Awaken

"Awaken" as a word always reminds me of Metalocalypse, particularly of Mustakrakish the Lake Troll.

But awakening is pretty much exactly how I've been feeling over the past few days, as if I had just been dormant and lackluster for those couple cold winter months. I put on five pounds and now I'm taking them off, I feel motivated to do my hair and put on Outfits with a capital O, and overall life just seems pretty awesome. I've got things to do before I leave Japan, and I've got lots of things to do once I get back to America.

I'm stuck in this really funny place between wanting to savor the rest of my time here and just hurry up and get back and re-start my "new" life. It's unbelievable how easily and rapidly you accumulate plans and obligations; every weekend for the next month and a half has been spoken for in some capacity or another. I have concerts to play/attend lined up for every weekend from this Friday through the end of March; my mom is visiting Japan for two weeks during spring holidays, I have a road race to train for in early April, and there's a big gathering in Nagoya the weekend after the race. With all these things to be planning and thinking about, I am still just sitting around watching videos of people eating fried butter at the Texas State Fair and daydreaming about America.

America really isn't that great, but I've built it up in my mind as some kind of wonderland. Nothing makes you love home like living away from it, I guess. Obesity epidemic, tipping culture, culture of unjustified entitlement and all, I have to admit I feel a bit proud of the big honking eagle on my passport. Now if only I could get a nifty burgundy/purple European Union passport too...

Initiating a breakup.

I think Austin is going to win. I really love the idea of it and no matter what, there will be more going on there than there is in Albany, NY.

Not that there's anything wrong with "The 518," "The ToC," or "Smallbany" (a modest sampling of its many monikers) - on the contrary, I really loved growing up there and I had loads of nice friends, a great nuclear family with a big house with a great park literally in my backyard. Since Albany is the capital of New York State, there were internships to be had at the state offices downtown, some music festivals, and smatterings of interesting nightlife.

I suppose I realized I'd outgrown my pond a bit when I went home to visit last summer and felt like I had managed to do everything there was to do in the area in two weeks. Most of my friends from childhood are married, engaged, parents, soon-to-be parents, or otherwise domesticated. Some moved to other cities and states, and quite a few more simply grew boring and useless to me. My parents hate the high cost of living and the snowy winters. I found the lack of Thai restaurants indicative of many things.

(Universities and colleges in America are ranked informally by their percentages of Jewish and Asian students - the higher the percentages, the more expensive and competitive the school. I use a similar system to rate cities. Cities with lots of Thai restaurants have lots of arts-conscious 20-somethings who have passports. People like me. Albany has no well-known Thai restaurants and only a small handful of Indian places. Manhattan/Brooklyn, Los Angeles, and Boston have at least eight of each on every block.)

Walter will be coming to Austin too. There we intend to recreate our present perfectly betsu-betsu (separate, individual) lifestyle - each keeping our own apartments and doing our own things, forming our own circles while having loads of adventures together. Our relationship and our bond seems unshakeable today, but if for some reason we don't make it as a couple, it's not like there's any shortage of cute single people around. Austin is consistently ranked as one of the best U.S. cities for young singles. Single girls make good girlfriends. Everybody wins.

My parents will probably move to the area too, since as I mentioned they are not fans of winter and in their mid-sixties are becoming a bit fragile for heavy-duty shoveling on a steep driveway in icy conditions. Dad's from rural Tennessee and Mom's from Dee-troit; they're both already sort of out of their elements in suburban upstate New York. Austin is still Texas, but compared to other major cities it seems, on all accounts, more foreigner-friendly, at least toward atheist liberal types. I've been doing some research; housing is affordable compared to NY and they should be able to find a tiny house or condo near downtown to grow old in.

In the past, my breakups with boyfriends have all been fairly straightforward, like ripping off a Band-Aid that was sort of falling off already anyway. I think saying "smell ya later" to my hometown will be like that, too. I'm ready for change and coming off of a three-year stint abroad, if I don't immediately flood my senses with more excitement and change, I'll wilt like a corsage after prom night. I'm so excited for this.

Mannheim

I like capes

Why can't I quit you?

I'm going to Germany again. This will be my fourth time in less than three years, and I have not lived on the western half of the Eurasian landmass for any of those three years. I'll be there over the New Year holiday in Frankfurt and Berlin. As if that weren't awesome enough, I will be accompanied with three of my best friends from Japan, who all happen to be English and therefore already nearby for Christmastime. To say I'm excited would be an insincerely understated lie.

