Fun Times and Typhoons

What a busy weekend! I'm totally wiped out.

Saturday after teaching a class I met some friends for karaoke. Luke wanted to have some kind of get together for foreigners in the area so he posted on a Stonewall message board inviting anyone who wanted to come for good times this weekend. We figured just a couple people would turn up, but when I walked into the karaoke room there were 17 people packed in there! Surprisingly only 6 were from Oita, the rest came from other prefectures. One guy came from Yamaguchi (7-hour train ride away) another from Kagoshima (7-hour drive) and yet another from Shikoku (3-hour ferry ride). Wow, who knew so many people would brave the trip out to Oita for a party.
Later we went to a bar but most everyone was pretty tired from travelling all day to get here, so we figured out who was gonna stay where and all split up. Kevin was putting people up at his place even though he had to go to work for a few hours in the morning, and he didn't want a bunch of people he'd just met hanging around his apartment on their own while he was out. I got convinced to spend the night and hang out with everyone till he got back from work. I'd only met him a few times myself but I guess that was enough to trust me not to wreak havoc in the apartment and steal all his stuff.

We got to bed around 430am and after a couple hours of restless sleep (I have a hard time sleeping in new places and usually don't sleep well after drinking - amazing I could sleep at all) we all got up and waited for Kevin to come home. In our zombie state most of this time was spent sitting around the living room staring at each other. I hadn't had anything with me and had to sleep with my contacts in. Boy were my eyes dry and red in the morning.
Except for the eating part, lunch was fantastic. We pretty much forced ourselves to eat. Then sat around sharing dead baby jokes. I'd never heard them before! It was so morbid and shocking. But I couldn't stop myself from laughing. If you know any dead baby jokes, please share!

It was time for everyone to get back home but all the trains and ferries were cancelled because of the approaching typhoon. No choice but to stay and party one more night!

We all gathered at Luke's to brave the typhoon. It wasn't as crazy as we thought it'd be. Branches were scattered in the road and the wind was kinda crazy, but I haven't heard of any damage yet. We spent the night playing all kinds of games I'd never heard of before. They were pretty fun, but with everyone so tired from the night before and drinking on top of that, I think the guy explaining the rules was getting annoyed having to explain the same thing over and over. I know I woulda been.
After the typhoon was over I absolutely had to get home or would die of exhaustion so sometime around 3am I started saying bye. People were exchanging contact info and inviting each other to come for a visit to where they live. Everyone was so great and I'd love to see them again, but I already know that the likelihood of me making a trip out to where they live isn't very high, so I just sat on the side like an antisocial hermit waiting for all the number-exchanging to get done. Does this make me an unfriendly bastard? I guess if there were people a bit closer to me and it was more convenient to visit I'd totally try to get in touch and hang out, but anything more than a 3-hour drive is just too far. I do have to say though that there were a few I'd love to get to know better and wish lived in Oita.

I imagine everyone else is making their way back home right now. And here I am tired as hell even after a night's sleep in my own apartment. So glad today is a national holiday.

Thank you presents

I thought of something else I really like about Japan. Presents. Today Hiromi gave me a little yellow trash can with a happy face on it because I went to her concert last week. I love it when people give presents to say thank you.

Last week I got a package with all kinds of teas and at the beginning of summer a box full of cheeses and another one with three tins of cookies. They were from parents of students to say thanks for teaching their kids. People here are so lovely!

I still haven't figured out on what occasions it's appropriate to give presents to people; there are so many!

Summer has officially ended

For a lot of people, the end of summer means the start of school, the closing of local beaches, and no more summer festivals. But for me, the end of summer occurs when the last of my kabutomushi beetles dies. He passed away this weekend. I found him upside-down and unmoving.

They generally live until the end of August, but my last beetle survived well into September, may he rest in peace.
The larvae born in early summer are getting rather big so I transferred them into uncovered garbage cans instead of paying for proper beetle aquariums. I don't have the exact number but I estimate somewhere around 50 larvae, about half of which will pupate into beetles next summer. Right now they're as long as my middle finger and as thick as my thumb.Here's a better picture where you can kind of see their cool orange heads and pincers. I keep 'em in the entrance hall of my apartment. Sometimes they burrow out and rest on top of the dirt, waiting for me to come home.

I love Japan

One of the best parts about Japan is it's so SAFE. On the main part of the busiest street in Oita this guy was passed out with his phone resting on his ear, obviously in the middle of talking with somebody when he lost consciousness. If this were anywhere else, he'd have been robbed of everything worth taking.

On the same night I walked past people taking naps by the coin lockers of the train station, in the covered mall, and in the middle of the bar district. Ya gotta love Japan.

This past Saturday was one of those rare nights I went out drinking in Oita City. Cool Bananas was having a Traffic Light party that seemed worth checking out and a friend offered to let me stay at her house so it was all set! What's a Traffic Light party? Wearing green means you're looking, yellow means great if something turns up but not really looking, and red means "no thanks". So of course I wore green.

