And then we all died a little inside

As it stands, June in Kyoto is the worst season in the history all my 90 or so seasons of my life. One of the main bragging points that Kyoto-ites like to spout is the fact that their city has four distinct season, summer, fall, winter, and spring. Yet they purposefully forget to mention the fifth season, the devil's own creation. It falls smack-dab in the middle of summer and is called the 梅雨, tsuyu, a.k.a monsoon season. It really is like stepping out of a shower into a sauna. It is a miserable experience. I never thought I would wish for the August heat, but this humidity is literally killer.

That being said, I thought I should take a few moments to list out the interesting things that one should expect from Japan that most people do not tell you.

1 - There are no giant battling robots or godzilla monsters protecting the airways, despite what the Simpsons and Powerpuff Girls tell you.

2 - If you are in Osaka and you pretend your hand is a gun or pretend that you have a sword in hand and you attack an Osakian, they will play along and die, violently. (I haven't actually tested this out yet on the streets, but it is fun in class)

3 - Japanese people, despite the hyper-awesome technological gadgets that make their way to the States, are, for the most part, technologically disinclined.

4 - Unless you can type on it with your thumbs, put it on your face, or wear it under your school uniform than most Japanese high school students are probably not interested in it.

5 - Nearly all of the foreigners in Japan are giant nerds, myself included, so it is very easy to find people who are into the same things as you.

6 - The old proverb, "If you don't use it, you lose it" applies readily to your language abilities, Japanese and English alike.

7 - The supermarket is a good place to be stared at by curious old women and visual scorned by old men, if you're into that sort of thing.

8 - The sidewalk is for bikes, period. Ambulatory commuters should learn to fly.

9 - Cockroaches are a way of life, get used to them. At least they are better than the Mukade, giant poisonous centipedes, which like to eat cockroaches. If you don't have cockroaches look under your bed for them bastards.

10 - Get used to paying 3000-5000yen, $30-50, for a night on the town. Where every night is 10 dollar beer night!

Well, it would be impossible to tell of the mundane and exciting things that have happened to me, but my biggest piece of advice is to come in with no expectations. This way you can only be surprised. It's a much more entertaining way to live in Japan.

Cut Hair to the Wind

And just like that, my dreams of becoming a world renouned hair model go up in smoke. I went to my friends office to have "competition practice" for the big day next　month. I practiced my Japanese to the sounds of clicking scissors and screams of televised Japanese soccer. As the minutes passed the hour mark, I saw resignation on the face of my hair obsessed friend. Dispite my best efforts, my hair was still too short to be of any use in the competition. Even though I am slightly disheartened at the loss of what could have been, I am reminded of how truly odd that competition would have been. I would have looked like a mix between Vanilla Ice and Guile from Street Fighter. My hair would have been pushed vertical and flattened on the top and dyed yellow. Yet, in the darkness there is always a speck of hope. As the monsoon season begins in Kyoto, I no longer need to have long unwieldy lawyer hair.

I Have Returned

So my trip to Arizona went well. My flights and the overall traveling experience was better than I could have hoped. I usual tend to get a bit claustrophobic on the plane, especially for eleven hours, but it all went well. The perk of the H1N1 piggy scare is that very few people are traveling. My flight to the states was nearly empty and I had my own row. My flight back to Japan was similarly populated but I was seated next to some skinny Japanese people, that allowed me to usurp some of their elbow room. There were no crying children like my flight to Rome and there were no karate practitioners honing their skills on the back of my seat like my flight from Barcelona. They were good traveling experiences this time.

It was a bit strange returning to America. As the JET infomercials stated, there was a bit of reverse-culture shock and my first attempt at driving my car led me errantly down the left side of the road for a moment. I did decide to get all of the culture shock out of my system in one fell swoop. My first stop, after I slept off the jet lag, was to the hub of American culture, in its most repulsive and repugnant incarnation, Walmart. It was a planned trip, designed to shock my mind back into the way of the "American Way." The second I entered the store I felt my soul cry. There were children running aimlessly, hyped up on sugar and Ritalin and adults shuffling about in slippers and stretch pants, to better suit their flab, pushing carts filled to the brim with cheap Chinese made goods.

