&= Super-fat babies <"&=" being "somehow equals">

Mr. Knoll has expressed a bit of doubt at the prospect of any progeny of mine being at all fat, should it be born of an Asian mother.  To you, Mr. Knoll, I say:

 

Yes, yes, I see your point.  Fat... Asian.. HA!

 

I should have clarified that I meant super-fat only with respect to the fattitude which the said Japanese grandparents WOULD have expected the child to express.  Because of my contribution to his or her frame, however, the babe would possess far more rotundity than any purely Asian baby would be capable of.  I myself, though one might not think it to look at me now, or at any time past the age of 1 for that matter, was in fact a mega-fat baby.  I had more chins than China-town, my shadow weighed more than most premies, and my baby name of Junior Samples was well-earned, for no morsel nor victual was safe within the ravenous radius of my flabulescent arm which generated a sucking vortex of consumption into which all food-stuffs met their mastication.  Or so they tell me.  I was too busy growing to remember.  Puttin` on the pounds is hard work.

 

So, Mr. Knoll, thank you for the challenge.  I hope the clarification is sufficient... which is to say, torturesome to your soul in its loquacity and affectation.

For the Cause,
--
Joshua <{><

An excerpt from "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", gratis Jonathan Coppadge

'Come, there's no use in crying like that!' said Alice to herself, rather sharply; 'I advise you to leave off this minute!' She generally gave herself very good advice, (though she very seldom followed it), and sometimes she scolded herself so severely as to bring tears into her eyes; and once she remembered trying to box her own ears for having cheated herself in a game of croquet she was playing against herself, for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people. 'But it's no use now,' thought poor Alice, 'to pretend to be two people! Why, there's hardly enough of me left to make ONE respectable person!'"

-Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll

Dancing Bear`s Log - Day three of Elementary School Teaching

Today I taught at Elementary school for the third time.  Four classes  back to back.  What a ringer.  They went really well, though.  The kids had a lot of fun, and that`s about 85% of what I`m there for.

 

Speaking of segues...

 

Someone asked me if I had found myself a Japanese girl yet.  And I answer:

 

I don`t think I would even want a Christian Japanese girlfriend/wife.  For the rest of our relationship she`d constantly be pulled from home... cause I sure as heck ain`t tying myself down to the island of Japan for the rest of my life just so her grandparents get to pinch the super-fat babies.  I may, don`t get me wrong, but she`d have to be pretty darn special.  I`m keeping my options open.  If I marry an American girl, we both have our families in America, and can launch out to anywhere else.  I`ve thought about this.

 

My friend also mentioned that when she was in Japan, she felt like she was living a long vacation or someone else`s life.  I concur.  Its neat and all, but I just have to ask myself... Do I want a cush job for the rest of my life?  The pay is ok, and compared to the `strain` pshaw, please, I could do this with my eyes closed and both hands and a foot tied behind my back while walking a tightrope wire and chewing gum laced with plastic explosives as I play Johnny Mathis on a harmonica using my nostrils in progressively different keys cause its a slide harmonica and I`m changing keys with my ears.  Really.  Its that easy. 

 

And I`ve never even heard Johnny Mathis.

 

But, I need to do something a bit more challenging with my brain and my heart, and I long to be in a place where Christ can use me to feed people.  Maybe child and adolescent psychology/ministry.  I love kids, but I prefer the smaller group interactions and one on one time the most.  Teaching can be fun, but I prefer searching things out with people, rather than trying to help them learn one particular thing.  We shall see.

 

Well everybody,

Until we meet again

On this blessed shore or the next,

Christ Keep You

I need soul glue

At this point, I`m not really feelin the year two thing, to be honest.  I find that the job is cush and that I don`t feel called or compelled to live here permanently, so learning Japanese has slid to the low priority pool, which, by the way, is CHOKED with the flotsam of well-intentioned pursuits.

 

Plus, I want to get my act together and get a degree and a wife or at least a job that pays well enough to save and then go to New Zealand or Fiji or whatever.  Two rather divergent desires.  An accurate dipstick of my inner status.

 

I`ve been doing a lot of crazy talkin` lately.

 

I feel like my internal monologe is a coin flipping and coming down time after time.  Heads says: Having no rudder and only the execution of the here and now has been grinding on me, and I just can`t seem to get it out of my system or get myself out of this rutt.  I have the feeling that I could do something great or more worthwhile or accesing of my talents, but I just don`t know what.  I`m not making much of a difference in these kids lives, I make crud for pay, I`m immersed in a language I won`t use for long, there`s no Christians anywhere nearby so I blow a ton of my budget just going to church. 

