And a happy new year

A few days before the first day of 2008, the weather had been intense; I've gotten accustomed to typhoon strength gusts of wind and sporadic bursts of rain, not to mention a significant decrease in the average daily temperature. Our friend Mercury is quickly falling, and as a result I'm forced to employ primitive methods of keeping warm in order to do my part to keep my carbon footprint at a minimum. For instance, anyone who's been in my apartment knows you must bundle up like Han Solo on the Hoth System after venturing out on his tonton to find his buddy Luke.


Recently I've been using a heat lamp I found in one of my closets, although its a little eerie when I'm by myself--when I turn out the lights, its as though the disembodied Eye of Sauron has returned to reconquer Middle Earth.



Despite unfavorable changes in the weather, there has been something to look forward to: given my strategic location and because of the rotation of the Earth, I take however small of a sense of pride it may be that I was one of the first inhabitants on our planet to welcome 2008. Most of you are about 14 hours behind, but you can rest assured that should anything unthinkable had happened, it would've given me more than enough time to tell everyone to prepare for a potential global catastrophe--an alien invasion, the sun exploding, any other various encounter that I failed to mention when the clock had struck 12:00 AM.

The following is a brief summary of my last night in the year 2007:

Some friends and I went to our favorite local bar at around 10 PM, where Mr. Spiller and I proceeded to introduce the Irish Car Bomb to those who were previously unfamiliar.

Get set...



GO!!!


I haven't "chugged" a beer since graduating college some 6 months ago, and after soundly defeating my opponent I couldn't help taking a victory lap outside. It also happened to be the first snowfall in Hagi, and the cool, wet droplets of snow on my bare skin rejuvenated me during my brief celebration.



After I successfully defended my honor, the night was typical of your average New Year's Eve. There were of course several occurrences that stick out in my mind the most:

I couldn't help taking a picture of this woman. She works for a guy who sells delicious imported coffee from a window in his van parked in the arcade near my apartment. She parks another van near one of the supermarkets in town. The reason why I took this photo is because its my opinion that this woman has the most perfectly round face the world has ever seen.



You can't help but notice how completely astounded I was judging from the ridiculous look I'm wearing.


Another event that caught my attention was the arrival of this tough-looking crew of J-boys. I'm surprised that my camera managed to capture the ridiculous cloud of smoke they created as they sat down and joined us in our celebration, which is why picture looks a little hazy.



After they had a few drinks to limber up, out of nowhere they began singing in unison a peculiar tune that sounded like a swarthier, manlier version of Fathoms Below, the lively song Prince Eric and his crew perform during the opening scene from The Little Mermaid. I wouldn't be exaggerating if I said it was priceless. It was priceless.

The countdown to 2008 hit us like a dramatic climax in a cheap suspense/thriller paperback novel. No one was really paying attention to what time it was, and when someone started counting down from 5 in Japanese, we followed suit. "Go...shi...san...ni...ichi...Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu!!", said the drunken mob of beer and Shōchū receptacles. Needless to say, my first New Year celebration as an expatriate was vividly entertaining.

Kobe beef revisted (Day Three and Four)

When I arrived at the Sannomiya Bus Terminal in central Kobe, I was saddened to have to say goodbye to all my friends I met the previous night, and a little overwhelmed that I would have to make new ones in the span of a day if I wanted to have as much fun as I did the night before. Instead of doing this, I decided to become an actual tourist. I made my way down to the pier and visited all the shops, tried some of the foods from the street vendors, went to museums, took a nap in the park and finally rode the elevator to the top of Kobe Tower which gave an impressive 360 degree view of the city in all its splendor.

"Oppai Park" (literally, big boob park) outside of Sannomiya Bus Terminal



A strange looking belltower in one of the parks near the pier




Kobe Tower




I watched this homeless man for 30 minutes while he tried to launch his kite. Stay in school.




As this vending machine suggests, if you had any concern about just how tough Tommy Lee Jones is, the sign leaves no room for doubt.



Since it was a Sunday and Japanese people don't get vacation for Christmas, there wasn't much to do when the sun went down. I decided to give myself a break and booked a room for 8 hours at the Internet cafe for a whopping 1,400 yen (about $10). I slept well, took a shower, had some breakfast and got on the local train to take me back home. Back in Hagi, for Christmas Eve I enjoyed a delectable Nabe dinner courtesy of Mr. Spiller, and spent the rest of the night at a bar with both foreign and Japanese friends. As I woke this Christmas morning, I discovered that Santa did in fact bring me a present: a nice hangover. Not exactly what I wrote on my list, but at least it was something. For those of you in the Western Hemisphere who are a day behind, Merry Christmas.

