Radiation Man, Can I get some gamma radiation too please?

Radiation Man, Can I get a little Gamma Radiation too?

If you are going to poison me with radiation please add a little gamma radiation for good luck!

If you don't get this joke it refers to the HULK. Bruce Banner gets overdosed with Gamma Radiation which basically makes him invincible.
That might be nice. Of course at the same time you will become a big green monster and destroy everything, but hell I can live with that.

When I was teaching in Japan on the Jet Programme we had to do a number of tests. Urine tests, I found pretty annoying. They asked that the first pee of the day be entered into a special vial then brought to work. To be honest, I didn't find that too sanitary. For most of my time in Japan I didn't have a car, so I would use my granny bike to get to work. I'm sure on more than one occasion people were wondering why I had a vial of pee in my granny basket.

One time the top was a bit loose, so I put it in a plastic bag. When I went to hand the school nurse the vial it seemed to be wet. Whoops!
I threw the bag out, I didn't really want to bring back my coffee mug in it.

Another of these tests that were required was X-ray's. I didn't quite understand why, it seemed so often. I think it was about once every six months or more. A huge truck would come to the school parking lot. They told the men to rip their shirts off and get at it. Finally one day I asked if I could possible get some lead shielding or something since I had been through quite a few X-ray's that year. Beyond the school once I had about 3 on my neck. Plus Superman couldn't see me (inside joke for comic nerds here, Superman can't see through lead!).
They looked at me funny. It seemed to me that whatever they were looking for they didn't think the radiation was a big deal. I thought at least a lead vest or something that they provide in Canada would be nice. Maybe I can hold it around my waist so at least I don't get cancer down there. That would be a bonus.

Finally after the fourth X-ray at school I asked what they are looking for. They told me tuberculosis. I was like what the heck? Isn't that some old world disease that died out 100 years ago? No one seemed to understand.
Since no one got it, I figured I better push my point. Black plague, isn't it like black plague? Since I didn't know the Japanese word for that I substituted death for plague. Don't you guys know black death is over? No response.
I think the X-ray technician thought I was nuts.
I tried to make a joke "Any chance I can get a little gamma radiation thrown in?". Bam!
I thought it was hilarious and started to laugh. I could see on his face he had no idea what I was talking about. Plus I didn't know the word for gamma radiation in Japanese so I just said it the way it sounds. That makes it even more cryptic.

After the X-ray I decided to bring it up at one of our weekly foreigner teacher meetings. "Hey do you guys think I can get too much radiation from X-rays? Its so stupid they even make us take it, after all who the heck gets tuberculosis these days?".
Everyone seemed to agree with me.
Well, guess what.
My good friend Mack's X-rays came back positive for tuberculosis. I couldn't believe it.
He mentioned he had been in Thailand for two weeks during Christmas and it must have got it there.
Its transferred through coughing.
He mentioned they told him he was banned from school and considered a threat to everyone by his school. He was to stay home on bed rest for 1 month and take anti-biotics. I thought this sounded great. A chance to get away from my bad students.
I asked him if he wouldn't mind coughing on me a bit.
He told me that it wouldn't be much fun though, as he had to sustain from tea and crumpets and eat healthy. Those crazy Brits! Crumpets and tea ha!

This isn't our X-ray. But it does apparently show Tuberculosis. I didn't even know it exists in the world anymore.

As you recall Mack was one of my better friends during my first year in Japan. When we first arrived he had come out with us one night, forgot where he lived and didn't have a contact from anyone from his school. He ended up staying with me for a few days.
One morning we looked in the fridge for some food. I hadn't bought much yet and all my pots and pans were from the dollar store, the lowest quality you could get.
He found some eggs in the fridge and brought them out. He saw the bananas and said that would be good cooked together. I'd never heard of eggs mixed with banana but I thought it must be some British delicacy.
As we cooked it the pot started to melt. It was so cheap (I guess aluminum) it couldn't stand up to low heat.
After it was done I threw the half melted pot out (its illegal to throw out in the garbage I found out).

As I took a bite of my slightly metally banana eggs mix, I was shocked. It was the worst thing I had ever tasted. Mind you, metal doesn't help anything taste good, but I thought it might be edible. I glanced at Mack and he scowled, "Emm this is terrible". Uhhh... he recommended it so I didn't know what to say.
"You have eaten this before right?", I inquired.
"No, I just thought it might be good and its all we had", he answered.

F!

