sometimes, when someone you love dearly leaves this world for what lies beyond, pieces of that person lay hidden in your heart, jagged yet beautiful, like shards of a mirror. and it hurts every time you discover one of those pieces, yet you can't help coming back to it, because it is all that remains. and, though the tears come freely, those tears are concrete in a way that memories can never be. after the tears, you start searching for other reminders, other ways to cheat death just a little bit. you look for the good, and try to recreate it in some way, no matter how inconsequential it might seem. that's why i'm gonna try and grow my moustache out.
i feel like such a stranger here at times. walking through the local supermarket today, i was really struck by how foreign everything truly is. i go through spells like this every so often, and i think the whole being in japan thing exacerbates it. anyway. the first day of school and the detritus stemming from it have come upon me. i'm gonna have to start *working* now, i guess. knowing i have a nice lan connection at the junior high takes a load off, though. now i'm gonna have to start bugging people for a pop mailbox. :-)
this weekend started off well with my visit to the gym and my first true game of pickup b-ball since arriving. naturally, i was pretty winded, and the fact that i was pretty much starving didn't help, so i went home a little early. the next day, i biked into furukawa to check out the gyms there. the city pool has varied aquatic facilities, but the weight room sucks ass. ditto for the older city gym. man, that's a bummer. the gym here only really needs a comprehensive selection of dumbbells to almost totally meet my needs...i wonder if there's any way to tell someone and get a set of what i need in there...anyway, after a stop at the furukawa dairy queen, a minor workout, and dinner at a local pizza chain, i started home. as i started up a bridge, however, my bike thought better of it, and my right pedal broke clean off. my left shoe fell off as i came to an abrupt stop, as well. naturally, i was seriously pissed off. i'm sure passing motorists could have learned some new english words if they had their windows open...so i pulled myself together, and called a friend from the pay phone at a nearby 7-eleven, and was soon on my way home in a taxi. sunday, i called my supervisor, who basically let the local bike shop know i was coming in, and i got the pedal repaired. otherwise, it was a lazy day, with a visit to cowboy for dinner. in cowboy, i heard the patsy cline classic "i fall to pieces," which definitely cheered me up some. i came home and played/solved rygar on my nes emulator. fun way to kill an evening. :-) also ate most of the sushi i brought home from the supaa. so that's my weekend in a nutshell. bring the noise, bring the pain, bring the kids.
been listening to: u2, the violet burning, sunny day real estate