My hot date

So I went out with Reina yesterday and it was great. She is the first person I've hung out with outside of Nova and my first Japanese friend. At first it seemed like I fucked up severely by making plans with a girl who speaks little English. When I told my friend Rachel that I was taking this girl out her reaction was 'she's a really low level though, yeah?' It hadn't seemed like a problem to me prior to the date and wasn't as bad as you might assume. We met at the TV Tower, right outside this cafe yesterday at 2pm. It was, naturally, awkward for the both of us. She was trying to ask me something about eating and I was trying to tell her to decide. It was bumpy. She was also nervous about her English so speaking very quietly and I was having trouble hearing some of what she said. We went to a Starbucks on her suggestion and just tried talking to each other for an hour or so. She's a student at a university around here somewhere and she's studying International Culture. I don't know exacty what that means but she needs to pick a culture to focus on soon and she's leaning towards Great Britain. I was actually getting frustrated and bored after a little while so I thought if I told her I was going to the Nagoya International Center's library she would either use that as an excuse to leave or come along, and then I could gauge her interest. Taking her with me to get books is incredibly lame, I'm aware, but she walked with me until it became so windy and cold here that we were forced underground. After a minute or two at the library we headed back to the subway and tried to figure out what to do. I don't know the city so I was hoping she could suggest something, but no such luck. We hung out in the Kokusei Center station on the Sakura-dori line for a long-ass time. She called one of her friends for suggestions although I think she just told her friend what was funny and weird about our date and me. I proceeded to text my friends and do the exact same thing. After she suggested a few things that I've already seen and done, I told her I would call her some night, soon, and we'd go to a club or a bar.

I think my biggest blunder was inviting her for coffee in the afternoon. There just isn't anything interesting to do in this city and we both got bored. A bar would have a much better setting. I did learn though that communicating with another person has less to do with language than I thought. I found I could get my points across with examples, gestures, and just a few words in Japanese and English. She's cute and I'll definitely call her but the dating potential of a girl I can't really talk to is pretty low.

I find that my English has gotten worse as a result of being here and my thoughts have been simplified as well. I picked up a copy of the Financial Times yesterday (for 600 yen a copy I won't do it very frequently --- most places that sell the Economist charge about 1400 yen per issue) and for the first time since I arrived I caught myself up with world affairs. I think I may get a subscription to a newspaper soon because I don't like feeling ignorant about what's going on in the world. Reading about what's going on in Japan right now made me realize how ignorant I am of what's going on around me.

Anyway, I'm starving so I'll talk to you all later.

A date and violently throwing up out the window of a cab

I went out to Red Rock last night to celebrate, yet again, the arrival of this Canadian girl named Andrea. It was ok but no one really came out for it. Which makes sense since we've already done something for this girl. Anyway, I got completely wasted and can no longer remember most of what happened. Red Rock was fun and I spent most of the time talking to these Australian guys from Adelaide who just arrived in Japan to teach at Nova. I began finding any excuse to talk to people and met this cool girl from... the States maybe. She gave me her email address but when I tried to text her today it didn't work. Either she was too drunk to enter it correctly into my phone or she gave me a fake one. I can't decide because it seemed like it was going well. Anyway, yeah, so she gave me a fake number. I'm cool with it.

Went to Joy Joy after the all-you-can-drink thing dried up. Joy Joy is a chain of karaoke bars and I can't remember any of it. The real lure of karaoke is that you almost always get all-you-can-drink with the deal but they serve you crap that you would start a lawnmower with. So I don't remember if I started to lose track of what was happening right when I showed up or after I started drinking there. My guess is that I had a drink and then everything started to go wrong. I spent most of the time there in the bathroom (but I don't think I threw up then, I just hovered in case something happened). During the cab ride home is when I started to embarass myself by just rolling the window down and throwing up on the highway. I know I covered the tail end of the cab with vomit but none got inside, so I think I should be given some credit. I was riding with these three girls that work at different branches of Nova and since I'm not interested in any of them I don't feel bad about subjecting them to that. But yeah, I threw up over and over again out the window. I dropped my jacket off today at a dry cleaning place just to be safe (and I haven't cleaned it since I bought it) and it was 1500 yen. Is that cheap or expensive? About 15 bucks for dry-cleaning? All of my dry cleaning stuff just stays dirty so I have no way to gauge that.

I'm meeting Reina... right now actually. I had a friend send me some digital photos from St. Patrick's Day, so I'm including a shot of her to this post. Let me know if she's cute. She's the one in the middle and please ignore how disgusting I look.

A gorgeous monday in Nagoya

Its so frickin' nice here right now. Its 53 degrees out but theres a predicted high today of 64. I'm walking around in a t-shirt.

I'm meeting Reina this Thursday for coffee and if this weather persists I'm gonna take a day trip to Gifu on Friday. This is the perfect time of the year to visit Japan if anyone is interested. The cherry blossoms are beginning to bloom and very soon the spring festivals will be starting. The sumo season just started and its not yet depressingly hot and humid. Just throwing it out there. I got the room if anyone can make the trip.

