I am happy about spring. I am not happy about spring bicycle riding.

There were some things I avoided learning as a child. I think my sense of self-preservation kicked in early, or something, because I carefully avoided anything I thought had the potential to break my face. For example, to this day, I cannot do a cartwheel. I am also really bad at climbing trees, which does not bode well for me if I am ever chased by a bear (Or a zombie horde. Can zombies climb trees? Because that would be terrible.)

But since moving to Japan I have discovered that the same sense of self-preservation that ensured my advancement to adulthood has also crippled me in one, specific, diabolically evil arena.

Bike riding.

Screw bike riding. I would like to know who the JERKFACE was who looked at a couple of wheels and thought, “You know what would be cool? If I stuck a twisted metal frame above those wheels, threw a person on it, and shoved them onto a road. Oh, and also, they have to pedal until their heart explodes from exertion and the stress of almost being hit by thousands of cars. Wouldn’t that be cool?” (After some googling, it appears that there is some debate about who invented the bicycle, but apparently, one of the bicycle’s developers was a German named Karl Drais von Sauerbronn. A GERMAN. Now it all makes sense. Schadenfreude, and all that.)

I never even wanted to learn how to ride a bicycle. My parents made me. I still remember watching my dad take off the training wheels on my bike (which until this point was adorable and had FOUR wheels), and thinking, “This is the day I die.” And it only became worse when he insisted I climb onto it and start pedaling.

I think the day parents teach their children to ride a bicycle is the day they tell their children the biggest lie they will ever tell. Telling them that broccoli tastes good? Not so bad. The tooth fairy? Pretty forgivable. “I’ll be right behind you, and I won’t let go?” FALSE. My dad totally let go. And the moment I realized that, my early-onset self-preservation kicked in, and I flipped out. I was crying, and screaming, and our neighbors were coming out onto their porches and looking out their windows because they literally thought I was being brutally murdered on the sidewalk.

At one point, one of my parents, and I can’t remember if it was my mother or my father, said, “You’re embarrassing me.” And I thought, I HOPE I AM. YOU ARE TRYING TO KILL ME. (Sidenote: This scene was repeated when my father tried to teach me how to drive a car when I was twelve. I am pretty sure I was the only twelve year old to ever utter the words, “No, Dad, don’t make me drive!” To be fair, though, Dad tried to teach me how to drive on the edge of a cliff, so.)

I think the last time I rode a bike for any reason other than utter necessity was when I was fourteen. After that, my bike went into the garage, and I pretty much never used it ever after that. I went through high school and university happily bike free, and I thought I had, at last, escaped.

And then I moved to Japan. This, in and of itself, would not have been enough motivation to get me on a bike again. But I have friends here. Friends who, for whatever reason, cannot see the bicycle for what it truly is. They think it’s great, and they don’t understand why I have to be forcibly dragged out of my house when they decide we should all go for a ride. Well, aside from the aforementioned danger and terror, I have three reasons for this.

REASON ONE: Bicycles are self-esteem destroyers. Oh, you think you’re young and spry and hip? Get on a bicycle and that is no longer true. Suddenly all your years of exercising are completely worthless, because this machine of terror has turned you into a noodle-legged old woman. And your sweat probably smells like weakness.

My friends Stacy and Tori (incidentally, the same friends who repeatedly force me to ride my bike) have thighs of steel. I have thighs of slightly melty aluminum. This makes for a problem when we go riding together. For instance, Tori and I take a dance class together, and one time (just one time,) she decided we should take our bikes. I lost sight of Tori within about five minutes. This is significant because the road to our class is STRAIGHT. It’s not like she was around a corner, or cutting through an alley, or something. She was literally so far ahead of me I could not see her. (Actually, this one turned out okay, because once she was no longer around to watch me fail at riding a bike, I was free to dismount said bike and walk most of the way to class. Which I did.)

REASON TWO: You can’t do anything else while riding a bike but ride the bike. Oh, you want to talk with friends and sip cocoa and window shop? NOPE. You are on a bicycle.