It's funny how any given place represents different things for everyone. For a friend who will be joining me in my travels, Germany is synonymous with uptight boring people who wear socks and sandals. For plenty of Americans, the first things that come to mind are Nazis, shit porn and Oktoberfest. For me, it is (incorrectly) a futuristic haven of minimal techno producers with cool names, power plants, Kraftwerk, and kinky shit. I studied the language rather casually and by this point speak extravagantly poorly - just well enough to survive, file a police report, and say "tee hee" to cute strangers.

Obviously it is just a country, with all sorts of variations in language, dress, geography and politics. In my short but sweet times there I've watched the sun rise over Berlin on New Year's morning after in the company of a druid, danced the night away at a pro-Israel/USA communist squat, and I've also been yelled at by a cranky middle aged woman on a train for having my feet on my own seat.

It's these mundane occurrences that become "unforgettable experiences" and define how we think of X locale, and this update exists solely for my own purposes. I'm including a few photos from the prior three trips that I find particularly nostalgia-inducing or representative. Enjoy!

A chilly pond by Ravensbrück concentration camp memorial site: Brandenburg, March 2008

Revelers at Icon, first "real" clubbing experience in my lifetime: Berlin, March 2008

TV tower in Alexanderplatz on a snowy New Year's Day: Berlin, January 2009

Summer flowers on top of a mountain: Baden-Baden, August 2009

Maren, a notably excellent Couchsurfing "coffee or a drink" host who introduced me to some lovely people: Munich, August 2009

Orientalism in Italo and Euro Disco

Jessica - "Chinese Magic"

Aneka - "Japanese Boy"

Peter Randell - "Lost in Tokyo"

Murray Head - "One Night in Bangkok"

Fuck your life. Leave it behind and head to the exotic Orient, where neon lights and golden opportunities await your every need with a ninety degree bow and petite feet. The sprawling Asian megalopolis is "Blade Runner" gone utopic, so unexplored and so utterly foreign that it will eat you alive and you will never be the same. Enjoy complete and absolute anonymity in the Far East; fall in love with a beautiful creature that you can bring home later; even the strongest and mightiest of men fall prey to the wicked and unexpected charms hidden in dark alleyways, go-go bars and tea salons.

As much as we like to pretend we are creatures of enlightenment because we read Edward Said in Asian Studies 101, I think we as Westerners in Asia all carry a little bit of this Orientalist fantasy with us when we hop on that long flight. Asia is still uncharted territory as far as young Western interests are concerned - how many people do you know that can name more than five cities in China? As far as North Americans are concerned, many more opt to head to Western Europe or the tropical islands to the south for leisure travel. Those who make the trek over to Asia often (sometimes un)consciously carry little beacons of pride with them on their travels, peering down their noses at those pawns who think Paris is a big culture shock jump because the French speak French. Yeah brah, Europe is cool and all, but Asia is for the adventurous.

It applies to me, too, even though I have much more in common physically with the feline, almond-eyed geisha-ladyboy-me-love-you-long-time sex object than the awkward-looking visible foreigners stumbling around Tokyo with maps and backpacks. No one looks at me twice over here, and they have no idea that I am listening to "Chinese Magic" on repeat under my blanket while China Airlines Flight 0011 lands bumpily at TPE. As mentioned in this wankfest entry from a few months ago, it didn't take long for Tokyo to lose its magical mystery. I think I know deep down that the sprawling capital cities of Asia are just like anywhere else, with possibly more hepatitis and deformed beggar children, and that's why I'm afraid to visit and keep running away to Europe instead of exploring the countries and cultures in close proximity to Japan. I actually want Asia to be the exoticised fantasy land of Italo and Euro disco from 25 years ago, and not simply part of a globalized world that has been raped and pillaged by American popular culture.

belly dancing

I saw this porn once where this guy was banging Lela Starr and at one point he just yelled at her "OOOH YOU'RE SO FUCKIN SEXY!" That's pretty much how I feel when I am failing miserably at learning belly dance moves via Youtube and making the earth shake in my paper box house while wearing a wolf shirt, sweating all the while of course.

My latest crazed plot to weigh significantly less than right now is to incorporate copious amounts of dancing into my daily routine. This is a pretty recent thing; I'm tired of being stuck at a plateau for like a month straight so something's gotta give and dancing is fun. After I've humiliated myself thoroughly by not being able to follow Billy Blanks (who may be the king simpleton of all exercise videos) for 45 minutes, I'll fling myself at the ground and do pathetic knee push-ups because I can't do real ones, do 200 crunches all in rapid succession which I'm sure is not how they are intended to be done, and then dance. On Monday it was drum and bass. Today it was the song "Tangerine Speedo," with some Crazy Town and Wheatus and a little Lou Bega (mix CD from my teenage years). I also tried to do the Mashed Potato but it gives me really bad rugburn on the soles of my feet. Possibly unwise.

