Engrish locks!

For those of you who don't already know it, there is yet another website that will help you pass hours of boring time at work/home. It's Engrish! Engrish (things that are nonsensical/badly translated into English) is EVERYWHERE in Japan: menus, signs, packaging, T-shirts. I thought I would post a few good ones here, just to give you an idea of the kind of world I'm living in. I'm worried America may never be funny again after having lived in Japan.

私の近所

A little bit of everyday life for you again: this is the sunset in my neighborhood of Uchidomari. why do sunsets on islands always seem to be so much more colorful? Though you can't tell, this is right over the ocean. Below is a photo I took of the same spot, several months ago in summer.

...there's more about mochi and brows

Christina reminded me that I forgot to say something about mochi: last week teachers kept telling me its going to get colder this weekend. I assumed they'd been watching the weather report. But no. Instead, it turned out that the traditional day of making something that sounded like Muchi (a special kind of purple colored mochi wrapped in large, fragrant leaves and tied with string) was last weekend. And its supposed to get cold when you make Muchi. No one could explain why to me, just... that's how it goes. Above is a photo of the muchi Matsuda-sensei brought me from her family`s muchi-making revelries. Yvonne devoured it all while in a state of extremely high-anxiety. I don't think she even noticed she was eating.

I just asked the entire teacher`s room why they make muchi and no one knew. After a long discussion, about 5 of them together turned to me and translated this story:

Once, there was sister and younger brother. The brother like to eat people then, the sister was not happy the brother ate people. So, she made muchi. In brother`s muchi, she put metal and in her muchi there was none. The brother could not chew his muchi, but he sees that his big sister she can chew hers. My sister is stronger than me, AGH!!!!! he thinks. He so surprise, sister pushes him down the mountain. And he die.

I waited for a minute, but that seemed to be the end. Soooo, I ask delicately, why do you eat muchi? A second conference. So we will become strong. No one can come up with an answer for why it is wrapped in big leaves. Or why it should become cold when muchi is made. Lastly, no one can explain why muchi should make people strong if it didnt actually make the sister strong, she just fooled her bro into thinking it made her strong by putting bits of metal in his. Hm.

One forgotten word on eyebrows, that will spiral away into an entirely larger commentary on Japanese society: Japanese beauty standards are not the same as Western ones. Grope around in your mind for stereotypical things that one may instantly find attractive on a potential mate`s head... eyes, smile, hair. Well, the Japanese over-lap in hair. Except their idea of attractive hair-styles is far different than our own. Noooooo comment. But there are a few things that you just wouldn't ever think of looking for, that the Japanese notice right off the bat. Ready?

Chin and eyebrows. Here is how this came up in (two separate) conversations.

Shouko: XXX-sensei will be driving the car.
Joyce: Who is XXX-sensei, I cant remember.
Shouko: he`s the sensei with the really hot eyebrows!
Joyce: Im sorry, I cant identify anyone that way.


Joyce: do you think XXX actor is cute?
Kanako: hmmmm. Chotto... hes cute, but...
Joyce: but what?
Kanako: his chin.
Joyce: huh?
Kanako: he has... in Japanese, we call it a butt-chin. Very ugly, ne.

The hot-brows. The butt-chin. It took several minutes of confusion on both sides after the finish of the dialogue to sort out: 1. why I couldn't figure out who XXX-sensei was from Shouko`s description, 2. why I didn't find butt-chins to be extremely unpleasant. We might notice male eyebrows if they're weird in some way: a unibrow, tatoeba. But generally speaking there is no definition for what constitutes attractive male brows. Guys just have eyebrows. No one notices what they look like. Its only girls eyebrows that matter... and do those even matter so much for us? I don't know, Im not a guy. I want to say that they are not on the list of top 5 facial features though (unless there`s the unibrow factor, once again).

Second. After a minutes thought, I determined that Americans don't particularly notice whether someone has a cleft chin or not. But that if it had to signify anything, it would be a sign of masculinity and be considered attractive. Look at our cartoon superheros, I pointed out. They ALL have cleft chins. Once I checked out a book on drawing cartoons in middle school, and I specifically remember learning that every superhero should be drawn with a cleft-chin (among other things) to give them a sense of power and manliness.

Another thing is that everyone has busted up crooked teeth in Japan... at least in Okinawa. Barely no one has braces, and people are just missing teeth, have extra teeth sticking out of weird parts of their gums, have gaps between teeth the size of the grand canyon, have teeth crossing every which way... and thats cool! Though I havent brought it up with anyone, Im assuming that teeth do not constitute the same attractive-factor for Japanese as they do for Americans. Will get back to you if I figure out anything more.

