Slammerborn

Lately since I am the only Venezuelan here, it has gotten more lonely than it used to be, I kinda feel like the witcher at some times most people hate me but they end up calling me when things get bad. I think I have said this before but in the circle of university brass bands in this state I have become sort of a rumour, every school seems to know about me by now and I am unable to introduce myself to anyone, people already know my name and what I have "done" or  not "done" because of this some new girls suddenly follow me on twitter ask me to teach them things(even though they are the ones going to a music course in college) I dont mind teaching, specially pretty girls! one is as stall as me and really pretty, but doubt that will go anywhere.

I sent my clarinet for maintenance which will set me back quite a bit money wise, no PS4 or fancy games for me, good thing I got into FFXIV hope that keeps me busy in winter. I guess I need to keep up whatever I am doing so the things people say about me dont become bad.

Finally, the juicy bit, seems Sally is back with a vengeance... I have been warned not to engage her and just let her be even though I have been getting ignored for about 6 months now(or more even) find it funny since I am the reasonable person she is just allowed to mess with me and I gotta be the big guy and take it. I am the crazy big foreigner so I guess I will take it as is... just hurts to know you are second class.

per week

So there has been quite a lot lately, I graduated masters, started PhD, had the yearly concert with the university brass band and I have some cool things to share.

   First of all, I finished the concert and I still felt bad about the whole girl that possibly quit because of me thing, at the very least it does feel that I tried to fix the mess I had indeed started. To promote this concert I appeared on TV, played at a local park during illumination.

  For that concert a new girl that plays flute joined the band just for that one concert, I didn't know who she was but I just thought she came from far to help us out so I invited her to practice with me quite a bit, everytime she happily accepted till it was her asking me to practice... now we even have gigs together(next month wohoo!) 

 After the recent school festival we were playing UNO with batsuge or with penalties it was usually the winner asks the loser(we decided this loser by the remaining cards after the game ended with points) asked questions, some real gems came from this like asking just "how many times per week?" calling the number seven sukeben or getting asked to call every card you play with Norio Wakamoto voice, favourite sexual position, eventually I was pretty drunk and I got asked what kind of girl is my type and I said the flute girls name without batting an eye, because of that I decided to ask her out... I did she said yes so all is well!

  For people that watched kimi no uso I will participate in a solo contest next February and I needed a pianist, my usual friend is busy with work so I asked a young girl from the technical college, she is pretty busy now but she said she will check it out, she also switched to English when she answered my request which was quite funny.

Empty Dumpty

      Friend said that when he was running out of gas on his car found it funny so I will title this entry like that, not much lately I have loads of free time so I can play a lot of clarinet and video games! went to play Pokken at the arcade turns out I am a monster with Charizard had some crazy win streak... my secret his throw takes half your life and then you mix them up with seismic throw which is ANOTHER throw and kill anyone in 2 or 3 hits. I am a genius... I got destroyed at the dragon ball game beat a bunch of the story in one go then someone tells me "dude try the special battles you are great!" then I fought a battle it was 3v1 and in this game if you beat someone they insta respawn so I got destroyed


I haven't added pictures in a while so I will throw  a whole bunch, went to the Venezuelan embassy and got my passport set up, it takes a while to get made so I am waiting for that, there was a girl I met there and i just invited her to the fireworks here in Nagaoka, kinda bold if you ask me, maybe she thought I was hitting on her. A girl that plays flute joined the band, she is actually pretty cute! and for some reason seems to enjoy practicing with me. For things of destiny, she ended up driving me home recently... friends set me up I think she was talking how spanish was the sexiest language then she asks me "what do you speak, Venezuelan?" I say nope "I speak Spanish!" but then I did not really know how to follow the whole sexiest language and just said that sadly it isnt that sexy to me just mentioned how she probably doesn't find Japanese all that sexy.

I went to Joetsu to watch a concert from the brass band of the university of education, they are good I must admit. They even had some first year new clarinet players one was good enough that made me want to practice more seriously. Who knows she might be better than me! we will find out when we play together later this month. It is from agosuke in Joetsu

    this is a don with green tea! it tastes a lot better than you believe, recommend it.

   Chembalo! rare instrument we got to see at a Bach only concert, yes it was hardcore.

