Head Stomping Orphan in Japan

To the colour wheel, he’s a traitor

 

It’s Mr Motivator!

How do all!?

A night of packing, one of train changing and another of unlimited grilled meat between me and the intercontinental pilgrimage and things are flattening out nicely. My birthday occurred in the past week, (thank you to all those that facebooked me some salutations, to the rest I’m sure you spelled it out on a stone tablet or abacus or however you fill your hours without the demon technology in your lives, sucking on a length of hemp I expect) and concurrently the Lords of Quiet Classes Smiled upon me a great gurning grin.

My worst class of the week is finally getting what for from their teacher who got an early Christmas present of some stones and is putting them to good use by bossing the shit out of her class, instead of me shouting at them (the only class I’ve ever had to do it to) in broken Japanese.

e.g. “I invite you to honorably sit down with humbleness! NOW!”

They were ten minutes late to class (fucking suits me) so she made them all walk back to their home class and back to my room as they weren’t quiet enough. Then I sent them back to get their scissors and glue and the rest of the class was the mayor of snaptown. Furthermore, on the same day, easily my most…um… special-est education-est kid came into the office to give me a big bag of mikans from his farm at home.

Pretty sure his 1:1 teacher put him up to it as she’s pretty keen on me since she found out I did her job in Ireland (sorta.) Nevertheless I’m currently engorging my liver with Vitamin C for the remaining couple of days just to finish the feckers. I’m turgid with it.

I have found a small bar in Matsuyama that does pints of Guinness for about 5.50euro and also has the double attraction of a barman with a ridiculous haircut. It’s the goods. While there I got chatting to a chap who turned out to be a Junior High School teacher who worked with a bunch of people I know. I mentioned I was going home over Christmas and bringing presents and the like and he screwed up his face.

“What’re you going to get them?”

Good question bro-hame. He couldn’t think of anything obvious and I agreed giving him the example that a Japanese person would buy like fucking antique chopsticks in a beautifully ornate chopstick carrying case.

Now I’m not sure what my grandfather would actually say if I bought him 200euro chopsticks but I fancy it would be transmittable by radio during afternoon hours.

So.. um, just lowering the expectations for you all, here are some pictures of what people are into here…

Yeah.

Just bear this in mind when you want to look crestfallen after receiving your gift.

Meg decided to celebrate the day of my birth by saying a deep basey "Fuck You" to the man and not waiting very very patiently at a crosswalk where a bike was at the far side of it. That she did it right in front of a Japanese police car only added to the severity of her rebellion. And the ticket that she got.

To be fair to the Po-po, he was really nice about it apologising that the ticket was so much and that his English was a zero. Whereas Meg is lucky I was there to translate and that I am such a considerate guy that I haven't told anybody it happened. This email to everyone I know in 3 continents being my only enfringement of this. 

On Saturday I went to an orphanage to recoup soe Karmic-credit after telling a bunch of kids all Irish people have lizard tongues. Orphanages, if you've never been, are mad craic altogether as the kids are so bored they literally wrestle you ton the ground when you come in. In my case they also disassemble shakers and pelt you in the face with dessicated soy beans while a 7 year old tries to stand on your head. Said seven year old got her foot caught in my shirt pocket and kicked her way out of it, much like a small horse. Or head stomping orphan.

We had been asked to bring presents and had all been assigned kids and such so I was pretty chuffed to buy 2 baseball gloves as I figured it'd be the sort of thing that'd last a long time and that they could have as their own. Well apparently one of my two kids was fecking left handed so he was miserable about his present and the other one I saw listlessly throwing and catching a ball as if his hand had been wrapped in shitty toilet paper rather than a poxy glove.

On the other hand, the only kid in the place who looked excited about his present got fucking stationary so perhaps as ever, there's shit going on here that I'm not 100% following.

That night myself and the ole ball and chain had a joint birthday dinner and subsequent drinkies. This left us in a squalid little hole in the ground called Jett where one patron was passed out barefoot on the stage when we got there and another shouted "Rock and Roll" when I ordered a drink, then went very white and I found later sitting down on the pavement in the cold, staring at me.

We stayed much longer than we should, finding reason in our own increasingly slurry company and discussed lifting up the terrifyingly skinny barstaff to see how much more they weighed than an infant. Or a hungry chicken.

In other news I am trying to bring some of my tat home via extra suitcase just so I don't end up sending an armada of boxes back in July. This really only adds validity to my policies on conserving clean underpants and wearing the same pants week after week until the characteristic red rash on my thighs tells me the pants are now saturated with spilled meal grease.

No ring. Ladies...

