Rainy and Calm

A cop pulled me over.

He seemed lonely.

I wasn’t speeding. I wasn’t swerving. I wasn’t talking on a cell phone. I wasn’t throwing mangled body parts out the windows.
I had been looking for a way to get up the mountains along the side of my city again, and I had just given up again. He asked me what I was doing. I told him. He didn’t ask me if I knew why he pulled me over, …and I still don’t..

Loneliness seems to be what it was though. He asked where I live, how long I’ve been in Japan, how long I’ve been in town… He asked how I like the city and how I liked the weather.
He asked what I do and if I like my job (I didn’t want to get into too many details with that.). Then he decided he had better things to do and let me go.

I know there’s a road that goes up the mountains. I can see radio towers up there, they are huge and they certainly weren’t hiked up.
A month ago I bought a book of maps, but it just doesn’t have any of the smaller roads in it.
The last time I was looking for a road to get up there, I tried a little narrow one, and wound up stuck between industrial sized dump trucks until I got to the lime mine/ dead-end.

If I found the road somehow, and on the odd chance I found anything nice up there, it still wouldn’t stop it from raining all the damn time/ I still get no landscape paintings done…

The day after the 2 day long typhoon was warm and sunny and clear. It was my first opportunity to get outside and not worry about any sudden weather changes. (The weather did change, …it just took a little longer). The problem this time wasn’t that it might suddenly rain down on me. The problem was, with all the rain from the weeks and weeks of rain, and 2 terribly rainy days just previous - it was so flooded I couldn’t get to where I wanted. Shame I hadn’t thought of that before setting out on the hour long drive to get there, but I did at least manage to get a nice small painting from the side of the river at the base of the bridge.
The last time I was there I started painting from almost the same spot, but it rained 30 minutes after I got there. There was a lot more rock in that one, This newer one is predominantly water.

I went to a small beach another day not long after. It was cloudy but not too too dark. I got a picture painted then at least.

I went back to my favorite beach on another gray day for a last swim. I was quite pleased that I didn’t get any jellyfish stings (for once). I had a good time, found lots of nice little sea-shells, and my car went all funny on my way back to work.

A couple months ago I managed to have my boss have the car inspected. It’s his car, and he should have had it inspected about 10 months previous. He told me it was inspected and ignored all the defects I cited.
When the windshield wipers jammed together + we had to take it to the mechanic, the mechanic told him it was hardly worth fixing it and cited a number of the same defects I had mentioned.
Most recently the sun visor has taken to dangling down/ swinging all around when I turn/ go over a bump.
That’s not such a big deal though - really, I can pull it off and toss it on the passenger seat when I don’t need it.

What a piece of crap!

This time I told him how the windows wouldn’t go up/or down, and how it was hard to turn right without the whole car shaking, …but he wasn’t interested.
I’m cheap too sometimes.

The next morning while I was driving to the school I had to work at, the turn signals/ blinkers gradually stopped working. They would blink, then blink slowly, then only blink a few times, then only once. I thought I should try to use those hand signals you’re taught in driver’s ed., but of course I couldn’t get the windows down. I decided I would just drive it to the mechanic’s after I finished at that school, but the car wouldn’t start after I finished. It wouldn’t even make any of those noises which would indicate it was trying to start. I had to make those noises.
It didn’t help any.

I had to be back at work in the office in a couple hours, so I called there to see what I should do/ see what should be done.

My boss’s wife answered, and she started to get angry, like she always does about anything. She seemed to think I was calling because I would be late to work or something, but I guess she realized I was already finished (as I made a point to tell her that I was already finished and stranded at the school).

She said she’d tell the boss and hung up abruptly. I got out the book I keep in the car, and the mechanic showed up not too long after. …I spent the next few hours watching him and his son take pieces out of the car and put them back in.
It was just one large rubber band looking thing that they needed to clear enough space to put in. I have no idea how much it cost, I would be only too happy to continue to not know how much it cost/ to not have it taken out of my pay. The last person to drive this car was an ex-mechanic, who was apparently not pleased to be fired by my boss. It seems he was the one to switch the wiper blades to jam. My boss is much better at inspiring thoughts of sabotage than loyalty or confidence.

A couple days after the car was re-repaired, he asked me to come to work 20 minutes early (not 4:50, but 4:30). I showed up at 4:30/ 20 minutes early, and he was angry because he told me to come at 4:20, …which he didn’t. He says that he wants to replace me with someone less calm; Also his wife calls all the shots and she is insisting that he replace me.

I was happy to hear it. I don’t need to put up with all these empty accusations. Waking up in the morning has gotten a lot easier.
The worst part of it, seriously, was that I had just stretched and primed a big piece of canvas I had been saving/ waiting to paint. Oil paint can take a month to dry, and with just a month and a few days before I finish here, I had to break it apart without having made so much as a single mark on it.

He said I would finish around October 25th so that he would have enough time to find a replacement, and so I would be able to finish the English show at one of the schools.
I asked him before what I’m supposed to do, and he told me something along the lines of: “School, five minutes, show, in early morning, something…, playing, dancing, saying, speak English, on stage, parents watch, please practice “
I asked if they had a plan at that school, or if I had to come up with it and he said: “Ma, you talk, ma, school tell, you, help, practice, ma”.
He gets frustrated when you ask him questions/ try to get him to clarify, so I never want to ask too many.

