sea change

The date on this post is actually September 10th. I'm continuing on an earlier draft from August 25th that I never "published", but it's funny how you know in your gut that life will just pull the chair from right under ya, and you're on the floor, pissing and moaning about your ass hurting even though you saw it all coming:

I'm stooping on someone else's apartment right now and feelin' zen. The weather has been less-Oprah's armpit lately. There's really no point to this post, more free write than anything. 

August has been a strange month, and now that it's about to end I feel an approaching sea change.  I'm applying for an internship in Hong Kong. I mean, it's gonna be tough to get but I'm optimistic. Actually, I want it fucking badly. And just the act of thinking about leaving has me all contemplative. Getting it means I'll have to leave Japan. Leaving everything I've known and grown accustomed to for the last nine months and starting over again, again. As much as I try to act spontaneous and free-spirited, I'm naturally a creature of habit, and change is plain unnerving. 

So yeah, as predicted, a lot has changed and I'm going to summon the reserves to pick myself back up again. I haven't heard from Hong Kong yet and as much as I want it, it doesn't matter if I don't, there will be other jobs. What has my wheels spinnin' is the whole idea of leaving. I'm not happy here anymore. Japan is starting to wear on me. 

tranquil

At the very end of my tonsillitis post I mentioned my chest hurt. Turns out that the month-long pain around my left boob was just imaginary, said Bubbe, requoting the diagnosis from the doctor's visit last Monday. 

IMAGINARY? Explain! 

This is what I understood from her translation: Taking deep breaths are not good for you. 

What?? 

Yes, she said. You're stressed out and taking really big breaths unconsciously. Big breaths cause superfluous intake of CO2 and that causes the pain in my chest. Just relax and the pain will go away. 

I said, well that's a relief. 

And then the doctor prescribed me some pills, pills that were described in Bubbe's Japanese-to-English dictionary as "tranquilizers." Fantastic. I'm on them right now and feel better already. 

it's alive

This last week has been punctuated by moot stress. I have convincing evidence my hair thinned a bit during this time. For nothing! 

The following is a long keitai-mail I sent my dear friend Joe this morning.  It sums up what I've been up to lately. 

"I had a minor nervous breakdown a moment ago when my ipod wouldn't turn on. my laptop's dead already, i woulda jumped on the next plane home if i lost the tunes too. it came back to the light after frantic power-button cpr. i curse japan and my appliance dependency. oh home! ive had sooo many lost in translation moments lately, especially transportation. i usually call the office so they'll get a taxi for my taxi school but THEY WERE CLOSED BECAUSE IT WAS SUNDAY. hmm funny...i guess SUNDAYS ARENT WORK DAYS UNLESS YOU ARE AN NT. so i called my own taxi somehow just repeating hachiji over and over to the receiving end and luckily a taxi came at 8. then [the company] fucked up my train tickets and i had to cancel them and buy new ones, literally scraped the bottom of my purse for the yens to pay for it with a minute left b4 the last train leaves. fri night after work i had to pretend to fall asleep once i got on the train bc i only had enough to pay for the stop before. the ticket guy pushed me awake once he realized i 'slept' past my stop and i faked 'HONTO?!?' he bought it and i ran off once the train stopped and jumped the wicket. i want my car = (" 

Chronologically, "week of unnecessary stress" starts with coming home to a comatose laptop. Macky-B had been purchased only a year and a half ago and I never download anything, so until then it was running like any other shiny new toy. So when the damn thing wouldn't turn on after numerous attempts I was devastated. In a place where nothing's familiar, a pitch black screen can be one of the most daunting. Slipped into transience was not only my DVD, music player, but also all those photos, videos, term papers, etc that had been stored in non-backed up fashion (who actually does that anyway?).  If this sounds anything like my lost-Internet post all the ways back in Beppu Beat time, it was actually way worse. It's like waking up, finding your arm (which was all good and army every day since fetal development) on the floor, not knowing how your arm detached and made itself useless, and being fucked over with the whole attachment bit. Okay, it might not be THAT bad, but my MacBook became laptopy carcass. I was busy every day from work so I had no time take it somewhere to get it fixed. On the upside, it being gone meant I had more time to study for the GREs, play lotsa guitar, get lotsa reading done, and I had an excuse to not reply to mounting emails (or compose blog entries). Freedom from material attachment...yadayada. 

