He's hardcore! He's hardcore! He's hardcore!

There are hobbyists, and there are gamers.

Gamers find games.  Games find hobbyists.  Gamers look for the next game, the next world, the next experience, be it Street Fighter 4, Tetris, Modern Warfare 2, or Diner Dash.  Hobbyists are content to enjoy games as they come, as a diversion or a social outlet, but you'll never find a hobbyist camping out in front of a Best Buy in the middle of December, warming their hands on the Hot Pockets they brought from home as thermodynamics mock their efforts.  Those "people" are gamers and the unfortunate parents of gamers, and that behavior is part of what makes us so God damn stupid.

But that's not to say that one is "better" than another (or so we tell our Jim Crow hobbyist friends).  It's just a matter of priorities.  Gamers go hobbyist when work, family, marriage, and kids (occasionally people actually do kiss us) conspire to take the focus--and rightly should--from a gamer's life.  It's in the contract: you get to pretend to be a man wearing space-armor into your mid-twenties, but when the time comes, you have to find a way to pay for your daughter's ballet lessons.  The loophole of course being that sporting a neckbeard really drops the odds of having to ever honor that financial obligation.  We're not socially inept, we just have a thorough understanding of the contract we signed.

And hobbyists, too, turn gamer.  All it takes is one amazing game, one unforgettable world, one gripping experience.  And a couple of loving family members to kindly turn a blind eye to our quiet shame.


My own transformation began on Christmas '93, when a gift-wrapped copy of Kirby's Adventure dropped into my lap.

 

Hardcore. 

If you've never had the pleasure of playing a Kirby platformer, I'll sum it up briefly: Kirby's Adventure is a side-scroller in the same vein as a Mario or Mega Man title.  But Kirby games are unique in that the titular protagonist doesn't pick flowers or fights with robot masters to build his arsenal of powers; he gets them by devouring the very foes trying to stop him.  Depending on the enemy Kirby eats, he gains access to one of 24 different powers to aid him in his quest to take back Dream Land.  In most cases, Kirby can keep his power as long as he wants (though a couple powers are use-restricted), as long as he isn't damaged.  When Kirby inevitably does take damage, the power falls out of his body in the form of a bouncing star.  He has a few seconds to try and re-masticate his ability, lest time runs out and the star vanishes entirely.  Simple, right?

Today's gamer likely wouldn't find anything special about that gameplay mechanic.  After all, games like Phantom Brave, Morrowind, and Dead Rising offer the player the freedom to do anything, or use anything as a weapon, but remember that this was an NES title, predating Dead Rising by a full 12 years.

 

Basically, these are the same game.

For 10-year-old Merican, this game might as well have been cut with heroin and dipped in chocolate.  Kirby's Adventure dominated my NES's venerable game slot for a full year, unchallenged by game rentals, barely having time to miss me upon the sudden arrival of a Super Nintendo the next Christmas, and Kirby was probably thankful for the breather.  Kirby's Adventure had it all.

But in spite of the tight gameplay, in spite of the charming presentation, the creative design, the memorable cast of characters, and the catchy soundtrack, the hook that catapulted Kirby's Adventure from "fun diversion" to "crippling addiction" was something that any true gamer will tell you robs us of sleep, meals with family members, the incentive to bathe, and funerals--hell, it's the reason Blizzard has reaped 11.5 million souls with World of Warcraft: completionism. 

And Kirby's Adventure had completionism in spades.  Every "world" is a large room, and the entrance to each level is a door within that room.  Initially, the doors are brown, but once everything in the level has been discovered, the door turns white.  As any Kirby's Adventure vet can attest, finding an elusive secret in a level and walking out to a still-brown door is like getting an I.O.U. for a birthday present.  Only it's an I.O.U. for a kick in the dick.  Scouring even deeper the depths of Dream Land, finally the secret is found, the door becomes white, and a reward in the form of a mini-game for extra lives opens up on the world map.  All is right with the world.  OR SHOULD I SAY ALL IS WHITE?

