Uhm, citizen tax, iPod, watch strap and other minor annoyances

I feel stupid being poor.

Well, not poor like I am forced to starve poor, I do eat avocado and camembert and fresh bread from a nice bakery on regular basis, but I just don`t like being caught in the midst of things crashing, tearing, breaking, bringing official letters that almost always mean you have to give rather big part of the sum you earn to the blood sucking stately organizations for this reason or another, in this case for one`s simple existence.

Am I being rather cryptic?
Well, two days ago I received an official letter in Japanese which I had no chance in the world to be able to understand with looong numbers on it, such as 17000 and 68000 with Yen marks in front of them and surprisingly, a lot of smiley faces all around them. It was the citizen tax. I wonder whether the smilies were there to make you feel a lot better about giving up all this money you have earned bathing in sweat and have not counted on parting with.

This letter came the evening of the day when my iPod resigned its post and decided to leave its body without its soul~the 10gb of the songs I had went up to Heaven together with the poor iPod himself.
At the Apple store, at the Genius Bar, they told me than they could repair it for me, where the reparaition meant replacement of the iPod. I have two choices they said. Either order the same model I had, but a new product, for 29000Yen, or I buy a new model for 29000Yen. Fair is fair I say (doh!).
What I also said to them was that they should write it in the product information that iPods are on general basis liable to break down after 2-3 years from the date of purchase, so people can count on such occurrences and make sure they have a back up of all in the iPod. When I asked whether they have a lot of people popping by with suddenly and unexpectedly non-functioning iPods he said, ’少なくない。’(not few-a smooth diplomatic answer). I told him to suggest, if he ever gets the chance, to one of the important people, that they should make products that are more people-friendly. It is a very important thing that they receive such a message!
And then (doh!#2) I said bye and that once I have money I will come and buy the new model.
Aren't I ridiculous???
After all this I am still willing and even wanting to go and act as if no moral crisis were at hand! What a little hypocrite me!

And so, yes, the iPod stopped working on the same day my leather watch strap stopped holding my watch tied around my wrist in a circular form. I glued it so that it would.
How cheapskate can one get? (Especially after making a purchase at Victoria's Secret for 60 Pounds~though would I be allowed to use this as my mitigating circumstance?)

I dont want to be negative or anything, but after I came back from work today I found a baby praying mantice on one of the cucumber leaves. Possibly eating my cucumber leaves!!!
Wouldn't that just round it off???

Somtimes I wish I was immoral.

Sometimes I do truly wish I was an immoral bitch.
There are times when this quality would make things in life so much easier for me to deal with.
Like now.
Yesterday I was offered a position that would provide me with a month and a half of holiday and such pay in the next three months that I would be comfortable and ready to welcome this long vacation and my mum on her visit in August.
As it is though, me being an individual of a high sense for one's duties and responsibilities, a looser with high moral standards and overpowering conscience, I end up starting my new job a month later than this dream offered, purely in order not to screw over my current employers and colleagues, break the hearts of my children and shock their parents into distrust and thus am ending up screwing over my own self in a way for despite having my starting day as off July there is no position for me to fill in at that time just as yet.
What this means is that I shall have to dig into my savings in order to survive the summer which means that as I start my fulltime ALT position in Septemner I might as well start on the savings all over again...
...BUT what it also means is that the next two months, not counting in June, appear to me to be of a rather vague and blurry nature,... rather FREE I dare to say.
I have not a clue about what is going to happen to me and I feel eliberated!
I am laughing inside with relief as I was laughing outside yesterday when I finished the consultation with my new employer.
I have no idea what the immediate future holds for me, I might be poor again, but I know that holding on to my moral self I will be able to re-start again and do so with no negative hindrances, something like the new hybrid cars at traffic lights. Eco!
One's moral values, a filter to one's self! Being Eco to one's inner environment. Selfvironmental.

***How could I ever build my happiness, and believe I could keep it, on the bent aching backs of others??!!!*** ~is the moral of my story!*

The post in which I am going to write about weird things I encounter on my way to and from work and elsewhere.

This is going to be a post in which I shall recount on all the weird things I come across wherever I may be finding the existence of my physical and metaphysical being.

*I shall begin with the most recent occurence. It was like this. I was cycling home, it was at the point of the day when it was almost dark, but not quite dark enough yet. The stage after dusk. Not that it mattered in this story at all. I was cycling and so was a young man I could see diagonally in front of me, cycling. Suddenly this young man as he was cycling along he starting hopping on his bike. It looked somewhat like when one stands up on his pedals when you need more dynamic power and weight going up a hill, but there was no hill where we were cycling with this young man both the same direction, and he was not standing himself up on his pedals. He was simply cycling forwards as one is inclined to and hopping on his seat, like a little child would on a grandparent's lap. I do not know why he was doing so.

*Another one would be from about three weeks ago. I was cycling from work again along this big road called Number 41 with big wide zebra crossings scattered here and there as they are supposed to be. At one of these zebra crossings, as I was approaching it and the light was red, a woman was standing with a big brown envelope held to hide her face, or so it seemed, from the cars waiting at the traffic lights (here I am finding a rather inconsistent point in my story since we, pedestrians, were waiting at the traffic lights but according to what I can remember the cars were also waiting at the traffic lights-though it easily might have been the situation where only cars turning a certain direction, right or left, might have had green). Anyway, I tried all sorts of inconspicuous twists and turns in order to be able to see this woman's face but all in vain. The envelope was there and the woman was obviously trying very hard at remaining if not inconspicuous herself at least unobserved or more like what one would call incognito. A thought provoking incident. Who was she hiding from. It seemed obvious it was the people to her right side, whether it was drivers, cyclists or pedestrians, or whether she was hiding at all, shall remain a mystery forever.

*This incident I think I have actually written about before. It was about the time when I moved to Nagoya and I thought it was the most bizarre thing in the world, that view was, but again I was only a simple country girl then. It was this man who I saw walking down the pavement, direction to the subway station, just like me. An old man, over sixty I would say, dressed up head to toes in a cyclist's outfit; an aerodynamic helmet on his head, a pair of reflective cycling shades covering the other third of his face, the last third of his face being covered by a curly bushy graying beard. His top and bottoms were a tight aerodynamic cycling suit, on his feet he had a pair of proper cycling shoes, looked like in their soles they would also have the clip that clips the shoe to the bike's pedal, and in his right hand he was carrying an umbrella.
He got his ticket at the station and got onto the same train as I did.
As I said, bizarre, strange but not unexplainable really.
He must be a local for I did see him once again in late autumn, still dressed up as a cyclist, but in winter style.

PHOTOS

PHOTOS

Kina-san's Matsuri in Nagoya, my 25th birthday (Mt.Fuji and Tokyo Disneyland):

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=15578&l=7f694&id=697930480

Summer at Ian Gallagher's Amami Oshima: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=15580&l=bfdf0&id=697930480

Thailand I. (a): http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=15260&l=fb3bf&id=697930480

Thailand I. (b): http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=15261&l=99eec&id=697930480

Thailand II. (#1 and 3 in process): http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=13739&l=c6e61&id=697930480

Thailand III.: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=15266&l=8ac87&id=697930480

Mobile Phone photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=13742&l=6e1c6&id=697930480

Prefectural Elections Parade Festival I.: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=14214&l=9fdf6&id=697930480

Prefectural Elections Parade Festival II.: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=14222&l=6b1a7&id=697930480

PanoraMatsuri (the first proper festival of the year) I.: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=14267&l=fcc08&id=697930480

PanoraMatsuri II.: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=14586&l=160aa&id=697930480

☆よろしくお願いしま～す☆

Friendshipness

Recently, exactly a week or so, I have been waking up in a bad mood, with an uneasy feeling in my guts, a sensation of a negative flow of energy all over.
Because this sort of occurence is in my case a rather rare one, has never actually occured before in my life, it did become a rather disturbing notion to cope with.
It is well known that to keep friendships one must take care of them. It has proved itself before and today it has proved itself again, and I am happy I suddenly remembered what to do because I was losing ground under my feet. Just like standing in the middle of moving sand, you know the feeling? Sinking, not knowing how or why but can't stop it.
Well, work was becoming rather a chore of late, one does not want to spend a whole day where there are bad vibrations...or perhaps the problem was one of no vibrations at all.
And so today was the day when I hugged. I asked boss whether she was satisfied with the job we were doing, she seemed a little perplexed, and then I hugged her. On my way home I waited for the girls, Mai and Chiaki-chantachi, under the stairs and I hugged them. I wanted to hug to feel friendship.
And suddenly a whole weight seemed to have been lifted off my shoulders and cycling home I felt I was flying and I also felt that I was not going to wake up in a bad mood in the morning anymore.
I am going to have a bath now in the Dead Sea salts that Dana brought for me from Israel. Apparantely in Israel if you want to go to the Dead Sea you kind of just go, like on a picnic, an ordinary day trip. Isn't it grand!?!
Dana is a great friend.

