The Tokyo Beat

2006-05-23T22:01:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-05-09T21:44:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-04-16T23:11:00.000-07:00

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

2006-04-10T19:55:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-03-07T01:02:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-02-21T18:54:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-02-19T21:49:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-02-19T21:39:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-02-16T21:44:00.000-08:00

Debu Me

I wrote earlier that everything between Lucy and me was fine on Valentine's Day. I mean, I was a little surprised there was no card for the gifts, but my understanding is that here in Japan it's optional. It makes no sense to me. And neither does the practice of telling your friends exactly what you want for your birthday, and knowing in advance they will get it for you. But hey, I'm not Japanese.

One thing did stand out about that night. She was idly staring at her thighs while we were sitting down, when suddenly she said she was getting fat. I peeked under the table to check* and saw she was mistaken, and just gave a sort of chuckle. She's definitely not fat. I'm amazed at how women seem to be able to notice every additional ounce of body weight that they may or may not have gained. I think you ladies are bullshitting, to be honest.

*Even though I knew people would maybe stare and wonder why the guy was peeking under the table at the girl's legs, I figured it would pale in comparison to what I did 5 minutes earlier, when I unzipped my pants and showed her that I was wearing the London Subway boxers. They are easily identified by the big bullseye that straddles the window, which thankfully was mostly closed.

So no sooner do I say that then she volunteers, "You're fat too." I laughed it off because I figured it was a joke, but she reiterated it in different words. Sadly, my weight, or more appropriately, body shape, is something I'm fairly sensitive to, and so her telling me that at first made me second-guess myself and wonder, "Damn, I guess I am fat. Fuck."

I'm 6' even and 70kg, or 156lbs. I would say that I qualify as "thin" in most people's books, so I should have realized she was on crack right there. That and the fact that this girl just told me she's fat too, and she's got stick legs. If anything her judgement is slightly impaired.

Vain motherfucker I am, a couple minutes later I had to ask her if she meant it, and she said yes with no hint of a joke. It's the ass, I thought. Must be. I don't have any fat on me except possibly there. That's from my mom. I initially began running because even when I don't eat substantially for a week, I still have some chub on my pasty globes. Running fixes that, see.

So I went home that night and thought, "Fuck that. She thinks I'm fat? I'll be in wicked shape by...Saturday!" You know, because I'm getting naked and rolling around in the hay with her Saturday. I want to be able to lean back and have the light catch on my wicked abs. I plan on leaving the window open so doves can sing to me about how awesome my body is. That'll show her.

I had a head start, actually. I had run distance Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Tuesday when we met was my only day off this week. She couldn't have known this, but I've actually dropped almost 1kg since Saturday, bringing me sub-70. What she saw on Tuesday was a transitory Aces. Literally the day after, and especially today, I was back in anorexic shape.

Last night, however, I pondered this. I realized that her calling me fat was enough to make me run Wednesday and Thursday (I skipped the mornings and intended to not run them, but ended up running anyway after work). And probably I'll run again today, and tomorrow morning before we meet.

But then I thought about another meaning of her calling me fat. She's still dating me, right? So if it's not for my tight ass and manly chest, it must be for something less superficial. I almost want her to call me an ugly son of a bitch so I can cross off "model good looks" as a reason she tolerates me. Then I'd just wait for the other shoe to drop (rocks the futon bomb) and I'd be set.

I've figured out the way to turn an insult into a reassurance. I'm a compliment alchemist, dammit. Of course, it'd suck if on Saturday, right when I'm about to pretend it's too hot on the train and tear off my shirt in front of her, she says she can't date fatasses and, well, dumps my fat ass.

Man that'd be embarrassing.

2006-02-15T23:07:00.000-08:00

Prey

Man, I absolutely plowed through Michael Crichton's latest techno-thriller*, Prey. I think I finished the damn thing in 7 hours or so, which means either I broke my own personal reading speed record (previously 500 pages in "never") or I have no concept of time.

*I count Prey as his latest book. That air one sounds like it flosses with my ass hair, and his attempt to take on global warming I hear is pretty laughable. Maybe not in the conclusions he draws, but in the idea that environmentalists wield some sort of power over governments. I think it has been well established that the kinds of people who fake cough when they see someone smoking (whether it's in person or via satellite) aren't zipping around town in a limo made out of solid gold driven by a senator.

But I'm not that into politics, so what do I know.

What I like about Crichton's novels that don't suck, like Sphere, Jurassic Park, Terminal Man and Lost World, is that he gives you so many branches of science or math and just shoves them all together, so even though you know what he's saying can't be possible, there's no way in hell you'll ever find anybody specializing in neuroscience, lion mating rituals and WW2 dogfighting who will be able to prove him wrong.

Like with Prey. He goes way off the deep end with technical talk I don't have hands-on experience with, then gives us a good helping of genetics, swarm and pack behavior in animals and human psychology. Even if something he says is patently false, there's still the idea that, "Well, maybe if that other stuff was right - and I'm not a psychologist so I don't know - it would work...hm..." The guy's a genius.

At least, he is when he's not creating a book that will turn into a movie that stars the guy from The Fast and the Furious whose voice makes me want to murder babies. Goddamn that fucker. I honestly thought he was gay for Vin Diesel and just using his sister to get closer. Shit, I would.

Anyway, the book. Crichton has this wonderful way of writing. It goes like this:

1. Write 5 pages of dialogue and/or action
2. Write 5 pages of character history that will be useful to know in 20 pages
3. Write 5 pages of dialogue, continuing where (1) left off
4. Write 10 pages of intellectual masturbation on a topic only 10 people in the world know about, who also don't speak English so they'll never be able to call bullshit on you, that will make the reader pop a knowledge boner and think about how wonderful you are, you smarmy geriatric fuck.

I don't have anything against the man, really, and as I said I enjoy his novels that weren't named by him doing a word association on the smell of his own flatulence (Eaters of the Dead?).

But reading Crichton novels makes me feel so...inadequate. Like, why does this guy know so much about everything under the sun, and I know jack shit? His bibliographies are like 20 pages per novel. I haven't read that many books in my life, and I'm counting every goddamn Berenstein Bears, Babysitter's Club and Nancy Drew (I wasn't a Hardy Boys fan) I ever opened.

Today I realized I need to pick it up some. I can't call myself an engineer or computer scientist if I've only ever read textbooks and a few of the popular tomes. So I went up to Amazon and spent an hour adding book after book to my wishlist. How do you like that, Crichton? I've got 50 books totalling $4000 just waiting for me to tear through them, after of course robbing a bank. And you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to write a novel about time-traveling Viking nano-dinosaurs under the motherfucking ocean, because thanks to you that's all I know now.

Goddamn.

Oh yeah, get the book.

2006-02-14T18:16:00.000-08:00

Valentine's Day

So yesterday was Valentine's Day, as I'm sure many are aware, happily or painfully. I received a box of chocolates which I polished off last night and this morning because I'm a chocolate fiend. I also got a tie, which is odd but somehow quite relevant because every tie I own has been through the wash many, many times. It's the source of quite a few jokes at my expense by World Class. In fact, yesterday the tie I was wearing was literally coming apart, so Lucy's gift came not a moment too soon.

It is the second clothes-related gift she's given me. The first was a pair of boxers from London with the subway map on them. I have to wonder if maybe she's sending me a hint - your boxers are filthy and your tie is a loose knit of wrinkled threads, please wear something I won't be embarrassed to be seen with. Subtle hints, see. As I recall, the boxers were a very prescient gift as well.

This is just what I want, however, because now I have carte blanche to get her whatever undergarments I want her to wear, and I can't be called a skeezy perv. My defense is that I just wanted to reciprocate. I'm thinking edible panties or those bras with holes around the nipples that one might see around Dogenzaka if one is ever in the area.

I'm not sure how Valentine's Day usually works out in the States - do all couples just shack up for the night, or what? I do know that I definitely got nothing yesterday. Which reminded me of some complaints I've heard from guys in general in the past few months. Namely, it seems as if most couples screw at least 4 times a week, if not more, and anything less is considered to be unacceptable. A lot of people seem to think that 2 times a week means the girl is turning frigid towards you.

Now, to be honest, I don't understand how this is possible, unless you and your girlfriend are both unemployed and/or students. I only possibly get to be alone with Lucy 2 days a week, and if we aren't at a hotel or my place, pants are staying on. During the week there just isn't any time for that kind of stuff between when I get off work and last train, and even if it was possible it would mean only getting 5 hours of sleep max for that night. How do you do it!?

No, seriously, if you have a job and live in a big city and manage, you must tell me. It's goddamn mandatory.

I've actually been thinking about that quite a bit lately. Last weekend I very retardedly overanalyzed things that had been going on between me and Lucy. To be fair to myself, they all seemed to happen at once, so it was quite a coincidence, but I know that's part of the overanalyzer's problem - he only thinks everything has changed.

Basically, I was a little peeved that she never called me to ask me to hang out, appeared to make excuses for why she couldn't come over to my place or spend the night, and only seemed to tolerate hand-holding and other public displays of affection (important because we have so little private time together).

Turns out she had valid reasons for pretty much each one of those. She doesn't call me to hang out on the weekends because she assumes we always will, and if I don't call by Saturday she will. I just always ask about plans first (usually the week prior). Thinking back, she's right - one time I didn't call/email on Friday, an she woke me up on Saturday to ask when we'd get together.

She couldn't spend the night because she would have had to carry her 泊まりセット and a gift for her friend's birthday (Sunday) to the Shinnenkai she had on Saturday. Makes perfect sense.

Unfortunately I found that out only after spending Saturday night with her, both of us barely talking to each other and certainly not holding hands. I figured that was just more evidence I was right - she really didn't want to engage in any PDA, and something was bothering her. She wasn't talking because she sensed something wrong with me. Communication's a bitch.

We ironed it out before going home, and I felt pretty stupid. I went to my club for an hour after she had left, and got nampa'd by some manner of jailbait with the same name as Lucy. She missed her last train, and I realized I had to leave soon to make mine. She asked me where I lived, and I said Nerima. It was clear where she was going with this. Then she and her jailbait friend went to get their coats and whatnot. While they were gone I split. I was a little down, but I'm not fucking retarded. Two underage girls at my place, especially when I have a girlfriend, is a recipe for some kind of disaster that probably involves sharp objects and deportation. It was an ego boost though.

The next day I was able to make up for Saturday's boring date with Lucy. I took her to see a photography exhibit in Ginza, which as you may know immediately doubles your value to the opposite sex. Every girl loves artsy guys, but they're too much baggage, flaky, and they don't take showers often if the ones at my university are anything to judge by. Motherfuckers smelled like high hell. I was able to provide that artsy intellect and other-sidedness while also being hygenic. I imagine that to Lucy, I'm now somewhere between "Sexual Dynamo" and "Bedroom Evel Knievel." We're going again next week to another exhibit, and then back to my place. I'll have to remember this if I ever get in an argument with her or something. "Oh, Lucy, this weekend I'm going to an exhibit on 17th century Ukranian trapezoidal architecture using balsa wood and dung. Care to join me?" Putty in my hands.

2006-02-12T20:43:00.000-08:00

Lady in Red (Part 3/3)

In fact, I didn't hear from her for a week after that. When she finally emailed back, I was very happy, and we set up another date. We went back to the same hotel, which conveniently gave out discount coupons (sadly I threw them out because it seemed too tacky to use them with other girls), and played around once more.

I've written extensively on our 2nd date, and you've no doubt seen a nice colorful example of the fragile nature of my spongy tissue, so I'll leave out the blood story. Suffice to say that after date 2 I thought for damn sure she'd be scared off. Here's a guy (me) she's known for 4 hours total, and suddenly he's leaking precious plasma for no apparent reason. If that's not a bright tattoo on my forehead saying "I have an STD - guess which one?" than I don't know what is.

Still, we managed to eek out a few more dates. Now, around this time I was romancing the Student, hoping to get a relationship in there. Since we hadn't progressed past the friends stage just yet, I felt no moral obligation to stop my weekly encounters with Lady in Red. Or Stairs #1. Or Shiri. Or Nightshift. The stars had aligned for me in January and February of 2005, I suppose.

One of the problems with having multiple partners (admittedly not the biggest) is that you have to make sure none of them start to get attached. I knew Shiri had an expiration date of the day after Valentine's, Nightshift and I were exclusively sex friends, and Stairs #1 was just that - a girl I would occasionally see in the stairwell of my favorite club. If the Student and I would start dating, I could end things with these women with no hard feelings.

But lady in Red was different. I pieced it together gradually by the little things. She was always more than willing to show affection in public in Shibuya, so either she wasn't worried about her other boyfriends seeing us, or she had no others. Then one day, completely out of the blue, she asked me if I wanted her to make a private landscaping change, since she noticed my own personal grooming.

As a side note, I have some aesthetic tips for other guys. Now, I've only come across other men's genitals incidentally - porn, public showers, and morons who stand 5 feet away from urinals. But I hear guys all the time talking about women who don't shave/wax/laser from orbit, and I have to say - a guy's ungroomed groin is infinitely more disgusting than a woman's. There's no risk of slicing something important unless you're using pinking shears or you have a tumor growing on a nut. Additionally, all that "it itches" crap means nothing because as a dude, you already scratch down there every 5 minutes anyway. And it'll never bother you unless you run 20k or more after a week of au naturel. Then you're fucked.

Anyway.

This question was kind of odd. I had assumed she was with other guys based on how we met, but it's unlikely one of them wouldn't notice the change. Then he'd wonder why she did that, and the gig would be up. I was a little wary now because Valentine's was creeping around the corner. With 5 girls and only 1 I actually wanted to date, I had to start distancing myself from the other 4.

Now, when you have nothing to lose, you take a few risks you wouldn't normally take. For me it was bringing my Sony T3 to a love hotel with Lady in Red and suavely asking her if I could photograph us. I figured whatever happened, I'd have a story out of it. Surprisingly, she was pretty gung-ho about it. That really scared me because I was starting to think she saw us as more than sex friends. I know, it sounds odd because to me we never even had enough non-naked time to develop an actual relationship, but I've seen some fucked up things here, so it wouldn't exactly be surprising.

And just let me say that it's damn hard to keep your hand steady enough to take non-blurry photos in dim light while having sex.

Sadly she made me delete the best photo, and most of the others were too dark for me to keep. I still have 2 on this work computer, tucked away somewhere.

Then there was Valentine's Day. I managed to fuck things up with Shiri, Stairs #1 hadn't come to the club in a couple weeks, and Nightshift had, well, the night shift. I ended up going with the Student and dropping 20,000 yen on dinner because I was a sucker who didn't know in Japan the girl gets the guy shit on February 14. Afterwards, however, we were still just friends, though I could see a relationship in our future.

I met Lady in Red shortly after that day. Round 1 at the hotel was peachy. But for whatever reason, round 2 was a difficult performance for me. Maybe because I was developing feelings for the Student. Kind of like how right now, even when the opportunity presents itself, I can't bring myself to cheat on Lucy. It just wouldn't be a fun romp with a random girl. Eh, I'm strange I guess.

Well, after 50 minutes or so, and being pushed out twice because the friction was too much for Lady in Red, I finally was able to wrap things up. It was kind of embarrassing. It's one thing to be a stud who doesn't blow it in 2 minutes. It's another thing entirely to not be able to blow it at all and cause your partner physical discomfort. When we parted ways, I decided I wasn't going to email her any more because screwing her had somehow lost its appeal. That and 5000 yen love hotel trips were draining my bank account (early 2005 was my "broke period")

I spent the next week or two focusing on hanging out with the Student. When I talk about February 2005 post Valentine, usually I say that's when I started dating her. In truth it wasn't officially until March 10th, which is an important distinction for me because otherwise I'd be a cheating son of a bitch. And we can't have that. First kiss (and hotel) was March 10.

Before that, however - it wasn't long until Lady in Red emailed me. She wanted to meet again despite the last time's dismal ending. I figured there wasn't any harm in going, and thought maybe my poor performance earlier had been a fluke, so I might as well try again. Also it seemed nothing I did would make her not want to see me - disgusting nasal activity, bleeding genitals, photography, way-post-mature ejaculation, and even a little bit of roughhousing (just to see how the other half lives, mind you).

We got together in Shibuya again, but this time I decided I was going to be a bit late. She always was 3-5 minutes late, which I've noticed is a rude habit of some women here - women who know exactly when each train leaves a station and therefore have no excuse other than wanting to delay a guy. So I figured I'd be 5 minutes late.

In a bit of dark comedy, I chose the wrong day to be late. It was absolutely balls cold and she never wore anything heavy. I was just checking my phone inside a cafe about 2 minutes away, so no problem for me. Finally the time came, and I went out to Hachiko.

She wasn't there. I cursed myself for showing up not late enough, because now I had to bear the cold until she arrived. After 5 minutes, I called her and asked where she was. No reply.

At 5:20 I got a call from her asking me where the hell I was. Turns out she arrived on time and had been by the Hachiko map (10 meters away), and we had just never seen each other. She was pissed. She said nothing on the way over, didn't hold my hand, didn't want to get coffee. Nothing. Straight to the hotel we went.

We arrived and got the "Free time" discount - until 10pm, 3000 yen - so we had a little over 4 hours. Unfortunately she still refused to talk to me, and instead turned on the TV and sat on the couch, ignoring me.

After an hour, I moved over there and tried to get her to talk. It was tough - lots of apologizing, but also a little bit of "why the hell didn't you call me earlier, or answer your phone?" Maybe 20 minutes later she was finally un-angry enough for me to carry her to the shower. A few minutes more, and we began.

This time, however, round 2 was an impossibility. I just couldn't do it, and in fact started to get a little soft. I'm sure she must have noticed. After 40 minutes I had to fake it and pull out because it felt awful for me.

Now, understand that I hadn't finished because I couldn't do it with her, not because I couldn't do it at all. I knew I'd have to clear the pipes or risk a mild case of blue balls (interestingly enough, while every guy talks knowingly about blue balls, I doubt many have actually had a strong case, since it truly can cripple you to the point where you can barely walk). I'll do damn near anything to avoid this. So I did what I had to, knowing this condition could be just around the corner:

I finished myself off under the covers.

For 5 minutes I sat there, one hand around her neck, the other doing the unmentionable. She looked under the covers at one point, saw what I was doing, and a look of shock came across her face. She got up and got dressed immediately. *ahem* I followed shortly thereafter. She seemed in no way inclined to wait for me to get dressed either, so I had to hurry. At one point she asked me why I was doing that, and I answered truthfully that for some reason I couldn't finish with her. The way back was stony silence.

Walking to the station, I had a big grin on my face, however. I couldn't help but laugh when I thought about what I had just done - basically said that I'd rather be stroking it than fucking her. I had found the one thing that could turn off this girl.

She never called or emailed me again, but by that point I didn't care. The Student came back from her trip to Egypt and we started dating, and I didn't have time to think about Lady in Red. She took down her profile on the page we met on around that time as well. Now, when I think about her, I've only got one regret:

I never got to tie her up.

FIN, motherfuckers

2006-02-12T03:03:00.000-08:00

Weekend Update

Apologies all around for not getting off my lazy ass and posting the Lady in Red conclusion. It's sad, really, since I actually have the damn thing typed up at work. Work is like my new toilet. I do all my most important thinking, reading and writing sitting there, and it's not at all related to what I came there to do. In that respect, my boss is probably like the guy who hands out mints and hot towels at the door, and the students are sick voyeuristic fucks stroking it to my grunting noises. Goddamn.

Anyway, I'll have that up for you all tomorrow. I'm going to have to skip the blood story with her, since I covered that once already on my old page in gory detail, and I've alluded to it so many times it's kind of cliche now. I hope you understand.

Re: the cell phone programming environment. The Docomo one is called DoJa. The latest version I believe is 4.1, but nothing after 3.5 has English documentation. And interestingly enough 4.0 and beyond are when they added some awesome features that really open up the phone for you, so that will suck if you have no idea how to read Japanese.

The game I was working on was Sudoku. There's actually a free version of it for i-appli at Sourceforge, and I took that version and cranked it up a few notches. The only thing remaining to do, if I get a chance this week, is to add some kind of graphic at the beginning to replace the misleading "Sudoku by Aces" title (I'm a liar and a cheat), maybe a feature to remember which puzzles you've completed, and the ability to download puzzles from my web page instead of having to hard code them. That would shrink the file size from 15k to 4k. Now, if anybody who peruses this page happens to be into mobile programming (which automatically means you are more skillful than me in this regard) and you want to work on a project together, I'm listening.

Unfortunately, it seems my time at work is about to be reclaimed for, well, actual work. My boss reminded me on Friday about my "objectives" - a bunch of shit that I have to do to get my bonus, but really shit that I have to do, period. I'll give you an example. One of them is "Teach students for this round." Well, ostensibly doing this well gets me 20 points closer to a good bonus. Really though, if I one day decided I didn't want to, I'd be fired. That's how I imagine I'll go out, when I'm good and ready. "Oh, you want me to teach today? Huh. I kind of thought I'd sit here at my desk, turn off all the anti-virus software we have, and see how quickly I can bring this computer to a grinding halt using any combination of malware and spyware I can find on non-English websites. I'm thinking 4 minutes. We can make a pool."

So he brought up my objectives for 2 reasons. One, well, he kind of noticed that instead of work, all last week I was doing Java and more specifically mobile programming. And he saw that the fruit of my labors was a game. Two, he saw that in 2 months my review is coming up, and I have done approximately 5% of the MP3 project, 10% of the motion tracking project, and 0% of the "Learn SystemC or bust" project. I told him I don't want to even touch SystemC because it's superfluous for the purposes of our program. Whatever we can do in that language, we can already do in C or Verilog. Maybe for big applications and designs it would be useful to have, but I'm not seeing those kinds of designs in the company's future. Strangely enough, I'm not seeing myself in the company's future either. Coincidence? I like to kid myself and think not.

But he's cracking the whip. He said that we'd swap out the MP3 project with a simple PCM octave generator (so I can make a keyboard that sounds like it's straight out of the 70's). That's like saying "Well we don't have time to build the car for you, but we'll compromise and give you a pair of roller-skates. They both have wheels." The big thing he wants is this SystemC shit though. I managed to convince him that me learning Java and programming for the Docomo environment was actually helping me learn SystemC because it's reintroducing me to object oriented programming, and SystemC is built on C++, which looks like Java if you blur your eyes. It also helps to be missing one of them.

All this just means I'll have to be more sneaky about posting to the website (which I do from work) and working on projects (which I do from work, as long as they aren't work-related).

Oh, the tragedy.

I'll update tomorrow on Lady in Red, followed by maybe a Tuesday post about last week and (per usual) my idiocy. And for extra fun, since Tuesday is Valentine's Day, we can see if what I write Tuesday afternoon is immediately reversed or reinforced on Wednesday. Fun!

2006-02-06T18:35:00.000-08:00

Eh

Not much is going on over here in my world right now. Well, actually that's a bunch of bull. It seems a lot is going on now, but I don't want to write about it until I've got something more substantial than just a quick "Today this trivial event occurred. More tomorrow!" Now, I'm one to read way too much into something. One of my friends just last week shut me up in the middle of a worrisome rant to tell me I'm an overanalyzing motherfucker. Point taken. Let's just say that I really, really don't understand the women in my life. I know what you're thinking - How could the guy who constantly makes shameless generalizations about all Japanese men and women being racist/smelly/stupid/insert-own-negative-trait be having difficulty with Japanese women? It boggles my mind too, so you're in good company.

Recently I've been shirking my job duties to do some skill-building of my own. I figure my work is absolutely raping my qualifications to work in any technical field, in the way that if you always practice low-level mediocre shit, you'll wake up one day knowing only how to do that. In my case, I now have a rock solid foundation in easy C and Assembly, and I've forgotten everything I ever knew about Java, C++, and object-oriented programming in general. In my own eyes, I'm not marketable to other companies.

So I've started dabbling in things I find interesting that also seem to have a future in the tech field. To wit, I'm fiddling around with the Japan-born OO interpreted language Ruby, as well as some Java. In fact, I'm working with the i-mode API and a bit of source code to develop some mini applications I can download onto my own phone. I do this at work in my "spare" time. I'm going to talk to the president some time this week or next about getting the hell out of hardware so that the next couple months before I quit are that much nicer (as well as beneficial to my resume).

Right now I'm working on modifying some existing code for a freeware game I downloaded. It's slow as nuts and has about 0 features, so I hate playing it myself, but once I'm finished (like next year) I'll go ahead and put it up here if anybody wants to download it. It's GPL, so knock yourselves out.

That's about it on this front. If you happen to be involved in software development, then disregard everything I just said about forgetting OOP and not doing my job right now, and hire my pasty ass. As long as I don't have to teach ingrateful snots about 2's complement and flip flops, I'll stick with your company for at least 18 months. I operate best when I'm doing something interesting and the business model survives assault by a reasonably intelligent 5 year old.

2006-02-02T20:50:00.000-08:00

I'm turning evil

It's true. If you thought I was an asshole before, well, you'll still think I'm an asshole I guess.

Every day on the train I bring my iPod. That's right, I'm one of those guys. I actually go days without it sometimes and don't have any withdrawal, but occasionally I get a song in my head and want to hear it, so it's convenient. Anyway.

I know how loud my headphones are. I've heard them on my girlfriend in the silence of my room, so I know whether they're loud or not. They're medium. On a quiet train in the morning, you can hear a little tinny sound, but nothing over the top. It's the same decibel level as everyone else who listens to music on the train. I've never been told to turn it down, but usually I'll turn it down myself if I notice things are really quiet so that I don't inconvenience people.

I'm a motherfucking nice guy.

Well today, I was minding my own business on the train - squished in between two salarymen who don't know what 一人分 means, crowding out my shit - when salaryman #1 starts tapping me on the shoulder like he's going to ask me out on a date. Quote the man, in English:

"Please turn the volume down. It is very loud and I can hear it."

One of my pet peeves is people making assumptions about me based on my looks. It's not the good kind, either, like "Oh he must be a CEO of a company and a male model, because he's so goddamn gorgeous and his suit is weaved together from 10,000 yen bills!"

It's more like, "Oh, he's gaijin so he probably can't understand Japanese, and definitely knows English." I know, probably statistically speaking they are more correct than not in that assumption, and well I do speak English after a fashion, but still. That's why it's a pet peeve.

Anyway, I stared at him wondering what to say to this bit of rudeness. My music was most certainly not loud, as I found out when I took the headphones off and had to strain to hear it when the buds were dangling on my own neck. Meanwhile he repeats his English practice on me, a little more forcefully, while some people standing up over me are looking at how I'm going to react. So I said the only thing I could.

えぇ？えいごできないよ。だって意味分かった。

He clammed up immediately. Probably (hopefully) felt a little stupid for assuming. But he got over it, and even though I had turned off my headphones at that point he thought he needed to tell me once more, this time in Japanese, to turn the volume down. I cut him off in the middle and said I got it, prompting him to shut it for the rest of the ride. Nobody embarrasses Aces on a train, dammit!

Strangely enough, after that little exchange salaryman #2 stopped sticking his elbow in my right lung and gave me some space. I think I'm going to do this more often. It might help me score a seat on a train so I don't have to buy new shoes every 5 weeks.

2006-02-02T20:44:00.000-08:00

マジで！？

Livedoor, eh? I'll handle this "scandal."

I put that in quotes because you have to be an absolute idiot to think this isn't just business as usual in Japan. Every day - every goddamn day - I open the paper to find out which company/agency/ministry of Japan is being investigated/closed down/indicted/nuked from orbit this week. It's endemic over here. Oh I'm sure it goes on in America, and I'm sure some dolts are going to say that over here it's just reported - nyah!, trying to spin something good out of this about Japanese transparency or some oxymoron like that.

You know what? In my time here, if there's one thing I've learned it's that news shows are incredibly sensitive to the privacy of Japanese citizens when they want to be. Witness how many bad things about companies come out after that company has fallen into shit creek. They knew all the bad stuff way before it came to a head, they just waited until the green light.

In fact, a lot of what Livedoor stands accused of is accepted as business as usual in Japan. When something big like this comes along, you have to wonder why it's making the news. The smaller shady dealings you read about every day in the paper. That this one made giant headlines can be due to one of two things. First, it's possible that things are spilling over now and they just can't ignore it anymore. Not so sure about that.

Second, maybe Livedoor and some of these other guys just crossed the wrong people. I'm going with door #2 here. You've got an arrogant prick with political aspirations - we'll call this man Horie - but that's nothing unusual in any country. What is unusual for Japan is his age (early thirties). My thoughts are that he just fucked with the wrong people in this very vertical society, and probably thought due to his hubris and power that he could magically make up for his age disparity with the two aforementioned non-virtues. Probably forgot to pay the local Yak the monthly protection money.

Breaking the rules is something of an accepted practice over here, but not knowing your place will get you shut right the hell down. Lesson learned.

2006-02-01T20:38:00.000-08:00

How do you solve a problem like ~~Maria~~ Aiko

I might catch shit over this, but it needs to be said. This kind of stuf makes me want to bring back The Foreign Correspondent.

Yesterday a bunch of old Japanese men, many of whom probably had absolutely horrendous breath (sadly it's an epidemic in this country among men above 30, as it seems about this time they take to a breakfast of turd-fish and spoiled eggs) got together for an isolationist circle jerk. So what do old men wank to in Japan? Well it's one of those roleplaying fantasies, see. Old men in Japan just love beating it to women in positions of power. Specifically, the prospect of a woman attaining the royal throne.

There are 2 camps of foreigner in Japan. Camp 1 thinks everything is peachy and the way it should be, and as foreigners we have no right(s) to complain. Even if we become citizens, like Arudou Debito, we're somehow not citizen enough to demand some change. Camp 1 would suck my dick if I told them Hamasaki Ayumi had touched it (she did). Camp 1 also usually leaves after their working holiday visas expire (cheap shot? Certainly).

Camp 2 thinks that Japan, as a prominent member of the international community and seeker of a permanent UNSC seat, should get with the goddamn times and own up to some serious societal woes. Camp 2 is my kind of camp.

