A Long One.

Well, I've been at this gig for a couple of weeks now. Here are some of my thoughts:

Getting up at 5:45 is, in fact, possible. It's not entirely pleasant, but, I've hacked through it the times I've had to. Hasn't been all that often, but, when I sub at a school I've never been to, and have to be at the station around 7:40 to get to the school by 8 since I don't actually know the time when I can waltz in, it usually means I have to get up around then to make it out there, since invariably I have to go out to the middle of nowhere on three or four different trains. The place I'm going to tomorrow isn't that far from my normal school, but all the same that's when I'm up tomorrow. It's only 15 minutes earlier than I would otherwise wake up, and 6 isn't that fantastic either, but it's still 6 and not 5 something, so, it feels different. And it's still dark out at 5:45. By 6, there's visible light. Odd how quickly dawn spreads across the Earth. It's cold out, freezing actually, but some of the most pretty things I've seen so far have been in those early twilight hours walking to Minami Nagareyama station. There have been a couple times where there was snow on the ground at that time that I never would have otherwise seen. Maybe the tiniest remnants later that morning, but were I still working for Nova, I would never have seen it since it would have been noon by the time I saw the ground for the first time.

I've turned into Greg, in the sense that I finish work, come home, and all I wanna do is have a beer and go to bed. The alcohol part of it kinda bothers me, I'm so pooped by the time I walk in I really do just wanna have a few drinks to put me out and go to sleep. But, other than that I go to bed around 10 every night now, and that's had a weird effect on my view on life. I know that what's happening now is going to, hopefully not permanently change my outlook on life. Last night Saki and I met up to have dinner, and Bryan invited us to go to a movie that started at 9:15, and we had to turn it down because it would get out at 11:30 and that's way too late for either of us to be finishing up something and making our way home, having to get up when we do. I used to finish work at 9. Hell, before that I used to finish at 11:30. Now at 9 I'm getting ready to call it a night, and by 11:30 I'm fast asleep. I remember my first though upon getting his text was, "why does he have to start everything so late?" and it struck me that it's not late at all, I'm just on a completely different schedule now. Richard seems to be much better at it than I, we both get up around the same time, and work the same hours, but he stays up till midnight or later every night. I just, and Ty's with me on this, need 8 hours of sleep. Maybe that's just my age talking, or maybe it's that it's winter and it's not light out when I wake up, but if I went to bed any later, I would be completely wrecked when I walked out the door. By the time I arrived at my school, I would still be asleep and it would be written all over my face. Personally, I don't want to have to deal with constant "Are you tired?"s at work. I get it enough as it is from my head English teacher at Ouji ES, just cause when I'm not in the classroom I'm very, very toned down. I guess it's just hard for some people to recognize that it's entirely possible to go from calm and tranquil to nonstop energy, not only possible but necessary to pull either off. Anyway, I need 8 hours of sleep, so, by the time I have to wake up, my body is sick of being in bed and I have to get up. As is, I have never once, not on one night since starting, slept the whole night till my alarm. Part of that is the winter factor, where either it's so cold in my room I wake up or because the heater is too close to me and I wake up to push the heater away a bit, only to wake up again as soon as I get cold enough for the previous to apply. I thought the head pad I purchased and started using recently would have remedied that, but it's really only ensured I wake up at least once or twice to adjust the temperature of all my various heating devices in order to get back to sleep. Not only that, but I wake up to my roommates coming home all the time, especially on Sunday night, when Dave has the day off the next day, like I used to. It also doesn't help that Dave basically never sleeps. I wake up to him talking over in-game voice chat all the time at 1 or 2 or 4 in the morning, but what really gets me is when I get woken up by something in the middle of the night only to look at my phone and have it be 11:56pm. It's depressing and almost funny that I'm asleep at that hour to be woken up by something. But I don't complain. As soon as my schedule becomes more regular, and the sun starts coming up sooner, my schedule will adjust itself and I'll be able to go to sleep much later and wake up at the same time. Dave gets about 4 hours or sleep a night, much like the rest of Japan, and while I'll probably never reach that I'm sure I'll start going to bed at midnight come spring.

