Recently in Away Category

Snow is falling like someone is shaking out the static from their etherial television. It doesnt snow so much in the Kansai area and the winter has been warmer than usual this year, so I've been a bit glum about not seeing any, not even during the New Year season in Seoul. Finally, it is snowing; not much really, but enough to make even the grubby grey school building seem vibrant in contrast to the speckled air. I've just come inside from marvelling at it. There was more snow last year, but my wonder hasn't subsided. The teachers and students laugh at the silly foreigner's fascination, but everyone has some hue of a smile on their face. Work has stopped for a moment and everyone is transfixed by the chaotic white tumble. I can't help but feel like a child with gibbering glee...
The type click paper shuffle printer whir telephone ring work mutterings start up again. Snow has stopped falling.

There's a little slip of paper in my desk drawer that is asking me if I'm going to sit here for another year or leave it all behind. I was given a similar piece of paper about two months ago, but that one had a "Maybe" option on it. This one is a lot more passive-aggressive about its question. My deadline is about two days away and while, if I was asked two months ago, my heart was set on coming home, I found that over the last two weeks, I've been torn up by the question. I've spoken with the family and have been weighing every option and reason that I can think of only to discover that poking myself in the eye is a lot more fun than making a decision. I guess that life decision aren't something I have an aptitude for.

January has been a turn around from 2006b. After the time I spent with Alex, Juliette and Jackson in Seoul, I've felt like living again. Sure, there are the things which have happened that I can't forget nor forgive myself for, memories that have branded me from optical nerve to the deeper cortices of my skull, but I've stopped being near obsessively anxious about what certain people thought and expected of me. The lashing myself with the past has eased a bit in favour of the present, but before I can get even a decent grip on that, I've got to consider the future. Damn.

One thing that is making the decision stupidly hard is how seriously, to even my own surprise, my Japanese study has become. I know that when I return I'll have to consider a more profitable and sustainable career than speaking another language or making coffee again, but while I'm here I'm swimming in the everyday learning opportunities, which is obviously something that isn't as available anywhere else. I'm making progress and making mistakes, but I am improving. Regardless of that though, I do miss my family badly and my friends of course, all of who may not be back home if I stay even longer. That is, of course, to be expected. The scariest part is how old I will be if I do stay. It's all crazy I tells ya! I've been waking up in the morning thinking that I going to go home and then ending each day wanting to stay. I swear my neurological functions are scattier than a gas particle's vectors.

So I've finished my one class for today, and I'm thinking and smoking and weighing pros and cons and pacing and poking myself in the eye. Two days and I need an epipany real quick. And a strong drink. And to stop ranting.

I had thought about this post, then dismissed it for being overly sentimental. It's a new trend I'm trying out, you see, not making syrupy blog posts. Still, I found a sweet spot in the mobile-phone-reception-black-hole that is my school today and spoke to my family quickly before they became too focused on their Christmas luncheon. Between the crackling signal strength and the background noises of mastication, I managed to drag myself into a far-away-from-home self pity which I'm trying not to think about too much.

Christmas over here is mostly just another Valentines-eque couples day, though there is a fair bit of Christmas present shopping all round. It's a matter of luck if you can get a Nintendo Wii or DS at the moment (literally luck - being in the right place when a shipment comes in or by entering a store's lottery for the available stock) and the department stores have been insanely full. The convenience store where I buy my cigarettes nearly every day even gave me a box of Christmas doughnuts (those lovely ladies). The family rituals are fairly absent though. I managed to be invited to a family dinner last night and ate a fantastic spread (turkey and stuffing oh my!) and managed to greet Christmas day with a decent hangover. Still, I've been thinking about family and all the extra-curricular families I've managed to be a part of. I miss them alot, even though theyve been time limited due to leases and shit working conditions. But I'd like to let some of these people know I've never forgotten. It's funny how some bonds are formed and last, even though the structure dissolves. Isn't it sublimation where a solid skips the liquid state and goes straight to gas? Sorry, I'm prevaricating...

Any casual traveler has to suffer illiteracy in the face of a non-native culture. All our little guidebooks can serve us the basic phrases to come across as charmingly stupid and still find out where the toilet is. Fortunately, the linguistic empire of English means that in some font and/or mistranslation, lots of basic information loiters about for consumption by the Western traveler making use of their first world affluence. While the most amusing export of Japan is its giddy misapplication of English grammar in advertising, notices, captions, product branding and t-shirt designs, you can still accomplish basic shopping, navigate the trains and read high-voltage cautions in a timely fashion. Another blessing is the katakana writing system for foreign words, through which you might be able to convey a few English nouns to a local by sticking a vowel on the end of each word (observe: "a dog and a cat" becomes "a dogu ando a cato"). Still, fumbling with what scraps of English are about only takes one so far and usually with a sharp decline in dignity.

I've been slowly progressing with the language studies enough that I might be able to have a (very polite) conversation with a 3 year old if they weren't so terrified of my yellow hair. My students still get a giggle out of me trying to talk to them on the after school bus, but at least I can order them about in class in their own language. Bank and post office trips are a little less embarrassing and I cause fewer queues, which means I have fewer angry locals ready to injure me. Still, there are more than enough times when I am defeated. The most current example was last week, having contracted my own personal dose of this year's flavor of winter virus. It seems that this not so pleasant critter is on the brink of epidemia here, but I'll save my review of it for a medical journal or something.

