How is it that an entire city can stink of piggy poo?
When it’s hot, as it generally is all through the summer in a semi-tropical area, …a person wants to open a window - Let in a breeze. - Not choke on those awful fumes - Yes?
I don’t want my home to stink of pig, but short of packing up and leaving already, there’s really nothing to be done about it.

I had hoped to be able to organize a little free time between jobs, but that didn’t work out in my favor.
They needed someone to come quickly, and they never mentioned the odor, the tarantula that guards the toilet, the ankle deep murky water where the dis-functional washing machine sits….
Not a big deal really.

I had to work on my birthday - again.
Last year I was locked in a “supply closet” napping and reading comic books until I snuck out. This year I really had to do something other than just sit there, but I was able to leave freely when I was finished. It’s good to try to do something a little special for your birthday so, after my morning class I followed some road signs to a nice place - where the 1st Emperor of Japan’s parents are said to be buried. I wandered around there and at a nearby park for a few hours, I watched the fish + found a huge snake, then drove back to the center of the city to work more.
After work I went for a short cycle to a spot that would have had fireflies if there were any fireflies around.

I’ve been wanting to see fireflies since my 1st summer in Japan, when I realized that not all places have fireflies like they ought.
It soon became clear that there weren’t any fireflies, so just went to the Indian restaurant in town.
I would have gone there earlier in the week, but I wanted to try and do something fun on my birthday.
I ordered a vegetable curry + nan.
The guy asked me how hot I wanted the curry “from 1/not hot - to 50”/ I can’t even imagine how hot that would be.
I said 9/ the low end of the scale (yes?) and I don’t know how the hell he worked out what number means what because I drank a whole pitcher of water + ordered extra nan + all of my insides were still burning all night and late into the next day - Hot!

I woke up late the next day because, I could, and because my parents had another birthday party for me / without me in New Jersey. I went to an internet café that night with my web camera + talked to a lot of the people there and talked to my girlfriend elsewhere. There is a time difference between here + New Jersey, so I was up until the sun started to rise the next day.

The next day I went back and painted 2 pictures of the place I’d found the day before. It was, after all, the 1st and only nice place I could find then. There were few people there on my birthday, and there were as many people the next day. I hadn’t seen anyone at all pass by for more than an hour when, of all things, I saw a black guy with curly hair.

The guy who’d decided we would go swimming at the waterfall had told me a few days before that there’s a super friendly black guy with curly hair in town. I had only seen 2 people who were not Japanese in as many weeks, and thought it safe to assume that there were not 2 black guys with curly hair.
+ he was really nice. He said he would be leaving town shortly - for greener or more fragrant pastures, I know not. Good for him

Given that I have to drive up to an hour out, several times a day, for classes here and there, I have managed to find some better places than what you see (and smell) in the center of town.

Two days after my birthday I spent almost 3 hours driving around looking for a beach that isn’t made of concrete. I did get 2 more paintings done when I did finally come across a beach. An old guy with a fishing pole stood and watched me for about 30 minutes, then he went off fishing.
I asked him if he knew of any pretty/ prettier places around + he was stumped. I live on a peninsula, on an island - and shouldn‘t have this problem. The sea is on every side of me, but all the roads just seem to connect one pig factory to another.
I forgot how to get back to the waterfall I slid down naked, but during a 4 hour break I drove around near another city I have to work in twice a week. I get 4 hours free time before starting there each Tuesday, so I was glad to find some nice looking mountain peaks not too too far from where the classes are. The 1st week I went up a one lane mountain road to a campsite + hiked around with all my heaviest paint on my back looking for the best vantage point. After about 2 hours of walking I realized I’d had the best view when I was still in the parking lot.

“Up the one lane road near another “city” that I have to drive a long way to.”

I went straight back there the next week and painted a large picture very leisurely. When I was all finished, I looked at my watch to see how much time I had left to do another painting, + I had to check and recheck my watch - because I was 25 minutes away + only had 15 minutes to get to class.
I drove quickly and changed shirts at a red light, and only got there a few minutes late, only a few seconds after the 1st students.

Another time I got to another class 5 minutes early, only to learn that 5 minutes early is really 25 minutes late if you have the starting time wrong.

I had another set of classes in a really small town, really far away, with an hour and a half break between sets. I found a super cool river there where a campsite had been - all covered in vines now. The rocks along the river are all oddly eroded - like green water running deep down in grey swiss cheese.

