Kyle's World

This little fella wishes everyone a Happy Halloween 2004! 

I'm sitting here at work, and I just gotta get something off my back or else I'll be bummed all day. Yesterday I was tod that we'd have a charity collection box out all next week to support the victims of the Niigata earthquake. I was asked if I might say a few words about it. Absolutely. I spoke, rather fast cuz I was nervous, but nonetheless I think I made my point. I called upon the school and my students to open their hearts to the victims of the earthquake. I then pulled out a 5000 Yen bill and put it in the box.
Now those who know me know I don't shy away from charity, you know raise money for cancer and so on. 5000 Yen doesn't seem like much when you consider the thousands of people living outside, in cars or in gyms. It doesn't seem like much when you consider that thousands are still without electricty, hot or even running water. Some of the folks are living on 1 onigiri a day. Many people have died, including the wife and three-year old daughter of a family of 4. 5000 Yen doesn't seem like much.
After I spoke, my principal came out, dropped 1000 Yen in the box, then also talked about the earthquake. Great, 1000 Yen. If that's what you feel like donating, then that's great. Except a couple things bothered me. He spoke of how foreigners have big hearts and are more likely to donate to charity, but that Japanese people were weak at donating to charity. What's that, an excuse for only donating 1000 Yen? That's like me saying that Toyota made cars have a history of breaking down, so I'm not gonna take my Toyota on the road trip. Simply doesn't make sense. He seemed to say to the students, "it's ok if you don't donate so much, after all you are Japanese". Then after coming back to the staff room, he mentioned about how I had donated 5000 Yen. We're having a staff drinking party tonight, and it will cost 5000 Yen a person. I told this to him. My logic was if I can spend 5000 Yen on a drinking party, then surely I could spend 5000 Yen for the people of Niigata. On those lines, if someone can lose 20000-30000 Yen a couple times a week, then surely they could afford 5000 Yen in donations. My principal said that both he and the vice-principal much prefer drinking parties, then my principal admitted that his 1000 Yen was a pity donation. Then they started laughing. I'm sure people in Niigata don't need pity donattions. I don't know, sometimes I really don't get this country or the people who live here. Are they wrong or am I just being preachy? I just realised that I'll probably be in a badmood for the rest of the day.

My beloved Red Sox, yes those same 'cursed' Red Sox that had endured nearly 9 decades between World Championships, finally struck gold when they ousted the Cardinals in a brisk 4 games. I am in baseball heaven now (although I admit baseball heaven in Japan is much different than baseball heaven back home). First of all, I had no satellite with which to watch the games. Secondly, the games were usually on while I was at work. Nothing quite says fired like a Red Sox celebration in the middle of the staff room. I went through the more quiet, subdued, keep-it-to-myself type celebration, but I did get several pats on the back and handshakes from other teachers. I remember back in the day, having both a "Rocket" Roger Clemens and a Wade Boggs poster on my wall. How is it that I've always liked the Red Sox? Maybe it was constantly being accused of being from Boston as a kid. That type of trauma (now I'll call it a treasure) sticks with you. I'm so glad I'm a Red Sox fan. I wouldn't have it any other way. And I'm so glad they won the World Championship. Just think, Bill Buckner is fully absolved of his sins now. I realised that if I have to wait another 86 years to watch the Red Sox win another World Series, then I'll be a fan at the ripe old age of 110. With medical advances, anything is possible I guess. But I also realised that I'll really enjoy this one, despite being so far removed from Boston, in case it doesn't happen again for 86 years. Let me just say in conclusion to all those Red Sox haters out there, you know who you are Eugenio, Joon Young, half my school...I laugh in your general direction. Red Sox forever.

I had to run to Costco again today in a bit of an emergency. I deked out of work at 2:45 and was on my way. My mission: to purchase a whole bunch of pumpkins. I had this great idea to steal a few English lessons to celebrate Halloween. Luckily it got the green light from the higher powers; I was even given an ok to get up to 15,000 Yen worth of pumpkins. I tell you, the look on the faces of the staff and customers as I systematically picked through the crates of pumpkins to find only the 17 best. Great looks, actually stares, but priceless as I walked to the checkout counter with a shopping buggy full of pumpkins. I went back in to get some of my own personal shopping done. As always, good times. I ended up with such items as an electric blanket, two sweaters (sense a pattern here...yep, it's getting cold) in my size, a Rock against Bush CD, BBQ sauce, ribs, salmon, Halloween candy and on and on. The damage? 38,000 Yen. Wow, that's over 50,000 Yen in one day at Costco. I suppose only the best stores can capture my money like that though.

