In The Shadows

WARNING: Contains Strong Sexual Violence (err... not really)

Walking home after a late night teaching web lessons, I say bye to my friends who all live in an apartment complex further on down what may be called "Flower Street". As the group pulled off on their own way I talked with them and came up a little more left of my street than normal, which was lucky because I barely avoided stepping into a round of vomit left undoubtedly by some over-boozed salary man now clutching his spittle covered knees in a crouch somewhere in Juso. I was thinking about how to write that sentence in a blog when I heard gravel rustling in a lot to my left. I gave it some attention but kept walking toward my apartment not 10 yards up. The churning though turned loud and violent and then it straightened out into a gritty smacking pat getting closer moving now out of the lot and toward the road as a screech reared up both garbled and shrill. I yelped and tore ass for the apartment hallway before taking a look back. Under the road lamps, a mangled mass of fur rolled out into the wash of light and one could barely discern that the creature was two. Their run was cut short though and the roiling frenzy began again as the first gutter ferret overtook the other and began savagely humping it. With a small scream, the bunch seperated back into the two small matted creatures that they were and breathing heavy. As if silently signaled, one of 'em took off behind a building in a burst of gravel before the other could trail it and then all was quiet.
Previously I had only seen ferrets in the Beastmaster movies 1 and 2. Those ferrets could grab keys off of a sleeping gaurd or weakly bite at villains giving the blonde hero just enough time to break free and grab his sword for a killing blow. You could talk to them too, if you were the Beastmaster, of course. I imagined that they only had witty things to say or that they were at least polite company. Not like these gutter ferrets. But perhaps they were the same ones. Maybe with the unpopularity of the Beastmaster series and a souring economy those poor out of work ferret actors turned to the mean streets and then turned against each other. I don't know their story but if they ever come at me again I'm gonna kick 'em in the head.

To Rest

It was unthinkable. I came home from work. Undressed mostly by the door and unloaded the single grocery bag I had brought from the international store: peanut butter, pasta, chicken and curry. Then I stepped into the bedroom to find Dell laying silently on the table.
`Dell?!` I said.
When I left that morning she had just finished sending out some mail and was playing music before taking her usual nap. She`d nod off about an hour after I left so that we could play when I got home but something was different. Wrong. I went up and tried to shake her but she didn`t wake up.
`Dell, quit playing. Wake up.` I listened for a faint hum, tried to spot some dim glow in those lights I had known over the past five years but there was nothing anymore. I turned her over looking for some mark, burn or hole; some reason for her not to answer but there was none. `Come on, girl. Get up.` I started shaking her again more frantically, waiting for her little fan to flutter and when it didn`t I lost it.
Pumping on the power button over and over I heard her stiff, cold frame nearly cracking and kept on still. `Not like this girl, you can do it.` Quiet. `Come on, damnit. Boot! You got it just... just... please just one whir. One... one click. One...` Quiet.
I called the tech support at web school but I knew it was too late. They couldn`t talk me through anything I hadn`t tried and so I hung up to be alone with her. I reached over shyly and let down Dell`s lid for the last time.
I know it`s selfish but we just bought the internet together and now I don`t know what I`ll do. If I may, I`d like to ask for a moment to remember Dell. College computer, partner in pirating crimes, editor, travel buddy and one heck of a processor. Enjoy the long sleep mode girl, you earned it.

Afterword

To head off some of the inevitable critics, let me be clear. Sure, in our time together I had been with other computers. I`d been to `those` cafes sometimes but I wasn`t proud about it. And yeah, I came home more than once with another IP address on my USB drive. For that I am sorry. There were times when I just needed more power in a PC and I can`t take it back. I always cared though and I just wanted to say, `Dell, you didn`t deserve this and I won`t let your memory Hibernate.`

Culture Jostle

I've been thinking for awhile now about some piece that is actually representative of my experience in a foreign culture, or at least minorly reflective. Up until now my anecdotal bits could take place, frankly, anywhere and I've been getting pressure from friends to share some experience: "J" it up a little. The big differences could be read about anywhere: the food quirks, technology curve, fashion trends or cultural norms. But the slight differences, the casual happenings, are more telling.
So here it is.
A top ten that might not give anyone a culture shock but maybe just a culture jostle.