If you found anything above amusing or even slightly funny help me out and click one of those boxes above or give me a Google +1 or something. Might come in handy in the future. If only it could make me some money. That would be even nicer!

My Youtube Channel, wearing red tights and jumping around as Deadpool (but I say Dadpool to avoid copyright. Smarter than I look!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUXxArlapy0

Other funny stories from this blog 
http://memoirsgaijin.blogspot.ca/

My blog about everyday life (not Japan related)
http://eyethroughtheglass.blogspot.ca/


My Youtube Channel (makes no sense just like my blog)
http://www.youtube.com/user/judoka4eva

Farewell Party and Speech Bomb

Farewell Party and Speech bomb

Bonus that I lived the 3 years there.

You know regardless of how bad things are, you probably have a better connection with people you have gone through rough times with. At least that’s what I thought. I felt like I had come a long way during my 3 years in Japan. Most of the kids liked me (not the graduated ones, they still wanted to kill me). I felt like I had changed a few of their lives for the better and even helped them, not only through exposure to foreigners, but of me having a love of them and things about their culture. Not the bad ones though, of course I still distasted them. There was one boy and one girl I felt particularly close with that I felt like I was going to miss the most of all the students. They both tried so hard to talk to me. 
Lastly their personalities were similar to mine. Which means, I should have told them to write half of this blog and told them its homework for me. Oh ya!
On the last day of school I was told to do a speech in mostly English and a little bit of Japanese. I was so nervous and I didn’t know how much emotion I would feel. As an adult I don’t recall ever crying, but for whatever reason I had a bit of sadness inside me. Hard to believe I know, me a true samurai have wimpy feelings.
It finally occurred to me that this was the end, not only of my teaching, ever seeing these kids and teachers again, but also of Japan. I was going home and this was it.
I showed one of my teachers my speech just before I got on stage. They told me I had made an error with a Japanese word. I was fairly sure I hadn’t. "Sayonaraba", is not Japanese she told me.
I said sorry, but this word was introduced to me by the head of the prefecture, and has a stronger nuance then simply sayonara. It denotes a feeling of “If we should meet again one day...”, as opposed to sayonara which does mean goodbye (usually forever). I looked it up in my dictionary to confirm, yes it was there and says a stronger feeling than sayonara. I asked another Japanese teacher, “No, its not Japanese”, she said. I didn’t want to argue with her, since not only did someone tell me its Japanese, my dictionary lists it was Japanese. Look who is the native speaker? Them or me? Ok so its not me, but if someone told me it has a meaning and my dictionary say it has the same meaning, it means 1+1 = 2. 
I was thinking perhaps, its like Shakespeare words, I doth eat thou grapes. Or while it may be some ancient or somewhat unused expression, it is still Japanese, and varies little from sayonara, enough that everyone should understand the point of it.
As I got to my final sentence, I thought I felt a tear in my eye. I breathed deeply and felt my lungs fill with phloem. Yes, I don’t know why, but lots of phloem. "Teachers, Students......" I said. I looked around and saw a lot of grade 6 girls crying, "Sayonaraba!"...silence. Did they understand the last part or they all think I made a mistake and meant sayonara.
No one clapped. Ummm.... shouldn't I get a clap or something? I got the crap beat out of me for 3 years and no clap? That ain't cool.
A girl walked up on stage, it was one of my favorite students Yuki. In English she said “Myles from all of us we thank you for the 3 years you have been at this school, you have helped us and change our lives, thank you”. She came forward as if to hug me, I felt some more tears in my eyes, then she gave me flowers. I wasn’t sure if I should hug her, but I was getting my damn hug regardless if I was supposed to or not.
The next day was my final day at school. During the day I got an email from my co worker, which said something terrible had happened. A student had died. My school went into lockdown. I didn’t really understand what was happening, since it wasn’t at our school but perhaps the school only heard someone had died but not how and were worried for the children. My friend said the girl was bullied a lot and jumped from the 3rd floor.
Not a great day to say the least. To top it off it was my farewell party with the teachers that night. Its never good to have a dark cloud over the day you are being thanked, or you are trying to tell everyone how much you will miss them or try to do a funny speech. I forget sometimes that sarcasm doesn’t work so well in Japan. Big foreshadow here.
After a terrible day at school I went home. I got ready for my dinner and biked my granny bike with the uncool basket on the front for the last time. I arrived at the hotel lobby covered in sweat. Perfect, start this 3 year trip covered with sweat and end it that way too. At least this time I wasn't late (or was I?). That was nice no one offered me a ride on my last day, oh well.
It reminds me of the time I walked in -10 C temperatures on snowy days to school and saw at least 4 teachers drive by who waived to me but didn't offer to pick me up.
I met some of the teachers and waited outside the dining room we were about to eat in. The principal wanted to have a chat with me. Of course after 3 years and always speaking in Japanese, it was interesting for me that now he wanted to speak in English. I could tell he had forgot a lot, so he was nervous. “Myles even though today was a difficult today, don’t let it make tonight not good OK?”. OK I answered!
I had prepared a speech which I thought was absolutely hilarious. I pictured everyone would be hollowing with laughter and what a way to start a day that was so rough for everyone. Here’s how it went.
“I’m not looking forward to going back to Canada as there is someone special waiting for me there. As all of you know, she would like me to take her on a private trip from Victoria to Niagara falls. She thinks its one hour from my house, but she doesn’t get that its 5 days by car. No one laughed. Maybe they didn’t get how funny it was. Ya and she also wants me to take her to Newfoundland! That’s on the other side of Canada. Seriously!? hahahha. No one laughed. This crowd is tough I thought. OK I’ll pull out the big guns. 
These jokes were referring to the old lady that had bad breath and was an assistant English teacher. I wrote a blog post about it before. They were all well aware she kept asking me to tour her around Canada.
The big guns were my last resort, where I thought I would sing to the tune of a song I liked. I was trying to sing but I couldn’t remember the tone because I'm tone deaf. I asked the music teacher could she start it off for me. She does it. I'm like OK I can do it, to the tune of shima uta (Island Song) with the words I translated from Japanese “Island song, like the wind, I’m blowing across the sea, like a bird flying in the sky, I’ll be meeting someone, oh the someone you know on my little island song. Silence. No one got it! Crap! Bomb after bomb tonight, that’s nice. I tried to explain it that the someone was the teacher that had worked at the school who drove everyone nuts. I thought it was funny, but maybe it's rude to insult people who aren’t there or something. Common, let me be funny today, its my farewell. Silence, a few people forced laugh. OK I guess I bombed, hopefully they don’t hate me. Finally they said OK now we are going to do a game where you are a pervert.

