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escapism_is_the_new_black
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Name: kelly
Country: Japan
Metro: Shizuoka
Birthday: 2/22/1981
Gender: Female
Interests: words, music, sweater weather, pedantism, self-delusion, avoidance, picking strawberries, obsessive-compulsions, Reeses pieces, writing down the things people say, running (metaphorically more than physically, though I've been known to do both), and chewing on things.
Expertise: Overanalysis.
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
1/11/2005
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| To clear things up: no, not terribly depressed about the job. It is, of course, a bit on the sad side that my bones know that whatever comes next is not waiting for me here. Which is not as defeatist as I think it sounds. I mean that I am going to be finished, one way or another, when my contract expires. This certainty is... good, right? I will find some kind of Japanese closure, or failing that, closure for Kelly's Japanese a(A?a?)dventure. I will let go of this treading-water situation and realise that ideals are by definition either unattainable or ephemeral. Or both. Not here. Apologies to anyone to whom I mentioned that my juku is hiring. It still is, but I wouldn't want to subject anyone to its instability. Yes, I am a little bitter. I miss Okawa. All the kiddies, the villagers, the teachers, and even the crazy principal. I would trade crazy boss for crazy principal in about 0.5seconds of consideration. It is probably unwise to elaborate here, since the j-staff is allegedly able to read English (repeat: allegedly), and I suspect mumbles have got around about my blog. Instead, I must follow up on my last post by stressing that it is not actually the children who are apparently scared of me. I do have a few small criers, to whom I represent a reason for separation from their moms, and that is perfectly understandable. Lucky them, to have nice mothers. On the whole, my students (young, old, private, group, whatnot, whathaveyou) enjoy me. As they should, because I am fun. (In this vein, I just scored another travel-to-kindergarten contract for Merry House, but that, in spite of being directly related to the response of children at a certain school and my interaction with the kids in hallways and whatnot, has nothing to do with me.) I should not make funny faces either at or in front of the children. "Of course, smiling is good." I should not write on whiteboards in anything other than the specific generic printing style which is taught stroke-order style like kanji. I should not increase the decibel-level of my voice, ever. The pitch of which, incidentally, is either too high or too low; no one can quite decide. In conclusion: This gig, not so good. Though, it is not so terrible, either. There is a lot of "I am settling" involved, which means I am not inclined to work overhard, but... maybe I want to have to apply myself. While the employment (and it must be said that I have yet to receive a full-month's paycheck here, so possibly that is clouding my impressions slightly) is only a very steady par, the life is good. A few hours in illustration: after a busy and productive day of work, I climbed a mountain. Began with Juliet, though she was obliged to retreat early with visions of burning down her apartment. (She didn't.) Thanks to the full moon, I was not punished for spending too long by myself on top of said mountain while the sun set. (Which I couldn't help anyway. Too powerful to leave.) After was my new favorite place, apparently: the bridge by the river, with my guitar and a bottle of clear and dry. (What? It's nice.) Again, unaccompanied... until Juliet and then Caroline showed up with a box of ume juice (just juice, not shu) and ideas of climbing another mountain the next day. I decided to drink and look at the silhouette of Fuji instead. | | |
| Quite a week.
It has been a long series of repressions since I last cried on the job (essentially because my (former--haha to Holly) principal is crazy. This time it was because with my big face and low voice, I am apparently scary to children. So said my... not boss, but something like supervisor? The head teacher?), and still longer since I channeled that pain through the neck of an ever-so-classy bottle of wine. Superlative. Clear and Dry. 1.5L. Plastic and screwtop bottle. Cheapest in terms of yen per volume (of pure alcohol--and yes, Chemistry Kelly did actually write out the equations) on this suburban market. Juliet helped me drink while I rambled about death and Faulkner. And still managed to climb into bed (built by me, again with Juliet's help) sufficiently early to not only sleep it off, but also be genki enough to then spend the entirety of the following morning at kindergarten! Where, incidentally, not a single child shrank from me in fear (or olfactory reaction, since booze is on the paragraph).
