Geisha, Interrupted

thy will be done

It is that time of the year when the beauty of my surroundings magnifies significantly.  Yes, Autumn is my favorite season in Tokyo, but more significantly: my Japanese visa is up for renewal next month. 

Lately, my Japan-related-snarkiness bas been all but extinguished, to be replaced by a nervous gratitude: I love my life in Tokyo and I don't want to leave!

Although all my documents are in order and I am a total upstanding citizen this year, especially compared to all the other times I successfully got my visa renewed (freak accidents, really) I find myself more anxious than I've ever been that something might go awry in this process. 

I am even more nervous than I was last year at this time, when I was only pretending to have a job, when immigration authorities had every reason to expel me from Japan for good, and when truthfully, the Rising Sun would have been better off for my absence.

So it would just be my luck, I think to myself, to get kicked out now that I am a useful citizen.  I have jobs that I love: teaching kids, translating cartoons, and making a fool of myself on Japanese television among them.   I love the AA community here, even though I am not likely to stop being a subject of controversy within it any time soon.  I love blogging about Japanese culture, and taking photographs of both the bizarre and the beautiful.

To put it simply, I have more to lose now.

I have a life here in Tokyo now, a real life, which is a far cry from the imitation of existence that I somehow maintained while drinking in Ginza hostess bars.  I have strong friendships and a stable relationship.  For the first time in my Real Life or otherwise, another person's life will be directly affected if my application for visa renewal is not approved.  I am speaking of course of my fiance, the cardboard coin craftsman wonderboy T.

In the event that I get kicked out of Japan, we are likely to stay somewhere in Asia.  But everything is in order to stay here, I keep trying to convince myself, I am a good citizen now.  And yet, god forbid anyone at the immigration bureau thinks to google me.  I worry about such things as my book and this blog.  I am not one for keeping my misadventures to myself, after all.

And speaking of god, if I were her, I would be really annoyed by my tendency to pray almost exclusively in times of desperation.  Just moments ago I was shamelessly praying just for a renewed visa, most desperately, when it occurred to me that something was off.  I was taking the wrong approach.  After all, I am supposed to be praying for god's will, that the will of a Loving God (of my own understanding) be done.

And so I pray for god's will.  I do this over and over and over again.  Yet I must admit, at times I can't help but slip subtle reminders into my prayers, regarding all the good services I could potentially do for my current community, should I be allowed to remain here.

happy pudding to you!

Because I am nine months old in sobriety now, T The Terrific got me a pillow in the shape of the popular Japanese children's character "happy pudding".  I can't think of any better present for a nine-month-old twenty-something, than a squishy green tea flavored pudding pillow, with a face and little feet.

Here we are inside a Tokyo metro station, waiting for the train.

 

And still waiting for the train.

And here our train has come. We even found a seat!  There we are feeling gratitude.

work

Speaking of work, which is not nearly as much fun as speaking of monkeys, but speaking of it anyway, there have been some developments lately regarding my part-time teaching job.

Yes, aside from translating cartoons, I also teach English to kids.  I travel around to various areas of the city with my large backpack of toys, games and flashcards, which I use tutor children in their homes.  And I only teach children.  I basically refuse to teach adults, seeing as when it comes to language acquisition, grown-ups are insufferably stupid compared to their much shorter and cuter counterparts.

And I get to make games.  I make lots and lots of games.  Here's a glimpse at the small corner of my room where I keep my teaching stuff (when it's clean).

Two weeks ago, I was called to attend a casual meeting in a Shinjuku restaurant with two penguin-suited salarimen for whom I work.  I naturally thought there was some sort of problem (I get fired a lot).  Instead however, my supervisors at the dispatching company had caught wind that I am constantly making educational flash cards and boardgames for use with my students, and they wanted to know if I was interested in making teaching materials for the whole school to use as well. 

With that office work on top of my regular part time lesson teaching schedule, the company was essentially offering me a full-time, salaried position.

