Things I have seen carved into school desks in Japan.

TROM
BONE

Me and My Mantis

We share the world with all sorts of animals. Some are covered with tight coils of fur, while some are finely-scaled. Some have adapted colorful appearances to frighten enemies or attract mates, and some don't care about these flamboyant animals at all because they are unfortunately color-blind, like dogs. The continents support a staggering array of species while the ocean is home to even more. However, there is one animal that shines above its brethren. An animal whose good-nature and playful spirit bring joy to children and adults alike throughout at least a few parts of the world. A creature whose beauty and warrior-like spirit have doubtlessly inspired whole societies to do impressive societal things. I am, of course, referring to the distinguished praying mantis.
Now, I know what you're thinking, something along the lines of, "totally, warrior spirit, they definitely have that." But you may also be wondering, why now? Six months and nothing then suddenly, without pretext, I am writing about the praying mantis. Well, it happens that a few weeks ago I noticed a young mantis apparently in the midst of an expedition across my wall, his large forearms pulling him quickly across the textured surface with the strange gait that such large, oddly-jointed appendages always cause. I watched him with curiosity, having never seen one so close. He settled upon the edge of my laundry basket and seemed content to lounge there occasionally turning his elongated head to give alert eyes a direct line of sight, the eyes of a mantis being located on either side of its head. I thought I should make some sort of gesture of friendship and scanned my room for one of the many crickets that have recently invaded my apartment. As if volunteering, one appeared in front of me just I as finished my thought. I hastily snatched him up and set him atop the basket, near the mantis. Within minutes the cricket was in the mantid's grasp, his chest pierced by powerful, raptorial limbs. Needless to say, I was quite impressed with this display and bought a small plastic tank for him and, with a stick and a leaf to recreate what he's used to, I ushered him into his temporary home.
Let me quickly throw some mantis facts at you as quoted from some guy name Dan Feldman who wrote a brief and unintentionally hilarious research paper on the praying mantis.

"With an estimated 1800 species of mantids that cover the whole world, the mantis has become a prevalent and often revered part of human life." -yes

"In Arab and Turkish cultures a mantis was thought to point toward Mecca, a site of considerable religious interest." -naturally

"Ears occur in 60% of mantids" -I find this both hilarious and enlightening.

"The mantis is an auditory cyclops"-band name?

So as you can see Dan did his research and it is undeniably interesting, in fact, I think it should be used to teach children to read. Now that you are suitably educated about this fascinating creature let me return to my story.

I gave my mantis a name, Mantis, and tossed him a cricket when I was able to catch one. He was generally slow in capturing his prey and I tired of waiting quickly so I only saw him eat once but it was brutal. The mantis waited patiently on the ceiling of the tank until the unsuspecting cricket jumped to a twig that lay directly below him. He stuck quick and the cricket escaped but only by leaping so frantically that he left one of his legs in the inexorable grip of the predator. Undeterred the mantis moved fluidly to the corner of the tank where the cricket sat, the leg still in his right hand. Looking down at the tiny insect the mantis ate half of the cricket's leg while the cricket sat stupified no more than an inch away. I have to admit, I was a little shocked myself.
A few days after the mantis showed up I went on a three-day trip to Hiroshima. Knowing my own feelings regarding being left alone in a tank for three days without food, even if there is a stick and a leaf, I set the tank on my porch with the lid open and bid him farewell. I explored Hiroshima and the nearby island of Miyajima and when I returned home exhausted I had nearly forgotten my mantid companion. Thus I was surprised when days later he appeared, resting casually on my screen door. I considered it a sign of friendship and resolved to leave him be and there he has stayed ever since, silently keeping me company.

Our Duties as Teachers

Most Interac ALTs (assistant language teachers), including myself, are embedded in one or two schools, rarely more than three. However sometimes we are asked to visit other schools, usually those of the elementary variety. Before the day of the visit arrives we recieve a fax of the official request from the school describing what periods and grades we will be teacher plus a list of what they would like taught. The typical requested lesson plan will ask for "easy english" vocabularly, an activity, and foreign culture. (I usually consider myself just being there as qualifying for the foreign culture) I always add a further bit to the lesson plan which I call, "a demonstration of my height." It consists of, as you might guess from its title, me demonstating my height by touching something relatively high, like a door frame or sign. Though I have been to schools with teachers just as tall as me, this bit seems to always impress them and provoke shouts of, "sugoii!!" (great!!) But I digress. Invariably, during these visits, the kids crowd you and, especially with the five and six-year, hug you and are quite affectionate and exciteable. In fact, it's not unusualy for me to leave a class trailing a half-class of kids off of my arms and legs. However, usually they don't include this in the request forms. In a recent request to another ALT the school, apparantly in a fit of honesty, they wrote as follows: "We'd like to shake hands with you and hold your hand. Then, we'd like to have the opportunity to touch you." -And what an opportunity it is.

