Home for the Holidays

I spent only one Christmas in Japan. While my family was trimming trees, wrapping gifts, and diving into a double batch of my aunt's famous bourbon balls, I got up as I did every other Sunday morning and caught my subway train at the normal time. In general, the Japanese ignore Christmas, but my gaijin friends and I had taken a few measures to make sure the time-honored Western holiday didn't pass entirely without notice: we had organized a little gift exchange among the teachers in our office; we had begged and bribed the Japanese staff to arrange the day's schedule so that we all could eat lunch together; and Dom had made a dinner reservation for a large group of us at a pub in Kyoto.

I met up with Dom on the subway and we made our ritual morning stop in Starbucks. The Bux in Yamashina is right next to the train station -- the commuting caffeine addict's dream -- and we call it "The Bux" as if it were an old drinking buddy of ours, which it sort of is. Somewhere between the half'n'half and the platform, I got a call from my mother. Because of the time difference, it was still Christmas Eve at home, and I wasn't surprised to have her call me from the treeside with a little holiday cheer.

She wasn't calling with holiday cheer.

She was calling to tell me my grandfather had just passed away that afternoon.



I knew before I went to Japan that my grandfather was dying. I had spent most of the previous summer driving him back and forth for dialysis three times a week and buying him Frosties and ginger ale, since he couldn't keep anything else down. By the time I had my bags packed, he was bed-ridden, and when I saw him for the last time in mid-September, he was so thin that only his ribcage and his feet made any noticeable lift in the bedsheet. He told me to be careful and have fun and send him pictures of Japanese cars.



Working on Christmas Day is depressing enough, but it's unbearable to work on Christmas Day on the opposite side of the world from where your family is coping with the loss of its patriarch. Particularly when you don't have any bourbon balls to help ease the pain. I told Dom what had happened while we waited for our train, then I locked it in a small back closet of my brain to be dealt with at a more convenient time.

When we arrived at the office, we skimmed the daily schedule. Much to my dismay, the staff girls had shifted my lunch hour back one time slot to accommodate a student. This meant that the lunch we'd planned -- with pizza and our gift exchange and the very naughty bottle of wine tucked in my purse -- wasn't going to happen. All the guys still had their break together, but I was scheduled to eat alone on Christmas Day.

I was already resigned to this being the worst Christmas ever, so I sighed and started heading upstairs. Dom, on the other hand, had this interchange with Mariko, the Japanese staff girl who happened unluckily to be nearby:

"Why did the schedule change? Last night, we all had the same lunch."

"O, sorry, Dom-san. The student wanted lesson."

"Well, call the student back. We're having lunch together."

"Eh? No, I can't, Dom-san."

"Mariko, it's Christmas!"

At this point in the conversation, between his bright orange hair and his face flushed in frustration, Dom was starting to look like a human fireball. I don't know if it was nervousness or panic, but Mariko made the terrible mistake of giggling. Then she shrugged at Dom and said, "Christmas... it's not so important to Japanese."

O no, no, no. Foolish girl. You don't giggle at a man who is spending his second Christmas away from his mother and who has put all his excess energy into salvaging some little bit of holiday cheer for this motley crew of gaijin who are the closest thing to a family that any of us have.

"Christmas... it's not so important to Japanese," she said, and she shook her head at him.

Dom drew himself to his full height. By Western standards, he's not a tall man, but he positively towered over that little Japanese woman. I thought he was going to shout at her, but when his answer came out, it was a low growl, dark, and full of danger: "Well... we're not fucking Japanese."

I knew Dom had that stereotypical ginger-headed temper, that he'd been known to say and do things hastily, but I was floored. I knew that he didn't hate Japanese people. In fact, I knew he liked this particular staff girl quite a bit. But she had crossed a line. He slammed the door and remained in stony silence as we rode the elevator up to the fifth floor. A few minutes later, another staff girl came up with a new copy of the schedule.



We had our lunch together that day, and we had our wine and pizza. I gave Dom a scarf and Tasi gave me a plush Tasmanian tiger. And that night we met up with about twenty friends for mashed potatoes and corned beef at the pub. Even Erica, who would normally not be caught dead in public with us, came out for dinner. It certainly wasn't a perfect Christmas, but in spite of the rough start, the long work day, and all the students who stared blankly at us every time we wished them a Merry Christmas, that dinner stands out as one of the warmest evenings I spent in Japan. We were all wretchedly homesick and much more subdued than usual (apart from a brief incident involving a popper and an unfortunately placed votive), but we took comfort in the discovery that sometimes your family is who you're born to and sometimes your family is whoever happens to be close by when you need someone to care about you. It wasn't perfect, but it was enough.

