Goddamn what dread I had this morning. I can hardly remember a time that I didn't want to go to work quite so badly as today. Last week was sucky, and this week promises more of the same. I would have probably preferred to be barfing my guts out sick than working this morning at 9:00.　True to form, however, it wasn't so bad once I got into it, but it still sucks to go into a week with the attitude that you'd rather commit murder than teach another class.

With luck I'll be a little happier when my paycheck rolls around. Money for services rendered is all I'm counting on, but at least I can buy happiness with it. I certainly have been trying. I think since I can't find so much enjoyment in my work week, I definitely do a bit more spending and splurging to reward myself for another week endured. In fact, I'm about to go buy some brake pads for my bicycle as a way to make up for this morning's dread and disgust. Actually, these are not really a luxury, any more than adequate stopping of one's bicycle is a luxury, but they'll make me feel better, just like the guitar strings did yesterday and the beer the day before.

hah, i just irritated the neighbors by playing my sad music loudly. How about that

All you all should probably brace yourself for some pessimistic posts in the near future.

For the record, i don't want to go home, at least not all the time. I'm just getting tired of the bullshit associated with not knowing what the hell is being said all around me. I've gotten pretty tolerant, but realistically it's no picnic.

Today was another shitty day, though better than yesterday, mostly because I didn't have to work today. Work is crap. It ought to be abolished. I suppose that if it were fun they wouldn't call it work though.
Anyway, today i went skiing in Hakuba, a luxury since I am currently the proud operator of a borrowed car. I kept forgetting little things. For example, where was my money? How much gas is left? Can I make it up this hill with so little fuel? I also kept making huge tactical errors. For example, I went to the less populated side of the Goryu-Toomi resort so that it was much more difficult to score the cheap used passes like I did for newyears. I also decided to break my 10000 yen note by buying a curry, I needed to have 1500 yen on hand so that I could buy one of these tickets off of someone as they returned to the deposit refund machine. Unfortunately, i picked a dish that returned me 90150 yen from my bill, leaving me bereft of the go-hyaku en piece. Stupid choice. So i needed to get more change so i walked past the change machine, the one that costs nothing to change your bill into coins, and purchased a beer that I didn't want. Stupid me. Then i went out to see if i could scalp a ticket. No, no apparently I can't, i just look like an ass as people refuse me for reasons i can't understand. Stupid white skin.

Now for the good part. The new skis that I got are totally awesome. In combination with the new bindings, they're just about a million times better than the old stuff. I can actually cut some turns. I can actually look like a telemark skiier. When next winter rolls around and the powder snow piles up, i'm going to be ready, oh you'd better believe I'm going to be ready. It will be such a great thing to start as an intermediate skiier rather than an absolute beginner.

Christ almighty, i have had a long week. I'm just not meant for 12 hour days at work. It's not that I hate the students or really my co workers. It's just that 12 hours is just like perpetual teaching. I'm only awake for maybe 17 hours a day maximum. That's not enough time for me thanks. While i'm not actually "working" those 12 hours, in fact i'm only paid for the hours that I teach which could be maybe 4 on a given day, they miraculously seem all spaced out to kill the maximal amount of free time in a given day. Thank god that most of the people i teach are interesting people. I'd probably buy a ticket home if it were a bunch of whiney-ass higschool students for 12 hours a day. This job is really making me think hard about what I can personally do with my life. Importantly, it's giving me a good perspective on what I don't want to do. Principally, i don't want to work someplace where the management has such shitty communication with the employees. For example, I didn't know until today that I'd be teaching children's classes next week from 10 or so in the morning and i still don't know my schedule for next year (april 1) yet. It's not like I haven't asked for clarification. I've asked 3 times for them to share my shedule for next year and as of yet, nothing.

Here's another thing that rubbed me the wrong way at work: About 4:00 I was sitting with Yasuko, a co-worker talking about what the hell we'll do with the little kids next week when my boss calls up someone and asks in English, "Hey, how are you, do you know whose white honda is in back?"
I responded that it was mine, jennifer borrowed a car from some friends who are out of the country, and that she had dropped it off for me earlier.
He quickly hung up the phone and said, "It's yours? Well we were wondering whose car it is all day, the neighbors said that some gaijin got out of it and left it there. You should apologize to the manager, he's a little pissed."

Speaking of a little pissed, this was certainly not the appropriate time to bitch at me. Not after recently firing my co-worker for no real reason, stacking me with tons of work this week and then asking me to pull more 12 hour days next week. Why the fuck would I have to apologize for parking my car in the back when students and teachers alike all park their cars in back. Nobody should have gotten pissed, they didn't even ask me or anyone else for that matter they just got all steamed up in their crappy little japanese way. Nothing doing my man, no apology from me, particularly since the dude doesn't speak any english. I'm not trying to be so english-centric, but realistically, i work with a bunch of english teachers, you'd think that one of them would at least be able to ask around in 2 damn languages whose car it was, particularly if there were foreigners getting out of it as reported by the snoopy neighbors.

Anyway, enough of the bitching. It's just been a long time since i've unwound. With jennifer's family here, there's been almost 0 private time, particularly as Doug was here for the previous 5 days to their visit. I love them all, but I need my damn space occasionally.

Jennifer and kelly are on the couch. Jean is on the floor. For the past 10 minutes kelly and jean have been going back and forth about various things. This all started as a conversation about the guy taking care of their some what senile grandmother who's staying at their house.

"Mom, what are you paying him?"

"I don't want to get into it, dont' go there"

"I'm just curious."

"You'll just take it personally, I don't want to get into it, it's none of your business."

"I won't get bent out of shape, i'm just curious."

"Well, i don't get paid for work that I do."

"You don't really do much work at all."

"Mom, you're making me angry, you don't know how hard i work."

"Well, every time you come home you avoid hard work like the plague."

"No, every time I go home i do some work, like washing dishes or something."

"What about hard labor."

"What is hard labor anyway?"

"You could have gone out in the backyard and dug a ditch with Ian and Aaron last year."

"I just didn't want to."

et cetera...

This is not unusual, but all the better for happening in my living/dining/bed room.
Families are lovely, but sometimes, particularly the times that they're so close, we can't really appreciate them. This is particularly true when they're being belligerent in my somewhat larger than a bread box apartment. Scratch that, it's not my apartment, it's the apartment that i'm sharing with my girlfriend and her wonderfully eccentric family, and their home life. Often, and I'm sure this is true for me, but folks just don't want to step back and say, damn i'm one stupid ass right now. What the hell good am i doing in this argument. Next time i'm being stupid like that, someone smack me in the face please.

The paucity of posts recently is due in some part to the arrival of my most talkative former roomate: Douglas Potter. Doug arrived with style, panache and about 150 pounds of baggage on Thursday night. It was great. I really loved bending my spine under the weight of his backpack which was filled with books ( half of them in swedish, half english, many of them math books), home-made banana chips, reusable extra heavy duty Danish coke bottles, a battery charger, several torn sweatshirts, 2 bags of Mate tea, 2 kg lentils, and of course the crown jewels, over 400 prophylactics to be split between Doug and Alf. Within about 15 minutes of touchdown the guy was sprawled out on approximately 1/3 of our total floor space with his luggage and food stuffs.

I don't know quite what it is about that guy, but he always has an interesting perspective on life and is particularly verbose about it.

We did the standard stuff, he visited Zenkoji temple, looked at some shrines, ate conveyor belt sushi and some ramen at a restaurant. Friday Doug came to watch one of my classes and apparently my boss wasn't the most pleased by this because while i was teaching the following private lesson Doug managed to get kicked out of the employees area. This is not really how i had hoped it would go. Personally, if i were a student i would be interested in learning from a different person, particularly if it gave me a little more personal time to practice. As it was, the class he visited had a 1 to 1 teacher student ratio, and what could be better than that. I suppose i did make a tactical error in not asking my boss the day before. I had hoped that he would be in the office before class so that he could give the ok, but I assumed that since Alf visited classes, it would have been ok for Doug to do so as well.

Doug came also to Nozawa Onsen. He was unfortunately unable to participate in the Skiing part of the day, he just stuck around the town and managed to get himself into one of the many onsens that spot the town. He was quite amuzed to get into a tub with a bunch of leathery old japanese guys and tell them about his life story, the politics of modern and historical Sweden and what japanese food he likes. The place eventually cleared out and one of the old guys suddenly whipped out his gimongous camera and took a picture of the spa's nameplate from 1 meter away. The old man proceeded to amaze doug with his cinematographic skill as he produced a digital video recorder and went to work filming the steaming interior of the onsen. Doug was impressed both by the cameras and the weirdness. I was shocked to hear niether. I live in a country of strange people. They do strange things. They think nothing of it. End of story.

Some of my perkier students posed the question to me last week, "Do you want japanese friends?"
My knee jerk reaction was, "Of course I do, don't be rididculous." But I really had to think about it for a while afterwards. I would like to think that I'm a really open, cultually sensitive and accepting guy, but as it turns out, i have relatively few Japanese friends here. Of people who are not my students or co-workers, I can count probably 3 or 4 people on my "Japanese Friend" list. I started thinking about the reasons for this and here is what i came up with as excuses:
1. I am shy. I tend not to make many new friends outside of my daily activities even back home. I'm not particularly gregarious by nature and that's accentuated by being in a foreign country.
2. I don't smoke. Smoking is always a social refuge for people, and particularly in Japan where so many people smoke all the time. Plus, my desire not to smell like smoke often prevents me from going to places like bars where one can more readily meet local people.
3. I have a girlfriend. This gives me an incentive to go home at night rather than prowling around looking for girls at night after work. Also, I tend to eat at home a lot and I turn down some plans because they're inconvenient to do with Jennifer.
4. I work. My hours are constantly chainging week by week. My only sure thing is that I'll be at work no later than 9:30 pm. This kind of kills many of the social things that I might engage in otherwise, such as classes, japanese lessons or evening plans with the normally employed workforce, japanese or otherwise.

