Escape from New York.

only mostly dead

2011-02-12T00:20:00.003+09:00

Swan songs away, guys. Looks like this blog has met its end. It has been a fun run, and I will keep this on-line and always (or for as long as the host-site is running/as long as I am not running for office somewhere) hold this little eBook of sorts dear, as fond memories I had in the first 2 years and change in Tokyo, Japan. In the beginning, I had finally created a blog with a real, easy-to-understand purpose: documenting my transition into life in a new country. Previous attempts had included whiny, emo poetry, personal rants and more whiny poetry. (See sidebar on right for less whiny poetry) Perhaps the reason it has stopped is, well, the transition is complete. I'm used to life here. Things now aren't about buying dish detergent and mistakenly using it for body wash, or other quirky fresh-blood new-gaijin(foreigner)-on-the-street stories like that. I'm another strange face in the Tokyo landscape, undeniably out of place yet settled into his niche and routine. And the personal things I once spilled across blackscapes in electronic ink don't feel like they need to be spilled anymore. Without the motivation for this labor of love, it's going on the virtual shelf once and for all: 10 "chapters," and a part of my life which changed me forever. I love you on some days Japan, hate you on others, but even at your worst you blow away my old life in East Greenbush, New York. Here I am someone, I've found this new work, new friends, new msuic and a new life with more success than I would have ever thought possible.

Escape accomplished.

Life happens fast

2010-12-03T13:32:00.006+09:00

"If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you might miss it" - Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

It's unbelievable this decade is coming to a close. I'm in a state of utter doubt. It is simply beyond my comprehension as a human being. Ten years ago I was 13, had almost no friends and spent hours after school playing the same E-A-D-A riff on my guitar in hopes of getting better some day. Shortly thereafter I started my first band and had some memorable, lifetime experiences. Smoking weed for the first time on my 14th birthday was one of them. Playing my first live show at the now defunct "Rensselaer fest" with our foul-mouthed singer (who got us banned from ever playing again with his stunning barrage of F-bombs) and covering Pantera while two of our friends moshed in the parking lot, and many parents sighed, mine included. I could barely lift my head up at that time to face the audience...

And now here I am, on the other side of the world, and I sing dance and entertain groups big and small on an almost daily basis. I'm talking about teaching kindergarteners here, by the way, at least for the singing part. With the adults I more often try to coax THEM into the singing. But at any rate, what I want to say is I no longer fear the crowd; I no long fear a future without companionship, and I can walk with my head up proud of who I am. It's a big change, and to be sure the next decade will be full of them too.

A very busy December has arrived, but it's the good kind of busy. I'm wrapping up the most hectic work week I have, but 3 weeks from now I'll be in Chiang Mai, Thailand, sipping a cool beverage and enjoying exotic foods in a much more beautiful environment than concrete-crazy Tokyo, praying to not contract traveler's diarrhea. There are a lot of things to do before that, most especially taking the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) Level 1 which will be conducted 48 hours from now. I'm not really ready, but with a little luck and some educated guessing I might just swing a passing grade! Which would be cool. I could get a job at any old Japanese company if I a) had the supplemental qualifications, ones in demand like engineering or programming (yea right!) and b) if I wanted to change jobs. But I don't. I'm content with what I do, except that I strive to become better. Stronger. Faster.

That's where the Master's comes in. Still looking into which University to attend, and anyone who wants to drop me advice on this big decision is welcome, but I'm going for my Masters in TESL through an on-line program starting in the fall of next year. I'll be more qualified, possibly make more money, but most importantly learn to be a better teacher. Lord knows I have improved by leaps and bounds since 2008, so I can only get better from here on! Tentatively, I'm planning to enroll in the fall of 2010.

Oh, and by the way, next month, if you're in the San Fransisco or Los Angeles area, come say hi, my band is playing SHORT FAST AND LOUD Fest and a subsequent show with Capitalist Casualities the following Sunday:

In F.I.D. news, new CD is being recorded this month, along with final preparations for the big California trip next month. I could go into more details, but I'll save it for another time.

Back to the present: After this little landmark test is over, I'm done with formally studying Japanese. I've done it (and pretty hardcore at that) a smidgen over 4 years, and I need to invest time elsewhere. Where exactly? Well, I want to up my knowledge of philosophy, American Contemporary and Classic Literature and overall "well-readness." Oh, and I want to learn another language and be able to speak it reasonably well by the time I'm 30. No biggie. =P

I've heard the theory some people are attracted to big goals? I am most definitely one of them. Eerily true to my star sign, I like nothing better than a project/task/relationship which takes a long, steady time to build up and is one that I can feel good and proud of. Don't misunderstand, I also enjoy my fast-food-style-whopper-with-fries-give-it-to-me-faster-FASTER-NOW-style things, as any good 21st Century Boy with a fleeting attention span should, but none of these can ultimately satisfy in the same way. I forget where I read it, but a veritable slogan for the modern American identity is this: "we want it faster, right now, for cheaper, and with less effort on our part." This works great when you're hawking used electronics or automobiles, but as for personal gain and getting somewhere in life, it isn't a very sustainable work-model.

Still with me? I'm getting to the big point here! For 2010, or at least until I start college, I'll be undertaking my biggest New Years Resolution since not being a fat lazy inactive slob: THE BOOK A WEEK PROJECT, A.K.A. "The Reader The Better" (pronounced in the past tense like the color red + er) I've seen mentions of it and other people have done it and blogged about it, now it's my turn. It won't be so strict as it may sound, and I reserve the right to read 3 or 4 or 5 different things at once. Comics will be mentioned by won't really count. Audiobooks count. I'll blog what I've accomplished as I go, starting January 1st.... or 5th, since that's when I get back from Thailand. The best used bookstore in Tokyo, the Blue Parrot, is having a big sale next week so I'll pick up a ton of reading there. Also thinking about a Kindle next year.

The main purpose of this project isn't to hit the goal or exceed it or anything, just to give myself motivation to read more. I'm no speedreader either, I take my time and enjoy my books, so it'll be a hefty time investment which I am more than ready to make.

That's what's up!! My dork senses are tingling all over, and I'm looking forward to 2011, with it's 12 (er, 9) months of complete freedom to live, work, and read as I please. No more shackles in the shapes of Chinese characters, also not as crazy with extra part-time work (hopefully) and most definitely am not letting anyone else run my life but me.

It's 23 degrees in Tokyo today (around 80 for you Fahrenheitians), with gusty winds and almost two dozen train delays. This is a sign of things to come.

Happy Holidays!
Ben Belcher

P.S.

A taste: Currently in the process of reading:

Audiobooks:
Shelly Kagan's "Death" - philosophy course from Yale Univeristy
Bertrand Russel - A History of Western Philosophy (made it past antiquity and to the part about the Papacy, and while history isn't my best subject and makes it hard to follow at times, it's still really fascinating and interesting stuff!)

Books:
Frank Herbert - Dune

Comics:
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World - Volume 2
ジョジョの奇妙な冒険４２巻 JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, volume 42 (in the middle of Part 4 of one of the most epic Shonen Jump series ever released!)

Alt. blog

2010-10-24T12:00:00.002+09:00

This isn't a real post. Really, it isn't. Just a plug for my secondary blog "Bennyb in Japan," which I'll be keeping on the go from my iPhone with pics and videos and stuff. This will remain my personal, overly-verbose blog, no worries on that guys. But in case anyone else noticed how I got too lazy to put picture up here, this should fill the gap nicely. And hey, you can now visually stalk me too!

http://bennybinjapan.posterous.com/

I'll try and jot a little something every day.

Now, for real, see you next year!

Official Hiatus

2010-10-06T00:25:00.003+09:00

if you didn't see it coming already! Sorry to those who follow the blog regularly or were hope to see me reeling off the 'ole yarn of tangents for a few paragraphs. To fill the time gap, let me briefly state the last few months: sweat, hokkaido, more sweat, pased JLPT2 with an 80% (nearly 20% improved from last December), sweat again, finally it's feeling like Fall.

Lately my writing fuel has been going into poetry - I've got two readings this month, which I'm both very nervous and excited about. On top of that, work school and prepping for the JLPT level 1 are all quite time-consuming. Then of course there's my new left hand - I mean iPhone 4. Oh how it glistens. I used it to read H.G. Well's Time Machine, I play a scrabble clone with friends abroad as well as ex-pat locals, and I get near-hd streams of NFL games among other things (also getting big into NFL again this year... go Bills? :(). I'm enjoying being nerdy and on the techno-band wagon. Also been reading a lot as well, this "The Best American Non-required Reading" book Nick gave me is pure genius. I stuck a fork in Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" around 800 pages in, its repetitive nature and lack of an exciting plot just got to me. Maybe I'll finish it, some day, but there are better things to read.

Exciting things on the horizon:

-Going to Thailand this Christmas. Going it alone. It's going to be a growing trip, for sure, assuming I come back with both kidneys intact. (j/kj/k, Mom, don't make that face)
-F.I.D. (my band) is doing something big, it's outside of Japan, and it's in January of next year, but I can't give details until everything is confirmed!!
-Several F.I.D. shows in Tokyo which are always fun
-Summer next year is the deadline for my studying Japanese formally at a "fulltime" rate - currently doing 200+ flashcards a day, 10 new words everyday, plus grammar workbooks reading activities and my two classes a week. I'll take the JLPT1 in December, and when I fail it (which I will, this is a benchmark kind of thing) I'll go for the gold in July of next year. But that's it. Because a year from now, fall of 2011, I will 100% definitely be enrolled in Grad School. The plan is to do on-line courses and score a Masters in TESL, while still continuing my current job, band, and lifestyle. Japanese classes will most likely come to an end, so I'll make the most of the next year to become a master of the Japanese language, or as close to a good imitation of one as I can manage.

One more thing. Your or I or both of us may wonder why I've put so much time and energy into the Japanese language (over 4 years now) - what's my goal? The truth is I still don't know. Translation looks interesting but very tough, and the gigs I've seen that I'd be eligible for next year with the right qualifications are 40-hour 9-5 office-type jobs (with an inevitable helping of overtime, probably unpaid if it's a Japanese company). I don't know if I'm cut out for cubicles, or the arguably worse Japanese equivalent, long, narrow community-desks. Shudder. I like teaching, so I might just stick with this kind of work, in one incarnation or another, for the long haul. But for every day I stay here, I wonder if I'll ever be able to make the plunge again, to start anew and submerge myself in a different international city, to learn about the language and the people while teaching English for bread, housing and booze. Beijing, Taipei, Seoul, Bangkok, who knows. There's so much out there in Southeast Asia that has little to do with Japan or it's culture, and I want to experience that too.

OK, that's the last of the report - and I'll be damned, tangential it did become. I think a break is good and spirits willing you'll see a new, re-energized "Escape From New York" in 2011. All the best my fellow netizens!

the vestibule of success

2010-07-17T22:28:00.003+09:00

Life is good. Almost finished with the post-Golden Week (Japanese Spring Break) push and onto Obon (Japanese August holiday), which is my favorite time of the year, as much as I hate the icky-sticky-greasy-sweatwhileyou'restandingstill-summer in Tokyo. Why? Two weeks of paid vacation baby! You can't beat that. The battle plan is an absurd 20-hour ferry ride from Ibaraki prefecture (neighbor to Tokyo) to Hokkaido, followed by a week of kicking it.

The northern-most island in Japan, once disputed Russian territory, including a city designed by an American architect and more country roads than you can shake a stick at, Hokkaido is a far, far cry from the cramped lifestyles of Tokyo. I'm eagerly awaiting going there with a few of my dearest European brethren, whom I shall refer to in abbreviated fashion: L, a sassy girl from somewhere in England that is not London, is a close friend and my bad influence a.k.a. drinking companion. We recently drew omake (4-panel comics) about two of our favorite school staff members at work, seeing as how we agreed they both deserve their own cartoon or something. Next is S, originally my Japanese classmate, a computer programmer and an altogether good-hearted individual with a passion for traveling the globe. Finally, a Welsh fellow I don't know well except that he seems cool and is in good with the others. Two of those three also happen to be licensed drivers!! If I miss anything from the States besides good pizza, it is most certainly roadtrips.... although roadtrips around islands aren't exactly an option where I'm from (and don't even open yer yaps, Long Island does NOT count by any stretch of the imagination) Should prove to be an interesting journey.

Before that, 3 more weeks of the work-crunch; although in reality a lot of my part-time work (namely kindergarten-stuff) from my second job is almost finished until September. I'm currently sifting through Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged when I have time for it. I recently caught up with Gantz, my favorite horror/action/pulp comic full of vampires and alien invasions, and am now reading JoJo, a cult classic of Japanese comics full of quirky and unique characters and superpowers named after bands. And lots of blood!

Musical taste has taken an unforeseen dive into screamo, post-hardcore and hip hop lately: At the Drive-In, Wu Tang, Eric's Trip, Modest Mouse, Maudlin of the Well, Small Brown Bike, End of a Year and Ceremony (the one hardcore band on the list), just to name a few. I feel like 11 years of metal is finally starting to burn me a bit and I need to look to other things. Why can't more bands just have good, unique vocalists like all of the above? Such is the way with anything I suppose: If there's a lot of it, most of it sucks.

I think I rocked the N2 JLPT, (new-format level 2 Japanese Language Proficiency Test) a few weeks back, but I won't know until September. The whole experience was worlds apart from the autumnal/winter isolation and late-night crams that went into Decembers finger-of-god, skin-of-teeth passing grade, and was in the spirit of summertime an exciting romp through the land of new things, namely being able to listen and read a lot better than I could 6 months back. Dating someone native in Japanese might have helped the former, and no question my addiction to text and imagery definitely aided the latter. But really it teaches me the greatest lesson of all: all things take time. I want to be better at Japanese today, and I can be, but only by seemingly invisible increments. So inch by inch I crawl towards some unknown vestibule of success. What is success? And why on earth is it contained within a vestibule? Such are the questions that no man can answer.

Other topics of relevance to my life which remain yet unmentioned: discovering a good American crime-drama a.k.a. The Wire (8 year late-pass please); coming to find hipster-infested, gyaru (blonde-hair barbie-doll type girls)-ridden Shibuya is my favorite hangout spot in Tokyo; a slight grimace at (but overall of) enjoyment of the single life; a dive back into some junkier foods and not having enough time to do proper workouts as of late; thinking what a shame it is the days can't be like the nights in the summer in the city; and wondering why other countries don't have genres upon sub-genres of comic books for every conceivable notion from robotic monsters to making a band to raising children to old people exploring the moon to whatever else the imagination can whip up.

That's all.

"Everything flows; nothing remains." - Hermaclitus

Mission accomplished

2010-06-09T23:00:00.008+09:00

Here I am in my new place. There are trees outside, the air is noticeably easier to breathe, the streets wider and the whole atmosphere of the town much less busy than before. To think I moved about 6.6 kilometers and 4 stations away! (although I am now technically in Saitama prefecture and not Tokyo) But that's the difference a little distance makes in this cramped corner of the world. I went from cement-box city and living in a crappy one room apartment to a spacious 2DK (3 rooms, including a full kitchen) with a park visible from the window. There's a baseball diamond and a running track in the park, not to mention tennis courts I'll never use. The public library, post office and public gym including basketball courts (!!) are all a stroll away. I haven't played basketball in almost 2 years, and I hear there's a club here, I might just have to join. They know they want the tall white dude on their team. Oh, and the kicker is since it's a public gym it's only 100 yen per entry, about a dollar compared to the 9000 yen monthly I was paying before, close to 100 dollars!! Goodbye Tobu-Nerima. In fact the the night before I moved, having pushed myself to attending a friend's closeby concert even though I new better I remember walking home and cursing out every corner of the city. Ya know, because I could. Suffice it to say I'm already much happier here.

Speaking of happiness, I broke up with the girl I was seeing last weekend. That was my first real breakup over here, and we dated for almost 4 months. It's all for the best and I'm better for the experience and all that wash, but what I learned more than anything else - besides the fact that my lack of of passion for rabid consumerism a.k.a. not loving "going to shopping" kills my chances with about 99% of the women in this country - is what it's like to date in Tokyo. One word: busy. I've grown to dislike that word ever since I first moved her but most especially while I was dating this girl. People put themselves through impossible schedules here, and this particular lady was working two jobs simultaneously both of which were her own business ventures. I thought that was pretty cool at first... until I realized it meant the chances of seeing each other at least once a week (or even twice a month) was comparable to the likelihood of icicles forming in a volcano. We had fun anyhow, and I'm over the bummed out phase which follows any breakup and enjoying my newly re-discovered freedom. I could say a lot more on the subject (I sort of let it overtake my life for a while because I'm gullible like that) but I'm not the kind to flood my blog with such "emo" posts. Not when there are much more urgent things to write about, like....

-how I'm enjoying working at kindergarten's more than I had expected. Not only is the supplemental income quite a nice bonus, but the work is hands-on, high speed and excellent life experience to boot. Definitely a young man's game though, so best be wary of how long I wade in this pool (and how yellowish the water is)

-how I'm reading Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, not because it's over 1000 pages... ok that's part of it, but not JUST because of the density and my attraction to ridiculously huge goals (see: mastering Japanese and becoming competent in Mandarin Chinese before 30; teaching at colleges; world domination) I'm intrigued because a) I like anything remotely philosophical and b) so many people love and hate this woman. I specifically remember an episode of South Park where I think Officer Mackie calls it the most boring book ever or something to that effect. Never one to blindly accept opinions, I had to see for myself. Plus the Singaporean kid who sold me all his awesome furniture for really cheap gave it to me when cleaning out his apartment. A double win situation.

-how my new place is pimped out. I can cook now: 3 burners and a decent-size fridge at long long last. I just came back from the supermarket with a haul of vegetables and meat and I am elated. My diet and workout have went to crap in the last 2 months, really got to get back into the rhythm now that I'm almost settled in.

And on and on I can always go. More writing means more to proofread though, which in turn means the less chance I'll actually do the proofreading and then you won't ever be reading this at all so I'm cutting the line soon. But before that, one more thing: My work schedule is heavy lately, that's my excuse for not putting as much into the blog.... but I've realized something very very important in recent days. Dire. On the verge of epiphany even: I like the busyness. Am I becoming a tokyo-ite like my workaholic of an ex-girlfriend? Not the case at all. I have this habit of getting trapped in my head and over-thinking in roughly 23 directions at once, and the only way to stop this train without hooking myself up to a morphine drip or going into a coma is to keep myself moving. Almost constantly. When I'm teaching, as grueling or tiring as it can get at times, I'm engaged in a dialogue with another human being(s) that has a distinct purpose. I was telling myself over and over that I had taken on this extra workload for the money, save for college this and that but it's really all secondary. What's first and unalterabley foremost is I've found work I enjoy doing! Not to mention I'm young and full of energy I need an outlet for, so I've wedged myself into the system. Sort of like that last tetris block that needs an extra bit of toggling, I didn't go quietly or without a struggle but here I am. In the machine. Part of the system. A cog in the beastly machinery.

Here's an uplifting poem I wrote on the train home today:

And I leave you with this note to all listeners of anything remotely metal: Starkweather's "This Sheltering Night" is the best record of 2010, period. Go buy it. Good day to you all.

"Father pestilence rasps in cicada speech / His countenance crowned in a halo of flies / Multifaceted gaze transfixed on the hourglass / Tactile sensory perception in crepitant hands // Reveals flaws in parchment derma / A regalia of weeping sores / In this place where the air is stagnant with the weight of disinfectant and decay / An unknown geography to place his head to the ground / Commune with all creatures damned and divine / Teeth rattling tremors emanate from approaching footsteps // Time has always been the enemy / I wish to slip this skin for rebirth" - Starkweather

Thinning out

2010-05-20T12:35:00.004+09:00

Much like my unfortunate hairline (rimshot) you can see a the blog updates here becoming more and more sporadic with time. I think this is natural with any project: it starts off with a bang and slowly loses steam. The real challenge however is to keep it going, and that's what really matters. So some months there may be only 1 post, sometimes 10, but more important than anything else is that I won't just leave it one day and never return, which is a fate left to many blogs and strikes me as a bit of a slap in the face to those who may have enjoyed reading it.

Moving is the word of the month. Everything I do seems to revolve around it. Overtime is arguably the second word of the month. Excluding the week of public holidays when my Mom was in town, I've had something like 6 actual days off in a 2 month period. That's not so much fun. Also working a lot of long days, like a 10am kindergarten gig over an hour away, and a following shift an hour in the opposite direction that goes until almost 10pm. The work itself is fine, it's the hours that can get to me a little. I try to make the best of my hours on the trains by reading or studying or vegging on the Simpsons season 5 which I just put on my iPod. Guaranteed good times.

Last night, while wrapping dishes in bubblewrap and filling boxes and other unfun activities, I lightened my mood by cooking some beef and chicken wings which I threw over bread in an open-face hot-sandwich style and downed with a bottled Heinekin I bought from Donki (a walmart-like store in Japan with a cute penguin for it's mascot). This may seem rather mundane, but it is a vast change from a) drinking Japanese beer (which is fine but entirely different) and b) my healthy diet I was adhering to for the last few months. In fact, my plan to eat lots of vegetables and less fried food, which was going very well for since January or so, has went to the dogs recently. Not 100%, because I still eat what fruits I can but I can't do any real cooking for a week or two. This is a nuisance but I'll just have to live like one of these usual Tokyo-slobs and eat convenience-store food and general shit for a while. Isn't the worst thing in the world.

What will I miss about my current neighborhood? Certainly not the crappy apartment itself, or it's *shudder* shared bathroom facilities. How about....

-my friend and neighbor Nicholas, the punk-rock English teacher
-the gorgeous walking path that helps me forget I'm in the middle of an urban wasteland
-the 100 yen store, grocery and department stores all very conveniently located next to the station
-the crazy lady who talks to her dog while he squats in a special baby-carriage-looking-thing she pushes him around town in.

That's about it.

My new place is/has:

-a spacious 3 room apartment with kitchen, shower etc....
-a balcony
-a view of the park I can walk to in 2 minutes
-located 4 minutes from my station, which will also give me access to 4 train lines and not just 1.

There's a look at it. Now back to the endless piles of paperwork and things I'm preparing. I'll have the world know that I set up my internet installation on the phone in Japanese without making a putz of myself either. Ha HA world, ha HA.

"It's one fast move or I'm gone" - Ben Gibbard and Jay Farrar

P.S. I do make liberal use of my P.S.'s here, don't I. Recording studio in 3 days. No nervousness here. I only have 2 riffs to play and a minute to record, but it'll cost over $100 easily and take 5 hours! WOOHOO!!!!

The relentlessness which may be felt

2010-05-11T23:08:00.006+09:00

The restlessness which may be felt when one hasn't written in over a month is not to be underestimated. It's as if I were scrawling out my thoughts on papyrus and tossing them into a river to dissolve, whilst a few special pieces catch rocks and somehow escape a fate of dissipating in an ever-changing body of water. What few scraps of papyrus I have retained I will share with you here. All I can say is it feels good to be blogging again, equitable to greeting an old friend or busting out the guitar after a week's hiatus.

This morning I escorted my mother to the Ikebukuro Metropolitan hotel, where she took the "Airport Limousine," an express bus that runs to Japan's main international hub: Narita airport. It wasn't a teary-eyed good-bye, but one that felt just right. Me and my Mother got to spend plenty of quality time together and she had the invaluable opportunity of experience a culture more foreign than anything she had ever known before in her lifetime. She was however missing her daughters and her cats and her normal Albany New York lifestyle as any sane person (a.k.a. anyone who is not me) would, and was ready to make the trek back home. I as well was ready to taste the sweet lightness and freedom I have become so addicted to, the stuff that living single in a big city is made of. And coming home to my apartment tonight to greet no one for the first time in over 2 weeks was a welcome change of pace! (love ya Mom)

Our vacation, which I will briefly describe in typical Ben Belcher pell-mell fashion, took place over Golden Week, which is for the uninformed a week of consecutive holidays in Japan where more people travel than any other time of year save New Years or O-bon (the August Summer holidays). Although in reality my mother had a few buffer days where I was working and I set her up with some tours, or some very VERY kind former students or co-workers of mine who saw to taking care of her. One such lady who goes by the name of Junko (once referred to in this blog in fact as my "Japanese Mom") took extra special care of my Mother when I was off doing my new kindergarten teaching gigs in the mornings - which just had to fall at such inopportune a time as when my Mom was in town - mashed together with my regular afternoon/evening job. Junko in fact took my Mother to a Spa, the movies and several restaurants in the few visits they had together, and treated her to the point that my Mother was genuinely a bit freaked out, not being used to such elegant treatment. However Junko's nonchalant response of "it's my pleasure" or "be my guest" may be a rather insightful peak into understanding Japanese culture for all you armchair travelers out there. This much-cherished Japanese custom of "gift-giving" - in the sense of treating one's guest to a "service" of some kind, (which sounds like a bit of broken English or a naughty innuendo) is a good way to wrap our Western minds around such practices. To Junko the privilege of showing around and entertaining "my Mother the American tourist" was just that, and a fun opportunity for her to use her English skills and make a new friend.

Was I talking about the vacation? Side-track, side-track. So that was a prime example of how some of my friends helped me in taking care of my Mom when I had work. There were a few others, most notably my wonderful Japanese teachers Nagasawa- and Yazawa-sensei (the latter of the town I incidentally just got hooked in Ben Folds...) Outside of that, here's a list that runs down how we slammed a full-on cross-country extravaganza into a period of 7 days:

- Thursday: woke up at 4:30am, took bullet train from Tokyo to Hiroshima, roughly 5-6 hours of train travel. Checked in, saw peace museum and beautiful zen gardens. Got "accosted" (or at least preached at) by two Jehova's Witnesses posing as little old ladies. Ate okonomiyaki. Took the wrong tram cars as a result of lack of rest on my part. Enjoyed a good nights sleep (my first in a few days after far too much work)

-Friday: woke up at 7 or so. Set out for Miyajima, a beautiful island off the coast near Hiroshima. Lost money in a UFO catcher (claw machine), but I almost had that damned giant Chopper doll!!! Got stuck taking the ferry with over 200 Junior High snots on a field trip. Saw lots of deer on the island. Saw the famous floating Torii gates. Saw the world's biggest spatula. Ate fried oysters. Went up a cable car to the top of Mt. Misen. Enjoyed it all.

Saturday: woke up early again. Went to Kobe, maybe a 1 1/2 hour trip if I recall correctly. We were rather tired but managed to drop off our bags at the hotel and make it (after some argument with a grumpy taxi driver) to the Sky Buffet, a nice restaurant on the 24th floor of a downtown building. The view of the surrounding Kobe area was quite stunning, and the food was decent too. There we met Akira, a former friend of mine from University at Albany NY who is attending grad school in Osaka. We discussed the blessings and curses of living abroad and having a broader perspective of the world; the downside being you don't really fit in in your home country or the new one. If truer words were ever spoken. Kobe tour was our next stop, it was a dinky thing with annoying elevators but worth the trip. Also went to the maritime museum, which I think the Mom had more interest in than me. Still a fun jaunt.

Sunday: in need of taking it easy for a bit, we left our hotel and shot out to Nagoya where my good friend Hiro (bassist of Condemned and Disconformity, both righteous death metal bands) picked us up from the station and drove us out to his family's home in the countryside. Hiro is a Buddhist monk, practicing under his father at a temple connected to their house. Needless to say the house was beautiful, as was the whole area which was as far off the beaten path as we managed to get all vacation (although where I come from, "the countryside" does not include urban areas a mere 10 minute drive away). The whole family - Hiro's grandmother, father, mother and himself - all treated us with the utmost courtesy and respect. Me and my mother both got the break in action we needed, she read quite a bit and I hung out with Hiro. We had a jam session and he showed me how he could play the entire Final Fantasy theme on his bass (among other things of course). Later we ate his grandmother's homemade miso soup, the best I've ever had, and deliciously fresh takenoko (bamboo shoots) plucked from the garden by Hiro's father. It was of course a fun chance for me to speak exercise my Japanese as well, since everyone in Tokyo seems to want to speak English. On top of everything we received copious presents including a yukata (summer robe) for my mother! As she said: "I felt like we were being treated like royalty." Such is the way of Japanese hospitality, and the especially sweet family that I will most definitely visit again should I find myself in the Nagoya area.

Monday: Visited the Nagoya World Expo Fairgrounds, a place beautifully laid out in the style of an amusement park with no rides (although one could see a Ferris wheel in the distance). There were however indoor ice-skating rinks and a water-park. Countless families went picnicking out in the open fields or just strolled around the area in the way we did, soaking in the beauty. Frankly, I would never want to be there during the actual World Expo for the same reason I ain't going to Shanghai this year: I'm not so fond of crowds. I ate ice cream and drank a beer at 11am. If it isn't obvious already these two days were the break in a flurry of vacation activities, and probably the most relaxing portions. We eventually left, stopped at a kaitenzushi (rotating sushi)
restaurant for lunch, where we tried such Japanese delights as seafood and mayo sushi, hamburger sushi and fresh octopus (among many other items more tasteful to my palate). Downtown Nagoya felt like Tokyo with 8-lane traffic, it seems I really underestimated the mass of this city! Although I've heard that, unlike Tokyo, the nightlife dies around midnight every night there.

Off to Nara! This involved a transfer at the ever-busy Kyoto station, and by the time we got to the hotel we were exhausted. It was however a first-class hotel, and I can't remember the last time I was even in one of those things. Mints on the bed, classy overpriced restaurants, that kind of place. We decided in light of our tiredness to do the only right thing two Americans in a hotel room can do: order pizza! (My mother had been wanting to try the seafood pizza as well) This proved to be a bit of an ordeal, and after about 5 or 6 tries, including one to pizza hut where I promptly hung up when they answered (since I wanted pizza and not microwaved fast food), and also restaurants that looked great but didn't deliver, we found one that worked. It seems that pizza delivery to hotels is relatively uncommon in this country, or the phone-guy was a total n00b. At any rate I managed to convince him to deliver our pies to the untrodden, mysterious ground of... the giant hotel next to the train station. And when it came it was delicious. Incidentally, I watched the movie "Fear of a Black Hat" for the first time. I love cheesy spoofs like that.

Tuesday: Spent the day in Nara. I'll leave this one to your imaginations, but to summarize the place is beautiful and an absolute must-visit (over Kyoto in my humble opinion) if you ever come to the country. The layout, the parks, the famous giant Buddha, the temperamental deer, it just creates an atmosphere. I imagine Nara would be a fantastic place to grow up or live. I felt a kind of liberation being there, despite the crowds (including a 45-minute queue for a special exhibit we happily skipped)

Wednesday: I realized the night before that since Wednesday night we would be returning to Tokyo, a good shot at Kyoto as I had originally planned was infeasible. In lieu of that however I decided we do the next best thing: go to Fushimi Inari Taisha (Great Shrine) on the Southern outskirts of Tokyo. Avoid the crowds and the urban madness of the final day of Goldenweek and get to see on of Kyoto's best and most overlooked sites? Win-win in my book. My mother dubbed the place "the land of a thousand gates," and with good reason: orange to red and every imaginable tint in between-colored gates exist in what must be the 10s of thousands in that place. It's another see to believe kind of Japan-spot, and google the name for some interesting pictures. It does get a bit redundant with all the fox-statues and the gates after a while, but the stone-steps and the great view make it a fun climb (Well, not as fun in the climbing department for my Mom, but she pulled it off!!) Afterward we had some cold soba to stave our hunger on a hot summer-like day, and happened to stumble upon a matsuri (festival) by sheer chance. (The crowds and the horse's butt we saw sort of gave it away) The name escapes me, but we got to see a dozen or so Japanese men drunk and in full matsuri-garb hoist the giant arc-like object on two long wooden poles up in the air. Although by this point I've seen a handful of festivals so they've lost a smidge of the novelty, it was of course the first time for my Mom.

