1st floor

i knew the new place was on the first floor of the same building as the old one, but which door? the other side of any of these doors concealed elderly salarymen swilling back shochu, or university students getting drunk on cocktails they couldn't afford-- but regardless of the bodies that contained them, it would be the questioning, frozen eyes staring back at me, telling me i don't belong.

unless i got lucky and chose the correct door....

i took a deep breath and pushed the red door. "Snatch" was playing on the TV in its new red niche, with the same sticker instructing all patrons to "Enjoy Yourself." the red bar, red chairs and trimmings with the kelly green Heineken light gave the bar an odd Christmaslike glow. Hacky and Noriko, already 3 sheets to the wind (in Hacky's case it was more like 4 or 5) bade me an enthusiastic hello. Tsugie poured me a beer.

yeah, I'd chosen the right door.

while it's definitely not the same place I'd made panda nesting doll towers, foraged friendships, tuned guitars, passed out, learned lewd Japanese slang, watched bizarre films and sang along to the Pogues so many times before and once had an intense conversation that lasted until sunlight filtered dust through the window--i could definitely get used to this place.

it's nice, having a little pocket of the red-light district of a dirty old town. and it's nice knowing everyone wants that, from San Fran to Bangkok and Aberdeen to Cape Town, Melbourne to Vancouver, and Buffalo to Oita.

quixotica

Donki Hote (i'm pretty sure it's a nihonglified version of Don Quixote as in the Man of la Mancha) is the most ranom store on the planet. you can find porn and fake Gucci bags right alongside the electronics which are next to the toiletries and porn adjacent to the winter hats and halloween costumes in any season in close proximity to the alcohol, snack foods and porn. it's a technicolor dream house of consumerism and no taste, and an unmitigated hell in a hangover.

did i mention they have porn?

but anyway, it's a sad state of affairs when... the "cool" thing to do in Oita on a Friday night is to dress like a tart and prance around inside Donki Hote. or if you're a guy, to hang out by the bike racks with cheap scooters while (actually not) watching the tartily dressed girls walk in and out of the store.

i need to start drinking on Friday nights again. preferably not in the Donki Hote parking lot.

20% fault

the saga of my car accident continues. today i went to the police station to finalize everything, and the same officer pretty much said the same shit to me that he did a week ago. including this little gem: roughly translated, it's along the lines of "you have to take care at intersections and slow down, and you shouldn't have assumed that the other driver was going to stop at the stop sign."

assume that someone would stop at a stop sign? how utterly daft of me! imagine that!

i mean we got a DOG!

this morning i woke up to some rustling outside my screen door. i ignored it for a while until it got really annoying and disconcerting. i looked outside and… there was a poodle with a little doggy jacket on sniffing around on my porch, eating my spearmint plant.

now, this wouldn’t seem so odd except… i live on the 5th floor of a (theoretically) no-pets-allowed apartment building.

turns out my neighbor’s girlfriend was over visiting last night, and brought her little dog. unfortunately, there are very few Japanese books that include the phrases “Excuse me, do you have a dog? he’s on my veranda eating my plants. please remove him. no, i won’t tell the landlord, but if the dog scratches up my screen you’re paying for it.”

so i’m totally getting a cat. yeah.

understanding in a car crash

pardon the uber-emo title.

but as you may have guessed, yes. i got in a car crash. luckily i'm alright apart from some minor whiplash, which i got some neck pain patches for. the doctor for some reason felt the need to tell me not to ship them outside of Japan. heh, don't worry; these are mine, biatch! they're awesome!

i may be learning to find the good things in bad things that happen. after being in the hospital and seeing how insane it is there, i'm willing to cut certain individuals in/out of my life some slack.

i'm alive.

and so is the woman who ran a stop sign this morning, thereby causing a collision which, according to the Beppu city police, was only 20% my fault.

and even more surprisingly, even though i was a bit rattled and near-pukey for about 2 hours afterwards—no panic attacks today.

i feel as though i turned 25 and the universe said “well, i’m afraid you’ve exhausted your lifetime quota for Worrying About Stupid Shit. you have no choice but to be calm and unable to take anything seriously for the rest of your life.”

cool.

