Fast times at Japan High

Sometimes it even amazes me how damned lazy I am; but then I think of my steady diet of crack and it kinda makes sense.

Anyways it was about Marchish the last time I checked and now its Spring time so that would mean that 5 months have passed since my last posting. I don’t know what you want me to say, I’m sorry. But to tell you the truth the spark just isn’t there anymore. I mean if you would clean yourself up once in awhile then maybe I’d pay more attention to you. I’m still committed just we might be relegated to the couple that takes about how much we like “Total” at the breakfast table and that’s it. Wait…..

Anyways, like I was saying I finally have escaped the clutches of the Jehovah Witlesses and their brain washing machine. I shit you not, they were knocking on my door everyday for about 3 weeks, I mean with this hair I do look like Jesus and I have been know to turn wine into grapes, so you can’t really blame them. But still man, it was scary. I thought about using them to start my own personal cult and spread the word of “The Holy White Dolphin that descended from the Trees” or “Bradism” but then I went to their house. It started out innocently enough, except for the pictures of Jesus adorning almost every inch of wall space. Not until after dinner did things start to really unravel. Not two seconds after the plates had been cleared did each family member whip out a musical instrument, no small feat considering there was a drum set and tuba involved (think transformers but with Japanese and instruments, okay maybe don’t think transformers). I noticeable cringed, thinking that they were going to sing some eerie Jesus songs or something like that, but the proceed to rock out to The “I’m bigger than Jesus” Beatles. This consequently spawned an idea so diabolical that my head would explode if I even began to know what I was talking about, followed by the cult idea. I now realize that at some point during the night they planted the mind control, shortly after calling me a black sheep when I commented that I wasn’t deeply religious, and I haven’t been the same since.

In the interim though I have managed to do a decent amount of things. Fish came out to the Ol’ Oguni and the madness that ensued made me question why I didn’t fail my final year at UCLA in an attempt to stay in school forever al la PCI. Fish and I set off on a memorable quest in Oguni so memorable that I can’t really remember it. I do remember that it had something to do with fire, Philippinas, and debauchery? Does that sound right? After that we met up with Ass ball and Body to roundly put the smack down on Japan. We were successful and I’m pretty sure that if you come to J-town that you’ll find the Japanese quite docile, except if you tell them that American baseball is superior to Japanese baseball. FOR GOD SAKES DON’T DO THAT! Still we had a pretty darn good time, at one point we decided that Sumo wrestlers are always on bottom with their women cause it’d just be bad otherwise.

After that it was a hop skip and a jump down to Okinawa’s Ishigaki Island for the 3 s’s. I totally recommend a trip down there if you have the time/cash since it was gorgeous and largely untapped by gaijin… or maybe I shouldn’t recommend it and leave it pristine. I leave it in your capable hands to decide.

Shortly after my gut had recovered (but not my wallet) from all that excess, I went over to a school in the valley called Chiner with fellow Aso-goonies Mark and Jamie. In China I was set upon by a number of evil forces, most prominently among them were Peiking Duck, Chinese Street Hawkers, and the English. Never one who enjoyed a booty prodding I soon exploded like Sloth from the Goonies and a fiery ball of rage to engulf my enemies. I first set after the Peiking Duck, employing the “pulling your own trigger” method and a toilette to obliterate ever last remnant of it that assaulted my stomach. After successfully defeating this intestinal invader I turned my attention to the shadowy Hawkers that lurked around every corner, even on the Great Wall, and would follow you for miles on end. Well after a while I decided that my best bet was to just try and weird them out. Soon I was trying to freak every hawker that came up to me. This was really successful but I usually smelled like poo afterwards and very rarely the Hawker enjoyed it so another plan had to be enacted. This time I decided to beat them at their own game. Borrowing Jamie’s watch, which was clearly labeled “Fossil”, I would follow the Hawkers around trying to sell them a real Rolex for only $300. After they got bored with me I would then follow them as they tried to sell their goods to different tourists and proceed to undercut the hawkers with my wares. This worked to perfection and I soon had hawkers run away from me when the recognized me.

It was then that I turned all my ruthlessness to the problem which was threatening to derail our entire trip, the English. Unfortunately I failed as some many dentists have failed before me in my dealings with them and Cinco de Mayo ended on a bad note by virtue of that. On the bright side I did make the wife of the President of GE Asia puke. Why you ask? Cause that’s how I like to make business connections.

So that about covers the last couple months, quick and dirty just the way I don’t like it…sometimes. Stay tuned for next weeks episode, “I’m only in Tokyo when I’m inebriated.”

