hand language

I walked home tonight, in the dark cold rain. Thoughts in my head. I'm sitting on my messy floor now, infront of my laptop, the speakers playing Creedence Clearwater Revival, "I set out on the road, seeking my fame and fortune..." The voice grinds on, and I pull up the event of the day that I'm looking for. It was this afternoon, it was still raining then too. I had ducked into a McDonalds near my house for a hamburger. The lunch-rush was in full swing, the staff running up and down yelling (with manners) at their customers. I was standing in line behind these two old women, they were having an animated conversation with their hands. Something about going somewhere (all that I can get, I'm still basic verbs and salutations) but the moment that hit me was what came next. The women got up to the counter and ordered with sign language. And the amazing, and hard to explain thing, was the change that came over the counter staff. She stopped talking, and just swayed her hands to indicate various things they were communicating about in basic sign language. I had a vision of a whole world communicating with their hands, wonderful visual symbols etched in the air, and yeah, noise pollution would be greatly reduced; the thought came to life and I could imagine the whole shop communicating with their hands. And then the whole country. It was a beautifully silly and cool idea. The young staff woman broke the silence with a strong "Thank you for your order please come again" to the two old women (who of course didnt even notice) and this broke me back into the noise of the room. Cash registers, people, a litteral ocean of sound.

day to day

Well, I've been told my blog is getting too philosophical lately and that I should shift it back to a log of what I'm doing... work, life, that sort of thing. The problem is I dont want to have a blog about work. I dont think I'd get fired for that (although my Japanese friend got fired for commenting on her friends blog entry about a bad boss, talk about bad luck, everyone got fired, I guess it was true... he was a bad boss!) I just dont really want to mix work with my blog too much. Kind of like trying to mix salt into my cocoa or something. Salt is important but its a whole different thing than cocoa... or something like that. But other than work, my life is mainly just filled with meeting people or sitting around my room most of the time. Not the most stimulating of topics for blog entries. If I find something, I'll post about it, otherwise for now its going to be mostly philosophical-ish rants. And in other news, I've had videos and tons of photos streamed to my korean site for years, but very few of my unkorean friends visit that so I've decided to try out that Twango service to bring even more media to unkorean viewers. Of course I have my original feed that is sent from my cellphone. And I started a new one of large photos taken with my new digital camera. For an extra bonus, I even have a channel of videos taken with my camera which should help you feel like you are walking around Tokyo with me... or something odd like that. Stalkers Paradise. Enjoy.

circadian rhythms

Last week, I was coming home from a bookstore in the evening. I got out of the station, and I was greeted by a typhoon. Thick rain, blown strongly in heavy waves. People were trying to walk home with their umbrellas, only to have their umbrellas ripped out of their hands or violently turned inside-out. A woman next to me screamed as her purple umbrella twisted and shuddered under the strength of the brutal wind. It then sucked the umbrella back, as if pealing a purple banana. I was so wet when I got back to my house, 10 minutes away, that I looked like I had taken a shower in my clothes.
The next day, it was hot and sunny. It appeared like sunshine and rain had fought for power of the sky, their battle leaving literally hundreds of umbrella carcases on the sidewalk leading to and from the station. Mostly cheap 100yen umbrellas, snapped, twisted and used; flapping in the breeze as the sun shined down ignoring yesterday's weather.
The weather was like many apparent victories of history (or even those of our mind), where the vanquished slowly regains control, so gradually that the approach is hardly noticed. Our sunshine was bright and beautiful, but slowly the heat faded from the days, the violent weather of winter slowly sinking its teeth into the last gasps of summer until with out noticing I needed a small coat today, even though the sun (in its proxy position of apparent power) continues to shine.

happy birthday

My friend (he doesnt use his name on the internet so I guess I wont either) recently posted a feelings about his birthday video post on his blog. After seeing that I thought I would comment on my feelings about... my own birthday! It feels weird to think about time, and its rapid unfolding. I was looking around trying to find old pictures of myself, and I found my oldest website again. I used my geek skills and reconstructed it (many image links were broken since it was so old) but its very geeky and makes me feel old to think this page is still on the net (in a broken form) ...a webpage that is from 10 years ago... a TEN year old webpage. Its fun to read it, like looking at a time capsule or something. Some of the things I was into, like encyclopedia making and film making are still some of my interests, but other things that I was into (some really geeky ones) show typical passing youth-interests. This page shows a mellow me, after any youth anger, a year before I headed off to college, a place where of course my life changed. I think I blogged about it before, so I guess thats about all I have to say about that. But really, life is a strange thing. A few more years, and it will mean that I have been overseas longer than I was in college. I need to take some time to think about what that all means, but I feel a little brain dead at the moment so I'm not sure what to add here. A comedian is streaming off the net, people laughing, while outside this room a driver is going by selling sweet potatoes from his car, his selling song echoing into my ears. Time continues.