Mom: "What are they saying?"
Me: "Umm, well, the literal equivalent of: 'Good! Go! Go! Go! Push! Good! UGH!'"

A few hours and a crowded bullet-train later (I barely managed to get my butt in one of the non-reserved seats! The dozens left standing in the aisles for two hours back to Tokyo weren't so lucky) we were back "home." Home being my little walk-in closet.

And that's how I spent my Golden Week vacation. So here's to you Mom, as you are in a plane most likely somewhere above Alaska or the Canadian tundratic™ (I made this word up) wastelands whilst I write this. It was a fun time, and I have this strange feeling you'll be back one of these days, assuming I'm still here.

That felt long! I'm putting off shoving my over-sized book collection into boxes for the move. Got to get back to it. I also have a fun-tastic 13 consecutive days of work to look forward too! Although F.I.D. will have a sweet recording session in the middle of all that. Life is still pretty good, but busy. Next month will cool down a bit, I hope.

"There's not much to knowing cuz things change too quickly these days" - Small Brown Bike

P.S. I had this floating for a week waiting for a proofread. I just proofread half of it and said screw it. No one's paying me anyways!! =)

An unfortunate (but not altogether unexpected) hiatus

2010-04-10T19:38:00.005+09:00

hiatus |hīˈātəs|
noun ( pl. -tuses ) [usu. in sing. ]
a pause or gap in a sequence, series, or process
ORIGIN mid 16th cent. (originally denoting a physical gap or opening): from Latin, literally ‘gaping,’ from hiare ‘gape.’

It's much to my dismay that I write this post, but as the Japanese like to say: it cannot be helped! しょうがない (shouganai). Due to an impending visit from my Mother - her first time in Japan! - and all the other aforementioned extra work I'm in the middle of: 6 day work-weeks, a weekly morning kindergarten shift topped with a normal until 10pm shift and some business overtime classes, not to mention how I tend to use my free time studying Japanese as much as is reasonably possibly, I can't expect myself to keep up the blog this month. Better to out and say then leave the loyal devotees refreshing the page every couple of days.

There is reprieve for me however; a few days before the week of Spring holidays, properly designated "Golden Week," my Mother will arrive on this fair island. Which means traveling once again across the landscape of Japan, to Hiroshima, Kyoto, Nagoya and beyond. It'll be my first time taking the world-famous bullet train as well, which should be interesting! (I did the sketchy but cheap nightbus last time..... NEVER AGAIN)

I will make quick mention however that I've also decided, after a year and a half in my current location of sunny Tobu-Nerima (a suburb on the north-western end of Tokyo, near adjoining Saitama prefecture), I will most likely be moving within the next 2 months. For the sake of being closer to my work, a bigger apartment, my own private bathroom, and a change of pace. That may also clog things up a bit on the blog-front. I am however quite excited at the prospect of it all! If only I wasn't such a packrat, and didn't insist on keeping all these books, the dresser, the kitchenette, the fairly new acoustic guitar, the 4-foot disco lamp, the persian rugs, the gold-seated toilet... well it would be a much easier task. However I'm possibly going to get a friend to rent a car and help me move, which should help ease the financial burden and also provide fodder for an interesting future blog post.

Another year contract has been signed with my current employer, who I am happy to say I'm quite happy with. It's not every man who can say he has any level of satisfaction with his job. Recently I've pondered getting a Masters in TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) and possibly going career with it. It's not so limiting as it might seem; not only would I be more apt to get higher paying (not to mention more dignified) jobs in various other countries, Asian or European, but perhaps I could use it as a vehicle for experience. That is how I have seen my current position for quite some time, and I'm sure many others do as well. A vehicle for experience. You get paid to do a job which can be (although it certainly isn't always) fun and rewarding, and get to live in a foreign country and rack massive personal experience points.

Case in point: yesterday I went to Asakusa for the first time. An amazing place with tons of "the oldest _____ in Japan" going on - including the oldest chronologically numbered block,* something like １丁目１番１, which if you can't see it on your computer or read Japanese basically says: "1 city block of 1 numbered 1." Anyhow, the point is this kind of job drives the experience train. There's no predictable end to the need of English education in foreign countries. In a way, I could see the world and get paid to do so. Hmm hmmm hmmm. I'd also like to imagine racking up massive language fluency as well, but realistically I don't think I'll ever consider anything besides Japanese my second language, although I'd like to attain passable Mandarin Chinese. Really I would. "One language at a time Ben!" Another teacher once told me...

*all blocks in Japan are sorted and number chronologically or clockwise around a center block, and there are no street names save for major roads. Sound confusing? It is. Read more here.

This has really all been a cleverly-disguised ploy to put off an eagerly awaiting virtual flashcard deck of 100 cards. Curse this mortal coil and faulty memory of mine!!

Thanks for reading. Until May folks!!

-Ben

P.S. Popular Japanese blog Hello Damage has posted some pictures from the latest F.I.D. show, in case you want to see cute Japanese ladies, dudes in messed up costumes (NSFW - NOT SAFE FOR WORK) or the funny faces I make when I play guitar. Thanks Steve!

Conversations with people in Japan (and the walls)

2010-03-30T23:27:00.003+09:00

Many occur, few are documented.

-At the gym one of the older gym rats informs me about a salt-related penalty in NYC (he knows I'm from NY, hence I am obviously responsible in part for this horrendous act). Something along the lines of "without salt, what the hell can you even cook?" I agreed it was crazy and told him I would research it myself. When I did, and discovered that Assemblyman Felix Ortiz had actually proposed the idea of fining restaurants for using salt in the state of NY, I agreed that next time I saw gym rat that it was indeed absurd and a travesty that Mr. Ortiz suggested such a silly notion, but hey, he was the guy who advised banning cell phone usage while driving too, so what can you expect (in my much less verbose or articulate Japanese of course). The conversation ended with:

"This Ortiz guy, is he your Dad or something?"

"No."

-When people stare at me on the train, in the street, etc. (as happens daily), I often respond with a smile. Or a funny face. Or a wtf-eyebrow raise. Or just a return stare. But sometimes I want to grab them, shake them and scream "I'm the same as you underneath, my skin is just a different color and my build is slightly larger and I much more vaguely resemble Bruce Willis, that's all!!!!"

-This isn't so much a conversation as a list of questions and comments I've received countless times. My reaction varies between cute and annoying, in that special love/hate manner that only Japan can bring out in me:

"Those are HUUUUUUUUGE" (in response to my shoe size, 13 or 14 in America, 30 centimeters in Japan). I often respond by telling them I have trouble finding shoes back in the States too.

"How about Japanese food?" Often entangled with or followed up by: "Do you like Natto?" (Natto is a disgusting slop of fermented soybeans that smells like dirty socks and tastes like cat food gone bad, so of course I should be into it but just can't bring myself to like it)

"Why are you skinhead?" (In Japan, people think shaved head is skinhead in English due to their bastardized Japanese English. I've explained the difference countless times but I'm starting to give up on this one....it's because I'm prematurely bald, by the way)

-This one is slightly more serious. I met an older fellow at the gym, past 60, who is always quite nice to me. He smiles and bows and doesn't look afraid of me like I'm going to pillage his family and leave them for dead, so that's always a brownie-point earner in my book. I almost always keep to myself there (same as back in the States) but have a few people I say "hi" to, the aforementioned Ejiro-san being one of them. (Another retired fellow I call Mr. Baseball is among the lot, we've never had a conversation over 2 sentences or that didn't involve baseball or his drinking too much the night before) He would for whatever reason give me candy at random times in the locker room... wow does that sentence sounds terrible, but really it was a gesture of good will. So I allowed him to treat me to lunch one day (the who-pays wasn't my choice; in Japan there is no getting out of a treated meal, and that's a fact). The old guy doesn't speak a lick of English and I like that - Old men are hard to understand and it's something I need more practice with in general. Plus, he seemed like a nice guy who probably had a lot of time on his hands since retiring, so I figured he'd be tickled pink at the opportunity. Turns out he was a gym teacher who also taught the mentally disabled. He coached marathon running for some time, and even worked at camps in Mexico and L.A. training potential Olympics contestants. Apparently the locations were chosen for their air quality, dry air somehow being better for training. At any rate, sadly none of them made the final cut, but I still considered that to be an excellent achievement, having trained athletes in a foreign country. He couldn't understand my passion for music, and I likewise couldn't appreciate his passion for running, but we understood each other well enough.... I'll be honest, at times I couldn't catch a whit of what he was talking about. But for the most part it was good, and I didn't once whip out my phone dictionary for fear of losing face (and looking extremely rude). The dumplings and fried rice were also excellent.

There are more. There must be more. But I'm exhausted, so you'll get no more. This is what happens when real life is really busy. Vacation plans, overtime work, figuring out the new fiscal year, I could list enough excuses to color every stone in the sea with virtual ink, but I'll spare you all and myself of the unnecessary. The blog must suffer a bit. Good night readers.

"I want to take you far from the tethers of this scene, we'll cut our bodies free, start a brand new colony, where everything will change, we'll give ourselves new names" - Postal Service

"It's a battle on my own/machinery you can't control/people always complain about their worst/troubles you wish were your own/as the seasons roll on by you realize you're getting older/it's a battle on my own what have I learned?" - Ignite

It will be mine

2010-03-18T21:25:00.000+09:00

I know I've thought countless times in the last week "hey I could blog about this." Sadly my flux of ideas doesn't correlate to the time I leisurely sit in front of my computer typing up entries, so I'm sure much has been lost. I am only human after all.

As for how I think and do things, I've been schooled on my own high-rises and gutter-balls, and it boils down to a simple idea: I'm creative and great at coming up with ideas, but I'm not so great at organizing and executing them. This isn't to say I'm incapable of the latter, but it doesn't flow as freely as the former does by any stretch of the imagination. It comes out in almost everything I do: my erratic yet dutiful studies; my haphazard but relatively effective speaking style in Japanese; my teaching method of the same cloth; my admittedly random, somewhat sloppy but unique(?) take on playing guitar, and so on. Even here, where I post on an unpredictable timetable and a kind of "when the spirit moves me" mentality. And my posts are equally as disorganized as every fiber of my being, as they reflect my thoughts. It's the kind of thing that you don't realize about yourself until somewhat steps up and calls you out on your eccentricities, because you are always too close to yourself to have any perspective or know better. It takes others for me to step back a minute and realize what I'm doing, and I'm glad they do - I'm still trying to figure me out.

At any rate, I blame too much creative learning and my lackluster abilities in Math- and Science-related curriculum. Curse you post-hippy, free-thinking education system!!!

I bought a new guitar today! But why the sudden urge? Another backwards explanation is in order: the weather was so beautiful yesterday (Sunday) that even a nasty hangover couldn't keep me down. In fact in a somewhat sloth-like state, the whole outside world teeming with new life, I swam in sunbeams that semed a surreal paradise which time had forgotten. I looked at the stone bench on the gorgeous verdure-covered walking path near my apartment and thought how I'd love to sit in the shade and play an acoustic guitar in this perfect weather. (before summer comes and turns this whole damned city into a sticky and miserable jungle) I have an acoustic guitar back in the states, but due to obvious spacial constraints refrained from bringing it with me on any journey nigh on 7000 miles. It's a decent guitar, but it's slightly warped from slight misuse and always sounds slightly out of tune anywhere above the 7th fret. So I left the old girl behind, and the mild longing for a new one has been itching at my gut for quite some time. Itch relieved. I'll post a picture? Naa, I'll never get around to it, who am I kidding. It's a 30-year old Humming Bird in amazing condition with only a few scratches that I got in Ochanomizu from a used guitar store for under 20,000 yen (around $200). What a steal!!!! I'd heard that there were amazing finds to be made there, but holy crapoly. One look at that baby and it was like the scene with the Stratocaster in Wayne's World, minus any Stairway to Heaven. I tried only one guitar, and bought it 5 minutes later. No regrets here, my apartment is a much happier place now.

--

I wrote all of the above about 3 days ago (not going to to try and blend it seamlessly together, no point) but knew I didn't have a complete entry. Here goes le finish:

March is crawling to an end, the cherry blossoms are just starting to peak out in places, and there couldn't be a more appropriate time of year to be reading "Hokkaido Hitchhiking Blues." It's a solid travel book, and enlightening on Japan. I recommend it.

Lately I've been thinking of humanity's frightfully minor status in the universe at large, or to quote H.P. Lovecraft: "terrifying vistas of reality, and our frightful position therein." I think it's a combination of being heavy into this Moby Dick audiobook - a lot of philosophizing, sea-is-great-we-are-small kind of stuff, not to mention biblical sh*t goes down in it - and it being spring time. The world spins on and her seasons roll by and we are merely lucky to experience them by circumstance; it isn't like we help cause them, and if anything we pollute them with our humanity. Silly humans. But being one I can't really knock them- er, us so hard.

I've got a lot of real world stuff to do: Taxes, fleshing out Golden Week plans with my Mom coming to Japan, studying super hard for level N1 JLPT in December (and level n2 for kicks in July). As for the n1 test, I'm banking on surpassing a 50% score. The minimum pass is 70%, and maybe if I didn't have to work I could study enough to get that in a year, but it's doubtful. It's a huge leap in difficulty, and a pass = fluency (on paper), so it's no small task. No, my real goal is to pass this almighty personal benchmark by 2011, which would mean I've "mastered" the Japanese language in about 5 years. Then I'd be able to shift my attention to the true pandora's box (and possible money-maker), Chinese!!!

How I wish I had a better grasp of where I was going with my life sometimes. Things are good now, but they can't stay this way forever. Changes have to be made eventually, but it's a "maybe next year" scenario. Every year?? Hrrmmmmm who's got a time machine I can borrow? Some Back-to-the-Future 2 style action is in order... minus the Biff.

Concerning Golden Week, after much hotel-hunting I've managed to string it together: Two days in Hiroshima, one on the mainland and one on the gorgeous, deer-infested island of Miyajima. Followed by a day in the famous port-town of Kobe, then a visit to my metal brethren Hiro's family's home in the beautiful Aichi countryside (a.k.a. middle-of-nowhere Japan), and two days to split between Nara and Kyoto, both former capital's of Japan. back in the dizzay. Before and after that me and my Mom will be doing stuff around Tokyo too, although it's really hard to decide what to the put time into exactly. Got to hit the major stuff anyway, although I secretly long to emulate Mr. Ferguson's aforementioned travel book, purposefully skipping all big cities and seeing more of the real, quaint, reflections-of-the-old-world Japan.

At times I feel like living in Tokyo is psuedo- neo-Japan (which it is). I'm not saying I want tabi (split-toe) sandals and samurai's impaling themselves in the name of honor, just more ricefields and less people who aspire to conquer the world via computer chips, or who want to speak English because it's a business language. Gah. English is such a beautiful, artistic, arbitrary language that to learn it simply for business purposes (without scraping the surface, feeling it or looking into the how and whys, laughing at the gross inconsistencies or punny possibilities) is sadly missing the point in my opinion. Although I would have to say the same for Japanese.... and probably most languages now that I think about it, if I had any right to say that or anything at all about them.

Ramblings. If you want funny pictures of stuff with more wit and less personal drivel, check out my buddy Steve's semi-famous Tokyo Damage blog on the right side of your screen. Good stuff, and he's a solid dude as well with good taste in music.

F.I.D. shows coming THIS SUMMER IN TOKYO! The new jams are off the hook yo. We have a song about "Babies in China, Metaphysics and Men on the Moon." And one called "Mixed Fries."

Until I ramble again, cyberspacians.

"Remember when you said that things would never change / You liar / Because these days things in my life, they don't stay the same / You changer" - Small Brown Bike

March Madness

2010-03-08T20:59:00.003+09:00

Before the fiscal year begins in April, chaos reigns over Japan. Deadlines loom something odious, entrance exams are finished, graded and returned to the delight or dismay of parents, and everything is a crush, a rush, a push to get through and make it out alive to see the cherry blossoms bloom. It's not so bad for me as, say, the typical salaryman or office worker, but I still feel the intensity building like a tsunami wave ready to crash the stubborn shores (the whole recession thing doesn't help). I'm doing heaps of extra job training this week for some Kindergarten gigs that should start up in April, so that'll keep me not only busy but also a little less in the poor house. Because the cost of living, having some fun and taking Japanese lessons 3 times a week on my standard salary leaves me without a satisfactory amount of coins to drop in my piggy bank. (You'd think you could just bash your head against some brick-blocks with question marks on them an voila! coins! But it is not so) So I myself am going through the metamorphosis, from teaching kids maybe 6 hours a week to an unknown increase, but I look upon this change with anticipation. The only thing is now it's Monday night and I'm dreading the long couple of days ahead of me. 我慢しかないね (nothing to do but grin and bear it) I just started reading a book called "Hokkaido Hitchhiking Blues," about a Canadian man who does just that from the southern tip of Kyushu to Hokkaido. Looks to be a light and fun read for a change of pace. (I'm getting near the end of Moby Dick on audiobook, and it's great, but it is one heavy mother)

Early night here folks. Between properly responding to backed up e-mails, inputting new Japanese flashcards in my study program and hauling a giant box of oatmeal home from Costco among several other heaps of "rare" goods after my Japanese class this morning, I'm pooped. My days off don't feel enough like days off right now, I need to take one next weekend that involves nothing but being a human sloth. I can't lie though, things have been great the past few weeks, I'm merely feeling the down that had to come eventually. Can't ride a cloud forever... unless by ride a cloud you mean be high as shit on Opium, in which case you can ride a cloud for quite a long time, but will end up a sickly waste of flesh as a result. I think I'll just keep my ups and my downs, thanks.

"We're on a road to nowhere
come on inside
We're takin that road to nowhere
we'll take that ride" - The Talking Heads

"Jokingly said you’d burn all that was mine in your place
With serious written all over your face
So I sleep in my clothes just in case
I feel the flames touch my face I can make my escape with grace" - Blacklisted

Not gonna do it

2010-03-04T10:33:00.004+09:00

I'll try really hard to get through this whole post without mentioning study or work. Here goes:

So I'm reading High Fidelity now. Almost finished. I saw the movie years ago and the main character (a vinyl obsessed, relationship obsessed owner of a failing record store recovering from a lifelong series of rejections) is pretty much the same in the book. More internal monologue and motivation and depth, but almost the same. I see a bit of my Father in him, but the High Fidelity guy is of course much more emo. What's interesting to me is that the book raises some thought-provoking questions, like this for example: "Do I listen to pop songs because I'm unhappy, or do pop songs make me unhappy?"

While I hardly listen to anything pop made after 1990, I was raised on 60s, 70s and 80s music nonetheless (again, hat tip to my Father, the only man I know to keep his own top 40 list 30+ years. I'm not being facetious either, I think it's cool!). I can relate a bit to the main character's escapist mentality: he gets in a bad situation, and runs away to listen to some music he can relate to. I've done that many times in my life, although I've been making earnest efforts to be more pro-active and not wallowing around waiting for problems to solve themselves.... even though there are cases where nothing else can be done. What's comforting about this kind of self-therapy - hearing someone else with similar woes or emotions to your own - is of course knowing that you're not alone; Feeling the connection with this person you probably never met, who has swirling thoughts in his head the same as yours. I recall someone as saying Cannibal Corpse was the first music he ever heard that "described what was going on in his mind." I say good for him! (I just can't like that band though, personally)

It's a process more exciting than it has any right to be, cherry-picking songs that fit my current mode. Listening to something depressing while I'm already depressed doesn't do much harm, it just emphasizes my mood but also soothes it in a strange, paradoxical manner... I don't think the ability to relate to others feelings, positive or negative is at all a bad thing. That being said, if I flip on, say, Neglect ("I wish I coulda been a coathanger kid/would've been the best f**king thing you ever did") or Joy Division ("Living in the ice age") I find myself smiling more at the absurdity of the lyrics than actually feeling down about life. It's empowering somehow, to know other people see the futility and desperation and insanity that surrounds our world every day... that has always made me smile. If you ask why, then you're missing the point.

I saw Cocobat the other night. I was blown away by how great they were, they must all be age 37-43 judging by the age of the band itself (almost 20 years), and still put on a powerful, energetic performance. If you can imagine a kind of post-bad brains, pre-metalcore approach to heavy music, with original melodies and unpredictable rhythmic shifts, and tons of slap bass, that is Cocobat in a nutshell. See for yourself:

cocobat live at shelter 2010-2-12 pt3

COCOBAT | MySpace Music Videos

It was kind of a strange night. I had worked until 4:30 at this new school my company opened up, and after changing my clothes I dragged me and my duffle bag down to Shibuya. After some rummaging I found an empty coin locker (hard to come by at that time in the evening, only one was left out of 200) to dump my stuff in. Finally free of that burden (bringing lunch, textbooks, and a change of clothes including sneakers to work then lugging it all on semi- to fully-packed trains can take the wind out of ya) I meandered to the venue, in no particular hurry. As usual the map from the "live house" (japanese-english for concert hall or venue) website was terrible. I later figured out it had the street names wrong - something about the Japanese and street names, eh? - but I found it sure enough. I got a burger from Freshness Burger, the best hamburger chain in Tokyo bar none (I invite anyone to suggest otherwise). I realized I hadn't eaten that kind of greasy goodness since I'd been in the states two months back. I've been eating healthy lately, lots of greens and soba noodles and less meat and all that. This made the experience that much more enjoyable. In short, it was an excellent cheeseburger.

As for the show itself, when I arrived there was a jpop/jrock act opening the gig, which to me seemed downright bizarre. I'm all for mixed bills, but I don't make spaghetti and ice cream sandwiches. I mean honestly, Cocobat is (to use great liberties in appellation) at least an "alternative rock band," whereas Edge of Spirit who played second is complete metalcore, and not the radio-friendly stuff either. Closer to NYC's Irate or Through the Discipline or some such thrash. I though they were great, and had to mosh a bit, even though it wasn't that type of crowd.

Speaking of moshing, and moshpits in general (which I used to be really into and still dabble in occasionally when I'm in the right mood), it's a subcultural phenomenon I could blog about for a while. Let's simplify and leave it at creative expressionist dancing to heavy music, and say it evolved dramatically in the last 30 years, from Slayer-esque pushpits and "slam-dancing" to karate-kicking and dance moves and all that (there is also gang-mentality B.S. that taints it, but lets ignore that for now) I like all styles really - the idea of the pit is to do what you want to the music without any rules or restrictions, so doesn't that make classification somewhat pointless?

Still, for a quick lesson on "mosh," I advise this educational video:

I'm still quite partial to the pizzamaker myself.

This is all of course a late 80s "NY"-slant on things, and there are many different scenes and styles and yadda yadda yadda. But back to the main point: what struck me at the Cocobat show was the pit was comprised 5 or 6 dudes probably as old as the band, all wearing Cocobat shirts and running a no-rules circle pit. They looked they were having a great time, and I had to join them a bit myself. It was that kind of feeling, when the music is so good you can't sit still, that reminds me why I still see bands and go to shows. It's worth it for that experience. This pit was like stepping into a time machine to me, as the style and atmosphere were so far removed from everything I grew up around, more like things I'd seen in old tapes of shows from when I was still a wee one. It was very cool.

And Cocobat is probably one of the best bands in Tokyo still playing. I rank them up there with Slight Slappers. I now have two really awesome bands here I hope to see again. Here's to finding more!

Using colors to describe sounds?

2010-02-26T13:27:00.003+09:00

Hey all. It's been busy times, per usual. I have upped my Japanese classes to 3 sessions a week, 2 hours each, 2 of which are on my working days, and have formally began studying for the level 1 JLPT. It will be another long hard road to follow, but nothing that's worth doing is ever easily accomplished. I could complain about how difficult the grammar is or how the test is even difficult for Japanese people, but I am determined to make this happen, so it will happen. Here's the battle strategy: Study hard, take the test in December with hopes of breaking 50% (minimum pass is 70%), take it again in July of 2011 with hopes of passing. As my teachers have informed me, there are many students (especially Chinese, due to the similarities of the written language) who pass the test but can barely speak at all. So I am trying to better my Japanese all around: reading, writing, speaking and listening. If I'm not getting better at Japanese, why the heck would I live in Japan? This seems obvious to me but is of course not the case for everyone. Sometimes (or perhaps I should say often) Japanese people ask me why I bother to learn the language, since it's not the global business language that English is. My answer is two-fold: I live here and it's important to know/understand the world around you; Also there aren't comic books and novels I want to read in any other particular language at the moment.

On that note, I've been sort of/kind of seeing a girl recently, and I found out she also owns and has read all of One Piece. That's a good sign!

Aside from languages and women, I have been sketching out my upcoming Golden Week vacation (a series of holidays in late April/early May in Japan, reminiscent of Spring Break in America). My Mom is coming to Japan for the first time, so we have some sites to say. Those will include (but not be limited to) Asakusa, Ginza, Shinjuku, Shibuya, Hiroshima, Gifu, Miyajima, Nagoya, Kyoto and maybe Kobe. It's going to be dumb crowded everywhere, but luckily my bro Hiro (from the awesome band Disconformity) has offered to hole up me and my Mother for a day in the midst of the madness, so that should be a nice escape from the masses. The better, cheaper places are already booked solid for Golden Week (especially in Kyoto) so I'm scouring the internet for reservations now. It will be a fun time, however I must remember not to overbook allow plenty of time to do things and enjoy them, as it's been my habit in the past to cram too much into one small vacation.

I'm almost finished with Haruki Murakami's "Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World." I've heard from numerous (mostly Japanese) fans that this is his best work. About 20 years old, the translation is not the best - especially compared with the scholarly works of Jay Rubin on "Wind-up Bird Chronicle - but I am enjoying it quite a lot anyhow. It's very, well, weird, surreal and over the top, with intriguing characters. A.K.A. Murakami's style.

This post does not feel exciting to me. I'm falling asleep writing it! I had better ideas yesterday, I swear, but no time to write them down. Grr....

F.I.D. is doing quite well, trudging along throug the somewhat tedious but beautiful process of songwriting. Much like bloodletting.

The weather has been turning to Spring, and February isn't even over yet.

I'm going to see another 20 year old legendary but relatively unknown Japanese metal band this weekend, Cocobats (Thanks to Rennie!). I'm working all weekend, so I consider this the definite highlight. OH, how about last weekend, I can talk about that! (you can tell I put loads of planning into this)

Last weekend I went to see Slight Slappers after band practice and working out. I was really exhausted, and just coming off the end of a stupid-busy week, so I wasn't really feeling the atmosphere; but I had traveled to Waseda (famous college town) and was determined to see this most excellent powerviolence band. From the moment I walked in the venue I knew just being there pissed me off: It was a total crustfest. By crusts, I mean dirty kids who call themselves punks but really they come from well-off families and wear dirty clothes and never shower. Add to this the venue having poor ventilation, no re-entry, being smoky as shit from the beginning and everybody drunk off there ass - well, it would sound like a pretty great time to some people. Maybe even me, but not at that time, I wasn't feeling it. So I watched the first band, Baddirtyhate from Osaka. Typical, by the numbers boring crusty punk. Well executed, but absolutely nothing exciting about them. Next was another band in the same vein, NK6: Shitty, blown out guitar sound, boring and predictable song-writing. At least the singer was kind of funny and had a bit of a weird voice, but otherwise, absolutely nothing special. I literally sat in a dark corner of the venue reading my book, hating all the stupidity around me - "Aren't there ANY other musicians in theis place who see how atrocious this crap is" I thought - not wanting to be there but having paid my money and knowing that Slight Slappers would be good, I stuck around. Also there was no re-entry, and bear in mind the place was packed, stupid packed. I was lucky that they let me stow my guitar and bag from band practice in the band "room" (closet in the corner with no door) without asking any questions.

So finally it came: two guitars with *gasp* coherent, crisp and fierce guitar tones could be heard warming up. And a man with a black stocking enclosing his face emerges from the crowd, takes the mic and says: "WE ARE SLIGHT SLAPPAAAASSS" I was foolish to think I could stay in the back, it made me smile and reminded me that there are good bands out there still, all is not lost. Powerviolence is a genre typified by really fast short songs, and wild showmanship, similar to grind but less technical, I think (someone correct me if I'm wrong here). There was insane dancing on the stage, guitars thrown and rubbed against the floor, the speakers, the drums, and guess what? It was all immaculately executed. I managed to bash my knee against a speaker cab and bruise up the side of my hand real good, but you know what? Despite limping home, I felt so much better after that set. Like I was really alive, and had just witnessed something amazing in the way of intense musical performances. I should mention this band has been doing there thing since 1992. So crazy they're still around, I feel lucky to have seen them.

Another mediocre (but slightly better) punk band called Gauze played afterwards. I know people like these bands, and maybe I'm just not so into punk, but I really can't understand the appeal. The musicianship and song-writing just isn't there for me. So I watched drunk people stagedive like mad from the doorway and left after that. And that was my night in general.

Life is looking up, I gotta say. I will see many more excellent live performances this year than I did last year, no question! Altough I'm skipping Isis and Baroness next weekend. 6000 yen, REALLY?? That's a $15 show where I come from buddy, I ain't paying $65.

Hooray for Cocobats.

P.S. I feel like things are changing. Let's throw caution to the wind and haphazardly begin chapter 9. OK!!!

"The thoughts of anyone but you never crossed the landmines in your mind. You're just pretending to be naive, you can't really believe that this is about you. YouyouyouyouYOU." - Blacklisted

"I'm crazy and I'm hurt, head on my shoulders, it's going berzerk" - Black Flag

"These roads don't move, you're the one who moves" - Ben Gibbard & Jay Farrar

"No one else will break the walls that are in your mind" - Ignite

Important things that children know

2010-02-15T20:15:00.004+09:00

which we may often forget:

-How to laugh
-How to have fun with absolutey no inhibitions
-How to express oneself
-How to be amazed by the beauty of the world around us
-How to be terrified by the immensity of the world around us
-How to play games
-How to cry
-How to make someone else happy
-How to make someone else upset (maybe we don't forget this one so much)
-How to rely unwaveringly upon someone else
-How to run with the wind
-How to wish and believe and dream

Pick one of these and try and do it today.

Perhaps it goes without saying, but this is a list of things I've noticed in the last two years of teaching here. For what it's worth, my limited experience with children has exploded exponentially since I took this job. No, I never especially wanted to be a kids teacher, but from the experience I've gained I can now deal with/entertain kids of various ages. I can even identify some of the more subtle things (you know, like when they have to pee or are about to cry). They can smell bad, be annoying, be loud and completely suck the life out of me, but they have their good points too.

And no, I've still never had a Japanese kid kancho me thank GOD - although one tried and was shut down immediately. And if you don't know what that means, google it, I'm not explaining it here.

Life is good at the moment. Taking pleasure in the ordinary stuff and the world around me. I had my first good Valentines Day in, uh, oh yea, ever. Meaning I wasn't in grade school getting fake mandatory ones from girls who never talked to me, or dealing with a bad relationship or being single. Nope, I actually had a date, and it went about as good as they can be. I even got chocolate from said datee and my band members. But in Japan as you may or may not know, girls give boys chocolate on Valentines Day, and boys return the favor on White Day in March. Good thing I still have a sack of recees peanut butter cups I brought from home.

