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 had a girlfriend in High-School,
…just 1.

+ She once went to a fortune teller.

She didn’t say very much about it until she broke up with me.

It was something along the lines of: we had different things in store for us, and that she was planning to go on a trip with some guy named Steve.
She said, that the fortune teller told her: ‘That I would one day live in China, and have a weird religion, and eventually meet a girl “just like her”’.
It did strike me as bizarre and off the topic (of whoever that “Steve- d%&$(%!!” was) at the time, but:
Several times since I came to Japan, I remembered hearing that prediction and laughing…
Most recently when I took a picture of my new girlfriend and noticed something more than just a slight resemblance to that first one,
…but I don’t hold it against her.

I like it when all the little bits and pieces come together.

There were a few here and there, and in between;
Then I lived in Chichibu for a little while…
…
…
… Wow! (…stay the hell out!!)
…
…+ I finally moved someplace civilized, + got a girlfriend (from back where I began).

She’s a good girl! …
“…Loves her ma’ma…”

I don`t know how she feels about Elvis, Jesus, America, or Tom Petty

I am ambivalent.

… about Tom Petty that is.

(But whenever I think - to myself /or out loud, that she`s a good girl, …the rest of that song follows through.)

It cost’s a lot to go and fall down a mountain.

The girls that I went with had some kind of discount coupon which allowed us to go and fall down the mountain at nearly half price, but there is no “Free Falling”.

What a horrible pun! I don’t particularly like or dislike Tom Petty, so I wonder why I’m trying to work that song into everything.

I didn’t even fall all that much that day, unless you want to think of it as “I fell for a girl”,

which I did:
There was a girl lying in the snow, and I didn’t want to run over her head, so I fell down to avoid hitting her.
- Ha! You would like think I meant that by its idiomatic usage, not that I literally fell to help a girl. Oh! Humor!

Indeed, idiomatically as well, I did come to like a girl, but in ordinary circumstances I would prefer to express that without using the word “fall”. Fond perhaps…

At this one point I was going to go over a jump, + I got settled into a nice neat line of approach, + fell down.
I went over the jump on my back; It was a peculiar feeling to go through the air that way.

The weather was great, the snow was also great, the girls that came by really really early on that Saturday morning to get me, were positively adequate. The one that I never liked so much, who for some strange reason also doesn’t like me so much, and a friend of hers drove us there and back. The one had plans for that evening in town, and the other lived several hours away, so we had to leave a little after 5pm. The pharmacist, of whom I am fond, whose house I stayed at over new years, was supposed to come that night to go snowboarding with me the next day as well, so it worked out for all of us. A good time was had by me, and probably by them too, but I was the only one who went over a jump on my back!!

I was obliged to go again the next day, but apprehensive as to how much fun it would be, stiff as I was, going 2 days in a row. I woke up that morning– sleepy and concerned. Sleepy: because it was still morning, and concerned: because I knew that that pharmacist, of whom I am fond, would be coming that evening, to stay over, and to somehow go to a ski-park with me the next day. I didn’t have a car, and had neglected to ensure that we would be able to get seats on the bus that goes to the ski-parks. The one girl that I went with that day, was kind enough to go with me to the park’s hotel’s information desk to ask about a bus that goes between the ski resort, and the station in the city.
The girl at the counter said in the most politely unintelligible Japanese, that there was a bus, but that it was only for people who were staying at the hotel. Luckily the other girl that took me that day found a brochure with information on another bus that goes to the ski-parks, that you didn’t need reservations for.

I had about an hour between getting home and having to go down to the train station to meet the pharmacist, of whom I am fond. I spent all of that time hanging my stuff up to be reasonably dry/ kempt for the same thing the next day.

I caught up with her alright.
We made spaghetti and stayed up late.

+ It turns out that she’s not really a morning person either, so despite her coming such a long way to go snowboarding, we never did go snowboarding.

We had breakfast at around 2pm, and finally left my apartment just after 7pm.

What a girl!

She’d been in Australia for the last year. Australia is considerably warmer than Nagano, and it’s currently summer there, and girls don’t really like the cold any which way, so I thought it best to buy a heater before she arrived.

I went to the only electronics shop in town once to look at heaters that might actually do some good – as opposed to the one that I bought some months earlier, which does not (heat/ do any good). The people in the electronics shop however, were not to be bothered with such trifling matters as “selling electronics”, so after looking around for someone to help me for 15/ 20 minutes I left.

I went to a recycle shop in the city near my town, and they had heaters, but the heaters were heavy, and would take 2 hands to carry, and it was a 35 minute long bike ride to get there, so I didn’t buy a heater there either. (The old man there did offer to have one delivered to me for free if I could wait until Sunday evening, but I knew that the Pharmacist, of whom I am fond, would be coming the day before, and leaving that night.)

