Zac who?

Joseph-Gordon Levitt, the hottest man on the planet, lies sprawled on my desktop and all over my heart. Celebrity crushes, delightful and destructive, have for a long time eluded me. Not since I caught my first glimpse of Seth Cohen in the candy coloured world of Orange County, have I been so head over converse chucks in love with someone on the other side of the screen.

But Seth wasn’t real and, as the seasons of The O.C. persisted, he began to deteriorate into a character fail. The show, suddenly devoid of plot, followers and Mischa Barton, stripped their remaining characters of character and left them all high, dry and washed up beyond belief. Seth’s demise was especially painful to watch. His nerdiness lost its cuteness, his hair lost its curls, and his quips were no longer witty and eventually, no longer even quips. It didn’t help that the actor who played him, Adam Broody, was a tool of the highest order, dating his onscreen co-star and starred in emotionally heavy films in which he cried onscreen and made out with Meg Ryan.

MEG RYAN.

In contrast, Joseph-Gordon Levitt kicks some serious ass. For a start, he’s got a better name. He smokes pot and wears sharp suits, although not often at the same time. He’s Jewish and lives in New York. He’s got the face of an angel but that wouldn’t stop him laying some serious shit down if the going gets tough. He’s a stud in (500) Days of Summer even though the movie is a bit of a dud and he’s amazing in Mysterious Skin.And can thrash out an acoustic version of ‘Bad Romance’ that would make even the greenest sceptic go Gaga. Babe; certifiable.

My flatmate (twenty-six today and radiant) is currently gaga over a different lady; One Joan Hollway, the curvaceous figurehead of TV’s pastel coloured masterpiece, Mad Men. We are respectively obsessed, sitting side by side on the couch trawling Google images for hours with grins on our faces. The other flatmates go to the gym and give us looks of disgust. They come back and we are in the same exact positions, but with a glass of wine. We watch really bad movies just to see our beloved do a five minute scene with Sally Field. This must be the reason so many gazillion people saw Twilight.

It’s a good age for the celebrity crush. Google has made stalking into an art form. And in today’s indie scene-themed day and age, a celebrity crush is mandatory. It’s like a familiar. Joan is very popular. So is Don Draper (and fair enough). Hoards jump on the Jimmy McNulty bandwagon and others on flock to Eric Northman’s Scandinavian aesthetic. Johnny Depp is still acceptable but only if you specify ‘early nineties Johnny Depp’ and mention John Waters. Julian Casablancas will do in a pinch. Tom Cruise will not.

And so I develop my obsession with Joseph. I drop him name in every social gathering and let people that I am (or think I am) the go-to authority on this particular hottie. Because people judge you.

A boy at work recently told me that his biggest celebrity crush was Jennifer Aniston and that she was ‘the most beautiful person in the world.’ I excused myself politely and picked up a copy of some glossy magazine, the front cover graced by a rather sultry looking Penelope Cruz. He shook his head and muttered that he’s rather “bone Rachel any day.” I sighed and nodded and smiled acerbically. I don’t doubt that a lack of judgement of would make the world a better place sometimes. But let’s be honest here; in the worlds of Sinead O’Connor, ‘he’s a fool.’

Forgive me for prattling away and making everything all oogy.

I have my very own number one fan. I ever have it in writing: “I am a fan of Telford!” In some respects, she reminds me a little of Kathy Bates in Misery, except psychically, where she is the complete opposite.

It all started last year. Over a casual bowl of ramen, my neighbouring ALT mentioned that he had a student who had seen me out and about and had apparently fallen into crush mode. I slurped my ramen and laughed. Crushes. Surely a mandatory part of any teaching job. He told me her name and I nodded and then forgot it, as I forget everyone’s name in this country.
Later (a number of weeks if I remember correctly), a drunken Friday night and my neighbour persuaded me to send the said student an ‘I love you’ text from his phone. He told me it would make her freak out ‘in a good way.’ I shrugged and OKed it and he sent the message off and we got kept drinking and soon moved onto more mature topics like camping and rim jobs.