Only 7 more months to come and visit Japan avec free translator/tour guide. You too can be big in the place that I am in.

Here's an early present for you. Go to Trip Advisor and look at the ranked hotels in a town you know. Then go to the bottom and read the worst reviews. 

Here's lookin at you Tralee's The Abbeygate.

Such indignant righteous outrage can only be matched by the blog "Angry People in Local Newspapers."

http://apiln.blogspot.com/

Expect lots of ...

Yeah. It's pretty good.

Bend over Ireland. I'm coming to do it to yehz!

Head Stomping Orphan in Japan (for 61 more hours anyway)

Girly Man in Japan

Spurning the name of the Holy Ghost,

 It’s career ginger Donnie Most!

Hey now guy and guytrinas!

I’m into a localized (localised damn you Microsoft Word, one more Americanisation of my admittedly slang heavy prose and I’ll have yer guts fer garters so I wills) home stretch.

9 more sleeps and I’ll be shooshing my way across the nature-rid Japanese countryside at bullet-train miles per hour on my way to the largest city in the world. Dramatic stuff right?

Really all that my mammoth commute entails is 35 hours of searching for Wifi for my iPod and chemically counterbalancing my caffeine/alcohol levels in order to resist succumbing to whatever timezone is trying to boss me around at any given moment.

The main focus of my week has been a charity concert that went on Saturday night and by all accounts went quite well. My main contribution was feasting on a proceeds-going-to-charity hot dog based dinner and playing a few songs with a badass trio of local musicians and some English teachers with unknown albeit undeniable talents.

The organiser also sang a few tunes more than ably, however as her set progressed I noticed a theme in her song choices, both that night and from previous gigs. None were of the frame-

“Hey baby, we’re both quite nice in our own way and things as they are I’d say we’ve got a pretty good thing going.”

In fact things were pretty sharply skewed towards-

“Fuck you and all the stuff you did to me and while we’re at it, I’m at least as rubbish as you. Moreso even! We’re shit!”

My finely tuned girly-man’s intuition tells me there was a bad break-up somewhere in this lasses history.

My set consisted of a Silent Night in 5 languages, some gospelly bluesy stuff and a bit of Blondie for the fogeys. I also seamlessly blended in a nuanced tribute to my two great influences “Teddy Wrong-Key King” and “Blind Playing-Chords-That-Aren’t-There Willy.”

Also, Bootsy Collins.

Gaze children, upon the face of madness…

The gig came and went at exactly the right time as within 20 minutes of getting off stage I was overcome by my annual winter 24 hour flu. Of doom. I slept from 1 in the morning till mid-day. Then snoozed. Cooked and ate lunch. Then napped from 7 till 10:30. In bed by 1:30 again, and presently I feel somewhere between heavy gas and a tax return. Though I only have a wealth of experience in one of those.

In the process of getting to this point I had two night time fevers where I soaked the bed (probably in sweat) and emitted irregular yelping noises as I tried to sing in my sleep. Worse again was my Friday night’s sleep, though in retrospect this may have been partially due to the beginnings of the flu soaking into my craw. On Friday night I dreamt rather graphically that I had killed a person and in doing so reminded myself of a previous time I had killed a person but had purged the experience from my memory.

All of which led to a terrifying 20 minutes pinned to the bed as I tried to figure out if I had in fact killed someone and de-remembered it (and killed a second person) or had just remembered a dream where I remembered a dream killing while committing another dream killing. Since my dreams are usually about eating roasted poultry and really sticking it to my family in fantasy football, this made for a bit of a rough evening trying to de-Inception my thought processes. There was also some grisly stuff to do with their kidneys which is even now some cause for concern...

A few bits and pieces I forgot to mention recently were that we were given a talk on emergency measures during our big English teacher’s conference thingy a few weeks back. It was given by a man who goes only by the name “Dansby” whose passions seem to revolve around not sleeping and passing litre after litre of low price liquor through his Keith Richards leather bag of a liver. A hero by all accounts.

In packing our emergency grab-bag his tips included “Don’t forget to bring food, otherwise you’ll starve like a tool,” and “You’ll probably be stuck in a gym with like 300 kids for a month or so, so you’re going to need one of these <lifts a bottle of Suntory Whiskey.>”

Also last Friday saw a strange upswing in the activity level of one of my Elementary schools. Everything was kind of the same, but just more so. For instance when all the kids sprinted in after break one of the 4^th grader boys knocked down a 2nd grader girl that was close to him. However he then continued running and proceeded to drag the kids under them like a cyclist into a wheat thresher and basically stomped her into the ground like a cigarette butt.

