Hello from the trenches

I've been keeping a low profile the past few weeks as I get my shit in order. My 2DK of Solitude is nearing completion. Soon it will be operational, to quote a character from a movie that was reworked 20 years after the fact into something that makes a part of me die every time I think about it.

I got a nice fairy blue carpet to cover the tatami in my Japanese-style room. I don't know if I've ever mentioned it, but I can't fucking stand tatami. It's absolutely horrible. I heard it's supposed to trap heat in winter and be nice and cool in summer, or some such. Well, that's a crock. My old guesthouse room was balls cold in winter, and balls hot in summer, and the only thing it trapped was the smell of my own body all season long. Fuck tatami.

The carpet is of the short-trim persuasion. Not so short that I can see the outline of the tatami underneath, but definitely not shaggy. And did I mention it's the color of a baby boy's nursery? I think I may have some subconscious desire to live like a kid, because I just ordered a pure white book shelf and I'm springing for beanbag cushions too. All I'll need to complete the look will be a TV with some Nintendo games constantly playing on it.

Lucy recently - and finally, I'll add - bought some bath and makeup products to store at my place, which has made spending nights over easier. On another note, I've started to map out the area around my place in Gotanno. I ran down past Ueno to scout the first leg of what will soon be my run to Shibuya, and I've also run out to Kameari, where there's an insanely cheap grocery store. It takes me 18 minutes at a cruising pace to get there, contrasted with the 30 or so minutes it takes by train. I've actually grown accustomed to running shirtless to shops nearby, waiting a few seconds for sweat to dry out, then putting on a shirt and walking inside to buy stuff. To say I disrupt the wa of a store is an understatement. I'd be willing to bet I cause these stores to lose customers.

I've also finally gotten off my ass and started studying up on writing Kanji. Over 2 years ago I had a course on writing Kanji, which was essentially the only time I've ever really spent studying those characters. Right now I've got the first 2 Joyo grades down (it really helps when you've been reading them for 2 years) and I'm working on the 3rd. I was actually a little surprised at the speed with which I picked up those 2 grades. I had them down in less than a week of studying on the train. But I've seen grade 3, and it's a break from the simple everyday characters I've been dealing with before.

World Class has a new blog up that will chronicle his 59 day run across the length of Japan over 20 years ago. I think it's going to be essentially 2 pages, with the meat of it devoted to him talking about how he cheated and rode the bus all the way to Wakkanai.

I know I can't get away from an update without mentioning my job, which is where I'm posting this from. A month or so ago they hired a new guy to "assist" me. He's supposed to be heading out to one of our other sites at the end of the year, and until then needs to be trained, or something. In the meantime, he has been charged with taking over half of my class, completely.

At first I was happy because I thought it was just a temporary thing - a couple weeks at most while my boss was out of town on business. But it'll actually end up being a 6 month stint. And I know damn well that his hiring was one reason I didn't get a pay raise in April. All of a sudden I'm only doing half the work training-wise, and the same amount of work development-wise. Well, actually that's false. The hardware I need for development hasn't even been picked out yet by my boss, so I'm stuck in limbo there too. About all I'm good for right now is updating lectures and quizzes. Work is incredibly boring right now.

I'm going to start dabbling in DoJa again. I finished my Kanji dictionary, which puts the Kanji dictionary from that contest I mentioned to shame. It allows searching by Kanji, stroke count, SKIP code, grade, radical, pronunciation and meaning, and for the last two you can do an all/any/exact search. It's helped me a lot on the train when I'm reading ads and see a Kanji I don't recognize. I can just plug in the SKIP code and have at it.

That's about it. I have to get back to work now. I'll post again in a bit regarding the new object of my simultaneous interest and loathing, Dan Brown.

In which I write my semi-annual update

Hot damn, work is rough this week. My boss is out of town for a week or two so I get to take care of the runts. Just my luck, the new round of students just started, so I have 4 hour lectures every day for my own students, in addition to his. I'm having a blast.

