If I've said it once, I've said it a million times: if you leave America and then come back after a couple of years abroad, things that you may have never noticed before become very apparent. You've seen me gush about the amount of green in America, for example. Recently I've become aware of the rampant consumerism promoted on American TV. Now I'm sure these observations are by no means ground breaking, but I like to point out absurdity wherever it lurks.

One of the first commercials I saw after returning from France was for KFC's Chicken and Biscuit Bowl, a concoction consisting of fried chicken, cheese, corn, gravy, and a biscuit all served on a bed of mashed potatoes.

Imagine the horror this image caused a person accustomed to dining on only the finest French cheese and wine. I am amazed that companies can get away with marketing such blatantly unhealthy food. The sad part is, this doesn't even come close to the unhealthiest food being marketed these days (see also the Wendy's Baconator or McDonalds Deluxe Breakfast).

I have to say that my favorite fast food campaign, the one that I really love to hate, is Taco Bell's "Fourthmeal." Yes, Taco Bell, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that 3 meals a day just isn't enough for today's active American; what is needed is a "fourthmeal" between dinner and breakfast. Many Taco Bells are open until 2 or 3AM to provide more people with their much needed "fourthmeal." Let me tell you something--I've seen a lot of Americans in my day, and the last thing most of them need is a midnight snack consisting of fried "Mexican" food.

Fast food companies aren't the only ones trying to sell us things we don't need that may actually be more harmful than helpful. The other big offender is--you guessed it--drug companies. Recently, a drug to combat RLS (Restless Leg Syndrome for the uninitiated) has been introduced and marketed on TV. Feel free to disagree with me, but as a "sufferer" of RLS I can say that it's not something I've ever felt the need to cure. In fact, a nurse once told me that the leg shaking caused by RLS was a way for the body to expend excess calories, something it would probably need to do after a Fourthmeal or Chicken and Biscuit Bowl.

On a recent commercial, I noticed some alarming side effects for this drug: "Side effects may include dry mouth, ..., increased urges to gamble, and increased sexual urges." Now I ask you, which is worse: having a leg that shakes from time to time or being a compulsive gambler? I imagine the conversation would go something like this:

"Hey Jim, how's your RLS?"

"Thanks for asking, Bob. This new drug I'm taking is really doing the trick. My leg no longer shakes and I no longer have that creepy-crawly feeling in my legs."

"That's great to hear."

"Yeah, the only problem is, I now have a compulsive urge to gamble. Can't quite seem to control it. Funny story actually--I went to Vegas last weekend and lost my family's savings. My wife is threatening to leave me."

"Because of the gambling?"

"Well that certainly doesn't help, but she's more concerned about the sex addiction I've developed. Ever since I started taking this drug, I can't seem to suppress my desire to have sex with strangers. I joined a group, but so far it's proving impossible to control, especially with my weekly visits to Vegas."

"Well, I'm sorry to hear that Jim, but at least your leg doesn't shake anymore."

"Amen to that."

I was concerned that when I moved back to the United States, I would no longer have anything to write about on the blog, that I would have to resign myself to writing my memoirs of Japan and France. Oh how the events of last week proved me wrong.

Living where I do, there's basically no work available for a trilingual monkey expert, so I have had to look for work that I am, shall we say, overqualified for. The sad part is, I am usually rejected from such jobs. Last Sunday, I perused the classified for jobs that someone might possibly hire me for. There was one ad for temporary work to help stock a new store--Bed Bath & Beyond--opening soon in my town.

They were doing the hiring en masse at a hotel in town. So I went to the hotel at the appointed time and joined about 15 other people filling out applications in a small conference room. The application was normal enough; and when I turned it in, I was given a survey to fill out. At first, I thought nothing of it, figuring it to be a survey about the interview process or the company itself. But as I opened it up, I realized it was a survey of a completely different nature. It was a multiple choice and true/false morality quiz.

