stabbing myself in the eyeballs repeatedly with a rusty ol' salt shaker

teaching children has quickly become my least favorite thing to do in the world. it basically all the elements that i hate about life combined with all the things that i suck at nestled into a box of skills that i lack. lemme break it down:

1. social energy. this is something that i lack completely. for example, if i'm out at a bar and don't know anyone to talk to, it's much easier for me just to go home than meet new people. little tiny japanese babies, on the other hand, seem to enjoy simply climbing out of the windows* and giving each other bloody noses*.

2. discipline. i've always felt that if i wanted to tell kids how to do things, i'd just have a pair or two myself. as it stands, i'm still figuring life out, and i think that makes me unqualified to tell other people how to do things. if you can't teach your children how to sit still in a chair, then clearly they aren't ready to learn english.

3. assholes. i don't like them, and try to avoid interacting with them. regardless of age.

4. humor. i've been known to whip out some hella-wit on occasion whilst kickin' it old school adult-stylie, but it seems nearly impossible for ol' monotonous mikey to get laughs out of the young japanese.

5. respect. i'm not going to reach into your pocket and try to take your money*, and i expect the same courtesy from you. somewhere along the line english teachers have instilled the idea that we're all just kids ourselves, and we love to run around screaming and not paying attention to anything! whoo! english time!

6. second guesses. i leave each class trying to reassure myself that i don't actually hate children, i'm just not cut out to teach them things.

this is written in complete frustration, and hopefully it's one of those silly post-skis that i'll look back on and be like "man, i can't believe that i was once so bad at teaching children." at the very least, i'm confident that i'll look back on it after this month and be like "man, i'm glad that i'm never teaching children again. ever."

*actual occurences (over the past two days).

fina-f'in-ly

somebody help me out here. are the stateside ads still pushing unnecessarily large automobiles running on gasoline? last time i was there, all i learned from watching tv was a bunch of power words like "titan", "mega", and "extreme". it seemed that as extra-big-ass car sales declined due to increasing gas prices, manufacturers decided just to push them even harder. great fuckin idea.

i see today that general motors will apply for bankruptcy, finally a concrete sign that the outdated american dream may soon no longer involve two cars per household driver, one bigger and one better. while it's unfortunate that so many people are losing jobs over this sort of thing, it's just a step in the evolution of transportation. i think maybe if gm had focused more efforts on cleaner modes than in hummer commercials they'd be a bit better off. assholes.

obamarama's due to announce the exact number of hundreds of thousands of millions of tax dollars gm will receive as a direct result of their failed business plan/obsolete products. way to go buddy. i keep hearing that my man has a plan to build high-speed railways and find cleaner methods of transport. here's your chance duder! you've got thousands of laid-off citizens and clearly tons of cash. what else do you need? some shovels?

ocean man

biz'd (business decided) to roll down to the ol' ocean and flip the stick for a bit today. you know, just take in some air. truly relax and just focus on life's marginalized intricacies. ended up dominating the shit out o' the waters. pulled this sucker out on the first cast:


i don't quite have any idea what the hell it was, but it was relatively large and surely alive.
quietly whispered not to give up so easily in the future, patted it on the ass, and booted it back to the depths. couple casts later found his cuz, also a complete pushover:

'tleast the view pleased. oh, how it pleased.

seagle.

this is what you get in japan when you say "i don't need a bag." instead of a "bag", you get your delicious pastry wrapped in plastic paper, then placed into something that mightily resembles a bag, which is then taped shut. i wish i knew how to say, "i'm just going to eat this as soon as i walk out that door, please don't make it difficult." it's a constant frustration, as the whole country seems obsessed with all things plastic. i suppose folks are simply trying to be helpful, but for christ's sake, when did hands become obsolete?

the bizness

finally finished building myself a website yesterday, and now i can tell people i'm self employed.

www.michaeljaskew.com

still a couple things that need working on...

from this point forward in my life, i'll be making no more decisions. nay, in place there shall be only business decisions. like yesterday, i made a deliberate business decision to take the evening off, and then i business decided to get some road sodas and explore new parts of japan.

went down to kakogawa, 'bout 25 train minutes away. it was in attempt to find shima mimizu, or red worms. our worm bin is might weak. we found about 2 dozen worms the other day, and their current livelihood is questionable.

walked around that damn town for like two hours to no avail, but i found some mighty picturesque sceneage:

here is precisely where i found the fish. although small, they rose eagerly to whatever the hell was floating by. i'll return in the fall with some light tackle.

chattering shmattering.

