What would you choose?

You may have heard comments from people who have been to Japan that the Japanese can't hold their alcohol and usually get drunk on one beer. This is often true but beer, like all things in life, is completely relative.

It's that time of year again...

If you're interested in reading a bit more about the Yasukuni Shrine and the controversy it causes you can head on over to The Star's website and check out this article. Thanks to Mom for the heads up on that.
You may or may not have to register in order to be able to see it. I'm not too sure about that.

When the big one hits will you be ready?

If today was indication then the answer would have to be 'probably not.' Coincidently, today's paper had a big article with the same title in question. I am of course referring to today's earthquake in Tokyo. I was in my class and I asked my student "I wonder if this is the big one?" It turned out not to be but it was a big one that's for sure. I was in the fifth floor of a department store and the walls were shaking like crazy-and it went on for a long time. Close to a minute I would say. Anyways it certainly added some spice to a terrible day and we all had laughs about it after. Apparently one of the students in the voice class started praying-perhaps she saved us all. I was too busy relishing my first big earthquake.

I had a carrot today. I know this tidbit of news might have trouble competing with an earthquake for newsworthiness but it's noteworthy in its own right. It was my first carrot in almost 4 months. I may be the first person in history get come down with scurvy on dry land.

let me get to sleep

History 101

As promised here's a little write up I've been composing about the military history of Japan. I was going to do the whole thing in one go but there's actually quite a lot you can write about in a 90 year period. I'll probably make this a 3 part project. Most of you will be horribly bored by this but it's actually amazingly fascinating. Take a gander at it at least.

Modern Japanese History (1853-1940) (from a Japanese perspective, Part 1 of 3)

When did the first Sino-Japanese war occur? What major Western country lost a war against Japan? Did you know that more Western countries than just Britain (Hong Kong) have leased parts of China? I have to admit that before I visited Japan, my historical knowledge of the Pacific countries was very limited. I was very interested in the happenings of WWII but I was only concerned with WWII in Europe. While I still have little interest in samurai and temples and what not, I've found the history of Japan (and Asia in general) to be extremely fascinating.

The thing that I find the most interesting is not so much the history itself, but rather how the Japanese view of history tends to be a little askew from ours. This is especially true concerning events that lead up to WWII. Remember the saying, "History is written by the winners"? Well that's a load of bunk. The saying should be rather, the winners are so enthralled by their own version of history that they don't even realize that the losers have written their own.

I learned of the Japanese viewpoint from the museum at the site of the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. Sound familiar? Probablynot. I had never heard of it before. But what might sound familiar to you is the controversy that arises every year when the Prime Minister visits the shrine in August to pay his respects. You've probably read about it in the paper because every year the Chinese and the Koreans get extremely upset. The reason for this is that in addition to containing the remains of hundreds of thousands Japanese soldiers it also contains the remains of several "Class A" war criminals. So the idea of the official head of state of Japan paying his respects to Japanese war criminals is a slap in the face of every Korean or Chinese who were somehow affected by Japanese imperialism in the 19th and 20th centuries.

This is a general synopsis of Japanese history from the mid-1800's to the begining of WWII. Remember I am only writing what I learned from my trip to the museum-these are not necessarily my beliefs nor do I necessairly agree with them. I was actually surprised by how much of it I actually disagreed with. However my previous sources of Japanese history were the movies The Last Samurai and Pearl Harbor-and I suspect that unfortunately that probably goes for most of us. It's also quite possible that our own history books are a little biased. So who's version of history is correct? Ours or the Japanese? I suspect that quite possibly the answer lies somewhere in the middle (as it almost always does.)

In this article, Japanese history begins in 1853. The Edo period has ended and Japan has just gone through two and a half centuries of isolationism as a result of fears of an invasion from neigboring Manchuria and encroachment by Western powers. America forces Japan out of isolation when Matthew Perry sails into Tokyo harbor with a fleet of 4 ships and requests an audience with the Emperor. He receives no response and leaves. He returns in 1854, this time with 9 ships and forces Japan to sign a treaty. The treaty was unequal to Japan as it gave the US the right to set export tariffs and gave them extraterritoriality. However the Japanese had little choice as they had not the navy to withstand the US's gunboat diplomacy.

