Objection Self-Sustained

Yesterday while crashing a party of advanced law students, I was having a conversation with a nice young lady who has been a judge in South Korea for seven and a half years. She ended our conversation somewhat abruptly with the following comment: "I had better stop talking to you. I just realized I think I'm sexually harrassing you." Uh....

Click Here If You Have Time To Kill

Well, new for me anyway. Be sure to check out "Presidential Address". Scary.

Is traveling an acceptable excuse for not posting in two weeks?

As I write this I am up way too early in Los Angeles. Jet lag leftovers. I have been in the U.S. for 5 days now, but still adjusting. Volunteered at the airport in Tokyo to wait a few hours longer. In return I got my ticket changed to first class and spent a day in Honolulu. So now I have a sunburn and too many pairs of pants.

My birthday was two days ago, August 19th. I am 29 now. That means in a year, if I survive that long, the three-decade mark awaits me. Oh my head.

After Honolulu and before L.A. I went to Portland, Oregon. Managed to see a lot of friends and family in the brief time I was there. And I also saw Napoleon Dynamite. I had hardly heard of it before I came over the pond. "Gosh!"

Celebrated my birthday with the purchase of seven pairs of shoes and dinner with good friends. I had a kid's burger and hummus. Oh yeah and I played disc golf and, almost entirely due to an overhand throw which the other players lacked, won by ten strokes. I don't THINK they let me win just because it was my birthday....

What else...? Dr. Sabrina is a good cook and I don't know enough about wine. And Eric has had my copy of "The Catcher in the Rye" for four years. And the agoraphobic lady across the courtyard is looking at me through only a crack in her curtains.

And I watched He-Man and the Masters of the Universe last night. Then I fell asleep on the couch. Before that we went out to some bars, including the Dresden, which is featured in the movie "Swingers". That was wacky. No room to move, just decent cocktails, and "It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that... cling?" Isn't that a Saran Wrap commercial? What is that word supposed to be? Swing? What thing that rhymes with 'thing', when absent, renders "it" meaningless?

Anyway, thanks to all my hosts so far on my American tour. Of course I will be happy to return the favor if you should ever pop over to Japan. I need some grapes. Bye for now.

Peach Prices are the Pits

A friend recently gave me two peaches. I thought that was nice. I ate them. Peaches taste good.

Today I went to the supermarket. They were selling peaches there. 10 peaches in a box, $50. Oh my head.

I need to make sure I say thank you to my peach-giving friend again.

Communicable Paranoia

I guess maybe I should tell about the lady the other day. Unfortunately my command of language is not sufficient to adequately express what took place, but I will try anyway.

So yeah I am a Caucasian living in Japan. I live in a town where there are plenty of others like myself, so it is not unusual to see us out and about. It would be more unusual not to see a foreigner, in fact. There are some small villages in Japan where people are still very surprised and curious when they see a foreigner because it is so very rare. But that is not where I live.

But someone forgot to tell at least one person that, I guess. When I got home the other morning, I was getting my keys out of my bag to open the door to my second-floor apartment when I noticed a women, probably in her mid-60's, blatantly staring at me from the street below. She was carrying a parasol and walking by, but apparently I disrupted her day in quite a radical way, because she could not stop staring. Yes, by the way, I did check to make sure there was nothing particularly strange about my appearance that morning. Nothing. But this woman looked at me with an expression that seemed to combine shock, wonder, disbelief, and, well, fear. It was as if she saw an alien. OK, technically I am an alien, but I am white not green. Anyway, I looked back at her, because I wanted her to know that I knew that she was staring at me so she might realize it and knock it off. No such luck. All the way down the street, about 50 yards or so, she kept turning back and looking, as if trying repeatedly to verify that I wasn't merely a figment of her imagination. If only I could have gotten a picture of the look on her face. Very unsettling.

As I thought about it more, it started to freak me out a bit. You see, I am not a person who believes that reality is only what we see. I think there is a lot going on that I don't see. The thought occurred to me that the woman might not have been reacting to me at all, but something that she was seeing that was near me. Even now as I write it it is giving me the shivers a bit. Recently I have been hearing a lot of stories of strange and unexplained occurrences--ghost stories, angel stories, psychic events, etc. Not long ago I spoke to an acquaintance, call her 'A.' A. has a friend who claims to see spirits and that A. is always being followed/attended by a 'person' that she herself cannot see, who is there to protect her. Also I heard a story from a student about a funeral portrait (a large photo of the face of the deceased which is hung for all to see at the funeral) of a person appearing upside-down within another photo. Weird things about that: The upside-down portrait wasn't actually there when the picture was taken. In fact it didn't even exist yet, because the person in the picture had not yet died. He was in the group photo with everyone else, very alive. He himself saw the mysterious photo later and was very angry at first, thinking it was some kind of sick joke. Then I suppose he must have been a bit frightened. The photo was taken to priests who prayed, performed religious ceremonies over it and such, etc. Anyway, according to my student that man did in fact pass away not long after.