Advice to japanese owners of beer gardens that rest perfectly on the top of the city

Don't leave your doors unlocked even if you're closed for the season, especially if you still have full, tapped kegs...it's not a great idea really-I mean, hypothetically, people could wander in and enjoy the beautiful view while helping themselves to some free beverages...hypothetically.

Two T-shirts

One of the best things about Japan is the t-shirts. Covered in nonsensical english seemingly picked at random from some strange database of english words-"fresh" is well-liked as are "sweet,"heaven," and "pressurefull"-the shirts make my days a little better. Yesterday I saw one that made good used of punctuation it said, "cheeseburger... cheeseburger? cheeseburger!." I would wear that! Also heard from another ALT that one of her teachers wore a shirt to school that said simply and yet somewhat mysteriously, "fucking." Japan... Japan? Japan!

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Mt. Fuji but Were Afraid to Ask

We set off towards the famous angular white slopes of Mount Fuji at eight on a Saturday night unprepared, sleep-deprived, and undoubtedly still nursing a hangover from the previous night’s revels in Hamamatsu. The four of us, Matt, Tim, me, and the slightly creepy Johnny Yi crammed into a efficiently-built Nissan after having a very obliging woman take the same photo with each of our four cameras and began what would be a trip so exhausting that I would almost forget how severely beautiful it was until I saw the photos two weeks later.
As we slowly ascended the mountain, car laboring and us bantering, I noticed the rather beautiful and eerily mythical forest that was slowly enveloping us. The ancient wood was so crowded with trees that pushed out towards the road as if with a plan to overtake it that you couldn’t see very far into it. The proliferation of rakish trees and heavy vegetation soon formed a dizzying wall that prevented any penetrating view. It seemed a place that could suck unwary travelers into its labyrinths and then bear down on them with all the treacherous devices possessed by an enchanted forest.
I later learned I was not the only one to notice a strange quality in Fuji’s guardian forest. It turns out that Aokigahara Jukai (Sea of Trees) is worthy of more than just a casual wariness. The soil that fuels Aokigahara is heavily veined with iron which causes traditional compasses to malfunction and leaves travelers unable to distinguish between North and South. More sinister is its apparent strong pull on those unfortunates who find themselves wanting to end their lives. The forest has for many years been Japan's location du jour for suicide with over 78 bodies dragged out in 2002 alone. In a coping strategy of questionable effectiveness authorities placed “no-suicide” signs throughout the area. Locals also reluctantly undertake a search of the macabre wood annually.
The road thinned beyond the forest and my ears began to pop as we drove steadily up the mountain and out of the treacherous forest. We pulled into the parking lot at stage 5-there are 10 stages or stopping points throughout the mountain-and had to navigate through an army of amateur astronomers and their equipment. At last finding a spot amid the telescope-village we stepped out of the car and stretched, suddenly alert in the cold night air.
We started the climb at what we thought was a moderate pace but soon found ourselves gasping from the steep trail and lack of oxygen. Johnny Yi announced his resignation from our team after around fifteen minutes of silently wheezing behind us; I was relieved. As Johnny turned around we quickly adjusted and vowed to keep the pace slow. We created a breaking system wherein every ten to fifteen minutes we took a brief respite, leaning against the large porous boulders scattered about, and let our raw lungs and bodies acclimate. After each rest Matt and I would trade the head lamp which carried with it the distinguished position of leader. Though it bore more responsibility, the leader regulating both path and pace, the lead position was actually easier-provided there was no avalanche-because directing the light made every step more sure and reduced the amount stumbles and unnecessary steps.Each dusty step we took up the mountain’s southern route, Fujinomiya, found us closer to the 6th stage. With burning lungs we reached the rusted metal shack that marks our first real stopping point and found to our dismay that the heavy iron doors were locked.
