Winter

I didnt even have time to write…Things have been so crazy over the past 2 months…I dont know where to start…

I’ll start from the most recent and go backwards…Its easier to remember things still fresh on my mind…

Today, I woke up at my gf’s apartment…Its funny how things work out….The Last time I wrote on here, I got rejected from Chihiro whom I was chasing over the summer….and the actress that I was interested in, I got her…Amazing how things turn around so fast…God, thanks. Really.

Today, me and Yuuka had to wake up and meet a very old landlord, an 89 year old man, who was going to decide whether or not I could rent his apartment…My Japanese has improved a bit, but nowhere close to even being able to converse without the use of English. Yuuka was there to translate and it is amazing how shes picking up English so fast, just like how Laura used to…

The old man agreed so I’m renting his apartment…Finally, my own apartment in Tokyo…No roomates, no fucking cleaning up after people…No fucking foreigner agencies out to rip me off…A real Japanese apartment. So its decided…I will be here for another year…So please come and visit, you all have a place to stay now so its only the flight cost and your personal shopping…but dont do too much of that right??? That stuff doesnt mean anything as you all know…

Me, Yuuka, Kaneko-San (89 Year old Landlord who luckily trusts foreigners) went to the rental agency company. You have to do this kinda shit in Japan….The rental agent who got the papers ready, Hotta-San, it turns out he really loves Hong Kong celebrities…fucked up shit…So he listed off all these singers like Leslie Cheung and Jacky Cheung and wrote down their Chinese names which I recognized…haha…It’s funny cause this was a bit of an “in” that I had…I had to convince the rental agent that I was legit and by knowing these HK singers and shit, that was a huge step in helping me get the apartment…

Later on today, we both had different places to be so we didnt even get the chance to talk about what occured…Thats how things have been recently…The nights come and go…I pull myself up and rush off to work…The seasons change…its getting cold…

I called my current landlord and told her that I was moving out. This is one thing…one super really important thing that Ive learned living in Japan…Sorry Taishi, I dont mean to make a generalization or stereotype. But, in Japan, rules are always rules. There’s not much leeway even when you take into consideration people’s feelings or lives. Certain Japanese people I’ve met, they wont ever bend the rules…Even when the rules are meant to be bent or you have the power to bend them.

Long story short, my landlord wants me to pay next months rent because im supposed to give one months notice…Of course you know me…I dont have much money…I told her, I’m moving out next week, no one will be living there so can I not pay next months rent…But…you know…people that own property…landlords…or rich people in general, I think they are rich for a reason…Cause they are MOTHERFUCKING SELFISH. Can you cut them out a heart??? Can you cut out my heart for them so that they can feel it beating??? A contract is a contract…A month’s notice in the contract is exactly what it is…However, when I said that you can already keep my deposit and I wont even be living there next month, why do you have to charge me next months rent? Its in the contract, I know, but if you have a heart, knowing that Im not rich like you…Im a struggling 26 year old foreginer in your fucking country that doesnt even speak your language…While you are a 60 year old American educated Japanese woman who fucking owns houses and lives in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Tokyo….Can you spare me at least a bit of your sympathy??? I dont ask for much in this world or life…I always try to give back and do whats good…But cmon….Can you just put your greed and “rules” aside. I’m not a contract. I’m a person. Do you feel me?

Anyways, I’ll pay her fucking rent next month even when I’m not living there. God, get some revenge for me ok…I know that’s evil to say, but I KNOW you stand on my side for this one…Cmon man…

Change…I received an email from my ex-gf today…She said, “Hey, how are you?”…And I never receive emails from her recently…I dont know what that meant really until later on today. After meeting the landlord, and then after the drama with my current landlord, I took the train back to my sharehouse. I got off in Shibuya station and as I was gunning it out of the station, a girl caught my eye. I saw her. She walked passed and she saw me. I stopped. I turned around to see if she stopped…she stopped and looked at me…and then we walked closer together…It was my ex-gf’s older sister. In the middle of Shibuya station, in a city of 11 million people, I ran into my ex-girlfriend’s older sister with whom I went to fireworks with and got to know a bit. We chatted and she said she had to go…What’s happening?

