Kamikaze Baseball

"Did you watch the baseball game yesterday?" I asked my sports obsessed Japanese teacher referring to the quarterfinal Japan vs. Korea game.

"Of course. Do you know Japanese word Kamikaze?" red flag

"Uhh, yeah, sacred wind, right?" I say thinking of grainy History Channel footage of evil karate kid headband bastards crashing into American ships full of inocent grandpas. We all have our false stereotypes. She continues, her voice as soft and clear as a cult member.

"Japan is very delicate country, and kamikaze protects us. This is how we beat the Korean team."

"Japan has the worlds second largest economy, and good pitching. It's not delicate." I said logically but defensively, "And it plays good small ball." I added diplomatically. I'm not going to abide by that poor pitiful Japan shit. In my opinion this whole World Baseball Classic has gone way off course with other countries not laying down like sacrificial lambs to be rightly slaughtered by American sluggers like the two bit banana republics that they are (kidding).

"Did you know that Japanese Emperor Prince, was in Mexico during their game against America? This gave Mexico special luck to beat America." She accented the 'mer' syllable like it was a bad word.

"Uh, no I... uh... I didn't know that. But Mexico has some good power hitting."

"Japan is a very special country, I think everyone in the world loves Japanese people"

"Kaneko sensei you know I love you, but I hate when you watch sports."

I watch the games in Japanese, which I hardly understand, and the play-by-play announcers must sound something like this:

"and Ichiro pop-ups out to left and the Sun Goddess blesses only Japan.."
"so desu, ne?" isn't that true.
"Next up is Kawasaki, who truly exemplifies the Japanese people. He is physically small yet deceivingly powerful, respectful, and never gives up. Here's the pitch. He's much like our young lions during the Russo-Japanese war. Ball one."
"so desu, ne?"

Last week was just a disaster baseball-wise. Monday's American victory over Japan was clearly due to an umpire's mistake, which every teacher wanted to explain to me. The more articulate teachers came at me with, "You know Max-Sensei, I'm not so sure that America won that game last night. In my opinion the umpire might have been wrong." One dude barely squeezed out, "Amerika" and crossed his arms into an X (I wonder if he was talkin' about baseball). Of course I agreed with them but I was still pretty stoked that we won. I mean I wasn't going to get all-uppity righteous and say, "Do you know American phrase, Manifest Destiny? America is a special country chosen by God to kick your ass in WWII then to refresh your memory by kicking it again in baseball." Which would have been the equivalent to all that 'sacred wind, Empire Prince special luck, delicate country' crap that I got. It didn't end there.

Wednesday the collective poker face that is the Japanese workplace erupts in spontaneous joy. Reason: America lost to Mexico thereby advancing Japan into the quarterfinals. "Screw alla y'all," I said as everyone looks at me for my reaction. They were ecstatic. I don't care if I'm the ugly American; I still want my country to win. Every one has the right to want their country to win at sports. Even as a crazy baldhead you gotta get up, stand up, stand up for your right. Right?

.....
To be continued

Painfully Familiar

Damn you FOX network. And not for the normal political reasons. Apparently, they are aware that I am a modern hero and have decided to create a show in my likeness. Free Ride. It’s about a strapping young lad from rural America that graduated from my alma mater UC Santa Barbara. he's pretty cool but he decides to move in with his parents while he decides what he wants to do.

In the first episode he buys an air mattress.

***Shutter***


.

The Monster State

Silent Stick and the Nonexistent Carrot

So motivation to work is a bit of a problem for me. Prolonged exposure to Santa Barbara, Thailand and marijuana tend to do that to people. But work is the reason d’etre for Japanese folks. I was hoping that their work ethic would rub off of me, but I’m not really sure if it has or not. Today’s subject is motivation…. Sorry… MOTIVATION!!