Compounded to that, today I had to wear my last remaining button-down shirt. It's the last one I have for a reason - it's missing a button right smack dab in the middle. So when I move around, my bare, pasty chest is exposed. You'd think my tie would cover it up, but my sinister tie, no doubt upset over being washed numerous times before I wisened up ("Oh, do not put in washer!"), keeps moving out of the way. Some girl was staring at me in the elevator just now, and it took me a full 10 seconds before I realized she could see my nipples.

Now, normally I wouldn't have this kind of problem. I have other shirts lined up. But I just last night at 11pm set up my new washing machine, and I don't have a dryer, so despite my best efforts, when I woke up this morning my dress shirts were still damp and wrinkled. Apparently hanging outside when it's drizzling isn't the best thing to dry clothes.

Oh, right. I moved.

I'm now up by Ueno, near a little part of town called Kita Senju. I'm about an hour from work still, but it's an awesome place to live. The foreigners there are just as cheerful and not-psychotic-looking as anywhere else in Tokyo, which is to say that they all look like they're marching off to take on a biker gang that killed their respective families. Maybe the same biker gang. Wouldn't that be something.

But I digress. I've got an awesome river a couple minutes from my place, and it's lined with a wide bike/running path that's at least 13.1 miles because I ran it in March. And there's plenty of places along it to either play pick-up sports (which I won't do) or have a picnic (which I'd do, but not until all parties involved sign an NDA).

I'm about 4-5 minutes from the station, which is in turn 1-2 minutes from about 5 grocery stores, all of which are balls cheap. For those of you not up on current ForEx prices, balls are practically being given away these days.

Which brings me to my new home. I managed to get some J-cred at the housing agency and they found me a great place. See, I brought my good Japanese friend who now lives 4 minutes from me. Despite the initial "Oopsie-daisies, foreigners can't live here!" moments we all shared with a wink and a smile, they actually got me settled in a very spacious 2DK for under 80,000 yen. It looks brand new, and no longer has that godawful new tatami smell it did last week when I first moved in. No, now it has the smell that makes guests crinkle their nose and invariably ask where I've hidden the body.

So I learned a lesson last week I'd like to share with everyone. It's a mistake to carry all of your belongings 90 minutes via train when you can just stuff it in a box and have it shipped through Lawson for like 4,000 yen total. I destroyed my upper body, which has been decomposing anyway since I left America.

Then after I'd moved in, I found that there are a few necessities that a normal apartment needs that I didn't have. Just off the top of my head...

refrigerator
microwave
rice cooker
water heater
washer
futon
bed
curtains
table
microwave stand
slippers
iron
ironing board
carpet for the tatami
plates
glasses
stove

Yeah, 2 years in a guest house will make you forget all those things you take for granted. Luckily there are 2 recycle shops nearby and they deliver same day. I picked up a wicked fridge, double-sized bed, microwave, rice cooker, and iron from them, though the damned iron is one of those ceramic-plated obscenities. Who the fuck decided that was better than good old steel?

All of those items were dirt cheap compared to new prices, but the thing about Japanese recycle stores is that the items themselves are all practically new anyway. The bed is 3 years old, the fridge is 2, the microwave is a little over 1. I managed to save a bunch of money that way.

I've still got to go back out this weekend to finish up shopping, and I don't yet have internet, but I'm relatively settled in. I've even got pink slippers and a blindingly magenta towel for my partner in crime to use. Should we ever break up it'll be a little awkward to explain to the future girlfriend why I have those lying around, but one step at a time.

For those who are wondering, we're still together. I'm not sure if I mentioned this earlier, but she told me a couple weeks ago that she was sticking with her job so that she'll have enough vacation time to accompany me to Lake Tahoe for a week of Aces Family Fun. This is a job she hates, and she was actually intending to quit. So I think that's a good sign.

