life on a stratovolcano ^{oshima edition}

Ah, the question of the day. Evidently we have a mouse problem in the office, which I missed due to my inability to give anything even remotely resembling attention during the morning meetings. I really should have pieced this together when I saw the “Wanted” sign complete with a picture of a very adorable mouse above the sink in the staffroom. Unfortunately, if a sheet of paper has even one Japanese character on it, I tend to actively ignore it. This lead to a near-disaster about ten minutes ago, when I reached down to grab some of the delicious omiyage (random souvenir food) that someone had left out. As I reached for it, one of my ever-helpful co-workers asked me what the hell I was doing, causing me to lose interest in said omiyage. I grabbed my bento (store-prepped lunch box) out of the bag, cleared out a spot on the staffroom table as best as I could (which isn’t very much — this place can look like a landfill sometimes) and began chowing down on it. At this point, the English teacher across the table asked me a very disconcerting question.

Him: “Why are you eating your lunch on the mouse poison?”
Me: “Umm… What?”
Him: “That box is mouse poison. See all the mice on it?”
Me: “I thought that was some year-of-the-rat thing!”
Him: “Nope, mouse poison.”

As it turns out, the scrumptious omiyage — that I had been so viciously food-blocked from by my co-worker — was actually rat poison. Very tasty looking rat poison, but poison nonetheless. One disconcerting feature of this is that it lacked the familiar “eat me and become me” skull-and-crossbones pattern. Since this, I’ve started contemplating other things that I’ve accidentally ingested that I probably wasn’t supposed to. I mean, if Paulette washed her clothes with bubble bath for a very long time, and Rob kept dishsoap for shampoo (granted, he doesn’t have very much hair), then what I have I bought and eaten that isn’t actually food? Am I using “DO NOT EAT” silica gel for seasoning? Am I slowly building up a Rasputin-like tolerance to all things deadly? All I know is that I’m going go and learn the kanji for “poison” right now. Wish me luck.

7:20 - Alarm goes off. Wakes me up from “very good” dream. I get angry. Reset alarm for 7:30.

7:30 - Alarm goes off again. Reset alarm for 7:50.

7:35 - Wake up and realize that was a very bad idea, since I had to be at work by 8:00. Reset alarm for 7:41.

7:41 - Roll over, check up on all the lives of my friends around the world on my iPod. Pull myself off of my futon, promptly fall over due to non-functional right leg. Throw on the same clothes from yesterday.

7:42 - Stumble over to the bathroom to brush my teeth.

7:42 - Decide that I’m too lazy to put my contacts in. Put glasses on instead. Realize I haven’t done laundry in weeks when I’m forced to put on a pair of running shorts as underwear.

7:45 - Survey the Hell that is my apartment. Note to self: clean up when you get home.

7:45-7:50 - Stare into space, trying to figure out what the hell I’m supposed to be doing right now.

7:55 - Grab wallet, iPod, cell phone, exit house.

7:55 - Get on bike. Realize I forgot my helmet and keys. Re-enter house. Grab helmet and keys.

7:56 - Get on bike. Realize I forgot my laptop. Re-enter house. Forget why I re-entered the house.

7:57 - Remember why I re-entered house. Grab laptop. Exit house. Forgot helmet inside again. Say “fuck it” and jump in my car instead. Wave to the music teacher as she sprints out the door (we are both equally late or early every day; I think she does it on purpose).

8:00 - Arrive at school. Forget to say “Good Morning” to the security guard. He shouts it angrily at me after I get into the foyer. Remove shoes. Run upstairs.

8:01 - Enter the office. Everyone glares at me for being a minute late.

8:01-8:10 - Make coffee. Drink said coffee. Stare into space until my English teacher arrives.

8:10 - English teacher arrives. I inform him that I’m going to need the Language Lab. English teacher freaks out because I didn’t tell him until today. Enter Schadenfreude.

8:15 - English teacher informs me that he’s secured the Language Lab. I realize that I will be paying for this in passive-aggressivity for weeks. Oh well.

8:15-8:20 - Realize that I’m missing the monthly “outside” morning meeting. There is a surprising lack of “caring” in me at the moment.

8:20-8:30 - Sit at my desk listening to music.

8:30 - Enter language lab. 25 students are waiting for me. I boot up the computer. Nothing happens.

8:31 - Flip the circuit breaker — the Language Lab activates. Turn on computer. Little flashing light starts blinking. “Doh.”

8:31-8:38 - Try to get the computer working. Epic failure.

