yeah, yeah, I know

J141 Monday September 10th

I cleaned up the apartment a little. Most of the daytime was spent writing the Fuji entry for my blog. A Japanese rain storm, low and windy and drizzly, had swept in the night before, ruining the fledgling plans to go to a batting cage for some recreation with the Gang.

Around 5PM the Japanese lesson started, and I was there, like always. It's shifted in tone since it first began, all those months ago. Erin came by, and while K worked with the other guys, Clive and Matt, I taught her the basics. Colors, the use of copula verb desu, all that jazz. Days of the week, too.

Erin told me that Toni had left the day before, without saying good by to anyone. I hadn't really hung out with Toni before she left. Our interaction was brief, but enjoyable when it did happen. I wish I had gotten the chance to know her better, but our lives were lived very differently. She tended to stay in most nights, where I enjoy going out. I used to be a bit of a recluse, but now my weekends involve a surprising amount of outside-time.

Ce la vie.

I did some grocery shopping at Ito Yokado. That's becoming a staple of my weekends, and I must say I enjoy it far more than I expected to.

I enjoyed a home-cooked meal and the Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged Series movie for dinner. The Abridged Series concept is one that holds much merit and esteem in my eyes, and the curious amongst you would be well-served to investigate them. The idea, if I haven't already sketched it out for you, is to take an anime series and par it down to the bare essentials. You re-dub the voices yourself and tell the story, usually mocking the quirks of the show in good humor. The first Abridged series was of Yu-Gi-Oh, an anime series based on/featuring a card game called Duel Masters, mastered by one guy. Other series have come since, ranging from the mediocre to the truly hilarious.

I attended a meeting at Second Earth to finish the weekend. My coworker was holding a meeting for the upcoming Scuba Diving expedition. Waivers were signed and information was given about medical conditions, height and weight, and shoe size. I enjoyed a berry smoothie, a delicious but ultimately non-greasy treat. The meeting was short, but sweet. My coworker, an avid reader and a believer in giving away books one has finished, gave me a copy of the book A History Maker by Alisdair Gray. The meeting was a leisurely thing, with good food served slow by the patient bartenders of Second Earth. The two newest teachers in town, Jo Ann and Candice, were present, this being the first time I'd seen either in almost a week.

The evening grew older, and we all left after an hour or two.

J142 Tuesday September 11th

It was cloudy again, though no rain fell throughout the day. Early in the morning, before I went to work, E.J. and I shared a few minutes in Google Chat. I miss my family terribly, my friends too, and those rare times I get to talk with them are wonderful to me.

I only had one class today, so I spent most of it folding elements for fliers. Tons and tons of handouts and pamphlets were folded and hundreds of plastic envelopes were stuffed. Every week I usually spend a day doing this sort of thing. It's not that boring or monotonous; I usually have other people to talk with.

J143 Wednesday September 12th

An absolutely beautiful day. Clearing clouds from the last three days of rain made the sky all the bluer, and the temperature was exquisite. I checked up on the second Fuji group, composed of Mike, Matt and Claire, and see how they fared. Their ascent was Tuesday, the 11th, and I hadn't heard from them yet. A quick phone email later, and I received word that they'd made it there and back again safe and sound, but they hadn't made it up the mountain. I was promised a more in-depth story come Saturday, at G-Bros.

Erin asked for assistance with her internet connection, possibly on Thursday, during the evening. I agreed, and promised to come by if she would have my help.

J144 Thursday September 13th

A cool day, the first one without rain in a long time. I didn't need to use my air conditioner to sleep through the night, nor to cool myself in the evening.

I did some investigating, and it would seem that the G.R.E. is held in a university in the (relatively) near-by city of Sendai. There are three test dates that will satisfy my needs, two in October, and one in November. Unfortunately, they are all on Saturdays, which are always a busy day for me. Still, I must take the G.R.E. if I am to enter grad school, so I had to ask my manager for time off.

