Counseling Mind

I was made class advisor for first year students. That means that I am responsible for the care and well-being of all students in the first year class. Last Monday, I met with the parents of a girl who was having trouble in school. Wisely I had asked a Japanese teacher to help me with the meeting. The Japanese teacher is a sympathetic figure, one of those women who reminds me of my slightly batty grandmother, even though she is only 42 years old.

Around 10:00 AM the father showed up at my office. He was wearing gold chains and a purple and black sweater in a lightning bolt design a gold pinkie ring and a gold nugget watch.

The first thing he said was, “Have you seen my daughter? She really ought to be here.”

The mother was young and not bad looking. We moved to the Japanese teacher’s office. Her name is Ishikawa. I will attempt to capture the atmosphere of this meeting.

Father: (speaking very loud and very fast) We got to get Emi (the daughter) in here. She really ought to be here. I’ll call her. (whips out a portable phone)

Ishikawa: She is probably in class, do you think you ought to call?

Father: It’s OK. I won’t talk long.

Mother: It’s OK. He won’t talk long and she told me that she did not have the textbook for that class. Students without textbooks don’t go to class, do they?

Ishikawa: Students without textbooks usually sit in the back of the class.

Mother: Oh students without textbooks sit in the back. Then it’s OK to call.

Father: Emi. This is your father. Yes, I am at school. I’m in some woman’s office. You have to come here. I don't know where the office is—here talk to her. (Thrusts the phone at Ishikawa.)

Ishikawa: (Holding the phone the phone like a high school girl holds the penis of some boy she is not really sure whether she likes or not) Hello hello. Yes this Ishikawa. Yes we are in my office. Do you know where that is? Well I am the teacher who teaches the Language Lab class, you know Monday third period. Do you know where the language laboratory is? Well it is on the fourth floor and my office is near there, number 405. (Returns phone to father.)

Father: (Sets the phone on the table and sits down) You see the thing is that some girls at this school have been teasing Emi. I know their names, but I am not going to say their names. But I know who they are. (Sunlight flashes of the gold watch and chain, as he shakes his finger at Ishikawa) Emi does not want to go to school anymore.

Mother: She has had some health problems. And her life plan might be changing.

Father: She does not want to go to school. What happens if she takes some time off from school?

Ishikawa: (Takes out a LEAVE of ABSENCE application form) The semester is almost over. If she leaves school now she will lose all of her credits. She should finish this semester and then take next year off to think about her life plan.

Mother What are credits?

Ishikawa: Well you get credits for classes you pass and you need so many credits to graduate.

Mother: Like collecting points at the supermarket for free stuff?

Ishikawa: Something like that yes.

Father: When does the semester end? When are the tests?

Ishikawa: Tests begin in January, after the New Year.

Mother: You know the stuff you get from the supermarket is really cheap, low quality stuff. You’re better off saving your money and buying the thing you really want.

Ishikawa: That’s true. They just do it to get you to buy the more expensive brand items.

A knock at the door

Father and Ishikawa: Come in. (They look at each other.)

Father: Emi come in here. Sit down.

Emi enters and sits next to her mother.

Father: All right, Emi tell these teachers what’s going on—tell them why you haven’t been coming to school.

Emi: I…..I …..

Father: Speak up, Emi, open your heart to these teachers.

Emi: I…(Emi makes low animal-like noises, tears well in her eyes.)

Father: They can’t help you if you don’t open your heart to them.

Ishikawa: You have been absent a lot recently. Is something wrong?

Emi Well I was going to come to school today, but …

Mother: You did not go to class this morning? Where were you when your father called?

Emi: I was in the cafeteria, talking to my friend. I always turn the bell on my phone off in class. If I had been in class I couldn’t have answered the phone.

Mother: Didn’t you have your book? If you don’t have your book you can sit in the back of the class. She (points to Ishikawa) says its OK.

Emi: I had my book. I just didn’t feel good. I was going to take some medicine, but the instructions said…

Mother: She’s very weak. In high school she could never participate in gym class. She’s very weak.