For seven months, I was an archaeologist.  Dream Land was my dig site.  I still remember looking at a set of destructible blocks and thinking "aha!" and busting them open to find nothing.  Undaunted, I walked to where the blocks had been and tapped up on the crosspad.  An invisible door.  There the last button stood.  No more puzzles, no more obstacles, nary an enemy stood between the gap that separated me from total victory.  I hit the switch, revealed the mini-game on the world map, and contentedly shut the game off.  I did it.  I had won.  Dream Land had no more secrets to hide.

Or did it?

The next day, I flipped on the NES, intent on a post-100% victory lap, selected my save data, and saw something curious: "Extra game"

Extra... game?  Extra, as in, "another," as in, "additional," as in... extra?  I tentatively tapped the B-button and Kirby dropped into existence, same as ever, in World 1, right in front of the door to level 1.  The only difference was, my normally robust 6-hit life-bar hovered at a precarious new maximum of 3.  My dig site just opened up into the God damn Temple of Doom.

Anyone with even a passing familiarity with gaming at all knows exactly what I'm describing: hard mode.  "Do it again," the game says.  "Do it all again.  But this time, better."

The first few levels were a breeze, exercises in muscle-memory, but my cockiness quickly faded once outside of the comfort of Worlds 1 and 2.  Extra mans melted away and the continue screen's increasing frequency showed me that I had vastly overestimated my own ability.  The sudden ramp in difficulty culminated in the boss battle showdown at the end of World 7--the defining moment of my childhood gaming accomplishments.  With a maximum of three health and with only the sword's short range to protect the frail Kirby from danger, the margin of error I was working with made Gallup look like wild speculation.  Because the opponent with whom my sword was crossed was none other than...

 

...this motherfucker.

I died.

A lot.

It was a Kirby massacre.  Kirby's marshmallowy blood caked my maladroit 10-year-old fingers.  The U.N. postured and passed resolutions to try to intervene in the slaughter, political college kids adorned in hemp stood on the quad, strumming acoustic guitars and shoving cans pitifully devoid of change into the chests of passers-by, and then-rock legend Sting penned a ballad in memoriam.

It kind of looked like this (but worse).

It took the kind of effort that today would leave me shaking my head in bewilderment and dropping my controller in impotent exasperation to the floor, walking away and never playing again.  But in the midst of the crystalis into a gamer, I persisted.  Summer vacation is weird like that.  And the raw satisfaction of finally cleaving my masked malefactor in twain unleashed the kind of ecstasy in me that snuff fetishists only dream of.  It wasn't the end of the game, there was still another world to go, but no challenge even approached the level of undiluted frustration of the duel with the Meta-Knight.

But the battle... it changed me.  I lost a lot of good Kirbys out there.  Kirbys with families.  Homes they'll never be going back to.  But if that's the cost of a hard-earned sense of satisfaction at a job well done, then I'd hurl another thousand Kirbys onto that masked bastard's serrated blade to do it.

I am become gamer, destroyer Dream Lands.

Of pie and strudel

I have a theory.

Perhaps you are familiar with the Japanese adult entertainment industry, the shining jewel at the center of the very strange mosaic of the more peculiar side of Japanese culture.

And I do mean mosaic.  Because, if you have even a passing familiarity with that of which I speak, you know that a set of clear, unblurred genitalia are about as easy to find as Sasquach (and if you did ever find unblurred genitalia, that's exactly what they'd look like).  Your first time you fired up a Japanese porno on your computer, you probably asked yourself "why does that man's wing-wong look like a redneck's face on Cops?"  Alas, in accordance with Japanese law, the depiction of sexual organs in any format, be it in video, pictures, video games, or cartoons, is illegal.  And it is, in my humble opinion, the reason for the myriad of bizarre pornographic scenarios and depictions in Japan: hot leather-clad women wearing massive, cruel, bladed alien codpieces, shitting dicknipples, men with prosthetic fire hydrant-sized dicks dicking equally comically foam-rubber oversized 'giners...

