Gen Kaz logged onto his work-station computer on Tuesday July 13th, 2008, although it perfectly well could have been any other day, every day in this place was the same. He was in Texas. He had been in Texas for forty-two days. He would be in Texas for another twenty-five. There were no emails in his inbox, save random assorted junk. He opened another tab in his browser and checked his Mixi. Minami. How was she? No updates. She had not written any new diaries, and had only posted a few scant comments on th [View Full Entry]

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—“You.” She said with stunning certainty. Her knowing smile made hollow my chest, my body creaked with buzz-killing shivers. Her pointing finger confirmed what I thought I’d heard. Still I thought I ought to ask again. “Me?” I stuttered. She nodded. 「俺？、、テッド？」 Again she nodded. “Minami loves Teddo.” ‘She told you this? This isn’t just what you think?’ She nodded once more, very seriously. This couldn’t be real. I had to get to a [View Full Entry]

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It was a 30 minute train-ride to Taka-no-Daira station. The entire time I could not stop thinking about what a great idea this was. Not because I saw it was going to afford me the opportunity to confront her face to face, or get her drunk, or provide me with an audience for story-telling, woe-bewailing, or a screaming, dramatic "take-me-back" proposition. But because I knew how amusing this was going to be. I thrive in situations that most people find too awkward to breathe. I seek them out. And the fact that I hadn’t imposed on anyone to get into this [View Full Entry]

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Another wonderless night at the Retro. Japanese never seem to ask the obvious questions that I was feeling need to spout answers to. I was gaining distance, at this point, from heedless, self-indulgent grieving and starting to feel guilty for the way I was carrying on. It’s rude in this country to make your issues other people’s business. It’s rude anywhere I guess, but back home people don’t always seem to mind. I had been a mopey little bitch to whoever would listen for the last two months and my intuition told me that the people around me were probably too [View Full Entry]

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You know what I’ve always hated? Meaningful dream sequences in anime and manga. It’s such bullsh*t when the plot is advanced because one of the characters unearths a repressed childhood memory or something and then extrapolates the obvious significance during a monologue. I know we don’t turn to comics for realism, but beyond being cliché and a visual irritant, it’s part of that old world transcendentalism that put me into the ridiculous mess I’m in now. If you’re stupid enough to believe that some force acting in your subconscious can arrange visions th [View Full Entry]

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Now that I was officially a loser again (July 9th 2008), I decided now would be a good time to get in the habit of taking all the rough things about adult life lying down (like most of us do) and stayed past the bell for unpaid overtime without anyone asking me. I was almost on the verge of doing some work when I got a phone call from the head office. It was Hiro-chan, he asked if I had any dinner plans. I had just cancelled my dinner plans for that evening and for all other evening thereonin, so I [View Full Entry]

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OLIVIER: Come on man, girls don’t hate you. MARK: And why shouldn’t they? I’m a no good, dirty, stinkin’ liar with propensity for story telling. And my mouth gets me in more trouble I- - I’d rid myself of it were it not necessary to feed. OLIVIER: But, I think chicks’ll like that about you…I mean you’re funny Mark, you make people have a good time. I ain’t got stories like that- -all those one you’re always tellin’ about the weird people you’ve met and the wac shit girls have put you through. MARK: Ah…[ [View Full Entry]

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First of all, thanks to my readers for making “” the most contentious article I’ve written to date, including the one where I basically told all white people in Japan to f**k off, and the one where I beaked on basically every blogger on this site. You should all be proud of the amount of beef you’ve managed to bring to the table. After four months without a word, we even managed to get my ex-girlfriend to stoop to speaking to me again. Didn’t meant to wreck the surprise, but we’ve reached that time of year again. Before I move on [View Full Entry]

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Mr. Kurita called my office extension around noon and said he was outbound for a meeting at the Hino office and asked me if I had any dinner plans. I answered unequivocally “no” without giving much thought to the vague promise I’d given Soon-Mi the night before (July 7th). It was a good opportunity to have another long awaited book talk and importune the wisdom of man who’d walked the life path of graduate studies in literature and has seen Japan through the kaleidoscopic 60’s and 70’s and through the rise and fall of the bubble, full of Seijin Suzuki aest [View Full Entry]

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I was terrified of something in the back of my mind. Of all the vain promises I’ve made (and the few that I’ve kept)- -perhaps it was the fear that I was perceptibly aimed at a lower-case “future”—not the semantic conceivable set of consequences from a set of given actions, or the pleasant restless mystery as I’ve known it—not “the” future but “a” future: No more undiscovered country… No ship, no crew, no beckoning. Ithica. The margin’s edge. She trusted me. I had substantiated a spurious claim about my plans [View Full Entry]

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