Of Rice and Zen I'm going to Japan tomorrow... shit the bed Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 0 0 20 6619

Articles from Of Rice and Zen

Day 562: I've always loved thunder storms 2007-07-29 15:15:00 Your friend SoCal lives in Kyoto in your old apartment block, but he works far to the east in Shiga. It's 5 am in Kyoto. You're still awake and you're listening to the thunder rolling outside. It bounces metallic off the mountains. Lightning flashes and every appliance in your house is overloaded and switches off. Behind the lashing curtains of rain you can see the sun is rising. You receive an email from your SoCal."i fell asleep on the train and am wandering Kobe...it would be beautiful if iwasn't currently fucked"SoCal spends the night making lemonade and waiting for the first train home. You receive a second email."Needless to say I managed to find my way onto the ladies only train car and am getting stared at left, right and centre."Technorati Tags: aeon, ALT, baka gaijin, chain school, eigo no sensei, English teacher, engrish, gaijin, gaijin memoirs, ganbatte, geos, hayao miyazaki, izakaya, Japan, Japanese, Japanese cold, Japanese food, JET, job, kanji, Kansai, Kyoto, ...

Day 561: Say hello, wave goodbye 2007-07-29 15:00:00 When Mouse came to find you studying and told you she was going home you checked your watch, noticed it was 7 o'clock and unexpectedly started weeping. You go wide-eyed and look upwards to stop your vision swimming. An unfamiliar old salty taste. You had no idea what your reaction was going to be when the day finally came, but you always knew that her return home was inevitable. That burning in the corner of your eye.Her reasons for coming to Japan were always slightly different to your own. You guess she wanted to see the world, she had an interest in the country after seeing a movie or two from your collection, she was a trained and experienceed teacher. You turn your head to avoid being seen bleary eyed by everyone in Starbucks. But she was never as invested as you in Japan. Once you broke up it was unavoidable that she would one day return to England. She wasn't as entrenched as you. Your return home is far from certain. You don't know where you call home anymore. Flu ...

Day 560: Stigma of the dump 2007-07-29 14:58:00 We really need to talk about May. She's the most quiet, introspective, delicate looking Japanese girl in you've ever met. She looks graceful and waif-like. Her movements are slow and her voice is always a whisper. In your head she's a Peter Jackson style elf who does everything in slow-mo standing next to a wind machine. If you were to judge her on her looks alone (and that's the Japanese way) you surmise that she is the epitomy of Japanese modesty and grace. A poster-child for good old fashioned Japanese values. It's hard to remember she's almost 30 years old. May's so innocent.So 30 is a number that conjures up certain preconceptions in the west. Cast those aside and imagine a 15 year old. That's May. She has the social skills and confidence of a prepubescent girl. She lives at home and with her mum, who waits up for her at night. If she comes home late her mum goes orangutan-shit at her and effectively terrorises her into complete control. Most mum's full-time ...

Day 559: The comedy t-shirt network 2007-07-28 06:12:00 Day 559: The comedy t-shirt network, originally uploaded by burleydude3. A: "I just saw a Japanese guy wearing a plain black t-shirt that said 'I scored last night' on it :)"L: "maybe he scored with the girl i saw with 'fancy a fuck' on her t-shirt!! x"Technorati Tags: aeon, ALT, baka gaijin, chain school, eigo no sensei, English teacher, engrish, freedom, gaijin, gaijin memoirs, ganbatte, geos, gion, Hokkaido, Ice bar, izakaya, Japan, Japanese, Japanese cold, JET, job, kanji, Kansai, Kyoto, memoirs of a gaijin, meta, Misasagi, Moiwa yama, Mount moiwa, nihon, Nova, photos, pikki, podcast, shiga, teach english, teach in japan, teacher, teaching English, engrish, Yamashina, zen ...