(All's well though! I was thisclose to sending it to Apple, but I'm typing on the little shit-tease right now! After floating in purgatory for a week, it decided to come back to life! I still probably wont get to all those emails in due time. Oh, I love my pretty little Mac.) 

At the same time the company's dreaded Summer School kicked off. I'll gloss over that; I hate talking about work. Basically for eight straight days my life consisted of scuttling for about 12 hours a day. It was awful, I'm beyond glad it's over and now I can go back to my job sucking as usual. 

So after a bad week everything is right in the world now, woohoo, I've learned nothing from this and I'm still stuck in Kyushu. 

mommy dearest

So about a month ago what started off as a routine sore throat soon developed into an actual pain in the neck, one the size and consistency of an average walnut lodged right below my left jaw. It felt like I was shot in the face. The medley of accompanied symptoms included vicious headaches, a high fever, the chills, and my defeated, pathetic sick puppy of a self, bemoaning illness. I might have exaggerated the pain to anyone within earshot to gain unsolicited pity, but you're allowed to when you're sick. I cursed and casted blame on my filthy students for thinking it's funny to lick and sneeze all over an otherwise healthy sensei.  

Had I been at home I would have just weakly exasperated to Mom who would have cured me before I could even say lickity. But you can imagine how it's way more difficult here, especially if you only have enough language skills to order food off a menu with pictures. It would have saved me a lot of pain if going to the doctor consisted of pointing to an illustrated menu of symptoms and saying please.   

Friends suggested I should "probably go get that checked out." I'm aware I should have. But I had several reservations. The most minor being I didn't want to use up my sick days while I was actually sick. The most pressing was not knowing where to "go" to "go get that checked out" and having no idea how to communicate the "that" of "probably go get that checked out" even if I found the place to go. And incredible pain and discomfort aside, even if I did jump those locational and verbal hurdles (I could have just asked for directions to a hospital, found a nurse and pointed at the protrusion on my neck) there was then the price of good health. I aint insured, hun! Crossing my fingers that I would heal on own my was appealingly free of charge! It's so much more fun spending yens on things other than doctor's fees and prescription mediation. 

  

So my stubbornly stupid or stupidly stubborn self settled on self-medication. I tested Mom-approved home remedies, but I soon learned that eating healthy, gargling salt water, and sipping hot lemonade and honey only works if it's administered by your doting mother during a mild cold. And I guess taking six Advils every few hours numbed the pain but it didn't actually improve the situation. Seeking some sort of answer, I tried diagnosing myself on the Internet (which I now believe causes acute hypochondria) but Googling ambiguous search terms like "sore throat" and "pain in the neck" led me to believe my ailment could be any number of peculiar diseases. Goitres, cancerous lymph nodes, thyroid malfunction (never mind that mostly pre-menopausal women suffer from that)! Oh my! 

I think the hardest part to being sick is admitting you need help. It took me awhile but I finally accepted I was sick and not getting any better. I reached a feeble hand to my cell phone and called the one person who could help me, a mother. My sympathetic Japanese Okaasan eagerly whisked me to a throat doctor, patiently helped me translate my pain, instructed me to open my jaw as requested by the doctor, explained to me that I caught tonsillitis after the doctor's inspection (TONSILLITIS!! I SHAKE MY FIST AT THOSE THOSE BASTARD CHILDREN!), dealt with all the administrative stuff, and showed me how to swallow the meds. She stopped short of wiping my ass. My swollen, bacteria-laden salivary glands went back to being unobtrusive in about a week. I was back to my genki self.     

There's probably a lesson in this. My chest hurts. 

"what's wrong with me?"