I went back to the only electronics shop in town, midweek, and they were every bit as unhelpful as they were the last time, so I left again, after 15 minutes, again.

Come Friday I went back to the only store in town and waited them out.
I asked some guy if he was busy and he said he was.

He was still standing there on his own, “busy”, a half hour later.

I really really didn`t want to give those bastards any of my money, but I was again concerned that my apartment was far too cold for a nice looking girl to be comfortable. It wouldn’t be right to have her sleeping in her jacket and, indeed, It would be far preferable to have her not sleeping, and wearing very little…

For which it would be better to have a heater.

I found some jittery old guy to sell me the cheapest heater they had – an old looking battery powered kerosene one. I asked him where I`d be able to find a tank to keep/ carry kerosene in. He seemed to think that I was asking where to buy kerosene, then he seemed to think that I was suggesting that they give me a kerosene tank. He jumped to some peculiar conclusions, and totally disregarded my multiple inquiries into getting internet service. Man I hate that place! So much of my time was wasted there that night, that the home center (where it turns out they sell kerosene tanks) was closed.
A month or 2 before, I had seen several empty tanks at the expensive supermarket that I rarely go to, but they had been sold out the last time I went (a few weeks before).
After pushing my bike back home - across town, while carrying a heater, I went back to that supermarket. And wouldn’t you know: they did have the tanks, and not only that, but this time they had the same heater I just spent soooooo much time trying to get, …and it was about $20 cheaper, and I wouldn’t have had to deal with the dips%&s. from the electronics store nearly as much, or carry it across town.

It was worth the time and money - regardless. She sat on the floor next to the heater for a time, and it makes my apartment bearable when I am alone there as well.

She had to go back home, a city I lived in, not 10 minute’s walk from her, for the 1st 3 years I was in Japan. It might have been nice to have met her, when I did live there.

We decided to have dinner at the all vegetarian café in the city on her way to the Shinkansen/ express train, but it would be a little while before we got there, + all the snowboarding ( etc.) from the day before had affected my metabolism. We only had 6 minutes to spare, but we went to the Mr. Doughnuts under the station to get something to keep me from passing out.

There was a trainee there who was just learning to fold the paper bags properly, so we had to run up the stairs, through the station, and down another flight of stairs to catch the next train.

We got to the café later. Many many people had recommended it to me, and I always wanted to try it. The first time I tried to go I couldn’t find it. One time later, I tried to take a date there, but she wanted to go someplace else. Another time I went there alone, but it was just closing up for the night. And this time: it was a shop holiday/ closed for the day.
We went someplace else,
…which was nice enough.

She came back this last weekend, and brought her snowboard again, and we didn’t go snowboarding again, (or indeed leave my apartment until after dark the next day again), but this time neither of us had any intention of going. She brought the snowboard so that she could: tell her mom that she was going snowboarding (and make it appear so), and …so that she’d have a good excuse to come back again in another 2 weeks:
to get her snowboard.

We made soup one night, and went to a handmade noodle shop the next.

She makes my heart race, so I have to eat more to keep my blood sugar up.

I showed her a still life that I was working on, and she didn’t ask about the Auras surrounding the flowers.

She asked if I was religious, and I said that I didn’t have a religion (as such), but that I had a reason to think that certain things are…

She used some program on her cell-phone to check the train schedules, and find out what time the latest possible train she could take, to get the last Shinkansen back, to another train, + then her house would be. We didn’t have a whole 6 minutes to spare, so I said, jokingly, as we were jogging to the station, that: I didn’t think we had time to stop at Mr. Doughnuts this time. She said that she would love a doughnut. I said that we only had 3 minutes. She said that we would have to be fast. I said I would run in and get her something while she got her ticket. (That way she could still make it to her train if I didn’t make it with the doughnuts, …which of course I couldn’t have.

I ran in and ran past - a young couple deliberating on what kind of doughnuts they should get. I got a tray and a pair of doughnut tongs, and found myself, too, set back by the daunting task of choosing.

Given my usual pace, I think I chose very quickly on this occasion. – There was still no way I would have made it back to her in time mind you…
The guy at the counter asked me if I wanted them for there or to go. I hadn’t been alone in a fast food type of place for years and years, so I didn’t remember the exact concise Japanese phrase for: “Hurry up and put it in a bag, you Bastard!”,
…so in lieu of that, I just pointed to the door.

It turns out that the door is just beyond where all the seats are,

so that bastard went and got a new tray and a dish for me so I could sit down.

I explained that my girlfriend was waiting outside, and asked him if he didn’t have a paper bag.
He went and got a box.
I began to explain that I didn’t need a whole box for 3 doughnuts, but I stopped myself and left.

I figured she would have just got on the train, and I would be walking back home with 3 doughnuts in a large box that I would eventually eat by myself, but she had waited for me.
(The train hadn’t waited for her.)

