The · Wheel

I'm trying to survive without spending any more money until payday (by choice, not circumstances), so dinner tonight was essentially stuff I had lying around:

Chestnuts. I boiled them in dashi broth and added cumin - is that creative?
A piece of wheat bread with spreadable margarine on top. Yum!
Seaweed vinegar salad. I still don't have the vinegar mixture right. Guess I'll have to try again!
1.5 scrambled eggs (I ate the other half yesterday). They have dashi, soy, and sugar in them. Tres yummy.
1 fish cake with vegetables inside. My favorite!
Roasted bell peppers. (sesame oil and salt)
Pudding.

I think I'd be in the running for a random dinner award, if there was one.

Expect more on the subject of wonderful Japanese food later.

Man, some of the questions the Japanese teachers come up with totally have me stumped. I know the answers, and can express them in a very roundabout way in English. But damned if I know how to expain it to somebody who was not brought up speaking the language. I mean, can YOU explain the difference between

"ensuring continuous diversity" and "ensuring continuing diversity"

without using concepts that only exist in the English language? I can't.

Continuing diveristy means continuing from now into the future. Continuous diveristy doesn't include the "from now" implication. But, it does contain the implication that diversity is continuous across some sort of other boundary or difference, like borders, or societies, or even time.

... the Japanese conception of time is different. There is no future tense. Add to that a weak understanding of continuous, no knowledge or little use of the word implication, and a hard time explaining non-concrete boundaries like societal ones, and... how would you do it? I think I failed :P

Of course, this was preceeded by the question:

Is it ok to compare "ensuring continuing diversity" and "conserving different species", because one phrase is gerund, verb, noun and the other is gerund, adjective, noun?

... some days, I just don't know where to begin.

Dear Everyone,

I am truly sorry for the lack of updates. But now that summer vacation is over for the students, I've been much busier. I feel like I haven't been to my home school in weeks (ok, 5 days, but still!). I finally have a routine of sorts, and am settling down to teach. It's harder than I expected.( Read more... )

PS: I'm not sure an entry like this is interesting.

Well, I think it's safe to say that I have finally settled into a sort of routine here in Japan. I've got all my major utilities and everything I really need except a checking account. I'll get one eventually. Just think - it only takes two months to get everything you need here! That's really how it is in Japan, though. You don't realize how much American society is based on instant gratification until you live somewhere else. However, there is one area in which the Japanese are as fast, if not faster, than Americans. It's food - whether it's going in, or coming out.

( Japanese squat toilets are really masters of modern efficiency. )

This Sunday was our school's annual culture festival. The students have basically been researching, building sets, and planning routines to bring other cultures into the school. School spirit abounded, and it was really amazing to see what the kids could do with a little time and a few tools. Here's a flash slideshow:

No, really. The heat here in Nagasaki killed me.

For those of you who don't know, I'm in Japan as an ALT and currently without regular internet. Expect changes to both the internet part and the lj soon. I have to document my experience, of course! The actual job starts monday morning. Wish me luck! 

I now know the answer to the deep question of fate posed by the movie 10 Things I Hate About You.

"I know you can be overwhelmed, and I think you can be underwhelmed, but you can be, just like, whelmed?"

Today's word of the day is Whelm:

Definition: To overturn a concave object (boat, bowl, etc.) to cover something with it (= to whelve); to bury under earth, snow, or water; to engulf in a devastating manner, e.g. a flood, storm, avalanche.

Frito Lay is pathetic.

Recently, I bought a bag of NEW! Wild White Nacho Doritos. Not because I'm a closet corn chip addict, but because it looked interesting. Maybe that's asking a bit much from a potato chip, but all I wanted was a flavor I hadn't tasted before. Is that so hard?! I am not a gourmet. There are plenty of things in this world I have never tasted. I would certainly expect a fine powder that was created by sucking the water out of half a dozen plants and adding a bunch of man-made chemicals that probably cause cancer, and then blown over not quite cooked Doritos in a factory, to be on that list. Hey, I like to live on the wild side. I obviously expect my potato chip flavors to be extreme. Even if I don't want the little potato chip orgasm fairy to dance on my tongue at the taste of this NEW! flavor, I'm obviously still too harsh a critic.

