This is to be the last one for the year. I'm leaving for Kyoto, for the Vipassana meditation retreat in an hour. Obviously, there will be no internet access on the path to enlightenment.

I must resist the need to take a snap shot of my mental state right now. There will also be no end-year reflections in this space. Anything I put down here will only be mulled over again and again and again ad infinitum over the next 10 dyas. So why don't I save the trouble and wish myself good luck, and good riddance to all that painfully karmic junk?

Good luck to a brand new state of mind for a brand new year. And since everyone at the retreat will be under a vow of silence, Merry Christmas too.

Back to myself again

It was a pretty tepid goodbye, wasn't it?

I wanted to crack a joke, but couldn't bring myself to make that reference from Winter Sonata ("Let's make a promise to not look back because I don't want my last memory of you to be your back."). Just seemed too contrived and too unnecessarily teary. And I guess it's not really that funny, although you will probably still laugh at me anyway. I love that about you.

It has really only been 3 weeks. It will be another 3 weeks until we see each other again. I knew it's been short and fast, but didn't realize just how short and how fast until you mentioned it last night. I mean, I couldn't even learn how to play In My Life on the guitar in three weeks!

Though in truth I have known that we would be good together probably since the 2nd or 3rd time I saw you. I knew that much just from talking to you on the plane from Tokyo to Yonago. Both the 2nd or 3rd time you were wearing that orange "Quality Chick" tanktop and blue mesh shorts. The 80's Denver Bronco colors aren't the prettiest combinations, but hey, it left an impression didn't it?

3 weeks is lightspeed compared to the snail-paced lovelives we've led until we crossed paths. It is so short that I'm still wondering about its legitimacy. I can't enumerate all the reasons I think we're right for each other without sounding obsessive or desperate, but I guess that's how these things are.

3 weeks is not long enough to discover serious flaws, but it's enough time to find the kinks and the wrinkles. Although for the past couple of days my mind has been focused entirely on these kinks and wrinkles (or more specifically, THE kink), I am sure that it will one day become one of those "comedies of errors" that you're so fond of coining.

It's been just a few hours and I miss you already.

addendum: just got your email from the airport, so I guess you must've felt the same. I must've spent at least 2 minutes staring and thinking about how you signed your email "with love." Nice curveball.

First semester wrap up

(from writing wkshop assignment)

I was supposed to find my answers here: answers to a
still fuzzy career, answers to my two cultures,
answers to aborted romances, and all the answers to an
unfilled future. I flew across the Pacific to find
the jigsaw piece to launch me into the next ¾ of my
life.

(Are you saying that I’m not going to live to a
hundred and one?)

I thought answers would come from shock treatment.
Cultural shock for my cultural schizophrenia. The
shock of a cushy 9-5er for my career outlook. And of
course, the shocking sight of J-girls in high boots
and high skirts for my lovesick puppies.

Funny thing is, it’s really not all that shocking
anymore. Or rather, it is shocking in similar ways
every time, and I can begin to find comfort in the
predictability of things. I still don’t get it, but
I’m seeing patterns. And I’m getting used to the
routine.

Which is bad news for a pilgrimage of answers. Things
need to be shaken up a bit. It’s time to get out of
the rut of the comfort zone and move my booty.

Because if I sit on my ass for too long, I’m going to
forget about the questions.

Fugu dinner

Guess I haven't elaborated on my fugu feast last Saturday.

Prior to Dad's arrival on Saturday, I biked all over Yonago to make reservations. Neither one of the two really nice places recommended by Satoshi and Mayumi took reservations for a full-course fugu dinner. One place (near the fire station) simply couldn't do it, the other (below 白木屋) could only do nabe (broth boiled fugu) and not sashimi. The place where I had sushi on Simona's birthday took the reservation for 2, for \8000 each.