It's been a long time since I've seen a full-time monthly salary, and the phenomenon doesn't usually last too long in my case.  For years, I tossed around the term full-time job, as if it were a dirty word.  This is likely because I have been fired from so many of them.  While I was still drinking, I had grown fond of the notion that I was constitutionally incapable of holding onto any sort of full time job.

This is a rather convenient outlook when one holds the same distaste for getting out of bed as I've had in the past, and still do to an extent.

Very soon, I will have to either accept or decline this job offer.

"Do you think I can really do this?" I ask T after showing him the contract.  I feel a bit guilty to complain, seeing as the weekly hours outlined in my new contract still add up to less than half of the time he works most weeks.

"Of course you can, " he says, because he is awesome.

"How come," I sigh, "all of these job offers keep coming in so steadily ever since I quit drinking?"

"Because you are innately talented," he looks up at me, "and now there is nothing in the picture to diminish that."

"But I don't wanna be inn. . ."

I stop myself mid-whine, because I am not sure if what I am about to say is true anymore.

T smiles at me.

I hold my breath and sign the contract.

my former self & me

In my heaviest drinking days, I used to love watching my illegally downloaded episodes of South Park- over and over again.  I rationalized this practice by telling myself that I could discover something new each time I watched the same episode.  I guess that was true enough, since I was too drunk and stoned to remember shit all anyway. 

So when I saw this link to create your own South Park character over on Sober Chick, I couldn't help but create an ode to my former self.

                             IN MEMORIAM:

Tagged = Special

Wow, I've never been tagged by anyone ever before -- never ever in my three-month-long carreer as a sober blogger.  Thank you Judith!

EIGHT THINGS YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT GEISHA-INTERRUPTED (AND DIDN'T ASK)

1) I was a competitive figure skater for seven years.  When I stopped competing, I taught ice skating lessons for two years after that.  This was all before I graduated high school.  Skating was an artistic outlet and all, but I'm pretty sure that the competitive nature of the sport, etc., fucked with my little mind quite a bit.

2) I have a fake tooth.  It was an adult tooth that never grew in when all the baby teeth fell out.  Growing up, it resulted in years of braces, even more years of a retainer with a plastic tooth on it (which I used to freak out my friends), and finally a tooth implant when I turned 18.  Since then, I've experienced recurring nightmares that involve my fake tooth's getting loose and falling out.  This is especially the case when I am feeling insecure for whatever reason.

3) I was a socialist in college.

4) I am always breaking my glasses. I have a tendency to fall asleep reading then roll over onto them. This has resulted in the ample use of duct tape, krazy glue, and dental floss in order to put my glasses together until they break again.

5) I get my periodic dosage of American culture by watching Flavor of Love on Vh1.com. 

6) I suffer from on-again-off-again addiction to the evil computer game SNOOD. My SNOOD inventory tells me that my addiction flares up during periods when I have a lot of other work I should be doing on my computer instead.

7) I dedicated my book to two of my high school teachers. I am not in touch with them anymore, so they do not know this yet.

8) I have been painstakingly trying to hide the fact that I have a blog from everyone I know in the real world, with the exception of the ubiquitous-T, who lives with me after all. But even the obedient-T is not allowed to read it most of the time. Jade knows that I have a site where I've posted her pictures, but I told her that she could only have the address after she quit her job. 

That said, I'm in the infantile stages of making online friends.  This makes me
nervous about who to "tag" here. 

OK OK, I belatedly TAG: MM, poatpaleo, THW, and Mr. Salaryman (if he is done playing with his new "God-Jesus" fortune telling robot...) Now you have to post "eight things we don't know about you (and didn't ask)".

 

My Little Ex-Blog

I was just trying to figure out my google account so that I could post comments on other people's blogs, when I came across an old blog I used to keep.  I clicked on this link hesitantly, as I was sure my old blog would be too painful to read.  Surprisingly, however, I find that my ex-blog is soooo cuuuute!  And naive!  And marginally retarded!