In the post 70s West, it seems true that, ‘everybody’s working for the weekend’ and all that. It’ like a cycle; Work yields money, money yields cool stuff, and free time allows you to enjoy it. So we work. If we don’t like the cool stuff/money/free time balance we’ve got, we adjust accordingly. Take the people who quit the big money in exchange for more free time. Or the opposite, people with too much free time that get a part time job. Not rocket science. But apparently here it is.

90%ish of the working Japanese people I know work all day every day. They don’t sleep, just work. Weekends too. They come to work at 7:00ish and don’t leave until 9:00 at night. Weekends too. They’re not as efficient as they’re portrayed in the West, but they aren’t sitting on their asses nearly as much as I do. My question is why? Sure you’ve got some cash, but you have no time at all to enjoy it. Maybe once in a while you go out and get drunk, but you go out with your coworkers. Basically, as soon as you finish school you work nonstop until you’re 60. Holidays too. During a holiday, I went on a bike ride around town. The stores and roads were empty, and the business and school parking lots were packed. People were working. WHY? Reason: The Silent Stick:

‘Cause they don’t want to let each other down and you don’t want to be the weak link. .

This sort of logic works well in warfare, but it’s a crappy way to live your daily life.
It’s like the price of a beer at a trendy bars, it just keeps escalating higher until people commit suicide. Nobody wants to work 90-hour weeks, or drink $10 beers, but we do it. Regardless of how absurd it all is we can’t flinch in the face of our friends and coworkers. Humans are just weak like that.

There is no carrot in Japan. The best you can do is not be gossiped about. There is no signing bonuses, paid holidays, or stock options for Japanese people. If you were lucky, after years of work you can tell people what to do using the plain style of Japanese, but fuck that, I’d rather have my weekends.

This is the very definition of the monster state. People pour everything into society, and hardly enjoy the benefits of doing so.

Rashamon

What I saw:

In a hallway, Brad turned around a corner and accidently bumped into a cute Japanese girl. She blushed and said, "Gomen Nasai", then proceeded to check Brad out from head to toe. Brad, taken aback, quickly backed up. As he did so, I accidently kick the back of his leg and involentarily said, "'ai" as I momentarily looked down at Brad's leg. When I look up there's a hot chick looking into my eyes.
We think: damn, Japanese girls dig us.

What she saw:
Two guys came around the corner. The first one is a clumsy giant, and the second one bowed and said, "Yes" for some reason.
She thinks: Fucking foreigners.

Drifter Senior Grade

Drifter Senior Grade

Scene: meeting new person at social event in drifters home country

Me: Hi, I’m Max
Hot Chick: Hi I’m a hot chick.
Me: Cool, how’s that working out for you, like, being really hot?
HC: (giggles and gladtalk flirting continues) So where do you live?
Me: Well actually I live in Japan (HC looks impressed pupils enlarge, etc)
HC: WOW, that’s great! What do you do there?
Me: Well, I’m an assistant English teacher…
HC: Oh yeah? Uhhh… I’m going to go talk to that rich looking guy.
Me: Barman… Hit me.

That’s the unfortunate situation of the Drifter Junior Grade.

Let’s see how this plays for the Drifter Senior Grade:

HC: (giggle) So where do you live?
Me: Well the BBC has us on the go a lot. I was interviewing Iraqi members of the Al-Armani Jihad Martyrs Brigade when suddenly the battle for Falluja broke out… we got some great footage, but it cost us our best cameraman. He’s…he’s…he’s in a better place now.
HC: Your place or mine?

