in my local convenience store was i lurking when i stumbled upon this gem of a snack.

now this was not the first time i had seen an egg salad product sitting in the unrefrigerated section of a conveninece store, but there was something about the packaging that, despite its contents, i found particularly appealing. perhaps it was the way it simply stated its belief in itself ("this egg sandwich is yummy"), the way in which it subjectively appealed to my curiosity ("let's bite and taste it"), or the fact that i had only had about ¥110 of change on me and was starving. (couldnt afford the ¥127 fried chicken). in any case, so lured was i by the inviting english, soon after i found myself at home, unwrapping my very first egg dog.


yummy indeed!

just finished a book from george r.r. martin’s a song of fire and ice series.
this by itself is neither interesting or cool, but i mention it only for the synchronicity with my own weekend of ‘fire and ice’.

fire...

as in...the arcade fire.
as in...guess who i saw in nagoya last friday night in a small club located down a back alley on top of an apartment building?
if you guessed the arcade fire your right, but that only because i told you the answer before the question. so if you didnt get it, well, i don't know what else to do.

the show was phenomenal. they had high energy from the get go, starting with the building noise-wash of ‘black mirror’ and continuing for an hour and a half through almost all of their released material. the encore included a weird but heartfelt cover of the smith’s ‘still ill’ and of course the penultimate ‘wake up;’ a song that can get even a typically reserved japanese audience to sing along. sadly, no cameras were allowed so you’ll just have to imagine me 10 feet away from the stage...high on the concert, grinning like a kid locked overnight in a toy store.

after the show i went to dinner with my boss, who i had invited along to the concert, as well as a couple other coworkers who we ran into before the show. i ended up missing the last train home and so i went to bar for a couple of late night beers and then to an internet/manga cafe where i took a little snooze before the early morning trains started running.

i made it home about 8am and slept until about 1pm when i awoke i looked out the window and saw...

ice...

ok ok , well not really ice but snow. (i had to make it fit the book series title somehow) it hardly ever snows this far south in japan, but there is was, just sitting there, the silent, cold blanket. it had come unannounced and covert. silently calling to all those who would risk frostbite or worse so that they might raise an army of three segmented ball men; an army whos faces looked to the sun as if to say ‘our mission is to march into that ball of pale yellow in the sky and extinguish it while we have this temporal advantage, so that our snowsons and snowdaughters might grow into snowadults. so that they might attend snowcollege and have snowfamilies of their own and have snow-b-que’s in their own backyards and drink snowdapop.’

sadly, it was not to be, and by the next morning only retreating vestiges of the once massive army remained. they had been wasted, emaciated, and dispersed by the unforgiving sun. maybe next year guys.

i finished off the last of my medication today, and i think i am finally recovered from my bout with the flu. its the first time i remember (much to my mother’s chagrin, im sure) ever finishing a prescription. although it took me six days instead of five because i forgot to take it a couple of times. sorry mom.

i think its interesting to note that my doctors visit and medicine combined cost a total of $35-$40. before my insurance claim. i wonder what the equivalent would cost in the states. i wont turn this into a complete criticism of the american medical practices because my statistical knowledge about it is rather incomplete, but i cant help but feeling the same treatment and care would be much, much more.

last week was setsubun. a time in japan where roasted soybeans are thrown at old men dressed as demons, and people chant ‘demons out! luck in!’.
i was not too into the festivities though. i wasnt feeling too hot...or rather, i was feeling too hot.

despite sweating all morning in the cold teachers room, coughing with violence and frequency that would cut the bark off a dozen trees, and blowing forth a mucal geyser from my nose with a regularity that would make ‘old faithful’ proud (every 12-14 minutes folks, step back mam, ok, there she blows!), it wasnt until i refused lunch that one of my bosses decided to inquire if i might not be feeling well.

denying my inclination to reply directly with a ‘shindeiruyo’ (‘im dying, you know’), i instead gave a traditional ambiguous japanese response of, ‘there is no excuse but i think the possibility exists that it might be the case that i think i have become sick.’

ok, so i wasnt quite that ambiguous, but i managed to make it known that i was indeed not feeling well and that an chance to go home or at least to the doctor would be appreciated. so, while the students ate their exorcist-themed lunches (soybeans in everything), i went to the doctor in hopes of exorcising some demons of my own. my personal chant becoming, ‘boogers out! clean air in!’

