Step Three: Hop, Skip and Dumped

I left before my hangover. The morning of the death of innocence we collected in the hotel’s “Flower” room, famed its aloe vera stench, and us new faux-kinawans headed out to the western bus-ette. At this juncture its worthwhile making a passing comment on my fellow future heat-strokers. Flatulence. Thats the closest passing thing to which I can make an analogy. Really, either they were as knackered as me or they believed that approaching me with the line, “Woah, you’re, like, British, like, like your Queen Diana. Like, I, like, like her” would provoke friendly conversation rather than a a scoulding sensation in my solar plexus. Either way my sanguine matter couldn’t but reject them out of strife. It’s the Empedocles, stupid.

We flowed out of the bus in a red tide of frightened westerners and were absorbed by the plane. Now with wings. The flight passed like those brave boys and girls in the Black Hole of Calcutta and within no time, because I’d failed to wind my pocket watch, we were at Naha. And then on another plane. By now I was alone but for the new CIR for Ishigaki, Melamprosops Phaeosoma. Muching on gooey seaweed, I couldn’t get much sense out of her. Conversation however seemed to work.

When we arrived on the island I stumbled out into a crowd of well-wishers. I waited until they were out of coins and they kindly turned and introduced themselves. My predecessor, all 18 foot of him, folded into a crane and then a puzzle-box and then a handshake which slipped me a beer and then Phaesoma’s beer (she suffers from the handcap of being allergic to ruining your life with alcohol). Within seconds of hearing everyone’s names and forgetting them for the first of many occasions I was then introduced to the Stoned Ranger, a former vice-cop turned randy foul-mouthed co-ordinator. We sparked immediately but the airport had a zero-tolerance policy on drugs so we moved to car.

First impressions of the island were a red mark across my chest from the seatbelt as we nearly crashed leaving the car-park and a sweaty indent in my head from the heat. I had never felt anything so hot (sorry, Rachel) and my jacket clung through my shirt, tie, undershirt, thermals, and cilice. “Who left the oven door open?” I opined. The Rangers one word answer was offensive to 4 races so I will omit it here.

A busy day of opening bank accounts and making a stupid number of self-introductions followed so by the time I cracked open the first beer with the colossus of Birmingham it was all of 2pm and we chatted Briton-speak for a couple of hours. With the beer finished I needed little more hydration, a little less Clacton Pier so we set off to meet the multi-national contingent in the dark. I looked about where hours before Ishigaki had been. Oxen and wain-ropes would not bring me back again to that accursed island; and the worst dreams that ever I have are when I hear the surf booming about its coasts, or start upright in bed, with the sharp voice of Captain Flint still ringing in my ears. Wait…

Step Two: Tokyo Disorientation

We touched down in Tokyo. Amazing the number of ducklings in that city. Before we knew it we were ferried by bus into a section of endless metropolis that sprawls like a drunk across the seafront. It became obvious that we would have to blend in so we checked in as Mr and Mrs Smoothie and poured onto the streets.

Surprisingly, the city didn’t feel very unusual or different. I don’t know, maybe my vision of parts of Solaris at high speed jump cut with robots and Lolita girls was as unrealistic as it was attractive but everything felt mundane. The western hotels, the vending machines (albeit in great numbers) and the metro, devoid of the groping schoolgirls I’d heard so much about in confession seemed hardly far removed from London. The city is humongous, without a doubt, so we limited ourselves to walking the distance of our dreams and found a greater challenger in the size of that grey leviathon. We took in the Meiji Shrine (admittedly it touched the sides) and walked through to Roppongi, stopping for a beer every 10 steps but saw little of major fascination. Apart from Condomania, a small shop which I will leave up to your imagination. Actually, no you couldn’t imagine the masks they had.

Next day we were feeling it. The maid walked in and so I put on my trousers and hurried to the opening presentation where the holy ghost swirled round and the Nazis faces melted or some shit. A number of uninspiring and somewhat threatening speeches later we were left feeling our Japanese was lacking, even though at a restaurant the previous day I made an old lady go down on us, primarily to get our shoes and bow at the passing comments I had made in her tongue.

The following lectures were at our choice. Unable to attend the Asian Jet and Black Jet lectures due to the clash (unusual choice of venue but the crowd loved it) I was informed of American driving problems (I’m British), elementary games (go fish, Watson) and transgender issues (You’re once, twice, three-quaters a lady).

All-in-all, or so I imagined from the multiple voices and groans from the room next door, a touch unhelpful. More time in Tokyo to chill in the 38oC heat and get accustomed to using Japanese in a city where English isn’t uncommon would have been brilliant but no, lectures in an island of westerners, stuck without a mobile with the raw-fish blues again.