Check it out for yourself!

http://morethansushi.blogspot.com/

I called it "More Than Sushi".  How cute is that?  And I kept it up for almost three months, writing about the life of a foreign English teacher in Yokohama living with a Japanese homestay family whom I didn't always get along with.

The last post I ever wrote looks to be published on July 22, 2003.  This is three days before a Japanese psychiatrist broke confidentiality to call my employer and inform him that I was "mentally unstable," whatever that means.  I subsequently got fired from my job and kicked out of my homestay family's house. (Consequently, a lot of this ended up in my upcoming book.) 

And I have not looked at this old blog since.  Not until today.

Summer 2003: this was my post-eating-disorder-pre-rampant-alcoholism phase.  The summer ends, as one may guess, with my moving from Yokohama to the center of Tokyo to embark on my silly career stint as a professional drunk (or nightclub hostess).  It seemed the thing to do at the time. 

If I remember correctly, during the months I was posting on More Than Sushi I was also cutting myself pretty actively.  But there is no mention of any of that in My Little Ex-Blog.  That's because cutting isn't cute.

I Am Mr. Taxi

I miss drinking I miss drinking I miss drinking I miss drinking I miss drinking I miss drinking

That said, waaah!

The sun came out today.  Feeling the sun on my skin, the first thing that comes to mind is how quickly I could get drunk in such heat.   "Ii naa," a Japanese expression which conveys a longing feeling of envy, comes to mind.  Then again, I also say "ii naa" when I see the impaired salarymen stagger home at night or the drunks passing out on the train with open bottles, which goes to show that I'm basically nuts.

The problem with having been a chick who drank to deal with basically all aspects of being alive, is that in sobriety, almost everything I do or experience can potentially remind me of alcohol.  Especially when the seasons change, and even when the sun comes out after weeks of grayness.  Somebody please, please tell me this gets easier.

I don't want the rest of my life to feel like I am standing on the edge of a precipice, constantly reminding myself not to jump off.

I am still stalled at my fourth step, with basically no progress since I last complained about being stalled at my fourth step. This makes me identify with the taxi cab I photographed in the previous post.  There is a lot going on around me right now.

Also, I took these pictures for you.

 

where in the world is geisha interrupted. . .

So I`ve escaped Tokyo, for the week anyway.  My mom and I are traveling together. Now we are somewhere in northern Japan, where she is attending a conference and I am left to take on the town. Sorry if I can't post as often as I'd like to this week.

This is the first time I'm spending time with my mother since I quit drinking.  It is, for lack of time to exorcize my inner demons for you in detail, weird.  Weird and different.  Different but better. Better, I guess.   

We went to visit my former homestay family for dinner on Thursday, which was basically exhausting for me.  I spent most of the time translating between my two mothers, neither of whom speak each other's language, and neither of whom I liked very much at the time.

My former homestay mother is the most quietly malicious person I have come into contact with.  She is evil, yet she doesn't really have anything better to do with her time.  My real mom means well, but a lot of things that come from her mouth just don't need to be translated into Japanese.  Or so says me.

My mom and I have only tried to kill each other once so far in the past few days together, and this may well be a world record.  In sobriety, I cannot help but notice the more insane elements of my mom's nature.  Before I quit alcohol, I was far too concerned with myself to notice as much. When my mom is around me she is immensely (if not excessively)nurturing for 75% of the time, 15% of the time she is fun, and for the other 10%, she is batshit crazy.  But I judge.

There is much more to report, but I must get out of this internet cafe and explore the new city now.

giri as a thing of the past

So I am outside this evening, playing with some devil sticks in the courtyard of my apartment, like a kid, waiting for my fiance to come home.  There, I cross paths with the young lawyer from Bulgaria who lives on the sixth floor of my building.

"That juggling's pretty impressive," she says.

I bow to her, but say nothing.  Bowing is a great way to shrug off compliments.

