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Just came home from a day out with my new boss.  54 years old and full of beans.  He loves North America and studied in the south of the U.S.,  can't remember the name at the moment.  He's a heavy set man, portly you might say, who used to smoke cigarettes.  His breath tells the tail.  All in all a very nice man and it will be great working for the government of Japan.  Lot's of perks and a lead into the government helps when dealing with visas.

We met at 1:20 pm in the local bookstore downtown and headed to the movie theatre to see, "The Legend of Bager Vance", with Will Smith and Matt Daymon and directed by Robert Redford.  It was a crappy movie about golf that just didn't cut the mustard but it was passable.  I didn't get a choice of what movie I would like to see but as he was paying for it I couldn't complain.  It was my first time to see a movie in Japan.  A ticket costs 1600 yen and the theatre was tiny, we are talking about 60 seats and the screen was the size of a large kitchen table.  It's different here in Japan.  If you go out with the boss on a "date" they treat you better in the work place.  It's part of the custom to go out with the staff even when you have made plans to go out with your mates.  Shogunai (that's just the way it is) as they say in Japanese.

After the movie we headed to a coffee shop to wait until 5pm.  This is when the restaurant opens up that he wants to take me to.  Who am I to complain.  We walk from the movie theatre to the bus station and have coffee and sandwiches and talk about the history of Canada.  Something that I'm not to up on at the moment but I think I'm going to have to brush up on.  He is fascinated with Canada and now wants to go to Vancouver Island.  I say why not, he would love it , who doesn't.  After the coffee and sandwiches we headed off to Shimatori to the restaurant that he wants to take me too.  He tells me that we are going to get drunk.  In Japan, everyone likes to drink a lot, it's something to be proud of and it determines if you are trustworthy or not.  So as I want the job I got hammered.  Not only was I gulping back the beer, but also the food, it just kept on coming, and good food.  He must have spent a fortune on it, well the taxpayers paid a fortune, the joy of working for the government.  Any ways, we had steak, shrimp, some kind of beef thing wrapped in bacon, salad, raw pork and salmon.  I couldn't eat it all and when we left there was still a ton of food on the table. 

After paying the bill, that must have been astronomical, we headed to have some strawberry cake and more coffee at the Kumamoto Castle Hotel, one of the most expensive spots in Kumamoto.  Here there are Jaguars, Porsches and Rolls parked outside.  This is one of the elite hotels in Kyshu.  So there we are, mixing with the rich and famous people of Japan, not that I would know a rich and famous Japanese person if they hit me with their car, but none the less there I am choking back strawberry cake and drinking rich Columbian coffee.  Has the world gone mad I'm thinking.  What is it all about!  He then proceeds to tell me that he wants to meet Mr. Yakamoto.  I tell him, "how did you know about Mr. Yakamoto?" looking a bit concerened because nobody was to know about Mr. Yakamoto.  He tells me to phone him and tell him to meet us here for cake and coffee.  I pull out my mobile and ring him up, we just so happen to be right around the corner from his petting zoo.  To make a long story short he comes down and kind of saves me, and then we go home.  

Dining with the bosses has proved to be a bit tiring as you have to be on your best behavior.  In Japan there are so many customs to follow that one thing, like picking your nose and eating it, or farting loudly while eating could put you in a bad light with the school.  All I can say is that I'm glad I have such a good friend like Mr. Yakamoto.  

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As you can tell I have revamped my site.  I bought a digital camera from Best.  Best is kind of like a Future Shop back home.  The good thing about Best is that you can use the internet for free on the 5th floor.  Which is nice if you don't have an internet connection like me.  The camera has 3 digital zooms and 2 non digital zooms.   I haven't figured out how to use the camera correctly as the manual I have is in Japanese.  The English one is coming in a few days and then I will be able to go to town.  I also bought an IBM think pad.  It was a great deal for the money.  It only has a 1.gig hard drive but I don't mind too much.  I have a ton of 3 1/2 floppies that can be a pain in the ass to back up.  Everything is external on the laptop so it's ultra thin.  This can be a good thing or a bad thing.   I'm learning having the CD ROM attached to the computer is a good thing.  It has a 133 mhz processor and 40 megs of ram.  Everything works on it which is a bonus for the money I paid.  

