On nice days I go to the beach, and those jelly fish!!!! You never even see them, but they Sting!

There have been 3, …maybe 4 nice days in the last month. The whole rest of the time it rained. We’ve had lots of promising looking blue patches in the sky but the grey keeps on beating them out.

Half the time I drive around with my backpack full of paint and brushes - hoping there’ll be a good sunny hour or two.

Maybe 30 minutes at 大鳥峡 and the blue patch I was pulling for gave up. It drizzled as I packed up my paints, and poured as I hiked back to my car.

30 minutes at Sakurajima - and the top of the mountain got swallowed by a cloud, which waited a few more minutes before raining, stopping, and raining and stopping again. I’ll assume that some of the people who stopped there in the rain to watch me were art enthusiasts, but some of them probably just wondered what the mountain they’d traveled to see - looked like.

One day it poured and it shined 6 times in rapid succession.

It was only rainy then sunny 3 times so far today; Raining now.

Rain and paint just don’t mix well.

Paint outside on cloudy days and you wind up with dismal dark paintings…, so I haven’t been as productive as when I 1st arrived here.

Mind you, 2 paintings a day, 4 days a week is difficult to maintain - even if the weather is nice.

I make it a point to go down to the beach any day that I have off. The water there is so warm, it has to be at least partly heated by the volcano (Mt. Sakurajima) up the road. It is of course cooler in the rainier times. And you’ll probably get stung once an hour. (Jellyfish)

When I lived in Saitama, my girlfriend would visit me most every day.

My new best friend, is a giant driftwood log. Every time I go to the beach I go find my log, roll it down into the water, then swim around it/ hang off it like an otter. Ask it how it’s been, tell it about the 1 yen coin I found, …It’s a good log.

2 sunny days this weekend, so I painted 4 pictures on the beach - and got stung 2 times.

Jelly fish!!

I used to bring my goggles to the beach, but there’re no fish and no plants to see. Long ago I was throwing the jelly fish I found washed up on the beach - back into the sea. No I don’t see them on the shore anymore. Maybe they’ve learned?

I don’t know if I would repeat my kindness to them if I saw any more washed up on the shore. I hate those damn jelly fish.

Anyway, I like the beach.

Despite the Damn Jellyfish!

Something/ not painting - that I have accomplished lately:

I cleaned my house.

Also, I moved into a newer nicer, much much much cleaner house. (That is the one I cleaned.)

New house video:

[youtube=http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=K3W__aF-_8A]

For some reason there was no mailbox at this house. All the other houses have little metal boxes nailed to the sides of them - mine just has a number of nail sized holes. I thought it odd that somebody would take a mailbox with them when they move, but then I went to a hardware store + saw how much they were charging for those little metal boxes.

When I went to the beach later that day I found a large plastic jug + thought I might be able to make it into something like a mailbox.

I did that “successfully”, though it nearly cost me the tip of my pointer finger. I only have a folding/ swiss army knife - which folded itself about a fifth of the way through my finger and nail when I was trying to cut through the plastic.

I’d like to say I learned from that mistake. I couldn’t use that one finger for a few days./ I gave it up for 2 weeks, then got 2 more bloody gashes, before I finished the job.

I’m happy with it/ and mostly healed now, …although I never get any mail.

My job here, I’m not wildly pleased with.

The 2 and 3 year olds just sit there with their hands in their mouths/ their friends mouth/ their drool spilling out of their mouths. The older kids have learned how to punch, and they often seem to want to practice on me. This one little bastard took a running swing between my legs (which is just the right height for a little kid’s arms). That hurt for hours, but I can only twist their little arms for a few seconds.

“It’s not English class unless somebody cries”.

Some of them think I’m gym equipment, some of them think I’m a petting zoo, some of them think I’m an Un-dress up doll, some of them just sit there and drool.

We played a game today where I had to chase some kids. I lunged at a little fat kid, and my pants ripped, and they all laughed at me. I missed him too. He was slow, but slippery.

The place where I once had to spend 20 minutes trying to get 2 mentally handicapped children off of me, so I could try to quiet down their 50 otherwise unsupervised classmates,…

It had improved significantly.

Hardly anyone ever tried to take my shirt off of me anymore, and they hadn’t given each other any serious injuries in a month. One time (within that 2 month period), the school’s principle looked in, and everyone behaved until she had gone (almost a whole minute). She canceled my company’s contract a few weeks later saying: “the kids aren’t having fun”. I was astounded! Those damn kids had soooooo much fun. I was only ever able to keep them from breaking bones/ shedding blood. I could understand if she’d said they weren’t learning anything. I could hardly hear myself over the din a lot of the time I was there (…they

This ticked my boss off.

I like money, you like money, he’s really really concerned with getting and keeping as much money as possible. He’s also pretty stressed out. I was hired to replace 2 people, and I think he had employed even more before I came.

Everything is, of course, my fault though.

The day before those people canceled that contract I had been talking with the only other foreign teacher he has. One of the reasons I switched to this company was so I could go back home for Christmas. This other guy too, seems to want to not be stuck having little kids try to stick their fingers up his ass on the most celebrated day of the year.

My Boss said only one of us could go home for Christmas. The other guy here really wants to go, and I value going -more than I value my job certainly, so it’s an easy decision for me - as to what I should do. Fa-La-La-La-LA!

Unfortunate about the timing though really. I don’t know what the deal was with them canceling, but I know why I’m not going to work through Christmas.

This other guy had to go and do my last 2 afternoon classes at the place that canceled. Because he and I are the only teachers, I got sent to do his 2 afternoon classes, plus his 2 night classes. I still had to do my own night class on top of that. Canceled classes means a short term increase in classes.

His anniversary was a week ago, so he asked me to switch one of his later night classes for one of my earlier night classes. It’s a pain for me to have to sit around for an extra hour, but it was his anniversary. The part that irks me, is the student I was supposed to teach called a few minutes before his class to say he forgot he had to come that night. So, the other guy got to leave 2 hours early, I had to stay 2 hours late, AND make up for the extra class the other guy didn’t have to teach the next day.

That was the day my girlfriend flew down from Saitama to see me. I hadn’t seen her in over 2 months, so my boss, who likes money, looked upset that I didn’t want to leave her outside for an extra hour and 10 minutes ,in the perpetually raining weather, in an unfamiliar area, with a heavy suitcase to drag behind her, so he could let somebody else come in and bore me a little later on a Saturday night. I’ll take care of your girlfriend he said. “She doesn’t like creepy old men” I thought, but decided to just stick to: “No Way”, and “You don’t know what she looks like.”

He was starting to get mad at me refusing it, when I suggested, as calmly as always, that he could just have to guy come earlier in the afternoon. Which was no problem for him.

As for the Christmas thing, he has wisely resolved to allow me to take off. As I had said, I would have taken off anyhow. He’s decided that he will let me use my vacation time to go, but all of my classes from now until then will have to be 15 minutes longer each, …so he doesn’t have to refund anybody any money.

That I’m going, is of course, the most important thing, that I’m using up all of my paid vacation time, when I’m being forced to do most of that work beforehand - is less than ideal.

I complain, but then I took a peak at the other guy’s schedule + it’s a lot busier/ he has more to complain about than me.

I took a look at my new monthly schedule too, and found I had one extra class. My boss never wrote where that class is… I asked him that morning, and he said it was there in the office. He moved the time of my next class back 20 minutes - I thought - so I would have just the time I needed to make it there.

I finished my new class + hurried the 30 minutes distance to my usual class - to find my boss there. “What are you doing here?” I asked. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

He hadn’t written a location for that class for me, nor had he given any indication that I wouldn’t be going there the same as always, + I assumed it was the same place as always. But it wasn’t.

He was/ is mad because I didn’t read the empty spaces the way he didn’t write them.

The funny part was that I left the stuff I need to teach at the school I wasn’t supposed to go to, while I was cleaning it.

This morning I went in the office, …because I have to go in the office every morning - in case he needs anything. He never actually does need anything, but he gets mad when I don’t go and tell him that I’m going now. He wasn’t there today, but his wife was. His wife asked me where I was supposed to work today + I told her + she got mad.

“Oh no, That’s 20 minutes away” she said.

“It’s 15″ I said.

“Can you really make it there on time?” she said.

“Absolutely” I said.

“Can You really?” she said.

“Yes.” I said.

“You can make it there on time?” she said - again!

“It’s 20 minutes away.” she repeated.

“It’s 15 minutes away, and the clock you’re looking at is 5 minutes fast.” I said …slowly.

“I don’t think you can get there on time.” was what she said next.

+ these are the times that I wish my Japanese was better.

If someone you knew was running late - do you think it would help them, …or, perhaps, make them later - to ask them the same dumbass question over and over and over.

I got there 4 minutes early, and I wanted to call her in the office to ask her where I was and what time it is.

It was nice to have my girlfriend over for a few days anyway.

She thought it smelled awful here too, but she has no idea how bad it can be.

She doesn’t often stay up ’til 12am!

We went to where the 1st Emperor’s grandparents are interred. It started pouring as soon as I parked the car. We went to the waterfall + saw lots of those weird orange cave crabs. We went to the beach and swam out to the shrine on the rocks. We went to the Indian place in town, and both felt sick the next day.

We went to Kagoshima city, bought a few art supplies, souvenirs for her mom and coworkers, then hurried back to the volcano side, to get in my mini car and drive like mad to the airport.

I was pretty mad too. We had to stop and ask directions twice, because there were/ are no airport signs at 2 of the intersections you have to turn at.

I drove for just under 2 hours - which should have been about an hour and 10 minutes. We got to the airport about 10 minutes before her flight. The people at the check in counter told her that she needed to be there 15 minutes before the flight, but they gave her a ticket for the 1st plane the next day, and I bought a map at a gift shop. We found another Indian restaurant and a hotel a few minutes away. I was glad to get to see her a little more, + dropped her off the next morning before my 2 and a half hour drive back to my city before I had to start work.