Having spent all of the first day of my misery on the couch, I thought seeing a doctor might be a practical idea. The choices were to figure out a local G.P. or just head into the hospital, the latter seeming like the easiest idea through a fever. One taxi ride later and I swaying in front of the mini metropolis of the city hospital. I had assumed that being an institution that seems kind of essential for human health, it might be linguistically accessible, but oh no. I stumbled around for a bit, having no clue where I was meant to go. Frustration and swirling cognitive processes were unable to untangle the jumbles of kanji, and most people seemed happy enough to let me stumble about lost. In the end i just taxied back home, curled up once more and grabbed a teacher the next day to take me to a G.P. near the school. But really, if my appendix were on the brink of combusting, I might have been slightly frakked. I'll happily trade the endearingly non-sensical smoking manners ads for a few translations of where I'm meant to go to see about punctured arteries in a hospital. I've heard of good English speaking doctors in Kobe and people working their way around other medical institutions, but I7m not sure if I can contain any live threatening situations to a more major city. Even just a few hints that the reception is this way would be nice.

Anyways, I should cease my griping. I suffered, I recovered and for some reason the doctor I eventually saw decided to pump something (no idea what) into my arm intravenously and I got to explore some groggy Enlightenment while I was at it (story for another time). I think the most frustrating thing about the language experience is the times when you really do need to beg time and favours from the locals to get you though otherwise simple and mostly private moments. Frustrating, embarrassing and karmic debt enlargening. Anyways, rant over.

pretty soon the man who is paid to monitor the humidity, temperature and wind chill factor will notice the optimum nexus of these atmospheric variables and declare nabe season. now, i love a good shabu shabu, but i still call it winter.

pretty soon the final exams for the term will be marked with hands cramping up on red pens, the loose ends of classes ignored and paid leave signed off. the favoured destinations these holidays seem to be china and vietnam. i never really got on to the whole organising a holiday in a timely fashion thing. the truth is that ive been kinda flaky through november anyway.

pretty soon it'll be the third excuse for a valentine's day like celebration here. we've had the real feb 14th, then white day, and now xmas. they cant get enjoy of the cheezy romance, oh well, who cant. im working that day anyway, maybe thumb twiddling with some serious sudoku action going on. as you can tell, im not that chuffed about the idea.

still, ive got options im sitting on until they expire. the current one is loading up a backpack and taking the milk-run local trains on a special 5 day ticket to, well, where ever. i'll have a pay check, an out of date lonely planet and a whole bunch of country music on the ipod. should be an interesting contrast against the japanese backwaters. country music... the music of pain... maybe i should go to korea

Summer means rain, typhoons, chlorophyll on steroids, being super slippy all the time and prehistoric sized insects. The humidity has been falling, the backyard has been shorn, the rain less frequent, but the typhoons and insects are still shading in the last corners of summer. Ah hell, since when could seasons colour in between the lines of months anyway. In the classroom I usually use, I keep the windows open to channel whatever wind hasn't been absorbed by the other school buildings. This makes the room a quiet thoroughfare for wandering winged things, and the other day I had an enormous dragonfly crash land at the back of the class.

Out the window you can see the tightly wooded sides of the Rokko "mountain" Range (as my brother put it, they're too big to be hills yet they seem too small to be mountains), where the wild boars that raid my school at night live and where, even from a fair distance, you can see these dragonflys engaging in aerobatic tussles. This poor specimen on my floor couldn't seem to pick the open window to fly through. Occasionally it would buzz itself off the floor, smack into the glass, then try to hide behind the curtains. After class I tried opening another window (its favorite for self punishment) and it still managed to maroon itself on the floor. It would try to fly up, hit something, then land on its back, its legs not even kicking in some attempt to right itself.

This dragonfly must have thought that it was pinned to the roof, flying with no beat of its wings. How could it know up? There was no sky in the room, only carpet, ceiling. The obvious escape eluded it, even with all of my assistance. Where did the sky go mister dragonfly? The only thing left to do was scoop it up in some paper and fling it out the window. It took a few tries, but when it had a blue and bright ceiling above it, it knew exactly what it was doing. It veered off to the fleets of it comrades, diving from out of the sun on their positions.

It never even answered me. Where did the sky go mister dragonfly? Which way is the sunlight?

So I'm back in Japan, with my computer returned (thanks for cleaning my computer AppleCare!) and my pore s are all excitable in the humidity. This last fact leads me to one of those contrasts every ethnocentric human needs to make to draw borders on a map geographically, culturally, whatever. My sweat-rags are all in the wash and I ran out of tissues for towelling myself down after getting home (I'm quite unattractive after striding uphill for 15 minutes). Fortunately, my mom (bless her) threw some Kleenexes in my suitcase before I left. I havent felt such luxury for ages! They must be 12 ply! I'm not absolutely sure why (though I have some random ideas), but tissues and toilet paper are all one ply here. If you can pardon my divulging of questionable information, going to the toilet back home was a little confusing. I just dropped some ash on the floor and I can't seem to pick it up...

Now, look at my workplace. If I give the students worksheets printed on Napisan fresh A4 paper, everyone freaks out. The whitest of whites is reserved for master copies - the kids get the recycled toilet paper. Even toilets require pre-purchased paper, or they are electronic George Jetson All-In-One Machines. People may complain of the crazy amount of disposable chopsticks Japan uses, but they've got their balance figured out. I was scratching my head in Australia trying to figure out how to separate garbage in just one bin.

So, I'm wondering if a bit of austerity could be exported. Is a fluffy puppy the message to be sending for bathroom hygiene? Enough pontificating. Back to trying not to smother myself with these pillow-like tissues.