Poison Ivy Countdown

From childhood experiences I've noticed that there aren't many things that have the ability to render me bedridden. I am vulnerable to insects with the potential to deliver a venomous sting, and I also have a heightened sensitivity for anything that produces the oil urushiol, namely the poison ivy plant. As a member of the Cruz clan, I've taken great satisfaction that we rarely suffer from non-life threatening chronic conditions. It comes as no surprise that when these do occur, I'm not too pissed off since being completely healthy for 99% of my life is a good trade-off for occasionally having to suffer from an annoying illness.

This past weekend a few friends and I went to a town not far from Hagi known for its vast plateau of limestone rock outcropping and over 300 subterranean caves, one of which is the largest in all of Japan. After camping out for one night, I returned home to discover that yes, poison ivy also exists in Japan. Its been about a week since being in full bloom, and after battling it for days, I've compiled a list of the 5 worst places on your body to get poison ivy. Starting from number 5:

5. The Inner Elbow
You have no idea how much you actually bend your elbow during the course of one day, and each time I did so I was constantly reminded of the nascent rash that had started to form in the folds of my skin.

4. The Fingers
Forget doing anything that requires even an elementary level of digital movement. I individually wrapped my fingers in tape every night before going to bed, so as not to accidentally spread the rash to other undesirable parts of my body.

3. The Neck
I was forced to sit upright like an Elizabethan woman, while making exaggerated turns of the neck like John Singer Sargeant's Madame X out of fear that I would be spreading the rash if I did otherwise.

2. The Lips
When it was in full bloom, I would wake up every morning with a fine covering of dried yellow crust over both my upper and lower lips. It took a few minutes with Q-tips and Vaseline to remove it so that I could take a shower. Throughout the day my lips were pretty swollen, making me look like Jimmie 'JJ' Walker from Good Times, but I can tell you that my ordeal was far from DYN-O-MITE!!..


1. The Genitals
In no way should this even be surprising. After spending the first few days in shock wondering what the hell was going on down there, when the rash spread to other parts of my body I was relieved when I discovered it was only poison ivy. Sadly the realization does not make things any easier, and I spent the better part of my days sitting and moving as little as possible. My job requires me to stand occasionally and walk around the classroom, and to make matters worse, my students in 4th period wanted to teach me a traditional 'Japanese' sport. Luckily the sport involved standing around in a circle while trying to keep a ball in the air by kicking it, and as I started to wonder if this arcane game originated in Japan, my teacher brilliantly quipped, "It's a traditional Japanese game. Maybe they played it 4,000 years ago..."

Back to the genitals. In Japan they have public bath houses called onsens where you pay a small fee for unlimited access of the entire facility. Anyone who's had poison ivy before knows that when it comes into contact with hot water it produces the same feeling as scratching the hell out of it for a good 20 minutes, except scratching is a big No-No if you ever want to see it clear up. Knowing this, I sat in the shower booth with the hot water turned all the way up, the nozzle of the hand-held shower head aiming directly towards my crotch area, while holding on to the partitioning wall with one arm to keep myself from falling over after discovering one of the purest paths to sensual ecstasy.

Thats the list. If you are as susceptible as I am to this nasty plant, please do yourself a favor and avoid touching these 5 parts of your body if and when you have a breakout on an innocuous part of your body.

Tribute to a Champion of Time

I wanted to take time out of my day to pay respect to a centurion of fabrics, a T-shirt I've just noticed still making regular appearances in my collection of clothes currently in circulation at this exact period in my young adulthood.

It's name is Ben.


It's probably the oldest shirt i have in my bounty of clothing. A living legend. If the sad, unknown world of T-shirts is like the world when you're in middle school this shirt would be the guy in your 8th grade class who is older than everyone because he was held back, which gave him instant 'bad ass' status, but never in a way that got along very well with public education and living a normal and stable life.

I did my laundry a few days ago and I was unusually compelled to take time to stare at it for a few seconds, and then immediately appreciate this epic T-shirt that doesn't get lost or strangely vanish over time. It's the scruffiest and most haggard-
looking shirt I own, and its figured out how to keep on keepin' on, so they say, still in circulation in my bounty of laundry for Alex Cruz, age 23, happily content but a little confused.

You always seem to become curiously aware of the passage of time when you come across those relics made of fabric. Our minds have no other option but to automatically reflect on the duration of time from now to when you first acquired artifacts like my T-shirt for example. Look at all the holes, and look how the collar is all but entirely frayed.


