A little touch of home

My parents sent me a care package today, and what is the item I am most excited about? Sadly, a can opener. However, I have a legitimate reason! I usually am not a "USA all the way!" kind of person, but let's face it...American can openers are much easier and more logical than Japanese/European/whatever can openers. I have managed to cut myself quite badly due to horrible Japanese can openers, and other times I just avoid canned items for fear of pain or anger problems (yes, I am retarded, but come on!). So, this entry is an ode to American can openers. Honestly, would you rather have this beautifully crafted piece of heaven:


Or this piece of shit that one would use on fucking Brokeback Mountain:


I mean, I guess I would use this, but only if it meant that I got to have mad sex with Jake Gyllenhaal. Until then, I'll use my American one, and my uncut fingers will be very happy with that decision (tho another body part will miss the options involved with the camping type).

Eduardo, Margaritas and Chilaquiles, here I come!!!!!!

I just got my nenkyuu (time off) for Mexico!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My kyoto sensei rules. I’m always afraid to ask for time off that conflicts with school (this will be five days I’m missing of actual school), but then whenever I muster up the courage to ask him, he’s like “Yeah, whatever, have a safe trip!” Hehe. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MEXICO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Time to book my flight!

Running out of creative titles for weekend-related posts

I had a good weekend, and I SORT OF did more than the usual lazy weekend. Well, kinda, hehe. On Friday I made my way over to AEON after (the worst, longest day EVER of) work and spent wayyyyyyy too much money on myself! Damn! I was all proud because for once I saved the amount I told myself I would save every month, and then some, but the “and then some” was spent at various stores in AEON. Hmm, I sense that sentence made NO sense. Anyway! So, Takeo Kikuchi is my favorite store in AEON, but every single shopping trip there goes something like this, “Oooo, I love this shirt! I wonder if they have my size? Dammit, they NEVER have my size! I hate this fucking store!!!! FUCK YOU!” and then I walk off angrily. BUT this time I found the most Jeff-ish sweater-jacket thing in the world, AND they had my size. So, I ignored the price tag and bought the motherfucker!

I also treated myself to the Hirai Ken CD/DVD set at HMV because Hirai Ken is my lovah. Rowr! And I bought Coronas, salsa, and chile verde sauce (!!!) at the foreign food store. And I bought shit for my kids at the 100 yen store. And I think I got something else. Plus dinner and Starbucks. Yes, Jeff spent 2 man on Friday. Anyway!

On Saturday, Cindy came over to watch Veronica Mars, but we were retarded and had NO clue what was going on, as we hadn’t watched it in two months. So it was very confusing and weird. I’m definitely going to need to rewatch the whole season in like one sitting this summer. After that we headed to Emily’s for dinner and game night!!! It was muy fun! Emily made an OISHII dinner, and then we played Taboo for a VERY long time (but in my opinion, you can never play Taboo for too long). I sense the neighbors may not have liked us, as I get VERY loud when giving hints or guessing at Taboo. But it was fun! AND the Country Ma’ams kicked fucking ass at the game, since we’re all psyshic. Sadly, every single hint had to do with either food or television, but whatever works, no? I wanted to stay longer, but the last train from Niragawa was at 10:59, so Jenny, Sean and I had to leave too damn early. I am SOOOO sick of trains! But thanks, Em, for a fun night! We need to do it again!

On Sunday I was ADD and couldn’t do anything at all, so I really have no clue what I did all day long.

As a side note, Cindy and I are extremely concerned, as we have not been hungry since Friday night! We had a HUGE dinner at Ootoya and apparently it had enough calories to last throughout the weekend?! I have only been eating because I feel like I should…even last night when I was lightheaded from lack of food, I wasn’t actually HUNGRY? WHAT IS GOING ON!!!!!! Needless to say, this is an overeater’s worst nightmare. Pray that it somehow fixes itself soon!

Burookubakku

Brokeback Mountain is coming out in Japan in March, woot! I saw a commercial for it last night at HMV and it reminded me how translations of films can totally change the meaning/impact of the story and dialogue..."I wish I knew how to quit you" is translated as "It's too painful!" Um, no. Sigh. Oh, well, at least I can see it on the big screen now!