Running for Peace

Me and Chiye ready to protest

Saturday was the annual Okinawa Teacher`s Union anti-base pro-peace Marathon! Lets get it out of the way: this is where I found myself dashing past a solitary cherry tree. Ever since US military bases have been stationed on this tiny island, hundreds of teachers have come together (in teams of 20 from each school) to run an 18km relay-marathon around Kadena Air force Base each year.

Right: my buddies Matto and Shouta sensei gearing up

Yup, they want the bases to beat it. The fact that the base is 18km around its perimeter should give you an idea of how big Kadena is: plopped splat in the middle of the island, a vast span of undeveloped green fields in the heart of a sprawling city, surrounded by high fences and barbed wire. Signs line the fence in both English and Japanese: US military property. Warning, this perimeter is patrolled by guard dog teams. Or some such nonsense. I don`t live within sight distance of a base, so when confronted with one so close up, I wonder what the people who live here must feel. They walk these sidewalks along the barbed wire everyday. They hear the roar of JET engines soaring over their homes and schools, rattling the windows. Marines walk the streets among the Okinawans, Y-plate cars (US military personnel) are everywhere. Shops are labeled in English. What is it like to be Okinawan and live on this island, where 2 cultures have been forced to exist together, though barbed wire, skin color, and language keep them apart?

Below: running vests of one of the school teams.
For all Okinawans except the elderly, an unoccupied homeland is a dream they have never seen as reality, though they have heard stories from their parents or grandparents. If we count Japan's annexation of Okinawa as occupation (which I personally do), than there are no living Okinawans who can remember an independent Ryukyu nation. Okinawans are a peace-loving people, if there ever was one. This marathon is a form of non-violent protest again Okinawan occupation and US militarization.

I was flattered to be asked to run with Ginowan High`s relay team. I actually agreed to it by accident, but was flattered in after-thought. This one teacher whose name I don't know was talking to me in Japanese about marathons. Ive been running (that is, performing a feeble half hour jog) with a few teacher friends here who are training for the Okinawa marathon in February and I was positive that's what we were discussing. I'm nodding and looking engaged but really not understanding what he is saying, as usual. I realize suddenly that he had posed me a question. Uh... yes! I answer, with all the certainty I can bluster. And that's how I was assigned piece #8, distance 1km, of the Relay Marathon.

Above: a mother and daughter run together. The child`s vest reads something like, `as long as there are bases on Okinawa, our bright future will never come`

Well, come on, 1km. that's like .6 miles, I can jog that. Sweeeeet kinda marathon, I`m thinking. Oh no, Joy-su. My friend Shouko informs me. Dash-u desu yo. What? It`s a 1km DASH? You want me to DASH half a mile?! Yeeeeeeaaaaah they did.

So, on a bright and brisk morning last weekend, we all piled into the van at Ginowan High. Spirits are high, hearts are happy, and people seem to be looking forward to running. I, on the other hand, am tallying the scarce hours of sleep that I have gotten in the past 3 days on my 10 digits, rubbing my bleary eyes, and gulping caffeine like a mad woman on steroids. Though I had performed remarkably well at the practice marathon (we actually did an entire marathon in order to practice for the real one... so Japanese) on Monday, uncontrollable life events had deprived me of sleep and appetite that week, and my dashing performance was... less than spectacular on Saturday. Lucky for me no one really cared if we won, it was just about protesting. I began my dash feeling like things were going well. I passed the dude from team #18. Then about 10 guys passed me (I forgot to explain that I was running the kilometer reserved for 40-year-old men. Why was I placed here I will never know. That`s just how it goes in Japan). About 20 seconds into it I began to feel light headed. And soon thereafter this mantra was floating through my head:

I am Jack`s lungs, exploding inside him. I am Jack`s delusional state.

Mom, sorry you don't watch movies and cant get the quotes.

Right: 2 teachers from my school

Too bad for me that the last 300 meters of my lame little km were uphill. At this point I was moving at a stumbling fast-walk, sounded like I was having an asthma attack, and had Matto-sensei riding his motorcycle along side me, shouting a constant stream of encouragement in Jenglish. I literally stopped moving and tossed the baton to the next sensei at the finish line. And fell asleep 5 minutes later in the van. The moral of this story is 1. never let yourself get out of shape or you will die 2. don't answer yes when you don't understand the question. Last-o: try to sleep before a marathon.

Below you see our entire group including many who didn't run but who were there for moral support. Every one was informed of my near death, and by Monday morning every teacher was coming up to me in the hall and saying: good job joyce! are you ok?!?

