opinios

I'd like to think that I am not normally one to be swayed by mass media as much as the rest of the pack.

This might be naive, but I generally do have a cynical view of most forms of advertising that I am surrounded by. I look at billboards critically, analyse magazines down to the formulaic sex-appeal photos that draw people in, and commend clever packaging. I'd like to think that I am able to appreciate good design without being sucked in to buy the product on offer.

But bookstores! Bookstores take me away.

I was given some vouchers redeemable at any book store as payment for that ridiculous "morals education" seminar thing last week, and spent hours today in Junkudo (the massive 9-level complex in Ikebukuro) today, just marvelling at everything on offer.

One of the problems of being someone who is interested in so many diverse things is that I am tempted to buy books about each and every one of them. I picked up how-to manuals for Photoshop and Macromedia Flash (they were even in English!) then put them down to be inspired by some graphic design annuals, then nosied through the pages of various contemporary Japanese fiction writers. I marvelled at some black and white photography masterpieces, then tossed and turned over whether I should splurge on a couple more bass guitar books or this must-have study book for learners of Japanese.

Unfortunately when it comes down to it, I can get excited by pretty much anything. Some people find this refreshing and others find it frustrating (usually myself). But there's no question about it: a well-written book, something that is tangible, with crisp new pages and a beautiful coloured cover can take one to another world far more than the rearranging of pixels on a screen.

What was that I was trying to say in my anti-consumerism cartoon? Gulp.

I have loved living in Japan. It's been a real dream come true after studying the language in high school, hosting some exchange students and developing a taste for the country and its culture. I love Australia too, but I never thought I would reach a point where I just absolutely HAD to go home. I thought that my leaving Japan would be a reluctant parting, one of those things that I know I would have to do eventually but never really wanted to.

Well, no more. I am so over it.

The stress and complications of living in another foreign country has really gotten to me in the past few days and I'm ready to go home. Two and a half years is more than enough. It seems like every little hurdle is compounding to make everything seem insurmountable, and it just puts me in a bad mood. For those who know me well, you will know that it takes quite a bit to get me riled.

Kim's knee of course isn't helping matters. The poor thing, she has put up with 4 weeks of pain and restricted movement now. This has been incredibly frustrating for her, but what is worse is the feeling of helplessness when you don't really know if the doctor understands the situation. He's an osteopath, so his specialty is bones, not muscles. But how can we be sure he knows what he is doing? We can't. We just trust him and trust there is no miscommunication in the broken half-Japanese/half-English dialogue that we have with him.

But then there's all the other bullshit. Favours and obligations. The other day I promised to help out a friend who was good to us when we arrived in Japan by teaching what I thought was an elementary school English class. As it turns out, the audience is a room full of elementary school TEACHERS, the topic is "the difference between child-raising and discipline in Japan and other countries", it goes for 2 hours, and it's all in Japanese. And I don't even know if they are paying me for it or not. And, I'm taking a day's annual leave to be there, after teaching ANOTHER school class that morning on the other side of Tokyo to help another friend out (at least I am getting paid for that one, but it's still on my day off and it's hardly lucrative!) How the hell did I get roped into this? When I suggested that this friggin' child discipline seminar might be a bit beyond me, the response was "Oh we've already sent out the brochures about you, so I'm afraid it's too late". How? How does it happen?

It just compounds. The teacher I taught with today can't plan two minutes ahead in her schedule, let alone decide what we should teach for a class in two day's time. The teachers' room at my regular elementary school doubles as the smoko room, and I always leave there snorting and coughing up dust and smoke. My apartment is smaller than the living room of the last place I lived at in Melbourne. I got jabbed in the balls on the train this morning by my own bag as the crowds were so bad. I haven't had an outdoor BBQ or been camping for over 3 years now (no that hut in Tanzawa doesn't count). Not that I could eat beef without being worried about catching mad cow disease or chicken without being worried about catching avian flu. All my friends and family are having babies (almost without exception) and I won't be there. And the strong Aussie dollar is making all this less and less worthwhile.

Really, I'm not normally one to be negative. The thing is, I think I just really wanna go home.

No, this aint spam.

You know those email ads you get all the time. In between the messages about the big black cocks and the tight pussies and the viagra. They read something like:

Get paid to surf the internet! Click here to find out more...

And if you can ever be bothered to follow the link there is some hyped crap about an online casino, or some complex ad-clicking scheme which involves referring as many people as possible, with a guaranteed 0.0000013 cents per referral!

Well, folks, I have found it. The true "get paid to surf the internet" gig. And I'm writing this blog while I'm doing it.