So join me here when I say, really, what the fuck? An actual complaint by an actual lawmaker was that having a female ascend to the throne would throw open the hellgates and let some for'ner blood have dominion over the sacred Mount Fuji. Don't take my word for it. Hear it from his decrepit peehole of bloviating:

"If Aiko becomes the reigning empress and gets involved with a blue-eyed foreigner while studying abroad and marries him, their child may be the emperor," Hiranuma told about 40 lawmakers, academics and supporters at a Tokyo hall. "We should never let that happen."

Despite the overwhelming public support for the reform, traditionalists have stepped up a campaign to quash the move -- going so far as to propose bringing back concubines to breed male descendants as was done until the Taisho Era (1912-1926). Others have argued the aristocracy, banned after World War II, should be reinstated as a way of broadening the pool of candidates for the throne.

I don't even know where to begin...

First, unless you think the woman is just an incubator for a child and men can make babies on their own (think little spermies getting together in the fallopian tubes and, when no one's looking, having raunchy sperm sex and producing a fertilized egg) you're kidding yourself if you think letting a woman be empress would suddenly cause an influx in family names like Smith and O'Brian. It's just ludicrous. A dude on the throne can screw a foreign chick and his babies will be just as mixed as if the genders were switched.

Second, this whole race purity crap is just another scoop of dung on a shit heap. It doesn't get much more xenophobic than that. A blue-eyed foreigner! Gasp! But then...her children wouldn't be 100% Yamato (now with more math smarts)! They'd have hairy backs and big noses and probably couldn't use chopsticks! There go any planned visits to Yasukuni...

Third, and perhaps most importantly for the sake of Japanese themselves, what's wrong with a woman on the throne, anyway? Afraid she's only going to be effective 40 weeks out of the year? Whether or not you agree with the effects of a half-baked feminist movement in America (which wasn't allowed to blossom fully in my opinion), Japan's current sorry state of gender equality is just horrendous. If you're in school right now and your Japanese language teachers are telling you ocha-kumi is a thing of the past, they're slinging shit bricks your way.

Honestly, if "tradition" isn't allowed as an answer to why they should be forbidden from ascension, then there is no reason. National identity was doing just fine before it was banned as a practice - no blue eyed devils running amok, that's for sure - and I don't think it's going to take a hit if they let this one through. I don't see Britain churning out weak confused generations who have no national identity.

And I don't believe anyone's going to make fun of Japan for having a female ruler, but if you want to sit at the kiddy table and make nice with someone who would use that against you, then do us a favor and drop the pretenses of adulthood.

Asshats.

2006-01-31T01:03:00.000-08:00

Hakone

Don't fret, those 2 or 3 of you waiting for part 3 of the Lady in Red saga. I just didn't have time to post it earlier. It's coming Thursday, probably. I'd like to do it earlier, but a new class is starting tomorrow. Fucking A. I found out about this new class, well, about 30 minutes ago. But that's a rant I've done already, so fuck it. I'm out of here if I have to chew my own arm off to get out of their kung-fu grip. I'd jump out the window and pogo stick on my dick if there was a job waiting for me 150 feet below. Hopefully a lucrative job in genital reconstructive surgery.

The reason I didn't post over the weekend was that I was in Hakone with Lucy. I originally wanted to do my romantic surprise for her 9 days ago, but we stayed at my place and my romantic surprise requires a nicer atmosphere and items that don't belong to me so I won't need to clean them. So my plan was foiled.

See, I told her I have a surprise, and I wanted to stay overnight at a hotel with her. This set off her shady fellow-alert and she insisted on staying at my place, as well as knowing what the surprise was (I didn't relent to that brutal interrogation). No amount of convincing would change her mind, and when we finally met on that Saturday, and she switched her tune, it was too late to go anywhere but a love hotel. And she hates those, apparently. Where I see convenience, she sees sleeping atop other peoples' skeezy fluids. Girls, eh?

So I vowed that this weekend we'd get into a hotel, reservations and all. The only problem was that she thought it would be kind of pointless to stay in a hotel in Tokyo when my place is fine too. I thought about it, and decided that we'd go to Hakone then. Fuck it, it can't be that expensive. I've never been there. It sounds romantic. And there's a hotel waiting for me to abuse the hell out of it.

Well, turns out Hakone isn't quite as cheap as I thought. I found a couple hotels that were by the lake and relatively inexpensive, and asked her to choose. Then, while waiting for her reply, I tried to go through the motions of making a reservation on one of the sites. It only had options for reservations in 2000 and 2001. The site was out of date. I figured the hotel had been shut down or something.

She got back to me and said she wants that hotel with the out of date site, and I was about to email her to say pick something else when, on a hunch, I googled the hotel name. Sure enough the hotel is still there. And sure enough, it's price has apparently doubled in between incarnations.

So a seemingly innocent idea had spiraled into a trip to Hakone and a stay at an expensive hotel. Oh, and did I mention that, back when I assumed we'd be sharing a love hotel or at worst a simple 15,000 hotel in Tokyo, I told her not to worry about the money because I'd pay for it all?

Also "apparently," one does not simply get a train ticket to Hakone and stay inside all day. One must purchase the 7000 yen free pass so one can ride boats and buses and ropeways. One's bank account takes a nosedive towards the red. One cries.

But I brought along my gear so I could do what I originally intended to do. I figured I'd make the best out of this situation. Those plans, naturally, were crushed when first a prerequisite of my surprise was not met. Namely, she's extremely ticklish. I know that already, since it makes taking her bra off feel like a game of Operation. But I didn't think she was ticklish everywhere, Christ.

Even then I was going to continue, but I realized something else: with her, any attempt at romance always, always leads to intercourse. There is no exception. If she and I kiss on the lips, there better be a bed around. If there isn't, she will simply refuse a liplock. I asked her about it and she said it's a habit. But it means for me that I can't kiss her unless I'm prepared to do the whole damn thing, and we certainly rarely kiss in public. The one time I tried that in Shinjuku, she had to stop because, in her own words, やりたいから、いやだ。 So I'd have to jump into my routine with her completely cold, and then it would lose its romantic aspect. I'm currently scheming a way to work in some kissing and whatnot, but somehow not lead in to sex, and rather to my surprise.

Long story (above) short - I paid 45,000 yen to not do what I intended to do.

But enough about that. How was Hakone?

Fucking cold. Goddamn, it was so cold I could only piss in the bathtub because anywhere else my dick would freeze with a jet of urine ice attached to it. The onsen in the hotel was nice. I'd never been in one before, or worn a yukata. I don't know what other new guys to Japan are smoking, but nobody looked at my johnson while I was in there. And don't give me any "That's because it's so small" bull, because while they didn't look, I certainly did, and I was king of the hill.

Other than that, Hakone really wasn't that impressive to me. Maybe it would be if I had grown up in a big city. I suppose the shock of seeing so much nature is dulled in me. All the places I've lived in - San Rafael, Ithaca and Sometown Pennsylvania - had mountains, grass, woodlands, lakes and snow. Don't get me wrong, it's definitely nice to be around all that, but it isn't worth the price tag in my opinion. It was something to check off on my list of things to do in Japan before I'm deported, though, so that counts for something.

This post is littered with pictures I took. Observe the magnificence of my photography. Or don't. Eh.

2006-01-25T20:55:00.000-08:00

Lady in Red (Part 2/3)

I was surprised that one actually worked, but now I was charged with finding such a place. I knew only to look around Shibuya, but I had no idea where except for the vague area "Dogenzaka." We caught the next train and went searching around anyway, eventually finding the hotels by luck. For future horny generations, there are two paths into the Shibuya hotels, diverging at 109 and then reuniting about 150 meters later on the left and 300 meters later on the right.

Now, my time with Lady in Red was certainly not without incident. Our first night together was in late December. The day after Christmas, I believe. When it's cold out I get a runny nose and sniffle a lot, and that day was no different. I also was coming down with a cold, which I would later find out was actually tonsilitis, so I had some bad hacking coughs and a throat that burned with each one. In the hotel, I was trying very hard to suppress both the urge to snort and to violently cough out a ball of unsexy phlegm. It worked for a little while.

However, while we were performing our erotic dance, I suddenly had to sniffle. I was on top, looking down, so my snot was threatening to fall with gravity and hit her smack on the chest. I saw she was closing her eyes, so real quick-like I reached up and wiped my nose with the back of my hand. I then wiped my hand on the bed (her side, obviously). I was safe, for now.

But later, in a more complicated position, it happened again. This time my hands were occupied. I had only one choice - cover for the snot. In the sexual context here it means I had to disguise the nose-drip as something else so she wouldn't notice, because the fluid free-fall was imminent. The only thing that came to my mind was saliva, but that would mean I'd have to lick something that would normally be licked so as not to appear out of place. I picked a breast, and began. After a few seconds, I gave up holding back the viscous nostril fluid and let it run. She figured I was just being sloppy.

That's right - I snotted on a girl's nipple.

Later, when we were cuddling, I suddenly had to cough really badly. But I knew it would come out sounding awful, so I held it in. This led to my lungs rapidly contracting and relaxing as I forcefully held back what should have been an involuntary action. She could feel my ribcage fluttering for 5 minutes, and thought I was nervous and inexperienced. I suppose strangely enough she was correct on both accounts, though for the wrong reason. And I still ended up hacking up a lung laying next to her anyway.

We ended the night a little afterwards, and I figured that was the last I would see of her. Luckily, I was mistaken.

2006-01-24T23:06:00.000-08:00

Lady in Red (Part 1/3)

Sit down around the campfire kids. Aces has a story for you.

I've written about Lady in Red on occasion, and I had a few stories about her on my old page, scattered about. This is the complete Lady in Red Anthology.

Towards the end of 2004, early December if I recall correctly, I signed up on an internet site dedicated to helping people meet other people for intimate encounters. Or sloppy sex. I forget if there was a filter for that or not. In any event, during my 1 month subscription period I probably sent an email or 50 out to various women, some who had pictures, others who didn't, in the hopes of getting laid.

As a side note, I developed an awesome strategy for mass mailing girls depending on their preferences - I had canned emails in Japanese and English, and one that was from mild-mannered Aces as well as another that was signed by So-you-wanna-be-bound-and-gagged-eh?-Aces. I could do all my emailing in 5 minutes. I digress.

One girl in particular, who we all know now as Lady in Red, showed up on my radar because her scant personal description was in Spanish and her photo was just a shot of her almost-bare chest. My radar, if you haven't noticed, is very primitive.

Intrigued, I Babelfish'd the Spanish. It said simply, "Who will tie me up? I am very submissive" This was a job for my sinister alter ego's email! A day later she actually replied, and said only, "Would you like to date?" I was getting off to a good start. We emailed a couple times and set up a meeting in Roppongi. It was her choice, not mine. I knew through (at the time) second hand knowledge that Shibuya or Shinjuku were where the love hotels were. Didn't know where exactly, but I figured that if we were going to Roppongi there wouldn't be any action.

So we met at Roppongi Crossing, and I thought she was stunning. I'll say this now even, having become accustomed to the Japanese face and no longer thinking everyone here is gorgeous, unlike some people *cough* anime fanboys *cough*. In her own right, she was quite attractive. I was glad I didn't send her my fake photograph - Arnold Schwarzeneggar's body, Brad Pitt's face, and a big black dick. She might have been disappointed to find out I have none of those.

Not knowing how these meetings worked, I asked her if she was hungry. She replied in the negative. In retrospect, that's typical of Japanese girls. They will never tell you they're hungry unless not eating in the next hour will cause them to collapse. I play a game called "I bet I can last longer than you without eating." After half a day together, they start asking every 30 minutes or so, "Aren't you hungry?" while I reply that I'm just dandy. Finally they can't take it and break down, admitting their hunger. Meanwhile my pocket is full of candy wrappers, because I'm a cheating bastard.

Anyway, I asked her if she wanted to go to karaoke, or a movie, or a club. She said no to all of those.

I was worried that this date would end before it even started. I suggested a cafe as a last resort, which she agreed to, and off we went. Oddly enough, she held my hand on the way there.

When we got to the cafe, we chatted for about 30 or 45 minutes over tea. I was quickly running out of things to say, and my list of things to do was even shorter. I suggested a couple other ideas, all of which were shut down. In a last ditch effort, half-jokingly, I said, "Well, I guess that only leaves a...love hotel..."

Her eyes lit up.

"Ok!"

(continued tomorrow)

2006-01-22T21:06:00.000-08:00

How I spent my Friday

I'm many things - an idiot being chief among them - but I'll never ever be called unbreakable.

2006-01-19T19:37:00.000-08:00

Japanese for Winners

A few days ago I alluded to a rather immature activity I'm especially fond of - my habit of making up new Japanese words or phrases by translating directly from English. I gave a couple examples even, my favorite being "butt pirate" because I really am that childish that euphemisms for homosexuality amuse me.

I sat down and thought about all the phrases I use (sadly) on a fairly normal basis. You can think of this as a Japanese lesson. Guys taking a class in college can floor their professors with their newly acquired knowledge. Or get politely asked to leave. I suppose it really depends on the prof. Good luck!

Because my mind is always in the gutter, let me begin with some sexually charged phrases.

Last year, when I had my run in with one of those blasted social diseases, I had to get myself checked out. Well, truthfully, before that I did a bit of the old research online to figure out what Uncle Aces had come down with. My hope for "superhuman strength and agility" was dashed rather quickly owing to the localized itching, swelling and pain. I didn't remember whether the Hulk suffered discomfort during urination on his path to becoming super, but it seemed unlikely.

Anyway, once I self-diagnosed myself I had to find a clinic in Tokyo to get checked out at. I went online and browsed any number of Japanese pages, at work of course, trying to find an STD clinic. I'm no doctor, and technical words in Japanese confuse me, so I had to use a fair amount of Babelfish to understand whether the place was going to do a standard STD test or administer a coffee enema. You can never be too careful.

One translation I found absolutely hysterical was "Urethra flame" for what most people describe as agony while draining the lizard. I wanted to incorporate this word into my fake vocabulary, but there was seemingly no way to do it properly. Until I remembered the type of clinic I went to...

The clinic is called 泌尿器科, basically the department of urology. It's pronounced Hi'nyoukika. But the last sound, "ka," can also mean other things - home, flower, song...and FIRE. My new word, 泌尿器火, is literally Urinary Organ Fire. I think it's a faithful rendition.

Of course while at the clinic you learn about what kind of nasties are out there waiting to hitch a ride on your Pillar of Hercules, or as I call it, my ズボンのへび. You can get things like かに and はくしゅ, to name a couple. I'm not too certain about any that affect the 家族の玉, but I'm sure they're out there.

Tokyo might be a really safe city, but occasionally you may have occasion to throw down (not recommended, of course, but stay with me here). Maybe some parfum-soaked gel creature is hitting on your girl. So you 目を上げる. He sees this and makes a move. Now you have two options - you can run away, or you can 彼に彼の穴を渡す. The latter will no doubt land you in jail or deported, but I'm sure your girl will wait for you. Unless she's a 金掘り出しやりまん. Can't win'em all.

On second thought, maybe you shouldn't repeat any of these in mixed or polite company. If you have any additions to make, please let me know. I love learning Japanese.

Oh, and I'm well aware of the real words for "painful urination," "crabs," "the clap," "testicles," and the colorful phrases listed afterwords. However, if you have another way of saying "gold-digging slut" I'm listening.

2006-01-18T00:23:00.000-08:00

Extra! Extra!

So I've got a bit of news in my life. No, not a new job. No, not a new apartment. I'm not the recipient of a large cash prize, nor am I being recognized for my genius in some public forum (damn).

I am, however, going to be rocking the proverbial shit out of another blog in addition to all the sexy bombs I'm dropping on this one. It's called Metroblogging. Particularly the Tokyo section. Maybe you've heard of it before. It's basically a big amalgamation (I love that word) of blogs about cities around the world. I was asked to write for the site because ~~god must really have it in for them~~ someone liked my writing style. Word.

If you take a little trip over there, you'll see, however, that its style is markedly different from my own. And the subject matter is also not all that similar to things you all have come to expect on these hallowed pages. I'm not sure how this is going to play out, though clearly my own personal escapades will have to remain here. Other than that, I think it's fair game. As long as I can bring it all back to Tokyo, or somewhere near Tokyo, or an abstract city of my imagination. And I guess I also have to pump up the knowledge. Apparently people go to that site to learn something new, and as interesting as my body fluids might sound to you and I, some people really don't care to know about them. Prudes, or the smartest people on this planet? You decide <--- no you don't, motherfuckers!

And there we have it. I'm not moving, I'm just sleeping around with a different blog behing this one's back. Twice the mayhem. Enjoy.

2006-01-17T21:54:00.000-08:00

My Island Redux: Foreign Pets

In a sense, Tokyo to me is just another city. A big city, and the first and only one I've ever lived in, but a city nonetheless. It has its peculiarities, like oh, I don't know, Japanese people. But I don't see it as some mystical land where techno-skyscrapers are lined up right next to shrines and monuments to samurai warriors, which are in turn across the street from every electronic device under the sun. And anime.

(Rant initiated)

Maybe my view isn't representative of how every other foreigner around here thinks. Every day you come face to face with My Islanders who adore every aspect about Japanese society as long as it's different from the West in some manner. No wrong there I guess. But you also spy the occasional xenophobe apologist, distinguishable from the former by his notable bitching about how gaijin need to shut up about discrimination and racism. They oppose any attempts to change Japanese society n any way. By changes I mean those regarding Japanese-foreigner relationships. Rights, liberties, protections, etc. When asked why they oppose such changes, it's always, always this answer: Japan is a homogenous society and we don't have a right to say what the Japanese should do.

Translation: I wish I had a katana and could fight against the evil shogunate like they did in the good old days. Curse my white/black/brown/leprous skin.

It's so defeatist an attitude though, isn't it? You live here for years, and in some cases make it to full citizen (why you'd want to, I have no ideas, but to each his own), and people tell you that you have no right to bitch about anything here because, essentially, you don't belong. We're in a foreign country, ergo bow down to the way they do things here without exception. They must really loathe themselves for not being born Japanese (you laugh but I know many guys and girls who do, sadly enough).

I find, and this is just my personal experience, that people like this think this rock is so much better than the others for one reason: their only export, foreignness, is relatively scarce in these lands. They see other foreigners as a threat, but the biggest threat of all? Complete acceptance of those foreigners and realized equality. That throws the gaijin card right out of the deck. It's unusable, and at the same time I can guarantee that it would cause gaijin flight to Japan, diluting the gaijin power.

Frequent complaints are about one agitator in particular - Arudou Debito. I mean, gosh, he's simply got to know his place dammit! When was the last time he looked in the mirror and saw he wasn't Japanese, and didn't deserve to bathe in the same places as them? It's their right, because you gaijin don't know how to act in the "Japanese way" to "preserve the wa and harmony" and "balance two jugs of water on each outstretched palm" and "decapitate tentacled sex ogres."

And it's always you gaijin who don't know how to behave properly. The My Islander is a master of oriental disguise, you see. They know everything they need to know from watching Japanese society. Essentially, before you enter a public bath, you have to announce your move and flex every muscle in your entire body. "Pasty white bath intrusion multipass AAAAAGGGGHHHHH!!!" This is basically a secret handshake to the Japanese. Get an eye operation and Hepatitis, and you're well on your way to becoming a citizen.

I refer to these people as J-pets. They're the dogs that you don't let near the kitchen table, but they're handy to have around in case someone comes nosing about, or you need to read the newspaper. Like any dog, they defend their master blindly for no other reason than that the master gives them food and pets them when they don't shit on the carpet.

(Rant over...for now)

I know I've grossly misrepresented akiba-kei and other anime fans now as well as in the past, but sometimes the rant just gets the better of me.

In truth, both sides have merits. Racism and discrimination in Japan isn't a widespread plague. Some people might like to think it is, but if it was truly as bad everywhere as any one guy's experience, there's no way it wouldn't be picked up on by media outlets in foreign countries. Simply impossible. Travel agents wouldn't advise visits to Japan, ever. Japan, despite what you may think, is not as homogenous as it once was, and Tokyo is as far along as anywhere here.

But it's also not the case that everything has cleared up over here. Witness my hospital trip last year, if you can still find it online. That was a nightmare. And you bet your ass I've seen "Gaijin not accepted" signs here in Tokyo. True, many of them have been for red light establishments, but you're a fool if you think any society's red light district is separate from the mainstream. Places of vice merely expose a society's underbelly (a drunk man's words are a sober man's thoughts, anybody?). I don't want to hear anybody discounting those signs on the basis that they're hung up on whore houses.

My favorite line, and by favorite I mean the line that makes me want to slap the person who utters it so hard the inside of their skull has a relief of my palm print, is that it's justified based on the actions of a few foreigners. Jesus Jones, that's shabby logic at best. That's the excuse of racists everywhere circa all history. You tend to classify people you meet against a status quo, but for whatever reason when it comes down to different races people tend to treat the outliers as rules, not exceptions, even though statistically it makes no sense. I had a geek analogy here, but I'd expose myself for a big nerd.

I think that living here does give you a new respect for what others have been put through in your own home country (and are still being put through). That doesn't mean you have to accept it here. And for those tireless argumentative types who say you should start at home before you start with Japan: Go fuck yourselves. At least for me, as stated way above, Japan is where I'm at now, and I don't have any plans to go somewhere else. If I ever return to America, maybe I'll start there, though for someone of my lowly intellect I wouldn't know where to begin.

In Japan it's cut and dried. I've got signs on street corners telling me where to begin. I've got guys in vans with megaphones planted outside of Shinjuku and Shibuya letting me know where the battle starts. The argument that one is hypocritical if one doesn't tackle discrimination in one's own home country first is just a decoy. It's what people say when they've run out of reasons to yell at you.

My stance on discrimination here in Japan? I've been racism'd by a hospital. My apartment hunt may or may not have been an example of discrimination, as commenters said. For the most part it's live and let live for me. It happens rarely enough that I don't notice. But there are some living here for whom it happens more often, or in a more serious situation, and just because I've got it relatively nice here doesn't mean we should all shut up.

Talk to me below.

2006-01-16T17:16:00.000-08:00

Not Quite Einstein

I've got to hand it to myself. Why, just last week I joked about how I'd never get Lucy to try those fancy lower body exercises. I actually put no thought into the matter outside of this page, since really it's not a deal-breaker in any way. But the lord works in mysterious ways indeed.

Yesterday I met her after work for dinner and coffee. Everything was fine during dinner, the usual conversations about work (hate it), upcoming events in our lives (none) and so on. But I promised myself, and I suppose you guys too, that I'd try to dig up more information about her. Hell, I don't even know what kind of job she had last year, or will have this year. My parents brought up that fact to me, sadly enough.

"So what does Lucy do?"

"Um, work?"

"Yeah but what kind of work?"

"...Busy...work?"

"You don't even know what she does? What do you know about her? I'm surprised you even got her name."

"Hey, Dad, I don't even know what you do for a living. In school I used to put 'consulting' down whenever we had to write about that stuff. And Mom got 'finance'."

*sigh*

So at the cafe, I decided to ask some hard-hitting questions. First up at bat was the cliched "What are your hopes for the future?" While her answers weren't exactly what I was looking for they allowed me to follow up a bit. Found out ever so much more about her. And her new job, meaning I now know more about her job than I do about anyone else in my family.

As always, however, I jumped the gun. When conversation had died down, I realized I still had an unresolved question in my mind concerning this Saturday. Namely, among other things my plans require sheets I don't have to clean and a big bathtub. Clearly we can't stay at my place. But without divulging what I wanted to do, I had to find out if she had a preference for lodging. In my ever-blunt manner, I asked her simply, "So this Saturday, we're not staying at my place, ok? Now would you rather stay at a ryokan, hotel, or love hotel?"

I'm the most subtle bastard on this planet.

Of course I asked because somewhere in the recesses of my mind I recalled her saying how she hates love hotels, which were my natural first choice. And I was correct. Then, her interest piqued, she wouldn't stop asking me questions about what we were going to do. Obviously if someone asks you where you'd like to spend the night, and mentions a love hotel as a viable option, you're going to think the plans are sexual in nature, and your mind is going to wander over to that realm. When she realized she couldn't get answers about this Saturday from me, but wanting to still ask me questions, she started with intimate inquiries.

We kept talking, and she asked such hits as:

Q: "How do you know that girls just want to be sex friends, if they don't say so?"

A: "If they sleep with me after knowing me for 1 hour, they aren't looking for a boyfriend."

Q: "Isn't it hard to do it in the stairwell of a club?"

A: "No."

And, as it turns out, she really does want to know my stories. She just figured I didn't want to tell them. From that point, it was game on. I introduced her to Lady in Red and my many misadventures, including the reason she stopped talking to me. I even told her about The Herbalist's infectious secret.

And in a serious thread, I told her about how The Student and I broke up in part because I had lied to myself about why we were dating. For many guys, when a girl is a little harder to get, they might fool themselves into thinking there's a bigger reason than sex that they're chasing the girl. You have to make the chase seem worth it. I'm not saying that it happens most of the time or that sex is the only reason to date a girl, of course. But if it is your only reason, the chase can easily make you forget that.

When I finally slept with her, the realization hit, and gradually I started losing my attraction to her. With The Herbalist, I was worried the same thing would happen, and told her as much actually. Then with Lucy, our courtship lasted 2 months, which was the longest wait thus far, and so I was really unsure if I was as genuine about liking her as I thought. Luckily the 3rd time was a charm.

As immature as my thoughts and behaviour may sound, I stand by them. Nobody wants to drag someone down because of their own problem maintaining a relationship. The Student was truly hurt when she realized we'd lost the magic, and she only stayed my friend in hopes of getting it back.

So I told all this to Lucy (if you're keeping count at home, this means I only have 1 "secret" left). But apparently when describing Lady in Red, I referred to her as my most skilled sex friend. Repeatedly. I needed a way to separate her from the others, see. Lucy asked why she was the best, so I told her.

And I'll be damned if she didn't ask me how to do those Kegels.

Though I told her over and over that she doesn't have to do it to impress me, she said she's going to practice for a month or so and try it out. I'm marking it off on every calendar I have, my cell, my watch, and any time piece I come across. The moral of the story? Honesty really is the best policy.

2006-01-16T00:28:00.000-08:00

Graphical Aces Interface

Alright, alright. I've heard it from a few people recently now, so I'm caving in and posting pictures, just like the good old days. If you've had nothing better to do for a year and a half, you may remember my Typepad site (blunt force trauma to the head can help you suppress those memories, if need be). And you may remember my awesome collection of photos, ranging from Akibakei at the Tokyo Game Show (though at the time I knew them only as "sweaty perverts") to sunsets all over Tokyo, to seasonal masterpieces. I had it all.

Then I switched to Blogger, and in the process lost my photographic inspiration and attempted to manually edit my template to mixed results. Hey, it looks fine on my computer.

The first pictures I'm putting up are all taken within the past few months. I've provided some captions. The family picture with me is, I think, as close to a face picture as any I've ever put online, blurry as it is. So if you see me in Tokyo, acceptable reactions would be to buy me dinner or hand me fat stacks of cash. Unacceptable would be to slug me in the face or call me a dirty sinner, unless you felt pity for me afterwards and then handed me a fat stack of cash. Beggars can't be choosers.

My friend and I showing off gifts we bought for our family. It was a humorous Christmas day at the Aces residence

Sunset from the Suijo Bus heading to Odaiba

Sunset from the Suijo Bus #2

Penguins at a Shinagawa aquarium (not The, but one in Shinagawa)

My brother, sister, dog, and then me, sitting on the floor

2006-01-15T23:14:00.000-08:00

Post-Coital Lovers Say the Darndest Things

One aspect of living in a foreign country that often gets overlooked is how one has to make do in a (very distant) second language. It can afford one many opportunities, as well as create uncomfortable situations or misunderstandings. A blessing and a curse, so to speak.

For the bad, I've gotten into a lot of trouble, documented and otherwise, with regard to misinterpretations. Last year in September I was trying to get a girl who I thought was avoiding me after our first date. The last straw was when she emailed me to push back our second date 2 more weeks (totalling 3 since we last saw each other). But she closed the email by saying "Since it's a long time off, on that day we can just do coffee only if you want." We were supposed to spend all day at a theme park, and instead she's pushing me back 2 weeks and saying we could just skip the day and hang out for drinks only? Fuck that.

What she really said, of course, was "Since it's a long time off, until then we can just go out for drinks together if you want." It wasn't a cancellation, but her saying she still wanted to see me before that date. I never heard from her after my reply (then my reply's correction, and finally my summary pleading).

On the plus side, I for one find that I'm able to say things I wouldn't be caught dead saying in English. Usually it's filler phrases like "Sou da ne" or general ways of speaking that I've always thought sound really, really childish when translated. And you can get away with a basic grasp of grammar and vocab a lot of times, which oftentimes leads to you saying something unintentionally funny. I have had fun with friends inventing words for "butt pirates" (oshiri kaizoku), "break wind" (kaze o kowasu), and others, for example.

Bedroom talk especially, if translated to English, is humorous at the best of times. But say it in Japanese? I'm off the hook for sounding like a woman (I have certainly said itai before, and I plan to do it again). I honestly would never even think to say "Can I stick it in?" (it's like asking for a bathroom pass) or "Does that feel good?" (too porno). Those are really tacky phrases. But nobody bats a fake eyelash about it over here.

Of course I imagine, and not having been in other couples' bedrooms I admit this is only conjecture, that those phrases are par for the course for many young lovers in Tokyo. I'd hardly be a manly man if I respected the par, however. I'm a goddamn sexual Tiger Woods (if only in the sense that sometimes it takes a few tries to get it in the hole).

The other day I was with Lucy in my room, just lying there post-action, thinking about technique-related things, when I let out a little chuckle accidentally. Lucy asked what it was about and I foolishly told her. I said, in a joking manner of course because it wasn't a serious subject really, that she becomes really shy when we get intimate (I believe my exact words were "naked time" - god bless second languages). I said if she likes something, or has a preference for positions and whatnot, I want to know. She said she doesn't have a preference because it all feels good.