Step One : Lucid in the Sky with a Drinks Trolley

Write, I’m running at 2 weeks post-event in terms of my blogging (my English is much improved after so much time spent hacking at the Japanese language) so the accuracy of the following will be called into question by David Irving. Regardless, here is the word, and the word was word:

I left England on the morning of the 31st. The sky was a crisp and dry advert and Heathrow airport loomed large like a weaving factory during quilt-athon 2008. Check-in was a doddle, in as much as it was a cross between Ken Dod and a poodle - a fucking blight that wouldn’t die. The computer weighed my bag and my libido and deemed me passable as a Virgin flyer. After passing through security I sat in the lounge and felt miles from home, my favorite braille travel log. After a spot of tired banter with the other Jets we passed to the gate and to the cigar that would fly us and my phials of the virus to the other side of the world.

It was here that I met my co-passengers/drinking partners for the next 42 hours. Fantastic Mr Fox held my attention for a good one sitting, though “yoai-yiff58”, the guy in the blue fox suit next to me, gave it 3 spins before he died and we bailed him out.

The scent of g&t then spread across the gangway and we all retired to the poop at the back of the plane where we held the hostesses rancid, or ransom apparently, until the pilot acceeded to our demands and extended happy hour.

By the time the plane landed we had stowed our stomach contents and felt distinct turbulance in our overhead lockers. Still we had acheived our mission: An 8 hour drinking binge at high altitude as a salute to the RAF in the Second World War. Jeremy “Shittin’ Blotto” Morley would have been proud.

An Innie or an Outie?

And now I’m sitting in a sake-box compu-booth between a mouldingly beautiful temple and a conbinience sto-a which devotes 80 percent of the floor space to spam. And there’s no percentage key. What a difference a traumatic and endless booze-sodden week and a half from hell makes, eh. And there’s no question mark. Oh god.

And there’s no god.

But wait, behold, for like a fool I have started at that bit where Odysseus wants to leave the island of pigs and not yet described the ship-wreck what got him there. No writer in their right mind…

When you last heard from me I was either throwing pebbles at your window and slurringly trying to win you back as I tried to keep my balance on the pavement (in which case “You bitch”) or I had just described the embassy balls and jokingly used the phrase “the twelth hour passport panic”. Well, ho, ho, ho, it turns out that mocking grouse hunting fucks your karma in the eyesocket because, and here’s a funny story:

*phone rings*

“Piss off”

*phone rings*

“I said piss off”

*phone starts throwing pebbles at my window*

“What do you want?”

“Good morning. Is that Alex Morley?”

“Yes”

“This is the Jet Programme”

“Oh hello, the Jet Programme”

“Yes, well, can I just ask, is that Mr. Alex Morley?”

“What? Yes you just asked”

“You can confirm you’re a man”

“You can too if you’ve got a few minutes”

“I see, because the passport you gave us can’t be processed for a visa…”

“…”

“…because you’re a woman”

“…”

“You are a man?”

“…”

“Mr Morley, are you a man?”

“…”

“Mr Morley, I need you to confirm that you’re a ma…Oh god are you…pissing in the shower?”

“Yes madam, for I am a man”

*Her eyes fill with stars and the music reaches its peak - she has found her man*

Seriously, I have had this passport for 4 years, used it to get into the US and therefore have my fingerprints and details logged and never noticed that by gender it has a fucking “f”.

Beefing it up to Peterborough I demand an answer for this mistake and what does Sheryl Arse-Over-Mind mumble back? Let’s end on this Huxlean ringer because I’ve have to go fight gundan warriors or something.

“If the box is not fully crossed through…the computer assigns you a gender.”

There is a God, and he lives in a box in the UKPA.

Monsieur, with this Asti you’re really spoiling us/the entire evening.

Despite being neither in a Graham Greene novel nor in June, I did head off to the Embassy. Most others had paired up and were stepping out into the shadows so I lit a cigarette and tossed a coin on the street corner till Lady Luck blew me. A kiss. A kiss of bloody amber stuck to the rim of the dozing sky as the clouds moved to hide the brief and secret tryst of day and night. It was twilight without the screaming fans, though with the temperature hitting 32oC we could have done with them. A silent queue appeared before the steps of the listed building. Given the popularity of the British hobby/sport/dance of queuing it could have been any evening down at the Regina Ballroom, Chiswick-on-Benefits, but for once this was a queue with a reason - the security staff hadn’t had a pay-increase for 18 months.

By the time I had got around the dozens of co-ALTs who decided bringing their massive suitcases to an international embassy was a good idea I was presented with a badge by Scarlet and Rah-hotep which read Alex Morley-Okinawa. I began divorce proceedings.