It rained again while I was getting ready to go out painting.

The next day looked nicer, but I decided I would just go for a swim instead. The Jellyfish stung me 2 times!

Without knowing much of anything about monkeys, I’d have to say that it’s probably monkeys chattering and squealing outside my window now and then
- and every nightfall and dawn.
All I can ever see from my window is bamboo, a lot of it.
Though I’ve tried to spot them at nightfall, it’s too thick and dark to make anything out.
At dawn I’m a lot less interested in catching a glimpse of …probably monkeys, more interested in getting back to sleep.
Damn monkeys! …probably.

Things like that are difficult to foresee, when you figure you’ll figure it all out when you get there.

The guy/ my new boss was waiting at the airport for me when I got there. He said he left his house at 4pm.
I had also left my last apartment in Saitama at 4pm. All the trains to the other train to the train to the airport were delayed. It might’ve been a problem for me, but the guy who took over my last job showed up at his new/ my old apartment early, so I didn’t feel much like sticking around for the extra hour and a half anyway.
My new boss said there was a faster way to my new city, but he didn’t know it, so we went the way that he did know.

It took longer than the flight, and was a bit awkward, being that I didn’t/ don’t ever have a whole lot to say, but I liked it better than the conversation on the train to the train to the airport with some other foreign guy who spotted me with my 4 bags.
It seems that his wife is Japanese, they have 3 kids, no money, and he is reluctantly being forced to buy a house in Tokyo. He teaches English at kid’s birthday parties on weekends for a little extra money. He smelled a little odd + had nothing else of any consequence to say; He said it anyway.
A lonely Nepali guy saw us/ 2 other foreign people speaking in English, so he politely joined in.
They changed to another train together + I hope everything works out for them.

I remembered that you’re not supposed to take shaving razors on an airplane, so I packed mine in a box I’d arranged to have shipped to my new apartment. Then I couldn’t shave for a few days.
I remembered that - to my disadvantage, …but forgot to move my mini Swiss-Army scissors out of my backpack, so I had to open things/ show things to the airport security staff.
I’d filled every bit of space in all my bags + it took a bit of time to get it all back in.
Guess it’s lucky the guy who took over my old job and apartment and his wife showed up early - so that I would leave a little earlier.

I went so far as to pack all my towels, soap, + razor together (so I could find them easily later), …and like I already said, the box didn’t show up for a few days.
I had to borrow hand towels to take a shower. The hand towels were only hand towel sized, but they smelled like the mold of many larger towels.
I got a few sticks of incense at a store - which did not make the towels any cleaner, but they did smell better.
+ having packed all my soap away, I had to buy some more cheap stuff at a store. I’d heard that the scent of geraniums makes insects less interested in biting you. + was lucky enough to find some geranium scented soap, which somehow makes my hands itch
- though, in its favor, I will attest to the fact that my hands have no insect bites on them.

I sent most of my clothes in my 2 big suitcases by delivery truck - because the airline dropped its luggage weight limit way way down. I packed everything to save on shipping costs/ airline fines, which led to me having only had 2 shirts/ 2 pairs of socks/ 2 pairs of shorts to last however long it took for the boxes to show up.
It did not take too long for everything to arrive, but I did buy some detergent + try to wash what I had (+ the hand towels I borrowed); That’s funny because the washing machine that came with the apartment will wash things very well, …though it will neither rinse nor spin dry anything you’d have it soak and soap up.

Turning the washing machine on also floods the entire balcony with water. I tried and tried to have it, wash, rinse, and spin my clothes, + eventually wound up with slightly sudsy mud water up to my ankles.

The apartment that came with the washing machine ….Egad!

[youtube=http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=6MktsfzjOTM]
There are thick grey cobwebs all over.
There are a number of doors off their hinges, and leaning against a wall.
The doors leaning against the wall have holes in them, as do all the walls.
There is only 1 futon for me to sleep on.
It is yellowed- like badly kept teeth, and there are no sheets, nor pillowcases for either of the pillows - which are browned - like very badly kept teeth.
There is a small table with a regular sized tire sitting on top of it. Why? - I do not know.
The toilet never stops running/ The fan above the stove never stops running.
- They are both heavily stained with grease
All of the screens on all of the windows each have holes large enough for birds (of varying sizes) to come inside + eat what bugs or mice there may be within.
I found at least 20 cockroach traps under the sink - which made the whole kitchen stink of sticky sweet poison.
That is why I had to go out to buy the incense.
There were several frozen cockroaches in the freezer and about 30 (intact) baby cockroaches stuck to the scrubbing side of a sponge.
+ I already mentioned the damn monkies (probably) that keep waking me up.

I was happy when my bike, my clothes and towels, tea and incense collection showed up here. Previously I had been walking far too far, in what I am told is now just a warm up to the real heat ahead. (4 hours walk the other day - that hurt my old man hips.)
Cycling is a good way to see a new town and to keep cool (the breeze), but certain patches of this city stink of cow or pig poo, and the stink comes and goes where it will. (It is not something I like to have hit me when I am breathing heavy - indeed …breathing at all.)

Rice fields, cow or pig farms (and their odors) aside, there is not the nature I was looking forward to meeting here. I’ve since seen signs and brochures that call this area “the Florida of Japan”.
It is an apt comparison in that it is hot and boring here. All the things you want to see and do are a long drive away, and many of the people drive like idiots.

I drive very carefully now because I’m not perfectly sure my international license is totally valid here, and I just realized today that the car I was given to use has not been inspected for a considerable time.
Also, as I mentioned, there’s nothing to see or do in the immediate area, so need to hurry there.

The lady who told me Kagoshima is cooler than where I used to live - She used to live in the big city on the water across the bay, in sight of the volcano I was so interested to come and see. The city I live in is not on the water, not in sight of that volcano I’d always wanted to see smoking away.

It’s damn hot.
I’ve sweat so much in just the past week, that the metal buckle on my watch has rusted.
- I didn’t notice this until my wrist started bleeding in several places - something of an inconvenience…

My new co-workers are both married Canadians. I was taken to watch the one at work - so I could copy what he did during my first week. He was good enough to take me an additional long way down a long road to a pretty nice beach that nobody is allowed to swim on. (Riptide)

He had a few hours before he had to be back in the office, it was technically my day off and it was, of course, hot, so he decided we should go swimming at a waterfall he knew of. If my bathing suit were not packed up in a box somewhere in transit, I would not have thought to bring it to a one hour pre-school English class.
He, likewise, just had the underpants he was wearing, but he had many more spare pairs than me. He jumped in, swam around a bit while I waded. I wanted to see the top of the falls. There was a rope you could climb up the cliff face, which we did - in our underpants. He said there was more cool stuff up there, which there was, but the only safe way back down was to go down the falls in the water.
He told me about some elaborate safety tests he had done + went down before me.
I didn’t want to walk around all day in wet underpants (with just my 2 day old/ sweat soaked other pair to change into, so I took off the ones I was wearing + tossed them onto a rock at the bottom of the falls + slid down the waterfall on my bare ass.

I like the idea of that.

It was cold in the water, but the sun was strong enough to dry me in a few minutes. I retrieved my underpants, shorts, shirt and got dressed again. Then as we were walking back to his car, I slipped on a slimy rock and fell in the water with all my clothes on.

That waterfall is about an hour away from my house. I can paint a couple pictures of it.
I found a “temple” without any buildings after work this afternoon, which could be good for one, …

maybe 2 more paintings. The beach and the water I was shown were both grey. The bay I drive by on my way to several of the places I’m to be working at have ugly grey concrete walls along the road, and beyond the sand - in the water. They’re also about an hour away/ not really worth visiting.

My new boss, and the one co-worker who is not going back to Canada for good at the end of the month are both quite nice. The guy who is leaving is also very good to me. He showed me an Indian restaurant, just a block away from my new company and a good bakery. I’ve found 2 internet cafes which won’t let my web-camera work.
I’ll have to explore the far off areas, but here is not what I had hoped it would be.
It is better for me than where I’ve just left, but I’ve also left my fiance a long long way behind. She said she would join me here in 6 months time If I thought I’d like to stay here longer than that, …but it doesn’t seem so.

Why they call this “city“: “Deer, something, city” of: “Deer, something, Island” prefecture - when there are no deer whatsoever anywhere near or far from here, is the only thing I have since thought to add to my list of things to: “find out or do” before I move on once again.

The End - this time

By some (seemingly) extraordinary coincidence: I only had 2 slices of bread, just enough peanut butter, and precisely enough jelly to enable me to finish all 3 up - together, with but a single “peanut butter + jelly sandwich”.
I decided it would be fun to take this as a divine omen of something or other, but never bothered to ponder it further. Deliciousness!

By some far more meaningful coincidence: I happened to wake up (to the cheery early sounds of propane tanks being dragged across the pavement beneath my window). I remembered what season it was, and got to the city I worked in that day, an hour early. From that train station - two thirds of the way to where I work, is a shallow river filled with: ducks, cormorants, egrets, turtles, fish, and , sadly…, bicycles, foam cups, and fire extinguishers. The part that is especially nice in that season though, is all the gnarley old cherry trees (which bloom only briefly).
An hour early was not enough time to paint anything, but just enough time for my little leaky bottle of ink and pen tips. I stopped under an old stone bridge and did a picture of a red wood bridge. You can’t see the red though, …being that I only had black ink.
With winter gone, it was still light enough outside after work to allow me to do another picture: Trees on both banks - in black + white.

A few days before, when I 1st happened to take my little leaky bottle of ink and pen tips to a little park to draw some cherry trees and wait out my 2 hour lunch break: I got a call from the president of my company who had stopped by where I work (unannounced/ unexpectedly) with some papers I would need for some new classes. I think my being in the park then is lucky, because as nice as he is, I didn’t have to talk to my boss, and didn’t have to explain why I was wearing the jeans and T-shirt it is my custom to wear to my “business casual job.

