Massive Mikoshi and Horrible News

So, busy two weeks for me. Summer is festival time in Japan, and I've been seriously looking forward to it since pretty much the day I got here. Suffice to say, I'm happy. It's possible to volunteer in some of these festivals, and I plan to do that as much as I can.

Last week, there was a big festival called the Tenjin Festival here in town, and it involves a very large mikoshi (portable shrine). I had originally given up on volunteering for this one considering I'm so damn tall and I figured that would mess with everyone else that was carrying the thing. However, like so many other things, Naoko really helped out. I mentioned it in passing to her, and she took it upon herself to talk to her mom and get more info. Whereas I'm too lazy and just gave up when I thought it might be an issue, she called them, found out it would be okay, asked me if I still wanted to do it, got my clothes size, signed me up, and gave me directions to the place O.o I... feel like I just got showed up something fierce. Regardless, I was really excited and spent the whole week prior telling my students about it. It was two days before the festival when I found out through some of my students that the outfit involves short shorts...

I went anyways, and it was a blast. Here, have a couple pictures (I don't have many since I was carrying the damn thing and Naoko was working most of the day).

This is Dustin, the only other foreigner that was involved. He's kinda famous around here.

You can figure out which one is me, right? Notice how I'm suddenly the same height as everyone else? Yeah, try standing up straight when you have something that weighs over a ton on your shoulder and everyone else is at least a half a foot shorter than you are. God, my legs hurt so bad after that (and during it. Especially my thighs. Especially when we bounced it up and down).

Before we started, taken with my camera phone by some random guy that talked to me before we headed out. He seemed cool and is part of a hiking group, but I got a kinda creepy vibe from him. He kept insisting we could hike alone if we wanted. I'm not contacting him again... better safe than sorry, eh?

Overall, the thing took about 6 and a half hours with a really short afterparty when we were finished. We only carried the mikoshi for maybe 4 hours total, though. There was lots of waiting and ceremony (especially at the beginning. We got to stand in a sweltering hot courtyard for about 45 minutes watching a REALLY boring shinto ceremony. We took the mikoshi from the shrine to the temple, took a break, then carried it back (this time joined by two other smaller mikoshi. One for women, who were scary energetic, and one for a local bank... guess I can't judge, I'm sure we'd commercialize and sell out our cultural festivals in America if we really had any). The other two mikoshi were much smaller than ours, but who's counting? Me. I am. I am counting.

We had four teams on our mikoshi, and I was on red team. Most of my team was made up of first year high school students who were all part of a soccer team. That also meant they were some of the shortest people carrying it. There was a few times when I looked ahead of me and realized the thing wasn't even resting on their shoulders. Speaking of shoulders, if I do this next year, I'm bringing more padding. Dustin told me to bring some, so I did, but not enough. Especially because I'm tall, my shoulders were just annihilated by that thing. They were all red and swollen afterwards (especially my right one), and covered in bruises that are still kind of there.

Some random notes:

1.) While waiting at the castle to start again, I saw a cat climbing along the castle wall. This thing is probably 50 feet at least, almost completely vertical, and made up of rough-cut stones. This crazy fucking cat was walking along the tiny ledges of those stones. So cool. I was worried it would get scared and fall off when the muskets fired to announce our start, but it just ran faster like gravity doesn't affect cats or something.

2.) I got asked so many times if I was a student. Somebody even asked if I was a high school student. When I said no, he guessed junior high. I don't think he was joking...

3.) The whole time we were going, people were going back and forth with "soya" "sa". At first I didn't join in because I thought there was some pattern, but there really wasn't. People would just shout it out whenever, and some people just made random noises. The only important thing was to make our noise at the same time other people did, so I joined in. It made it more fun

Last Monday, I was thinking of going to actually see the festival (it was a Sunday/Monday thing), but my legs hurt so bad I could barely walk. All I did the entire day was play games and go grocery shopping (which was really difficult). It took like 3 or 4 days before I could walk without my lower legs hurting really bad. Worth it.

This weekend, I was planning to rest a bit in preparation for Suigosai (which is a big fireworks festival coming up soon). Looking back, in the past 3 weeks before now I climbed a mountain, explored a silver mine, and carried a massively heavy wooden and metal object. I thought it'd be good to rest. Then my buddy Mac told me there was a festival going on in Yonago, so away I went. The festival was called the Gaina festival, and there big shtick was organized teams (most were sponsored by companies) hoisting giant poles with lanterns attached in the middle of the street. I think they're called manto, but don't quote me on that. I got there a little bit late since it was on Saturday and I worked that day, but it was still really cool. Rather than pictures, I'm throwing out what I think is my first video on this blog. Excuse the start pointing at the ground. I thought I had to hit "play" or something, but as soon as you switch the camera to video mode, it starts recording.

*Stupid website is being stupid as always. Gonna retry posting the video later*

After that, Mac and I went out drinking with some of his friends and students. We had a blast, and I got to meet some cool people. We also met a random stranger at an okonomiyake place who was horrible at English... unless he was talking about American wangs versus Japanese wangs. Then he was fucking fluent or something. We finished at... 6:30 in the morning. Holy shit, I still have no idea how that happened. You ever walked out of a bar so drunk you can barely walk straight just to be bombarded with the bright rays of early-morning sunlight and gathering humidity? It's awful. We slept until about 2, then got up to get ready for the fireworks display that night.

