The only things keeping me grounded at the moment are Nintendo games, Raymond Chandler and Saul Bellow. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing. My tastes could be decidedly less wholesome, and no doubt they would be were I still in Melbourne, or hanging out in Tokyo with the boys. As for The Adventures of Augie March, I have rarely been so impressed by the density and scope of any work of art, and that it could be the product of a singular mind, calling upon nothing more but narrative skill and delicate observation of the intricacies of human existence just make it all the more inspiring.

It just feels so complete, as Bellow can address everything from nihilism to professional relationships to class struggles through the prism of middle American life in the 20th century with such clarity, and identifies hidden motivations, weaknesses, and agendas in every character it introduces, from lowly union foremen, the the numerous women who come and go, to the matriarchal Grandma, to Augie’s various mentors, and so on.

Not to mention that the plot and pacing are nothing short of immaculate; characters’ true intentions are only ever slightly hinted at so as not to prematurely spoil any eventual climax or create unnecessarily gratuitous tension where there need not be any. Nevertheless, through the strength of Bellow’s descriptions alone we feel like we know the characters well already, so that their actions never come as a complete surprise, either. Everyone is flawed, undoubtedly even more so than Augie himself in all his restlessness. And that’s the thing; it’s so human, it doesn’t romanticise except where absolutely necessary, life is unfair and it doesn’t shy away from this fact. Augie’s biggest struggle is between his desire to preserve his own integrity and the weight of his aspirations.

The thing felt like it lost steam over the last 100 pages or so; since Augie spends the entire first half of the book talking about Grandma Lausch and Einhorn, it seems slightly rushed when he joins the army, goes on three tours of duty, marries, and resolves with his estranged older brother within the space of a couple of chapters.

Anyway, after months of toil, I finally finished it a week ago, and I’m worried that whatever I get stuck into next will either be too lightweight or comparably far too existential and depressing. Options include Tender is the Night, Cat’s Cradle, The Trial, and Speak, Memory, something I’ve been threatening to read for years. I guess this is what happens when I try to prepare reading lists months in advance – my moods and expectations change, and then I feel like a petulant kid being forced into doing some kind of boring homework when I have to start a new book without an entire bookshop at my disposal.

I’m gonna go ahead and call this movie ‘death affirming.’ It’s almost perfectly acted and despite a fairly predictable ending, still works really well. The characters are well balanced, suitably eccentric when they need to be and yet always compelled by real and honest motivations, rooted firmly in compassion for their families and their fellow man.

Personally, I had no idea these kinds of professions were so scorned in Japan, and really, you would think that someone with such responsibility would at least be quietly respected, but apparently not. The movie’s greatest success is how it frames the deceased body as a vessel for transgression, as much for the living as for the dead. It really ends up being quite reverential, and some of the embalming (is that the right word?) scenes are painfully, wonderfully emotional, without any dialogue being necessary.

I wasn’t ever really sure where the cello-playing aspect was supposed to fit in, other than as a showcase for the lead actor’s obvious cello-shredding skills. But that’s OK, as it lent a nice subtle soundtrack to the proceedings.

All in all, a pretty good movie.

Haneke is a director who really matters. This guy makes films that are not only deeply disturbing, but very relevant. Think you know what a scary movie is? Go watch Hidden and get back to me.

Anyway, his new one The White Ribbon is quite a departure from his other films. For a start, it’s much broader in scope, is set eighty years ago and is shot in black and white. I guess many of the themes are familiar: guilt and shame, violence and repression; but given it’s historical context I think this film is even more salient than his other works, even if perhaps it’s not as purely entertaining or thrilling. Haneke has insisted that we’re not supposed to see the movie as simply a foreboding prelude to the atrocities of Nazi Germany and World War 2, but as a snapshot of ignorance, intolerance and terrorism in all it’s forms.

The acting is top-shelf, production values are through the roof, and to be fair there are some truly gripping scenes, but overall I just wasn’t as engaged for the whole duration, like I was with Hidden. This is serious, formal film making, and I fear it’s just too cool, too self-aware, too detached to ever really penetrate. Nevertheless, definitely not for the weak of heart or short of patience.

Also, it became clear to me as I watched The White Ribbon that the only German phrase I have remembered from my high school days is keine ahnung. That figures.

OK, enough of the heavy stuff. Raymond Chandler has been keeping me entertained and rescuing me from the depths of being-foreign-and-alone-at-Christmastime-related despair through the strength of his biting dialogue alone. Here are a few choice cuts from the first fifty or so pages of Farewell, My Lovely:

“His smile was as cunning as a broken mousetrap.”

“Suspicion climbed all over her face, like a kitten, but not so playfully.”

“She was as cute as a washtub.”

“It was Malloy all right, taken in strong light, and looking as if he had no more eyebrows than a French roll.”

“Dames lie about anything – just for practise.”

And, arguably my favourite so far:

“She’s a charming middle-aged lady with a face like a bucket of mud and if she has washed her hair since Coolidge’s second term, I’ll eat my spare tyre, rim and all.”

Man, people just aren’t as eloquent (or as charming, apparently) as they were seventy years ago. I seriously believe that our tendency towards email, in all its benevolent, automated glory, is hampering not only our literacy, but the very stuff of our interpersonal relationships. In the past, a scorned lover would compose page upon tear-stained page of hateful yet poetic hand-written prose in order to purge him or herself of heartache. Nowadays, retribution is as easy as uploading a photo to Facebook. Yikes! The sad thing is, even the retorts are borderline unintelligible.

But seriously. As recently as ten years ago, flirting with a girl involved carefully synchronised ‘chance’ meetings, a delicate dance of hints dropped here and there at measured intervals, and a whole lot of good timing and luck. These days, it’s as easy as dropping a text message: ‘hey. i wna ride u like a black mercedes.’ Charming, no?

Yes, my eloquence is slowly dying, and with it, my patience and tact. I only have myself to blame for this, and I feel the only proper remedy would be self-imposed exile from the internet, and more time spent with the likes of Chandler, Bellow, Nabokov and those countless others who express so much with so (comparatively) little.

I bought a snazzy little netbook computer! It’s an Eee PC 1005HA.

Inluded with the iPhone to give a proper sense of scale.

In fact, I’m using it right now. The rad silver colour is not available outside Japan, so TAKE THAT, WESTERN CONSUMER MARKET! What’s more, the construction feels way more solid than my pricey elite Dell machine. It’s running Windows 7, effortlessly installed off a 4GB SDHC card, and does everything I need, like typing, and wasting my life on stupid websites. Also, with the strengthening of the Aussie dollar, this stuff has become ludicrously cheap. Like $350 kind of cheap. Party!

On a more personal note. I’ve resolved to spend the winter break seriously improving my Japanese. The last couple of months (and in particular, the last month itself) have seen my conversation skills increase significantly, and although I still have more than my fair share of furrowed-brow, panicky ‘wtf was that word again!?’ moments, at least I can keep a conversation more or less going now. I mean, that is, as long as the person I’m talking to doesn’t get bored and give up. To them, it must be like talking to a toddler with learning disabilities.

I did learn something interesting lately though; according to one of my supervisors who studied linguistics at university, dyslexia is far less prevalent in Japan (and presumably also in China and Korea) than in the Western world. This must be something to do with both the form of their characters and their grammatical constructions. After all, it’s hard for most English speakers to imagine a first language where each ‘letter’ corresponds to an entire syllable; where words can be pronounced phonetically without any danger of misplacing stress or timing, and where an entire universe of meaning can be contained within one simple symbol, such as 空, or 人. The Japanese and Chinese don’t learn to spell, so much as they learn to paint pictures of the world through language. Likewise, reading isn’t a constant deconstruction of bunches of letters, or educated guessing at the appropriate phoneme; everything is there as it’s written, except in the case of an unfamiliar kanji character, where, upon encountering these new characters, a Japanese person will simply ask their neighbour,  どういう読むの? or この漢字の読み方は何ですか? (“How the fsk do you read this?”).

Furthermore, owing to the grammatical hierarchy of the language, the relevant reading for any given kanji is immediately apparent to any native speaker of Japanese; there is no guess work necessary. It’s pretty remarkable.

According to The Language Instinct, Japanese (and to an extent, Korean) are something like language orphans which have evolved separately, leaving behind little grammatical resemblance to other East Asian languages. This isn’t so hard for me to believe, because as I’ve said before, Japanese more or less resembles the exact grammatical inverse of something like English, and I’m sure this has a considerable impact on the structure of society over here, especially when compared with our own.

The main point I wanted to make when I started this huge theoretical rant, however, was that I’m at a point where Japanese people no longer feel comfortable gossiping about me in my presence, because they fear I might just be able to understand them. Pretty satisfying in one sense, although I was kinda enjoying being able to eavesdrop as I pleased.

Well, on that note, it looks like I’m gonna be all too alone for Christmas, and unless I get my act together and ask for paid leave, I’ll be sat at my office all day without any other kindred spirit (ie. lost soul) in sight to share the holiday with. I’m not a religious person, but I guess I am a pretty sentimental one, and despite all my misgivings about Christmas and the sham that it is, I do feel an unwelcome sense of isolation as the year draws to an end. It’s not that I’m depressed. There’ll be plenty of time for that come 2010. But I just kinda wish I had stayed in contact with more of you this year. So I’m sorry. I guess that’s it.

Stay tuned for my best and worst of 2009, along with the usual solemn reflections and empty promises, in the next edition!

So long.

I’ve always been of the opinion that most people are far too hasty to distinguish between intellectual life and physical life. Why do we do this? People place an incongruent value on scholarship and other intellectual pursuits, while frowning upon drug use, promiscuous sex, etc. Even those that work out all the time seem to be sniggered at by academic types who invariably value mind over body. It is no coincidence, therefore, that these people are usually out of shape and without any tangible sense of style. Conversely, gym junkies like to scoff at intellectuals who spend more time with their faces in books than getting tans. This is most obviously manifest in the common ‘nerd’ stereotype.

I’m advocating a healthy balance between the two. I don’t see why we need to neglect our physical desires, or give inordinate amounts of attention to intellectual appetite. They are both equal parts of the same whole, and what’s more, they both exert the same monolithic influence over it, whether it’s for better or worse. Truly balanced and sensible people should look for pleasure not simply of the body but of the mind, and seek wisdom not only through quiet reflection but through actions.

I’ve been forced into this perspective recently through my own single-mindedness, and the realisation that to absorb oneself either in books or exercise alone is no remedy for restlessness, frustration or inadequacy. Well, the scales have levelled out pretty nicely, or at least they had, until I went ahead and put my foot right into one of the most uncomfortable and regrettable situations of my life in Japan so far on Saturday night. But heaven knows, and I’ve said this a hundred times before, that a public blog full of self-indulgent rants is hardly the place to go into juicy details.

I don’t know why Japanese culture and language attracts such hardcore, militant foreigners. Similarly, I don’t understand the bullshit false modesty that accompanies so many of this country’s permanent foreign residents. Shyness is an inherent part of Japanese culture, sure. But it very unbecoming on foreigners, especially since it makes their endless lust to fit in over here all the more blatant. The irony is that is has the opposite effect: it just makes you look like a wanker, when I ask you if you can speak Japanese, and you say no, and then I find out that you are 1-kyuu level. Have you ever even known what it’s like to not be able to speak Japanese? When my friends and family back home ask me if I can speak the language, I give them the honest answer: I know enough to get around, day to day, enough to order food and ask for directions. Nothing more. But Japan seems to be the only country that gets this kind of cult following from the West, and while modesty might be endearing on the natives, it is pretty sickening on foreigners.

You can’t fire me, I quit.

Way too tired to write anything more in here at the moment. I’ve gone way too hard lately and I’m exhausted. Today was rainy, and my bike was stolen. Not the best conditions under which to decide to write a blog entry, but that’s life. I’m hoping I can straighten myself out over the next week or so and leave this trail of destruction behind.

]]> http://ext23.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/falling-pianos/feed/ 0 ext23 img_7100 http://ext23.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/its-a-jungle-out-there/ http://ext23.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/its-a-jungle-out-there/#comments Fri, 16 Oct 2009 04:37:00 +0000 ext23 http://ext23.wordpress.com/?p=223 ]]>

This blog is rapidly turning into a place where I can air my identity crises. The crucial difference between this blog and real life, though, is that around here I can’t be interrupted. In their past lives, my blogs were forums for confidence issues and (barely) veiled jabs at various girls who had gon’ up and don’ me wrong, but I guess these days my problems are more existential in nature, and are probably, in the long run, better off for it.