In the 1860's Japan goes through a period of modernization. The shogunate is overthrown and the Imperial Court returns to power. Fiefs are turned turned over to the state and an army is established. Universal conscription is adopted and Japan drafts 270,000 men and implements a division system for easy mobility. Japan's focus is quickly changing from domestic defense to overseas operations.

This period of modernization threatened the samurai who were forced to cut off their topknots and were barred from wearing swords. Their proposal to subjugate Korea was also rejected which infuriated the samurai so in the mid-1870's they rebelled. Japan in turn enlisted the aid of Tom Cruise to beat down the samurai, which as we all know, backfired horribly and damaged Hollywood/Japanese relations for the next century. After a period of civil war, the rebellion was quelled.

In the 1880's trouble started to brew between China, Japan and Korea. China considered Korea to be a vassal state and as such they constantly interfered in their affairs. Things started to heat up when internecine conflict started up within Korea itself between the pro-Japan party and the Conservative party. The Conservatives, unhappy with the pro-Japan party staged a military revolt and in 1884 there was a coup d'etat which resulted in military intervention by the Chinese. The Japanese felt threatened because their "line of advantage" had been compromised. Line of advantage in this case seems to be another term for "buffer zone."

In 1894 a rebellion started in Korea and both sides sent forces to "quell" the rebellion. The problem was that both China and Japan supported opposite sides of the rebellion. Another problem was that the intentions of both countries were not pure of heart. Both countries knew the country was in a shambles and were looking for any excuse to invade. Japan sent a force three times the size of China's and they seized the government and reformed it. The new government then gave Japan permission to expel Chinese forces from the country and so the Sino-Japanese war began.

I'm not going to go over the battles because it isn't necessary to know what happened but rather what the outcome was. Just be satisfied that there were lots of guns fired and ships sunk. In the end it was a glorious victory for Japan, who not only expelled the Chinese from Korea but also managed to aquire a huge tract of Chinese territory called the Liaodong Penninsula. According to the museum I went to, the war ended with the Treaty of Shimonoseki and "Korea achieved true independence which Japan had hoped for."(the last part is taken directly from museum information-whether Korea was truly free I don't know.)

It's at this stage we see Western countries interfering in Asian affairs for a second time (first being Americans forcing unfair treaty signings in 1854.) Russia was not happy to see the success of the Japanese as they had a lot of interest in that part of China themselves. They also didn't like the Japanese at their borders. So they got together with France and Germany and convinced them to help pressure the Japanese into returning the captured territory to China (Tri-Partite Intervention.) Japan having just fought a tough war, was in no shape to resist the western countries' demands. As soon as the Japanese pulled out of Liaodong, the Russians occupied it themselves and the French and the Germans received city states in China for their help. So while it might be accurate to say that pre-WWII Japanese were imperialist aggressors, you have to admit that they had excellent teachers and would go on to employ many of the same methods in the 20th century that they learned from Western countries.

The Japanese of course considered the Tri-Partite Intervention to be a slap in the face and soured their relations with much of the world. "Vengeance at all cost" became their new motto. That combined with Russia's southward advance to the Korean penninsuala convinced the Japanese that a Russo-Japanese War would be inevitable.

And so ends the 19th century.

12am-only 4 more hours till bedtime

I don't really stay up till 4 am. I haven't done that on a regular basis since university. But it just occured to me that quite possibly the best thing about this job is the fact that I can stay up as late as I want and I never have to worry about whether or not I'm going to sleep in and be late for work (which is something that is worth worrying about because being late in Japanese society will incur serious financial penalties.)

I could sleep in till 11am if I wanted and still have a ridiculous amount of time to get ready for work. I don't of course. I usually get up around 8-8:30 and lazily eat breakfast and read the paper and then I saunter off to the gym for an hour and a half. Still it's nice to know that if for some reason you need to stay up late, you'll always have lots of time to sleep in the next morning.