I realized the other day I'm only as neurotic as the book I'm reading. Not good because, one, I thought all this time I had something of my own intrinsic personality, and secondly, since I'm reading "The Corrections", I'm currently depressingly, obsessively analytical. This entry has taken me an hour to write.  

all those bugs busy buzzing 'round

I HATE JAPANESE VERMIN. I feel like I'm in a Brobdingnag voyage---they're huge! I saw a spider the size of my hand one night, hanging out on the bathroom tiles welcoming me to be petrified by it. The fuckers are surfacing everywhere in this humidity. I counted at least eight large spiders and one Big Daddy sunning themselves and being all spider-like on Nakatsu school's front door. I entered and exited through the back door the whole week to avoid contact. ANDANDAND!!! MOSQUITOS ARE EVERYWHERE AND THEY LOVE CHINESE FOOD. I lose sleep over them because I hear them. They wake me up from slumber, mockingly buzzing near my ear, tummies full of my blood. One morning I woke up with seven bites all over my body. My largest accumulated mosquito-bite-total stands at 11. It looked like I had leprosy. 

A few months back I saw the first harbinger of the upcoming months' insect infestation---ROADKILL CENTIPEDE, guts and all festering about. If you can see an insect's insides, you know it's big. I wondered aloud if was some deranged kid's house pet that escaped, because nothing that mortifying could naturally surface from the ground. There are plenty of (less) creepy-crawlies like ants or ladybugs roaming around already. I insisted to my sanity that the centipede was a renegade pet an unpleasant person kept as testament to their strangeness, like people who raise iguanas or keep bats in cages or whatever. But NO, I WAS WRONG. CENTIPEDES ARE EVERYWHERE. I saw another one recently sauntering across the road as if it's were allowed to be exposed to human sight, that asshole! I ran away and screamed bloody murder. What what was it doing walking on my sidewalk?? What was it doing breathing my air??  

If I wasn't so scared of them I would smash every insect to pieces or obliterate them all nuclearly--but I have a feeling radiation exposure would just cause them to mutate, grow larger, and spiteful of humans. I think the first atomic bomb caused them to grow this large in the first place. 

Can insects read? I now have a slight irrational fear they will kill me in my sleep for posting this.  

potty mouth

This entry was inspired by last week's bathroom banter with a coworker at an izakaya. Without going into too much detail--I peed, I wiped, I postured, then I hollered to the next stall over:

"WHY DO ALL JAPANESE WOMEN FOLD THE FUCKING TOILET PAPER INTO A TRIANGLE?!"

After said holler, a fit of giggles surfaces from a bystander. Twas an English-speaking Japanese woman! So I doth implore: "WHYWHYWHHYY must you make me feel bad for not folding the toilet paper into a triangle after I use it?" 

She replieth: "Because I get bored when I go pee!" 

"Oh...does it matter if I can't fold it back as neatly as I found it?"  

She continued giggling. I think she was too polite to tell me that I probably shouldn't bother. 

Thus begins The Beat's Japanese bathroom enigma analysis (for women at least). Only in Japan would urination merit a proper blog entry.

Enigma-1: Toilet paper triangles. 

Toilet paper triangle in an upscale hotel, sure. Toilet paper triangle at the communal in Starbucks, whyy? It's a nice gesture, but I don't need your help to find the end of the roll. I don't want to think about your grimy hands delicately folding a perfectly symmetrical toilet paper triangle while I'm peeing. I don't want to feel guilty for not folding the toilet paper back into a triangle so the next person can conveniently wipe too. If you're doing it just because you're bored, as in the aforementioned anecdote, why don't you bring a book instead? 

Enigma-2: Bathroom slippers are always worn in the bathroom. 

Fair enough for the Eastern-style toilets, which is basically just a hole in the floor you squat over (where bodily excrement could splash about if you can't aim well) but why are the ubiquitous slippers found in Western-style bathrooms as well? I wont launch a scientific study comparing the amount of floor bacteria in the respective rooms, but I'm betting the Japanese style floors have way more icks and ews. There really is no reason to protect your feet while using a Western toilet, actual Westerners sure don't. I venture to guess that Japanese people are so used to wearing footwear in bathrooms that they carried it over to the Western counterpart. This segues to to...

Enigma-3: If the Japanese are so afraid of possible unsanitary exposures, then where are the damn toilet seat covers? 