No quotes today. Listen to Cat Power, she's so good, and you need to hear her voice to understand why.

Bilingual Baka Band

2010-02-14T07:43:00.003+09:00

note: baka is Japanese for idiot

Today I'll be writing about something that separates my Japanese experience from others: the band. I've done perhaps 5 or 6 bands in the last 10 years, each one carrying different dynamics of personality, interaction and chemistry between the members, ultimately leading to what kind of sound we were able to create. Nothing however could have prepared me for F.I.D., as it has been the greatest collaboration I've had the pleasure to take part in, but at the same time requires the most care, hard work and even multicultural awareness!

(This is starting to sound like a bad PBS special or VH1 documentary, but it gets better I promise.)

I can only repeat myself so many times, but for any random or new readers I joined F.I.D. late 2008, shortly after coming to Japan. The band was originally an all female grindcore act, but they were willing to sacrifice their novelty (which was never their aim in the first place) to get some fresh blood into the equation. Their had a falling out of sorts with the last guitarist, and I filled the gap. Since then it has been a steady uphill climb from 9 months of practicing to old MDs (digital recordings) with no drummer, due to Tomoko's pregnancy, all the way to our recent shows and finally now our writing new songs. It has been a wild ride and I feel like it's still in the early stages. We have all become good friends and there are no egos raging out of control and ruining the creative flow, as has been known to happen amongst bands in the past (firsthand experiences here). I personally have always gotten on well with girls as they tend to be less competitive and self-absorbed than most guys I've met in my life. And they are after all Japanese no less, but attitudes take it beyond all that gender and ethnicity stuff: These girls are in it for the right reasons, namely to write music, play it and have fun. That is first and foremost I love this band.

But it's not all ice cream cupcakes and puppy dogs in the park; Nothing worth doing is easy after all. Anyone who has been in a band knows that to practice every weekend is a lot harder than it sounds, not to mention other sacrifices of free time, energy and finances that come into play. Me and the drummer both travel about an hour to practice every Sunday - carrying our instruments on the subway, which for me took some getting used to but I do like it better than lugging stacks of speakers in my jeep..... though I miss my 5150 and mesa-boogie pre-amp combos!!! Sigh.

And then there is language. Oh what fun it is to interact with people from other cultures, but what a challenge it can be as well. The majority of our dialogues are all in Japanese, and the singer Makiko is the only one who speaks English at a nearly fluent level, hence some things going over my head, some misunderstandings, etc. (not to mention countless times I have to ask Maki to explain what the hell everyone is talking about) If I had a yen coin for every time I wanted to say something simple like: "Ok stop here, then put it some kind of fill, whatever you feel fits and then we will all come back in together for 3 measures until the wawowaw part," but was stopped dead in my tracks by a language barrier, I would have lots and lots of little yens. Granted my Japanese is decent, so I try my best to convey these in my second language, but it's tough and can also (if not often) be difficult to communicate sometimes even the simplest of things. I do greatly enjoy it on the whole, and we definitely make it through, things just take longer.

This segues nicely into another cultural point: Japanese people tend to speak in a vague and roundabout manner and as such are often typified (and not without reason) as indecisive by Western people. I've had my share of Japanese cultural experiences just living here - memories of prolonged conversations to achieve the simplest ends at the bank or the post office come to mind - but nothing compares to the band dynamics. The main difference between this band and my experiences in America is that everything is considered thoroughly before it's acted upon. For example, if I say: "We should speed up that part, what do you think?" It may result in a 5-10 minute debate before we actually just play the part and see how it sounds. While this isn't inherently bad - putting thought into things instead of charging pell-mell into them has merits - it doesn't exactly make for the timeliest song writing. I often find myself (and to be fair sometimes my bandmates are the ones to say it too) saying yattemiyo (let's try it and see). I feel the need to throw around my hasty and arrogant American bluntness at times, while others I flow with the girls in a more Japanese state of mind pertaining to caution, detail and delivery. A mix of both has a lot of virtue I think.

I have to say, it is entirely too cute when Tomoko - who on the surface appears to be the sweetest, most innocent and harmless looking lady you could ever meet - and us are discussing a song, and something comes up like: "you can put a quick fill in there before the next part!" She will sit there and ponder, drum stick or hand lightly touching the chin in a thoughtful manner before blasting out something completely amazing. Kana as well, sometimes a bit fuzzy from doing other band practices, a brutal 6 day work week full of overtime or a late-night drinking party will always put in 110%. She is a bit more tom-boyish, often using the pronoun boku to refer to herself, which is something only tomboys and musicians do and I think is individualistic and also very cute (Japanese are good at the cute thing). She is so much the opposite of Tomoko's seemingly traditional sense of self that it makes for interesting times and great writing. Case in point: Tomoko wasn't 100% after not playing drums for like a year (and who would be after a pregnancy, that's some hardcore stuff!) and I said one day something along the lines of: "Hey, your drumming skills are really coming back eh!" Which doesn't sound so bad in English but was much MUCH too direct and rude in Japanese, to which Kanako said dare omae? (Who the hell do you think you are?) And we all burst out laughing. In fact we have fun interactions like this quite often, and it helps to keep things fresh and interesting when playing a song for the 20th time in one day wears us down.

In closing, let it be known I am in a band with some very talented people and am far luckier than I deserve in that respect. I know I am not a great guitar player, however I am confident in my ability to construct good songs and churn out somewhat original or unexpected ideas. This goes a long way and will ultimately make F.I.D. a stronger band with broader horizons than before, while still maintaining the intensity that it has come to be associated with in the underground music arena.

Whatsoever it comes to in the future - playing shows in Tokyo, recording, possibly even traveling abroad to play a festival or 2 - I am having too much fun to stop any time soon. And I believe the girls feel the same. That is we work our hardest to achieve BBB - Bilingual Baka Band!!

"She she she she's a bombshell" - Operation Ivy

"So you're saying that girls only listen to ballads and love songs? The girls that I know wouldn't think so. But according to you a song should separate all the girls from the boys" - Polar Bear Club

Thank you George

2010-02-10T09:26:00.004+09:00

"Scenepoint Blank: Do you think hardcore gets a rep of being lowbrow culture because of the aggression associated with it?

George Hirsch: Naturally my answer would be yes. Anything associated with aggression is almost always automatically labeled as "macho," "jockish," etc. It's sad. In my opinion hardcore is defined by that aggression and volatility. I do not condone unnecessary acts of violence, but I would have to say that hardcore for me stands out musically at its most violent, its most unpredictable. You want something that you can feel and lets you know that you are there. When you are in a room with four-hundred kids and people are just diving off of everything and sweating and screaming every word, that intensity is what hardcore is about for me. So honestly anyone that writes hardcore off as "lowbrow" because of that just doesn't understand it and honestly shouldn't even be checking the music out anyway, At least the music I am a part of. For people like that there is always the cute stuff they can listen to on the radio. If they still have an interest in hardcore they can always go get a crew cut and listen to The First Step."

-Scenepointblank interview with Blacklisted.

I'm not getting into any epic debates defending the kind of music I love, the meatheads who ruin it, those who can't wrap their heads around it or simply refuse to understand it. Not today. But reading this pretty much smacked the nail on the head for me; It speaks to what I love about the music, the style, this community and sub-culture that has been created, and despite being bastardized and turned into a form of big business in safe and easily digestible doses (much the way of metal and its various sub-genres), it still exists in an underground manner that is alive and breathing to this very day. I really need to get to a good hardcore show. I told these guys they need to come back to Tokyo. Here's hoping.

By the way, my life right now = spreading my tentacles out every which way, meeting new people, trying/doing new things and having fun a bit more. Studying will take an official backseat until March or April. This is good, you were right Kyle, I worked hard for a good 6 months so I should play hard for a little while longer. Also, while I'm direct-responding to readers, Tokyo-Working Girl, sorry I'm late on this - why don't you message me on Skype when you have a chance? The only Ben Belcher in Japan. We can discuss jobs and what yours is like there, I'm curious. Also if anyone else is really dying to have a chat with me for whatever reason, you can look me up on the aforementioned program, but I only accept messages from people I know so please identify yourself properly, thanks.

This week I feel like going back to school for a PHD would be a waste of time and a delve too far into academia for my tastes. There must be more options out there in the world of education. Maybe a terminal M.A. would suit me better, though I still don't know what exactly it would be in. The more I think the harder it gets to move, so here I will stay where it's cozy and I am happiest. For now! I can work while having ample time to explore music, books and my own interests. Can't ask for much more, save a bigger paycheck. Except that I remember thinking from a young age that when I finally grew up and got a job, I wouldn't become obsessed with the monetary value, but focus solely on how much I could enjoy it. No point in being a lawyer if it makes you miserable. So by that logic, I'm doing the right thing right now.

In case I'm being to ambiguous: all I want to do is be a teacher. I'd ideally like to teach higher level education at some point, I think. Either way I was right when I blogged it almost two years ago: "here's to being a teacher forever." Maybe I'll feel different 5 or 10 years from now, bitter and old mannish about the whole shtick, but it's hard to imagine.

The human brain didn't evolve with this many decision-making synapses in mind, constantly pulsating and driving ourselves crazy. This is why the modern world overwhelms us all - we are merely animals with far too many extraneous factors besides eating, sleeping and procreation keeping us busy.

"I'll be grazing by your window/Please come pat me on the head/I just want to find out what you're nice to me for/When I look up don't think I don't know/About all the scabs you dread/
It's hard to stomach the gore" Dinosaur Jr.

"Wish I knew safety/Wish nothing phased me/ Wish I felt more than just feelings of unrest/Wish the darkness didn't cloud me/Wish I wasn't an emotional wreck" - Blacklisted

In the wee hours of the morn

2010-02-06T10:13:00.005+09:00

When I start one of these badboys, I want to have an idea in my head of what I'll write about. I've still got a few bouncing around, but to be frank they all feel like they'd take way too much time and effort to articulate. What a copout! I even have a half-finished entry from last weekend that I may or may not get around to finishing up. Lame right? But it's my blog, and I have total control over it so I can do what I want, when I want, and YOU CAN'T STOP ME MWA HA HA HA HA HAAAA~~~

I have a very good maniacal laugh by the way, if I start doing this youtube thing more maybe I'll demonstrate.

So what is there to write about besides the hassle of writing. Uuuuhhhhhhhhhh. Stew? Yea this is me on a Saturday morning. I work Friday night and am leaving for work again in a little while. And overtime tomorrow, followed by an evening band practice. I'm a sucker for pain (and money), what can I say. My brain will be trickling out of my ear come Sunday night. However, something very important is going on Monday morning at 8am. "Ben," you ask, "is it your edutaining Japanese lesson that you always so faithfully attend?"

NOPE!

Is it the most dignified, strategic and sophisticated of all things on God's Green Earth? Perhaps even the last real sport of exquisite quality and sheer unbridled manliness left to all of mankind?

Well... no.

But it is the superbowl! Due to the 14 hour time difference and my looking for anything fun or interesting to do on my one day off this week, I'll be attending a breakfast buffet event at Heaven's Gate- I mean, er, Heaven's Door in Shimokitazawa. I hear their Kool-aid is top-notch! But really folks, it's 2000 yen to enter, perhaps some other Tokyoites/blog-readers want to drop in and say hi? I don't bite! I just sort of gnaw.... Also, I don't think I'll really be drinking much if anything - that is way too early and I'm not, how do you say, an alcoholic. Still, it'll be cool to see it live this year, instead of getting it spoiled by gmail advertisements before I could even watch a recap like last year. -_-

OK, I really should be shoving off, this has been a nonsensical and non-serious post brought to you by Ben Belcher. Yes, I do these sometimes too. Ta ta!

....Colts!

Because writing takes so long

2010-02-04T12:53:00.003+09:00

I posted two new videos:

VLOG #2

Me reading 3 of my poems

I passed JLPT2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2010-02-02T23:15:00.004+09:00

合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格合格！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！

I'm so happy. I blame exhaustion, but I cried tears of joy upon seeing my results in the mail as I strolled in from a full day on the job. I worked for this, I earned this! I spent countless Saturday nights studying kanji instead of doing other fun things. I studied thousands of new words and grammar in a span of six months. I learned to speed-read in a foreign language. I've been studying Japanese 3 years and I pulled it off. Holy shit. I'm still reeling in shock that I actually pulled it off.

Come December, JPT1 time: hell or high water.

Do you see

2010-01-27T22:21:00.003+09:00

a blog layout littered with advertisements, banners and "give me money for this crap already" written all over it? Nope. And my blog(s) will always be that way. If I made a dime off of any of this, I'd be cheating you. I can post for free, so I will write for free. That's my philosophy.

Cats and Dogs, LIVING TOGETHER.

2010-01-22T23:06:00.003+09:00

In reflection, the last few posts have all been a bit on the serious side. While I am a pretty serious guy, I also have a sense of humor, so here is an amalgamation of recent life events, ancient history, future goals, show write-ups and a look into my eccentric psyche. Without further ado:

The dreaded JLPT2 test being behind me for now (results to come mid-February, what a wait!) I have been enjoying a slightly more relaxing lifestyle than in previous months to say the least. Since I've gotten back home I've caught up on a few movies (Paranormal Activity and Up in the Air both surpassed my expectations), a lot of Bukowski as previously noted (you're right Nick, he does get repetitive but man he's good) and even some gaming time. Gaming is something I did so much between the ages of 3-12, and 19-23, that is hard to believe I've abandoned it so. Blame it on childhood and then later on smoking too much weed (respectively in THAT order) if you like, but I love games. I still do, I merely don't have time for them!

What did I do from ages 13-18? Learned guitar, bands, girlfriends, attempted to make friends and fit in. And was still an angsty teen, oh yes I was. Angsty and out there, I used to never talk to anybody in Junior High School! I just walked around school wearing my headphones constantly and listening to Nothingface, Section 8, Candiria and Skinless. Those were some times, and of course High School I made some great friends - some not so great - and even had a bit too much fun sometimes.

I skipped High School English 12 times in my senior year due to my teacher being quite monotone and my being somewhat rebellious. Pretty ironic when you think about the fact that I became an English teacher 5 years later! Yes I know what you're thinking: "that's great Alanis, get on with something more interesting!" Well how about the fact that he let me by on an extra credit reading of Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis?" My life will never be the same.

All tangents aside the main point being what I meant to say was in all honesty i don't think i could put it any clearer than that is to say........ I now don't incorporate much time for games, unless I'm really tired or feeling unable to be productive in any way. So playing Half Life 2 for the first time on my 360 is a nice break from reality. Bang bang, pow pow, none of that lame "Gears of War" duck-and-cover crud everybody rants and raves about. Just a good ol' run-around-shoot-solve-puzzles-enjoy-the-ride-style game. And Portal is quite excellent as well.

My New Years Resolutions? To pass the JLPT1 in December (ain't that a lark!), to lose this wretched gut of mine and turn it into pure muscle once and for all (making progress!) and finally to play guitar more. I've been slacking a bit these days, only playing at practices or at shows and that's not going to cut any sort of mustard whatsover- brown, yellow, spicy dijon, etc. If I want to write the best tunes possible with F.I.D., I have got to push myself harder and work more as a guitarist. This is a bit hard with work, Japanese and making sure I squeeze in fun time and travel, but I will manage it. I'm going to the country on Sunday this weekend, Okutama to be exact, google it if you want to know what it looks like. Mountains and rivers and all that fun stuff this concrete block-city doesn't offer me.

Shows!! Played two last weekend. I wasn't on my best game but oh man, they were fun! Highlights include CxPxSx singer diving headfirst into a garbage can! They are easily my current favorite band to see in Tokyo, next to Kurupino - she didn't even have the electronics setup when I saw her play! Only one tom, a cymbal, a frog-puppet, plastic implements *ahem*, a drumstick, a mic and an S&M whip. Quality! Anyhow that was about the highlight of Tuesday night, besides some 80s-new wave, a thrash metal band and Visual K (Japanese slang basically meaning new-school hair metal) band named Sex-Virgin Killers, who were all good at what they did. It was pretty sweet.

Flash/rewind to Sunday. Biggest show I'd played in a long time, maybe 200+ heads, big stage, big backstage, lots of drunkenness, crusties (dirty punkers), mohawks, leather-studded jackets, old-time punkers noisecore bands and then F.I.D. somewhere in the middle of it all. The bassist of the Wanky's, a punker band of drunken debauchery from the U.K. graciously invited us on the bill, and although we stuck out - being "grind" and not noise or old-school punk like the rest of the bill - it wasn't a bad thing. DSB (Drunken Shit Bastards) and Struggle For Pride were band that stuck out as really good.

Anyway, I was quite nervous about playing at first. The girls insisted I give some kind of introduction speech, and I obliged - certainly no one ever wanted me near the mic during any of my previous band stints. By the way I've been laying down a few vocals live here or there, at the risk of further tarnishing a once all-female grindcore band no less.

(In case you're a new reader or just need a reminder, Flagitious Idiosyncracy in the Dilapitation is what I'm talking about.)

Sunday:

「このバンドはぜんぶ女の人でも俺は女の人らしいじゃないけど。。。ファクユウアアアル！」
"This band is all women but it appears that I am not a woman... *obscenity* YOU ALL!!!"

My intro speech from Tuesday is also worth mentioning. In an overly cutesy-voice (except for the last bit I said:

「あのね。。。はじめまして、べんです、よろしくな！GO TO HELL!!!」
Umm, I'm Ben, nice to meet you all. GO TO HELL!!!!

The need to break the tension a bit was obvious, I seemed to have their respect but I looked scary enough normally, let alone shredding and losing it with a large blunt instrument in my hands. As we initially set up I definitely heard choruses of マジっすか？ (seriously??) at both shows, most likely referring to the giant white guy with the three Japanese bandmates. There were however a lot of people who seemed to dig us at this bigger show, and a line of 6 or 7 faithful metalheads in the front, holding their beercans like majestic chalices, headbanging and continually offering me and Makiko drinks. I swiped one, chugged it and tossed it back out in an attempt to be all crazy and whatnot. I sweat and shredded my hardest - could have been tighter but the energy was there. People complimented us on it and we moved a few units, and when all was said and done I (we) had an awesome time.

Perhaps the strangest bit of all this was that the original guitarist showed up to the Sunday gig. (!!!) This is the woman who wrote most of the stuff I'm now playing, and as it so happened it was the first time I'd ever met her. It was kind of like being on a date and meeting your girl's ex-boyfriend, like: "oh hey you used to be all up in this but now she's mine. Sorry?" Without going overtly into detail perhaps it was awkward at best. We'll be changing over our set to quite a few newer tunes in the future anyhow, although she did write some good tunes!

I'll leave you with that. Work in the morning. You stay classy San Diego!

"He's a Buddhist, Christian, paramedic, vegan, straight edge pimp but most of all... Big. He's big" - Horse the Band

"There's not much chance for survival if the neon bible is right" - Arcade Fire

"I've got it all.......most." - Modest Mouse

P.S. Started yet another blog on account of I've been inspired to start writing again. I mean writing stuff besides this journal: "Benjamin L. Belcher's Poetry and Prose." Riveting name, I know. Check it if you like.

Why I play

2010-01-20T00:55:00.009+09:00

It's not a matter of making money or getting famous and it never was. It was always about creating something that expressed your feelings in a way that society and the powers that be wouldn't allow. It was and still is about opening the jar of pent-up rage and frustration inside and unleashing it in a positive manner. Instead of beating your wife or doing heroin or banging your head against a wall, you throw all of your emotions out into the music with a burst of power and a sense of release. We play for fun, we play to create, we play because it's something we have more control over than almost anything else in our lives. Everywhere else there's always someone waiting to come down on you, watching you to make sure you stay inside the trail everyone else has blazed. In music, we can transcend the mundanity of everyday life and do something that is ours and ours alone. Nobody else can touch it.

Save Yourself (old band) 2004

Most Precious Blood (with Save Yourself) 2004. "Every scar has a story, no guts no glory."

F.I.D. first show, 2009

Homecoming show Christmas 2009, singing along with good ol' JT, singer of my last band in the states, Damnation Alley.

These are just a couple of small examples. Maybe I've been to 800 shows in my life, maybe 1,000, maybe more. I've been doing bands for the last 10 years. I don't think I was ever happy until the first time I was writing songs and jamming with my friends. Without music, I don't know where I'd be today, but it certainly wouldn't be here. I play and I scream because it's all I can do to make the most of the life I have, and dammit, it makes me happy.

"[don't] Forget that... there are places in this world that aren't made out of stone. That there's something inside... that they can't get to, that they can't touch. That's yours... Hope." - Shawshank Redemption.

There and back again

2010-01-12T12:53:00.004+09:00

Time for an overdue presentation to the faithful blog-followers. Please open your books to page 2010, index 179.0081, class is in session.

New York was quite a trip. Going home was such a mindfuck, I could actually feel pieces of my memories of Tokyo-life and NY-life overlapping and fighting for dominance in my mind, like someone suffering from split personality disorder. Allow me to digress into a bit about the "counter culture shock" I mentioned a few posts back.

When I walked off of that plane, it was like stepping into a different world. I had been in Japan for about 18 months remember, the only break being a trip to Korea. So I was accustomed to many things which were turned on their heads promptly upon my arrival. To be frank, the sheer mass of people - yes I'm talking about obesity but also average height and girth - and ethnic diversity stunned me. Hearing everyone speaking English, not to mention speaking loudly in line, seeing the attendants looking bored, tired, and wearing blatant expressions of "I don't want to be here" on their faces was nothing less than shocking to me. You've got to understand what service is like in Japan: everyone always wears a smile, they say the veritable equivalent of "Someone honorable is present" (often less literally translated as: "Welcome to our store) every time you enter their place of business, and give you extended thanks and courtesy to the point of overkill. Flipping from that back to the American standard of courtesy on the job (which is pretty pathetic by all of my accounts) really made my head spin.

While I was standing in line for customs (it took well over an hour) I was at first talking to this professional fisherman from Guam on his way to Kentucky for some sort of business-related thing, and I was having a really interesting discussion about America's claim of eminent domain concerning Guam and the history and everything for as long as we were waiting. That distracted me well enough until I got into a separate line and had to take in my surroundings. Everyone was chattering so loudly, and in English mind you, that it flipped some WTF switch in my mind and I had to leave on my headphones for the sake of keeping it together. Granted I hadn't slept at all for about 24 hours but still, it was such overload. The plane ride from Newark to Albany consisted (as per usual) of taxing for nearly an hour followed by a 30 minute flight. I was cranky and just wanted to get home.

When I did, well that was very nice. To see my family, and my best friend Jessica, it was a relief but I was almost too exhausted to appreciate it. On the way home riding in my Mom's minivan and sitting on the passenger side was also really disorienting, it being a dark and frigid December night didn't help one bit (bear in mind that cars in Japan drive on the left side of the road and the passenger seats are also on the left side)

When I got back, I had the pleasure of a bowl of my Mom's homemade turkey soup and with a side-order of my Mom's two-month old kittens. They really helped me relax, although they kept walking on my face in the middle of the night. The one was named Bonnie, the other Butterscotch, though it turned out that contrary to my Mom's impressions the former was actually a boy, making him/her "Bonnie, the sexually confused kitty cat." He/she also has a serious mother complex and is always trying to nurse on peoples ears. WEIRD.

I was only jetlagged for a day or two, but I was wound so incredibly tight, and this feeling outlasted my jetlag. I will never forget the next morning, that lovely, crisp Monday morning roasting at a seasonable 34 degrees, walking into Price Chopper, our local super market, and being awed by the sheer size of it and the offerings of so-long forbidden delights: giant succulent red and yellow peppers, hummus, feta cheese, bagged salads, a plethora of canned goods, whole grain oat and wheat breads, tortilla chips, salsas and even an entire aisle dedicated to cereal!!!!!! My heart never sang with such joy as it did that day. It was almost magical.

Thanks to the kindness of my Father I was able to drive the old 97 Jeep Cherokee delivery-mobile of many a pizza around during my stay. And boy did I drive. A lot. And the majority of drivers in my area - and I'll be damned if it isn't true for most other areas as well - are terrible drivers. Especially in the winter-time. No blinkers, no flashers, sudden stops, running lights, erratic driving, sliding on fresh snow, overly aggressive and unwarranted driving, granny driving, I could go on and on. Long story short is I enjoyed traveling by car around the beautiful capital region of Albany New York and soaking in the never-ending waves of nostalgia, but my god give me trains for the rest of my days and I'll be content. I didn't realize how much stress driving can really add to one's day until I had the opportunity to compare it to living in an urban environment like Tokyo.

Which gives me a nice segue into the urban versus the "suburban," or downright redneck hick-town U.S.A. Upstate NY is full of the latter and I lived in it for like 95% of my life. Suffice it to say I saw my surroundings with new eyes, a greater appreciation for the beauty and historical character of the American city versus the clunky, overly modern and concrete-blockishness of the Japanese city. Albany and it's surrounding areas are also full of nature, and lots of it. So many trees, I'd never really taken the time to look at them before. It was as if I had seen them, but never had any breadth of appreciation save a fleeting one. Even in the wintertime they stood like glorious landmarks of NY's natural beauty in my mind, and I was to spend a good chunk of time just observing and appreciating my environment over the course of my stay.

I mentioned being wound up? I was wound tighter than a rattle snake on speed spun down a hill in a tractor tire. If it wasn't for the courtesy of my friend Dave (writer of this fine music blog plug plug) letting me rage in his apartment for a bit and vent out all the crazy thoughts that were swarming in my head, I don't know how I would have survived the whole ordeal. I did spend valuable time with (in no particular order) Dave, Rich, Phil, Danielle, Kevin, Josh, John T., Kerri, Kyle, Gabe, Jessica, Dana, Fran, Margaret, Kaitlin, Mike L., Mike C., Rick, John B., Alaric and probably many others who are escaping my mind at the moment. That doesn't even include my family, or the slew of people I saw for like 5 seconds and didn't have nearly enough time to catch up with. There are others I'd like to have seen but wasn't able to, and of course the few I was hoping not to run into and (luckily) didn't.

I tipped everyone in a reckless fashion - there being no tipping whatsoever in Japan and also on account of my feeling great about having money and free time at home for the first time in what felt like an eternity. I even dropped 10 bucks in the tip-jar at the pizza shop I used to work at. Some had left but a few loyal employees looked the spitting image of themselves from 2 years ago. Very peculiar, or maybe not so peculiar.

It's amazing how some things and people change so drastically in a short period of time and some stay completely the same. Constancy is a good thing mind you, routine is something we humans crave, but change is also good. Very good, and very necessary even if we don't always want it to be. I am in short glad I've made the choices that I have. My hometown is a truly beautiful place, but I don't want to spend the rest of my life confined there doomed to wondering if there wasn't something more that could've been. That's my take on things, and you can quote me.

I bought/received many amazing books, not limited to Salman Rushdie's latest, Howard Zinn's "A People's History...," "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," a Charles Bukowski anthology called "Run with the Hunted," "Crouching Dragon, Hidden Tiger: Can China and India dominate the West?" An index of classical to modern philosophers and their main theories, and several other tomes which weighed down my suitcase by no small amount. I'm currently digging eagerly through the Bukowski and audiobooking Moby Dick, both of which have so far greatly exceeded my expectations.

I ate so much delicious food when I was home. New York pizza at least 10 times, Indian lunch buffet at least 3 times, hummus uncountable times, my Aunt's homemade lasagna and my Mom's amazing taco dip, divine pork cops, ziti, tuna noodle casserole, exquisite salads, chilis, wraps, sauces, flavors, and all kinds of wonderful things. My tastebuds rejoiced like it was the second coming. Sometimes I just had to stop doing anything else, close my eyes and just bask in the glory of the things hadn't touched my tongue in so very long. I consumed them and it was good.

I even went to church for the first time in what must be nigh on 10 years, with my father and my sister. My feelings on the matter? It was very nostalgic for me, being the church that was also a private school I attended in the 4th and 5th grade (and I refuse to discuss these years in any more detail whatsoever for now) Was I converted back to a healthy life of God-fearing Christianity? Sorry to disappoint you but no, I was not. I did however recognize the beauty in the community that a church embodies in a way I couldn't when I was younger. I saw people supporting each other and reaching out in a very healthy and healing manner, and I thought: "That's great for them. It's just not for me."

I'm a staunch atheist by the way, if I haven't made that clear in the past. We'll leave religious musings for another post but let me preface anything you might think questionable about my stance on religion with the fact that I was raised a Christian, and that I believe in the righteousness of the ethics laid out by Jesus Christ, and even that the bible is full of morally rich teachings. I simply don't believe in any of the supernatural elements of it. Jesus was a man, and a great one, but just a man. That's all. Sorry Mom and Dad and the rest of my family which is uniformly Christian.

However, you don't have to be Christian to do good deeds, like charity of one form or another. It wasn't much but, thanks to Rian and JT and some other really cool people who supported the event or came out, we held a benefit show as was mentioned some posts back. This was a benefit for NBIA, the disease which afflicted my brother and continues to plague my two older sisters. The highlights for me were:

-seeing lots of friends all together in the same place
-Kerri preparing tons of delicious baked goods for us to sell. Thanks Kerri!!
-Damnation Alley's set. It was so tight. They even opened with River Runs Red by Life of Agony which is an awesome song. Thanks guys. I went up to Dave (guitarist) at the end of the set and told him: "I'm glad I quit the band. You guys got way better without me."
-Me raffling off a bunch of Japanese candy (mostly purposefully "gross" stuff like fried squid strips and fish-flavored shrimpy corn puffs) along with a few rare goodies (100 yen-store chopsticks and an F.I.D. CD). I never knew people got so into raffles, made like $60 selling tickets, crazy.

In the end we only raised around $300, but it's that much more to a good cause. You can donate, learn more and spread awareness of this particular cause if you so desire by checking out the official website: http://www.nbiadisorders.org/

This is also a video of my Mother, whose strength of heart I hope to achieve some day myself, being interviewed for the local news about the disease:

Heavy stuff isn't it? Welcome to my family life. I remember when that perfect model of an 80s-bloomed le femme news anchor turned to me with a look of longing to understand and asked me: "How do you process all this?" I could have answered in various ways but chose something along the lines of: "In my eyes, this has been the reality for more than 10 years. I've had time to process it, I accept things for what they are." I could have said a lot more... About the cruelness of the genetic lottery, the random coldness of the world itself, the unfair burdens shifted upon some and not others, how it effected and shaped my personality (which it played a heavy hand in), how my brother's death indirectly lead to my leaving the country. I could have said a lot of things, but I don't bother to say them to those who don't really want to listen. Or at least don't have the time. I bet some of you internet-readers out there care to know it a hell of a lot more than some local celebrity T.V. journalist does.

I can't properly detail and describe everything I felt and experienced throughout my Return to New York (although I do distinctly remember an elderly couple almost backing into my car while I was on my way to the aforementioned church that fateful Sunday). Some details I have left out are too personal, although they would undoubtedly make for great writing. Let me leave it to mystery and say that I love and appreciate the western woman and her independently feminine identity and attitude much more than I did before I left. It was refreshing to see a bit of that while I was home, cultural gender identity was, among other things flipped on its head, as Japan is stuck somewhere in the 1950s as far as Women's lib. is concerned.

