Happy New Years Everyone.
Sorry about the delay, but I didn`t even leave my house yesterday. I
was still recovering. I`m not going to say anything about what I did
on New Years to everyone. I think I `d better censor it. I`ll just
say I made it home and I had some good times and some bad times.
Also, I hung out in a Yoda cave for most of the night． The rest you
can just imagine. I`m off to see a giant Buddha tomorrow and am
almost supposed to hang out with someone I met on New Years. Don`t
remember what they look like. I realized that I still haven`t talked
about how 3D japan can be. You can go somewhere and be underground
for miles. You can be above ground for blocks. There are buildings
with businesses on every floor for like 10 plus floors. Under train
tracks there are businesses. under those businesses there are
businesses. In Kobe, I can walk around the whole city in probably 2
hours and it has 1.6 million people packed into it. I guess the
reason I bring this up now, is that I went to Osaka for New Years and
it is a giant version of the same thing. It is so easy to get lost
there it`s ridiculous. You can walk around and eventually realize
that you`re underground. It`s crazy. Taking a break from teaching
has been really nice. I didn`t realize how much of a daily grind it
can be. It`s so quick, because it`s 8 classes in like 7 hours.
Eventually I am doing the same lessons over and over again. Plus I`m
running out of stuff to talk about with my regular students. Plus
I`ve probably become overly friendly with some of my real regular
students. They know me to well. I have a couple students now. I
don`t even do lessons with them, just chat. But that sounds easy, but
is ridiculously tough. We have to find something to talk about for 40
minutes straight and they are pretty limited in their English. It
makes it tough. I was supposed to go to a shrine on New Years day
with some Japanese girl, but I was too hungover, so I had to skip it.
It`s probably better anyway. New Years is more of a family thing
here, so I was probably getting her in trouble with her family. I
went and scoped it out, because the shrine is next to my grocery store
and it was just packed with people anyway. It would have been like
waiting for a rollercoaster, except I`d be waiting to throw money into
a thing, ring a bell, and pray to the Shinto gods I don`t believe in.
Not really worth it, I guess. Culturally it might have been
interesting, but I already know how everything works from my students.
I found a cool Mexican restaurant near my house last week. It`s
pretty good and the owner is a really cool dude. He`s one of the few
Japanese people I`ve met that travels like me. No package tours, just
wandering around and eating food. He`s been to Mexico and Southern
California. So he just ate tons of tacos, came back and opened a taco
place. Plus it`s right next to where I get haircuts now. Little
things are tough here. Like getting a haircut. The kind of precise
control of a language you need to describe what you want in a haircut
is tough. All I was able to ask for was a trim, cut the hair in half
and that`s it. But they do things weird here. Like, they don`t block
the back, they just leave the natural hair line, so I have to learn
how to ask for that. It`s also scary, because they use an old school
razor to trim around the edges. And they used like four hot towells
on me throughout the haircut. Luckily it only cost ten bucks. Most
haircut places here are like 35-45 dollars. It`s ridiculous, but I`m
not willing to pay that much, when I can`t explain what I want. Also
the way they point to things is different. So for my sideburns, I
just pointed and said here. But she cut my hair to where the top of
my finger was and not the bottom, so I have to remember that. I
learned some new words for calling someone disgusting in Japanese.
For some reason, whenever I learn dirty Japanese I can remember it
instantly. Of course one of the words I learned is Hentai, which is
Japanese porn. It kind of means pervert. I was telling a girl about
one of my students. He`s one of the dirtiest people I have ever met.
When I have him one on one, he just wants to tell me about going to
whorehouses, wearing women`s clothes, etc.etc.etc. So she told me to
call him Hentai. Next month I`m gonna be super busy. There`s almost
no one at my school next month, because everyone built up a whole lot
of vacation and linked it with this holiday to visit home. So I work
6 days a week all next month, plus I have training on my days off all
next month as well. But afterwards I`ll be able to do kids classes,
which I don`t really want to do, but I want my day to be broken up
more. So I probably won`t have any interesting e-mails. Although I
will still probably be up to something on my days off. When I`m doing
6 days a week, the 7th I like to just leave Kobe and wander around
some place aimlessly. So I will try that again. Maybe find some new
places that are cool. Well my times almost up. So I got to go.
Dan