It occurs to me every time I ride a bicycle that I must look like some subspecies of gorilla, because I am hunched over the handlebars, staring intently at the path in front of me, willing any slippery rocks or old ladies or cats to stay out of my way, completely white-knuckled. There is no window shopping or exploring to be had, because if I don’t want to DIE, I have to pay attention. I also cannot participate in conversation because a) I am really out of breath, and b) probably several blocks behind everyone else. Drinking or eating anything is right out. Essentially, everything enjoyable about going places is impossible to do while on a bicycle. Seriously, who invented this thing?!   

REASON THREE: No protection from the elements. Oh, it’s raining/snowing/hailing? TOO BAD. You can’t hold an umbrella. This happened a matter of days ago, and it was terrible.

Long story short, we rode our bicycles to a department store (I was perpetually four blocks behind—melty aluminum thighs), went shopping, and exited the store to find that the sky had opened wide and was dumping snowflakes the size of ferrets onto the streets. We were forced to ride twenty minutes back to our apartments in the blizzard. Being completely blinded by snow, there were a few moments (mostly after I nearly ran down an old man, swerved, and nearly impaled myself on a fencepost) when I thought I was going to die. On a bicycle, which is not a heroic death  at all.

So there it is. My lifelong struggle with the bicycle. Personally, I have had enough of this bicycle business. I think it’s high time modern science got with it and built me a hoverboard. I’m waiting, modern science. I’m waiting.

This was originally a post about the birds I saw the other day, but now it isn't, so sorry, bird enthusiasts.

Things about living alone that are awesome:

Taking really long showers

Sitting around in my underwear

Dancing badly to Jay-Z (I’m a little ashamed of this one, to be honest, but there it is).

Rapping along badly to Jay-Z (No shame here, I’m improving)

Things that suck about living alone:

Zombies.

Dear readers, I live in the set of a horror movie, and I genuinely mean that. My apartment building has been specifically designed to play to my one, true phobia, which is the walking dead. Lumbering bundles of rotting flesh with an insatiable hunger for human flesh? NO THANK YOU. I’ll stay over here.

The problem being that I cannot simply “stay over here”, because I live in a place that is going to be a zombie heaven when the apocalypse hits (which I predict will happen if Rick Santorum becomes president, but in that case I guess I won’t mind the world ending so much). My apartment is pretty Japanese-style, which is usually lovely, but which is a terrible fortress against the undead.

For one thing, my apartment has no locking doors. Well, the front door locks, but is one, measly locked front door going to keep out the zombie hordes? No, it’s not. And once the zombies bust that down, I am out of luck, because the rest of my doors slide open, and do not do anything even remotely like locking. And some of them are made of paper, so even if they did lock, it wouldn’t matter, because they’re PAPER. The zombies could just spit on them repeatedly and they would come down. The zombies could get at me with nothing but their spit and that is really not secure.

For another thing, the vast majority of my entire apartment building is composed of nothing but dark, spooky corners, which are usually roughly the size of an average zombie. Sometimes I wonder if the architect was a zombie sympathizer (that traitor), and he built in extra corners just to give his rotting co-conspirators a place to hide. In order to reach my apartment, I have to walk/run frantically past approximately a hundred of these corners and up a flight of stairs.

In addition, the lights in the stairwell flicker the way lights flicker in the movies right before the serial killer leaps from the shadows and decapitates the promiscuous teenager. It sounds like I am making that up, but sadly, that is actually completely accurate

So my arrival home every night goes something like this:

PHASE ONE: MENTAL PREPARATION

Approach building.

Stand at edge of light from streetlamps and gaze into darkness

Select chipper Japanese sugar pop music on iPod

Optional: Cry.

PHASE TWO: BUILDING ENTRANCE, PART ONE, LIGHTSWITCH

Walk purposefully to the building’s front door

Inspect initial giant scary corner. If zombie-free, proceed.

Go up first set of stairs.

Press back to the wall and hit stairwell light switch.

Wait for lights to stop flickering horribly.

Pause music and listen for approaching footsteps from the apartments above. (SIDENOTE: I once did not do this, and therefore didn’t hear one of my neighbors coming down from the third floor, and we sort of met as he came around the corner, and I screamed like I was dying, and he screamed like you’d expect someone to scream when a crazy foreigner is backed up against the wall looking at you like she’s not sure whether to flee for her life or kill you in self-defense. And then we had this moment where I was like, “…you scared me?” And he said something I didn’t quite understand, but which I guess meant, “I’m moving,” and left, and that is why I am not friends with any of my neighbors.)

