California on my mind

I’ve just about healed from the dog attack. It was good to be reminded how passionately vicious mammals are capable of being.

Sometimes I wonder what all my co-workers are talking about all day in the office. They are a lively bunch. One of the dudes likes to yell down at students from the office window. He has a breathy, mafia gangster-like voice. Then there is this sweet plump teacher who told me to call her “pretty Uchi” (so I do) and she is always making emphatic exclamations in the office. We all sit at our desks for about nine hours a day if you count lunch (this will change once school starts back up on the 26th). Then again some of the teachers are coaching or helping the students during some of that time. Unfortunately we don’t have cubicles; this means that your business is my business and that we cannot pretend to be in the film “Office Space.”

The other day I noticed that Tom Green has a blog. You can view it at tomgreen.com ; for some silly reason I am a fan of this particular comedian. There is something about the way he cares about his own carelessness that is very amusing. He likes to fill his blog entries with details about his body and general feelings. He is both candid and down to earth. That combined with a little touch of je ne sais quoi does the trick.

What is it with comedians? Will Ferrell’s serious aloofness and Ben Stiller’s hopeless but trying characters. (There are probably better ways to phrase the character they tend to play…). Empathy certainly plays a role in making these characters so funny as does sympathy for them. Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski and his co-stars Steve Buscemi and John Goodman are the three perfect idiots that are impossible to hate maybe because they so cleverly emulate important character traits that exist, on some level, in the majority of individuals in our society. Goodman plays the ineffective dominant brother, Lebowski plays the abiding middle brother, and Buscemi plays the little brother always willing to play along. Of course this is not how all brothers or friends in society are aligned, but they have enough correlatives to work well on the comic level.

I’ve been thinking about California a bit recently. And about Hawaii, and France, and Spain (somewhere I have yet to visit). Bali is on my mind. To leave so thoroughly allows me to see what's out there with renewed eyes. Also, thinking about the places makes them feel less far away. Those Joshua trees are excellent. For many of the people I meet here I am there exposure to the places I have been--they otherwise would not have a person-to-person understanding of these distant places. There is so little diversity here that my presence is very impactful. One of my nursery students was so shy when she first saw me that she cried all day. I am that different than those around me. But my presence is also good at illuminating the similarities. I too like sashimi and green tea. I too can sit properly and enjoy a glass of shochu or sake. I too can appreciate the Buddha. I too like the Beatles (the vice-principal Nomura loves the Beatles).

My grand-predecessor has put a link up for my blog on his blog, so I will do the same: http://www.cosmicbuddha.com/adam/
There is even more about Ubuyama in his blog. He was here for two years starting three years ago. His name is Adam Yoshida and he is pretty cool. Especially since he lived here. Now I am living in the same little house that he lived in. And I have his old car (but maybe not for long; I am upgrading). Here in Japan you can buy a decent late nineties car for about one or three thousand U.S. dollars. New cars are not that much more expensive. The real costs come in the form of taxes which are about $1500 for every two years. Most people are driving these little boxy K-cars (small cars with two or three cylinder engines that can pull off about 50-60 miles to the gallon I reckon). Gas is maybe $5 per gallon. I reckon.

Last night I got to lead an English conversation class in the neighboring town. About eight adults (ages 30-80 appr.) sat down and I told them about my family, where they come from, and where I come from. They were pretty happy and even offered me some of the candy that they had used to offer to their ancestors on Obon, the Buddhist holiday that basically started the day I ate the snake. They also introduced themselves to me and seem to be very happy to just hang out for a couple hours every Monday night (and they even pay me a bit)….

So I will carry on my country life among the beautiful enchanted trees, farmlands, mountains, streams, and onsens. I will try to avoid the semi-rabid dogs (I think the one that got me was a Shitzu) and the Mamushi. The earthquakes and volcanoes may rattle and burn me but I should survive them. In the meantime I hope that my brother Nick is enjoying his trip in Europe and that Anthony is lighting Berkeley up; also we wish mom and dad our best on their island home. And I hope that my gracious friends, the ones that bother to read from time to time the little words I write here for them, are having their own exotic experiences and/or relaxing epiphanies.

Word of the day:

Epiphenomenalism: (n) the view that consciousness is merely an aftereffect of physical processes in the brain and nervous system.