I went back to my sharehouse and packed up all my shit…You know in Kanye West’s song, “Last Call”, he says, “I went back to my apartment and packed up all my shit, 10 days before I had to move out cause the landlord was a jerk…”  Thats how I felt like tonight…

My Chinese roomate, Bulu, he’s a good guy…I actually wish I could take him along with me out of that sharehouse…We lived there together with 2 other Japanese women, Asako and Sachiko…I dont know what it is…If you didnt know, Tokyo and Tokyo people have the reputation for being “cold” or having the “coldest people” in Japan. It’s funny how things like that work huh??? The most fucking polite people in the world also rank among the worlds coldest…especially in the cold winter, that amplifies this type of feeling…In all other sharehouses or shared living accomodations I have lived in, I’ve managed to at least become semi-friends with the others..I always at least try to talk and share some things, you know, show some signs of fucking LIFE in the sense that I’m human and actually want to communicate with others….and everytime I have moved out of whereever I moved out of, I always say bye. I always do and did that…But this time, it’s different, I’m not going to do that. I only said bye to Bulu and I’m not saying bye and just leaving. That’s how cold it is here you know?

So now, after dragging some of my luggage back to Yuuka’s apartment, I’m sitting here writing this again. I have a Whiskey Coke next to my left elbow…I’m smoking again because I’ve simply decided that I’m going to do what I want to do. This past summer, I always told myself, “Dont drink, dont smoke, eat healthy, sleep early…” That type of thing…But all it led to was a bunch of self paranoia, especially when I started to “deviate” from what I was “supposed” to do…It’s been hard to let go actually….I have to give up being such a perfectionist….

Sorry, I have to go, Take care.

Never felt insecure until I met you, now I’m just stupid…

Tonight I gave it a try again…You know, u can’t simply just give up after the first time…you gotta check to make sure whether or not there’s a second chance or whether there is ever even going to be a second chance…Like when u lock the door, u check it to make sure its locked or when you break something, you try to make it work/repair it in order to make sure you know that its broken…

So I went to the aquarium with Chihiro today…It’s “Autumn Equinox Day” so everyone gets a holiday here…Recently I have been going to places like the aquarium, the shrine, the famous local “tourist markets”…next destination is gotta be the zoo or something like that…I dont know why…I haven’t been going out late night and I’ve been doing late afternoon type activities…You know that is so not me…Actually I know why…It’s because I lack a “really good person/friend” to party with…In Korea, I always had Fritz…In Canada, I have my friends, and in Japan last year, I had Adrian and Kotomi…but here…ive got no one so far…and without a partner to go with…it’s like….u just dont go….hmmmm…

Anyways, I went way off-topic…me and Chihiro, we went to the aquarium together, went out to eat…and after all the joking/messin around, having fun…I had to ask her about “us”. Long story short, after too many hours of talking, she’s extremely indecisive, but she finally managed to decide that she doesn’t like me enough to break up with her current bf…Even though she doesn’t like him that much, her love for me isn’t enough to break their relationship/bond (recently I have been using the term “love” a lot more cause in Jp, they dont say “like”, instead they say “love”, but the meaning is “like”)…U know that fuckin sucks cause I tried pretty damn hard to try and get her to like me…and today is September 24th…Damn its been almost 2 months since I started trying!!! fuckkkkkkkk!!!!!!!  Anyways, I think I learned two things from this girl…One, that everytime I push too hard/try to hard for anyone, it never works…All the successful relationships I had with girls, it flowed a lot more easily on a mutual basis…I remember with frog face Alice and Clara, I pushed so hard that I was just being foolish…and this time with Chihiro, I pushed hard cause i liked her, but i guess i was also led on by her because she was simply indecisive. She couldn’t ever make a decision so she just kept goin out to dinners and hangin out with me despite it meaning bullshit…The second thing I learned, which I just realized about 43 minutes ago, was that I should never ever again fuck with/try to date girls that either just ended a long (1 year+) relationship or were still in that “breakin up/gettin back together” stage…This was my mistake I should have realized earlier…ahhhhhhh…idiot!!! Chihiro, she’s just so confused and gettin fucked up by her feelings and 2 guys trying to pull her in opposite directions that she simply can’t make a choice…easy as that.

