It’s been a long time since I posted anything.  My computer died + took all its secrets with it before I could.

There was no real warning, …just a faint buzzing sound before it locked up and went black

I borrowed my girlfriend’s computer semi-frequently until I could get myself a replacement off of e-bay.

I don’t know why I was forced to pay for express international shipping, when the guy didn’t even put it in the box for 2 whole weeks.

This upset my girlfriend too.  I used to use my computer for everything/ as a: CD player/ radio/stereo/ TV/  DVD player/ book/ comic book / newspaper/ + substitute for a great many other things too…  She just just seems to like e-mailing and online shopping, which she couldn’t do whenever I was using her computer – as there are no stores anywhere nearby, and just as many worthwhile stores for hours in any direction from here.

It did arrive eventually, I am glad.  But I couldn’t plug it in the 1st day, because the plug has 3 prongs and all the outlets in my house only have 2 holes.  I left for work earlier the next day and found a store that sold an adaptor, and did manage to plug it in the next evening,  but the password screen came up, and I had to reborrow my girlfriend’s computer to ask the original owner for the password, which again took several days longer than you would want it too.

Anyway, + at last, it’s shiny and red, bigger and faster, and the keyboard still has all the keys, so I’m pleased.

I would have liked to have gotten all the information off of the old one first to be honest, but what I remember writing about before:

• There was a near total eclipse of the sun – Such as we wouldn’t see for more than a 100 years to follow, …but we didn’t see it through all the clouds that appeared the night before.  People came to our nowhere town from other far off  parts of Japan to see our grey clouds and go home.

It was precision bad-luck timing, being that: It hadn’t rained more than once for the entire 2 months previous, which dried up everything I tried to plant in my garden more than once too.

• We had to drive up to the city on the opposite side of Kyushu so I could get a stamped paper from the American consulate that says that as far as they know I’m not already married.

It’s nice to go into a US government building and not have to see Bush or his goon squad smirking down at you.

They had an all vegetarian burger joint in that city that claimed to be an all vegan burger joint, …which it wasn’t, …unless you ordered the right thing, …which I did do when we went back the next day.  My girlfriend has an aunt there who we stayed with for the 2nd night (or we’d have gone for veggie burgers for dinner too).  The 1st night she slept in the car, and I didn’t sleep – in the car.   Her uncle really likes art, showed me lots of art books and I showed him only 2 pictures I’d painted – because he’s still running internet explorer 5 or 6, and nothing else could load in the 20 minutes we spent on his computer.  Really nice guy though – had lots of suggestions for places to paint, and the futon on his floor was far and away much more comfortable than the inside of my girlfriend’s car.

We stopped in another city on the way back so she could try on wedding dresses.  They had a couch there for me to wait on, but all the magazines were wedding themed – as would be expected I suppose, …but a fish tank or something would have been nice.  They had me try on a couple Tuxedos.  I asked for a green jacket, black shirt, blue-green pants, and gold shoes, but they didn’t have any of that.  The jacket they decided I should try on – I couldn’t move my arms in.  “Don’t move your arms then” was the response from the shop professional.

We met up with a college friend of hers that night who took us to a vegetarian Italian restaurant.  I wanted to know what the soy cheese there would be like;  It turns out that it’s almost indistinguishable from tofu.  We stopped at a volcano the next afternoon + climbed up.  They decided that the fumes from the crater were approaching dangerous levels just as we were heading back down, …so it’s good we didn’t stop for lunch until dinner time.

• One night at home we saw something that looked like a mouse scurry down the hallway into the kitchen and back.  I got up and chased it into the shower + closed the door until I found a nice box I could trap it in.  When I opened the door it was gone, apparently down the open drain in the floor.

Neither of us took a shower for an extra day after that, as I was worried we’d wind up with a bloated drowned mouse stuck in/ blocking our pipes.

• That was a funny story until we started hearing several more mice up in the ceiling running back and forth, hopping?, and gnawing on the insides of the walls.
• We had a lice infestation not long after, which sounds bad, + it is bad (!!) – I assure you, but lice don’t hop all the time like fleas do, + they prefer to bite girls + babies.  My girlfriend took to wearing a hooded sweatshirt, and tucking her pants into her socks for a while.

She fumigated the house several times, ironed the tatami mats in the floors every night, and washed all of her clothes in poison.  (add some poison to your laundry + see how much color it bleeds out!)

• The last time she fumigated we waited out the recommended 3 hours at a friend’s house, then 5 minutes after we came back home she was bit again.  She didn’t find that as funny as I did.

I was still very glad they weren’t fleas, which hop and itch and hurt, and like boys as well as girls and babies.

• We came back from my boss’ house late one night, turned the lights on in our house, and a mouse didn’t run right through my girlfriend’s legs,

…. it was a giant rat that ran through her legs, right back the way we had came.  She went into the bedroom to hide while I looked for it in the other half of the house.   I searched that part of the house for about 10 minutes, until I heard her scream again, so I went back there grudgingly thinking there would be a spider, or a little beetle , but she said she’d seen another one – another one meaning another rat, which I found hard to believe, but sure enough I saw it lurking against the wall behind a cabinet right next to our futon.  I put an empty shoe box in front of it, and pulled the cabinet out from behind, hoping it would run and hide in there, but it went right for my girlfriend, like its friend had.  She screamed a few times + tried to stun it, by whacking it with her kitty-cat slippers, but it ran into the room where our ancient mountaineer toilet is.  I saw it hiding behind the toilet, so I put the box down again + poked around behind the toilet with a stick hoping to scare it into the box.  This time it climbed up the back of the toilet, and lept at me.