Fear and Loathing in Japan

In a tribute to the recently deceased Hunter S. Thompson, this week’s 3 part episode (because blogger sucks) is recorded in the Gonzo Journalism fashion.

Christ man! Where in the Yosemite-Sam-Hell am I? Surrounded by industrious midgets at every turn, I wade through this “uni-race” country parting the masses when I walk the streets like a hobo on Rodeo Drive. What am I doing here man? Everything is a blur of Cute and Cuddly, ready for consumption products, firewater, and episodes of “Deadwood.” I spontaneously yell out “cocksucker!” while walking the streets, making the inhabitants flee from the albino Godzilla. Of course not a soul can understand me when I say I want assistance of any kind, yet when I blaspheme its almost as bad as if I had called someone a Korean…almost.

Faint recollections of the females engaging in some sort of erotic primeval rite of passage in which they endeavor to pop the other’s Balloon with their Sword.

Swords and Ballons 

Community relations where I’m put on display like some giant blond-haired chimp, “feed it beer, listen to it try and communicate. Fascinating creatures aren’t they?” One massive dwarf tries to take me under his wing only to give up in disgust as his gibberish is even more garbled to me then the normal gibberish practiced here. I try to explain that I’m just a hired geek. My hands cramp from the continued hand gestures.

Even the multinational conglomerates conspire against me. Am I the only one untainted by this madness or have I gone mad myself, corrupted by my own “Gaijin Magic”? Questions without answers.

None what-so-ever 

Sweeping mountains and volcanic grasslands, overly polite yet excessively introvert, one people yet elitist, cultural borrowers yet completely convinced of Japanese supremacy.

I travel to what appears to be the heart of the beast, some place called Farmland, to try and gain understanding. I am greeted by some kind of abandoned alien colony. Cows talk to me upon entrance, I can’t tell if they’re making sexual advances or trying to fatten me up. I spend the night in moon bubbles playing intense Jenga. I wake the following morning to find that my face is painted, giving me the appearance of some out of work communist clown minus the foam nose who had his face painted by his organ playing monkey. I stumble towards the mess hall looking for some grease to make the construction workers stop. The ass-clown behind the desk tells me that his’ not sure if I can enter done up in such a manner. I explain to him that I’m a customer, not actually affiliated with this madness. I lurch through the entryway and all the slits in the room focus on me, a child cries. After a double survey of the fare I reluctantly settle on a bowl of mustard gas colored soup, as SPAM has made it to these backwaters while a decent breakfast is still absent.

No answers, just more questions. Did all this happen? Or has the jar with the snake in it finally had its revenge?

Damn! 

VB Day

Ahhhh Japan, nowhere quite like it.

Take Valentines day for example. Unlike in America, although I have my doubts, Valentine’s Day is a completely commercial creation. Apparently in 1958 some genius card company owner decided to unveil a new holiday, loosely modeled after the western Valentines Day but centering around “giving” cards and candies. Notice I didn’t say “exchanging” cards and candies. Oh no, in Japan its all on the women. They buy chocolates and cards for everyone; in fact in the work place the women are somewhat obligated to buy candies for their superiors. This basically translates into the men doing nothing, no restaurant reservations, no weekend getaways, on Valentine’s Day. But before you pack your bags, you should know there’s a catch. While the women do give presents to most, they usually offer up a “true love” present to the person they’ve taken a fancy too. This is one of the few opportunities that women have to express their feelings of love in Japan so it’s not to be taken lightly. The men who receive a Valentine’s Day present have until March 14^th, or White Day, to make up there mind if their present is a “true love” present or not. If they decided it to be and they want to respond in kind, then they must offer up a gift to the woman they received the initial gift from, usually multiple times the initial gifts value. . In fact many of my female students have said that White Day is their favorite holiday. Although the men don’t get off Scot-free, its rather like my coop out every year for Valentine’s Day “Its my Birthday so you have to do all the planning”, you still have to participate its just not as full blown as elsewhere. Still a hellva change for the Western idea of Valentine’s Day. I was lucky enough to make enough of an impression on many of the girls at my schools to rack up the chocolate but seeing as I think Chocolate is “THE DEVIL” I can get some good regifting mileage out of all the little boxes.

