It’s been a long time since I posted anything.  My computer died + took all its secrets with it before I could.

There was no real warning, …just a faint buzzing sound before it locked up and went black

I borrowed my girlfriend’s computer semi-frequently until I could get myself a replacement off of e-bay.

I don’t know why I was forced to pay for express international shipping, when the guy didn’t even put it in the box for 2 whole weeks.

This upset my girlfriend too.  I used to use my computer for everything/ as a: CD player/ radio/stereo/ TV/  DVD player/ book/ comic book / newspaper/ + substitute for a great many other things too…  She just just seems to like e-mailing and online shopping, which she couldn’t do whenever I was using her computer – as there are no stores anywhere nearby, and just as many worthwhile stores for hours in any direction from here.

It did arrive eventually, I am glad.  But I couldn’t plug it in the 1st day, because the plug has 3 prongs and all the outlets in my house only have 2 holes.  I left for work earlier the next day and found a store that sold an adaptor, and did manage to plug it in the next evening,  but the password screen came up, and I had to reborrow my girlfriend’s computer to ask the original owner for the password, which again took several days longer than you would want it too.

Anyway, + at last, it’s shiny and red, bigger and faster, and the keyboard still has all the keys, so I’m pleased.

I would have liked to have gotten all the information off of the old one first to be honest, but what I remember writing about before:

• There was a near total eclipse of the sun – Such as we wouldn’t see for more than a 100 years to follow, …but we didn’t see it through all the clouds that appeared the night before.  People came to our nowhere town from other far off  parts of Japan to see our grey clouds and go home.

It was precision bad-luck timing, being that: It hadn’t rained more than once for the entire 2 months previous, which dried up everything I tried to plant in my garden more than once too.

• We had to drive up to the city on the opposite side of Kyushu so I could get a stamped paper from the American consulate that says that as far as they know I’m not already married.

It’s nice to go into a US government building and not have to see Bush or his goon squad smirking down at you.

They had an all vegetarian burger joint in that city that claimed to be an all vegan burger joint, …which it wasn’t, …unless you ordered the right thing, …which I did do when we went back the next day.  My girlfriend has an aunt there who we stayed with for the 2nd night (or we’d have gone for veggie burgers for dinner too).  The 1st night she slept in the car, and I didn’t sleep – in the car.   Her uncle really likes art, showed me lots of art books and I showed him only 2 pictures I’d painted – because he’s still running internet explorer 5 or 6, and nothing else could load in the 20 minutes we spent on his computer.  Really nice guy though – had lots of suggestions for places to paint, and the futon on his floor was far and away much more comfortable than the inside of my girlfriend’s car.

We stopped in another city on the way back so she could try on wedding dresses.  They had a couch there for me to wait on, but all the magazines were wedding themed – as would be expected I suppose, …but a fish tank or something would have been nice.  They had me try on a couple Tuxedos.  I asked for a green jacket, black shirt, blue-green pants, and gold shoes, but they didn’t have any of that.  The jacket they decided I should try on – I couldn’t move my arms in.  “Don’t move your arms then” was the response from the shop professional.

We met up with a college friend of hers that night who took us to a vegetarian Italian restaurant.  I wanted to know what the soy cheese there would be like;  It turns out that it’s almost indistinguishable from tofu.  We stopped at a volcano the next afternoon + climbed up.  They decided that the fumes from the crater were approaching dangerous levels just as we were heading back down, …so it’s good we didn’t stop for lunch until dinner time.

• One night at home we saw something that looked like a mouse scurry down the hallway into the kitchen and back.  I got up and chased it into the shower + closed the door until I found a nice box I could trap it in.  When I opened the door it was gone, apparently down the open drain in the floor.

Neither of us took a shower for an extra day after that, as I was worried we’d wind up with a bloated drowned mouse stuck in/ blocking our pipes.

• That was a funny story until we started hearing several more mice up in the ceiling running back and forth, hopping?, and gnawing on the insides of the walls.
• We had a lice infestation not long after, which sounds bad, + it is bad (!!) – I assure you, but lice don’t hop all the time like fleas do, + they prefer to bite girls + babies.  My girlfriend took to wearing a hooded sweatshirt, and tucking her pants into her socks for a while.

She fumigated the house several times, ironed the tatami mats in the floors every night, and washed all of her clothes in poison.  (add some poison to your laundry + see how much color it bleeds out!)

• The last time she fumigated we waited out the recommended 3 hours at a friend’s house, then 5 minutes after we came back home she was bit again.  She didn’t find that as funny as I did.

I was still very glad they weren’t fleas, which hop and itch and hurt, and like boys as well as girls and babies.

• We came back from my boss’ house late one night, turned the lights on in our house, and a mouse didn’t run right through my girlfriend’s legs,

…. it was a giant rat that ran through her legs, right back the way we had came.  She went into the bedroom to hide while I looked for it in the other half of the house.   I searched that part of the house for about 10 minutes, until I heard her scream again, so I went back there grudgingly thinking there would be a spider, or a little beetle , but she said she’d seen another one – another one meaning another rat, which I found hard to believe, but sure enough I saw it lurking against the wall behind a cabinet right next to our futon.  I put an empty shoe box in front of it, and pulled the cabinet out from behind, hoping it would run and hide in there, but it went right for my girlfriend, like its friend had.  She screamed a few times + tried to stun it, by whacking it with her kitty-cat slippers, but it ran into the room where our ancient mountaineer toilet is.  I saw it hiding behind the toilet, so I put the box down again + poked around behind the toilet with a stick hoping to scare it into the box.  This time it climbed up the back of the toilet, and lept at me.

I thought I was going to have to try to smack a flying rat away from my face, but it landed just short of me – in the bowl, and slid down into the pit beneath the toilet.

-   Sometimes, …+ this is months later,  I hear noises coming from under the floor where the toilet is,  and I worry that a rat is gonna’  scurry up and bite me in the ass.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8210000/8210394.stm

That was my favorite story for a while, until in the same day:

• A jellyfish stung my lips, and some bastard kid bit me.

The jellyfish are small and translucent, and they tend to float near the surface of the water – where you wouldn’t see them if you were looking around for all the other fish.  They get your feet on the way in or out of the water, sting your hands while your paddling, they float up or down your shorts and sting your ass too.

That kid was throwing crap at another kid and climbing on top of a spinning rolling/wheeled chair he has fallen off of before, + I got bit while pulling him down.  It left a big welt on my arm which stang less than the jellyfish stings, but it looks a lot worse, bled more, throbs, and I had to wonder if you need a tetanus/ rabies shot for little bastard kid bites.

I have to put up with crap like that from time to time, I don’t get paid much at all…, but it’s usually pretty relaxed, I live on the beach, my boss is nice…

I tell him how the Rats in the walls and ceiling keeping me awake at night, and he laughs…

He lent me his wetsuit while he’s away for the summer.  I wasn’t at all inclined to use it until a few days ago, when jellyfish stung: my nipples, armpit, ear, my whole right side, and gave me an extra jab in the back.    The water in the bay is as warm as a hot cup of tea you’ve left behind to answer the door – not knowing it was the Jehova’s witness a’ knocking, + you’d never get back to drink it anytime soon; I mean it feels nice on your skin, and it takes a lot of stings before you have to admit to yourself that it’s time to put a hot rubber suit on to go in the water.

I actually put his wetsuit on just the once.  It was thick, hot, and it hurt behind my knees.  40 minutes later I took it off with a mild lingering discomfort, + 2 days after that the back of my knees started bleeding whenever I straightened my legs.   Taka + the other drunk guy I asked about it say my legs are too fat + implied that I should go on a leg diet.