So somehow such stories came back to my mind after I saw the way that woman looked at me. To be honest it scared me a bit. I wonder what she saw.... If this happens again, I think I will try to talk to her. I hope she doesn't run away screaming. Then again at least that would make a good story.

Don't Forget Your Dreams

dream moon monkeys armpit shaving

church easter so many crackers forgot to study hebrew "don't let us lose this feeling"

The above is a portion of the note I wrote to myself on July 26th after a night of unusually vivid dreaming. I wanted it to trigger my memory later so I could write in detail about what I saw with my eyes closed. I love my dreams because they are so wacky but sometimes so real and even mysteriously predictive at times. Unfortunately due to a powerful combination of busy-ness and laziness I can no longer remember what I dreamed and can therefore no longer write about them. But I can write about not writing about them. I just did. What a waste of good material.

Made another beautiful salad today but decided not to post the picture because, well, it is a picture of a salad. People might think I have too much time on my hands.

Tonight I went on a Morrissey buying spree at the used record store. I am of the opinion that Morrissey could sing the ingredients on the shampoo bottle and it would sound good. In fact I would like to hear that. Hmm, maybe I will try it myself tomorrow in the shower. Good thing I don't use Japanese shampoo.

A Little Green Can

A Little Green Can, originally uploaded by Hack Rambler.

A true friend brought me ten of these from a vending machine in Hiroshima. A long way to carry ten cans of soda! Now if only I had blue raspberry syrup I could relive a cherished college memory....

My Stupid Hobby

My Stupid Hobby, originally uploaded by Hack Rambler.

Well, one of them. I like to make what I perceive to be aesthetically pleasing creations when I go to the salad bar. Then I take a picture before devouring. This is the latest installment.

Pick and Roll: Not Just a Basketball Maneuver

So a lot has happened and thus nothing has been written. A bit ironic, perhaps. Perhaps not. Simply reinforces the relevance of the Dante quote at the top of this page. So much to tell, so much unsaid, and often better left that way. If someone were to feed me dinner and give me a place to sleep, I might be willing to divulge, though I might later regret it. Hmm....

So I was on the train the other day and I noticed a middle-aged Japanese man playing with his hair, a bit excessively. He was very systematic about it. Twirl hair around and around, then untwirl, then smell fingers. Repeat as desired until satisfied. And he did indeed repeat many times.

The final finger smelling move reminded me of a student I once taught in Taiwan. He was 7 years old, and had developed a compulsive habit of putting his hands down his trousers and then not so surreptitiously examining the odor. He thought he was doing it undetected, but the problem was he repeated the process so much that all the students were aware, as was his teacher. Rather awkward, to be honest. What does one say? "Hey, Jimmy, stop putting your hands down your pants and smelling them!" Yeah, right. I attempted to make myself understood with facial expressions and head shaking. It worked for a while, until the next urge hit him. Fortunately I only taught him once a week. Eeeww.

So back to the finger smelling salaryman. After his last cycle of twirl, untwirl, and smell, he moved on to the next act in the show. He began rather conspicuously picking his nose, removing unwanted obtrusions, rolling them around between his thumb and forefinger and inspecting them with great interest, then flicking them onto the floor of the train. He seemed to pay no mind to the people around him, including the stranger sitting in the seat right next to him. This went on until it was time to get off the train, at which point Mr. Hygienically Incorrect appeared to be a completely normal citizen, blending seemlessly with the crowd. One wonders how many hands he shakes each day after completing the twirling, smelling, picking, rolling, and flicking routine. And how many other people who appear to be respectable members of society are engaged in the same sort of dirty practices, though perhaps more clandestinely. Maybe more than anyone wants to admit. After all, upon further reflection I realize that the most shocking elements of his behavior were his disregard for social convention and the frequency with which he performed the acts. The acts themselves are of secondary importance, and actually not so surprising. The real difference is when I pick my nose, I try not to be seen. And I try to minimize the time spent doing it. So in a sense it is actually the man's lack of pretense that offends most. He showed no ettiquette, no concern for social 'rules'. He was a little bit too free, a little bit too unbound. While I deceptively pick my nose when no one is looking, he engages in the act with an almost enviable apathy. Perhaps he is more honest than I. But I have to admit I prefer the tricky pick. I like the social rules that make people like him unusual. I don't think I would want to live in a world full of people who picked and flicked with such reckless abandon as he. But at the same time, while disgusting, it keeps life interesting to occasionally observe such a person.

I believe Gomeiyage has a story that relates to this one on more levels than one. Perhaps he would care to share it?