 

Tails says: Japan is cool.  I`m having fun.  I`m learning to discipline my life and my habits so that I live heathily and intentionally in body and spirit.  God is surfacing and forcing me to address the issues of my heart.  All in all, I`m glad I`m here and look forward to every day left in my time, and look forward to coming home.

 

Chad, this is where you get to say "I told you so," and where I point out that "I saw it coming and did it anyway" and you get to call me "crazy for doing it anyway" and I plead the fifth and say, "Yeah, but I just wouldn`t be me if I didn`t, would I?"

 

I need to get some soul-glue

And make one self from two.

 

Hangin tight with Jesus,

Josh

Worst Teaching Day Yet

so, I just watched a kid throw a wad of paper at a teacher`s face... and the kid just got away with it

the two of them got up out of their chairs and started talking at each other less than a foot apart, and the other teacher just walked up behind the kid, and tried to get him to come back with her.

and the little crap head just got away with it.

this has been, by far, the worst teaching day of my time in Japan.

i wanted to send that kid through the wall, so I just turned away and put my hand over my mouth and pretended I was somewhere else.  That was second period.  My only consolation is that it can only get better.

the Puppet Master

I think I have discovered my lost calling in the form of elementary school teacher.  I am just too goofy... I think I was born to do this.  The kids I taught today were amazing, too, though, so I`m sure they had a lot to do with it.

It seems like the big difference between elementary and junior high students is that the JH kids either have attitude, lazy-butt syndrome, think they`re too cool to listen to you, or are too shy to even look at you.  In elementary school these kids are still crazy headed little nut-jobs, but at least you can control them like puppets.  Get excited, and they catch it like a virus.  Calm down and use your commanding voice, and its like they`ve been hypnotized.

Of course, the only drawback is that it takes a lot of energy to play the puppet-master, and I am wiped out now.  I had a great time, though.

 

That was only one class.  On Tuesday I teach 4... back to back <shudder>.

-PMJ

They call me... Shika

So, a couple of weeks ago I was getting gas, and the attendant who was taking care of me busted out some English.  It was good.  I was impressed.  I tried using what little Japanese I knew in exchange, and he gave me the pitty compliment "Oh, your Japanese is very good." (Which UNIVERSALLY means, "you suck, but I`m polite" in Japan). 

 

I just ran into him again, about 5 minutes ago, at the community center where I am using the computer.  I looked over at him and said, "Oh, hello!"  About two or three seconds later he got the Gestalt look and said, Oh hello, back.  He asked me how I was or something like that, I told him I had just taught at Fukuroda Elementary School, which by the way went really really well, and we had some nice polite chit chat.  When he went to go, I extended my hand and my name.  This really surprised him... me offering to introduce myself and form an aquaintence with him.  In Japan, the line between the customer and the employee is ironclad and vast.  From what I understand, the principle extends to your fellow employees and whatnot.  Your work friends are your friends at work and NOT outside.

 

So, me bridging the gap and connecting with him meant more than it would in America, I think.  He told me his name, and when I repeated it to him to make sure I got it right, he said, "Please, call me Shika."  I could tell he thought it was cool, and so did I.  He works at the gas station where I go all the time, so I`m sure to see him again.  Maybe I can hang out with him again some time, we`ll see.

This has been a random Japan moment with Josh.  Tune in next time for... "Prices of various fried goods after mark-down hour at the Ecos" 

Christ Keep You All <{><

A picture is worth... not spoiling with words.

Steven, Hideko, Rie, and I went for a little weekend outing recently, and we had some fun with the side walk poles. Me and Steve have future jobs as stunt doubles for Quinten Tarantino and Jessie the Body Ventura.

Rainy Season in Savannah

I actually wrote this a couple of years ago, but its the same prayer I find myself praying these days. The issue of thirst seems to be of paramount importance to my spiritual life. "This is my blood. Drink in remembrance of me." I have not taken communion in months now, and I miss it. It is good to be thirsty, though. I don`t think we`re supposed to find oursleves feeling truly "full" or "slaked" until that Final day.

I wish this poem had more eloquence and refinement... the raw imagery feels a bit juvenile to me when I re-read it. But, its one of the most honest, and therefore best, poems I think I`ve written.

“Rainy Season in Savannah”

When the air is dry it hurts my eyes.
Thirsty, I pluck pebbles from the creek bed
To hurl them at the empty, open skies,
Imagining a deep-gray thunderhead.
I brace myself to split the stormy cloud,
Anticipating saturated nights,
When I may plunge, as draught has not allowed,
From muddy banks down fresh torrential flights
Of earthy blood that spills down thirsty land.
The open veins contain, though don’t restrain.
The dirt’s descending heart pumps into sand
The power to revive this parched terrain;
Unlike my body, circulating blood,
Your Life is boundless current, graceful flood.
Joshua P. Suich 2/18/05 – 3pm

Caught my first snake in Japan!

