Greed and Idiocy Are Universal to Humans (even Japanese ones)

One common thing that I have noticed with many Japanophils (including myself) when first coming to Japan is our incredible ignorance about Japanese people.  Us lovers of Japan have been brain washed by over romanticized writings that we have read over and over.  From JET blogs to actual non-fiction novels, many of the authors are under a spell when they write about their Japan experience.  They see everything through ruby lenses.  This is then passed to us ignorant travelers.  We come to Japan believing that the people of this country are unlike us evil westerns because not only are they polite, they are also gracious hosts who would are lacking whatever it is that makes us evil foreigners greedy and ignorant.  I would like to dispell this idea once again.  I will refrain from talking about honne and tatemae because I would more like to focus on one issue and also just one experience I had.

I want your lovers of Japan to open your eyes (if you are already enlightened then congratulations).  Drum roll please…. JAPANESE PEOPLE ARE HUMANS LIKE THE REST OF US!  GASP!  Muttering among the crowd.  Yes its true, Japanese people are in fact human.  This being the case, they have all the positives and negatives all us other humans possess. Some of you non-Japan lovers will wonder how is this at all surprising.  Well let me shed some light and repeat myself.  People that love Japan spend most of their time reading all the lovely, glimmering and awe inspiring half truths about Japan.  I say half truths because Japan does rise to many expectations sometimes.  Violent crime for one, is much lower in Japan than in most places.  I am not refuting that.  What I am concerned about is people have this idea that all Japanese people are polite, timid and shy people.  Utter bullshit.  I will admit, I meet many shy, polite, and timid people in Japan.  There are a lot of them.  But there are just as many, loud, obnoxious and entirely rude people here.  Walk down a street in Shinjuku and night and you can see shining examples of this.  Japanese people can in many ways actually be MORE ignorant than American’s (whom the world loves to hate and make generalizations about in the opposite fashion of Japanese).

In case some of you didn’t know, here is a little history lesson.  During the Edo period which lasted from about 1600 to the mid 1800’s, Japan was a closed country.  They even have a word for it (shikoku).   Then one day America (don’t you just hate that place?)  came over with their black battle ships and basically told Japan, “Yo open your country or we will blast your asses”.  Japan “grudgingly” accpted this.  Grudgingly is in quotations because they hated or ways but they LOOOVVED our technology.  They realized that they were basically in the stone age and if they wanted to be a world power they needed to get with the times.  So they opened their doors to the world (there were some that traded with them a bit before the opening of their country) and soaked up the best tech and systems they can find.  To this day, that is why Japan has things like beer and school girls.  The idea was that they would use western technology but keep their Japanese spirit.  That was the slogan that was brainwashed into them at the time (now being the meiji then showa periods).  After world war 2 when they lost the war, Japan changed their tune again.  Mostly because they had to (again thanks to America).  They became an economic power and gave up war (article 9 in their constitution.  Look it up for some nice controversy).  I’d also like to say that although they no longer go to war, they have the second most advanced army in the world (its called the self defense force).

So that’s a lot of history.  It’s pretty clear that the people of Japan must know a lot more about the world now that they are an open country right?  Guess what.  No, a lot of them actually know nearly nothing.  The amount of times I have had students not able to find places like America or England on the map is quite troubling.  That’s just the tip of the iceburg though.  People genuinely think the most ridiculous things in Japan.  Here is a great example of this.  This comes from a story I heard from a friend.  For a period of time a little while in the past there was a surge of robberies performed by some Chinese immigrants.  These were mostly caused by a group and they were eventually arrested.  There was a media storm about this though.  People basically believed in Japan that Chinese people were different than Japanese people and that they are all burglers.  Here’s where it gets really insane though.  They started marketing, and this is true, they started marketing “anti-Chinese locks”.  ANTI-CHINESE LOCKS!  Locks that could not be cracked by Chinese people.  How insane is that?  This kind of shit is rampent in Japan.  If you live here, how many times have you experienced having someone be dumbstruck by the fact that you can read the simplest of characters?  I have regularly met people, children and adults, who believe that it is IMPOSSIBLE for a foreigner to learn how to read and speak Japanese.  When it does happen its like a fluke.  This can work in your favor when you want people to buy you beer and such but it’s still annoying.  I have been restricted from entering bars because I am not Japanese.  Certain apartments will not allow non-Japanese to live there.  If this shit happened in any other country, you can bet your ass that someone would be getting sued.  And with good reason.  What it comes down to is Japan is 99 % Japanese.  Think about that for a second.  Ninety-nine fucking percent.  For anyone that lives in America (other than the middle of no where) this is a ludacris number.  This is the only factor that allows me to accept some of the obscene ignorance that you see in this country.  If you (or any human) as so cut off from the rest of the world, it is more than likely that you too would also be just as ignorant and naive.  Problem is is that this isnt 1600 anymore.  This is the 21st century and the world is at everyone’s doorstep what with media like the internet, tv and movies.  People should know more than they do.  One of Japan’s other less than stellar traits is its inability to change.  Like even the littlest bit.  And this doesn’t just include topics on foreigners.  They even do it to themselves.  I won’t go into it but there are so many things that Japanese people do that serve no purpose.  They can be extremely wasteful things to just downright confusing things.  I realize that all countries do things like this but Japan does it in spades.  You just have to experience it.