He surprised me there a few weeks later + said nothing about my “Business - very casual” attire, but laughed a good deal at all the vegetables poking out of my backpack, so it may not matter what I wear for my 2 hour work days after all.

I like my job, but dislike city, and would like vacation.

The last day that week was one where I only had to work in the morning, which permitted me to take some paint to a spot I painted in when I first lived in the suburban blight I occupy again now. Only one drunk guy and his kids tried to talk to me then, which allowed me enough time to finish my painting and make it home on my bicycle before total darkness set in. Did really well with that one I think.

Being that this is a ceaseless concrete sore - there are really really very few other/ + no better places to go to paint, so my girlfriend went back there with me the next day.
While I was busy painting, she sat on the ground and played Sudoku. One of the times that she looked up, she asked me if we didn’t know a guy by one of the trees.

There were lot’s of guys there by the trees, and a fair chance that we knew any of them, but being that there were about a hundred guys in the area immediately near the trees (because there are lots and lots and lots and lots of people in this area, and a terrible lack of trees for anyone to be near), I couldn‘t pick out a dark haired guy that looked more familiar than anyone else.
Later on, some girl wandered over and asked me if I didn’t know some guy, who was then waving to us with both arms. That helped a lot!
He and his family are all from Turkey, and he brought something Turkish over for us to try. It was sort of a thin pancake with maybe spinach, and potatoes or pumpkin pressed inside. I liked its uniqueness,
…if not its taste or texture. His girlfriend stayed and talked with my girlfriend for a while. That seemed to liven her up a lot; Girls like talking.
This other girl said she said she had gone to art school and offered to introduce us to people who know how to get paintings into places where they could be seen or sold.
I’ve heard that sort of thing before, and it does sound nice, and it was nice of her to suggest it, but I don‘t expect anything to actually come of it
An older woman also came by, watched, and took lord know how many photos of me there. She was really truely earnestly interested in how many cherry petals had gotten mixed into my paint / had adhered to my painting.
Tweasers at home revealed it to be 48.

There was also an old man …who said he remembered me from long long ago - painting plumb trees under the Shinkansen tracks. That was my favorite part, I remembered him too after he mentioned that
…makes me wonder if I won’t bump into him again a few more years down the line.

It was a really really nice day and nice night, accentuated by the fact that it rained the entire week after.
It cleared up the day just before the weekend,
but switched right back to rain when I’d gotten home from work.

While trapped indoors I looked into what possibilities lay for me to escape my suburban confinement.
Actually I took the easier approach: revised an old resume I had disabled on a Japanese job site, to let companies look at it - just to see if anyone wanted to offer me a sweet job like mine, in a place unlike this one.
Not long after, this one company offered me one for one, and another for the other, but no combination of: nice job + good place.

I’m down on Saitama, so my girlfriend thought she would prove to me that Saitama is not such a bad place. She drove me to a big park 2 cities down, which was packed full of only children and young parents. We had a good walk all around the park, but didn’t see anything interesting besides the one tree that looked older than me.
She took me a lot farther out on another day to see a lake where the mountains reach the plain, but she didn’t want to wake up before 10 am, and actually didn’t wake up until 12pm, …so we got there not long before dark.
I liked it there, somewhat far from here… Driving there for a mini-hike, a snap-shot, and a drive straight back is a shame though.

I’ve taken to collecting houseplants - to try and liven up my most immediate surroundings., but it bothers me that all the pots they sell are either: expensive, or plastic. Expensive ones are expensive. Plastic ones are a cornucopia of toxins, which crowd the seas and landfills - and will do for the next million years at least.
But they are cheaper…
It’s weird to have to buy a container and dirt to keep a plant nearby, when they should rightly be all over the place anyway.
I was going to reluctantly buy a few extra dishes: ceramic mugs, soup bowls, and whatnot - to keep some extra plants in but then I discovered these new pots - otherwise indistinguishable from plastic ones, except they’re made of bamboo fibers and flour. They crack the week after you put a plant in them, + claim to disappear without a trace within a year if kept outside. This has to be one of the most exciting types of pot that has come out in a very long time. Hooray for pot (s)!

Anyway, on that one day that I headed to work an hour early, I got to the station with lots of time to spare, and I saw some cool close up photos of these rock archways on a mountain I used to drive past. Nagano is full of mountains, but that one would easily be the coolest (if it were in Nagano, not right next to Nagano - in Gunma).

My girlfriend drove us there one weekend soon thereafter, so I could try to paint a picture there. It always was my favorite mountain of all those I’ve seen this far, and it would have been the perfect time to go paint: the cherry trees up on the mountain were still blooming, as were so many other flowers. I was pleased we had timed it so well,
but 20 minutes after we got out of the car, it started raining.

I think, by all rights, Japan should be called the land of “Dude, where’s the sun?”.

The rain was not so hard this time, and it let up before too long, but the sky stayed ominous looking, so we hiked all that day instead. The trail there goes through several stone archways. We climbed on some rocks + took some pictures. I took about 30 minutes to draw a picture of an arch.

I could have done a lot better with it.

(I also usually cut my hair reasonably well, but my hand twitched while I was using the scissors this last time, so I had to get my shaver out of storage early + go all bald.)

We got back to the car at dusk + drove around looking for a place to stay for about 2 hours. We could have driven back home in less time…

The next day was a lot safer/ sunnier + we were going to go back to the same spot so I could try to paint everything there while it was still so so so nice, but we stopped at a little lake along the way which was also nice, so I started painting there + we didn’t leave until dusk again.

Whenever we head in that direction we stop at an Indian buffet where the waitress presses one of the chefs into make me a vegan curry.
I don’t know why I like Indian food so much.
I’m told that my brother has to go and work in India for weeks at a time, and he brings jars of peanut butter and jelly with him, so he doesn’t have to eat curry all the time.
Peanut curry seems like an idea!
The pumpkin curry I tried a few days ago was terrific.

I stopped at an Indian curry place nearest the station where I have recently been forced to start teaching on alternate Wednesday nights. That was alright, but more expensive and much much more limited in quantity. It also burned my insides for 2 whole days.
It might not have been soo bad for so long, but I decided to have spicy vegan Singapore noodles for lunch the day after; Kinda’ like how Arnold Schwartzenegger was doing push-ups in his hospital room right after he had surgery done - too much too soon.

Speaking of surgery reminds me that I had been talking about curry, and by talking about curry I mean to point out that my girlfriend has decided that we are engaged now.
She made me go ring shopping with her in some swank area of Tokyo where they have an all vegetarian Indian restaurant. That was excellent, but again, pretty expensive considering: it was in an expensive area and involved buying 2 rings (+ mine was free).
Rings and weddings are remarkably unimportant to me. I’d be much happier just having fewer cockroaches, or a few days to travel.

The night before all that, a recently married friend of mine who is going to make a nice art website for me came to discuss ideas, lose at Mario cart, and look around my apartment for things he can get when I go. He likes curry too, so we had a bit of what was left over from the night before.

The night before was when she made nann, + I made curry, + she got upset that I had all but decided to move to one of the furthest parts of the country. She wound up crying more than briefly, which I don’t like to see, but I don’t remember exactly how that came to her decide-ding that we would get married soon.

The soon part surprised me. I thought I’d have a few years grace period, but she was saying soon while talking to the staff at the jeweler’s who wanted to know when we’d be getting hitched.
“I want to get married”, I’ve been hearing more or less persistently for a year ; It doesn’t surprise me much anymore. What is the need/ What is the benefit of Marriage? And why would it ever have to be soon.

Soon is when I seem to be leaving for one of the furthest parts of the country. Maybe with that approaching, she was able to wake up before 10 to go ring shopping.
If for whatever reason you feel as though you want to get married, I would advise you to have the foresight to surprise her with the ring. You will save sooooooo much time (+ probably money).

We started ring shopping at 12. One shop, one train ride, and one more shop later, it was 4pm + we got to that nice, though expensive vegetarian Indian restaurant - with the good pumpkin curry. Nice place, terrible waiter, I prefer the buffet we always stop at whenever we head in the opposite direction. I’ll miss that place if/ when I move to one of the furthest parts of the country.

We were at that last ring shop for the 4 hours which ensued.
She, having picked out a platinum, and pink gold matching engagement + wedding ring set (with 7 small diamonds and one large one I insisted not come from an unknown part of Africa (The ensuing investigation took at least an hour, but people recommended I watch that movie about diamond smuggling in Africa, + I‘d hate to think of anybody losing an arm or their family over a shiny rock).
After we got everything worked out, she was happy + said it was fine by her if I wanted to go back to the expensive all vegetarian restaurant with the good pumpkin curry, but 3 days of curry and the price set me off of it this one time.
She was good enough to get us a package of French fries on our way back to the station.

I have to admit that I found it intellectually stimulating to ponder with what frequency French fry purchasing would have to occur to equal the price of the aforementioned jewelry in: one, five, ten, and thirty year periods of time.
I’m just a pretend genius though, so I didn’t actually do the calculations, I just helped eat the fries.

Kagoshima is a city in the southernmost part of Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan’s largest islands. Kagoshima has sounded really really interesting to me for a long time because:
They have cone shaped sake’ cups which cannot be set down on the table without spilling, and those same cups have a hole at the bottom, which sake’ would leak out of - if you didn’t plug the hole up with your finger. These are 2 very creative ways to ensure everyone gets drunk very quickly; You just have to shoot it.
What they put in those cups, my old roomate brought with him on a ski-trip and we drank it as his girlfriend drove us all back home. (Apparently it’s okay to play drinking games in a car in Japan, if the driver isn’t drinking). She didn’t miss out on much, what he had in that bottle/ what they put in those cups is not good! We had to stop at a convenience store to pick up some better tasting liquor + I think Tyler had to drink, ‘cause that’s how the game went: When we drive past a Pachinko parlor - Nao drinks. When we go past a convenience store - Tyler drinks. I had love hotels and those circular sushi restaurants.