Let’s peace!

In the same lunch break I planted a kid in the face with a dodgeball and had to watch him wander the yard airily as I wondered whether a particularly rigorously inflated balloon could cause concussion.

Also I said hello to one 1^st grader who if I’m honest would probably Kathy Bates from Misery me if she had the body weight. I then immediately picked up one of the special needs kids who gestured that he wanted up.

Kathy Bates did her fucking nut.

 

Fucking with me will totally work out well for you

I think she calmed down once she found a game of dodgeball within which to smack some kids in the face but I think I may have to tread carefully till I get that flight out.

On that note of foreboding and knee shatterage a bid you a fond adieu.

Something rude.

Girl man in Japan.

Michael Bolton in Japan

He's just snorted rhino horn,

It's Rip Torn!

Christmas yuletideries to you all, as Black Friday gives American retailers a warm floaty feeling before the Chinese come in gouge the fillings out of their frigging teeth. And Europe? They've something special prepared for us... we get to make all their cheap zippers and lead painted children's toys.

Ho ho ho... hold off on the "motivation rod" for a minute there Mr Honourable Floormanager Sir wouldya?

As the bunga bunga cruise that has been the last 20 years slams into the rocky rapids of reality it's looking like there's gonna be many's the austere Christmas ahead.

Except in Japan!

Thassaright, while everyone else in the world is doing their collective nut worrying about their respectively fucked economies, Asia is making hay while the sun shines. Now the average Japanese person on the street will tell you that their economy is on in bits, but honestly things are pretty good on the ground in terms of unemployment, infrastructure, bad debt, credit card loans etc. All this adds up to yet another KFC and Strawberry Cake fuelled Christmas spendathon with the double whammy of the New Years coming one week afterwards.

As this is my second Christmas season in Japan, I have something in the way of traditions that I am following. For example in 2 weeks I'll be at an orphanage divvying out presents, ideally as "Santa-san" but we've got to wait and see on that. That'd be a lot of wandering hands to deal with and I gotta check if the santa suit interior is lined with Kevlar. Another tradition is my December classes getting progressively less educational and based more on explaining that no, a Turkey is not just a large chicken and that yes, cranberry works with it.

Over the past week we all have gotten out of school for two days to attend the Skills Development Conference. Of Doom!!! They wore our collective ears off about how it was no longer to be referred to as the Mid-Year Seminar and wrote SDC on every email and piece of info-garbage they gave us.

The intro began as thus.

"Welcome to this Mid-Year Seminar."

<slaps own forehead>

It was productive enough and consisted of lots of foreigners giving the shit out of their opinions while a load of Japanese Teachers of English sat on their hands and had to be coaxed to give any kind of response at the end of a bayonets with a piece of Christmas KFC at the end of it. A highlight was when one of the mouthier Americans wandered off on a tangent in a Q and A and another one raised their hand in the middle of flow and asked of the moderator..."Can I stop him? ... That's all!"

The seminar is the one time in the year when all 100 of us are in the same place, so you get to see a lot of too-few-times-met chums and go out on the tear with them on the Thursday. Assuming you're not giving one of the talks on professionalism or whatever the next day.

On Sunday I got to have an aul jam with a folk music trio as we are playing together next Saturday. If they were English one could refer to them as "crusties" but as we are where we are they were all fine upstanding types with their own cars and underpants and the like. I also got gifted some mandarins as I sat waiting for the train home from a lady who spotted me being foreign.

Also on Sunday I finally met one of Megs students as we tried to get ourselves human again after a night out. Weirdly her student is called "Seanie" and is the product of his local mother and a DCU student. Meg insists that he is about twice the size of the other kids his age and 3 times as active. True to form as Meg spotted him and said hello, he promptly ran out into traffic laughing maniacally.

I have essentially sorted out my Christmas presents except for the two people who will wilfully crush my hojo's underfoot if I give a hint of scrimp. A scrint.

Scrint≈Grint

That would obviously be Ingrid and Meg. Though I'm getting there. Girls like music right?

Check and mate!

Yuss! A lot of people are gonna be getting some seriously similar presents though I'm trying to make sure that everyone get's something offensively weird. Or weirdly offensive. No shortage of either here.

In other news I was engaged in converstion on a train a few days ago. It started in a fairly predictable way. "I want to speak English with you. Where is your country?" However after beginning like this it revved up to 90 in a fairly intense way. "Please, I would like very much to engage with you on a variety of topics. To begin, what are you're feelings on the European currency crisis?"

"Um... buh?"

Turned out the guy has learned to speak English from International news he watches on youtube.