Ok, thats the end of that rant.  I would like to present one more thing though.  This is an experience I had that had absolutely nothing to do with race relations or race for that matter.  This was something that I experienced in Japan but it could have happened literally anywhere.  Today, I went to the laundromat because I needed to wash my comforters.  They are big and my washing machine only holds 4.5 kilos.  I used the biggest free washer that I could find and sat down and started studying some kanji.  With one minute left on my timer, a man comes in.  He is bearing a small box.  Possibly the size of 4 rolls of paper towels.  He proceeds to open the last three remaining dryers.  I look at him and I say to myself,”No way, this is not going to happen.  He’s just checking them”.  Nope.  Sure enough he carefully separates his clothes and splits them into three parts putting them carefully into each of the dryers.  When he is finished, each dryer is maybe 1/5 of the way full.  Maybe less.  To give you a mental picture, one of these dryers could hold maybe 25 towels when properly filled.  Maybe it could hold 30 if you go slightly over the line.  This man put in all of FIVE towels into this fucking machine.  I was fuming with anger but I thought, “Ok maybe he will set each of the dryers to only 10 minutes because those things are going to dry super fast”.  Nope.  THIRTY FUCKING MINUTES EACH.  To paint yet another mental picture for you, I have taken my comforters to that particular laundromat before and it only took twenty minutes to dry one of my comforters which are each a little less than a load in each dryer.  This man used triple the time he needed on each dryer.  I just stared at him.  A cold hatred in my gaze.  He looked over at me and I just shook my head.  He looked away.  He looks again and I am still looking at him as pissed as can be.  I walk over to my GIGANTIC by comparison washing machine and throw my comforters into a cart with a crash.  I wheel it over to my table, all the while looking at this pile of living shit.  He looks at me and looks away uncomfortably.  I am not going to wait 30 minutes for a dryer.  It is supposed to rain today and I was already taking a chance being there in the first place.  As I get read to leave i look at him again and mutter loud enough for him to hear, “you cocksucking mother fucker”.  Hes Japanese so of course he doesn’t know what I am saying but I continue to mutter to myself.  As I am readying to leave, three separate people come in.  Two old ladies, and a pregnant woman.  Two of them had dryers already but one didn’t.  Now an old lady must wait because this dipshit had to have all the dryers to himself.  I leave but give him one last stare of contempt as I go.  I swear he may of had a smirk on his goddamn ugly, fat paunch face.  I leave without causing a scene because I am a pussy.   As I walk home I am not only mad at that cockgobbler but at myself as well for being so passive-aggressive.  The line was almost broken though.  I have never come so close to jumping over to raving lunatic and just flipping out on someone.   I wish I had.  At this rate is could happen sooner than later.  My point is, this could have happened to anyone, anywhere because humans are greedy and they are retarded.  So if you plan to come to Japan do yourself a favor, remember that humans are humans and be ready to not only have a great time but also be ready to experience the same bullshit that you experienced at home.

Babyfest 2009

Posted this on another journal of mine but I figured it was Japan related a bit so…

In past posts I remember talking about how I wanted a job that would change the world. I posted about how I wanted a job that made a difference. I said that since I can’t be a real superhero, I wanted to help the world in another way. My my my how time changes us. Maybe it didn’t change me but allowed me to see the real me. The real me is quite lazy. I don’t have the courage or the passion to go through with all that schooling and study the amount that I need to to get a job like that. I finished school but my degree is utterly useless (asian studies HUH?). So what’s my outlook look like? Not good. It’s not that I can’t find a job to do. It’s just that there is no job that I will love at all. My job in the future will only be for the purpose of providing me money. What kind of existence is that? Whatever job I will be doing will be for the next 25 years of my life, doubling my life. How do people work at a job they don’t love? The only way people can do it, at least as far as I can tell, is by lying to themselves. So many people do it. They rationalize their job by saying it supports their family or something gay like that. That doesn’t change the fact that the job sucks shit and its robbing you of your life. They also tell themselves shit like, “my job is important and they need me”. In most cases this is also bullshit. Unless you are doing a job that requires a lot of intelligence or training, the more menial the job the more replaceable you are. Most jobs have no importance at all. Someone needs to do it and anyone can. Thats the job I will most likely get stuck with. I’m thinking some sort of job that teaches me a skill that could at least be useful to my life like an electrician. I won’t love the job and I will loath getting up in the morning for half of my life but I will loath it less than other loathable jobs. That’s really all I got to look forward to. A job that I loath less than another job. There is no job that exists that I will love. Not to my knowledge anyways.

My girlfriend tried to see if she could think of a job for me even though I told her it was impossible. She asked me, “what would be an ideal job for you?”. I told her it would have to be something easy. It would only require to me work maybe 4 days a week and only 6 hours a day. It would also pay me a decent wage. Something like 80,000 a year or something. I told her that there is no way any place like this exists because if it did everyone would do it. There are no shortcuts in life. I know this. Minus winning the lottery, I will probably be mildly depressed for the next 25 years of my life.