In Search

i'm not sure if it's something i miss about japan or just something to do with growing older, but i'm in search of more quietness in my life.

The Uterus Tax

one of the things i miss most about japan is the trains. you just can't beat
the ease and reliability of japanese public transport. and honestly, who doesn't want a commute to work that involves zoning out with your ipod, texting novellas to your friends, putting on your make-up, and drinking your coffee or beer (coffee on the way in; beer on the way out) in total safety and serenity. it's an extra twenty minutes of responsibility-free lounging before you arrive at the office and hop back on the hamster wheel. not to mention the infinite joys of train games such as train surfing, shown here. incidently, this is the same day that marley, the indian/trinidadian/canadian wonder on the right, got shoved off the train. poor marley.

(see the addendum to The Anti-Climax for an explanation of why american trains don't cut the mustard.)

well, dorothy, we're not in japan anymore. here in the u.s. of a, if you have places to go, you need a car to get there. americans love cars. almost as much as we love guns. nothing gets us off more than having a gun in the back seat of our car. it's the american way.

enter my car. she's a mercury mystique -- notice how we love cars so much, they get to be called "she" instead of "it" -- a 1995, which is far from new, but her only previous owner was a little old lady who drove her to the grocery store and to church and nowhere else. when i got her, she had a staggering 30,000 miles on her. unbelievable. and o so beautiful. an added bonus: mystiques normally come with a little four-banger engine, but mine has a v6. this means that i will kick your ass in a drag race any day of the week. try me.

however, at the end of the day, a twelve year-old car is still a twelve year-old car, so we obviously have a few maintenance issues. right before i left for new york (literally the day before), one of these issues chose to rear its ugly head. it happened like this...

because i'm a delinquent cat parent, i often drop him off at my mother's when i decide to skip town in search of adventure or when i'm running from my creditors and crack dealers. on this particular occasion, i just get him settled in for another stay at "grandma's" and am about to pull out when the coolant light on the dash comes on. ok, no biggie. i stop the car, pop the hood, and sure enough, my coolant's a little low. i bee-bop into the garage and grab a bottle, top it off, and think i'm set to go. o no, no, no. as i start her back up, my mother comes running down the driveway after me.

"wait! i know why your coolant was low!"

"other than because there wasn't enough coolant in the tank?"

"don't get smart with me. it's leaking. it's dripping all over the driveway."

"well, i'm supposed to be in *insert name of other, slightly cooler town* in half an hour for dinner with *insert name of hot guy*, so... i don't care."

"well... you could take some coolant with you and top it off again later, but if the hose goes... especially since you're driving all the way to *other town*... you should really have somebody look at it before you take it on the highway, honey."

somehow by adding "honey" to the end of things, she always sounds so reasonable. so since she's my mom, i do what she says and i head over to an auto shop. the two auto shops we use are actually kitty-corner from each other on the same intersection. i randomly chose one. for our purposes, we shall call it "bill's".

bill checks out the car while i wait. a good twenty minutes later, he returns with bad news -- it's not a leaky hose; it's the water pump, which circulates the coolant through the engine. this is a biggie. if i had gotten on the highway, i would have basically toasted my engine and had to thumb my way home. thanks, mom.

but the news gets worse. a mystique is a smallish car and it turns out that the location of the water pump is somewhat problematic. bill tells me they'll actually have to take the engine out of the car in order to reach the pump, a job which will take four to five hours. i'm already late for dinner. did i mention it was dinner with a guy? and that he's hot?

bill insists that the car's in really bad shape and i shouldn't even drive it home. well, so much for dinner. i call my mom to get a ride home. one ringie dingie... two ringie dingies... no answer. hmm, i muse... how curious. i try her cell. same story. then i remember she had said something about mowing the lawn... dammit! it'll be at least an hour before she gets a message. so i'm going to be at bill's reading last january's "better homes and gardens" for a while. i call my dinner date to cancel and explain the situation, hoping he believes me and doesn't think i just bailed.