Given that she had no way to get back (and I don’t think either of us was too upset by this), I asked her if she didn’t want to go back in Mr. Doughnut’s and pick out something maybe better suited to herself, but after all that, she really seem to even want a doughnut at all.

It was nice having her over for that extra night, even if I did have to wake up at 5:30 that next morning to see her off again – so that she could make it to work on time, …in another part of Japan.

The kerosene in the tank I bought ran out after she left that second (third) time, so I walked it to a gas station after work. I had a bit of trouble choosing what button to push on the all complicated – all Japanese menu screen on the pump. So it was good that another teacher from one of my schools came by after filling up his car to check on me.

He also observed – to my benefit – that I had dropped all my money on the ground.

But my ill luck was not entirely averted.
No.

The gas tank was heavy –
whatever 18 liters of kerosene weighs.

I thought I’d carry it back on my shoulder, and… after a time I became aware of a distinct kerosene scent, which was indeed: kerosene, dripping down the tank on my shoulder.
I resealed the tank, and carried it the rest of the way to my apartment before going to the store.
I tried not to stand still for very long at any time while in the store, because I got dizzy whenever the kerosene fumes from my jacket caught up to me.

Of course moving around all the time does tend to make you breathe heavier / inhale more fumes when you do stop. I got slightly nauseous and developed a bit of a lingering headache. When I got home again, I hung my jacket up outside + changed clothes.

When I wore the jacket, which I’d assumed would have aired out that next morning, the: shirt, pullover, and undershirt I was wearing all came to smell like kerosene within 5 minutes. That faded before too long, but I had to chain my jacket to my bike outside to keep everyone else from getting sick.

I thought I should take it to the cleaners after that, but the care tag inside said it was the kind of jacket that you wash in a washing machine.

Into the washing machine it went – Along with: some towels, socks and such…

I washed everything multiple times since then,
..with different blends of different soaps,
with splashes of perfume and rose oil mixed in,

…but I still find myself wearing a kerosene scented scarf,
And drying off with a kerosene scented towel whenever I get out of the shower.

This weekend I am going back to my 1st city, where my New girlfriend lives, where my old Japanese teachers are having a farewell party for some Korean people I’ve never met, and where my old roommate is having a 30th birthday party.

I’ll wear my kerosene soaked jacket in the hopes that all the cigarette smoke will dull / mask the odor.
I’ll do something akin to worrying about how I’ll be 30 in a few months myself, though I know it doesn’ make any difference really. Except perhaps that, I think it will feel entirely different to have to tell people that.

There was an end of the year party for all the teachers. It was held in the banquet hall of some hotel. I had a runny nose/ bit of a cold left over from a few days before Christmas, so when I got there, I hung up my jacket and ducked into the bathroom to get some tissues. When I came out, I saw some other teacher nervously running down the hall into the shower room. I asked him if he was going to take a shower, and he said: ‘No, he was looking for me’. When I asked why he was looking for me, he said that the lady that I gave my jacket to said ‘that it was “heavy”, and that she was worried’.

What a F&$#ing mystery that is…. !!!!!!

The teacher that I like, the one who tries to kill me with booze, the one who only speaks at parties, and only then about how much more we (I) could be drinking,… He had some sort of “problem” that required surgery/ He didn’t come to that party.

When wondering what was/ is wrong with my absent friend, I have to admit to the possibility that he might’ve had a heavy jacket (or perhaps an especially long scarf…) &%$%!!

I like that guy, but it was nice to be able to remember more than just the 1st 2 hours of a school party, …for a change.

This was a nice party, as parties should be, but not especially eventful.

On the next night:

One of my old Japanese teachers invited me to join her and a young girl (she knows I’m fond of), to have dinner and some drinks at a bar on the top of a building in a richer part of Tokyo.

I don’t really like Tokyo, but I like my old Japanese teacher, and I like young girls - young girls that I don’t have to go all the way to Tokyo to meet in particular.

This girl I met at this same old Japanese teacher’s Christmas party the year before. I invited her to my party the next day and someone else’s New Year’s party after that, and she came, and she moved to Australia a few days after that.

This place in Tokyo was really nice because: it was classy, I was not allowed to pay for any of it, I got to sit next to a young girl that I’m fond of, and when they told the Maitre’ d (= Head Waiter guy - I can’t spell that) …when they told him I was a vegetarian: he didn’t look at all worried (that always!! happens…), and he didn’t suggest they bring me a nice salad with beef cubes (…which has also happened).

There was a little creek running through the place, and a jazz quintet (with only 3 members - because I can‘t think of the right word for that just now, …but triplet seems …wrong), and they put fresh orchids in all the girly cocktails - so by the end of the night I had a pocket full of orchids. Hooray!

No one believed/ cared that you can eat orchids.

