Having the Last Word

Today was my final goodbye speech at my final junior high school.  Actually, it was my fourth goodbye speech for this school, which is quite a lot coming from a school that has less than 300 students.  This place has always been one of my hardest schools, because it was a place where I never really knew where I stood.  The teacher responsible for training me passed away three months into my job, which meant that the remaining English teachers had no time to explain what they wanted/expected/needed from me.

My first spring teacher change came, and I was left working with two incompetents and a school administration that was apathetic, if not at times downright hostile.  I recall one idealist young temporary teacher explaining the need to spend more time developing the students’ English skills being rebuked my crusty old men with, “Why bother when the kids can’t even speak Japanese?”  My most incompetent JTE stabbed one temporary teacher in the back, helping the young teacher prepare an demonstration class and then criticizing the class’ organization in the meeting with prefectural officials that followed.  She interrogated another young teacher whenever she came to talk to me.  She also made no apologies for asking people to prepare 50 minutes classes on five minutes notice.

Where does an ALT fit in all of this?  When you’re the lowest rung on a ladder that seems happy to tear itself apart, what do you do?  And what do you do when the kids you not only study with, but live alongside, are the ones who end up getting screwed over because of all this?  Ultimately, I thanked God I knew my Japanese and blazed my own trail for two years, working with the incompentents where I could, ignoring the crusty old men who spent all day in the staff room (easy enough to do), and following in the footsteps of Douglas MacArthur, I invaded.  I helped teach math, I helped teach art, I did calligraphy and contributed to social studies classes.  If there was an open-minded teacher and a willing group of students, that’s where I was.  I did my job and then some.  I didn’t ask for permission, I made no apologies for what I did– I kicked myself free from the system and did what I came here to do.  Finally, this April came and I breathed a sigh of relief as things changed for the better.  One incompetent and the old guard are largely gone– and their replacements are considerably more English-friendly.   Even the remaining incompetent has gone up a notch in this new friendly work environment.  I no longer have to be a renegade to do my job.

But a few members of the old guard remain– the V. Principal and the Office Guy.  And then the Principal’s changed.  The old principal, the one guy at the top who had my back and privately approved of my renegade behavior was gone, replaced by a guy who didn’t know me and who would likely be getting his image of me from the guy who hated me the most, the V.P.  I feel that if I ever get the V.P. to both make eye contact with me and smile, the universe itself might collapse.  The V.P. and his Office Guy stooge wasted no time, insulting me at the beginning of the year party and refusing to call me by my full name during the school opening ceremony, prompting nervous laughter by a number of students, teachers, and parents.

Which brings us to today.  What can I expect from a school whose authority I’ve actively ignored, whose English teachers have had a history of being unhelpful, and whose leadership had turned downright unfriendly?  A handshake and showing me the door may even have been asking me too much.

But I guess, somewhere in all of that, I did something right.  I got to give three very personal speeches to each grade two weeks ago, during morning meetings.  And finally, today’s closing ceremony came.  The new principal was giving a run-down of everything  that has happened this semester.  In his final comments, he included the fact that I’m leaving, something he could easily have overlooked or made light of, but didn’t.  I even got a bow and a “sewa ni narimashita” (お世話になりました), which I didn’t expect.  A student came up, made a speech in English and gave me a bunch of flowers.  And then I got to give my speech.

I could have used this time to ask why I had to have it so hard at this school, why the administration thought it so necessary to be so close-minded, why I had to make myself a virtual outsider just to get my job done, but I didn’t, because the incompetents and the crusty old men weren’t the only ones in this crowd.  The crowd was nearly three-hundred students who would scream my name from across the street if they saw me, and full of teachers from every subject who were willing to give me something to do and something to contribute when my English department wouldn’t– and it had two new English teachers who had been nothing but supportive since April.

So I told the truth– I was happy to be here, I was greatful for the memories.  I explained what these three years mean to me now, and what they’ll mean to me when I go home.  I explained to the students that school is the birthplace of dreams, and that I was glad to be a part of that with them.  I finished with a heart-felt thank you and came down from the stage to roaring applause.  The V.P. sat there with a face that looked like he was eating a whole tub of umeboshi, but it didn’t matter.  The ceremony was closed, and the first semester ended.

And I got the last word.

(Well, unless you count the ‘Safety Discussion’ with the students that followed closing ceremonies.. in which the students were told to avoid drowning in the river and, if possible, not to get bitten by monkeys (wtf?) over the summer vacation season.)