There was such potential for disaster. After a three-year relationship my ex and I broke up a few months ago. And who did I see as soon as I walked in? I got a tug on my arm leading me outside and a plea to pretend like we don't know each other. It wasn't hard to figure out the new boyfriend was there, too. So we stayed away from each other and stuck to opposite sides of the club.

I ran into all kinds of people I hadn't seen in ages. Someone gave me a strong hug from behind that lifted me off the ground, and when I turned around it was my old roommate! I didn't have a place to live when I first moved to Japan and had to live with a Korean guy for a few months. I assumed he'd moved back to Korea after all these years but he's still here and got a job in Beppu!

During a break from dancing I ended up next to a girl and thought, "Her name is Naomi and we haven't seen each other in five years. But how do I know her?" She recognized me and we were both shocked to suddenly see each other after all this time, but I still haven't figured out how we know each other. I didn't have the nerve to just come out and say I don't remember a thing about her.

Sometime around 4am I was introduced to a guy who started complaining about the relationship he's in. He's dating someone Japanese and apparently they're going through all kinds of cultural differences and constantly fighting. After hearing a few stories I could totally relate to everything he said. Then it occurred to me, this is the new boyfriend! Well wouldn't you know it turns out they'd been dating for a year and a half. Which means that for half of the time we were together, I was being cheated on. Which I kind of already figured and for my own sense of well-being it was finally nice to have proof.

It did cross my mind to go ahead and say all kinds of terrible things to ruin their relationship, but that would just be spiteful and mean. So I just let it go. Things are over and done with and no business of mine anymore.

It was a good night. Saw old friends, got some sense of closure, felt great dancing. What a nice weekend.

Never too old! Never!

Lately I feel like everyone around me talks about how old they're getting. They can't do this or that because they're getting old. That they just don't have the energy to go out dancing like they used to. Used to? They make it sound like a couple years is a whole generation ago. We aren't rolling ourselves around in wheelchairs, people! Age is just a number! The rest is all in your head.

Now Hiromi here is proof that age means nothing. She spends her days quietly filing papers in a law office. But on weekends, she hops around live-houses and keeps me up to date on all the cool up-and-coming bands. Then a few months ago she decided that Korean lessons weren't doing it for her anymore and decided to take up the electric guitar (aside from her weekly kickboxing lessons). Let's be a Hiromi!

The guy she studies with had all his students group together into bands and they put on a concert last weekend. It was pretty good! Amazing how she started from scratch and got good enough to play three songs on stage. Proof that we're never too old to learn new tricks. Of course she had her eyes on the guitar the whole time and was so nervous she felt like barfing, but what a great effort! And the guts to perform when all the other bands were made of high school kids.

One of the bands she likes is coming to Oita in December so I looked them up on You-Tube and found a few videos. They're good! Got the kind of sound I love. It's still kinda early but will see if I can reserve myself a ticket. Here are some videos . . .

I like this one a lot. The band's called Elle Garden and I think the lead singer used to live in San Francisco. In the last week I've listened to this song about 80 times I like it that much.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=JBGfyKqOOcs

This one gets played on MTV but I can't seem to make much sense of the lyrics.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=e4OoVZcvJgk

Kanchan's house in progress

A couple weeks ago we went down to visit Kanchan's new "project". A small hotel never got finished and Kanchan decided to turn it into his home. For the time being it has no windows and looks more like an abandoned crackhouse than a partly finished hotel, but he's working on it. This is just half of the building and each room has its own parking space underneath.

None of us had been here before and didn't know what to expect. If we had brought better shoes apparently we could have gone hiking up the stream a ways to another pool.
Just the same, the little waterfall next to the building was fantastic! So nice on a hot summer day. We made boats out of leaves and tried floating them down the stream. Every single one instantly plummeted to the bottom.

John had a go at the drums while the rest of us frolicked in the woods and danced in the river to the beats coming from the building. For now the room with all the band equipment is the only one with proper windows and lighting.



And this little critter followed us around everywhere (the cat, not the creature holding him). Kanchan didn't really want him, but got attached after Tango stuck around for while. He's just so friendly how could you not like him!




The building's just off the road and feels so remote. Can't wait to have some nice barbecue's out there! But this time we had to head back once the thunder and lightening started. In a second we were faced with a sudden downpour.

Cheap fish with short lives

I heard another story that made me think, "Only in Japan." I was talking with someone who bought some cheap goldfish. They died a few days later. He went back to the shop and asked why they all died so soon, and the shopkeeper explained that these fish are supposed to die after a couple of days. Huh? And why would you sell fish that die after a couple days? The answer: to teach children about death.

Naturally the next question was, "Why would you sell these fish to me?" The shopkeeper replied, "I thought you needed to learn about death, too."

Thankfully I have never had this experience of being sold fish that were meant to die. All my fish died from poor water conditions and from eating each other. Here are some pics of my dear ones that have passed on before their time.

