The Morning After

Greetings. Still alive in Kumamoto, having survived my first typhoon (1) last night. Bit of a disappointment really, didn't get to see a lot of action. Pretty much heavy rain and really high winds, myself and my roomates were a bit let down by the fact that we didn't see any cars being overturned/roof's flying off etc. We invented the game 'typhoon dare' which involved just going outside and walking around, to check if there was anything exciting going on down the street. Got a little bit of 'serious lean over while being held up by the wind' thing happening, it was kinda fun.

It is definitely a change of concept not having to work nine to five, in fact pretty much no one I associate with is on regular hours, and has their days off on different days of the week. Combine this with having multiple birthdays, going's awayseses, new arrivals, and you've got yourself this equation: Any semblance of an excuse + multiple drinking buddies = big nights and good times - EVEN ON A SCHOOL NIGHT!
Having said that I've compiled this little list, which of course is NOT based on personal experience:

The Morning After: Subtle Signs That You May Have Had One Too Many Last Night

• You wake up in your pants and shoes.
• The $150 bucks you took out at 7pm last night has been reduced to 16 coins on your bedside table.
• You last memory consists of answering your mate's question with this reply: "Do I want another tequila shot? HELL YEAH"
• There's a piece of paper with the name 'Yukie' and a phone number on it, yet you have no f.cking idea who Yukie is.
• There's a fat girl in your bed.

Given the hecticness of the last couple of weeks, I've decided to tone it down a bit and get stuck into the study. Implemented a new policy of having at least three AFD's (2) a week, starting next week...Nah just kidding started a few days ago, it's been going well, put in about five hours language study today. The reason for the intenso homework action is that I've applied for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. Thought I'd bypass past level 4 (the easiest) and go straight for level 3. Upon reflection, this may not have been the best option. Come December I've got to know 300 Kanji, 1500 words of vocab, a fair bit of grammar, and have good reading, writing and listening skills. Not going to be easy, but I figure even if I fail I'll learn a fair bit in the process.

That's about it for now, hope everyone is safe and well, I'll talk to you soon.


(1) Typhoons, Hurricanes and Cyclones are pretty much the same thing, but are called different names depending on the global area in which they form:
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-difference-between-a-typhoon-and-a-cyclone.htm

(2) AFD - Alcohol Free Day

I Still Got It. Or Have I?

Greetings everyone. Been a little while since I last posted, things have been cruising along nicely. Celebrated my 16th birthday yesterday (okay, okay, it may have been my 27th), and apart from spending my time pondering the fact that I'm now an old geezer, I've also been keeping busy by travelling, studying, training, drinking, socialising and working.
So seeing that growing old is the theme of the week, I've put together a couple of observations:

Subtle Signs That At 27 You Are Now Past It (#1)
Your memory goes. Sitting in the bar the other night talking to my friend Bronwyn, and her friend who I didn't recognise. After a few minutes Bronwyn says 'Have you guys met before?'. I replied with 'No, we've never met' at exactly the same time that her friend said 'Yes, we've met before'. How's that for f.cking smooth? Apparently we met a few weeks ago. Whatever...

Subtle Signs That At 27 You Are Now Past It (#2)
Hangovers last for multiple days, instead of 10 minutes. Went to Fukuoka last weekend and caught up with my mate Brendan who is living there now, it was a pretty cool couple of days. Did a little bit of shopping, and also painted the town red. Despite our best efforts, we ended up downing quite a few drinks. I blame the fact that the bar we went to had all you can drink cocktails for $30, from 10pm until 5:00am. With deals like that it's always going to end in tears. Wasn't the ideal result, because Brendan met this really hot girl at a bar called Fubar (Fukuoka) the weekend before, and was keen to catch up with her again. So we went back to the same bar, and her and her friend (Kazumi) arrived at the bar a little later after we got there. At this point I was asked by Brendan to keep her friend 'entertained', while he moved in on his sweetheart. Being the ultimate wingman that I am, I took a bit of a hit for the team because unfortunately she wasn't exactly a stunner. But you know what they say, 'you have to slay a few dragons to get to the princess'...Anyways because we had a couple of big nights in a row, I was feeling it for a few days later the next week, prompting me to rethink my current policy of drinking to excess quite often. One one hand hangovers really suck, but then on the other hand, after a few drinks everyone does look prettier...Hmmm, tough choice.

In other news, I've found a gym close to my house so have been hitting it fairly regularly. Made the decision to healthen it up a bit. Didn't think it was possible that I could actually get skinnier, but since I arrived here I've lost maybe four or five kilo's. If I lost any more weight I'd probably by in the negatives. So it's time to say goodbye to 'Max Danger - Global President of Team Skinny' and replace him (in a few months) with 'Max Danger - Buffest Cat on The Planet'. The plan is to hit the gym every second day and transform my strings for arms into MASSIVE CANNONS! For example, today, I already did like a thousand pushups...

No update on the married dilemma, that kind of fizzled out a bit. My friend hasn't really being seeing much of the milf in question, so nothing to report there.

Random People Experiences (#2)
I was at the international centre on Sunday looking at the english notice board, when some jap dude comes up and says to me 'can I talk to you'. I thought why not, he probably just wants to practice his english, let's give a little back to the community. So we sit down and start talking, but after about 10 seconds it was pretty obvious that this guy has no social skills. 1 minute into the conversation he's asking me 'can I be your friend', 2 minutes in and he's asking for my phone number. I just looked at him and said 'no you can't have my phone number, I don't like phone calls', so then he asked for my email. Points for persistency I guess. He pretty much just wanted to be my friend so he could get free english lessons. Seeing that I teach english every day, the last thing that I want to do is teach it in my spare time too. For free. Now I have some understanding of what girls must feel like when random losers hit on them, and they have to give out fake numbers and stuff. The worst part about the whole thing was that he wasn't even cute.

For all you fans of japlish, check out this little establishment a couple of blocks from my apartment:


Pretty convenient when you need old Fido raundered, hey?

Here's a couple of pics from Sunday night when we went out for celebratory drinks, in honour of my sweet sixteenth.

Shu's Bar, with Fern and Rashell frontin up at the bar. Those cats in the background are Nova as well.

L to R: Pat, Rashell, Max Danger, Bron, Laura.

L to R: Laura, Max, Dev, Joel, Rashell, Bron and Fern. After I got over the weirdness of not being home for my birthday, it wound up being a pretty good night, although the town was pretty dead being a Sunday night and all.

Apologies for being pretty slack on the email front, I haven't been using my laptop that much lately. And don't think that it's just you that I'm not replying to. Because I'm a genuine guy, I'm ignoring everyone equally.

Will hopefully crank out a few emails back home in the next couple of days. Talk to you soon, Love Maxi.