"*long explanation of my current conundrum*... so i guess i'm not going to make it up for dinner. i'm really sorry."

"where are you now?"

"at the auto shop."

"is someone coming to get you."

"no, not yet. i left a message for my mom, but i think she's mowing the lawn."

"what's she doing mowing the lawn? that's a man's job!"

"*laughter* i know! tell that to my dad!"

"well, stay put. i'm on my way."

the tone with which he says this conjures vague childhood memories of batman on the red phone with the commissioner and inside i swoon a little bit. on the outside, i protest -- it's too far and he really shouldn't go to all the trouble... but he's already walking out the door and before he hangs up i can hear his car starting.

so dinner was saved, but i had to abandon my car at bill's while i was in the adirondacks. when i picked it up a week and a half later, his $500 estimate had lept to $650. yikes methinks as i write a check. that's gonna leave a mark. just to make my day a little better, he stops me on my way out and explains that they also found a problem with the o2 sensors. (o2 means oxygen, he explains, as if i didn't pass fifth grade science.) there are four of them -- three are completely shot and the fourth is going, so they all need to be replaced. he estimates $90 per part and $120 in labour, which will be another $500 by the time you add tax and such. brilliant. i sigh and set up an appointment to bring it back in.

i take the receipt home to file it with other work we've had done on the car and i am astounded to find another receipt from the auto shop across the street -- paul's -- for the exact same job early last fall. my parents have had this car for a while now, and less than a year ago, they replaced that same water pump. this raises a wide variety of disturbing epiphanies. first and foremost, the water pump paul installed was under warranty, and thus if i had taken it back to him, he would have replaced it for free. $650 thrown to the wind. but it gets better.

the overall job at paul's cost only $400, a whopping 40% less than bill's version of the same repair. confuseb and a bit irritated, i start looking at the fine print. $110 for paul's water pump; $160 for bill's. $15 for a belt at paul's; $30 at bill's. $15 for fresh coolant at paul's; $25 at bill's. 2.8 hours of labour at paul's vs 4.5 at bill's. for the same bloody job! that's $180 for paul's labour and $280 for bill's. then my favourite -- as i'm looking at the charges on bill's bill, i notice something kind of funny: less than $250 in parts plus less than $300 in labour plus $15 in taxes magically equals more than $650 total. you don't have to take non-euclidian geometries to figure out that that's bullshit, and i f*cking aced non-euclidian geometries.

i'm flying into an apoplectic rage about now. i leap back into my g-mobile and all six cylinders buzz me over to bill's to read him the riot act. i try to be polite to the receptionist 'cuz none of this is her fault, but she can probably see the plumes of donald duckesque red smoke billowing from my ears.

bill is, of course, shocked and appalled at the mathematical "error" and slyly attempts to blame it on the receptionist who has conveniently left the room. almost instantly, he pulls the difference of $100 out of his wallet in cold, hard cash and thrusts it at me, all the while blubbering about how his accountant would have caught that mistake. she surely would have called me in a day or two.

then let me ask you this, bill: shouldn't you give me my refund in the form of a check so that you have some written record to show your accountant when she comes asking?

"o no," he's floundering big time now, "not necessary. i just prefer cash 'cuz it's faster."

yeah, that's the same thing my crack dealer says.

next i set my two receipts on the counter side-by-side and demand an explanation of the pricing difference. why is your water pump worth $160 when paul charged me $110 for the same part? and the belt? the coolant? the labour??

blah blah blah, bill tries valiantly to explain something about the quality of the parts and warranties and such.

this is hard to swallow since i was just on the phone with paul who assured me the pump and belt both have lifetime warranties. the pump, in fact, is the newest model they can get their hands on, absolutely 100% satisfaction guarenteed. through the whole ordeal, paul's a total star and even though i took my problem to the guy across the street, he's willing to refund me the cost of the defective part. he is in no way obligated to do this. he's just nice.

bill's voice is starting to remind me of charlie brown's mom and i know that the 100 bucks in my pocket is the only useful thing i'm going to get out of him, so i start to collect my papers and walk out. in the last death throes of our customer service relationship, he changes strategies and offers me some "good" news -- it turns out he was wrong about those o2 sensors. only one of them is really bad and a second one going, so i'll just have to have two of them replaced instead of all four.