This nice former Japanese teacher of mine had arranged for me to stay at the home of a friend of her’s, on this occasion, and indeed whenever I went back to visit my old city. Her friend just happens to be the mother of the young girl, of which I am fond, who I met last year, who went to live in Australia, who came back to Japan for a few months, who was sitting beside me this night.

I laid awake in the futon in the spare room that they laid out for me, for a long long time wondering if/ + hoping that girl might stop in to wish me a good evening (in a French Maid’s outfit or something).
Perhaps it was at the cleaners.

On the next night:

I met my friend from England, his wife, and baby at a little restaurant. He and I started getting “warmed up/ drunk” for their party that evening at 5. Everyone else showed up at 8:30. My very previous ex-girlfriend also came. I asked how she’d been getting along and she said she had a wrinkle.

That’s where 2 years goes I suppose; She didn’t offer any other details except to announce loudly that I was getting a bald spot like a dirty old man she knows. I reminded her that I have larger boobs than her (and I don’t have any boobs at all - just to point a fact).

Other than that, and the fact that everyone went home at 11:15, it was a fairly nice party.

On my way back to that girl’s house that I was staying at, I stopped at the bar where I had my leaving Japan party the previous spring. I had bought a little souviner for the owner, who got to talking to me, and some other guy I’d met once before came in with 3 girls… + I didn’t wind up leaving until 5am.

12 hours is a lot of drinking in my opinion, and I never used to like drinking really.

I walked back to the girl’s house that I was staying at. I used the key that they gave me to get in - but they’d put the chain on the door as well; It’s the last thing you need an hour before dawn in the cold…

I thought about just sleeping on the front step, but then I figured that because I’m from New Jersey - I could work the damn thing loose.

I did eventually.

The practice came in very handy the next night, …when they put the chain on the door again…

I went to a party the next night:

That nice old (and when I say old I really mean it as former- much more than aged) Japanese teacher had thrown a Christmas party for me, which was a bit hit, and a great many people attended, but I was busy that day, so she did another one for me on this night. The girl and her mother whom I was staying with came, as did a few Nepali and Korean acquaintances, and my older drinking Canadian friend. They ordered everything that could be made meat/ fishless to be made, so I didn’t have a lot of time left over for drinking.

But after that party ended, ..and the girl and her mother, and most other people went home, my old Japanese roommate, my Canadian friend and I went out drinking. The staff at the bar smiled an awful awful lot!

After my older drinking Canadian friend wept comically for 20 minutes or so, my old Japanese roommate confessed that he’d given them (the staff) the hottest hot sauce in the world, which I’d brought for him from America some months before. We did “Rocks, Paper, Scissors” to see who could choose which of the cheese ball looking things they would eat. I wasn’t certain that they were all vegetarian, so I cheated and peaked, and it is well that I did so, …or I wouldn’t have a nice long funny video of my friend: talking about how strong he is, crying, …and asking for more ice-cream.

The ice-cream does help.

We had another party the next night . My English friend came along, and he drew the short straw but: I felt badly for him, I heard that hot sauce may cure Diabeties, and he paid me 830 yen to eat the hottest hot sauce in the world in his place.

There is a video of me crying and eating ice-cream as well, but I don’t think it is as funny…
It is true about my bald spot though…

We went to karaoke after. That night was the 31st, and we stayed up until 6:30ish. My old roommate tried to get me with a rolling kick one too many times (3 times), so I kicked part of the couch out of the way and he had a good solid fall to the floor. The year is young yet, but that is still the highlight, …thus far.

I stayed with my older drinking Canadian friend, because the girl whom I had been staying with was going to go to Korea with her mother early on the 1st. I was planning to take a train back to Nagano the day before the 1st, to make it in time for my favorite dance club’s closing forever party. I was told that that party went from 8pm to12 noon the next day. I was woken up just after noon by some boisterous drinking Canadians telephoning my friend via his computer/ web cam.

4 of the 6 of us from the night before drove to Nagano that evening. We got lost along the way, and everyone was later shocked at how cold my apartment is.

They have no gourmet vegetarian food at rest stops in Japan, but they have the cutest hello kitties in the gift shops.

I’m not really sure how I spent all the rest of my time off from work. I tried riding my bike to some of those famous sightseeing spots near my town, but I just wound up on an isolated road at the top of some far off mountain, at dusk, before I had to turn back. I mostly finished a painting I had all but given up on a little less than a year before: “the Other side” - coming soon! - though maybe not quite so so soon.

I cooked a nice soup.

I was invited to a party, than dis-invited mere minutes after accepting.

I was invited snowboarding (by the same girl), and heard no details whatsoever regarding the plans, so I excused myself from that excursion, and went with my newer drinking Canadian friend and his friends instead.

My neck and back still hurt.

My feet feel better.

For a time I thought I might turn into one of those human snowballs that keeps rolling down hill - getting bigger and bigger (like in those old cartoons).

