We now return to our regularly-scheduled programming. no new news on the coach front; i'll update when/if i hear anything. i was scanning the obituaries website, and by pure coincidence, saw that the father of one of my professors in university had also passed away recently. he lived to be 100! that's ridiculously amazing. i don't know if this professor remembers me or not, which makes me reluctant to drop him an email. but thinking about it a bit more, i'm sure he'd appreciate a message of sympathy and support. so i just wrote to him, but we'll see if he replies.

today is a public holiday in japan, but i had half a day of work. observation day/open house in one of the schools. but i get half a day off tomorrow, and that leads into the golden week holiday. i realize that the line between holidays and work is really blurred in japan. one of the teachers was telling me that when he was younger, teachers got paid very little to come back to supervise CCAs on holidays. the situation is a little better now, since there have been new labour laws put in place, but i still don't quite get why people would want to become teachers in japan, especially since there's a chance of a rural posting.

speaking of teachers, i tried to ask the cute teacher out sometime during golden week. got rejected, which sucks. i get the feeling he wants to maintain some level of (professional?) distance. and the suspicion that he's got something going on with the lady teacher is getting stronger. they're both coming in late after the holiday. but hey - his personal relationships are not my business. and he isn't obliged to spend any of his personal time with me, either. can't deny that i'm a little displeased about the whole situation, though. well, it'll get better over time. and this is not the worst thing to happen to me in terms of potential dates, by far.

associated thought. with that rejection, i suddenly feel even less close to school A. i really wonder how much of the closeness that i felt was due to attraction to the cute teacher. also, could the diminished feeling of closeness to school A also be caused by the increased feeling of closeness to school C? now that i'm spending 2 days a week there, i've got more opportunities to talk to the kids there. also, the teachers agreed to implement my notebook idea (the kids write anything they want to me, and i'll reply. but it has to be in english.), so i've gotten to learn a bit more about them through that avenue too.

at the end of the day, i think that this is a learning opportunity to not let personal feelings interfere with work obligations. luckily enough for me, i've never had to work/interact with people that i've been attracted to, both at tuition and at the accursed IP firm. well, there was that cute guy in tuition, but we were teaching completely different levels. there was a cute guy in the accursed IP firm too, but we were in different departments. in both those cases, our paths never crossed professionally (or personally, for that matter, to my dismay). so, the plan here is to just carry as normal, and teach to the best of my ability. as for the optional stuff, like staying late to watch their CCA...maybe i'll cut back a bit. both because i need some distance to heal first, and also (more practically) because driving back to the town hall takes 20 minutes.

where do we go from here, then? a major downside of a rural placement is probably not having many/any LGBT people that you'd consider as dating prospects nearby. i mean, most of the guys in the town hall are married, and the single ones mostly look straight. that's not to say that there are zero LGBT people in the town though; school C's principal has mentioned that some students are having orientation/gender identity issues, which is all the more reason i should do something to be of help to them. but i should remind myself that it's JET first, dating later. i didn't come to japan to find a partner. it'd be a nice bonus, but it's not the main objective. that's experiencing life in japan, and living alone.

last thing which i've tried figuring out in my head, with no success. can't remember where i heard it from, but singapore is in the wrong time zone. we use GMT +8 like hong kong and perth, despite being significantly west of them. our closer neighbours, indonesia and thailand, use GMT +7. even countries east-er than singapore (cambodia, vietnam) use GMT +7. what this means is that we're an hour too fast. so let's say the sun rises at 6:00am in thailand. that translates to 7:00am in singapore, which is why the sky's always been dark when i woke up for school growing up. i was never a morning person, but in japan, i wake up quite naturally and easily to the sun shining in my room. best part: it's usually only about 6:15am. i have like, 2 hours before having to report to work. i'd noticed this a while after coming to japan, but i'd always thought that it might be my excitement and the novelty factor. but having lived here for 5 months now(!), that's all but worn off. maybe that's why waking up was so difficult for me in singapore. wow, it's a relief to have written and reasoned it out!