I know I can have one or the other. I can have a really easy job that doesn’t pay well or have a job that requires me to work a bit but pays a decent amount. I have to compromise. The thing is I need it all to be happy. I know thats retarded. Maybe I can overcome that someday and kid myself like most people but right now that isn’t happening.

Before I talk about what my current job is like I’d like to mention a thing about money. I hate money as much as the next guy but I still want enough of it. Growing up my parents always told me about how,”we can’t afford this,” or “we dont have a lot of money right now”. I hated it. I hated it so much. To this day they tell me these things and I really hate hearing it. I never want to be like that. I mean within reason obviously. I don’t want to be rich. I just want to be comfortable. I never want to have any serious worries about money. I want that money but I really don’t want to work for it. I know that sounds lazy but I can’t help but feel that way.

Now I will talk about my current situation. I hate my job. It sucks waking up to go to that job every day and deal with the same old shit. How do people do this to themselves? It hardly pays. I was comfortable before. Kinda wanted to be more comfortable but for the time being it was fine. Now with my student loans I am no longer comfortable. I don’t have to worry about living really but I wanted to go to a Japanese language school and its going to be a real bitch to save up money for it now. I pretty much have to live like a pauper just to have enough money saved up to live off it. I’ll still need to take out a loan to pay for the school. Pretty much nullifying all the money I paid to that point.

Teaching at an english teaching school (eikaiwa) is bullshit. Not only are you 100 percent replaceable but id say 80 to 90 percent of the kids do not want to learn English. They don’t care at all so it makes it impossible for me to care. Not only that but I am a mediocre teacher. I don’t know what the fuck I am doing. I just slap some bs game together and call it a lesson. Anyone could do my job.

The only glimmer of hope in my job is my private students. They actually want to learn English and try. They make me feel like I am helping. Only problem is that they are on a fucking Saturday. So I could either give up the prime weekend day and have some classes that matter or I can give up those private lessons and have only shitty classes. I opted to keep the private lessons because I don’t know if I could last if I had to deal with those little bastards for 8 more months without having some ones that wanted to learn mixed in on a rare occasion.

Bottom line: Eikaiwas are pretty much expensive day cares or just wastes of money all together. Most of the kids at this school that is supposed to be focused on LEARNING HOW TO SPEAK ENGLISH, can’t speak to save their lives. Sure they pass their English proficiency tests and everyone pats them on the back, but who really cares? Its all going to be forgotten.

This brings me to Japanese. The bane of my existence. I am currently studying to pass the level two Japanese proficiency test. I will not pass it but that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t test you on speaking. I could get a perfect score on that test and not be able to speak Japanese. Since I have come to Japan my Japanese has nary improved. This is mostly my fault for not practicing by making friends and speaking Japanese regularly. Still, you think I would be a bit better. I think I am defective. I am going to try one more time. I want to go to this Japanese language school if I can. Its about a 50/50 chance right now since I don’t know if I can get a loan for it. The only reason I am going is so that if I fail I can say I tried. I usually give up before I try everything because giving up is easy. I’m trying not to give up on something just once in my life. Japanese brings me little pleasure anymore. Its mostly because I constantly feel like a failure as is. I know I haven’t failed yet but I might as well have failed already. Its just that I can’t visualize myself speaking Japanese at all. Its not just that though. Every day, I hear Japanese being spoken and although I understand more than I did before, I am still always lost. Also I am constantly reminded of how little I know every time I go out. Whether its reading ads, newspapers or just ordering food. I can’t do it at a respectable level. This Japanese school is my last chance. Even that I don’t look forward to. Japanese schools are filled with Koreans. Korean and Japanese are basically the same language. So you go into these schools and everyone there speaks decent and then there is me. Speaking like a dipshit. I won’t be going into a beginner class but an intermediate one since my knowledge (at least for tests) is too high for basic. So I will constantly be the underdog. I’ve been in this position before with Japanese and its so unbearably humbling. Every day you just feel like a dumb ass. At least at that time I was with people that sucked at taking tests and I pretty much rocked them every time. That wont be the case with these Japanese schools. These people will study and they will do well. So basically I am going to have to work my ass off to be mediocre. You know how I feel about work. I am only doing it so that I can say that I did it once and didnt get scared and quit.

I have a friend that has a friend (whom I met) who is basically a genius. He is really smart and his Japanese is quite good. He has studied very hard to get to his level. He now is studying German and within 6 months feels that his German is better than his Japanese. He feels that since Japanese is so much different than western languages, that it makes it nearly significantly harder for a westerner to learn it. Awesome. A rather intelligent person is saying this. I am no where near as intelligent. Basically I am fighting a losing battle. Mediocrity is all I can hope for. I want the best or nothing. Maybe I should give up.

