Sheer Boredom and Its Discontents

To those in the working world: Do not hate me.

Yours truly has been in the midst of a major 4-alarm boredom binge for the last two weeks. Jealous? Well, don't be, because I am BORED! The kiddies had their hardcore midterm exams last week, and so for the week before that, many of my classes were miraculously transformed into extra grammar sessions (for which my games of Jeopardy, picture games, and myself were apparently unnecessary). During testing week there were no classes for anyone, and this week, I have no classes as well for I don't know why. That there is a lot of free time on one's hands. And I have an internet connection...Blast!

If only I were a lazier man (and I am lazy, but not lazy enough) I could truly relish the opportunity to get paid thousands to give myself a first-rate Wikiducation. People spend dozens on books purchased from guys with dollar signs in their top hats just to get to where I am today, but alas, I must have shown some initiative at some point, and so I'm feeling a bit of remorse at being such a well-paid lump. Wouldn't you?

For the first week of nothing, I was ambitious and diligently made daily schedules for myself of tasks that needed accomplishing. But, it's very difficult when you look at the open calendar ahead of you and the urgency just drains right out of your tasks. However, I did put in 3 days of legitimately productive Japanese language study time, finished Book 1 of my JET Program Japanese language course, and even had several grammar-related conversations with other teachers (now if that's not a sign someone's a nerd, I just don't know what is!). I figure it's an unspoken component of my job description that I should try to learn the native tongue, so I don't even have the guilty feelings I get when I read movie reviews.

After that 3-day wonderblast of achievement, my output took a slight downturn towards the Facebook, email, and Wikipedia realms, sadly. But you can attain a great deal of knowledge for free, I've noticed. And the best part is that Wikipedia doesn't discriminate between the highest of high brow and the lowest of low brow. It's entirely possible that an entry for Lindsay Lohan could be much longer and far more lovingly detailed than the entire entry on Mongolia, for example. This is knowledge by the people, for the people, from...a lot of uncited sources. Still, it's wonderfully egalitarian, if prone to ridiculousness.

This week my boredom hit an all-time low and so I resorted to making home-made egg nog for the other teachers to sample. I think we've all been there, the "You're so bored at work that you make egg nog for your co-workers" stage We all go through it at least one time in our life. I'm happy to say the homemade Nog got reviews of "Oishii" ("delicious") all around. I withheld the booze, on account of all those pesky high schoolers around. On a side note, do you know how to make egg nog? It's remarkably simple: just add 6 eggs to 1 quart of nog and you're done. Soooo easy. The hard part is finding the perfect nog, of course.

Do not pity my sloth. I am preparing for my triumphant return to teaching next week by planning a Christmas spectacular the likes of which this country has never seen. Well, actually they do Christmas pretty durned big here, but I will try to infuse the rampant commercialism with just a small injection of soul and tradition. I wanna do something nice for the kids to show them a little bit about what Christmas means to me; of course it's not all pure spending and commercialization, after all. There is still something wonderful about it that I think can be shared.

So that's the news from Nakatsugawa, where all the men are beautiful, the women are strong, and all the children have cute lunchboxes.

Dear readers, I am in the midst of making a larger post about our recent trip to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I guarantee it will knock at least both of your socks off. I also just added some new shots to my photo website, so they are available for perusal at your leisure. I charge 300 yen for each photo viewing now, but email me and I may be able to accept airmailed cookies or beer. I still have to get the final word from my business manager, Andy Taylor of Atlanta, Georgia.

-The Shogun

I will leave you with a beautiful photo of cultural togetherness. I only look about 4 stories taller than Hong. This is why I crack my head on even the doorways in my own house: