since my last post, i've gone to disneyland and disney sea in tokyo. i've also gone to welcome weekend and witnessed the return of lustpuppy (my nickname for adam, the first guy i made out with in japan).


i went to a sumo exhibition day in uozu, which was AWESOME!! here's something that wasn't so awesome, though, and merited me coming out of my shell to post a new blog entry.


me, jake, dan, akira and miho were out eating at a restaurant tonight and these two guys came in and one of them started yelling at us, calling us beggars (i think it was supposed to be insulting) and calling miho a slut and stuff like that, telling us to shut up. these were people we don't even know. and we stopped talking and ate in silence. it was sickening to me. that was one of the roughest feelings i've ever had. we could do nothing. the restaurant owners just cowered in the kitchen while he unleashed a totally unnecessary barrage of verbal attacks on us just for daring to eat in the same restaurant as him--which, by the way, we were at first.

that is going to cause me SEVERE culture shock. i can tell already that i'll be going on for days about how that wouldn't stand in the west.

but, i would be lying if i said it didn't used to happen regularly in the south. tonight is the first time in my life someone has been aggressively racist towards me and it sucks.

i mean, it was kinda hurtful aside from the fact that they called us beggars, which was just a strange thing to say--i mean, we were eating in a restaurant...honestly, my meal was like 1500Y...we didn't exactly look destitute. i could understand if it were gusto (a big chain like waffle house or something like that), maybe, but it was a mom and pop shop charging actual non-sweatshop prices. i've been discriminated against for being gay openly like that before, so i'd prefer not to go back through that lesson.

apparently, our japanese friends think they were like tokyo yakuza or something, but they can't have been really good yakuza because otherwise why would they be on the uozu beat.

i kissed a girl yesterday. i went to the halloween party as a straight. this is unrelated to my racism story, but is generally relevant.

i've been in japan and i've learned a lot about the culture and the people and how to avoid being integrated.

i've succeeded marvelously so far, learning only a minimal amount of japanese (albeit significantly more than another alt in my city), making my students try to understand what i was saying in english even if i did know how to say it in japanese (rarely.)

anyway, my supervisor has cottoned on to this fact and had a little chat with me today. it went something like the following. this is how it felt, not how it actually occured:

jte: hey, stupid fucker, get over here.
josh: yes, o-suck-at-life master.
jte: joshua-kun, i want you to speak more of the pure language. your insistence on sticking to the barbarian tongue in so many instances where you could be harmonizing by speaking the language of his imperial majesty, the emperor, grates on my fragile ego and my ears. further, i can stand to be outdone by other schools whose alt's may speak marginally more than you, even though i've never met another school's alt. what's more, every time you insist on using english, i am forced to get that much better at listening comprehension, which, as you know, is solely your job at this school, or at least in every class you teach with me.
josh: ok, you are right as always, or never. (that's zen)
jte: please don't be shy because your pronunciation does not harmonize with ours. in fact, feel free to speak in japanese to anyone at all except for me. you should only talk to me through whimpers and sad eyes, indicating by pointing at your bank book or a postage stamp or a utility bill which you need help with. i will assume everything and solve your problem that way. as soon as i figure out how to do it because i am a man and my wife usually takes care of all those things for me. anyway, about japanese, learn more or you're not getting invited back for a 3rd year. fucker.
josh: ok. i'm leaving now.

now, that's not exactly how it went; i took some liberties. the factonista may insist on the following transcript:

jte: joshua-sensei, i want you to try to speak more japanese.
josh: okay.
jte: the new alt's have come to toyama and i want you to speak more japanese than them.
josh: okay.
jte: don't be shy.
josh: okay. がんばります。
ｊte:　がんばってください。
*walk away*
josh: fucker.

so the new kids are really something else. some of them are pretty cool, but none of them are david keddie, my fiery scottish lover.

but they look up to me in some sick, strange twist of fate. i am their senior (in toyama experience, not age!) and they expect me to know things that i often pretend to know for their sakes. but sometimes i don't have to pretend, because i've been here for what now seems like too long. case in point: a group of us, including myself and two other sempai and about 4 or 5 new toyama jets went to lovebuzz, the most happening night out in toyama city. aside from knowing all three of the dj's, i also ran into, coincidentally, two people that i knew (but had forgotten names of, sadly), an-chan of namerikawa and lustpuppy's old girlfriend, michi. i have never run into anyone that i knew randomly at lovebuzz aside from foreigners i knew would be there anyway.