I had a lesson yesterday with three older guys and it was the biggest group I've ever had where we just threw the lesson away. Technically I think I can get into trouble for that since its forbidden unless the student booked a man-to-man lesson (the student has to pay for four lessons to buy out the other potential student's space). As long as no one complains to the Japanese staff you're ok, but you should really make sure everyone in the group wants to talk. Just one complaint could get you into a lot of trouble. Anyway, so these three guys were really smart and they were all research chemists and crap like that (I think they were level 4). We talked about Chinese history and karate and then I fielded some questions about why there are so many big cities in the northeast of the US. The answer I came up with had to do with colonization, manufacturing, and the hostility of the interior during settlement. I think it was pretty good but I had to think for a minute to answer it. It put me in such a good mood that I didn't mind having a functional illiterate in my next lesson.

So the students who come to Nova are given an assessment test on their first day and then placed in an appropriate learning tier. It starts at 7A which is for someone who can't do anything and the lessons consist of getting the students to say yes or no to questions like 'do you like pizza?' It was ok when I started because I liked the variety but it got old quickly. Now those lessons are the hardest because no one talks and you get bored with the material. The levels progress from there to 7B, 7C, 6, 5, and 4. There are higher levels but not at our branch. Any student we have that reaches a level 3 we send to the larger branches. So the typical level 4 has probably traveled a bit, can form a varity of sentence structures, and can answer why to a lot of your questions.

Asking a Japanese person 'why' however is something that a lot of them seem to hate. I find a lot of my students have very strong opinions but can't explain why the fuck they like/hate different things. A bullshit answer some will come up with is: 'I don't know how to explain in English.' For higher levels this is just a cop out. So when I ask people what books they read, what movies they like, or what kind of food they like, I can expect Japanese books, movies, or food as an answer.

Sensei Benn: 'Do you read?'
Loyal citizen: 'Oh yeah, I love to read books.'
Sensei Benn: 'What kind of books?'
Loyal citizen: 'Japanese books.'
Sensei Benn: 'Do you like western books?'
Loyal Citizen: 'No, not really.'
Sensei Benn: 'Why?'
Loyal citizen: '...'

I have this one guy named Keigo that thinks Japanese media dominates American and British media but has no idea why he thinks thats true. When I watch the news in Japan you almost never hear about world affairs and when you do its always some irrelevant shit that I would never care about. He acknowledged that the responsibility of the media is to provide us with unbiased information so that we can form our own opinions about the world, but couldn't back up why he thought Japan did a better job than the west in that respect. That might be a hard question to answer, but when Japan wins one measley gold medal at the Olympics for figure skating and I'm STILL watching clips of her performance someone is banging a drum.

Also, I can't catch the dialogue on TV, but I hear the word 'America' a LOT. I can't even imagine what they're talking about since it will come up in the most random situatios. I don't know if anyone back home is following the World Baseball Championship but Japan won this year. I was watching highlights of the game against Cuba and I heard 'America' more than I did 'Cuba.' What the hell are they talking about?

Lastly, a 24 hour grocery store just opened up in Kyowa. The old supermarket had hours of 10am to 8pm so this is significant for me. Its cheaper, about twice as big, but more than twice as far away from my apartment.

A new grocery store in my town is about all the excitement I can handle right now.

Nagoyako finally

So I was out last night at Shooters and at around 12:45am I realized that I had missed the last train back to Kyowa. The people I was drinking with had thinned out (they didn't forget when their last trains left) and the people who remained in the bar were people that I was sick of talking to. So I just left the bar without saying goodbye to anyone and wandered around the city for an hour. I only know one place in Nagoya that I can find someone to crash with so I was wandering aimlessley but in that general direction. I sent text messages back and forth with Daniela which was awesome and made the walk fun. I bought some sushi from a convenience store and ate it with my fingers while saying hello to everyone who walked past me. Actually, on several occassions I said konnichiwa, which is good afternoon, and then corrected myself after they were 10 steps past me. I must have looked absolutely ridiculous and slightly threatening to the little Japanese people that I met. I left my sushi plate in some conspicuous place so someone else could throw it away and bought some cookies. I ate them greedily and took a picture of some yellow flowers with my cell phone. I tried to talk to a few people I think but gave up when I realized that being drunk doesn't make it any easier to speak a language that you don't understand.

I got to Free Bell at 1:30ish and right as I entered the building my cell phone died. So I was forced to guess at the apartment number of my co-worker Mike, and just bang on his door. No one answered and I was convinced that I had the wrong number anyway, so I went back downstairs into the street. I took a minute to piss in an alley and concentrate. This was something I could solve. It hit me: just walk home. How many stops is it to Kyowa, only like 8 or so, right? I started to walk full of determination and then realized it would be like walking from downtown Boston to Waltham. Ok. I can't do that. Back upstairs and make a lot of noise became the plan. I went back to the door that I thought was Mike's and really laid into it. If a pissed off Japanese person opens the door I'm gonna say 'gomen nasai' (which is I'm sorry) and if they aren't satisfied with that I'm gonna jump at them and scare the shit of them. So I'm banging like crazy and a suprisingly awake Mike opens the door. Success. I crashed there until I couldn't take it anymore and left at around 7am. He only had a little loveseat thing and my neck and knees were killing me. He gave me a pillow but I slept under my own coat and it was freezing in his apartment. I had a weird experience when I left though. It must have been thanks to how I was sleeping but when I got out into the street one of my legs went numb and I couldn't walk on it. I had to stop and act like I was just deep in thought while I waited for me leg to start working again. It was less than a minute, but I got worried pretty quickly that I lost my ability to walk to the train station. I don't even know how I would solve a problem like that. It works now though, so no problem.