So if I like this it means I am a pervert then! Damn!!

I was like WTF? They are like oh ya, its cool. You wear a sash that says “I’m a pervert and you walk around”. I don’t think I get it, who is that funny for. I’m not a pervert, at least I don’t think I am.
Finally they put this pervert sash on me. I started to realize that this was it, this was the last day with these people. Three years battling all these demons kids, but coming out alive was a bonus. I had expected to lose a finger or two. I mean ya, so my neck was permanently damaged (and still is), but at least I didn’t get stabbed (only the threat of).
So there was a group of female teachers standing together and the party was starting to end. The principal whispered to me that while we shouldn't really have a 2nd party due to the tragic event of the day, we still would because it was for me, but only a few select teachers would be invited. I prayed for it not to include that old lady I spoke about in the song.
I decided I better get my farewells in and get my final hugs. I went to some of the female teachers ready to get a hug. One of the female teachers looked at me, “What are you doing?”. That was direct I thought. “Ummmm, hoping for a hug, since this is the last time we meet”, I answered. One of the male teachers patted me on the shoulders, “You are a pervert (hentai)”. I was like WTF? I moved on to the next teacher whose face went a pale colour and she looked upset like I was about to do something terrible to her. As I tried to put my arms around her she brought her arms up into her chest, like she expected me to violate her. I know Japanese don’t touch a lot (especially PDA), but this is a bit crazy I thought. Three years together of all these rough times and I don’t even get a hug, rough. At least I will remember them everyday every moment of my life for the rest of my life. Every-time I breath due to my still broken ribs and cracked neck I thought.

Ouch, that hurts. He is feeling some pain for the rest of his life too.

If you found anything above amusing or even slightly funny help me out and click one of those boxes above or give me a Google +1 or something. Might come in handy in the future. If only it could make me some money. That would be even nicer!

My Youtube Channel, wearing red tights and jumping around as Deadpool (but I say Dadpool to avoid copyright. Smarter than I look!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUXxArlapy0

Other funny stories from this blog 
http://memoirsgaijin.blogspot.ca/

My blog about everyday life (not Japan related)
http://eyethroughtheglass.blogspot.ca/


My Youtube Channel (makes no sense just like my blog)
http://www.youtube.com/user/judoka4eva