We showed up at 8pm. The fugu sashimi was laid on a big plate, with thin strips of raw fugu skin. The sashimi was cut paper thin, literally. You make a roll with the fish and spring onion and dip it in this soy sauce/chili mixture. Raw fugu meat does not taste like fish at all--the texture more closely resembled octopus or squid. The flesh was spongy and a little bit chewy. The skin has a little bit more of crunch. The sashimi was interesting, but for \8000?

Next came the nabe pot. Actually, nabe is 鍋, which means pot, so nabe pot is kind superfluous. Basically, nabe is hot-pot, kind of like shabu-shabu, essentially make-it-yourself soup. A bowl of broth is set to boiling on a gas burner, with a big plate of various raw fugu parts and vegetables also set at the table. You cook and eat the fish at your own pace. You know how all cooked fish has that flaky texture? Not fugu. Strangely cooked fugu does not taste much different from sashimi (I'm pretty sure it is not because we didn't cook it thoroughly). The flesh holds together as a whole, and was chewier than you'd expect from boiled fish. Different parts of fugu (from flesh near vertebrae, near face, near tail--you can tell by just looking at the raw parts) have different texture, some chewy, some extremely fatty, some crunchy (more cartilage than flesh). It was really an adventure.

The deep-fried fugu tasted not unlike typical fried fish, however.

The one thing the left the strongest impression though was the 鰭の酒. Charred fugu tail fin was soaked in boiling-hot sake. The lady brought the cup, lights the sake on fire and closed the lid. This was to burn the flavor of the fin into the sake somehow. End result: not like sake at all. It tasted more like a peppery fish soup with just a hint of alcohol, mostly hinted by the burning feeling in your stomach. Never had anything like it.

Hmm mm good.

Dreamt

Dreamt that my apartment was in the middle of a mall, and the girl with whom I have been kissing and whispering turned out not to be Simona, but Berra! I came to this realization when we took a walk down the mall, and I asked her if she remembered about asking me to cum. She said yes.

Also encountered other strange individuals in the mall during the stroll but cannot recall. I walked into a McDonalds asking for Egg McMuffin. The cashier spoke Japanese (basically, I had no idea what she was talking about) and I gathered that she has no idea what an Egg McMuffin breakfast is. I got something with chicken and seaweed instead.

Simona was there when I returned to the apartment, failing my quest of finding Egg McMuffin, we sat and ate the chicken and seaweed thing. There was a knock on the door, which turned out to be a rhesus monkey of sorts. I fell for its dind-dong-ditch a few more times, until finally it snuck into the apartment. I grabbed it, petted it gently, and signaled for Simona to open the door. I threw the monkey out of the door violently, but in a flash it ran through the door crack before Simona could fully close the door. It was pissed. And it hissed. I grabbed it, and it bit me repeatedly. Again, I told Simona to open the door, somehow enduring the pain of the bites and the fear of rabies I threw the monkey out.

Then I caught myself saying "It's biting me!" in my sleep and I woke up. Simona was up too--apparentl I had said plenty more than that.

Simona Marie Fisher

Been spending so much time with Simona this past week, it feels like I am out of the loop of my own life. Then again, it could be just my sleeep deprivation talking (having averaged 5-6 hours since last Wednesday).

Still waiting for the other shoe to drop. There has to be another shoe right? If something this good is really this easy, then why hasn't it happened already?

It is really good though, Simona and I. Exactly how or why, it is hard to put into words. It's like Song-Yung said in 冬ソナタ: "If you really like her, you won't be able to say why" (I'm sure Simona too realizes the irony of our romance starting in December during viewings of Winter Sonata). We both sync on the same frequency: in conversation, in laughs, in eyes, in kisses ("Like cogs in wheels," she said last night, showing me exactly how with our hands).

I'll resist the temptation to say anything more. I don't feel like I can say enough about right now anyway.

Summary

I hate writing summaries of weekend events like this in the blog.