this has been happening a lot lately. i've been running into people that i've met or know left and right, and i know a lot more people. i'm not saying this because it's a bad thing, but it appears that i am putting down some roots here that are growing pretty thick. in keeping with that metaphor, i know that eventually i'm going to have to uproot myself and move on with my life. how hard that is going to be, i guess, will depend a lot on how deep i allow them to get.

that doesn't mean i intend to live life any less intensely than i have been to this point. it just means that i'm occasionally thinking about how i'll be able to keep the important people in my life...um, in my life.

so i think there may be a limited selection of faggotry in this new bunch. they tell me that there's no new homos. i hope they're wrong.

in other news, britain has foiled terror plots that would almost certainly have killed at least a fraction of the number killed in lebanon. thank god for that. i'm reminded of a quote from the onion...


Silvia Jones,
Ice Cream Scooper
"Well, we have to pull those troops out of Sudan immediately. You always help the least-brown people first, that's just how it works."

that is all.

i just got back from tokyo yesterday and have plenty of lovely stories with which to regale everyone. one involves two of my favorite things: drunkenness and sex. unfortunately, i was partaking in neither, so it's not the happiest of stories, but it just might make you think.

ok, let's start with why i was in tokyo. i was there for the tokyo orientation for the jet programme. i was selected a few months back to be the representative for my prefecture to meet and greet the new jets. this entailed meeting lots of new jets at narita airport (shout-out to the amazing chick who, after a 18 hour flight, recognized me from my blog. i forgot your name, but you are a truly informed reader) and then helping to host tokyo orientation and put on workshops and work at the information desk and hospitality center that provides free internet, and ironing boards and whatnot. i was seriously over the top gay and genki (energetic) for this. i should note that this was borrowed energy that i didn't have the actual reserves to cover. (speaking of borrowing and going off on tangents, i hope the yen-dollar rate gets better so i can cover my student loans faster.)

anyway, so we all roomed with another tokyo orientation assistant (toa) after we got back from the airport on sunday night. i won't reveal my roommate's identity to save him from any future repercussions. anyway, so i'm in my room at the lovely keio plaza hotel, enjoying a nice sleep when in comes my roommate (a responsible tokyo orientation assistant and not at all a total asshole who can't muster enough respect to talk in the hallway while his roommate is trying to sleep) at around 4:50 or so with not one, not two, but three lovely ladies. they have a nice little chat. some of my favorite parts include "oh, look! he's so cute!" "yeah, he ties my ties." (i tied his tie because he can't. moron.) and when discussing the issue of whether or not the pool is open, "should i go get my bathing suit?" "is the pool even open" then this smooth piece of work "at this point, clothes aren't really the major concern." nice work, there, cockface. finally, they left and i thought i would be able to resume my sleep until about a half an hour later when my roommate returns with only one of the girls.

hrm...maybe they're just going to be rude and talk and keep me awake. (bear in mind that they have no clue either during the first visit or this time that i am awake.) "why don't you make yourself comfortable while i go to the bathroom?" shit. i know where this is going. but maybe they're just going to fall asleep. he comes out of the bathroom and clothes go flying. fuck. so i wake up and start yelling in broken japanese hoping she might not understand and knowing that he will. he just laughs and agrees to cut it out. i'm sure i wanted to believe him. they start up again, i turn the lights on and try to find the number to get in touch with the clair staff to let them know that my roommate is having sex in the bed next to me as we speak and could i possibly get another room. dickface totally takes this violent tone with me and demands i turn off the light or else. ok, fucker, you just made sure you're not going to be invited back to any future jet programme conferences. anything else you want to add? turns out there was "i thought you were cool with stuff like that, man." what?! how do you assume coolness with something like that outside of a frathouse without directly asking "do you mind if i come in and have sex while you're trying to sleep?" i would have been more cool with him saying "okay, well it's time for some fucking so anyone who doesn't want to be here should speak up." or something along the lines of "hey josh, i'm probably gonna try to get any minger that will give me the time to come up and sit on my face later so just a heads up." none of that was offered. it was assumed. and you know what happens when you assume: "you make an ass out of u and ... you, you fucking piece of shit. just you." so i got up and put my pants on and went down to the 24 hour hospitality center to vent a little to whoever was on duty. the gay scot and some random chick. =) anyway, back to my sleepless plight. after a few minutes i came up with this gem: "okay, i'm gonna go back up and get a shower. it's been about 2 minutes so they should be all finished and cleaned up by now." i took my shower (she's still there in the bed, by the way. i should have taken out my camera and started filming for jet girls gone wild volume 1. christ man, what a fucking slut! let me just give you a little background on her: she's a new jet headed to the same prefecture he is. they have plenty of time to fuck in x-ken when i'm not in the bed next to them.) i packed my backs and left. no way i'm staying with a guy who snorts tequila any more. i didn't know what to do with my bags so i left them in the clair office (clair is the government agency in charge of the jet program) with a note that read:
"CLAIR staff,
Can I leave my bags here until I get a new room? My roommate and I have irreconcilable differences of opinion.

