Vigga Wha’?!?!

I m leaving the convent today. Kinda sad - kyoto and the nuns have been soo good to me. what a spoiled bitch i ve been : going to bed and waking up to yummy breakfast, coming home to yummy dinner (usually filipino food), hanging out with the coolest sisters on the block, biking around kyoto… it s been great… gonna miss it , but ill be right next door in osaka.

before coming to japan i was told by a very smart person that it is said that japan is the only country in the world where socialism succeeded. whether this is the case or not, the shock of being able to receive unemployment benefits as a foreigner in japan is… is shocking. it s almost as shocking as the name of the unemployment office - HAROU WAKU - or in if translated back from the katakana English - HELLO WORK… no kittes here. maybe i m misinformed. maybe foreigners can receive unemployment funds at home. but I quit my job voluntarily. as far as i know you have to be fired to get those benefits in the states (unless your a victim of some sort of abuse / pressure that thereby justifies your resignation). hello work is definitely a perk in japan… try it yourself.

this will be the last entry from the internet cafe across from the nuns’ that has become my cyber home (i also probably second handedly smoked a carton of cigarettes here)… the gamers are doing their thing and i m doing mine. the next entry will probably be from ochaka… more mysteries await. until then…mata.

i got a job. i m going to be a hypnotist in osaka. my company is called berlitz and i ll be working with colleagues, elmo and tingo. i m being hired to hypnotize japanese people to speak english. after a week of training, i m sure that i can do this. plus - it ll be fun to teach kids using the sesame street characters. i m looking forward to it.

tick tock tick tock

like i said, i had a solid week of traingin my new job - more like 8 days… after each day , while in osaka, i went apt hunting. it s interesting to see where your dollar (or yen, in this case) will take you. after checking out some nice places and some not so nice places (not to mention the place where they fly flew out of the wretched bathroom) i decided on making shin-osaka my new hood. shin-osaka is where the bullet train (the SHINkansen) pulls into in the osaka area. it seems like it s going to be a good place for me - i can bike to Umeda Station (’the grand central of osaka) from there, which means that i ll be able to hang out in that area (lots of fag bars around) until the late night - the trains in osaka stop running at about midnight, so if your out later than that , make sure to have cab fare, or a bike… i ll hopefully have both. moreover, at shin osaka, i ll be about a 14.75 train ride to my hypnotist job… gotta make the benjamins. that s also scheduled for early november… november november busy november…

this novermber  i ll be turing 28 - hayyyayyayy!!! why i just said that i dont know… maybe i do… i think that i m welcoming this aging thing . i like motivating along the way and garnering more experience. iz cute. what i dont like is the fact that when i shampoo my hair nowadays, i tend to find some stray hairs in the lather… my mother s dad isn t bald, i dont think.. nor are any of her bros… is japan turning me into a balding hypnotist? do i have to hypnotize myself to prevent male pattern baldness… i dont know , but if you do , holla…

I went to MOTIVATION last night at WORLD in KYOTO. Motivation was a party thrown by TT (Towa Tei). It was a fun party. japanese hipsters in fulleffect. i love seeing TT in Japan. he seems very shy in person. i once met him at an autograph signing session at Tower Records on W 4th and B’way. He was kinda shy then too. this time, after his set, he hung out for while in the booth with the other DJs… the stakler i am , i waited to see if he was going to exit.. and when he eventually did, i followed him… all i wanted was a pic.. he ran through the crowd however, and i didn t get it.. its OK though.. he ll be back… you can check his DJ schedule on his website.. he all over japan in the next couple of months… i hope his set will be better next time.. he s THE MAN, but the last time i saw him in tokyo, he was a bit better….

well… it s 1 30 AM and im surrounded by gamers in this gaming cafe - i think i should go now… besides, i m getting sleepy… getting sleepy,,,, getting. shclleeppppiii….