"Join us for some drinks," she nods at the shopping bags full of Asahi Super Dry that occupy both her hands.

"I don't drink," I grin, somewhat nervously.

"Still?" she asked with a sense of surprise that has become familiar to me. "You're going to make me feel bad again now!"  Sometime last fall before I quit drinking, I was feeling the type of groundless generosity that only a drunk can possess and picked up a tab for her at a karaoke bar where a group of us had drummed up a pretty tall bill.  My refusal to let her return the favor is getting on her nerves.

"I have giri," she says seriously.  Though neither of us is Japanese, we understand the concept of "giri" (or "duty") very well.  And in this situation, giri dictates that if my acquaintance is not able to repay the generosity she once received from me, then she should feel unbearably ashamed.

I shrug, as if to tell her that she may as well commit harakiri now if she can't deal with the shame of being unable to pay me back.

"Well," she says, "stop by my apartment anyway.  This is the only night of the week that I finish work early."  I look at my watch, noting it's 9:30pm.

"Ok, maybe later," I lie, "I'm waiting for Trevor to come home."

"See you then," she says, making it my turn to feel guilty.

"Do you like me better now that I don't drink?" I ask Trevor, back in our room.

"Yes," he replies immediately.

"Is that the right answer?" I ask again, half joking and half curious.

"Is it?" he deflects my inquiry.

"But you liked me before I quit drinking too, right."

"You were the same person," he assures me, "but now you are a much more constant companion."

"I think that ever since you decided you didn't need to drink," he continues, "nothing but good things have been coming your way."

So much is undeniably true.  I am better at just about everything I do now, and for a goal-oriented type this is very satisfying.

"Then why do I miss it so much?" I want do ask, but I don't.  Actually, I only think to ask so much after I type up the above conversation.  But now he has gone to the store.  Besides, I don't think he knows.

I hear his key in the door now.  He's brought me back cucumber pepsi.

Karaoke: Not Just for Drunks Anymore...!

Every day I come across more ordinary experiences that I used to believe were impossible to tolerate without the aid of a drink.

Whether it be going to a sushi bar without ordering a bottle of sake to invariably spill on the fish, visiting my former homestay family without guzzling chu-hi on the train over to Yokohama, or even getting a phone call from someone back in the US without a six pack on hand, all of these experiences feel like stepping stones upon which I cautiously maintain my balance as I cross a river of sorts.

Going to Karaoke the other day, however, was more like jumping into the water and just swimming to the other side instead.

I should note that Japanese karaoke is strictly distinct from the American adaptation. In Japan, the sing-along fest is almost always a private party.  Establishments rent out dozens of small rooms equip with the machines, so that we need only embarrass ourselves in front of our closest friends.  It is also not uncommon to go to karaoke alone.  Salarymen and high school students will often patronize karaoke boxes during their lunch breaks, so that they might alleviate some work-related stress by belting along to their favorite songs while no one is watching.  These establishments serve alcohol, but it is not a requirement. 

Nonetheless, karaoke and intoxication still go together like sake and sashimi.

I was out with my best friend, and I forget which one of us suggested going to karaoke.  It is something that we always used to do while out drinking together.  I will call her "Jade" because that is her name in my book. She knows that I have quit drinking, and is an ardent fan of the decision.  At karaoke, she chose not to drink in my company although I told her it would be fine if she did.  I was surprised that she didn't feel the need to order a drink despite the environment.  Other People, I am learning, do not drink nearly as much as I thought that they did.

And so we sang the latest J-pop tunes.  English lyrics occasionally made cameo appearances in these songs, seemingly for decoration.  This "English" is heavily accented and basically indecipherable while only listening to the songs on the radio, so we were very amused to learn the actual nature of these lyrics while reading them off of the TV screen.

I thought you might be too:

I am learning that laughter can be an intoxicating substance in itself, and in this light I feel lucky that I live here in Japan, where there exists so, so much to laugh about.