Day 558: Indoor sharks, train sets, king bugs and amateur paparazzi 2007-07-27 03:43:00 A day with the missus and her nephew may sound like hell to most men of you age, but in Japan it can be strangely compelling. For example, Omihachiman in deepest darkest Shiga is famous for nothing other than an architect called Boris. They grow water melon here, but nobody really mentions that. Out here there see so few new things that people take your photo from the safety of their vehicles, and if you stare at them for a while as they do it they pretend to be inspecting their cameras.So you take a drive to Hikkone and find a Toys R Us to amuse Kota. When you get there you see some startling differences between Japan's branches and those in Blighty. For example, bug catching was once a big hobby in Japan. So much so that it gave birth to a series of bug catching games like Pokemon and King of Beetles. Salarymen still talk about this hobby with fondness and some still practice it, but outside of the hardcore otaku it has become a purely digital pursiut. Or so you may have tho ...

Day 558: He can choke down a tube steak 2007-07-27 02:35:00 Kota has taught you a lot. You have just learned how to say "I have a big mouth" in Japanese. That's a mixed blessing. Let's back up a bit.You challenge your nephew to eat his greasy battered chicken and pink hot dog from Mos Burger. Now for some reason Mos Burger has a reputation for selling higher quality ground up lip, ear and anus, than other ground up hoof, tail and eyelid merchants because they sell a burger made with rice. Fuck a doodle doo. In fact it's not a burger, because in Japan they think the burger is the bun, so the Mos Burger I ordered contained no burger at all. Bygones.So he lays down the chicken and tucks into the hot dog with a vengeance. I realise I was just trying out my Japanese when i told him if he ate the whole lot I'd give him ?5000, but he's attacking that tube of Yakuza double-crosser flesh so hard it's squeezing out of the bun and is coating my shoes in diced onion and ketchup.To my utter disbelief, he gets the whole thing down and d ...

Day 558: No pay for you serf scum 2007-07-26 22:18:00 First it emerged that Japan's largest language school was witholding bonuses from staff. It has just come to your attention that President Monkeybridge has declared an emergency situation and is not saying the Japanese staff their salary. Way to save a business, genius.If he's lucky the Japanese staff will continue to toe the company line, take a hit for the team and not tell the newspapers now messed up the company seems to be.Technorati Tags: aeon, ALT, baka gaijin, chain school, eigo no sensei, English teacher, engrish, gaijin, gaijin memoirs, ganbatte, geos, Japan, Japanese, JET, Kansai, Kyoto, memoirs of a gaijin, meta, Engrish, nihon, Nova, photos, pikki, podcast, Peter North, teach english, teach in japan, teacher, teaching English ...

Day 556: Bux blogging is so metro 2007-07-25 01:37:00 Because typing on a plasticky, generic bluetooth keyboard that doesn't seem to register any button presses on the lower row is about a rewarding technological experience as using a Windows machine, it's tempting to give up. It's at exactly these moments you tell yourself to resist the easy option and push on. This may seem to be as sensible as continuing to chew your own scrotum when all your nerve endings are screaming at you to stop.There is, however, a hidden purpose behind this kind of masochism, and it has nothing to do with learning to love substandard design. It's about turning Japanese. It's about blending. It's about getting into the mindset. 'Ganbatte' is a famous expression, used to encourage someone not to give up, to perservere, to choke down the pain and maintain their efforts. The origins of the word sound pretty honourable, right? Square jawed? Big balled? Wide-shouldered? It's modern usage, however, is closer to the 'sho ga nai' ("it can't be h ... Blogging

Links for 2007-07-24 [del.icio.us] 2007-07-25 00:00:00 Of Rice and Zen - Episode 21 Of Rice and Zen podcast ...

Day 556: Japan outdoes me again 2007-07-24 12:23:00 If you were using my ironic love of Engrish to make a joke about a magazine devoted to 'Consumer Advice' you would probably combine some of your favourite Engrish to come up with a name you thought was utterly hilarious. No sooner have you spooged ad-nauseum about great English phrases that become Japanese phrases that begin to lose connection with the original English phrases like 'GETTO' and 'NAVI' will be pleased to see there is a magazine that combines two examples of the ridiculous and comes up with the sublime.You officially cannot satirise Japan. It will always outdo your wildest efforts. Technorati Tags: aeon, ALT, baka gaijin, chain school, eigo no sensei, English teacher, engrish, gaijin, gaijin memoirs, ganbatte, geos, Japan, Japanese, JET, Kansai, Kyoto, memoirs of a gaijin, meta, Engrish, nihon, Nova, photos, pikki, podcast, shiga, teach english, teach in japan, teacher, teaching English ...

