TOTALLY BONKERS GAIJIN ADVENTURES IN JAPAAAAAAAAAAN

2011-05-08T03:24:00.000-07:00

it`s getting warmer every day here. that means that school is going to get a little more unpleasant, because only the staff room and principal`s room are airconditioned.

but, the warmer weather means that not only summer, but festival season are upon us. and i just went to one, a couple days ago.

people in devil costumes, dancing around for an hour. & what`s the meaning behind it? i don`t know, and neither did my Japanese friend. and neither did anyone else we talked to that day. maybe it`s one of those things that people have been doing for so many hundreds of years, they don`t remember why they started doing in the first place.

2 days till I get whale in the school lunch

これを書いた外国人

2011-05-05T03:00:00.000-07:00

well. golden week is already over. no more holidays until July. well, i suppose i should just be thankful for 3 days off we just had. back to my normal bonkers adventure.

5 days until I get whale in the school lunch.

Making friends

2011-05-03T07:13:00.000-07:00

I just met one of the local yakuza. Although, this guy is more of a yakuza wannabe. The word for that in Japanese is "chinpira"
チンピラ

Thing about real yakuza is, they try as hard as they can to not draw attention to themselves. No real yakuza would ever say "I'm a fucking yakuza!" like he did in Japanese or any other language. And this guy had all 10 fingers too. If a loudmouth idiot like this guy was really a yakuza, I reckon he'd have about 6 fingers left by now.

See the thing is they have to cut off 1 of their own fingers when they fuck up. Saying "I'm in the yakuza" is definitely a huge fuckup. I've met these chinpira type before, nothing to be afraid of. This moron was trying to sell me a Japanese visa. Too bad for him, mine is good till 2014

7 days till I get whale in the school lunch.

これを書いた外国人
--signatures go here

Everyone told me yakuza were fucking huge over here in western Japan. Were they talking about tards like this チンピラ?

2011-04-24T03:04:00.000-07:00

well i had to basically force myself to write a post. it seems like i always have something to do, work related. and when i have free time, i just dont really want to do much of anything. as much as i argued with my co-teacher last year, well, they certianly didn`t spend their time sitting around doing nothing. now I`m on my own, so while I don`t have anyone to argue with, all the planning and preparation falls completely on my shoulders. and since i haven`t found an efficient way to deal with my new workload yet, I`m bringing work home alot more often than I`d like to.

kinda hard to get ahead on lesson planning when you teach straight through the whole school day, 1st to 6th period.

but hey, if i make it through one more week here (and friday`s a holiday, yay) my reward is golden week. now a smarter guy than me might take advantage of 4 days off to make their workload more manageable. but working on holidays seems to me like missing the point of the idea of holidays. so i`m not gonna do that. I`m gonna take the opportunity to blow off some steam. after golden week, there`s no holidays until summer break so...wanna enjoy my free time.

as for my golden week plans, i thought about going to Osaka, even Nara. but i think i`m just gonna hang around this town, unless everyone`s leaving for their hometowns, i dont know. there`s alot of cool temples around here, but i suppose i could see them anytime, and would be using my vacation better by going elsewhere. but i dont have much motivation to go. there`s a party in the prefecture i came from...but that`s ridiculously far away now TBH

and the people around here are pretty cool. i found not one but two bars within drunken stumbling distance of my place. everything else is pretty inconvenient though. this town is alot smaller than i thought it would be. theres big cities not terribly far away but...this place has nothing.

in fact, it`s small enough that lots of people know my business, including who my friends are, where I drink, where I work, and thats not paranoia talking either. I`m still trying to get used to that. guess i better stop throwing my cigarette butts all over and keep my tattooes covered up for the time being.

i thought i was going to be moving to a bigger city. well more people live here than the last place, but i`m still in the sticks. strangely enough, i`m not that angry about it. i`ve already made a couple friends and found stuff to do for those times when i say "FUCK IT IM NOT PLANNING ANY MORE LESSONS TODAY" i think i could grow to like this place, maybe. but it`s early days still, i havent even been here a month yet. well, on saturday it will be 1 month.

the move sucked btw. but hey, all my stuff got here, unbroken. guess i cant ask for anything more than that.

ーー外国人 in the 田舎

this blog is not dead

2011-04-20T03:38:00.000-07:00

hoping to get a blog up this weekend. my new job has me unbelievably busy, i`m even taking work home sometimes. but the golden week is coming up soon. and i should have some time to spare

2011-03-29T23:31:00.000-07:00

I just saw a huge fucking monkey walking through a field! From th window of this train. I'd heard there were monkeys in Japan, 1st time I saw one though. Wish I'd gotten a picture, this thing was really big

無事でした

2011-03-26T02:19:00.000-07:00

Posting from my iPhone.

Just found out my friends grandparents are alive, not sure what the holdup was on getting in touch with them. But everyones relieved, it's a pretty good day.

4 days left in town. My stuff is like 90% ready. Trying to ship everything tomorrow.

We`re doing a recap episode....?

2011-03-21T00:21:00.000-07:00

FYI, this is my last post for the month. i`m busy.

take a look at this chart from XKCD

so yeah, don`t worry about those reactors anymore. Fukushima might expose you to more radiation than you get from living in Denver for a day, but less radiation than a chest x-ray. and the latest bulletin from my employer says that the temperature in all 6 reactors is below water`s boiling point of 100 degrees celsius, source (Japanese only, sorry....i wonder why I bothered to link that) but the english versions of the radiation reports are available now. i am really fucking tired of hearing about radiation.

I`ll just say this one more time, for the last time, to consider donating to the relief effort if possible. alot of displaced people are battling the cold weather with no electricity and very little food and water. having realized that, people here are really coming together and trying to support the victims as best they can. I`ve seen a lot of good things here lately, fundraising and benefits and collecting stuff to send up north, etc. everyone`s on the same team here it seems, perhaps it`s part of the Japanese spirit that my Japanese friends frequently try to explain to me. this country was completely wrecked by WWII and one day came back stronger than ever. that`s why I know that Japan will, eventually, make a full recovery. It`s going to take time of course, time and a lot of money. but it will get done, because the world needs Japan. incidentally, I saw a crane fly past a few days ago, the bird which is the symbol of long life here.

(better) info about how to donate

Anyway....

this is shaping up to be a pretty long post actually. there`s a lot of things I want to say, some things I don`t wanna say, and some things I would say but can`t explain them too well. March 22nd is a day I`ve decided to kind of make my own personal holiday, it being the day that I landed here 1 year ago. so, I`ve already achieved a year of living here without getting fired from my job. Actually, I did pretty good this year, according to the boss, so that`s nice. This being one of the most unique cultures anywhere, a lot has happened in 1 year. overall it`s been really great. there were bad times too of course, but that will happen to you wherever you live. I don`t have many regrets this year and I`m looking forward to the next one, although I`m moving onwards to another part of the country, bringing this chapter of my time here to a close. it`s time for Bonkers Adventure Chapter 2: the next chapter (i`m not good with titles ok?)

anyway let`s recap a little bit:

GOOD: I made a lot of good friends who I care about
BAD: now I have to say goodbye to them

GOOD: I lived as an outsider in this society for a year
BAD: I lived as an outsider in this society for a year

GOOD: I travelled the country quite a bit and went to lots of cool places
BAD: ....theres nothing bad about that

GOOD: I learned how to drive on the left side of the road
BAD: Driving is a fucking shitshow here

いい: I`m really happy with my Japanese ability
最悪: fluency is still far, far, far away

GOOD: I went on some awesome dates
BAD: I had some bad dates (my fault perhaps?)

GOOD: I played Taiko and even got to perform
BAD: I`m not sure if I`ll be able to play Taiko anymore

GOOD: I got invited to a bunch of parties
BAD: i spent a lot of time being drunk

GOOD: I learned how to play Shogi
BAD: I`m not very good at it

GOOD: i got a drivers license in a foreign country, thats pretty cool
BAD: that was absolutely fucking unbelievable, that whole thing there

BAD: The Sendai earthquake

GOOD: My cooking`s getting a little better. i think....

GOOD: I played sushi roulette with the half-price sushi you can get at the grocery store at the end of business hours cos they weren`t able to sell it that day
REALLY GOOD: I didn`t get sick from doing that repeatedly

and I could go on and on.

to be honest, friday, saturday and sunday I was drinking hard. why? well for one thing, classes are finished at school. but mainly, お別れ会. Farwell parties. in this culture, when you leave, it`s kind of a big deal. therefore, when somebody`s leaving, you throw them a party, and so i`ve gotten a few parties, almost to the poitn where i feel guilty about it. i mean, hey, i`m friends, real good friends with a few of the folks here, but i still feel bad when one of my Japanese buddies pays for me to get drunk just because i`m changing jobs & location. it`s a cultural thing i suppose, because people here really don`t change jobs that much. but no matter how informal it may be, you still gotta say something about the time you spent with those people. a speech, a comment, they want you to say something about the time you spent together. really, there`s so much i could say to them all, but in the name of civility, i don`t say everythihng i could. it`s kind of polite to say ( )を忘れることが出来ません。 I can`t forget ( ). so when I was thinking about what i wanted to say beforehand, the whole year came back to me at once. turns out i don`t fucking care about the all the time i spent at work not working, all the time i spent waiting for trains, all the time i spent waiting in offices or anything like that. those are absolutely forgettable, 確かに忘れることが出来るよ！ where i came from, to say "I`ll never forget ( )" in front of a bunch of people is too melodramatic. but after some thought, there are definitely alot of things I`ll never forget

I`ll never forget telling off the hooker that Ogawa bought for me,

I`ll never forget Ryuuta asking why I was never coming back to his school again,

I`ll never forget just saying no to drugs in Doushimura,

I`ll never forget yelling at my co-teacher in the staff room, because goddamit we wanted these kids to learn something we just never saw eye-to-eye

I`ll never forget getting my first translation job because Amemiya believed in me,

I`ll never forget all the ridicule,

I`ll never forget all the hospitality,

I`ll never forget why I asked for this transfer in the first place,

I`ll never forget all the times telling my tutor I just couldn`t fucking do it and her showing me that I could,

I`ll never forget why I rediscovered the bible,

I`ll never forget my first Japanese part-time job at the bar,

I`ll never forget when Jhyie told me to go fuck myself,

I`ll never forget all the time we put into practicing Taiko,

I`ll never forget putting that practice to work and performing at the morning market,

I`ll never forget meeting the local Yakuza,

I`ll never forget eating Taiyaki in Manriki Park with Maiko and I`ll never forget what she told me,

I`ll never forget going ballistic at the license center,

I`ll never forget how scared i was, walking into my first class, on my first day,

I`ll never forget dragging my friend out of the bar and taking a punch to the jaw,

I`ll never forget Asami crying at 6 in the morning in K-town and what it felt like when she asked me not to move west,

I`ll never forget where I was during the great Sendai earthqake,

I`ll never forget making one of the best friends i`ve ever had and how much he taught me,

I can`t ever forget the people here, I can`t forget this year.　

あんなに思い出忘れることが出来ないよ。

--これを書いたの外国人
Athens riot dog says: "your argument is invalid!"

lets math

2011-03-16T23:57:00.000-07:00

here`s a dumb question that i can`t figure out the answer to.

radiation is sometimes measured in bananas apparently. in other news, bananas are radioactive.

1 banana is 0.1 USV of radiations, whatever that is

the radiation detected in my prefecture last night was 0.045

so, the radiation in my prefecture is:

A.) 0.045 * 0.1 = 0.0045 bananas

or

B.) 0.045 / 0.1 = 0.45 bananas

which one is it?

about Fukushima NPP

2011-03-14T01:31:00.000-07:00

the mood here right now where i`m at, an unaffected area, is tense. another massive earthquake has been predicted within 3 days, because of damage to tectonic plates from the last quake or something like that, so people are trying to prepare for that possibility. I`m not as prepared as I`d like to be, hoping to remedy that today.

had some earthquakes over the weekend but things kind of calmed down yesterday and every quake today was less than 3.0

they`re going to start turning off our power soon, for about 3 hours at a time. trains aren`t running here today, at least not the commuter ones. but this is just minor crap compared to what people in Tohoku are dealing with right now. on that topic, perhaps consider making a donation?

still no word from my friend`s grandparents in Iwade pref., still got our fingers crossed though.

news coverage outside Japan seems to be stuck on the nuclear reactors. i`m not good enough at science to really know what to say about it, but this really long article says it`s not going to be a problem. not the most official source, certainly. but on the other hand, we haven`t gotten instructions to take any special precautions here, so i think its alright.

i`m fine

2011-03-11T01:35:00.000-08:00

well Japan just suffered something between a 7.9 to 8.9 quake, around 4 hours ago my time. this is actually my second earthquake, i remember a small one in january that rattled things in my apartment.

but this quake was crazy, i was washing my hands in the bathroom when all of a sudden i couldn`t balance and had to grab the sink to stay on my feet. i knew i hadn`t been drinking so i didn`t know why i wasn`t able to keep standing, it took me a second to figure out that the entire fucking school was shaking! it shook for at least a minute too. in the hallway, the teachers were (literally) running around like WTF?! i asked one what to do and he ran right by me. i kinda forgot all my earthquake safety trivia in that moment. well my co-teacher saw me standing there and said "go outside!" (unspoken sub-text: "you idiot!") so the whole school ran outside. there were a bunch of different alarms going off too.

the kids looked like they were keeping their cool better than the teachers tbh. now, the news is saying this is apparently the biggest earthquake in Japan`s recoreded history, so maybe they were too scared to be making a ruckus as usual.

then we started getting the aftershocks, and even when sitting down i could still feel the ground moving, it actually felt kinda like bouncing up and down in a car seat, maybe like the school bus for example. then we turned on the tv and watched tsunami after tsunami roll in one after another along the eastern coast. there were boats, cars and houses flowing through towns. and we all saw a dead body floating along as well on the live broadcast, before the camera cut away.

we watched a huge debris filled wave flow through sendai, smashing all the little greenhouses and such in its way. it was being filmed from a helicopter, so we could see the people who were driving the wrong way to get away from this thing in their cars get swallowed up by this huge dirty black mass, part of which was on fire. i just heard about 20 minutes ago that Sendai airport is underwater.

phone lines are clogged, obviously. not that I really have anyone to call. see i don`t have any family here, but at least one of my friends is trying to reach relatives in Iwade pref. so that`s not really something i would want to be going through.

it looks like the whole north-eastern Tohoku region got fucked up pretty badly.

ーーこれを書いたの外国人

update! this was the 7th largest earthquake in human history and released more energy than an atomic bomb, there`s already a wikipedia page on it

played some taiko

2011-02-26T12:11:00.000-08:00

And i was very conspicuous

--これを書いたの外国人

linkmania

2011-02-10T17:35:00.001-08:00

China is officially #2, bumping Japan down a notch in the category of who has the worlds biggest economy. its KIND OF A TOUCHY SUBJECT....well, after last years bullshit and many more years of bullshit before that, getting news like this must feel pretty great

it`s not cool to link to old posts on your own blog, see? also i couldn`t find the post where i linked to that China-Japan story when it was still relevant. maybe i just imagined that i linked it.

i may have briefly mentioned before, but at the end of March, i`m relocating in a more westernly direction, within Japan of course. yep, seems like ever since `08 I just can`t stay in one place for more than a year, and it also seems like i cause riots with my absence. there sure is a lot of unrest in the world right now. well i`ve actually never been to Tunisia, Egypt, Libya or Bahrain, but I have been to Thailand Greece and South Korea

yes, some of those links are a little old. but it does establish a pattern of shit hitting the fan when i take my charismatic award winning smile elsewhere

so the latest addition to my C/V of misery would be....hey look! more pictures from Syntagma Square! quite different from the pictures i took of the place. to give just one example, no one was throwing firebombs when i was there. if you look carefully, you`ll notice that those ceremonial motionless parliament guards have finally left. also if you watch the video closely.....is that "Riot Dog" running around again? that dog must have pretty strong opinions to keep braving the molotov cocktails and clouds of teargas. wtf is wrong with that dog?

i remember lots of stray dogs everywhere i went in Greece. generally they just seemed to wander around looking for food, i didn`t know they were such POLITICAL ANIMALS *ba-dum tish*

when I leave this place at the end of March, I can only imagine what`s gonna happen to this sleepy little mountain town. in fact i can already see the conditions for chaos and unrest starting to form here, i mean, for god`s sake they are CLOSING the taiyaki place on Route 20!!!! ARE YOU PEOPLE FUCKING CRAZY

so in an effort to ensure that my little slice of Japan doesn`t suffer the same fate as the other places i`ve been to, I`ve been focusing my energies on leaving this place the right way. spending quality time with people, etc., rather than blogging.

blogging sucks! it feels too much like a responsibility

--外国人
Riot Dog says: "Austerity hurts the poorest segments of the population and tends to depress economic growth, I`m sorry for pooping in Syntagma Square."

勝利

2011-02-04T00:41:00.000-08:00

look

that`s what a Japnese driver`s license really looks like. it`s also what victory looks like, just so you know. so for those keeping score (myself), today it`s

Me: 1
Japan: at least 5

ーーこれを書いたの外国人
サインはここに

SPINACH ATTACK

2011-02-01T23:33:00.001-08:00

right now it`s national spinach week here in Japan. not officially perhaps, but there`s been spinach in every school lunch every day since last week. doesn`t bother me too much, although I`m not sure why we`re getting spinach bombed all of a sudden. as far as greens go we usally eat seaweed and this

who puts spinach in soup? what the hell?

I suppose the reason for all this spinach isn`t really related to the one-world government agenda of the new world order as i originally supspected, and probably has more to do with vitamin C. i see kids as germ factories, and schools have more germs than hospitals, Japanese schools are no exception. one of the schools i work at is having a problem with インフルエンザ, a.k.a. the flu. everyone has to wear a mask there until PEOPLE IN THIS COUNTRY LEARN TO COVER THEIR MOUTHS WHEN THEY COUGH

coughing propels your damn germs 3 meters, that`s 300% further than talking, CUT THAT SHIT OUT

why no updates for 3 weeks? I would say that I`ve been busy, but that would mostly be a lie. although in the past 3 weeks, I`ve accomplished the following:

-got a new job placement from April onwards
-renewed my VISA (i`m talking about the passport thing of course)
-failed the driving test once

so when i came home from school, i didn`t feel like blogging in between answering emails and working on my visa application, and this driving crap has continued to be a pain in my ass too. it sucks because i`ve been driving for 10 years now, and people at the local DMV won`t trust me with a license because.......?

ironically, i don`t even need the license anymore. i don`t need a car for the placement i`m going to in April (and therefore, I`m losing the one i`m currently using). i could just give up now and it would be fine. but i`m gonna try at least twice more, because of all the time/money/mental effort i`ve already invested, plus i want to conquer this thing.

i barely remember the first driving test i took 10 years ago. i think it was something like, "if you can drive for 20 minutes without crashing and you have $25 then you can have a license" compare and contrast it with the Japanese version. crooked seatbelt? thats points off. did you slam the door? points.

somewhere in-between "we won`t fail you if you`re sober" and "forgetting to kick all 4 of the tires is an auto-fail" lies the perfect driving test, i suppose

you have to memorize these 3 courses and drive a random one that the guy tells you when you get in the car

here in Japan, there`s alot more biciclysts and scooters on the road who regularly pull some suicidal shit. there`s alot of really narrow roads here. In my honest opinion, it`s harder to drive in this country than in the U.S., what with our wide roads and lack of cyclists who don`t want to live anymore. so i can see if the test over here would be a little harder than back home. but why should a twisted seatbelt be 10% of your grade? my seatbelt wasn`t twisted btw. i failed because i braked during a curve, 20 points, THIS TEST WAS MADE TO BE FAILED

but im not stressing it anymore, because i technically dont need the license now. like i said, 2 more tries at most. i`ll be really happy with myself if i can pass though. i hate the environment enough that i`d at least like to have the OPTION of driving.

ーーこれを書いたの外国人
サインはここに

(culinary) terrorism strikes Japan

2011-01-19T03:11:00.000-08:00

The 3+ day Japanese new year is over now. The Chinese one`s coming up next week though. guess its too bad then that there`s only 1 Chinese family around here. its alright actually, i`ve had enough rice cakes to last me the rest of my natural life. I`m a huge fan of Japanese food, but the rice cake "sweets" they roll out around new years time are fucking terrible. This was my first new years in Japan is the thing, so I had no way of knowing. Anyway, that brings the list of Japanese foods I hate up to 3.

it was kinda surprising how no one really cares about Chrismtmas here (KFC is the traditional Christmas dinner in my part of the country...i wish that was a joke but it`s not) maybe it was surprising to my friends how I in turn wasn`t really interested in お正月? Well i might not celebrate their new year, but I still found this to be extremely amusing

did you notice what`s in the URL: Culinary terrorism?? I thought that was more along the lines of what I do in the kitchen, rather than poorly prepared food.

PERSPECTIVE!!!! what`s the most important family holiday where you come from? Chances are it involves a meal of some sort. let`s say you decide to buy the thing, whatever it is, instead of cooking it. now imagine someone pisses on it right before the guests arrive and you kinda get the idea. tears were most certainly shed. in my stereotype riddled opinion, ruining a 正月 party like this would be something you`d remember for the rest of your life....if you`re Japanese. Well, at times like these living on the fringes of this society doesn`t seem all that bad at all!

most of all, you gotta love the reaction from some people on this, i.e. a "real" Japanese woman would painstakingly make this stuff herself instead of buying it. Nice, Japan. but yeah, seriously who do they think they are, trying to make their life easier like that? that`s not Japanese!!

that was just a joke

any 日本語 readers out there? here`s a bilingual bonus for you, Japanese only sorry. I`m roughly 1/10th of the way to being legally literate in this country, but here`s what i was able to comprehend: basically Hitler is the CEO of Groupon and he`s yelling at the Nazis because they didn`t get cheese, etc. for the Osechi boxes.

i`m betting i wont be seeing any ads from Groupon any time soon. i don`t understand how businesses work, but if there`s a video on youtube comparing you to Hitler, you probably fucked up somewhere?