I got it from a high school soccer tournament in some small town in Georgia that the world will never hear from, and although I probably won't notice when Ben does eventually disappear, I'll feel a little better knowing that I took a little time to write about him.

Its the ability to ignore time, to prolong a slow but certain degradation into trace fragments that has inspired me to do great things one day.

Mathematical Axioms

but then again...

Anachronisms Part II

I’ve yet to meet anyone who uses the words ‘high school’ and ‘enjoyable’ in the same sentence except to describe the complete lack of joy one feels during those four years of post-pubescent awkwardness. Some of us spent our time being cool, trying to be cool, acting like being cool didn’t matter, actually understanding that it didn’t matter, or playing Magic during lunch. The only other time I remember feeling so noticeably conscious of my self-image was in a dream when I was naked in front of strangers. In high school we avoided situations that would’ve drawn unnecessary attention to ourselves.

These thoughts all came back to me when I saw “The Tank”.


There was much anxiety floating around the staff room when the teachers found out two handicapped, wheelchair-ridden 1st year students were accepted into my school for the new academic year. My school has 4 stories and no elevator. Before the students arrived my school petitioned the Prefectural Board of Education for funds to build either an elevator or an electric lift so that the students could reach all levels of the school without difficulty. They were denied either. My school was left with no other option than to buy ‘The Tank.”

After I witnessed a few demonstrations of how it worked, I was numb; I didn’t know what to make up in my mind. In order to use it, a helper must scoop the student while sitting in the wheelchair, lock them into place, tilt them 45 degrees in the air, and initiate forward motion with the trigger that’s on the handle. The tread on the belt grips the edge of each stair and slowly propels the student upward while the machine makes a gurgling, mechanical sound. It works the same way on the descent except the student must now tilt downward, arresting that same feeling when at the top of the Freefall at Six Flags once you are about to fall 10 stories at an acceleration of 10 meters per second per second.


All of this is done in full view of the student body busily shuffling up and down the same main staircase. The way is now impeded because of this bulky object, and the congestion in traffic must only heighten the feeling that people are staring at you. I guess it’s a shame the government can’t fund schools that have special needs. I’ve noticed that Japanese high school students far surpass American high school students in sense and sensibility, so maybe being handicapped isn't quite as bad in Japan as it would be in an American high school.

Nice Life

After a night filled with lots of drinking, late night--or early morning--bike rides, olives and real Parmesan cheese, and playing drums in time with forgotten punk music from the 90's, I woke up this morning and really didn't want to go to school. In Japan they have morning meetings in the staff room at 8:15 AM every day, and they consist of soliloquies of people talking about this and that--important school matters--while I twiddle my thumbs and try to name all the U.S. Presidents in descending order starting from Curious George.

This particular morning I relished stayed in bed revelling and didn't want to go back to sleep. I continued laying there for a while thinking about stuff and reset my alarm for what I thought was an appropriate time to come in late, just in case I did drift back to my wonderful dream world.

I had no classes today so no one except my desk neighbors would notice my absence. I strolled in around 10:20 like someone who is always perfectly on time and just as I expected, no one had noticed or cared. My immediate neighbors of course strained their faces towards me, waiting to hear my excuse. I gave them the universal sign for drinking, holding the imaginary cup and throwing your hand back towards your mouth, and it was OK. In my job they think its funny when I come in to work late because I made my liver turn somersaults the night before. My hangover wasn't that bad but I consciously clutched my head with my hands every few minutes for dramatic effect. The chuckle I heard from Fujii-sensei lets me know its working...

Only two months left before I'm ejected like a newborn baby from this protective womb of paradise.

Leaving Sucks

His name is Yasunobu. He stands 6'4 and weighs somewhere between 250 and 300 pounds. I met him just before he left Hagi to join the Japanese military, but has since quit once he found out they no longer use Medieval weaponry. I thank God every day that I was born in the 20th Century instead of around 1100 A.D., otherwise I would've seen this guy ending my life on a Medieval battlefield swinging a war hammer into my face.

I dug into my bag of tricks and whispered to a Japanese friend that Yasunobu looked like Biff Tannen from Back to the Future, which was followed by an immediate uproar. For the rest of the night we called him Biff, and I was amused as our Japanese friends struggled with the tendency to add the extra syllable at the end of every foreign word. They called him 'Biffu.'

He came back to visit Hagi only for Golden Week vacation, so I will probably not see him again before I leave. He is one of the many people it will be hard to forget.

New Cartoon

Gouda