The part of it that kinda bothers me is that now on my weekends, instead of waking up at 8, like I had already started to about a year ago, I now wake up at 6 or 7, such that even on my days off I'm tired by 10pm, and it's hard to stay out. I don't ever want to go to bed at 10pm on a Friday or Saturday. But, assuming I'm not with Saki or out with my friends, there's a good chance that would happen just because my internal clock has been set to that time, and re-adjusting it every weekend would just make Monday morning all the worse. Ugh.

Teaching in schools is different, but not so different that I don't already feel like I've been doing it for ages. In a sense, I have. Every Nova Kids lesson I ever taught got me ready for this, because of everything from experience with Japanese kids to teaching lessons with a complete and utter lack of preparation to teaching the same lesson three or four times a week, to getting everything ready a week in advance so I can just waltz in and do whatever feels good. All the dynamics that make a good of bad lesson are exactly the same, except here I can just use Japanese if I have to, and I have a teacher in there to throw in some discipline if things get out of hand. It's basically, it's everything I wanted out of Nova Kids. The only bad part is that, uh, huh, well whatever I was going to say just left me so I guess there's not really a bad part. Another thing I like is that I get to see the kids in their safe zone. At Nova, they were in a small intimate group, and that was good, I really enjoyed that because my influence was very personal, but at school they're at their second home. School is your life as a kid, everything of any real importance happens there, and the people and routines you see and have there are basically your reality, and that's huge. As a public school teacher, I'm a part of that reality, and more than that I'm a part of what is safe and normal and real to them. At Nova kids could always say, "this isn't school so I can just fuck off and not care" but in schools, while it's still present, it's there to a much lesser extent. I've really enjoyed seeing what life is like for Japanese kids. It's also really interesting to see what goes on behind the scenes, how schools are actually run. I got called Sensei at Nova by my students, but, even though I'm something of a novelty still with this job, I really am Sensei.

I was having my regular inane and thusly mandatory Japanese style teacher's meeting this afternoon after school got out, and I was talking to the 6th grade teachers, whose classes last time I taught a lesson about family members' abilities e.g. "My mother can play the piano". The first class, with a teacher who doesn't speak English really at all, ended with a game I wasn't really able to explain very well, such that when they were doing their game, their partners were saying yes and no to statements, rather than questions, and didn't realize that was the case. So, after class, I took the teacher aside, and told her in Japanese that unfortunately my last game was poorly explained, and that many of the students perhaps didn't understand what they were supposed to do, and that I was sorry for that. The next class I skipped a game I had done earlier and worked with my teacher to make sure that the students understood the instructions via English and Japanese, and the game went just fine. Anyway, she told this story to the other teacher, and how surprised (good) she was that I went out of my way to apologize to her for this. She also told me, through the other teacher translating, that the students all like me very much, and that I'm very popular with all the kids in school. I could have guessed this by the way I get chased around the school constantly and and am bombarded nonstop from sunrise to sundown in the halls with hellos and "Deibito-sensei!"s, but hearing it from the teachers made my day. Especially to hear it from a teacher I didn't really think liked me all that much. Koala-sensei(Furukawara-sensei) told me after my last lesson with him that my lesson was Ichiban (the best), and I was just tickled pink. I'm so happy to hear that they like what I'm doing, even if I still think I'm hacking through it most of the time. Today, I didn't really think my lessons went all that well, but it's fast easy learning what does and doesn't work. Sometimes I don't like dumbing down lessons, but all parties involved enjoy it a lot more when everyone can accomplish an entire lesson's worth of material, even if that involves only teaching 1/3rd of the material originally planned. Compared to the other meetings I've had so far, today's were about 1/4th the time, because my lesson plans for next week are much, much more simple. Intro, song, review, vocab and a game. Boom. Done. If, somehow, for some strange reason, I have extra time, we can just play games. I constantly draw big lines through lesson materials as I'm realizing some things are just way too much for kids. I wanna give them a one liner they can bust out in a game, and really hammer down before they leave. Anything other than that is just gonna get lost, and nothing at all will stick.