I hope my readers can appreciate the utter absurdity of having a morality quiz; for, as anyone who does well on tests can tell you, you have to mark what you think the teacher wants you to mark and not what you feel is the correct answer. It's all a game to score the most points. This is only the absurdity inherent in the test, however, and it does not compete with the absurdity of most of the questions.Most of the questions centered unsurprisingly on shoplifting and taking from one's company. They problem was that these accounted for 2/3 of the questions and the same thing was asked over and over.

Here is a sampling of the questions from the multiple choice portion of the quiz:

I have shoplifted in the last week.

A. Definitely true.
B. Somewhat true.
C. Somewhat false.
D. Definitely false.

So far, so good...

I believe all adults shoplift from time to time.

A. Definitely true.
B. Somewhat true.
C. Somewhat false.
D. Definitely false.

My friends shoplift.

A. Definitely true.
B. Somewhat true.
C. Somewhat false.
D. Definitely false.

I believe it's ok to use a company phone for personal calls.

A. Definitely true.
B. Somewhat true.
C. Somewhat false.
D. Definitely false.

I believe it's ok to do something illegal on my lunch break.

A. Definitely true.
B. Somewhat true.
C. Somewhat false.
D. Definitely false.

I believe it's ok to drink on the job as long as it doesn't affect my performance.

A. Definitely true.
B. Somewhat true.
C. Somewhat false.
D. Definitely false.

And my personal favorite on the multiple choice:

Would you lie to get ahead?

A. Definitely true.
B. Somewhat true.
C. Somewhat false.
D. Definitely false.

I love this question because if you think about it, there is only one possible answer. Either you don't lie to get ahead and don't think it's ok, in which case you mark D. Or, you do lie to get ahead, but don't want to admit that to a prospective employer because it will keep you from getting hired, in which case you mark D. It's a self-fulfilling question.

The test got a little tedious after a while (there were 80 questions like that), but at least it was clear what answer you were supposed to put. On the true false section, things became a little less clear.

True or False? A main cause of people stealing is the social condition of the individual and not the individual himself.

Dear test makers, I believe this question is slightly out of the scope of the true/false format. I am pretty sure that politicians, religious leaders, psychologists and sociologists have spent many years researching and debating this issue. I was not prepared to declare it definitively true or false today, without warning.

True or False? Living on the streets requires that you take what you can and not worry about anyone else.

I'm sorry, test makers, but I have not lived on the streets and therefore cannot answer this question. The only thing I know about life on the streets is that I would most certainly not survive.

True or False? I believe life has been unfair to me.

At this point, I could barely contain my laughter, but decided it was best not to openly mock a morality quiz, so I held it in as much as possible. I had not expected to face such harsh questions about my life, and in true-false format.

I finished the quiz and turned it in. Eventually I was called for my interview, where I pleaded for a job like I never had before. The result? No call-back. Either I'm not qualified to stock shelves or I'm just not moral enough.

Almost a year into my stay in Japan, a friend visited me for a couple of weeks. We made all the usual tourist stops: Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo. After seeing all that Tokyo had to offer, we consulted our guide books and came up with one last stop: Mount Fuji. Mount Fuji can only be climbed by amateurs in July or August, and we happened to be there at the end of July. This was our chance to climb Japan's highest mountain, and we decided to take it.

We were no fools; oh no, we were going to do this right. So we took one afternoon to sit in a cafe in Shibuya and read about how to do Fuji-san right. It was decided that we would climb at night and arrive at the top in time to see the sunrise, we would we would wear appropriate shoes, and we would have mountain climbing provisions such as oxygen. Once all of this was decided, we headed out to equip ourselves for the climb. We each bought the following items: a can of oxygen, one Snickers bar, and a bottle of water. Incredibly proud of how smart and well-prepared we were being about the whole thing, we headed off to Shinjuku bus station to catch the bus to the mountain.

We arrived at Mount Fuji just after the sun set. I was wearing a pair of boots, jeans, a t-shirt, and a light jacket. We looked at the souvenirs available a base camp. They included, of course, a Mt. Fuji Hello Kitty. We would each buy one the next day after successfully climbing the mountain, we decided.