--これを書いた外国人
こっちにサインを

meh

2011-01-10T02:40:00.000-08:00

well i was gonna write about my vacation. but i`m having bad writers block. i`m just gonna show some pictures from winter break with no context or explanation.

well first of all there`s some new anti smoking ads for the winter season

here`s the A-bombed dome

and the peace park (part of it)

and shrine island

and the local specialty, Hiroshima`s version of Okonomiyaki. it`s not everything it was cracked up to be though. i`m not a huge fan of okonomiyaki anyway

regardless, it was still a good trip. wish i had more to say about it

--書いたの外国人
サインはここに書いて

what ive been doing

2011-01-07T19:14:00.000-08:00

well there hasnt been a post here in awhile. truth is, my old computer finally gave up on life. but i got a new one, a Japanese one. im still looking for the apostrophe on this Japanese keyboard. but thats okay, you dont always need to punctuate things. now that i have the computer im willing to blog again, because blogging from the cell phone is a crap sandwhich.

anyway, while i dont have time to write a post today, im hoping to get one done tomorrow or monday (national holiday), because i had a pretty interesting vacation.

--gaijin who writes this
signatures go here

メリークリスマス

2010-12-24T21:46:00.000-08:00

Just as the title says, merry Christmas. That's all I have to say for the month of December, unfortunately. I wanted to write some posts, but kept getting distracted from it. Well whatever.

I'm going on vacation tomorrow so I'll plan to come back to this site in the new year.

Happy holidays etc etc.,,

外国人

Ok look basically what we're trying to say here is "fuck you"

2010-11-29T00:02:00.000-08:00

here comes my 4th post for November, sliding in just under deadline, as usual. well whatever its up isnt it? the rest is details.

i tackled the 1st half of getting a Japanese driver's license today, but unfortunately i didn't tackle it nearly well enough, as I failed the pre-interview, which means i can't even think about taking the test until i pass the beuaracracy stage (did i spell that right?)

but why did i fail? basically, racismz. i walked in the door and cop 1 said to cop 2, "you wanna fail that foreinger? We haven't failed one since lunch." of course i didn't hear anything like that being said BUT I KNOW THEY WERE THINKING IT at least, if you imagine it or want to see it, you can imagine racismz everywhere you go in Japan, you won't always be correct though. in fact most of the time you're wrong. the racists are certainly out there though, i've run into a handful of them. but these cops weren't racists. unless, deep down....they're SECRET RACISTS???!??!??!? maybe? probably not

well the requirement is, you have to live in the U.S. with a driver's license for at least 90 days before you can apply for a Japanese one. "no problem," i thought. i got my first license almost 10 years ago, and I had a piece of paper to prove it. not only that, i got my latest passport in 2002, and didn't go anywhere with it until 2006, so that alone is 16 TIMES THE REQUIRED LENGTH OF STAY...of course it's all null and void because they didn't stamp the stupid thing on my way out or when i came back in.

"you can't prove you were in the U.S. during that time, it's like, you could've been anywhere, we just don't know." my brain exploded after hearing that, and i refused to clean it up.

i dont think its my fault for not getting stamped 4 years ago, and again 2 years ago, and 1 more time last year. Canada didn't stamp me on the way out either, hey, some countries are more laid back I guess? was i supposed to say "you're obviously not stamping U.S. citizens but could you stamp me because I can't shake the feeling that this is gonna cause me a major hassle in about...4 YEARS"

i really love how nice the translators my company sends to these things are. i can appreciate the fact that when they say things like "They weren't so strict last year, you would've passed for sure!" or "___________ from __________ failed 6 times, so don't worry!" it's meant to cheer me up.

You've probably already guessed the reason why they've gotten so strict within the last year. TERRORISM. yeah.................what?

????????

so anyway, now i get to deal with the U.S. Embassy, who apparently knows every time we use our passports and where and can issue a printed record of such. I've never dealt with the embassy before, in any country i've been to, so i don't know how efficient or friendly they are. right now i'm still stuck on their phone switchboard. maybe when i actualy get the thing i need i can rate their citizen services. At least the embassy's service for people living in Japan.

Finally, this is far from anything resembling a news blog, in fact it could probably be considered the opposite of a news blog. but anyway, what happened in Korea last Tuesday (my time) was fucked up. TOO fucked up. i'm really hoping that there's no war in Korea. I don't think anybody on either side deserves that, and while it didn't happen during the wargames on sunday, things still seem pretty bad to me, I may not be a smarty pants news analyst but, those guys have the potential to be wrong too.

anyway if you're of any kind of religious persuasion you should be praying for peace in Korea!

--gaijin who writes this
signatures go here

Hit with stick, repeat

2010-11-17T14:29:00.000-08:00

ok guys the chief really wants this case off his desk! someone ask that bird what it saw.

wow, a post! just 1 more within the next 13 days (my time zone) and i'll have met my goal.

this week I got hit with a perfect storm of work and non-work related stress and bullshit to the extreme. so my friend was like, 'hey why don't you come meet some of my other friends and we can hit shit with sticks in an old storehouse on top of a mountain?' i said no at first, but then I realized that it was an amazing oppourtunity to finally use my college degree

well I didn't major in hitting specifically *Taiko drums* with sticks, but i gave it a shot all the same. i sucked, but it was fun, and quite the workout as well i must say. every time i've seen a Taiko performance i've always thought it's pretty cool, but i never appreciated how tough it is. my hands are already blistered, it's kinda like what happens to your fingertips the 1st time you start playing guitar, excpet with more dead skin and discharge. turns out you've also gotta sit the right way, stand the right way...dang ancient traditions, why can't I just stand the way it's easiest for me to hit the thing?

so I joined the Taiko club, because i've been studying too much and needed to take a break and smash things. also, while the things i do in my free time are definitely fun, they're not anywhere near as cultural or productive as practicing the war drum routines of guys who've been dead for almost 500 years, followed by drinking cheap whiskey.

when we were leaving, my friend gave me my own pair of Taiko sticks. i said 'are you really giving these to me? I don't know what to say,' but it turns out that they're old and no one was using them. well whatever, now they're mine. i wrote motivational Kanji on them.

IN PERMANENT MARKER

they're sitting on my desk right now, and i keep looking at them and want to practice hitting stuff. the chairs i have look like they could withstand some punishment. i was practicing with chopsticks at school today, my co-teacher asked me to cut that shit out. it's honestly been awhile since i've been this excited about a new hobby, but if my life up to this point is any indication, that'll soon fade. but until i start to not-look forward to going to Taiko club, i'll continue to hit stuff that wouldn't be hard to replace.

--gaijin who writes this
signatures go here

this is the 50th post

2010-11-04T05:54:00.001-07:00

and there has been maybe...1 or 2 pages of worthwhile content so far. the blog is over a year old though, so 50 posts in a year is really not that much, but it's not like this is my job, so i don't really care. also at this rate i wont make my goal of 4 posts for november. unfortunately, i'm not a person with a lot to say about things.

this last week at school has been interesting, action packed you might say. the elderly came to school on monday, to teach the kids gateball. it's like that lawn game croquet, except it's even more boring. well hey, at least it got me out of the staff room.

the kids ran a 4km race on Tuesday. i stood at the start/finish line and watched them run off into the distance...and come back some time later. meh. at least it got me out of the staff room.

wednesday thursday and friday were not action packed....i guess i spoke too soon. i spent a lot of time in the staff room.

the international 'festival' was yesterday. obviously, being a foreigner myself, i went. i'll upload some pictures later. turns out that Phillippine (sp?) dancing is really cool. turns out that all you can drink for 1000yen is also pretty cool. before the night was over, ***REDACTED*** fun times, +1 for not being in the staff room

--gaijin who writes this
signatures go here

it's not always a party

2010-11-02T23:57:00.000-07:00

Hey, a blog post! the goal for november is 4. weekly or not, 4 posts would be good. I should be able to do that. i spilled coffee all over my desk & floor during the early stages of writing this, and I still managed to post in the same day. that's the kind of dedication i have.

the carpet's stained for good though i think. no amount of blogging is gonna fix it.

anyway, another week, another typhoon. no, seriously. last week had 3 days of constant rain, followed by a day of fog. look at this picture i took at school.

normally i can see the mountains on the other side of the field there. it reminded me about that shitty movie about the killer fog....what was the name of that movie again? oh yeah, it was called the fog and it was bad. this may be the tail end of typhoon season, but i'm looking forward to the next typhoon already. i get to go home early sometimes because of these things.

unfortunately, most of the people i know, Japanese or not, are scaredy cats about these, and no one wants to do anything. so, what to do?

yeah, exactly, translate video games into english. what else is there to do? me & my Japanese tutor (& part-time counsellor it would seem) just had a long talk about my unrealistic language goals. of course, no one tells me what to do, so that's why i bought 2 notebooks & sat down to translate the shit out of the latest Zelda game. i'm an hour and a half into the game so far and....have spent 90% of that time checking the dictionary. well at least now i know how to say 'water bombs' & 'hold down the Z button to target things that are far away,' both are useful day to day phrases, so its a good thing i undertook this.

if i had more visitors i could play Shogi on the piece of graph paper i bought @ the 100 yen shop that i have to weight down to play on. that's my Shogi board. pretty cool right?

yeah, basically rainy days are just as boring here as they are elsewhere. although the weather's cleared up this week. today was really nice and a national holiday too. it was culture day today, but don't get too excited, no one gave a shit and nothing exciting was going on. whatever. i'm not old enough yet to go hang out with the retired guys at the shrine and get drunk on a wednesday afternoon. or a monday afternoon. or basically any day of the week when i drive past there around 3:00.

things may be a little slow right now, but i just have to hold one more month for winter vacation. Osaka and Hiroshima are on the agenda. until that comes, my weeknights and rainy days will be occupied with the legend of Zelda, where I will endeavor to save the princess, slowly, very slowly. while consulting a dictionary. so far i need to check, on average, every 3rd word. but if i ever meet a Japanese person who needs to know how to use the water bombs, it will all be worth it.

--gaijin who writes this
signatures go here

this will be like being in high school again, kinda. i'm not getting a D in chemistry now so i guess that's different

2010-10-25T03:21:00.000-07:00

Damn, only 2 posts for the whole month of October?

guess that's what happens when you're sick though, you don't feel like doing anything productive and just sit around being sick all the time. I actually got better about a week & a half ago, until i got sick again last week. that's ok though, in Japan, the combined cost of seeing a doctor and buying some medicine is like 2 packs of cigarettes.

anyways, with a steady regimen of kimchi and kiwi fruits (remember to eat the skins of those too-that's where all the fiber is) I'm pretty sure i've blown away whatever was ailing me in a devastating blitzkrieg of vitamin C.

so anyways. i've got to deal with something over the next month or two that's gonna occupy alot of my time

How much do you like the DMV in wherever you're from? seems like most people, whether they're astronauts, bakers, accountants or whoever tend to have an unfavorable view of it. well I think i've only been there about 4 or 5 times, but yeah there's long lines and the people working there kinda suck and so on and so forth, probably the same kind of DMV stories that you have.

well maybe you think your DMV sucks, but do you want to know how bad it is over HERE?????

actually it's not bad at all, sure there's a language barrier (for me anyways) but it's efficient and not such an unpleasant experience. i mean it's not like there's a party or something in there, and there's definitely other places in Japan that i'd rather be at any given time, but it's really not bad at all to go there is all i'm trying to say.

yeah, if i wanna stay in Japan for another year (I do) i have to get a Japanese driver's license, cos the international permit only lasts a year. I guess i better hurry up and go driving in the United Arab Emirates while I still can! now if i were Canadian, or British, or lots of other things, I could just go to the DMV, sign a few forms and get a Japanese license. That's cos, in all those countries, you get a license from the national gov't. not so where in the USA, i've got a drivers license from my state. and that makes things much more crappier.

I have to take the written and driving test, which are of LEGENDARY difficulty. there's a local english teacher's forum i read quite abit, and regarding the tests, all the advice on there seems to range from 'just kill yourself now' to 'just kill yourself now.' there's pages and pages of stories about this thing, more than 1 person has failed before even starting the car. hey, safety first right? even my boss sent an email in which he basically said, 'you WILL fail this thing at least once,' well thanks. thanks, boss. it's good to have a nice vote of confidence like that. especially with so much riding on this test. if we get rehired but cant get a Japanese license, it seems like it'll be a guaranteed assignment to sulfur island. i can't remember the name of sulfur island. it's so volcanic that the 400 or so people who live there breathe sulfur all the time, and they all get checks from the government for it. i'll try to look that up for another post maybe. getting goverment money every month might be a nice consolation prize actually.

so, starting probably next month, i'm off to Japanese driving school, with the high school kids. the cost of driving school supposedly equals the cost of failing the test a few times. i'm not looking forward to spending my free time like that to be honest. i guess this would be the 2nd time in my life going to driving school. in the states you usually only go twice if you get a few DUI's. well at least this time i don't have to wait for a ride home afterwards.

so will Japanese driving school be a totally bonkers adventure? or just driving school? if i don't have anything to say about it next month, you can guess for yourself which one it was.

--gaijin who writes this
signatures go here

sickitude

2010-10-14T01:07:00.000-07:00

Why no posts lately? First I was sick, then I was simultaneously busy and sick, this week i'll be busy again. Next week i'll hopefully post something.

Yes, there was a sumo tournament

--gaijin

Japan is more interesting if you look at a flyer and imagine that something cool may be happening

2010-09-25T23:08:00.000-07:00

well, the hottest summer ever recorded in Japan is over, and it's starting to cool off here in this corner of the world, bit by bit. apparently there's once again snow on Mt. Fuji now, but I can't say for sure because i can't see it through the clouds between Fuji & my apartment. when it really starts to cool down, i think i'm gonna plug in my super Japanese toilet for the 1st time because i want the seat warmer on 24/7.

we also had typhoons #9 & #10 (they don't name these things), but those aren't a big deal. #10 didn't even pass over my part of this volcanic island chain on a rock flying through space.

there's been an international incident over here between China & Japan, which i imagine hasn't made the American news cycle yet. HAS IT? people are kinda pissed about it over here. as for me, i dont have much of an opinion on it.

personally, i'm alot more interested in this even though admittedly it has absolutely nothing to do with Japan. having found solutions for all other problems in the world and therefore having alot of free time, the UN selected earth's first ambassador to other species from beyond the milky way. yep, planet earth now has an official representative for dealing with aliens from space, maybe the UN knows something that we don't??? hmm.

other than that....

it's just business as usual here, really. which is why i've been suffering from some major writers block lately with this blog. i'm not saying i want to quit the blog, because that would be dumb. but nothing spectacularly interesting has happened since Tokyo Blipfest. my Japanese life has been shockingly ordinary lately,

to give just one example, sometimes I:

1.) get an electric bill in the mail
2.) pay the electric bill (that came in the mail)
3.) think about using less air conditioning

as i mentioned in my last post, i wasn't able to go to the 2010 Tokyo Game Show, an annual video game convention which is famous around the world, with people from EVERYWHERE showing up for it. My friend who did go had some really thrilling stories of waiting in line for 4 hours before the doors opened and waiting for an hour in each line to play any games. I WANTED TO STAND IN THOSE LINES TOO

the reason i couldn't go was a last minute Saturday work order to attend a school sports day, i don't have much to say about it honestly, pretty much your average kids' track meet with more ceremony, bowing and military marching than the American version. my expert source (i.e. just some guy) says these things were originally started as military excercises, you know, just to make kids miserable and/or get them ready for WW2. true or untrue? i don't know, how much do you trust just some guy?

anyway, today when I was on the train, 3 sumo wrestlers in kimono got on too. if i'm reading the flyers around my neighborhood right (i'm probably not) i think there's an upcoming sumo event right here in my own town, so that'll be cool if that's actually what the flyers mean. i'm gonna get one translated tomorrow.

but until/if that tournament happens, i don't have anything to say. I've been thinking of writing posts that aren't time sensitive when i'm feeling particularly motivated, then publishing them during the slow times. or just posting some pictures of my latest culinary catastrophes, although those images would be extremely offensive to any human being with eyes that likes food of any kind. of course until i actually produce something, this is just me talking to myself.

so stay tuned for my write-up of the sumo tournament!**

gaijin who writes this
--signatures go here
**the sumo tournament may very well be a figment of my imagination caused by my Japanese illiteracy

Dammit

2010-09-15T03:00:00.001-07:00

Update: I can't go to the Tokyo Game Show, dammit.

stupid school sports day....

--gaijin

barbarian at the tea party

2010-09-11T11:34:00.000-07:00

but it is a pretty good idea right guys?

the last week was mildly interesting here in Japan, we had the 9th typhoon of the year (these really aren't a big deal) and it passed over my part of the country before dying out. But they usually don't name storms over here, just give them numbers. We also had an earthquake drill at school. and i went to a tea ceremony, which is about as exciting as it sounds i.e. a totally off the wall bonkers adventure (with tea)

now back in college when i really had a boner for everything Japan related, the tea ceremony was something i wanted to see. i told everyone who'd listen 'see, this country's so cool they've got a ceremony for drinking a cup of fucking tea' but years later, i'd kind of forgotten about the tea ceremony. the only ceremony i perform with tea is digging through my pockets for change for the vending machine. so when i was invited to this one, i realized that i actually hadn't seen a legit one before, so i jumped at the opportunity and by that i mean i thought about it for 2 days before i decided to go.

it was sunday, so honestly what the fuck else are you gonna do, right? that factored into my decision.

this was actually my first time in a Japanese person's house. made some pretty good faux-pas('s?) too, i always try my best to make sure i do something wrong, you know, just so the people will remember me.

the next time i go to a Japanese house, i'll just say "it's gonna be a shockingly offensive evening, so let me just apologize now. i only know how to be polite in my own culture, btw your wife's hot."

when i took off my outside shoes, i touched the inside shoes with my hand, so i had to go back outside and purify my hands and for some reason, my mouth....? i don't remember saying anything bad....in fact pretty much the only thing i said the whole time was 'sorry,' repeatedly, over and over again. maybe they thought i was such an idiot for touching the shoes that i should purify my mouth pre-emptively to make up for the stupid shit i was inevitably going to say at some point.

also don't point at the altar, or even in the general direction of the altar or in any direction where you might be construed as maybe pointing at the altar or even thinking about maybe pointing about the altar. just trust me on that one.

the altar's for dead relatives and pointing is rude here! if someone in the western world invited you to their house for dinner, you wouldn't give the middle finger to their dad's ashes would you? i don't know, maybe you would, i'm not you.

My Japanese teacher's mom is also a teacher, a teacher of the tea ceremony. so this thing was being put on by her students, so they were all really deliberate and such about what they were doing. if you go to a serious ceremony like this one, i can tell you that you'll end up bowing no less than 2,605 times (i counted).

why is it so serious? i accuse this thing of having spiritual/ritualistic undertones related to Shinto, which i know fuck all about, so i'm not qualified to speak on it. i also accuse my parents.

THE TEA CEREMONY IS PRETTY SHORT ACTUALLY

1.) go sit in the garden

2.) the ceremony people come in so get ready to bow like, 2,605 times seriously damn

3.) eat sweets while the person makes tea and the host explains everything in Japanese. (seriously, eat them. it's gonna help you deal with step 4)

4.) drink some really unpleasant tea -- DO NOT VOMIT!

5.) bow some more, leave

6.) get in your car and go to CoCo's Curry House on Route 20, because it's awesome and all extra toppings are just 100 yen

total time: 15 minutes (+45 minutes at CoCo's because they really take their goddamn time. i'd get irritated if it wasn't so good)

and that was my sunday. experiencing new cultural things is always good i think, even if you do it little by little, and even if you don't end up liking whatever you went to go see. i actually thought the tea ceremony was interesting though, i'd go again, just not like every weekend or something. and on top of that, my previous question is still valid: what else are you gonna do on a sunday?

well if you live in Japan, your answer might be: the 2010 Tokyo Game Show.

Ever heard about TGS? it's famous. it's Japan's annual version of E3 basically, where new games are debuted and every Japanese & foreign nerd descends on Tokyo to see games, play games, buy games, and stand in 3 hour lines for EVERYTHING. the doors open at 10, people are already lining up by 6. TGS 2010 is next weekend, and Monday is a national holiday. i think i'm going! i mean on the one hand, it's gonna be a real pain in the ass to wake up so early to try to get in, but on the other hand, i really love standing in 3 hour lines so....

--gaijin who writes this
signatures go here

file under: 'why not?'

2010-09-06T04:55:00.000-07:00

so i decided to stop smoking those 4 foot tall cigarettes that i carried like a torch

a few weeks ago, in an effort to pass the time while my rice was cooking, i watched these videos on Penny Arcade TV. they weren't too bad, it certainly starts out pretty ghey but picks up as it goes along. anyway the videos were about 'chiptune' music, something which i was only vaguely familiar with (from hanging out too much at the college radio station) but hadn't really listened to. if you wanna know what chiptune is all about, you could watch the video at penny arcade, or google it, or even just keep on reading (the words on this page).

chiptune is what happens when people take apart old nintendos or famikoms (the Japanese version) or reprogram gameboys to make music with the 8-bit soundcards. or 16 or more bits for those using something above an NES. but the 8-bit sounds usually aren't the only element of the music, in fact that's the worst kind of chiptune there is, after all, if all people wanted to hear was an entire song composed of 8-bit sounds, they would buy an old game on the Wii Shop. most people making chiptune use the video gamey sounds to make VERY AVERAGE techno. my first thoughts after finishing the chiptune movie were somewhere between /shrug and 'meh....' but one thing i did notice was that alot of the artists were from Japan, so i googled a few, and noticed that alot of them were playing on the 4th. indeed, from the 3rd to 6th was the 1st ever Tokyo Blip (just another name for the same thing) festival. so i said 'meh' one more time, called up my friend in Tokyo and made plans, because i knew i wouldn't have anything better to do.

if the idea of completely taking apart old computers to make music sounds nerdy, it pretty much is. but one of my friends has been telling me that Japan is the place where you don't have to be embarassed about being a nerd, you can do whatever you want and not be judged by it. so i went to the chiptune show. we went friday and saturday night. the pre-party was at this really tiny venue in western Tokyo that we must've walked past about 4 times without seeing. i think that's the way to tell how hip and underground a place in Tokyo is: lack of a sign, and inside, it's a total dump.

we got there in time to catch the tail end of a bad set. there was a "girl" playing chiptune with just the 8-bit noise, "she" even covered the legend of zelda theme....why would you do that? we've heard it over 15 years ago and you can't do any better....? btw are you wondering why those 2 gendered pronouns were in "quotes?" it's because "she" used to be a "man."

next up was a guy named BokusatsuShoujoKoubou, BSK if you prefer, from Fukuoka. he was ok. he gave us some stickers with his logo, which is a really cool Japanese demon thing, i put one on my backpack then took it off after running the Kanji through a dictionary and finding out what his name meant
bokusatsu (-suru verb) beat to death
shoujo little girl
koubou workshop
that would've been a bad scene, walking around with that on my backpack. thankfully i have an IPHONE, with a free dictionary app only available for IPHONE (and iPad, if you're an asshole and have one). I also really enjoyed the idiot who played after BSK, he wrecked his gameboy and sampler halfway through his set in a fit of joy, the gameboy was on display for the rest of the night too, he completely shattered the screen. and that was friday

saturday was better. it was in a different part of town, in another basement venue, but this one was much more spacious. we saw YMCK? YMCK is well known enough in Japan to be on Japanese Itunes, also, they programmed their own iPhone app. but what do they sound like? crap, basically, although your mileage may vary. just search YMCK on youtube. Blogger didn't want to upload my videos. but it's 2 guys and a girl who really overdo the whole NES nostalgia/fetish and present it in a way that's a little too cutesy Japanesey for my taste. when something's this hard to listen to (IMO) even heavy drinking during their set doesn't help you.

i have another shitty video too of saturday night's headliner. i think he was using the soundcard from a Commodore64? anyways, it also wouldn't upload. his name was Trash80. you can youtube him? you know you could also watch the professionally produced movie that i linked to at the beginning....

yeah, kinda upset about the videos not uploading, because i really didn't take any pictures, it was dark and iPhone cams dont have a flash

despite all the video failures, it was still a pretty good weekend. i definitely had nothing better to do at any rate, and going to Tokyo is always guaranteed fun fun enjoy times. i bought a t-shirt, can your boring weekend top that? i'm glad i saw those videos on PATV and decided to go to this thing, after all, Tokyo is famous for its music scene among other things and this was my first experience with that. i wanna go again, but not before i buy a handicam or something else that does a decent job recording sound, and maybe a new blogging site that can upload a video?

