Drunk Businessmen and Aggressive 14 year old Girls.

Hello. Well, It's pretty cold here now. I don't think it would seem that cold if the houses here weren't made from chopsticks and origami paper. Honestly, it’s colder in my apartment than outside. We did have 2 weeks of good weather between t-shirt drenching heat and now so I guess I can't complain. Apparently there's 2 more decent weeks in the spring. Yay. Sorry,
complaining about the weather is dumb.
Still not getting any attention from anyone. I feel like I should maybe focus on getting negative attention, like some of my students. If I started slapping people or pulling people's hair I bet they'd have to acknowledge me. Other foreigners say hi to me sometimes but it's annoying. They must assume that just because we're not from Japan we have some personal connection. One guy walked by me and just pointed at me and nodded. I blanked stared him pretty good. I did meet another foreigner in my town, which was a surprise to say the least. She is living with some Japanese guy and seems pretty weird. When her and her boyfriend found out I lived in Habikino too, she turned to him and said, "See, there you go," and nudged him encouragingly towards me while he gazed at me with dreamy eyes. I don’t know what they had in mind but they didn’t get my phone number.
I know that all Japanese women don't exactly develop in the following pattern, but from what I've noticed in Osaka, a lot of them do.

0-13 yr olds - They cry. A lot.

13-16 yr olds - These girls make up the most courageous demographic group
in Japanese society. They are the only ones who will talk to me sober. They
usually don’t get past "hello" or sometimes "how old are you" without
exploding into fits of giggling, but at least they try.

17-25 yr olds - For these girls, the only main focus in life is applying
and reapplying makeup. Every spare minute they are checking themselves in
mirrors and fixing their hair. They enjoy shopping and other shopping
related activities and lose any muscle mass they accidentally built up during
childhood.

25-50 yr olds - Once you're around 30 in Japan, you give up on getting
married and having kids. 30 is way too old apparently. So, in this age
group, you have young mothers with Louis Vuitton bags who think that their
child's latest attempt to stab another child is cute, and women in their 30s
who work a lot and practice their English so they can marry a foreigner who
doesn't mind how old they are because back home they watched Battlestar
Gallactica and got beat up a lot in high school.

50-death - Possibly the most physically inept people on the planet. Their
day must entirely consist of going to the grocery store because it takes
them a fucking hour to choose which noodles to buy. They shuffle along,
stopping frequently and without cause so that I have to fall over backwards
not to run into them. I’ve never wanted to hurt old people more.

So that's pretty much Japanese women. Some don’t follow this life plan
but I think they are shunned. Oh, aside from 14-year-old girls, drunk
businessmen will also talk to me. Both conversations are usually
uncomfortable, but for very different reasons. I can usually see which drunk
guys are going to talk to me. They stagger in my direction, see me, and do a
double take. Then they sort of smile in a kind of smug/creepy way and stare
off in the distance for a few seconds as they remember a phrase from their
last English lesson. They then blurt out something like, "Hello, how are
you? Ok to talk to you?" The conversation usually covers where I'm from, if
I can eat Japanese food, where I'm from again, something unintelligible, how
I like Japanese women (he tells me this, I just listen), and we'll finish on
where I'm from again. There is a lot of handshaking and heavy breathing
involved. My friend Lisa and I had a fun one on a train in Nagoya. Keep in
mind this is at 10am on a Sunday morning and this guy has a drink in his
hand.

Drunk guy: (Sees us, comes over and sits down) Hello.
Bouche: Hello.
Lisa: Hello.
DG: "Where are you from?"
B: "Canada. We don't speak much Japanese."
DG: Ah. (Turns to Lisa, looks at her chest) "Where are you going?"
L: "I dont understand"
DG: (Turns to me) "How do you say 'sister' in English?"
B: Sister.
DG: (Turns back to Lisa) Sister.
L: What?
DG: Sister.
L: I don't have a sister. No sister.
DG: (Looks at me like Lisa is crazy) "How do you say 'when' in English?"
B: When.
DG: (Stares at Lisa's breasts) When. Sister.
L: What?
DG: "How do you say 'what' in English?"
B: What.
DG: Whatto.
L: "I don't understand."
DG: (Getting a little agitated) Sister! Whatto! When!
(The train gets to our stop, we get off)
DG: (Desperately) Whatto sister! When!
(As we are walking up the stairs, he gets off the train at the last second
and frantically pleads with Lisa)
DG: Whatto! Whatto! Sister!
(We run away)

So I've been sort of busy lately. I have a quasi-Japanese tutor whose
Dad is Yakuza and whose Mom is a tattoo artist. They invited me to their
blowfish party (kinda like a fondue party, but with poisonous fish). My
tutor is around half my size but figured she could drink more than me so we
got shitfaced on sake. She did well actually. I didn't die and the fish was
really good so I was happy. 2 weeks ago I went to Kobe with Sami and Alex
and ate at this Brazilian restaurant that was all you can eat meat. The
waiters were constantly coming around with giant skewers of meat and sliced
it right onto your plate. I ate so much I though I was going to pass out.
Oh, I bought a bike last week and I found a Subway that’s only a 20 minute
bike ride from my house. It's in the middle of nowhere, really random. My
bike, by the way, has a basket and a bell but I'm still cool because all the
bikes here have baskets and bells. So shut up. Even the police ride bikes
with baskets. Yeah that’s pretty much it. I’m going to put some pictures up
soonish.

Bouche


P.S. Some 14 yr old girls called me 'beautiful' the other day, finally
confirming what I've suspected for so long.

P.P.S. We get a new teacher in our area this month. Apparently he's a
football player from LA. Should be interesting.