Simona

I couldn't write this post until after I moved the blog because Simona has been a regular reader. I've been spending a lot of time with Simona, starting just around the time of the Great Yuko Debacle. Shopping, dinners, Japanese study sessions, and watching and laughing at sappy Korean soap in the dark under a curtain/make-shift blanket. It's even less romantic than it sounds.

She took a few dance classes. She also played a decade-plus of piano. She paints a little, and writes a bit. She doesn't watch TV but once watched the whole X-files series in marathon sessions. She drinks infrequently but in great quantity (I still remember, at Tyler's party where I met Yuko, she brought a whole bottle of 2 buck chuck "for my personal consumption"--who does that?). I think she spends a lot of time on the web/chat. She talks slower than most, but I'm not sure if it's because she contemplates about what she says, or if it's because she's from Iowa. At any rate, she takes the time to answer some of my best questions, which I appreciate.

She was a philosophy major but doesn't, or can't namedrop philosophers or books. She's smart, in an offbeat way that is appreciated by few and offends the rest. She's sharp enough to have piercing observations about people and situations but isn't sharp enough to keep those observations to herself. As far as I can tell she's capable of some really sick humor.

She keeps comparing me to this other Stanford guy she knows named Patrick Iber. I don't like it when she does but I haven't told her that.

To be continued.

Headspin

A few notables from Headspin, a party on Saturday night in Tottori-shi:

1) Chioko whom Yuko knows and Brian Wilson whom I know in Tottori both went to Kyoto for the weekend. As a result, I had trouble finding a place to stay for the night, and Yuko bailed out on me as well.

2) I finally called James who put me up, and I left Yonago around 6ish. An hour and a half later me and my car were in Tottori-shi.

3) Headspin was at an abandoned karaoke bar in Yayoi-cho in Tottori. Not a huge place but about 40-50 people showed up.

4) I thought it was going to be mostly house, down-tempo and other kinds of electronica, but it rarely deviated from fairly typical club hip-hop.

5) With the small venue and dozens of smokers, I felt like I smoked a pack just dancing there.

6) Met a girl from Walnut Creek, CA named Miki. Cute girl, cute voice, average body, half-Japanese. I did the California thing and dragged her outside a few times for smokes and chit-chat. We got on well, and eventhough she's 28 and lives an hour and a half away, it never feels bad to get numbers.

7) There was an Irish girl wearing this ridiculously low black hugging dress. The strange thing was that there was this green plastic band, the kind that looks like those fluorescent wristbands at clubs, across the low top. If I had spent too much time staring at it, it was only because it was such a ridiculous looking top and not because of her popping cleavage. Apparently she was at the Halloween party too and was a playboy bunny (Joe hooked up with her on the dancefloor and was the envy of every men at the party, that punk).

8) There were these 3-4 Japanese girls at the party. They were all above average attractive, which is not unusual, for some strange reason being above average seems to be the norm for the entire female population of Japan. However, one of them was higher above average than the rest. She wasn't pretty, she wasn't hot, she was Beautiful, and I mean she was the Asian version of the kind of Hepburn-ish, Kelly-esque, Paltrow-y classic beauty. Even if I spoke fluent Japanese I couldn't get up the balls to approach her. Then Vick mentioned something off-hand about how he tried to talk to her but she can't speak English and her Japanese isn't good...cue Jeff to the rescue. I asked her if she spoke English in English, she replied no in Japanese. I asked her if she spoke Chinese in Chinese and her eyes just blossomed and she was suddenly ALL OVER ME. You can imagine the rest. She turned out to be a "dancer" from China at a local Tottori club. She had a boyish name on her card and we laughed about it. For a brief moment I was the other envy of every men at the party.

9) Rachel asked me something weird: "Jeff, I have something to ask you. When you first met me, did you think a) she's pretty cool b) she's a bitch c) or did it not register at all?" (this quote is 70% accurate) What!? I said no comment and kept on dancing. I am still clueless about the whole thing.

10) There was this other Japanese girl whom I spoke with briefly, and she asked me if I knew Yuko.

11) Naturally I danced my ass off the way only I could for the whole night. I am sure some people thought I was nuts or spasmic by the end of the night but I didn't give a shit. The top three dances of the night in ascending order: 3) with Miki 2) with the Irish chick with the strange cleavage 1) with this Kenyan dude who was totally with it. Apparently, the toe-heel thing I like to do during transitions is called a c-step. Yo betta recognize!