Japan Fact #231
Japanese kids are smarter than Canadian kids. This is a given considering how most of them go to school eight hours a day six days a week and then go to a cram school for an hour and a half after school before going home to do two and a half hours of homework followed by an hour of piano or violin. I last week I was sitting on the train next to a kid who looked like she might be a very young ten years old. She was working on a sheet of long division math problems such as 24.3/9 and 35.2/3. I haven't attempted it myself yet but I'm guessing that I probably couldn't get the right answer without a calculator.

Yasukuni pictures.

Since I had such a good time at the museum last week (what a loser) I went back and paid another $8 to go through it again. While I am a big fan of museums I don't generally go every week. Yet I was so fascinated by seeing history from another point of view that I had to go back and soak it all up. I took a notepad with me this time and jotted down 12 pages of extremely small print notes (oh God it's official.) I'm planning on doing a little write up about it before I forget all the details and I'll provide a link to it whenever it gets put up. I also chanced the possibility of banishment from the country by breaking the rules and taking a few photographs. Unfortunately they're small because I used my cell phone but it still gives an idea of what the museum is like. Enjoy.

Japanese tank. Sorry I can't say much more about it. I guess I should have gotten a shot at the information plaque that is sitting right in front of it. Also I apologize for the blurriness. I was trying to avoid being taken down by a museum attendant who was about to tackle me and my illegal camera.


This is a German made cannon that was captured from the Chinese in one of the 19th century I think it was during the Sino-Japanese war. What was a German cannon doing in China during the 19th century, you ask? It's amazing how much meddling the Western powers did in Asian affairs post-18th century.



Japanese Zero fighter. This one was rebuilt using parts from quite a few destroyed planes. Most of it is authentic.



Japanese kamikaze weapons. The first is a rocket called Cherry Blossom. They were attached to the bottoms of Japanese bombers. Once released from the bomber, the rocket would fire and the pilot would guide the rocket into US ships. The second pic is that of a one man torpedo. Basically a small submarine packed with explosives and controlled by a single person. It's actually quite huge-the small picture is deceiving.






I could be wrong but I think that the Thai-Burma railroad (as mentioned in the information picture) was the same one that Alex Guinness was forced to build in the movie Bridge over the river Kwai. I could be wrong.








These two cannons both came from Okinawa. They were excavated from some caves I believe. Unlike most of the Allies cannons that you see nowadays, these ones are not in pristine shape. They were under some pretty heavy fire and they show it. The barrels are covered in bullet marks and some pieces look like they've been torn away by explosions.

Ok let's Jenken!

I forgot to mention one of the more positive aspects that comes from teaching kids. I am now an expert at Jenken. For those of you who don't know, Jenken is the japanese version of Rock Paper Scissors-I suppose it would be more accurate to say that Rock Paper Scissors is the english version of Jenken. I think they invented it. We use it in class usually when we're doing the card activities and there's a tie in a race to touch the correct card. If it's a tie I point to the two kids in question and say "Ok. Jenken."

What happens next is a sight to behold. It's as if you've hit the "Launch" button. If I did that in Canada it would take two minutes for the kids to get the rules sorted out. Here in Japan however, the words are barely out of my mouth and the kids' hands are already in motion. These kids have probably never met outside of class before but there's no question of how you play-it's just instinctual for them. I had one class that I divided up into two teams and they played Jenken for the cards. The two teams were so enthusiastic that they would scream out the words and usually someone from each team would grab the players arm and move it up and down for them-it was really funny.

During the man to man classes where there are no other students I get a chance to play a little myself. In fact I've played it so much that I know the chorus (try to imagine this in a cute little kid japanese voice.)

Sigh-show goo
Jenken
Pon

and if it's a tie:

Icodashow (repeat as required)

The game is fairly similar to the Canadian version only the paper is with the palm vertical instead of horizontal and in the event of a tie, rather than going through the motions three times again you just do one more and show your hand again so "Icodashow" is all in one motion. Also this is probably just what the kids do, but the first two shakes are regular and then on the third one they swing their hand all the way back behind their backs and then swing it all the way forward again as if to finish in a grand finale. It's quite cute to watch.