The girl, whom I am fond of, whose home I stayed at while I was visiting my old city,

who I have not seen in a French Maid’s outfit,

whose mother kept “absent mindedly?“ putting the chain on the door,….

She wrote to say that Korea was nice, and that she intends to take me up on my offer of a place to stay/ to go snowboarding. This coming weekend. That’s something nice anyway.

I finally asked my landlord to have someone come and look at my sink. (It leaks and leaks persistently, but only when I am trying to sleep (It also leaked all the time I was in my old city.).) The plumber that came couldn’t make it leak (I was not trying to sleep at the time.). He suggested I put a sponge under the faucet when I get tired/ go on vacation.

I`m not too sure about what sorts of people read these. I`ve said that before, and I am saying it now, again. Chances are, if you`re using the internet you can handle the following, but you may want to take this as your warning:

This is “the Truth” after all….

You see, I had a dream that I was having sex with a fat girl, and she was making fun of me all the while. I remember thinking that it might be fun to flip her over and maybe smack her big soft abusive butt once or twice, but I didn`t seem to think it would work. She didn`t like the way I talk or something… I might have told her that she could stand to be a lot friendlier/ and a lot fitter, but you never think of things like that when you`re dreaming; I thought of it when I woke up though, and was ever so slightly perturbed.
I tried to go back to sleep to see if she had a better looking friend or sister roaming around in my head, but I was too awake at that point. - Peculiar.

So I lay in bed mourning the arrival of another morning – as is my custom, and eventually got up to go out painting again.
The day before was beautiful – a great day to go out painting, but I had to help set up for the City`s Annual International Party then. I especially had to be there, because I was scheduled to stand on stage alone and sing.
That I`ve done several times before, and the results are typically less than entirely good.
I`ve either gotten better in the last few years, or everyone in Japan is very polite, perhaps it is both. I actually had a very nice time there. I met a lot of good looking young ladies that I will certainly never hear from again. Oh, I`ve been waiting!
This is what I wrote to my Manager this morning:
“Thank-You! At this school, I can check my e-mail and print things - neither with any sort of hassle. Can`t say I`m too pleased about working on Christmas - I guess that means I`ll be stuck in the area - not that there was anything particularly special going on in Saitama on the 25th. No classes at all today, so I`m grading papers/ updating my webpage/ wondering why none of the semi-sexy ladies from the international party haven`t written to ask if they can come by for an erotic massage.
The lady that works in my building - whom I have to make water payments to, said to ask my “Oyasan” if I have an external water pipe heater installed or not. I thought she was the “Oyasan”. “Name withheld” said she would come by to look sometime but: I haven`t heard from her since our drunken Jenga game after the international party, and I doubt she knows anything about external water pipe heaters besides. She`s still more than welcome to come, as I`ve decided to open a “LADIES ONLY Erotic Massage Parlor” - and I may need some practice. - I may need the practice, but I`d absolutely make that up for that with Enthusiasim - I can assure you.”

This is what I wrote to my sister last month:
“ I don`t really want anything. Maybe some nice Oatmeal. If I`d have known 10 years ago that I was looking forwards to getting oatmeal for Christmas I would have cried.”.

This is what I wrote to myself last month:
“Don`t forget to write back to Mr. Fuji”

….but it`s not like I have to take orders from myself is it?!! (I forgot + just remembered today)

This is what I wrote to a friend of mine 3 years ago:
“I meant to write - to you, and other people, but I always forget whenever I’m actually near a computer. How was Christmas/ New-Years?
I came back to the US for about 2 weeks. My girlfriend bought a ticket to New York, so I had to go too, then after I got the extra day and a half off of work, paid for the ticket, and told everyone I was coming back, she canceled (’cause she needed the money to move out of her house? - no details available, I think she just changed her mind. I’m gonna look for a new girlfriend, but I always introduce all the girls I know to all the other girls I know, and they all talk to each other – collude to not go out with me.) I figure my grandparents are getting old and I should try to see them at least once a year anyway”.

I got rid of that old one about a half a year after writing that, but I still haven`t gotten a new girlfriend…
My Grandmother died last month, …some changes are easier to rely on – it would seem.

Last week I had a date with this girl that I had a date with maybe a month and a half before that. I had a great time both times, but she never writes back, except on the rare occasion to say that she`s too busy.
I still like her better than that girl that used to ask me to go out dancing with her and never showed; And I like her far far better than the fat girl that haunts my sleep.

I asked this other girl I didn`t/ don`t really like, if she`d like to come by for dinner one night, and she said okay, and later asked if she could bring her 3 friends along. I figured I may as well throw a party if that was what was going to happen anyway, so I invited the girl I had had the one date with and hadn`t heard back from in over a month. She wrote back to say that she was too busy then though.
The girl I don`t really like brought along some other girl, who I did like better, but didn`t have the chance to speak to then or ever afterwards.