The other thing about Kagoshima is that it has one of the Earth’s most active volcanoes in the bay opposite the city. They say it spews a cloud of grey ash up in the sky almost every day. The people there always carry umbrellas to keep the dust off of themselves, and they have a hard time choosing a day to hang their laundry out to dry.

The company that tried to get me to take the job with great hours in the city as bad as the one I’m in now, and later tried to get me to take a really busy job in a city which is arguably better than the one I’m in now… - They got me to wonder if I shouldn’t look and see what other jobs, in what other places might be available.

I saw an ad for a job in Kagoshima, where I’ve most wanted to go for years, …so I told the guy I’d like to know more, + he called me a few times, + this + that + offered me the job without bothering about an interview.

The vacation’s pretty bad, but I don’t actually get any vacation at the job I do now.
It’s nice I can work without working + see my girlfriend/ “fiance? - I guess”, but it also feels as though I am just waiting here to Die (again) (+ play on face book).
This other job involves a car - which beats the hell out of riding your bike to work in the midst of a typhoon. I already have a grey umbrella for the sunny - ashy days.

Rain:
My feet were wet from 10am to 10pm one day last week. A typhoon came during the night + I didn’t plan to have time to get the train to work. My bike is a lot more direct/ quicker than the train, but it made me a whole lot wetter - despite my rain coat and ski pants. My shoes, of course, are just normal shoes, so they got filled with water + my feet sloshed until I got home.

I got home at 10pm, because I had an interview with the company that kept offering me jobs I didn’t want. I came direct from my job in one city, and rode 2 cities down, past my house, + 2 cities further to get to the interview just in time. I met a guy in a very nice suit + had to apologize for wearing my “business very casual” clothes direct from work. The guy asked me lots of questions he didn’t seem to need to hear the answers to. He said he used to work with one of my oldest old co-workers/ one of the ones who tried to convince me to leave Nagano + come back to Saitama. He said that they had put teachers into the teeny town I used to live in, and that one of the people he’d talked to there had had nice things to say about me. His boss came in at one point + waved to me + shook my hand, because he had worked at the company who had put me in that teeny town - when they had put me in that town, and he quit that company to start his own company. It was a long validating trip down memory lane. The job they had in mind for me sounded kind of sucky though.
Despite my jeans, wet shoes, and T-shirt, they wanted to offer me work I didn’t want, and they wanted me to start tomorrow. I wanted a bit of time for vacation between jobs, but told the guy in Kagoshima that I was interested in his offer anyway. - I figure living at the southern tip of an island with the sea on 3 sides might make time to travel less important.
We’ll see if I’m right or not. Sometimes: I am not right - sometimes.

“Golden Week” is a time when a lot of people, like me, get a small portion of the week off. This makes traveling anywhere further than your local grocery store both: crowded and expensive.

My girlfriend and I had the same few days off as everyone else, + didn’t want to waste them sitting around in my apartment/ this city. Trains, busses, planes, ships, trolleys (assuming there are any trolleys in Japan), would be too full to fit everyone and both of us inside them, so we waited until late afternoon the 1st day of the mini-vacation, to drive up to Fukushima. I had been to the 5 colored ponds there years ago + liked them. At that time, the city I lived in/ live in now had a special deal with an inn up there to give Ageo city residents a big discount on nightly stays. Sometimes when we ponder the good/ bad points about this city, I am reminded of that.
Early on, when we had determined that staying in our city would be a huge waste of a good opportunity to go somewhere I was led to think that going back there would be good. That inn’s out of business now though.
We bought a Fukushima travel magazine at a roadstop on the way.
Going there really wasn’t too bad by the way. I expect most people got in their cars the night after work the day before. My girlfriend saw a picture of a village where all the buildings had grass roofs + decided we would go there the next day.
Again, we drove around for nearly 2 hours looking for a place to stay before we found a spot.
We got up the next morning + went to a castle (which was packed full of other people too). We figured we’d find someplace to have lunch on the way to that village with all the grass roofs, but we didn’t, and we got caught between 2 cars in a long long long long long line of cars on a 2 lane road. We must have gone one car’s length every 10 minutes. We both got really really sleepy after being stuck in a tunnel for 30 minutes. I thought we might die from carbon monoxide poisoning. The opposite lane was full of cars speeding back the way we came, making it nigh impossible to turn around, so …after at least 2 hours + perhaps 2 kilometers of waiting, we got to a blinking traffic light where we could turn + take another road back.

We went a few kilometers back when the road got all crowded up again, so she told her car’s navigator to navigate us to a temple that is somewhat famous out that way. I liked it there because it wasn’t trapped in the car, and there were lots of chickens wandering around the grounds.

We went to the 5 colored ponds the next day. I like it there best: Nature, colors…

That’s it, …but they’re good things!
We rented a rowboat for 30 minutes + saw giant goldfish in the eerie blue water.

I stopped to paint a picture, but had to quit when it started to rain.
The rain stopped before we were back to the car, + all the other people had fled, so I stopped + tried to paint another picture. My girlfriend decided she would visit the gift-shop where we parked/ and wait in the car until I was done.
Just after I started painting, it started raining again. I started putting my stuff away again - as Acrylic paint and rain make a bad combination (water soluble), but figured it might clear up again if I waited a little bit.
I did wait a little bit + the rain did slow, then stop, but it made marks in the paint I had to let dry then re-paint, + by the time I was “finished” it was almost too dark to see any colors in the eerie colored pond.

As soon as I touched the car, my phone started vibrating like crazy because my girlfriend had apparently been e-mailing and calling me, hoping I would hurry up. Mostly everyone went home around the 1st rain, so the gift shop closed + she had nothing to do.

She said that she had had to pee for the last 2 hours, but the bathrooms were locked up. There was a public restroom in a parking lot across the street which I remembered from years before when I had come by myself, + she was even more “pissed off” that she’d been sitting + waiting so long when there was a bathroom 3 minute’s walk from the car. What can you do though?

There was a big traffic jam on the way back - when I was the one who had to go. Luckily for me, she was driving, so she drove to a rest stop and I ran in + went, while she was still waiting in the line of cars trying to get a parking spot.

We got home late + woke up late + I had a feeling like I should clear some of the things out of my apartment that I wouldn’t be needing. About a week and a half later I was offered that job in Kagoshima, a city so far away, I would/ will have to be very very selective about what I take with me when I go, + what I ask my girlfriend/ “fiance?” to take in her suitcases with her when she comes to visit me there.

The Bureau of Immigrations is a place for Immigrants …and in between folk like me, to go and sit for hours. There are of course’s lots of other places to go and sit, but only the Bureau of Immigrations has soooo many screaming foreign babies. It’s not just the grey carpets, grey curtains, grey walls, grey carpet, grey benches, and the multi-colored/ multi-cultured babies that draw the crowds though. You see: We’re forced to go.

If we were not forced to go, I think a lot of us foreign types would get upset that we have to sit for hours to wait to pay 2,000 yen for a stamp of permission to stay and pay 8,000 yen for another stamp of permission to leave occasionally.

I had a friend who forgot to go back to Immigrations to get his set of stamps: allowing him to stay and leave. I used to wonder which of those 2 stamps take precedence, but then he tried to go home for Christmas, and he wasn’t allowed on the plane, so there you go,
(…or don’t go).

I’ve been here legally for 6 years, but I never intended to stay long enough to have to go sit at the Bureau of Immigrations this many times. I wasn’t sure if they would force me to leave if my visa expired, but I didn’t want to have to go to court to find out - like my friend did. He got fed up and went home, …when they allowed him to. I took his job.
I went to immigrations to get the papers I needed to fill out. I filled them out, then waited in line to get a number, so I could wait to be called to give my papers to somebody else. Somebody checks your papers to be sure they’re all filled out before you can begin to wait to hand your papers to somebody different.
It took me maybe 10 minutes to fill out my papers.
15 minutes waiting to show my papers to the lady who hands out the numbers
I got a number and waited for 2 hours until:
They closed for lunch for an hour
Then I went for a walk, came back after an hour, and waited for at least another hour for them to call my number.
They called my number.
A guy looked over my papers for about 5 minutes, had me write my address on an postcard, He said they would send it to me when they decided when I should go back.

They’re reasonably comfortable grey benches, but still a huge pain in the ass if you know what I mean.

Why did I have to wait more than 4 hours for some one to look at my papers for 5 minutes? Why did I have to get a number for someone to look at my papers - when that someone looked as intently at them, as the person who looked at them when I got the number 4 hours before?
Why couldn’t I just leave my papers on the counter and go do something worthwhile with my day off?

Why did they have to demand that I go back to get my stamps during the only 3 day weekend I’ve had in a year?
Why did it take only 40 minutes to get it all done with when I did go back?

I wouldn’t say that I’m especially eager to stay here now, but I have to build up my insulin supply before I try going back to America again. $435.00 for me to talk to a doctor for 15 minutes in my own country, …and I can’t live without insulin (which, of course, requires a prescription/ Doctor‘s visit). Nice how that works out…
A non-sarcastic nice thing about here is that: people get the medicine and care they need without having to rely on corporate financers.

Between now and again, I watched all the clips of Ralph Nader I could find on YouTube and learned a lot about corporations. Are Nader’s ideas from 2000 still relevant today? Yu-Huh.
I volunteered to fly back home to help get Mr. Nader all the signatures he needs to get on the state ballots; I even said I’d ride my bike from house to house across the country so we wouldn’t have to spend $4 a gallon + pollute that much more in doing so. He hasn’t written back about it, but I did get an invitation to his birthday party as a result.
I really would have loved to have gone to that.
Damn shame I had to work that day, …on the other side of the planet. I did, however, take my girlfriend out for dinner on his birthday, …and hers.
We had a just a little party for her on her birthday. She picked out a place with half price drinks. Of course the food was roughly 3 times the price you’d pay anywhere else, …and only 2 vegan options. Didn’t get much of anything to eat, and had a lot to drink, and had a hang over alllll the next day.
I use my cell-phone as an alarm clock, so when I got a cell-phone mail an hour before my alarm should have gone off, I hang avertedly turned my back up alarms off and went to work. My head hurt, but I was especially disappointed to be told that I was an hour early.

