August 14-17 in 2015

Friday August 14th?
It is 10:02 AM, and I am remembering just how difficult it is to pretend to be working. Effectively, I have nothing to do until I go to a Japanese language summit on the 25th. Even then, classes won’t start here until the 1st of second of September, and I’ll be back from the summit on the 28th. That means, counting today, I’ve roughly nine days of nothing. Well, no excuse to ignore the ol’ Prosebox.
On Thursday I accomplished so much less than nothing. Still hurting from the workouts I’d attempted, I found that it just wasn’t worth attempting much of anything. I think that I’m going to call this week a loss and start them again when I have internet. I think that, in the future, I’ll do my walks in the morning, then do a workout when I come home. However, I think that I’d best add a warmup and some stretches prior to the workout proper. I realize that this makes the whole thing more annoyingly time consuming, but time is something I definitely have. I also do think I’ve got some mice, so I need to clean the apartment, and I’ve got to be in physical condition to be able to do so. Everything just hurts so much.
I’ve also got to watch what I eat. I’ve been stress/bored/depressed eating a lot, which of course wears one. I think it’s easier to eat well if I’m more generally active, so, the workout program may just have to wait a while. It’ll be easier to eat healthier if I can actually cook in my own place instead of eating out all the time, so I’ve got to get everything clean. So, yeah. Priorities. Need to clean it all this weekend. Also need to get garbage stuff figured out.
What is there to say? Not a great deal, I’m afraid. I played computer yesterday, did some Ukulele, did some reading. I finished Botchan and am working through I Am a Cat. Took a lot of Advil. I took a bath, and tried to listen to stuff on the computer, now the track pad isn’t working. Hope that resolves itself. Just a few drops of water, yet, it’s still such a big deal.
I do enjoy watching Ouran High School Host Club. I have watched it before, but the various characters really speak to me in interesting ways. Firstly, and most obviously, there are the twins. Hikaru and Kaoru. Their whole lives, nobody had ever been able to tell them apart. They made a game of it. They were always so proud that nobody could ever see who they were. But they also desperately wanted to be found out. They viewed themselves as utterly superior to mankind and viewed other people as toys. They demanded to be constantly amused and saw other people as a perfectly reasonable way of getting amusement. Tamaki is a princely type. But really, he grew up in a broken home and had to constantly console his ill mother. He just wants to use the people around him to create a new family, and he reigns supreme over it because he wants to keep the family dynamic around. There is some awareness around him (he’s unaware about most things) that the whole thing can’t last forever. Feelings will develop, problems will happen, but what holds most of it together is his idiotic sincerity and love. He has breathtaking moments of insight into other people, but stays oblivious to most of the obvious things. Really, though, he just wants to see other people happy as a way of making up for his own past unhappiness. Finally, of the characters I especially relate to, there’s Kyoya. He’s the shadow operator who keeps everything running. He manipulates everything and everyone to get his way. Yet, there is some deep, hidden, kindness underneath it that he seems to both cherish and to be ashamed of. He’s struggling with it. That’s most of his friendship with Tamaki. Tamaki is pure and full of love and pursues things wholeheartedly. Kyoya thinks, and plots, and plans, and analyzes. People didn’t and don’t naturally like him the way they do Tamaki. He has to become something and to do things to impress others. He doesn’t seem to mind it, though. The more obstacles in his way, the more fun the game.
Obviously this isn’t nearly as true of me at present as it has historically been, but, maybe that’s the problem. I think that there’s a lot in these characters that I can relate to and a lot that I can think about in general. It’s been nice to keep my mind off of things.
A thought occurs to me that I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned before to anybody. At least, not in great detail. I mentioned it to Tristan a few months ago and horrified him, so I suppose that it will at least be novel. Very often, when I see an object, I imagine it doing horrible things. Usually to me. I see a knife, and I start to feel it stabbing me repeatedly, or slicing my flesh open, or such things like that. Sometimes I feel a slight impulse to go ahead and try. That’s why I can’t stand horror movies. I tend to feel, almost physically (and sometimes physically) pain from seeing others experience it. I get squeamish talking about torture or things like that because it gets so embedded in my mind that I can’t get it out. Even as I type, my palms are sweating and I am feeling nervous because the feeling of my fingernails against the keys makes me imagine that they’re being ripped out. It’s hard to keep still. That’s one reason why, perhaps, I’ve found it so useful to shut down so much of my own empathy? When I feel it, it often can overwhelm. Knowing certain things that other people have experienced has horrified me to the point where I have altered how I live or do things simply because I’m haunted by their experience. Certain things I’ve learned are burned so deeply into my mind that I cannot escape them. I want, sometimes, to demean and cheapen these things. But to do so would be truly horrid. Still, it is awful to walk around carrying another’s burdens while not lightening their true bearer one bit. It is a difficult thing, it seems. Well, I don’t know what to say or what to do about it.
