Rocking in Hakata

On Sunday, I woke up and left Aileen’s flat and walked to the Tsutaya parking lot down the way to meet with Will and his eikaiwa student, Mimi. The three of us went shopping in Imabari for random stuff. Will and Mimi were both Christmas shopping, but I was just kind of along for the ride. I ended up buying a bunch of cards. I will send them on their way, but they will not make it before Christmas and New Year’s. So sue me. Ha ha.

We went to Hard Off first. Allow me to say that this is a poor choice for a store, but it is entirely innocent, I assure you. It is supposed to be a shorthand way of insinuating discounted prices on hardware. (The “off” from “20% off” and the “hard” from “hardware.”) Get it? Ok. Well, it basically sells everything. Clothes, furniture, electronics, toys, games, musical instruments, etc. I think it may be a high end thrift store. Not sure. But it is fun. We struck out there, and moved on to the next store - which wasn’t a store at all, but Fuji Grand.

At Fuji Grand, we stopped and had a wonderful lunch. It was yummy. I had the pork cutlet curry (since we decided not to go to the Indian curry place, and I was in the mood). Will had the Demi-glace sauce pork cutlet, and Mimi had the “Lady’s Set.” There was nothing ladylike about it. It was bigger than our meals combined. We had to help her slay that mammoth and then we split up. Will and I hit the big departmenty-style store. I was teased really bad by the Wii that they had on display. They are selling the controllers, the games, and all the accessories, but not the actual system. What gives? Ugh. After shopping for a bit, we left and hit the last store on the list.

Daimaru is a really expensive department store. While Will shopped for his gifts, Mimi and I browsed the aisles at random. I took her over to the Rolex counter, pointed at the ¥1,069,900 model, and asked her if she felt like buying it for me. She said no. I dunno why. Ha ha ha. Craziness. That is way too much money to spend on a wristwatch. Ha ha. Anyway, we headed back to Hakata and I fell asleep on my couch at some point, but woke up just in time to go to bed in my bedroom. Ah, the weekend.

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So, as many of you know, I was asked to sing a song with Aileen at the ICIEA party in Imabari yesterday. I also sang a song by myself. It was crazy. Aileen and I went on stage second, and we sang the Pogues’ Fairytale of New York as a duet. I am pretty sure that they all loved it. It was awesome. I went on stage again as the seventh act to sing Nat King Cole’s The Christmas Song (which most people recognize immediately from the lyrics “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…”) by myself. I was nervous, but in the end it all worked out great. Nobody seemed to mind my quavering voice, and the free food seemed to put everyone in a highly receptive mood. The crowd was bowled over by our very own Hong, my RA (assuming she is still talking to me…I make fun of her too much…sorry, Hong…) and the Hawaiian duo of Wendy and Melissa.

The picture above is my new buddy named Rock. Aileen introduced me to him. He came up from Matsuyama to bum around with us during the ICIEA party and the after party at Chantelle’s. He is, without a doubt, the coolest Japanese cowboy I have ever met. (And…the only Japanese cowboy I have ever met.) How did I know we’d get along? Well, I met him at the station in Matsuyama. He walked up wearing full out cowboy attire and was friendly as could be. Aileen pointed out his white Jeep and exclaimed “Whoa! Rock, is that your car?” to which he replied, “Yes. This is my horse.” Excellent. Gotta love it. Hope we’ll see more of him. He’s good people.

The after party was quite amusing, as well. Basically, everyone broke away and rested for a bit immediately after the party - which ended mid-afternoon. Rock, Aileen, and I went and had conversations about a variety of topics including some fun quirky stuff and the obligatory linguistic conundrums we face from both sides of the divide. We ate some peanuts in chocolate, relaxed for a few hours, and headed to meet up with another contingent at the karaoke place U’s Bowls. (I just discovered that I have been saying this wrong, because I thought it was pronounced “U. S. Bowls.” but it is really “You’s Bowls.” Go figure.) We decided that we hadn’t embarrassed ourselves enough singing, so we needed more. It was great fun. Highlights included recaps of Wham! and Mariah Carey (which the other JETs had run into as well), all the Christmas songs we could fit into the schedule, Rock’s stunning (seriously…not being sarcastic here…he has a crazy good voice) rendition of Twist and Shout, Aileen and my reprise of The Longest Time by Billy Joel, and as many Japanese songs as we felt comfortable attempting. Good times.

