 3. i routinely order a 3 out of 4 at the indian place in takahagi, but this is a whole other league. the scale goes up to 10, but to prove yourself you have to finish off a plate of level 5 before they let you go any higher. i wanted to try and challenge level 10 someday, but it looks like that isnt going to happen. level 3 was edible, but it was already at the point where all of the normal taste of the dish is just obliterated by spiciness. ill be ok without level 10, thank you.

speaking of gastrointestinal achievement, I ate at La Rochelle on friday night, which you may recognize as the restaurant of one Hiroyuki Sakai, better known as iron chef french! im no gourmet and ive certainly never paid 15000 yen for a meal before, but the food was amazing. the hot appetizer was foie gras with truffles, which takes care of 2 out of the 3 in the trifecta of the most expensive delicasies in the world. i went with 6 other JETs from ibaraki, kind of a random mix of people united by a desire to eat food prepared by an iron chef. of course, sakai wasnt actually there that night... but the food was still great. it was also fun to see everyone a bit out of their element and struggle to keep up the decorum suitable for such a classy place. i was definitely struggling too :) that night i went to vanilla in roppongi. roppongi is getting kind of old. i need to find something different to do with myself and the short time i have available in tokyo. woke up saturday, shopped and got some really ugly shoes in shinjuku, and finally got on a train back to ibaraki, just in time to catch the tail end of a st patricks day celebration at the drunken duck in mito.

the duck was crazy crowded, like tokyo levels. i think basically every foreigner in all of northern ibaraki was there. guiness and baileys flowed in great torrents to the amassed revelers, and unfortunately a bit too much went to a certain colleague of mine, so i ended up getting to ride along in a japanese ambulance to look after the guy. I've been in that position way too many times myself, to a lesser level of course, so I was happy to help out. also, japanese hospitals are apparently really cheap. an overnight stay for my buddy even without insurance was only about a hundred dollars. and i got to crash in a nice comfortable hospital bed for free too. woke up sunday (in the hospital) in time to go to the grocery store and get some beer and meat and go to a little birthday barbecue in a park in mito for Leo, then finally to coco's and now home finishing this on my laptop. I need to take it easier. spent way too much money over the past couple weekends going to tokyo and whatnot. It has been fun though.

Weekends

It's been a long time since I've done a traditional weekend summary type post describing adventures in Japan. Mostly because they don't happen as much as I'd like. But maybe if I try and condense all the fun stuff that happened in the last month or so into one post it will be interesting enough to bother writing about.
A couple weekends ago while shopping for a copy of Parappa the Rapper I managed to inadvertently spoil a tactical espionage mission taking place in the store above Super Potato. However I was immediately CQCed and put down for the count. When I finally awoke, me and Jay decided to head over to Shinjuku where a chocolate show was supposedly taking place. In Shinjuku station we spotted quite possibly the tooliest human being ever. I'm not sure if you can fully comprehend the awful majesty of this hairstyle with only cameraphone pictures to go off of. Regardless, immediately upon seeing the king of all rat tails in person, a chase began to preserve an image for posterity. The fucker didn't make it easy either! I was like 80% jogging to keep him in range as he power walked his way to wherever he was going. Unfortunately westerners of this level of toolishness are not at all uncommon in Japan.

Back home in Chibaragi (apparently people in Tokyo use this word to describe the neighboring prefectures of Chiba, Ibaraki, and Tochigi, as they all blend together into one nothing place), I've mostly been spending the weekends going to Mito, drinking, passing out at Dan's, waking up and bumming around, usually in arcades, then relaxing with some ps2 back in Takahagi or sometimes Oarai. Lessee... memorable stuff... I went to the Drunken Duck, the most infamous gaijin bar in town, for the first time, and was pretty underwhelmed of course. But then the next time I went I managed to inadvertently break up an entire gokon as all 5 females in the matchmaking party at the table next to us surrounded me and started hitting on me. Kinda creepy actually, but also good for the ego.
Other stuff... in McDonald's in Japan, they had a special sandwich called the "Mega Mac" also advertised as "Beef Heaven." It's a Big Mac with double the meat. Ridiculously greasy. As I am American, everyone wants to know if I have tried it, and if its the size of normal hamburgers in America. In this picture Jon is not looking particularly pleased at the All American bounty set out in front of him. I didn't think it was that bad, but certainly not good, and certainly not something I would have eaten if not for the cachet associated with it.