People always tell me, “you should talk to your girlfriend in Japanese”. No. I won’t for three reasons. One, I only see her once a week. I am not going to waste that time feeling like I have to do work. Two, I hate feeling like an idiot around her. I can be an idiot around anyone else but I don’t want to act like a moron around her. I know she wont think less of me but I will still feel shitty. Three, she laughs at me when I speak Japanese. She laughs at my pronunciation and my mistakes. One time I wanted to buy something and I wanted to check my Japanese with her. I said, “do I say 買ってください” which basically means “Can you buy that for me”. She laughed and she said sorry it was just a funny sentence. She said she was laughing at how the sentence was ridiculous not at me. Still felt like it was at me. I didn’t feel as bad that she was laughing at me (although i did feel pretty bad about it) but more at that I made such a basic mistake. I thought about it some more and knew what to say but I guess it might not be that natural I dont know. How can someone that makes such mistakes ever become good at speaking? I’m fucked.

Language partner much?

I am looking for a language partner.  Anyone know any good webpages?   I dont know why I am posting this on here.  No one reads it.  Suppose thats my fault

I’ve only been out of school for 4 months and my life is already stagnant.

WELL looks I’ll update this shat.  I had planned on updating this thing around the time my roommate had a friend come visit him.  In that time I have moved, graduated and gotten a job.  The only really interesting thing that I had planned to mention at that time was that I went to a maid cafe.  I will start there.

The Maid Cafe

For those of you who are ignorant on the topic, allow me to educate you from square one.  There is a place in Tokyo that has always been swooned over by American otaku geeks that dont know any better.  This mythical place is known as Akihabara or Akiba for short.  In this part of Tokyo, the geek can walk around freely and indulge himself/herself in geeky gluttony.  Basically you can buy any matter  of toy, video game, porno or electronic here.  This place is supposed to be the place to go to get cheap electronics and old video games.  I am sure both of these are true but to really find good deals you need to know where to go.  I unfortunately, do not know where to go.  This makes Akihabara almost useless to me.  Except for those used game stores.  Man those used game stores…  You can find many of them quiet easily and some of them have good hauls.  I found an old Vectrex quite easily.  I have always wanted one of those.  Ever want a Neo Geo?  Go to Mr. Potato and you can select one from a pile.  I would say Akihabara is probably one of those places you don’t need to go to while in Japan but if you have the time it wouldnt hurt to stop by if you are a geek at heart.

This brings me to my story.  The otaku of Japan love maids.  French maids to be more specific.  Well, French maids done Japan style.  I am not entirely sure where such a craze came from.  Im sure its from anime.  Otaku love all that is cute and pure.  They say there is nothing sexual about maids and that is true.  At least as far as maid cafes go.  That rule is not followed in kabuki-cho however where I have seen prostitutes dressed like French maids.  Anywho, the maid cafes in Akihabara are not sexual in any way. When you walk into the maid cafe you are greeted by a gaggle of overly cutesy girls.  Welcome master!, they all say.  You take your seat.  Before I go into what I see I must say that there is a wide variety of maid cafes in Akihabara so what I experienced may be different from what others have experienced.  The place was one medium sized room with a stage and a bunch of bar like seats in front of it.  I went in the middle of the day and there were a bunch of salary men drinking beer there.  Its quite an expensive place to go because you have to pay for the maids “services”.  They do magic on your drink and talk to you in super cutesy ways.  They also reduce you to their level by making you say the silly magic words.  I think I had to say pyun pyun or something like that.  It was truely a strain on my manliness but it was entertaining enough.  You get a menu when you sit down and on the menu there is assorted over priced food and drinks and also different things you can do with the maids.  All of them are creepy.  Well let me explain that actually.  Its only creepy if a grown person does these things.  If it were a child then it would be fine.  Of course, almost all the people that come into the place are grown men.  They are almost all creepy in nature.  The two that I saw that werent with the salary men reaked terribly.  You can have your picture taken with the maids have the picture put on something like a trading card.  This one guy that had to be in his late 20s had an album full of these pictures.  Really creepy.  The other creepy guy brought all these stuffed animals with him.  You pay extra to play with toys with the maids.  Its super creepy.  I only recommend going to these maid cafes if you are into really weird stuff and seeing really creepy people.  I guess Im into that.  When I left I was given a silver members card.  Apparently you can collect points or something and get stuff.  I dont plan on going back.

Moved Out

So I moved out of my old place in hibarigaoka.  It was a nice place but I just wanted to live on my own.  To no fault of my roommates (at least one of them) I was just sick of the lack of privacy in the room I had.  I basically had a room with only two walls.  One wall was a big glass door and the other was two thin sliding doors that led to the kitchen.  It gets old when you cant do things like take naps because of people using the kitchen.  Oh well.

I have to thank my girlfriend for all her help in my moving process.  I doubt I would have gotten such a great deal on an apartment if it wasnt for her.  Here is a huge tip for those looking to live in Japan.  If you have decent Japanese skills (unlike me) I highly suggest you go through a Japanese realtor.  They have so much more to select from.  The problem other than the language barrier is that a lot of landlords refuse to take foreigners.  This is mostly to protect their asses because a lot of foreigners only come here for a short period of time and then up and leave without saying anything.  Luckily I found a real estate place that took foreigners.  I had my ladyfriend translate everything for me.  The whole process was kind of stressful but I am totally happy with my place.  I am too lazy to get into the specifics but I will give you some bullet-points.