If you love me you will give me 10000$ and buy me this saxophone I promise I will make it worth your while playing careless whisper...

   The last three are random pictures, but heck easy to understand I guess.

railgun

    I have a weird announcement, I got through the thesis defense so if all goes well I will be starting doctors next month and my adventure will continue for 3 more years. I am pretty resistant to homesickness as it is right now and talking to the folks through skype, etc. is getting more and more distant as time goes on as if I am talking to someone I don't really know, bad feeling to look at your own family and feel like a stranger to them.

    I don't recall mentioning this other tidbit of info, no more Venezuelans are coming to this university at least for a year so I will be an even more rare being around here, band news... the atmosphere in the band is kinda weird I would say, at least for me. The biggest reason I am showing up recently is because I am pretty sorry that person quit mostly because of me and I feel like I took something away from everyone; even if it isn't really that, it is how I feel so it cannot be helped right now. Could guess half the women hate my guts, but that is all that it is a guess and a wild one at that. I just don't know

   I get to play in the nearby park again on August 8th, got asked to do 3 ensembles, got asked as a favor to do 1, then asked again to do another... then the third time the guy was sorry to ask me again to play something for that day, guess he also knows I kinda feel bad and to some degree he is taking advantage of it.


   Summary of my life now, I need to get better at handling guilt I guess... it is going to cost me eventually.

女子力

for this entry I guess first I would have to reel anyone that is reading in the concept of  女子力(joushiryoku) means girl power, but not on the way it is usually implied in English it means how womanlike qualities you can display. In other words, your power level on women stereotypes  and cliches, you cook good food, understand people's feelings, etc. On a random note since I am teaching random junk a good way to remember the kanji for woman if you know hiragana is to just write the kana for kunoichi one on top of another   く then  ノ then  一 and you get the kanji for woman... and that is where the name for female ninjas come from.

Now back to the topic this week I was called to the Niigata University of Information to play in their Tanabata fest, their brass band has very few members so they call people from all over to help which in turn makes it a lot of fun, anyways one girl sax players was talking during lunch about how distance was an issue in relationships and I told her "distance" itself is not the issue it is not about living with your partner but not being able to meet them when you want to, she always takes jabs at me for being big so she tells me "oh you got a 5 months belly" then I just tell her "yeah, it's already kicking and everything!" then she goes "you know when babies are supposed to kick" well yeah... that is common knowledge, She is like "no no.. I am a nurse! men normally don't know that!". Last year I played  in the graduation ceremony for this University and it was cool mostly because they also called this really cute flute player and she was there for this one too! Now I got her name and she is also taking part in another concert with me later! looking good! Anyhow, thanks to the sax player, there is a rumor that I am knowledgeable about women issues! 

I am very kung fused.

    I watched kung fury recently so forgive me for the horrible joke in the title. I have been working on my master's thesis and well, I need to step it up... my teacher ain't around so I gotta work on it myself without any help or supervision which is kinda daunting.

     On the interesting topic news, I went to the school diner where Sally works(I was still being ignored by then) during the meal though she waves and smiles at me. I was so shocked I thought I was seeing things so essentially I shut down to the point the people eating with me(including one girl) got pissed off at me wondering what was going on. I go to the band practice after eating everyone talks about how she is gonna quit probably, she goes off work at 9pm around then she leaves all the chat groups etc for the band I just go home kinda sad about it, but then see some evidence of band leaders fighting on twitter.

     It is hard to explain, I just threats and stuff like "you wont get away with this, I wont let you!" and then people deleting their accounts. later that night Sally(who had me blocked on every form of internet contact she could block me on) sends me a message saying she was childish and wants to be friends again. I told her we can talk later. Before, she would adamantly refused, this time she accepted even with a smiley face. Something happened, and I have no idea what... truly a shame.


   When she apologized I was truly tempted to just copy paste what she told me when I asked to be friends again(she said she wasnt mad but we couldn't be friends now and she wanted space and time), but then I thought from all the bloodbath I had seen on twitter and the talk on the band that something happened and even if she did a number on me emotionally, I acted like a grown up and didn't take the first chance I had to hurt someone when I had the chance.