I thought I was going to have to try to smack a flying rat away from my face, but it landed just short of me – in the bowl, and slid down into the pit beneath the toilet.

-   Sometimes, …+ this is months later,  I hear noises coming from under the floor where the toilet is,  and I worry that a rat is gonna’  scurry up and bite me in the ass.

That was my favorite story for a while, until in the same day:

• A jellyfish stung my lips, and some bastard kid bit me.

The jellyfish are small and translucent, and they tend to float near the surface of the water – where you wouldn’t see them if you were looking around for all the other fish.  They get your feet on the way in or out of the water, sting your hands while your paddling, they float up or down your shorts and sting your ass too.

That kid was throwing crap at another kid and climbing on top of a spinning rolling/wheeled chair he has fallen off of before, + I got bit while pulling him down.  It left a big welt on my arm which stang less than the jellyfish stings, but it looks a lot worse, bled more, throbs, and I had to wonder if you need a tetanus/ rabies shot for little bastard kid bites.

I have to put up with crap like that from time to time, I don’t get paid much at all…, but it’s usually pretty relaxed, I live on the beach, my boss is nice…

I tell him how the Rats in the walls and ceiling keeping me awake at night, and he laughs…

He lent me his wetsuit while he’s away for the summer.  I wasn’t at all inclined to use it until a few days ago, when jellyfish stung: my nipples, armpit, ear, my whole right side, and gave me an extra jab in the back.    The water in the bay is as warm as a hot cup of tea you’ve left behind to answer the door – not knowing it was the Jehova’s witness a’ knocking, + you’d never get back to drink it anytime soon; I mean it feels nice on your skin, and it takes a lot of stings before you have to admit to yourself that it’s time to put a hot rubber suit on to go in the water.

I actually put his wetsuit on just the once.  It was thick, hot, and it hurt behind my knees.  40 minutes later I took it off with a mild lingering discomfort, + 2 days after that the back of my knees started bleeding whenever I straightened my legs.   Taka + the other drunk guy I asked about it say my legs are too fat + implied that I should go on a leg diet.

He also invited me to a vegetable barbeque just after I lost my deluxe junior woodchuck underwater exploration kit and digital camera.  The vegetable barbeque consisted of 2 small slices of pumpkin that my girlfriend hadn’t already eaten while I was walking up and down the beach looking for any of the components of my deluxe underwater exploration kit, and a handful of green pepper slices that were covered with meat.

I got the deluxe underwater exploration kit for my birthday from my girlfriend who also helped me bake a vegan chocolate peanut butter cake, and left for a 3 day trip with her friends that same morning.

I spent weeks looking for a set that would fit me, be totally waterproof, + not cost me more than I would make in 4 hours teaching crazy bastard kids.  I took very very good care of it, used it every day- if not multiple times every day – as I really don’t have all that much work to do, and it fell off the back of Taka’s jet ski, along with my camera (in a floating waterproof case).  A pair of scuba instructors that were visiting asked me to hold their fins and masks as I was getting on the jet ski, so I didn’t have the chance to secure my own belongings before Taka suddenly sped off.

He’s a nice guy who constantly surprises us by showing up at our window drunk, or with drinking apparatus at all hours of the night – with and without friends and anyone who happens to be staying at the inn his family owns.

He took me to some rock islands/ reefs you seem to need a boat to reach + we saw lots of giant, + very colorful fish. I had thought that he only knew how to say the more colorful words in English, but he tapped me on the shoulder then to say “Oh!! very ….dangerous fish!!!”   I asked if he was referring to the 5 fugu/ blowfish below us, but he was  talking about the huge – fins all extended red lion/ scorpion fish that was swimming quickly and straight at us.  That was scary!  I only got a very blurry photo – They’re apparently very painfully poisonous! #gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; }

He took me, my girlfriend, the diving instructors, and another pair of heavy drinking guys there on a very jellyfishy day when I lost my mask, snorkel, and camera.

I had to borrow a mask from one of the diving instructors, + swam back 35 minutes to where I got on the jet ski hoping to find any of the missing components, but no luck, and Bad Luck! – with all the Jellyfish.

There’s a small corner of the beach that has a jellyfish net stretched through the water, but the lifeguards there don’t want you to do anything, so I tend to stay away from there.

One day, before the lifeguards started showing up for summer duty, I was wearing my birthday deluxe snorkel set – following one of the super bright blue fish, and I saw an octopus arm pop out and try to grab it.  It wasn’t grabbing it all too well, so I got to see an octopus follow its arm out (to better its chances of snagging the fish) before I had to go back up for air.  A friend of mine wasn’t too far away, so I shouted for him to come and see the octopus, but when we went back down to the bottom together, the octopus was gone, and a gigantic manta ray was resting right next to the rock it had come out from under.

I told people that I saw an octopus for about 2 weeks, until I got tired of hearing them ask how it tasted.  Bastards!!! Did you know they have 8 arms and 3 hearts?