fightin' words

I consider myself to be a person with a fairly mild temper. Honestly, I think about the only things that usually piss me off are racism and sexism. So I was walking home from the station, looking up at the sickle moon in the dark sky thinking about how beautiful it looked hanging above my little town. And I come up behind two middle age guys, one pushing a bike, and the other walking along beside him talking to each other in Japanese. I couldn't get around, so I walk behind them for awhile, but they are slow and I am tired, I want to go home. So I say "Excuse me!" but they just keep talking, ignoring me, so I say with not enough tact "You're in my way." and they step aside but the fatter man, who was walking alongside the man pushing his bike, mutters in Japanese "Noisy foreigner." and I couldnt help it, I had to retort with "Shut the hell up." (In Japanese of course.) Because maybe I'm noisy, but does he have to bring the race issue into it? As I'm saying that and walking past him, he lurches out and digs his fingers into my chest and flings me against the rock wall on the left-hand side. Swearing loudly and twisting out a brutal command for me to shutup if I know whats good for me. I dont like to be threatened or attacked by idiots, so I dont back-down, I yell back "Racist bastard, get lost." And he lifts his hand up to hit me and says as much, so I yell something about the police and kick my foot out against his leg, not in a violent way (that would have only started it off more) but in a "dont hit me" kind of way; not painful, but strong enough to let him know I wasnt interested in a knuckle sandwich. His friend is urging me to get out of there, to go home, and so the older fat man takes up on that and tells me to "go back to america, pig" or something of the sort, and I tell him again he's racist. He acts like he will get violent again, but I dont want to tell this guy its OK to harass foreign people so I just yell "racist asshole!" at him (which I guess isnt the smartest idea for my long-term health). The short fat-man starts swearing at me in bad English, and so I join with a few English swear words, but I dont want to turn this into an empty-anger macho festival. His friend by now is frantically making motions of "drinking" when his friend isnt looking (doesnt want to piss him off, I guess), trying to calm down the situation. So I guess he's just some drunk dork (or atleast thats a good enough reason for his social backwardness) and so I bark something sharp, and head off with the fat man streaming insults behind me.
Kind of creepy to think this happened at my station, I hope I dont get some fat-gangster stalking me or something. Racist freaks.

magic airwaves

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." (arthur c. clarke, author) I feel a bit like I'm in some sort of magical land. I bought a laptop yesterday; boot it up and it starts instantally sniffing the air and finds 7 local net gateways, three which have unlocked doors. pop snap crackle, I'm on the net... endless data-streams... for free, through some magic voodoo called wi-fi. coolness. more to come later. its now time to go to work... woo!

my place in the world

I've been thinking a little about my relationship with this world I exist in. (I have a lot of thinking time with no real TV, no computer and not even a radio. Cant wait to get a PC!)
Me and Japan. I dont feel like a "Japan Geek" and in fact tell myself I am not crazy about the country. With that said, I feel myself disagreeing in my head, with many of the foreign teachers about Japan. (And I'm sure they might read this, so to be clear that wasnt meant in a really negative way.) For example, semi bugs (cicadas) are hated by many of the teachers because of their shrill buzz in summer. I heard several conversations about how they cant understand how Japanese people can appreciate the bugs. But I like the noisy sound of those bugs. Yeah, its annoying but it connects me to all my other summers and reminds me how quick summer always really is. I could go on about these bugs, but the main thing I wanted to point out was my difference of opinion.
Me and dreaming.
I think of myself as being almost always half lucid when I dream. (Lucid, if you dont know for some reason, means that you are aware that you are asleep while you are sleeping.) By saying that I am half lucid, I mean that somehow I always have a sort of awareness of being in my "night movie" and its like an adventure through a land that somehow I know is a dream, even if it isnt as clear as that while dreaming. I sometimes have full lucid dreams, but not as often, so I recently used some information on the internet to try to push my dreams into full lucidity more often. The opposite has happened so far. My mischievous subconscious has used the information to "pretend" to have lucid dreams, that are still only half lucid. For example, last night I thought I woke up (that was part of the dream, unknown to me) and could feel myself being dragged back to sleep. I told myself (who was actually dreaming at the moment) that this was perfect timing for having an incubated lucid dream, I would just stay aware that I was falling asleep while I fell asleep and I would be lucid. I thought I fell asleep, although it was still a dream, and the "lucid" dream was washed out and not vivid (like its supposed to be) so I thought it was my mischievous subconscious messing with my "dream view" because it knew I was falling asleep. It was more twisted than that, my subconscious tricked me into thinking I was having a lucid dreaming when instead-- wrap your head around this one-- I was dreaming that I was dreaming lucid. Eventually after several attempts at dream-control didnt work right, and instead of seeming lucid the reactions seemed like what happens when you are in a dream (random and bubbly), my mind got a little confused, I suppose you could say I had a lucid moment inside my dream of being lucid, and so I decided to wake up and reset the process. This time when I woke up, I really woke up, and I could think clearly enough to realize the first time I hadnt really woken up and the following had been a mischievous trick I had played on myself. Yeah, its a true story, I have a very odd way of thinking which shows itself in my dreams I suppose.

