New Title: explanation

My contract says that my workday starts from 08:15 and ends at 17:00. School is usually out by 4pm, but most teachers stay at their desks until 6 or 7pm. I have no idea what they stay late everyday for, but leaving the staff room "early" is a daily guilt trip for me.

Me : お先に失礼します
-I'm sorry (lit: I'm being rude) for leaving early.
All: お疲れさまでした
-You have exhausted yourself.

Formalized, just so my exit can be properly processed by all.

Woe is my rabu wagon

Last Wednesday at about 6pm, I was in my car ready to go for a swim, when Simona called. I decided to skip XAX pool for her apartment. I then remembered that I didn't have any コンドーム, so I turned off the car, jumped out, and sprinted back to my apartment.

I was in mid-jump over 4 flights of steps when I heard Amy yelling my name with a mix of horror and desperation.

"Jeff! Jeff! THE CAR!!!"

I turned around, my car was slowly rolling down the little hill where it was parked. Then it started rolling a little bit faster, then inevitably faster, then BAM right into the white kei van parked behind it.

In my haste, I had forgotten to pull the parking break.

The white fan was dented on the back left side and it's tail swerved into that direction. If the usual bus had parked next to it, it would've dominoed into the bus. It also had a flat tire.

Needless to say I didn't play basketball that day. But I still went over to Simona's.

Fast forward to 2 hours later. I called Nishiyama-sensei, who just happened to be at the train station. He came over with his wife and called the cops and the insurance for me. He didn't seem to mind taking time out of his day to help me at all which I was really grateful. He seemed to have lost some weight too, and the pitch of his hiccups may have changed as well as a result.

The next day, Yamaoka-san, the owner of the van, called my cell phone. Both Honda-sensei and the principle spoke with him and apologized profusely. Then I had to apologize to Yamaoka, Honda-sensei, and my principle. I guess one accident and half-dozen apologies seem to be the Japanese way. Yamaoka-san's wife's family apparently has an auto-shop business, and both Honda-sensei and kocho-sensei said that Yamaoka is a "really really nice guy" and that he told me to "not worry about it." I don't know what that means to my insurance premium, but I'll take their words for it.

In the end, my car suffered only minor damage. The right break light and blinker is broken, and there are some scratches and almost unnoticeable dent on my bumper and back hatch, but now my love wagon creaks more than two ninety-year-olds in mid-doggy.

Oh my rhomboideus major!

Swam 4x100m today. The most I have done in one session so far. During my 3rd rep, I think I pulled this muscle. It hurts the most when I bend my neck down towards my chest, pains me whenever I pull, and I am aware of the tweak almost constaly. Damn my rhomboideus major.

Isn't 25 supposed to be my prime in terms of athleticism? Either I am more aware of my body now, I'm out of shape, or my body just isn't what it used to be. I really feel stiff if I don't warm-up or stretch properly before every workout or practice, and more often than not I'm achy or sore the next day.

Maybe I should pick up yoga or pilate or something. That ought to delay the inevitable days when I have to ice my joints after an afternoon of pick up basketball.

Email from Dad

Date: Sat, 21 May 2005 21:45:04 +0800
From: "Cheng Tai Cho"
To: thejeffcho@yahoo.com
Subject: Re:

Now I'm in China Airline Lundge (VIP room) and will take-off to L.A. at 10:50pm. Today lunch party was interesting, because this is the first experience to me to be the main speaker of Wu's family. During we talked about the engagement and wedding affair around party end, your grand-mom-in-law blow a very noise gas (continuous PI). In thattime she sit beside me, I heard the first sound then I cough loudly wanted to cover its sound immediately but its sound was continuous PI-LI-HWA-LA around 3 to 5 second and I couldn't cough so long. You can image the feeling of Wu's family member and color on our face, have to pretend nothing happen continued talking about wedding affair but inside affraid they had bad impression to us. Fortunately they also are old age knew the old man body is aging, blow gas is normal thing not strange I thought. So that today lunch party was successful and your uncle will get marrage around end of this year.

I didn't get any your recent information, tell us when you are available.

My first million

With the deposit of my May paycheck today, I am now a millionaire.

They say the first million is always the hardest. In my case, I had to move to Japan to do it.