To summarize about last Friday's kyugitaikai, a school-wide, inter-class ball-sports competition with boys playing futsol and basketball and girls playing volleyball and dodgeball, is probably okay. It is an uniquely Japanese event, which is worthy and interesting even in a laundry-list-style report. This event deserves its own space in a later entry, along with the Hiroshima trip, once I figure out how to FTP the pictures again.

The Xmas party on Friday night at Hi-high, on the other hand, probably doesn't even need to be mentioned in the blog. It's just another night of drinking following the drinking done earlier at the enkai with the first-year teachers (Ogura-sensei was again annoyingly drunk). However, not even those combined ~8 drinks could cheapen what happened between Simona and I that night (our first kiss happened when, Wednesday night to some Green Day song?). I think some people caught onto us at the party. A summary-style blog entry would destroy the sweetness of it all. This too, deserves its own space, in a more contemplative tone.

A summary of Dad's visit over the weekend probably wouldn't be the most interesting. Sure we changed tires, visited my school, Daisen temple and shrine, Matsue castle and Sakaiminato, but these weren't exactly new things to me, much less exciting experiences. The fugu dinner however, definitely deserves its own space. Man I wish I had pictures of the fugu sashimi, fugu nabe, 揚げfugu and the fin-soaked sake. Mmm mmm good.

Dinner and movie (horrible: Shall We Dance with RGere and J-Lo)and more with Simona on Sunday was also meaningful in a un-summarizable kind of way, obviously. It is legit, I know so.

So, I guess there's really nothing to summarize about my weekend, just a preface of more other exciting and insightful and soul-searching entries to come, かな？

Reasons why I hate Bill Walton

I hate this guy. I mean, just look at his smug face.

He's a walking advertisement for himself. He constantly drops Grateful Dead references; and when you drop Dead lyrics as often as he does, you know he's doing it consciously to create his public persona. He loves talking about big men and how they play the game--which is fine because he's arguably the greatest all-around center of all time--but not without mentioning his foot injury at every single opportunity (primary reason, according to Dr. Jack Ramsey, why he's arguably the greatest all-around center of all time). He loves to talk about John Wooden and Larry Bird and about "greatness." Though he appears to be humbling himself by basking in their reflected glory (being Wooden's player and Bird's teammate), you get the feeling, from the way he talks about them, that he unabashedly considers himself as their equal. Sure he IS a HOFer and probably closer to these great basketball personas than 98% of people in the world, but he straddles the wall and blows both ways: you just cannot be humble and haughty at the same time and reap the benefits of both.

The way he talks about basketball in general is also really irksome to me. He loves to take the old-school stance, extolling the virtues of pick-and-roll, teamwork, passing, work ethic, "making teammates better," etc. (while inevitably namedropping John Wooden--"I remember when I was under the tuteledge of Coach Wooden..."). But he also takes David Stern's party line and panders (well, cock-sucks is more like it) to the superstars, the Kobes and the McGradys and the Iversons, whose games are more Jordan than team. In the same paragraph/broadcast, he can go from praising the shoot-out style of the 04 Sonics (currently 17-3) as "free-flowing" and condemn the same shoot-out style of the 02 Celtics (led by Toine and Pierce, lost in the conf. semis by shooting <30%) as "unimaginative." Basically, Bill Walton will say either 1) what the fans want to hear or 2) what the NBA thinks the fans should hear.

Which is fine, if he stays true to being the NBA's loudspeaker. But he also shamelessly fancies himself as a journalist. What with his trademarked alliterative cheese like the "What grace, what atheleticism, what determinations, what ball-humming bullshit XXXX" variety, or his use of intelligent-sounding, but needlessly and meaninglessly superfluous phrasing like

"It is the play-making ability of Allen Iverson that
makes him so important to 76er's offense" (quoted from
ESPN chat 12/13/04)

A player's play-making ability makes him valuable to a team? No shit? Of course most TV sports personas (to be distinguished from sports writers) are guilty of unnecessary bullshit fillers (how many time have you heard T.H.E. N.A.T.I.O.N.A.L. F.O.O.T.B.A.L.L. L.E.A.G.U.E. instead of NFL on SportsCenter?) but Walton is the most gratuitous of the bunch. Not only that, he probably considers himself Emmy-worthy. Sure he's no literary giant, which is probably why he ALWAYS start his columns with Grateful Dead lyrics.