It feels like I`m damn Rodney Dangerfield – if you remember him.

I had a dream that small groups of Aliens, Angels, and Spirit Demons were watching me to see how I would react when they revealed that despite all my efforts, I`ve been doing something confoundedly wrong for the past few years. What else can you do but change and hope it`s not a trick of some sort.

I met an angel kind of a thing once, but it just wanted me to stop what I was doing and go back inside of my body.
You never think to ask Angel seeming kinds of things about Rodney Dangerfield or any of that when you find yourself suddenly loose/ in spirit form.

the Fall

posted November 6, 2006

Do you ever look back on your past and wonder who you were then? What you must have been thinking/ Why you did the things you did….For the life of me, I cannot figure out why I am wearing such a gay shirt!

These are a few of the things which I can remember:

The monkey that taught me the true meaning of Christmas…

Dying - that last time,

Swinging a wet tea bag around my head and yelling: “I’m a Cowboy!!”

Swearing revenge - though the reason/ circumstances elude me,

Almost all of my address - probably all of my phone number,

How to make really nice Tofu burgers!

Dropping my lunch on the floor of the school. It filled in some of the cracks in the old wooden tiles. I didn’t eat very much that day - but because I’m diabetic I always have to have emergency food around.

I remember that a bird pooped on me on my way to school, and a bat flew smack into my chest on my way home from school,

I woke up at 4 in the morning because my sink began leaking – spontaneously - more than just a little. I was tired and at least 2 other feelings, so I checked my blood sugar, and sure enough it was too low to go back to sleep safely.

The one time that I died was when I couldn’t wake up because my blood sugar was too low…

I had another feeling, like there was something important about that moment just then. They told me later that day that my grandmother had just died, but I‘d be lying if I said I thought that that was what the feeling just then was. While I was awake then, I dreamt that an older lady teacher at one of my schools was going to try to make me drink something that would be bad for me. I ate something and went back to sleep.

I remember most of the first party. It was a PTA/ Board of Ed/ Mayor of the City/ various grandparents/ and all the teachers first party. The teacher that I dreamt was going to try and make me drink something that would be bad for me, was sitting right across from me, ….but SHE never did – not that I can recall. The teacher that single handedly poured me 3 bottles of sake’ (I was honor bound to drink) at the last school party, however, did the same thing again. He came running over to my seat 10 minutes into the party, and reminded me that it was an all you can drink deal, and that I had better drink as much as I could. We finished a bottle in 10 minutes. There was no food I could eat, so a small plate of vegetable sushi was brought out for me about 45 minutes later. I saw a salad about 30/ 40 minutes after that, but I don`t think I ever got the chance to eat any of it. All the while my new best friend kept swinging by with his 3 bottles, and running off after several shots, saying someone would die if this was kept up. Various Grandmothers, PTA members, teachers, and the head of the Board of Ed obliged me to drink a small drink with them. Wow!

I imagine this was kept up well into the second party, but I only have a few hazy ideas as to what went on then. Some friendly guy suggested I sing something, and I remember the first few words being okay, but then it seemed to get really fast, and I have no idea as to whether I finished the song/ got halfway through the song/ or sang lots of other songs… I remember someone telling me it was time to go home, but I don’t remember when, or how I got there, or where I got home from, or why I woke up all naked with the exception of my socks.

Everyone is trying to pickle my liver so they can eat it.

I remember going to this other school to get my picture taken with everyone, and the principle there said he heard from someone that I went to a party at my other school, and that I was all crazy there. I asked him if he knew that one teacher that loves pouring drinks, but he didn’t. I wanted to point out that I am, anyhow, always crazy, but I didn’t.

Case in Point: There was this one time, where I swung a wet tea bag around my head and yelled: “I’m a Cowboy!!”

I remember getting stuck in another meeting:
at all the other schools I’ve worked at - whenever they have a meeting they let me out of it/ simply never tell me about it. Nowadays I have to go to them. It’s nice that they try to include me - for five minutes or so …then I get bored.

I remember asking this one boring girl what she likes to do for fun, and that I can never remember how she answers because it’s too boring.

I remember that time (2 days ago) when I was abducted by Chinese hookers!

I remember saying that this one teacher at this one school had really good energy. I had to go back there for the school photo, and I was reminded that I am right about that.

There is another teacher at another school, who I tried not to be drawn to. She’s not as pretty, and does things differently - but something I am not aware of - is working for her.

I was doing - what I like to call “my homework” - and realized all of a sudden (the way realizations are), that the reason the girls that I do persue never want to come to: “the party in my pants”, is at least in part related to the fact that I would never do “my homework” if I had a strong/ and more physical alternative.

I remember one pile of apples in the store being much happier than the pile of apples next to them, and the things in the formaldehyde display case feeling upset, and Kaiun laughing because I wouldn’t let him kill the cockroach that ran across my floor - …years ago.