• The move in costs in Japan are a bitch.  You can avoid key money and the like but  you are still gonna end up paying a couple grand to move in.
• Apartments are rarely furnished unless its some kind of place like leo palace and those usually aren’t so cheap
• The walls between apartments are paper thin.  That is 100 percent true

• Moving your stuff doesnt need to cost a lot.  I only spent 10,000 yen.  Thats about a 100 bucks which is good for Japan.  I had a cool old guy that helped me move and I talked to him about stuff.  Id also like to note that he was one of the only Japanese people that I have ever met that actually was able to reword sentences when I didnt understand what he was saying.  Most of them just say the same thing over again and just as fast.

So now I live in Kamifukuoka.  Its a smaller town close to kawagoe.  So if you are in the neighborhood for some reason drop by!  Actually dont, I will probably be at my wonderful job.

My Job

Just kidding, my job isnt wonderful.   It can actually be quite horrid.  I work at a small English teaching school in Fujimino which is one stop away from where I live (I ride my bike there duurrrr).  Before any of you say anything, yes I know that I have been saying that I wanted to teach English from the very beginning.  I realize this.  Now that I have done it I can say with authority that I am terrible at it and it drives me crazy.  Its not all bad.  Let me be positive and start off with the good.

1. Good Students Rule

I remember not particularly liking those kids in school that always tried so damn hard all the time.  I think it was because I thought the teacher didn’t know that they were potentially douchy kids.  Now I know why those teachers liked those kids.  When you don’t enjoy your job and you have to teach a bunch of brats that dont cooperate, it gets really old really fast.  However, when you get those kids that  try and truly listen to you well, its like a gift from God.  Its like running on flat ground after having to run uphill for a really long time.  Things just go so much faster and you feel like you are actually getting somewhere.  These kids unfortunately are not the majority.  I am lucky.  I have three days of pretty good kids.  I have two days that have some particularly shitty classes though.  Those days kind of ruin my whole week.  The kids dont cooperate and I am a shitty teacher to begin with so that makes life even more challenging.  I will talk about some horror stories later but let me say another good thing about my job

My Co-workers

I like my co-workers.  I think they are nice.  It is easy to get along with them and I dont have to loath seeing them every day.  I couldnt say that for many of the students at Temple (retards).  Thats something to be happy about.

Its a Small Company

The company I work for is not a chain.  I know the owner personally because he sits at a desk behind mine.  He is also my guarantor on my apartment.  Hes kind of a dope and not very good at running a business and sometimes I want to yell at him, but at least he is not a large heartless corporation that tries to make me sell textbooks to kids.

Anywho let me get to the shit

Kids are pretty much animals

Kids want you dead.  Kids can be some of the most selfish and unreasonable people you will ever meet.  Some of them are really cool dont get me wrong, but the bad ones man… The bad ones.  Sometimes I want to throw them through a window.  I have to teach kids from 5 to 18 at the moment.  This brings me a vareity of challenges.  The young kids can be cute yes, but they are also the hardest to manage.  They tend to be really screwed up too if they have lousy parents.  I have to teach this one class thats a bunch of 5 year olds.  Let that set in for a minute.  Its a class of 5, 5 year olds that are made to sit in a chair for 50 minutes and listen to me talk and read.  Think about that.  What where you doing at 5?  You were most likely in Kindergarten.  What did you do in Kindergarten?  I’ll tell you what you didn’t do.  You didn’t sit in a chair for 50 minutes and listen to some teacher force you to learn a language you don’t know.  You know why you didn’t do that?  It was because you were 5 years old and you had the attention span of a fish.   These kids are ruthless.  This one little shit never listens to me and gives me these mean looks like hes gonna do something to me which only makes me laugh because I am ya know, 5 times his size.  I have kicked him out of the room several times.  The last time I overheard him in Japanese saying how boring this class was.  Sorry kid but I am not a professional teacher and I am not making you come here, your parents are so lay off me.

Another lovely thing I learned is sometimes a class wont like you just because of your gender.  I had a class of 9 year old girls that hated my guts when I first started teaching them and honestly gave me hell.  That class was torture.  I have semi won them over now so its not as bad as before but man, that crap happens all the time.    This kind of thing does not happen for the other teachers and that leads me to my second point

I am a mediocre teacher

I will be the first one to admit that I am a mediocre teacher.  This makes my job feel like a punishment for me because every day that I go in I get to feel guilty that I am probably screwing these kids over by not teaching them English properly.  I try my best but man I feel like I am doing a crappy job.  I have had a teacher sit in with me before because they had nothing else to do (this happens sometimes).  Afterwards, I asked her if I was doing an ok job and she said that I was doing fine but it was the way she said it.  First of all she is Japanese and its always highly possible that a Japanese person will say that you are doing a fine job when you really aren’t because they think its rude.  Even if you ask.  This is quite infuriating because  I would like to be a bit better at my job just to make it less painful.  So yea maybe I am being hard on myself but it seems to me that I suck at teaching English.   The sad thing is that I am probably not the worst at teaching English.  English companies basically take any foreigner whose native language is English.  I guess I had some competition when  I applied to the job and  I actually won the job.  What does that say about those other people?  I guarantee you they eventually got a job somewhere teaching English and I bet they are suckin it up.