I got home and haven't slept since then. Today while on the train back from the Nagoya Aquarium I fell asleep on the train. Every Japanese person does this, as none of them ever sleep, but it was very unsatisfying. I can't wait to get home, maybe have a cup of tea and some rice and fall asleep reading. Oh man that sounds so fucking good right now.

The Nagoya Aquarium kicks the Boston Aquarium's ass. A Japanese woman told me that the aquarium in Sydney harbor stomps a mudhole in the Nagoya one though. There's two separate buildings to walk through and there are multiple tanks that more than triple the size of Boston's biggest one. They have a bunch of dolphins, an orca, manatees, a shitload of turtles, a bunch of penguins (the Nagoya penguins don't get as much space as the Boston ones and I don't think there's as many but the presentation is maybe a little nicer) and whatever else swims in the sea. More than an hour and a half though and any aquarium is boring. I felt a little ripped off in the information department though. They could use a little more eigo (english) in that dump. Maybe 20% of the shit you see is translated and that's being generous. So while I didn't learn a thing it was fun.

I was reading my earlier posts and found them very uninformative. I don't really get any kind of a picture in my mind when I read my own writing so I'm gonna try to fix that. I don't think just making these posts really long is going to solve that problem, but more information would help as far as I'm concerned. I'll try to be better with the details I guess. I'll write everything I can remember and then let you guys decide if its worth reading or not.

Or something like that.

Boobs!

Ignore that last post

I just reread my post from yesterday and its beyond crap. I think I was just repeating what I've already said elsewhere anyway. It's hard to remember what I've written in the past since I never look back at any of it. Since I just write this stream of consciousness there's a lot of redundancy too. Sorry about that.

A new NOVA teacher just arrived from some god-forsaken part of Ontario so we all went out to Shooters last night. She seems ok but she has this really high level of optimism that I find annoying. I asked her about her plans in Japan and why she came and shit like that, and I could tell she just loved the sound of her answers. So while I think she's ok, what I really mean is that she'll be ok and I'll avoid talking to her or seeing her outside of the bars we all go to.

I ran my 'degrees of McDonalds' idea by some co-workers who shit all over it. Now that I think about it it is a pretty incorrect thing to say. This job isn't like McDonalds but it is annoying in some regards. I feel like an entertainer and not a teacher. I talked with an Australian guy that I really like (I've heard mixed reviews from other people on this guy) last night and he said he taught at an actual school for a little while and likes this better. I said that I didn't think we actually teach anyone anything and he said that he gets more of a response now than he did with grammar rules and all of that crap. To him that other stuff seems like pointless memorization and this is the way to go. HOWEVER, a Japanese guy I met at the bar last night lived in the US for 2 or 3 years and used to go to NOVA. He doesn't have a good impression of it and that supports my case.

The Australian guy (and this may be why some people don't like him) told me that every Sagittarius he's met, me included, have 'scheming' eyes. He's maybe a little bit more honest than some people want in a friend and he often buts into conversations to correct people. I like it because its a unique personality here. Anyway, I take his 'scheming' eyes statement as a compliment. No one has ever called me scheming but I think to be scheming you first need to be clever. So I appreciate that he thinks I'm clever enough to be capable of scheming, but I don't know what about my eyes gives him that impression. He tried to clarify later and said that I look like I'm constantly looking to get into trouble. Again, I don't know what causes this.

I'M HERE WITHOUT YOU BABY!!!!

This is going to be my most introspective post so far.

So I cant really decide where my heads at right now. I'd say the highlight of my day is reading emails from you guys. After talking to Daniela I'm not under the impression that makes my trip to Japan a failure. She made it sound like its just natural to enjoy these so much.

Side note: I hate the Black Eyed Peas. 'My humps' is probably the worst piece of shit to hit the radio since... well, ever maybe. The beat is terrible. It sounds like a generic knock-off of a Pharrell track: a stripped-down beat, no real music to speak of, and annoying popping. I can't figure out why someone would describe a woman's curves as 'humps.' Thats a hideous word and ruins the picture for me. It always calls to my mind camels, not sex. Terrible. Finally, the song, like most crap on the radio can't have more than 28 different words in the whole fucking thing. Ugh. Someone must be paying out the ass to keep that piece of shit in heavy rotation.

Anyway.

So there's this lonely feeling from being separated from my friends and family that's compounded by how alienated I feel from the rest of Japanese society. I can only really interact with Japanese people at work, where I'm the entertainer, or in the real world, where I have to be the entertainer to compensate for my lack of Japanese. I find that when I can't say what I want to say I just gesture wildly and laugh a lot. I feel like an idiot but when you're funny people tend to be more patient.

And on the other hand I'm enjoying that same loneliness. In Boston I hated eating alone and I always had these paranoid feelings when I did so. I thought I looked like a depressing loser to others which made me feel terrible. Here though, its not so weird to eat lunch alone because I'm a foreigner and that gives me a quiet dignity... sometimes... I feel more like a backpacker (the height of independent cool in my opinion) than a gaijin working a job for which I'm overqualified (After all I work in the services industry so how far off from a McDonald's worker am I?). To be able to live in Japan without knowing the language or anyone makes me either very dumb or very independent and strong. I'd like to think its the latter and convincing myself that this is true makes me very confident in everything that I do.