i almost laugh aloud because he has got to be a cokehead if he thinks he's ever touching my car again.

i've heard other women complain about the uterus tax that you pay when you take your car to a shop yourself, instead of having your husband/boyfriend/father take it in for you. i always thought it was sort of an urban legend. well, somebody call "myth busters." of course, some of the additional fees on bill's water pump job were probably related to the fact that i was going out of town and not just the fact that i don't have a penis, but in total they amounted to $250 worth of bullshit charges, not including the upcoming $500+ o2 sensor replacement.

unfortunately for bill, i'm ballsy enough that i pulled right out of his parking lot and into paul's where i had him run a scope on my car. you'll be relieved to know, dear reader, that my o2 sensors are just fine.

First Impressions

Last week I got a call from my college roommate Liz. She was always very close to her family, her mom especially, so after we graduated, she moved back to Minnesota where she's been (un)happily teaching elementary school. She called me to tell me that she had done something very scary: she had made a major life decision without her mom's approval, without her mom's input even. She decided to quit her job and move down south with her boyfriend. Dad was supportive, but Mom was (naturally) upset and hurt. Liz was determined to follow through on her plan... and also terrified. Everything was so overwhelming, the packing and planning, the whole idea of being in a new place, having a new life.

So I told her the story of my first night in Japan...

My arrival in Japan went fairly smoothly at first. I was met at Kansai International Airport by a collared and neck-tied NOVA company man who took me and a few other greenhorns to Umeda Station in Osaka. There we were split up and put on different trains headed toward our respective destinations. I was aimed in the direction of Kyoto, along with another American. We were told to stay on the train until it arrived in Omihachiman. There, another company rep would meet us on the platform and take us to our new apartments. I was relieved to have a travel buddy, and we eagerly took note of every station name along the way, checking and double-checking our map to make sure we didn't miss our stop. (Once you get used to trains, missing a stop is nothing more than a slight inconvenience, easily rectified, but on that first trip, the stop after Omihachiman might just as well have been the edge of the world, a great black hole, eternal oblivion.)

Finally the train puffed into our station. We were standing at the door, backpacks over our shoulders, long before it came to a jerky halt. The door swished open and we hopped out, craning our necks up and down the platform to find our next guide.

There was no one on the platform. After some waiting and debating, we decided to go up into the station. It took several minutes to decide which staircase to take. (When we finally chose, we quickly discovered they led to different ends of the exact same, very small room. Japan: 1; Us: 0)

Still no one.

After quite a bit of nervous pacing and discussing our very limited options of action, we spotted a NOVA sign just across the street -- one little spark of familiarity. We jumped at it and started heading that way. As we were crossing the walkway over the busy traffic, we were met halfway by a young, smartly dressed Japanese woman. She asked if we were the new teachers. Ah, yes! We were! She led us through the labyrinth of a shopping mall to a tiny company office tucked in a corner and explained that our guide was running late and would arrive shortly. Until then, we could wait in the teachers' break room. We sat in the cramped room (more a hallway with a coffee pot than a staff lounge) and waited anxiously, reading every scrap of paper pinned to the wall. Finally our guide, a red-headed Kiwi with a brisk, down-to-business attitude, came bustling in and whisked us on our way.

This is where it got good.

He whipped out a little hand-drawn map and decided that the other girl's apartment was closer. We headed east on the main road. After a few minutes, we got out of the business district and wound our way through some quieter, residential streets. We were enraptured by the rows of beautiful Japanese homes with weathered wooden walls and tiled roofs, persimmon trees loaded with fruit and peeping over garden gates, hibiscus and a thousand other flowers with names we didn't know but that must have been glorious and exotic.

After about twenty minutes of walking, we arrived at the apartment. Her roommates -- two Canadians -- weren't at home, but they'd left her a welcome note. We stayed only a minute to settle her in before Kiwi was off again in the direction of my new apartment.

First, we back-tracked the twenty minutes we had just come, back down the main road, back past the office and train station, and continuing west. And continuing west. And continuing west. Shops gave way to houses, which grew sparser and sparser, charmingly interspersed with small rice fields and winding streams. About thirty minutes after we'd passed the office, Kiwi consulted his map. He was certain we were on the right road, but we hadn't come far enough yet -- we still had to cross a river and a set of train tracks. He muttered something about the map perhaps not being to scale... Are you sure, Kiwi?? We continued walking. He was a bit embarrassed and tried to make light of the situation. He pointed ahead. "See that white building there?"