10- Rice
The mashed potatoes of the east. It might not be a surprise but this starchy little food is everywhere: entrees, omelets, to-go ball form at convenience stores, even in desserts and pastries. Everywhere. Everywhere.

9- Magazine Poachers
Crowds of folk gather at magazine racks and read cover to cover whatever happens to catch an eye for half hours at a time. There's no clerk shouting "What we're a library now? Get outta here!" Nothing. I don't even think they're for sale.

8- Convenience Stores
And boy are they. Far from a trash food and soda stand; Lawsons, Family Mart, Sunkus, 7-11 and (my favorite alliterated shop) Marty-Mart all provide the following: domestic postage, utility bill payments, event ticket sales and Kinko's style printer/fax services.

7- Bikes Just Move People
The idea of a bike as a leisurely activity or "green" travel alternative is absent. It's just practical. If you're between 20-80 years old then you own and ride a bike. It is so casual that it is not unlikely for you to see either a twentysomething managing to steer while texting his homeboys or a grandmother pumping down the street with a cigaretter hanging limply out the side of her mouth.

6- Whole Prices
It's such a relief. The tax is worked into everything and there's none of that "$Blank.99" garbage. I know its gonna roll over to a higher digit when I take it up front. You know it. Everybody knows it. Who's still fooled?

5- Rambling Cashiers
In the southern tradition I was taught to nod at cashiers, trade a "How are ya?", and be about my business. Here, it simply does not compute. Cashiers begin an automatic monologue that runs from the time you give them the item until you're out the door. They must say it 300 times a day and another 200 to the customers in their sleep. They're on autopilot and if you break the script with niceties, if you interact, they fumble a little, nod and try and pick it back up further down the line. When it first happened I thought they were trying to tell me something secretly without looking me in the eyes like in spy movies. "Don't look now, but you're target is at the dogfood. I said, 'Don't look!'. You can take him outside but you'll need to use your silencer. Hurry, our windows about to close on this one."

4- Smokings Huge
You can smoke in restaurants. Someplaces let you smoke at work. There's vending machines every 5 blocks. Old people smoke. Young people smoke. Babies... babies chew tobacco until their stubby little fingers can work around a lighter and then they smoke.

3- People Don't Give Change to the Homeless
One student asked me why we did it in North America and I just couldn't translate 'nagging moral imperative'.

2- Auld Lang Syne
At least all across Osaka, Auld Lang Syne is played in every store at closing time. It's like a mini New Year without booze, hope or resolutions.

1- Public Drunkenness
Liquors even made its way into vending machines. That, on top of a great public transportation system, puts students and salary men alike on the alchy shuffle from bar to bar and train to train all over the city. "Yeah, you drink on the streets. Why wouldn't you?" Most times you can smell the vomit before you step in it but the odds are really against you on a Saturday night when its pasted so liberally about the streets.

Wait, you're not kidding?

I was lied to. There is no heater function on the AirCon system in my apartment. I have figured this out while the temperature outside is 38 degrees. In my apartment it is 40 degrees.
I just saw my breath.
This sucks.
I wanted a hot water bottle to stick under the covers. I boiled water and tried pouring it into an old water bottle from my recycling pile. It melted in my sink. I have a better post coming up in a day or two but I thought this was pretty damned funny, or at least it will be in the morning when their is a sun and warmth again in the world.

Without which...

Special Thanks to Jay for some fantastic pictures of our trip!

Ishimaru, Kyoto

I`ll try and do better?