Unfortunately, I have no pictures of this for three reasons. Foremost, I left my damn camera at Mac's apartment. Secondly and thirdly, however, Suigosai will be much bigger and I didn't want to bother fiddling with my camera to take pictures at night while trying to watch the first fireworks I've seen here. The display was pretty damn cool, but the people were kind of annoying. Mac and I went to claim our spots about an hour and a half early, and grabbed a couple of standing positions near the back of the crowd. There was still about 6 or 7 feet empty behind us at that point, but it filled up quickly. Now, Mac and I are both tall, but there were cameras in front of us and we didn't really want to sit, so we stayed standing. Of course, when the fireworks started, the people behind us (who were sitting down like most people), started to complain. I often feel bad about my height. I feel like I'm inconveniencing people and I get a little bit embarrassed, but this was not one of those times. These assholes got there later than us, chose to stand behind us when they knew where we were and the fact that we were standing, and chose to remained seated. Then they had they nerve to bitch at us like we were being rude. One person even grabbed Mac's hand and tried to tug him into a sitting position. Ridiculous, especially when you consider how bad people here are at paying attention to their surroundings and being courteous to other people. Whatever.

It really was a fun weekend, but I got a bit of a bombshell dropped on me. Mac is going back to the states at the end of this week. He had a family problem, work wouldn't give him the month of he requested, and now he's breaking contract and heading home. He says he's going to come back eventually, but there's no guarantee and he's aiming for Tokyo. Shit, there goes one of my only closer foreign friends here.

Today, my AC finally got fixed and I did pretty much nothing again. THE END!

Oh wait, random shit. Not much this week:

1.) Remember how I mentioned earlier that people don't pay any attention to the people around them? Yeah, this manifested in me getting hit by a bike and almost knocked into a busy road this week. Going across the bridge as I always do after lunch, riding my own bike, and a massive group of bike riders was coming from the opposite direction. As usual, they were spaced out to take up almost the entire walkway, so moved over and rode right next to the railing next to the road. Some idiot in the back then decided he was going to pull out into the only open area and try to pass them. Of course, he didn't bother to fucking look where he was going, staring off to the side instead. Seeing as how I couldn't move left or right and stopping wouldn't stop the collision, I got to watch as he finally looked forward, saw me, and failed to move out of the way in time. Slammed into the side of me, tore a small hole in my only pair of dress shoes, and almost knocked me over the railing. He looked back at me in complete bewilderment, didn't apologize, and rode off.

2.) Last week, I ate a bug in class. This was not intentional. I was turning to correct a mistake a student made, with my mouth open of course because I was about to make noise come out of it, and a bug just flew right in and down my throat. It was a small bug, but it was still enough to completely surprise the shit out of me.

Darth Humid and Tomas Rainbows

Another two week break. Mainly due to laziness this time. Although I'm wiling to assign part of the blame to technical difficulties. Last time I connected my camera to my computer to upload photos, it decided to put all the pictures from Kyoto back on the camera (wtf?). For some reason it then took about 3 or 4 hours to go through the process of deleting them. My end was simply ctrl+a, del. That's like 2 seconds. What the fuck, computers? How you gonna take over the world if I'm outperforming you that bad?

Anyways... two weeks ago, Naoko and I went hiking! We went to azumayama, which is maybe an hour or so from Matsue. It was really nice, but it was hot as hell. And humid. More on that later. I've noticed that, in general, mountains in Japan are a bit different than in America (at least the ones I've been too). There's a lot of trees and large bushes, and they're all packed really tight together. There's also enough birds and insects making various noises that it occasionally felt like walking through a rain forest. Again, the damn humidity helped that illusion.

Here's a view from a clear spot midway up the mountain. This one was kind of unique in that the top was relatively free of dense tree growth.

Naoko and I at the top. We ate some lunch up there and our freaking McGuyver hike leader busted out some hot coffee and cold snacks (kind of like otter pops). At the top of a mountain. In Summer. This guy was prepared.

I'm sporting a bit of a derp face here, but it's pretty much the only group shot we have (minus the leader, who took the picture. Although the old guy in teal was kind of the de facto leader). The guy on the far left of the picture lent me the towel-thing on my head, because they were worried I would get sunburned. Japanese people are SUPER paranoid about the sun. They were arm guards or sweaters and all of them have hats. They also put on sunscreen (but their sunscreen is shit over here. I've been on two Summer outings so far. Used copious amounts of sunscreen on both. Still got sunburned both times).

I honestly don't remember what we did on Monday. The pictures on my iPhone make me think that maybe we went to the mall. Is that the week we saw Super 8, or did we see it the week before? Why am I asking this question to the internet? Well, yeah. Something occurred on Monday. I'm sure it was magical.

 This week, we went to Iwami Ginzan, which is a world heritage site silver mine that was in use for something around 400 years. I was not prepared for the extent of the trip. I thought it was like an hour away by car and just a little outing. It was two hours by bus and took up most of the day. Regardless, it was fun.

Here's the entrance of the cave. Not pictured: our feeling of absolute joy standing in front of that tunnel opening because the inside was like a damn air conditioner and it was making the unbearable heat somewhat bearable. I've always heard that mines are warm because they're deeper in the earth, but this one was, for whatever reason, a good 10-15 degrees cooler than it was outside. So nice.

Not a good place for claustrophobic people, however. Even Naoko had to duck down for parts of it.

At the end there was a pretty open tunnel heading up to the topside. It wasn't even that long. Didn't stop it from having a bunch of little chair-benches that folded down from the wall for people to sit on.