--gaijin who writes
this signatures go here

get ready to take notes

2010-08-29T01:50:00.000-07:00

because this guy is amazing, and is teaching the kind of English that I've always wanted to teach.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TH_dKfBI40

--gaijin who writes this
signatures go here

look i wrote another novel

2010-08-23T05:35:00.000-07:00

all of them smoke, it was the gun that they didn't like.

*ahem* if you want to read this whole post, you should probly get some snacks and take a bathroom break first, cos I went for the word limit, not reading it is also an option, we live in a world of opportunities and the time is now

well the 1 month Japanese summer vacation is over, and on friday i'll be back at work, which is really too bad, because over the last month i was having a great time being in Japan with no work to do, and I went to some kickass places. there's nothing better than waking up on a tuesday and saying out loud, "fuck it, i'm going to SAPPORO, Japan's 5th largest city & the capital city of Hokkaido prefecture which is the northern island region, close to Russia....today. I know where sapporo is so why am i talking to myself like this?" *tooot toooot* that was the sound of the 11 o'clock exposition express, comes through these parts every blog post for the benefit of people living outside Japan.

i usually don't read the entire company propaganda pamphlets that come in the mail, but the last one basically, said 'summer break will be over before you know it!! dont miss the opportunity to try or do something new during your time off before returning to your life of drudgery, all meetings are now mandatory, you're slowly dying inside a little bit more every day.'

that was me paraphrasing the thing but here's a direct quote: "It's time to have an adventure! It's time to take the local train, not the express!"

"But I always take the local trains, so....maybe it's time to take the express??" he wondered aloud as he crumpled up the newsletter, throwing it carelessly aside without a second thought or bothering to read the...whatever they usually write on page 2, he wasn't sure. What he was sure of, was that if he would just go to the damn store to buy some more trash cans, he could throw all his mail in there instead of on the floor.

After a brief moment to reflect on the crippling laziness that was ruining his life, he made his way to the train station and blah blah blah plot development blah blah awkward romance scene, some cars or something explode and theres a chase scene in there somewhere and they kill a vampire/werewolf, the end."

had i known how stupidly long it takes to travel over 1000km by train, i would've bought the $150 plane ticket and spent the savings on pocky....why did i link that? you know what pocky is, anyway how bout that train adventure?

the train itself wasn't much of an adventure really, took 20 hours and the trains were basically devoid of life because people don't really commute over 1000km to work on a tuesday (on the way back, sunday).

but during an hour stop in a small city called Hirosaki, I met and talked to a girl named Yuka, who instantly earned a place on my 'top 5 craziest people i've ever met' list. not crazy in the sense like, "wow that girl can drink you under the table and parties like crazy!" no....no, crazy as in she was literally rubbing her ass all over a vending machine when I first saw her, and while I know that sounds like the beginning of a beautiful love story, sadly it was simply not in the cards....this time.

She kept asking me over and over if i saw the "Nebuta" festival (i looked it up later, and yes it's real not a hallucination) and why I was in Hirosaki. When I had to catch my train, she gave me a box of matches from Mister Donut....WTF????!? i mean, seriously, why can you get matches at a donut shop? also why did she give them to me is another question that came to mind.

Hirosaki JR Station.
Manila (i was only making a transfer to America).
The Athens airport.
LAX. why do batshit crazy people around the world feel the need to talk to me, of all people? do i have a look on my face that says, "sure, sure go ahead and come talk to me, i'll tell you exactly which firefighters are secretly plotting against you and exacctly what type of alien put the tracking device in your skull."

well the last i saw of Yuka, she was walking away, looking extremely confused. not as confused as me though. and i'll admit i was was mildly curious what she was going to rub her ass on next, and i still have the half empty box of matches

because i never know what my astral plane spirit guide will want me to burn next

Japan is somewhat famous for random craziness, as in the manga tv and anime that they export makes some people wonder what kind of country does it take to produce that kind of stuff? but the people in Japan who are legitimitely crazy? i don't want to disparage them too much. these people need some help! but me and my friends laughed about Yuka's story, probably because we don't meet people like that everyday. if we lived in tokyo, that kind of encounter would barely even register.

anyway, i was talking about going to Hokkaido by train. I guess I got....sidetracked! *ba-dum* *tish*

.
..
...
....i'm really sorry about that.

it was definitely cool to see different parts of Japan that I wouldn't have seen had I taken the plane. The coastline is especially beautiful, but I couldn't take quality pictures or video from inside the train because of glare on the windows.

traveling on express trains in Japan is almost like being on a plane, albeit a retardedly slow one. i only say that because, like a plane, express trains have stewardesses too, who want to sell you a variety of overpriced snacks and drinks. but i boarded the train with a few bottles of tea and some sandwiches. hours later, i was all out of tea and sandwiches, but on the other hand i'd reached Sapporo, so overall i'd say I came out on top.

Sapporo, being located where it is, was a few degrees cooler than my area, which was nice because it gets pretty hot in Japan. another cool thing is the city is really easy to navigate. it's growth having been carefully planned from day one (which is unique to Japan), the whole city is laid out as a grid with addresses based on how far from Odori park they are,

this long park right here with the igloo, i took this picture from the top floor of the TV tower, another landmark. the grid makes getting directions really easy. There's no confusion about where "North 5 East 3" is.

There's also no confusion about where the party is. Vertically from S2 to S5, horizontally from W3 to E1-ish, anywhere you go in that general area is the Susukino neighborhood. wanna see some pictures of a crazy Susukino party with free-flowing booze and ladies of loose morals?

oops, wrong picture. but that garden was also crazy. indeed, most of my pictures from Susukino were deleted, by me, when I looked at them while sober. instead, i'm just going to show you the aftermath of someone else's drunken escapades through Nakajima Park

you fail bikes forever.

and you fail shoe repair forever.

ok, Sapporo, LET ME TOLD YOU SOMETHING, don't ever forget that:

now go to your room. btw, Nakajima park doesn't have much else going for it besides the late night bike-drowning shoe-breaking parties (unless you like greenery, it does have greenery)

i'm a big food tourist these days, and Sapporo has a few things going for it cuisine wise. just like Fukuoka in Kyushuu, which is the southern island, Sapporo has their own specialty ramen: "Bataa Koun Miso Ramen" (not making that name up, Japan uses a lot of loan words) which is ramen in a butter/corn/miso broth. oh and just so we're clear, we're not talking about shitty instant ramen noodles, these are real noodles. Anyway, Sapporo's ramen was alright, but as far as nonstandard ramens go, 'Hakata Ramen' a.k.a. 'tonkatsu ramen' a.k.a. 'hakata tonkatsu ramen' depending on who you ask, will always be my favorite.

In Fukuoka, go for the guys selling Hakata Ramen by the Nakasu river. In Sapporo, look for b/c/m ramen in Ramen Youkochou (ramen alley), something which everyone in the city can direct you to.

well there's 2 ramen alleys, this is part of 1. i know the next question you have is what's Sapporo's take on curry? well I was just about to get to that,

it's soup curry, and it's about as good as the quality of this picture. IMO, you can visit Sapporo, not eat this, and not miss out on anything special. i like curry to be thick, not something i dip Nan in. I guess one good thing I can say about Sapporo soup curry is that it provides you with energy that your body can use to maintain consciousness for awhile

finally, at the Nijo fish market (which is not pictured because the name pretty much says it all doesn't it?), you can eat really fresh sushi. or if you're a complete and totall jackass, you can buy a fresh fish at the market and take it to one of the sushi restaurants in the market where they'll cut it up and make you some sushi. but i didn't go to Nijo for sushi, I went for the local version of Oyakodon. Oyakodon means 'mother and child' and is usually chicken and eggs in a rice bowl. the Sapporo version is salmon and salmon eggs in a rice bowl

and this was the best, because these salmon eggs are a lot bigger than what they serve in the states. i know you can't see it in this picture, but these eggs look like little eyeballs because there's a grey/blackish thing inside each egg, a baby salmon i suppose but i'm not a science-doctor so don't take my word for it.

besides a fresh fish market, Sapporo is also home to #3 on Japan's list of Gakkari (disappointing) sights, the Sapporo clock tower.

and i know what they mean, because immediately after taking this picture, i was disappointed. see the small red stars on the building? the red star is kind of the logo for sapporo city

because it's the logo of Sapporo Beer, a name which is synonomous with Sapporo because...it's the exact same name. The Sapporo Beer company has been in S______ (this question is worth 5 points) for a really long time. Their original brewery is now a museum, free of charge and open to the public

where you can get drunk on the cheap. there's no info in English, but you can still learn something from going here, for example: "i like this beer," "the guy running the museum bar is an asshole" and

"this beer was made by teams of mice in red hats and blue hats."

guess that about does it for Sapporo. if i had some time off in february, i'd go back to see the ice sculpture contest. i think they made a Japanese castle one year. it's a great city, and now i've set foot on 3 out of 4 major Japanese islands, which means Shikoku is next on the list, then Okinawa and i'll try to hit a couple of the hundreds of smaller islands if i can.

Maybe i'll go see Nebuta too, this one person i met on my trip thought it was really cool...

--gaijin who writes this
signatures go here

natsu yasumi

2010-07-30T09:53:00.000-07:00

idiot in frog
suit says this blog is on break
till next month, sorry.

are you familiar with HAIKU?????!??!??!??1??!?! As in old Japanese poetry, usually taking the form of 5-7-5 syllables although other combinations of 5 and 7 are acceptable I think.

anyway, the haiku is the truth. my summer vacation started this week, a full month (asian summer breaks are only a month long, omg culuture alertt!!!) of nothing to do, and I don't feel like blogaloggin. i will be back with a recap episode in late August. until then...why not amuse yourself by writing your own haiku's in the comments section below?

don't know what to write? no creative juice? let me give you a few rei to start off with:

i went to mcdonald's this week, know what i saw?

asian girls eat-
ing fast food that could be a
sexual fetish

and one more

computer says: 1
0001
001

also:

K-Town is boring
time to go to sapporo
susukino yay!

by setting the bar low, will more people feel like posting??? be back in a month

--Gaijin who writes this
signatures go here

Edit: forgot to make a title again

2010-07-16T08:47:00.000-07:00

ok, i'll admit that that's true. i'm just wondering how the helicopter is in any way related

So yesterday, Monday was a holiday in Japan. What holiday? well....

the name Umi no Hi literally means 'Sea Day,' so I thought it must be some holiday about liking the ocean? i thought that would make sense, this being an island and everything, the ocean was probably an important part of life in Japan's history right?

So what do people do on Umi no Hi? sit around respecting the ocean while thinking about a sandwhich? enjoy watersports? all my questions around the office, in English or Japanese, were met with some major 4-dotting

Me: "What's the meaning of this holiday?"
Teacher: "...."

Me: "What do people usually do on Umi no Hi?"
T: "...."

Apparently (you know, according to hearsay and unfounded rumor), the Japanese navy was created on July 19th, many years ago. well why isn't the holiday called navy day? i think i might know why. here's something that happened at school about 2 weeks ago that i think might illustrate my point:

Asst. Principal: "There's only 5 periods today."
Me: "Oh, no 6th period?"
AP: "No no, no. We cancelled 4th period and moved 5th and 6th periods earlier."
Me: "but...but that...only 5..." /brainexplode
AP: "...."
Me: "Don't 4-dot. Ok. No 4th period, got it."

In other words the only person who knows what this holiday is about is probably the person who created, about...40 or 50 years ago I think? the planning process probably looked like this

oh shit copyrighted images on a blog. i heard South Park is banned in this country.

Since I had Monday off, I thought about going south to the nearest coastal prefecturue, where they've got plenty of ocean, unlike where i'm at. i figured, if anyone's having a festival or any kind of event, it'd be them. but no, someone just HAD to schedule their bachelor party for Sunday night in Tokyo, and just HAD to thoughtfully invite me along. so I went to Tokyo, to a hostess bar, which is not nearly as dirty as it probably sounds (and has nothing to do with snack cakes).

still, Monday was Umi no Hi, a national holiday, so i figured there must be something special going on. i poked around town for a bit, but i didn't see anything special. so in the spirit of the holiday, i went to the mall (which was open) and bought one of these

oh crap, you said sea day! (cue laughtrack, fade out to commercials)

--gaijin who writes this
signatures go here

Gaijin lake

2010-07-05T01:07:00.000-07:00

I don't remember doing anything special during last year's 4th of July. I think I was in Thailand maybe? I don't exactly remember. I know for sure that in 2008, when I was in Korea, nothing happened. After all, it's not a holiday celebrated outside of the States, so people from everywhere else don't pay any attention to it, and rightfully so, it's not their independence day.

But this year, I actually went to a party, we even shot fireworks.

you know, things that look like this? this party wasn't specificcally for the 4th of July, but there were enough Americans there that we decided to get fireworks. actually, everyone there was American, except for all the Japanese people. and the Australian guy. and the Canadian girl.

it was raining all night, of course, because it only rains when i want to do something fun. but with a little human ingenuity you can still shoot off hanabi in the rain. we didn't grill much though. even though we were able to keep a fire going all night (with a little human ingenuity, obv) no one wanted to stand over the grill with an umbrella all night.

That's not me

This party was at a lake. I didn't bring a tent (don't own one) so I slept in my car. In the morning, the lake looked like this

It was a fun night, at least 75% as fun as my recent escapades in 2 of Japan's megacities. you can't go to parties like this in Tokyo or Osaka, no, this kind of thing only happens in the inaka. maybe that's why some Tokyo kids came out to this party, because they just have to ruin everything everywhere.

next week, I'm going to a rooftop beer garden party dinner function event hoedown nomihodai. think it'll rain?

--gaijin who writes this
signatures go here

"Well don't that beat all! I reckon there's more'n 15 people on this here train. Don't see that in my prefecture, no sir." begins plucking banjo

2010-06-19T19:38:00.000-07:00

haven't blogged in...2 weeks or more? i've been busy, not just at school, which is of course a monday through friday commitment, but in the past 2 weekends i escaped the inaka and made it to 2 of Japan's most impressive cities, Tokyo and Osaka, so LET ME TOLD YOU SOMETHING about that

last week i met up with an old friend in Osaka. to get there from my side of the country is actually kinda complicated and expensive, but totally worth the effort. Osaka might be my favorite place in the world that i've been to so far, although it's hard to say why exactly. having said that, it's really a shame then that i left my camera at home isn't it? but, i more or less carry a computer with me wherever i go in the form of my iPhone (how many times do i have to tell you about how great it is before you just buy one already)

there's Osaka castle. it closes at 5, so don't show up @ 5:15 like we did thinking you can go up to the top. if you do go up, which i did 4 years ago, you can see the city of Osaka, which is famous for takoyaki (and other stuff) and here is a blurry picture of that

and heres hitachi tower

i think you can eat dinner up there? i don't really know what you can do there. it's too bad i couldn't spend more time in Osaka, but i had work on monday. still made time for a badass night of liver abuse in Dotomburi though. Osaka people stay out drinking there till the sun comes up, and i can respect that. i have a pretty lenghty vacation coming up, which i'm starting to plan out, and Osaka is certainly on the agenda.

this weekend was free, so i decided to go to Tokyo. i can get there by train, so i figured why the hell not. the world cup is on, and i'm not the biggest fan of soccer, but it only happens every 4 years so...watch it? that's actually not a good reason to watch something. but the world cup has been fun so far because the Japanese are using it as an excuse to go crazy (crazier than usual, that is) i watched the game in Tokyo's all night neighborhood, Shibuya, which looks like this

if you look in the bottom of the picture, you'll see the reason why i don't drive in Tokyo. that's a lot of road hazards? i've been to Tokyo before, 4 years ago, and certainly i've seen some pretty sizeable crowds in other places since then. still, exiting Shibuya station (which is also packed) and seeing what i can only describe as 'people ocean' still made me stop and say 'holy shit!!!! if only i knew how to make scrambled eggs, i could cook soborodon AT HOME' i also encountered a sound which I hadn't heard in 4 years

somewhere in the crowd here, a Japanese guy is screaming gibberish at everyone as loud as he can. everyone needs a hobby right? some people play tennis, or so i hear, while others may enjoy the underappreciated fine art of yelling at crowds.

you kind of get channeled in a big crowd like this, that is to say, you can't just move any direction you want because you will create an instant clusterfuck if you do. figure out how the crowd is moving before getting in there and trying to make your way to Freshness Burger, where a guy is licensed to make a Banana Cake

Japan tip #103: Don't buy banana cakes from anyone who hasn't been properly trained and licensed.

Japan tip #104: Don't buy banana cakes i mean what is that i dont even know

Japan lost to Holland 1-0, and for maybe 20 seconds things got pretty quiet. i only remember that because with all the constant background noise in Tokyo, it was hard not to notice the sudden quietude. then, i'm pretty sure i heard all of Shibuya yell 'Nippon!!!' at the same time, together. and i'm pretty sure they yelled it with 3 !!! rather than 2.

so Shibuya kept partying all night, either because they were still proud of their team or because they were still drunk. perhaps the answer is a little of column A, a little of column B. in any case good times were had by all, with the possible exceptions of a guy i saw dry-heaving over a trash can and the girl who couldn't stop crying for some reason (maybe crying is her crimefighting superpower though).

probably maybe the guy screaming at the Shibuya station crowd had the best time of all. i mean, who knows what's going on in his head?

but after the sun came up, the respectable crowd came out of hiding, the department stores opened, and while there will still like 10 million people crowded around me the mood had become much more subdued, by comparison. i ate some Hakata ramen before making my way out of the city back to the place where i can't buy Hakata ramen, a.k.a. the place where i live. my trips to the big cities was a really welcome break from life in the inaka. certainly there's fun to be had out here, but it's a different kind of fun, like climbing over 200 stairs to get to a temple on top of a mountain, going to some cool festivals and eating green tea icecream in the park. we might not have the energy of Shibuya or Dotomburi, but it's still not a bad place to live, i could think of worse. first thing that comes to mind would be caves, obviously. caves have bats, spiders, sometimes bears, and usually at least 1 werewolf. of course that didn't stop 3,500 Australians from choosing to live in caves, they can do as they like but i wouldn't want to live there

on the train home today, i looked out the window and watched the cityscape gradually change into wooded mountainsides, rivers and little mountain towns and i thought: "i really need to poop."***

THANK YOU FOR READING TOTALLY BONKERS GAIJIN ADVENTURES: KEEPING IT CLASSY SINCE 2009

--gaijin who writes this
signatures go here
***true story

Japanese iPhone saves the day (again)

2010-06-09T03:25:00.000-07:00

well my laptop, which I can't really say has served me all that well, decided that it would be cool if the keyboArd stopped working, and so, now I can't type any words with c, v, or h.

since I'm kinda morally opposed to increasing my (English) vocabulary at this point in my spirit journey, Im not planning on learning a shitload of new words to avoid 3 letters plus whatever other keyboard keys decide to break in the next few days.

so I'm blogging on an iPhone, my iPhone actually. But that presents it's own problems as well. No matter which way you hold this thing, you have to hold a magnifying glass to the screen ifn you wanna see shit. A broken keyboard may actually be easier to type on than this virtual keyboard thing where you kinda type with your thumbs (that's how I'm doing it, is that right or wrong?). Oh, and the battery life sucks, probably because of all the fancy pants graphics on here, and using the phones Internet costs some yen as well.

it's a good thing that this new generation of cell phones does pretty much the same stuff I use a computer for, email and what have you. but blogging is a pain on the ass with this, as such all blogs will be short & infrequent until I figure out something I can do for my Korean laptop. But hey, 今、私は日本語で書いてできる。don't know if those characters can even show on your screen or not. don't worry, it wAs entirely unimportant,

my final thought for today is, this is really fucking annoying

--gaijin who writes this from an iPhone
signatures go here

lose your erection

2010-06-05T10:19:00.000-07:00

what can't you buy at hard off? it's a secondhand store with an unfortunate name. you could even buy shoes here if you wanted, but the idea of buying used shoes isnt that appealing to me. they also had quite a selection of fishing poles and video games, as well as a whole bunch guitars, clothes, furniture even. pretty cool place actually. i bought a rice cooker there, then promptly ordered a pizza when i got home instead of trying out my new buy. i lead a life of constant excitement and adventure...

...literally. i think i'm making a trip to Osaka next weekend (thought it'd be this weekend), so that's pretty damn exciting, cos I haven't been there in 4 years, but i remember it as being a ridiculously cool place. so I hope it works out, cos the rainy season is ending, and i'm eager to get out of the boondocks, even though there's a hard off here.

