Everyone needs a hobby: Thief caught with 450 pairs of high heels

Thief caught with 450 pairs of high heels

This one is worth reading for the comments that accompany it.  Some solid comedy, including a couple of shoe-based puns.  There's also some thought-provoking consideration on one of the journalistic failings in the story itself-- namely, if the suspect has no fixed address and no job, what are the circumstances behind his room rental (including the logistics of transferring such a massive shoe collection into it without raising some kind of alarm from the owner) and seeming ability to gain access to a hostess club?  Those places aren't cheap, you know.  We also need to know how they nabbed him.  Did he make a clumsy spectacle of himself, or did someone just happen to barge in on him in the act?

Information, please.  That's a journalist's job and you've only done yours halfway.

And while I don't condone theft, I do think everyone needs an outlet for his or her interests.  This guy is apparently very into high heels, and that by itself is great.  But he should have sought gainful employment so he could afford to buy shoes rather than stealing them.  You can buy used shoes online and in vintage clothing stores, and there must be other legitimate resources for people who share this hobby considering how many Google searches for Malin Ackerman's feet I come across when checking my blog's readership.  If this is your thing, I urge you to join the vast online network of high heel lovers and foot fetishists out there and keep things above board and legal.

Unless the stealing of the shoes was his real kick, in which case I believe I have the answer for him and others of a similar nature.  Sometimes it's the illicit act itself in relation to the object rather than the object itself that draws the active hobbyist.  Perhaps there's a market for fake shoe and panty thievery.  Set up a club or a shop, stock it with whatever clothing items fetishists like to steal, let them pay a monthly fee and satisfy their urges with totally legal "theft."  You can allow the customers to go through whatever scenario turns them on (hostess bar changing room, high school lockers, laundry hanging on a line), curtail crime and make a few bucks in the process.

How about it, venture capitalists?

This is getting out of hand: Flu epidemic warning issued for Tokyo metropolitan area

Flu epidemic warning issued for Tokyo metropolitan area

But it's no surprise.  When people get sick, they go to work, school or even their English conversation classes anyway.  Just wear a mask, use the "Air Doctor" and some of the hand sanitizer at the store entrance and continue spreading the flu far and wide.  On the other hand, I don't know too many people who take the precaution of getting the flu vaccination at the start of influenza season.  The vaccine doesn't guarantee you'll breeze through the cold weather months flu-free, but it works a lot better than any of the other methods people tend to rely on.  Which includes, as I said and I cannot stress enough, going about their daily grind despite being sick.

My wife and I got shots back in November.  As you know, I work at a school and she works at a daycare.  So we're around all kinds of fun viruses and bacteria daily.  I like to think we do pretty well.  We wash our hands when we come home at night and don't even hug or kiss until we've changed clothes.  We're both pretty paranoid about germs.  Which is another reason why I rarely talk about illness.  And yet I've been blogging up a storm on the topic lately, haven't I?

I'm longing for spring and simple seasonal allergies.  Spring is my time to suffer.  This year, I'm going to do something similar to my flu preparations and get on some kind of prescription medicine before the cedar pollen starts wafting about and irritating my immune system into attacking me despite my relative health.

In the meantime, avoid all human contact if possible.  Seal yourself in, adopt quarantine protocols and live off your emergency supplies until the authorities issue an all-clear bulletin.  Which should come any... day... now...

Transmission complete.

I don't have many teeth...

Don't worry.  I haven't had a dental disaster.  Yesterday, I bought another digital volume of the Seven Seas Entertainment's translation of the manga series Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai, which translates to "I don't have many friends."  It's also called Haganai, which led to my wife asking me what I meant by saying I don't have teeth.

"That's another name for that manga about the friendship club," I said.  "Remember that one?"

Of course, she did.  "But it means, 'I don't have teeth,'" she told me.

Thinking I mustbe mistaken about the name, I did a quick Google search.  Haganai.  "It's also called 'Haganai' for some reason," I said, showing her the results.