The Sunday when Dan was in Nagoya and it was Earth Day

We walked and walked, walked in rain, could not find the things we were walking to but it was still very nice to walk in rain. We walked into the Nagoya Castle grounds and walked in the gardens. There we found a pretty modelsan who was making all sorts of bizzare faces that she thought were cute, sexy, seductive and what not and around her was a crowd of geeky looking photographers shooting shooting shooting, giving us smiley looks saying `This is good! Such good luck and you guys are so lucky you can see us in such unbelievably good luck...`. When I asked why are they doing it, for it did not look like a regular photoshoot with one model, one photographer and a bunch of cosmetic ladies, they said they would get money for the photos. I did not try to unravel the vagueness of it by asking any more questions.
Though I was very tempted...or more than tempted, I felt driven to do something slightly abusively amusing like join in the photoshoot and pull silly grimaces behind the pretty girl, but Dan was being rather normal and refused to join in my pursuit of fun which was not going to be fun if it was only me taking part. Humphr.
And so we walked on and walked some more, went to have another look at this year`s failure of the Earth Day celebration, met up with Dana for a coffee and watched the last beats of this year`s Earth Day`s last live, in the rain together with approximately twenty more people. It felt very lonesome. Just like the rest of the Earth Day event this year.
Dana went, and we went too. Again we walked and we walked into Matsuzakaya to pass the time between now and the time to go and see ex-kabuki master Harasan`s strange and enchanting performance at K.D. Japon. Walking in Matsuzakaya was almost as much fun as visiting Tiffany`s the day before, we went into all the super label shops and adored, criticized, in my case got bored with looking at, the ultimately fashinable worldly items. Oh but the best part indeed must have been playing golf at the golf club shop. First time in my life too!!! So much fun!!
And then we went to see the performance together with Ayachan and it was very impressive.
The music, the movements, the visual presentation, the ideas, the dialogues of which I understood maybe half and thus did lose quite a big part of the point of the narration, all this in one very colourful and overwhelming whole conveyed for me the Japan that I love. The dreamy, somewhat ghostly and unreal, old, simple, but too deep to understand Japan. The Japan of a rich beautiful mind that veils the modern loudness and smog.
It was an enlightening experience.

Happy Earth Day!!☆☆☆

Waaaaaaaaa, the potatoes are out!!!
OMG this is so exciting!!!
I think what I am emotionally going through must be a feeling somewhat resembling motherhood only it is so much more exciting because I dont have to wait half a year to see how they grow!!
The cucumbers look so strong and healthy (knock knock on the wood), a couple of them still have their bright pink used-to-be-seed-covers caps holding the points of their leaves together praying to Mother Nature to let them grow...
- I do think though if they use chemicals to protect seeds they really should make the effort of making this fact a little less obvious one for it does makes one feel a bit unsure as in whether to actually eat the fruits that came out of such -almost fluorescent- coloured seeds-...
The tomatoes look very fine, fragile like very young aristocratic ladies, the raddishes seem like a bunch of energetic children happy to be out in the playground and the potatoes, mirroring their past they are like strong stocky farmers slowly but surely pushing their way out disturbing the peaceful flatness of the soil that covered them.

HAPPY EARTH DAY!!!
I am thankful...first for my babies being allowed to be, then for the world being allowed to be and share itself with us, then for everyone in it.
I am thankful to the Earth for it is her who lets us all live a grandeur Life, it is Earth that lets us all meet wherever we are, it is Earth who lets us share our worlds among one another.
Thank you.

*Dan in Nagoya*
Yay yay! Dan (Towse) came to visit!! He arrived last Sunday and is staying until this weeks Friday. Until Friday he has been hopping around Honshu island, went to Kobe, Kyoto and Himeji and finally on Friday night we could go out and drink Gin Tonics. Ate a wonderful ramen and chahan for dinner, ah, mmmmmm, and ended up in one of Ethi's favourite bars which is on my way home from the station. Vert Zai. We drank slowly and drank a lot, played a great game of naming famous people whose names start with the ending letter of the previous one, until the 'N's got us so exhausted that we stopped after three hours and started communicating with our surroundings, i.e. drunken Japanese salary men and the bar tenders (one of them rather pleasant looking and giving me the looks rather much of the time;-)).
It was great, we got home at about half three, satisfyingly socially exhausted and yesterday we went out to hit the town.
The Aichi Earth Day 2007 was somewhat disappointing and it pains me to admit it for I was so much looking forward to going and having some Earth Day fun, such as we did last year. This year there seemed to be not much point to it, no core, not even cafes or stalls selling organic foods and beverages and I think this just simply goes along, more like is a must on such a day as Earth Day. The only bright point was meeting some lovely friends, among which were Ishikawa-kun and Akari-chan with their little Mito who was crying his head off everytime he looked at Dan and me (foreign beasts effect). Oh, and of course, the upcoming Bongomen live (local reggae band and oh so good) scheduled for today.
Today there is also a 物々こうかん [butsu butsu kokan], an exchange market, at Meijo Park by the castle and Dan and I are bringing our homemade organic peanut butter fudge to share and exchange. Yay yay!!
Am off to make some coffee now...
...Happy Earth Day!
And I think there might be some kabuki performance for us tonight...and maybe Rocky IV. (ah the III. is just so good!!)
Oh how could I forget!!!
We went to Tiffany's!!! Looking like a hippie I felt strangely satisfied with myself and rather daring too. I tried on this beautiful ring made out of rose (reddish) gold with little diamonds going round and round it as the ring went round and round, and I almost managed to persuade the good looking smooth shop assistant to let me take a picture of it with my mobile as it was on my hand to show it to my mother. Wasnt allowed but it was still great and we did take a picture together with Dan in front of the Tiffany's shop sign.
So much fun so much fun!!!!!!!

Viewing the photos & spring style misc.

Yahhoooo Yahhoooo, I`m not sure why so many of you darlinks seem to be unable to view my photos for when I tried it all it took me was a click on the link.
Hummmmmm...
Humphr humphr.

Try try try treacles!

Oh and by the way, my little babies are growing and growing, up up up closer to the sky each day they are!
Replanted my radish seedlings today and my balcony has positively become a garden.　I can`t wait until it`s utter wilderness with me swinging in my hammock over it in the summer sunshine. Hummm...Yay Yay!!
Good plan!
Only need to get a hammock now and get the tomatoes and aubergines and cucumbers actually prove their existence.

Naochan's PANORAMATSURI

Waaaaaa, I do not care about Friday the 13th because yesteray was the best day in the world!

Naochan was having a PanoraMatsuri at her house in the mountains outside of Okazaki and it was oh so grandeur!
The night before, harassed by an elderly golden retreiver, we took possession of the garage-like shed and around a fire in a big tin can we were jamming and jamming until we almost got caught by fresh aired misty dawn. NaoPapa had a couple and was in the proud parent mood enough to show us his home made shochu spiced up with a bunch of about 4cm long mountain bees for taste (the bees that by which if you get stung twice you die-one to go for Katou-kun).
He also went to dig out a bamboo shoot at 1am and made a bamboo miso shiru for us, since bamboo is best when freshly dug out.

It rained hard all night.
As the morning approached we could see the faint shadows of clouds breaking and when we woke up it was hazy with humidity in the air, but the sky was almost blue, almost bright and thus our spirits thrived and one as the other they raised up up up until we were all spinning in the spring morning extasy of life.

And then everybody came. We all settled ourselves around, took out our handicrafts, and under the pretense of being serious merchants, we visited each other's stalls, talked, laughed, listened to music, cried and danced...we played and played and played until it was time to go home and thats when we played some more.

なおちゃん☆ありがとう☆

NB! You shall be able to see my photos here
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=14267&l=fcc08&id=697930480

The plan is to upload one CD a day, so slowly my whole Japanese life might be viewable ^__^

aaaaargh!!!!!!!
fucking piece of SHIT!!

oh for fuck sake
i have been writing for almost two fucking hours to manage to delete most of the stuff that I had written!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I hate this piece of crap!!!!

To Write about Good Things...

To write about good things I shall write about our prefectural elections.
In this year's Aichi elections I got involved rather unexpectedly as I went to see Hide working in Hisa`s Thai Massage parlour and Renchan who was there asked me whether I had a sewing machine.
Thus it was that being 25 years old, in the bloom of my youth and not allowed to vote myself, I was all of a sudden voluntarily spending the exciting Friday night in an election office among a bunch of enthusiastic over middle aged activists sewing flags that we were to paint with slogans in the manner of Love, Peace and Let's change the world! Hurray!
Spending the first parts of the following nights at the election office and the second parts at the boys' house trying hard not to not sleep, there was no rest for the body nor the mind, everyday work was topped up with persevering cold and my snotty nose and a chanson voice were there in the spotlight of our parades to charm the potential Ishida electors.

It was wonderful!!! We made banners, we made flags, we made stones (Ishida-san; ishi=stone), we drank immense amounts of coffee and ate very believable amounts of snacky crap, talked rubbish to each other at three in the morning and did pretend fights with bamboo banner holders, all a result of sleepless nights and foodless over-cafeinated days. And so was the serious political campaign, under the lead of Hisa with all of always eager us, his minions (Renchan-Hanachan-Higucchan-Hidechan-Ayachan-the-old-school; Hiko, Shinji and a lot of others as new additions to the volunteer crowd) tagging along, yes, so did the political campaign change into one grandeur festival sharing positive ideas and strong beliefs in achievable goodness...beating our drums, dancing, singing and laughing aloud we proceeded forward to let people know of an ordinary and so possible a happiness and brightness of future.

Another good thing is that we are back together with Hide...because I am to write about good things now I shall not mention anything about how much fire and ice there was to walk over to get here...all I am going to say is that even though I am so afraid I dont want to think reasonably for some time to come, my soul is charged with greatness, my heart beats trust and I am standing still but strong so I can hold up my dreams.

Artistic Skills of a Full-time Company Employee

Right! I signed into mixi.jp today with an admirable intention to try and track all my friends and ask them to become my mixi friends so I dont feel left out having only 8 friends on my page compared to all the others who have over 100 of them. I know this does sound rather ridiculous but in order to feel good about ones self there are times when things like this are unavoidable. And so with an inconspicuous objective of making myself feel better about myself I found all the friends I wanted and one by one wrote them cute little emails that it's me and I want to be mixifriends with them. Though as I one by one wrote emails to them I also one by one read their profiles and realized that now I actually feel remarkably worse about myself than before I went to mixi.jp today.
Everybody seems to be a grandeur artist of some sort, a photographer, dancer, musician, candle artist and what not and they all seem generally appreciated as what they claim themselves to be...then on the other hand I have a look at me, all the time attempting to create some thing or another and all I can see I have is a lack of free time due to a full time job. Besides having a full time job I also have twelve days of paid holidays per annum and thus am condemned to as much as dream of long unforseen roads, open clear skies, neck hurting from my big fat camera and dirt behind my ears.
My mind is tortured by adventurous desires, my body buzzes with restlessness and my feet are starting to itch...
...so, the first military plan of action I shall like to undertake is to get my job become part-time...
Hurray!