I spent about 3 weeks searching intermittently for my mask, snorkel or camera. Sometimes it was very wavy, sometimes rainy, sometimes I went out to where I couldn’t even see the ocean floor; And I saw Jaws as a child and I’m still only slightly less afraid of open water (wet places larger than a bath tub).  I have since found only the mask I lost, 2 other masks, an old fishing pole, a snorkel nowhere near as nice as the one I lost, a piece of roofing almost the exact same size as the hole in my roof, and assorted other things I left lie on the ocean floor.

I spent about a week chasing a school of squid down the length of the beach.  They’re very fast, and hard to follow;  They change to a dark color when they squirt ink out, so you have trouble telling when they turn away.

You can’t paint pictures underwater, and the water is so nice I haven’t painted more than a couple scenes to use on our wedding invitations from as far back as June. I painted a few in June that I still haven’t uploaded to any of my websites, because I didn’t have a computer for the longest time, and didn’t have a camera for the second longest.

Taka comes by drunk from time to time and talks about all the preparations he’s made to come to our wedding.  He came by one night with Jack and a pair of girls and we all went out to look for seaturtles – which only come ashore once a year to lay their eggs in the sand.  The one we found was the size of a washing machine!

I went out by myself a bunch of other times + never came across another one.  Whenever I told anyone from around here that I saw a giant seaturtle, they all made a point to tell me that their eggs taste very nice with Ramen.     The Bastards!!

Taka and another of the drinking guys, both restauranteurs, decided while drinking that they would have a contest of skill – to see which of them could cook the best 2 course vegan dinner for me, but Taka forgot that it was his grandfather’s 88th birthday that evening, so I only had one 2 course vegan dinner, …but still very nice mind you.

The other guy doesn’t show up at our house unannounced like Taka does – except for when he does it with Taka, or on the one occasion when he came by rubbing his crotch and asked me to wake up my girlfriend so he could ask her pharmaceutical opinion on something he contracted from a girl he’d met.

I wouldn’t want to go to a hospital in a very small town with that sort of problem either.

I’m angry about that one third of my salary.
It’s kind of boring here too.

There’s really very little for anyone to do in this area. There are no restaurants, no movie theaters, no bars with disco nights. There’re just a lot of small farms, a beach we can’t swim on - ‘cause it’s too cold, and hundreds of mountains we can’t climb because there are no trails, and it never stops raining.
Yesterday it finally did stop raining. I went out and painted a picture of a shrine with the first few cherry blossoms of the season. I don’t know why my girlfriend wanted to come with me. Looking out the window, it seemed like a good idea - until we realized how cold it can be when the sun goes behind newly forming rain clouds. She sat in the car for a few hours - reading a magazine and looking angry, while I painted outside - shivered and shook.
She took my car down to the supermarket + didn’t come back for an hour at least. It was really cold.

We tried walking our $200 (equivalent) down to the old lady’s house to pay our rent, but that old lady can never hear us knocking.

She always wants to know who I am + why I’m there with money too.

My girlfriend bought a new computer when I first moved down here, so she could keep in touch with me easier. New computers all have Windows Vista on them these days though, + she’s not too good at using it. It’s all in Japanese + Windows (esp. Vista)  is rarely as straightforward as you’d like it to be, so I’m not a lot of help. We did get the internet finally though, so she at least has something to play with while she isn’t playing video games with me.

One day I was looking for a place to recharge my cell-phone.  There are just enough spaces in the power strip to accommodate both our computers and the modem, so I tried to plug the cord into the outlet in the bedroom. Instead of the 2 prongs at the end of the cord going into the 2 holes in outlet, the inside of the outlet got pushed back inside of the wall - where we can never get power from it again.

I’ve never even heard of that happening before.

….She found a cockroach at the bottom of a sealed container of Listerine we keep in the bathroom.  That’s even more bizarre.  It’s a watertight/ airtight childproof container,so how did a cockroach get inside?

Another odd thing is the old people who just appear.  We heard these voices one day, so I went and peeled back the curtain in the other room, + there were 3 octogenarians sitting on my porch talking calmly amongst themselves.  Perhaps they were talking about the good old days…

I thought my girlfriend would be interested to know there were random old people relaxing on our porch, but before I could even tell her, the old man loudly, gruffly, agitatedly exclaimed:  “Who the hell was that guy?”

I figure that ought to be my line…

I was on the floor of my studio another day when I happened to look up and see an angry old man looking in the window, down at me.   I would have taken a photo, but he shuffled away before I could get my camera out.

When I 1st moved in to this house, there was a fist sized hole in the wall with a wire running out, up, onto the roof connected to an old aerial antenna- that I can’t connect our TV to.  I plugged up the hole with clay, but the wire is still there, and we still can’t get any TV signal from it unless we plug 2 boxes attached to it, into outlets that we don’t have.  It might work out if I were to knock another hole in the outer wall and run an extension cord through, but there’s already a hole in the outer wall of another room which has an extension cord running from a wall outlet out to where the washing machine is…

People keep their washing machines outside here sometimes. It’s a pain in the ass wiping all the ash from the volcano off the washing machine + laundry pole when you want to wash some clothes.

Our washing machine used to squeal so loudly, you could hear it inside any building in the area.

