It is entirely possible to study a language for several hours every day and immediately upon closing the textbook become engaged in a conversation where the native speaker of studied language will use approximately none of the words you studied.
There's only one real response in a situation like this: a counter-attack in high speed English, delivered monotonously with the mouth hardly opening. Of course, this isn't a friend-winning tactic and is admittedly particularly obnoxious but I'm desperately hankering for just one day here in Japan where I don't feel utterly stupid.

Quite what happened I cannot say. I'm unsure. What began as a sedate adult evening enjoying the multifarious delights of conversation and Japanese cuisine very rapidly descended into a deplorable spiral of violence and destruction. Suspect I may have played a role in the instigation of the evening's sudden turn for the worse, but don't exactly know when or how. A swollen lip, cuts on the legs and back and welts across a large part of the carcass. In the morning those that remained crawled out of their respective pits into a landscape of smashed glass, broken furniture and pasta shapes stuck to walls.
And there is video footage. To my eternal horror. I do not remember being filmed. I do not remember doing that wicked, evil thing with Ben's testacles. But, sadly, the camera never lies.

An extremely heavy plastic horse properly intended for the shrieking amusement of children was stolen in Otsu this weekend. Dan did not help to carry it. He is innocent.

I am becoming to old for these things.

Gaaarrrggghh. Once I see a roach, regardless of size or relative threat, I start seeing them everywhere. Start feeling them in my hair and up my pants leg just above the sock. This particular little bastard was about the size of an uppermost thumb joint but I still had no scruples over reacting as if it where a foe of Godzilla's come to stomp my kitchen furniture into oblivion.

It was skulking under the dish scourer, biding it's time. Plotting. Sending signals back to the mother ship.

'It's too cold for you and your kind', I attempted to mentally project into it's hideous insect brain. It gazed back in disdain. How stupid I am. Friend Katy (who's a scientist and knows of these things) once told me that cockroaches are, amongst all living things, infinitely more likely to survive nuclear winter than any other strain of sentience - humans included. And here's me attempting to banish it with effette, limp wristed swats. Eventually friend Erin stepped in, scoffing my disturbed shrieking. She is Australian and presumably used to abominations such as these. I am English and as such the most malevolent insect I am accustomed to is a particularly sociopathic cadfly. She scooped it up and actually spoke to it. She said 'Come on mate'. Then she hurled it off the balcony. I'm 4 floors up. The roach hit the pavement and scampered off. 4 floors in roach ratio is like Everest. And yet it scampers still. Mocking. Diabolical mocking. It will, no doubt, bring others. Why wasn't it killed? 'Why wasn't it killed Erin?'

'It's just a cockroach'

Fuck that. I have laid six (6) traps tonight and will lay more yet. I have heard the sickening sound of cockroach legs across tatami matting - me esconced on futon - once before and have no desire to hark to it again. I bow to your hardened cupolas. I mean you no harm (save for the traps). Please do not lay eggs in my sleeping ears. Please leave my apartment be.

Everybody in existence will have a birthday this year.
2005 is not unique in this. Last year was similar, if not the same. 6 billion something birthdays. Think of it. All those candles.
1,303,654,784 birthdays will occur in China, though not on the dates we think they will of course because January is February and December is January and it's all 4207 and 2005 is not the year of our Lord but the very own year of the Cock, which may be tantamount to the same thing. What have I said? Moichido's improbable Catholic readership may now be going crazy, although a cursory check of recent headlines intimates that the Holy See probably already has. So much for infallibility.

And what of Christmas Island? An oft overlooked place in this world upon which live only slightly more people to have birthdays then there are year days available to have them. Pop. 373. And are birthdays so popular in a location where it's arguably Christmas everyday? Who knows? Not me.
Palau, the Cayman Isles, Lietchenstein, yes even Lietchenstein; birthdays to celebrate all. So why is mine important?

It's not.

I've had twenty-eight birthdays before and hardly celebrated any of them. Each another year closer to death, whenever that may be. Understand that this lack of birthday enthusiasm is not a faith based thing, it's personal. What did I do worthy of celebration? I just sit on my arse and allow the year to float around me, like a lift/elevator (hello America!) that goes nowhere whilst the building moves around it. So. Friday's going to be much the same as any other day, except my mother may call and say something about my 'making her feel old' but no 'Happy Birthdays!', because we don't do that. It would embarrass me if we did. No. I want very little.

But please; let there be drink and let there be friends and let there be some laughing too. And if the reason for any particular gathering is my rapidly approaching thirtydom then let it not be uttered. Instead, lets drink to my aforementioned mother and all the Mothers of the world. After all, she - my mother - did all the hard work - pushing and grunting (I imagine - my sole reference being hospital dramas) and in despicable pain during the hours before lunch on Wednesday 昭和５１年２月２５日.