Hmmmm... I just reread what I wrote and I can't tell if I'm getting my meaning across. I mean, what I wrote is intelligible, but to really accurately explain how I'm doing is hard. Something might happen in the next 24 hours that makes me throw out everything I just said. Maybe I should just stick to anecdotes and leave the analysis to someone else.

I ALMOST FORGOT!

Maybe those of you who aren't luddites won't be impressed by this, but I figured out how you can text my cell phone! My phone's email address is bennegan@c.vodafone.ne.jp. It's easy on my Vodafone to enter email addresses but I don't know how it works for Verizon or whatever you're using. In summary, if you want to send me short messages, naked pictures, or whatever, send them to that address and I can get them at work.

Infrequent Posting

Its been 5 days since my last post and that may become the norm. I'm back in Sakae this afternoon, getting library books, buying a candle if I can find one, and maybe picking up some postage so I can finally send some more postcards. I just ate at an Indian restaurant around the corner and forgot to use their bathroom, so now I'm trying to hide the fact that I have to piss like a racehorse. I can't think of a fucking thing to write so I'm gonna go check out my email and try to come up with something.

Wisdom of the Irish

My dad has been sending me Irish toasts and sayings and I particularly like this one which I had never heard before:


May those who love us, love us

And for those who don't love us

May God turn their hearts

And if he cannot turn their hearts

May he turn their ankles

So we may know them by their limping.

May you live as long as you want

And never want as long as you live.

Day after St. Patty's Day

For whatever reason when I came here yesterday and tried to update my blog I received javascript errors. I just checked and I can see the failed post in its entirety so I'm just reposting it now. It looks like it worked...

Today I called in sick for the first time. Calling in sick is pretty slick because you don't need to call the branch you work at and feel guilty about anything. You call Osaka and they alert your branch. Apparently they write down what you say though and record it somewhere. One girl who called in (I'm told) laughed when she told them she had diarrhea. She laughed because it was embarassing (and she might have been lying too) but they thought she was just flaunting the fact that she was lying so that went on her record.

We drank all of the Guinness that Brian bought and did a few Irish Car Bombs. The night was spent at a British pub (it must have been worse for the pub to be celebrating the national holiday of a country that frequently murders its citizens, than for us to be celebrating in the establishment of the enemy), the Elephant's Nest, which is indistinguishable in character from the American and the Australian bars in my opinion. I spent the night talking to these Japanese people and ignored my Nova coworkers for the most part. My Japanese is getting better but I can only make the most basic sentences and sentence fragments. I tried to compensate for my lack of conversation by drawing the USA on a bar napkin and then writing all the Kanji I know. I got this girl named Reina's number ("denwa bangoo wa nan desu ka?")and left the bar with her, but immediately lost her. We went to some restaurant and her and her friend went elsewhere. We hopped into a cab afterwards and went to Freebell for the night. She sent me a text asking where I left to. Oops. I sent her a text this morning but we didn't get together. I am completely indifferent.

I don't have anything else to report. I have work tomorrow and I'm planning a trip for next weekend to Kobe, Kyoto, Gifu, or something. I'll let you all know and if I leave the area I'll bring my camera. I forgot to bring it to the pub, sorry.

More updates

Happy St. Patricks Day! You won't be able to wish that back to me for another 1 and a half hours, but whatever. Im in Sakae at the Yahoo cafe again. I woke up last night with a slight phlegm problem. I guess I caught my first Japanese cold. It MIGHT have something to do with all the fucking kids I have that like to sneeze and wipe their snot on their hands and cough in my face. No joke, I was sitting in a circle with some kids yesterday and a girl sneezed right in my fucking face. She waited until I looked up, stared me right in the eyes, and sneezed. A nice thick sneeze that must have coated my whole face and later worked its way to the back of my throat and nose. So that puts me in a bind for St. Patty's day but I think I can cancel out the negative effects of alcohol with prayer, so I should be ok. But what else could be more appropriate than prayer for the most hallowed of holidays.

I was gonna title this post 'You don't get to drink like this on Rosh Hashanah' but then I remembered that you do get to drink copious amounts for Passover, so I guess its a draw. Daniela gave me one of the best holiday cards I've ever seen, it was a Menorah and a Christmas Tree with light sabers fighting to the death.

I've been disseminating some very false information over the past few weeks (years even). I only recently decided to do my research and see how accurate I am. The biggest crock of shit that I've said recently was that Thanksgiving has its roots in the Crusades. Completely false. I got this information from a Ras Kass song (which should have been my first warning) titled 'The Nature of the Threat.' The second thing that I said recently was that the four-leaf clover was considered lucky in Ireland because it looks like the crucifix. I have no idea if this is true or not and I'm not about to look it up. I'm just going to assume I'm wrong but keep telling my Japanese students its true.