As much as I'd love to think that were true, because it would mean I had near godlike prowess in bed (which I won't deny if asked), I know that it's bullshit as well. Please, your average guy is desperate to get laid but even then he'll draw the line somewhere. Whether it be a staunch refusal to do The Bridge or The Piledriver, or a moratorium on teeth, even your most hard-up man will never say it all feels good. So I tried to get her to tell me the truth, and inadvertantly said something a little revealing about myself.

"Oh come on, that's a lie. There has to be something you don't like. Everyone has likes and dislikes. And for every girl it's always different."

(silence)

"So Aces, how many girls have you been with?"

Oops.

That's what we talked about for the next few minutes. And somehow we segued into me telling her about the stairs at my club, among other things I figured would be inappropriate discussion material even when clothed.

But that's par for my course. It seems every time we're together, despite my best efforts, I always end up saying something embarrassing about myself. I'll get going on a topic, and start a story about a night at a club or some such, then realize that I'm talking to my girlfriend and abruptly try to stop.

"No, I want to hear it," she'll say, and she means it. My stories are that fucking good. But there's just something really wierd about telling your current girlfriend about how great a prior, not-even-girlfriend was in bed. I always ask her if she really wants me to tell her this stuff, and she says she does, but I still feel a little awkward.

The one thing that saves me is that I'm telling her all this in Japanese. It sounds trivial, but not having to put it in your own mother tongue really makes things easier to say. It's almost as if you're not saying it, but someone else is on your behalf. I feel if she takes it the wrong way I can always go back and tell her, "No, I didn't say that! It's a damnable lie!" I'm my own PR guy.

So far we've talked about the following, always right after the act:
- How many girls I've been with
- Where I've had encounters
- The list in my phonebook (I said it's an important piece of history)
- My ex-girlfriend
- Last January (known to me as "Heaven on Earth")
- Stories that you've all been privy to
- What I like and don't like, with real-life descriptions of why

In a way, even if she found this web site, I don't think it would hurt our relationship at all. I have no secrets from her any more. The only things I haven't told her yet are minor things. Like how Mini-Aces is prone to injury, The Herbalist gave me the Hakushu (translate it directly), and how my first time was with a whore. Details, really. But I've divulged so much about myself and I always forget to try to dig up any of her secrets, or else she tells me there's nothing funny or strange about anything she's ever done. Which can mean either

1) that she's so kinky that what's strange to some is normal to her,
2) she's pure vanilla, or
3) she's holding out on me here.

I think it's #3, honestly, if only because habitually kinky people usually have scars and marks, and nobody is pure vanilla. I'm going to put the magic to work this Saturday to get some answers. I've got special plans in store. I'll be back later with results.

2006-01-11T19:13:00.000-08:00

Shades of Frostbite

So the other day I went running in the wee hours of the morning. I donned my new sleek Under Armour top, which keeps me warm but also has the unexpected side effect of making me look like a super hero. It's all spandexy material, but somewhere in there they must have hidden Batman abdominal muscles or something, because when I wear it my stomach shrinks and I get a wicked 6 pack, and my upper chest expands to like .4 Schwarzeneggers. I'd wear this shit to church if (1) I still went to church and (2) wait, go back to (1).

The down side is that it feels like I'm running 3 miles above sea level with all the pressure it exerts over my body. And that's got to be a lot of pressure to mold my saggy ass into steroidal awesomeness. But I get none of the benefits of running at elevation. Instead I reap the benefits of running in a simulated bear hug.

Anyway, the point is my upper body was warm.

My lower body, however, got absolutely frost-fucked. I'm still running in shorts, even in January. But the temperature these days has got to be well below 0. There's just no way I'll believe otherwise. My naughy bits tell me I'm immersed in an arctic environment. Oh god, do they tell me.

See, when I got home the other day, the first thing I noticed was that my little soldier had been replaced (let's see if Aces notices!) by an ice wand. You know the drill - I've written about it before. But this time it was a little more frozen than usual. I knew I had to get in the shower to thaw him out, so I ran upstairs, shed my clothes and ran back downstairs to the shower with just a towel and my bath stuff (soap and laminated porn).

Unfortunately someone decided that would be the day they turn off the hot water at Yaji House. It periodically happens for no reason. The worst is when the hot water knob turns and lets water out, fooling you into thinking it's going to be hot when you step under the shower head. This time no water escaped. I cursed, oh how I cursed, but no one was awake to listen. Then I felt a stab go through my groin as the ice took hold of a testicle, and raced back upstairs to the only other warmth I know - my space heater.

I wasted 10 minutes thawing out my Glacius Minimus, practically straddling the damn heater. It felt like someone had kicked me in the nuts with steel-toed boots. I think maybe 10 more minutes outside and I'd have frosticles. You need an operation for that shit. I ended up going to work without showering, which anyone will tell you is the way you'd walk into work if you wanted to be universally hated by your coworkers.

One thing I have to say about Tokyo weather - in the summer, there isn't a breeze to be found. But come winter, that wind tracks you down and smacks you right in the face with its icy shaft. You just can't win around here.

2006-01-11T17:22:00.000-08:00

Feed Me, Bitches!

Hey everyone, I just jumped on a years-old bandwagon and added Feedburner to my site. I also put up the snazzy counter that shows how many people are reading me. It's quite humbling. Right now it's at "1", and that's because I subscribed to myself to see if it was working.

I wonder if I can hit double digits before this year is over.

In any event, use it if you're tired of always clicking on my shit to see if I've updated and then inevitably being disappointed (this could be disappointment with me not updating, or disappointment with my content when I do update). The little icon occupies the bane of my template's existence - the left panel. I swear one day it'll display properly on all browsers.

2006-01-09T19:44:00.000-08:00

I love computer

When I walked into the guest house on Thursday, a little present was waiting for me. Seems the Dell Japan guys decided to deliver my monitor 5 days in advance. Now, I say little present, but know that I'm talking about the huge 24" LCD I ordered a week prior. I was a little peeved, however, that they apparently didn't need me to sign for it, trusting instead on the benevolence of those who live with me to safeguard it. There it was, sitting in the hallway next to the other mail. My sentries were nowhere in sight, probably busy in their rooms drawing up plans to gank it. I'm looking in the direction of the Vietnamese room on this one.

Having the monitor come so early meant that I could build my computer a full 5 days in advance, which meant I could watch pornographic materials for 4 days 23 hours and 30 minutes, give or take work and sleep. So over the weekend I went to Akihabara and purchased the missing components - a case, power supply, power strip and graphics card, and sat down to rapidly assemble my dream machine.

Unfortunately, "rapidly assemble" was a misnomer. It took me until past midnight to assemble the thing due to some confusion/idiocy on my part. On top of that, my eyes are only rated to work properly from 6am to 7pm, so identifying the little screws and wires that needed to go everywhere was painstakingly difficult. The heatsink my best friend supplied me with was a little on the big size, so wiring everything together was somewhat challenging as well. On the plus side, I have a nice frost coating the inside of the case now.

The only thing I didn't have, and still don't, were speakers. My Z5500s were slated to arrive yesterday, but in fact won't make an appearance on my doorstep until next Monday for some stupid reason I can't be bothered to run through Babelfish. My earphones are only a meter long, so in order to watch movies or play video games with sound I have to pull the case halfway towards my bed, then lie down on my back next to the case.

It's actually a pretty interesting way to play Unreal 2004 (the last game I got into pre-Tokyo). If my fingers slip on the keyboard it's damn near impossible for me to find WASD again without looking, but other than that things are ok.

I'm eagerly anticipating the arrival of my speakers now. That, and maybe a little chair or something so my ass doesn't fall asleep on the tatami. Oh, and games. Lots of games.

What's funny to me, and always will be until the probably logical reason for it is explained to me, is that many electronics devices created by Japanese companies are actually cheaper in America. It's the reason I bought pretty much everything save the case and monitor in America. The monitor ended up being cheaper in Japan, but that's because Dell Japan decided to have a $400 off New Years extravaganza. With this discount, I saved a little over $100 from buying it in America.

So naturally, I've got this PC up and running to my tastes now, planning to use it as a gaming-movie-whatever machine, and what happens? My boss asks me "What use is all that power? You're going to be a busy man real soon." The implication of course is that I'm going to work from home now that I've got a PC, and I won't have gaming time. I think my boss needs to look at the receipts here. The reason I paid for it myself was to avoid precisely that situation. And the reason I wanted to avoid that situation was because they weren't paying me enough to work from home as well. So now that I've spent $2500 of my own money they want me to work from home for peanuts? I was more inclined to do that back when they were going to foot the bill for the computer, but now it's completely out of the question. Talk about turning a slight incentive into a strong negative one.

I was thinking, however, about purchasing my own little development board. Nothing much, just a simple embedded one or perhaps an FPGA with a CPU core. That way I could work on my own projects on my own time, and it would still be fun. I'm dreading going back into the job market because since graduation almost 2 years ago, I haven't racked up the experience I think I should have. Nothing would suck more than to be stuck in this job for another year or two because I'm unqualified to hold a development position. Ugh.

2006-01-06T04:56:00.000-08:00

Work? Fuck work.

I was racking my brain for something to write about - as sure a sign as you`re going to get that the next few paragraphs aren`t literary gold - when I remembered something that pisses me off: work.

I don`t write as much about it as I used to, a habit I think I got into once I realized my direct boss and possibly others higher than me on the food chain (you really only have to be on the food chain to be higher than me, technically) might be reading my blog. That was when I was on Typepad. I moved somewhat sneakily to Blogger and so far I think I`m safe, though now I`m beyond caring anyway.

I found my job through some kind of black internet magic. To this day I can`t recreate the search parameters I must have used on Google to find the lone site that had my job`s contact information unless I actually type in the name of my place of employment. It was a stroke of luck at the time; my tourist visa was due to expire in a month, and I hadn`t yet visited any place outside of Tokyo (still haven`t, really) so I was in no rush to leave. And Tokyo is a fun place to live, probably as good as any other city for me at least, being young.

My job agreed to get me the work visa and even managed to pay me in semi-legal ways while the paperwork was processed, and they started me out on a better salary than the only other job offer I scrounged up would have given me (those cheap bastards were offering me 160,000 yen a month to code up video game libraries). The company is quite small so I talk directly to the president if I want to, and it feels just like I imagine an American company would, except for the occasional Japanese I hear or speak.

For a while all was good. I was and still am grateful they did all that for me.

But the honeymoon is over. I`ve got a few major complaints about this place: the environment, the job itself, and the students.

The Environment

For about 6 months now I`ve contemplated quitting, but I held out until recently on anything more because I was waiting to see how they`d compensate me for all the hard work I put in last period. I wrote about the ridiculous bonus structure they have for me, where in order to get the whole bonus I have to split into two people and work until the wee hours of the morning every day. Apparently I did something right because I got most of that bonus in November. But something was missing - a raise. When I finally pushed the subject with the president, twice, he agreed to let me set my price. It was only fair, since this period I`m expected to do some crazy shit that quite frankly will take me at my current skill level a lot longer to do than people who have a solid hardware design background.

Well they fucked me over on that account. The "raise," if you will, comes out to, after tax, less than 20,000 yen a month. In hourly wage terms, that`s $1 an hour more than what I`m currently getting. A great way to say "fuck you" to someone is to tell them they can name their price - a price we agreed on in February, actually - and then go behind their back and cut that by 75%. And did I mention they weren`t even going to give me that until I reminded them?

Unfortunately, as I have noticed recently, that`s the way a lot of things go down at my job. They`ve been doing things like this the whole time, I just didn`t care as much. I used to go to a cafe with the president about once every month or two and tell him I wanted more responsibility and more inclusion in company matters, something which he was definitely pleased about. He`d always say it was a great idea, and he`d get started right away including me on important emails and such. And yet nothing ever changed. It was as if we didn`t have the conversations in the first place.

Each time they hired someone, I would find out about it after the fact, around noon on the day they wanted to go celebrate with a company dinner I had to attend. Same thing whenever students got placed, or quit, or struck oil while planting cucumbers in their back yard, or whatever. I was always the last to find out, and in some cases wouldn`t find out anything until weeks later.

The latest example is the computer I built myself because they had dicked me around too much on what they were willing to pay for and how I was supposed to use it. Turns out they went ahead and bought the parts anyway, even after I told them specifically not to because they weren`t going to let me have it until I move after March. Way to keep me in the loop. And the thing is, before I left they told me they wouldn`t purchase anything until I sent them a formal email explaining what I would do with the computer. An email I imagine would look something like this:

Dear sirs,

Porn.

Hugs and Kisses,
Aces

I never sent them the email, but it didn`t stop them.

The Job

When I was hired, all I had on my resume was 3 years of IT from college (though the hours I worked made it equivalent to almost 2 years of full time, and I was one of the head guys there) and a dual major in computer science and math. I must confess that math gives me a raging mind-boner.

Clearly with this experience I expected they wanted me for some kind of software stuff. And in the beginning I did teach some C and C++ stuff to some decent students. It was my first time, but they were able to grasp the concepts fairly well given the roughness of everything. I didn`t want to get stuck in "intro teaching" mode though, and made that clear, so they put me on hardware duty to help out my boss.

Thus began my unsteady relationship with hardware, which to this day is somewhat stunted because I have never really been able to ask questions to my boss as a student of hardware, lest I seem like I`m not qualified to teach the stuff (I`m qualified now, I would say, but it was a difficult path). I had to learn all the shit myself on a really tight timeline, and if I ever wanted to ask a question about something stupid, I had to dress it up inside a really complicated-seeming question, wait out the 30 minutes for the answer to the big question while pretending to listen, but really waiting for my boss to slip up and answer the minor one in his explanation.

All this got me, in the end, is a bigger slice of the intro teaching pie. My software skills have become rusty - I have to give myself a refresher in C++ because we`ve been doing C for a year now - but my hardware skills aren`t anything I`d brag about either. I`m competent, but I wouldn`t say I`m a design wizard.

And this gets me back to my major complaint about job duties. They`ve got me on a track that is stagnating my skills in two fields, effectively wasting my time, while simultaneously telling me that, for a whole extra $1/hr more, they want me to design a hardware implementation of an mp3 encoder/decoder and a motion tracking project. I`d love to do those things if I was getting paid a little more, and if they hadn`t fucked me over from the get-go by ensuring I couldn`t have the necessary skills to do either of those projects in an efficient and timely manner.

The Students

I said my first students were pretty good. Unfortunately, the last few rounds have been anything but. It`s very frustrating to be doing something I don`t particularly like - teaching - at a level that doesn`t help my skills improve, and then have the students be ingrateful sots. If I were getting free tech training, a promised job at the end of the tunnel, and a little spending money on top, as well as what amounts to free English lessons, I`d be happy as a security guard in a lesbian prison. I certainly wouldn`t dick around and not accomplish anything, and just wait until the instructor walked away and then reopen my chat windows. Fuck.

The current round of students never ask questions, even when it`s so obvious they don`t have a clue what`s going on. They make mistakes that should be absolutely unthinkable at this stage in the game, and it only goes to show that they have been copying off each other on the projects and not taking anything I lecture on to heart. One of the guys came up to me today and asked a question on the first homework, which was due about a month ago. His question was "Where is this exercise?" Nice work, sleuth. I guess it took him a month to get up the courage to nominate himself for idiot of the hour.

The worst part is that I`m being judged based on their performance. A few of them shouldn`t be in the program at all, and the others just need to fucking work. Since they`re all behind schedule, I`m taking the heat. I know I`m partly responsible, but there`s only so much you can do. Last I checked alchemists never figured out a way to make gold from lead.

I put a lot of work into the teaching, which incidentally robs me of most of the time I need to spend developing projects. It`s actually something I`m pretty decent at, and if the students have questions I`d love to engage them. I`m looking for someone to show a bit of interest, and I get nothing. They can`t even copy code efficiently, since some of them type about 10 words a minute.

So I`m looking for a new job now. I won`t quit this one until I find another, and even then I feel I should give my current job a month`s notice because they`ll really be hamstrung without me for a while. But I don`t think I can stand much more of this.

2006-01-05T16:02:00.000-08:00

Everything you never wanted to know

Damn. I skip town for 10 days and the JT forums suddenly become a bastion of blatant racism and stupidity.

Wait, back up. No, they've always been pretty low. But it seems worse somehow now. Maybe some simple-minded folk had the brainiac New Year's Resolution to stoop to a Challenger Deep level of asinine generalizations and idiocy, and I missed it. I'm always left out of the fun, see.

In the Love, Sex and Relationships forum, where I'm only marginally qualified to give advice in one of those 3 topics, you can count nearly half of the current threads being dedicated to how ugly/inferior/ill-equipped/stupid white/black/asian people are. God bless the internet, eh? And don't let these procreative mistakes get started on why black guys get all the fine bitches, or white guys rule western civilization. That's just askin' for it.

The plus side, if there is one, is that I've learned a lot of neat things I didn't know before. Someone posted a link to a discussion about the depth of vaginal cavities (my dirty mind just conjured up an image involving a gargling birth canal. I think I'll cry myself to sleep tonight). However, they forgot to put a little "NSFW" tag near it, so when I innocently clicked, for research purposes alone mind you, I was unprepared for the mid-sized textbook drawing of the fairer sex's genitals. Luckily my monitor faces my boss and the students I have to look in the eye every day. Did I say luckily?

This got me to thinking about one of the greatest inventions of the last century - Kegels. I've only known, as the Bible might say, one woman who practiced this erotic art. It's pretty amazing. It's like a magic trick: where did that hand come from? It let me momentarily forget, for about 180 minutes give or take, that I wasn't so much discovering the Indies with her as placing my little sandwich flag on whatever real-estate hadn't been taken up by other, more impressive flags. Ah, the good old days.

One of my side projects now will be to subtly hint to Lucy that I want her to try a few weeks of it. This might be a little difficult. I don't know how to interject it into a discussion, but I also can't just bring up Lady in Red and tell Lucy just how much fun it was to spend 3 hours a week with her. Something tells me that's not something a girlfriend wants to hear.

I googled Kegels to get a little more information. Maybe there's something I, as a dude, can do to help? Like buy a nice coffee-table book about the subject or a little barbell for The Nothing (yes, they do exist). What I stumbled upon instead was something referred to as Men's Kegels. Apparently a guy can do roughly the same thing for male-equivalent sexual benefits (I don't think my penis is 'flabby' or 'loose', for example, and I certainly don't want to return it to its original size and shape). The wonders never cease!

I think I'm going to try this out until either (1) I get the fabled 30 second happy time, or (2) I develop a hernia. I'm not entirely sure what muscle I'm supposed to use. I'm only aware of 2 down there: the flag-waving muscle and the oh-jeez-I-don't-want-to-shit-now muscle. If there are others, they aren't listed on any workout equipment I'm familiar with. Looks like I'll have to get a little familiar with my body this weekend. Maybe while I'm down there I can finally figure out what's causing the little platelet leak I occasionally have...

2006-01-04T02:05:00.000-08:00

The New Year

Huh. Odd. I write that I'll be posting everything going on that's not related to Lucy for a month, and then post absolutely nothing for 3 weeks. I suppose we can probably draw our own conclusions from that. My life in one dimension.

I just got back from my 10 day stay in Nowhere, Pennsylvania with the family. I needed the "vacation" if only so that I could occupy my time and forget about Lucy for a bit. But as with all family endeavors, they rarely turn out to be much fun. I'll post more on that later since it's a whole other topic.

I got to see some friends I lost contact with (read: stopped talking to). That is also deserving of another post later when I have some time. It was great to be able to see them and hang out like we did years ago, only with deeper voices and job experience.

As always, I spent lots of time with my best friend, which is time I probably take for granted. This year I started showing my advanced age (23) and couldn't handle the video game all-nighters like I used to. Still it was great fun. My friend ordered some PC parts for me since lots of electronics are much cheaper in America than in Japan, and we built my new computer. I have to say, the thing is going to be monstrous. I'm currently waiting on the beastly 24" LCD monitor, Logitech Z5500 speakers, and the graphics card and case I have to buy this weekend. When all is said and done I'll have a very nice home theatre. Won't change the fact that I'm still living in a guest house, but one thing at a time.

I'm back in Tokyo now and eagerly counting down the days until Lucy gets back. I have high hopes for this relationship. It turns out she isn't staying with her ex after all. She mentioned having to go to a net cafe to check email, and I asked her why her ex doesn't have a computer - seems to me every Japanese person needs a computer and cell phone to survive - and why she was outside talking to me on a pay phone. She said that she's living in a share house that he introduced to her, which I thought was pretty cool. I just assumed they'd be living together, but apparently she took it upon herself to spend the extra dough to live in a share house, and he even helped her find one. And a note to the naysayers - not that I doubted her *cough* but her story checks out.

I have some surprises for her when she gets back. The new home theatre is one minor one - now we can watch movies in style (while of course ignoring the fact that we are watching them from within a guest house). But I've got other things covered. I'm getting back to my roots as a master chef of all things confectionary, if by all things confectionary I mean one specific type of cheesecake. She's getting one of those, provided I don't ruin it. And then, in a startling break from anything I've ever done, I'm taking her to a hotel where I will try my hand at a romantic massage and bubble bath. Girls dig that kind of thing, right? Isn't a guy who cooks and can give a massage one sought-after mofo?

There are other things in the works, but they're not finalized yet so I won't jinx myself.

Now, I'm not doing this because I'm worried about losing her. And it's not because I want to get laid, though my little eight ball tells me not to wear a belt next weekend when she gets back. If I wanted to get some ass, I'd be in the clubs. I'm just digging this relationship thing, really. Of course, it is possible that in the next week something will change between us, and I'll end up hitting Shibuya armed with my cheesecake, charm, and clothes bought from the rack bordering the women's section. My contingency plan, if you will. But I'm not holding out for it.

I'll try to post more often now that I'm back. And with the completion of my computer project I won't be able to claim I can't post at home. Just in time, too, because yesterday when I walked into the house I saw something I was hoping I'd never see again: The balding half of last year's Vietnamese duo. Things might get ugly soon. We'll see.

2005-12-18T02:14:00.000-08:00

Fucking Cold

This weekend the temperature in Tokyo dropped from somewhere above "Ice Testicles" to somewhere way, way below that threshold.

Now, when I run, I do so in the only running clothes I have. These clothes worked great for summer and fall, or pretty much any month that doesn`t fall during winter. It`s running shorts and a long-sleeved, airy shirt.

These days, however, I find that it isn`t quite as good for protecting against the elements in December. I don`t have gloves, so I have to wear socks on my hands. And I don`t want to buy any new clothes, since I`m getting some for Christmas most likely. If I can just hold out for one more week...

Yesterday when I got home from my 25km run I had a Frost Boner. That`s the term I made up just now for when it`s so cold that your dick shrivels and compacts. I could probably dip it in some juice to make a penis popsicle. I call it the anti-rection. It hurts to thaw one of those motherfuckers in the shower.

Today I intended to go out for a 24km run - my Sunday ones increase by 2km each week to a plateau of 32, under my new personal training. I saw blue sky and sun, and reasoned it must be a decent day out. Nevermind the sound of a howling wind banging my windows. Sock-gloves? Who needs those on such a wonderful day?

I barely made it to Shakujikoen, not even a mile away. That damned wind must have knocked the temperature down to a large double digit negative number. I ran one lap around, and had to head back before my hands broke off ala the T-1000 in Terminator 2.

Speaking of my training, in the past few weeks I`ve been on somewhat of a diet as well. I wanted to eat more healthy foods and ditch staples of my diet like chips, ice cream and soda. In that regard I`ve been soda free for 6 weeks, chip free for 3 or 4 (I keep an unopened package in my room so I don`t buy any more at the store, but if I ever feel like them I eat a snack on the way home to overcome the urge...a sneaky motherfucker, eh?), and I have ice cream maybe a couple times a week max.

My daily food consumption is always the same for breakfast - a banana and some maple granola wafers. I used to have a hard boiled egg, but they`re a hassle and I ran out anyway. For lunch I usually have a massive chicken sandwich on a sub roll with avocado, onions, tomato, pickles, green pepper, mustard, lettuce and cheese. I have to dig out the bread to have space for all that awesomeness. I also have plain yogurt - half of one of the 500g cups. And tea.

I keep snacks limited to beef jerky, peanuts, onigiri or bread with honey. But you know, all this adds up to about 1500 calories before I even head home for dinner. I was surprised, since I assumed I was eating 2500 calories a day before going on this diet. I must have been consuming a lot more than that if cutting down on shit leaves me with 1500 before dinner.

This in combination with the running has caused me to lose a bit of weight. It was actually noticed by my friends. Apparently my face is a little too thin now. My cheek bones, sexy as they are, kind of protrude now in an anorexic manner. I remedied the hell out of that today. So far I`ve eaten my wicked chicken sandwich, yogurt, banana, maple bars, orgasmic curry made by yours truly, some bread with honey, a sports drink, and lots of cafe ole.

And it`s not even dinner time yet.

I just don`t want to cause a shock when I come home in a week. If I arrive in skeletal form, my parents will tie me to a chair and fatten me up, and for the next month I`ll sweat butter and garlic and breathe out chunks of See`s chocolate.

2005-12-12T01:59:00.000-08:00

Guesthouse Alone

Today Lucy got on the plane to London. She'll be coming back January 12th, meaning I don't have a girlfriend for a month. Technically I shouldn't notice until this weekend, since we never see each other until the weekends anyway. But the fact that she's going to be greeted by her ex and staying with him has me finding it difficult to be an optimist.

She seemed really gung-ho about us right before she left. In fact, maybe troublingly so. She's not one to plan dates ahead of time, but she was telling me how she wanted to go to my runs (one of which is in Okinawa), and this one aquarium that has cute dolphins (I'm that guy) etc, when she gets back. I'm interpreting that to mean she knows how difficult the month is going to be as well, and is trying to set up an anchor of sorts. Even better, she's doing this for my sake, which come to think of it would be pretty thoughtful.

I didn't ask her any intrusive questions about the ex, or if she'd tell me should they end up in bed together. I figure what happens happens, and it's better if she goes to London feeling good about us, instead of worried. Actually she was run ragged all last week with little sleep, so I probably don't have to worry about anything the first week they're together - she'll just fall asleep and shake him off (experience talking, here). The next week is her and a friend in Paris. So really he's got 2 weeks. I wish I knew his address so Santa Aces could send him some Yuletide botulism for those boring moments without crippling stomach pain.

I did finally get some pictures of her. Regrettably they're not the blackmail kind, so they won't serve any other purpose than to be catalogued* and, if you're a family member, possibly sent to you (sorry Beat, you were adopted - twice). My mom will no doubt be pleased with that. She even was going to use my camera to tape a little introduction to my parents, but I deleted it because my voice somehow made it onto the recording and I hate hearing my own voice.

Acknowledging that I have some doubts about what the month holds in store, I am hereby swearing off clubs for 30 days unless absolutely necessary (like this Friday). I know it won't take much alcohol for just the idea of a girl giving me eye contact to make me say "Oh fuck it" and somehow talk myself into a couple Dogenzaka over-nighters. I've already had my first sort-of test. One of my old friends from last year, the guy who stays in Tokyo for a few weeks every couple months, invited me to go out with him and 4 other girls on Saturday night, an offer I had to decline. I have to come clean though, it wasn't all my strong sense of fidelity. It might have also been my general state of nakedness with Lucy.

Sometimes this language barrier helps me out - I was unprepared for him to ask me, "So do you want to stay out all night and hook up with some beautiful girls?" so my phone volume was on max, and in the silence both of us could hear quite plainly his voice. The only difference is that I understood his words.

Barring some kind of update from Lucy ("Hey Aces, I was just boffing my ex when I thought about calling you...") there's precious little on that front to mine for another post, so I won't be bringing it up again for a month.

I will, however, bore you with my diet and run schedule. I've got plenty to say about those topics. And anything else Japan-related I think of. Like how just today, I was standing in one of the two lines for a particular train door. The line next to me seemed short - there was no one standing beside me, and the woman behind and to my right looked like she was kind of half in my line/half out. One of my guesthouse friends arrived and didn't know if he could take that very large space (3 person's gap, mind you). So he asked the woman who was in no man's land if she was actually in line, and was that her space. She waved him off and muttered that she was in that line, so he went back to the end. Turns out she just didn't want to stand next to the foreigner (moi). We remedied that by squeezing in next to her on the train, fitting 8 people quite uncomfortably on the 7 person row.

Goddamn bachans.

*Hopefully the juxtaposition of this joke with something serious doesn't make one forget that it is, in fact, a joke. Of course I have blackmail photos!

2005-12-08T23:56:00.000-08:00

Christmas

I have to come clean up front. Ever since I was old enough to spend my own money on presents, the number of gifts I've given and the price tags associated with them have been in steady decline. In fact, if I recall correctly, last Christmas I stayed here in Tokyo and effectively got out of the whole presents thing entirely. Not so for Christmas 2005 - I'm heading home for 10 days.

This year, however, I actually have disposable income, and so my gifts are getting an upgrade. I'm a little worried though, because while I'm getting everyone insane presents, they're probably buying me presents priced in accordance with what I got them last year. So some family members are no doubt getting me nothing, while others are probably going gift-wrap their cell phone bills for me. I may indeed get mugged on Christmas morning by my own family.

But it's all in the Christmas spirit. I figure when they see these absolutely fabulous presents from yours truly under the tree, and then realize they all got me a pack of Bazooka Joe each (in the same goddamn flavor too, knowing them), they'll feel like ass and make amends by stuffing my pockets with lunatic kite-flying founding fathers before I fly back out to Japan. So I've prepared the following lineup for maximal Yuletide guilt-tripping.

I was going to get my brother a blow-up doll so he can practice important things that I had to learn myself, like the one-handed bra unclasp (detailed poorly in this link - the middle finger!?) or the elbow wedge. Plus, the act of inflating the doll itself would provide his mouth muscles with priceless experience he's going to need when it's just him and 19 other strapping young lads out in Iraq in a couple years. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he just spends every day blowing it up and letting the air out, over and over.

But that would only be a $10 investment, and dammit, Brunz deserves (slightly) more. So he's getting a Real Doll. I guess the biggest difference is now he doesn't have to worry about puncturing it when he misses.