Multiple Choice

Q17: みょうじ ( ? ) よんでください。

(A) へ　　(B) に　 (C) で　 (D) の

Errrm...(C)? Strange how I actually know what this sentence means yet have no clue what the missing particle is. At my desk in the staffroom frustration and desperation and the need to have action lead me to place the test paper on my head. I don't want to come out from under it. I momentarily hope that perhaps this absurb paper hat will act as some kind of extra-sensory antenna and the answer will be transmitted from my colleagues into my brain. It doesn't happen. I eat an onigiri. The chewing movement of my jaw causes the test paper to fall. Outside it is snowing.

Yesterday was friend Satoko's birthday. Not really though. Her birthday's not until Monday. But she works on Monday so she's having her birthday Friday, today and tomorrow instead. I'll drink to that. And I did. Didn't take very much arm-twisting to get me murdering already sad songs on the karaoke system. Sure I protested lamely for several minutes, then proceeded to hog the mic for an hour or so. The voice of the drunken man is music only to his own ears, this I know. I've heard inebriated friends sing.
That was Friday - which at precisely midnight turned into today. Welcoming the chimes with too much food in CoCo's 24hr 'Californian' restaurant, accepting beer from strangers (rohypnol be damned), having difficulty with the chopsticks. Only DAY THE SECOND of Satoko's birthday marathon. We musn't go home, it is forbidden. Hmmm, it's rather cold - let's head to the beach.
Stood and faced a churning sea and felt not too much at all. Good. Congratulate myself on well adjustedness whilst skimming flat stones with, I felt, precision. Satoko proves much better at it however so I naturally walk off in a huff muttering stuff about 'kid's games'.
Fall asleep in the car and wake up miles away surrounded by mountains, covered in too many coats, heating full blast, lips dry and chapped and craving water. Satoko believes this temperature to be ideal. I concur that for the core of the fucking Earth, perhaps it would be. Still, it's her car. And it's still her birthday too.
And how lovely these here mountains, nestling as they are between metropolitan sprawls on all sides, these cities and towns also having beauty of sorts in the early morning delirium. And there are strange golf courses here, myriad aging people floating across the greens with outsize clubs and clownishly large, flourescent balls. Fascinates me. But the state I'm in - midway between cities, like the mountains, and between euphoria and hallucination - so does the skin on the backs of my hands. And Satoko's hair. So black. Does she dye it? If I touched it maybe I'd know. But maybe she'd kill me. Perhaps with a precision skimmed stone to the forehead. Kid's game. Must stop looking. Watch the old people. That's it. But there are stars. I see stars. For a stupid moment I am convinced I can see auras. No. Just tiredness and dehydration mixed in with the dreaded strangeness of impending contentment. Knowing it must end. Knowing a promise has to be voiced or shown or facilitated or would you look at that old guy go! My god, that's eighty-nine years of sushi and natto for you!
'Coffee?' say's Satoko, pronouncing the 'F's. Oh my. Please fuck up. Just once. Please.

Coffee, bread, and air oozed from pine trees massages our stomachs as the car motors down, always down, toward home. I'm drifting away. But home's not an option. I want to drive you some places says she. And she does. Beach towns, built up along cliffs. Like Clovelly. They make me fantasise earthquakes. Along this vast faultline, is this sensible homemaking? Then later, much later. Closer to where my bike has been left - outside the bar from so long ago. Satoko wants to sit in the park. We sit in the park. A chocolate hedgehog is made a present of to me. Satoko likes hedgehogs very much, I learn.
She is cold. Keeps expressing her coldness. 'Samui, samui, samui'. I suspect she wants holding. Wants something. A movement. An overture. Something musical. But from me, there is paralysis. There is nothing. Except this.

I sit drinking whiskey you bought me and I'm writing to you without writing to you at all. I'm posting it here for maybe eight people to read, but none of them you, in a language you don't really comprehend. For me it's a way to scream without you knowing. You could ask me what's wrong and the fact is you're perfect and as fucked as it is that's what's wrong. I deserve perfection less than you deserve me and that's a fact I almost can't comprehend. Yet it's how I think it must be. And if you take your sadness and hold it to mine I think we might find it's the same. Same, but different.

Not so much to be said for today. A rumour of warmth in the air, a low sun through the staff room venetians bringing a promise of sakura and some much needed serotonin. Some classes were taught, some English was spoken, some students slept. My interest in what manga that guy at the back is attempting to hide below his desk continued to outweigh my interest in making myself understood. I love these kids. They think I hate them. I'm a teacher after all. Cops 'n' Robbers, Teachers 'n' Students.
I learn my application for a second year amongst these kids is 'initially accepted'. Have this confirmed in both English and Kanji. Good. Two sheets of paper means 'definitely'. Right?
Okada Sensei is moving to Malaysia in April. Wife and kids too. Teaching English in a Japanese school. 16 students. In 6 year groups. Says I can visit whenever I like and I know I will. We discuss mobile phones and the price plans of such. He says 'the merit is...' and looks at me. 'Can I say 'merit?' 'Well yes, absolutely' says I, although I haven't heard it in a dog's age and aren't entirely convinced. Mentally riffle through the personal thesaurus alternatives. Bonus. Good thing. Best thing. Positive point. 'Merit' is, I conclude to myself, the perfect usage. And again I'm being taught English by the Japanese.