Months passed. Seasons changed. The White house got a little blacker and Susan Boyle made hundreds of hard working music students take to the bottle. The school year ended and a new one began, ushering in a tide of tiny, tidy, immaculately dressed fifteen year olds, with epic fringes and novelty charms dangling from every piece of stationary. I was at my monthly visit to the high school one town over, when I heard a high pitched squeal from the back of the classroom. I ignored it and continued dictating the list of sports-themed verbs.

The second the class ended, a pair of feet pattered up to the front of the classroom. I turned around and looked down. In front of me was the tiniest girl I had ever seen. She had huge eyes and ridiculously long hair that was done up in pigtails and made her look ever shorter. She started babbling at me in Japanese, her eyes getting wider and wider as it became clear I had no idea who she was or what she was talking to. She suddenly thrust her Hello Kitty-themed cellphone at me and said ‘I lub you I lub you I lub you!’ and tried to find the said message with shaky hands. I clicked.

It is at this point where the phrase ‘just nod and smile’ really comes into its own. I nodded and smiled. She squealed and hopped around and covered her mouth with her hands. I have never used the word swoon before, but I think she fulfilled the definition. She actually swayed from one side to the other like she might tip over, but somehow managed to stay vertical. Eventually, I managed to pry myself away and head to staffroom, as she followed my down the corridor waving manically and screaming out ‘kawaii’ (The Japanese favourite word meaning 'cute') as I secured myself inside.

A week later, she added me on skype. I accepted her because I had no idea what her name was and that ‘Yukki’ must have been the name of someone eligible fellow I met in my one and only gay night in Sapporo. This happens a lot; the forgetting names, not the eligible gay Skype buddies. As a result, our first conversation was a terrifying experience as I tried to figure out who the hell I was talking to through my fractured Japanese. It didn’t help that the profile picture was an anime warrior holding a gleaming sword.

I finally figured who was on the other end when Yukki asked when I was coming back to ‘the school.’ I told her I would be there in three weeks which brought on a tirade of giggling smiley faces and the phrase: “OK!!!!!!The enjoyment!!!!”

Throughout the next few weeks, I found out many things about Yukki as she guilt tripped me into numerous Skype conversations. If I didn’t respond, she would play the ‘sad face’ card which works much better on Skype where the sad face actually cries tears over and over again. I discovered that her hobbies were ‘movie watching & music appreciation’ and her favourite food was chocolate with twelve exclamation marks. I told her I liked running and she suggested in capital letters that we run together. I grimaced and told her ‘lol’ but she sent back the confused face that meant she didn’t understand so I gave up and just said ‘NO.’

She approached me on the train on Tuesday and handed me a cellophane bag filled with chocolate treats. I walked to school with her and her friends (who were instructed to stay several steps behind us) and she told me that I was ‘very very very cool’ and that I had beautiful eyes. The friends giggled and I blushed. I let it slip that I was leaving the land of Japan the next month and Yukki stopped dead. She looked up at me and shook her head. Her eyes filled with tears and she yelled at me: “No! No! You stay here! Stay in Japan. New Zealand no! I lub you!” I told her I would think about it.

Eventually she cheered up and asked if we could still talk on Skype if I went back home. ‘Sure’ I said and I meant it. She’s sweet and really means no harm to anyone. Plus, she’s tiny so if she ever tried any Kathy Bates shit, I could blatantly take her.

Out there on the ice

The new English teacher has arrived. He is 23 and looks like he is sixteen. When I met him, he was wearing a baby blue tie with diamantes on it (or rhinestones for you Americans). If this was New Zealand, he would be deemed suitable effeminate to have the homosexual checked and double checked by any curious onlooker. But this is Japan and it’s hopeless trying to tell the gays from the straights in a culture where the macho baseball captains hold hands in class and sit casually on each other’s laps. I once spent an entire evening drinking sake and flirting with the Japanese boy next to me at a salsa bar. After a good hour of (by Western standards) rather forward under-the-table signals, I attempted to seal the seemingly done deal and he told me that he actually only liked girls. What a fucking crock.