My sister asked for a man, but as I'm neither Jesus nor someone to whom Jesus owes a favor, that little miracle isn't about to happen this Christmas. But I'm her brother, luckily (or biologically, strictly speaking), and so I know her better than she even knows herself. For example, she's always ranting and raving about the joys of house cleaning, so I'm getting her a 5-in-1 mop/sponge/broom/window washer/hawaiian dress. I think she'll be reasonably impressed at my thoughtfulness. And if not, she can at least do my dishes and clean my goddamned room with her new toy.

I'm not sure what to get my mom, since the only interests of hers I'm aware of are cooking, making my bed, dusting my room, hanging up my clothes to dry outside, and driving me places. Maybe I'll get her a driving cap and a nametag for when she carts me to and fro. I'll also give her a maid outfit so when she rhetorically asks, "What do I look like, your maid?" I can answer unequivocally that, yes, in fact she does. And while she's at it, can she toss me the remote because it's too far for me to reach?

My dad listed scores of movies and music as gifts he'd appreciate. Most of them I've never even heard of, and some sound vaguely adult-oriented. Friendly Persuasion seems like a homoerotic thriller where 2 men agree to "just experiment" but the aftermath of their tryst and surfacing lust for one another affects their marriages and the fate of the nation (one of them is the president). The Naked and the Dead sounds an awful lot like a necrophiliac's paradise. And for the love of god, The Culpepper Cattle Company!? I'm not even going to touch that one. My father, I never knew thee.

So I guess he was going for quantity over quality. For his gifts, I printed out his document and threw 3 darts at it. These darts landed on Beau Geste, my grocery list, and a drawing of an elephant mounting a mouse that I had doodled while bored at work. Unfortunately, I was unable to find the Beau Geste DVD in the porn vending machine outside my guest house where I just assumed his movies would naturally be, so it looks like my dad is getting milk, Amino Supli, nikuman and frozen gyoza. And an elephant mounting a mouse.

In the end, of course, Christmas isn't just about the gifts. It's about spending time with those who care about you so much that they rarely bring up that one time you shit your pants because you forgot your keys and you really had to go pretty badly, and who was going to find your soiled underwear in the bushes out back anyway? (footnote: Dad, a couple years later)

And to see the look on everyone's faces when they open my gifts - that unique gradient of expression from confusion to shock to annoyance, complete with the obligatory eye-roll - then watch them scrap over who gets to throw theirs in the fireplace first, well, I'm looking forward to it! That's what Christmas means to me.

That and an elephant mounting a mouse.

2005-11-28T00:24:00.000-08:00

Running to ~~Cure~~ Induce Cancer

My god, I'm sore. It feels like the very first time I put in some real distance. As I recall from that time, I was out of service for a few days afterwards, while World Class gave me shit about my condition. In the spirit of comradery, I'm sure.

So I just got back from Tsukuba yesterday night after running, and thankfully finishing, the marathon. Tsukuba is dead, just like I figured, but it has a nice college-town feel to it, and if you can get past there being absolutely nothing within miles save a shopping center, it may even be a nice place to hang out every now and then. But who cares about Tsukuba. This is my post-marathon update.

On Sunday I ran in the marathon. I surprised myself by having the fastest 10K I've ever recorded, and my 20K was on par with what I expected. I felt good, running aerobically, drinking at the aid stations without coughing, and I must have passed a few hundred people up until the 21K marker.

Then I hit the wall. Multiple times.

I recall something World Class said to me a month or so ago, during one of my boastful predictions that I was going to run away with 1st place (and 2nd and 3rd, since I'm so damn good). He said that the first half of a marathon is 30km. I see now what he was talking about.

I was completely unprepared for the total shutdown of my legs. It started with a slight cramp in my calves. If you've ever swam or run a decent distance, or biked, you know the kind. It comes really quickly, and depending on whether it's high or low you either have to stretch it out by touching your toes or pointing your toes up. Or excise the damn things completely. Who needs calves anyway? They're overrated.

I tried to run with the cramps, but they wouldn't go away, so I figured I'd walk it off for a few seconds. This worked, and I started running again.

If that was the worst I wouldn't have anything to complain about. But somewhere down the line my quads took a dive. It went completely unnoticed while I was running so I can only ballpark it as being around 26-27Km. I got another spastic cramp in my calves, where the muscle refused to go back into a rest state, and it hurt so much I had to walk a little. But the moment I slowed to a walk to stretch my calves, my legs felt like dead weights. One quad locked completely and sent my right leg to the ground, where the awkward position cramped my left calf even more, causing quite a lot of pain. I tried to stretch a calf but the quad burned, so I tried to stretch a quad, causing my calves to burn. It was a lose-lose situation. Eventually I squatted like a frog to stretch both out at the same time. I wouldn't have thought of that but for having seen another runner doing it earlier.

The interesting part was that, while running, my quads were fine. It wasn't the quads that caused me to have to stop, but if I did stop, they would die immediately.

Eventually my upper thighs cramped as well, and so I had 3 sore spots to try to keep in balance on each leg. This turned out to be very difficult. If my calves cramped, I knew that if I slowed down or walked, I'd be brought to a complete stop. It was kind of depressing to realize that, were my calves in better shape for endurance or had I stretched better beforehand, I wouldn't have had most of these issues. I could have made it to the end on dead quads and strained upper thighs, because I didn't notice those trouble spots while running. But that's a lesson for next marathon. And there will be a next.

Speaking of lessons, I learned a few yesterday I'd like to share with you. First is something I didn't take into account, but which makes sense logically. When you're done with a marathon, your body is considerably weaker than when you started. For me this meant I couldn't regulate my temperature. It was cold outside, so I became quite cold as well. I was even shivering an hour later inside a shopping mall, wearing 3 layers and gloves. Then at a restaurant, it was a little stuffy, and I got incredibly hot. I imagine, but not being a biologist or willing to Google it, that all the blood going to work in my legs had some part to play in that.

I learned that you need to lube yourself up before you run, and men should go to great lengths to protect their nipples. When a woman runs, her chest rises and falls with the shirt, and it's quite a beauty to behold if I do say so myself, but when a man runs, unless he has boobs, his nipples stay in place while the shirt rubs against them for a few hours. I saw a guy with giant pink circles around each nipple, and though mine weren't bleeding like a hemophiliac, I had my share of discomfort as well. Additionally, the inner parts of my thighs, closest to my junk (I could make a joke about that being down to my knees) were rubbed red from all that back-and-forth. Conclusion: Lube up.

I learned another valuable lesson. When you're bored with the missionary position, don't fold your knees under you. It may be better for the girl, but it has the potential to cramp up your hips and lead to tenderness the next day. Additionally, if your significant other is 10 inches shorter than you, do not attempt sex in the shower. You place undue strain on your leg muscles because you have to bend your knees to get anywhere close to the right trajectory.

I suppose it also would have helped if I had more than 5.5 hours of sleep the night of the marathon. But I knew what I was getting into when I invited Lucy to stay overnight.

I'm actually anxious to get back to running. Hopefully it will be in the next few days when I feel able to run again. I'm liking this whole "sickly thin person's six pack" I have going on right now. If I weren't cripplingly weak right now, it might actually mean something other than that I'm undernourished and somewhat dehydrated. I have yet to indulge in my favorite beverage - Dr. Pepper - since yesterday I knew I wouldn't enjoy it completely and today I had to lecture when I got to work. But I fully intend on draining one of those 20oz motherfuckers later tonight, as God intended when he gave Moses the recipe on the third stone tablet.

For my next run I'll try a different strategy that may or may not include carb loading the week prior and abstaining from sexual encounters the night before/morning of the race. I wonder which one will have a bigger effect on my performance...

I've already plotted out my next runs. I'm doing a 20km in mid January, a 20km on February 12, and then a full marathon in Okinawa on February 26. Not that anyone here reads my page for the running information, but here are the links. Maybe I'll see one of you there (I'll be the guy rubbing astroglide feverishly on my nutsack).

Yokota 20km
Kujira 20km
Okinawa Marathon

2005-11-24T16:37:00.000-08:00

The Calm Before the Storm

The other day was a holiday, so I headed out to Ueno to do some last minute shopping in preparation for the Tsukuba Marathon. You know, the one I'm going to have a heart attack at. It's this Sunday. To prepare for it, yesterday I ate a large tin of Devil Hot Pringles. Goddamn, those were good.

Ueno is a great shopping area. It's confusing as all hell, basically a maze with secret passages between alleys, but you can find some great deals there. I picked up a pair of Asics 2100 running shoes for 6000 yen. I'm not sure if it's actually a good thing to use a brand new pair of shoes at a marathon. I did run a few miles in them yesterday morning, and they felt fine, but 8 miles is significantly less than 26. I won't know until Sunday afternoon whether it was a mistake to get them so late in the game.

The other items I purchased were race-related. I got a great breathable, yet form-fitting, bluish gray long-sleeve shirt. And apparently, though I didn't know it at the time because I bought it without trying it on, the sleeves are tear-away. It's a good thing I bought that, because otherwise I wouldn't have a decent shirt to run in. I bought a jersey like you see everyone wearing on TV, but sadly I didn't try that one on either, and it doesn't fit too well. I look like I'm running in a gay parade, not a marathon.

And yes, I now own a pair of men's hot pants. The real deal hot pants, not the jeans and leather pants I wrote about a year ago. I'm talking about these. I never really thought about it, but I guess you don't wear underwear with them. Luckily there's netting in them like a bathing suit to protect your family jewels.

I am kind of worried now, however. Everything I've read has said how you have to load up on carbs the week before, which I guess I've inadvertantly done. But you also should steer clear of greasy foods, which is a big "Oops" for me. I've been soda free for 3 weeks, and it's a bitch and a half because I pass by a cool, refreshing 20oz Dr. Pepper every day on the way to and from work.

I'm worried about a lot of little things too because everything was in Japanese, and I can't stand reading pages of Japanese. I probably missed a lot of information just because of that little gripe. Like I have no idea if I just show up on Sunday and that's that, or if I have to bring something with me, like a card with my next of kin printed neatly in block letters.

That's also the reason I still don't have a hotel reservation. Or rather, I have 3. See, I went to a bunch of Tsukuba hotel web pages, but the ones that had online reservations were completely booked. However, a couple had online reservation requests, and they said they'd get back to me. I filled a bunch out, and even filled one out twice (once in English on the home page, and once in Japanese on a portal), and they took their sweet time replying. And when they did reply, they said thank you for making the reservation, instead of first running it by me to see if I wanted to confirm or something. So now my reservation choices (I see it as them competing for my business):
Semi-double for 13,000 right near the station and the marathon area
Unknown size (I think it's a single) for 15,300 at the same hotel
Double for 11,500 that, on the map, is 2.5km from the station, but the directions on their site say to go to a station 8km away and take a taxi. Fuck that.

The semi-double is the one I'm going to spring for, but I'm not sure if that hotel has 2 reservations for me, or just one, or what. I emailed in English, since they wrote me in English, and we'll see how long until they ditch the pretense of understanding what I'm writing and just drop me a big J-bomb of a mail.

Which I of course won't read.

Lucy is accompanying me for the night and next day, though I've got no idea what there is to do in Tsukuba, so she's shit out of luck. It looks like an absolute shithole. Hell, it looks like my hometown in America kind of. Don't get me wrongI'm glad she agreed to come along. In fact, part of the reason I'm so late on the hotel game is because I thought she was going to back out. It's going to be boring as shit for her. I'm trying to find something for her to do, but as I mentioned above, it's a shithole. There appears to be a couple restaurants and some shrines. I imagine there's some dead animals on the road that you can poke with a stick if you get really bored. And if it's a sunny day she can fry ants with a magnifying glass. Oh the possibilities!

I checked the healing progress of my Scepter of Ra and found that it's coming along nicely. I'll definitely be back in business tomorrow, and not a moment too soon. I'll make it out like I need some pre-marathon motivation, for strength or some such. It's probably one of my last requests anyway. The last one is that the giant shovel they'll use to scoop my carcass off the street be made of solid gold.

I'll let you all know how I do, and what the new specs on my wheelchair are.

2005-11-24T00:29:00.000-08:00

Slaving Away

God, work is kicking my ass right now. My boss left for the Philippines on Tuesday, leaving me in charge of the little miscreants. I've been grading tests and answering questions all day, so I haven't been able to get shit done around here.

So it makes sense I'm writing this post at work.

They're all testing me. They think because my boss can't speak Japanese that I can't. Most of them don't fare too well in English, so they've been counting on group dynamics to shield them from my wrath. That is, they know they should be working, but they figure if they all gang up and chatter in Japanese I'll be too much of a pussy to put a halt to it.

The sad part is I just have so much shit to do that, even though I desperately want to let them know that I can hear them talking about me, I don't have the drive to do it. I've got too much on my plate right now. I couldn't even monitor the students taking the tests earlier, so for all I know they cheated or looked in their notes. Oh well.

The other week I received my new 6-month objectives sheet. It's got various things on it, but the meat of it is (1) current salary, (2) bonus structure and (3) what a brother has to do to put some goddamn food on the table.

I noticed this time around that (3) was significantly out of proportion, in the wrong direction of course, to both (1) and (2). Specifically, my salary and bonus had not changed since February, despite what was promised then.

A month prior, my boss and the shachou had all but confirmed that I'd be getting an increase. I asked the shachou while we were sharing a manly minute pissing next to each other at a company dinner, and he said yes. For a week, though, nobody spoke of it, until my boss said that the reason I had so many more objectives this time around was because of "what you and the president talked about in the bathroom at the izakaya." Well, as I didn't recall any other conversations with him, and I usually take great pains to remember what I say when my penis is in my hands, I figured he had to mean the raise stuff. And that was a tacit affirmation that I was in fact getting one, was it not?

Apparently not. One month after that incident and they had never mentioned it again. Instead a week or so ago I got the final document for my objectives. The extra shit was there, but the new pay was curiously absent.

To give you an idea of the extra stuff I have to do, in addition to what I had to do last period:
1. Design a motion detection project on a Xilinx FPGA (an add-on to a basic video project)
2. Design 2 projects for the Hitachi H8 embedded board
3. Create projects and documentation for System C, having never used it before
4. Design an MP3 encoder/decoder (of course also a basic AC97 audio driver) for the Xilinx FPGA

Fans of me, and there must be a million of you out there because I'm awesome, will know that of those 4 extra projects, only 1 of them is even remotely close to what I thought was my field. The FPGA stuff and System C is all hardware, which I've been learning for 1 year on the job. That they want me to make my own MP3 design at this level means they think highly of my skills, no doubt. But I don't really care what they think.

I want my money, bitches.

It's simple. I can conceivably get this done, but it was promised in February that I'd get a $10,000 pay increase in October. On top of that, these projects are not the kinds of things you can just whip out in a week or two, especially if you are teaching classes, grading shit, providing Linux support to an employee who must huff paint in his spare time, etc. I'm going to have to start working at the office longer, or working from home a little. And there's no way I'm doing that without a spike in my compensation.

So that's what I told the shachou on Saturday. Well, first I asked what the hell happened to our deal in the first place. He said they decided not to change the structure (thanks for the heads up!). His reason was that he wanted the pay rates to be 1 year commitments. It's the same sort of reason I didn't get my bonus in August (6 months after my February review) but rather in November with everyone else. But this time I wasn't buying it.

I told him that what they're asking me to do now is considerably more than last period, and it warrants more pay. I can understand wanting to have a flat yearly rate, but if you're going to do that then you shouldn't change my responsibilities so drastically in the middle. It's like trying to squeeze me for the next 6 months knowing I'm already committed to a lower rate. It's not fair at all.

He thought I was worried about the bonus. That is, I wouldn't be able to finish everything, and therefore my bonus would suffer because it's based on me completing all of my objectives at or above a satisfactory level. So he offered a compromise - he'd divide the amount of points I received by last period's total to keep things roughly the same.

I didn't think he was understanding the dilemma. If you give me work, I'm going to get it done. It's in everyone's best interests, mine and the company's, to do so. So I never even questioned that the bonus would be in jeopardy. I was more worried that the full amount of it wouldn't cover the sacrifices I'm going to have to make to get it. Sacrifices like, perhaps, not jerking off before going to bed, or then again when I wake up (things I can't do now anyway because my little guy is in the intensive care unit).

We ended up agreeing that a raise was in order, but the amount was left open with the stipulation that it wouldn't be too outrageous. I was just going to suggest the original 1,000,000 yen we talked about in February.

Unfortunately, my boss got involved. Whenever he gets involved in something that's my decision, he always makes it for me. With the PC they were going to get me, he took it upon himself to spec out the lowest-priced-yet-functional computer out there, even though I was given a 200,000-300,000 blank check. He means well, but it never ends up good for me. So I was surprised when he said to me the other day, before he left me in the hell I'm in right now, "Oh, by the way, in case you were wondering where your raise went, it's in the new objectives. The one I sent you the other week just had a temporary salary because I forgot to change it."

So now I'm worried. First of all, that was an artful dodge - the salary change was merely left off the final document, despite the shachou telling me otherwise. I don't hold it against him, it's just amusing. But now I know that he's the one who is going to figure out the new salary, and I'm kind of scared. He has an interesting idea of "good pay" because he's been in Japan so long that wages that wouldn't hold a candle in the States seem gratuitous to him. My one saving grace is that the shachou has given me final say in the matter.

I'll see what's going on when my boss gets back next week. In the meantime, I hear some whiny bitches that need to get slapped the fuck up. I gotta get my teach on.

2005-11-23T00:46:00.000-08:00

Housing Trouble Already?

Last weekend I went to Nakameguro to look for apartments. I`ve done this before in Ikebukuro at the Apaman Shop, so I knew what to expect. I`d walk in, be greeted kindly and treated like just another person on the street, answer a bunch of questions, chit chat, and then hopefully find a place.

As this was my first time in Nakameguro, I didn`t know where the Apaman Shop was, so when I left the station I just searched for the first place that said "不動産" on the front. Finding such a store, I walked inside.

I must be getting spoiled over here. It used to be, back in March, I couldn`t even get into a hospital with a 39 degree fever because I was a foreigner. Oh boy, those were the days. But since that time I`ve had no trouble on the racist front (I don`t want to hear any more bullshit excuses for it, like "Japanese have an inferiority complex" - a personal nonfavorite - or "Maybe they thought your gaijin body would react differently to antibiotics than sturdy Japanese ones"). So I didn`t put two and two together when I walked into that apartment shop and had each successive agent hurriedly pass me off to the next one, all the way until the last guy, whose back was literally against a wall.

He sucked air through his teeth, which is really something that gets me going because it`s the equivalent of rolling your eyes and mumbling "Oh god, here we go," and asked me plainly, "Can you speak Japanese?"

I was taken aback slightly, only because I thought it was customary to at least use semi-formal language with a customer. I answered back politely that yes, I could. He sighed loudly and walked behind the counter, but decided not to immediately attend to me. First he busied himself with some drawers, opening them and closing them for no apparent reason. Finally he sauntered over to my side of the counter.

"What`re you lookin` for?" Again with the brusque tone and language. I told him my friend and I wanted to move into a 2LDK, and he interrupted me to say "Huh!?" Those who live over here know the tone he said that in. It`s the oyaji disbelief expression that he used. It really pisses the fuck out of me now because there`s absolutely no reason he shouldn`t have been able to understand my Japanese. It was a simple sentence. I run across this every now and then. My personal belief is that some assholes are still holding on to the idea that foreigners can`t speak Japanese, so they`re surprised anew every time they hear one articulating himself in their own language. Since they weren`t planning on listening to the garbage coming out of the foreigner`s mouth to begin with, they have to ask the person to repeat himself.

Which is what I did, and he seemed to understand. He asked me if my friend was a guy or girl and then inquired about how much I was willing to spend. Next he went to get a booklet with various apartment listings, but instead of handing it to me, he casually tossed it in my direction across the counter. I was really starting to regret walking into this place.

In America, this kind of stuff is commonplace and not at all rude; it`s the way we treat customers sometimes. There`s no polite language really, and a lot of salespeople like to talk to you as if they`re your best friend. It can be comforting. In Japan, however, that behavior is almost universally avoided, and when engaged in it`s not because the person wants to talk to you like a friend, but because he doesn`t care about you. Or he`s a racist sack of shit.

After he "handed" me the booklet, he told me to just read it, if I can, and check off anything I liked. Then he walked away. For 60 minutes.

That gave me plenty of time to peruse the booklet and realize he had given me one with almost no apartments in Nakameguro, and the ones that were in Nakameguro were not for 2 people, let alone 2LDK types. After finishing it I asked for one with Nakameguro properties, and he gave me, no shit, the same booklet with the pages reordered.

Fuck him. Seriously, right there in the eye.

Also while reading, I was listening in to other people`s conversations. None of the other realtors left their clientele alone, and they were chatting about properties and what the customers were looking for, helping them pick something out. It was like my Apaman Shop experience. I figured my guy was just an asshole, and let it go until he took a pair of Japanese punks who were also looking for a 2LDK.

If he was a real asshole, surely he`d have something against young 20-somethings dressed like Shibuya squeezed them out of its Center Gai moments before. But surprisingly, he engaged them in polite Japanese and asked them all about their ideal apartment, helpfully guiding them on what was possible with the money they were willing to spend. Then he went to the back to look up a match for what they were searching for (they had a booklet like me, but I guess he didn`t want to hurt their eyes) and brought out a single listing that was everything they wanted.

I closed my booklet and he just said, again in a pretty rude tone, "なかった?" Nothing? I told him I couldn`t find what I was looking for, and he just shrugged and told me "また今度きて見て." Come again, spoken in the way I`d tell a friend.

I know what I should have done. I should have bitched him out for treating me like that. He couldn`t have been unaware of my Japanese ability, since we had fucking talked in it when I entered. And if he was so shy or worried I couldn`t handle his Japanese, he could have given me over to someone else who would do the job he was hired to do. In fact, I heard one of the agents using English, but he was talking to someone who was trying to break her contract, so I guess they only bring out the big guns when they`re about to lose money they think is already theirs.

On top of that, though, it was just one of those times where I knew if I started to berate him in rude Japanese, I`d probably stutter or have to stop to think of what to say next, which would just dull the punch. Next time I`ll have a verbal phalanx to unleash. But I don`t think there`s going to be a next time, because I`m not setting foot in that place again. So I`ll have to save up my assault for someone else who deserves it. I`m thinking one of those assholes who pushes people aside when getting on a train, pregnant and old alike, so he can nab a seat. I`d love to bitch one of those motherfuckers out.

Plus all Japanese oyaji look a like, so I can just pretend he`s the guy from the apartment store. I`ll have my day.

2005-11-22T06:24:00.002-08:00

Exercises in Stupidity

Those who have followed my rants for over a year now have probably seen me come back again and again to one issue that plagues me like, well, the Plague. If I were to use dinner table language, I'd call this umbrella topic "physical discomfort." But we're not at the dinner table, and frankly if you're eating something while reading this you deserve whatever surprises await you on this page.

The letter of the day is P.

I've made some stupid decisions when I'm drunk and/or horny. I've used condoms that I knew were too small because they were free at the hotel and I thought it would be kind of awkward to whip out my own. This has resulted in 2 rips and one event I'm very proud of (brings a tear to my eye every time) where I actually busted right on through that sense-depriving latex membrane. It was like the Hulk ripping out of his normal clothes, only less green.

No children were created in the making of that event.

But there are some times when, goddamn, I don't need any assistance to make stupid decisions. I can do them even with the best of intentions. And horniness.

Case in point: Sunday was Lucy's special time of the month.

You think you know where this is going, but you're wrong. Because you underestimate my stupidity. It's ok, I forgive you.

After our Hikarigaoka trip, we went back to my place to sit around and spend the rest of the day together. Eventually, as with all things me, this led us back to my bed. I knew what week it was, but really a little blood doesn't scare me anymore, and I've heard from girls here that it actually can make that lunar pain subside slightly. Word.

We started with just kissing, and eventually some shirts were taken off, but the buck stopped there. She was really uncomfortable with the idea, which I completely understood, and efforts to convince her that I had an old towel I didn't care about and I don`t think it`s embarrassing were met with plain old "iya da." As I think I mentioned before, despite being a hornball, I still genuinely don't want a girl I'm with to feel uncomfortable, so I let it drop for the most part, only occasionally bringing it up.

In the meantime, I made a stupid. I figured if the pants wouldn't come off, well, I have a technique for just that occasion that can allow her to enjoy the situation without exposing herself. I'm referring to the Aces Adaptive Dry Hump Method. It's really quite catchy. Kind of a multi-tasking combination of things, not just the boring rub pelvises crap your grandparents used to do. This is a guy and a girl skydiving into an active volcano with baggy jeans and their hats on backwards extreme. And as expected, it allowed her to enjoy the time spent together.

Unfortunately, I had to sacrifice to make this possible. Namely, for a few hours my Genie was being rubbed the wrong way. It felt like sandpaper because he had escaped the confines of my boxer pants lamp and was in fact sliding up and down the back of my zipper. I tried to find a new position that wasn't jagged metal, and was only moderately successful.

For her part, she was still afraid of letting go because of the blood issue. After a few hours she left to change her insert and came back, right where we left off (I had been giving the boys a pep talk, telling them to stay the course even though I didn't have a specific plan, and the one I was following was destined for organic failure).

This time her pants were allowed to come slightly off. I took the hint and my pants came off as well. That turned out to be a mistake.

Apparently, in the folksy game of Rock-Denim-Fleshlance, Fleshlance loses every time. A wiser man than I could probably guess that. Her pants were still partly on, so now during my routine I grated against her zipper and material. It was either press into the material directly - think stabbing a battleship with a pencil - or endure the friction of sliding against it - think caveman starting a fire with, well, his penis.

After enduring this, which I'm pretty sure was one of Hercules' lesser known feats, the pants finally came off, and I was left with panties. Or so I thought. She still didn't want to take them off, so I continued my technique. But panties are soft, so the battleship analogy didn't hold, and I decided to press the issue. Pun definitely intended.

And that's where I learned Valuable Lesson #1356: On the Mohs scale of hardness, apparently my penis is rated lower than jeans, panties and, especially, tampons.

My Super Friend was being barred from entering the Hall of Justice by a measly piece of plastic. She was having a ball, but I was quickly amassing not-quite-so-manly scars in my nether region. Finally, after moving slow enough (5 hours of foreplay) so that she was no longer embarrassed about her monthly, everything came off. But it was almost like a loss for me. I could barely put on the condom because I was so worn out it hurt. I didn't dare look at what a mess I had created of my own parts, and focused again on making sure she was enjoying herself.

Which of course she was. I'm goddamn incredible.

But after it was all said and done, I'd be lying if I said the inside of that condom didn't feel like battery acid on an open wound. We lay down for a long time together (which is something I usually can't do after the act; with her it`s different). I was imagining what I would do in the shower - apply anti-bacterial, maybe a few sutures, a bandaid...

But sadly there are no penis-shaped bandaids.

Well skip that, maybe just some soap and hot water. And I'd walk around naked for a while for minimum fabric contact.

Someone asked in the comments why I always have a blood story to relate. Well, this is why. Because I`m a little retarded kid playing with power tools.

The good news is I checked up on myself this morning and the head of my family is in tip top condition. He's got a little soreness underneath, but it's nothing I can't handle. Thank god she's gone next month during that time, or else I probably would attempt this again.

2005-11-21T21:15:00.000-08:00

The End of an Era

So I promised an update on my life. Well here it is: I'm retiring from lady-hunting.

Yeah, yeah, so technically the ones I brought back to the cave weren't exactly "ladies" most of the time, and almost was a blasted man that one night, but you get my point. For health reasons alone I should be considering taking it easy. As it turns out, I have another excuse.

It would seem I'm dating Lucy now.

The last time I spoke of her, I believe, I had made it clear that we were about to go on probably our last date. That was over 2 weeks ago. We went out, and I tried to hold her hand (after only 9 dates? Slow down, gramps!), but she shrugged it off after a couple seconds. I had already told her I liked her on a couple occasions, so to me that was a definitive "just friends" sign. I figured it was best to extract myself from the situation, and got quiet for the next hour contemplating what to say to her. We ended up going home after being together only 2 hours that day, and she knew something was up.

On the way home she emailed me to ask if she could call me when I got home. I said sure, and 30 minutes later she called up. Honestly, I thought I'd never see her again, so I decided to just tell her everything I was thinking (and dare I say, at risk of my manhood, feeling?). This included my feeling that she was still holding out for her ex, and wanted me around as a comfort guy. I even told her my illustrious history as detailed on these hallowed pages.

Boy, was she shocked.

My motivation was that, on some level, I was hoping it was still salvageable, and if that was the case, I wanted her to have no mistaken beliefs about me. I mean, anybody who hangs out with a guy who can't even hold her hand successfully after damn near 2 months is going to think he's a prude. Do they still use the term mary, or am I horribly outdated?

It turns out that she did like me as more than a friend, and oddly enough after my fit of honesty said she likes me even more (I don't recall detailing my special bedroom techniques though). However, she was honestly not under the impression that I liked her because of my own behavior. When I asked her out, it was after date 3, and to her it meant I was casually throwing around the term without knowing her. To me, it meant just a plain old "I want to get to know you, possibly in a naked setting." A simple miscommunication.

Additionally, she was worried that if we do go out, when she goes to London and meets her ex, she might have feelings for him again. This reminded me exactly of what I told The Herbalist a few months back, only now our positions were reversed. And god help me, but I said to her the same thing The Herbalist said to me, with one caveat. I said that if she did, and told me, then we can at least attempt to work through it.

So yeah, I essentially gave her a blank check to cheat on me.

My reasoning was kind of sound. I told her I'd prefer she didn't, but if she does, well it's probably what I'd do (didn't say that), and they did date for 5 years. It's an idealistic view here, but I think if she at least tells me we can try to move on. If she doesn't, it's probably going to eat her up inside, and that'll end us pretty quickly. So it's kind of a "give it your best shot" deal. We ended that long 3 hour phone call with an agreement to think about it.

The next week we hung out was my birthday. She gave me some gifts and treated me to my favorite curry place, Samrat. Incidentally, I have taken almost every girl I've slept with to the same Samrat by Kabukicho. It's an easy way for a girl to gauge how close she is to seeing my dangling fruits. But I digress.

We went back to my place and just chatted in my cold room. This time I was able to hold her hand, probably because it was so damned cold. It was a private victory.

