I just saw a huge fucking monkey walking through a field! From th window of this train. I'd heard there were monkeys in Japan, 1st time I saw one though. Wish I'd gotten a picture, this thing was really big

無事でした

Posting from my iPhone.

Just found out my friends grandparents are alive, not sure what the holdup was on getting in touch with them. But everyones relieved, it's a pretty good day.

4 days left in town. My stuff is like 90% ready. Trying to ship everything tomorrow.

We`re doing a recap episode....?

FYI, this is my last post for the month. i`m busy.

take a look at this chart from XKCD

so yeah, don`t worry about those reactors anymore. Fukushima might expose you to more radiation than you get from living in Denver for a day, but less radiation than a chest x-ray. and the latest bulletin from my employer says that the temperature in all 6 reactors is below water`s boiling point of 100 degrees celsius, source (Japanese only, sorry....i wonder why I bothered to link that) but the english versions of the radiation reports are available now. i am really fucking tired of hearing about radiation.

I`ll just say this one more time, for the last time, to consider donating to the relief effort if possible. alot of displaced people are battling the cold weather with no electricity and very little food and water. having realized that, people here are really coming together and trying to support the victims as best they can. I`ve seen a lot of good things here lately, fundraising and benefits and collecting stuff to send up north, etc. everyone`s on the same team here it seems, perhaps it`s part of the Japanese spirit that my Japanese friends frequently try to explain to me. this country was completely wrecked by WWII and one day came back stronger than ever. that`s why I know that Japan will, eventually, make a full recovery. It`s going to take time of course, time and a lot of money. but it will get done, because the world needs Japan. incidentally, I saw a crane fly past a few days ago, the bird which is the symbol of long life here.

(better) info about how to donate

Anyway....

this is shaping up to be a pretty long post actually. there`s a lot of things I want to say, some things I don`t wanna say, and some things I would say but can`t explain them too well. March 22nd is a day I`ve decided to kind of make my own personal holiday, it being the day that I landed here 1 year ago. so, I`ve already achieved a year of living here without getting fired from my job. Actually, I did pretty good this year, according to the boss, so that`s nice. This being one of the most unique cultures anywhere, a lot has happened in 1 year. overall it`s been really great. there were bad times too of course, but that will happen to you wherever you live. I don`t have many regrets this year and I`m looking forward to the next one, although I`m moving onwards to another part of the country, bringing this chapter of my time here to a close. it`s time for Bonkers Adventure Chapter 2: the next chapter (i`m not good with titles ok?)

anyway let`s recap a little bit:

GOOD: I made a lot of good friends who I care about
BAD: now I have to say goodbye to them

GOOD: I lived as an outsider in this society for a year
BAD: I lived as an outsider in this society for a year

GOOD: I travelled the country quite a bit and went to lots of cool places
BAD: ....theres nothing bad about that

GOOD: I learned how to drive on the left side of the road
BAD: Driving is a fucking shitshow here

いい: I`m really happy with my Japanese ability
最悪: fluency is still far, far, far away

GOOD: I went on some awesome dates
BAD: I had some bad dates (my fault perhaps?)

GOOD: I played Taiko and even got to perform
BAD: I`m not sure if I`ll be able to play Taiko anymore

GOOD: I got invited to a bunch of parties
BAD: i spent a lot of time being drunk

GOOD: I learned how to play Shogi
BAD: I`m not very good at it

GOOD: i got a drivers license in a foreign country, thats pretty cool
BAD: that was absolutely fucking unbelievable, that whole thing there

BAD: The Sendai earthquake

GOOD: My cooking`s getting a little better. i think....

GOOD: I played sushi roulette with the half-price sushi you can get at the grocery store at the end of business hours cos they weren`t able to sell it that day
REALLY GOOD: I didn`t get sick from doing that repeatedly

and I could go on and on.

to be honest, friday, saturday and sunday I was drinking hard. why? well for one thing, classes are finished at school. but mainly, お別れ会. Farwell parties. in this culture, when you leave, it`s kind of a big deal. therefore, when somebody`s leaving, you throw them a party, and so i`ve gotten a few parties, almost to the poitn where i feel guilty about it. i mean, hey, i`m friends, real good friends with a few of the folks here, but i still feel bad when one of my Japanese buddies pays for me to get drunk just because i`m changing jobs & location. it`s a cultural thing i suppose, because people here really don`t change jobs that much. but no matter how informal it may be, you still gotta say something about the time you spent with those people. a speech, a comment, they want you to say something about the time you spent together. really, there`s so much i could say to them all, but in the name of civility, i don`t say everythihng i could. it`s kind of polite to say ( )を忘れることが出来ません。 I can`t forget ( ). so when I was thinking about what i wanted to say beforehand, the whole year came back to me at once. turns out i don`t fucking care about the all the time i spent at work not working, all the time i spent waiting for trains, all the time i spent waiting in offices or anything like that. those are absolutely forgettable, 確かに忘れることが出来るよ！ where i came from, to say "I`ll never forget ( )" in front of a bunch of people is too melodramatic. but after some thought, there are definitely alot of things I`ll never forget