Tonight I was supposed to be substituting for a teacher who is away on holiday. The lessons they teach are over the phone - students who don't have time to attend face-to-face classes ring up and the lesson is a role-play conducted over the telephone. The student reads their part, teacher reads theirs. Teacher provides feedback on pronunciation, intonation and other tips. Says goodbye, good luck with the study, and hangs up.

Well that's what supposed to happen. But the phone hasn't rung yet. I've been here for 2 and a half hours and not a single call. The clock is ticking. And I'm getting paid for every second.

Let's see, I've checked my mail. I've updated my blog. I've read all the newspapers online. Now, what else can I do. Oh yes, it's my birthday coming up. Better update my amazon wish list!

Being on holidays is so under-rated. No, really. I know you're thinking "yeah, it's great, isn't it?" But you don't understand. It is soooo good. And just how good it is really hits home when you have to go back to work.

It's not actually work that really bothers me. I happen to like teaching and like the teachers and students I work with. But it's the whole stress thing that comes with it.

It starts before you even leave the front door. Before you even wake up. You can't just sleep until you've had your fill, and then lazily arise to address whatever needs doing (usually eating breakfast). Oh no, you have to set an alarm to wake you up earlier than your body feels is natural, to deprive it of its full quota of rest.

And then breakfast is never as good. There just isn't time to fry up a bacon, eggs and mushroom extravaganza. A bit of a toast, a cup of tea and you're out the door.

The stress comes out of the corners it's been hiding while you were on vacation. It seeps out from between your joints and weighs down heavily on your shoulders, slowly tightening them. It lets loose inside your mind and starts frantically running around, shouting out all the different things that you need to do.

Previously your to-do list probably didn't extend beyond reminding yourself to duck out and buy a paper.

If you got round to it.

Being back at work means work takes priority over most of your day, a big leap from when you had the day all to yourself. All that spare time, that you time, meant that your mind was relaxed and you had time for reading, writing, drawing and meddling in whatever hobby has your current attention.

Like my latest obsession with building web sites, for example.

When I was on holidays, I was able to sit for hours and tinker and tweak and tweak and break and fix and learn and refresh the page and marvel at what is possible.

Being on holidays meant I could sit and pull my hair out in frustration at why borders look different in different browsers, and trawl the web aimlessly for someone who had experienced a similar problem. I could hammer away until 3, 4, 5 in the morning, screaming profanities at my laptop, threatening to hurl it from the balcony, and wondering what was ever wrong with the original table-based design in the first place. I wouldn't even eat at my designated meal times, I could just soldier on into the night with a double espresso because I didn't have to get up at any particular time the next day. I didn't need to go outside to lap up the beautiful weather, as I had all this free time to devote to sitting in front of the screen.

Yeah, having to go to work really sucks, as it requires me to get a full night's sleep and eat decent meals in order to be healthy, awake and alert for the people who rely on me.

Hmmm. Maybe being back at work aint all that bad after all...

I love Japanese food.

So many flavours, with varying degrees of health and sustenance. Granted, I have yet to acquire a taste for natto, but the rest is pretty good - most of the stuff ending in an "ee" sound, anyway. Like sashimi, sushi, yakitori, onigiri, umeboshi, okonomiyaki, wasabi, and curry.

Yep, that's right - Japanese curry has its own distinct flavour. It's a little sweeter than regular curry but it's pretty tasty. And easy to come by.

But sometimes, you just can't beat the real thing.

Luckily, we have an authentic Indian curry house a short bike ride from home, and they do take out. Which is just as well because there are 6 seats. No, that's not a typo. A maximum of six people can sit down and dine at this place. It is ridiculously small, it is the size of the kitchen at my mum and dad's house. Before they renovated. If anyone's interested, it's on the main road about 5 mins away from Ikebukuro station, west exit. On your right. I forget the name but you can't miss it.

The good thing about it being so intimate is you can watch the chefs go to work. Flipping their nan dough like eccentric masters, throwing their tandoori chicken wings on a skewer like they are fencing in a Zorro movie before flamboyantly jamming them into the coals to roast. And jabbering away and making jokes in Hindi.

All ordering is done in Japanese of course: their English sucks, and I can't even say hello in Hindi. But the common denominator for two foreigners in Japan is the local lingo. Which is surreal. You can almost see each other's brains translating as you talk back and forth, all the while self-conscious of your mistakes in front of other Japanese people.

Jeez it's good tucker though! Happy New Year everyone!!