12) Left the club at 2. Back to James place for another hour of Street Fighter and conversations about comics and literature, and made the 1.5 hour returning drive semi-drunk, wholly-catatonic, but nevertheless safely home at 5am. Fell asleep on the shitter back in my Yonago apartment. Hernt!

Waist - a Western invention?

The word for "waist" in Japanese is ウエスト, or uesuto. It sounds just like waist and is spelled in katakana (the script used for imported words).

Stuff

In chronological order:

1) Last last Sunday: skipped Japanese study session with Suzana and Simona and met Yuko @Sarara, she basically wants nothing resembling romance from me.
2) Monday: met Agemi, my new Japanese 1-on-1 tutor. Good partner to practice my broken Japanese conversation. Cute as well.
3) During same introductory meeting with Agemi, Kaori hooked me up with Shinobu-san's basketball team. First practice is tomorrow. Yada!
4) Wednesday Japanese class: established conversation routine with that girl (Hanako's friend, must find out name tomorrow). Another good target for Japanese conversation practice.
5) Friday: did I do anything? Oh yeah it was the ken-wide orientation in Sakaiminato. That Shimane teacher's speech was very good. Played pool with Adam (I won most games, naturally). Also, found out that Amy must've put a password on her wireless internet as I can no longer "borrow" her bandwidth from my apartment.
6) Saturday: shopped all day with Simona. Well she shopped and I just hung out at Jusco. Bought a floor lamp. Was treated to Tomato&Onion by Simona. Watched Winter Sonata (Korean soap VERY popular among Japanese obasan) for near 7 hours until 2am.
7) Sunday: drove to Tottori-shi and played ultimate. There's a JET ultimate tournament and I think I got myself a spot.

Will elaborate on the above, when I find time.

Also, other stuff to add:
1) pics from Hiroshima trip
2) further ruminations on Yuko, girls, and relationships in general. If I don't write some of it down I will forget all about it, which will probably become lessons unlearned but isn't really a bad thing. As it is now my feelings about the whole things are already significantly diluted.

Dreamt

Dreamt early last night that, for some reason unbeknownst to me, I was being pursued by Ivan Drago(Dolph Lundgren), an ex-boxer and now professional assasin. I swam across a freezing lake onto a woodsy island. In the forest, there were these strange erections made out of lumber, ropes, and man-sized glass tubes, like a giant goldfish maze. I used my typical dream-reasoning to infer that, if I had made my way out of the maze, I would escape Drago. As soon as I reasoned thusly I spotted the exit of the maze immediately but I have no access toward it unless I make a impossibly-long jump of over 10 feet. While I was pondering about it Drago appeared. I told him that (I realized that at this point I was also an assasin so the dream plot resembles Stallone/Bandares's Assasins or the Andy Lau/Takashi Sorimachi's Fulltime Killers or any number of other cheesy action films) although both of us being assasins, I have more value in an assasin fantasy league: I am a versatile assasin posting stats across the box score, while he can only post scores in the kills column. He got mad and killed me.

Cheating Fantasy - How low can you get?

There were two trades that went down in my roto league:

Yao Ming+Carmelo for Okafor/Chris Wilcox/Abdul Rahim
Payton/Ray Allen/CWebb for Devin Harris/Chris Mihm/Mike Miller

Between the same two players. I vetoed the first one, still went through. I wasn't around to vetoe the second one over the weekend, went through. This is such cheating bullshit. I need to quit this stupid league.

the weight of tenderness

no easy thing to forget, the weight of tenderness.
joy, dreams, wisdom and serenity,
tenderness sinks deeper than any of these gravities.

see the smile curls
the heart and coils the strings until
they give.
hold the smile, cuddle it, try its weight, tenderness
swelling into half-empty.
nothing but
the weight of melancholy.

with a slow sad susurrous
rustle, the wind plucks the autumn bough.
leaves, golden and red, sprinkled
the boy and the girl with poetry and death.
and the boy lifts a single green leaf
from the girl's hair.
fallen, like a kiss.

Fantasy

My head-to-head team, Cho-Do:

AK47
BronBron
KMart
Dalembert
Jamaal Magloire
JWill
Doug Christie
Drew Gooden
Jeff McInnis
Boykins
Bobby Simmons
Raef LaFrentz
Andre Iguodala

My new roto team, Do-Cho:

AK
Zach Randolph
Kirk Hinrich
Boozer
Rip Hamilton
Chris Bosh
Dwight Howard
Jim Jackson
Nene
Stromile Swift
Boykins
Iguodala
Maurice Williams

The end of ostrich-ing

I am declaring an end to ostrich-ing. I have been ostrich-ing about Yuko for the past three months and it's time I pulled my head out of the sand.