The previously mentioned Bunkasai 2004. This is a picture of the song competition. See even boys can sing, and sing well at that. (A picture of 3-2 who finished second: from left Ryota, Aki, Yoshichika, Hiroshi and Taro) 

Saturday marked the last 文化祭 as 豊野町. From next January, we'll be swallowed up by the larger fish that is 宇城市. By the way, sorry for this Japanese/English intermixing. I'm at the 小学校now and there is a keyboard that types in Japanese. Anyway, the students put their hearts and souls into preparing for the 文化祭 which makes it a great event. Seeing the students come together as they did makes me so proud to live here. Anyway I'm starting to ramble. I was part of this play, so I had to act in front of everyone. I had like 4 lines in Japanese, I think I did a good job although I'm sure I was a bit stiff. Afterwards, everyone told me how good I was. My 校長先生 said I was like Sly Stallone out there. Is that a compliment though? Isn't Stallone supposed to be a lousy actor? There was an area where we put pictures of the teachers when they were younger and people had to try to guess who they were. I got my mom to send a picture of me on going out for Halloween (stay tuned till Sunday when I'll post it). I thought for sure mine would be the gimme question; after all, I'm the only white guy on staff...pretty unmistakeable I thought. Well, I should have known, my students found a way to screw it up. There was another picture of 豊野中's 理科先生 Mr Takimori who submitted a black and white photo of himself wearing sunglasses. Let's see, dated picture of a Japanese baby in from the 1960's or colour photo of me when I was about 4. Several of the people guessed me as Mr Takimori and my rival Edo (my predecessor ALT) as me. Weird, but funny. At the ふれ合い学習 I learned how to make 絵手紙. I'm sure it's 見苦しい but I tried hard anyway. During the song competition, apparently there was a 3 年生　 student who botched her piano part, apparently causing her class to lose out. My seasoned musical ear didn't notice anything though, I thought that class did rather well. But as is the Japanese way, and good eveidence on how the students wore their hearts on their sleeves during the 文化祭 she was upset and crying several hours after the performances had ended. I felt sorry for her.

My name is Valerio Rodriguez Lopez Martinez, and I am Pedro's daddy. All you Yankee gringo bastardos can kiss my latin ass. Burn in hell with the worst case of Nalga del Fuego damn Yankees. Go Red Sox! Son, I'm proud of you... 

The Boston Red Sox are finally making it a series. Not even 48 hours ago I was at home thinking the Yankees were surely getting out the brooms to sweep my Sox out the door. Then I witnessed the Sox magically win two in a row, in extra innings no less. Now they are only down 3-2 heading back to the Bronx. Can the Sox become the first pro sports team to come back from 3-0 down? I'm starting to believe. Go Sox, stick it to those Yankee, 185 million, I-buy-my-pennants, steriod using arrogant pricks.

Kanako came to visit last Saturday. I hadn't seen her since April; it's always nice when a proud Kyushu-an has a homecoming. Neither Kanako or myself are any good at making decisions, so it was a bit tough to figure out exactly what the plan was for the day. Finally, we decided on an Amakusa/Hondo driving tour. But that actually turned into a Best Denki tour since we were looking for my friend Yuichi to suggest a good restaurant to us. Alas, he wasn't even working on Saturday as I found out. Figures as much. Anyway, after driving from one end of the town to the other several times, we finally settled on a quaint little family restaurant to quench our hunger. Not bad, except there was absolutely no one in the restaurant. Alao I wasn't really feeling up to anything since my throat was so sore, I guess the sign of my upcoming cold. And to boot the curry was a bit salty. Anyway we left Hondo, driving tour accomplished, but we had to boot it home to make it to the evenings fireworks show. Of course we stopped for mikans though. Well we must've left Hondo too late cuz, despite taking the highway to get to the fireworks, there was still a huge traffic jam just to get off the highway. That's right, a good 3km in 1 hour pace. I must say it was the worst traffic jam I may have ever seen. It was nice to see what fireworks we could from the car though, as well as try not to let any cars cut us off. In the end, the fireworks were not to be. We soon gave up sitting in traffic and went for ramen instead. Sounds like a fair trade to me.

Me and Kanako, in front of Pepe 

It's Morizo, the unofficial sponsor of Aichi's World Expo 2005. Cute, but kinda looks like Totoro to me... 

Something cool...stare at the 4 dots for 30 seconds. After 30 seconds, close your eyes and slowly tilt your head back. What do you see? Post a comment of what or who you saw and I'll publish the results later on. 

I'm currently layed up with the most severe of sore throats. Bronchitis? Not sure. All I know is that it really hurts to do such menial tasks as breathing and swallowing. That ends my amazing streak of some 10 months, like 46 weeks, of great health in Japan. Yep, I haven't had a cold or anything since December 4, 2003, whereas back home I'd get sick every month or two. I've been trying to sleep since 6PM today, with mixed success. But my friend Kanako is coming to visit tomorrow, so I'd like to be fine for that. Damn sore throat.