--gaijin who writes this
signatures go here

2010-05-30T05:04:00.000-07:00

no update this week, i'm working on something to post later though

why you should learn japanese sign language

2010-05-22T18:55:00.000-07:00

because you can do this

--Gaijin who writes this
signatures go here

The endless joy of stereotypes

2010-05-13T06:30:00.000-07:00

Once, in Junior High school, in Spanish class, our teacher gave us a paper with a bunch of stereotypes that people from various countries south of the border had about Americans, the only ones i can remember now would be that American men drink beer for breakfast and if you live in an American city you either carry a gun or know martial arts. anyways the teacher's point was that people get certain ideas about America from watching our movies which are exported around the world. certainly alot of the kids in Korea thought that eveyr American has a gun.

so what kind of misinformed ideas do the Japanese have about us? I only learned one this week, I don't know any others, but this one made me chuckle a bit, to myself, on the inside.

Apparently, according to the teachers at my Wednesday school, alot of Japanese think that Americans never say "I'm sorry." Why do you think they think that? think on it for a second...i don't think you'll guess the answer though. it might be surprising.

I wish I could write in invisible ink or something here, the kind of text where you have to highlight it with your mouse to read it. anyone know how to do that? leave a comment below onegaishimasu

they think we never say "I'm sorry" because of lawsuits, as in when you say sorry you're admitting guilt so you can get sued later. funny desune? well, actually i think it's true that if you get in a car accident (in America) you never say sorry, cos you're admitting you were at fault and blah blah blah. these are the kinds of things i don't miss about where i come from.

but i explained that if i spill someone's drink, i can say i'm sorry cos no one would sue me for that. then later i thought, if i spilled a hot drink on someone...they *could* try to sue for it right? i'm happy to be living in a non-litigious society now! Litigious is the vocab word for the day.

you might read this and think it's completely fucking ridiculous, and yeah it kind of is. but sometime, why not put one of your crazy ideas about Japan in the comments, and i'll just go ahead and call you an idiot for having a stupid idea.

just kidding, i don't think anyones an idiot in this kind of situation. if you've never been to a place or never met anyone from there of course you'd have the wrong idea about the place. for example, i heard that they eat some pretty bland food in the Czech Republic. is it true, or false? mankind will never know.

--Gaijin who writes this
signatures go here

Yen power? Steps of Enlightenment? (double post & old pictures)

2010-05-04T09:32:00.000-07:00

Recently, some of my Japanese friends have been throwing around the phrase "En power." 'Yen' is pronounced "En" in Japan, so why is it known around the world as 'Yen' ????

My first trip to Japan, about 4-5 years ago, $100 would get you the equivalent of about $120 in En, but that was years ago, and things have changed. the dollar keeps going down, down to the point where the Japanese have a phrase for it, "doru yasu." "yasui" means 'cheap.'

this doesn't surprise me at all, because even before i left for Korea the $$$ was fucking up. you can go to Canada now and pay with American dollars because the exchange is almost 1:1. is the Amero coming soon? Goodbye, United States of America, hello N.A.U.

AMG IT'S HAPPENING!!!!! THE BIBLE!!! APOCALYPSE!!! THE 7 GREAT NATIONS!!! oh nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

so yeah, doru yasu. it doesn't surprise me. what does surprise me is that the En is on the Euro's ass, getting closer to 1 Euro = 100 En everyday. anyone who's ever changed dollars into Euro knows how much that sucks. when you walk away from the exchange counter in any EU country, you're probably thinking "Well, at least that was better than a kick in the nuts," but I have to disagree. i'd gladly take one right in the beanbag if it meant a few more Euro, cos that's a fucking expensive currency, and I can always just punch myself in the chest to get the blood flowing again down there. maybe that's not how it works. maybe that's just a placebo or something, all i know is that it seems to make me feel better everytime i get nut shot. punch yourself in the chest (more like stomach or abs) as hard as you can.

i'm talking about testicles by the way.

regardless, i'm happy about 2 things, #1, I already cashed in my dollars, #2, my salary is in En.

My Japanese listening ability is shameful, but it seems like the Euro's problem is....Greece? why does that not surprise me? Greece is a country where you can start a fire in the woods, plant a tree the next day, go to court and say 'that's my tree so this is clearly my land' and the court says ok.

The only reason I'm watching the Athens riots news coverage is because i've been there in Syntagma Square, therefore i'm more interested. when i saw the cops on TV shooting tear gas, my first reaction was 'that's Syntagma Square!!!! I bought ice cream there! it wasn't good!' I immediately looked through my pictures from my trip to Greece. if you go to Syntagma Square (and honestly, what's the point of going to Syntagma Square? go to Gazi, Ommonia, Acropolis, skip Syntagma) you'll definitely see some of these guys in front of parliament **beep beep old picture alert**

similar to London and Bangkok, these parliament guards stand stock still all day and never smile or react to whatever, even when tourists run right up to them for some funny pictures. a picture of you, and a guy standing next to you in an old-fashioned uniform with a blank expression. AWESOMESAUCE ON RICE !!!! well i should probably clarify, in Athens and London you can take pictures with the parliament guards. in Bangkok, the soldier with an M16 (looked like an M16) standing next to the guard tells people to fuck right off. AND THAT WAS WHY I DIDN'T ASK SOMEONE TO TAKE MY PICTURE WITH THE GUY

can i go on a tangent for a minute? oh right, right, it's my blog and no one reads it. ok here's something stupid for you to chew on (or you can skip it if you like)

************TANGENT TIME********************************************
Wat Arun is in Bangkok and it's the coolest temple i've ever been to, period, the end. I haven't been to Angkor Wat Cambodia yet, but that's irrelevant, and I don't want to diminish Wat Arun, which translates to "Temple of the Dawn" or something. this is one of the places that you should just physically go to rather than looking at pictures. this is one of those places that pictures just don't do it proper. well fuck it, let's show some pictures, because some people are too scared of Hepatitis A to ever go to Thailand. I didn't get any vaccinations for anything before I went and i never got sick!

i'm bad at photography

I SAID YOU pictures don't do it justice, and I SAID YOU i'm bad at photography

click the picture. click it

oh, i'd love to go up and down those steps again before going to the burger king on Khao San road. here's a tip for anyone who wants to go to Thailand: memorize where the places with air conditiong are, and go there alot. your body will thank you later when you're not dead from heat stroke.

BUT, if you want to go to Wat Arun, you have to find it first, which is no easy task. well...maybe it is an easy task if you're not using Lonely Planet: Bangkok to find your way around. Wat Arun is on the far west side of this lovely gradually sinking below the waterline city, which means the most efficient way to get there is crossing the western river on a boat. This much is true. Lonely planet directs you to the wrong boat, which puts you 2 solid klicks further away from Wat Arun than you need to be. well whatever, a 2 klick walk in the Thailand sun is no big deal right? my brain can always use a good boiling.

following lonely planet's directions takes you to a navy base, not Wat Arun. they were not happy to see me walk in the gate, the doberman did not want to play frisbee. but honestly you guys? if you were standing OUTSIDE the gate, it would've been easier to stop me from GOING IN the gate. and i can't read Thai.

for those keeping score at home, that was the 2nd time a lonely planet guidebook has tried to murder me. think lonely planet won't try to kill you too? try walking around any city in the world with a lonely planet map and send me an email afterwards. this entire tangent was about my burning hatred for LP

and a hooker told me the right way to Wat Arun before propositioning me with some lines that, heh, sounded like they were from Full Metal Jacket. you know the scene i'm talking about? hey, she spoke some english and pointed me the right way so it's all good.
*****AND THAT WAS TANGENT TIME***********************************

Thailand & Greece are so far apart, what do they have in common? they both like protesting, protesting alot, and protesting passionately. the 'red shirts' (i don't know Thai politics, can't explain it) are protesting in Bangkok lately, is it in the American news cycle? Don't read too much into that question, it's not a judgement, i honestly don't know what's on the American news these days. but the red shirts collected a bunch of blood donations and poured it on the streets, maybe you read about it? that's been going on for a month or so, and Athens apparently saw that and said 'hey we need to get in on that shit!'

the thing that really cracks me up about the Athens riots though...go back to that picture of the Syntagma Square guard. when I saw the video of cops shooting tear gas in Syntagma, I saw those guards, still standing there, not moving. Ok guys, there's a riot going on, did you see it? it was right in front of you. you're allowed to move now. someone should go to Greece and tell them they're allowed to move now. if you see the video of cops shooting tear gas in Syntagma, look closely, in the background, behind the police, you'll see the parliament guards. then the camera follows the cops down the street, away from parliament, and you can't see them any more.

but i should stop talking about this stuff, I don't know enough about economies to make an intelligent comment. all i know about economies is, when i want a cheeseburger, i go to Mos Burger and trade some En for a cheeseburger, compared to other people around the world, like some of the kids in Thailand, this is a luxury and i've got nothing to worry about, and it doesn't matter how much En or Euro I can get per dollar because I don't have to live on the street. so let's switch topics, check out this transition sentence. I don't know anything about economics, but I know I had a kickass Golden Week.

What do you do on summer vacations? naked Skydiving? Swimming with sharks? Bear taunting?

Those are all of my usual habits.

But this Golden Week, i didn't go for any of that crap, except for the bear taunting, which is a year round pasttime. fuck you, kuma-san, yeah maybe you can climb trees faster than you can run, but can you play nintendo with those claws?

I spent my golden week running around my prefecture and part of the next one, seeing what was up. there's more places to see in Japan besides Tokyo, Osaka etc., if you live in Japan, your backwater prefecture might actually be kinda cool if you give it a chance. i did lots. I found an awesome Korean restaurant a couple towns away from me, I went to Shizuoka city in the neighboring prefecture, which was awesome in every way, definitely worth the long trip haha, looking forward to going back

but i'm just gonna talk about one thing here, the Kuonji, the headquarters temple of Nichiren Buddhism is located right here in my prefecture! I don't know enough about the Nichiren sect specifically to TOLD YOU anything about that, it's on the same level as all religions in my mind, that is to say, I personally don't believe in any of them so they're all the same to me. well there is one difference that did stand out actually, it wasn't a Zen temple, so there wasn't one of those meticulously arranged rock gardens.

the town where this is is (basically, more or less) in the Mt. Fuji area, kinda. i found the temple on my phones GPS and thought, 'hey that looks kinda close to the train station' so I decided to take the train down, but that was a mistake. i should've zoomed in the map on my phone, because when I got off the train and loaded up the GPS Walking directions (beta), it turned out to be about 4 Klicks to this temple from the station. whoops! well it wasn't like i was about to turn around, get on the train for another hour so i could go back and get my car. i walked.

walking through this town, i didn't see anyone else around. I thought i lived in the sticks. i was wrong. this is the sticks.

again, can a couple of pictures capture the essence of a place? if you're a good photographer, then yeah, maybe. but i'm not so this is all you get. the town is mostly unremarkable, so walk 4km to Kuonji on an empty stomach, you'll know you're there when you see this

those big trees are one of Japan's national treasures actually, if pamphlets can be trusted. see those stairs in the background?

these are the bodai, the 'steps of enlightenment.' there's 287 of them, if pamplets can be trusted, but i stopped counting when my lungs reminded me that i'm a smoker and i coughed up my heart. there's actually 3 ways to the top of this temple mountain, the gentle incline of the women's path, the steeper men's path, or the steps of enlightenment. but i didn't walk 4km on an empty stomach to take the women's path! the steps of enlightenment don't look so bad when you're at the top

again is it bad photography, or the fact that pictures just can't represent the thing? i'll leave that as a thought exercise. so what's your reward for getting to the top?

greenery.

a 5 storied stupa (it's a word look it up)

a goldfish pond

lots of these...classrooms? lecture halls idk. those are little desks

Sake for dead people (ha! nice trap, but i've read enough Japanese comics to know that drinking dead people's sake is like instant bad luck)

ever play "Fatal Frame" for the Playstation2? if you didn't just look at those 3 pictures and imagine there were homicidal ghosts there

5-clawed Dragon painting on the ceiling. big deal right? can see this kind of thing at home. except the one on the ceiling in my room wasn't painted by a famous guy or considered a masterpiece. there's also not a painting on the ceiling in my room but, meh, details. hard to get a picture of this painting, it's on the ceiling and it was too big. i wouldn't rotate it if i were you, kinda fucks with the dimensions. just tilt your head sideways maybe?

the whole temple complex is huge, and since it's a headquarters of a whole sect of buddhism, it's pretty active too, with lots of monks running around and services going on, but I don't take pictures of people praying, or any service. how would you feel if some foreigners came into your church temple or mosque and took a bunch of pictures of you doing whatnot and whathaveyou? i don't know, maybe you'd be ok with that, i'm not you.

i walked back down the steps of enlightenment on my way out, thereby un-enlightening myself? still, still pretty good for a sunday, during golden week no less. what else is there to do on a sunday?

--gaijin who writes this
signatures go here

an awesome clusterfuck of greatness

2010-04-29T03:07:00.000-07:00

Today is a national holiday in Japan, which is fantastic, because my thursday school is a 30 minute drive up the side of a mountain. still have work tomorrow though, so this doesn't equate to a long weekend, just a day off in the middle of the week. pretty cool right?

the english name of the holiday is Showa Day, named after one of the former emperors i think. a trip to wikipedia didn't reveal which emperor it was, because alot of things have the same name...it's complicated. this is a complicated place. i don't really know anything about the holiday beyond the fact that i didn't have to go to work and the convenience stores were still open so i could buy some cigarrettes and kaarage, something which you english speakers know as fried chicken. which one is unhealthier though, is the really pressing question.

**tangent **one of my favorite unhealthy snacks ever was in Bangkok, where I found a guy who just sold bags of the crunchy fried parts of fried whatever for about 35 baht if i remember right. it was alot better than the boiled insects and things that looked alot like tacos but weren't that other vendors had for sale.

some people advise you not to eat street food in Thailand. these people are neo-nazi terrorist child predators **end tangent**

so what's this holiday all about? surely there must be a festival for it right? i'm sure there is, and i sure didn't go to it. actually one of the kids at school asked if i was going to the festival, but i already knew i was going to use today as a do as little as possible day. i'm sure the biggest celebrations are in places with more connection to the emperors. i even interrogated my english speaking co-worker about Showa day and can tell you that its not too big of a deal. no special traditions, holiday foods or anything like that. it's just a simple day off in honor of someone. i did some laundry and played emulator Zelda III, some kids played baseball next to the shrine down the street, and my neighbor hit his wife/girlfriend again(i would move my bed away from that wall if i could, go to counseling people!)

what this day really is is a precursor to an awesome clusterfuck of holidays collectively known as Golden Week, in which Japan took all the random one-off holidays and stacked them right next to each other. pretty cool, i know. imagine how great it would be if America did the same thing with its' collection of 1 day holidays, as in presidents day, labor day and (am i missing any) all in the same week as MLK day.

lets look at the holidays which make up Golden Week? "no hi" just means 'day of ______' and it's not pronounced the way you think,

May 1
Kinrou Kansha no hi -- this is literally, literally, Labor Day Part 1 in Japan, I shit you not

May 2
In Japan, days that are sandwiched in between other holidays like this become holidays, bonus! EDIT: turns out it's on a sunday this year :(

May 3
Kenpou Kinen-bi -- Constitution day, to celebrate the beginning of democracy here, ok this has a reason for being on May 3rd.

May 4
Midori no hi -- Green Day, eco-warriors throughout Japan wet their pants because this day is all about being thankful for everything we get from nature and blah blah blah. think on it for a minute though, does this day need to be right after Constitution Day? now we're starting to understand the rationale behind Golden Week

May 5
Kodomo no hi -- Children's Day, which for kids in Japan, Korea (and maybe China too? idk) is like a 2nd Christmas...in may. but why is it on May 5th? GOLDEN WEEK

EDIT: i didn't have my facts straight at all...this has been on May 5th since 600 CE, but it didn't turn into a national holiday until after WW2, not that you care because you don't get to celebrate it if you're not in northeast Asia. GOLDEN WEEK

Children's Day seems to be the most elaborate and tradition-filled of all of these, involving the flying of fish flags, elaborate dolls, eating special cakes, and the gifting of PS3's (i said you it was a 2nd christmas). by the way, "Children's Day" used to be "Boy's Day," DEAL WITH IT

BUT nothing is perfect, and certain things can make this holiday frustrating, not really this frustrating but frustrating nonetheless.

first of all, everyone decides to travel during this time, whether they're going back to their hometowns or just on their way to enjoy some whatever. this means 3 things for you. #1: all roads and transport will be crowded to the point of unpleasantness #2: all hotels will be booked, including the sleeping bag on the floor of the storage room #3: things magically become more expensive. that last one's kind of a kick in the nuts, especially since i haven't gotten a full paycheck yet.

ALSO! all banking & postal services shut down, so you need to get your cash beforehand. therefore, if you're new to Japan and aren't aware of Golden Week, it's possible to get caught with your pants down, as they say. if you live in a seriously out of the way place, like one of the minor islands, you might also see all stores, including groceries, close down.

I think this is what sprouted the urban legend of the English teacher who found himself during Golden Week with nothing to eat but one of those comically large Daikon radishes, which he apparently tried to ration out over the holiday. I know that story's not true though, because why would you buy one of those things in the first place? no one likes them. I call bullshit. still, the story was plausible enough for me to stockpile enough canned food in my apartment to survive the collapse of civilization, and come to think of it, i guess we never really know when that's gonna happen so...probably a good policy to follow in general.

not that i'm gonna be spending too much time in my apartment this week anyway, this much holiday is too good to pass up. the bright lights of Tokyo or Osaka seemed like a good idea at first, but I don't really have the cash yet to enjoy myself properly there. so I'm gonna be running around my prefecture and parts of the neighboring one, seeing this or that thing and doing all kinds of stuffs. that's the plan anyway

so enjoy your time off, America OH WAIT A MINUTE NO

--gaijin who writes this
signatures go here

and big edit: i consulted a "book" (remember those things?) and Showa day is actually meant to be a somber day to reflect on the 63-year up and down reign of the Showa emperor, more commonly known around the world as Hirohito.

Rule #1: you dont talk about Taiko club

2010-04-22T05:52:00.000-07:00

If there's one thing that i know for sure i did wrong in Korea, it was never getting involved in any kind of club or whatever outside of work. i learned that lesson well though, and when i was about to hit the 1 month mark here in Japan, i decided it was time to find something to occupy my time outside of work. so i put on my detective hat and got out my magnifying class to go search for some clubs to join. and clues. lots of clues. DNA evidence.

and tehere was plenty of stuff for me to join. i've said b4 that Japan is a country of festivals, well it's kindofa country of clubs too. want to learn Taiko drumming? there's a club for that. practice martial arts? there's clubs for each different kind, and some of them are free! want to play frisbee? sundays at 3, rain or shine. all sorts of shit, it's seriously endless. everyone has a hobby afterall. some people play tennis, some people's interests are more questionable.

furries, i'm looking in your direction, and i dont like what i see..............................................................nah just kidding, whatever floats your boat you fucking freaks

BUT, while alot of the clubs on offer are interesting, and would certainly be a worthwhile timesink, they're kind of confined to that one time a week that you go to the club. and by that i mean, if i joined the taiko club, i cant take the drum around with me and play it on the subway, or if i started learnin some jujitsu, it wouldn't help me communicate in the teacher's room...or would it....

certainly music and martial arts are worthwhile activities, but everything you choose to do is a time commitment. that's really the problem right there, it's not money, it's your time, you only have so much free time. so you don't want too many things on your plate as they say, and i've always preferred for my free time to be pretty loose. so one club is enough for now i think, until my new "Friends of Mos Burger" club gets up and running. it's been unexpectedly difficult to get that going though, because every time i try to talk to them about it they keep telling me to place an order

so, until i can succesfully talk to the manager, i've decided to commit my time and money to a Japanese class. not as interesting as taiko, not as fun as the Korean art of the kick and the punch, but worthwhile. afterall, I live in Japan don't I? it only makes sense to try to learn how to talk the people around me. especially the kids at school, because i need to learn their stupid dodgeball rules. goddamit kid, where i'm from, if you throw the ball and i catch it, YOU'RE out, not me, YOU

a trip to the 100yen shop got me all the notebooks and pens and whatnot i needed. in retrospect, i was way more excited about class than i should've been. everythings said in japanese of course, what would be the point if it wasn't? but as i'm sitting in there, slipping back into my bad habit of just listening for key words, my excitement about class faded when i realized that i'd overlooked 2 crucial facts: 1.) Japanese is really hard 2.) I hate studying. no, not the most fun i could be having, but hopefully something thats gonna pay off. because otherwise the only way i study is listening to the radio while i'm on the road and trying to learn 1 word a day. if you learn 1 word of a language every day, you'd probably die of old age at least 3 times before you actually learn the language. so i need someone to direct my learnin

Now that I think about it, i could've shortened this alot if i'd just posted a picture of a cat sleeping on a piano or something and underneath it wrote "i joined a Japanese class." whoops...can i just do that now?

i joined a japanese class. the end.

--gaijin who writes this
signatures go here

It sounds harsh but it's the truth

2010-04-21T04:45:00.001-07:00

i can't take any credit for the picture, as awesome as it may be.

--gaijin who writes this
signatures go here

No ones taller than the last man standing

2010-04-16T22:52:00.000-07:00

I think it was around 4th or 5th grade when I started to suck at soccer. Around that time, there was always some other kid who could handle (soccer) balls better than I could ever handle balls. When I played soccer before then, there was no strategery whatsoever, you see the ball, you yell "ball!" and run to it, kick it if you can, doesn't really matter which direction. But then we got older and all of a sudden the other kids learned all this fancy footwork and shit that I just couldn't deal with. So, like anything else that's hard in life, I quit.

I still think that's valid by the way. If it's too hard, if it stresses you out, just don't do it. Like math for example. I'm proud to say that I've naturally over time unlearned all math from algebra onwards; i don't use it at all, and neither do you, so quit lying. Erin (J) would be the only exception, cos she's a math major and knows 19 different ways to murder you with that shit. but, all the maths that i need is simple subtraction. There is (X) amount of yen in my post office account, subtract (y) amount of yen to keep the internets on, make sure you pay by (D) day. and the amount you have left over after that is enough for one (1) badass night of drinking with Ogawa-San (not Natsu-San, she doesn't like me).

back to the anecdote! soccer! we all know it's a stupid sucky game, but the kids sure like it, because they just don't know any better. and when they say 'yatte miyoo!" how can i say no? well i could say no, but then i'd be an even bigger asshole.