The great thing about this marathon is that every year, the teachers who are retiring in March come and run. So it doubles as a farewell celebration for those guys, who have given like 40 years of their lives to teaching in Okinawa. Below you see the team tossing a Ginowan High retiree in the air with three cheers. Despite near death, it was a merry day indeed.

#1000

O happy DAY! Hit #1000 was none other than my very second blurker unveiled! What a courageous soul. To reward her bravery I did not only a mental jig, but one spin to the left AND one spin to the right for her status as Hit #1000. See what they think of that in the teachers room. Yes, lets continue the trend, blurking buddies far and wide. And now, finally, the next entry will address dashing by a cherry tree.

Blurkers

I know I promised that my next entry would explain why I was dashing by a cherry tree. I lied. That will be the entry after this one. Lets have a chat about anonymous blog readers. About a month back I put up a hit counter on my blog. You will all be happy to notice that it is fast approaching 1000, and possibly I will remember to do a small mental jig (or maybe twirl around once in my desk chair for no apparent reason, giving my neighboring senseis gaijin brain fodder for hours) when that happens. For now though, I find myself wondering just who all these people are who read my blog. Friends! Family! You say. Well I'm sure some of them are. But it just so happens that, though I have no way of knowing who a specific person is, I can see which countries people are reading my blog from. Ha-ha! You tremble with fear.

There are people from 28 countries reading my blog. Twenty-eeeeeeight. Do you want the breakdown? Let's see the tally as of January 29th:

Japan 553 (56.72%)
United States 246 (25.23%)
Germany 46 (4.72%)
France 28 (2.87%)
Canada 22 (2.26%)
Netherlands 16 (1.64%)
China 10 (1.03%)
United Kingdom 10 (1.03%)
Guatemala 9 (0.92%)
India 5 (0.51%)
Austria 4 (0.41%)
Korea, Republic of 3 (0.31%)
Turkey 3 (0.31%)
Colombia 2 (0.21%)
New Zealand 2 (0.21%)
Portugal 2 (0.21%)
Singapore 2 (0.21%)
Spain 2 (0.21%)
Brazil 1 (0.10%)
Bulgaria 1 (0.10%)
Chile 1 (0.10%)
Italy 1 (0.10%)
Macao 1 (0.10%)
Poland 1 (0.10%)
Qatar 1 (0.10%)
Sweden 1 (0.10%)
United Arab Emirates 1 (0.10%)
Vietnam 1 (0.10%)

Yeeeeeah. I know people in some of these countries. I lived in Germany, Japan, and America, it makes sense. I can name specific friends o' mine in Guatemala, Chile, China, Sweden, among others. I can stretch my mind further and attest to knowing people who live in, er, Qatar and Turkey... though how they would possibly know about my blog is beyond me. But what really keeps me awake at night is the many blurkers of fascinating nationalities who have somehow stumbled upon my blog.

Where are they coming from?! WHERE!?! Come on, how many of you readers actually know where Macao is without looking at a map? Be honest with yourself when answering that question. Be honest! Did someone in the United Arab Emirates google "mochi " and randomly end up read my opinion about jiggling mouthfuls of grandmas arm fat? What's going on here, for the love of god?

Blurkers, it is up to you and no one else to bring me peace of mind! Leave a comment! Tell a story! In order to encourage you, I will tell a real life story about one courageous blurker who did just that. The name of the story is

Snellius, I commend you!
One day a few months ago, before the days of the Hits Counter, I went out on Friday night at a bar in Naha with some friends (this bar was the famous Paul and Mikes!) My friend Christina is chatting with a fellow at the bar, some gaijin (foreigner) that I've never seen before. I go to ask her something, and the fellow she's chatting with turns to me with a smile and says something like "Hello! You're Joyce, aren't you?" Needless to say, I am dumbstruck. A very Japanese "ehhhhhhh?!" is gliding through my head. As I stare at him, no doubt doing my best deer in headlights impression, he explains further, "I recognize you from your blog!" Snellius, from the Netherlands, was on vacation in Okinawa. Before departure, he did some google browsing for info on Okinawa, read a few blogs, one of which was mine, and lo and behold: though his adventures in Okinawa are now over and done for, Snellius is an ex-blurker risen to the ranks of faithful blog reader and commentator! Voila.