So anyways it’s late and I dont feel like typing anymore.  This is a good overview of what I have been doing.  I can complain some more later.  My life is pretty stagnant already and nothing really happens to me now so I guess my posts will be sparce but hopefully less sparce than before.

A month of review

Wow, I GUESS I should have been more diligent with my posting seeing as how this past month has been extremely action packed what with Kelsey leaving, my birthday, Sara moving in and me just being a drunken moron. I guess I will separate this whole post into different parts

Birthday Weekend

Alright so for my birthday I didn’t do anything like really crazy. It was pretty low key. It was just me, Sara, Derrick, Kelsey and these two Japanese people that I never met before. The guy was a friend of Derrick’s. He was a pretty funny guy. They didn’t really speak English. His girlfriend totally owned him. She kept slapping him in the face and didn’t seem very happy to be with him if I remember correctly. What made it even more funny was how nice she was to everyone else minus her boyfriend.

So what we were gonna do was go to this one yaki niku all you can eat place that we went to for Derrick’s birthday. We had gone there another time with our landlords and its pretty much my favorite restaurant. So we meet in Shibuya and walk over to the restaurant and its out of business…. Well we aren’t 100 percent sure if it went out of business because it seemed like they were doing a bunch of renovations on the entire building. Regardless, I was pissed. We ended up going to a different all you can eat yaki niku place but it was more expensive and not even close to being as good. The best part about the place that I wanted to go to was that you could serve yourself so you can just stuff your face as fast as you want. If they did go out of business I would like to think that it was our fault for eating too much.

Yea nothing really spectacular happened at that restaurant. If you want to see me butcher Japanese in my drunken state you can on facebook. After the restaurant we headed over to this place called golden gai. If I haven’t told you guys about it already let me say, its a great place. Golden-gai is this little area in Shinjuku that has tons of little bars crammed into three story buildings. The streets in between the buildings are about the size of alleys and then they have alleys inbetween those alleys. Inside the alleys inbetween the alleys they have even more bars. Its pretty awesome. The bars at most can hold like 12 people. Some less than that. Each bar has its own kind of personality. For example, there is pretty much every kind of music bar you can think of there. Well popular music anyways. We ended up going to this place just because there was this tiny sign that said rock and roll on it and as Sara said, “Places with rock in roll in the name are usually good”. Yea it was a pretty awesome bar. The bartender had tons of music behind the bar and he just let me make requests the whole night. Then he gave all of us free birthday shots of tequila which was pretty awesome. There was no one in the bar for most of the time we were there so it was like our own private bar. You can see pictures of the place on facebook. The bartender could play the guitar and ended up playing master of puppets in entirety. It was pra fewf. Not anything particularly extraordinary happened at the bar but it was fun never the less. It was just a relaxing night out which was exactly what I wanted. We ended up catching the last train home and sat outside in a park drinking beers and smoking cigars and pipe tobacco. When we got home, Sara decided it would be a good idea to take wild turkey shots. We all did one and she did two. I think it was one too many for her because she ended up passing out on our couch while me and Kelsey played pokemon snap.

The next day Sara and I went out to look at cherry blossoms in Yoyogi park which is this huge park in Tokyo. Usually this would have been really pretty but we went when it was raining. Kinda ruined the scenery a little bit. There was tons of these parties going on there. Cherry blossom time is kinda like a holiday time in Japan. They even have a word for looking at blossoms called hanami. So during this time, tons of people have parties under the cherry trees. Drinking under the cherry trees even has its own word, hanazake. Yea the parties were playing really loud techno music that kinda reminded me of that rave party in the matrix 2. That is, if that rave party had a bunch of drunk, terrible dancing, Japanese people in jackets. It was pretty funny. Sara and I hung out pretty much the whole day. We went to this place called pepper lunch that she likes. When I saw the meat I was like, “Umm I’ve had this kind of meat before and it gives me really bad poops.” YA SEE, in Japan they got these ground beef/pork steaks that they sell. They are pretty cheap but terrible quality meat. So yea, I ate there anyways and the next day I nearly pooped my pants. Like seriously I was 30 seconds away from me walking home with a huge poop stain on my pants. It would have been the most embarrassing terrible thing that could possibly happen to me. I had to run into this convenience store and use their employee bathroom. That bathroom happened to be a Japanese style toilet. I have never used one because why would I want to squat over a toilet when I can sit comfortably on one? Yea I was in too much pain to actually squat over it so I held myself up with my arms while I had the most colon cleansing crap I’ve had in a long time. Kinda like the poop in Dumb and Dumber.