I really, really like this picture of Naoko. There's another one from a few seconds later where she's actually posing, but this one is better I think. Also, yes, those are heels. She wore heels, and they both broke, so she had difficulty walking back and was sad that her shoes that she really liked got broken. Then I was sad because she was sad. Her response when I told her she should really wear tennis shoes or something for trips like this? "But heels are cute." That logic, it is flawless. Really though, it wasn't that big a deal, I just felt bad that I couldn't help. It was a good excuse to avoid taking another few hours in side trips to temples on the walk back to the bus station (I kinda regret it now, but I was so damn tired at the time).

We did, however, visit one temple. It had a derp face lion. I tried so hard to make my mouth look like his, but I guess I'm just not cool enough :(

My air conditioner is broken this week, so we decided to do something where it wasn't about 100 degrees with humidity when we got back. Our decision was to go see Harry Potter. Randomly ran into my buddy Dustin, which was cool. Movie was pretty meh, though. Overall, it was a really good day. Today Naoko had work so I sat around and played video games. I like video games. :D

Random Shit:

1.) I forgot some stuff last time. Here it is: I got the dubious honor of holding a stinky drunk guy on his feet while we tried to figure out what to do with him. Naoko and I were leaving English Night at 5150 on Tuesday, and there was a loud thunk as an old drunk dude fell over. I helped him up while the owner called the police (not a bad thing here I guess? Apparently they were going to help him home). Eventually they told me to just sit him down and head home. Unfortunately, I was holding him up long enough for the stink to get on me. Damn, that was gross.

I was told I was an excellent teacher. I've been here for about 8 months now, and this is the only time I've heard it. It made me a little happy, but I think the absence of other such comments reinforces the fact that I probably am not.

I was talking to one of my students about things you can and can't do at the zoo, and he came out with this one: "You can't give the animals water... or beer." The way he said that last bit caused uncontrollable laughter. Usually I can hold it back, but not this time. It was like a mix of shame, extreme pride, and honest heartfelt advice. After prompting him for more info, he told me he fed a chicken beer at a zoo and it fell over.

2.) I hate heat and heat hates me. Seriously, everywhere I go, heat follows. We're having a 40 year heatwave in Japan this year. Just for clarification, that is a heatwave of severity that it only happens once in FOUR DECADES. And, just like every other house I've ever lived in, my air conditioner broke this week. Of course, work is dragging ass about fixing it. Last I heard on Saturday, they were going to "ask head office". I would fix it on my own, but I'm not allowed to because it's their apartment. So now I'm stuck in an apartment that is routinely over 100 degrees when I come home for work and in the mid 90s until about 3 in the morning. Oh, and it's humid. I've never experienced humidity before, but I knew it was going to suck. It's not like I was unprepared. Unfortunately, it's kind of like knowing you're about to be kicked in the balls. You know it's gonna hurt, and maybe you even mentally prepare yourself for it. Doesn't change the fact that you feel a disturbance in the force as if millions of voices suddenly cried out and were silenced. Those voices were your unborn sperm babies, and knowing that pain was coming didn't help them either. I think what we can learn from this really weird and typically inappropriate analogy is that humidity is the dark side. And the death star.

3.) 

Scooters are cool here!

4.)

It's... what... how...

I am very disappointed with myself. I was heading back to work after lunch, going across the big bridge from my apartment, and I saw a rainbow. A double rainbow actually (what does it mean?! It's okay if you don't get that. One of my Japanese friends did, and it was awesome). But it was no ordinary (double) rainbow, it was a (double) rainbow perfectly framing the river and the mountains in the background. It started at one bank, and arched perfectly to the other. I thought to myself "I should take a picture". But I didn't. I took one when I got back to the office, but it wasn't the same. So pissed even now. Of course, the adorable child that sometimes comes to work greeted me with a cheerful "Tomas, rainbow!" which just made it worse.

JLP Fails and Meat Love

So yeah, sorry this is late and I didn't post last week. I was working my ass off to get ready for the JLPT. Between work, studying, working out, and trying to cook healthier meals, I pretty much have about 2-3 hours tops of "free" time each day. I put "free" in quotes because if I do anything like cleaning or posting a blog, that time gets cut down even more. Slightly complaining and slightly throwing that out there so I don't feel as bad about missing updates.

Anyways, since last time, what's been up? Hmm.... Oh, I went to an Indian restaurant with some AEON employees from Izumo. It was nice, but it was somehow even hotter and more humid inside that restaurant than it was outside. Not even slightly exaggerating, I felt like I was going to pass out for about half of the dinner. That was the weekend before my test prep began, and I think it was all I did that weekend.

Last weekend was much busier. On Sunday, I had the JLPT in Okayama. Naoko decided to take the day off without telling me in advance, so we both got up at 6 freaking AM to catch the bus out there. I got to see some nice scenery on the ride at least, but, predictably, I got very little sleep the night before. On the bus was one of the co-workers from Izumo who was taking the test, a JET from Izumo who was taking the test, and some dude who was on his way to orientation for NOVA. Once we hit Okayama, we had enough time to grab some food then get on the super packed bus to the university. We met a woman from Italy who is teaching Italian and was taking the same level test as us (the guy was taking the N2, one step above us).

