Woah!

OK, just a quick one today. I have three points for you.

POINT 1: Go see SiCKO. Now! Log off from this computer, get in the car, and see Michael Moore’s new film. The topic, as most of you already know, is the American healthcare industry and the complete cluster ***k that it has become. By the way, It turns out that I was partially right a few months ago when I said on this very blog that the blame for American medicine can be placed on Nixon. Mr. Moore’s film includes some old audio recordings from Nixon’s Oval Office that are . . . fascinating.

So go see it. Now. I’ll wait.

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

2 hours of depressing realizations later…

Wow. That is nasty and yet so right at the same time. My British friend sees me in a whole new light now that he has some idea how American’s live. All my foreign friends pity me and my people.

POINT 2: Dick Cheney is either an incredibly stupid man or he has so little respect for the American people that it’s laughable. I’d believe either. It was recently reported by Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” and with both sources double checked by me personally, that Dick Cheney has had images of his residence (The US Naval Observatory) pixilated out on the Google Earth satellite mapping program. Please note that both the White House and the Capitol Building remain clearly visible. The stupid thing is that directions to the Naval Observatory are still accessible ON MAP QUEST! I wish I was smart enough to make this stuff up. Incidentally, “The Daily Show” aired this information as part of their new series: You Don’t Know Dick.

Check out the video at this link:

http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_daily_show/index.jhtml

POINT 3: The conservatives have now made an attempt to actually rewrite reality to suit their whims. Citing extreme liberal bias on the part of the public online edited encyclopedia Wikipedia, a new conservative site entitled Conservapedia has launched at http://www.conservapedia.com/ and it is scary. Front page articles at the time of this writing include the evils of Rosie O’ Donnell and how the British are planning to create human-animal hybrids. This encyclopedia also lists the year 4004 B. C. as the most likely point of the creation of the universe. Another definition from “The Trustworthy Encyclopedia” is this: Homosexuality is an immoral sexual lifestyle between members of the same sex. It is more than simply a sexual act, it is going beyond the boundaries that God has setup for marriage; one man and one woman.

By the way, I found this response to the liberal evils of Wikipedia by clicking on a link found . . . on Wikipedia!

I’ll leave you with that.

RyuSensei

Way Back Track 2: In Training

Temporal coordinates set for the last week of March, 2007 Mr. Peabody.

Well, this is the part of my story that I can’t really tell you too much about, without being contractually obligated to kill you that is. I speak, of course, of my company’s training regimen. I’ll leave the details to your imaginations and simply explain that various injuries occurred over the course of the week, mainly due to filling out so much paper work.

The best thing about my current situation is the hotel. This place is PLUSH! The Narita View is only about 20 minutes from the airport and has everything from an artificial hot spring（which, sadly, costs more money than I’m willing to spend at the moment） to 3 fairly high class restaurants. That is apparently common in Japan, for the really fancy modern restaurants to be affiliated with a major hotel. I picked up more than a few stares being a gaijin who was willing to eat sashimi. For some strange reason, Americans have a reputation of being unwilling to eat raw fish. Now why could that be, I wonder?

Anyway, I have had an interesting adventure here. I’ve made a new friend here, we’ll call him George. He’s a fellow American and he knows nothing from Japan nor a word of Japanese. He wanted to see downtown Tokyo, specifically Akihabara Electric Town. Since that requires a 2 hour round trip on the Tokyo Metro. Since the train system can be confusing for someone who can’t read and doesn’t have any experience with the system. Since I’d ridden this route on a previous vacation to Japan, I accompanied him.

20 stations and only one missed layover later, we were in the neon labyrinth known as the Tokyo nightlife. Being a fellow English major, George was amazed by the 8 story bookstores. That’s one of the things I live about this country, the respect for books. Bookstores in America are rapidly vanishing into a void of Bones & Ignoble nothing. Yet here, you can’t walk into a shopping center or train station without tripping over a bookstore. No wonder the kanji for “Japan” can be read individually as “sun” and “book.”

The most fun of the day was when we got back to Narita. Short version, British people are funny when drunk. We ran into a girl that saw us and started yelling “Damn Yankee” style comments to us. I eventually had to verbally, and loudly, that I was born in England as well. I was then proclaimed a real person and the jokes about having gone native began to fly.

The training went well, although I still had some serious questions about my company’s level of intelligence when I was told that my city was a new contract for the company and that I was the first ALT to be sent out there. It’s my first assignment and the company is sending me out there sight unseen. I’m either really good, or they are really nuts.

Either works for me.

Our next adventure in the Way Back Machine (v. 2.48) will include the actual moving in process. What’s more, if I can get my freaking camera to work with my new Japanese laptop, I’ll try and post some pictures at the same time.

Way Back Track 1: The Flight

Temporal coordinates set to 2007/03/19 Mr. Peabody.

Warning: Inconsistent tenses approaching.

The original notes that became this entry were scribbled in a notebook mid-flight. I take full credit for the apparent randomness of my thoughts. Before we get to that, I present some thoughts about the state of airline culture. The entire system seems geared toward the art of the vacation. It appears that no one in the planning phases ever considered the possibility that someone might use one of these “areo-planes” to actually move from one home to another.