my friend ting-ting astutely suggested the evening previous that i visit a doctor. she mentioned a nearby clinic that she had gone to, and noted its cleanliness, friendliness, and professionalism. what she failed to mention was its hours of operation, so after spending a couple minutes trying to explain my situation to the nurse at nonomura clinic, she said in very kind japanese to please come back in 4 hours when the clinic was actually accepting patients.

deciding that a 4 hour wait was more than i could handle, i left nonomura clinic, vowing i would return for the treatment of a future malady. i said something like ‘i vow to return with hayfever’ or ‘i vow to return with gout’ or i might not have said anything but just vowed in my head. some details are a bit fuzzy about that fever-spiked afternoon. i do remember that it was with slight trepidation that i headed to suzuki clinic instead.

now, i had nothing against the suzuki clinic itself, but i knew the doctor didnt speak english. thats fine for the examination phase of the visit, its easy enough to understand the directions i am being given, but when it comes to the diagnosis and treatment phase its very difficult to understand everything thats going on with my body . im always afraid i am going to miss some small but important detail that could make a radical difference. like the homecoming queen with a child on graduation day because she missed the word ‘swallow’ on the directions for her birth control. on my previous visit to this clinic, it took a good 5 minutes to understand that the doctor was telling me i had to take two different medicines one time a day after dinner, not one medicine two times a day after eating rice. that kind of confusion i felt ok with, it was just a cold, but this time i was sure what i had was not a cold.

indeed, it was much worse. first the doctor told me i had influenza. that much i understood. he then showed me the results of a test he had run where a dark line clearly indicated that i was positive with test-kit disease. after saying some things i didnt understand he said ‘torifuru’ and asked me if i had heard about it on tv. i put two and two together. ‘tori’ means bird, and ‘furu’ is the japanization of the word ‘flu’. he meant the avian bird virus. my eyes went wide and i told him yes i had heard about it. i had seen it on tv. i asked him ‘arimasuka?’ (do i have it?), he said ‘aruyo’ (definitely, without question).

i was nonplussed. maybe it wasnt as terrible as the meida had made it out to be, but i couldn’t believe how he could be so flippant in telling me. he had mentioned something about medicine, and i remembered hearing that a majority of the cases are not fatal if treated in time, so i tried to remain calm and listen. surely im missing something again. as he opened a box of pills to give me it was then that i realized my mistake. i didn’t have ‘toriflu,’ he was going to give me ‘tamiflu.’ a flu medicine. i felt relieved and like a complete idiot at the same time.

he had been talking about the medicine, and due to the situational nature of japanese my question to him ended up being not ‘do i have the disease?’ but ‘do you have the medicine?’ as for the bit about seeing it on tv? well last year the ministry of health released a study about the drug that suggested it not be given to children 10-19 years old. apparently, the drug had induced window jumping hallucinations and my-body-is-a-truck-stop delusions. sorry kids 10-19, you cannot stop a truck...you have to wait until your my age. ive already been hit by a truck once here in japan....but thats another story for another time.

powertip #1:
if you are going to forge your friends' signatures to make it look like you did the practice exercise, try to use names that don't sound like factory parts.

this time of year is very busy at the junior high level, and ive been working weekends as of late. i say work, but its more of just going to watch baseball, table tennis, kyudo, and track meets. last weekend was a choral singing competiton. oddly, the japanese call it konkuru, and they were shocked to find out i had no idea what that word meant, since everyone thinks it comes from an english word. upon doing a little research, i found out its a french word. im still not sure what it means though. i meant it when i said 'a little' research. im guessing it means something related 'concert'

one of my students won the town-wide english speech competition and is going on to compete in the regional level. i would be more proud of her if it wasnt for the fact that all 3 contestants were my students so i was a shoe-in as the winning coach. oh, and i was also the head judge. next week the real competition begins. the bragging rights of no less than 10 english teachers are on the line. wish me luck.
hmm...i guess wish my student luck too.

