08.07.02

Right, so the Health Check the other day was utterly ridiculous. 2nd graders playing doctor could have performed a more revealing inspection than these "doctors." The only thing the 2nd graders would have lacked was the 400 year-old X-ray machine in the back of a truck(!!) they used to check for cancer, which I'm sure they'll find in a few months thanks to that very same, antique cancer-inducing X-ray machine.

At one point I went behind the curtain and the doc checks out my breathing and heart and then feels around my neck area for tumors or something. She asks (in perfect English, which was weird) if there's anything that's bothering me. I stow the backlog of sardonic comments just waiting to leap out at her and mention that I've had a small tingle on my left shoulder on and off for the past month or so. She then feels around the shoulder area and tells me that both my heart and breathing are fine and that she can't feel anything around my shoulder so she thinks I'm fine.

........ WHAT!?!!?

Gee, Doc, thanks for the laying on of hands. I'm sure the Gods will take my petetion for continued existence under careful consideration. Aren't you even going to give me a leech to bleed my upper-left quadrant so as to relieve my shoulder of it's unholy-imbalance of evil? Jesus Christ!!

According to the Japan National Cancer Center, malignant neoplasms, Heart diseases, cerebrovascula diseases (whatever the hell that is) and pneumonia are the top four causes of death in Japan. I could be in the final stages of all of them and these doctors wouldn't have a fucking clue until I'm dead!! Even then, they'd probably just attribute it to natural causes. Man, screw this, I'm finding a Doctor that studied somewhere other than Japan and having them check out my shoulder. This is ri-goddamn-diculous.

Moving right along...

It's been rather quiet on the Engrish front recently (which reminds me, I still need to redesign the Engrish Page). I did however don my photographer hat recently and manged to get out and hunt down a few for your consumption.

It's always neat to run across things you've done that you've forgotten about that didn't seem like a big deal at the time, but kind of impress you after the fact. While searching for a file on my hard drive the other day, I came across a fax I sent to one of my Elementary Schools a month or so ago. It's just a simple lesson plan, but if you had shown me this a year ago and told me that I would be writing documents in Japanese like this, I would have laughed in your face. Pretty cool.

As I'm in the midst of preparing for this week's list o' Raves about Japan, I figured we could open things with a brief blurb from our correspondant in Dazaifu, Angela (mmmmmmm, Angela). She chimes in with one of her little things that just makes Japan a neat place to live, despite their hideously incompetent moron-doctors. So let's see what she's gotta say.

by Angela
Hair Flap Correspondant

Let me introduce you to Running Man.  Our paths cross on our commutes to work.  He is always running towards the train station as I am walking away from it. We always pass at the exact same place, just like clockwork. 

I can't understand why he doesn't leave a little earlier each day so he wouldn't have to sprint to make his train.  I can honestly say that I have never seen him walking and I actually look forward to our passing each morning. 

He puts a smile on my face every time. 

08.05.02

So this is an update I had intended to post on Friday night of last week. It's been sitting all but done on the desktop for two and a half days. I needed all of about 10 minutes to post the damn thing, and I haven't even had that.

My schedule is such that it requires me, even on the weekends, in the middle of summer vacation, to wake up at the crack of dawn, leave immediately and not get back until late when I'm so exhausted that all I can do is fall down and start sleeping just to do it all again the next day. The main problem with this being that I can't do things that need to be done, like laundry, dishes, or cleaning up anything from the nachos party me, Fletch and Ben had with three girls from work about three days ago now. Holy God my place just stinks right now. It's honestly disgusting. I hate my life.

Despite the fact that the fallout from the nachos party has imbued my apartment with the stench of a decaying pile of raw death, the party itself was pretty fun and I make some kick-@$$ nachos, if I do say so myself. Just look at em! Don't they look delicous?

And yes, that's the girls' cocker-spaniel, Nonki, who is eyeing said nachos very suspicously. I think Fletcher likes this dog about as much as I do, because when he wasn't spilling my chicken nuggets from the freezer all over the floor (damn you, Fletcher!!!) he was intimidating the dog by barking at it and scaring it shitless. That's what the little bastard gets for crawling all over my couch (the dog, not Fletcher). You really should click on that picture, it's quite hilarious. It's things like this that make me proud to know Fletcher.

Of course, that didn't really solve any problems because the dog still needed something to do, so he resorted to trying to hump his owner's shoulder for the remainder of the night. Have I mentioned how pleased I was that there was a dog in my home? >:-(

So as you probably noticed, I managed to post last week's ranting without the photos of the donut box that I was yapping about. Turns out that I can't find the damn donuts anywhere now. They used to falling out of the sky. As I would walk down the sidewalk, people would actually roll down their car windows and pelt me with boxes of these donuts as they sped by. I've not the slightest inkling why they have suddenly disappeared, unless Japan ran out of plastic to wrap them in, that is.

I had also neglected to post a pic of that 7-11 bag with the "let's live eco-life" logo that I was talking about, so here it is now. Happy?

I'm still working on this week's Rave response to last week's Rant. This week is going to be a hectic one since I have a shit-ton of things to do for work (more translation...mmmmmmmmm), on top of getting ready for my two-week trip to Tokyo and Kyoto starting next week.

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