You Really Got Me

It's Tuesday, November 5, 1991.

It's the first working day for me since my emotional meltdown this past weekend... since I made an impassioned speech at the Ohtawara Cultural Festival here in Ohtawara-shi, Tochigi-ken, Japan, that I wished people would just forget about where people are from and would just be friends.

Who knew that a very emotional speech that garnered me a standing ovation would play a large part in my life... actually, at this point in time, I have no idea if it will.

I hope so.

Today, I am at the largest of Ohtawara's seven junior high schools—I teach at all as an assistant English teacher on the JET (Japan Exchange & Teaching) Programme—Ohtawara Chu Gakko (Ohtawara junior High School).

It's about a 10-minute bicycle ride from my large apartment building. I genuinely like the students and teachers at this school. Not every kid is golden, but even when one gets lippy, the class leaders put that kid back into step and apologize to the teacher for  his behavior. I've not had any poor behavior directed at me here - and let's keep it that way.

It's freezing cold outside! There's no heating system in the classrooms. Zip. No insulation either. According to last year, there should be a potbelly stove placed into each room to warm the class. Trust me... with the stove at the front of the class... you do not want to be the cool, freezing kid in the far rear corner. Unfortunately... there is no stove in place at this time. Apparently, it's not cold enough yet. Could have fooled my shrunken testicles.

Instead... because there's a howling wind a blowing outside... in each of my three classes the windows are wide open. I'm freezing. The students are freezing. And, yet the teachers leave the window open... I think it's to prove a point. I have no idea what it is, but asking Shibata-sensei (Mr. Shibata - a teacher), one of the English teachers at this school... he simply says... "Perhaps the students like it."

He then smiled, shook his head and said he has "no idea why, but the orders come from the Principal."

Fair enough.   

You would think that the arctic wind blowing directly onto the crotch of my pants would help my emotional state of mind... but I am still in a daze.

The kids are all great, however - all first-tears (grade 7s - 12-year-olds).

But, while walking from one class to another, some cutie-pie third-year girls come running up to me with books clutched to their chest and ask me if I would please come to the school's cultural festival on Sunday.

Hmm. It's the same day as I was asked to go to the Oyama Kyudo (Oyama Japanese archery) festival. But... I think I need to go and hang with the kids. I was also asked to go to the Wakausa Chu Gakko (Wakakusa Junior High school) cultural festival on Saturday.

After school, I head home, rent some videos and then go off to teach my adult nigh school course I do on the side. Mr. Suzuki is writing 'Happy Birthday' on the greenboard. Coo. It's my 27th birthday on the 8th, and I won't see these folks again for another week.

My students all come up to me the moment they see me enter the room. It's heartwarming. They were all very worried about me after my speech yesterday - that I seemed unhappy and lonely.

Mrs. Ohno - dear, dear woman - she has written out with the aid of a Japanese-English dictionary some questions - all multiple choice.

It must have taken her a helluva long time to look up the words and to write it out - providing multiple choices to make my giving her a proper answer easier for me.

Well... it's like I suspected... make an ass of yourself and suddenly everyone is concerned.  Truthfully, I did not make an ass of myself, but I did make an emotional plea for help, without actually verbalizing it. Smart people here in Ohtawara... or empathetic. Whatever. They know I'm down. 

I give her my answers, she seems satisfied I'm not going to kill myself or others, and realizes I'm just going through a rough patch.

Funny... after 15 months... and seeing some of these people for three hours a night once per week ... they already know when I'm not right emotionally. Maybe it's because I'm usually so up. Pity I wear my emotions on my sleeve. Or it's a good thing. At least I don't hide how I feel like most people. I don't want to wallow in self-pity or confusion. By opening myself up like this, by the actions and inactions of people, you see who really cares.

After class,I go home and watch TV before having to call it an early night. My damn eyes are really bothering me, as my left contact lens keeps on moving about the eye. Rub-rub-rub.

Oh... and today I mailed off the November issue of the Tochigi-ken newsletter the Tatami Times and wrote out my official resignation letter as its editor.

I still haven't plugged my phone back into the wall.

Somewhere someone gets me,
Andrew Joseph
Today's blog title is by The Kinks:

 And here's a great cover by Van Halen - because I love this song:

I've Seen All Good People

Today, Monday, November 4, 1991 is a holiday here in Japan. It's also the final day of the three-day long Ohtawara Cultural Festival.

Today I'm in an emotional uproar as confusing thoughts race through my head. I'm not manic in a clinical sense, but I am feeling pissed off with the world.

I've been here in Ohtawara-shi, Tochigi-ken, Japan for 15 months to teach English to junior high kids...  but I'm not internationalizing. I'm supposed to be hanging out more with the Japanese, and instead I find myself mooning over a bunch of dumbass foreigners who could give two flying figs about me. Why am I wasting my time?