Reminders

As one leaves puberty one tends to forget some things. One of them would be acne, which in my case is N/A. The other one are period pains and indeed this one, after being on a pill for a considerable amount of time, I happened to forget.
And indeed, today, I was cruelly reminded.
I could have seen this, what with all the emotional issues I seemed to have created for myself over the last couple of days (not utterly unjustified though too) and the sensei's comment after training yesterday that I don't seem to have the healthy spirit ("元気がないみたいな～").
The time though when the reminders took their full force was while going with my poor two and three year old victims for a walk today and I just had no power to let them climb on every pole we passed.
Nevermind, I had a nice dream about snowboarding with En, who once upon a time in China gave me a very nice kiss. This sort of dream made me sober up a little from all the torture I subjected myself to as one does if gifted with such a lively imagination as I was; it is a toll bestowed by the Fantasy Queen.

I am now going to join the kids reading `Inside Freight Train` and then try to sleep off with them my body and soul pains.

Troi Fois...or Trois Mois...remnants of foreign language weather forecasts on Slovensko 1...Radio Gaga

Oh my God Oh my God there is something terribly wrong with the children today!!!!
They have all gone crazyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!
Since morning they just keep running around with fire at their bums, throwing themselves at the teachers, at each other, into each other`s way, onto the floor...moments of peace and silence are scarce and in high demand.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not packed yet.
Got to go shopping tomorrow morning, also have to clean and air the house and meet up with Aichan to give her my flowersisters, go to work, pop by Shinsakae, get back, prepare food and get myself to the station for 10pm. How I am going to to this I refuse to worry about. Aaaaaaah, already my head feels swollen....uuuuh....

I indeed cannot wait to eat a lot of big pieces of meat soon!!!

** Rusty said I could get a job at his hostel in Guatemala whenever ever whenever even if I just showed up at his doorstep...am very tempted by this...hmmmm...bug bug bugeyed bug...

Update.

Ah, its cold everywhere!
Outside the house, inside the house, inside a futon, inside a futon inside the house even if you put the heater on.
Anyway...
...it`s Tuesday and tomorrow is Wednesday and then it`s going to be Thursday and Friday and on Friday night I shall be taking the night bus to Tokyo to go to Narita on Saturday and arrive in London on Saturday night to go ice-skating in Oxford on Sunday.
It is indeed so hard to believe I haven`t set my foot on the English soil for the last year and a half. You know what they say; `Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.`
It really seems like I only left a while ago, like it was just a couple of months ago we graduated and left for the world. And here we are, year and a half after, Evuliatko happily married with a babyちゃん in Australia, Mala Katka happily married, Daniel moved to America.
Humphr.
In Nagoya life seems to go the same way every day, somehow only the feelings and perceptions of each new day tend to be different everytime you wake up. All else seems to remain the same.
The children change. It is amazing to see every next week Taichi becoming more of a social being, if discussing whatever action makes you one; amusingly annoying to watch Shinchan become more and more mischievous, his ability to listen to the teachers decreasing with the amount of days added to his lifespan; wonderful to see Junkun or Nonchan curl up to you and be able to fall asleep in your arms and Yuna or Manami throw themselves at you even with their moms are present.
Renchan secured his place in my life as the older brother I never had, he is also the best `girtlfriend` one can have to bitch about things with; Hide remains craving for peace and silence and lonesomeness and I remain irrationally in love with him. Hisa`s Thai massage parlour is almost finished and Aichan is in a state of wondering what to do with her life when it is, with Pochai`s continual though rather slow, I do have to admit, almost sorted out. Mito, Ishikawakun and Akarichan`s son, now five months old, still very much resembles a little monkey baby but the understanding in his eyes has increased since i last saw him two months ago; and my hair is still short.
Yesterday I went to do a photoshoot!
To be on a New Year`s client post card for Press-Sonnia!
It was so pleasant to be attended to by a handful of professional staff who put your make up on, dress you, make sure you`re not hungry or cold and keep telling you how cute and talented you are. Very nice experience indeed.
And all the Christmas presents are bought and packed nicely in my new orangey-brown flowery suitcase!
Bon Voyague and happy shopping in Paris!!!

Gelato, kitten, Ethi and valium

Yes yes, I havent written for quite some while but I have been in states of grandeur hospitability and utter jealous depression and thus the time was rather scarce. Also my head, in the last couple of weeks, have been buzzing with ideas, plans, additional Xmas shopping items and some more rather vague but still, plans for the future.
Last week, on Wednesday night Gelato came to visit from Tokyo and stayed for a week; we had some very wonderful times, some times a little not so great mostly caused by my oncoming PMS and some very great times when we went to the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Arts to have a look at a very nice exhibition on Persia and learned some great names that can be used at any time, any situation, interchangably as insults, we went to the Nagoya castle and took some very geeky foreign tourist photos in the surrounding gardens, we went to a matsuri at my friends shop and then drinking with Renchan and Aichan consequently finding a little half frozen kitten in front of it, soon to become Ryza こうもり (Ryza=rice in Slovak, Koumori=bat in Japanese) and the apple of an argument of us all. Kitten was permitted to be taken, for the price of one kiss for Renchan, to the Shin Sakae house, where all of us have become Ryza `s mammas. It was so weak that despite being 2 months old it would not eat nor drink, we had to feed it with a syringe and it would then walk around and piss and poo on every futon it could see. After three days it was no better and so we took it to the vets who said that, indeed, it was undernourished but except for some worms there was nothing wrong with it and it only depended on the strength of its life whether it would live or not. We then argued who was to look after it from now on for the Shin Sakae boys were a little fed up with feeding it every two hours, while I would only come and feed it once or twice a day. Fair enough, I could understand them, but what could I do being the only one, with Renchan the only two, who have a regular job. Nevermind, we argued, I cried, quite pointlessly and eventually agreed that Aichan who is free until friday would take Ryza until then and I `d have it until Monday. The next day Ryza died on Aichan `s lap and it left us all a message. A message of friendship, love, care and perhaps the righteousness of the right thing over the wrong.
Ryza came to say goodbye to Oshima-san who had been her real mamma these few days, while held in Aichan `s hands she came and scratched his door and off she went...
We are all friends again; I feel a big Thank You and a strong belief that Ryza is now happily running around the Cat Heaven, watching us and after all the turmoil is warm at heart to see us together once more.
Gelato left and the next day Ethi came from Slovakia, brought me a klobasa and a continual feeling of grandeur hospitability. He `s gone off to Hokkaido today to be back on Sunday so we can finally get trollied. Yay yay.
Today was also the day of The Health Check. No food, no drink since 10pm last night, Mai sensei and I were off to drink valium and get mashines squeeze our boobies. It was a super high class hospital with carpets and paintings on the walls and the staff being super polite, together with tens of other clients we were walking around in blue pyjamas and paper slippers, listening to beeping sounds, guessing holes in circles, getting our booboo squeezed and what not. Valium, as Chris sensei said, tastes and looks like a very bad milkshake, though it is when you pick it up in its plastic cup with your hand that you understand that its something that really should not enter your body. And thats when you have to drink it. Its sooooooo heavy!!!! You gulp it, sip by sip, sqeezing you eyes, after each sip checking how much of it is still left, and then you have to roll this way and that while they take pictures of you. Not really an ideal modelling situation.
And then you have to spend whole afternoon walking around feeling as if you had a brick in your stomach and wondering whether you `ll be able to make it to the toilet. Which as a matter of fact I almost failed. It was rather an adventure indeed.
I `ve pooed out all I could today and I am off to bed now.
I dont think anything i have written this time makes much sense but see if I care (*she pulls on one of her bottom eyelids and stares at the challenging computer screen*)

How to make friends.

Ways to become closer with male karate students age 6-14: start screaming in a loud feminine voice when you see a cockroach speeding it through the changing room and accuse the individuals in question of putting it there on purpose to scare the crap out of you (possibly unconsciously in order to bring out your feminine side too-which in my case is a trait rather faint, at given moments demonstrating itself via menstrual cycle and wanting to kiss boys).

Koalas, the moral examples.

Ha!
I had a grand weekend this weekend. I walked over 30 kilometres and considering that my current place of inhabitation is the third largest city in Japan with rather efficient and sufficient transportation system I view this as quite an achievement.
I walked three subway stations to get organic bread and sausages and a glimpse at potential Christmas presents and walked the same three stations back. Got home and ate like a pig and went down to Shin Sakae to see the boys where, as it has become a rather usual set of events, with Renchan we had a highly educational (if you consider any sort of information to be educational) yet somewhat bizarre discussion. This time it was regarding the 818 Stargate (I did want to write this blog right after the weekend, so that this information would be actual and possible to take into consideration and be acted upon, thus my appologies), the notion of which involved a very strong UV beam, the 17th of October, the Earth, alignment of the 1 and 2 universes (perhaps likely addressing the issue of parallel universes) and a preference for positive thoughts on this day (17.10.2006=> 1+7=8, 1+0=1, 2+6=8 and thats why 818 Stargate and not 345 or 987 or 123 Stargate, that is if anyone was wondering) in the attmept of making the world a better place. And thus it somehow justifies Renchan taking a day off on Tuesday and my decision of throwing in some positive prayers towards general and universal goodness of all straight after work at 5pm (the ideal, universally acknowledged best average time for everyone who is too busy or too responsible to take a day off was estimeted 5.10pm).