Ahhhhh... I guess that's it. I'm going to check my gmail now and you bitches better have written to me.

dont think less of me... BUT

so i found a website (i think it was part of that whole about.com universe) that had personal ads listed for the nagoya area. i just contacted a bunch of people about emailing or finding something to do in the city. i know it might seem lame and needy in the traditional sense, but, well..., yeah i guess thats true. i really want to make some japanese friends and branch out a little bit though. learning japanese is near the top of my list of things to do (fill out my taxes and get my fucking money back from verizon are numbers 1 and 2). so teaching a japanese person english in exchange for some japanese and friendship seems like a fair trade to me. after all, this is what all the students at nova are looking for, but someone tricked them into paying for it.

ill let everyone know how my search goes...

i may keep this hidden, but...

i just got an email from my friend paul whos stuck out in the boonies. sweet tap-dancing christ, he has a blog!

paul's msn space

i dont have a bad thing to say about the guy, but i think ill keep this blog from him. since i plan on badmouthing a lot of people id prefer to keep it hidden from everyone in japan. i cant remember what ive said so far that would be offensive, but im sure theres something. i wonder what would happen if someone found this blog. its not so unlikely either. if one of my coworkers has an account on friendster, they could easily look me up and get this site. i might take a minute to review what ive written. i dont plan on changing anything, but i want to be able to lie convincingly if it comes up.

popular demand

so i was talking to daniela and she said that pictures of my coworkers with labels would help. so here they are. i felt guilty about posting the pictures and names of my coworkers so i included myself for good measure. if someone stalks and kills one of us, i suppose its only right that i have an equal chance of being that lucky someone. i dont have a picture of my roommate brian yet, or my coworkers marille and mark. these are all the people ive been hanging out with whose names i can remember. ive met some other cool people but it was only once or twice and they arent regular fixtures as far as i can tell.

more stuff

so i went to chibiko training on monday. chibiko is something that i hope i'll never need to do, but will within a month or two. chibiko is just the name given to kids aged 2 to 4. their parents are in the room while the lesson is going on, so they handle all of the discipline stuff. but in a chibiko class, you play a CD and just let it run for the 40 minutes you're there. its mostly singing and dancing around type of shit, but what makes me nervous is the CD. everything is perfectly timed out and all you have to do is not deviate from the lesson. people have said its a lot of fun, but it sounds boring and lame to me. i always fuck with the lesson plans now and it makes everything more fun.

after chibi training i went to some bars with paul, a guy i met at my first day of training here. hes from london and probably the best wingman material ive seen so far. hes a solid guy. so we went to some izakayas (japanese style bars) and had a few. we bought a bottle of sake and i got some tempura at this one place. it was dead, but there were three cute waitresses working and clearly interested in meeting some white meat. so i used all of the japanese i know to keep the conversation going (they didnt speak any english) and it would have been going great if they werent working. they'd vanish for long periods of time before walking through the bar area again to strike up conversation. it was fun but we left to catch the 9pm train (the last one home from toyohashi). paul and i bought some beers for the ride home and i wrote in my journal while i nursed it. the fact that you can drink beer in public and even on trains is quite awesome. while it may be frowned upon by some of society, that part of society doesnt hang out with me and i can get away with anything anyway.

im working 8 hours of overtime tomorrow, thursday, so i wont get a chance to update this blog again until at least friday. as friday is blessed st. patrick's day, i might not make it all the way downtown to post or write email. brian and i have stocked up on guinness and whiskey so its gonna be a day spent drinking early and staying out late. im gonna bring my camera and then let you all know how they celebrate the holiest of holidays in japan.

steal this japanese kid

ok, so kids classes scared the bejebus out of me before i had a few. now that im a veteran, i have to say kids classes rock. they rock hard. especially kinders - 4 to 6 year olds to the layman. the first or second kid i had was ryusei, who is surprisingly smart and so he gets bored in no time. i still havent figured out how to keep him interested but now when he decides to do something else, i roll with it. he wanted to bend all the cards i had in half and then throw them on the floor. cool man. i dig it. then we went over to the window and watched pedestrians and he taught me some japanese swears.

i have this adorable little girl named hinata with no teeth in her damned head. she easily gets into the top 5 cutest kids ive ever seen. she doesnt like the games that nova suggests so she just makes up her own and they rarely have a point. she had me close my eyes while she hid blue poker chips under eight flash cards. i then had to find the chips by flipping over the cards. sounds like a pretty straight forward game, but she put a chip under every card so i couldnt lose. also, instead of keeping score, she took the chips back and put them in her pocket. today i had her again, and we were coloring pictures of giraffes. i really got into it and then she got into it too. we must have spent 10 minutes coloring and i was just asking her for relationship advice like she was fluent. she would look up and smile whenever i paused, so i would just continue: 'yeah, so the problem is that i dont speak any japanese so im really shy around the girls here. i bought a book the other day and im learning mad fast, so i should rub my face in it soon enough.' i sing random songs and sometimes the kids catch on. today hinata recognized the wedding march so we just sang that together until the bell rang. kids rock.

the group lessons are much more challenging. with eight kids at once the problem becomes keeping the one kid who doesnt want to be there from dragging everyone down with him. today it was akira. these guys are always like cancer in the class: their bad attitude spreads to every other student as they eventually get bored and want to punch others in the crotch. im not opposed to crotch punching but a lot of the time someones parent is right outside and keeping an eye on things. a girl named midori in my class is either the class suck up or has a crush on me, because she helped me keep all of the boys from running around and yelling shit in japanese. shes nice to have around but if it is a crush it creeps me out a little bit.

there was a kid who used to work at our branch named marc. so, to set this story up you need to know we have something called a 'kids log book.' whenever anyone cries, gets hurt, or misbehaves, we're supposed to write it down. so this kid marc used to write ridiculous shit in it. while hillarious to read, it was pretty dumb of him to provide a written confession of what he does in class. some entries were like: 'today haruki punched another student in the crotch when he wasnt looking. i tried, unsuccessfully, to hide from the students how funny i found this. another student ran into the wall and his nose started to bleed. it bled on his book and all over the carpet. no action taken.' when someone got wise to what was going on, he was sent to the toyohashi branch to get disciplined. my boss, cathryn, was really lame about it too. she lied to him about why he was going to toyohashi. he only found out what was going on when once he got there.

anyway, so the kids are awesome and as long as you dont get caught you can basically just fuck around with them and play games. and if anyone back home wants a japanese kid, they're running around practically unsupervised over here. it would be so easy to pop one in a box and first class it back to you guys. just let me know.

