Sorry about that

Well I haven't written here for a few weeks, partly due to laziness, and partly due to being pissed off. I wanted to avoid bitching, but fuck it, I'll quickly go over the story. Basically I realised first hand, after so many people telling me so, that the company I work for are a bunch of parasitic cunts, sorry for the harsh words, but harsh times require harsh measures. So with 3 days training it can be expected that new employees will make mistakes. One lesson I did didn't work out, it was from the textbook, a badly designed lesson, plus my inexperience meant the whole thing fell apart. The little shit headed schmuck student cracked the shits cause he couldn't understand what was going on(he is a high level student who speaks good English, yet believes he speaks flawlessly). Then he complained that I made him feel stupid and he never wanted to have a lesson with me again(he can go fuck himself). So the area manager(Irish fuckin' cow) with her years of experience in personnel management figured the best way to handle this was to grill me to death. I personally think it was the most retarded way to handle a situation, but I'm sure she felt pretty big after it. I guess she went through my file and wrote down every negative comment about me, then proceeded to present her case that I truly was a deviant usurper and my sole intention was to cause trouble. During the half hour of this Spanish inquisition I was reminded at least 4 times of the one incident were I had my top button undone(god forbid-not the top button!!!), as well as some quote(she was unable to tell me where and when it was said) from me were I'd apparently mocked the company. Forgive me for this, but as far as I've figured mocking this idiotic company is the one thing that binds all the employees together, a mutual recognition of the fact that we are being anally raped by some greedy fascists. So in that one instant she managed to destroy any sense of commitment or loyalty I had to these fuckers. It also made me feel uneasy and nervous while working, which I guess degrades the quality of the lesson, which was what this was all about in the first place. So congratulations queen bitch, you've done a great job.
Well that was a bit long, sorry about that, now that it's out I can get back to my normal bollox and stop swearing so much. Though I wonder if they are reading this. So I put some photos up, there's a link to the side there, just a random selection of pictures I thought were cool. Not all are taken by me either, well most are. Now my life, well not much has been happening, pretty lame eh? I went to the river yesterday to chill out, all the japs go there on weekends for these BBQ's, bizarre bunch, they all group together under the bridge, yet if you walk 100m along the river there is no one there. So I was relaxing, drawing some picture and this dweeb comes along on his motorbike and decides he wants to practice his offroad technique on the little track there, riding back and forth. It was peaceful for a while.
Michael Palin observed the Japanese ability to fall asleep in any place at any time, and I can say this is true. The other night on the way home on the train the woman standing in front of me was fast asleep, then I sat down, after a minute a space became available next to me and she briefly woke and slumped down there. Then she went straight back to sleep and kept rocking back and forth, like falling asleep, then waking just enough to stop herself from rolling right over, she'd lean right over on me, then straighten up and start to lean on the guy next to her. I felt like I should just say she could lean on me, but I wasn't sure if this was socially acceptable, anyway, she might've started dribbling on me or something. everytime I saw her drifting towards the pole I put my hand on it to stop her hitting her head, the guy on the other side just sat there nervously trying to ignore the fact that there was a girl falling asleep on him.
Another time on was on a pretty crowded train when I noticed a standing woman leaning right over, I thought she must have lost something and was looking for it on the floor. After a while I realised she was just asleep, though she was standing upright and her head was near her feet.
Also be sure to read this link here, I never realised it happened to me. That's about it for now thankyou very much, feeling better after letting everyone know of my plight.

Oriental Passage

Because the thing which a ball appears most in Shinjuku
SUCH A THING IS.
Our supporter in this store. As for this store.
The way that a ball like the sun bursts open
is the order of this store.
Love a ball is, ORIENTAL PASSAGE