I went to Iidabashi on Wednesday, a white day, to pick up my passport, after receiving an email from Interac telling me my visa stuff was finished. I was happy to see I'd received another 3 year visa, after worrying it would be downgraded to a 1 year. I also got a bunch of info about Junior High School from Jason, and talked to him about my transfer. He finished my sentence for me saying it was already taken care of, and mentioned Matsudo when I was listing the cities I was interested in working in. So, either I'm working in Matsudo from April, or I'm gonna be in this area at least. I'm happy to hear that. I really hope it's somewhere the commute isn't so bad. What I really hope is that it's somewhere I can move close to. I'm kinda looking forward to moving closer to a school, I just want it to be somewhere near a hub, so I can still go out and see my friends. I think ideally I would be able to get there easily from Shin Matsudo, so I could get an apartment there with Saki. Somewhere on the Noda line would be ok too. Whatever the case is though, I can now start a countdown to moving. I could be living with Saki 4 or 5 months from now. How weird is that?

She and I went out last night after she got off work, and we were bitching to each other about how, thanks to work schedules, we haven't had sex in like three weeks. It's driving the both of us nuts. She asked last night before we got on our trains why were weren't living together dangit. I just want more intimate time with her dangit. She's coming over on Saturday night, but, it's a bad time of the month so that's a no-go. It doesn't really bother me, sex isn't really that important to me anymore so much as just getting to be close and in private with her, but, still. It would be nice.

Anyway, in terms of reflections on my first couple weeks, it's been fine. Xiao's been bitching a lot about this and that, but I really can't complain. She's still getting used to classes not going how she wants, I've long since let go of trying to control kids. She's still being bothered by teachers that need control, I've long since let them have it. It's just stuff you learn how to do. You can throw yourself against these walls all you want, they're not coming down for anything. They're the fabric of reality. I learned a long time ago, if you have a problem with something, and you want it to go away, YOU have to change. It's YOUR problem. I guess that's a hard one to learn.

Cutting Bait

Apparently, I was lucky, if not smart, to get out of the GComm/Nova business when I did. I got the news on my way to meet Saki to watch I Am Legend tonight that Bryan has been sent home and put on standby until further notice. GComm, much like Nova before it, is bleeding money something awful and as such they fired all the old Nova management and started to use their old Japanese model, i.e. fire the hell out of everyone, 1 teacher per 40 students.

So, Bryan and a bunch of the others, based on seniority, ability, and training, were told not to come into work anymore, and that they would receive standby pay until their branch numbers rise to an amount that can support their coming to work.

What was GComm thinking? Did they really think people would come back to Nova after they opened it back up? Only the hardcore, only the social rejects, only the people who had put every penny they had into that company would think of coming back, if for nothing other than to reclaim a bit of the money they sank into the falling giant.

So now, here they are, trying to suture their internal bleeding, at the expense of basically no one but the teachers. Which reminds me...

What were the teachers thinking? Why would you stay with a company that did all this to you? I mean, I understand, cause I stayed with it far longer than I should have, I should have gotten out faster and I didn't, but, in the end I did, and they all should have too. First, we were all given a nice long vacation with which to look for new work. But they didn't. Then, we were given a chance to take a month off and get paid for it. Many took the money, but didn't use it to go home, or find a new job. Many, myself included, started work instead, but unlike myself, didn't continue to look for new work. Now, most of those people are getting another chance to stay at home for another month before GComm undoubtedly fires them, they'll have to, they can't just pay them month after month to sit at home, to find a new job or get the hell out of the country.