This morning, a Sunday morning, a sunny morning I walked two subway stations to purchase yesterday glimpsed Christmas pressies-yesh yesh Bero has already done her Christmas shopping b`cos she is super cool and indeed almost a thoroughly responsible and organized in her highly respectful post-graduation independence individual. The presents are lovelylovelylovely and I am so excited about giving them away on Christmas that it makes me even more excited about Halloween in two weeks cos have already sewn my Halloween party costume (I know, I know, its going to be for the kids!! yeah yeah yeah...)
On my way back I popped down the local Zoo and botanical gardens where walking for the rest of the day I exhausted my pphysical shell utterly, though looking at koalas I did regain my moral energy and am ready to continue a meaningful and valuable existence.

About how I wanted to write about Kakuozan matsuri and ended up writing about something else.

On Sunday I have also bought a ダラブッカ　(darabukka), a Turkish drum, so I can practice and so one day be able to join people by some fire or another.
I was slightly worried about possessing an absolute lack of rhythm in me however I decided to go on with the transaction anyway, for if I haven`t done so I would feel, well, not too much like some of those cheesy chain mail phrases say `Love like you`ve never been hurt...` or similar rubbish, I think I`d just feel stupid for not indulging in shopping in order to become cool. One should never allow for such a thing.
And so I bought it. And surely enough there was an email waiting for me stating `16 things that it took me over 50 years to learn`, an account written by Dave Barry, Nationally Syndicated columnist; ` Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that one amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.`
Cheesy it might be, but here, I give you all the 16 points, for on the whole, they do ring a wonderful, rather refreshing and indeed truthful, reflection:

1. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.
2. If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be "meetings."
3. There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."
4. People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.
5. You should not confuse your career with your life.
6. Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance. (I wish I had!)
7. Never lick a steak knife.
8. The most destructive force in the universe is gossip.
9. You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time.
10. You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she's pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.
11. There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age 21.
12. The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above average drivers.
13. A person, who is nice to you, but rude to a waiter, is not a nice person. (This is very important. Pay attention. It never fails.)
14. Your friends love you anyway.
15. Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.
16. Thought for the day: Men are like fine wine . . . They start out as grapes, and it's up to the women to stomp the crap out of them until they turn into something acceptable to have dinner with.
FINAL THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: There is more money being spent on breast implants and Viagra than on Alzheimer's research. This means that by 2030, there should be a large elderly population with perky boobs and huge erections and absolutely no recollection of what to do with them.

Project for Valuable Human Environment

I mark success!!!
I have decided, after I moved into my new house and realized that its surroundings very much resembles a nice peaceful いなか (countryside), to say `Hello!` to everybody I shall meet journeying out or back home.
I have been rather disappointed to note people failing to at least grant me a friendly glance (ok, a non-grumpy would do just fine too) and so I have set my mind to a `Project for Valuable Human Environment` (by Pokeron the Mountain Imp). The idea was to persist on greeting everyone in 向陽町 until they will all end up saying `hello` back to me.
After a somewhat fruitless beginning the day before yesterday (a Sunday, a day off, a sunny day, a warm day, a day of festivals) everybody who I met on my way home responded to my friendly salutation and I, very much satisfied about the positive development of my hypothesis (willingly admitting the lack of Hypothesis 0 and thus acknowledging a rather positive failure of it succeeding for any hopes of future research), happily hopped up the hill to enter my small orange house.
I indulged.

An important notion

An important notion I have forgotten to publish is that my new sensei, 池sensei, looks sooooooo much like Zatoichi (http://www.zatoichi.co.uk/)!!
Well, looking at the pics now, not sooooooo much, but definitely a little.
Hurray!
おす！

KaratetaraK

Alas!
After more than one year break, not taking into account the miniscule amount of times I have attempted at finding a dojo and practising karate in Japan (doh!), I have finally succeeded and am back in the game!
Or am slowly easing myself into it.
Habib, upon his visit, poured into me a thermflask full of motivation and with minor difficulties I have managed to locate a dojo in Nagoya. It turns out the shihan (sensei) is a sixth dan, going for his seventh this year and the only A class instructor in Aichi, giving away that I have probably found the best dojo in whole of Aichi-ken, at least.
Very pleased with myself on that front. The practical one raises more doubts, I feel like a retard for most of the time; there I come, a black belt with shameful despair in my eyes copying the kyu grades during kata, am the one and out of rather few being corrected almost constantly. Which, in the long run, is actually good, for the second dan exam in spring as well as for the self development and understanding; it only makes me feel, well, ashamed and shy, in fact (do believe me please!!!!)
However I do feel I might still have a chance at becoming the pet student, mostly for having the need to be corrected all the time, which also puts me in the situation where everybody wants to explain things to me and correct me even more. That or the post of a useless blonde nuissance of a gaijin. Hmmm...

The Toilet Diaries

My life in Japan, except for being marked by numerous adventures of all sorts, is also, and majorly, marked by endless attempts at `the longest poo ever pooed` record breaking. `How long can one go without a poo` one too.
(Anyone with any fascinating data do publish do so do!!)
Chlorella doesn`t seem to work it`s magic, excercise and massage also remain powerless in the long run, and I do not really want to lower myself, however tempting it may seem, to a coffee and a cigarette every morning. And so please, you who are in the know, do tell me your secret formulae and I shall be forever greatful to you!
(It does save on the toilet paper though. Hmm. What is of what worth???)

山水人 (Yamauto) 2006

Hum. Well, except for a few minor news, such as that Maria the basil has died, that Tom the cricket has disappeared the day after being christened and that I am still stupidly loving Hideto, there are indeed some major news to be reported.
From 16th until 24th September 2006 a festival called Yamauto (山水人）(mountain and water people) was held in the mountians of Kyoto. The lucky ones with no regular jobs, such as Hideto, just-returned-from-Mongolia Hiwako, Takumi and Yoshikochan, etc., attended the festa right from the beginning, the more organized individuals such as myself and Renchan, for that instance, were given no other choice except for the weekend, or stay at home (Rencha~n!!).
The ultimate plan was to find someone who could give me a lift all the way, for looking at the official website and seeing the instructions of travel I felt no more clever than before seeing them. In the week that I was asking all the possible friendly acquaintances I would look at the printed directions every day and every day of this week my understanding was lacking and I was kept in pure darkness of true illiteracy.
Friday came and with it the fact that no one was in the end going to give me a ride and with this notion finally and rather unexpectedly came the long awaited understanding. After a week of countless attempts I glanced at the map and the instructions and at the map once again and sudden enlightenment descended upon me.
And so it was Friday night that I set off on the road, for if it was later I would waste the prescious free time that we, the individuals confined to an order of societal regularity, as much as we dont want to be so, are allowed to on the two days a week.
Friday: before work I rushed to Otsukaya to get a thread for the ceramic accessories, I rushed to work. I then, within the space of 18:00 and 22:45 ran to training (19:00-20:45), from training rushed to the train station (20:45-21:30) to see whether there was any truth in what Chris先生 was saying about being able to get a shinkansen to Kyoto for 2500 Yen, which there was not, and so I was forced to run to the subway and then run home (21:30-21:55), in ten minutes call Ren to try to persuade him to go with (22:00-22:03) and pack all the clothes and things I wanted to sell (handmade aprons, chopstick cases, pencil cases from Slovak traditional indigo cloth, some ceramics, letter sets,...), didn`t persuade Renchan, packed the clothes and the food and the sleeping bag (22:03-22:10), ran decorated with my backpack and a bag to the subway again (looking like a lunatic most possibly), to then continue running to platform number 6 to get the 22.45 train to Maibara. Rather impressive movement me likes to fink.
To celebrate my getting there on time I stood in a ten metre queue for the train and stood for the next three stops in a sardine-like mode though to soon indulge in the half empty train and the onigiri I prepared for the journey. I got to Maibara at midnight, went to check out the combini for items that might be neccessary for a survival at a festival (not stating more details for the Mother reads these pages), got back to the station and dropped myself and the decorations off at the spot I have already spotted on my way out, the spot with a hedge and a tree surrounded by which and under which I was to spend my night with the ever-wandering rollie-pollies.
Sitting back, finally in a bit of a calm, I could see the station further in front of me swimming in the bright lights of nightly workers, and being slowly but gradually overwhelmed by inconspicuous feelings of freedom and quiet happiness, leaning on my backpack looking into the night sky through a dark green crown of a tree, I finally fell asleep.
Woke up at 4:40am, packed and walked over to the waking up train station, got on my train to Kyoto and soon enough I was sat on the bus from Kyoto to 梅の木. From Ume no Ki (梅の木), with the leftover of the passengers who were obviously (real easy to deduce from the clothing and hairstyles) headed for the same destination, we waited for the next bus to take us up up up the mountain and sheepishly we made friends. My new friend was called Toyoちゃん and she was super nice; she works for a bicycle shop in Osaka and we talked and laughed all the way and as this took place I felt a lot better for not being the only lonesome loser with no friends coming up all on her own. On the contrary actually, I realized. We were the cool ones. We have never been there before, we to say the truth, did not really have a very bright idea of how we were to get there, but eventually we did and that`s exactly what matters.
Oh and besides that the camping in front of Maibara station.
And getting in for free. But not really so. I came up to become a staff member of the DeraYukaNakamatachi group, the Hideto candle-make-selling-human-device.
Anyway, I shall not rumble no more.
To sum it up in a rather clear manner...
...Yamauto was an amazing place, amazing experience, an amazing event, so rich in it`s simple purity, reviving, inspiring, full of floating energy that charged you with it`s vibrations from head to toes, filled your heart so all you felt were thanks to the Creator, thanks for being alive and for everything that is around you.
You look around and you feel peace without anyone making you feel it. You feel love, you feel gratitude.
Upon my arrival, finding Hideちゃん in the mode of utter exhaustion (thus lacking friendliness), I also discovered Hiwaちゃん occupying the tent together with Naokiくん, hurray!, Yoshikoちゃんand Takumiくん camping next door, hurray! and Goちゃん wandering somewhere around, or possibly still asleep but definitely somewhere around, hurray hurray hurray!!! for I have not been expecting any of these wonderful people and they just happened to be there and made me feel happy and at home.
My heart was full and loving, and the people with whom our paths crossed, the Hungarian sculpture artist wanderer with twisted moustache, the Canadian Czechoslovak (`Ja jsem spravnej Cechoslovak!!`) selling koncovky with his Japanese wife and a Japano-Czechoslovak baby Niji (Rainbow), Toyoちゃん the bicycle shop assistant, Duan, the Australian mixed-roots university English-teacher-of-course, Naraさん the jambe teacher, Tettchan, the half drunk half stoned friend of ours who gave me a lift home, all just fell in the picture within my heart, and completed the puzzle it is.
We talked, we laughed, we danced, we hugged, we told each other of our love and how we were thankful for it.
That was Yamauto.

