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.