Rambler

I guess it was more of a dilemma than a predicament, but I handed in my resignation today, so the wheels are in motion, guess I'm heading back to Europe, most probably Denmark. Since no one bothered reacting to my post of the situation, I had to do it by my own hand, hope it turns out well. Felt kind of weird doing all the paperwork, but I was in the corner, it was now or never. There's still the option to withdraw the resignation, guess that after they do fuck all in my company to make you feel appreciated they hold that last option knowing that the employee is kind of important to the running of the business. So, leaving Japan, this is a hard choice, I want to stay and I want to go, but you can't have both. Guess I fear that I'll never return here, everywhere I go has good points and bad points, I wish I could collect all the good points and make my own city.
I went to see some bands on Sunday again, Clisms again, and the madman from Oshiripenpens in his own band, pretty cool. It's this kind of stuff that makes me want to stay here, it's a taste of what real Japan is, we were the only gaijin there, none of this pissy stuff that everyone else goes to, stupid foreigner parties and the like. It's a different side of it, not tourist stuff either, I guess this kind of thing exists everywhere, the underground subculture, but it's always hard to find, especially in Japan where everything is hard to find, but when you do track the cool stuff down it's very satisfying. Anyway, stfu.
The only other news is that I'm going back to Australia in 10 days, and it'll be my birthday on the 19th, 1 and a half score years, unbelievable. So there's a party in Newcastle on that day, at 3pm at the Oriental Hotel in Cooks Hill for all those who don't know, I'll be arriving by helicopter. It's a BBQ too, so bring meat, or nutmeat if you don't like real meat but enjoy the flavour of some weird shit that tastes remotely like meat. Amazing that this post is only 6 days behind the last, that ought to do it though.

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So here it is, this one might be kind of long, so you better hold on, I'm dividing it into 3 parts for ease of reading.

1. The Visit.
My brother Toby came to visit, I guess it was 2 weeks ago, this blog is not exactly chronological, but it was after the police man story. Nothing unusual, just it was Toby's first real adventure into the outside world. We basically hung around Tokyo, there's enough to do here in a week. Checked out some temples, at this point might I add that the touch pad thing on a laptop can be as annoying as fuck when you are trying to type. Anyway, yes, temples, it doesn't take long to get sick of them, all basically the same, old thing with some monks or something thrown in as decorations, most of them aren't really that old, usually reconstructions after they were blown up or fell down. We also did a bit of a trek to the Tannzawa mountains again, this time to Oyama, which was kind of easier to find, I knew we had to get a bus from the train station, but which bus I didn't know, luckily there was a map in the bank window near the station, so I managed to crack the code again. This mountain was more popular, as it included a cable car, but we wanted to walk it. There are a lot of a shrines and temples on the way up, and a shop at the top of the cable car line(which is only halfway up the mountain), which had aggressive owners, trying to strong arm us into an ice cream, or drink, or anything. Further up we ran into many older Japanese hikers, I'm always astounded by people who go hiking, they take it so seriously, with the special shoes and system pants that can be reconstructed into a small house or an enclosure for wild animals, we just had jeans on, so I guess they were worried when they saw that it was 2.15 and we were only halfway up. They were giving us advice, I didn't get it all, just something about 3.5 hours, I assured them we would be ok, because I had my light also, then we continued up. These mountains can be tough, and in true Toby style, there was little jubilation when we reached the top, just some grunts and moans. We hung out up there for a while, there was a temple there, and of course a shop next to it, behind the temple there was what looked like some kind of space station, like the thing in Return of the Jedi that projects the force field around the Deathstar. The view was quite spectacular, grey in every direction, but after a while the clouds cleared slightly and we saw Mount Fuji in the distance, poking up through the clouds, then after a while more clouds cleared and we saw the real Mount Fuji in the distance, poking up through the clouds and realised the first one was a small mountain not very far away. I was also excited to see Mount Sannoto across the valley, I could even make out the cabin on top that I was outside. Then the clouds moved back in and we decided to head back down. Funny how you thing it's only a 10 minute walk back to the bottom, but it ends up being about 2 hours, almost as hard as going up. It's about a 900 metre descent, which is like a straight fall broken up into around 2500 smaller falls, it still takes it's toll. My ankle started hurting, but when I got home I found out it was just my shoe that must've been pressing against a nerve, 'cause once it was off the pain was gone.
Enough with these lame mountain tales, the week ended with a concert by my favourite Japanese band, Clisms, they rule, just the perfect mix of madness and musical talent, and now we are friends with them, official groupie status, we get to have a half baked conversation after the show mixing shit English with shit Japanese. But they are cool, the cool thing about liking unknown bands is that you can talk to them after, I like it. Then we got up early the next day and put Toby on a plane to Thailand, good luck. The rest is his story.

