No I will not marry your daughter....

Circa early Aug.

So last night I got to talk to a friend of mine Beth (who is a JET in fukuyama) and instead of letting me enjoy speaking english for just a bit, Japan decided it would be better if it remade Hitchcock's The Birds....with earwigs. In Japanese they are called "Hasamimushi" which means "Scissor bugs" - I find this name somewhat more comforting, considering the english name came from the fact that the bugs apparently crawl in your ear whilst you sleep and lay eggs....ugg. I swear I committed some sort of international crime with the amount of them I killed last night. Every time I'd get one, another one would just pop up, or fall on my head, literally out of thin air. Ridiculous. I wake up this morning to Coco Puffs (when I saw them in the grocery story, I was compelled to buy the store out, which meant that I got one pack of Coco Puffs....), a shower, some more earwigs, and then off to work. Per usual, I sat at my desk and wondered if I should actually be working or not and decided to do a little preparation for classes coming up. Preparing posters, laminating things (that was an experience) and games, lots of games. I feel like I'm getting ready to run my own class, but alas, I am but a lowly ALT (which, don't get me wrong, has its perks). Sometimes I wish I were at a high school, but other times I'm glad I'm not! Little kids have a lot more energy and don't realize that English is actually an impossible language and there is no point in studying it....ok so I jest, but they are actually interested in english and games and fun, as opposed to high school which I hear is more about doing well on the entrance exam into college.

Today was also buy my plane ticket for orientation in Kagoshima City (the main city in the prefecture). So the lady who sits next to me decides to take me for a ride (the place is a block away). We get in her car and she looks at me and says that she isn't very good at driving. I laugh with her until she says, 'Really, I'm not very good, especially at backing up'. I chuckle a few nervous laughs and tighten my seat belt as we begin to back out of the parking lot (which isn't really a parking lot, more of a gravel field with no rules for parking....). We go to the store and are greeted by a lady who is going to sell me my ticket. She seems very nice at first, until she asks the dreaded question - Do you have a girlfriend? - In Japan, a girlfriend is signaled by lifting the pinky finger up and waving it around. I get this a lot, I mean pretty much every woman I meet greets my by holding up her pinky and shaking it around. I should just walk everywhere with my little pinky up just to let everyone know I HAVE A GIRLFRIEND AND DO NOT WANT YOU TO SET ME UP, THANK YOU VERY KINDLY THOUGH. I laugh and tell her I don't and then she gets serious. 'Well I've got a daughter in tokyo, she's very pretty' and then laughs a bit. A little surprised (why should I be, I mean I DO have blue eyes) and then says that it would be a great thing. We could get married, I could teach her english, take her on trips to australia, she could teach me japanese....I'm trying to politely decline, but it is of no avail. While it's clear she is sort of joking, she is also sort of not joking in that `I'm being serious that you should meet and marry my daughter` sort of way that mothers get, it was a strange endeavor which I can only assume will happen again. I'm thinking of just lying next time and saying that I have a girlfriend in America whom I love very much and is very pretty, thank you very much. Something tells me that wouldn't really stop them, hell it might even make them more determined!

Well annnnyway, I'm off to go look at a car, it is apparently metallic gray and is a manual, so we'll see how it goes, I'll keep ya updated, having a car would be nice, even if it is a small island.

-Josh