Another rushed entry

when oh when will I get the internet in my apartment? Earlier this week I was advised that the library has free internet. So here I am.... typing... as quick as my little (giant to most japanese people) fingers can manage. I have exactly fifty minutes to play on the computer. Wait! Only forty-five. You see there is a timer ticking away on teh screen. This library is high tech. At any rate, come hell or high water this computer will shut down when my time is up. Lucky me.

anyway I`m trying to use this little bit of time as best I can. I`m not allowed to send email but I can do other things like try to better coordinate my personal initiative to pay bills.

I should give a quick update shouldn`t I. Um, I recently got paid. My paycheck wasn`t shit. I mean really nothing. I had like a cajillion deductions. This was my first paycheck so I had to pay 2 and a half months of rent, electricity, local tax and something else that I forget now. The point is that I will be trying to stretch my little rice rations slightly farther in the coming days.

hmmm. Here is a new one. My job is making me sick. Like really sick. I have had a child-induced cold for the last week. I`m just a little tired of seeing little clouds of germs rushing me... The kids are still cute though. So you can`t be to mad. I`ll try to sleep more and eat some fruit. y`know viatamin c and shit.

I finally got a cell phone, but only one person not in Japan has called me. Thank you Rasha. I officially feel important. Everyone else... $&%&%$&#%$#%#%#$%#%#$%#%"#!$'&'(( Call me dammit!!!!!

To put my phone number here or not to put my phone number here... that is the question.
if you want to calll me leave a note on the blog. I`ll drop you dem dere digits.



twenty minutes left. What can I add. Well hell. I was gonna try to load some pictures on here, but this fucking high tech library has locked, and I do mean physically locked the A: drive and both front facing usb ports. Bitches.

Oh shit this very creapy old man just walked up to my computer and stared at me. Not the stare of someone who is just curious. oh no. this was the wobbly I might be drunk and/or crazy at noon stare. I`ve grown very accustomed to the "OOOooooo, Big Gaijin" stare. I get it everywhere. Last night this guy stopped and shouted something like Sekiyara at me. My friend said it meant I was big. I thought it meant I`m drunk because that guy had definetly downed his weight in liquor.

These rushed entries are long.

How`s this for wrong. Today I am making spaghetti with tofu.

Rushed... kinda

I really don`t have much time to get a decent "write" on. I`m actually paying for this time. I`m at this internet cafe... 400 ￥ an hour. The words highway robbery come to mind. Anyway, I`m fighting this japanese keyboard and just wanted to report that today has been my best day in Ogaki yet.
I honestly didn`t do much today. I went bowling, to the arcade, saw a movie, and ate lunch with a couple of my coworkers. I guess that counts as a lot.

anyway. My schedule at the school is hectic. I think my boss is pushing me off on the parents at a reduced rate and that is why I keep getting more and more students everyweek. right now I`m up to forty students. That doesn`t sound like a lot but at least fifteen of those students are private lessons. Private lessons are a pain because you have to prepare a complete different lesson plan for that little bastard.

I`m a little scatter brained right now. I`ll com back and fix this.






I want to get rehired though. I want to do this for about three years, so I have to put foward my good face. At all times.

My apartment is cool. I like it. I`ve said that before.

I have pictures. I always seem to end up at a computer with internet at awkward times though. I`m gonna have to start carrying my flash drive everywhere.

Day 5: Mystery Solved, Sleep Overwhelming

We have decoded the heater. Maybe decoded is the incorrect word. We, I, found the correct combination of buttons to press. Now we can sleep semi-comfortably in our small beds with their super thick sliding blankets. Rapture.

Day 4: Training Begins

Ok. That previous entry was destined for failure the moment it started. I was surrounded by my training peeps and could not really concentrate. This morning is really no better though. I’m sitting in my room waiting to get ready to go to training. The reason that I am waiting is because my roommate, Steven, and his wife, MeiLei, are copying some worksheet for our training. They were supposed to bring it when they came to training but they left it in their other suitcases. (We had to send the bulk of our luggage to our branch schools and only bring about a weeks worth of clothing to the training center in Okayama.) SO now I’m waiting for them to finish that.

I’m also waiting for someone to shed light on the secret of our heater. We have this gorgeous little heater attached to the wall that neither I nor Steven can figure out. The damn thing is entirely in Japanese and the crappy instructions that our first trainers (the ones who released us into Okayama with a bad map and a prayer) are horrible. The instructions give like a one word explanation of the heater. Actually it’s the Kanji symbol for heater followed by the English word “heater.” Truly a useless means of instruction when you are cold… ice cold… possibly on the verge of dying from hypothermia because this fucking building does not include central heating. Oh GAWD to be back in the U.S. were people understand that instructions for heat are best detailed in English. One word explanations should be the title for your instructions. NOT, the instructions themselves. Personally I for the most part can deal with being cold… most of the time, but today I find that I am craving a little heat and this heater mystery is proving to be to much for me and my needs.