In a different kind of bender, I spent most of last night at the nearby Skylark. Ahh, unlimited drink refills... Introspective and solitary after work, I read Atomised while drinking apple tea (interspersed with a couple of fountain cokes and some chizimi). This is not a book review, but it was brilliant for Kelly. Nerdgirl. As opposed to Mac. Long story. Feeling rather than watching the skylarkers rotate around me, blurred like time passing in a movie that is too low-budget to afford a montage. Suspect it is most interesting on a Friday night. Construction workers drinking beer, fat (sizes I didn't know was possible for j-dna outside of the sumo-ring) women eating parfaits, at least one illicit liaison (the woman changed at least three different times, and they left separately and furtively). Five hours coming to five hundred yen, and not even the ringing of the okasan could bring me down. (The phone died as soon as I hung up, anyway.)
Bringing us (me) to tonight, in which I will bring my sleeping bag to a secret sukiyaki party. Two goals: a) remember to preemptively decline the raw egg, and b) try not to get too dunk in front of the Japanese household. Nice people. Children. Wouldn't want to scare anyone. | | |
| Juku life. It's... far different from jet. Socially it is like I have returned to uni dorms, living in singles with friends of convenience a couple doors down. Not that I wouldn't be friends with these chicks if they didn't sleep so close-by, but I definitely wouldn't spend so many nights drinking on one floor or another. Usually don't rate the couch, which is really something between a loveseat and a stool.
Far more excitement in Kannami than in Okawa, as a result. Result of the dorm, not the drinking. Though I did have an alcohol-related weekend in the hospital, looking after an accident-prone member of the juku crew who broke her wrist crashing her bike or tripping over a bottle, no one is really sure which. Our pre-6am conversation, which she coincidentally does not remember, went thusly:
"Kelly, come get me."
"Where are you?"
"I don't know, just come get me."
"Well, what do you see around you?"
"There's a road... and some bushes. Just come get me. My wrist really hurts." Sigh. Work-style. I see, obviously enough, a far more diverse crew than I did in the shochu. Babies who can't speak, a brilliant three year-old with whom I am completely in love, old women who study English more as a hobby than as an intellectual pursuit, teenagers who are gearing up for some test or another. Strange hours, Mondays off, and all-morning trips to kindergartens. Two-hour lunches. A palpable segregation of the j-staff and the gaijin staff. The location was always going to be quite different from the smallest village in the country, but I still find myself occasionally shocked at my own proximity to things. A conbini nearly across the street! Not one but two video rental establishments within a five-minute walk! Beaches and fault lines and the sudden boundary of the inaka! All with Fuji hovering phantomlike in the distance. In a word: bizarre.
Yes. | | |
| Once again, though Karen is the only one who knows about it, drinking and playing on the internet in the apartment of one of my new coworkers. Unsure of how to reenter this xanga world, of if it is even possible given my extended (and I must add dramatic) absence from my former persona. Escapism by name and by trade, I suppose.
Here, let's look at some pictures*! Aforementioned friend (Rebekah) brought her camera along to the Welcome Kelly enkai to my new gig, clever girl, and I can post them* for the general viewage. I have relocated with Black Francis to Fuji Land aka Shizuoka, to a town which still calls itself a cho in spite of its over 39000 people (making an increase of nearly 80-fold, for those keeping score, like me), where I work in a private English school. Juku-style, for the most part. I started teaching my first class on my first day to an amazing ten year-old... who is gearing up to take her pre 1-kyu in October. Bloody hell, that test is hard. I... well, I actually would have known most of the words on the test at ten, but that's because I am a nerdy lit-girl.
Ganbarimasu, and the like.
With the Bekah.
