It's President Theodore Roose
Another fine rice flavoured morning to all of y'all. Despite already having had my obligatory sickness for the school year my crappy body crapped out on me big style in the past 7 days when I got IN-FU-RU-EN-ZA, a very big deal indeed.
Remember that image you have of various Bird Flu/Sars emergencies in Asia where one guy who was actually living inside a huge chicken caught a sniffle and suddenly it looked like death himself walked the streets and was only satiable by making everybody wear ridiculous face masks?
If not...
<dab dab>
Well it turns out they ALL do this during the winter months anyway, it wasn't a reflection of how serious (SARSious) they took the disease. Anyway,about two weeks ago I looked up at the class that had just walked into my ignorance bunker and all but one was wearing one of those masks. During the starting portion (Me-"How are you?" Them- "How are you!!") I tried to see who was sick with what.
Number of sick=0
So I asked why they were all wearing masks. This lead them to make an I've-been-found-out face that made one think of a lawyer whose client is so damn guilty their hand sizzled touching the Bible.
For example here are some guilty types (I'm onto you Cliff!)
My question hung in the air like the curry fart I just presently made in the staff room (waft waft). Eventually somebody said "Yobo." Immediately everyone was out-Yobo-ing each other.
"Yobo!"
"Yobo's the guy you want."
"I'm twice the Yobo you'll ever be."
"Yobo forever!!"
To which I responded, "Guys what in salty frig is Yobo?"
Turns out Yobo=Guard.
Even though no one was sick, they had all their mouths covered for no other reason just that they might breath in some errant germs from no one. I pointed this out to them gleefully.
Response? "...yobo"
Anyway despite all the Yobo about, I still got a touch of flu and spent my mid-week sweating and shivering while working, eating or sleeping. To those of you who have never been sick in a foreign country, store it up. It's one of life's choicest net-bags of shit to fling at you. Though by now I have what I need to scrape myself through with the minimum bother, mainly a local brand of not poisonous whiskey for sleeping and access to the restauraunts of Imabari via motorised auto-carriage.
It might sound odd but I find work helps too, as it distracts you from the constant registeration of inner-awfulness that your body is performing.
In Japanese current affairs, the TV gave over an hour of televisual programming to the breaking news that two dogs were hugging. Frankly I thought they were making a bit of a scene of themselves and were a studded collar away from some bizarre fetish video, but then so is everything else here.
A bunch of the dames from AKB48, that juggernaut of J-Pop and having their faces plastered on tatty merchandise (think of 48 Japanese Krusty the Clowns in miniskirts) got kicked out for not being single enough.
Somehow, somewhere Ivans body temperature went up by 1 degree
I organised an event last Saturday night, which was mainly a bunch of us foreigner types cooking food together, playing board games (they should call them BORING games(no they shouldn't I love them more than life itself, that was a test, a test which you failed person that laughed)) and having a few glasses of wine.
I served up one of the few actual meals of the night (as opposed to nibbily bits) with a meat, spuds, cabbage with an onion and beer gravy. Irish style. <thrusts peace sign towards listener>
Subsequently we got to hear more from Kiwi Mark's time in Cork, where he sold a broken mini-fridge to one guy and ended up getting his car impounded. For utterly valid and reasonable reasons. We also found out his girlfriend is "quite beautiful..." though not as much as her sister and that he is the black sheep of the family with all his other brothers being accountants in major global cities whereas he sells knives down the Long Mile Road and generates reasons for his girlfriend to dump him.
In other news I caught myself miming going to the toilet on a student. He was sitting in a bunch of old tyres looking glum, and having spent the previous 3 hours with 7 year olds I thought it'd be really quite the ratherest thing to jump up on the tyre and pretend it was a squatter toilet. Unfortunately the kids didn't see the funny side and looked very much how you would expect an adult to react if someone came up and started miming going an indeterminate number on them (1 or 2). Their patience with mark senseis antics that day was subjeted to that last heavy straw causing the camel to buck and sway... before it righteously slaps you with a lawsuit and a camel smelling fist.
I'm in a t-shirt and little pants at the minute (ladies...) as I dared to go out in the cold to leg about with the children over lunch break. The rest of the school staff who are wearing 4 layers if their wearing any at all, keep telling me how brilliant I am for being slightly chilled, but then they remind one another that after all, I am from Iceland.
Was called over to my Board of Education last week for something. They wanted me to sign a document. Which I did. Just not in the box that said "Another year of Japan please."
See yez in July!
T-Shirt and Little Pants in Japan
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