I hate Verizon

I signed up with Verizon for a two-year plan and cancelled early because they don't provide service in Japan. If you can prove that you're leaving the country then they waive the $175 cancellation fee. I got charged $158 on January 23, and through persistent calling got someone at Verizon to assure me that I would see a credit of $175 on my next statement. Awesome. Oh wait, no, that's not awesome because it never happened. I just looked at my Citizens account and not only have I not yet received my $175 back, but there's a new charge as of February 22 for $63.74. It would be impossible to convey in a blog how angry I am. I imagine someone who catches crabs from their girlfriend would be at a comparable level of rage. I just wrote two emails through their website that are probably directly routed to someone's trash bin. The problem is that it's so easy for them to take money out of my account (apparently they don't even need to let me know they're doing it) and its so hard for me to get it back. All I can do is ask very politely that they give me money back and all they have to do is say no, and take the rest of it. I will never again sign up for automatic deductions for anything. That has got to be one of the dumbest things a human being can do with their money. I wouldn't let some motherfucker on the street hold my wallet, so why would I let a huge corporation have access to it? It doesn't make any fucking sense. Corporate America, I want to give your girlfriend crabs.

Paycheck, one last time

Ok, so I finally talked to someone who works the same hours that I do and has Nova housing. I heard from Marielle that I can expect 160,000 Yen per month after rent and whatever else Nova takes out of it. I'm cool with this number. So, that's less than 1600 bucks, but that only needs to cover my food, drugs, and raunchy sex club habit. That 160,000 however, is only going to be 120,000 for my first three months. I took a cash advance of 120,000 when I got here, and they take it back over three months. However, my Economics degree tells me that to get 120,000 Yen three months early and without paying any interest back leaves me with all the time value of money. This may or may not wind up being a roll of toilet paper. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Lunch out and Shooters

I just uploaded all of my pictures from Shooters. I went there a week ago with my co-workers and afterwards we went to Karaoke. I think I've already mentioned all of this, so enough said.

I heard back from Daniela, Starr, and my dad that the postcards went through alright. I sent them a little while after Valentine's Day, so I guess it takes three weeks for something I send to reach you guys. I got a postcard from my mom in Paris which was cool. That makes her the first person to send me something. Thanks by the way, mom.

I am completely ignorant of what's going on back home. I only come to this internet cafe once or twice a week, so I don't waste my time reading the Globe. If there's anything I should know about, don't hesitate.

I had one of those days at work where you question if you're terrible at your job or not. Before each session, we check this little board that tells us what room we're in and how many students are going to be there, etc; So the other day I walked into the wrong room and my co-worker Mark had to stand at the door and wait for me to realize that I had fucked up and leave. I brought the wrong student's folder into class with me but I was lucky and she hadn't done the lesson recently. I had a full kid's class and I let them all out about 4 minutes early. In the kid's room its hard to hear the bell, so when they all lined up with their backpacks at the door, I just assumed they were right and let them go. That's a pretty serious fuck-up I think. Then in my last class of the day I had two girls who just didn't understand a THING I said and it was mildly frustrating. I mean its usually them and not me, but if they go downstairs and complain to the Japanese staff that I was talking too fast or something, then I'm just guilty and that's all there is to it.

I'm caught between not giving a shit what happens at work and wanting to be good at my job. I mean, when it comes down to it, I don't imagine this is going to amount to anything on my resume. The only thing I'll be left with in a year is a letter of recommendation but I'm convinced that those are about as helpful as Hepatitis C. So why not just give up and do a job just good enough to not get fired (see Office Space)? I guess I'll try to get better at this because I feel bad for the students. We're a conversational school, which means we only talk to them and don't actually teach them anything. We don't review grammar rules or anything. If we do anything useful its vocabulary building, but even that would be better accomplished at home with a dictionary. I feel like these people really want to learn English and the company only has to create the illusion that they're learning. If any of these students (and I'm talking about the upper level ones) went to Boston they wouldn't be able to decipher a single word spoken to them. No one in the northeast talks as slowly as I do here, and no one uses such simple sentence structures with such easily understood words. They're not any better off than someone like me, here in Japan. So that's why I'll try to improve what I'm doing and not make so many dumb mistakes. The company can eat a dick though. It's comforting to know that if I get into serious trouble here, I can always jump ship and land another job with one of their competitors. There's a lot of money to be made teaching English here and these companies are habitually short-handed. That makes me marketable and being marketable means I don't have to deal with anyone's shit if I don't feel like it. Which is nice.

