"working on my faults and cracks..."

2.17.2007

English translation on the sainthood applications?

My time and regular internet access in Shizuoka ends tomorrow. I'm mostly ok for that, because it has been a boring four days here. Plus, I can't afford replacing a hotel television thrown through the wall--which I'm about four or five hours away from doing. So I lounge around in the room in my underwear, listening to angry music and eating ice cream sandwiches, simply for lack of anything better to do. I'm not worried about my physical condition--I ran 10 kilometers yesterday and averaged under 4 min/km. That might be good, but I'm not sure. Ignorance is bliss, so if you speak 'metric', enlighten me.

I unfortunately missed the massive Okayama naked festival this weekend. It was something I was particularily looking forward to--not participating (tattoos are not allowed in the mayhem), but just watching all the naked assholes tussle about. It looked like fun.
Maybe next year.

So for my last night in this boring town, I went out with several of the teachers from the school where I was observing all week. Two of them were typical hockey and outdoors-loving Canadians, and the other was a giant New Zealander named Angus (whom I prayed would get irresponsibly drunk and start breaking shit. He did not. I was disappointed). Anyway, they tossed around words at school like "bollocks, eh," and "fahckin' rahbbish." It sounded like fun, so I obliged to go along. After eating our metric weights in yakitori and fried chicken, we ended up going to some random foreigner bar in Numazu, which is where I at last felt comfortable making my first sweeping generalization from all my experiences in Japan:

Foreigners in Japan are assholes retards idiots pathetic.

With The Spy Who Shagged Me setting the awkward mood on a bigscreen television, the bar was poorly staffed, poorly stocked, poorly priced, poorly lit, and filled entirely with balding, lovesick, 30-somethings drinking Zima, fugly Japanese girls who apparently love English speakers wearing Head and Shoulders, and then a small mob of drunken, angry Australians, whom are always pissed off, from what I was told. Anyway, seeing all these people mingling about under blacklights made for a particularily depressing environment, but a solid approximation of these types of establishments. Thankfully, we cut out early (they all work tomorrow) and headed home when the guys began to optimistically reflect on their chances with several of the aforementioned girls on the dance floor. Quite good, I wanted to add, but only because those girls were there to stamp blue passports--if it were desperate enough. And believe me, most of the sad-sack passports in there were pretty goddamn desperate.

Anyway, my bottom line is this: if there are non-natives in Japan who are conducive to the promotion of a healthy, non-homogenized international society in Japan, I have yet to meet a single one. And drinking watery Japanese beer in an English-speaking singles pub waiting for "Piano Man" to come on doesn't count. Fair dinkum, no?

2 contributions to this piece:

Anonymous said...

I find it mildly humorous that although you don't overtly include yourself in with the sad collection of foreigners, you don't take any particular steps to DISCLUDE yourself, either...

But we know differently! lol

Valerie said...

Hey look...I have a blogger account now, so I don't have to keep filling in the fields wrong. BOOYA! lol


 
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