   I talked to a Venezuelan girl that is here that gives me advice on this sort of things. She instantly told me to just get payback and be done with it. Sadly, I do like the woman so it is not easy for me to be vindictive against her. She was won and she probably knows it.

I will work hard for my thesis so I doubt I will manage to be able to update too often. Wish me luck.

aftermath

Anyways. White day happened... I tried to talk to sally who was still ignoring and giving me one word answers, that night I gave her original cookies I ordered from a wedding place to match a character she likes. She seemed happy and it all seemed ok but honestly she kept with the one word talk and I just told her what was up with that. After a day getting ignored she said "she was late. She needed to think her answer, she needs time and space to organize her feelings" I am sure organize is not the best word but put things in order kind of thing. She also clearly said "I am not mad!" etc which probably means she is still mad.

I actually gave the chocolates and talked to her on the 16th of March, on the 15th I got called out for a date by a friend(yes, she is a woman and she is taken) lets call her Faith, She went to Mexico for internship so she speaks some Spanish. She gave me the valentine tequila as return I gave her some cookies from Venezuela(my last!) some chocolate I bought from a japanese store and a mexican lollipop I got from another Mexican girl(betrayal!). Anyways she asks me about the whole Sally deal and wants to hear my "side" of things... I honestly ask her if there was anything I could have done to not have this happen and she told me "nope, never seen her this mad" and "when we fought she never talked in single words". Just confused me even more... anyways since I hinted that I might quit if I have some girl just ignoring me in my own part she said how fun it was for her to play with me and how no one wants me to quit(again painfully hinting just to the fact that I am ok playing) Seems I gotta be the adult in this situation and swallow whatever pride and self respect I have left and take it. Dont think anything will come out of this but my drama gets more complicated by the minute!

'fess up

The big concert happened, I managed to play well and live to everyone expectations. The organizer was thankful that I played and everyone was praising me left and right so it was a good mood. We gave a present to sally for handling all the calling and scheduling of the clarinet part, she was very happy and broke the silence with me and just said "your solo was lovely as always". Anyhow at the second party(in japan we have the normal party then like an afterparty known as 二次会 or nijikai) during then I talked to her she said she wanted to forget about everything tha happened recently and just work on our friendship. I think I have one too many tequilas or something but since I like her I decided to confess up right then and there.. she was already ignoring me most of this month so if it comes to worse nothing would change, I know she has a boyfriend so I said this something like this "I like you and I am aware there is someone else you like and it is not me(implying her boyfriend) and that is ok." then I proceeded to tell her about me getting rejected for the disney tickets by her etc. She said she had no clue and she was really happy to hear that, after that though she got really quiet and shy just staring down. Since I noticed she wasnt gonna respond anymore with anything besides nods I just told her "lets leave it up to here for now". A girl I met the day of the concert was praising me to hell all day. She was honored to play with me etc, really pretty too... shame I didnt get her contact info, most of the girls of the clarinet part were really proud of me it seems. I think all I did was straigthen up my thoughts about Sally, we have to meet on white day because I gotta return her chocolates(she hasn't cancelled this maybe she forgot) anyways she likes a kids character called コジコジ so I got a bridal shop to design cookies to the likeness of that character... smallest order was 5 so I gotta hand her 5 cookies. Honestly I don't know what happened since she wasn't really talking anymore she seemed to be smiling while looking down(at least a crooked smile)

Maybe I fucked up, but I think I am doing the right thing at least. At least I gathered the balls to tell her knowing I would crash and burn the whole time.

Wreckage

so I guess I was slightly popular during valentines... after that a lot has happened. First of all for the next concert we were planning to do a clarinet ensemble, an octet, practice was not going so well but I believed everyone was going to put in some work and we would have it sorted out in time. Suddenly, one person withdraws this will get kinda like a novel so get your pens I will call this person  Debbie, so she suddenly just mails everyone saying she isn't showing for the concert anymore and that she is sorry and she is gone. I am at the clubroom and one girl from the clarinet part wants to talk to me about it, lets call her Sally, I ask Sally if she actually wanted to do the ensemble and she said nope I actually don't we were discussing what we were gonna do, I just tell her I am not gonna force to do anything so I am probably going to call it off myself, after that I guess she didn't find me as a decent conversation partner  so she went to get advice from some other girls, honestly I got kinda mad about this so after a while I just picked up my things and left as I was leaving she calls my name and in my head I was all  "oh, now you want to talk to me!" so I ignored her and left(Sally is the girl that convinced me to stay on the band in the first place). That night after I get home Debbie is back on the concert she says, Another friend lets call him Carl, he works on the pamphelts and things so he already did all the work removing Debbie from everything so he has to put her back in everything, Carl is pissed and he is vocal about it, but willing to work.