At any rate, I made it back to Japan in one piece. And being here, now, I hold a greater appreciation for Tokyo and feel some of the awe and inspiration this city once instilled in me born anew. I won't be here forever. If things go according to plans, some time in 2011 should be an exit date. But while I'm here I'll make the most of it because baby, you only live once.

I'll leave you with a stunning reading by the man who has been reinvigorating my love of poetry from beyond the grave, one Charles Bukowski:

I could say a lot of things

2010-01-07T01:09:00.004+09:00

My head has been full for weeks, I could say a lot of things right now. I'm not ready to say most of them yet though, and certain things I have no intention of writing the majority of them in a public blog. Let's just say that coming back home has put me face to face with some of the more difficult life-related decisions I've been reluctantly avoiding for the last year or two. Being an adult? Not easy. But I'm blessed with loved ones who support me, and a will to keep on pushing on. I'm not exactly sure where to push however. I've had to cut ties, turn my back to people and aspects of life I once held dear to be on the "adventure" I am now. And now that I'm back over here, in Tokyo, I'm glad to be here, but it comes with very real price tag. I'm only now beginning to realize some of the weight that has come with my separation with the old world, my old environment where I spent 23 years and some change. Reinventing one's life takes a lot.

I'll be 25 in April. Where will I be at 30 if I'm still kicking? My guess is probably just as philosophical and even more confused about which way to turn. I just wouldn't have it any other way. That's life, and I'm cool with that.

On the plus side of everything, I've written more poetry in the last 2 days than I have in the past 6 months. I'm not happy if I'm not creating something. So here's to you 2010, may you be as revealing and lucky of a year as 2009 was for me, lord knows I've seen much much worse in the past.

"You're not in this all alone just look around and you'll see, the answer's right before your eyes I'm here for you and you for me. It's hard to open up, just try and you'll see, that true friends will always be there." - Sick of it All

...creep into place...

2010-01-03T19:54:00.005+09:00

I couldn't help looking into the bathroom mirror and laughing hysterically. What a ride. As I walked out of the airport facilities I thought to myself: either I need some tums or I should just keep away from sausage biscuits, not sure as of January 3rd 8pm Tokyo time, 6am at my current location of Albany New York. Albany airport to be exact (about time they provided free wifi here!). Newark, New Jersey doesn't do the same though, so this will be my last communication until I'm back in the Japanland.

This is a red-eye flight of sorts, even though I woke up at 2:30am this morning. Fairly ridiculous when you think about it.

I'm not in disbelief I'm going back to Tokyo, I merely find myself laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. And possibly the unbearable light of being as well. Huge thanks and much love to all my friends and family who made my vacation so enjoyable. Also, list of awesome bands I saw in the States over vacation, that I'd recommend to you all:

After the Fall
Born Low
Damnation Alley
Make do and Mend
Down to Nothing
Forfeit
Oak and Bone
Trapped Under Ice
Sun God

I could through myspace links in there... or you could just google ANY of those names and the word myspace. C'mon, you won't.

If anyone really wants to know what's in my head, or perhaps why I'm going back to foreign lands and am content to do so, you need look no further:

"Go to work, go to school
Get an education, so you won't be a fool
Be a doctor, PHD, all that shit, that's not for me

All my life people tell what to say
This is my life live it my own way

Was so blind could not see
figures of authority, always standing behind me,
ready to come down on me

All my life people tell what to say
This is my life live it my own way" - Sick of it All, "My Life"

I now leave you as a "quote" in typical E.F.N.Y. fashion, the first track off of After the Fall's latest CD "Fort Orange." It's the best work yet from an amazing local band that has been together almost 10 years... and who I should see in Tokyo this year. Go dudes!! Fort Orange is the original name of my beautiful hometown of Albany, NY, by the way. I don't have the lyric sheet with me so here's most of it from memory.

"December 31st marks the day when Albany police opened fire on Lark street and killed an innocent man. Tell me what the fuck were you thinking, were you following standard procedure, to protect and serve?.... David Scraringe was only 24, he had a family not just another name.... those cops never saw any punishment to this day" After the Fall - "Fort Orange"

Home, home on the strange

2009-12-29T08:34:00.002+09:00

Details, they can wait. You want to know what it was like to come back home? First, it was bewildering. Everything was bigger, people were louder (and statistically physically bigger as well), ethnic diversity exponentially increased, attitudes and cultures changed around me in a space of 14 hours. Instead of greeting me with a smile and a bow, I get a bored stair and almost no verbal response from the cashier when I go to buy a drink. Walking into Newark Airport this December is surely an experience I will never forget. After being disoriented the first night, I went through a quick "honeymoon stage:" two days of elation followed by a huge drop into confusion. Why did I leave, why did I come back? After about 5 days I was on an even keel again, once again acclimated to my home country. Do these symptoms sound familiar? They happened once before, and that's when I first found myself in Japan.

Culture shock, or in this case counter-culture shock, is real. I can say this having experienced it from both sides myself. I liken it to waking up every day to an alarm clock. When you look at the alarm clock's lights, making up its digital display, each is red, except one which is yellow. This repeats for a long time. Then one day, to your astonishment, all lights are yellow except one which is now red! Logically you can make sense out of it, but your brain has trouble reacting to this kind of immense change all at once. Take that feeling and times it by a zillion, and you have culture shock. Maybe that's why, (excluding safety and tradition) people used to live in the same towns their entire lives, live and die there as would their children and their children's children. The world has certainly changed since 1000 years before I was born.

Details, details. There is a lot to say. You word hungry blog-readers will be satisfied soon if you are interested in a detailed account of what I did with my Christmas Vacation. To summarize for the present, it was great. I've seen my hometown with new eyes, and can go back to Japan with much better perspective than I had. It was amazing seeing my friends and family after what felt like a very long absence. I missed authentic New York-style Pizza. Now the clock is ticking down, only mere days remain until I'll be thrown right back into the Tokyo Rat Race. I have a six-day work week to look forward to, starting 24 hours after I land. Should be fun. I'll make time to write too.

New Years Resolutions? Set higher goals for physical fitness, acquire some kind of extra work using Japanese with the credentials I think I'm getting from the test I think I passed (by the skin of my teeth).

Secrets of time

2009-12-10T00:16:00.003+09:00

or should I say secrets and time? We live our lives based on the clock, yielding to father time's inexhaustible might. I now hold several secrets that would make for exquisite blogging material, yet can't let out the spoilers for fear of those who may read before Christmas. Looks like this post will be shrouded in mystery.

Remember that test, the one I was studying for for, oh I dunno about 6 months and stressing over for so long? I think I passed it. I have a hunch anyway, and if I failed it then it had to be by an obscenely minute margin. So I must have passed. Yes. Nothing to do but try to forget about it anyway, I won't get the results until mid-February. =/

I also need to send a letter in this week to make sure that the JLPT Association doesn't make out any certification to Benjamin. Le Roy Belcher. Yes, they put a period in my name. Yes, I probably accidentally made a mark when filling out the application form. Yes, it's a pain and a hassle, especially when I'm so busy! Packing, banging out a last week of work, blah blah grumble grumble...

4 days from now I'll be somewhere in the sky. That's a strangely reassuring thought. There's a new movie coming out which I may see when I'm back home called "Up in the Air" which deals with the idea of living in the surreal world of flying, where we are truly alone with ourselves and a hundred other strangers. People get really reflect during these kinds of travels, I for one have undoubtedly always enjoyed them. Sometimes more than when I get to the destination itself, but that won't be this time of course.

My bag is full of things that should make people I know smile. I bounce between vehement anti-capitalist and completely giving in to the beast, as I abstain from unnecessary shopping most of the year but fall into a vicious cycle during Christmas. And I like to give people presents, better to give than receive and all that stuff. It's more fun this year than any other, since I live in a place with tons of cool albeit expensive stuff, and I have the best paying job in the history of my life.

Oh and I'm getting my right thigh tattooed, probably take 5 or 6 hours. Ouch much? But dang it will be awesome in the end. Oh yes. The onsen's (hot springs) will be putting up my picture saying don't let this guy in under penalty of blank stares.

Bruce Belcher memorial fund is HAPPENING, attention NY people:

I hope for a good turnout to raise lots of money for the cause (you can learn more at www.nbiadisorders.org) and if facebook doesn't lie than there should be at least 40 people there. Hip hip hooray!

Maybe my last entry before I get back home.

Hello vacation.

F.I.D.

2009-12-07T23:14:00.003+09:00

"Nightflesh," the first song me and the band created together (along with my good friend Ian who helped formulate this little ditty) being performed live for the first time ever at Studio UEN, Nishi-Ogikubo. Big thanks to bands and friends who supported the show, if only this was every weekend:

Tokyo people: January 17th, Shindaita @ Shindaita fever, crazy show with a lot of awesome bands, mine included. Come out, say hi, admit to lurking on my blog when you're bored and hang out!

10.01.17 (Sun) DESTROY, DESTROY!! Presents "THE WANKYS JAPAN TOUR 2010 with CHAOS CHANNEL"

OPEN 15:30 / START 16:00
ADV ￥2500 (+1drink) / DOOR ￥2800 (+1drink)

The WANKYS / CHAOS CHANNEL / LAUGHIN NOSE / SYSTEMATIC DEATH / F.I.D / ABRAHAM CROSS / STRUGGLE FOR PRIDE / STAGNATION / D.S.B / TOM AND BOOT BOYS

http://www.fever-popo.com/schedule/2010/01/17/

I forgot the dramatic countdown!

2009-12-05T22:02:00.001+09:00

You know, like I did over a year ago when I was building up to leaving Japan:

Days remaining until departure: 8.

Or something like

Time left on until I reach the land of Gold and Hamburgers: 8.

Or perhaps

Time left on this weird-ass island in 2009: 194.6 hours

Shucks. Well I'm heading home a week from tomorrow for a much needed Christmas vacation, and regardless of the lack of suspenseful blog buildup, it's been a real life climb to say the least. JLPT2 tomorrow. No way I'm ready, but I'm as ready as I can be. I learned a lot in 10 months, time to put it to the test! 発展できるぞ hatten dekiruzo (Time to strut my stuff/show 'em what I got)

I should be studying RIGHT NOW. And I'm getting up at 7am tomorrow, not looking forward to that. I've heard all kinds of impractical theories in regards to passing from my Japanese friends: wearing a "lucky mask" (whatever that may be), carrying this study/luck/pass charm my teacher gave me on the day of the test, or even eating a かつ katsu (pork cutlet) sandwich because pork cutlet and win have the same pronunciation in Japanese.

Me, I don't believe in luck. I believe in the undeniable power of the self.

And after the test, It's a end of year nabe (delicious stewed pot of goodness) celebration with my friend in F.I.D.! In Japan the end of the year party, or 忘年会 bounenkai is all about drinking your troubles away. The characters literally mean "forget-year-party." Also going to be a busy weekend, Monday is my last lesson of the year, and I've decided to meet my Chinese teacher on top of it since we haven't met in over a month due to this JLPT nonsense.

Ok, times up!

Into the void

2009-12-03T21:57:00.000+09:00

You ever seen the movie Spaceballs? The part where Rick Moranis (a.k.a. Darth Helmet) says "Light Speed is too slow." And they crank this switch from light speed, to ridiculous speed, to ludicrous speed. That's how I feel right now. There shouldn't be stars flying by me at all angles, there should be streaks of plaid to do justice to the absurdity of the world around me.

People talk about the love/hate cycle expatriates experience in foreign countries. I've talked about this before, but I swear some switch in my brain is flipping between love and hate and it's gradually built up to the point of happening several times a day:

I love Japan.
I hate Japan.
I think Japanese people are cute and adorable.
I want to throw said people out of the nearest window because of their overwhelming indirectness and insincere politeness.
I love your Osaka-sense of humor.
Unless I have a piece of broccoli the size of Utah sticking out of my teeth, you have no good reason to stare so hard at me.
Your food is delicious and most of your women aren't obese here, awesome!
Texting and riding a bicycle while holding an umbrella with your two children while none of you wear helmets on a busy street might just be a teeny weeny tiny bit STUPID don't you think?

And so on.

This is all do to the insanity I willingly put myself into, and I love it. Keeps things interesting. Speaking of insanity, first show with the band/first show in Tokyo happened last Sunday. I know I haven't posted pictures here in ages, but I'm on my last legs tonight and don't feel like sorting through them and posting them. They'll be on the band site soon enough, and let's just say they are pretty righteous. I got to see grindcore legend Kurupino with her frog-puppet doing a solo S&M-style set with only a tom drum, a symbol and a mic stand. You really had to be there. Million Dollar Boys are also the best Tokyo band you never heard of, and the co-headlining band almost stole the show from us... well, they did in terms of streaking and ridiculousness anyway. CxPxSx donned their masks, make-up, underwear and little else and played a lewd set in the vein of "bad luck 13 riot extravaganza." I saw the soundguy grab the singer by the throat after he started hanging off of the lighting equipment, other than that it was just a lot of good clean fun.... well, as clean as it can get with a bunch of crazy Japanese grind-heads taking off their clothes and running into people while playing their instruments. One of my students even came out to see my band (the one I saw play in Shibuya last weekend) and he said the set was "pretty awesome."

All in all it was 大成功 "Daiseiko" - a great success. My fingers felt stiff at first but after the first few songs I knew the energy and high of the live show once again, such as I hadn't experienced for over a year... and what an addiction it is. I couldn't have pictured it going much better, except that my guitar got knocked out of tune for a bit. Might consider changing string brand/type, or going back to using 7-string sets on a 6 string guitar (since I play in B anyway).

The next day I took 4 hours of Japanese lessons (cramming my groups and privates together because I was busy with job training later in the week), which as you can imagine is pretty tiresome. I feel good though, and ready to put to kick this stupid test in the ass and bury it in the past. I'm obsessing about it way too much, I know, but as of writing this it's only about 60 hours away!! I should be studying right now... which is what I will go to, but first...

I taught my private students after class and doing some serious xmas shopping for my friends back home, and got this really cool, giant, most likely genetically-modified apple from Fukushima (north of Tokyo), along with a Fukushima-specific Chopper keychain. Pretty cool. I also discovered - since these ladies are completely Dog/Disney-obsessed - that Lady and the tramp is called ワンワンの物語 "wan wan no monogatari" in Japanese, the literal equivalent of "The Bark Bark story." Who knew?

Now I really have to hit the kanji book. Until I go to bed. I'm not even bringing my D.S. with me on the train until this thing is over with. Now if only I could pry myself away from this laptop!! Make it 3 days from now already!

Oh, and thanks to the people who responded to the last post, I really appreciate your feedback!

"I am extraordinary, I am I am" - Blacklisted

"We've all been tricked into loving some fool, not a person alive who hasn't wasted time" - End of a Year

What can you see from your window?

2009-11-25T22:39:00.007+09:00

Every week when I work in Shinjuku, I find it fills me with a certain kind of rage. I spend the day by going to Iidabashi for my 2 hour Japanese lesson, and follow that up by going directly to work. A full day, which leaves me satisfied but somewhat fatigued. And the masses, inside and out, do something to the natural state of the human mind. The people's mentalities and the general coldness to everyone they don't know in this kind of big city really strikes a darkness of the heart I'd never experienced before my time in Japan.

I can't assume whoever is reading this knows anything about these places, so allow me to explain: Shinjuku is home to the busiest train station in the world, and a veritable center of the megalopolis known as Tokyo. It's busy, always. Walking through there means becoming part of a mess of people moving in every conceivable direction; pure organized chaos. When I get off work nigh on 9:30, the drunken businessmen vibe is in full effect as well. And it all just piles up. Perhaps listening to grind metal isn't helping the situation, but it feels so appropriate to the madness hidden behind the neon beauty of the city.

Suffice it to say living as close as I do to any city feels like a temporary thing. It couldn't last, it would drive anyone with a soul crazy, I think.

...that's a dark start isn't it? Kind of prose-y though. My attempt at a description of the feeling of walking through the streets of Shinjuku, even if it only happens 2 or 3 times a week, thank god. It feels like a little piece of my soul is stripped away every time I cross those anonymous masses, being scratched and clawed at by the empty aura of the stone metropolis, struggling to-

Yea that's enough of that.

**

Last Sunday was one of the best days I've had in a while. I did the following things:

11-1pm. Listening practice test for the upcoming JLPT (11 DAYS AWAY) with a nice Spanish girl named Lydia. Got a 50%, which is around my average. Hey, listening to Japanese is tough! Thankfully this is a smaller portion of the overall test grade than the other parts I do better at.

1-4. Special 3 hour band practice, busted ass to get there on time (through the dark torrents of Shinjuku once again) Fun practice, they always are. Laughed and wrote and played and replayed and corrected and played again and felt exhausted and poured it all into the instrument. Yea.

5-7. Did the language exchange thing with Kana (friend/bassist) and did surprisingly well with Japanese grammar points. I can feel the pieces falling into place.

8ish. Arrived in Shibuya - the trendiest, most over-glorified crowded sack of amorphous blobs of people (which deserves its own post) I've ever seen - went to see my student Toshi's band play. He had given me a free ticket so I thought what the hell, it'd be rude not to go! I was pretty wrecked at this point, but managed to find the venue which I realized I had visited last year. Despite this, It is a bit of a tuck away building on an imaginary "street," above a Harley Davidson shop on a seedy-looking corner.

I had timed it to come just in time for Toshi's band, the "Super Sonic Monkeys," since I knew it would be an all day fest of amateur bands which I could not sit through. Although when I arrived, the act finishing up was quite entertaining. Some lady in her 40s/50s in go-go boots and white vinyl doing a ridiculous dance alongside to a male-backed ensemble of beardless ZZ TOP wannabes in trench coats and Leapord jackets with a fairly cute Japanese girl as a singer. The guitarists were doing all kinds of lewd rock moves. There was a saxophonist too, but everything jumbled together and didn't sound particularly good. Visually 10/10, musically 4/10. Wish I had my camera for that one!

Super Sonic Monkeys were pretty good for a band that does popular covers. The did the whole guitarist/bassist harmony thing quite well, covering Blink 182 and Green Day and the like. They even had a fan club, a gaggle of girls which I thought was pretty amusing. Am I playing the wrong kind of music? (don't answer that)

After the show the whole group - groupies, friends, band and myself - went to an Izakaya (Japanese-style restaurant/bar) they had reserved. Really brilliant, as them there U.K. people like to say. I had a lot of fun. And besides meeting some new friends - who said they want to "go go to Ben's Live!" - I realized that my Japanese hasn't improved at all.

It has TRANSCENDED.

I have had my head buried so deep in difficult everything that I didn't even realize my comprehension of daily conversation (and ability to communicate) has soared since the last time I'd attended this kind of social event with a bunch of Japanese people, maybe a few months prior. I communicated smoothly with several people almost no problem. It felt good. I can't do the whole night justice, let me just finish with saying it was fun.

The next day I took a much needed rest, studied and watched Apocalypse Now! for the first time. The Redux version in fact, over 3 hours long. Heck of a movie, I like the specks of Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad that the director mixed in with a Vietnam-themed war movie. And I find myself saying "the horror... the HORROR" whenever the opportunity arises.

**

One more thing. This English teaching shtick. I realized in college that the beauty of studying English - despite its lacking somewhat in the practicality department, at least in my case and in the States - was that a good command of language can be universally applied to almost any field. If you are well spoken, or well written, this bleeds into so many different careers and facets of human life. My job now, it's not glamorous, it can be redundant, but I'm always working with real people. Talking with people one inevitably forms connections with them, of interest, curiosity, disdain, friendship, warmth, familiarity, etc. etc. I am able to learn so much from them, it has become an enduring strategy of mine to find something interesting in even the most ordinary or seemingly-dull persona. I can learn about Japan, or the culture, or get an unfair look at what this person's life is like while at the same time doing what I do very effectively. It is in fact my job to ask questions that border on personally intrusive ("Do you live alone?" is listed as an opening discussion question in certain books). The empowerment of it all gets some people drunk, I think. I want to believe I take full advantage of this position by gleaning what I can, while of course doing my job to the utmost of my ability and helping those who truly want to improve. Not everyone takes this kind of job that seriously, but I can't help it. I'm an all or nothing type. If I don't give a shit, I don't give a shit, but if I care at all, it's like I yanked the cork out of the Hooker Dam once I get involved. So I put my heart into it, and sometimes I get really amazing, intangible things back.

Or the occasional - but slowly becoming weekly - bag of delicious potato-salad bread, raisin loaf and other sundry bakery items from Junko. You are like my provisional Japanese Mom, THANK YOU ALTHOUGH YOU WILL NEVER READ THIS.

This clunkily segues into my last bit, the title. It comes from one sleepy new student's attempt to be creative today. In response to "Ask about my apartment," she asked me: "What can you see from your window?" I said I can see snoopy and woodstock in a window from my window, and several other buildings, but that's pretty much it. However, in the cogs of this thing we call a brain, this question struck me as so deep, so unintentionally profound and deep. How much does my viewpoint control my perspective? Where does the vision stop and the imagination begin?

What can you see from your window?

I'm inside your computer

2009-11-18T02:11:00.005+09:00

Decided to do a VLOG, video blog, was kind of restless and sleepy at the time so forgive my state, however it's a wrapup of what's going on now. Some old info, some new, and what's it going to be like to re-enter my home country, I wonder...

Nothing to say? Say it anyway!

2009-11-12T14:34:00.005+09:00

I greatly enjoy sitting in my underwear and participating in solitary activities (studying, reading wikipedia, listening to music) in my one room apartment. The walls are scaly and paper-thin, but I have do have two windows. And although the sun-absorption turns it into an oven in the summer, it provides me with some great "natural heating" when it starts to get cold, like right now. I'm looking at my "business jacket," and it's got more wrinkles than a part time eldery bag-lady at the local grocery store, but ya know what? I think I'll wear it to work today anyway. I never cared much for outer appearances.

I spent 5 hours studying, reading, and also did some song-writing trying to bang out another F.I.D. number today. Our time is limited - not that it ever wasn't - but as usual I'm being far too hard on myself, wondering if this riff fits the style, or is congruent enough, or will please old fans. This is something entirely new for me: Writing music for a band that has a fanbase. I'm doing my best, and the girls like it, and it's a departure from the first CD for sure, but I feel like in essence (and with 3/4 the same members, even though the old guitarist spear-headed most of the material) it's the same band. I can't wait to play a live show again, it's one of those addictions I can never quit. A kind of elation no drug can give, girls can't do it either, although their kind of elation is nice too.

And, to finish, I'm realizing how lucky I am to be surrounded by some amazing people in my life, be they co-workers or students. I'm so glad I have a job that forces me to interact with people when I tend to steer away from it, as I've garnered some amazing opportunities from it. More about them later.

"Now you see me, and now I am a shadow" - Small Brown Bike / Casket Lottery

Come back, kid!

2009-11-09T21:39:00.004+09:00

Last night I drank a souped up energy cocktail drink from the conbini (convenience store) full of ginseng and various extracts I couldn't recognize, most likely from the deepest regions of the congo and it seemed to do something good. I stopped taking the codeine and other prescription stuff this morning, I tried buying some over the counter cough medicine (Benadryl is illegal here) but the one that was the "least sleep-inducing" according to the pharmacist/cashier put me into nap mode after a few hours. I won't be taking any more of that too soon. I was at least able to come back to some semblance of a normal day, and although I'm not 100%, I'm back to functional, and that's good enough for right now.

I took the 15-minute train into town to meet some students for a lesson a popular cheap Italian place, ate some pizza and made 4000 yen (roughly $40) talking about dogs for an hour. Good racket. More important I made it through without feeling like trash, as it was a kind of test before going back into full on work. My week is busy and starts tomorrow.

1 week without the gym. First time since April. My muscles are pissed at me (especially my back) and my whole body feels really neglected. I'll try tomorrow morning.... we'll see. The physically drained feeling is still lingerning however.

I've been listening to a great reading of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" by Jack Finney, and while it isn't the best book it's some fun, pulpy, character-driven sci fi that has helped get me through this rut of a sick week. I'm just starting "No Longer Human" by Osamu Dazai, a best-selling Japanese novel even today, by an author who killed himself in 1947. It's a lot like the first emo before there was a word for emo however. "Woe is me I can't relate to anyone my life is pain etc. etc." I'm reading through trying to find the appeal, and I want to stop but it's mysteriously addicting....

Thoughts: being sick and stuck on my own in this little room with too much free time led to my usual over-philosophizing about life and the universe and my mediocre position therein and about my prospective career and my childhood and my possible days as an old man and how we all have to die some time, it's just a matter of when. I'd rather go backwards, not forwards. Regress into a child, de-age until I was a sperm and an egg and subatomic particles and disappear. It'd be a really original way to go.

See, this is why I keep myself occupied. Can't think freely for too long.

Countdown to home: 34 days.

Posting from the bottom

2009-11-06T06:34:00.007+09:00

Dear internet-

Hello, how are out? I'm not so good. I've been sick for the past few days. Just on the tailend of a holiday weekend, I managed to catch a really nasty cold - congestion, splitting headache, ears ringing, fever, the whole shabbang. It feels like years since I've been sick like this. Since I was afraid it might be swine flu, I decided a prompt visit to the hospital was in order. To say I was nervous is correct, but thanks to my good buddy google maps (whose father google may turn into or already be Big Brother according to this guy) I found the closest general hospital. I always knew there was a plethora of clinics (small Dr.'s offices, often specialists) in my town, I never realized that a 5 minute walk in another direction from the train station would bring me to a legitimate general hospital.

Oh, but before that I had to hit up the chiropractor, because I'd strained my back trying to use that stupid exercise wheel again! I felt like the floor of a taxi cab but made my back-massage appointment, trudged down the road and went through the motions at the hospital, receiving a test for the dreaded swine flu.

The results? Tune in next week to find out!

Many foreigners have to seek out English-speaking doctors which is not only a hassle, requires traveling but will probably be more expensive, even in Tokyo. Despite how bad I felt I was at least happy that my Japanese was far along enough I could fill out forms and speak with the nurses, doctors and pharmacy people with little to no trouble. However, when asked about whether or not I wanted to take the Swine Flu test I heard a word I was unfamiliar with, some fancy medical way of asking if I wanted to "receive the test." Not knowing this one word apparently convinced the nurse to go the "bull by the horns" route and she tilted my nose back and shoved a cotton swab really, really far up it with like no warning. I felt like Shwarzenegger in Total Recall, when he gets the tracking device removed from his nose.

Shudder.

OK, I didn't have swine flu (quickest week of your life). However I have turned into a strange cross between the invisible man and a zombie. I'm approaching my third day of sick leave, and have been playing Grand Theft Auto 4 to pass the time, since anything that takes much thought or concentration really hurts my head.

Incapacitated on the Island,

-Ben

I'm about to pass out from exhaustion

2009-10-29T00:28:00.004+09:00

But before that, behold in all it's glory:

Yep. My first show. Gonna be awesome. Feast your eyes and ears on the youtube goodness of some of these zonky bands:

F.I.D.
http://www.myspace.com/fidgrind
CxPxSx
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkyfgKS-LqA
Million Dollar Boys
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gufBaTP-VkQ -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coEyrStSM_w
Geshurekt Organ a.k.a. Kurupino a.k.a. Froglady
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AN3_WQOP-K4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBipqrFfjhY
Morquido
ECODAMNED
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHY1F3hLobM

Gotta say, Frog Lady is my favorite.

See you in 7 weeks NY, 6 weeks test, 5 weeks show.... my head asplode?

Paradigm Shift

2009-10-22T01:20:00.002+09:00

What happened to me? Recently I've been taking a good look at the progression of my life, and it's stranger than you might think. Those of you who only know me from this blog, or not so well in real life, might think of me as a pretty serious or straight-foward guy, possibly funny at times, somewhat eccentric and obsessive about his "work." That is me, now. But who did I used to be? The longer time stretches on the harder it is to remember. Although that person will always be a part of me, it's just that, a part. Nothing more than a percentile. A widget on a pie graph. I won't go into details about it, but I used to be a slacker, an unmotivated sack of crud in my school days. It took serious changes in the world around me to shake my foundations: sweet, sweet liberation from 10 years of anti-epileptic, concentration-destroying seizure medication, and the death in the family. These things converged violently around the time I broke up with my last serious girlfriend and started studying Japanese. Weird, right? And that was, somehow, only a littler more than 3 years ago. It feels like I've stepped into a different life, and that was some distant thing in the past. The ancient past. The Gettysburg address and 1492 past. It's almost like I have to remind myself that some of the bad things ever happened. That I was ever so numb to the world, or isolated from my peers. It's weird, strange, and too personal to go into any real details about. At the moment. Maybe some day, but probably not in blog form.

So the world spins on, and my learning has also shifted. Depending on the subject matter, I can sometimes survive reading several consecutive pages of Japanese comics without using a dictionary. Many things that would have passed me by a year ago are being reeled in by Ben's Brain - V2.0. It seems to me that we teach our brains to filter out various sounds the world makes, and a lot of this meaningless noise has gradually acquired meaning to me. I can feel the shift, slowly, but certain, and if I keep pushing until the blisters break I feel like life could be one hell of a ride.

"Keep diggin, pail, dirt, hands calloused for what it's worth." - Rick Whispers

Please fill in all the blank spaces

2009-10-13T12:59:00.003+09:00

Posting will definitely decrease the next few months. T-minus 7 weeks until JLPT Level 2 test. 8 weeks until my epic return to Upstate NY (for a much needed 3 week vacation). I have to put my nose to the grindstone until I have nothing left. I must succeed.

I've been getting a little sick the past week, might be the change in weather, which is actually quite favorable. 70 degrees and cool in mid-October does beat NY this time of year, I'll give you that Tokyo. Otherwise the summers here.... Lets just say that next year I'm getting some astronaut-style suit with internal cooling mechanisms or just never leaving my room. Winter on the other hand will most likely be rainy and chilly, usually in the 40s consistently which isn't so bad. That's Fahrenheit (damn you and your difficult to spell name) to any of you who didn't grow up in the States, where we still practice backwards measurement systems such as miles and pounds.

Perhaps it coincides with the sickness, but I've been feeling a bit down on life lately. This place is a "roller coaster ride," (props Nick), one day it's all love the next day it's seething hatred. I cannot make up my mind. Days like today I'd feel better just relaxing and reading some comics and having a quiet day, but it's off to work in an hour. Sometimes my job can energize me a bit though, and Tuesdays are usually good, so we'll see.

Went to an amazing Okinawa-style restaurant the other night with some friends after band practice, that was a great experience. Tried 海葡萄, or "sea grapes," a kind of seaweed with little green balls that are sweet like grapes. Really strange. The pork was exquisite though. And the end-of-meal soups are always great at these specialty izakaya places. Would go again.

Not much else to report, gonna try and throw in a few last hurrahs towards the end of the year, but things will be slow on the blog front. Duty calls.

"Don't ever think you know why" - System of a Down

Tornado of Books + Bowling Ball = .....

2009-10-10T20:42:00.010+09:00

After much procrastination, I finally sorted out my books. Mostly Japanese comic books, the bulk of which I have yet to read. I can't believe I was quite so enthusiastic about buying them so fast a year ago - "OH MY GOD! IT'S ONLY 100 YEN, THAT'S LIKE A DOLLAR!!!!" - thank god I've calmed down.

This does not include novels and stuff, of which ther are like 50 more on my shelf.