CatMan

so last Sunday i was walking out of A-Price when i saw the cutest kitten ever wearing a collar and secured to a shopping cart, apparently waiting for his or her owner to finish shopping. i stopped to pet it and baby talk to it for a while, as onlookers probably were thinking i was nuts.

cut to today, as i was coming out of the train station and i saw the same cat sitting on a middle-aged man's back.... while the man was riding a bicycle. the kitten didn't look completely comfortable with the situation, but still not as freaked out about it as you'd expect.

riding a bike with a kitten on your back. i just love random acts of eccentricity.

saishou wa gu, jankenpon

the Chinese Zen master Joshu said, "a clay Buddha cannot cross water; a bronze Buddha cannot get through a furnace; a wooden Buddha cannot get through fire."

i think this is the underlying principle of jankenpon, a game routinely played in and probably invented in Japan. you might know it as "Rock, Paper, Scissors." the rules are simple. paper beats rock. rock beats scissors. scissors beats paper.

kids janken for who takes the first turn in a game of Go Fish, grown adults janken for the prize at Sushi Meijin on Sunday nights at precisely 8:00 (this is a spectacle i highly recommend). they janken for money; hell, there's even "strip janken" with an elaborate set of rules. if you and someone else are vying for a subway seat (or overly politely offering it to the other), the obvious solution: Janken.

Janken is the settler of disputes, the decider of who is worthy. no argument is too high-stakes or too petty for the gods of the rock, paper and scissors. in fact, i've seriously wondered why Emperor Hirohito didn't just challenge Harry Truman to a game of Janken. humanity could do well to recognize the simple fact that there is no ultimate weapon in the janken game of life, and to think otherwise will only bring about certain destruction.

and even though some smartass might violate that sacred law and come up with a Volcano, or nuclear bomb, or even the middle finger, everyone knows that there is no almighty win-all. all you have is your hand muscles, your gut instincts and the endless cycle of jankenpon. it's the ultimate equalizer.

50 Word Fiction: Volume 1

lightning strikes in the distance, a consolation prize to the promised typhoon. a poor substitute for the electricity that never came. weathermen are never right. what a bogus science, or perhaps modern alchemy? i'll go outside with a lightning rod and bring the storm to me. Thor incarnate, I am.

congruence?

not that it really matters whether my job matches what i studied or anything, but i do get shit about it sometimes. a lot of people wonder why i'm teaching English if i have an environmental degree. i've always had the freaky feeling that, in my major, you either live a life of poverty handcuffed to a redwood or you become a pointy-headed academic who hides in a library all day. my route was going to be the pointy-headed one.

and it could be still. but what i got into, what really struck a chord with me, was what i learned about how environmental problems are just a product of greater social ills and the System. cut to Thursday night, at a class dinnner with my Toshiba students. they all told me how much they like my class and how much fun they have there. i know how stressed out they are, and how hard they work. it made me think, "wow.... i'm giving these people refuge." it's not just some distractor from what i studied; it has EVERYTHING to do with what i studied. maybe this really is something i can do with my life.

awesome.

summer holidays and christmas cake routine

i hate the summer. at least in Japan, i do. it's a weird thing to say for someone who comes from a place that's covered with snow for 5 months out of the year. but in Kyushu it's as if the life force drains out of me along with the sweat, and any cleansing cold showers i take are useless, as the grit and dirt of melancholy stick to my body and refuse to evapourate into the sticky mass of the air, because it can't take any more.

i will be 25 in less than 2 months. i promised myself i wouldn't get depressed about it; in fact the thought hadn't even occurred to me until now. but 25. i should be ... you know, established or something. established as what, that's a damn good question that i don't even begin to know the answer to. yeah, i'm an english teacher and i'm employed and don't even live in the same country as my parents let alone the same house but.... for some reason it's not enough for anyone. i thought it was enough for me, but maybe i was wrong. maybe i'm not strong enough not to succumb to all that crap. all that buying a house and picking out bridesmaid dresses and getting stock options with your giant fortune 500 company employer the hybrid vehicle to show how responsible you are the cheerful abandonment of the sheer unabashed cheeky cockiness of your university days when you were going to change the fucking world and look good doing it.....

choose life.....

a festival atmosphere

i'd made it as far as the elevator door tonight when i realized how little i wanted to be in the sweatbox that is my apartment. likewise, i didn't want to wander Ekimae street alone, but still i turned around and wandered off into the night.