The only problem is that, due to the turbulence of the 2 weeks since she first told me about our relationship woes, I now am very jumpy about really small things. In the past 2 weeks there have been times where I can swear a breakup is coming because of something stupid I imagine I did, or the way she writes an email to me, and then it turns out to be nothing. The feeling's going away, but not soon enough.

That's enough for one post. I've been taking these extra-long lunches this week since my boss isn't here, so maybe I'll have time to post again later in the week.

Movin' on up (to the East Side)

I appreciate everyone's comments and emails last week. I didn't mean to leave you all hanging, but I figured it would be better to wait until the dust had settled before I made an update on the situation.

And now, and update on the situation.

It was a very rocky week, but Lucy and I talked quite a bit and got back on track. I reiterated (or just plain iterated, since I'm pretty sure it was the first time) my commitment to our relationship - something I wasn't able to do with The Student or The Herbalist - and shared with her some very personal thoughts and experiences and whatnot. I'm not going to go into too many details of course, since I still retain some semblance of privacy in my life, bloody boxers and tales of hookers notwithstanding.

For now, on the relationship front, things are progressing nicely. We're closer than before, that's certain. Thanks to those who voiced support or advice, or some combination thereof.

Of course, I also gave up my Fortress of Solitude's secret location, and some time in the next couple weeks she's going to be visiting these hallowed pages. Then I get to explain to her why her name is Lucy and not Jessica, as in Alba (short answer: she doesn't have blonde hair). I'm pretty sure there are other things I've written that I'll probably be a little embarrassed to share, but hey, I don't write to impress people. Hell, sometimes I don't write at all, as many* of you noticed and emailed me about. I write to amuse (myself only, all too often) and put things together in my life. And since I've got an absolutely horrible memory, this also serves as a kind of record of what I've done and how I've handled stuff. I never want to forget how to deal with a smelly old man who thinks the handles on a train have more germs than the rancid death being dealt in gas form from his mouth, leaning into me and rubbing his foul body odor all over my suit. I build calluses on my elbows that way.

My other problem, that being my distinct lack of confidantes or good friends, is resolving steadily as well. One of my friends is helping me find an apartment before my current abode gets demolished and turned into an old folk's home. Where he lives, East Bumfuck (I'm in West Bumfuck) is a couple minutes closer to work, but a hell of a lot cheaper, and we've been looking at places there. As an added bonus, it's only 25 minutes from Lucy, as opposed to the current setup, which is about 80 minutes in either direction.

We looked at places on Saturday, and I got to remember what really pisses me off about Japanese society (hah, there's a rant in here, fuckers!): the nonchalance with which many people accept racism and discrimination as a fact of life.

The agent told my friend that not a few of the selections I had made were going to be difficult because the landlords don't take kindly to my type 'round these parts. The guy didn't even bother to ask, just flat out stated that for'ners were forbidden. But the language he used was very matter-of-fact and sort of "what can you do, eh?" I know I'm not breaking new ground with this, and I've written about it before, but it's something that always ticks me off. It's this laissez-fair attitude toward a lot of things that is evidenced anywhere you want to look. It's changing, but not before I have to move myself into a concrete structure with plenty of space that doesn't have roaches keeping my bed warm.

Owing to my indecisiveness and the fact that the realtor had no clue how to operate his own computer to do timely searches, we ended up making final selections a little late, and so he didn't want to schedule an apartment viewing. My friend got him to agree to just one, a place literally 1 minute away. But when the realtor called the landlord, her daughter answered and said that she wasn't sure if gaijin were permitted, don't you understand, so I couldn't come over. But next week she'll ask her mom and we'll find out for sure if the thought of a white guy living on her land keeps her from getting a good night's sleep.

Another development this week is that one of my friends from college, The Lesser Half, is in Tokyo for a week on business. I call him that because we share the same first name, and he was my senior at work, so he started referring to himself as the greater half. The truth is now we each call ourselves the greater half, and someone's got to be the lesser. Until we find a 3rd mutual friend whom we can dump on, we have to deal with this bit of ambiguity about who's who. We'll see each other one or two days this week, and I'll relentlessly hammer him for job recommendations.