"attention: it is not uncommon to witness lightning striking drowning rabbits."

masksks

oink, oink.

there have been a couple of confirmed cases of the ol' swizzle flizzle in the kōb. folks in asia often wear what look like surgical masks to protect from outside viruses, smog, and sometimes to contain their own germs. i think this mostly came about due to SARS back in the day. the news just hit town yesterday, and already folks are maskin up like crazy. a bunch of schools have been shut down to the ground, and the annual kobe festival was cancelled today.
if it makes it to this side of town, there's a pretty good chance that annie gets a few days off! that would be totally sweet, because then as millions of people are cowering inside of their houses, afraid of a fuckin flu strain, we could hit all kinds of cool spots and not have to deal with crowds of people wearing masks.

better go stock up on canned goods, bottled water, and tp. like it's 1999.

jitensha

went to the bike man the other day with translator in tow. basically tried to describe what a road bike is in limited japanese. i understood how to say racing bike, and i had some pictures on my camera that i'd snapped a few days prior. he had me write down a price and we parted ways (with modifiers denoting politeness...actually only on my end, because even though i'm a customer, he's way the fuck older, which automatically places me in his debt).

i returned on the designated day at the designated time to check the steez. he'd pulled a badass little road bike from his warehouse. in bridgestone's hayday (1986-89) they produced an amazing piece of machinery dubbed the mile 112. surely y'all remember when julie moss rode none other than to victory in the Ironman Japan back in '85. she's a bit small for my large american frame, but sleek, and sexy.

now i'm mobile. you'll probably call me a liar, but the other day i rode from central kasumigaoka all the way to higashi-tarumi-eki in under 3 minutes.

and now, a whole bunch o' the photes! why? because this place is the shiznit.

the new wheels. note the sleekness, the sexiness, the horror.

what an asshole.

once again, its the kōb. view this time from the top of a cable car route.

not sure the architect had this point of view.

its multnomah falls! psyche, nah. i took this picture in japan.

dude rockin out on the mom's day prez; me contemplating how much i love momma.

the fabled bacon-doggie. she keeps me warm on those cold nights whilst returning from the bars.

don't even imagine getting on this bicycle, asshole.

think about it.

a large, fluorescent rubber coupled with a large, fluorescent heart.

o-sacks. rather large city, roughly nyc size. bright lights, glitz, all that. there are incredible fashion choices being made every day in japan, and you can witness them all here. more on this soon.

three dimensional map, complete with "you are here" locator.

that's right.

dotombori. second cousin river of the willamette, it's a notoriously dirty river that runs through it*.




*o-sacks.

n' er'body in the club gettin' tipsy

i remember in high school we had club day. it was supposed to go down once a month, where you go to your club on wednesday morning and then the rest of the day's schedule was abbreviated. later on in my high schoolin days i realized that you were really just supposed to go to perkins for coffee and cigs, then come to school late that day. when i was a youngin', however, i actually dabbled in a few of the offerings. the chess club was pretty cool, but my friends and i eventually settled on the Future Homemakers of America (FHA). this was mostly because my sister and her buds were in it. they were a whole 2 years older and new my name, so i thought that made me pretty badass. it occurred to me today as i was firing up some gyoza and carefully arranging the apple slices and rice in anne's bento box that the joke of being in FHA without ever planning on being a homemaker has come full circle. i think i'm pretty damn good at it.

here's some photes:

this was taken on kyushu, a rather large island on the other side of awaji island. anne's coworker took us for a drive a couple weeks ago and we saw some savoringly sweet sites. all them platforms is fishin spots, where you can just taxi out and kick it with a rod.

this was taken on the beach by the flat 'round duskish. 'twas a picnic dinner, 'twas.

the kōb. view from roughly downtown on my way back from nishinomiya with anne's bike.

brewser machine! sadly, it has yet to get old.

second hand kitchen island, pre-construction.

post-construction, view 1.

post-construction, view 2. credit anne for all the creative input.