on my own time

News In Briefs
WYWS Edition

* So we've arrived at a new layout for the blog. Finally stopped tweaking it, so I guess this is where we get off the train.
Anyway, hopefully, future posts will take us toward some semblance of structured thought provocation regarding life in Japan, and the mess that aspiration and direction have become as of late. Until whenever that may be, I'm content making poop jokes and writing vapid posts like this one.

* I'm currently not working very hard on putting together another schizophrenic installment in the Go-En series. I haven't recently had a lot of time to dick around in Okayama with my camera as much as I used to, but a lot of people have been asking for more of me pretending to enjoy life here, so I'm willing to compromise. Besides, I have some sweet unused footage of a Japanese dude wearing a green Borat banana hammock.

* Finally caved and sold back my Guitar Hero III out of pure disgust. Entirely out of protest, I chose not to finish it. And yes, I was only two songs from the end. It became a battle of me versus the shitty craftsmanship on a guitar that worked only 50% of the time. The other 50%, it sabotaged my progress by cutting out on long notes, and not registering on others. It made full combos impossible, and ensured failure against the Lou boss battle (thanks to the idiotic new powerup system).
I suppose I could have taken advantage of the in-box warranty, and gone through another round of Japanese customer service hell for a new one, but I'm done with GHIII and all its hastily tacked-on elements. Thanks to a humiliating note assist system, the contrived boss battles, and the unnecessary in-game sponsorship from Axe deodorant spray, it's the chili cheese skid mark on the otherwise squeaky clean pair of rockstar underpants that is the GH series.
So, I'm already warily looking forward to GHIV and its touted "create a song" features, by which Activision will hopefully rise from the ashes of their shitty craftsmanship and redeem themselves. I'm skeptical though--the magic of the first two games disappeared when Activision realized that from the rock they had just smote, flowed not water, but a raging torrent of cash.

* I'm not sure how hard it's getting pushed in the states, but the anticipation in Japan for Metal Gear Solid 4 is reaching a near-solid state of palpability. Trailers like these are doing little to quell the increasingly cramped quarters in my pants.

* One of the younger, more attractive teachers on our floor has really short hair. It should also be noted that I have a strange attraction to short hair. I pay close attention to these things. So you could imagine my surprise when she showed up one morning early last week, short black hair suddenly having sprouted rogue ponytails. Two of 'em. Smallish buggers--almost as though she had borrowed the "party in the back" section of an adolescent mullet while he slept, then fashioned it into two little extensions. Some days, she wears it. Other days, she ties it into a single tail, and lovingly drapes it over her right shoulder. Still on other days, it's completely gone. Not quite as obvious as a balding man who drops his toupee into a bowl of tomato soup, but still obvious enough for me to keep score on which days she wears them, and which days she does not.
My theory is that it makes her feel young and nubile again, after having just hammered out a 50 pound doodoo machine.

* No, "doodoo" is not hyphenated.
Yes, I checked.

Today's Japanese lesson:"Do not learn Japanese"

"Is that everything? Are you sure?
It seemed like he said quite a bit more than that..."
If you watch closely, you'll find a number of things at work in the fifth chapter of the "Go-En Chronicles."
The first, and most obvious, is me trying to get my $600 doorstop either repaired, or outright replaced.
You may already know that such attempts were expectantly unsuccessful.

Anyone who has ever studied it at length, can probably tell you a whole hell of a lot about the "say one thing, mean ten" mentality of the Japanese language. On one hand, it's fascinating. On the other hand--the hand smacked repeatedly against one's own steaming forehead, is how irritating and exhausting reading through all the fluffy subtext can be. As with any other context-heavy languages, in Japanese, a compliment, a suggestion, an assertion, an insult, or an outright verbal pimp-slap could very well be cunningly tucked between the politely apathetic folds of the same statement. Translation boils down to a lot of contextual approximations, which may vary from time to time depending on your relational distance to the speaker, or on the audience.
Or sometimes simply how annoyed you are with the lack of progress being made.

