IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!!!
I MADE IT 1 MORE!!!!
I'M 23!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'd like to take a chance to review the year's foibles and fares, triumphs and traumas, achievements and idiocies, BUT I really haven't the time right now. I'm still rather frenziedly working on my assignment for Fodor's, due Friday. Back to work, I'll still be 23 next week...
Tonight I had a birthday party! I know it's early (only by a week!) but tonight a bunch of people I know from the radio station had this big birthday dinner for me and three others, Aoi-chan, Maahk-san and To-kun who all have September birthdays and lots of nice people gave us presents! Yay party! I also got to sit next to Hazuki-chan, who, although she's apparently just been recently engaged to be married, is one of those "I will forever hold a candle in the window for you" kind of girls, and always makes my night feel special when I see her. And it was my birthday! Yaaay! AND SOMEONE GAVE ME FLOWERS!!!!!!!! I think this is the first time I have ever gotten flowers. I FEEL SO SPECIAL! They are pink roses with little green squiggly flowers all arranged around them. I know it's the silliest thing in the world, but it seriously makes me feel almost giggly with happiness. I got flowers! Yay Japan, where men can get flowers. Tonight when I was buying gifts for the others (flowers for Aoi chan and plants for Mark-san and To-kun) and the ladies were wrapping up the bouquet for Aoi chan I reminded them that the flowers were for boys and they said they'd wrap them appropriately...this apparently involved pink and peach colored paper and a lot of lacey ribbons that they made all curly with scissors. What?? The party was very laid back and super fun, and I'm happy to be in with these people again; we all had kind of a drifting apart over the summer. Anyway, here's my pictures of MY PRESENTS AND MY FLOWERS! YAAAAAAAY!
I got super nice smelling bath soap, hair gel gooey stuff that smells like grapefruits, a set of incredibly nice cups for Japanese tea, a reDICulous Pringles picture frame from someone who knew how funny it was, a really pretty candle holder with sea-glass sides to refract the light AND, BEST OF ALL (besides the flowers), a HAPPY MONKEY FM RADIO!
HAPPY MONKEY FM RADIO! HAPPY MONKEY FM RADIO!
I spent a great deal of the party saying IGOTAHAPPYMONKEYFMRADIO very excitedly. Some people were like, "wow, you must have really been hoping to get that Happy Monkey FM Radio." It is pretty amazing. It took me about thirty minutes of fiddling around with it at home to realize how to change the station, since there's not only no instructions, but also no discernable controls whatsoever. "So what," you think, "obviously, you just turn its arms around!" Oh touche; actually, you have to PUSH ITS EYES IN. So, so weird. O Japan, where men can receive hair curling products that smell like grapefruits and monkeys get poked in the eyes.
Today I got a phone call from my friend Daisuke at the kaiten-sushi place next door, saying that everyone there was worried about me because no one had seen me in so long, and was I OK and would I come in to see them all soon?
I need to remember that things like this happen, especially at those times when I get frustrated about being here in the Twilight Zone; this place can be pretty amazing for all its strangeness. So I went to the sushi place and I brought omiyage that I had bought for all the staff on my trip to Ishikawa-ken (chopsticks from the morning market in a city called Wajima on the Japan Sea, famous from bygone days for its laquerware, and some beautiful watercolor postcards on thick rice paper from Kanazawa's kenrokuen, one of the Three Best Gardens in Japan according to canon). I ate lots of sushi, I chatted with everybody, I enjoyed me some life. And then tonight I get this email from Daisuke...I think it is perhaps the best single piece of correspondance I have ever received in my life, despite an indecipherable part in the middle. It goes:
おみあげをどうもありがとう。Ｔｈａｎｋ ｙｏｕ ｓｏ ｍｕｃｈ ｆｏｒ ｓｏｕｖｅｎｉｒ ｆｏｒ ｍｅ。 Ｙｏｕ ａｒｅ ｓｕｃｈ ａｎｉｃｅ ｆｒｉｅｎｄ。Ｗｅ ａｌｌ ｌｏｖｅ ｙｏｕ ｅｖｅｎ ｓｏｍｅ ｗｏｒｋｓ ｗｈｏ ｗｏｒｋｓ ｂｅｈｉｎｄ ｔｈｅｃａｕｎｔｅｒ。 Ｗｈｅｎ ｙｏｕ ｃｏｍｅ ｉｎ ｏｕｒ ｒｅｓｔａｕｒａｎｔ、 ｅｖｅｒｙｂｏｄｙ ｌｏｏｋｓ ｈａｐｐｙ。Ａｎｄ ｔｈｅｍｏｏｄ ｈａｓ ｇｏｔｔｅｎ ｂｅｔｔｅｒ。Ｗｅ ｌｏｖｅ ｔｈａｔ。Ｔｈａｎｋ ｙｏｕ ｆｏｒ ｃｏｍｉｎｇ ｔｏｎｉｇｈｔ。おやすみ。
I love Japan? I love Japan.
