the Temp Agency

And so a month has almost passed, and I've reached my final day in my present position with this company. Though my time as Administrative Assistant to the President as his Vice Presidents is coming to a close, I do not feel sad. For this is because I am not in fact leaving the company, merely moving to front desk reception because someone more qualified than I returns from their vacation on Monday.

Not technically another job, but still yet one more different role to add to my rapidly growing list of recent responsibilities held. Christus. But still the same company, at least. I guess that's progress? Not to mention the same company above the company, because the temp agency I've been working for has remained unchanged since the job after the department store. For those of you keeping track, I went from Electronics Retail giant, to Japanese English teacher, to Electronics worker in a retail Department Store, and then to the temp agency.

Funny thing is, when I was hired for my first job at the temp agency, I had figured my transitory job period had come to an end.

If you've never applied for a temp agency before, but here's how it works:

1.) Receptionist with a bullshit forced smile greets you, and waits for you to speak. If they don't recognize you, they know exactly why you're there, but they want you to tell them anyway. Confess job-hunting defeat to the faux nice receptionist, and let them comfort you with tentative job promises. "hush, hush child. It's all right, the mean jobless period is over. I'm sure we'll find something that's just perfect for you in no time."

2.) Take a seat between two unshaven individuals reeking of cigarettes and some previously undocumented alcohol. They will be speaking a language you don't understand. Likely to your left there will be a man in a long black business coat, wearing leather gloves if it's winter, glancing nervously at his watch and seriously doubting whether he made the right decision to come there. Likely he'll be feeling embarrassed and self-conscious, and probably won't meet your eyes.

3.) After the receptionist finishes shuffling papers around a few times, he or she will invite you to sit with them, to chat a while. The two workers with both watch you with their eyes as the receptionist leads you away, though they won't pause their conversation. It will all feel very ominous.

4.) Answer questions about who you are, how fast you can type, and if you brought down your social security number and banking information. 'Did they plan on hiring me from the moment I sat down?' you'll wonder. Do you have two hours you can spare this afternoon? You should hope so, because that's how long you'll be in the office, now that they have your information and the net is drawn.

5.) Spend an hour plus typing out answers to everything they can throw at you in their on-site computer lab. The computer program will barrage you with questions, often seemingly arbitrary. It will ask you when you went to school, what your grades were, what subjects you took. Oh, and what would you do if your best friend stole two dollars from a til at work, which you later saw him put back? By the way, you told us you have intermediate knowledge of Microsoft word- see this demo window? Please create a new macro useable in Word that will implement a mail merge to the following groups, which you can create by searching the appropriate contact lists. Then convert the document to a 3d grid, adjust the margins by .2", and save it as the the latin word for 'octopus'. You have thirty seconds.

6.) While trying to still appear enthusiastic, go back to sit in the chair to wait a little longer. The two stragglers will be gone, but the high-profile type gentleman will still be there, probably reading a magazine on local business for the third or fourth time. They'll call you to the back where your interview will take place.

7.) The interview. If you answered the computer questions with what they wanted to hear, they'll tell you how perfect you are for the sort of work they have available. If you didn't, they'll tell you how perfect you are for the sort of work they have available. If your answers were good, the work they have available will be office jobs, customer service, maybe something like computer assembly. If your answers were bad, the sort of work they have available will be warehouse jobs at wal-mart. If you're a female and your answers were good, they'll tell you how extra perfect you are for the jobs they have available. They will be referring to the secretarial positions.

8.) You're hired, congratulations. Go home now, we'll make a few phone calls to make sure you're not a rapist or an obvious drug abuser, and get right back to you.

Typically then, you would be contacted with 'assignments' - much like a hit man. It's always, "you're assignment, should you chose to accept it, is..." followed by a date, a time, a place and a name. Temps are the mercenaries of the office world.

In my case, they had an immediate vacancy in the temp agency office itself. I was hired on a temp-to-perm basis (meaning if I worked through the required three months or so I'd become a permanent hire) as their new front desk receptionist.

