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.