randomwisdom.com

Mom and Dad made it to Tokyo alright. I think they're a bit overwhelmed by everything; the first meal we had was a breakfast at Denny's this morning. Of course, Japanese Denny's is not American Denny's, heh.

Today I took them out through Ueno park where we saw the cherry blossoms in full bloom, and then to Harajuku where we witnessed the crazy fashions and the largesse of Meiji-jingu. Then we hopped on the trains back to Asakusa. Dad was watching the conductor of the Yamanote line point out all the stuff he was looking at to make the decisions to speed up and slow down, and where to stop the train and such. I thought it was pretty cool.

Tomorrow we've got plans to watch the mayhem at Tsukiji fish market and swing through the Imperial Palace gardens before catching a shinkansen to Kyoto, where we'll be springing off on some quick day trips to various places. My keitai-mail isn't working for some reason, so I can't give daily updates on our journey, but I'll try to keep everyone updated over the next few days. Photos will come up around April 10 when I get back to school. Stay tuned, dear readers!

From a student composing a letter about a trip somewhere:

Dear Jeff,
I'm in North Korea. I got here last week. I went to Pyongyang the day before yesterday. I had discussion with Mr. Jong-il about an army and a nuclear weapon yesterday. Mr. Jong-il is very great man. I'ts sunny and it's warm. North Korea is great country. I'm having a very great time.
Sincerely yours,
...

I went out and bought a piece of furniture for my apartment, a red faux-leather couch to replace the aging lumpy piece of crap the previous person had left behind. Disposing of that particular relic was simply disgusting. My goal was to separate the burnable from the non-burnable pieces (i.e. the metal frame). I had to rip out chunks of packed insulation foam and fit them in bags; this itself wasn't too difficult. Then it came to ripping the other cushions apart with scissors to find shredded fiberglass insulation. The toxic carcinogenic itchy stuff, which the maker of aforementioned crap couch had decided to put in the cushions in massive quantities. Nothing I couldn't handle with a shop-vac. (A Japanese person: "A shop-vac? Industrial-strength large vacuum cleaner? What's that?") Obviously a shop-vac wasn't an option. At that time I decided the garbage crew was better equipped to handle this crap, and threw the rest of everything in the garbage disposal area. Let them screw with it. It was never my couch to begin with.

But the replacement couch made it all worthwhile.

I figured since I'll be spending another year and a half here, I might as well start to make the place my own. It also gave me an excuse to clean out my living room a bit. Most of it was piled up old mail. I can't believe how much crap both JET and the local municipality keep sending me. I get this pile of papers every month or so, in every imaginable size OTHER than A4. Most of the stuff from JET just shouldn't be in the national newsletter at all. (Did you know that if you're a high school ALT from Australia, there's a conference in Kyushu next week?) Therefore, most of it went in the trash, and most of them in the future will go directly to trash, do not pass Jeff, do not collect 20 minutes of time.

More later. I should probably go "teach" my class right now.

"Don't you mean the shining?"
"Quiet, boy, do you want to get sued?"

Today was the middle school graduation ceremony. Lots of formalities, lots of bowing, quite a few speeches. Yesterday they practiced most of the day to make sure they got the timing right. The graduating class sang some songs afterwards. They sang the same song they did at the school concert in October. I don't know why, but it was beautiful.

It's funny, most Japanese people don't show much outward emotion. They usually don't cry... but as they were singing, you could hear a sniff here and a voice crack there, and the motion of hands wiping away that emotion that never makes its way to the surface. The parents didn't cry, but the teachers did; we had seen them through thick and thin, all the fights and all the struggles, all the jokes and all the romances. It's only been half a year for me with these kids, but the song pulled at me too. It was like watching our own children graduate. I think it will be harder next year.

For when you just have to track down that person dressed all in black.

Edit: and the helmet itself isn't even black. How are you supposed to track a goth if you can't blend in?