When the karaoke ended, we managed to coerce Hong and company to come with us to Chantelle’s apartment to engage in merrymaking, amusing conversation, and…even more singing! There was a guitar, a room full of foreigners enjoying ourselves, and plenty of cheer to go around. Plus, Chantelle has a really nice apartment. Dare I say it? Yes. It was absurdly nice. (Absurd is my word I overuse at present, just so you know.) I am jealous. Smells great too. My only regret is that we didn’t stay for the cake…darn it…haha. Next time.

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And by famous people, I mean me. And by drinking problem, I mean I drink unearthly amounts from PET bottles. How much? Tons. I counted this time as I dumped my PET bottles into the recycling nets. This month I drank 52 bottles. Of those, 42 were over the 1 liter size. That’s a lot of drink. Here’s a photo to prove it. I had to take the bottles down using 2 laundry baskets. Geeze, Deas. Take it easy, I know. In my defense, they told me I shouldn’t drink the water here because the island has no municipal filtration system in place. Therefore, I buy bottled water. (Easier than boiling it.)

You’re thinking…this loser still hasn’t qualified himself as famous. Truth is, I am so far away from being famous it’s not even funny. I was merely referring to the latest i-News Magazine, a publication put out bimonthly by the ICIEA. I was featured along with some other newcomers in the December-January issue. Click on the cover of the magazine to go to a PDF of the page where my blurb is featured. This magazine is available in the central Imabari Library, Imabari Station, the ICIEA office, and by request. I hope to write an article for them for a future issue - just gotta decide on the topic. Any suggestions are welcome. Yay! (By the way, awful picture of me, I know. Not mine. They had to ask around, because they were looking for it while I had no computer of which to speak.)

So…the oranges. I thought it would be so cool to live in and around orange groves. Ehime is famous for mikan oranges - which are mandarins, for the curious. That means my island produces salt and oranges. (Incidentally, it also means that a large portion of my kids reply that they aspire to be mikan farmers when they grow up.) Well, it turns out that it isn’t always all it is cracked up to be. You see, lately, there have been lots of oranges left on the ground to rot. What does this mean? Orange stink permeates much of my environs. Not pleasant. Rotting citrus isn’t pleasant. It’s like riding through an overripe garbage bag…blech. Hopefully this is a short-lived season. Luckily, I have been riding the ferries more often lately, which limits my sour orange experience. I’ve hit the kaisokusen 4 times this week and the car transport ferry 2 times. The cabin of the kaisokusen (fast line) is in the picture above. Starting to feel like a normal commute.

Last comment for today - Yuge High School got overwhelmed by my mad Christmas caroling for the past 2 days. Thursday was full of Nat King Cole (the Christmas Song), Brenda Lee (Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree), and Jose Feliciano (Feliz Navidad). It was great fun. These are my ideas of some classic Christmas songs that are fairly easy to understand. They use less archaic English than songs like “Deck the halls with boughs of holly” or virtually any awesome Christmas hymn. Even if it’s beautiful, it’s not necessarily easy to understand for Japanese high schoolers. Anyway, today, my music was given a backseat ride in favor of the current Japanese popular Christmas songs. What were they? Last Christmas by Wham! and All I Want for Christmas by Mariah Carey. Out of my range. Out of my genre. Need I say more? Nah. Ha ha. Funny stuff, though. I will have you note, I heard more than one kid singing Feliz Navidad after class. How many were singing Mariah Carey? Zero. Ha ha. Gotta love it.

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This week I learned that you cannot buy a Wii in Imabari…yet. You cannot reserve one, either. And the people who work at Saty are probably the most clueless about the situation. Most helpful? Probably the folks who work at GEO. Yamada Denki sits firmly in the middle - not helpful, but not completely inept. Oh well. C’est la Wii. (Ouch. I know.) I shall wait. Wait until the new Zelda game can be mine. At least I got fun Japanese phone practice in and used a few minutes on my plan, so it’s justified.

I went to Imabari on Monday and Tuesday to teach at Imabari Nishi High School. I collected some goofy essays to grade over the weekend - a few excerpts will be forthcoming, for those who are anticipating giggling at these poor students making an honest attempt at writing an essay about their favorite things. I also headed to the Mexican Cafe again.