A lot has happened since my last entry.  I now work for a local high school and I begin on April 9th.  I'm a teachers assistant.  The pay is good and I only have to work 15 hours a week.  I have privates and I also work for another school called Brother.  Crazy name but all the schools here have a crazy name.  All in all I'm really busy but enjoying myself.  I have the whole of March off which is really great.  I'm building a web site for a Mr. Yakamoto's school and it is still in the building phase.  It has proven challenging building a site in Japanese but I'm getting there.  My computer is not the fastest and without an internet connection at home it can be a bit slow.  But It's coming along. 

The weather has been a bit nut's here.  One minute it's sunny, the next cloudy, the next snowing.  It's been really unpredictable.  It has been really cold on the scooter that's for sure.  I found a full faced helmet so that has helped with the cold.  The other helmet I had was a scull cap.  It looked really cool but not very good in the cold or and accident.  I wonder what the weather has been like over in Canada.  Probably cold and miserable.  

Mr. Yakamoto and I have decided to get a tutor.  Every Wednesday we are going to learn Japanese with one of Mr. Yakamoto's drinking buddies.  It should be a great experience learning Japanese and getting to know Mr. Yakamoto better.  I just wish that he would clean up around the house. He can be very tiring at times.  

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Went out last night for my going away party from Washington.  We started the night at an Italian restaurant and proceeded to Sharp, the bar that I told you about in my last entry.  I sucked back beers and said my farewells to the great people that I worked with.  It was my first teaching job here in a full time position and all the staff helped show me the ropes.  As the evening progressed one by one my colleagues left.  At the end all that remained was Andy, Tekeshi and my self.  We decided to head off to another bar in town called the Sanctuary and then to a bar called The Rubber Room.  All the bars seemed quite due to yesterday being a holiday for people turning 20.  

We finished the night at a karaoke bar some where down town.  My first time in Japan.  It was a cool experience but my voice really sucks.  I sang American Pie, The Boxer and one more that I cant remember really poorly.  We also drank Shochu, a mean spirit that knocks your socks off.  I ended up walking home in the chill of the night at an ungodly hour of 5:30 am.  

After forcing myself to get out of bed at noon all I did in the afternoon was sit around and read Harry Potter.  A great tail about wizardry. 

Wow, I just felt my first earth quake!   "It was a small one," says Mr. Yakomoto, the experienced seismologist.  Mr. Yakomoto is now teasing me.  "That was just a tremor," he gloats all knowingly.  Well I feel like I have just experienced one more thing in life.  What a great feeling. 

The weather has been really crappy today. The wind has been howling and it has been snowing and hailing.  Not nice scooter weather. 

Editorial
Today, while we were lying around reading under the kotatsu, a woman came by and knocked on the door, Mr. Yakamoto and I look at each other knowing that you should never answer the door because when you do you get locked into a deep conversation that you can't get away from in thick Japanese that you can't understand.  But being curious creatures we tip toe to our door and take a peep through the peep hole.  She seems like she was pretty anxious to talk to us.  She even tried to open the door, thank Boris that it was locked.  

Mr. Yakamoto and I were a bit puzzled as to why she felt she could just try and open the door to our apartment and what was she going to do when she gets in.  That's when you remembered what a friend of ours told us.  In Japan the entrance hall in your apartment is "public."  This means that people feel free to open your door and pretty much come into your house with out being invited.  This was a new experience.

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Crazy life I lead.  Always on the edge of my next gig.  After I handed in my notice at Washington Institute of Languages I don't know were my next maki sushi is coming from.  I decided to go out to break the chain of the norm, break out of the life that I have been leading these past 5 months.  I decided to go out and get hammered with the locals.  Talk cod shit to strangers about the price of sake and love it.  Yes, I went to Nexus in Kamatori, a bar in the dirty side of town.  

