Ah, the merry month of May… Whoever came up with that line was a total liar. For me, May was the month of misanthropy…mostly because the absolute stupidity of my schedule was revealed. Remember how I said I meet each class of my junior high school only once a week? Now…imagine what happens when the school board says I’ll be working at elementary schools twice a week from here on out. That’s right. Some students never see me for weeks at a time. Or ever. Take this excerpt from a conversation with Slick Sensei.

“So, David…how many classes do you have today?”
“One.”
“And tomorrow?”
“Won’t be here.”
“Wait…didn’t you miss those classes last week too?”
“Yep.”
“Let me look at your schedule.”
“By all means.”
“…@%#$!”
“Yeah…my thoughts exactly.”

Slick Sensei and I agree…the school board must hate junior high kids, and absolutely love the little demons of elementary schools. On that note, let’s introduce the schools of the years.

1. The School of Busted Walks. Ya’ll remember this place? Yeah. My favorite elementary school. They let me keep it. I’m so happy. But, Mr. Sick Teacher doesn’t work there anymore! That means, I’m completely separated from the Sick Teacher family! Y’all don’t know how much that hurt me, but it did. But I still have two buddies there. Tomoko (a teacher who invited me to dinner with her and her husband) and a new teacher, Ms. Kawashima. She’s my age, and I believe was brought in to replace Mr. Sick Teacher. But the three of us have our desks together, so we pretty much crack jokes all day. The kids are still total sweethearts there, and…this place is still my favorite school.

2. Littlest School. This place is new…waaaaay up north in my town. All the teachers there are old women who don’t really speak Japanese, but absolutely love me for some reason. The children at this school, and all the schools, swear I look like Ronaldihno…or however you spell his name. Soccer player, Brazil. Whatever. I’ve made it my mission everyday I’m there to try to bring the entire place down with my voice. “GOOD MORNING EVERYONE” becomes a diaphragm exercise. Actually, I do this at all schools. It’s really strengthened my voice…though now I REALLY have no volume control. Anyway…this place is okay.

3. Too Close to Home. This school is my neighborhood school, and the kids that go there live very close to me. They’ve seen me walking around before. This cannot end well. But, the vice principal at this school is a cool guy. The teachers are great people, and…yeah, it’s all good. But, man…this school has more foreigners than I’m accustomed to. Like a little Pakistani boy, and a Fili—oh. Oh, okay, now THIS messed with me for a while. I was in the teachers’ room, talking to all the teachers and stuff when I saw someone. ‘Hey,’ I thought, ‘a Filipino teacher! A rather attractive Filipino teacher! I wonder if she’s an English teacher?’ Then, as two sixth grade girls ran up to her, and they all went giggling off to class, the horrible truth hit me. ‘She’s…twelve years old…at most. Well, now I’m going to hell.” I swear, man…she does NOT look twelve. That girl is totally out of place here…and yet, my place in hell has been decided. How do I know?

4. Hell. This is the worst school of the bunch. A school of loudmouthed, kancho-crazy, in-strong-need-of-a-backhand children. This is the home of the hecklers…the kids who constantly try to disrupt your flow in class. The kids who never stay in their chairs. The kids who, for some reason, already have rotting teeth. Kids with snot permanently encrusted around their nostrils. Kids who forget that I am, in fact, a human being…and actually ask questions that start to chip away at your tolerance for ignorance. Also the home of the violently retarded children. And you may think I’m trying to be funny with that one, but I’m dead serious. Violently retarded. This school has its good kids, and its horrible ones, but the horrible kids run the place. The teachers don’t even try to discipline the kids here, insisting that it’s cute. And honestly, on my third visit, I almost snapped. The teachers are good people, but man…

The sad part is…schools one and two, my favorite schools, I go to only once a month. School 3? 3 times. And Hell? EVERY WEEK. Now you know why I wasn’t too happy with the world this month.

But things got a bit worse. Now, way back in November, I noticed that the adapter on my laptop was kinda…acting up. It’d work if it was held in the right position, but…sometimes that position would change and stuff. But, as any Williams can, I learned to work around the malfunction, because I had neither the time nor the means to get a new one shipped here. Eventually, the problem left my mind…until the thing died on me in the second week of May, due to a broken wire inside the cord. Or was it April? …Anyway, Matt and I decided to make an excursion to Akihabara, the electronics district, hoping to repair our respective adapters (his had worn through as well).

Matt’s attempt ended in a bust. Either that, or he just didn’t wanna spend that much money on a new adapter from Dell. As for me, well…my (Jen’s) laptop is a bit old in computer terms, so the Dell shop didn’t sell that type of adapter anymore. What this meant was that I was gonna have to go scrounging through all the spare parts shops in Akihabara. And when you realize how many of those there are, you find that this is NO easy task. But I had my trusty Matt with me, so…off we went, asking questions in English and busted Japanese.

