Things You Discover While Looking For An Apartment

Two snippets I found particularly amusing while reading articles online this morning:

Interestingly, there is no word in Japanese for "racism". The nearest translation is 人種差別政策 (racial discrimination policy) or 人種的偏見 (racial prejudice). But these words do not include the sense of superiority felt by real racists (like the Nazi). It is also undeniable that a lot of Japanese feel superior to their Asian neighbours, while discriminating against them. It is thus convenient for Japanese not to have the word "racism" in their vocabulary, so that no law can effectively prohibit it, and discussion about it is seriously hampered.

Sex discrimination, combined with sexual harassment, have been part of everyday life in Japanese companies. A lot has been achieved regarding sexual harassment, but glass ceilings preventing women from reaching high positions still exist in most Japanese companies.

Interestingly again, Japanese have no word for "glass ceiling", which makes it more difficult to tackle as many people do not even think about the concept.

Taken from http://www.jref.com/society/discrimination_in_japan.shtml

Bored.

Today was basically just another normal day, I went to work, and now here I am, sitting at the helm typing here because there wasn't anything going on in the game I play.

A high level student and I were discussing journals/diaries in our lesson today, about how we've totally lapsed in updating things in our daily lives recently. Basically, we don't write because there's nothing to write about, because life has settled and there's really not a lot going on, or, because we're way too busy living it to actually sit down and type about it. So it's kind of an interesting quandary, that the only times I really write are when I'm bored and have nothing to say.

I look back on my old entries now and again to read what I put down, and there are some things that really wow me, but this is nothing I haven't said before.

It's kind of anticlimactic when you realize that all the hardship and struggles you endure in life all go towards ultimately being extremely bored. Like, I busted my ass and went through a lot of shit to come to Japan, and now here I am, my life is stable, I have everything I need and most of what I want, and all of a sudden there's no reason to really pay close attention to anything. And it's not like I'm going to fabricate importance in things, nor manufacture events to stimulate my life, but it really is something of a let down to finally get to a point where I've wanted to be only to be bored now that I'm here.

It just goes to show I guess that life really is about getting there, rather than being there. I've been aware most of my life now that the rewarding part of doing something is less the result than having made an effort to get there, or, if not that, then what the end result enables you to do that you couldn't before, thus enriching your life and opening doors to new opportunities.

I hate this conflict that I don't like being stressed out all the time but I hate being idle. I guess though when it comes down to it I'd rather be in controlled panic than controlled stability. for example, in this game, I just finished leveling a Priest to max level, and I find that I enjoy healing much more than I do blasting things with my Warlock, the reason being that when I'm killing shit all I have to do is pick a target and stick with it till it dies, there's occasionally some crazy stuff that goes on, but by and large it's lather, rinse repeat. But with healing, I have to divide my attention at least 5 ways, keep 5 people alive, and watch out for environmental factors what not only endanger myself but the rest of my party. With a good group it's satisfying to do a good job, but I almost like a semi-good group because then I really have to work to keep things going, and that kind of near-panic, near-failure is where the real satisfaction of playing comes from, from my point of view.

I suppose though, it's a good thing that I have this outlet for my desire to be up to my waist in panic and potential harm since there are zero real life consequences and it more or less tames me in real life so I don't go doing something profoundly stupid where it really counts.

Anyway, in other news, I have my end of contract evaluation coming up at the endof the month, I have to arrange my vacation days for my trip to Thailand asap, and I'm going to spend Saturday night with my girlfriend, which makes me happy.

This summer has not been a summer at all, I've been cold at night more often than not, the rain is weird and inconsistent, and has dragged on for a strangely long period of time. So, either it's gonna be stupidly hot when this breaks, or the entire globe is going to freeze come winter. What the heck is going on?

New Kinds of Lazy

I just discovered last night that I can talk to my computer, and tell it what to do.

As in, my computer is listening to me. That's party very creepy, but a whole lot way cool.

For example, I can tell it to turn on the screensaver while I'm laying in bed and *POOF* there goes the screensaver. And in the morning I can just look over from my pillow, or not, the mic is pretty sensitive, and say, Cancel Last Command and then *POOF* screen comes back and Switch to Firefox and, you guessed it, *POOF* Firefox comes up so I can get right down to checking MySpace and Facebook, having saved what must be tens or hundreds of milliseconds that I otherwise would have used mousing around uselessly.

Can you see why this is the greatest thing ever?

If you couldn't before, let me really throw you a whammy. If, for example, I'm in need of a little gaming action, but I'm across the room changing after just having arrived home from work, worry not my friend, Open World of Warcraft and *POOF* it's ready and waiting by the time I've stripped.

Still not impressed?

Tell Me A Joke. *POOF* Knock Knock. Who's There? Avenue. Avenue Who? Avenue heard these jokes before?

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA. My compie is so funny. It's got such personality, I can't believe I've ignored it all this time. All this time I spent calling girls back, and I could have been hamming it up with compie here.

Disgusted

So, like I said, I went to take a jog, and when I got back, I went to the kitchen to get a drink of water.

So I grab a glass, one of the little ones that Ty uses to drink his milk with ice that he always has, and fill it up. And as I'm thinking about this, I happen to glimpse over towards the stove/garbage can/scratching post area, where something has caught my eye.

On first glance, I think to myself, "ah, Dave cooked dinner last night and used his tempura flakes, probably made shrimp or something." But then I think, "God, that's pretty messy of him to get that stuff all over the place, maybe the stuff went bad and he had to throw it all out, and got it everywhere pouring it out." But then I think, "man, that stuff is everywhere."