(Oh, and teachers approached and asked if they could use the ‘School is the birthplace of dreams’ slogan in the lectures.  I happily agreed.)

Taking Stock

“If you scream in your sleep
Or collapse in a heap
Or spontaneously weep
Then you know you’re in deep…”
— Barenaked Ladies, Go Home

So it’s time to wind down this whole experience.  In the interests of closure, I’ve started making a list of all the things I’ll miss (and all the things I won’t) about being here and doing what I’ve done for the past three years.  While I’m sure this list will grow with time, here’s where I’m at now:

I’ll miss beach sunsets, mountain sunrises.
I won’t miss sun-up at 4AM in the summer, sun-down at 4PM in the winter.

I’ll miss really great ramen shops everywhere you look.
I won’t miss only having ramen shops everywhere you look.

I’ll miss paying for a $1 Coke with the equivalent of a $100 bill.
I won’t miss everyone traying to pay their share of a $50 bar tab with $100 bills.

I’ll miss the rice fields, forests, waterfalls and fresh air everywhere.
I won’t miss the small clouds of bugs and industrious web-weaving spiders.

I’ll miss everyone knowing who I am.
I won’t miss everyone knowing who I am.

I’ll miss fun ALT friends happy and eager to sing karaoke.
I won’t miss Japanese folks all too eaager to sing Celine Dion, the Carpenters, or Amazing Grace.

I’ll miss the onsens and skiing and winter.
I won’t miss getting out of the shower in a freezing house in winter.

I’ll miss the Japanese friends open to talk about anything and make it interesting.
I won’t miss the Japanese folks capable of talking only about chopstick use, natto consumption, and whether or not it snows in my country.

I’ll miss that student who starts out hating English and then does a 180-degree flip and their confidence soars.
I won’t miss the smart kids who should know better but refuse to talk.  I now understand what Mrs. Biehl meant when she referred to intellectual selfishness.

I’ll miss having my own theme song.
I won’t miss everybody knowing my theme song.

I’ll miss the open-minded professional teachers who are in it for the kids.
I won’t miss the close-minded teachers who are in it because they can’t get fired.

I’ll miss all the oyaji-gags and strange body motions that define Japanese humor.
I won’t miss all the Ohio-gozaimasu jokes.

I’ll miss kids with names like Simon, Messiah, L, Shoot, Hit, and Taxi.
I won’t miss Mark, Demi, Judy, Ann Green, or even Bin.
I certainly won’t miss Freddy the Leaf or that tree in Hiroshima.

I’ll miss the summer festivals, the omikoshi, fireworks over the Yoneshiro River, the Namahage, the kiritampo, the Kimimachi marathon, the town Sports Day, the autumn leaves and the spring sakura.
There’s not a thing about that which I won’t miss.

I’ll miss Monday night taiko, Tuesday night table tennis, Wednesday night swimming, Thursday night table tennis, Friday night parties, and weekend adventures.
I won’t miss Mr. Bean’s karaoke skills, introverted table tennis folk, negating all that swimming with a Dixie burger, losing darts and money at Ad-Lib, or getting utterly lost on Iwate’s back roads.  I will miss the bear jokes, though.

… and the list goes on.

Behind the Times: On Drinking

This country is very good at its own PR– a lot of images foreigners have of the Japanese have to do with an entrenched respect for culture, an environmentally conscious society, with healthy food, long life spans, and technological savvy to boot.  While a case can be made for some of these things, the effectiveness of Japanese public relations can often lead to disappointment when someone, newly arrived, finds littered beaches, fried everything, and lots of people who can’t use e-mail.

There are, however, some places where Japan really is ahead of the game, and one of them is definitely drinking.  From the drinking establishments themselves, to safety, and even the day after– the Japanese have thought out going out for a glass of beer to near-perfection.  Akita, in this regard, is even more special, with the highest alcohol consumption rate in the country and home to some of the richest fire-water that Japan has to offer.

Drinking Out

Like any other country, Japan is one littered with drinking establishments.  There are probably more pubs and dives in this country than beauty parlors, and that’s saying something.  Bars open and close in such frequency that there’s always somewhere new to try, if you but look.  This sort of creative destruction has given birth to plenty of staples to the Japanese alcoholics’ diet, both good and bad.