I haven't posted a picture on here in a long time. This one is a pretty accurate symbol of my life, a swarm of information I want to absorb faster than is humanly possible. I've picked out some choice titles to focus on, like One Piece, Eyeshield 21 and JoJo, but for the moment I should really be studying for the big test in a little under two months. I'm acquiring vocabulary by reading these things, and I enjoy them, and they help my Japanese, but I'm 99% sure there will be no questions on the test with phrases like "Mind your own business," "Let's kick the crap out of 'em," or "do you mind if I throw a rock at them?"

It's amazing what a full time job working, studying 2-4 hours everyday, and trying to have enough downtime can be. Well, not amazing or anything, but throw in the band, mandatory weekly social engagement of one sort or another, and it's a full ticket. I'm having dinner with Maki and some friends tomorrow after practice, and attending a bowling party with some school people on Monday. Bowling, now that's something I haven't done in years.

I went to a school party the other night where this rather out-going gent (who, strangely enough had been half-asleep during my class) was busting out some serious 関西弁 (Kansai, or "Western Japan," dialect). I noticed it right away, as it's a distinctly different speech style from standard 東京弁 (Tokyo Dialect), although to be fair it has dozens of different forms depending on regions in the west. Anyhow, I asked this guy to teach me a useful phrase since I was interested in learning Kansai Dialect, and he said: なんでやね. His way of explaining this phrase was: "If I see a guy, and he has two pickles in his eyes, I say NANNDEYANE??" This, at the time, didn't quite click with me as a clear definition, but I looked it up later, and it can be roughly described as: "What the hell?" or "You gotta be kidding me!!"

Sometimes I go throw B.S., I work my butt off, or deal with difficult people and situations, but I realized the other day that I've become acclimated enough to this place. I passed some unseen threshold when I wasn't paying attention. I'm not afraid of leaving, but have trouble imagining what it will be like. Also, I can't help wondering what getting comfortable like this could mean if I'm going to actually follow through on Graduate school or living in another foreign country. I can't deny, if I do attain a high level of fluency in Japanese, it might be tempting to just work for a company here doing translation or international relations, assuming they don't want me doing the 11-hour salaryman shtick. Especially if I end up marrying a Japanese broad like, er, every white dude in this country. But the future is something I'm as clueless about as any of you.

Getting back to Japanese for just a second, after much work my reading has improved quite a bit, but my listening is still lacking. I started listening to news podcasts (which make me feel dumb with my 5-10% comprehension of them) and, less depressing than that is watching some Miyazaki films without subtitles. He's the Disney of Japan, and I honestly haven't seen much besides Prince Mononoke and now Spirited Away again, but I want to run through more of his movies in the next few months.

I'm looking forward to this big test-hurdle being behind me, so I can focus more on learning fun japanese and less on words I'll never use, like "registered mail" 書留 or "servicing & maintenance" 整備.

Naturally, studying my butt off and then working can both be pretty brain-draining exercises, especially when work is especially busy. So my pill to "take as needed for pain," my weed in a wrap, my cure in a bottle has been nothing less than the NFL. In the last few years I've grown to appreciate watching football as an activity that fills a primal urge of seeing people smash into each other, while being entertaining from a strategic vantage point as well. I still have a deep-seeded dislike for jocky, block-headed bullies, which of course make up a good chunk of professional sports, but I do like watching them pummel each other, I must say. 4 weeks in, and I haven't exactly enjoyed seeing the Bills offensively fall apart, but otherwise, I like the Bears and the Steelers this year.

I won't lie, by slacking on the blog I have missed out on the opportunity to write what could be some hilarious stories for you guys. My bad. At the moment all I can think of is:

-a few 10 year olds started clapping the rhythm to Queen's We Will Rock You (or should I say lock you) in the middle of class and kept it going for around 15 or 20 minutes

- teaching "nod your head" has also turned into an air-guitar-shred/head-banging session in the aforementioned class

-I met a woman the other day whose brother had moved to Mexico. When asked why, she said it was to be an amateur masked wrestler. 0_0

-There was a sort of typhoon the other night, wasn't so strong, just some winds and rain coming from many directions, but I missed the bulk of it. However, working that night some idiot slammed the the wrong pedal at a railway crossing and smashed into an oncoming train. No one was killed or seriously injured, but 5500 people were estimated to have been effected by the stopped trains. I caught a local half-way home and walked another 2 miles or so, not too bad, but the funny part is as I crossed the tracks on the home stretch, I saw my train going by. So if I would have waited, I wouldn't have had to walk. Curses!

(The accident)

Integrity is playing here in a few weeks. I'm considering going to a sports festival the same day, since I know I'd be a great asset to the tug-of-war section...

That's all for now. Writing is fun, I don't plan to stop any time soon. Thanks for reading.

"These walls are paper-thin and everyone hears every little sound" - Modest Mouse

"If I never make it home tonight the streets will swallow me whole" - Trapped Under Ice

" What are your qualifications? #2- Ah well… I attended Juilliard. I am a graduate of the Harvard Business School. I travel quite extensively. I lived through the Black Plague and I had a pretty good time during that. I’VE SEEN THE EXORCIST ABOUT 167 TIMES…AND IT KEEPS GETTING FUNNIER EVERY SINGLE TIME I SEE IT! Not to mention the fact that you are talking to a dead guy. Now what do you think? Am I qualified?" - Beetlejuice

P.S. Ian, I know you always find some spare time to get on here, remind me to return your books soon dude.

P.S.S. Reading Kafka's "The Trial" for the first time now, it's awesome, so very very awesome.

like having a dizzy spell cast upon you by a malevolent wizard

2009-09-27T22:32:00.004+09:00

The more I read about Japan's last 150 years of history, the more I marvel at how everything has become so perfectly industrialized, as is now the standard. If I ascend the roof of my 3-story apartment complex, I can see nothing but buildings in every direction - maybe 20 of them apartment buildings, give or take. And I don't live in a very "urban" area, by Tokyo standards. I may have said this before, but the supreme wackiness of how everything is designed and put together here makes me think of a child with an infinite supply of legos: He just starts laying things into place pell-mell, without regards to the gas station next to the temple next to the research laboratory next to the preschool next to the bottomless pit. But I digress; I don't find buildings that beautiful. They can be awe-inspiring, as I re-discovered walking from Mejiro to Ikebukuro the other day, but it's a temporary effect, like having a dizzy spell cast upon you by a malevolent wizard. As embarrassing as it may be to say, I am a child of the suburbs, and kind of liked it there.

And yet, somehow, I am growing more and more acclimated to city life. Just thinking about how I've gotten used to these mechanical beasts that we all trains as my mode of transport was a mind-blow today. I compared that to the only real public transit option in Albany - the public buses, or CDTA, and shuddered at the thought.

I am going to plow through this "Modern Japanese Literature, 1868-present" book in all its tomeliness if it kills me in the process. Also reading Mother Night by Vonnegut now, that's exactly what one would expect from such a master of wit and pen. I started writing a bit more of my own fiction, although where that'll go remains to be seen. It feels a bit like bloodletting, but painful as it may be, perhaps it's necessary as well? Blogging is infinitely easier than creating worlds from bits of inspiration in my personal life.

Band practice was kick-ass today, no bones about it. Songs are getting tight. Trying to put together a proper set-list, which is harder than it was in punk/hardcore/metal bands. When every song is 1-2 minutes on average, you have to combine them and time them right, for maximum output. Gonna have a "studio live show" in November, which just means a relatively small studio space. I'll post a flyer or what-have-you when things get confirmed.

...Maybe it's less what I want to do with my life, than what life chooses to do with me?

Windows to the world

2009-09-21T00:08:00.003+09:00

Stop what you're doing for a minute. Look around. How long has the computer screen held your complete attention? How much time do you spend with your eyes deadlocked on screens every day? We have an infinite plethora of information at our fingertips, and it makes us sit completely still. I have been using computers since the age of 3, sort of like a long-running heroin addiction, but a bit less deadly. It's far too late to stop now, as I rely on them so much. But I make it a point to focus my eyes on a book, or a window, or something not on a screen for at least some decent percentage of the time I'm home. There's something missing in the computer screen, a void that you can never fill no matter how much information you harvest, levels you gain or letters you type. And that's the knowledge that everything you're experiencing is second-hand and inherently vicarious. Make use of technology, but don't forget about the value of the experience.

Carry on guys.

"Do we really need to record every boring second of our lives to prove we did it? Doesn't anybody just experience anything anymore?" - George Carlin (I might be paraphrasing, quoting from memory)

"Do not resist, it is your destiny. Have we not all become the children, the children of technology?" - Carnivore

Positive!

2009-09-18T23:07:00.004+09:00

Today was a good day. I submitted my JLPT application (6000 yen the poorer for it), had amazing students and enjoyed the beginnings of fall weather. I saw people wearing what looked like winter coats (it was like 70 and cloudy) which cracks me up. I can't wait to see my hometown again, and breath in air so cold it my body rejects it. I hope it's covered in 3 feet of snow come December.

I felt like I made a positive different in the kids I taught today. None of them were trouble, some were tired or stubborn, but as for all of them, I wonder how my actions might shape their impression of the English language or Americans in the future. Granted they have a good chance of just forgetting my existence too, but hey, I can't help feeling like I did something right. Today was a positive day.

"Silver Week" showed up much quicker than anticipated. It's a slang term that appeared just this year, to match the long-standing Golden Week series of holidays in April/May. I only get two our of the four days off, but hey, better than nothin! Terror and Winds of Plague are playing next week too... gonna be complete chaos! (or should I say kaosu?)

I'm feeling pretty braindead, My Friday night/Saturday morning combo work schedule puts me at 12 hours of teaching in a 24 period, always leaving me a bit zonked. Half-way through it now, writing ye from the trenches. The days and weeks are flying by.

I'm reading:

"The Rape of Nanking - the untold Holocaust of World War II" A really poignant account of a tragic time in the history swept under the rug, not taught in schools and downright ignored and denied to this day by the majority in Japan. Some really gruesome, terrible stuff went down between Japanese soldiers and over 260,000 thousand men, women and children, the minority of which were actually soldiers (or at least soldiers over the age of 12). It's grizzly and disturbing. A human atrocity. It's one of those things I remember reading a small paragraph about in High School History class, like the "Trail of Tears." I feel like even then I wondered: if it's so tragic an event, doesn't it deserve more than an eighth of a page?"

And on top of that, as Nick informed me this morning, the author, Iris Chang, killed herself several years after writing the book, feeling that she would be hounded for the rest of her life by ultranationalists, critics of her work, etc. And haunted by a looming depression. From what I've read on wikipedia (just now) the book is somewhat flawed, especially in the author's bias and uninformed portrayal of the modern Japanese, but nonetheless, it doesn't matter of it's 100,000 or 200,000 or 400,000 deaths, it should be remember so as not to be repeated.

Shalman Rushdie - "Shalimar the Clown" My 3rd Rushdie novel, this guy is intelligent and somewhat of a snob in his writing, but he's also surreal and convoluted in his plot constructions, which I enjoy very much. This is good so far, although it occasionally hurts my brain.

I dunno why I felt the need to write all that, but I did it anyway! It's my blog, I can do whatever I want! BOW BEFORE ME MERE INTERNET MORTALS.

...oh. You're still here? Why are you still here? You want to know about my secret plans for the future? What the hell is Ben gonna do after he is finished with his English-teaching Time in Japan?! I know you're dying to find out. Or at least I am? Hmm. Well. Recently I've been thinking about something along the lines of getting a masters in East Asian language translation.... if such a thing even exists, and studying abroad at a University in Shanghai or Hong Kong or something. I want to be fluent in speaking and writing both Japanese and Mandarin Chinese someday. I don't know why exactly, but maybe, just maybe all of this time in Japan is giving me such an uneven balance of what Asia actually is. This taste of living in a different country, it makes me want more. I want to experience living in another completely different country, and be shocked and humbled by my lack of knowledge about how things go down all over again.

It's OK mom and Dad, I'll pack my toothbrush.

"Everywhere's story is now a part of everywhere else" - Salman Rushdie.

nabebugyou - he who controls the hot pot...

2009-09-13T13:01:00.004+09:00

Nabe is a kind of traditional Japanese "stew" or "soup," popular during the winter and at izakayas (pubs/eateries), where the customers put in the raw ingredients themselves. I was having dinner at a namahage-themed izakaya (that's a Japanese demon from Akita who scares children into behaving correctly) with my students the other night, a sort of sayanora-party for one who is leaving the class, and nabe was among some of the delicious foods we ate. I've always enjoyed soup-based dishes, a good broth, and one with lots of delicious vegetables and meat is a great finish to a nice meal. There was even a nice post-nabe meal, the name of which escapes me, where extra broth is added with rice and an egg. I had an excellent time, but the main reason I mention any of this: there were two pots on the table, and each one seemed to have a kind of nabe-master, a self-proclaimed individual at the table who presumed to know the correct heat of the portable stove, when to put the ingredients in, and when to serve. I was informed by one gentleman about nabebugyou, or "he who controls the nabe," which used to be a term for an administrator to the shogunate back in the Edo period. Nowadays, it has turned into a kind of idiom for someone who takes charge of a situation. I thought that was interesting.

You can read a little more about Namahage here.

I was listening to an interview with George Carlin called "On Comedy," where he talks about his inspiration, techniques and such. I really enjoyed his talking about how "the subconscious does most of the work for us, like a potato coming up to the top of a boiling pot. 'Hey, look at that, a nice potato, let's have that for dinner.'" While I know this isn't originally his idea, it got me thinking about how I work on a creative level. I know from experience you can't force good output, it has to be there waiting to come out. All my potential in writing music or writing these words is merely the culmination of my having put them together in this broken format from the pure recesses of my subconscious. One reason I do this is for fear they'll be lost forever otherwise - which many surely are. Some people describe the creative process as a joyful one, others a pain. For me it really varies, sometimes it's a matter of "I must do this" and other times I genuinely want to express myself somehow. Blessing or curse? More like necessity.

I don't understand how people can live an enjoyable life without some experience of "the arts." Whether it's books, or music, or movies, or poetry, or painting, or even fashion, I can't comprehend an individual who lacks this need for something outside of the mundane, mathematical and wholly predictable. I like Carlin's comedy because it's shocking and insightful; I like Murakami, Rushdie and Lovecraft because they are surrealist authors who's works maintain a delicate balance between poetry and absurdity. I love my music because so many of the lyrics speak to me, or the ways I've felt or feel now, or maybe the sound of the instruments is just really well crafted. Or both. To keep myself happy, I need a slew of these things to be ever-present in my life. I'm not here to judge others, but I will say that people who are content without any of the aforementioned items or some extension of it completely blow my mind. And I meet them on regular basis. Is the world there for you to experience it, to ponder and love and wonder at it, or for you to sit listlessly as it all goes by? Maybe it sounds like I'm talking about two different things - taking action/living life and experiencing the arts, but I see them as going hand-in-hand. Living life by being a "suit and tie guy," and just doing everything you're told is hardly a life at all.

This is all a bit serious. I think about things like this a lot though. Also a lot about "next steps." A bit too much, sometimes to the point of paralysis, as I've already mentioned.

To break the intensity a bit: NFL season has started. I find watching 1 game a week to be a great exercise in turning off my brain and enjoying a strategic, brutal and unrelenting sport that is emblematic of the American spirit: Smash, take, gloat. It's a guilty pleasure, and probably the only sport I can enjoy watching, save college Basketball on occasion.

I finished my first complete "practice test" for the big Japanese exam in December, and got a 65%. Only 60% is required to pass, so this pleased me greatly. If I can hit the 75-80% margin on practice tests by November, passing will be a safe bet. And that'll be one more notch in the walking stick, so to speak. After that there's the level 1 test, which is a greater challenge in so many ways... After that is Chinese... After that is...

"Can't nobody hold me down, I gotta keep on movin"

That's not bad, it's baaad yo

2009-09-06T21:25:00.004+09:00

I recall when I was 14, 15, 16, and I used to listen to Angel, the singer of my high school band My Own Demons, describe bands to me: "That band is baaad yo." This always perplexed me. I mean, if he showed gesticulations indicating favor towards the band, then I could assume he was misusing the word bad as slang, or short for "bad-ass" or something. That was clear enough. But then, when me and James and Dan (drummer and bassist respectively) would write tunes, and he said "that's bad!" I was always terribly confused and in need of clarification.

Last night, when I saw Bishop and Loyal to the Grave at Club Era in Shimokitazawa, I was talking to Akira, who I have mentioned before in this blog. He's a devoted troycore lover and general fan of 90s-era New York Hardcore - he especially worships Cutthroat, who have a special place in my heart as well. So we were talking (in Japanese) and I asked him what bands he likes nowadays, since all his favorites are at least 10 years old - Stigmata, Dying Breed, etc. Here's a rough transcript:

例えば，このごろハードコアバンドの中で最高はテラーと思う
me: "Well, for example, I think Terror is the best hardcore band going today."

まあ，テラーは。。。ー＿ー
Akira: "Terror, no I don't really like Terror"

なんで？バリッドアライブ好きんだろう？
"Really? But don't you like Buried Alive?"

うん，そうな
"Well, yea."

同じヴォカリスと！すっげ！ライブは最高だぜ
It's the same vocalist! They destroy! They are so good live.

まあ，ライブテラーはヤベエな
Yea, live Terror are bad.

なに？つまりテラーが好きじゃない？
What? In other words you don't like Terror?

違う，そのバンドのライブはヤベエエ
No, that band is just really bad live

ちょっと待って、「ヤバい」という意味は好きじゃないんでしょう？
Wait, "bad" means you don't like them?

ちがっ、「ヤベエ」はかっこいい
No, "bad" means they are sick/cool/good

Talk about across the globe high-school flashbacks.

I also had a fun time at the show, got called "crazy" for dancing just like I always have back home (I think being the only white guy in the crowd and my size has something to do with it - lots of Japanese dudes gettin down too), and left with a slighty busted nose. All in all a good time. As an added bonus, talking to Akira and some other dudes, I got to practice my manly Japanese, which is a hell of a lot harder than it sounds - a lot of different word shortenings and speech patters are used by men only, it's a much more gender-defined language than English, in my opinion.

Today was an amazing band practice. New songs being wrapped up, studio time in the near future, and show dates being planned. January 17 is a definite, details T.B.A. Also some heavy news about the future of the band, or at least that it will be on haitus for a while next year.... :/ But I can't talk details, not yet. Still, whatever happens, it's a wild ride, and F.I.D. are 100% solid people, and some of my best friends in Japan.

This talk of change though, it makes me think about how I'm actually leaving this country behind (permanently?) some time in the future. Weird.

"Stay cold! You can't hurt me anymore" - Trapped under Ice

"Pushed to the limits of functioning human condition, my brain stem snaps from the pressure" - xBishopx

All I need's a good swift kick in the ass!

2009-09-04T23:03:00.004+09:00

I've been trying to vary my "training" at the gym lately, and I really did it this morning. Working out in the morning and working a 4-10 shift can be risky, and sure enough I was sleepy all day today. I somehow managed to pull through. I literally took a 15 minute power nap in the break-room (better called a break-closet, it's literally big enough for one person to sit down in).

No, I'm not turning into one of those bros who talks about his work-out routine. I still hate bros and jocks, that was founded in junior high and high school and will never change. I hate bullies more though. So what do I do when I see kids in my own class bullying each other? I can't very well grab him by the collar and enact street justice, now can I? This is just a broken side-rant, but dammit, dammit, dammit, I don't want to teach kids. I don't care how cute or fun they can be sometimes, I hate all the baggage that comes with it. Emotional, disciplinary and otherwise. And I'm also not a big fan of teaching rudimentary stuff, when it comes down to it. I like talking about the philosophically unknowable, the incredibly inane and the highly inappropriate. I did explain to a student what Jehovas Witness, the Amish and Mormons are the other day. That was very stirring (at least for me)

I forgot to mention I had an attempted kancho done to me for the first time the other day too. While substituting for another teacher. For anyone who doesn't know, a kancho is when you make a "gun" with your pointer and middle finger of each hand together, and try to poke the other person in the anus. As a practical joke. No, I'm not making this up, look it up if you want, I can't make this s**t up. Thankfully it was a failed attempt... I certainly don't need 6 year old girls violating me, that's wrong on HOW many levels??

Gonna go see a good show tomorrow night too. And no stinkin kids to teach tomorrow. And band practice and hiking a mountain this weekend. Could things be on the up and up?

"Save yourself, don't make a sound." - Starkweather

I want the world and a side of fries

2009-09-03T00:05:00.002+09:00

or make that potato salad. And some turkey, and mashed potatoes, and stuffing, and generous portions, and big roads, and large cars, and bigger yards, and larger communities, and SPACE, and big fat smelly egos, and 18" pizzas, and old friends, and feet of snow, and cold winters, and mild summers, and places to drive, and a chance to listen to music with my friends.

3 months until I get back to the right side of the world. I need an asia break, stat! =/

Time well spent (is?)

2009-08-31T19:12:00.003+09:00

I often have been too forward-looking. It's not a trait common in younger people, as far as I can tell, but it's how I've functioned and seen the world for as long as I can remember. Being a planner (and the slightest bit of a control freak) has its advantages: being relatively organized, spending time efficiently, feeling like my life is in order. But it also prevents me from "living in the moment" sometimes. I went to a show the other night, the first one I've really experienced in a long time (excluding something last weekend - I'll explain later). There's something still a bit awkward about being at a hardcore show - and it isn't that everyone is Asian. Yet I felt a kind of release and lack of time awareness that one can experience only through their own passions. Things that eat you alive they are so enjoyable. Things that suck up all of your mental processing power. I live for these sorts of things: reading, music, studying, exercise, spending time with friends and enjoyable conversations. Outside of these activities, I sometimes get stuck in a kind of stagnancy, thinking too much about the future or the past. Even as I write this, in the back of my mind I'm thinking about the books I put down to do so. I'm halfway through watching the Goonies as well - that's how important this blog is to me. :)

This time-management obsession is something that's part of my personality, and I don't see it changing any time soon. I can only remind myself to not let it control my life.

I woke up the other day to "salsa's here." Nick, my neighbor who moved out 4 months back, showed up unexpectedly around 9am with a jar of salsa from California, per request. I knew he was coming back, but didn't know when. It's almost surreal, and another example of how the world moves like crazy around me, but my routine and place of living have stayed the same. I like that reliability. Anyhow, Nick is back, if only temporarily before he moves for his job/school. Going for his masters in TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) at Temple University, and I say more power to ya buddy.

Last weekend, I had a ticket to see Madball. I was excited about this. Before that, I went to the gym, then went to the going away party of someone who has been here 15 years, but had to leave for job and personal reasons. He's a real cool dude with good taste in music, and for what it's worth, he was the first trainer I met when I moved to Japan (as he used to work for my company). I remember that day, so nervous, so unsure of what to expect and how it would all go down, and he made me feel strangely at home at 7pm in a bleached-white classroom setting, doing some kind of "favorite food/favorite song" survey activity, meeting my fellow trainees. A good guy, and I went to his farewell thing in Yoyogi Park to wish him the best of luck. That was quite nice, I played frisbee, watched the Yakuza and 50s-pompadour-style guys and gals dance it up in the park, and had a few drinks with some co-workers. After a while it was time to hit up the show.

But when I got there, I felt like complete shit. I had been in Yoyogi earlier, and Shibuya holds no less crowds than Harajuku on a Sunday; they are both incredibly trendy and popular spots. Not that I care about trendy or popular, but that's where the parties and hardcore shows happen. And as an important aside, I don't like big crowds. My only real experiences with places jammed with people was ever was at shows back home. Fair enough. But here, it's like crowds lurk around every corner, and when I arrived at the show to find it crowded to the point of difficulty getting around - the bottle-neck design between the bar and the merchandise tables to the main stage didn't help - I felt suffocated. Not that I'm claustrophobic, or agoraphobic, I just didn't feel like being there at that time, I'd had enough. It might have been the mid-day beer, or the lack of caffeine supplementing it, but I knew my mood and mind was set. I watched 2 bands, wasn't feeling it at all, and headed home. 4000 yen and a chance to see an NYHC band wasted, but I knew that getting away from the throngs was what felt right at that point in time.

See, I'm the kind of guy who needs my space. Seriously. I know what you're thinking: "smart move coming to Tokyo," right? Well, for the record, on my job application under desired location I wrote: "anywhere in Japan." And I prefer Osaka people and their over-the-top sense of humor to Tokyo seriousness any day! But that's besides the point.

So I was a little bummed and felt like I had wasted time and money. In retrospect though, I'd seen Madball nearly 5 or 6 times back home anyway. This weekend, I made it up by playing with kids for 3 freakin' hours and making them circle pit (they call it musical chairs, but I see a lot of resemblance), and then going to see Loyal to the Grave, Maroon and the Acacia Strain and pit it up there. This was at the exact same venue as last weekend, mind you. But my mood was entirely different. I missed xBISHOPx who I wanted to see, however they're playing Shimokitazawa next Saturday, and I'll be there with bells on. The show was an awesome time, I got to vent out my frustrations and felt a lot better.

Oh, and Sunday (yesterday) I was supposed to have band practice, but canceled it for other plans which got canceled. Do'h! Not all was lost, as I finished Remembering The Kanji volume 1!!!! That's 2043 kanji I can write. Boo freakin' yah. I expected confetti and streamers to magically appear at the time of my completion, yet none did. I love hitting milestones like this. I also finished a vocab book of about 1500 words, and will be done with my grammar book of no less than 180 grammar points this week. 3 months until the big test. I have to keep up this pace to stand any chance, so there's nothing to do but stay pumped on Japanese for the next 12 weeks. A week after my test, I'll be visiting home. I don't know if I've ever looked forward to any Christmas more in my life.

"Don't you realize? The next time you see sky, it'll be over another town. The next time you take a test, it'll be in some other school. Our parents, they want the best of stuff for us. But right now, they got to do what's right for them. Because it's their time. Their time! Up there! Down here, it's our time. It's our time down here." - Goonies

P.S. This marks the beginning of chapter 7. Why? Because it's typhooning a bit outside.

It's not Gaijin, it's Gaikokujin!

2009-08-27T12:48:00.002+09:00

Gaijin: 外人. Written with the characters for outside and person. Shortened from Gaikokujin, 外国人, literally outside-country-person. While it's become popular slang to call foreigners the former, it isn't quite "politically correct." (let us suspend disbelief that such a concept could actually exist in Japan) Literally translated it means "outsider," but more often than not people see it as a harmless term for foreigner. Popular usage, the in thing. Many foreigners happily refer to themselves as this; our I.D. cards are called "Gaijin cards" by most; and I've even heard other foreigners talk about getting "gaijined," meaning stereotyped or some such thing. Ex: "I got gaijined on the train again, when I sat down the lady next to me got up and moved to another seat." It's got to be one of the first words a foreigner learns here. I even saw a video recently of youtubers sharing their favorite Japanese word, some of which was funny, some of which was just plain sad. What sticks in my mind is a guy saying: "My favorite word is Gaijin, because that's what I am." I thought to myself: How many people have no idea of the possible implications of the word, or that it's even slang, and not proper Japanese?

Some background on this entry: A few weeks ago I was having dinner with a Japanese friend, and her other "gaijin" friend. This girl was part Filipino, part-Chinese, and part-something else I don't remember. She had grown up in Japan, most likely experiencing a lot of discrimination due to her being so incredibly different and not Japanese - although, to the untrained Western eye she would hardly look different at all. She is the one who got me thinking. While we were eating, my Japanese friend said Gaijin, and the other girl somewhat sternly corrected her on it. "Gaikokujin." At first I thought "what's the big deal?" But I got to wondering what Chinese, Filipino, Brazilians or any other creed for that matter must experience growing up here. And how much weight language can carry, oblivious to many who use it, propelling ideas or even stereotypes they are totally unaware of. Think back on the term nergo; Does anyone say this anymore? No. Why? Because it's genuinely offensive and carries with it older ideas about segregation of blacks. I've seen Japanese referred to as "Japs" only in fiction, (Jappu ジャップ) but apparently that word still carries some weight. I can only imagine what the old WW2 vets would think if they heard it being thrown around.

As for me, Gaijin is not an offensive term. This is the case for most foreigners. But next time you use this word, or any word, think about the implications it may have to those around you. I mean, I used lots of slang in my speech, I especially enjoy comedy that deals with racy issues, like race, gender, class, society, etc. I've been on a huge George Carlin kick lately. But that's besides the point. Just take a minute to think about where what your saying comes from, and how it might be received by the other. This isn't about being completely P.C., it's about not being completely ignorant to the world around you.

"We're just a bunch of monkeys spinning on a rock around the sun."

Bear with me while I bear with me

2009-08-19T20:17:00.003+09:00

Summer vacation is over as of tonight. It was a full 2 weeks, so I should feel satisfied. I went to the beach in Zushi, Kanagawa prefecture on Saturday, and spent 2 days in Nikko. I got to see some famous things, like some waterfall named after a dragon and lake Chuzenji. And Toshogu temple. There was NemuriNeko (the sleeping cat), sansaru (the three monkeys - hear no see no speak no evil), and exotic food called yuba, the skin off of tofu. The mountain air was crisp, cool and refreshing. I took some pictures with my cell phone, having forgotten my digital camera, but I don't feel like uploading them right now. Mwahahahaaaaaa!

Man have I gotten lazy about pics or what? Sorry guys. It was easy when everything here was shiny and new and I didn't have so much else on my plate.

This learning Chinese one day a week thing is certainly interesting. I go to work a few hours early (or rather the city I work in that day) to meet my teacher, and we do a language exchange. So far I have learned the general rules of thumb for reading Pinyin, "the standard system of romanized spelling for transliterating Chinese." I'd like to spend more time focusing on it, but really I practice only once a week. I hardly feel guilty or anything, since I spend so much time on Japanese.

My friend and neighbor who was in my training group has moved back to the States today. I was kind of bummed out, as this now makes zero white people or friends in my building - not that I have anything against my Japanese neighbors, but they are all really shy - and Dayn has been here for the exact same duration as me. Watching people disappear, and soon watching new people pour in, as there is a new training group starting this week, is certainly odd. I don't really know how to describe it.... maybe a dual axis. The world is spinning fast enough around me - I live in Tokyo for pete's sake - but relatively speaking everything stays still. I stay still. And people come into my sphere and leave almost haphazardly, whilst I go about my business. It's disorienting in a way, and I fail to see how anyone could get used to this.

It was quite a shock to be in Nikko, in a place where trains run only once or twice an hour. I'm used to every 3-7 minutes. I'd been thinking for a while how much of a pain this city can be, and how I subtly wished for a quieter life in the country, but this really opened my eyes to the reality of how boring country life appears to be. It looks gorgeous on the surface, but in comes the feeling of being trapped out in the countryside.

Here is where all the opportunities are. Here is where I am employed, have a band, and have a few cool friends. So I should be happy here, for the time being.

I've almost learned to write 2000 kanji. I can taste impending victory. According to Anki, my friendly flashcard study tool, I've spent 2.59 days on this deck of cards. (I have others...) 12,052 reviews, counting each time I reviewed each card. !!

My teacher noted today that I'm making less mistakes than before with my grammar practice. And I'm noticing things like comics becoming gradually easier to read, and sometimes I can go through quite a few sentences of Japanese text without needing a dictionary. It's like all I needed was this vacation and a few days off to really look at the progress I've made. Still, gotta keep the motivation up, and pass that JLPT2 test in December. Or die tryin!