Those Chinese hookers will really screw with you if you’re not careful!

There’s a famous waterfall in this city. The reason it is famous, I think, is that it is/ they are actually 2 waterfalls/ twin waterfalls. I’m told that it’s taller than Niagra, which in and of itself is probably not so impressive (but I can’t validate that because I never did actually get there). The photos I’ve seen are good. Everybody tells me how nice it is. Somebody told me there is a bus that goes there. Nobody was around to read the bus schedule for me, but the first 2 or 3 characters on the one bus were the same 2 or 3 characters in the name of the waterfall. I woke up not as early as I planned to try to go there, but trying was the extent of it. I asked the bus driver if the bus went to the falls and he let me off at the next stop. He gave me the time for the bus that did go to the falls, and I waited around for that, but it turns out that he gave me the wrong time.

Then I asked some other people, and it turns out that there is no bus that goes there at all.

I tried riding my bike to the falls the week before, but the signs there are all in Japanese, and I didn`t remember the name/ recognize any of the distinguishing characters on the sign. Oddly enough, the signs on the way back to the city center were bilinguial. I had to go up hill in the rain for an hour and a half to find that out.

I remember giving that other teacher at that other school my e-mail address, and telling someone else in the meeting that I had nothing to do that Friday night, and her hearing it/ her asking me later if I wanted to come out drinking with her and her friend. I hoped her friend would be really pretty- and she was okay. I asked them about the waterfall, and suggested we 3 go there with more girls.

They tried to get me as drunk as them, but I`d been riding my bike up hill in the rain for an hour and a half earlier in the evening, and I metabolized all my girly drinks too quickly (I like the colors).

Those Chinese hookers probably expected me to stay drunker longer than I did do too.

I tried riding my bike to the falls again, after missing the bus that I had the wrong time for, but the hill just got steeper and steeper, and a back pack full of paint/ canvas is heavy. I rode up hill for about an hour and gave up. I gave up in front of a quaint old house with a really nice flower garden, so I painted a picture of that, then went into Nagano to meet that same other teacher from that other school that asked me to come out drinking with her and some of her other pretty friends that previous weekend as well.

The train to Nagano takes 25 minutes. I rode my bike there in 35. I was delayed by a number of cars pulling onto/ blocking the sidewalk. This one old lady saw me coming – saw that she wasn`t going to be able to pull into traffic yet, and still put her car in every inch of room. Typically the idiots that do this will back up for you when they see that they aren`t going anywhere, but not that lady. I waited, and she didn`t move (forwards or backwards). I knocked on her windshield and she looked at me, then ignored me. I walked my bike onto the side of the highway in front of her car and waited for the oncoming traffic to clear up, …………..then I kept waiting. She honked and yelled, and turned bright red. She held her horn down and I gave her the finger very calmly. I had somewhere else to be though, so I wasn`t able to detain her progress even as long as she had mine.

I have to teach a bi-weekly class there, as a part of my contract. The first time I went there they didn`t have too much to say about what/ how I should teach – Instead, they asked me if I`d go to their international party in November. They said I didn`t have to, but they would like me to, and I said I would. They gave me a sheet of paper then with all the relevant information. Then they faxed that same sheet of paper to me a few weeks later. My friend who is also my manager, who is from Canada, and likes drinking a lot called me one night to ask if I knew about the party they were planning at my community center in November. I said I did, that they had: told me, given me a sheet of paper with all the information on it, faxed me the same piece of paper with all the same information on it, AND that they had called a teacher at my school, to ask them to read the fax to me! That`s when he told me that I had to go to a meeting there (at the community center). I asked him what it was about, and he said the party they were having at the community center in November – they just wanted to give me some information about it.

At the meeting at the community center they read that same sheet of paper – again! They argued for an hour about how much they should charge elementary school students to go. When they finished that they argued about how much to charge the “international contingent” of the international party. Only 2 of us went to the meeting; The poor German girl said she had been tricked into attending, I was forced. She said that she was supposed to be one her way back home at 7pm, and she said that after 9pm. Some old man kept taking the microphone – spiting and yelling into it in his excitement; It hurt my ears, and wasted nearly 3 hours of my life, but I`m better off than the German girl who was brought there 2 hours early. I was also allowed to leave a little after she did. We were both amazed that they would feel the need to call a committee to discuss where the tables should be placed, and at what temperature the tea should be served. Some people will never know the joys of running with scissors. If you can follow me? Indeed I doubt I would ever have known as much about Chinese hookers if all of the people I was with at the time hadn’t kept disappearing for hand-j%bs…

They just drag you in from the street. …In a remarkably similar fashion, I was once talked into taking some responsibility for an empoverished little kid in the Philippines. Then when checking to see if everything was settled in that regard, I came across an ad with a picture of a poor empoverished little Indian kid. It was the 4th time that I saw that same ad that I reasoned: As non-empoverished as I am, I may as well help make some one else’s childhood easier to bear.