That said, i honestly consider some of my students and co-workers to be friends. When you meet someone weekly or more frequently and shoot the shit over various topics, you tend to develop some sort of friendship that to me is more than just that of a student/teacher sort. I would be happy to spend time with many of my students outside of the classroom setting, however, my contract specifically bars such meetings. Well shit. I guess I'll probably end up a lonely, isolated foreigner in a sea of japanese faces.

Japan may well be the land of the facial protruberances. I've seen more freaky moles, warts and skin bumps here than at any time in my personal history. I don't know exactly what it is, but you'll find warts and huge moles on people all over the place. Highschool girls who in the US would freak at the idea of having one of these dudes clinging to their epidermis casually apply their makeup around them. Old women and men seem to grow volcanic masses on their faces. Shane and i saw one in tokyo that was quite honestly the same diameter as a penny and about a centimeter and a half tall. It looked like something out of Hansel and Gretel or The Wizard of Oz.
It's possible that people here have the same occurrence of moles and warts as the western population and simply don't bother to get them removed. However, i find that completely odd because the japanese are incredibly image conscious, at least as conscious as Americans and probably more so. They also go to the hospital for the slightest health problem. For the common cold, that may require two or three visits to the hospital. My best guess is that the japanese must find them benign from a beauty standpoint, or at least not care about them too much. Maybe they even find that attractive, however far fetched that may be.

There's a real dichotomy when you see a guy wearing a super nice suit and then tennis shoes or bedroom slippers. All of the men and women were decked to the nines and yet there was that one glaring inconsistency. Since they always take off their shoes before entering school to switch into their indoor shoes, usually crappy 100yen things or some sort of sneaker. I saw maybe 2 guys today who had nice shoes on, the rest were wearing fuzzy, floofy things. It just doesn't jive.

I've been to boring-ass graduations, mine included, but the one I attended today was by far the worst one i've ever been to. I showed up and the students were lined up in one of the two gyms to head into the other gym where they had their chairs all set up. I was ushered in to sit in a seat next to the door to watch the whole proceedings from the comfort of my suit and tie. THis is the only time i've worn the suit and tie since coming here. Admitedly, i've tied more neckties in the 4 months here than in my entire previous existence, but that's beside the point. THe english teacher came up to me and said, "THank you for coming, today will be in a traditional Japanese style, enjoy." I was intrigued at this point, maybe there would be someting interesting afterall.
The seniors all marched into the auditorium to some cheesy piano tune that i could recognise but not place. They were just wearing their school uniforms and so, looked exactly as they did every other day of their semi-adult lives (they wear the uniforms every day except sunday). THis was a big mistake from my perspective, there was no particular dignity for these girls, they just looked normal in their little sailor outfits and knock knees. Then through a series of bows, standing, sitting and instructions of various types, we passed a good 2.5 hours sitting and listening to various people drone on through the ceremony about how auspicious and great their class is. I don't know this for a fact because i understood only about 25 words the whole time, i'm just assuming. They read off all of the names in the class, about 100 total, and then instead of handing each student her diploma, they gave the wad of them to certain students to be distributed in some other way. I guess that's ok, if you want to stress that the group is more important than individual achievements, but realistically, i felt that the students were cheated. They had no gowns to wear, no stupid hats, no annoying tassels, none of the really good things about graduation. They aren't even really finished with school, they're going on a class trip to Vancouver in the middle of April and they'll hang out all summer. Some of the girls were a little teary eyed, but i can only imagine what it would have been like if it had been a really good graduation, or even a mediocre ceremony instead of some hack-job in the gym.

Oh well, i got a nicely prepared box of glutinous rice and chestnuts out of the deal.

I watched "Spirited Away" last night (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi in Japanese) by Hayao Miyazaki. Follow the link for a more detailed plotline if you're interested. The basic story, and this should be easy to follow since it's totally screwball is as follows:
A young girl with crabby uncaring parents goes through a tunnel and comes out in the onsen village for the spirit world. Her parents start gorging themselves on spirit food and become pigs. She then has to save them for working for the witch who runs the onsen and whose spell turns them into the porkers. In the onsen she meets a boatload of freaky dudes, dudettes, birds, bats, and various "Japan Only" things that I've never even considered before. She has to pay her way by working hard and earning the right to free her parents. Eventually she helps various strange spirits and creatures and find peace/relaxation whatever and discovers her identity and that true love can conquer all.
While I can't say what the dialogue was like in the original Japanese, the English edition was nothing short of sappy. I've generally got the idea that Japanese is a pretty sappy language if taken literally, with all it's honorifics, pleases and thankyous and poetic symbolism, it probably doesn't translate well... either that or it's a nation of sentimental dweebs.
At any rate, I found the movie principally interesting from the graphical standpoint, as the main characters all said annoying things in annoying voices. Graphically, the movie was really intriguing, principally for the way the director used the traditional anime features, such as complex subject framing and panning shots as well as interesting angles. I also really appreciated the attention to detail in the subject matter, for example the way that Sen, the main character, stops to put on her shoes before chasing after her friend. Not only does she do it in a realistic manner, she does it in a way that is particularly japanese. However, the storyline was quite strange and not a little cheesy. True, it is a cartoon, and one geared for all ages, but the "true love conqers all" theme is pretty trite. I wouldn't have watched the whole thing if it had merely been western style characters, but the incidentals, the bit characters and the background were so strange and foreign, I had to watch so as not to miss anything. If this guy were American, everyone would have to assume that he were taking heavy doses of some psycotropic drugs, either that or a schizophrenic. It was just that bizarre from my standpoint. While I'm sure that it's regarded as a fanciful film here, i wonder just how strange it is to the average japanese adult.

The idea has crossed my mind more than once that i'm a big idiot when it comes to sports and such. I've got these goals that i set for myself, "I'd like to be fast/ski well/climb high." and then i just go and fart around and waste my time when i could easily be working towards those goals. I think that probably most people are like that to a large extent, but I really don't care about other people in this case, we're talking about me here. I suppose that's what separates the achievers from the non; the little thing called 'self motivation'.

I'm reminded of the conundrum that Alf proposed while he was studying neuroscience at Mac. He said that what he should really do is work his ass off and figure out some drug or brain synapse that would motivate people and then he would be rich after an extensive marketing campaign to sell the stuff to all of the unmotivated people in the world. The only problem is he would have to have such a drug available to get over his perpetual lazyness. Blows your mind doesn't it?

So i'm going to be in a talent show. No, i'm not doing that strange thing with my throat that i do at parties or blowing fire (can't find 151 here), i'm playing the guitar. Ronnie and I got together last night to practice what little we know and to work on our improvisation skills. Already able to strum we've decided on a simple Yningwe Malmsteen piece featuring Ronnie on the solo and me doing an impressive little air guitar solo.
Actually, we're probably going to do a touching duet of Cat Stephens' "father and son" . I'll let you know how things progress. we were sounding pretty good after i had abot 3 beers, i thought at least.

I really appreciate the Japanese people who don't act Japanese, or at least don't when they're speaking English to me. The constant apologies and chronic shyness get to me after a while. Realistically, one should expect that I call on you if you're in my English class, that's just how it works. There are several students of mine who repeatedly and almost unfailingly look surprised, shocked, confused or dismayed when I ask them a question in class. I might expect this for a week or two while you get used to my style or whatever, but it should be apparent after a month that I will call on everyone in my class at least once for every exercise if possible. The students that I really love are the ones who, even if they don't speak English so well, will at least give it a shot. Forget shyness and saving face or whatever, just go for it and try. I totally love it when someone will take the initiative to tell a joke or make fun of me in class, at least it shows a bit of initiative. I was explaining my voice to a little old lady of medium English ability and she responded, "Your voice, very attractive right now." It was great! I love that stuff, real honest-to-god communication.

I suppose that I would be well advised to take this advice to heart and go out and try to communicate with Japanese folks, but hell, I am just a hypocrite in this case.

Well, i now have my first homeowner friends from college. Ben and Marye are now the proud owners of a house in the Longfellow neighborhood of Minneapolis. What's more, near as I can figure they bought Jesse Ventura's boyhood home. The whole email is below.


first comes love. then comes marriage. then comes...
a house. shit, you thought i was going to say baby in
a baby carriage. marye and i had our offer accepted on
saturday. the new address is 3200 46th avenue south,
minneapolis. the neighborhood is longfellow. the house
is three blocks from the river and two blocks from
lake street. the closing date is march 25 but we can't
move in until april 28. the craftsman bungalow style
one and a half story single family home was erected in
1922. it was the childhood home of james janos. who
knows who james janos is. he was a wrestler. he was
governor. that's right, he is jesse ventura. anyway,
his dad was handy with the steel, and we have kitchen
cupboards to prove it. anyway, the house is sweet.