Now, I'm not going to lie to you all, I enjoy Walmart for two reasons. First, because they have a five dollar DVD bin and one can always find a decent deal there. And secondly, because Walmart is to me, what IHOP is to Lewis Black. (If you have never heard Lewis Black, the comedian, talk about IHOP, I suggest you YouTube that.) Mr. Black states that he considers IHOP to be his health club because, "No matter how fat you are, there will always be someone there who weighs 350 pounds more than you will ever weigh." And thus is true for Walmart as well. If I've said it once, I've said it a million times, Walmart is a cesspool for Americanism, where hope and self-respect go to die a horrible and miserable death. (my own included)

Now purged of my own feeling of superiority over the Walmart shoppers, I could enjoy my vacation. A vacation which included a trip to the dentist, a few loving family dinners, a graduation, a huge family party, a drive California to be accompanied by several games of beerpong, a geocaching day with the father, several trips to Papago Brewery to drink real beer and several boring days spent surfing the internet and watching HBO.

If only everyday could be spent lounging around eating leftover lasagna, watching HBO and trolling Facebook, what a life that would be! Alas, one's life cannot be wasted as such though. And now I have returned to the daily grind at work.

When I finally returned to work, after passing the swine flu test, my principal came up and tried to talk to me. He said that he liked my beard and wondered if I shaved it everyday. Then he asked how often I go to the dentist to keep my teeth strong. And now today, several teachers asked me why I changed my hairstyle, but didn't wait around long enough to hear the whole story, they merely nodded and said that they liked it. So with that, I have returned to a place where my mere appearance is a novelty which doesn't grow old.

It's good to be back.

I Call Shenanigans on You, Japan

So, as most of my six steady readers know, I am returning to the States for a triumph. (Yes, I expect four white horses, a Roman chariot, trumpeters, slaves throwing olive branches in my wake. All that jazz.) But it has come to the attention of my supervisors and the Kyoto Board of Education that my trip home to Arizona is planned right, smack dab in the middle of the most vicious, vile and murderous plague on humans since, well, the Plague of a blacker nature.

Yes, of course you all know what I am talking about. Now introducing, in the left corner, coming straight from the pig's mouth, transmitted humanoid to humanoid, the most delicious sounding of all the flues in human history; the Sultan of Swine, the Frothiest of Flues, the most Dangerous of Diseases, the most Porkiest of all Plagues: H1N1.

My upcoming trip to "ground zero in the fight against the Pig" has my supervisors and their supervisors up-in-arms. I'll start from the beginning of the story because, well, that's usually the best place to start. I will do my best to retell the story as accurately as possible, it may falter here or there but that is because during the meeting that occurred on Tuesday May 12, between 5:01pm and 5:32pm, I was laughing my ass off inside my head.

The Tuesday began as any other Tuesday, me sitting at my computer at my visit school about an hour and twenty minutes trip from my base school. When all of a sudden, the vice-principal approaches me and in his limited English tells me that, "After work today, You should go to your base school for an important meeting." I was a bit shocked and slightly alarmed. I knew my base school would have a meeting with me about my trip but what could be so urgent that they would need to talk to me today that could not wait until Thursday when I would return to the base school. I was afraid that they would ask me to cancel my trip because they needed me to do work at school. (HAHA, "work") So the rest of the day went off with out a hitch. After my last class I decided to check my email and relax until the bell rang and I could legally stand at the bus stop and wait twenty minutes for the infallibly late bus. (They really should just update the bus schedule if it is going to be late every day) It was at this time when a teacher came to me and told me that I was supposed to be gone an hour ago. Of course the difference between, "Go after you finish your work" and, "Go after work," was lost on the vice-principal.