Now i'm a heavy smoker (outside of school [except for my tuesday school, where I can smoke all i want]), so after about 5 minutes of running, i'm coughing wheezing and collapsing. but it doesn't fucking matter! because i'm taller than these kids and my legs are longer! they wanna do their fancy footwork and try to get past me? fuck no, I can take a ball from them just because of my wingspan...legpspan? i don't fucking know. all that matters is, compared to these kids, i'm the best, and they suck.

I'll say it one more time for the cheap seats:

THE KIDS ARE LOSERS & I'M #1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

but you already knew that.

vindication is sweet. I was never the biggest kid on the playground, but I am now. dogeball, basketball, soccer? i'm the first one to get picked. it's true that these kids can run faster and longer than i can (where does all that energy come from?), but there's only so much they can do when they're up against someone who's 80cm taller and 40kg heavier. VINDICATION!!!!!!!!

but! i actually got eliminated in volleyball on monday. i got careless. I was getting ready to power a shot at one of the 6th graders I didn't like, when a little girl from my 1st grade class popped me in the leg. there were many jokes at my expense, of course, and i deserved it. just goes to show you that no ones taller than the last man (or wo-man) standing.

oh yeah, occasionally during the week i taught english

can you believe i'm getting paid to do this shit??

--gaijin who writes this
signatures go here

Here's that video

2010-04-13T05:49:00.000-07:00

Here it is, if you care

Only other thing I have to say is, since work started for real this week, this is the point when the posts are gonna
slowwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
dowwwwwwwwnnnnnnnnn

My goal from now on is one post a week, probably on sundays. and that would be saturday for people reading from the states, because I live in the future now.

--gaijin who writes this
signatures go here

We fight and die for Panasonic (and its' subsidiaries)

2010-04-06T05:04:00.000-07:00

Samurai's in K-Town!? OH SHIT TIME WAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP

actually, I didn't find and enter a time tunnel (i still want to though), it was just the annual dress up as samurai and get drunk while some guys ride horses down the street festival.

Japan, much like Korea, is a country with alot of festivals. They can find a reason to make almost every occasion a festival. Is it peach picking season? PEACH FESTIVAL! Some guys with a death wish ride 12-ton logs down a mountainside every 7 years? LOG FESTIVAL! I'm actually kind of kicking myself for not knowing the log festival was this weekend. guess I have to wait another 7 years to watch someone get crushed by a log (at least one participant has died every single time I think). There's also a penis festival, which happened a couple weeks before I came to Japan. Apparently there's a kind of parade and people wave around these big phallus things or something...now that one's kinda confusing to me, is it a gay pride event? Or just a celebration of what makes us guys? I'll find out next year!

But this particular samurai festival I was at is all about this guy, a samurai daimyo who was undefeated in his military career and...i'm boring you aren't I? I'll stop now. I mean, this weekend I learned all these interesting stories about the local samurai clan from long ago, but I'm aware of the fact that it's only interesting to me and other people with boners for history.

regardless of how much you like history, this event is pretty damn cool (IMO) and worth checking out if you're in the area in early April. The way it goes is: for 3 days the whole town celebrates Shingen Takeda's life and career. There's a "castle park" here, which isn't actually a castle but just the grounds where the castle was, and a few walls. Anyways a bunch of vendors set up here so you can buy food, beer, souveneirs...worth checking out, the food was good, allegedly there's some vendors who sell the kind of snacks that people had during medieval times, but I wouldn't recognize those if i saw them. I just ate some tako yaki, hootoo (to everyone who just read that word and said, "who too?" YOURE WRONG), and fried chicken, the most authentic Japanese snack of all.

Saturday is the day to go if you've never seen it before. People from all over the prefecture get dressed up in samurai armor with all the props and parade through the city, and the generals and the actor playing Shingen ride horses down the street.

But even better yet, there's some young totemo kirei-na ladies who put on the samurai armor too, which equates to a bizarre kind of sexual fantasy that I didn't even know I had until yesterday.

I actually tried to dress up as a samurai about 3 haloween's in a row back in the states, but I only had a kimono and some wooden bokken swords, so basically I just showed up to these parties in a bathrobe more or less. but if you sign up for it, you can actually put on the armor and march in this parade, and nothing, NOTHING will stop me from doing that next year. it's #6 on my list of things I want to do before I die, in between "cut down a tree" and "eat an endangered species."

If there's anything else you need to know about Japanese festivals, it's that you're basically gonna be drinking the entire time. That's a big part of what makes it so festive, afterall. They were giving out free Sake yesterday and I drank with a spearman from the PANASONIC regiment, I don't think that was really a part of Shingen's army, but hey fuck it this is the year 2010.

I did try to take pictures of Shingen and his wife, the horses and stuff like that. but there were a shitload of people here and I couldn't find a good spot to take pictures from, so not many of them came out well. Next year though I'll be part of the action so I should have plenty of photos of the person standing in front of me. For right now, I can offer you this horrible quality shaky-cam footage of a 6 minute Taiko routine with a shitload of background noise. you can actually hear a melody if you listen for it. I think i'll buy a real video camera when I get paid. EDIT: the video link wasn't working at all, so I took it down. I'll put it on youtube later maybe and just link to it, so...keep an eye on this post (if you give a shit about Taiko drumming)

--Gaijin who writes this
signatures go here

Everyone is D.W.A.

2010-04-03T01:33:00.000-07:00

Whoops, thought i moved to Japan, guess i went to new york by mistake. ruh roh

Oh yeah, this blog has 1 follower now. Thanks Ken! one day i'll be king of the blogosphere, which incidentally is a word that i hate.

I got the above photo in our prefecture capital, I guess I shouldn't say the name, cos that will give away my location, and I've been doing such a good job of hiding that. err...well i guess that poll I had going had the name of this town on it. ewps. whatever, (basically) no one reads this, and I dont think an employer would ever find it, or look for it. still, i think i'm gonna stay anonymous for a good long while anyway. why risk it? let's just call the place K-TOWN!

but a couple people answered the poll about where i should go this week, seeing as how i had all this time off. so i looked at that and i went over to K-TOWN! for a bit, because i actually wanted to go there more than tokyo (i need more cash to go there IMO) and i had a meeting there today as well. now i can take the train over there for about 200 yen, but the boss said, 'hey why don't you drive over, it'll be good practice.' so that's what i did, cos i didn't know any better.

well i learned my lesson, i'm never fucking doing that again, ever.

it took me a solid hour to drive to K-TOWN! today. K-TOWN! is 25 FUCKING KILOMETERS FROM MY HOUSE (and that would be less than 20 miles if you're from the states. oops i meant less than 20 FUCKING MILES, sorry)

i don't like to make broad generalizations, stereotypes i guess. but i can't help but notice something. when you crossed a street in Korea, it was kind of up to fate whether you actually made it to the other side or not. similar situation in Thailand, where many people actually buy their driving licenses. do you see where i'm going with this? i guess that makes me a bad person, but still, think about it anyway.

they say that the average speed you would drive in tokyo is about 8mph with all the traffic and stuff. i can certainly believe that, after today's shitshow. where do all these cars come from? dang it guys, go green already and don't drive ur cars! which is what i will be doing from now on, any time i wanna go there, i'm taking that train.

there's just too many road annoyances on the way to K-TOWN! and honestly, i'm just not gonna deal with them ever again. now my town has it's own little problems such as the roadside death ditches and the one lane roads with cars trying to go both ways. but at least around my neighborhood i dont have to deal with

-suicidal cyclists
-homicidal bus drivers
-people parking IN the road (STOP DOING THAT!)
-overly ambitious pedestrians, also suicidal
-fucking taxi drivers

man, if you ever drive in Japan and you see a taxi, just get the fuck out of its way. they are GUARANTEED to do some really stupid shit. i don't usually talk to myself but the whole time i was driving "dude, CUT THAT SHIT OUT" is the only thing that was coming out of my mouth. why are people stopping their cars in the road?!!! i mean, in my mind thats the kind of thing you'd usually do in a parking lot, am i fucked in the head or something?

here's a parking lot btw. my car is the blue one that's blocked in. i would've been pissed off but it's all so fucking hilarious

i tried to take some video of the traffic, but it seemed like every time i hit record cars would start moving again. i actually took a wrong turn when i started out and ended up on the freeway, and i didn't really wanna challenge the Japanese highways yet but once you start going up those on-ramps, obviously there's no turning back. well it's a good thing i did get on the freeway actually, because if i hadn't i never would have gotten to the place on time.

ah, but now i must riff about the highway. i certainly am getting sidetracked today, but it's been a weird day. now i'm legally illiterate in Japan, cos I can't read enough kanji, but this hasn't been a problem so far when i've been driving around, because Japan has thoughtfully made bilingual road signs, just for me. and that feels good. but the signs on the highway...aren't bilingual. now there's 2 things hurting me here, 1st, i can't read the signs and 2nd, even if i could, i'm not good enough with kanji yet to read them at 80 km/h. that shit's not fair Japan! make new signs!

i'm still kind of amazed i got to this thing on time. when i sat down at my seat, I looked at my watch and it was exactly 2:00. which means by Japanese standards, I was about 5-10 minutes late. but the meeting wasn't being run by Japanese, so who cares! the fact that this was one of the most pointless meetings i've ever been too kind of added to the fun of the whole experience. Well i guess that's a corporation for ya, they can afford to pay 30 people to sit around for 2 hours holding their dicks.

i'm about to head out for some food and fun, but before i go i'd like to say a few words to some people who appear to need some encouragement or something. so this is an open letter to all cyclists, scooterists, and motorcycle enthusiasts of Japan.

Dear people who ride anything with 2 wheels instead of 4,

Hello guys and girls. I'm new in town but already I can't help but notice that you seem to want to kill yourself using my car and your cycle. But have you ever considered that maybe, instead of trying to end it all, there are other alternatives for you, such as riding the bus or taking the train? Cheer up! Ganbatte! Life is worth living! Please QUIT FUCKING AROUND (or zakennayo, if you prefer).

Respectfully yours,

--Gaijin that writes this
signatures go here

Gaijin bachelor cuisine part 1: Miso! (with pictures ofc!)

2010-03-30T03:16:00.000-07:00

oh mosburger, where would i be without you? well certainly "gourmet" burger places exist in the states, but not like this one, oh no, not like mosburger. mosburger is exclusive to Japan. seriously, you can get busted at customs if you try to smuggle it out, if people outside Japan knew about this place..............

and i know the picture doesn't do it justice, but mosburger is really fucking good and i'm a fan, is basically all i'm trying to say here. xpensive though, which is why, in an effort to conserve cash and lose a few kilos, this kind of thing should be an occasional treat. eating in is much cheaperrrrrrrrr OH SHIT NO ITS NOT

man, i dont know why i kept thinking that groceries are cheap in Japan. nothing's cheap here! i so should've known! i'm just trying to think of what gave me that impression in the 1st place, maybe there's an awesome store or something i cant remember? INB4 "100 yen shops dude" NO!!! 100 yen shops sell junk food! of course they do sell it for just 100 yen, nothing wrong with that...

NO! i deserve the best and you all know it.

now when you don't really know how to cook anything properly, and even if you did all you have to work with is a pot, and you live alone, you might be thinking that your options are limited to those ramen packets, milk and cereal, sandwhiches and instant coffee. that's what i thought anyway, until today.

after M. San helped me with some official stuff I never would've been able to do on my own, like applying for the Gaijin card (the ARC), and opening my post office account (in Japan you deposit your money at the post office!), we both decided that it was time for me to lose the training wheels, and try to be self-sufficient. yep, i'm now an independent man in Japan (i hope), thx to M. San. but before sending me on my way, she kindly showed me a couple of things at the grocery that 'even you can do.' (me) of course i could only remember 1 a couple hours later. maybe i lost the training wheels too quick like? maybe maybe not, because i've graduated from making my award winning "cereal in a bowl with milk in it" to making miso soup, kinda.

warning warning: you will most likely find this uninteresting

now even in the states you can buy packets of miso soup, complete with tofu and seaweed and all that shit. well FUCK THAT i say, when you can make things more complicated and difficult for yourself, do it, that's always been my motto.

wait what? no, thats not my motto at all nevermind the fact that i dont even have one. i totally would buy those packets of soup if they sold them more than one at a time and each one made more than 1 serving. but you have more options for making your miso here in Japan, up to and including making all the broth and stuff from scratch but hey lets not go bonkers here, if it takes more than 20 minutes to make i'm not interested, and neither should you...be. interested in that. SO...

you need a box of miso...paste? goop? idk what this shit is. just buy it, it looks brown. bonus points if you can't read the box. ~~200 yen. now boil some water!

hey look, something i can read! this is dashi. ~~200 yen for a packet of 10, which brings us up to $4 total. now, i have no fucking idea what dashi is exactly, but i know that i need it. well, M. San said i need it or else the soup will taste like hell, and she hadn't lead me astray before so...

in it goes! hard to make out the details in that pic, but this stuff looks and smells like fish food, the pellets kind. i think she said you're supposed to add this stuff bit by bit, until you've got the kind of taste you want but FUCK IT! i'm a maverick! just toss that whole fucker in there

now scoop up some of your miso goop and toss it in, you want to add somewhere between one scoop and a shitload of scoops, but i dont know, because i dont own any kind of measuring device.

now stir all this shit up with your amusingly long chopsticks. seriously these are foot and a half long chopsticks. finally, it's time to taste test your soup. did you fuck it up? chances are you did, especially if you were following these instructions. but listen! that's not important. what's important is that you end up with microwaveable leftovers. i think that's like the ultimate in lonely bachelor cooking, you go throught the effort to cook a pot of something once, and then you can eat twice, or maybe even 3 times if you dont have my kind of appetite. and when you do all this for 400 yen, taste doesn't even enter the picture now does it, gaijin guy? no, because you've just transitioned from "i'm spending an average of 1000 yen per day on food" to "i've been eating the same thing every night for 5 years for not as much money," which should be your goal. now let's give it a quick rundown with an out of 5 grading scale that i'm making up as i type

MISO SOUP
Ingredients: 2 minimum (plus boiling water)
Price: 400 Yen (can make it about 4 or 5 times probably)

easy to make? 5/5: it's easy!

easy to fuck up? 3/5: mine smelled like really salty vodka for some reason

is it good? 3/5 maybe? idk. how much do you like miso? you know you could just add in whatever kind of extra stuff to this that you want...if you're made of money maybe

OH SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT did i just write a whole post about boiling water? someone needs to turn off my internets

--GAIJIN that writes this
signatures go here

arm the photon torpedoes

2010-03-28T06:50:00.000-07:00

unnecessary picture is unnecessary
one of the things most people seem to know about japan is that theres alot of people on a series of smallish islands, hence, it can be a bit cramped, especially when it comes to how much space is available for your apartment. well this is certainly true in Tokyo, where awesome people are able to take a shower and fry an egg AT THE SAME TIME :0 it doesn't seem to be the same case out here in the sticks, which is where i am, more or less.

I've believed for a long time that if you always set your expectations low, you'll be pleasantly surprised more often than not, hopefully that makes some sense. on the way to the apartment, i was expecting either an old, shitty apartment, a hilariously small apartment, or some combination of the 2. after all, who the fuck am i and why should anyone go to the trouble of getting me a nice place? i pretty much based this assumption on 2 things--#1, my apartment, and my co-workers apartments in Korea were shitholes (and they rented for about 100,000KRW/month i believe, which would be why our rent was comped by the company). #2, everyone who has ever blogged about living in Japan, and the discovery channel, says Japanese apartments are small. perhaps comically small

i was really starting to wonder what kind of place i was gonna get stuck in as M. San drove us down those awful narrow streets with death ditches on the sides, past a shrine and a bunch of fruit fields. orchards maybe. imagine my surprise when, after heading up to the 2nd floor of "Leo Palace" (who's Leo?), it wasn't a depression-inducing shithole the size of a phone booth. in fact ITS ACTUALLY PRETTY NICE, and new. i even have the luxury of some extra space where i'm like, 'wonder what i could do with this space?' that's not what most EFL teachers are saying in this country, i reckon. hell, there was even enough space for them to put the toilet in a seperate room from the shower/bath, which was traditionally important to Japanese. one activity's dirty, the other isn't, can you guess which one is which though, is the question. so i could say i have a toilet room and a shower room, but i think i'll just prefer to say i live in a 2 bathroom apartment. 2 bathrooms

oh and btw guys? i have one of those Japanese super-toilets, not one of those squatter things. these things come equipped with a seat-warmer, power deoderizer, and a bidet, but i haven't plugged it in yet, because with great luxury comes great utility bills i'm guessing, although i'm definitely plugging this thing in during the winter. i used to think that, as far as houses went, double doors (in my mind) were the biggest sign of wealth and success, but now i know its a toilet with a control center, which you can see above. 5000 bonus points because it looks like its from star trek, so you can shout 'arm the photon torpedoes!' or something similarly stupid while you're making turd islands (shoutouts to turd island, if you dont know who they are, dont let it keep you up at night)

quick tangent here, is it possible for me to be retroactively pissed off about the shoddy state of my apartment in korea? can i do that? i wanna do that.

i think one of the biggest complaints (about apts.) from my compatriots in korea was no air conditioner or heater. well not only do i have both, i have an Ion sprayer or something. according to M. San i'm supposed to turn it on when i 'want to feel good.' doesn't that mean it should always be on?

blue radiation in blurry motion

now if you're dumb, you're probly all like "so you have to sleep on the floor in japan right? derp." NO

you know how you always stash things under your bed? well Japan decided to make that into storage space, because thats efficiency! I can also use it to hide from werewolves, so it's sort of a panic room, basically.

now, i guess i should apologize for bragging about this place so much. after all, i know at least a couple ppl who might possibly be reading this are still in the ROK. i guess i just wrote all this stuff so that there would be something to accompany this series of pictures that wouldn't be even remotely interesting otherwise. well no place is perfect. my rent isn't comped here and it's really expensive for 1 dude. and this place is really out of the way down those mind bogglingly small streets that really stress me out, the staircase is a deathtrap for drunk people (which i will occasionally be), and there's apparently a yakuza living here. also: werewolves. but i hope that, no matter where you're reading from, you can good naturedly share in my joy about my video intercom, and the almost endless potential it presents for fun at someone else's expense

if someone rings my doorbell, i'm prompted by a red flashing light to push a big button with the Hanasu (talk) kanji, and i'll then be able to see on the screen who DARED to ring MY doorbell, and they can't see me, which means i could say all kinds of stuff just to watch the look on their face! to me, that sounds even more satisfying than answering my door half-naked, tattoos showing, in korea. the elderly women passing out fliers for church knew to avoid #510 after a couple incidents of that. undoubtedly though, the best part of this intercom is that when i go to hit the big flashing button, i can yell 'ONSCREEN' just like in star trek (again with that). except unlike star trek, when the image comes onscreen i'm not talking to some friendly vulcans....

it's just another person who read my novel. leave me alone people! (special thanks to the neighbor who wanted me to move my car out of the wrong spot)

for the next couple days, there should be a poll at the bottom of this blog. turns out i dont have to go to work for a whole week (!!!), so instead of staying in for the whole time, i actually have time to make a short little trip, question is, where should i go. and the poll will have little to no bearing on that, i'm just trying to decide for myself.

--guy who writes this
signatures go here

moving blocks

2010-03-27T18:39:00.000-07:00

Is that dog in the picture...angry about the coffee? happy? i dont' think we'll ever know

Well I made it to my assignment, took a look around the "city" and have gotten somewhat settled in i guess, i know where the family mart is, the grocery store, and have an idea where the bar is. still don't know how to get to work exactly, but i'll figure out these little details as i go, after all school is still out here! i'm getting the impression i might not even start working till next week.

haven't made any friends here yet, although i kinda had a conversation in (mostly) english at the grocery store. If you've never been to japan before, you might not understand the fact that people really dont' say hi to strangers that often, especially if they're just passing on the street. at home, if you're passing by someone and you make eye contact, you might give a small nod and say 'hey', and they'd probly make respond somehow about half the time. but saying konnichiwa here just gets you a look really, it's not exactly what they do round these parts.