something about these summer nights -- the air so thick with sea-salty, subtropical moisture it feels like you can grab a sticky handful of it, the faint smell of sulfur exhaled from the mountains, the sound of firecrackers in the distance-- brings me back to my first days in Beppu when i'd wander the streets and sit by the beach by myself. watching the moon glitter off the surface of Beppuwan as the oil slick churned underneath.

tonight, Ekimae-dori was awash with girls in colorful yukata, the breakdancers in front of Tokiwa, crappy reggae covers emanating from the sports bar that i despise (but every foreigner here seems to love), mothers and children attempting to catch fish from plastic kiddie pools, guys screaming solicitations to buy whatever edible item they're selling, and charcoal grill smoke rising up from the stalls on both sides of the street. i walked on the sidewalk instead of going between; thought it would make me less visible. ghostlike.

the isolation. the alienation. feeling invisible and yet painfully aware that everyone must be wondering, "who is this weirdo and why doesn't she have any friends?"feeling like there's no one i can really talk to in any language. knowing that, while i'm acquainted with a ridiculous number of people, i actually have very few friends.

then i'd remember that it was exactly the same way back home. "home." whatever that means.

has my situation really changed all that much in 2 years? i mean, suppose the few people i'm really tight with suddenly ran into visa troubles or started receiving Yakuza death threats or something had to leave the country--i'd be in exactly the same place as before.

there are those here who said they'd take care of me if i were to stay a long time.... but i'm reluctant to count on that. nothing is permanent here.

or maybe i'm just bored in my sweatbox apartment on a Friday night and ruminating.

house plants

my friend left the country today, back to the life that awaits her in Tennessee. she’s not the sort of person i probably would have befriended if not for being foreigners in an absurd country, but i’m very happy that we did.

she had a rather large collection of house plants, most of which she’s entrusted to me.

normally this time of year is when i start mourning the people i’m losing. but you know what, life's too short for that. i am sad to lose her, but grateful for our brief friendship. and for the greenery and fresh oxygen in my apartment.

pervy kids make my job amusingly worthwhile......

for some reason i was dreading my 4 straight hours of kids' classes today. that's the norm for Mondays, but today i just really... REALLY didn't want to do it.

but it was actually pretty good--all it takes is a new game sometimes. and when we were playing Hangman (a horrible game on so many levels in my opinion, but it kills time and the kids like it), one of my kids kept yelling "H! H!" to guess the letter.

which isn't that funny when one has little to no knowledge of dirty Japanese. but i do. the English letter "H" is a homonym for "eichi," which essentially means "fuck" or "pervert" or something to that effect. this brought on a barrage of giggles from the 11-year old kids in the class. and, since i'm much like a 12 year old myself, i started laughing too.

it all further confirms my belief that the secret to effectively molding young, moldy minds, lies in telling lots of dick and fart jokes.

power lines

after about 2 weeks of shitting bricks over whether i'd be able to get a visa extension permit on such short notice, i finally went to the Immigration office today with my coworker and all the documents i needed. Kaori and i waited outside the drab grey door for the final 5 minutes of the officers' lunch break. despite the fact that most white-collar slaves here routinely shove seaweed and chemical-wrapped rice down their throats while checking e-mail and answering phone calls, one does NOT, under any circumstances, fuck with the lunch break of Japanese government workers. at precisely 1:00pm, the portly man in the blue suit with his shiny gold "Immigration" badge on his left pocket opened the tall grey door and said "hai, dozo."

the flourescent lights flicked on and the other portly man in the blue suit processed the papers of a 35-ish guy who, from what i could tell by glancing at his passport, was Chinese. from what Portly Government Stooge #1 could tell, all of my papers are in order. the government of Japan does indeed think there is a place for me in their fine country.

the Chinese national left with his materials while i filled out my own papers. then the Portly Government Stooges Numbers One and Two commenced the paranoia-inducing comments about my former company, in loud Japanese of course. now.... of course i didn't get everything they were saying, but my Japanese (and knowledge of human interaction for that matter) is good enough to know when people are shit-talking. and they definitely were. Kaori and i glanced at each other. she glanced disapprovingly at PGS#1&2 . i shot them a look that said "i understand everything you cunts are saying," which wasn't entirely true but they didnt' need to know that. eventually they shut up. (Kaori eventually told me they were making fun of the Chinese man who was in line next to me. a rather cunt-y thing to do while on lunch break behind the door that no one must enter between the hours of 12 and 1, let alone while on duty and in the presence of the people they were meant to be taking care of. cunt-y indeed.)