So i’m gonna move on….listen to Omarion’s “Icebox” to remind me of the icebox i have…and u know it works both ways….There’s hearts that you break and there’s your own heart that gets broken…that’s just the way it is…i got shut down tonight, but i always shut down other ppl too…i aint bitter…i aint that angry either…i know some girls I rejected are bitter towards me, but im sorry, thats just the way i feel and its the straight forward truth…and if Chihiro is willing to give me at least her truth, then i can’t be angry at her for that and I just live with it.

Wish me luck with the actress.

And Emily, I’m thinking of taking your advice…You’re right, I got a lot of things to say and perhaps i need someone that can absorb and expell what I can spit out…Especially here in Tokyo, I only talk to 2 people where I can speak English at full speed and be understood completely…All other times, I have to speak slower and dumb it down…I cant just fucking unleash the word storm….

And Entourage is back on in North America and im dloading one of the new episodes right now…I LOVE that show.

Do you know that over the past 2 months, I’ve been going to the dentist once a week…It started at the end of July…well actually, it started around April/May where somethin on the top molar wasn’t feeling right and it got to the point where i couldn’t bite down so hard on my left side…long story short again…one night, it really really really fucking hurt…like i never experienced that kind of pain in my mouth before…it was a terrible experience, but a good one to learn from…Anyways, my top left molar was infected…It couldnt be saved…I needed a root canal procedure where they “kill” the tooth by taking the nerves out, but leave the tooth in your mouth…You know me, I’m a clean dude and I always brush/floss…the cause of this was because when I was back in Saskatoon in Nov 2007, I wanted to check everything about my health so I went to the dentist…he said i had a tiny cavity and that i should be removed and filled in….So i went ahead and got it done….what happened was that the filling was too deep….and it had led to a gradual infection in my molar and thus, mind-bending/numbing pain I experienced…

In Japan, they dont just fix you up in one/two visits…it takes literally around 8 visits…they check ur progress weekly and make sure that shit doesn’t hurt and etc…in Canada, they fix u up damn fast and ur off…thats a big difference between dentists here and there…anyways, things have been much better since that night in July and this thursday is the last time i will go back to the dentist here…My “crown” is about to be fitted…….Should i buy them some chocolates to say thanx???

This past Sunday, I had to speak in front of 70 people…When I got up there, I wasnt nervous, but once i looked at the crowd…I was shaking….like my hands/arms were shaking a bit…and before it was my turn to speak…I actually said to myself…in my head…”Yo Ric, just calm down…relax……calm down…relax…”  I was trying to breathe deep…not shake…but it was hard….I wasnt sweating which was odd cause i usually sweat, but i was just shaking…When it was my turn to speak…I guess I’ve introduced myself a lot in these past 2 years and my voice/mind just went on autopilot…Like you know how sometimes you think about the words you say or you feel the words come out and through and perhaps, try to change their tone/meaning or inject some more passion/feeling…When I was speaking up there, all that was going through my mind was….1. Speak loud and damn clear so they can hear me…2. Don’t look scared by smiling A LOT. 3. Show confidence even when your shaking inside/outside…

It’s nice to know that friends and family support you….Thank God this year, I havent had the illnesses that I incurred last year, but I’ve definitely hit a few small bumps this year…Recently, I’ve had acne problems and its getting much better now….I think due to stress actually and probably because i was stressin over Chihiro and working at that fucking job in Kanagawa….Anyways, my mom called me like 2 days ago and she said she was sending over some Chinese herbs so that I can make soup that will control my inner “heatiness”…I have too much “hot air” inside of me so need to keep that shit in check…And then last night, just when i was about to sleep earlier to start waking up earlier…My aunt calls from Sask and she tells me more about how to make “bitter melon/soybean” soup to lower my inner heatiness…I didnt want to talk to her at first cause i was just about to pass out…but afterwards, the next morning, I realized that I really appreciate their concern…I’m not going thru a life-threatening problem or anything remotely close to that, but they still took time to try to figure out a way to help me out…thats fuckin love and support man….nothing can buy that….so when i think about who i support….i definitely support my friends and some of my family members so holla when u need me…really.