I'm sure there was something else I was going to say, but the earlier talk about trains got me all worked up. All these new shain this month have made it hell. They all seem to instinctively know which car gets out right in front of the stairwell at Ikebukuro and Shibuya, knowledge I had thought was protected by me and about 30 others. Well, one of those Judas' flipped sides and ratted us out, and now you've got to fight just to keep one foot on the ground. My pant leg got a little rip already, and it's not even the end of the month. Luckily nobody in Japan eats fish and pickled vegetables for breakfast.

*maybe 2 or 3

If you can find the good news in this, tell me

It's been a very long while. I don't expect many are reading the page anymore. Hell, I haven't really bothered to either, so I can hardly blame any of you.

When last we spoke, it was almost White Day. For those of you who care, I got my girlfriend a nice array of chocolates and a sexy thong with a chain across the front. The kind lady at Marui convinced me it could do no wrong, and indeed she was correct.

That was 3/14. I had my run (Arakawa Marathon) on the 19th and beat my previous time by 20 minutes. It was absolute hell because we had a head wind the last 21km. Compounded to that, I was sick and had a runny nose, making it difficult to breathe and damned near impossible to drink while running. Lucy was supposed to come, but overslept on account of it being that womanly time of the month. It might sound stupid, but part of what kept me going was the thought that she'd arrive and be waiting for me at the finish line. It didn't happen like that, but I finished nonetheless.

Other things happened - my guesthouse is being torn down and I have to move out by 5/31. The message is written on a bulletin board nobody checks in sloppy Japanese, which I think is not the nicest thing Yaji could have done. There are undoubtedly going to be a couple people who are completely unaware, or who simply can't read the Japanese. I'm planning on moving out east near Ueno.

I had a horrible incident at work that had me literally ready to quit the week of 3/27. By that Friday I was a nervous wreck and had a splitting headache. My coworkers were angry with me, other people in the office were, and still are, ignoring me completely. I had put off looking for another job for months, so I was acutely aware that if I had to quit, I would be living very spare for a few months. But I forgot about dealing with all that when I hung out with Lucy that weekend.

I bring this up because yesterday I was caught completely off guard when Lucy told me she just wants to be friends.

She'd been thinking it for a couple months now, but never broached the subject, and instead just let it sit inside her until it was too late to change anything. I can't fault her for that, since it's exactly what I would do, and have done. The very dark humor in all of this is that the list of things that I had done, or more correctly not done, are all things that I wanted very badly to do.

She mentioned how I don't talk about work with her as much as with my only other good friend in Tokyo. He was a student of mine and quit, so we have lots of common ground. But truly I thought that constantly complaining about work to her would be too boring and negative, and I figured that she wasn't interested in hearing about it anyway because she never told me about her job either. And I'm sure you can see the cycle - neither of us talks about something we want to talk about, because the other isn't talking about it. Such a simple miscommunication.

There were other things, most of which she couldn't explain to me, but had apparently discussed with friends. They had all suggested she talk to me about it, but she didn't. She said that when she gets sick and calls me to say she can't meet - 1 or 2 times a month - she feels that I don't seem to care or say words of encouragement. I was always frustrated when she got sick because I couldn't go to her house and sit by her while she slept - she had never brought me to her house or introduced me to her parents.

I tried to explain all of this to her - how so much of it was a miscommunication, and how my actions stemmed from such and such an experience. She said she hadn't come to a decision yet, but she also was unresponsive while we were waiting for the train, and at one point she cried, though I wasn't supposed to see it. The verdict was in before I arrived, and anything I said just made it harder for her to tell me.

