Sobetsukai

So, today at work, while being totaly silent, i sat and studied japanese... i felt i actually did some progress in remembering kanji since my previous post.... heh... like i said probably bipolar or some other magical term that the drug industries invented...Anyways this weekend i might go to sendai or morioka with the seishun 18 kippu, but i will leave two days on it for the following weekend.... I dont know what i will do in sendai, other than walk around, but i think if i do go to morioka, I will get some cooking ingredients since i feel like cooking something that i have not in a while, but i need to find the ingreedient list for what i wanted to do... I used to have it memorized in college, but alas, living by myself and being overly self doubtfull leads me to do become apathetic about cooking... Anyways, we had a sobetsukai for the workers who where relocating. I thought it was going to be an experience that would only reassure my insecurities and isolation here. The event started out meager enough, i got a special meal request of kappa/kampyo/ume maki and inari-zushi, and i feel i am a burden on those around me...As the event got started we had the normal formalities of everyone filling everyone elses cup, yet i was the only one drinking oolong tea. These nomikai's are expensive.... There are 6 going on this week, i said i would go to 2, but i might skip the one on friday since thats allmost worth a ticket to tokyo. But its part of the 'be in the group' charge... everyone becomes equalized, everyone (well with the excetion of me and some designated drivers) gets drunk. But something that usualy happens at nomikais that i have gone to in the past happened again... People open up and talk to me... If anyone wants to talk with me, i am more than willing to talk with them, and actually eager too... But usualy people come to me with a degree of aquwardness....As if because they dont speek english that they cant communicate at all with me (though i admit some of the 'hogen' here just passes over my head from time to time, i can get the jist of most conversations and talk about basic stuff, without being a neitzschie or Shakespear, or whoever you will choose as a representative of someone who can control and effectively utalize a large corpus of linguistic devices to construct amazing narratives/expressions.... One of the individuals i ended up talking to told me how he stayed in nishiwaga for most of his life im assuming (well he didnt say that exactly, but that he went to one of the elementary schools i teach at, so i am only making an inference..). But as he talked, he wanted to try and speak english, which i said was fine (though i usualy replied in japanese to try and clear some things up). But in the process we had quite an interesting conversation... He told me, after i expressed my feelings of isolation and how i am considering going south, that everyone here had a fairly deep respect for me, and that most people wouldnt have the courage to just get up and try and position themselves in a culture(s){i must add [s] to stay away from a totalizing singularity with the singular} without being fluent in the languag, and that most of the people wanted to talk to me but were nervious to do so since they could not speek english.... I told him how i found it hard to try and talk to people even though i want to internalize/construct a form of japanese that i can control at my volition (yet i didnt realize at the time that i was probably speeking more fluent, and i could sense it to a degree...). He mentioned how he would feel the same way if he was in america, and continued to compliment me on my japanese (umm...i want to say its the same steriotypical comments that everyone gets if a foreigner says 'domo' or anything), so i basically said i felt as if my japanese sucked (in japanese) and that my mind has become (or i guess i should have said always was) messed up and over cluttered to the point of where i cant think or remember like i could in college... Well, it was interesting none the less.. After that another guy that i dont know at all tried to speak to me, we ended up talking about food prices in Iwate and agriculture.. But it had its earie silence, as if they were refraining from asking me (and myself the same to them) things, due to to some invisible barrier....i.e. my lack of being fairly fluent in japanese, or just the oddity of trying to speak to someone for basically the first time. Well, then the end of the party came, and i could see my 'go to man' at the board of education was totaly wasted, he cant hold is liqor well i think (i.e. his face was bright red and he barely had his eyes open...and had this errie smile that kind of freaked me out...but it was interesting to see them all let go from the ridgedness of the workplace, if only for a few hours..). At the end of the event, everyone gave their little 'prep' chants that somehow remind me of a throwback to some aspects Showa militarism, though thats much to simplistic, anyways, its kind of interesting to see these chants they give (heh.. well i even think the 'prep' rallies that were held at my H.S. were quite fascistic, under a specific definition of the word that i probabl only use.). Well, anywas, there was a second part to the night, and everyone was going karaoke, but i kind of felt like going back early, and wasnt up for singing (i had done so before, and i guess i just wanted some time to think, which is probably bad for me to do right now if i am left alone enough...) So i decided to go back, but almost forgot my bag on the way, while my 'go to man' rememberd it (just more of me doing little fuckups all over the place, im totlay a hetakuso....[peice of shit] my memory fails more rapidly, i feel im always making a fool of myself... sigh... oh well... ehh.. im kind of tired now... will check out to see if there are places in tokyo i can work. right now im looking at ECC and GABA as places to get a foot in down there and some income to feed myself..i dont know ow that will effect gaducate school pans, but we shall see i guess....