-random thought of the day: Work out a schedule for golden week!-

My secondary school bowling senior just got in touch a few hours ago, to ask me if i knew any of my (our) coach's next-of-kin. as you might imagine, nothing good ever comes out of a request like that. the facts i know from my senior are: (1) my coach has passed away, (2) the police are involved, (3) one of his next-of-kin has been contacted. everything i say from here on about the situation is my speculation and/or opinion.

based on the info that was relayed to me, i interpret the sequence of events to have been my coach passing away unnoticed some time ago, a neighbour noticing something amiss (the smell or some other indicator) and alerting the police. i don't know why my senior of all people was contacted first. maybe his name (which starts with an A) was the first in my coach's contact list. as for the cause of death, your guess is as good as mine. my top 3 guesses are natural causes, heart attack, some form of asphyxia/suffocation.

i must say that i've been fortunate to not have received too many pieces of news informing me of the death of someone i knew personally. come to think of it, when was the last time before this? maybe around 2010, when my secondary school friend passed away in the UK while playing soccer? given my relatively young age, i suppose it's normal that i don't hear/haven't been hearing too much about the death of people in my immediate social circles.

this isn't the first time i've blogged about my coach. but in light of this development, i suppose that i should talk about him a little more, if only for remembrance's sake. i first met him when i joined bowling in sec 2 (long story about what i was doing in sec 1). i'd been bowling casually with my uncle and cousins, so i did know a little bit. unfortunately, i was young and stupid, and overestimated my knowledge. thankfully i wasn't (as far as i recall) arrogant about it!

when we moved up to sec 3, i got closer to him as a part of the CCA committee. he'd occasionally bring us out for dinner, and drop us at marina south MRT (the bus came once every 30 minutes or so). for that year, my best memory about him, and the bowling team in general, was the end-of-year camp, where we booked a chalet in sentosa. that's when i watched bruce almighty an insane number of times.

even after graduation, i interacted with him fairly frequently because i asked him to oversee a portion of the coursework for my NYAA project. strangely, i don't recall how i went down to marina south from CJC! but i do know i went down, because i have memories of coaching my juniors, and my coach telling me not to talk to just one of them too much, because it implied favouritism. there was a brief coaching stint in army too, well...more like i went to watch and help out in one day of national schools. my best friend from first 3 months was there too, but that's just side trivia. we're no longer in contact.

on to undergrad. i helped out with the primary school, first at the sports school's bowling centre, then subsequently at orchid country club and SAFRA yishun. my coach set initial expectations very high; like one mistake and i'd be terminated. but it never came to that. that was also when we had a dispute about pay. i was owed a sum in the neighbourhood of about $500, and he didn't pay me because he said i didn't submit timesheets...which didn't make sense to me since we agreed to split the pay 50-50. and i never missed a class (as he should know) so i didn't understand why he didn't just divide the total sum by 2. but i gave up the thought of getting that sum back a long time ago. partly because of that, and mainly because i was starting my honours project, i didn't continue with him in the fourth year of my undergrad. after that, we met up only very sporadically, like once on my birthday in 2018, and maybe another 1-2 more times at most.

like i said in the past, i owe him a huge debt of gratitude. as a sheltered kid who didn't really get out of the house often, i really looked forward to CCAs and the dinners after. he taught me social skills too, like interacting with seniors and juniors. admittedly, there was some friction, but at the end of the day, we bonded well as a group. he also gave me advice and reassurance during my NS days, and introduced me to MMOs. it's thanks to him that i started city of heroes, and i have fond memories of playing it late into the night at his place. he also brought us (the students on the bowling team who were closer to him) to the cat high gatherings, and it's from there that i really got integrated into the alumni network. that's one of the top 5 best things to have happened to me so far in my entire life.

having said all of that, i will also say that he was human, and thus he wasn't perfect. he did many great things, like his taekwondo achievements. and not to discredit them, but as he got older, he seemed to still be living in the past as far as those were concerned. he often said that he wanted to get more physical activity into his routine, do more exercise, maybe even go back into taekwondo. but all that didn't happen. in his defense, he was injured quite badly (metal pins in some places), plus he'd gained weight since the glory days, so i understand that these were deterrents to his plans. points i can't defend: his heavy smoking, his eating habits.

