Buggirl's Increasingly Strange Tokyo Tales...

The most important part of the last day was the fact that it was the last day. This colored my perceptions of it all. I needed very little energy to propel me to my final destination and goal, to be in my apartment, alone.

( Camp: the final entry. )

You might have assumed that one of the things that can get lonely about living in a country where English is spoken only sporadically is the difficulty in having intense intelligent conversations. You’d be partly right. But when you find and intelligent person and you share some common language this can be achieved, it just takes longer and you may find that in clarifying your ideas for ease of communication, you also refine your thought process…

 

No, the thing I miss and if I even sense it in someone else I fall head over heals is…the ability to banter. Witty repartee. Fast and furious with the insults. Word play. Flinging invectives! Sarcasm… I love Raymond Chandler, Thin Man movies, the scene that Faulkner wrote for Big Sleep…my father and I insult each other for sport and family gatherings…Dorothy Parker is a start but I wanna be Wilde.

 

( Camp, part 4. Uno, this time its personal. )

By Thursday evening I came to a horrible realization. Excluding time inside toilet stalls, I had not been 100% alone since Tuesday evening. There is no private space when you are teaching at a summer camp. You sleep with others. You bath and shower with others. You eat with others. And the moment a child sees you walking away from dinner prep, they follow you.

 

I need a certain amount of my own space. No one is ever surprised to learn that I was an only child. The thought that I hadn’t been alone for over 24 hours and would probably have another 20 or so more peopled hours to go until I could be alone in my own shower and bed…filled me with grumpy worn out dread.

 ( Part 3. Warning, pictures of alledgedly cute children )

Thursday

The next morning the camp awoke around 7:00 AM. No, that’s not quite right…Kathryn awoke from unsettling dreams to find herself changed, in her bed, into a gigantic…nope, that’s not it either…The next morning, sane adult creatures reluctantly awoke from restless slumber, the children had been up for hours…from the sounds of it, they awoke early in order to painfully torture each other and to transmogrify into little elephants who existed only to run up and down the steps above our room. The predicted 7:00 uprising was nowhere to be seen, but the schedule clearly stated that yet another uprising was planned for 7am the next morning.

 ( Part 2, continued. )

I came back from camp in one piece. Actually, I came back with more than I left. In a few days the horrible swelling of my ankle will go down, the mystery bug bite will subside, and the tube-like flesh will no longer be hot to the touch. Of course I am assuming that the thick amber liquid that is beginning to seep from the epicenter of it is a sign that it is healing and the poison is draining. In a week I’ll be able to wear shorter skirts without the plum-blue bruise on my inner thigh making me look like I’ve been beaten in a very private way. These both would be less noticeable if I wasn’t so darned pale, but on days like this it seems that my skin tone was designed to best offset bruises, scratches, and swollen rashes. I’m a white wash gallery of missteps and imprinted motions, a catalogue of objects I have encountered full force.

 ( Kiddy Cat Camp, part one. )

I'm headed up to Takasaki. It's up-north, a few hours by regular train. I'll be traveling with Jimmy "Black-cat" Lee (humor him) who is the lil-brother-former-co-worker who got me this gig. I'll be going with him to an English Language Study three-day summer camp for elementary school kids up north. It pays. The cash will hold me until paycheck day! Yay! And that's really why I'm doing it. The experience of working with the lil' ones, that's nice and all..

It will be my first time actually working with elementary school kids, and seeing that that is my new job, I could probably use the practice. Most of it will be group stuff. Games, hiking, and...stuff? Not sure at all. But on the second day I'll be alone, with 6-7 kids, for 2 hours...(shiver)

I raided my new school for supplies and I got packed up. I've got some big flash cards of colors and fruits and some monkeys with magnets on the back of them. No clue really. I think I'll be making up simple songs about liking fruits and colors...then games about fruits and colors...and then perhaps two team competitions about fruits and colors in which scoring is kept by the monkeys climbing banana trees...all very intellectual stuff I assure you. Post-modern, really. A great use of my degree in fine arts.

But it pays. I'm pretty sure there will be no vegetarian food, nor any food source nearby. I'm got a sneaky feeling I'll be on a caffiene low as well...but it pays! I've packed my allergy meds, because I've never worked at a summer camp or internationalization seminar that didn't involve sad moldy bunk-beds and a special demonstration devoted to "how to fold the linens."

Wish me luck and edible cafeteria foods!