My two relationships ended when I came to Japan. To be honest, I was rather happy to be rid of them. One, Jordan, is an inordinately sweet and caring girl who’d never been the recipient of affection before. She means well, but she’s just not at all for me. Audrey needs more than anything to be single, but wants, more than anything, not to be. We’ve all known the type. She’s the self-deluding sort who, provided she finds a man equally inclined, should be happy provided reality never comes knocking. At any rate, Jordan does have periodic moments of rather brilliant insight. Sometimes she sees things that I would examine and then be ashamed that I’d never realized. She mentioned something to me, weeks ago, that’s stuck by me for quite some time. She said that I don’t write real people and don’t seem to know how. I think she’s right.
The two characters I wrote that I cared for the most were still my first. A fan fic Marty Stu, and my anime romance du jour. Of course I cared. I think they probably got more developed as characters than nearly anything else I ever did. Why? I suppose because, in their instance, the plot was important, but I really just wanted to imagine the two of them (us?) together. The plot was there largely because of their relationship. Never again would I come to feel so much for a character. Instead, I’d like ideas. I’d like concepts. I’d like notions. I’d think that I’d found some new idea worthwhile. Maybe that’s why my short stories are readable? An idea can carry you for a dozen pages or so. Maybe even two dozen. But in larger work, it’s got to be characters that get you from moment to moment. I really attempted that with my warring brothel stories, but it kind of faded away when things got to be difficult. People had some kind of shtick, but it wasn’t the same as a personality, or even really caring or being developed. I stalled when the action did. Lots of scenery porn, lots of porn porn, but not a whole lot of people. I hinted, but I couldn’t deliver. It wasn’t a brother, it was a restaurant.
I dreamed of Amanda recently. For the first time in a very long time. I let her know over FB, but, of course, she hasn’t replied. We’ll see if it ends up meaning anything.
Well, it’s Friday. Even though I’m dreading the boredom that is the weekend to come, I really REALLY don’t want to be here at work not working. It’s just exhausting. Pretending to work is so much more difficult than the real thing. I don’t know how people manage to do it. Still, I’m running out of life updates. I’ve mentioned two personal thoughts, and I’ve given a rundown of all of the exciting news that’s transpired since this time yesterday.
I suppose that’ll have to be it.

Update: After lunch, where I need to go home and do stuff and thus may not get to eat much, I’m going on a driving expedition with Sam. We’re going to see the routes to and from our schools from the BOE. Hooray! That’ll actually be something a bit useful and time consuming. Hooray for me!

Continued on Monday
Well, the driving expedition was a rousing success. But not at all in the way that we had intended. Sam drove, I rode, and we first made our way to one school on a rough route that should take us near about four of our schools, though mostly my schools. We made it to the first school with no difficulties. Then, we went to the second school. There we hit a very fun complication. We happened upon the vice principal who wanted us to have some sort of formal introduction. It was incredibly enjoyable. Tea was served, naturally, and there was light conversation and we received some business cards from him. He then informed us of where we ought to go for the next school, called ahead, and he told them to expect us. We got a tour of the place, and it was really quite lovely. Then they had some people come out and talk to us. One is one of the ladies from my conversation club! Amazing, right? It was a really lovely talk.
After that, it was time to head back to school. We did, and we said goodbye, and we went home. After that, we went out. We went to a Don restaurant that was owned by a sweep Filipino woman. The food was pretty mediocre, but Sam loved it. We had a nice chat with the people. The owner’s daughter or daughter in law (couldn’t tell which) said we should go up to Izumi and visit her and her husband (who was also there and was the owner’s son or son in law). We had asked about young people being around, and they said that no, there were no in Satsuma. Apparently the young lady in question is friends with a lot of the bar girls in Izumi. She said she’d get us a discount there. Sam and I were naturally hesitant, and I doubt we’ll be taking her up on the offer. Frankly, while these girls may not be prostitutes, they’re a little bit lose, and with hungry families looking for remittances, I think the odds that they don’t turn the occasional trick is . . . small. They’re dancers/bar girls who come with a table. It’s not a terribly long step.
After the Don shop, we went to a series of bars. Well, two bars. Both ones I’d been to before. I was remembered both places, which was nice. Sam wasn’t as good at singing as I’d been lead to believe. Let’s hope he’s as good at music. Finally, when I realized that I had hit my drink limit, we went home.