よし！日本語で手紙を書きました！はじめて日本語の手紙ですよ。すごく変なかんじかもしらないやけど、できました。この手紙は前の彼女、長谷部由ちゃんへ。最近由ちゃんと話ししたくなりましたから先週電話でかけてみて、嬉しかった。さ、読んでみてね！
こんにちは！この間話してくれて嬉しかったよ。由ちゃんは８月にも９月にもずっとや休みがありまが？学校へ全然行っていないですか？うらやましいぞ！昨日から仕事しおる。火曜日は鴨部小へ行きましたけどあまり何もしなかった。お昼まではぜったいひまだった、少しじゅんびをしたけど。給食が終わってから１年生と５年生授業しました。５年生は携帯電話ゲームをした：音楽をかけているところに、子どもたちが二つの携帯電話を回せて、音楽が止めたら持っている人は会話をする。"Hello, what's your name?" "Hello, my name is Yumiko. How are you today?" そんなかんじだ。１年生は伝言ゲームと鬼ゲームしました。子どもたちと会って、子どもと私もすごくよろこんでいますよ。
今日は玉中に行っている。今１０時４５分ですが、授業もう終わりました；今日は１時間目と２時間目だけ。おかしいね、この仕事。２時間働いたら、何で８時間務める？たまにおかしいね、ここの生活は。
由ちゃんは休みのとき何しおる？だいたい暇だったら、合気道はよく練習しますか？僕最近あまり練習ｓていないよ。。。よくないけどしかったがない、ぜったい忙しかったけん。
でも今頃何してるの？まだ前のそば屋で、とかご両親のラーメン屋でバイトしていますか？どこか旅行に行きましたか？よく、飲みに行きますか？
でわ、また時間あったらメールしてね？bye bye------
So I'm breaking my 12 o'clock bedtime rule (it's more like guidelines) but today was a good day, and a web post is a nice way to finish it. Right now I'm drinking kabo-cha, the delicious savory tea which mysteriously tastes exactly of very good chicken soup, and eating a small helping of two dried apricots, three prunes and some cashews off a very nice black triangular dish I bought the other day for a delightful 150 yen; the domesticity of all this produces really a very calming, tranquil effect for me; even though my apartment has devolved to a shambles from the relatively well-ordered pad it was only a few days ago, I've got a little corner of refined sanity to keep me stable. Sanity, thy name be dried apricots and tea.
Today was the first day of school for me, and although I did remember on an intellectual level how much I love my kids, I didn't remember how truly amazing and lovely and loving they all are. All they wanted to do today was play with me and dance with me and pick me up and get picked up by me and smile at me, and at the end of the day I was petitioned to walk about a million of them home; they were great in the games (a Pirates game and a song-and-dance with the 6th graders, a Hellos relay with the little little ones, a thump-the-desks rythm chanting game with the third graders, all as fun for them as for me, the mark of a good game). I was nearly overcome today with how wonderful they all are. They wanted to talk and talk to me, they wanted to have piggy-back rides, they wanted to teach me how to whistle like an owl...I just couldn't be luckier. Yay school! I was so apprehensive about returning, too! Yay for kids, the wonderfullest people ever. Here's a picture from a while ago, albiet of a different school than today's, but full of lovely little ones all the same. I'm actually in this picture if you can find me. It's like Where's Waldo, except with Josh. Where's Josh? He's in JAPAN.
Lots of new photos up on Flickr: www.flickr.com/people/jbisker including some more highlights from my trip to Takamatsu last weekend. You can also see me turn into a Samurai at the totally awesome Kagawa Prefectural History Museum and watch as I try on an array of rediculous hats at same; also a wander through a Japanese garden park, some good wining and dining, fun with monkeys on an island and an Indiana Jones style adventure through an archeological forest park. Not a bad life I guess.
Sadly no photos up of my recent foray to Kochi-ken; I just got back and I'm BEAT tired, and feel gross and in need of a shower and some good TV. Not that I can come up with the second one, but the first seems more or less do-able. I need to shave too; tomorrow I'm at SCHOOL again, a working man once more. Summer vacation is officially over for me in about 7 hours when I start biking to work. Sigh. Fun while it lasted...very fun actually. Summer in Japan is a pretty great thing; festivals, parties, beaches, travel. But tomorrow it's a working world once more, so I'm off to bed. NIGHT!
Who didn't have to sleep in an internet cafe in Kochi City last night because he got to crash with a sexy girl named Ayumi instead? And then also had a city guide and sexy escort through the new-to-him city all day today? Today I Am Awesome, is the answer to both of those questions.
Today's ending scene was me and Ayumi, the last two people on a rocky, rough, no-swimming beach a close drive from the city, snuggled up from the warm wind together high up on a fenced-lookout at the top of a rocky bluff, a lighthouse towering high and silent on the cliffs above us and lighting the unkind surf, a short splatter of scalding white from its mouth hitting the ancient Shinto shrine twenty feet beneath us. Today's ending was making out with a beautiful Japanese girl on a rocky bank overlooking the a churning and raging moonless sea, the bayed-in Pacific, with the sound of waves crashing and howling and spraying up like an army of souls bursting in fury against the jagged rocks beneath us. Today was a good day.
Of course, TONIGHT I'm sleeping in the goddamn internet cafe, because Ayumi's mom (the girl's 21, lives at home with sister, mom and grandpa, all of whom are very sweet and gave me many grapes this morning and a weird fruit I'd never eaten and forget the name of) decided aptly that one night was probably enough for me to crash there and that I could find my own way--and here I am, at the intenet cafe. 2000 yen for the night, I got a little couch. Y'know. It's not luxury, but it's living. NIGHT!