Dirrty Spelling

So today I had my 3nensei doing word finds (dude, Japanese kids LOVE English word finds…even the “cool kids” who usually don’t do anything in class!) while I graded other kids on their dialogues. One of the puzzles’ themes was careers, and so there were words like “lawyer,” “doctor,” “cook,” etc. All of a sudden one of my students turns to me and says “Jeff, how do you spell cook?” (in Japanese, the word for cook is Jengrish and is spelled “kokku,” and sounds a lot like something that you wouldn’t want to be when you grow up, if you know what I mean). Before I could answer, she asked, “Is it c-o-c-k?” Um. Hmmmm! Thank god I somehow could control myself and not give away that that was a real word, as well. I don’t know how I suddenly became mature but I was just like “Oh, no, actually it’s “c-o-o-k,” but good guess!” Hee hee. Oy, I am easily amused.

Japan and Mexico both suck!

K, I realize I am probably the only American to ever fly from Japan to visit fucking Mexico, but could we please make the fares a little less ricockulous? I can’t find ANY flights after taxes under 10 man ($1000). Hello, Jeff doesn’t pay this much for flights! NOT ACCEPTABLE! Since I am going to end up paying so damn much, I am looking into JAL since they have a non-stop flight to Mexico (but not back? I don’t get it), and I might as well get Asian service and food if I’m gonna spend a bazillion dollars. Hrm. We’ll see.

On another note, why are Japanese people so unorganized when it comes to travel? First of all, I don’t enjoy the lack of being able to buy tickets online (everyone uses travel agents; I am a control freak, god dammit!), and I don’t understand why they don’t book sooner. Most airlines don’t even release their flights or prices until TWO MONTHS before departure? That is freaking ridiculous! I want my ticket now, dammit! So I am reluctantly waiting until two months before departure, but I hope it doesn’t fuck me over. Mehhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Let’s swimming to Mexico!

Shucchou

Yesterday was an amazing day for three reasons: 1) I got to sleep in for 2 1/2 hours, 2) it was SUNNY and WARM and 3) I didn’t have to go to school! WOOT! Tobu ALTs had an orientation kinda thing in Tatebayashi in the afternoon, so I managed to skip out of all of shougakkou, which was wonderful, as I needed a break from it. I love shou, but I was totally in need of a week off! Woot.

The orientation was at Scott’s school in Tatebayashi, i.e. the nicest school I have EVER seen in Japan by far. Holy shit, it is an amazing school, I’m so jealous! It’s only three years old and has solar heating, heating in the hallways, wide corridors, nice bathrooms, TECHNOLOGY, is clean, (sort of) doesn’t look like a prison, etc etc etc! It is fucking amazing. Most schools in Japan were built like the day after World War II and have NOT been updated nearly enough since then (or at all, it seems!), so it was like being in a whole different country. It is weird that in a country with so much unneeded construction, that they never build new schools. I don’t get it.

Anyway! Um. Orientation. So, we watched Scott’s class (um, his students are creepily good, and apparently are even when there aren’t like 20 scary gaijin staring at them), then discussed the class and team-teaching in general. I found it amusing that this is the second day of the orientation….when was the first day? Oh, yes, SEPTEMBER. The dude in charge mentioned “day one” multiple times in his speech, and fuck if I can remember that far back!

The orientation was fine….a bit boring, but not as bad as some. Also, that BOE dude was full of shit. I know everyone who was there knows what I’m talking about!

After orientation Cindy and I were thinking of going to Mexico (a very simple name for a Mexican restaurant) for dinner, until we saw how unbelievably sketchy it looked. So, instead Mami drove me, Cindy and Angie to Ota (thanks, Mami!!!) to meet up with people for yummy-ass sushi at our favorite kaiten place. A couple of beers and lots of sushi later, we all didn’t want to go home and face the fact that we had work the next day (it SO felt like a Friday), so we went out for unneeded dessert at Typhoon. It was cool because we got to watch the Olympics on a huge projection screen. At first downhill blah blah skiing was really exciting, until we got to the motherfucking 35th person, at which it was NOT EXCITING AT ALL. Hello, were they just letting random tourists go down the slopes?! Bah. I want some bobsledding and skating up in hea!

Anyway, eventually we faced the fact that we had to go home, as it was a school night (sniff sniff), and the night ended. Boooo work! But yay fun day.

How do I get into these situations?

So, I go to the same barber at my kick-ass 1000 yen haircut place every time. He’s really nice and cool and fun to talk to. However, I fear I may need to stop seeing him because I have gotten into a true Santilli sibling predicament (only Kris can understand what this means)!

So, last time I was there I was saying how I was going to Thailand for winter break and he was like “Oh, you’re going with a lot of girls? You’re going to get a lot of action!!!” A lot of my students go there, plus I didn’t really feel the need to come out to my fucking barber, so I went along with the conversation, but now he thinks I am like the biggest pervert EVER! According to him, I am fucking my way through Japan and now I don’t know how to deny this! Saaaaaad.

