Japandamonium!!!

It is so freaking cold. And let me explain, it’s not that it’s chilly outside and then you get to come in and cozy up and escape from it, it's like you're outside, all the time. They just don’t insulate places like we do it back home – back home being “anyplace in the first world that isn’t a historical heritage site.” It’s like we’re living in caves. And you just have to think, WHY? WHYYYYY!!!! I mean, that's why people invented "inside" thousands of years ago, so you wouldn't have to be "outside" all the goddamn time. Except, you know, in my apartment, or in school, or in restaurants, or in my apartment, where as much as it may look like inside, nono, you're outside – you can tell when the wind blows, “outside,” and papers flutter around on your desk, “inside.” What the hell is the matter with these people? Do they just not know – dudes, “inside" is totally one of the best ideas ever. I think we should go back in time and find whoever invented "inside" and give them like a big prize, like a washing machine or a bubble-gum dispenser from the supermarkets or a hug, and then leave them back there in the far-gone ancient past to be revered as a God for their cache of bubblicious and their eerie knowledge these things the future man calls "hugs."

One may think of this “we are outside all the god damn time” as characteristic of the Japanese cultural mentality that lives much more in tune with the natural world and its changes than the American cultural mind ever will, but I think this is mainly a load of horseshit and that there’s no reason why my apartment should be designed with big unpluggable holes built into the walls to let the wind, rain, cold and (in summer) bugs through. Nor is there any reason, ANY CONSCIONABLE REASON, why the girls should be made to wear skirts to school year-round. Because if it’s cold in my apartment, the one place it’s colder is in school. in school, it is unbefuckingleivably cold. Yesterday at Tamagawa JH we had an anti-drug assembly in the Taikukan, which is Japanese for something like “vast-like-the-tundra and just-as-arcticly-cold-in-winter gymnasium.” The first thing they did was pull all the big shades closed over the windows and turn off all the lights. You know, so we could see the clip art powerpoint presentation. No, not so we wouldn’t notice when our neighbor solidified bodily into ice. No, where did you even get that idea from? No! Anyway, it is insanely cold in the taikukan. It’s a big airplane hanger room with metal walls and no heat, and it’s not connected on any side to the main building at school; it just sits there, rocklike in the tundra, eating the wind. So I sat in the back with the PE teacher, Kuwabara sensei, my friend at the school, and he brought his electronic pocket dictionary (which he actually bought just so he and I could talk more, which is unbelievably sweet); I think he wanted to make sure I was all up to date on my anti-drug-tactics-for-middle-schoolers stuff, like, “and if they keep on asking you to try drugs with them, say that your mom or your sensei told you not to, and if that doesn’t work, then run as fast as you can away from them!” I kid you not. Anyway, all the sensei (myself included) are in there wearing about ten layers of clothing and almost all of us are wearing our winter coats, but the students are there in their normal uniforms, jacketless even, and freezing. We can all see our breath. And there are the girls, massed on the right side of the gym, shivering quietly in their skirts and short socks while this lady cop drones on about not how tobacco may effect your speed in school races. I looked in Kuwabara sensei’s dictionary for the word “sympathy” and tried to tell him that I felt really bad for the girls, forced to wear skirts in the HELLISHLY FREEZING COLD, and he says,
“Oh, don’t worry about it. They’re young and they are very tough; they don’t even notice the cold.” I asked for his dictionary and punched in letters till I came up with what I wanted and handed it back to him. He looked at it for a minute or two, quiet, thinking, and then his face cracked as he started laughing. "So so so so so," says him, looking at the little screen. "'Bullshit.'"