No picture documentation done, if you want to see what it was like, come and look in my eyes. They shall be the mirror of the days.

Simple Matters

This input is going to be an account on the developments of the last month, dated as off the day we officially split up with Hideto (13th of August), for it seems that this event has given a free way to occurence of other rather random events.
So, to sum it up very simply and clearly, since we split up with Hidechan my heart has been aching so badly that it still is and despite various barriers it persists on desiring the one it should not. It hurts. Every day.
But that`s more a sum of my current emotional state than events. So, once more, to sum it up simply and clearly, since we split up with Hidechan I had a ragazzo italiano seducing me almost completely, Habib attempting at seducing me by the means of a sensual massage, wandering hands and his mastery of soul-touching, I had two almost underaged Japanese twenty-two year olds telling me they wanted to be my boyfriends and I had Ethi kissing me so that I wanted to pull him in rather than push him out of my door which I had to do.
Upon these happenings, for they took me by surprise at their quantity and intensity, I shall try to draw an analytic bio-social model in order to understand, though I fear it might be all of a biological basis and the social element of it would be enclosed in the fact that we consider ourselves humans.
To support this claim comes the account on my own desires which have proven to seem a reaction to my bodily wants, which, to say the truth, I am not, turning to my moral inner being with questions, totally opposed to.

This random last month`s row or column was topped up and brought to absolute excellence by meeting up with Benjamin Fulford in Tokyo, a person of substance in the circles of Japanese journalism, politics and more recently literature. He calls himself a revolutionary and in his not so obvious though very present weirdness he is adorable and most respectable.
He gave me a ride on his bike while giving me an update on the 9/11 incident. We rowed a boat, fed fish, ate ice cream and talked over possibilities of changing the world into a better place and so now I feel I have a motivation which if it begins to decease, I know where to reboost.
Vivat!

Understanding...??

Once again the time has come which requires an urgent and inevitable change, or rather than that an urgent improvement in the areas of personal qualities of self.
Hard work and improvement is needed in Kanji and Karate studies though rather than in these (comparably more) material qualities it is absolutely essential in the ones of the hidden inner self.
Since the time when Hideto has decided he would rather like to be by himself than with me I have become once again self-absorbed, negative and bitter despite all my vehemently expressed attempts to hold a positive attitude.
Once again I have to be careful about the things I think and I utter, the ways I think them, the ways they come out, about the ways my surroundngs comes to my understanding for now these are dirty with bitterness and I am once again disgusted with myself.
What is needed is a determination and modesty until it is possible to take a quiet day of knowing nothing and no one so one can know oneself.

Ethi in Nagoya

Oh dear God!!!
Ethi prisiel Sodoma Gomora.
Ethi is in Nagoya!!!
He came yesterday and the result was rather wobbly and unstable, a fragile composition has overcome me.
All he did was that he called me that him and his friend were no longer going to stay at my place (heart-broken) and that they wanted me to come for a dinner with them (yay-yay!).
I got to meet a man, probably the richest I have ever spoken to, Ethi`s patron, and he made us drink probably the most expensive wine I`ve ever drank and because he left at about midnight he made us drink even more. Oh what pure happiness!
I remember hitting Ethi a lot, a crying girl in a corner and feeling waves of feminism rushing through my body and mind (thus more beating for the boys). And then it was morning and my attempt at finding my way to the toilet was lenghty but in the end successful. Being still unable to walk straight at two in the afternoon recounts for a wonderful night of Slovak warmth.

*Huraaaaaaaaa!!!!*

Habib in Nagoya

Yesterday was a Wednesday, the day of the night when Renchan and Hiko and two boys I`ve never met before, Yohei and Yoshi, were going to a secret society meeting, the night when I got as a present from Hiko an Okinawan soup and an Okinawan sweet powder dough, the night when Hidechan had to go to meet someone by bike in rain, the night when Habib was coming down to Nagoya to see me.
We haven`t seen each other for two years and it was really wonderful to meet up after such a long time. A lot of time has passed, a lot of things have come our way, a lot of people have crossed our paths since we parted... we have been changed and remained unchanged at the same time, just like the rocks that are and aren`t changed by the sun, the wild winds and waters.
It truly was wonderful, this meeting, if a little surreal, but maybe that was the magic of the moment. We spoke a lot, about ourselves, karate, our pre-historic-era-us, karate, Japan, we drank 日本酒 (Nihon Shu) and spoke some more about karate. We exchanged massages, strictly no funny business! ...finding Habib attempting at peeking sent me rofl (rolling on futon laughing).
And what it also made me realize was how much I am actually dying to feel single, technically being a singleton, only so I don`t miss out on all those available amounts of touches and warmth, ... though why is it so HARD??!!
I am not in control of my-ness; and the thing that is is locking me out from the free world of love and affection. Everytime I could I can`t for deep inside it feels like I am just about to betray my own self. Not Hide, not our love but myself...

As we would say with Gelato, `It socks!`. Paris Hilton would probably say, `That`s hot!!`

The Subway

Living in the city is indeed rather wonderful.
You have such a great choice of coffee shops to go to and the amount of friends you can go and drink the coffee with is heart-warming. Also you get to see many a different person and that for me, experiencing it now after a year long estrangenment in the countryside, is a rather refreshing hm experience.
I went to see the Shin Sakae guys (Ren, Hide, ...) for a bit one afternoon and I was going by subway. As I walked onto the platform this man, an intriguing figure to say the least, joined the waiting company.
It was an old man dressed in a cycling outfit, full on hundred per cent, low hiking boots, cycling tights, a cycling t-shirt, ones that my dad would wear for his trainings or races even, an aerodynamic helmet pointed at the back, with a dark shield coming down from it covering most of this man`s face leaving only a great grey beard sticking out from underneath, and in his hand he carried an umbrella.
There is nothing really significant about this, only that it was so refreshingly different and mostly bizzare.
And at this sight I felt a strange satisfied elation.

The Movement

Okay, it is exactly one week and some hours since I moved to Nagoya, left Fukuchiyama behind, to begin a new life towards which I was looking with eyes wide open with excitement of novelty and, more than anything, a pleading heart full of shining hope.
And so, after a long fun drive at 140km/h down a motorway where speed limit, despite the perfect state of the local highways, does stubbornly remain 80km/h (doh!), with Hide we stopped at Kimburu, a super cheap recycle store where one can find anything and everything and nothing at the same time and then, wheee, we were finally off towards the heart of Nagoya which we found after a couple of failed attempts.
At similar rate we also managed to find my new house and deloaded, ascended, deloaded, descended, up and down, somewhat like happy walking christmas trees, we concluded the grand move.
The sun was shining from the morning until the evening, the skies were smiling and so was my heart, in spite of sad facts that followed us, an unwanted tail, instead of `just married`, it said `just broken up`, floating in the wind as the white car went forwards to a new existence of two lives.
Anyway, the days that followed I do not remember where they begun nor where they ended, all I remember is the neverending hunger for buying a stove does not apparantely solve everything as I might have hoped, you do need a gas hose!!!! The sleepless nights when warm and wonderful Gelato was keeping me company, the sleepless night of confusion when Hide came to pick me up and held my hand and lay in my lap, the hunger, the wheeee-wind-in-her-hair-`Where-can-I-buy-....?` left me with a cold sore, feverish eyes and a look of the hunted in my face, though in the end it was an underscribable happiness, a feeling of content, warmth, of having a home!! that took over my thoughts, my heart, my soul.
And thus I have a house with a green curtain with yellow tulips, a blue kitchen with orange flowers, frog hooks and a strawberry shower curtain, short hair and a new job.

About how having nothing is so much greater than... ...anything else.

Thanks to the development of the number of recent events a strong feeling of reaching adulthood has overcome me.
Adulthood strictly in the practical sense, determinedly refusing to take into consideration the mental states and behaviour of self.
Last week, from Wednesday night, when I met Renchan and Ryochan in Kyoto to accompany them on a moving-truck-fee-free journey to Nagoya which developed into a very individual type of a moving adventure in itself, until Sunday I was, indeed, in Nagoya, taking the Skygarden (the new Bero先生 work place) summer school, enjoying promenading in a summery city and chasing after means of accommodation. Together with Hideちゃん and Renちゃん, my good fairies for the days.
After a lengthy session at the estate agent`s, Smile Home, after me almost pulling my hair, all gone grey by that time, at the realizatgion of the helplessness of my situation resulting in me eventually losing my fight against the system I, with brave determination, set my self to fight, I found a house. An orange one. On a small hill. A very tiny flat in this small orange house on a top of a small hill is now mine. Is is so small you can just about walk in a straight line with a small circle in the end of it in it but the view is the bestest best of all ever and it is only mine.