Emi: The instructions said, take after eating. So I went to a convenience store and bought some Coffee milk and some An-Pan. No it wasn’t An-Pan. It was a melon roll or was it a cream roll. I can’t remember. But, you have to take care of your health. If you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything.

Father: That’s true; health is the most important.

Mother: You have to take care of your health.

Ishikawa: That’s true; If you lose your health you don’t have anything.

Me: So you were late because you ate breakfast?

Father: That’s just today. That’s a special case. Tell them about the girls who are teasing you.

Emi: Well, Mayumi and..

Father: (Slaps the table and shouts) Don’t say the names Emi. Never tell them the names.

Emi: Anyway, I heard these girls talking about me and saying that I don’t have any cheeks and that my face looks funny.

Ishikawa: These days a face with fuller cheeks is considered more fashionable. (Ishikawa touches her own face.)

Emi: Its not my fault I don’t have any cheeks. I look like my father.

Father: It’s true—I don’t have any cheeks. Its too bad she doesn’t look like her mother. Her mother has cheeks.

Mother: I have cheeks, but she doesn’t look like me. She looks like her father. Her father does not have any cheeks.

Me: When was this?

Emi: The first week of school. But then they started sending me messages on my portable phone. They sent a picture of me and it did not have any cheeks.

Ishikawa: You can send pictures with a portable phone?

Mother: Sure, you can send e-mail, check the weather, write messages…

Father: You can buy stock, bet on horses, ….

Mother/Father: YOU CAN DO ANYTHINGWITH A PORTABLE PHONE!!!

Emi: I’m thirsty.

Ishikawa stands up and starts to move towards the sink. The mother reaches into her large designer bad and removes a plastic bottle containing tea. Emi seizes the tea and lifts it with both hands to her mouth and drinks like a baby.

Mother: She gets thirsty. (The mother replaces the cap and puts the bottle back in her bag.)

Emi: I get thirsty. (She coughs dryly for effect.)

Ishikawa sits down. Emi rolls her shoulders.

Emi: My shoulders hurt. When I feel stress, my shoulders hurt.

Mother: Her shoulders hurt when she feels stress and she can’t sleep.

Ishikawa: My shoulders hurt when I feel stress.

Father: I get it right here. (The father rubs the back of his neck.)

Mother: I get headaches when I feel stress. (Rubs above her eyes)

Emi: My shoulders hurt. (Without warning Emi plunges into the mother’s bag and grabs the tea bottle. Again she lifts it with both hands and drinks.)

Father: You need to get rid of your stress Emi. You need some exercise. Doesn’t this college have any clubs?

Ishikawa: Yes there are a lot of clubs.

Mother: Don’t act like a child. (The mother takes the bottle and puts it back in her bag.)

Ishikawa shows the school handbook and points to the pages showing the clubs.

Mother: Oh look, they have tennis.

Emi: I can’t play tennis.

Father: How about badminton, Emi?

Mother: Is badminton good exercise?

Father: Badminton is very good exercise. There is a lot of running in badminton.

Ishikawa: Is that so?

Father: Yeah.

Emi: I don’t want to play badminton. It is like tennis and I can’t play tennis.

Father’s portable phone rings. He picks it up and moves into the background talking.

Mother: They have swimming.

Emi: I can’t swim.

Ishikawa: Basketball?

Emi: No.

Mother: Dance.

Emi: No

Ishikawa: Handball.

Me: Mountain climbing?

Everyone looks at me.

Father ends the conversation on the portable phone, looks at his watch and sits back down.

Father: Emi, you need to join a club so you can get sweat and get rid of your stress so you can sleep at night and come to school.

Emi: Let me see. (Emi looks at the handbook.) They have Karate. I want to do Karate.

Father: That sounds good. Karate. Sweat and get rid of your stress.

Emi: I want to do Karate. I want to do Karate. I want to do Karate. I want to do Karate.

Father: (He looks at his watch again.) OK. We should go. These teachers are busy. We should go. But Emi remember these teachers are kind and they will help you. If you ever have any problems. Anything at all you just come and see these teachers and they will help you.