Birthday Weekend #2

Ok birthday weekend two wasn’t quite as eventful as the first one.  I think people kinda felt guilty for not coming to my first party.  I guess that guilt didn’t make them want to come to the second either.  Actually, the second party was organized by Jin.  I think he regretted it though because we kinda complained a lot and ended up going to this place that he hadn’t even picked out.  That place was shakeys.  NOW, shakeys is usually a great place.  How can you go wrong with all you can eat pizza?  I tell you how, by making it self serve and only putting out 4 pizzas at a time and have at least two of those pizzas have tuna fish on them.  Yes, I ate a tuna fish pizza and it was one of the biggest travesties I have ever put in my mouth (cue gay jokes).  Seriously, I was fuming.  I was really really angry.  Like I wouldn’t shut up about how angry I was.  Ya know what cured that anger?  Beer.  Lots and lots of beer.  We got a nomihoudai deal so we drank a bunch of pitchers of beer.  I wasn’t angry by the time we left.  Actually, thinking about it right now makes me a little angry.

Afterwards we went to this bar that had Paulaner beer.  I nearly shit myself.  It was the first time I have drank my favorite beer in da world and it tasted a million times better than what I have been drinking lately.  It was like ambrosia.  I mean, the beer I usually drink is pretty good but it doesn’t compare to the great taste of Paulaner (please send me free Paulaner beer).  While we were there this really drunk Australian moron started talking to us.  We used the fact that Sara is a girl to get us free drinks from him.  He knew he had been had but he was too drunk to handle it.  We made him play a drinking game with us with whiskey.  I wasn’t in the mood for pulling an all nighter at some club so I took Sara home while the other guys got really hammered.  Yea they can tell you that story.  Its pretty good.

I was gonna go to the penis festival the next day but I was too hung over.  I don’t feel that bad actually because there were a TON of douche bags from my school there.  I went to the temple that they had the festival at the week before and saw some penises so I was fine with not going again.

2 weeks of hiatus

I had finals and didn’t do anything

Kelsey’s going away/birthday party/Sara’s moving in party

Berserk is the best manga ever made. Possibly the best comic ever made

I am going to otaku out on all of you and say that Berserk (ベルセルク) by Kentaro Miura is the best manga ever made and possibly the best comic ever made.  The main character is cooler than batman.  Yea I said it.  He is cooler than batman.  His character is much deeper.  Batman has no other side to him then just batman.  He isn’t just some nice guy who had a bad thing happen to him and that made him tormented.  No batman is just batman.  When his parents were killed he ceised to be Bruce Wayne and turned into Batman.  I guess you could argue that maybe he turned into Batman when he got the idea of striking fear into people or whatever but the end is the same.  Batman can’t love because he will always be Batman first and foremost.  The main character in Berserk, named Gutts is on the verge of just being like Batman except he does love.  In fact part of his reason for existing is to not only avenge himself but to avenge this lady he loved.  Now, don’t get me wrong, this comic isn’t sappy by any means.  There are tons of killings, rapes, bloody battles, it has the whole nine yards.  But the main character’s tormented personality is what makes the story so incredible.  His lust for revenge in the later books is pretty much manifested into a demon itself.  The only thing that keeps him normal is his friends and the lady from his past.  

Why is he so out for revenge?  That is the meat of the story.  And I can’t really tell you that without ruining this huge scene that happens about half way through the series.  I will let you know though, his revenge seems justifiable…  Well I guess it really isn’t that hard to figure out what happens but its still a powerful scene.  They kinda allude to it early on but still when it actually happens.  Man its crazy.  Because of what happens, Gutts is constantly followed by demons trying to kill him.  So his life is pretty much a living hell.  He has this giant sword that he uses to dispatch the demons and more importantly, the apostles of the 5 God Hand.  They are like the kings of the underworld.   That sounds really nerdy but its done really well.  If you guys can overlook your stupid stereotypes about comics and manga, you should definitely read this one.  Not for the squeemish I guess but seriously, you wont be disappointed.  I just wish the damn comics had furigana so I could read them.  I have to read stupid poorly translated at times, fan translations.

My only gripe with this manga is that its STILL going.  It started in 1989 and it is still going.  In most cases, stories get kinda boring and whatnot or just don’t seem to be ultimately leading anywhere.  Not this story.  It is totally moving towards an eventual end.  The only problem is that it is updated like once in a blue moon.  The guy that makes it takes his sweet time writing this manga and its driving me insane.  If he could pump out more volumes faster, then this manga would be flawless.  FLAWLESS I TELL YOU!   GAMBINO NOOOO!!

POST YOUR NAME ON YOUR COMMENTS PLEASE UNLESS YOU DONT KNOW ME SOMEHOW

Dude, I put my journal on facebook so people could read and comment on it but I kinda wanted to be able to know who is doing so. COME ON. I assume the people writing in Japanese are Japanese people but that doesn’t narrow it down all that much…

Speaking of which, I enjoy the comments left in Japanese.  Its good practice for 日常の言葉.  I think Im going to make a new journal at  http://lang-8.com/?l=en.  Apparently you can have your friends read your journals and fix all your language mistakes.  Not that you really want to, but you are kinda procrastinating/ wasting time reading this journal so why not read another one and accomplish something while doing it?  I’ll post it on facebook when I start it

THUG LYFFFFEEE

Last night I went to another of Tokyo’s many clubs.  It was in Shibuya.  I have never been checked out by so many chicks in my LIFE.  And yet, I wanted none of them.  Like honestly it was insane.  Everywhere I turned, chicks were checking me out (until i got into my funk).  I guess I was wearing that one gray shirt that Rob/Emily picked out for me that makes me look muscley.  I am pretty sure I had girls come up and stand next to me so that I would talk to them.  I DIDN’T DO IT THOUGH.  Clubbing chicks don’t turn me on.  Well, don’t turn me on enough to want physically go up and talk to them.  I guess I really do cblock myself constantly.  I mean, you don’t even have to be suave with these girls.  Introduce yourself, say a few stupid things and then dance with them.  Its just not my scene.  Now chicks that I WANT, thats an entire different scenario.  I can’t get them to notice me for a second.  Probably because I show interest.  Chicks hate that.  It makes too much sense.  They much rather play some bullshit game.  SORRY I STARTED RANTING ~QUIT.

