Ups and Downs

Today was the most ridiculous juggling act with my physical and emotional state of being. I woke up early to go meet Janel for lunch at 11, at that I think was the start of things just being weird. I was tired to begin with, and I kept going back and forth all day between having plenty of energy, like, bountiful excessive energy, and being just absurdly tired, down, angry, and spiteful.

I attribute this to several factors.
1) I was tired from waking up early
2) I consumed three hardcore genki drinks over the course of the day
3) I had some complete shit kids classes that were frustrating as all hell

Among other things. Janel and I had lunch, and got some stuff off our chests, er, well, I got some stuff off my chest about where I stand with things and how far I'm willing to take them with her, at least for now, and it was good, because I was pretty straightforward about what things put me off between us, and she seems like she's very willing to try to make things better, and happy that we got them out in the open early on rather than later. We'll see where that goes.

Today though was ridiculous. There's really no way to describe the rollercoaster ride I went on today. It seriously made me think about what it must be like to be bipolar. I would hate to have those kinds of extremes all the time. Thankfully I've since levelled out, after a few drinks and some quality time with friends after work enjoying Mexican food and absurdly spicy sauce.

My birthday is rolling up quickly, and I have to start making preparations for my party, as well as getting time off to go to SummerSonic, for which I already have tickets. Additionally, I need at the same time to do more with my life and get more sleep. How I'm gonna manage that is beyond me at the moment.

Natascha and I went out after work last night, and went to Denny's, which for the record, as I've already stated, is NOTHING like Denny's at home. If you wanna know what I mean, just consider this: no milkshakes. No seasoned fries. No ranch dressing. No Dagwood. Melon Soda. No buffalo sauce OR bleu cheese dressing. It's enough to make a man miss home. Or at least complain while he orders the Club Sandwich and marvels how it's absolutely NOTHING like a club sandwich back home, despite having been inappropriately named American Clubhouse Sandwich.

Anyway, I'm gonna cruise to bed now. Goodnight me. And the other two or three people that read this.

Strawberries and Peaches

So...what's new...I bought new shoes, agian. Great, go me. This time they were a little more what I was looking for, fit, and were much cheaper than the pair I bought a few days before. I got some booot type style kinda thing shoes during my lunch break as the result of a mini freak out involving my grey stripey pants being about and inch or two too short for my taste, and my new shoes being a lower cut than the ones that just crapped out on me. Rob mentioned I should go boot style, what with the style of pants I was wearing, and thus my mission was begun.

After work yesterday I cruised out directly to Nishi Eifuku where I met up with Janel to have dinner and stay the night. She made pasta and salad for me, and we had our first little fiasco, trying to make the alfredo sauce. First she didn't know how to convert grams to cups, but after a little creative thinking we figured that out. Then, we tried to use the microwave to soften cream cheese, but then decided we should just look for the blender which we eventually found. Then, come time to eat, we realized the bottle of wine I brought needed a corckscrew which did not seem to exist. But, after much searching and a bit of frustration, Janel opened the super secret drawer without a handle she had forgotten about and there it was. Sweet. Dinner served. For the record, I think it's the sweetest thing she made me dinner.

We talked it was nice, we sat on the couch together afterwards but what I liked was just sitting around the house and relaxing while she cooked. Just kinda watching her prance around the kitchen half knowing what she's doing, and the interplay between us when she didn't know what to do. I guess what gets me about her is that sometimes she says things that are just so incredibly direct, and normally that wouldn't bother me, but having gotten used to Japanese culture, it does come as kind of a shock. Hearing things like, "don't look at me" when what I'd normally hear is, "I'm so embarassed about people watching me drink" is a little abrupt, but when she says things like that, she looks at me a second later with the most incredible eyes and this feel like she's so happy to be looking at me that I can hardly think there's any harshness in her words, rather that's just the way she talks. So, even if I wanted to I couldn't be offended by it. I should mention this girl has the most amazing eyes. Even if there were malice in her words, that look would undo any animosity that developed as a result.

I didn't get couched, so I was happy about that, and moreso I was happy to wake up next to her, even though on account of the a/c being on in the room it happened many, many times throughout the night and morning.

Anyway, last night was a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed getting to know her better. Looking at her photo albums and things, seeing her aunt and uncle's house, it kinda gives me a better feel for the depth of her life, what kind of person she is. It's weird, you can have ideas about someone, but then you get to see evidence of their life before you knew them, how they came to be here and who they are, and it somehow makes them more real to you. I've noticed a lot of teachers I know out here don't have that, I have no concept that they exist outside of this little world here.