On top of this, yesterday he was like, “You know a lot of girl ALTs, right?” I said yes, and he proceeded to tell me that he had a few friends who are interested in going on a “gokon” and I should invite my girl friend ALTs to go with them! ACK! A gokon is when a group (usually of five guys and five girls) go out together for dinner, see who best matches with who, and break off into single dates in the end. It is pretty much like group speed-dating or something. In other words, NOTHING I would ever recommend my friends get randomly involved in! I was like “Hmm, well, most of them don’t speak Japanese!” to try to get the idea out of his head, but I promised that I would tell my friends. So, er, if any girls out there are interested, do I know some boys for you! ;)

Oy. Jeff may wait a while before he gets his hair cut again!

Putting the “gay” in geijutsu

So the other day I was sitting at my desk during lunch (as I do), and Ms. Ito turned to me and said, “Maybe during lunch you can go outside and play basketball with the boys?” After a moment of pure terror at this thought, I informed her, “Um….I can’t play basketball.” She then proceeded to ask me what sports I do play, at which I made a big dame sign with my arms to inform her that Jeff+sports do NOT mix at all.

I made excuses for my lack of sportiness by saying that in high school I was in band, drama and the student body president (wow, that looks SOOOO nerdy on paper, sad!), and she was like “Ah, geijutsu dane!” (“You’re artistic, huh?”). Yes, I am indeed VERY GEIjutsu!

Also, I don’t want any more of this “her wanting me to participate in school more” shit. Hello, I already teach four classes a day, I’m like twice as busy as most ALTs! Meh! Let me read and write E-Mails in peace, woman!

I swear I don't work for the marketing team of The NY Times

An interesting op-ed. I would elaborate, but I think the article concludes it better than I could.

Who did I sleep with for this to happen?

After two months of dreading the moment that my Japanese Language Proficiency Test results would arrive on my desk, they came today and I was fucking surprised to see this:


How the HELL did that shit happen?! It’s about as giri-giri as one can get for a passing grade, but we’ll ignore that! Dai shokku, I tell you, dai shokku!

Shuumatsu wa dou deshitaka?

That question summarizes every Monday class of Japanese throughout high school, and now summarizes every blog entry on Mondays. So, on to my weekend-ness!

On Friday I felt very productive by getting my ass all the way to Tatebayashi (i.e. the fucking corner of Gunma that might as well be in a different ken) by 6:30. Of course I only went there to eat, but still! Some of us got together to celebrate Helen’s birthday (happy birthday, Helen!) at an Italian restaurant called GUM (as Helen pointed out, why WOULDN’T a nice Italian restaurant be named GUM?). I put my lactose intolerancy to the test by getting the lasagna there, which was pretty much a big bowl of cheese with a noodle or two thrown in. Fortunately I didn’t die.

I was also happy to FINALLY see Mami for the first time since December! Damn. And yeah….it was a fun night!

Saturday “morning” I got to talk to Eduardo, which was nice, as we usually only get to talk on Sundays. I fear he may need my housewife duties ASAP, as macaroni and cheese proved to be “too much work” for him to make for dinner that night. What is Mexico doing to him?!!! Eduardo, I’m on my way :)

After sitting on my ass for most of Saturday, I was actually happy to bike all the way to Iwajuku in order to get some much-needed exercise. I trained from there to Maebashi for Jenny and Skye’s birthday party (happy birthday, Jenny and Skye!). It was MUY fun, yo! We had two hours of nomihoudai and tabehoudai (all you can eat and drink) at Ninnikuya, followed by two more hours of nomihoudai at karaoke. Yes, my friends, that combination may spell abunai! It was a lot of fun, but Jeff gets very loud and judgmental when he is too drunk in Japan! I apologize if I pissed anyone off accidentally! I also apologize if I flirted with anyone (I vaguely remember saying something dirty to Scott, but I fortunately repressed what exactly I said). I remember most of the evening, tho, which is generally a good sign. I was amused how Jenny and I fell on the ground in karaoke (usually a sign that the night should end soon) and she was immediately whisked away into a car! It was like the Secret Service were watching out for her or something. Anyway, good times were had!

It was a little depressing how at Ninnikuya all of the tables had plenty of food except for the one with Ota peeps, at which all of the food was devoured in about ten seconds, followed by grumbles of “Um, when is more food coming?” A bad sign, indeed! It’s also bad how Cindy and I are such bitches that we never bother to mingle with anyone we don’t know. You know, because we have enough friends, we don’t need more ;) Hahaha.