Crazy place this Japan. Other than that things have been great. I got to play in my first soccer tournament in Japan 2 weeks ago. That went great until the 3^rd game when my fat-ass pulled my hamstring since I haven’t run that much in about 5 years. Also went sledding with Jamie down a sweet ass hill at the dark. It was pretty awesome since after the first run down we were walking back up and I see a decent sized shrub and comment that it was a good thing we didn’t hit this. Jamie says “That one ain’t got nothing on this one!” He was standing behind a shrub (forest!) that was about half his height. Hadn’t been able to see those at all even though we passed within a couple feet of them on the way down, of course we proceeded to make the run a several more times. Even though the snow has melted now I still got some good pictures of that on the website now, check em out. Also this should completely relate Japan’s craziness in one small story:

Last Thursday I got an “urgent” call from my second school, Aso Seiho. Now most Thursdays and Fridays I go to Seiho but had decided to stay at Oguni that day since I didn’t have any class at Seiho and didn’t feel like getting up earlier to make the drive, which I’m not supposed to do anyways, plus they were having judo and Kendo matches at Oguni (more on that later). Well I take the call and it’s the Kyoto sensei “Vice-Principal” of Seiho. Basically what I understand from him is that I need to come to school right away! I think that something major has happened and I need to be present, the possibilities make me excited because I’m usually left out of most things. So I manage a hurried explanation at my first school, who have to check to bus schedule to make sure there’s a bus going there since I’m not supposed to drive, and bolt. In a rush I drive “to the bus station” in my car. When I get to Seiho I look around for Kyoto Sensei but I am told that he is in a meeting. I think to myself “This is big he’s in a meeting now, I must be accused of impregnating somebody’s daughter or something.” So I wait around for 30 minutes while he finishes up he’s meeting. To my surprise he comes up to me with a chocolate cake, apparently one of the teacher’s had found out when my birthday was and made me a cake. This was why I needed to be at school right away. At first I was relieved, then slightly miffed, then stoaked. It was really cool of everyone but the odd thing was that the teacher who actually made me the cake was too busy to actually show up. In fact everyone was pretty busy at the office so they each had their piece of cake, chatted me up, told me they were sorry they couldn’t go out and drink with me (even though I hadn’t asked them too) and promptly went back to work. Also my birthday wasn’t until the weekend so it was all a little surreal for me but still cool. My host family had previously invited me to a private spa retreat in the famous spa area Beppu for the weekend so I wasn’t that offended that people couldn’t come out, especially when I hadn’t organized anything. People organize something for me unbidden and then apologize for not being able to show me a proper time even though I never expected anything out of them.

Pretty crazy place this Japan.

LINKS TO MY FRIENDS

• Kid Ethnic


• The Republic of Mackistan


• Fingerhut


• Japan: The Huge Entity



• Cabu Chan does Japan

The Joys of Cooking

Well getting back to the grind has proved to be a little more difficult than I thought. It was great having the time off but it only emphasizes the fact that I can't travel around Japan on a whim. It seems as one of my teachers, almost sensing my frustration, came to my rescue at the perfect time. Her idea was that I should write the menu for the last cooking class that the 3rd graders (equivalent of seniors) had. She said that she wanted something decidedly American and so when I suggested fish tacos she was not all the enthusiastic about it. So instead I was forced to come up with a substitute; Caesar Salad, French Onion Soup, and Meatball sandwich. I thought that she would grow wise to the fact that Caesar was actually American and the soup actually had "French" in the title but I was able to slip that by her.

In the end though it was a lot more difficult then I first imagined. Getting Marinara proved to be all but impossible and the first trail run I had to a combination of Catsup, meat sauce (don't ask), and tonkatsu sauce (another type of meat flavored sauce). Now as horrible as that sounds it tasted even worse. Thank that it was only me and the cooking teacher eating eat and that the Japanese have a habit of always paying compliments. She said that it tasted "delicious" and couldn't wait to give it to the kids, even though the look in her eyes betrayed a frantic searching for the closest bathroom. I promised that the second go round would be better since she had assured me that she could get a hold of some sauce that she actually used with spaghetti. I should have realized right then and there that I should take the responsibility of getting the sauce as it is common practice in Japan to put seaweed and mayonnaises on spaghetti, but wallowing in my first failure I could only demur to her choice.

Well when the final day was upon us I walked into the classroom, fearing the outcome. The kids had been talking about the class for 2 weeks so I was afraid to let them down. I was happy to see that the class was composed of 26 males and 6 females and I privately took satisfaction in the fact that a male dominated class would not complain about excess portions of meat. Well everything started out smoothly, I went over the basics for the kids and they seemed to be into it, until I got to the actual meatball stage. I had wanted to make the meatballs as fast as possible since I wanted them in the sauce for a good 1 so that they would taste better. But as many of the kids seemed unable to actually cook they're meatballs without breaking them I had to cook them all myself. To compound this fact I was only provided with 2 small cans of this sweet tasting red sauce. It turns out the teacher had seen how much sauce was left over from my first attempt and decided that we didn't need that much sauce the second time round. So the pot was literally over flowing with meatballs and almost no sauce.