Laryingitis sucks if you're an english teacher. It would have been difficult otherwise but i happened to have my most talking intensive class this morning. It is my top level class, both of the women in fact are or were english teachers. Weekly we pick a topic article from Newsweek and we discuss it for 70 minutes or so. This week's topic at my urging was a really good article about the Passion of Christ movie by Mel Gibson. I thought that the article provided a really insightful view of the cultural context around the bible, a topic that i haven't really done any research on. This was by far the longest article we've discussed in a class. Generally speaking, we can do about a 3 page article in an hour and this one was 7. It would have been a stretch under normal conditions.
Two problems for today's class: I had no voice and my students were not christian.
Basically, it was a lecture class. Japanese people in general, and my a-religious students in particular are not so well versed in the bible, something that I kind of take for granted. I don't consider myself particularly knowledgeable on matters of the bible or anything. It's not like i really paid any attention in gradeschool to the bible, but i did sit through a bazillion masses, lessons, classes and the general christian osmosis of American society at large (which i heard is the most religious in the developed world, as much good as that does for our foreign and domestic policy) and i have seemingly come away a genious on christianity. In this respect i must pay tribute to my father, the master at pontificating on rock hard opinion and a little logic. It's pretty great what one can get away with when there's no one there to call you on it. It's not like these two Japanese women, however fiesty they may be, can call my bluff on the exact date of Vatican II (1956 I told them) when it actually appears to have been from about 1963-1965 or so.
The movie itself is a hot button topic because of percieved anti-semitism in the film. Through reading the article, i'm much less worried about the anti-semitism present in the film than the anti-semitism thats present in the idiots, bigots and fruitcakes who go to watch it. It's not like the bible itself is anti semitic--the writers were all jews, for christ-sake (i'm gonna let that one slide), but wouldn't you guess what document has been used over and over to persecute all sorts of politcal undesirables like jews and homosexuals for example.
I'll personally wait to pass judgement of the film until i've actually seen it. Some reviews i've read are unflinchingly favorable, but those are unfailingly from a christian perspective. I have to wonder what my students will think.

I love amazing people with my feats of subarashii cycling or whatever. The other day I rode about 15K one way to the class that I was teaching instead of wasting my time going to the station and waiting for the train, then getting off and walking. People were shocked. It's great, the Japanese, maybe more than American's are stunned by human powered transportation, even though bicycle riding is so much more prevalent here.
But for the meat of my post i wanted to mention a sickening and strange occurrence on my ride.
The route to the business where i teach took me south of the city through an area that has been developed almost entirely within the last 10 years, mostly in the preparations for and aftermath of the olympics. It was strange riding in this area because while Nagano has its share of big box retailers and auto lots, they're all crammed in next to mom and pop shops and houses and apartments. I was initially shocked upon my arrival at the intermixing of land use along Japanse streets. It's not uncommon to see a garden right next to a convenience store that's right next to some heavy manufacturing place. It's really strange from my perspective of land use and zoning that's so prevalent in the US. At any rate, the ride through the new part of town felt strangely homey; the big box retail and vacant parking lots along with wide roads and unrestricted traffic made me feel as though i were riding through some shitty suburb in middle america, not middle nippon. It was a nostalgic trip that was only broken occasionally when i realized that everyone was driving on the wrong side of the road and that there were bicycle lanes on the sidewalk, but it really wasn't that different from Edina or Hopkins or Urbandale. I was swept away by the charm of the highway strip.

so here is what you've all been waiting for . . .



the great naked ape.

i have recently come into the posession of some rather scandalous pictures of Alfred in the onsen. While i was unfortunately unable to get one of the monkeys attacking shane, there are some good ones of alf scalding himself in the water. Hopefully i'll get them posted today.

I had a kind of crappy friday at work.
I went in to the day hoping to get a raise; in my contract it says that, "After a 3 month probationary period, the wage will increase." This was to be sweet as my three months are up. The other teacher, Paul and I were all stoked about the clause and were hoping to come home with the knowledge of a couple of extra yen in the next paycheck.
Paul initiated the conversation with the boss and right then i knew that we were in for trouble. You see, as soon Paul mentioned it, there came the sqinty face and the hissed inhilation that mean, "Big problem, but I don't want to talk about it," in Japanese.
We went upstairs to a classroom and our boss said, "Well the reason that we have not increased your paycheck is that we're actually not satisfied with your performance."
Great, there's a certain kick to the crotch. All this time i had been thinking that i was a nice guy and a somewhat above mediocre teacher and suddenly i suck.
Paul's response was, "Fair enough," and seemed like he wanted out of the room right away but i was more than a little interested in finding out what the hell was going on.
"So, if we're not teaching up to your satisfaction, could you please tell us what we should do to improve our teaching?" i asked.
"Well, I'm not really sure. Since September we've lost about 50 students and we're really not sure why. Maybe the student's don't like you as teachers. We sometimes hear complaints that the classes aren't that interesting."
"Ok, I can appreciate that students want interesting classes, but I was only instructed to teach from the textbook and in fact there is a pretty rigorous schedule that i was told to keep up with and not to deviate from."

It kind of went like that for a while. I was pretty pissed off and bummed about my teaching ability. But shit, i did exactly as i was instructed, and it's not like i proclaimed to be a fabulous english teacher before I came. It was plain to see from my transcript and resumee that i am not a teacher and that I studied Geography for christsake. If they had a problem with my teaching it would have behooved them to talk to me about it first, rather than to wait for me to bring it up in a salary meeting.
This is just the perfect example of the problems that western and japanese people have in communicating here. Maybe we're too dumb to see things and maybe we expect to be told about stuff before the shit hits the fan but it certainly does suck the way it's done here. THere's such a societal emphasis on saving face and not insulting anyone and making it formal and polite that I just can't understand what's going on half the time. I wonder if i'd ever have heard any complaints if we didn't bring up the issue about money first. I have to assume not.
As it turns out, the point was brought up in our little meeting that the Nagano Foreign Language Center may not be able to keep the doors open past April unless they get a lot of new subscriptions or whatever. At this point I honestly don't know if I care whether or not the place stays open. It would be fine if they did, as i'd have a job, but i'd actually rather do stuff on my own where i don't have to wear a tie every day to work. That really cramps my style. Currently, i'll just see how things go and swing it one way or the other. I think that secretly i hope to get laid off to increase my free time quotient and also make my schedule more similar to Jennifer's.

A quick rundown of Alf's visit:

Last Friday he visited my work and confused a lot of my students. It was nice to have him around but I have a feeling that they weren't so prepared for alf in all his alfness. My favorite of the day was when we both tried to explain the US election system. The system's a mess anyway, but i'm sure we totally freaked everyone out with our convoluted explanations. THese were high level students, probably the best class at my school, but at the same time, it must have been hellishly confusing. Afterwards we went out for conveyor belt sushi- a fabulous Japanese taste treat- and then to a bar where we met a drunk and friendly Japanese couple out on their second date and we watched the guy drink himself under the table as he tried to keep up with 4 sober gaijin guys. Humorous and a little strange.

Saturday was spent hanging out and watching the Canadian amateur hockey champions get slaughtered by their russian counterparts. It was an 11-1 rout for the Russians. Fortunately we saw some good fights, that at least was entertaining. Afterwards we went bowling and slept over at Lara and Shanes for the following day's ski adventure.

Sunday we spent at my favorite ski resort, Nozawa Onsen. I've got some great pictures of alf falling on his ass, face side and head that should amuse me for weeks. Jennifer is getting pretty good with the ol' snowboard. Not ready to go pro on the half-pipe yet, but pretty close. Shane and I got lost and had to get picked up by a ski patroller when the lift shut down. Pretty annoying really.

Monday alf spent sitting in front of the computer, no breaks.

Tuesday we went around downtown to Zenkoji, the big temple in town. It's pretty cool, but still just a temple. Alf went to buy some chopsticks for his girlfriend as a souveneir and the store we got them at didn't have enough cash to break his 10,000yen bill, so as it happens, i bought his girlfriend a present.

Wednesday we spent hanging out at the Monkey Onsen. Hopefully, i'll have some good nude pics of alf in the onsen. The best part of the day was when two monkeys started attacking eachother mere feet from shane's bare wet ass. Pretty cool, one of those stories to tell your grandchildren.

Alf spent Thursday also hanging out and playing games on the ol' computer. After work we had a Guys Night and Shane and Ronnie (the other two guys that i hang out with) came over and drank beer, told stories and we played some epic slime volleyball battles. Overall, time well spent.

Alf's final japanese experience here was watching a shitty japanese nija movie that seems to have been closely based off of a Playstation 2 game or a crappy anime movie, complete with the meaningful stares, silly dialogue and a nonsensical plotline.

Yesterday Alf and I biked to the train station at 5:30 in the morning so he could get to Osaka in time for his flight. A word of advice: If you're going to visit us, fly to either Tokyo or Nagoya unless the ticket elsewhere is like $200.

As you may have guessed, alf has been here for the past week, striking terror into the hearts of the Japanese.
Actually, since alf's been here i've been "Hello"ed more times than in the previous month. He seems to look the part of the tourist. I haven't been doing that much blogging because He's taking up much of the computer time. We've been competing in epic battles of slime volleyball and not much else. I'll give a rundown of our doings this past week shortly.

BY the way, the 2 player version is much better, the game physics in the 1 player version are too difficult.

Check this out y'all! Alf's coming to visit, i don't know what that means for the safety of the average Japanese female, but it can't hurt them over in China.

I"m not quite sure what we're all gonna do, there's only so much touristy stuff that i know about, and i have to work too, but i think we'll be able to work things out ok. Lucky for me Alf can occupy himself quite well, as anyone who's watched him play with silverware can attest.

More on the hilarious hijinks to follow.

there's a strange funky smell that develops in japanese higschools. SInce there is no real heating in the halls or anything, the rooms are powered up with these gigantic kerosene incinerators. Once you get them going it's kind of like a forge blasting away 3 or 4 feet from the nearest roasting girl. These things are alright, but the smell can get a little overpowering, particularly when the heater first kicks in. I also think that as a function of the girls (I teach at an all girls school) having to wear the same uniform day after day, the classroom smell gets a little weird by wednesday and just keeps funking it up after that. It's kind of what I imagine a brothel would smell like, at least a japanese brothel.