Not to say that i'm invisible though, that's for sure. whoever told me that Akita's don't bark was a liar, because the Akita that lives around here barks at me incessantly. no matter how much i improve my language, no matter how many japanese clothes i buy, i will always stand out, and stand out obviously, and i understood this b4 my first trip to nihon. i'm acutely aware of the looks i get while i'm walking around, and the giggles and bursts of japanese being thrown when i'm around. i'm sure a translation would be: 'is THAT american fashion? heeheeheeheeheehee' kids though, they're just so curious that they'll go ahead and stare, even follow me around a bit. the thing about kids is, i could turn around and go 'HELLOOOOOOOOOO' and they would probably find this hilarious...or run in terror, definitely one of the two. but all this talk about being followed and being watched just makes me sound paranoid doesn't it? i suppose i might turn out that way, and start hearing mocking japanese voices in my head or something if i had a different attitude about the whole thing. but i understand that, not knowing much japanese, it's hard to talk to me. that'll change. when i think i can hold down a conversation about whatever, i'll carry a big sign around with me: "YOU CAN TALK TO ME" of course, that might go over even worse. well i guess it might be ok, as long as i'm not naked and covered in blood or something when i do it.

once i get a good feel for this place, i'll know the right way to act around here. i mean, is this one of those places that's so small everyone knows what their local foreigner is buying at the grocery store? i don't think so...yet, although the fact that i bought $5,000 worth of pocky today (well worth it) might be gossipworthy. i think what's gonna make me the most obnoxious around here would be my DRIVING

b4 i get into this, i have to give some kudos to someone who will never read this, but it's well deserved regardless. the company i'm working for uses some english speaking consultants whose job is to help out the new hires when they get to their placement, show them around a bit, teach them how their high-tech japanese apartment works, etc. etc. until the person can be independent in japan. well in the case of my helper outer, this included going for a drive with me to the 100yen store. now can you imagine the kind of bravery it takes to get in a car with someone who tells you that they're clueless about driving on the left side of the road? and she didn't even scream once, even when there was an incident with left side/right side, so hats off to Mayumi ..........-San for being pro.

now anyone who's reading this (that would be like...5 people maybe? nah it's probly just mom) who've never driven on the left side of the road, here's a protip: don't ever do it, no matter where you travel to. it's a shitshow on wheels, at least it is here in this town in japan. the roads by my place are so narrow, that if i was driving in the states i'd see that road and say 'well obviously i'm not supposed to drive there.' there's a bunch of narrow roads where if a car is coming from the opposite way, somebody has to back up or get off the road (not even just pull over) or else no one will get anywhere. how do you decide who has to back up? i'm sure there's a whole system that i don't know. making matters worse is, in a lot of places on one side of the road is a kind of ditch thing

what do you reckon would happen if i drove too close to this and 'fell' in? would a team of amused but rather shocked onlookers be enough to help me push the car upright back onto the road? what if this happens at night? this kind of scenario has replaced the shadow people as the subject of my recurring nightmares.

here's the really annoying thing: i used to be a driving pro. b4 heading to the ROK i used to deliver pizzas, and in every country throughout the world, a pizza delivery driver is one step below a NASCAR racer. i could look at a parking spot and know right away whether i could fit in or not, knew when i could squeeze by something and when i couldn't, stuff like that. i had a kind of 6th sense for exactly how big the car was. now, not only do i not have a sense for how big the car is, i have to look at it and try to figure these things out from the right front seat, and let me tell you just that little change in perspective really flipped my shit. all of a sudden, instead of paying attention to my speed or looking for my turn, all my attention was focused on one of the most basic things a BEGINNER driver has to master; staying in the fucking lanes. i didn't pay any mind to oncoming traffic back home, but the first time i saw a car heading my way @ 40 km/h (not really that fast) i thought i was too far over to his side. so i tried to get a bit left and then i thought i had 2 tires on the shoulder. then add to this other complications like pedestrians, cyclists.....it gets ugly. next weekend i'm supposed to drive to training in the next town over, about 25km away I THINK I'LL USE THE TRAIN INSTEAD

but even as much as my first driving adventure stressed me out, i couldn't help but notice something which really stood out to me, something that made me chuckle in between my crying and shouting and swearing (M. San was a good sport about that)

there's 3 kinds of cars in this town, although i hesitate to call them cars, more like moving blocks. if you wanna drive in this town, apparently you're only allowed to have one of 3 designs of moving blocks. you can have whatever color you want (i have a blue block), but if you wannt something besides moving block A, B, or C, it's just not acceptable. take a look at this picture of my building's parking lot to see what i'm talking about.

not pictured: my license plate.
also not pictured: other kinds of moving blocks

my apartment's pretty nifty, think i might write up a real quick (hopefully) post about that tomorrow.

--guy who writes this
signatures go here

the unbonkers adventure

2010-03-25T23:57:00.000-07:00

minna-san, konnichiwa and all that shit. fair warning here, long post incoming. one time, just one fucking time i'd like to be able to make my points in 500 or less, why is that so hard? edit: written in a jet-lagged state, read at your own risk

my flight to japan...made it to japan, which is a good thing because i enjoy being not dead. it's also a good thing because it was uncomfortable as hell on there, united is pretty damn cramped i guess? not cramped like the shitshow in the sky known as phillipine airlines, but still pretty bad. i think the best trans-pacific flight i ever had was asiana air maybe? i wonder if they fly to tokyo? but this is all irrelevant anyway isn't it? yeah. for context, i'm writing this post with jet lag in full effect. 3 question sentences in a row is not good writing imho tbh. when you've literally traveled to the other side of the world, the first week can be pretty hard on your brain, at least with me it takes about a week for the mental fog and fairly persistent fatigue to clear up. sometimes i cant even finish senten

being hungover this morning didn't help, by the way. i even got called on to demonstrate something today, but i didnt butcher it too badly so whatevs! was total misery in the morning though. lesson learned: i can't pull off those zany alcoholic hijinx i used to and still be effective the next day. not saying that i'm old or anything, i'm really not, but i've somehow managed to slow down, and i'm not sure how that that happened. must be lack of practice and no motivation. well fuck it.

so anyway LET ME TOLD YOU SOMETHING about the title of this post. why is it an unbonkers adventure? i mean, just the fact of being in japan means the crazy fun times are neverending right? well it could just be a perspective thing, but i've been less than thrilled with the situation so far, and theres a couple reasons for that i think. jet lag on top of the pretty busy 8 or 9 hours of training each day have made training kind of rough, and being somewhat confined to this hotel (its a nice place btw) with about 150 other new hires is getting old. not that i dont like them but i dont like the sort of in transit temoporaary vibe here, i'd much rather settle into my tiny apaato for better or worse. and there are some peoples here i dont exactly care for. lets just say they wont be on my xmas card list. i should have anticipated it, but there's alot of 'personalities' here. i have respect for alot of them, even after talking briefly with ppl, i can see that most of the new hires here are rock solid. but then theres some others, ppl who won't shut up [ever], ppl who are so awkward it hurts you, ppl who insist on dominating every conversation, a couple shitty guys, a couple bitchy girls, and of course 1 or 2 otaku's [ppl who get a boner when you say the word japan]. the fact that we're here means that most of us have some otaku-ness in us, but i was honestly expecting alot more of the hardcore manga junkie, compulsive anime watcher, gamerlol pocky fiends than i've met here. thats kindofa dick thing to say though, and believe me, i'm not the greatest person on the planet (batman is) so i have no right to judge. let them be, right? they'll be out of my hair soon enough, cos i'm headed to my assignment tomorrow. ashita, if you prefer.

my roommate though, is a really chill australian [he's cool with smoking in the hotel room. believe me, that is a fucking luxury for us compared to the other smokers here] is good peoples. as much as i want to hang out with the japanese, learn the language and date a girl and integrate with the culture and blah blah blah, good people are good people and you can hang out with them even if its another gaijin, i dont respect the attitude that some gaijins have where they go to ridiculous effort to ignore other foreigners for whatever reason. when you meet someone cool, is it really that much fucking effort to at least swap emails and write once in awhile? i propose that no, it's not.

a lot of this frustration i'm expelling i think is coming from the fact that i'm not settled into my place yet, but after a few train rides tomorrow i'll be home, in a sense. sure this hotel has japanese TV and whatnot, but its not the kind of japanese experience i hopped on a plane for. i couldn't stop smilin while they were telling me about my travel itinerary for tomorrow, and looking at the body language around the room i could see the other people in my little section were feeling the same way

i was going to talk about the medical check we had to do, because i was amused at times, going through that process which was my first experience with japanese medical stuff. the nurse drawing my blood didn't have any snoopy band-aids for me, and goddamn did i ever have to rack my brain to think of how to ask her for one in japanese. there was a bunch of fog on my chest x-ray, so i pointed at it and asked if it was "tabako" but you know what it was? this guy didn't really speak english but he said it was 'gas, you know, poo poo gas.' well, if he knows that word, some english teacher somewhere was doing it right. i know what i want to talk about when i get to school. and on that note, i think my brain has officially frozen because i just cant think of anything clever to say about taking a blood pressure test or eye exam (which i had literally weeks before coming here).

so now its back to packing my bag while half-watching japanese tv. btw, i haven't seen any of the super fucked up tv shows yet, everything seems kinda regular. well fuck it, i would just turn those shows off anyway cos they're hella dumb.

--guy who writes this

signatures go here

japan threatdown: futakuchi-onna and her yokai buddies

2010-03-10T06:56:00.000-08:00

THE PREPARATIONS FOR GOING TO JAPAN continue. because i'm an internationally renowned, highly respected paranormal investigator, it would be FOOLISH of me to travel to another country without researching the local paranormal creatures i will most definitely encounter, frequently. after all, i dont want to be remembered as "the guy who got careless," i'd really prefer to be remembered as "the guy who punched like 30 ghosts in the face, i watched him do it, it was sorta cool i guess."

for today's threatdown i was originally going to tell you about the savage asiatic black bear, the only bear ballsy enough to maul 4 people at a bus stop in an urban area. but theres something even more deadly than this bear: futakuchi-onna a.k.a. the woman with two mouths and boa constrictor hair or, more commonly, OH GOD WHAT IS THAT THING FUCK ME I CAN STILL SEE IT WHEN I CLOSE MY EYES

i guess if i come back from a class and see that someone ate my lunch, any of the ladies with demon mouths in the back of their heads are my number one suspects.

futakuchi (2 mouths) is actually the tip of the iceberg. the iceberg of despair, floating in the sea of doom (which can be a nice place to visit, depending entirely on when you go). there's a bunch of really cool ghosts and stuff in japan, collectively known as yokai.

ok i got distracted all week while trying to write this post. i was gonna give a rundown of the most interesting kindsa yokai i could find, but it took me too long. lets just summarize it thusly: 1.) nine-tailed fox, likes to possess womens so it can have sex with mans 2.) turtle-man that kills people by taking something from out your anus. See, the japanese like to exercise their imaginations when they come up with ghosts!!!

Anyways, as i said i got distracted during the week. there's alot of things to be taken care of, when you're leaving for a year. my bags are mostly packed now, and my japanese working vacation is literally hours away. assuming my flight doesnt crash, i'll be starting my more interesting life in japan starting monday (japan time ofc). its slowly starting to hit me, the fact that this is a place i've wanted to live in for years, and now i'm finally getting the chance to go there long term. well, lets hope that i dont fuck it all up, as i'm prone to doing, and return to cleveland trailing my torn tattered dreams behind me. and if i can make it work over there, well then, see you in a year cleveland. oh and if our plane goes down over the pacific, i guess the biggest regret of my life would be.......dying in a plane crash on the way to doing something cool. i hope those wont be my last words on the internet? WELL STAY TUNED AND WAIT FOR ANOTHER POST SOON OLOLO

--guy that writes this
signatures go here

japan threatdown: the terror of the countryside

2010-03-10T04:46:00.000-08:00

so far, my preperations for going to Japan have consisted of loading my mp3 player with travelin music. back in 2008 (!!!) when i was leaving for korea to start my job there, i forgot to bring my mp3 player with me, a mistake that i don't care to repeat this time around. being without your music can be soul crushing, as i found out. although luckily for me, the jukebox at our preferred waegookin bar in incheon had a pretty decent selection of music. you might be wondering why i didnt buy an excellent and affordably priced korean mp3 player. shut up.

anyways i have been thinking alot about where i'm going, trying to imagine what life's gonna be like there. i dont want to say where i'm going exactly because i feel like with all the rampant spelling errors and blatant contempt of punctuaton in this blog never mind the content if an employer ever connected this internet garbage to me it would almost be the same thing as writing the boss a letter saying plox fire me nao with a little cartoon drawing of boobs at the top. i'm even erasing my name from every post today. all i wanna say is that i'm going to the mountains, somewhere on the tokyo side of the country. and believe me, that could be a loooooooooooottttt of places.

so i tried to think, what do i know about the japanese mountains? thats when i remembered something, something terrifying. i'm not even talking about suicide forest. its worse than that.

think about a hornet. k? do you have that mental image in your head? now make that hornet bigger by like 600 thousand times and you get this guy.

if you cant be fucked (yes i appreciate some aussie slang every now and then) to click that link then let me explain. biggest fucking hornet ever, was created by satan, eats other bees, kills about 657 thousand million people every year and has a stinger with neurotoxin. neurotoxin. neurotoxin. snakes have neurotoxin. this thing is like flying poison. IT KILLS MORE PEOPLE IN JAPAN THAN FUCKING BEARS, an animal whose sole purpose is destruction and can climb faster than it can run (nowhere is safe). and the hornet primarily lives in....the japanese mountains :0

i've often wondered why mosquitos don't pass on deadly viruses like HIV (btw i've never gotten a satisfactory answer to that question, so speak up if you know) and if they did, then they would probably be the most dangerous animal ever. these hornets, seeking to be the most dangerous animal ever, decided not to bother with contagious diseases and just fucking murder people.

i've been to a few places where people eat things that we here in america think are disgusting to eat. just as a quick example, would you rather snack on a.) potato chips or b.) lightly salted grasshoppers? well people in japan sometimes eat these hornets, obviously after they're done making sure that it's absolutely dead, and won't rise again, fly across the room and eat their baby's soul in a fit of hornet rage. now i would consider eating these hornets, if for no other reason than to demonstrate once and for all my superiority over the entire hornet race, perhaps theatrically standing on the table and holding one aloft betwixt my chopsticks like a flag, the message clearly being "your poisonous flying servants will never deter me from my mission, satan."

but when i think about it more, doing this would clearly anger the queen of the hornets, she-who-must-not-be-named. i cant rely on guns as a defence since they're illegal in japan, not to mention that the hornets are immune to bullets anyway. so i guess i'll need to keep my windows closed at night and keep a can of black flag insecticide within arms reach.

--some guy
signatures go here

Edit: I forgot to put a title here

2010-01-30T21:57:00.000-08:00

If you haven't figured it out by now, this whole bloga blog is on hold for the moment. The last post was...2 months ago? Damn. Anyway, as I mentioned in my last post I'm going to Japan pretty soon (and by pretty soon i mean march 21) and i'll be starting this thing up again. it was supposed to be about travel anyway FFS, and i haven't been doing much of that lately, so i haven't felt any need to post, as i've mentioned before.

but lately, i got some pretty exciting news, and that would be my placement in japan. i'm going to a place in the mountains surrounding the tokyo area. i had to look it up on wikipedia, because my japanese travel guide didn't have any info on it.

yep, thats right, it's not in the travel guide, and i've gotta say that i'm dissapointed but i'm not surprised, because after all, it's a lonely planet travel guide. and i've explained before how valuable those are to travellers...who need some toilet paper and wouldn't y'know, theres none around.

So what did wikipedia have to say about the place?

1.) It's close to tokyo
2.) that's about it
3.) do you want to donate to wikipedia?

Yep, looks like my 1st assigment in japan is gonna be a bit out of the way i guess? i dont know. its close to tokyo. and by that i mean its in the county (yeah prefecture i know, shut up) next to tokyo which appears on a map to be a county all by itself? it's definitely big enough to be, when you take in the whole tokyo area that is. and honestly japan isnt a big country, so if it's that close on a map i think it should take...30 minutes to get to tokyo? i doubt it would take as long as the hour it took to get from incheon to seoul.

and i'm gonna have a car >_<

in case you were wondering, no, i dont hate myself enough to drive this car in tokyo.

at one point i decided that i was living a good life if i was not responsible for any of these things: a car, a house, children. well now i'll have to break a rule in order to work in japan, something which i've wanted to do for ages. or 5 years actually, not ages. sure you might say that having the car will be convenient, maybe even fun, but to that i say "you're dumb." why drive yourself when a bus driver or subway conductor can do all the work for you? a car is a pain in the ass, waiting for the right time to strike...to annoy you. what if this thing breaks down? i dont know how to talk cars in japanese ffs! i'll have to get used to driving on the 'other' side of the road and stuff too.

or maybe i can just drive on whatever side of the road i feel like. after all, i'm gonna be a gaijin in japan so maybe i just don't know any better?

--the guy who writes this blog

my karma ran over your dogma

Achievement Unlocked (30 points): Job in Japan

2009-11-25T08:43:00.001-08:00

"I'm hungry. Give me the ramens."
"Which ramens?"
"EVERY ramens."
"Ok, but this isn't a ramen shop, or a restaurant."
"GAIIIIIIJJIIIIIIINNNNNN SMAAAAAAAASHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!"
"OHNOGAIJINSMASH!"

got hired. i should be leaving in mid-march i believe, which gives me plenty of downtime to practice my gaijin smash accuracy and technique. oh, and bone up on my japanese. that would also be good. in fact, Abbey, i still have your copy of "Making out in Japanese" and that's gonna get me a few slaps in the face but i'll still study it intently. it might be time to dust off the denshi jisho and finish the translation of river city ransom 2 that i abandoned when i went to koreeeeeeeeeeea. as long as my plane doesn't xplodelol on the way there, 2010 should be a pretty good year. hopefully 2011 will be too. then we all die in 2012 when nibiru comes back.

--guy who writes this
my karma ran over your dogma

nuke nuke nuke that moon

2009-10-24T14:50:00.000-07:00

The last time I blogged after an interview, I felt all confident about it and stuff, but things didn't pan out. WELL that was before, today was totally different, you guys. this one is a sure thing. yep, thats right, guaranteed job.

why would I say something like that? because when my rejection email comes in 3 weeks i can quote the above text and then write "lolpwnt" below it for comedic irony, or something. i wouldnt need to say anything else, as a matter of fact.

yeah, interview was good, is all i'm getting at here. i'll find out in 3 weeks. got a phone interview with a place in Taiwan this week, which would also be a cool place to work.

i couldn't figure out how to segue into this. but it's awesome. did you know that during the cold war, certain people in our intelligence community thought it would be a great idea to launch a nuke at the moon, just to show the rest of the world how big our dick was? well goddamit why didn't they go through with it?! fuck the moon!! right? am i right? and that's just #5 on this list of the most heinous plans from the cold war. i found #2 to be especially...nefarious

and here's a cool little story of a guy who's trying to make NYC a more attractive place.

writing pointless garbage is hard, ok?

2009-10-15T21:35:00.000-07:00

No posts for at least the last 2 weeks, why? because nothing's been going on TBH. i started this blog because it is, as far as I know, inadmissable as evidence and to keep track of my worldly adventures. the adventure, sadly, has been nonexistent lately unless you'd like to hear the epic tales of "drew wrote an email" or "drew vs. the yardwork" or "drew read a series of articles about the corruption in his county government and still strangely decided that he didn't feel like voting, again."

i believe in my last post, i said that i was simply waiting for someone to throw large piles of money at me and send me to japan, well, guess what....i didnt get the job...LOL! here's a graphical representation of how i feel about that:

INTERVIEW FAIL yeah i'm pretty honked about it, mainly because i don't think i pooched the interview at all, as i said i felt pretty good about what had been said when i walked out of there. looks like i've BEEN TAKEN DOWN A PEG which has caused me to learn these 2 things:

1.) you can never be too confident about important stuff like this

2.) i'm going to piss on a canadian flag

so, my next interview is in a little over a week, and i'm gettin ready for that with an eye towards not fucking it up. in the meantime, more applications are going out! looks like i might be headed back to the ROK before too long

--guy who writes this

my karma ran over your dogma

one job please, with xtra moneysauce and a side of benefits

2009-09-30T09:25:00.000-07:00

where exactly do you draw the line between confidence and arrogance? because i think i think i almost nailed my interview in toronto, with maybe only one little hiccup during thw whole thing, and now having said that, i'm gonna look a damn fool if i dont' end up getting this job. what else can i really say about this? i think i did well, in 2 weeks i'll get or not get a job.

one cool thing about the interview was that i got to go to canadia, surprisingly enough, as close as toronto is to cleveland, ive never been there before. do you know what's really unfair to canadianadianadiadiaadians? i can go to their country and pay for things with american dollars, but they can't come here and pay with candian dollars? well why the fuck not? certainly i can remember when $5 USD was like $8 CAD or whatever, but these days it's almost 1:1 xchange rate. it's a difference of like $0.004, just think about that for aminute. let them use canadian money in the states, right? don't worry, i already emailed the president about it.

what's toronto like? that's what i'm wondering. i showed up, did my interview, and left. now i wish i had taken some more time to poke around toronto, because it seems like a really cool place. supposedly it's the most diverse city on the whole north american continent. they have the CN tower, which i looked at but didn't go up in, but i bet it's cool for fans of tall buildings. there's a restaurant up there WITH $20 APPETIZERS AND $40 DINNERS so if you eat there youre an asshole!

i may have mentioned it before, but canadians dont say "eh?" or that long O vowel sound all the time. matter of fact, they sound like...us. every big name store in america that you can think of, they have one. i've never seen a tim hortons in cleveland though. and turns out its true that almost every sign is in english & french.

the hostel i stayed at was an interesting place, no bar at this one but there's also no lockout/curfew and its located downtown so you should be able to have fun while you're there. people like to hang out on the back porch, and it can get pretty fun out there. in fact, i'll go so far as to RECOMEND this place if you need a cheap place to stay in toronto. its like an big old house or something, rather than a hotel. and every room is named after some canadian celebrity. yes, there was a celine dion room. do you think it was haunted? i do.

just make sure that the next time you go to a hostel, whether its in toronto or addis ababa, make sure you play hostel bingo. i made a blank bingo card for you to use, just check off a box every time you see/hear/do/eat/experience something on the list, you know, like highway bingo. "addis ababa is the landlocked capital of ethiopia"

click click click click

mine looked like this

--guy who writes this

my karma ran over your dogma

boredom rant #2: the revenge of boredom

2009-09-18T15:03:00.000-07:00

Boredom has struck again, this time in the form of my internet not working for the last 4 days or so. hai, soo desu, intanetto ga arimasen. anxious about any job-related emails, I went to my local library to check my email, i don't even remember the last time i was there. i try to avoid libraries when possible, after all they're kind of sucky places for the most part, wouldn't you agree? so many worthless books. it's such a tedious place, you can literally see it on the faces of everyone there.

is there anything more annoying (and boring!) than checking your inbox after a few days of not checking it? you need an e-machete to hack through all the shit and get to the important stuff. i'm in the US airways frequent flyer program, and goddamit they sure like to remind me about that every fucking day. i was promotions director at my college radio station, 88.7 fm WJCU about 3 or 4 years ago, and despite recently putting every marketing/promotions person on my spamlist, press releases somehow find my way into my inbox every day!!?!??!