Like this, but the kitties are ginormous penii, and the bucket is the 'giner

But did I really start this blog entry with the intention of talking about Japanese porn?  I mean, anyone could get a crash-course in that with Google search and an hour on Bittorrent.  Well, yes and no.  For anyone who has never visited Japan, it would be easy to think the mosaic is just an idiosyncrasy of the adult entertainment industry.  That would be untrue.  The mosaic, in Japanese media, is the wrapping paper to a very exciting present.  Its powers are the stuff of magic.  Its use, a lost art form of the Far East.  Utterly inexplicable to the outside observer, yet utterly captivating in effect.

Don't believe me?

Allow me to illustrate: imagine watching a TV program, they announce a special guest will be coming out after the commercial break.  Go to commercial, come back, and it's Oates from Hall and Oates.  Disappointed, you change the channel.

Now, you are watching TV in Japan.  They announce a special guest will be coming out after the break.  Just before commercial, they show a quick two seconds of footage of the special guest coming out, but the face is obscured with a blue circle and a question mark in the middle.  You hear the deafening roar of the audience, perhaps coupled with the trademark chorus of "えええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええ!!!", you get a close-up of the actor or comedian on the show promoting their movie jumping out of his chair with absolute disbelief.  This is going to be good, you think.  Go to commercial, come back, and it's Oates from Hall and Oates.  This, you think to yourself, is television magic.

Perhaps you still don't believe me?  Perhaps you need another example?  Again, you're watching a TV program, explaining what exactly makes KFC so digit-polishingly delicious.  The host interviews several executives and employees of KFC corporation and finally asks the burning question: "what are those 17 herbs and spices that make it so hand-masticatingly great?"

"Sorry, it's a secret."

The host shrugs.  She tried.  She wraps the piece up and tosses back to the studio.

Let's see the same footage again, but in Japan-o-vision.  The host is interviewing a member of a local outfit that makes daifuku.  The store has been around for years and has garnered a great deal of local acclaim.  After watching the cooks work their craft and asking about the history of the product, the host asks the same question: "what is the recipe you use to make your daifuku so good?"

"Sorry, it's a secret."

Suddenly, you are treated to a faceful of mosaic blur that fills the TV screen to the last inch, you squint your eyes, hoping to make out some culinary gorilla within the digital mist.  A lake?  Are they using lake water to make their daifuku?  No, that's stupid.  It must be vanilla pudding.  A big vat of vanilla pudding, that must be the secret ingredient.  And suddenly, a voice-over removes all doubt: "this paper contains the secret recipe.  You can't see it, as the process it details is the key to their daifuku's great flavor."

This actually happened.

Riveting TV, folks.

So it goes, with the ubiquitous mosaic casting its fog over all manner of entertainment.  Obscuring D-list comedians and washed-up musicians on guest appearances, locations that would otherwise provide relevant context to news reports, recipes and secret ingredients, Sasquatchian genitals, the list goes on... but there is one thing they do not censor, and upon discovering that, you finally come to understand what truly constitutes pornography in the Land of the Rising Sun.  Because, what is porn, if not being able to see every detail of something carnal and raw before taken in the throes of loud passion.

This.  Notice as our star trembles in anticipation.  And here comes the money shot!

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you 80% of Japanese television.

This is far from the sole domain of the tube, though.  For the guys (girls, too, maybe? I don't know...) reading this, have you ever been out at the bar with some friends, worked your way through a few too many beers, and out comes this full-details, nothing-left-to-the-imagination account of how you once picked up this one girl--total freak--and proceeded to unleash fucksmogeddon?  Hours upon hours of her apocolips on your ragnacock.  And from what you can recall, there were definitely four horses involved.  And two weeks later the doctor told you you had the clap-ture.

Japanese office women do the same thing.  But with food.  What they ate, what they want to eat, what they will eat... while the other females of the office moan and wail in unison.  I understand if this is hard to believe, given the Western impression of the Japanese--especially Japanese women--as demure, polite, quiet, and reserved, but throw a cream puff in the middle of a group of 'em and watch the inhibitions fly out the window faster than a pair of panties at a whorehouse.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have something else to attend to--a cup of rocky road that's been a very bad girl.