Anyway, I was dead on my feet at work today, and I'm going to go to bed early tonight, er, well, as soon as I finish this, to catch up. Tomorrow Janel and I are going to go see the new Pirates movie. More as it comes.

OH and the peaches thing. On my way home on the local train tonight I ran into a student who I see out drinking sometimes, and she was on her way home with her dad, who speaks great English. We discussed the new Oliver Twist movie which he doesn't like, and they gave me a couple peaches. Every time I see students out in the real world, they give me stuff. That rocks.

And in case the strawberry thing went entirely over your head, Janel is a redhead.

Supplements

So, lately, I've just had no energy whatsoever, and it's been kind of annoying, cause, well, having no energy is just kind of annoying by default. I've been trying for a little while to pinpoint what's been causing it, and trying various methods to relieve said weariness to little avail. I tried buying bottled water, on account of the hard tap water here. I tried taking a multivitamin, which seemed to do the trick for a short while, but seemed more to aid in the prevention of communicable diseases during the cold season. Even getting more sleep wasn't helping, and that's just no fun, cause, I'd be too tired to stay up late and tired even when I went to be early.

So, I finally thought about it when I was considering why I've been bruising so easily lately. See, back when Natascha and I were biting each other for fun, I noticed that I was bruising from them. And, moreover, when kids were hanging on my arms in class, I was bruising from it. That's not a good sign. I was worried, as one always is at first, that I had developed cancer or the HIV or something, but THEN, it dawned on me during a jinx-style same moment comment that I probably have an iron deficiency. So then I went home and read the label on my multivitamin and was disappointed, yet in no way surprised, when I discovered that my multivitamin is exactly and only that.

So, I went and bought a multimineral supplement yesterday and started taking it.

This morning? Damn. What a difference. I woke up early, rested, and had energy today for the first time in literally AGES. It makes me think back to the previous almost two years of my life and how tired I was all the time. And I realize that left to my own devices I eat almost no foods that are high in minerals especially metals, such as red meat.

Oh, and Natascha and I had a little talk the other night and mutually agreed that we're just going to be super close friends, cause we like our company far more than we want anything to happen between us.

Additionally, tomorrow night I'm going over to see Janel, and I'm very excited about that. Mostly cause she's going to cook me dinner, and partly because I fully plan to make out like fiends. You can swap those two actually, it'd be more accurate.

J-Style

I went J-Style hardcore today. I finally caved, after looking around for a few days unsuccessfully and bought the mega J-Style de-constructed jeans with the belt and wallet chain ensemble. It's VERY Japanese fashion. And, in true Japanese form, I payed an arm and a leg for them, which, oddly enough, I could afford, which is even weirder for me.

I went and sung karaoke tonight in Abiko with the whole crew, which was fun. I got to shoot the shit with a lot of people, but had to leave at 10:50 or so to catch my last train, but that wasn't a problem seeing as I haven't drank in a while cause Tyler's sober, so what little beer I had hit me quick, so it's like I got a good night of drinking done, with time to go to bed and go to work at 10 tomorrow.

And, for the record, I can't get this little redhead out of my head.

I'm sure she'll be thrilled to read this, but, I can't stop thinking about her.

Etc.

So. Life. It's been hot lately, for the record. Not only hot, but ridiculously humid. Which, if nothing else, makes me especially thankful for air conditioning. I've woken up the last couple days, regardless of whether I went to bed early or at 4 am like the night before last, promptly at 8 am, to not only my room being insanely bright, but hotter than blazes. Yes, I just said hotter than blazes. I guess I should say hotter'n'blazes to really epitomize how southern that phrase is.

It's quickly getting to be that time of year where sweat is just as much a part of every waking moment as breathing, which is encumbered by the aforementioned humidity.

I had 30k leftover come payday, despite having Tyler out to visit, which is absurd and unprecedented. I'm rich. Not to mention I don't have to send money home this month thanks to my failure to break the poverty line, i.e. my state income tax refund, and I finally received my federal check today, so now I have to find some place to cash it. That's another $575 in my pocket, or more realistically 65,000 yen. I'm a rich rich man. Time to get a haircut I guess. Or go on a coke binge, one of the two. Maybe both. More on that later I suppose.

