tonight after web shift i went to the clinic to have dr. ueno snip and pluck ten stitches out of my chin. it wasn't fun, but BELIEVE YOU ME it was a mother fucking spa day when compared to the process by which they got there in the first place. now i'm left with a faint but lovely scar running along the right underside of my chin. at this rate i'm gonna look like harrison ford before i hit 30. hey-o! i don't even really care though. i'm just glad those suckers are OUT.

in more crash-of-'08-related news. tonight's x-ray showed a tiny fracture in my elbow. and to think i've been walking around for the last 2 weeks wondering why i can't rotate or extend my arm. headdesk! the good news is that it's very small and the doc seems pretty confident it'll heal itself in a few weeks' time. here's hoping. because i'm not exactly keen on the idea of being casted.

and on a much more hilarious front! yesterday, in a dialogue about going to the doctor, i got to explain to two of my grown-ass students why diarrhea is funny. the japanese generally do not inherently see the comedic value of diarrhea; to them it's just another symptom. no funnier than a sore throat. so i took matters into my own hands and taught them how to act 12 years old. then we spent the last 10 minutes of the lesson laughing until we cried.

someone talk me out of spending $280 to jet (shinkansen) off to tokyo tomorrow. i don't want to spend the yens, but laura and colin are being awfully persuasive and they won't stop texting me WAHHHHH

despite being a huge pain in the ass, the language barrier has some redeeming qualities. for one thing, it's rife with potential for hilariously awkward situations.

por ejemple. take this little snafu from the other day. i was sitting in the abeno ward office waiting to get my health insurance stuff finalized when this little boy started playing peek-a-boo with me, repeatedly burying his face into his moms coat and then turning around to see if i was still looking. his mom smiled at me and i smiled back and said "kawaii desu!" only instead of pronouncing it "kuh-why-eee des" i said, "kuh-why des."

i was later informed that the lack of the final long "eee" sound turns the meaning of the word from "cute" to "scary."

i told this lady that her little boy was scary.

my students crack my shit up up too. whether i'm laughing WITH them or AT them, rarely do i teach an adult lesson where i don't find anything hilarious. yesterday i got to teach a student the word "stinky." we were talking about natto and farts. last week i asked another student what he had in common with his wife. his answer?

"drinking."

another student told me that he wanted to "bone jessica alba."

and still another postulated that eating american fast food is making japanese people taller. i asked him if he meant fatter. he said, "no. taller."

the kids classes are going well. they're pretty draining because you're singing and dancing and hopping around like horny bunnies or frogs or whatever for 40 minutes straight. but they always fly by. kids ages 2-5 are damn funny. but they have the attention spans of guppies so if they aren't interested in what you're teaching, they'll roll around on the floor or try to eat their cushions instead. yesterday while cleaning up after my AL class i found a piece of alpha-mat that had been chewed and slobbered on. DO NOT WANT.

in other news, i've had a couple of fun nights out in the last week even though i'm still piecing them together memory-wise. last night laura, colin and i met some other teachers at a 200 yen bar for some beers. from there we rode around the city on our bikes armed with cans of chu-hi (14 proof what up) and a 2-liter carton of red wine labeled "daily box" which we took turns drinking from. this is where it starts to get blurry. i know that we met some awesome japanese people who offered/force fed us their tako-yaki, which laura and i burned the fuck out of our mouths with. i know that at some point we parked our bikes, walked away from them, and proceeded to totally forget where they were. I KNOW THAT HILARITY ENSUED. yeah not really. but i know that i kept wailing "jitensha wa doko desu kaaaaaaaaa" and i know we eventually found them.

i know we ate at a ticket restaurant sometime after that. i don't know what i ate. but i do know it was dericious.

i know that, when i went to ride home at 6am, i had no absolutely idea where i was, let alone how to get home. but i do know i somehow found my way back ok so whatevs.