Emi: I want to do Karate. I want to do Karate. I want to do Karate. I want to do Karate.

Father: Stop acting like an elementary school student. (Emi dives again into the bag for the bottle of tea and drinks like before.)

Ishikawa: You know the school has a counselor. If you want to talk to someone. You should talk to the counselor. Did you know the school had a counselor, Emi?

Emi: I know. When we had our health check at the beginning of the year, we took a psychological test. The next week I got a note from the counselor saying I should come and see her.

Ishikawa: Did you go see Ms. Tabata?

Emi: No.

Ishikawa: Well if you want to see her her office is 305.

Emi: I want to see the counselor. I want to see the counselor. I want to see the counselor.

Father: (He stands up.) We have to go. Stop acting like a child.

Emi: I want to see the counselor. I want to see the counselor. I want to see the counselor.

Father: (Moving out the door) The problem is we spoiled her.

Emi: I want to see the counselor. I want to see the counselor. I want to see the counselor.

Mother: Thank you very much. You have been a great help. (Bows deeply)

That was the worst.

Nuclear What???

I came in to work, and stuck to my door, and the doors of all my colleagues, was a red bulletin announcing that I had failed to submit the extremely toxic and unknown substance survey sheet for my office.

The paper continued that today was the deadline and if I continued in my failure, school authorities would have no choice but to enter my room by force and confirm that there were no extremely toxic and unknown substances on the premises.

I wondered what the hell this was about and really had no idea. I remembered seeing a couple of e-mails regarding extremely toxic and unknown substances, but had disregarded them, believing they were intended more for the chemistry and physics departments. The most toxic material I deal with is the subjunctive.

Imagine my surprise when, after digging the e-mails out, I read that in Building 19, which is being reconstructed from its current sullen, concrete structure to a brighter more ecological design that still pays homage to its Stalinist design roots, a worker had literally stumbled across a container of unregistered, uncontrolled, nuclear material.

This had prompted the immediate, comprehensive, self-administered survey. I quickly wrote down that I had no extremely toxic and unknown substances in my office. I walked across campus where my completed form was solemnly accepted without confirmation or question.

As I was turning to leave, one of the men stopped me and told me that I was responsible for one other room used by the English teachers. I have never been in the room, don't have a key and the idea of digging out the key, confirming the absence of extremely toxic and unknown substances suddenly seemed burdensome so I just told them that there was nothing in there either. They seemed OK with that and checked it off their list.

I hope Al-Kaeda is not on campus.

A, B, C, Taiken

I was riding on the subway the other day and sitting on the seat next to me was a little Japanese book. There was no around, so it had obviously been left there. I picked it up and the title was "WATASHI NO HAJIME A, B, C, TAIKEN". Roughly "My First A, B, C Experience". Dork that I am, I thought it was talking about learning English so I started to read and the first few pages quickly disabused me of this notion.

The book was a collection of "letters" from young women about their first sexual experiences A=first kiss, B=getting felt up, and C=going all the way. Now I am under no illusions that the letters here were actually written, by the high school girls in the letters, but that did not lessent their effect.

"A" was pretty sweet, lots of shared walks under an umbrella and fire work festivals. The "B" section was pretty short. Not a lot of "B" that does not lead to "C" it seems. I was looking forward to "C" and thinking I might need to find a bathroom soon. "I felt his finger inside my underwear. I felt all soft and liquid. I knew I shouldn't,but..."

Somewhere along the way, the train had filled up and now the person next to me was talking to me. "Can you read that?" Some late middle-aged grandmother was looking at the book and at me. "Can you read that? I have never seen a foreigner read Japanese before." A splash of cold water. A rapid deflation a mumbled something and I exited, leaving the book for someone else. But I think I have found something new in language research. Arousal by text only pornography as a measure of fluency. All I need is a small government grant, some books and maybe a bathroom.

