A high-speed collision with a ten-year old was a memorable end to my six month contract teaching at grade schools in Sakai city. it also tore a nice hole in my longjohns and suitpants as well as stamping two large festering wounds on my knee and elbow. little Nishi-kun, how you survived that crash is a mystery to medical science.
"Tag": don't let it happen to your children.
Now i am officially on vacation. huddled in my kotatsu gulping coffee i contemplate the day passed previous. my first Monday off was spent battling the immigration office, the travel agency, my dispatch company, realtors and my bank account. there were no surviver.
I have secured my next work contract. i am using the same dispatch company as before; a rare move amongst foreigners. the pay is crap but i will get August and half of December free (unpaid) but free. this will allow me to do something i have wanted to do for awhile; bum around Germany and possibly Denmark for a month, improving my German and taking some wonderful hikes. in December i can plane back to my hometown and enjoy a snowy New Year with family, friends and dark beer. this will be a year of travel.
As for April's work; once again i have scheduled myself to labor in the dungeons of grades Five and Six. Shackled to the chalk board afor thirty some children on the cusp of puberty I will bear their unabashed repugnance for learning of all ilk in a furious attempt to relay to them the importance of that chunk of cell-mass sloshing around inside their skull-space. All while the head Japanese teacher slouches in the back allowing his eyes to glaze over as he rigorously inspects the inner workings of his nostrils with the tip of his pinky.
I say this now, but in all truth i really love the bastards...
4.3.11
and inevitably drive eachother mad...
A roof above the head and below the ass a bed.
And so begins the cumbersomely enjoyable task of moving. with a roof and numerous walls secured for the start of April, i have spent the last few days analyzing the logistics of moving my crap. my pechant for pack-rattery has left me with tables of trash topped with heaps of worthlessness. my bed is made of nicknacks. my table is a broken television set.
As my first peice of luggage, i have purchased a packet o f twenty x-some gallon garbage bags. the rule is, if i can't remember why i have it, out the window it goes.
The whole housing readjustment happend very suddenly. though this is not to lessen the openness with which me arms are for it. on one fair weathered weekend a few moons back, my roomies and another pair of friends and i set out house hunting on seperate ventures for seperate places in seperae parts of town. so it was only natural that we all ended up deciding to live together.
My present rub-a-dub-dub situation has me homing with two other guys. we have spent an delightful year or so together in a set-up that has worked beautifully for ineffable reasons. our relationship is like the dots of a Seurat painting: up close all one can see is the dirty dishes and unwashed britches. only when one stands back can they see how the elaborate network of beer cans and toilet paper form a most stunning park scene. in the foreground a round-rumped woman sporting a parasoul. in thew background, some jackass kids no-doubt making a mess of things. yes, this is truly a metaphor for our relationship. Ass in the back; rump in the front.
Sequestered in our 7 tatami matt room live myself and Larry my manfriend. Despite the hickish nature of his name, he is in fact Japanese. Though this should not deter a countryside image from arising. he is very much the hillbilly in his own oriental way. he will often lapse into fits of "awa-ben", a rustic dialect from the uninhabited island of Shikoku. We enjoy our days buried in the kotatsu, discussing food, life, and imbecility.
Across the kitchen lives our vertically excentric roommate Droopy. Droopy and i have been chumly ever since our Fukuoka days when we worked inside a box yelling idioms at Japanese housewives and business men. Droopy has a tendency for random gyrations and is a user of "the funk". we often collide in the kitchen in a din of snappy comebacks and calculated misscalcuations. he is the G-Funk to my S-Man.
As an entourage of three, we will move. and to the extasy of my eyeballs the madness will be supplemented by two more fun-loving characters.
I first met Niki and Taashi inside a karaoke box huddled around a trough of beer. Nikki speaks her mind to the delight of my eardrums and is always up for an interesting time. in the past few weeks we have experienced both "cardboard" and "banjo" parties. we look forward to many more of this ilk. Taashi is covered in tatoos; an inky jacket that mismatches his personality to a T; quiet, shy, and generally perverted.
These two additions to the home-spun gang will surely make for a tapestry worth tapping. i can't wait for the big move when we smash our lives together in our barely three bedroom house.