He also invited me to a vegetable barbeque just after I lost my deluxe junior woodchuck underwater exploration kit and digital camera.  The vegetable barbeque consisted of 2 small slices of pumpkin that my girlfriend hadn’t already eaten while I was walking up and down the beach looking for any of the components of my deluxe underwater exploration kit, and a handful of green pepper slices that were covered with meat.

I got the deluxe underwater exploration kit for my birthday from my girlfriend who also helped me bake a vegan chocolate peanut butter cake, and left for a 3 day trip with her friends that same morning.

I spent weeks looking for a set that would fit me, be totally waterproof, + not cost me more than I would make in 4 hours teaching crazy bastard kids.  I took very very good care of it, used it every day- if not multiple times every day – as I really don’t have all that much work to do, and it fell off the back of Taka’s jet ski, along with my camera (in a floating waterproof case).  A pair of scuba instructors that were visiting asked me to hold their fins and masks as I was getting on the jet ski, so I didn’t have the chance to secure my own belongings before Taka suddenly sped off.

He’s a nice guy who constantly surprises us by showing up at our window drunk, or with drinking apparatus at all hours of the night – with and without friends and anyone who happens to be staying at the inn his family owns.

He took me to some rock islands/ reefs you seem to need a boat to reach + we saw lots of giant, + very colorful fish. I had thought that he only knew how to say “F@ck” in English, but he tapped me on the shoulder then to say “Oh!! very ….dangerous fish!!!”   I asked if he was referring to the 5 fugu/ blowfish below us, but he was  talking about the huge – fins all extended red lion/ scorpion fish that was swimming quickly and straight at us.  That was scary!  I only got a very blurry photo – They’re apparently very painfully poisonous!

He took me, my girlfriend, the diving instructors, and another pair of heavy drinking guys there on a very jellyfishy day when I lost my mask, snorkel, and camera.

I had to borrow a mask from one of the diving instructors, + swam back 35 minutes to where I got on the jet ski hoping to find any of the missing components, but no luck, and Bad Luck! – with all the Jellyfish.

There’s a small corner of the beach that has a jellyfish net stretched through the water, but the lifeguards there don’t want you to do anything, so I tend to stay away from there.

One day, before the lifeguards started showing up for summer duty, I was wearing my birthday deluxe snorkel set – following one of the super bright blue fish, and I saw an octopus arm pop out and try to grab it.  It wasn’t grabbing it all too well, so I got to see an octopus follow its arm out (to better its chances of snagging the fish) before I had to go back up for air.  A friend of mine wasn’t too far away, so I shouted for him to come and see the octopus, but when we went back down to the bottom together, the octopus was gone, and a gigantic manta ray was resting right next to the rock it had come out from under.

I told people that I saw an octopus for about 2 weeks, until I got tired of hearing them ask how it tasted.  Bastards!!! Did you know they have 8 arms and 3 hearts?

I spent about 3 weeks searching intermittently for my mask, snorkel or camera. Sometimes it was very wavy, sometimes rainy, sometimes I went out to where I couldn’t even see the ocean floor; And I saw Jaws as a child and I’m still only slightly less afraid of open water (wet places larger than a bath tub).  I have since found only the mask I lost, 2 other masks, an old fishing pole, a snorkel nowhere near as nice as the one I lost, a piece of roofing almost the exact same size as the hole in my roof, and assorted other things I left lie on the ocean floor.

I spent about a week chasing a school of squid down the length of the beach.  They’re very fast, and hard to follow;  They change to a dark color when they squirt ink out, so you have trouble telling when they turn away.

You can’t paint pictures underwater, and the water is so nice I haven’t painted more than a couple scenes to use on our wedding invitations from as far back as June. I painted a few in June that I still haven’t uploaded to any of my websites, because I didn’t have a computer for the longest time, and didn’t have a camera for the second longest.

Taka comes by drunk from time to time and talks about all the preparations he’s made to come to our wedding.  He came by one night with Jack and a pair of girls and we all went out to look for seaturtles – which only come ashore once a year to lay their eggs in the sand.  The one we found was the size of a washing machine!

I went out by myself a bunch of other times + never came across another one.  Whenever I told anyone from around here that I saw a giant seaturtle, they all made a point to tell me that their eggs taste very nice with Ramen.     The Bastards!!

Taka and another of the drinking guys, both restauranteurs, decided while drinking that they would have a contest of skill – to see which of them could cook the best 2 course vegan dinner for me, but Taka forgot that it was his grandfather’s 88th birthday that evening, so I only had one 2 course vegan dinner, …but still very nice mind you.

The other guy doesn’t show up at our house unannounced like Taka does – except for when he does it with Taka, or on the one occasion when he came by rubbing his crotch and asked me to wake up my girlfriend so he could ask her pharmaceutical opinion on something he contracted from a girl he’d met.

I wouldn’t want to go to a hospital in a very small town with that sort of problem either.

I started typing about something else at first, but my girlfriend said she could only beat the dough for the pitas on this table between our computers. I gave up on typing pretty quickly. She beats it with such gusto I couldn’t help but think she’s angry about something.

I’m angry about that one third of my salary.
It’s kind of boring here too.

There’s really very little for anyone to do in this area. There are no restaurants, no movie theaters, no bars with disco nights. There’re just a lot of small farms, a beach we can’t swim on – ‘cause it’s too cold, and hundreds of mountains we can’t climb because there are no trails, and it never stops raining.
Yesterday it finally did stop raining. I went out and painted a picture of a shrine with the first few cherry blossoms of the season. I don’t know why my girlfriend wanted to come with me. Looking out the window, it seemed like a good idea – until we realized how cold it can be when the sun goes behind newly forming rain clouds. She sat in the car for a few hours – reading a magazine and looking angry, while I painted outside – shivered and shook.
She took my car down to the supermarket + didn’t come back for an hour at least. It was really cold.

We tried walking our $200 (equivalent) down to the old lady’s house to pay our rent, but that old lady can never hear us knocking.

She always wants to know who I am + why I’m there with money too.

My girlfriend bought a new computer when I first moved down here, so she could keep in touch with me easier. New computers all have Windows Vista on them these days though, + she’s not too good at using it. It’s all in Japanese + Windows (esp. Vista)  is rarely as straightforward as you’d like it to be, so I’m not a lot of help. We did get the internet finally though, so she at least has something to play with while she isn’t playing video games with me.

One day I was looking for a place to recharge my cell-phone.  There are just enough spaces in the power strip to accommodate both our computers and the modem, so I tried to plug the cord into the outlet in the bedroom. Instead of the 2 prongs at the end of the cord going into the 2 holes in outlet, the inside of the outlet got pushed back inside of the wall – where we can never get power from it again.

I’ve never even heard of that happening before.

….She found a cockroach at the bottom of a sealed container of Listerine we keep in the bathroom.  That’s even more bizarre.  It’s a watertight/ airtight childproof container,so how did a cockroach get inside?

Another odd thing is the old people who just appear.  We heard these voices one day, so I went and peeled back the curtain in the other room, + there were 3 octogenarians sitting on my porch talking calmly amongst themselves.  Perhaps they were talking about the good old days…

I thought my girlfriend would be interested to know there were random old people relaxing on our porch, but before I could even tell her, the old man loudly, gruffly, agitatedly exclaimed:  “Who the hell was that guy?”

I figure that ought to be my line…

I was on the floor of my studio another day when I happened to look up and see an angry old man looking in the window, down at me.   I would have taken a photo, but he shuffled away before I could get my camera out.

