Only one more month here in Japan. Needless to say it's hectic. I constantly vacillate between dreaming about Taco Bell tacos (oh precious Grade F meat!) and then scheming up ways that I can stay here in Japan permanently until I die. Flip-flopping like Kerry. But every day spent in an unproperly air-conditioned office and non-airconditioned classrooms nudges me towards the thoughts of coming home... then promptly moving to the Yukon... because Texas is too damn hot as well. Sure we have air conditioning in Texas but the second you leave the door your skin melts off.
But the tacos are oh so enticing!
The last month will be spent saying goodbye to lots and lots of peoples. Parties upon parties. Alcohol upon alcohol.
This weekend i'm going with a family to an onsen in Gifu Prefecture for some more naked bathing. It'll be great because one of the kids I'm goign with has a Nintendo DS and we'll battle in Mario Kart. It's pretty humbling to get your butt kicked by a 3rd grader. makes you feel old.
Well, I'm smart enough to know that this post is going no where. So i'm going to abandon it! Peace!
i've dreamt about doing this for a long time, and finally i'm going to try it. i'll give you the long exhaustive play by play so that you the reader can have success when making your very own Rice Cooker Cake. (warning: 3MB of pictures)
step 1: clean rice cooker
my rice cooker was filthy. it had like month old rice in there. thankfully, it was cooked to an unedible crispy brown, i've had it grow rainbow mold before. this step might be the most important step.the word is that there will no longer be any mountain dew at the konbini down the street. the konbini-san pulled me aside and gave me the warning... such good memories. in the last month or so i mangaged to fill up a garbage bag with green bottles. all that soda, perhaps that's why i'm a bit tubby now. c'est la vie. if it's true that my precious is leaving the township, then it's clear, i must now commence OPERATION:GREEN STOCKPILE.
mark your calendars for August 1st, 2006 because that's the day I fly 7,000 miles to move back home. america, the land of tacos. i can't begin to explain to you about how much i want taco bell.
i know that a lot of people will rejoice at my homecoming, and i really do appreciate your love, but i personally can't think of anything more depressing. in three years i've made a few friends, a million acquaintances, and the whole town more or less knows me by name and combini / video renting habits. and i have to say goodbye to all that, to all "this". it's sad. it's sad to look someone in the face and say "goodbye" except it means "circumstances being... we will never see eachother again."
today i bought some cardboard boxes and have filled one up with winter clothes already. i have another box that's labeled "books". after that, i'm not sure how many more posessions i have; 2 computers, a small array of musical instruments, a box of lomographics, and a nintendo gamecube. moving is always crap. moving countries is worse - but it's pretty liberating to throw away massive amounts of clothes papers.
tonight at the Aisle, my bar, the stero was playing Desmond Dekker's Isrealites (Classic Reggae, not the abomination that is Dance Hall). listening to the upbeats and the falsettos I was drunk with a certain peace. I simultaneously wanted cry and wanted to dance around the restaurant like the fifteen year old version of my self.
i don't know how that connects. but it did somehow.
i'm coming home. to do what? i don't know. that's a question i don't very much like. a week ago i got really excited about becoming a teacher, but this weekend i decided that i like blogging too much to be a teacher. like hell i'd be a teacher in America with a blog. that's like asking to get murdered. is that a weird decision?
at risk of losing any possibility of future employment... i hate it that employers will oooh and ahhhh over "i can build a website" when it's written on a resume, but if someone owns a domain and blogs it somehow becomes virtual voodoo doll for an employer who is uber-likely to google their applicants.[/rant]
i don't know how i'm going to end this except by saying, train rides are depressing and leave you with too much time to think over life.