Osaka is my playground (Day One & Two)

DAY ONE: ARRIVAL

It is December 21st and once again I find myself embarking on a solo trip across the Japanese frontier. Only this time I've got no friends waiting for me where I'm going; I've got no one to call while I'm in town to request temporary lodgings from or to accompany me as I scour the streets at night. I don't even know where I'll be sleeping for the next 3-5 days. Of course I've brought all the necessities: plenty of hard Japanese currency, Kurt Vonnegut's Bluebeard, a book bag with two sets of clothes and my camera which will hopefully be able to capture some of the things I'll see on my trip. For a person my age, the opportunity to explore these cities of mayhem is the equivalent of turning loose a small child in FAO Schwarz, or perhaps a prepubescent teenager with an unlimited gaming card at Dave 'N Buster's.

Like my previous voyage to Kyoto, I find myself at the Shinkansen station, the novelty of its awesome power having slightly declined since the last time I was here, although I still reserve a sense of admiration as I climb aboard the non-smoking unreserved car. As we scream onward towards our final destination, I pull out a slip of paper I brought with me to write this introduction in order to record my travels. To give you an idea of just how incredibly fast this train is, by the time it took me to write this short passage, we're already half-way to Hiroshima (usually 1-2 hours by car).

So now before I begin to tell you the tales of my adventures, keep in mind that I only post about 1/3 of what I actually do. For the benefit of the reader--also because I lack the mental endurance to attempt to reach absolute precision--I've decided to include only the juiciest of descriptions that will hopefully give you an idea of just how crazy this country and its people--myself included for voluntarily choosing to come here--really are.

And so, let my journey begin.


DAY TWO: AFTER THE TEST

After 3 or so grueling hours of standardized test-takling, when I had finished the last section my score appeared on the computer screen. I had considerably high expectations for myself since I had devoted nearly every day for the past month to studying, and I was not surprised to see that my hard work had actually paid off.

"Damn right," I said to myself when the computer asked if I would like to save my score, and send it to potential graduate schools. On the way out of the building I got the urge to perform a somesault, but instead I somehow managed to contain myself. Despite the fact that it was a downpour in Osaka, I was so relieved to be finished with the test that I treated myself to an all-you-can-eat sushi lunch, and bought myself a book entitled "Post-Impressionism" that I found in a Japanese bookstore's obscure English section, resting snugly between "Marriage: A Sentence," and "30 Cake Recipes".

Because of extremely inclement weather conditions my plans for the day had been temporarily postponed, so I found myself sitting in a comfy chair at the ubiquitous Starbuck's-esque cafe franchises called "Excelsior Cafe". I'm considering dozing off for a few hours since my neighbor in the Internet Cafe where I slept the previous night was so involved in whatever it was that he was doing, that it required him to click his mouse button at a pace that sounded like he was transcribing a Shakespearean sonnet into morse code. It goes without saying I didn't sleep as well as I would've liked to.



View of Osaka from the roof of a department store



After being asked to leave several establishments because I brazenly continued to sleep in their comfy chairs--it was still pouring and I had a few hours before dinner, hence absolutely nothing else became available--I decided to waste a few hours by purchasing a ticket to see "I Am Legend". Luckily, this movie was in English. After serious deliberation, I had dinner at an Oden restaurant where I downed a few tall ones to give me the sort of confidence required when walking into an all-Japanese bar and attempting to look like a regular, while giving everyone else the kind of look that says, "Hey, I do this all the time!" I found a very peculiar-looking establishment called "Mystery Trip Bar", and a sign posted outside of it read: "If you come with Mick Jagger or Ringo Starr you can drink for free for half a year...maybe..." Obviously this was the kind of place I needed to go. In retrospect it was a good idea because not only did I meet a guide and partner-in-crime for the night, but my newfound friend, Satoshi, also spoke no English which was a great opportunity to practice my Japanese--which is still crap by the way.

I'll fast-forward through all the trivial, mundane events everyone has been acquainted with at some point in their lives; almost getting run over by a Yakuza in a speeding black sedan honking his horn while driving down a narrow side street which I'm sure cars weren't allowed; having your picture put on a wall in a bar because you scored a 333 in a darts game; walking through an arcade with potentially millions of people shuffling by like we were billions of tiny red blood cells traveling on the interstate highway of our circulatory system, while bright neon and fluorescent billboards create an epileptic phantasmagoria for the naked eye. If you are chlostrophobic in the least, I would seriously warn you to consider if taking a trip to a big city in Japan sounds like a great idea.





At the end of the night Satoshi and I were looking for decent lodgings which afforded us by way of the illustrious capsule hotels.





My room seemed a bit bigger than what I was expecting, but I wasn't any less enthusiastic about finally being able to say I slept in a capsule. Satoshi slept directly above me. As we were returning our keys in the morning I said to him in Japanese, "tanoshii toki arigatou (thanks for the good time)." The hotel manager looked up as I said this because he was responsible for our rooms sharing such close proximity, and no doubt assumed we had done something scandalous.

And to all a good night...

