Matthew Rowe's Storefront

Matt’s Blog

• Don’t Get It

  2009 Nov 6

  I don’t get it. I really don’t. I had a really great week. A nice day off on Tuesday in which I met a friend and had some nice drinks. Then Wednesday I went to Kindergarten, which is good because I got to play with little kids and I got half the day off. Then, I went to Elementary school and the children absolutely loved my Halloween lesson. They went nuts for it. I was worried they would be too shy (and the 6th grade were, a little) but they were totally willing to play Trick or Treat. So I got to laugh as the kids put their hands into boxes full of brains (tofu in yoghurt and pasta sauce), eyeballs (peeled grapes) and fingernails (plastic in sauce, for good measure). I played tricks on them for the students’ amusement and I got good comments by teachers and students alike. So, I was very pleased. Finally, I had resumed chatting, via email, with a girl I had originally spoken to when I first came to Japan. Things were starting to look promising. There was absolutely no sign that things were anything but positive. Then, out of the blue, she sends me a message today saying that she doesn’t think we are a match and sorry. Okay, we were just chatting, and I was enjoying it, but that was all. Why do I feel like I have just been dumped? It’s made me question my whole... me-ness with such cliché thoughts as “I’m never going to find anyone” and “I never seem to get anywhere being honest and nice so why not just be a complete bastard?”. I’m a particular fan of the last one right now, but being nice is hardwired into my being. I could no more be mean than I could slice off a hand with a rubber chicken that had been left in the oven til it went all liquidy, or burnt, or whatever would happen to it. I really must research that in case I ever need to write a scene in a book where someone puts a rubber chicken in an oven. You never know.
  
  So, I don’t get why that decision was suddenly made, I don’t get why I have trouble finding women when I seem to be the kind of guy they always say they want and I don’t get why lots of bad stuff has suddenly happened to me this evening after such a good week.
  
  There was that, then my tire went flat while I was in Mister Doughnut and I had to push the bike all the way back home. I was already tired and then by the time I got home I felt dizzy with a possible temperature. Now my mood is just ruined. I might have to draw some happy cartoon rabbits and then sneer at them for being so happy.

• Bendy Bendy Stick

  2009 Nov 3

  There’s an advert on TV here where a woman gets chased around by laundry until she stops and has a cup of coffee. It goes ‘Blendy blendy. Blendy stick!’. Today was a good day. I had lunch with my stalker in the same restaurant where we first had dinner. It went on for so long. We talked for ages. I enjoy that we can tease each other, because I’m never sure if other friends can take it. So we had a decent lunch and then carried on talking over three or four cups of coffee and hot strawberry liquid stuff. It took up my whole day really as now it won’t be long until dinner time.
  
  It’s so cold today too. The weather has really changed fast. Only two weeks ago it was regularly in the twenties and now it is winter. The typhoon really ripped up the climate and I wouldn’t be surprised if it snowed tomorrow. Because it is such a sharp contrast it seems a lot colder than it actually is. Given a few days or weeks of cold, which I am sure we will have, and we should be used to it. I still have to buy some fuel for my second heater, and a clothes horse, because I’m not going to be able to dry clothes outside anymore.
  
  I’m also very used to the masks people are wearing because of the flu. In fact, I quite like them. They make people a little mysterious, and really highlight the eyes, which on most Asian women, are bloody gorgeous. Speaking of which, I may have found the (most) perfect girl (I will find). She’s Japanese, very friendly, unbelievably kind and generous, she speaks a good amount of English, she’s learning to teach yoga and she’s a dancer. Plus there are other reasons I am not going to state here, just know that they make me feel very good about her. The only problem is that she lives half way across the country. Considering there is a chance that I may have to move at the end of this school year, that’s not all bad, but it seems I can’t find anyone who doesn’t have a flaw of some kind. Normally, it is distance, which is to be expected I suppose, as there certainly is a lot more of the world that is far away than there are parts of the world that are close. Also, brown bears are brown, birds fly and your fly is undone.

• Virtual

  2009 Nov 1

  I exist mainly online. I am not a huge presence but I am more effective there. Everyone I know, and a huge bunch of strangers, knows what I am doing because I write about it for all to read here. I make more friends online than I do off. I work, connected to the online world and research through it. All my lessons are based on ideas I find online. My writing exists more online than in paper form. Funny, isn’t it? But I guess it’s because it is a lot easier to do what you want in the virtual world. In the real world there are no end of problems, red tape and confidence issues that get in the way.
  