I honestly don't remember smelling that weird when i was in higschool. Would someone who's been inside an american higschool recently let me know what it smells like.

I realize that i've been kind of lax in responding to some personal emails, one in particular from Ben in which he required the definition of sugoi.
The word sugoi means something like "great, awesome or cool" and it is sometimes used in the way that we use "really" as in -really big- or something like that. Basically you can say it whenever anything interesting happens, or actually almost anytime. For example if you taste something good you should pucker up your face and then express in amazement, "SUUUUUUGOOOOOI Oeishiiiii!" If one of your snowboarding friends smashes into the back of a skiier and pops up unhurt, you should say, "SUUUUUUGOOOOOIIII!!!" and cackle like a hen. If you are a 2nd grader and you see a big pile of snow outside the window you should stop paying attention to the english teacher and run to the window to yell to all of your classmates, "SUGOI Yukii."

Overall, it's a word you shouldn't miss out on.

Already I'm a spoiled snob.
I've been downhill skiing less than 10 times in my life and at this point I already have like 0 tolerance for crappy resorts or snow conditions. We went to this place on Saturday which was mostly a giant snowboard park, things like the half pipe, rails and jumps dominated the scene and there was only one run that I really liked at all. At least part of my dislike came from the fact that the snow was slightly harder than granite over much of the course. I totally f-ed up my arse falling down and then later smacked up my knee. I fared better than Jennifer however; on her second time snowboarding she ended up in tears with a totally busted up ass on the last run of the day. Yikes.

Other than that, I had a pretty good onsen experience. There are few things more gratifying than getting naked with a bunch of Japanese guys and boiling myself. The place we went after skiing had a nice outdoor pool full of 40 degree water (Celsius that is) and after a while I always get so hot that I've got to cool off. There was snow around the pool and as I got out, I grabbed a couple of fist-fulls and proceeded to scrub down my body, much to the amazement of the Japanese patrons. I must have had 15 pairs of eyes glued to me as I scrubbed down with the snow in the style of Alf Hickey: vigorously, with some grunting and grimacing. I may have cared about stuff like that 2 months ago, but right now I've pretty much stopped giving a crap. I figure that exposure to new things is good for most people, and Japanese people are no exception. With the most homogeneous population of any country on the planet, the Japanese would do well with a little variety in their social diet, as it were.

I miss the dumpster. They throw all sorts of great stuff out here, but you can't get to it, because they lock up their dumpsters. THe amount of produce should be just awesome, but it's really hard to get at because it's behind closed walls or they keep it inside. Also the level of fish consumed in this country sometimes makes it pretty ripe around the rubbish bins. We just got a letter from Doug describing one of the better hauls at the ol' dumpsterama near Whole Foods, i presume. It sounded blissful. Food here is so damn expensive, it's like shopping in Switzerland. Lots of selection, if you like miso and if you can afford it. The fruit is really the killer. I've seen $100 melons in the grocery stores. Apples can be pretty pricey too, like 300 yen a pop. I think it's because of all the manual labor that goes into the production of food here. A rice farm can be like 2 acres and the guy is out there with his little roto-tiller and rice picker. Apple orchards are ridiculous, they put little pieces of paper over the apples to keep them from ripening too early. THat's probably why you can get apples the size of your head in the grocery stores. Everything is smaller here except for the produce.

Thanks to my thoughtful and crafty sister Claire, i just fininshed watching the Return of the King in beautiful laptop/pirate format. While i was a super big fan of the other two, this one left me wanting a little bit more. I think that it was primarily that the visual effects couldn't take precedence in my apartment the way they would on a big screen full of entranced viewers. As far as my personal viewing pleasure goes, i'd have to say that the first movie really was the best for me, principally because i was soooooo blown away by the visuals and the fact that anyone would tackle the greatest fantasy story of modern times.
My gripes about the series are pretty par for the course:
The acting was at times a little lacking, but realistically Tolkein doesn't give a whole lot of character development in the books. It's a saga afterall, not a personality study.
Gripe number 2 is the cheesy music at importune times in the movie. I didn't really care for the "holy music" that popped up oddly. Maybe it would have been better had it not been for my computer speaker setup, but I doubt it would have jived with me anyway.
Gripe 3 is principally one with hollywood in general and is closely tied to gripe 2: too much gratuitous sound effect. Some ones that i got kind of irritated with were primarily Frodo's excess gasping in Mordor and elsewhere. Realistically, when you're super thirsty you're going to try to make as little noise as possible to conserve the moisture in your mouth, and you won't sound like a fish out of water. The other one that pissed me off was the shelob web spinning noise, it sounded like taking a poop, and it just kind of ruined the effect for me.
I would also have liked to see some of the cleaning out of the shire, but that could have easily stretched into another hour, which would be totally insane.

Anyway, the overall effect was great, just like in the books, i was sad to have the story end. Middle earth is no more, and in fact it just existed in one schisophenic mind to begin with, complete with its people, its customs and mythology. I honestly think that most people would be happier in a world like that with issues in black and white. I know our president would, since he casts it that way in his head already.

You know this SARS really isn't as bad as people think. Sure, i've got a mild case of it, but really nothing to worry about. I find that the dry cough kind of punctuates my speech well, gives it the importance of a consumptimatic sage. As for the fever, it really helps cut the chill at night. Normally we turn the heater on for a short time before bed, but since coming down with SARS i just take off my shirt and radiate into the apartment. After 1 or 2 minutes the place is as toasty as can be.
Yeah, the dizzyness, headache, bodyache and fainting all have their downsides but realistically, I think we should welcome this new year of SARS with open arms and no worries.

I now officially declare my website more interesting than Alf's because I actually post and I really care about my readers. Please support my move upscale in the blogger community. Alfie may have pictures but i've got content.

I've had an interesting week. On monday coming back from the train station, i was propositioned for the first time since i was in boyscouts. A woman came up to me as i was walking and looking deeply into my eyes, she said, "japanese japanese japanese MASSAGEIE" which we all know means sex, right? Anyway, i told her in my best stilted japanese that i was fine and i had to go. I don't know if i just look lonely, randy or rich but it was somewhat exhilirating to be accosted in the dark like that.
The second interesting/disturbing thing for the week was yesterday in my highschool class. I was teaching a bunch of 16 year old girls a bunch of nothing (because they don't learn, i swear to god) and i was making the rounds of the room trying to encourage them to work, rather than screw off. A difficult proposition, ask any higschool teacher, let alone one who can't speak the language. Anyway, as i went back into the bowels of the student body, i went to this group of 3 girls. It had seemed that earlier the two "cool" girls had been picking on the less cool of the three, but i don't know anything here and i figure that they will just have to fend for themselves because i'm not willing or able to deal with much crap. The un-cool girl was in the middle of the other two and was the only one of them who had a text book. I walked over to indicate that maybe they should read the damn directions which were easily accessible to them in japanese and that maybe they should do the work and i noticed a significant amount of doodling in the book. This is pretty normal since the majority of highschoolers double as Manga animators in their spare time, at least that's what i must assume from the copious volumes of stylized pictures they have scrawled everywhere. What i wasn't quite prepared for was the type of doodle. Now i'm used to the usual sex graffiti present whenever boys are around, but i was certainly not quite up for seeing 3 different and equally detailed renditions of the female genetailia "doodled" on the pages of the poor girls textbook. It was kind of a, "Hey what nice drawings there, you've got a bunch of stars and a....OH MY GOD...we'll just put your pencil case over that one, won't we." followed by some female hysterics from the two "cool" chicks.

As i think about it today, i probably should have reported this to the head English teacher, but at the time i was a little unsure about what to do. After listening too Paul, my english co-worker, describe his satisfaction after chewing out a student who told him to "DIE" (the effective equivalent of "fuck off" in Japanese) and hurl a piece of chalk at him, I'm pretty sure that I should start kicking ass, if at all possible. The only problem is, i really don't care. If they don't want to learn, i'm not in the position to motivate them, and i pretty much don't give a crap. They're all going to be boring pregnant wives paying for English lessons from guys like me in 10 years or less, so they can pretty much screw off if they want.

The children here are amazing. I mean, little five and six year olds here can speak perfect Japanese. How many American kids that age know a foreign language? The crazy thing is that kids here love speaking Japanese so much that you'd swear they didn't know how to speak normally! Weird, i know, but it's just one reason why this is called the "Switzerland of Asia".

I tried my hand at a little mountaineering this weekend.
Since i couldn't get a ride to go skiing with Lara and Shane, i was in a dour mood all saturday. Some may well know that i'm quite the sourpuss when i don't get to do what i want, particularly since the weekends here have a sort of precious quality that any real job lends them. I decided then that on Sunday i would attempt to find my own snow to ski down. So, I loaded up my skis, boots and poles into my backpack and headed up the mountain on my bike.
I've become inured to the weird looks from the locals here. I pretty much get stares from people whenever i'm anywhere but at work, in the building. The looks are always very discreet, but occasionally you'll catch people looking, or more frequently, purposefully not looking at you. It's become so regular that i have started to give less and less attention to how I look in public, figuring, "I already look ridiculous, why bother trying to look slightly less so?" I've taken to leaving my helmet on in stores, not taking off the pants bands that keep my ankles from snagging the chain on my bike and I'll even leave on the little yellow gaiters that i've begun to use when the pants bands weren't enough. At any rate, i pretty much expect japanese people to look at me funny.

You definitely get some funny looks when you're wearing tights, carrying skis on your back and riding up a mountain in the snow, probably regardless of what country you're in. I certainly have had that experience.