We talked so much that she ended up missing her train and just nonchalantly said that she'd sleep in my room until first train. The funny thing is, as soon as she said that she essentially went right to sleep. We were just laying down on my bed holding hands, and she closed her eyes.

Now, I didn't think anybody could fall asleep that quickly, so I figured she was just resting her eyes a little. I kissed her on the forehead and she smiled and made a little "mmm" noise for lack of a better description. So Acesfigured it was Go Time. I kissed her cheek and forehead a few times, each time yielding the same response. After 10 minutes I moved in for a peck on the lips. You see, my middle name is Danger. Aces Danger Magnumcrotch.

And apparently my nickname is "The Date Rapist" because it turns out she was asleep when I performed that maneuver. She woke up, and her eyes shot open before she pulled back and exhaled "Bikkuri!" I was quite embarrassed. I almost lost my wood. Almost. The last thing I want to do in a situation where the girl is forced to stay overnight is make things uncomfortable for her. But if you're ever going for that effect, then kissing someone when they're asleep and having them wake up to catch you red-handed is a surefire way to accomplish your mission.

We went to sleep after that little episode but woke up shortly thereafter, and this time I made sure her eyes were open.

The rest of the night was very fun. The end.

Well not entirely the end. We hung out most of the next day, acting couple-ish. And we met again this past weekend, pretty much every day, with her coming over to my place on Sunday for some Hikarigaoka Kouyou watching. That's not a euphemism; we actually did go to Hikarigaoka and look at some goddamned leaves. I'll put some pictures up one of these days.

The odd thing is, even though in my mind she's my girlfriend, so I'm giving up on other women, we haven't actually said we're going out. It was just implied, 3 times between midnight and 9am Sunday. I guess I should probably ask her about that at some point, but it does look kind of strange to have to bring up the question after we've shared the same bed.

Well, that's my important update. And now that I've gotten that out of the way, I have another one. I'll be back with that tomorrow.

2005-11-17T22:33:00.000-08:00

The Rape of The Pursuit of Knowledge

Goddamn. I don't think I've talked about my political stripes yet, because for most of what I discuss it's simply not that important. However, I feel comfortable telling you all that I'm pink as a leather slave's ass. I'm a liberal, and while this may fly in the face of David Horowitz's totally not insane theory of liberal re-education, I became so in spite of college, not because of it.

I don't want to go on a partisan rant here, however. Politics is such that even at the best of times both sides are minimizing negatives against them and trumping up how great such and such a plan is, or how downright fiendish an opponent's actions are. Even when you are correct, you are still an asshole.

I'm an American, so what I'm talking about below thankfully only affects my country. But I have to say, right now it's getting kind of fucked up over there. The world is catching a glimpse of our kitchen floor when the roaches don't fear the lights anymore. We've always had batshit crazy people living within our borders, just like any other country. Our crazies have their own reasons for being crazy, such as inbreeding and an obsession with that Marvel Comic Book superhero, Jesus Christman. Seriously, some people must be reading a different Bible than I remember, because the J-dog I know never laughed his ass off when hearing about torture and innocent people drowning.

Then again, Nascar hadn't been invented yet.

But nowadays their claws are finding purchase in our government and public sphere, and they're fucking things up, royally. This is the airing of grievances. I'll provide links to stories where I can.

Let's start off with Intelligent Design. I'm going to come out and say it right up front: The proponents are fucking NUTS. Not the people who adhere to the belief, but the proponents. Anybody is allowed to believe what they want. You can believe that some things in nature are simply too complex to have come about purely through evolution, and therefore an omnipotent creator (wink, wink) must have had a hand in things. That's fine. There's no proof to the contrary, right? Can't prove that God, er, the creator doesn't exist. No problem.

But using it as a fucking substitute for science? Fucking weak. It's a placeholder at best. It's saying that we don't know, at the current moment, how something happened, so we're giving up. Not "waiting to see" but actually giving up. You guys remember the idea of a real number line in geometry? How there are an infinite number of points because for any two, you can imagine a 3rd in between? This is the same shit. No matter what a real lab coat and spectacles scientist finds out, there will always be something that remains to be discovered, or a piece of a theory that doesn't yet fit, and the ID morons jump on it as if it disproves evolution.

But it doesn't. It just means we haven't yet found a missing piece. Maybe when we do, we'll see that evolution is actually wrong, and get a new theory. But that theory won't involve a sky fairy who sends hurricanes to poor people as punishment for having gay neighbors.

It's imperative to keep this shit out of school. It's Creationism dressed up as something with the word "intelligent" nearby because, well gosh, it just sounds so much smarter, you know? But there are two plain facts that just can not be squared with education.

1. It's a placeholder, and will discourage scientific pursuit.

How many scientists do you expect to come out of a school where they're taught that it's pointless to try to figure out how we developed, so don't even bother? And if you are saying, "Well those people wouldn't have been scientists anyway" you are plain wrong. The power of suggestion coupled with the path of least resistance (I don't have to study? Woo hoo!) can turn any genuine yet malleable student. It's a poison.

2. It's not even fucking science!

The ringleader of all this, a one Michael Behe, admitted on the stand in Dover (Day 11 afternoon, page 37) that, under his acceptable definition of scientific theory, motherfucking astrology would be admitted. I could probably argue that psychology classes aren't complete without a thorough discussion of physiognomy given his stringent definition of science.

It's perfectly fine to "teach the controversy" if you even want to call it that. But what that means is teach the accepted theory, and then teach the problems along with it and any other theories that fit the data better. This encourages students to do some sciencing of their own, to either fill the holes or find another theory. Something that can't even be tested (no hypotheses) is not a theory. Screaming "Aha!" every time there is evidence "against" evolution when your position is only unassailable because you have no goddamn hypothesis to prove wrong is just a waste of everyone's fucking time.

This wouldn't even be a problem, but for the fact that people can't separate beliefs from fact, and personal opinions from ones that should be mandated to all. There's a big difference between "Do you believe in ID?" and "Should it be taught alongside evolution?" Unfortunately many Americans can't seem to make that choice, because as we all know, if given the chance most people would love to impose their beliefs on others. That's why we elect our leaders, not pick names out of a hat.*

Goddamn I hate ID hacks. This wouldn't be filed under "politics" except it turns out that slightly more than 100% of politicians who support this inane bullshit are Republicans beholden to a small group of people who don't buy from Jewish stores because of "what them boys did to Jay-zus." Fuck.

If you want more information on ID, there are a lot of places to start. Here are a couple:

http://talkorigins.org - a great place to start
http://pharyngula.org - not ID-specific, but PZ does a great job of showing their agenda the proper way to grab its ankles
http://www.pandasthumb.org

There's a lot to dig through. I think one of the most important concepts to get is that the debate is so often mischaracterized by both sides, with people mistreating facts and ideas about evolution or ID. I probably even made a mistake like that above, but the meat of the argument is all there, no bullshit. This isn't about evolution not being 100% correct. It's about fake science hijacking school curricula, and the only reason it's got so much momentum is because uber-religious types want to teach Creationism to everyone at any cost, and they're backing this shit up because it's a perfect Trojan Horse.

*except when the Supreme Court elects our leaders, in which case any name out of any hat would have been better.

2005-11-15T23:31:00.000-08:00

Death on Rails

I know I promised a post on the other part of last week, but I'll wait until the results of the recount are in before breaking the news. Until that time, you have

RANT

Long-time readers will remember my fond experiences living under the same roof as a dysfunctional duo of Vietnamese oyaji. I fucking hated those guys, and the hatred was certainly not mitigated by finding one of them in my room one night, the lights turned off with him poised behind my door like he was going to rape and kill me (in no particular order). This was the guy who, a week after meeting me, informed me that Americans bombed his village (read: sleep with 1 eye open, white devil). I'm pretty sure he killed a few of us too.

Well they left a long time ago, and I thought I was rid of their rudeness and disgusting habits (blowing their noses on the floor in the living room?). Then the unthinkable happened: two more Vietnamese gentlemen moved in.

I didn't know they were Vietnamese at first, since one of them kind of looks like an odd Japanese man, if you squint hard enough. My first tip off was the staring, which I remember from the last pair. One of them always stares at me, and I can see it out of the corner of my eye, like he wants me to look over so we can, I don't know, have a romantic moment or two. It's creepy. And it's annoying. I know if I turn around and my eyes go anywhere near his personal space he's going to engage me in some kind of shitty excuse for conversation. Which reminds me.

They can't fucking speak any language known to man. I think they're even making up their native language as they go along. Certainly English and Japanese elude them, which would be fine if they only talked amongst themselves. But they don't. The other day I was minding my business, chatting to a friend online about the events I haven't told you about, when my friend Charlie decided to interrupt me. We had one of those comical misunderstandings, where he talked to me in pidgin English and told me rudely to get off the computer, but really meant to ask me how much he has to pay Yaji to use the computer. Oh it was humor, alright.

So far the biggest problem I have with these guys, to be honest, is their staring. It's driving me up the wall. They are boring. I don't want to talk to them. Creeping me the fuck out isn't going to change either one of those.

I suppose I have some anger issues with older men, now that I think about it. On the train this past week or two I've become a one-man oyaji punisher. I make those smelly, rude sons-of-bitches long for better days when 75 kilograms weren't pressing upon their vertebrae, and ribs were happily unencumbered by flying dragon elbows.

That's right. Flying Dragon Elbows.

Usually my routine on the train is this: If it's crowded, I pack myself in to allow others on the train, but at the same time being mindful of those I'm pushing against. I always grab a bar or strap to hold on to so that I don't fall into people when the train jumps off the goddamned tracks.

Here's a typical Japanese salaryman's routine: If it's crowded, he turns around. Then he proceeds to shove his saggy ass into as many people's crotches as he feels is necessary to assert the fact that he's getting on a goddamned train. He pushes people indiscriminately, and allows himself to be pushed by other oyaji behind him, like a fucking pile-on in a football game. Once he's pissed off everyone in his way, he makes a habit of stepping on feet that don't belong to him. He never holds anything that might provide stability, opting instead to seize life itself and go wherever inertia takes him. He also smells. That's probably a part of his morning routine.

I snapped recently. I couldn't stand it that I was the only one in a car who cared about others, always holding myself steady and making sure others around me were relatively comfortable. Any time the train bucked or shook, I'd get 20 people ripping into me from either direction, and nary a "sumimasen." Even this would be ok, if it weren't for the oyaji who actually resented the one guy keeping 20 falling passengers off of their cheap suits. They give me the eye if I have earphones on, even though I've tested and they can't hear them unless they are absolutely trying. They push me out of the way with their shoulders so they have a place to stand and kick my feet out. I'm only useful when I'm shielding them from other assholes who don't hold onto the straps. They think the train belongs to them. Well I've got news.

So does a Flying Dragon Elbow. To their ribs.

I have a new routine now. When I get on the train, I know I'm going to get pushed. What the pushers don't know is that I'm going to stop and hold my ground once I'm pressed up to someone. This has yielded many a satisfying "oomph" from behind me as these smelly fucks have to find another path to crushing people.

Then when the train is moving, I take note of who is being a prick and pushing me/trying to stare me down. I calmly point my shoulder and elbow in his direction. If the train stops/accelerates in his direction, I let go of the strap (oops) and make contact with his vital organs. If it forces him towards me, I hold onto that strap for dear life as he tries to bowl me over, and again make contact with his vital organs. Then I push back, because even holding onto that strap I'm bent somewhat uncomfortably (though I'm the least uncomfortable in our little game, admittedly).

Today some ass decided he didn't like my earphones. He turned and stared at me every few seconds with a scowl, despite the punk kids elsewhere whose headphones were blaring. He tried to push me out of his personal space, as if I had a choice in the matter, and at one point I was shoved behind him and, in victory, he tossed his head back, giving me a faceful of his greased hair. It was on.

I managed to maneuver back into position to his right just in time for a train stop that sent people from my right into me. I let go of the strap and transferred all of that weight right into him. He realized he was about to fall and grabbed a strap, which just made him bend like a smelly-haired boomerang instead. Oh, the sound of his feeble attempts at resistance.

He figured out what I was doing, of course, after it happened again. But Japanese culture being what it is, he didn't call me out on it. Instead he tried to join the game in the second half. When the train accelerated away from a stop, he let the people next to him push him into me, and got the wind knocked out of him when his soft belly met my strategically placed elbow. It was a game he couldn't win, but he tried a few more times. Even when the train was humming along, he'd attempt to move his feet into mine, or turn his shoulders to hit me. But when we got off at Shibuya, he was very, very careful not to push me out of the doors. It's quite a drop off the platform.

I know I'm probably overdoing it a little here, but the trains, man. They're fucking killer. Everyone drops any pretense of politeness once they get into a train station. My boss saw an old man chase an unaware high school girl and smack her on the head because she accidentally bumped into him on the stairs, for Christ's sake.

You know, I'm thinking now I should take the bus to work for a few weeks, just to cool down. I don't want my next post to be from a detention center...

2005-11-10T22:30:00.000-08:00

Adventures in English

It's established fact that I am a hypocrite. I prefer to think of it as my opinions evolving to take into account new experiences and evidence, really. But it all boils down to the same thing - I can say or do two wildly inconistent things and not even bat an eye. So if I say something below that I've seemed to be against in times past, well, damn. There, you've been warned.

Last Saturday my friend K (yes, I'm blatantly ripping off a Japanese novel) invited me to go out to Roppongi with him. One of his female friends, we'll call her Nova, wanted to introduce him to a friend of hers and see if they'd hit it off. It's the way things are "usually" done here in Japan - friends introduce you to other friends. I say "usually" because actually nanpa is just as popular, but it suffers a bad reputation. Personally I find it awkward to go out with someone with whom you already share a good friend. But that's me.

Anyway, he wanted another guy to be there because otherwise he'd be outnumbered 2-1, which is bad odds for this particular situation. He wouldn't be able to be alone with the new girl, if he liked her, and the presence of Nova would be kind of like a teacher looking over your shoulder during a test. I understood his dilemma, but I had one of my own.

"K, every time you introduce me to one of your female friends, she's 30 going on menopause with a face that induces a gag reflex."

Only the least superficial complaints from my corner. He assured me she was pretty, but just in case I had a few drinks at my Shibuya home-away-from-home before heading over there. I wasn't in a particular mood to make chit-chat, but I'd help him out. It's not like I had other plans.

When I arrived, they were already waiting for me at Almond. He was right, his friend was indeed very attractive. I was also partially correct, in that she was 31 years old, putting her a good 8 years above me. But I don't mind that either, as we all know so well. It's those 31 year-olds with Chlamydia that you have to steer clear of.

Unfortunately, disappointment was not far behind. K introduced me in Japanese, as he is wont to do, and they replied back in decent English. It turns out they had each been to America for many years, Nova for 7, and naturally had picked up on the language.

Now, before I sound more like an ass, let me explain something. My dislike/distrust of Japanese who speak good English is not something I came here with. I just have noticed that when someone insists on talking to me in English before giving me a chance to try Japanese, they are usually looking for a chance to try out their language skills. When they have great English ability, it turns into an impromptu lesson on my part. Even that wouldn't be bad if they could mask it with something interesting (humor, semblance of personality), like I suppose you could say I do, but many times that's not the case. I of course give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and don't immediately dismiss them as boring out of hand. But a warning is raised in my mind that this conversation could suck a fair amount of ass, so I should have on my running shoes.

So I was disappointed with that. As usual, the next questions were straight from page 4 of your English textbooks, including such beauties as "How long have you been in Japan?" and "Do you like it here?" Even in English some Japanese people never stray too far from the pack. I humored them with short answers, and then K and I forged a path to Vanilla.

When we got there, we picked up drinks and pulled up a table. Everyone chatted lightly for a bit until K decided to focus on his girl. This left me and Nova to work out a conversation. I'll admit, at this point I wasn't feeling up to the task. I was thinking about Lucy and the girl across from me was still asking basic questions about what I do, and where I live. Things don't get interesting until Chapter 15, when you learn the crux of all American humor - sarcasm. So it was a dry, humorless hour until both girls went to the bathroom.

Me: "K, I don't think she likes me. Darn."

K: "What? No, she told me you look like her ex-boyfriend, only you're much cooler."

Me: "When the hell did she tell you that? Besides, I'm not in the mood."

K: "Aces, pleeeease! Help me! If you are more aggressive, she'll make her feelings known."

Me: "...I guess. Are you sure you want me to be aggressive?"

K: "Yes!"

An hour later I was making out with Nova on the dance floor. Hey, she was hot!

The side effect was that we were out of K's hair, so he could focus on the girl he liked. They made plans to meet again for another date, and I made plans to meet Nova again. That last one was because I was equal parts drunk and horny by the end of the night. When I'm intoxicated and think someone's attractive (something of a causal relationship...) I do the damnedest things.

Well, two days ago was our date. I think it was one of the most boring dates I've ever had. This is a girl with whom I had made out from Saturday night into Sunday morning, but without the influence of a club atmosphere, she just wasn't interesting to me. She was still very pretty, but I noticed her personality more now.

For one, my fear of her being an English-teacher hunter was correct. The questions she was asking me to make conversation were really elementary. And when I'd talk back, she wasn't actually listening to what I was saying contextually, but grammatically. I could see the motors whirring, parsing subject, verb, object and everything in between. I was conducting a lesson.

Her own English was far better than my Japanese though, so I didn't want to hamper the conversation by switching. Which is good, because she later made fun of my Japanese indirectly. On Saturday we ran into one of our guest house friends, and he was really drunk. He and I have this running joke, where he adopts my way of speaking Japanese with a funny voice to make fun of me. Wednesday night at the izakaya, she said that he speaks Japanese really funny, and laughed at him. I told her it's actually how I speak, kind of. Then she asked to hear me speak again (she heard me joking to the waitresses at Vanilla) so she could, I suppose, laugh at me. Fat chance of that.

So anyway, the night was boring as all hell. I realized I didn't want to be there, but I thought I'd at least make it more comfortable for her. To this end, every time I made a joke or laughed, I initiated some kind of physical contact, like a touch of the arm or shoulder. She warmed up immediately, and there was less tension in the air.

She said that she was going to the gym on Sunday to exercise, and since I could see her arms and they looked normal, I decided to pretend to squeeze the muscle and joke about how strong she was. It's a really corny thing to do, and in America I wouldn't think of it, but in Japan they do it to me all the goddamn time, and I like to turn it around on them.

Bad move.

She recoiled, saying "no no no" and then, in a completely surprising move, said "Excuse you!"

There are a few English phrases I don't particularly like. I think I'm with a majority here when I say that some things you only say under a few restrictive circumstances. One of these is the term "Asshole." It's rarely a joking name, and if you want to jokingly call someone an asshole you have to be a good friend and say it with a lot of humor in your voice. Otherwise, it's an insult, plain and simple.

"You're a goddamn motherfucker, Aces" <- a joke, most probably

"You're an asshole, Aces" <- I must have crashed this man's BMW

Another thing that is deadly serious on most occasions is the retort, "Excuse you!" either said as an exclamation or with emphasis on the "cuse", a la Long Island or urban areas. You have to really say it the exact right way to make it not sting.

She didn't.

I completely soured on her in a matter of seconds. I know, she probably didn't realize she was making a mistake like that, but it was just one of those reactions. That coupled with the fact that we weren't having a lot of fun to begin with put me in a mood. I didn't know how to extricate myself from dinner, but didn't want to talk anymore. So I just stared outside most of the time, while she punctuated the silence with more dumb questions.

It's also worth noting that we were sitting next to each other, facing a window. The table was a table for 2 with the leg space sunk into the ground so you could sit on the floor comfortably. But our seats were as far from each other as possible, and the entire time we were talking earlier, her body was mostly facing the window, angled just a little towards me, which struck me as cold. All of this pushed me to finally give up, and when she asked me if I wanted to go home for the 3rd time, I said yes.

At the station, her last words to me were, "I'll email you later!" to which I replied a very dry "Thanks" and rolled my eyes, though I had already turned around by that time. I was rolling my eyes for my own benefit.

I don't think I'll be seeing this girl again. But this is only part of the story of the past 2 weeks. I'll get to the rest next time.

2005-11-06T21:51:00.000-08:00

What Friends are For

Last week I slept over at my close female friend's place. We have no romantic interest in each other, and she knows literally everything about my sex life. She pointed me to the clinic to get tested at. She heard my blood stories. She knows how many girls I've slept with. And she knows my sick sense of humor. I in turn know a lot about her, and though it's not quite as embarassing as the dirt she's got on me, that's to be expected. I lead a twisted life. Who bleeds out of their dick? Seriously.

I keep her informed about things going on with me, which usually involves a setup, a situation, and a horrible decision that snowballs into something amusing to those with short attention spans, myself included. My own father recently asked me if I was still dating the Brazilian shemale. That he said "still" was unnerving, and I expressed shock that he would think that. After all, I only wrote a handful of sentences on him/her a month and a half ago, and left it at that. Quote Dad, "Yeah but I read that paragraph four times."

The point is that she's as close a friend as I can get over here, at least in my own American terms. She had previously brought up the hypothetical, "Would you ever sleep with a close friend?" I joked that she and I wouldn't be able to stop laughing at the absurdity, and I'd probably go limp or just take a damn long time. This was right before she told me how she had, in fact, recently slept with Muscle Aaron. After sitting on that information for a month without him knowing, I finally got a chance to unleash a slew of jokes at his expense involving the sanitary condition of his fingers. It was good fun. This was 3 weeks ago.

So he was surprised and very relieved when I told him I had just followed in his footsteps.

My friend and I hadn't seen each other in a couple weeks, so we made plans to hang out Wednesday night at her place and drink. Thursday was a day off. I made it to her house around 10, unable to walk straight because I had not-so-secretly been buying myself a few rounds at my Shibuya hangout. We had another drink in her living room and talked. I updated her on Lucy, and I'm sure she updated me on something too. I hope it wasn't important, because I'll be damned if I remember. The drink she made me was weak though, so I was better in an hour.

We went upstairs to her room and just laid down and talked to each other a bit more. She had my futon spread out on the floor, but I suspect that was just for show. Because as I found out a little while later, her intent was not for me to sleep by myself.

And let me tell you, my prediction was 100% accurate. We laughed the entire goddamn time. I actually cracked tasteless jokes on many occasions, such as:

(while attempting to drunkenly pull her bra down and failing)
Her: Nice one, Aces.
Me: Hey, don't laugh. (whispering) I've never done this before.

Her: (laughing) Oh my god, Aces, what are we doing?
Me: Is that a trick question? We're fucking, from the looks of it. Want me to draw a diagram?

Her: Why aren't you saying anything? You're really quiet.
Me: Um...thanks? I like to do it stealthy, like a ninja.
Her: No, it's fine. At least you're not like "Fuck yeah!!!"
Me: Note to self...

and, of course, something I've always wanted to say:

Me: Goddammit, my own shit's all over me! Ugh!
Her: That's a lot!
Me: Dude, I think I just glued us together.
Her: Oh my god!

It was, I'd argue, the most fun two people can have when their pelvises are sharing the same space. Semantic parsing notwithstanding, of course. When I say fun, I mean on par with watching either a really funny movie or a really shitty movie with good friends.

After our final round, I said it would be better if I threw out the condom in her room trash instead of the bathroom because otherwise her father would want to know why she screwed a mary with a pink rubber. Damn clinic, not only do they give you the small ones, but they make sure you're embarrassed to use them by making the color as effeminate as possible. Even with the lights off you could see it. I was like one of those angler fish with the fluorescent light sticking out of them.

And afterwards, we realized that our friendship is not the kind that relationships are made of. We're friends of, I'd say, a different caliber than most girlfriend/boyfriend pairings. I'm glad I was able to relieve some of this tension from my dates with Lucy though. I could get a cheesy "that's what friends are for" line in but, oops, just did. Twice.

So, there you go. More about me than you probably wanted to know. Especially if I carry your genetic information (hey family!). I got to make jokes while having sex and not be thrown out of bed, which is on the list of things every guy should try before he dies. And I don't think our friendship has suffered, though I'll have to get back to you on that. Of course, if it has, then I'll have to rescind my recommendation. The contents of this page are subject to change.

2005-11-03T22:32:00.000-08:00

The Holy Grail

Hot damn it's been a while over here. I completely suck at updating. And it's not like I have just forgotten to update this whole time either. Rather, sometimes I wanted to write a post, but there was so much that had happened since the last one (on account of me failing to update earlier) that I had to abandon it because the post was all over the place. And of course the next time I felt the desire to write, even more had gone down, and I put the pen away. A vicious cycle, really.

But I have to start somewhere to get back into this, so here I go. It's work time, bitches.

When last I checked in, my bonus had been decided, and it was on its way to my bank account. That delicious transaction will be completed on the 10th of this month. I've already scouted medium-length leather coats and man-jewelry on which to waste this princely sum. Oh, and a computer. In the process of telling my job what specs I wanted for the computer (absolutely beastly, I do admit), they hit me with a friendly reminder - namely that this computer was so I could work at home, not play video games and watch porn simultaneously (the dual core Athlon I was shooting for and twin monitors tipped them off I suppose).

I even offered to front the difference between what they were planning to get and what I wanted, but they were still worried I would be using the PC for other things. So I said fuck it. I don't accept gifts with strings attached as a general rule. If you want me to do something, you ask me in a straightforward manner, and if there's nothing better on TV I'll do it. Unless it's work from home. Want me to put in an extra hour a day at home? Pay me 12% more and relocate me closer to work so I can still get 8 hours of sleep. Want 2 hours? You're going to have to deal with the porn multitasking. It's not negotiable.

Speaking of relocating, I'm moving to the posh Nakameguro area in a month or two. I've already got a roommate - Muscle Aaron. He adamantly refuses to pay what I affectionately term Rapekin (reikin for expats-in-hiding). I don't blame him. We'll already have to put down 400,000-600,000 yen (which according to my calculations is really only $23 and change. Fuck you, exchange rate). When you're putting those kinds of bills into a place, the last thing you want is to have to stick a further 400,000 into some random guy's pockets. This decision not to pay the gift money has limited our choice of places somewhat. We may technically end up living in Namakeguro, but it'll be a dump where postmen don't have regular routes. The saving grace is that it's only 10 minutes from Shibuya.

I suppose I have to mention girls for this to be a true post. Let me not disappoint. A lot has happened, and then again nothing has. I could say I added a couple notches on my headboard, were I keeping count (and I AM).

One girl whom I invited over to my place was seen by Muscle Aaron 2 days later with another guy. When I called her, only to laugh of course, since I took no offense, she said she couldn't talk at that time. Later in an email she said that she hated herself for sleeping with me, and is going out with someone else now (you don't say?). I actually had occasion to send a sarcastic barb to someone else based on their promiscuity. The pot and the kettle were fast friends, indeed. But it was fun, and cathartic. If she wants to out-playboy me, well be my guest. If you want to win the race to the bottom of the barrel, here, let me lend you my lead weights.

On the more serious side, and ain't karma a bitch, I'm fighting an uphill battle to go steady with Lucy. We've gone out every Sunday since about 7 weeks ago, and always all day, and yet I've not once held her hand or kissed her. On our 3rd date, as I believe I wrote a month ago, I asked her out. She politely refused, saying she wasn't ready yet. Key word "yet" which is more than enough for any guy to continue his quest.

Then on date 5, I brought up her response, and asked for clarification on exactly what it meant. See, that was meant to be our last date, because I wasn't going to be kept on a waiting list for eternity. That was the day I found out she broke up with her ex in April after 5 years of dating, and they only broke up because he moved to England to work and study English. I asked her if that's why she was going to England this Christmas (no shit, I know) and she said he was just going to show her around, and she's also spending time with a friend from high school in Germany and France for a week.

So anyway, I got what I thought was a straightforward answer from her about why she said no to me earlier. She thought that after 3 dates, if she said yes, I'd think she was an easy girl (or maybe it was, she figured I thought she was easy because I asked, and so she said no. Goddamn Japanese language mocking my imperfect grasp of it). She said we didn't know enough about each other, and I didn't know about her ex, which she deemed an important nugget of knowledge. I see why, now.

But seriously, we have to define some terms. Easy for me is if, after 10 minutes we're making out and after 30 we're on our way to a hotel. If I make it to 3 dates with no hand holding, that's not easy, it's clinically dead.

Even though she seemed like she doesn't want a relationship unless it's with the ex, I pressed on. Surely after making my intentions plain as day ("Be my girlfriend") a decent person who had no desire to reciprocate would either tell me to fuck off, not return my emails/phone calls, or make clear to me in the same language that we are nothing other than friends. I know this is probably part of my cultural learning over here, and eventually I'll have a Sixth Sense moment and realize that oh shit, she was telling me we're just friends the entire time!

Last weekend at Korakuen I thought we were making headway, actually. She held onto me on the rides and through the "haunted house" bullshit. And when I grabbed her hand and went to watch the fountain symphony, she actually held my hand back. Of course I was so surprised I didn't get a kick in the nuts or something that I failed to see the other couple coming towards us, and quite romantically ran into them. Slight moment-killer, that. She escorted me to my station entrance (the Marunouchi entrance was apart from the Chuo one) and I awkwardly hugged her goodbye. In romantic currency I'm still dealing with coins, but it's better than the monopoly money I use with club acquaintances.

Also highlighting that night was that she said she wanted to go to Hakone with me. On my birthday no less (November 12th for those of you who want to sing me some sexy 10,000 yen notes). However, last night she said that she looked at Hakone prices and it was too expensive. 20,000-30,000 for an overnight stay and train. I told her no big deal, that's easy to do (bonus, motherfuckers!). Her reply was a chilling, "Well it's ok for you, but it's too much for me to pay." Translation: separate rooms. Then she unleashed another gem. "I have to save up for London, but when I get back and have more money we can go." Translation: $2000 for my ex is doable, but being in the same room with you for free, or paying $200 to hang out in the same vicinity as you, is not.

I'm not sure whether she said that because of the obvious relation I would draw from it or not. She had also said earlier that she only exchanges Christmas presents with a boyfriend. Later she asked for my home address in America, and when I inquired why, she said so she could send a Christmas card. A card is quite different from a present. I would give a card to a coworker who always tried to look over my shoulder when I was taking a leak (Merry Christmas! Don't hang yourself from the tree, sick fuck!).