Wild White Nacho Doritos are 1/2 Cool Ranch flavor and 1/2 Nacho Cheese flavor, mixed together in an effort to satisfy us poor, poor consumers. I buy Doritos less than once a month, and I still knew on the first chip.

So Wild!

So new.

Anyone want to guess what the other new flavor, "Smokin' Cheddar BBQ", tastes like?

I am currently taking a break from dancing around with wild happiness at the prospect of an interview preparing for my Jet interview. It's nice to know I'm recommended by the following pointless internet quiz:

Kevin, my roommate, recorded a very interesting show from the local PBS titled "Generation Next: Speak up, be Heard", that we watched this evening over dinner. The bent of the entire program was making Generation Y more accessible to Baby Boomers, providing arguments as to why or why not Generation Y is spoiled, debt-ridden, and/or incomprehensible. And while I was incensed at the inherent assumptions required to argue these points, I felt that the program really let not only Generation Y, but even the Baby Boomers down in terms of what it ignored.

My generation lacks that which this program tried to give it: a voice. Baby Boomers have largely defined today's socio-political landscape, and live appearing to expect that they should define our socio-political future as well. Who can argue with them? In sheer numbers, we will never be able to out-vote them. We are a class below them. Our values, our beliefs, those ideals which they claim we do not have or hold dear, cannot be realized while they shout at the top of their political lungs about what they want. If Generation Y is materialistically spoiled, then Baby Boomers are politically spoiled. We watch a world go by that we cannot change with nearly as much ease as our parents. I'm not saying that we don't get involved- Generation Y volunteers its time and money to worthy causes in amounts far exceeding what the Baby Boomers were able to muster at their age. But we do it with the knowledge that in order to make changes, we must wait patiently until someone with a louder voice takes a moment to stop and notice.

So my peers and I must learn to be content to make unnoticed entires in our little virtual diaries, learn to expect pay more for an education that will bring us lower salaries, learn to work harder for a smaller home and fewer luxuries- and I can assure you that we learn well. But we still cannot put any of this learning to use until it is our turn to speak.

"One day our generation
Is gonna rule the population
Until then we keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change"
-John Mayer

I'm having a bad day and I'm not even going to work. I'm sick, I went to the doctor, and I still feel guilty for staying home. I have got to stop destroying my long term health for the sake of my asshole boss. The doctor told me a bunch of stuff I already know- I need to sit down and eat a meal while I'm a work, and I need to have small snacks if I eat smaller portions at meals. DUH I know! My job literally has no allowance for that. My boss doesn't even schedule me for meals and it's hard to find time to sit down and snack- I am on my feet for the entire shift, usually. I do take time and sit down when I can- sometimes even when I can't. But my last boss yelled at me for it. He actually told me to skip meals. What is it about retail that somebody always gets the shaft?

I have a sick feeling that I will not get my remaining 4 days of vacation this year. I am going to boss's boss about it- again. Yay. I have so much to look forward to, that I had to cry for joy for about half an hour today. Definitely not up to working.

Today a supervisor at work told me to use some WD-40 from the shelf to oil a door a customer had complained about, then put the item back on the shelf.

I told him that I couldn't do that because it was dishonest. And then he managed to offend me about a semi-serious topic: He said he bet I went to church every Sunday as a child and believed everything they said. Wooo, doggy! I was offended. Not at being taken for a Christian, but at the apparent fact that he actually thought that statement was appropriate to say to any employee.

I have not told anyone at work my religious preference because I think it could actually damage my ability to manage. My choice would not be respected, and so the employees themselves would respect me less. And no matter how much religion is suppose to stay out of business affairs, I can't pretend that it wouldn't have an impact. I did not tell him what my religious preference was at this point, either. I merely said that, although I was taken to church regularly as a child, I had chosen not to become a Christian when I was a teenager. I told him that I believed most religion was slightly absurd.