Saturday was long and dull. I did essentially nothing and was, essentially, nothing. I did manage to get most of the crap from my downstairs cleaned up. Well, at least moved upstairs into my bedroom. However, as the shirt I’m wearing right now smells pretty terrible and was still packaged as of today, I rather suspect that I need to put all of that away ASAP. And to get dehumidifiers in the drawers. I also think that I’ve got this garbage thing sorted out. Maybe. Wanting to not miss another step goal, I went on a long walk and talked to mom on Skype. It went on too long and I got cranky. I don’t know whether I just get tired of her or she actually does grow more annoying, but the more I talk to her, the harder it is to tolerate her. Which is bad. I’m terrified that she or dad (especially dad) may be gone soon. I worry. I wish I loved them more, and I really wish I liked her more. She’s a good woman, in her own terrible way. At least she half way tries to be.
Sunday, Sam and I went to Satsumasendai in search of music stores. We found two. Both were closed. Yeah. Everything is closed on Sundays here, which doesn’t make a great deal of sense to me. Everything also closes very early. Which makes, frankly, even less sense. Satsumasendai was mostly a shopping/driving practice trip. I drove, of course. I think Sam may just be cheap. That’s fine, though. I liked the practice. On the way back, we went to Joyfun café, which is a sort of Denny’s/Big Boy place. But Japanese style (but not like Japanese Denny’s or Big Boy which are different). Sam had wanted a chain restaurant (we have none in our part of town) and that seemed promising. I was desperate for some shrimp tempura udon. I was not in luck. This frustrates me greatly. Well, pulling out, I nearly killed the both of us by making my first serious wrong-side-of-the-road mistake. Hopefully the last. But for Sam, I don’t know if I’d get the chance to make another one. After that, we went to Nafco, which is a kind of home goods store. It’s a lot better than the Plasse here. I got some rat poison and a new kind of Fanta and some hand soap. Then I went home.
Beyond that, I’m playing the ukulele a lot. I went over my data, finally. Mostly, I’m bored. I don’t have a whole lot to do. In town, there are no places for entertainment. No theaters, no sports areas, nothing at all like that. Complicating matters, so far I haven’t met anybody my age in town (outside of Sam), I have no internet, the restaurants all seem to serve just ramen, and I’ve gone just about everywhere within walking distance. So . . . yeah. There is Pachinko, but I’m not really in slot-machines-by-another-name.
So, yeah. I’m bored and lonely, but not to Akita levels, yet. Which is a blessing. I’m counting down the days until school starts up. That’s when the fun begins. That’s when I’ll have stuff to do. August 22nd, I get paid. Sept 1st (or 2nd) school starts. Bam! That’s what I need. An end to financial distress and stuff to do all day. For one thing, I do just love teaching. More than that, though, through the schools I’ll be meeting teachers, who can be friends, and I’ll be able to join clubs that take up even more time! Thank goodness for English Conversation Club tonight.
I started a workout regimen a while ago. It lasted two days. Well, I suppose I should say, I started it last Monday, and I’m still sore from the Monday portion of the workout. I want to keep doing it, but I think that I’ve got to do a lot of warmups and stretching first. But I kind of want the internet to be able to do that. I want a warmup/stretch tutorial. I can’t really do that at the moment as Youtube is an all-consuming data monster, and I’m already over my data and have to pay for it. $10 per gig. I think. Man, I hope I’m right. But I digress. I’m generally making my step goals and my stair goals, which is good. The difficulty is in diet which I need to alter. Again, depression and boredom and not my allies when it comes to weight loss. I’ve been eating horribly and suffering for it. The jackets I had tailored that had to be taken in are now too small. Hooray for me. Well, that’ll be easier come the start of school, but, I’ve got to improve things in the meantime. The difficulty is that it’s honestly hard to find food here that isn’t ramen or fried. I’m sure it exists. Heck, I’ll just eat sushi for lunch today. Why not? That’s healthier anyway. I mean, it doesn’t have a ton of veggies, but it’s just rice and fish. I keep meaning to start cooking for myself, but it keeps not happening. Come school, I’ll have two healthy-ish meals guaranteed: breakfast (cereal, yogurt, and fruit) I do at home, and lunch will be Japanese school lunch. That should be pretty okay.