I`ll never forget telling off the hooker that Ogawa bought for me,

I`ll never forget Ryuuta asking why I was never coming back to his school again,

I`ll never forget just saying no to drugs in Doushimura,

I`ll never forget yelling at my co-teacher in the staff room, because goddamit we wanted these kids to learn something we just never saw eye-to-eye

I`ll never forget getting my first translation job because Amemiya believed in me,

I`ll never forget all the ridicule,

I`ll never forget all the hospitality,

I`ll never forget why I asked for this transfer in the first place,

I`ll never forget all the times telling my tutor I just couldn`t fucking do it and her showing me that I could,

I`ll never forget why I rediscovered the bible,

I`ll never forget my first Japanese part-time job at the bar,

I`ll never forget when Jhyie told me to go fuck myself,

I`ll never forget all the time we put into practicing Taiko,

I`ll never forget putting that practice to work and performing at the morning market,

I`ll never forget meeting the local Yakuza,

I`ll never forget eating Taiyaki in Manriki Park with Maiko and I`ll never forget what she told me,

I`ll never forget going ballistic at the license center,

I`ll never forget how scared i was, walking into my first class, on my first day,

I`ll never forget dragging my friend out of the bar and taking a punch to the jaw,

I`ll never forget Asami crying at 6 in the morning in K-town and what it felt like when she asked me not to move west,

I`ll never forget where I was during the great Sendai earthqake,

I`ll never forget making one of the best friends i`ve ever had and how much he taught me,

I can`t ever forget the people here, I can`t forget this year.　

あんなに思い出忘れることが出来ないよ。

--これを書いたの外国人
Athens riot dog says: "your argument is invalid!"

lets math

here`s a dumb question that i can`t figure out the answer to.

radiation is sometimes measured in bananas apparently. in other news, bananas are radioactive.

1 banana is 0.1 USV of radiations, whatever that is

the radiation detected in my prefecture last night was 0.045

so, the radiation in my prefecture is:

A.) 0.045 * 0.1 = 0.0045 bananas

or

B.) 0.045 / 0.1 = 0.45 bananas

which one is it?

about Fukushima NPP

the mood here right now where i`m at, an unaffected area, is tense. another massive earthquake has been predicted within 3 days, because of damage to tectonic plates from the last quake or something like that, so people are trying to prepare for that possibility. I`m not as prepared as I`d like to be, hoping to remedy that today.

had some earthquakes over the weekend but things kind of calmed down yesterday and every quake today was less than 3.0

they`re going to start turning off our power soon, for about 3 hours at a time. trains aren`t running here today, at least not the commuter ones. but this is just minor crap compared to what people in Tohoku are dealing with right now. on that topic, perhaps consider making a donation?

still no word from my friend`s grandparents in Iwade pref., still got our fingers crossed though.

news coverage outside Japan seems to be stuck on the nuclear reactors. i`m not good enough at science to really know what to say about it, but this really long article says it`s not going to be a problem. not the most official source, certainly. but on the other hand, we haven`t gotten instructions to take any special precautions here, so i think its alright.

i`m fine

well Japan just suffered something between a 7.9 to 8.9 quake, around 4 hours ago my time. this is actually my second earthquake, i remember a small one in january that rattled things in my apartment.

but this quake was crazy, i was washing my hands in the bathroom when all of a sudden i couldn`t balance and had to grab the sink to stay on my feet. i knew i hadn`t been drinking so i didn`t know why i wasn`t able to keep standing, it took me a second to figure out that the entire fucking school was shaking! it shook for at least a minute too. in the hallway, the teachers were (literally) running around like WTF?! i asked one what to do and he ran right by me. i kinda forgot all my earthquake safety trivia in that moment. well my co-teacher saw me standing there and said "go outside!" (unspoken sub-text: "you idiot!") so the whole school ran outside. there were a bunch of different alarms going off too.

the kids looked like they were keeping their cool better than the teachers tbh. now, the news is saying this is apparently the biggest earthquake in Japan`s recoreded history, so maybe they were too scared to be making a ruckus as usual.

then we started getting the aftershocks, and even when sitting down i could still feel the ground moving, it actually felt kinda like bouncing up and down in a car seat, maybe like the school bus for example. then we turned on the tv and watched tsunami after tsunami roll in one after another along the eastern coast. there were boats, cars and houses flowing through towns. and we all saw a dead body floating along as well on the live broadcast, before the camera cut away.

we watched a huge debris filled wave flow through sendai, smashing all the little greenhouses and such in its way. it was being filmed from a helicopter, so we could see the people who were driving the wrong way to get away from this thing in their cars get swallowed up by this huge dirty black mass, part of which was on fire. i just heard about 20 minutes ago that Sendai airport is underwater.

phone lines are clogged, obviously. not that I really have anyone to call. see i don`t have any family here, but at least one of my friends is trying to reach relatives in Iwade pref. so that`s not really something i would want to be going through.

it looks like the whole north-eastern Tohoku region got fucked up pretty badly.

ーーこれを書いたの外国人

update! this was the 7th largest earthquake in human history and released more energy than an atomic bomb, there`s already a wikipedia page on it