And the Japanese... I'm their friend from another country... but they seem to know very little about Canada or my home life here in Japan, and don't seem to want to know more about me than my frivolous nature.

But at least the Japanese like me. And they do want to know about me.

I feel that just like last year, the AETs (assistant English teachers) on the JET (Japan Exchange & Teaching) Programme have shut themselves off from the Japanese. With a few exceptions, they only seem to hang out with other foreigners.

Maybe I should shut myself off too... but from the other foreigners (with a few exceptions - like Matthew and Kristine).

Unplug the phone. Done. Quit being editor of the AET newsletter. Done. Don't be a joiner. Screw'em all! Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!!! Let them do it all themselves! I don't care, I don't care, I don't care!!!!

No one understands how I feel right now. That snub at not being invited to those two AET parties this weekend just threw me back 10 or 11 years when I was always snubbed by the popular crowd back in high school. I'm not going back to that! I'd rather hide away than have it all fly back in my face again.

Maybe it's time to retreat and lick my wounds for a while and reinvent myself? I've done it before a few times, why not again?

People say that life as a teenager are supposed to be the 'best years of our life.' God, I hope not.  I'm not really ready to go downhill just yet. I'm not yet 27-years-old!

No... maybe a step back... to find myself... to get ready for my return home to Toronto.

Man... do all these AETs think they are special because they are here? They sure sound special: "I'm going to graduate school when I leave here."

Why? So you can be more boring than you already are? Is that possible?

Well... says the emotionally tumultuous Andrew, now that you are in the correct frame of mind... let's go to the Ohtawara Cultural Festival.

I show up at 1PM - just in time to make a speech. Sure... what the hell... I've not prepared anything, but I feel talkative!

Martin, another foreigner from Quebec, but working through a local Ohtawara business exchange, goes first. His is on environmentalism - and he gives it in Japanese. He's effing amazing. I have no idea if his speech is any good, not knowing much Japanese, but the crowd gives him some very strong applause.

I still don't have a topic as I stand on the stage in front of the microphone.

Then it hits me! Talk about how I really feel today. Homesick. A stranger. Alone. Unable to read, write or speak Japanese. So I do.

I tell my captive audience how I really feel at this moment. How we all need to find our own true feelings for each other, and use that as a proper bridge for internationalization. It shouldn't be about the Japanese wanting or needing to be friends with the gaijin (foreigners) - it should be about wanting and needing to be friends with Andrew and Martin and Matthew. We're just people - just like you are to us. Just people.

(Yes, I purposely left out Ashley, my ex-girlfriend.)

As I finish speaking, my eyes begin to mist over with tears. I'm offered many hands to shake, but I don't even see from whom, as I'm in too much of a daze. Hunh. A standing ovation.

By jove old boy, you seemed to have crossed the line from assistant English teacher to a man who wants to internationalize! I think I touched my audience and myself. All in one fell swoop.

I slide my Rayban sunglasses onto my face before I cry, and walk out purposefully. It must have looked weird to everyone. Like I was being stand-offish. 

I have this vision in my head of a cowboy riding off into the sunset at the end of a movie.

I continue to walk past everyone with my usual grin on my face - trying (successfully) not to drop a tear.

As I reach the exit of the festival at the old tobacco factory near my apartment, Mrs. Matsuda comes running up to me with some food and hugs me. 

(Expletive! My eye's are misting over as I type this out 20 years later.)

Mrs. Matsuda understands, I think. God I hope they translated that correctly! She's just like my mom - which makes me feel better, but worse.

I go home, sneak out and rent some more movies. In the video store I see Ashley. She comes over and asks me how I'm doing.

I growl back "What difference does it make?"

She says: "If it didn't make a difference, I wouldn't have asked."

I hate her sometimes. Just not right now.

I go home and half-expect to see her waiting inside my place... but she's not.

Matthew, good old Matthew, comes over later. I explain my issues. He patiently listens and tells me to (rhymes with 'puck') all the AETs. And to not care what others think, as long as you think good things about yourself.

(Twenty years later, in some Otherland, I struggle with heeding his sage advice... but I am making progress. Thanks).

After Matthew leaves, Mrs. Ohno and Mrs. Matsuda come over and try, with that familial concern, to drag me out to the Festival party that's going on tonight.  

I think I would like to go, but I'm feeling kind of fragile.

I think I just need to be alone right now.

Somewhere I feel like crying and do,
Andrew Joseph   
Today's blog is by Yes.

Dazed and Confused

It's Sunday, November 3, 1991.

The rollercoaster of love, life or whatever b.s. I no longer feel is picking up blinding speed and is throwing me all over the place emotionally.

I effin' hate rollercoasters!

