Ethnocentrisim
I’ve always had a pretty poor impression of coorporations, and I know that’s not singular to me. Loads of people probably resent the idea (and the practice) of having to wear clunky shoes - and a suit that makes moving your arms constraining. Why do we all have to waste the better parts of the day indoors - hustling forms? Working for a coorporation on the other side of the Earth can push the issue of desk work out of the forefront of the mind, …but I do work for a corpooration. What I used to like about this corpooration, was that they mostly forgot about me. I did my job, and they never had reason to show any concern but, … This corpooration has recently tripled the number of its middle managers. A metaphor that approximates the situation: ” Fat kids (crowding) around a pizza’.” I skipped a part of my company training and I’m glad that I did.I console myself with the thought that there is a reason for everything that I do, and finding that there was no reason for me to go to training - I didn’t. Now these (metaphorically) chubby chocolateers are waddling their way around me. A metaphor that better approximates the situation: “Fat kids crowd around a pinata’.”
The nice lady from the Nagano branch of my company said that the head office was trying to call me on Friday and Saturday nights. Why would you call a guy on a Friday or a Saturday night? I’m glad that they never got through. Some guy called looking for: 佐藤 愛/ Ai Sato. I might’ve assumed too much from that call; It could have been a wrong number, but Japanese girls are known to give people alternate phone numbers rather than simply rejecting a fellow. He sounded really disappointed that I didn’t know Ai Sato. My company might have my number from 2 years ago, but I’m not sure… There were all kinds of rumors going around that my company would soon be bankrupt. Those rumors might’ve just been a tactic to get people to defect to other companies. I never actually heard any of the rumors form anyone other than a friend of mine who did switch companies said it was so. Perhaps they really can’t afford to call me…
They told the head of the Nagano branch to ask me to call the main office between 6 and 7pm. I have the kind of cell phone service plan that costs me a whole lot of money if I make any call over a couple of minutes. I’m also a cheap-ass. If I have to talk to idiots I would like it to be on their dime/ and during working hours, but I did call them. In the interests of berevity I called them several minutes before 7, but I got a message saying that that isn’t a real phone number. It was 2 years ago that I last used that number… Maybe they change them periodically so that their employees will unwittingly answer - not knowing who it is. That happened a number of times a number of years ago - Oh Man! I hate when you’re relaxing at home and you answer the phone, and it’s some clueless supervisor! The 1st company that I worked for in Japan didn’t get my number for the first 3 months. I thought I did well with that. The cool guy that worked there asked if he could have it, and I forgot to specify that he ought not give it out, ..but once he had it, people from all over Saitama were calling me asking me to forsake my few days off for extra work. If insulin grew on trees I would not need to work for a corpooration/ participate in Society like I do now; I doubt I would. I have come to like my new city better anyway - Better than the unending concrete of Saitama. - Not quite as well as my last city, …but it is catching up. When my girlfriend came over the holidays we drove to the park near the top of the volcano and went hiking 3 times. The last day we thought we heard a bear, …but it didn’t really sound so much like a bear… She got the idea that the volcano was stirring, which felt right to me, but how would I know.There are no volcanos in New Jersey. We played frisbee with little kids another time. We went to the orange water hotspring halfway up the volcano another time. That was neat. You get in the nice hot orange water, and your skin turns orange. There was a cheerleader with orange skin in New Jersey, we called her; “the orange cheerleader”, but she used funny tanning lotions - not Iron enriched volcanically heated water.
I dug my old glow in the dark Spiderman underpants out of the closet to wear to the movies (under my pants though/ underpants) (It was Spiderman 3 of course). She liked it too …the movie more than my underpants. Before she came I went to a hospital and another doctor’s office.People don’t go to doctor’s offices like they do in America; When they have a snuffly nose they go to the hospital. I went to the hospital, and I went to the counter that said 1st time patients, and I said “Hello this is my first time.” and “Could I please see a doctor to get my prescription refilled”. I said that 1st bit, and that other bit both - in Japanese. The Japanese woman behind the counter laughed and said - in Japanese: “You don’t speak any Japanese at all do you?!!!” I replied along the lines of: “What language do you suppose I’ve been speaking?!” - only I said it slightly more politely (and in Japanese). She looked “unhappy” to hear me say this. I said again, in Japanese, again,; “This is my 1st time at this hospital.” “I need to get a prescription refilled. What do I need to do to see a doctor”. Then she said, in a tentative beaurocratic way: “Well, …this hospital doesn’t have any doctors.” I left and went to the clinic that the nurse at my school recomended. It was farther away, a lot smaller, kinda’ hard to find, and probably really only for children. There were toys on the shelves and puppets hanging from the ceiling. There were 2 toddlers in a crib, and 5 or 6 mothers reading story books to 7 or 8 children (with snuffly noses). I got through about 2 pages of “My Neighbor Totoro” before they called me in. The doctor said that the nurse of my school had mentioned that I might be coming, but he wasn’t sure what I needed. “Insulin” I said. (All of this conversation took place in Japanese as well, but he wasn’t a d*^@$ead.) He was reluctant to prescribe a lot of insulin/ syringes without seeing some of my medical history. I gave him the number to the clinic I used to go to in my old city, but they had