this next thing is something i don't think i've ever said out loud, but towards the end of our regular interaction, i kind of got the feeling that he was lonely and wanted companionship. for one, his social circle didn't seem to be all that big. also it was like, he would be ok with me staying until late. he'd even find reasons to keep me at his place for longer (star trek episodes, music tracks), to the point where i missed the last bus home on a few occasions. for the record, i never felt threatened, and always stayed out of my own free will (and perhaps slightly out of a feeling of obligation as well).

there was just one instance where it got a little uncomfortable. i forget the circumstances leading up to the call, but he called me and told me off for not contacting him. it was very guilt-trippy, along the lines of "i was so worried, what if you'd died? i read in the news that someone with your name died from cancer recently!" i think we began to drift apart after that. on the topic of his loneliness, him being single didn't help things. i never knew his sexual orientation for sure, but i do know that he had dated girls before. some batman work turned up info that he might not have been fully straight, but i don't have access to details while in japan. i'll update if i have confirmed information. there were also rumours about his orientation floating about, because he was a little too physical with people who were in bowling around the same time as me. but from my perspective, he never crossed any lines.

going to be a little vague here, because privacy. he came from a filthy rich family. like, the $500 i was owed is a drop in the bucket ocean to them. so i never understood why he lived the way he did. not that there was anything wrong with it, since it was an honest living. maybe he just got disillusioned by corporate life and chasing money? or having resources available meant that he could pursue his passion of bowling/coaching.

last thought: there are learning points that i can take away from his life. (1) stay healthy. (2) live in the present. (3) don't be clingy. (4) be kind to people. (5) expect the unexpected. (6) don't make everything about myself. my senior, who's now my primary point of contact for this matter, should hopefully update me in the near future. all that remains is for me to say to him (as if he can hear it now) is thank you for your mentorship, i hope you're at peace, pain-free, and in a better place.

-random thought of the day: Goodbye.-

Encountered my first incident of racism in japan today. it wasn't directed against me, though. so what happened was that as we were doing an activity in class, a kid remarked to a classmate, "can you do it? you're a half, after all". "half", or "ハーフ", refers to a person of mixed descent with one japanese parent. i'm not sure if it's a derogatory term like "gaijin" is, but i think we can all agree that considering the context in which it was used, it was offensive. to think that i was just happily telling my JET friends that there was no racism or discrimination around here!

i've been thinking - where from and how is racism learned? other forms of discrimination too, for that matter. fundamentally, i think kids notice people who are different, and depending on how that difference is processed, it can manifest as discrimination. although in this case, i'd say that the kid's argument is flawed. one of the other kid's parents in non-japanese, and from an english-speaking country. so if anything at all, that kid should be able to do english-related tasks better! but that's not the main point.

because i was elsewhere in the class, i didn't catch the offending phrase being said. and honestly, even if i was right next to them when it happened, i may not have understood it, given my level of japanese. the other english teacher caught it, and i think she handled it admirably. what she did was not to confront the kid directly, but check the seating plan to get the name, then tell the main japanese english teacher (and me) after class. it must have hit closer to home for her, considering she's foreign, and married to a japanese guy - meaning that her kids are "half" as well. guess that shows her teaching experience. watching what she did was a good lesson for me too, in case i ever catch something like that happening. i'm also looking forward to seeing whether/how the school will deal with it, because this is the first time since i've been here that such an issue has cropped up with me in the know. so, my impression of the administration will likely be significantly affected by how they deal with this.

not sure if i've talked about this here yet, but a few weeks ago, i asked my supervisor how i could be of support to LGBT kids in the schools. her advice was for me to offer my help to someone i trust in the school administration as an initial step. of the 3 schools i visit now, i think primary and secondary school C have discussed the topic of LGBT. not sure about school A, because they haven't brought it up at all. maybe it's the numbers game in reverse. with such a low student population, there might not be any LGBT kids there. the related thought i had was that if i want to offer support, i might have to come out to whoever i talk to about it, and eventually to the student body at large, just so they know that i'm in a better position to understand what they're going through. am i ready for that? i honestly don't know. i shouldn't let fear stand in the way though, especially since i've said that i wished that i had an LGBT role model when i was a teenager. and i have a great role model; jedi master came out so as to support his students. but that resulted in him leaving the teaching service, so...yes. i only hope that when i do decide to take the plunge here, japan won't let me down.

