The beginning of the end

So, it has began to occur to me that my adventures in Japan will soon be coming to an end. I will spare you the long and nostalgic talk about this (for now). Anyhow, today it is official. I walked into work this morning and looked at my schedule. Pretty rough, lots of students, several of whom I don't like. No sooner do I walk away, however, than our staff lady walks over and adds two new students to practically fill my schedule to maximum capacity. I was a little upset at this (not at the staff lady, she has very little to do with sign ins other that writing them on the board) as I am coasting off of a small ammount of sleep thanks to finishing the new Harry Potter last night. "I quit!" I say in a loud voice, fill out my resignation form and hand it to the staff lady. Now this is not quite as dramatic as I would have it sound as I had already expressed in writing to my area supervisor that I had no intention of signing a new contract. That, and I already had my resignation form ready to go in my drawer. Nevertheless, its official, and the red lights in the robot's eyes are beginning to fade. Yes, its almost over now. Japan has not always been kind to me, nor have I always been kind to Japan, but I still feel a distinct pang of sadness at the thought of leaving. Still, this is just the beginning of the end and I still have more than a month of Japan to go, and I will save my nostalgic thoughts for the exciting conclusion to "On becoming a robot"!!

More tales of the bizarre

Things have pretty much returned to normal in Japan. I just got my phone back from the shop. Payday is coming up, and I am chilling on a wonderful 6 day weekend. Nevertheless, there are still things that I see that are not so "normal". Maybe a month or so ago I was walking home from work and there in the middle of of a busy intersection was a tiny kitten stumbling back and forth between cars that are doing their best to avoid it. Being a compassionate human being who has no desire to see small cute things come to harm, I dashed out into the intersection and snatched up the little guy. Now it was a stray so there really wasn't much to do with it but set it loose in a safer part of the street. Luckily, it would seem that the kitten has fallen in with the gang of local strays that lurks around my apartment. Anyway, on Friday night, I was walking home from the bar, and unless I was halucinating, I saw an elderly Japanese man standing in the street in his underwear. Now, I thought about recreating my kitten heroics by grabbing the old fellow and carrying him to safety. I decided against it though, as he was a full grown man and can take care of himself. Thats about it. I did have another close encounter with nature yesterday. I was walking to the convenience store yesterday and a little bird landed next to me. I looked at the bird, and the bird looked at me. I got the distinct sensation that the bird was trying to talk to me. So I cocked my head to the side and said, "hello". "Chirp!" the bird replied cheerfully, and I felt a little happier. I also realized how weird the whole situation was. But hey, it was good for a laugh.

ID4.05

Happy Independece Day to all in the land of the free. For me, sadly, July 4th is over. In fact, it is 1:30PM on July 5th now, but hey, the time in Japan doesn't really count when it comes to this particular holiday. Like on most holidays that I hold dear, I had to work yesterday, but it was an easy day as I only had one lesson, so spent the whole day reading. I just wish that the mall that the school I work in on mondays is in wouldn't play Auld Lang Syne for the last half hour before closing. It really becomes quite maddenning once you have heard it about thirty times in a row. To make matters worse, it is the synthesizer version. For some reason big stores love that shit. I know for a fact that I would have gone totally nuts if Best Buy had played some special Best Buy theme song to the tune of When the Saints go Marching in. Anyhow, my celebration of the Fourth was limited in its scope. On my walk back home from the gym I whistled whatever patriotic tunes I could think of off hand. I must say, it is a testiment to how difficult it is to sing the national anthem that when I tried to whistle it my mouth cramped up completely, preventing me from talking for the next half hour. It was raining, so, even though fireworks cost only a small fraction of what they do back home, we couldn't do that. Instead I coaxed my roommates into going to a Japanese style bar, which we only chose because it was very close. Nothing special there, only the service was particularly bad, so much so that I was not even impressed when they offered us free dessert (which turned out to be a clear, colorless gelatin that tasted like grapes). I was going to watch Independence Day when we returned, but got caught up stumbling around the internet. Anyhow, happy July 4th. God Bless America, and all that.