I now blog on Tumblr. It is a fine time.

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1. It’s simple: I am tired.

The amount of energy that I put into my job is enormous. Physically I bike, walk, jump around, sing and dance, run up and down stairs, do exercises—whatever all day. And then there is the emotional side to consider. My work persona is what I like to call “genki as fuck.” I smile and laugh and sing and dance; I am patient; I am supportive; I am enthusiastic and energetic. It is extroversion at its finest.

And then there is the language barrier. At work I study Japanese. After work I study Japanese. At night classes I study Japanese. I walk down the street and learn something. Friends share new things. Essentially, I am always studying. Despite this time and effort, several times a week people say to me, “I’m sorry, but I don’t speak English.” This is said to me in Japanese. It is usually preceded by me having spoken in Japanese. And, dear Reader, before you start saying, “Well, maybe you…” I want you to keep in mind that this is usually me having spoken the phrase “ohaiyo gozaimasu,” which means “good morning,” which has been part of my morning routine for the past two years. The response to “ohaiyo gozaimasu” is “ohaiyo gozaimasu.” It’s really very simple. Sometimes other coworkers will ask the person, “Are you kidding me? She was just talking to you in Japanese. She understands Japanese. She speaks Japanese. Why won’t you say hello?” Oh, it can be tiring.

Friday night means socializing. Every minute of Saturday is seized to its utmost potential.

Sunday is the only day of rest. What a day!

2. Also: I miss privacy.

Yesterday a student asked for my signature. I laughed and asked why. “You’re famous, Sensei!” he said, “And when you return to America you’ll be famous too!” I wanted to laugh more, but the student was serious. Although he had a point.

I’m not famous, but my face is conspicuous.

Yesterday I went to the bank and was seen by a gaggle of students across the street. “Sensei! Sensei! Hello! Sensei!” they shrieked, jumping up and down excitedly. I hoped that they wouldn’t run across the street in their enthusiasm and get hit by cars. Everyone on the street heard them and turned to look at me. Everyone in the bank heard them and turned to look at me. I smiled at everyone, blushed, and waved.

Everyone knows who I am, even if I don’t know who they are.

And then there are questions. People want to know all about me, and my hobbies, my favorite food, and my birthday. They wonder what clothes I wear to school. They wonder how I decorate my room. They wonder how I… well, everything.

3. In conclusion: I am tired.

Damn, this post is really lame.

Upcoming posts will feature the following topics: concerts, David Foster Wallace, homesickness, language, satisfaction, travel, zombies, and a short story that is technically a comedy, but everyone dies.

I stood on the train with a shoulder wedged against the closed doors. Pressed in front of me was a strange man, pressed behind me was a strange man, and for half an hour we got to know each other very well as the car swayed, slowed, and accelerated along the tracks. We bumped and breathed and stared abstractly at the backs of each other’s heads in the crowded space as everyone else moved similarly and tried to figure out where to place their hands. It was exactly how the night would have gone, without the loud music and the brightly colored drinks, had the oysters not left me in a pitiable state. I sighed and fingered the play button on my iPod as eki no sugi was replaced with guitars.

With a bing the doors opened and half of the car filed out. Ichi, ni, ichi, ni. With a bing the doors closed. I leaned against the doors and watched as the rooftops of unfamiliar buildings created a pointed and geometric landscape through the darkly tinted windows. Loose telephone wires looped through the scene in lazy sine waves. The train rocked rhythmically. In the window’s reflection Nostalgia caught my eye. It didn’t even ask if I wanted to talk, it just stood next to me and began to ask questions.

In an effort to avoid the situation I looked down at my shoes. Nostalgia followed my gaze and began, “Do you remember the stilettos?”

And the short skirts and the band name t-shirts? Do you remember how you would always grab your phone and throw it into your purse precisely as the car pulled up in front of your apartment, subsequently missing the call as you grappled with your jacket and your keys and a handful of CDs and the lock on the door? And then you would both say hello and smile knowingly as you drove toward destinations carefully mapped and printed, USB beard attachment hidden in the glove compartment?

Do you remember when traveling 30 minutes in any direction would change your life? Or, at the very least, your weekend?

Bing. I stared at an advertisement and tried to figure out an unfamiliar word as the train paused and waited for the Ryomo to pass. Nostalgia watched in confusion as my attention was diverted to context and radicals. I muttered ji, ji, nantoka, as I paged through the dictionary on my keitai. Bing. Hmm, I thought as a new kanji combination entered my vocabulary.