An example of the good (albeit perilously so) would be the nomihodai, perhaps the best recreational option for impoverished young people surrounded by nothing but rice fields.  Pay a certain amount, and drink all you like for a limited time.  Want to drink yourself into a coma?  Doozo.  You’ll still have enough money left over to pay your hospital fees.  In a country where a regular beer can run near $5, a decent nomihodai can at least make the next day’s hangover a little less painful, as you won’t wake-up to an empty wallet.

An easy example of the bad would be 発泡酒, a beer that, though healthier, is a mixture of rice and wheat– has an aftertaste that ranges somewhere between dandruff and armpit. Even more villainous is the barmaster who claims to be selling real beer, while actually pushing this nasty near-beer on his customers.  Though it’s certainly a good deal if you’re the barmaster, as happoshu runs a lot cheaper than actual, flavorful beer.

Safety

With all this drinking going on in a country loaded with people, narrow roads, dangerous sober drivers, and even more dangerous elderly people crossing the streets– you’d think the Japanese would be constantly running each other over, crashing into buildings, and taking out large lines of preschoolers in adorned in yellow hats and carrying sexist backpacks.

That probably would very well be the case, if, at least, it weren’t for Japanese drinking and driving laws and the government endorsed 代行 system.

For public employees especially, Japanese drinking laws are mercilessly strict.  Drink even a sip of alcohol and drive and you can be charged inordinate amounts of money and will have your name dragged through the mud.  Of course, if you drink and actually cause an accident, things will be even worse.  Your choices are largely black and white.  Go out, stay sober and drive home– or go out, drink and find somewhere to stay.

Or, if you’re going home with enough people, there’s the 代行 (daiko).  Cheaper than a taxi thanks to government subsidy, two drivers come, pick up you and your car.  One driver takes you and your fellow drinkers home, one driver drives your car home.  No risk, nobody hurt, and all for a little extra expense.  Daiko is essentially your own designated driver for hire.

Never become two-days drunk

With all the nomihodai action out there and not having to worry about driving home intoxicated, you’d think there’d be a lot of people waking up on Saturday morning with a massive headache and the urgent desire to stay out of the sunlight or, as the J-folk call it, 二日酔い, or “Two-Days Drunk.”

Nobody enjoys feeling hungover, and if your night included any Japanese sake, your hangover may indeed be severe.

But yes, the Japanese have even found their way around this, relying on nothing more than a dose of Turmeric.  A glass before you go out on the town, and the next day you will feel fine and dandy.

Not About an Earthquake

There are moments when life throws you a bone, and gives you something you can write about easily without much thought or foreplanning.  But there is no better way to confirm your willpower, or your existence, than to throw that bone defiantly back in life’s face.  I will not be a lemming.  There is no way I will write about the earthquake that happened on Saturday morning.  I refuse to tell you that is was a 7-something earthquake down in Miyagi-ken and shook all the way up beyond my house.

I certainly won’t tell you that I had just gotten up, was lying on my couch and, for the first few seconds, thought it was just a large truck driving down the street.  You’ll never know how many seconds it took me to realize that there’s no way a truck could be that long and to head for the nearest support beams in my house to hide under.  You’ll totally be in the dark about how I had a revelation about how old that house is, panicked and headed for the huge driveway outside my house, where my car was dancing back and forth, entirely on its own.  Power lines, too.  There’s no way on earth you’ll hear about how the ground felt like it was going to open up and swallow me whole or perhaps a giant earth-burrowing worm monster was going to take me for breakfast.

No.  I’m not that cheap, and I certainly don’t need to look that hard for something to blog about.  Maybe someday, when I really reak of desperation– then I’ll tell you all you need to know about the Miyagi-Iwate earthquake of 2008.

一発芸人 – The Pinnacle of Japanese Comedic Achievement

Japanese are a funny people.  It’s funny when someone who smokes four packs a day valiantly defends natto by claiming it’s “healthy.”  It’s funny how the shyest most stoic person in the office can suddenly turn into a jovial English-spouting volcano after two tea cups worth of Asahi.  It’s even kind of funny getting the Clinton/Obama question ten times a day (or from now on it will be the Obama/McCain question) from folks who never discuss politics with each other, even when the street is clamoring with obnoxious vans spewing Japanese politician names from loudspeakers to the point where they drown out the cicadas.