Around the late 20s/early 30s threshold, the male existential crisis is either resolved or metastasized into full-blown schizophrenia. At this point in life he should have something to show for it: a wife/girlfriend, an advanced degree of some kind, a skill, an adventure completed, a language learned, or at very least a sweet car. Drifter junior grade has little to show for and, embarrassingly, has to crash at his parents' (or more successful friend's pad) to get back on his feet. As he lays awake at night in his high school bed, or friend’s couch, he realizes that the possibility of becoming a Master of the Universe has passed. His options are two: he can settle for the BSChump role or graduate to Drifter Senior Grade.

like DJGs, DSGs live abroad, but are not a low level English as a Second Language teacher. A DSG can still work in the ESL/EFL field as a full-fledged university teacher on par with other native teachers, or he can be a Director or Studies at a language school, but he cannot be in classes doing the same work as a Drifter Junior Grade (DJG). But most likely a DSG has left the low status ESL world. The DSG is more likely a foreign correspondent journalist, or a MA/PhD researcher (with a grant) studying something specific like migratory patterns of penguins in heat. Other jobs are also respectable for DSGs. For example real-time translator, black belt aikido instructors, UN atttache, lecturer/writer, quantum physics professor, or deep sea explorer. If he's a buinesss minded type maybe he’s an importer/exporter as his long nights as a DJG studying kanji, Russian, and reading The Economist paid off. You basically able to say things like, "I wonder how this is going to affect the DAX and the "Footsie," and sound like you know what your talking about.

DSGs are pretty damn sweet byt they don’t chill at the same places as DJGs, instead of hostels and guesthouses they meet at storied hotels with names that start with “The”. “The Continental” or “The Sir Francis Drake”. Think Michael Cain in “The Quiet American” or that academic fellow in Dan Brown novels. They're smart as a whip, and played their cards right, but they're not famous or anything. Basically, Kerouac would have respected them before they a got all pretentious and bought a bed.

Level of Bad-ass-itude
High. You’ve not only seen it all, you participated in or ‘covered it’. You’re also perfectly fluent in at least one language. People you grew up with don’t know you anymore and your never been asked to be someone’s best man.

Toys
A 35mm camera and your grandfather’s wartime .38 (in case things get out of hand). You've also got a Kevlar-plated laptop, your prized collection of tribal masks, mahogany bookshelves replete with your ‘works’, and a signed picture with you and your mentor.

Clothes
Earthy and tweed coats and corduroy slacks if you’re the academic type or blood-spattered vests with lots of pockets if you’re the foreign correspondent type. You always smoke a pipe or a cigar and wear the cap you bought in Edinbrough.

Car
It’s unimportant to you but it was made in Sweden. When the weather is nice you ride a bicycle similar to the one you had when you went to Saborne

Chicks
Cute smart undergrads quote you constantly, but you grew out of dating them when you were a PhD candidate.

Cash
You’ve got a comfortable apartment, but you blew a wad on that authentic Hanzo sword. You think being rich is uuchk...so jeune c'est pa.

Worries
How your recent work is ‘received’, insurgencies, how the ‘administration’ keep screwing you over. Grant money. Currency deflations.

Vacation time
You go to major universities (not in Las Vegas) for conferences and look forward to seeing the near-by museums because the (insert European name) collection is visiting.

Drug
You used to smoke pot and talk about books in college when the frat boys got drunk. You still smoke occasionally when the book club gets together. You like scotch, imported beer and whatever spirit is popular in the county you live in.

Politics
by the New York Times

Religion
Totally depends, but you're first and foremost a thinking man, those with blind faith are worrried that you're a 'person with a lot of questions' and pray for you.

Friends
Academics, contacts, members of the international blah-blah-blah organization. Not average Joe’s, they think you’re a prick.

Drifter Junior Grade

So I realize that most of my posts are Japancentric. Most of my friends stop listening when I start a sentence with, "in Japan...", so this post is a nonJapancentric one. I'm reading a book on mythic archytpes in society by Joseph Campbell and it's quite interesting. Concurrently, like all twentysomethingish males, I'm trying to decide which of the many paths of manhood I'd like to follow. So I figured I start a series of possible successful paths that we can take.The key word in that last sentense was successful, not necesarily financial successful, but successful


Ok, this one is close to home for me and I don’t mean it to be demeaning to you Intrepid Travelers, I’m just calling it like I see it….

