Life is .. something

You know how you can tell when a joke has gone too far? 1) When people start dying as a direct result, like in Foucault`s Pendulum, or 2) When you find yourself in some f$%&ing nowhere town on the northern coast of Honshu with nothing but a bicycle and a pack of (not nearly enough) supplies, riding from town to town flying a Japanese-style banner that says "Niigata Earthquake Victim RELIEF MISSION." It could be just that: a joke gone too far -- we`re sitting around in Osaka (where I have come to buy books and pursue women) last Tuesday morning, and I`m complaining about this e-mail my mother had sent, yelling at me to "pay attention to what`s going on around me" and "do something to help out." So everyone starts getting on me about how I have all this spare time, I should get off my ass and do something worthwhile, they`d all do it themselves but they have "jobs," blah blah .. thing is, before long it started to make sense to 2 of us, me being one of them (if they`d known me better, known how seriously I`d take any accusation of time-wasting, they wouldn`t have said a thing), and by that evening I had a bicycle, a destination, a vague plan, and no details whatsoever .. actually, 5 days into the trip, I`m still kind of blurry on the details -- I`m just kind of riding northeast, from town to town, with this big yellow banner, asking anyone stupid enough to come near me for a contribution (fyi - so far people either give me a thousand yen, or run away). When I get to Niigata, which should be in another week or so, I will do three things: 1) Give all collected money to the appropriate venue, once I figure out what that is, 2) Probably throw in a large handful of my own cash, since I`m really not good at the whole soliciting thing and would feel embarrassed showing up with like $100, and 3) Auction off the bicycle (which is very nice), give whatever I get for it to the aforementioned appropriate venue, and catch a bus back down to Osaka, where I don`t even live, but hey, there are girls waiting for me there. And my other friends too, of course.

So is it a joke turned against me? A cry for attention? An attempt to do something worthwhile, like the way my older sister is sponsoring a little girl in South America, only less tangibly effective? A vision quest?? My latest effort to become more like Kintaro Oe? Doesn`t matter what it is -- it`s poorly/barely planned, kind of ridiculous, maybe pointless, and exactly what I`m doing ... wish me not-death.

Excuses

Not much new to report, and I don`t want you all to think there is. I`m plowing nicely through my first pile of books for the summer .. after I finish A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which I am ashamed to only be reading now, and not, say, 5 years ago, all I`ve got left is Only Revolutions before I have to find a decent bookstore and reload. I`m thinking Random Walk in Osaka ..

.. and there is my official excuse for going back there, which I plan to do tomorrow night. It has nothing to do with the 2 or 3 women over there I have crushes on. Nothing! Aaron is right .. maybe I am pretty transparent.

The fact that I can`t think of anything else to tell you right now makes me feel like I might be wasting my summer. Reading and exercising are good and all but still sort of passive activities, no? They`re like my default things to do, overriding other potential tasks like cleaning my room (room = apartment, but "cleaning my apartment" sounds like such a grown-up, responsible thing to do, while "cleaning my room" is something I don`t have to do as long as my parents are not around) or, God forbid, re-learning how to draw. Don`t even get me started on that one ..

This manga cafe smells funny. In another 2 hours I will leave, get some coffee, catch the subway back to my place, and crash for most of the day, which is acceptable because we have a typhoon or something coming Sunday .. see that? I am justified in all my actions. Nothing can stop me now!

Welcome to the next level

I`d say last week had some pretty bizarre moments, but what week doesn`t? Whether that`s my fault or Japan`s, it is hard to determine.

I was complaining about that contractual garbage earlier, so I`ll try not to go off on that again, but it presented a problem last Wednesday when [Corporation Z] told all of my agencies that I couldn`t accept a role as another baseball player until October, when the contract I have not yet seen/signed expires (how can the contract expire when I haven`t signed it yet??) .. they did this 30 minutes before the audition I`d been waiting all day for. So I couldn`t go. I asked them where the hell this contract was, and what would be the point of me signing it when they didn`t have any more work lined up for me after this (last) weekend, and the response was "we`re still drafting it," and "we`ll give you money for signing it, and we`ll probably have something else for you to do this summer." Whatever. Screw that; Friday I went to a job fair.

Since I still have a bunch of money, and don`t particularly want a real job again just yet, I mostly used the job fair as an excuse to update my resume, dry-clean a suit or two and feel like a legitimate adult for a few minutes (hah). I went with some very specific things in mind to look for: Translating work in Osaka. Hmm, I guess that`s only one thing. I went to look for a translating position in Osaka.

The job fair itself immediately brought me back to Drexel -- minus the sense of urgency and doom. I remembered this one time I went to a job fair looking for my third co-op job, and got interviewed briefly by (I think it was) the Inquirer after talking with some guys at Cemex, some company that did something with concrete, and I got quoted in the newspaper with something like, "Of course I don`t really see myself working with something like concrete for any extended amount of time; this is all just temporary." That was the winter I ended up building cubicle walls.

Anyway, there were only something like 20-30 companies at this thing, plus some universities offering MBA programs (including Temple and McGill), and a bunch of recruiters (quick note about recruiters -- this is what a bunch of my friends are doing lately, and it`s not a line of work I`ve dismissed entirely, but I refuse to be at the other end of it because I know how much money they get from your salary if you get a job through them), so after I (surprisingly) found 1 or 2 companies with translating positions in Osaka, I was feeling good enough about that, considering I didn`t think I`d find any, and I was doing a final walkthrough, considering hitting on some of the Indian women there, when I get stopped with a guy asking, "Hey, aren`t you Mr. White?"

Next thing I know I`ve got a small crowd around me, wondering what the hell I was doing here and laughing at the idea that I`d originally come to Japan as an engineer (I know, funny, right?), but more importantly, giving me their cards and getting my info, telling me they "think they might have something for me," in a way which implied that that might actually be the case. Of course it`s unfair to others that I should receive special attention for being the Baseball Guy on TV 4 months ago, but not something I`ll beat myself up over ..

Now that I look at it, that`s not so bizarre after all, but this is: Wednesday night I got a woman`s phone number while sleeping on the train. Seriously, it woke me up when she pressed the little piece of paper she`d written her number on into my hand before taking off at her stop. Not to brag but I don`t even know what level that is.

Agh damn it, is it raining again?? Stupid rainy season. I didn`t mean to cut this short, but I`m hungry and need to go scavenge for some satisfying breakfast food, kind of a rarity in this country. So I`ll talk to you later.

Also, I saw Live Free Or Die Hard (called Die Hard 4.0 over here and in Europe apparently) Saturday; it was like Die Hard without the blood, cursing, sense of urgency or realism, or coolness (with the exception of any scene involving the Parkour guy). The "I`m a Mac" guy was actually pretty entertaining, too. When he`s one of my favorite parts of a movie, you know something is amiss ..