When I 1st moved in to this house, there was a fist sized hole in the wall with a wire running out, up, onto the roof connected to an old aerial antenna- that I can’t connect our TV to.  I plugged up the hole with clay, but the wire is still there, and we still can’t get any TV signal from it unless we plug 2 boxes attached to it, into outlets that we don’t have.  It might work out if I were to knock another hole in the outer wall and run an extension cord through, but there’s already a hole in the outer wall of another room which has an extension cord running from a wall outlet out to where the washing machine is…

People keep their washing machines outside here sometimes. It’s a pain in the ass wiping all the ash from the volcano off the washing machine + laundry pole when you want to wash some clothes.

Our washing machine used to squeal so loudly, you could hear it inside any building in the area.

I tried washing some clothes the other day + instead of the usual sound (that makes me want to walk down  to the elementary school down the road – to apologize for the disturbance), there was an awful burning smell.

Our washing machine doesn’t seem to work anymore.

It wouldn’t cost too much to replace it with another really old washing machine,  but that’s a lot more money than I’m happy spending with what I make now…

Now that we have the internet set up – I waste a lot of time doing this and that, but I don’t really remember exactly what.  I also try to get my girlfriend to play something on the Wii I got with her in mind, but she doesn’t like losing, …or playing video games – I’m not sure which takes precedence.
I got some recipes off of vegcooking.com . They usually work very well – if we can get the ingredients in this country… She likes cooking now too.

When we went back to the U.S. for Christmas, we didn’t get a chance to have any falafels.  (There are no restaurants or Mid-Eastern people here.)
Falafel is fun to say. They taste good. They’re so very difficult to get around here!!
They sound easy to cook, …and still taste good, even when you mess them up as badly as we, …or I, did.

She read a book she got from the library while waiting for the pita dough under the table to rise. (We only have one table – a Kotatsu – it has a heater attached to the bottom + a blanket that goes around the sides (to keep your legs warm.)
I’d already finished making the stuff that tasted a lot like hummus – even if the consistency was not right, so I played the cheap Incredible Hulk game I got while we were home for Christmas. Smashing up video game buildings and cars with an angry Hulk seems so therapeutic, but it just seems to make my girlfriend madder.

She was all the more madder with all the extra time my poor failure of falafel making took.

Whenever I ask her if she’d like something to eat, so looks to the clock for guidance, …like it’ll turn her into a gremlin.  Eating dinner late makes her pretty angry anyway.

I got a used Wii off of e-bay before Christmas because she really wanted one the Christmas before. I figured it would give her something slightly active to do when she moved in with me here (where there’s nothing to do this time of year), but she doesn’t share my enthusiasm for Spiderman games, and hasn’t gotten around to trying the ones I got with her in mind.
Spiderman is Awesome though – I have to say.

It’s been nice for me to have it. You can’t paint outside in winter/ in the ever present rain, + there’s no place to go anywhere around here (as I believe I’ve mentioned).

I might have written this sooner – if the city, the princess, the world didn’t need saving, zombie build up, all of that.  There also didn’t seem to be a lot to write about – it being so dull and rainy here.
I waste a lot of time on the internet too, now that we have it, as I have surely already mentioned.

Yesterday was nice because it didn’t rain (the 1st time in forever). Today was nicer because it was both: not raining, and sunny.
I painted a picture of a gnarley old tree growing on a big rock – covered with flowers, in front of a cliff.  It’s quite scenic,

but I knew it was a bad spot to pick on a Monday – being that it was next to the elementary school.
When school let out I had a sudden crowd of eager curious youth pushing each other, pushing my elbows and my easel (while I was working) to get a better look, asking hundreds of questions I could only sometimes understand, and YES: they touched the paint on my canvas to see what making fingerprints in a new painting felt like.

I also went to the old lady’s house again to pay her our $200 (equivalent) rent. I had to explain who I was, what the money was for, how much the rent is, what month it is, and all that all over again. If she wasn’t so old you’d maybe think she had a lot of foreign people stopping by with envelopes full of money for her.

There are only 3 foreign people in this town; One of them is : Jack, so that is what we all get called. I get Jack’s mail from time to time too, …close enough I guess.

I like to bring my girlfriend with me when I pay the rent. It gives her a little exercise and gives me a witness that I did pay – in case that lady forgets.
My bosses’ wife called me a month or two ago to say that the old lady’s son talked to her and he didn’t think we’d paid her for January. She couldn‘t be sure either way. I was sure that I had paid until I thought about it more + more, but even I couldn‘t be so sure about it after so much time had past.
My boss had initially made an envelope with the house‘s address + the names of all the months on it for me to put the money in, so she could stamp the name of the month and I would have something like a receipt to show I had paid – avoid any problems or oversights.
The 1st time I went over there she was peeling persimmons by her front door. I gave her the envelope, but her hands were covered with sticky goo and I never saw or asked for the envelope again. I tried bringing another envelope, but it turns out that she can’t remember where she left her hanko/ stamp anyway. My girlfriend is more concerned with proving that we paid than I am. Mostly I don’t think she would ever remember that she should expect any money from whomever I am every month anyhow.

The people at city hall called me at home on another day because I had renewed my visa a year before, and they hadn’t made a record of it on my “green card” yet.  I move around a lot, + there wasn’t any extra space to pencil in the un-new information on the back of my card with all the other changes, so they assured me it was very urgent that I apply for a new “foreign registration” card as soon as possible.  I’m pretty sure it wasn’t.

Last week I was a little shaky + needed to eat to stay alive, but I couldn’t remember what I was looking for in the kitchen.  I think I was expecting to find some food that’d already been eaten.  I used to keep more food around, but then my salary got cut to one third + my girlfriend’s on her never ending diet anyway…  She’s the one who gave me some sugar pills + made sure I ate them.  Having a low blood sugar can also make you sleepy or sweaty.  It was cold, but I had to take off my shirts and find a towel to dry and warm myself up again.

On one of the many many rainy days, I found myself taking a cool shower, …+ not knowing why.
Taking a cool shower is something I‘m always – altogether disinclined to do – I think you’ll understand.  It seemed to take forever to get it to warm up (but not scald me).
When I stopped shivering, I started to wonder how long I had been in the shower. My fingers weren‘t wrinkly yet (though that probably happens quicker when the water is warm). I was immediately impressed with my deductive skills – to have reasoned that out so quickly, …but alarmed at the same time that I didn’t know several more simple things like: what time/ even time of day it was, whether my girlfriend was still home, whether I had shampooed or not, etc.
It was when it came to my attention that I honestly had no recollection of having gotten into the shower, that I got out.

I stepped out to find a clock – to reassure myself I wasn’t late for anything, but having consulted several clocks and my new cheap green watch, it turned out I was already 15 minutes late for a class in a town far away (I was also wet, and naked, and not in my car getting any closer …45 minutes away). That was more alarming, but then when I looked around and found my phone to call my bosses’ wife to say that I wouldn’t be there on time – I found a whole bunch of messages from her asking things like: where I was, what I was doing, why I hadn’t left yet. I wrote her a message to say that I just “found myself” in the shower and couldn’t remember getting in there/ anything before that.

She wrote back to say I had been acting really weird, so she just canceled my class for me. I wondered how she knew I had been acting any way at all until she explained that she had been in my house and gave me a pill …before I took my clothes off.

That is very peculiar is it not.