After a short rest against the sealed doors we snapped some photos of ourselves in front of the invitingly ominous, “trail closed for conditions,” sign before stepping around it. About 100 meters from the 6th stage we discovered why the trail was closed: it was completely gone. The guide-rope, our greatest alley against the steep inclines, had been covered by a season’s worth of iced-over snow and the correct path was decidedly non-existent. “Should we keep going,” someone asked but we all just stood, feet shifting, looking skeptically at where the rope dove into the white and the vast icy incline rose beyond. Though we were all thinking the same thing, namely that it would be stupid to try and continue, none of us wanted to be the one to say so and thus it was that after ten minutes of hesitation we dug our shoes into the ice and moved on.
With one flashlight, old running shoes, no climbing equipment, and no gloves climbing was, well, hard. Every direction held precarious steps and, as I realized about half-way up, a distinct possibility of serious injury. As it grew steeper we were forced to crawl. Our hands grew raw from grasping frozen outcroppings and it was with great joy that I discovered a discarded work glove stuck to the ice in front of me. We took a long rest at the metal structure that appeared before us at the end of our climb. After pondering our idiocy and eating a packet of Ritz crackers apiece we began our hike again. By then I had implemented a two-minute glove exchange between my right and left hand thus distributing the cold equally. As we hiked on I noticed Matt was wearing a pair of extra socks on his hands. Tim noticed too and for the rest of the trip he referred to us respectively as, “socks,” and, “one-glove.”
Two hours into the mountain, we saw a shadowy light to one side of the trail. We watched the light grow brighter until at a fork in the trail we saw two figures emerge as if from the fog behind. I knew, even before we found out they had both been climbing Fuji alone, that they were crazy. Both of them wore shorts. Dave, a Canadian Grad student turned out to be quite funny-if unintentionally so-and a bit strange. Daigo was Japanese and spoke literally five words the whole time I knew him but I found him an amiable enough companion. After introducing ourselves we voted to continue the climb together and set off bolstered by our new forces. The next few hours were tiring but pleasant, punctuated by frequent rests that allowed us to watch the dark skates of clouds that roamed the silent sky below. When not resting or trudging silently up the lifeless slopes we listened, bemused, as Dave explained how he came to be on Fuji that night. Apparently a concerned family had found him, unable to speak the language and lost, at a store in a town near the base of Fuji and had graciously taken him to their house and offered him some dinner. About half-way through dinner he began to feel tired and rather than attributing it to jet-lag or sleep-deprivation, both of which he was surely suffering from, he concluded the family had poisoned him. As soon as he came to this realization he rose from the table and announced his imminent and hasty departure. Somehow despite his boorish and strange behavior he still managed to extract a ride from the family to the 5th stage where he began his hike. Naturally we pointed out the danger he put himself in by accepting a ride from someone who had so recently tried to poison him. The other thing about Dave that I found hopelessly funny was that, unable to remember Daigo's name, he simply addressed him by a different one each time, some of which were little more than mumbles.
I had perfected my glove-transfer timing by this time and was rejoicing in my relatively warm hands when we came upon a sign proclaiming 90 minutes to the summit. It’s hard to tell distances when climbing a mountain; sometimes far looks near and sometimes near looks far. Whatever the approximate distance was then, I was ready for it to be half to a third less than the sign said but there was no chance of giving up then. We were right on for reaching the peak at sunset and had no intention of sacrificing that. The final 400 meters of the climb is broken up by steep but comparatively soft-terrain of wide snaking switchbacks. As we reached this fateful point we noticed we were now quite able to see our surroundings, the red-gray sand and rocks suddenly visible in all their dusty resplendence. This, however, was not good. Our time was running out.
