God Bless America

Happy Birthday America. It is funny, being abroad makes you realize what a great place America is. Our culture extends around the world. Wherever you go, you will see our influence. Whether it is downtown Tokyo or small town Nanbu where I teach. Our presence is felt. I went to see Spiderman last weekend with some friends. We saw it in English with Japanese subtitles. Can you imagine all of the greatest movies being in a different language? How annoying would it be to read subtitles while watching all of the best movies? Seeing a movie in Japan is kind of funny because a lot of the humor gets lost in translation. My friends and I were laughing at parts in the movie while the rest of the Japanese audience remained silent. After watching that movie I felt proud that my country makes all of the greatest movies. Then I thought about how we basically run the entertainment industry for the whole world. When you go to a club or a bar, you hear American club music, not Japanese club music. Japanese people seem to love America, whenever a random person asks me where I am from, they always respond by saying cooool. I am a conceited American and I'm proud of it. Confidence breeds success and that is why America is number one. Enough about America. I joined a new gym this past week. It looks like something out of a 1970s boxing movie. All the equipment is ancient and they building itself looks like it hasn't been touched in 30 years. This is however fine with me, they actually have some heavy weights. This gym does not max out at 20 kilograms (45lbs) like the other gym. The downside is, I am no longer the biggest guy around...This gym has actual body builders... I guess I'll just have to use that as motivation. At school, nothing new here. The kids all seem to be disinterested, but that is to be expected. I can't imagine having to go to school year round with only a 2 week summer vacation. I told my students that American students have 3 months off in the summer and they all gasped in envy. Just another reason why America is amazing...and lazy....haha. Lastly I want to talk about the Japanese work ethic. I really respect it, but most of the time it seems pointless. I think that most of the time they 'work' late just to gain respect. I heard that some of my teachers were working until 9pm the other day...This is in addition to being coaches and having to work on Saturdays...This leads to a bunch of people who are extremely boring and irritable. They need to work less and play more in my opinion. In the Japanese work place you don't want to be the first person to leave unless you are the boss. So for example, no one will leave my school while the principal is still here. Even if it is 7pm and they don't have anything to do, they will stay to gain respect. Japanese people don't complain, so that is why this practice is still going on to this day. If this was happening in America, one of our Unions would step in to set things straight. That is all for now. I am always on skype, so if you have skype let's chat. I am usually on in the morning your time during the weekdays. And I usually go on after drinking on the weekends, so that would be like 10am-1pm your time. (Julia...cough) JB