Clubs are not bars, but chicken is great

We went for drinks in the “South Side” here Saturday night, and all I was concretely reminded of was the fact that I’m really Not In College Anymore, a feeling best typified by a situation during which, over a heinously butchered club mix of Under Pressure, I was told what sort of alcohol precisely resided in the ceramic panda-shaped mug this girl was drinking from (I no longer prefer such “innovative” cocktails). “I even get to keep it,” she said, and I imagined that abomination sitting atop a table or shelf the next day, never to experience being the life of the party again. After we left I witnessed a manifesting bromance, a woman throwing up all over her shoes from some front-step concrete, and a man getting pulled over by police for recklessly revving his crotch-rocket, all which served to seal the deal: I’m getting too old for this shit.

On the way back to my buddy’s car there was Popeye’s chicken, which I had to wait in line twenty minutes for but was worth every frittered tick. If there was one anywhere near where I live there could be trouble. It was so delicious that in retrospect I can hardly isolate the flavors. I was completely consumed in the moment.

Before the South Side drinks there was the “Baller BBQ,” a down-the-street event put on by a distasteful man that I have never been able to help but be fascinated with: his overwhelming outward enthusiasm nearly tempers the latent douchebaggery. At any rate, there was grilled chicken and keg beer (of the light, tasteless, make-you-pee-frequently variety), and it was all free. This condition enhanced the flavor of all consumed goods considerably.

It was a Saturday that served to offset the hellish fiasco that was Friday’s physical examination in preparation for my JET program participation, an annoying debacle peppered with a urine test, hearing examination (I get on just fine thanks), and an optical obstacle course that proved I have better than 20/20 vision with corrective lenses. They thought I might need a chest x-ray, as suggested by the form I sought to complete, to verify that I do not have tuberculosis. Sans health insurance, I fought the process: despite my Japanese doctor telling me it would be “very cheap,” they wished to charge me $380, a sum I neither possess nor would be enthusiastic to spend for the verification that I am not currently afflicted by a disease I do not have and have never been in exposure to. Further consultation of tenured doctors in-house agreed with my assessments, and one of them marked “lungs healthy, no history of disease, able to participate.” I pray (in solemn synchronicity with my bank account) that this proclamation is sufficient.

The affair having taken upwards of three hours, I couldn’t even make it to the Japanese restaurant in time for lunch, and having my heart set as I did on a big old bowl of donburi, I was left an unhappy man. I begrudgingly prepared rice and a pound of “mechanically separated taco-seasoned ground turkey” at home, a type of meat product that not surprisingly to all of you but particularly surprising to me in my endless enthusiasm for processed meat products proved relatively unappetizing.

Sunday was peppered with video games, naps, and little else: back to work today I have switched all the clocks on my computers to 24-hour time in a preemptive effort to adjust to The Japanese Way. The PDF of the JET handbook hit the Internets today, a mammoth virtual tome filled with about as much information as I could have reasonably expected, and large, weighty sections about personal and national taxes, health insurance, social customs, job responsibilities, and the sinking feeling that I’d better learn a little more of the language than I currently know. Yoroshiku onegai shimasu, Nihon.