The weather here is pretty unpleasant, though beautiful to be sure. There are clouds trapped against the mountains, something that always makes me happy. It’s also interesting to see the peaks just visible off in the distance and the ambiguous views that make you unsure if it’s a mountain or a cloud. Not as beautiful as when we’d talk about it gazing out over Biwa, but still, pretty nice. I really can’t complain. I’m worried about reaching my exercise/step goal today. It’s just pouring and humid and gross, and, even then, still pretty warm. And there’s not really a decent indoor place to walk for very long. There’s only one store you really can walk around in, but Plasse really isn’t that big. I mean, I suppose it kind of is, but I’m still not sure if it’s a store or just a venue for stores. The bottom area is divided into a series of sections that all seem to operate independently of each other. It’s got a media rental/sale area, two areas (at least) dedicated to Satsuma gifts, or gifts in general, and then a bunch of small dedicated shops (cleaner, florist, and a few others). Then, the upstairs has an arcade, a 100Yen shop, and then has the “everything else” section. A tiny bit of just about everything. Nothing in particularly great quantity or quality. Oh well. Such is the fate of man in the inaka.
I want to talk about the schools that I visited, and I was trying to think of a way of adequately describing them and how they made me feel. I tossed a few words about in my mind, but none of them seemed to do the job. At least, not very well. Then, a Japanese one popped in, sensibly enough. Aware. A-wa-re. It’s really the only thing I can think of.
The first school we stopped in (second of the day) impressed me with its office. On the wall, hung pictures of every principal in the history of the school, which was founded back in the Meiji era. The first principal didn’t even have a photograph. It was a portrait. Apparently nobody had been able to get a camera out this far into the middle of nowhere. I find it amazing, as I read Japanese literature, that from the Heian story of Sugiawara no Michizane to Soseki’s I Am a Cat and Botchan, Kyushu is viewed as a place of exile. Still, there was something moving, something beautiful about that school and the school room. The building was old. Not original, to be sure, but old. You could see portions where it had been altered. It was clean-ish. As ish as it can be in the deep inaka of the subtropics. Still, it was a place where you could feel history. It was truly astonishing. And, there, in that office, looking down at you, were the dozens of faces of the men who had lead it. Truly magnificent. Of course, then, it stands to reason that the school is to be closed at the end of the term. There simply aren’t enough students to justify having anybody in the building. Families are leaving, and couples aren’t conceiving. Population decline, a theoretical bane to the Tokyo elite, is a fact of life here in the countryside. Being from Michigan, I can, to an extent, relate. This school has been there, in one form or other, for nearly a hundred and fifty years. It saw a war with China, with Russia, and with America. It has seen four emperors. It’s seen the rapid rise and gradual decline of the whole region. It’s survived everything but this last one. It can stand in the face of bombs and unrest and dying emperors. But it cannot bear emptiness. So, it fades. Alone. Who can say what will become of it?
The second school was even more so than the first. Perhaps it is because they were ready and we had the tour. We were taken outside. The play area has a little coop for rabbits and chickens. There’s a sort of soft, overgrown, oval track in the center of everything with a play structure inside. There’s even a pool of sorts. Beyond the play area, the whole ground drops away and you see a beautiful valley stretching out until it abruptly ends with the mountains in the distance that loom impressively just out of reach. Inside, we saw the rooms. The largest class was a mixed 3rd/4th grade class. Four students, if I remember correctly. Four. We saw the music room, with more keyboards than hands for them. We went into the science lab with a station for every student and then some. We saw the immaculately clean rooms, tended by generations of farmers’ children. Finally, on the top part of the wall all along the second story, were barrel lids with the names written in of each and every student from each and every graduating class. Perhaps, as it’s the end, all of the students will be allowed to write their names this time. Not that I think anyone will be able to see. It is a terribly sad thing, when a part of history fades into nothing. I mourn for Andover, and it was never my school. It’s where I met Elise, and began my trek towards The Starlight. I went on some lovely dates with Lee to the shows there. I saw Katie Carter perform, back before that meant a thing to anybody. I started my teaching career there as the assistant director to The Rising Stars. I snuck kisses with my girls de jour there. Amanda, Niki, Rachael, Arielle, and probably a few more that I can’t think of at the moment. Possibly Amber. Still, it was never my school. It was just a school that I frequented. How much worse for somebody who’d really truly been a part of it? And what of all of this in Japan? Andover closes, but, while it hurts us as sentimental fools, there’s no great worry about any of the Bloomfields. But for this tiny place? The stores around it area already shuttered. They’re talking about repurposing the building, but what on earth will they do with it? There’s nobody and nothing left here that will be here in a few decades. Still, I saw one of the teachers working in the rain to plant more flowers. It is the most beautiful, elegant, walking corpse I have ever seen. Maybe there is some merit to arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. What else is there to do?