But more funny than the Japanese is the stuff the Japanese find funny.  A foreign visitor couldn’t be blamed if, on their first visit to Japan they only saw Japanese comedy and, judging by that, claimed the Japanese were underevolved.  Japanese comedy is heavily balanced in favor of puns, strange body movements, and people slapping each other in the face.  Every comedian, it seems, is limited to one trick in their arsenal of laughs.  Hence the name 一発芸人, a one-shot talent.

Scarily enough, these one-trick ponies are also demons in disguise.  A select few of them even have enough evil power to possess the bodies of Japanese students.  It’s scary– and the Japanese comedians that tend to possess students tend to be the most evil.  Look at some of the big names over the last three years and it’s horrifying:

Razor Ramon Hard Gay (a.k.a. HG)

Came into fashion shortly after I arrived.  As the name suggests, HG was a guy who showed up on TV in tight black leather and acted gay.  Or at least gay in the Japanese comedic mindset, which requires shooting your arms into the air and yelling “Foooo” really loud.  If that doesn’t paint a clear picture, just picture a bunch of teenagers trying to replicate this ad nauseam.  At the height of popularity, HG appropriately had a cover of the single YMCA by the Village People.  Honestly.  HG’s star eventually fell, and gave way to Taka and Toshi.

Taka and Toshi

Their gag, as would be expected, was a string of word plays combined with the skinny one smacking the fat one on top of his head.  Their signature line, 欧米か。 (Are you a Westerner?) was a calling cry to all Japanese kids to hit any foreigner they meet on the head.  A marvelous way to communicate the subtlety of Japanese culture, don’t you think?

… and then came the Anti-Christ.

Kojima Yoshio

A near-naked man shouting crazy absurdities while punching the floor.  For some reason his crazy-man act took flame faster than a misbalanced kanto lantern.  Within a month, every sentient being aged 3-18 was mimicing this crazy lunatic and his disturbing body motions and facial expressions.  Thank heaven they had the self-decency to keep their pants on.

Fujisaki Market

No star rose faster, or fell faster than these two.  Their gag was simple enough– to dance around in exercise uniforms and engage in short sketches that ended with lots of shouting of “Rai-rai-rai-rai… etc.”  The end of each sketch called for more dancing.  Their short is testament to the fact that, even if you’re only funny for five seconds, you too can achieve your full fifteen minutes of fame on Japanese TV.

Edo Harumi

This is the only person I’ve ever seen who made English gerunds the focal point of her comedy.  A gerund, for the unaware, is the ‘-ing’ form of a verb.  Every punchline of hers centers around some katakana cognate of an English gerund, and ending the final syllable with “guuuuuuuuuuuuu!” (read: the Katakana mutiliation of the word “good.”)  At least, it can be argued, Edo Harumi contributed something to the English education of the Japanese people– even if only showing the evils that spawn from katakana can produce.

Oh, and she wasn’t hitting anyone on the head or pretending to be gay.  +10 points for that.

And, the current flavor of the month is….

Sekai no Nabeyatsu

Whose only negative point is that he’s not funny.  Not that that matters.  His gag is to count numbers, and act like an idiot whenever he hits a multiple of three.  And… um… okay, that’s it.  That’s all he does.  Sadly, he doesn’t even have a picture on google images yet.  But, give it a week.  Maybe by then he’ll have his own CD.

Perhaps The Count from Sesame Street can do backing.

Making History

“History is written by the victors.”

It’s one of those pet complaints of education here, enough of a complaint that it makes international newspapers occasionally.  Japanese compulsory history education serves as a vehicle for instilling patriotism in the student body.  This patriotism not only stems from Japan boasting about its achievements, of which there are many, but also stems from omission or distortion of the facts.  The underlying morals are that Japan fights only when Japan is the victim, and that Japan can do no wrong.  The most notorious of these is the publishers of the “New History” textbook, which describe the Nanking Massacre as an incident (事件) and downplay the use of comfort women by Japanese soldiers in overseas theaters.

The Japanese government didn’t even admit to the use of comfort women until 1993.

Relatives Koreans who perished in the atomic bomb dropping at Hiroshima had to fight to have a memorial in the Hiroshima Peace Park and, when they were given that opportunity, their memorial had to be seperate from that honoring the Japanese victims.

The bitter taste of making history even creeps its way into the English classroom with the infamous “Mother’s Lullaby” story, a tree’s narrative about the Hiroshima bombing.  The passage is perhaps one of the most annoying for any American ALT, fearful they may suddenly be asked to explain the rationale for an attack that occurred forty years before they were born.

