Friday, March 14, 2003

*... girls' revenge ...*
or "White Day", as it is more commonly known, is being celebrated today. Of course I was very flattered to have a holiday just for me in this country, despite their occassional general disapproval to my existence. Sadly, I was mistaken. Today is one month after Valentine's Day, and the day that men are supposed to lavish upon their ladies. The thing that amuses me about this day is that the men's gifts and attentions are supposed to be very elaborate, even if the woman only gave him like a pencil or something. And supposedly men are supposed to give gifts to ALL the ladies in their life, from girlfriends and wives to secretaries and seamstresses. However, I have yet to see any chocolate grace my desk (ehem!) but perhaps they are confused by the fact that I am actually an ugly man. But this is good news for all of you who might have missed the deadline one month ago; I will expect the chocolates in my mailbox tomorrow...
1:01 PM

Thursday, March 13, 2003

*... the Japanese say the darndest things ...*
I am often surprised at the amount of English that Japanese harbor. I am more surprised at the KIND of English that they harbor. For example, I was walking into the teacher's room this morning when one of the teachers who has not spoken a lick of English to me (he's always spoken to me in Japanese) was close on my heels. I turned around and he said "Don't worry, I'm not a stalker." clear as day. I stopped in my tracks, and he bowled right into me (whoops). Maybe it comes from all the English phrases they put on everything (I would NOT be surprised to see a phrase like that on a t-shirt) although most Japanese admit they have no idea what the English splashed all over the place usually says. One girl I workout with had a t-shirt with "Power to see Thogugh" screaming across it. She admitted she didn't know what it meant, and when I tried to explain, she just laughed and said "The Japanese like English and have many foolish t-shirts." I agree. She was trying to work out the difference between "fun" and "funny", soI explained it to her in Japanese. Then she busted out with "English is fun because YOU are fun... And funny." At least she got the point. She's my best student (and not because she says stuff like that, either) even though she's not in one of my classes.

All the teachers here keep looking at me and pointing to the sky saying "last snow, last snow". Pretty much everyone here knows how desperate I am for it to stop, so they are trying to cheer me up. Problem is, even if the snow goes away, it is replaced by freezing rain, and winds so cold you'd feel them if you were in an iron box. I'm actually colder now than I was when it was snowing. I didn't think that was possible.

ps - I'm taking speculations on why the heck they sell bread in packs of 3 or 5 slices over here... any thoughts on that?
12:37 PM

Wednesday, March 12, 2003

*... models of efficiency ...*
I was wondering why I have been receiving so many bills lately until I realized that March is the end of the fiscal year for Japanese. Apparently my debts are surfacing in quite a few areas. Now I certainly don't mind paying for the goods and services I use; that's not a problem at all. But what is really starting to piss me off is the fact that I am NOW paying for goods and services that were rendered 4-6 months ago! For example, yesterday I received a bill for international phone calls (totalling a whopping 112 yen) that were made in November. Give me a freaking break! Why it took them that long to tell me this is beyond my comprehension. At school, I was told I need to fork over 7000 yen for the bo-nen-kai (end of the year) party that I was originally told I did NOT have to pay for. So I have concluded that it's no use trying to budget anything anymore because I don't have the patience or capacity to anticipate what they might charge me for 5 months from now...

*... taking my work home with me ...*
There are times I have to remind myself that I am not at work and don't have to necessarily correct the pronunciation of people I meet randomly. For example, Koshihiro-san (the soba guy) and I spent a good ten minutes or so on the pronuciation of "1500" ("one thousand-o, five hundred-o", and I just wanted to pay the bill, really). Since "N" is the only letter of the Japanese alphabet that is allowed to stand free with no vowel after it, most Japanese have a hard time ending their words. Hence why my name is bu-ri-to. In class, I can spend an hour correcting sentences from "I rai-ku red-o a-pur-zu." to "I like red apples." I'm sometimes amazed I can understand them at all; work has definitely fine-tuned my ear in such a strange way. Also since coming here, I have become more tolerant of children. {{gasp! can it be?!}} Back at home, there were limited numbers of humans between the ages of 0 and 17 that I could stand. But over here that number has grown, and I am even accepting of some of the more annoying ones, like the small boy (maybe 8 years old?) who likes to come into the women's changing room at the gym, and climb on things (chairs, lockers, total strangers) and stare. Seemingly I am the only one who a) notices, or b) cares, and yesterday I had about enough, so I tried pointing out to him that he was the only boy in there... didn't seem to register. Then I started singing the "One of these things isn't the same" song from Sesame Street, which seemed to get him more riled up. Finally I just picked the kid up (he didn't belong to anyone inside, his mom was out in the lobby somewhere, smoking. at the gym. sheesh.) and as someone came in the door, I placed him out of it, without a word. My patience and endurance in matters like these is slowly building, which may be good news for some back at home, hehehe, like my little boyfriend Michael (Shihan's youngest and most rambunctious, and the only child I have actually had the impulse to strangle, had not many people intervened at the precise moment I almost lost it).
11:15 AM