Curry

The restaurant had been recommended by my colleague. Usually I do not like buffets, but the idea of three kinds of curry and unlimited nan for 600 yen ( about five dollars) sounded too good to be dismissed out of hand. It was after 2:00 when I got there and the lunch crowd must have already cleared out. The place was empty, except for the owner. He told me to sit anywhere I wanted, so I set the newspaper I had brought to read during lunch on a table and went to study the buffet. As promised there were three different curries bubbling away in the hot plates--vegetable, that lentil curry that I can never remember the name of and mutton. I decided to give the mutton a miss, but the other two did not look bad at all. I filled a plate with curry and nan. A slow afternoon of steaming food and reading my paper was spreading out before me.

When I got back to my table the owner was waiting for me. He was middle-aged, balding. He had a cauliflower shaped mole sprouting three hairs on his cheek and an odd rust colored dent in his head between the top of his nose and his eye-brow. I reminded myself to not think about his mole while I ate the vegetable curry. As I sat down he asked, "How did you hear about this place?"

"From my colleague," I told him.

"Is he American?"

"No he is British."

"But, you are American?" more of a statement than a question.

"Yes"

"Does he have a big nose?"

"Not so big, no."

"Is he short and very fat?"

"No. I guess he is about the same height as me."

"Does he limp?"

"Not that I noticed. No."

"Does he have a hump?"

"Hump?"

"You know on his back. A hump." He stooped and patted his back for emphasis.

"No. No hump." I had to wonder exactly what sort of foreign clientel frequented this place.

"Is he bald with glasses?

"Well, he is balding and yes he does wear glasses." Lucky guess I wondered or had he by chance stumbled upon some visual memory of Myles.

"The British like curry." Question, statement? I did not know.

"I have have heard so, Yes." Thinking that my own curry was getting cold.

"What kind of curry do they like?"

"I really have no idea. All kinds I guess." From what I had seen, just about any brand of curry would suit your average lad on his way home after a pub crawl.

I guess he thought that he had exhausted me as a source of information on the prospects of opening a curry house in England if this place failed. He walked away, but abrubtly returned with one of those yogurt drinks that I can never remember the names of.

He set it down. "Service," he said. "Is this your paper?" I had not opened it. I nodded, my mouth full of nan and curry. He picked it up, "May I borrow it?" he asked and walked into the kitchen opening it and scanning the headlines.

That was the last I saw of my paper.

Minor Rants

I don't have time to develop these themes into full scale rants, but I do have few things on my mind.

First, yesterday I was approached by the a couple of members of the student affairs committee. How I came to be chairman of this committee is in itself worthy of minor rant, but that is not what we are on about today. It seems that there have been a number of minor and not so minor thefts around the school--several (more than 8) students have had their wallets lifted from their bags and one student had a personal computer stolen. The modus operandi was remarkable similar.

The nefarious criminal waited until students had gone to the bathroom and left their bags unattended in the classroom--this despite posters hanging in each classroom clearly warning students that "IT IS IRRESPONSIBLE TO LEAVE VALUABLES UNATTENDED" . The diabolically clever criminal would then rush in grab the wallets, strip the cash and then pitch the wallet in the trash where it would later be found by the janitors. Somehow the criminal was able to avoid the crime preventing effects of the security posters fastened to walls.

School authorities were baffled. I was even unaware. Anyway, yesterday the student affairs committee members came to me and told me that two students had witnessed a girl taking wallets from two bags. The members wanted to know what the school should do.

My immediate response was, "Call the police!" My enthusiasm for involving the police can surely be seen as my ultimate maturity into a middle-class bourgeousie citizen.

The committee members said that this was impossible. The school doesn't want to involve the police. In fact, after hearing of the school's unwillingness to act, the two witnesses had gone to the local police box and filed a complaint. The police had immediately called up the school and asked if the school wanted them to come up and investigate. The school said, "NO!" and in a powerful demonstration of government authority bowing to the cooperative spirit of Japanese culture, the police complied. I think this goes a long way in explaining Japan's low crime rate.

Now, what is the school to do in this situation. I dreaded the answer to my next question, but felt that this might be where the conversation was heading. "Should someone from the student affairs committee talk to the suspect?" I was relieved to hear that this was also impossible. The suspect has rights, I was told and we the student affairs committee members have no authority to question her. Who has the authority to question suspects, I asked. Confused looks crossed the faces of the committee members. Why the police of course, they answered. "Call the police!" I insisted. Tired smiles, "No that is impossible."