I tried washing some clothes the other day + instead of the usual sound (that makes me want to walk down  to the elementary school down the road - to apologize for the disturbance), there was an awful burning smell.

Our washing machine doesn’t seem to work anymore.

It wouldn’t cost too much to replace it with another really old washing machine,  but that’s a lot more money than I’m happy spending with what I make now…

Now that we have the internet set up - I waste a lot of time doing this and that, but I don’t really remember exactly what.  I also try to get my girlfriend to play something on the Wii I got with her in mind, but she doesn’t like losing, …or playing video games - I’m not sure which takes precedence.
I got some recipes off of vegcooking.com . They usually work very well - if we can get the ingredients in this country… She likes cooking now too.

When we went back to the U.S. for Christmas, we didn’t get a chance to have any falafels.  (There are no restaurants or Mid-Eastern people here.)
Falafel is fun to say. They taste good. They’re so very difficult to get around here!!
They sound easy to cook, …and still taste good, even when you mess them up as badly as we, …or I, did.

She read a book she got from the library while waiting for the pita dough under the table to rise. (We only have one table - a Kotatsu - it has a heater attached to the bottom + a blanket that goes around the sides (to keep your legs warm.)
I’d already finished making the stuff that tasted a lot like hummus - even if the consistency was not right, so I played the cheap Incredible Hulk game I got while we were home for Christmas. Smashing up video game buildings and cars with an angry Hulk seems so therapeutic, but it just seems to make my girlfriend madder.

She was all the more madder with all the extra time my poor failure of falafel making took.

Whenever I ask her if she’d like something to eat, so looks to the clock for guidance, …like it’ll turn her into a gremlin.  Eating dinner late makes her pretty angry anyway.

I got a used Wii off of e-bay before Christmas because she really wanted one the Christmas before. I figured it would give her something slightly active to do when she moved in with me here (where there’s nothing to do this time of year), but she doesn’t share my enthusiasm for Spiderman games, and hasn’t gotten around to trying the ones I got with her in mind.
Spiderman is Awesome though - I have to say.

It’s been nice for me to have it. You can’t paint outside in winter/ in the ever present rain, + there’s no place to go anywhere around here (as I believe I’ve mentioned).

I might have written this sooner - if the city, the princess, the world didn’t need saving, zombie build up, all of that.  There also didn’t seem to be a lot to write about - it being so dull and rainy here.
I waste a lot of time on the internet too, now that we have it, as I have surely already mentioned.

Yesterday was nice because it didn’t rain (the 1st time in forever). Today was nicer because it was both: not raining, and sunny.
I painted a picture of a gnarley old tree growing on a big rock - covered with flowers, in front of a cliff.  It’s quite scenic,

but I knew it was a bad spot to pick on a Monday - being that it was next to the elementary school.
When school let out I had a sudden crowd of eager curious youth pushing each other, pushing my elbows and my easel (while I was working) to get a better look, asking hundreds of questions I could only sometimes understand, and YES: they touched the paint on my canvas to see what making fingerprints in a new painting felt like.

I also went to the old lady’s house again to pay her our $200 (equivalent) rent. I had to explain who I was, what the money was for, how much the rent is, what month it is, and all that all over again. If she wasn’t so old you’d maybe think she had a lot of foreign people stopping by with envelopes full of money for her.

There are only 3 foreign people in this town; One of them is : Jack, so that is what we all get called. I get Jack’s mail from time to time too, …close enough I guess.

I like to bring my girlfriend with me when I pay the rent. It gives her a little exercise and gives me a witness that I did pay - in case that lady forgets.
My bosses’ wife called me a month or two ago to say that the old lady’s son talked to her and he didn’t think we’d paid her for January. She couldn‘t be sure either way. I was sure that I had paid until I thought about it more + more, but even I couldn‘t be so sure about it after so much time had past.
My boss had initially made an envelope with the house‘s address + the names of all the months on it for me to put the money in, so she could stamp the name of the month and I would have something like a receipt to show I had paid - avoid any problems or oversights.
The 1st time I went over there she was peeling persimmons by her front door. I gave her the envelope, but her hands were covered with sticky goo and I never saw or asked for the envelope again. I tried bringing another envelope, but it turns out that she can’t remember where she left her hanko/ stamp anyway. My girlfriend is more concerned with proving that we paid than I am. Mostly I don’t think she would ever remember that she should expect any money from whomever I am every month anyhow.

The people at city hall called me at home on another day because I had renewed my visa a year before, and they hadn’t made a record of it on my “green card” yet.  I move around a lot, + there wasn’t any extra space to pencil in the un-new information on the back of my card with all the other changes, so they assured me it was very urgent that I apply for a new “foreign registration” card as soon as possible.  I’m pretty sure it wasn’t.

Last week I was a little shaky + needed to eat to stay alive, but I couldn’t remember what I was looking for in the kitchen.  I think I was expecting to find some food that’d already been eaten.  I used to keep more food around, but then my salary got cut to one third + my girlfriend’s on her never ending diet anyway…  She’s the one who gave me some sugar pills + made sure I ate them.  Having a low blood sugar can also make you sleepy or sweaty.  It was cold, but I had to take off my shirts and find a towel to dry and warm myself up again.