when i havent been practicing english speeches, planning lessons for teachers too busy to plan thier own, or sleeping, ive been playing my nintendo ds. i play it about 3 hours a day. now before you get on your high horse about video games, wasting time, productivity and all that, i want to point out the game i am playing...its called...actually, im not sure what the name of the game is called, (i have my own name for it) but it doesnt matter....its what it does thats important. its a kanji trainer so that i can improve my japanese reading and writing ability. i call it...wait for it...KANJI TRAINER TO IMPROVE MY JAPANESE GAME! anyway, it rocks and my reading and writing of the more complex kanji has skyrocketed.

signs all over town are begining to make sense. suddenly i understand that 'caution: im NOT supposed to touch the glass in the steam room. its hot. please be careful' ...and i know what the symbol for nasty (wheat) tea is so i dont have to drink it ever again...and that the sign on the sweets in the fridge at school doesnt say 'please dont eat, property of matsumoto-sensei' but 'help yourself, from matsumoto-sensei.'

comprehension is a wonderful and fattening thing.

well, this week marks the beginning of the second limb on the three-legged monster called the 'japanese school year.'

how i spent my summer vacation:

mostly alseep with the air condition running while trying to avoid the sultry japanese heat...notable exceptions to this were as follows:

-going to see my first sumo match; as posted previously

- going home to texas to see my sis get married. grats amy! the wedding was absolutely amazing, but the most impressive thing about the wedding was my mom. she was constantly putting out logistical fires throughout the entire weekend, dealing with relatives, room and board, unexpected stay-overs, and everything in between. she was grace under pressure and i am just as proud of her as i am of my sister. pics forthcoming.

-going to shizuoka to visit akiha jinja, tube down the river, and visit tabidaki-san.

although my vacation while in japan was rather uneventful, i was still sad to see it end. besides having oodles of time for exercise and studying, i started hanging out more with liz and egan (a couple of americans that teach at a conversation school nearby) but since they teach primarily in the evenings and i teach during the day, its a little harder to hang out with them now that school has started again.

despite potential schedule conflicts, we've managed to form a small tri-weekly jogging club. liz has been jogging since before she learned to walk so she is considering running a marathon. originally she was undecided about running it and so i put my foot in my mouth and offered to sign up for it also, hoping that would embarass/inspire her into running it since i basically suck at running. however it turns out the marathon in question is actually only a half-marathon, so she will most likely run a different one in march (that unfortunately is a women's only marathon). im kinda bummed about it being a half marathon, because, as crazy as it sounds, i was actually getting excited about the idea of just trying to run a full marathon. it seemed ludicrous and completely unlike me. and the more i thought about it, the more fun it seemed. i may still try to do the half-marathon, but im not as inspired. we'll see.

crossed off another on a list of 'to do's' in japan today as i went to my first sumo match. i actually didnt go to the whole thing as a full tournament lasts 15 days, from 8am to 6pm each day. today was the 8th day so i felt like i was right in the middle of the slow-paced but nonetheless exciting action.


i say slow paced because each of the 60+ daily sumo matches last anywhere from 5-10sec., but they are prefaced by about 3 minutes of stretching, stomping, salt-throwing, mouth-rinsing, and fat-slapping. still, it was quite an enjoyable way to spend a sunday afternoon and my fun was only slightly spoiled by a reporter who said 'aru?' ('is he a sumo wrestler?') when i passed.

i was sitting at my desk a couple of weeks ago in the teachers room when i noticed that my students training for this year's sports day. it was really funny trying to watch them (especially the tiny ones) try and clear the 70cm hurdles. now, i've never done hurdles myself, but even just channel surfing past the olymics every 4 years (most likely while eating pizza), i felt like i had a good idea of how it should look, and the students weren't even close.

i thought, hey, ive always wanted to try track and field sports. this is my chance to join my students in an activity we are all fairly new at. even though we have a language barrier, and our cultures are different, we can still learn together and have fun. peace love and happiness. also, i may *actually* be able to kick their ass. i couldnt pass this up. it was imperative that i join the class.

a few stumbled-upon japanese 'umm, may i..''s later and i was in my workout clothes getting ready to show these kids how (i thought) the hurdles should be done.