The next major thing that happened recently, yesterday, was my purchase of a flight ticket to England, in order to come home to Slovakia for Christmas (no, it`s not wrong, mum and I are feeling the need for luxurious expenses and are taking a longcut via Paris).
All good and all however the next moment, after feeling rather well off for a short period of time, I do find myself once again pennyless.
I had this warm feeling of security with 300 000 Yen in my account just one week ago. Though I didn`t feel any extasy or elation, the notion felt flat and perhaps was even pushing towards more greediness. Nevertheless, against all my expectations, now that I have spent all of it and I have nothing again, I do not feel bad nor angry nor upset. I feel even warmer, for happiness is spreading through me like a flame chasing an oil stain, a feeling of inner satisfaction and peace of mind and my ever wandering soul is maybe slowly finding its way into my heart. I feel I have a purpose.
For the first time in my life I have this feeling of this now, and it`s the feeling of the rightest thing of all.

*Oh, and after a year long search in the most technically developed civilization on Earth, after endless resultless enquiries that have over the time become somewhat of a habit without a real purpose, I have managed to open an account today which will provide me with a Visa Debit Cash Card (until now the only way to have a VISA Card was to subscribe the the Creditial Devil). I was the first customer to have it ordered (well, in Fukuchiyama, but what do you know) and probably the richest one too; the balance on my new Japan Post account is exactly 10Yen.
And suddenly another wave of inner self-status satisfaction comes over me...*__*

Camping by the River (About how I did and didn`t write about my camping adventure)

So.
I was slightly annoyed but in a rather self-condescending humorous way about what happened to this input written wonderfully artistically with beautiful language nuances when I left Nagoya on Sunday. Things keep happening to me that I persuade myself to understand as a lesson to be learned so I can go on without any negative energy floating about my insides, though sometimes I stop for a moment and wonder, just like now, why can`t I simply learn from the one encounter like such and apply it to all the other ones that are in some way or another related (it`s always a blog, that should be enough to qualify as related) to it and that I come accross.
Well, I wrote on a Sunday morning and left on a Sunday afternoon, leaving this jewel of a literary opus open on Renchan`s PC and of course, during the time I stopped writing, went to Kakuozan festival, packed, bought a new 13 Moon Calendar note book for the new year commencing as off 26th of July (not strange, not weird, not magic, it`s Mayan), kissed Hidechan goodbye, got on a train, realized what happened and in a mental rush emailed Renchan to begin an art saving emergency action, of course the session had expired.
And so I`d better start again.

Karma and camping by the river.

I do believe in karma. I used to say that, inside being only half persuaded about the validity of my statement, however the occurrence of recent events (of which recency could possibly date all the way to more than one year ago) did harden the claim of this conviction. Or maybe now I say it with an air of a little bit more inner sincerity.
Why do I mention karma today?
Yesterday, late in the afternoon, a huge storm came, thunders were scaring everyone under the age of 10 (though I am voluntarily and openly letting myself to admit that I did unexpectedly shake with a hasty dash of fear upon the deep throbbing sounds coming from the skies to shake the ground, an unconscious reaction to reading too much of BBC News Online about North Korea making a playground out of the surrounding pools of Seas and toy Islands)...anyway, the storm came, dark and heavy, with huge raindrops flooding our world from the dusty yellow skies. When I came home for my break, I went straight upstairs to pick up something utterly unimportant from my room and as I entered from the staircase I gasped in horror and my eyes filled with dry unshed tears of helpless frustration of meaninglessness of any actions you decide to undertake at any known moment.
The point is as follows. Last weekend, on Sunday (not mentioning how I had sewn a really nice sleeveless top for myself on Saturday, with nicely worked collar and hand holes (since I said sleeveless I wouldn`t like to term them as sleeves anymore) and trying it on I came to know I had sewn it one or two sizes too small (that`s that for LOHAS on my part)) I spent hours making a pottery Christmas present for my dad-a set of six little glasses for his homemade slivovica, nicely formed, nicely decorated and all. Siince it is a つゆ (tsuyu-rainy season) now in Japan anywhere you go it is very very humid. Anywhere you go, you sweat, whatever you do or don`t do, you sweat, it is enough to open your mascara container and you sweat. However in my house, the most humid space is the downstairs, the kitchen and the lounge and the toilet (peeing you sweat). I used to leave my pottery to dry downstairs but recently, because it has become so so soooo humid I decided to transfer it into my room upstairs for my window is open all the time and thus it could get enough fresh air and dryness and could dry better. I thought. When I walked into my room yesterday, after that big storm I mentioned, the plates with my set of six slivovica cups were filled with water, as much as shallow plates can be, which was still enough to make the cups soaking themselves and also entirely unreservedly destroyed. I didn`t cry but I wanted to. (There wasn`t anyone around to pet me and thus I felt it a waste of perfectly good energy).
To get to the point I am trying to make here, I wasn`t too angry about that more skilled woman in our pottery class stealing my ideas, but she could have asked if it was okay. If she had asked I would have said yes, of course, no problem with a smile on my face.
Anyhow I had reached a point of realization, a revelation of some sort. Thinking positive thoughts at all times is a very very very important thing. I am going to try this from now on and perhaps all will turn better and there will be no soaking pottery and no angry chasing of long lost boots*.

On a completely different note I am going camping tomorrow. With myself and a backpack full of food to survive until maybe even Monday morning (can`t rely on making fire since it`s been raining every single day). It is going to be a purgatory trip, an escape into green silence of the woods and rivers of central Japan in order to try to find myself once again, clear the path of future in my mind, affirm fresh ways of thinking and believing and stop being scared of bears.
Am also taking a book by Salaman Rushdie, Midnight`s Children, a book about knitting, some wool and needles, a knife, toilet paper and a raincoat, some letter paper to reply to Tony`s letter and a bottle of water. Since it is a purgatory process I am aiming at leaving slivovica at home (though am still not wholly convinced this is the right decission).
And on Sunday, if the weather permits, Yuko先生、Sachiko先生　and Miki先生 with their offsprings are coming to join me for a summer barbeque by the river.
I am going to the place of one of the first Hideちゃん and mine dates. Moto Ise Jingu, the shrine of Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess.


*referring to the `I still don`t have the burnt hiking boots I have left at Chiiori once a long time ago` chapter of my life.

Ideals of the teenage years. What is the truth? Is the truth right?

Today my last class started at 18:30.
This class is a conversation class for two girls, one 15 and the other 17 years old. They both really really want to go abroad, England and Australia (`...because I want to see Grand Canyon.` >__<), but unless I spoke into their adolescent naive-with-innocence minds that doing their homework and getting ready for their English conversation classes is essential for them to at least be able to buy a ticket back from there when they realize it`s not all pizza, ice cream and cocktails at a pool, they would still believe it`s all pizza, ice cream and cocktails at a pool.
But I think we all were like that, such beliefs mark our fragile teenage years, and I do have to admit, that despite appearances, despite what I told them (talking bitter experience), these beliefs still do occupy an honoured space of my mind and I am happily accepting them where they are and that they are for if they weren`t that`s when the bitter experiences would turn the whole self, from head to toes and from toes to head, wholly, irreversibly and crushingly bitter.

And I hate saying, more than that, I hate myself for saying this, that ideals sometimes have to be crushed in order to find the truth in the world. Sometimes other people do it for you (that`s when it hurts but in the end you realize that it indeed was the right way to go, even if you didn`t choose it in the first place and all off your own accord...perhaps something like my Chiiori revelation) and sometimes you do it to yourself. But do you? No, I guess the part that follows is just a phrase and has nothing to do with reality. Maybe it just fitted the sentence. Meaninglessly.

Anyway, the point I am trying to put across is, that with one of the girls (the other one didn`t show up), today we were to listen to her favourite English speaking artist and read the lyrics and try to understand their meaning. She said her favourite English speaking artist is Eminem, she likes him because of his style and the way he dresses, and of course the music. But she doesn`t understand what he sings about, she admitted. And so we printed out a copy of her favourite song`s lyrics, `Shake That` and started reading and translating. I don`t know if any of you are familiar with this song and it`s lyrics, but I personally felt a little embarassed explaining their meaning to a pure(?) 15 year old girl. Nevertheless, I took on the role of an older sister (or whose role should this actually be?) and started explaining to her what `There she goes shaking that ass on the floor
Bumpin and grindin that pole
The way she's grindin that pole
I think I'm losing control`
possibly means. Then came the bit about getting drunk and fucked up and someone getting their dick rubbed, followed by `Get fucked, get sucked, get wasted, shit faced` and then something about a `good pussy`, but thank got we only got to the bottom of the first long verse and I didn`t have to explain anything about cats.
After spending the half an hour with these lyrics, the girls face was wearing a somewhat disgusted expression and I am only grateful we didn`t get any further, and that she didn`t understand anything further herself, because I would be very upset having to explain it and thus having to upset her even more.
I did follow through and told her that in general it was a song that was not too nice to women, and looking at it again, I think it also gave quite a poor picture of what men are or should be like.
Writing this I am a little hurt myself by having to crush this young girl`s ideal, however on the other hand, maybe it was the right thing to do. But was it really?



*I feel in need of referencing, a natural reaction to the remnants of university education:
URL: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/eminem/shakethat.html, 12th July 2006

Typhoon and the Matters of the World

Well, what am I to say?
It is a Friday and a typhoon is coming this weekend. Hurray!!!
I have already been warned, by Sachiko先生, before she left the office today, not to, under any circumstances, go out and run around and dance in the streets in rain when the typhoon comes!
I am rather amazed how well someone can get to know you just from watching you play with their kids and occassionally drinking coffee with you. And I promised not to.