Pure gold, this was a sign outside a pachinko arcade, try if you will to make sense of it, I don't think it would even mean anything transalted to Japanese. The best bit is that some of the sentences aren't even sentences. For those that don't know, pachinko is this incredibly exciting gambling game were you buy a bucket of balls and put them into a machine, then get to spned the next few hours watching them drop through a bunch of little pins and platforms, at the end if the ball lands in one spot you win, if not, you don't. Sounds exciting?? I know, I get excited just thinking about it. To think how lucky I was working in the nut factory watching nuts go through the machine, now I can spend all my free time staring at balls falling through slots, I see why it's a national obsession.
Anyway, the sign was one of the best things I've seen in this country. I was lucky enough to be taken to this place by Mike(on holiday from Sydney), his cousin, and her Japanese husband. In the same area there were bars and restuarants, most restuarants have plastic models outside showing the dishes they served, unfortunately we had just eaten, cause my mouth started to water when I found the restuarant that served the football sized fishhead on a plate with some salad, yummy!!! I'll have to come back to this one....
I don't wanna sound like one of those bitching foreigners, but some stuff must be laughed at. I saw in my local supermarket they sell rockmelon(canteloupe), and what a bargain, only 2000 Yen each(AU$25, NOK 125, 10 pounds), so I bought a few, been eating them for every meal.
I met a Finnish woman in Malaysia who lives here, she offered to show me around, so we met up, had a coffee and a chat. She told me how Japanese men were afraid of her, in a way I could understand, she was small, but she looked like she could rip a man's balls off in one swift motion. Though she was cool, we hung out, interesting character, problem is she's been here 5 years or so, so she pointed out all these bad things about Japan, that I hadn't noticed, like that they have a tendency to act like a bunch of robots, so after that I was sitting on the train freaking out at them all. Anyway, she was a hardcore chick. There's an american "chick" at work who took offense to me refering to her as a chick, so I asked the Finn if she found it offensive and she said she thought it was a compliment. Chicks man.
The japs can be a bit unimaginative at times, the other day I tried to get my students to think of a famous building, and we'd play a guessing game, so I gave them a minute to think of one. Then i asked if they were ready, they just sat there with blank faces, "c'mon guys, anything, any building". No, nothing, god knows how they manage to come up with all these crazy inventions.
And to end this I'll say that the weather is lovely now, nice and cool, yet not freezing.

Ouch!!! My Footneck!!

Well I'm happy now, after 3 weeks of trying to figure shit out I finally got the internet working here at home, we've had it the whole time but I couldn't open anything. I tried everything I coiuld think of plus some other shit I didn't think of, tried ringing support but it was all in Japanese. Then I remembered the 1st rule of windows; don't use windows, but if you have to- reinstall it often. Anyway, geek talk, I figured it out myself.
So, the Japanese word for foot is ashi, and the word for neck is kubi, so I smiled(well I didn't smile, I ran out down the street to tell someone, but they already knew..) when I read the word for ankle is ashikubi. The word for arse is oshiri, but luckily I haven't seen any oshirikubi in my book. There was a population census here on the weekend, some bizarre form that had to be filled out, I dunno if we did it right, they might have registered that there are 9 of us living here instead of 3, though 3 of the guys all have the same name. This old guy came round with the form, he was pretty cool, they're very humble here and polite, bowing a million times. But he couldn't speak English of course, except for "can you", then he'd point at the form and say some Japanese. He then pulled out a big piece of paper(a3) with English on it, I wrote some stuff on it and he went. There's a thing he did, and all the people in shops do it to, if you are leaving and look back they say thanks and bow, and will do it everytime you look back, no matter how far you walk away. So he kept bowing as I turned to go inside, but I looked back and of course got another bow and a thankyou.
I've still got no idea what I'm doing at my job, as far as I can figure I'm paid to hang out with these folks. I might have written about this before, the voice class is like a casual class where they get to just talk. Everytime I'm in there I ask why don't they just go to a bar and hassle some foreigner, but they'd rather pay to talk to me, I always feel like I'm ripping them off....
I feel like I should write something worthwhile, but I guess the footneck is the best bit of literature today, some folks think what I write is funny, others say it's good writing, this puts pressure on me to write something half decent and not the usual dribble I spiel out here. I'm no writer, guess it's not as bad as a friend of mines blog about taking turds in central america, I try to refrain from turdtalk here. Oh well, trynna figure out how to get my photo's up here, soon.