But will they? No. Dumbasses will sit there and keep coming back, they'll sit at home and blow their paychecks on wine and beer and Roppongi, why? Because it's all they have to keep themselves from feeling like their lives have completely gone to shit. Well guess what? They HAVE. Get over it and find something new. The company is dead, and no matter how shit you think the situation is, such that you would be willing to put up with whatever they dish out in order to make ends meet, if you just got another job you could avoid all that.

Not qualified to find another/better job? GO HOME. Don't have the money to move somewhere else for a new job? GO HOME. Not willing to make sacrifices to make ends meet until you find a job, i.e. stop partying all the time, cook your own food and stay home? GO HOME. You stupid, stupid moronic fools get a new job or get the hell out of the country. What are you doing here? What kind of sick pathetic illusion of life are you living in such that you'd put yourself through all this? How miserable and depressed you all must be to think that this is the best you can do? And if this really is the best you can do, shit, you can do it back home too. Better yet, you could go back to school and have a shot at something good, assuming you can try hard and long enough to pull it off.

I know for a lot of people this is a dream come true. It's way better than anything they could have gotten at home with the same skills. Live in Japan, meet beautiful Japanese women, feel important and amazing and unique and rare and get away with anything you want just because you're gaijin? Ya, it's fantastic, a dream many would never want to walk away from. The allure certainly drew me in, and I'm certainly stuck here for as long as I can imagine, but I've got my feet on the ground enough to know that there's a daily life behind that dream, working and moving up and bettering yourself that must happen to make anything like this possible, at least in the face of adversity. Something has come along that has threatened to destroy the easy, celebrity life you had planned out for yourself, and I know you don't want to give it up, but for fuck's sake, it's GONE. It's long gone and all you're doing now is revealing how pathetic and washed out you really are. If Nova were cocaine, you'd all be Sanjit, scraping and licking plates at the end of the night and knocking on friends' doors just to make sure there's not more hangin around somewhere, all the while oblivious to the fact that the sober, er, high but not desperate people around you are fully aware of just how low you've sunk. Sanjit had a family too, a pregnant wife, like so many foreigners here have, but sink sink sink he would and sinking sinking sinking you are.

Saki commented tonight while we were sitting in her car parked out in front of my apartment after the movie that all this time she thought eventually I would ask her for money, and thought I was very dedicated and hardworking that I didn't. While this came as no surprise to me, I knew she would be thinking that from day one, it was still weird for me to actually have that conversation with her. I told her she is the last person on Earth I would come to for money, my troubles are my own to fix, and if I absolutely had to, like I did, I would go to a friend first, then family, but never her. Debt destroys relationships, it's her job to support me emotionally, not financially. She gave me something far more valuable than money, she gave me my sanity. She gave me the resolve and the motivation to get through all this, to be with her, and preserve something worth keeping. To ask someone to do both, when we're not married, and even if we were, would tear out the foundation of our relationship, at least in my eyes.

I mean, Saki's by no means poor, she's actually quite rich, she makes more than I do, but then again she also works a lot more than I do. But all that aside, she's done well for herself, and she could, I'm sure, help me out if I needed it. But I would never dream of asking her for money. It's just morally deplorable in my eyes to do something like that. It just makes me all the happier I never had to. I hope should never need to. I'm sure it sent a message to her too, about who I am, and how hard I'm willing to work for something, because I learned a lot from it too. Sure I slacked a little, but when it came down to it I got my name out there by whatever means I had to, and I found something. I'm fine now. Given I could be working with Jennifer for a lot more money had she only offered the job sooner, but it's something, it's fun, and I enjoy it. The work is important and it's rewarding to me.

I've faced crazier adversity than this before, and walked away. I'm proud of Saki that she has the job she has, I'm proud that she makes more than me and works much harder than me. I'm also proud of myself for getting this job, and for showing her I'm someone worth being proud of being with. Life will go on, I will continue to move up, and hopefully, lol, someday I'll be the breadwinner enough that her income is just play money. I look forward to that.