Looking back to that photo I posted on Halloween, it was good that I went with a simple caption instead of some foolishly sentimental manifesto. I still have the draft to that foolishly sentimental manifesto I wanted to email Yuko, but it will most likely never see the light of day again.

I feel like such an idiot. For being fooled, and for fooling myself. Did Yuko ever harbor any romantic feelings for me?

My vindictive left ventricle says she did not. She says that she has no idea that

1) calling a guy the next day, whom she had just met the night before, to make future dates
2) taking the initiative to do this to me multiple times and
3) making plans to travel, her and me and no one else, to Okinawa and
4) making Christmas dinner plans two months ahead of time and
5) batting her eye-lashes, laughing at my stupid jokes, making accidental/intentional hand/arm/body/lips contacts and doing just about everything to drive a man into morning-like arousal

are signs of romantic interest. Fuck you-ko. You're telling me that, after having studyied in UK, after having known scores of English-speaking friends, and after having jilted at least one English-speaking man in Tottori besides me, you have no idea that what you were doing to me will make a non-Japanese man think something besides no-strings friendship? Fuck you.

My emotionally-masochist right atrium says she did have romantic feelings for me. She can't really be that good of an actress, can she? I can't really be that big of a namby-pamby idiot, can I? She got out of a relationship, and an engagement, a year ago. The same guy lives right here in Yonago. She has emotional scars to heal. At the same time, she'll be leaving Japan in a few short months, so it's understandable she has trouble involving herself even in something casually romantic. She probably did not drag me into this pink whirpool maliciously.

Then again, my heart is all cracked and it's mostly because of her(definitely more than 60%, I wasn't really even that attracted to her in the first place; my first impression of her at Tyler's party: "She's kind of cute, but she looked a bit older than me doesn't she?" I remember this clearly and when she asked me in bed that morning about my first impression of her I was at a loss for words) and I'm far from happy about it. Felt like she has popped my gall bladder and I've got bitter bile cruising through my arteries. To be continued. I haven't let it all out yet and it's already 5pm.

Update

Pics from Nakayama-Temecula decennial sisterhood.

Pics from Yamauchi-san's party.

Update on Ramen Disaster.

文化祭の写真

Pics from the cultural festival:


Kocho-sensei's commencement speech.


Takami Ryoma's (president of student council) commencement speech. This is also the same kid who exchanges letters with Amy.


The large poster of 1st year students (approx. 10ftx15ft)


Poster of 2nd year students.


Poster of 3rd year students. Best prize.


1B choir performance. They sucked, but it was the best picture I have of any class choirs.


Presentation of experimental results (on the water quality of shimoichi river in Nakayama) by the science club.


Dance performance by some boys.


Dance performance by some 3rd year girls, to "Oh Mickey you so fine..." This song is mad popular in Japan right now, and from what I've heard is performed at cultural festivals of every single school. Notice how their skirts are shorter? Rolled up at the waist for maximum exposure.


Oh this is good. This kid (whose name I forgot, which can't bode well for what I'm about to tell you) sung by himself in front of the whole school, as his way of expressing his feelings for Yuna the volleyball captain. This was the prime gossip topic during the staff trip to Hiroshima.

I knew there was something to this. As he stepped down from the stage after the song, Yuna immediately attached herself to some other boy in the same class and chatted frentically. To me, the boy being chatted seemed dismissive of Yuna, and the boy who sung seemed dismissed by Yuna. I knew that Yuna was a bitch.


3rd year play. Momoko and Satoshi played middle aged men and woman. I had no idea that these kids had the kind of emotional depth they displayed during the class plays.


The liberation play. Area/Caste discrimination is a big problem in Japan, and these liberation plays are meant to increase awareness for human rights issues. Rina (the girl in middle with white shirt) comes from a burakumin family and these issues probably hit pretty close to home for her. She cried for real during the play.

Other bunkasai notables:
* My calligraphy was displayed along with other 1st years. Kyoto-sensei, between compliments, called my writing "too skinny."
* No pics of the display area. There were drawings, sewings, food recipes, Jap/Eng writings, calligraphy, flower arrangements, etc.
* Got the email from Yuko the same morning and my mind just wasn't in it at any time.

Pics from Jeff-sensei's Halloween activity

Will you see this post?