8:38 - Students looking bored and frustrated. English teacher looks to be wanting to eat me alive. Run downstairs, grab my computer, run back upstairs, try to splice my computer into the projector.

8:39 - Fail.

8:40 - Limp down the stairs, grab the first worksheet I see off of my desk. It’s a cypher puzzle.

8:40 - Dash across the hall to the copy room. Boot up copy machine. Wait.

8:42 - Copy machine boots up. Set to 25 copies. Copy machine starts spitting out paper that looks nothing even remotely like the worksheet I made. Stop copy machine. Grab random teacher in the room and gesture wildly at it. He fixes it.

8:43 - Copy machine prints the copies. I realize that I have the cypher’s answers on the worksheet. Cover it up and start over.

8:44 - Copy machine gives error in Japanese. Fuck. Change to slow copy machine. Machine prints 8 pages, and then stops, giving another error. I reach over to the inside of it to grab my paper, and toner spills all over my hands. Gets all over everything. Start making copies again with the other slow machine.

8:47 - Copies finish. Run upstairs, copies in hand, smearing toner all over everything I touch. Enter Language Lab and remove shoes. English Teacher does not look amused. Students are laughing hysterically. I pass out the copies.

8:50 - Students start arriving at parts of the code which aren’t visible due to the copy machine. I make stuff up. Teacher is not amused.

8:50-9:10 - Students work diligently, actually having quite a bit of fun. Teacher relaxes. I think back over my “wonderful” morning.

9:11 - Students leave. I apologize to English Teacher. English Teacher’s words of “No problem! It’s really okay!” belie the seething hatred of all things Tyler in his eyes.

9:13 - Return to the office. Zone out. Listen to music. Study Kanji.

10:00 - Other English Teacher comes up to my desk. Informs me in no uncertain terms that my schedule change that I made where I blow off one class so that I can have five days off in a row instead of two is “ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY, NOT OKAY.” I nod my head, act like everything’s peachy, and silently plot my passive-aggressive revenge.

10:13 - Check e-mail. Begin writing blog entries.

11:01 - Take a break to buy lunch. Realize that the bento store has already been called, and I’m going to have to go get my own. Shoot the shit with other teachers for a while.

11:15 - Return. Write this. Wonder what the hell else is in store for me today.

Stay tuned.

Rant 1: The day before yesterday I decided that I didn’t want to cook, so I jumped on my motorcycle and headed down to Mag, the darts bar on the island. I ate my usual dinner of Taco Rice, watched an episode of Family Guy on the iPod, and then jumped on my bike and started to head back to my house. I started heading down the extremely narrow road next to the bar down toward the beach. As I veered to the right to cross the bridge next to the beach, I suddenly realized that I had no traction whatsoever, and the next thing I knew, the bike had slid out from under me and I was sliding across the pavement. I was totally in shock; within seconds, I grabbed my bike, picked it back up, started it, and drove home. As I recanted the incident in my head, I realized what had happened: I had slid on some sand. I have to take the bike to the shop now. Fortunately, I escaped with only a limp as my wallet drove into the top of my leg, doing something weird to it. The black biker jacket is all kinds of scratched up now though — if I wasn’t wearing it, I could have done some serious damage to myself.

So fuck black sand.
Fuck black sand on black pavement.
Fuck black sand on black pavement at night while riding a motorcycle.

And I still have to train for this 6k race in ten days. Balls.

That is all.

Just watched Spider-Man in Japanese. Mom’s coming in tomorrow. This evening I just saw the most beautiful sunset I’ve seen in a while. On Oshima, a few minutes after the sun sets, there’s a period of about three minutes where the entire sky explodes into color. I haven’t seen anything like it anywhere else in the world.

Life is good.

I tried to get on the jetfoil to help mom get in, but unfortunately the ships were canceled due to the insane wind and waves. My neighbor told me that one of the teachers got stuck at sea on the jetfoil for four hours, and everyone was getting horribly sick. Glad I wasn’t there.

So mom’s on the ship alone right now. I hope she sleeps through the ride and doesn’t eat too much jet lag — especially since I reserved the ticket weeks ago and I still couldn’t get her a reserved spot. She has to sleep on the floor.

Damn, I’m tired. I just wanted to get something up here.

Lata.

I just had one of the more awesome nights ever. We went to a Brazilian bar in Roppongi that was closing down, and they offered up a 3000 yen all you can eat/drink for the last night. It was unreal. My camera got passed around like a two-dollar hooker, so I might post pictures here, but I’m afraid my family might have heart attacks.

See you on Oshima!