Calimochos* live on, even in Hachioji-Shi! Fueled by a 500 Yen (dats lie $4.60, so booya) bottle of Spanish wine and a sale on Diet Coke, my British flatmate Michelle and I took to learning some Japanese last night. We're getting there, maybe. Ha ha. I know one character in katakana (one of Japan's three alphabets), the character that represents the sound "bu." Knowing this character really does nothing for one's ability to communicate, but someday I imagine it will truly come in handy.

Some actually useful Japanese is this post's title sentence, which means, "where the poo is the internet cafe, you crazies?" One can substitute any location for "internet cafe" and essentially find it by asking a friendly looking local.

[A note about friendly looking locals: they really are friendly, and will take you anywhere you need to go within reason. They will guide you down multiple blocks to get you to the post office, and then will give you explicit lower-level-primate-like and therefore language-transcendent directions for the silliest request.]

Anyway, aside from simply experiencing Japan in all its confusion inducing ways, I am also "making a living" of sorts here. I trained this week in Tachikawa for three days, and am now ready for a Nova-filled day of seven lessons starting TOMORROW! Over the past three days I taught at least 8 or 9 classes and learned teaching strategies and corporate policy and etc. along the way. I really enjoy the teaching so far -- the students here are generally really eager and fun and appreciative, which is reflective of Japanese culture, I believe, and quite refreshing. So, yay for getting payed to speak English. And then yay for spending all my wages on apples.

My home school is in Kichijoji, which is approx. a 40 minute train ride from Takao. Factor in walking from my apt. and to the school, and my commute is going to be about 70-80 minutes each way. Yikes. I plan on reading a lot on the train -- I've already finished two lengthy books and, mind you, have only been here a week.

Anyway, time to rest up for the fun and games of tomorrow. I was supposed to get a mobile telly today, but did laundry instead. Thus, tomorrow I will be asking one friendly local, "O Vodafone, wa doku desu ka?" and then experiencing my first full day of teaching. Another day, another dollar, I suppose.

*Not only do they live on, but they make Me, Myself and Irene seem like the funniest movie EVER. Maybe it is!?

Wow, I:m in Japan. I like it here mucho, particularly since right now I:m reclining in a leather chair in a very suave public internet venue. it:s superposh. here are my favorite of my most recent japan discoveries.

1) IN women:s bathrooms, there aren:t always toilets. instead, there are holes of sorts in the floor that are ceramic and whatnot, and thus resemble toilets in their nature, but not in their form. When using these amazing contraptions, I thank my years of peeing in the woods during long runs, mostly, for preparing me for this experience. Even better about the restromms here is the fact that there are contraptions in the stalls here that play waterfall and/or flushing sounds to, I imagine, combat the horrid effects of bashful bladder. Thanks, Japan!

2) while walking home from the subway the other night, i was enticed by the sound of the most relaxing and laurence welkish voice crooning from around the corner. mind you, it was late in the evening and i was walking in what in america would be considered an alleyway inbetween three and four story buildings. So, I was a little creeped out even though Japan is ridiculously safe and people are out at all hours doing honest business. BUT, I shouldn:t have been creeped out, because the lovely sound came from a little mini truck scented aromatically by roasting meats and lit by dreamily romantic chinese lanterns. It was like a dream come true, except i wasn:t hungry. Just deleriously tired, like I am now.

Peace out,
Eliz

Ahhh, back after a long and arduous journey across the southern regions of the state. Friday was a Day of Amazing Travel and Family and Friends, and it proceeded as follows:

In the AM I took a quick trip to the Detroit Renaissance Center (or RenCen, per both my Grandpa and Mother, the latter of whom claimed "yeah, of course it's the RenCen. It's always been the RenCen.") to retrieve my Visa-Stamped passport. I walked in on a Japanese woman in the bathroom at the Consulate. I then took my Carolla onto Highway 5, which is a bizatch in lots of ways, including the ways of north, south, east AND west. But finally we (me and MicVat) found the right direction, after a stop at a grey gas station to sneak a peek at an unpurchased road atlas.

Highway 5 took us to Grandma's for a visit with her and Grandpa and Chet and Bruce PLUS a phone call from Uncle Dave. Lovely. The visit was really nice, especially because it reminded me of an Easter visit to the same place during which transpired a terribly interesting and entertaining discussion of Butter Lambs. Allegedly my Grandpa, who is quite the artist and did wood carving until a few years ago, used to whittle these babies up for Easter feasts of yore. Or at least so claims my Grandmother.

Ann Arbor was the next stop (minus Plymouth -- grey and rainy) to drink pink cocoa and look at pictures and eat noodles and walk in the rain and visit with Kate and Hendricks and Bowling, Shaw and The Beej. Goulet, and finally I drove, while listening to old school Prince, to Kzoo for Kzoo's homecoming! Actually, I could care less about Kzoo's homecoming. But I do care about my dear friend Jess, who was in town on a brief respite from grad school at Tulane. And so we caught up and watched Sealab 2021, not to be confused with SeaLab 2020, and peered out the windows at the miserable weather and enjoyed the hospitality of her buddies. Woot.

And now, let the countdown begin. 66 hours until I give Dick Cheney a brusque nod at the Cherry Capital, and then breeze outta the country. This place is dead anyway, or at least that's what I'll tell myself.

You know those huge turkey legs that "they" allegedly serve at Renaissance Fairs and the like? What? You don't? Well, talk to Slobs, who feeds her boo such delicacies while rubbing his belly and whispering sweet nothings in his ear after long and difficult football games. Oh, and for further aid, check this out. Ew.