"Why?"

"I don't know.  Maybe it's teenaged slang."

Fortunately, someone does know.

Haganai, or Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai, is the entertaing story of Kodaka, an average guy who can't make friends because everyone thinks his blond hair means he's a thug.  Kodaka meets Yozora, a forceful, somewhat mean girl (okay, she's an unrepentant bully) who is such a pariah she's been reduced to hanging out with an imaginary friend.  After an introductory conversation, Yozora gets the idea of forming a school club based on making friends, which she names the Neighbors' Club.  Yozora ropes Kodaka into joining, and despite Yozora's hideous attempt at making a poster (which she explains in the most brilliant display of anti-social logic ever captured in any media), the club soon attracts a small group of outcasts.  Most prominent among these is Sena, the most beautiful, perfect girl in school... who, like Yozora, has some severe personality problems.  Yozora and Sena instantly develop a hate-hate relationship that causes the club a lot of hardship, yet both are too strong-willed for their "friends" ever to intervene successfully or stick up for themselves.

The most effective moments of humor come when the story contrasts the genteel appearance of the club and its aims with the near-sociopathy of its two main members.  Yozora and Sena are so lacking in empathy and all the common feelings of group harmony, each attempt at bonding turns into a life-or-death struggle ending in disaster for all involved, even the ever-unwilling Kodaka. 

When they play an online role-playing game to practice cooperation (or something like that), Yozora and Sena both can't refrain from killing each other, which is funny enough, but the most hilarious moment comes when the two girls team up to play a dating simulation game.  Their battle of wills results in the poor game protagonist being stuck with an atrocious name, "Kashiwazaki Semoponume," which dismays Sena (it was supposed to be her name at first) and Yozora declares as distinctive and the work of god.  Within moments, they both turn against their own creation and mock his unwieldy moniker as both bully bait and the result of the character's parents having "despised" their son.  After that inauspicious beginning, the girls jointly lead poor Semoponume to the worst possible game ending, the life of a miserable recluse.  All because they can't fathom the simplest human interactions and tend to project the worst ulterior motives on even the most innocent of friendly overtures (this, ironically, reveals a lot more about their own personality flaws than they realize).  That they're so completely assured in their wrong-headedness makes it doubly amusing.

Kodaka's  not the most interesting of characters, but his occasional wry commentary prevents him from becoming too much of a zero, and the supporting cast consist mostly of one-joke types.  Both Yozora and Sena provide the fireworks here, hilarious in their lack of self-awareness and largely oblivious to the destruction they cause even as they share in its aftermath.  They have enough energy to carry the initial episodes, although there's also a tendency towards formulaic structure.  Pretty funny going for now, even if I'm not sure how long this can be drawn out.  At some point Yozora and Sena are going to have to start learning from their mistakes and when they do, they'll join the ranks of ordinary humanity and become a lot less interesting.  Until then, Haganai makes for fun, light reading for older teens and adults-- I do not recommend it for younger readers.  There's far too much cheesecake and even an episode involving a pornographic video game.

Which is also pretty funny!

Easy time getting my work visa extended...

I hate going to government offices, whether in Japan or back in the United States.  They tend to be dreary places with all the atmosphere of an elevator and none of the exotic and exciting allure of a doctor's office.  The immigration office here is no exception, and the staff there aren't particularly friendly.  Not that I expect them to chat me up, but a little smile every now and then would certainly make the experience more fun and fulfilling for all involved.

On the other hand, what our local immigration official lack in charm, they more than make up for where it counts:  efficiency.  This year would have been the easiest experience with Japanese immigration if not for the severe screw-up on our part.  We tried for the spouse visa, but failed for reasons I won't go into here, but are completely due to my lack of diligence.  The work visa proved a quick process, this time with a total turnaround time of less than 60 hours.  I went one day, turned in the paperwork, received my postcard the next day, had my new ID card and 3-year extension then next.