My expensive blue and beautiful. He turned out to be a bully and had to be dealt with. To my dismay, the smaller tank I transferred him to had poor filtration and he didn't make it.


I don't know why but Apple's shell got thinner and thinner until he had nothing left to live in.
African Aphyosemion - a $60 birthday present. I didn't notice the filter had stopped up and ammonium nitrite levels skyrocketed. He got a bacterial infection and puffed up like a balloon. By the time he saw medical treatment, it was too late.
My lovely albino medaka . . . One night I woke up to a frantic splashing occurring in the tank. The Aphyosemion had one halfway in his mouth and they were thrashing in unison. The few survivors were promptly separated.


Golden loaches. They were scared of the other fish and wouldn't come up to eat. Poor things died of starvation.



Sadly, I have no photographical record of the many others that are no longer with us. And what happens after they pass on? Some make their way underground via toilet. Others head for cremation mixed in with the "burnable garbage." When I was a kid, we turned them into dried fish mummies and put them in a plastic ziploc bag. We had a nice collection of dried corpses. Until the cat ate them.

Concert in the middle of nowhere

Malcolm's been playing in a band called Baobab for the last couple years, and today was their last gig as a trio. It's hard to believe he'll be moving back to New Zealand and we'll likely never meet again (Malcolm's on the drums in the middle).

The other two members - Mirai and Maika (brother and sister) live out in the middle of nowhere on a hill surrounded by rice fields, a really good venue for concerts. Their music is a relaxing mix of violin, guitar, and percussion, and fits so well outdoors with all the greenery. Kind of like Irish folk songs with Japanese lyrics. Here's a pic of the surrounding rice fields. What a beautiful place!

When I showed up one of my favorite high school students (in the red) came up to say hey. I was like, "What are you doing here???" She simply replied, "I live here." Huh? It turns out Mirai and Maika are her brother and sister. I had no idea she commuted to school every morning from such a rural place! She was pretty busy the whole time dishing out curry, selling cookies, and making drinks.

I've known Midori (on the left) practically the entire time I've been in Japan and the strange thing is we've never exchanged phone numbers until now. She's one of the few people around that can speak Italian. Unfortunately her teacher moved back to Italy and she's in search of a new one, so if you're Italian and living in Oita, I know someone who'd love to meet you.

I love these guys. They live miles away but always come to hang out. I've never met brothers that were so inseparable. Hiro (up front) just got a mohawk and is the only person I know that wears traditional wooden clogs wherever he goes. Yusuke's a fireman in the town where they live. Two cool guys, and it's a wonder they're single.

Baobab will go on without him, but it'll never be the same without Malcolm in the middle.

The Japanese are kinky.

Yes, I'm sure you already know about Japanese comic porn and slave clubs and hostess bars. But I heard about something new today!

Some friends were talking about something called "NyoTaiMori" which is sashimi (slices of raw fish) being served in a restaurant. Pretty normal, right? Except instead of the sashimi being served on a platter, they're served on a woman lying on the table. Supposedly this was pretty popular in big cities a few years back, but one friend was talking about how her brother works in a sushi restaurant and this was actually ordered, so that's how they served it. Which means they have women on-call to do that sort of thing?
The girl on the right with sunglasses on her head is the one who started talking about NyoTaiMori. She's constantly increasing my vocabulary of naughty Japanese.

The one behind her has the brother that serves sashimi. I haven't met her brother yet, but when I do, you can be sure about me getting all the details on this sushi-on-a-lady thing.

My pets

Last night while I was watching TV, something crashed into my living room window. I opened the sliding glass door, and a rhinoceros beetle was turned upside-down. I flipped him over and was faced with a dilemma: Do I bring him in and add him to the aquarium with my other rhinoceros beetles? Hmm . . . he might have mites clinging to his legs and I didn't want them spreading to the beetles I've been so carefully raising for the last three years, so I just put some food out which he enjoyed. Here's a picture of him snacking on the beetle jelly I placed in the hanging planter outside my window.

I'm so lucky. Downtown at the pet store these little critters sell for $5 each, and here they are flying into my living room window! So you're probably wondering, why on earth would I start raising beetles?

A few years ago a friend was talking about how he used to love them as a kid and carried a net and bug-carrying case wherever he went. After reminiscing about how much he loved them, he wanted to go into the forest to go looking for some (at 4am, I might add. Yes, this was unbelievable to me, too, but I went along). A few days after we caught some wild ones, I realized that they're flying around my neighborhood, too. In fact, one night I heard something bumping against the window and when I opened it, a beetle flew in! Anyhow those first beetles laid eggs, I raised the larvae, and a good number of the babies pupated into adult beetles. Then those beetles laid eggs, I raised the larvae, and so on and so forth. For the last three years. You know, I used to think they were pretty scary with their spiny legs and beady eyes, but after watching over them for a while they've become like any other pet.

I just peeked outside to check on the beetle jelly that I left out last night, and he's back! He remembered me. And he brought a friend with him.