Hustled upstairs we emerged onto a plateau of drink and conversation. Ordinarily brilliant, this didn’t quite live up to expectation. I approached the waiter with my usual oh-god-its-alcohol-out-of-my-way-fuckers gait but had to stop and stare as he dropped two glasses of sparkling Chateau Dingelberri ’11, which caused a third to smash, and then reached for a tea towel as another on the other side of the little serving table took its own life in sympathy in a kamikaze leap over the edge. I hadn’t even told him that he could fill me up anytime yet. Escaping the least tactile man Id met since my paraplegic masseur, I ended up looking tired and bored in a variety of groups, maintaining eye contact with the camera; centre frame throughout. Serge Gainsborough provided a sarcastic yet piquant melody to highlight my displacement. Eventually Wes Anderson gave up on me and took shots of his perfectly arranged contents of a pencil case or navel or something, forcing me to mingle even less enthusiastically. After a variety of speakers, and a smattering of applause from those who had the bad fortune not to be drinking when the speakers got up on the dais, and a smattering of shattering from our friend in the Asti/Cava/Cillit Bang-scented trousers, I was cornered by shadows of my past.

The two interviewers who had given me a touch of the old cognitive dissonance back in February approached at speed and asked what the hell I was doing here. My polite laughter was an only child in this fire-damaged nursery of the soul. Eventually the mood lightened with canapes and canards, the most terrible being when they saw my name tag. “Okinawa, eh?” They smiled. “You asked for that didn’t you?” “Why.., yes” I wretched. “But not as forcefully as what you’re asking for now.” They laughed. I went into septic shock. Then the language teacher tapped me on the knee and asked me to put her on my shoulder. With the grace of the British Empire I politely declined. I decided to call it a night so took the train back to the car back to the house back to future. And slept until it was no longer now.

GAY-NORTH /geɪ nɔːθ/ n. (1) over-orientation.

You will excuse the fact that I have man-flu/hayfever/unspecified ailment whose symptoms mimic man-flu/hayfever while causing necrosis of the solar plexus. From whence this malady struck is unknown but the timing is adolescently spot-on, coming as it does when last-minute preparation is in season. Oh the glorious twelfth-hour passport panic.

Thankfully the lergy hatched just after the London Orientation, taking the tourist’s pars pro toto (i.e. the “We’re not in Kansas”) definition of London as Western Europe including parts of Las Vegas, known hereafter as the Schlieffen Plan. As Ishigaki is NOT IN JAPAN, why should London Orientation be in London I hear you cry. Uxbridge Orientation took place in the leafy dettol-ridden suburbs where the cries of malignant foxes shatter windows and life-crushing mind-fycking drugs are sold in daylight. I was actually approached and offered a Daily Mail. The hawker’s twitching flesh and darting eyes honed to focus on young mothers told me he was too far gone and was probably hooked up on their potent online stuff. My mild tan from the summer weather seemed to catch his attention as he jumped forward and tried to extradite me.

Thankfully I’m a phantasist so made it to Brunel University with a good 47p to spare. After a brief tete-a-tete with the receptionist, who was squatting below the desk, possible breast-feeding, tete-a-teat, I returned to the car to post my permit with the pride of a loving mum who disregards her son’s incompetence and rusty undercarriage. I ignored the receptionist’s comment down the phone as I turned which went along the lines of “We’re getting a lot of shittin’ JET people, Sarah”. Welcome to Uxbridge.

Immediately on arrival I encountered some of those I’d met at the pre-flight drink’s we’d arranged. The hall was abuzz with honeyed words, a hive droning with jacketed ALTs and conference workers flitting about collecting our passports and bumping against the sheet glass looking for the disguised doors. Theres a bees humm re-echoing in my skull. At least its not a wasp. The rest of this post would have been written with Ian Banks tapping away at the back of my spleen until I recovered my purchase.

I headed to the lecture hall. On my way I noticed a squirrel’s torso, mangy with lice and matted with blood from Old Saul’s attentions. The sand was warm and crusted, the dune tufted with sprouts of the creatures hair, ripped from the corpse by the gulls. I plucked a pocketful and fingered each thread in devotion as I passed towards my seat. But my head felt hollow. Eric’s phone call had thrown me. Not as much as they did when I was a kid - since turning 12 I’ve learnt a lot - and all that’s held me back has helped me learn in the end, once I’ve taken it apart. Like the squirrels.

By now I was sitting, enjoying the warmth my seat echoed back from my lower portion. An assortment of distant shells and FCO apparatchiks gave off an empty telephoned muffle. The other girls fingered their ringlets as a well groomed young gent from Oxford and naturally thereafter the Civil Service told predictable anecdotes and showed wasteful high-budget ads selling us the idea that the world was at our feet if we adhered to the law. Wonder what Eric would have thought.