My aim was to cycle as far as i could and then hike up the mountain further to try to get to this patch of snow that you can see from our apartment. No problem really, there was a logging road that allowed me easy access to the base of the snow field, which was unfortunately almost completely unskiiable because it was only a snowfield in winter, in summer i'ts full of huge boulders which were only mostly covered with snow now. I hiked abotu halfway up and then decided that it was stupid, so i tried to ski down, crashed once (a minor one) and then i skiied down the logging road back to my bike.

Overall, it was a rather abortive expedition. Now if i had some snowshoes...

It's all about expectations. For example, yesterday I had the expectation of a really easy day, 1 class, and an easy class at that. It was going to be great, nothing much to do, and Jennifer was home on a "sick" day so we would have gotten to hang out, I was going to go for a run and things were in general, going to be good and simple.
My class happened to be out of the office, held at a business south of Nagano and when I got back to the office, I discovered that I had to teach 4 more classes that day, one of which was starting immediately. One of the other teachers fell and screwed up her already injured knee and couldn't walk, which somehow prevented her from teaching. Actually it wasn't so much the teaching as the getting to school that it prevented. Anyway, my glorious easy day was shot to hell. It's not really that the day was difficult, but I had the expectation of an easy one.
No problem, yesterday pissed me off, but today was going to be no trouble since the girls highschool was supposed to have tests today. I love test days, nothing is better than watching the students who give you grief all class long suffering under the labor of their test materials. I imagine that my dream job would be a study hall monitor in a Japanese highschool. As it turns out, it was a damn good thing that I prepared a lesson "just in case".
Such a bunch of crap! Paul (fellow teacher) asked them yesterday if I was going to have to prepare a lesson for the 3rd year (senior) highschool classes. The Japanese teacher said, "No, 3rd year students have tests tomorrow." What the guy really meant was, "Everyone except 3rd year students has tests tomorrow." SURPRISE! My lesson went off smashingly mediocre non-success.
I had another class this evening out of the office. I had expected to be driving the company car to class and consequently didn't get ready as early as I usually do when I'm taking the train. Unfortunately, my boss informed me that I was instead to take the train as I normally do. Groovy. Also, I had to buy my own ticket this time as he was fresh out of them. Groovy. So I got on my bike and hauled-ass over to the train station, sprinted up the stairs, hurriedly bought my ticket and nearly missed the train by about 10 minutes. I had a nice time in the unheated station waiting for the next train, 20 minutes later, but now I know that if I miss the first train and run quick-like from the station I can get to the class only about 2 minutes late, maybe less if it isn't icy and I'm in better shape.

Overall, I'm really looking forward to the weekend at this point. Let's hope that no one else decides to mess with my expectations.

To be read as if it were funny:

ALL YOU ALL WORRY WORTS CAN JUST STOP IT.

I am fine in this country. Despite what i may say or write in this blog there is nothing bad here, everything is fine. The glorious Emperor is great, all praise to Him. Long live the Japanese Empire.
...
What? Of course this is Aaron Evan Ritz writing this blog. How dare you question my authority and veracity!!
...
No, nothing could be further from the truth. THis is not some sort of Eastern hell hole or gateway to Apocalypse! I don't understand how you got that idea.
...
Well, yes, i know that my blog entries have been rather melodramatic.
...
No, no i don't think that we're really all screwed like i posted earlier.
...
Yes, like i said, everything is FINE!
...
Great, thanks for calling. I'll write more later.

Nothing satisfies a craving for meat better than a nice mushy block of tofu. When you're thinking about protein, animal husbandry, warfare and politics, there is not a food in the world better than Tofu. It's white, squishy and it has all of the nutrients that you'd ever imagine could come from a soybean packed into its cheap, easily slurpable exterior. I've recently switched to free-range tofu because of my concern for the living conditions of some of the soybeans out there. Did you no that for the "silky" style tofu, they actually put the beans into a pen, and prevent them from moving, all the while they force feed them on fertilizers and manure? It's kind of disgusting to think about, really.

The soybean is an amazing animal, and i'm pretty sure that without it, japan would be totally up shit creek without a paddle, either that or their food would have a whole different flavor. The soybean can be turned into almost any type of food, from a main dish, to an appetizer to a condiment, to a soup, the soybean does it all. My big question recently is, "How do they get the milking machines onto the little beans in the first place?" I like soymilk a lot, and i'm really curious whether or not the process is humane. Do the beans suffer? Please leave comments if you have any answers.

Well, my love affair with peanut butter has faded. Now i'm in love with this band that i discovered all by myself, with no one else telling me that they were cool. All i needed was the POWER OF THE INTERNET and the wonderful file sharing program Kazaa. The band is The Shins and while you can't see much from their website, they really rock. THey're kind of reminiscent of Yo La Tengo, equally good and i'm currently swooning to their alternative indie rock coolness.

While in the past my esteemed colleague Alf has eschewed Indie Rock for being too whiney, i personally am a big whiner and therefore can really identify with musicians who speak my language.

Now i must change my socks as they stink something fierce.

I've recently fallen in love again. It's been a while, but at last i know where my heart lies...


PEANUT BUTTER!

Peanut butter is soooooo good. You can eat it on almost anything, if you're on a survival mission, there are few foods that combine as much nutrition, flavor, packability and pure calories than dear old peanut butter. I should really pause to thank Jean McMaken here, since she had the good sense and good grace to airlift us some peanut butter a while back. It'd been sitting dormant in the cupbord and i hadn't been eating it much since we haven't bought bread as frequently as we used to. Since buying a loaf of japanese poofy white bread, i've been on a PB binge. I can't believe how much i've missed you, Peanut Butter, but it's been too long.

I'm hearkening back to the fall semester of 2000, a good and bad time; my achilles was screwed up and jennifer was in chicago, but i played a lot of guitar and brewed my first batch of beer with Alfie. I also had a sordid affair with peanut butter, not the petiet variety in the 8 oz jars, but the big 4 lb jugs of it, of which i consumed 3 in the course of 3 months. Ahh the wonder years.

I don't think i'm going to be able to (physically or logistically) eat quite so much in the subsequent months, but i'll be damned if i won't savor every mouthfull.

I realize that last post had a reasonable number of swears in it. While I really love it that my parents, their peers and my aunt and extended family all have been reading from time to time, it makes me a bit apprehensive about my less literary posts. I guess i've got to hope that all of you love me through my potty mouth as well. Sometimes the F-word conveys exactly the point that i'm getting at. Certainly a useful, if crass addition to the english language.

At times it's insanely easy to impress japanese people, in particular japanese housewives. I was discussing my past weeks activities which included cooking chili for a selection of gaijin on sunday. I'll always get, "Really, you can cook? Do you like cooking?" When I respond, "Yes," i always get a wide eyed look of wonder and some crooning. "Oh really, that is great, i wish that you were my son/husband/etc." Even my male co-workers are amazed by me, "You're really going to ride your bike home in this?" Or maybe, "You mean you're really going to eat that Kim-chi and Mayonaise sandwich?" The answer is YES people, niether of those things are that bad!

Back to housewives: The japanese housewife has kind of a shit existence in many ways. While it's also the case for western women, the japanese housewife is really little more than a servant much of the time. You would marvel at the complexity of the boxed lunch, the dedication to the evening meal and the complete lack of authority that most housewives here have. I suppose that's why the mainstays of the adult english education industry is in fact the housewife and the spinster. i've heard it theorized that english class is a way to escape the doldrums of life. It's like a secret identity for some people, i think.

On a side note, here's a little bit about my intellectual life these days: Nothing much doing.
i've been an intellectual bump on a log recently. I haven't read anything interesting in quite a while. Most recently i Read "Road To Omaha" an entertaining, if pulpy book about some stylized characters in their attempt to scam the corrupt US government. I tend to put off reading books with the thought in mind that it will keep me from studying japanese, but since i don't study japanese ever anyway, it's hardly a problem. I have had a mean craving to write some songs on the guitar, but maybe that's just an excuse to get myself a guitar. Consequently i've been plumbing the depths of the internet for music, lyrics and overall entertainment. As i write this, i'm listening to Yo La Tengo's version of "Nuclear War" by Sun Ra. It's a cool cover. Wheras the Sun Ra version is kind of a cool jazz version made interesting particularly by Ra's strong Jive accent as he repeats the refrain, "Nuc-lar War, it's a mother-fucker, Don't you know, if they push that button, your ass got to go," the Yo La Tengo version has a techno style background with their singer leading a chorus of gradeschool children through the same lyrics.

Both are good, both are powerful and both relate to my current belief that we're all fucked and it's going to be sooner rather than later. I think that the world will be a very confusing place in the not too distant future when China emerges as the new superpower and the US fades into relative obscurity. I suppose that our parents and grandparents and their parents etc. all felt the same way, but at the same time, maybe they were right to feel so, we're all just getting fucked-er and fucked-er, it just takes a while to notice.

Meanwhile, i'm feeling somewhat lonely and sorry for myself as i sit in the safest country in the world in my nice apartment typing on my $1000 computer. I'm an armchair doomsayer.