There is one F.I.D. show planned, though it isn't until January. It's a long ways off, and probably there will be something before that. We are close...

I am close. Closer to comprehension of a foreign language, closer to finally playing a show, closer to breaking through this stage of my life.

"It was always worth it, that's the part I seem to hide." - Modest Mouse

"Uuugggh.... Turn that treble up!!" - Loss of Reason

"You wanna see pissed off? I'll show you pissed off like you've never f**kin seen!" - Burnt by the Sun

I won't stop screamin'

2009-08-14T15:34:00.003+09:00

Lately I've been getting in touch with friends back home for the first time in many, many long months. My life over here has, for lack of a better term taken on a life of its own. I have made some good friends out here, but of course NY and my homies are still number 1 in my heart. Now that things have slowed down at last with vacation, it's just good to be reminded that home still exists outside this place... since living here everyday makes it rather easy to forget about the rest of the world! (At least when one is busy, as I have been)

Has my posting been melancholy, or emo or something? Well, since Ian hugged me, there is now nothing I can't accomplish. Maybe it's the beef and onions I just ate talking here, but the next few days should be really sweet. Meeting a lady friend tonight (ooOOoo), going to the beach in Zushi (an hour from Tokyo, in Kanagawa) on Saturday, and going to Nikko from Sunday to Tuesday. It sounds a bit busy but it should all be quite relaxing, I'll get to spend time with friends, and most importantly get out of this city!!!! It's so necessary to stay sane.

Other than that, my downtime has been so needed. I've been reading Haruki Murakami's "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle," and I'm totally into it. Too bad it's 600 freakin' pages, a.k.a. too fat to lug around on trains, and too long for me to finish any time soon. But I'm tryin!

Studying has become really burdensome. Maybe without mind-numbing work to balance it, it seems like more of a chore, I don't know, but I'm feeling in danger of burnout. I look at my flashcards and don't want to look at them (hence this post). It could be a result of me trying really hard but not seeing visible improvement that I want - a problem frequent at the schools I work at, where people study English full-time. But we can't expect miracles can we!

Really, I just want to be able to understand what people are saying in everyday conversations. But it takes years to get that good. My reading is actually pretty decent by the way. I read a 700-page manga monthly serial almost cover to cover, minus 3 or 4 series. I was very proud of myself. :D

Let's make this a posi-negative-posi sandwich: I am also setting up a benefit show for research about the disease my 2 sisters have, NBIA. I haven't yet mentioned much about it in the blog, although of course it's a big part of my life. You can read more about it at www.nbiadisorders.org. The only lab that does major full-time research on this rare genetic disease is in danger of shutting down, and we're trying to raise a whopping $250,000 to save the lab. It sounds near impossible, but 10,000 is already in. And I plan to get up to 5,000 more at the benefit show this December. More details coming soon, but I expect ALL my friends from back home to be there. :)

That's all folks.

"CHAPTER ONE

analyze the devices
war with thee
pieces of your destiny corrupted
rise
thriving
can you verify the lost contents

CHAPTER TWO

gravel lodged in your throat
flesh box cavity
gradual eruption probe
one that feeds
hands that caress a crooked spine
absorbing bi-products
prompt exchanges
that will deconstruct

CHAPTER THREE

move on forward
signs that will pierce like labor pains
sharp
ways of a drunkard
the dogs shall devour and lap up their blood
stains

CHAPTER FOUR

persist
the prime suspects will not restrain
with affection
recession
final effects of a broken hope
of a broken shell
of a broken yoke
walk and learn from these
deviant
loss of wealth
subservient
quarantine the divisions
the double edged sword
depth incision

CHAPTER FIVE

glutton eat your fill
divination is that of a swine babbling in their filth
beware of the things hibernating in your skull
reeking havoc
malignant cells still active
schemes that will inflict my son
schemes that run rampant

CHAPTER SIX

if the disease of self
leaves a heavy burden on your soul
it must be removed
like bricks in the belly
you will sink in to the depths" - Candiria, 300 percent Density. (still one of my favorite albums of all time)

Stuck in "teacher mode"

2009-08-12T11:16:00.003+09:00

Everyone knows "you are what you eat." When I was a kid with epilepsy, I liked the stickers that said "epilepsy is what I have, not who I am." Today's post has a little something to do with both. Being on vacation - an almost unreal experience after working so much and being in such a steady routine - has given me some time to reflect on an issue of autonomy that's been bugging me for a while: People stuck in teacher mode.

When teaching a class or a small group, a person is more often than not forced into creating a kind of psuedo-personality. This is done to entertain the group and to draw attention to the points being taught. At my company they call it: "turning it on. No matter how tired or sick or down you may feel, you have to be able to just turn it on." I've gotten pretty good at this. It's like hitting a switch in my brain, where my goofy personality becomes more extroverted, and I become more interested in what students have to say than I would be were I listening to them off the clock. (Bear in mind that English conversation school are more about getting students to talk than giving them lectures)

This kind of listening-to-people-talk-about-whatever-they-want can sometimes lead to touchy topics - I've heard our job jokingly referred to as underpaid psychiatrists; Although in actuality, it's quite true. There are times I've heard of students crying in classes about recently deceased relatives, hugging teachers, a lot of reaching out and things that obviously don't belong in the language classroom in theory, but find there way there in practice. There are people who are lonely and have no one to talk to. There are mentally disturbed students whose family won't pay them heed, and who find solace in the classroom, where for 40 minutes they are 1 to 1 with another human being. I heard a story of a female student who would make breakfast and dinner for her husband, and in between those 10 hours she would just ride the yamanote train (the main circular line around Tokyo) around and around for hours on end, until her English lesson. Then ride it for hours again.

It takes all kinds. You get lots of interesting people, and lots of needy people, and a few downright weird people in this job. An example of the weird: There's a warm-up activity I do, a word game where you make a new word with the last letter of the previous word. Like cat -> tree. I had an incredibly quiet and shy student, I started with something like trick, and he put down knife. KNIFE. That isn't even a k sound!! Can you spell "sociopath?"

So how do the teachers adjust to this, and how does it effect our lives and personalities, is the question I'm concerned with today. I know one guy in particular who has been doing this job for over 15 years - the type who has a family, kids etc. Talking to him is like talking to a brick wall. Maybe it fools students, but the kind of "uh huh, uh huh" response I've gotten almost any time I've said words to him has been like an overly dignified "I'm pretending to listen but have absolutely no interest in what your saying" response. Then if you do manage a sentence out of him, it's like a rushed barrage of words with the purpose of denying his involvement in the conversation in the first place. It wouldn't come across that way to a lot of students, so I wonder if he's even aware of it. But to me it's a classic case of letting your occupation become who you are, and applying your teacher-mode excessively outside of the class room. The same kind of problem as a smarty-pants know-it-all type who acts like he always knows more than you about everything and is always talking down to you. No one wants to be friends with that guy.

It doesn't end there, and it's not an isolated case. For my own part, all this work with "English conversation" has gotten me thinking a lot about how conversations work. Sometimes outside of work, I feel like a conversation is arduous, or like I'm teaching a lesson. I even glance at the clock like I do at work, trying to figure out how to budget my time, which is totally out of place and wrong. I have to remember to separate my work mode from my own personality. Otherwise I'll end up just like that guy, never receptive, always putting on airs in social situations, leading to unnecessary friction and blocking communication.

"Look out, see life goes around you, the routine becomes what you are. Look out, see all the mistakes, that you'll be makin 100 times more" - Sick of it All

"Now that's hardcore"

2009-08-08T23:46:00.003+09:00

Hardcore has become a label for a subgenre of somewhat trendy music. The idea came from separating it from radio-friendly trash or wanna-be hair-bands in the 80s though. I forget where I heard it, maybe the "American Hardcore" documentary, but it was something along the lines of: "Yea, you'll like this band, they're really hardcore." Hardcore punk just means real punk. Not something with an image for the sake of it, not a cash machine, but something you feel with all your heart and do because you love it.

I've come to realize in years though that the line between faking the punk and living hardcore is not so black and white. Tonight, I went to my first hardcore show in almost 6 months. That's amazing, because back home I used to go to a show almost every weekend - granted I cut it down to once a month, once every other month at times - but I'd been steadily attending shows and "part of the scene" if you will ever since I was 17. And in fact I'd been going to shows since I was 14, but not having a car or money can be a surprising hindrance on making it to gigs.

Anyway, I must have seen over 1000 shows if I add them all together. Tonight was something like my 7th or 8th in Japan. I got offered a guest list spot by my friend Koba - or as I have named him COBRA - so I decided why not see some new bands. I was especially interested in Doggy Hoods, a band sounds kind of like Bulldoze and other oldschool NY hardcore bands. But I'll get to that later.

It's been sweltering, and I mean it, 90 degree heat with 90% humidity, for what seems like an eternity. I really had to push myself to even leave the apartment, but thanks to my patented Gaining Ground tank-top I felt slightly less hampered. I made the trains, and walked into the belly of the beast, downtown Shinjuku, a.k.a. Kabukicho. That's where ACB, the venue is located, and it also happens to be a district infamous for it sleaze, Visual-K acts (poofy-hair boy bands), host and hostess clubs, and even more sleaze. It oozes it. Also it's always dumb-crowded, at least 10% with tourists. I saw a line stretching around the corner and coming back again of over 100 people waiting to get into what looked like a new McDonalds. I laughed out loud, unable to control myself, at the sheer ridiculousness of it. This is a sub-rant about how, deep down, I loathe the big city and secretly wish I was living anywhere else in Japan. It's the place with the most opportunity, but at the cost of many souls I should think.

"MONEY STINKS MONEY STINKS, THIS CITY STINKS" - D.R.I.

So I got to the venue. The club, or "livehouse" if you wanna use Janglish, is 3 stories underground, my biggest qualm with the place. Otherwise its great: no security, a knee-high stage perfect for diving, and a nice dance floor. About the size of Valentines back in Albany, for you NY people. I saw 3 or 4 bands that can best be described as melodic hardcore - all interesting enough, but none of them striking my fancy. I hadn't been to a show in half a year and thought hey, I need to mosh, it's long overdue. Give me something that sounds closer to a sledgehammer breaking a watermelon in half on a concrete cinderblock, not this boy-girl makeout music. (Not that it was that soft, or bad, but I wasn't feeling it)

Then Doggy Hoods played. The sampled a rap song and walked out with custom Nike sneakers hanging by knotted laces around their necks. They all wore matching shirts with a crown design (incredibly campy by American standards but it seems to be cool here). The singer at one point busted out into a freestyle which had me laughing in tears. They had a big fat guy drinking a cola surge energy drink on the side of the stage, almost just for the sake of standing there and grooving (maybe he's a former sumo wrestler or something, I dunno but he was slapping his gut every time he laughed). They were heavy and tight, and even covered Slayer's "Reign in Blood," which I got a kick out of.

My main point in all this is Doggy Hoods were almost exactly what I expected. They played fast and slow parts, I danced and a lot of the crowd got down, it was crazy and wild and all that. But hardcore? What's passionate about neon-green sneakers? What's truely moving about wearing matching clothes and dog tags around your neck? Just like in the states, I thought to myself, it's a fashion before passion wasteland.

I've come to realize however that fashion and image is a necessary evil with any genre of music, or any band. People have expectations, and if they are fulfilled to the nines, they are much happier than they would be with a surprise 20-minute freeform Jazz odyssey. Go figure.

Even I was happy. But, I think I'm growing up. Dammit. Seeing kids pile-on for sing-alongs and do stagedives still makes me smile, but unless it's a band I'm really into, I don't feel the same passion I used to a few years back. It's like a spark that faded little by little, coinciding with the disillusion of adulthood. I think there's great merit to people singing alike words with perfect strangers (even if there's no melody, DAD), dancing and doing what feels right, just letting lose and forgetting their troubles in creative expression for a while. It goes back to our primitive roots. But the real wacky part is, like I said to one guy, almost everyone in Tokyo moshes just like people in NY! It's like Bizarro Albany where everyone is Asian!

Now that I've spoiled the brooding mood and seriousness of this post, allow me to end with an extra special anecdote or 2.

1) I pointed out to a guy in a Boston redsox hat and black shirt with Brooklyn on it the irony in his clothing, but he didn't get it. He did proceed to say "You look like Raybeez" and to call me Raybeez for the rest of the night. I took that as a compliment.

2) As I mentioned, I was wearing my Gaining Ground stuff. My buddy Koba knows em, but I didn't expect anyone else to. (Koba and the Loyal to the Grave dudes love NYHC) But I met one guy who recognized it, he even knew where they were from! ALBANY! HE KNEW ALBANY! At which point I looked to the sky and thanked God for all his good blessings. Oh, and did I mention it's really annoying how no one here has a concept that lives down the street from a parsec of a clue as to New York outside of NYC? And how I try to avoid saying where I'm from, because countless times I've gotten the "I think, New York is such big city, how do you live there?" response which makes me want to cry and scream at the same time? No? Well, that's the case.

ANYWAY, this guy knew GG, and he had seen them in concert in Canada last summer. This is a fairly local band who have only done one major tour outside of the U.S. at all, and this was a Tokyoite 6000+ miles from home I was talking to, so it made me happy. That concludes our broadcast.

"1492

can someone explain to me
why we dedicate a day
to a fucking rapist
are we that disillusioned
that we've forgotten how to read
and when we do
we look past the facts

as a whole
we refer to knowledge learned in basic education
reciting songs
of faithful voyage
and sugar coated exploration

and we continue to celebrate
and we continue to praise his name
but we look past the genocide
we look past the fucking rape

but why dont we teach our children
why do we plague them half the fact
they see a loyal captain
i see a filthy fucking rat

were cultured to be content
were brought up to abide
the aincient ropes that tie us together
are made of rotting lies

with our minds
so young
we become
so numb

social manipulation
we continue to celebrate
social manipulation
and we look past the fucking rape" - Gaining Ground

What in the worlds?

2009-07-31T23:05:00.005+09:00

My eyes feel like they're on fire - it's really just the results of not enough sleep and being stuck inside with florescent lighting all day. And perhaps the 2 hours of commuting I did today. I love the school I work at on Fridays, everyone there is really sweet, even the little brats are downright angelic. But I got to thinking about how, when all is said and done, it's something close to 100 hours of my life I will have spent on those trains, just for one day of work, in a year. Crazy.

But I keep myself occupied. I've been listening to a Professor's series of lectures on Viking history which has me intrigued. Learning a little about Norse mythology, to say nothing of its immense impact on Tolkien, all kinds of fiction and popular culture as a whole, is really interesting, and makes me want to learn more. I've always had a kind of fascination with oral tradition, and I think undocumented story-telling is still an amazing and under-rated kind of art form. I do it quite a bit, on the job and off - Although some may call them anecdotes. They are hardly epics, anyhow.

MMbbeeewwe.e I have 3 more working days until vacation. Almost home free, except for the not going home part. (Not till Xmas) I survived unhealthy amounts of overtime, and I'm thinking of how to pick up some part-time shticks on my vacation... am I insane? Possibly. Do I enjoy the idea of saving for Graduate school? Probably. Do I ask an unnecessary amount of rhetorical questions to push this entry along? Poweruply.

I have been taking note about some really interesting Japanese loan words, words taken from English, that somehow didn't retain their original meaning. Examples include:

kaninngu, from cunning. In Japanese it means a cheater. I found out by incorrectly using it and almost hurting some poor lady's feelings in the process.

yubikitasu, from ubiquitous. It is strictly used for Ubiquitous computing, something I knew nothing of until Wikipedia enlightened me on the subject.

puchi. Petite. This one means the same thing, it's just a funny adaption.

That's just a small part of the mysterious pandora's box I opened when I began studying Japanese. When asked to explain my passion for the language, I overuse the term snowballing to be certain. But it fits. Who knew it would snowball to such great heights as it has, slingshotting me halfway across the freakin world, Where on earth would I be now if I hadn't taken Japanese on a whim thanks to Rich's suggestion and my anger at buying Yu Yu Hakusho VHS tapes on ebay with Chinese subtittles. (That's a partly true story)

I'm going to a shabu shabu party tomorrow night. Shabu shabu is a kind of thinly sliced meat boiled quickly and dipped in a sauce, and is also a kind perverse Japanese slang which I won't get into.

I hope this entry has been entertaining. I feel like so much of my energy has gone into other things, this blog has lost some of it's luster. I can get it back if I put some effort into it though. Sweet dreams, world at large.

"This time I won't let em have anything from me." - Guns Up!

"It was only a kiss, how did it end up like this?" - The Killers

"Then against my better judgement I went walking out that door
I smiled at one person then I nodded to three more
One man asked me for a dollar, I asked him, "What's it for?"
He said, "I have seen them" I said, "OK, it's yours"" - Clutch

Little worlds

2009-07-20T20:17:00.005+09:00

"Little worlds inside pages
save us all from each other
from the speech of another.
Little words inside places
without substance disguising
our discontent rising,
we hold fast to the pages."

For a change of pace, there's something I wrote to start off the entry. Like it or leave it, I know I most likely couldn't be bothered to read someone else's poetry. Maybe that's why I usually write short poems, and have usually failed at short stories or novels... or maybe it's my short attention.... span.

The other day I came home to an unexpected guest. Or rather several dozen of them. But let me backtrack: The week before I had seen a cockroach rear its ugly head in the corner of my room, and sprayed him down with the quickness of Apollo. This foe was simpler and slower, but much more ubiquitous and took some thinking to kill. That's right readers, after a long day of work and such I came home to find around 40 or 50 tiny black ants mulling around in different places on my floor. I only noticed one or two at first (I had seen a few the day before, but had foolishly thought little of it), but when I sat down at my desk and felt one crawl onto my foot, I knew it was a problem that require immediate attention. I began frantically squashing them one by one, until finally I found the source: A tiny hole, perhaps the size of a pencil point, behind my dresser (I live on the 2nd floor of my building). I gassed the hole with my roach-killing spray, and after a quick trip to the convenience store came back and glued the thing shut with super industrial glue.

The only problem was I did this last bit too hastily and glued some small pieces of tissue paper to my fingers. Wah Wah Wah. I managed to get them off with some hot water though. All crisis averted. There's your anecdote of the month.

Things I've been reading:

-American Psycho. A thoroughly disgusting but intriguing book. Could have done without the graphic descriptions, both of people being dismembered and of suit jackets and name brands. But it was interesting to see where the movie came from, and some of the dark humor was particularly amusing.

-The People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn has been an informative and enlightening learning experience for me (big props to my favorite blog, Audiobook Corner, for providing the goods). It focuses on the rebellions, the Government corruption, and everything else they try and make light of in textbooks. Despite having been brought up in a post-"Cowboys killed Injuns because they were bad" society, I know my school history books were bias, as any are. Zinn said something along the lines of: "Any history that portrays a people's mentality as united is disguising inner conflicts and struggles of ideology." He denies the idea of the consciousness of a state, and basically tells history from the lesser heard voices. While inevitably romanticizing the plight of some of history's less fortunate, it's definitely well-worth reading, and reminds us all of the important academic, but also real world-applicable lesson: Never trust just one source.

-Lord of the Rings. An awesome version on audiobook I'd recommend to any fan. Just been doing a few chapters a week after the gym, really helps clear my mind of crapola.

-Various manga, probably not worth delving into in detail: Eyeshield 21, Yotsuba, Azumanga Daioh, Higanjima (a vampire horror manga that my friend turned me on to), and some others in a monthly manga called Gessan (Get the Sun) that my friend also has generously lent me. Thanks Dayn.

- Textbooks. Grammar, Kanji and Vocabulary textbooks. Can't I just know like 20,000 words already and get it over with?

-Dialogue boxes in Dragon Quest 9. I keep my dictionary handy at all times, but general comprehension is pretty good!

I'm almost done with this month of 6 day weeks, and in roughly 2 weeks my 2 week vacation will start!! I'm earnestly looking forward to all that. And band practice next weekend. Speaking of the band, I had my last lesson with Kana last night before her big TOEIC test this week, and I think she'll do well! We've been doing lessons for something like 6 months now, maybe longer? Also speaking of the band, I should really record and mp3 these song ideas before I forget so we can have a more productive practice next week. じゃね！

points points points

2009-07-15T00:45:00.003+09:00

This humidity is sucking the life out of me. I arrived at the tail-end of it last year, but man, I was in no way prepared for this nonsense! Rainy season is over and the blistering heat is coming out in full force. 90 degree weather during the day. Right now it's almost 1am, and the humidity is 94%. Utterly disgusting!

But one has to pay to play. And play I have - I've been restricting myself to Japanese video games lately, as an attempt to study study study because the JLPT (Japanese Proficiency Test) that is looming closer in December is not by any stretch of the imagination an easy one. But, if I keep at it every day until then, I feel like I'll have a good chance of passing it, or at least doing well enough that by July it would be a breeze. (The test is given only twice a year) The criteria is as follows:

"The examinee has mastered grammar to a relatively high level, knows around 1,000 kanji and 6,000 words, and has the ability to converse, read, and write about matters of a general nature. This level is normally reached after studying Japanese for around 600 hours and after completion of an intermediate course."

I already know more kanji than that!! And I've been studying for 3 years. I don't keep track, but I sure feel like I've put more than 600 hours into Japanese-related activities. And my grammar is all coming along well, but vocabulary is my biggest weakness. It's like every sentence is a puzzle, where I know the outline, and the shape, and even the tone and the inference, but not the subject, or perhaps not the object. Consequently I spend a lot of my time studying new vocabulary, in hopes of succeeding. I can feel the hard work paying off, although days like today: 2 hour gym sessions, 4 hour study sessions and 6 hour work shifts leave me totally wrecked. But wrecked in a good way that makes me feel accomplished. And I sleep pretty well.

I didn't even mention: Dragon Quest 9, the latest in Japan's most popular gaming franchise ever - yes, even moreso than Mario - came out last weekend. It's awesome and I'm playing it with a dictionary in hand at most times, and only getting about 50%-60% of the dialogue, but it's still really good fun.

Lots of good shows around the corner - Madball, Acacia Strain & xBishopx, and Terror, all in the next few months. And some shows coming up from F.I.D. in the near future for sure. Speaking of which, here's a picture of me and the band:

That's Kanako (bass) me (duh) Tomoko (drums) and Makiko (vocals), respectively.

And that is just about that. I'm trying to beat the heat, and survive the brutal Tokyo summer, but having a good time doing it. Also looking forward to my 2 week paid vacation, less than a month away!

"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve." - Bilbo Baggins, Lord of the Rings

"I had a dream of a wall that was 21 stories tall" - Bad Religion

"You're all the same, hollowed out for the piper to play." - xBishopx

Archery, ping pong and fencing in a one room apartment.

2009-07-08T10:09:00.002+09:00

I picked up Wii Sports Resort this weekend, and I am really satisfied with it! The new "wii motion plus" controls definitely make up for where it was lacking before - now movement is less constricted and more natural. And I can finally have a sword fight in my dinky room!

Yesterday I had these students who come every week - they are two middle-aged women who laugh at almost everything that is said for no real reason. They're both very pleasant and we talked about Wii Sports Resort and the last One Piece movie (that's a super-popular anime/comics franchise in Japan). One of them was saying how the "voice actor" for Chopper and Pikachu is the same. Total nerd stuff, but only in Japan would you hear housewives saying something like that! My own otaku-like interests often give me good talking points with students. I had an 8 year old bring up Bobobo yesterday, and I asked her if she liked manga. "Yes, but my parents won't let me read it" is roughly the equivalent of what she said. I've also met other parents who say they don't let their children read comics at all. I find it surprising, and although some kids out here are so obviously spoiled rotten, others really have to earn their chips, to make the grade. Otherwise they won't get their new life-size gundam or samsung 50-inch t.v. or designer 5000 yen t-shirts.

I read an article that Tokyo is "the most expensive city for expatriates." Yea, but it's also one of the coolest places to live! Even if the trains smell like... unmentionables. And since the economy is generally strong, the yen is also worth something compared to the dollar, unlike the Korean Won or Chinese.... what do they use?

Hmmm. Well that encompasses everything I wanted to say. I have Japanese class today, then work in bustling Shinjuku. So here's hoping that today is a good day like yesterday. As I'm sure I mentioned before, this month is all 6-day weeks, so between work and studying I'm on the run a bit. Feels good to be busy. Good night America.

"I wish I could be the name on your lips, for only one moment of bliss. I wish you could see the paper thin-scars" - Blood Has Been Shed

4th of Ju-wha?

2009-07-04T00:31:00.004+09:00

I had completely forgotten about Independence Day until literally 2 days ago. It's understandable, me living over here on the other side of the world where there are no July holidays except "Marine Day," but still mildly disconcerting. I suppose it was never a very exciting holiday anyway - the best part was watching fireworks from my Ma's back porch, or in the street since we lived on a hill. And eating hamburgers. But I was never too big on the celebrations anyhow.

There are also August fireworks for O-ban (summer festivals) I am thinking about attending. Maybe an adequate substitute?

Regardless, happy 4th of July my fellow Americanos!

Looking back.... almost 1 year of "Escape from New York"

2009-07-02T09:42:00.004+09:00

So maybe only John Torn has been with me since the beginning, but I've been doing this blog for almost a year. What does that mean? It's an accomplishment of sorts, to have kept writing steadily for a year. It also means I've almost been living in Japan for near on one whole year, which is both humbling and scary at the same time.

I took a few minutes to go back and read some of my first posts on this blog this morning. How have my opinions changed, how have I changed? Not so much as I had expected, or at least not noticeably. Though I suppose when one is around oneself all the time one cannot detect the minute differences, can one?... Ahem. But it did make me feel nostalgic about playing in Damnation Alley, my last music project in NY, and one of the funnest bands I've ever done. And JT, if you're reading this, weekend tour, when I'm home, some time between December 13-January 3rd, MAKE IT HAPPEN BRO. Me and Rich are on board!

Anyway, here's a snippet of what I'm talking about: (god I can feel the pretentiousness just oozing from me by quoting myself)

"This process of raging is how I'd like to define all the music I've ever written, but especially this last project, possibly my last New York-based band for a long time. We had so much fun writing and hanging out together, that it almost feels a shame to stop now. But, with Josh moving to Oregon in 2 weeks, and me moving in 5, it's time to say goodbye to the NY music scene, which is basically the same as saying goodbye to family and friends. I've made so many great friends along this wild ride. It was in hardcore music I found people I could finally relate to, words that meant something to me, and inspiration to stop taking life as it came and start changing things for the better. ...although past projects have had rather underwhelming results they have all meant the world to me, and been some of the most fun that I have ever had in my life."
- from this dinosaur of a post.

I still rage all the time, yet sadly, don't attend shows nearly as often as I'd like. I can't wait to be doing it the right way, where my band plays the show so I don't have to fork over 3500 yen at the door. And comparing Damnation Alley, my last band, with F.I.D., my current band, is about as apples and oranges as you can get. Two totally different styles, totally different genders, totally different cultures. But they both shared one thing, and that's the fun of writing and creating something - oh, and they're both composed of stand-up dudes and ladies.

Even more embarrassing is looking back on my very first post (you don't want to, trust me) and to see what my goals were. Did I keep the blog free of whininess? As much as possible, but a guy has to complain now and then. Did I keep it un-work related? As much as possible, but work is such a huge part of my life, it can't just be totally ignored. Did I keep it true to my feelings and has it been an outlet that makes me feel a bit more connected with my loved ones back home, and the random people who read it but never say anything? That is where the greatest success has been, for sure.

I have lost my train of thought. Um. I am in a bit of a rush this morning, second Chinese lesson, then I'm going on a quest to find Frank's Red Hot or some facsimile thereof at a foreign food store, and finally work. It's gonna be a full day, I already know that. So let's stop here for now.

"It's an old trick, writing of life as if you really had an angle on it. I do it myself. I even admire my own piss when I'm pissing... piss and writing, we're closest to our own." - Charles Bukowski, "Piss and Shit."

"Another day, another year, so what's the hurry?" H20

"I never want to feel that way, I never want to hear those words again" - Skycamefalling

P.S. I keep forgetting to click the "publish" button when I read my comments - so if you're wondering why yours haven't shown up, sorry! I really like hearing from people through here. :)

If only every day could be just like today.

2009-06-28T20:18:00.002+09:00

Today was awesome. I got up and went to the gym at 9:45, right when it opened. I pushed myself to do as much as I could and got out at 11:00. I made some a green pepper and garlic omelette with bacon for breakfast, and then went to Shinjuku for F.I.D. practice. To those who don't remember (or never read my older posts), here is a recap:

-F.I.D. is a band I'm in. It used to be all girls, but through several strokes of luck I was able to take the place of the previous guitarist.

-For family reasons, the drummer has been out for almost a year

-Today was my first practice with the drummer - before it had always been me, the bass player and singer practicing to a tape, which was lame but we had no choice.

Roughly 9 months ago, I met the drummer Tomoko and bassist Kanako for the first time. Since then my Japanese has of course gotten significantly better, so communication during practice wasn't much of a problem. The real struggle was in certain music terms like "measure" and "3/4 timing." But regardless, Tomoko played amazing. It was everything I hoped it would be, us 3 jamming out tunes almost perfect on the first try, which is really something considering I've barely practiced them in 3 or 4 months (although I learned them by heart then) and Tomo hadn't hit anything but a practice pad in almost a year! We also wrote 2 songs. I'm so freakin' excited about writing more and playing shows. We all get along and have that chemistry that is necessary for a band - I've seen it flow before, and this is definitely going to be something good.

After that, we all got caught unawares by Japan's sneaky rainy season. It had been sunny and beautiful this morning, and turned sloshy and wet by the time we left the practice studio around 4. We all got pretty soaked, and me and Kana were off to do our language exchange, as we've done every week for almost 6 months now. She's taking the TOEIC next month - that's the big English exam which, if you nail a good score on it, can get you an awesome, good-paying job. It also haunts Japanese people's nightmares, I'm sure. Much like the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) does for me.

Anyway, the wind and rain picked up severely, and we shared one cheap umbrella, both of us with guitars on our backs. Kana's bass unfortunately got a bit damp, turns out my case is soft but water-proof though. We had a good lesson and I've almost half finished with my current Japanese grammar book, which is good progress. I also read some Eyeshield 21 (Japanese American Football manga) on the train. And I'm now totally exhausted.

I really wish everyday could be spent working out, jamming, and studying. As cool as my job usually is, I'm really here to learn, not to teach English. So I feel obligated to make the most of my free time.

Speaking of studying, I started a new blog that will make absolutely no sense to 99% of you out there (only if you're an avid student of Japanese). It's about using spatial memory tricks to group Japanese characters with the same reading together and learn them all at once. Many of these groups range from 10-characters to 50 or 60, all with the exact same pronunciation - Japanese is full of homonyms. Have I lost you yet? It's kind of cool though, because I'm using something some dude on the internet invented called the movie method, where you take one movie to mean one pronunciation, and associate each character with a scene or aspect of the movie. It sounds totally convoluted, but actually works! And is a great excuse to watch a movie. I'm working on doing this with Gran Torino now - that was probably the best movie I saw all last year compared to the Wrestler.

While I was writing this my Mother called, and I got to talk with her, my Aunt and my cousin for a bit. I miss you all! My mother also wrote a beautiful piece about her some recent struggles in her life, maybe I will link in the future. Most moving thing I've heard in a while. As far as heroes go, I think Moms are far under-rated.