What to do? Several possible solutions were proposed. We could hire security guards to stand in each class all day. The hallways and classrooms could be wired with security cameras. "The girls soccer team locker room too?" I asked. Instead of having offices, teachers could be assigned a classroom where they would spend all day -- like a homeroom teacher in high school. In the end, we decided to call a meeting and invoke the power of the full student affairs committee --kind of like when the Legion of Superheros calls a meeting and you get the big Marvel Comics Annual where Spiderman and Ironman team up to defeat Dr. Doom.

The crime preventing effects of meetings are well recognized in Japan, but personally I can't understand why. The people who most often attend meetings must be politicians and they are they biggest criminals in the country.

*******

On a less serious note... My walk home takes me past a vending machine that sells pornographic videos. The exixtence of the vending machine does not surprise me--a clever application of technology. Its location next to the all boys high school--simply recognizing the niche market. Now I myself would never buy pornographic videos from a vending machine (so close to where I work). But I always make sure I walk close enough by the machine that I can get a peak at what is on offer. What struck me is that every day the videos are different. Somebody out there is buying a huge number of these videos. Isn't that odd?

Lettuce

I have always resisted moving back to the states, because I figured teaching in the public schools and dealing with all the discipline problems would drive me mad. And teacher friends' letters do nothing to reassure. But as my university digs ever deeper into the gene pool for students, behavior problems are increasing. I was listening to the BBC and the commentator was interviewing one of the scientists responsible for mapping genomes. (I don't really know what that means.) But he said that most people would be shocked and embarrassed to learn that humans and lettuce share almost 70% of the same genetic material. I am not shocked, I see it every day and wonder if there is not some way to increase the ratio, my students would be better behaved.

This one girl, brought her hair dryer to class, plugged it into the wall and was drying her hair. I told her to stop that. Same girl next week brought her curler set and plugged that in and was curling her hair. Same girl walked into class carrying a cup of the "cup o' noodles" stuff and was slurping and I mean slurping away. I told her to finish her breakfast (it was 9:00 am) and then come to class. She came back about 10 minutes later and when class finished I was walking in the hall and saw that she had left the cup of the "cup o' noodles" sitting in the hall. SHe could not be bothered to walk the 10 steps down the hall to throw the thing away. Bad enough, but someone had kicked it over spilling curry soup all over the hall.

Fire!

About once a week I come home from work and say to Shizuko, "that was the worst day of my life." And so far it has been true,--a constant, descending spiral of pain and humiliation that is my job. Every worst day worse than the one before. Now however I think I have bottomed out. It is going to take some time to top the fire.

I am a little embarrassed to tell the following story　because it reflects badly on me in so many different ways, but I console myself with the knowledge that your opinion of me was surely destroyed years ago.

It is time for graduating seniors in our university to turn in their graduation thesis. In the past, I think I have described these theses as poorly punctuated random thoughts in English on broad topics, and I believe that this description still stands. Before the Christmas/New year break, a student, Miwako (her real name), sent as an e-mail attachment her thesis for me to proofread and correct. She had been working steadily during the semester to complete the paper and had now reached the required 20-page limit and so stopped in mid-random thought and sentence. She is a diligent, but not terribly accurate writer. The paper was basically comprehensible to a sympathetic reader, but in reality every sentence of the 20 pages contained errors and needed correcting. I did this directly on the paper using the word-processor and sent it back to her by e-mail. The next day, just before the break I met Miwako and another student, Sayuri. I told Sayuri that her paper was fine and if she made the few corrections I indicated, the paper would be ready for submission. I told Miwako, with a straight face, that her paper was very good, but I wanted to read it one more time to make sure I had caught all the errors. I could tell she was heartbroken. So I tried to console her, but just continued digging the hole, saying something about how while Miwako's paper, was really, very good, it probably suffered, however slightly, in comparison to Sayuri's paper which was excellent. Neither of which were true. Tears were welling up in her eyes when I hurriedly promised Miwako to read her paper once more during the break and return it to her in January. I did that. And was pleasantly surprised to see that I had caught most of the errors the first time and really with just a few more fixes the paper would be ready.

