Hey! 15 days until the new Conan O'brien! I originally heard it wasn't going to begin until the fall. Re-runs perhaps? That doesn't really make sense. 

Anyway.  Quick week in review;

With a little bit of rain in the area, and general lack of satisfaction in my Japanese level/social status, I made a trip to the local coffee shop everyday for the last four days.  I've taken a momentary break from the Shin-chan comic books, still a great form of entertainment, just felt I needed more work on developing full sentences.  So, I made a trip to the local Book-Off and bought a 100-yen book that struck my interest. Happens to be a study on bathroom and toilet culture in Asia. Pretty good find really. Another young teacher at one of the schools, who I've recently been talking to more often, seemed to have a solid interest in the book and asked to borrow it when I'm down. Shit sells. 

My current head teacher at my main school is something else.  I think he's a real lonely (looney) person, but it makes sense if you've ever met him.  He sits across from me in the teachers office, but has yet to say good morning, or even nodded for that matter.  He doesn't participate in the drinking parties and seems to be the least social of all teachers.  I'd say mid to upper 50s.  He's gotten on my case a couple of times for a few mistakes I've made.  The other teachers told me to just get used to it cause he treats everyone the same way, so in that regard, I don't let it bother me, but today when I didn't first mention the precise method of scoring in a game (even though it wasn't a problem to make it up on the spot), I couldn't help but laugh a little because of the general lack of reason to have any kind of anger in the situation. Turns out the laughing just made him even more angry because he assumed I was making fun of him, causing him to switch in Japanese and complain, and because I could understand, it made it really difficult to stop laughing. An endless cycle of emotional exchange. His negatives only strengthened my positives. The perfect example of how easy our lives can be broken down into such binary elements. Eventually I turned that smile upside down and we came to an understanding and everything is cool now, but what a 5 minute scene it was.  The way he'll repeat the same sentence over and over again is absolutely unnecessary, and I don't mind raising my own voice to compensate. I'm not going to just stay quite, or even be subordinate like a Japanese when I know I have a complete understanding of the situation, especially since it's in my own language.  I'll take a guess that the source of his anxiety is yet another product of the negative aspects of Japanese culture, although people like him exist all over the world. They put so much effort into a situation that it actually backfires a produces a dark cloud around everyone nearby. But really, he's the broken gear in the machine.  All the other teachers resemble human beings. 

Tomorrow! Skateboarding with some new friends I haven't met yet! Should be a blast.