I wonder.

The thought of my mom passing my blog to other people (so far, only Fred has told me that he's read it) has me shuddering on my tatami. So I moved the blog to here.

I placed a robots exclusion meta tag in the template too, so hopefully this page won't be googled in the future either.

Ramen disaster

So I went to Tenshin for ramen today. The place was packed as usual so I sat down sharing a table across from this couple, and there was an empty seat next to me. It is possible that I violated some unwritten Japanese social contract by sharing a table. It had been an unusually hot day, I could've worn just t-shirts and jenes.

The place had regular ramen, miso ramen, and veggie (yasai) ramen. I ordered a ramen with miso and veggie--"miso to yasai kudasai (miso and veggie please)"--I had heard someone order it the last time I was there, it wasn't on the menu but it sounded pretty good.

A few minutes later, they brought me a veggie ramen and a miso ramen. Two bowls. I tried to explain that I wanted miso and veggie together, but just veggie is fine. "Okay desu." She brought the miso back. Everyone in the shop stared at me, I was slightly embarassed. I just wanted to finish and get the hell out of there.

Few more minutes later, she brought out another bowl of miso veggie. I was about finished with my veggie ramen, my mouth was full and I'm sweating from ramen heat and everybody was staring at me. Somehow she understood when I tried to tell her that I'm by myself, and wanted just one miso veggie. She insisted that it's okay, took away my almost done bowl and told me to eat a little more (I think).

I stared down at my new bowl of miso veggie. It was steaming hot and I kept sweating. Everybody kept staring at me, I knew it even without looking up. There was a discussion behind the counter, and the words "miso" and "yasai" were used repeatedly.

There was no way I could finished a second bowl, so I took a few slurps at it, got up and whispered "gochisoosamadesu" and paid. Of course, the confusion was again repeated at the counter. I paid for one bowl of miso yasai, eventhough a total of 3 bowls were brought to me. I kept apologizing and she kept apologizing. I just wanted to get out of there as fast as I could. So I turned around,

And ran smack into the next customer coming in.

(updated 11/13/04)
After a day on Daisen with Courtney, Amy, and Simona, we (minus Courtney) returned to Tenshin. The ramen obasan recognized me as the miso to yasai ramen guy and apologized yet again, so I had to tell the embarassing story. I knew I shoulda waited longer before going back again to remain in cognito.

Links

A Queen wins it

Chicks with Dicks and 7-irons

Still my favorite show

Jesus Saves!

Candidate for my next favorite show

4 Serious playas only

As if the NBA players aren't rich enough already

Party at the Yamauchi's

Yamauchi-san, the koto teacher, and her husband (who spoke excellent English) hosted a Temecula couple for the 10th year anniversary of the Nakayama-Temecula sisterhood: Ken, the TVUSD board member, and his wife Nancy. The Yamauchi family invited me and Amy to attend their dinner party last night.

It was a pretty tame party with Sukiyaki. Ken and Nancy were nice people, nicer than the other Temecula visiters whom I've met. But they weren't particularly interesting. Two of my students were there, so were two other families from Nawa and two boys from Nawa Jr. High. It was not very exciting, with the language barrier and all.

But I did find out that Haruka and Sanami from my school were actually sisters, and they have a older sister in Yonago Nishi and a younger sister Yumi in Amy's elememtary school. They live doors down from the Yamauchi's.

Haruka is a 3rd year in my English elective course. She appears shy (smiles abashedly everytime she makes eye contact with anybody) but doesn't hesitate to speak English. Sanami is a first year, and she is one of the best students of her year (and extremely ambitious too: her semester goal is to be in the top 3 of her class, while other kids have goals such as study 30 minutes everyday or trying not to forget things; also has a good hand of calligraphy, although a bit wild for a girl--Kyoto-sensei's comments).

It was really nice to kid around with them outside of school uniforms. I met their mother too, a really nice lady who grows flowers.

(updated: 11/13/04)


Yamauchi-san demonstrates The proper sukiyaki technique.


Me, Yamauchi-san, Nancy, Amy, Ken, and damn what's his name?

Choir boys

I spent the morning watching the first and second years practice their choir singing. And really, it's not often I don't wonder when the Jr High school choirs are going to get around to singing a gloriously enhanced version of the Divinyls' I Touch Myself.

Other requests include:

AC/DC's Back in Black
Baja Men's Who Let The Dogs Out?

and

Sublime's 2 Joints.