Thanks..." and signed my name.

later when i was explaining the situation to them, i made sure they knew that i merely wanted to change rooms, not to have him punished or kicked out of the conference (which, it sounded from the way they were talking, i could have if i would have milked it a little more and seemed a bit more devastated at having aurally witnessed breeder secx).

i've seriously been debating whether i should even be angry about this. on the one hand, i was knocked out of my rem cycle by two sluts who were too cheap to take it somewhere more private. to compound that, my roommate had come in around 5 am and not been the quietest little sheep the night (morning) before, too. on the other hand, though, i have this lovely story to share with people until it gets old or until they all read it here.

regardless of whether or not i decide to be angry, joe liebermann lost his primary. fuck you, joe. and can i also just say fuck you, president clinton, my personal hero, for endorsing such a loser? i used to think you were infallible, slick willy. way to crush my dreams.

yesterday on the way to rehearsal for the charity show, i was so sure that the directorettes were going to say something regarding my lateness so i prepared my stinging retort well in advance. it helps to note that the rum was beginning to act, but it only intensified my strong feelings about being reprimanded. my tongue would be acidic, leaving no one unscathed. feelings would be hurt and people would be offended. some technical details it might help to know about: rehearsal on wednesdays last from 7-9 pm. rehearsal is in kureha, a stop down the line from toyama in the opposite direction of my home, uozu. i can take a train at 5:35 and get there at 6:28 or a train at 6:35 and get there at 7:03. after rehearsal, if i leave kureha at 8:45, i can reach uozu in 30 minutes. if i leave at 9:18, i get home in about an hour. and now, here in all its glory is the content of the deluge which i was to unleash last night:

"Tim, Sara, fellow members of the cast, I am perhaps the most transportationally challenged member of this company. i am late on wednesdays. that is not going to change. By the end of this whole ordeal, I will have spent countless hours on the train and the largest beneficiary of this whole charity show from my enormous jet salary will have been JR west (to quote my blog). This whole farce was sugar-coated from the beginning and it seems that little effort has been made to accomodate our needs. we were also lulled into this monotonous time trap by the diabolical stroking of egos. had any of us done what so many others had done and consulted with second-years on the advisability of doing this show, less than half of us probably would have showed up for your auditions. at least, i wouldn't have. i'm not one to feel good after i've done something nice for charity. i'm a person who enjoys attention, and that's why i signed up for this under the guise that i want to help kojo annan embezzle a few more un dollars. it seemed right at the time. but now it feels terribly wrong. and i want out. i want out so badly i can taste it. at the same time, i don't like negative publicity. so, keep on chastising me and giving me a reason. because while i welcome attention, i don't take abuse, especially from a volunteer position. i would think you would be smarter than that this close to showtime. here's a suggestion: i'm not in the first two scenes that you could be running before i get here instead of needlessly worrying about my absence. action!"

and then things would have just started up flawlessly and we would have gotten on with rehearsal.

fortunately (or perhaps sadly), my late entrance went unmentioned.

last wednesday, brad (bbgriffith.blogspot.com - read it!) came down on me for not updating my blog in a while. i had no valid justification aside from the fact that i was too busy watching napoleon dynamite and blazing saddles at work to be bothered with updating the rest of the world as to my goings on. too busy doing nothing at all.

even the last photo i uploaded to my flickr page was april 19th. sorry for the lull, kids. i'll bring things back into full swing.