And so somewhere around 8 or 9 o'clock we headed out. It was cloudy but not raining. As we set out on the path, our conversation went something like this:

"This so awesome! We're climbing Mount Fuji!"

"I know. I bet none of our friends are doing anything nearly this cool right now."

We continued climbing, singing, and excitedly chatting for about the first hour. At some point, it had begun to rain slightly, but this did not phase us. After all, we were fully prepared for anything the mountain could throw at us. We had cans of oxygen. That meant we were prepared.

At this point, we reached the first ranger station on the mountain. A Japanese ranger who happened to be standing outside the little guard hut spotted us and waved us into the hut. We went in and sat down for a cup of tea. There were four Japanese rangers there, and though I couldn't understand them completely, they seemed concerned.

Japanese ranger: "Oijidjif pants wunejros rain."

Me: "Pants good. We fine. Don't worry."

Japanese ranger: "Tonight yspoauew no climb. Top wiydbrtn dpierbvt."

Me: "We want climb. Together ok."

Japanese ranger: Sharply sucks in breath while looking at naive girls with concern.

We left the hut and I turned to my friend.

"We can totally climb this mountain. I hate how Japanese people always baby foreigners, especially girls. I wonder what exactly he was saying, anyway."

And so we continued our upward journey. At first the climbing was fairly easy; there were "stairs" and the rain was light. My jeans were getting pretty wet, but that didn't phase me. We did not, however, see many other people on the mountain. I remember passing a couple of guys, who said "It's nice to see some chicks on the mountain," as they passed us.

As we entered the third hour of our climb, conditions steadily worsened. The wind had picked up drastically; rain was coming at us from all angles; and the stairs had disappeared and been replaced by steeply sloping naked mountain. Keep in mind also that it was dark and approaching the middle of the night at this point. Our morale began to wane; the singing had stopped and been replaced with hopeful utterances that those lights up ahead were the top. But each time we reached a set of lights, we only saw more ahead, higher on the rocky face of the mountain.

At this point, our climb was starting to resemble something out of Into Thin Air. At times, we were climbing nearly vertically on the rock face, slashed by wind and rain. It was dark and hard to see, and I feared that I might slip and fall. Our Snickers bars had long ago been consumed, while the wildly unnecessary oxygen tanks clanked about in our bags.

At around midnight, a drastic decision was made: we would stop at a hut to rest for an hour before continuing. The path up the mountain is dotted with huts where hikers can rest for an hour or two, or stay the night, all for a price. When our trip was in the planning stages, we had sworn that we would not stop at one; now, were dying to reach the next one. Just after passing the sign saying we had reached 3,000 meters, we came to a hut.

Inside it was packed. There was at least one tour group staying there, along with many independent hikers. Our original plan was to stay for an hour, but this changed after my friend began talking to someone from the tour.

"There is a typhoon," she said. "They have closed the top. You cannot go up there tonight. This is my second tour of Mount Fuji; the first time the weather was bad too. I wanted to see shooting stars. A friend told me you could see shooting stars. Maybe next time."

So what we thought was a little rain and wind was actually a typhoon, which went a long way in explaining why the rangers had seemed so concerned about us at the bottom and why there was virtually no one else on the mountain. Given this devastating news, we decided to spend the night in the hut. There was barely enough room for us. Since we hadn't planned on spending the night on the mountain, neither of us had anything to change into. We peeled off our wet, cold jeans and settled in to our futons.

We woke up early the next morning to fog outside. Since we had only slept a few hours, our jeans had not come close to drying. Allow me to tell you, in case you don't already know, that few things compare to putting on a pair of cold, wet jeans in the morning. It was one of the most miserable moments of my life.

We decided to tag along behind one of the tour groups for the trip down. I was surprised to learn that the path down was not the same one we had climbed up the night before. Oh no, the path down was wide and covered with gravel and included no "cliffs." It took us less than two hours to descend and it was an easy walk.