PHASE THREE: BUILDING ENTRANCE, PART TWO, STAIRS

RUN OH GEEZ SOMETHING MOVED OVER THERE RUN.

PHASE FOUR: APARTMENT

Finish running

Slam door shut

Lock door (it’s your only defense).

Turn on EVERY SINGLE LIGHT

Disregard electricity bill

(SIDENOTE: That last bit is particularly true, by the way. I compared my electricity bill with one of my friends, and mine was…well, it was higher. And it’s all because of zombies. Those evil jerks are costing me money and the apocalypse hasn’t even started yet.)

Well, just be aware, zombies. I have a drawer full of dollar-store butter knives, and I am not afraid to use them.

The end.

This post is not funny. Sorry.

A while ago, I went to the park around Hirosaki Castle, and I took some pictures. Enjoy!

 I want to live in this garden. 

Santa wears a lot of mascara...

I work at a special needs school every once and a while, and the last time I was there, they had me dress up as Santa Clause and sing songs with the kids. One of the other teachers made a sleigh on wheels himself, and dressed up like Rudolph to pull me around. It was awesome.

So basically this is what I would look like if I inexplicably became an old man, but retained my love of eye makeup.

This story has a terrible twist ending, just so you know.

Here in good old Japan, it's customary for everything from schools to sports teams to have an end-of-the-year party called a "bonenkai". Basically, everyone drinks a lot and eats a lot and nobody talks about what happened there the next day.

My school had an awesome bonenkai. The food was amazing, we played a drawing game (which my team inexplicably won, even though my rendition of Pikachu kind of looked like a fish), and had a jolly good time.

Until a member of the school board had a heart attack just as we were getting ready to do some synchronized cheering (which is a thing in Japan) and eat cake.

So instead of cake, we got paramedics. And then the party was super tragic, so everyone just kind of wandered sadly away into the snowy night.

The end.

P.S. I don't know what happened to that old gentleman. I assume he is alright, since I probably would have heard someone mention it if he wasn't. I am going to pretend he retired and moved to the Bahamas to pursue a life of fishing and not having heart attacks at parties.

I can't think of a good theme. Have some random pictures with commentary.

I would like to know what we were reacting to in this picture, because I am clearly on the attack while Tori...well, scratch that, I don't know what she's doing. At all.

To truly grasp the size of this bowl of ramen, imagine Lake Erie with noodles and bits of fatty pork. I think in the course of eating it, I accidentally poked the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald with 

my chopsticks.

I crashed my bicycle. Several nearby construction workers rushed over to help, but that may have been because in the process of falling over into the gravel, my skirt ripped rather far up my thigh. Merry Christmas, random construction workers. 

I like the gentleman in the front gazing wistfully into the distance. Everyone else is bracing to meet their mighty foe in battle, and he's not even looking, he's just like, "I think I'll rearrange the living room when I get home. Maybe put up some new wall scrolls. I love me some wall scrolls."

Adulthood.

To be clear, I am an adult. I am twenty-one. I have a college degree. I have an apartment, a job, and I pay the bills (except for that one time when I didn't pay my gas bill for three months and all my appliances got turned off, but we don't talk about that).

I had plans for my life after work today. I had things to do, grownup things, that were important... or something. I don't really remember. Because when I got home, this is what happened:

This was terrible for two reasons. One, I was listening to really obnoxious pop music really loudly, and my neighbors were probably clawing at their ears, asking the universe to put an end to their torment.

Two, once the euphoria that only jumping on a bed can produce had faded, I was left feeling like all my adult-y efforts had been undone. I sometimes think adulthood is like the life bar in a video game. You can deplete it by having an awesome time doing ridiculous things, and refill it by completing very boring tasks that are mostly mundane and unreasonable. I had done a huge amount of damage to my adult life points. I had to solve this problem before I had to go to work again, or I might show up in a kitten sweater and pigtails with a wild look in my eyes.

So I did all my dishes. ALL OF THEM, shedding tears all the while.

The end.