So you see, my job with the agency, much like my job in Japan, was began with the assumption it would last longer than the month that it did.

Even though Marx wasn't big on gender

An interesting thing is gender, and particularly how it fits into office relationships in big business Alberta.

Take me for instance. I'm a male, both in sex in gender identity. I presently work in a position which is, bluntly, secretarial. The job I do requires organizational skills, some people skills, and the necessary computer/language skillset to efficiently enter data and create operating manuals. These attributes don't seem to me to be something that either sex would physically have an advantage over the other in. Yet between my office and the previous office environments I've worked in, I've been the only male typing away behind the counter at an 'administrative' position.

I hyphenate the word 'administrative' because it's really only a cushion term for people who choose careers in secretarial positions that don't like the reality they'll not likely ever be more than an assistant to someone who matters.

Regardless of the terms used to blanket the comfortable yet meaningless world of the office secretary, the curious item remains that in our gender-equity-aware society, this is a job field that is still dominated by females. It's unfair for men everywhere, really. All those robust young fellows toiling away in grocery chain warehouses, waisting their sweat and tears on wages they could just as easily surpass by sitting comfily in a faux-leather chair and googling themselves. Of course, this sentiment only sticks if you don't count that nearly all of the executives in the two major firms I've worked for are chaps themselves.

There is exactly one female executive in my office right now. There is exactly one male 'administrative worker' in my office. I've been subtly reminded by fellow office-jockeys no less than three times in a week's space how odd it is for a person with hanging junk to be sitting where the eye candy's supposed to go. I find myself wondering if she's been getting as much mixed feedback for being the exception in her case as I have in mine.

Elaboration: does our company president - my direct boss, who adorns his room with a collection of bronco-busting cowboy busts and I distinctly heard today refer to his printer as 'baby' - come up to the female exec and ask her surreptitiously how she wound up in this sort of field? When she responds guardedly that she just was looking for work and this seemed to present itself as a way to make money which utilized her available skills, does he then pursue to cough loudly, look at for a few moments, then say, "It's just... Well, you don't see many girls in that sort of job. Not that I have a problem with it or anything. It's just... Unusual." Then does she wait til he leaves, close her eyes and count to ten, then reopen them to the disappointing realization that she in fact did not dream this whole affair and she was not actually soundly sleeping on a floor mat in Central Japan?

My favorite was the lady who worked in payroll that attempted to politely sputter out small talk and the best she could come up with was, "So, that's weird. You being a fellow and doing that job. Isn't it?"

No, it's not. There's no perfectly good reason why it shouldn't be normal for a dude to be another dude's personal assistant. The job description doesn't involve sponge baths, mandatory low cut tops, or being able to solicit a hard-on in a fifty-five year old man merely by representing what he jerks off to on the internet every night as a tangible fixture in his office.

I say, let there be more secretaries named 'Frank', and more CEO's pushing their telephone 'speak' button to say, "Doug, can you hold my calls for the afternoon?" Unite the male proletariat to rise up and steal into the coveted world of the secretarial for our own equal-opportunity cushy job initiatives!

Let there be boys assisting to girls! And boys assisting to boys! Let the dream become a reality!

Fortunate Sons (and Daughters)

Monday happens. Mondays do that. They begin to appear threatening and suspicious if they try to do anything else.

I'm idly grinding out powerchords on a Mexican-made Fender Stratocaster, and feeling less like a musician than my fifteen year old brother as he whips through Blitzkrieg Bop on a Playstation 2 scaled-down replica of my exact guitar. Even if he paid a gouging $160+ CAD for his Rock Band experience, at least he has any such experience to speak of; my days in a rock n' roll band ended over five years ago, and I'd venture that nobody misses our uptempo, punked-out Bon Jovi covers in the least.