"Hillary Clinton speaks so well and so forcefully, don't you think?"

"Um yeah. Gooo Hil-dog!"

Mercifully the train came to his stop before either of us had to give the other a right-wing tirade and start dismissing anybody without a Bentley as lazy.

13 more days of school and I'm back on the train/plane home. Last night I dreamt of a Roast Chicken sandwich. There was two much chicken in it, so I took some out and made a second sandwich. Todays lunch? Rice and seaweed.

Hildog's good and all but I'd like to see her jaw down a bowl of seaweed, whole (including the eyes) fish and enough tofu to choke Morrissey.

Peace to the out!

Michael Bolton in Japan

20% of New Zealand Children in Japan

He's lovin the banter,
 

It's Pervy Santa!

Hulloo hallah Christmas cats!

As the festive season limply takes hold of my sleepy (indeed coma-y) Japanese 'burb I am gifted plenty of time to ponder the sweet deliciousness of Irish Christmas fare that very soon will be passing my gullet and giving me taste shivers.

Just be forewarned that if you approach me carrying anything but anything that came from the sea, I will righteously strike you down like when St Peter cut off that slaves ear with his samurai sword because... just because.

Yeah, they were the guys to be trusted with writing the Bible...

The only man I trust... to kill us all

Well, the past week has been a bit of a piss hurricane as I tried to organise the trip to Tokushima and make sure everybody knew how to get the bus, not die of hyperthermia and make dinner. People are not smart.

One particular hero rang me the day of the event while I was in school and asked me when the bus was getting to his house. Neglecting the fact that no one at any point had asked for his address. Have a banana. And a safety helmet.

Well the whole thing went well in the end and there were no major issues.

As ever these things tend to be a bit of an orgy of catharsis as people emerge from their unlit, fishpaste-subsisting villages back into normal company and immediately need to dull the experience with booze. Two in particular were the tragic fallen soldiers of the piece as their enthusiasm outweighed their livers (or what's left of them) and ended up each with their own team of concerned girls picking up their lady-vom.

One was from one of the other prefecture groups in attendance and was of a mixed race background. This is only relevant because as she writhed on the ground and some maternal types tried to clean the spew off her legs she kept appealing to surrounding audience to get "ALL THESE WHITE BITCHES" off her.

The second girl was even more of a calamity as she downed my wine and ran off into the dark dark night to find... someone, unaware she was barefoot, returning an hour later (forgetting about the person she was obsessed with finding) because she saw a particularly ill cat which caused her to go into a weeping fit about the cat being a disgusting scabby metaphor for "the bottom 20% of New Zealand children" who resemble its less than stellar condition.

By far the best part was the next morning when her head swelled up like a gooseberry with allergies. Scraping the sides of her noggin as she tried to fit it back on the bus.

Other highlights of the weekend were when we were playing a game that basically amounted to full contact rugby with girls, but everyone's kneeling down. After many of us switched teams many times (the rules to the game were a bit fluid) I found myself the only guy on my team, I glanced across at the opponents who were also all girls.

Wondering if I had missed an announcement and being very much in the organiser mode of thinking where I'm announcing everything left, right and centre I asked loudly of everyone there "Is this an all girls game as I'm the only guy on the field."

I then looked once more across the field at our opponents and spotted several rather puny, waif-like critters that their mothers would generously describe as men dotted amongst the girls.

All of all too late I managed to mutter:

 

"Umm... nevermind."
 

 

Pictured: What I did to their manhoods

Apart from a few exceptions the other Jets coming from other Prefectures were a little disappointing in that they were largely more keen to sit in their own groups and play poker/some lame variant of beerpong/sitting morosely than come and have a chat. Or at least come and laugh at the unsalvageabley inebriated.

In the end we played a drinking game with the few who were keen to meet new people and sodded the rest. Other highlights of the day were almost beating a real sumo wrestler at sumo, managing to hold up from the bottom a 16 1/2 foot human pyramid and finding out that everyone else there wanted to stay the second night like we had done, despite it being basically down to a mistake of mine.

Booyah!

In other news Osaka is considering electing the son of mob boss as their Mayor. His programme for goverment is and I wongle you not:

Less bureaucracy.

More whores.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15786798

Umm, in even more news... he won.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15913870

We had an earthquake a few days back too, a bit of a window rattler. There's a point during earthquakes here that you realise suddenly that is isn't a truck passing nearby or some sushi related digestive trouble, but potentially an obliterative hell storm designed to suck you and everyone in your town into the earth.

Basically all you do or have time for is to make sure your pants are on for fleeing or alternatively, pooing them. Tomorrow though I climb up  a hill with my Junior High school just so's we all know where we should have gone when an earthquake hits.