Party Report - general consensus: awesomeness was experienced by all. A big thank you to my teachers at Oshima who threw this enkai for me, and to the guests who showed up from far away places. It was great. I was absolutely stoked, and it was well deserved stokedednessicity. (That’s even more of a fake word than ain’t. And I didn’t even shy away from it for a second.) We had loads of yakitori and beer in Imabari after a day at Nishi High School. It was GREAT. Some choice sentences were, as Aileen will testify, “I am sorry. I am crazy.” (Spoken by the most serious and down to earth sweet guy in the room at the time.) And…the best one… ”…sexual harrassment…心配ですね…” Ha ha ha. Fun times. (Safe times too, for Mom and worried friends. It was all in fun.)

Favorite bits of yumminess were: fried cheese with strawberry jam, gobo sticks, chicken skin on sticks, grilled leeks, and a hormone salad. Some of you probably think hormone salad sounds really disgusting, but it was actually really good. As far as I can tell, “hormone” refers to any random bit of meat from the animal it is listed under. In this case, it was the closest thing to bacon I have had since coming to Japan. Mmmm.

Wednesday had me back at Hakata HS, where I did a lot of dilly dallying. I felt bad not being useful, but there was simply nothing for me to do. So the day ended and I headed home to get a decent night’s sleep in preparation for Yuge on Thursday and Friday.

Coming up this weekend: party on Sunday for ICIEA (the International Association for Imabari), then shopping on Sunday with Will. Unplanned goofing off is likely to occur. Stay tuned for updates after the weekend.

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“Mailbag Day, Mailbag Day, hey everybody it’s Mailbag Day!” Um, no cool points for knowing that reference, but maybe 10 lashes for not knowing it. Ok? I kid, I kid. It’s Brak, from Space Ghost Coast to Coast - when it was funny, anyway. So I thought I would write a quick thank you to the people who made this week amazing from far, far away.

I got two, count ‘em, TWO packages in the post this week. One was from Mrs. Newman, who, bless her soul, sent me 3 packages of Taco Seasoning!! I already used one. I have 2 left. We can fight about who I will share it with. I’m willing to trade it for the price of a PS3 on eBay. Anyway, it was amazing. Made a little bowl of rice, added some browned ground beef (seasoned, of course), and enjoyed. It’s too bad we don’t have access to tortillas or decent cheese, cilantro, or lime and Coronas. But hey - that taco seasoning went a long way in warming up my over-blanded soul. Thanks, Mrs. Newman!

My family also sent me a package, which I have almost finished off. It had my winter stuff - jackets, gloves, hats, etc. I’ll have you know that I wore the scarf and the gloves every day this week on the way to and from school on my bike. I also wore the hat once on an extra nippy morning. Also included was a container of gummy worms, which I think were gone about 30 minutes after I received the box from the post guy. Whoops. I missed them, ok? Um, then there was some Kool-Aid singles (which are a great idea!), pretzel sticks (oh yes oh yes oh yes), Chex Mix (heaven), and a wonderful 12 pack of granola bars, that might as well have been made of gold. Basically, I really really enjoyed this stuff. You have no idea how much you miss things like this until you get them after a few months of lacking them. I was looking at the prices on the boxes, you know, $2.99 or $1.99, and I was thinking, shoot, I would pay $15 for that and $10 for that. Ha ha. THANKS.

Also got a few emails, ecards and greeting cards, and they make the winter less cold. Thanks everyone. Yay!

In slightly sad news which will make you want to patronizingly pat me on the back, I created 2 new strange dishes today. Mom sometimes calls me Chef-Boy-R-Deas (instead of Chef Boyardee). Today, I failed that title. Ha ha. It was rainy and gross outside, so I didn’t want to walk to the store. Unfortunately, I had no real breakfast stuff - or anything else, really, to make a coherent meal. My 3 slices of crustless bread (which I bought 2 days ago) had mold on it. So that got tossed. No toast for me. I’d eaten most of the other stuff yesterday. So, I created 2 new takes on grits. Neither will become standard fare, but one might be repeated in times of desperation.

I made Orange Grits by adding orange marmalade to a bowl of original grits and stirring. That was actually quite nice. It was just a hint of orange - sort of like drinking an orange tea, except a lot closer to porridge. The mistake was when I decided to take the remaining smidgen of hot cocoa powder to create Chocolate Grits. It was chocolicious, sure enough, but was really not for me. Here’s an image. This dish will never be made again by Deas, and he apologizes to planet earth for having introduced it in a moment of weakness. Ha ha. Yup. I don’t know what I was thinking. But at least you can learn from my errors.

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