"Yes..." I replied with a glimmer of hope.

"Well, that's not it either."

Very funny, Kiwi.

Finally, we crossed the river, then the train tracks. A few minutes later, we found it. This put me at over a forty-five minute walk from the train station and the city center.

Kiwi stayed just long enough to toss me the key, chide me for forgetting to take off my shoes, and turn the water heater on. Then I was alone.

Unlike the other new recruit, I had no roommates. (The girl who was supposed to be my roommate ended up not coming to Japan at all, which is another long story.) The grocery store was right next to the train station, a forty-five minute hike away. Even if I'd had food, I wouldn't have been able to eat it -- my stomach was turned completely up-side-down by the fourteen hour time change and I hadn't been able to keep anything down since the airline food. My luggage, which the company had shipped separately, was not scheduled to arrive until the next afternoon (and though I didn't know it at the time, would actually arrive a day later). This meant I couldn't take a shower at the end of my day of hiking -- I had no towels or clean clothes. Obviously, since the place had been vacant, there was no phone or internet hook-up, so though I had an international calling card, I couldn't use it. The soonest I'd be able to acquire a cell phone would be at our training session, two days later. The only pay phone I knew of was in the train station.

So there I was on the wrong side of the world, hungry, tired, sweaty, and completely alone. That's how my experience in Japan began.

(If your first night in Georgia sucks that much, I told Liz, you can call me in tears and I'll understand.)

I survived though, and things got better. Much better. Especially after I started work about a week later and met crazy Aussies at my office and a kaleidoscope of other characters.

That's how it always is when you start over new. I'm very proud of Liz. She'll be scared, but she'll be happy too.

San-jo Bridge... filled with so many memories

Spheres of Influence

Before you become a teacher, you're always hearing about what an incredible influence they have over students. People tell you "O! You're going to be such a role model! Students will hang on your every word" etc. They tell you that, but you don't believe it.

Then you have students.

When I was teaching in Japan, I was fortunate to be in a position where I had a very wide variety of students, in terms of both age and skill. I taught group children's classes with kids as young as three and adults, in groups and one-on-one, of all ages. One of my favorites was a woman named Nobuko. She was an older lady with three grown children of her own -- a son and two daughters, all older than me. Like many retired Japanese people, she took English lessons as a hobby, but unlike most of them, she was very, very good. Her son was also a student at our office, and her superior skill in English was a constant source of irritation for him.

Because she was so fluent in English, we very rarely used official lessons from the book; we just chatted about anything we could think of -- her life, my life, men (in general and in specific), current events, and especially Japanese and American cultures. One morning, we got to talking about kimono. She was trying to sell her house and move to a smaller one, and in order to do that, wanted to unload about fifty kimono, most of them antiques. She said she wanted to give one to me. After the three customary exchanges of refusal and insistence, I caved.

Socializing with students is officially forbidden in our company. "Socializing" includes not only going out to a club with them or taking them home to bed, but any contact outside of a lesson. I believe "the giving or receiving of gifts" is stated verbatim in our contract as a forbidden form of socializing. Nobuko took this incredibly seriously and actually slipped me a note in the middle of a lesson telling me when and where to meet her. When I arrived at the appointed place and time, she was standing with a bundle in her hand. A quick exchange of bows and arigatos and, just like a real ninja, she vanished into the crowd.

The kimono, shown here, was not a simple cotton yukata like I'd expected. I got the full story the next time I saw her. It went something like this:

"This kimono was my mother's. I'm sorry it is not long. When I was married, she re-made it for me, half, so I could wear it over my wedding kimono. Also, when she did this she put a new lining in. I'm very sorry this lining is only cotton, not silk."

I insisted that it was gorgeous and perfect and flawless and absolutely amazing, as it truly was. The fact that it was lined at all made it approximately 385% more awesome than the other two kimono i owned (one blue silk that I'd bought at a temple market, the other a yukata from another Japanese friend). And the personal history of it -- unbelievable! I wonder if her son knows she gave it to me. I wonder if he's pissed.

Of course, we had to repeat another ninja ritual gift exchange when I thanked her.