Today I worked in my new position as Executive Assistant to the President, VP Finance, and VP Engineering of a downtown contract oil and gas drilling firm. It's my third day in the position. Which, coincidentally, is also the number which represents the exact number of days' experience I have in the field of Executive Assisting. And the exact number of days' experience I have in anything even remotely to do with oil and gas. I'm not at all qualified to be working this job, which is a fact that most people might find stressful, but I mostly find amusing. My training consisted of 1.5 frantic shifts with a stressed overseer trying to multitask between the two new recruits in a minimal amount time she had alotted to instruct us before leaving the country for an entire month. Now when the President of the company comes 'round, if he asks me whether the BOP is up over the casing on rig 78 well 986 and if drill out had occurred on the 72nd pad rig's B1 position, I'm certainly well-equipped to field his curiosity with some insights about how oil sure is viscous, isn't it?

Also, wealth blows me away. I just have no capacity for understanding it. When I'm handed six cheques each in sextuple digits to be deposited into one of our accounts on the same day, it has the same effect on me as if some suit gave me a handful of monopoly money and told me they own Boardwalk and Park Avenue. Suits can recite as many restaurants in downtown Calgary where dinner costs over thirty dollars a head as I can recite variety's of beer under $8.00. Which is saying something, since even while typing that I counted up to eighteen.

I didn't know this kind of money traded hands on an average day in any relatively small business area. I mean, I guess I sort of did, because you hear about rich oil tycoons and software developers, and people who sell underground military bases on eBay, but actual wealth is as far away from my reality as Xanadu. Someone might read this and nod their head, thinking smugly, "yup, big money's out there. Just look at my 52" plasma screen, and my Hiltonesque blow-up barbie wife." Fuck you. Your reality is obscene. I am awestruck by people who can afford to buy gourmet pasta in grocery stores, the thought of hauling in enough regular income to toss coin at 'home theatre systems' is beyond belief.

Not that I grew up in slums or squathouses, understand. I've just never seen money flow freely for the people in my immediate intimate circle. Which sounds like I'm referring to a harem, but I meant most of the friends I see on a regular business, plus my immediate family and the closest non-immediate branches on the family tree. Prior to being an Executive Assistant, when I was doing data entry for the GIS team in a landbanking company I had occasion to observe an entrenched office worker (like a curious visitor might a zoo animal) hand out portable gaming systems to casual acquaintances as a small-dollar xmas gift. That's Playstation Portable, not electronic yahtzee. And they splurged for the entertainment package. That's what really got me. You're buying gifts for these people who mean nothing to your life beyond chitchat about the office hockey pool, and you fork out the extra eighty bucks each just to make sure they get the extra game and memory card, to make sure they get the most out of your 'trivial token'.

It's like being generous just for the self-gratification of it, and in doing so completely missing the point.

Here's to Tuesdays, forever forced to deal with their one redeeming point being that 'at least they aren't Mondays'. Tuesdays are the silent heroes of the weekdays.

the World Away Comes Home

Three months ago, I returned from my adventure overseas. Three months ago, I was bitterly frustrated at being forced by the ill-timed bankruptcy of Nova Group Japan to return to a city I wanted nothing more to do with. Three months ago, I felt trapped even after I stepped out of the tiny main compartment of my West Jet flight from San Francisco and into the open Prairies of Southern Alberta.

Three months later, my sentiments remain exactly the same.

It's true; I have returned, I am back. I'm living in a furnace room under the basement stairs in my parents' cookie-cutter suburban house. It's probably about as glamorous as you're imagining. Nova Group took it upon themselves to promise all staff, foreign instructors included, that all of their delayed payments and salary advances would be through sometime in mid-October. As of October 26th, 2007, the date the company filed for bankruptcy, none of the aforementioned found any last minute grace deposits swelling the funds in their Japanese bank accounts, and as of today, January 10th, 2008, this hasn't changed. The company owed far more to creditors and unpaid employee wages than the limits of what Japanese governmental policy will compensate. For me, this meant I had a month-long trip to Japan which proved to be a (culturally enlightening) blast, but came with a pretty hefty price tag. Unplanned debts are the reason I've been back at home these past few months, sharing my bedroom with a large metal apparatus which snores louder on winter nights than even the most nasally congested of co-habitating mates.

It isn't paradise, but I guess it's home. I guess.