anyways! not only am i alive and well, i can honestly say that life is pretty awesome at the moment. and even though i was bummed that i did not get a thanksgiving this year and i missed the holy living shit out of everyone, there's always next year. and the next. and the next....

xo.

week three in the land of the J. i'm officially in love with this place, though i can't seem to get over the fact that i live here now. in fact i'm still having a hard time fathoming that me living here is even a physical possibility. yet, somehow, i have food. i have a roof over my head. i have toilet paper with which to wipe my ass. i even know where to go if i ever need some handcuffs. and to think i was ever worried about a handcuff crisis. duhhh. it's osaka, not mars!

life is still life though. and last monday sucked a fat one! it was the first day i've had since i've been here that's been anything but good. i blew my first demo in training by totally forgetting to do a warm-up which just derailed the whole thing. leave it to me to screw up the easiest part of the lesson. my trainer was very nice about it. his voice said wow, i've never seen anyone do that before. but he had to have been thinking, what a douchetard. ALL ABOARD THE FAIL BOAT.

that little faux pas aside. training has been totally fun. my group consists of 2 canadians, 2 other americans, and 4 brits. whom i've vastly enjoyed taking the piss out of for the way they talk. the last couple of days we've been learning how to teach kids' classes. turns out that the secret to teaching children is to make a complete and total ass of yourself, and i think we all know how i excel at that. i didn't expect to be so excited about teaching the little ones. but after doing the hokey pokey in training, i am secretly kind of psyched to put my bottom in, put my bottom out, put my bottom in, and shake it all about.

wahhhhh i need a pedicure and i think my neighbor is a prosti. also, my wallet's too small for my fifties and my diamond shoes are too tight. other than these things, all is well. the blisters on my feet have healed. i found a bookstore with books written in english. i have a bike that i don't know how i ever lived without. i'm learning to read and write katakana. most importantly though! i have a shower curtain hanging in my bathroom and two packages of baby cheeses in my fridge. it really is the little things beeyotches.

wow. ok. i don't even know where to start. i promised an update though so here we go bbs.

i landed at kansai on thursday afternoon around 3:30. despite all the flipping out i did the whole week before i left, i was shockingly calm. big up to xanax! i also slept quite a bit on the plane, so i was fairly coherent for someone who had been traveling for nearly 20 hours.

i managed to navigate through the airport, claim my 10847437 lbs worth of baggage, buy a phone card, etc. pretty easily (a lot of the signs were in english), but when i went to take the train i suddenly got this paranoid feeling that i was on the wrong one even though i had absolutely no reason to think that. this is how i first came to the realization that the japanese people are the nicest people in the world. because i was sitting there absolutely convinced that i was on a train to outer mongolia or siberia or some shit, and the man sitting across from me asked if need help. i must have looked really bewildered because he said "i was worry about your face!" and then he pointed out my stop for me. thanks dude!

the rest of the day is kind of a blur. i met my housing rep, aussie patrick, at the tengachaya station and he drove me to my apartment. from there we walked around my neighborhood a bit and he pointed out bars and convenience stores and bathhouses and train stations. then he left and i went and bought two little bottles of sake from the mart around the corner and spent the rest of the night unpacking.

waking up in my room friday morning and re-realizing where i was was probably the most surreal experience of my life thus far. my second bag got dropped off around 11, then i hit the streets. even though i stuck to my ward and the neighboring ward (abeno and tennoji, respectively), there was plenty to see. i took pictures, wandered into random stores and markets, ate my first bento (of many, i'm sure), dodged a million bikes on the sidewalk, and generally loved every. second. of it. i even somehow managed to find the abeno ward office to apply for my gaijin card. despite speaking VERY little english, the guy there was, again, SO freaking nice and helpful. the whole process was shockingly easy and i didn't have to wait in line or anything. it's pretty pathetic when it's easier to navigate a foreign country's bureaucracy than it is your own government's. go fucking figure.

but i digress. my favorite discovery of that day was definitely the 99-yen store where i found clothes hangers after hours of scouring. 99-yen ftw, just sayin.