But making such an impact on your students is not always a good thing. My high school students, for example, actually do hang on every word out of my mouth. They think they're really hip and independent, so they will deny this 'til hell freezes over, but it's true.

Here's how I know:

To kill a little extra time one day, I started showing a couple of my juniors how to write their names in katakana. This is a neat trick because it looks really difficult but is actually quite simple to learn.

One of the kids was getting pretty excited about it. He sleeps a lot in class, doesn't do any homework, and is generally drifting through life waiting for a lightning bolt, so seeing him get fired up about something was, I thought, pretty cool.

No, not cool.

A few days later he came to class with my sketchy little katakana version of his name tattooed on his arm. TATTOOED. FOREVER. FOR E VER!

Seriously, what are these kids thinking?

Carving a Niche

Apartment living here, there, and everywhere

My friend Josh (or "Tasmanian Josh" as I usually call him when telling stories about him) just moved from his little apartment in Shiga to a littler one in Osaka. This is the first time he's been living on his own -- no family, no roomies, no nobody. The place was completely empty, so he had to go out and do a little shopping. For the first time in his life, he now owns an ironing board.

They grow up so fast, don't they?

My first apartment in Japan was sublet by my company, way out in the middle of nowhere. I was a forty-five minute walk from the train station, grocery store, pay phone, etc. and the rent was outrageous. But on the plus side, I had sliding glass doors that led to my tatami-floored bedroom where I slept on a futon on the floor. It was all very Japanesey. (See below, left.) After a brief spell there, I couldn't handle the commute or the rent anymore, so I moved into Yamashina, a suburb of Kyoto, and lived in a much older, much more genuinely Japanese home (below, right).

If there's any doubt in your heart as to which place was more traditionally Japanese, take a quick gander at the toilets and you'll figure it out...

In both these places, I had roommates. In the apartment, she was a very cranky Aussie -- actually the only cranky Aussie I know; most of them are absolute stars -- and I was glad to get away from her when I moved. The girls in the other house were more laid back, but we didn't ever become very close as I spent most of my free time with people from my office. These roommates also worked in Kyoto, whereas my friends and I worked in the more rural Shiga, so our social circles were a little different. Still, we co-existed peacefully enough and it was with great sadness that I left our little tile-roofed, tatami-floored domicile.

Once I had secured a job here at home, I needed to get out of my parents' house. I love my parents very deeply, but living seven thousand miles away from them and then moving back in was absolutely un-rock. I started apartment-hunting via the internets (mostly the big one). I'd been sitting in one coffee shop all summer filling out job applications and it actually made me sick to my stomach to go in there, so I changed locales to a little bookstore downtown. My friend Sisi, who is the most organized and systematic person I have ever known, came with me and made pro/con lists and did math involving rent rates, utilities, and other facets of my financial life.

Sisi was extremely helpful and after exploring several different options, we found a great little place. Highlights: it's well within my price range; as long as he behaves, I can keep my cat, Benedick, here; I'm allowed to paint the walls; and none of the neighbors seem to be crack addicts, or at least, they're very quiet crack addicts.

Ben chillaxin' in our new pad

I didn't go out and buy an ironing board (I stole an old one of my brother's instead -- he has a wife now; he doesn't iron), but nothing makes you feel all grown up quite as much as living alone.

The Anti-Climax

Just a quick note on the rest of the weekend, and a Chicago story I can't resist telling you...

We spent most of the day Saturday on the phone trying to convince people they wanted to go out Saturday night, all to no avail. An epidemic of lameness was sweeping across the entire city.

Just when all hope seemed lost, we got one taker and went out to meet him. Now, I give him major props for coming out at all, but unfortunately, he showed up in a baggy t-shirt, long shorts, and gym shoes. I would never judge a man by his fashion sense, but evidently every bouncer in Chicago would. Even with two hot chickies like us in tow, he couldn't get in anywhere. We walked for ages 'til finally one semi-polite bouncer at "Shenanigans" (which I'm told is a great place) sent us around the corner to somewhere with "a more... relaxed dress code." Thank you, bouncer. Thank you for nothing.