What have I been doing these past three months? Good question. Scrambling to stay afloat, I suppose. Making money where I can has led to a working a string of different jobs, which combined with my experience as an English Language Instructor and the job I worked before leaving the continent, brings my total to six employers in five months. Unexpectedly, I've started to view the jobs I've been working since coming back, as well as the subtle changes I've been perceiving in my post-post-secondary life, as culturally enlightening (if not moreso) than almost all of my experiences in the Greater Tokyo Area.

I've gone from being a kid who grew up on punk and 90's alternative rock to a commercial retail salesperson, making my coin off of suckers too daft to understand how useless the opinion of a commission-paid worker is, to an executive associate in a downtown oil drilling firm, breaking into the generally female-dominated market of administrative temp work to make my mark with the suits who look down from above the world of the lower middle income patsy. In between I have been lied to about wages by a Canadian retail giant, helped illiterates secure warehouse jobs which pay more than what most of my University friends are making, and punched in numbers for an international land-banking corporation whose executives possess such obscene wealth that it's a wonder they don't all own chunks of Africa to rule over as white devil kings. Almost entirely all male, of course. And this is without even getting started on my time being trained by a Topher Grace lookalike to hold kindergarten classes for middle-age Japanese housewives.

In my desperation to cope with being 25, penniless, and planless, I've inadvertently discovered an entirely different world away, this time at home. So I think this what I'm going to redirect my blog towards, adapting it towards the purpose of being an at-home travel journal. If I manage to continue posting semi-regularly, that is.

Here's to Westernism, both at home and abroad, and it's never-failing ability to create machines of people (and subsequently provide me with material to offer commentary upon).

the Bar Ship

(Written on October 4th)

I remember being a kid and watching Cheers, and thinking how cool it would be to hang out with such a mixed bag of characters who would all unequivocally accept you for who you are. Whether you're an everyman postal worker by day or a self-assured psychotherapist, when you walk through the doors to what I figured at the time was some sort of clubhouse for grown-ups, you become the same as everybody else. And not only that, but you all magically become friends, as though Coach had cast some benevolent spell over the building which compels its patrons to camaradrie in a very Carebears-ish sort of way. Granted, this kid fantasy needed some reimaginative tweaking upon the discovery that the camaradrie came more from the taps than the building walls, but I've still always though it would be pretty nifty to find a place where I could be a regular, like Cliff or Norm. I feel it's important to document my discovery of the Bar Ship as a place where I could be just that. Well, not so much Cliff as a clueless yet amiable foreigner in an otherwise entirely Japanese establishment, but the idea's still the same.

Japanese pubs, like pubs anywhere, can be whatever you make them. It can be said, however, that pubs here are, overall, much more conducive to intimate social experiences than the larger, more-about-the-booze pubs back home. Of the pubs I've seen in Japan, they generally accommodate a maximum of eight to twelve patrons at once. Often a pub will be no more than a bar counter with stools around it, usually located in the basement of a building or a few floors up from the main level. Pubs here are open from 7pm to 3am most nights, and until 5am on weekends. They're not as much geared towards non-Japanese-speaking clients as some of the restaurants and clubs tend to be, (as is illustrated by the extremely inconvenient absence of an english drink menu) and in fact some might exhibit outright hostility to gaijin. Our first experience of a pub in Fujisawa consisted of myself and a couple of friends taking the elevator to a bar on the 4th floor of a nearby building, only to be met by a table of hostile/confused glares as the elevator doors parted. Imagine walking (unannounced) out of a closet at a living room A.D. & D. gathering, dressed in full Harry Potter ensemble. Only instead of dorky kids in prosthetic elf ears, they're Yakuza, and looking really bad ass. We hastily jabbed at the 'close door' button while my roommate, Chris, futilely mumbled something about being on the wrong floor- on the off-chance that someone at this table of gritty Yakuza thugs took english lessons in his free time as a hobby.