had a brief chat with one of my juniors yesterday - the one who got accepted into the IP firm that didn't take me. she told me that she interviewed with the accursed IP firm as well, and my former boss interviewed her. i'm even happier for her, that she chose to go with her current employer. she said that her boss (the guy that would have been my boss if i'd gotten in) is a lot like our professor. maybe i'll try again after JET...although i'll expect that he'll ask how my JET experience ties in with IP work. i figure i should do something to move myself towards that direction.

last thing on my mind. over the past 2 weeks, i noticed that the cute teacher and a new lady teacher have been coming in late on the same days. my horrible suspicious brain wonders if they were together on the previous nights of those days. the actual explanation is probably totally innocent, like they had to visit a student, or do some other errand first. but even if they were spending nights together, it's not my business, is it? very honestly, i don't think that i'm ready to date yet, but something in me still wants to try. now all i have to do is get the courage to suggest we exchange lines, and maybe plan to do something over the golden week break. this is the last major holiday until the summer break, which is in july or august i believe. my JET friends are telling me that i should prepare for disappointment, and on a purely logical level, i know that they are likely to be right. but when were affairs of the heart ever logical? even in my non-logical state of mind, i know that i shouldn't let this drag on for too long.

-random thought of the day: Catch up over the weekend!-

Point-form blogging to cover events that happened in the past 10 days, as well as for the near future. reminder to self - don't let bloggable things build up for too long. some of them are bound to slip between the cracks. maybe i'll elaborate on a few of them in a future post. also, do forgive any lack of coherence. it's late, i just finished raid, and i'm doing this before going to sleep.

- no COVID symptoms. really grateful.

- feeling better about school C. i really think it's due to the teachers.

- the teacher who i thought was cold/distant now seems happy (happier, at least) to have me in class.

- part of it may also be due to more contact with the kids, as i'm seeing them for an additional day.

- the sec 1s are becoming a little moody. probably puberty.

- conversely, i now feel less close to school A. not sure why.

- still working up the courage to ask the cute teacher out.

- had a minor...difference of opinion regarding company car usage.

- the positive side is i can get more exercise from walking to the primary school.

- got rejected by aeon again. will wait 6 months i guess.

- making crossword puzzles from scratch is difficult.

- questioning some of my beliefs. or, as jedi master might say, killing some sacred cows.

- more bicycle practice done, but nowhere near confident enough to cycle on the roads.

- field trip with school A tomorrow. heard there'll be lots of walking.

- been feeling sleepy after dinner.

 that's all for now i guess. i should have more time and energy to make more sense of this over the weekend.

-random thought of the day: Cut the labels off new clothes.-

Although it was a short work week since i took leave on monday, it was more tiring than i'd anticipated. that's mostly due to the new school year starting, and me visiting schools again from wednesday. the new first graders seem nice enough, plus a few of them have older siblings whom i've taught. while i'm not super worried about the content that i have to teach, i have to say that i am concerned about how to teach it.

got a couple pieces of not-good news this week. first, i was rejected for the aeon card. it's annoying, because the main supermarket chain here is affiliated to them, and i get 1% of my purchase back in points. considering that most of my expenditure goes towards groceries, having that would have been nice. another benefit is that the ETC card is free, unlike the one that comes from rakuten, which isn't. i suspect that i know why the application got rejected, so i'm thinking of sending in another one to try my luck. worst case that doesn't go through as well, and i wait for a few months and try again.

next piece of not good news - i have school lunches catered on days when i have classes. no, that's not it. in kochi, and (from what i know) japan in general, school lunch comes with a carton of milk. here's something strange about me...i don't drink milk. it's not due to allergies or lactose intolerance or anything. i still eat other dairy products like cheese, ice cream, yoghurt. just that i have 2 bad memories of drinking milk, and that's put me off the stuff. the first, believe it or not, was when i was a baby. i remember drinking milk made from powder, and there were lumps/clumps in it, probably due to insufficient stirring. although i didn't have the words for it at the time, i remember being grossed out. the second memory was when i was in primary school, maybe primary 4 or 5? i was staying over at my aunt's house, and she would always buy breakfast back from the market on saturdays. on one such saturday, i saw a glass of white liquid at my place and, thinking it was soy milk, took a big mouthful. i remember it tasting weird, and that was when i realized it was cow milk. nothing bad happened, but the taste really put me off.