I was starting to think that the sunrise would look quite nice from the bottom of the switchbacks but Tim and Matt had been re-energized by the slowly pinkening sky. Brains clouded by the race with the sun and noting that we could see the peak just beyond us, they suggested we ditch the trail and go straight up the rock-strewn rise straight ahead of us. It would mean taking the elevation gain all at once rather than slowly with the switchbacks but presumably we would reach our goal faster. Dave was against it, pointing out how steep it was, we would have to proceed hand-over-foot, and how dangerous it would be. Daigo was, per usual, silent on the matter-though his face seemed steeled to accept any decision-which seemed to leave the decision up to me. Sealing our fate, I looked up at the shimmering peak and said “well, we’re almost there right?” And with those marginally encouraging words we began to make our way, at a pace that seemed alternately very slow and ludicrously fast, up the mountain’s final feet.
It took less than five minutes for me to nurture a deep regret regarding my decision to skirt the path. By then we had then been hiking for over five hours at a time when we were usually in bed. Each successive movement was more exhausting. I was resting at least as much as moving forward and still with every rock I grasped my chest grew tighter. I was fighting off dizziness and nausea of which the former was alarming given the precarious situation I was in. The mountain seemed to drop off behind me. I looked up and saw Matt disappear over the top and cursed him to myself. When I finally pulled myself over the last rocks of our improvised trail every one of my muscles felt utterly useless and I wanted nothing more than to take a quick nap but as I walked into the icy gusts that batter the top of Fuji I forgot all that and fell into an awed trance, struck by the uncommonly perfect beauty surrounding me. The sun had just overtaken the horizon and bled a striking orange across the sky, enshrining the sharp outline of the far peak. As I watched fiery dark-red tints join the orange Matt walked over and we congratulated each other.
“God,” I yelled into the wind, "look at that."
“Yeah,” he yelled back smiling.
We walked carefully across the icy surface that flowed up and down like great motionless waves, keeping our heads down to avoid the wind. Looking down into the crater, tremendous and gaping below, I felt huge. Rather than overpowered by the immensity of everything, I felt strengthened by it. The exertion, the hours spent slowly climbing the mountain, and the fact that we alone had shared the night with its rocky curvatures led to a feeling of oneness with it all. I hadn't defeated the mountain and the mountain hadn't defeated me; we existed symbiotically.
When the biting wind became too much for our already-chapped faces we retreated to a nook about twenty meters below the peak. Huddled there in relative comfort we pulled out a small bottle of sake and with little delay passed it around following each drink with “cheers” and “kanpai” while looking down on the mountain we had summited.
The walk down, which at some points would have been more aptly described as a stumble, was still long though we cut our climbing time in half. Occasionally we would snap out of our exhaustion-fueled trances and glimpse the new mountain daylight had revealed. The tropical vegetation at the base seemed almost obscenely green and the large patches of snow sparkled white all around us. In all honesty though I spent much of the hike down imagining the meal I would have at Denny’s later and trying to ignore the pain in my feet. The last dusty mile of trail was hell. It was like a slow-motion dream or an exhausted astronaut's moon- walk, every step obscenely big and awkward. Our feet sank into the sandy ground and my legs functioned at about 30 percent of their capacity. When we at last reached the bottom we spread out in front of the sign that marks the start of the trail and took a group photograph. I wanted nothing more than to sleep but as I looked back up Fuji’s slopes, marbled white and dotted with porous red-brown rock, I remembered the vastness of the sunrise and the beauty we saw alone on the top of the mountain.