Eventually, we were on the trail of my adapter. Various shop owners were pointing us in the same direction, a place called QCD or something like that. They all seemed quite certain that this shop would have my adapter, and man…I was getting excited. Things might actually work out!

This is the time where I need to remind you guys of something I may have mentioned before. I’ve never named this phenomenon, but let’s try right now. Williams…Electronics Incompatilibility….and Return/Repair Disorder. WEIRRD. Perfect. So, this phenomenon is pretty simple. Any and every time the Williams family tries to make a major electronic purchase or repair, something…something goes wrong. Example: Super Nintendo. Somehow was incompatible with an old school Zenith TV. We had to send the brand new game system to some random fix-it-dude, where he installed a chip that would make the thing work properly. Totally ruined Christmas. Our first VCR was purchased AFTER the Nintendo. Literally burned out the moment I turned it on. A new big screen TV and refrigerator? Too big to get them to their respective rooms. New computer? The monitor was cracked. The list goes on. We always figure out a way around it, but these things have NEVER gone smoothly for us. Something always has to be sent back or fixed.

So, as we walked into QCD, I forgot about WEIRRD. I thought everything was gonna be awesome. In fact, it was! I found the adapter! It was a Dell! It was older! It was the wrong voltage! And even though the head of the adaptor looked almost exactly the same…there was a slight difference that could prove to be difficult. A simple chamfering of the corners. That’s all. And it was this slight difference that got Matt thinking.

If you don’t know Matt, he’s the kind of guy who has enough confidence to make everyone think they can do anything. Sometimes, I’ve had to channel his way of thinking when times get tough. In this moment, Matt decided it was time to do the impossible. We were gonna make this adapter work.

Minutes later, I was buying the adapter, and rushing from shop to shop to buy wire cutters, heat seals for exposed wires and electric tape.

“The crap are we doing, man?” I asked Matt, as he strode confidently to the next shop.
“You’re gonna splice those together. You only need the head of the new adapter, and the body of the old one. All you gotta do is clip both of them, pull the insulation and shrouding back a bit, splice them together, seal it up with the heat wraps, tape it up, and call it a day. You got a soldering iron, right?”
“No.”
“No prob. You’ll dry splice it. Then shave the edges of the head down so it’ll fit in your computer.”

See? He talks about it like it’s nothing for someone who’s never done that before. Thing is, I figured he was gonna help me on this one…but I was wrong.

“Dave…I gotta go meet someone else today. So, you gotta do this yourself.”
“Wh—“
“Dude, I thought you knew I was going somewhere!”
“You might’ve said it, but you say a lot!”
“…Well, anyway,” he handed me the clipped and stripped adapter pieces. “You can do this. Just keep that upright and untangled, and do what I told you.”
“Y—“
“You can do this, Dave.”
“I hate you.”
“Later!”

Okay, so it wasn’t QUITE like that, but it was close. So there I was, riding home on the train, trying to figure out how all this had happened. And trying to figure out how Matt manages to do stuff like this to me EVERY time. But, I break almost everything he owns, so…it’s the balance in our relationship.

I got home, and set myself to work, following everything I’d learned from the other David back at FullSail, and merging it with the crash course Matt gave me. Finally, I wrapped it all up in electric tape, plugged it in, and prayed my computer wouldn’t explode…and lo and behold…it worked! All was well, and I had no reason to kill Matt.

But it wasn’t over.

I was sitting at my computer two weeks later, preparing a worksheet for my high school students. …Oh, right! My high school kids!

Okay, so, twice a month on Saturdays, I teach at a high school in Mito. Thing is, these are the super smart kids. They catch on fast, and WANT to learn, which really helps balance the stupidity of the schools I teach during the week. They’re good kids, too. So, I’m very happy to go there, even on a Saturday morning.

So, I was making stuff for them, when my phone rang. I got up, answered, and turned around to see my laptop screen go white. All white. Then, the computer sang a cute little song. Then it went black. Then, I smelled the wonderful smell of burnt electronics. Now, this is not where I’m gonna think about whether or not my ghetto-rigged adapter had anything to do with the burning of my laptop video card. This is where I continue the story.

So, I sighed, knowing my computer was gone, but wasn’t all that worried. You see, in April, my mother actually shipped my tower over from the States, AND even earlier, Matt had given me a free flat panel monitor some dude didn’t need anymore. I’d tried turning on the tower a while back, but it did the something-very-small-and-hard-to-find-is-wrong-with-me beep, so I set it aside for a time when I’d be able to focus on it. I knew the computer had probably just gotten a bit jostled on the way over, so…no big deal. Besides, part of me hoped the laptop would just start working the next day. I mean…maybe it’s just me, but for some reason, my brain thinks electronics have some ability to heal over night. It knows that’s impossible, but…come on. Why not?