The train picked up speed and the roof points transitioned into a humble plateau of fields. Nostalgia tried again.

Do you remember driving down the highway with an open sunroof, minds dancing through the Elysian fields of antihistamines as you both sneezed and sniffled from the fledgling corn and over the speakers K. Barnes pleaded with chemicals?

I dabbed at my nose with a tissue and shifted my eyes to a Suntory advertisement that featured a wooden ship on the high seas. “Get a load of this,” I said, rolling my eyes and gesturing at the poster. “’World class?’ More like ‘world ass.’ Am I right?” Nostalgia shifted uneasily and apologized that it didn’t have much experience with Japanese and Japan. I nodded sympathetically and adjusted the volume on my iPod. My toes tapped gently following the beat of the music.

“What are you listening to?” Nostalgia ventured, for lack of anything else to say. I silently handed over the iPod while reading an advertisement about new longer lasting lash-lengthening mascara. The model had disturbingly large blue eyes. “Oh,” said Nostalgia as It passed back the iPod. “Is that—is that a new album?”

“Yeah,” I said, smiling. “Sorry.”

“Oh, no, it’s ok. I mean, I’m sure it’s great, I’m just, uh, I’m just not familiar with it is all.”

“Donmai. I mean, how could you know about it? I just got it yesterday.”

“Is it better than their second album?”

“Yeah, I think I like lyrics and instrumental arrangements a lot more. This one song—it’s great—has a line that just kills me every time, about questions asking for answers. Oh man, it is so good.”

“Nice! Oh dude, do you remember that song off of their last album? With the killer opening line about Jesus?”

“Oh geez, yeah. That is a classic!”

“Remember when it started playing at that one party?”

“How could I forget?” I said. Then with a sinking feeling I realized what I had done. Nostalgia had regained control.

Do you remember when your indie ingénues turned off the carefully constructed party playlist and put on that one song? And you both laughed at their enthusiasm over yet another zoologically named buzz band because you knew in your heart of hearts that Animal Collective was the one that would endure?

“Yeah,” I said quietly and stared at my shoes. The black smudge on the left toe was from one of our adventures.

Wasn’t it great when it was just the two of you? The scenery would shift to rooftops and starlight and you would deconstruct the universe until it made sense?

I stared at another advertisement, but it contained a lot of unfamiliar words enclosed in a pair of parentheses and I no longer had the heart to avoid the subject.

Well, what happened? Really? How long has it been? Why? And what do you want to do about it?

“Look,” I said. “Distance is hard. It—it does things that are despicable. And then there are things like time zones and economic situations. It’s not my fault! It’s no one’s fault! It’s just the way it worked out. It’s not ideal, but, you know, life usually isn’t.”

“And that’s all you have to say?” Nostalgia asked. “’Distance is hard’ and ‘It’s not ideal’?”

“Yes,” I said without conviction.

Nostalgia looked at me for a long time and said nothing.

For the remainder of the train ride doors binged and feet shuffled. Ichi, ni, ichi, ni. In my stomach the food swirled and lurched unpleasantly, wholly independent of either oysters or the motion of the train. Nostalgia stood and said nothing.

I assume you came across “Fate and the Hands of Mannose,” a relic of The Science Years. In short, the title is a terrible pun. If you really must know, here is an explanation. Proceed with care: Esoteric jargon follows.

Mannose, C₆H₁₂O_6, is a carbohydrate. To be precise it is a hexose sugar monomer, under IUPAC nomenclature fondly called (2S,3S,4S,5S,6R)-6-(hydroxymethyl)tetrahydro-2H-pyran-2,3,4,5-tetraol. Basically it is a sugar that is shaped like a hexagon with hydroxyl groups for “hands”. Here is an excellent 3-D visualization. (Check out the Van der Waals option. Exciting!)

In October 2007 mannose was used in my research on pathogenic bacteria. This research required excessive amounts of laboratory time, hence the post.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 once featured the movie “Manos”: the Hands of Fate.

In Spanish “los manos” means “the hands.”

Combine these four things and voila!

The more you know.

If you are looking for guidance and find yourself asking “What would Hunter S. Thompson do?” you either need to stop whatever it is you are doing and find the nearest church, or you need to give in to situation completely.

