Who says I'm a dork?

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