In the evening, after work and dinner, I headed over to Erin's place to help her with the Internets. I poked and prodded her connection for the better part of a half hour, but to no avail. Naturally, I forgot the second step in any IT procedure; check to ensure the malfunction actually exists. I hadn't opened a web browser when I sat down to investigate the problem. After fiddling with options and plugging and unplugging half the cables in her laptop, I got the crazy idea to see if I could just access a webpage.

Wham, bam, thank you ma'am. Internet. I bid Erin a good evening and retired to my own abode, happy to have helped her get online.

J145 Friday September 14th

Today was notable for the sheer volume of communications I was involved in. I managed to finally get in touch with Raymond, my Australian friend (best buddy? surrogate brother?) about holiday plans. He and Jandi would love to have me for Thanksgiving. I'm not sure how much off time I can reasonably request, and I was originally planning on traveling to the Land Down Under this Christmas. This plan requires more thought.

I was also contacted by Brandon, another teacher but not one of the regular Gang. He works for the same company as Josh, Interact, a JET-like private company that puts foreign teachers into public schools. Brandon, being an anime fan in his own right, had yet to see the new Evangelion movie, and wanted someone to watch it with him. I agreed, as I hadn't seen him in nearly two months and the movie is just that good. We made plans for a Sunday of extraordinary magnitude.

I managed to get Final Fantasy VII, on my PC, working with a low-cost USB game pad I picked up a few weeks ago at K's Denki. It works like a charm, and I logged a few hours on the RPG classic. I've never actually beaten the game, though E.J. and I came close when we first had it. It's a solid game to run on my laptop, limited as its processing power may be. The game runs quite smoothly and never lags, so far. I'm a long way away from the really crazy spells and summons, so I could easily make my laptop gag with Knights of the Round.

J146 Saturday September 15th

Another busy Saturday. My classes were normal, but I did enjoy an extended conversation about Evangelion with one of my beginner-level students. I managed to work the topic into the lesson's final exercises. My student is quite the Eva fan, and he and I had a grand old time swapping banter and ideas about the characters, albeit at a low English level.

After work it was time to attend to my duties as member of the Gang. A few hours of FFVII saw the clock's hands nearing 10PM, which is the default start time for all gatherings at G-Bros. Tonight was to be Mike's Going Away Party. He had lived and worked in Hitachi for a year and a half, and had decided to head back to America. California, if I recall correctly.

I felt drained and tired after my long day, but stuck with the celebrations. G-Bros was filled with a visible haze of cigarette smoke. The smell of liquor and frying gyoza mingled with the sulpher/sweetness of tobacco smoke. Beers were drunk, jokes were told, and memories were brought out again to be displayed, like trophies by proud parents.

A large contingent of the gang desired fun outside the walls of the bar, so we ventured to Manhattan, a Karaoke club near G-Bros and somewhat close to my apartment. We proceeded to sing our lungs out until 5:30AM. The crowd started a solid dozen strong, but as the night wore on (and flat out transitioned into morning) our group lost members. At long last we paid the bill and parted ways. I noticed that one of the cashiers at Manhattan is a cashier at Lawson's. He's not Japanese, he looks Middle-Eastern, but he speaks decent Japanese and a bit of English. He and I know one another's faces, but have never talked; we're both too busy. Still, it's neat seeing someone I don't normally hang out with on a semi-regular basis. Call it a reminder of the coincidences we live with daily.

I biked my way home, under a pre-dawn sky. Like an odd inversion of twilight the sun, still beyond the Earth's limb, set the eastern sky afire. Hitachi lay within the Terminator, the hazy band that is the no-man's-land between night and day, and beyond it, toward the western mountains, night still slunk like a panther about the teeth of the world.

The clouds in the sky were a rich purple, limed with crimson/gold fire. The sky a curious mixture of dusk-blue and midnight-black. I marveled as I pedaled the short distance home at the beauty that surrounded me. Pity, I thought, that I had to sleep. I unfolded my futon without fanfare, folded my tengui into a serviceable blindfold so as to block the sun, and slept like a dead man.