While in Tokyo I happened across the Meiji-jingu shrine while taking refuge from the crushing 95 degree heat. Located among a somewhat vast (133 acres in fact) wood oddly close to skyscrapers and upscale shops it is a a lovely place to stumble upon. Walking through the wooded park on the way to the shrine-I didn't actually know where it lead at the time-I gaped as I passed beneath the towering cyprus torii that mark the entrance to the shrine




I would have been quite satisfied with just the park but the shrine was a fitting place for the path to lead, beautfiful japanese cyprus buildings, a couple having a traditional marriage ceremony to one side, and a huge, leafy prayer tree in the center of it all.



After studying the prayer tree for a while, taking it's geometry and authenticity, I became reasonably satisfied with its effectiveness and then purchased a tablet to make my own wish. As someone had already wished for Dylan Sprouse to be their boyfriend-one should always be wary of competing wishes on the same tree-I decided to wish my dad a good birthday.



-happy birthday Dad-be there if I could.

Some people, generally those of a more relaxed and casual nature, tend to misplace important items more than others. For instance my best friend used to lose his car keys almost daily, invariably finding them after a few frenzied minutes searching, in a neglected pocket-that cargo pants were at their zenith in popularity didn't help. Then there are others who seem always aware of precisely where all their possesions reside and never lose a second retracing their steps. *1 I am always teetering on the fence above the former category. Though I have made many improvements over the years, I no longer write my name inside my jackets, I still find myself misplacing things fairly frequently. However, the items I lose lately generally fall into one of two categories. The first category is that of important things which I have put somewhere safe so I won't lose them. This is, of course, ironic but nevertheless quite common. The second is things which I lose but immediately know, upon finding them missing, where they are or at the very least how to go about retrieving them. Last weekend I found myself faced with both.
When I awoke Sunday morning I knew something was missing. I shuffled around the room half-heartedly locating all my personal effects one by one till I had everything gathered but my wallet. As I slunk back to bed, I had awoke too early due to my still curtain-less windows, I checked my phone for the time and found my wallet falling neatly into category two, or so I hoped. I had a message from the local koban (police) which I could only assume involved my wallet though I didn't understand anything in the message besides my name and, "koban." Later that afternoon, after breakfast, I decided I had better go see about my wallet. Assuming they wouldn't return it to me without some sort of identification I figured I would take my passport-problem was I couldn't find it. After some minutes of throwing books around and rechecking my important papers pouch a minimum of four times I started to get a smidge nervous. After a thorough scattering of papers and books across my floor I checked my accordian folder-reserved for important things-and the passport fell neatly into category two.

Prospective Reader: Sure. Some people lose things. Some people don't. Who cares?

Matt: Well, it was sort of an examination of the different ways in which people, specifically myself, lose them and the processes they/I go through recovering them.

Prospective Reader: A bit slow isn't it?

Matt: No.

Prospective Reader: And aren't you supposed to write about Japan??

Matt: You interupted. I was just coming to that.

Prospective Reader: Well get on with it then.

Matt: Ahem.

I drove to the police office next to the station and parked my car where the taxis wait as I figured it would be an in-and-out thing. Inside the small building a police officer greets me from behind a short counter. I start to stumble through my request in Japanese-"Matt Dillinger." Stop, check for understanding. No response yet. "Yesterday, last night. My...my..." Damn, why didn't I look up the word for wallet. Damn. "Yesterday...I don't have." Someone walks in and the policeman politely extricates himself from my babbling and begins helping the new guy. He needs directions to the onsen nearby but is either a tad slow or just appreciates very exact instructions as they spend around ten minutes discussing it. As they prattle on in the background I look at the "wanted" posters posted around the room. The photographers have captured each one at his most unsettling and I recognize the creepiest as one wanted for murdering a british girl a while back. I notice with some shock a poster of a young woman and idly wonder what she had done. As I am compiling a list of possibilites the direction-lover and the officer finish up and after a quick laugh about something the officer returns to me. I am ready this time and hand him my phone with the message they left on my phone. He nods as he listens. Says, "ah, Matthew Dirinja-San," and goes to the back of the office returning a short time later with a binder full of various lost items including my wallet. Inside the Lost and Found book I see a hundred yen coin (less than a dollar) sealed inside a plastic baggie and with a full report attached. I smiled imagining someone finding the coin on the ground and brining it to the police station hoping the rightful owner would come to claim it.
After recieving my wallet, we spent between five and ten minutes trying to understand one another as there was evidently something else he wanted from me but I had no idea what it was. Eventually a pulled together and realized he was trying to call the person who had returned the wallet so I could thank them personally. He seemed unable to reach them and eventually indicated I could go. As I walked to the car I checked my wallet and noted without surprise that the two thousand yen that had been there the previous night was still there.

Prosective Reader: That's more like it. But the stuff about the wanted photos was a bit dark.

Matt: Sorry, that's what happened.

Prospective Reader: Just didn't really fit with the rest.

Matt: Okay.

Prospective Reader: And what about Alex's request for more stories about kids?

Matt: On it, as soon as I start school again in September.

Prospective Reader: Good.











*1 Perhaps the energy spent keeing things uncomonly organized to make for easier retrieval later and filing the locations of all ones things in one's head is equal to that of an occasional few minutes lost to searching.