There was a guy helping people find the bus to campus, but once there people were much less helpful. We headed the wrong way, but that led us to an information counter where we got back on track. Cue waiting around for about a half an hour before going into a room full of people to... wait around for another half hour. There was a lot of waiting for this test. It was kind of infuriating. Overall, it was four hours and the staff was super strict. Aside from me and the aforementioned people I met, there was only one other Westerner in our testing room. He's an AEON worker from Tottori, and he's a total tool. How much of a tool? Well, he was one of the last people to show up, just minutes before the test, ignored myself and the Izumo worker (he's met us both) even when she directly greeted him, spent the whole time acting like he owned the place, and showed up after the doors had been closed on the final section, interrupting the proctors explanation, without even apologizing (just for reference, you're supposed to be disqualified from the test for that). This isn't isolated behavior. He always acts like that. Everyone else was Chinese, Korean, or Indian, and some were very interesting. One dude was performing a full on stretching routine before the test. I expected him to get up and do a warm-up jog before the test or something. Another guy came in kind of late with a weird cast around his arm. Except it wasn't really a cast, it was just a thick, white fabric wrapped around his arm, and his hand kept twitching. I expected a horror movie to start at any moment.

As for the test itself, it was actually a bit harder than I had been expecting. I don't think I passed (I was about 50/50 on my chances going in). Overall, everything went as expected (no problem with kanji, grammar and reading kind of tough but okay, slaughtered on vocab) except for the listening section. I spend a lot of time talking to Naoko and, to a lesser extent, my other friends in Japanese. I thought listening would be okay. I don't know if it was because it was at the end of a four hour test, because I was working on less than five hours of sleep, or because I just suck at listening, but I think that section alone sealed my doom. I kept just stopping paying attention halfway through the conversations, and they threw in a lot of curveballs to make "trick" questions. I took a glance around as they were collecting the tests, and pretty much everyone had different answers... Thing is, there's three sections to the test. You need 95 points overall with at least 19 points in each section to pass. Listening only had 27 points. If I missed more than 8, I failed the whole test. At least vocab had 35 or so, so I had more leniency... Oh well. I won't find out until early September, but I'm not holding my breath.

Afterwards, we grabbed some dinner and headed back home. On Monday, Naoko and I were going to go hiking but it rained. Instead, we hit up the department store, watched a movie (Super 8), drove around a bit, ate some yakiniku, and had an annoyingly serious conversation about what may or may not happen when I return to The States for grad school. No Japanese class that day because I'm taking the week off studying. I think I earned it with the JLPT. That's more or less it, except for a whole mess of random shit:

1.)

Another ATM this month, and I saw this at the Yonago station. Apparently it's from last year, but still. A salvia festival? Really? Between this and the pot air fresheners, I'm beginning to think Japan is a nation of undercover stoners.

2.)

This is... I mean, really. What? Yes.

3.)

Couldn't help but notice the ridiculousness of this as I was preparing a lesson. How was my food poisoning? Really? Is that the best example you could think of to teach "how was it?"?

4.)

These pictures show me that apparently Naoko and I went to sushi the week before last. There were a bunch of those awesome pictures. Also, hot dog sushi. WTF Japan?

5.)

Oh yeah, this. This is part of my disappointment with myself lately. Naoko and I have started jogging. In typical fashion for things that other people get me to do, it was her idea but she has only jogged once while I've kept to a strict jogging schedule. What is making me sad is I enjoy it. I look forward to the days when I jog after work, and I have to stop myself from jogging extra days. WTF Thomas?

6.) Compounding my above disappointment was a series of thoughts I had while making dinner last week. Not only did I choose juice over beer as my drink of choice for the night, I actually had the thought "I should stop eating hamburgers. They're too greasy." pop into my head. Now, let's get one thing straight here: I love meat. I love meat so much that I wish it was there to welcome me home every night after work with a hot meal. Made of meat. If the Green Goblin dropped meat and a bus full of children off a bridge, I would save meat and let the kids plummet to their screaming doom. If I was a politician, I would have a sordid affair with meat and have to leave office when the scandalous photos arose. If I had to choose between my loved ones and meat... okay, well, I'd choose my loved ones. But I'd think of meat every day thereafter and, sometimes, when they night was still and I was lying alone in bed, I would sit up and wonder if I had made the right choice. It would be heartbreaking. I love meat so much I, I don't even care how incredibly homosexual this entire rant has sounded. Hopefully this gives you some insight into why I was so deeply disturbed when I thought of cutting one of the purest forms of meat out of my diet. Shame on me.

7.)

Been meaning to snap a picture of this for a while. View of the rice field below the bridge near my house. Got it on the way to the station on Sunday.

8.)

Speaking of awesome, here's one of the many great scenes I got going through the mountains on the bus. Not pictured because I couldn't get my iPhone to bear in time: the big yellow sign with a monkey scratching its head and the warning "beware of monkeys" below it. No, that is not a liberal translation. Entirely literal. No "b" in this spelling.

 9.)

Coming into Okayama. Big American Shop? I... what? What do they sell there? Also nearby and not pictured: a store called Love Drugs. More proof. Damn Japanese stoners.

 10.)

They has Magic cards here! These next few pictures are from me and Naoko gallivanting around the department store.

Awesome party costume.

This is actually from the biggest book store in Matsue (about the size of a normal-sized Borders in The States). This is their entire foreign language book section.

Awesome book marks from the department store again. I feel like my mom would like these. They're kind of her sense of humor.

Crowded Tacos and Human Beans

Another week with little to say. Naoko came over and chilled for a couple of days, which was nice, but I worked both days so yeah...

On Saturday I hit up 5150 for Tacos and Motown night. The Motown was pretty much nonexistent, and the tacos were... Well, let's just say I paid 1,500 yen (about 20 bucks) for one beer and a taco bar that was almost completely blocked by people sitting in the way and wasn't that good anyway. I had one taco. But whatever. 