On one of the many many rainy days, I found myself taking a cool shower, …+ not knowing why.
Taking a cool shower is something I‘m always - altogether disinclined to do - I think you’ll understand.  It seemed to take forever to get it to warm up (but not scald me).
When I stopped shivering, I started to wonder how long I had been in the shower. My fingers weren‘t wrinkly yet (though that probably happens quicker when the water is warm). I was immediately impressed with my deductive skills - to have reasoned that out so quickly, …but alarmed at the same time that I didn’t know several more simple things like: what time/ even time of day it was, whether my girlfriend was still home, whether I had shampooed or not, etc.
It was when it came to my attention that I honestly had no recollection of having gotten into the shower, that I got out.

I stepped out to find a clock - to reassure myself I wasn’t late for anything, but having consulted several clocks and my new cheap green watch, it turned out I was already 15 minutes late for a class in a town far away (I was also wet, and naked, and not in my car getting any closer …45 minutes away). That was more alarming, but then when I looked around and found my phone to call my bosses’ wife to say that I wouldn’t be there on time - I found a whole bunch of messages from her asking things like: where I was, what I was doing, why I hadn’t left yet. I wrote her a message to say that I just “found myself” in the shower and couldn’t remember getting in there/ anything before that.

She wrote back to say I had been acting really weird, so she just canceled my class for me. I wondered how she knew I had been acting any way at all until she explained that she had been in my house and gave me a pill …before I took my clothes off.

That is very peculiar is it not.

The day before was my girlfriend’s birthday. I rode my bike up and down a small mountain to get to a small shop that sells very small slices of very small cakes. I was dizzy + shaking off and on most of the rest of that day, so I probably should have eaten more than just most of a very small slice of a very small cake before going to bed. - I’ve woken up dead before after all…

I don’t have to wake up at the crack of noon/ even earlier like I used to anymore. That is very nice!
My boss said there aren’t enough kids at the school for him to pay me to work “full time” this month. “Full time” was roughly 4 to 8:30pm. I never got paid as much as one might like, but those are hours that I was happy with, so I didn’t complain about the money, the kid that wets himself, etc.
This month and last month I’m working the occasional morning Kindergarten class and anything after 6pm. That gives me almost every Friday off (with nowhere to go + it’s always raining) and $700 (equivalent) for the entire month.
I’m glad my girlfriend moved in + is splitting the $200 a month rent with me, but I’m also not entirely comfortable living with someone who can somehow be soooo pissed off all the time.
She made nearly 3 times what I made, when I was still being paid merely “not well“ (as opposed to now, when I‘m hoping to make as much as I did at my part time job in my high-school days).
We don’t share money anyway, so I don’t see how it should affect her. She’s also seems to be angry that I have more free time.
She used to be very angry that there weren’t quite as many convenience stores as there were around her mom’s old house. She’s angry that the floor is dirty after I vacuumed after she vacuumed. She’s angry that I’m playing video games while she’s trying to decide all the details for our wedding…
Women are a pain!

We went back up to Saitama for the weekend to visit her mom and my old friends. As much as I hate being surrounded on all sides but up - at all times by concrete, It was nice to be able to do a little shopping and visit a few restaurants.
We went to this Italian place where you can eat as much pizza as you want. When they finally realize that I will only eat as much of my girlfriend’s pizza crusts as she will concede me, they usually make me something vegan.
We took her mom to a vegetarian restaurant in Tokyo the next day. I was disappointed that all but one soy-sage (It’s not a sausage.) was honey flavored (with honey no less). My girlfriend was a little angry that her mom didn’t like all of her wedding ideas.

I still think the best idea was having lots of chickens walking around during the ceremony - even though I was just joking at first. The Green Lantern costume is also a good idea. My idea of having the party adjacent to that restaurant - in the hall with the giant Buddah statue is the one they liked enough to go with.  Now I’ve got her thinking about getting married on Halloween, …so I can freely confess to anyone that it {was} the scariest day of my life.

As upset as my girlfriend initially was when she moved in with me, despite what she claimed, her house is way way colder than mine. Her mom lets me sleep in a spare room on the 1st floor with no heat (none of the rooms have heat except the one with the heater). I thought I could cut back on shivering time by leaving all my outer clothes and sweatshirts on when I went to bed, but I forgot about the chocolate I had been keeping in my pocket.
It was melted onto the back of my shirt/ into the sheets when I woke up.
I wasn’t sure how to explain that in Japanese, so I got my girlfriend to help.

She doesn’t translate things as I say them though - she says whatever she wants to say and says that I said it.

I never said that I don’t like her mother’s Onigiri, for instance, I just said I didn’t really feel like having it for dinner (having already had it for breakfast and lunch).

While she was practicing for her nail technician exam with her mom (whom I never said did a lousy job - despite how my girlfriend chose to translate it), …I walked around my old city for a few hours and bought 8 cheap curry mixes and three: 1 killo bags of dried beans to take home.  She was mad that I spent a little over $50 (equivelent) on food that would last us more than a year.

I was pleased that I finally got an art frog from the machine.  I’d been dropping a little money in that machine every now and again over the last year I lived there - trying to get the keychain with an artist frog.  I got 4 typhoon frogs, 2 aerobics instructor frogs, 2 mushroom picking frogs,… but I could never get the artist frog until this last time, when I put my money in + nothing came out!