(Check out my own meat-orgy)

Nothing sells like success. Especially not this crap.

Sony and Microsoft have collectively spent the last four years getting their asses handed to them by the little console that could.  Once branded a gimmick that could never hope to oust the conventional business model of the gaming industry, motion control support has proven that not only can it move large amounts of consoles, but it can attract a new consumer base to the already rapidly growing "gamer" demographic.  And, like all things that become successful, someone has to shamelessly rip it off.

Microsoft announced their Wii wanna-be (wanna-Wii?) in June of last year in the form of Project Natal, basically a hybrid of the Eye(toy) (remember how successful that was?) and motion-capture technology, using points on the human body as seen by Natal's camera as forms of input.

Sony, meanwhile, has announced their do-it-yourself Sailor Scout kit, much more obviously and shamelessly copying the Wii's design.

By the power of the moon, I am Sailor Awkward!

Unfortunately, they're both doomed to fail miserably and wind up at the bottom of the Al's Gone Crazy Discount Electronics and Furniture Shack's bargain bin before year's end.  Why?

1.  Sony and Microsoft can't compete with the Wii's price point

It's fair to say that, by now, all three consoles have cut their prices sufficiently that anyone who wants a PS3, Xbox 360, or Wii could afford one, despite certain MSRP difficulties upon launch for a certain console.  But the simple fact is that, even if Sony and Microsoft packed their motion control peripherals in with their consoles from their respective release dates, that would still leave tens of millions of unsupported consoles across America, Europe, and in the XBox 360's case, almost four unsupported consoles in Japan.

That places the onus of purchasing Microsoft and Sony's motion-control peripherals squarely upon their customers, in addition to the cost of any motion-control games that would be released, which brings us to the next problem.

2.  Anyone that wanted motion control as a primary feature of their console already bought a Wii 

The Nintendo Wii was first to market.  It has been around since 2006.  The Wii MotionPlus adapter has been around since mid-2009.  The Wii has a massive advantage in market penetration over the competition, not to mention a library of motion control games that dwarfs anything Microsoft or Sony will be able to muster within the lifespan of this console generation.  Gamers are going to be very, very reluctant to buy a peripheral that won't enhance their current game library on the blind promise that developers will someday support it, which leads us to problem number...

3.  Developers won't support it

Even if the Wii had gambled on developers supporting motion controls and lost, Nintendo is still a gaming company.  They are the only company with a console currently on the market that actually produces their own games for their platform.  Nintendo could still squeak through on their own first-party titles which have historically (and recently) sold very well.

What's more, even if developers didn't want to support the Wii's motion controls, Nintendo still offered an out by allowing the Gamecube controller to be used as an input device and fail-safe against third-party timidity regarding developing for the then-nascent technology.  But the fact of the matter is, a lot of companies do want to develop for the Wii because--get this--game companies are companies!  Developing for the Wii gives them the largest potential consumer-base for any console of this generation.

"But!" you say, "why not develop for all three platforms?"

Ask any developer that has made cross-platform titles: it's a lot of extra work.  And especially in the early going when the Microsoft and Sony peripherals need to build momentum with killer apps, that's when their market penetration is going to be at its weakest.  Are game companies going to spend millions of dollars and add months to their design cycles to accommodate a platform that doesn't even have a large enough market share to put the endeavor in the black?  Absolutely not.  Because, above all else, the success of Microsoft's and Sony's foray into the world of motion control gaming still has one monolithic, insurmountable hurdle to overcome...

4.  It's a peripheral 

Quick, name one peripheral that has ever succeeded.  And don't say the Rumble Pak--that was a pack-in that wasn't actually necessary, even for the games that supported it.  And besides, thinking back, it was pretty stupid.

The answer is none.  Not the 32X, not the Sega CD, not the Super Scope, not R.O.B., not the SNES Mouse, not even the then-revolutionary peripherals like X-Band, The Sega Channel, NES Power Pad, Multi-tap, or the Zapper.  Why?  Because the decision to design a game for a console operates on one major assumption: that people are going to buy it.  Sure, everyone you're marketing to owns the console you're developing for, but the second a peripheral becomes a necessary component to gameplay, the target audience starts shrinking.