The other day i had time to burn so I went to a game center…They had Street Fighter II…I dont know if u know that game, but I KNOW that game…inside out….I played it and no matter how old I will become in the future, I will never forget how to play SF II….its just in me man….like when i worked at Electronic Arts…Out of all the company employees, I think I was number 3…There was that white dude who was so good that he must of played Street Fighter during sex and that other asian dude, “Tony” hahaha why is there always a Chinese/Nammer dude named Tony??? Anyways, I was damn good cause i was really good at one technique…Throwing people with Chun Li….Taishi knows this….for some reason, at any of those 2D fighting games, I’m simply good at throwing….So I played SF II that day, but I lost because I couldnt block high…something was fucked up with the joystick and its ALWAYS some problem like that which causes me to lose….like if theres one minor control problem, your entire repetoire/game/technique is compromised…thats kinda true with anything in life hey???  Like when u have an injury, a big fucking zit on your fucking face, hiding a deep secret inside yourself, or even not doing your make-up or hair…like that one minor flaw can tweak your entire performance…

Theres more but I fucking talk too much…Take care.

Failure at some point in your life is inevitable, giving up is unforgivable

About 3 days ago, I decided to start writing a blog again….I closed my Xanga blog about a month ago and by that time, I hadn’t touched it for almost half a year…It was always full of all these bullshit ads and constantly asking you to upgrade your account….Anyways, I’m back at it…Why??? I dunno….I think I just have to be honest with myself in that I wanna write about whats goin on in life and I wanna share it with people that are important to me.

It’s strange…I haven’t written in a long time and I’m not exactly sure how to start…I’m not sure HOW I should write this…Before when I used Xanga, I never mentioned any names, always subtly implied things to certain people. I guess a lot of people read it and I didn’t want to offend anyone….But that was the problem with the old blog…I cared too much about the other people and had to “hide” my messages and posts….Like hide my true feelings and the true meaning of my message by covering it all up with no names and “For example” scenarios…In the last few months I’ve decided to fuck caring about what others think, be more selfish, and just do me. Just do what I want to do.

I remember when I shot a basketball like 2 years ago…Before that I hadn’t shot a ball for almost a year and the next day when I woke up…My wrist was hurting…From 5 – 21 years old, I probably shot over 50,000 shots at the hoop, but no matter long or how much experience that you have with something…When you go away from it for awhile, it takes some time to get that “touch” and “swagger” back…so if my writing sucks, I promise it’ll get better with time…age like fine wine…

That brings me to something else too….I’ve realized that whenever I start to care about someone or something, it usually adds more stress to my life….I’m not fucking selfish, but what I’m trying to say is that when I get caught up in having too many “friends” and trying to keep up with all of them on shit like Facebook or MSN, it’s just not real…it’s not good…I’m gonna lock it down to only those that give a fuck…Like the people that actually give a fuck….the ones that I’d invite to my wedding or considered having babies with before or along those lines…

Stress is a motherfucker….I’ve been trying to stay healthy and I smoked a few cigarettes this past week because I was broken down by a girl…Usually, after a problematic experience, I always head towards this “downward spiral”, where I start drinking a lot more, start smoking a lot more, and just start doing generally negative shit and affects me negatively. In a health sense and in a “7pm, look in the mirror and realize I look like shit” kinda sense….I’m just not gonna care anymore about “things”. I’m not going to worry anymore about “things”. What are “things”??? For example, how am I gonna teach today? Which friends do I have to email back?  Worrying about getting up early in the morning…Dealing with girls….Dealing with acne…Dealing with those fucking businessmen on the train….Dealing with those ignorant Americans who randomly say something to me in English on the train, not knowing that I’m not Japanese; I speak English fucking better than you do, and then having me surprise the motherfuck out of them by either rebuking their statement or just simply “reaching” out….(This has happened to me 2 times on the train…They are long stories…)I’m just gonna wake up, attack each day…fuck this idle bullshit….If a girl isn’t going to wait for me, then I just dont care.

This past weekend/week has been up and down….You know…a lot of crazy shit happens in all of our lives…like its not actually “crazy”, but it’s interesting things that might amuse some of your friends and if you remember them, then you got a story to tell….I mentioned above that I started to hit this “downward spiral”….This is what caused it….