Girls. Ugh. Melissa sent me a message while Tyler was here and ended it with a comment I found intriguing, 'I'll see you when I'm less congested'. The congestion isn't so interesting as the implication we'll see each other again, but then again I haven't heard from her since and that was a week ago now, so, who knows. At Christine's going away party I had to explain to more than a few people that she and I had broken up, which is surprising and not at the same time.
Natascha wants to be with me, and it's clear she intends to make a boyfriend of me, which, well, I'm admittedly resistant to. I made an exception for Melissa, and just because I had one doesn't mean I'm willing to just jump to the next person that's willing to pamper the crap out of me like she does.

Also, I seem to have picked up a new reader, hi Janel, who is intriguing in her own right. I'm discovering I am in more ways than those I hate, that I'm my father's son. I do seem to have something of a weakness for redheads. It's not right for me to call a real life casual dating relationship into question because of a girl I only chat with that lives across Tokyo from me, cute though she may be. But, I'm doing it, so. I dunno. She's 18, I'm ~24. We'll see how that plays out. I'm not gonna say more, cause well, she's reading this.

Greg and I have decided we want to go out and have fun, and not worry about things for a while, and I think that means at least for a while being single. I'm only two weeks out of a relationship, so really I'm in no position to be thinking about any of this. But, when the dust has fully settled, we'll see where I stand.

Overall, life is alright. This year's going by way too quickly. I want to travel more. I need to write more. I've put on weight, which I need to lose. I need to join the gym, cause I'm sick of having the potential to be cut but am not. I'm thinking of moving to Nippori with Barbara.

I'm scared I'm getting older and less bitter. Now that I have increasingly less to complain about, life is a lot more boring. But my Japanese is getting better.

Aftermath

Well, Tyler's been gone a few days now, let's recap:

Every night we were supposed to spend out on the town, enjoying the night life, went to crap. We went to Shinjuku to stay at an all nighter and go nuts, but, the first one we went to turned us down cause we don't speak Japanese, and the other because of Tyler's tattoos. Who turns someone down in the REDLIGHT district because of tattoos? Japanese people, that's who.

We saw Mi:III otherwise known as Miiii. It was a lot of Tom Cruise being out of his mind, and rehashing shots from his previous movies. I get the distinct impression that movie had the sole aim of trying to put Mr. Cruise back in a favorable light publicly.

That was the night of the second failed all nighter attempt. A week or so prior we were invited to go to Roppongi with a crew led by Mr. Bryan Maw, but I got to see everyone back out one by one like utter tools. Let this be a lesson to you all: don't plan an all nighter the night after the World Cup Final. Additionally, on the subject, what the crap? Italy? Yeesh. None of the final four teams were ones I cared to see win. So, whatever.

So yea, I was royally pissed about that one cause well, it turned out to be a whole lot of Bryan being selfish, right in the face of how kind I've been to him in similar situations, like when his friend was visiting and I busted balls to make it to his all nighters to show his friends a good time.

Tyler's camera deleted all his trip photos the next day on his way up to Mito to do Bryan's radio show. So that's particularly disappointing for the both of us. It would have been nice for the sake of our memories to have some kind of proof his trip existed.

Tyler found his prostitute the last night he was here, good stuff. Now he's back, I'm still here, and life is continuing as if nothing ever happened. Weird how that works. Next entry is non Tyler matters.

Accomplishments

So, Tyler's been here a week now. What have we done?

Hmmm ok let's make a list of the things we've done together, not counting his day trips while I'm at work:
Went to Harajuku, went shopping, saw the Meiji temple
Tried to go to the Imperial Garden but it was closed
Went to Akihabara and played claw games
Went to Teganuma Park for fireworks
Sang Karaoke
Played Pachinko
Checked out Shibuya at night, ate super large ramen
Went bowling with Greg at Minami Kashiwa Young Bowl
And some more things I've doubtlessly forgotten.

Today marked a somewhat momentous occasion for me. My balance on my Citi credit card is now more available than not. I.e. I've paid off more than half my balance. In the next two months I'll stop getting those emails I have sent to me reminding me my balance is abolve the $300 threshold I set for myself. That will be nice, though in anticipation I've set an alert on my WellsFargo overdraft to tell me the same thing. Still, progress is progress.

This entry is on the 5th, at 3:08pm. I'm too lazy to edit the posting date right now.