This is to any and all readers who have wondered WTF?! in the past month. Work has started that`s TF. But I`ve gotten a routine together finally so the result is more of what I love doing and what you hopefully moderately enjoy reading.
　 I am currently teaching 40 minute Lessons for adults of all English proficiencies, and even a few kids classes. Everything is really enjoyable so far though there are admittedly frustrations both with students and the company from time to time. Sometimes I think a toaster could run the scheduling department better but I`ll leave work grief for work friends. Anyway, I hope the new entry is chucklable.
Sincerely... really,
Nate

No, it`s okay. Keep looking.

The folks trodding onto the last train out of Kawaramachi are either worn out or just looking to start their rowdy night somewhere in Osaka city. Anna and I have just gotten off of work and we're of the drowsy variety but it's okay since the Rapid Express sports plush, non-bleacher style, lounge seats facing one another in their pairs of four. The older and bolder passengers throw their bags into the seats across from them and prop their feet up with an air of privilege that surrounds those who have endured while others plop down in the available remainders.
There is an empty cell of seats near the back. I take the window seat, Anna sits beside me and in a few moments a middle-aged man in a black and charcoal jacket takes a seat our opposite. One stop up in Katsura, the carriage takes on a few more passengers and a young girl grabs the last seat in our section across from Anna. Her hair is dark and bundled beneath a knit cap which lets trail out a blue wire trafficking music. She's most likely thin but you couldn't tell what with the puffed-up down jacket enveloping her and the tall, white canvas UniQlo bag that she sits krinkling down into her lap; the brim resting just below her chin.
The boarding chime finishes its few twinkling notes, the doors seal together in a swoosh and the train is back on its way. There isn't another stop for miles. In the daylight, the trip through the countryside is gorgeous. It's as if the Virginian mountains packed up while no one was looking and took off to Kyoto, following romantic rumors of Buddhist footpaths and leaving behind the meth labs and shine stills for a fresh start abroad. But at night, there is only the cool blue city lights resting beneath an orange vault of light pollution. The moon beyond the glass is full and heavy in the sky, worth noticing, and so I nudge Anna. When I turn to back to her I can see her eyes are watering and she has her upper lip pulled tightly over a smile.
"What's with you?"
She shakes her head and looks away letting a snort out briefly before catching herself and turning back.
"Nothing, nothing," she interrupts herself with a bust of laughter. Calming down, she takes a deep breath and covers her mouth but then looses it, unable to catch the laughs rolling between her fingers.
"What the hell is so," but then I see it. It's the pair we're rubbing knees with.
My first thought is that there is a selective gas leak in the carriage. The man has fallen with his face against the window, his cheek and eyebrow pushed together; the one eye open in the likeness of a slain cyclops. The girl though must have never stood a chance. She is sitting upright with her hands resting palm up beside her, a pose which would presume complete alertness where it not for her head lolling loosely into the bag at her lap as if she had drowned while privately bobbing for apples.
For the last ten minutes of the ride I was in a stroke of laughter, looking outside or to my feet, biting back ha after ha while the sleeping duo jostled limply with the bumpings of the train. The next few stops are no help. At Awaji, the man animates and unsticks himself from the glass to exit. He wakes the girl in passing but not a minute out of the station she is already fighting in jerks against the invisible anchor about her neck and in two minutes she is back to the bag like an ether junkie huffed to death.
Across the aisle on the other side of the train a fashionable, young couple has taken to staring at me and Anna while we quietly quake and shush ourselves, perhaps wondering where we found such good weed. I nod at the guy and cock my head at the bouncing ragdoll next to us as if to say, "I know, right!? You think she found it yet?" but he's not having any of it.
I turn back to the window, avoiding Anna so I won't make more jokes, and watch nothing go by but my own reddened reflection, the girl behind me and the trendy fellow beyond shaking his head: Come off it buddy. This is gold!