The life of an english teacher (part 2)

This is the second and final in an enlightening (says the author) and interesting series about teaching in Japan.

The second component of the teaching experience is teaching kids. Like everything else in life it has it's ups and downs. It can be joy or it can be a trial depending on what kind of class you have. I usually teach at least two kids classes a day, but often three and sometimes four. The kids are divided up into three categories: kinder, junior and senior. Kinders range from 4-6 years old, juniors 7-8 and seniors 9-12 years old. The classes can be from just one student up to eight students. Usually each school has a couple of kids rooms for the classes.

Classes are 40 minutes like every other class and each kid has a textbook and workbook that they work out of. Language is usually introduced on cards (ie card with a lady on it and "Mom" underneath. "It's my Mom!" Who is it? Kid: "It's my mom.") In between the activities we play transition games to keep the kids focused and to keep their attention from wandering.

I've come to realize now that I'm a bit of a fair-weather teacher. When the kids are good I have a lot of fun with them and am a pretty good teacher. When they're brats they just get me upset and I can't control them. I'm not a discipliner. At least not of the kind that the parents would approve of anyways. In my opinion what some kids really need is a good slap in the back of the head but I'm not sure that that's something the school condones and I'm not about to find out. I've decided that it isn't worth the stress. These kids' futures are not going to be dependent on whether or not they learned the word Mom at six years old. The only time I am concerned is when they start dragging the good kids down with them.

Usually the kids are pretty good though. They don't always succeed at the lesson but at least they try and they have fun. All the girls are usually super cute even when they're bad (speaking of which I don't teach Minami anymore. Someone finally clued into the fact that she got 1's when she was taught by male teachers and 4's and 5's when she was taught by female teachers.) It's a lot of fun to watch them play games with each other.

Saturday is my bad day. Actually bad is too mild of a term. I'm usually at the point of nervous breakdown by the time the 3rd class rolls around. I have two kids classes in the morning and they're both awful. The first class is a group of kinders. I basically have no control whatsoever from the moment they walk into the room. I've finally learned my lesson and I go into the class ahead of time and "kid-proof" it before they arrive. Last month was my first time teaching those horrible five. I thought it couldn't possibly be worse this month but it is-those horrible five turned into horrible seven. My second tour of duty is half over and this one is my last-someone else can teach them next month.

My second class is almost as bad. Three junior boys. They wrestle with each other and yell and basically ignore me. One of them has a Tamagochi (i can understand why teachers were always so much against them when they were popular in Canada) and plays with it while I'm trying to teach them. Usually I come out of those two classes very tired, hoarse from shouting and with a bit of a headache-and I still have to teach the rest of the day. One of the teachers actually asked me last Saturday what the heck was going on in that class. She couldn't believe it when I told her there was only two kids in there.

There doesn't seem to be much I can do. The simple fact of the matter is that I have no experience when it comes to handling and discipling kids. We received one day of training to teach kids classes and 90% of that training covered actual teaching of the lesson plans and activities with almost no time spent on classroom management. And I can't even really kick the kids out of class. This is a business not a school after all. All these kids represent money. And the Japanese simply cannot confront problems head on. Their idea of a solution would be to break the class up and split them into seperate classes. That would be fine for most kids except for the antagonists who will just spread their poison in another class and drag that class down with them. Very frustrating.

Anyways kids aren't as bad as I'm making it sound. Those two classes probably represent about 10-15% of my total kids classes in one week. All the other ones are a lot of fun. I just did my Chibico training the other week, which was better than a kick in the head with an iron boot. Chibico is for 2-3 year olds and the parents are in the class with the kids. It's sort of the same but it's even more simple and there's a lot of ridiculous singing and stuff like that. Fortunately there are almost no chibico classes at my school right now (who in their right mind takes their 2-3 year old to school?) and I'm hoping that I don't have to do one. I think I would quite honestly rather teach my Saturday kids-at least the parents aren't in the room with us.

let me get to sleep

The life of an english teacher (part 1)

Some of you have been asking exactly what I do over here so I'm going to try to explain my daily routine over here the best I can. For safety reasons, or in case I happen to do something extremely stupid in the future, I won't mention where I work-it's amazing how some people think that they can write whatever they want on the internet and nobody will find out about it (right Lieran?)