Hm, in typing all this I'm starting to realize I've got no goddamn chance. Well, weblog, you've come in handy!

Still, we're meeting on Sunday. This time though, I'm pulling no punches. If I try to take her hand and she recoils, I'll explain politely at the end of the night that we can't see each other any more. I need a female Japanese friend like an oyaji needs a Luis Vitton purse. Which is to say, so I can get other girls with it.

But seriously, we are friendly, just not in a best friend sort of way. I have come to a little realization in the past 2 days. Previously I have expounded on how to me, a perfect girlfriend has to also be an incredible friend. Well folks, that's horse shit. She can be a good friend of course, but will always be a different sort of friend than, say, The Future Father of my Children (Ben). It's taken me 23 years to realize that.

The thing that changed my mind just happened a couple days ago, so I'm turning it over, waiting for aftershocks that will disprove my theory, and then I'll spit it out for your consumption. But it's a wholesome tale for the entire family, except your grandmother with the heart condition. And you know that I've long since thrown out any "decency standard" for this little page. For Christ' sakes, my Dad called me up the other day to ask me if I was still going out with the Brazilian shemale. When I pointed out that I only mentioned kissing him/her in one paragraph, he replied that, well, he read that paragraph 4 times. Touché.

Marathon is on November 27th in Tsukuba. If you want to see someone have a heart attack while running, you'll never have a better chance than at 12:45pm around mile 17. Not me, of course. I'll be the guy losing control of his bowels on the side of the road. But I'm sure people die during these things, so I figured I'd give you a heads up, morbid sons of bitches.

2005-10-08T05:49:00.000-07:00

Bonus, bitches

I had my performance review on Thursday, wherein it was judged that I had gone above and beyond my obligations to my job. The way my bonus structure is set up, I would have to score like 150/100 possible points, where points are awarded for objectives completed out of a max of 100, in order to get the full bonus. Which means I would have to not just be a damned good employee, I`d have to invent cold fusion and a time machine and be able to demonstrate it on an FPGA using minimal power and 100,000 slices.

Well, I came close, but time travel eludes me. So I only received 120 points. That was more than I expected though so I`m quite happy. No idea whether I`m getting a raise on top of that, as was promised in February and again in April, but I can wait to find that out. You guys should see this formula my job uses to figure out how to go from points awarded -> $$ received. It`s a fucking multi-variable quadratic equation. You need like 5 dimensions to plot the damn thing. And they use substitution pretty heavily, so you can`t directly compute the variables. You have to first figure out these minor variables that are then combined into one of the variables actually used in the equation, or frequently into other minor variables..

Getting the bonus reminds me why I`ve been saving up 100,000 yen a month for the past half year (though in reality I only have 500,000 in the bank now, thanks to my parents not allowing a photo of me as an acceptable substitute at the dinner table this Christmas). I`d say, not knowing much about the ways of money, that I`m doing pretty well for myself. With the extra money I`m getting in my November pay check, I will have enough to do lots of stupid things, like buy a motorcycle or move into a posh apartment in Naka-Meguro with a friend. Or get a plasma TV. I don`t need a computer, since my job wants to buy me one for home. And the price they said they`d be willing to pay - 300,000 yen; $3000 in my simple conversion - is more than enough for me to get a damn good system. A gaming system. Mmmm...video games...

This talk of video games reminded me of my date last week. It went perfectly. We saw the dolphin show at Shinagawa Aqua Stadium, and then made the last ferry to Odaiba while the sun was setting. I`m such a romantic motherfucker. We walked along the beach and went to that park by the Rainbow Bridge, where it was just us two for a few hours. Then we went to an Indonesian restaurant, since she said to me earlier that she likes Indonesian food. And she decided to pick up the bill. I had no problem with that. I have learned enough here to know that I never voluntarily pay for someone, because the odds for me that I`ll see them again are fairly small.

We spent 10 hours together, but in that entire time I didn`t even hold her hand. The couple times I accidentally (no, really) grazed her hand with my own, she moved her hand away. In fact, I almost thought that one time she said "dame" though I forget what we were talking about at the time so it could have been relevant to the discussion. It just struck me as odd that when I honestly wasn`t trying to hold her hand, this happened, but then when I joked about being horrible at massage she asked me to give her one, and then gave me a neck massage in return.

Anyway, at the end of the night I committed a dating faux pas. I had a legitimate reason, I think. See, on the train ride home she seemed really tired, and I realized I had blown any chances of finding out whether she wants to go out as more than friends or not. The end of the date isn`t a good time for that anyway. But it`s something I wanted to know, because if we were still in the getting to know each other phase, well there were 4 other girls in my phonebook who were already past that stage that I could be spending time with when not out with this girl. I`d drop them for a girlfriend happily, of course, which is why I decided, after we had parted, to email her and ask what we were.

I can only get flack for this from other foreigners. Japanese people don`t have a leg to stand on when it comes to having important discussions through keitai emails. She took a long time in responding, and when she did, it was a long email about how much fun she had, and how she actually had not thought about what we were. Then she asked, "私は友達だけじゃないって考えてくれてるの？" Pardon me for my Japanese, but I translated the くれる as a good sign (since confirmed by some natives), and responded in kind. She initially thought I was joking, since it was through email, but said that while she likes me, it`s still too early to go out. A polite rejection. I rebounded and said fine, let`s just go out again next weekend and keep seeing more of each other. She agreed, which was, and still is, kind of strange.

See, if a girl doesn`t like a guy, and he lets it be known that he likes her, she can do a couple things. First, she can tell him to fuck off. Second, she can politely reject him, and then never return his emails. In fact, she can even say that she does like him, and never return his emails. Both of these conclude with the guy never meeting the girl again - it would be awkward otherwise.

Now, if the girl likes the guy, she has two choices again. She can say yes, let`s go out. Or, as in this case, she can have some excuse for why she can`t right now. That excuse could be a bad breakup recently, or something like that. But none of my female friends could think of a reason why a girl would say no to a guy if they liked him, unless there was some crazy other factor, like another guy in the picture too.

Unfortunately that`s what we have here. She`s going to London for a month from December to January, where she`s lodging for most of the time with her ex-boyfriend. That doesn`t sound like a messy breakup to me, and in fact it sounds like they`re still quite a bit friendly. That she and I email every day and she`s going out with me again all day tomorrow means, to my cynical side, that she`s not sure what to do and wants to hold on to her backup. Fair enough though, since that`s essentially what I do every Friday. I can`t hold it against someone that they have their own interests in mind. In fact, it makes it easier for me to go out and meet other people, since I know that not only am I taking care of myself, but she`s taking care of herself too. It does make relationship talk a little difficult though. Cross that bridge later.

Since she`s coming over tomorrow, I have to do a little cleaning up. I was thinking just rearranging my stuff, since I vacuumed on Thursday night. But then I remembered why I vacuumed Thursday - the girl from Heartland, cute one of the trio, decided to spend the night a couple days ago, and I needed to clean my room for her. Realizing that, I took a little look at my tatami and saw, much to my dismay, that it was covered with 7" black hairs. The kind of thing that guys never notice, but girls pick up on immediately. And my sheets have a suspicious stain or two on them, so I`m flipping my futon. Good thing I have my shit together.

I`m looking forward to tomorrow, and the day off I have Monday. I`m also looking forward to another rant about idiots in politics. One doucherrific line of thought I`ve been hearing a lot lately comes from supposed "centrists." These morons say shit like, "If the war in Iraq is illegal or immoral, then I will oppose it" - just about as vacuous a statement as can be made. It`s a CYA utterance. I would hope they would oppose something like a war that was illegal. But they make no effort to stir up interest in figuring out if it was illegal in the first place. You can`t honestly say you care about whether something is legal or illegal if you always avoid the issue. Do they just expect someone to come up with evidence in one direction or another one day, right the fuck out of the blue?

"Oh, look what I just stumbled upon in my rose garden - a signed confession from GWB saying how he started the war in Iraq because he hates the color brown and anything brownish, like sand and Arabs! I guess now I oppose the war in Iraq. Too bad I`m a little late in the game, and the region from Cairo to Bombay is a giant crater."

If you don`t want to be an enabler, saying things like "If someone else does all the hard work, in spite of the fact that because of people like me there doesn`t seem to be any popular support for that work in the first place, then I`ll reconsider my opinion" isn`t going to cut it. And besides, who the fuck goes into a war, admits their ignorance as to the reasons we`re in that war, and has the opinion by default that the war is legal? That`s actually quite scary that there are people who can say "I don`t know enough about it to know whether we should even be there or not" but instead of denouncing it or at least demanding more information, they tacitly agree that we should be at war. Does that make sense? If I`m not sure whether to dump my savings into some suspicious stock, I don`t invest anyway as my default action, and then say "Well in a few years if someone voluntarily comes up to me, personally, and says that stock was a mistake, I`ll pull out, no harm no foul!" Fucked up, my country.

That`s my thought for the day, anyway.

2005-10-01T18:15:00.000-07:00

The Checklist

I`ve been less than a perfect site updater recently, and so instead of the usual diatribe that I love to deliver and you pretend to tolerate, I`m going to have to fall back to my old style of posting just to catch everybody up on the news.

So remember the questionably-gendered Brazilian I mentioned meeting last week? The one who was left in the dust while I scrambled up the stairs shouting "Nyuk nyuk nyuk!" because she tried to get me to pay for her drink? Well, I relayed the story to one of my friends, and I was left quite humbled about the affair. Here`s how the conversation went.

Aces: "Hey Muscle Aaron, I`ve got a story for you dude. You know 911? Well last week, the hot blonde girl..."
MA: "You mean the one with the big fake tits?"
Aces: "Um...yes, so anyway..."
MA: "You mean the shemale?"
Aces: "..."
MA: "..."
Aces: "Fuck."

Of course, having started the story, I had to finish it, and I was really glad my boss was in tow at the time so he could also laugh at my idiocy. You know, because it`s not like I have to face my boss 5 days a week for half a day or anything. And I certainly don`t have a performance review next week either, which will decide my new pay structure.

"Well Aces, your work was ok, but you`ve shown yourself to be prone to making horrible decisions, and that`s a liability for the company. Let`s try an analogy - I`m a movie company, and you`re one step away from becoming Eddie Murphy. You`re fired."

Also on Friday, I hatched a plan whereby I would get back at the bar girl at the club I frequent, the one I had asked out and who never returns my emails. I invited the girl I`m going out with today to the club (we`ll call her Lucy Liu since apparently that`s who she looks like). My hope was that bar girl would see us and become jealous, but Japanese custom being what it is, she would not say anything untowards to madame Liu. Kids, let this be a lesson - never go out of your way to make someone jealous.

I walked in the bar alone and was mauled by Bar Girl, who latched onto me and held my hand, saying how she missed me. This was my first clue that I had entered Topsy Turvy World. My second was the obscene amount of alcohol on her breath. She`s 90 pounds going on 85, so it only takes a couple drinks to get her smashed. When I walked in she was beyond that point. And throughout the night I watched her take shot after shot, until she actually had to be put in a taxi and sent home, oh, around 9:45pm.

But anyway, before all that, she was all over me. She wouldn`t let go of my hand, though I`m sure a big reason for that was her inability to balance on two feet, and an uncanny knack for falling over and breaking things. I was thinking my plan was going to backfire, but I wasn`t sure how badly. After a few minutes I got the call to pick up Lucy, and returned shortly thereafter with her.

Bar Girl was jealous. I know because, in front of Lucy, while holding my hand and kissing my neck, she said as much. I gave the "I have no idea what`s going on" hands to Lucy, hoping that might alleviate any problems due to this drunken vixen who was now spooning me, or at least give me plausible deniability. Bar Girl also, in a startling breach of etiquette, asked us point blank if we were boyfriend/girlfriend, though Lucy played it well (by well, I mean she didn`t vigorously shake her head no and blow a snot rocket onto the floor, as if the very idea that we`d be a couple could cause gooey buildup in her sinuses). Bar Girl also tried to make out with Lucy, and nibbled her ear nonstop the entire night. Oh, when I say it was fun, I mean they had to remove all sharp objects from my nearby area.

Of course, I had to stop by yesterday to make sure she was ok, and she remembered very little of the previous night. Including where she told me she was jealous. So my plan didn`t work at all, and now Lucy suspects I am a playboy. That`s something I was going to tell her on Date 5: After We`ve Consummated Our Lust.

Lucy had to go home at 10, so the rest of the night was spent at Heartland in Roppongi with my boss and Muscle Aaron. You know, I hate Heartland. I hate it like a kidney stone that you start to piss out, but just when it`s at the tip you lose pressure, and the ensuing vacuum causes it to go back into your insides, where you`ll have to endure the torture of trying to pass it again, at a later date. Fuck Heartland.

But I can`t say we didn`t have fun there on Friday. Aaron and I were nanpa`d twice just sitting down. I got one of the girls` numbers but didn`t follow them to the club they were heading off to. Instead Muscle Aaron and I turned around after they left, only to find my boss was actually talking, in Japanese, to two decent-looking girls. Our jaws hit the floor. This has literally never happened.

Well girl 1 was apparently trying to hook my boss up with her friend, girl 2, so she switched places with him so he could be in the middle, talking to girl 2. I told Muscle Aaron I would be a gentlemanly wingman and sat next to the other girl to talk to her, thereby relieving the pressure on my boss so he could concentrate on his girl. Within 10 minutes we were making out, but a quick look at my boss and the girl he was talking to indicated that his conversation had run dry, and she was actually telling him, a few times, that she was sleepy. The 3 of us decided to leave this place so my boss could eject gracefully, which he kind of did, though he bitched at me for taking the prettier girl. I think he meant "easier" but we spend so much time in Japan our English skills aren`t what they once were.

When we got to my normal Roppongi club, the girl from before at Heartland called me to say that she and her 2 friends wanted to hang out with us. We met and headed into 911, against my wishes of course (refer to last week at 911) where the girl who called me and I started kissing. She was keen on meeting again, and wanted to go back to my place to spend the night. However, I had to decline, since my place smells like shit when the AC isn`t on, and the AC hadn`t been on all day. She said no problem, we`ll hang out tomorrow, and then yanked one of her friends from her dance with my boss, and the 2 of them took a taxi home. My boss was, again, nonplussed. We went home shortly thereafter, him probably wanting to shank me the entire time since he thought I had screwed him over twice in one night.

Saturday, I wasn`t supposed to go out again. In fact, the girl from Heartland/911 who wanted to stay overnight with me was supposed to call me and go out, but we both overslept and made plans for next week instead. This left me free to go back to Roppongi after checking up on Bar Girl`s health.

Before I could do anything, though, I had a Tokyo Experience. It`s one of those things that every foreigner goes through when they`re in Tokyo. You can probably make a score-card and keep track, checking off these things as you go. For example, one would be "You get on a train and when you sit down, the people on either side of you stand up and move," or possibly "You speak Japanese to someone and they either respond in English (despite you not being an English speaker) or ask you to repeat yourself multiple times until they can get their head around you speaking Japanese."

Yesterday was "You get approached for a modeling gig because you are gaijin." I used to have a photo of myself on my old page, but if you didn`t get to see it, let me describe myself: not a model. And I`ve seen some of the "models" in Tokyo of foreign descent, and with the exception of my Polish friend, who is one sexy motherfucker, I`m not too impressed with the quality. That, on top of the fact that apparently some poor sap thought I`d make a good model, makes this almost an anti-compliment. You know, to paraphrase Groucho Marx, I don`t want to be in a club that would have me as a member.

It happened as I was going into my Shibuya hangout. A Japanese guy asked me if I was a model, and then after getting laughed at he asked me if I was interested in becoming one. He took my information, though I don`t even know my weight in pounds now so I couldn`t tell him how many kilos I am. Then he took my photo a couple times. Now, I really doubt I`m anywhere near model material, so there is a good probability that he is just some guy who goes around and takes pictures of people he likes, then stalks them/harasses them/jerks off to their photos in his sex dungeon.

He said the auditions were today, Sunday, but I told him I had a date and couldn`t make it. He`ll show my photo to his "boss," probably a man distinguishable by his assless leather chaps and furry white boa, and if I`m good enough to skip that audition they`ll call me.

You know, now that I look back, I really think he`s beating off to that photo he took of me.

After Shibuya Muscle Aaron and my boss and I again went to Roppongi and Heartland. I was nanpa`d again, which to me is scientific proof that the national average eyesight is something quite different from 20/20. This time it was by proxy. A girl thought I was cute and her friend came over to pick me up, unbeknownst to the original friend. We talked a bit in English, since she lived in Texas for 8 years, and I decided to have fun with my answers to her questions. I refused to tell her what I do for a living, waving the question away with a sly smile. You have to be careful with that smile however, since it can degenerate into a sleazy pedarest smile if you don`t have complete control over your facial muscles. And nobody wants to look like a pedophile when they`re telling someone they can`t divulge the secret of their job.

She went home a few minutes later, after forcefully exchanging numbers with me, and I went back to my friends. Again, 3 girls came up to us to ask us to go to a club with them, but Muscle Aaron and I were quite content where we sat. However, the prettier of the 3 was trying to hook up my boss with her friend, so we practically forced him to go with them. He was like a stubborn child going to get a tooth drilled or something, dragging his feet, but I think it worked out in the end for him. He called me later to say he got the girl`s number, and had I not been sleeping, I might have thrown a mini celebration.

That was my weekend. Heartland is the only place I know of where guys get hit on more than girls. I have a date in a few hours that I put a lot of consideration into (that`s a measure greater than 0) with Lucy Liu, and hopefully that will turn out alright. Hell, I missed a model audition for her (/sarcasm). How was everyone else`s weekend?

2005-09-26T05:19:00.000-07:00

Hurricane Dumbfuck

Some of the Christian faithful see images of Jesus in, say, an oil tanker or a piece of cheese. Or occasionally he shows up in a taco or a toilet. I don`t know, there have been so many sightings it`s hard to keep track. But they all had one thing in common - they were pitifully small, hardly worthy of the Almighty`s time or effort. But this most recent one, well, I`ll let you be the judge.

That`s what I`m talking about. You`re looking at the J-Dogg`s holy nizzle, his begotten-child maker, if you will. This is a Jesus sighting on a massive scale. If wars are fought in part due to male size inferiority complexes, then we`re only a couple weeks shy of an all out game of nuclear hot potato. This is the evidence of Intelligent Design that ~~absolutely no one~~ everybody has been looking for. Or it`s just an image of Hurricane Rita taken a few days ago.

Speaking of hurricanes, I have been meaning to write a bit about Katrina, but due to concerns of mine (this blog is the wrong place, I`m not a pundit, etc) I held off for a while. However, in the aftermath, and with Rita headed into Texas (I have no idea how it went, by the way), a lot of absolute fucking idiots crawled out of the woodwork to comment on the people who were affected and essentially blame the victim.

If there`s one thing I can`t stand, it`s assholes making assholes of themselves because they use asshole logic. So let`s straighten some things out, and also use a bit o` brain power to settle the record.

#1. In the US today, there is very little overt racism, as such. The determining factor in whether someone hates you or not is not usually race, but class. Now, historically, due to prior government sanctioned racism, certain minorities are more likely to be in a lower economic class than others. So when someone says George Bush hates, oh, I don`t know, black people, they are only partially correct. Now, if one wants to say that it is the failure of government to address these historic inequalities, thereby reinforcing certain prejudices and continuing a cycle of poverty, lack of opportunity and de facto racism, then I won`t stop them. Because it`s true. Is affirmative action the answer? No clue. I solve one world crisis a day, and that ain`t it. But it`s not racism that drives that government, it`s classism.

#2. This tired argument:

Katrina victims should have left before the hurricane. I have no sympathy for them.

First, I`m sure what these people mean is that they have no extra sympathy for them. It`s hard to imagine someone callous enough to say they don`t care about hundreds or thousands dying. And the implication here is that not only do they have no sympathy, but they are blaming the victims. Cold heart, indeed.

But let`s run with this. You have no money and no food or water. You hit the road and...die of deydration or heat stroke a few days later, tired from all the walking which has drained you of energy that could have been used to keep you for up to a week. A worse case scenario? Sure. But it`s as real as, say, drowning. And actually, isn`t there supposed to be food and water for us over there...?

#3. Hi. I`m FEMA. On my publicly accessible web page I declare that I am the primary relief effort for national disasters. That means that when the hurricane was declared a national disaster, it was up to me to come in and provide relief immediately. Thousands of people were waiting for me. In fact, in their minds, and RIGHTFULLY SO, it was much safer to go to the 2 relief centers and get water and food from me than it was to go roughing it with nothing in unfamiliar territory.

You see, it`s all fine to say now, after the fact, that they should have hiked to the nearest town that wouldn`t get assfucked by nature. Because now we know that there was no food or water for these people, and instead there were unsanitary conditions and lawlessness. But we can`t fault them for believing in the government that said it would be there for them. Come on, this is a fucking trust exercise. I did it in the Scouts or something. One person stands behind you and says fall back, I`ll catch you, and you trust them. If you fall on your ass, it`s their fault. Pretend it was for a really wicked merit badge or something so that there`s gravity to the decision. I suck with analogies, alright?

#4.

That means the federal government failed, so shrink it!

Fucking. A. I don`t care what your politics are. Really, I don`t. You could be as pink as my ex-girlfriend`s panties or the demon that controls Grover Norquist, because I`m not arguing that the federal government needs to change sizes. I`m pointing out a ridiculous argument. There may indeed be a reason that FEMA and other federal departments and programs need to be cut, I plead ignorance, but this is not it.

If someone (Bush) places an incompetent or 3 in top positions in a federal emergency group (I`m looking right at the horse litigator, Brown, here), then of course that agency is going to fail. You want an unstoppable argument to cut FEMA? Put the best of the best in charge, someone who doesn`t lie on their resume or get invited to resign from their last job, and if it fails then, you have a case on your hands.

Don`t be a dick and fall into fallacious arguments just because they serve your agenda.

Also, I provided no links because it takes time, and it`s late over here. My eyes suffer past 7pm and I can`t read for shit (I`m essentially typing blind right now). You want something, look it up.

2005-09-24T08:54:00.000-07:00

Down Memory Lane

I met a girl last week who, in my drunken state, I figured would be fun to hang out with. You see, drunken reasoning is very different from, say, that of a sober man. For one, logic doesn`t enter into the equation. It`s like playing a card game without looking at the cards, in a way. Or rather, you can see the cards, but I`ll be damned if they don`t all look like Kings.

Anyway, we agreed to meet again tonight, in Shibuya no less. I know my way around Shibuya quite well by now. *cough* Dogenzaka *cough* Nothing could go wrong.

Those are famous last words. The night was abysmal. First off, she definitely wasn`t a 4 of a kind. We`re talking maybe high two pair here. Alcohol has failed me yet again. But I was determined to continue with the date, not letting something like taste or standards get in the way.

We basically ate and then went to a hotel, which took a lot of unnecessary convincing and traditional Japanese dancing around the subject. 30 minutes of "I don`t know what to do" and "Where do you want to go?" and all that crap. We were supposed to see a movie but couldn`t find the theater, so we didn`t have a plan after eating. She was really shy, and even though last week we did everything under the sun except for sex, she wouldn`t even hold my hand this time. We agreed to go to the hotel but not have sex, since apparently she only does that when she has a boyfriend. To each his own. I have no problem with that.

What I do have a problem with is being the one who pays for a hotel when I`m not getting laid. If we`re just going to sit around, we split the bill - it`s the same as if we had gone to karaoke or pool or something. But she hung in the background while I fronted the money to the man behind the counter. And on top of that, when we did start fooling around, she didn`t reciprocate. She just laid back like a dead fish. A dead fish with 5000 yen more than me.

She also forgot my goddamn name.

Let`s recap: I paid for a hotel with a girl who wasn`t that attractive, didn`t get laid, didn`t even have fun (opting instead for blue balls, due to her aversion to touching certain appendages), with a girl who didn`t even know my name. And to top it all off, the room was the exact same one that I spent with Mei (Lady in Red from my old page) the second to last time I met her. The time she let me take photos that I can`t post here. So I was reminded of how great an experience I had the last time I was in that room, and how bad the current one was. How far I have fallen, thought I.

The ride home was punctuated by absolutely nothing. We barely spoke, because she became shy as soon as we left the hotel again. And she got off the train without saying goodbye, something that prompted me to write a fairly rude email to her. I didn`t send it (yet) because she emailed and called an hour later, kind of apologizing but not really. I don`t mind not having sex, and I don`t mind paying for someone, and I don`t mind if I do all the work even. But I do mind all of those at the same time. It`s a bit off-putting to me. Maybe I`m old-fashioned.

I also met a beggar who accosted me in Shinjuku 2 months ago. He got me while I was waiting for the girl at Hachiko this time. Nice guy, writes some poetry or something, and he`s always telling me about women who have done him wrong. He had advice for me today that I should have heeded, namely that I should bolt if ever a girl makes me pay for her (Technical Note: I followed that advice on Friday, which is why I never found out about the shemale). I guess if you`re homeless you could have a lot of wisdom built up from the bad mistakes you`ve made. Either that or he just really has it in for women.

But it`s ok in the end. See, I`m meeting the girl I actually want to date next weekend. We went out last week and had a lot of fun. One of those real dates I so rarely go on these days. In fact, I`ve only gone on them with 2 other girls, and both of them I ended up going steady with. Were I a smarter man, I`d say that it seems I do better when I don`t rush things the first time we meet. But I don`t think that the reason my past 2 girlfriends didn`t go to a hotel with me on our first date was because I didn`t ask. You know, because I actually did ask for one of them.

In any event, I`m off to bed now. More on my theory of dating, a flawed work in progress, a little later.

2005-09-22T11:51:00.000-07:00

It's Raining Men

Oh sweet baby Jesus, I think I just kissed a shemale.

I haven't been to Roppongi's 911 bar/club in a while. I remembered there's a reason or two that I avoid it like the plague. Perhaps it's the low, low quality of females in there. Or maybe it's the fact that even in the dead of winter, it's hot as the devil's dick in that place. If you aren't standing under an air conditioner with an ice cube shoved up your ass, you're sweating bullets. Fucking place is packed all hours of the day with people who run cool at 110 degrees.

But there was another reason I don't like 911, and unfortunately it took a very drunk me tonight to recall that reason. See, every time I go in there, there's always been this one very buxom blonde who has given me the eye. Every goddamn time. She seems too good to be true though, like an oasis in the middle of a desert (quite the appropriate analogy in a place such as 911, where the bottom of the barrel just isn't deep enough). It's uncanny that she manages to find me in this throng of people where I can't even see the bar, but without fail I notice her staring at me with come-fuck-me eyes if she's there, and sometimes if I'm not looking for it she'll even pinch my ass. I've always ignored her, though not because I don't like attractive women hitting on me.

No, it's because I think she's a he.

Laugh if you want. I've seen drag queens pull off better than her. Her ass and legs scream "man on the swim team" like you wouldn't believe.

Well today, drunk and alone, I wandered into 911. And who should seek me out but Rupaul itself. God, the things alcohol will do to you. Instead of cutting a quick exit out the door, I actually stayed and...dare I say...danced with her. We all know what me dancing with some girl entails, so don't think this was like your grandmother's line-dancing either. No, I was verifying with my own hands whether those were silicone or not, and trying in vain to find out if she had a special male part.

Is there a tranny school I'm unaware of? Do they teach you how to hide your Woodrow Wilson so that it appears you've just got an Oval Office? Because for the life of me I couldn't find the trouser snake, though I also failed to discover the path to the center of the earth. I was also drunk, so cut me some slack. I graduated with a BA in Math and Computer Science, not Junk-Grabbing.

Anyway, It was telling me all about how It lives only 5 minutes away, and we can have some fun, etc. It and I periodically kissed, but something about that kiss felt like I was frenching my brother. Brunz, if you're reading this, know that the vomity taste you just got in your mouth will be in mine for a long, oh so long time.

I went to another club with It, where It made a terrible mistake of trying to test out how far I was willing to go for It. See, with normal girls, ones I can verify have functional reproductive organs that compliment my own, I'll try to do my best to make sure they stick around. But if it's a tossup between "pretty hot" and "probably packing some heat", I'm going to have to side with the choice that isn't going to result in me waking up in the morning bleeding out my asshole with a big dirty man-dick sharing the same sleeping space as me. See, I play it motherfucking safe.

So she/he/whatever was in the bar, and ordered a drink. Then It asked me if I want one. Well that would be a negative, captain. See, I was so plastered I figured another drink at that time would be a waste of money - it would just come right back out, only this time with the not-so-subtle hint of bile. She insisted I get something to drink, probably hoping I'd order some strong, numbing drink like Long Island Iced Tea or maybe General Anesthesia with Lemon so that I wouldn't notice the sausage crushed between her legs. But I refused.

So she said ok, then pay for my drink. While I verbally rejected this unilateral decision by the People's Republic of Dangly Parts, she still ordered, and then when the drink came, tried to make me pay. Oh, the look on her face when I said "Fuck that." You'd think I had found the spot she missed shaving that morning. She turned her back, a very manly back I might add, and slowly reached into her wallet while the server girl looked on, wondering what was going on.

I took this opportunity of her not looking at me to bolt right the fuck out of that bar. I mean fast. I was up the 15 or so steps in 3 leaps, and I didn't stop running until I was in my safehouse down the street. In a drunken stupor I reflected upon what had just happened, and shuddered as I realized what might have actually happened had she not tested me with that "buy me a drink" shit. Honestly, I might have tried to fuck a shemale.

I don't have any proof that she was a guy. I only have gut instinct, and that voice that tells you that some girl's face just looks like a dude, post- or pre-op. If you're ever in 911 and you see a blonde girl with eyes like Kelly Bundy, and a gorgeous body, and she tells you she's Brazilian, then run for the hills. Don't look back. But if you do look back, and it turns out she isn't a man but just a horny nympho, let me know, because I'll be there again next week, having conveniently forgotten this night's lesson.