BUT WAIT! there have been moments where i wasn't bored! i went back to that school i graduated from, and my Nihon-Go Sensei asked me "mai nichi nani (w)o shiteru?" well, i've been doing lots of things each day. around the house, mainly, and this is why i'd say i'm bored: i watch cartoon network's adult swim every night. awesome. i played resident evil 4 again, now we're having serious fun. a casual observer might say, i'm just smoking my life away, wasting my time all day, what they hey? but that person would be retarded, and wrong. you see, i had a mild case of productivity recently, and now i have two interviews coming up with companies that will send me to the land of the rising fun, the home of the blue hedgehog, the heaven of he...err...nvm about that last one. two interviews! SICK

now this is a big deal for me, because i've been applying to jobs in japan for a long time, and by that i mean, 2.5 years off and on. before i got TEFL'd (this is a verb which i created, and if you don't like it you. can. go. TEFL. yourself.) my cover letters looked something like this:

Hey there,

I don't have any experience or skills but I really, really, really, really, really, really, want to work in Japan. I consider myself somewhat of an expert on Japanese culture, because i've watched Akira AND ALL OF COWBOY BEBOP, even the feature length movie, which was honestly pretty bad especially when you compare it to the rest of the series you know what i mean? i also enjoy eating me a good tonkatsu every now and then. so hire me, i'm cool. HIRE ME PLZ OMG OMG

i always got a form-letter response

dear guy,

i didn't take time to read that shit you sent, but even if i did, i'd still be telling you that we don't have any job for you. please feel free to either a.) apply again, at which time i'll tell you the same thing or b.) shit in your oven, bake it and eat it. now personally, i don't care what you do. i'm not the one who needs a job. i have a job. you're the one with no job. loser.

well lately it's been different, i've either been applying at the right time, or right place, or something, but i've passed the phone interview stage with both a big ei-kaiwa, and a company that puts ALT's (just read the wiki i don't want to explain it) into public schools. so now i need to get ready for my face to face interview, videotaped teaching demonstration, grammar test and blah blah blah.

i'm feeling strangely and perhaps unjustifiably optimistic these days, and the surviving member(s) of team awesome could attest to the fact that optimistic just isn't me. normally i'm more of a "the glass is shattered on the floor and i stepped on it with bare feet and also that glass was full of liquid swineflu" kind of guy but now i see something intersting and potentially exciting coming up soon, i just need to wait for it to happen. and this is why it doesn't bother me to be bored right now! i will continue to watch reruns on adult swim every night, and a couple days before the interview, i'll think about getting ready for it. this doesn't require the Buddha's patience either, because i have a nintendo gamecube with resident evil 4, and shooting guys and gals in the crotch (only in a videogame, of course!), never gets old.

--guy who writes this
my karma ran over your dogma

boredom rant #1: lonely planet hates you and wishes you would die on a mountainside

2009-09-10T09:50:00.000-07:00

Seeing as how i'm back in the place where my travels started, there's not much to blog about today as far as travel goes, right? well that may be true, but after spending the morning and most of the afternoon working on job apps where you need to spel check and punctuate GODDAMIT FUCK i decided to take a break from all that. now my first idea to unwind was to load up call of duty 4 and throw grenades at russians for awhile (hit '4' to use your flashbangs), but then i glanced at the books scattered across my desk and i had a better idea.

Lonely Planet: don't support their evil with your money. with the conclusion of my latest trip, i have now been the victim of 3 of their books, lp-south korea, lp-bangkok, and lp-greece. before we get into specifics here, let's get into generics here

4 SYMPTOMS INDICATING THAT YOU HAVE A LONELY PLANET BOOK

CLICK IT TO READ IT

here's a short account of an interesting or humorous incident, a.k.a. an anecdote: i was on a little vacation in busan, SK and i was using my lonely planet book to get around. the night before i had tried to find 2 of the places to sleep they had written about, but couldn't because of shitty directions, but i just figured that was a fluke, so i took it with me in search of Seokbulsa temple which is on Geumjeongsan mountain, right outside of Busan. now i have to be a little bit fair here: Seokbulsa is like a hidden place, it's really out of the way, it's kinda hidden on one part of the mountain, and a multi-kilometer uphill hike is unavoidable to get there. i dont have the book anymore, i'll tell you what happened to it in a minute, but i found the exact directions that i was working with online from LP's website. i wont link to it because you deserve better.

"From the South Gate (남문), the path indicated by the Mandeokchon (만덕촌) sign THERE IS NO MANDEOKCHON SIGN YOU SHITFUCKER leads to a collection of restaurants and foot-volleyball courts in Namman Village (남만 마을)I FOUND THIS WITHOUT YOUR HELP. At one point, the path stops at a court NO IT DOESNT; walk right THERES LIKE 4 DIFFERENT FUCKING WAYS TO GO WHICH WAY ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT and pick up the trail on the other side. About 500m down the trail look for a sign that reads in Korean 석불사 입구 (Seokbulsa entrance)I COULD TOTALLY READ THAT SIGN IF I COULD FIND IT. Turn right and walk down the steep hill to the road sign pointing the way to a 600m uphill hump to the templeWHICH ONE OF THE UPHILL PATHS DO I TAKE THERE WERE 3 OF THEM GODDAMIT. On the way back, there's no need to return to Namman Village. Take the trail to the top of the mountain WHICH ONE??! WHICH FUCKING TRAIL??! THERE IS MORE THAN ONE FUCKING TRAIL YOU FUCKING COCKSMOKER! and ride the cable car down."

well finding this place was a fucking shitshow as you can imagine (although when i found it, i have to admit it's one of the coolest places i've seen) and i basically blundered into it, no thanks to lonely planet. on the way back however, i took my best guess as to which one of the MULTIPLE trails was the "trail to the top of the mountain" because it was going up. that was a mistake, one which i blame on lonely planet. the trails on Geumjeongsan go up and down, up and down, and their is a total lack of signage which is not LP's fault, but sometimes people operate with landmarks ok? use landmarks to tell me which trail to take! after going down the wrong trail for awhile, i had drank all my water, and my smoker's lungs were quitting on me, and i thought i couldnt walk any further. yes, i thought i was going to die on the mountain, thanks to lonely planet. murdered by lonely planet, if you will. so what happened next? i summoned some energy from deep within! and got up and walked back to where the trails split. i filled my water bottles with mountain water, because i was fucking thirsty and didn't see any other choice. i chose another trail AT RANDOM, and got the right one. when i got to the top of the mountain, there was an awesome view of the city of busan in the valley below, and i got some great pictures here. so what happened to my book? i threw that fucker as hard as i could from the top of Geumjeongsan, and i can only assume its still somewhere up there as long as the local wildlife is smart enough not to eat garbage. i feel a bit guilty for littering the beautiful natural mountainside, but honestly was that book going to help me get back to the city?

i'm not the only person who's been boondoggled by lonely planet. most complaints against the books fall in one of these categories:

--DIRECTIONS: are all around shitty, vague, just plain wrong (LP bangkok--Wat Arun), or impossible to follow because of things such as lack of signs in which case they should use landmarks in their directions

--INFORMATION: wrong phone numbers, wrong addresses, drastically wrong prices, wrong websites, wrong wrong wrong

--WRITTEN BY GAY PEOPLE: some of us don't care where all the gay bars are, and "sa-tahn ban-teung gair yoo tee nai?" is not a useful phrase for us in bangkok

--POINTLESS PHRASEBOOKS IN THE BACK OF THE GUIDEBOOK: "jaemi itneun-geo isseoyo?" will not help you navigate the streets of seoul. but then again, nothing can help you navigate the streets of seoul and the locals are lost too...oh korea, i'd be pissed if you weren't so damn cute

if you've purchaces a lonely planet book, don't despair! i'm here to help you out:

THE SAFE & PROPER DISPOSAL OF A LONELY PLANET BOOK

--guy who writes this

my karma ran over your dogma

hello cleveland

2009-09-08T05:35:00.000-07:00

on my way to buy a delicious feta cheese pie yesterday, i took a shortcut through an alley. apparently it was the wrong alley. sitting on some steps i saw a guy with a needle in his arm, and i think it's safe to say that there wasn't insulen in that syringe, because his arm looked like a roadmap...of addiction! we made eye contact, and it was one of those 'oh shit' moments, so scoot scoot scoot i powerwalked my way out of there, rather than hang around to have a chat....or shoot the shit! ha ha ha, get it? it's funny. this happened around 5pm by the way. another traveller here told me he saw someone else in an alley a few days ago sticking himself in the thigh. what the hell, athens? quit doing heroin

oh and i know youre all curious about the cheese pie, yes, it was excellent

but now its time to scoot my way out of greece, and europe as well. in about 9 hours i'll be making my way to the airport. i've had my fun, learned quite a lot, and the number of countries my ratty old black flag sweatshirt has been to is now 4. i can't paint all of europe with the same brush, but i gotta say that i'm not particularly interestd in coming back to greece. it's a nice place, don't get me wrong, i'm just not that into it, to each his own yeah? greece is more into thereveda and i'm more zen. me and greece aren't playing sonic the hedgehog 2 in 2 player mode. maybe it's the attitude that i came to greece with that's the problem. i wasn't here on vacation, i came here to accomplish something and i did, so now its time to plan my next adventure. i'm going to spencer indiana on the 16th. FUN!

i think i've been here for about 5 weeks now. i didn't hit the famous greek islands, but i still feel like i got an idea of what this country's about, so here's some of the things i enjoy about greece:
--Smoker friendly country good for me, maybe not so good for others
--Not a puritanical society drink wherever you want to
--Food is filling and pretty tasty, but actually i wish it was spicier. there's no hot peppers, hot sauces and such, these people would shit themselves on the spot if they ate some kimchi.
--The people are mostly friendly, mostly, and i appreciate their laid-back style.

anyway, soon i'll be back in cleveland...for the second time this year...damn....this whole teaching english in foreign countries thing isn't really working out too well is it?

--guy who writes this
my karma ran over your dogma

little plastic pitchforks: euro mcdonalds is wierd

2009-09-06T07:24:00.000-07:00

Almost everything is blogworthy now, at least that's the way i think after starting this blog. did a bird poop on the sidewalk? blog post. fuck, i stubbed my toe, post post post. so much has happened in the last 24 hours that i could make like 3 posts. i mean ttake a look at my day yesterday

--me and a friend checked into the hostel and our roomate is an unfriendly canadian woman, i guess i would be standoffish too if i was sleeping with strange men, but you're missing the point here: unfriendly canadian...those 2 words dont even make sense together. every canadian ive ever met has been friendly, so what gives?
--i almost got pickpocketed by a teenager but he didnt get anything because i turned around in time but im still excessively angry about it and fucking hate all teenagers
--the keyboard im typing on is broken and its hard to type
--we went to some bars last night

before i say anything else, lemme just tell you a story about my friend i checked into the hostel with and his quest. quest for chewing tobacco. yeah this guy likes to dip, but only brought 2 cans of it with him, thinking that he could buy it over here. well i guess we both learned that chewing tobacco must be an american/canadian thing, because you can't buy it here. come to think of it, i haven't seen it in asia either. mehneways, he realy wants his SKAOL pine cut chew or whatever, so after arriving in athens we noticed a tobacco store and went in. 2 steps in the door, i knew we werent going to find chew here.

it was a turkish tobacco store, they had intricate bongs and hookahs everywhere. well we asked for chewing tobacco anyways, and he didn't understand, then my friend mimed (miming is your way through the language barrier) putting chewing tobacco on his gums, and the store guy said, "oh, hashish? you want hashish?" "nO!" we said, you dont understand us, J mimed again, although really what was the point if the first time the guy thought he was miming for hash...do people chew hash? i dont think so. anyways this guy blurts out "I KNOW!" and looks really proud of himself

"go outside, see that alley there? find the kid with black, black face you know? black skin. he has it, but be careful."
".....uh......the kid has chewing tobacco?"
"yes yes, coca leaves, chewing tobacco! but be careful"
"drew, what's he talking about?"
"i think i saw those leaves in a movie once"

so this is a cautionary tale for all you folks that enjoy the taste of shit in your mouth, bring xtra cans of dip, BECAUSE IT IS EASIER TO FIND HASH AND THOSE COCAINE LEAVES THEY CHEW IN AFRICA

Moving right along, i had lunch at mcdonalds today, exciting, i know. when i travel, i'll usually stop in mcdonalds, because it gets pretty tasty in there, and i like to take note of the little things that are different from our mcdonalds. i guess now ive been in mcdonalds in 4 different countries besides america? i think we ate there in london too but that was awhile ago and i dont remember that trip so well. so off the top of my head i can think of the following

mcjapan: Squid burger, and they bow to you
mcthailand: they wai to you, and they deliver 24 hours a day, also, samurai pork burger
mckorea: bulgolgi burger, and when you're done eating you put the ice from your drink in one place, the paper trash in another, and place your plastic cup into the holder....oh korea, i'd be pissed if you weren't so damn cute

so whats it like here? i'll answer the question i know is foremost in your minds: yes, they have a euro menu. i dont understand why people find this so amusing, i mean, mcdonalds & euro mcdonalds have a value menu, why would euro md call it the dollar menu? walking in the door i thought it looked like a club or something, it was really fancy, with couches instead of booths. couches, in mcdonalds. there was a security guard here too, presumably to enforce the club dress code and make sure only cool people could get past the velvet rope? actually, this was in omonia square so his job was probably beating beggars senseless when they stumbled in the door. but maybe, maybe there's one more thing he does: ejecting drunks. yes, mcgreece serves. you cant buy ouzo, but you can get beer, guess who was drinking the beer, yeah, fucking teens. i should've yelled at them to turn their goddamn music down and get some fucking jobs. and stop drinking. in mcdonalds.

i scanned the menu for something you can't get in the states, and i had 2 or 3 options here, chicken mythic, and mcfarm. mcfarm? it looked exactly like all the other burgers on the picture menu, and i couldnt see what was so different about it. more tomatos or something? was it organic? i ordered it. here i'd like to point out that the service here is greek service, you know, because i'm in greece. so, greek mcdonalds is the antithesis of 'fast' food. eventually i got my food and went up to the 2nd floor, which was the smoking floor. an entire smoking floor in a restaurant? sweet! 45% of greek adults smoke.

i was genuinely excited unwrapping the mcfarm burger, i had no idea what kind of meat it was, what was on it, nothing, but this is the kind of thing that's interesting to me. it was a double......vegetable burger, DISGUSTING! actually, it wasn't too bad. the next thing that caught my eye made me chuckle, and i'm hoping to put a picture of this on my flickr at some point. the menu is in greek and english, but the ketchup packets? 7. different. languages. and english isn't one of them. it's cool, like a rosetta stone between 7 different languages, should i put this in a time capsule? now obviously throughout the EU, many different languages are spoken, but is it vitally important to print the contents of the ketchup like this, and wouldn't it have made more sense to do this with the menu? what will a hungarian do if they want to order a mcfarm in greece? can you imagine the kind of thinking that went into this? i gave it my best shot:

*****

"it sure is great being in charge of euro mcdonalds! what should i do today? get over here boy, i have a job for you."
"i'm 44 years old and i'm not your son."
**CRACK**
"shut your bitch mouth boy! now listen, i want you to make sure that we print the ketchup packets in 7 different languages. this is FUCKING important, hear? do not FUCK this up!"
"why don't we make a multi-lingual menu instead?"
**SMACK**
"i am really FUCKING tired of your backtalk! ketchup! 7 languages! and where the FUCK, did my FUCKING, whiskey go?"

*****

i think this is the most likely scenario. this kind of scene or something similar was probably responsible for the next little quirk of euru mcd: the little plastic pitchfork. i am really kicking myself for throwing this away instead of keeping it. its a TRIDENT, a small, plastic TRIDENT, the size of a straw or something. what is the purpose of this thing? am i supposed to use it to do battle with my friends? protect my home from intruders? a fry-fork? a burger impaler? i got some looks when i used as a fry-fork, so im guessing thats not it, but its perfectly suited to forking those fries. i need to know what this is for. what if they forget to give me one and i need to ask for it, whats the name of it (also, what would i need it for and why would i be asking for it?)? or should i just say 'EXCUSE me, how am i supposed to fucking eat without my burger impaler? idiot.'

can we please get these things in the states? we could study spanish on different levels of ketchup packets before we poke them open with our burger fork fry impaler

--drew

my karma ran over your dogma

hostel party.

2009-09-04T07:30:00.000-07:00

The Class is over, we all passed. we all got TEFL'ed, got our certificates and had some champagne in the classroom, good times.

in other news, i'll be in athens until tuesday night with no pressing business to attend to, so you know what that means. yep, you guessed it: hostel party.

i'm more of a hotel guy myself but you can't beat the dirt cheap hostel prices, especially when youre staying in the most expensive capital in europe. yes its true, after switching to the euro athens is now the most expensive capital in europe. 5 euro coffees, 8 euro pints of beer, go to www.xe.com and see what i'm dealing with.

i've stayed in hostels twice before, and i gotta say that they do have one special thing going for them that you can't find at a hotel. yep, you guessed it: hostel party.

hostel party. usually goes something like this: it's a tuesday night and people are sitting around the common area, checking emails, having coffee, smoking, pretending to read a book that a hip cultured person would read but actually just zoning out and waiting for the hostel party. to start. the unspoken thought on most peoples minds is, 'its tuesday night, and weve got a big day tomorrow, i better go to bed soon.' but then somebody, often but not always a new arrival says 'hey anybody want to have a drink?' this is the start of (yep, you guessed it:) hostel party. if your hostel has a bar, that's great. the one we're staying in does. true to the tradition of greek hospitality you allegedly get a free 'welcome shot' for walking in the door. if bar does not exist at your hostel, go for a hostel with no curfew and no lockout to avoid an allround shitty situation.

whats the most coolest thing about hostel party. you ask? people check in and out of hostels every day, so you have a constantly revolving cast of characters at each one of your hostel party. this means that each hostel party. can be different, if you choose it will be so. SO, this is what i'm upto for the next four or so days, hanging around athens with people from the TEFL course, in a hostel, at the hostel party. hostel party. hi, my name's drew and i'm an alky.

the TEFL course! is finished now, and i got my ever-useful TEFL certificate, although i think it might be a little more useful for getting a job if i cross out "TEFL" with a marker and write "MasTerz DegRe" i'm relieved that this thing is finished, besides the stuff i mentioned the other day, i didnt put much thought before i came as to how much it sucks to go to class for 11 hours a day, 5 days a week. but i'm still glad i came here, all things considered

WHAT I GOT

--A TEFL CERTIFICATE oh shit did i say TEFL certificate? i meant masters degree...i got a masters degree..
--Friends friends are good, even if they are directly competing with you for the same jobs
--A list of over 100 language schools...with phone numbers YOU guys better get caller ID, because i'm gonna talk to you every day until one of us caves. mom, there's gonna be some charges on the phone bill

LESSONS LEARNED
--THE KEY TO TEACHING EFL is stealing complete lesson plans from other people who are better teachers than you. thank you internet
--GETTING EMOTIONALLY ATTACHED to people who will essentially be out of your life in one month is not a great idea
--JOB SEARCH for at least 2 hours a day, not 15 minutes of 'instapply' followed by youtube & videogames
--PEOPLE NOTICE WHEN YOU SCRATCH YOUR BALLS don't scratch your balls, people notice

this has been an experience. soon i'll have enough XP to level up! i just keep getting better and better, awesome people tend to do that.

--drew
my karma ran over your dogma

i dont remember stuff so good no more

2009-09-02T13:39:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday Erin! (Erin J) I forgot, again. happy birthday.

--guy who writes this
my karma ran over your dogma

oh bitch bitch bitch QQ some more

2009-09-01T23:37:00.000-07:00

The next time i meet someone who can't pronounce my name, wherever that may be, i can just tell them that my name is the past-simple form of (to) draw. i know enough about the english language to say that now. and presumably, this is the reason why i was named drew in the first place, to make it easier to say for the good people of Bratislava, Slovakia.

but it hasn't all been fun and grammar here at the TEFL institute in corinth. i have time to write this because i've finished my last essay. this is a long post but i'm totally going somewhere with this (but only in my own fucked head) JUST SKIM EACH PARAGRAPH FOR THE MAIN IDEA AND ANSWER THE QUESTIONS BELOW, REMEMBER TO WRITE IN SENTENCES AND USE YOUR NEW VOCABULARY CAPSLOCK = COOL

let me go on a little tangent here first. SOMEONE UPDATE THE TEFL BLACKLIST PLZ, it hasn't been updated in 2 years. it hasn't been updated in 2 years. it hasn't been updated in 2 years. do you know how long it's been since it's been updated? well, actually i happen to know and i can tell you, it hasn't been updated in 2 years.

