The Outgoing

I can't remember a time when I've written a retrospective post about the prior year, or something looking forwards, so I thought I'd double down on new experiences and try for both.

The logical place to start is back, (not that time has a 'back,' or 'front,' but you know what I mean) so let's start there.

In terms of job, nothing changed.  I'm with the same company, doing the same work.  The only difference is location.  This year I ended up working with a fun group of teachers, so that's a bonus I didn't have last year.  I'm working closer to home, which means I'm not waking up at six in the morning, I'm sleeping longer every day which in turn led to me being happier overall.  It turns out sleep is pretty important, guys!

I'm still with the same rugby team.  I joined last year and there was a noticeable changing of the guard (I say noticeable, I wasn't there the year prior, so I don't have a frame of reference beyond what people have told me) that ensured we had a decent amount of energy going into the season.  We staved off any mention of the word relegation, and ended the season with two or three wins (I forget).

This year we were forced to play two relegation playoffs, of which I played one (I was busy for the other and could not play).  In all, this year has been incredibly disappointing.  Almost all our points were scored through the forwards, our attack had no flow, we made very few opportunities and made hundreds of mistakes.  Up to the playoffs I had played four or five games (I also had surgery on my ankle this year, which meant an enforced absence for the first few games) and only scored once.  The other wingers on the team had scored once or twice.  The fullback scored once.  I can't remember any of the centres scoring.  We probably scored more points in any two games last year than the whole of this year.

Our defence was not much better.  We were disorganised and, frankly, unfit, so we bled points even during the games we won.

On a personal note I made mistakes and struggled to find form.  It was difficult coming into a team that was already established, after a personal injury, and I will have to put in  a lot of effort next year to retain my position.  Try scoring is an important statistic for wingers, and I did not do enough of it.  The result was my often coming off the wing and working the inside channels like an extra flanker, not exactly conducive to scoring and also an excellent indication of the dysfunction of our attack.

No individual wins a game of rugby, but I will definitely hold myself to higher standards next year in order to try and drag us upwards, particularly in defence where I will suggest using an aggressive pattern (and of course be rebuffed because I'm a foreigner who doesn't know anything).

It's evident that no one else is going to step up to the plate on the pitch, so I will.




Machismo and bravado aside, this year I started a number of personal projects.  The first is a book.  I've been writing a sci-fi (yes, I know, hardly an inspired genre choice) novel that's reached the end of alpha testing.  That is to say, in literary terms, that I've written a hundred thousand words, and that I need to now beat and wrestle those words into a story.

I've seen people talk about their writing as if they were sculptors, finding a story hidden inside a block of imagination, much like an artist chisels away at wood or stone to find the naked Greek man underneath.

Writing, for me, is more like punching a bear in the gonads.  At many points I sat down and fought like a madman, foregoing food and drink (and occasionally sleep) to hammer away at the keys in front of me, thinking I was making headway in felling the beast.  Occasionally it would get angry and fight back, knocking me for six and causing me to seriously reconsider the endeavour.  During these low points I would peruse the internet and look to others who are writing for the creative outlet (as opposed to those looking for financial gain) and see a literal world of people who are better at it than me.  That's always a fairly dispiriting realisation, no matter how times you are forced to reflect on it.

Like punching a bear, this project serves no real purpose.  I'm never going to be a professional author (not smart enough), nor am I ever going to be published (no personal connections).  Despite being willing to go toe to toe with any number of Carnivora for the chance to have a Dream Job (tm) I'm realistic.  Sad face.

As such, I have some modest goals for my book.  They are as follows:

Goal the first, sell one hundred copies.  This is the big one.  The goal that means, in my mind if nothing else, that I'm an author.  I will note it on my CV.  This, for me, will be the fulfilment of a lifelong dream to 'be an author,' and to 'write a book.'  This is a dream I assumed I would target when I was forty and in the midst of a life crisis.

Goal the second, sell ten physical copies of my book.  Possibly with signatures.

