No Job, No Apartment.
Day 4:

Unbelievable. I spent most of November and December watching my sanity fray as I waited for responses in a job and apartment hunt. But now that I'm actually unemployed and it's too late to avoid any more massive expenses suddenly they're knocking down my metaphoric door.

Between three companies asking for sample lesson plans or personal statements and some dickweed realtor calling me back about a vacancy, I may actually be able to get a new job and a place to live.

Everything's coming up Milhouse!

Stuff about someone other than me!

The Japanese Imperial family, which is constitutionally incapable of anything more than merely symbolic functions, is currently being headed by an Emperor who recently had prostate surgery. While he is still in rehab, there is the very real possibility that the operation has made him sexually, as well as politically, impotent. Coming on the heels of fan-favorite sumo wrestler Takanohana's injury-forced retirement, a year in which two members of parliament were arrested while in office, a 12-year economic recession, and the continued inability of the Japanese Self-Defense Force to produce one viable giant fighting robot, these have not been great days for Japan's self-image.

No Job, No Apartment.
Day 2:

Got my last paycheck. I rather cleverly chose to take my contract completion bonus, which was a plane ticket home, in the form of cash. So now I have enough money to support myself for another month or so while I look for lodging.

Odds are I'll have to take a room in a gaijin-house. It's a largish sort of house or smallish apartment complex that rents out individual rooms, usually to foreign types like myself. It'll be too expensive for what I'll get, but still be a damn sight cheaper than anything else available in Toyko.

And here I thought I was finished with that whole roommates thing. Ah hell.

Uh, wait. I meant to say: "Ah well."

No... I was right the first time.

No Job, No Apartment.
Day 0:

Brief misunderstanding at work concerning my final days. I was under the impression that I would finish my last day on Wednesday, and on Thursday morning I would pay the last gas and electric bill, pick up the last of the bags I hadn't already moved, and give the key to the new teacher.

Which was essentially correct except for one fact my manager told our good old head teacher, Miho, but that she neglected to tell me until after she scheduled my final apartment check for the night after work on Wednesday: I wouldn't get my final paycheck until the next business day that I could meet the manager at work after Miho completed my final apartment check. And the manager's day off was Thursday. And my regular payday is on the 25th anyway, so funds would naturally be low anyway.

Fortunately, my manager, who is the single best boss I've ever had , foresaw this problem and advanced me a small loan to cover my ass.

Sumiyo, thank you.

Anyhow, that brings us up to the end of the day, at 11:00 pm, when I got my final apartment check. And the list of things that needed to be corrected, done over, and additionally fixed up to make sure that the place would generally be in better condition than when I arrived. All by 10:00 am.

[11 hours of cleaning, packing and dealing-with-cab-drivers-who-couldn't-understand-my-pronunciation-of-"right"-in-Japanese later...]

The new teacher finally showed up. Before I could give her the list of instructions I've written on how to use everything in the apartment, Miho asked me to tell her how to use everything in the apartment.

Again.

So we started with the closest item: the water heater. But after the beginning the instructions on how to use the oil heater (item 2 on the list of things she'd need to know), I was struck by the realization that the new teacher didn't seem to be so hot at dealing with the unfamiliar. After watching her try her first day of teaching, and now her attempts to understand the intricacies of lighting a wick with a lighter, I came to the conclusion that her primary response to the unfamiliar was to whine. Which she would continue to do, possibly until someone else helped, consoled or hit her.

After much repeating myself I finally got the OK from Miho, gave up my key, and moved out completely.

No Job, No Apartment.
Day 1:

Woke up on my friend's floor. Drank gin for breakfast. Looking for apartments in Tokyo.

Optimistic about future.

Two days left until I have no job and no apartment.

No one ever imagines that there are homeless people in Japan, but they do exist.

Maybe in another day or two, there'll be one more of them.

I've been looking for a job for, like, six months. My company told me in June that they weren't gonna renew my contract, but they wouldn't tell me why, and that they still wanted my to do my best for Goshima-Shibucho and the company's bottom line.

So I started checking out the other English conversation schools in the area (the area being Japan). Most of them said that they tend to hire with a two month turnaround, so to check back two months before my contract ended. That takes us from July to about December.

In December I find out that most of these schools are going to postpone all their new hiring until after the new year. Which means I had about a two week window in which to find a job and a new apartment before my current job and apartment are turned over to my replacement.