DDR and the current wave of rhythm games did a great job of getting people to buy their games and peripheral devices, but how many companies have developed for games with DDR pad support, or games that support Guitar Hero or Rock Band instruments?  The designers of those games were content to send their product to market knowing that their target audience would buy their games and peripherals, but as the numbers in the game title ticked upward, fewer people bought them.  Because if people didn't want to shell out for the expensive plastic guitar the first time, chances are they're not running to the store on account of Guitar Hero 5 being released.  The creators of the Rock Band franchise painted themselves into a corner with required peripheral support and have been catering to a progressively smaller and smaller audience with each iteration.  Same thing with DDR last generation.

What can Microsoft and Sony do to avoid this fate?

Wait a generation, refine the technology (the Wii's motion controls are hardly as sharp and responsive as a many would like), and then do something new and awesome with it.

Like, imagine if you could give a game a 3D look and feel with creative use of existing technology so that a player's perspective were dynamically reflected in-game to give a truly immersive experience.

Oh, wait, that already exists (warning: may cause mind-blowing).  It's called head-tracking.  And why it hasn't appeared in some title in some form defies all logical explanation.  Imagine a cover-based FPS like Gears of Halo with head-tracking.  Game of the Year, right?

Hey, you there at Sony!  Put down the pretty princess wand and get on that!  Yes, the tiara, too!

Everyone you know is a liar

As I've mentioned, I'm engaged.  Engaged to a wonderful, intelligent, funny, attractive woman that, in all likelihood, wakes up every morning, looks over to me, and breathes a long, bewildered sigh.

I'm 25.  I'm getting married.  I work a full-time job.

I believe it was in a famous Talking Heads song where they posed the elegant question: "what series of events led me to this particular juncture in my life?"

Growing up is weird.  As a kid, you always think of "when I grow up" as a destination.  An end goal that your childhood and adolescence are straining toward.  But as you get older, you start to wonder when you'll actually feel like you broke through the finish line and became an adult.

At first, I thought it would be the end of high school.  High school teachers delight in telling their students how "things are really going to change once you get into college," how "professors won't want to help you," and that "you're going to have to do things for yourself."  Of course, you arrive in college and within the first semester you learn what a load of crap that was.  Professors are about as unwilling to meet you as a clingy ex-girlfriend.  I think some of them actually get so bored that they start arranging boxes and papers and books as haphazardly as possible in some sort of unspoken "who can look busier" competition between faculty.  Seriously, have you seen some of those offices?  Didn't these people have mothers?

So you spend your college years rationalizing that the reason you weren't an adult yet was because even though you're 18, 21, 22, in the case of the dude who was "totally cool with doing whatever" after the party 27... and of course you don't feel like an adult yet.  You haven't experienced the real world.  And honestly, I think there's some weight to that.  My roommate junior year played World of Warcraft and I'm convinced he hadn't seen the real world in a very, very long time.  He's a tax accountant now, by the way.  Just so you know, the guy filing your 1040-EZ might very well have logged a couple thousand hours in college pretending to be an Undead Priest.  Bless you, Internet.

Graduation comes and goes, the job search drags, and finally it finds you.  The legends were true!  The "real world" lies in wait--finally!  Adulthood!  And then the first weekend of your gainfully employed, apartment-lease signing life, you sit around for twelve straight hours in your underwear eating cereal from a coffee cup and playing Street Fighter.

What happened?  To quote the immortal words of Queen's rock epic Bohemian Rhapsody: "Is this the real world that everyone was talking about?"

No, of course not.  For that, you have to get married!  Of course, with marriage comes responsibility.  The opportunity to find that enduring partner with whom you entwine your soul and forge an eternal, enduring bond, fortified against the stress and strain of any challenge, obstacle, or temptation or some gay shit like that. 

