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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I like the idea of that.

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

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

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

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

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

The End - this time