Goodbye Spencer, Hello Telecomunications.

It was both a sad and joyous day today.

Let’s get the sad part over with first: Spencer is moving away from the ‘Bo to the greener (greyer?) surrounds of Tokyo and tonight was his going away party. Of course the party itself was significantly rockin’- we went to the local sports bar called ‘Dreamers’ and indulged heartily in all manner of food, beverages and socialization. It’s always really nice to get everyone together in one place, and while It’s sad to see Spencer go, it was cool to meet some new people too, there’s a married couple called Jocelyn and Craig from California and a very funky young lady called Milani from Utah; I look forward to introducing them all to the pleasures of karaoke, pachinko and binge-drinking.

Spencer with his adoring admirers; we'll miss ya man!

It’s kinda weird not being the ‘new guy’ anymore, but it’s cool to be able to help other people and watch them get settled in. It reminds me of the wonder I had during my first few weeks; in a way I’m a little sad that going to the supermarket isn’t an adventure anymore, but I guess it does save time when you don’t have to stop and take pictures of whatever crazed mascot is on the instant noodles this week.

My big exciting news is that I got my Alien Registration Card, which means Wooooo! I’m all legal and the government has deemed me worthy of the ultimate responsibility: cell-phone ownership! No more trying to organize my social life with a notebook and e-mail, yay!

I went somewhat silly in my excitement and walked into the nearest DoCoMo and grabbed the first phone that caught my eye; I ended up with a Foma SO703i as advertised by some J-pop starlet with alarming regularity on CNN. As befits any piece of technology on this island it’s so ridiculously feature heavy that I live in constant fear of launching nuclear missiles at Russia when I put my phone on silent. Seriously, it makes video calls, reads barcodes, gives GPS information… and the best part, it smells. Seriously, it comes with a frickin’ ‘scent card’ so when you’re talking you can smell lilacs. Uhhh… I wonder how long it took the R&D folks to think up that one.

My phone, complete with its 'aroma card'; it scares me that it probably has more processing power than the space shuttle.

Yeah, so anyway I’m back in contact and I spent a good part of today thumping all the numbers and e-mail addresses (‘cause SMS is soooo 2 years ago) that I had written down on a collection of post-its into my shiny new toy. In case you hadn’t noticed I’m pretty pleased. Now all I need is a set of ridiculously gaudy cell-phone charms and I’ll be set.

Stay in touch world,

Shaun.

Monkey (or is it Kyushu?) Island.

Ahhh… vacations, it doesn’t matter how old you get or what you do to procure sustenance in this crazy world, vacations still rock. Especially if they’re paid, and even moreso if you have some friends that are psyched to party.

You know what I was saying about having superpowers? Well it turns out that I do have amazing powers, at least of luck. I was out shopping when I walked past the train station and who should I bump into but Christi? She’d just come off the train and by some amazing stroke of serendipity I was walking past as she was standing outside the train station. Who needs the high tech wizardry of mobile phones (or indeed the low-tech wizardry of smoke signals) when you have impeccable timing and a ridiculous amount of luck?

Anyway, I took Cristi on the big tour of Sasebo (which wasn’t really that big since it involved two parks, a wharf, the shopping arcade and my apartment) we ate Mexican (Viva the nachos!) and then met up with Saori for a night of wanton indulgence in wine, food and TV; we watched three episodes of Queer Eye then switched to ‘High Fidelity’ (mostly because of my incessant heterosexual male whining). Great night though!

After emerging bleary-eyed from our futons the next morning we grabbed breakfast the window shopped for a goodly proportion of the day, I managed to convince Cristi to sample a Sasebo burger while the opportunity was evident, for a fairly petite girl she managed to wolf it down quite easily, props! We wandered around the market district for a while then went to a few 100 Yen stores (the same concept as ‘Cheap As Chips’) to prepare for Hannah’s pirate-themed birthday bash. Being somewhat cheap ‘preparation’ involved buying bandannas, although I splurged and bought a 100 Yen T-shirt and wrote ‘Arrrrr’ on it with a whiteboard marker.

We started off in Nimitz park with jelly-shots then moved up to Gela’s temporary domicile (which is a very nice house in the hilly suburbs of the city) for the majority of the night; again the craziness of the alcohol supply in this country astounds me, I walked into the lounge room and the first thing I laid eyes on was a 3 LITRE bottle of Smirnoff, the second was a 3 litre bottle of Jack Daniels, and after that a 5 litre box of sangria. I’m not even going to start on the ridiculous pile of beer and other assorted spirits scattered liberally around the place.

Anyway, enough about booze; let me tell you about the binge-drinking. We had about 18 people attend in all, and I got to meet a lot of interesting people; special mentions must go to Spencer from Canada for his fabulous piratanicalness and awesome wit (seriously, watch out Mr. Depp), Lauren from England who was kind enough to force many drinks upon me and drag me onto the tatami ‘dancefloor’ and Paco, a fine representative of the U.S. armed forces who gallantly stripped off his shirt and did the manly task of providing us all with substance from the barbeque. Kudos to you all!

Spencer, Hannah and Gela get piratanical; check out all that bootylicious booze! Just looking at it now makes my innards twitch uncomfortably.

We eventually wound up taking taxis back into Sasebo proper (mainly to avoid having the neighbors file charges of disturbing the peace against us) and continued on at another string of bars ending with the appropriately named ‘Treasure’ (which actually has a beach sand covered floor, how cool is that?) I made friends with an ancient Japanese man who taught me how to play crazy 8’s (or ‘baka hatchi’ as it’s known around here) even though he didn’t speak a word of English. It was 8AM by the time we staggered out into the sunlight and sensibly decided to call it quits; poor Lauren… she had to catch a bus back to Kuramoto at 12; still… such is life as an educator, and she’s a trooper.