i think perhaps i wasn't seeing things as spectacular anymore. i'm really settling into life here well. i'm very comfortable being here (aside from the language gap, of course). i'm becoming really attached to my students as of late. this fucking charity show bullshit is driving me up the wall. i can't wait for it to be over. jake reminds me every day of how impractical it actually is. for instance, adding up all my transportation costs to and from all the asinine rehearsals in which we (up until a week or two ago) accomplished practically nothing, i estimate i've donated well over 15,000Y to charity and it's all gone to West Japan Rail. and i'm not being reimbursed with anything besides the satisfaction of knowing that i helped rich blind people not have to spend any of their vast amounts of cash on a dog that they're probably going to abuse anyway.

i told luis, another uozu resident, that i was starting to feel comfortable and i realized just how sick that actually is. if, after knowing whatever it is you think you might know about japan, you feel comfortable here, you're not doing it right. japanese people aren't even allowed to feel comfortable here. take, for instance, the emperor. his every move is closely watched and he isn't allowed to do anything without official approval. the common salaryman has it worse. his every move is scrutinized by everyone around him. he is under intense social obligations to act appropriately and do everything that is expected of him. and now, it appears, i'm under suveillance by the teacher at the end of the row. when i told one of my colleagues that i was so bored i watched a movie during the day, she told me to be careful.

"careful of what?"

"kinoshita-sensei is watching you."

"...and?"

"he is very strict."

"well, you know what. he's just another teacher."

apparently he's monitoring my daily routine to make sure i don't deviate from the acceptable norms. even i am facing expectations from my co-workers now. in other news, i think i'm turning japanese ;)

just to prove that i'm back, today's monkey business is brought to you by:
*begin news item*

Africa home for Brangelina babe

May 29, 2006

NAMIBIA has offered citizenship to the baby girl of Hollywood couple Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.

Local papers reported Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt was born at 1.40am local time on Saturday near Swakopmund, 400 kilometres from Windhoek, the capital of the southern African country, said Environment and Tourism Deputy Minister Leon Jooste.

"It is with enormous pleasure that I inform the Namibian nation about the birth of Angelina's healthy baby girl early in the morning," Jooste said.

"The entire procedure went according to plan and there were no medical or other complications at all.

"Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt will according to Namibian law be allowed to obtain Namibian citizenship if the parents should choose to do so," he said.

He added that a Namibian passport for the new arrival would be discussed with the parents "at a later stage."

The girl is the couple's first biological child.

Jolie adopted two children, Maddox from Cambodia in 2002 and Zahara from Ethiopia last year. Their surnames have been changed to Jolie-Pitt.

The golden couple and the two adopted children checked into the Burning Shore beach resort in early April, where their bodyguards and Namibian police have shielded them from paparazzi.

The new parents are "thoroughly overjoyed", Jooste added, "and they have expressed their happiness to be able to share this experience in Namibia".

Jolie, 30, and Pitt, 42, will remain in Namibia for some time to allow mother and daughter to recuperate, Jooste said. link

*end fake news item*

there it is, folks. i'm back. =)

-fin

yesterday was a pretty sweet day, charity show rehearsal aside! in the morning, my mom called me and woke me up. she was crying her eyes out and apologized for the way she was when i went home. hopefully she'll turn things around.

i went to uniqlo and bought 6, count 'em 6 pairs of toe socks!! they're so much fun! i also got this jacket and a pink shirt =)

then luis and i rode out to the seaside and had a beer and we talked about boy-stuff. super secret no girls allowed stuff ^_^

then when i got home, i called beau-chan! he's moving back to japan! i'm so excited. i'm gonna get to see him in saitama, it's gonna be fantastic! although he's moving to aomori-ken which is kinda sucks. but it's still gonna be possible to see him often!

and i downloaded avenue q! shadenfreude! fuck you, lady! that's what stairs are for!

i fucking love my life right now.

omg, let's having drunken revelry in the park!

the plum trees have blossomed so the cherry trees can't be far behind. they were out a little in toyama castle park yesterday and even less in takaoka kojo park.

i have to go to the bathroom.

okay, anyway...we (i) got wasted yesterday celebrating the [almost] floweryness of it all and chris b's birthday. so i was the lone drunk. i think i pulled it off well. i played footie with the boys and gossiped with the girls. all in all, a good day.

or at least it would have been, if it weren't for charity show rehearsal. that made it a great day! falling all over the place (taking one particularly big one), stealing all the brownies, bitching about someone drinking the beer that i didn't buy, pretending to not be reading my script and not convincing anyone, groping adam (okay, that happens sober), and generally pissing off the people who were making an effort. awesome! village drunks brad and geoff are so lucky to have discovered this amazing secret so early on in the game.

