Writing introductions is a bit tedious so....just take a look at my first post if you want to know more....

....and if you get curious about the name of this World or my posts, check out the second one.

Empty Dialogue

Recently one of my jr. high 1st years can't stop shouting, "This is it!" whenever he sees me. I thought he was actually trying to say something the first two or three times (just goes to show you how much I don't care about the rest of the world....) but eventually realized it was just some English he heard somewhere and was repeating. Kind of like the rash of elementary school kids who went around chanting, "Yes we can!" during the last presidential election.

It finally clicked in my head what the kid was talking about when I walked by a display outside a book/DVD store. While I'm not a fan of the office of the president, and kind of hate politics in general, I have to say I'm slightly insulted that Obama's catchphrase has been so quickly erased from the minds of Japanese children. To be replaced by Michael Jackson.

Last Thursday the kids went out to collect aluminum cans to sell to get money to buy flowers for graduation. The (super cute) nurse and I went out to take pictures of them as they came back all loaded down with bags of beer and coke cans from the neighborhood houses. On his way out of the school gate the same kid passed by us and shouted...guess what?

Yep.
"This is it!"
...and looked at me like he had just done some thing amazingly cool and I should be really happy about it.
The nurse blinked a few times and looked at me like, 'What's that all about?' and I sighed and yelled after the kid,
"Do you understand what you're saying?" in Japanese.
"No!" (also Japanese) he answered. And kept on walking.

*sigh*
No. Of course not.
I was right. "Yes we can!" all over again.

The nurse turned to me and asked, "So....what does it mean?" and I said, "Well....um...it means....." and realized, 'shit! it can mean like 8 million different things depending on the context!' Of course, I have no idea what the context is since I don't even know if "This is it" is the title of the dead King of Pop's song, or just his DVD. (The only time I knew anything about Michael Jackson was in 6th grade when he had that video where all the people's faces morphed into each other's. And that was a big secret since everyone thought I was way too cool for stuff other people like. I can't remember the name of the song, or the tune, just the trippy looking people melting from one to the next.) I couldn't have explained "This is it" in English, let alone Japanese.

Stupid, ambiguous language.

End of Hypnosis3 (The Blue Fog)

Here it is:

I touched it.

It was a pretty awesome way to spend the day after I said goodbye to my wifey. I took about a million pictures. Kind of weird for me.

"the call to arms was never true"

Just a few days before that we got a private tour of the Bandai Hobby Center here in town.

Also amazingly cool.

Recently I've been feeling like I'm living in between sleeping. It's probably just b/c there's no school so I feel kind of useless. Of course, we're always technically doing that I suppose. That's the only way we can do it. And I always look forward to sleeping.

March of the Death

Yesterday my brother told me he can't come visit me in Japan this summer. He can't afford it. It's kind of ridiculous since I know he has tons of money, but he's a good saver & I can respect that. At first I was upset, but then I remembered him saying he wanted to climb Mt. Fuji this time around.

Today I climbed a mountain with my students. Well, more like a mountain range actually. Of course it was MUCH less work than Fuji-san would take, but still I think I'm glad I won't be doing that this summer. You know that expression, "what goes up, must come down,"? Well, in mountain climbing it works the opposite way; what goes down, must go up. Again. Because, of course, you've already gone up once in order to get to the place you were going down from.

I pretty much hate mountains. And climbing. Up or down. As I was walking (read: slipping, scrambling, sliding on my hands and knees over the wet, dirty, mossy rocks) with a few of the 2nd year otaku girls all they could say was, "I can't do this! I'm gonna die! I wanna go home!" And I couldn't have agreed more. Of course, I couldn't say so b/c as a "teacher" I have to be a good example. But I couldn't really say much in the way of encouragement either since I was barely breathing enough just to walk (read: drag myself up the mountain on tree branches that left huge splinters in my hands) without talking. I just contented myself with thoughts of the dead bodies of all the other teachers (and maybe a few students...) strewn across the mountain path after I blew them up for taking us on this "outing" where we didn't even look at anything or stop to learn about the area.

Yep, Hayato would've been proud jealous of the massacre I was planning.

We had one interesting conversation along the way though:

Me: What do we do if it rains?
Ai-chan: We get wet.
Me: Eh?
Mizu-chan: You brought a raincoat right?
Me: Yeah...
Mi-chan: If it rains, put it on.
Me: And...we keep climbing up?
Ai-chan: Well, we can't go back. We have to keep going forward.

And that's the way it goes.

It rained. We put on our raincoats & went on. They kept saying they were going to die the whole way. I kept thinking about how I was going to kill everyone there. But we went on anyway, & when it was over I decided, yep, I still hate mountains. They got my shoes dirty after all.

Grow?

Recently, I think I've been changing a lot really fast. Like, in my head, that is. So many things happened this Spring that I wanted to write about. I had good opening lines for so many stories in my head. And more things just kept happening. I kept telling myself, I'll do it soon. I'll do it later. I'll do it........sometime.......eventually. And now they're mostly forgotten.

I went to Comiket & it was awesome. I went on vacation with my friends. I went on vacation with my dad. I started a new project for work on a whim & somehow got a lot of good attention because of it. The new school term started & I had to say goodbye to some of my favorite students ever. I almost did a few things that could've turned out really badly. No time to dwell on it now though. The days keep moving forward.

Recently, I think about drawing more and more. Think about how I wish I was doing it when I'm stuck doing something else. Or when I'm stuck wasting time because I have to be somewhere in order to keep things working right. I think I'd be pretty happy if I could do nothing but draw all day long. Too bad there are things like dishes and laundry and life keeping me from doing it.

I've taken to writing stuff in a notebook during school. Just random stuff that comes into my head. It's nothing good, writing wise. I'm really bored at my current school, but I can't bring myself to do anything to get involved since I'm only there for 10 more days. It was only 19 to begin with. Kinda sad when you think about it. So I study, & write stuff, & pretend to study, & count the hours.

It's less than a month now till my 30th birthday. Strangely, I'm not all that concerned about it. I thought I would be, the way people hype it up so much, but I'm not. I find myself looking forward to my birthday the same as every year. It's my birthday after all. It's the day I always loved most but wouldn't tell anyone else about. At first I thought I'd like to just be 30 & get it over with so I could stop being 29 & worrying about turning 30, but now I guess I can't help but be a kid about my birthday.

Recently, I feel like my mind is working too quickly. Speeding almost. It's not a bad feeling, but sometimes a scary one. It jumps from place to place without any permission from me whatsoever. I can't seem to focus as well as I'd like to, in an impatient sort of way. I can't seem to say or even think about things clearly.

It always amazes me the amount of things other people are able to do. Like, all at once, all in one day, they just work on stuff, and accomplish stuff. Me, I spend more time thinking than anything else. It's overwhelming at times, all the stuff in my head. I wonder if I could turn it off, if then I'd be able to spend more time doing stuff.

I remember one thing I wanted to write.

I looked at this picture from our trip to Kobe a while after we got back & I thought, "This would look completely different if someone else had taken it." If Sarah took it, Pin, Brian & I would all be grinning like idiots with our arms around each other's shoulders. If Pin took it, it'd be all cool & artistic, with the other three of us all in contrasting views. If Brian took it.....well, none of us would be in it most likely. Just the tower & some random Japanese chick he thought was hot. My perspective is always this one though.