  That’s one reason I get frustrated about girls. I’ve managed to contact a lot of people online, but in real life I get nervous before going on a few dates. Maybe, because they are so rare. When I think about it, in point of fact, I’ve never really been on proper dates until now. So, I guess it is no wonder, and I can only hope it gets easier... or that it won’t have to because I’ll meet someone soon. It’s more frustrating being in Japan too. In England, I didn’t mind because there were hardly ever any attractive people around (for me), yet in Japan there are so many. So I hope this is the darkest hour before the dawn. The dawn being a cute Japanese girl with long black hair and eyes you could drop a penny in and never hear the ‘plop’.... probably because it would be an “Ow! What are you dropping pennies on my eye for?”... or “いたい！どうした？”
  
  So yes, today I have had a nice day just being at home, but being productive too. I have tidied my flat and I have spent a good few hours drawing pictures for my Halloween lesson while Firefly plays in the background. It is a joy. Through the joys of facebook, I got to hear about other people’s great Halloweens too. I wish I was in a place where there were people dressing up and going out. Hopefully this will be the last month of money being tight. So I can go out and enjoy holidays from now on, or visit bigger cities. But, oh wait, the next big holiday is Christmas and that isn’t celebrated here at all. Though Christmas Eve is actually a kind of Valentine’s Day for the Japanese.

• Heart On My Chest

  2009 Oct 31

  I wonder why all my plans go tits up. Am I not a good friend? Maybe I am too busy fighting demons in hope of freeing the land that nods to pay attention to other folkels. I look like a complete idiot sometimes. I invite people places, promise other people they will go and then I turn up alone and I'm the fool left explaining that I’m not a Billy No-Mates with Drop Dead Freds for company. In the long run that doesn’t matter too much, not least of all because I’ve decided not to go to that a party tonight. I'm mainly concerned about the fact I am probably going to die alone. I'm not saying this for pity, but out of sheer matter of fact that occurred to me today.
  
  Today I went to meet a girl knowing it was just for an English lesson and under the impression that, like Pip, she was going to move away soon - so there was no apparent chance of romantic happenings. Yet I still got myself so nervous and worked up that I had a headache on the way to Sendai and felt dizzy on the train. Sometimes, I hate my brain. I remember how nervous I was meeting Pip too and she was nice but not strikingly attractive. The problem with me is, I'm stupidly picky and not happy with anyone unless they are incredibly gorgeous, despite my meagre offering, on top of everything else. So just imagine how nervous I would be with such a woman. I would have no chance, and I'm almost 30. How can I still be like this? I meet someone and I’m just hurrying to get the adventure over with so I can go back to a comfortable existence where I’m not worried about making a tit of myself or having a panic attack all the time. So it seems inevitable that I am going to die alone, because I can’t see how I am going to impress anyone I am interested in. I will start putting money aside for prostitutes.
  
  As it turned out though, this girl was nice, and she has a similar taste in music. And things didn't go horribly wrong. She even sent an email to me this evening expressing an interest in meeting again (what does that mean?) and a cute photo of her in the new glasses she bought. So there is a possibility things might develop in the future. I'm just not holding my breath. If I'm gonna get worked up every time I go to meet her then its probably not going to be worth it. Maybe it is just the build up. We have to plan the meet, then I have days expecting it, then I have the long journey to the city and then waiting around in the spot where we will meet. If she came to visit me then it would be far better. I hate anything I can see coming; jokes, spitballs, meteors, speeding buses when I’m standing on a crossing. Maybe I shall see if she is comfortable with having an English lesson at my place, or at least a neutral spot in my city.
  
  On the way back from the train station, I was very cold and needed food. So I stopped in at the ramen shop that I haven't been to for ages - the one owned by the man who took me karaoke singing. It was good. Not only do I have a nice meal when I go there but I get to chill and chat to the staff afterwards like I am a friend coming to visit. They called me Machyu-kun too, which is cool. It's the first time I've been called a -kun (a suffix of affection for males) without people adding a ‘t’ sound on the end of it and it cheered me up a bit. He helped me with my other problem too, which is that I had been invited to a Halloween party this evening but no idea where it was. I left looking for the place too long, assuming I could find it on my iphone's map on my way there. However, it doesn't seem to exist and no one has heard of it. Not even the phone directory people who my friend called up. I was considering biking around town in my costume looking for the place, but there were too many reasons against it. My tiredness was one, the headache another, the hangover intruding on my worktime tomorrow and since I volunteered the idea of doing this Halloween lesson for Elementary school I need to deliver. There’s also the act that I won’t know a soul there, but I do know that it is mostly middle aged souls, who are good company at times, but not the kind of partying company I want right now. The final reason is that the costume I bought is more lame than an extremely dumb dog that walked into our seperate bear traps and then got its tail caught in a fifth for good measure. I bought what I thought was a cool skeleton suit, but it turns out to be a t-shirt. It’s a very cool t-shirt, but as a Halloween costume it’s lame, and I don’t think the guy from a country that actually celebrates Halloween should be outdone by a bunch of peeps from a country that doesn’t. I also get to have a decent night’s sleep. I shall just have to live with the fact that I could have had fun, and I might have met some cool new people.
  
