May 2008 Archives

Is that right, volume 5? I dunno, I've lost count over the years.

I figure, having lived in this country for almost 5 years now, that I've pretty much seen and heard everything. Well, not everything mind you (I don't live in Tokyo), but I think I've had my fair share of knock-you-on-the-floor-WTF moments. From The Greatest Question Ever ("how many women have you raped?"), to Ms. Americanized's "c'mon America, come bomb the shit out of us", and even the one time I was greeted by a 14-year old Japanese girl with "Hey nigga!" only to have the Japanese woman standing next to me exclaim "What the fuck?!", all in English*, I kind of figured there wasn't much else that could phase me anymore.

Boy, was I wrong.

*I'm still amazed that the universe didn't collapse into itself upon this incredibly unlikely sequence of events converging upon each other at one specific point in time.

***

Remember in the last update when I said that my wife wanting a baby was serious business? Well, actually, it's far worse than I thought.

Faithful readers may remember that my wife got a little antsy about marriage when her two best friends, K-san and S-san, both got married at more or less exactly the same time. So now, you're probably figuring that either K-san or S-san got knocked up, which is making my wife antsy about the parenthood thing. You would be close, but continuing with the "God Is Conspiring Against Me" theory - actually its something completely different.

Despite the usual Japanese tendency to get a newlywed wife knocked up as soon as possible, both K-san and S-san don't have any buns in the oven yet. Apparently, with S-san's husband working the typical life of a Japanese salaryman, he comes home tired on the weekdays and unable to do anything*, therefore the two only have sex on the weekends. So, no baby yet.

*While I suppose this is a decent sex life, it goes against my fundamental theory of "If I Can, I Will." The theory goes a little something like this - if I can, I will. It really doesn't matter what state I'm in - dead tired, sleepy, drunk, sick, injured, melancholy, emo, retrospective, whatever. I can be on the brink of death - as long as I can rise to the occasion, I'll do it. I didn't even let my broken collarbone break my stride. I think this is the result of me being sexually frustrated all throughout high school, and college for the most part. I'm like a starving Ethiopian child - can't turn your nose up at whatever scraps might come your way, because you never know when the next meal is gonna be.