Mr T. thinks so too:

It's like you never knew

2009-06-25T23:52:00.006+09:00

Recently, I've had the pleasure of hanging out with and talking a few really nice and interesting women.

One of them is involved in some kind of psycho-analysis doctorate, the other is looking to enter a law school in America. These are people I feel some kind of connection with, and can talk to with ease. One of them recently finished school in America and has been here a year - she has inherited a kind of American-attitude that has made relating to her coworkers and peers difficult. The problem is that, in the Japanese business setting, you aren't supposed to say you don't understand. You aren't supposed to disagree with your superiors. There are so many stifling social boundaries that you would never notice as strange growing up here, but which seem bewildering when juxtaposed to the Western World. Both of the people I chatted with actually experienced this kind of problem recently, and it pushes me to wonder what kind of effects living here will have on me, and how I will come to see my own country and it's culture.

"I've finally met someone normal," one said. It was nice to hear that.

So before you go getting any ideas dear lurker/friend/family member, I'm not planning to immediately date/marry/procreate with any of the aforementioned people. Although it does beg the question about what my "love life" is like? Well, non-existent at the moment, and to be honest it's a relief. It's a bit personal and I usually avoid talking about it in a public blog like this, but I feel that being single here is liberating. The freedom is awesome, almost in the traditional sense of the word. I don't have anyone else, any other huge X factor or unpredictable aspect controlling my life. I like having this control, and someone even said to me: "being single and living in a foreign country is the best." And from where I stand now, I have to agree. Not being tied down makes everything so much easier, and it is making this an excellent first experience of living away from home for me. So, for now, no girlfriend, but I'll most likely post if such an extraordinary event does come to pass. (or if the moon crashes into the sun, whichever comes first)

Speaking of women, I got to hang out with my band-mates last Sunday. It's actually the first time I've been to a Japanese person's apartment, and it was really cool seeing Kana (my bass player) in her element: huge stacks of CDs everywhere (probably over 500), tons of VHS tapes and a really eclectic mix of music. Everything from Misery Index to Saves the Day to old New York Hardcore compilations. So freakin' cool. We hung out and listened to music and just chilled and drank and ate most of the day, along with Makiko and some other friends who stopped by, and it felt like being at home again, in a strange way.

In Japan, people don't "hang out" at home as much. I feel like even small get togethers are less common, because apartments can be so small, and walls so thin...and complaints so annoying. But this was so reminiscent of some apartment in Albany, just hanging out and enjoying a Sunday. Totally chill, and we didn't have to go to some smokey bar or loud annyoing club (lord I despise clubs) just to chill.

And, speaking of F.I.D., T H I S S U N D A Y is my first practice with Tomoko (the drummer who has been M.I.A. since I first joined the band due to her recent newborn), and I am pumped. I haven't practiced guitar as much as I should have lately, but I feel confident that we will click. My creative energy with music is kind of comparable to not peeing for several days: When you let it go, man does it come out strong and feel good (sorry for the crudeness of that one or if you are eating). I really only know how to write rhythmic tunes with a drummer, so I'm looking forward to a good jam session. It's really one of the best highs there is, playing music with friends.

So, what else. I took an excursion - a sojourn, an expedition if you will - to Shinagawa to go to the annoying Immigration Office. Visa renewals and all that. But, it looks as if everything will go through smoothly, and I managed to get it down in about 3 hours on my day off (the office is almost an hour away by train), though sadly missing a good Japanese class. Instead of taking a bus to the obscure location from the train station I saved a few bones and strolled through the warehouse district. The location is just... weird, for lack of a better word. Everything is put together strangely in this country. It's like somebody gave a toddler a multi-trillion dollar lego set and let him go at it, putting skyscrapers next to temples next to apartment buildings next to shipping docks. Unreal. And it smelled pretty bad over there, by the factories and the river. Kind of like those desolate areas between Rensselaer and East Greenbush back home, that no one would ever go to except for work. Sulfury.

I think that's about everything.... working 4 straight 6 day weeks next month, so expect sparse posting. My momentum with this blog has slowed but my desire to write hasn't wained a bit. I'll fill it in as I feel is necessary. Until next time peoples.

"If you can dream it you can be it"

"When someone sees the same people every day, as had happened with him at the seminary, they wind up becoming a part of that person's life. And then they want the person to change. If someone isn't what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own." - Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist.

p.s. Instead of trying to cleverly weave it in, here's something I forgot to add: I was strung out on caffeine last night after my first Starbucks in literally months (I rarely drink coffee, and thought the hot cocoa was safe - pure folly!) and as a result couldn't sleep until roughly 3am. But I dutifully got up at 8:30 to get to my first Chinese lesson on time. My teacher is really cool, and we're doing a language exchange. Perhaps the neatest thing is that she is from China, but has lived here 15 years, so she speaks very fluent Japanese (with an interesting Chinese accent). Compare that to her broken English, and just what she's comfortable with, and my lesson is as a result given mostly in Japanese. So it's like two birds with one stone. She's started coaching me through pronunciations today and honestly it was fun and interesting, even though I feel like an ass making the ü sound. (it's like blowing into a flute that's not there and half-grimacing with your face at the same time) In case you didn't know, Japanese has, I think, 70-something phonetic sounds, pretty low compared to English. Mainland Chinese has over 400.

Why am I learning Chinese you may ask? Well, why is the sky blue? I just felt like it was overdue, I don't know why. I love Asian languages and Chinese characters.

As a result of my lack of sleep and need to work, I did the Japanese "plop-at-a-table-and-powernap" strategy and it worked quite well, helping me to survive a day with 3 hours of kids classes. I have one really cute little girl in the class whose only motivation in playing the games today was that I'd give her a piece of my orange after class. "Orenji Orenji!" She kept exclaiming randomly. Sometimes the little things make me happy for no good reason at all.

I'm writing you all to inform you that I have nothing to say

2009-06-19T12:39:00.003+09:00

My wit feels duller than a spoon at the moment, and I don't have anything particularly funny to say. Fighting a bit of a bug but I'm starting to see the light. Normal business as usual, I'm about to have curry and rice for lunch for the 5th day in a row. Life is good.

That is all.

@#$% the police.... subheader: The World at Large

2009-06-09T13:22:00.006+09:00

Seriously guys, @#$% 'em. One of my dearest relatives has been caught in a clear case of entrapment by the coppers back home (who have nothing productive to do in Hudson, apparently) for selling a 6 pack of beer to a minor. Even though said-minor looked much older, and was obviously sent in by the cops to catch somebody unawares. It is really lame and I can only hope this turns out to be for the best in the end... But I have a good feeling things will be OK.

So what's new with me, you ask with those bloodshot eyes staring down the screen? Well, not too much. I've been thinking about my visit back home in Christmas (despite it being 6 months away) and how cool it will be to hang out with my friends again. But then again, how I really only have a few people outside of my family I even miss, as pretentious as that may sound. There are loads of acquaintances and people whose company I do enjoy, but as far as people I really know, or who really know me, there aren't so many I'm afraid. It's the same out here, except with a slight twist... I know loads of cool people, but really my closest friends are my band-mates, I think. They understand me and see part of me most others don't.

Before I go any further, I'd like to express a small concern. I'm afraid this is all coming off as self-centered or pretentious. I had some guy spamming my comments a few months back saying something like "this is the most self-obsessed shit I've ever read." Well, in his defense, he was probably right. I do care a lot about myself, however, if you don't care about yourself, you're either lying or have serious emotional issues. Or drug problems. I write a lot in this blog to try and make sense out of what's going on and to put things in perspective. It's my second reason for writing, next to letting the folks and friends (and fiends) back home know what I'm up to. And the mysterious internet lurkers who account for more than half the traffic to this site...

But I digress. That was a kind of disclaimer, in other words I'm fully aware I'm writing self-centered stuff. It is my blog after all, so if you don't care about me, you're more than welcome to read something else. No offense taken here! I honestly rarely read other people's personal blogs (more news and opinion-column stuff) with the few exceptions on the right of the page here.

So about my friends. I have some good ones here, mostly lots of cool acquaintances and people who are genuinely worth knowing, but I'm not that close with them. Then there is the aforementioned, twist. That is the beauty of the teacher-student relationship: I feel very close to lots of my students in a kind of distant way I've never experienced before. It's cause methinks is that I meet them through my job, and our common ground is usually just the English language. Of course there's more to life than words, and I've had some amazing discussions, and have had the pleasure of meeting some cool punk rock kids, very awesome Japanese versions of Soccer-Moms, politically-charged types (a rare event out here) and just plain weird yet awesome people. Meeting cool people is in fact one of the biggest rewards of this kind of job, as I've come to see it thus far. But even my most regular students, or the ones I've hung out with outside of class - one who is a skater and lived in california for a few years, really cool dude, comes to mind - don't really know me outside of my shell. Outside of my work persona and my happy mask. I do let pieces of myself through, and definitely express my opinions when the time is right, but more often than not it's a lot of glossy, empty smiling. Wait, maybe not empty. That's not the right word. I take pleasure in what I do, and I enjoy encouraging my students and trying to make something so hard as English fun for them, but so much of my energy, my expressions, my personality is somewhat forced or greatly different from my personality when I'm in normal-mode, instead of teacher-mode. I feel like anyone who calls him or herself a teacher has experienced this kind of self-transformation and these sorts of ubiquitous yet ambiguous relationships. What does it all mean, and will I ever know any of these people after the job is in the past?

That's my rant and thoughts for today. In other news, the buff 60-yet-40-looking ponytail brodude from the gym (remember him? When I first met the guy he was arguing with his other gymrat buddy about whether or not I was Eastern European, way back in fall I think) corrected the way I was doing curls and some other exercises, and after modestly receiving his gracious advice, I can't lift as much but my form has greatly improved. My wrists are getting much stronger, and something so simple as that can help me with the everyday, like computing, writing and such.

Thanks brodude.

"You're not in this all alone
Just look around and you'll see
The answer's right before your eyes
I'm here for you and you for me
It's hard to open up
Just try and you'll see
That true friends will always be there." - Sick of it All

Dirty doctors, fond farewells

2009-06-02T23:03:00.004+09:00

About 2 weeks ago I ordered a back-support pillow since I have terrible posture. It doesn't help that I'm still recovering from pulling a muscle in my back a month or so ago. I ordered it through the local clinic, and the nice doctor who usually does the work was cool enough to suggest it. I've been busy however, and wasn't able to stop in and pick it up. So yesterday, on my way home, what do I see but a man in white scrubs (and those silly plastic clogs, I think) chasing me down the street. I told him I was busy and would pick it up later. That was yesterday, and tonight on my way home from work, I noticed that his shop door was open. So I checked in to see if it was OK (even though business hours were long over), and all I could see was an arm from someone laying horizontally on the floor, swinging in what must of been a bizarre "hello." The dude laying on the floor (the doctor's assistant) proceeded to say my black tie was cool, and the odd couple seemed really stoked to have a foreigner walk into their office at night.... and they'd obviously been drinking, although they were doing paperwork at the same time. Oh Japan!

It's such a right phenomenon, I don't think I will ever get used to it. My very existence, being a foreigner in Japan, makes some people ecstatic (without any effort on my part) or fearful (double-checking their locked doors at night). I either appear 10x cooler than I really am, or a big scary monster. I get the former vibe more often, honestly. I mean I can't read people's minds, and even though the difference between a cold, mean stare and a kind, curious stare should be simple enough to differentiate, the infamous Japanese "passive stare" as my friend Nicholas called it, is quite ambiguous. For instance, the other day I was doing sit ups at the gym and the tatttoo on my leg (located above my knee) was showing a bit. An older guy next to me just sat there and stared at me for a good solid minute or two. At the same gym, I was doing a back-bridge on the mat and this younger fellow walking by just gawks at me like a deer in headlights. Sometimes when I sit next to people on the train, they are just enamored/revolted by my being there. It's really hard to tell what they're thinkinh, so I just kind of respond in the same passive manner they utilize so much. Fire with fire, and all that. Best not to think too much about any of it and just let it ride anyway.

So I saw a good friend of mine off yesterday, and it was a bittersweet departure. Bitter since I no longer have a cool neighbor who'll play Black Flag and Rage Against the Machine at 8:30am, sweet since, uh... I got a desk in my room now? But of course I'd rather keep my neighbor than some hunk of wood. I'll miss ya Nicholas, get back here soon!

Oh, and the best part: my room is such a mess from me being tremendously busy all month (I've been working 6 day weeks and usually spending almost my entire day off taking lessons/studying), that I have a desk plopped in the middle of my room. I gotta "play tetris" with the place so to speak to get it to fit snugly somewhere. But not until next weekend!

Also, it's officially "Rainy Season" here in Japan, so the incredible humidity can make things go moldy, as my friend and classmate the British Mum of 20 yrs. expatriate-status recently informed me, so washing up, airing out and putting away my possessions will be crucial to not incurring the wrath of said mold. As Shane, my other classmate put it: "last year I got mold on things I didn't know could get moldy, like my leather bag." We'll see how it turns out!

And in other (non-dramatic) news, I'm really into "Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney" for the DS at the moment, and am reading Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol." I don't really have a good reason for either, so I'll just leave it at that. I'm exhausted, good night!

"I don't want you to be alone down there to be alone down there to be alone" - Modest Mouse

"Remain steadfast. Awwwwww Perseverance! Crushing all opposition, discipline and determination" - Hatebreed.

P.S. In my post-work drowsiness I almost forgot the best part: TOMOKO (F.I.D.'s original drummer, who had a baby about 4 months back) is coming back to the band! We can start practicing! I can start jamming with a Japanese drummer who loves Suffocation! We'll play some shows this year! I'M SO EXCITED!!!!!!!!

Can I write an entry in 5 minutes?

2009-05-29T14:26:00.004+09:00

I'm about to go to work but wanted to crank something out really quick. I just finished Haruki Murakami's "Kafka on the Shore," a surreal and metaphysical rollercoaster ride of a book. Highly recommended to anyone who is looking for an author with a more unique flavor.

I'm trying to read more Japanese authors, and picked up a great book that offers English translations and grammar/nuance explanations along-side the original works. (it's called "Reading Real Japanese Fiction") Hopefully this can be a kind of springboard for me to get closer to reading real Japanese books, not just comic books. That is an ultimate goal of sorts. As much as I do love Dragonball and all...

But I've realized that there is no magic bullet. While I am slowly accumulating knowledge, there's no way to set the process in hyper-drive. Just have to take it day by day and turn this hill into a mountain.

It's rainy here in Japan. Thunderstormed the other night. Weather felt really homey to me, honestly. I'm looking forward to the rainy season because I'm strange like that.

I had two kids cry in my classes last week, but yesterday they went off without a hitch thanks to some pro-teacher's advice. I feel much better about all that.

Things are very busy.... Seeing Nick off Sunday night, which will be rather bittersweet. Just doing what I'm doing, so I can one day leave behind the English teaching racket and move on to bigger and better things. Nothing else to report...

Except another roach! I set up traps and have spray at the ready. Come to me you little bastards....

"Look deep inside. Can't change the world but you can change yourself" - Sick of it All

"According to you, our songs should separate all the girls from the boys" - Polar Bear Club

It's up too loud

2009-05-26T01:44:00.003+09:00

It's about 2am, I'm getting ready to hit the sack, and as my ear touches the pillow, I hear a familiar sound I've come to loathe: the pumping bass lines of techno music from my neighbor downstairs. The walls (and floors, apparently) really are paper thin around here. The kids outside make noise in the morning, trucks with megaphones playing pre-recorded audio advertisements (that would doubtless be considered noise disturbances in America), and sometimes this guy directly beneath me plays his music and it wakes me up earlier than I like. Until now I've left it all as somethings I have to deal with, have put in earplugs or whatever, although they don't help much with vibrations coming from beneath...

It's one of those things that's immensely harder than it should be: knocking on the door of someone you don't know in the wee hours of the morning to say they are being too loud. In America I'm sure there are plenty of people who'd first file a noise complaint - in fact, when I used to be in a band at the age of 15, we had just that happen to us and the cops shut us down several times practicing in my drummer's living room. But that's neither here nor there.

I've pondered the idea of telling him to turn down his techno re-re-mixes at 8:30 in the morning, but since the signs say "keep quiet 11pm-7am," and I usually should be getting up anyway, I've brushed it off. But this is 2 freakin' AM, and definitely a bit out of line. This dude has got some serious subwoofers, that's for sure.

I make my way out, seeing a dead baby roach in the hallway and taking that as a sign of just how lovely this guesthouse really is. (as an aside, there's some kind of 3 foot square basin outside my window, presumably for catching and draining rain, with two curled up dead roaches, apparently done in by a heavy rain yesterday. Yuck.) So I knocked on his door and at first I think he questioned hearing it. Then I knocked again, and he answered. His face looked bewildered at the very sight of me, which is what I expected. I politely said in Japanese - or maybe only half-assed politely - that the noise was too loud, and he apologized, I bade him good night and hopefully we never have to do this little dance again. But I have a feeling he'll be back to his old ways in the near future.

Oh, and speaking of old, you'd expect this to be some college student, but the dude is an (apparently single?) mid-40s-looking guy. Total shocker the first time I saw him. Anyways, off to bed now, the city is sleeping and now so can I.

"It's too @$%&ing loud" - Acid bath.

Risk of burnout is imminent, abandon ship!!!

2009-05-21T12:20:00.003+09:00

So this morning I woke up with about 5 hours before I had to go to work (at 10 that is), but found it hard to move out of bed. Somewhere in my paranoid psyche I'm thinking: "Swine Flu!?!!?" (or shingata infuruenza, new-type Influenza, as the Japanese call it) This of course is rash and baseless, I've just been lethargic upon getting up because the last few days have been 80-85 degrees and humid. And it's only May!!! Time to start powering up the air conditioner.

Everyone is of course freaking out about the Swine Flu. My school, which shall of course remain nameless, has closed its doors temporarily in other parts of Japan due to the outbreak scare. People are already speculating that the same thing will happen here in Tokyo some time soon. Yesterday I worked in Shinjuku, easily one of the busiest locations, but the first half of the day was surprisingly devoid of students. Is it a sign of things to come, I wonder?

Although, for the Japanese, their culture is working against them in this whole affair. It's already been beaten to death across the internets, in news comments and whatnot, but for those who don't frequent those types of sites or know so much about Japan, here's some insightful information: The Japanese go to work as long as they can physically move, be it they have the chills, a fever, a cold, sore throat, limbs dangling off, severe blood loss... well maybe that's pushing it but you get the idea. The collectivist mindset and importance of attendance is so critical that many people go to work (and school) regardless of their health condition, wearing the ever-popular but rather inefficient surgeon's mask to let everyone know they are sick. So in effect, a disease like this spreads through schools, places of business, and crowded trains easily here. Not much to worry about for those of us with strong immune systems, really only for those who are already facing some kind of disease...

Sounds a lot like regular old influenza to me.

Anyway, that's what's going DOWN at the moment. Swine flu swine flu swine flu is all I hear. On the upside, many students have learned the word swine as a result.

Back to basics and what really matters: even though I got up lethargic and slow this morning, I still wanted to hit the books for a few hours before work. Today I have 3 kids classes to boot, so I'm sure to be totally drained at the end of the day, and good for pretty much nothing. This gets to the title of today's blog. I want to study hard and make the best of my time, but at the same time I have to keep methods varied and can't just be staring at flashcards for hours straight. This latter monotony lowers my interest, makes it less fun, and increases the risk of burnout. I'm sure anyone who ahs tried to cram or intensively study anything ever has experienced this feeling. Your interest (assuming it was there in the first place) wanes, you feel frustrated and possibly intimidated by the loads of new material. This is a danger when trying to focus really hard on one subject, so I have to remember to keep it varied. Or at least remember to take the occasional break.

Lately I've been reading Haruki Murakami's "Kafka on the Shore." It was his most popular work in America or so I've heard, but I've never read anything by him before. Quite interesting, surreal and engrossing, but so far from the traditional Japanese author it's startling to the huffy old scholars, I'm sure. It makes me want to read more of his works, but in it he heavily references Greek philosophy and various other things that I want to dive deeper into as well.

But, like my Mother said, I can't be "super ambitious about everything all at once." There just isn't enough time in the day, and I gotta earn my money too! On that note, it's back to the books, paying my rent, making my epic cheap lunch/dinner of carrots, broccoli and rice with instant curry and hoping for no crazy mishaps during my adventures with the youngsters today. (Or at least no drool on my clothes)

"Evil will always triumph, because good is dumb." - Spaceballs

"It isn't a question of intelligence. I'm not all that bright, I just have my own way of thinking. That's why people get disgusted with me. They accuse me of always bringing up things that are better left alone. If you try to use your head to think about things, people don't want to have anything to do with you." - Mr. Hagita the philosophizing truck-driver, "Kafka on the Shore."

"If the world don't like us it'll shake us just like we were a cold." - Modest Mouse

Life happens

2009-05-16T23:00:00.003+09:00

It's 11pm on a Saturday night, and after working from 10-4 today I spent 4-odd hours studying Japanese (nice power nap included). I'm working overtime tomorrow which is a slight bummer but it's easy money and I can't turn down the opportunity. The Japanese is certainly coming along though, and while some things move slowly others show great improvements. I can quickly and easily recognize (be it in speech or reading, more-so the latter) many phrases, bits of vocabulary and grammar points which I have only learned in the last few months, which to me is pretty amazing. I think that the last 4 months of hardcore studying (and reading lots of manga) has armed me with knowledge of the language that a semester or 2 in college in America just can't provide. It's immersion at work, I just had to experience it to believe it.

The shift is quite nice. Granted my social life is taking a hit but I'm also trying to save money and limit going out for the time being. Once a week is enough I figure. I know far too many people who seem to blow everything they earn on living the party life, but that was never for me anyway. I'm serious about what I'm doing and think it will play a part in whatever I do in the future. Yah.

As the weather gets warmer, that fleeting period of sweet, comfortable temperatures and beautiful days slowly slip away, soon to give way to the rainy season and the dog days of another sticky Tokyo summer. I caught the tail end of one last year, and I am not looking forward to it, to say the least. I've heard from veritable world travelers that Tokyo summers are among the worst (thanks a lot, Global Warming and Excessive Industry!) The bugs come out in droves, everything sticks to everything else, and the only salvation is the A.C. in my room, the train, or the office. And if I had a nickel for every time I was stuck in a small room, teaching four people with a broken A.C. unit - and let's just say they ain't smellin like bundles of roses, more like businessmen who haven't showered in several days, wearing the same suit they did on their business trip to Nagoya last night - if I had that many nickels, "I'd throw them at people in the foodcourt." - Strongbad

I'm sure it gets like this in other crowded cities, but man, some people (in and out of work) just reek like a sack of old onions or various other ripe products left to spoil. I mean why not at least carry some cheap cologne or something, and spare your neighbors the olfactory suffering? Instead of smelling like a sack of sweat (and often shochuu (rice wine)) when you're standing right next to me. [/end rant]

In my case however, I've always been a bit of the indoor type, if you hadn't already guessed by my dorkish tendencies and pale complexion. So the summer for me is much like the winter in that it's an excuse to retreat indoors and do rainy-day activities. Like study or read or what have you. Yes I know it's not cool and I act like an old man, but that's how I roll. In fact I've always been of the belief, although it took time to act on it completely, that I should do my own thing without trying to conform as much as I possibly can. This doesn't mean painting A for Anarchy on my left buttocks and sleeping in gutters after huffing paint; It simply means I shouldn't feel obliged to do things strictly because they are a social norm. I personally feel like so many people get bogged down in this that they lose themselves in the process.

I do need to get to more shows, but I have trouble finding good ones on my days off (that I'm willing to shell out the 30-40 bucks for). So for any readers out there in Japan, shoot me your suggestions.

I'm currently re-reading (actually listening to an audio rendition by this stirring British narrator, thanks to one of my uber favorite blogs Audiobook Corner) Lord of the Rings, and enjoying it far too much. Also reading Dragonball and Hare nochi Guu to practice my Japanese (and get some laughs). I picked up more books lately, since I can never have enough, and although most are Japanese-studyish stuff, I did find the autobiography/memoirs of one "Milton Bertram" at Book-Off the other day. He was a well-to-do British gent who visited Japan in 1868 and again in 1904 if I recall the dates correctly, and talks about the vast changes that occurred (in a funny, if presumptuous and by current standards prejudice and uninformed kind of way).

Ya know guys, I try to think of interesting things to blog about, and worry slightly that rather mediocre entries like this one may lose people's attention, but then I remember: I'm writing this for a) myself b) my friends/family to let them know what's going on. A little mundanity isn't always such a bad thing, at least there are no shitstorms coming that I can foresee at the moment! :)

P.S. Visiting home in only 211 days! Mark your calendars.

"too much is never enough
we take more than we need
too much is never enough
our gluttony will be our demise
it's a growing epidemic
it's too late to make a change
we're taking over
we are a cancer
this is the human plaque" - Pulling Teeth

We are entering dimensions beyond space

2009-05-11T23:32:00.004+09:00

So I've been back from Korea for well on 5 days now. I'm just now feeling refreshed and ready to get back to the routine - which will in fact last me for the next 3 months until I see another holiday! This is the first time in my life I haven't been counting the days until finals were over and eyeing the upcoming summer vacation, but I am rather staring at a seemingly endless daily grind of sorts. Growing up is weird, dude.

I made the terrible choice of stretching my vacation to the max and got back home around 7pm the night before I had to work my first shift of the week. It might not sound so bad, but 12ish hours of trains and planes can leave a man quite bedraggled. Quite. I am definitely going to do a bit more research into where exactly my airport is located in correspondence with my locations of interest in the future. Live, learn, repeat ad nauseam (just been looking for an excuse to bust out that last one)

What's new - what isn't new? I'm already tired of talking about my vacation and yet I have only orally reported it (ad nauseam), so the best may not be yours for the reading, sorry internet people. Let me throw out some highlights:

-I ate so many delicious dishes. Panjyong (kimchi baked into bread), Jya jya meong (Black bean noodles), Jim Dah (an incredibly savory, spicy dish of noodles and chicken), kimchi chige (kimchi stew) and a lot more things I don't remember well enough to mispell. (pics on the bottom folks)

-I had the pleasure of a friend as a guide, so my inability to do anything at all in Korean was less debilitating and more of a nuisance. It did bother me a bit, and if I'm ever going to any foreign country that doesn't speak much English again, especially on my own, I'm going to devote at least some portion of time to learning basic phrases, at the bare minimum.

-Witnessing a police drill in Seoul with what must have been over a thousand cops all swarming in and around the station. At one point they started pouring in in lines from both sides of a subway exit, and it strangely felt like being in a movie.

-South Korea, being 1/3-1/2 (I've heard both statistics) Christian, had giant crosses outlined in red neon everywhere, so that it was all you could see floating in the night sky. ??!!!?

-More bootleg stuff than you would find in the heart of Shanghai. Seriously. Their biggest brand is called Banc, and it's a complete lego-ripoff!

-Everything there is really cheap compared to Japan. I got lots of ties, some shirts, Korean spices, bottles of sake as omiyage (presents for my bosses), and other stuff.

I'm really too tired to say much more. I should weave in pics to make this look good, but hey, nobody's paying me! So go here for pictures and whatnot. I will try to update my blog with more, smaller updates in the future instead of sparse and generally longer ones. :)

"First we get some surgery, lose the kids and our identities. One thing I know for a fact, mustache stays, right where it's at." - Clutch

"Life is pain princess. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something" - The Princess Bride.

I didn't proofread this one. Heads up!

2009-04-26T17:35:00.005+09:00

I love having random conversations in Japanese with the other tenants. Usually it's just a quick kon ni chi wa or a bow, but sometimes I get to practice my Japanese a bit. Flex my skills (lol). It's a confidence booster. As it turns out the spacey-looking younger dude down the hall (I always had suspicions - wait, still have suspicions he sniffs glue or something) is a Chinese major who has just graduated from college and can't find a job. It's a position so many people are in right now, job-hunting despite the fact that most businesses aren't hiring. Of course this situation is not limited just to Japan, but, it's as evident here, in a country so reliant on its exports that has felt the backlash of a slowed-down international economy, as it is in America.

This sure sounds like some kind of intro to an insightful blog post - gotcha! I'm just finishing preparations to leave for SOUTH KOREA in roughly 38-hours. I am naturally really excited, gonna see the DMZ (De-Militarized Zone), Seoul for 2 or 3 days and Busan for 2 days. Should be a time, either way. I'm debating what entertainment to bring on the roughly 12-14 hour trek; It's my apartment -> Narita airport -> Incheon airport -> Gimpo -> Seoul -> Gyeongsan. I wish it went as fast as writing that sentence. But I've always kind of had a strange love for long trips, they are usually pretty rewarding after all. I may read kuroame, "Black Rain," one of Japan's most famous works of fiction based on the Hiroshima bombings. I will probably also study (if you aren't sick of me talking about it by now) and play my DS for the first time in what must be over a month.

Even my 360... my wii... they are suffering from a lack of love. I can't help but feel that my priorities are shifting, I feel like I should spend my time (especially in Japan) more wisely. Someone else said I'm growing up, but this can't be true!! I'm much too young for that still. Although I suppose 100 years ago I'd already have 7 kids, so perhaps it's a fair deal.

I sprained something in my back at the gym. After my birthday party at an Izakaya in Shinjuku, then going to karaoke all night with a few friends, I made the wise(?) decision to work off my hangover, as I normally do. However, I did something wrong, and arched my back a bit too much when I should have only been using my arms, so now I got some funky neck pain and I saw the doc at the local clinic (same one that treated my arm-muscle strain a month or 2 back) about it today. Glad I got him before golden week. It turned out to be a full hour or so of electro-stimuli, massage-work and acupuncture, and I came out feeling not so much better yet, but, after some more appointments he says I'll be fine. The highlight of this wonderful lesson in pain was probably either me saying kore wa tanoshikunahi　(this is not fun) and the doc finding it highly amusing or, hearing one of the others discussing me in Japanese mere feet from where I lay. "Yea he's an American, he's from New York. He does lots of weight training and plays sports and stuff." Hmmm, iiinteresting." I mean I can't imagine they have many foreign clientele, so I'm glad to give 'em something to talk about.

Still, laying down is a bit uncomfortable in some positions and my neck/upper back is still a bit sore. Waa waa waa, I'll live!

I don't have much of anything left to say. There's nothing to do but put one foot in front of the other and go forward. One more day of work (so cruelly placed after my weekend) and it's 7 days of NOT TEACHING ENGLISH.

P.S. Late/Old/whatever. LET'S GO BUFFALO! I never liked you T.O. but save my team dammit!

"A life left half behind, though no longer blind I can't yet see. I'm not the boy that I once was, but I'm not the man I'll be." - mewithoutyou

"Like dancing with a dead body"

2009-04-20T18:38:00.004+09:00

The title of this blog comes from my neighbor and good friend Nick, from California. He did TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) in California for something like 7 years before coming to Japan, and is not only a good teacher but an all around good dude. I was venting about how unresponsive and unwilling to learn some of the kids I had to teach were last week, and he compared trying to each those who don't want to listen (regardless of age) to "dancing with a dead body." You try to drag them to and fro, but they never put forth any effort of there own, except maybe to resist, and drag you and everyone else down a bit. I get students of all ages like this from time to time, not just little kids who'd rather be playing their DS or baseball or Virtual Kancho: The Arcade Game or something. It's a pet peeve of any and every teacher I'm sure, and it's one of the biggest reasons why I will never ever become a high school educator. If I'm going to teach long term, I want at least the majority of those I'm speaking to to actually want to be there. To want to learn. Because when the student tries, and you struggle together, it forms a great bond and is an excellent and rewarding experience. When the opposite goes on, it's tiresome and discouraging. My current "dream" is to teach at the University level someday, not only giving me the ability to teach higher level material that I and the student should each find more engaging than a study of basic grammar ("What did you do on your last vacation" x1000 = my average week) but also reserving me the right to say: "Hey buddy, you don't wanna pull your weight? Then take a different class and quit wasting our time."