The day before was my girlfriend’s birthday. I rode my bike up and down a small mountain to get to a small shop that sells very small slices of very small cakes. I was dizzy + shaking off and on most of the rest of that day, so I probably should have eaten more than just most of a very small slice of a very small cake before going to bed. – I’ve woken up dead before after all…

I don’t have to wake up at the crack of noon/ even earlier like I used to anymore. That is very nice!
My boss said there aren’t enough kids at the school for him to pay me to work “full time” this month. “Full time” was roughly 4 to 8:30pm. I never got paid as much as one might like, but those are hours that I was happy with, so I didn’t complain about the money, the kid that wets himself, etc.
This month and last month I’m working the occasional morning Kindergarten class and anything after 6pm. That gives me almost every Friday off (with nowhere to go + it’s always raining) and $700 (equivalent) for the entire month.
I’m glad my girlfriend moved in + is splitting the $200 a month rent with me, but I’m also not entirely comfortable living with someone who can somehow be soooo pissed off all the time.
She made nearly 3 times what I made, when I was still being paid merely “not well“ (as opposed to now, when I‘m hoping to make as much as I did at my part time job in my high-school days).
We don’t share money anyway, so I don’t see how it should affect her. She’s also seems to be angry that I have more free time.
She used to be very angry that there weren’t quite as many convenience stores as there were around her mom’s old house. She’s angry that the floor is dirty after I vacuumed after she vacuumed. She’s angry that I’m playing video games while she’s trying to decide all the details for our wedding…
Women are a pain!

We went back up to Saitama for the weekend to visit her mom and my old friends. As much as I hate being surrounded on all sides but up – at all times by concrete, It was nice to be able to do a little shopping and visit a few restaurants.
We went to this Italian place where you can eat as much pizza as you want. When they finally realize that I will only eat as much of my girlfriend’s pizza crusts as she will concede me, they usually make me something vegan.
We took her mom to a vegetarian restaurant in Tokyo the next day. I was disappointed that all but one soy-sage (It’s not a sausage.) was honey flavored (with honey no less). My girlfriend was a little angry that her mom didn’t like all of her wedding ideas.

I still think the best idea was having lots of chickens walking around during the ceremony – even though I was just joking at first. The Green Lantern costume is also a good idea. My idea of having the party adjacent to that restaurant – in the hall with the giant Buddah statue is the one they liked enough to go with.  Now I’ve got her thinking about getting married on Halloween, …so I can freely confess to anyone that it {was} the scariest day of my life.

As upset as my girlfriend initially was when she moved in with me, despite what she claimed, her house is way way colder than mine. Her mom lets me sleep in a spare room on the 1st floor with no heat (none of the rooms have heat except the one with the heater). I thought I could cut back on shivering time by leaving all my outer clothes and sweatshirts on when I went to bed, but I forgot about the chocolate I had been keeping in my pocket.
It was melted onto the back of my shirt/ into the sheets when I woke up.
I wasn’t sure how to explain that in Japanese, so I got my girlfriend to help.

She doesn’t translate things as I say them though – she says whatever she wants to say and says that I said it.

I never said that I don’t like her mother’s Onigiri, for instance, I just said I didn’t really feel like having it for dinner (having already had it for breakfast and lunch).

While she was practicing for her nail technician exam with her mom (whom I never said did a lousy job – despite how my girlfriend chose to translate it), …I walked around my old city for a few hours and bought 8 cheap curry mixes and three: 1 killo bags of dried beans to take home.  She was mad that I spent a little over $50 (equivelent) on food that would last us more than a year.

I was pleased that I finally got an art frog from the machine.  I’d been dropping a little money in that machine every now and again over the last year I lived there – trying to get the keychain with an artist frog.  I got 4 typhoon frogs, 2 aerobics instructor frogs, 2 mushroom picking frogs,… but I could never get the artist frog until this last time, when I put my money in + nothing came out!

I went to the counter to complain + the guy opened the machine up and let me pick out any frog I wanted.  They stopped making those frogs in 2006 and the machine is still half full – he probably would have given me all the rest for another $1. …

On our way home we stopped at the best Indian restaurant I have found so far – in Kyushu. They were having a sale on Indian clothes (without curry stains), + I got an interesting pajama shirt; Pajamas are the national dress in India.
It seems very well suited to block out the sun and keep you cool at the same time – both useless features with the weather being what it is here.

The cherry trees were just starting to bloom up in Saitama + Tokyo. The blossoms have almost all fallen off down here.

It was good that the sun shone for a few days at least. Three of them I spent in a valley with 2 big waterfalls: painting, and trying to warm myself up somewhat. I painted a lot more cherry blossoms by a river on one cloudy day. I drove around looking for the place people had recommended to me – wondering why the hell they’d think I should look there for nice cherry trees, on another cloudy day.

Cloudy/ rainy days make for poor paintings, so I’ve taken to drawing outside with an old ink pen recently. (Everything has to be black or white, so you don’t have any of the colors diminished by the bad lighting.)

One day when it was gray and windy, but not raining,  I tried cycling up to the lookout on top of the only mountain I’ve found with a road here.  It took an hour and a half of constant pedaling, but I made it all the way to the top: soaking wet and that much colder in the wind at the top of a mountain.

It took me an hour and a half to cycle up, but only 15 minutes to make it all the way down – and dry again!

Now that our washing machine has stopped spinning clothes dry – I might try wearing something wet up the mountain sometime.

I like having more of my afternoons free – even if it does mean a lot less money + an angrier girlfriend.

Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.–HEBREWS 12:6

That’s why when I was brushing my teeth last night, the sink fell off the wall and dropped on my feet.

I’ve cleaned the place up pretty well. There’re still lots of drawers, shelves, and cabinets I haven’t swept the cockroach droppings out of, but as I don’t have anything to fill the drawers, shelves, and cabinets with, it hasn’t been a very high priority.
I’m also trying to get over the long lingering illness that the 1st bit of cleaning gave me.

Dust, it turns out, can induce illness, + there was lots of dust. When I moved in, there were sheets of thick white dust and grey and black cobwebs all over the place. I spent the better part of 2 weeks cleaning one room then another. I got sick the 1st week here (from dust or from stress or from 80‘s music?) and it’s been with me since. Every time it seems to have abated, I decide to climb a mountain, cycle along the coast, or finish cleaning, + it comes back…
The 3rd day I was here they had a welcome party for me. They’re good people, + it was really quite fun. They ordered me some tofu without the fish flakes, spring rolls without the shrimp, a buttered baked potato without the butter, buttered corn (also) without the butter, a screw driver made with orange soda and probably not vodka either.

We went to a karaoke bar and I lost my voice, so I couldn’t explain why singing Rick Ashley is a funny thing to do, + couldn’t speak much louder than a whisper for the next 3 or 4 days.
I lost it again after I cycled to Sata town.
I thought it was 21 kilometers to the cape, but it was 27 kilometers to the cape, after the 21 kilometers to the town/ 48k. I would have liked to have known that before going all the way to the town – cycling sweaty in the cold air + losing my voice again.

The cycling is really really nice here. It’s mostly flat and smooth with a view of the bay from most places, and none of the awful stink that was everywhere in my old town.

My old town stank, and my old job sucked.
When the guy down here said he might be able to offer me a job just 40 minutes away from where I was, it was just a passive curiosity that made me go down to hear about it.

It pays about $500 less per month, but the house has better furniture, is $150 cheaper and 20 seconds from the beach. I don’t have to drive 100 kilometers to 3 different places from 10am to 9 or 10 pm everyday. I wake up later, work fewer hours, and don’t have my schedule changed in secret. I don’t have to worry about what and how to teach the kids next. They don’t climb on me or try to poke me in sensitive areas. I don’t have to put up with anyone complaining about how their business is failing because their staff is no good. I’ve also been told that we charge less than half what my old boss did.