[youtube=http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=oFUt9NN7fGM]

I don’t love teaching those kids there, but I like that I have a couple hours of daylight after my last class there + I’ve managed to paint 2 pictures there in 2 trips.

I ran low on paint thinner really very quickly, but there was none to be found in my new town, so I had to drive to the capital of the region on a sunny Sunday afternoon. I saw the volcano that always spits ash into the sky sit peacefully/ not erupt, …but it was still impressive. The city itself was also surprisingly nice. There was green grass there. Green grass is even rare on the golf courses here, but it was right there in the middle of their big roads, manicured, with street cars running along side it all. I got one bottle of paint thinner, directions to a branch of my bank, which was of course closed on Sundays, but why do the ATMs need to take the day off?

I had a good walk around - for 5 hours, then got dizzy + needed to eat. I thought I might be able to find a vegetarian restaurant, but I got interested in the menu of an Indian restaurant. I’d gone back to the ridiculously spicy Indian place in my town just the night before, and had a much easier time with a level 6 vegetable curry. The level 6 potato and garbonzo bean curry was just right.
While walking down the street, I heard someone politely ask - in English, if they could talk to me, and he looked like a Jesus hound when I turned around and saw him, but it was just a nice guy from Tennessee trying to get people to go see his band play. I don’t know how successful he getting anyone else to go. I didn’t go to find out. I was mostly glad and relieved that I didn’t have to fend off another: Mormon, Jehova’s witness, or door to door newspaper salesman.

The day after, I finally found the kind of beach that I expected to find everywhere. It was just 20 minutes away. I saw all of 9 people there the whole day. There may’ve been one or 2 more people there in the morning, but I was then busy wading through the murky standing water on my balcony - as I had thought it proper to try and wash some clothes.

It took about 40 minutes to walk from one end of the beach to another. I got tired and painted a picture from the midway point + went swimming. It was warm like bath water + you had a great view of the whole bay + the mountains across the way. There was a shrine built on some rocks at the opposite end of the beach. I swam out to it when I got there. My 1st painting blew over while I was swimming, but not seriously damaged. I smoothed out the scratches in the paint with my fingers, which resulted in larges patches of both my arms, shoulders, and feet turning a Smurf-ish blue (for several days - baked on paint!).
I painted another picture of the shrine on the rocks, the sea surrounding it, and the mountains off in the background.

“Shrine on the rocks in the bay”    

Actually I think it was carrying 2 big blue paintings 40 minutes down the beach at sunset that somehow turned large parts of me blue.

I got back to the center of town around 8:30 + tried out a revolving sushi place I had passed and wondered about. They had fewer vegetarian dishes than the Kaiten-sushi where I’d lived in times past, but they put roughly the same amount of mayonaise on what vegetable dishes they could make.
Everyone was looking at me over their shoulders as if they had never seen a foreign sunburnt man with warpaint drinking lots of water.
I tried to discreetly wipe my blue fingerprints off the counter + think I got it all taken care off.
The inside, door handles, and roof of the car at the mechanic’s is another story.

————————————————

We get time between classes: An hour, two, or five.
+ I’ve noticed… that the time between classes, however long it is, it goes by quicker than the limited time I spend in class and driving long distances to class.

Today, for instance, my car wouldn’t start right away, so I was 5 minutes late for class,

it took about 5 minutes to get them all to come in the classroom,

and I let them leave a bit early,

…and I let them talk amongst themselves for another however many minutes (It wasn‘t enough).

That left about 40 minutes of them kicking, slide tackling, wrestling, pinching, and climbing all over each other (mostly kicking). When I say each other I mean myself as well. You twist a kid’s arm up and he acts all repentant, …but that doesn’t last 15 seconds. The other kids, don’t stop kicking him for 5 of those seconds either.
One kid had like 50 rubber bands on his arm that he kept snapping at the others, I grabbed the lot of them, pulled back and threatened to let them snap at him - which I did do when he tried to kick me. I suspended a pair of them, a leg in each arm to get them to stop kicking each other, and some other little monster jumps on my back. I tripped up a pair of them (lifted their feet) while they were trying to kick me, and that was funny, but the one pretended to cry so that the others would come within rubber band range, and I had to spend another several minutes confiscating them then.
You try and tell a kid that slide tackling someone is a good way to get punched in the face, but stupid kids don’t listen.
It was easier last week when 3 of the 5 of them refused to get out of the mini pool + come in the classroom. I saw/ heard through the window that the little girl took all her clothes off and was yelling at the principle to look at her ass. I didn’t initially know she was the one who was supposed to be in my class.