That`s Rich

Canadians may be well-intentioned and polite but quiet they ain't. In fact, if a painter were ever commisioned to 'Capture the essence of disparity between Western hooliganism and Eastern solemnity in the 20th century,' then I have seen his masterpiece. The sheer volume of liquor pumping between the two white girls who tumbled onto the midnight train out of Umeda is hard to gauge since they've just left an all-you-can-drink karaoke bar. But if you guessed too damn much, you'd be right. To be clear, they are wrecked, razzled, sloshed, plastered and blitzed. Their laughter which spread easily up into the station's vaulted ceilings found the passenger car full of J-Towners less inviting and they began shushing themselves. They work their way to an unoccupied pocket near the back, which is good because potentially explosive elements, fiery or drunken, should always be kept away from the greatest number of people. I should mention that I was not a simple bystander. I know them and I was at the bar too. But while these girls were downing drinks, I was belting out Rocket Man and Bohemian Rhapsody. I also paced myself and the combination lead to one sore throated, designated walker whose duties include operating Japanese text ticket machines, figuring train routes and decomplicating turnstiles.
While watching one of the girls tug on the vertical handrails like a lobotomized stripper, I catch Amanda asking an shy, older gentleman if he has any girlfriends. I try pulling her out of his face and with a suddeness not normally expected from the drunk, she snaps around to let me know that she was "just making some fucking friends." I wanted to ask her if a "fucking friendship" was always based on heckling or if they could really be BFF but after watching one of our friends wind down around her pole and crumple into a heap of shuddering white girl, I decided to let it go. On the other end of the car, thirty locals sit straight back with their knees together and stare off into a happier, less integrated place. I've managed to get Amanda talking to me and she lets me in on a "secret". It wasn't her secret but it belonged to an Asian student of hers. It was one of the most racist things I've ever heard in my life and also one of the funniest, probably, because it was about us: whitey.
"You want to know why (whisper) Japanese people don't like sitting next to us?"
I have 3 immediate guesses but, "Go on."
"Well, my trainer said it was because they're afraid they can't hold a conversation with us but a Miko told me something else today."
Wait for it.
"They think we all smell like butter."
I'll never really stop laughing about it. Won't shake the thought of my creamy aura repulsing Asians into the corner. Jin nudging Yoshi on the subway going "Dammit, man. You think they keep it in their pockets or what." Who would've thought?

Much Obliged

Official Dispatch

To: Native Personnel of the United States Foreigner Relations Department
Regarding: Matters of Personnel Conduct
Body:

Dear Staff,
In short, the bar has been raised. My time spent amongst the Japanese citizens has been unexpectedly and abundantly pleasant. It is unfortunate. We will undoubtedly have to redouble our own national efforts for expressing courtesies to foreigners, which means more work for the department. Included herein is a short account of hospitality to be considered for your Domestic Reparations Division.


Internet Cafe Cashier- Helped change my computers settings and keyboard functions to English, temporarily leaving his work post.

Noodle Shop Server- To accommodate my inability to read the restaurant's menu, I was walked out to the front of the shop. There the young woman had me point to the plastic display of the entree I wanted: she never stopped smiling.


Curry House Server- See above entry.

Don Quixote Supermarket Employee- When asked about my computer's laptop cable and US plug converter switches, the attendant disappeared. I was left to puzzle through the electronic section's display boxes (all written in Kanji) when the young employee returned with several cable boxes. She opened them all at a nearby outlet in the store and we tried every one.

Drugstore Clerk- Looking down the aisles in a pharmacy in Juso, the cashier interrupted my hunt for painkillers; presumably offering assistance. I pointed to my head, pinched the bridge of my nose and the man, along with his mother who was watching TV behind the counter, came out onto the main floor. He asked about my age, symptoms and severity of the headache before finding one box in particular, and then deciphered the Kanji instructions on the boxback. It was opened, his mother brought me a glass of water, and they had me take two in the store before I left.