Today, here in Ohtawara-shi, Tochigi-ken, Japan where I've been living for 15 months as an assistant English teacher on the JET (Japan Exchange & Teaching) Programme), well... i (not a typo) wake up confused.

The confusion swirls all around me.

Uncertainty.

How are you Andrew Joseph?

I don't know.

Show I be honest or be like everybody else and lie?

I'm tired. So very effin' tired.

I don't want to do anything but remained curled up in bed.

Should I go home - back to Toronto, Canada? And to what?

What am I doing here in Japan? Do I make a difference? Perhaps, but not in the way I think I should..

Still... I get up. I said I would go to the Ohtawara Cultural Festival again today, so I do.

I don't hate the Japanese - just pretty much everybody else. The Japanese have treated me pretty well, and right now I'm not thinking clear enough to believe anyone else is.

Going to the festival turns out to be a good idea. A student, Matsuda Yukio (surname first) and her 12-year-old friend drag me all over the grounds. I see a lot of my students who act like idiots - and it amuses me to see them act their age - not their Japanese age (which i usually older).

There's a radar gun and a baseball cage there... some boys push me towards it. I grab a baseball, no stretching, wind-up and fire a ball in. Not so good. It was only 94 kilometers an hour. I guess I'm either tired or not that good anymore. Or... I was never as good as I thought I was. Probably all three.

I buy a plant - a two-foot tall berry tree and a plant stand made of bamboo - to turn my place more Japanese and less Andrew from Canada. Yeah... the plant will do that.

I get dragged over to a stage and am asked to give a speech in English that will be translated into Japanese by a man I've never seen before. I'm unsure if he gets the translation perfectly, but he certainly is quick!

My speech was on my view of the Japanese people relative to when I first arrived here to what I think now.  I made it up on the spot, but I just speak from the heart, so it's decent.

Obviously, my only impression of the Japanese was the typical Hollywood stereotype of stiff little Japanese business men in pin-striped navy blue suits, carrying briefcases, wearing glasses, black hair, short and no sense of humour. While I am sure the stereotype exists - in spades, I found the Japanese to be quite similar to every other person I have ever met on this planet. No different. No worse. Love of family. Humourous. Hard-working.

All true, of course. And, all part of the JET Programme's internationalization to teach Japan that while it's okay to be Japanese, they aren't that different from the rest of the world.

I have a very long day. Long, but fun.

I go home with much food given to me by Mrs. Matsuda... leave there and ride out to the local video store and rent three movies.

As I am watching a movie, Karen Irwin calls. While I just want to boink her, she is looking for a boyfriend. Right guy, wrong time, Karen.

We chat amicably as I explain that I am quitting the editorship of the tatami Times AET newsletter. I explain to her that I am down on the whole AET thing and why - being snubbed for a party in Utsunomiya last night, and one in Yaita this evening - two parties being attended by my ex-girlfriend Ashley.

I'm unsure if I am pissed off at the snub of if they think I'm not interesting enough!

Cripes! Ashley?! I wrote to friends saying Ashley and I had a personality difference. I had one and she didn't. And yet... here are these other AETs who think she is more interesting than my self.

Karen is worried about me and wants to help. She admits that she really, really likes me, but I explain how I don't wish to take advantage of someone who has been constantly taken advantage of herself.

She says she appreciates that, and hope that we will both be ready for a proper commitment soon.

But despite the appreciations, she doesn't like my forthrightness. Who would?

Still, she makes me promise to call her tomorrow.

She had also begged me to come down and stay with her in Yaita tonight, but I said I wouldn't take advantage and I really don't want to deal with any AETs right now.

And hey! What the hell! She's in Yaita... and there's an AET party in Yaita - so Ashley told me... so why isn't Karen there? What the hell is Ashley up to?

When Karen and I finish talking, I pull the phone out of the wall jack.

I'm not calling her tomorrow.

I need to make a clean break with reality today.

Somewhere, my brain hurts,
Andrew Joseph
Today's blog title is by Led Zeppelin.

Strawberry Fields Forever

Ahhh... the blog I was dreading.

On this, my rollercoaster of life, I am perched right at the top of the highest peak, quietly looking about and enjoying the view.

It's Saturday, November 2, 1991. I live in Ohtawara-shi, Tochigi-ken, Japan. I'm a junior high school eigo-no-sensei (English teacher) on the Japan Exchange & Teaching (JET) Programme in my second year.

I had a girlfriend, Ashley, but we broke up as she felt smothered and wanted her space. Okay... but she used to come to my apartment four or five times a week. For companionship and quite possibly free food. I know by this time I had had maybe five meals at her place. Total.

So... perhaps because she was hungry, and perhaps because she was lonely for someone who knew how to make her clock tick, she and I began sleeping together on a semi-regular basis... friends-with-benefits. I was still free to whore around with whomever tickled my fancy, and she was free to do whatever it is she did best - sleep, I think.

