Come back, kid!

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

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

Please fill in all the blank spaces

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

Feeba!

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