Subway Police Officer- When asked about a nearby "Torei", the man walked me 50 yards or more to the nearest bathroom.

Free Hug Lady- Though she may have been mentally unsound, her cardboard sign was plainly stated. The promised hug was comforting and fraternal.


Though this list is hardly exhaustive it represents the vaguest outline of my interpersonal experiences to date. I hope that these accounts may serve to motivate those of you in our Foreigner Relations Department when conducting yourselves in the field. Take care and keep up the good work. We owe these people.
Sincerely,
Your Deputy Agent of International Survey and Information Reconnaissance

Charles

I can't get back to reading. I've tried but now I've done gone and got distracted. What'cha thinkin' bout Nate?
I'll tell you.
I just had my first significant English conversation. Sitting, reading a chapter from I, Lucifer in a Mister Donut, a fellow approaches my table. The man is Nigerian looking, slender, not much taller than a 14 year old and is wearing an orange polo, not fitting quiet right because it's stretched out about the neck. He introduces himself, telling me that he was on the bottom floor outside when he looked up at the glassed in upstairs and saw me reading. He said he felt compelled to speak with me. Ok, sure.
'Have a seat'.
We shake hands and the man seems pleasant. He gives me his name, Charles, and tells me he's a "world traveler". At this point, he hasn't yet quit the handshake and when he turns my wrist over to ask me where I got my watch and if it was important to me, I realize trouble's just pulled up a chair.
I set my book down, so as not to be rude, and the man has dropped my hand to pick it up. No invitation just turning it over a few times. He marvelled at the book as if he were surprised to see written pages fastened together so cleanly, and with a glossy cover to boot.
'What's it about?' Charles asked.
'Uh, the Devil gets a second chance on Earth.'
'Oh, are you religious?'
Stop right there. I think I've figured it out. Charles must be some scared-if-you're-different, tongue-speaking, "Extremist for Jesus" that saw my book with Satan on the cover from down in the street and thought it a perfect cry for help: a lost boy just achin' for a savin'.
'No, I don't subscribe to any one thing. I think that there is something that runs beyond us and....'
He interrupts, 'Have you ever heard of the "Power of the Invisibles"?'
Honest Abe, the 'Power of the Invisibles'. I figured he was a little loose but now I'm sure he hoped on the crazy train and blew right past Certified and Bat-Shit a long time ago.
I say 'no', thinking that he'll continue but he quickly gives the subject up to talk about his marriage, his girlfriends, his time in Japan, American media, and his "world traveling" which included 36 (unnamed) countries. After 34 minutes, yeah I was counting, I notice: the man's spittle collecting at the side of his mouth, the readiness and frequency with which he adjusts himself in the chair and changes topics, a seeming inability to blink and an incessant chewing of his upper lip. After listening to Charles' not-so-detailed account of the Amazon which he saw on vacation... in New Zealand, I get it.
Charles is tripping balls. Hours earlier in the rising high of a drugged-out euphoria, he must have been window shopping for one thing alone: a fixation point. Perhaps after a long tour of the neon lit, pulsing, slot arcade; eyes dilated and full of wonder, Charles stopped in front of a Mister Donut. And there on the second floor, perfectly wrapped in solitude behind glass, he found a bargain.
Credit where it's due, I stuck it out. Frequent sips at my cup of tea allowed me to break out of his acid glossed, take-it-all-in, Medusa stare and with only vague, half-answers on my part, he grew weary. He wrote his number out on a piece of paper ('No, really. I'll call you.') and headed back downstairs. Back to hunt down another courteous Westerner or focal point for his last few hours on the magic journey, which is a shame because I know the Japanese have gotten Pan's Labyrinth: that would be a trip.