Today, I have been dripping blood from my sinus and reeling from fatigue and headpain after being sick for a week solid, but all was made right in the world when that moment of bliss descended up on my weary soul. My heart could scarcely contain the joy when my students ran to me saying "Sweechi, Sweechi, come, hebi, hebi!"

It was beautiful. I had seen one before when I had just finished climbing a mountain, a beautiful leafy green and pale flaxen ratsnake. I really should have looked at its head first, to check if it was poisonous, but I guess my instinct was good enough... which was a good thing because when I picked it up by the tail it managed to succeed where at least a half-dozen other snakes had failed, and reached back up to my hand and bit me. It actually didn`t hurt at all, because his teeth were so razor sharp that they slipped into my skin without any feeling. Once he was hanging by (wait... let me count) 9 teeth from he top of his mouth, I felt the wierd tugging sensation of little things under my skin, but even then it was barely recognizable as pain. Those things are SHARP! Whew.

I then placed (dropped) him on the ground and used a broom handle to pin his neck to the ground. Once I got a hold of him below the head, he curled up around my arm and placed his body over his head. He chilled out, and I took him for a tour of Minami Junior High School asking, "Sumimasen, kono hebi wa anatano des ka?" "Excuse me, is this your snake?" I finally found the owner (one brave soul who rose to the occasion and answered my joke with real English, "Oh, its mine!") When I tried to return said hebi to his rightful owner, the young man graciously bequeathed it to me and said, "Oh, no, you must have. You must... have." Of course, I most ardently acquired ownership and maintained the manhandling of the beast, but havning no propper domicile for a reptile, and having been recently forbidden from the ownership of animals in my apartment, I most dolorously divided ways from my new-found, ill-met, but prematurely parted scaly friend.

So anyway, this is a picture from the Web of one of his cousins. Nobody had a camera handy, and he had been a good sport and not pooped ALL over me (just a tad), so I let him off on good behavior. I couldn`t blame him for the bite.

Now if I can just get my hands on some decongestants and get away with my second snake bit not going septic, I`ll be healthy as a horse.

What a great scam

So I taught at an Elementary School for the first time this week! It was great. I loved it. I learned a few very important things, too.

1) Children are creatures of absolutely manipulatable impulse and appetite.
Corrilary: Get them excited and they will love it... this has NOTHING to do with how cool the activity actually is, or how difficult. Make them want to play, and they will work their brains into a smoking blaze.

2) They WILL grab the picture of Spiderman if it is within reach.
Corrilary: If you can`t find magnets to hold the pictures of Spiderman and Venom on the blackboard, DO NOT put them on the floor or you WILL spend the next 4 minutes trying... and I mean trying... to retreive them from the bottom of a dogpile of hot and sweaty 60 lb. Japanese bodies.
Corrilary: If you didn`t conceal it, it was meant to be taken on sight.

3) No amount of immune boosters will save you. Schools are germ-ridden hives of infectious snot-wads.
(I taught on Tuesday, and I`m STILL getting over it.)

4) No, that`s it. I only learned three things. I had a lot of fun, though, and only hope I don`t get ragingly, miserably sick again next time.

And now for the scam. I have discovered that Japanese school children will do almost anything for a sticker. They are all future gamblers, and so small shiny or colored objects that represent raw 'special points' will drive them into a frenzied lust for any token. So, Suich Sensei has established the economy of 1 1cm yellow smiley face sticker for a vigorous 30 second shoulder rub. Too weak or too short results in no sticker. The kids form a que to do this.

I have been making model paper castles in my free time at school. My free time vastly outweighs my actual work time. When I come back to America, I will be ruined.

I love my job.

Speaking of which, I am going to church in Fukushima (about 30 minutes north) tommorow. I am very excited. I`m meeting the Costanzo`s who live to the north. Apparently they have a circle of about a dozen Christian English teachers in the area. I may have struck pure gold here. I`ll report back ASAP.

Christ Keep You All,
Joshua P. Suich, aka スイっチ Sensei

My first church experience

so this saturday afternoon i hopped in the car and drove down to Chiba (im currently texting this blog entry while driving back, capitalizing on the traffic jam). i went to Oyumina/Honda church pastored by Dan Iverson. it was so refreshing and encouraging on so many levels.