Tropical Ointment

I live on a tropical island - i mean, technically - but before you conjure up visions of sparkling white sand beaches, drinks with umbrellas, blue oceans, and palm trees let me set the record straight. This is the other tropical, the un-sought out one. This version is characterized by a choking heat that never dissipates and leaves the air so moist you often find yourself unsure whether you toweled off after your showers. (on the plus side it takes only minutes for refrigerated butter to become spreadable) The cool ocean usually seems quite far off and much of it is not good for swimming. Guitars fall in and out of tune, as due their bowed counterparts. The seemingly peaceful and soothing green tea field behind my door has been doused with fertilizer and the stench permeates the neighborhood. I've even developed a charming heat rash for which the pharamacist gave me something that seems to be a japanese version of icy/hot which is in no way effective, though I can maybe follow her reasoning. On the bright side those ungodly-big winged beetle things that live in the trees and bushes and wake me up every morning with their deafening, and undoubtedly useless, crawing, cricking vibration sounds have been dropping like mere flies. Of course there is more good here than just dead beetles, though each new sighting brings me a little joy, there will be time for that later. For now, just trust that tropical doesn't always equal pleasant.

In the crook of the mountain
the city lights blur,
below, struggling galaxies.

-June

Before I Forget

It's odd, much of what makes unfamiliar cultures interesting is not the drastic differences but the subtle ones-the quirks. It's similar to love. Maybe at first you are drawn in by more immediately apparent things; their laugh, or wit, or how they fit into their jeans but it often takes a while before you notice the important things, the qualities that make them endearing are the ones that don't initially pop out at you, maybe even the ones you forget if you don't think about them. Why am I saying all this?? Well, because I almost forgot one such endearing feature of Japan: the unicycle. (1)
Unicyles are know throughout the world. No doubt you have seen one before, perhaps even tried to operate one. In Japan the majority of the population is proficient. At least those under the age of 15 are and probably the older ones too it's just less quantifiable in them. When the recess song begins (short melodies are used to alert you to the time, there are even loudspeakers throughout the cities that play one at noon and six everyday) the children scatter across the playground, organising their various activities. Soccer, dodgeball, and jumprope are all popular. But there are also groups of kids riding around effortlessly on their unicycles. It's pretty surreal at first and, of course, you feel like you are at a very strange, and possibly in violation of child-labor laws, circus but with time you grow quite charmed by and eventually accustomed to it. And then you forget about it, just like you forget your girlfriend's shoulder freckles, until some event, or passing conversation, or place reminds you and you make a note to remember it.


(1) I had to type that twice because the first time I wrote pogo-stick. Ridiculous.

A guitar, a drink, a typhoon

If you're not depressed at least weekly you're not paying attention. And if you don't enjoy hard rain and late nights and guitar strings there is something wrong. You know a hard rain's a comin means something's gonna happen.

The Mountain

Best Left Unsaid...

Who doesn't love variety?

I know I do; whether in meals or blogs it's nice to have a bit of everything. Hence today's blog. First, before I forget, sometimes the best parts of your day are the little insignificant parts that you forget immediately after they occur. This occured to me in the midst of one of those exact moments yesterday and I will now relate it here:

It was cleaning time at school. Not the school that plays Strawberry Fields for cleaning time, the other one. Anyways, I had been playing basketball in the gym with a couple of the volleyball girls who insisted on shooting the ball as if it were a volleyball being set and was returning to the teacher's room when I was drafted into a cleaning group by two of the second year boys. They were kids I liked and who made a concerted efffort to speak english to both each other and me which is much more than I can say for most. The conversation at this particular time went something like this: "Matt-he is (gesturing towards his friend) gargoyle."
"Really, a gargoyle?!" I say with feigned shock.
"No, he is Gargoyle," says his friend again indicating with his hand.
"Hmm," I say.
"Matt...he went to hell tuesday." His friend puts him in a headlock. "He goes to hell after school," he chokes out after freeing himself from the headlock.
"That's too bad," I say, admiring their linguistic skills.
"Matt."
"Yes."
"We are undead."
"Undead?! Let's go to the Nurse," I say and start leading them towards the office.
"No, No," they protest, "We are no undead."
"Well...okay."
and so on. My favorite is, "he is gargoyle.'

The next thing on the plate is Mt Fuji and the conquering of its slopes. I will not go into too much depth because I want to do a post with photos and I have been having some technical difficulties but let me some at up like this. You think it's gonna be you climbing a mountain but then you get there and...it's you climbing a mountain.