I decided I should ask at the school instead, but neither of the teachers of the 2 classes knew anything about it at first. A couple of weeks later I asked again, because he kept bugging me about this thing he never seemed very interested in explaining. The one teacher said she wasn’t going to do any English thing, but the next teacher said: It was not 5 minutes, but an hour long (an hour for 5 year olds to perform in a foreign language they don’t understand? - Weird!). It was not in the morning, it was at night, etc.
I asked them to please inform my boss (who had told me: morning, 5 minutes, other things that are as likely horribly wrong).
He had since informed me that I needed to write something like a play with music (about 5 minutes still). I did it and I brought it with me the next time I was there. We practiced one time so far, and I go back there 2 more times before they’re supposed to do it on stage in front of their parents (for an hour?). 3 times for 5 year olds to memorize everything for a short play - That should be sufficient.

That should also be my last day - as he had informed me, but then he’s put me on the schedule as far as the 31st - perhaps longer.

It would give me more time to paint outside if it would ever not rain continuously through my days off.

There’s a pretty friendly girl in her 20s that works at my company a few days a week. It turns out that she doesn’t like working there all that much either. She said the boss’ wife had been, or is trying to get him to fire/ replace her too. I told her there’s no reason she should have to put up with all their crap.
I didn’t see her there all the next week.

I got to thinking that this would be a good time for me to go back to New Jersey and visit my family, maybe the grand canyon…
I could find another job here, but going home for Christmas for once is and has been my highest priority for years. Something always comes up and prevents me from going. This year I‘m absolutely going.
Upgrading jobs and working conditions had made it so I haven’t had a real vacation in years, …not since I went back to visit my mom when she had cancer. (She wrote a few days ago to say she thinks her cancer may have come back.)
I was even thinking of going home for a bit and trying to get myself into one of those programs to get certified as an art teacher in the U.S./ get a job I won’t hate and one of those cheap houses the market is flooded with…
But it seems that Bush has started a new depression and thousands and thousands of people in the U.S. are going to out of work very soon.

I had already made plans to go back up to Saitama to visit my girlfriend before I was told I would be replaced, so we decided we should stop at the American embassy in Tokyo that weekend to see what we would have to do to get her a visa so she can come live with me in the U.S. if/ when I go back.
I brought a lot of things I had in this house to store at her house - to make moving out easier. She seemed pleased to get all my curry spices, vegan seasoning, and my mostly untouched bottle of vodka.

It happened to be an old coworker friend’s birthday that night, so we had a small party for him. It was supposed to be a bigger small party, but both the other girls I’d invited canceled that day and said they had to stay home to take care of/ go visit sick relatives.
We tried to go to another bar after the first one, but the ones we’d had in mind were all closed early on Sunday nights.

That probably made it easier for the 2 of us to get up early to make it to the American embassy, but it didn’t feel at all easy.
While we were switching trains my girlfriend realized she’d left her bag on the shelf above her seat. We had to find the office were we could report it missing, report it missing, wait for it to be found at the last stop, take the next train to the last stop, find the office where they had her bag, get her bag, and get back on our way.
It left us with very little time. I tried to warn her against running towards the embassy in sight of any of the many guards always outside. The 1st one she tried to pass stopped her, but didn’t ask her nearly as many questions as any of the cops who have ever stopped me. I didn’t think it prudent to give the guards any reason to detain us. American security forces are never very cool, but these were all Japanese natives.
We got in about 5 minutes before the embassy closed.
Getting her a visa would necessitate us getting married beforehand, so we got a notarized form that says that I don’t appear to be married already, so we can get married, so she can get a visa.
I had to put in lots of personal information and swear before some woman who said she was an officer (an officer of what I don’t know). She made me hold up my right hand and asked: “Do you swear that all the information you have put on this sheet is complete and true to the best of your knowledge?”
“Ah, …yup” I said. She gave me back the form, I gave it to my girlfriend to keep it nice and safe.
The catch to all this is that the notarized form ($30 and a long pain in the ass train ride each way), expires 90 days after issue, so we have to file it at her city hall with marriage papers sooner than I would otherwise care to do.

It was rainy all that day too. We stopped at an all vegan pita restaurant I’d found when I had to go to the embassy for the passport I’d lost. The inside of the shop is covered in white flour, so everybody eats outside, even on rainy days, under a drippy umbrella. It was good food, but we didn’t want to be outside all too much that day.
I proposed we waste a rainy day filing marriage forms in her city hall, rather than waste a perfectly good other day, but then I remembered getting married would void my Japanese working visa within 14 days unless we went to city hall and another government office yet another city. It closed too early for us to make it.
Doesn’t all that sound terribly romantic?

She apologized several times for forgetting her bag on the train. I told her it really didn’t matter since we made it there and got everything done on time anyway.
I forget things sometimes too.

I wouldn’t have thought that principle needed demonstrating so quickly.

We drove up to my favorite Indian buffet for dinner, and stayed overnight near there.
I love Japanese roadside hotels!
We found this all pink one with pink palm trees lit up all around it, but there weren’t any vacancies.
The one with the statue of liberty on the roof looked a little too old, the one with all the greek statues in plastic boxes on the staircase was too expensive, so we settled for one that had a little waterfall in the parking lot. The pink one would have been better really…
When we got back to her mom’s house the next day I realized I had left my white cell phone behind on the white pillow, so she drove us all the way back again.
We do make a fairly well matched couple at any rate.

While I was away for a few days, one of my adult students found out that I would be leaving, and told a guy in the next town who owns another small school - who is looking for somebody to hire rather quickly. I knew nothing of this until he sent me a message asking if I’d be interested. I went down there and he mentioned the hours and a house on the beach and I was interested.

It’s about $500 less per month, but that house is $150 cheaper, and I wouldn’t have to drive 20 minutes to an hour to different places 3 times a day. Shorter working hours./ More days off./ The stench of pig I suffer here, would give way to a salty costal breeze there…