excited whispers of 'oooh, mr. aaron' rippled throughout the class as i walked out to the field, and i felt confident i could do this. we set up the first race, the buzzer went off, and i took off with everything i had. i did ok on the first few jumps, but despite my tv-based training i was way behind. so at the end i pushed way to hard and used a muscle i dont think i have ever used in my entire life. my body, in an attempt to survey the damage, instantly rerouted all its resources to finding out exactly what went wrong, even the part that keeps you standing; the result being that i crumpled to the dirt in pain. although i was able to continue doing practice races for the rest of the class i woke up the next morning feeling like the sides of my pelvis had been mauled by a bear. not just any bear, but...a pelvic mauling bear.

i ended up being sore for 10 days. during that time (well, mostly the first 5 days) i couldnt do anything but hobble to and from my classes. my normally stoic teachers couldn't help but snicker when they watched me stand up or sit down. rather embarrassing, but considering my motives it probably a good learning experience. and what exactly did i learn?

don't watch the olympics, dont follow your dreams.

its starting to get warmer and warmer everyday. most of the male teachers have stopped wearing their jackets in school and a few are even daring to take off their ties.

there is something good to be said for the lack of centralized air conditioning here, as its really nice to feel the weather changing throughout the day; im really starting to enjoy it. its difficult to explain, but at the risk of sounding 'new-agey' i will simply say i feel in tune with the world. despite being inside the school from 8am to 4pm, i feel physically 'on the same page' as someone who spends it outside, just less tanned. overall, its a great sense of harmony that will soon be destroyed once classes are over for the summer, the temperature gauge reaches 27 degrees celsius, and i start blasting my AC unit.

im featured…sort of!
for those of you with itunes, check out the ‘podcasts’ page of the itunes store. under the featured section check out the ‘stump the chef’ video podcast. its very interesting and the background music is really cool. i wonder who wrote it? ill give you a hint…the composer’s name begins with an ‘a..’ and ends with a ‘aron ramirez.’

if you don’t use itunes, or can’t be bothered to install yet another media player on your already cramped hard drive, you can also check out the shorts i wrote the music for at the onnetworks homepage. i wrote the music for ‘stump the chef' and ‘austin connoisseur' series. the music is pretty much the same for all the episodes, but check em all out anyway and educate yourself about austin.

the head english teacher at kota jr. high was transferred to another school this year. as a going away/thank you present for me, he gave me what i consider probably one of the best gifts iver ever recieved. it’s a mini-me. a red ink version of my lil’ puss with which to adorn my students journals, papers and essays, whilst dispensing ‘good jobs’ and ‘great work’ in the hope that they one day aspire to comprehend more detailed affirmations.

last week was the official end of sakura. although the last of the spring flurries of cherry blossom petals had precipitated much earlier than expected this year (place your global warming opinions in the space provided below), i was able to go to a few parks and snap some phone camera worthy shots before the sakura had completely faded.



as a note, one of the most beautiful places to see sakura is only 10 minutes from my house. okazaki castle and the surrounding park were incredibly beautiful. ill have to take better pictures next year.

anyway, with this early warmth has come some very nice weather (of the cool breezy shorts variety), but at the expense of being robbed every night by bloody thieves. and i mean that literally, as i am losing what i estimate with great accuracy to be about 10 gallons of blood every night.

the culprits are a mysterious gang of mosquitoes that somehow infiltrated my state-of-the-art screen door defense and now seem to be stocking up for a future war with my blood as the k-ration. this cannot continue. although i have always been a strict proponent of peace, i can no longer ‘turn the other vein.’ and so they will have their war...let it begin.

apparently fire drills in japan work a bit differently than in america.

ive been working at my desk for the past hour or so and i just realized that i (and the school clerk) are the only ones in the teachers room. this is a rare occurrence and usually means that ive missed something.

upon further inquisition, it turns out that, since i had my japanese thinking hat set to 'zero', i indeed missed the announcement made 10 minutes ago that calmly informed everyone around me of the fire drill now taking place. a part of me wants to cut some flames out of red construction paper, tape them to my jacket, and run out of the school screaming, but i dont know how to say 'relax, im just playing around...please dont call my manager' in polite japanese.

how ‘bout these ringo?

last friday i made my first and last attempt at taking the driver’s test in japan. with the aid of hitoshi, i passed! of all the people who have had to take the test, i’ve only met one other person who has passed it on the first attempt, so i was feeling a little proud. no more biking and walking to school in the frosty morning. no waiting another two weeks to have to take the test again! yayayayay!