It was WAY more crowded than I expected. I have never seen 5150 that crowded. I didn't like it, and neither did Mac. Part of the reason I go there is because it's more chill than most bars. It did, however, give me a chance to talk to a couple of JETs from South Africa. We had some interesting conversation topics such as the fact that it is apparently rare for people to be able to recognize a South African accent (I always thought that it was normal since I can do it. I am now curious where I picked up this skill since I have only talked to one or two other South African people in my whole life), the fact that both of them know about 6 languages because of how many languages are stuffed into the same place in their hometowns, the awesomeness that is their native languages (even though they're pretty much the same, they're a different dialect. Apparently there's about 3 "root" languages in the region, so a different dialect can quite literally be a different language or just a different pronunciation. Crazy. Also, Mac and I are both unable to do the tongue click that is part of their language. I tried. I tried so hard. Nothing.), and which kinda chunky celebrity we would have sex with. What? It was a group of about six guys talking over tacos and beer. Wipe that disappointed look off your face and replace it with one of amazement as you realize that only one of our topic conversations involved sex.

Since trains stop here crazy early, Mac crashed at my place. Next day we got some grub, talked a bit, then he headed home.

Monday, I made myself proud. Which is a rare occurrence. Think back over the 7 months I've been making this blog. How many times have I been proud of myself? Yeah, I bet you're excited to find out what amazing thing I did. I bought two bus tickets. Yes, I know that's not awesome, screw you. The things that make me happy are weird and I take them when I can get them. I walked into a travel agency scared and feeling bad that I would be holding up a line full of people while I stumbled through my lines and struggled to understand the travel agent. What proceeded was a fully functional and fluent conversation wherein I didn't once find myself unable to express myself or understand what she was saying. I finished faster than the person to my right that started before me, and the tickets actually go to the place I want to go to on the time I want to go there. This is officially one of the only times I have not felt like a complete invalid in Japanese society. Oh man, that's a rant. Can I resist the rant? Nope, failed saving throw, here I go.

Extremely rare circumstances like the one mentioned above, I think the thing that is bothering me the most about living here is the way people treat me because I don't speak Japanese that well. There's this magical thing that people do when you don't speak their language: they treat you like an idiot. When you ask a question, they don't answer it directly. They start at the bottom, because obviously you aren't able to understand a simple explanation without help. For example, I might ask someone what the word "inu" (dog) means. They will then proceed to inform me that there are these things called animals, and that there are many different kinds of animals, people sometimes buy some of these animals and take care of them, and so on and so on before they finally just say "they're the animals that have four legs, a tail, and bark. People have them as pets." 

Every. Single. Step. Along this magical fucking journey to enlightenment is accompanied by them checking to see if I understand. Sometimes a nod or an "okay" will get me by. Sometimes this triggers them re-explaining what they just explained because I obviously didn't understand it. Now, it's not like this happens constantly. If that was the case, this rant would have come much earlier. Instead, it happens with just enough frequency to really get under my skin. Oh, and don't even try to say "nevermind". They won't let it go. Ever. I need to be given the gift of knowledge because me no understand words make head hurt. -.-

Everyone does it, and I am fully convinced that most hold no malice and don't even realize what they are doing. They want to help, and they are doing what they think will let them do that. They just don't realize that they're doing it in the most patronizing and infuriating way possible, and my Japanese isn't good enough to explain to them how much it bothers me and why (irony much?). My friends do this, my coworkers do this, random strangers do this, even Naoko does it sometimes. That one's the real kicker for me, by the way. The one that really clinches this as something that bothers me. Random stranger does it? Annoying, but whatever. Friend does it? Not the first time a friend has annoyed me. Naoko does it? Ouch. Okay, that hurts. The whole process just makes me not want to ask questions. It has, however, made me very direct with my students because I don't want to do the same to them. They ask a question, I'm sure to answer it like I would to someone who already knows the background info. If they need more explanation, they ask me and I give it to them. Do any ESL (English as a second language) speakers you know a favor and do the same for them; I bet they'll appreciate it.

Random Shit:

1.) Watched the new Studio Ghibli movie on dvd with Naoko while she was over (Ariete or something like that? Has it come out in the states already? It's about tiny people). The subtitles were... interesting. Absolutely flawless except for the fact that we are all apparently "human beans". Not beings. That would be crazy. What's really confusing is that one of the translators had a distinctly Western name. Maybe they were actually using "bean" in some kind of "look, they're different and don't know what to actually call us." I was talking to Naoko, so I didn't really pay much attention to the Japanese... Anyways, pretty damn "meh" overall. Nothing great about that movie.

2.)

Naoko's adorableness is apparently not limited to just me. She made this for her mom. So cute. I like how the middle one is so happy its eyes are imploding.

3.) Stopping by the convenience store with Mac on Sunday, I saw gourmet Cheetos. You better believe I bought that shit hella fast. They were also meh. I would have preferred normal Cheetos.

Parental Sneak Attacks and Revoked Mancards

Short post this week because I really don't have much to say.

So, on Saturday I was definitely expertly maneuvered into surprise-meeting Naoko's parents. It went a little something like this:

Email from Naoko: "Hey, you busy tonight?"
Email from me: "Nope, what's up?"
Naoko: "Want to get some dinner?"
Me: "Sure, sounds good."
Naoko: "Oh yeah, my parents are going to be there. And my older brother. :D :D :D :D"
Me: O.o

This was also while I was at work, so I didn't even really have time to mentally brace myself for it. In her defense, I have expressed interest in meeting them before because I can tell it's important to her, but damn, that's messed up yo.

