On to Details

It's been a while. A serious while. I sort of thought about playing it off, "Hey guys, so this long reprise from writing was an intentional exploit into... (blah blah blah)." But really, I've just been doing other things and subjecting this poor blog to heaps of neglect.

Anyway, this whole apologizing for not writing often seems to have become somewhat habitual, so from here on out, though I will attempt to keep posts more regular, let's just forgo the introductory platitudes.

And henceforth dropping the (semi-)chronological recounting here on Nihon and Brandon's Nonsense, we'll delve more in depth into some interesting aspects that are Japan and Brandon. Of first note is that doing this is itself a comment on what "settling in" has taken place. In less pedantic and obfuscated terms, I'm seeing Japan with a more detailed vision and so can actually write about details instead of sweeping (and probably wildly irrelevant) generalizations.


One thing that I've noticed are cravings, or rather, the abating of their previously frequent visits. Think, "oh, God, I must absolutely have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or I will surely die in gruesome and wholly unappetizing ways" or "Goldfish, goldfish, goldfish, GOLDFISH NOW!" kind of thoughts. First, mentioning peanut butter and jelly sandwiches around here will solicit all kinds of "eww" faces. Seriously. Second, peanut butter in Japan is something entirely not peanut butter, rather some newfound way of turning peanuts in to an incredibly creamy and quite ridiculously sweet substance which is called ピーナツバター. Yeah, and mentioning sweet, I won't even go into the sugary sugariness that is called jam here. So, good ol' fashioned PB&J's are relegated to reminiscence. . . except that my lovely mother (give her a hug) sent a care package with all sorts of American goodies.

But such cravings have waned and if there are any they now tend to be more for things like sushi or gyudon, namely Japanese cuisine stuff. Which placed my tongue in interesting territory with that care package that my mom sent. The stuff I had been craving before didn't taste anything like the wonder and glory I had been imagining. Now, by no means was it un-tasty, but in the course of learning to enjoy various types of seaweed, fish, and miso soup, there seems to have undergone a paradigm shift in my gustatory sense. Things just taste different.

Another indicator of the settling in is that I've begun to dislike specific things. Actually, that's not quite true, but from time to time I dislike certain specific things that pop up in the course of going about my business. I'll be more specific. With an anecdote!

My beloved company Cosmo deals in all sorts of English education facets--not just sending poor, unwary Americans to Japanese middle schools. One way they do this is by offering small English classes to the adult public. And a perquisite of being an AET for them is that you can take on teaching some of these classes on the side. That's where I said, "yes, please." So a couple Thursdays ago was my first class, and in classic Brandon fashion, I got lost.

The short story is that, tough I left about 45 minutes early, I was about 15 minutes late. The longer-winded version is that I hopped on the wrong train, which just happened to intermittently be an express train going really far (and bypassing in between stops), and trying to be early as possible, I didn't check whether the train I was boarding was local or express. It was express.

The stop I need to get off at is about a 2 minute ride, so when I was still barreling down the tracks 30 minutes later, I was beginning to suspect that somewhere, something went wrong. So, as soon as possible, I hopped on a train going the opposite direction, back to where I needed to get off, calculating that I would make it with a hair's breath of time to spare, in fact I was 2 minutes late.

Unfortunately, I had boarded the wrong train line entirely and instead of getting off at the station close to my classroom, I was another 10 minutes away by walking (at this point my face is sad). Well, I arrived to class fine; the two students were self-studying, and everything seemed fine. We just held class a little later than normal to make up the difference for being late, and in fact ended up staying way later answering questions and chatting.

Well, my company was seriously unhappy. They became an evil monster of grouch. The main issue here apparently revolves around a phone call. I should have called them before 7 which is when the class officially starts. However, not being able to make phone calls on the train, I thought it was a choice of either getting off at a bodunk station with very few trains stopping there, calling my company early, but being 30 minutes later in the process; or calling the company a bit late but being more modestly late. The choice I made is apparently an American analysis of the situation and from the Japanese viewpoint quite selfish.

Well, interestingly, Cosmo seems to be the only irritated party in this matter, having had to make apology phone calls. But that's just it. I feel like it's nonsense. Why are they irritated? The students are not mad (especially since I have volunteered 30 extra minutes after each class for conversation and the like) and nobody was inconvenienced. Yet, all that is beside the point according to my company. Late is late. Bad is bad.

So, this somewhat dogmatic view of things left me with a slightly bitter taste. Yet, I'm glad to be encountering these kind of things. Somehow, it feels more real to taste all of sweet, sour, bitter and salty.

So that's that.