Belated

This is just going in front to let everyone know that until I get the internet in my place [Coming Soon in November] my blog action is going to be delayed until I can cut it off my computer and paste it up here on ol` Popeyes Internet Cafe. Sometimes a day. Sometimes two of `em.
What this means to you, the end reader: not much. It`s just old news to me. So, keep on reading and I`ll keep on posting; blog-chunks big enough to keep you busy while that favorite YouTube vid buffers its way into your heart.

An Occurence at Maison Jeunesse

This morning I had my first English conversation with a brother and sister new to the apartment complex who were also going to work for ECC. They struck me at first as a timid pair who must have went knocking about door to door until I had invited them into my little space. I can't be sure how I didn't get their names but it never once came up.

The girl was attractive, with marbly blue eyes and a sort of greasy teenager look that was fitting given that she had accepted the job not long after working alongside high school students at a local Pizza joint in New Jersey. The brother seemed to suffer from the same oily inheritance and his well-worn Nintendo t-shirt was in constant duress, losing a fight against sausagy arms and a Santa size tummy. I asked them how they liked New Jersey and the guy seemed willing to let the girl answer for the both of them.

She told me how great it was to be near all the cities but that she also liked the country because of banjos and black people. I didn't ask her what exactly she meant and she continued to say that 'If I have a kid in the city, I'll get him a banjo but it'll be a shame he won't be able to play it. You know all the people who play banjos live in the country.' I had no evidence to the contrary so I let that one slid too.

Here, the brother jumped in and mentioned the hiring session in Toronto. They had been, but experienced a blackout or some such difficulty that cut short an otherwise in-depth orientation. Both were surprised to hear me relate, what I considered basic information: length of stay, commuting arrangements and even pay specifics. Jumping in again, the brother cut me short in an aggravated way and joked that 'I had too much time just sitting around to read all that stuff,' and while he was painfully right, he came across as ignorant and insecure. The girl picked up on my talk about money, which I referred to in yen, and didn't quite seem to get the scale of pay. She told me how she had recently purchased a home with her boyfriend back home and now worried that she might have to save longer than planned to get back to him.

'So you are going back to the states, to New Jersey?' I asked. 'Oh, yes,' she replied. 'I don't have much of a choice. I've already put 800 dollars down on the place.'

'But you could save that working here in like two months,' I told her. To which she simply stared at the floor as if it were easier to do the math on the blank tile. Perhaps sensing his sister's distress the brother pulled out a laptop and wanted to show me something he thought I might get a kick out of. I realized that the girl had gotten up and left. The brother gave me a 'watch this' nudge and, as the screen filled up with an anime cartoon of military jeeps trading gunfire and dodging rocket explosions, I heard a tinkering in my kitchen which fully woke me from my sleep. I scrambled up, grasping after the pair of idiots who slipped back into the nothing I had pulled them from.

One might turn to a troubled psyche for interpretation but they needn't, really, go farther than isolation and a large plate of poor Japanese-spaghetti before bed to understand the vividness of my encounter and the disappointment, like yours upon facing a cheap literary trick, of its non-reality. Oh, well. It's morning and even if I've still met no body, whose to say ghosts aren't people too.