We found ourselves once again at the gift store at base camp, waiting for the bus to come. A very important decision was made; although we had not made it to the top, we decided that the events of the night before merited a Mount Fuji Hello Kitty charm. Hello Kitty in hand, we talked about trying to climb the mountain again the next year. But you know what they say about Mount Fuji: A wise man climbs it once; only a fool climbs it twice. I have not yet been foolish enough to go back.

I recently had a two week vacation. I spent the second week in southern France, a place I had been many years before. It was more beautiful than I had remembered, and after the week was over I dreaded heading back to the dreary north. But I digress. I am here to relate a scene I witnessed one sunny afternoon in Monaco.

My father and I had decided to visit the principality during our stay in the south. Since the palace was closed and we were tired of walking, we decided to take a tour of the country on a "petit train." It was a 30 minute tour offered in 10 different languages. In front of each seat were earphones and 10 different buttons allowing the passenger to choose his preferred language. Each linguistic option was represented by a flag. This being Europe, English was represented by the Union Jack and not the good ol' American flag. This presented no problem for my father and me.

After a few minutes, two plump, middle-aged women approached our car and sat down. As soon as I heard them talk, I recognized an accent I had not heard for years--that of my home state.

After speculating for a few moments about what "the others" in their group were doing, they turned their attention to the earphones in front of them.

"I guess these are the languages," one of them said, examining the flags.

"Where's my language?" the other one asked.

"Well let's see... It says here they offer the tour in 10 languages. That would be quite an oversight if they didn't have English."

"Maybe it's in one of the other cars," one suggested. This explanation must have seemed logical to them, because they started to get up to change cars.

Then the light bulb went off.

"Hey wait a minute. What does the British flag look like?"

"I think it's that one," the other one answered. "I sure am glad you caught that. That was some smart thinking." With that, they settled back in and tuned to the British English channel.

Living abroad has made me aware of how puritanical the US can be. While I think people in the US can be a bit prudish, sometimes things can swing just a bit too far the other direction when, for example, one is living in France. I have no problem with the naked breasts displayed in advertisements around town, and the lack of open container laws can be quite convenient at times. But I was recently confronted sexuality being used in a way that left me, well, confused.

When you buy a train ticket in France, it generally comes with a convenient little ticket holder. Normally I wouldn't give these little envelopes a second thought, but on a recent trip this image caught my eye:And I asked myself, "Is that supposed to be what I think it's supposed to be? Because I think it's supposed to be a condom and yet it is on an envelope containing my train tickets."

Hoping to clear up my confusion, I decided to read what was written on the envelope:
For those of you who don't speak French, that translates as "A few grams of plastic, having to do with fidelity, and that you should be interested in using..." My suspicions were confirmed. And then I opened the envelope, at which point it only got better:
Hello Mr. Smiling Condom! How nice to see you with my train tickets!

Now, I don't know what French people normally do on trains, but I have never associated condoms with train travel. Which brings me to the crux of my confusion: how is safe sex supposed to encourage me to take the train and use my frequent travelers' card? Granted, I don't know much about advertising, but I thought the idea was to encourage people to buy your product. Condoms=train tickets just does not compute. Are they telling me that if I don't use my SNCF (National French Train System) card when I take the train I risk catching an STD? Looking at the wording on the envelope, they seem to be saying that just as you use a condom to symbolize your fidelity to a person, so should you use your SNCF card to symbolize your dedication to taking the train. The problem with this is that condoms and fidelity are not two things that are necessarily linked. Quite to the contrary sometimes. So, advertising department at the SNCF, good effort but try a little harder next time.

Once, while waiting for a train in Japan, I noticed the sound of birds chirping. "My, that's odd," I thought to myself. "I've never heard a bird chirping while walking outside in Japan. It must be because they've all chosen to congregate inside the train station. I guess when you don't have trees, this is the next best thing." After a while. I noticed that the singing did not vary in any way... the pitch, volume and melody were constant. Of course! It was merely being played though the speakers. There were no actual birds.