I'm curious if anyone has ever had problems extending their work visas despite having valid contracts with established companies.  I've known people who had to leave Japan when their cultural visas ran out and the Ministry of Justice refused to grant extensions, but I've yet to hear of anyone losing out on a work visa.  No doubt people make mistakes on their paperwork, or else the MoJ blows it somehow on their end.  While the whole thing is a bit inconvenient at best, I've never had a visa denied.  Am I lucky or just like everyone else?  Maybe I should find out.

Yeah.  I'll do that.  Someday.

Flu Watch '14!

This year's influenza outbreak just claimed a second class.  The first must stay home until Saturday, this one must wait it out until Monday.  Strangely, both cancelled classes are in the same grade. Or maybe not so strangely, since the kids tend to mingle and mix at times.  The other two grades are relatively healthy, one with only four flu victims, the other with just one.  What's kind of amusing is we've divided each class into groups working on speeches, but one of the groups only had two kids in school today and so they got a bit more coaching from me than their missing four teammates.

I guess if you happen to be one of the few healthy kids in either of these classes, you're sitting pretty right now.  Nothing to do but play Wii or Nintendo DS or whatever it is kids do these days.  It's got to be rough on their parents, though.  From my informal polling, our students prefer typhoon days to flu breaks.  Typhoon days tend to be more exciting, kind of like those rarer-than-rare snow days back home in south Georgia.  On a flu day, you're either one of the sick kids or you recently were one or you're getting ready to become one.

Influenza wiped out one of our classes...

It's influenza season, and there's one thing I've learned since I've been in Japan about illnesses:  people love to talk about them.  I hate to talk about illness, but whether it's norovirus or the bird flu or the New Flu, the news broadcasts cover the topic in-depth and so do people in casual conversations.  And because I work in a school, it's a topic that we have to have conversations about because influenza impacts everyone here, from the students to the hardworking cafeteria staff to the office people to the teachers.  Even one of our interview tests yesterday featured various forms of influenza as its topic.  There's no escaping.  Especially since one entire class here has been completely destroyed by the flu.  Cancelled for the rest of the week.

This doesn't affect my schedule, since I'm through teaching them until next week.  It's certainly strange going into a half-empty classroom, though.  The kids seem to be in a different headspace entirely.  They're not as attentive, they're more easily distracted.  There's almost a holiday mood among the survivors, or the feeling of a Saturday class even though it's Monday or Tuesday.  It throws me off the rhythmic method the JTE and I have developed.  I feel an impending sense of doom, of some apocalypse in our near future.

Then it's back to the teachers' room to listen to more phone conversations about influenza, and to receive handouts about it.  Masks on, hands washed, teachers joking about the situation in that way all people do when circumstances grow beyond their control and they become flotsam on the tide of an ever-flowing, ever-changing situation.  You have to wisecrack.  It's human nature.

This is the first time since I started working here we've lost an entire class.  Last year, we came close during the height of flu season.  On the whiteboard the school nurse toted up the names and numbers of our absentee kids, the ones with high fevers underlined in black, the confirmed flu cases in blue.  This year that single class hit their sickness limit, and like a weary platoon where casualties have destroyed its combat effectiveness in wartime, the rest were pulled off the front lines to recuperate and wait for replacements.  Maybe they'll be folded into the other classes.  Maybe they'll all be sent home until the crisis passes.

A follow-up: Factory worker arrested over tainted frozen food

Factory worker arrested over tainted frozen food



Well, that's one way to protest low wages.  I'd just suck it up at work and take it out on loved ones passive-aggressively in the classic American style.  Or, you know, find another job.  I'm posting this because it's something I posted about a few weeks ago and also because I really like the comment from someone named "Tessa" about the gyoza party.  I enjoy this company's microwaveable pizza-- and I've probably eaten some produced by the suspect in this story-- and my main takeaway here is a craving for it right now!



Which I won't satisfy for fear of being poisoned by pesticide.  I'll just have to wait for it to pass.  Can't make homemade microwaveable pizza.  If I could, we'd have a party.