trip to Niigata

Kayo and her sister Mari invited me on a "one day trip" to Niigata. We left late at night, using a Youth 18 Ticket and got to Niigata in the early morning. Mari is a big fan of Japanese History so she talked us into going to a place where a Japanese Castle used to be. We took a local train (with me opening the window and hanging out as we zoomed past deep green rice fields) to a small station where we could walk to the site. We asked the local train station man if there were any restraunts in the area and he laughed at us, too small for that. We asked about atleast any convience stores and he said "I've heard of one over that way, although I've never seen it myself." We headed over that way, and found a small convience store where we got tons of food and ate it outside while watching ants scurry below us. Then we hiked up through a green mountain, along old overgrown paths. Semi bugs hummed in the trees, the summer sun burning our skin and sweat drenching us. At the top there was nothing but the top of the mountain, the castle was removed in the Tokugawa era long ago, but the view of the city below was beautiful. Glittery small town buildings cluttered together with puffs of green trees, leading to an endless gray-blue sea on one side. After that we made our way to a rocky seaside in litterally the middle of nowhere. Our guidebook said there was a bike rental shop, but it had closed years ago. We wandered around, seeing a few sport fishermen in the river leading to the ocean, and some huge electricity generating windmills. We stopped at a large local soveniour shop and got some drinks and sat and watched the ocean while drinking. After that we took the local trian back to Niigata for a wonderful sushi dinner. The only badmark on the vacation was the fight we got into about having fights. Its an ironic thing to have a fight about I suppose, and there were many causes, with the biggest being our sleep-deprived minds. It was quite a scene, two Japanese and a foreigner screaming in a sushi joint. That calmed down and we walked back to the overnight train and took it back to Tokyo. A blur of memories that arent quite captured here in the words I've thrown out of my head.

hot day trouble

Its super hot today, my brain is melting. I came to the internet cafe and the lady said all the seats were taken in Japanese, and so I said I'd wait, and she seemed surprized and said in a heavy English accent that the place was full. I said I'd wait. Her boss came over and told me to go away in Japanese because the seats were full, and I was busy checking my cellphone e-mail so I snapped at him without polite markers in my Japanese something like "shutup, I'm waiting" and so he asked me to leave the store. I said no, I was waiting to use the internet. He put his arms on me and pushed me to the door. I dont like people to touch me if they dont know me, so I pushed his arms off me and said something to the effect of "bugger off creep, dont touch me" in Japanese and he said he would call the police. I said something like "I'm not doing anything wrong so go ahead" in a very rude way because I was annoyed with this guy, and I dont like to be pushed around. He goes off and I hear him calling the police... I was surprized because I thought he was bluffing. A seat opens up, so the staff gives me a ticket to sit down and I do. The boss comes back and gets mad at her for letting me sit down for whatever reason, I suppose because it makes your argument weak to the police if I'm quietly using the PC in the corner. I use the computer. The police actually show up, one wearing a bullet proof vest and hand hovering over what I presume is a stun gun. I kid you not. The boss-man tells them that he's sorry but its all over with now. They leave, annoyed they didnt get to bust anyone. Wow. I almost got trashed by some Japanese cops.

living in the future

Sometimes I get a little silly and feel like I'm living in the Future so to speak. Although I'm aware of time as something more complex than that bonehead statement, it felt a bit like that today. First, I got a free phonecard from my company that I programmed into my cellphone, and this morning I called direct to America to talk to my mom. Direct from my cell phone to half way around the world for a couple of cents (uhh, I mean yen), that was kind of cool when I thought about it long enough. (As a side bit of info, my mom wasnt home. I didnt recognize who answered so I asked who it was, he refused to let me know on the basis that I had called there instead of him calling here, so I said who I was and he introduced himself as my little sisters boyfriend and stuff. Time flies...) And another bit of feeling like I live in the future happened later today, Kayo is visiting Australia for a few weeks, and for no real reason I called her with the TV-phone option from my cellphone. Pres a button and up pops Kayo in Australia standing next to her host-dad, and then a bit of a backyard and some other people in vivid video. I dont know, maybe I'm being a bit old fashioned, but I thought that was cool. (as another side note, I couldnt hear much of what was being said because a train came by on my side, right when she answered. Thats the disadvantage of "use anywhere" technology I suppose.) And as a bit of final from the future thoughts, I want to make sure everyone knows my cellphone is the "keitai" that is referenced in the scroll graphic on the sidebar. So yeah its pictures sent direct from my cellphone to an online album, please check it out as much as you want. Oh yeah, uh huh uh huh.

work and such things

And yes. I am part of the rat race again. I am a worker bee... only not female... and bigger and stuff. Okay. You got the idea. I'm getting off track here. I like working again, it feels great to be back in the room with students teaching after about an 8 month pause of nothing. Of course the company I'm going with doesnt offer too many options for full teaching, but so far I'm really liking it. They got new books, which are better than the old ones and really make it fun for the teacher and student if used right I guess. My coworkers seem good so far, the students have been a blast, and the work area is cool. Thats about all I have to say about that I guess, dont hit your head against the floor with boredom please.

14th vlog - my old cellphone

This is my old Japanese cellphone. It's about 6 years old. I pulled it out recently and recharged it. It still works fine, although it has one small visual glitch on the display. I decided to play with it, and heres the true result. And yes, that's me screaming like a dying cow.