I don’t miss that putz at all.
I didn’t tell him I was moving nearby, and I didn’t stick around for him to come and inspect my old house before I cleared out. My new boss lent me a car big enough to fit my bike, all my stuff, and a little bit of shopping I did in town – in one trip. I got up early after my last day and left before my old boss could show up. He was looking for a way to take back some of the money he paid me for my last month, and he was gonna’ complain about his failing business again. That house was a pretty good one, though it did have a few problems: In the beginning, he wouldn’t pay to have his old car fixed up, so it was never worth the trouble to tell him that his vacumn wouldn’t suck, his fridge froze everything no matter how you set it, the screen doors had holes large enough for ravens to fly through, the blankets had holes big enough to poke your legs through, and the toilet never stopped flushing. Problems he would probably – suddenly decide to blame on me.

My new toilet, by comparison, doesn’t flush at all. It’s just a hole with a seat. That hole is pretty drafty when it‘s cold.

It’s been about a month and a half since I left and my old coworker tells me that he too has since been fired. He read his contract and expected to be paid for his one sick day. My old boss likely thought it better to find somebody new than to just pay a qualified experienced person the $130 he’s legally obliged to pay as it‘s unlikely he (or either of us) would feel it worthwhile to try and navigate the Japanese legal system). Our contracts also said we’re supposed to get an extra day off/ extra pay when we work on our days off. I pretty much always refused to work on my days off, but my old coworker lost lots and lots of weekend time to doing favors big and small for our old boss who seemed to rely pretty heavily on his help.
I just got an e-mail today that said that the girl who worked there part time, and the two people who were hired to replace me have all quit.

I love no longer working for a total jackass!
I also love working less.

I have a studio now too.
They tell me that this house used to be a police box/ a station for just one or 2 police. There’s a big front room with lots of windows and a concrete floor where the police used to keep a desk. It’s nice and big and bright. I put some grass mats on the concrete floor so I needn’t worry about dribbling/ splattering paint, but this place is so old and so cheap I really needn’t worry.

With my newfangled extra free time I restretched the canvas I had stretched just before I was fired from my last job. I had wanted to start the painting I have started back then, but at the time I didn’t think I would be staying in the area. Messing with oil paint less than a month before you have to move (to parts unknown) is really ill advised. I unstretched the canvas and gave all its pieces to my girlfriend for safe keeping. Then I had to get it back from her a month after when I knew I wasn’t going too far after all – along with my organic vegan soup stock and some other items I wouldn‘t care to abandon.

I see a lot of cars slowing down when they pass my windows, and people I don’t know tell me they’ve seen me painting while they were driving.
My boss’ wife tells me the old ladies in the neighborhood all tell each other I’m working on something interesting, but I don’t know how they know how interesting it is.
It is – interesting anyway.

I’ve been exploring the area, sick, and inside when it’s raining/ too cold/ too windy/ too dark, so I haven’t painted outside much at all in the month and a half I’ve been here.
I might try to blame Harry Potter for another drop in my productivity…
Because I don’t have the internet hooked up yet, I decided to look at a book for a little while one day. And the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and the next day, etc.

I did get out to do a picture of the beach I live off of, and the craggy peaks just above it, but the weather went from nice to raining in just over an hour.
I did 2 pictures on my way back from my morning classes near my old town one day and got horribly misdirected trying to make it to my evening classes on time. I drove from Aira towards Onetime – I followed a sign that said Onejime, but after 20 minutes of driving straight ahead, the next sign pointing straight ahead said Aira. I saw another sign that said Onejime, but it pointed between 2 roads – at the corner. I tried one of the 2, but it put me 5 minutes from where I 1st started (some 40/ 50 minutes later).

I bought a book of maps for $8., but it doesn’t have half the roads in it.

I painted at a shrine at the side of the big road one day last week. I took my backpack full of heavy tubes of paint with me on my bike, and decided that would be a good time to look for a hiking trail up into the mountains. I found something far away that looks promising, but didn’t have time to hike the whole way up it, as I wanted to get to the shrine in time to get the best bright rays from the setting sun.

I had finished everything but the roof of the shrine in the painting when it got too dark out to continue painting, so I packed up and rode my bike back home.
On the way back home, in the very dim twilight, the sidewalk disappeared. There was a sidewalk, then there was a 1 foot drop with no warning. I had my freshly painted – still wet and susceptible painting in one hand and I was going too fast to stop. Thankfully it landed face up in the same soft grass I landed face down in.
That’s the best bad luck I’ve had since I got fired from that job that I hated.

The luckiest thing that’s happened since I was offered a better job right after being fired from a lousy job was that: I found a TV laying outside yesterday. My girlfriend’s been wanting to get a Wii for more than a year, but they were in short supply and pricey when I had a TV. I tried to win one from a gas station in my old town all through the summer, but I still didn’t have a TV. It has all that black and white fuzz and makes that hissing noise that TVs tend to make when they aren’t connected to anything, so I assume it’ll work when it is connected to something. I just don‘t know if there‘s anything good on… I’ll hook it up when my girlfriend gets here at least. She’ll have the internet set up for us.

That’ll be nice to have. Right now I only get on the internet on my boss’ old computer. There’s always a menu open right in the middle of the screen that we can’t get rid of.

I keep on counting down the days until I’m done with this terrible job.

I was supposed to be finished on the 25th of this month, but then my boss asked me to stay ’til the 31st – just to finish up the month.

Then he asked me to work on the 1st of the next month too – just to finish up that last week…,

then he asked me to work until the 8th, presumably so he won’t have to teach some of the miserable bastard children I get stuck with – while he waits for someone to move here from England.

My best guess is, he hasn’t informed this person that:

• his company keeps losing money/ business,
• he has no idea how to operate it,
• he expects them to pay to fix up his piece of $h@t car,
• they’ll be asked to work a lot of their days off,
• they’ll be: prodded, poked, punched, kicked, climbed on, or ignored (if they’re having a good day), or
• that this whole city reeks of pig-ass.

He had initially told me I could stay in this house until my December flight home (I’d paid for a long time ago), but now he’s decided not to have my replacement move into the same filthy cockroach palace he had me living in for the 1st of the 4 months that I’ve been here (and have been wanting to quit).

I was looking forward to a little down time after finishing, but I knew he would probably change things around on me:

Last week he told me not to go to one of the schools I usually go to, but to go to a different one instead.  No big deal, simple change;  He also left a note on my desk to help me remember.

When the day came I went to the different school, and who was there red faced and shouting that I was in the wrong spot.

I’m not taking any more crap from him!

Especially not when there’s a note on my desk in his handwriting, telling me to go there at that time.

I bet my replacement is going to love coming to Japan for the 1st time and having all these unnecessary suprises sprung on him.

A couple of weeks ago my boss sent me to work at another new place.  There was a new “student” at the new place who stomped on my feet about 10 times while he shook my hand for the 1st time.  The kids decided they wanted to start the class with a book.  That same bastard child got up, ran over and stomped on my foot every time I turned the page.  Some other kid saw this and thought it was the thing to do, so they pushed, hit, and strangled each other – trying to fight over who could be the 1st to molest me – every time I turned the page.  I pushed them back – One started crying.

I tried to get them to sing a song/ play a game, but they just grabbed things from all over the room to throw all over the room.  I made them pick the stuff up, and whichever one I wasn’t standing over tried punching me in the butt from behind.  I twisted an arm or 2, but these kids don’t understand the “action = reaction” phenomenon.

Man…,

I hate my job.

While I was playing a game with cards on the floor with a kid who was comparatively calm, the newest kid with the kicking problem came over and kicked the card all over the room.  I got up and made him put it all back.  As soon as I had squat back down he tried to kick me in the head.  I pinched his leg so it would hurt, so he got angry and redoubled his efforts.  I missed the 2nd, but pushed his foot up the 3rd time, which made him fall over.

