International Relations - Maxi Style

Greetings. In the time warp that is Japan it seems that another week has come and gone in a flash. Notable events seen this week include a sake party, starting Jap lessons, experiencing first hand what it feels like to be in a freak show, and doing my bit to boost Australo-Japanastanian diplomatic ties.

On Wednesday night a couple of the other Nova teachers (Laura and Mary) decided to have a sake party at their apartment. So me and Fern head over, quite a few people turned up, and the order of the day was to drink either sake or another local liquer called sho chu. Deciding at the last minute that the 720ml bottle of sho chu we had between us might not be enough, I picked up another bottle from the 7/11 on the way. Turns out it was a reasonable call because four or five drinking games later we were already halfway through the second bottle. Ended up polishing off our supplies (one bottle each) and them some (resorted to raiding the girls' fridge for some excellent backup drinks such as cruisers) thanks to the last game (an all time favourite) called Kings. Was it fun? Yes. Was it the best idea to go out until 4:30am when I had to get up for jap lessons the next day at 8:30am? Probably not. Did I feel wrecked on Thursday? Absolutely. Am I going to write the rest of this entry being a question talker? No. But am I enjoying it now? Hell yeah.

So as mentioned above I've started going to jap lessons for four hours a day, everyday during the week. Only had a couple of classes so far, but I'm looking forward to the end of the three week course when hopefully I'll be able to string a few sentances together. They also organise a few cultural events, we had one today were everyone dressed up in yukata's and got stuck into some japanese food. Here's a group shot of some of my class mates:


Diversity isn't really a big thing in Japan - registered foreigners account for around 1.3% of the population, and 90% of these migrants are from either asia or south america. So westerners account for about 0.13% of people (1). As such I've found that the fact that I'm white makes me a bit of a novelety. On Tuesday it was a beautiful sunny day (one of the 4 that have occured since I've been here) so I headed to the park to work on my pasty. I'd like to call it a tan, but coming straight from Melbourne's winter this would be a blatent lie. Anyways I'm just chilling by myself when this jap dude comes up and starts talking to me. He didn't have the best english skills but we had a brief chat, and before I know it the rest of his group comprising three other blokes and two chicks have formed a circle around me, and are just basically staring at me. We had a quick convo in dodge english, I felt pretty awkward, but they were nice enough. It also happened the other night when we were out to dinner, these really drunk young blokes ended up sitting at our table talking about kangaroos and koala's etc, but again they were harmless. It's definitely a bit weird experiencing it though. I guess they also wanted to get a closer look at someone as buff and cut and devilishly handsome as myself. Can't blame 'em really.

The other notable event this week has been some excellent work by myself on the international relations front. I won't go into too many details, but I met this girl Yuko at some bar last Saturday week. Ten minutes after meeting her she touched my hand when she reached for her drink, if that doesn't scream "I want to have your babies" I don't know what does. Of course, the MDHHM was used to devastating effect, followed up by whizzing her and a couple of her friends (along with a couple of my homies) off to Karoake where I proceeded to serenade her with a few woeful renditions of such classics as Bad (Michael Jackson) and Yesterday (Beatles). Got her number that night, followed it up with a few sneaky texts during the week, and tee'd up to meet her again last night. She's not 100% on the whole english thing, a couple of her text messages to me before we met where pretty funny. "Hi. Do you arrive to a bar?", "Do you know Sanctuary? I stay it. Can you go to this bar?", and "Yes! I wating (sic) for you this bar!". Being the top bloke that I am thought the only decent thing to do was to give her a few 'private' lessons at Club Maxi, BOO YAH! (2).

Well, that's about it for this Sunday, keep the emails and posts coming, stay safe and talk to youse all soon.

(1) Source: http://www.migrationinformation.org/Profiles/display.cfm?id=39
(2) Mum, this story is entirely fictional. You know I would never even hold hands with a girl unless I had a) established that her motives were entirely honorable, and b) we were married.

Death, Taxes, and Maxi's Luck.

