So I took the driving test again last Monday and let me tell you it was like some hilarious teen movie where a kid is in desperate need of a license to drive to a party where he expects to lose his virginity to some girl. But instead of getting his license the main character falls prey to one hilarious wacky situation after another. I will just tell you about the test itself. There were three of us taking the test. Me, a Japanese girl and a Japanese guy. The instructor (who thought by yelling slowly inches from my face would somehow make me understand more of he was saying) made us all stand equal distance apart in a row. I was chosen to go first and literally without joking failed almost immediately. I tried to pull out of the spot with the emergency brake on and in Japan the turn signal is on the right of the wheel, not the left. The left side controls the windshield wiper. So not only did I try pulling out with the cars emergency brake still pulled up but I also accidental set off the windshield wipers. I started laughing but my stone faced instructor however did not find is as funny. So i ended up turning on the windshield wipers about 9 times but even if I didn't do that then I would have failed. The best was when I guess i dint stop long enough at a stop sign and he started yelling "stop stop stop stop stop" as if I was punching his mother in the face with brass knuckles. I think when all is said and done that I will end up killing at least one person who works at this driving center. It will not be pretty.

Amazing

http://gizmodo.com/5252014/japanese-marriage-bra-gently-nudges-men-toward-nuptials-with-boobs

Photo Updates

Today a student of mine was reading from the text book and was trying to read the world "closet" but just kept saying "cock, cock, cock" for about thirty seconds. It was hilarious / horrifying.

I am currently watching the movie Eragon. It is as the Japanese would say "complete fucking shit" But yet, i do not stop watching, why? No idea.

Recent Playlist:

Manchester Orchestra - Mean Everything to Nothing
Jeremy Enigk - OK Bear
Coalesce - Ox
RiceboySleeps - S/T
Alexi Murdoch - Tour CD

P.O.W Camps

Today I went to the driving center because I have to get a drivers license for my job. The building looks like some kind of pow camp and the workers at the driving center were about as friendly as people actually being held as pow`s. They were nice enough, but didn't really seem to have the time to deal with me and my lack of fluent Japanese and to add insult to injury the driving center is in the middle of fucking nowhere and I am not allowed to take the test again for 2 weeks due to some kind of problem with my paperwork. This whole process is slowly making want to kill every person who has a Japanese drivers liscense.

I went out drinking saturday night with my co worker and one of his friends whose name escapes me. We went to the usual place we go but it was kinda dead so we stayed for only two drinks then we went to a different usual place which was also pretty dead but we met up with some of my co workers other friends and these two Japanese people i didnt know. Everyone (my co worker and his friends) wanted to go to some dance club type place and we all know how much I love going to dance clubs, so I didnt go with them. I ended up hanging out with the two Japanese people for a bit then we went to a bar that one of their friends owns and it was pretty nice. They were nice people and gave me their contact info and mailed me the next day to say thanks and invite me over to their place for a dinner part which was really cool of them since I really do not have that many friends out here.

Other than that not much is really going on. I really need to get this drivers liscense so I am freaking out about it a little cause it is totally inconvient for my new boss and her staff that i do not have a liscense, so I dont really want to piss her off. But hopefully it will get sorted out soon.

I don`t know of any of them read this blog but to Missy, Dan and Heather congrats on your soon to be weddings and I am sorry I can`t be there to celebrate with you. But good luck and congrats anyway.

Umeda, Raging Bull and Wild Things

Sorry for the lack of anything here but I went back to Osaka for 4 days to hang out with my old roommates and to do some shopping. It was a good time, but going back defiantly made me realize that I am happy where I am now and that I think I made the right decision moving out here. Osaka has everything that you would want from a city. It has good shopping, live shows, every type of restaurant imaginable, but now that I have begun to live in the countryside all of the things that Osaka lacks have become obvious to me. Where i live now has horrible shopping, no live shows, basically only Japanese restaurants, but in Osaka there is a visible barrier between Japanese and Non Japanese. Non japanese people living in Osaka and Kyoto, in my opinion are used as some type of entertainment. People always ask the same questions “where are you from” “how long have you been in Japan” But the people who talk to me in Kochi treat me more like a real person and less like some oddity that has been thrust into their lives as a source of amusement and for that I am grateful.
But I got some good shopping done, I got ITUNES gift cards, a few books, a Japanese text book and a few clothes. It is amazing how little shopping there is in Kochi. It is almost impossible to buy english books here and if do somehow actually find some your choices are nothing more than Harry Potter or The Da Vinci Code. So it was nice to pick up some books that you cannot buy out here.

My old roommates and I went to a rock club. I had never been there but I had heard a lot about it and it was actually really fun. For some reason I like dancing. I have no idea why, but I enjoy it. But I only enjoy it when I have crossed the line of drunkenness when I don`t notice the fact that jumping up and down and singing into an imaginary microphone is not actually considered dancing. But going to this club has also made me realize how horrible white and Japanese men are at dancing. Even keeping time with the song for some people is as difficult as asking them to perform open heart surgery at moments notice with nothing more than a pen, a paper clip and an Oreo cookie. There was some other guy, who I am only assuming is American based on nothing more than the fact he was running in circles yelling WOOOOO at the top of his lungs, who was the worst dancer possibly ever. I bet that he thought he was the best dancer in that place but he was total and utter shit. Not that I am much better but it just made me realize two things 1. no one is as good as they think they are at anything and 2. Dancing rules.

The bus ride back to Kochi from Osaka was a bit brutal. I was sooooo tired. I didn't get to bed until about 530 or so the night before because we went for a night out. Then i woke up pretty early around 10ish and couldn't go back to sleep. I went down to Umeda which is the main area of Osaka and had a burger at Outback steak house. It is funny, In America if somebody said to me “Let`s go to Outback” I would probably make a face like someone had just tried to push my face into a babies freshly soiled diaper. But in Japan my face lights up like it did when i would watch the Thunder cats movie when I was a kid. I become excited almost to the point of retardation and devour whatever it is that I have ordered with the speed and heart of a lion that has found a decaying carcass in the desert. So after that I walked around Umeda for about 2 hours. I couldn`t find a coin locker that wasn`t being used so I had to carry my bag in my arms for the whole time. So my body being the incredible human specimen that it is, I became tired in about.....1 minute. After that it was agony carrying around that heavy shitty suitcase.

In other news, recently I have been watching a lot of older Robert DeNeiro movies. I have realize that he is an amazing fucking actor. If you have never seen Raging Bull or Cape Fear, he is seriously amazing in those movies. (also surprisingly Juliette Lewis is awesome in Cape fear and Nick Nolte is horrible). I have always liked DeNeiro. Of course he is always awesome in gangster movies like Goodfellas and Casnio but I had never seen his movies from the 70s and 80s. I am, as I am writing this watching Taxi Driver and he is awesome in this movie as well. But if you have never seen Raging Bull I suggest that you stop reading this shitty blog and go rent it and watch it as soon as you get home. That movie is so good and he is utterly amazing in it.

One last movie related thought. I have watched the trailer for “Where the Wild Things Are” seriously, with out exaggeration about 50 times. I don`t know what it is about the trailer but I love it so much and I want to see this movie so bad. If it is bad I think i will seriously cry. The monsters look fucking amazing and I think that the movie industry needs a movie like this to come because recently the movies that have been coming out have been pretty shit and don`t really inspire anything. With the exception of Slumdog, So i really hope that this movie is good because the preview is so amazing.

I Will leave you with this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQ2ZVWyOVRI