I went to the counter to complain + the guy opened the machine up and let me pick out any frog I wanted.  They stopped making those frogs in 2006 and the machine is still half full - he probably would have given me all the rest for another $1. …

On our way home we stopped at the best Indian restaurant I have found so far - in Kyushu. They were having a sale on Indian clothes (without curry stains), + I got an interesting pajama shirt; Pajamas are the national dress in India.
It seems very well suited to block out the sun and keep you cool at the same time - both useless features with the weather being what it is here.

The cherry trees were just starting to bloom up in Saitama + Tokyo. The blossoms have almost all fallen off down here.

It was good that the sun shone for a few days at least. Three of them I spent in a valley with 2 big waterfalls: painting, and trying to warm myself up somewhat. I painted a lot more cherry blossoms by a river on one cloudy day. I drove around looking for the place people had recommended to me - wondering why the hell they’d think I should look there for nice cherry trees, on another cloudy day.

Cloudy/ rainy days make for poor paintings, so I’ve taken to drawing outside with an old ink pen recently. (Everything has to be black or white, so you don’t have any of the colors diminished by the bad lighting.)

One day when it was gray and windy, but not raining,  I tried cycling up to the lookout on top of the only mountain I’ve found with a road here.  It took an hour and a half of constant pedaling, but I made it all the way to the top: soaking wet and that much colder in the wind at the top of a mountain.

It took me an hour and a half to cycle up, but only 15 minutes to make it all the way down - and dry again!

Now that our washing machine has stopped spinning clothes dry - I might try wearing something wet up the mountain sometime.

I like having more of my afternoons free - even if it does mean a lot less money + an angrier girlfriend.

October 30, 2008 at 12:27 am

I keep on counting down the days until I’m done with this terrible job.

I was supposed to be finished on the 25th of this month, but then my boss asked me to stay ’til the 31st - just to finish up the month.

Then he asked me to work on the 1st of the next month too - just to finish up that last week…,

then he asked me to work until the 8th, presumably so he won’t have to teach some of the miserable bastard children I get stuck with - while he waits for someone to move here from England.

My best guess is, he hasn’t informed this person that:

• his company keeps losing money/ business,
• he has no idea how to operate it,
• he expects them to pay to fix up his piece of $h@t car,
• they’ll be asked to work a lot of their days off,
• they’ll be: prodded, poked, punched, kicked, climbed on, or ignored (if they’re having a good day), or
• that this whole city reeks of pig-ass.

He had initially told me I could stay in this house until my December flight home (I’d paid for a long time ago), but now he’s decided not to have my replacement move into the same filthy cockroach palace he had me living in for the 1st of the 4 months that I’ve been here (and have been wanting to quit).

I was looking forward to a little down time after finishing, but I knew he would probably change things around on me:

Last week he told me not to go to one of the schools I usually go to, but to go to a different one instead.  No big deal, simple change;  He also left a note on my desk to help me remember.

When the day came I went to the different school, and who was there red faced and shouting that I was in the wrong spot.

I’m not taking any more crap from him!

Especially not when there’s a note on my desk in his handwriting, telling me to go there at that time.

I bet my replacement is going to love coming to Japan for the 1st time and having all these unnecessary suprises sprung on him.

A couple of weeks ago my boss sent me to work at another new place.  There was a new “student” at the new place who stomped on my feet about 10 times while he shook my hand for the 1st time.  The kids decided they wanted to start the class with a book.  That same lunatic child got up, ran over and stomped on my foot every time I turned the page.  Some other kid saw this and thought it was the thing to do, so they pushed, hit, and strangled each other - trying to fight over who could be the 1st to molest me - every time I turned the page.  I pushed them back - One started crying.

I tried to get them to sing a song/ play a game, but they just grabbed things from all over the room to throw all over the room.  I made them pick the stuff up, and whichever one I wasn’t standing over tried punching me in the butt from behind.  I twisted an arm or 2, but these kids don’t understand the “action = reaction” phenomenon.

Man…,

I hate my job.

While I was playing a game with cards on the floor with a kid who was comparatively calm, the newest kid with the kicking problem came over and kicked the card all over the room.  I got up and made him put it all back.  As soon as I had squat back down he tried to kick me in the head.  I pinched his leg so it would hurt, so he got angry and redoubled his efforts.  I missed the 2nd, but pushed his foot up the 3rd time, which made him fall over.

He pretended to cry, and he was an awful actor (worse than either of the new Darth Vaders even), but ignoring him moan off and on while he watched me from the corner of his eye, just made him angrier and angrier.

My boss got a call that night from some upset mother who I am comforted - has to live with that child, where I just have to have some sort of plan for an instance where they take a break from trying to sodomize each other with building blocks (and thankfully not for much longer!).  My boss was red faced and upset again, so I tried to explain what actually went on, but he didn’t want any explanation.  He didn’t try to blame that on me, and I assume from the look he gave me that he had been working there before he pushed it on me.

I hate this job.

I went in one morning to find out that he had decided to throw a big Halloween party for all the kids that go to the school on my day off.  Please make a plan for a 30/ 40 minute activity for everyone, he told me with almost 2 weeks notice.  I told him that my fiance had bought a plane ticket to come and visit me over that weekend, and that we had been planning to take a trip in this area for 2 months.

