Luther is too alive to function.
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Thursday, April 30, 2009
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Import store
I bought a jar of pickles at the import store. I put it in the fridge to cool it down. A couple days later, I tried to open the jar, but the lid was on too tight. So I put it back. I waited another day or so and tried again. But I wasn't strong enough. So I put it back. The next week I decided to try again. I took the jar out, placed it firmly in my grip and twisted as hard as I could. The lid didn't budge. So now I decided to try something crafty. I took the end of a spoon, placed it under the lid and pushed. I heard a popping noise and the lid came off. I thought to myself, "Tools. They're what separate man, from the monkeys." I reached my hand into the jar and grabbed a hold of a pickle. But when I tried taking my hand out, it was stuck. That pickle jar was on my hand for 3 days until I bashed it against a wall and it broke off. And I thought to myself, "Walls. They're what separate man, from pickle jars."
.
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Thursday, April 16, 2009
A Real World chat
Hey - this is something I haven't really done yet with this blog. I've always come on here with something in mind that I want to say, and fleshing it out with a lot of editing. But tonight, I'm just going to journal...
My mind is a million miles from here. I say a million, but really I mean 6,000. I'm not in Kambara, Japan anymore. I am sooo set on leaving, on moving on to what's next.
I love it here in Japan, don't get me wrong. I do. I want to be both places though. I like being here, but I really want to be back in America - the good ol' USA. I will be - in 4 months.
I've just got myself too over-involved. At one point I had had a lot of free time, so instead of picking up an activity or two I picked up like 7. And now I just don't want to being doing much of anything. I just want to chill out in Japan, ride my bicycle, sit on the sea wall and stare out at the ocean, write, play my guitar...and reflect - reflect because I am leaving, and I realize that. I didn't even get back to my apartment until more than 2 hours after sunset today. It's hard to miss the sun.
I stayed up until almost 5am watching episodes of "The Real World -Brooklyn" 2 nights ago. Then last night I fell asleep at 5:30pm and didn't wake up until 6 this morning. Now I'm up again still and it's almost 3... I guess watching The Real World pulled me away from Japan for a few hours. I was watching TV! And the people were speaking some language I understand! And not only that, but I was getting the social nuances - I was picking up on the consequences of their actions - I was assembling it and fitting it into a moral, social and cultural puzzle - one with which I'm familiar and care to even try to understand.
This all sounds a bit weird, even to me. I don't know what I'm writing right now, nor do I even want to try and figure it out. I've been in a TOtally different culture and silenced myself inside a language I don't understand for almost 2 years now. Seriously. Where did those 2 years go? What are they? How have I changed? What was the purpose for being here? The big purpose? What is the list of lessons I've learned? What relationships am I going to take away from this?
I fall in love every day.
I AM sick of my job. I am looking forward to not doing something where I don't have any semblance of an impact on the learning of any individual around me. Nobody really learns English in Japan, and very few even care. There's just no need for English, and the systems and methods for teaching it are broken. I'm mostly here to give Japanese people access to a "foreigner." And I get petted regularly. Apparently "foreigners" have soft hair.
Sorry, that's a bit of venting. I mostly don't have anything bad to say. But Japanese people in general are quite naive about the world around them. Very few people are interested in knowing me at all. And those who are want to know me so they can practice their English, not because they think "Luther Flagstad" is an interesting person. Heck, most people don't even know I have a last name. Or they think I'm "Mr. Rusa." (The Japanse pronunciation of Luther). I have found Japan to be, in general, quite cold.
Not to say I haven't had my prejudices and flat-out, crazy cultural experiences of my own. I need to see the world, and I'm doing it. Let's hope I haven't been too ethnocentric.
Yeah - I'm just tired (and it is 2:53 am) - I don't want to go sit at my desk tomorrow. This weekend isn't going to be much better. I teach English for my volunteer club on Friday night (7pm-10:30pm), I go hang out at a camp in Fujieda all day Saturday, I get back so I can go to church early on Sunday morning (get up at 8am), then come back for a pot luck dinner late afternoon - then I'll probably have some NAJET work or school work to get ready for the week. These things seem like they'd be fun, but when I'm only doing things I said I'd do, everything starts feeling like an obligation and nothing is fun anymore. I have to use the wee hours of the night if I want some time to just chill out, and then I'm super tired the next day. I don't even have a chance to work out anymore, and I'm supposed to be walking 100km the end of May.
I've discovered that it takes exactly 4 days (no more) for my apartment to go from spotless clean to pig-sty messy. Not that there's dirt, but just everything is everywhere. I need to learn to put things back when I take them out and use them. Hmm...that's a big life lesson I wish I had learned when I was about 9 years old. But there was always someone there to pick everything up for me, even if I was told to do it. So I never learned. It will probably take until I get married (or at least engaged) to start picking up things on a daily basis. (And if you're reading this, my future wife - yep, that's how it's going to be - and if you're reading this from the future my current wife - am I better?).
That's one of the goals for next year when I move back to the states. (no, not clean silly...) Find a wife. I will be actively seeking to get married. So I've been starting to do a lot of things about and for myself since about November to get ready to impose myself upon another human being. Let's hope she takes the whole package and says it's good enough. I'm totally ready to start moving in that direction - I'm just going to start looking, and when I find that special someone I'm going to start pursuing.