I'm a squatter. I will never EVER sit on a public toilet seat, who knows what combination of fuck's on the seat, and if there is only one other squatter like me it merits my hover. After living here for 6 months, I now prefer the floor toilet over the seat for public peeing. I'm gonna say it's actually more sanitary to squat over the floor because there's a bigger surface area to aim pee versus the smaller circumference of a seat. Plus, less porcelain-to-skin contact is desirable. So if the Japanese wear slippers to protect their feet, why don't they have seat covers to protect their exposed ass? They don't hover; them women actually sit on the seat, even on public toilets! I don't get it! It seems to be a cultural attitude that naked skin is always clean. This brings me back to a doctor's visitation a few months ago when I was asked to change into a robe and sit bare assed on the wax-paper-less examination table. Perhaps hundreds of actual diseased patients are screened on that table!! But there it was, a pleathered, germy, cushioned table. I shuddered, held my tongue for sake of cultural sensitivity and carried on. What was I talking about again?

Enigma-4: The automated flush sound. 

I love those nifty washlets with aim-accurate bidets, sprays, and charming musical tones as much as the next foreigner. Some of those toilets even have automated deodorizers that make your ones and twos smell like spring flowers! BUT, I'll never understand why there's an option to play the built-in flush sound when it makes the actual flush sound when you, well, actually flush. 

That's about all I have to say about that. 

Live from the 5th floor of Santoraru Pirie building.

Instead of the usual parking lot post, I have found a wifi nook conveniently situated right by the elevator of my floor; three bars of perfectly communal, delicious wifi reception. I don't even need to get out of my pajamas for this lil' spot. Being completely shameless, I relish the increased opportunity to embarrass myself and prove to the whole floor (and the blogworld) how cheap I am. I think I'll download some really graphic pornography and play it on full volume just to add insult to injury. Or maybe I'll Skype someone.  

"Konnichiwa!" Or, the "why yes, I AM squatting in the dirty hallway with my MacBook" face I greet my neighbors with. Hilariously, they seem to be more apologetic for invading my post. 

This is to prove I am indeed in the hallway. That fern sure don't look indoor-sy: 

wifi corner at hiji school

Last night I asked one of my students, "Can you stop fucking suck so much?" He stared at me blankly, carried on fucking sucking, and I realized he won. Next time I'm going to make them dance until they're too tired to be little shits. 

Just off my Tokyo Golden Week high. Back in the Bepp with a one-day weekend that I plan to stockpile with all sorts of fun, continuing my upward (or downward) projectory into similar Tokyo-style unconscious-goodness.

I can't write an entry on Tokyo, I don't think I can sum it up. 

Maybe this picture can.

survey

I love these survey things. Original survey tag courtesy of Katie Jackson.

FOODOLOGY:

1.) What is your salad dressing of choice?
the one that comes with chinese chicken salad.

2.) What is your favorite sit-down restaurant?
don't have one. i dig conveyor belt sushi though.

3.) What food could you eat everyday for 2 weeks & NOT get sick of it?
mexican.

4.) What are your pizza toppings of choice?
only sausage. or only chicken and bacon together. i love eating animals.

5.) What do you like on your toast?
butter and jam. and nutella.


TECHNOLOGY:

1.) How many T.V.'s are in your house?
one but it's unplugged.

2.) What color cell phone do you have?
black and silver.

3.) How long would it take you to look up 'who invented the Rubber Band?
google responded in .24 seconds. william h. spencer.

4.) Have any idea, how many Megahertz your computer has?
no.


BIOLOGY:

1.) Are you right-handed or left-handed?
righty. i want to be a lefty though.

2.) Have you ever had anything removed from your body?
teeth, i guess. nothing major.

3.) What is the last heavy item you lifted?
backpack through tokyo.

4.) Have you ever been knocked out unconscious?
does blacking out from too much alcohol count? that's more like knocking myself out unconcious.

BULLCRAPOLOGY:

1.) If it were possible, would you want to know the day you were going to die?
no way.

2.) If you could change your name, what would you change it to?
wouldn't want to.

3.) Would you drink an entire bottle of HOT Sauce for $1,000?
absolutely.

DUMBOLOGY:

1.) How many pairs of Flip-Flops do you own?
one.