  Another reason is there is another party tomorrow. See, my friend at the Ramen shop told me that there is an annual foreigners party during the day. More an event than a party I suppose, but it sounds like it either would be fun...or will be filled with the kind of people I've been trying to avoid. I'd definitely go if there were Japanese English speakers there. The problem with this one is that it is quite a way out of town so I need someone with a car to take me. Might be able to rope someone into it but everyone seems to be hiding tonight.

• Red Cross

  2009 Oct 29

  I didn’t think this moment would come. Relief. Last month was a big hairy arse with warty boils. Thanks to my pay being reduced after the short hours of summer I had to live very carefully, which meant eating less, which meant me being grumpy. However, I did a good job of not showing it at work. As usual, I have an excellent supply of masks. Then, when I got money, I was running around making sure it went to the right places and I got what I needed with it. That exhausted me. This week, things have gone back to normal activity wise but I’ve been feeling like I’m still coming down from the stress of last month and the tiredness. So, after feeling shitty, it was nice to sort out my finances this evening, at last. I can live comfortably now, plus I have the choice of saving 20-30,000 yen a month or blowing it on a trip to Tokyo one weekend or something. It feels good.
  
  So, where as this morning I wasn’t sure if I was going to just stress out at work and shirk my responsibilities, this evening I’m feeling better than I have in ages. And I almost got sexually harassed by the cute English teacher, if rubbing chalk off my backside could have counted as such. I don’t think it is if I give her permission. She ran off anyway. She’s in a bad mood with me because I never give her any “Matt Money”. I’ll make up for that one day. And I got the news that one of my best friends has fallen pregnant! So congratulations to you, Jot. I can’t wait to play “Uncle” haha. Who am I kidding though? She has so much family I won’t be able to get a peek in.
  
  So yeah, this week. I managed to get some lessons organised. I’ve been teaching, after what felt like another long hiatus even though it was only a week or so and I have been teaching the second grade. I haven’t done that since before summer. It’s nice because I hardly know them, so it feels new.
  
  Tomorrow is Halloween. I like Halloween, because, despite it being largely an Americanized holiday, it celebrates the supernatural, which is my bread and butter in the literary world. So I’m all for it. I still have to sort out a costume, but I have a party to go to on Saturday. I wanted to make a Jack Skellington costume, but I might have to settle for buying a plain ole skeleton suit. I’ve always wanted one of those full body skeleton suits that have the painted (I think) design. All the ones I’ve found nowadays have stupid, cheap looking plastic glued onto them. Ah well, I’ll have to see what I can pick up on the way home tomorrow.

• Pumpkin

  2009 Oct 26

  I’m very torn about Sendai. It’s a lovely place. It’s a nice big city that has all the usual related amenities and attracts decent gigs events and the like. It has a university, good connections to other major cities and there are just so many beautiful women there. Yet, every time I go it turns into a stressful shitty little annoyance. I had to go in today to visit the bank. I got there okay, but despite me having prepared everything I needed and using all the information the bank back home gave me, I still couldn’t complete the payment so I ended up wasting my money going there and wasting my time (which was hours) in the bank trying to work through the forms with the bank clerk. I appreciate her efforts but why is it so complicated? I’ve tried so hard recently to make my payments back home but everything I do, something gets in the way and normally it’s my UK bank’s fault. It’s like they don’t want their money. I’m planning to go to Sendai again on Sunday to meet a girl. I’m determined to make a day of it and have a good time so I can reverse this curse.
  
  In the meantime, I’m knackered with all my free time used up. So I’m gonna quit wasting it talking to you lot and go do something better instead. No offense, my loving adoring fans.