Another week in Japan has flown by. Managed to get out and about a little bit more this week, it's been good fun. However, I've made a discovery that not everything is different over here.
On Thursday at Shu's bar there was a Yukata Party - Yukata being traditional Japanese clothing. The deal was that if you wore one then you got cheap drinks. Not having procured a Yukata yet I rocked down anyway after work, and ended up chatting to this little cutie named Tash:



Anyway's, 30 minutes of what I thought was some solid groundwork later, the boys thought they better give me the heads up:



Yep, she's married. Joel's expression pretty much sums it up. Thought I was tuning (and actually getting somewhere) some single chick, turn's out that I'd been trying to chat up someone's wife. Staring the smug look of defeat in the face, it was time to make a graceful exit and move on. Wasn't all bad though she's a pretty cool chick.
Plan B presented itself when I moved to the other end of the bar, and ended up sitting next to a random hottie, Yoko. We get chatting, and Yoko's story was that she works as a program director for a local radio station. Things were looking up when the patented 'Maxi Danger Hand Hold Manouvre' (MDHHM) was busted out and received positively. Scoff all you want, but baby steps people, baby steps...
So just as I'm beginning to think I might be in, enter not-as-hottie Toko. As it happens, Toko had also received a healthy dose of the MDHHM on a previous occasion. Last friday week I met her at Shu's bar, and was making some progress (or at least I thought so), although being in a very drunken state I cut her loose to go and get some food. Yes, I'm aware that's stoopid but everyone knows Max Danger's decision making process and logic don't have a lot in common.
Turns out that Toko and Yoko are friends. Good friends. Shu's bar isn't exactly the biggest venue in town so there aint exactly a lot of places hide. Long story short Toko ended up jamming my run with Yoko, she wouldn't leave us alone. I should've got one of the boys to run interference, but didn't think of it at the time. Not your friend. So at this stage I'd have to say the Max Danger Impact Rating is currently sitting on 0, although hopefully that will change...

Here's a group shot of the Yukata party, it was a fun night.



Talk to youse soon, Maxi.

Love At First Sight

Some of you predicted that I would come to Japan, fall in love and stay forever. Despite my best efforts to avoid this, I stand before you today and must declare that it has happened. I'd like you to meet Ruby:




Isn't she beautiful? She also goes by the names 'The Red Dragon' and 'The Danger Mobile'. Picked her up at the local version of kmart for around a hungy bucks. Superb. She's got six gears AND she folds up if you want to take her on the train. Those attributes alone qualify her for automatic entry into the league of awesomeness. My roomate Fern (also pictured) bought some new wheels as well, and as you can see we are now clearly the baddest mother f.ckers on the block with our pimpin' rides. I was cruising with Ruby the other day wearing sweats, a hat and a gold chain, and some japanese dude stopped me in the street and wanted my autograph - took me a while to explain that I actually wasn't Snoop Dog but got there in the end. True story. My street cred may have dropped a couple of points though cos I was listening to Missy Higgins at the time. I'm going to have to tell all the Jap girls to form an orderly queue cos no doubt I'll be swamped when they see me gettin around on the Red Dragon. Lucky there's plenty of Maxi to go round...
In other news, I'm trying to pick up some of the language and am generally managing okay. However yesterday I couldn't understand why I was getting puzzled looks from the restaurant staff when I ordered a glass of water ('chizu kudesai'). Eventually they worked it out because one girl understood a little bit of english. A couple of minutes later I realised what went down - instead of ordering water, I was ordering a world map (or cheese). Note to self: MIZU means water, not CHIZU.
Work's been going pretty well. My students were slightly hesitant at first because they're obviously not used to having such an incredibly good looking/buff and cut teacher, which is completely understandable, but they get over it reasonably quickly and most of the lessons fly by. In keeping with my 'Aussie-a-cise Japan' mission (by the way thanks to those who posted replies!), this week I've introduced the terms 'no worries', 'g'day mate' and 'hottie', and also explained the phrase 'whinging pom'. As we've got a couple of teachers from the UK I had to ask my students to not mention the last one to any of the other teachers, I think they're loyal though so it should be all good.
Keep me posted on the gos back home,
Love Maxi.

ps - Can't wait till the Dwayne's World blog goes live. Also seriously considering flying back for a couple of days just so I don't miss out on the opening of the Palace's 2nd Floor. Ahh, The Palace - good times, good times...