So I put it out of my mind while I enjoy my glass of not really satisfying, tepid tapwater, but then the thought creeps back into my head again, and I glance over again over the rim of the glass to reinspect whatever all those tiny little white pieces of something are, and the fleeting thought skitters through my mind, "God I hope those aren't moving."

But they were. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of tiny somethings moving.
Larva.

I'm not the wretching type, but that moment would have been a good time to start. But instead, the calm rage that gets me through crisis took over and I set about disposing of the garbage, fucking maggots and all, crawling on my hands as I tie off the bag and haul it to the garbage area to sit next to a bag of kitty litter. I placed the garbage can and this random bucket we have under the table we keep our rice cooker on into the shower, and sprayed them and the whole kitchen area with bleach, took a deep breath (in my room, so as to avoid inhaling the reeking bleach-inundated kitchen and shower) and cleaned.

The thing of it is I don't produce food waste. I mean, as much as the guys tease me about always buying my dinners, and not really cooking all that much, well, I do actually cook, but I never produce waste. Ty on the other hand produces 90% of the food waste in the house, and so my blame-seeking mechanism has set its sights on him. I know, however, that, however much I might wanna blame him it's really just shit luck, and bad form on all of our part not really adapting to this climate. So, we're gonna need a new system for disposing of our food waste such that this never happens again.

The funny thing though is that just two days ago I was in a lesson and I talked with three women for like 20 minutes, I did a whole lesson, on giving me advice about how to get rid of all the damn fruit flies that live in the kitchen.

The Week In Review

Life's been pretty normal lately, oddly enough, but here are some funny things that have happened lately.

Last Saturday I went out for dinner in Roppongi with Dave and Andy to eat duck at this Chinese restaurant Dave knows. The duck was good, and the restaurant was funny because it was styrofoam breasts and asses all over the walls, subtly painted the same color as the brick so you didn't really notice until you took a closer look around. After dinner we went to The Heartlands, my least favorite elitist yubby snob bar ever, where we met up with Kieran and Ty and thusly began our allnighter. Just to kick it off right, I ran and jumped on Kieran while he was making some booty call or other to one of the hundreds of girls he sleeps with that isn't his fiance, and he just crumbled and fell instantly. Andy and I got stuck in Muse without the rest of us because they wouldn't let Ty in with his sandals on, so Dave went with him to Motown and a few other bars while Kieran of course, hopped in a taxi and spent 6000yen going for a lay.

I finally met back up with Ty and Dave after Andy took me to a bar that was closed to meet up with someone, who turned out to be the girl Ty used to be sleeping with, Naoe. He didn't realize that I know her, like, somehow it isn't public knowledge that Ty Dave and I all live together. What I guess I don't understand is why go to her, I mean, she's not really the super hottest girl, and she's pretty dumb to boot, not to mention the ration of vowels to consonants in her name is just absurd. Hi, my name is 75% vowels. Nice to meet you.

So around 5am I decided to catch first train back, said goodbye to the guys after meeting back up with them and going to some bar populated entirely by Filipinas and being generally sick of being awake.

The next day I met up with Greg and Saki to go bowling, and of course I was beat to shit tired and so my head was all messed up and it took me until late in the evening to really get myself back to normal. Greg needed some cash for the train, so he rode his bike from Minami Moriya to Toride so I could meet him and hand him off some money over the ticket gate. Saki came back to my place after bowling to watch more of Anchorman with me, and we got about another third of the movie finished before saying screw it and retiring to my room for related activities. I really like this girl.

Monday I had my Japanese lesson with Mayumi, where basically we just reviewed what I had gone over in my book over the previous two weeks, so I can't say I really learned much. But, I promised I would keep my ears open for things I wanted to be able to say, so, hopefully I'll start to be able to take greater value from them soon.

Tuesday after work Rich and Allen and I went to Saizeriya after work to meet up with a bunch of our students for Allen's farewell party. He finally got a new job working in design as he always wanted to, and that's a good step for him, as I think he reached 30 and suddenly realized he's living in Japan with no wife and no real job, and kinda went into panic mode. I think his girlfriend was thinking the same thing so they're probably gonna get married and this is that new more serious job that will somehow make him feel like his life is more meaningful and/or successful, so, good for him. After eating we went to karaoke at the new joint by our work and it was really fun. Youichi really belted it out, and Karin, wow, what an amazingly soft voice when she sings. Rich and my taxi fare was 4600 yen, but thankfully Youichi gave us a voucher from his company for a free taxi ride, so we didn't have to pay a thing. Nice deal.

Wednesday I went out for Yakiniku with Kieran Dave Ty Ethan and Andy, and it was deeelicious. And, we got to make fun of Kieran and Andy for their antics Saturday night. I didn't stick around for long after we went back to The Hub after dinner, I wanted to catch last train, but it was a good night. Fun with the guys. As we know, that's rare for me, I've never really been a "one of the guys" kinda guy.

I got called in to work an hour of overtime yesterday and to work in Kashiwa instead because Juan called in sick to work, and, an hour later, so did Hannah, so they were 2 people short. Not only that but Jeremy went to Moraju on accident and was late for his first lesson, so there was this generalized panic in the staff room for most of the day, which I managed to avoid by just tuning out the universe for the most part. And then, to top it all off, to help they called in Dara, Kashiwa's old AT, to teach a few lessons, who's now an Area Manager for a different block and is the creepiest, sleaziest, shadiest guy imaginable. So, more tuning out the universe.

The rainy season is in full swing, and by swing I mean it's swelteringly hot and humid one day and dreary, cold and rainy the next, sometimes both in the same day. It's one thing to live with a bipolar, but to have the weather need mood stabilizers is an entirely different story. Today it's party cloudy and neither hot nor cold, so I'm gonna go jogging and we'll see how it all works out. Peace.