Temmusu, age, to konyaku

So I've been taking in the culture. I've been grilling the housewife students I have on what they cook at home. I got this recipe of sorts from these two women and made it tonight. San Go (San is the number 3 and a Go is a unit of measurement larger than a cup) of rice, equal parts water, two tablespoons of sake and shooyu (soy sauce), diced up konyaku and age, Japanese mushrooms, and diced chicken. All of it thrown into my rice cooker while I read a book. So about an hour later I pull this slop out and its not half bad. Most of the cooking I've done at home turns out quite bland and this was no exception. I discovered this dark brown sauce with sesame seeds in it at the grocery store (no idea what's in it or how to find out) and it makes everything tasty. So I added some of that and it was awesome. I couldn't even begin to tell you what konyaku is (other than describing it as fish gelatin) and age is some sort of fried bread (maybe). I'm quite pleased with my cooking ability and willingness to eat anything placed in front of me. I haven't tried any fish eyeballs, squid, or things so bizarre even the Japanese won't eat them. I bought natto, and apparently the Japanese are 50/50 on it. I've been told it absolutely stinks when you open it up, but it tastes pretty good and consists mostly of beans. So I bought some and I'll dig in tomorrow. I will say that the Japanese ingredients are hella cheap. I spent less than a dollar a piece for a bag of Japanese mushrooms, block of tofu, stick of Konyaku, and 5 rolls of age. I'm eating cheaper here than I did in the States. As long as I don't go blind, I'll be great.

Oh, and apparently you can look at porn on the train and no one even bats an eye. I was riding the train with Erin to work one morning and some Japanese guy in a suit next to us was looking at anime porn stuff. I laughed and pointed it out to her, who explained that its not weird at all. I said, oh, well, its only animated porn, so I guess that's not weird, right? Immediately after I said that he opened up another magazine with actual porn in it. Playboy photo-spread style. It was a packed train too. So I guess that's one point for Japan.

My paycheck revisited and something more interesting

So I asked a couple of the teachers I was hanging out with last night how much we make. Since everyone here seems to be on a different plan the only person who could tell me anything was Mike from Florida. I said a couple of days ago that I took 120,000 Yen home after everything essential was taken out. I may have been way off. Mike seems to think I'm way off. He puts that number over 200,000 Yen, which seems too high to me, but since I don't know anything, I really can't say. After rent and everything else is taken out of my paycheck I make between 120,000 and 220,000 Yen/month. That's as close as I can get before I get a paycheck.

Last night we went to Shooters, an American bar in Sakae. I'm going to add a map of Nagoya to this site when I figure out a classy way to do it. I like the addition of the counter (on my slowest day since I started keeping track, I had eight unique visitors and I had 14 yesterday) but I also want to add a clock or something with the local time. So, yeah, Shooters. American bar but not very American. The staff was mostly Australian and there was soccer on the TVs. What American bar has soccer on? Plus it was made up of the same motley crew that you see everywhere else and that means very few Americans. I took a bunch of pictures with my camera (thanks again dad) but this internet cafe doesn't have USB ports I can use, so you'll have to wait until I get back to Kyowa to see them. Thursday night at Shooters is 'teachers' night,' where its all-you-can-drink for 1,680 yen. I can't remember which night it was at Red Rock, but the　all-you-can-drink deal is 1,700 Yen so I guess its a pretty standard deal. You could get bottled Kirin or one of about 30 or so mixed drinks. Seemed pretty cool to me but everyone I was with knocked it. It was nice to go out and get destroyed for a change. I still want my privacy and solitude but there needs to be a balance. We sat around, drank, and then went to a Karaoke bar after midnight. Another Nova teacher who lives in Kyowa with me,　Amber, invited these two guys to tag along. I assumed they were American since they looked kind of thugged-out. One guy had corn rows and his friend had on a shirt with Biggie's portrait wearing a golden crown. I never spoke to them but found out this morning they both spoke Spanish only.

While Japan is very homogenous, there are some minorities living here. The largest is probably Korean, but not far behind them are Brazilians and Filipinos. So, obviously the Koreans tend to blend a little better than their Brazilian counterparts. Apparently there is a large community of people in Brazil with Japanese ancestors. In the 80s or so, there was a labor shortage in Japan and these emigrants were invited to come back. Japanese-Brazilians are treated like outcasts though. They are mostly blue-collar workers (the reason they were invited to come back) but they don't get the same health benefits and shit as their Japanese counterparts, they changed their Brazilian surnames to more Japanese-sounding ones in order to fit in, but the impression I'm under is that a lot of doors are closed to them. I've only met two Japanese-Brazilians in my classes, and they were probably the coolest two students I've had so far. It sucks for them, but maybe you all would find that interesting.

Next door to the Sakae McDonald's

This is going to be my first of many posts from this internet cafe. Its a free Yahoo Broadband cafe located right next to the McDonald's I ate it last weekend. I don't know why it's free or whatever, but they're playing DJ Clue in the background, its warm (it got chilly here and I'm in my Birkenstocks - rookie mistake), and I get two hours for free. Its much faster than the cafe in Kyowa too. Plus, since there aren't any private booths I know someone didn't jerk off in my seat 20 minutes ago. So I would call this a flawless victory.

I didn't take any pictures of anything, but I did manage to sign up with Vodafone earlier today. I'm going back later to get my activated phone, so I'll be able to give you all my phone number here shortly. I don't pay for incoming calls, so feel free to give me a ring from the US. I signed up for the two-year plan, which knocks 15% off of my bill each month, and got me a free phone. I'll take advantage of that and then stiff them for the cancellation fee. I know it's dishonest but the whole sales situation pissed me off a little bit. I mean, I was going to do it anyway, but now I'm not going to feel so bad.

