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!