My desk is a hideous mess of Australiana (dig that rad kookaburra), lollies I use to bribe minors, Japanese textbooks that I have skimmed, not read, and a variety of teaching materials that, surprisingly, have been getting a pretty solid workout of late. While it is true that at times I may have been something of a lazy ALT, that trend has definitely been reversed as I’ve been able to identify the more bothersome areas of my job and work on improving those, rather than the aimless stressing of eras past. I’m steadily realising that bored, unmotivated students aren’t the problem; it’s disorganised co-workers. I am repeatedly inundated by inconsiderate and illogical requests for help with classes that aren’t mine, translations of things of a singularly personal nature, and so on. I believe the thought process resembles something like this: Darren is an ALT, and ALTs aren’t busy or just don’t work very hard. だから、Darren mustn’t be busy. It’s beautifully Socratic.

Anyway, in light of these revelations, job satisfaction is at an unusual high, as I have adopted an even more nihilistic approach to my job: I chat with students whenever I feel like it, and about whatever I please. I play DS with them and snap unflattering photos of them. I ask them about their boyfriends and girlfriends and point out cute girls in magazines. So when it comes to classes, most of them are comfortable enough with me by now to play along with whatever I come up with. However, I think the main thing that has improved my working life is that, as the months have rolled by of late, I have become increasingly willing to strike up a conversation in punctuated Japanese, and the kids have started to realise that I am actually a living organism of equal or greater intellectual capability, one who has thoughts and feelings of his own and the gift of self-expression. Who would have thought – a foreigner!

I’m definitely beyond repair. When I start visiting – and enjoying – websites such as this (a cute girl appears in the day!) there seems to be little chance of redemption. To make things even worse, this link was sent to me by a female Japanese friend of mine. There’s just something irresistible about homely girls posing for coy photos and bashfully describing their personal traits.

The longer I spend observing other cultures, the more convinced I become that the world we inhabit is governed primarily by sex and money. The sex industry in Japan is omnipresent and, as a young woman, there is no better way to make easy money than to become a hostess or waitress in a fancy bar. Middle-aged men pay through the nose to merely be in the company of these creatures, and while prostitution itself is outwardly frowned upon, its no secret that money can buy everything, the porn industry is rampant, and the vast majority of establishments fronting as pleasant, classy lady bars are little more than extortionately-priced brothels. On a more personal level, it seems that wherever I go in the world, the thing that impresses the majority of girls with the most boring regularity is a boy with money and the willingness to flaunt it, both on himself and on his girl. The extravagance that passes for class and style in Japan can be truly sickening, especially when a dude in parachute pants can be considered cool just because they cost hundreds of dollars. Oh, and on that note: fuck you, Ed Hardy. I hate you and everything you create.

I always misspell the word ‘opinion’ and it comes out looking something like ‘onion.’ Perhaps there’s something in that.

Dudes. I’ve been all over this new Paramore single for a week now. How is it better than anything they have done in the past? Let me count the ways: Hayley’s voice isn’t as pitch-perfectly auto-tuned as the last album, and, moreover, she sounds way more pissed off on this track. Whilst ‘Misery Business’ was definitely a catchy (dare I say good?) song, it always seemed a little trite and forced to me. On this one, she simply spits out the lyrics in a much more natural meter, and the whole song is better off for it. Next, this song plays with time signatures and syncopation in a way that would make even the most capable metal bands envious. Its structure consists of multiple layered elements and constantly blurs the verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge distinction. The arpeggios in the pre-chorus and breakdown are simply insane. Paramore’s drummer is awesome and is clearly the most impressive thing about the band besides Hayley’s voice. Listen carefully next time!

This movie was rad. The first half of District 9, in particular, takes the now-familiar mockumentary style into pretty interesting and challenging territory, offering a charicature of bureaucracy that is comical, satirical and confrontingly honest. Its themes are superficially obvious, and its a kind of wonder that it has taken so long for sci-fi films to come up with this idea. But the allegory extends further that just ‘how should governments deal with illegal immigrants,’ into far more personal territory: how do we overcome language barriers with foreigners? Is there any way to deal with the issue whilst retaining personal sensitivities? Indeed, can there even be a non-violent resolution to these kinds of problems? It nods towards the pervasive racism issues with a handful of ingenious quips, the kinds of slips-of-tongue usually reserved for mid-level politicians that are likely to see their superiors caught up in some heated PR backpedalling:

“I mean, you can’t say they don’t look like that, that’s what they look like, right? They look like prawns.”

It is amazingly well-acted, particularly by Sharlto Copley, who carries the second half of the film single-handedly and prevents it from ultimately becoming little more than a gruesome FPS-inspired alien blastfest, although even Copley can’t save it from crashing and bashing its way to a somewhat underwhelming end. District 9 combines some of the cinematic elements of Independence Day, Children of Men, The Host and…well, Starship Troopers, but its South African orientation gives it a pretty unique feel overall. Definitely see this movie!

Well, there was going to be more, but now there isn’t. ‘Til next time!

I don’t know what to do! It’s 3pm, I’ll be heading home reasonably soon, but literally nothing awaits me there besides a living room that requires vacuuming. That’s right, I’m so lonely in this tiny little country town attached to my job that I would rather stay at school than go home. At least my workplace has the tell-tale signs of human life in it. I’ve already been for a run today. Last week, I upped my distance from around 6km to around 12km, out of sheer boredom. I was halfway through when I thought to myself, ‘I have nothing to do after I stop.’ So I just kept going.

The last handful of weekends have consisted of some truly devastating nights out, whether measured in terms of financial strain, magnitude of hangovers or accumulated emotional baggage. The cure? Repeating the whole procedure the following weekend (or, ocassionally, during the week). But we won’t get into that now.

For the sake of a yardstick you may use to measure my boredom, I’ve read every book I have with me except one. One of the things I’m most looking forwards to when I visit Melbourne in September is to replace these books with others from my library back home. However my impending trip back hasn’t stopped me from abusing Japanese Amazon and buying copies of books that I already own. Like this one:

Not for some time have I been so captivated by a book. Since living overseas, I have tried to broaden my literary horizons by sampling some of the most well-respected works that those countries and cultures have to offer, from ultra-modern stuff to classics from bygone eras, etc. Along the way I have subjected myself to some real crap, but also to some true diamonds in the rough. Rarely has anything compelled me to (gasp!) blog about it.

I have been reluctant to even open In Cold Blood, simply because I want to savour the whole experience as long as possible and I am scared of taking too big a bite out of it. This might seem like a strange thing to say about a book that is basically a true story, especially one of which everyone knows the ending. But it’s the writing, the pacing…the narrative switches between the reckless road story of two outlaws to a grotesque painting of a once-peaceful town that has been frozen stiff by tragedy and fear. Capote deftly weaves the two together until their numerous inevitable convergences, which, when they finally happen, he treats with simplicity, economy and cool-headedness – the closest he ever gets to plain journalism. There is no fanfare, no cheap page-turning tactics at play here.

The rest of the time, it is so lifelike, so tender, so human that you can often forget that you’re dealing with two murderers. You want to know Perry’s backstory, you want to empathise with him, you want to see him…well, succeed. If there was one failing of the novel, I guess that would be it. But Capote was never trying to pass judgment or condemn anybody; he was only guilty of trying to manipulate his readers, to paint a picture and to bring his characters to life, which every writer invariably strives to do, and in this sense he succeeds completely.

I’m enjoying this so much, especially since the last couple of books I have read have either gone way over my head or just been flat-out not very good.

This one made its Australian debut at the Melbourne Film Festival a couple of weeks ago. I took notice because one day at work the girl who sits opposite me asked if I knew the book she was reading – The Sky Crawlers. I asked her what it was about and got a typically vague Japanese type of answer; I think she said something about ‘romance’ (but let’s be honest – everything in Japan can be classified as roomansu or dorama, usually a combination of the two). She said it was sugoi kanashii, and naturally I was skeptical. But when I saw that it was selected at the film fest, and did a bit of follow-up research, it seemed pretty cool, and it is. The CG animation used for the dogfights is simply astounding, as kinetic as any war film but with just the right amount of artifice and artistry. Anyone who knows me well knows that when it comes to anime, I value art design and mood more than the story itself, and this one is no different.

The one that has really grabbed my attention, though, and subsequently the frontrunner for being the first film I see in general release in Japanese cinemas, is the upcoming Studio 4°C work, First-Squad. International anime collaborations really interest me, and Studio 4°C has a pretty good track record. Monster was, of course, set in Germany, and its strongest attribute in my mind was its representation of Germany in the 1980s. The atmosphere of political suppression and its cultural side-effects permeated every episode/issue. So, long story short, I’m really keen to see First-Squad when it comes out.

This post has succeeded in wasting my time, and yours. Til next time!

Alright! Summer holidays. No classes for five weeks. I do have a list as long as my arm of things I need to do, such as developing photos, posting certain things home, marking hundreds of haiku, and preparing for my school’s open day, but in the meantime…

I guess I’m caught in some kind of vortex where I am neither in touch with Japan nor completely alien to it. This results in a number of misunderstandings and presumptions. For example, the assumption that as a white guy in Japan I am only here to try to hook up with Japanese women, contrasted with the shocked gasps from my students when they ask me ‘Japanese girl is cute?’ and I say ‘yes.’ Likewise, some people go bananas when they hear me utter even the most basic Japanese phrase, while others refuse to talk to me until I am fluent in the language.

Ironically, the thing that most reliably earns me the admiration and acceptance from Japanese people, particularly my students, is the fact that I carry around my Nintendo DS with a Japanese dictionary loaded on it. Of course, it’s not because of the fact that I’m making an effort to learn the language that they recoil in shock, but rather that I have a DS, and I didn’t buy it over here.

There are probably two easy routes out of this situation: either to become completely immsersed in Japanese language, culture and tradition, or to reject it completely. However, neither of these options appeal to me, for obvious reasons. I guess I should have known before arriving here that I would be destined to remain on the liminality between being a real person and a prop, but I could probably have never predicted the repercussions and reverberations, or how simply being identified as an outsider can effect every facet of my daily life over here.

I have chosen to profile some of my more memorable students in this blog.

Many of them go to my special school. It’s still really hard for me to go there. I’m not fnding the experience any more comfortable even after a year. The kids don’t have any chance of learning a foreign language, so the fact that they insist on even having English classes still doesn’t make sense to me. I would be just as useful, if not more so, in other classes where I could freely participate, instead of standing at the front of the room reciting phrases that they will forget as soon as I produce a picture of a koala (to be fair, this phenomenon is not exclusive to my special school).

Nevertheless, there are a few individuals who make the arduous experience more enjoyable. For example, Yuta. This kid always had a smile on his face. In some ways I kinda envied that about him. I wasn’t ever really sure what he was saying in Japanese, cause my Japanese still wasn’t good enough when I was teaching him. But he did know three or four very important English words: “I like ~,” and “yes.”

Our meetings would proceed as follows, never straying from this basic but effective formula: Yuta would spot me from across the room/hallway/yard, and come barreling over towards me, coming to an unsteadily gleeful stop about a foot away from me. In his eyes was an unbridled lust for life and a complete lack of intimidation.

“I like….sushi!”

“Haha! Really?”

“Yes! Yes!”

“What’s your favourite sushi?”

“Yes! Yes!”

He would then turn on his heels and bound away from me, perhaps at a greater speed than that with which he arrived. Sometimes, he would switch it up.

“I like….hanbaagu (Japanese for ‘hamburger’)!”

“Is that so, Yuta?”

“Yes! Yes!”

Vrooooom.

He was hilarious.

These days I spend the most time at Nishigo hanging out with this girl called Yuka. She’s 16, but owing to whatever disability it is that she has, only looks about 11. I like her because even though she knows I usually can’t understand her, she never slows down what she’s saying and comes to hang out with me week in, week out. She always asks me to sit next to her on the bus and then tells her (speechless) friends about it. She asks me questions like, “are there birds in Australia?” Which may seem stupid, but is actually really cute. She loves singing and, like Yuta, doesn’t let a damn thing bring her down, ever.

She tells me how she fell over on her arse at school, she warned me to take care cause of the swine flu when I went to Hong Kong, and talks about the scary bugs around her house. She comes into my office every Monday at 3:20pm to warn me that the bus is coming soon and I shouldn’t be late. Sometimes I have absolutely no idea what she’s saying and have trouble identifying a single Japanese word amongst the torrent. But I like her because she talks to me more than any student or teacher at that entire school.