Meanwhile my insatiable fetish for Lebanon rages on. Inspired by Youtube videos of sexy bitches with fake tits wiggling around on Lebanese TV, visions of hedonistic nights clubbing in Beirut, and the fact that I ALMOST got a falafel on Saturday, I'm mapping out a trip in my mind. I'm looking at you, Wael Abifaker.

The glamour of flying

It doesn't get much more "back in the day" than this photo, does it?

One time on an American Airlines flight from Narita to Chicago I met Shirley the flight attendant. She was an overweight white woman in her fifties or so and was obviously a senior flight attendant. Let me tell you, Shirley does not take jack beanstalk from anyone. "You don't touch me, you TALK to me" in response to a Japanese passenger tapping her on the shoulder. I'm pretty sure she actually asked other passengers to help her stuff luggage into the overhead compartments. Shirley is not the living picture of long-legged glamour; she represents "service with a sneer" to a T, the archetypal complaint material of businessmen who only fly Asian airlines and still call them "stewardesses."

However, as cranky and culturally shocking as Shirley was to me (I'd gotten used to petite and demure Japanese cabin crews who bow to you), she inspired me in a huge way by snapping "Are you a flight attendant?" when I stacked the food trays before handing them to her. Puzzled and flattered, I asked why she thought I was a flight attendant, to which she replied curtly "I dunno, you just seem like you know what you're doing."

What if instead of settling down like a good adult after my homecoming, I ran off again, this time in hopes of snatching some residual glamour from the rare sparks and flashes that remain somewhere in the earth's skies? For every songless land whale requiring a seat belt extender or stinking pile of baby vomit, there must be SOME perk that keeps flight attendants from committing suicide every day. I think I'd like to find out what it is.

A long hiatus and a brief update

I've not written in over a month due to lack of inspiration, but that doesn't mean nothing has happened. In the past month I have done some traveling, saw my third year students graduate, signed on for a major musical project, and am in the process of enjoying the ephemeral cherry blossoms characteristic of springtime in Japan.

Places Visited

A few weeks ago I went to Tokyo to meet a bunch of friends from the Internet, as you do. Did the usual drinking, clubbing, singing and all that. Had dinner at an Uzbek/Turkish restaurant with belly dancers and hookahs one night. One interesting new experience I had in Tokyo, aside from those which are not fit to write about on a public blog, was going to a cat cafe. It is exactly what it sounds like - you pay a fee of roughly ￥1000 to sit in this big pink salon style room where there are a dozen or so cats sitting around that you can pet and play with, and the staff serves hot beverages to go with your cat. Very quaint, but the sort of suffocating quaint where it's just so sweet that you feel miserably depressed.

I also went to Nagasaki with Walter for a long weekend. I was unpleasantly surprised to see that the city itself was kind of drab and run-down, with only its natural geography and of course the irresistible allure of the atomic bomb memorial museum and Peace Park to draw in tourists. I don't know what I expected from Nagasaki but I felt a little disappointed; perhaps I expected it would be more sunny and California-esque the way Sasebo is. Did the obligatory visit to the atomic bomb museum; it was quite well done and lacked any sort of intrusive political agenda aside from (somewhat obviously) being pro-nuclear disarmament. I met an old woman in the Peace Park near the epicenter of the bombing who was a survivor, she was five years old when Nagasaki was bombed and remembered that there used to be a cherry tomato patch where it fell.

Graduation and Staff Changes

Not much to report here. The third years graduated, which was pretty bittersweet since they were my favorite year of students. I hope they do well for themselves and don't all end up working at the Trial (fake Wal-Mart) in Tagawa. A couple of them email me sometimes but it's really a fool's hope to think I can really keep in touch with anyone for that long.

As mandated by the stupid Troglodyte Council of Retards (prefectural Board of Education), the carnival lottery system has spoken and we are undergoing major staff changes from April 1. This year the principal and BOTH vice principals are changing, as well as three English teachers and a whole bunch of other teachers. The entire office staff downstairs are changing too. While I welcome new coworkers who are possibly better than their predecessors, it's pretty awful that my favorite English teacher is being transferred. I will never understand this crap-chute system of moving employees around.

Musical Endeavors

I signed on to play violin at a charity concert in June. It's being held at the Fukuoka Christian Center for the sake of decent acoustics and performance hall space. Apparently I am collaborating with someone else, who knew. My ideas for what to play are as follows, and definitely still a work in progress....