One ALT in Akita was actually led into a social studies class where the teacher had written August 6, 1945 on the board, and asked him what his country did on that day.  The ALT claimed he didn’t know.  The social studies teacher then wrote Hiroshima on the board (or, more specifically 広島, kanji which the ALT could not yet read).  The ALT finally got a clue when kids started making explosion gestures.  The teacher had apparently made her point, and the ALT was then escorted out of the classroom.

Why I’m Lucky

I feel very forutnate in that, in my job, I have encountered this very little.  I’ve been surrounded by fairly open-minded social studies and English teachers.  I attended one of semseter’s first social studies classes to see a teacher who opened with a discussoin about the Olympics in China, the possibility of the Japanese team being booed, and why.  “We did some really bad stuff when we went in there during the war,” he said.  While he didn’t go into details, he wasn’t preaching a Japan that can do no wrong, and he wasn’t telling these kids that Japan was just a victim.  He then went on and encouraged every kid in that classroom to go abroad someday, saying, “there is simply no other way to understand the good things about where you’re from, and the bad.  To see the world for yourself will teach you volumes more than this textbook and what I can tell you.”  The foreign world wasn’t portrayed as something scary or horrible, as the Japanese media tend to do.  There were no speeches on how Americans are loud, fat, gun-carrying maniacs or how Chinese are out to kill off Japan with shoddy merchandise and poisoned food.  The message was that foreign was okay, too– and to understand the foreign was to understand yourself.  Perhaps the message was too deep for the students, but I doubt it.  At any rate, at least the seedling was planted, and I doubt their sense of self-worth or patriotism was harmed in the least.

Also to my good fortune, the few crazy nationalistic types I’ve encountered have been in positions where they couldn’t really exploit their craziness.  They’re the few scant administration types that claim English education is unnecessary because “our students can’t even speak Japanese.”  I’d say it’s time to give up teaching Japanese  if you’re students are hearing it 24 hours a day in every subject (including English), on TV, from their parents, and receving three classes or more a week dedicated solely to helping them tackle their mother tongue.  If, after all that, it is your crazy delusion that the kids can’t speak their own language, complaining that their education is ruined because they spend a paltry 3 hours a week studying English seems silly.

Calling the Kettle Black

But as morally satisfying as it is to chastise a racially homogenous, small island-mentality-saddled country for its nutty nationalistic tendencies, it would be disengenuous to overstate the argument.  The reason I feel uncomfortable when asked questions about the Pacific War (the Asian theater of World War II), is because my World War II education was always centered on Europe.  Coming from a country that’s had plenty of wars and embarrassing moments of its own, it always bothered me as a student that I had to learn about another country’s transgression, namely the Holocaust, every year.   Junior high school was largely holocaust education.  Sixth grade?  Holocaust in social studies.  Seventh grade?  Holocaust in social studies and in English.  Eighth grade?  The Diary of Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel’s Night in English class.  Ninth grade?  Had to read Night again.  Surely something else has happened in the past sixty years that we can talk about? 

The end result is I knew only two things about the war in the Pacific: Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima.  I didn’t get a more extensive education on the matter until I hit freshman year in college, when I accidentally got placed in a Japanese History course.  I was always taught that the Vietnam War was a mistake– but I hadn’t heard of things like Agent Orange until I was a sophomore in college.  And, while my government was willing to pay compensation to American victims of Agent Oranges’ effects, the Vietnamese victims were turned away with nothing.

I specifically remember the end of world history in high school.  World history ended at the end of World War II, I was told, because, “After World War II, world history essentially becomes American history.”

There’s no telling what kind of historic permutations CIA secret prisons and accusations of torture will take in future history books, but it may end up as less of a footnote than Special Unit 731 of the Japanese military, which conducted ‘research’ on biological and chemical weapons during the war– on human subjects, dissecting them alive without anesthetic.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731

How many Americans are willing to consider the torture of ‘enemy combatants’ with no rights as wrongful?  How many Japanese know and are willing to own up to the human rights violations of Special Unit 731?