Back at Kohnan, there is Yurie. I am not sure whether it is me or Australia that she is in love with (I suspect it is the latter), but we became friends through her proudly presenting me with a new flavour of Tim Tam each week. The first one was something like wild raspberry, and I was suitably impressed. I guess her older sister lives in Tokyo or something, and has more reliable access to strange and exotic (and exorbitantly priced) foreign delicacies. Anyway, she always says to me ‘Australia ikitai! (I want to go to Australia!).’

Her English is, I guess, fairly standard for a san-nensei student at my school, or maybe a little above average. She understands everything I say to her, and I mostly understand everything she says to me. It’s a bad habit, that I usually speak in English to my students and they usually speak in Japanese to me, but in the end I suppose it’s the most reliable way to communicate with them.

She is really pretty and outgoing, which is why it’s hard for me to understand why she’s not somewhere closer to the top of the social pecking order at my school. She always has a dazed, anime-style look in her eyes and an adorable habit of always showing up five seconds too late to whatever it is that has grabbed my students attention, and then lingering around for a few moments after the cacophony has subsided just to smile at me and make sure I had seen it, too.

Nine times out of ten when I see her, she is alone, either knitting or reading in an empty classroom. She enjoys horror movies and I burst out laughing when I was describing No Country for Old Men and she cocked her head and chimed in with a quizzical “splatter!?”

As for the boys, easily the most noteworthy must be The Rock Star. This guy! At my school, wearing a uniform isn’t compulsory, and he takes full advantage of this fact. I’ve never, not once, seen him wearing regulation school pants. Before school, after school, during lunch, even in the ten-minute break between classes, he is perched upon a desk with an acoustic guitar, and a handful of doe-eyed Japanese girls staring up at him. He is also prominent in that he has probably the waviest hair of any of my students, so much so that one of the girls commented that we look ‘like brothers’ together. He also likes to exploit this particular gift that has been bestowed upon him, since he gets his haircut like every two weeks. Needless to say, we look nothing alike.

But by far my favourite moment with The Rock Star, was one day a couple of months ago, when I arrived at school to see him decked out in bright blue skinny jeans, a Strokes-esque vest and a bright white t-shirt underneath. By the start of the fourth period, he was wearing three-quarter length jeans, and a hoodie. After school, he had regressed entirely into a pair of shorts and a V-neck t-shirt, designed entirely to accentuate the fragile lines of Japanese dudes’ shoulder blades and collar bones. Yeah – three costume changes in one regulation day! And not a school tie to be seen. He’s soooo dreamy.

The punchline of the story, however, has to be the fact that this guy hates me, because one sad day he realised that I can play guitar way, way better than him. And I don’t even have to dress up to look like I’m in a rock band.

I guess that’s enough for today. But do not despair, avid reader! I have plenty more anecdotes to share with you. Stay tuned for another edition of ’serious breaches of privacy and potentially inappopriate student-teacher relations in the Land of the Rising Sun!’

So long!

I need a haircut. Of course, this isn’t news to anybody who has laid eyes on me over the past six months. But I feel like this time it signifies something more.

My hair is the embodiment of all the unchecked and misguided behaviours of the past eleven months. It is a painful reminder of my awkwardness and utter inability to assimilate. It is the end result of what happens when you remove someone who has barely come to terms with his situation in his hometown and the spiritual connection he has forged with it, and place him somewhere that is more or less ignorant of all the values that have become so close to him over the course of his short existence. I hate to trot out all the familiar cliches of culture shock, and to be quite honest I’m not sure that that’s the problem here. Any problems I have encountered on that front can probably be attributed to my own apprehension. No, friends, this is a much more internal conflict.

Hark! The unrepentant tug of loneliness prevails! The blogosphere attracts the isolated, the mediocre, the desperate as if it were an immeasurable whirlpool of the kind you would only read about in the seafaring tales of eras past. Surprised? Neither am I.

I went to China.

The point was to escape the groove that I could feel myself settling into, and you know what? It worked. Although it was but a brief adventure, and it lacked the same sense of discovery that enveloped me the first time I went there, it gave me the perfect respite: anonymity, an absence of expectations, and despite the incessant hustle and bustle of China and Hong Kong, it also gave me some peace and quiet.

I often jot down notes to myself, intended to serve as lightning bolts of inspiration when it comes to actually writing something. Of course, as I’m writing them, I say to myself, “yeah, this is good, there is no way I will look back on this in a few weeks’ time and not know what I was going on about.” I don’t need to point out that it never works out that way. What in the hell does ‘A guide to better living in Japan’ mean?

So long, friends.

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The onslaught of material worth writing down in Japan is so torrential that it washes away all other consecutive cognitive processes in a mire of fractured memories and splintered shards of recognition. I should resort to poetry or (gasp) lyricism. Alas, all that inspires me to write is that most inappropriate of sources; that want for an audience of sorts, or recognition of the fact that I have but finally put pen to paper, or fingertip to typepad, as it were.

Japan, I’m sorry. You alone cannot force my hand, not this time, no sir. It requires a mocking tenacity, goading persistence of spirit to cause this bird to rear, retreat, take flight, open the gates, surrender the fort. Greatest pleasure of late has been found in mapping out an itinerary for persons not myself, lining up the dominoes in order to hastily and improperly knock them down, setting myself again the task of restructuring and organising, resolving and inevitably abandoning in the larval stages the germs of real accomplishment.

Documentation and opinion to be redirected henceforth towards a more wholesome and practical arena. Endless depths to be explored and then occupied, both here and there, but to different ends.

A handful of albums that have had a considerable effect on my life, my worldview, my perspectives on certain events and my appreciation for art and beauty, presented in the chronological order in which they appeared and ignited something within me. Apologies to those who probably deserve to be on this list but aren’t. These are, after all, my formative years that are in plain view.

• Oasis  - What’s the Story (Morning Glory)?
• Everclear – So Much For the Afterglow
• Propellerheads – Decksanddrumsandrockandroll
• Lagwagon – Double Plaidinum
• Saves the Day – Stay What You Are
• Staring Back – On
• Jimmy Eat World – Clarity
• Jets To Brazil – Orange Rhyming Dictionary
• Smoking Popes – Destination Failure
• Blueline Medic – Text_Bomb
• Miles Davis – Miles Ahead
• The Black Keys – Thickfreakness
• Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros – Streetcore
• The Lawrence Arms – The Greatest Story Ever Told
• Ted Leo and the Pharmacists – Hearts of Oak
• Elliott Smith – X/O
• Built To Spill – Keep It Like a Secret
• Common – Be
• The Hold Steady – Boys and Girls in America
• mewithoutYou – Brother/Sister
• Twin Vickers – Demo
• Muscles – Guns, Babes, Lemonade
• Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – The Boatman’s Call

Until we meet again – so long, friends.

I figure I owe it to myself to blog in the old-fashioned way, before this whole Japan experiment got started, back when I had too many dreams and aspirations to fit into my days (as opposed to not enough). I’ve been reading over some of my old blogs – from my adolescent halcyon days – and they are quite seriously littered with hilarious anecdotes and controversy. Like our anonymous stalker who kept prank-calling us around the clock, seven days a week and the thirty-two comments it spawned. Or my ingenious relationship smasher service (patent pending). Here’s a quote I am particularly fond of, presented here in it’s original letterbox format (i.e. without any grammar or capitalisation):

as for those people who believe that soccer is the ‘world game’: i’d like to see all those square-jawed, golden-haired euro trash pretty boys sacrifice one fucking hour of their time and earnings to get together in the name of charity, not to mention saving lives. soccer is a fucking joke and if you support it you are naive and stupid.

This blog has always been marginally more serious than my previous efforts, though, so for that reason I have avoided late night ramblings or personal anecdotes. Plus I’m not sure how many readers I’ve got. Who knows who might be watching. Probably all those future employers who want to recruit me but are afraid (owing to my prior history) I might slip up and are therefore tracking my net footprint. 

Here’s a list of things I miss about Australia.

• Good coffee. I thought I could do without it, and for a while, I could, but there’s only so much tepid dishwater I can reasonably be expected to imbibe. I guess the only reason I still do it is that I would lose my freaking mind sitting here for eight hours a day without the intermittent excitement of getting up to make myself a hot drink.
• Fish and chips and meat pies. I would make a killing if I opened up a fish and chip shop over here. Y’all gots no idea. If the Japanese are up for anything, it’s food, and they love their poutato furai. I could charge an exorbitant amount of money for this and get away with it. As for the meat pies…well, it sure beats the tepid floating menace that is oden when the weather is cold.
• Talking. To people.
• Outspoken bigotry, impatience, impoliteness. Gotta keep things interesting, you know?
• Music. Melbourne famously has one of the best live music scenes in the world. I have become far too accustomed to going out at night without music or, worse still, making my own (karaoke).
• Being able to keep up with current affairs. Watching the news over here is pointless, because even though I can’t understand most of it, I can definitely understand enough of it to know that it is insular, blinkered and (really) only a step or two away from flat-out nationalist propaganda. At least in Australia, where I can speak the language, I have the freedom to select where I get my news and opinions from.
• Learning stuff. When not battling with a language, one is much more freely able to research and investigate topics that they find interesting. My weekly excursions into bookstores have completely stopped and I only buy the occassional thing off Japanese Amazon.
• My family and friends. Somewhat self-explanatory.
• Over-saturation of Aussie rules football. This is probably my number one most-missed thing from Australia. Fkn BigPond in all their benevolent wisdom have made it impossible for people outside of Australia to watch their videos online, thus shunning the biggest demographic of people that would ever want to watch their shitty Windows Media format streaming videos online. Also I miss cricket. It is has just finished being summer back home, after all.
• Phone conversations. I remember talking to a good friend of mine in year 12 every time we had a literature essay due. We would spend hours making pointed and highly intelligent observations to each other and eventually digress and start talking about eighteenth birthday parties and school assemblies and how we wanted to start a lounge act (still the best unfulfilled dream of my life…and there have been many).
• Philosophy. As you are no doubt already aware, most of the thinking I do over here relates to being able to communicate with the people. I used to think about social trends and the media and artificial intelligence and the artistic integrity of video games and things like that, but it’s hard over here. Also I’m a lot busier.

Totally got a care package in the mail last night. It contains all kinds of survivalist rations. I am a hoarder of the first degree. But I am one with mini Mars Bars and Minties and deodorant. Yeah I still stink though. My stomach is growling at me like a caged animal cause I haven’t fed it today. It seems like for as long as there has been a recorded history I have had the same anxieties about accomplishment and procrastination. Would it be better for me to just ignore it and spend as much time as possible distracting myself with meaningless (let’s call them ‘cultural’) endeavours? Or is this something I need to address swiftly and comprehensively? I guess I’m just searching for some kind of evidence that my life since finishing high school hasn’t been a complete waste of time. I wouldn’t dare venture something so stark as a list, though. It would end up short and flaccid.

Dude in my office compulsively brushes his teeth without toothpaste, gargles without mouthwash, and slurps all his food and drink, from instant noodles to plain old tap water. So much of the conversation that goes on in my office is hollow and formal. Here’s a full transcript of everything that was said in the last hour:

“Ah! Muramatsu-sensei. You brought the bento! You have my sincerest gratitude!”
“Why no, it was simply my pleasure to bring you this bento!”
“How is your honourable bento?”
“But of course, it is utterly delectable!”
“I will now return the empty bento to the office!”
“Shibahara-sensei, you’re too kind! Will you be eating bento again tomorrow?”
“I certainly shall! Tomorrow is the last day of bento!”
“You are indeed correct, Shibahara-sensei.”

I suppose when this is all I get to listen to each day, I am actually better off not knowing much Japanese. If they only knew that I am talking about them right now!

I couldn’t sleep last night. Not sure why. I had an itch on my leg (the outside of my leg, perverts) that I couldn’t stop itchin’, and maybe the old electric blanket was up a little bit too high. I read yesterday that when sleeping, your body needs to reach a minimum core temperature for the sleep to be meaningful. It always leaves the next morning. It never says thankyou and I feel cheated and used. Anyway I suppose having the electric blanket up too high would explain why I feel even more lethargic today than I have in a long time despite going to bed relatively early.