I want that hour back, but as I say every time I write, I don’t work very hard. Which works out to be pretty un-exciting.

I’d go live in the woods if I didn’t need a job to buy insulin.
I told my girlfriend that + she got all miffy because she thought she wouldn’t be welcome to come and be a hermit in the woods with me. I tried to explain how you can’t be a real mountain hermit with your girlfriend asleep on your couch all the time, and how it’s impossible for a diabetic hermit to manufacture insulin with just spit and berries, but it didn’t cheer her up any + I had to say it was okay if she wanted to come and visit. She’s a pharmacist, but I’m still not retired.

Relatively warm days recently. These last 2 days I was off I went outside and painted plum blossoms near the railroad tracks - one of the few patches of land hereabout that hasn’t been turned into an apartment building.

There’s a park with actual green grass and some trees in one of the other cities I get sent to work in. It was warm enough the other day that I could go eat a peanut butter sandwich there over my 2 hour lunch break. It took 30 minutes each way to walk there, but I saw some trees and heard some birds.
That’s about all the contact with nature I’ve had for 5 months, unless you count all the cockroaches that run wild through my kitchen when the light is turned off.

I don’t like to kill them, so what I usually do is: keep my apartment clean, plug up the cracks and holes that lead in and out and out of the apartment, and trap the ones I see in an old cup - which I empty outside.
Really late one night I caught a big cockroach in an old mug my friend had left in the apartment. I took it outside on my balcony + tried to hurl it out into the night, …but I shook too vigorously - the handle of the mug snapped free - which sent the mug (+ cockroach inside) flying - loudly- into another apartment building, then something else, then it clattered on the ground a bit. It was loud as hell! I don’t know that it actually shattered though. I only live on the 2nd floor.

I threw bits of bread crumbs and unpopped popcorn kernels out the door of my apartment from time to time over the course of the winter - for the birds, but it’s all still there. There only seems to be big black crows in my city, + as far as I can tell, they only eat from garbage bags. “Picky”.

There’s a mini library next to the train station in my city. I went there a few times recently to try and find a children’s book that I would be able to read. I could read the ones I got, but I just couldn’t follow the story very well. My girlfriend has been a Japanese language volunteer for a few years, and she’s the one who teaches me Japanese now, but she was surprised at how many weird words they put in children’s books.
Anyway, I guess seeing books reminded her that there is a library in our city, so she went there on one of her days off + got out some cook books.

Consequentially, she’s been baking a lot recently. It also happens that she’s much better at teaching me to make curry than at speaking Japanese. She even taught me how to make tofu, which is good, ‘cause I‘ve also learned a lot more about the problems with plastic packaging.

She came over and made Nan one night. Having watched her do it, I thought I would try to make it myself. It took up about 3 hours of my time - at least an hour trying to get the “dough” off of my hands and another hour trying to get the “dough” off of the counter, off of my clothes, out of the bowl, out of the sink, etc…

An interesting side note:
Before I tried making Nan, I had to stop at a store for the right kind of flower.
The Japanese word for “What?” just happens to be pronounced as: “Nan”,
so when I went to the store + asked which flower would be best for making Nan…. I was also asking:
Which flower would be best for making What.
So the lady said: “What What?”
I said: “What, ‘from India‘”.
She said: “What? India? What Indian food do you want to make?”.
I said: “the What, the bread that they eat in India” .
She said: “You want to make curry?”
I said: “Yes, but I want to make the what that they eat with the curry”.
+ she said: “Oh, you mean what!”,
but she still didn’t know what kind of flower I ought to use,
…maybe where I went wrong.

The lady who lives under my apartment is from the Philippines. The guy that lives a couple doors down from me is from Ghana. I bumped into him one winter afternoon, and he suggested we have dinner sometime. I doubted he was a vegan - some people apparently aren’t, so I invited him to come out drinking with me + a couple of my friends one night instead.

He called me that same evening and said he’d like to come, but we had a bad connection, + it was hard for us to hear each other. I was 2 cities down from where we live, so he said he’d call when he got there + we could sort out the directions then.

I heard nothing back from him until a couple hours later, when my friends were too drunk to continue, + we were all splitting up. It was actually right when I got to the train station that I got about 7 messages all at once from the guy from Ghana + from another friend I’d invited. My phone’s battery just then dropped from halfway full to nearly zero as I was reading, + he only seemed to say that he couldn’t get through to me and he was going to go home, so I just went home then too.

He called me at home a few weeks later (+ I hate telephones), so I walked over to his apartment. He gave me a beer before I could mention that I hate beer + asked me to come out drinking with him and the Philippino lady from downstairs, who was then doing his laundry.
I went home to shut my soup off. (I tossed most of the can of beer in, which helped the flavor somewhat.) I changed into clothes I wouldn’t mind stinking of smoke, + went back to meet them. His ex-girlfriend also happened to stop by for a chat then, so it took considerably longer for us to head out. When we did get to where we were going, the Philippino lady from downstairs, whose idea it was to go out drinking, suddenly remembered that she had to be at work in a few minutes. She asked to borrow money from the guy from Ghana and she ran off; He seemed frustrated - it being her idea that we all go out drinking, + his money. She said she could meet back up with us around 2am, which was only 7 hours away/ totally not going to happen, but we said okay. He took me to a little “Soul Bar” in our city. I had been in there for about 30 minutes and $30 about 5 years ago with some other friends. At that time there were 2 guys dancing in front of a mirror - intently watching themselves dancing in the mirror + a middle aged woman sitting on a couch eating potato chips/ Altogether not worth the $30 cover charge.

This time it was me, the guy from Ghana, a middle aged woman sitting on a couch, and her daughter. I hadn’t eaten any of the soup that I was just about finished cooking (when he 1st invited me out), so I had some potato chips and screw drivers to keep from fainting. He tried talking to her daughter, but she wasn’t having any of that. Her mom got up to dance a lot, and I like “soul” music, so I did the same. I didn’t try to dance with her, because she was too old, she was not a good dancer, and that’s reason enough really…
Hearing things in a noisy bar/ conversation in general is not my forte, but it seems it was not just coincidence that this same lady was at this same place 5 years later. She shouted to me later that she is there every night. I think someone who goes out dancing every night really ought to be a better dancer. Her daughter was also not much of a dancer, but she was thin + she had drank a lot, so she gave it her best effort. The guy from Ghana is a guy, so it makes no kind of difference how he dances. The only really important things he + I had to discuss all evening were: how weird it is to ask somebody to go out drinking then remember that you have to go to work at the last second, and that skinny girls aren’t all that appealing. She/ the daughter was the only young girl though, so he kept trying to talk to her, and she kept having none of it.

He was slightly peeved to begin with, + perhaps disappointed in the girls that were there/ not talking much to him, so he went home. A business man in his very late 60’s ( perhaps even in his late 70‘s)-with a good quality suit came in and got his “booty on the dance floor”. He was a better dancer than the girl or her mother. A couple guys came in with a young girl. The old guy in the suit, next: “busted some moves” with her,
Then he went to sleep on a table. That same girl tried to get one of the guys she came in with to dance with her, but he clung to his chair. I hate to see a young lady strain herself, so I held the chair as she pulled. This, somehow, resulted in that guy insisting on buying me lots of drinks I didn’t really want. I was just going to stick around until I finished off my last drink, but, hey, several more drinks… and I’m sorry to say, a drunk Japanese guy yelling drunk Japanese at me over loud funk music.
Some sexy looking girls turned up around then, but I have a girlfriend,
and more importantly, in this instance: I had to meet my girlfriend at 5am at the train station so we could go snowboarding with some of her old coworkers.

I went to sleep at 2:30ish. Had a bit of my soup before turning in, then, yeah. 5am wake up.
We got to some other station about 30 minutes later + met a guy who drove us up to meet the rest of the group. Unfortunately there had been a bit of snow while I was asleep, and the road was too frosty to drive as fast as we otherwise would have. We met the others at a rest stop about an hour late. They decided that we would go to a ski park near where my last house was. Also unfortunately their car couldn’t get up the road to the ski park, so we had to go to the little expensive one that is 5 minutes walk from Karuizawa station.

N’er have I been to a ski park as sucky as that one was. A lot of money for the lift ticket, and a 40 minute wait in line ( I timed it the 1st time we went through) to get on any of the lifts up the very little mountain. I saw people walking up the hill, sliding down the hill, then walking up the hill again, while we were still waiting in line. We went on a Sunday, so some people left a little before closing, to get back home + get ready for their jobs. The last 2 or 3 hours we were there weren’t so bad. Dancing, not sleeping, and waiting in long lines for ski lifts all morning made me unusually tired that evening though.
The people I was with had a “free lunch” included with their lift tickets. I knew they wouldn’t have anything for a vegan, the line for the only restaurant looked about an hour long, and Nagano is the only place you can get one of my favorite Japanese foods: Oyaki.
There was a huge shopping center right next to the ski-park (owned by the same company), and the 1st shop there had oyaki. It wasn’t very good, but it gave me an extra hour and a half of waiting to get on the lifts and I went down the hill 3 times before the rest of my group came out of the restaurant too.

I am not able to count all the very good reasons to be a vegetarian, let alone name them; There are more than several. When people ask me I can only mention 5 or 6, or 10 or 15…, without getting into the proper details. When PETA said they had pamphlets/ brochures for interested parties to hand out - I did volunteer.
If you didn’t know: Environmentalists and Animal Rights Activists are now considered “terrorists” by the Bush 2 “administration“, so it’s safe to assume that the NSA now knows not to go snowboarding in Karuizawa.
I never even did get those brochures, but I’ve been on the PETA Asia mailing list for a long time since. I got a message not too long ago asking for people who could speak Japanese to help them with their new Japanese anti-fur campaign, and again, I volunteered.