Let's get down to brass tacks.  This is a vanity endeavour driven by ego.  The idea that someone might want to read whatever drivel I write, and that I am interesting or important enough for another human being to be entertained, is entirely self indulgent.  I am essentially saying that I am cool, and you are not.  That I matter in some way.  A physical book can last thousands of years and thus secures my legacy as a human of note.

Now that I think about it, maybe I'm having my mid-life crisis early.

Anyway, with the advent of on-demand vanity presses I can sell enormously expensive single copies of the book, instead of bulk buying thousands at a time.  My aim is to sell ten physical copies, each of which will count towards my hundred total.

The third, have a real ISBN number.  This one is probably the easiest to fulfil, but is likely to be the most expensive.  Anyone can purchase an ISBN number, but they're very expensive.  If you go through Amazon or other popular self-publishing services, they can give you numbers and bar codes that look like ISBN numbers, but are only recognised by their respective services, so are not true ISBN's at all.  Sneaky buggers. 

The point of this is to ensure I can take my phone, scan the code, and have it direct to a recognised storefront.  Should I ever meet someone who is interested in my book (an unlikely premise, granted) I want to be able to whip out my phone, scan the barcode of the copy I will carry around with me literally everywhere, and have it direct to a storefront with my name on it.  Did I mention I have an enormous ego?

Fourthly, I want a pucker cover.  I want a cover that is art.  I want it to be a self-contained story that is good enough to go toe to toe with the huge publishing houses and their artists.  This has potential to be the most expensive aspect of the project, but will almost certainly make or break it.  The cover is the first thing you see and most people will judge it thusly.  To get my hundred sales this needs to be perfect.

The fifth and the final, I want a review.  Not a review from the Times, or an online blog.  An amazon review.  I want someone to have read it and felt strongly enough to have left a review.  I don't care what the content of the review is, I just want one.

Notice how none of these goals have anything to do with the quality of the writing or how it is received.  Don't take that to mean I'm assured of my own genius, but rather the opposite.  It is not Discworld, nor will I ever be Pratchett.

It is also my first book.  The first is always a learning experience.  Who knows.  Where I will end up in the future?  One day I might even be adequate.  Now there's a long-term goal.

The rest of my top-secret projects will be revealed at a later date, that's enough writing for one day.

I Think I'm About to be Assassinated

So I have an utterly, utterly filthy plastic cup that I've never washed (building up immunity) sitting on my desk.  It's so filthy that no matter what I put into it (usually tea, occasionally watery hot chocolate) it all tastes the same.

One of the English teachers I work with took pity on me and washed it out.  Evidently their cleaning liquids were not up to the task, so instead of giving up and telling me to stop being a bridge troll he took the nuclear option.  He cleaned it with bleach.

The nuclear analogy is perfect for a number of reasons.  Firstly, it worked.  The cup is now white.  Whether it's white because the filth has been whitened, or washed away, we will never know.

Secondly, it made a point about my personal cleanliness habits that I will not soon forget.

Thirdly, the area which has been bleached is no longer fit for consumables.  I can no longer drink from that cup.  IT REEKS OF BLEACH.  No matter how many times I wash it out, it won't stop smelling.  I was only away from that goddamned cup for an hour so it can't have been stewing for more than fifty nine minutes, and yet the poison is ingrained.  There is no way it's ever coming out of that damned cup, never ever, ever.

It's a shame because it took me the best part of four years to buy a cup to drink things at work (I only got it because I needed one for the hospital and it happened to be in my bag when I went to work the next week) and I will never remember to buy another one.

And what else is a cup useful for, other than cup stuff?  The cup has been destroyed.

It's also a shame because he's a really nice guy and I don't think he meant to utterly destroy my personal property - he only meant to slyly tell me that my colleagues think I'm a pig (I don't have the heart to tell him I don't give a rats ass) and that I should clean my stuff.