And yes, it is a Friday, the first Friday in this month and so, typhoon still no where to be afraid of, I cycled over to the City Hall to take my pottery class.
Usually, if you don`t use all the clay you are given in the class, you can take it home with you and make things at home, and so, then, when you come to the class next time, you bring your works of art and put them on a designated table so they can continue to dry and get ready for the burning.
Before I started coming to the class, and this is just a pure result of observation, no big-headidness in it or anything, only a piece of evidence to support my claim. Anyway, beforehand, everybody, since indeed it is a traditional Japanese pottery class, used to make simple plates, cups, bowls, vases, tea pots, whatever. But I don`t really like making bowls and vases that much and so when I would come home I would make some beads and pendants and little things you can put on a string and hang them all over yourself. And when I did make a bowl or a cup I would decorate it, with flowers or leaves or drawings and so on.
Since then, everybody started trying to do something similar, about which I was happy. You know, giving inspiration and all that.
In the class there is also this woman who has been doing pottery for about 4 years now. Nice girl, she would help me if I asked her something and explain things to me that I didn`t understand and when she saw my beads she showed me one really pretty bead that she made herself some time ago. She is really good. Her bowls or cups or plates don`t crack in the process of drying like ours and she has a good sense, as they say it here.
And so when I came with my ideas of some more beads and some candle holders (or covers) and she said, uh, it`s really nice, you have a sense, I was really happy.
Though the next class she came with some candle holders herself, things that very much resembled mine ones only they were done in a finer manner, they were more worked, for indeed, she has been doing it for a looong time and obviously knows what to do, how to do and what not to do. But I was fine by it. No problems, I take inspiration from things I see around me all the time.
However, this Friday, she came to the class and when we were all looking at what everybody else made, she, standing next to me, started taking things out of a paper tissue, telling me, `Look what I made. I made some beads and pendants too.` And what I was being shown were my ideas, finer copies of my beads in her hands, followed by, I don`t know, a statement, question, simple stating of the obvious, `I copied yours. I`m sorry.`
I didn`t know what to say. I didn`t feel what I should say at that moment yet. I said, `Cute.`
She left me with a miserable evening, and I know I should not be feeling it that way, but I could not help myself feel cheated big way. She is the one who`s been doing this for 4 years. She is the one we, the rest of us beginners, should copy, and so what she did I felt was utterly unfair.

I am starting to wonder about this all-around-the-world-known Japanese politenes. I think it only reaches as far as the `ごめんなさい`, `すみません`, `しつれいします` (`I`m sorry.`) though I don`t think it roots anywhere deeper than the tongue and a pair of lips. I have experienced a very rude karate先生 who accused me of stealing and was prooved wrong and didn`t even appologize and who treated me with an absolute lack of respect, claiming I had no manners because I was not Japanese and she called all this budo. In budo, I believe respect goes two ways, from the student to the teacher, of course, but there needs to be respect coming from the teacher towards the students too, otherwise the communication must fail. She called upon me not understanding anything because all this matter is based in Japanese culture, and budo, however she also hid her hidious behaviour behind budo, and I think it is close to something I`d call blasphemy. I found more natural respect in my karate club in England than in Japan and I am hurt and so disappointed about it.

There is no difference between people anywhere in the world, I think. People have feelings, negative and positive and mixtures of them, there`s loads!, nevermind where they come from, whether they are Europeans, Asians, Africans, whether they are from Russia or England or Brazil or Japan. Some people don`t say anything about anything, some people shout them out, some people hide them behind other words, but the feeling s are there and they inevitably do have to come out somehow. We are people and there is no escape.

I was only taken aback with this realization, I think my ideology bubble has been pierced in yet one more place,...
However there are always things that are real and you can trust and believe and that shall keep me in that bubble, floating on.

(*Though again, I think my world view needs revisiting, detox and new revelations.)

Presents and the Post Office

I know what i wanted to write about!!!!
I wanted to write about the present I got from my friend Dan. You see, Dan is fab, we went to Amsterdam together and got high as kites and ate at a Chinese restaurant crispy duck every day. Yay yay! Very fab Dan.
Anyway, sometime recently I spoke to Dan on MSN messenger and at that moment he was being in London spending his 2000-won-in-a-casino-pounds-fortune. He already bought an Armani suit, yahaaa (wanna see wanna see) and then he said that he just found the perfect present for me. Yippeeeeee. Love presents!!!! And so I gave him the address and the present came and it was a Badger Badger T-shirt and it was perfect.
Only my boss then, after I`ve shown all the present staff what the badgers actually are, with a small curious smile pointed to the address on the envelope which said, `Veronika Ciernikova, Fukuchiyama, Kyoto-hu, Japan`. No street, no house number, nothing. And the present came anyway!!!!
I was left there standing with a grin of disbelief, turning my head in wonder and confused amusement. With all the lost-letters-and-not-coming packages-inquiries from me the Fukuchiyama Post Office must obviously be already well acquainted with Miss Ciernikova who`s address her closest friends and closest family fail to remember.
Which reminds me, indeed, my favourite Tonysan, too, on the last letter wrote the old address followed respectibly by the new address (this was after already tracking his previous letter down a month or so before and a consequential re-update of the current state of affairs ) and it managed to arrive at my house only by the miraculous knowledge of the Post Office staff of my Fukuchiyama whereabouts.
V. impressed.

Can you Japanes(z)e?

It is a Saturday.
And I am being tested.
Or...more like...you try to look for accommodation in Japan!! Do you really need to pay thousands of moneyz for internationally recognized proficiency tests? I have come to believe that once you manage to do all this, you know, the job, the house, the moving, all by yourself you should be eligible to pass at least the, I don`t know, Japanese survival proficiency test? Not there yet, not there just as yet...humphr for now.
So as it goes, somehow so far, I have managed to understand that I am supposed to meet the guy at one of the estate agencies at whenever on Sunday next week, in Chikusa-ku, opposite Mr Doughnut (a good opportunity to show my healthy-skin-and-intestines-and-general-
lifestyle diet the finger) and that if I want to live in a tall red マンション (mansion) I have to call at the beginning of August. And, yes, the other guy who just threw all this Japanese at me and expected me to understand. What`s that all about? However, he does have my name and my phone number and has just called to say that if I want to move into that room as well as paying my 41000 Yen for rent I would have to pay another 70000 Yen upfront so they can repair the room for me (???). The final sum was 150000 Yen or so, why it has become this amount I failed to understand however I managed not to get myself tricked by a wicked salesman of today`s tricky capitalistic world and thus I guess something must be working.
Nevertheless, at times like this, I would be willing to pay as much as 1000 yen for a Babel fish.

Not hurting.

I had something on my mind, something I wanted to write about, something funny, other than feeling that the best way to live a sane life and remain emotionally stable for the moment is to hang in the vaccuum and not move. The funny thing about this anekdote is that I can actually see the vaccuum right above me, and whenever there is a possibility that my mind would slip into the well-known sad loneliness mode, the mode that in this situation is way too dangerous to slip into (have you ever tried teaching and crying at the smae time?), my eyes become blank as I quickly imagine the vaccuum and how comfy it is to be there, hang there and refuse to know or understand anything.
Meetings are being held, hearts are being twisted and turned that way and the other, they are kneaded hard in attempt to squeeze all the needed amounts of love so something can survive. We can survive. Hide and I. Or perhaps the love we have is being pulled out of the parts of the hearts that don`t seem to have been used too much, or pushed around to find the hidden little hooks it could hold onto...in order to save something so dear, the warmth and comfort, the kindness of the hearts deep... The love, poor thing, shoved around this way and that, mostly over the phone lines, the virtual tracks of emails, the trains and shabby train stations, the hurrying halls of subway. The love that up until now has lived it`s stable life within external instability, has been given a chance to finally blossom and grow...and is put in the vaccuum to float around together with me until the good winds come. Or any winds. So that it can go...the destination has not been decided just as yet. Waiting for the winds...to listen to their whisper and go...

I guess I really did forget what I wanted to write in the first place, didn`t I?

Becoming nuts and the fire flies.

Anyway! All i wanted to do was write a blog about becoming nuts with the kids and seeing fire flies. Where I am now is still in the office, without a cash card, hungry and it`s already 20:23.
Yesterday the main afternoon activity was `rythmic`. It ususally consists of listening to one sensei play the piano and the rest of us moving accordingly to the rythm given.
And so it was yesterday. We were hopping around like rabbits, walking like horses (possibly kicking surrounding English language teachers in the nose while making the usual horse noise `eeeeahahaha`), flying like butterflies, jumping like frogs, gliding like dragonflies and eventually we were to become a どんぐり [donguri]. Since none of us had an idea what a どんぐり could possibly be in English (and they let us teach??!!! and pay us for it too!!!!!), and since we knew it kind of resembled a nut of some sort, we were, in the end of the lesson, all becoming nuts. It was rather charming. We were rolling on the floor from one side to the other under the supervision of Emiko sensei who showed us how to become nuts, we were all rolling having the best time of it and with Lionel sensei we were rolling and laughing rather maniacally, shouting `We are nuts and we are happy!`
I enjoyed yesterday`s class very much.

In the evening Lionel and I went for a nice walk in the fields that we`ve only discovered last week, really close to our house, in fact just across the road and over a small hill, and decided to make it a sort of weekly routine. The walk.
And as we walked and as the evening was slowly falling upon us, as it became darker and darker and as we finally could see nothing except for a bright blue light blicking somewhere in a distanced field in front of us, suddenly we could see a bright yellow light blicking somewhere in not so distanced front of us. A small one. And again, no more than one. I at first thought it was a cat, an either frantically moving one, so you could see only her one eye and only at certain times, or a half blind cat twisting her head from right to left or...well, I didn`t get further in my deductive analysis before I found out that it was a thing moving in the air, speedily moving towards us to pass us with no interest at all, blicking a bright yellow light all this time.
It was a fire fly!!! A Japanese fire fly! The European ones, once it gets dark they just shine. Pepetually (if you`re not sure how many `l`s you are supposed to write in a word if the word doesn`t look good with one but neither with two, is it okay to write three? Perpetuallly.) And they shine and shine and shine until it gets light again and you can`t see how they shine anymore.
But the Japanese ones, very closely reminding me of the Japanese energetic system, seem to work on a power saving mode and instead of just shining constantly they blick. And also, they seem bigger. But again, I have only seen two of them yet, so I can not press this matter further and present the results of mere observation as true and valid facts without any evidence, really, can I?
Fire flies, fire flies, their bum shines!
(they have a candle in their ars!)(a little more expressive artistic expression I would address it).