I didn’t know I would have to telephone Media-outlets (in Japanese) to be sure they got those pictures of that sexy naked girl who “preferred it to fur”. I hate telephones and I especially hate using them, but I do like animals, …and fair trade chocolate, and I like sexy naked girls, …and I like moss covered stones, and patchouli….

Anyway,
They gave me 3 numbers to call. I had my girlfriend tell me how to say things in Japanese like: “rights” (alla‘: “animal rights“), “organization“, “connect” (as in: “hook a brother up”). It took her a lot of thinking to come up with the right words.
I managed …not at all gracefully.
Somebody told me that their whole photo department was “off” that day. They added that there were only 2 people in the department, …so it might not have been just a polite way to hang up.
Perhaps getting a call from an Animal Rights organization would make a lot of people uneasy. Getting a call from someone obviously reading a script to you too! …Uneasy. Then when you factor in my funny American accent - assuming I have one, well I wouldn’t want to talk to me either - But I hate telephones + wouldn’t want to talk to anyone if I could help it.
A lady who answered one of the phones asked me who the e-mails were addressed to, so I told her how I was one of the few PETA volunteers who could manage to speak a little bit of Japanese, + somebody in another country had done the mailing. It turns out that she spoke very good English, + she went and asked the people in the photo department if they had gotten the photos of some sexy blonde lady naked in Tokyo. They had.
I saved Playboy Japan for last. The receptionist explained that the whole company was a photo department. That sounds like a good company - but they had the worst “on hold” music of the lot. The guy I got on the line after waiting seemed interested in seeing pictures of the world’s sexiest lady naked (because she doesn’t like fur) in Tokyo.

Naturally.

A year or 2 after I got here my mom sent me an e-mail about something or other and she mentioned that the girl who liked me all through elementary school had died. I wrote back to ask why, but never got the answer.
I asked a few people I grew up with, whenever I was back in the old country and able to ask, …but nobody ever knew.
I thought I let it drop, but:

I had a dream a few weeks ago that I was somewhere with people from my high-school that I was friendly with, sitting at a table, and talking. The girl that used to like me (who died somehow), came and sat down in the empty seat beside me. She looked at me quietly, but didn’t say anything. I said: “Hey, didn’t you die a while ago?” Her eyes got wider + she seemed to be thinking about it/ She still didn‘t make any sound. So I said: “You did die though, didn’t you?” She lowered her head a little and looked concerned. I’ve been curious about this for a few years, + I was excited; If anybody would know why it was said that she was dead, she would. I said: “Somebody told me you were dead.” . And all the color suddenly left her, she slid down in her chair, and her head went limp/ rolled. She laid corpselike for just a moment before I woke up.

I stay up late a lot. Like right now…
My girlfriend wondered if I had trouble sleeping.
I said I have to wake up and eat sometimes to keep my insulin from killing me (again). + I told her about that dream, how it woke me up, + she had trouble sleeping afterwards.

That was a dream though.

I have not written anything for a long time, because - truth be told, I have not done anything altogether interesting (for all that time) (…and then some).

I moved back to the concrete piles that stretch unbroken from Tokyo, and far further off.
It was a good decision, being that: I don’t fall asleep on my feet from boredom at my old job anymore.

Nowadays I listen to housewives tell me what they think of whatever new movies happen to be new while they’re telling me about them.
I sleep a bit later, “work” an hour, take my 2 hour lunch, “work” one more hour, then go home.

I thought I could paint a lot more with all my extra time here, but all the colors  to be seen here are advertisements for things I don’t want.
I tried rebuilding my website several times, but all the software I’ve tried only seems to allow you to make an extremely ugly website. I sit down every once in a while to try it again, but it gets me nowhere when I could be spending time with the kitten that used to sharpen its claws on my bike tires.  It stopped sharpening its claws on my bike tires right around when it /the kitten disappeared,  a few months ago.

(I would rather go off looking for the kitten than sit for hours trying to get all the electric: headings, fonts, and menus to work, or to match).

I took my girlfriend to America for 2 weeks in October to try American vegetarian food, see my backyard, and see my sister’s wedding. We went to the Statue of Liberty. She had pie for breakfast. Our suitcases were much heavier on the way back.

She took me to a park one day in the fall to see some colored leaves. It was very nice, but a crowded park, an hour away, is not the forest in my backyard.
Now there are only a few apartment buildings - blocking my view of hundreds of other apartment buildings - in my backyard.

Mind you I get full pay to read short dialogues and hand out stickers after the kid’s bingo classes.

There was a day when I got up an extra hour early, so I could get to work earlier, and try to organize something a little more fun and effective for that day’s pair of kid’s classes.
But there was another train jumping suicide which left only enough taxis for the first 50 people, + I wound up with the day off.

I was also off on Christmas day this past year. I sorta’ hoped it would cost less than $2,000 to go back home for Christmas, …but George Bush is only trying to make the world a better safer place (for oil and munitions companies)/ Bush wants everything safe-icated for American Economicalisim.
Everyone else I know was working on Christmas; My girlfriend was working, and sick, so she came out to dinner and went straight back home afterwards.

We went to a Chinese restaurant a few cities down with my old Japanese teacher and her husband . We were a bit late to meet them because there was another train jumping suicide a little while earlier, and the trains didn’t really work for the next hour or so. Aside from us being late, and her being sick, it was good. She had called a week or 2 beforehand to make the reservation + have them prepare an entirely vegan course for the 4 of us.

A few days earlier, the lady who organizes the free Japanese lessons took me to a Christmas party in Tokyo. She brings me to swank restaurants/ takes my girlfriend and I on day trips pretty frequently, and it’s usually moderately interesting, so I rarely ask very many questions about whatever she has in mind. There’s nothing better to do around here anyway.
This was me, her, and around 20 old Japanese couples (men wearing ruffled scarves/ women with clip on pearl earrings) - all sitting stiffly crooning poor translations of English Christmas songs (the translations didn’t fit with the beat or melody whatsoever). The dinner they had inbetween was decidedly NOT vegan. I had: garnishes, bread without butter, and wine whenever a bottle was passed into my corner.
The part of that that I did like was that one old fellow volunteered to do a magic show for everyone, in which he stopped to think and to restart most of the tricks more than once.
I came with a package of cookies someone else had given me earlier that week, and left with a package of wrapped dried seaweed and some Mango jam. Mrs. Ito came with a $500 handmade scarf from Indonesia, and she didn’t want the mango jam she wound up with, so she gave it to me.

I’ve been taking Japanese lessons again since I came back to the city, but now my girlfriend is the one who teaches me, and I don’t ever learn anything. She tries to convince me that the obscene amount of junk mail I get is a valuable thing. I in turn try to estimate the annual per capita tree casualties, but this does nothing to advance my Japanese ability.

Once she tried to argue that hiking is more fun in the city, because you can stop and go shopping whenever you want to. There aren’t any stores in the forest she wisely assertained.
(I know that’s spelled wrong, but I think the A-S-S form is more apt.)

When I 1st moved away from this city - I lived in a small town - surrounded by small mountains. It was a very nice change of scenery, …although very lonely. I wouldn’t want to go back ther for more than a week or so unless somebody came to visit me.
I took lots of baths + tried to develop psychic powers, with some small degree of success.

You’re far more likely to fall asleep while meditating than anything else… but other times, when you’re trying to fall asleep you start vibrating or watching an ultra high speed slide show of God knows what. One night, not so long ago I tried staring into the dark and it felt like I was punched in the head.
I can type that, …and you can read it, …but it’s not something you can read and understand.

I have not written anything for a long time, because - truth be told, I have not done anything altogether interesting (for all that time). Except:

My girlfriend and I went to the Emperor’s Palace. It turns out that they have free bike rentals thereabouts, and I’ve always wanted to try a tandem bike.
My parents told me oft and again - all through my childhood, that they went for a tandem bike ride on their 1st date. There was something about a big hill, and on or the other of them was tired. (It’s not a story/ with a beginning and an end, and meaningful conflict - It’s just something they said over and over again).
I thought it’d be neat to take a 2 person bike for a spin around the Emperor’s place and see if we could see him hanging out his laundry, or peek through a window to see what he was watching on TV, …but they got a big wall all around the place.
Still it was nice and romantic, albeit insanely hot.
That was early August, …I haven’t written anything for a LONG time.

I moved back to the concrete piles that stretch unbroken from Tokyo, and far further off.
I dislike it - for reasons I spent my 1st 3 years here detailing. But living here saves my girlfriend from having to drive 5 hours to and from Nagano every weekend to see me. And I don’t fall asleep on my feet from boredom at my old job anymore.

She thought she’d do me a favor and drive us somewhere we could see some real trees. I had never been to Hakone, and it is geographically close to where we live, so we got in her car.
She only has 2 CDs in her car; I didn’t realize it until we had been sitting stuck in traffic for 3 hours - which was half way through what should have been a 2 hour drive. (That’s 6 hours!)
Since we were stopped and stationary so very very often, she managed to find a nice Indian restaurant with a program in her phone. It took some extra time to figure out exactly where it was (as the roads in Japan usually don’t have names). The food there was really really good. They had 2 vegetarian options, so we went with one of each. + They played Indian dance music. I would have loved any music that wasn’t one of her 2 CDs at that point (Except of course for Country music - which is always truly terrible).
It was dark, the moon was nearly full, and we were (geographically) close to the shore at that point, so I suggested we stop at a beach and look over the ocean for a little while.
We couldn’t find a beach there though. It had all been covered with concrete, with a wall along the edge of the road.

Finding a place to spend the night was a little tricky too. I won’t make an episode of that - or the time it took, but we got a room at a love hotel with huge spiders. The cool electronic horse in the room would have balanced out my misgivings with the spiders (The spiders that seemed to watch from the walls around the bed, …and in the shower), but who would ever return to a cheap old hotel that had no Tea? …Granted, I brought my own, but it’s the principle…

We were up late looking for a love hotel/ cheap hotel with any vacancies, so we slept a bit late the next morning. I noticed several itchy welts (from the spiders) when we woke up.

