07.26.02

You know, it really annoys me how juxtopositions of "Man & Nature" in art are usually steeped in irony and sarcasm. It's always some commentary on how beautiful Nature is and how ugly and clumsy the manmade world is and how absurd they look when thrown together.

What a load of shit.

When I'm coming home at five a.m. after a night of dancing my @$$ off and I see something like what you see to the right, I want to cry it's so beautiful. I mean, not just a little bit, I honestly start to feel like that freaky kid in American Beauty that goes around videotaping everything he thinks is beautiful.

I honestly don't see how someone can look at something like that photo and not understand the inherent beauty contained in the dissonance between the natural and artificial world. It's is exactly because they are so different that they are so felicitous at bringing out each other's aesthetic qualities.

God I love the city.

[In the above paragraphs, please note my use of neato words such as juxtaposition, dissonance and felicitous. My, how sesquipedalian of me.]

**Health Check Update**

Ikeda-san, our supervisor, comes up to us today and explains that the health checks are going to be "public," i.e. a bunch of Town Office employees will be lined up waiting for their turn, will go behind a curtain with the doc and get...ya know..... health checked. She then sidelines into how, if we need to, we can go to a private doctor at another hospital since she knows privacy is an issue with us.

"So, you can go do the group check, and the results will then be handed to the Superintendent," she says, "or you can go to a private doctor and the results will then be handed to the Superintendent."

'Did she fail math?' I wonder, cause this ain't adding up. I've lost count how many times both myself and Fletcher have told her that the Health Check is not the issue, it's the handling of the results!! Who gives a rip if the examination is private if the results are going to get the same treatment they would anyway!!?!?!

That's like saying, "Excuse me waitress. You dropped these scrambled eggs on the floor on the way over here, do you really expect me to eat them?"

"No sir, of course not. How about I have the chef whip up some eggs sunny-side up and I'll drop those on the floor on the way over here instead?"

I mean, how can I not ask, what......the......hell?

07.22.02

I don't know how everybody else feels about it, but I don't think there's been enough pictures since I started the new format, so from today on, I'm bringing back the random photo at the top of every(well, most anyway) entry. The love just keeps on comin', don't it?

Until now that is. Ready for the Bitch o' th' Week©? Here it comes.

I have absolutely no problem with mandatory health checks. Public employees are public, hence they have a lot of contact with people (sometimes called 'the public'), hence they (we) are required to meet certain health standards. I mean, you don't want your own government going and getting you sick, right? I can accept that.

The issue I'm having is that my supervisor cannot guarantee the confidentiality of the results of said health test. She says that only the Superintendent of Education will see them, but then goes on to say that in Japanese people aren't as private about these kinds of things and usually talk about their health test results openly to each other. Hmmmm, that's not exactly inspiring confidence in her claim that only the Superintendent of Education is going to see or hear about these things.

The only reason I bitch about this is because, while I'm not a raging fatass or anything, I can pretty much guarantee (although I am working out again and getting thinner these days), that at the moment most doctors would consider me slightly overweight. Especially a Japanese doctor who is no doubt used to seeing bone-skinny people on the verge of malnutrition and actually having the gall to declare them healthy. Oh yeah, and Fletcher's fat too. (heh heh, I can't wait until he sees this.)

There are horror stories abound in the JET community of health test results leaking to the school staff who then either constantly mock or pester out of concern the poor JET who didn't even want or need the test in the first place. It sometimes even gets as far as the students, and as everyone can remember since we've all been one at some time, Jr. High and High School students are rat-bastards. They won't hesitate for a minute making your life a living hell simply because you like having a few pieces of bacon sandwiched between a couple of twinkies every now and then.

So I'm trying to figure out how I can explain to my supervisor that if anything that's waiting to be discovered in my health tests, good or bad, gets to anyone outside the doctor or the Superintendent of Education, that I will be making lives hell. Remember that line in Casino?

"You beat Nicky with fists, he comes back with a bat. You beat him with a knife, he comes back with a gun. And you beat him with a gun, you better kill him, because he'll keep comin' back and back until one of you is dead."

Yeah, well my name is gonna be Nicky if anyone whose name doesn't start with 'Doctor' or end in 'kyoikucho' (Head of Education) mentions even the slightest reference to my test results.

You heard it here first.

So enough of my bitching for now, it's time to hear some of Fletcher's bitching. Take a look at what he's got to say by clicking here for his latest column.

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