Dreamt

That I was playing in a volleyball game with my school's staff, against another Japanese school. I showed up at the game with a female teammate, someone I have never met before in real life and can only be described as a mix between Simona, Nishiyama-sensei, and Ray Allen. She had sprained her ankle so she couldn't play, but she warm-ed up with me.

I noticed that during the warm-up, people ran and stretched but no one used volleyballs. I peppered with Simona/Nishiyama/Ray Allen and everyone looked at us in puzzled disapproval.

Also, the game took place on tatami mats, and there were 6 couches on the mats for the 6 players. As the game started, I noticed the ball used was made out of styrofoam.

Apparently the tatami mats and the styrofoam ball was part of the official rule of Japanese volleyball. But sitting in the couches during the game wasn't--apparently it was an integral but not official part of the game like bump-set-spike. My kocho-sensei insisted that I sit in the loveseat in the back row because "You are our defensive specialist."

I insisted otherwise and they finally gave in and removed the seat and left me roam free on the tatami. As the game started, a guy in glasses from the other team stood on one of the couches, and threw the ball straight down on our side. The ref scored one point for their team.

WTF? I complained, and the ref said that the move was legal. It is afterall, the Japanese way.

After that, I think the rest of the dream went lucid and I school all of them, including my own teammates, and then I had this incredible, mindblowing sex on the tatami.

This dream was possibly a reaction to the actual staff volleyball game against other schools in Saihaku-gun on 6/11. Some odd rules apply: 9 players on the court in a 3x3 matrix, and the net is only 2.3 meters. Also, I think the ball used is a "soft volleyball."

WTF?

Other atheletic footnotes

Our first league game was last Thursday. Bunch of other players whom I have never seen before during practice showed up and we had a team of 15. I played just 7 minutes in the 3rd quarter (7 minute quarters). We won with a final score like 50-30 against another 6 guys all from our normal Wednesday night practice/pick-up.

Last Saturday was the Chuugoku Cup soccer tournament, with 6 JET teams from the 6 県s in the 中国 region. The team from Hiroshima-ken won the Japan-wide JET tournament: they had 2 ex-NCAA soccer players on their team, including a midfielder from Cal. Besides them, the players from Yamaguchi, Shimane, and Okayama are all HUGE. At the opening ceremony/info session, standing next to the other players, it was like the rugby teams (them) against table-tennis team (us).

At the info session, a guy from Hiroshima asked: "So when is the finals?" which is immediately followed by Kevin's question "Where is the first aid box?"

We lost our first game 0-1 to Shimane, after Adam kicked in our own goal after a ricoche. We won the second game against Yamaguchi 1-0 with a goal by Jon (pronounced Y-on, Korean). I played left mid and right back. My lack of skill was apparent because I have no skill and because I was around the ball alot. I took down a 6-8 guy in short shorts and tackled a hottie from Yamaguchi.

Shimane, the winner of our pool, went on to be destroyed by Hiroshima 8-0. Which is cool, and nobody really cared because there was a BBQ and huge party afterwards.

And I was hung-over on Sunday.

10 days and 2400 kilometers later

I'm back. Actually I've been back for a full week now, but even a week after the long break I still can't get adjusted to classes and teaching.

Blogging about the Kyushuu trip, plus other backlogged stories and photos I've been meaning to write about since way back in late Februrary (Hadaka Matsuri in Okayama, grand sumo tournament in Osaka, school trip to Matsue, the end of the adult class, the beginning of the kiddie class, etc.) just seem like such a chore.

This is of course, stupid. Writing about nonsense is meant for fun and release from the tribulation of the daily grind. It should never, in any way, feel like a burden on my free time.

So why does it?

Is it because of my self-imposed duty to record my life? Or my imagined loyalty to my paltry readership? Or simply because I have less time now than a few months ago to mentally masturbate?

At times, I feel like I'm living for blog-worthy anecdotes. It's like whatever noteworthy episodes happenning in my life do not reach their closure until they have been dutifully documented by me. Has the blog been living my life rather than the other way around? Looking back, I filled most of April archive with nonsense, just so I can keep it "regular."

This way of living is exactly the opposite of the Zen ideal of living in the present: as something interesting is happening to me at the moment, I am thinking about how to write about it in my future blog entry and what to write about that last interesting thing in my current blog entry.

Fuck it. I'll write about those when I feel like it down the road. It's time to get back into the present swing of things.