ENTRY 17

The Last Days of Summer

9月21日 (月\火) 12:51am JST

It was a long weekend, but I ended up spending all my time on the internet. I also called home some and talked at some of my relations. This week’s schedule should be throughly confused, as I had today off, Wednesday is the school festival, and Thursday is off again.

Friday night, I participated in “Glossary/{{Combini}} golf,” which ended up being like aversion therapy for beer. (Come to think of it, I’ve neither drank nor been to a combini since then…) The idea was to wear golfing outfits while walking from convenience store to convenience store and downing one beer from each store in as few sips as possible. It was quite self-evidently, a Bad Idea.

On the plus side, I never got sick.

On the minus side, I lost my hat.

On the neutral side, I got to sleep in a train station.

Ah, hobo life!

I officially launched http://carlsensei.com Curl sensei.com to give my relations some evidence of my existence with some pictures, etc., but it clearly still needs a lot of work. All my websites end up being semi-minimalistic. I pretend like this is a design choice and not related to my lack of graphic design skillz.

At Glossary/{{Mos Burger}} the other day, an English speaking Indian/Pakistani woman asked if I was French. The staff was curious, she said. I was curious about the mustard(o) chicken. But I think we both learned something that day.

9月22日 (火\水) 12:49am JST

I’m in a semi-philosophical mood tonight, though perhaps not to the degree necessary to write. I’m thinking of the old “What’s real?” problem, my semi-blasphemous solution to the problem of evil, and the like. Also tonight, I reshuffled a Wikipedia entry on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMAP SMAP.

Fantasizing about giving a tour to some friends, I introduced Japan as “my country.” Of course, such a statement is particularly absurd given my precarious place in Japanese society, but I nevertheless wonder if this is my own Glossary/{{magicant}}.

There’s something so fleeting and arbitrary about life. Neither the logic of Newton’s physics nor the reassurance of Leibniz’s God quite capture it.

“Why finger!? Why toes!? Oh God!”

“Why http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light c!? Why http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_constant G!? Oh science!”

If our bodies are just a mathematic formula that describes atoms bouncing endlessly, what meat do we have that Batman doesn’t?

If God breathed my soul, why into such strange dust?

Ah well. The rain outside my window means trash day tomorrow. Such is my refutation.

Today at school was as random as predicted. 1 = 5, 2 = 6, 3 = 7, 4 = 4, except for T--- and I, 3 = 4, and 4 = ø. Easy, right? The lesson we’re doing now is too hard for the kids, and after the best version of it yet, the teacher said, “It was soooo quiet!” I just laughed, having seen worse.

T--- found a room that the teacher in training had been using as a private office. We tried some calligraphy there. I’m sure the school contains other such mysteries, but they’ll have to wait for now. Maybe if I find the door that opens inside John Malcovich, then I’ll know life is a dream. Or maybe I’ll find the grandfather of all knowledge and the purpose of meaning. Or maybe I’ll even find our posters for the school festival!!! Ah man, now that would be one sweet ass door!

Posters!

9月23日 (木) 2:15pm JST

Yesterday was the school festival. Every room was decorated with a different theme, and there were games and food, etc. I lost an arm wrestling match because I didn’t have the eye of the http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/ tiger. It started well, but then I couldn’t pin the kid’s arm down, and after a minute my arm started hurting. A moment of doubt was all it took for him to get me.

Later, some of the girls at one of the food booths were being weird, saying things like, ‘yuu aa handsome,’ ‘sexy,’ ‘I lav yuu,’ for some reason. However, as I informed them, Japanese girls are definitely not my scene. I can’t tell what their aim was in all that. Maybe just trying to guilt me into buying a ¥500 shish kabob.

T--- and I got pictures made at the student Glossary/PuriKura booth— not too shabby. I learned that the exchange student C--- is very ignorant of world news and religion. Typical American, I fear. I missed tea ceremony, but I did get some rabbit shaped mochi. They displayed one of my http://deadhobosociety.com/art/sumi/index-Pages/Image11.html sumi-e’s with a collection of student works. That was fun. I found 9 of 40 “Where’s Wally”ies. There was the student concert, complete with 4 year olds doing synchronized dance.

After school, some JETs went to a Brazilian bar, among other places. I got back around 2, but really didn’t drink much at all. All for the best, I suppose.

9月23日 (木) 11:27pm JST

No class today, in honor of the equinox. Naturally, I got my haircut this morning. I asked for a Goro-of-SMAP-style cut. It’s not perfect or as short as I’d like, but it’s OK. In the afternoon, I went to the Tsukuri-mon festival in F*-town.

Wow!

I was seriously impressed with the transformation of the otherwise sleepy town. The sheer tonnage of people was incredible. Booth after booth of food and games and trinkets stretched out as far as the eye could see. I ended up getting a used answering machine for ¥500 and seeing a Japanese jam on the didgeridoo. One of my kids played recorded for Glossary/{{shishimai}} and another did a crazy Hokkaido dance.

The point of the festival is all the stuff they make out of vegetables, I guess as a tribute to the harvest. I liked the tanooki genitals made of gourds. There were also numerous tributes to the Japanese Olympic team. A picture of a cat from the http://imdb.com/title/tt0065421/ Aristocats made of rice and beans. The normal stuff, I guess.

One odd thing is that the prizes for a lot of the chance games had porn tapes mixed in with the stuffed Pikachus and (overly realistic looking) pellet guns. Boxes with pictures of naked women on them stood next to “Father of the Bride II” and the like.

Still, super-awesome!