Tuesday, March 11, 2003

*... potions and politics ...*
Yesterday was the graduation ceremony for san-nen-sei (3rd yr) students at Koshin. In the traditional Japanese way, it was so somber and full of speeches that I thought I might fall asleep. Luckily all the bowing I was required to do kept me awake, though very very dizzy (being part of the staff, I had to bow to every parent, every student and every official or PTA member that came). Afterwards, a group of girls ran up to me (and somehow surprisingly were able to stop too, considering how waxed the floors are over here) to give me a notecard that everyone in their class signed. Unfortunately most of them wrote their messages in kanji (which i can't read so much), but with more than the occassional English "I love you!" summing up their feelings. What made me laugh really hard, though, was in the corner, written quite small and decisively was not a message of "thanks" or "I love you" or "see you..." but rather: "I think George Bush is not intelligent."

Well, there you have it.

Last night I decided to check out a soba shop about a block away from me. I have passed it quite a few times, and am able to read enough kanji to figure out they hand make all their noodles, so I was intrigued. And hungry. I ended up staying for about 3 1/2 hours, talking to the owners in an interesting mix of Japanese and English and of course lots of gesturing. We talked about everything from the best suburbs in Tokyo to why Matsui went to the New York Yankees (he was the only baseball player I liked over here, and then he up and left! The injustice!) to the fundamentals of kung fu. They were highly entertained, at least enough for the man to go to his storage closet and pull out a really big pickling jar that had what looked like golf ball sized brains in it. Turns out that it was his own personal brew of ume shuucho, an apricot wine, that he had been fermenting for at least 3 years. He served me up a glass (quite tasty, but dang was it strong!), and then pulled out another jar, this time with what looked like severed fingers settled in the bottom (okay, no more "Young Frankenstein" for me). He insisted that I try one of these finger-like things, so I told him "you first". He apparently thought they were delightful and piled a bunch of them in my glass before pouring, all the while saying "suppai! suppai!" Turns out suppai means "sour", and it was like drinking mild vinegar. I still don't have any clue what the little things were (anyone know what a matatabi is?!?) but they insist it's good for digestion. But they also insisted that sake was good for the head and smoking was good for the spirit... err, riiiiiiiiiiiight.
9:17 AM

Monday, March 10, 2003

*... cele-britt-y ...*
Took a little jaunt over to Kyoto (a little jaunt means spending at least 5 hours each way on the bullet train) this weekend with Karin, and man were we "popular, popular, popular!!" (said in my best valley girl voice). Karin and I met up in Tokyo and jumped onto the shinkansen to Kyoto, only to find no seats available and ended up camping out in the tiny hallway where the train cars are connected (that's what you get for not forking over the extra 510yen for a reserved seat, I guess). We had 2 Aussie companions and had one of them rolling from the stories we were telling (and, ya know, the train sways). Kyoto is absolutely beautiful and worth at least a week stay to soak in all the sights and culture. However, constrained as we are on time, Karin and I skipped the soaking in and opted instead for a sort of 'Kyoto sponge bath'. Despite the crap weather (it was supposed to be cloudy and in the 50s, instead we had it snowing on our heads. Rarr! I'm not believing in weather forecasting in this country anymore!), we hopped on a couple of tours to get the general gist of things, and from there seemed to start our on personal fan club in Kyoto. As we were being our normal goofy selves, we seemed to be overtaking the tour guides in attention and entertainment value. Yoshi, our second guide, introduced us to the rest of the group, explaining about our jobs, etc. After that, everyone kept coming up and asking questions about life in Japan, how we like it, and all the other usual curiousities tourists have about us ALTs. I met a couple whose daughter goes to UCSD, Warren College, so they stuck by my side like glue. Later, Yoshi even let me kick it back into tour-guide gear and conduct some of the tour... which consisted of me standing on a rock in front of everyone and saying in a clear, loud, tourguide voice: "This is a waterfall... Thank You." I can still hear the rapturous applause. We stayed at a sort of hostel-like place, and met some very interesting people there, such as the Chinese French guy who spoke 5 languages, the veryvery genki British Emma, who must have been in her mid-thirties, but insisted on wearing her hair Pippy Longstocking-style, and then the huge German girl who bullied us into taking Belgian chocolate. She seemed to really like me, as she was pushing it off more on me than Karin, and from the looks of this 'lady', I feared for my life and took as much as I could to get her away from me.

Factoring in the short time, crap weather, different stages of not-feeling-so-good, and having a camera curse (my brand new camera fell out of my bag/pocket 3 FREAKIN times... no, more specifically, it fell out onto the stones steps, was kicked and skittered across temples, losing its battery somewhere along the way while someone else stepped on it, grounding gravel into the lens side. The poor thing looks like it's been through a cement mixer now.), Karin and I had a great time. Just don't expect me to come home with pictures of Kyoto beauty and culture... the snow made it a little difficult to get any good shots, though there is a picture of me trying to eat falling snow, and a fabulous one of me chasing pigeons around a Buddhist temple... And probably one of gravel. Rarr.
11:40 AM