"Look kids, Big Ben, Parliment!"

I went to London last week. Because, you know, when you're not really getting paid for a month, the best thing to do is go on a vacation out of the country to a place where a flat, room-temperature beer will set you back $7.50. But it's been a hell of a lot of fun being here.

In all honesty, there's something very relaxing about being a foreigner in London as opposed to Japan. It seems unfortunate that it makes sense to me in this way, but it's got a lot to do with race. In Tokyo, the percentage of the population that is "not of Japanese ancestry1" is something like .5%, and that number is primarily made up of people from China, Korea, and other nearby Asian countries. Which means a person like me, who doesn't really have any of the outward expressions of the stereotypical Asian phenotype, tends to stand out. And be stared at. And avoided on trains with an expression of mild fear. Now, I know that's to be expected. Most folks fear what they don't understand, and you can't really understand something if you've only got a 1 in 200 chance of meeting it.

But it gets a little tiresome being something that people go out of their way not to look at, unless they think you can't see them or they're really drunk or something.

But in London there's enough brown people2 of all shades and shapes for one more not to be a novelty. Here it's possible to be foreign without being a freak. And that almost makes the cramped subways, dangerous buses, stinking sewers, bad television and warm, flat beer seem charming.

But not the mushy peas. There's only so much a reasonable man3 can overlook.

1 Which is a backwards way of saying "foreigners what wasn't born there, and who also thems that was was born there, but whose parents or granparents wasn't Japanese but were Korean or something else that ain't Japanese and therefore aren't like natives." 'Cause your family might have been in Japan since the 1800s, but if you aren't listed in a Japanese family registry as Japanese, you simply aren't counted.

2 When I say "brown people," I just mean people who have different combinations of melanin in their skins from the Caucasian standard. So it's everyone except the honkies, haystacks, Mr. Charlies, white devils, gwei-lo, haoles, pinko-greys and WASPs. Funny. Saying all that didn't make me feel any better.

3 "Reasonable" being a guy who would footnote his otherwise casual and off-the-cuff comments. Riiiiight.

That's it? 100 posts? Really?

Kinda sad, huh? Two and a half years, and I'm just getting to 100. Given my recent rate, I must've been pretty serious about this when I started. Of course, some of the things I really wanted to remember and tell you about, you know, waaaay back in 2002, may be starting to lose their luster.

Perhaps it's time to try something new. What'd John Cleese say in that Monty Python sketch when he was trying to rob a bank but'd gone into a lingerie store instead? "Adopt, adapt, improve." So, er, gimme some bras and a couple of thongs.

No, not really. But it is time to do something besides bitch about, well, damn near everything. Maybe a new job? Or a new hobby? Hell, maybe I should update the layout and re-name this page. Any suggestions?
Last time "Tokyo Vigilante #1" was the only suggestion I got. By the way, thanks Warren.

Has it been two months already?

I've heard that black-hole type gravity and near-light speeds can bend time. Having neither Stephen Hawking's imagination, Albert Einstein's insight, nor a betamax on which to play my copy of The Black Hole, I can only speculate. However, I can say that Tokyo's heat, humidity, and mind-crushing mob mentality can also make time move slower in some places.

Imagine getting on a train car with about fifty more people than the recommended maximum capacity, then stopping in the sun between stations while something that is never fully identified holds up traffic. Suicide? Earthquake? Ninjas fighting demons? You don't need to know. You can just wait there while the air conditioning, which runs the whole time the train is running, doesn't run. Finally get to the station, your suit is now re-pressed with a much more interesting series of batik-inspired patterns, and you can try to get through the 90 degree, 80% humidity to your office. Where your dickweed manager is bitching out someone else for changing clothes at work.

Sorry. It's summer vacation for elementary schools here, which means that I have almost 6 weeks off. Imagine, six whole weeks off... no lesson preparation, no stupid meetings to verify my lesson preparation for the next week, no questions about how tall I am, and no pay at all. So I gotta get back to doing the conversation school again. Which wouldn't be so bad except they neglected to input my schedule today. Which means I'm out my transportation fee, the day's projected earnings and I'll have to get this shirt laundered after wearing it on the train. Hoo-hah. If it wasn't for my brother's recent visit or getting to see my girlfriend again recently, I'd be one deeply unhappy young man.

Not that I'm fixing to go all Columbine-post-office-John-Hickley out here.

Besides, these kids are just as messed up as kids anywhere else.

No. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part.

The question is what? By who?




And to whom?

Spectator sports?

Been busy, as usual. Nothing really special to report lately, beyond some standard interpersonal drama that I was only tangentially related to.

I did go to Gifu prefecture (about 2 1/2 hours west of Tokyo by bullet train) last weekend to visit a friend and see the traditional art/industry of Cormorant fishing. As a UNESCO-recognized "indigenous cultural treasure," it's not a bad way to spend an evening drinking beer with your friends. The whole point is supposed to be using these half tame water birds (called "Cormorants") on leashes and choke-chains to catch little sweetfish (called "ayu") by torchlight. Really, few things are as absurdly relaxing as taking an evening cruise on a warm summer night, drinking and eating with your friends, and watching a man in a grass skirt force a riverbird to cough up a fistfull of live fish by the light of a roaring wood fire suspended in an iron basket from the prow of a 18-foot boat.

Definite improvement in language use...

About five months ago, one of my private students told me she wanted to meet after work in Kawagoe to have the lesson over dinner. I was thinking "she's already paid my trainfare to Wakaba, so it'll save me 15 minutes riding."