She had no nametag!
Ha!

I hadn’t thought reading 1 page (5 short sentences with lots of colorful pictures), doing 1 workbook page (trace less than 10 words), then playing a game was a lofty ideal, but you see how quickly it degrades into “No kicking anyone who is down on the floor.”

Like I said, my free time goes so much quicker.

But the driving part is what really concerns me now.
The car is as un-inspected as it was when I was given the key and the “it’s your problem now” from my boss two weeks ago. It seems not to have been inspected for quite some time now, but (perhaps?) only very recently has it started squealing - …like a donkey would squeal, if it were in hell.
When there was a little drizzle of rain for the 1st time, I turned the windshield wipers on, + instead of wiping the windshield (like windshield wipers do), they stuck together. That is to say: they collided and would not work out their differences ( maybe passions?). I had to stop the car, turn my hazard lights on, pry them apart, and repeat the process. Luckily it was not raining hard and it soon cleared up.

I told my boss about it. He said it’s good that it isn’t raining anymore.

Now I don’t want to have to pay upwards of $1,000 plus some hundred dollars to have his old spare car fixed up enough to pass the stringent (costly) Japanese inspection standards, but I also don’t want to get pulled over driving an un-inspected car + paying whatever awful fee that likely entails.
For his part, he didn’t want me to drive around uninsured (or he has a friend that sells insurance), so he called a friendly insurance agent, who came bearing a form with all my information already filled in. Some of the information was wrong. People don’t often get any of my names right, this guy had me down as Shinda Raian. If you translate that 1st part, …it actually means: “He’s Dead”.
Funny mistake from an insurance agent.

I wondered how interested the insurance agent would be to hear that my windshield wipers don’t work, but he still wanted to sell me the auto insurance…

The day after I first/ second/ and third tried to use the windshield wipers - It rained. It rained really hard and, of course, my windshield wipers would not wipe. I tried calling my boss to remind him I couldn’t drive 15 kilometers in a typhoon unless I could see, but he was out of town all morning and I only had his office number - Which nobody was around to answer - Which, I imagine, must have peeved the people at the school I didn’t show up to too.
Although I did show up, (a mere) 25 minutes late + saw a whole bunch of teachers gathered around a telephone looking angry. I don‘t know if they were upset because I hadn‘t died, or because nobody had answered any of their calls to the office.

I bet my insurance agent is happy I‘m not dead though. I pay by the month after all.

When I went out in the typhoon to make sure the wipers still didn’t work, to reassure myself it was safe to go back to sleep, they almost did work, and after a little bit of readjusting them (in the typhoon) - they did seem to work like you‘d expect windshield wipers to work. Somewhat reluctantly, I went back inside and made something to eat, + put dry clothes on, + left my scuzzy apartment when I should have already been there.)

So my boss called me back around lunchtime + suggested we take his/ my car to a mechanic + have the things he’s tired of hearing me remind him about looked at, + I’ll have no reason to not go to work on time.

The mechanic’s wife came out - looked at the wipers and realized that one was much longer than the other. She switched them + it was all fixed within 3 minutes. I told her all the other things that seem to be wrong with the car. She got her husband, who was surprised that a car with so many flaws had been able to pass inspection. My boss said he didn’t remember how much time was left until it needed to be inspected again, but he knew it was okay. I told him yet again that there was no sign of it having ever been inspected. The mechanic asked how much longer it had. My boss looked all over the car (in the rain) for the inspection sticker (which is always in the same spot ( where my windshield has a circle of sticky residue). The mechanic’s wife looked though the papers in the glove compartment and declared it almost 10 months overdue. He was surprised. He said the police would throw me in jail if they caught me driving it; Which is the same thing I had told him 4 or 5 times before.
I guess he realized I shouldn’t be expected to pay to fix up his old car/ or more importantly, realized that I wouldn’t, so he’s said that he’ll pay the mechanic’s inspection fees/ get it up to specs.

I was relieved to hear it. Sort of wished I hadn’t filled the car up just an hour before, but it was on empty. The loner car they gave me drives so much easier than his car, but it was even emptier than mine had been when I filled it up out of necessity.

That’s all seemingly sorted out now. Thankfully.
The other gripe that I have now is his expecting me to work one of my days off each month.