Dinner went... about as well as you could expect when meeting your girlfriend's family for the first time and you don't speak their language all that well. Oh, to make things worse there was a big ol' vent in between us that made hearing and seeing each other difficult (we were at a yakuniku place, the vent is for the smoke). I don't think I made a bad impression though, and her brother wants to hang out with me. Also, yakuniku. Fuck yeah.

That's... yeah, pretty much it. On Monday night, I went to 5150 to meet up with Mika and study for a few hours. Yeah, that's how cool I am! I go to bars to study! You're hanging out with the big dogs now! God, I'm a sad, sad man...

Random shit:
1.) This is first because it is weighing on my mind currently in a very uncool fashion. I feel like I'm not travelling enough here. I mean, I know I've done a lot in the 7 months I've been here, but very little of it actually involved the travel I was so positive I would do while here. The only places I've been to that are more than a half an hour from Matsue are Hiroshima and Kyoto. I just... I don't know, there's like this amalgamation of factors that have all formed together to make a supermutant of "fuck you Thomas, you don't travel". Everything here is expensive, and I need to save money for things like student loan repayments and eventually going to grad school. I don't seem to have any time off, and when I do have time off, it's on the vacation weeks that EVERYONE in Japan has off (which means prices are higher and there are too many people). I can request time off, but I don't plan ahead that well, and I need to have things all set up. Speaking of planning, I'm ridiculously bad at planning trips here because I'm not good enough at Japanese to feel confident while doing it. I now have to factor Naoko into any trip I make. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind this at all, but it does make it more difficult to accomplish. I am, by nature, a pretty sedentary dude. I don't even know how I motivated myself to come to Japan in the first place. On my weekend, I want to kick back and relax. The list goes on and on. I can rationalize to myself why I haven't done it, but when it comes down to it, I've been in Japan for 7 months and I've visited maybe a half a dozen cities of any note. This bothers me.
2.)

Are you ready for another episode of "What Adorable and Thoughtful Thing did Naoko do This Week?"? You better be, cause you're getting one. At Open Mic a few months back, I mentioned off-hand that I really liked one of the snacks we were eating. Apparently, she's been trying to find some ever since. She got it for me and left it hanging on my door for when I got home. 

3.)

I really wish this picture was better, but it was taken on my camera while going home for lunch. Remember when I mentioned those low clouds before? This is kind of what I was talking about. Normally there's big hills on the horizon.

4.)

I... I ate this for lunch. I feel dirty admitting that. You see, Naoko always talks about how worried she is that I don't eat healthy, and it kind of makes me feel bad, so lately I've been making a conscious effort to eat better. I was grocery shopping on Monday and I thought to myself "well, I could buy some meat and a beer for lun- ohlooksalads." and then I grew a vagina. True story. I need to find things to do for Naoko that don't involve me revoking my already-revoked mancard...

5.) Partially as an attempt to regain some manhood and grow some hair on the ample bosom that has sprouted from my chest due to my recent girlyness, I bought some weights finally. Of course, it's freaking Japan so they cost a ridiculous amount. About 75 bucks for 40 pounds of weights. aka, twice what it should be. I need to buy some more, but seeing as how I only have a bike, I thought it wise to do that in a few trips. Maybe this weekend I'll pick some up.

Molester Chairs and Ghost Cats

This week was not overly eventful, but some cool stuff happened. Work was pretty busy as usual, but on Saturday I went to a bar with Naoko. Now, she's not a drinker, and she doesn't like clubs, but one of her work buddies was DJing for the last time at this place, so she wanted to go. Apparently she told me last week, but I forgot because of my shitty memory so I was a little caught off guard by it. Like everything here, it was expensive (3,000 yen for the two of us), and it was SUPER fucking crowded. When we first showed up, it was kind of mild. But an hour in, and it was difficult to even move through the main room. Doesn't help that the place was tiny. The actual bar portion probably had about four or five feet of space between the bar and the far wall, and there was a little side room for music and dancing (which no one was really doing). We ended up leaving early, but not before I got the distinctly uncomfortable pleasure of meeting a bunch of Naoko's friends and coworkers. They were all really excited to meet me, and a few of them even spoke some English. Problem is, we would have had trouble communicating under ideal circumstances. The bar had loud music, too many people pushing by, and alcohol. Yeah, it was tough.

Here's an awesome house-face we saw on the way to the bar. It's actually a coffee shop. Too bad, it would be an awesome place to live. Right next to the river in "downtown" Matsue, too.

The next day got all kinds of messed up. Naoko loves schedules, you see, so I went entirely against my nature and wrote out a schedule (two, actually. One if it rained, and one if it didn't) for the day. Of course, said schedule assumed I would be having my weekly DnD Skype game. Well, it got cancelled. At first I thought this ruined my plans, because my schedule didn't start until 5, and now we had all day. Luckily, Naoko solved this problem by sleeping ALL FUCKING DAY. This woman has an amazing talent to be tired all the time forever. I think she's a superhero with the worst superpower ever. Anyways, she actually said she felt too tired to do the plan I had made in the first place, so we just winged it anyways (and ended up doing most of my scheduled stuff regardless...) We went and had waffles because we both really wanted them, and they were freaking delicious in my mouth. Then we went by the department store to pick up some supplies for making pizza (more on that later) and ate ice cream. More delicious. Triple scoop delicious, actually, since they were having this insane promotion where they charge you their ridiculous amount for two scoops, give you a third for free, and act like you should be thankful you just paid six dollars for three tiny scoops of ice cream. Man, I hate prices over here. Know what makes me happier, though?