Anyway, it is said that we should learn something every day.  Today I learned that if you BLEACH a receptacle for FOODSTUFFS (drinkstuffs?) you are substantially reducing the ability of that thing to carry the item(s)/thing(s) it was designed to carry.

P.S.  If you're going to try to murder someone who isn't anosmic, bleach is a terrible choice.

Foooooooooooooooooooooood

So it's no secret that food is a big problem for me in Japan.  There are a thousand different types of fish (none of which are predicted to be available in 10 years due to over-fishing) and a thousand different types of rice (who knew there was more than one kind of rice?) but very little in the way of marmite.  There isn't even the option for one kind of marmite, the bog standard marmite in a jar.  Marmite chocolate is fine in a pinch (that pinch being a three month wait for it to be shipped over), but, realistically speaking, nothing is going to take over the crown of the original.  Marmite crisps are something to be avoided.

So we know how things are from an English in Japan perspective; how about the reverse?

In Japan they have all the fish and all the rice, but they also have interesting takes on well known western classics.  If you're a macdonalds person who has ever been on the internet you probably know about the teriyaki chicken burgers.  They're just fried chicken sandwiches with a teriyaki sauce, so nothing mind-blowing.  Unless you've never tried teriyaki, in which case I suggest you go out and find something adorned with said sauce.  You might like it if you like tangy things, but aside from that I can't really tell you what it's comparable to and whether you should avoid it or not.

I am bad at this.

There are also the chocolates, something I am much more familiar with.  The venerable kitkat has made its way here, only to fall over and get covered in green tea.  It's bright green and tastes quite peculiar.  It doesn't really taste like green tea (who would have guessed that a chocolate company pouring chemical formulations into their chocolate would end up with something that doesn't taste anything like the flavour written on the label, shocking!) but it doesn't really taste chocolatey either, so I'm not entirely sure who this is aimed at.

Locals who have never eaten chocolate or drunk green tea?  Good luck finding that person.

There are also seasonal varieties here.  They love the fact that they have four seasons (for some reason that I have yet to figure out, all Japanese people think that Japan is the only country in the world with four seasons, even though they only have three - hot, cold, rainy) and utilise that for some insidious marketing.  In Summer everything is watermelon flavoured.  In rainy, everything is cherry blossom flavoured.  In Winter everything is back to normal, but with a christmas tree on the cover.

One thing I've also noticed is that apples come around this time of year, apparently from up north (Hokkaido) and they're great.  Super sweet, super juicy and enormous.

Artists impression of various apples.  Big ones - Japanese Winter apples.  Small ones, stupid English apples.

The only problem is, and I say this with all the affection for quirky Japanese customs, rituals and superstitions in the world, they are terrible at eating them.  The worst.

They get a knife, peel the apple, then cut it into equally sized slices, then serve them on a plate.

Everyone does this.  Monsters.

It's a fucking apple!  Just eat the damned thing!  Run it under a tap to get all the nitrates, pesticides and carbon nanotubes off the skin, then eat the fucking thing.  Christ almighty.  I could have washed, eaten and thrown away three apples in the time it takes to peel one.  By the time you're done the thing is brown anyway.  What on earth.

Anyway, apples aside, there are a million variations of normal western food out here, I just wonder how long it's going to take someone to make a sushi stuffed Christmas turkey, like a turducken, only with wasabi.

Oh, wasabi.  You should definitely buy some if you have never tried it.  It's possibly the most revelatory food experience I've had since I've been here.  It's part tastebud destroyer (like the worlds strongest mustard), part decongestant.  It's excellent with almost anything you'd use mustard for, I'm told (I don't eat mustard, mustard is disgusting) and obviously great with sushi.  I've also been known to just sit down in front of the youtube with a tube (of mustard), and slowly work my way through it, instead of going to the corner shop and buying some horrendous slop as a snack.

It's probably given me, or is going to give me, seventy bajillion ulcers because that stuff is basically caustic, but damn if it doesn't get the pipes clear.

Try it out some time.