But you guys at Nova. Man, get the picture. They say, fish or cut bait, ya? Well, not only are there no fish, but you're running out of water. Cut bait.

Dual Realities

Working as an ALT so far has been a blast. It's been hectic, they've changed schedules around on me, I've had to wake up around 6 every day I've had to work, and at times I've come within an inch of complete and utter panic mode, but overall, once I'm actually in the classroom, we have fun, the kids enjoy my lessons, and the other teachers are apparently satisfied.

But it hasn't been like that for all involved, and that concerns me a little. My friend Xiao also started working with Interac at the same time as me, and her experience has been a little different. She worked at a Jr. High the other day, and had to prepare a worksheet for class wtih very little information to go on, and the Japanese teacher wasn't impressed. Less than impressed, actually, even more so by her lack of knowledge as to what a 'gerund' is, which I'm guessing 95% of the general English speaking population doesn't know either (a noun ending in -ing, e.g. skiing, or making lunch). But this bothered the teacher enough to complain about her to Interac, and so now she's involved in trying to cover her ass to our boss, Jason, who is calling into question her knowledge of grammar, which I think is crap.

What I see in this is clearly a case of a Japanese teacher with a bone to pick with the idea of native English speakers waltzing into Japanese schools and teaching their students with what they perceive as basically no formal training whatsoever, and was on a mission to prove just that. See, things like gerunds or type II conditionals are things that every speaker of English knows, but, much like psychology, don't know the name for. Non-native speakers of English however, learn the titles for all these things because 1) if you've got a name for it it's easy to refer to when learning/explaining and 2) they don't know it's the kind of thing that native speakers never, ever say and probably don't know. Not the actual grammatical concept, mind you, but the word for it.

So now she's got an angry school and an angry boss, a boss who, to me, has been supportive and easy to talk to for the most part, however mildly dismissive when it comes to my overblown concerns. Which is probably good cause it teaches me what they think is important and how better to work for the company. But all the same, it's just weird, to think that all this time I'm out there in schools worrying, but still enjoying myself, and now there's another person, who I at least think is just as qualified to be here as my, who is experiencing what will probably be a lot of negativity until things have either blown over or other people put her in a more positive light.

Now, things to take into consideration here are that she was teaching at a Jr. High School, which I haven't done, and consider to be really really hard, since teachers are going over hard grammar points, things which are considered to be the most important parts of English as far as Japanese schools are concerned. Which, I'll admit, are important, but the ALT's job is to provide an opportunity for native English communication in a safe supportive environment, the Japanese teacher's job is to go over hard grammar. But, I digress. It was also her first day at that school, we really only receive training for elementary school classes, and she hasn't been in Japan that long(something like 4 months).

I'm just as worried about going to Jr. High schools. I have no idea how to do that stuff. Thankfully, I don't have to until February, assuming my schedule stays the same. But even then I don't know that I'll be ready to go in there, especially because then the school and the company will consider me to be an experienced teacher, and they'll probably pull the same kind of crap when I get there that they did with her.

But this brings up my long standing gripe about the role of native English teachers in schools. We're sold to the schools, and the understanding is or should be, that we're not there to go over the hard grammar points of English, though a knowledge of such things greater than the average guy on the street is good and I think should be required to some extent. We're there, as far as I can see, to encourage a healthy relationship with students, such that they see English as something that is not intimidating or impossible, and, much, much, much more importantly, to dispel the long standing xenophobia inherent to Japanese culture. The more we're in there, and the better students get to know us filthy criminal gaijin, the more we can start to drop those adjectives and change that racial slur to something much more neutral, like gaikokujin. Gaijin are the entire rest of the universe, and Japan is innately biased against them. If all I do in all my time as a teacher is instill the idea that foreigners are real, living breathing, and as potentially worthwhile valid individuals and members of society as Japanese themselves, then I will have accomplished far more than anyone could have ever hoped towards improving Japanese society.