I keep twisting my damn ankle. THe past 4 runs i've been on, i've twisted the damn thing. Today was the worst, i am actually having difficulty walking on it. Today's sprain resulted in some swearwords, notably the F-enheimer and a lot of groaning. It always seems to happen just as i'm about to turn around at the farthest point from my apartment. It was a long damn walk/hobble/run back home.
Strangely, i'm starting to feel like my body doesn't heal up quite so well as it used to. It's probably the first step in getting old. I'm going to be 25 in the near future. Attaining the quarter century mark has been a great ride so far but at this point I'm well past time to have made something of myself. I remember watching professional athletes on TV and always in my youth they were old to me. Now it seems like half of them are 19 or something. Pretty sick. Here i am farting my life away in a foreign land when so many other people are making real contributions to the world. I recon i'm just destined for a my niche: mediocracy.
This is a minor gripe in the great scheme of things, but i'm just feeling a little bit bitchy and lonely today. Jennifer's been gone for like three weeks. I feel a little dependent when i say it, but it's not as fun to be here without her around. I suppose i would never want her to leave if we didn't share a tiny apartment. I think with one more room it would be perfect, but as it is it gets rather cooped up feeling here sometimes. Currently, however, i've adjusted myself quite well to the lack of female influence. I smell bad, eat poorly and play a lot of computer games. Well, one in particular, but i play it a lot.

Back from skiing and I didn't really hurt anything except my pride and my wrist. Crashing a lot will do that to a fella. I had a total of 4 days on the slopes. The first day we went to the combined resort Hakuba 47 and Goryu. This is a pretty nice place with two sides of the mountain covered in lovely snow. We also discovered a great scam; if you wait until about 2:00 you'll see the first trickle of people who are done for the day and they go to return their electronic passes for their 1000 yen deposit. Well if you're persistent, you can buy the passes off of the skiiers for abotu 1500 yen, making 3 hours of skiing cost you 500 yen when you get back your deposit. This totally rules. Nothing feels better than getting an unexpected windfall, particularly in Japan, where bargains are few and far between. We did this for two days and i also spent 2 whole days skiing. Overall, it cost me a little less than i had anticipated, which was totally great since my paycheck was a little lower than last month because of all the holidays involved.

We stayed in a cabin sort of thing for the 3 nights. The place was fine except for the terrible stink emanating from the pit toilet. It was a olfactory killing field in the bathroom. I did appreciate the interesting slang that i learned from my british compatriots as a result of the stink. It is truly amazing the variation of the English language between different areas of the world.
The best illustration of this point for the trip was Eddy of Halifax, Yorkshire. It was nearly impossible to understand the guy sometimes. It was truly hilarious. My favorite of his sayings was, "Minging," prounounced ming-en which apparently means something like, "nasty," or "disgusting." The first night Eddy introduced himself to this guy Andy and the interchange went something like this:

Eddy: Nice ta meet ya, Muh neam's Eaddeah.
Andy: Yeah, Andy, and your name is?
Eddy: Iahm Eaddeah, you're Andeah?
Andy: Andy, right, what's your name again?
Eddy: Eeddeah, you knoo Ead!
Andy: Oh, Eddy! Right.

Its just amazing to hear all the diffferent variations in my own language. Pretty hilarious to think of these people as english teachers however. How the fuck are japanese people going to understand them if I can't.

This just in from Annie Taff, a fabulous idea, and one that i could definately see myself getting interested in.

speaking of breweries - please go to brewery school and opend a brewery
soon. first off, the machines are so satisfyingly big, like when i went
to a monster truck rally and it was satisfyingly loud. and second of
all, it would open up a place of employment for me - i could draw the
labels and give tours wearing a special 'ask me questions' button - it
would, i assure you, be brialliant.

I tried to be productive today and get shit done, but it was only marginally successful. I just didn't really motivate that fast, and then this computer game called out to me, "Play Me, Play Me, Waste your time getting disgusted with yourself." So i did.

Whilst running errands earlier, i saw this guy getting onto his motorbike at the 100 Yen store. He must have been about 120 years old, he could barely walk and he gummed his gums in the way that old folks without dentures will do. He gave me the once over and kept glancing at me in my bicycling attire, leg bands and yellow helmet cover. I tried to watch him as well; the guy just teetered and puttered along, coaxing his 50cc bike out of the parking space. He took several weak tries at the kick start before getting the thing going and then he just kind of puttered out of the parking lot.
Two reactions from this: The first is, "Wow, what a stubborn old man. How great of him for maintaining his independence."
The second reaction is, "Wow, what a crazy old man. He's gonna get himself killed for sure one of these days. There is no way that his reactions are fast enough to ride a motorcycle successfully in the winter in this city."
I've heard of the legendary stubbornness of old Japanese men, and this guy was the first real example. One has to wonder about the rigorousness of the driving tests for the elderly. WIth a population as geriatrically inclined as Japans, it's a wonder they don't have more accidents caused by drivers who are just too old. Maybe old folks just walk after a certain age.
The old ladies here all push along these little rolling chair/walker/purse type things. They're little quilted chairs that they scoot around the town with. They look doll sized to me, but really i suppose that they're handy for all of the shrunken, hunched over women here. Osteoporosis is hugely popular with old ladies and old men. Some are so stooped over from working in the rice fields and calcium poor diets that they walk along like ducks. They look awkward, and yet they're mobile, something that can hardly be said for the elderly in our country, who are often confined to beds or wheelchairs. I'm not sure of the reasons why, but it seems quite normal for little old people to hobble everywhere they need to go. Maybe theres just no transportation for them.
At any rate, i think that we'd all be doing well to be riding motorbikes at the age of this fellow that i saw today. Ganbatte kudesai

I went sliding down a mountain on my ass today. I also had skis attached to my feet but for about 3 of the 4 hours that i was there they seemed rather inconsequential. My clothing also seemed to have a marvelous slippery coating that made me slide like superman for tens of meters when i fell, which was often.
For about the first two hours i was a big sissy, sticking to the kiddie runs and crashing a lot. then when i got my legs under me i went ahead and tackled the bigger runs, and crashed a lot. Happily i'm not hurt and only have a minor kink in my neck as a result of the day's festivities.

I liked skiing, as i assumed that i would, but i think that i'm going to get kinda bored with the resort thing pretty quickly (relatively speaking). I still haven't really managed a good set of linked Telemark turns, which is what i was sort of hoping to learn how to do, but i can see that overall it's going to be a matter of constantly challenging myself to do interesting things. Skiing is about 80% skill and about 20% fitness. I'm definately used to things that have the opposite ratio. Once you figure out how to ski, the only real challenge lies in doing crazier and crazier stuff. We'll have to see how it goes.

Maybe i should finally get health insurance.

This is heartening news. It just goes to show that all is not going to hell, even if it seems like it. Apparently some group from Arkansas wanted to put in a new shopping mall right next to the priarie wetland area in my hometown of Ames Iowa. My parents thought that it was a foregone conclusion, but luckily, not everybody in the world has his or her head up his ass.

Land Use Policy Plan Update #13

News from 1000 Friends of Iowa

AMES PLANNING AND ZONING COMMISSION VOTES TO DENY LAND USE POLICY MAP CHANGE
The Ames Planning and Zoning Commission, in a meeting last Wednesday, voted 5-2 to recommend that the City Council deny the LUPP change Wolford Development was requesting for the area at the intersection of East 13th Street and Interstate 35. In addition, the commission recommended a reevaluation of the need for a regional commercial area east of I-35. The responses of the five individual Commission members explaining their vote were thoughtful and reflected the real concerns about the best type of growth the Ames’ community needs.

i was just putting the futon where i sleep away and a strange notion came into my head. I was feeling kinda lonely and isolated, i suppose listening to Radiohead didn't help.
I feel like the retarded kid in the inspiritaional and poigniant film that makes you feel like, "Boy if that handicapped guy can get on with his life, so can I."
The big problem with my self imagery is that, first of all, i'm not disabled, i can do lots of stuff and i should be smart enough to motivate myself past the crappy attitude that i've had the past couple of days. I suppose that its maybe something as trite as the christmas blues that are keeping me down. That coupled with a healthy dose of Japan and i'm feeling kinda shitty. At least next week is vacation. Thank god for that. I would probably go nuts without the welcome respite of the newyears holiday. Of course, that means more time for me not to do the things that i set myself to do everyday. We'll see how it goes.

Here is a new japanese word for you all, i'll try to put it into sentence form; Watashi wa kino domo futsukairoi deshita. That roughly translates into, "Yesterday, i was really hung over." Sometimes a hangover can be an asset, sometimes a liability, this day was a bit of both. I felt like shit, but likewise didn't give a shit about the stupid highschool girls. Whatever, they worship me because i gave them candycanes.

There is nothing like a christmas in a foreign land with one's girlfriend in a different foreign land to really make a bottle of whiskey look good. I was over at the christmas eve party of the aforementioned Nick and Al and felt the need to cut loose a little. I was up until three drinking and playing charades. Let me tell you, i am good when you get the juices flowing a little bit. Maybe not so good at the guessing, but damn i can act up a storm. I managed to pull off the reinactment of the title, "The Origin of Species". Guess what sexual word "origin" sounds like and you are halfway through my performance.
Really though, it's stunning what people can act out with just the few selected clues such as, book, movie, person, sylables etc. I always write down something that will be totally impossible but nonetheless someone whips right through the thing in 20 seconds.

I guess that there's just a limit on how creative my brain can be.

i bought this menthol shampoo yesterday thinking that it would be a great thing. All of the other shampoos around here tend to smell girly, weird or just plain grand-motherly. After cracking all the caps in the store to smell the contents, i settled on the minty freshness of the Tonic brand shampoo. I figured that the smell would invigorate my scalp and by extension the little grey cells of my brain.

Today was my first trial run of the new bottle.

All was good, it smells good, it looks good and it burns good. I don't know who got the bright idea of putting menthol in shampoo. Shampoo goes in your hair, which is usually located above your eyes. This is, i think, a good design. The only problem comes into play when you put a volatile substance into your hair and then try to rinse it out, and down, from your hair with the shower.