Day 2 begins, I meet Sally in the morning she apologizes to me about ignoring me the day before, I tell her it is nothing and that we should talk more about it in the practice with the other players she agrees(or so I believed) we get there and then I get ignored all day again and she gathers everyone but me to do the discussion. Anyways, a vote goes on for who wants to do it, I voted I am willing to play, Sally said no, Carl was still pissed so he went off again on the chat. Now I need to make a break here, while I was being ignored and not part of the clarinet talk on this day Debbie's boyfriend his name shall be Roger approaches me and says "please, I had to talk to my girlfriend a lot to convince her to come back please be nice" in my head I was all "damn, I can't do anything for you son, I am getting ignored by everyone right now". Now skip back to Carl going nuts at Debbie for being so wishy washy during that I just got "we cannot work together like this, peace" and leave the chat. Right at this moment Another girl... lets say Heather messages me and asks me if I am ok and that she is sorry for whatever happened for the record until that point I was scared shitless of Heather, she is a psych student, but is incredibly crafty in dealing with people to a degree that scares me, also she just broke up with a good friend of mine so it is difficult to talk to her I guess without me getting murdered(I still live in Venezuela in my head sometimes) anyhow I wait for things to cool off and apologize to very girl, Another girl, lets call her Susan, says "please don't worry about it, I like you a lot so don't believe I am mad!"(now that I see it it is very hard to word in English) Sally responds with a flag "I am fine! dont worry about me please!" this one was dry was heck so I talk to her to see if she has time, she says she is busy today and the day after and actually this week is very hard to meet at all.

Skip to the weekend, practice goes as usual, I am kinda down because I am certain Sally hates my guts now turns out I wasn't wrong at all. The peak was when the song changed and she had to sit next to me and she went "I don't want to sit next to this guy" after all we have been through that kinda hurt me to be honest, so after that I set her aside and talk to her, honestly I started really weird now that I reminiscence about it, I said "are you really ok with this? not being even able to sit next to me" she said really softly "no" honestly if someone does that I normally send all to hell, but Sally is nice so she is worth going the extra mile I explain her that last year I had exactly the same situation and also about the girlfriend thing the situation.... I get a shocker, she says she is mad since December, that was just the last drop, last December we did an ensemble together in Christmas after it she told me the first thing i said was "we should invite Heather to do a quartet" , I will explain myself here we were three people and we just played as a trio, but used the quartet music so we were lacking one person all along. Anyways she felt that I didn't need her so me ignoring her made her feel that I didn't need her even less. Conclusion, she says she needs time for things to cool down. She said at least until after the concert

Skip to midnight, I get a mail Sally says "It is not that I hate you or anything like that, I just got mad, so please be nice to me as you were before"(again the exact japanese is hard to word in english) I say sure and also that I will be more careful from now on. 

Valentines

so it is that time of the year... chocolates and me having to return every single one the next month, I got a chocolate Wednesday from one of my  students.. high-school girl, tomorrow there is practice will all the schools again. If someone has read any news I guess Venezuela is quite a mess right now, went from the highest minimum wage in the continent according to the government at least, we all knew that was a lie to know officially the lowest at 71$ a month and engineer earns about 121$ this affects my mood a bit I guess, but I tend to avoid Venezuela talk quite a bit to be honest so I will try to mask it down. 

I will update next week with more info on what chocolates I got if I get any the actual day!

something a day

A mysterious entity keeps asking me to update more often so to keep up with those desires I will attempt to talk about random stuff, that maybe people already know but heck I will just throw it out there. I talk a lot to japanese people on a daily basis, to be honest not many foreign students try to engage japaese their form their communities and only use japanese as survival skills. This gives me some experiences that other people dont have regarding learning the language and I know a lot of weird things.