Well at least we'd have plenty of electricity from the nearby nuclear power plant...

Safe!

Still working on the Christmas presents stash, though things are proving a little tougher than I originally thought. You whiteys like bags of dried fish right?

Well ya better learn to...

Sorry for the delay of the email by the way, yesterday I was stuck in Elementary school being forced to actually earn my crust by singing German to a bunch of 7 year olds. There was a reason I was singing German.

I'm almost sure of it.

T-minus 23 days,

Boyle out.

20% of Japanese Children in Japan

Oden in Japan

He's the voice of right now...

It's Lil' Bow Wow!

Welcome to the angry dome fellow foreigners (we're all foreigners somewhere like)! The seminar on being stared at starts at 9 and lunch will be some weird piece of crap you can't quite prove is not food.

Week 70 of 104 and finally the streams have been crossed. Meg got to see what I do at work. The reason for this was the annual culture day was on and I had been roped in to help out with... whatever it is ANY of them do from day to day. The upshot was that I got to spend an hour at the crafts table painting a plate surrounded by women in their 70's and got roped into eating a box of rice and sweetpotato. This was by far and away the best thing I could have ended up with as there was also a massive pot on show, filled with shell covered eggs, tentacles and if my nose is to be believed, human wee.

It's called Oden and is a fucking warcrime in a pot. Meant to be a winter warmer, it is a constant reminder to Meg that there are worse things in the world than my soon to be patented Fried Salad. It's not going to be funny, indeed it'll be gravely serious but here's a picture of some Oden.

It's what little boys are made of. Also, Mao.

There are few foods that I would rather consume as a suppository than in the traditional fashion but ones with fish paste and pink spirals are as Kate Bush would say, "Running up that hill."

Add to that list Konjac.

Greyer than a Ken Barlow lecture on printers.

A jelly so tough it's actually banned in the EU and US due to the fact that 18 people have choked on it between 1998 and 2005. There'll be liberal amounts of this in the Oden too. Please enjoy!

So anyway after dodging that stinky bullet I basically loafed around for the day trying (unsuccesfully) to avoid my students pronging me in the dondalinger with their index fingers in front of the village's Head Honchos. When Meg turned up we ended up having to stand for about 10-15 photos with random Japanesers who just liked the cut of us.

I'm pretty sure if enough important people die I get to be the Prime Minister here. That said there are a lot of boneheads between me and the big chair and about ten of them are in my village wandering from rice harvest to school opening with a sash and a bad haircut. One particular runtish little bobblehead is getting on one's tits with a sterling skill. In the past week alone he has given me and Meg separately a bowl of his shit for not being entirely fluent at Japanese.

Unfortunately I have revealed my hand of being someway okay at the language by now so I can't shrug and give him an "I dunno" which is usually what I would do when someone is trying to "help" me from doing what I want to do. So now I'm not sure how I can re-ignore this moany little road cone. For the time being I plan on disposing of him in a big pot of wee-smelling winter stew but am open to suggestions.

The other thing I've been at in the last week has been organising a bus and accomodation for 30 people to go to the far corner of my island for a thing we're doing next week. Basically a piss up.

The whole thing became an exercise in pain-in-the-assery after a few miscommunications got the better of your intrepid adventurer and he was forced... by the fault of everyone else in the world though definitely not him... to make a massive and egregious error.

It's all fixed now though, with the end result being only that we have rankled a particularly un-easy going, stereotype-stomping Jamaican.

Pictured: Bullshit.

She got all fucking Red Dawn on us after one of the girls on the committee emailed her with what was meant to be good news. In return she got a hail storm of Jamaican ire about how offended she was by us trying to help her. Or something. It didn't make any of a lot of sense.

That said I definitely hope nothing heavy ever falls on her. Especially not poo. Loads of it.

In other news I have begun a Christmas present buying spree the likes of which the Japanese have never seen. I already finished buying all the tat, cack and Phil Dalls (maybe just my family for that one) I'm bringing back and now all I have to do is buy the crap.

We'll be all set!

Any specific Japanese present requests will be catered for, just send me on an email and I'll see what I can get for you. We've exactly one month on the clock before I'm back spud side, so get back to me on the pronto.

Separately to this, some of my students have found out throught their extra evening English tutor that はし are in English... chopsticks. The end result of this has been them coming up to me with a solemn expression and using the word in every grammatical permutation they have learned.

e.g. "These are the chopsticks that I find so exciting"

I'm actually kind of proud of them.

In the office tomorrow so check for me on the facebook, but apart from that see you in a month!