DO NOT LET THE FOAM CONTACT YOUR EYES UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE!

Bad things will happen. Luckily i had a ready source of water to flush my burning eyes, but let this be a lesson to all of you: Do not buy mentholated products unless you know what you're doing!

Yesterday was the emperor's birthday and also a national holiday. Jennifer left for Thailand at about 5:30 in the morning. Since it was a national holiday, one of the resident gaijin opened up his tiny restaurant for a brunch. THis guy's a fabulous cook, it was total Bobo quisine, there were scones, crepes waffles, chocolate sauce and some home baked bread. To top the bread you could have the chef's own rum raisin butter or his charcoal roasted hand-ground peanut butter or his home made preserves. Later on there was some fresh coffee and some bagels, made and steamed in his very kitchen. It was good food regardless, but made all the better by the fact that the people in the restaurant were having interesting conversations in ENGLISH. It was quite nice. I ended up running errands with Lara and Shane and then stopping by the house of Nick and Al, two gay JETs from England. They're putting on a super duper christmas party to which many JETs are going. I was tentatively scheduled to go as well, but opted not to since i prefer to teach english to reluctant, giggly, highschool girls than eat a well prepared meal with good company and booze.

After the brief stopover at the chez Nick and Al I came back home to mount up my telemark skis. It took about 3 hours to get everything set up and by this time it was pretty dark and pretty late, like 11:00. I had been screwing around with these skis for so long that i needed to get out and use them. I decided that i'd try to learn how to telemark ski on the embankment near the bridge overpass about a kilometer from here. I loaded up the skis in my backpack along with the poles and boots and headed out into the foggy night. I was pretty glad that it was so foggy because it made it a little less strange to be a lonely foreigner, trudging up and down the embankment with a big pair of skis. It must have been a strange sight.

It's probably good that i have a girlfriend or i'd be doing shit like this all the time, skiing on an embankment at 1:00 in the morning or some thing. It will be an interesting 3 weeks.

Here's a little Onion style tribute to my alma mater.

How Can I Use Feminism to My Advantage?

I was running the other night and i saw the first speedy Japanese guy here. You can frequently spot runners, but for the most part they're pretty slow and sweating heavily. This guy was going a little bit faster than the pace i had been going at but i doubled around to follow the guy and was able to match his pace from behind pretty well. I wanted to catch up and talk with him but then the thought occurred to me, "My Japanese is SHIT!"
I'm getting kind of frustrated by my lack of motivation on the language front. I haven't really been good ata ll about studying. I put in 3-4 hours a week, but that's not nearly enough. This is a complex and confusing language, not to mention they use a different set of characters from me. It's just a pain in the ass to learn. I can study a page for about an hour and still feel comfused about the whole thing. Pitiful really. What i really need to do is get off my ass and try to go meet people. THis is my problem however, since i didn't like doing this in the US, let alone in a country where i'm just another Novelty White Guy.
Oh well, if i don't learn Japanese i can always stay at home in my apartment and play computer games.

I've taken to a bit of rock climbing recently as there is a gym sort of close to our house. It's pretty fun except that there aren't any shoes in japan that fit me. I have tried the ones that they rent at the climbing gym but they more or less crush my toes while i have them on. Last time i went i brought along some athletic tape and stuck my toes into the shoe and taped the rest on. I tried climbing barefoot, but that's pretty painful.
I really wanted some shoes which led me to try to make a pair of my own. I figured, "How hard can it be?" And so i went to the store, bought some athletic tape, a pair of socks, some glue and an innertube for the rubber. It seemed like a simple type of thing right? All i had to do was to wrap the sock with athletic tape to support it and then simply glue on the innertube to the bottom like the sticky rubber climbing soles that most shoes have on them. No Problem.
I realized about one and a half rolls of athletic tape and 1 innnertube later that it is actually more difficult than i had originally surmised. Things did not go according to plan, shall we say, and i was left with a ruined and strange looking pair of socks.
This led me to search for some shoes online. I always hate buying shoes online. I've really had nothing but bad luck. If it weren't for the fact that there are no shoes in the country that fit me here, it's kind of difficult to do anything but order online. I've had to get 3 new pairs of shoes and 2 new pairs of slippers (well had to is strong for the shoes but i really wanted them) since coming here and all had to be imported, usually through the kindness of my parents.
At any rate, i bought a pair of climbing shoes online and had them shipped last week. They arrived really fast, which was super, but unfortunately they (a pair of Mad Rock Hookers, sz 13) were decidedly too small for me. Climbing shoes are supposed to be tight, but these were excruciating. They bent my toes downwards so sharply that my toe-knuckles turned white and developed little rings from the shoe material. It looked kind of as though i had been toe wrestling with an octopus or something, cool but not practical.
SInce they don't fit, not only did i waste my time but a valuable shipping expense as well. It costs about $35 for the dudes to send me the shoes and it will cost at least $15 to send them back and i still have no climbing shoes. The only convenient thing about the whole deal is that Japanese post offices always have a 24hour window for mailing things. I don't exactly know why, but it sure is convenient when you work late.

I heard about this guy last year and i think that it's fitting to mention him now that we've supposedly celebrated 100 years of manned flight. I have to give props to the Kiwi who was the first man to achieve powered flight. Richard Pearse

Richard Pearse: "Mad Pearse", "Bamboo Dick", self-taught inventor, prophetic designer, trail blazing aviator and eccentric visionary. On or about 31st March 1903 a reclusive New Zealand farmer Richard Pearse climbed into a self-built monoplane and flew for about 140 metres before crashing into a gorse hedge on his Waitohi property . Even at half the distance Pearse must have felt the liberating but anxious exhilaration of flying. There is uncertainty about whether it met the definitions of sustained flight, but it came eight months before the Wright Brothers entered the record books at Kitty Hawk North Carolina on 17th December 1903.

The 100 yen piece has a picture of the cherry blossom or sakura which is one of the traditional Japanese emblems. Cool right, the samurai favored the ideal of the flower because it fell from the tree while still in full bloom, symbolizing the honorable path for a samurai, who would prefer to die in battle in his prime rather than in old age. At least that's what the guidebook told me.
That's great and all, but what the emblem really means that the yen piece falls from your fingers with the transience of the cherry blossom. Jesus does the money fly out of your wallet here. I spent almost 30,000 yen in less than 8 hours for my visa stamps and train tickets to Tokyo. It's almost like gambling to see money fly that fast. Thrilling because it's still abstract to me, they're more like polker chips than dollars to me at this point. It's also crazy since i don't yet have a bank account yet and i just get my paychecks in cash, and a fad wad o'cash it is, har har har.

I've been pondering some things about Japanese automobiles. Here's one of them, in the form of an email that I sent to Airhead.org, an air pollution monitoring site sponsored by the Center for Neighborhood Technology, a group out of Chicago whom I worked for in 2001 while I was studying there. Overall it's a great organization, it is one of the few non-profits that I've seen where I really felt like they were on their game and they were effecting positive policy change on a local and larger scale. Here's the email:

Hey there,
I recently moved to Japan for the next year or so to teach English and since I've been here I've noticed some interesting things. The one I'm most curious about is if the trajectory of diesel exhaust makes any difference in air pollution.
I ride my bike to work every day and I've noticed that all of the large diesel vehicles such as buses and trucks have their exhaust pipes at the standard automobile level. Consequently, I get a face full of fumes when they pass me. I hate this, but I could see some possible benefits to having a low trajectory for diesel exhaust; namely that particulates could possibly settle out faster and maybe the fumes would not rise quite so high into the atmosphere. So, my question to you is, is there any possible difference as far as immediate human impact and long term atmospheric impact is concerned? Are there any studies on the matter?
Any info would be quite interesting. It's not as though I can really effect any policy change here as I am not skilled in Japanese nor am I able to vote here, but for my own edification it would be nice to know.

Thanks, Aaron Ritz


I'm also really curious about the way they do the licensing here. They have two levels of car plates here. The yellow plates are for cars with displacement of 660cc or less in their engines. These cars are cheaper and also have the benefit of being taxed at a much lower rate as well as cheaper insurance. Something that surprised me was to see that the Toyota Prius, the hybrid car had a white plate, the same as the rest of the license plates in Japan. I suppose this is because the car has a larger displacement than is allowed at 1100 cc (approximately, thanks Toyota website) but the car also gets awesome gas mileage, much better than many of the yellow plate cars here. It seems to me that the car should be gauged more on its mileage than on its displacement. This shouldn't be to difficult to measure since each car here goes in for a checkup and taxation every 2 years.

Please tell me if my ideas make any sense or if I'm just thinking too hard.

I had to make a return trip to tokyo today and i chose to use the Shinkansen instead of the bus. While the ol bullet train is about twice as expensive, I think that it's worth it. FIrst off, it's convenient. You just buy tickets the day of from the machine or the ticket counter and then you hop on, select your seat and blast off. THIs brings me to the second reason the train is better- It's fast as hell! THe train takes about half the time of the bus. There is some superb thrill in rocketing along the earth at that speed. It's way better than an airplane. While there is some coolness in being 30,000 feet in the air, it's nowhere near as good as whipping by houses and mountains like you were fastforwarding a movie. A certain section of track which takes me 28 minutes normally in the train is more like 8 in the Shinkansen. If there weren't the immense fixed costs involved, i would suggest that the US bag the stupid airlines and get us some bullet trains! I think while the maximum speeds might not compare between a bullet train and airplane, the actual transit time could be lessened by the superb convenience of the train. No passport scanners, no waiting for takeoff, everything on time every time!

Thanks Shinkansen!

Goddamn the Onion is funny. Just when you think the world is going to hell, you can turn to the Onion and find out, "Yeah, it's going to hell, but that's FUNNY!"