Seen from this context, my hopes for the Rhinestone Cowboy are slimmer than his tiny Japanese hips. Perhaps I will have to settle for a buddy to drink sake with; it will be nice to have someone in the town who speaks English and is under 45. The Seinfeld thing was always wishful thinking anyway (the Japanese are a nation of Friends worshippers; argh). And of course, he is a far superior crush to the grey haired Moltisanti. Perhaps a better comparison is that of Twin Peaks’ James Hurley; generating a level of allure that is not quite Seth Cohen-obsession worthy, but definitely a few steps up the ladder and has crush-crossover potential to the outside world.


Two excellent Japanese anecdotes then. The first was the discovery that none of the female
teachers at our high school wear high heels. Ever. Curiouser and curioser I thought and questioned my female English co-teacher about this over a cup of instant coffee. The principal has outlawed the said items for the reason that ‘in an emergency, they cannot run fast.’ I guess this makes sense in a Japanese kind of way, but it does ignore the fact that Japanese women in heels can move faster than steroid- infused athletes. As one of my ALT friends put it: “If Japan ever wanted to win any Olympic sprinting race, they just need to have a woman in heels in the line up and put a man with an empty beer glass at the finish line.” This may sound sexist, but trust me, it is incredibly accurate.


I also suggested that in the unlikely event of an emergency, a woman in heels could simply TAKE HER SHOES OFF. I imagine that shoes would be the most likely cause of death in any Japanese emergency, because the indoor/outdoor footwear code still applies. Even in our semi-terrifying earthquake drill last year, the teachers found time to lay out an enormous, elaborate mat between the front entrance and the tennis court so that as they escaped certain death, their shoes remained unsullied. The same lack of logic became apparent at last week’s moving ceremonies; movers would attempted to change from outside to inside shoes even while struggling under the weight of a half ton fridge-freezer. Surprisingly, there were no broken backs.


The second story comes courtesy of another ALT but desperately needs to be mentioned. At another Hokkaido high school, a rather portly female teacher fell over on the ice and broke her leg. The principal called an emergency meeting of all staff and informed them that the newly incapacitated educator had in fact slipped over because she was too fat. He ranted about how irresponsible the teacher was (I believe the phrase ‘how dare she’ was used repeatedly) and instructed that everyone in the school go on an immediate diet to prevent the same thing happening again. This is, perhaps, the perfect example of ‘adding insult to injury’.


I have slipped over on the ice at least five times this winter (not counting a lot of very close calls) and I cannot imagine anyone making it through a Hokkaido winter without doing the same. The island becomes an ice rink for four months and you are constantly one slip away from a broken collarbone. I have taken to shuffling my feet along the ground penguin-style and have shacked up an impressive collection of bruises. People stop drinking altogether because it’s too dangerous to walk home from the pub. Every car in the island has to change its tyres.


All this is my attempt to try and explain how ridiculous and offensive the above anecdote is, but to be honest, it does a pretty good job of that by itself. I can only imagine the poor woman waking up in the hospital to find a get well card and a bunch of celery.


As I type this, I am starting out the window and can see the buds growing on the trees that have been bare for the last four months. The season is finally changing. I cannot wait to see what perplexing anecdotes The Spring has to offer.

LOCAL!!!!

A new phenomenon has appeared on the rural Japanese horizon.

At present, our high school is in a blissful and short lived period of nonchalance. We are in limbo between school years, between the frantic period of drunken ‘end of year’ enkais and drunken ‘beginning of year’ enkais. I can arrive at school between eight and nine and am free from my despised shackles of suit and tie.

Last week, we had the traditional ‘musical desks’ day, as the teachers who leave clear their workstations and everyone moves to a different desk in the immense staff room. I am one of the lucky ones; I have been upgraded from a desk facing the back wall to one right in front of the windows. I now have a view of the local co op, baseball field and a side view of the hospital. It is bliss to watch the crows swooping and screaming, to see tiny old people creeping to and from the co op; so old that their backs are bent into Quasimodo hunchbacks and they stare permanently at the pavement.