So I ran two kilometers down hill to the train station so that I could make the early train and get to the other school fifteen minutes earlier (What a waste of energy this would turn out to be.) Eventually I arrived at my other school and sat down for my meeting with the vice-principal, the principal and an English teacher for translation. The principal showed me an article in the Kyoto newspaper that showed the numbers of the world wide plague, known as Swine Flu, broken down country by country.

He decided to have this meeting to tell me that, of the 6,000,000,000 people there are in the world, 5,200 have Swine Flu. And of that 5,200 people world wide, 2,600 people have it in the United States. As a result, my trip to America was not only my concern, but a National and International concern. According to my principal, I am to:

1. Take my temperature everyday while I am home and keep a log to show the people at the airport.

2. Where a face mask, constantly.

3. Be prepared to give a blood sample at the Kansai Airport when I return.

4. Be prepared to be quarantined in a hotel near the airport if I have a fever.

5. Call my school the day before I am to come back to work to ensure that my blood test at the airport passed. If it does not, I will be suspended from work for ten days.

6. Wash my hands all the time, I think he said, "ichinichi" meaning "all day long."

7. Gargle with the patented Japanese brown garble sludge, which reputedly is supposed to kill germs and ward off evil hippo spirits (there's a hippo on the bottle.)

8. Don't come to work if you have the coughs, sneezes, farts or blinks.

9. Don't return if you to work if haven't bathed in fire and gargled bleach.
And So On. (The last two rules were slightly exaggerated.)

All-in-all, I am very excited to have the same exact meeting again on Monday to ensure that I understand everything. I wonder how freaked out they would be if I brought them bacon back as Omiyage (souvenirs).

Adventures of a Fantasy Fan: Part 3

Keto could, of course, return to his marching war party and tell those that sent him that his party fled in the night out of fear and his goblin commanders would not likely bat an eye at his story. Goblins have always been a resourceful and despicable race, yet dependability and loyalty were not common traits among this small statured race of green, orange, and yellow skinned monsters. Thus, Keto should have returned. All of his logic told him that he would survive longer in his war party but something was wrong, or at least, something felt wrong about returning.

Something was indeed "wrong" with Keto, in terms of his race's usual disposition. Keto had killed his kin before this most recent massacre, yet never so unprovoked as the occasion in the cabin. He had no regrets as warfare amongst the goblin kind were far more common than war against the humans. Keto had acted on his own. That was unusual.

Keto was a well trained forward scout for an ancient goblin tribe from the North, from the foot of the Dragon's Tooth mountain range. His tribe, the Vactea, were a large and powerful clan indeed. They controlled a large swath of land in the North and existed, and reproduced, unchecked by humans and other goodly races. Their numbers had swelled beyond the capacity of the Dragon's Tooth. In the past, frequent and deadly human war parties had rampaged through the mountain range thinning the Vactean numbers and sending the survivors running through the mountains to find holes in which to crawl. But in the last generation, there had been only one human raid on the Vactea.

That raid ended terribly for the humans who were caught off guard by an untimely spring snow storm. Those few that survived the weather met gruesome deaths at the claws and teeth of the beasts in the Dragon's Tooth, none survived to return to the town of Last Haven. Since then, nearly twenty years, the humans of Last Haven and the new outpost of Laybren have kept themselves far from the dangerous mountain slopes.

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On the word of the tribe shaman, the Vactea clan warriors left their rocky homes and marched South into the realm of men. The one-armed and withered orange-skinned shaman came to this decision as a result of a vision induced by the spewing vapors of shaman herbs. He saw, in his prayers of intoxication, the Vactea clan and all goblins of the land living in the forests and rolling hills to the South. He saw a successful clan, a health leader, a thriving goblin population and a destroyed human town. Tamoz, the shaman, had never felt such a strong guiding presence in his daily prayers before. In all his years he had never been so touched by the blessings of Gromth, the chaotic goblin deity.

