8/5/14
I was surprised, on my walk back from the tourist center (which is my only source of wifi right now), to see bottles of water sitting outside on the street, gathered around poles outside buildings. I’ve seen that practice just once before in an anime where it was mentioned as a superstitious custom used to keep cats away.

Well it’s fucking working, because WHERE ARE ALL THE CATS. Or the dogs for that matter. This little town is immaculate, and I’ve only seen one dog (which was hilarious, btw, small and fluffy, with a smushed-in face that always looks like he’s about to whip out a cigar and call someone mugsy, see?). I was also very excited to see a small dish of salt by the window of a shop! This is a custom whose name I can’t remember now, which was started by a woman attempting to draw the horses (who love salt) that drew the emperor’s carriage to her house so she could make out with him and have his babies. That woman was a genius.

It’s afternoon now, and I’ve seen two more dogs, one of which lives at the end of my block and is a giant gray Irish Wolfhound, and seems friendly but totally beaten by the heat, poor lil’ pony.

So, quick recap:
I arrived at Narita airport, went through immigration, got a resident card, and picked up my luggage which I immediately arranged to have shipped to the school where I’ll be working. Next I exchanged some cash and bought a bus ticket into Toyko. I kept passing out in awkward positions during the 45-minute bus ride. I’d nod off only to wake up with my mouth hanging open and my head dangling off my shoulders at an odd angle.

I got off the bus and immediately started looking for a cafe where I could hook up to some wifi. I stopped into the first one I found, bought a sandwich in a plastic bag, and asked if there was wifi. There wasn’t. I stuffed the sandwich in my purse and kept moving. I turned up a small street and hit a Starbucks. Bingo. I bought a scone and a bottle of water out of a sense of obligation, and sat down to discover that I needed a login and password to use the wifi. I went back to the sales lady, and showed her my phone. A look that resembled “Oh, honey, you’re so screwed” flashed across her face, then she quickly said, “I give you mine!” She snatched the phone out of my hands and started typing furiously while I bowed deeply and thanked her in the most formal way I knew how. Once back at my seat, I discovered that the research Boyfriend had done on hotels were nearby the wrong train station. I found a few in the area, and decided to try the nearest, which turned out to be adorable, affordable, and very, very small. The man at the front desk was very kind and efficient, and waited awkwardly behind the desk, avoiding eye contact once he had given me the “women’s package” (a small bag with a pink clip, some nail polish remover, etc.), until I mustered up the courage to ask, “Sumimasen, demo, key desu ka?” (Excuse me, but is there a key?). He burst out laughing and apologized a few times while he handed me the card for the room he had forgotten all about.
I laughed at the tininess of the room, ate my sandwich, changed and went to bed. In the morning, I returned the room key, and went to find the train station. Once accomplished, I bought a Shinkansen (bullet train) ticket ($135) to Morioka, and barely found the right platform in time.
The train ride was a breeze, but I didn’t sleep. I bought food on the train, a few tiny onigiri and karaage, and tried not to cry.
My coworkers met me in Morioka about an hour after I arrived, since I came on an earlier train than expected. They drove me to work, where I volunteered to teach a couple classes before I was declared unfit for duty and duly driven home.
When I arrived at my apartment, the electricity was off and there was (and still is) no internet, which I didn’t notice until my coworkers had already left, making arrangements to come back after work to help me find a grocery store nearby. I laid down and tried not to cry, to no avail. I didn’t sleep.
They came back, turned on my electricity, and we drove around, bought some food and they dropped me back at my place, at which point I noticed the water was off, too. I figured out how to turn it back on, only to discover later the next day that the gas has also been turned off, and won’t be turned on until the gas company comes by to “verify [my] existence” (my coworker’s exact words tonight).
I fell asleep yesterday, my first day in Morioka, around 7pm and woke up this morning around 3am. I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I ate, watched Wreck it Ralph, then decided I didn’t want to wait until noon for my coworker to pick me up. I wanted control. I wanted familiar faces. I wanted some fucking wifi.
I got dressed, procrastinated a little, and finally set off in the direction of a tourist center based on the combined information from a map printed out at work and a pamphlet I had picked up at the train station. About a mile later, I had gotten to know my neighborhood a little better, and the tourist center had just opened up. It was 830am.
I stayed until about 11, facetiming and chatting with friends, and watching the rain come down outside, hoping there would be a break in the weather for an umbrella-less tourist to make her way home eventually. And there was. Because Jesus loves me.
I got home starving (finally), ate some chashu on rice I bought the day before, and watched Ghost in the Shell until my coworker showed up. We chatted easily on our way to work, and bought some food for lunch at a nearby grocery store. Once at work I was on my own, and did a much better job than the previous day of paying attention and being engaging and energetic. I feel less like a zombie today than I did yesterday (no thanks to my uterus, which, fuck you, uterus, why, of all days, jesus christ), and I’m willing to bet tomorrow will be better than today.
So now I’m finally home, in an apartment I’m looking forward to making my own, and hoping I can find enough cool stuff to do when my friends and family come to visit. Either way, it finally felt like it’s all going to be ok, and I know the moment that change happened: when I got a shitty little loaner bicycle. It’s so fucking small, and it’s so shitty, and it’s mine, and everything is going to be ok.