Today I guess I will talk about パイスラッシュ(pai-slash) pretty easy if you break it down the pai is from oppai(boobs, tits, gazongas, chichis, sweater puppies, etc) and slash it is to describe the strap of a bag or a guitar placing itself between the object of admiration in question. I was taught this word during a discussion between a very pretty horn player girl and another friend where she was adamant saying she had D cup size and her sister measured herself! and the other dude kept saying "you are barely a C woman stop fighting so hard for the D! during that discussion  she mentioned the word and I did sort of a confused face and she proceeded to explain and use herself as an example, She event went to get a bag, etc everyone at the band later was "you lucky dog Juan she just showed them to you up close!" etc, honest to god I will never forget that phrase haha.

you want a really weird phrase that is being used around here that almost no one outside this prefecture knows? コマ?　short for これマジ？　like saying are you for real?  another one I will remember is one girl explaining her type for guys and she said 塩顔(shiogao or salt face) what this means is a guy that is almost good looking, but really isnt, he is almost the ideal but doesnt quite cut it and that is the kind of man she likes.

My passing knowledge of Japanese can slowly be transferred around I guess, the salt face is only used by teenager girls mostly so be careful!

Happy New year 2015 edition

  This entry says New Years in the title, but I will start from christmas and around those times. At the start of December I got hit by a car, got grazed by the rear-view mirror so I didn't fall down or anything, still on process to deal with the insurance company which is taking too long and it is just annoying. I was also teaching Spanish to a nurse that plans on going to Paraguay, I did it for free just out of the worry of her getting beheaded and hanged off a bridge if she doesn't know anything. I rarely talk about my experiences in Venezuela, but I will sum them up saying I know for a fact how unpleasant of a place it can be.

Number of deaths/injured/incidnts in Nagaoka honestly reminded me a lot of hot fuzz I was shocked in Venezuela  you have around 65 murders a day(I just averaged the total with 365 days it waas 24k) 

I found a danish bakery... while walking to the police station, it looks fancy.

   I guess this picture has a reward for people who actually read how I write this one has a story, there was a foreign student support event with lots of free food, imagine every table with this so I invited girls from the brass band to have free food with me, they just said they were all my Japanese tutors here(saying they are teaching me about Japan or Japanese) so I ended up with 4 pretty girls all claiming to be my tutors, one of them being the absolute idol of the university right now, model jobs, part time priestess, the works... as pretty and awesome as she is I like her friend that plays clarinet more, another one is into games(tales and pokemon) I guess she would be lace's dream woman;also people thought she was vietnamese and kept trying to talk to the "hot vietnamese chick", the last one is a pretty shy trombone player but when it is go time at concerts she transforms into a bad-ass. What happened at the party was not so awesome, I was a jerk to the girl I liked(ignored her most of the time) because meh I am salty after taking her to that concert just to find out she has a boyfriend etc and still getting approached in a way I see so forward just seems weird... I could say it is a culture clash maybe, she is probably trying to be friendly with her senpai I am taking it the wrong way 100%

you know what this is son, smash on a projector, Nothing else to say.

The stage I played during christmas, pretty depressing saw everyone I knew with their girlfriends, also messed up while playing which bothers me quite a bit.

This is how I bring beer to a party

Everyone chips in food for the christmas dinner.

Every year so far i volunteer at a temple in Japan for their New Years visit, name tags of people that come and go.

Temple Guard called "UN" just look at his face and imagine what sound he would make, or just remember what sounds akuma makes in street fighter.

Bishamonten shrine, this is 700 years old and survived the Meiji unification.

Uesugi Kenshin, if you play random Sengoku era games you might know who he is, also the inspiration for rurouni kenshin's main character.

Now for pictures of my actual job at the temple, carving a path in the snow I later decorate it with candles, pictures below.

This dude is UN's partner called A, notice how his mouth is open.... he should be blue in color UN is when you are born and is red colored and A represents the moment you die and should be blue(this statue is old and lost its blue tint).

Snow falling hardcore

I make paths with candles son and I like to thing I am so good at it some bro got woo'd his woman right there.

Sake and food after finishing the work.