February 2001
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"Someday I'm gonna give up all the buttons and things
I'll punch that time clock 'til it can't ring
Burn off my necktie and set myself free
'Cause no one's gonna fold, bend, or mutilate me."
- Stan Rogers
The White Collar Holler

March 1, 2001

Got a phone call form my mom this morning at 7:30 informing me that there had been an earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale 35 miles southwest of Seattle. Talk about a surefire way to wake up in the morning - nothing like a little disaster info to get your blood pumping. It didn't stop me from going back to sleep and being late for school, though - not that that is anything even remotely close to unusual. I know I should at least try to get to school by 8:15AM, but as I have no classes until 11 or 12 and nobody seems to mind at all if I come in late; why worry about it?

Let me tell you a little story about an incident that occurred way back in 1999. Imagine it's 10 in the morning or so on a schoolday. I'm happily shaving myself, wondering what to have for breakfast when the phone rings. It's Amanda, the ALT from Hamatama. Conversation as follows.

J: "Hello?"
A: "Hey, where the hell are you?"
J: "Umm... you're calling me at my house, so I must be at home."
A: "Very funny. I just called your school looking for you and you weren't there, so I asked where you might be and the guy said 'I dunno. Try his house'... what time do you start school?"
J: "Oh, 8:15, 8:30 usually."
A: "So what are you doing at home?"
J: "Slept in, now I'm shaving. I'm going to school soon..."
A: "So nobody cares that you're almost 2 hours late for school?"
J: "They don't seem to, no. What do you want?"

END QUASI-TRANSCRIPTION

Anyhow, the conversation here isn't word for word, but I'm sure you get the idea. Basically, I've been late for work on a regular basis for almost three years now - and the funny part is, I usually wake up earlier on the weekends than I do on weekdays. I think there must be something wrong with me. Oh, and any potential employers out there that are reading this - I'm actually a very punctual person... honest. I do, however, tend to be a little gruff around the edges until I've consumed enough coffee to bolster the economy of a small South American country.

March 2, 2001

I actually had something important I wanted to say this morning, but I forgot it as I was chasing after the garbage truck with 4 bags of non-burnable trash. Yet another way to get the blood pumping in the morning. I reckon I must have been quite a sight: dashing down the street wearing only plaid flannel pajama bottoms and a pair of old Chuck Ts - a bunch of my kids biked past as I was returning home... they thought it was pretty funny. At least they missed the main event, anyway.

I'm fairly sure that I wanted to at least touch on how much I'm going to miss the little things about living in Kyuragi, but I know there was more to it than that. Damn garbage trucks.

Realized yesterday evening that I've only 4 more months over here...how did that happen? Where the hell did February go? I know it's the shortest month and all, but come on - 28 days shouldn't be allowed to go by that fast. Somebody oughta take this up with whoever's in charge of Time. Hmm... maybe I should send Stephen Hawking a fax. He must be able to do something about it.

Whoa. Here's a random thought that those of you who know Shroedinger's Cat might approve of. If you put Jesus in a sealed box after his crucifixion and waited for 3 days to pass, then at any given moment (according to quantum mechanics and/or the Bible) Jesus would be both dead and ressurrected at any given moment. Sort of an inverse of the original, but with a somewhat more sardonic twist. Who the hell is Schroedinger? Well, I'll give you a choice: you can have the straight stuff or the real deal. If after reading one or both of these you still don't get it, don't worry about it. There's no shame in not understanding geek humour.