This experience made finding the Bar Ship all the sweeter. Later the same night, we stumbled down the steps to a different bar, enticed as equally by the promise of a ship that is simultaneously a bar as we were by the bright red walls and neon lights. Inside we were immediately greeted by a chorus of "Irasshaimase!", (welcome) belted in unision by the staff behind the counter along with the patrons seated parallel. Brett and I were encouraged strongly to sit at the bar rather than at the single table the Bar Ship boasts, which was unoccupied at the time. Seated between two Japanese businessmen and two business women, (all in their forties or fifties) we were immediately subjected to a hail of questions. These mostly came from Shing, a drunken suit who talked for hours about how he is unhappy living in Japan with his wife who won't agree to move to Singapore, but because he has a son with her, he is unable to move to Singapore with his girlfriend. Alcohol, he told us, is paradise. Shing mostly wanted to practice his english, which was marginal at best. The bartender, Ko, (Bar Ship's Sam Mallone) spoke even less english- though on subsequent nights we would have to rely on him as our sole translator. We didn't understand anything on the drink menus, so we just pointed at things and said, "kudosai?" (please?) Shing bought us several rounds of straight Tanqueray gin, and one of the forty-something ladies tried to proposition one (either) of us through Shing's broken/slurred english translations. We ordered something called a 'Wiki Wiki', which the patrons and staff laughed uproariously at (to our confused apprehension). It appeared to the untrained eye tropical and fruity, but was in fact deadly.

We later learned that the Wiki Wiki was one shot tequila, two shots various liqueur, one more shot of something like triple sec, and a mixture of grapefruit and pineapple juice, all poured over crushed ice and garnished elaborately. The next day I had the second worst hangover of my life.

We returned several times to the Bar Ship in the weeks following, and learned that it was run dually by Ko (who was 28, has one child named 'Sora', and is a pro surfer) and his mom (who drinks too much and talks to stuffed animals around the bar like they're old friends). Everytime we went back, Ko would introduce us to whoever was sitting at the bar that evening. Just like Cheers, everybody's on a first name basis. After Ko took an interest in us, his bizarre recurring foreign guests, he bought us tequila shots, treated us to on-the-house cream of corn soup and nut mixes, and even ran home from the bar one night to grab a styrofoam container of natto for us to try. Natto, a revolting, fermented red bean concoction, is apparently huge over here as a breakfast food. Rather than risk offense to the assembled inhabitants of the Bar Ship, we ate it all.

Of the places I've been in Japan so far, from the karaoke booths in Harajuku to the Buddhist temple sites in Kamakura and Enoshima, when I leave Japan, the place I think I'll miss the most is Ko's Bar Ship. Though I've only experienced the Kanto region of the country, I doubt there could be any crusty dive quite like it in all the rest of Japan.

To counterbalance the previous unapologetic display of sentimentality, a bit of amusement: while we were in Harajuku, I purchased a fifteen dollar t-shirt adorned with the image of a smiling poo pie on a stick. Above the illustration, the shirt reads, "poop" in Japanese. This has caused no end of hilarity to erupt within the ranks of Japanese schoolgirls who stroll close enough to my proximity to make it out. The general assumption, my fluent-in-Japanese friend Nana tells me, is that I have no idea what my shirt reads, and I think it's a happy ice cream on a stick or something. They walk past saying things like, "do you think he knows? Should we tell him?", then collapse into giggles punctuated with further sidelong glances in my direction. The reaction has escalated to the point where, the other day in Kamakura, a troupe of Japanese schoolgirls approached me so as to have their picture taken with "that poop shirt guy".

Bonus- the picture itself makes for a pretty neat souvenir.

On Drinking, Flushing, and Ms.Yamamoto's Blind Friend William

(Written on September 30)

The efficiency of the Japanese is both thorough and utterly unrelenting. Like, an OCD degree of unrelenting- not to peg the entire society with another disorder to tack up beside ADD or anything. But whether it's due to a strong lingering work ethic from a bygone age of samurai culture and codes, or on account of some bacteria in the water that was mutated by the same undersea radiation which spawned Gojira and a host of Ultraman monsters, this is a society which puts functionalism upon a pedestal before all else. The ridiculously intricate CSI mystery of a recycling system aside, this emphasis on functionalism has been a pervasive element in all of my experiences since since relocating here to Japan. The presence of two to three beverage vending machines on almost every street or alleyway in urban Japan is another testament to this efficiency complex.

