aaron's home plumbing

Below my rusty plastered stairwell in my funky concrete apartment block rest 4 bikes in various states of disrepair, and befitting their surroundings, all are well acquainted with the rusting process. 3 of them in some way or another belong to me. One mountain bike appears to be totally unusable, is quite rusty, and totally covered in dirt and rust. A present passed from a few predecessors of this apartment i believe. The other is a granny bike, or "mama-chari" complete with a basket in front and no gears. A nice yellow color scheme though. The third is a red mountain bike i just acquired from another ALT (assistant language teacher) and after some maintenance performed by yours truly, and then an actual bike mechanic, seems to work quite well. It even reminds me of my first real mountain bike, a red Specialized... ahhh...
So I had a Lancaster apartment moment yesterday when I finally got too frustrated with how slow my bathroom sink drained. Some drain-o type stuff helped but didn't really do the trick. So after disinfecting my little plunger i went crazy on that stupid sink, which again helped but didn't alleviate the problem. So next Aaron became Mario-aaron and used his Japanese plumbing skills to take apart the pipes underneath his sink. Though smelly and gross I did manage to remove the clog of many disgusting things from the pipes, and reassemble my bathroom sink (mostly plastic, only some metal, so not that much of an accomplishment). So the world is a new place now that I have an actual functioning bathroom sink.
To perhaps spice up the story of my life after that boring stuff, I did spend about 17-18 straight hours in Tokyo this past weekend, almost all of which was on my feet. I trekked in in the early afternoon on Saturday, after being very late to meet my Aussie friend, and stayed there until the first trains back to takasaki started running Sunday morning around 6am. I had tacos not once, but twice, as well as a crepe, so pretty standard Japanese food. I had a "this place is so weird" moment when me and my friend went to a "maid cafe" in Akihabara (the electric district in Tokyo) on the 5th floor of some sort of mini-department/junk store. We proceeded to wait in line for a long time as we watched women in anime style french maid costumes walk around, sew in a little old fashioned room, and advertise their upcoming new CD. One would probably picture a skimpily outfitted Japanese woman with lots of makeup, but they were actually quite modestly dressed, and certainly going for the innocent and cute thing and not the sexual thing. I guess? So we paid relatively high prices for some drinks that a "maid" poured for us, and she even mixed in the milk and sugar in my coffee (by sugar i mean sweet-syrup, which they use instead of sugar here in japan for coffee. sorta gross). We then played UNO with her for about 5 minutes, and my friend won both games, which earned her the prize of a small cardboard coaster with a handrawn picture of a cute little whale on it. All the little maids clapped for us and said "O medeto!!" (congratulations). Being the westerners we are me and Amber (the friend) talked about the contrast between the cute whale picture and the fact that Japan is one of the only countries to continue whaling. She told me that its a relatively common belief among at least Japanese children that whales eat a lot of fish, and that's why the supplies are dwindling around Japan. That's so unbelievably far from the truth, and I hope that its not that commonly believed.
Anyway, after that we met up with a big group of more gaijin and the rest of the night was sort of standard big city fare, with dinner, some wandering, and a run of the mill club in Roppongi (foreigner/party district). Still had fun, but if i have to listen to Shakira saying her hips don't lie one more time...
School is still confusing, as it probably will be for quite some time. Just as much because I don't really know much about teaching as it is because I don't know Japanese (or enough anyway) or understand the Japanese school system. I do know that its ok that the Judo teacher picked up some kid with an attitude by the collar and threw him against the wall in the teachers office and screamed in his face before throwing on the ground. That would certainly not fly in an American school, as that teacher would be lucky to only lose his job, and more likely he'd be legally dealing with his actions for quite some time. I think that kind of stuff may not be common here, but is far from unheard of. In the end, kids are kids and teachers are teachers as anywhere else. Some teachers are more effective and involved than others, and most kids look bored and want to talk to their friends, not learn English. They do want to talk to me as well, but would obviously prefer to do so in Japanese (how many times can they ask "do you have girlfriend?" "is ____ bigger in america?" "how old are you?" etc). Most of the English classes remind me of 7th and 8th grade french classes, which is to say its just another class. I don't think i ever thought I was actually going to learn French, and well, i didn't. No worries though, I'll undoubtedly revolutionize the entire Japanese public education system within the upcoming year. Keep your eyes out for the Godzilla sections of the paper.