back to school lunch. well some time ago, i asked my colleague who's in charge of school lunch matters whether the cost of milk could be waived off my bill. she said she'd help me check, then told me yesterday that because it was a personal choice not to drink milk, and not due to an allergy or anything, it wasn't possible for the cost to be waived. not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things, but i would have liked to have been able to save the 100 yen or so per school day.

third thing, 車検. that's pronounced "sha ken" (not "shaken") and it means "car inspection". because i'm good at neither japanese nor cars, i decided to take the most convenient alternative, and send my car in to a mechanic. they settled everything for me, even lending me a car for the one day that my car was in the shop. the total bill came up to 71000 yen, which is actually more than i paid my colleague for the car! good news is that this inspection only has to be done once every 2 years, so that works out to about 35500 yen per year, or just over SGD 430. that's cheap, by singapore standards! SGD 430 is slightly less than what i paid for about 6 months' worth of road tax in the last year or two of my civic. so it's about a 50% discount from that. when framed in that perspective, it suddenly doesn't seem that expensive. although one of my colleagues said that the cost would be almost halved if i did the checklist and sent the car for inspection myself. but that would involve taking days off and a potential chance of failing the inspection. so...convenience and certainty over savings here, i think.

however, these pieces of bad news become minor annoyances when placed alongside the news that one of my JET friends got. for the sake of privacy, all i'll say is that a family member suffered a sudden health problem, and it was severe enough that the friend decided to fly back to singapore. just got word that the friend has checked into a quarantine facility, and everything appears to be going smoothly. i don't know about how the friend left affairs in japan, but i figure that there'll be time to worry about that later. priorities. whatever the case, i hope that everything works out in the end.

going back to school also means that i got to see the cute teacher again. he's gotten a haircut and changed his hairstyle. i feel that this hairstyle suits him better! although that might be influenced by my personal preference for a clean-cut look as well. sad thing is that they shifted all the seats around in the staff room, so i'm no longer sitting next to him, but diagonally opposite. on one hand, it makes it easier to just look at him. on the other, it's more difficult to talk to him. nothing has changed since the last update, by the way. unless i forgot to mention that i gave him my number. he hasn't done anything with it though, so...yeah. figure i'll wait a bit and ask him to hang out more directly or something. but i don't think i should wait too long either, since there's a chance that he'll get transferred out in the next round of musical chairs.

side note: i wonder if the language barrier might make dating difficult. for instance, i was somehow brave/stupid enough to tell him "i missed you" when i saw him in school on thursday. context: i hadn't seen him for 2 weeks because of spring break. but i think he may have processed it as "nice to meet you", which makes no sense in context. i say this because he said "nice to meet you too". i know my friend and his (japanese) wife have the occasional communication hiccup, and his wife was an english major in university! i don't know how dating a japanese person with a "normal" command of english will be like.

club activities (CCAs) have also started with the new school term. and it seems that clubs have training/meetings every day, and that carries on to saturdays as well. such a schedule (including finishing school at 4pm on normal days, 6pm with CCA) would be basically mad in singapore. i recall secondary school finishing at 2pm, 3pm latest. but CCA did finish later for us though, because we had to go to the bowling centre in marina south. and it would be about 7:30pm by the time i reached home. but that was like...twice, thrice a week? doing that every day would have killed me! wasn't until JC when school started finishing late, at like 5pm. makes me wonder how i survived that, with decent enough grades, to boot. i figure the logic for having such long schooldays and club activities here is to keep kids out of trouble and to occupy their time. because honestly, there isn't much to do for entertainment here, except probably to play with friends. so why not kill 2 birds with 1 stone, and make it count for school? personally though, as someone who's experienced a different education system, i don't think that i'd be very happy schooling in this town. considering that the available CCA choices are baseball, soccer, basketball, volleyball, band, culture society, and that none of those things appeal to me at all, i would probably not join any club, or join the after school study club. not much fun either way, if you ask me.

have a couple of errands to do tomorrow, in the form of getting more groceries, chocolate bread, and retrieving my bicycle. the cancellation and re-registration went through, and i asked the nice bike shop person to check it over for me. the belt needs tightening, and that'll cost an additional 1000 yen. might as well get it done while it's there. now i can ride with no fear of being stopped by the police! well...if i could ride in the first place. there's plenty of time for me to learn.