This guy just really piss me off. Fucking hypocritical cock-sucker. I think I have to side with Ralph Lawlor on this one.

Inspiron-ed blog

First blog entry on my new Inspirion 700m. It will take a few days to get used to the small English keyboard and the new features/layout.

List of things to be blogged: kyugitaikai, Xmas party, Simona, Dad's visit, fugu ryori.

Expensive Expenses

Notable trends from my recorded expenses to date:

About 1/4 of my income goes towards various bills: rent, utilities, ketai, social insurance, etc.

About 15% so far is devoted to transportation. This includes train, car costs, auto insurance and gas. After car purchase in September, transportation costs have hovered around 6-7%.

A pretty steady 12% is eaten. This includes eating out and groceries (instances of eating out that include alcohol are considered entertainment). My experiment to eat out more in November had no noticeable effect on the overall food expenses.

A pretty steady 5% is spent on entertainment. Majority of this is drunk, minority of this is spent on video rentals (and the "perks" associated with these rentals). Much lower than I expected.

This leaves travel, stuff and care as the main categories of variation. [note: Stuff (permanent goods) and Care (consummable/hygenic/personal care goods) are separated so that I can account for purchases that I would have to leave behind once I leave Japan]

After all this, I have been able to save close to 30% of my income. Not bad.

Just one of the firsts with Simona

First kiss between me and Simona.

The Line: "You know, we haven't had one full drink yet..."

The Reference: Simona wouldn't let me kiss her that night on Kate Connelly's floor because we had much to drink.

The Setup: on the black leather couch of Alberos (newly opened bar in Asahi-machi), , under blue lighting, no one else in the bar besides us and the bartender (the owner of A-beam showed up later with another woman, which I thought was a bit strange for the owner of a gay bar).

The Move: Request permission to land with left-handed face caress, slowly. After permission has been granted, hold altitude with the same hand. Flaps set, gear down, continue holding altitude. Check eye contact. Pull up nose slightly. Touch down. Set parking break and taxi to the terminal.

The Taste: some blue-Curacao, lychee-flavored mixed drink.

Happy Belated Birthday, blog

Happy Belated Birthday, dear blog.

You've grown up, boy, from the living room in Aliso Viejo, California to the staff room in Nakayama, Tottori. Isn't it ironic how your very first entry was about completing the JET application?

You have taken me through some rough patches, blog. I remember, amidst going-nowhere unemployment and going-nowhere-slowly Saddleback classes, how my daily compositions let me go from day to day with a sense of purpose and placement. The act of writing and recording served as a ballast that prevented me from capsizing, something marijuana and alcohol and PS2 and poker failed to achieve.

It is possible that, 235 posts later, I have learned more about myself. At any rate, I now have pretty good reference materials.

It is also possible that I have forced myself to expand beyond who I was before, or who I might have been without the blog. I really never thought that a year of my life might be worth 64,570 words.

It's a milestone, a'ight. Let's take a moment to slow down, reflect, and feel the keystrokes.

New Signature?

Candidates:

"He just reminds you so much of Shawn Kemp in his prime. It's going to be scary to see this guy in a couple of years."
-- Byron Scott on Amare Stoudemire.

"I have never seen a fight like that in a game since I was in high school."
Quentin Richardson on the Pacers-Pistons melee

"My two biggest personnel mistakes were Michael Ovitz and Mo Vaughn."
-- Retiring Disney CEO Michael Eisner

"This is how I relax and maintain my composure. Every now and then, you want to kill somebody." -- Buffalo Bills running back Willis McGahee on Halo 2.

