The DI tries to show his soft side... ...Fails miserably

News In Briefs
WYWS Edition
* If Shibata sensei's phone rings that stupid goddamn pop song one more time today, I'm going to stuff it down his gaping, buck-toothed maw the moment he gets back in from volleyball practice. Pretty sure the only reason he doesn't know how to properly turn the ringer off, is because he still hasn't gotten over making phone calls with a soup can and a piece of twine.

* I'd like to say something about recent gas prices all around the world.
It has been 11 months since I last bought gas, and let me tell you, trying to find a use for all this extra money lying around totally sucks. I think it's high time I own a sombrero.

* The fifth "Go-En" episode is coming very soon. It would have been sooner, but my geriatric iBook is systematically sabotaging the audio editing process, by mixing up/accidentally deleting/sending to Korea some very key clips that I guess we're just going to have to live without. Stay tuned though. I'm trying extra hard to be funny this time.

* I caught one of my students yesterday eating his glasses. Yep. Chewing on the lenses. With his teeth. This is the same village idiot whom I once tried to spite by asking him to spell "boy" in a classroom game. To spite me back, he spelled it incorrectly.
I've got the Diet Building in Tokyo on line three--let's tell them to call off the "Future Leaders of Japan" search in Okayama.

* It's easy to be frustrated in a foreign country. Easy to nitpick, easy to find things to whine about, or resent. At its very core though, a nation or a culture, is still the sum of the people that define it. The very kinds of people that are quickly forgotten in isolated moments of frustration. Why then, is it so often that a nation is defined by its idiotic minority? Because the voice of discontent never fails to ring the loudest.
Anyway, to earn back some of my lost karma over the last few weeks months of admittedly negative posts (and for any future posts as well), I'd just like to say that there are still people here, a part of the Japanese majority, that I admire to no end, like:

• The middle-aged couple whom every Sunday morning, walks brisk laps around Undou Park in their flannel shirts and khaki bucket hats. The husband is actually blind, so they walk side-by-side, hands joined by a small red baton. Their pace isn't always even, and their path isn't always straight, but their faces never hide the fact that they love doing it.


• The crossing guard at the top of the school escalator who, every morning, greets every single student who comes to school with an unfailing smile, and a throaty "ohayou gozaimasu!" That's like going out every morning, rain or shine, saying "good morning," and actually meaning it 1500 times. The dude's a champion.


• All the fathers who teach their daughters how to ride the unicycle down by the stadium. Little J-girls, far too adventurous for handlebars or brakes, teeter precariously on a single pink and white wheel, while the father stands at the ready to catch their fall. It's especially warming, because it's not a special case. On any given sunny weekend, there could be as many as a half a dozen dedicated fathers, out and about with their fearless unicycle-riding daughters. Why the unicycle? I'm not quite sure actually. Because it's Japan? An expected rite of Japanese female passage perhaps? First you like Anpanman, then you ride the unicycle, then you buy a training bra, then you find a boyfriend and wait around for him to move out of his parents' house so you can get married and grind out some babies.

Ah. I see what just happened there.

Can I at least keep my karma and that last sentence?
No? Damn.