Through some hard negotiations and disgruntled faces, we 5 managed to obtain a most luxurious house for a thousand bucks a month (divided five ways, not too shabby). in our new home, the apple of my eye is the living rom. the japanese are a people not accustomed to sharing space with other humans. so they rarely see it fit to build an apartment with more than one bedroom, let alone one with a living room. afterall, what would they use a living room for? aside from creating social tension and fostering hate.
So it goes without saying that my present apartment has no such rumpus room. instead we just loiter around the fridge chitchatting until our knees give in. but with the new place, i finally score an area to spread my social net and rake in some tasty conversations. i'll harvest my roommates. we'll pick eachother's brains; and inevitably drive eachother mad...
And so begins the cumbersomely enjoyable task of moving. with a roof and numerous walls secured for the start of April, i have spent the last few days analyzing the logistics of moving my crap. my pechant for pack-rattery has left me with tables of trash topped with heaps of worthlessness. my bed is made of nicknacks. my table is a broken television set.
As my first peice of luggage, i have purchased a packet o f twenty x-some gallon garbage bags. the rule is, if i can't remember why i have it, out the window it goes.
The whole housing readjustment happend very suddenly. though this is not to lessen the openness with which me arms are for it. on one fair weathered weekend a few moons back, my roomies and another pair of friends and i set out house hunting on seperate ventures for seperate places in seperae parts of town. so it was only natural that we all ended up deciding to live together.
My present rub-a-dub-dub situation has me homing with two other guys. we have spent an delightful year or so together in a set-up that has worked beautifully for ineffable reasons. our relationship is like the dots of a Seurat painting: up close all one can see is the dirty dishes and unwashed britches. only when one stands back can they see how the elaborate network of beer cans and toilet paper form a most stunning park scene. in the foreground a round-rumped woman sporting a parasoul. in thew background, some jackass kids no-doubt making a mess of things. yes, this is truly a metaphor for our relationship. Ass in the back; rump in the front.
Sequestered in our 7 tatami matt room live myself and Larry my manfriend. Despite the hickish nature of his name, he is in fact Japanese. Though this should not deter a countryside image from arising. he is very much the hillbilly in his own oriental way. he will often lapse into fits of "awa-ben", a rustic dialect from the uninhabited island of Shikoku. We enjoy our days buried in the kotatsu, discussing food, life, and imbecility.
Across the kitchen lives our vertically excentric roommate Droopy. Droopy and i have been chumly ever since our Fukuoka days when we worked inside a box yelling idioms at Japanese housewives and business men. Droopy has a tendency for random gyrations and is a user of "the funk". we often collide in the kitchen in a din of snappy comebacks and calculated misscalcuations. he is the G-Funk to my S-Man.
As an entourage of three, we will move. and to the extasy of my eyeballs the madness will be supplemented by two more fun-loving characters.
I first met Niki and Taashi inside a karaoke box huddled around a trough of beer. Nikki speaks her mind to the delight of my eardrums and is always up for an interesting time. in the past few weeks we have experienced both "cardboard" and "banjo" parties. we look forward to many more of this ilk. Taashi is covered in tatoos; an inky jacket that mismatches his personality to a T; quiet, shy, and generally perverted.
These two additions to the home-spun gang will surely make for a tapestry worth tapping. i can't wait for the big move when we smash our lives together in our barely three bedroom house.
Through some hard negotiations and disgruntled faces, we 5 managed to obtain a most luxurious house for a thousand bucks a month (divided five ways, not too shabby). in our new home, the apple of my eye is the living rom. the japanese are a people not accustomed to sharing space with other humans. so they rarely see it fit to build an apartment with more than one bedroom, let alone one with a living room. afterall, what would they use a living room for? aside from creating social tension and fostering hate.
So it goes without saying that my present apartment has no such rumpus room. instead we just loiter around the fridge chitchatting until our knees give in. but with the new place, i finally score an area to spread my social net and rake in some tasty conversations. i'll harvest my roommates. we'll pick eachother's brains; and inevitably drive eachother mad...
登録:
投稿 (Atom)