All the best wishes to everyone who reads opinios regularly, sends stuff in, leaves comments, contributes to discussions, writes to me to sympathise, empathise, encourage, belittle and correct me. You motivate me to keep posting, creating and expressing.

In a year that saw opinios get redesigned, migrated to a new host, hacked and go through an identity crisis, I am reasonably proud of the very random and eclectic collection of words and pictures on this site. A lot of them are not mine and so I extend a huge thankyou to anyone who made a submission to opinios this year; there were some really incredible photographs and prose sent in that I have been very proud to publish. I hope you felt the same element of pride when your name was in lights as I did being associated with it. These were some of the highlights.

Having said that, in its continual defiance of categorisation, opinios will be undergoing another re-organisation over the winter break, resulting in a site that will have a slightly different format and a fresher look and feel. I also plan to move over to Movable Type which should make it easier for me to update more regularly. And there are a whole bunch of cartoon ideas that I want to share with you too.

But you'll just have to wait for next year for all that.

Until then, enjoy the festive season and time with friends/family, don't drink and drive, and take some time out to think about some of the people out there who don't have a home to sleep in or food to eat on Christmas Day, let alone have access to the internet and other luxuries. You might even want to think about giving someone less fortunate than you some money to help them out with that food thing. It's Christmas, remember.

All the best.

Well then. Mark today down in my calendar as one of the weirdest I've ever experienced. Ever. Where to begin?

8.15am. Riding a packed Yamanote line from Ikebukuro station just two stops to Takadanobaba. For those who've never lived in Tokyo: yes, it is that bad. An insolent high school student had his backpack on, pushed into my face, while a boney fake-tanned doll with seven layers of make-up kept elbowing me as she reshuffled to get a good position amongst the squashed masses.

But that's not weird. That's normal.

What was weird was reaching up for the strap hanging from the ceiling and spotting a HUGE mother of a spider on my arm!!! Bigger than a daddy longlegs and beefier than Bob Sapp, my eyes widened and I had to squeeze through and apologize (Sumimasen, comin' through!) at the next stop to brush him off.

Do spiders signify death? I think it was a sign.

In the last year or so I have had to come to terms with the death of my grandfather and my dear little fox terrier Toby, while being completely detached geographically. It is weird when there is nothing you can do to make that seem real by being on the other side of the world. You can't go around to his shitty little apartment and see his absence, or throw the ball and call out his name to hear the silence and let it sink in.

But today the reaper seemed to be in my face, in all sorts of subliminal ways.

Tonight on the way out to my evening business class in Saitama, our train hit and (assumedly) killed someone. I was napping quite pleasantly (the Red Arrow Limited Express is much like a shinkansen, with its comfortable, reclining seats and ample foot room) when I was woken with a jolt. We had hit something and pulled into a station that isn't on the list of stops for the express.

The Japanese word for someone committing suicide by jumping on the tracks is jin-shin jiko, which literally translates as "person-body accident". The announcement came over and we were delayed for over 20 minutes.

I've been delayed by jin-shin jiko's before, but it was never actually the train I was on that was involved in the collision. It seemed more real and disturbing knowing that I was seated on the vehicle responsible for ending someone's life.

I was suddenly quite awake. The driver and other station staff were frantically running back and forth on their CB radios, probably trying to get hold of someone who knew what the process was for these kinds of incidents (one couldn't expect them to make any decisions on their own!). But chances are they have encountered this before - it happens all the frickin' time.

Some say it is the fact that there are less guns in Japan, that trains are an easy alternative to ending one's life. Others talk about Japan being a melancholy nation because of its Buddhist take on life and reincarnation. There are arguments for honour and pride (especially among CEOs whose companies are failing), while others think it is due to the Japanese losing faith in where their society is headed. Plenty of people blame the economy being in a slump for the cause of it all. And then others think the prevalence of porn, prostitution and an increasing lack of morals or wholesome role models is the root of it all.

Perhaps it is a combination of all of these. But there is no question that it is a daily occurrence in Japan. An epidemic perhaps? The family of these disillusioned souls is left with the price tag for the clean-up - it is different depending on which line you choose to jump on to - and it includes counselling those workers who have to physically deal with the mess. I don't know how much the Seibu-Ikebukuro line charges but there was another invoice written out this afternoon to someone.

I managed to put Jiro the Jumper out of my head for the duration of my class, but the book I began reading on the way home put him right back in there. No Reason For Murder, by Ayako Sono, is full of lost souls, set on snowballing paths of self-destruction, fuelled by a complete lack of any shred of moral fibre. During my train ride home after the lesson, one of the main characters strangled a high school girl after having sex with her in a dodgy "theme" love hotel because she was trying to extort money from him due to her being under the age of consent.