Immediately after his holy encounter, he met with the clan chief. Bachu the Ugly had been the clan chief of the Vactea for a decade, which is a rather long time to be in such a dangerous and sought after position in the goblin hierarchy. Bachu came to power after he defeated his own father in combat. Bachu poisoned his father's grog one night and when the grog seemed to be taking its effect, Bachu made his patricidal move. He was over anxious and before the poison had taken his fathers strength his attack was met with more than a little resistance. In the fight, Bachu took a sword slash to the face, leaving him with a hideous scar from forehead to jaw and blind in one eye. His grievous wound earned him the surname to which he affectionately referred.

Tamoz and Bachu met late one evening after Tamoz's vision in the clan chief's cave.
"And when I closed my eyes," Tamoz exclaimed while raising his hands to the air, "I saw the Will of Gromth."

"Th-The Will o' Gr-Gromth?" One stuttering goblin body guard asked incredulously.

"Yes. Me s-saw Gromth's de-s-signs for Vactea. Great designs He have." Tamoz said, mocking the interrupting goblin's speech impediment.

Bachu waved his hand as a signal for the stupid goblin to shut his mouth and for Tamoz to continue. Although Bachu was not a terribly religious man, he knew the power superstition and religion had over his clan. He also knew the immense power that Tamoz held as chief shaman. To most of his goblin clan the shaman's word on religious matters was law. That power made Bachu nervous. His position in the clan was unrivaled, yet this shaman and his religious blather played an essential role in the culture of his tribe. Perhaps Tamoz was stretching his reach, he thought.

"Gromth wants me- us, to lead the tribe South, into the lands of the humans. He wants war on the humans. I have seen the future in my vision and I-"

"And you what?" Bachu interrupted. His interruption startled Tamoz who jumped at the sound of the imposing war chief's voice. " 'Will lead the tribe against the masses of humans raising your staff high in the air and calling the name of Gromth.'" Bachu bellowed a laugh, patting his leather armored chest. "Do not forget your place dear shaman. I lead Vactea."

For now, Tamoz thought. "Indeed. Which is why I have come. To discuss the importance of my vision. Gromth demands this of us. I saw a city destroyed and a tower-"

"A tower?" Bachu interrupted again with a smile, knowing this interruption would infuriate Tamoz. "Towers hold wizards, shaman." He scoffed.

"And the only tower in the south is in the human town of Laybren." Tamoz said bravely. Although the witty shaman, witty for a goblin that is, was quite powerful in the tribe, his offensive, martial prowess left much to be desired. He feared the strong war chief, whose corded muscles and unrivaled height made Bachu look more human than goblin, albeit a green one. Yet, Tamoz feared Gromth, his wicked and horrible god, more than this mere mortal in front of him. "So we know where we must go." He finally said with as much conviction as he could muster.

Bachu paused for a long moment, reading Tamoz. He was trying to understand what gave the shaman the audacity to come to his cave and tell him how and when to conduct a war. He touched his calloused green hand to his face and shook his head. The idea was ridiculous, of course. There would be no feasible way for the Vactea to raid and besiege the walled and magic protected town of Laybren. Not now and not with his current numbers. Yet, he knew the predicament he had been thrust into. He could not deny to Tamoz outright because that would be blasphemy in the eyes of his people, the raid is apparently demanded by Gromth. To ignore such a omen would bring chaos and internal strife to the clan and would likely lead to a civil war, an all too common goblin affair. But, to go through with this haphazardly planned attack would be suicide. Bachu contemplated throwing his spear through Tamoz's heart to silence him, but he didn't know who knew about the dream.

Finally, he sighed in resignation, "Very well, but it cannot be done alone. Send word to the other tribes in the North. Tell them that Bachu and the Vactea march to bring revenge and death to the humans of Laybren." He stood from his hide-adorned rock throne and raised his his arm, spear in hand. "To war."