Happy chairs that are happy. Seriously, when a chair is fucking grinning like that despite having to deal with peoples' asses being all up in its grill 24/7, you know things aren't all bad. Or that chairs have an ass fetish. One of the two. Oh god, what have I done? I can never sit in one of those chairs now. Seriously, look at that picture with the idea in your head that the chair would totally get off on you sitting on it. Now ask yourself if you would willingly place your delicate, unprotected cheeks on that lustful, lime-green ass-grabber. The beady little eyes on those bastards just scream "you'll get in trouble too if you tell anyone." Right, I just exchanged being mad at money to being terrified of sex offender chairs. I'm so entirely sane it hurts.

After the chair sex den, we went to the park/temple/whatever near Matsue Castle. See, I've never actually taken a walk around there and a really wanted to. It was nice, with lots of pretty nature, but nothing spectacular. I think I might jog there once I get back into a jogging routine. The thing that really struck me was the insane number of cats there. We went around late dusk, and I think I saw around 50 cats during our visit. At first it was funny, then, as it got darker, a little creepy. They would just sit there in bunches of 3-5 and stare at us as we walked by. Most of the time we didn't even notice them until we were super close. I did manage to successfully scare Naoko numerous times intentionally and absolutely terrify her twice unintentionally. The intentional ones were just me saying random words in front of the word for ghost in the most ludicrously cheesed-up ghost voice ever. She actually finds it frightening, which I find hilarious. Because I'm an awful person. The first unintentional time she said something and I stopped and said "wait!" in mock indignation. She nearly fell over. Guess that was sign 1 she was a bit jumpy and scared (let's ignore all the times she said the place was creepy). The second time it was a bit darker and I pointed quickly to a cat and said "cat!" because it was adorable and running into the bushes. She hit me after that one.

Anyways, we got back and made pizza! See my mom is awesome and sent me this little mini cooker thing with some dough mix and pizza sauce back in like April. I'm lazy, so it took this long to make it. The pizza was good, but I didn't cook it quite long enough, so it was a bit doughy...

Random Shit:
1.)

Saturday was an interesting day. For breakfast, I had mutant eggs and toast. Not gonna lie, I was a little unsettled about eating the wonder twins egg, but I was hungry.

After that, I saw this little guy in my stairwell. He looked at me funny.

3.) Something I forgot last time. I recontracted with the company for a year last week (as was planned when I left), but first they gave me my feedback and stuff. One of the things my head teacher said to me, and I'm not kidding when I say this was a direct quote, was "No one hates you. That's a good thing." I... well, I mean, yeah, that's a good thing, but I mean really? I did got positive feedback, but that just struck me as the weirdest thing.

Resurrected Blogs and Inappropriate Metaphors

Okay. So, yeah. Been a while. What's happened since my last post? Well, not much, really. Just one of the myriad reasons for my inexcusable laxness when it comes to actually keeping you guys informed. It didn't really occur to me that this absence would bother people, but I've been contacted by a couple of people, so I'll do my best to update at a more constant rate again from now on.

Let's see, where did I leave off? I think the end of Golden Week. The last day (I think) of Golden Week, I went to Unnan City with Naoko and a few friends. We went hiking, had some delicious lunch, and visited an old iron foundry (although that term is a bit misleading. It was mainly just one building and most of the stuff was belowground where we couldn't see it.) It was really nice. I've been wanting to go hiking since I got here. I've done a few minor treks on my own, but it wasn't really what I would call hiking. To be honest, this wasn't either, but it was at least a bit closer. We went to Dragon's Head Falls, which was a little bit crowded.

I like this picture because it looks like we're tilting the earth. Makes me kinda dizzy if I look at it long enough.

Group picture, yay!

There's bears in them thar hills!

This was the actual waterfall. Nothing amazingly impressive, but it was still pretty.

I climbed up behind it and got some more pictures!

We were supposed to climb Mt. Daisen the weekend after that (or maybe two weekends after?), which would have been real hiking. I even bought hiking boots and everything. Unfortunately, this is the rainy season in Japan. This fact completely caught me off guard by the way. Anyways, we got rained out on our planned day. Oh well. Someday I'll actually get to go to Daisen. Instead, Naoko and I went to see the fourth Pirates movie. It was pretty awful, but I can console myself with the fact that I figured it would be going in. There were actually three things that were of note about it though.

1.) This was my first time going to a movie theater in Japan.

2.) The tickets cost 2,200 yen a pop (for a 3D show). That means I spent about $55 for two tickets to a overwhelmingly average movie. Wow, that hurts even more when I see it in writing.

3.) I officially felt homesick for the first time. Not the occasional little "I miss Chipotle" or "man, it'd be cool to go see my friends right now" that I get on a weekly basis. Something about Yonago, the rainy night, or the movie theater was just way too much like home. I was full-on despondent and confused for an entire evening. It was unnerving and I didn't like it. Next morning it was gone though.

Okay, I'm no sure that was the weekend before this most recent one, which means I don't really remember what I did on the weekend after Golden Week at all. I'm almost positive I sat at home and did nothing. See, this is why I need to update this thing more often. You people know how bad my memory is, why didn't you say something sooner?! Jerks...