You may find yourself tweeting on a rainy street. And you may find yourself sitting on a dirty curb. And you may find yourself waiting for friends to leave the combini. And you may find yourself in a pair of black heels, in some skinny jeans. And you may ask your friends, “Hell, can you stop saying that my body is a ‘wonderland’? I know it’s supposed to be a compliment, but I just threw up in my mouth because that is a really terrible song.”

It is ok if the details are a bit foggy if there was a fog machine present.

Sometimes, but not always, the verbal exchange of “Go!” and “Ok!” counts as a conversation.

There is a time and a place for comparing and contrasting the philosophies of David Foster Wallace and Danny Wallace. If “Party in the USA” is playing, that is probably not the appropriate time.

Places to search for your misplaced money:
• Your bag
• Your pockets
• The floor
• The kitchen counter
• Your Suica account

You may not know Korean and there will always be better dancers around, but life is good. Remember that.

Things were never actually that great. They were not exciting in the sort of Hollywood-ized self-discovery road trip ways that the television promised. Things just had a tendency to fall into an unintentional routine. Blueberry muffin on Tuesdays, salad if the lettuce wasn’t wilted, call so-and-so about such-and-such, tri-taters on Saturdays, take notes while watching the clock, clock-in, clock-out, have a fast conversation while walking, crash, then repeat.

The majority of the friends that you made were not exactly the kind of friends you would invite to be in your wedding party, as promised to you on your first day, by a beaming upperclassman, who spent large amounts of time describing the upcoming wedding of her best friend/roommate/classmate/peer. Even at the time you thought that was a lot of pressure, to stare at ten strangers and to be told you were destined to be best friends forever. That these nervous faces would be there for you as you experienced things, as you grew, as you were nurtured in this vibrant community, as you matured into the staggering titans that the world so desperately needed right now. Oh, these would be the best years of your life and you would accomplish all of these wonderful things together!

But the thing you remembered most about that first day was the professor who you never saw again. You were walking alone, stubborn as usual, trying to find an elusive classroom, possibly late for another team-building exercise that was likely to make everyone involved feel awkward and humiliated—ostensibly part of the process of integration into the vibrant community. The professor saw you looking at the room numbers seemingly assigned at random and smiled. He said knowingly: “You wish you never came here.” It was almost a question, but mostly a statement. The two of you blinked, paused, then laughed. It wasn’t a joke, but it was hilarious.

He pointed you in the right direction and you spent the remainder of the team-building exercise thinking about how your peers looked sweaty, wide-eyed, and tended to travel in herds, like cattle. And then you thought about how cattle now lived nearby. Honestly, cattle! There was even a slaughterhouse in town. And what the hell were you doing in a place with tractors? And why the hell did everyone talk on their cell phones constantly? And how did they afford such expensive cars and designer bags? And please put away the pictures of your significant other, the story is boring, you are 18, and you will probably break up with that person by Thanksgiving. Now can we please go to actual classes because I can’t find the undo button!

That was the beginning. It was just sort of ok.

My glasses lay on a table across the room, abandoned the night before. I squinted at them from the comfort of my comforter, decided I didn’t care enough about the weather to move, and, fumbling, hit the snooze button.

Ten minutes later the alarm went off again. I squinted at the air in front of me and watched the small clouds of breath appear and diffuse. I sat up, shivered, then laid down again, burrowing further into the cocoon of blankets.

Outside the wind picked up and it began to rain. The wind knocked the drying rack against the balcony’s railing. The neighbor’s dog howled. I moved the curtain aside and looked out the window at the cold, wet rain. I dropped the curtain and looked at the rain suit draped over the chair. I imagined the cold, cold wetness of the rain in my face, mascara smudging, glasses clouding; my frozen fingers clutching the ancient rubber handlebars of the bicycle during the morning commute. Inevitably the wind would blow my hood off, the rain would pour down my hair, down my neck, and I would be splashed by cars as they weaved past on the narrow streets.

I moved the curtain again and looked out the window, dropped the curtain and looked at the clock, then sighed and looked at the little clouds of breath hanging in the air. I turned off the alarm, pulled the covers over my head, and went back to sleep. The weather was too much.

I awoke at noon, still cold, but rested. I got out of bed. I drank a large cup of coffee and smiled.

I turned on my laptop and checked my e-mail. There was a message from my boss: I got a raise!

What a day!

THE END.