He pretended to cry, and he was an awful actor (worse than either of the new Darth Vaders even), but ignoring him moan off and on while he watched me from the corner of his eye, just made him angrier and angrier.

My boss got a call that night from some upset mother who I am comforted – has to live with that child, where I just have to have some sort of plan for an instance where they take a break from trying to sodomize each other with building blocks (and thankfully not for much longer!).  My boss was red faced and upset again, so I tried to explain what actually went on, but he didn’t want any explanation.  He didn’t try to blame that on me, and I assume from the look he gave me that he had been working there before he pushed it on me.

I hate this job.

I went in one morning to find out that he had decided to throw a big Halloween party for all the kids that go to the school on my day off.  Please make a plan for a 30/ 40 minute activity for everyone, he told me with almost 2 weeks notice.  I told him that my fiance had bought a plane ticket to come and visit me over that weekend, and that we had been planning to take a trip in this area for 2 months.

I didn’t bother to remind him that I prefer to have off on the days that I have off, or that he is supposed to check with us if he’d like us to do work on our days off, and provide us with another day off when we do work on our days off:  It is something he knows full well.

His latest plan was to have me work until 7 pm on the 8th of November, and told me to be ready to move out early on the morning on the 9th, maybe a few hours before the next person shows up.

I had told the people in the town 2 down that I could start at their school on the 25th, then told them he pushed it back to the 31st, then the 1st, …I didn’t bother telling them that he wanted me until late on the 8th – seeing how he’s changed his mind so so so much so far.

They decided that they’d like me to start on the 3rd and haven’t changed their minds about it yet.

It put a look of shock on my present boss’ face when I told him that he’d have to spend that one week in my shoes, …but of course he doesn’t have to put up with all his own bull$h@t.

In the meantime, I mostly just want to prevent myself and any innocent children any bodily harm,

and to have the car not break down again before then,

but you can’t always have what you want.

Every time I stop for gas they tell me that one of my tail lights is busted.  I tell them that it’s my boss’ car + that he would never approve of having any part of it fixed for anything more than free.  I told them I’d just need to drive it for 2 more weeks.  Then the next week I told them I’d only need to drive it for 2 more weeks.  A week after that I told them that I’d only need to drive it for 2 more weeks;  Hopefully it’s for real this time.

A busted tail light doesn’t worry me nearly as much as the squeals and the various warning lights that turn on with increasing frequency.

Today there was a terrible burning smell which I really would have liked to have come from something other than the car, but …it followed me all the way home and stank there too.  I opened the hood and found the new generator belt shredded up on top of the engine.  The mechanic has told me that: the car is old, so the engine is rusty, so the belt will keep breaking all too frequently.  He repaired it much quicker the 2nd time.  It really ought to last at least 3 weeks before breaking again…  it ought.

I had endeavored to ride my bike as much as I could, but it turns out that I just can’t bear having to breath in that awful pig-$h@t stink when I have to breath harder.

I used to carry a bandana to keep my poor bald head from burning in the sun, but it rains so much, and smells so bad here, it’s become a makeshift airfilter.

The town 2 down where I was offered a job at another small school smelled worlds better when I went down to see it.

Trading in my Christmas air ticket home would cost more than half the price we had already paid for it + it’s actually cheaper for me to buy a cheap car and try out living there – than to head home an extra month early.

They asked me nicely to stop by their Halloween party – so they could introduce me to all their students.  I told my boss I would have to leave work 2 hours early that day, and in his typical fashion, he canceled my last 2 classes on the wrong day.  It was the 1st time he’s ever made a mistake in my favor.

He called me early in the morning a few days ago to tell me that the school I was supposed to go to at 10am that morning wanted me to meet them – somewhere totally different.  He tried to explain where it was they wanted me to go, but it soon became clear that:

• he didn’t really know,
• and was, again, growing increasingly frustrated trying to explain it.

He drew a map and dropped it off at my house.

The map…

would make you laugh if you saw it and compared it to what really exists.  For one thing: It only had 2 roads – neither of them where the building was. It was drawn so that it was between the bridge and the lake on the left.  If it had been drawn to scale, the building would have been 9 killometers long, not tucked behind 2 other buildings off the road, which was, in turn, a totally different road from either of the unrelated roads he had drawn. The bridge and the lake are 15 killometers apart in the real world.  I drove slowly most of that way looking for anything larger than a house. I drove back, then back around again.  I stopped at a convenience store + asked, and the mystery was solved.

I maybe should have bought something.

I was only 15 minutes late, but what they had asked me to go and attend was just a stage rehearsal of some dances they were going to put on for their parents.  This left me sitting on a mat on the floor “watching” the rehearsal, under a pile of kids, none of whom had any intention of watching anything, when they could climb all over me, fight each other, and pick my pockets.

I felt something like a lucky golden buddah statue that everyone wants to rub for good luck…

I had an otherwise good day today:

I slept in for the first time in a too long time and painted one picture at “the rock beach”.

I call it that because it has a small peninsula with 2 tall rock towers sitting next to each other – if it has a real name I don’t know it.

————

The last time I was there I painted a really good picture.  A family with a few small children parked nearby to look for shells, but the 2 youngest kids just stood and watched me for 20 minutes.  They declared that they were amazed at my painting.  I, in turn, was impressed that they were able to stand there that long without attacking anyone, but didn’t want to get into a long discussion over it.  There are often times when people stop to tell me that I’m doing a good job, and I often find reason to disagree because of this or that, what have you…

This time it was a good painting from beginning to end, and I was pleased all until:

• I finished it,
• I turned around to pack up my bag,
• It got blown over into the sand while my back was turned.

• It was an otherwise windless day…

AAAARRRGH!

I’ve had things blow into paintings (most often leaves or cherry blossoms).  I’ve had paintings blow free from the easel – so I have to chase or climb after them. I’ve had the easel tip over onto me/ ruin my clothes.  I’ve had my palate blow into gravel or onto my leg/ shirt , but I had never before had a painting get blown over into sand.

Luckily it was a very large grain sand which dented layers of paint, but didn’t get buried in it.

I fixed it up so that the colors are all as they should be, but there are still a number of small craters in the paint.

Anyway, there were no horrible paint accidents today, and I was glad.

——-

I only mention this here and now to contrast it with what happened yesterday:

Yesterday:  Oh Lord!

I was tired, and had to work that Sunday morning at some sport’s day thing.  It was even earlier than when I have to work on my regular working days, but it was at least over pretty quick.

I gave myself as little time in the morning as I could – to facilitate sleeping…  I made sure to bring all my painting supplies with me, so I could go out directly after.  Usually when I’m painting _ I don’t need to eat very much, but the little bit of running around I had to do in the morning must have made my insulin work far better than it otherwise ever does + I had to finish up my breakfast/ lunch/ half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, gone very early on in the day.

I was on a beach (the 1st one I was ever able to find here),

from 10:30 am until just before 6pm with only a half dozen very stale crumbled up crackers and one “atomic fireball” still in the bottom of my bag from my last trip to America, …over a year ago.  The little package of crackers must have gotten busted open at some point during that year – I was hungry, shaky, and I sometimes got vertigo when I moved, but they were still really hard to swallow.

I wasn’t sure if I would be living in this area for more than the 2 weeks I knew I had a home, and I wanted to make the most of the sunshine near the coast/ paint all day.

I did a painting of the waves, then one of a sand bar up close, then that same sand bar and brackish pool from futher away, then the pool from another angle, then I thought I’d paint a smaller picture of the beach running back in the distance towards some mountains but wasn’t able to get very far with it.