So, this weekend I did very little as well. It was raining again on Sunday, and on Monday it was kind of misty and I swear there were huge globs of water just floating in the air. Something really cool I've noticed about this weather: the clouds here are really low. We have some small mountains (really just slightly larger than normal hills, honestly) around here, and the tops of them are covered in clouds recently. I need to remember to take a picture of it, because it's beautiful. And I need to climb to the top of one of them, because I want to be inside of a mother fucking cloud. I bet that shit's cottony as hell. Sorry... no idea where that came from. I always see the clouds when I'm on lunch break or something, so it's tough to get a picture.

On Sunday, Naoko and I did a bit of shopping, and I saw this awesome monster mask in one of the makeup shops she took me to.

Something tells me it actually has something to do with makeup, but I choose to believe that women put this on their face and pretend to be monsters. That's probably way cooler than what it's actually used for anyways.

We also visited a few thrift stores trying to find used weights (since weights here are ridiculously fucking expensive). We found no weights, but we did see some awesome stuff like "Let's Beer". I can't argue with you, box, you're so persuasive. Also, Naoko has officially confirmed there are Magic cards in Japan. Her brother used to collect them.

Just when you thought it couldn't get any better, Let's Beer Great hits the scene! What's so great about it? It's Engrish and beer combined! How was this thrift store not a smoking crater irradiated with awesomonium? Why was I not bitten by a radioactive beer bottle and turned into awesomeman immediately upon entering the vicinity? WHY DIDN'T I BUY THIS THING?!

After that, we went shopping with Masashi. He wanted me to visit a few shops that his friends owned. A couple of clothes stores, to be precise. The first one had shirts that cost 7,000 yen (almost $100) and the second one didn't have much of interest to me, but had some interesting handmade leather stuff. That being a bust and all, we went to an onsen. It's my second time being to one, and this one was much larger than the one before. It was refreshing, but once again I get really light headed. This time I actually kind of fell over, but I passed it off as saying I thought the step was lower down then I thought. I'm still distinctly uncomfortable getting naked around a bunch of people, especially since I actually knew one of them this time, but I found a couple of tricks to get over it. Trick 1: Don't really think about the fact that you're getting naked. Sounds weird, but I just kind of let the thought slip from my mind every time it cropped up, and somehow that worked. Trick 2: Don't let your eyes focus on anything, even if you think it's safe. See, the thing about an onsen, especially a crowded one, is that it is, in reality, nothing more than a steamy jungle of hairy man-dong. You can't avoid this. You're going to see some, and you should just count yourself lucky that it's not leaping from the bushes like a tiger to mangle you and leave you weeping in a corner. But we're all big kids, and seeing another man's dangly bits in passing isn't going to kill us. However, if you're focusing on something that you happen to think is a safe area and it is suddenly invaded by a flopping Donkey Kong (I am amazed an endlessly amused that that works as a euphemism for penis), that shit is kind of unnerving. Just learn to not really look at anything, and you'll be fine. I lack pictures of this visit for obvious reasons.

After that, Masashi took us to an all-you-can eat yakiniku place that only costs 1,600 yen per person (20 bucks a head. Yes, that is cheap here).

Happy Yakiniku was happy! :D

Random Shit:

 1.)

I would feel remiss in my duties as that annoying guy that won't shut the hell up about his girlfriend if I didn't remind you that Naoko is, indeed, still adorable. She drew this. Except the ghost. That was all me. She also sat semi-patiently through a DnD session I had over Skype, and drew some more pictures for my fellow nerds.

Hello from Japan!

This is Danielle. I'm pretty sure it means Naoko thinks she's ugly. Trust me on this one, I know what I'm talking about.

Here's Ryan. Apparently Naoko remembers him for having good teeth and showing her a cat.

And this... well, this is Damon. This picture was originally much more flattering, but I made the comment that he looked kind of angry (he really did). Thus, Naoko prettied him up and made him into a China Baby. The shirt is her interpretation of his zombie Mona Lisa shirt.

2.) One of my students recently informed me that she refers to me as "Tomuo" when she talks about me (wait, she talks about me? Why?). See, many Japanese male names end with "o", and "Tomu" is how you say Tom in Japanese, because you can't just end on a consonant unless it's an "n". Now, this is something I am almost 100% positive you don't know about me, but I actually like nicknames. I've had exactly three actual nicknames (aka, ones that weren't just randomly made up and used for one night) in my entire life. One was given to me when I was super young while at a playground. I don't remember where it was, why I was there, how long I was there, or who I was there with, but I know it wasn't one I normally went to. I spent maybe an hour playing with this kid there, and he decided that my nickname was "T" after expressing his amazement over the fact that I did not previously have a nickname. I know this flies in the face of the addendum I started this list with, what with the whole only being used for an hour thing, but the guy happened to be black. Yeah, that's probably racist, but I don't even care. It legitimizes the nickname. It's like getting  a clean bill of health from a doctor. Some people just have the authority to certify these things. The little homie even checked it out with his mom, who give it her approval (I'm not even joking, one of the only things I remember about this kid is he was the littlest gangster I've ever seen). The second "nickname" was actually a number of nicknames all given to me by James playing off the original nickname Eddison (yes, another exception by bundling them all into one, but they're all from the same source). Now my third is Tomuo. I am collecting these things and hoarding them like gold, because they're interesting and I can't figure out why I like them.

Huh, in retrospect this is probably the most bizarre post I've written to date. I was only paying attention to half of it, but I'm pretty sure I wrote an entire paragraph about onsen man-dong. Sorry mom.