Day 555: Key bored 2007-07-24 11:23:00 Welcome to A's first ever blog from a bluetooth keyboard and a mobile phone.The product we'll be both using and reviewing in this entry is vastly inferior bluetooth generic keyboard. It's available under many names but always has the same appearance. This iteration known as a BK600 Universal keyboard that was shipped to Japan from the folks at Suntekstore in China.The keyboard software is far from universal until you scour Google and find yourself a generic bluetooth keyboard driver for your Series 60 3rd edition Symbian powered Nokia N73. The software in the box is several generations old and wouldn't install at all. Nokia's own generic bluetooth driver is about effective as an edible fork and only after a few minutes of hitting dead links and downloading third party drivers did this reviewer stumble upon a suitable fit.Once downloaded the driver seems to work fairly well. What doesn't work so well however is the rather crucial component known as the 'keyboard'. Th ...

Links for 2007-07-23 [del.icio.us] 2007-07-24 00:00:00 Of Rice and Zen - Episode 20 Like herpes A intermittently returns when you least expect it to tell you about pink salon blowjobs, poison from China, earthquakes and nuclear waste and disabled men warming mobile phones in their wheelchairs. 'GET-O' SHITA! BYEE-BYEE! Of Rice and Zen - Episode 19 My stalkers are really starting to give me the farty liquid follow-throughs and I'm really not sure you guys are taking me seriously. When they find me locked in a Japanese basement with a rolled up textbook in my mouth and a haiku painted on my body read ...

Day 554: The legends were true 2007-07-23 18:48:00 For an animal expert, stumbling upon an elephant graveyard would be quite a thrill. For a Japan enthusiast, that magical find would take on a different shape. Let me back up a bit. The highlight of your day is when the builders outside turn on all the diggers and start throwing hammers indiscriminately at girders, making beautiful working class music that feels really good on the inside of your skull when you've been to karaoke until 3am. Today however it wasn't the clanging of Thor that woke you up. It was something new. Something you'd never seen before. A dark satanic ritual you thought was just a myth. You are giddy to find out it's real. You've finally witnessed it.Group activites are always sinister and smack of communism, but these weird "work outs" to music really shit you up more than anything. The terrifyingly creepy music - no adult should be able to stomach something so sacchirine. The uniformity of the movements. The fact that the "work out" clearly has no ...

Day 553: Back on the air 2007-07-23 09:35:00 Despite Ourmedia's best efforts to fudge it up, a new podcast is online and ready for your delectation. Like herpes A intermittently returns when you least expect it to tell you about pink salon blowjobs, poison from China, earthquakes and nuclear waste and disabled men warming mobile phones with their butts. 'GET-O' SHITA! BYEE-BYEE! The feed appears to be working about as well as George Bush's language coach so I'll put it up here. Technorati Tags: abyss, aeon, ALT, anamatronics, anpanman, baka gaijin, blossom, booby, Byodo in, byodo temple, chain school, cherry blossom, counting crows, crab, ed harris, eigo no sensei, English teacher, engrish, food, freedom, gaijin, gaijin memoirs, ganbatte, geos, gion matsuri, handicaps, hayao miyazaki, heiwado, Hokkaido, hoko, homo, Ice bar, izakaya, Japan, Japanese, Japanese cold, Japanese food, jaws, JET, job, k's blowing, kaitaku no mura, kanji, Kansai, kill bill, koda kumi, kurama onsen, Kyoto, mary elizabeth mastrantonio's tits are ...

Links for 2007-07-22 [del.icio.us] 2007-07-23 00:00:00 Of Rice and Zen - Episode 20 Like herpes A intermittently returns when you least expect it to tell you about pink salon blowjobs, poison from China, earthquakes and nuclear waste and disabled men warming mobile phones in their wheelchairs. 'GET-O' SHITA! BYEE-BYEE! Of Rice and Zen - Episode 19 My stalkers are really starting to give me the farty liquid follow-throughs and I'm really not sure you guys are taking me seriously. When they find me locked in a Japanese basement with a rolled up textbook in my mouth and a haiku painted on my body read ...