Anyway, the Rufus concert was amazing, which I knew it would be, but was extra pleasantly suprised anyway because he played a bunch of tunes from his new album which promises to be pretty damn good. I'm in love again, with a man who also loves men. Ah well. I suppose I'm not quite as enamored as I could be because he failed to play Sally Ann, which is secretly my favorite song of his . . and I celebrate his entire catalog. But, it was still fabulous.

This past weekend (and the week prior, including my Manpower retirement party and cash bonus) was p-r-e-t-t-y fun. But that is neither here nor there, because one can only type so much.

What is both here and there is the following true bigraphy of Da, the dashing native who makes a tribal cameo and then paddles off into the tsunami/sunset to the strains of a white women's negro spiritual chorus on the latest episode of this season's Survivor.

Somehow -- amazingly, really -- Da infiltrated the South Bend Power Hour scene this past weekend. You see, LSlevins needed Da to teach her the ways of proper machete use when she all of a sudden found her dungarees sliced across the knee at Finnegan's, a snafu that can be traced only to her vain attempt to hew a cocunut with improper form, and sans Da's comfort and guidance no less. Because, you see again, she really wanted some feta cheese from the Whole Foods on Survivor-Island, but without Da to either lead here there or gently correct her machete-weilding form, she succeeded only in ruining her pants. And where was Da? Like I said, he was both here and there, having first climbed a mountain like a monkey and then retreated to the wilderness to play with his new Tamagotchi.

The funny thing about Da's Tamagotchi is that it strikingly resembles the blob* from that Zoloft commercial of late. You know the one. Anyway, Da is learning a lot from his new Tamagotchi that he never could have learned as solely a native of Survivor Island. For instance, all he has to do is press the "Zoloft" button, and his Tamagotchi the Zoloft blob does a few things. A sampling of what such cause-and-effect teaches Da:

"You take drug and you be bouncing"
"You take drug and everybody your friend"
"You take drug and everybody like you"
"You take drug and socialize with unicorns"
"You take drug and fade in color"

To confirm these Tamagotchic teachings, Da (just last night) performed a case study with four cell phones -- three identical and outfitted with blingin' ring-tones (i.e. "My Boo" by Urshr & Alicia Keys) -- and one NOT identical and outfitted only with the capacity to send and receieve phone calls. When the latter took Zoloft, not only was there bouncing, but there was friendship. Da then performed another, parallel study, the subject this time being a music fan tragically unversed in Kid Rock's catalogue. With a little Zoloft, though (or Keystone Light) this subject was treated to lots of bouncing and socializing and musical revelry of the kind found only in Zoloft commercials.

Da felt validated in his studies and findings, despite his failure to witness any "fading of color." The only other thing Da learned from his obviously symbiotic relationship with the aforementioned crooning white women (and Slobs, I guess) is that if you take a picture, it will last longer.

*If you try really hard, you can find the Zoloft commercial on this site. Go to "animation" and then scroll down and click on the link to Pat Smith's commercial work. Then you be bouncing.

Two weekends in a row in the presence of DRigato, Scolson5, and MicVat makes me a lucky girl indeed! What a funny couple days. Seriously -- hilarious. I think I might have actually peed my pants a little bit on Saturday, the day on which the bulk of the FUNNY occurred. Ha. So, okay -- here are some key recounts of the weekend's events:

-> LSAT Saturday. Glooossss over that.
-> Meeting a sobering-up-but-angry-about-the-game-and-the-loss-of-a-pink-hat Mike and Fullback at Legends. Mike punched Fullback in the speed bags as the game let out. Fullback had "brownie" on his shirt, which he changed later for the Pole/Backer.
-> A chat with Scolson, who was stealing Capri Suns from the band building. And then a bit of chaos by Legend's, during which Mike tried to get Sarah to smell his pants . . or chaps. Whatever. What? Weird.
-> An unforgettable trip to Martin's, which involved a few noteworthy occurrences. First of all, there was an odd Neapolitan Ice Cream / Ground Beef hybrid labeled "meatloaf" in the refrigerated meats section, which we dubbed Neapolitan Meatloaf. Antics ensued. "Don't get no [Meapolitan Neatolaf] on the Sofa Sofa," says Frank Zappa, amongst other things. Secondly, I saw an IBM camper from this summer, which was just bizarre and weird. But awesome. But weird.
-> While making dinner with Sarah and Dave post-Martin's, MicVat emptied a FACEFUL of Reeces and Almond M&M's onto his face/the floor/everywhere. More antics ensued.
-> A trip to Ramin's house party, at which some of the Faltos showed their faces. Aw, faltos. Particularly entertaining were Miguel and his new "tat," which he doesn't call a "tat," but SHOULD, and Lizett's Khaki on Khaki action. Oh, Lizett -- just embrace the khaki on khaki and enjoy your Killian's.
-> At the Bizacker, ummm, nothing too exciting happened. But I remember "Hang on Sloopy" and then "RockyTop" and Fullback's clean shirt. And, of course, proposing the age old question "what if I drink this Miller High Life?" And then . . .

Anyway, all in all it was a fulfilling ND weekend, aside from the crapalicious game. And if you feel short-changed by these brief snipetts, it's only because the full tales are too incohesive to tell. I promise. But impose a laugh track on this post, and though it might seem forced, you'll start to get it. Or not. Khaki on Khaki.