My grey haired Moltisanti crush is leaving, but my hopes are high that the new 23 year old English teacher will be a more than satisfactory replacement. I envisage a young, studious man with good teeth and a killer smile who is fumbling with his forbidden attraction to the better sex. I will take him under my Caucasian wing and teach him the ways of the western world, starting with Seinfeld and we will argue about the greatest character (I will say Elaine; he, of course, will choose Kramer) and then move on to even more uncharted waters. At school, we will blush as we pass each other in the corridor and meet for a secretly romantic lunch of sushi and green tea, using the guise of ‘man to man bonding.’ I will teach him the meaning of ‘clandestine’ and he will laugh and pretend that he that already knew it. It will become his favourite word and he will use it every day, but never quite get the pronunciation right. He will try to teach me more Japanese, but I will tell him I am only be interested in learning the dirty words. He will oblige.

Mr M. is also leaving. He had an English teachers’ lunch for him last Friday, which was a sombre and slightly awkward affair as we toiled over bowls of bland pasta at the town’s mediocre Italian restaurant. I had learnt before lunch that all the other English teachers despise Mr M., and one of them flew into rage and yelled “He is a fool man. He is not a real man. He is joke face.” I was semi speechless and murmured something in agreement. When we returned to school, I informed Mr M. that he had spaghetti sauce on his shirt. He looked down, horrified, and carefully replied:

“I am sorry. Mmmmmmmm......I will now go and cream myself.”

I will miss him inexplicably.

This too-ing and fro-ing of teachers lead to the phenomenon I spoke of; moving day. It turns out that all the teachers must partake in the arrival and departure of all their peers; we have a schedule booked solid throughout the week. First off was the principal; a man with a perfect comb over and steely eyes who has always terrified me, but looked a lot less intimidating in a backwards cap and an anorak tucked into his khaki trousers. The entire teaching staff (a good thirty odd people including the receptionist, the janitor and the school nurse) got amongst it and formed a human chain from the house to moving van, passing along boxes and bubble wrapped armchairs with Amish-worthy precision. Two dozen school students also turned up, for no reason other than that they wanted to help. All the while, the principal’s obedient wife went round bowing and thanking everyone. When we were finished the principal gave us another formal thank you and gave us of as a can of beer and a small bottle of green tea.

This went on all day. Another teacher’s moving session was so emotional that a group of his students started crying. Another one had a bunch of his ex-pupils drive two hours to our town specially to lend a hand with the move. Someone gave a speech and took a photo for the town paper. A small child tried to climb onto the moving van and was pulled off, crying, by his mother. My supervisor explained that the child was sad because the only toy shop in the town had closed down so he wanted to move to Sapporo with the teachers where the toys were. No such luck.

I am expecting another full day of moving ceremonies tomorrow and my only regret is that I cannot take photos to document the bizarre ritual. Unfortunately, my camera is out of action since it fell of a piece of interactive artwork at the top of an Osakan skyscraper. So far, I have ended up with five cans of beer and a lot of green tea. The new crush arrives tomorrow afternoon. I will be sure to shave and wear a tight T-shirt and stand close to the moving truck to keep my eyes peeled for framed photos of Mariah Carey and boxes marked ‘HOT PANTS.’

Coffee, Crushes and Criminals

On hiatus due to much needed escape slash holiday to Kansai (see Facebook for photo updates), Bombay & Elaine is now back with some sort of coffee-infused vengeance.