I thought I should make the most of my 2 hour evening break, so I went into the clinic across from the mechanic.
The doctor, and later - the pharmacists were all afraid of me. Well educated medical professionals never want to admit that they’ve never had to deal in insulin and needles before, and they always try to cover up the fact that they’re having their staff telephone every other pharmacy in the area looking for insulin/ needles.

They always give me a form to fill out (all in Japanese), which I do fill in (in Japanese)

, and they always seem to read it over carefully before asking me if I speak Japanese.
Doctors and Detectives are separate professions after all.

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.

>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

One of the old ladies that sells bread at the bottom of the stairs under my apartment tells me that I was on T.V..
I wondered why they had those big ass cameras pointed at me, but I figured it was for some kind of video.
Those people, who had the 7 lengthy meetings as to how the party ought to be organized, …and what sized paper plates to distribute - they’re picky about details.
I imagined they would continue having meetings for all the months following the party, …looking for ways to improve next year’s deal, …and I‘m probably not wrong about that, but it turns out they showed it all on T.V..
I asked what channel it was on, which was silly of me, seeing that my T.V. doesn’t work.

This is the end of the year, …you may be aware of this, - or living in the future…,
regardless,
this is the season where there are a great many “End of the Year Parties”. It’s nice when I am invited.
I typically accept invitations when I am able to. Restaurants in Japan typically have very very little for a genuine vegetarian, such as myself. I appreciate the merriment, but I AM growing slightly weary of having nothing but French fries and salad for dinner every night.

I, of course, have continued to propose amusing excursions to a small selection of the pretty girls I know hereabouts and they, ….give me the weakest excuses!! Or slightly more frequently - never respond.
That girl that never met me to go dancing (twice!), she wrote - out of the hazy blue.
She suggested I have all my friends meet her and all of her friends at some restaurant in her town. I wrote back to remind her that I don’t have any friends, which is not true, but if I were to have them come with me way the hell out of the way to meet a bunch of girls that will never show up, …I would have fewer friends.

This girl that has no interest in me, nor I in her, - except that I find someone with no interest in me, well …
“fascinating” …

She wanted me to go to some dance recital of hers. She’s good to me, so I felt in no way eager, but rather obliged to go. After I said I would go, she tried to get me to take more than one ticket. It seemed like she had too many tickets, but I didn’t spend an awful lot of time reading her Japanese mail all too carefully. I thought I might as well ask that girl that stood me up twice…
I asked that girl that stood me up twice.

She gladly accepted, and stood me up a 3rd time!
I knew she would,
…but you know how doing all those push-ups is supposed to make you stronger.

I had already arranged to meet/ go dancing with the girl “that at least shows up, though rarely ever writes back“, - after the recital, but when I called after the recital, which she rightly had no interest in, she was asleep, and planning to continue to sleep.

I was going to just go dancing on my own after that, but I hadn’t had lunch, it was 9pm, and there were no vegetarian friendly establishments anywhere at all during the hour I walked around the city looking.
Truth be told, there was one, but it closes at 9:30, and they weren’t as pleased as I - that I managed to get there 2 minutes before they closed.

When I got home later - ashamed at my existence, I just cooked myself dinner. Some lady I met at that international party, where they filmed me singing on stage, wrote to say that she read that article I wrote for the newspaper about how I couldn’t get to the twin waterfalls. I wrote back to tell her that I bought a bottle of wine to cook with, but that I couldn’t open it until the corkscrew store opened up the next day. She must not have wanted to come by with a corkscrew and help me, though I assured her that the Cous Cous was entirely vegetarian.
Some people are just really weird!

My friend who works at the dance place that I didn’t go to that night, says it was full of beautiful girls that night. There was an old Crow saying that: rain falls equally on everyone’s head/ Every life has its challenges/ hardships,
…but I do maintain that I am a special case.
But I have met 2 other people this past week that have been hit by cars.
(Japanese drivers are worse than any New York Taxi!)
I met a kid with no fingers on one hand, a kid that must have some disorder, because he looks like an old man, and a pubescent Brazilian girl. - Mind you there’s nothing whatsoever wrong with being a pubescent Brazilian girl, but to be one in an Elementary school full of entirely flat-chested Japanese girls, that can speak Japanese - would certainly be difficult.
Perhaps I ought not complain that I seem to be going blind.
Recently, when I go from someplace cool/cold to anyplace warmer …I can’t see/ can’t see well for a half hour or so. Everyday when I go into school, all the other teachers sit at their desks like blurry cloud shapes.
Also, more and more often, when my blood sugar drops down, things and people disappear from my field of vision.
The 1st time I met that girl that has since stood me up 3 times, I had one of my school’s head English teacher take me to the table with the sugar packets. I could hear her laughing when it was explained that I was diabetic, but I could hardly see her for those first few minutes.
Mind you I never see her now either…

