Friday, July 18, 2003

*... there's a rumbly in my tumbly ...*
I have definitely figured out the culprit responsible for afflicting me with food poisoning twice. It's salmon. I can say this as a definite since I had suspected as much before and last night after I took about 3 bites of the pepper-stuffed salmon steak I had made (mmm!) I felt like someone was knifing my innards. Ick. Therefore, in the future, all fishy-culinary exploits will now be handled by professionals. This little discovery prompted me to reflect on exactly what kind of suspicious things I have actually ingested while over here... it's a wonder I haven't been MORE sick! Here's a sample:
* horse intestine
* octopus tentacles
* pigs' feet
* dog liver
* cow heart
* sperm whale
Mostly I tend to find out what this stuff is after i have eaten it, usually by pointing at the same thing on someone else's plate and asking "Nani kore??" (what's this??) Trust me, always find out AFTER you have swallowed it.
4:56 PM

Wednesday, July 16, 2003

*... who, me?? ...*
REWIND: Last Friday night I played pool with my friends Marika and my chauffer-for-the-night, Nakano-san. He was anxious to show me his American car (an Explorer) and play his American music: Brian McKnight, Joe, D'Angelo, etc. I laughingly told him what that partuicular music selection may suggest for certain situations, especially those involving boys and girls and dark cars and starry nights. I think he understood what I was saying, even if for the rest of the night he would nod his head and say "hai hai hai" at whatever I was saying, then turn to Marika behind my back and frantically whisper "nani??" what??
FAST FORWARD: When I saw Marika yesterday, she had a gleam in her eye when she asked if Nakano had taken me straight home after the billiard festivities. I assured her he had, but the look she was giving me plainly said she didn't believe me. It took me a second to catch on to what she was thinking, and when I did I pointed an accusing finger and shouted "scandal starter!!". She started laughing, "I like scandal." (I had no idea she even knew that word.) Her suspicions stemmed from her maybe seeing his car driving around long after I should have been home (I don't live that far from the pool place), and her definitely hearing him answer the question "Do you like American girls?" with an enthusiastic "DAIsuki!!" (I REALLY like them!!). Admittedly, I was the one who posed the question to him in the first place, but I promise you it was most-innocently framed (you'll have to trust me on this one: not only do i lack flirting skills, but I actually had a friend of mine in mind when I asked him this; a friend who happened to like what she saw when we met Nakano in Niigata Station on our way to Tokyo... you do remember him, right Kristy?)
PLAY: Marika's thoughts on all of this? A huge thumbs-up, an evil little grin, and a hearty "Enjoy Japan!!" I couldn't believe her. I jokingly told her about the homestay offer (she knows that guy, too) and how the heck was I supposed to have 2 scandals with 2 different boys in only a month or so? She fell silent for a moment, brow deeply furrowed, and, in quite seriousness, she came up with a plan that involves some sort of 2 week schedule. And she sealed it with an encouraging "Enjoy Japan! Enjoy Japanese boys!!" Maybe she should get a job at the Tourist Bureau.
5:13 PM

Tuesday, July 15, 2003

*... splash zone ...*
for the past week or so, i've had the great privilege of being singled out by the crazy-guy on the bus home everyday. I guess it's not so bad considering he could have singled me out and stuck like glue 4 months ago; at least i only have a handful of this bus-taking days. He likes to sit behind me and shout "Basu wa shizuka ni, shizuka ni, shizuka ni" which means "be quiet on the bus" (even though no one is talking but him). He especially likes to slur the last part so I end up with quite a bit of spittle dotting my back. Yay. Lately he's taken to reading out of some notebook that he likes to bang me in the back of the neck with; if I move he does too. Thankfully he gets off before I do, but it takes a while to get him off the vehicle. He likes to stand at the bus driver's side and yell "arigatoo gozaimashita!!!" while shaking his bus pass in the poor driver's face. He literally has to be pushed off the bus, usually by one of his schoolmates but sometimes by the lucky bus driver.

