Making time:
We are all given 24 hours to each day.
I respectfully disagree with this saying. I know, I know, I complain a lot about being bored at school. It's true. Sometimes, I'm so bored I start bleeding simply from boredom. But once the bell rings at 4:15, and I flee school, I never have enough time to anything. It is a huge contradiction that I haven't been able to solve.
I am a man of many talents, interests and hobbies. I mean, none of them are really talented or interesting, or hobbits, but I need a certain amount of time to devote to each of them. Since I first arrived in Japan, I've been struggling to keep up, especially with my co-curricular weekend and alcohol commitments. It hasn't helped how I have picked up some new hobbies, such as balcony gardening and pet-keeping, playing darts, ukulele, and the biggest mistake of all: buying a computer. Soon, I will also start weekly Japanese lessons with a tutor- who will give me homework.
Something had to give, but there are no expendable hobbits. I couldn't possibly give my guitar or computer away, stop playing basketball twice a week, eat out every night, or neglect cleaning my apartment. And I couldn't forget the occasional weblog entry. I spent hours and hours, for weeks on end, trying to think of a way to create more time in the day. It looked hopeless.
Then, one day I came home after school. I was famished because the school lunch was sparse; it contained a bunch of dead river fishes on a plate, and some smaller ones swimming upside down in the soup. I thought long and hard about this too. I have always been raised like a war-child, eating your meal as if you don't know if there will be a next. Sure, I went through a "hiding the broccoli in the pot plant" phase, but that didn't last. So, in Japan, I always did my best to finish the crap that is sometimes served at school lunches. One week- there must have a mistake in the ordering of the ingredients, and someone added a few zeros to the amount of 'small gruesome river fish' quota- we had fish with everything. There were tiny dead fish of 80% eye-ball mixed into the rice. There were toothy fish of 70% bone, and 20% dry burnt skin sitting on a plate. Even the usually safe miso soup contained more fishes in the murky depths of the bowl.
I am not a vegetarian (anymore), but I have developed very strong feelings about eating whole animals. These river fishes are not filleted. They are simply caught, and cooked. Most people eat the heads too. That's their choice. My feeling is though, I don't particularly want to be eating everything: the eyeballs, the teeth, the eyeball fluid, the spinal fluid, the genitalia, and so on. More than that, the last meal that the small river fish ate- probably water insects- are still somewhere in its digestive system. Worst of all, you are eating what the fish was about to poop out, before life was swiftly taken from it. If you eat the whole fish, you are a shit-eater.
So, I made a decision to eat like a peacetime civilian, and started hiding the fishes in the pot plants. Some days, I can go to the convenience store for a burger instead, but other days, I am left feeling quite hungry when I came home.
On that fateful day, I came home familiarly hungry. For some reason, I decided to just start cooking. I was chopping garlic at 4:28, mixing the batter at 4:30, chopping cabbage at 4:31. By 4:45, I had made myself a pretty decent okonmiyaki. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okonomiyaki). I ate, watched some T.V., did dishes, took a dump and brushed my teeth... all before 5:30!
I now had 7plus hours to do stuff! This is my solution. That night I did some stuff, and then I went out to dinner again at 9pm, and went drinking. Maybe that wasn't the most constructive way to spend my newly-discovered time, but the principle is sound.
Miss Dough.
My new favourite place. It's Mr. Donuts (contracted to "Misdo" in Japanese), where they have all-you-can-drink coffee, average doughnuts and terrible music. Sure the atmosphere is only slightly better than McDonalds, but it is a great place to sit, write and email people (by phone). Closing time is at 8pm, so it is ideal for my new routine to go for dessert and coffee. Yesterday, I stayed until closing time. Yes, I am hardcore. The last 3 days I have gone there, for a total of 7 hours. I am starting to wonder if there is "anything" in the doughnuts, but for the while, things are working out well.
I mean, if I can now afford 7 hours at a café, and still have time to write this piece of crap today, you know everything will be okay. Also, since all the kids are doing it these days, I've been trying to put some photos online. I know how most people prefer to just look at the pictures, so some of my newly-made free time will go towards this too. http://s189.photobucket.com/albums/z70/ruvaman/
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