The author really gets into these people's heads and it is turning into one of the most disturbing stories I have ever read. I am beginning to wonder whether my choice of novels for venturing back into the world of literature after toning down my Japanese study was a wise one. A tear trickled down my cheek when every character I had encountered reached a real low but deceived themself into thinking life was grand. When I closed my eyes images from Requiem for a Dream floated into my consciousness. And I am only up to Chapter 4.

And of course to top things off, sprawled out on the staircase in the middle of a rush of commuters at 9.30 at night at Ikebukuro station was a salary man who looked like he had been walking along and suddenly had the life sucked out of him. There was something about his still form that was different from the sleeping drunks that choose to curl up to the side of the mass of people making their way home. He looked lifeless and a large circle of people had gathered to inspect the situation: some concerned, others curious. I stopped and winced. I spotted someone make a phone call. Pretty soon a policeman appeared.

There was nothing else to be done but continue home. Was he alive? Dead? I have no idea. Someone was taking care of it.

I turned and headed for home.

So I have basically decided that I want to get into web design seriously when I go back to Australia, but I can't believe the can of worms that a bit of research opens up. It's not enough these days to have an eye for aesthetics and some HTML skills. These days design studios require applicants to be familiar with expertly proficient in a ridiculous array of difficult-to-learn software. Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark Xpress, InDesign, Flash, Fireworks, not to mention actual technologies like Perl, PHP, CSS, JavaScript, Java, SQL, Apache, Flash ActionScript... the list goes on. Most of them are easy enough to do simple stuff in, but when you try and do something that might look, gasp, semi-professional. Well...

Luckily there are countless online tutorials to work my way through. Am even considering paying money for a course when we leave Japan next year.

Maybe one of these days I can give old opinios another overhaul to make it use CSS properly (folks, this stands for Cascading Style Sheets and refers to a way of coding HTML pages to separate the content from the way it is presented).

In the mean time, my buddy Ben has also turned his had to web authoring and helped his uncle get his collection of (impressive) oil paintings online. www.donrankin-art.com.

Isn't that how the saying goes? Build a better mouse trap, and the world will beat a path to your door or something like that. Anyway, the Japanese did it, but someone forgot to tell them that the phrase included provisos like "humane".

Yes, we have a mice problem. Had a mice problem. Martine tried to warn us after staying over one night, but we were in denial for quite some time. I think the conversation went something like:

Martine: Hey, you guys. Did you know you have mice? I saw a huge one climb up the wall over there.

Us: Pah, it must have been a cockroach. We get them every now and then. I've already set baits, don't worry about it.

Until they started getting stuck into the bananas. That was the point at which we decided we had to get rid of them.

I searched high and low (well, the high and low shelves in the pharmacy down the end of the street) for your standard, painless, set-the-cheese-and-wait-for-the-snap trap that ends the varmint's life instantly, but you just don't seem to be able to buy them in Japan. The alternatives were poison, or the incredibly inhumane glue-pad, a sticky surface that the poor little thing sticks to and can't move from. I bought both (we were getting desperate, ok?)

At first we tried the poison. Judging by the cartoon on the cover of a rodent licking his lips holding a knife and fork, these were supposed to be tasty little sacks of scrumptious nastiness that the little critters couldn't help but chow into, but made them feel dehydrated so that they went outside to quietly die (out of sight, out of mind!)

The mice must have played hacky-sack with the damn things, because in the morning we found them scattered around the kitchen floor but otherwise left untouched.

And so, we resorted to the gluey walk-on-this-and-you'll-never-leave approach. We lay the trap with a piece of banana (I figured we should make its last meal its favourite food) and left Saturday afternoon for an overnight trip to Nikko, and just got back this evening.

Unfortunately, it worked. Extremely well.

Lying glued to the cardboard adhesive mat, whimpering in its own shit, urine and vomit (and some other green mucous that may or may not have been its brain) was not a mouse, but a very sizeable rat. Up until now I still hadn't really believed that they had existed in the apartment because we had never seen one. Well, here it was. And the little fucker was panting and looking woefully up at me.

The bastard almost looked cute.

I had to shield our catch from Kim and bundle the whole package - trap, banana and rat complete with excreted accessories - into several layers of plastic bags, take it outside and stomp on it to put the poor bastard out of its misery. The neighbour was sitting in the gutter having a cigarette, and watched on quizically. I didn't bother trying to explain. I was too full of pity and kept seeing its face looking up at me whenever I closed my eyes.

We are so getting a cat when we get back to Australia.