Yeah those two stories just call to mind the whole experience of living in the countryside and being as stereotypically foreign as you can be. I think when most Japanese people hear the word "gaijin" they think: tall, blonde hair, blue eyes, big, hairy, meat eating monster. And uhh... yeah I'm kind of all of those things.

This has its advantages and disadvantages, which I will hopefully write about at a later date.

Allez Cuisine

Well, I might have used cookware officially endorsed by the first Iron Chef of French cuisine, but yea Iron Chef I ain't. I thought this was kind of amusing, so let's take a look at the cooking process for tonight.

First, preparation. Wash the frying pan that has been sitting in the sink since the last time it was used last week, but then get too lazy to dry it, so just put it on the burner and turn the heat on. The water will just evaporate right?
Next, take stock of ingredients. Decide to cook eggs because of short preparation time. You need to have some kind of fat to make sure stuff doesn't burn and stick to the pan right? Add a little bit of olive oil to the pan since there's no other kind of oil or butter or anything. Wait, that pat has been sitting on the burner for a long time. It's probably too hot, better turn it down. Add eggs to the pan, maybe with some salt or pepper.
Hmm, that doesn't look like much food. What else could go with it? Right, rice. It's all set to go in the rice cooker from the last aborted cooking attempt. How long has it been in there... Maybe 5 days? Ooh, yeah, its pretty nasty. Half dried out and half soaked and gunky. Ah well, just put it in the pan. That's how you make fried rice right? Better stir everything around in the pan for a bit too.
Just plain eggs and rice doesn't sound very tasty. Need some flavor. That's what hot sauce is for! But rice is like Asian, and Tabasco isn't... so use the Thai sweet chili sauce. Better put a lot on. Wait, some meat would be good too. The only thing in the fridge is bacon? Ah well, in it goes. Oh shit, those eggs have already been cooked and scrambled for like 5 minutes. Gotta finish this soon or they'll burn in there! Is this bacon cooked already? Probably. Eh, looks done enough. Plate it up.

The end result

Man that was nasty. Greasy and way too sweet, since apparently both the hot sauce and bacon were mostly sugar. That rice really had no business being eaten in any way either. Maybe cooking isn't really the best course of action.

sorted (basically)

well I haven't signed anything yet, but long story short, I've decided to give Takahagi another year. i feel like i should have a more definite reason that i can write about and tell people when they inevitably ask why, but i'm gonna have to think a bit more before i can do that. i know there are things i still want to get out of living in japan. i want to get better at japanese and at least pass the nikkyuu. i want to make actual japanese friends. i want to buy a mark II touring V and learn how to drift. and while i do worry about missing another year back home, i think in the end it will have to wait. honestly, i know i will greatly miss out on being able to see my friends and family back home. but also, one thing i have to thank the JET program for is providing me with the motivation and clarity of purpose in going to law school. my last post was completely true, but maybe it came off as being a bit negative in how i view the day to day activities of my job. in the end, i still don't want the weekends to be over, and i still can't wait for friday night to come around, but the time in between isn't all that bad. i really really like my job. i have more "damn, life is good" moments than any other time I can think of. but, JET hopefully has shown me that there is a lot more to life than just a "fun" 9-5 job. i have no real idea of what law school would offer me, but i know now that i want to go down that road next. i only hope that after giving me that desire JET hasn't taken away my ability to actually accomplish it, as I can feel my grasp on the English language lessening every single day...

anyway. i will come back to america eventually. please wait for me. i miss everyone back home, and it was not an easy decision to postpone our reunion for another year. i know my path will bring me back in line with the people that matter to me, but it will have to be just a little later. in the meantime, come to japan! you might not ever get the chance again to have such a knowledgeable tour guide that you know so well :) also, i think i wasn't completely telling the truth last time when i said i didn't really have any girls on the mind. turns out thats impossible.