The loss of a girlfriend is not something that would normally have me so down. It's something I realized on the train this morning that has had me furtively drying my eyes all morning when I think nobody is looking. In a week, I will have only 1 friend in all of Tokyo. And that friend isn't yet someone I can tell everything to. Even these thoughts are filtered, albeit poorly, before I write them down. I don't like to deal with anger - too much of that in recent memory - and committing something to an archived medium like the internet makes me pause before finalizing a thought to see if it's actually semi-rational and reflective of me. It's a lot of work to strain your feelings so that they don't offend or cause unwanted judgement when talking to people, as I'm sure everyone is aware. Now that I want to talk about everything going through my head, I realize I'm missing a friend to talk to.

And ironically enough, Lucy told me last night that one of the things she had wanted from me was more openness on my part, and more talk about what's kicking around in my brain. Then we broke up. There's a word for this, I'm sure.

I'll try to update again. I make that promise so many times, I know. This weekend I might be going to the Nagisa Music Festival in Odaiba, so hopefully I'll even have a story to write about.

Killer App

Sorry again for the absence. I had a drought of interesting things to say. You know, because usually I've got tons of awesome shit going on. Last week? I had nothing.

Japan is as ever Japan. Work sucks, just like usual. I've been spending my time at work trying to figure out new games or utilities to make. You know what sucks ass? There was a DoJa development contest recently - 1st one - where programmers submitted non-commercial applications that they had created for Docomo phones using one of the old overseas versions of DoJa. I didn't submit anything because I figured I'd be blown out of the water, and I didn't have much time anyway. Ideas I was throwing around were a full-featured dictionary using Jim Breen's EDICT database, or a good semi-3D game.

You know what won? A pared-down Japanese dictionary. You enter the number of strokes and the pronunciation, and it gives you the kanji and the meaning. Seriously, unless I'm missing something, that's pretty lame. It shows you can parse the database file, but no one needs that lookup feature. How many people know how many strokes a kanji has, but can't remember what it looks like? And if they have a phone and know the pronunciation already, they can type it in and convert it automatically, without this program. He could have just skipped to the end - giving the meaning.

Second place was a horrible-looking "3D" tunnel game. No textures, I'm actually reasonably certain it wasn't true 3D, just a bunch of rectangles superimposed on each other. He won a laptop.

Third place was a Sudoku solver. It's not even unique - I can write one for the phone today if I want to, since there are a million open source solvers available on the web, many written in Java and not requiring any special libraries. He got a digital camera.

Goddamn. I guess next year I'm submitting something. I need a piece of this DoJa pie. And apparently it was only foreign contestants, because if you look at any one of the many i-appli sites in Japanese, they're leagues ahead. On that note, I was disappointed to find that 2 games I was willing to attempt - Bomberman and Nectaris - are both developed already and put out by Hudson. Motherfuckers. I'm quite tempted to download Nectaris. That game dominated. If it was open source...

My Sudoku is officially complete. I've got everything the way I want it to be (kind of had that 3 weeks ago, but made a few minute changes). The only thing I can think of adding is support for custom-entered puzzles, but I don't have time to figure out dynamically adjusting the scratchpad size, if that's even possible, and I've got enough puzzles anyway.

So now I'm looking for a new game. I want a puzzle game, but at the same time some kind of puzzle/action would be fine. Of course, I can't figure out how to draw a simple 3D quadrilateral to provide a game board, so I'm stuck at the moment. It's a pretty sad place to be stuck, I admit. I just know I want a 3D board. After that, I'll figure out what kind of game goes on top of it. Maybe 3D checkers. Hehe.

Welcome to Civilization

World Class pointed me to a little blurb in the Daily Yomiuri that I thought was quite humorous. Apparently, in preparation for the 2008 Olympics, Beijing is going to institute a new "civilization" program aimed at making it, well, more civilized I guess. One of the things they're going to do is encourage people to stop spitting on the streets...by putting up garbage cans on the streets for you to spit into.

Is it just me, or does that seem like they're avoiding the real issue?