Overall the kids didn't complain too much as they ate it all in complete silence, never uttering a word. I did see one of the girls, to my dismay, throwing out the avocados that I had included in the Caesar salad. I ran over and grabbed one out of midair before it hit the trashcan and then popped it in my mouth in one fluid motion. Shamed she ran back to her seat and began to stare out her salad bowl. I tried to come over and explain I wasn't angry at her I just like food that tastes really bad so I had to eat the avocado. She half-heartedly accepted and I made a fool of myself by tossing the rest of the avocados into my mouth, missing each time so she felt better.

Feeling defeated over all as the students ran out of the classroom I realized why everyone found it amazing when I said that I can cook, because to them everything I cook always tastes like crap.

On that note I will leave you with some more quotes from my textbook. This section is intended to be a discussion point in class.

A. Oh! Boys are better than girls! I wish I were a boy! They are stronger. They can play any sport better than us. They can be so active and seem to have nothing to be afraid of. Don't you agree?

B. Does your school have a uniform? Our School has. And I think it's better for high school to have uniforms. If you have a uniform, you don't have to spend so much money on new clothes. And you can sleep 10 minutes longer in the morning, because you don't need time to decide what to wear. What do you think?

C. I'm sure video games are one of the causes of recent crimes. As you know, many people enjoy fighting games. People who play those games enjoy hitting and even killing people in them. If they play the games so many hours a day, they get used to that way of thinking and may hit or kill people even in real life! That is wrong and we must stop it. What's your opinion?


What is your opinion?

LINKS TO MY FRIENDS

• Kid Ethnic


• The Republic of Mackistan


• Fingerhut


• Japan: The Huge Entity



• Cabu Chan does Japan

Where am I?

Dang if I ever kept up with this stuff on a regular basis I wouldn’t have to recap so much whenever I do this. As you've probably figured out by now I had to create a new site after the old one took a dump on me so hopefully I'll keep this one up to date more. Oh well here comes the whirlwind, by the way there’s new pixs up at the website http://captain.staticworks.com/~fish/gallery/Japanimation, be warned though, there’s A LOT of new pixs up at the website.

So my brother Bryan came out to visit me for Christmas since my school basically told me that I couldn’t have the 24^th of December off as I had to be at school for closing ceremony. So he came out on the 17^th and I picked him up in Tokyo which we then proceed to rock, the problem is that rock takes a lot outta you, especially you’re wallet. We did it all in our 4 day tour of Tokyo, thanks to some help from Mino who met up with us and showed us the sights. But rocking hard does have its advantages as Bryan is new starting to be referred to as the Emperor in many social circles around Tokyo. Basically we went to the aptly named “club Vanilla” during our escapades and Bryan dominated the dance floor even before Y.M.C.A. came on. After that there was no escaping his power. He had people, not just Japanese but foreigners too, trying to copy his every move. At one point he was encircled by a bunch of Japanese, mostly men actually, and yelled out “I love Japan!” The over-emphatic reply from all 12 in the circle was “WE LOVE U.S.A.!” Ahhhh Tokyo… crazy place. So besides that greatness we a generally spent our time sneaking 2 extra people into 1 person rooms (which are incredible small in Japan), checking out the sites, and celebrating our greatness in other ways. We also were able to stop at a Ryokan, which is a old school style Japanese inn where they basically take care of your every needs (well okay not all of them) and prepare you with lavish dinners and lunches, a long the way.

After four days Bryan and I head down to my ghetto. After the expenses of Tokyo we both wanted to tone down the spending a little bit without actually toning it down. Well thanks to great Japanese hospitality we didn’t pay for a single thing while we were in my town. People got wind of the fact that my brother was in town and the bum rushed my house. Bryan was able to spread “Boom-shaka-laka” and “Yatzee” with ease. My home stay parents were especially great and I think that Bryan now has a special place in the heart of my home-stay father. I think at one point Bryanhad him doing Karate moves outside other peoples houses. Great stuff. Although coming back for closing ceremony was a complete waste since there was absolutly no reason for me to be there other than to so that I was there. It was still good to show someone my town though. We ended up spending most of the time with my home stay father, partying on Christmas Eve until 3am and then having him wake us up at 5am so that we could catch our flight to Bangkok.