Here, girls scream constantly of fright from there own shadows.  Here the rats crawl around knowing that times are rough and food is scarce.  This is where I started my wondrous crazy night of the un know.  Who knows where my drunken stupor would lead me but I was in the mood to throw up.  I was in the mood to be hung like never hung before, I was going to get blitzed.  I order my forth beer from the Japanese bar tender, he new why I was in there and he smiled knowing that I will drop a pant load of cash into his empty till.  He was happy to see me.  The first four beers were spent chin waging at a friends house, talking about the local gig and such.  How it's hard being a teacher in the god forsaken town of salary men and Bulgarian hostesses.  Yes, its regular John Wayne country here in Kumamoto, the town that is known for internet porn and prostitution.  Always ready to draw your wallet and pump out cash at the drop of a hat.  Yes, money flows like water from the cash machine to the merchants.  You spend money in your sleep here.  You fart and it costs you 1000 yen.  It's crazy money in a crazy place.  And I love it.

After purchasing a beer and striking up a conversation in my pigeon Japanese to the bar tender about water skiing on Canadian lakes, not that I have done much myself but when you are in Japan people just think that you have a jet powered boat in your yard next to the Yamaha  motorcycles and the sport utility van.  Well that's what I like for them to believe, It better for the free beer that way.   I sit down next to this kind looking gentle man, yes he will do.  I sit down and begin to practice my Japanese.  He tries to get away from the conversation but he knows that has locked in for the long hall of struggling to listen to my crappy Japanese and trying to make sense of it all.  He begins to smoke a cigarette. After about an hour of gibberish we decide to split and head off to find another watering hole.

We wind outside a bar called Sharp, a hole in the ground that smells of rotting beer and cigarettes. This seems to be a local hangout for foreigners and the American military. The military have a great name in town for being complete assholes and causing trouble once drunk. We enter with a thirst for beer. The people inside are well hammered and the scenery a drunken blur to me. Its a crevice in the ground, not fit for man nor military but we are here anyways. There is a stage with an array of instruments, drums, guitars and congas, a dance floor and of course the bar.

I roll up to the bar and order a beer, the owner, a burly Australian that goes buy the name of John says to me that I have a job where he works in a local high school. I pawned him off thinking that he was a drunken fool. I know what job he was talking about but I hadn't even been for an interview. He later begins telling me all about the staff and such. I'm a bit shocked and shrugged it off. How does he know about my job interview with this high school I thought to myself in my drunken state, no time to think must drink more beer I thought. I talked to some foreigners here about the local beer and such and after a while they left. Its still a blur.

Anyways I sit drinking beer thinking about my tiny life in this big world when all of a sudden four Bulgarian hostesses come in and swarm around me, in my fright I just sat there, frozen like a deer in the headlights of a B-train truck. They begin to nestle in the bar by taking off there coats and ordering drinks. Why, I thought, why have they sat beside me. I have just come to get blitz and lose my mind for a couple of hours. I decide to get up and stumble over to the Congas and begin to play them to the techno music, a sorry state of affairs but I was having fun. On my own, the way I like it when I'm completely inebriated.

Low and behold they come over and want me to teach them how to play. I thought my plan to escape was fool proof, but not to be. I began to try and teach them to play and then they start dancing. I finished off the song and stumble back to my bar stool. Safe for a while I thought. I'll order another beer. They are now calling me from the dance floor, all dressed in skimpy outfits with Bolshevik expressions. I decline the offer with a wave and a drunken smile, didn't want to offend them. It wasn't good enough, one of them come over and drag me off my stool and pull me toward the dance floor. She then begins to dance with me. She was very good. She was dancing some Jazz thing, dipping and spinning around me, she was doing an excellent job of making me look good. She even did the final dip on the beat of the last note. I was amazed. I clap and rush back to my bar stool drinking beer trying not to feel to nauseous.

After they danced themselves out we talked about Bulgaria and they thanked me for being kind and listening to them. They headed out about 5:30am. Ah, just me I thought, back to the beer. This is when John makes his move to probe me about my existence. A fly under the microscope in my drunken binge. We chatted and then jammed blues on the guitars till 8am, he bought me a bunch of beer and a coffee. I left the bar at 8:10am and staggered to a taxi and was then promptly whisked home.

Tuesday was my last day at Washington, Wednesday I went for the interview with the high school and got the job, I begin on April 9th, more about the job later.