...Apparently they think the best way to do this is to expose Japan to the most abrasive (yet somehow socially competent) people possible.
Did I ever congratulate on being placed? If not, congratulations on being placed in JET Djinn.
I was wondering who was going to take that bait/opening. And complete lack of surprise at who did.
I like to think I do it classier with backhanded compliments than most.
I thought it was pretty much implied that I saw such a flaw in making that kind of statement when I added the 'socially competent' qualifier? I'm not blind to own abrasive personality when it comes to dealing with my Japanese friends. >.>;;
Still... it -was- classy.
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I'm convinced that there exists a "Law of Conservation of Happiness". A finite amount of happiness that must exist in a more-or-less constantly balanced state such that when one person is very happy, another is very unhappy. Similarly, the longer a person remains happy, the greater the chances are for a big surge of unhappiness to come crashing down around him. I have no real scientific evidence for this, except possibly the Law of Averages. In the end, most things follow a bell curve and so events in life would necessarily fall either on the Happy or Unhappy side of the mean equally.
Anecdotally, of course, I have tons of evidence.
Recently, my life in Japan has undergone quite a few changes. I used to live in the sticks. A place called Mazemura - it was an idyllic little 'population: 800' village that resembled something out of a fantasy novel (or an RPG) more than an actual place that people could live. There were no stores, there were more deer than people, and the only place to buy something to drink was at the village's one vending machine. It was nice to wake up, look outside my window at the gorgeous valley, the rolling mountains, and the babbling brook. But it was also incredibly boring and isolated.
After returning from America, the first that I got to do (after spending my obligatory week in quarantine - swine flu, you know) was get the hell out of Mazemura. It was excellent. My new apartment is located in a relatively populated town complete with grocery stores, sports centers, electronics shops, restaurants, the all-important convenience stores, and best of all - people. I can even still see the mountains and the river, so I don't really feel I've lost anything and part of me is expecting Mazemura to burn down now that I've left, since that's just what opening villages in fantasy novels/RPGs -do-.
My new place even had lots of furniture and knick-knacks left behind by the former English Teacher who lived there, so it was vaguely like getting a bunch of housewarming gifts as part of the deal! Especially useful is a full set of Kanji flashcards to help my Japanese study.
I'm also now living next door to my favorite fellow foreigner and we get more chances to hang out now that our apartments aren't hours away from eachother. This is a huuuge improvement from my old neighbor, who basically seemed to hold a grudge against me from the moment I moved in last year for my grievous sin of not being as cool as his previous neighbor, whom I'm guessing he was really good friends with (the first thing he ever said to me was: "You have some pretty big shoes to fill, Andrew used to -cook- for us all the time").
Also, I've recently transferred schools to a new group of excellent teachers. These teachers are particularly skilled at throwing good work parties, which is way more than I can say for the Mazemura group, who always seemed tired and uninterested. It's really satisfying to have the chance to really connect with my teachers this year.
And at the most recent work party, the teachers from the elementary school also joined in, and we all had a blast. One particularly interesting event was that the older teachers all seemed determined to set me up with one of the female teachers from the elementary school - the only teacher my age, of course, Miyuki. She was pretty cute, and I was pretty entertained by the efforts of the other teachers, so I asked her out and to my surprise, she actually said 'yes'. I hadn't really figured that I'd have any luck finding date material at a work party, but I guess things were really going my way recently.
So we set up a time and place and the next day we were on a date. It was really nice to talk to her -without- all the alcohol in my system, and we had a lot of fun. She didn't speak any English, but even when I messed up at Japanese, she mostly understood me and it was easy to make jokes with her. Additionally, she had a really great sense of humor and I found myself cracking up a lot with her. After a cool dinner (we went to an Italian place in Japan - surprisingly good), we went out to karaoke and met up with some friends there. That was a blast - joking and singing and basically being crazy really helped to smooth any roughness in my bad Japanese speech, at least!
We set up another date for a week later, so things seemed to be going pretty well. It was nice to finally have a chance to date a cool girl who didn't live 6 hours away by train, but a mere 30 minute drive. Also, it was nice to have finally met a girl somewhere other than a club.
And then the next day came and now you'll understand why I think there's a finite amount of happiness in the world.
It started with a text message. Miyuki and I had been texting back and forth since the work party, joking and chatting (it's just how Japanese people do it, I suppose). But this one started with the phrase "Well, the truth is..."
Apparently Miyuki already had some guy she liked. Even though he lived all the way in Osaka and was too busy working all the time for her, she apparently felt she needed to tell me that we should 'just be friends'. Ouch. She assures me it has nothing to do with my being a gaijin.
So with this hanging over my head, my day began. I got a call from my boss saying that after work I needed to go to my old apartment and get the place clean for us to move out all the old unneeded furniture to the dump tomorrow.
He also told me it would be another two weeks before I would get internet in my new apartment. This wouldn't be so bad except he had already told me that two weeks ago, too.
Work itself that day was uneventful, excepting the fact that I kept hearing my co-workers occassionally muttering something to eachother and dropping mine and Miyuki's names throughout it. They were talking too fast for me to follow, but it wasn't exactly comforting to hear myself getting talked about...
After work, I went to the laundromat to pick up my huge stash of clothes (I had just moved, so I had been putting it off for a while and was getting a lot of it done all at once), only to discover that I had left a black pen in a pocket somewhere and now a bunch of my favorite clothes had been ruined. This wouldn't have been so bad if not compounded with other recent tragedies and the fact that getting new clothes in my size in Japan is really difficult (and expensive). I lost roughly 10 light-colored shirts (not too hard to replace, but one of them was my favorite button down) and two pairs of khaki pants (impossible to find in my size in Japan).
I took the ruined clothing to a dry cleaner to see if anything could be done, but the lady just shook her head when I showed her the pen. I went home and promptly fell asleep.
Having completely forgotten about my obligation to go and clean my apartment, I get a call the next morning from my boss who is already at the old apartment, wondering why it's not clean and why I'm not there. It takes an hour for me to get there, and he has already finished roughly 70% of the work. He also gives me this look like "I did in an hour what you had all of yesterday to get done" and I felt like crap. I couldn't even explain myself since he hardly speaks English and I had no idea how to begin saying it in Japanese.
He puts me to the remaining tasks and we get the place cleaned up and all the old furniture out. To make things just that little bit worse, my grumpy neighbor shows up and starts chatting with my boss in Japanese about who-knows-what, but I'm paranoid by this point, so I can only assume it's about how much of an irresponsible kid I am and that by this time tomorrow, everyone in town will know it. After all, this just confirms what everyone already knows is true - all foreigners are dirty and lazy. And their clothes are covered in ink stains.
What an excellent way to start off the school year!
</emo>