Gigglidy gigglidy gone!

Oden in Japan

Busy Hands in Japan

His man-boobs are saggy,

It's Mr Miyagi!

Hey all, another week into the pre-Christmas stretch and I'm getting a bit sick of having to make up fairly unrelated and turgid games on pretty godawful points of grammar.

"It is the soup that you want."

Apparently. I managed to turn this into the Einstein House Puzzle, where you spend 45 minutes chewing your pencil wondering who in fact does "Have the fish?" The Indian horse trainer or the Pall Mall chain-smoking alcoholic. In the end it is revealed that it is in fact you who has a fish, working the levers in your rubbish brain allowing you to waste so many minutes of your precious life so imprudently.

As my day has so far consisted of filling out a questionnaire about what kind of cake I want for Christmas school lunch (the first of several such unnecessarily unfestive pieces of paperwork I will have to fill out in the pursuit of some 4 out of 10 quality confectionary) and having my timetable ignored by home room teachers who barge into my room at irregular times with irregular students I believe I shall vent a little steam.

In March of every Japanese school year, the Japanese public sector undergoes a monumental, indeed tectonic shift. About 30% of all staff are moved from every school/office/public facility to another such place in the same district. This means that every 3-4 years the deck is completely shuffled, crappy schools become good schools and bad teachers aren't too bothersome as they're never round long enough for people to get really pissed with them.

The aim is to keep corruption down by not allowing people to burrow in like some rubbishy wasp which is all well and good. Unless you are the only one who is not moving. Any amount of give I may have had with the people here when I first came either vanished with them or settled into the beleaguered resentment they feel to their other Japanese co-workers as I am supplanted from my throne of newness by new and equally clueless Japanese teachers.

What's more is that I was pretty damn unlucky with my first reshuffle, where I lost about half of the teachers who could speak English to any degree and these were replaced with a bunch of chickenheads who not only are devoid of the English they are meant to know but have trouble with discipline, timetables, stopping kids from falling over and revelling in the acute satisfaction that comes with bawling a kid out when they won't shut their noise holes.

Not pictured: the child he is standing on

In any case, under the slack tutelage of one of these new(er) teachers, one of my elementary school classes is gradually climbing from a solid 7 to a low level 8 on the Lord-Of-The-Flies-oscope. Next comes the severed pigs head and a fat kid with broken glasses. Though I'm afraid they don't make me nearly as uncomfortable as the 12 year old who hasn't been taught what "bad touch" is yet. Now I'm a liberal guy, but flip and a fedora if that kid doesn't work my creeped-out reflex to its very last strand to the point that I usually try to use another child as a shield or just make sure I'm playing chasing the whole time so I can avoid his

... busy hands.

Then there's SF (refer to earlier postings for the key to what SF stands for, or make up you're own poo-based nickname, you'll probably be close) who continues to lead a one-jerk crusade against punctuality, lesson plans and the English language.

All told, this little piggy is gonna be happy to be on the far side of the 9 day week I'm currently facing into. Course there are a few culture festivals thrown in there for good measure but there are more than enough soup-brains and jerk-bags between me and my next meagre slice of sweet sweet freedom. And many many more between this little piggy and his next slice of roast beef. To which I add, wee wee wee all the way home.

Incidentally, pigs eating beef? Wouldn't that make em go mental like mad cow disease?

Or the Jim'll fix it guy?

In other news I had a great moment in a convenience store a few days ago which basically was a brilliant Nth degree of day to day Japanese politeness. So in any shop or restaurant in Japan, when a customer comes through the door it is customary for every staff member in audible range to shout "IRRASHIMASE!!!" This kinda translates I think to "You have come (honourably.)"

It's a bit disconcerting in most cases as there are people shouting it from every direction, mainly from places that you can't see e.g. the kitchen. But in these cases they do it almost as a reflex, not even pausing in their work of coaxing some kind flavour out of a kilo of plain rice or putting wrapped packages into ever so slightly bigger wrappers just to layer those suckers up for winter insulation or good luck or whatever the frig.

For the most part though, the professional welcome is a bit hollow as as soon as you speak (in either English OR Japanese) they will give you a pleadingly confused look like you have just asked them to pop a marshmallow up their bottom.

Anyway, a convenience store worker came in the door and no-one looked up to see that it was in fact an employee. He got the full shouting treatment as everybody in the shop shrieked at him at the top of their lungs without actually looking up from the Strawberry and Milk flavored Pepsi (I kid you not) they were stacking on the shelves.

The worker himself was also shy of a few brain cells so assumed similarly that all his co-workers weren't shouting for the good of their health and that a customer had come in. The customer who was him.