The following video is a short compilation of lowlights and frustrations from a 45 minute phone call, by the end of which, if it were physically possible to stab someone in the mouth through the phone line, I'm sure SCEJ's "Toyota" and I both would have thrown down in spectacular no-holds-barred fashion. In their defense though--I didn't expect Sony Japan to attempt service on an American machine (I assumed the attempt would fall apart as soon as they requested the serial number, but it was unfortunate that my operator kindly waited until the end of the call to obtain this information). Lucky for them, I still picked up the phone, being bored, hopeful, and totally stoked about giving Docomo another hefty chunk of my tiny paycheck last month.

Japanese speakers may pick up on other thinly veiled attempts at satire within, but for most everyone else, this is simply me being juvenile about my situation, and how calling Sony Computer Entertainment's J-train tech support just made it worse.

You're welcome.

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.

Feels rushed, because it was

No, I haven't forgotten.

I actually held off on posting Go-En IV which has been mostly finished for a long time now, because the actual Undoukai event was so long ago, and because the video is mostly rubbish. I guess holding off on it is what made the event so long ago in the first place...

Eh, shyaddup.

Oh, and it's really boring. But I hate eating up my hard drive with unused crap, so I'll post it anyway. The event's actual blog was posted about a month ago, can be found here, and the rant about asshat Billy Blanks, here.

The video is a big sloppy bag of arse, but you're welcome anyway.

Calorie, mate

Well, it's here, and it sucks. You may kindly stop holding your breath. Just a word of advice, I recommend you first watch the training video if you haven't yet, as it directly precludes the 10 minute crap-fest above. You can find that here (training video, not the crap-fest).



* Totally unrelated, and mostly inappropriate, am I the only one who finds the golden juvenile humor in this blithely ignorant news title? Just wondering.
* This one isn't much better. Call me when Japan goes to break the world record for "Largest Circle Jerk." Cripes...and they call this "breaking news."

You were a song in my head

Before you watch this video, it should be noted that it contains footage spanning a three month period during which, outside of the obnoxious, caveman-like growth of my hair, very little happened. Even so, it's still probably worth mentioning that I've since hit the J-dude salon, for some quality 21st century grooming just in time for the big Ohio/Brazil/Japan KAKE summer exchange, starting tomorrow.

Go-go-gadget Go-En Chronicle III video update.
Enjoy.







** P.S. The full version of Kominami's guitar insanity (at 2:19) can be found here.
Holy shit! Two videos!? My head asplode!

Long live the car crash hearts

I saw two guys in garish jumpsuits and luchadore masks picking up trash outside the library today. I wanted to take a picture with them, but immediately wondered if the outfits were some kind of convict-identifying system. Like the dunce cap.

Repeating small talk drives me insane, so all the clips were done on the first take. But "Gotta have my pops"?? I still can't believe I said it, and you probably won't either. Anyway, you can finally stop refreshing your browsers. Go En II is here.

Enjoy.





** New scheme for your tired eyes. You may now return to not bitching about my colors. **

Thnks fr th mmrs

So do I.

So I can kick his smug teeth in for thinking he can attract customers by posting such a stupid, conceited sign.

Anyway, tonight's post finds me in Shizuoka with an itchy throat, sore shoulders, and a massive headache. The jetlag hits my body differently each trip here--this time, it has opted for the aforementioned, and an incredible appetite, the likes of which, rivals only the Jolly Goddamn Green Giant himself. Depending on how long I pause to rest my jaws, I've either been eating seven meals a day, or just one long 9-hour feast-a-thon. Anyway, without further adeu, all the other minor details are trivial and thus available for the first time ever, for your viewing pleasure, in the first installment of my forthcoming "Go-En Chronicles" series of video updates. If the formatting is floaty or wonky, it's your fault. Get a mac, or just follow the video link over to YouTube and watch it there.

Enjoy my latest crap-fest, you lazy bastards. I'm going to bed.
...So...I that makes me the lazy bastard.
Whatever.

Enjoy.