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.