The Good News

The good news is that something along the lines of 0.03% of Japanese public schools use the New History textbook.  That’s still 0.03% of a nation’s population being fed blatant disinformation and being brainwashed into narrow-mindedness.  And that figure doesn’t count the number of teachers who insidiously sneak the image of Japan Can Do No Wrong Unless the Victim mentality without using the textbook.  When I first arrived in Akita, my school was working on that Hiroshima-Tree story.  I was asked to make a bulletin about the American perspective on Hiroshima.  I could write anything I wanted, I was told, so long I remembered one thing: Japan was the victim.  Yes, as long as I ignored the rest of the war and kept the myth intact, I could write anything I wanted.

That teacher has since moved on, eternally so, and been replaced by more open-minded educators. 

Over spring break, a Japanese friend of mine put the Japanese whale-hunting controversy this way:
“What’s the point with our government putting up this front about hunting whale for research?  Everyone knows it’s bullshit.  We should just do like the whalers up in Scandinavia.  Say it straight.  We like whale.  Whale is delicious.  We’re going to hunt it, and that’s all there is to it.”

Surely it would be direct, undeniable, and very un-Japanese– but it would throw down the gauntlet and remove the charge of hypocrisy on the whaling debate.  The argument could shift to questions of ethics, animal rights, and practicality.

The day the Japanese can do the same about their history will be the day some of their wartime demons can be put to rest.

Extra reading for the interested:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Society_for_History_Textbook_Reform
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_textbook#Junior_high_school_history_textbook.2C_2005
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_orange

A Deficit of Faith

Akita gets the least amount of sun in Japan, has some of the most snow, some of the worst infrastructure, and the highest suicide rate in a country with one of the highest suicide rates in the industrialized world.  Where places are at their most miserable, the population is typically ripe for indoctrination.  Perhaps the most difficult thing to understand about a place like this is the faith.  Shinto and Buddhism have a healthy co-existence, but both exist for many as a matter of tradition and superstition– Shinto kami are prayed to in order to make the deities happy (so as to bless your new car, or simply not to meddle in your affairs), and Buddhism teaches you that life is all about suffering and the path to enlightenment is littered with introspection and philosophy.

As a religion, these things can offer to their followers answers to some of the big questions– but the journey is often left to the individual.  What is missing is the often therapeutic effect a faith community can have in supporting the faithful.  The result is that while religion still has a place in Japanese life, spiritually satisfying experiences run few and far between.  At times like these the soul will grab at anything it can get its hands on to make up the difference in this deficit of faith.  This leads me to my experience yesterday.

I was e-mailed in April from an ex-(and also young)-eikaiwa student saying she wanted to meet and talk and introduce me to her English speaking friend.  No harm in that, I thought to myself.  We eventually arranged to meet yesterday afternoon.  We were to meet at a roadside break area (already a little odd), and it was a few days earlier that I had learned that her English-speaking friend couldn’t make it.  Not having another person there was perhaps the best way that this could have happened.

We sat down and she began immediately prodding into my religious background.  Having grown up next to Jehovah’s Witnesses for a portion of my childhood, I saw little alarms starting turning on in my head.  I knew where this was going.  But still, I had driven myself to this place, I may as well stay to hear the sales pitch.  I was told I could be happy, and if I already felt happy I could be happier.  I was told that because Galileo outsmarted a bunch of narrow-minded priests in the Middle Ages that Galileo had succeeded in outsmarting God Himself (not sure how this fit into her Buddhist sect, as I don’t recall Galileo being Buddhist, but whatever.  I was informed that I was lucky I wasn’t born a cat, because only humans had the chance to achieve the Enlightenment she was offering.  I was given a book thicker than my JET General Information Manual and a few of the cult’s newspapers.  After ranting about how happy I could be for another 30 minutes I was told that in death I would be so happy my body wouldn’t undergo rigor mortis and stiffen, I could live forever in a pretty white world with a beautiful body!

I asked if this meant I would be a zombie.  I was assured this was not the case.

At this point my former acquaintance informed me that all this happiness and joy could be mine if I underwent 25 minute ritual (to which she was sketchy) in an unknown location.  The sole path to Enlightenment could finally be mine!

She then had the backbone (or nuttiness) to claim that this entire faith was based on the precepts of science.

Sadly, I couldn’t bring myself to undergo this Enlightenment.  There are no shortcuts to peace of mind and there is no guru who can sell you enough metaphors to find happiness.

And to quote my ex-acquaintance’s oddly inspired Galileo:

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”

She also claimed there was no way her faith was online, but alas, it is (albeit somewhat resembling a glorified geocities site):

http://www.e-net.or.jp/user/mblu/ndb/index.htm