2. More Goddamn Mountains.
Yes, I'm sorry, but we went back to Sannoto on Thursday, this time with Enagi, he said he wanted to push it to the limit, he wanted to go to Fuji, but I said fuck that, you wanna walk with 5000 other bastards, or just 1? When we arrived at the bottom he was a big man, saying he'll take it in 10 minutes...haha. That was just the first little bit, by the time we were halfway up I had to carry him over my shoulder, but he was still a big man, so I left him to crawl on his own, and met him at the top a few hours later. There might be some slight exaggeration there, but the next bit is true. The good bit, suddenly I noticed an odd coloured thing on the edge of my peripheral vision, it was a deer, I thought it was dead, but then I realised it was trying to hide behind some logs. As we approached we saw it was stuck, it's antler were tangled in a kind of net fence thing, probably put there to stop deer, looked like it kind of worked. It's antler were small, only 15cm long or so, they were all swollen and red, guess the blood had been cut off by the rope, or he'd been rubbing them on the log, trying to get the rope off, both I think. In true Steve Urwin style I took out my little knife and went closer, Enagi was warning me to be careful, New Yorkers, they haven't ever seen any wild animals. His fear made me kind of edgy, so I gave him a big stick and told him to stay behind me a hit it if it started attacking. I cut one side of the fence which enabled it run back and forth in an arc, then it got to a tree and couldn't go any further. I don't know why I was afraid cause it wasn't that big, but Enagi was right about the ticks and the Lyme disease bit. We could see it had eaten all the grass around the area it was sitting, so I guess it had been there a while. I cut the other part of the ropes and the beast was released, first thing it did was start eating grass, but there was still a 50cm log tied to it's head, I figured now I should've cut this bit of first, because now I couldn't get close to it again. As it tried to run away it went straight back into the fence, yet even with a log attached to it's head it managed to fall through a hole in the fence and run off down the hill, I tried to follow it a bit but it was gone. Good luck wood head.
Enagi had two firsts on this adventure, his first leech, and his first time drinking from a river. He freaked out a bit about the leach, started having that kind of paranoia, saying he could feel something on his back, but it was his bag. I'd rather not know if I had a leach, so I didn't check, they are disgusting molluscs, but they don't hurt. I told him to think of it as donating to the forest, his blood would feed the leach that would feed a bird or something, real charity. On the way down we took a different route, I was hoping to get back to Oyama, but the time estimates I got from my hand drawn copy of a map I'd photographed last time were a bit shorter than reality. A few hundred metres below us was Ninoto, the little brother of Sannoto(san being three and ni two, dunno where ichi is though), below that there was a real road with cars and all, which we had to follow for a few kilometres. Then we came to the pass, and a fork, we could take the real road or a trail that we hoped would take us towards the train cause it was getting late. So we flipped a coin to decide, and we got the trail, which turned out later to be good, because I looked at a map and saw the road was way longer, the trail was nice as well, like something from Lord of the Rings, carved onto the face of a steep mountain. After a while we came to a river, which was good, because we'd drunk all our water and I was dying of thirst, the water was good here too, very clear and pure, tasted like the stuff you buy in the shop. At this point the path turned into a concrete road and in a few minutes we were at a house, it was covered in mould, which is the price you pay for living next to a river in a forest in Japan. Then we found the bus stop and that's the end of it.

3. The Predicament.
I found out on Saturday that my branch is closing down, just my branch. Of course no one bothered to tell us, just a student who pointed to a sign in Japanese and told me it was over. That doesn't really bother me, but I wonder where I'll be sent. I've been tossing the coin now about what to do with the future, my year is up soon, amazing how fast it's gone, is this what being an adult is, am I one? The inquisitiveness of being a child is gone, so now everyday just flies by and then you die. I remember at school even a 10 week term took forever, once I had a piece of paper on which I crossed everyday off until the end of term, until the last week when I wrote a new list which was based on hours, only 97 hours left. That was boarding school though, which was like a gulag for teenagers, the gloomy depressed feeling I had at the start of each term was pretty cool, best thing I learnt there was how to put up with bullshit and stay sane. Anyway, the predicament, what to do? Do I stay in Japan or move on? My plan of course is to head back to Europe, my dream is to take the Trans-Siberian railway, but maybe it's too hard to realise right now. Every time I think I've figured it out I get second thoughts, weighing up the pros and cons-
Pros- Europe is cooler than Japan, both literally and otherwise; I won't have to catch this damn train to work anymore; I get to see all those bastards I left behind in Norway who haven't bothered coming to visit me; I don't have to work for this backwards company anymore, I am sick to death of the stupid textbook we use; Maybe I could even take the railway; or Sonja wants to take the van and drive around Croatia and Slovenia for a few weeks(I know, it doesn't sound very inviting).
Cons- No snowboarding, I just learnt it here, but it's fun, and cheap here; I don't get to see my favourite Japanese bands, Clisms and Ni-Hao; the food here is pretty good, and relatively cheap also; I also would like to get better at Japanese, but maybe at this rate I need another thousand years; I also have a few friends here, although no Japanese friends, which makes me feel like a bit of an idiot(the language and culture barrier is hard to break through, it also doesn't help that it's against the rules to socialise with students, the only Japanese people I really get to meet.); Maybe I'll end up in another dead end job in Europe, like delivering newspapers with a bunch of third world refugees(sorry guys, one of them was a doctor from China, earning more in a week delivering Newspapers in Oslo than he earnt in a month in China).
I guess I was scared of leaving Norway a few years ago, funny how I settle into a place, maybe it's comfort and familiarity, things I love and loathe. Maybe it's part of the human thing again, you get used to a situation, even though you don't really like it, it's better than the scary unknown, so we dig in to our ruts further. Somedays I walk around and see all these people and think "that's it, I'm going for sure", but then I see something cool that makes me think I should stay longer. I'm definitely going there, the question is just when, do I go soon, or stay 6 more months, I usually make the decision the day before I move, but this one's a bit bigger, needs some planning.

Well, that's it, I actually spent some time on this, rewrote a few bits, so there's no excuse if it's boring. Enjoy.