• Drama Queen

  2009 Oct 24

  I’ve had a brilliant couple of days. Yesterday was the school コンクルー which seems to consist of every class in the school singing a couple of songs. We took over the city’s civic hall and it was great fun. We all sat in the crowd but the classes took turns to take the stage, where they stood like a proper choir, and here is the most impressive bit, students played the piano and conducted the music. I enjoyed listening to the songs I liked, and watching my favourite students take the stage and do their thing. For the rest of the time I was sat with one of the first grade classes. The kids asked me questions about the songs and some of the English writing on the programme. We talked and listened together and I tried to give them some advice about coping with nerves. After that particular class finished their performance one of the girls cried for quite a while. I was concerned and didn’t know if she was happy or sad. For one, Japanese people bottle lots of things up and then let it all go in explosions of emotion at flagship events like this and there was the fact that she was probably nervous, but I thought she did great (she was conducting). So I assumed she was happy and relieved. My proof came later when, after all the classes had sung, she won 1st award for her conducting. Another girl from that class won for her piano playing. It was good to see them happy then. I had nothing to do with it, obviously, but I felt a little proud because she’s one of the children I like most; she always says “Hello!” to me in a cheery voice, every day I see her and she reminds me of Kiff from Futurama.
  
  The singing did vary a bit that day, but most tried really hard and did a good job. One of the third graders really messed up his piano playing. It was amusing to listen to the chorus sing acapella for a while, but at the end of the song, the pianist’s attempts to get back in the swing of things were starting to sound painful. It seemed like the longest song. The third graders were amusing in their team cheers before each class began. There are some jokers in that grade (of course) and they made some funny chants that I didn’t get because I’m not Japanese.Still, they were amusing to watch. I got to take my camera and document the whole thing. I took loads of photos, though they do tend to seem the same as it was the same set up every performance. I also recorded video of my favourite songs. I don’t think they would allow that at English schools anymore.
  
  Today was even better. Where as yesterday we only just had time to break through that normality barrier and reach into that realm of experience where the time you spend together is unique and the rest of the world doesn’t seem to matter, today was a full day. The day was marred by one big problem though. My camera batteries were dying and the replacements were already dead. So I wasn’t able to take as many photos and videos today as I would have wanted (though it is amazing how long you can sustain power by wiggling them a bit). It was a real shame as, at the end of the day, some of the third graders did some comedy sketches. Despite not understanding half of it, some of the comedy was universal. For example, one sketch seemed to be about a group of boys who collapased to their knees when a beautiful, famous singer (some kid in drag, in actuality) walked by to her song playing. This was immediately parodied when the Star Wars music played and a guy dressed as C3-P0 robot walked onto the stage and off the other end. Then, at seemingly random moments the Star Wars music would play again during their scenes and the C3-P0 would walk on again, saying different funny things I didn’t get, but just the occurrence was hysterical.
  
  Anyway, the day started with a performance by the strings section (with one song being the aforementioned teacher accompaniment). Then there were some speeches and the like, including my speech contest student re-enacting her performance from the contest. It was good to see as I didn’t get to see the competition itself, despite all the preparation. Then the third graders put on a play. I didn’t get it, but they did a good job. This was followed by the brass band. I was more than ready for lunch, and then the day changed a little. Suddenly, we were walking around all the classrooms looking at displays of students’ work. It was like a parent-teacher day back home. I got to see a lot of other material though, and it was nice. Some of them really get into the other subjects, which is to be expected. One strange thing that happened at this time, was that lots of people gathered around the running track. I wasn’t sure why until I went outside and looked. They were having a spitting competition. Yes, in complete contrast to their usual politeness and good manners, the students had gathered to see who could spit seeds the furthest. Naturally, I had a good go, and managed a respectable 4 m 20. It got a bit of a cheer, but it was so funny to watch. I had seen the teachers do it before though. One day someone had brought some watermelons into the teachers room. After beginning eating them, some people went outside and started spitting seeds as far as they could. Strange, in contrast to normal days, but fun.
  
  After this tour of students work, we all went back to the main hall and waited for ages. Then some of the students did their comedy sketches. This was probably the best part. We were all tired, but they still managed to be so energetic and they really got into it again.
  
  One of the things I really enjoyed about this time was how into it all the students got. When their friends were announced as winners, they really cheered hard. It’s such a change from the meek figures I see everyday slipping down the hall, hoping I won’t try and talk to them today. They really got a kick out of the second day when the teachers sang along to one of the songs. It was traditional Japanese, and only some teachers sang, but the cheers and laughter from the students was incredible. I wish they had that energy more often. It might be easier to connect with them. Though I did make some progress with another student. I took to hanging out on the balcony with one of the English teachers for half the day. Some of the students who were working behind the scenes would pop out every now and then to watch a bit of the act currently performing. With the English teacher’s help, I started talking to one of the girls who really tries hard to avoid me because she doesn’t know any English. I got her started on the whole “Matt Money” quest, so maybe I’ll hear more from her. Especially since I suggested she work together with her friends to pool the prize money.
  
  The downside of today is that, for some reason, they completely blocked out all day light so I feel like I have been in a darkened theatre all day, and now it is naturally dark. So I think my body is a little confused, but it’s nothing that a long sleep won’t soon sort out.