but now i was at a tough decision. how should i tell ting-ting, who is on her 4th attempt and has been unable to drive for a month? after every time she failed she sent me a text message saying how sad she was about failing the test. if i didn’t say anything, it would be rude because she knew that i was taking the test today and i know she wanted to know how it went, but if i told her i passed, she might become sad because she studied the course so hard and paid to practice driving on the course while i did nothing but walk around on the course for about 20 min before my test.

after debating the pro’s and con’s of each choice for 30min with hitoshi
i decided the most considerate thing to do was to just sent her the picture above and a text that read “haha. what time should i pick you up on monday?”

30 minutes after i sent the message, i got a phone call. it was ting-ting. as soon as i said ‘hello’ she said, in a surprisingly calm voice, “i’m going to burn down your apartment. i’m going to explode your car. i hate you.”

i guess i made the wrong choice.

i love my job.
we had our year-end party in nagoya.
my company rented out the hard rock cafe for a couple hours with a burger buffet and open bar. although it started off fairly somber at first, with a memorial ceremony for one of our coworkers who passed away, as well as saying goodbye to all the great people that decided to return to their respective countries this year, everyone was in high spirits bit by the time we had to leave. afterwards we went to a nearby pub for more drinks and then to karaoke. by that time i had had enough more than enough drinks to open my heart and grace everyone with my gift of song. according to my memory, this picture best reprents my performance...

but according to my boss it was probably closer to...


humph! well beauty is in the eye of the beholder. so what if the beholder's eye is a bit blurred by gin and tonics, the point is, i had a blast.

lets see…how bout a living situation update.
- i still cannot legally drive, although i take my final test friday. it’s my first time taking the test and i am not encouraged by the fact that my friend just failed her third attempt yesterday. im worried only because each trip to the driving center costs about $20 in transportation fees, $50 in test fees, three hours of travel time round-trip, and a day of vacation time. unfortuantely, i am using my last paid day off for the school year. fortunately, the new school year begins in twenty days and i get five more emergency paid days off.

- my friend hitoshi moved into the spare room and life in japan has just become much easier. its really nice to have another person around the house. in addition to just having someone to socialize with more often, im also paying less in rent and bills, and spending less money on food since its much easier to cook and clean with 2 people. im also getting tremendous help with my japanese. iina!

- thanks to the magic of the internet, i picked up a second job writing music for a small production company in austin. i just finished my first ‘contract’ as a composer/musician for a couple of pilots. while the music i wrote for the pilots is not my best stuff ive ever written, i was actually proud of a few tracks considering the time constraints. this is the first time i’ve made a substantial amount of money with music. i had a great time doing it so hopefully i can turn this into a more permanent source of income.

- after a year of living in kota, i finally met the (five) other foreigners living in town. ive actually run into one of them several times at the train station (that is, i met them repeatedly, not ran over them again and again). but it wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago that i actually managed more than a passing, “hi, whats up?” this weekend we ended up going to a hinamatsuri. although people do not typically gather for hinamatsuri in japan, a nearby town has a festival anyway. they gather a bunch of bamboo and reeds and set it all on fire. while the reeds are burning, a bunch of men in water-soaked cat/panda suits dance around and agitate the fire so it burns bigger and faster. it looked like a scene out of a
miazaki anime. it was short but sweet.


now, this particular matsuri was actually supposed to happen last month, but it was cancelled since someone snuck onto the festival grounds and set the whole thing on fire the night before. since there were no people dressed as cats or pandas dancing around and no one to watch it burn the night before, it was considered arson.

other than finally getting to meet the other foreigners in kota, my favorite part about the matsuri was eating my favorite takoyaki. now, a typical takoyaki ball only contians a piece of octopus, but my favorite takoyaki vendors take it to the next level and they somehow manage to put an entire mini-octopus in the ball for your chewing pleasure. i ended up eating three of them and it was pure tentacle heaven.

in high school a friend of mine once let me borrow a video tape of japanese tv and game shows. specifically i remember watching episodes of ‘takeshi jou’ (or ‘takeshi’s castle’, which is now used as footage for the show mxc in america). for those who don’t know, the show begins with about 100 contestants that gradually become eliminated through physically demanding obstacles as they try to reach and defeat takeshi in his castle. although untranslated, i was immediately fascinated with:

1. the shows strange concept
2. the complete disregard for human safety (at least by american standards).
3. the boundless energy, confidence and happy-go-lucky attitude of the contestants despite the bone-breaking obstacles they faced and lawsuit-riddled plunges they took.

even though the show aired in the late 80’s, i cannot say that i was not hoping for some the same caliber of tv shows when i came to japan in 2005. since being here i have seen a few shows that were somewhat interesting, but nothing especially noteworthy….until last night.

i don’t really know where to begin. for one, i don’t actually know the name of the show. what simply caught my attention at first was the fact that there were four japanese men and one woman wearing togas and fake beards…well the woman wasn’t wearing a beard…but had she actually worn one i don’t think he show could have gotten any more ludicrous.

my best guess is that they were imitating roman/greek gods talking about humans. each person had a ‘belief/rule/hypothesis’ that they thought about humans. they then staged intricate yet highly unscientific experiments to determine if the hypothesis was 'true'. if it held true for a majority of the people, a woman dressed as an angel would take a large quill pen and would scribe the rule in a gigantic book. if not, then the belief suggested would simply be dismissed.

for example, the first ‘rule’ i watched them test was:
-“women with body odor have bad luck”
to try to prove this theory they took 20 women to a parking lot and had them choose between button ‘a’ or button ‘b’. if they pressed button ‘b’, it was good luck, because, hey, nothing happened. if they pressed button ‘a’ however, it was considered bad luck because they immediately got sprayed with water from a fire hose and knocked back onto an air mattress.

in the end, eight women were deemed unlucky by the fire hose god and were lined up in front of a professional i don’t know what its called…odor-ologist?...to have their armpits clinically sniffed and determined if the women had body odor or not. out of the eight, five women were designated odorless, while three were deemed odiferous with additional embarrassing qualifiers such as ‘smells strongly like soil’ and ‘smells like mildew.’ since only 3/8 women had body odor, clearly, the rule was not entered into the book.

other rules offered up and tested were,

- ‘men who use the word ‘positive thinking’ as part of their personal motto are not interesting or funny’ (not entered into the book, as 8/10 men who put ‘positive thinking’ as their motto on a survey were found to be haha funny and/or interesting)

- ‘hairy men with big voices will not become upset when their girlfriends tell them they are unexpectedly pregnant.’ (entered in the book. 4/8 men did not react negatively when their girlfriends lied to them and said they were pregnant. i can’t imagine the same holds true when the girlfriends had to admit they were lying)

- ‘women who wear the same pair of glasses over several years will become possessed when inside a haunted house’ (not entered in the book, only 3/10 women taken to a place that was said to be haunted claimed to have any uncontrollable conditions).

as bizarre as the experiments themselves sound, the funniest part of the show were discussions the hosts had when they presented their beliefs. there was not a trace of irony or sarcasm when they were explaining why they believed the things they did, or in the responses from the other hosts. no wry smile to indicate some sort of joke. had my friend not been translating, i would have thought that they were having a heavy philosophical discussion; contemplating the human condition, the poetics, or existentialism. who knows though… perhaps, through their absurdist acumen, they were accomplishing something with a similar effect.

after a few days of no internet, and admitting that, however hard i wished, technology rarely repairs itself, i took matters into my own hands. i called my isp’s customer service.

me: “hi, i am having a problem with my interent connection.”
tech guy: “what seems to be the problem?”
me: “well my modem seems to have stopped working.”
tech guy: “i’m so sorry, let’s see if we can figure out whats wrong”
<5 minutes later>
me: “well that seems to have done it. for some reason, my tcp settings were incompatible with the modem after an upgrade. thanks for suggesting a static ip, that’s great.”

this was the conversation i wish i had with my isp. instead i didn’t call them because my japanese phone skills are deplorable. i always get stuck at the part where you listen press a button because you have just been given a list of options to choose from; but i never understand any of them.

so i freak out and hang up.