did it stop at rehearsal, though?? no! absofuckinglutely not! i sat outside the train station at kureha and made some drunken phone calls asking augie about his steak, etc. brad and i had to wait 20 minutes in toyama so we scared the ticket man into letting us keep our tickets so we could go get some soba before the next train. i sad goodbye to brad 4 stops down the line from uozu and promptly went to sleep. it was some good sleep, too. i slept all the way to tomari until the conductor politely woke me and kicked me off the train. i got back on because it was turning around and going right back to toyama. half an hour later, i was home safe in my own bed. still drunk.

and for what, you ask? this:

it's the little things that make japan special to me. today was opening ceremony and i got to see my students again, finally! i was so excited. my best student, daisuke, has the coolest hairstyle in school still. yuuki tanii is still adorable and does that little winking thingy. yoshiko and yuki are still my fanclub presidents. things haven't changed since i left. not that i was expecting them to, though. i was only gone for 2 weeks.

yesterday morning i rode my bike past a teacher scrambling to her car. she doesn't live in uozu, but she explained that she had gotten drunk and had to stay in town. whore.

today was opening ceremony and tomorrow is entrance ceremony. i'm working on a plan to consolidate ceremonies in japan. that way, we can cut 90% of the bs and get the fuck on with our lives (and not work on fucking saturdays).

back to my original thought, it really is the small things that do it for me here. take, for instance, this morning's discovery of a new red pen on my desk. plus a refill! that's all it takes to make my day, people. that, in itself, is either profoundly (a) enviable or (b) lame. here's the pen, you decide:

hey kids! life is lovely and free over here in freedomland, but it's not the relaxing vacation i'd hoped it would be. i realized that i really don't enjoy spending time with my family that much because they do nothing but stress me out. to top that off, my best friend just broke up with her boyfriend (which was a good move). while i support her in that, i don't support her unhappiness whilst around me. let's pretending to be happy for joshie's sake, ok? this nenkyuu could have been used on much happier thoughts.

on the main thrust of the article, though, obsessing some more over my internet boyfriend, beau. if you don't know about him, you don't know me half as well as you might hope to think you may claim to (or i've kept him a secret from you for other reasons). anyway, i took this vacation mainly to see lots of him, but i just haven't been able to because he lives so inconveniently far away and i feel obligated to visit my family and friends, etc. he picked me up from the airport on sunday...we had an interesting evening. morning after shot:


in fact, i'm on my way to see him later tonight after i meet some of my other friends.

i guess i'm a bit bummed about my trip because i haven't spent this much time with my family since i moved out when i was 19 and i'm quickly remembering why. they're mostly the same, i'm not. my mom is popping twice the pills she was when i left for japan. my grandmother and her brothers and sisters are still fighting over money and pissing off my great grandmother who's losing her mind. really, visiting my family is fucking wretched.

my mother scares me. she's obsessed with me. she's like a stalker, hanging on my every word and action. not leaving for work until i leave, bragging to everyone about my latest mediocre accomplishment as if i've just miraculously created world peace (did you guys know that josh just tied his own shoes again!?), literally hanging on me. fucking quit. stop being so overbearing and psychotic. slow down on the pills. talk about your other children for five fucking seconds. just stop.

i reiterated my promise to never move back to florida. there's so much petty nonsense in my family. mountain, meet mole-hill. i'm so happy outside of this place, i don't see why i came back. ah, yes...satan and beau-chan.

i <3 you both.

while i was blowing my nose in the bathroom (ironic, really, because a japanese school bathroom is the last place you want to resume breathing freely), a thought--ney, a question--entered my mind. what is decadence? i thought of this because today i got angry with a few people for their manual transmission superiority complexes. i got to thinking in the bathroom that it shouldn't really matter because we're quite fortunate to ever have driven a car in the first place with so many disadvantaged people in the world. but then i thought of how hypocritical that was of me knowing i'd come back and blog about the very same thing on my computer, an overpriced sony no less. which got me wondering, what is decadence? of course, it's a relevant issue. i don't feel half as bad sipping starbucks green tea frappacinos in shinjuku station as i would in beijing. mainly because i've never been accosted by homeless children in shinkuku.

so what is it, folks? what can people do and still be able to feel morally upright? where, in between mother teresa [money-grubbing bitch] and nero, do we reach the threshold of acceptability? of course, this is a rhetorical question, but we all must have our own opinion. given that, is it acceptable for us to impose our own standards on others and to what extent?

this is why i don't like using the bathrooms at school.

as always, brought to you by: *begin news item*

Irish stew is back on Friday's menu

By JOHN GUTIERREZ-MIER
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER

FORT WORTH - Chalk it up to the luck of the Irish.