If I sound bitter, it's because I am. Her reasons for breaking up with me were idiotic... but I'll take the sex without the hassle. The problem is that I still want the relationship. I just hate to lose, and the way this one 'ended' it felt like I lost.

Stupid huh? I was too blind to realize I had won. I got the sex and could see other women.

She spent the night - no sex, please... we're friends.

We wake each other up by playing footsie. That's all it was at first, though a deft right hand soon makes sure she's a puddle on my bed sheets. Two puddles, in fact.

She excuses herself to go to the bathroom, and when she comes back, I'm left holding the bag, so to speak, as she is now only interested in snuggling.

We don't kiss because she hasn't brushed her teeth despite the fact she has a toothbrush here at my place. I somehow managed to brush my teeth before we started, but then, I am a considerate bastard.

We eat tacos for breakfast and watch some of my TV videos. It's now 1PM when we dress and leave my place to do some errands. I try to kiss her, but refuses to because of her unbrushed teeth.

I lay into her saying she could have brushed her teeth anytime during the last four hours if she really wanted to. So... now I'm on edge. No sexual release. No kiss. But she got hers and breakfast made by me.

We ride our bicycles out to Iseya, the local department/grocery store as I have top pick-up a sweater from dry cleaning and some film. She has to get some food for her apartment.

As we ride to the store, she says she can't hang out with me tomorrow night. Okay... I knew about the party tonight in Tochigi's capital of Utsuynomiya that she was invited to by fellow AET Dan McCarthy that I was not invited to... so I ask why.

A party?!

Where?

Yaita.-shi (City of Yaita, about 10 kilometers south of my place)

Whose? I thought it might be her friend Karen who wants to sleep with me as a boyfriend only.

Will Gardner!!? Another AET?

In my head I am screaming: I was snubbed again? Just like for Dan's party?  No! What the hell is going on?!

As we pull into the Iseya, I tell her to come close to a particular entrance as I'd like to get my dry-cleaning first - but no! Miss High-and-Effing-Mighty continues to ride off to the other side of the store. Now... people who know me, know I have a big, powerful and deep voice. I'm not one for not being heard. Is she lost in her own thoughts again? I hate that! Or is she just trying to piss me off so that she can have her way again at the expense of me? So far, everything points to the later - especially after her behavior this morning at my place.

(Expletive!)

My sweater is still not ready at the dry cleaner, so I storm through Iseya, get my film, politely say hello to some students from Ohtawara Chu Gakko (Ohtawara Junior High School) and then leave the place for home.

Expletive her! I've had it with AETs! Stupid ones, that is!

I go and rent some videos and head home.

I then look at the clock and realize I should go to the Ohtawara Cultural Festival going on across the street at the old tobacco factory.

There I meet Matsuda Yukio (surname first) a student of mine at Ohtawara Chu, who drags me to see her mother. Yukio's mom and Mrs Ono then fight to grab an arm as they lead me to a table and proceed to stuff me full of food and coffee.

Unfortunately, the festival ends at 5PM and I didn't get a chance to see my friend Mr. Mashiko... but he had already come and gone, but had left me some hand-drawn meishi (business cards).

The ladies then buy me some more food and drinks and walk me home, making me promise to come back to the festival tomorrow.

I go home, eat the food the ladies gave me - thank you very much! - watch my videos, labels some envelopes for the Tatami Times AET newsletter. I then phone up Jeanne who is still acting as the prefecture's AET leader and tell her I am quitting as the editor of the newsletter.

Expletive all the AETs. Just let me become Japanese.

Tipping over the edge, the roller coaster slowly begins to gather speed.

Somewhere my thoughts are darker than the night,
Andrew Joseph
Today's blog title is by Pink Floyd. A little background is in order. During my teenaged years, I was picked on and tormented emotionally daily. I hated my life and everybody in it. I know, welcome to the teenaged years. I was never suicidal. Never. But I hated my life. I vowed I would one day be strong. Be a success. Be universal... and I wasn't until I was maybe 24 and finished university and went to Humber College for journalism. For no reason that I know of, standing in line that day to get a student card, I had two strangers  - one in front and one behind, chatting to each other about how they had both worked at a paint store - but at different locations. John Hobel in front. Scott Bujeya behind me. I recall the moment. It was that important to me. I suddenly and unexpectedly to myself, joined their conversation. I stopped being shy at that moment and new me was born. No one who knows me would ever suspect that I was ever shy, as I have been told I have a dynamic personality full of vim, vigor, verve, whatever. I never wanted to go back to being shy, quiet and unnoticed... but today's blog showed me that I was... at least by the other AETs - NOT the Japanese! Japan and its people seemed to care. I am not going back to being treated the way I was! And so... I have become comfortably numb.