Fast forward a couple hours and we’re in Bangkok. We bused into the city from the airport at 9pm, smelling like crap, due to the excessive partying as well as not taking a shower in two days, and tired as all hell. We then meet up with my buddy Jamie on the infamous Ko San Road. For those of you that have never had the pleasure, imagine a magically place where anything and everything if for sale, the only problem is that you don’t have to go looking for it, everyone’s trying to push it on you. You can’t walk more than 5 feet without getting to ask to buy something, even when you sit down at a restaurant people will come in and try and sell you stuff and the restaurant staff almost encourages it. Smells like crap too. Our room was made into a triple for the night by throwing the mattress off of one bed onto the floor and just having the box spring for the other bed. Oh well its cheap and we were only thinking about going there to meet up with Jamie and then head down to Phuket that night on the night train but when we got there we pretty beat and enticed by the excited sites of Ko San Road so we decided to stay the night. Man are we geniuses, if had taken the night train we would have just gotten off the train in time to get hit by the Tsunami that rocked south East Asia. So needing a back up plan we headed to a place I had visited 3 years ago, the island of Koh Tao.

After getting bombarded, actually I didn’t get to bombarded it was pretty much just Jamie, by hotel salesmen the entire boat ride over we decided on the Coral Grand resort which I pretty sure I tore up with scooters the last time I was there. It was a pretty nice place actually and we paid a grand total of 2$ a night to stay there after we signed up for the scuba diving course. Most of our days were spent studying for the scuba, which didn’t sit to well with Bryan, and going diving. We made pretty good friends with our assistant dive Master Nigel, especially when Bryan started whipping out “are you for the scuba” from “Along Came Polly” which he was a big fan of. Of course this didn’t sit particularly well with the two French women that were in our class, lesbians…not hot lesbians, since they thought that we were making fun of them. Nigel had to explain that it was a from a movie and once they accepted that we started to use it to make fun of them. Come on don’t give me that look they deserved it, one of them even had a tattoo of the Eiffel Tower on her shoulder and remember they were ugly lesbians, I’m pretty convinced if there weren’t ugly lesbians the world would accept lesbians in a heart beat. But even with that we managed to have a blast. Koh Tao is this gorgeous island where the water laps up onto the beach like in those Corona commercials, coconut drinks come in a freshly cut coconut, and mixed drinks come in those sand buckets that you see kids carry at the beach (complete with a whole .350 of imitation JB, man those are deadly). Bryan and I were able to get oh diving license for under 300$ and improved our tans, unfortunately when I got back to Japan it automatically vanished since it was so scared of the cold.

Word to the wise if you’re in Thailand and your boat gets canceled because its so windy out that its thought to be too dangerous to cross the ocean, don’t take the only boat offering to go. That was a great 3 and ½ hours. 6-8 foot waves rocking the boat, Bryan fell asleep for the first 30 minutes but woke up because everyone was so eirily quite on the boat since they were so scared. It got so bad that people were wearing life jackets, this is well past the part where several people started yaking into plastic bags (which started more people yaking). One woman was just awful though as she kept demanding that the drivers stop the boat, yeah like that’s gonna do us a lot of good, we’ll just be drifting in the middle of the ocean with the waves crashing down instead of having the motor running and the ability to move out of the way of some of the waves. But her hestaria was infectious and so I was almost to smack her until I think somebody gave her a valium and she shut up. But serious the boat came close to capsizing a couple of times which was not fun since we were all basically in the hull of the boat with only one way out if the boat did capsize. But we made it to the next island and where able to catch a stand-by to Bangkok since we missed our train on the mainland already. After that we pretty much arrived in Bangkok without any further incident and then slept in the airport until our flight the next morning. Bryan took off from Tokyo and I went down to Mino’s place to tool around there. Had an excellent time there and in Kyoto, which I highly recommend to anyone as its quite beautiful and has an abundance of old Japanese cultural landmarks, but finally returned to my ghetto a couple bills shorter but generally satisfied with myself.

So that’s basically the last couple a weeks. Sorry for the quick run through but I figured no one would read it if I made it too long. I might fill in some of the gaps if you ask me but for now I leave you with an actually section from one of the English textbooks that I’m supposed to use:

There were a lot of native Americans in America,

The loved their land,

In the old days the hunted fished and farmed,

The lived like that for centuries.

Then the white people came,

They called the native Americans “Indians”

They killed a lot of Indians,

They changed the life of the native Americans completely.

Today many native Americans live in restricted areas.

Its not that I necessarily disagree with what’s being said its just…. Damn.

Well I'll update you all again soon. Later