When I first began to get somewhat serious about academics, way back in the year 2004 - ahem - I took Philosophy 101. It was mostly a study of classical philosophy, which some find to be quite boring, loaded with abstract, archaic rhetoric and so forth, but I found it really interesting. My professor was one who took absolutely no nonsense, didn't allow students to voice their baseless opinions (even driving a few of the cockier space-wasters out of the class right from the start, which I greatly respected him for), and insisted that the only way to properly understand the subject was by reading old books. Old, dated, dusty books.

I learned a lot from that guy.

But there is always more to life than just the classroom. If there wasn't, this would be a trite and boring blog... well, maybe you think it's boring, but then why are you still reading?

Last Saturday I saw Melt Banana, Slight Slappers and a few other bands who failed to be nearly as good as the aforementioned two. SS put on the craziest live show I've seen in a while. Case in point: I brought my friend Andrew to his first real underground show. He's a lower classman from the same college as me who just began a study abroad in Tokyo this month, and also an all around good dude. When he finished his tallboy of Strong Seven half-way through SS's set, and seemed at a loss as to what to do with it, I, feeling the complete chaotic nature in the air, chucked the can in the air, and it landed on stage. The singer - a spazzing guy with sweatpants and a face that looked like it belonged to a mental patient - picked up the can and shook out the last drops of it before somersaulting off of the stage. There were guitars flying and people too, no exaggerations here. Those are the kind of awesome sets I love to see here, and one of the greater advantages to living in the Tokyo area.

I reached 1000 learned kanji the other day, a mini-conquest in my Japanese studies. I jumped for joy at 1 in the morning. I also recently found a 10-story bookstore in Ikebukuro, from which I've bought some useful study books and will probably get some English novels at some point too. (It was entirely strange, walking through an aisle with English language books after I've scantly seen any outside my room in the last 8 months. I'm not sure you guys can follow me here, so just take my word for it)

I skipped cherry blossom viewing (a huge deal in Japan) for overtime a few weeks back, but didn't really regret it. There are a lot of beautiful trees near my apartment, and I got to stroll through them from the budding stage to the peak of blossoming, to that lovely half-green half-pink phase which truly signals the arrival of Spring.

Oh, and talking about Spring, allergies are still kicking me hard in the ass. Sinus headaches ahoy. It's just like being back home!

Oh, home. With my birthday fast approaching this week, and having spent well over half a year here, I'm starting to miss it a bit. This is a beautiful time of year in New York as well as Japan, and while I'm grateful to be experiencing the latter, I still miss my all my friends back home. I can however look forward to taking a nice, lengthy 3 week vacation (!!!) in NY next Christmas, as I just secured a roundtrip ticket for only 1000 pesos. Thank you, declining economy!

Last week was the first week of new classes and my new contract schedule, as the first two weeks in April had been a buffer for job training and such. How was it? Incredibly busy, slighty disorienting. All around good though. First day of 3 kids in a row involved one crying profusely upon the very sight of me and hugging his Mom for dear life (he warmed up to me by the end though). Another, a 7 year old actually starting bawling after losing at shoot the basket, to which I panicked slightly but managed to handle. I thought to myself: What was it like to cry in front of others at that age? Most likely you wouldn't want to be seen. So, I pulled in the staff member, and on a whim said: "OK guys! We're gonna play "guess-how-many-fingers-Ikko-is-holding-up," and proceeded to dump a huge colored parachute-toy over his head. This with some pictionary managed to take attention off of the kid, and by the end he was dry-eyed and fine. I think things should go much smoother next week.

Oh, I almost forgot! On my first day of work last week, I got up at 7:30am on Tuesday to visit the Immigration Office in Shinagawa to get my "re-entry permit" so I could go to South Korea over Golden Week. Long story short is the rush hour trains were dumb crowded, people falling over like dominos when the train would come to a halt and the one hungover businessman standing up half-asleep would tumble and cause an effect that put the majority of the car in pain. I hate rush hour here. Long story short (too late) I caught a bus out of Shinagawa, and it was the wrong one, me being in a hurry I didn't bother checking. I walked a bit, caught a different bus, walked more after receiving directions, saw some huge construction machines while walking through what was obviously a serious industrial district, until I arrived at the glorious Immigration Office.

They say that people at these kind of offices are rude. We Americans complain about our DMV service, I've heard from others it's just as bad at X public office in Canada, Britain, New Zealand etc. Japanese people seem to think this the case with the Immigration Office as well (assuming they ever have to go there for travel purposes), but I disagree. For government employees, they were really friendly and polite, compared to some of my past experiences in America. Besides having to wait in line twice, since the middle step involved walking to a convenience store conveniently built inside the Immigration Office to buy a ticket and go back in queue, I was out fast enough. I hightailed it to the bus, the station, already feeling the stickiness of 97% humidity (I was wearing my suit, as I had to work later), got off at Kawasaki instead of Yokohama for some brain-fart of a reason, came back, got to Yokohama, and went to do a job involving monitoring of certain hardware for a certain company I'm certainly not allowed to discuss on the internet. It's not as cool as it sounds, but I did make my normal days salary in 2 hours for bug-testing hardware and software, and that's pretty cool.

Two curry buns and a train ride later, I was in Ginza for my normal job. It was busy and somewhat stressful, my e-mail failed and I had to prep a lesson plan for 2 of my new classes, but I managed to triumph in the face of adversity. I liked my new students and I believe they had fun as well. I was however so overly caffeinated by the time I caught the train home that I had the shakes for a bit, and literally collapsed in my bed, but hey, all in a days work.

What else. I could go on. I can always go on. It's my job, in fact, to go on when there's nothing to go on about, simply for the sake of filling empty space with vibrations that sound like a coherent conversation until the clock strikes a certain time. This is also known as rambling.

Today, I went to Japanese class, and invited my fellow students and teacher to come to my birthday party on Saturday. I (for some reason decided) I should have one, at a cheap bar with lots of good food, just my kind of low-key place. Maybe some Karaoke afterward.

I also visited my friend Ann who is sadly bedridden in a hospital, no fun at all. Unfortunately on my way to deliver her something besides hospital food (an Avocado Veggie sub to be precise), I was the victim of the most severe migraine I've had in, quite literally, years. My head felt like it was going to split open, I sweat profusely, got the chills and felt waves of nausea. I have no idea what triggered it, I had been feeling fine up until that point. I don't think today's lunch of garlic pork was to blame, anyhow.

So there I was, visiting my friend in a hospital, but in miserable shape myself, and she ironically enough was quite peppy and in a good mood (happy to have a visitor of course). I laid down on her bed, borrowed some headache medicine and veritably filled in as a patient for a few hours. It was a strange experience to say the least. But good to see a friend and see her get all embarrassed when the nurse asked her "did you stool today?" =D Love ya Ann.

The migraine did pass after about 4 or 5 hours, but man, what a whopper. If that happened during work I'd be pretty useless. Here's hoping it doesn't.

I'm fresh out of material so let's call it a day. South Korea in 9 days, and I can already taste the kimchi.

"Just remember what ol' Jack Burton does when the earth quakes, and the poison arrows fall from the sky, and the pillars of Heaven shake. Yeah, Jack Burton just looks that big ol' storm right square in the eye and he says, "Give me your best shot, pal. I can take it." - Big Trouble in Little China Town.

Who says I'm a dork?

2009-04-09T22:46:00.004+09:00

HHRRMMMM????

Long story short, due to aforementioned "New (Fiscal) Year," time has been short, and I've been filling my free time with things besides the blog. I haven't abandoned it, just put it on the back-burner for a while. My schedule this year is full but awesome, I just worked at a school 15 minutes away. 15 FREAKIN MINUTES! After almost 8 months of 40+ minute commutes, I at least have a short one to look forward to each week! And on the whole travel time has been reduced quite a bit compared to last year. (Incidentally, said close school happens to be my favorite)

I wish I had a thousand interesting anecdotes to share about my exciting double life of rogue English teacher and being a wacky foreigner who cannonballed into some ojisan onsen (old man's hot spring) but alas, it's been rather quiet outside of work. I saw Watchmen the other ngiht and was greatly impressed; it was cool to see a movie in Japan, (almost felt like home with the amount of white dudes there), just like America save the Japanese subtitles at the bottom. Those provided an interesting "subtext" (if you will) to see how certain phrases - namely vulgarities - were translated. My favorite part was when the hot female lead said "Let's go," and it was translated as "iku wa yo." To give any non-Japanese readers context, that's a super-girly interpretation (the gender qualities of language are a great dichotomy here) which could be accurately translated back as "OMG, let's like totally go." My friend said she thought an older man must have translated it.

The sound system was also absurdly loud. I don't know if it's me or it was just that movie or the projection guy fell asleep on the volume button or what, but my ears were ringing afterwards.

Completely unrelated, I highly recommend "Freshness Burger" for anyone seeking a good, cheap, American-style hamburger in Japan.

I recently read Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, and excellent suggestion (thanks Kerri), and am currently reading Making Sense of Japanese by Jay Rubin (same guy who has translated the most recent works of Haruki Murakami, the famed Japanese author). This dude has some really profound essays about the problems we Westerners face regarding understanding of Japanese grammar and nuances, and he's pretty funny. Highly recommended.

My blog momentum just died. Like a hamster running on his wheel at full speed until his squeaky little self gives. Get back to you all shortly.

P.S. I made my facebook public, featuring new pictures from a recent Kamakura trip. Enjoy.

"I think I'd like to go back home and take it easy, there's a woman that I'd like to get to know, livin' there, everybody seems to wonder what it's like down here... Gotta get away from this day to day runnin' around, everybody knows this is nowhere" - Neil Young and the Crazy Horse

Doing things I've never done before

2009-03-31T09:36:00.003+09:00

(written last thursday, posted late)

Today was my last day at the school in Shinjuku. I've worked there one a week since September, and while it's been fun, it's so busy and the trains are always so crowded coming and going that I just wanted to get out. The break room is also scantly big enough for 3 people, yet we usually have 5 teachers minimum coming and going. Thankfully, I got my request for a closer school on that day instead. The sad part is that the staff and my co-workers are all really cool people, so I bought them a few bags of candy for a final farewell.

I'm not the only one who wanted out though - one older teacher described his relief of being able to switch schools after five years by showing me this picture:

I also brought my guitar in at one of my friends' request, to go to a blues bar I had heard much about. We had Sayaka on trumpet, Katie with her alto saxaphone, Matt with the harmonica and me with my guitar. I instantly felt so out of place there: picture a bar full of drunk businessmen, small and cramped, with guitars and other instruments clumsily stacked against the walls. There's a drumset, several amps, various doohickies and a piano. As I walk in there's some big Japanese guy, butchering some song lyrics in English, rocking out on one of those big, bridge-raised blues style guitars. You know the kind with the wavy pattern of indentation on the front of the wooden body, like B.B. King or something. And while I knew that me with my hardcore stickered ESP amongst a bunch of dudes with fender customs and big-bodied blues guitars would stand out a bit, I still felt like even if I botched it, things would be O.K.... or at least that's what I told myself. I was really nervous but by the time I got to play a lot of people had left, so it was less pressure.

After about 2 hours of waiting (we had our names on a list, and everyone is a guitarist these days after all) we all got to go up with a few other random musicians. Even though my playing was far from perfect; the owner behind the bar reminded me to tune in between songs, which was quite funny: "Ben-san, chuning wa...." There was a kind of chemistry going on there unlike what I've felt before in metal or hardcore bands. Everything in a band is 99% pre-planned unless it's at practice, but this style of blues jam means pick a progression and let it fly. Matt wailed on the harmonica, Sayaka's trumpet boomed like her own boisterous persona, Katie's sax sang out her heart and I did my own things too. I even did something else unprecedented, and actually attempted vocals. Of course anyone can do a blues verse or two, and as Lisa Simpson would say "the Blues come from in here" (pointing at the heart).

Despite a mad dash to catch the last train it was a memorable time. I hope to brush up on my scales, acquire a more refined taste for this or maybe another style of music and continue playing. I still wanna play fast and thrashy stuff, but it feels good to try something new. To test the comfort zone and push myself out into a different realm. Perhaps some of this will come off as overly poetic, but if you've never shared the feeling of playing music with friends, it just does something to your brain. At that time you're on an magic plane, interacting through this kind of fleeting, untouchable medium that can never be grasped, just experienced.

I really need to play more.

"...When it occurred to me that the animals are swimming, Around in the water in the oceans in our bodies and another had been found another ocean on the planet, Given that our blood is just like the Atlantic. And that's how the world began, And that's how the world will end" - Modest Mouse

Feeba!

2009-03-21T22:26:00.005+09:00

Chapter 5: Cedar in the Air.

The other night I wound up, by some various hair-brained circumstances, hanging out with two Japanese friends of mine from Kobe and wandering aimlessly around Kabukicho, Shinjuku's famous red-light district. The two girls' reactions were quite hilarious: "It's so embarrassing walking through here!" They say as we pass love hotels, host clubs, strip joints, and what are probably soap houses (legitimate brothels). This area of town used to be run in a more heavy-handed manner by the Yakuza, and quite dangerous; Now it serves as more of an area teeming with varying forms of night-life. This was the night before Spring Equinox (national holiday) and there were foreigners abound. Other than the usual black dudes and other foreigners (not to sound prejudice or something, but it's like 80% black dudes), out to hustle you to going into an overpriced adult club of some kind, there were foreigners, salarymen and everyone from everywhere you could think of, all out to have a good time in this ubiquitously well-known, over-crowded area. Tokyo is an exciting place to live like this, and I guess I take it for granted at times.

I escorted the two ladies to the cheap bar I knew there, but it was full up since we showed up late, having celebrated early holiday with overpriced (but non-Japanese) beer for a belated St. Patty's Day. Again, the girls said they felt weird but we turned a corner and poof, like magic, we went from perv-ville to a huge display of hundreds of colored balloons, various cheap dresses on sale and stuffed animals. One block away was the hotel district, and two more was a 20+ story hospital. The sheer abundance in such small spaces is dizzying. Japan is condensation. The town I live in is more dense and probably bigger than Albany, the capital city of New York that I am "from" (really five minute across the river). But this 100,000 person or more area is considered somewhat rural.

When there are neon signs, 24-hour eateries and 3 convenience stores in 1/8 of a mile, I don't quite call that rural.

*note to self: place clever transition here*

--

Feeba (Fever)

After the veritable breeze that last fall was, as far as no noticeable allergy afflictions, I thought I had left my horrendous pollen allergies behind with my old life in New York. You see back there, every Fall and Spring were murder on my sinuses, so I had tried everything to counter-act it, from pills to nasal sprays to allergy injections. (!!) I even brought some of the nasal spray with me to Japan, but stopped taking it and noticed no difference - good for me, since acquiring and refilling prescriptions are supposed to be a royal pain here.

As you may have already guessed, I jinxed myself hard on this one. Spring is in the air, with temperatures reaching up to 70 this week, and Japan's over-saturation of cedar-based pollens has rocked me pretty hard today. Headaches and a sore throat when I woke up this morning, nothing unmanageable, but today I earned my chips, substituting 3 kids classes in a row, 2 of which were levels I've never really taught before. 2 of them went smoothly, despite being craft-based: making playdough was a right mess but fun, and coloring Easter eggs with a bunch of 5 year olds is really no big deal. I did have a class of 10-12 year olds though who were really, really hard to get through to, like they wouldn't pay attention to a word I said and I was continually being talked over by more than one person, and I have to work on some methods to counteract this. I think they call it discipline? I call it my least favorite part about my job, since I just want to be the cool, down-to-earth kind of teacher I always enjoyed back when I was a kid, but sometimes it's necessary. More on that as things develop.

I got my new job contract! (In case you don't know, everything starts in April here, school, new fiscal years, etc.) It's only tentative at this point, but it's looking good. I have five kids classes which I think is a good number, and some closer schools thanks to management acknowledging my requests. I'm leaving some students and classes and schools behind which is a strange feeling, as it's the first time I've really done something like this. It feels like a weird situation, between me and my students... We only have a student-teacher relationship, but I really want to know what will happen to the young guy who specializes in agriculture moving to the country who I've taught since I moved here, or how the 5-year-old who I just started giving private lessons to will get on in the future. I'm so stubborn about leaving things behind, and change and all that, which you wouldn't think considering where I live, but I am.

Took a trip with some friends to Kamakura on Monday. It was a great time, getting out of the city and seeing the ocean. Pics coming whenever I get off my lazy butt to upload em. (...or I guess that would be on my lazy butt, with a camera and USB cable in arms reach).

I was experiencing some chronic wrist pain when lifting so I bit the bullet and saw a doctor the other day. I was gonna go to a hospital but my friends in Japanese class convinced me that a Clinic was better. This bears some explaining: In Japan, almost any city/town will have several Kurinikku, where you can see a licensed General Practitioner who will take care of your needs on a more personal level than a hospital. The best part is that with my health insurance, I've been getting some crazy, acupuncture-point-style massages on my aching arm for real cheap, significantly better than the co-pay back home. I've even taken to chatting my doc in Japanese, since he mostly just knows medical terms and can speak only broken English. The best part was when I mentioned moving to Japan, the first thing he says something about toilets, using an onomatopoeia to the effect of zaaaa, with an exaggerated hand motion, exhibiting some kind of function that the high-tech toilets here have, which I have yet to uncover - lazer beams perhaps?
As far as Japanese toilets, they come in two styles here: medieval holes in the floor (see: the one right outside my room) and high tech models with buttons for everything from varied degrees of flushing to personal, shall I say, genitalia-washing sprays. Haven't tried that one yet myself. Or rather, I haven't been forced into a situation where I have to.........yet.

Speaking of sound-based words like my doc's "zaaaa," they love, utterly love using onomatopoeia in speech here, I'll do a full article on it some time. It's mind-blowing.

In band news, there's no real news. Sadly our new prospective drummer Ian had to back down due to an already over-slammed schedule. So we're drummerless once again, and I'm kind of bummed, but waiting patiently. We've got some ads up but no catches yet - if anyone knows a good, grind-style drummer in the Tokyo area, contact me, ok?

I know there are cool stories or things that have happened that I'm not recalling right now, and that's a shame. I should write more regularly, but I spend more of my free time now study-study-studying. I've got kind of a "maximum-output fever" going on, and want to keep it up for as long as possible. I spend my time drilling flashcards, practicing grammar and reading Japanese comics I understand 40-60% of, with varying success. Right now reading a lot of Gantz, Dragon Ball, Bobobo, One Piece.... I also have been reading yet more Lovecraft, he's got an addicting style with his vivid, spooky imagery. And watching the hilarious music-student based drama Nodame Cantalibre, hilarious!!! (Ashleigh, you would like this one)

No point in forcing it I suppose - more of my quasi-exciting life coming soon!

"Given to the rising." - Neurosis

"I'm walkin' and I'm talkin' and I'm tryin' and I'm lyin' but I just can't get through to you! Maybe I'd be better off talkin' to a wall, cuz you aren't makin' any sense at all!" - Cro-mags

"And it's strange, but they're all basically the same, so I don't ask names anymore." - Death Cab

Another day in paradise - Culture shock, cockroaches, sweaty crowds and beds of roses

2009-03-07T22:07:00.005+09:00

Everything shifts, all the time. Language is amorphous and ever-changing, so are the economics and so is the culture. It should come as no surprise that the residual effect is a dynamic yet unstably predictable slew of moods I find myself in each day. I don't know if I believe in bad days anymore, there are too many things can happen in a mere 24 hours. I do believe in the value of time, and a certain friend of mine said the other day he had an "out-date," a.k.a. a set time in mind when he was going to leave Japan. I was a little saddened to hear this as he's one of the few really cool people I've met here, but was of course supportive of his plans to move on, get a real career, etc.. More importantly, this bit of news he followed up with: "Having a set date in mind makes the time more enjoyable, if that makes any sense."

To me, it makes a world of sense. A galaxy, nay, a cosmos of freakin' sense. Goals are important, although mine aren't necessarily temporal (it's old news but as a refresher: learn Japanese as best as I can, help F.I.D. take over the world with grindcore, have fun, etc). In any regard I have never been content staying in one place or doing one set thing for too long, with possibly only 2 exceptions: reading and playing music. And even with these, I burnt out at times, went into slumps, got fed up with them - too much of anything is never a good thing, as the old proverb goes. Have I yet taken in too much Japan?

The answer is a bit counter-intuitive. I would describe my experience in Japan so far in the following chronological way: Seeing everything as surreal, followed by a splash of cold water in the face, followed by adjustment, followed by acceptance. My 4-step program, if you will.

Now there's this thing they call culture shock, but I don't think it's defined correctly. Note:

"culture shock: the feeling of disorientation experienced by someone who is suddenly subjected to an unfamiliar culture, way of life, or set of attitudes."

What's wrong here is the word "suddenly." True, culture shock hits you when you first come to a new place, but it's residual effects are comparable to those who try and quit smoking. At first one has undeterred confidence in their ability to overcome, followed by waves of desire for going back to old habits. That's a lot like my experience of culture shock. Some days are lollipops and neon lights (perhaps better described as yogurt-flavored candy and squid strips), while others i feel the city grinding me down as a whole, just scraping slowly away at my humanity, to risk sounding a trifle over-dramatic. My buddy over at the The Ghost Letters has blogged about this latter phenomenon quite a bit, and it's something anyone in any big city must go through: feeling isolated, getting fed up with the crowds and whatnot. The main difference is that everything here feels like it hits an extremity...

Life in Japan is everything to the max. The colors are brighter, the gadgets shinier, the lights blink faster and the silly humans all squeeze in to make their way, everything going 100 miles a minute. I'm not used to it, I'm getting used to it; some days it feels normal and some day it feels like the veritable equivalent of walking around mars with my helmet off, Total Recall style. For instance, I saw a dude bitching out the station attendant for a late train the other day. He was a young salary man, obviously in a hurry and upset by the late trains. He kept saying things along the lines of (and I'm translating faithfully here): "I'm not fucking around! Do you think I'm kidding here? This train cannot be late, do something, seriously!" While the station attendant apologized repeatedly and profusely, bowing all the while. Thie is a prime example of what one would never see in the New York area: a slave to public transportation venting his anger out on a station attendant who can't do anything, the guy obviously catching flak for a problem he didn't cause, and still maintaining a "the customer is always right" mentality (also known as okyakusama ga kamisama, translation "the customer is god"). I think if you pulled that at Amtrak in Rensselaer, NY, the staff would just laugh at you.

But enough with all that stuff. Moving on. I had a somewhat rocky week, with construction beginning at 8am on Thursday morning keeping me a awake and forcing me to run on low batteries all day. Then I made the terrible mistake of going out Thursday night, getting woken up by the clings and clangs and hollers of construction workers after staying up until 2am, and subsequently feeling a little burnt out for my kids class that day. The real kicker of all this is there was a sign put up just this week, bi-lingual, saying in English: "we will be painting from March 6, sorry for the inconvenience." This was rather deceiving, as it not only began on March 5, but when I later looked at Japanese closer, the characters for "construction" were explicitly stated.

I was better prepared today but still missed sleeping in until 9 or 10 like normal. I tried asking one of the constructoin workers if they would be working on Sunday as well, and he gave me a run-around answer along the lines of "we're working until it's finished," if I understood him correctly. Maybe I didn't. Irregardless, the dude had half inch forests of nose-hairs coming out of his shnoz, and I can live without ever seeing that again, ever.

Work was a breeze, only a couple classes at my favorite school, all the students were animated and a pleasure to teach. Note: this was the exact opposite of an incredibly awkward and painful day I had earlier this week in Shinjuku. I taught a dude today who was on a plane to Vegas when the Twin Towers fell; he said they re-routed him to Vancouver and that when he finally made it to Vegas, everything was just shut down. No lights, no casinos, just desert and dead bulbs. Wild. Another student said he tried to watch Star Wars without Japanese subtitles, and he did fine except that he couldn't understand Yoda! I had to of course explain that Yoda says everything completely backwards, and hence has terrible grammar!

I was thanked several time for being generally helpful today, which always makes me feel good. I've never felt so appreciated in any line of work in the past as I often am at this job. I feel that of all the teachers that come through, a small amount really want to give it their all every time, and not to brag, but when I do something I do it right. I don't like half-assing anything. So, that made me feel good. The staff at that school are also becoming good friends of mine, and I'm crossing my fingers and toes that I'll have a set day there as of April on my next contract, as I'm only there once or twice a month as of now.

Today I came home and what's the first thing I see? A cockroach scurrying up my wall. I try and calm myself down but the overwhelming revulsion I feel for the thing is almost nauseating; I never had to deal with these guys back home, although house centipedes were another matter altogether. Fact of the matter is they both creep me out as much as anything possibly can.

I mustered up the stomach and slammed an old hard-cover copy of One Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (sorry Vernes) into the little bastard. It fell in the corner of my room, next to my bed in a corner of shoes and belts. I decided I had to move my bed and do some hardcore cleaning to get whatever putrid rice crumbs I had let find there way there for little dudes like this to much on (not to mention go buy some bug spray the next day). I proceeded to move my bed, poked at the shoey-belty-corner with an umbrella, and sure enough the little fucker comes sidling out on the wall apparently undamaged. I throw the book at him, my heart leaping out of my chest, and still see him scurry away after being apparently flattened, and into my shoe to boot!

That was it.

I flipped my shoe with the umbrella and he scurried behind the book. I kicked that book so furiously that the neighbors must have thought I was having a domestic dispute with myself, and finally it was over. I spent the next 3 hours cleaning up and working around all the crap I'd been putting off for so long. I watched Blazing Saddles for the umpteenth time while I cleaned, ate some pizza toast and felt inspired to pour out all of this you're reading. So in the end, it really was a good day, on the whole.

As I said at the beginning, things change constantly. Nothing is ever set, it just appears that way.

Margarita Pizza has got to be one of the greatest things ever invented

2009-02-22T22:15:00.004+09:00

I mean, mozzarella cheese, big pieces of tomatoes and basil? How much more right can you get?! Or gluttonous, for that matter. And to anyone who talks smack about pizza in Japan, sure the portions leave a little to be desired and the sizes are smaller, but everything is smaller here! You really don't get eggs, mayo and squid pizza unless you ask for it, so don't believe the hype.

So what's new with me? A whole lot of nothing, that's what! 日本語ばかり勉強している = I feel like I'm doing almost nothing but studying Japanese. Not that that's a bad thing, but I've honestly kicked it into high gear, sacrificing most of my leisure time toward studying. I may be generally lazy or mild-mannered, but when I stubbornly set my mind on something, I see it through 110%, just so long as I don't lose interest. Which hasn't happened yet, as languages are a lot like endless puzzles, where exploring one nook leads you to a whole 'nother vista of inquiry you knew nothing about beforehand.

Case in point: rude Japanese. I love speaking rude Japanese, it's fun and people are even more shocked than when you speak in an overly polite manner (us foreigners always seem to achieve one or the other, it's an endless struggle). Naturally I only talk in such rude language among good friends... Although I've already once made the regrettable mistake of trying to be jovial with one of my bosses, only to be reminded by the look of sheer, audacious shock on his face that the respect hierarchy is not to be to be tampered with, in language or in action. In or outside the office, a subordinate speaks to his boss in keigo ("humble form"), bows him off of trains, etc. etc.. Of course I am not as subject to these standards as most Japanese, since I'm not expected by any of my fellow staff to speak Japanese, and am conversely expected to carry the aura of "native speaker" around with me, like a floating cultural orb. (It's one of the selling points of the company) If I do however decide to try and speak it, it's a "tread lightly" kind of situation. And just like in any country or culture, some people are way more lax than others, it really depends.

As should be obvious by my lack of formatting, I'm completely winging it this week. The theme was finding unexpected surprises in languages... ah yes. naname means diagonal. Whenever I record a word in my notebook, and subsequently place it into my flashcard program, I always double-check a second source to make sure I have not only recorded the meaning correctly, but also that I am not ignoring other potential meanings. I thought that diagonal surely couldn't mean anything but just that, but checked it on principal anyway. Glad I did, because I now know that gokigennaname means "in a bad temper." I'll be sure to use that one as soon as possible!

I had band practice today and it was rather by the numbers, except that now I've learned the majority of the songs and I'm beginning to get a chance to write my own stuff. It's always the most fun part of the being in a band for me: everything is still fresh and new, anything one wants to alter is still subject to change, and one can get useful feedback from fellow band members. The writing phase can be truly magical, as you are only limited by your own imagination, and you never know what shape things may take. It's as if the music sometimes becomes it's own living, breathing entity! And I don't feel that any of that was over-dramatic in the slightest. At practice, myself and the ladies of F.I.D. were surprisingly enough both in the same boat, as neither of us have had a "real band practice" (one with a drummer) since last summer! Josh, I know you won't read this but I miss jamming with you.

As well as practicing the songs, I also greatly enjoyed the chance to hang out with my band mates - they are not only a few of the best friends I have over here, but they're also Japanese, meaning I can practice my language skills, we can bounce our cultural nuances off of each other, and most always have a good time. Maybe their being Japanese wouldn't seem like such a big deal, but being an expatriate with mostly fellow expat-friends, it is. That point about language practice goes two-fold, since our bass player doesn't speak English much but definitely wants to improve. I even agreed to help her study for the TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication), a bar of measurement almost all Japanese use to weigh their language skills, the single most important exam for careers and all that too. Hopefully if I can coach my friend a bit and get her thinking about it the right way, she can study hard, do well on the test and get an awesome promotion or something.

Oh, and by the way, on the subject of bands, instead of saying "check, 1, 2" or "testing, testing," Japanese people go: "ah ah ah ah" into a microphone. I still find it very amusing every time, without fail.

I have had the weirdest dreams lately. From nightmares of terrifying kids' classes (as I'm nervous about the new ones I will receive in the new contract year coming in April) to surreal dreams of Gabe shooting some arch rival and chopping up the body and hiding it in a closet....no, I can't make this stuff up. I'll level that back home, I used to indulge in a certain, er, plant which has the effect on me of not remembering my dreams. Here, I remember something vivid and strange almost everyday, for better or for worse.

So this was a random post, was it not? I have toyed on and off with doing VLOG's (Video-blogs), and they are just so popular nowadays, but I think I express myself much better through the writing process. Besides, what do I really have to say that's so important you need to watch a streamed video of my face for ten minutes? The real thing is hard enough to take for ten minutes, and the virtual equivalent would most likely transmute me into some kind of demented Lawnmower man, choppin' up yer brains with my virtual-lawnmower.

Later!

"What an extraordinary situation is that of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he feels it. But from the point of view of daily life, without going deeper, we exist for our fellow-men — in the first place for those on whose smiles and welfare all our happiness depends, and next for all those unknown to us personally with whose destinies we are bound up by the tie of sympathy." - Albert Einstein, "The World as I See it."