To put an end to this shaggy dog story, I sent Miwako an e-mail saying come to my office. I received in return, just before the submission deadline, an e-mail with an attachment. During vacation she had re-written her pages now up to 23 pages, changing every sentence of my correct and corrected English into gibberish. I was heartbroken.

She showed up at my office on the day her senior thesis was due. She looked terrible, puffy, red bloodshot eyes. She obviously had not slept. She had stayed up for two days writing gibberish. She was mentally and physically exhausted so when I told her that her effort had been a complete waste of time (not in so many words, mind you) because the paper I had proofread was better, and better written.

The deadline was that day and I had no time to proofread her paper and it was full of mistakes. So she would be better off handing in the proofread paper. She started to cry, bawl, blubber. So I said, "Let's have a cup of tea." Very few situations can't be improved by a hot cup of tea.

In my office I have a gas burner for making tea. Above the burner is a rack for towels. I have often thought this was dangerous, but have always been careful to make sure none of the towels got close enough to the flame to catch. Miwa was still sobbing away so I was a distracted. I was digging around looking to see if I had any chocolate, when I heard something crackling. I thought the water could not be boiling already, and it was not. One of the towels had slipped down and caught fire. On the rack there were two or three towels, old and dried out. They caught like tinder and there was a pretty good flame going. I beat it out quickly, burning my hands pretty good in the process. The fire was out, but all the smoke had set off the fire alarm and everyone came running to my office. I told them a towel had caught fire and everyone just laughed it off, but it had been pretty bad. Three old towels can make a pretty big fire. The cabinet is pretty scorched and if it had caught, it would have been GAME OVER. Oh well, what they don't know won't cost me my job. The day did not get much better after that, but it certainly did not get worse.

Ouch!

********Warning**********Warning************Warning*********Warning**

The following story is not for the faint hearted or the under eighteen.

About two years after the chain on my bike started slipping, I replaced it and the rear sprocket on my bike. Considering that the result of its first slipping was my broken knee cap and eight weeks in a cast, plus the fact that it only cost about 35 dollars, some people might consider this a slow response. But after hearing the result of the repair, I think I could have waited a little longer.

The repair guy also adjusted my brakes when he changed the chain and in fact it was this repair that caused the accident. I was coming home from work riding on the left edge of the left lane. Remember, this is proper and correct in Japan.

A car was passing me on the right as we moved down a small hill. Suddenly, the car signaled he was turning left and in fact started turning. At this point he was only about six feet in front of me. I slammed on my newly reconditioned brakes and they caught hard. Centimeters from hitting the car I stopped. But the force of stopping threw me off of the bike saddle and onto the cross bar. Every boy has had this experience, but this was harder, faster, stronger than anything in my life. The cross bar rose between my legs, neatly splitting, but missing both my testicles, but slamming into my cervical bone. Stars, a wave of red color before my eyes, and a deep rhythmic drumming in my ears is the best I can do to describe the sensation.

I rode home and on inspecting my equipment found that the sack for my testicles was actually torn and bleeding. Seeing your balls bleeding is a pretty unnerving experience, but nothing compared to the sight of my poor penis the next morning covered by deep purple, black and blue bruise. It looked like something out of a gay s/m magazine. I chased Shizuko around the house saying, "look at my penis", but she was not having any of that. I took the whole thing down to the doctor and had him look at it and he said, it should OK in a couple of weeks, but if I had any, you know, "trouble" I should come back.

Well that put the fear into me and I immediately went home and told Shizuko about her duty, but she was not having any of that so I was left to the internet and my own devices. I am happy to say that everything seems to be working properly. This was actually a couple of weeks ago and classes have started, the scab on my balls is old, dry and starting to itch so I have to resist that urge while I am teaching.