Things i wish I had right now: a stereo, coffee, a street map of Japan that made at least a bit of sense, the authority to convince the Japanese Diet to assign names to streets thus making sensible maps useful, Mexican food, a banjo, a washing machine, curtains, an apple.

Music of recent interest: Folk Implosion, Devandra Banhart, Residente Calle Trece.

That is all for now,

Peace

Elementary visits

I had just chopsticked the last shumai into my mouth when a rapidly gathering circle of elementary school kids began requsting my presence outside for some event. Actually what they said was, "Mato Senseii, um....potato...go....um...potato," while gesturing at the door. I took this to mean, well, to be honest i had no idea but that is quite usual here. Turns out this particular elementary school occasionally boils large amounts of potatoes and then serves them to the students outside. Now, you wouldn't think anyone would get too excited over plain, boiled yellow potatoes but they were ecstatic and I gave in to the potato excitement pretty quick. In fact in my excitement I even missed the main point of it all, we were to throw the skins from the potatoes into the flower beds presumably to act as fertilizer, luckily I was quickly reprimanded when I tried to eat my skin and made aware of the expectations. The lunch culminated with the delightful coining of a new insult which I sincerely hope catches on. One of the 6th graders, you know how it is when you are learning a new language, was desperately trying to find some way to make fun of a fellow student in English. She fumbled around a bit until she settled quite happily on, "potato ghost."

Like tiny, disgusting horses

A friend of mine used to begin his explanation for why he likes the tv show 24 like this, "you know, I am usually completely against torture...," and he would go on to explain that when the main character of the show tortured someone he thought it was perfectly called for and, in fact, very well executed. I am going to start this rant off the same way...
I am usuallyh completely against torture, even of insects and rodents and things we humans traditionally do not care about. However in the case of my new friend the cockroach I may relent. I have been trying to figure out what it is that makes these things so grotesque and unlikable but still cannot pinpoint it. Regardless I am disgusted by them and, recently, have been thinking about employing some crueler methods for their demise, that is rather than the ancient and reliable "shoe method." I want to encourage them to seek a home elsewhere and though I am pretty sure intellectually that they do not have any means of abstract communication, when I see them I can easily imagine their plotting to further inhabit my apartment. In light of this suspicion, I was not surprised when, after finishing dinner, I found a mid-sized fellow examing the dishes in my sink. I found this the perfect opportunity to test the effects of hot water on these miserable creatures. The most interesting of this effects was the repeated, and rather mocking, rearing up of the cockroach in what I can only describe as a good imitation of a horse bucking. It actually took me by surprise and I almost lost him in my astonishment but I quickly recovered and dispatched him using a new method which I termed the "side-of-the-cutting board method."

These photos are from a ferry trip to the Izu Penninsula, to the small diving town, Toi, where my friend Rob lives in what amounts to a palace here. It was a damned lovely trip. The Pacific is warmer here and swimming is, well, actually its still cold but better than Washington. In the summer heat it will be perfect. However, you have to watch out for the spider crabs who grow to be as tall as me and will attack bathers in groups of three or four and drag the unsuspecting vicitim out to deeper water where they devour you as your lungs fill with water.

Almost forgot. Please do not worry about me being lonely as I share my apartment, including the sink, with a family of curious cockroaches whose numbers, sadly, seem to be decreasing with every attempt to console me.

Let me first say that hopefully I will procure internet for my home within a short while and then posts here will become much more frequent and, quite possibly, better written. And now to spew out random thoughts and experiences...

I just finished my first month of school here and to be honest I am pretty broke up about leaving my school.* I had really begun to feel comfortable at Sakagawa Chugakko and was getting to know the kids names and all. Damn it. Surely the new school will be good too; I hear they have a soccer club.

Also, in what is supposedly one of the lowest-crime rate countries in the world**, I have already experienced the devastation that lawlessness can inflict upon honest folk...somebody stole my bycycle. (Im really sorry steven....) It is a damn shame, even though my bike was pretty lowgrade, and I am sort of temporarily stuck relying on my friends, um, even more than usual. Hopefully it'll get replaced soon, maybe with a car or at least a nicer bike.

Oh, these are pictures of a little park area by the castle by the library. What? Oh, you don't have castles by your libraries???



*I switch Schools every month but just between two.

**I made that fact up though I think it is pretty true.