How to Build a Fire

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Things have been pretty quiet lately, just hanging out in the capital of the prefecture with American and Japanese friends and working on my calligraphy, sword fighting and pottery making skills, the latter two of which need a lot of work. I have sent out my graduate school applications, and now I have nothing to do but sit back and relax and wait for the results from Princeton, GW, Tufts, John Hopkins and the University of Colorado sometime next March. I will keep you posted. Today I got a pleasant reminder from home. My friend took a trip to Costco and snagged me a large cheese pizza and a couple of extra-sized jars of Prego spaghetti sauce.
Ah, the title of this edition. The other day, I was teaching about Chanukah at one of my junior high schools in an effort to get them to learn that not everyone celebrates Christmas. I lit the menorah my mom sent me to demonstrate how we carry out the ancient tradition. The assistant principal criticized my method of lighting matches and showed me the proper way. Later that day, the alarm rang, signaling that the school was having its annual fire drill which everyone knew about this ahead of time. All 26 students and 13 teachers promptly marched out in single file and we assembled outside next to a huge pile of kindling and old newspapers. When the Japanese say fire drill, they certainly don’t kid around. And guess who was selected to set the timber ablaze? The reasoning: the principal said I needed more practice in using matches. I lit the match, gingerly pressed it against a sheet of newspaper, and then jumped back as flames began to shoot out from the pile of wood. A student was handed a fire extinguisher, the principal set his stopwatch, and the student started firing away at the raging fire with the bottle of pink foam. Precisely ten seconds later, I was again handed the book of matches and repeated the whole ordeal again, and later a third time. When I was asked if the procedure is similar in America, I kindly informed them that the chance that a student would use the occasion to try to set the school building on fire was a significant deterrent to such an exercise.
In conclusion, I would like to relate a tale of the kindness of strangers and the unintended benefits of living in the wilderness. I was coming home from my friend’s house late at night on country roads like I do so often. I have a bad habit of driving with my gas gauge pretty firmly in the E range. I was exhausted and not thinking, and I figured I would pass an operational gas station on the way home. Amazingly, after the witching hour of 10 PM, there is not a single open gas station on the entire fifty-mile route to my house. Nearly in panic, I stopped at a major intersection, still a solid fifty minutes from home territory. My gas gauge was reading empty, and I was terrified that my little Minica was going to call it quits. I parked the car, went to the 24-hour convenience store, and looked around for someone who could help me. Auspiciously, there was a man reading comic books in a corner of the store, oblivious to the concerns of the world. Hesitatingly I approached him, and explained my situation. After determining he had no means of transferring gas from his tank to mine, he told me to follow his car with mine and he took me on a road that took us past orchards and rice fields before coming to a stop at a barn. He told me to wait, and he reappeared moments later with a container of gasoline that he pumped into my poor little car. At the convenience store, I had happened upon a farmer with access to all the gasoline I could possibly need. I couldn’t believe my stroke of good luck. I thanked him profusely and headed for home, still exhausted, but certain I was going to arrive safe and sound. I am a bit more careful these days, but I still feel fairly confident that no matter what the circumstance, I will be able to find someone to help me as has already been proved here so many times before.

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