So in essence I got to see the odd treat of a man screaming "WELCOME!!!!" to himself as his power of independent thought flickered and died for the very last time.

Just got a form into my hands for re-contracting for another year. It's gonna stay blank...

See you soon stinkbugs!

Busy Hands in Japan

Exclusive Obsession in Japan

He's sick of getting spam!

It`s Jean Claude van Damme!

After passing through the rather drinksy oriented feast of Halloween, we have now tentatively taken our first steps into the Christmas season. The only change that that brings for me is that now Meg will not allow us to pass a 1 euro store without detouring in to purchase some kind of Christmas paraphernalia.

If I hear one more "Traditional Canadian Bandito Trumpet Solo"

I think I'm gonna puke.

Apart from that though, Christmas spirit will remain thin on the bloody ground here all the way up until I begin my biannual pilgrimage via bullet-train and intercontinental flight to the aul shebeen back home.

As for the weather we are still on the shorts wearing side of 20 degrees, though the daylight here is spent by before 6 o'clock, if there is any wandering around and apologising to everybody to be done here, it needs to be a pre-dinner affair. A big problem for foreigners here is that compared to the monumental importance of the holiday back home where a good sixth of the year is dedicated to working up to the 4 hour orgy of booze, meat, varied potato dishes and familial passive aggression, the Japanese are very much just playing along.

On basically any topic, Christmas included, you could well be regaled with how much the Japanese like so and so and how so and so is such a frightfully big deal over here.

Well... yes and no.

Japan is nation of enthusiasts and you probably couldn't think of something that a Japanese person hasn't dedicated his/her (usually his) adult life and every waking hour to. Furthermore there are legions more Japanese who only let the psychotic brown bear of their passion out to play once they've punched out of work and slipped their black suit onsey over their heads.

This leads to a situation where individuals end up ignoring large swathes of world culture for their exclusive obsession, while at the same time paying lip service to everybody else's obsessions just so we in the rest of the world don't think they're a mentalist shut in. Which they almost definitely are.

So even though your image of the Japanese Christmas might be balls-out festivity and more Christmosity than one could shake a bell covered stick at, the real Japanese christmas is limited to strawberry cake and the ubiquitous KFC Christmas bucket.

Ready. Steady. Kill me!

Oh, excuse me "Party Barrel." <shudders>

As ever I must stop myself from continuing onwards in this ranting manner before this email degenerates further into me bighting down on a leather belt while emitting furious hissing noises. A neutral anecdote then shall we?

A week or so ago we were playing a game as part of one of my classes in Junior high. I say "my" classes but for the most part in JH I have to do only occasional planning and even then the teacher usually will stay there throughout for translations and to join in with whatever it is I'm at. Usually when I'm in control this is a game designed to punish the weak, humiliate the slow and generally make as real as possible any inner secret fears the students may entertain in the darkest corner of their soul where only God and their mother is meant to ever see.

So the teacher made up this game which for all intents and purposes was an English language version of the game "Go Fish." For those who don't know it, everyone gets five cards and if you have any pairs you put them down in a pile of your own. On your turn you can ask another player if they have any of a kind of card e.g. "any 2's?"

They either give you a 2 of their and if they don't have it they say "Go fish" and you take one out of the communal pile. Winner is the one with the most cards.

A game so simple it makes Poker look like threading dental floss through your ears.

Anyway, in the Western version, it is a simple winner take all system. Survival of the fittest. If you're crap, there'll be no one crying for you Sonny Jim when you're out on the slag heap with all the other human meat and me and all the other Go Fish success stories shoot straight to the top of the pile building our grand legacies on the bones and crushed skulls of those who used to be our peers.

So much the better for the winner, but there can be only one.

Cause he says it in the film so he does!

In the Japanese version there is only one LOSER where the person who is left with the unpaired Joker at the end of the game. If you'll indulge me...

This is a pretty sweet microcosm of the groupwellness/anxiety quality of Japanese life. Even though, life is basically pretty good for everybody as in case you haven't checked the markets lately Japan is kicking all our asses even with about 10% of it getting decidedly soggy, irradiated and razed like Carthage last March(never heard of Carthage you say? Kinda my point.). Employment, quality of life and all those things are pretty darned good and as the Japanese are all about group harmony (or "wa") it seems that everything will be good forever.

Butawaitheresmore!

With the general assumed happiness of everyone comes an implicit fear of being that odd one out who for whatever reason gets dealt a shit sandwich by fate and is expected to chow down on that for approximately their whole life.