Anyway, I biked my drunk ass back from Iwajuku and perhaps talked to myself in a combination of English and Japanese the whole way there. Drunk Jeff of course had to make a detour at Ministop in order to get the LAST man (um, you know there would have been drama if there hadn’t been any at all!), then assed out.

On Sunday I talked to Eduardo some more (yay!) and my parents called saying they want me to try to go home. Meh, I don’t wanna! They can come here, dammit. Hehe. I watched the last episodes of Arrested Development, which were FUCKING HILARIOUS. I want it to live on on Showtime, but if it doesn’t, I thought it ended perfectly. I also watched The Virgin Suicides, which I didn’t dig so much (k, for some reason I have been using the word “dig” lately, and it is weirding me out). Like…I don’t know. It wasn’t what I expected, I guess, and I just didn’t get the point of the film? I think I am just too old and bitter now because I don’t understand teenage shit anymore (Catcher in the Rye and Vernon God Little had annoying-ass teenage characters and I had to stop reading them ‘cause they were just too irritating).

So, yes. A weekend full of birthdays! Muy fun. Photos to come soon (Drunk Jeff and Jenny accidentally stole each other’s cameras, so there will be a bit of a delay).

Crazy-Ass Laws

Dude, this is really fucked up

Ken is still gay, and Barbie is on her deathbed

Article. Dude, I didn’t think it was possible, but is Barbie even thinner than before?!

Visitors!

So, not only is my sister coming in five weeks (YAY!!!!!), but in the last 24 hours, I have found out that Brandon is visiting Japan at the beginning of March, AND Tony and his wife got teaching jobs and are moving here in April! Woot! Oregon is taking over, bitches! (haha, Brandon, you are an Oregonian now whether you want to be or not)

Note to Self: Don’t E-Mail Hookers

Hahahaha. Gee, I can’t BELIEVE the Charlie Sheen/Denise Richards marriage didn’t work out. Their love seemed bless by God!

Cue the Fashion Police

I hope I am not stealing a blog entry from Cindy, but since we have the same blogs anyway, it doesn’t really matter (we were talking about this last night).

It has occurred to me that I bet my students think I am really poor and ghetto, because they see me wearing the same thing literally every day. I dress nice for work (nice pants, nice long-sleeved button-down shirt), but no one would know if I went shirtless because I always put my black Columbia Sportswear over it at work. For those of you who don’t know, Japanese schools are so cold that you could probably leave huge slabs of raw meat and cartons of milk in the hallway and they would never go bad (I sense a science experience in the making!). I can see my breath in the hallways as I walk to class (don’t get me started on the even-colder bathrooms). So, yeah, just wearing a long-sleeved shirt doesn’t cut it!

Anyway, the first time I wore my fleece, I got some comments from students who were like “Cool, Columbia!” Now I bet they are probably like, “Honey, you need to get your ass to AEON and buy some new clothes, mmmkay?” because I have literally worn it every day to work since November or December.

I wash the fleece every week, but still…hmm. Thank god for it, tho, because some of my shirts I wear underneath it need to be ironed so badly that even if it is warm, I refuse to take the fleece off because it would be embarrassing. Oh, well, the students would probably wear the same thing every day if they didn’t have uniforms! Or at least I will tell myself that.

Nerd Convention

Last night was the weekly Ota potluck. However, due to it being cold as fuck and no one wanting to bike anywhere, we have been doing it at restaurants in Ota lately. Also, due to people being sick and busy, there were a whopping THREE people at last night’s dinner, hahaha. So, yes, it was a PARTY with me, Sean and Cindy. Nah, just kidding, we had fun. And by “fun,” I mean we were the nerdiest people in all of Japan (and that takes a LOT).

The three of us decided last night would be the official time to do a file swap of TV shows and movies from our external hard drives (well, me and Sean were swapping. Cindy was just STEALING! Hee hee). So, I went to dinner with my huge backpack full of literally more than $3,000 worth of technology: my laptop, my external hard drive, my iPod and my camera. Sad, I am such an otaku.

Anyway, we decided to walk to Sean’s house after dinner, as we couldn’t think of any place we could steal electricity. Might I mention that laptops are really light until you have to carry them in a backpack for a 20-minute walk? Yeah.

So, at Sean’s place we did the swap and I now have TONS of stuff to watch during winter hibernation! Woot!