And now I have found that special someone.  And it hadn't occurred to me until a few days ago as I sat there watching her try on wedding dresses, seeing her veiled visage a radiant glow, her body accentuated and vibrant and alive under the layers of satin, looking as beautiful as the day I met her that this is the woman that a few hours ago with whom I lay in bed, hands wrapped tightly around her subtle curves, and had been blowing tummy farts on.

Adulthood, my friends, is a lie.  And those who perpetuate it, and we, the ones who believe in it and chase it, are all liars.

Eikaiwa work

So why then have I decided just now to start a blog midway through my third year in Japan?  Well, for one thing, the distinct lack of job satisfaction has led me to pursue other venues of employment, and I thought tapping a little rust off the old keyboard would be a good way to get started.  Now, that's not to say that I hate the gig.  Teaching in Japan has opened the world to me.  It has given me a window into a world across the ocean, introduced me to a vibrant culture that pulses with life, opened my eyes to a world where contemporary and tradition co-exist as partners to create a venue unlike any other on the planet.  Which is why I proudly endorse Japan as "best country to visit in the world."

See what I did there?

Not work.  Visit.

No, Japan is not a place conducive to working life.  The term "working poor" can accurately be ascribed to a much larger sector of the population than anyone would care to admit.  In fact, many people in Japan have turned to Internet cafes as a source of housing.  It is no secret that Japanese workers are underpaid and under-appreciated.  The the fact that there actually exists a word--karoshi--literally translating to "death from overwork" in the Japanese language (which can be ascribed to the cause of death of some 300 Japanese workers a year) should be at least a warning light to someone that something is wrong.  People over the age of 50 and women who are pregnant or who may become pregnant (when did this turn into a pharmaceutical commercial?) are screwed when it comes to finding and keeping a job in Japan.  Maternity leave is on the list of "Things That Would Be Nice to Have" most Japanese women keep under their pillows, right in between "unicorns" and "someone to get me pregnant."  But that's a whole different societal problem.

Not to say the whole "death by overwork" thing is my problem.  Or wanting someone to get me pregnant.  Far from it, in many ways, but as a thesis statement, bear with me.

Eikaiwa work (here I go, up my own ass) in Japan is a fine way to get over here.  Sign a year-long contract and enjoy.  For someone straight out of college, it's a pretty sweet deal.  For the low, low start-up cost of having to pay for your own airline ticket over here, you can breathe a big sigh of relief as your work visa, living arrangements, and employment all become someone else's problem.  But, as many will tell you, once you land in Kansai or Narita, every situation is different.  Hell, for some websites,  that might as well be their catch phrase.

But that's only because it's true.

New Eikaiwa employees have a herding instinct.  We travel in packs for safety.  After all, when you're walking around in downtown Osaka well past any reasonable person's bedtime and a 40-year-old woman with a handful of fliers starts chasing you shouting "massage, okay?  Massage, okay?" at you, the lone foreigner's immediate instinct is first flight, not realizing that that was exactly what they were expecting.  He stumbles backward, wheeling away, his legs providing no more support than spaghetti dangling from a fork, although to the massage lady, every bit as delicious.  A few steps in the other direction and, like velociraptors, you never see the other two hunting you from the sides.

Clever girl.

And so now, one very unhappy ending later and your wallet 14,000 yen lighter, you know better.  You stick with the herd.

In our circles, stories of things we've seen or heard about get passed around.  Seemingly fantastical to the average first-year herd-dweller, by the second year, if you still haven't seen people getting promoted through the ranks by being yes-men for the head foreign teacher, or your manager being laid off for having the audacity to get pregnant, or the assistant-manager being physically assaulted by the manager for not successfully negotiating a more expensive contract with a student, or foreign teachers reduced to tears by the head foreign teacher for complaining about the manager verbally berating them from day one, or the area manager reducing your manager to tears when she asks if the school can hire another foreign teacher... then you must not be working at an eikaiwa.

And is there any chance you're hiring?

Wanna know how I know I'm gay?

So, I know what you're thinking: "Merican, you said you've been in Japan for more than two years.  Why are you just now starting to write about it?"