once i was finished writing, Kaori and i sat down on the chairs in the waiting area next to a young Filippina woman was playing with her child. the little girl immediately took to Kaori's bright smile, kind face, and 5-months pregnant belly.
"nansei desuka?" Kaori whispered. the little girl grinned and held up 3 fingers to indicate her age.
"usotsuki!" the young mother retorted. the girl looked down sheepishly and held up 2 fingers, caught in her innocent lie. Kaori's infectious laugh rang through the dour palace of bureaucracy.

later, as we were driving back to work with that precious stamp in my passport, i gazed through the power lines that ensnared the view of the fog of the sky intermingling with the white volcanic vapour of the earth and i thought to myself, "this place would be pretty fucking breathtaking if it weren't for all the damn power lines."

tune out

so i was in a coffee shop today trying to study some Japanese when a few foreigners came in. i pretended to be too engrossed in my studies to be friendly and social with them.... it's not that i hate other foreigners (what the hell is that phenomenon anyway? it's got to be some form of Stockholm Syndrome or something), it's just that i don't want to make that same awkward, stupid conversation that you're always forced to make (are you a student? what program are you with? where are you from? how long have you been here? how's your Japanese? you think you're SO fucking special in the words of Thom Yorke, don't you). so i avoid any kind of random foreigner contact at all costs. nothing personal.

but anyway the girl talking.... she had one of those voices that just carries, and i'm sure her conversation was immensely fascinating to the person she was talking to, but i just wanted her to shut the fuck up as soon as possible. while i'm doing my damndest to understand the language that's usually going on around me, i still have the luxury of tuning it out when i want to hear things but don't feel like listening. but the sound of random English is like an aural train wreck. particularly when the word "like" is spoken about 3 times per sentence.

i wonder if i sound that stupid when i'm talking. probably.

My 5 Minutes as God

4/29

today i just watched a butterfly take what may well have been its first flight. it was in a sewage gutter, it had black wings that shone an almost iridescent blue, and it looked like the most delicate black paper fan. as i watched it struggle to unstick its feet from the concrete and fight the wind that flattened its wings to the ground, i wanted so badly to pick it up and throw it into the wind. but i knew that, A. i might crush its delicate body. and more importantly, B. if it got to the air by some other force beside itself, it may not have the strength to stay airborne, and the impact when it finally hit the ground again would liquefy it.

so i watched it fight and struggle for however long i did. no doubt the old ladies at the fruit market down the street were wondering why this hen na gaijin was staring into a sewage ditch. i stayed there also to guard agains the cars on that narrow street; they would swerve for a human (however eccentric) but not for an invisible black paper fan on the ground.

and finally-- liftoff!! i gasped as the black paper fan with its blue iridescent wings floated up and down but steadily higher until she perched safely in a cedar tree, no doubt exhausted.

as i walked away, i wondered why people need presence of some personified God in their lives when there is so much divinity in the world in itself.

the Bored on the Train diaries

i started a new job in February. it took me to many out-of the way locales that kind of require a car.... which i didn't have for 2 months. to avert the boredom and loneliness of waiting for and riding on public transit, i bought a little notebook and wrote in a very roundabout stream-of-consciousness sort of way. this is an account of what i wrote.

i like to sit across from people on the train who try to look at everything individually as it all goes flying by, knowing full well it's an exercise in futility. i like watching them because their eyes twitch and they look like they're about to have a seizure, or their brains are reacting to their own recent discovery of the nature of the universe.

it's also really funny to go into a big department store and watch girls tug their boyfriends around by the elbow like pets. granted i am a girl, but i could never figure out why they do that. exercising power, perhaps?

it's weird how i feel this need to do EVERYTHING right now--like get working on my novella again, get the new job up and running smoothly, AND alleviate the boredom that has hit me recently (how can i be bored when i don't even have time to stop and look at shit?) nope, can't stick to one thing. gotta do everything. precisely why i get nothing done, ever.



Weirdest Metal Show Ever

only in Japan can one attend a metal show entitled "New Wave Heavy Metal" which is actually quite old-school, and see everyone actually sitting on their asses while the leather-trenchcoat clad lead singer is all.... into it and doesn't seem to care that the audience is absolutely LIFELESS. after 2 pints of Guiness i really can no longer express the weirdness into words. there were lots of people there with no business being there at all, just like me. random.