March 6, 2001

So I've been thinking - there's this new preview out in Japan for a flick called Pearl Harbour. Every time I've seen it, it raises my hackles just a little bit. After careful deliberation, I've come up with a hypothesis of sorts. It goes a little something like this:

The preview opens with several shots of young, beautiful people leading idyllic lives in scenic Hawaii - interspersed with various shots/silhouettes of a squadron of Zeros fast approaching (particularly memorable is the part where a bunch of them buzz past 2 kids standing on a hilltop... but anyway) with obvious ill intentions. A sort of in-your-face series of imagery showing us the happiness and innocence soon to be lost to those bloodthirsty bastards - anyway, before I over-over analyze - the attack. Scene after scene of the futile actions of the heroic martyrs vs. the faceless, inhuman machines slaughtering them. Note that there ain't a single nihonjin in the whole preview... andthen post attack shots: the usual death and destruction, priests administering last rites, yada yada yada. Now this is the best part: the preview wraps up with a recording of the declaration of war upon Japan by the United States. With no subtitles. Oh, yes. Things like 'this day will live in infamy' and so on - which, incidentally, are anything but common vocabulary - are not offered in translation. Hmm.

Now here is the part that I caught only because I live in Japan and read the newspaper fairly regularly. About a year ago, a 12 year-old Okinawan girl was raped by a US marine. Not the first incident of it's kind, but one that touched a nerve throughout Japan. Since that incident, every single event involving the US military has appeared in the news to some extent - is this strange? Is is if you consider that many of these events that make it into the paper are hardly newsworthy: a marine dents a Japanese woman's car, 3 marines get drunk and almost get into a fight, or some civilians are allowed to fire some howitzers on a parctice range. Granted, the sinking of the Ehime Maru and the comments made by a certain officer are certainly newsworthy and have served to fan the flames of anti-US sentiment in Japan, which is why the release of Pearl Harbour in Japan couldn't be better timed.

What am I saying in this barely coherent ramble? I'm saying that this movie is going to play on Japanese feelings of war guilt and is going to serve as a reminder that the Japanese were the original aggressors in an attempt to convince people to become more tolerant/forgetful of the US military presence in Japan.

Still not convinced? Who's making this movie? Oh - it's Jerry Bruckheimer - the man who has brought us so many other fine cinematic features in the past! Highlights include Armageddon, Enemy of the State, and - wait for it... Top Gun. Uh-huh. Love his work, baby.

All rambles aside, I'd like to see how Pearl Harbour is recieved in Japan. I am of the mind that since Armageddon is still one of the top 5 rented videos in Japan, folks are going to eat this slop up and love it. Which is a damn shame. Anyhow, that's just personal speculation and opinion, and I'm far too lazy to sit down and craft these thoughts into some sort of structured essay for the reader's convenience. I'm just reserving the right to say 'I told you so' when the time comes.

And now, some coffee.

March 15, 2000

Damn. Been a while, hmm? That would be because I've only just recovered from potentially the worst illness I can recall having. It sucked. Five days of headspins, shakes, sweat-soaked futons, feverish dreams, cabin fever and all sorts of terrible things floating inside my head. I managed to get my temperature up to some 40C (that's about 104 for all you Farenheiters out there) for three of those five days - I've never been delirious for that long before, either. Thankfully 9th grade graduation was the same weekend, so I got to be sick in a suit, which is something I don't get to do very often. I think most of the kids were wondering what the hell was wrong with me, but I couldn't explain myself in Japanese at that particular juncture.

Being sick for a couple of days is fine, happens to everyone sometime - five days is pushing it, if you ask me. I get mad. Real mad and unfriendly-like. I surprised even myself on occasion. I think my finest hour came while driving down to Saga and I caught myself in a near-blind rage at every other car on the road. Had they done anything? No, they just happened to exist, is what I think it was. I pulled over to calm down and soon found myself railing against the tyrannical hand of God - the lousy bastard had the gall to afflict me with suffering, did he? From there I think I shunted back to hating drivers for a while, then it was TV and advertisements, then the entertainment industry, then the government (for a while actually - first for dicking me with my student loan, then for keeping information away from the general population) and finally just every stupid sonofabitch I'd ever met. I didn't know I had it all in me. It was crazy.