Yeah, the blogs were definitely better than they are now. Post more comments, people. I know you’re out there. You’re not alone. After all, the internet is the one place where you can really, truly, be yourself, right?

but the thing is, i just can’t listen to meaningless music anymore. why listen to a song that says ‘i love you’ when you can listen to a song that says ‘this list is what went right, your name is written twice’? i dunno.

i’ve been sitting here so long, staring at a blank page that should be full of either the musings of a poet or the calculations of a genius. unfortunately no amount of rhyme or reason can break this spell that i’m in. it’s a daydream at night, but it’s not a fiction. it is a life, or so they say. is a life spent materialising the sensations we encounter, every day and every night? that is how a life should be sold, not bought. i’m in a different time zone. i have a different exchange rate. my all-ordinaries are fucking strange. my mind set sail before i had checked it in. i bought insurance when i should have gotten assurance.

matter of fact, i’ll make a journal entry at 2:20am. who says maths exams can’t be fun on five hours sleep and even less time studying. i do. i’ll make it fun. i’ll make it fun by pretending that two plus two equals five. or that complex numbers are not in fact any different than real numbers. in fact, complex numbers often make more sense than real numbers. here’s a complex number: there are 31,536,000 seconds in a year. here’s a real number: about 400 people between 15 and 24 commit suicide in australia each year.

Yeah, I got a lot of catching up to do. Over and out.

A whole week with no appointments, deadlines or obligations would be a blessing for many people. Think again! I’m sitting here, rheumy eyes glazed over, brain feeling much the same way, tapping away on the keyboard in an effort not to draw attention to my general droopiness. For now, it’s working.

The reason I find myself in this position is that it’s entrance exam week at my school. That means that the whole place shuts down and only the most hardcore of teachers need to show up. Yep, that includes me. Good thing I’m here, too. These hours won’t waste themselves. So to get to the point, there are hundreds of wide-eyed junior high school kids here today sitting their entrance exam. I’m not sure why they bother, to be honest; mine isn’t the most academically excellent of schools. And we’re not talking about desirable real estate, either. Surely kids don’t need to do an hour-long English exam when all they want to do is play baseball or cheerleading. But what would Japan be without hours upon hours of inefficient customs and beauracracy? I’ve said it before: I stopped asking permission to do anything around here a long time ago. I realise this may seem presumptuous of me, but so far it has only resulted in startled admiration from my co-workers (“you organised this all by yourself? Darren-sensei, you are very busy だよ!”). It’s not because I’m subverting authority or because I don’t wanna talk to the vice-principals (OK, actually it is a little bit of both of those), it’s just that if I did things by the book, I wouldn’t do anything. 

I don’t feel like writing movie or music reviews here anymore. I’ve lost my critical edge. Oh no! The smoothening has begun! I can feel my jagged and caustic personality being whittled away to an inconspicuous sand dune with every passing day in Japan. Opinions are as rare over here as good coffees. I find myself retreating in a sea of self-loathing every time I venture an opinion thanks to the startled looks I get from my co-workers. And then I step back and realise that my brain is rotting away. Time that used to be spent criticising art and music is now being spent semi-consciously trying to conjugate verbs or thinking about the housework I gotta do. I should get back in the habit of hating everyone and everything. Life was good back then, the world was so full of possibilities. 懐かしい。。。

I started snowboarding a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, started, in late February. But it’s OK because the snow season goes for like six months of the year in these parts. We went up to Zao which was everything you expect a Japanese ski resort to be, complete with eery ghost-like steam emanating from the natural hotsprings.

I was alright at snowboarding, actually. Better than I probably should have been on my first attempt, so naturally on the second time around, my head got a little too big and as a result the benevolent forces that be decided to plant me firmly on my arse. Big head = sore arse. That’s how it works when it comes to snowsports. But it has only strengthened my resolve to go out and drop heaps and heaps of cash on gear that I’m probably only gonna use a handful of times. We are located within two hours of about a dozen ski resorts over here, it’s pretty mental. Every Japanese girl on the mountain is dolled up in brightly coloured jumpsuits and beanies, regardless of their ability when it comes to, you know, going. Down the mountain.

Let’s see, now. A few us dropped a crazy number of yen on tickets to Fuji Rock in July! To be honest I’m only lukewarm on the lineup at this stage but I figure it will be fun regardless. Three days, at the foot of a mountain. You have to hike through forests and cross over streams just to get between stages! I’m also going to Punkspring although the lineup is pretty lame.

Today is bento day. When there are no classes, they have these bento days where the teachers are supposed to eat bento together and strengthen their office relationships. Well, I’ve been here for two hours and nobody has said a word to me. As if relationships needs strengthening! The bento days are the same as any other day, except there are no students bouncing in and out of the office, and your lunch is cold and costs 1100 yen. No thanks! I’m planning on taking myself off to the supermarket on my bike and getting some yaki soba or ramen. 

The olds are arriving for a visit in April. They’ll probably be around my area for about eight days. The following week is Golden Week – named not for any special celebration but simply because there are four public holidays within two weeks. So I’m looking at going to China again during that time. I don’t have any desire to go to Korea, have just been to South East Asia, and definitely don’t wanna go to Malaysia or Indonesia. Plus there is so much of China I haven’t seen, and the food is incredible. This time I wanna go further south (but avoid Shanghai). 

My mate and I are campaiging to take over the local JET newsletter for the upcoming year. I would be lying if I said it had nothing to do with my brain going stale. Any opportunity to be able to express things in my native language is welcome, as far as I’m concerned. We want to make it entertaining and pleasant to look at. There is no reason why it needs to be bland and utilitarian. We’re living in Japan, for God’s sake (神の酒?), there should be no lack of inspiration. A well-written and entertaining publication is as important as an informative one, and if we can lure in a solid readership I think it will only become more and more popular and attract more and more contributors. If you are reading this, you are probably already familiar with our campaign or you are in a position where to actually care about my editorial aspirations would be an enormous waste of your time. It’s just something I’m looking forwards to doing.

There’s only so much Japanese study I can take in. I recently bought a textbook with an accompanying workbook and CD. It’s so intimidating that I don’t wanna start it yet. I think I know enough by now that I could comfortably skip the first half a dozen lessons, but then who knows what nuggets of wisdom I might be missing out on? It’s a daunting prospect, taking on an entire language textbook without any guidance or prior experience, but I guess by moving to a foreign country with very limited English I haven’t left myself with much choice. My conversational Japanese is still clearly my worst point, which is a shame but I guess it’s understandable. A month or so ago I threatened to take on the 3-kyu JLPT in December but, considering I have  taken in very little new material since then, it’s looking unlikely.

This thing is losing steam. Peace y’all.

This is madness! Two blog posts in one night?! Note: like last year, this stuff didn’t necessarily come out in 2008, but let’s just pretend.

favourite albums of 2008:

mewithoutYou – Brother, Sister
Twin Vickers – Demo

These two recordings were so far beyond anything else I heard in 2008 that I feel the need to break up the list in order to point out this fact. The rest can be considered more or less equal.

Cut Copy – In Ghost Colours
Muscles  – Guns Babes Lemonade
The Decemberists – The Crane Wife/Picaresque
Smoking Popes – Stay Down
Bayside – Shudder
The Benevento/Russo Duo – Play Pause Stop
Dinosaur Jr. – Beyond
The Black Keys – Magic Potion
The Maccabees – Colour It In
Annuals – Such Fun
Judy and Mary – The Great Escape
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – The Boatman’s Call
Crystal Castles – S/T
Death Cab For Cutie – Narrow Stairs
Foals – Antidotes
The Hold Steady – Stay Positive
New Order – Substance
Ratatat – Classics
Justice – †
Kanye West – Graduation
Louis Jordan – Greatest Hits
Modest Mouse – We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank
Oh Mercy – Priviliged Woes
The Bronx – III
The Presets – Apocalypso

favourite songs by bands/off albums i may or may not necessarily give a shit about:

Twin Vickers – The Way To Walk Out Of Here
mewithoutYou – O Porcupine/The Dryness and the Rain/Wolf Am I!
Oh Mercy – Can’t Fight It
The Greasers – Shelley
The Bronx – Past Lives
Annuals – The Tape
Cut Copy – Feel The Love
Death Cab For Cutie – I Will Possess Your Heart/Cath…
Common – Be (still probably my favourite hiphop track)
Kanye West – Robocop
Bayside – The Ghost of St. Valentine
MGMT – Time To Pretend (I liked this when everyone was still obsessed with ‘Kids’)
Muscles – Jerk
Hot Chip – Ready For The Floor
Driving Music – Demo (all five tracks)

bands that should have quit in 2008:

Fall Out Boy
Jimmy Eat World
Saves The Day (hurts me to mention these last two)
Bloc Party
Kaiser Chiefs
Coldplay (still)
Metallica (still)
The Getaway Plan

bands that shouldn’t have quit in 2008:

Blueline Medic…

best new bands/new to me:

The Paints
Kimbra
The Benevento/Russo Duo

biggest disappointments:

Kanye West – 808s and Heartbreaks
Common – Universal Mind Control
Lagwagon – I Think My Older Brother Used To Listen To Lagwagon

best gigs:

The Paints @ Noise Bar
mewithoutYou @ Soundwave Festival
Saosin @ Soundwave Festival
The Matches @ Soundwave Festival
Ratatat @ The Espy
Kimbra @ The Toff
Twin Vickers @ The Old Bar
Justice @ Ganban Night ‘08
Lagwagon @ Club Quattro Tokyo

i just don’t get it:

MGMT
Deerhunter
The Gaslight Anthem
Vampire Weekend

biggest surprises:

Local artists outshine just about everything else regardless of genre
After shockingly saccharine Plans album, Death Cab release scary good song with ‘I Will Possess Your Heart’
I develop a nasty affinity for nasty electro (although I can pinpoint this to one very particular night)…
Sum 41 most popular pop-punk band in Japan (not really surprising actually)
Brad Pitt in Burn After Reading, mental

best movies:

Let The Right One In
Wall-E
The Dark Knight
The Killing
Tekkonkinkreet
Burn After Reading (Coen-lite but still hilarious)
Battle Royale
Hidden
5 Centimetres per Second
Tokyo Story
Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead (why are there so many thrillers on this list?)

worst movies:

I didn’t watch anywhere near as many movies this year so thankfully I didn’t see many bad ones. Let me think…

Babylon A.D. (stumbled across this on the plane to Cambodia, I couldn’t look away it was so appalling)
The Orphanage (not bad by any means but just a bit of a disappointment)
Ghost In The Shell (so overrated)
Pineapple Express (had its moments but ehhh)
My Blueberry Nights (ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh)

best television shows:

The Colbert Report
Monster
Death Note

worst television shows:

The Office (quit while you’re ahead!)
Heroes
Lost

best games:

The World Ends With You (DS)
Space Invaders Extreme (DS)
Kirby Canvas Curse (DS)
Jump! Ultimate Stars (DS)
Geometry Wars (DS/PC/360)/Grid Wars (PC)
Everyday Shooter (PC)
N+ (DS)

best books read in 2008:

The Grapes of Wrath
The Name of the Rose (it took me like four months, it must be good…I think…)
Red Dust
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea
If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler

best book read in 2008 that i didn’t really care for:

Slaughterhouse-Five

most anticipated/fingers crossed/predictions for 2009:

New Decemberists album redefines indie rock, tops both Pitchfork’s best albums chart and the New York Times book review
Fabled second Postal Service album finally drops
Kimbra becomes the next Björk sans the cat-on-a-hot-tin-roof act
Blueline Medic reunite and finally get the recognition they deserve
Hacking the Wii becomes even cheaper and easier
Nonetheless, Nintendo continue their march towards total world domination
Barack Obama launches rocket full of conservatives into the sun
Kevin Rudd’s internet filter blocks every website except tubgirl
Electric cars
People start talking about how many Yen gold can buy, not the other way around

That’s a whole year’s worth of pop culture right there! Sadly I can’t even remember half of the stuff I read and watched in 2008. The first half was spent in a warbly daze and the second half swimming in neon and smokey karaoke bars. Consider my lesson learned.

よろしく。

Is this thing on?

So, uh, I’m sorry it’s been so long since I wrote in here.  That’s not an apology directed at anybody in particular, cause I know nobody reads this, but I feel like I’ve let the team down. Anyway on with the show.

New year’s resolutions. Bizarrely, I more or less accomplished all the things I set out to accomplish in 2008. I feel like that must be a first for humankind. So this year I’ve pared it back a little bit, and focussed on more practical, rather than abstract, goals. Like getting more proficient at Japanese, f’rinstance. And saving money. 2008 was a year of excess. And to prove it…

OK now, I’m more or less over these kinds of surveys. But I feel that given my time constraints it would be more efficient and less painful for you, the reader, to see this in easy-to-digest point form. So with no adieus to further, here’s 2008 in review.