A pessimist is a crushed idealist

People say that they can feel the spectre of history last night, stalking them down like silvian wolves, breathing down their necks with each peek at the TV poll results or each click at the refresh button. Among all of this looming inevitability, I blinked. I blinked again, but everything was pretty much the same as it was before I blinked.

What just happened? Did melodrama and sentimentality triumph over common sense and rationality? Or was it the other way around? Who's crazier? Those who fear terrorist attacks above all else, or those who believe that the big bad man will be bigger and badder given another four years? Who's your fear-monger of choice? The one in the White House? Or the one on the silver screen?

They are all idiots. Every last one of them.

The celebrators, the mourners. All idiots. Nothing was going to change, and nothing has changed. America is still not ready for gay marriage, will always lust after oil, and be on the payroll of corporate billionaires, regardless of who's calling the shots. The soldiers will still get all the "some" they want, regardless of who is telling them to roll. Change the figurehead, and the ship will still sail downwind.

We're voting for the mascot of our country, is all. So what if this one looks a little bit more like a chimp than the next? He's a mascot, afterall. They're supposed to look goofy and be all rah-rah and stuff.

All these people acting like it's the end of the world, as if the prophet has marked the wrong doors with ram's blood--get a clue.

A pessimist is a crushed idealist. Nothing but.

Where were you?

Where were you when Bush claimed victory? I think this one has the potential to be one of the "where were you" questions of all time.

I was in Nakayama, attending a party celebrating the 10th year anniversary of the sisterhood between Nakayama, JP and Temecula, CA.

I had a horrible time. The Temecula folks were stiff and unfriendly, I made more smalltalks with the Japanese people there. They were also very judgemental and full of "We in America does X differently, and better" attitudes. Not surprisingly, they were mostly city officials and politicians. As for the Nakayama people there, I recognized a lot of their faces and remembered the events where I met them, but couldn't recall any of their names. So it turned out to be pretty awkward. Exchanged a few numbers with women in the housewife age group who wanted to practice English and was invited to another party tomorrow. I just wanted to come home and sleep.

Which I will do now. Fuck the election, contrary to what a lot of people believe, it's not going to be the end of the world.

(updated: 11/13/04)


Before the unvealing of the decennial plaque. At the party, the fatman on the left insisted proudly that he was once the mayor of Temecula. Extremely unplesant man with mouthful of bad breath and rah rah USA. Obviously, he voted Bush.

Few noted comments from this unpleasant fat man. "The fact that we have little legues and that these Japanese kids don't have formal baseball training until middle school is why MLB is fundamentally better than JLB." He's wrong, of course: the Japanese elementary schools have baseball teams and coach, and Americans have frames to support, for example, bellies of his size. Just such a stereotypical American thing to say. "The American bottom-up municipal governement system is better than the Japanese top-down municipal government system." He's probably right, Japanese local governements have to petition for funds from the central government, which seems like a system designed for corruption to me.


The plaque.


Girls from 1A.


What could these 2nd and 3rd year girls be looking at?


High school faux-breakdancers, of course.


A whole bunch of teenage girls going nuts for a B-list celebrity impersonator in angel outfit.

Fantasy!

My NBA fantasy team:

JWill, Doug Christie, King James, AK47, KMart, D. Marshall, J. Magloire, Kandiman, Keith Van Horn, P. Brown, Joe Smith, D. Armstrong, and Jeff McInnis.

Not exactly an intimidating lineup. Although I did got both AK and LBJ from the last pick. Will provide further analysis later.

No honey, I am doing this for you!

While watching TV at Ian's last night, we came across this strange segment: about a half-dozen TV celebrities, many of which beautiful and nubile, were sucking on glass soda bottles. They sucked on the thin transparent bottleneck without the support of hands, their puckers the only part of their body touching and lifting the bottle (i.e. a lot of suction). They wrapped their lips around the head and moved it so that the head touches and glides between all parts of their lips. There were no bobbing, but you get the picture. This lasted a few minutes.

We kept watching. Until we finally were able to decipher that this, apparently, was some sort of exercise to keep your cheeks from sagging like pugs.

What a revelation!

Dreamt

that Matt came over to show off his ENORMOUS delts. When I asked him how he brushes his hair, with such huge shoulders, he replied: "It's okay, I don't have much hair anyways" (he has a buzzcut). Strange.

On a REM-unrelated side note. The night of the Halloween party also coincided with a couple of other milestones. One of which, no more or less significant than the other, was the 35th birthday of Internet.

Happy birthday.