UPDATE: Later that night…
So I just realized the hard way that without gas, there is no hot water. I had a cold sponge bath and sit with a nice warm laptop on my legs to warm up, and comforted myself with the recognition that I’ve had worse. Much, much worse. I survived Belize, where the only water deemed fit to bathe in still wasn’t fit to drink, given that it was captured rainwater held in a cistern that was often populated by frogs. It was also totally unheated. We were told to turn on the water to get wet, then turn it off, later up, turn on the water to rinse, and that was it. So having a cold sponge bath in a secure apartment in a clean, safe city using water I’ve been drinking for 24hrs with no ill effects is hardly an issue. It’s a fucking luxury. Still, note to self: get the fucking gas turned on already.

Holy shit, this flight is showing Neko Samurai. My whole life just lit up a little brighter.

LAX is still awful, and now at a significant distance from me. I fully bawled for about three seconds when the wheels left the runway.
Before I go on, let me toot the saddest horn in my personal psychological symphony and say that I love the way I cry when a life presents something crushing. I completely collapse for
one-onethousand
two-onethousand
three-onethousand
four-onethousand
five-onethousand
at which point the waterworks shut off like a faucet, and I move on. This happens in small, unpredictable bursts, but it makes dealing with issues feel managable since I know that when I start crying it’ll stop quickly. I give myself total permission to become a puddle, then snap back to being a semi-person again. My humanity becomes binary: functioning human on, functioning human off, repeat until tired or tired of functioning-human-off setting (usually followed by food). It’s genuine, mentally healthy, and, frankly, pretty fucking convenient. So. *toot*

Anyway, I’ve been crying off and on all week: sitting at home watching cartoons, eating (crying while eating might actually be the accomplishment for which aforementioned horn was made for. It’s harder than it sounds), saying goodbye to just about anyone (especially my ESL students, a few of whom caught me on camera breaking down while thanking them for giving me an amazing first experience as a teacher with my very own classroom, and I am not excited about seeing that hit Facebook sometime soon), my family, my friends (especially my dojo family), the list is a predictable, beautiful representation of the people I’ve been lucky enough to be surrounded by until I chose to book it halfway around the globe for a year to have an adventure in making mistakes and feeling lost while overdosing on ramen (reimen now?). I only feel regret when I think of who I’m leaving behind, and I get totally selfish and fantasize about stuffing my luggage full of person-I-love-and-suddenly-can’t-live-without in a heartbeat until the inevitable (and suddenly unfunny) sound of breaking bones that would inevitably result when said luggage was elegantly launched off a cart and onto the tarmac. I think that’s enough of that.

Meanwhile, I have the entire row on this flight to myself, which is fortune I didn’t dare wish for, and UGH OMG the duty-free cart just went by and I choked a little on the perfume. Bleh. This row is probably larger than my apartment in Japan. I should relish it while I have the chance.

Saw this the other day and was very pleased that gifs play on a loop.  So cute.

(and because gifs are spotty on WordPress for some reason, enjoy it here if the below doesn’t load.)

is there a cuter gif on the internet (that doesn’t include animals)? I think not

When I’m about to go to an appointment like a job interview or the first day of a volunteer thing that might turn into a job (like today’s thing), I get nervous.  Not worried-nervous, active-nervous.  My insides vibrate at a frequency that would make a Beagle go deaf.  My typing becomes sharp, quick, and super-accurate.  No web page loads fast enough.  I zoom around the office completing tasks with an efficiency that would make a German blush.  I snap my head back and forth and squint/expand my eyes like a hunted animal instead of glancing around casually like a normal.  I’m doing it now, right now.  AAAAAAH SHIT GOTTA GOOOOOOOOOO!

“Have you tried yelling at it?!”

As I’ve previously pointed out, it’s pretty much common knowledge that old people are bad with computers. Sure, there are exceptions, but on the whole, the learning curve is just too sharp for sexagenarians to keep up with.

My boss at Office Job is a member of said group. She has me print out PowerPoint presentations, and tells me to “keep a copy” of digital files. She scrolls through documents looking for names instead of using ctrl+f. She resends emails with the subject “not sure if i already sent this.” She double-clicks EVERYTHING.

Although this is what I’ve come to expect from her age-group, I confess I felt genuine shock when I helped her hunt through her Yahoo email inbox for some attachments. I told her to try searching for the recipient. The conversation went something like this:

“I’m looking at who sent them, I can’t find her.”
“…Try using the search bar… At the top… The top of the page… Right there.”
“Oh! That’s a great idea.”
“It’s very useful. I use my search bar often.”

And so on. I try to be gentle.

Eventually she gave up, got up from her chair and wished me luck. I sat down, went to the top of the page, and froze. She had over 150,000 emails in her inbox.

A hundred and fifty thousand.

If she’s been collecting these emails over the course of ten years, that’s 41 emails per day including weekends and holidays. Every day. For a decade.

I don’t know how long she’s had this email address, but it has the year 2002 in it, so I think ten years is a solid bet. Still, WTF?!!! How does this happen? I get the feeling she has no sense of how an inbox should function, what folders are, how to use them, when an email should be deleted, etc. She has adult kids, don’t they help her with this stuff? Or are they as lost as she is?

What worries me is that even her work email inbox is engorged with messages (read and unread): about 20,000 currently, at least a dozen or so of which are mine, longing to be read and dealt with. They might as well exist outside of time. They might as well accept their fate, and die.