Dead Guy

The dead guy lay in a small alley behind the French restaurant Moulin Rouge. His back was against a large, green, industrial garbage can that the restaurant used for throwing away the scraps from their kitchen. A small crowd of holiday revelers had drifted in from Bourbon St. and stood in a quiet circle, staring at the dead guy. The dead guy had not been homeless or destitute. Only in his lack of breath did he differ from his audience. An overweight, white guy on vacation from Akron or Dallas or Detroit drunk on Tom Collins' and Mardi Gras. His white pants were loose around his waist as if he had slipped into the alley intending only to take a pee before returning to the carnival. The alley was damp and ripe with deposits from the bladders and stomachs of similarly intentioned travelers. The puddle spreading between his outspread legs revealed that the dead guy had not yet succeeded in his task when something, possibly a heart attack, had taken him by surprise and forced him sit down for a minute and collect his breath. The dumb look of surprise at his body's betrayal still popped from his drunken, red rimmed eyes.

An approaching ambulance siren caused me to blink away the dumb look of surprise from my own drunken, red rimmed eyes. The noise of the crowd came into the alley and filled what I thought had been silence. It seemed that I had been with the dead guy for a long time, but really we had only just met.

Twenty minutes before I had been in Tom's Market, one of the half a dozen original homes of the Hurricane-a noxious drink made with watermelon flavored snow-cone syrup, shaved ice and vodka, or rum or tequila or whatever clear well liquor was handy. A toxic slurpee and the official drink of Mardi Gras.

Tonight Tom was selling his progeny cheap. A dollar bought a half-liter Hurricane served in an attractive plastic souvenir cup. Nobody could accuse Tom of skimping on the booze either. Each was industrial strength. He did not need to. No one except drunken sorority girls from Chapel Hill could drink more than one of them. I walked outside to get some air and saw a guy wearing a Michigan sweatshirt. I was a little drunk, so I went up and asked him if he went to U of M. He told me that his brother went there. He was majoring in engineering, blah, blah, blah. I was all ready bored and he must have sensed it because he asked if I wanted to see a dead guy. I was a little drunk so I said, “Yeah, I’ll go see a dead guy.”

How I Got Here

My path to expatriotism is a little more direct and started a little longer ago than most people. I have been in Japan for about 11 years now I guess and before that I was in Korea. I went to Korea right when I graduated from college. I woke up in a cold sweat about six months before graduation (truth) and realized that I had no skills apart from being able to work a TV remote control with my right hand while rolling a joint with my left. But I got recruited, a story in itself, to teach English in Seoul. Airfare, apartment, paid vacation, decent salary, the complete package. At 21 I thought it was worst job I had ever had. I sincerely believed that back in the US there were thousands of employers just waiting for someone of my talents--which had not improved from before. I finished my contract and left Korea the next day. travelled through Asia, not through India though, and went back to to the states to travel and look for work. I was sleeping in my car within six months.

I could not get a job and my savings were running out. Sleeping at rest stops or along the road as homeless people beat on the windows "soliciting" change, I would think about my cozy Seoul apartment and the money I had had and the girlfriend who used to come by and sex me up in the mornings. I thought a lot about her actually.

Originally, I vowed that I would never teach English again. But realistically, it looked like the quickest way out of the car. I maxed out my credit cards, got back to Michigan. Sold the car, crashed with my brother and got into an ESL MA program at WMU and a got a student loan. I vowed I would never go back to Asia. Salaries in Europe or South America would allow me to pay off my very modest debt in the year 2200. I decided to go back to Asia, but never again to Korea. I wanted to go to Japan, the El Dorado of ESL teachers. I couldn't get a job from the states in Japan. Then I thought, I can go back to Korea, but not Seoul. Then I thought, I can back to Seoul, but I will not work for ELS CHONGNO. To make an already long story shorter, Not only did I end up working for the same employer, I ended up living in the same apartment,　the 14th floor of the SAM CHANG Plaza. The power was out in Seoul the day I arrived (as frequently happens) and I had to carry my luggage up 14 flights of stairs. I swung the door on the apartment I had left 18 months before and the thought struck me. It doesn't matter what YOU want in life, it is what they give you.

I always say, you can't love your job until you've slept in your car. I like living in Asia. The news and politics are interesting.