The X-ray

It's done.
I can now give "the company", as I've come to call them, an x-ray of my chest which will complete their medical records. Obtaining the x-ray was not, however, without its difficulties. The trip would be my first outside of the 10 square blocks around my apartment which I have anxiously been ambling about for the past 3 days. In fact, if the locals have come to recognize my presence, if they have an image, then it is of a timid and uncertain, lanky fellow walking about: one time, as someone might recollect, looking toward the sky while toting a package of toilet paper precariously out of an unzipped backpack; maybe lost, they would think, but most probably stupid.
The trip to Namba section where the doctor is located can be no more than a 30 minute commute but, curveball, there is a transfer from train to subway. The only complication this offered, and indeed the only one I encountered, was the necessity to change ticket types. Turning to the handiest tool I have ever owned, my pocket dictionary/phrasebook (Thanks Jake), I was given a beacon of hope. The book included a diagram of a standard ticketing machine which showed, to my delight, a button promising a full walkthrough in English.
Firsthand, no button exists. Rather, my solution for depuzzling the Japanese ticket machine was to start with small bills and work my way up to cut loses as I would inevitably screw up. A fine plan but it takes some guess work, guess work that holds me wide eyed in front of the automatic teller for some time. The people backing up in the line make me nervous and it isn't long before I abort the mission and let the crowd at their business. It's okay because there are quite a few tellers about the station but scattered wildly which sends me walking back and forth in a curious bee line looking for a vacant machine and shying away when the next train empties its cars of people back into the lobby and so back into the intimidating queues. If my dazed shuffling about the station concerned anyone, if they could comment to one of my neighbors, they might receive a dismissive wave of the hand, they might say, 'Oh, he does that.'
Tickets purchased. Things go smoother. Outside of the station I've reached Namba, Osaka. I rarely need to consult my map and can enjoy walking amongst the many towers and animated billboards, past the flamboyant traffic men waving their flags and the crowds they are herding, to find the tower where the doctor's clinic should be. To be brief, I am ushered into the lobby by a pleasant receptionist and asked to fill out a questionnaire while I wait for the doc.
Do you smoke? Have you had a serious illness? Do you break 2 days in between drinking? The last question hints at a touchstone for alcohol abuse in the country much higher than I would've granted and I begin to reconsider my allowances when the doctor steps in and calls me back. He introduces himself and asks 'How are you?' not 'Ogenki desu ka.' He speaks English and the potential conversation is exciting.
I gush a little about the trip telling him that 'It was difficult but I'm fine now though its been warmer than what I would have imagined for the fall though I suppose..." when his slack expression interrupts me to say 'I'm sorry, what?' My face answers back, 'This is going to be like everywhere else isn't it?' and his quiet says 'Yes.' While the doctor and I banter quietly, a lovely nurse has stepped with us into the examination room. She motions for me to take my shirt off and her gesture strikes me as a little provocative but, alas, I am the one on stage. I'm coached onto a platform where I'm instructed to rest my chin and shirtless belly against a dull, brown, metal rig. I wonder briefly about the lead vest one would expect but disregard it because the doctor and nurse are standing in place behind me, the doctor prompting me to inhale and exhale slowly. By the third breath I've chalked the lack of radiation protection up to advanced Japanese technology when the doctor says 'Stop' and hopes quickly out of the room and shuts the door. I've been tricked.
Out of the corner of my eye, I can catch the bastard going for a button and then a quick clicking noise behind me spools up. Next, I swear I feel a lethal, carcinogenic, gamma pulse working its way through my chest; recruiting cells to take up the fight and revolt like some cancerous Paul Revere.
In an instant he's back in the room, smiling. He tells me to put my shirt back and I remember how to ask 'How much?' in broken Japanese. Looking back on the scene I must've appeared like a first time prostitute without much confidence: standing shyly after an unpleasant experience and snapping my shirt back on while hoping that he'll cut me a fair price.
To set a fair comparison, Wilkes Regional Medical Center gave me a quote. $148 dollars for the x-ray plus technician's fees and 3 days to process. The doctor told me it would be 2,000 yen, roughly 20 US dollars, and if I waited for 5 minutes, then the receptionist would bring everything I needed right out.
Sure. I can live with that.

The Begining

My name is Nathaniel Hanks: 22 years old, tall and adorable. I grew up in western North Carolina, graduated from Appstate University and put on my big boy pants to find a job that pays. The job, teaching english as a second language to kids and adults in Osaka, Japan. Will I exploit this unique opportunity of mine to create some entertaining blogtent? Yes. Did I make up the word blogtent? I think so. With the introduction aside, let it begin. Cultural friction, Big city livin for a kid from the sticks, Ninja Warrior ambitions and the fumblings of a foreigner all swirl together in a perfect storm of material. Kampai!