March 19, 2001

Had a 21st-century morning yesterday. Awoke to the sound of my alarm clock blaring away in my ear (on a Sunday, no less) and my cat begging for food/attention/whatever the hell cats want at 8AM. Stumbled out of bed, picked up the morning paper and read the following:

Paper: Superconductor at 67C

In my early-morning haze, I mistakenly believed that somehow, scientists had not only found a way to produce superconductivity at a reasonable temperature, but they had done it with a material that didn't actually conduct electricity. I'm not really sure what I was thinking, but I was kicking myself halfway through the article. Still, you can see how a headline like that might be misleading, can't you? If you'd like to know what superconductors are... well, dozo.

So what made it a 21st-century morning? Well, after reading the article, I decided to hop on the internet and see what else I could find out about the issue - ended up on a poetry chat forum while talking on my cel phone... I felt so connected. I have this recurring dream of what I figure the 21st century should be like - people living in vast residential complexes, each with their own isolated pocket of existence seperate from the rapidly-changing technological world outside their door; people living in small closet-like apartments filled with the trappings of their lives, mostly useless personal effects that they've gathered during their time on the earth. Yesterday morning kind of felt like that to me - sitting at home, reading about scientific breakthroughs in superconductor technology and staring at all the stuff I'd picked up over the past 3 years. It's kind of a hard feeling to describe - although I suppose anybody's daydreams are like that.

I don't know - I don't feel the need to have a large amount of Lebensraum, it seems. The thought of living in a small room in a megalopolis sounds just as pleasing as living in a small cabin on a lake to me. Guess I've watched Brazil one time too many. Either that or I've read too much William Gibson. Maybe I will move to Tokyo - work in a ramen shop or something. Become another faceless individual scurrying about in one of the giant anthills we have created. The funny thing is, from time to time I feel that there is no city large enough that I would want to live in it - I feel like I've been born a hundred years too early - or too late. I guess most folks feel kind of the same these days.

Who knows? This is starting to feel a little too random and piecemeal for me at the moment. I'm in a non-sequitur frame of mind today, apparently.

March 28, 2001

So it's been nine days. Whoops. I don't know what I've been doing lately - though it's pretty easy to tell what I've NOT been doing, which is updating this puppy on a regular basis - I guess I've been busy. Hmm, being busy. What a novel concept for an ALT at a single school up in the mountains. Actually, now that we're on spring break, I've been busier than I have so far this year. Go figure.

Going up to Fukuoka tonight with Takashi and Josh tonight to see Shang Shang Typhoon at the Blue Note. I'm currently redefining excited. I hope they have T-shirts - nothing would be cooler than to have an Okinawan folk/synthesizer band shirt, in my humble opinion. Well, not much, anyway. I definietly don't get out to see enought shows over here. Going from what was at least a bi-weekly event to seeing a show every two months is Wrong (caps are intentional). Granted, cover charges here often border on the absurd, but even so, there have to be more local live gigs that I can get in on. I should call the Boys more often. Maybe now that spring has sprung...

Spring. I've never been so happy to see it arrive. I don't know if it's because this is my third year or not, but I've had enough of winter in my ramshackle house to last me a lifetime. Maybe because this year was the first year that my pipes froze or maybe it was that vicious cold I caught - I've had my fill. Bring on the flowers and the sundresses, I say. Hanami, barbeques and beach parties all the way. Folks 'round here can't believe it when they hear me talk that way. It's always "But isn't it colder in Canada?" or "Don't you like the cold?" when I talk to people about it. Yes, it is colder in Canada... but my house here ain't insulated. And no, I don't like the cold. Cold sucks. Snow is fine, but chill, dreary weeks are not. Waking up with frostbitten hands and frozen cranial fluid ranks pretty high on my pet peeves list.

I'm not bitter, though. Weather is weather and can't be helped. Besides, recent weather more than makes up for the winter. Soon enough I'll get to bitch and complain about how damn hot it is. Hmm. I consider myself to be a misanthrophile, but I wonder if there is a word for someone who loves to hate everything (or hates to love everything) out there. Time to bust out the etymological dictionary, I guess.

Side note: working on this page at school seems to result in a shocking decrease in the amount of quotes included within the body of the text. Must be the fluorescent lighting affecting my intelligence.