I particularly liked this one CEO's Maritial Duties Outsourced to Mexican Groundskeeper

I'm a little distressed today.
Recently, the Nagano Foreign Language Center merged with the Excellent English School which was located just down the street. No biggie, the Excellent crew just moved a couple of blocks down and pretty much just put their classes in our building and brought their 2 teachers, one of whom is a New Yorker by the name of Gaury. She's married to a japanese chap and therefore has some pretty wicked Japanese skills. I'm not sure that i like her, mostly that she's fine but we probably won't ever be buddies or anything. No problem there, but what really troubled me today was our conversation.

Gaury: So, what do you think of the people here?

Me: Well, i think that they're fine, but i don't understand much japanese so i'm not sure.

Gaury: Well i don't like the people at all! I think that they're reall assholes, particularly Bucho-san. They're just so rude to Kimiko (former owner of Excellent). I mean, she's really cool and they just treat her like crap!

Me: Well like i said, i don't know enough japanese to tell, they seem nice enough in English. I like Mr. Adachi (Tomo) a lot, i think he's a great guy.

Gaury: Really?!? Whoa, i don't know, this place feels like an english factory, like they don't care about the students. I heard from Kimiko that they lose like 30 students a month because people don't like it here. I mean all of my students hate it, some of them are probably going to quit because they don't like the environment.

Me: Hmm, i don't know, i hadn't heard that.

Gaury: Yeah, this place feels like a NOVA (the 800lb Gorilla of the industry). It feels like nobody wants to be here. I mean, even at AEON (another biggie) they have a better environment.

Me: Really. Well, that's interesting


This was kind of a shocker because i really think of my employers as assholes or anything before. I mean, Bucho-san probably does suck, i can tell that the guy is pretty much a cheauvanist crappy japanese business man, but really, i just don't know enough japanese to tell if anyone else is a jerk. For the most part they all seem happy and i haven't heard anything from my students, though maybe none of them would tell me if they didn't like me.
Realistically, i can see problems with how things are done and that maybe it's not as good as it could be, but i don't know about the claim that we loose 30 students a month, i think i would notice that.

Anyway, i'll chat with my English compatriot Paul about it sometime when there are no other english speakers around. My general impression is that my school isn't as bad as all that and that Gaury doesn't know the whole deal, though i can't really second guess her because i don't know any japanese.
We'll just see

I haven't yet had the time to figure out the procedure for putting up my own collection of funny japanese labels, but they already have some of the ones i've seen posted on Engrish.com it's pretty damn funny what people will think is good english in this country. It's really more of a decorator art. I'm sure that there is some of the same thing going on in our use of kanji in decoration, but nothing quite to the extent that you'll find it here.

While to most folks in the US, and probably most folks in the world (including myself) it seems like a strange idea for a person to pick up and move to another country, be it Canada, China, Honduras, Guinea, Japan or whatever. Before i came a lot of people would inquire whether or not i had a japanese girlfriend. No, actually i don't, i'm just going to go adventure for a while, see a bit of this planet before i die and make a stand in a foreign society. Recently i've been pondering a little about what the hell i'm really doing here, and it came up, that i'm really just doing this for myself. I suppose that's not a bad reason to do something, and when it all boils down to it, few if any people really do something for someone else. Volunteering, peace corps, joining the army and fighting wars, running for elected office; all of these things come down to the fact that the people who are doing them can justify what they're doing as good deeds which in turn makes a person happy.
It is my somewhat cynical view that all philanthropy can be reduced down to a large extent on the effect it has on the doer of the "good deeds" rather than the recipient. I honestly don't think that anyone would come up with the initiative to begin and continue on philanthropic works if he or she didn't get something back.
I suppose that i could use the previous paragraph to launch into a diatribe against doing any sort of charity towards others, but that would be stupid. Helping others, particularly those less fortunate is good! It's just that many people don't keep in mind the reflexive nature of good deeds. I know i don't.
I was kind of inspired to write this post because Sarah, a friend of jennifer and me from highschool is now working for an NGO in Afghanistan. Damn, that's a perfect example of philanthropy. She's engaged in frustrating, difficult and useful work in probably the second most dangerous country on the planet, right after Iraq while i sit in probably the safest country in the world.
An illustration of my situation is the shocking crime statistics for my city. In the past year alone i personally experienced 1 bicycle headlight theft and heard about an unsolved murder about 13 months ago. Scary isn't it. What's more, no one has guns in Japan! How am i going to protect myself if no one has a gun and no one thinks he needs one? I'm going to have to go and get me some swords and ninja stars.

If you want to get pissed off about the bush administration for a reason which has nothing to do with the war in iraq, here is a great article written by Robert Kennedy Jr about bush's environmental record.
George Bush will go down in history as America's worst environmental president. In a ferocious three-year attack, the Bush administration has initiated more than 200 major rollbacks of America's environmental laws, weakening the protection of our country's air, water, public lands and wildlife. Cloaked in meticulously crafted language designed to deceive the public, the administration intends to eliminate the nation's most important environmental laws by the end of the year. Under the guidance of the Republican pollster Frank Luntz, the Bush White House has hidden its anti-environmental programme behind deceptive rhetoric, telegenic spokespeople, secrecy and the intimidation of scientists and bureaucrats.

Hopefully, i'll be posting my collection of amusing product labels soon. Keep Tuned!

I went to Tokyo yesterday to get a stamp on my passport and to change my visa status. In short: WORST TRIP TO TOKYO EVER!!!! And i mean that, out of my two trips to Tokyo, this surpassed by far the first one in shittyness. The day started out fine, i almost overslept my 6:30 bus and then sat through 4 hours of traffic etc while the bus drove onward. I woke up in the outskirts of Tokyo with rain slapping the windshield and happy squeaky noisies coming from the wipers. The woman behind me didn't stop her snoring though, i'd have to wait until we got off the bus.
In tokyo i followed the instructions given to me by some co-workers and ended up at the appropriate train station in no time. When i got off, i had a short 20 minute trudge through the rain to the immigration office which is conveniently located on an island in tokyo harbor next to the coolest garbage incinerator that i've ever seen.
No problem, i'll just go inside, whip through the forms and be on my way. I went inside and anyone who has ever been to an immigration office can attest, it is a place of despair and frustration, no matter how nice the staffers are. Realistically, the people working at the place were amazing. All of them were like quadra-lingual, and they were amazingly polite for public servants. It was just that the place reeked of frustration, first from the other people and shortly therafter a lot of it was coming from me.
As i was filling out the forms i noticed that there were some blanks that I had to fill out including the net worth of my employer, the NFLC, the yearly revenues and also the tax paid last year. WTF, how the hell am i supposed to know about this stuff before i come to the office. No problem i would just call the office and ask them for the info. But shit, i had forgotten to bring the phone number as well, i couldn't call anyone! So i stewed and pondered and then while looking through my Lonely Planet guide to Tokyo i discovered that there was free directory assistance from NTT the phone company. SWEET! So i called the office only to find that my boss was out and that i'd have to wait for an hour and a half to talk to him. This was just dandy. So i wandered around and had some lunch in the built in cafeteria next to some Filipina prostitutes and their 60 year old japanese pimp. No they never propositioned me, but realistically, what else would 8 Filipina women, dressed in hoochie clothes and accompanied by a single man who paid for all of their lunches be?
Several minor frustrations later I called back, go the info and was psyched to be going to actually get my papers processed. So i went up stairs and looked at the line "Now serving 200," as i pulled 427 out of the box. Shit.
An hour and 45 minutes later i was out of there, ready to find some stores, like the international market and the shoe store with big sizes in Ginza. As i had carefully planned my route, it took me more than 15 minutes to get lost, confused and bewildered. Really, i wasn't lost in the traditional sense, i knew that i was in Tokyo and i knew that there were some train stations around. I just didn't know which ones to get on or get off of and it was a bitch. I missed my stop and then got confused as to where to catch the other train so i just ended up walking. Not too bad because i wasn't far from where i wanted to go, but it was still a large pain in the ass, particularly as it was still raining. I kept the hood on the rainjacket up to prevent soaking my head, which in turn prevented me from seeing well. Trade offs, always trade offs.
Anyway, i managed to find the shoe store without too much difficulty once i was actually on the ground. Unfortunately i felt like an ugly idiot shopping there and looking for a single pair of shoes less than 10000 yen, the cheapest one i saw, and an ugly pair at that, was 14000 yen (about $128). So, i left kind of disheartened, and searched for the National Azabu Supermarket. What a bust. THe directions i got off the internet were bunk. Two minute walk my ass. SO i wandered around and ended up eating dinner at a Subway restaurant. Not a great sandwich, but better than in the US. Then i realized i was going to be cutting it close for time and began to head back to Shinjuku for my bus.
Easier said than done. As it turned out, when you don't know where you're going it takes a lot longer to get there. I arrived at the bus stop with about 3 minutes to spare, sugoi! unfortunately the bus was nowhere in sight. Apparently something got screwed up, because i waited for a minute or so, and then the bus came zipping by, I was like, "Sweet!" then about 2 seconds later i was like, "Shit!" as it kept on truckin down the road.
At this point I began to wonder which of the cardboard box houses i could most likely shack up in, preferrably with a bum with great english skills, a shower and some good food. As these were in short supply i decided to try to catch the Shinkansen back to Nagano. This meant taking a train all the way across the city again and then paying 8000 yen for the ticket. But hey, realisticaly, i arrived back home before i would have if I had caught the bus. THe other great thing about the day is that I have to go back when they actually mail my reciept for my Visa and do the process all over again!