Hotel Alpha-1 Sakata

... of compromise where I readjust to this pace of life and seek future employment. We'll see how that all shapes up. There is a sort of authenticity in the air now that wasn't there last month.

"The point is not to resist the flow. You go up when you're supposed to go up and down when you're supposed to go down. If you resist the flow, everything dries up. If everything dries up, the world is darkness." - Haruki Murakami, The Wind Up Bird Chronicle.

... the same job as me, who I never got tired of criticizing. So robust and damning has my badmouthing been that a friend of mine wants to study my interminable capacity to scorn others of my calling for her university research project. But to be fair to science, I haven’t been as careful with them as I have with my Japanese peers, so there’s a double standard after all. I think the majority are okay, and some are my close friends, but it’s ...

... Ryokan, which is a traditional Japanese Inn up in the foothills of Mt. Chokai near one of my elementary schools. The place had two small onsens, yukatas that were ironed just right, and pillows designed to undisturb sleep. In terms of presentation and color, the dinner and breakfast was nothing less than stellar. The raw oysters put a few butterflies in my basket ...

... keeper/announcer/photographer/kid who really doesn't like baseball. Despite a lop-sided start, the game quickly became quite competitive, with one team always close on the heels of the other. After nine innings, the score was Lucas, Tyler, Rob 39 - Satoshi, Yusuke, Garrett 38.
We checked our watches. Three more hours. yikes.
We shouldered our packs and humped back ...

... spenderade vi två nätter på mysiga hotellet Shoufuusou, alltså en heldag i Kisakata. Tiden ägnades mest åt att bada gul onsen och promenera på stranden. Tanken var att vi skulle bada, men det var mulet och regnigt, och under natten blåste det dessutom upp till storm, så imorse var det extrema vågor, och vårt tåg hem var en och en halv timme försenat.

Såhär spännande har alltså mina första dagar i Japan varit. Nu har jag återvänt till civilisationen (härmed klassas ...

On Tuesday, I gave a pulpit-pounding speech to the entire elementary school in Japanese about my childhood in America. Rather than summarize the speech, I’ll go over the visual aids, which do a far more elegant job of paraphrasing my wonder years: a 2-dollar bill, a Nintendo Entertainment System juxtaposed to a Japanese Famicon (the equivalent system), a scary Rottweiler, a collage of American school lunch items, including pizza ...

... body is harder than oak, a densely packed receptacle of meat and gristle, throbbing in its barely restrained power. That’s what I would say, anyway, if it wasn’t just my thighs that have swelled in the past two years. My forelegs and arms are still sticks, and locals still pat my gut, forsaking all I’ve learned of Japanese politeness, and ask, “six months ...

... session at the beginning must have done the trick. Names are pretty silly. The majority of people think my name is Rawson Bread (since they do the last one first thing out here). That's no biggie 'cause the "t" and "d" do sound confusingly similar. But usually, it's my last name that's disfigured. The 7-11 of Japan is called Lawson, and since katakana (one of the ...

... I usually always have to either repeat myself a few times or mention a bigger city near mine and then say I live [never / eat / sour / worms] of there. I mean, I've heard the people of Kisakata claim it's the best place to live, and I think so too, but I was just surprised to here someone from the city say that. But apparently, others DO think so. But why? From the sounds of it, Kisakata's fame and / or attraction has something to do with a guy named Matsuo Basho, who ...

Rest assured, these routines aren't my routines - that'd be boring to write about. Given that the secret to being boring is to say everything, I shall only say a little. And anyways, my routines could be summed up in a sentence: I oversleep, forget to zip up my fly before the daily morning meetings, spill ramen on my suit pants at lunch, forget to change the oil of my car, and lose my USB after making a knock-out lesson plan for the next ...