First of all, they couldn't give me a single document in English to take with me. I don't have a copy of my contract I can read and other than some customer service number they gave me, I have no way of finding out what's going on. While the salesman was nice and tried to speak English as best he could, I think he purposely didn't tell me about certain things until after I signed the fucking contract I couldn't read. So its like 3,350 Yen a month. That includes 2,000 Yen worth of charges, and there's a mad complicated diagram to explain how and when I get charged for things. Oh, and its in Japanese, so that makes it that much clearer. But in addition to that 3,350 which he assured me was how much I was going to pay, there are some extra charges every month. This only came up after I signed the contract. I'm going to pay an additional 600 or 800 Yen a month for unlimited emailing, an additional 300 Yen a month for insurance, and an additional 300 Yen for some other fucking thing. So, why did he tell me it was 3,350 if he knew full fucking well that wasn't the final amount by a long shot? Again, he seemed like a really nice guy so I'm more inclined to blame fucking Vodafone. Assholes. But its ok, since I'm gonna stick them at the end and they won't be able to collect a nickel. Or a sen, or whatever the hell they use here.

Ugh. Hot in Herre by Nelly. EVERYTHING IS GOING TO SHIT!

I signed up at the International Center and took out three books (the max at one time). When I asked about late fees, the woman at the desk led me to believe that they don't charge late fees. I never know if I understand what's being said because the English spoken here is broken at best and always unclear.

Before I go and check my email I'll let you know another way to rip off the Japanese. Monthly train passes are only good for certain destinations. For example, my pass is good for all of the stations between Kyowa and Handa. I still pay the regular 320 Yen to go to Nagoya station. When you ride the trains here, you buy a ticket from a vending machine and you pay for how many stops you plan on going. So, insert 200 Yen and then go through the turnstiles with your ticket. If you travel further than 200 Yen will let you, when you try to leave the station it rejects your pass and you need to pay the difference. It works just like the San Francisco metro for anyone who's used it. So, with my train pass, if I hopped on a train in say, Tokyo, I could pay the smallest amount possible, 140 Yen or whatever, and then when I hit my hometown of Kyowa, I could just slip my train pass in instead and it would look like I came from any of the other stops between Kyowa and Handa. I would need to pay for a one-way ticket to Tokyo (maybe 60 bucks) but it would only cost a dollar for the trip home. So, today I'm going to test this out by only paying for one stop on the way home. The other Nova teachers are the ones who put this idea in my head, so I know it'll work. If I get arrested, I'll have my lawyer update this blog and let you know it didn't work.

My paycheck

To answer Bruce's question: I make around 220,000 Yen a month. I think that's right. My rent is 51,000 Yen a month, and there are some other random things that I think Nova takes out of my paycheck (taxes, health care, etc;). They pay for my travel to and from work, but I think when everything is said and done I have a little bit more than 120,000 Yen to blow through each month. If that's what I'm making right now, I'll get a bump after the end of this month. I'm technically still in my probationary period, which they use as an excuse to pay me less. My paycheck on April 15th should be closer to 240,000 Yen or something like that. To be honest those numbers may be wrong (although close). I'll look into it and let you know. I work a 34 hour week and any overtime I work on my days off is 125% of my regular pay or something like that.

Most of the teachers I know here teach private lessons on the side which I haven't looked into yet. I like all of my free time, but I'll probably do the same thing after I've gotten more accostomed to being here.

Viva la Weekends

So its Thursday, which is my Saturday. My camera's battery is charging right now and I don't want to go into Nagoya without it, so I'll leave in about an hour or so. Its 11:29am here on Thursday, so its 7:29pm on Wednesday in New York, Boston, and Greenfield (where most of my audience happens to be located. I also have a fan in Philadelphia and wherever Jeff happens to be right now). My game plan is to finally buy a cell phone through Vodafone (and not through DoCoMo because their phones are ugly). I'm going to the International Center again (to get a membership so I can take out their English books), three bookstores in the Sakae part of the city (hopefully they have English sections that don't sell cheap Shakespeare paperbacks for more than 12 bucks), Osu Kannon to buy a bookshelf, and while in Sakae I'm going to try to find this internet cafe that gives away 2 hours for free to foreigners with registation cards. I don't know why this internet cafe would do that, but I've gotten reliable information that they do.

The work week was alright. Same ol', same ol'. If I can find this internet cafe, I'll post any pictures I take today and write some emails, so everyone keep your fingers crossed.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. So I had a student in class the other day and we were discussing exaggerations. People here are very modest and this concept is tricky for them. So, one of the expressions was 'I'm so hungry I could eat a horse' and this one older guy didn't get it. The converstaion went something like this:

Surprised American: I'm so hungry I could eat a horse. We say this when we're REALLY hungry.
Horse lover: But in Japan, we eat horse.
Surprised American: No, I mean, to eat the WHOLE horse.
Horse lover: Yes, we eat the whole horse.
Surprised American: No, I don't mean to eat each part of it, I mean to eat the whole horse AT ONE TIME.
Horse lover: OH! No, we don't do that, hahahaha.

Riiight. Because THAT would be ridiculous.