1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before?
So much stuff! Taught myself a language (ahem), traveled alone, lived alone (including paying my own bills, believe it), worked full-time, got fired from a job.

2. Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions and will you make more for next year?
As you are all well aware by now, yeah, I kept ‘em. As for this year…well, I won’t go into any more detail than I already have, cause that would be terribly narcissistic of me, plus you’ll probably jinx it.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Well, a couple of my fellow JETs did! I mean, their wives did. But otherwise, no, I guess not.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Yeah. My grandma passed away in October. She was such a nice person and I owe a large part of who I am to her. I miss her a lot.

5. What countries did you visit?
China, Japan, Cambodia, Vietnam, in that order! Snap!

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?
Japanese ability, hair that does what it’s told.

7. What date from 2006 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
I suppose leaving for Japan and subsequently arriving in Japan, although I can’t remember the exact dates. Also the morning my grandma passed away and trying to put on a brave face at school that week.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Being independant, my giant Australia presentation, the Tokyo Run for a Cure, investing a lot of time into recording my song, following my dream and moving to Japan.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Again, not being as good at Japanese as I would like to be by now, not being able to hold down a relationship over here, not having enough time for writing or playing guitar. I have more or less learned to deal with routine minor embarassment.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Yes, got layed up in hospital in Siem Reap after repeated bouts of partying way too hard, but otherwise no. I guess I was healthier this year than I have been in ages, at least since moving to Japan. Ironically, I have also excercised less since moving to Japan.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
A ticket to China, my laptop, my Nintendo DS, heaps of new clothes, party supplements in Saigon.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
My fellow JETs (particularly in Kennan) for being so rad and chilled out all the time. Also my family, for being so supportive of me when I left and my brother for finally getting a job. Obama, muhfuckas.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
Holy shit. To my former employer (don’t wanna name names in case of some future libel case), you are such a son of a bitch, and it makes me sick to my stomach that people as selfish and arrogrant (and essentially gutless and pathetic) as you are somewhat successful in this world. Oh, and as usual, right-wing Australia and America.

14. Where did most of your money go?
God, I shudder to think. Probably the accrued expense of traveling all around Asia and Japan. And drinking.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
This is a somewhat dumb question.

16. What song will always remind you of 2008?
Anything by Muscles and Cut Copy.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you: Happier or sadder? Thinner or fatter? Richer or poorer?
Man, I don’t even know. I’m just as happy but in a different way, and I’m the same size and shape but not as fit. I’m definitely richer. Consequently I’m also a lot more shallow.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Reading, writing, exercising, slutting about.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Not..approaching…girls…in Japan?

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
Oops, again, too late. I spent Christmas spelunking around temples in Cambodia and then hitting a wild Christmas party with a bunch of Cambodian tuk-tuk drivers, their families and their ocassionally beautiful girlfriends.

21. Did you fall in love in 2006?
I fall in love numerous times whenever I cross the road outside Shibuya station.

23. How many one-night stands?
Define ’stands.’

24. What was your favourite TV program?
Monster (watch it), Death Note (watch it), The Office (went seriously downhill in season five, though), The Colbert Report (still the most honest news you can get).

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
Who knows? Actually no, I’ve got a pretty good filter going.

26. What was the best book you read?
I’ll get to this later.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Likewise, I’ll get to this later.

28. What did you want and get?
I assume this doesn’t apply to immaterial things. So with that in mind: a sweet placement in Japan. My highschool rules. No it’s not just cause of the short skirts.

29. What did you want and not get?
An invitation to play rhythm guitar for Front Counter.

30. What was your favourite film of this year?
What’s with all the questions? I’ll get to this later.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Turned 22, made a right jerk of myself by offending people I’d never met as well as others that I considered good friends. It was a fucking great night.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Fluency in Japanese. That’s about it. Everything else worked out more or less according to plan. Take that, conspiratorial stars!

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?
Better than yours! At least, better than all the stupid haircuts I deal with on a daily basis: both in Melbourne’s metrosexual indie underbelly and in transgender Japanese high school.

34. What kept you sane?
Time to myself, heaps of great music, benders of inconceivable magnitude.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Hrm. I’m gonna give the honorary title to the late Heath Ledger.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
Obama, baby.

38. Who was the best new person you met?
All my Japanese students and co-workers.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008.
I learned that you only learn life lessons when things don’t go your way. Which makes it hard to learn and grow as a person when you get more or less what you want. Ha! But, I suppose in many ways I became closer to my family this year, which is a good thing. I miss them and I love them and I can’t wait to see them!

That’ll do, pig. That’ll do.

There are always a few peripheral characters in the Pixar films that I fall utterly in love with. In the case of Wall-E, it’s the adorable clean-up drone M-O (they always boast clever names, too), whose facial expressions come entirely in the form of LED eyes yet manage to capture all the curiosity of an intelligent animal who is coming to terms with human ingenuity.

Which leads me, of course, to Wall-E. This is a beautiful, breathtaking film in every sense of the word. From the scene it paints of the inevitable convergence of the current human condition (both from an environmental perspect and a social one), to the promulgation of corporation to an extra-terrestrial scale, to our dependence upon automatic processes and loss of love for learning, to the effects of infinite loneliness and longing, Wall-E as a film transcends and redefines animation itself. There, I said it. It has aesthetic value that is surely equal to any film as well as philosophical implications that are relevant to us – today – on countless levels…and it conveys most (if not all) of this without dialogue. Think about it. Everything Wall-E achieves, he does so without words, without a soul, without religion. All he has is his curiousity and his faultless, incorruptible innocence.

The depth of field animation, and in particular, the depiction of weightlessness in space is just beautiful. There is no other word for it. Wall-E and Eve’s dance in space is surely the most beautiful and touching sequence in Pixar’s history. Oh, and just quietly…things are still looking up.

I guess this means I’m gonna have to start thinking about my best and worst of 2008. It will be a bit of a tough call, as I’ve been uncharacteristically occupied, at least over the last few months, and have partied more vigorously, more regularly, this year than I ever have before. The result? I must be getting old. I have that familiar feeling that time is flying by. I feel the year(s) whisking by at unfathomable speed with utter disregard for patience or etiquette. This year, more than any other, I have caught myself in moments of contemplation and admiration at the infinite serenity that the world offers by virtue of its simple existence. There are patterns and balance and beauty to be found everywhere if you’re only willing to take a few minutes out of your day to sit back and think about things

Stop worrying about your job. Stop worrying about your boyfriend. Stop worrying about your deadlines. Stop worrying about money. Take a look around. A speckled bird, humbly inspired, ran across the road, when it could have flown.

I’ve been thinking a bit about Christmas back in Australia, and how I’m kinda really gonna miss it. The weather is always nice (re: not freezing), and it’s always accompanied by a pretty pervasive good mood, plenty of eating and drinking, and of course, the promise of cricket, parties and more amazing weather. Some of my fondest memories of the past few summers have been Boxing Days, Australia Days, New Years’ Eves, that sort of thing. Apparently New Year’s Eve isn’t such a big deal over here, at least not in the same sense. From what I can ascertain, it involves docile trips to shrines and such and reverence for the first sunrise of the new year. It’s a far cry from the utter immorality of New Year’s Eve back in Australia. Back there, you’re lucky if there is a shirt in sight, or a non-alcoholic beverage. My Aussie friends and I have already started plotting a rampage on January 26th. Rain, hail, snow or tsunami, it will definitely involve shorts, thongs, outdoor barbecues and (more than likely) Vegemite and Tim Tams (since they are the only uniquely Aussie foods you can buy over here).

Oh, did you guys hear? A black guy is gonna be President of the United States. There’s something to mull over the old noggin’. I can’t possibly add anything to further elucidate the significance of this. It’s so strange being in a country like Japan, where national pride runs so deep but general knowledge about politics is so limited. Seriously, beyond local council elections, the average Japanese person has no idea about the political situation in their own country, let alone internationally. It’s because their elections are structured differently from the ones we are used to, and because the Emperor and his family still carry such symbolic importance, that the image of solidarity and stability is unfaltering, even during times of severe economic panic. Of course, the fact that the media is so saturated with ‘major’ issues like two Russian-born sumo wrestlers getting caught smoking weed doesn’t do much to raise awareness of ‘lesser’ problems like war. This was front-page news for at least three weeks back in September and August. Why? Because sumo is the national sport, and anything resembling a blot on the integrity of the symbol that is Japanese nationalism is nothing less than the worst thing that could happen in this country.

Take a look at the flag, for further evidence:

It’s, uh, bold. To say the least. Even more so than when I was back in Australia, I have been depending on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report for my news, at least when it comes to America. I’m not quite so keen to read thousand-word articles on The Australian or The Age websites, though, on account of I’m already starting to see the waking world in bleary-eyed, pixelated format, and I don’t want to exacerbate the problem. But you know what’s great about high-speed internet? All forms of media are available on-demand. Give me convenience or give me death. Just don’t spoil the party, Mr. Rudd.

On a related note, I find the routinely inflammatory comments that appear on news websites absolutely fascinating. At the time of writing, the most recent comment on that article I linked to above reads as follows:

“I didn’t vote for the twit, I hope the people who did are satisfied we have a now have a monkey running our economy and our internet.”

So many great things about this post, not the least of which is the level of political engagement with the real issues at hand here. But it’s indicative of the vast majority of what constitutes ‘commentary’ on the internet. I believe most people’s internet practices have evolved so as to completely filter out all user comments, except in the case of community message boards, but the phenomenon of semi-anonymous propaganda is incredible. The ability to conceal one’s real agenda and distill one’s real motivations into a handful of characters is something that we are seeing for the first time in human history, and the manifestations are countless. What is it that compels people to comment on articles like this in the first place? Who do they think is actually reading them? Do they not realise the abstraction that occurs when you substitute your real name and address for an internet handle? It goes without saying that the vast majority of these comments would not be made in a real-life scenario, eg. in general conversation, or even during a political discussion amongst peers over dinner.

I feel like going back to university just to investigate things like this. In fact, I feel like going back to university full stop. Seeing how my students’ eyes widen when I explain that ‘percent’ comes from the Latin words ‘per’ and ‘cent,’ and that ‘per’ roughly equates to the Japanese possessive particle の(no), and that ‘cent’ means ‘hundred,’ is a great feeling. In these rare cases, I truly feel like I’m helping them learn, and that what I have to offer them is actually valuable and rewarding. I want to regain that feeling for myself.

It’s lunch time. I had better sign off and go make my presence felt.

Take care, friends.

I forgot to take my phone off silent. Normally, in Japan, this isn’t an issue. Any uninvited noise emanating from your personal space is frowned upon over here, with the exception of slurping your food like you’re eating out of a bowl on ground level without cutlery. But this morning, it was a problem. Because my phone is also my alarm, and when the phone is on silent, the alarm ain’t very alarming.

So I overslept for the first time since arriving in Japan. During my frenzied bike ride to school, I visualised all the ways in which they would punish me. Embarrassing apologies to the principal, deductions from my paid leave, peltings with rotten fruit in the town square, all of it. So I snuck in. Seemingly morning meetings had already begun. It was like a ghost town. I’m in huge trouble for sure.

Because the Japanese base their entire existence around the notion of keeping up appearances. Even if you have nothing to do or contribute by remaining at your workplace, even if you would in fact be bothering your coworkers by your mere oversized gaijin presence, you are expected to stay. It’s J-group-think, or, as it is more commonly known around here, group-sink. If your co-workers are making the effort to be at their place of work, then of course it would be rude for you not to be there as well. If they are making the effort and keeping the world spinning by falling asleep at their desks or shopping for handbags online, then so should you. I just fail to see how I’m contributing anything by sitting around, trolling message boards, downloading games with the school’s bandwidth, listening to music on Myspace, and of course, the prescribed four or five hours of aimless Facebook patrol.

But that’s the way things are here. Long story short, I didn’t eat breakfast and pedalled like a bitch only to discover that they had quietly switched Monday’s timetable with Friday’s and I don’t have any classes today. Maybe I’m just not in tune enough with the J-lifestyle yet, but it seems like there are some discrepancies in communication versus expectation here.

In other great news, I have a stiff neck. This comes from sitting at my desk for hours upon hours with nichts zu machen. I discovered these two girls who like to play acoustic guitars in an adjacent classroom after school, so sometimes I invite myself in to jam with them. In this case, collaborative jamming actually means me butchering Elliott Smith songs, and them recording videos of me on their mobile phones. I keep saying ‘Youtube’ and making that J-style ‘do not want’ sign with my arms. The teacher I sit next to at work generously donated her sister’s unwanted acoustic guitar a few days ago, so that’s awesome. For those who are in any doubt, cycling home in strong winds carrying a hollowed-out guitar isn’t as easy or as fun as it sounds.