As I found out through questioning other gaijin as to why I was getting so many strange looks on the streets, the proper social protocol to observe when travelling and thirsty is to: 1.) purchase a drink from the vending machine; 2.) drink the beverage without moving from the vending machine; and then 3.) put the empty cup into one of the two recycling bins (plastic bottles, glass bottles) invariably located beside each machine. Drinking while walking down streets or through malls is bad form, and while nobody comes up to you and bitch slaps you across the face or anything if you do, you will be silently, and strongly, disapproved of. No room here for the potential to be stranded without a place to put your empty can- just take care of your pesky thirst fast, and get back on with your day.

There are tonnes more examples of Japanese efficiency at work to be found within simple, everyday things. From their "build up, not out" architectural response to overcrowding, (Japanese buildings are often like vertical strip malls; they're often 8 floors or more, with each dedicated to a completely different shop or business) to the miniature, box-shaped cars which swarm the streets, through even to the way that bank machines handle cash deposits. After setting up my own account through Shinsei Bank, a lengthy process due to interspersed wait times and translation issues, it was neccessary for me to deposit the remaining yen I had into their automatic cash machine (which, unlike the teller, does have an English option). To do this is so simple it's embarassing that all ATM machines back home don't function the same. You swipe your card, hit deposit, then put your money into a drawer-type apparatus that opens its mouth to devour your bills. No passwords, setting an amount, or fussing with envelopes- it simply closes its maw, counts the money you put in, then tells you the amount deposited. Another embarassingly simple example of how this culture is light years ahead of North America in the efficiency department is provided by the peculiar nature of the toilets located in private residences across the country. First, toilets have their own room separate from the room with the sink and shower, in case Mr. Yamamoto is running late for work and Ms. Yamamoto needs to drop a log ride down the porcelain chutes at the same time. You might think, "gross! Then how is kindly Ms. Yamamoto going to wash her hands after fouling them whilst cleaning up her bottom?" The answer: with toilet water, of course. There is a little bowl that resembles a sink attached to the topside of the toilet, so that when Ms. Yamamoto flushes, the water ultimately destined to purge and refill the toilet first runs out of a tap up top and into the pseudo-sink drain (which then of course carries the water down to the toilet bowl proper). As the water level in the toilet is already impossibly low, the elimination of added water waste from post-defecating hand washing means that the total H20 consumed in the process is barely a fraction of what North American homes use. As I'm writing this, I'm realizing that this probably isn't interesting to anyone but me, but I found the entire process fantastically exciting.

The functionality list yet goes on: multiple supermarket aisles dedicated to the briskly efficient concept of instant noodles; (for lunch, dinner, breakfast, snacktime, you name it) individually organized lineups on train platforms for where each train door is anticipated to stop; fast food so fast you put money into a vending machine for it, push a meal button for a ticket, and wait at the counter for 1.5 minutes til the cook slides it out on a tray; showers for customers onsite in internet cafes! How can any one culture be so saturated with so many good ideas actually being applied all at once? The phrase "No, that won't work" must simply have no Japanese translated equivalent.

Regarding my own welfare- the company is going down, I purchased a (rad) Japanese cellphone which will work back home in Canada, and I've been enjoying the rain in Kanagawa for the past few days, where it has been light but unabated. Japan is fast becoming a popsicle stand, for my own functional purposes.

In closing, one more example of Japanese wisdom owning our unworthy North American bottoms:

Sidewalk brail for blind people to navigate! Systems of this elevated yellow rubber run everywhere in Greater Tokyo, including through all of the train stations. I've often seen the blind strolling about on these walkways bereft of seeing-eye dogs, armed only with a cane and a working mental map of how the sidewalk brail systems play into each other. Crazy, but simultaneously ingenious- a lot like everything else here.