Last night, after the Nagano branch of the larger company’s: End of the Year Party, I went to the dance club where my friend works - to see if any of those beautiful girls from the previous week had returned, and they must have, but I figured I had all night to talk to any of them, and they all left early. Later I was introduced to a pair of good dancers, whom I may or may not find myself adding to the pool of poor excuses. One of them looks very much like a girl I had a dream about not so long ago.
I’ve been meaning to re-read my copy of “Psychic Development for the Beginner“, but it seems to be working on a limited basis on its own anyhow.
At some of these parties that I have been to recently, I have met some people, whom I have given this website’s address to. On the chance that any of them are, and are able to have read and understood this much (in my decidedly non-basic English), I would advise them to not read any of my previous Journal entries because:
- It’s a lot of hard work reading things. - Salutations!!
- If they were to find out about: my now reoccurring dreams of naked fat girls - I would be embarrassed!

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!

Something and its Opposite

posted October 15, 2006

They have several classes for the “special kids” here.

I was a special kid – up until I got too old to be called anything other than a weird old sack of man – but not as special as some.

My old classes usually consisted of someone telling me to listen to a recording of someone talking. “Try to pay attention to the person speaking, not the background noise” they`d say, and I`d say: “Oh!! – Sorry!? What?!”.
There`s this one kid here that has the same problem as me – though likely far worse because he has his own teacher to follow him around all the time, pull him off of things, and find him when he decides to initiate a game of hide and seek. I like that kid.

Anyway – the one class here cooks a lot. The other day they were selling bits of boiled pumpkin with grape Jello. Something that specially unique you just have to try – after verifying that the Jello is free of animal bones, of course.
It tastes like it sounds.

There`s a nice old man here who trips over a wastebasket every day. I would say it`s like that old old black and white t.v. show - where the father trips over that same piece of furniture every night, except that there are many wastebaskets here, and he usually trips over 2 or 3 of them.

His misfortune amuses me – slightly. This is for you:

There were all different kinds of clouds out when the weekend came. I waited around a bit and watched them, and eventually convinced myself that it wouldn`t rain on me if I went outside for a few hours. I hurried all the same
Verily – as I was leaving, it drizzled, and I thought of going back in, but then it stopped. So I started riding my bike up a mountain towards this nice temple I`d found when it rained on me the weekend before. The weather was nice enough for the 1st hour and I had a really good start to the picture I was painting. Then it rained again. Water and oil pant don`t mix well – I`ve tried painting through a storm before. The last time the backing I was using got warped from the water. This time I brought an umbrella. It`s hard to hold a small umbrella over yourself and a canvas - whilst holding a palette and operating a paintbrush, so I set the palette down. The picture, I thought, was looking an awful lot like something Edward Munch would have painted, but you`ll have to take my word for it.
I bent down to get a little more blue out of my bag, and a gust of wind blew my picture down; It fell right on top of my pallete. The palette was/ is smaller than the picture, so all the parts that didn`t get smeared in gobs of paint – including the blue I just squeezed out,….. all the rest of the painting had pine needles and gravel stuck to it.
Neither the wind nor rain showed any signs of stopping, I was wet and altogether dis-pleased with the state of things, so I headed back. On the way back the wind blew my poor disfigured painting free of the clip on my easel, and the car behind me very nearly ran over it.
I got home, and as it turns out, I had knocked a tube of green off of the shelf in the course of my hurrying out. I sealed it up, and cleaned up the mess, but there`s still a big green splatter on my floor. The tube sprung a leak as well – I know because when I put it back up on the shelf, it leaked down, and dripped on my nice pink suit.
I have a pink suit because my grandfather – who is partially colorblind, perhaps never understood what pink really is. He gave it to me.

Everybody always liked meeting my grandfather; He dressed like a dish of candy.

I wore a pink suit because it makes people happy to see a man in pink, and because my old company said that the people who wore suits to work were the ones who could expect to receive raises/ promotions. – the lying Ba%$ards!

I stopped wearing my pink suit when that joke wore off, and I stopped working at that company when they didn`t give me a raise.