already closed for the holidays. A nurse that worked for him called a couple other hospitals/ clinics looking to see if there wasn’t someplace which could do the necessary (unnecessary from my perspective) blood tests before prescribing me any insulin. One hospital said that they would see me, This was of course the hospital where that daft *&^% said there were no doctors. I told the nurse that I had already gone there, so she called back and looked a little confused when she told me that she spoke to a lady who said that some man had come in over an hour ago talking crazy. When I do take it upon myself to speak, very few people ever have trouble understanding me, but some imbiciles see that a person is not Japanese and can’t be swayed of the opinion that only Japanese people can speak Japanese. (This is will repeat - It alarms me.) Sometimes you can speak with someone in Japanese for ten or twenty minutes …and then they ask you if you can speak Japanese. Sometimes you have dinner with someone, and they ask you at the end if you can use chopsticks. I’ve been here a long time, and I believe I’ve put up with a LOT of crap,
I love my girlfriend, the scenery (away from the cities) is good, and I like the low cost tofu, but a person can only be asked whether he knows how to bow so many times a day before he becomes reluctant to communicate with anyone new.(Bend at the waist - Yes?) I was at that clinic from about 3:45 to 6:30, because that nurse had borrowed my blood monitor kit to call other clinics and ask them if they knew about it/ used the same kind. I would think a lot of them were closing at that time, …and indeed - some of them were likely afraid to agree to admit anyone who wasn’t Japanese. I would have just gone home, but she had the last of my test strips and she just kept telephoning. I told my girlfriend all of that when she arrived the next day. I told her about the lady at the 1st hospital and she said: “F*&% that B*%*!” (She studied English in Australia, so she knows how to communicate. I’m proud of her.) The next Monday I went to another clinic. Some nurse interviewed me - in Japanese - again with no problem. Then I talked to a doctor. Then they took blood and made me pee in a cup. Then I had to talk to the doctor again and he said that my pee was good, but my blood was a little high. I told him that I ran out of my other kind of insulin - the kind I’ve been asking doctors to prescribe to me for 8 years, but they never have; They always say my blood isn’t very good, but they’re generally content that I haven’t died or gone blind yet. But I have died, and on some occassions I do go blind. After talking to another nurse for another 20 minutes about how much of everything I would need month by month, I waited a long time to be called up for my turn to pay and finally got to leave! I’ve been asking for that fast acting insulin for sooooo long!! No one ever wanted to risk putting me on it. I just told all those new nurses and the new Doctor at my new clinic that I used to use it, but ran out, so they prescribed me “more”. Then I went to the pharmacy where they didn’t have my usual insulin - just the fast acting stuff (which I did get for the first time finally!).
The people at the pharmacy explained in Japanese that they would have to have my usual insulin delivered - within 2 days at the very latest. (They said the number 2 in English - many many times for some reason (probably because I am not Japanese, and although I understood the greater part of everything else that they said in Japanese, they were happy that they knew how to say “2″ in English. Maybe they wanted to show off)). I was not impressed for 2 reasons: There’s nothing impressive about that +It took 4 days. My girlfriend went to a pair of weddings over the weekend. I guess you don’t bring a date to weddings in Japan; I wouldn’t have wanted to fly to Kyushu for one night anyhow. She wrote to say that she caught the bouquet, which made me nervous. I went painting near the orange water onsen we went to the week before. There had been buds on a tree right near the orange river. I thought they would be in full bloom ( a little over a week later), but they were only just starting to open. At any rate that painting turned out pretty well. I wasn’t able to finish the other picture that I started. I might have - there seemed to be just enough daylight left, but 2 people came down the hiking path well over an hour after anyone else. They asked me where they were - It was not where they wanted to be. I found myself driving them (about 30 minutes) to the station in my city. (It was about 15 minutes to the nearest bus stop, but if this city is like any other place I’ve lived before, there would only be around 3 or 4 busses a day.) They asked me if I spoke Japanese, and I said that I was able to, but rarely ever bothered to say very much. The girl seemed really suprised to hear me say that; It turns out that she’s only been here for a few months. You could talk to a group of Japanese people for hours/ days/ or longer and never shake some of them of the presumption that Americans can never speak Japanese. (This I have repeated. - It alarms me.) What I told her is that there just isn’t much that I want to say. What I didn’t tell her was that: I only ever ask a question - if I can not get the answer on my own. There was a yellow tubelike thing near my seat in the teacher’s room. At the next week’s teachers’ meeting I picked it up and saw that it had my name on it. What could it be? There was a cylinder inside of it, which had an opening at one end with a hole cut into the side - giving it the appearance of a whistle. I forgot that I was in a teachers’ meeting and tried to get the whistle looking thing to produce a sound …to no avail (for the best I suppose). I put it in my pocket to ask Ms. M. Ms. M would know what it was. I asked Ms. M, and Ms. M knew what it was. She told me that it is a thing which is used to collect pee …so the doctors can check it. I told her I had thought it was a whistle. She said it was funny watching me blow into it during the teachers’ meeting, but that is was okay, because they probably don’t recycle them. I am an advocate of recycling - whenever possible, with, possibly, this exception.