Next day proved my irrational thinking to be just that. I went to school, hoping to come home and get my tower working again quickly. But, again, WEIRRD stepped in. I took my computer apart (sorta) and put it back together…nothing. And from there I didn’t really know what else to do. I had neglected to ask my mother to send the user manuals for my motherboard (genius) so I couldn’t tell what the diagnostic readout was telling me. I was stuck. I was going to have to ask someone for help…and there was only one poor soul I could think of…and I really didn’t wanna bother him. But…

So James knows computers pretty well. He’s also willing to help people…usually. This was a wonderful combination that resulted in me bringing my computer to him the next day. So, there we sat, in his apartment, taking the computer apart again, and cleaning off the carpet of dust that had accumulated inside the poor machine in over a year. We laughed about dork jokes and the like for a while as we repaired mistakes from the original assembly, and put the computer back together. We chuckled as we reconnected the wires, and crossed our fingers as we pushed the power button. Then, I cursed as the same frickin’ beep went off.

“Oh, come on!” I said, almost punching the machine.
“Hmm…” said James. “Maybe it’s your power supply. But I can’t be sure unless I know what your motherboard is telling us.”

My motherboard has two little LEDs on it that give you a code for good or bad things. Had I the user manuals, we would’ve figured it out quickly. I had not the user manuals. So, we consulted the internet. Eventually, we found it, but the message didn’t really make sense. I can’t even really remember what it was.

“Okay,” said James. “I’m guessing from this that…it’s either your power supply…or the whole freaking motherboard and processor.”
“…So…I gotta buy a new power supply or motherboard?”
“Looks like it.”
“Power supply.”
“Good choice.”

Off we flew to the electronics store, which, I just wanna point out, has this awesome thing where…you can buy computer PARTS, and not whole computers. That means, if you want to build a machine, you can go to a real store, and not deal with online hassles or go to your “friend who knows a guy who really likes computers, but happens to look and act like a drug dealer/child molestor”.

We got back, disconnected the old supply and reconnected the new. And again, we pushed the button. Again, the beep. Again, I cursed.

“What IS this?!”
“Hmm…,” said James. “I wonder…”

Suddenly, James was removing the heat sink from the motherboard. Underneath, we found the processor, just slightly jostled out of place, meaning some idiot in the delivery system didn’t know what “fruh-jee-lay” means. I slapped my forehead as James put the computer back together, turned it on, and…all was well.

Needless to say, I owed the guy one, and I intended to pay him back, by finding a proper Japanese class for both of us.

Since May 11th, I’d been going to a Japanese class in a city west of here, called Oyama. Good city. Good class, but the teacher was movin’ a bit slow, so, before I brought James in on the action, I need to get this guy up to speed. Besides, the other guy in the class, a Turkish dude named Ali, is better than I am at Japanese. And James, well…he knows more than I do. I’ve just got the advantage of more speaking practice. So, I gotta get the teacher moving. I see a lot of promise in the class, though.

Outside of that, I saw Spiderman 3 with Yuka and James. I dunno what to say about that movie. Some days I’m cool with it. Other days, I wonder if I saw the right movie. I just…I don’t know what the heck that was, man. Really. And I saw Pirates 3 with Kyoko. That was enjoyable, but strange as well. I did find it funny that Kyoko and I were the only ones laughing that the hilarious anti-piracy commercials they have. If I can find those somewhere, I gotta post them.

Anyway…that’s May. Next up! June! The month of reflection, racism, regrets and…r…obots?

D

Whatever the reason may be, I’ve apparently gathered a few fans of my writing…though I think they might have me confused with a certain other black dude in Japan. Anyway, I was recently informed of the fact that those fans are wonderin’ what the heck I’m doin’. Truth be told, not much, besides teaching and studying…but let’s review. We’ll do this in months to get y’all caught up nice and quick.

First off….APRIL!!! (Note to reader…these will be written as if the other months have yet to happen.)

Aaight, so…I started the new year at my new junior high school, which, to be honest, left much to be desired. This isn’t to say that my new school is bad…it’s just that I was pretty happy back at North Junior High. Now, I’m chillin’ in the West school, closer to my apartment, and far less busy than before. You see…this school figures I should meet each class only once a week. That’s twelve classes. Every week. I work for 12 hours. Every week. Do the math, okay? What do I do with the rest of my time? Why, I think of humorous nicknames for everyone on the staff! Roll call time.

There are three English teachers. The Dude. The Short One. The Tall One.

The Dude – This guy’s cool. His English is really good too. In his classes, I’m pretty much just a parrot, but he definitely knows how to control his classroom and keep the kids excited. And trust me…any dude that can control and keep the attention of a bunch of first years…deserves some respect. He talks to me the most, in both English and Japanese…and we exchange knowing glances when the school lunch just ain’t up to par. I think he and I will get along just fine.