Hours later, while sitting in traffic, waiting to get up the mountain - to the park where we intended to go hiking/ where I had hoped to paint, hours later we were sitting in her car near the top, listening to one of her 2 CDs and reading a magazine she left in her glove compartment in 2004. She was as bored as I, and asked me if I would turn into Spiderman from my Spider bites, but I figured it would have had taken affect already if it was going to happen. (We did a lot of sitting in traffic).

Much later we did manage to get a wee bit of hiking in, but it was too grey/ cloudy/ crowded to paint anything. We saw some volcanic steam vents, and a little shop which sold volcanically hard boiled eggs - black on the outside/ dark grey on the inside. They looked interesting, but I didn’t think they would have used free range eggs to serve crowds as big as those.

My girlfriend knew I was vegetarian and she likes my cooking, but she didn’t really seem to understand why people would swear off any thing as inoffensive as meat

( lots of laughing here if you’ve seen ANY of the data ( http://www.peta.org ),
I found a few videos some kind person had subtitled with Japanese - so I could show my girlfriend - foster a better understanding…
She stopped eating meat that same week, and I lost all interest in eggs and dairy products.

(It would seem that my plan had backfired,
…but we’ve both gone happily forward.)

Progress IS a wonderful thing.

It took us another 6 hours to make it back to our city.
(But we stopped at that same Indian restaurant for an hour on our way home and had the same 2 things we’d ordered the night before; We just switched bowls.  That was the best part of our whole trip.)

Since we spent nearly the entirety of that trip sitting in a car not seeing much of any nature, we tried to go someplace else a few weeks later.  There had been some famous waterfalls near where I used to live in Nagano, but my $1. road map didn’t have them or indeed, half the roads in the region marked.  We headed out that way one afternoon thinking we’d spend the night nearby and visit them in the morning.  Traffic was much better along the way there, and we would have made excellent time, if we had not stopped for an hour waiting for an Indian buffet along the road to open up for dinner.

The waterfall the next morning WAS very nice, and very packed with people who had also driven and waited in a line of cars to get there and see it.  I’d wanted to paint a picture of it but:
- It would have been hard to get a good impression of the colors with all the camera flashes     going off,
-  And there really wasn’t anyway I could set an easel up where I could see the waterfall through     all the people/ where all the people wouldn’t knock into me and my easel trying to get closer to     the waterfall,
-  And my girlfriend would have been bored waiting for me.  (It was okay on the beach in the summer, ‘cause she could sleep in the sun.)

We stopped at that Indian buffet on our way home again - because there aren’t any near where we live (and lots of Indian food/ Indian people are vegetarian).

Chinese food I very rarely ever eat, because all the Chinese places in Japan only have meat dishes/ vegetables soaked in meat goo.  The nice lady who had the Christmas party years ago, where I 1st met my girlfriend, who takes me/ us out all the time, she found a Chinese restaurant in a city very near ours, which could make an all vegan 5 course dinner.  She had wanted to take a small group of people along, but one was sick, and my girlfriend had to work, so it turned out that just 3 of us were able to go that afternoon.  I was very impressed with all of the food and the atmosphere.  She knows lot’s of good places like that, and she does often take me along.

She got to talking, and said that she had found a really nice place which, if we booked now, we could have a nice engagement party for me there in the spring.  Then she and the other lady with us carried on for a bit as to how things could be organized/ arranged for my engagement party.
I only bothered to mention that  I’m not engaged (not altogether eager to be) a few times through all of that, …as it didn‘t seem to matter too much to them.

Over the last month of summer, and the 1st of the fall my girlfriend and I kept getting red itchy bites here and there.  We knew they weren’t mosquito bites, and I knew that they weren’t flea bites (having had some experience/ experiences in that matter some time prior), but we never did find out what was causing it - before whatever it was finally stopped.
Likewise, I suddenly developed an allergy to something which made all of my arms and some of my back and chest  itch like mad.  I really wanted to know what might have caused it, but the doctor I was sent to didn’t seem to think it the slightest bit interesting/ important.  It took about 5 days to clear up, and hasn’t happened again since (quite thankfully).

I would have had an extra day - to ease the transition between jobs/ place of residence, but we had that day switched to get an extra day off after the following weekend. My old roomate, the lesser of the remarkable filthy pair/ a good reason why I went off to live in the wilderness years ago…, he had made plans for a group of us to stay at an island near Tokyo. The group started off as a grand concept, but wound up being him and the girl he lives with, me and my girlfriend. That worked out well, because we all fit into one rental car when we got there.It wasn’t rainy then, but it was very cloudy and looked like rain all through ’til afternoon. We walked to the nearest beach after checking into our Inn. I swam around and looked at the fish, and painted 2 pictures while the other 3 slept on a blanket. I got very sunburnt, as did my old roomate. Those paintings came out pretty well. It was a bit overcast though, so the colors came out a bit darker than I would have liked. My back/ shoulders and such were also darker/ far more painful than I would ever want them to be.

The next weekend/ the last weekend I took everything else from my old apartment to my friend’s old apartment, …where I live now. I went to his farewell party and came back to Nagano to drop my old company’s car off.

>Your cartoon makes NO sense at all!!
>

—–It`s about Transformers.   (…..They turn into stuff…)

This (attached) is probably easier to understand.

I got your package yesterday.
The vice-principle let me out of school 2 1/2 hours early so I could go to the doctors + pay some stupid bill.
 You`re only able to pay that sort of bill at: city hall, or at the finance counter of the post office.  They both close at 4:30 (I finish work at 5), and you can`t pay it on Saturdays either.  I had gone to the post office at 5pm and tried to get the guy (who sits at that counter `til 6 or 7) to accept some cash for a payment stamp, but he always says that they finish at 4:30.
Anyway I got there at 3 + paid it, then went home to get the patient card I needed to see the doctor, + of course, in the door is the note that says I got a package from you. 
  I was at the doctor`s + the pharmacist`s for 2 hours.  They asked me all kinds of questions like:  Do you ever feel a numbness in your hands/ fingertips?  Do you sweat a lot? Do you ever have trouble seeing right?
  I kept saying: “Yes, all the time!”

but they just looked worried, ignored it, and continued down the list.

I went back to the post office when I was all through with all of that, + that guy was still sitting at the financial counter at 6pm - doing nothing `cept reminding people that they didn`t do any financial matters after 4:30.

I have to sit here from 8:15 to 5pm regardless of whether I have anything to do or not too.  It used to bother me, …and I went to meet some people from a friend`s company.  He works 2-5 hours a day.  I said it sounds good + they thought that meant that I would start working fo them on the 31st.

I like the country, but I don`t get much chance to appreciate it here.  When I do, I do, but seeing as I`m an old man: I need to slow down - sleep late…

I hate the city though.  This other company has a Nagano branch.  I`m gonna see if they can`t transfer me back here - which is really stupid, because I am here right now.

 I`ll be driving my company`s mini car down to my old city tonight.  The radio in the car only plays the sounds of the engine, so I may try out your i-pod under cover of dark - in route.
I like the color.  Some of your musical selections I`m not so sure about, but I haven`t heard any new music since college.

The card was really cool.

The movie looks to be good.
The gummi candy`s got all geletin in it, so I`ll give it to whoever.
(The cake that mom sent me 2 weeks ago has beef fat in it, so I gave it to Rie + her mom.)
It`s good that all the stuff made of chocolate is labeled as such, because I squeezed the packages a little, and I don`t think they retained their shapes.
It`s okay.
  Chocolate is chocolate, and I don`t discriminate!

——7/5—————–

What makes me think it’s a good idea to sit and write
one of those sappy reflections on the general state of
living…
  It’s not just that I turn 30 today,
  - It’s the fact that I’ve spent the last few days
locked in a dingy little room, in some part of Asia,
with nothing “important” to do,
+  Yes, some amount of sentiment.

“What is important?”.

If I didn’t really need the 2 shots of insulin every
day I could have made different decisions down the
line. 

On the 2nd day - the day they gave the tests back to
the kids/ the other day that they didn’t need me to
come and sit here for 9 hours (with nothing
“important” to do), I wrote a letter to Micheal Moore
(who has just released a movie about health care.  I
thought he might be interested in my “solution” to the
health care problem in America. 

“Move to Japan.” - I said. It’s a humid, crowded, mess
of cracked greying concrete, but
Everyone in Japan is required to have health
insurance.  You can buy it from the city/ town that
you live in, or from a private company, and they can’t
refuse to cover you.
  The drawback to my “solution”, is that you have to
stay in Japan, and if you have any health problems
when you’re outside of Japan, they are your problem:

- Some obese Englishman drank half of his box of wine
and decided to join in our no hands sumo competition.
I had my arms tied behind my back when tackled me.
I was only in Australia for 3 weeks, but I had to
spend  that last week and a half carrying around my
backpack full of paint with however many
cracked/broken ribs (I never did find out for sure).

- And I cut my arm while I was visiting my family in
America.  I asked my dad to stitch me up with dental
floss, but he insisted on taking me to the emergency
room.  …Think of how many starving families we could
have saved with the more than $3,000 that they finally
reduced the bill to…
…    So now I’m back in Japan…

+ it’s my 30th birthday, and I’m locked in a dirty
little room that is stuffed full of beat up furniture
that was made in the early 60’s.

  I was born in ‘77 - Beat up all through the 80’s and
early 90’s.
  Just a few hours after his own wedding, my brother,
through shaky nerves or nostalgia, thought it’d be fun
to punch me awake from a nap.
  His previous best was the time I was in junior high
school and he snuck up behind me, and punched me in
the back of the head, as I was brushing my teeth. 

When I was in grade school he got me to crawl under
his bed to look for something he dropped, and when I
crawled back out he smeared his own s@%$ on my face.

There was another time where he repeatedly hit and
headlocked me, so that he could record me calling him
a $%#face, and play the tape to my mom and dad (who,
of course, were not interested in the circumstances
leading up to the name calling). 