I didn’t bother to remind him that I prefer to have off on the days that I have off, or that he is supposed to check with us if he’d like us to do work on our days off, and provide us with another day off when we do work on our days off:  It is something he knows full well.

His latest plan was to have me work until 7 pm on the 8th of November, and told me to be ready to move out early on the morning on the 9th, maybe a few hours before the next person shows up.

I had told the people in the town 2 down that I could start at their school on the 25th, then told them he pushed it back to the 31st, then the 1st, …I didn’t bother telling them that he wanted me until late on the 8th - seeing how he’s changed his mind so so so much so far.

They decided that they’d like me to start on the 3rd and haven’t changed their minds about it yet.

It put a look of shock on my present boss’ face when I told him that he’d have to spend that one week in my shoes, …but of course he doesn’t have to put up with all his own bull$h@t.

In the meantime, I mostly just want to prevent myself and any innocent children any bodily harm,

and to have the car not break down again before then,

but you can’t always have what you want.

Every time I stop for gas they tell me that one of my tail lights is busted.  I tell them that it’s my boss’ car + that he would never approve of having any part of it fixed for anything more than free.  I told them I’d just need to drive it for 2 more weeks.  Then the next week I told them I’d only need to drive it for 2 more weeks.  A week after that I told them that I’d only need to drive it for 2 more weeks;  Hopefully it’s for real this time.

A busted tail light doesn’t worry me nearly as much as the squeals and the various warning lights that turn on with increasing frequency.

Today there was a terrible burning smell which I really would have liked to have come from something other than the car, but …it followed me all the way home and stank there too.  I opened the hood and found the new generator belt shredded up on top of the engine.  The mechanic has told me that: the car is old, so the engine is rusty, so the belt will keep breaking all too frequently.  He repaired it much quicker the 2nd time.  It really ought to last at least 3 weeks before breaking again…  it ought.

I had endeavored to ride my bike as much as I could, but it turns out that I just can’t bear having to breath in that awful pig stink when I have to breath harder.

I used to carry a bandana to keep my poor bald head from burning in the sun, but it rains so much, and smells so bad here, it’s become a makeshift airfilter.

The town 2 down where I was offered a job at another small school smelled worlds better when I went down to see it.

Trading in my Christmas air ticket home would cost more than half the price we had already paid for it + it’s actually cheaper for me to buy a cheap car and try out living there - than to head home an extra month early.

They asked me nicely to stop by their Halloween party - so they could introduce me to all their students.  I told my boss I would have to leave work 2 hours early that day, and in his typical fashion, he canceled my last 2 classes on the wrong day.  It was the 1st time he’s ever made a mistake in my favor.

He called me early in the morning a few days ago to tell me that the school I was supposed to go to at 10am that morning wanted me to meet them - somewhere totally different.  He tried to explain where it was they wanted me to go, but it soon became clear that:

• he didn’t really know,
• and was, again, growing increasingly frustrated trying to explain it.

He drew a map and dropped it off at my house.

The map…

would make you laugh if you saw it and compared it to what really exists.  For one thing: It only had 2 roads - neither of them where the building was. It was drawn so that it was between the bridge and the lake on the left.  If it had been drawn to scale, the building would have been 9 killometers long, not tucked behind 2 other buildings off the road, which was, in turn, a totally different road from either of the unrelated roads he had drawn. The bridge and the lake are 15 killometers apart in the real world.  I drove slowly most of that way looking for anything larger than a house. I drove back, then back around again.  I stopped at a convenience store + asked, and the mystery was solved.

I maybe should have bought something.

I was only 15 minutes late, but what they had asked me to go and attend was just a stage rehearsal of some dances they were going to put on for their parents.  This left me sitting on a mat on the floor “watching” the rehearsal, under a pile of kids, none of whom had any intention of watching anything, when they could climb all over me, fight each other, and pick my pockets.

I felt something like a lucky golden buddah statue that everyone wants to rub for good luck…

I had an otherwise good day today:

I slept in for the first time in a too long time and painted one picture at “the rock beach”.

I call it that because it has a small peninsula with 2 tall rock towers sitting next to each other - if it has a real name I don’t know it.

————

The last time I was there I painted a really good picture.  A family with a few small children parked nearby to look for shells, but the 2 youngest kids just stood and watched me for 20 minutes.  They declared that they were amazed at my painting.  I, in turn, was impressed that they were able to stand there that long without attacking anyone, but didn’t want to get into a long discussion over it.  There are often times when people stop to tell me that I’m doing a good job, and I often find reason to disagree because of this or that, what have you…

This time it was a good painting from beginning to end, and I was pleased all until:

• I finished it,
• I turned around to pack up my bag,
• It got blown over into the sand while my back was turned.

• It was an otherwise windless day…

AAAARRRGH!

I’ve had things blow into paintings (most often leaves or cherry blossoms).  I’ve had paintings blow free from the easel - so I have to chase or climb after them. I’ve had the easel tip over onto me/ ruin my clothes.  I’ve had my palate blow into gravel or onto my leg/ shirt , but I had never before had a painting get blown over into sand.

Luckily it was a very large grain sand which dented layers of paint, but didn’t get buried in it.

I fixed it up so that the colors are all as they should be, but there are still a number of small craters in the paint.

Anyway, there were no horrible paint accidents today, and I was glad.

——-

I only mention this here and now to contrast it with what happened yesterday:

Yesterday:  Oh Lord!