If there is such a thing as the World's most expensive U-turn, then certainly I did it. After making my way to Oita and subsequently Matsuyama, by car, alone, 9 hours with no map, I was understandably a bit confident on the return trip. I totally thought I could find Kumamoto by myself. I came upon the 150 yen toll road that I drove on to get to Oita, so thinking I should simply re-trace my footsteps, I got back on it. My confidence was spilling over at this point, but not enough to stop me from asking the toll booth guard if this was indeed the right way to Kumamoto. After all, everything looked the same at night. The guard told me that I was travelling in the wrong direction, and that I'd have to turn around. So I paid the 150 yen toll and asked the guy where I could turn around. Very clearly I was the dumb gaijin who didn't know where he was going. It was a situation I've played to perfection time and time again. The gaijin card really comes in handy. Anyway he said I had to drive up 30 metres, and there would be a turn around point right there. I did exactly that, but who was there to greet me? None other than the toll booth guard, telling me I owed him another 150 yen. What? For a U-turn? I only used the toll road for 30 metres. What a rip off. Bastard. My gaijin priviledge card had been revoked. Mean, cheap old men work in toll booths in Oita. But hey, I left with a funny story.

I checked my email today at work as I always do, except today was a bit different. When I logged in, I saw that hotmail had increased their storage capacity to 250MB. That my friends, is outstanding. I first heard about this plan back in the spring. I guess Bill Gates needed to pull the necessary stops to stay competitive with Google and Yahoo. After not happening in the spring, I heard I'd have to wait till the fall for the increase to happen. For the longest time I've been at like 98% full, so I've wanted this increased storage capacity for a long while...still I thought it would only be an increase to like 10MB. What!?! 250MB?!? That's craziness. But over the course of one night, I went from 98% full to only 1%. Great job Gates, great job hotmail (nope, I'm not secretly a Microsoft employee shilling the product).

Me with a semi-famous Pachinko peddling statue in Matsuyama. But why is he pointing to his nether kintama region? Only in Shikoku...only in Matsuyama. 

Me and B, in front of a Gastow Steamclock ripoff, Dogo, Matsuyama, October 11, 2004 

Me and Yoko, on the Ferris Wheel in Matsuyama, October 10, 2004 

Oh yeah, it's finally Mikan season here in southern Japan. For the uninitiated, I absolutely love mikans. I did a semi-mikan diet last year to no great results, and I'm thinking about doing the same this year if my stomach holds out. I got my first bag of the delicious orage coloured treats last week. My supervisor at work gave them to me. And of course they didn't last too long before I ate them all up. The thing with mikans is that they don't fill you up, so a bag of them is quite easy to finish. Also, they are so easy to peel, they have no seeds, and much like chips, once you start eating them it's hard to stop. I bought my next three bags while in Matsuyama, the self-proclaimed mikan capital of Japan. I ate one bag one the ferry, and another bag at my desk today. But after all that, you pay dearly for it. I ended up being late for my last class of the day because I was getting aquainted with the students washroom. Maybe like that kid in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory who turns into a blueberry after eating too much blueberry candy, I'll turn into a mikan by year's end. Results may vary, but good times.

Surfing in Hawaii!! And I got up 3 times in only one hour alongside my instructor Kaz. Except apparently I'm a goofy. But a natural. 

Me and Kaz, on the katamaran cruise in Hawaii 

I think the Air Conditioner in my house is definitely possessed. I may have drawn that conclusion a while ago, but today's Air Con doings definitely sealed it. First of all, you have to realise that my air con's company is Sylphide. That already sounds a bit sketchy to me, like a type of rat poison or something. Since the beginning of summer, I've been cranking out the air conditioning at a chilly 16C. Everyone was concerned that I'd catch a cold. But my air con's 16C must be like a comfortable 25 or 26C on an aircon that works. Believe me, if I could have gotten it down to 11C or so I would have. So back in the day, it was honest to goodness snowing and raining ice chunks out the slits in my aircon. What the hell? It's 36C outside, where's this snow and ice coming from? Not to mention that it hurt when the snow and ice blew down on you at a Randy Johnson fastball pace. Anyway, after not seeing snow or ice for a long while, I was using my aircon today when it started to gush water. It wasn't a waterfall type gush, but it wasn't Chinese water torture gush either. I'd say I would have been able to wash my hands with soap including getting a nice lather going and then washing it all off with all the water that dripped. Craziness. What's the lesson learned here? A) Never by a Sylphide air conditioner B) Keep a bucket under my aircon at all times C) There's hope yet for an indoor ski resort in Kumamoto