So she suggested an izakaya, because she'd said she liked drinking. I figure teaching buzzed has got to be easier than teaching hungover, so we got some drinks.

No matter what tack to begin the lesson I tried, she was fidgety and distracted. And finally when we got to "what are your plans for the new wear?" she chugged down her drink, looked me in the eye and said "Maybe, I'm wanting to stop taking the lessons."

Yeah, she invited me out to a "you're dumped"dinner. She'd even practiced an "it's not you it's me" speech in English. I was so proud of her. Last year she was struggling with simple past. But she managed "If my life has changes, I'll call you maybe."

For $500: "Commodore Perry landed there and introduced Japan to American diplomacy over the barrels of some very large cannons."

So after, like, eleven months of just skulking around the Tokyo-Saitama Metroplex, suddenly I've gone to Yamanashi, Kagoshima, and now Shimoda. All within, like, a month.

Shimoda's nice, by the way. But don't let an overly genki Japanese student plan the trip for you and your coworkers. Otherwise you'll wind up with both karaoke and Japan's fifth most well-attended dolphin show on your itinerary.

By the way, the answer is "What is Shimoda, Japan?" I'll take "Strange Breakfast Fishy Stuff" for $200, Alex.

I have new respect for Karla

Last time I had checked in with y'all was a couple weeks ago, and I was (in case you can't recall or can't be bothered to read the previous post) complaing about the prospect of having to go and teach elementary school. Most of my experience up to now has been in teaching students with more years having had mastered toilet training than not. But as it turns out the kids are the least of my complaints.

And given that most of them are right around crotch height and fairly reckless with other people's anatomy, that's saying a lot.

Nah, what's really got my blood up is that I'm being shuffled around between 6 elementary schools. Since I've been reassigned to Chiyoda ward, a school disctrict that's been experimenting with english education in elementary schools for about three years now.

Which is all well and good, but since I'm spending one week out of six in each school, and forty minutes per week with each class, I'll see each kid about five times in a year. Just the thing for building a rapport with the little crumb-catchers. No, seriously. In general, those kids are so frigging cute I wanna say something less than sarcastic about them.

But I can't. So I'll include a link to some W.C. Fields quotes about children instead. Here.

Where was I? Oh yeah. The kids are fine, but I have to change schools every damn week. And since the schools want to get maximum use out of their new English machine (that'd be yours truly), I'm generally teaching 4 to 6 periods a day, out of a maximum of six possible periods.

Once again, I'm tired.

I have no idea how this particular role model has done it day in and day out for the last year and change. I fully expect a return to binge drinking and howling at strangers who talk in movies for myself.

Okay. That's enough self pity. Take a look at these instead...
Florida scholars?
Osaka teacher?
Japanese students make comics in English

Call Tech Support!

Damnnation, I need to get my computer fixed. It�s not like I�ve even got an internet hook up in my apartment, but it�s really not worth going all the way to the internet caf� to type these up. Not that I don�t value my correspondence with you all. It�s just, er, there�s other things I�m choosing to spend my time on these days. Like A People� s History of the United States by Howard Zinn. Or my search for the best ramen in Ikebukuro. (Can�t read it? Too bad. Me neither. Ha ha ha.) Or seeing a young woman of singular attraction.
Hoo-hah!

I must be hallucinating or something...

My new supervisor is an Alaska-born-1/5-Chippewa/Cree-Native-American-mix named "Angus" who looks EXACTLY like Samwise Gamgee from Lord of The Rings. And he was sitting opposite a Japanese accountant who looked like a criminally deranged John Malkovitch.

There's a lot of weird looking people working in education here.

Depth or Surface Area?

One thing that I have come to understand about Japan is that it's modern society was forcibly bent into shape by the triumphant US Army circa 1947. There's 2300 years of history and tradition here, but that's become the base material for the bastard child of pre-cold war, market-based-democracy that has become the setting for life here.

"What the hell does that have to do with you?" you may ask. As an assistant teacher hired by a private company and subcontracted out to work at public junior high schools, for me it may as well be the weather to a farmer or astroturf to a pro ball player.

The board of education chooses which company to lease foreign ALTs based on a number of criteria: availabilty, experience, recommendation, staff profiles,

money

and how chummy you are with the board of directors.

As it turned out, my current posting was due to a contract that was recently underbid by a company that specializes in 6-8 person lessons for adults. To supply ALTs for Junior high kids. In classes of 36-42. This company wanted the prestige of supplying ALTs to Saitama prefecture, so they bid below the cost of teacher salaries.

So next month I get to look for another job, or else trust my current bosses to relocate me. Which they claim to be able to do.

In Elementary school and kindergarden.

Realize that I am a 6'4" man with a sense of humor best described as "dark." "twisted" or "malicious." And I will be expected to teach English to tiny humans who can not yet speak their own language.

And how did this come to pass? An inefficient beauracracy installed by an inattentive electorate to try and sort out an atavistic "free market" in which the rules are set by people who make their living bending the law into worse shapes than a Thai sex performer and are then rewarded for squeezing a profit out of any public organ they can get a clammy, scabies ridden hand around.

But maybe I'm overreacting. Maybe I'll have a great time teaching animal names and potty training. And maybe companies like AEON, Nova and Interac are actually interested in the education of children.

And maybe I shouldn't read so much Hunter S. Thompson when I'm already casting around for a way to describe an ugly situation.