Drifter (Junior Grade)
Jack Kerouac’s dream incarnate, classless drifters and peaceful warriors are the realizing his prophesy of a rucksack revolution. I’m not talking about people on a gap year, doing a year aboard, vacationers, Semester at Sea students, or people taking a year off, I’m talking about full-fledged drifters with several years in several countries. Because they aren’t from rich families, they have to work their way around the world. Wandering over and across continents they pick fruit at organic farms and teach English at places found in the Alternatives to Tourism chapter of the Lonely Planet guidebook They all have University degrees, mostly earned, but some bought from a guy I know on Koh Saan Road (a place that everyone knows) almost everyone has a Bachelors or Arts degree and few seriously studied math or science.
This group’s primary concern is being where they want to be and not hurting anyone in the process. Military service doesn’t count. Going to as many places and doing as many cool things as possible gives you creds. Guesthouse patrons size each other up by casually recounting what they’ve done and importantly where they’ve done it. For example take these true driftbrags, “When was snowboarding in Japan”, “On a walkabout in Australian”, “we were on a long mountain treks in the Himalayas when…” “I used to bartended in Paris”, “When road tripping Russia…” “I was teaching sailing on (unheard of Mediterranean island)”, or “I had been modeling in the Philippines when…”. Driftbrags usually require some backing up and clarification questions are standard. Taking about home is tolerated but only to an extent among the driftsnobs. Asking for the prices of things at the next stop, and comparing the differences in American and British English are also out that’s lightweight/ first timer stuff.
Older drifters fall into 3 general types: sketchy lonely loser guy, windbag old guy that decided he need to change careers at like 40, and cool older guy that tells a good story and has been every where (more on this dude: Drifter Senior Grade later).
This type of drifter also speaks several languages, the less useful the better, Highland New Guinean slang trumps Japanese, Japanese trumps French, and French trumps Spanish. The drifter junior grade usually doesn’t master any language as he, by definition isn’t in anyplace long enough to learn anything but the basics. As for their English, the vocabulary and intonation eventually becomes a hybrid of American, Australian, and British English. For some reason Americans tend to adopt the British intonation when asking questions, and Brits use Americanized words for cool.
Although this seems new there is nothing new about the drifter junior grade in history, they rowed and sailed the boats, delivered the mail and did shitty jobs for powerful people from the dawn of time.

Level of Bad-ass-itude
Pretty high. The drifter junior grade somewhat respected by his job/wife locked friends, but his wayward lifestyle is seen as flimsy and rootless. As the drifter ages, fewer respect him or even remember him unless he is upgraded to Senior Grade Drifter

Toys
Large rucksack, Ipod, portable laptop

Clothes
Durable, adaptable, generic, Patagonia type stuff or fake.

Car
Yeah right. If you’ve got one it had better be a shitty one

Chicks
Drifters take a shot at the local fare that see him as something bigger than they really are. Drifter couples are somewhat few but respected.

Cash
Several currencies, but few notes. A drifter Junior grade has a job so he’s not scrounging but he’s never around long enough for a promotion.

Worries
Coming home and working at Applebees.

Vacation time
Your always kind of on vacation

Drug
Pot shrooms hallucinogenics in general, unless your in a drugfascist country like China or Japan then its beer or local specialties.

Politics
Way left, but not currently active in politics. But damned if they don't like talking about it.

Religion
Consists of at least three hyphenated faiths like Transendental-Buddhic-Suffi, or Epsicopalian-NeoPagan-Druid,

Friends
Cool interesting worldly people from everywhere.