Which brings us to the present. I've spent over nine hours riding trains today, been to one interview in Nagano (that place where they had the winter Olympics not so long ago) and have just arrived in Shibuya, the part of Tokyo that looks most like Blade Runner, to find that I have forgotten my map to tomorrow's interview. So I strolled around until I could find a Kinko's, printed out the map, and decided to take a minute to tell you all what I've been doing. After this I'll eat some takoyaki from a vendor's cart on the street, and find a capsule hotel so I can rent a 2 meter tube to sleep in for the night. And tomorrow, I'll act like I'm really interested in relocating to Tokyo to do essentially the same job I'm doing now, but for slightly less pay and a much smaller apartment. Whee!

What a fan-fucking-tastic life this is, huh?

What am I thinking about these days?

In 14 days I will be unemployed and homeless.

In Japan.

There oughta be some kind of joke here, but I can't think of anything funny.

Well, there is this: In LA, when I had shitty jobs that I intentionally slacked at, I could keep them for as long as I wanted. This year I had a good job that I liked and tried to follow the rules for. And I got released.

It's funny. But not ha-ha funny.

The Japanese Language Proficiency Test

or

Another Goddamnned Learning Experience

a Christ-mass storie to warme the Heart... Or Rile the humoures

Part I: The Set-up

This story starts on November 30. As I was planning on going to Nagoya to take a Japanese test on Sunday, December 1, my only plan on Saturday night was to leave work quickly and go to bed early, so I could catch the 6:11 train to make the test by 9:30.

But...with 10 minutes to go before quitting time on Saturday, the head teacher called me into her room for a conference. She wanted to know why I was only getting to work 5 minutes early instead of 15. I explained to her my position of preparing my lessons in advance the night before
and my inability to see the value in making any effort for the head office that would not directly benefit the students, since I've known since June that they weren't renewing my contract and since August that there was no chance to change their minds. Generally, I've been dealing with this bitch of a situation by focusing on the students and trying to forget my urges to plot revenge or just stop going to work. But good old Miho reminded me of how much the students like me, and how much my coworkers like me, and how much they all depend on me since more than half of the staff has been there for less than one month. (No, I don't know how they say "guilt trip" in Japanese, but it's clear they're familiar with the concept.)

Anyway, after 40 minutes of making sympathetic noises alternated with requests to keep working harder, helping the new people, and filling out all the paperwork for the new classes that will start two months after I leave, Miho finally let me go for the evening. I packed my bag, remembered my wallet and phone, and went home for the night. I studied for about 10 minutes before succumbing to a stress headache and going to sleep.

I woke up instantly at 5:20 the next morning with a clear head and one stark realization: I had left my test voucher, without which I WOULD NOT BE ADMITTED, in my journal, with the directions, on my desk at work.

Part II: The Problem

Quickly reviewing my options and swallowing the bitter dregs of my pride, I called my long-suffering and too-kind manager at 5:30 AM to plead for help. To her credit, she not only woke up and answered the phone, but chose to help me at that hour by calling the building security company to let me in.

After all the phone calls were made I took a quick jog downtown (time till last train: 35 min...) to meet the man in charge of security.

All 19 years and 140 pounds of him.

He quickly gathered that I was the foreigner he was supposed to meet (a keen deduction, given that I was the only person on the street) and got out of his car and let me in the building. We went upstairs to the Aeon office where we discovered that neither he nor I was the manager of Aeon. That was a problem only because the manager is the only one with a key to the office door.

So I was still unable to get that one piece of paper I had been told was essential to my taking the test, and now I only had twenty-eight minutes to get in and out of the building, to the station, buy a ticket and get on the train. It was then that I remembered that there was a window in the copy room that opened onto the roof of the next building. If that window was unlocked, it would be a simple matter to climb in and get my card. So I went to the roof, opened the door, and discovered that the rooftop I was on was only around twenty feet above the part of the roof I needed to be on. So I decided to dangle off the edge of the roof and drop down.

Part III: Breaking and Entering... Or maybe just breaking.

I suppose at this point I ought to remind you that this test was only offered once a year in Japan and once a year in the US, on the same day. If I missed this test, my next chance to take it would be in twelve months. Additionally, I was in the process of trying to apply for new jobs in Japan, and figured that some certification of my Japanese ability, no matter how low, would be better than nothing at all. And all that was going to be a moot point in another twenty-six minutes.

