The fact that I haven’t written anything here for, ooh going on 6 months (actually closer to a year, looking at my blog dates), is probably an indicator of how much I’ve been up to. In fact, it should be seen as a testament to my laziness of late. I have actually been writing entries but either decided against posting them for all to see or have simply forgotten to, hence the laziness. Those in the former category are usually omitted as they’d hold as much interest to people who aren’t me as would listening to the rumblings of someone dissatisfied with daily inane goings-on. Which is, coincidently, exactly what most of them consisted of. Also, I’ve discovered that this blog is accessible from Google under the search term “choseibi”. Try it. I command not only the pole position on the list of results, but also second place as well. I almost deleted the entire thing when I was told of this; thankfully another ALT discovered the fact rather than one of my JTEs. Hello Rachel! Still, a lot of my unpublished entries were negative in the extreme and covered such fascinating topics as the Japanese medical system and cash flow. Oh, and a review of Cloverfield. Most of these entries were therapeutic rants rather than observations of any interest and posting them here seems an unnecessary risk. Anyway.
Three months to go. This is a fact I have to keep reminding myself of, as it seems so ridiculous. Three months? Surely not. It was six months only last week. Wasn’t it? No, it wasn’t. Time has not so much flown as chartered a jet, and taken its best mates Day, Week and Month too. My exact date of return has yet to be set but I’m grasping at the idea of it being sometime in early August. Because of the proximity of my triumphant repatriation, job applications stream constantly from my computer into the jungle that is the interwebnet. So far all appear to be lost, no doubt eaten by some backwards tribe of Email Filters, their remains shovelled hastily into the rapids of the great river Rejection. Never mind, I have plenty of volunteers left.
I’ve been experiencing a great deal of Lasts recently: my last Golden Week holiday, my last Self Introduction lesson, my last birthday in Japan. Even with all these minor farewells the imposing fact of my imminent departure seems to evade my mind, meaning that I’m not all that worried about leaving. No doubt I’ll cast a furtive look back as I enter the plane at Tokyo in six (no wait, three) months time but from where I sit now it’s hard to see much I’ll think of during the inevitable fits of manic tears after I return home. I don’t want this entry to veer into my own un-publishable territory but there’s little of my current day-to-day situation that I’ll miss with much enthusiasm. There’s the obvious apprehension that precedes any life change, but so far it hasn’t overwhelmed my current disposition of pleasant oblivion. By that I suppose I mean that I’m not really anywhere, mentally, at the moment. My daily life consists of appearances, being at a certain place at a certain time like a soap star’s supermarket opening schedule. I imagine the job satisfaction is of a comparable level also.
Still, I owe it to my future self, as disease ridden and incontinent as he may be, to make the best of the time yet available. Hannah and I are in the planning stages of a trip to Okinawa where we shall dance on the ancient fields of victory, singing the American national anthem and raising the Stars and Stripes, adorned as we shall be in George W. Bush masks. Hannah has decided to stay for another year, a prudent decision based on the fact that I won’t be here, but will accompany me home for a fortnight’s holiday. It works for her; family reunion, much missed cockney bantering, and it works for me; a gentle learning curve and an excuse to do nothing for a while longer. Aside from these pleasant distractions, Mum and Dad are visiting at the moment. No doubt at this very moment of typing they find themselves in Narita airport surrounded by otakus and hentai. Assuming they emerge unsullied we’ll be meeting them in Fukuoka this weekend.
This brings me quite nicely onto my final paragraph, that being the one you, the reader, is reading right now; my wants. There are certainly more than a few activities I wish to avail myself of before I leave and this paragraph has been reserved for the purpose of listing them and perhaps expanding upon them by giving a few circumstantial causes of interest. First, and best connected to the last paragraph’s closing of Fukuoka, is a baseball match. At home, the television is often switched on and inevitably enough a baseball match will appear on its magic face once or twice a week. They look fun. There are balloons and big foam fingers, the kind my friend who had been to see Gladiators came to school with back in 97. I wish to buy a foam finger and if this means watching a bunch of eager Japanese and portly, has been Americans amble around randomly for a while then so be it. Unfortunately, my premature booking of this entire paragraph to list my desire was exactly that, premature, as I can’t at the moment think of anything else I actually want to do over here. Is this a case of having done everything of interest already, or has the blade of my imagination dulled itself against the thick armour of boredom? I know not. Either way, it is time to take my leave. Lunchtime approaches and I have some bitches to pimp, courtesy of GTA IV. Forsooth and away!