"Senators, in light of the fact that last year thousands of people died as a result of drunk driving, I propose that we make sure all cars from now on are equipped with big spongy bumpers. Also, pedestrians should have rocket belts."

Here's an idea - ask your citizens to stop spitting on the goddamn roads. It's disgusting. What the fuck are they eating anyway that causes them to have so much spare mucus? I've eaten all sorts of unhealthy, middle-of-the-road and organic shit - the entire spectrum of food - and I never felt the urge to hack loudly and spit on someone's shoes. The only thing bad that ever happened to me as a result of eating Chinese food was a 48 hour case of the Hong Kong shingles. You'd need a bigger trashcan, and I'd appreciate a triple-ply dispenser nearby.

I suspect this is a cultural thing, much like Japanese salarymen pissing on streets, and teenage brain surgeons riding bikes while talking on a cell phone and holding an umbrella. The solution isn't to make sure these poor salarymen have a specially designated Urinal Tree every 50 feet. It's to call them names or push them into their own puddle when you walk by them, then mutter "Gomen ne, oshikko-sama." Goddamn.

I suppose it is admirable that they at least recognize it's a problem and want to correct it in some vague, unhelpful way. I thought it was funny that it was being called the "civilization" program, though whose name that is - Yomiuri's or Beijing's - I don't know. Now if only Japan would institute one of those programs. I imagine it would be something like this:

(1) Free public showers near every train station
(2) Toothpaste and scope booths at each intersection
(3) Amnesty from police if you beat someone for stopping on an elevator or being a nuisance because they were reading their keitai email while walking.

Now that would be a goddamn program to be proud of.

Guest House Blues

Man, things in the ol' guest house are heating up a bit. It seems people are becoming more and more annoying. When it was just the Vietnamese guys, I could write it off as their deal. Now more people are jumping on the bandwagon and making the place suck, so I'm almost thinking it's an issue with me instead.

Almost, but not quite.

Let's cover some familiar territory first. The Vietnamese guys. I hate them. I can't stand to be near them. They make those open-mouth chewing sounds, gums smacking gums, every time they eat. And they make sure at least one of them is eating at any given time. Always some kind of long-dead fish they dredged up out of the septic tank, smelling 5 kinds of awful and looking the part.

The computer is the same. They'll monopolize it, typing away, and they only get off when another of their number walks in to the lounge. The thing is, they don't even say anything to each other (a rare occurrence). I'd expect the newcomer to say "Oh excuse me, Mr. Ding (I'm not making that up) can I use the computer?" Instead one walks in, and the other just gets up knowingly. They hold the seat for each other seemingly just so I can't use the damn thing.

That's when they want to use the lounge computer. Periodically they bring their laptop in as well - yes, they have a laptop and still feel like using the public computer. The problem begins when they want to connect to the internet, and do so by unplugging the lounge computer. Since all 3 or 4 of them can speak maybe like 5 words of English among them, it's a chore to try to convince them that no, they don't need the internet for an hour, and yes, they should stop being douchebags.

The other day I went to use the computer and found it to be conspicuously unconnected to the internet. 5 feet away, clicking away on his laptop, was my old nemesis - Vietnamese guy from last year (friend of my arch nemesis, Vietnamese guy who snuck into my room like a crazy unmedicated dildoid). He tried to sputter out the words to tell me what he was doing and settled on, I believe, "I use."

I don't want to generalize, but every Vietnamese guy who has lived in this house has been unable to converse in either Japanese or English. Please, just learn one of the fucking languages! If you're here for a week I'll understand if you have no language ability, but after half a year you damn well better know how to make a simple sentence. Especially if you are inconveniencing other people. They have to know they are being annoying, because most of their truly bad behavior is universally unacceptable.