The place he referred us to was McFadden's, a pseudo-Irish pub. I once went to O'Hagans Irish pub (corner of Clark and Roscoe) and rather enjoyed the fact that 1) the barman was actually Irish, 2) it was full of actual Irish guys with names like "Patty" and "Colm", and 3) they were watching rugby on the tele. McFadden's was the polar opposite in an incredibly disappointing way. I could go on for hours, but I'll spare you. To sum up: it was full of douchebags. Definition of douchebag: those guys who are not attractive or interesting in any way but were "cool" in high school and haven't grown out of it. The bottom line: you should never go into a bar where they play "Livin' on a Prayer," but you should especially never go into a bar where they play "Livin' on a Prayer" and, in a terrifying karaoke-from-hell-esque scenario, eighty-seven douchebags burst into song. We were compelled to escape and ran (literally) out the door and down the street laughing.

Because we are awesome and were equipped with witty intellects and comfortable shoes, we still had a good time, but it was nowhere near the caliber of Friday night. Moral of the story: it really is who you know.

I was supposed to stay in Chicago another night, but things were so dead, I actually came home early. This shall go down in history as the least climactic weekend of my young adult life.

* * * *

Before I sign off, I've got to share a little tidbit with you about the last time I ventured over to Chicago...

Whoever Said "Getting There is Half the Fun" Never Rode Amtrak

When I lived in Omihachiman, Japan, I rode my bike fifteen minutes to the train station every morning, hopped on the Biwako 9:16, got off twenty minutes later in Kusatsu, and walked five minutes to my office. After I moved to Yamashina, I had to walk out the door at 8:50, catch the 8:53 subway from Ono, change at Yamashina Eki for the 9:05, arrive in Kusatsu fourteen minutes later, and walk five minutes to the office. Five days a week -- about $100 per month. And you could set your watch by the trains.

Imagine my dismay, then, when I rode the Amtrak this weekend. Of course, the Amtrak is a long-distance passenger train, not a commuter train, and the weather was poor, and there were other complications, and excuses, excuses. But honestly, folks, this was over the top.

I'd been told that the trains often run late (typically an hour or so by the time they've gone from Detroit to Chicago on this particular line), so when we departed thirty-five minutes behind schedule, I wasn't too fussed. I settled in next to a U of M student on his way home from Ann Arbor for the weekend, and we both listened happily to our iPods 'til he hopped off (an hour behind schedule) in Kalamazoo. A student from Western got on there and took his seat next to me -- headed home to Chicago to take his girlfriend out for a late Valentine's.

Here comes the good part. We stopped in Niles, Michigan, to let out, what? One passenger? After we'd been sitting there several minutes, the conductor announced that we'd be sitting a few minutes more. A freight train had, for some undisclosed reason, been unable to complete its trip to Chicago that night, and we were going to take some cars containing certain important "equipment" from that train and haul them the rest of the way. This little switcheroo would take approximately thirty minutes "if everything goes as planned." Ah, the great, all-powerful "IF." So hundreds of passengers (ie, people/customers/etc) sat and twiddled their thumbs so that some mysterious stuff (that is, not people/customers/etc) could get to Chicago.

Time ticked by. The fellow next to me produced three packs of Pez candy from some pocket and began pondering aloud how long one could survive on nothing but three packs of Pez candy. (On a side note, he ate them straight out of the wrapper, which I think is the first time I've seen someone eat Pez without an official Pez dispenser. I found it strangely barbaric.) Two college students behind me carried on an intense and endless discussion of their favorite films and television shows -- the longest amount of time I've heard two people talk without mentioning a single real life occurrence. They literally must have dropped two hundred names without once mentioning a person they actually know. Amazing. I was beginning to think they were from some alternate dimension in which unreality is the only reality...

Two hours after we arrived in Niles, the conductor informed us that there was a slight delay. (In case, perhaps, there was someone deaf, blind, and dead on the train who hadn't yet noticed.) The transfer of the freight cars had gone smoothly enough, but they were now experiencing some difficulty with the air compressor that controlled that rather crucial locomotive element -- the brakes. Brilliant. If we didn't get moving "shortly" (however long "shortly" might be), he assured us there were buses on the way to pick us up and take us the rest of the way to Chicago. This announcement was met with a groan from the whole assembly -- obviously, if we wanted to ride on a bus we'd have saved ourselves the money and done that in the first place.