(I`d like to stop wearing pants, but the winter is coming, and I worry about the consequences.)

I was having a fairly sucky day at that point, but I was expecting a complete turn around; I had a date in the evening.

This was the girl that didn`t meet me, that one time that that girl that I met said that she would meet me that one night - to go dancing.

In the intermittent period, she apologized for not showing up that time and suggested we meet up on this night instead,

….but she didn`t come this time either.

Apparently she went to the place with some friends of hers, but they didn`t have enough to pay the cover charge. My best friend hereabouts works there, - was in fact working the door there a good part of the evening: He got me in for free, I had money and a discount coupon in my pocket for her, and I got 6 or 7 of my 9 or 10 drinks for free while waiting for her to show. The last train back to my town was gone before she wrote to explain that she was back safely at home, not going to come this time either, …but she did suggest that we arrange to get together another time – to go dancing.

That was pretty funny of her.

My friend had a floor and some blankets for me to use, …after we got back from the place – which didn`t close until 5am. I don`t work there, but I swept the floor.

I`m a good sweeper, …and an adequate mopper.

I woke up alarmingly early + tried to sleep, but it just wasn`t taking. I got up, looked out the window, saw that it was a nice day out and started back to my small city. It would be a shame to waste a day as nice; It`ll be getting really cold here at some point, so I`d like to paint outside as much as I`m able before then. On my way to the station, however, I noticed the conglomeration of thick black - and imposing clouds hovering over the borders of my city.

I washed the stink of too many second hand cigarettes off of me and asked this other girl if she had any free time/ wanted to go out. This is the one that came to my 1st welcome party – that I didn`t have much opportunity to speak to. She gave me her address at the after sports day school party, where she used to work, where everyone poured drinks for me that I was obliged to drink and, … I can`t remember well, but don`t think I got to talk to her too much then either.

Anyway I waited around all of that day to see if it would rain or not, and finally went out and painted 2 pictures from the roof of my building`s parking garage in that last stretch of time before dark (”A Chill and a Mountain”, and “the Night - Suzaka”).
I think they`re good – if a little dark.

The next day was really nice!! I`d say it was ideal, but I didn`t wrestle any sexy girls in (vegetarian) Jello. The weather was nice. I fixed up that picture that had the gravel and pine needles stuck in it. I had a date with that other girl…

This was a long/ 3 day weekend, and she had to work through all of it, but still she suggested we meet up that night. It turns out that she only had a few hours off from work late in the evening – on a national holiday, and she brought an equally fazed co-worker along with her, but it was nice enough. I like it when they show up!

I suggested Indian food, because it`s generally safe for vegetarians, and it`s kind of ackward going some where with someone you hardly know and explaining to them why you aren`t eating anything.

They kept me pretty busy that week. I had to help another teacher practice a demonstration lesson she had to do, + I was at school until 8pm on Tuesday night, 7pm on Monday and Wednesday. I`m supposed to be at home/ goofing off come 4:30; I think I am turning Japanese. They had a little follow up meeting for an hour or 2 the one day that they wanted me to participate in. Typically I`m excluded from this sort of occurrence – with no resentment on my part, I can assure you! I – and perhaps everyone, were very surprised that I was able to understand everything – well not quite everything.

My older drinking Canadian friend was telling us one night (as we were drinking), how it hates it when people in the service industry always speak to him with honorific tenses; “Stop being polite!” he says, “I can`t understand you when you`re polite!”, and they chuckle… The girl I had the date with said we`d work out our plans for the next weekend after they were done with the big deal thing she was sorting out for that Friday. After the first meeting, I was made to go to that all day meeting she`d helped organize that day. It was – as I said ALLLLL day, + conducted almost exclusively in Japanese. I couldn`t tell you what anyone was saying at any point, or why they needed me – “the human paper weight” to be there, but during the one short break in the proceedings I asked her if she had anything going on that weekend,

…and she did,

…but not with me.

My newer drinking Canadian friend in Nagano city invited me along with him to his friend`s cabin deeper up in the mountains. It was something to do.

Then I painted 3 more pictures through the remainder of Saturday + Sunday`s daylight hours (”Fuganji Garden”, “Fuganji Falls”, + I forget just now).

- These are all really good pictures!

– But I`d still prefer to have a girlfriend – or someone sexy to wrestle in (all vegetarian) Jello with.
(And I`ve been saying that for years!)