A sudden gust of wind blew my easel over and ticked me off, but I jammed it down deeper into the sand,  cleaned it up as best I could and got back to work.

Just a few brush strokes later, the board on the easel, which I had the canvas clipped to – blew over into my hands – it turned me and my clothes blue, but made me more irate.  I patiently screwed the piece holding the board in place tighter.

A few minutes after that, another gust of wind blew the canvas loose of the board and the clip, back onto me – making me bluer and more frustrated, but I didn’t want to waste the last little bits of daylight, which are usually the prettiest to paint.

But before I could even get the canvas re clipped to the backing board, the wind picked up again, blew it loose of my hands and pushed it face down along the beach in the sand.

AAAARRRGH!  AAAARRRGHHHRRRAAAGH GAAAAA!!  – but how.

I was tired, hungry, and not just a little angry at that point, so I took advantage of the nearest washed up piece of garbage on the beach;  I thought I would kick a half deflated volleyball halfway out to sea!

But instead, I found it really funny that when I tried to kick the ball,  my big toe bust through the top of my shoe – leaving a hole that filled in with sand as I walked dejectedly back towards my boss’ piece of $h@t car.

It was past twilight and the only other people in sight drove away when I got to my car.  I tried to wipe the worst of the paint off of me and packed up the car.

The car, I had parked on the one lane of packed ground leading to the edge of the beach.  I backed up slowly to be sure that my front tires stayed on the hard packed ground at the edge of the sand, but I failed.

What a horrible day.

When I put the car into drive it did not move.

I quickly reminded myself that there was absolutely no one anywhere around.

I tried to rock the car out of the sand by switching between drive and reverse gear as quickly as I could, but no rocking in either direction occurred.

I got out to appraise the situation:

The pain in the ass fairy could not have planned it better (if it existed): My tires were dug about a quarter of the way down into loose sand.

I pushed, and dug in the sand.  Sand stuck in the paint stuck to my arms from all the problems with my last painting.  The car didn’t move any and sank deeper into the sand.

I tried again.

I tried steering left and right to get a hold of something firm.

The car just sank deeper and it looked like the chassis + the engine would soon get planted in the sand, leaving the front wheels hanging over the holes they had dug.

I reminded myself that:

• there was absolutely no one anywhere around,
• I didn’t know the name of the place or even the town where I was – to call for help,
• I had only had breakfast and had had no lunch and would have no dinner,
• it would be totally dark in a few more minutes,
• and there was a big hole in my shoe.

I dug in the sand some more + found a few small rocks and two tiny thin strips of wood which I set on top of the sand under each wheel.

I tried going forward + it lurched just a little.

So I went backwards as quickly as I could + it moved just a little more. + I repeated that process, but really made very little progress in either direction until I undid my seat belt and threw my whole body forwards when it was in drive, and shook my weight backwards when it was in reverse + I managed to get it to teeter over the edge of the hole and gain forward momentum enough to get back onto the packed dirt road just before pitchdark set in.

It turns out to be lucky I gave up painting before then.

I stopped at a supermarket on the way home + must have looked odd with paint and sand and dust all over me,

…and my toe sticking out of my shoe.

They say you shouldn’t go shopping when you’re hungry, but if you’re hungry and tired, sunburnt and dirty, and the store is about to close, you just have to keep yourself out of the vodka aisle.

37 miles per gallon

Created by The Car Connection

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Americans are tired of these endless wars and they don’t want to police the world and they don’t want to put our troops into dozens of countries. So why are the candidates such rabid warmongers?

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A cop pulled me over.

He seemed lonely.

I wasn’t speeding.  I wasn’t swerving.  I wasn’t talking on a cell phone.  I wasn’t throwing mangled body parts out the windows.
I had been looking for a way to get up the mountains along the side of my city again, and I had just given up again.  He asked me what I was doing.   I told him.  He didn’t ask me if I knew why he pulled me over, …and I still don’t..

Loneliness seems to be what it was though.

He asked where I live, how long I’ve been in Japan, how long I’ve been in town…   He asked how I like the city and how I liked the weather.
He asked what I do and if I like my job (I didn’t want to get into too many details with that.).   Then he decided he had better things to do and let me go.

I know there’s a road that goes up the mountains.  I can see radio towers up there, they are huge and they certainly weren’t hiked up.
A month ago I bought a book of maps, but it just doesn’t have any of the smaller roads in it.
The last time I was looking for a road to get up there, I tried a little narrow one, and wound up stuck between industrial sized dump trucks until I got to the lime mine/ dead-end.

If I found the road somehow, and on the odd chance I found anything nice up there, it still wouldn’t stop it from raining all the damn time/ I still get no landscape paintings done…

The day after the 2 day long typhoon was warm and sunny and clear.  It was my first opportunity to get outside and not worry about any sudden weather changes.  (The weather did change, …it just took a little longer).  The problem this time wasn’t that it might suddenly rain down on me.  The problem was, with all the rain from the weeks and weeks of rain, and 2 terribly rainy days just previous – it was so flooded I couldn’t get to where I wanted.  Shame I hadn’t thought of that before setting out on the hour long drive to get there, but I did at least manage to get a nice small painting from the side of the river at the base of the bridge.
The last time I was there I started painting from almost the same spot, but it rained 30 minutes after I got there.  There was a lot more rock in that one, This newer one is predominantly water.

I went to a small beach another day not long after.  It was cloudy but not too too dark.  I was able to paint one good picture there at least.

I went back to my favorite beach on another gray day for a last swim.  I was quite pleased that I didn’t get any jellyfish stings (for once).  I had a good time, found lots of  nice little sea-shells, and my car went all funny on my way back to work.

A couple months ago I managed to have my boss have the car  inspected.  It’s his car, and he should have had it inspected about 10 months previous.  He told me it was inspected and ignored all the defects I cited.
When the windshield wipers jammed together + we had to take it to the mechanic, the mechanic told him it was hardly worth fixing it and cited a number of the same defects I had mentioned.
Most recently the sun visor has taken to dangling down/ swinging all around when I turn/ go over a bump.
That’s not such a big deal though – really, I can pull it off and toss it on the passenger seat when I don’t need it.

What a piece of crap!

This time I told him how the windows wouldn’t go up/or down, and how it was hard to turn right without the whole car shaking, …but he wasn’t interested.
I’m cheap too sometimes.

The next morning while I was driving to the school I had to work at, the turn signals/ blinkers gradually stopped working.  They would blink, then blink slowly, then only blink a few times, then only once.  I thought I should try to use those hand signals you’re taught in driver’s ed., but of course I couldn’t get the windows down.  I decided I would just drive it to the mechanic’s after I finished at that school, but the car  wouldn’t start after I finished.  It wouldn’t even make any of those noises which would indicate it was trying to start.  I had to make those noises.
It didn’t help any.

I had to be back at work in the office in a couple hours, so I called there to see what I should do/ see what should be done.

My boss’s  wife answered, and she started to get angry, like she always does about anything.  She seemed to think I was calling because I would be late to work or something, but I guess she realized I was already finished (as I made a point to tell her that I was already finished and stranded at the school).

She said she’d tell the boss and hung up abruptly.  I got out the book I keep in the car, and the mechanic showed up not too long after.   …I spent the next few hours watching him and his son take pieces out of the car and put them back in.
It was just one large rubber band looking thing that they needed to clear enough space to put in.  I have no idea how much it cost,  I would be only too happy to continue to not know how much it cost/ to not have it taken out of my pay.   The last person to drive this car was an ex-mechanic, who was apparently not pleased to be fired by my boss.  It seems he was the one to switch the wiper blades to jam.  My boss is much better at inspiring thoughts of sabotage than loyalty or confidence.