After struggling with a dialogue for a minute or two (such highlights from me as "Unplug from the internet. Write your email. Plug in. Send." and "No, 1 hour is too much. You've been sitting there for an hour already") we reached an agreement whereby he would watch porn on his laptop and I could use the internet, and then at 10pm he would get on the computer to chat with his wife, Roger.

If that was all, I wouldn't have brought it up. The thing is, other people at the house are acting strangely now too. We have a...meaty...Italian girl who loves wearing tight pants and lounging around the place all day. Her voice is loud and nasally, so I can hear her when I go to bed (my room is above the lounge) and it keeps me up some nights. Though I bitch about that here, understand that I don't mind it much on its own because I recognize it as a superficial complaint.

What I do mind is her attitude. She expects other people to translate Japanese <-> English for her, even though she was majoring in Japanese until last year. That's a practice that really irks me, since I get picked on to do it too sometimes. It's one thing to not know a language. The Vietnamese guys don't know English or Japanese (or Vietnamese probably. Bastards are probably making it up as they go along). If you have trouble in it, the solution I've found that works best is to (1) minimize the amount of talking/listening you have to do by not being a bother or inconveniencing anybody, and (2) asking politely for a translator when (1) fails.

This girl, as well as the Vietnamese and a few other people who've lived here before, they all think that it's your job as a bilingual to translate anything and everything around them. World Class was in the lounge eating, with her watching TV, when one of the Korean guys walked in. He asked World Class in Japanese if he could change the channel, and WC said he doesn't mind, but he thinks she might be watching something, so ask her.

He tried to talk to her in English, but couldn't get the words out, and I guess despite her studying Japanese for years she hasn't made much progress. So they both stared at WC - minding his own damn business - expecting him to both be listening intently to their conversation and also to see that he should be translating for them. Eventually she understood that he wanted to change the channel, but afterwords told WC that he wasn't a nice guy because, I assume, he isn't a goddamn psychic and she was too much of an ass to ask him nicely to translate.

As I said, it's happened before, and will happen again. Saying "please" really does make all the difference in the world.

Yesterday the circuit breaker tripped because the Vietnamese were using the microwaves and both toasters, as well as the water heater and a rice cooker. The Italian girl and I were also in the lounge when it happened. I waited for 10 seconds in darkness before deciding to flip the switch back. On my way out the door, she yelled out to me that I had to unplug the rice cookers first or else it would turn back off. She made no movement to get up off her ass, just yelled it to me. I said to her that I wasn't using any of that shit, but it should be alright anyway. Usually it is.

Well, 10 seconds after I flipped it, the lights go out again. She raised her voice to me and said, accusingly, "I told you it would happen again! You have to unplug the cookers!" This whole time the guys and her are just sitting on their asses, not even attempting to help out, expecting me to go to each appliance and unplug it because they want to stuff their faces with rice and shit-fish. So I told her, "Why don't you get up and turn it off yourself? I'm flipping the switch. You guys turned all this shit on, the breaker tripped, now you turn it off." Then I motioned to one of the guys - "Hey, could you unplug the rice cooker? Thanks." She didn't talk to me the rest of the time, but I can't say I missed the tender sound of her voice.

Kamisando

I just made the best goddamn sandwich I've ever eaten. I'll take a picture next time. I would have taken one today but I couldn't put it down long enough to get the camera (6 inches away from my left arm).

Ingredients:
Avocado
Cheese (regular old slice)
Chicken (steamed in a frying pan with karashi)
Eggplant
Green pepper
Lettuce
Olives
Onion (lots, chopped)
Pickles
Spicy mustard
Tomato

I have so much shit going in there I have to hollow out the roll so it's just the hard crust, a little bit of soft bread, and a whole garden of vegetables. I think it costs me like $10 to assemble a half-roll. Goddamn. One of the girls in the guest house saw me making it one day (before I added olives and eggplant to the list) and tried to make one herself. She said it was horrible.
So apparently only I have the skill to make these vegetables come together, grab your taste buds from behind and pound flavor into them. A culinary gang-bang, if you will.