2 weeks or so to figure this out

hey hey, look at that. it did in fact take another month and a half for me to write a new post (I just finished the post from December 20th a couple minutes ago). first off, i never got around to linking in all the pictures that i talked about a couple posts ago. but you can take a look at the gallery of all my pictures of takahagi here . i feel like there's a lot more that i want to share about this town. unfortunately i already have to decide within the next couple weeks whether or not i want to spend another year working and living in takahagi, and its a hell of a question.

here's my daily routine: get up, bike to school (or get driven to kimida) and get there maybe 2 minutes before the first class starts. if i have to teach, then i go to class, and talk with my JTE on the way to figure out what we will do. more often than not, my role in class is to read out of the textbook, wander around the room and help kids as they do worksheets, and occasionally something more interesting. i have lunch with a different class each day, which is mostly eaten in silence, unless the kids are feeling talkative. but really, they barely have enough time to finish all their food in the lunch break, so I cut them some slack. when i don't have class, i sit in the teachers room and attempt to amuse myself, or to do something productive, but usually just end up dozing in my chair. at 4:15 i leave, usually feeling slightly guilty about not attending the basketball practice. (but im gonna start back up with it! really!) after school i usually have some errands to run, and then i go to the gym with tim, get back, eat some food and chill for an hour or two on the internet or with some video games before i go to sleep. on weekends, I will usually meet up with friends in Mito, or, if someone comes up with a good enough reason, I will spend the change (about $60 round trip) and time (at least 2 hours each way) to go into Tokyo.

it might not sound like it from that description, but my job is actually my favorite part of life these days. my job is easy and pretty stress free, if not particularly challenging. overall i really enjoy working with (all but one) of the japanese teachers. and every day one of my kids will end up doing something or saying something to make me smile or laugh. sometimes even on purpose. and when we actually plan out lessons, and they work, i get a huge feeling of satisfaction. the flip side of how easy my job is is that its not particularly fulfilling. however, i know from experience that its mostly because of the lack of work i put into most lessons. as i said, when it works, its a great feeling. but, even when I feel like I have accomplished something in my job, there is still a nagging feeling that I should be doing something more with my life.
I think what I ideally want out of my job is to do something that I enjoy and I feel I am uniquely qualified for. So overall JET gives me half of that, which is better than the last job I had, which gave me neither. one of the things holding me back from truly being fulfilled in my job as an ALT is the sense that I am replaceable. which I am. which is why JET is a temporary position. this feeling stops me from getting everything i need even when I'm thinking to myself "this job is awesome."

and for the past week, I haven't even been liking my job very much at all. unfortunately the A part of ALT stands for assistant, which means that the Japanese teachers we are assigned to work with control a large part of the job experience for us. I feel lucky in that I am perfectly happy and content with 8 of the 9 junior high school teachers I work with. but that last teacher makes me dread work. i realize that much of my frustration and anger at working with her is in no way her fault, but that doesn't stop the situation from making me want to get the fuck out of the country. the worst part is how my frustrations carry over to other people at that school who aren't even involved in teaching english, or the kids themselves.

to add onto that, life outside of the classroom leaves much to be desired as well. the weekday routine isn't bad. going to the gym at least 3 times a week is a pretty good habit to get into. but unfortunately thats basically all I have time to do. the biggest problem with takahagi is its location. being 45 minutes to an hour from the nearest group of people i can hang out with means that i have to invest a serious amount of time just for traveling to and from my destination. so, i can't really go to the gym, then meet up with friends, and then get home. and thats just if i want to go to mito, which is a nice place, but no tokyo. going outside of ibaraki is an even bigger investment, and straight out impossible on a weekday. even on the weekends it means finding a place to stay and paying even more money, or leaving to catch the last train back to takahagi just when things are starting to get fun.

so life is fairly solitary. and isolated. which I have actually been dealing with pretty well. in fact, living by myself was one of the things i was looking forward to doing in japan. not that i havent enjoyed having roommates in the past, but it is very very comforting to come back home and have it be your home, and no one else's. im also finding being single and not looking for any kind of relationship nice. More than just the fact that that this is the longest I've gone without having a girlfriend since soph year of college, this is the first time in a long time when I'm not obsessing or worrying over one girl or another. i like having all that time and mental capacity open once again. But, do I really want my life to just be something I can "deal with?" the past couple weekends I have been going to Tokyo and having a great time. but that train ride back home to ibaraki is hell. more than that, I can tell that the isolation and solitude could get to be more than i can deal with sometime soon. but thank god for the weekends.

ok i basically just vomited up the entire contents of my brain onto my blog space. there's always more to say, but i still need to sort a lot out. i basically wrote this for myself, but if you actually read all this, thanks! i would definitely appreciate any thoughts.