A couple days after the car was re-repaired, he asked me to come to work 20 minutes early (not 4:50, but 4:30).  I showed up at 4:30/ 20 minutes early, and he was angry because he told me to come at 4:20, …which he didn’t.  He says that he wants to replace me with someone less calm; Also his wife calls all the shots and she is insisting that he replace me.

I was happy to hear it.  I don’t need to put up with all these empty accusations.  Waking up in the morning has gotten a lot easier.
The worst part of it, seriously, was that I had just stretched and primed a big piece of canvas I had been saving/ waiting to paint.  Oil paint can take a month to dry, and with just a month and a few days before I finish here, I had to break it apart without having made so much as a single mark on it.

He said I would finish around October 25th so that he would have enough time to find a replacement, and so I would be able to finish the English show at one of the schools.
I asked him before what I’m supposed to do, and he told me something along the lines of: “School, five minutes, show, in early morning, something…, playing, dancing, saying, speak English, on stage, parents watch, please practice “
I asked if they had a plan at that school, or if I had to come up with it and he said: “Ma, you talk, ma, school tell, you, help, practice, ma”.
He gets frustrated when you ask him questions/ try to get him to clarify, so I never want to ask too many.

I decided I should ask at the school instead, but  neither of the teachers of the 2 classes knew anything about it at first.  A couple of weeks later I asked again, because he kept bugging me about this thing he never seemed very interested in explaining.  The one teacher said she wasn’t going to do any English thing, but the next teacher said: It was not 5 minutes, but an hour long (an hour for 5 year olds to perform in a foreign language they don’t understand? – Weird!).  It was not in the morning, it was at night, etc.
I asked them to please inform my boss (who had told me: morning, 5 minutes, other things that are as likely horribly wrong).
He had since informed me that I needed to write something like a play with music (about 5 minutes still). I did it and I brought it with me the next time I was there.  We practiced one time so far, and I go back there 2 more times before they’re supposed to do it on stage in front of their parents (for an hour?).  3 times for 5 year olds to memorize everything for a short play – That should be sufficient.

That should also be my last day – as he had informed me, but then he’s put me on the schedule as far as the 31st – perhaps longer.

It would give me more time to paint outside if it would ever not rain continuously through my days off.

There’s a pretty friendly girl in her 20s that works at my company a few days a week.  It turns out that she doesn’t like working there all that much either.  She said the boss’ wife had been, or is trying to get him to fire/ replace her too.  I told her there’s no reason she should have to put up with all their crap.
I didn’t see her there all the next week.

I got to thinking that this would be a good time for me to go back to New Jersey and visit my family, maybe the grand canyon…
I could find another job here, but going home for Christmas for once is and has been my highest priority for years.  Something always comes up and prevents me from going.   This year I‘m absolutely going.
Upgrading jobs and working conditions had made it so I haven’t had a real vacation in years, …not since I went back to visit my mom when she had cancer.  (She wrote a few days ago to say she thinks her cancer may have come back.)
I was even thinking of going home for a bit and trying to get myself into one of those programs to get certified as an art teacher in the U.S./ get a job I won’t hate and one of those cheap houses the market is flooded with…
But it seems that Bush has started a new depression and thousands and thousands of people in the U.S. are going to out of work very soon.

I had already made plans to go back up to Saitama to visit my girlfriend before I was told I would be replaced, so we decided we should stop at the American embassy in Tokyo that weekend to see what we would have to do to get her a visa so she can come live with me in the U.S. if/ when I go back.
I brought a lot of things I had in this house to store at her house – to make moving out easier.  She seemed pleased to get all my curry spices, vegan seasoning, and my mostly untouched bottle of vodka.

It happened to be an old coworker friend’s birthday that night, so we had a small party for him.  It was supposed to be a bigger small party, but both the other girls I’d invited canceled that day and said they had to stay home to take care of/ go visit sick relatives.
We tried to go to another bar after the first one, but the ones we’d had in mind were all closed early on Sunday nights.

That probably made it easier for the 2 of us to get up early to make it to the American embassy, but it didn’t feel at all easy.
While we were switching trains my girlfriend realized she’d left her bag on the shelf above her seat.  We had to find the office were we could report it missing, report it missing, wait for it to be found at the last stop, take the next train to the last stop, find the office where they had her bag, get her bag, and get back on our way.
It left us with very little time.  I tried to warn her against running towards the embassy in sight of any of the many guards always outside.  The 1st one she tried to pass stopped her, but didn’t ask her nearly as many questions as any of the cops who have ever stopped me.  I didn’t think it prudent to give the guards any reason to detain us.  American security forces are never very cool, but these were all Japanese natives.
We got in about 5 minutes before the embassy closed.
Getting her a visa would necessitate us getting married beforehand, so we got a notarized form that says that I don’t appear to be married already, so we can get married, so she can get a visa.
I had to put in lots of personal information and swear before some woman who said she was an officer (an officer of what I don’t know).  She made me hold up my right hand and asked: “Do you swear that all the information you have put on this sheet is complete and true to the best of your knowledge?”
“Ah, …yup”  I said.  She gave me back the form, I gave it to my girlfriend to keep it nice and safe.
The catch to all this is that the notarized form ($30 and a long pain in the ass train ride each way), expires 90 days after issue, so we have to file it at her city hall with marriage papers sooner than I would otherwise care to do.

It was rainy all that day too.  We stopped at an all vegan pita restaurant I’d found when I had to go to the embassy for the passport I’d lost.  The inside of the shop is covered in white flour, so everybody eats outside, even on rainy days, under a drippy umbrella.  It was good food, but we didn’t want to be outside all too much that day.
I proposed we waste a rainy day filing marriage forms in her city hall, rather than waste a perfectly good other day, but then I remembered getting married would void my Japanese working visa within 14 days unless we went to city hall and another government office yet another city.  It closed too early for us to make it.
Doesn’t all that sound terribly romantic?

She apologized several times for forgetting her bag on the train.  I told her it really didn’t matter since we made it there and got everything done on time anyway.
I forget things sometimes too.

I wouldn’t have thought that principle needed demonstrating so quickly.

We drove up to my favorite Indian buffet for dinner, and stayed overnight near there.
I love Japanese roadside hotels!

We found this all pink one with pink palm trees lit up all around it, but there weren’t any vacancies.
The one with the statue of liberty on the roof looked a little too old, the one with all the greek statues in plastic boxes on the staircase was too expensive, so we settled for one that had a little waterfall in the parking lot.  The pink one would have been better really…
When we got back to her mom’s house the next day I realized I had left my white cell phone behind on the white pillow, so she drove us all the way back again.
We do make a fairly well matched couple at any rate.

While I was away for a few days, one of my adult students found out that I would be leaving, and told a guy in the next town who owns another small school – who is looking for somebody to hire rather quickly.  I knew nothing of this until he sent me a message asking if I’d be interested.  I went down there and he mentioned the hours and a house on the beach and I was interested.

It’s about $500 less per month, but that house is $150 cheaper, and I wouldn’t have to drive 20 minutes to an hour to different places 3 times a day.  Shorter working hours./ More days off./ The rank stench of pig excrement I suffer here, would give way to a salty coastal breeze there…

“Real Time” debate follow up with Bill Maher, Featuring: Ralph Nader, Tim Daily, + Lisa Schiffron. September 26, 2008

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2008 Open the Debates rally during the Republican National Convention in Minnesota on September 4, 2008. In this highlight reel you can see excerpts of speeches by Ralph Nader, his VP Candidate Matt Gonzalez, and former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura talking about open debates and how they impact elections.

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