The Short One – Okay, this little lady’s hilarious for some reason. I think she’s just a little older than me, but a whole heckuvalot shorter. And, oddly enough, I can’t help but watch her. She’s like…an animator’s case study or something. Seriously, every movement is…well, she’s just so small that watching her move it…I can’t explain it! I don’t think my brain can understand how someone my age can be that small. And she’s one of those folks with an undeniable baby face, and quite possibly the shiniest eyes I’ve ever seen. Because of this, I have another nickname for her—Stitch. And few people can deny Stitch’s cuteness. But see…that nickname ain’t all good. She suffers from JBG syndrome. Japanese Busted Grill Syndrome. This is not a blemish on her personality at all…in fact it makes me sad that Japanese dentists ain’t up to speed to help this girl out. And they tried…I can tell. But it’s like they tried without caring about the finished product…color coordination or anything. If I meet her dentist, I will punch him.

The Tall One – Now this girl apparently is a month or two younger than me, but has some height on her side…meaning she’s like 5’7” probably. But in my mind, she’s 5’11”. She’s cool, and speaks English in a way that doesn’t sound like a Japanese accent or anything… It’s weird. She’s in charge of all the second years, and her classes seem to LOVE me. They cheer when I walk in. And The Tall One seems quite relieved to have me around.

The rest of the staff…only a few get names, as most people there don’t talk to me yet.

Slick Sensei – Oh, I love this dude. He was an English teacher back at South Junior High, but they brought him here to watch out for the new teachers, such as The Short One. Mrs. Sick Teacher told me I’d be working with him, and that he was a VERY respectable teacher, so I was expecting to have to learn some serious polite Japanese, but…nope! This guy’s hilarious. He sits right next to me, and talks to me in English all day, giving me inside info on teachers, classes, students and Japanese life. He knows I’m studying Japanese and has offered to teach me for one hour every Monday. Truth is…he teaches me ALL day. We joke about how I’m being paid to study Japanese, too. And he’s always saying things like, “Okay David…it’s break time. There’s a convenience store on the corner. We’ve got three more hours of the day, and nothing to do. I say….you go to the store, grab some beers, and we go in the courtyard and gulp them down as fast as we can.” “What about the principal?” I ask. “…Fine, get him some beers too!” Like I said…love this dude.

Mrs. Buxley – I call this woman this because of the character from the old Beetle Bailey comics…a secretary to everyone in the office, and how I learned to understand what the word “buxom” meant. Now…this girl’s built differently than the Japanese women, meaning she’s actually got curves, but…I’m honestly unsure as to whether or not she’d be considered fat over here. Somethin’ tells me she is… But, hey, she tries to speak what little English she knows with me, so we’re cool.

Big Man – Aaight…this dude’s got good qualities and bad ones. Good: He’s always laughing and smiling. He’s been kind enough to try to help me with the crazy coffee machine they got here, and he’s given me Dole Popsicles. Bad: …okay, this requires some backstory. One sentence actually. In Japan, dudes can break out and pee anywhere they want, any time, no harassment from cops. This has resulted in a really weird view of peein’ by some Japanese dudes. One that reminds me of the rules of my father… So, sometimes I’ll be in the restroom after drinking my usual 3 liters of water a day. Big Man comes in, checks his hair or something, and leaves, BUT leaves the door WIDE open. People, there are teenage girls walking around in that school…and I don’t care in the urinals have the little dividers between them (which barely protect me, considering my height)…I’m trying NOT to get fired ya know? Everyone else closes the door…not Big Man. Heck, when he’s in there, he leaves the door wide open too! He and gotta reach some accord on this… The other bad thing is that…well, he can’t help this, but…his voice. It’s almost like…the Japanese Louie Anderson. That’s not his fault! I’m just sayin’…I noticed one of the third years at my last school talking like that, all nasally and what not, and I realized I’d heard it elsewhere too. It’s…an acceptable way of speaking in this country. But, man…it cuts me to the CORE. Me and Big Man…we got some issues to work out, but we’ll be okay.

The Big Girls – I call them this because…they’re the heaviest ones on staff, but are sweethearts. They talk to me everyday…all in Japanese of course…and always give me little snacks and treats throughout the day. They’re always laughing and joking. I love these two, and they’re my real test in Japanese…because they really don’t try to speak any English, but ask me things about English…which I have to explain in Japanese. Totally…not…easy.

There are others, but they’ll get names later. For now, just know that my first three weeks were spent only at this school, and…my job really isn’t a job. I just study all day and get compliments from everyone about how fast my Japanese is improving.

…I still miss the kids from my old school, though. Maybe I’ll get to visit them one day…

I’ll tell y’all about May next time.

D