It’s getting cold. I don’t know how cold it is but I don’t like it. Things are looking grim. Last night I was wearing four layers, two of them woolen. We had okonomiyaki which was the one thing I specifically requested not to have because you never get enough food and it takes forever. It’s like a big fried noodle pancake that is drowned in the Japanese equivalent of barbecue sauce. Give me tonkatsu any day. We stopped at the foreign food store afterwards and descended upon it like ravenous zombies. The poor girl working there was probably so scared seeing the six of us blitz through the place. I feel kinda stupid sometimes when I go grocery shopping because Japanese people don’t often stock up on snacks and soft drinks and easy-to-prepare meals and bread and milk and cereal like us whities do. I can’t help feeling some degree of condescension each time I go through the checkout. In my defence, I do usually buy fruits and vegetables too, despite their outrageous prices (sometimes four or five dollars for a peach, that kind of thing). Last night I bought Cadbury chocolate and Tim Tams. Ohhhhh yeah.

This weekend won’t be as mental as the two preceding it. I think I’m staying more or less put. Considering going to a Halloween party on Saturday night and/or a house party. We have yet another public holiday on Monday, followed by the mid-year conference on Tuesday and Wednesday in the capital city. We’re kinda planning a trip to Kansai (Osaka, Kyoto) at the end of November, which I’m crazy excited for, but we need to book it soon or else spaces will run out.

Anyway, I had better go and attempt some more Japanese study. Or maybe I’ll just keep playing Metroid on my DS. Who knows.

So long, friends!

No game plan whatsoever in the writing of this blog. Like I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, I’ve been either too busy or too tired to even think about writing for the past couple of months. I don’t know what all these other JETs are complaining about.

Anyway. This past weekend was one of the biggest of my life and as I hunch over my desk in Nishigo I can barely keep my eyes open. I am a trashbag of the highest order and I’m sure my Japanese co-workers don’t appreciate it. OK, maybe it’s not that bad, but I get the idea that they expect me to be at my genkiest on Monday of all days, not the other way around. So let’s backtrack a bit.

On Wednesday I left school in Shirakawa early to go to Koriyama where the Global Citizens Festival was drawing to an end. Actually, my motivations were not quite so noble. I was going to check out the performance of my school’s synthesiser club (pronounced ’sinsasaiza’). A few weeks ago I ‘helped’ them by reading out the lyrics to a song they were performing. Of course, the impressionable first-year girls thought this was the most exciting thing ever to happen (I suppose given the fact that we’re talking about Yabuki, they were probably right). I was so embarrassed. They sat me in a chair in the middle of the music room (one lonely, lonely chair) and gave me an a-cappella performance of this song in like twelve-part harmony that was like Southern Gospel quality. Then as I was leaving, made a guard of honour and applauded (I mean literally) for my help. Again, I was so embarrassed. But obviously it meant a lot to them, so I took a few hours off work on Thursday to go see them perform in Koriyama.

To tell the truth I wasn’t aware that I was even going to the Global Citizens Festival. Those of you that have seen my Facebook photos will have also seen the face-painting that went on last weekend (spreading international understanding through horribly butchered renditions of Australian flags slapped Jackson Pollock-style onto high schooler’s faces) – well, it turns out this is one of the biggest events on the prefectural calendar and attracts heaps of visitors. The closing ceremony was held at the Bunka (culture) Centre which is like a huge concert hall. It was packed, and there were TV cameras and giant mixing boards and ushers and the likes. There were hundreds of performers doing exotic foreign dances and stuff like that. I was duly impressed, and of course the Synth Club girls were awesome. Apparently the Emperor’s son was there too!

I took a day off on Friday which I was well entitled to do and went to Tokyo. I met up with Midori in Ginza and we went out on the town. Midori is heaps and heaps of fun. Her English wasn’t as good as I recalled though, probably cause when I met her we were all so drunk we weren’t making sense anyway. Not to worry. Turns out she is from Osaka which explains her genkiness. She took me to an Irish pub. I’m not sure why. But there were so many repulsive Americans there. The whole time we were there ths group of three of them were talking in their obnoxious accents about frat parties and smoking weed and getting ‘blitzed’ and ‘blazed’ and those other disgusting Yank colloquialisms that all amount to the reasons why Americans are so unpopular with the rest of the Western world. It was really distracting. Not to worry though cause they left after a while, only to be replaced by this old British guy who sounded like Michael Caine. He showed up with three Japanese women, who all looked as if they were in their forties, who spoke fluent English. Michael Caine said he had been in Japan for ten years but the whole time he was there didn’t speak a word of Japanese.

Midori is a beautician in one of those ridiculously expensive boutiques in Ginza. I have never been anywhere so glamorous in all my life. Every minimalistic shop front houses two or three brand name accessories that probably amount to the value of the rent of the stores themselves. We’re talking Louis Vitton, D&G and upwards here. Maseratis parked on the sides of the roads. I mean even the taxis are luxury cars. Not to worry. Some of the smaller streets, crowded with restaurants and bars, reminded me of Melbourne. As if I needed any more justification in my love for Melbourne, but while Ginza is awesome and impressive, its style is very materialistic and affected, unlike my home city. Thankfully, despite being totally stylish and beautiful, Midori herself is unencumbered by any of this. She is humble and not too embarrassed to attempt English sentences which are way beyond her ability, which makes me feel more comfortable about speaking Japanese. Anyway after we left the gaijin-infested Irish pub we went to a san-byaku-en bar. I did not know places like this existed in Japan, let alone Tokyo, but for those that haven’t already figured it out, all the drinks are three-hundred yen! Bargain basement lunacy. The place was horribly over-crowded with trendy locals and a minimum of foreigners.

All the disgruntled middle-aged salarymen in Melbourne would do well to take note of J-business attire. Sure, most of these lemmings think about necking themselves every other night, but at least they will look good doing it. They all have nice shoes and nice suits and nice briefcases and the girls all wear black stockings and high heels and everyone in Japan owns a designer wallet or handbag (males included), but now I’m only repeating myself.

So my night out with Midori was loads of fun. The following morning I got up nice and early to head to Hibiya. This would have been more of a problem if the weather wasn’t the best we’ve had since I arrived in Japan. The last four or five days have been absolutely beautiful. Met up with Ian for the Tokyo Run for the Cure! We scurried about registering and getting changed and finding a place to stash our bags then headed down to the Imperial Gardens with the other thousand people. There were heaps of foreigners this time around. Ian and I started the race at the front of the pack and more or less stayed there. I got entangled in a sprint-finish with this absolute tank of an American guy and another white kid who was maybe twelve years old and barely five feet high. Long story short, I finished maybe fifth out of a few hundred! Totally stoked, as I didn’t eat dinner the night before, barely slept and haven’t been regularly exercising in months.

We walked aimlessly around Hibiya after the run looking for a place to eat and relax. We eventually got knocked back from a capsule hotel in central Tokyo because they don’t accept business from people who can’t speak fluent Japanese. This was the first case of obvious, inveterate, structural racism I have encountered in Japan. To protest would be completely useless. To make cultural generalisations in Japan is almost expected, in the sense that everyone assumes a white face is an American face and that we are loud and rude and can’t use chopsticks. In a sense this is true, and as a JET I am currently leeching of the government to a degree that would cause a six-week controversy on Today Tonight back home in Australia, but that’s no excuse.

We eventually crashed at Ian’s friend’s apartment in Roppongi. We happened to arrive at the exact moment of the official green-carpet (yeah, I know, wtf?) opening of the Tokyo International Film Festival. So there were heaps of VIPs and punters there. Ian slept under the coffee table for a while before we went out for Chinese food. After a seriously placating meal of dumplings and sticky rice we jumped on a train to Chiba for GANBAN Night 08! Mental! The lineup for this event was simply insane, and I’m not even into electro music. The party was at this stadium and was the biggest thing I have ever seen. Thousands upon thousands of people were there. Saw Bassment Jaxx and Justice (among others) and partied harder than I have in a long, long time (without actually drinking that much). Caught a train back in a semi-conscious and deliriously exhausted state at about 6am.

We picked up our bags from the coin locker (re: rocker) and stumbled around looking for a McDonalds in the same manner that the undead crave living flesh. We found one and watched a girl apply her makeup and curl her hair for over two hours while we waited for our bus back to Fukushima. This was the most measured and immaculate procedure I have ever witnessed. I was intoxicated by her unflinching steadiness of hand (as well as just being intoxicated in the conventional way). She was a pretty girl but to my mind didn’t look any better at the end than she did when we walked in. But who knows, maybe after another few hours she will have been completely transformed, as if from humble caterpiller to stunning butterfly. I will always wonder what she was getting ready for, where she was going, who she was meeting. We went to the bus terminal at 9am and came back home.

And that’s why I’ve only had about 10 hours sleep since Thursday.

Ja ne!

I’ve had a while to settle in now, and this means I’ve had more time to digest all the bizarre things that go on here in Japan. As I was telling a friend the other night, there are some things about this country that will forever remain beyond the realms of my comprehension. It’s such a wacky and nonsensical place in many ways, but at the same time, so ordered and simple. But I’ll embellish more on that some other time. I’m feeling more comfortable now that I’ve been here for six weeks, but by no means am I a natural. I mean, I was asked if I was wearing coloured contact lenses and if I had a perm in my hair. This week has been a bit of an anomaly in that I had my first day at my final school and my base school has been busy with exams. So that makes for a grand total of three high schools. Here’s a bit of a rundown:

Kohnan – This is my homebase. The people in charge of fitting out my apartment (ha!), making sure my bills get paid and generally holding my hand are all Kohnan staff. My supervisor, Kaori, is one of the English teachers and she’s really great. I’m not sure how old she is as you can never tell with the Japanese. So I think she would be thirty-five at the most. She is kinda tall for a Japanese woman and has the most perfect posture of anybody I have ever seen. Every move she makes is graceful and perfectly balanced. Her English is grammatically perfect but still sounds kinda stilted and occassionally straight-up humorous. She told me one day a couple of weeks ago that I had a “great sense of styling.” Kaori is so prim and proper that I find myself forever pushing the boundaries of acceptable Japanese office humour in an effort to expose her bad manners. Sometimes I get a real belly laugh out of her but usually not when I expect it. She has been so nice to me since I arrived and bought me some new linen as a welcome present. It was a good thing she did, too, cause the Board of Education didn’t deem it necessary to ’splurge’ on bed sheets for me. Kaori has taken me all around town setting up my utilities and explaining things to me. I’m still pretty clueless and helpless when it comes to this whole Japan caper but if it weren’t for her I’d be in a whole heap of trouble.

The other staff are just as friendly as her. The guys in the office (not secretaries, just like general admin guys) helped me fixing the light and TV reception in my apartment. The vice-principals and principal are cool too except they don’t speak any English whatsoever so I have little reason to ever talk to them. The English teaching staff are all awesome. Including my supervisor and myself, there are seven of us, and four of them are attractive young females. Win! Nemoto-sensei is the best guy ever. He knows evrything about every subect. He’s an English teacher who has read Nabokov and is able to make witty metaphorical jokes in his second language. Every time I have some odd question about an obscure aspect of Japanese writing or grammar, the other teachers all say the same thing: ask Nemoto-sensei. He knows everything. Still, nobody  (Nemoto included) has been able to explain to my why the character はis written when it is わthat is pronounced. The classes themselves are still warming up so I’ll have more to report on those later.

The Kohnan students are all pretty rad, with the exception of a few of the older kids with bad attitudes. They always try to make me feel like I’m invading their territory, which is true to a degree, but I’m just another teacher really. The first-year students (ages 15-16) all get heaps excited when I come to their classes, even though most of them couldn’t talk their way out of a paper bag in English. There was one first-year kid who spotted me at the train station one Friday night though who came and spoke to me in decent English. I had never seen him before and I was so surprised at his ability I asked him if he’d been overseas and if he watched millions of English movies. He answered no to both questions – I still can’t believe it. He’s probably got the best English of any of the kids at this school. Anyway so the point is the standard of Engilsh isn’t winning any awards but most of the kids are pretty cool. 

After schools when I get restless I occassionally take my footy outside and look for kids to kick it to. Usually I just bomb it at them from a distance and they flip out with excitement – firstly, because the foreigner is coming, and secondly, cause they have no idea what is going on. Playing footy with Japanese kids is amazing fun because it makes me feel like I’m actually good at football and also because they have no idea what is meant by ‘contact sport’ so I can push and shove and bump them out of the way at will and I feel supremely muscular. 