And I was stunned yet again at his complete misunderstanding at what I said. It became apparent that he wasn't appalled by the idea of organized, mass religion. He was actually making a slur against faith of any kind, ridiculing those who believed in something greater than themselves. Perhaps he thought I was an atheist- I believe he might be one, himself. Or perhaps, like many people I have known, he thinks that to acknowledge something beyond himself would mean giving up control of himself. I would be the rude party, to guess at all the experiences that led him to conclude his choice. But I don't understand how people come to similar conclusions when everything that we have accomplished as a species, as a society (and I don't mean Western society- take your pick), we have owed to belief.

Faith and belief are just fancy words to explain our gut feeling that something can be understood, accomplished, or explained despite having no concrete evidence to support it. I don't just believe that there is a system at work within the universe, in which we live our lives, that we can interact with and use to effect changes (read: God). I have faith that someday, enough people will work together toward the goal of space travel that we will journey beyond our solar system and meet beings from other planets. Other individuals might take issue with one statement or the other. But that's the beauty of it- I don't believe because of evidence, or even because of logic. I have faith because it is my soul's way of explaining to my inadequate brain that there are endless possibilities that it cannot foresee, but I can prepare for nonetheless. It is not a matter of proof. It is a matter of strength.

...I have faith that someday, human beings will understand that they need each other in order to live... that we must work together in order to ensure that we have a future.

You know, it probably looks like I never update my journal. But really, I make a private post nearly daily about work. I just have to make it private because of current laws regarding business and public internet postings.

It looks like my work is my life, when you read that statement. But it's not. There's so much going on in my head that I forget half of it most days. I feel like I live this rich, inner life that nobody around me gets to see. My friends and family understand some of it, but I'll be the only one who ever knows all of what I perceive and think. It's strange to think about. Only what I present gets to the world. Perhaps I need to work on my presentation skills? What is said, what is implied, and what absence implies are all different things.

Just so everyone knows, Kevin and I are just roommates now- we are no longer dating. I don't want to hear any nasty comments about him, though! He's a nice guy! He could make somebody very happy someday. Just not me. Our inner lives and philosophies are too different. That's why we're not together anymore. We just didn't realize how different our perceptions were because we only presented some parts of them to each other. It wasn't until we had a conversation (you know, the kind guys generally hate and girls generally want to have to figure things out) that I realized the logical end of those differences.

Put simply, he thinks happiness is too much to hope for or ask for. He seeks only the status quo.

I like to try to be happy. Just the struggle brings me happiness.

He is not interested in his happiness, or mine. Therefore, he cannot make me happy no matter how hard I try to be happy.

And you know, that's really not so painful. It's neat, and simple. Two customers at work actually commented about what a wonderful attitude I had yesterday [they didn't know- I wasn't telling anyone at work]!). I hadn't realized how much the situation weighed on me until I resolved it. And I am happier, and life goes on.

I am thinking about getting a new job. No, really.

When I came back from vacation and it was the same old shit as always at my store, I knew I just had to get out. Why would I want this (retail) for the rest of my life? And the funny thing... I really, really want to go back to Japan. I don't know why. One of my friends is going and I suddenly just found myself wishing I could be back there. Not just fond reminiscing. but a wave of desire and excitement to go back. I keep reminding myself that it wasn't all fun and games while I was there, and I did have some problems. But I still really liked it... I just thought I needed to come back home at the time because of things for me in America.

Well, now I've taken care of those things and I don't have to worry about them anymore. I know my options. My brother said I could try and find other jobs here first, even things involving Japanese. Here's the only thing... I need practice. I remember alot, but not nearly as much as I knew when I graduated. I've forgotten lots of Kanji. If I went back to Japan, I'd not only gain experience, but they'd pay me to teach English too. Killing two birds with one stone- gaining experience and getting paid for it (maintaining financial independence). All my other options (school, practice on your own time, etc), will cost me resources. I see no better option.

...but I really want to know what you guys think.