An ever present anxiety monkey sitting on your back whispering in your ear, "It could be you any day now." Furthermore this anxiety feeds into the Japanese obsession with luck which links to Buddhism, slot machines and a waving cat statue. The game is a terribly rich metaphor indeed.

In other news, I have repeatedly forgot to mention the high occurrence of midgets in Kyoto a few weeks ago and shall do so here. Midgets ahoy!

Midget the first: was riding a mini-motorbike in full mini-leathers.

Midget the second: feeling bad after cackling loudly at the motorcycling midget, I decided to just look straight ahead as another midget approached me in the street. Walking in the opposite direction, they seemed to be trying to not look at the foreigner and promptly tripped face first onto some stone steps.

Muy bueno.

Yes Pecan!

Exclusive Obsession in Japan

Turnip Jack O Lanterns in Japan

Who's at the door?

It's Zsa Zsa Gabor!

Good Halloween to you all Xeno-fans! Another week another poorly aimed use of the child-height urinals as Hashihama school continues refurbishing and my socks get ever more piddily.

The week gone was a quiet one to be sure to be sure, as Halloween is upon us I was able to make up about an hours worth of activities and apply it rigourously to all my students without regard to their age, level of interest or appropriateness of content. A few word games and pictures of Turnip Jack O Lanterns (Irish style) were mixed with a poorly translated account of the Famine and a rather skilled glossing over of why so many Americans came to Japan on boats bringing Halloween with them.

It wasn't to give them an award for niceness

Oddlly I think the Famine was a bit of a hit as when I tried to explain that the spuds got a "Potato Sickness" and turned inedible and black, this went down to uproarious laughter as I mimed picking them out of the ground and looking at them. Also everyone forgot what a Banshee does so I got to shriek in a book-ish kids face at full scream.

A 7.9 on the Richard scale.

The best things in life ARE free. Also this week I was enlisted to do a culture lesson because a bunch of city fat heads were in visiting to every lesson they did that day. So they all had to be planned rigourously and jampacked with engaging, informative content. As opposed to every other day where they repeat "Grapes am swell!" for 45 minutes before they all bow to a picture of Hello Kitty and eat a bowl of fermented seaweed.  Okay I was overstating quite a bit there...

...apart from the seaweed.

I told them about what it's like to be submerged in another culture where everything you are is basically the greatest of affronts to good taste and ettiquette. My examples were when a waiter followed us for 5 minutes out of a restauraunt because we had left a 10cent tip, when I took another teachers sandals to be the Toilet Sandals and came out to find them shouting at a kid they assumed had stolen them as a trick and then finding a postman in my apartment as I shielded my nethers with a dripping towel. Stirring stuff indeed.

My forays into the nut bustingly hard core world of Asian martial arts contiues sluggishly with a large part of my kendo time spent beating several shits out of a mannequin with an old car tyre for a head. Oh and shouting MEH! every couple of seconds. One kids` MEH was deemed so sub-par he had to spend 10 minutes MEHing his Nipponese nuts off before the teacher would allow the class to end. Also I am currently looking for a set of second hand kendo gear as to buy it new, predictably costs as much as an evening of high end erotic dancing from the Spanish PM.

<enter spicy sausage joke here>

Bar these minor considerations it has been a fairly pedestrian week with a standard Halloween-proximal Saturday night of rubbish costumes (mine at least) and eventually very drunken Karoke, Japanese style which means in a lightless booth with just you and the set of friends you walk in with with no one else to talk to. Never been my bag per se but when in Rome... you'll see open racism.

Their mad for it over there, the divils.

Meg to be fair was rocking a pretty deadly costume of some random be-bearded hunk of 100% Irish beefsteak. In an anime t-shirt wearing dirty swimming trunks maskerading as shorts and small stuffed pig. She looked so damn good I would've cheated on her with me, who was her who was me who was her who was me...(trails off and breathes through mouth...)

In other news I'm beginning to finally get a few visitors in the next few months and am getting my grits together to have something to show them. As an aside to anyone who's considering popping over while I'm here, yee've got about 9 months before this turkey... hatches. Put a fork in the turkey! Because it's eggs are all in one basket and counted before they've hatched.

So...yeah visit me up a notch ya shower of beggars!

Also I'm trying desperately to worm my way in with both former lecturers/employers to try and wring references out of them for when I return. So if you feel like writing down something complimentary about me and keep the swearing to a minimum I'm accepting anything anyones willing to give! Hai dozo!

Afraid that's gonna have to do yez for this week, jesus, they just brought in the school lunch. Who knew that grey had a smell?

I did. I knew.

Turnip Jack O lanterns in Japan