-Sonata for Violin and Piano in A, Cesar Franck, Mvmts III and/or IV - solo violin
-Arirang (Korean folk song) - solo violin
-Sea Chantey/Metallica medley - violin and guitar
-Cover of "Clovenhoof" by Tiamat - violin and guitar

Aside from the charity concert I am also thinking of shattering the glass walls preventing me and Walter from playing music together. We're both better than terrible at what we do, and could probably be a formidable for-fun stage act. Miho is organizing a party with local musicians for the end of May and I'd like to offer my goods and services to that.

Springtime?

It is fucking cold this year. Today the high is supposed to be 12 and the low a pathetic 2. I wore my heavy wool trenchcoat to work today and was still stupidly cold on the walk this morning. Cut the bullshit please, I don't want to sit around looking at cherry blossoms wrapped in fifteen blankets and shivering. I did go to a lovely nighttime event in Kumamoto this past weekend, something of a festival of cherry blossoms and 8,000 lit candles in a temple on a hill.

Fucking badasses.

Oh I totally forgot to mention Sunday was the Bota Rock 2010 rock festival in Tagawa. As a musical event it was spectacularly good, and possibly even better for straight up people watching. Toothless old men with missing fingers, aging bar hostesses without panties, junior high school kids in uniform, and all varieties of rockabillies and pompadour-sporting greasers flung themselves around to 7 bands ranging from Celine Dion-esque diva solo singers to a junior high school band covering the Ventures and a working-class doo-wop/boogie outfit who actually went the distance and wrote a catchy song about the local private train line. Unforgettably fun time, reminded me that rock and roll is not dead. And I will be updating this post with photos.

Buried

Back to the swing...cold nights, cold days, warm bed, and still haven't taught any classes upon returning to Japan. I'll be amazed if I'm not covered in bedsores in the near future. Last week I went to bed at the unheard-of hours of (before midnight o'clock) almost every night. I'm back to my usual zombie-like 2 am-7 am sleep schedule and it feels terrible, which is just how I love it.



It's always rough coming back after visiting home. It's hard not to sit around wondering "why did I leave insulated buildings and the possibility of Pepperidge Farm Cake to come back to an impoverished industrial city with rice paddies?"



But slowly I'm re-adjusting. Haven't succumbed completely to winter blues; I still suspect I've got a slight dopamine imbalance that keeps me grinning when everyone else is down. I realize the mundane things in my utterly meaningless existence are what make life beautiful. Things like singing Vengaboys for the 34564th time at karaoke in Shinnyu, shoving eggplant into my face at the Suizenji Shokudo when I visit Walter in Kumamoto, and posting drivel on a web forum 8 hours a day are all delightful in their own way.

In more exciting news, I may have a lead for a free ticket to Wacken Open Air Metal Festival held in Wacken, Germany, in early August. I have also planned trips to the three largest cities in Japan to frolic in the next couple months.

Brownie Mountain

Lately I've been watching WAY too much "Tim and Eric" and I thought this clip (mainly the song) is a really accurate portrayal of what it's like to be on psychedelics.



As you can see, this entry was tagged with "wanderlust." Hmm.

krampy has a band?

I'm in a band now. We're not a real band, we don't even have a bass player, but this is as band-like as it's gotten thus far and I like it. For now it's mostly covers of songs everyone knows with heavily improvised violin and djembe beats, and everyone sings and switches up their instruments. Nothing professional or terribly innovative but a lot of fun. It feels amazing to be playing music again. My dreams of street musicianship appear to be well on the way to coming true. Soon I'll be shivering half-naked in tattered clothes in the Ita Gintengai shopping arcade playing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" with my violin case open, imploring the octogenarian passersby for pocket change.

Meanwhile I'm hit with the pressing need to travel. It's almost as urgent as needing to urinate or that graceful word - what was it - "beeriod" after a night of drinking. Walter and I have been talking about going to Shanghai for a few days. I'd be happy to walk around not being able to read anything or speak to anyone, perhaps throwing out an emphatic "ching chong wing wong" here and there, eating street dumplings cooked in cleaning product, logically followed by diarrhea without toilet paper in some filthy hellhole, and maybe a classy meal atop a skyscraper.

Actually the other day a student said "nihao" to me. I said "HELLO" back.

Hello. I sort of love being hung over. That disoriented slightly achey haze does wonders for the introspective soul and fosters a nice kind of team spirit when everyone's feeling it. It's like smoking cigarettes. If there's nothing else to talk about, you can always just talk about what you have in common. Oh, Marlboro Lights. What are you, a homo? My gay ex smokes those. I think they're so foul. Here, have a Lucky Strike. What do you mean they're too strong? What kind of pansy are you?

Only 6 more hours of work.

P.S. Welcome to the new blog.