Hellwalk and Arrival to Your TV Appearance

Hellwalk and Arrival to Your TV Appearance

Arrival in Otsu, Shiga. Time to go to go to the Ministry of Education!

Arrival at last. Oh by the way its as hot as hell. Enjoy!

After the hell walk (will be posted as a blog entry later) we arrived at the Shiga Ministry of Education Building. It was old and too far from the station. My sweat was dripping down my back as we entered the building. Air conditioning! Yes I thought, but no. To my dismay there was no air conditioning. Apparently it was being renovated. Unlucky! We started to cue for the elevator. One tiny elevator made for 3 Japanese to stand in at one time. That means barely 1 foreigner and even that 1 foreigner with 1 or 2 bags no way! It was too tight was taking forever so I elected to take the stairs. The only problem was it was the same temperature as outside and the lactic acid in my arms had eroded my muscles beyond use. I pulled my bags up as hard as I could up 5 flights of stairs. When we arrived at the top they told us everyone was late and we needed to put our suits on. “Wait!”, I said. “Can I have a shower or something, I’m covered in sweat and smell like man chowder”. They said "No, hurry up and change." Unlucky.
I ran into a room full of sweaty half naked foreigners body types aplenty. We had little tiny guys, big guys, super duper skinny guys and even a girl walked into our room by accident! We asked if they could possibly turn on the air conditioning in the room since we were dying and sweaty. They put a large fan at the entrance of the room. I started to rip my clothes off. I stood in front of the fan wafting my stinky man chowder into the air for all my fellow brethren to enjoy. Finally there seemed to be some sort of cool air coming into some vents at the back of the room. It seemed the air conditioning was working, slowly but surely. I ripped my socks off, tore my boxers off and threw them on the vent. Might as well dry those suckers while I can I thought. I wasn’t sure what to think of the other foreigners, but I heard 3 guys all from England talking in their high level English accents. “Emmm are you from New South Whales? Would you mind some tea and crumpets?”. Actually sorry I can’t remember what exactly they said to one another, but something along those lines, plus I was pretty much naked so I was more concerned with that. I finally took a gander at the Brit with blue eyes and dark hair “Hey what’s up you British bastard?”. He seemed to be taken aback. “Nice to meet you my friend”, he answered. It occurred to me he might now know I’m Canadian so maybe I better explain that. “I’m Canadian”. He said “Ok”. Maybe he didn’t know what that meant. I thought everyone knew, Canada is like India to Britain, the 2nd jewel in the crown. Or maybe not, based on his expression. I thought he’d know the history of my forefathers, how our people came from England to conquer a whole new world and became the best country on the planet. He, and no one else I met seemed to know that. How could they not?
I turned to my right where a really gangly British chap named Mayur. He was this tall guy super thin and a posh accent. He said his name a few times but I wasn’t quite able to pronounce it. I kept saying Mayor and he said no Mayuuuurl. I said "You mean Mayor?". and he’d say "No". Eventually after 5 minutes he said "OK you may call me Mayor", and that’s what I called him. Mayor copied my idea of putting his boxers and socks and shirt on the vents to dry them. My first thought was, this guy is gonna be a good friend. That turned out to be true.

I don't want to post Mayur's face so his shoe will have to do for now. Can you see its gangly?

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!

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

English Teachers Introduction Mr.Awesome

Prior to arriving in Japan I thought I should watch something in Japanese to refresh my Japanese and learn a few things about Japan. This came in the form of G.T.O. Don’t get this confused with Grand Theft Auto (G.T.A). No, the Japanese TV show I am referring to is Great Teacher Onizuka. It is about a teacher who is a low level gang member who likes to look up girls skirts, smoke, swear and get in all sorts of trouble. Sounds like a good life that any guy would want. The first Chinese character in his name means devil or demon.

First character is demon or devil.

As we entered the room to be introduced formally to the teachers and apparently to the people of Shiga prefecture as this was being taped for TV, I was starting to laugh. Not out of fear of being watched by so many people or as I was being paraded like a money for people to throw peanuts at, but because I swore I was looking at Onizuka himself. All the Japanese teachers followed the same dress-code except one. The men wore their suits with ties all tied the same way, formal black shoes, and suit jackets. Their suite jackets all done up tightly despite the heat and the women wearing their skirts and typical black or grey dress-clothes not revealing any skin (damn!). Actually now that I think of it, it could have been a scene of THE MATRIX with Mr.Smith. There was one person though sitting in the middle of the crowd, who I thought looked like Onizuka. He was darker skinned, had sunglasses on (yes inside), wore a sleeveless shirt, gym shorts and had leather sandals beside his chair (which he wasn’t even wearing. He had bare feet!). The theme song started running in my head. I may have been humming it out loud whoops.
I was thinking it would be funny for whoever got Onizuka, after all he seemed to not want to fit in at all, he was like the opposite of the cultural norm. Japan has a saying “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down”. I was like, whoa this guy is a adamantium nail (the indestructible metal Wolverine's claws are made of out of in case you didn't know).
All of us monkeys sat down on our chairs as we faced our soon to be teachers, as well as city officials, education ministry officials and by way of filming, the people of Shiga. I had the feeling Onizuka was looking at me. I was thinking maybe I’m the best looking among the monkeys? (Unlikely I thought). A few of the monkeys looked like GQ models (damn them and their perfect faces!). Can’t they try to set the bar a bit lower for me!
We were told to introduce ourselves and then the teacher from our school would come forward, introduce themselves as well. After the introductions were over we would go to our schools. I looked beside me. The Chinese looking guy from the train sat beside me. I swear that I saw Onizuka stare at him. I whispered “Hey is he looking at us or just my imagination?”. The Chinese guy answered “No, its not your imagination. He is looking at us.” I was like oh, so I’m not hallucinating (with all that heat and man chowder smell I wasn't sure what was a mirage).
As the line moved closer to us I could feel the sweat dripping through my pits and back of my shirt. Then came our introduction. Onizaka put his sandals on and walked right up to us. “Hey guys you are really lucky, I’m the best English teacher in all of Shiga”. Everyone started laughing. He was like I’m serious, I’m cool.

The car he owned. When his hair was black again.

I thought that was good that he understood slang and wasn’t like the other Japanese English teachers who all seemed like robots, Domo Arigato Mr.Roboto!

Maybe I was lucky to have someone that fit outside the box I thought.

Little did I know the adventures were just about to begin.

Until next time!

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