my actual phone conversation was with my tri-lingual friend, ting-ting, and went something like this:

me: “ting-tiiiiiiiing!”
ting: “hey aaron, whats wrong?”
me: “my internet wont woooooooork! its been off for four days!”
ting: “wow, mine works fine. have you gone to the shrine like we talked about and said your new years prayers?”
me: “…not yet.”
ting: “you really should go, your luck has been awful this year.”
me: “tell me about it”
ting: “anyway, did you call customer service?”
me: “…no”
ting: “why not?”
me: “…because i can’t understand the menus.”
ting: *audible sigh* “do you want me to call?”
me: “YES!”
ting: “ok. fine. ill come over tomorrow, but you owe me…again.”

well, tomorrow came and ting-ting graciously picked me up from school and called my isp, and indeed within five minutes i had my internet up and running. the meat of their conversation (as far as i could tell) went something like this:

ting: “hi, im having problems connecting to the internet."
tech guy:“what seems to be the problem?”
ting: “well, the modem turns on but the link light is off.”
tech guy: “have you moved the modem recently?”
ting (to me): “have you moved the modem recently?”
me: “yes, i thought i might have damaged the cord when i moved it though so i already bought a new $10 chord and tried it out but it didn’t work.”
ting: “..but did you change the plugs?”
me: “no i…wait…lemme see something….oh my god!…im trying to get the internet from my fax machine! im an idiot!”
ting: (to me) “yes. i agree”
(to tech guy) “im sorry, my friend found the problem, thank you very much, sorry about the inconvenience.”
tech guy: *trying not to laugh and failing* “no problem, thank you for calling.”

in my defense the cables were colored incorrectly. however, if one wanted to counter my defense, one could remind me that i purposely switched the color of the cables four months ago because of their lengths.

after first threatening to throw me out the window of my apartment and then retracting the threat on the grounds of insufficient height, ting-ting suggested i return my computer science certificate. to say she was mad is an overstatement though, i think she was actually giddy that she now has ample ammo to use whenever ‘know-it-all’ aaron starts making fun of her.

this weekend my internet went out at my house. i was kinda bummed but i figured i should get out of the house a bit and get some excersise. so i made a plan to bike to the neighboring town and do a little shopping and looking around, then go study my japanese at a little cafe i like to go to. i packed a little bag full of some snacks and prepared myself for a nice healthy day of bike-riding. there was only one problem. when i went outside i found that my brand new super cool mountain bike had been stolen.

so instead of going to my favorite cafe to study japanese, i went to my favorite police box and reported my missing bike in broken japanese.

after i struggled through all the questions that the officer asked me, doing my best to reply in japanese, and getting help from my friend hitoshi when i couldnt answer, i eventually got the report filed and returneed home.

no sooner did i get home that i recieve a phone call from the officer. after a little more struggling, i understood that he was telling me that he had forgotten to check some information and wondered if it would be ok if he stopped by my appartment. i told him it that was fine, and about 10 minutes later he showed up.

when he arrived, he told me, in near perfect english, 'im sorry, i forgot to check your registration card' i was floored. i couldnt beleive that he made me go through all that questioning at the police box in japanese when he could speak english so well. he seemed to sense what i was thinking, and so he told me that my 'japanese was ok' and that he had to speak japanese to me earlier to see how much i could understand should the need arise for me to testify.

after he checked my registration, he asked if i remembered him. i gave his a quizical look before i realized that this was the same officer to whom i had reported my missing passport this past summer. embarassed, both because i haddnt recognized him and also because he knew this was the second time ive had to the police, i appologized, asked oafishly how he had been, and thanked him for helping me yet again. he took the rest of my information and left, telling me that the chances of getting my bike back were better than average, because the color and size of the bike were pretty uncommon.

so now, with no car, no bike, no internet, i had been offcially cut off from the world. i started feeling really bummed about the series of craptacular events that had occured since id been back in japan. i was just starting to let myself feel like the universe was conspiring against me, but then i remembered the letter that i had recieved not three days previous from my company.

it turns out that a fellow co-worker of my was killed this past weekend in a car accident. while i did not know her personally, the news still had a significant impact on me. i realized that while i was mourning my bike, my coworkers parents were mourning the loss of their daughter. while i was figuring out how to get to school, they were figuring out how to get her body back to england. i forget sometimes that there is nothing as emotionally sobering as being reminded of my own mortality.