Riding in the Hindenburg over the world's Cleanest Continent

(written on September 27)

The upside to my being employed by a failing company, is that in my case it's kind of like having first class tickets on the Titanic with a reserved seat on a lifeboat. Whether by intuition or blind luck, I made certain the ticket I bought to carry me to Japan was also round trip. So if the rumors whispering through teachers' lounges in branches across the continent are indeed indicative of a full-on corporate enema lurking just around the corner, I won't be caught among the hundreds of homeless gaijin desparately pumping out resumes in a frantic effort to secure employement- be it through teaching, modelling, bartending, or whatever else they can find.

So it's like this: The company I work for is in shambles, but is doing its absolute best to make sure the lowest-level employees are kept unaware of this. The peons of the corporate structure are the bare minimum needed to maintain the illusion of a functioning business. Middle management has been experiencing severe delays in salary payment, and have begun to let the company's actual state of financial turmoil slip. Apparently, the salary office halved its english-speaking staff several weeks ago, making it difficult to reach someone regarding inquiries as to when pay might be expected to be deposited. Several days ago, there were no english-speaking employees at the salary office at all. Most recently, they just stopped answering their phones and replying to faxes altogether. Japanese staff, senior instructors, and middle management types are now approaching a week without seeing any of their regularly scheduled pay. Some of them have actually taken to editing their resumes from work. The whole affair is thoroughly interesting to view from the inside, at least from my fairly secure vantage point. Clearly the President is running the company into the ground, accruing as much debt as possible before officially declaring bankruptcy. The only word that has been received from the President's office in the past few days reported that "things are on the up and up", and "unpaid staff should see their money any day now".

If and when the proverbial fudge pie hits the fan, my plan is to cash in on my return ticket home, reorganize, then hopefully soon after head back across the Pacific to teach in Korea. I've been living it up enough in Japan enough to not feel too keenly a sense of regret- especially considering I'll still have at least another month here either way.

On the topic of seizing the moment out here on the opposite side of the world, last night was a singularly enjoyable occasion filled with celebration and abundant libations. The cause to celebrate? Completion of On-The-Job Training! Our three days of rigorous education on how to properly do our jobs was over. Read: after three days of being told to "imagine what you would say if your (fellow trainee) was Japanese and you needed to explain satire" and then being thrown blindly into situations where we were alone in a room with three Japanese students and no real idea what to do, we had a collective thirst which needed to be quenched. After buying an assortment of Japanese beers and coolers, our motely cadre of fresh-off-the-boat instructors gathered to sit cross-legged in a circle on the living room floor of our tiny apartment, and proceeded to play Canadian drinking games.

This was followed by a late-night excursion to "the Bar Ship", a small pub in Fujisawa where Brett and myself have established ourselved as regular clientele.

Also, and of particular relevance since we are fast realizing it to be a problem that needs handling ASAP, item No. 2 on the list of things I didn't know about Japan: their recycling system has to be the most efficient, confusing, and overall, f*cked up system of recycling on the planet. On Tuesdays and Fridays, city sanitation goes around to pick up burnable items- that's "kitchen refuse, food leftovers, miscellaneous paper, and plant matter", according to the slip of paper I was given outlining the crazy rules for garbage. Every other Tuesday, recyclable cans and metals, pots and pans, glass bottles, and Newspapers/other paper products must be put out in separate bags. Paper must be tied together in bundles rather than placed in bags, else it won't be picked up. On Wednesdays, recyclable plastic items are collected. All bags must be translucent, else the Japanese KGB kicks down your door and beats you with batons. This also occurs if you screw up and do something unforgivably stupid, like putting out glass bottles on a Wednesday.

What this all adds up to is a remarkably environmentally-conscientious society, even despite the jungle of urban development that seems to have been vomited up over every square inch of the continent. Kutos, masterminds behind Japan's modern recycling initiatives. You have succeeded in tidying up your corner of the world, and at only the trifling expense of the sanity of foreigner's living abroad in your country.