During Lent, the Christian season of penitence preceding Easter, Catholics are prohibited from eating meat on Fridays.

But in an unusual move, Bishop Kevin William Vann of the Fort Worth Catholic Diocese has waived that ban for this week only -- because St. Patrick's Day is Friday.

That means Catholic revelers this year can consume corned beef and other meaty Irish treats. The announcement was made Sunday at area churches and applies to Catholics who attend services in the 28-county Fort Worth diocese.
oh thank god for that. *end news item*

woo!

i'm sick today =( i hate this! i hope i get better by the time i go back to the states. i got chocolate today and that usually makes me feel better but it didn't today. last night's rehearsal was pretty good. i overmolested lustpuppy again. sorry, lustpuppy.

i have a lot to do before i go back and i have to pick up things for mr. buchanan-my internet boyfriend and satan-my best friend. laundry tops the list, though! geoff also wants me to bring back ranch dressing. and crack. i'll work on the ranch.

ooh! i bought my train ticket yesterday, too! woot woot! tokyo, here i come...for about 10 minutes before i truck it to the airport to get back to the states as fast as possible.

today's bittersweet entry brought to you by: *begin news item*

Can't a dolphin have some privacy?

Several agencies react to the distress call. . Turns out things weren't what they seemed.

By CAMILLE C. SPENCER
Published March 14, 2006

---

PORT RICHEY - It was 8:20 a.m. Tuesday when a Port Richey police dispatcher got the call.

A resident on Sunset Boulevard reported seeing an injured dolphin near Harbor Pointe at channel marker 17, at the mouth of the Pithlachascotee River.

The animal was bleeding. Preparing for the worst, officials sprang into action.

The dispatcher called Florida Marine Patrol at 8:24.

A veterinarian from the Clearwater Marine Aquarium was called at 8:30

At 8:45, the Port Richey Police Department's marine unit arrived in wet suits and went down the river using two boats borrowed from a civilian.

At 9:15, the Port Richey Fire Department was called.

Police Sgt. David Brown said the scene "gave the appearance the other dolphins were trying to help by nosing, or pushing, the injured dolphin to the surface.

Closer inspection by veterinarian Janine Cianciolo told a different story: A female dolphin was surrounded by two male dolphins. She was bleeding because the trio had been horsing around.

link*end news item*

and by horsing around, they mean fucking. =)

i think i'm getting sick. which totally fucking blows because i'm going back to freedomland for a few weeks on sunday. i'm so totally stoked about this trip!! sadly, i can't take goku with me due to tightened u.s. visa restrictions after september 11th. he might be considered a terrorist if he accidentally kameyameya's someone on the airplane. besides, if he goes all super-saiyan, can you imagine how it's going to be getting him through the metal detector?

so basically my morning is turning into me not doing anything but talking to jose about nocturnal emissions and memorizing my script for the play.

anyway, here's a word from our sponsor, insanity:*begin news item*

Japan alarmed by U.S. shipping of risky beef to Hong Kong

Tuesday, March 14, 2006 at 15:04 EST

TOKYO — The government expressed concern Tuesday over U.S. beef exports after it was learned that a U.S. meat-processing plant that has cleared conditions for export to Japan recently shipped beef containing risky cattle parts to Hong Kong.

"Japan will have to conduct checks on its own for safety," Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters at his official residence. Japan is asking the United States about the incident and will look closely into it before taking any step to reopen its market to American beef, Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe said.
*end news item*

this is such fucking bullshit, japan. you know who this is hurting? me! i want fucking american beef, you stupid fucktards. japan has had 767% more cases of bse than the usa. and they are now worried about what they're importing to hong kong? this is all just stupid political maneuvering and japan is reeeeeeeally reaching a lot with this hong kong bullshit. don't worry about what they're sending to hong kong you stupid pieces of shit!

the above is what can happen if you deprive a southerner of his beef for too long.

crazy-sensei gave me his goku statue today! how awesome, crazy-sensei!