I work 5 days a week of course and on average about 8 hours a day. Because the weekends are busy times for schools I don't have the normal "weekend." My days off are Tuesday and Wednesday. I also don't work normal hours. I usually start at the crack of 1:20pm (except for weekends when I start at the absurdly early hour of 10:50am) and work till about 9pm at night. Because of these unusual hours, mornings are when I have to do most of my leisure activities (ie. go to the gym...and yeah that's about all.)

I usually teach 8 classes a day. Sometimes if it's a slow day I get lucky and might get a free. I work one day a week at a small school and if I'm lucky I get 2 or 3 free classes. You can't leave the school though so if you're by yourself it can get a little boring. Classes are 40 minutes long and are composed of up to 4 students. You rarely have more than one 4-student class a day though. On any given day you might have a couple 2 person classes, one or two 3 person classes and a couple of one-on-one classes. During the day you also have to teach kids classes (more on that another day) and you might have to do a voice lesson. Voice class is basically a chance for the students to use the language that they have learned. So you might have 5-6 students in a room with some couches and you just sit around and talk about whatever comes to mind. It's quite fun-especially with the high level students.

The students all have their own level. Levels range from 7C, 7B,7A, 6, 5, 4, and so on down to 2. 7C is the lowest level and 1 is a native english speaker (obviously we don't teach level 1's.) My school only teaches up to level 4 which is good because level 3 and up is a lot more difficult to teach in part because the language is a lot more advanced and because these levels haven't received the new textbooks yet. The old textbooks, to put it mildly, are wretched.

I'm not sure that I really consider myself a teacher-actually let me rephrase that- I don't consider myself a teacher. Any place that gives you a quota for level-ups to meet I don't consider an actual school but a business. I suppose we're more of a guide for the textbook more than anything. And of course we can answer any questions that the students may have. Once you learn how to do the lessons it's really dead easy. A class is usually comprised of a warm up session, where you just chat with the students and maybe briefly introduce the topic and see what skill they have with the language.

Then you get into the actual lesson. The first part usually covers vocabulary of whatever subject you're studying (ie. weekend plans, apologizing, assigning blame, etc) and then you go into some of the language using modeled phrases (ie. Q. What are you doing this weekend? A. I'm meeting friends at a bar downtown.) After you do a listen and repeat (you model it and they repeat it) you then practice it and do some drills.

Then there's a listening stage (you read out a dialogue and they have to answer some assigned questions about the dialogue,) followed by a couple of activities and then finally at the end of the class an application stage where the students get a chance to practice what they've learned.
It's the exact same formula for all levels (up to level 4) only the language get more difficult.

We usually get about 15 minutes between classes to grade the student and offer comments or suggestions for the next teacher-pretty standard stuff. There's no pass or fail or anything like that. Once the students achieve a certain level of proficiency they are given a level up and have to take a level up test to proceed to the next level. I suppose they do learn something so it can't be a complete waste of time. We must be doing something right I guess. Of course you get the odd person who is just completely hopeless. Only a couple though thankfully.

Bigger classes are easier because the teacher has to do less work. One on one classes are the most work because the teacher has to participate in all the activities and drills. I prefer the smaller classes though. They're more personal and you get a chance to just chat with the students-some of them can be quite interesting.

There's a huge range of students. There are a few general "classes" though.

First, is businessmen. Basically learning english because it will help them with their company. These people are usually pretty dry but you get the odd interesting one.

Second would be housewives. I'd say this category must comprise about half of the students. They either want to learn so they can talk with english friends or for travelling or they are just bored and want to do something during the day.

