Hi... I've just come back from six days in wonderful Illinois visiting with my friend Bongo and sitting at a table taking photos of people in American Kabuki costumes (it's what I call mass media costumes - superhero, video game, television, movies). We also sold our second issue of Evil Scientist Quarterly (#1 still available). So, if anyone wants a copy - they are $3 apiece (forget about postage) - they are a parody of GQ except it's written by myself with Steve doing the art and pretending he's Terry Gilliam doing the Monty Python cut-out animation. It's very funny. E-mail me!
Since I'm not up to speed yet... the next few days will see some short observations about Japan.
Ever since I first hit by a car while riding my bicycle in a typhoon (I know, two silly things in that one phrase), I have been having just the worst luck with the weather.
It rains every time I travel anywhere in this country: Tokyo; Osaka; Nikko; Kyoto; Beppu; Miyazaki; Kagoshima; Fukashima; Saitama; Gunma (it snowed); Kobe; Tokyo Disneyland (it's actually not in Tokyo, but rather it's in Chiba); and even Thailand (you'll have to wait a bit longer for this adventure).
It's very frustrating. All of my photographs around this wonderful country have rain clouds in them. In fact, it's a sense of great pride and surprise when I actually see a photograph that shows a bit of blue sky in it.
My students know all about my luck with the wet weather because, well, they asked, and I showed them photographs. They gave me an awesome, if rather obvious, nickname: "Ame Otoko" which means "Rain Man".
At first I thought they were calling me "Candy Man". You see the word 'Ame' is spelled and sounds like the Japanese words for 'rain' and 'candy'. It's pronounced 'ah-may'. However, when it is written out in Kanji (the Chinese style lettering/letter), it has two different looks. Of course, 'ame' when written in Kanji also means sky and heavens - but I didn't know that until five minutes ago.
Here are those symbols:
Sky
Heavens
Candy
Rain - actually looks like rain, too!
I did say short observations, didn't I?
Okay... so my students call me Rain Man. My office, the OBOE (Ohtawara Board of Education) picked up on that (there's a gaijin grapevine where everybody knows everything about the local foreigner), and also began referring to my wet making ability. (I know what I wrote and I'm not making a joke about it).
My students politely suggested that I travel to Okinawa to combat the drought going on there, but the OBOE said I wasn't allowed to have two jobs.
They want me to give up my job as an AET (Assistant English Teacher).
Are they kidding me? Why would I give up being an AET? Ugh. I might have to do real work.
Somewhere with a towel,
Andrew Joseph
Today's title is by Deep Purple: WATER
Whoops... wrong video. However, it's a better song than the DP one.