More recently, I was shopping for groceries in France. While in the produce section, I noticed that my thoughts were drowned out by the sounds of the rain forest. More specifically, it sounded like a large bird of prey was attacking a spider monkey. Not one to be fulled twice, I knew there were no actual birds or monkeys in the store. By the way, is there some research that shows that sounds of nature make people want to spend more money? Because personally, it kind of made me want to duck and run for cover. I didn't know who that bird was coming for after it got done with the monkey.

After living abroad for almost 4 years, 3 of them in Japan, I assume any nature that I see or hear is contrived and fake in some way. Bird songs are taped, trees occur only in neat rows.

Monkah!

As often as the words "I hate Japan" leave my mouth, it's easy to start wondering just what I'm doing here. As previously stated, it's partly because I've become attached to my captors, but that's not the whole explanation. As P put it yesterday, it's about the surface needs and deeper needs.

Japan is very good at making people content on the suface. Everything that surrounds me in my room or at school is decorated with a cute character. As P said matter of factly yesterday, "I mean, how many times a day do I use cute stationery? It's a lot more than the number of times I worry about my freedom." In Japan, we're constantly high on cuteness. There was a study released recently which reported that looking at cute things stimulates the same place in your brain as drugs, alcohol and chocolate do. I think that goes a long way in explaining my current situation.

On the other hand, many of the weightier things that people need to feel fulfilled and satisfied are missing or denied us. For example, it is difficult to stand up for yourself if you are unhappy with a situation. It may be for any number of reasons, from lack of linguistic ability to the fact that your concerns are not taken seriously because you are not considered a part of society. When asking my BOE for help furnishing my apartment (this is done for most JETs anyway), I faced both of these obstacles. I had someone translate a letter for me, but in the end it didn't matter that I was able to communicate in Japanese. The fact of the matter was that I was at the bottom of their list of things to be taken care of because I was only temporary (foreign) employee.

A friend asked me the other night if there was anyting I would miss about Japan when I left. The answer is, of course, yes. There are tons of things. At least some of them are tangible things, so I have a chance of getting them sent to me once I return to the real world. So without further ado, a list (in no particular order) of things about Japan that I will miss.

Given how much I complain, most people are surprised I've stayed in Japan this long. What they don't realize is that I complain about everywhere I've lived; at least this place is "exotic" and they don't speak English.

The problem is, I'm running out of time. They're going to kick me out of here in a few months, and I have to go somewhere else. I'm pretty sure my next stop will be Europe, since going home is not an option. There are a lot of days, however, when I just can't imagine leaving, and I don't know why. I don't have many friends, I hate the weather, my grasp of the language is laughable at best... Guess I've just gotten kind of attached to my captors.

I am addicted to coffee. Tempting me everyday, there is a drive-thru Starbucks on the way to work. Usually I'm running too late to stop, but this morning I was actually running early for once. I decided to allow myself this one little treat to get me through the day.

I clutched my coffee in my hands during the morning meeting. My reasons were two-fold--I was trying to warm my hands while hiding from the other teachers what I was holding. The Japanese are a very inquisitive people, especially when it comes to what foreigners eat and drink. I used to bring a Nalgene bottle filled with water to school and set it on my desk. Even though the bottle clearly contained water, everyone, teachers and students, felt the need to stop and ask me what was in my bottle. Though it was tempting to fill it with sake, it always contained water--what I would logically guess to be in a clear container. Anyway, I knew that if they saw too much of my coffee, it would be all over the school in no time. Not that there's anything wrong with drinking Starbucks coffee, I just didn't see a need for it to be the talk of the school.

One man stopped and asked me what I was holding. I quietly revealed the logo on the cup thinking that this would answer all questions. He gave me an inquisitive look.

"It's coffee," I explained. "From Starbucks."

"Ohhh."

Later in the day, I ran into him again.