I'm preemptively writing this Christmas post since I'm off to Osaka to take the GRE this weekend. In order to escape the thought of sitting alone in my apartment on Christmas Day, I've decided it would be in my best interest to go on a road trip across Japan until my disposable cash is depleted. Hopefully things don't end up as one of my colleagues has presaged:

"You're probably just gonna blow it all in one night cos you'll be too drunk to notice..."

In spite of what Mr. Spiller predicts, I will not appear back in Hagi on Monday morning with my tail between my legs. Instead of sitting in my lonely apartment on Christmas, I'll probably be sitting in a train amongst complete strangers on my way to Nagoya or Kyoto, which is considerably more preferable in my honest opinion.

How I will miss the 24-hour showing of The Christmas Story on TBS; how I'll kick myself because I was deprived of my ritual viewing of How the Grinch Stole Christmas; how I'll curse the hour when instead of eating Christmas ham and my sister's world famous deviled eggs, I'll most likely be eating sashimi with boiled rice and miso soup.

I'll miss many things, but I'll hopefully remain unaware of what day it is in the approaching week, and I'll wake up on the morning of the 26th and breathe a much needed sigh of relief. There'll be many Christmases in the future for me, and just one of them away from my family and friends while stuck in a country that actually works on that day does seem like blasphemy to most Western Christians, but I'll get by. Besides, I'm not even sure I would classify myself as a typical Western Christan anyway.

For those of you outside of my immediate family who actually take the time to read this blog, Merry Christmas to all...

This man love soccer

The art teacher who sits across from me in the main office drew this portrait of me while I was reading, using Microsoft Paint's spray-paint application only. He then sent me his sketch in an email with this subject line:

"This man love soccer."

The remainder of the email is as follows:

"I'm sorry....."

I don't know how to handle all of this, but its a pretty good portrait I'd say.

Things That Make Me Laugh: My Students' Essays

Every once in a while a teacher will hand me a tremendous stack of essays to grade. I'm always given a 2 week deadline with which to finish everything, which gives me more than enough time to savor every last subject-verb disagreement, every run-on sentence, and every misspelled word (out of fear of making a dangerously ironic mistake, I had check if misspell had two S's or not).

Sometimes I get essays where I can't help but to chuckle to myself: I'm quite sure my students purposely put these cryptic messages in their work since they know I'm the one who has to eventually grade them. Sadly, since most of the teachers don't exactly appreciate it, I'm not allowed to award points for attempted humor.

Here are some excerpts from a few essays I copied by hand so that I could share them with you. In order to capture each one in its essence, I chose to leave the structure and the grammatical mistakes intact.

(The purpose of this essay was to analyze and record information from a graph. This particular graph plotted the levels of unemployment in Japan over a series of years. I find essays like these extremely funny because they initially answer the topic, but without warning they morph into something else entirely. Before you know it, you'll be reading about Japnese baseball players when the students were supposed to be writing about their favorite food)

A Lonely Student

[...]
In 1990 however, there were nearly 5,616 Japanese are complete-ness unemployment. Hang in there Japan. Hang in to the end Japanese pelpou. This is an increase of about 11.7 times. I'm lonely. Japan. It really gets me down, Oh boy. Its really a headache. I can't sleep well because I have so many worries. I'm scared.




(In this essay, the students were required to analyze a chart listing behavioral statistics of certain animals. Towards the end it gets a little hazy. What they're saying sounds silly and isn't entirely wrong, but I neither have the time nor the patience to rewrite their essays word for word. Instead I leave most of these mistakes unmarked, which probably means the student will continue his life thinking what he wrote was perfectly acceptable)

Bats and Deer

[...]
2nd type rests during the day like owls and bats. I want to be like bats. Your'e lucky. The 3rd rests at day and night and is active at sunrise and sunset like deer and lions. I want to be like deer. Nice life. I'm almost jealous life. I'm interested in deer life.




Shougatsu

(In this essay the students were instructed to tell me about "Shougatsu", the period that includes the first few days of the new year. I included this piece not only for the obvious reason of trailing off into another subject entirely, but also because for some reason students enjoy using particular set phrases they remember from a lesson years ago. For example, "thats too bad," or "what a shame" make appearances more than once in a student's essay in order to take up space. See if you can spot where the student uses one of these phrases)

I like "Shougatsu,"
Because I can enjoy and eat a dericious food with family.
Oh... I must apologize to you for taking a lai.
I don't like "Shougatsu" really.
I'm very very very very sorry.
That's a pity.
Yeah...
Do you like baseball?
No, I don't.
But, I watch baseball game on TV.
Oh, That's a pity.
I watch it in baseball park.
Rearry? I envy you for it.

(If you are confused about the multiple indentations, the essay sheets have lines numbered from 1-10. The required length must fill exactly 10 lines. Some students think they can outsmart me by starting new lines when they have plenty of space to finish. Sometimes they go well and beyond 10 lines using this method to make me think they are going above what is required of them, when actually they haven't even written half of what they were supposed to. Apart from humor, I wish the teachers would allow me to give points for craftiness and cunning.)