Master of the Universe

So I realize that most of my posts are Japancentric. Most of my friends stop listening when I start a sentence with, "in Japan...", so this post is a nonJapancentric one. I'm reading a book on mythic archytpes in society by Joseph Campbell and it's quite interesting. Concurrently, like all twentysomethingish males, I'm trying to decide which of the many paths of manhood I'd like to follow. So I figured I start a series of possible successful paths that we can take.The key word in that last sentense was successful, not necesarily financial successful, but successful


Master of the Universe
“My offer to you is this Senator: nothing”. These are words that only a true MoE could utter. He is the puppet master of lore. Keyser Soze, John Bolton, big-dick style. He’s takes no prisoners, he plays to win. Legality is a PR problem. A finger in every pot, and a lawyer for every hurdle. He starts wars and sees no need to end them. Big screen TVs? Ha!! TVs are for Chumps. The MoU owns the networks. He’s either pretty as a Easton Ellis character or a double-chinned Karl Rove caricature. The ego is the same. If a group doesn’t make them more powerful, fuck ‘em, move on, then sell weapons to their enemies. Thankfully few people are smart or ruthless enough to become MoUs on the big scale. Yet every village has a class clown, and every junior high has its tribal leader. The MoU is different from the Steve Jobs nerd-with-market-share archetype. The MoU and supernerd are both ruthless, but the Mou isn't nearly creative enough to think outside of the fight-or-fuck mentality. No No No No the MoU is concerned solely in his own immediate benefit. His funural is the bonfire of the vainities.

Level of Bad-ass-itude
Super high. With lawyers or a .50 caliber machine gun, either way he’s armed and dangerous. He’s the badass that Makes (yeah capital M) a street hood into an untouchable.

Toys
The Middle East, the Luftwaffe.

Clothes
London tailored power suits. Shoes that are ‘by’ someone whose last name ends in a vowel.

Car
Lockheed

Chicks
Either dumb wannabe chickenheads that drink coke with champagne, or cold women that went to Radcliff and don’t like being touched.

Cash
Nazi gold.

Worries
The IRS. Senate probes, International Criminal Court, having really really bad karma.

Vacation time
Monte Carlo casinos, upping the stakes to outrageous levels cause he's undeniably addicted to gambling even though he doesn’t need the money.

Drug
Big full-bodied Cabernet Sovereigns PVs that only he can get cause he's a friend of the Rothschild’s. And coke lots of coke.

Politics
Power politics, he doesn’t care about kitchen table issues like universal healthcare, ‘cause he's on the board of Pfizer. Actually he is Pfizer.

Religion
He is his religion. He is the Godhead, and his dick has a name, and it's Thor.

Friends
Whoever can get him what he wants when he wants it, and absolutely anyone with a last name.

The Biologically Successful Chump

So I realize that most of my posts are Japancentric. Most of my friends stop listening when I start a sentence with, "in Japan...", so this post is a nonJapancentric one. I'm reading a book on mythic archytpes in society by Joseph Campbell and it's quite interesting. Concurrently, like all twentysomethingish males, I'm trying to decide which of the many paths of manhood I'd like to follow. So I figured I start a series of possible successful paths that we can take.The key word in that last sentense was successful, not necesarily financial successful, but successful. So this is the first one. Unfortuanatly and deceivingly, this is the most likely:

The Biologically Successful Chump.
Last night I watch some early 90s family crap movie with John Travolta, Christie Ally, some kids, and two talking dogs. The plot was innane but there were some themes that I found quite interessting. I missed the beginning of the movie, but I guess the Travolta charactor was a bit of a rebel. I'm not sure if he was like Bob Marley rebel, drug bloated phychopath rebel, but I'm guessing he was more long hair tennis player rebel. But I guess he was at some point a bit of a nutter. So Kristie Ally apparently "tames" him. Soon thereafter he's got a morgage and normal kids and dogs (that talk) and shit, and other (rich and hot) women start chaising after him. He is the symbol of the domesticated man, boring, groomed, and wearing a suit and able to tango like it's nobodys buisness. He has a decent job, but he's not a master of the universe or anythng. He is our first archytype. A man, once somewhat respectable in the eyes of the cool, married to a honest but somewhat frompy Chritie Ally thinking he's cool cause he can pull of wearing a blue fucking sport coat. Regardless of how much you were able to drink in college, what drugs you once did, or what motorcycle you drove, you are in the eyes of the society a chump.