* I am aware that I am apparently a liar with regard to the whole plural/singular thing. But, when a chick shows up with a big bag full of chuhai and sake, can one really ignore that and keep tooling around on the intrawebs instead? (Answer: no. At least, one would hope not.) | | |
| They're freaky, they're huge, and if you don't live in Japan, they're not where you are. Wikipedia might tell you that mukade are just centipedes, but that is a dirty lie. They are a special kind of evil centipede, demonic and vengeful. They are bug-eating wall-scaling pair-travelling young-nursing quick-moving scary things that can live for seven years of festering hate. Thus, one must nurture one's mukade karma. When found, mukade must be killed in a swift but humane manner. Karen sort of drowned one last year--well, she hit it with a rock and then deposited it in her storm drain. Not so good for the karma, though nothing has come of it (as far as I know. Though its kids know where you live, Karen. In fact, they've probably never left...). I suspect the long-term safety of the special Mukade Death Spray, not so much because extensive use of aerosol poisons can't be good for human systems, but because it takes ages for a mukade to succumb to its life-stopping. Have you ever sprayed a mukade to death? It squirms, it runs, it sprouts wings, I swear I've heard one scream. My murder method of choice is actually the brutal but quick squash. I use a boot, since as a girl I have boots with massive soles, which work quite well in providing inflexible blocky death. Also, as a girl in Japan, these shoes are always ready for an emergency mission: standing in pairs near my front door. The thing about squash-death, however, is that it must be done in one strong blow, lest the mukade vanish in spite of its being broken in half, and one must always be prepared that mukade blood is thick and black. It'll stain your tatami, or at the very least make sure you're even more scared than you already were.
My mukakde karma is rather good. I have a number of good stories, but I usually find them before they find me, and I was bitten just the once. Apparently only one girl has ever died from a mukade bite, a seven year-old who gotten bitten on the head (and could have actually died due to an allergic reaction to the bite rather than the mukade poison in itself). My last encounter was a few days ago, picking tea leaves with the kiddies. The singular second-grader started yelling about "mukade!" The other teachers counselled everyone to leave the area calmly, but I picked up a big rock and smashed it with one dull thud. The elementary kids applauded (and the teachers all thought I was insane, approaching a mukade like that).
Yes, I save children.
My mukade karma may be in order, but I have found an even more powerful karma which still owes me. After years of biology labs, and a childhood indulging in the terrible bug movies on usa, I should have known what would happen. Everything is cool... until suddenly the insects band together and wreak their terrible vengeance upon me. And my thus apartment has been invaded by the ghosts of all the tiny flies I have ever knocked out with ether to check whether their eyes were red or white. Whether they even have eyes. Whether their wings are long or stubby. And you can't do a damn thing if the wings are curled. Sexlinkedcrossingovermutantrecombinantmuttermutter...
Drosophila karma.
Apparently I forgot about some bananas a couple of weeks ago, and their going soft (not even completely bad, though the prejudice I somewhat irrationally carry about consuming insect-ridden food products made them fully bad in my eyes) unfortunately coincided with my being out of the house, performing genki all day for Kochi's Earth Day festivities. And I'd left the window open that morning, oblivious to the threat building outside. Most bugs can't get through screens, but drosophila aren't most bugs. Though even if they were, I have never witnessed a bug to have trouble infiltrating the edges of Japanese windows. So, I returned on a Sunday evening to find a writhing cloud in my kitchen. At which point I did what any rational person would do: I went on a killing spree. I multi-bagged the offending bananas, removed the gomi and what flies didn't manage to escape my ingenious bag-o-death, and sealed off the kitchen. With a Cosmo (Scarlett Johannson on the cover) in one hand and a cookbook of Southern foods (given by Andrea a couple of years ago) in the other, I raged and squashed and splattered and emerged as the sole victorious being of my apartment.
Or so I thought. The buggers keep coming back! I can't imagine what they are finding as breeding grounds, as I have cleaned my kitchen to near-hospital sanctity. I wash my dishes immediately rather than the next day. There is no trash and not much food of which to speak in the kitchen at all. So what is their sustenance... if not our own mutual hate?
Fine. You will pay for this, melanogaster. Your life span is, after all, only two weeks. | | |
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