I say this because I’ve spent the last two weeks trying to figure out the best way to fit my entire live into two bags in order to fit within the baggage restrictions. Anyone who has ever had to make a major move, weather it be across the city or across the country, will tell you that you always have more stuff than you think and it all weighs a ton. Well, obviously I did it as the trip went on as planned. Now, on to the scribbled mid flight notes I mentioned earlier:

The good news is that they have certainly improved the distraction technology on these flights. The days of group movie screens that you can’t ignore and evil peanuts with arms and legs that attempt to devour your soul are long one (mores the pity, I rather liked those peanuts).

These days, every seat has it’s own monitor and remote control that doubles as a video game controller. Granted, these are stripped down versions of games that you can play for free on yahoo, but when you’re careening through the air at breakneck speeds for nine hours and fifty five minutes, you don’t get to be choosy.

I was not ready to say good bye to Mom and Dad. I’ve known this day was coming for months now, but when the moment came, I still broke down in tears when Dad told me that I was talented and that I was ready for this. Naturally, my first thought upon passing through security was an overwhelming wave of “what the f%#k have I just gotten myself into?”

As I write this, I am sitting in seat 21-c on NWA flight whatever the heck over the Pacific Ocean. That’s it. At the moment, the only address I’ve got is seat 21-c. That’s because I don’t have a place to live yet. The company has yet to find me an apartment so I can’ begin to figure things like rent and utilities into my budget. So I have no idea if the $2000 in my left pocket is going to be enough to survive until I get my first paycheck in two months!

By the way, Will Ferrell is not funny. I’m writing this as Stranger than Fiction plays on my monitor. It’s a good idea for a film with some interesting commentary on literature and the nature of story and plot. There are even a few laughs, none of which come from Ferrell’s character. Please refer back to my previous comment about how fliers can’t be choosers.

OK, something amazing has just happened. A stewardess has just handed me an ice cream sandwich as a snack. It’s official, we have good airline food. Hell has frozen over.

The rest of the flight was relatively uneventful. Now it doesn’t matter how still you try and sit during the flight, your level of personal grooming will suffer after 10 hours in the air. After landing, I ran a comb through my hair and dragged my luggage off the plane and to the lobby. Now that’s more than it sounds like. Narita International Airport makes a point of placing the flights from the US at the far end of the building as far away from the baggage claim as humanly possible. It turns out that the Gaijin community refers to this as the Narita Marathon. It took me about 13:30 to complete, that’s gate to baggage carousel.

So I was unshaven, slightly disheveled hair, a strained shoulder, and probably some bad breath. This is how I met the first representatives of my new employers. Thankfully, they were used to this and I was still one of the best looking of the males. Translation: I didn’t show up in ripped jeans and a tee shirt.

That is the story of the flight from Oregon, USA to Narita, Japan. This city, which only exists because of the airport, is going to be my home for he next week as I go though the company’s training for new ALTs. But that is a story for another post.

This is Ryu Sensei signing off, type at ya later!

Like a phoenix from the ashes, I rise again! And I am now on fire.

OK, I admit it, I haven’t kept up with this blog thing as well as I wanted to. My reasons are varied, complicated, and extremely convincing. Trust me. First of all, Internet access is disgustingly limited here in Japan. I know that seems strange for a country that is perceived by the rest of the world as half a step behind the Jetsons, but it's true. Specifically in rural areas like I find myself in. Far from the urban jungle of Tokyo, the school at which I am now employed is surrounded by rice patties.

The school is wonderful; sadly, it varies from the traditional model of a Japanese middle school. Not that I mind, but I was hoping to be exposed to the so called “normal” way of doing things so that I could bring that information back to the states in an attempt to improve our own flagging education system.

Anyway, I finally have Internet access at home, or at least I will when I send this, and I plan to make up for lost time. I’ve been keeping records of my adventures here and while they may not be the stuff of legend, I find them interesting and it’s my blog so there. Over the next few days, I will post one entry every 24 hours. These will cover my time here from March 20th, my date of arrival, to the current date, whenever that happens to be.

But before we get to that, I have to make both an apology and an retraction. In a previous post, I blamed Richard Nixon and his fear of appearing communist for the lack of an American health plan. That was wrong. Nixon look into expanding Medicare but it was actually Eisenhower who vetoed the idea of a national health plan. My bad.

Continuing on the interesting trail of politics. Did you know that Dick Cheney is no longer the Vice President of the United States? It's true, Dick Cheney doesn't work here anymore. That is to say, he is excusing himself from presidential orders regarding handing over his office's records because (you're going to love this) "Cheney's office claims it need not comply with the executive order because it is not an "entity within the executive branch.""

Now, if we think about this logically, we come to a wonderful conclusion. See if you follow me on this one:

1) Cheney has just said that he doesn't answer to W.

2) So he's not a part of the president's administration.

3) That means he's out of the presidential chain of succession.

4) That means everyone else gets bumped up a rank to fill in the gap, that means. . .

Nancy Pelosi is now Vice President!!!

OK, maybe not. But it does go to prove that W is so outside of reality that his own VP/ventriloquist doesn't pay attention to him anymore. Here's the link to the article I saw that prompted this flight of wishful thinking.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070622/ap_on_go_pr_wh/cheney_secrecy

Meanwhile, back at our story, the first of the back articles, concerning the plane ride over here will be posted tomorrow.

Thank you for your patience while we address this problem and while the author is severely beaten about the head and shoulders by alien possessed chipmunks for neglecting his fans.