In
for the long haul.
I remember the first night I was in Tokyo, I went to the Lawson near my
pad and bought some cookies or something. A few minutes later, I headed
back down to get something to drink and thought to myself, "Damn, I'd
better get rid of all this useless change before I leave." Then it
struck me: I wasn't going to leave for another 364 days! (so I believed
back at that time)
I read a thing about Kingston Penn (in a book called Bitter Humour)
that said you don't actually realize your situation, until you hear the
gates of your cell slam shut. At that point, you come to understand that
you're fucked royally - then even the most hardened criminals break down
and cry. Sometimes the obvious can be shocking.
FREE-DOM!!
Well fetch my kilt, paint my face and call me William - I'm free. I haven't
actually made it official yet, but I filled out the papers today. I'll
still be working here until after Golden Week in May, but at least I can
start the countdown now.
As much as I complain about this job, it's acutally not bad at all. It's
easy, the pay is decent and 97% of the people I work with/teach are great.
I complained to Wes about Nova one night and he told me that I'd miss
it when it's gone. I believe him, but I'm gonna gloat at work to all the
lifers anyway.
Another
nugget of Nova life from Gakugei-Daigaku.
We were discussing the upcoming cherry blossom festival in Tokyo. For
those of you who have no clue what I am talking about, the cherry trees
bloom once a year for about two weeks. In this time, the grey city softens
to a delicate shade of pink, due to all the cherry trees in the parks
and along the streets. To celebrate, families and friends gather beneath
these trees and get pissed on sake (as is the custom with most celebrations
here).
Upon hearing this, British Girl leaps in and says, "I hate drinking
in the park. It makes me feel like I'm 15 again." As the rest of us
go silent and stare at her in disbelief, she continues her tale, unabashed:
"Since we were too young to get into bars and such, we'd just nick
bottles of wine from our dads and go the the park to drink. We didn't
have cork screws or anything, we'd just push them in with our thumbs,
get sloshed and have a good snog in the bushes."
This later became more alarming when I found out what "snog" meant.
Snarky
Dwarves.
I'm reading the Hobbit now and have found some parts to be quite
amusing. There's this one part with a snarky dwarf that got me (forgive
the copyright infringement):
"...and there was a great feast going on, going on for ever. A woodland king was there with a crown of leaves and there was a merry singing and I could not count or describe the other things that were there to eat and drink."
"You need not try," said Thorin. "In fact, if you can't talk about something else, you had better be silent. We are quite annoyed enough with you as it is. If you hadn't waked up, we should have left you to your idiotic dreams in the forest; you are no joke to carry even after weeks of short commons."
Admittedly, this might be funnier if it was given in context.
Part-time
moron.
I'm listening to Tribe, with bass. For the longest time, I was
suffering with treble-dominated jazz and rap in my room. I thought that
I couldn't get any bass because the Discman I brought over was kind of
old, but now I realize that it was just because I didn't turn the volume
up on the damn player. See, there are volume controls on the speaker set
as well, and those were the only ones I used. No matter how much I cranked
it, I couldn't get the bass up beyond a faint thump. Now, the room bumps
to:
"Back in the days when I was a teen-ager,
Before I had status and before I had a pa-ger.
You could find the Abstract, listening to hip hop,
My pops used to say it reminded him of bee-bop..."
Blessed
drunkeness, sweet dark oblivion.
Caught the last train home again. I didn't much feel like going home straight
after work, so I took to wandering around for a while and eventually settled
down to read and be alone for a bit. After a few hours, I had had my fill
of my own company and headed home. Upon reaching Miyazakidai station,
I saw a lady standing near the taxi pick-up area. She was trying desperately
to hang on to something steady, while the Earth spun mercilessly beneath
her feet.
I let this go for a while (because it's not a good idea to approach strange
women at night), but once she almost went head first into the asphalt,
I went over to her.
"Sumimasen, daijob des ka?" I said. She mumbled something in drunken
Japanese back at me. "Nihongo wa karimasen." I said. Drunken Japanese
again. I helped her to her feet and held her upright until a taxi came.
After I put her into the back of the cab, she rolled down the window,
screamed out at me, "ARIGATO! ARE YOU HAPPY?" and collapsed back
into the seat.
Japan's
cool cuz...
They know how to use gravity to their advantage. Take this toothpaste
for example. Its container is made in such a way that the toothpaste is
always ready to flow out of the tube. You never have to squeeze or roll
it up until it looks like a demented plastic snail.
The tip is also fashioned in such a way that you'll never get all that
dried gunk plugging up the hole. Man, I hate that. This container
is so well-engineered that I could stick on four wheels and a bumper,
and take pole position at the Indy.
Japan's
messed up cuz...
They play English music in all their shops. This in itself is fine, but
the fact that they don't choose the proper music for the situation is
a little eerie. I'll give you an example (and there are many, believe
me). I walked past a little bento place near work and decided to stop
in to grab lunch. As I opened the door, I was greeted by the smell of
freshly cooked fish and rice, AND Rage Against the Machine blasting
on the nice Bose speakers.
You haven't experienced Japan until you see old women picking out avocadoes
to gangsta rap.