a history of me

In a few days my classes for the semester will be finished and I can look forward to six weeks of little-to-no responsibility. Sadly, this period will not see me lounging around the apartment at all hours in my underwear, as I am still expected to show up for work. Why? I guess it's because they're going to keep paying me my usual salary so they want their money's worth. With no classes to teach or children to eat lunch with, my summer will mostly revolve around whatever amusement I can manage on my own in the staff room at school. This means BOOKS are my new priority because I suspect someone will cry foul if I fire up Steam on company time.

Having already experienced small doses of these "enforced doldrums" back in March, I knew I had to plan ahead. I started recording a list of potential summer reading back in April and in recent weeks I've begun to build up my collection. First on the list was Chuck Palahniuk's latest novel which I happened upon almost by chance in Osaka one weekend. This weekend we spent most of our time walking around Kobe where I picked up some good old-fashioned non-fiction by Naomi Klein and Neil Postman. I even made an impulse buy of some posthumous work by Carl Sagan, simply because the one book of his I've actually read was absolutely wonderful and spoke to me like few books do.

The downside to all this is that I still don't have nearly enough material to cover six weeks of "work" so I'm hoping someone out there has some more ideas. Even better, I'd love it if someone was willing to accept an order of books in the States and then ship it to me over here. English books exist in this country but their relative scarceness means the selection is extremely limited. Some stores have a "foreign books" section which contains little more than the Harry Potter series which couldn't interest me less. Add to that the elevated cost of buying an imported book (those three books I bought cost more than all the meals we ate this weekend O_o) and I'm in a pinch.

Why did we spend a night in Kobe instead of just coming home? It was a last-minute plan to "get away" for the weekend (we haven't really done that in almost two months) which was also a convenient excuse to use the coupon we got from the Seishin Oriental Hotel after we had our wedding there. Considering the extraordinary sum of money we paid them last November, I think they should have offered us a week's worth of free lodging, but they only offered us one free night so that's all we got. I think we made the most of it though, spending Saturday afternoon shopping before crashing at the hotel and coming home on Sunday in time to watch the start of the Sumo tournament. And it was nice to sleep in air-conditioned room for once, as our bedroom isn't equipped for that.

Not that I think Mako would go for such a thing. One of the most frustrating things about living with a Japanese woman is their distorted view of their climatory (I am inventing this word) surroundings. Considering how much I hate searing heat and suffocating humidity (two things we have plenty of in our area) I consider myself reasonably restrained in my use of the air conditioner. I typically set it for 28 degrees C (82.4 F) and compensate by simply not wearing any clothes while indoors. Mako feels the heat just as much as I do but even after coming home from work and changing clothes, she's still wearing a couple layers of stuff around the apartment. Once the A/C is on, she initially enjoys it but she quickly starts to complain that it's too cold. So while I am sitting there in my boxers just tolerating the apartment, still sweating a bit onto my comfy chair, she's dressed for spring while under a blanket asking if she can bump the temperature up to 30 (86 F).

Then again, maybe it's not just the Japanese women. Every elementary school that I visit has an air conditioner in the office/staff room, but despite the heat wave Japan is experiencing no one is willing to turn it on. Many of them openly complain about the heat and frantically fan themselves but not a single person asks about using the A/C to cope with this nastiness. In fact, many of them continue to drink hot coffee or tea throughout the day, even occasionally fanning themselves while they pour boiling water down their throats. It's like their complaints are the only way they're willing (or able?) to cope with the disgusting weather we're having. They could do something about it but they just don't. Mark Twain's head would probably explode if he could see this.