Ok, getting super tired now... (3:03).
That's about all the updates I can think of at this hour. It sums it up pretty good I guess. My mind is far from here, I've totally given up speaking Japanese (never had a friend that wanted to teach me or hang out with me in Japanese anyway), I'm sick of crawling into an empty bed night after night - I've got more to give than only I can receive, and it would be nice to stop letting that fade away into the ethereal nonsense of my apartment.
Time to do something about everything. Only 4 more months...
.
My mind is a million miles from here. I say a million, but really I mean 6,000. I'm not in Kambara, Japan anymore. I am sooo set on leaving, on moving on to what's next.
I love it here in Japan, don't get me wrong. I do. I want to be both places though. I like being here, but I really want to be back in America - the good ol' USA. I will be - in 4 months.
I've just got myself too over-involved. At one point I had had a lot of free time, so instead of picking up an activity or two I picked up like 7. And now I just don't want to being doing much of anything. I just want to chill out in Japan, ride my bicycle, sit on the sea wall and stare out at the ocean, write, play my guitar...and reflect - reflect because I am leaving, and I realize that. I didn't even get back to my apartment until more than 2 hours after sunset today. It's hard to miss the sun.
I stayed up until almost 5am watching episodes of "The Real World -Brooklyn" 2 nights ago. Then last night I fell asleep at 5:30pm and didn't wake up until 6 this morning. Now I'm up again still and it's almost 3... I guess watching The Real World pulled me away from Japan for a few hours. I was watching TV! And the people were speaking some language I understand! And not only that, but I was getting the social nuances - I was picking up on the consequences of their actions - I was assembling it and fitting it into a moral, social and cultural puzzle - one with which I'm familiar and care to even try to understand.
This all sounds a bit weird, even to me. I don't know what I'm writing right now, nor do I even want to try and figure it out. I've been in a TOtally different culture and silenced myself inside a language I don't understand for almost 2 years now. Seriously. Where did those 2 years go? What are they? How have I changed? What was the purpose for being here? The big purpose? What is the list of lessons I've learned? What relationships am I going to take away from this?
I fall in love every day.
I AM sick of my job. I am looking forward to not doing something where I don't have any semblance of an impact on the learning of any individual around me. Nobody really learns English in Japan, and very few even care. There's just no need for English, and the systems and methods for teaching it are broken. I'm mostly here to give Japanese people access to a "foreigner." And I get petted regularly. Apparently "foreigners" have soft hair.
Sorry, that's a bit of venting. I mostly don't have anything bad to say. But Japanese people in general are quite naive about the world around them. Very few people are interested in knowing me at all. And those who are want to know me so they can practice their English, not because they think "Luther Flagstad" is an interesting person. Heck, most people don't even know I have a last name. Or they think I'm "Mr. Rusa." (The Japanse pronunciation of Luther). I have found Japan to be, in general, quite cold.
Not to say I haven't had my prejudices and flat-out, crazy cultural experiences of my own. I need to see the world, and I'm doing it. Let's hope I haven't been too ethnocentric.
Yeah - I'm just tired (and it is 2:53 am) - I don't want to go sit at my desk tomorrow. This weekend isn't going to be much better. I teach English for my volunteer club on Friday night (7pm-10:30pm), I go hang out at a camp in Fujieda all day Saturday, I get back so I can go to church early on Sunday morning (get up at 8am), then come back for a pot luck dinner late afternoon - then I'll probably have some NAJET work or school work to get ready for the week. These things seem like they'd be fun, but when I'm only doing things I said I'd do, everything starts feeling like an obligation and nothing is fun anymore. I have to use the wee hours of the night if I want some time to just chill out, and then I'm super tired the next day. I don't even have a chance to work out anymore, and I'm supposed to be walking 100km the end of May.
I've discovered that it takes exactly 4 days (no more) for my apartment to go from spotless clean to pig-sty messy. Not that there's dirt, but just everything is everywhere. I need to learn to put things back when I take them out and use them. Hmm...that's a big life lesson I wish I had learned when I was about 9 years old. But there was always someone there to pick everything up for me, even if I was told to do it. So I never learned. It will probably take until I get married (or at least engaged) to start picking up things on a daily basis. (And if you're reading this, my future wife - yep, that's how it's going to be - and if you're reading this from the future my current wife - am I better?).
That's one of the goals for next year when I move back to the states. (no, not clean silly...) Find a wife. I will be actively seeking to get married. So I've been starting to do a lot of things about and for myself since about November to get ready to impose myself upon another human being. Let's hope she takes the whole package and says it's good enough. I'm totally ready to start moving in that direction - I'm just going to start looking, and when I find that special someone I'm going to start pursuing.
Ok, getting super tired now... (3:03).
That's about all the updates I can think of at this hour. It sums it up pretty good I guess. My mind is far from here, I've totally given up speaking Japanese (never had a friend that wanted to teach me or hang out with me in Japanese anyway), I'm sick of crawling into an empty bed night after night - I've got more to give than only I can receive, and it would be nice to stop letting that fade away into the ethereal nonsense of my apartment.
Time to do something about everything. Only 4 more months...
.
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