It's a funny thing about perception. When I stood across the street and looked over, the two roof levels didn't seem so far apart. When I was climbing the stairs from the fifth floor to the roof, it didn't seem so far. Even when I was looking over the edge and trying to find a ladder or a rope or a sturdy looking drainpipe, it didn't seem that far. But once I actually climbed over the edge and lowered myself as far as I could by dangling from my hands, all I could think about was how easy it would be to break my ankle again, the two support screws already embedded in my leg bone notwithstanding. Fortunately, just as I was preparing to drop, the ever helpful security guard came back up to the roof and looked over just in time to offer me an incredibly helpful question:

"Hora, daijoubu desu ka? Abunai?"

Exactly the question a person wants to answer when he's literally dangling by his fingertips.

Despite the guard's assistance, I did manage to drop down and tuck and roll. I'd made it down with no problems beyond a few scrapes and a lightly sprained wrist (which I wouldn't realize until later), and scrambled over to the copy room window.

Which was locked.

So now I was on the roof of the fourth floor of a building I could not get into which had a ladder that only went down to the third floor roof, and only twenty-two minutes until the train left.

I suppose I'm lucky that the part of downtown that I work in has a bunch of those buildings put up in the 1960s in a very limited amount of space. It was pretty easy to creep over a fence, down a drainpipe, along a balcony and down an awning to the street.

And it was from the street, looking up at my classroom window that I remembered something: I almost never remember to lock the window of my classroom despite repeated requests, notes and reminders to do so. Assuming I remained true to forgetful form, I should have been able to simply slide my window open, walk into my room and get the form, then run down to the train station with seven or eight minutes to spare.

All I had to do was climb up to a window that faced the street, not a rooftop.

There is a sign just under my window that functions as something of a ledge. And a maintenance ladder that runs up the outside edge of the building from the second floor to the sixth.

I suppose there are really only two details about my climb that're worth recounting.

One: I remembered to lock my window after all.
Two: The security guard was no more helpful from the street than he was from the ledge.

"Oi oi, sugoiii abunei da yo..."

All told I managed to get to within two yards of my voucher, but that wasn't quite close enough. Admittedly it was from the wrong side of a fifth floor window, so I guess that oughta count for something. But in the end I couldn't get in the room, I wasn't able get my voucher and I didn't take the test.

So I thanked the guard, apologized for his trouble, and went home. Just in time to see the sun rising. I went home, completely defeated. I couldn't get into the building. I couldn't get my test voucher. I couldn't take the test. I couldn't get my $50 test application fee back. And I sprained my wrist, which swelled up pretty good for a couple of days.

That night, when all the other people who had gone to take the test came back with their reports on how difficult it was, I got the final insult, without which the previous injury would not have been complete.

They didn't even bother checking the vouchers at the test site.

Apparently, one foreigner is as good as another, and it didn't really matter if you tried to take the test with or without proper documentation.

...

You know how when things go badly, and there's really no upside to the final results, people always tell you "well, I guess this is a learning experience, huh?" I've had people tell me that after car accidents, having to work at shitty jobs, getting dumped on Christmas eve, and tearing the hell out of my leg falling through a window.

Turns out there's a similar phrase in Japanese that literally translates as "you have become a lesson to be learned from."

I think I've heard that more than enough for one lifetime. I'm sick of learning this way. And I'm really sick of other people learning from me this way. I'd really like to learn something from a resounding success for a change.

And honestly, what the hell did I really learn from all of this?

1. There's lots of ways to not get into a building.
2. Always following the rules gets you dick.
3. If you have a halfway interesting story that you're going to have to tell more than once, make sure you tell it to a group first, otherwise that one person is going to tell everyone they meet before you do, effectively defusing your ability to vent and they'll get the details wrong to boot.

The End.

Next Time: How I went from worrying about how to chat up three girls to wondering about the extent to which each of them thinks less of me than your average thesaurus.

Merry god damn Christmas.

Busy.

Really fucking busy.

If I ever get free time, I'll tell you about taking tests, teenage security guards, misread signals from the opposite sex, and what Spider-man's got that I don't.

It's fall here. Which means its been cold (around 40 degrees F) and has been raining about every twenty minutes.

The girls have started wearing sweaters and coats and gloves and scarves and hats. But, oddly enough, have not stopped wearing skirts that stop around halfway between knee and thigh. Not that I'm complaining, but it seems like it'd be a little... drafty.

Anyway, I'm too chilly to get my blood boiling over Bush or commercialism or any of the other things that I'd normally be ranting about. So here's a short story about Nara, a place I visited when it was a lot warmer.

Next time: International communication and giving people the finger.