2005-09-20T18:42:00.000-07:00

On Morons

I never thought I'd be writing a post like this. In the past few years I've heard no small amount of complaining, in person and online, from Western girls about Western guys who go to Japan. Saying things like we're all over here for the easy girls, who also happen to be subservient (ha!) and "more feminine" (double ha!), and we can't get a girl back home.

And I'll be honest, when someone bitches about something that I can't even understand (yellow fever?), I often go the reactionary route just out of spite. So for a long time I was more than a little annoyed at the attitudes of Western girls about us Japan-bound guys, thinking if I didn't hold them in contempt they'd surely pounce on me and say I was in Japan for the girls.

(Of all places, Japan - where it's a rarity for someone to have an even number of teeth. Being able to eat a mean corn on the cob is pretty low on my list of things I'm looking for in a woman.)

But you know, it turns out that not only were a lot of them correct, but they were actually reacting much nicer than I would expect, given the amount of shit they put up with.

I was cruising the forums (the very same ones I said I never wanted to read again) and was astounded at the number of topics dedicated on various sites to smacking down Western girls. Topics like "Why I hate Western women" or "White girls are so ugly" or "Why are Western girls such bitches?" Some dumb fucks really just post stuff like "White girls are really ugly, and Asians are all so hot. PS I'm not a racist." For the love of God, doesn't saying "I'm not a racist" mean that you are one? When I was a kid the only time I ever said that was right before I told a joke about "Canadians."

Other, confused souls seem to think they just have some kind of compatibility issue that precludes them from dating non-Asians. It's fun for me to hear them defend that. I mean, it's one thing to say that you are more compatible with another group of people because you share the same culture. It's quite another if you actually don't share the same culture. Eventually it boils down to some ill-conceived notion that Asians are "family-oriented" and "loyal" and "not averse to taking 5 across the eyes if they ever mouth off an opinion in front of my friends." OK, I made that last one up, but I'm sure someone typed it and just forgot to hit "Post."

One dumb sack of shit said that the problem in America is that this goddamn feminist movement, which the poster agreed with until the 60's (so it was all gravy for...a year), has encouraged both parents to work, meaning no one raises the kid. Using logic not seen since the heady days of Galileo, he concludes that since American women don't want to quit their jobs to raise the kid, this means they are not family-oriented. He conveniently forgets the other side of the coin - guys who don't want to raise the kid must by that logic also not want a family. He's whining because the status quo has changed and now he's not entitled to something.

Other guys rail incessantly on Western girls for their desire to, one hopes metaphorically, sprout a penis and become more manlike (I'd say if you have a dick between your legs then congratulations, you're pretty much there). So much talk about how Western girls aren't feminine anymore (especially Americans), and lookit here - they're ugly on top of that! You can never run someone into the ground enough apparently.

This is the part I hadn't seen before coming here. It seems a lot of guys over here genuinely have some bone to pick with WGs. I'm not a psychologist and I can't pretend to know everything about all of them, but judging from how they prop their arguments up as "family values" or "respecting tradition" or some clear bullshit like that, I would have to agree with the sentiment that many of them are just unfit to date in their home country, and need the Foreigner Power (collect all 5!) for a leg up on the dating scene here.

And it has to take balls for some of these guys. No social skills for many of them as evidenced by some of the things they say, but owing to that boost of je ne sais quoi (actually je sais pretty well what it is) they feel like they can bitch about these girls and somehow mask the fact that, by and large, their enmity is probably due to unrealistic expectations they had and sexist opinions they hold.

As for my own opinions on Western girls, well I can really only speak about America, but I imagine it's a similar situation in other countries. When I lived in America, I saw plenty of gorgeous girls. It's not like I didn't have a libido until I arrived over here, you know. I don't know what the argument about ugly Western girls is, unless it's specific to Tokyo. I'm of the opinion that most Western girls and guy are not much to look at over here. But I know they aren't representative of Westerners as a whole. Something about Japan and flypaper for otaku, I just can't put my finger on it...

Additionally, there are going to be difficult girls anywhere in the world, not just America. Maybe Americans just seem bitchier because many are more forthcoming with their opinions. But anybody who thinks Japanese can't be bitchy in their own way, or even aggressive like Americans, is a fucking moron. And it pisses me off to hear these guys talk about "feminine blah of Asians/Japanese". All girls are feminine as long as they don't have mustaches or curly back hair. Why don't they just come out and say "cooks, cleans and has a high squeaky voice and wears dresses with flower print"? That's what they mean. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say most guys who use that feminist line deep down are looking for a girl with the sensibilities and, many times, physical traits of a 10-year old who just got her first Easy Bake oven.

If only they'd admit it to themselves. Nobody asks them for their opinion, and yet they volunteer it. It's as if either they need to be reassured that they aren't off their rocker, or they just want to stamp out what they perceive to be oversized egos of Western girls. I'm inclined to think it's both. If I had a really retarded opinion, I'd want to make sure I wasn't the only one with it. Witness furries. And mixed in with these comments against WGs are criticisms that even the plain ones are high maintenance and think too much of themselves, so ego-bashing probably plays a part as well.

In the end, I think it remarks poorly on all of us guys over here. But I'm curious, are there any out there who can, in a reasonable fashion, defend their distaste for Western girls? I mean with intellectual honesty - no pulling of that feminine or traditional bullshit card. I can see how I might not mesh with, say, most girls from the Middle East. But I can't understand how Western guys think that girls who grew up just like them, exposed to much the same stuff as them, could possibly all be incompatible with them.

2005-09-16T02:11:00.000-07:00

The Cow's Ass

Oh man my eyes hurt. I just spent my lunch hour, and the hour or two immediately following it for good measure, looking at some Japan forums. You know, to see what I'm missing. News is boring and, if it's American news, downright depressing. But after sitting through 3 hours of horribly mutilated grammar and opinions that would make Satan wince (all people with STDs deserve it; Western girls are all bitches and too much trouble), I think I'd be better off just reading obituaries when I'm bored from now on.

One of the long-running Japanese gags concerns the tenuous grasp of English that the natives have. Some may call it Engrish. You see signs that have misspelled words or questionable grammar, or flat-out unintended perverted meanings, and of course it's funny. Especially in this day and age, where bilinguals aren't that hard to come by. But I often tell people who are learning English that no matter what, they'll always speak and write better than most Americans. Reading forums that tend to involve anime-freaks reinforces that opinion 100 fold.

Dig:

They dont need or they can not????

re you saying they resigned themselves to what they find....

May be it is wise you return to hug the trees you know

And:

Haaahhh?I dont know your contridictorious bullsh*t ...if you want to type,type correctly,otherwise go screw yourself pin head!!!
I only confessed that your all pimps,your balls,fingers and tongue deserve to be decapitated!This is for women's pride sake!

Seriously, I put that shit in Word and it crashes my goddamn computer. No blue screen, no error to send to Microsoft. I hear a ghastly scream like someone just saw their toddler catch fire, my overhead lights flicker, and the computer just shuts right the fuck off.

Well, best not to get worked up about it. I may see some of these people tonight at the clubs. My only rule is that if someone says "lol" in front of me, they get a backhanded pimp slap across the face. The only verbal warning I give is, "Check out this backhanded pimp slap!"

Speaking of the clubs, I went shopping for some new clothes the other day. Those of you who have followed my pages since I first arrived here (hey mom) know that a recurring theme is my struggle with Japanese pants. Before I came here I had just bought a pair of nice-fitting size 32's, thinking I was a slim motherfucker. Then I got here and lost so much weight in 2 weeks I had to use a makeshift belt (a piece of white cord) to hold them up, or else they would literally fall off my ass as I walked.

So it was a big shock to me when I went jeans-shopping late last year and had to buy what the tag informed me was a size 34. To top that off, they were so snug I could barely walk in them. And yet I bought them, along with another pair of pants marked suspiciously as X-Large. Squeezing into those made me painfully aware of the fact that I had an ass, and enterprising doctoral candidates behind me could probably write a thesis on the shape and texture of each one of my ass hairs.

I began running with World Class, but from about November to March it was just too god damn cold to get out more than once or twice a week, so the best I could do was the 34's. When I'd run, they'd be a good fit; when I'd stay in and eat katsu curry every day, not so much. My hot pants, the misleadingly labeled X-larges, well they would have to wait.

Then in late winter I bought some leather pants. I've got no idea what was going on through my mind. They didn't fit, but my rationale was that I would run and get into shape and stop eating Coolish every day (mmm....Coolish...) and eventually be able to wear them with pride. I define "with pride" as "without fracturing my pelvis." My dictionary has a few extra entries.

Well, bitches, the day hath come. The Lord tried'th those suckers on last week and He saw that they were good. And those X-large pants I had earlier? They are loose now. Japanese pants couldn't hold this brother down.

Of course, a caveat. The leather pants are still tight around my hips. I've only got bone sticking out at each end, so unless someone's got a file I don't think that I'll be able to do much about that. But because of this little problem, my boxers get bunched up when I put on the leather pants, and that in turn makes them tighter and uncomfortable. So I got to thinking, do I really need boxers?

And that's why I'm going commando with my leather pants next week. It's really a no-brainer for me, which means both that it was an easy decision, and that it is probably stupid. But I mean, what purpose do they serve? My junk is a white-collar criminal in a minimum security prisoner with boxers, compared to the Hannibal Lecter straight-jackets that are tighty-whities. I've already got no support, might as well lose the facade.

I'm not entirely sure what physics says should happen to someone when their entire lower body is suffocated by leather for hours on end, but I can imagine certain scenarios. Things like sweating so much it comes out the pant legs in torrents. Or coming home and finding my legs look like beef jerky. But it's a price I'm willing to pay so that I can say I didn't waste all that money on something useless.

Oh, and yes, my mom does read this site.

2005-09-14T02:48:00.000-07:00

I'd Rather Not Finish At All...

So as promised, I have a little rant about nice guys that will segue into something Japan-related (pinky swear) by the end.

I'm pretty sure I talked about this at my old place, but it probably sucked something fierce. I apologize for covering old ground. Additionally, I often project my own feelings onto faceless others when complaining about something. The old "well if I think this way, surely a sizeable number of other normal people do too" logic. If I catch myself doing that below, I'll let you know so you can make up your own mind. So let's begin.

"Nice Guys"

When I was a young(er) lad, say 16, I was incredibly shy around girls. I'm not really sure why, since to my knowledge I was only ever rejected by a girl once before that, and she stayed my best friend. Actually I lost out to my other best friend, but as I recall, after that fateful 1-on-1-on-1 meeting wherein I was made aware of my resemblance to a 3rd wheel, the love birds never went out on a date. Also that was when I was like 10. Maybe the 6 years in between, where I barely talked to girls, had something to do with it then.

Anyway, I used to have all sorts of excuses for why I didn't date. My personal favorite was that I didn't think the guy should always ask out the girl. I actually would tell people, straight-faced, that some pretty gal should come up to me and ask me out, braces and pimples and all. If anything, I had huge die-cast balls back then.

Naturally that didn't work, but I had a reserve excuse. You see, the girls that I stared at and constantly talked about boning? That was just talk. In reality, they were below my level, sluts most probably, and I didn't want them anyway. Boom! Instant excuse. If there was a girl that didn't like me, well, I didn't like her first, so there.

A sort of corollary to this was that if a girl did like me, all of a sudden she lost every negative trait and gained a boatload of positive ones in my own mind. If Jackie liked me, well I'll be damned if she wasn't the most beautiful, athletic, smart, kind-hearted person in the world, probably volunteering her time to teach children with cancer how to enjoy life, shitting bouquets of flowers into their waiting hands.

I had plenty of female friends, or girls who were friendly to me at the very least, throughout high school and college. They used to call me a nice guy, probably because I wasn't actively trying to hump their legs. I thought the secret to finding a girlfriend lay solely in talking to them like a friend. Listen to them, joke with them, etc. Not to say that's not part of wooing, but I'm sure I seemed neutered to them. Here was a guy who they could just tell was a sexual non-entity.

What this shyness was really about, of course, was a lack of confidence in myself. I've never been confident in my looks, though every Japanese person seems to think I look like Tom Cruise or Keanu Reeves, batshit crazy or horrible affront to humanity. And if there's one thing lack of confidence breeds, it's jealousy. In the 6 years before I came to Japan, I did absolutely terrible things to guys and girls alike in my quest to get a date. The most biting I can recall was to my best friend during a summer college camp at Cornell. But there were others.

From the shyness and lack of knowledge on how to deal with situations, came other problems. A month before prom, I took the girl I had asked out on a date. Dropped her off afterwards (too shy for anything crazy like a kiss), and she went with her other friends (whores, the whole lot of 'em!) to a party where she hooked up with a college kid.

I did a lot of things wrong, handling that. For starters I ignored her, my own prom date, like a petulant brat. You know, always grumpy-looking, but when she asked what was wrong, I'd say "Eh, nothing grumble grumble." I was jealous, to be sure, but also I had this feeling of entitlement, like she should come up to me and apologize, and maybe I'd take her back. I never realized that she had honestly never even considered that I liked her, despite the date, because I had failed to broadcast that to her.

Later in college, there would be plenty of girls I befriended solely because they were pretty and I wanted to go out with them. That had the effect of me thinking every other guy did the same. Even if they were kind of attached, I was sure there would be an opening soon. Like there was a sign on their door:

Help Wanted: must know roughly where to stick it

But if a "friend" started going out with someone who wasn't me (roughly 100% of the time) I'd never talk to the shameless hussy again. Up until that point, I was a nice guy; afterwards I was a plain dick. I was one of those guys who would leave cryptic away messages hoping the girl would read it. And they never understood my behavior, and I never understood how they couldn't understand.

I was generally a great person to hang around with until the topic turned to dating, where my outspoken opinions on the matter caused discomfort for the women present (imagine that) and lack of empathy from most of the guys.

By the time I got out of college, I had warped ideas about women. None of them were interested in guys who actually cared about them, and they were all harlots unless they liked me. I figured of course that I cared about them, you know, because I would sit there and listen to them (albeit for a selfish reason) and talk them up (sometimes excessively). But those guys going around getting with all the girls, I despised them for what they did and equated most sexual things with amorality to justify that hatred. I was quite the model Puritan in that regard.

If I haven't succeeded in making myself sound like a huge son of a bitch, you haven't been reading closely enough. I was, effectually, an asshole to most girls I came across in the end, bewildered by simple social situations yet unwilling to find my faults, and irrationally disliking guys who had something that I didn't, and secretly coveted.

It wasn't until I got to Tokyo that this changed. Not because I was in Japan, but because I got out finally. Going out to clubs a lot, I met and befriended people who I would have hated in college, and found they were normal. I became more confident in myself, owing in large part to the fact that I was running a lot and losing some, er, junk in my trunk. I noticed I had a sort of sexual double-standard for women, and quickly let go of that. You know, if a girl screws some guys in her life, she's a slut, but if a guy does it, he's a player. I never bought into that before, because to me both were reprehensible. But as I got to know more guys and gals of the night scene, I realized they weren't evil or even doing things that hurt others, for the most part. They were just having a good time.

I'm cutting short my training montage to get back to the original point. The reason I say I hate nice guys is because it's a misnomer. They aren't really nice guys in the sense they care about a girl. They're nice as long as they get what they want. After that, or failing that, really, they become overtly selfish and childish. I've seen it time and again over here. I get bitched to regularly about this kind of stuff these days. Nice guys actually end up causing more pain in the end than the bad types. I'm not saying there aren't reasons to disapprove of my lifestyle, but some of these types of guys probably don't agree with it because they can't do it themselves, not for some underlying moral reason. (projection)

One of the anonymous commenters made a snide remark about my romantic escapades, and he's of course entitled to his opinion. But I have to say, every girl I've slept with knew exactly whether she was getting a sex friend or a serious stab at a relationship, and none of them objected. They're probably happy about that anyway, since it wasn't until recently I finally figured out what I want in a girlfriend anyway. I think the only girl who was unhappy with the results was my friend The Herbalist, but even then, I'm not sure she cried over me. Maybe she shed a tear after the antibiotics took effect and the respectable Chlamydia family was evicted from her vaginal tenements. I didn't exactly stick around for the going away party though.

That's the end of my rant. If you have anything you wish to add, do so in the comments. I'm sure I have a couple bum conclusions up there.

2005-09-13T17:52:00.000-07:00

Close Encounters

I was reading a few articles at Japan Today, and I got to thinking a couple things.

1) A lot of these guys write for shit.
2) See #1

I know it's a lot easier to tear apart someone's article than it is to write one. But still, it's tough to imagine that these guys actually get paid to write this nonsense in a sort-of respectable medium. And as I definitely don't get paid for my opinions and ramblings, I suppose you could even chalk this one up to jealousy. I said it.

Our first contestant for the award of "Most Stunningly Useless Contribution To Society" is Complaints Department by Louie Diaz, Jr.

So I was sitting in a bar, forgot where really, somewhere near Shinjuku, or Roppongi, one of these theme places.

Or maybe Harajuku, or across from the Imperial Palace, or in the shade of an oak tree nearby Osaka Castle, they're all the same *yawn*. Oh, dear me, I seem to have dropped a basketful of names!

It could have been a British pub where they sell fish and chips with malt vinegar and Newcastle brew in a bottle, real authentic looking, except for all the Japanese staff and the fact that they play rap videos on the many TV screens around the joint. It could have been Australian, or Irish, who knows, but the point was, after a few pints and a couple of tall cans of beers at the station, this guy sat next to me.

Yeah, yeah, we get the point, you're an insider, you know Tokyo like Bo knows any sport with a ball. Way to go, guy. So tell us about this **SPOILER ALERT!!** swarthy foreigner.

He was slurring his words, but he liked the fact that I could speak English and the fact that he was a native English speaker.

Two facts that, combined, made for one hell of a factual encounter.

He looked not-quite-hip, but not really geeky either; not fitting in, but not exactly standing out. There was no bite to his style, except for his somewhat greasy long hair and the fact that he was a Westerner. You could tell by the way he held his glass and how he walked and how his chest and head were puffed out that he was a Westerner. Could’ve been a John, or a Dave, who knows? But he was from somewhere I knew, but forgot already; who has traveled to places I have already been, or really want to go.

Haha! The Westerner is probably named John or Dave! Or Steven!

Seriously, nice tactic with the description. Keep him as nondescript a foreigner as possible, and try to provide BS rationalization for how you knew he was a foreigner to begin with. It's like you know it's not PC to say "because he was 190cm and white," so you have to pretend it's because foreigners hold their beer differently (presumably without the aid of an opposable thumb).

And because we are gaijin in a bar in Tokyo, we talk about Tokyo and Japan.

Nothing screamed professionalism like when he switches tense in the middle of a story.

“What’s up with the trains stopping so early?” he says. “That really gets to me.” And I nod my head in agreement.

“And what’s up with it being so crowded all the time, even when it’s not rush hour. And why are there no garbage cans anywhere? I now have all this trash in my pockets. Or can they separate garbage into more categories?” He’s just getting started.

“And the ginger things you see as condiments all over the place, I hate those. I hate the pizza, too. Tomato sauce on a pita is not pizza. Corn does not belong on a pizza.” His beef with food simmers to a boil.

“What’s up with cooking your own meal in a restaurant? I gotta grill my own meat? And make my own soup? Yeah, it’s kinda fun, I guess, but I would rather have that done for me. And how about that smell that slaps you in the face and punches you in the gut every time you walk into a convenience store? What the hell are those floating things sitting on the counter? Who in their right mind would buy that at 2am?”

That's a damned good question! I still have no idea. It looks like breaded genitals floating in chicken soup broth.

He downs his drink; complains about the price of it. He shouts loudly to the waitress, butchers the word “sumimasen,” and says “beeru.” The waitress promptly returns with another pint. He examines his glass. “And what is up with this beer? It should be criminal to serve beer with this much head.” He stares at the waitress as she turns around and walks away; there is a look of lust and fever in his eyes.

Uh-oh. I know this writing style. I think somebody recently acquired an island of his very own. Butchering "sumimasen"? The implication is one of arrogance on the writer's part. Not that you aren't allowed to acknowledge that some people here really do have no idea how to speak the language - many don't, and it's sometimes difficult to stand, like when you're embarrassed for someone else. But to use that as some kind of attack on the guy, as it is plainly employed in that paragraph? Immature. And when I call someone immature, you know they're feeding off the bottom.

And why, when complaining about foreigners, does one always have to resort to discussing how they stare at Japanese women? It's irrelevant to this story. Is he trying to imply an Asian fetish? Or juxtapose the foreigner to, say, himself, who apparently doesn't look at women at all (explaining how he got into this situation in the first place)? He sounds like another group of people I despise, so-called "nice guys." That's a topic for another day.

And then he goes on a tangent, about the different Japanese broads he’s picked up, and about the different techniques he uses, and he goes on about it ad nauseam.

Oh like you weren't feverishly taking notes on the napkin.

More rap videos: Snoop Dog “crip walkin” to a Neptunes beat. More pints: the cheap ones, of course. More conversation: complaining or bragging.

And he goes on about a date he had, about how this girl was beautiful, complete with her Louis Vuitton bag, and her great makeup, but she had a slight teeth problem, how they weren’t all straight and even. About how they take pictures throughout their day together and every photo has a “bloody peace sign.” And this guy hates “peace signs” and she poses with them before every photo.

Finally, he checks his cellphone. The last train is coming soon and he has to check the time.

But he is ranting: “What’s up with the stares I get on the trains? What’s up with the hip-hop dudes acting all hardcore? What’s up with everyone being so reserved? Can’t anyone show their real feelings? What’s up with taking my Nikes off every time I go anywhere? What’s up with the ridiculous amounts of hours people have to work?”

The correct answers are:

xenophobia
god alone knows
something in the water
they have no souls
you track shit in with you
the lunar calendar has 29 hours in a day.

That wasn't so hard, was it?

And, all of a sudden, his last train is fast approaching. He races up the steps, runs toward the station, and I follow him. He’s missed it completely. He read his mobile wrong. He took the wrong turn to the station. He’s there, but he’s on a completely different level. On the wrong platform. Way off. We walk away and see some drunken gaijin stumbling toward us.

“And what’s up with these idiot gaijin?” he asks. He smiles and takes the next cab, muttering about how expensive they are.

The irony: The man was referring to the writer of this article.

Was there any purpose to this drivel? Other than to maybe make the writer feel like he's part of some super-secret not-quite-gaijin club? The foreigner in the story was, of course, no model citizen either. But he didn't go home and write this diatribe. And really, if you don't like the guy? Get up and move. Were there no girls or other guys there (whoa, be sure they're not Westerners though! You can tell because they'll have puffed-out chests and probably be named Michael or Colonel Mustard)

One last thing about this piece I have to mention: it sounds fabricated. A guy non-stop complaining all night, fitting a perfect foreigner stereotype, making all the junior complaints, and yet my pal Louie doesn't just leave him alone? In fact, he follows him to the train station? I'd be surprised if this actually took place like the author says. But you know, he had a point to prove or something, so what if he stretches the truth a bit?

2005-09-10T20:11:00.000-07:00

Korea

I`m about to make some completely ignorant generalizations here. Ready?

I love South Korean girls.

Not necessarily the way they look - I`ve seen plenty of below average girls from the peninsula. And on the flip side I`ve met many a girl whose face seemed just a little too symmetrical to be natural, cementing the prevailing idea many Japanese have that South Korea is the plastic surgery capital of the world.

It`s certainly not the language, though I`ve been learning it for the past 3 weeks. The sounds they make are so difficult for my foreign tongue. I desperately want to pronounce things with a Japanese accent and Japanese intonation. Things are even more difficult for native Japanese speakers, since they can`t differentiate between the various "e", "o" and "w" sounds. I have it on super double secret background from a Korean girl friend that Japanese people sound, as she puts it, "gay" when they speak Korean. Like that one ugly duckling from Smap (the one who looks like the kid from Back to School with Rodney Dangerfield). So Japan: keep learning Korean! You make my bastardization of the language sound better in comparison.

I think if I had to pin it down to one thing, it would be their outgoing nature. That`s slang for "If a Korean girl likes me she grabs my junk." You know, within 2 minutes of meeting some girls, whether they like you or not. It`s quite the opposite with most Japanese I`ve met. You have to talk, and talk, and no matter how much she`s laughing or not shaking off your creepily wandering hand, you have no idea where you stand. Got a phone number? Good luck with that. It`s like a business card around here, given just out of formality`s sake.

The Korean girls I`ve associated with are all much different. If they think you`re cute (macular degeneration could play a large part in this, as could blunt trauma to the part of the brain that maintains the hotness scale), they come right up to you and say it. Equally, if you ever piss one off, you`ll be the first to know about it. No guessing, or waiting a week until you finally realize she`s not going to call back.

As an aside, that`s one of the reasons I try to meet so many girls. Not (necessarily) because I`m a hornball. But because for every 5 girls I meet, maybe only 1 or 2 ever call/email back. I had a theory that has since been rigorously tested that Japanese girls will only call back if you have had sex with them already or just chatted with them (80%). If you do anything in between, the rate of failure seems to be quite high (10% return). I guess if you can hold yourself back you don`t have to worry about that as much.

Two days ago I was out in Roppongi, feeling pretty good about myself because I had just asked out one of the new bar girls at my weekly hideout, and she hadn`t outright spat in my face and kicked me in the nuts. To be fair, she`s like 3 feet tall so she`d have to be pretty flexible to get at my low-hanging fruit. But there I was, in Roppongi, dancing away. I saw two gorgeous girls walk in, and an American who had just struck out with one dame walked over to them and immediately started dancing with the taller of the pair. I figured they were friends, since they looked very intimate. But no, she wasn`t his friend. She was just South Korean.

By the way, do all of us white folk have noses that big, or do I just notice it more in Japan?

My boss was talking to the other girl, and when he found out she was Korean he motioned me over. I tried to say the one or two sentences I "know", but they came out sounding like absolute shit. She told me just to speak English, and then pushed me onto the dance floor and said simply, "Dance with me." Hey I`m all for girls taking the guy`s traditional role, unless it involves strap-on accessories.

The next two hours were incredible fun. All 4 of us were dancing, and I really didn`t care who was dancing with whom - I knew from the one girl`s behavior that she liked me, so there was no need to get jealous when the two of them would dance with the guy, or by themselves.

We kissed a little, but I wasn`t myself for some reason, and didn`t take things further. This turned out to be my undoing. They actually got fed up that we weren`t showing them to the nearest hotel, and left. For my part I had left my mini-Aces biohazard suits in my backpack in a different club, and given my recent luck I wouldn`t have gone into battle without them. But I was in awe of their decisiveness. And crippled from blue balls, which were just starting to set in.

In this state, I walked over to my favorite former bouncer from the Shibuya hangout and asked him what went wrong. Like a sexual sensei he told me what I did wrong ("They wanted to fuck, but you guys were a bunch of pussies") and how he had seen it where I had not ("I asked them if they want to fuck you guys, and they said yes"). My teacher is very wise.

Then, he revealed to me the final secret technique in my training. I had mastered the art of "The Stairs" in Shibuya, but that was only an intermediate level move. He led me to the back of the club and showed me how to open the door to the outside, where lo and behold, a hidden stairwell was revealed. He explained the vital information, such as where to stand so nobody can see us, which positions would probably work best, and how to get back inside. I had acquired a new skill: "The Stairs: Roppongi".

Next time I meet an outgoing Korean such as that one girl, whose name I never did catch, I will be prepared.

*This post is in no way implying that Korean girls are easier than any other ethnicity or nationality. If you take offense to my generalizations, feel free to share your experiences to the contrary. If you have none and just take offense for the sake of taking offense, then I invite you to look up the term "generalization" and see how it is not a synonym for "absolute fact".

2005-09-09T20:50:00.000-07:00

Nuts and Bolts

You aren`t really a man until you have to tweeze an ingrown hair out of the little space between your beans and the beanstalk.

Or maybe it`s the other way around. In any event, it certainly isn`t a fun endeavor.

Years ago, when I was a freshman in college, my dormmates and I used to pull all sorts of sick pranks. It`s probably a big contributing factor to why I am who I am today - a 6 foot tall walking sick prank. One of the things we did on occasion was sit around the lounge, where everyone would gather and talk throughout the day, including the 6 girls in our unit. Sometimes it got really boring, so to spice things up, one of us would, secretly, take our balls out of our pants and leave the package resting on our zipper. Without anybody realizing it, we`d cover it with a book or something and continue talking as if nothing was wrong.

When one of the girls walked in, we`d engage her in conversation and then, casually, lift up the book or whatever it was and put it aside. The look of shock on their faces was priceless. Juvenile? You bet. But these girls were basically one of the guys, so it was far from harassment. They took it in stride. It`s just, you know, we couldn`t do the joke to each other because that would call into question our sexuality or something. And a dorm full of college guys is a fragile society that can quickly devolve if your friends think it`s strange that you`re always flashing your family jewels to them.

Anyway, because of that I grew self-conscious about the flora and fauna in my region. One day I decided to shave my balls, not really thinking things through, and while the end result was a beautiful piece of hedgemanship, I realized a week or two later that I`d have to repeat the process...indefinitely, and until I die.

Fast forward to now. I still do it about twice a month, but on account of my having absolutely no time before and after work, I have to roll up all my hygenic activities into "shower time." I shave, brush my teeth, clip my nails, and prune the nether region all to the background music of high-powered running water.

Before I switched to an electric razor for my face, I had abandoned shaving cream in favor of shaving gel as per World Class` suggestion. This never presented a problem in the shower for my face, as it was out of the way of the showerhead and so the gel never got washed away.

Unfortunately, Little Cosby often gets caught in the crossfire. The gel either runs or doesn`t rub in right. I know when I put the razor down there that there is a risk I am taking - but it wasn`t until two days ago that I was confronted with the folly of my bathroom policies. I was getting ready for bed and casually scratched at my balls. Feeling something tender, I decided to investigate further. What I discovered was a pea-sized dark red lump literally where the sun never shines.

I spent the next 10 minutes gingerly removing layers of skin around the area until I thought I could see the hair, and tried pulling it out. Unfortunately my eyes are horrible at night, and what I thought was "hair, yearning to be yanked right the fuck out" was actually "skin, tainted with a drop of genital blood." Yes, my eyes are really that bad.