An hour after that, there were still no buses, there was nothing to eat or drink that didn't cost you an organ, everybody who wasn't asleep was bored senseless, and worse yet, everybody's iPod batteries were in the red. Things were getting desperate. Pez boy was out of sugar, and even Siskel and Ebert behind us were groping tragically for something to talk about. Just when all hope seemed lost, the train lurched forward -- now a mere four and a half hours behind schedule, in case you weren't doing the math.

I slept fitfully the rest of the way to Chicago, but all that added weight must have slowed us down. We arrived in Chicago at 3:30 am, Central Time -- five and a half hours late. Union Station was deserted -- no commuter trains, no buses, no taxis. Those unlucky enough to not have a car waiting for them or a taxi company number in their cell phone were, as the French say, "s.o.l." and spent the remainder of the night sleeping in the station.

All told, my four-hour train ride lasted NINE HOURS and was definitely not half the fun of my weekend in Chicago. It wasn't even one one-thousandth of the fun. In fact, you could safely say it was no frickin' fun at all.

Truly, the beauty of capitalism is that a company can't do this to its customers in a civilized society. They'd be exposing their jugular directly to their competition's blade. But somehow in America, capitalism has failed in the locomotive business on a massive scale. Amtrak has no competition, and so, no blade to fear, no consequences for stopping whatever train wherever for however long for whatever reason and making no apologies about it. Welcome to Amtrack -- We do whatever we feel like 'cuz there's no other train for you to ride. Well, Amtrak, I don't care how expensive parking is -- next time, I'm just going to bloody drive.

Wasting Away

Many factors, both personal and professional, influenced the timing of my return to the US. It's no secret that our economy is in a bit of a shambles, and teaching jobs are hard to come by. You can get a job pretty easily if you're willing to move out into the foothills of Tennessee or to a dark alley somewhere in New York, but why risk your health when you can move abroad and get a cushy chain-school job instead?

After several months in Japan, I heard a rumor that a position was opening up at my alma mater -- a bit rough around the edges at times, but a good school, close to my family and willing to pay me well. I couldn't pass up the opportunity. I had been planning a visit home anyway because one of my brothers was getting married, so I simply put in my notice at the chain-school and changed my round-trip ticket to one-way.

Well, it wasn't really that simple.

Moving anywhere, especially alone, is always a return to square one. You wipe out every aspect of your daily life and start building something new. I knew that would be the case when I moved to Japan, but I was surprised to find that startling sensation of the Blank Slate was even worse coming home, perhaps because it was unexpected.

My friends in Japan were a tight-knit group, boisterous and spontaneous and utterly free from self-consciousness and responsibility. I reluctantly left them behind and returned home to find that nearly everyone I knew had moved away or gotten married and dropped off the social radar. My parents were in town, but my brothers and sister were out carving their own niches in the world. My British boyfriend, who had originally talked about joining me in the States once he got the paperwork sorted out, ran into a million frustrations trying to get a visa. Combine that with the toll the distance took on our relationship, and we went down like a sumo wrestler made of nato and chopsticks. To top off the loneliness and listlessness I felt, the job I had come home for dissolved into legend. Perfect.

It is a well-known fact in life: if you are happy, stay where you are. Stirring things up will only leave you wishing you hadn't.

The Intro

All this happened, more or less...

I'm a teacher, sort of. Don't get me wrong -- by "sort of," I don't mean I'm that weirdo teacher you had for American history with the gigantic pink lips who pronounced Illinois "ill a noise." I'm a good teacher. And I'm frickin' hip.

I'm just not a lifer. This is one of many adventures I'm passing through.

My last adventure was to pack a bag after my college graduation and move to Japan. Lots of people from home acted like this was special, but if you do a quick blog search for something like "teaching in Japan" or "foreigner in Japan" or I''m a gaijin," you'll see that practically everybody and his red-headed cousin has lived in Japan. This is a good thing. I love Japan and I'm down with anybody who wants to live there or visit there or sit at home and have a vicarious gaijin experience through his red-headed cousin's blog.


However, what's unique about my experience is that... well, it's over. And now I'm back home trying to re-acclimate to the U.S. of A. I thought this would be a fairly quick and comfortable transition, like sliding back into bed after a shivery midnight jaunt to the toire. Turns out, it's more like crawling back into the womb. I'll let you think about that analogy for second...

The web is well supplied with blogs about living abroad. This is a blog about trying to come home.

Kansai at dusk