I’m going to go take a shower now and frown at my wrinkled shirt that I refuse to iron. I’ll frown it into straightness.

DAY 3

I’m starting to think that I should have endeavored to maintain this thing daily. Well that was the original plan, but due to set-backs things were changed. The power situation here in Japan is pretty weird. I don’t think they use three prongs ever. They just let their electricity just flow willy nilly all over the damn place. At any rate I purchased a funky looking extension cord so that I could finally charge my computer up and get a few things done. I was finally able to chat with Rasha and assure her that country to popular belief I did make it across the ocean. I called my parents. They were worried. They tried to call my branch school, but were not able to get through.

We’ve been walking all over Okayama, which is the city in which I’m doing my training before I travel to my school in Ogaki. We went to a castle today. We, of course, is my training class. My trainers let us loose upon the city for like two days. IN my class there are about ten people: David, Rennel, Dayo, Tracy, Naho, Archie, Steven, Danielle, Meilei, and me. Ta-da.

Hour 11: Feeling Like a Caged Animal

To say that this day is not exciting would be a bit of a lie. I am so buzzed, kind of. At least I was. I feel like a caged animal. This “flight,” this torture seems determined to never end. !4 hours from Dallas to Osaka. I’ve been on long car trips, but in those situations I always knew someone. Today I know no one. I know that there are five other people on this flight who are going to Japan for the same reason as me. I also know that aside from the requisite Japanese people all the foreigners look normal. Normal may be the wrong word. They don’t look unusually remarkable. No one stands out as being one of the elect few.

Truth be told this type of job is common nowadays. So, the elect few is just a myth that exists only in my head. Kind of like W.E.B Dubois and the magnificent 10 or some shit like that. Anyway, I’m bored and I’m still reeling from the insult I was dealt today at the hands of this old…. GUY! This guy who is from Amarillo, Texas is a finance consultant. He talked my ear of during my flight from Mobile, AL to Dallas. Al 77 minutes of it. He would not shut up. He made me give him my sister’s phone number so that he could offer her some help with refinancing her shit. After he talked to me for about an hour, during which time I ran to the bathroom and tried to feign sleeping (he could not be shook), he says that I look older than what I really am, He says that he would have pegged me as thirty and not 23.

That old bastard my heart break. 30? Thirty? THIRTY FUCKING YEARS OLD!!!!!!!!!!!

I have never been so hurt. I mean thirty isn’t a bad age. I’m hearing more and more reports of people coming into their prime at thirty. I’m not near my prime though. I’m not even on that downward (or upward) spiral to 30 yet. Naturally I played off my hurt. I made it into a joke. I wanted to hit him. I wanted to knock those liver spots straight off his sorry ass. I know a poorly veiled insult when I see one. He was saying I looked bad, But who wouldn’t? I have only had two hours of sleep today. I’m tired and it freaking shows. He caught me at a down moment. But I’ll get him. I’ll show the world that I am only 23 and I look great!


Not really, but I’m gonna see if I can get some sleep in. I have this creeping feeling that the trainers are gonna try to take us out to eat tonight. To turn them down or not to urn them down? That is the question.

I hate packing.

Damn Cats Rejects

I'm 23 now and for the most part pretty well adjusted for someone coming from He... I mean Mississippi. I say for the most part because of this show. This show, Zoobilie Zoo, screwed me in the head when I was younger. When I was seven or something close to that my aunt used to babysit me. This show came on everyday right in the middle of her soaps. It was like General Hospital, Dallas, Zoobilie Zoo and then All My Children. The schedule was perfect. Everyday my favorite show came on, until one day things went horribly wrong. Zoobilie Zoo was my favorite show. On this horrible day things changed. The cute characters (which now appear freakish and just plain disgusting) sang their songs, did their dance, and proceeded to teach me something special. On this day the something special was about the solar system. The characters explained the way that gravity works on earth and in the solar system. They explained that the sun is our solar system's center of gravity and that all things are pulled towards it. They explained that all the planaets in our system are slowly being pulled towards the sun and that one day all of the planets will fall in.

That shit shocked me. I was seven, very impressionable, and very aware of how the sun worked. I watched the discovry channel. I knew that the sun was hot. I knew that nothing could live on the sun. Nothing dammit! Nothing. The little giggling happy character on Zoobilie Zoo made me leave my room. I almost cried after watching that show. I sat outside my aunt's trailer and refused to look up. I just sat there and sucked on my blue frozen cup and wonder just how soon we would all burn up. After that day I could never watch Zoobilie Zoo again. I just didn't feel right. My stomach churned and my heart grew weak.

They Basically told me that I was gonna die. That is never cool on a children's show. I just wanted to say that and let every one know about another one of the many 80's shows that contributed to my fucked up nature.