Cindy and I left Sean’s and walked back to Ota eki, which we thought would take 20 minutes. I didn’t think we were walking particularly slow, but apparently we were, because at about 9:35, we realized we were a bit far from the eki to make my 9:48 train. The following 13 minutes were the most excruciating minutes of my entire life! I had to fucking RUN as fast as I could with the fucking heaviest backpack in the world! Needless to say, “fast as I could” was NOT very fast at all! On top of this, I was wearing the following clothes: a wifebeater, a t-shirt, a long-sleeved shirt, a sweater, and a THICK coat, gloves and a scarf (if it was truly cold last night, which it wasn’t, I would have been wearing a fleece under the jacket. Thank god I wasn’t!). I was also wearing underwear, long underwear, jeans, and thick skiing socks. Um, YEAH. So I made the train just in time (the second time in a week that I have yelled at the platform person to wait for me as I run up the stairs to the train), and was sweaty and out of breath for like the whole train ride. Hmm, PERHAPS I am a bit out of shape! Jesus!

So, yay to having movies to watch. And yay to having a reason to be more out of shape than I already am!

Sigh

Proof that I am an old man and no longer a fun person:

I woke up this morning with a feeling of dread that it had snowed during the night. Hoping that my instincts were wrong, I opened the curtains to find a blanket of snow covering the ground. Instead of having a normal, happy reaction to this, my thoughts were “God dammit, I don’t want to bike to work in fucking snow!!!” Sad.

Weekuendo Rebyuu

I’m currently pretending to be a dumb gaijin and acting like I don’t know there is a school meeting occurring in the gym. Hey, if the tea lady and kyushoku lady don’t need to attend, neither do I ;) I don’t give a shit about bike safety! (as will be evident later in this post) The moral of the story is: don’t schedule an assembly during Jeff’s period off.

So, instead I will blog! I KINDA did stuff this weekend, which is more than I could say the last two weeks. Well, drinking, eating and watching TV count as doing stuff, right? Anyway! So, on Friday Ann, Cindy and I met up with Emily in Tatebayashi for dinner at a tabehoudai (all-you-can-eat) place. Um, needless to say, we got our money’s worth! It was a thank you meal to Emily for always driving us places….thanks, Emily!!! And, let’s face it, it was an excuse to eat, muahahaha.

Saturday morning, the fucking mail lady woke me up at 9:30 in the morning! GAH! I answered the door, not able to speak any language at that hour, and she was like “Ah, yes, on weekends people like to sleep in and take it easy, eh?” I was like “YES WE DO NOW GIVE ME MY FUCKING PACKAGE.” Actually what I actually said was “unn lxslkjweroiuwerflksjsdfks arigatou” *door slam* Anyway, it was good, as I had to clean up a bit before Cindy, Jenny and Ann came over for a Brokeback Mountain viewing! IT WAS SO GOOD. I need to watch it again! The only bad thing was that the copy was a little quiet, and they mutter as it is in that movie, so we had to rewind a few times to see what the hell they were saying. Still, so good! Great acting and great directing…..sooooo good. Might I say, I am disturbed that I saw The Princess Diaries’ girl’s boobs. That isn’t right. Same with Michelle Williams’, for that matter. But, come on! Princess Diaries! Boobs! No! Anyway, the movie was amazing.

We then went to this Ota International dinner thing in Ota (hmm, imagine that) and FINALLY saw Veronica, Angie and others. I hadn’t seen them in a million years, so it was nice to finally hang out with them a bit. The event itself was making me very nervous at first, as it looked like a possible English leech convention, but we somehow came away without any full-on attacks, for which I was very grateful. Plus I do believe our table drank the entire party’s booze, as only gaijin can do.

After the dinner, some of us headed out for karaoke at the usual place. We are going to have to find a new usual place, as they raised the price for the good nomihoudai menu. The drinks on the cheaper one are fucking nasty, yo. Hrm. I had walked to the eki with the girls, so I didn’t have my usual bike to bike back on. However, I had my extra bike at the station from when Cindy rode it there like a month and a half ago (yay for safe Japan!). So, drunk Jeff rode the already-too-small bike home with the seat at Cindy’s height. It was, er, interesting! Thank god there weren’t any cars on the road, as I was all over the damn place!

Sunday was the usual relaxing day…talked to Eduardo (yay!), talked to my parents, watched lots of TV, and did grocery shopping. Yes, I lead a thrilling life. Oh, I saw Good Night, and Good Luck and it was good. Very interesting and very appropriate for the current political climate, as well as the laziness found in modern journalism. I didn’t realize George Clooney would be such a good director; I was impressed!

And yep, that’s my weekend. Hey, the meeting just ended and no one asked where I was. Yay for not being important! Time to read some Harry Potter and ignore everyone :)