Level of Bad-ass-itude
Very low. But he does have kids that will be well adjusted, and will be able to go too college. You are just like everyone else, you fit in, and your concerns are normal, and dreadfully boring.

Toys
Not many. Likely a big TV that you waste years in front of, watching network drivel. You probably have a hobby, maybe it's a cool hobby like surfing or snowboarding, but it's more likely gardening. When you’re kids are gone, you’re wife will let you get something cool like an RV, but by then you’re a defeated man.

Clothes
Newish , ‘cause your wife picks them out for you. You don’t really like them, but fuck it. At home you wear what you like, but when you go outside you don’t get to dress yourself. Oh and you have the blue sport coat that you pull off.

Car
Anything with 4 doors and no turbo. Maybe if your lucky a BMW or something when your 50.

Chick
Your chick is your wife. That’s it. She’s whatever ethnicity you are, and she loves you dearly, you’ve forged a spiritual bond and you are the envy of every newly wed. Your sex life isn’t great, but at least its regular. Your wife, once really hot, is now a maternal figure. But she cooks. And at some point that’s all you really want.

Cash
Enough to raise a family, little else.

Worries
Mortgage, kids soccer practice, work is boring.

House
You live in the subburbs of (chose any American city)

Vacation time
Station wagon trips with the kids. You look just like every other loud shirted family man on the open road since 1952. Once a year you meet up with the boys from college for a party weekend, on a lake or something.

Drug
Beer with the boys, wine at dinner and church. That’s it.

Politics
Not that important to you, but you always vote. Depending on how much you make you are either a Democrat or Republican.

Religion
On Sunday you go to some church. You are a guy in the pews, and your wife loves the social aspect. You are not a spacey mystic and you don't want to be.

Friends
Guys like you!! Family men. Chumps. Pretty much everyone is like you. Also you aren’t allowed any female friends whatsoever.

Disjointed Sentences.

The weekend began as they do. And I got pretty drunk at a 'family resturant' and wandered around the city drinking and getting my beatnik ramble on. Then I ran into a French dude I kinda knew and drank with him, my friend Lucy, and some random Japanese people. It was that kind of bizarre weekend so this blog consists of disjointed sentences from disjointed weekend.

Lets Olympic.

At the combini I bought the Great Escape on DVD. Leading to the natural question, which would you rather fight: Charles Bronson, Lee Marvin, or Steve McQueen. Answer McQueen.

Topics most often discussed:

DVDA: arrangement possibilities and recruitment,
Beegers,
Levels of formality in the introduction to Budakke candidate. Do you bow? who arranges it?
The need and type of myths needed in globalized society.
weed.

Drew: “Dude this shit is filthy,” referring to some crunk-as-hell beat with a dude slurring out the lyrics, ”your mother, your father, I fucked your sister,” or something to that general effect.

After listening to crunk you can actually feel yourself losing you education.

Moreover, we got all these crazy expensive quasi-useful degrees and when we graduate we want to go to Australia to pick fruit.

I walked by a random old ass car with nobody in it and took a leak. When I finished my business and walked passed said car it started on its own. A few hours later, while standing around drinking a beer in front of an Okonomiyaki restaurant, a slight zephyr blew by. This slight breeze managed to knock over a huge (6 ft x 2 ft x 2 ft) box shaped glass sign not 5 feet away from me. I wasn’t hurt or anything, but I did convince me that I’m in fact a powerful X-man whose phychokenitic powers need cultivation.

Yuji: “Dude she just eye fucked the shit out of me.” Referring to Japanese High School student. There were many young (too young and too unattractive) girls on the street after dark in Nigitta.

On the slopes:
‘Dude I just lost my Ipod!’
‘What color is it’?
‘White’

Yeah but superior toilet technology is no reason to stay another year’

‘Will loses 2 crunk-points for bringing homemade granola… it’s fucking good though’

‘…That Iranian dude… what’s his name…Armani Jihad or whatever.’

so thats what I remember.

What's going on this weekend?