I could care less if they still don't get the idea of the definite and indefinite article. Learning another language makes you less racist. TADAAA the world's a better place.

So, I hope that when it comes time for me to step up into a Jr. High School I can do something meaningful when I'm there. But, more so, I hope that Xiao manages to find a way to improve her image and step up the quality of her teaching, because I want her to enjoy her time here. So far it's been nothing but misery, and that makes me so sad, so see someone in the same country, doing the same job as me, have such a completely opposite view of their time here. I went through all this too, and I survived, but she's been here for far less time than I, so, all she has are bad times, none of the good stuff I've been through to make it all worth it.

I hate seeing people give up on Japan. Sometimes I want to, but, I realize that it's no different from any other place. The names of the problems change, but they're all still there. Don't like how racist Japan is? Never would live there because of the open discrimination? Lol. Look at your own life. You're just bitching cause here, you're on the receiving end. Or, if you're already discriminated against at home, I don't see why you wouldn't feel better off here, since it's not just your demographic they don't like, it's everyone. At least here you're not singled out.

Anyway, the lesson here is that there are people in the world who are out on a mission to prove that who you are and what you do are worthless. Part of making it in life is learning not only that there are such people, but how to work around them. Not necessarily to change their minds, because without them, we would have no motivation to be good enough to get past them. Even if it means being such a good people person that they look past your not knowing what a superlative is, you're still better off knowing how to get around them. Adaptation is the name of the game. Even in Japan, the land of repetition for the sake of repetition and repetitive identical failures because change admits a bigger failure.

Happy New Year 2008!

Well, first off, Happy New Year to all, I hope that this year brings not only myself but all of you all that you have hoped for and more. More importantly, what you need, but don't realize.

This year has gotten off to a pretty good start. My Christmas and New Years celebrations were pretty crazy, involving more than one strange Japanese girl, an American living in Kazakhstan, an unnatural quantity of alcohol, and Megatron.

What I didn't mention about Greg's party but should have was that I got a Megatron Transformer for Christmas on top of a stack of much needed cash. It's sick, I love the thing. Also, Jeannine, a gal from America living and working as a teacher in Kazakhstan was there visiting Greg, which turned out to be quite the irritant for his Japanese girlfriend Miki, who would occasionally flip out and get all emotional because it completely violates traditional Japanese relationship norms to have a girl stay with you, regardless of the nature of your relationship, which, if you knew them, you'd know what completely platonic.

For New Years, Bryan Andy Ty Dave and I started off at Saizeriya for a couple magnums of red wine before heading out to Kashiwa to meet up with Greg and Miki, and as it turns out Maya and Asami, Miki's make-out friendly friends, and Moses and Ben, two very nice guys from Nigeria. Oh, and Nathan too, who I worked with in Kanamachi for a time, who shares a love of a particular massively multiplayer online role playing game with me. The night basically turned out to be Asami making out with anyone she could, and Maya throwing herself all over me and me having to dodge her attempts to make out with/fondle/etc me. Saki was out with her friends that night, though I wish she were there with me, because she could have helped fend off Maya. Then again, I would have had to deal with Saki dealing with Maya throwing herself all over me, which would have been equally unenjoyable.

We would up at karaoke, but not before Bryan drank himself sick and had to be taken home by Fumi, who showed up just in the nick of time to do so. Karaoke was fun, but expensive, as we missed our train to go to Shin Matsudo to do it there and had to go to Shidax, the world's most expensive anything. That was fun too. Highlights include losing the ball of my eyebrow piercing to Miki trying to put it back on for me, having to change seats multiple times to avoid Maya actively trying to grab my balls any time I wasn't actively removing her hands from them, Jeannine being tired and grumpy, Miki crying, Asami making out some more, and a lot of singing. Went to bed around 7.

