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.