An abundance of free time, I'm afraid.

For you see, gentle readers.  I am not well.  And I don't mean "I'm not well and am now airing my grievances on the Internet for the entire world to see," I mean I'm sick.  I'm a sickly person and I always have been.  I've had more obscure jungle diseases than Tarzan.  And you know why?  Because Tarzan is a strong, healthy, Adonis, and I am a pale, sickly, anemic man.  But what I have in illnesses I make up for in lost wages free time.

But there's being sick, and then there's being sick in Japan.  Because in Japan, everything--and I mean everything--is a cold.  In the two times that I had food poisoning in Japan (delicious as it may be, don't eat the raw chicken dishes in Japan.  Japanese people can walk away from it, Americans wind up laying in bed moaning and wailing as they shit their lungs out), both were declared by the first doctors I saw "a cold" and by the hospital people in the emergency room "food poisoning leading to dangerous levels of dehydration."  My fiancee had her pneumonia, flu, and mono all originally diagnosed as "a cold." Japan is so devoted to getting you back to your rightful place (the office) that a protruding femur is "a case of the sniffles."

  Pictured: a cold in Japan.  Also, those aren't my pearls.

I hurt my toe a few months ago, and unlike normal people, and really, really unlike Wolverine, I didn't get better.  In fact, it got worse.  Ever had an ingrown toenail?  Not like this one, I promise.  Fortunately, the surgeon was really nice and had a good sense of humor (he even laughed at me when I put my hospital gown on backwards.  Wearing it with it open in the ass is common in the States, doctor).  Fortunately, my fiance was allowed to come into the operating room and we had a nice conversation about our upcoming farewell party in between my intermittent screams of agony and pleas for more anesthetic.

Because the painkillers in Japan, aren't.

Don't get me wrong, the local stuff was balls-out.  I'm talking about the painkiller that every Japanese person and every person in Japan has been prescribed a thousand times and has worked absolutely zero: Loxonin.  Everyone's had this stuff, and it never, ever fucking works.  60mg of this stuff is barely half a Baby Aspirin in the States.  So this time, I thought I was going to outsmart the system and beg and plead for some real painkillers.  Vicodin.  Percocet.  Oxycotin.  Gin.  Anything.  Guess what I got?

English translation: Loxonin.

Beaten.

So I did what anyone in my position would do: go to another doctor and beg and plead for more drugs.  What I got, was this:

Pictured: proof that in Japan "you can take your painkillers and shove them up your ass" 

isn't just the prevailing attitude, but actually medical advice

At a time like this, all I can remember are the immortal words of Bugs Bunny: "Just remember, you asked for it." (by the way, that picture was snapped literally seconds before that thing went up my ass.  Bless you, Internet)

And you know what?  It was good.  

 

It worked.  It actually, actually worked.  And eight hours later, I bounded hobbled pitifully to the bathroom to insert another stake of opiate goodness into my rectum.  And will continue to do so for the next five days.  So Japan, for going above and beyond all expectations and delivering to me prescription ass-heroin, I say bless you.  And also, thanks for the instructions.  I wouldn't have been able to figure it out myself.

Wait, so I just type here I'm not really good at these computer things

Who am I and why do you care?

To start, I'm a 25-year-old Kansan teaching English for a private language company (an eikaiwa, if you use the local language--or don't but are up your own ass) in Tokyo. I came here two-and-a-half years ago to gain that oh-so-valuable "work experience" necessary to mitigate a lackluster university GPA so I could some day triumphantly return to the US (much like Eisenhower) and get a teaching degree (unlike Eisenhower). If I only knew then what I was getting myself into.

Things are different living in a foreign country, and for those of us living in a foreign country for the first time, you don't really know what culture shock looks like until one day you find yourself at a store that sells holiday cards, party favors, Santa hats, and erotic costumes with an entirely straight face. And such is life in the 'Pan. The common and the exotic, the mundane and the sublime, glimpses of Western life painted in Eastern brushstrokes.

Also there is a lot of cartoon porn.