Then on Thursday, Bryan and I went to the Hub again to meet Greg and Jeannine for her last night in Japan, where Greg started talking to some random middle-aged Japanese woman sitting next to us, who joined us upon Greg's request, and stayed well after his departure. Amanda Nikki and Sachiyo showed up out of nowhere and they joined us too, and the 6 of us not including Greg and Jeannine but including strange Japanese woman Reiko, made our way to Shin Matsudo via last train to go sing some karaoke. We're pretty sure Reiko is a hostess or a snack bar girl, from the way she acted, and she certainly knew her stuff when it came to that karaoke bar. Our drinks were slow and she was all over them, we got our stuff in record time, and it turned out to be surprisingly cheap, much more so than our New Years excursion, which, for the record, was not the most expensive of all time, but still way up there. Got back home and went to bed around 3.

Yesterday I met up with Saki at Moraju of all places, to help her pick out some glasses. It's fun doing little mundane things with her, it's kind of a hint at what's to come in the future, and it reassures me to know that we do those things well and enjoy them.

Being in Moraju was weird though, and we walked by Nova to find it wasn't there anymore. A wall had been erected where the entrance once was, and when we peeked in from outside through the edges of the pull-down curtains, we discovered that everything, I mean everything had been demolished and removed. The whole place was just empty drywall and spackle. Very odd. Very odd indeed to look at the place where you spent two years of your life working and see absolutely nothing to remind you that it was ever there. Not the first time in history that's ever happened, but still an odd experience nonetheless. Odd for Saki too, as the place where we met, and the whole reason we know each other in the first place no longer exists, not only in the fact that particular Nova isn't there anymore, but that I'm no longer a Nova teacher and she's no longer a student. Kinda makes me glad we met when we did. But, I'm always glad for that, regardless of Nova's plight.

After that we drove back to Kita Kashiwa to drop off her car, and I gave her the choice of going somewhere local, or going to my secret place, which I had picked out but wouldn't tell her, only that it was kinda far. After the great equalizer, rock paper scissors, we decided to go to my secret place. Let me just say this now that the Japanese have RPS down to a science, so much so that they can win or lose games at their leisure. I know for a fact, despite not know how, that she threw that game. I wish I understood it, but I think I'd have to have grown up here to have that kind of skill. It's like jinx I guess, when two people say something at the same time. Or calling shotgun.

So we got on the train and headed into Tokyo to my secret place, which turned out to be the Shinagawa Prince Hotel, where yes, I know, I took Melissa back in the day, but it's such a nice place, and well worth going to again, especially for a nice classy evening with a little fun added in. We went to the aquarium and saw the dolphin show, and the sea lion show, both of which I missed last time, and the Amusing Sunfish was sleeping, which was oddly amusing in and of itself, despite being completely uninteresting. Sleeping fish. Weird. Doesn't help that the dang thing is like the size of a car, and bobbing around upside down in a tank. Also doesn't help that Sunfish are just the weirdest looking things ever.

Anyway, after that we hopped on the roller coaster they have there, and then made our way to the 39th floor for some cocktails and a nice view of Tokyo. We had a great conversation up there, telling stories and going back and forth sharing tidbits of our lives we had previously left out. We discovered, not surprisingly as we get along so well, but surprisingly enough, that we both have what seem to be very interesting pasts, which had given us a great deal of experience in life, yet somehow haven't really jaded us much. I was surprised by how well balanced Saki is, I've always been able to see it, but, the more I get to know her, the more I realize just how little I have to worry about her.

We made our way back, and went to bed back at my place, and lounged around the house all day today before I took her to the station so I could dick around a little bit and relax before having to get up early tomorrow morning to go to a meeting for work in Iidabashi at Interac HQ. We were both pretty frisky today and yesterday, but fortunately, her period started yesterday so nothing really was possible. Yes, I said fortunately and if you read the previous entry you'll know why.

K that's all for now, as if that's not enough. Happy New Year all!