The last main category would be highschool kids (mostly girls) who are taking english classes because their parents think it's good for them. They're usually extremely shy, extremely quiet and extremely cute (oops did I say that out loud?) You basically cannot have a conversation with these girls. They talk so low that you can barely hear them, they usually look straight down at the floor and they appear to have no self confidence whatsoever. You can sometimes get them to come out of their shells but the trick is to find out what they like talking about. Fortunately that is very easy because it is usually anime, internet, J-pop or videogames. It will still basically be a one way conversation (you ask simple questions and they give simple answers) but at least you'll get a smile. And then you have a whole variety of people in between-university students, artists, exterminators, areobic instructors. Chatting with these people is usually pretty interesting.

After a while you get to know the students by name (i recognize most of them but I'm terrible at matching faces with names) and a lot of them you will get to know by number (each student's file number). The first thing we do when we get in each day is check the schedule and then groan about what student we might have to teach that day. If a student has some particular mannerisms then they'll probably be imitated by one of the teachers and all will have a good laugh in the teachers room.

Students are a constant source of amusement for the teachers. Through no fault of their own, students might say something extremely funny during the lesson, which will then be repeated after class in the teachers room. I'm reminded of once incident in particular where a lesson was being taught about starting conversations with strangers. One student didn't realize that the line "I hate elevators" was only to be used when actually in an elevator with someone else. The idea of this person approacthing someone in a convenience store and saying "I hate elevators" was a source of hilarity for us.

Hmm that's all for now I guess. If you have any questions feel free to ask in the comments section. I'll be happy to answer.

My dream job

The other day at the train station, as I took this picture I found myself wondering "why did I come here to teach english when I could probably be making the same amount of money to prop up a sign with my body? (if you're wondering what I'm talking about then scroll down to the bottom of this post: http://brendansboringblog.blogspot.com/2005/06/im-baaaack.html )


Since some of you are actually interested in what I actually do over here, this weekend I'll write a short series about what exactly I do as a teacher. Keep your heads up.

Movies!

I almost forgot that I recorded a couple of movies with my camera. They're both of Shinjuku. Inside and outside of the world's busiest station. They aren't as good as dancing girls but I suppose there's more to life than that...

Lotsa stuff

I finally got my camera hooked up to my computer. I didn't think I had any new pictures but it turns out that I took some and forgot. The problem with putting them up all at once is that it's too much work to talk about them all so I'll be brief. The first one is of me at the dinosaur museum. Then we have some shots of the Tokyo Tower and the Imperial Gardens. This is some random building I went past in a park today. I have no idea what the significance is.

For sightseeing today, I visited the Yasukuni Shrine. That's the one that is always causing controversy because the Japanese heads of state often pay their respects to it even though it contains the remains of Class-A war criminals. There are thousands of lanterns with all different japanese characters on them which leads me to suspect that they might be the names of war dead. I'm sure it would be cool to see them all lit up at night.

The shrine itself was pretty bland. It doesn't really hold any significance for me and I wasn't really sure what I was looking at anyways. There was a rather large museum on the site and now that was interesting! For more reasons than one. I am of course a historian at heart and they had some amazingly interesting stuff even back past the samurai period. What was extremely interesting however was their take on basically the past 100 years of history. It's often said that history is written by the winners - all that I can say is that the winners forgot to serve notice of this little detail to the losers. It's amazing to see the same history from a different point of view. I wasn't even sure if they were talking about the same war. Actually I guess they weren't. We talk about World War 2 and they talk about The Greater Asian War. Anyways I learned today that Japan was dragged into conflict with other Asian countries as a result of western imperialist aggression and the Americans forced the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbour. Also the Rape of Nanking was the fault of the Chinese for refusing to surrender. Apparently as a result of this, "heavy casualties were suffered" and the people of Nanking were liberated. Amazing. Oh well I suppose you can't expect much since it's located on a site that refuses to remove the names of war criminals.

I have to apologize for the lack of pictures. The first couple months you're here you go out and take pictures like crazy and then after that you just don't seem to bother anymore. Now that I'll be posting a lot more again (hopefully) I'll make an effort to get some crazy japanese pictures. They are after all, the only redeeming quality to this blog! I usually don't carry my camera around with me but I always have my phone with me so you might see phone camera shots more than anything. Especially since I can send the pics to the comp through infrared which is a lot more convenient than hooking up the old camera via USB.