-random thought of the day: Why have some sporting events started up again?-

Reached home earlier this morning, after spending the past 3 days with the singapore JETs. the trip was fun, and i finally got to be a tourist in japan this time. it did give me some points to think about, regarding life in japan, and just life in general. i'm not going to list every single thing we did, because that would be too boring. also, i've probably forgotten some of them already.

highlights include visiting the famous omurice place. i was last there 6 years ago, when i came to japan for a holiday with some judo friends. in the 6-year gap, the chef's skills really improved! not so much in terms of taste (it was already decent), but more in terms of his showmanship. he's most well known for placing an omelette over rice, then cutting it open and having the sides fall over and envelop the rice. this time, he did a trick where he tossed the omelette from the pan into the air, and caught it in the plate so that it landed on and covered the rice. i was pretty impressed, because it requires good positioning and orientation. i also reconfirmed how he made the omelette - 2 to 3 eggs, whisked with salt only. high heat and a small high-sided pan (20 cm-ish?), which is slightly narrower away from the handle as opposed to being a perfect circle. the wall of the pan is higher at the far end too, but i know that he can do it with a regular pan, so that's probably helpful but not essential. i think that helps shape the omelette or make it easier to turn out into the rice. thin layer of oil, and rapid mixing/tossing. will give that a try once i buy more eggs and get an appropriately-sized pan.

the other outstanding food memory was having mackerel sushi in a little restaurant. the sushi was rolled as opposed to being formed by hand, and it tasted good. i think it's mostly due to wrapping the sushi in kelp, which cured the fish somewhat. the recommended eating method is to take the kelp off, then just eat it as-is. no sauce or wasabi. i think that there was a bit too much rice, and that the rice was a little too sticky/gummy. still, i would recommend going there at least once to try it.

oh! i nearly forgot about the chicken. we had lunch at a cafe that used to be a bathhouse. i had chicken in leek sauce/oil with rice and some other sides. for someone who's not hugely into fried chicken, i must say that i enjoyed it more than i thought i would. something about the fragrance of the oil and the texture of the chicken, which was still moist on the inside. their double chocolate cake, though...amazing. chocolate bits in the cake was a nice surprise.

throughout the trip, i ate a lot...and i mean A LOT. not to mention the spending; i think i spent double or more of my intended budget. thankfully i've been good-ish with my money on normal days, and thus can afford it. we also did a ton of walking! my personal best during the trip was something like 26000 steps, give or take a couple hundred. thanks to that, the average step count for each of the 3 days is between 17000 to 18000. have to admit, my feet were killing me on day 2. but i think i'll be fine.

it's difficult to believe that i was still in the same country for the past 3 days. the cityscape is so different compared to the countryside. then again, i suppose that such a difference is to be expected, for a distance similar to that between singapore and kuala lumpur. i've asked myself several times throughout the trip, if i would be happier being a JET in a more urban (crowded) area. surprisingly, the answer is no. those 3 days reminded me that while i would like a bit more human contact, there is a fine line between a bit more and way too much. i think a reasonable compromise would be like living in the suburbs (away from tourist-y places), or in a nearby town/prefecture. being 30 to 60 minutes away from a big city sounds like the best of both worlds. and no, kochi city doesn't count as a big city.

let's do a quick summary thing. city placement pros and cons:

+ easy access to a wider selection of commodities and services

+ more central, so easier to travel

+ able to be just another face in the crowd

+ able to meet (date) more people

- more temptation to spend money

- actually spending more money (rent, parking, etc.)

- 

rural placement pros and cons:

+ you know everyone

+ able to form deeper relationships with people

+ quiet

- everyone knows you

- inaccessible/inconvenient

the list isn't complete, but i'll add on to it when i think of more points. actually, i don't know why i'm biased towards having to live in a city. to me, it seems more...desirable, somehow. could be because i'm more used to it, or because more/better opportunities can be found in a city. in terms of quality of life, the countryside wins hands down. maybe the main drawback of not being able to get stuff can be offset by internet shopping and shipping.

-random thought of the day: Back to work.-