This was nice: After I met this other teacher`s other friends, who were 5 girls to us 3 boys. I got most of them to come dancing. The dance place was just upstairs from the 2nd bar we stopped at. I`ve been trying to get a good looking girl to come dancing with me for a good long time, so I was very pleased to be “the filling” in a drunken girl sandwich. That other girl teacher would dance with me for about a minute then run away, or push one of her girl friends into her place, so… I think she may have the same feeling about it all as I seem to: A charged ambivalence. At some point between 2 and 2:30 she disappeared entirely, which I thought pretty peculiar, but she was pretty drunk then too. All the rest of her friends went home in a group a little before 3. I stayed and stuck it out until 3:30, when I remembered that I still had to ride my bike a long way home. On the way back to my city I got a message from her saying something I couldn’t read, but it mentioned a hospital. When I got home I looked that part I didn’t understand up, and it seems she somehow dislocated a shoulder while dancing, so she had to go off and have it put back in it’s socket.

I remember going to meet a girl to go dancing two months ago, and her never showing up.

I also remember going to meet that same girl to go dancing last month and her not showing up that time either. All in all I’m much better off with this one, though it’s something neither of us seem to want most of the rest of the time. - That’s why I like it; It’s Cheaper than those Chinese hookers too I tell you!

Tree posted August 6, 2006

People say you need obstacles/ problems/ things to overcome. I don’t want to be on fire again.
I read a book about the evolution of consciousness - From mostly ignorant cavemen to Egotistical financiers - the breadth of perception experienced by humankind has altered. The guy who wrote the book (Ken Wilbur) said humanity couldn’t have stayed content in
Eden unless it was totally ignorant of everything. God would visit - walk and talk with man, who was secure and taken care of (he never understood death), but knew there was something else… ? The serpent helped strip away the security, + that was uncomfortable, but it was necessary; We couldn’t have stayed there forever with a nagging feeling in the backs of our minds - not with something so extravagant to realize…I’ve got nothing to follow that up with…..
Not just yet.

Some time - perhaps long ago, a tree fell down in my parents yard. It broke the fence. My dad fixed the fence, and he had someone help him roll the trunk aside. When I first came back to visit my parents I used some of my grandfather’s old carving tools to make a pair of totem poles from parts of the trunk. One day I got a newly sharpened chisel stuck deep in the wood. I might’ve knocked it loose with a hammer, but I had been carving something delicate and didn’t want to cut into the wood on either side. It seemed “smarter to give the stuck chisel a good yanking, and it did come loose, but it went right into my arm. Maybe that‘s what you get for carving a “serpent”.
I was only in the emergency room for a short time, but the bill came to $2,100.00, not including the $748.00 doctor’s bill. I think this is a good reason for me to expedite my return to
Japan, and the Japanese National Health Insurance Program.
I gave up carving for a time - given the inherent difficulties (it’s a 2 handed task) - and because my paint had finally arrived from
Japan (although a number of the tubes had disappeared, and others seem to have exploded - that took some time to clean).
I had intended to swear off carving for a lot longer, but my grandfather, saw the 2 totem poles I did manage to finish and asked me to make him one, so I got back to carving early this week. I set up a whole circle of citronella candles, as if it were some kind of arcane right, but it doesn’t seem to bother the mosquitoes at all.
I took an evening off one night, went for a bike ride, and saw a big black bear poking around in someone‘s garden. Someone was standing at the window of their house watching the bear in their garden. I wanted to stop and watch the bear as well, but I’d just come down a long steep hill and I was approaching a long steep hill, and it seemed far more prudent to use the momentum I’d built up, to not stop at the bottom of 2 hills with a big black bear a few feet away.
The next day, while I was making a nose for a wooden face - the sky got really dark really quickly, the wind picked up, and a huge tree fell over right near where I was standing. I was surprised. I went inside.
I tried to work on it more the day after that, but the wooden hammer I was using split 3/4ths of the way through. I glued the cracks and the piece that fell out as best I could and went for another bike ride. There was another bear - this one at a much safer distance.
Today there were mosquito bites on the insides of my hands, and the hammer all but fell apart - so it would seem that - if there were “higher forces” at work in the world - they don’t want me to be carving.
“Higher forces” - if you’re inclined to believe in them, also don’t want me to wake up amidst many/ any beautiful women. That’s why I sleep in whenever I can.

An Apache man said he was out on his horse when the storm came. There was a whole lotta’ rain. He was under a tree when lightening struck the ground. The energy ran 20 feet through the wet ground - straight at him, but stopped just short of where he was. The next lightening bolt did the same exact thing - from the other side. - Then he knew that the spirit energy wanted him and went straight back home to begin learning the songs and the dances.