For the past two months, I’ve been chasing Chihiro. She’s funny, she’s pretty, she’s interesting…Even has her own “special laugh”….thats shit is really appealling/addictive for me…Anyways, as direct as I am, she had a choice between me and her ex-bf and she told me this past Sunday night at 1:20am that she was gonna go back to her ex…because I can’t speak Japanese and her English is minimal so we can’t really communicate on a deeper level…However, I do speak some basic Japanese and she does speak some basic English so I thought we could keep trying, try to make it work, but the door was closed…

My heart is a bit of an icebox….whose isn’t???  Like I’m fucking 26…Usually ppl at this age have gone thru one or two heartbreaking trials with someone so everyone is a bit negative and senile….However, I am hurt and it fucking sucks…I proceded to hit my downward spiral that night, drinking till no end and smoking till I accidently burnt my eyelashes…nono i didnt burn my eyelashes…i think its our fucked up stove that burnt my hair once…

The next day, I got up at around 1pm…I opened my window, looking at those damn noisy elementary school kids…I went down to eat breakfast and I dunno what hit me…I guess I just simply decided that I wouldnt ride this rough patch out by drinking and smoking…and as fucked up and innate as it can be…i thought, “i’m gonna find a new blogging website and write my way out of this…….im gonna do some bicep curls, drink some water, and just simply not care about what happened on Sunday night….and just move the fuck on..”

And u know whats fucked up? I met a student of mine that I taught last year and i told her the same story that you just read above and she suddenly professed her love for me and asked me to be with her….I said no, lets just be friends because i never even considered us as anything more and she was fine with that. The thing is, I realized that my former student, Minami, she has/had these feelings for me, but I just naturally didn’t/don’t for her….and i simply turned her down and that was that….But on Sunday, only about 36 hours prior, I was in Minami’s position where I was turned down by Chihiro and left devastated….What I learned is….that feeling that you have when you like someone…its just there and it’s not there…if u dont feel it for that person, then u just dont and when they dont feel it for you, then u just have to accept it….hmmmm…

Japan is getting on my nerves a little bit….I think people here are simply afraid to “lash out” or “speak out”…like the society is exceptionally confined by social and moral rules..like some strange code of silence….for example, there’s tons of perverted dudes and sex is everywhere here…sometimes its fucking offensive too…i remember i was eating breakfast at 11am and watching Channel 4, one of the basic cable channels, and at this time of day, you had 5, 20 year old girls competing in these challenges where they had to use their fucking massive breasts to either squeeze something or hit something to win the challenge…All while the perverted host has this tiny camera thats pinpointed at the girls’ massive jugs…like cmon man….its fucking 11am!!! have some fucking respect for the women, children….I cant believe they show that shit on basic TV and nobody says anything! You’d never see guys swinging their dicks around, trying to poke out someone’s eye or doing something like that….like even this female objectification sex shit…its just swept under the rug, you dont talk about how its wrong and you just ignore it/live with it/get used to it and it becomes normal…Thats how Japan is essentially. This is one example, but this type of “unspoken rule” thing happens in so many scenarios that you would have to fly over here on a plane and we sit down, have a drink, and can discuss it.

Last thing. A week ago, there was a really really drunk dude on the train…I was sitting down and he was standing up…He was holding onto the handle for his dear life where he was swinging back and forth with his arm holding onto that handle thingy….The women sitting down close to him…everytime the drunk dude would swing towards them, they would flinch and move their body away from him….hahaha…it was like the drunk dude was the fucking plague or SARS or some shit like that…hahahaha….anyways, i couldnt help but laugh and smile….I couldnt stop smiling…i was like the fucking joker man….i had this evil ass grin on my face because these women were so scared of some drunk dude that was just holding on for his dear life and he simply wanted to lay down and sleep for 12 hours…The drunk dude was swingin back and forth like a pendulum and he eventually touched one of the women and she just got up from her seat, said some choice words for the drunk dude…and made this ugly ass, pig-stinkin, look of disgust on her face and she walked away…hahaha….the drunk dude finally got to lay down, poor guy…and the other woman…this dolled up chick that was in her early 20’s….she got up to leave too, but before she left, she gave me this “fucking weirdo, why do you think the drunk guy is funny” kinda look and i just grinned at her and that made me happy.