Anyway, the reason why I am without a cash card is because I first have to apply for an account before I can actually open it. So that`s what I did. And the reason I am hungry is because I haven`t had any dinner yet.
And I`m not going to say the reason why I am still in this office for I believe it to be rather obvious.

PS: And if anyone thinks I am going crazy, I am not, it`s just that I`ve been reading The Hitch Hiker`s Guide to the Galaxy, full five parts of the trilogy, for the last week and a half and it seems to have a sort of mind-wandering effect on me.
And if you think that now it is when I am crazy, just wait, you haven`t heard my next travel itinerary yet!

The Golden Week: A Fab Adventure (3rd-7th May)

Well, it all started with one very drunken night.
Not really.
A fellow `hospitality` friend came down from the Nagano mountains to experience a bit of civilization over at Fukuchiyama, the city, and he brought a 無添加 (organic, for that is all I`m allowed these days for about the next year) wine, delicious by the way, and so it was THE occassion indeed, to open my well-cared-for slivovica. Which at the time seemed to be perfectly reasonable, though after throwing my dinner up out of the second floor window of my room I started reconsidering, as soon as I got my straight thinking back on the board, the correctness of the decision.
Anyway, that was the time we sealed the hitchikers` deal and two days after we were off, generally going the same direction, me again heading for Nagoya, THE hitchikers` destination according to my frequency record, and Satoshi continuing up, all the way to Nagano. (Talking of Nagano reminds me, The Earth Celebration is on again in August this year, yay yay yay! Not that it`s in Nagano or anything, you just pass it on the way:-))
Anyway, (I have to say here that Satoshi is considered by most and many to be a professional hitchhiker), setting off at 6:30 am, being late only half an hour according to the re-arranged schedule and one whole hour according to the original schedule, we managed to get a lift at the traffic lights by the Fukuchiyama Ramen shop (learned a new trick of how to change peoples` minds about taking you places) and this nice lady dropped us off at Kyoto where we took the public transportation to the Kyoto Station and from there we took a train (as good hitchhikers should) to the next station Yamashina where we got off and searched for the highway entrance. Found it and after lengthy discussions, partially including a random guy with bad teeth and a purple tracksuit, we walked to the toll gate and got a lift by a guy who was really nice, seemed very happy to help and in order to do so he seemed to have slightly ignored the road rules, or whatever it is that makes drivers moreless civilized.
He dropped us off at the nearest services, which were absolutely packed packed packed with adults, children, geriatrics, dogs, tour guides, etc., it being the absolute first day of the Golden Week, and there we peed, drank water and waited for not too long for another ride.
Though it was then, when the real waiting started. It being an absolute first day of the Golden Week, despite the fees, the highways were packed everywhere, and according to the red blicking info boards above the highway, a 25km distance was covered in about70 minutes. After another rather lengthy discussion with Satoshi and the map, the map told us to get off at the next junction (no one ever does that, mind you! It was also Satoshi`s first time, which kind of make me feel rather important to help him get rid off his junction-getting-off-a-given-ride virginity), and we walked by the queuing cars down the junction arm, over to the toll booths, through the toll booths, climbed over two locked gates and we were in the city of Ritto (only God and the map knew where we really were). But as we saw Family Mart and other marks of human life and peaceful existence, I simply knew there must be a train stationsomewhere there too and indeed it was.
Thus we got on a train to Maibara and then on another one to Ogaki with final destination Nagoya, yay yay, and even finaler destination for me was the Second ExitEntrance of ShinSakaeMachi and a reward was a kiss.
Satoshi decided to become a materialist for this short amount of time and took a night bus over to Nagano.
And this is where one adventure ends only to be followed by another one, a new one, The One Where We All Helped Hide Paint His Room (and Got to See the Hysterical Slovak in Love).

A Lust for Life

Winter is gone. So long and thanks for all the fish.
I have been suffering with this strange type of depression that makes one complain a lot. The problem would not be the complaining itself but the state of self-disgust you thus manage to drive yourself into. It showed mainly in the absolute lack of want to train, which under usual circumstances is `the little engine that could`. The inability to understand this was also somewhat confusing, even though eventually, I gave in and accepted it as the path of the present, rather than accepting the growing debilitating feeling of a questioning mind.
The spring is slowly coming to the Land of The Rising Sun and with it comes the sun and the warmth and wakes not only all the life around, but so it seems, also feeds the life inside of one`s soul and one`s heart grows softer in the sound of the warm spring breeze strolling within your psycho-somatic existence.
I feel like poor old Sarlota, my father`s turtle, who after a long winter sleep pulls her head out and after the four months of darkness is blinded by the happiness of yellow rays of sun.
I bought a pink noren, hanged it in the doorway which now is a little bit pink instead of dark greyish black and so is the living room. Hurray for pink if it signifies life!
There is a sewing machine on the floor of my room, there are pieces of materials and innumerable used tissues and books about knitting lieing around, and also sad slightly unidentifiable victims as the outcomes of my creativity, such as little bunny with yellow eyes and a crooked smile and a fluffy invalid frog.
It is warm because of the constant hot attention of my electric heater and it is warm because it is yellow. Yellow curtains, yellow tatami, yellow cloth hanging in front of the door and even my thoughts are yellow with the colour of the sun and energy whizzing through and around even if it rains.
As of April I shall become a member of the local Shotokan club and as of May 12th I shall indulge in a piggy style fun. I am joining the company of bored Fukuchiyama housewifes in the City Hall to learn pottery.
After those lingering winter months of lonesome darkness I irrevocably feel alive instead of alone.

*thank you Tonysan

My name is Kondo. You know my father.

Saturday marked the end of the desperate urges of unfulfilled desire to create and with the new house goddess Mishin we threw ourselves in the whirl of uncontrollable madness of potention. I sewed for two days straight and by the end of the weekend my fingers were blue with indigo, nerves wrecked, body exhausted and my heart warm with satisfaction of achievement. And the room together with me smelled a bit bad.
On saturday early in the afternoon Miki先生 stopped by to pick me up to go and book a car for mum`s and mine trip to Chiiori three weeks from now. Miki`s dad owns a car company so he dealt a deal for us. In my imagination Miki was going to head proud and unthreatened straight for the office and bark at the slouching sales assistants, nervously now and then peeking from behind their ashtray glasses, `My name is Kondo. You know my father`. And in that instance all would be clear and done. To this idea Miki just laughed in her slightly modest and amused voice, she got out of the car, headed for the office, smiled...and all was clear and done.
(Of course the yakuza action involved few moments of ununderstandable rants, unconfortable silences and questioning looks-mostly on my side-but eventually indeed, we left with a booking of the dealt deal, an unused proof of identification and unused few money that i brought as proof of my possessions and a granduer feeling of importance).

And I should not forget to mention a little anekdote about how I forgot, in that whirl of maddening passion for creation, to bring in the futons and sheets that I hang in the balcony, before it started pissing it down with rain. Miki rang the door bell and with that already mentioned slightly modest and amused voice, this time also with a grin on her face, she reported to me the happenings of the outside world of which, in my own little lost existence, I had absolutely no idea.

La Japoniesa: A Sunday Morning...

I am excited. I found this blog today, by an absolute chance. Bored of not getting any emails I went on to GoogleSearch to search for something starting with an `r` (what it was I no longer remember) and a word someone has already tried to GoogleSearch for came up-`relakuma`.
It was this guy`s blog. Except for Kumachan he seemed to have a lot more other pictures. I wanted to see. For no other reason but interest out of boredom. Fonz and Wani are still asleep, and I`ve read and lay in bed too much of this weekend already. Taro, I found, has 2571 pictures in his gallery!! And so I really wanted to see. As I saw I thought how, in a way not really grasped yet, he reminds me of Oz. I miss Oz a lot. And so I wanted to be this boy`s friend, I realized. I want to become his friend. Hm.

La Japoneisa: ...the journeys of one`s soul...

Few days ago I started reading The Bible.
I always wanted to read it but never really managed to get pass the evil snake.
This time the Book was there and so I read, got pas the evil snake and I keep on reading (smiling at Fonz`s and Wani`s comments such as `I`ve never seen anyone read the Bible like this except for my grandparents`) and living the story. And I don`t want to become a nun ^__^
After I`ve read I want to go and see.
...じやあ旅をつずけよう...everybody their own one...

Revelation!

Today I mark as the first day of brightness.
Today is the day when I managed to find a flight on a Japanese website. All the way from the bottom of the beginnings, the Japanese Yahoo search engine, throught the departure date and place to the actual result and final information. I am content.
Though I don`t really know what to do with all the obtained information now thus I sent it onto Hidechan to do something about it.
But it is the beginning, right?

La Japoneisa: Winter

And suddenly the world has changed. Just like that. Without a warning it has suddenly all gone white. And quiet. Its as if a blanket of peaceful silence fell over it, almost like a filter or insulation or double-glazed windows! The snow covered life suddenly feels as if it was wrapped all over by a thick layer of cotton wool, its soft and quiet and all you have to do now is just close your eyes and wander off in your dreams.
Walking down the old fashioned streets, away from the main-stream walkways, unshoveled, they are left to resemble deep white winter rivers and you feel like you are the only soul left on earth, walking your way through to only more whiteness that seems, in its cottony silence, there forever.
I never imagined snow would get me this extatic one day. The moment I stick my nose outside a grin of an idiot child settles on my face and my soul vibrating with unreasoned for happiness makes my voice sing out my heart. And of course, all the christmas carols I know.
I am in love with the world!