I’m still trying to find a way to weasel my way into the music department. I’ve decided I will buy a guitar over here but so far haven’t and I have an itching to play. There are these four dudes with crazy manga hair who play ‘music’ together in a rock band after schools some days. I don’t think they have any songs; they all just stand somewhat near each other and play their own shit. To this day I haven’t heard them play more than 4 bars together in time. Maybe once I get more comfortable I will invade and try to actually play something with them.

The focus here definitely isn’t on university entrance and subsequent subway suicide, and I like it that way. Their baseball team is one of the best in the ken and they have a full-blown cheerleading squad. The students artwork that hangs around the corridors is all seriously good and their school bands are good too. I’m glad I’m not in charge of making sure these kids can study their way into some white-collar nightmare of a job.

Shirakawa Jitsugyo - This is a technical school in Shirakawa of all places. Takes me over and hour to commute there in the mornings and costs me about $10 each way on public transport. Hardly worth the effort for the amount of work I have to do when I’m there, but anyway. 

The kids here are at about the same standard as Kohnan. They offer various engineering and agricultural courses as well as the standard ‘home economics’ thing which is what all the girls do. I’ve only been there twice so far but they get super excited when they see me. One particular third-year class consists of forty girls – simultaneously frightening and awesome. One girl offered to take me to Tokyo Disney, at least two of them asked for me phone number and another offered to make me lunch. Fairly awesome but intimidating. The teachers here are so great. My supervisor at this school is another young girl who gets nervous before some of her all-boys classes. She was explaining to me that they are rude and loud and I was fearing the worst. But for the first time since been given my teacher’s badge of honour, I put my authoritarian boots on and kept them in line by regailing them with stories about Australian football and some mild teasing. One kid cheekily asked if I wanted to go swimming with him and I said only if he stays at the other end of the pool. He more or less shut up after that.

They have a staff meeting every morning where the two vice-principals make general announcements and it’s all very curt and and well-behaved. These two guys sit at the front of a huge long room which also houses about forty of us underlings. It doesn’t stop certain teachers sleeping at their desks between classes though. The main building of the school is a huge U-shaped structure which encloses a giant Japanese sand and rock garden, which is amazing. There are two ‘islands’ with huge boulders and windswept pine trees perched upon them, surrounded by a perfectly raked ocean of sand. It will look even better in winter.

I like going to Shirakawa cause it helps to break up my week and I feel a bit closer to civilisation, even though I have to get up at 6am to catch my train.

Nishigo Yogo – My third and final school which I visited for the first time this Monday. This is a special school for kids with disabilities located on the outskirts of Shirakawa. Takes even longer and costs even more to get there but it’s worth it for the experience. The kids here all have different levels of disabilities. Some of them just have severe ADHD, about a quarter of them are autistic (some quite mild, some who are likely to scream and shout at any given moment), some can’t read or write (dyslexic I suppose), some of them have emotional disturbances, but much to their endearing credit, they all seemed the least startled or excited by my presence there.

I think there are only about nintey students here, aged between 14 and about 20. During the day I wore the most fugly pair of boots and a hick’s straw hat and went bean pickin’ with the kids. It was good fun! Just to get to know some of the kids and staff and sit back and observe. Obviously there’s not much of an academic focus here so my class didn’t involve any actual teaching. I just showed a slide show of Australian animals and got the kids to try to bounce the football. As an aside, the kids at Nishigo are as good at doing this as any other Japanese people – they are all equally hopeless. It’s simple physics, guys – pointy end first so it bounces back to you. Apparently they don’t see the simple part though – I’m revered like a virtuoso every time I do it. I’m so glad I brought it with me – it has been such a great ice-breaker.

Anyway, each of the kids in my class at Nighigo came up to me and introduced themselves in English and told me their favourite fruit/vegetable/colour, which is more than I could say for the students at my other schools. I guess it does have something to do with their disabilities (lowered inhibitions, that kind of thing) but it was still pretty amazing.

I’ve only been there once so I don’t know too much about it. Unfortunately the Japanese love their public holidays and most of them fall on Mondays, which is when I’m supposed to be at Nishigo. So I’ll only get to go there maybe a dozen times in total. So I guess that is more than enough for now. I’ll have more specific anecdotes next time but since I don’t have the internet at home yet (being installed on the 25th) I haven’t really had time to sit down and write a decent blog.

On the weekend I went to a traditional-style tea ceremony with one of the teachers from my office and his daughter (I thought she was 21 but turns out she is 30 and married, mental). The tea ceremony was beautiful, so quaint and delicated. One of the other English teachers was participating so she was there all dolled up in her kimono and she looked absolutely stunning (and I told her so).

This afternoon I’m gonna tackle some more Japanese study before I heading over to the music department to help the choir pronouncing the lyrics to this hymn that they’re singing (again, all girls, totally frightening). After school I might pay a visit to the local swimming pool. It’s been heating up again this week and apart from riding my bike everywhere I’ve been feeling pretty lazy. As for my study, I’ve started learning some of the kanji (Chinese characters) and verb conjugations. Constructing sentences is still more or less beyond me though. I am able to understand the odd conversation that flies about my office but I’m still very much in the habit of speaking English. I’m gonna work hard on that over the next few weeks.

Tomorrow I’m heading down to Tokyo for the long weekend. On the agenda is wandering around Shibuya and going to some party, the details of which I have no idea about. The trip down there takes about 4 hours on the regular train and costs about $35 AU. On the shinkansen it’s more like $60 but only takes an hour and a half. Maybe once I make friends and no longer have to get a hotel room I’ll consider taking the shink but until then I’ve gotta stop splashing money around. Nevertheless, this weekend promises to be absolutely filthy and I’ll come back with lots of disgraceful photos.

Take care, friends.

World, well I’ve got a bit of time to waste while the other teachers are deliberating over their staff meeting (I was excused immediately after giving my welcome speech on account of not being able to speak Japanese) so I figured I would try to jot down some things in the meantime.

Hopefully most of you are aware that I’m in Japan right now. Since I got here I’ve been sweating nonstop, getting hideously sunburnt (not the best first impression although it really does drive home the point that I’m the whitest guy these people will ever meet) and soaking wet in the rain. Yeah, there are only three seasons here: hot, cold and wet. Sometimes the wet season overlaps with the other two. I want to buy a motorised scooter so I don’t have to ruin my business threads by cycling to school every day but that idea didn’t go over too well. The reason is that the Board of Education in Fukushima-ken are subsidising my rent and decked out my apartment with a refrigerator, brand new microwave over that is smarter than I am, futons, a television, stereo, desk and chair and other stuff. The brand new bike was the icing on the Japanese cake and they would be offended if I didn’t use it. On the plus side: abs of steel.

There’s always lots of hushed conversation going on amongst the female students when I strut scurry down the halls at my school, followed by plenty of giggling once I am out of earshot barely six feet away. I guess the fact that I’m a single white male replacing a taken Asian female is pretty exciting for these people. The teachers though are all amazingly friendly and genki: I haven’t met one yet that I wouldn’t have liked to have as one of my own teachers back home.

It’s still technically summer holidays now but most of the kids come to school anyway to practise their instruments, or baseball, or cheerleading, or their being Japanese. It’s pretty awesome and schools definitely rock out in a different way than they do in Australia. I will never understand how these girls are allowed to wear their skirts and socks in that particular way, though.

Since arriving I’ve been to karaoke a few times, mostly with other whities though. Shamefully, I’ve already started memorising some of the more ubiquitous J-Pop and have since come to the realisation that there is nothing funnier than seeing drunk white dudes singing Japanese punk anthems.  Saw some amazing fireworks in Shirakawa as part of the obon festival the other week. I have rad videos but alas I’m on the crappy work computer and don’t have access to my pictures or movies right now.

I saw frogs, grasshoppers and foot-long dragonflies in my front yard. Not that it’s much of a yard. It’s like a gravel driveway with some pitiful grass trying it’s best to grow. There is like a town alarm clock that sounds like an especially loud doorbell that goes off every morning at 7am and I imagine wakes up the entire prefecture. It’s always a bummer but it definitely prevents me from the possibility of sleeping in.

Attempts at Western food are even more questionable in Japan than they are in China, but it’s countered by the fact that you can buy enormous boxes of sushi from supermarkets and 7-11s for not much money at all. When in Rome. Virginia and I are still on a quest to find some good places to eat in our little town but given her awesome Japanese skills I reckon we’ll find something sooner or later.

It’s been heaps of fun meeting all the other new JETs and talking about our various homelands. Being Aussie has never been such an easy in-road into all sorts of social circles. Yesterday I showed my supervisor all the bizarre Australian animals I could think of courtesy of Wikipedia. Seriously, if you needed proof against “intelligent” design, look no further than the platypus. The koala is a perennial favourite amongst the Japanese and I broke a few hearts when on my first day I strolled around the school handing them out to unsuspecting students.

In spite of Japan’s reputation for having a declining birth rate, my prefecture is notable for having the nation’s highest rate of teenage pregnancy. Don’t look at me, I’ve only been here a few weeks. Anyway, the number of attractive young girls pushing prams around shopping centres is absolutely mental. The girl who sold me my mobile phone was a student at my school just last year, according to my supervisor, and already obviously pregnant. What’s with that? The prefecture is also famous for producing a huge amount of Japan’s peaches. You could bludgeon someone to death with one of those things, they are the size of my head.

There is also an uncomfortable number of dudes carrying around manbags. At first I was skeptical – surely the girlfriend of that guy with the Louis Vitton handbag with gold trimmings is getting on at the next station? – but it’s actually cool over here. I have never felt so comfortable being as skinny as I am, because I’m still a damn shot more masculine than most of these Japanese guys.

Television, while shockingly ethnocentric, is a blast. The Olympics coverage has been complete balls (most recent example: just last night they replayed all nine innings of a Japan vs. Canada softball match immediately after it finished) and I have never been so sick of the sight of one athlete as I am of Kosuke Kitajima (OK, I lied – I got pretty damn tired of Jana Pittman), but the bizarre array of game shows and variety shows is astounding. The other week I saw a guy whose challenge was to do do a forwards roll atop a three-metre diving board, with a balloon at the end that he was meant to burst. Hilarity ensues. Their soaps are pretty amazing, too: imagine a sexed-up schoolyard version of Neighbours with even worse acting and editing. Not that I can understand what is being said, but do you really need to?

Politeness and courtesy levels are through the roof here, until they get a few drinks in ‘em. Rest assured there will always be some kid who wants to shake your hand and practice his two lines of English on you over the course of any given night out. Older people and females remain timid, though.

Let’s see, what else. I have noticed other quirky things since arriving here but I’ve generally been so busy or tired to write it down anywhere. Classes start this Friday so I’m sure things will only get weirder.

Take care, everyone.

Now that there’s less than a week remaining before I’m unceremoniously shipped out of Australia, air freight-style, the time is right for a blog post. I’ve been avoiding the fact that I haven’t been as dilligent or as timely as promised when it comes to updating this thing, and I guess that’s because I knew I would eventually have to write this very post and I wouldn’t know what to say. Well, here it is.

I’ve been spending the last few weeks getting ready. For those of you who have moved overseas before, you will know that ‘getting ready’ in this context more or less translates to ’spending heaps and heaps of money.’ Having never been a white-collar employee before now, I had to rush out and buy business attire, including a suit, which prompted more than one American Psycho-style moment of self-evaluation. Since discovering how difficult it really is to find stylish business clothes that I feel comfortable in (I’m trying to keep all pastel colours to a minimum here, which, if you take a look at the graduate job/overpriced race meeting crowd, is a lot harder than it should be), I find myself sneering at every ill-fitting jacket, poorly tied-up tie and tasteless shirt I encounter. Presumably, these people spend their entire waking lives being buttoned-down yes-men; I thought by now most of them would have realised how to dress themselves. Guess not. Anyway, it’s something that I haven’t paid any attention to until now.

I’m still in the process of trying to sell my car. Nobody wants it I guess. Come on people, it’s not like I’ve smashed it up that bad. At least, any damage is emotional, not physical. One thing I’m not going to miss in Japan is driving. To be fair, Melbourne’s traffic is becoming exponentially worse with every passing month, but to be in a place where public transport is as popular and ubiquitous as energy drinks or flannel shirts or Apple products is gonna be great. I’ll be stationed an hour and a half from Tokyo by shinkansen (aka death-defying anti-gravity train). But there are some things about Melbourne I’ll be missing.