It is odd for me, the coffee thing. For the entirety of my life, since my first sip from a Beatrix Potter mug at about age eight, I have been a tea addict. Tea with breakfast, with every snack, after every meal and every drunken purge. It is the perfect hangover cure, the perfect elixir for both first dates and catch ups with Grandmothers. I can go through several pots a day; full pots which I will refill and top endlessly. My bedroom is a mess of mugs with thick brown rings down the inside. I was given the name ‘Tea Wench’ in my favourite university flat because of my consistent meddling with the kettle and the Dilmah. Earl Grey is the king of them all, followed by the Lady Grey and then English Breakfast. Herbal tea can, for the most part, shove it. I am no tea snob however; I like it strong, plentiful and, above all things, hot. Milk is compulsory, sugar is sacrilege.

And now, for the first time in my life, the dreaded beverage of coffee has all but taken over. Coffee has always been there, occasionally delicious and frequently disappointing, but never necessary. And now, at school, I find myself addicted to the god awful stuff. And it IS the god awful stuff; a jar of instant granules which look like they’re been scraped off the factory floor. In addition to this, I add a good heaped teaspoon of BRITE; some sort of hideous milk powder which revolts and obsesses me at the same time. I add it because it’s there and because the thought of drinking the stuff black makes me shudder. The BRITE drains my beverage of any sense of naturalness, turning the liquid a revolting shit brown, like the kind of paint no one would ever choose to colour their walls with.

And down the cups go; four, five, six times a day and I am addicted. Fuck. But you should see typing speed.

I have developed a crush, of sorts, on one of fellow teachers. It has taken me months to figure this out due to the fact that he is, in real life, low on the attraction scale. I think he may even have a bit of grey in his hair, although colour distinction has never been my best subject. Still, it makes me feel old. What makes the crush so interesting to me is the fact that my brain (or other organ) has become so bored and desperate that it has sought to seek out the individual with the most crush-worthy disposition in a staffroom of middle aged crowd fillers. And now, after months of thinking that I was safely off the hook, I have fallen victim to the most ridiculous crush of my life and feel like I am in The Office.

It has taken me all weeks to figure this out; this weird little allure of the Japanese man in track pants. I shall call my theory ‘The Moltisanti appeal’ and therefore lay all future copyrights. It is my belief that, if one spends enough time with a group of individuals—no matter how heinous or dull—they will hone in on the one in the group that is the most attractive, despite the fact that in real life they make ‘ewwwww’ noises and discard them with a flick of their heads. A crush must be established in EVERY collective group in life, no matter how repugnant the group is. Every high school form class, every university hall, every summer job. The situation is completely hopeless and there is nothing that can be done about it.

For those of you have watched The Sopranos (which is incomprehensively few of you considering that is a very serious contender for the best TV show ever made), you will understand my title. Christopher Moltisani, the hot headed, insecure younger cousin of Tony Soprano, is NOT an attractive person. He has an oddly shaped nose and the suspicious beginnings of a monobrow. He wears wife beaters (and IS a wife beater or at least a fiance beater; poor Adrianna) and tracksuits and hideous gold jewellery. And yet, through the many, many hours I have spend soaking up the intensity of HBO’s masterpiece; I have been sucked into crushing the little bastard. Why? Have you SEEN the rest of the males on The Sopranos? By comparison, Christopher is a regular (pre-emo band phase) Jared Leto.

I realize the absurdity of having a homosexual crush on a character in a show where the only gay character gets beaten to death. And I must reiterate that it is not a life changing crush; I don’t intend on plastering my walls with pictures of Michael Imperoili or pausing the show on scenes of him sans shirt. In fact, Christopher is perhaps my favourite character on the show (along with Janice) for completely different reasons—because he’s such a complicated, fucked up mess who was doomed from the start—but if I was to invest so many months in The Sopranos universe, I had to find someone to crush on, and thus Moltisanti it was.

And so, with my mandatory eye candy pinned, I can relax. It is simply not natural to spend that much time with a group of people, be they real or imaginary, without singling out the one you would most like to get with if the ridiculous hypothetical ever arose. Because, who knows; maybe one day it will. As I type this, my office Moltisanti has left for lunch. When he arrives back, I will smile secretly and make myself another cup of deathly coffee. Life of sorts, is sweet.