More Osaka, feeling sorry for myself, fake priests, and teaching

I'm currently writing without a specific point in mind. I just have a bunch of random thoughts going through my head and I want to spill them. I started teaching private English classes to an interpreter for my company this week, I was surprised by the size of my Internet bill, I've been reading about Caucasians who pose as priests for Japanese weddings, and I've still been thinking about Osaka a lot.

Maybe it's because I don't have any friends in the town I live in. Before leaving for Japan I was surrounded by people I called friends. I was part of a fraternity with some of the greatest people I have ever met. I lived with them, I ate with them, I worked with them and I drank with them. To come here and not have that is rather hard for me. One of the things I have a problem with is the fact that I came to this company and they offered no support for me--introducing me to this town and maybe some of the English teachers that live around here. I know it really isn't their responsibility, but I thought that I would at least have had an opportunity to meet other interns through JETRO. Nothing, they dropped me off at my dorm and said see you tomorrow at 8. So I get home from work, eat dinner, watch TV and browse the Internet until I fall asleep. Everyday.

I went to Osaka last weekend and got to see some of my good friends. It really meant a lot to me because it's not everyday that I get to see them. I didn't realize how much I value good people until now. Even though I didn't do anything extremely noteworthy with my friends in Osaka (we went drinking which is normally what I do with these guys) it was really different this time. For them it may have been just another two nights of drinking, but to me it was a lot more. It's pathetic, I know.

On Sunday I had lunch and coffee with my ex girlfriend which was really weird. I could tell she thought the same, but it didn't prevent us from having a really good time. As I was walking around Umeda with her everything seemed the same as the last time I lived there except the two of us were only friends. Before meeting with her I didn't have any thoughts of getting back together and I wanted to meet as friends and see how she was doing. But it was too nostalgic and I wanted something I couldn't have. I was plagued with memories and thoughts about her that I hadn't had in nearly two years. I thought that maybe if I was back in Osaka things would be the same as they were two years before, and that was one of the reasons that made leaving so hard.

The rational part of me says that that can't be. We all know the story of Jay Gatz trying to go back into the past and rekindle a lost love and we all know it killed him in the end. I know that I was only there for three days and three days isn't very much time. I was still in the shock that I was actually back after two years and the only memories that I could think of were those of two years past. I'm putting that weekend behind me, not forgetting about it, but I'm going to engage myself in new activities to make the thoughts less painful.

I received an email from someone in general affairs asking me to help one of the company's interpreters with English. I kind of wondered why an interpreter would need help with English but it made sense when I met him. He was fluent in Spanish, having lived in South America and Mexico for 18 years and writing Spanish grammar textbooks in Japanese. Being fluent in Spanish doesn't mean one is fluent in English too. I guess the people in my company don't realize that. It looks like they want to save money and when they found out that he could kind of speak English so they hired him for both. I'm not going to say anything because it's not my place, but I hope they learn when they actually use him to interpret technical English.

The guy is nice and he offered to pay me even though the company told him not to. That will be nice because it will allow me to spend more money on travelling. The guy is really nice and a lot more interesting than most of the middle aged Japanese men I work with. He's bummed around the world having visited about 70 countries and he isn't afraid of saying his opinions, making him a lot easier to have conversations with. There's just a few topics I try to stay away from...relationships for the most part. He started talking about his wife and how she left him. Then went on to his son and about how he's a failure. It got a little weird when he said he tried to find a girlfriend who was about my age at one time. As long as he doesn't talk about those things our sessions go great. I bring up grammar points and use example sentences and then he goes off on tangents related to the examples.

It worked out perfectly because the week I started doing classes with him was the same week that I received my cell phone bill and my Internet bill. Just so happens the Internet company decides to charge 12,000 yen for a router, an AC adapter for the router, an Ethernet cable, and some other phone cables cables. If I had known that I would have bought them myself and tried to pay less as an initial fee. Hindsight is 20-20.

So I ran into the other American at the company the other day and he told me about an easy way to make big money on weekends. Only it involves deceit and a Caucasian male to dress like a priest and wed a couple. Japanese people want to have Christian weddings even though they aren't Christian. Fair enough, there are plenty of non-Christians who get married in a church back home. I have no problems with this. However, after researching it a little I became kind of discouraged with the practice because these couples sometimes go to a bridal company under the impression that an actual man of the faith will wed them. In reality it's some English teacher who makes 12,000 yen a ceremony...with ceremonies lasting only 20 minutes these "priests" can do 5 or 6 ceremonies a day and rake in 60,000 yen with only an hour worth of work. I think it's a shame when a couple goes to get married under the impression that the priest who weds them is actually an English teacher doing this on the side to make booze money.

Those are my thoughts for the evening. I'll be back soon to post about where I want to travel in the upcoming months.