A huge range of everything, thanks to our ever-increasing migrant communities, is one of them. Amazing bands and live music events are another, despite their extortionate prices. Cultural landmarks such as the Astor theatre, Flinders Street Station, the botanic gardens, Southbank, the MCG are as distinctive and as well-loved as any in other countries, and our innate sense of style far outclasses anything I’ve encountered in any other city (especially Sydney).

Of course, there are other things besides traffic that I won’t be missing. Like six dollars for a Metcard, fickle weather, being a native speaker and as such being subjected to the drivel that saturates newspapers, magazines, television and radio, disgraceful trendy nightspots and their accompanying clientele (although these aren’t endemic to Melbourne), the complete lack of a decent film/television industry, consistent apathy towards important political issues and, on the other hand, uninformed outspoken finger-pointing regarding uncontrollable ones (e.g. fuel prices), and so on.

Japan, on the other hand, doesn’t suffer from too many of these complaints. They have properly fast internet, perfect etiquette and rituals of generosity and politeness (us Westerners would do well to take note), local cuisine that is more about subtlety than sheer quantity and a zany fashion sense. It also boasts being one of the most consistently romanticised countries on earth (at least, from a Western point of view) and, finally and most importantly, a healthy whaling industry.

While there is something to be said for being organised, I have learned over the last couple of years that to try to control too many of the billions of variables that make up your day-to-day life only guarantees two things: firstly, that you will end up feeling frustrated, and also that you will inevitably miss most of the finer details that make the ordinary into something worth noticing, remembering. I know that my preconceptions about Japan will mostly likely turn out to be well off the mark and I will someday come back to Melbourne with a completely different perspective on the country, its people and its culture, and I’m going into it without too many expectations. The only ones I do have are ones that I want and need to control, for my own good – greater independence, more creative output, that kind of thing. I’ve been completely exhausted for the last couple of weeks and to be honest it will be great just to arrive in Japan so I can finally sit back and just let things run their course.

The time I haven’t spent in a delirious state of hyperanimation has been used to get hideously drunk, sleep in late and play bucketloads of video games. For those of you in any doubt, we’re talking hardcore Nintendo DS gaming here. I’ve picked out a few choice game trailers for the unconvinced.

Nanostray 2. One of the hardest games I have played. Still stuck on level two.

The World Ends With You. Ultra-modern RPG and proof that the DS is the only platform you can find games with real style. Great soundtrack, too.

Jump! Ultimate Stars. Possibly the best handheld fighting game ever, featuring loads of playable anime and manga characters and seriously cool art style.

Sonic Rush. Light-speed Sonic goodness.

Space Invaders Extreme. A fantastic remake of a game that was in desperate need of a shot of adrenaline. As an aside, I more or less need to own this bag. It’s $80 at the only store I’ve seen it in, which is a flat-out joke for a PVC bag. Anyway.

Metal Slug 7. Insane shooter, not as hair-pullingly frustrating as Nanostray either which is a plus. To finish the whole game only takes about half an hour on easy mode but that’s not a problem.

So there you have it, and that is saying nothing of the huge catalogue of great adventure games on DS. It has been said before; I should probably be earning a commission for the promotional work I do on behalf of Nintendo, but I’m just happy to have a portable gaming console this powerfully awesome.

I was gonna do something of a review of The Dark Knight but it’s getting late. Let’s just say, forget the superhero genre. Forget any genre; this is as good a movie as you are likely to see this year. Strong characters across the board, fantastically bleak art direction (and countless expensive Armani suits) and clear-as-mud ethical and moral riddles are in danger of seeming superfluous to the incredible performance by Heath Ledger. Two hundred people collectively gasped after he delivered his first few lines as The Joker. I doubt any other infamous posthumous performance will be looked upon with such reverance; if anyone can think of one, I’m all ears. Let’s be perfectly honest; we have seen the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor awarded for much less. Don’t fail me now, Academy. Everything about this film is first-class and frankly embarrasses all other movie franchises of the last few years. And as I already mentioned, its themes are anything but preachy or obvious. Haunting, stylish, brilliant!

I guess that means the only other film I can’t wait to see this year is Wall-E. Hey Pixar, whatever happened to global release dates? Thanks a million. Now I’ll have to wait until December to see this in Japan. If I don’t download it first. Seriously; you would think a studio with their money and influence would realise that a synchronised global release date for their films would be one of the most obvious and effective ways to prevent piracy – if indeed movie piracy is as much of a big deal as you pretend it is. When studios are paying $250 million to make movies as horrendous as Spiderman 3, I have trouble believing it.

Either way, the movie looks unbelievable. Only Pixar have the balls to make a kids’ movie where the entire opening act is silent, and the plot of the movie opens the door for treating some seriously overdue ethical issues, for example our impending irreversible loneliness and a sense of responsibility for each other and for the environment. Ratatouille was great but didn’t feature any new plot devices or themes that weren’t already commonplace in animated films. I know this time I won’t be let down.

This has gone on long enough; for the rest of this week I’ll be running last-minute errands and tieing up loose ends; hopefully there’s time for a trip to the Art Deco exhibition as well. If all goes according to schedule I’ll also be leaving a parting gift for you, the Internet, and you can be sure I’ll be posting it up here as soon as I can. Until then, stay safe.

I guess it’s about time I started punctuatin’. If I’m going to take this blogging game (and myself) seriously, I guess I should. WordPress, for better or worse, still lacks any kind of mass-editing functionality (you will notice that this new theme made the text in my last post bigger than all the others) and there’s no way I’m going back to edit my older posts. But I can live with that shame. Always there to remind me of the shadow of a man I once was. What’s more, I guess I have certain standards to maintain from here on. But more about that later.

My trip to China did wonders for the old inspiration/imagination combo. Being idle in any one place – even somewhere as fantastic as Melbourne – is unhealthy, at least for someone like me who struggles with ideas about consuming versus creating. The architecture alone was enough to make me flip out, from the intricate designs adorning temples, to huge monuments and statues, to hyper-modern spaces like the People’s Square in Chengdu. Meanwhile, the Chinese themselves are fantastic. Fantastically interesting, anyway. I would be lying if I said I didn’t encounter any selfish or inconsiderate behaviour while was there, but as someone who enjoys simply observing people going about their daily business, it was fascinating. It’s definitely a place that really drives home the idea that we Westerners don’t have it all going for us; in fact, as far as the richness or authenticity of our culture, we are severely lacking in many respects. Unlike other areas that have been overrun by tourists, China (with the sole exception of Shanghai) still feels mostly real – while you may feel like you are accepted, as a white person I doubt you could ever feel like you truly understand the culture from the inside out.

So, the experience of being something of an outsider exposed to such a rich and intricate culture was properly eye-opening for me. Before I left, and countless times during my trip, whenever I told anybody I was travelling in China alone, I was usually met with incredulous looks, signifying either utter incomprehension as to why I would want to go there (when I could go to Bali instead, bro!) or disbelief as to how I could ever hope to do it on my own. The Chinese recognise the significance of their nation’s achievements and status, but are usually quite modest about its appeal to Westerners. I think that’s one of the reasons I enjoyed it so much; the fact that it’s not simply a party destination or retreat for spoilt white kids does make it more demanding, but infinitely more rewarding to see a country that’s still getting used to the idea of people like me just wanting to visit.

Basically, I would recommend a trip to China to anybody. Any age, any race, anybody. There is so much to do and see there that is mostly hidden from Western eyes and it is impossible not to fall in love with the food, the generosity of the people, the simplicity with which they go about their daily lives, the exuberance of the cities, the landmarks and historical sites, the art, everything. My only regret is that I couldn’t spend a far longer amount of time there; as I have said elsewhere, one would need a number of years to see it all.

Getting back to my original point, though, was that it did wonders for my sense of creativity. As a Westerner in China, you really need to make it happen for yourself. It’s not a one-way ride of consuming, using and abusing the country’s resources; there are countless sacrifices and trade-offs that you need to make every single day – in your pride, your reliance upon English to communicate, your privacy, and so on. And you will be inspired to take as much of it on board as is humanly possible. I felt more energised every day in China, no matter how utterly exhausted I happened to be, than I have in at least the last few years here in Australia, due to an endless enthusiasm to see and do as much as I could. Despite my much-publicised love for Melbourne, I have on many occasions felt bored here since I got home. It lacks the cohesion of a place like China (maybe this has something to do with their communist government?) and I have to say I did not miss seeing drab, dreary, depressed, middle-aged white collar business types shuffling onto the peak hour bus home every night, listening to James Blunt on their collective iPod Nanos. But the end result is that I came home with a renewed enthusiasm for, well, just about everything. And I’m not sure whether too many other places could give me that feeling, to be honest.

Time now, then, to turn eyes towards the future. After months of preparation, stress, and (let’s face it) waiting around, I finally got the call that I’ve been anticipating since November. I didn’t go about telling every single person that I had applied for the JET Programme for a few reasons. Firstly, because the turnaround is so slow. Secondly, because the chances of anybody getting in are realistically quite small (from what I can ascertain, I think only about one in seven applicants get selected, but definitely don’t quote me on that). Mostly, however, I lacked the confidence to think I would ever actually be one of those that made the cut. Well, I guess I did, and the Japanese government is paying for me to go over there and teach English in government schools for a whole year. Maybe even more, if I like it, and if they like me. Let’s be straight with each other, here: this is an infinitely better deal than working for an eikawa (private English-teaching companies – I daren’t call them schools), for a billion reasons, but I won’t get into them here. Anyway, that’s the reason for my new-found ‘professionalism’ when it comes to capitalising my blog posts and the likes – for someone who prides themselves on their proper (dare I say competent?) use of the English language, I have been unforgivably lazy, and if I’m gonna be heading overseas to try and make sure these kids get off on the right foot, I had better tidy up my own act first.

I guess it’s no secret that I’ve had a fascination with Japan for some time. Let the records show that this does in fact extend beyond cute schoolgirls and anime, although there is a time and place for everything (ironically, Japanese high schools). Of all the options I considered, the JET Programme was by far the most attractive and elusive, and I still can’t really believe that I’m going with them. I had more or less resigned myself to a few months of restless anticipation of what would inevitably end up being a rejection letter – imagine, if you will, my surprise when I got a personal phone call in the early hours of the morning last week (OK, it was more like 9am, but that is ungodly). I guess now I have a matter of weeks to ready myself for a complete overhaul of my sheltered and comfortable life in Melbourne, which will hopefully include a snappy new wardrobe with any luck. I already bought the laptop, the digital camera, the Nintendo DS in anticipation of someday knowing for sure that I will be going to Japan and putting them to good use, but honestly I never expected it would be upon me so soon. Admittedly, the whole process to this point has taken close to seven months, but it did give me the opportunity to reassess certain things and have other experiences such as the China trip in the meantime.

So there are quite a few things I definitely want to accomplish before I leave, but alas a blog is hardly the right place to broadcast them. I’ve got some time up my sleeve to tie up some loose ends and to get started on some new things, and for the first time in ages I feel more than confident that I’ll get it all done with plenty of time left over to enjoy the time I have left with the people and places I love.

just to let you all know; this blog is far from dead. i am cooking up various posts of unimaginable proportions. some of you may know i’ve been on a brief but exciting sojourn in china recently, but alas i am back and ready to make a fist of it here in melbourne (but hopefully not for too much longer).

i couldn’t use wordpress while i was away because of the nefarious and infamous internet censorship in china, so those that know me on a personal level will have been keeping up-to-date via facebook notes. and if you happen to be reading this very blog via facebook, you should know that i’ve done away with my interminable lists of ‘favourites’ on my profile page. yes, they have been replaced with the much more relevant ‘current play/reading lists.’ call it something to do with seizing the day. please note that i still stand by everything that was once listed there, it just doesn’t necessarily reflect what i’m into at any given moment anymore.

so, what have i been doing since i got home? not much. going out and getting on it more than i probably should be, seeing handfuls of world-class local gigs, and busting out on my brand new (imported, special crimson red edition) nintendo DS.

oodles and oodles of fun. in fact, it nicely matches my red laptop, and red digital camera. game reviews and obligatory hyper-exaggeration shall follow within the next few days, i dare say.

so yeah. i’ve had some pretty crazy experiences over the past couple of months – not simply relating to the fact that i was in china. forced some serious changes in perspective which i’m sure will only prove to be beneficial in the long run. i’ll be back to discuss them all with you soon. i’m gonna leave it there because it’s late and i’ve got some sleeping to catch up on. i hope all is well out there in the real world. take care.