They say that if you haven t seen Kyoto, then you haven t seen Japan. Considering that it is Japan s former capital and the home of all that you think about when you close your eyes and try to picture japan (except for the harajuku gwals - they re in tokyo - wannabes can be found all over though), there might be some truth to that statement. Arriving in Kyoto I ve seen geishas, temples, shrines  - japan at it s finest. one thing (or person) that i did not expect to find is a dutch priest who holds mass in japanese for the filipino community here in downtown kyoto. talk about clash of culture…

"Chi chi to ko to sei rei ni yotte … Amen" "In the name of the Father, and the son and the holy spirit… Amen"[Amen is a word that that is comprised of syllables that are already in japanese, so it doesn t change]. this is the way that we open and close our masses at the pag-asa (a tagalog word that means hope) catholic center. Father Lukas is an interesting man - at 70 years old, he s been in japan for 42 years - that means that he came here from holland at 28 - i ll be 28 next month (not to say that i m going to be around till I m 70-  whether i ll become dutch or not - that s another question). his japanese is impeccable and hearing the parts of the mass that i were drilled into my head as a catholic school boy said in japanese gives me a sense of nostalgiac deja vu that feels like it s wrapped in a sheet of seaweed. though i m over seeing his white face speaking japanese with the ease of a television newscaster, i m still in awe the ways that the japanese language communicates ideas that are so non-japanese. i ve been to two masses so far and they ve been interesting… the parishoners [japanese (few) - westerners (some euopeans and americans), and filipinos (lots)] gather to hear Father Lukas. right now i m parishoning… how long i ll be able to parishon (is that a verb?) is questionable. kami sama dake shiteiru ka na..?..?..?

So here I am… again… in Japan. After being at home for 6 weeks hanging with friends and trying to catch up on the culture (still haven’t seen an episode of "Desperate Housewives", so I’m not that caught up), I am back on the in Ayyyshuhhh…uhhhh. Are you ready- gonna give you the first seven day wrap up - it s a doozy…

After the 13 hour flight (i hate that shit - didn t have it hat bad this time though b/c i managed to squeeze my way between these two empty seats in the center of the plane) i landed in tokyo exhausted and overpacked. from narita, i took a bus to tokyo then took the subway to matt rhoda s apt in suginami-ku.. all and all - door to door, it probably took me about 20 hours - maybe longer - yeah, it fucking sucks… s OK though… i deal , i mean i DO want to be in japan - ne?

tokyo - tokyo s always nice to be in - with all the crowds and the mass traffic , nothing but good times- it buzzes with energy -kinda like new york, but on some sort of japaneezy fizzy energy drink. i think that i might have had fun that day.. i might have if i didnt  have to board the shinkansen (japan’s bullet train) to make it to an interview the next day in a city called Kanzawa. yeah - the maniac that i am, i landed in tokyo and left after being there for about 12 hours - it was the only time that the people at the art school that i interviewed at could see me.. so - off i went -

kanazawa - i ve been talking about kanazawa for a long time i feel. i went there to talk to the KIDI/parsons people. after doing some research and contacting the dean while in NY, I scheduled an interview in japan. although i was told while in NY that there really was no position for me at the current time, they agreed to meet with me and see what i was about. i guess i wasnt what they were looking for… maybe they weren t what i was looking for either. meeting with the two heads of the school was cool - they also gave me a tour of the facility.. that was nice too… but when i showed them my stuff and we started to talk design, it seemed that we didn t jive … later on i got a note in my inbox stating that they could not offer me an oppotunity to lecture this winter (they said during the interview that they might have an opportunity to test me out by letting me lecture 1 time) - disappointing it was for a little, but i m taking it as an opportunity to explore other things.. kinda happy in a way - dont know if i would ve found what it is that im looking for in kanazawa… moving on i am

toyama - after spending a night in kanazawa, i crashed at a friend s place in the next city over - toyama. toyama - inaka ne.. "inaka" in japanese means countryside… though i did not get to see alot of toyama - i was still tragically jetlagged when i was there - the part that i did see didnt say "live here" … i mean - it was nice, but maybe to visit - the person that i stayed with - more of an aquaintance than a friend - was a corrections officer that i met as i finished my time in my old town in japan, ochi… he was nice enough, but after two nights of staying in his house, he kinda freaked out on me. he told me that his boss saw the light on in the kitchen while he was at work and that i could not stay .. you see he s a public official - living in governement housing (not the PJs).. on the third day in his home - my fifth in japan, he came back home and told me that i had to go (i wonder what telling him that i was gay the previous night had to do with my being booted out.. hmmm?)… so where did i go, you ask… i turned to jesus, of course

kyoto - that is where i am right now - i m staying with these two nuns - one of whom is my father s classmate from elementary school through high school - hence the connection… and i have basically my own apt - for the mean while - we don t know when i will be on the move again. i m always packing a bag it seems nowadays. i have an interview this week and i hope top be able to settle down soon.. till then , i m saying my "Our Father"s and "Hail Mary"s- looks like all that catholic school payed off afterall - all they way in japan…