As you probably know by now, nothing amuses me more seeing terrible translations and other forms of Engrish. The bigger and more "official" the source, the funnier it is. For example, there's nothing quite like having a huge storewide sale and spelling the word bazaar wrong on all your posters and banners.

Japanese Fact #2
There are no garbage cans in Japan. That's right, they can make a robot that looks and acts like a human but they have yet to invent the metal cylinder with an opening at one end. Go ahead and buy one of those weird coffee drinks at one of the 3 trillion available vending machines in my neighborhood but God help you if you do because you will be carrying that can around all bloody day.

Greetings from the top of Mt Fuji - not!

That was the plan for this weekend anyways. I had 3 days off in a row so I thought I'd head out and check out the old hill before school vacation started and things really got crowded. Unfortunately the weather wasn't really willing to cooperate. It didn't rain but apparently it's going to be cloudy all week and dang-it-all, if I'm going to climb up the highest part of Japan I want to be rewarded with a sunrise when I get there!

So maybe I'll do it in a couple of weeks instead. The crowds shouldn't be too much of a hassle I guess. I can just close my eyes and pretend that I'm back in Pacific Mall in Scarborough! I bought a laptop yesterday as well which is part of the reason for my not leaving (but it was mostly the weather to those of you shaking your heads.) Not much to say about that I guess. It's a computer and it comes with all the frustrations that computers normally have. For some reason after I installed an English version of Windows XP it crashes every time I try to shut it down! The power button doesn't work so I have to unplug it and then take the battery out so it shuts down! So unless a new (and hopefully arriving SOON) version of Windows fixes the problem I don't know what I'll do. The laptop also makes sort of a strange sound. The only reason why it's strange is because my roommate has the exact same computer and his doesn't make it. Fortunately I was able to solve that problem myself. I call it sticking some damned earphones in your head and turning up the music! Let's see you download that Bill Gates.

I can't remember if I told you were I'm going to be moving-one floor downstairs. That's right, all that trouble to go down 10 feet in altitude. If I haven't already given you the scoop then I will some other time.
And since it seems that some of you are interested in what I actually do for a living over here, I'll make a special write up about it next time.

let me get to sleep

New title - now with 100% less creativity

Before I started writing this blog I was curious as to just how easy it would be. It must constitute some effort to be able to constantly write about new things all the time. I've never been a diary person either so that was another strike against me. Now after four months I've found that my fears were baseless. Writing a blog is easy!! The hard part is constantly having to come up with some kind of witty title to act as a "hook." Perhaps from now on I'll come up with some kind of generic numbering system for my posts. How does Bravo-two-niner sound as a title?

The apartment saga continues. I was looking for an apartment with my roommate but he has since decided that he wants to live in Ikebukero. So then I resigned myself to living alone (which I prefered anyways) only swing back to the roommate side of things when a friend living in the apartment next door said she'd like to move but stay in this part of the city. Yes she. I'm not crazy about living with some chick but then again I'm not really crazy about living with another guy either. That's just my personality. However the hard truth is that it will cost you a fortune to live by yourself in a small (SMALL) bachelor while two people can live quite cheaply in a two or even three bedroom apartment.

It may appear that my personalities have battled it out and my cheapness has emerged victorious over my anti-socialness. That isn't actually the case. For me anti-socialness always wins out over cheapness. However the all-powerful desire to play videogames wins out over everything. And it's very difficult to play videogames if you have no money. Now that I think of it that's probably why I never go out clubbing. My cheapness, antisocialness and desire to play videogames come together to form an indestructable alliance. An axis of stick-in-the-mud as it were (yes Laura I used that term again-im sure you're aghast.)

This weekend was pretty boring. I didn't go out because it was raining and because the upcoming apartment costs have left me even stingier than usual. Instead, I answered the call of the Fatherland and spent the afternoon hunting merchant convoys in the North Atlantic. Those crafty Canadian merchants have been trying to get supplies through to England since 1939. My Unterseeboot (U-boat) will see to that!