 I have to confess, …this is another reason I took
to living in Japan.

It all gets beat up, and it all gets repaired (like so
many other things) with duct tape.  The desk tops here
were single pieces of wood, now split clear across
(from end to end).  , some of them in more than one
place, some of them wobbling more than others, some
bits of bent nails stick out here and there.

On the 1st day that they locked me in here, I finished
up some bits of cartoons that I’d been waiting to do.
It was a test day.  There’s never anything for me to
do here on test days, but they always want me to come
here and sit from 8am-5pm anyway.  Rat-Bastards!

There’re these 4 or 5 kids that never go to class
who, oddly enough, didn’t feel like taking any tests,
so they came in the little dingy room I have to occupy
on weekdays.  One of them went to sleep on the couch
for 2 periods.  The others did the best they could
with the beat up chairs.  Sometimes they got up and
looked around for something to play with. 
  I stayed to keep an eye on them for as long as I
could, but 4 big cups of tea will always win out over
time. (TOILET!)

There’s a lady here who gave herself a serious medical
condition by worrying over every stupid little detail
of everything. - Her chair got broken on that 1st day
that they locked me in here.  The back of the chair
was touching the ground - something I’ve never seen a
chair do - It was really pretty funny to look at.
But she gasped, and shrieked, and yelled, and moaned,
and whimpered, and cried, and whined… for almost an
hour.  She asked me who did it, + I said I didn’t
know, but I thought it might be: the one that was
asian, who had black hair.
She started crying again, and made some loud frantic
angry phone calls, then she muttered to herself about
her medical condition for a while.  Then she asked me
if students in America ever broke their teacher’s
chairs - To which I replied “they, in most cases,
probably don’t”., and she put her head in her hands
for about 10 minutes, then started all the wailing,
whimpering, and phone calls all over again.

Later that afternoon an art teacher wrapped a load of
wire around the back and the bottom of the chair - to
keep it together.  He said it’d hold, so long as
nobody leans back too hard (which would seem to make
it as good as it was before).  A couple of people
watched his wire wrapping technique.  Then they all
decided that the door to this room should be locked
not just when there is nobody here, but anytime anyone
isn’t actually passing through it.
  This is nice, because it keeps the distractions to a
minimum, but the people that ought to come in here to
consult with me over things - seem not to want to have
to bother to unlock the door, …
and they don’t.

On the 3rd day that they locked me in here, I hooked
the outdated scanner I bought up to the outdated
computer they keep.  I scanned in some of my smaller
cartoons.  I had lunch with the special class, and the
teacher there informed me that they would all be
weeding their garden in the rain after lunch.  I, of
course, volunteered to help.
It’s good to get outside, and it’s also nice to get
some good exercise occassionally.  This one kid just
kept walking around, so I made it his job to hold all
the potatoes I kept finding.  He got happier and
happier with each potato I came across.
After that, I sat here and read some Batman comics.

Batman is cool! 

When I was in Junior High School I liked Batman, and my father berated me for it: “When are you going to grow up?” he’d ask.
  Today I’m 30 years old …grown up by most accounts,
but I still like Batman - moreso in fact.

Yesterday/ the 4th day that they locked me in here/ my
birthday, I took a 4 hour nap, then I read Batman
comics, then I had some cold curry for lunch, then I
wrote part of this, then I left.

———–7/6———————
I went out this morning to find the lady who I have
class with now, but she said that because we didn’t
talk about a plan at least a day beforehand, she
doesn’t want to have to do anything with me now.  It’s
sort of a peculiar thing to say, because she gets the
same copies of all the schedules that I do, and I was
here all day yesterday with nothing to do (except read
Batman comics).  It would have been an opportune time
for us to discuss anything at all, but she was not at
school at all.

Perhaps she’s aware that I skipped out of school 2
hours and 5 minutes early, and she’s upset about this
- although, again, she wasn’t here herself yesterday.

Why does it always rain on my days off?  Yesterday was
a beautiful day/ my birthday, and I had nothing to do
here.  All the other teachers were gone, and most of
the students too…  After sitting quietly in this
little hole for 6 hours, I went downstairs to ask the
vice principle if I could go to the doctor’s, …but
the vice principle wasn’t there, nor was the
principal, or indeed anyone else.  I could have left a
note saying that I was heading out, but I thought it
unlikely they even notice me gone.

After escaping I thought better of going to the
doctors.  I don’t want frightened nurses sticking me
with needles and giving me dissapproving worried looks
because I won’t wear those slippers that are several sizes too small that they leave out for the patients. 
  I don’t need more of that crap,

 not when the weather’s so nice outside. 

 My insulin supply is good for a little while longer too.

I went home, got my backpack full of paint, and I
drove down backroads - where I’d be less likely to be
spotted.  I stopped just past the bridge, on the way
to the temple that they built on the side of the
cliff, and I painted a pair of pictures - of cliffs,
the river, and mountains.  They’re good pictures - if
I may say.  Being that I was at work  until late
afternoon - it’s really suprising that I finished one,
let alone finish one, and get a good half of another
started.
The weather, as I remarked from the widow of the
little room they keep me locked in, was fantastic.
Better, perhaps, having been shut in for all the
earlier part of the day.
The bridge was not near my school, but the road that
runs over it is busy enough to make it likely that
somebody saw me painting from it.
I was concerned, but not worried really.  I tied a
bandanna over my head to hide my not-Asian colored
hair - I didn’t want anyone to get wise to the fact
that I wasn’t where there was no need for me to be.

Long ago, when I changed from my old company, to this
(slightly less evil) one, I had a bunch of job
interviews.
The interviews consisted of: someone looking me over
to be sure that I’m not Japanese (or dreadfully ugly),
and them pretending that there was anymore to the
interview than that.  3 or 4 questions seems to be the
average - before they offer you the job right then +
there.

I got lots of offers for jobs that it turns out I
didn’t want.
… Nowadays I sit in a dark little office all day for
no real reason, and indeed, do very little of value to
anyone else while I’m here. 
I don’t mean for it to sound like that bothers me at
all, it doesn’t. 

 What bothers me is that I could be earning as much money as I do now, and a prisioner for a lot less time.

I have a friend from Canada who has been offering me his job for about a year.  He’s going home - to Canada, next month, and his company wants me to take
over from him.

The psychic advisor whom I decided straight off to never pay for advice said that there would be a good financial opportunity coming to me soon.

There, I wouldn’t have to put up with the crap I do here,
but it would be naive to think that there wouldn’t be other crap…

250,000 yen a month - 45,000yen rent, -15,000 car rental fee for a minimum 45 hour work week (9 hours a day) Coworkers are alternately nice/ a huge drag
pretty mountains + lots of good places to paint nearby, + I know what to expect.
  V.S.
245,000 yen a month - 60,000yen rent, + whatever train fares add up to 15-20 hour work week (2 hours on Saturday - Sunday/Monday off)
It’s a concrete wasteland, but my girlfriend lives in the same city.  I could wear shorts and a T-shirt to work, and not work on Christmas.

It’d be a pain in the ass to move again…,       

  I like having Nature nearby…..

Dunno’.   I go back and forth. 
I might have to get the I-ching out of the closet.

——————————————–

I got offered a job where I would be working - on average: 3 hours a day -
for the same salary I make now.
I`d have to move back to my old city, + give up my 3 week summer vacation/
+ $1,500. bonus…

…but I could/ would!  wake up at 10:30, and be home by 3.
Free time in that city is nowhere near as valuable as free time here…
I could paint pictures of cockroaches/ trees that`ve had all their branches
cut off…

I had 2 classes all of last week, but I had to stay here in this stupid
little room for the requisite 45 hours regardless.
There are nice mountains here, but I can only play on them during non-rainy
weekends that my girlfriend isn`t around/ tired of mountain climbing.

They had a wee birthday party for me at a little vegan cafe in Tokyo on
Saturday.  Then we had tea in some lounge on the top floor of the most
expensive hotel in all of Japan (I was told).  You can see the emperor`s
palace out the window  + I suppose if you had a really good pair of those
opera-scopes, you might be able to see the emperor hanging out his laundry.

I had a $20 cup of tea, but somebody else paid for it.  They got ripped
off.

I checked my website just now to see if I made 10,000 visitors in the
course of the year. It was 9,600 or so last I checked, but It`s gone now! 
It`s suddenly a black single`s dating page! 

Can someone reasonably competent please make me a webpage?

—————————————–

7/12

The I-ching said not to go chasing after dragon’s
gold - which is easiest to interpret as: stay put…
but there’s something to be said for waking up at 9am
and coming back home before 4.

There’s something else to be said for living someplace
with trees and birds and plants.

But then what good is all that nature when you have no
time to go out and enjoy it?

But again and then and again…  What good is allllll
that beautiful wonderful time, if there is nothing
beautiful any closer than a 2 hour train ride back to
where I am now?
It’s a dilemma.

I had the interview on Saturday morning, before my
vegan birthday gathering.  My girlfriend got me to the
correct station at the right time, and was going to go
for a wander, when the lady from the other company
approached and said it would be perfectly fine if she
came along with us. 

They looked me over and asked maybe 3 questions:
Why did you come to Japan?
What kinds of students do you like best?
Can you start work on the 1st of August?

My girlfriend asked them about healthcare.  They said
it’s easier for everyone if I just buy it from the
city - easier to get a rebate if I quit and go home…

During the interview - people were calling/ writing to
my cell phone - presumably to ask about my vegan
birthday gathering.  The vibrations tickle me.  The
battery went dead.
A girl I knew from my old town in Nagano wrote to say
that she would be in that exact part of Tokyo, and
free in time to come, but of course I couldn’t get
that message until long after everybody had already left.

——-7/18——

I had to fax a letter to my company today to tell them that I’m leaving them for a younger sexier company, and that I never loved them.

  I don’t work very hard at my present job to be sure, but 45 hours a week versus 16…

 It’d involve me moving back to Saitama I’m afraid, but that’s better for the environment