I was tired, and had to work that Sunday morning at some sport’s day thing.  It was even earlier than when I have to work on my regular working days, but it was at least over pretty quick.

I gave myself as little time in the morning as I could - to facilitate sleeping…  I made sure to bring all my painting supplies with me, so I could go out directly after.  Usually when I’m painting _ I don’t need to eat very much, but the little bit of running around I had to do in the morning must have made my insulin work far better than it otherwise ever does + I had to finish up my breakfast/ lunch/ half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, gone very early on in the day.

I was on a beach (the 1st one I was ever able to find here),

from 10:30 am until just before 6pm with only a half dozen very stale crumbled up crackers and one “atomic fireball” still in the bottom of my bag from my last trip to America, …over a year ago.  The little package of crackers must have gotten busted open at some point during that year - I was hungry, shaky, and I sometimes got vertigo when I moved, but they were still really hard to swallow.

I wasn’t sure if I would be living in this area for more than the 2 weeks I knew I had a home, and I wanted to make the most of the sunshine near the coast/ paint all day.

I did a painting of the waves, then one of a sand bar up close, then that same sand bar and brackish pool from futher away, then the pool from another angle, then I thought I’d paint a smaller picture of the beach running back in the distance towards some mountains but wasn’t able to get very far with it.

A sudden gust of wind blew my easel over and ticked me off, but I jammed it down deeper into the sand,  cleaned it up as best I could and got back to work.

Just a few brush strokes later, the board on the easel, which I had the canvas clipped to - blew over into my hands - it turned me and my clothes blue, but made me more irate.  I patiently screwed the piece holding the board in place tighter.

A few minutes after that, another gust of wind blew the canvas loose of the board and the clip, back onto me - making me bluer and more frustrated, but I didn’t want to waste the last little bits of daylight, which are usually the prettiest to paint.

But before I could even get the canvas re clipped to the backing board, the wind picked up again, blew it loose of my hands and pushed it face down along the beach in the sand.

AAAARRRGH!  AAAARRRGHHHRRRAAAGH GAAAAA!!  - but how.

I was tired, hungry, and not just a little angry at that point, so I took advantage of the nearest washed up piece of garbage on the beach;  I thought I would kick a half deflated volleyball halfway out to sea!

But instead, I found it really funny that when I tried to kick the ball,  my big toe bust through the top of my shoe - leaving a hole that filled in with sand as I walked dejectedly back towards my boss’ dysfunctional car.

It was past twilight and the only other people in sight drove away when I got to my car.  I tried to wipe the worst of the paint off of me and packed up the car.

The car, I had parked on the one lane of packed ground leading to the edge of the beach.  I backed up slowly to be sure that my front tires stayed on the hard packed ground at the edge of the sand, but I failed.

What a horrible day.

When I put the car into drive it did not move.

I quickly reminded myself that there was absolutely no one anywhere around.

I tried to rock the car out of the sand by switching between drive and reverse gear as quickly as I could, but no rocking in either direction occurred.

I got out to appraise the situation:

The pain in the but fairy could not have planned it better (if it existed): My tires were dug about a quarter of the way down into loose sand.

I pushed, and dug in the sand.  Sand stuck in the paint stuck to my arms from all the problems with my last painting.  The car didn’t move any and sank deeper into the sand.

I tried again.

I tried steering left and right to get a hold of something firm.

The car just sank deeper and it looked like the chassis + the engine would soon get planted in the sand, leaving the front wheels hanging over the holes they had dug.

I reminded myself that:

• there was absolutely no one anywhere around,
• I didn’t know the name of the place or even the town where I was - to call for help,
• I had only had breakfast and had had no lunch and would have no dinner,
• it would be totally dark in a few more minutes,
• and there was a big hole in my shoe.

I dug in the sand some more + found a few small rocks and two tiny thin strips of wood which I set on top of the sand under each wheel.

I tried going forward + it lurched just a little.

So I went backwards as quickly as I could + it moved just a little more. + I repeated that process, but really made very little progress in either direction until I undid my seat belt and threw my whole body forwards when it was in drive, and shook my weight backwards when it was in reverse + I managed to get it to teeter over the edge of the hole and gain forward momentum enough to get back onto the packed dirt road just before pitch dark set in.

It turns out to be lucky I gave up painting before then.

I stopped at a supermarket on the way home + must have looked odd with paint and sand and dust all over me,

…and my toe sticking out of my shoe.

They say you shouldn’t go shopping when you’re hungry, but if you’re hungry and tired, sunburnt and dirty, and the store is about to close, you just have to keep yourself out of the vodka aisle.

He seemed lonely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What a piece of crap!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rain and paint just don’t mix well.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jelly fish!!

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

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

Anyway, I like the beach.

Despite the Damn Jellyfish!

Something/ not painting - that I have accomplished lately:

I cleaned my house.

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

New house video:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It had improved significantly.

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

This ticked my boss off.

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

Everything is, of course, my fault though.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It’s 15″ I said.

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

“Absolutely” I said.

“Can You really?” she said.

“Yes.” I said.

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

“It’s 20 minutes away.” she repeated.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She doesn’t often stay up ’til 12am!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I like the idea of that.

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

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

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

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

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

The End - this time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I could have done a lot better with it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.