I'm not sure if i've made this clear or not, but i'm NOT going to miss taking the bus.
4:44 PM

Monday, July 14, 2003

*... do i get paid for that? ...*
yet another day of coming in to work to find all the classes canceled, and thus, i have nothing to do. For the next 3 days. AAAUGH!! ((insert hair-ripping-out here)) I'm glad I had the foresight to bring another book... you wouldn't believe the volumes of pages i've read in the past year, simply out of lack of other distractions. At least today I got to entertain myself a bit by torturing Kaori-sensei into an argument of logic about getting one's driver's license in Japan... Here they take the written part after they pass the road test. She says it's a way to sum up your knowledge, I say it's going out unarmed... it's like me trying to play basketball: i know the general moves but would fail any quiz on the exact rules or whatnot.
I'm trying to figure out what to do with my extra time once school is over. I will be heading of for a little R&R to the Philipines before I head back to LAX, but before that I have to co'chill in Japan for a bit (like over 2 weeks after my contract is finished and I get kicked out of my apartment for good) and I would do the whole sightseeing thing except I don't want to haul my luggage across the place. I have quite a few offers from people saying "You can stay with me!" and that's sweet, but I don't want to wear out my welcome with anyone. I was thinking about doing a homestay with total strangers, but I think I talked myself out of that one too (you guys don't really realize how shy I actually am!). However, I happened to have an offer for a homestay, but here's the snag: he's a very attractive high-school-teacher-by-day, karate-guy-by-night friend of mine who wants me to stay at his house and 'teach him English', mostly along the theme of "What do American girls want in a guy?"

Or maybe this isn't a snag at all...? ((winkwink, nudgenudge))
5:03 PM

Sunday, July 13, 2003

*... taking arms against a sea of troubles ...*
the past coupla days have been all about battles, sadly, on two different fronts. One fierce, stomach-pain-inducing one is at school, and is related to my health (which is becoming worse the longer this goes on!) It seems that there was some misunderstanding somewhere along the lines about my status as having malaria or not. The school and the City Office are up in arms about "my disease" (as they kept putting it) and are frantically trying to fill out paperwork for the Japanese Government to report me as a contagious, dangerous person. Yet I've told them that I don't actually HAVE the disease, but this seems to be a moot point. The glitch is somewhere in the area of in the past I may have had it, and they are anxious to contact the proper authorities. Despite my protests that I have no malaria (i had it checked, about time) they are living in the past that 2 weeks ago i said I might have it. But this isn't where I am actually battling them; my reaction is merely a sad shake of my head that they haven't caught on to the logic that there's no reason to fill out paperwork and let the government on to the fact that I DON'T have it and never did. Rather, the battle comes from the beachhead invasion of my privacy. My supervisor asked the teacher in charge of me at my school for all my medical records, so on a daily basis she is hounding me for names and places and details and results about my entire medical history. Now this may be the Japanese Way, but I am NOT about to bend on this one. The way I see it, if my supervisor at the City Office wants to know something, he can ask me directly. There is absolutely no way that I am going to tell Hamanaka-sensei who tells Kyooto-sensei who tells KoCho-sensei who then tells Sekiya-sensei at the City Office. It's no one else's business, but if it were to go through all these ears and mouths, not only would the message undoubtedly get mangled (as happened the first time 'round) but also the entire school, all the students, teachers, and parents, plus the entire Board of Education and the City Office would know. That's just how it works. And that's not how I'm going to play.

The other battle comes from a question of freedom of speech, though maybe not that extreme. It seems that my portrayal of a certain fierce yet giddy head karate guy has ruffled a few feathers since it may tarnish his image of fierceness. Personally I think it adds to his character, but that's not the point. The point is that I am being asked to erase from here anything "negative" said about the guy... I have a few problems with this: 1) whoever it is that is making these requests haven't actually told me personally, but used a friend to tell me. So, again, through all the messengers, who knows what the actual message is?, and 2) these words i write on a (almost) daily basis are about my experiences, my views, my point of view through all that goes on around me. They're not advertisements, endorsements, fiction or encyclopediac-fact. The main point of this particular situation is that i was surprised that the image I expected was so different from the man I met; the point was NOTHING other than that, and to imply any level of defamation is hard to swallow, especially since it was such a totally personal, "me" experience. Therefore, this what I have decided: for now, I will change the name of the sensei-in-question (the new name meaning "grandfather" since he's the sensei of my sensei), just in case someone decides to do an internet search on the guy and are horrified at the findings that this guy may not actually match their idea of him either... but I will not erase anything about what happened. That would be cheating myself out of my own memories, and there are few arguments that would ever inspire me to do that.
2:06 PM