"it hasn't been updated in 2 years" is a negative sentence in the present perfect tense, i can't deny that i learned lots of shit here...but i also can't deny that this is a (mostly) bullshit operation. now part of me doesn't really care too much, because in 2 days i'll have a TEFL certificate, no matter what. so what's the problem? well there's a few i can think of

***THERE'S 2 TEACHER TRAINERS WHO WORK HERE WHO HAVE BEEN TOTALLY AWESOME AND HELPFUL THE WHOLE TIME, AND NONE OF THIS IS DIRECTED AT THEM, THEY'RE THE BEST PEOPLE HERE***

acommodation: i sleep in a living room with 2 other people, decently cool guys for sure, but i dont never have no privacy, hey why was i told that there would be a single room for me? the hot water cut out on us for 5 days, and at 250 euros for the month, those 5 days i had the second most expensive cold showers ive ever had in my life. the cold shower i won at the annual cold shower silent auction in Busan SK was slightly more expensive. there's 3 girls living in the flat too, which means 6 people using the one bathroom in a flat meant for 3 or so people. don't forget, in greece, you can't flush toilet paper, you have to put your shitty shit paper in the trashcan. well with 6 people doing this, our bathroom smells like something wonderful, man. did you know that girls poop too? i didn't believe it at first either. i can only imagine that it's better than the situation at the main trainee house, with 9 people, 1 bathroom. must be pretty hard to get a shower in the morning over there? and bedbugs. we literally have bedbugs? something bites at night, having screens on the doors, which we have to leave open to avoid burning alive, might help. not having the internet we were promised is quite annoying as well. and the response from our TEFL hosts to all these complaints is either 'it's greece, get used to it' or 'you're not in a 5star hotel.' i won't even get in to the dead dog in our dumpster incident

goddammit, this post is too long

job placement: if you don't intend to help any of the people who pay for your course get jobs, you shouldn't claim 8 out of 10 students get jobs. now i understand that no agency should guarantee a job for plenty of reasons, but there's more to the story! ok, TEFL in greece, lots of people on this course want to get into it, and lucky for them, there's TEFL opportunities here! great! but...it's 80% or more of the TEFL jobs in Greece are through Anglo-Hellenic Teacher Recruitment....which is the company run by the guy running this course and his wife. now you'd probably think, 'if your teacher is the guy who controls all the jobs, shouldnt it be easy to get jobs?' surprisingly enough, the answer is no, because this guy is somewhat ofa shitfucker, as well as (i.m.o.) an alcoholic and a womanizer, and about to be sued, more on that later. anyways his wife makes no secret of her opinion about americans, i believe it was one of the first nights all the trainees were together when she enlightened us to the fact that "AMERICANS ARE SO STUPID" because "YOU NEVER THINK!" what? what do we never think about? i think about lots of shit, every day. like when i decide which black t-shirt to wear, that's thinking. there are neuroblaster things exploding in my head while i'm deciding which black t-shirt is the least filthy. see? i even know how the brain works.

now in just one short year of being in a foreign country, plus my trip to thailand, plus being here in greece, i've met a fair amount of people from other english speaking countries, and if any of them had this attitude about americans, none of them, not one, ever expressed it like that. most of them don't have an opinion about you at all, until they get to know you, which is how normal people operate. sure, everyone has shit to say about our government, but most realize pretty quickly that railing on our government to me isn't going to change anything. i'm not gonna whip out my cellphone and call the president. "hey you know how we have a problem with _______? well this person at the bar totally knows what we should do. lemme put them on" her diatribe about our lack of brain power is only the tip of the iceberg, annd well it's a pretty immature mindset for a well-travelled person in middle age i.m.o. although i guess my dad thinks the same shit about other countries, so there you go, you can still be immature over the age of 60.

if you've read this far, isn't their something more worthwhile you could be doing?

i have been guilty of this too, but quickly updated my worldview after meeting people from not-america. most best example: not all canadians say "eh?" all the time. only people from rural canadia do that. but TEFL corinth has been in operation FOR 4 FUCKING YEARS! in all that time i refuse to believe that there hasnt been ONE fucking person from america who wasnt a fat , loudmouthed, stupid alcoholic! why am i railing on this woman so much? SHE IS THE PERSON WHO DECIDES IF YOU GET A JOB IN GREECE OR NOT. remember i said that almost all the greek jobs are through anglo-hellenic teacher recruitment? anglo-hellenic is just a psuedonym for her. she'll take your resume (everyone else in the world calls it a CV) and say she'll send it to the schools, then she will go upstairs (they live on the 2nd floor of the main trainee house) and dice your CV, using it to complete her horiatiki zalata, the hope-sauce that oozes out of the paper makes it taste better. she makes it a point to be unavailable all the time, always assuring people that she can meet them the next day, then making an excuse at that time too. one of my roommates (god i hate typing that, but he's alright) was trying to meet with her almost every day since the 2nd week of the class, but she kept blowing him off and told him to send an email, which he did, then she said he was sending too many emails! he sen't one email. she keeps ranting about how greek companies don't want to hire americans, because they don't have an EU passport. now this i can understand, it would be much more complex for an american to legally work in the EU than a brit, but i REFUSE to believe that it's impossible. and goddamn i feel lucky that i don't have any desire to work in EU. i would be well and truly pissed off if that were the case.

if you've read THIS far there's something wrong with you

in 4 weeks, she has only brought one potential job to one person, then she said, 'tell me about your life.' well thats a dumb question with lots of different answers, but this girl answered the best she could, after which the offer was retracted, because she wasn't ecologically minded enough or something? i didn't exactly understand. no one did. she plays favorites so if she doesn't like you, you better not dare to even think about getting a job in this country. she even ratfucked the roommate i mentioned before, when he called a place in athens asking about a job ad in the english newspaper, they told him to come to an interview. SOMEHOW (?) she found out and they contacted him to let him know that they'd talked to her (!!) and that he didn't need to come to that interview because he would have to work illegally?? they knew he was american when he called them the first time!

if being american is the reason she is so unhelpful about helping people with the job search, then even my dog, who has little understanding of human ways, would be disappointed. in fact when she finishes reading this, she'll probly do that thing where she covers her eyes with her paws. the most CONDEMNING thing was that a couple days ago, anglo-hellenic (heh) posted that they have 80 jobs available in greece! WTF?! i salute the people on this course who have seen what's what and are taking the job situation into their own hands. best of luck to you.

i better clarify my earlier accusations against our teacher though. he's come into class tipsy on more than one occasion, but i suppose we should forgive him that because it's the greek way (he's british though) and we all do this too on fridays, so i can't hold that against him. on the 2nd day of class he rubbed a girls upper thigh in a meaningful way, which started a major shitshow as you can no doubt imagine. one of the people on this course, an EU citizen living in athens, is considering suing for false advertisement...we'll see how that one works out, i don't know. i wont get involved.

ok, you should REALLY stop reading this now

interstingly enough, if you look on the FUCKING TEFL BLACKLIST multiple people are voicing the same complaints FROM 2 FUCKING YEARS AGO, WHOOPS GUESS I SHOULD'VE CHECKED THAT BEFORE I PAID 900 EUROS AND YES I GUESS THAT MAKES ME ANOTHER STUPID AMERICAN WHO DOESNT THINK!

ok, capslock is hurting my eyes, enough of that. after reading my graduate school thesis here, you might be surprised to know that i don't feel like i was robbed of 900 euros. why? because, thanks mostly to the 2 teacher trainers i briefly mentioned before, i did learn a lot of stuff here. about grammar, about how to teach more better good, all things i need to know. i'll be a helluva lot more confident walking into that next job, thanks to them. and i'll have a certificate too.

when i first came here to korinthoss, i felt like i was on a contest reality show like project gay, america's next top frat mattress and top chef. top chef was alright i guess, seein as how i like food and whatnot. well how bout a show about 15 people living together training to be TEFL teachers? there were competing personalities, and some dramaz, and some people were so defensive about their actions in the classroom you would've thought they were trying to protect their baby from you or something but this group has come together somewhat, because many people feel theyre being shit on to an equal extent. and you know what they say, if someone's shitting on you....well then you better move outta the way! rofl rofl i bet you were hoping i'd say something smart weren't you?

if youve made it to this point without falling asleep or dying, you deserve a drink, so go ahead, treat yourself and don't feel bad bout it. typing this took an entire hour of time that i should've used to study for the final TEFL test tomorrow. but even after realizing that, i still dont want to study for it, so i'm gonna go see what it's like to nail my dick to the floor.

--guy who writes this

my karma ran over your dogma

acropolopolopolopolis

2009-08-29T05:42:00.000-07:00

there's lots of interesting stuff in Athens. the "fuck pao rouph" graffitti for example. who's pao rouph? i don't know but it doesnt matter fuck pao rouph. go drinking in gazi, that's interesting too (if you're using lonely planet--greece, they changed the name of the metro station @ gazi from votanikos to kerameikos)

the acropolis on the other hand, as i was starting to say earlier, i'm not as into. it's kinda hard to explain why, and really i have no obligation to try but ill give it a shot anyway.

so you're finished witht the theater, you head further up the hill through a gate. its called the beuele gate. and its made of stone, thats about it. nothing especially impressed me about this gate. now through here is the temple of athena nike, which you pass through on the way to the parthenon. it's kinda built into the side of the hill itself, but there isn't too much going on here either. in fact i didn't even realize that this was the temple of athena (nike) until i saw the little plaque on my way out. fail, maybe on my part, maybe not? well through the wrecked temple of a-n, the parthenon is 100 feet in front of you.

now as i said before, the parthenon is visible almost anywhere you go in athens, it's just something that's always there, it's just part of athens life i'm sure. when i was walking around other places in athens, i took a ton of pictures of it from the courtyards in omonia square, syntagma, monastiraki, it looks different from each place. but the pictures don't do it justice, and i don't think it's my camera to blame either. i just don't think i captured the _______(i don't know exactly what word) of the way it looks from a distance, especially not at night when it's lit up. i thought it was really cool on the distant hill, looming above the city, which is quite modern except for the big fucking white thing that you can see wherever you go. basically what im getting at is that it looks way cooler from far away now why is that? well when you're standing in omonia square, the parthenon looks all imposing and mysterious and such, situated the way it is above the city, but when you get up to it, well, it's just another of the ancient wrecked buildings, sorry, no mystery here.

you can't get right up to it, because it's blocked off by rails and in one section, a whole bunch of felled rubble and other shit. the ancient columns are held up by a series of ancient scaffolding and ancient construction cranes. oh wait a minute no. apparently you used to be able to walk through this place, but i guess everyone who visited here was a dirty filthy pig because their body oils and whatnot started to erode everything. of course all the cars you see/hear/smell around athens that wouldnt have a snowballs chance in hell of passing an e-check in the states have something to do with it as well. most of the artwork that was on the top of this thing has been taken down and either moved into the acropolis museum or stolen by the british some time ago (who won't give it back), so there's not much left to the parthenon but the blank pillars. to be brutally honest, i think it wouldve been cooler to see the huge cannon that the turks put here when they occupied greece, but i bet a greek would be pretty honked to see that be preserved and put on display. they're not the biggest fans of turkia.

when you make the little circle around the parthenon, there's another temple thing up here called the erection, which was ok, as it still has some statues there but the plexiglass-esque stuff they put in here kind of ruins the effect. and no it's not really called the erection, but thats a fuckload easier for me to pronounce than erechteion.

if i ever come back to athens, i think i'll skip the a-krop. if you're into the history of it and whatnot then by all means, go see it. thailand is first on my re-visit list, so it may be some time before i come back here, if ever, by which point it may have crumbled some more perhaps? maybe by the end of my life the parthenon will be a pile of fallen rocks, in which case i'd make an effort to show up and yell at all the young punks that i saw it when it was still standing. i imagine they'd ignore my story and mock my oldness with that damn slang of theirs that i can't understand. i'd turn around then, and as i'm shakily making my way down the hill on foot (because personal jetpacks scared and confused me ever since they were released in 2058),i'd curse pao rouph and the foolishness of the future's youth and think back to the day in 2009 i stepped out of monastiraki station into the courtyard and happened to look up, when i saw the parthenon in the distance for the first time, all lit up in the darkness above the city of athens and said to no one in particular, "now that's fucking cool"

then i'd slip on the marble steps and die.

--guy who writes this
my karma ran over your dogma

what do you know about stuff?

2009-08-28T08:30:00.000-07:00

Here's a short culture quiz that we did in class this week that i found pretty interesting. just answer true or false for each one, scroll down for the answers.

1.) if i were doing business in china and was asked about taiwan, i would say 'it's a country i have never visited.'
2.) if i were having a meal with some malay business colleagues in kuala lumpur, i would only pick up food with my right hand
3.) if i asked a japanese businessman to do something and he said 'it's a little difficult' i would continue trying to persuade him to agree
4.) if i were invited to a british person's home at 8 p.m. for dinner, it would be ok if i were 15 minutes late
5.) if i were doing business in saudi arabia, i would not speak arabic unless i could speak it properly
6.) if i were in oman, i would not start talking about business until after the second cup of coffee

we didn't do an entire session on this, just took this short little quiz. i found it interesting though, and i definitely didn't know how to answer the questions about the muslim countries. the whole point of this discussion was that depending on where you're teaching you could seriously offend someone without realizing it, and as such should try to learn what you can about whatever country you happen to be going to. well i would agree with this, and thinking about the majority of foreign teachers i saw in korea (charlie brown and team awesome i'm not talking about you if you happen to be reading this), i wish that more of us way-gook-ins would respect the local culture and customs more. but hey i can't say i was never guilty of being offensive in korea myself over the course of a year. THAT's not important though, let's just say that this is something for all EFL teachers travelling the world to think about. quiz answers below

1.) false--mainland chinese won't like it if you refer to taiwan as another country
2.) true--muslims eat with the right hand, the left is used for wipin your ass
3.) false--this is how a polite japanese person would say no (saying no directly is rude in japan)
4.) false--i shouldn't need to explain this one
5.) true--apparently, if you can say hello or some other short phrases in arabic, saudis think that's great. but beyond that, if you don't speak arabic, they'll be pissed about you butchering their language, so speak english.
6.) true--you're supposed to have some general chit-chat and small talk before getting down to business in oman, as well as turkey and egypt apparently. not waiting for the coffee is RUDE

--guy who writes this
my karma ran over your dogma

terminal acropolitis

2009-08-28T01:31:00.000-07:00

When something fails to meet your expectations, do you ever feel kinda guilty about it, like maybe there's something wrong with YOU? each time i've gone to athens, i could see the acropolis from almost anywhere i went in the city, which i thought was pretty cool. it's like the whole town is under that thing's shadow. i finally visited the acropolis this weekend, and when people asked me what it was like, all i could say was 'meh.'

now i could tell you all kinds of shit about Japanese history, but everything i know about greece comes from the movie 300, directed by zack snyder, starring gerard butler, and a CGI elephant. 300: "Feel the wrath...in IMAX!" Lonely planet--Greece (btw lonely planet--south korea is pure shitsauce printed on crap paper, if youre going there try another guidebook. sorry tangent.) said that the acropolis is the most important site in western history, and that "the sight of the parthenon never fails to lift sagging spirits." gay. anyways, i was a little confused by this because i thought the acropolis & parthenon were the same thing, but as it turns out akropoli refers to the hill that the parthenon is on.

so i buy my ticket and start walking up the hill. it's not a tough climb but wear shoes rather than sandals because walking on marble is slippery, which i learned the hard way, twice. ANYWAY i can't deny that some of the shit around here is pretty cool. there's an old theater that you can climb around in, and it's huge. you can sit in one of the seats or go into the little flat stage section and it's kinda neat because most likely, someone was doing the exact same thing 2000+ years ago. neat. there's also a cave in the side of the hill where they allegedly found a really early christian church/temple to pan (c'mon, it's gotta be one or the other and it shouldn't be too hard to figure out guys). i say allegedly because i didnt see it with my own eyes. you can't go inside.

this is kindofa recurring theme at the acropolis. you can walk around, look at the ruined stuff or the site where ruined stuff used to be but they moved it, say 'that's nice' and take your pictures before moving on to the next thing. but you can't actually go in anything, with the exception of the theater on the low part of the hill. well normally i have no problem with that, after all, you can't go into the Kinkaku-ji (OR the Ginkaku-ji) in Kyoto, the Grand Palace in Bangkok, the great pyramids (i'm assuming)...the list could go on i'm sure. but it just feels cool to be at those places, even seeing them from the outside, although i haven't seen the pyramids yet (i hope to soon). is this because i'm sufficiently boned up on the history of these places, and am actually interested in what may have happened there, years ago? see my problem was, i didn't get that cool feeling just from being at the acropolis. i wouldve liked it alot more if i couldve gone inside these things. i felt like i was looking at rocks, really. not especially interesting rocks but goddamn, ask anybody and they'll definitely say you better be impressed because a) this stuff is more than like, 100 years old or something and b) it was hard to make something like this without cranes and shit. OK, i can respect that last part. give yourselves a pat on the back, prisoners and slave laborers. as time went on, some prisoners were jewish OMG THAT WAS RACISIMZ!!!!

so turn away from the theater and stuff and head up towards the big gate and the temple of athena nike

I WILL FINISH THIS LATER.... (hopefully with pictures)

--guy who writes this
my karma ran over your dogma

can i haz job?

2009-08-26T04:06:00.000-07:00

so, lately what's been on everyone's mind here at the TEFL institute has been job hunting. the course ends in a a little over a week, and as of yet no one has a job, although some have gotten offers. i haven't got any offers yet, which is shitty, shitty supreme even. we're now in the 3rd week of the course, and everyone's stressing about this, although some are stressing about it more than others of course. everyone seems to have a plan though. some want to bum around europe for awhile, waiting for something to come up. i wish i could do something like that, but if i cant find a job in the next 1 1/2 weeks, i'll be on a plane back to cleveland, head hanging low in defeat. maybe i'll "miss" my flight from amsterdam to detroit and hang around at the airport bar for a year, cleaning the place up for money.

in my mind the whole EFL job hunting process is as painful as eating shitsauce on rice. first you go to some EFL teaching job website, and there's a million of them out there. seriously, you can upload your resume to over 20 websites, but lemme tell you right now that more than a couple of them are pure shitsauce, because their "jobs" require you to pay $200 application processing fees and other suspicious things. and my inbox is DROWNING in the daily jobs newsletter from all these sites, most of which are giving the same jobs as the other sites. now you may be thinking, "well, shit, sounds like getting a job should be fucking easy with all that shit in your inbox, stupid." and i can see how you would think that. but did you know that 100's of people are applying to all the jobs that you're applying to?? this means that every time you click that nifty "Instapply" button, there is someone else more experienced, more British, better looking, better educated, with certifications from hell to breakfast clicking the exact same thing. the whole thing just feels futile, especially when the rejections start filling your inbox.

the more and more the rejection emails roll in, the more i think that there's only one choice left that makes sense--south korea. and that's not a decision i would make lightly, having previously lived in the "land of the morning calm" (anyone who'se been there can tell you that name is a misnomer) for a year. maybe this time i'll try working in busan SK, because then i can take the boat over to fukuoka and clean toilets for a living.

the rejection emails though, lets talk about that for a minute. reading these everyday has been quite the cultural experience. each country's email has it's own particular flavor and reason for crushing your hopes and dreams. here are just a few of the places i've applied to and heard back from:

Czech Republic--"We are very sorry, but we want person with valid EU passport, but you do not have any EU passport so we are very sorry."

Greece--"Sir, as we have told you many times already, there are no more positions available on the Isle of Lesbos which, by the way, is a very different place than what you described in your cover letter."

Japan--"good luck in taiwan, south korea, china, russia, the fucking moon, or wherever else you get hired that isn't here."

Thailand--"THANKS FOR APPLYING US!! THERE IS NO JOB NOW BUT TRY AGAIN IN FUTUREZ BYE!"

Neptune--"We have received your application, however as our atmosphere is composed of hydrogen and helium, we feel that you may not be the right candidate for this position."

Turkey--"No."

Vietnam--"We tend to...prefer British teachers over Americans."

Ah well....looks like i better tell mom to get my room all squared away for me. maybe it won't be so bad though, i can bring home some tzatziki and assos tzigarras and pretend i'm still in europe.

...man i really wanted that job on neptune.....

--guy who writes this
my karma ran over your dogma

AMG!!! FERST POSST!!!

2009-08-25T12:33:00.000-07:00

YIA SU means 'hi' in Greek. i'm real proud of myself for learning that, seeing as how i've only been in Greece for 3 weeks now. and what's even better is i think i must be pronouncing it just like a native speaker, because every time i say yia su to the guy selling cigarettes, he starts saying all kinds of shit in greek. i bet he's real disappointed when i point at myself and say, "english english." of course this just leads to another of his monologues in greek while i catch the pack of tzigarras (that's another word i learned) that he more or less throws at me. i think we have some kind of understanding though. maybe he'll take a picture with me?

it seems like ive been doing a good amount of travelling in the last year, so why not blog about it right? its better than taking the time to write emails! right? am i right? yeah. my latest stop, if you couldnt figure it out by now, is greece, which strangely goes by the name of ellas around these parts--how did that get mistranslated? ive been studying my nuts off learning about how to teach english since i got here in a place called corinth (korinthoss) and living in a cool little beach town called vrachati. and each weekend i go to athens for overpriced food and drinks and the chance to look at 2500+ year old half-finished buildings. man there's this one neigborhood on a hill called the acropolis...they should really scrape some cash together and finish building that stuff, it could be really nice.

"so how does greece stack up to the other places ive been?" is a question no one cares about that i asked to myself the other day. after 3 weeks in greece here's what i have to say about the place

Europe is fucking xpensive--changing currency into euros makes my genitals hurt

siestas--everything closes from 3-6 in the afternoon because people are tired from all the beers they drink at lunch. does anyone work in this country? yes, from 9am to noon.

food--greasy (greecey?), fattening, good. also: filo dough. also: tzatziki

animal services--stray dogs, stray cats, stray goats being looked after by stray dogs, stray southeast asiatic red pandas

Toilets--you can't flush ANY paper down the toilets here, unless you want the septic to back up into your home. you have to put the toilet paper in a little trashcan next to the toilet. isn't that crazy??

things to see--the busted up temple of (insert name here), really old rocks, the beach, trees and hills and vineyards and some moar rocks

attitude towards foreigners (as in you/me)--on Drew's Scale of Native Friendlitivity greece falls somewhere between "are you lost, friend?" and "get out of my country." ha just kidding ACTUALLY most greeks are friendly and accomodating. of course blah blah always exceptions blah blah blah people are people blah blah.

so basically greece has been great, although i've been busy studying TEFL. i would upload some pictures, but mostly what ive been doing is sitting in a classroom for 12 hours a day.

--guy who writes this
my karma ran over your dogma

TOTALLY BONKERS GAIJIN ADVENTURES IN JAPAAAAAAAAAAN

Making friends

this blog is not dead

無事でした

We`re doing a recap episode....?

lets math

about Fukushima NPP

i`m fine

played some taiko

linkmania

勝利

SPINACH ATTACK

(culinary) terrorism strikes Japan

meh

what ive been doing

メリークリスマス

Ok look basically what we're trying to say here is "fuck you"

Hit with stick, repeat

this is the 50th post

it's not always a party

this will be like being in high school again, kinda. i'm not getting a D in chemistry now so i guess that's different

sickitude

Japan is more interesting if you look at a flyer and imagine that something cool may be happening

Dammit

barbarian at the tea party

file under: 'why not?'

get ready to take notes

look i wrote another novel

natsu yasumi

Edit: forgot to make a title again

Gaijin lake

"Well don't that beat all! I reckon there's more'n 15 people on this here train. Don't see that in my prefecture, no sir." *begins plucking banjo*

Japanese iPhone saves the day (again)

lose your erection

why you should learn japanese sign language

The endless joy of stereotypes

Yen power? Steps of Enlightenment? (double post & old pictures)

an awesome clusterfuck of greatness

Rule #1: you dont talk about Taiko club

It sounds harsh but it's the truth

No ones taller than the last man standing

Here's that video

We fight and die for Panasonic (and its' subsidiaries)

Everyone is D.W.A.

Gaijin bachelor cuisine part 1: Miso! (with pictures ofc!)

arm the photon torpedoes

moving blocks

the unbonkers adventure

japan threatdown: futakuchi-onna and her yokai buddies

japan threatdown: the terror of the countryside

Edit: I forgot to put a title here

Achievement Unlocked (30 points): Job in Japan

nuke nuke nuke that moon

writing pointless garbage is hard, ok?

one job please, with xtra moneysauce and a side of benefits

boredom rant #2: the revenge of boredom

boredom rant #1: lonely planet hates you and wishes you would die on a mountainside

hello cleveland

little plastic pitchforks: euro mcdonalds is wierd

hostel party.

i dont remember stuff so good no more

oh bitch bitch bitch QQ some more

acropolopolopolopolis

what do you know about stuff?

terminal acropolitis

can i haz job?

AMG!!! FERST POSST!!!

"Well don't that beat all! I reckon there's more'n 15 people on this here train. Don't see that in my prefecture, no sir." begins plucking banjo