This kindly old man taught me how to play cards, I gave him my 50 yen bandanna as a token of thanks; it suits him, don'tcha think?

Of course today was pretty much a write-off, consisting of obtaining food, minimum stamina expenditure and avoiding anything that makes loud noises. I feel pretty much fine by now though, it’s amazing what raman, water and sleep can do.

Tomorrow we’re going to go up and explore around Cristi’s place in Chikushino, then go back into central Fukuoka and meet Lauren (our Lauren) for the Dontaku festival, which I don’t have much idea about but am assured is quite a big deal around here. I’m just excited about being stared at by schoolgirls again.

Alright, time to go shove my gear into my newly-acquired Hello Kitty duffel bag. Back in a few days, stay happy alright?

Shaun.

Welcome to the J-Pan...

It’s the weekend (at least my weekend: Sunday and Monday) and I’m lazing around my flat recovering from my welcome party last night. Serious fun was had; after work everyone from the office and a bunch of students got together and we all went out to this all you can eat/drink buffet at a local swanky hotel. The food was great, we started off with beer but soon switched to cocktails (Saori used to be a bartender, so she’s awesome at making drinks). Afterwards one of our students took us all to karaoke- which was so totally fun and so hilarious that I still giggle to think about it; everyone has their preference for music, and while I got to hear a lot of cool Japanese songs my highlights were singing R.E.M. (What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?) Aimee Mann (Lost In Space), Daniel Powter (Bad Day, with Chihiro) Greenday (American Idiot, with Hiroki) and Simon and Garfunkel (Bridge Over Troubled Water, with everyone). We stayed out singing and drinking until 3AM. Total Awesomeness.

It's an unwritten law that in Japan every product, organisation, institution or thing composed of atomic matter needs a cute/bizarre mascot. This is the one for Sasebo city, illustrating the 'sailors and burgers' motif admirably.

I think I’m gonna go shopping today and maybe make some kind of effort to decorate my apartment, it’s looking pretty austere and I think it’d be nice to come home to a few posters and maybe a pot-plant or two… hmmm, I’ll have to think about interior decoration in between lesson planning. Shoot me your suggestions (bearing in mind that cheaper is better).

Still lost in Japan,

Shaun.

Finding Engrish over here is about as hard as finding sand on a beach. Todays dose is courtesy of a sweat top I bought at Jusco yesterday. It may be nonsensical, but its warm, and it was cheap.

Try This at Home.

Leaving your home for an extended period is an experience that produces many demands; the amount of paperwork required to obtain permission to live and work outside your country is often dauntingly large, I burnt out 2 pens filling out forms in triplicate for AEON and working my way through the visa application process. Packing is another mini-nightmare as you try to condense your life to fit airline baggage-limits, 27kg seems a little restrictive considering the amount of 'mandatory' gear (like suits) that's dictated by the company. Thank god I live in an age when so much can be condensed into digital files, not that an mp3 library can really compare with a CD collection, and reading text off a screen doesn't have the visceral charms of holding a book, but at least I'm not flying into a complete void.

One of the not so harsh parts of leaving is the opportunity/obligation of seeing everyone to say goodbye, preferably with as much 'party' attached to the experience as possible. The last few days of my life have been devoted to getting as much 'party' time in as possible. The stories are many, a select sampling:

- Meeting Kombei, one of the supervising teachers for the class of Japanese exchange students who are currently visiting my old high-school. We traded many notes on beer and he taught me a lot about Japanese drinking culture and etiquette. He also said that teaching English is 'really easy', which makes the terror subside ever so slightly.

- Pete using his and Matt's awesome home theatre setup to play ancient games using a NES emulator on his computer. '1943' and 'Guerilla Warfare' are only improved by making their giant pixellated visages many meters across. Truely the ultimate fusion of state of the art and retro.

- Jamie managing to obtain for me a genuine shopping trolley, something I have coveted for a significant period of time. I only regret that I won't have time to use it as a chariot with which to commute to pubs. Still, I'm sure that Pete and Matt will give it a good home, and now they have somewhere to store their ridiculously enormous cache of empty glassware. Many thanks again!

- Walking into unibar to be confronted with a sea of engineers all dressed in green with headbands as part of their 'Binja Turtles' pubcrawl; another one of those things that's a little tough to visulize; so here's a photo:



Aren't they precious?

- Dancing with Kristy to New York, New York (if you can call our vague twirling and swaying 'dancing') it's amazing what you can do after 15 jugs or so of the foamy stuff!

- Hanging out with the workcover crew and having all my questions about GST, birthday cakes and fiscal management answered. They make a great pizza too! Watching Pete throw up out of the taxi door wasn't so fantastic (although we had a great taxi driver, he just pulled over and said 'it's ok'. I even got to meet Leo (Pete's turtle) the next morning; he's major cute!

I pretty much have everything I need all ready, now it's just a matter of packing it all; I had a lot of fun trawling through those 'Australiania' shops looking for gifts to take over, check out my fantastic future office-mascot:


He/She doesn't have a name yet... suggestions gratefully received!

I went to my doctor for a checkup before I left, I got proded, listened and peered into and was pronounced fit to travel. Then I got a very serious lecture about the dangers of binge-drinking and using alcohol as a 'way to fit into a new environment'. Heh, at least I can be confident that my university did it's best to prepare me for that hazard. I promised to only buy vending-machine beer for the novelty value and not to actually drink any.

Tonight I'm off to see my old high school's production of Beauty and the Beast then I'm heartily looking forward to a complete 8 hours (minimum) sleep in my own bed, preferably without any alcohol to 'help' with the process.

Party on world. Just make sure to switch to coffee every once in a while.