Let's Go Clips!

And I quote the Sports Guy: "Few things are more rewarding, as a sports fan, then supporting a perennial loser as it finally starts turning things around. It's like losing your virginity all over again."

Weekend

There was a ken-wide JET conference/workshops in Kurayoshi last Thursday and Friday. It felt like my weekend had started early.

The conference/workshops were neither interesting nor informative. There was, however, a session run by a psychologist, and the things he said were pretty helpful.

Stayed with Kate Connely at Kurayoshi Thursday night(12/3), instead of driving all the way back (1.5 hours) to Yonago. She's really something else. She's from Connecticut and 26. Graduated from Amherst with a BA in physics (what!?). And she quit graduate work in geophysics to work in the Forestry Fire Service for 2 years in Arizona. She drives a black something or other Grand Prix with tinted windows, the ride is very yakusa. She responds to people's comments with quick gestures and brief one-liners. She kind of carries herself with a nervous twitch that's endearing to me, because it makes even her slightest social discomfort apparent. She has a spare room in her apartment, and she put a weight bench in it. I don't know what she can bench, but I'm pretty sure she reps bicep curls at 40lbs. I've got a picture of us which I'll upload whenever I work out the kinks in FTP (I think it's because of the new firewall-related thinging in our school network).

Courtney and Simona also stayed with Kate. Slept on the floor with Simona, and we fell asleep holding hands under the blanket. It wasn't spooning, but still nice.

Returned to Yonago Friday night. Thought Dad was coming the next morning so I tried unsuccessfully to book a full-course fugu dinner (blowfish; one restaurant is full and the other can't get fugu in time) Turned out he's flying in next weekend during the Xmas dinner and party--pretty pissed that his one visit basically took up both of my weekends, since I basically made this past weekend available and now my next weekend becomes unavailable. Went to onsen with Matt, Ian, and Simona. Went for a walk with Simona up 湊山(minatoyama, just a hill in Yonago where the old castle used to be) afterwards. Whether things will be nicer from this point on only time will tell.

Sat around all Sat and read 100 bullets by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso, which I borrowed from James a week ago. A good noir murder mystery. Not unexpected from reading noir for 8+ hours, it depressed the hell out of me. The fact that it rained incessantly Sat and Sun did not help.

Ran 4 miles, played 7-game sets of 9-ball with the other guy at Grand Prix, and had my Japanese lesson with Akemi Sun. And now I'm off.

Dinner and LTDB

Add dinner to the LTDB: List of Things Doable in the Bath.

The list includes: spacing out, getting drunk, napping, clipping nails, reading, watching (TV/movie, doable at my former DC studio), listening to music, talking on the phone, and brushing/flossing teeth.

Happy Birthday

I am sorry that I forgot your birthday, dear blog.

Rambling

Today is the first of three days of final exams, and I have the entire afternoon class-free and work-free. Oh, except for the article I have to write for the PTA newsletter and the 15-minute activity for next week. But that can wait until next week.

For some reason my FTP client isn't able to connect with thejeffcho.com, so I can't upload any pictures. Not that I have many besides pics from the Hiroshima trip a month ago anyway.

I have High Fidelity in front of me. The one by Nick Hornsby.

I have been reading it for a few days. It corresponds to the movie pretty well, except the main character in the book is a lot more of an arsehole than John Cusack. I have heard the name Nick Hornsby dropped several times by several people, but never read any of his stuff until now; nor did I know that he also wrote About A Boy, a movie which I also loved.

This is not going to turn out to be a book review. But I thought a lot about my life in general while reading this book. Esp. all my prematurely terminated romantic misadventures. Something I can refer to in distance only after reframing the topic with an odd combination of qualifying adjectives and adverbs...

Ah, 5:00pm. Saved by the bell. Perhaps another time, when my heart is filled with Soul rather than Blues.

A new Hedgefund

One of Cuban's Greatest.