yesterday. saturday. i got a little ballsier. i grabbed an iced coffee and headed out to shinsaibashi, osaka's answer to times square. it's only 3-4 stops away from me on the train, depending on which line i take. from there i got lost on purpose and just meandered around for a few hours. i ducked into a teeny little sushi place and sat at the counter and ate some tekka maki as the other patrons chattered at (and probably about) me in japanese. it was getting dark and i was on my way back to the train station when i accidentally stumbled on the dotonbori river in shainsaibashi. HOLY MOTHER OF GOD. i had seen pictures of this area, but in person it was just fucking SPECTACULAR. there's no way to adequately describe it but there are pics on my flickr. i am in love. amazing amazing amazing.

last night, i hung out with two of the girls that live in my building, natalie and jacque, who are both from toronto. we prepartied it up with some sake in nat's apartment and then took the very last train back down to shinsaibashi. the trains stop running around midnight which in my opinion is freaking gayyyy but twatever. they didn't seem too sure what they wanted to do and i definitely didn't have a clue, so we bought some booze from a convenience store and drank it on the street outside a gaijin bar and chatted up some brahs who work(ed) for NOVA (suckas!!!). yep, here you can buy alcohol anytime and you can also drink it right in the street. HELLO, am i in heaven?

after that we paid 2000 yen (!) to get into a club and danced our asses off and let some japanese guys buy us the tiniest tequila shots i've ever seen. it was ok though because i was already wasted and having the time of my life. i even made my first japanese friend, toshi, he was such a doll. by the time we cabbed it home it was nearly 5am. i don't think the bars even close here. it's weird shit, but i'm not complaining.

today i woke up at 3pm and dragged my ass out of my apartment. i took the train to namba and ate at subway. YES SUBWAY. fuck you i was too hungover to be adventurous. then i walked back down to the dotonbori and sat to watch people and smoke cigarettes and just take everything in. it was there that i felt my first real pangs of homesickness. there were some guys speaking english within earshot and it made me REALLY miss home. one of them was a major daddy though and that made me feel a bit better. but still. i was tired and hungover anyway so i called it a day and took the train home around 6-7.

so now here i sit, in my teeny little aparto, drinking some cheap red, listening to itunes and brogging my ass off. despite the pangs today, i am having a fabulous time. i can safely say i think i'm going to love it here. even though if i have to hear or say the words "arigato gozaimasu" one more time i think i'm gonna puke.

anyway, this is getting long and there's some crazy japanese shit on tv so i'll wrap it up my darlings. take care of each other for me and check back here for updates. i promise this is just the beginning.

xo.

my life. is slowly. being. dismantled. two garage sales, one move, two ads on craigslist, a pilgrammage to buffalo exchange, about eighty million trips to goodwill, and a whole lotta blood sweat and tears later, my whole life now fits into 6-7 boxes and two suitcases. and as much as i miss being the proud owner of a fondue pot. i've really never been so happy about having so little. besides, my new digs in osaka look like ( this ) and yes that room is the ENTIRE MOTHER FUCKING APARTMENT. i never did the college dorm thing but i guess there's no time like the near-future.

i fly out in two weeks. i'm excited but also stressed as all get-out. quasi-unemployment definitely agrees with me, but quasi-homelessness is turning into a full time job. it's not the afternoons by alison's pool that are stressing me out. it's not all the daytime television i'm watching or the all-nighters i'm free to pull now. in fact i'm guessing it's some combination of a five-mile-long to-do list (which admittedly would be a bit shorter if not for pools and oprah) and having to live out of my car and/or with my parents. this couch surfing business is harder than it looks. i tell you what!!!

in light of all this hoopla i'm trying to become better at brogging. and i said TRYINGGGG so bear with me. i started this thing and i've had several people threaten to beat me if i don't update it. so hopefully you'll all get lots of pictures and maybe a sordid tale or two of my adventures as an engrish sensei/baka gaijin. in the meantime, get into it.