2.) Last time you had a run-in w/ the cops?
hong kong, day after christmas with my cousin jasmine for peeing on a public building. got away with it because i think they were more embarrassed than we were.

3.) Last person you talked to?
joe on the celly.

4.) Last person you hugged?
greg at oita station last night.

FAVORITOLOGY:

1.) Season?
summer, but only L.A. summers.

2.) Holiday?
don't think i have one but st. patrick's day is moving up there. no other obligation besides drinking and wearing green.

3.) Day of the week?
saturday or sundays in the morning if i'm not hungover from saturday.

4.) Month?
december cause of the birthdays and holidays.


CURRENTOLOGY:

1.) Missing someone?
definitely. a lot.

2.) Mood?
mellow.

3.) What are you listening to?
traffic.

4.) Watching?
nothing.


RANDOMOLOGY:

1.) First place you went this morning?
post office but it was closed.

2.) What's the last movie you saw?
ugh valkyrie.

3.) Do you smile often?
i do. i like smiling.

4.) Sleeping Alone Tonight?
yes.


OTHER-OLOGY:

1.) Do you always answer your phone?
nope. but i always feel guilty when i don't.

2.) It's 4am and you get a 'text' message, who is it?
tristan.

3.) If you could change your eye color, what would it be?
a lighter brown.

4.) What flavor do you add to your drink at Sonic?
never had a sonic drink before. i've always wanted to go to one. they don't actually exist, i'm sure of it. they just tease me with their tantalizing commercials.

5.) Do you own a Digital camera?
yeah.

6.) Have you ever had a pet fish?
yeah. the last one was named little kevin and it was kept in the loyolan. there was an office poll on when it would die.

7.) Favorite Christmas song(s)?
i've always liked the one that repeats bells over and over. but the bing crosby, david bowie, little drummer boy is probably my new favorite because it's fucking hilarious.

8.) What's on your wish list for your Birthday?
i want everyone to be happy.

9.) Can you do push-ups?
yup. like 5 before i collapse.

10.) Can you do chin-ups?
half!

11.) Does the future make you nervous or excited?
nervous excitement.

12.) Do you have any saved 'texts'?
nope.

13.) Ever been in a car wreck?
nope. fender benders, yes.

14.) Do you have an accent?
doesn't everyone? i have a southern californian accent.

15.) What is the last song that made you cry?
pale blue eyes, by velvet underground. it was downloaded long ago and came up on shuffle on my iTunes two weeks ago, and it hit me like a boulder. i couldn't move for about 5 minutes after the first time. then i played it like 6 times after.

16.) Plans Tonight?
i have all those ANTM eps and south parks to catch up on. i'm so excited.

17.) Have you ever felt like you hit 'rock-bottom'?
yeah.

18.) Name 3 things you bought yesterday:
beer, chu-hi number one, chu-hi number two.

19.) Have you ever been given roses?
yup.

20.) Current worry?
i need to pee and i have no idea how many more questions are left.

21.) Current hate right now?
nada.

22.) Met someone who changed your life?
of course. everyone i meet does.

23.) How will you bring in the New Year?
not sure yet.

24.) What song represents you?
good question. i'll probably ponder this one for days.

25.) Name three people who might complete this?
no.

26.) Would you go back in time if you were given the chance?
sure.

27.) Have you ever dated someone longer than a year?
yes.

28.) Do you have any tattoos/piercings?
four piercings on each ear, but i don't wear earrings anymore.

29.) Will you be in a relationship in 4 months?
yup.

30.) Does anyone love you?
yup.

31.) Ever had someone sing to you?
yes.

32.) When did you last cry?
two days ago. it was the last night in tokyo with paul and joe.

33.) Do you like to cuddle?
love it.

34.) Have you held hands w/ anyone today?
no.

35.) What kind of music did you listen to in Elm.School?
pop--spice girls, TLC, anything on kiis fm. then i got into my 'cool' 90s alt rock phase like no doubt, matchbox20 and third eye blind. funny.

36.) Are most of the friends in your life, new or old?
new. but i lovelovelovelovelove the old ones who stuck it through.

37.) Do you like pulpy orange juice?
yes.