No time like the future

Work and a couple of non-work things put a squeeze on my time over the last week. Everything plan-like about my life took a break for a week, including this here bloggy thing.

Should be back on the rails soon.

A small bout of nostalgia (written 9-10-09)

Today, I want to write something about my life, and its overall trajectory. Well, that sounds a bit grandiose. All I really want to say is that I feel a little better about America lately.

Three things in particular have gotten me feeling that way.

First, “the public option”; having become a freelancer, and having really no interest at rejoining the salaried workforce, insurance comes out of my pocket. In Japan, my current monthly cost is about $280, thanks to a COBRA-like setup. My monthly cost would be a lot closer to $500 if I were on the public system due to the salary-based cost structure. Stateside, I’d expect to pay $500 or more (though I haven’t researched that number at all), despite my relative youth and good health. If the public option happens, self-employeds like me can look forward to somewhat better rates (is my understanding), and all I have to do is leave again before they finish up the Obama Death Camps. It would be a lot easier for me to go back to school and get a graduate degree if I knew my insurance costs wouldn’t be higher than my tuition.

Second, cheap shopping; I’m going home for Xmas this year, just like last. And just like last year, I plan on doing some shopping for non-perishables that just cost way too much in Japan. On top of the list are supplements, fancy-schmancy toiletries and software. Shipping anything to Japan is prohibitively expensive, but cramming it into a suitcase when you’ve already planned a trip is essentially free. But all of the machinations involved in buying the stuff via my underfunded American bank account get me to thinking: wouldn’t it be nice to just live in the place where things are reasonably priced? Well, “living” there is a lot farther than my mind wants to take it, but it would be nice to pay less than $5.00 a pound for ground beef.

And last, Mythbusters; what can I say, I like the show. I like the guys. I like the IDEA OF the community the show stands for. I am seriously deprived of light-heartedness, optimism and DIY creativity here. There’s not a lot of open or secluded space to go around either. I heart the hell out of Tokyo, but I’ve been a little more open-minded about America since bittorrent delivered me a big dose of life-affirming America (i.e. Mythbusters eps).

So what does the future hold for my strained relations with my homeland? Damned if I know. I don’t expect I’ll be giving up on my adopted home in Japan any time soon, but I juggling some numbers to see if there are circumstances under which I could spend some time in the states without spending a fortune or dismantling my Tokyo life.

Then again, spending a couple weeks at my folks’ place every now and again takes care of my shopping needs, and Mythbusters is a lot more charming that “the real thing” with the added benefit of being downloadable. Health insurance, I’ve already got.

There are some things that make sense for me to do in America: learn to drive, learn some other skills/ attend grad school, live more cheaply, work on my English skills and spend more time with the broader family (to name a few). Lacking a strong and specific reason though, I’m not quite in a hurry to spend a lot of time at home just yet.

Suzumebachi OMGRUN (a "thing" I wrote)

I started writing 500 word "things" for writing practice a while back, and figured I may as well dump some of them onto here. Looks like I wrote this one 8-17-09

No more ado:

Suzumebachi OMGRUN

I read once that Americans have a special hatred of insects. You see insects cropping up in American horror/ sci-fi movies an awful lot more than in other countries. The theory in this article was that the great American bug phobia stemmed from the days when insects could easily wipe out a farmers livelihood. For people in remote areas that could easily mean starvation. The same article said that these new world bugs were a whole new level of hardcore for the colonists.

I don’t know exactly what kind of badass insects those puritans were up against, but I’m scared shitless of the Suzumebachi (Giant Asian Hornet). As the English name implies, these beasts are anything but small (see photo http://gaijinlore.blogspot.com/2006/06/suzumebachi.html). The neurotoxin in the suzumebachi’s sting kills a handful of people in Japan every year. So they’re not only physically disturbing, they’re actually dangerous.

Usually nature only gives a creature one trick: camouflage or poison or “being a grizzly bear”. The suzumebachi has three: size, poison and better PR than two of the Beatles. I see some sort of “beware the mighty suzumebachi” reenactment at least once a year on Japanese TV, complete with scary narration and scary music (and terrible acting). Usually some old dude who didn’t even notice he was stung, and then barely made it out with his life.

Despite their television presence, I had never been exactly sure what suzumebachi look like. To wit: a couple of weeks ago I was in an outdoor bath and a couple of these fellas (http://mushi-taiji.cocolog-wbs.com/mushitaiji/2008/08/post_1f26.html) showed up. Giant? Check. Hornet-like? Check. Asian? Check. It turns out my identification was false (they were a species of horsefly), but I really though I had encountered the dread suzumebachi. Add to this threat the facts that they were really aggressive and I was really naked. The perfect storm of shitlessness.

In the end we also barely made it out with our lives.

I actually just had another incident with a misidentified suzumebachi, this time in a dream. In the dream I got stung in the neck by this giant hymenoptera-lookin’ bug. The shock woke me up with a start and left me thinking “was that a suzumebachi?” for the first couple seconds of wakefulness. After I figured out that it had been a dream, I went to check wikipedia anyway. Look at the length of the Japanese page (http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%B9%E3%82%BA%E3%83%A1%E3%83%90%E3%83%81)! I’m sure there’s a lot to say about suzumebachi, but this page is longer than the article on WWII (not really).

I was hoping to find some hints as to how to tell the impostors apart from the real suzumebachi and some way to deal with them. Based on what I’ve read the most practical solution is to run away as far and fast as you can anytime you see, hear or or intuit a bug or a leaf that looks a little like a bug. Better safe than sorry.

Postscript: Google tells me that there’s a Naruto character with the last name “Suzumebachi”. That’s dumb.