St Patrick's Day

fuck, it's St. Patrick's Day and everyone's flaking out on me. ost important festival of the year, and once again--i want to do something and no one else wants to. shit. oh well, Selector it is. probably alone.

(note: this actually turned out to be quite a lovely night. ;) )

I ALWAYS miss the goddamn train. always.

I miss Vics. she was the Dean Moriarty to my Sal Paradise, my partner in crime. i need a partner in crime, preferably a girl, to get into random hijinx with. boys are good for shenanigans, but not so much the hijinx.
i want to get 2 cats, and name one of them Hijinx and the other one Shenanigans.

3/21 Equinox

i just went to my kindergarten to find that there is no school and i could have just stayed in bed. somehow i'm not extraordinarily pissed by this. maybe it's that element of pleasant surprise, like waking up on the day of a Buffalo snowstorm to find that school has been cancelled, and feeling that sweet release that only a snow day can bring. fuck orgasms, fuck booze and weed, that snow day surprise is the best feeling in the world.

today's the day of the Equinox, when supposedly you can balance an egg on its head and the weather will magically change to spring and people will pull out their blue tarpaulin, some with Rikka Bear of Doraemon, and pour sake down their throats under the delicate sakura. in Buffalo, the Equinox meant nothing, winter would potentially last another 2 months if it felt like it. St Patrick's Day was the beginning of the end, nothing more.

but anyway i say all this because, while it may be the celestial first day of spring, the air is still so wintry and clear. you can't see the mountains in the spring and summer haze, but today both Beppu Bay that draws from the Pacific and the snow on Mt Tsurumi (an active volcano) is clearly visible. always the unanswerable question, mountains or sea? mountains isolate, but the sea can be a gateway. it was for hundreds of years here. that's why Oita has more connection to Shikoku over the sea than Fukuoka over the mountains.

i'm rambling. definitely rambling. when is the train coming?

3/22 I am certifiably insane.

today (last night? this morning?) marked the 2nd time this week i've taken the early train back to Beppu from Oita after an all-night bender. maybe that intention thing is true--i was feeling bored and in a social rut, i broke out of my Lost and Heroes at Luke's comfort zone and ROCKED OUT last night. and, it turns out that, yes, i will dance with Abandon, that dashing fellow that he is, if given the right crowd and the right music. 6 tequila and tonics don't hurt either.
and...... i'm feeling the dopamine rush of a crush on someone who is leaving the prefecture next week. sigh.... at least he's only going to Kitakyushu. but still.....

3/29

it's always funny to see Japanese tourists in Beppu. it makes me contemplate which one of us is the outsider and which of us is the one at home, in their element.

4/2 the "i am a shit teacher" worries are hitting again. ugh. oh well. can't make everyone happy.

the air isn't clear anymore. and i miss him.

4/6 Driver's Test

taking the driver's test again. just another step in the process. life is a process. "the process," Mr Reichard was fond of saying. he was a fantastic music teacher. i wonder if he's still alive.
life is a process with only one possible result, regardless of what happens along the way. kind of renders the quest for results completely meaningless. it's a concept you hear about constantly, but it's hard to drill into your head.

3:00pm I PASSED!!!!!! Holy shit almighty i fucking passed!!!!!!!

now that was a weird Zen ego-death experience. i surrendered all desire to pass the test; i was just driving a car. it was me, the car and the imaginary people on the road. yosh. yosh. yosh. i think i might have to write a 2nd movement to my "Fuck You Driving Center" song. thanking them for the Zen Ego Death Experience.

4/23 Kids

they drove me seriously nuts today. but at the same time, i kinda feel bad for them. my class is just another thing their parents force them to do and, I have to cater to the parents' wants and wishes for their kids to "get ahead." to be the best. dog eat dog.

i wish i could just play and get them excited about English, learning, about life. instead of just becoming mindless drones who have had all wonder, love of learning and discovery systematically and purposefully beaten out of them.
i can remember being that age. even though i was a "good student," i resented teachers for forcing their "knowledge" down my throat. i don't want to be that person.

and why is it so damn important for these kids to be better than everyone, to get the edge? why isn't it good enough for them to just be children, and for people to just be?