Too long after we were led into our sections of the factory. It was my fate to face the urine and quicklime first as two former ALTs gave a presentation (along the lines of mooning). Rah-hotep was joined by his glamorous dominatrix, Scarlet O’Habromania, a woman of exceptional gurning capacity but riddled with doubts over her own drive, to the point that she crashed every sentence into a grimace or down-turned head to cover the tears of failure. Her frighteningly cheery announcements were sometimes so patently fallacious that I had to stop myself from self-scalping with the language CD pack I was burdened with. In the end I was correcting every sentence ending with a preposition as a way to pinch my brain to draw the pain. She was elated with the fact I was going to Okinawa, but believed Ishigawa to be in Honshu. “NO, ISHIGAKI!” I shouted, in part to practice for every return boat trip. She smiled and I died again. Basically the only information we got from this is that condoms out there are too small and we will be molested by over-friendly work colleagues. Not really penetrating analysis of our worries, but what can you do when the rubbers dont fit?

Back in the swelt of early summer when we were given the redundant orientation plans that bore no resemblance to the actual events, we were asked to rate my poomsae in terms of Japanese ability. About 80% had no ability, or no willingness to be put on the spot. Others of us knew the te-form or the ta-form or other oblique ways to gauge our level. However all our perceived abilities were blown out of the water by the sensei, who specialised in putting us on the spot and telling us we were in the wrong class. Crass. I once had a Mandarin teacher called Ms. Zhu, whose tongue made a menagerie of sounds that I failed to keep up with. I took her to the Greek teacher where he introduced her to the ancient alphabet and in her bludgeoned-state taught her how to give us a chance. Seeing no chance of doing this here I headed off to the bar where 6 pints, shouting over shit music and stolen pizza were the only things on the menu. It may have been a Weatherspoons.

Waking up the next day, having wasted 4 hours in restless repose before I remembered that I can only sleep on a bed if Im the wrong way round, I went to breakfast, getting there before anyone else, primarily to steal the strawberry jam. 6 hours of painful oral followed, broken over a catch-it-yourself al fresco dining experience when the wind picked up and everyone lost their sandwiches. I cooed in delight at this ridiculous scene and headed off to the Embassy, walking rapidly in the thin June sunlight towards the worst horror of all.

Abridged bridge

I realise my last post proper was a month ago, but I’ve fallen into sync with the other nuns and we’re all on the blog today. Here’s the low-down and other psychological challenges I’ve overcome in the last few weeks:

- First contact. In order to smooth over the cracks of change with the mayonnaise of a man who doesn’t understand masonry the JET programme gently compels all leaving ALTs etc. to contact their successors. At some point. At some point I recieved an e-mail from Phil, who despite his best efforts, couldn’t distract me from falling asleep over 4 ales in front of most World Cup matches. Come on, barkeep. His e-mails were undercut by the failure of the prefecture to send out the welcome pack he had prepared for me but we skyped and facebooked and all the other things our grandparents fought and died for. Apart from mine. Because I come from a family of cooks. On both sides. Over easy. Regardless we got plenty sorted out, primarily concerning the car, school schedule, flat and fact that Ishigaki will be discontinuing my contract after the first year. Less of a golden handshake than a leprous one but they’re out of money and will help me find somewhere else afterwards. Maybe even in Japan. Oh can you imagine?

- Orientation. I’ll cover this later because it’s too much of a challenge to mop up.

- A rain of little e-mails from others, primarily new Okinawans and Ishigakoons, and eventually the lengthy contract in the post and, by e-mail, the info my prdecessor had prepared. After orientation. And then Perdita was found and Hermione’s statue is in fact the living queen. Some things are a little unbelievable, but work out ok in the end if you can force neurosyphillis. Now I need a handkerchief.

Death with Interruptions

Ok, well this has nothing to do with the JET programme so yes, be my guest and do an Enoch Powell and say it doesn’t belong here, but there’s bleach on the stairs and I haven’t got socks on so I’m stuck on this computer until I learn to triple jump with a 30cm run up.

José Saramago died yesterday so for once his books are going to be a little bit more prominent on booksellers shelves. Maybe for a week at best. After that they’ll be filed back under “S” and it’ll be up to the literary gnostics and those caught by rhacial art and typography to pick them out. But I’ll be sabotaging the display stands with copies of “The Double” and covering up the biography sections with “The Stone Raft” for a good few decades to come.

Sure, “The Cave” is a bit like having a fruit knife slide under your scalp at times and “Seeing” was a complete cul-de-sac after the beauty of “Blindness” but for realistic magic he’s more than the urban Marquez or the Portuguese Murakami. Just superb.

Buy, my pretties.

Buy.