What followed was a lot of cursing, and logically more blood. Apparently ingrown hairs cause a little cyst of sorts to sprout up, and it`s filled with clear liquid. There was some of that too. And it hurt like a motherfucker. It was right on a vein, no less, so I was honestly fearful of both 1) rupturing an important blood vessel, and 2) ruining my sexual plumbing.

Luckily everything worked out in the end and I`m not too horribly mangled. But let my story serve as a warning of what not to do when shaving your testicular region.

Speaking of warnings, you may not want to read this post if you`re eating. You`ve been warned.

2005-09-02T19:33:00.000-07:00

My Island

There`s a curious phenomenon that happens to a lot of Western foreigners here in Tokyo. I`m not sure if it happens elsewhere in the world, because I`ve never been anywhere else. I`m untraveled and uncultured and all that other stuff. But I can call a spade a spade, even if I don`t know how it got there or how to use it.

So these foreigners, when they arrive in Tokyo, are real chummy fellows, or at least as friendly as they were in their home country. Maybe they speak a bit of the ol` native tongue, maybe they don`t. Most likely they hang out in Roppongi an awful lot and hit on really ugly girls the rest of us wouldn`t fuck with a stolen dick, keeping the delicate sexual ecosystem in balance. God bless them and their lack of discerning taste. They`re like minesweepers.

But after a while they get a bit more able in getting around and handling themselves in the society. They start to think their Japanese is better than it really is, thanks in no small part to every Nihonjin`s insistence that, despite only being able to say "My name is John" and "Where is the toilet?", they have mastered the Japanese language. So these guys and girls start to feel like part of the society - they know Harajuku, and Shinjuku, and Shibuya...juku. This place is just like home. You know, except ketchup is put on omelettes and sporks are more prevalent than forks.

Then it happens. A sudden change of mindset. They stop romanticizing Tokyo and kimono and katsu and karaoke, and one thought is held above all others:

God damn, I really dislike other foreigners. (no, really)

Suddenly you stop making eye contact with them on the street. Nothing wrong with that - you shouldn`t have to make eye contact or talk to someone just because they are also from another country. It`s strange. But you know what`s stranger? Making accidental eye contact and then quickly turning your head the other direction until the foreigner has passed, even if it means staring at a gaggle of toothless old women. And yet it happens all the time here.

It`s "My Island Syndrome."

I don`t think I`m exaggerating with the causes or effects. Obvious Auslanders go to great lengths to avoid other non-yellow faces, and on the rare occasions they have to associate with someone whose native language isn`t Japanese, the discomfort and boredom is written on their faces. I`ve suffered from it too. For me, I wanted to avoid contact with other gaijin because I thought we looked too touristy when talking. But goddamn, I hate looking touristy anywhere.

Other side effects include otaku-like behavior. I define otaku in my own special way - geeky, anime-loving, Japanophilic, puts-the-word-ne-at-the-end-of-all-his-goddamn-sentences, one step removed from a furry, foreigner. You have to know the type. In college I was surrounded by them in Japanese class, until they realized not everyone (read: nobody) in Japan talks about honor, sword-fighting, and mechs. Man, that was a good day.

My Island Syndrome looks similar. Suddenly an otherwise normal person will start harping on all things Japanese, fancying themselves an expert in history, art, culture, and psychology. Oh that`s a big one. I`ve met more white people over here who understand the inner workings of the Japanese mind than I`ve met therapists in America, in my 21 years there. I guess it`s possible that everyone over here has a degree in Psych and a valid license to practice.

I`ve heard armchair analysts talk about how Japan is suffering from a lack of national identity, or how Japanese people aren`t racist but actually just jealous of white people (which naturally explains why they are racist towards non-whites too...assclown), or how Japanese traditional XXX is so important to maintain because of that aforementioned national identity. I think if it was really part of the identity, and not your pulpy romantic ideas about what Japanese culture should be - I`m looking RIGHT at bushido-lovers - then more Japanese people would give a fuck about it.

"Did you know that before WW2 Japan had never been successfully occupied? Blah blah honor blah blah...i wish i was japanese for like a day"

"Nope, didn`t know, don`t care, doesn`t affect me or how I view this country because I`M NOT A MONGOL HORDE and I couldn`t give 2 shits in a shitstorm about it."

"Sigh, you know all Westerners except me can`t tell the difference between Asian ethnicities? I could tell if someone is Taiwanese, Nepalese or Japanese just by looking at the texture of the hair on their ass."

"No shit? See I tell where they come from by what precedes the -ese when talking about them. Japanese? They come from Japan. Taiwanese? Taiwan. Chinese? Chin."

For example, that Geisha movie that is coming out. It stars that fairly attractive Chinese woman as the lead Geisha. That`s no problem, right? Many Hollywood movies have casts whose ethnicities don`t match the characters they play. It`s a fucking movie. They are actors. I would hope they can act like the part they`re trying to play. We forgave Harrison Ford`s not-quite-Russian anti-accent in that sub movie. And Kevin Costner always sounds like he just stepped out of Montana.

But to people suffering MIS, this is an inexcusable breach of something or other (probably honor). I mean, it`s sooo obvious that she`s Chinese, not Japanese! Just look at the way she moves, just like one of `em Reds. Not a Geisha at all. And her hair is totally Chinese, not Japanese. Ugh, the movie is going to suck. Wah, wah, nobody understands Japanese culture like me.

Vomit.

You may think I`m making all this up. That`s fine. I don`t provide links because the the owner of the page I was reading that moved me to begin writing this entry is a good guy. I reasoned the tone of my writing is probably a bit sarcastic, and I don`t want him to think it`s an attack on him. I`m a nice guy, motherfuckers.

But if you want to see the "controversy" around this film, do a search for that Geisha movie. It`s called Memoirs of a Geisha. God help you if you stumble upon a message board. Then you get to see the combined efforts of out-of-country otaku (all named Sakura___ or various permutations/misspellings of Dragon Ball Z and its characters) and in-country MIS-positive foreigners (usually Tokyogaijin, GaijinInTokyo, or Hotwhiteguyintokyo4u2assfuck).

In conclusion, I suppose I got a little sidetracked. If you are a foreigner in Japan reading this, just remember that you aren`t the only one of your kind here, and don`t resent the rest of us for being here. And please, don`t become a Japan expert. You`ll hate yourself in a year or two when you realize how pretentious you were acting. And yes, I do see the irony in me writing that.

2005-08-27T19:49:00.000-07:00

A real runner

I`ve been running for one year now with my friend, World Class Athlete. He says he was in the 1988 Olympics, and I`m too lazy to do some fact-checking, so I take him at his word. Our first run was meant to be 6 miles, but I made it about 1.5 miles in before I collapsed from a combination of things, notably "being out of shape," "being horribly out of shape," and the killer, "being a lazy fatass." Ah, those were the days.

I`m no longer a lazy, easily-winded sack of shit. Though sometimes I don`t make it up in the morning to run, I supplement my routine by running home from work on Mondays and Wednesdays. I get plenty of strange looks, let me tell you. A 6 foot tall white guy in running shorts and sneakers traipsing through Shibuya`s love hotel alley, where my route starts (purely on accident, I swear), is bound to get a few glances.

Yet despite this, I still used to feel strange calling myself a runner. I mean, I run, but at what point do I go from just a casual runner to a real runner?

I thought about it for a while. I`ll be running a marathon in November, though finishing it is another story. Maybe popping my marathon cherry is the act that makes me a runner. Or maybe there`s a period of time you have to be running before you are considered a runner? I had no idea. Until yesterday night.

Last night I took a shit on the side of the road and wiped my ass with leaves.

That`s right. I figured out at the very least a shortcut to becoming a real runner - making someone else`s apartment my toilet during a long run. And it felt good.

I was running down a long stretch of a main road, and got this gurgling in my stomach. I blame it on the kimchi curry I ate earlier in the day, though it could also have been the corndog I consumed in the morning on my way home from Roppongi, or the bean burrito, or the Cho cream puff. My diet could kill an elephant.

At my designated turning-around spot, halfway done, I stopped to get a 5 second break, and realized to my horror that I couldn`t start running again or else I`d give the sidewalk a coating of Aces Paint in the not-so-popular "Ass Brown" color. With tons of cars passing by, and pedestrians innocently strolling along without a care in the world, I realized I couldn`t unleash my bowel furies at the moment, and so, whimpering, walked awkwardly in the direction of home.

For 20 minutes my eyes were peeled. I was looking for a public bathroom at first, but as I hobbled homeward I realized my chances of finding one of those was slim to none. So I started looking for buildings that were left open that I could sneak into. None of those either. Resigned, I began scoping out dark areas between buildings.

At one point the pain went away, and foolishly thinking I had bested nature, I took up the run again. 45 seconds later it was back with a vengeance, and so I had to take the first dark corner I could find. Nestled in between two apartment buildings, my way illuminated because there was a lit window on either side of me, I relieved myself. I grabbed a few leaves I hoped weren`t poison ivy, wiped, and went back to the road. Truthfully, if I had a newspaper I might have been tempted to sit there and read a bit. But now that I think about it, if I had a newspaper, I wouldn`t have used the same leaves for my ass that insects lay their eggs on.

But here I am, I made it home and I`m feeling great today. I`ve got that marathon coming up in November, my first ever, but I`m not so worried about it now. I`ve got a running merit badge many of the guys there probably don`t even know about. I know I`m already a goddamn runner.

2005-08-14T19:56:00.000-07:00

DWA

In America, and I`m sure other countries too, there is a stigma associated with Asian drivers. Namely, they can`t drive for shit. Especially the women. Oh God, they`re horrible. You learn to spot an Asian woman from a Latina at 100 yards out if you want to live. Of course, my desire to appear racially sensitive being what it is, I usually reserve judgement until after said motorist has wrapped herself around a telephone pole.

Oh, they aren`t all that bad. Some of them can even use turn signals. It`d help if it matched the direction they were turning, but one step at a time, right?

Anyway, living in Tokyo, I can see where at least the Japanese drivers in America get their absolutely horrendous driving skills. When you go out on the street, or even the sidewalk, you take your life in your hands quite literally. It`s one big game of chicken, where the color of stop lights are just suggestions for what a motorist should do. Red? You should probably stop, but I`ll support your decision whatever it is.

Mopeds are really bad offenders, since they think they can get away with anything. They skirt traffic, weave in and around other cars, and always, without fail, run red lights. Or my personal favorite, they decide the pavement is for losers and hit the sidewalk for a little bit of a head start. Fucking morons. They ride the bikes like a woman giving birth, legs spread as far as possible and leaning backwards. That just makes them look all the more foolish to me. I thought the first thing you`re taught is to keep your legs around the gas tank for stability.

Every time I go running, whether it`s in the relative backwaters of my hacienda or the criss-crossing highways from Shibuya to home, I almost get hit by a car. Sometimes a few of them. And it`s always the same story. A Japanese guy is coming out of parking lot. Over here, you come out and go in the direction of the lane closest to you. It`s a crapshoot otherwise. So on the left side of the road, you would expect him to come out and turn left. And indeed he does. But here`s the kicker - the guys never, ever look right. That`s where all the traffic is coming from, naturally, and yet it`s the last place they look.

I swear sometimes I think it`s intentional. People over here think if they aren`t looking at you, they can do whatever they want. On the train, people steal your seat and then lower their eyes so as not to see you. In the road, if someone makes eye contact, they have to obey the rules of the road. But if they never look in your direction, it`s on you to stop. So these fucking loons pull out into traffic without looking to see if cars are going to hit them. Invariably I am running along and right in front of them when this all goes down. According to World Class, that`s one of the laws of running -

Sometimes the only thing that saves me is that they are driving stick, and everyone knows Asians can`t handle a manual (it`s in the encyclopedia). The momentary stall as they attempt to go from neutral to 1st offers me just enough time to get out of harm`s way.

I`ve got theories for why no one over here seems able to drive worth a damn. I think it`s got something to do with the way they get their licenses. Over here the DMV isn`t like what it is back home. In America, or PA at least, if you can drive, you will get your license with little problem. Learn the rules, practice, and take the test.

In Japan, the DMV is comprised of career salarymen. I loathe career salarymen. They are the biggest assholes you can meet in Tokyo outside of a train station. They are inefficient and stubborn in their ways. With regards to licenses, they will fail you as many times as they like for seemingly no reason other than to make themselves feel powerful. Cocksuckers. They sit around on lunch breaks watching people take the driving tests and laughing at each and every one of them.

So what do Japanese people do in the face of these snooty gatekeepers? They go to driving schools, where at the end of the day they get to take an easy test for the same license. It`s virtually impossible to fail, unless you forgot whether the ignition key goes in this key-shaped hole marked "ignition" or the cigarette lighter. You come out of there and really whether you can drive or not has not been tested at all. The driving school costs $1000 on average, which surprisingly many people are willing to pay - the situation at the DMV is so dismal that shelling out $1000 is preferred to trying the real test with its fee of a few bucks per shot. I think at the very least this contributes to why so many people drive like they`re playing bumper cars at a theme park. I`m actually quite surprised that I don`t often see accidents in Tokyo. Though one thing I do notice is that every single bicycle and a good number of cars have squeaky brakes, a testament to their constant use, perhaps.

And here I am looking to get a license to ride a 400cc+ motorcycle. I`d probably live a lot longer if I took my own advice.

2005-08-14T05:04:00.000-07:00

Online Dating and Tokyo

I made frequent mention on my old page about my "dabbling" in the realm of online personals. Specifically, since personals are pretty low-key and rather boring for someone my age, I have been a member of a certain more-than-friends site for a few months in my 13 month stay here. It`s those months of experience that I draw upon for the discussion below.

First, I`ve read a lot of offhand comments about how desperate someone has to be to sign up for one of these sites. I have to take exception here. I signed up only as a break from the usual routine of going out to clubs and bars. And if you stop and think about this with me, it makes perfect sense. It costs much more per month to go out drinking all night in the hopes of meeting a girl - I can spend 3000 yen a night easily (though now I have free entrance into one of my frequent stops in Roppongi, so 2000 is what I shoot for). The site, however, was 2000 per month.

Bringing up desperation is like the pot calling the kettle black. Have you ever actually seen the guys who go after girls in clubs? They`ll hump anything that moves. Hell, I`ve been hit by more than my fair share of OCBs (Out of Control Boners) on the dance floor. I`m sure a couple of them weren`t on accident either.

In Roppongi it`s really bad. I have to say, whether it`s from shyness as many like to claim, or just common decency, most of the Japanese guys I see don`t usually exhibit borderline rapist behavior. Shocking, given the abnormal fixation on rape you can find just about anywhere, from movies to magazines to kitchenware to cereal (Sodomy Flakes with marshmallow tears). In any event, being a white guy myself, I can freely discriminate against other white guys and call them what they are - dirty skeezes.

I will admit that almost all of the guys using the site I used also fell into this category. But at least they were focusing their efforts on willing participants.

And a final note in defense of the sites - no misunderstandings. The nature of the site I used was such that if a girl didn`t want to do anything more than talk, she would say so up front. This is in stark contrast to everywhere else, where just talk is the assumption and anything more needs to be discussed. This leads to expectations being met more often than not.

But there`s always a catch. Now that I`ve gotten out of the way a brief reply to the legitimacy of using sex sites to find girls, let me dig into the negatives.

Ratios

In Tokyo, for every girl who may or may not be looking for a guy online, there`s 20 dudes of the "hung like a horse and will make you so hot" variety (if their bios are to be believed, and really, I have no reason to doubt that half of the foreign male population is walking around Tokyo with 3-legged jeans). This ratio is absolutely horrible. Would you pay to go to a party with 95 guys and 5 girls in attendance? And yet that`s exactly what I did. Why? Well, the reason works as both a negative and a positive. Read the next topic for details.

Finding Girls

This is a lot tougher than it looks. For Tokyo there`s no shortage of girls to choose from, but that`s deceptive. You can send out 20 emails and not get a response from anybody, and for no good reason at that. I`m no Adonis, but I`ve seen the guys on the site, and pictures of guys in a girl`s list of friends, and they look like the slag on the bottom of a shit barrel. There`s no way these guys should be getting any girl, let alone a pretty one, and yet they manage just fine. It`s what makes the horrible ratio bearable: you can be incredibly good-looking and by virtue of that you`ll get a couple replies from random people, or you can be a hideous ogre and magically meet vixens. There`s no rhyme or reason to it sometimes.

I`d like to think that maybe they are just more charming in email form than me, but that`s simply not the case. I`ve seen these guys crank out messages like "Hey baby, I`ll fuck you all night long" etc. If I didn`t know I was on a sex site I`d think they were detailing the intricacies of a car`s engine, what with all the valves and pistons and pumping and machine oil. These guys are hardly cunning linguists.

I played like I was investing for my retirement in 20 years - some high risk, and some defensive. I`d email the girls with pictures who I found attractive (a function in 3 dimensions - as looks or possibility of having sex with me increases, so too does one`s attractiveness), even though I knew there was probably no chance of them even seeing my email among the 100`s of semen-stained ones they`d already received from the likes of GaijinStud78 and TokyoAssfucker. Then I`d shoot a few messages to the girls who didn`t have pictures posted, on the grounds that they would be less sought after and more likely to reply. And hopefully not afflicted with a flesh-eating disease.

Overall I would say this strategy worked fairly well. That and sending out over 100 emails to eventually talk to 15 girls and ultimately meet 7 of them in person. The shotgun method can`t be underestimated here.

The Courtship

If someone replies, you have to know how to handle yourself. My first month I got a reply from 1 girl and we went back and forth a couple times before never talking again. My mistake? Well, I was a douche back then.

My second month was quite fruitful. Really, if you are a boring schmuck in real life, or a so-called "nice guy", then you`re going to have a shit of a time carrying the conversation to a meeting. Your personality will bleed into your correspondence and it is just as unattractive electronically as it is in person.

The one thing you have to get over is taboo. If you meet someone at a bar, you don`t normally launch into a question about how many guys they`ve been with. But at a site that touts itself as a meeting place for people who want to screw around, it`s a safe bet the girls you talk to are not only prepared for those questions, but expecting them. It`s not at all rude to ask, and in fact not broaching those subjects could cause the other party to lose interest if they are looking for a guy with at least 1 testicle.

My 3rd month I was fortunate enough to find a good friend by losing any pretense of romantic involvement whatsoever. However that is anathema to the purpose of the site, so I don`t recommend that course in general.

Meeting Girls

Despite everything I`ve said thus far, be prepared for disappointment when you meet a girl face to face. I have met 7 girls through the site, and in all but two cases the girl I met did not match her pictures. I even talked to a girl who had two photos of herself - one was model-quality, and the other was fiendish and a brutal affront to God. For obvious reasons I cancelled our plans to meet. My life is many things, but an episode of Seinfeld it is not.

As I said, 5/7 girls I met did not look like the photos I had of them. In one case that was a good thing, since the photos were just slightly above average. In the other cases, it was not a nice surprise. I don`t say much for myself regarding looks, but at least the pictures I send capture my visage rather accurately. If I hadn`t sent the girls my photos, we probably would not have ever met because there`s no way I could pick them out in a crowded place given the crappy Photoshop jobs they had sent me. In each case they found me, not the other way around.

Conclusions

It`s really dependent on one`s tastes. As I said earlier, I did it more for curiosity and a break in clubbing than for anything else. Different types of people use those sites than go to clubs. In fact, none of the girls I met liked going out to clubs. If there was a higher infusion rate of new girls to the sites, it might make it worthwhile to do more than a couple times a year. As it stands, 4 times a year will catch all the variation there is to be had at a given site.

And if you can figure out why dumpy guys whose pictures are of their ugly cocks get pretty girls on these sites, you will become very rich.

2005-08-11T23:08:00.000-07:00

The Gift of Life

I first noticed something was wrong about one week after my first romantic encounter with The Herbalist. Actually "romantic" is hardly the way I would describe anything I've ever done. Desperate, maybe. Laughably pathetic, oftentimes. But certainly not anything approaching romantic. Even when I buy flowers for a girl or take her out to an expensive dinner, I'm not thinking about how much fun she's having; I'm counting down the minutes until she takes her top off.

Also when I say "romantic encounter" I mean sex. Lots of sex. Just to clear that up.

It started with a bad itch. I've gotten those before, I don't mind telling you. It happens when you don't clean your man muscle on rare occasions. And I of course rationalized it away as just that - I mean, for 12 hours she and I were connected at the hip, and that's all the time in the world for smaller forms of life to make mi casa su casa. It'd go away, I figured.

But then the next day, when I went to piss, it felt like the hose was a little tight. I was also pissing neon green, which didn't help matters. Using my awesome powers of Googling, I pinned the hot electric yellow urine down to the GNC multi vitamin I had just started taking. As for the slight irritation that accompanied it - well, I chalked it up to morning piss. Guys know what I'm talking about. That first release in the morning always tingles a bit. (right???)

About a week later, however, the pain had increased to a more noticeable level. I've got no idea what "intense pain during urination" or, as it's wickedly called when you translate from Japanese to English, "Urethra Flame," feels like. I figured it hurt really badly, not what I was going through. But when I met The Herbalist again that weekend, she fessed up to having some of the same symptoms.

I say some of the same - she was missing the critical "When I pee it feels like someone set fire to a little child in my sperm-nozzle" symptom. What she had was the same itchiness I had developed, which I had written off 2 weeks prior as a phase. She went to a hospital and for the low low price of $150 got herself checked out. Results came back a week later.

Meanwhile, I waited patiently for the 4th Thursday of the month, when for 90 minutes there's a place in Shinjuku that administers tests for goddamn FREE. The only catch is they don't print the results and give them to you, and I'm pretty certain they tested chemicals on me while I was there. Still, free is free.

Before my results came back, she got hers, and we had a meeting. I have to say, when she put all sorts of medical papers and pills and tubes on the counter in the cafe, I was a little scared. Documentation? What the fuck kind of STD needs a 10 page booklet to explain that you shouldn't fuck anybody for 2-6 weeks?

Turns out she had two nasties floating around her love box, or as I like to call it now, Death Valley. The first was Candida. It's a fungus that causes itching and irritation. Sound familiar? Guys don't normally get it, but she bought me the $5 medicine anyway. How sweet. I used it just because I was paranoid that somehow I had it.

The second present under (or rather, inside) my Christmas Tree was Chlamydia. That explained the feeling of sharp glass raking my pee hole I was experiencing 3 times a day. I suppressed an urge to thank her, but she wasted no time solving the whodunnit.

"Aces, if we go out as boyfriend/girlfriend, I have to insist that you take a test because I don't want to get a disease from you again."

Whaaa? At this point I had to show her my newly acquired sexual health knowledge that I had learned at Search Engine University only earlier in the day.

"Actually, you never showed the symptoms for Chlamydia, I did - and only from 3 weeks ago. Symptoms almost always start within 1-3 weeks, or never. Ergo, I was given this disease recently, and you've had it for a bit." Case closed, bitches. QED for my Roman friends.

"But the last time I had sex was in May, and my boyfriend showed me his test results and he was clean," insisted the mobile lab of the CDC.

"Then that means you had it before him," I countered.

"But the time before that was 2 years ago!" she exclaimed.

I paused and put on my best look of doctor's concern. Someone had to tell her the truth.

"Then you are infertile."

There, that wasn't so bad! I thought better of explaining to her that there was only a slight chance of that. It's not professional for an authority figure such as me to contradict myself.

Afterwards, I was glad to see she already had the pills for the treatment - had she not shown me any signs of having visited an actual doctor with an actual clean police record, I would have been suspect. Not of the test results; when you blast golden napalm from your flesh cannon there's only a few choices for what it can be.

No, I would have assumed she meant to go apply some healing scented oils and rose petals to her vagina or something equally insane. The Herbalist was deep into everything that was not science. This included natural healing, aromatherapy, astrology and that shit where they stick needles into you to release the 4 humours and let you summon the spirits of your ancestors. I always called it "failed suicide" but in Asia they've got a whole study on inventive ways you can give your body a big "Fuck You." Oh, right, ACUPUNCTURE. Fuck the hell right out of that.

I eventually got my own medicine too, after a hilarious (not really!) and embarrassing meeting with two female nurses who played 20 questions with me to guess which disease I had. They wouldn't just point me to the nearest Urology clinic, since it was obvious I had made a slight translational error in arriving at Gynecology. No, they had to get me to say the word "Chlamydia" out loud. Stand-up gals, I tell you.

Final Diagnosis: Clean as a motherfucking whistle!
Doctor's Recommendation: If you wouldn't eat off it, wear a condom next time you put your dick in it, you dumb fuck!

2005-08-11T17:29:00.000-07:00

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

2005-08-11T02:49:00.000-07:00

The Foreign Exchange

Everyone's got their own story of how they lost their virginity. Some are romantic, some are enjoyable, and most are memorable. Still others are...

Aces: 20,000 yen!? That's expensive!
Pretty Girl: She very good. She very nice.
Aces: Yeah, but 20,000 yen good? What is this, like an all-nighter?
Pretty Girl: Eh?

Exactly.

I have to be honest, I was in Shinjuku for just this reason. I mean, the hotel porn channel only worked for 60 seconds a day, and I had used those up at lunch time. Even my attempt at self-sabotage - leaving behind all but 1000 yen at home - didn't work. These floozies accepted cash. A classy outfit.

Aces: I only have dollars, no yen.
PG: How many dollars?
Aces: Um...$150. About 15,000 yen.
PG: No sex for $150. 20,000 yen only.
Aces: (fishing in pocket) Oh look, I just found another $50!

I would make a horrible salesman.

<in the elevator>

Aces: So I can't fuck you?
PG: No. But she is better than me.

<5 seconds later>

Aces: Are you sure I can't fuck you?
PG: No.

When we reached the top, I was escorted into a dimly lit room that could have been a hospital ER room what with all the curtains separating it into private sections. Except no hospital I've ever been in smells like sweaty dick.

I remember picking out the girl from a magazine. Her name was Risa. She was also recommended to me by the pimp as someone who could handle a foreigner, whatever that meant. I didn't like how the place was set up though. It felt like I was going to get beaten and robbed. Still, it's hard to argue with an erection. I've tried. My brain and balls play chess, but when my balls are losing one of them holds down the brain while the other sucker punches him.

I found myself in Risa's work area, where I was told to take off my clothes. After helping myself to a shower, I returned to find her naked and fixated on my groin.

Risa: Waa, you're very big!

I had to look down to see if we were both talking about the same equipment. Unless that shower was built by Priapus himself, my unit was still unimposing and merely average. Perhaps she was just complimenting me...

Risa: I don't know if I can take it.

Back up. What!? My wallet was lighter by 2 bank notes. I did my part. The whole "fitting" problem was something she should have taken care of over, I don't know, the 5 years she's been in this field.

Aces: (laughing) Yeah, haha, but you're going to try. And try. And try.

There wasn't much talking after that. She insisted on giving me a massage. My joints still haven't recovered from that. It hurt like a motherfucker, compounded by the fact that I was on my belly with a raging hard-on and 100lbs of whore crushing my spine.

One agonizing massage later, I was ready to begin. She chose this point to leave our curtained area to go do a line of cocaine. Probably. I actually have no idea. Maybe she just had to take a shit or check email. When she came back, she hit me with a sales pitch:

Risa: Service?
Aces: You betcha.
Risa: No, no. Service...

This time she pointed to my mouth and motioned to her unspeakables.

Aces: Um...yeah. Duh.
Risa: 10,000 yen.
Aces: Oh, haha, no see, I already paid.
Risa: It's extra.
Aces: Son of a...

After another payment (oops, found another $100 in my wallet!) I now had no money left whatsoever. But dammit, I was going to enjoy this next hour!

At least, that's what I was thinking for the 2 minutes I kind of sort of had sex with her. Let me try to capture the feeling in one word - unsatisfying. It felt like I was screwing a pillow in slow motion. She wouldn't let me move at all, and I was only ever half-way in at most. If I tried to inch my way forward (inch is the operative word), she'd yelp.

I guess she got tired, you know, what with all the exertion of laying completely still underneath me, because the next thing I knew she had pushed me out and was pinning me down on my back. The following 15 minutes were spent with her trying to rip my penis out of its penis socket in a pitiful attempt at a handjob.

It hurt. The whole time thus far had basically hurt or been lackluster. She made mention of how my time was almost up - I guess I only paid $300 for a half hour block or something. So I had no choice but to finish. It was either that, or a wicked case of blue balls. I can say I acquired a new skill that day - reaching climax while in extreme pain. But that's not exactly something I can write on my resume.

When all was said and done, I had to run to the station to make the last train. I felt like I had just made a bad purchase. I could have given myself a handjob, and it wouldn't have cost me $300. Probably wouldn't have felt like medeival torture, either.

One thing kept me from getting depressed over that experience: it wasn't really my $300 to begin with. You see, on my way out of college I had received a scholarship from Cornell University to travel in Japan, to the tune of $4000. It must have been the essay I wrote, "You're giving me cash money whether you like it or not." It's the money that got me to Japan in the first place. When you are using free money, you can't really complain too much. I slept easier that night, knowing it wasn't my hard-earned cash I had just blown. It's worth noting I also slept easier because I was entertaining plans to return to that place and rob them blind.

Whenever I think back on my first few weeks here, I always remember this experience. What could have been a horrible experience has now become "The $300 Handjob that Cornell Paid for."

2005-08-11T02:34:00.000-07:00

A new home

I'm back in business on a new site that will be more focused (I swear - failed boy scout's honor) and at the same time, more free. You see, on my old site, http://aces.typepad.com, I was a bit constrained. One factor contributing to this was that my bosses were reading the site. That goes over well when I talk about how I post from work, hate work, am bored of work, and want to find a better job. Hey guys, just kidding!

I was also losing steam. If I write about my daily activities with no sense of direction, they all meld together for me. It's like I sit down to write, and ask myself "What happened to you today?" and the answer inevitably was, "I went to work. I ran a bit. I had some trivial encounter with a girl."

So after taking time off to focus and regroup, I'm coming back with some quality shit - I'm talking parables and anecdotes and other hard-hitting descriptive nouns. Let's start with something I never wrote about and only alluded to a year ago. Join me as I talk about the real Foreign Exchange, circa 2004.