ANYWHO, this club was totally for Japanese people that want to be black.  There were so many Japanese guys there wearing the thugiest clothes ever.  Red handkerchiefs and all.  It was called pure.  You pay 35 bucks to get in and its all you can drink.  They give you a cup when you walk in.  Its pretty much a glorified college party.  If the cups were those big plastic red ones and there was a keg that Scott could take over then it would be like being in Carbondale all over again.  So the cups were really small and there was tons of people there so we pretty much stood by the bar for about an hour and a half just pounding beers.  The beers were so small and watery that the transition from sobrity to intoxication was undetectable.  It wasn’t one of those, your sober one second, a drooling moron the second.  No.  I honestly had no idea I was drunk for a long time.  Oh that changed.  I ended up getting shots at one point.  I dont know why.  I didn’t even want shots.  I think Japanese people were giving them to me.   So I did my usual routine at a club.  I drank with my friends for about half the time.  Then the second half they went and danced and had fun while I stood somewhere and sulked/coxed out.   I get into a funk and look angry.  So yea, that makes people avoid me.  Funny thing is that I would rather be in a bad mood at a club then sitting in my room watching episodes of scrubs.   I don’t remember the walk home.  Its pretty much a blur.  Then I went online and ranted at my friends for an hour about how I can’t get girls.  I also did the ceremonial, say something really stupid on lai’s xanga.  I tried playing CoD4 and went 2 and 10 withing like 3 minutes and decided it wasn’t worth it.  I may have listened to music loudly.  I don’t remember.  I do know that I went to bed around 830.  I am so tired.  Hey guys, could you keep it down I haven’t slept in like 5 weeks.

I went to a snack bar (I was drunk when I posted this)

Oh man. I am pra drunk right now. This is going to be some bad story telling but I will forget what happened if I dont say it. Well, now that I think about it I guess not that much happened but it was still pretty different. So yea, I came home from a long week of paper writing. I sat down and watched a bunch of episodes of scrubs. Then my roommate im’s me and says, “Hey do you want to go to a party in shibuya?”. I am pra tired at this point but I say sure why not. We decide to go eat before hand and we ended up staying at some italian restaurant for a long time. We decide its not worth going to that party so we go to some bar that my roommates went to and said was awesome. WASNT IMPRESS! But the owner did give us some free beer so that was sweet. It would have been better if the people that were there when my roommates went were there but they werent. After that we went to a snack bar. Snack bars are bars that have womens working there that talk to you. Thats their job. You go there and talk to chicks that pretend to be interested in you. Let me PHIL you in a little bit. In my town, all the chicks that work at these bars are from the phillipeans. They are pretty much just glorified whores. In fact, I am pretty sure they were working the corner in shifts while we were in the bar. Anywho, these girls are like crappier versions of hostesses. They are supposed to entertain you. My roommate and I had some of the hotter girls working at the bar. Now, the Phillipeans were a colony of America for a very long time, so these phils all know English. Good for me, because I am at a drunken point where I dont even want to bother with Japanese. Even so, we go back and forth with Japanese. Now, I said that we had the hotter of the group of phils that worked there but I definitely did not have the more talkative of the group. I had to make this girl talk to me the entire time I was there. I really had to dig. Honestly, when I was in the bathroom I was thinking of things to say to her. Thats how dry she was. My roommate on the other hand, was having a great time. He was dancing with chicks and he had a talkative girl that gave him a (probablyfake) phone email. Honestly bullshit, I got screwed. My roommates girl knew how to fool with a guy. She kept saying how handsome I was. My girl didnt say anything worthwhile. Actually, when we walked in all the phils yelled and totally laughed. I am almost POSITIVE they were making fun of us. I called them out on it but they said no. I say its bullshit. It was a great experience to have but I do not plan on ever doing it again. At least not with mean phils. I will stick to reserved Japanese girls that keep their criticisms to themselves and pretend to like you better.

Also on the way back, I brought a little carbondale to japan. So there is this apartment complex that is empty and my roommates and I all think that they shoot porn there. Expensive porn. They come there with lighting and cameras on a regular basis. One of my roommates swears he saw some woman in a robe outside the building once. So anyways, we went on the second floor where they always shoot and pissed on a couple of the handles. I had to really go so I made a huge mess. Childish and disgusting? Yes. Hilarious? You better believe it. THAT ONE WAS FOR YOU SCOTT!

Yea party isnt happening till 6 so i guess i wont stream the deal