Isn't that a good story? What are the odds of a random man from the Netherlands stumbling across the blog of a teacher on the other side of the globe, then bumping into her in a bar and recognizing her from the blog photos, several months later? I tell you, there is a God. Though now that I think of it, this kind of thing happens to me frequently. Once in 2001, for instance, I met a Nicaraguan for 10 minutes in the Paris train station... fast-forward to when I lived in Nicaragua later. One day walking home from work in the out-of-the-way city of Estelí, a car stops dead in the middle of the road. And by god, guy from the Paris train station leaps out, throws his arms open to the heavens and shouts my name (which isn't exactly easy to remember for non-English speakers). Re-united! Bam. He's just driving through the city on his way to the other side of the country or something. And then there was the time me and Ainsley ran into Liz Hodley and Meredith Jenkens from McDougle middle school in the middle of the night, New Years, on the eiffel tower... the exact details of that are fuzzy. I just remember the crazy Australians we were with thought it would be a great idea to race up the Eiffel tower steps. We may have all passed out after the exertion. Oh, there was also Basti and Sven, 2 Germans who I once met in a youth hostel in Europe and, without exchanging any contact information, managed to run into again in both Spain and France.

Off subject. Again.
If you are a person from one of these mystery countries, douzo! Have a go at a comment. Nothing to say, say it anyway! Throw off the anonymity! Everyone wants to know how it feels to live in a small Portuguese speaking nation surrounded by China.

Okinawa cherry blossoms

Everyone has heard of Japanese cherry blossoms, and the famous Viewing thereof. What people don't know is that the very first cherry blossoms of Japan bloom in Okinawa, in January: several months before the blossoms on the southernmost tips of the mainland even consider opening their buds to the sun. The cherry trees in Okinawa are not the same species as on mainland Japan. Their blossoms are small and bright pink. They bloom very briefly, before they fall. Though I missed my chance to go north and see the festival, luck was with me yesterday. In my day's wanderings (to be read about in the next entry) I stumbled upon a lone cherry tree. I dashed over and took a few minutes time with the tree. Here are a few photos I snapped.

The Art of Eyebrows

6 months here now, and there are many things I've gotten used to. One of them is people's physical appearances. I'm usually shocked to see myself in the mirror and realize I`m not Asian. If I see any non-Asian walking around my neighborhood I am apt to tail them suspiciously for several blocks, trying to figure out what they are doing there. I myself get looked at cross-ways by many neighborhood folk. Sometimes small children just stop whatever they're doing and stare at me open-mouthed when I walk into my apartment building. A foreigner on the streets is one thing, but a foreigner in your own neighborhood throws kids for a loop. Good Evening, i say to them in Japanese. Stare stare stare no answer. Ah, except for the one little 3 year old girl who lives upstairs from me. The first time she saw me getting out of my car (she was on the third floor dangling her feet through the balcony rails) her face lit up with joy, and she began waving frantically and peeping, `Hello! hello! hello! hello!` Clearly someone is getting an early start on English lessons! Now every time i see her its like this:
Child: hello!
Joyce: Hello!!
Child: hello!!!
Joyce: Hello!!!!
...until I am out of sight or her parents have shoved her into the car and locked the doors. She`s my best friend in the neighborhood, and I don't even know her name.

You're wondering what this has to do with eyebrows. Nothing, I just got off track. As I was saying, I have grown accustomed to people's appearances here. So much so that I have utterly failed to mention Japanese eyebrows on this blog.

Similar to the habits of mayoraa, the information I am about to divulge to you may blow your mind. Though it will not turn your stomach.

Let's start with some background. Japanese people really don't like body hair. They find dark arm hair, for instance, quite unattractive, and sometimes shave their arms. It is popular for females here to shave their entire faces. The hair removal/dying/shaving aisle at the store is the size of Tajikistan. Eyebrow hair has not escaped the fashion frenzy or the product rush:

MINI EYEBROW RAZORS!
Product Features

* Mini razors from Japan, made especially for eyebrow grooming for men and women

* Each long-lasting high quality stainless steel blade is a half-inch long, making it easy to reach even the smallest areas. Blade guards protect tender skin.
* Eliminate painful tweezing forever
* Shape eyebrows with greater precision on top and bottom
* Comes in a package of 3, each with a different handle color - share, take them with you, or keep one color for eyebrows and another for hairline and neck area

99% of people here clip their eyebrow hair to one half or one fourth its natural length. I used to think that Japanese people's eyebrow hair just didn't grow much compared to ours, but no, there is clippage occurring. Many take it further and shave off the hair entirely! Or, more popularly, they leave it a short razored stubble. Lots of girls paint in thin little fake brows over the stubble.

One of my students sporting the Stubble Brow

One of my students sporting the No Brow

Then there are the guys that shape their brows. The shaping of brows into thin lines and delicate arches doesn't really cross gender lines in America, and this is why Japanese males put foreigners off their gender-balance upon first sight. And the fact that most of them style their longish hair and some of them wear eyeliner might add to the effect. Gender-shmender! It's the word in Japan. Dudes are just as into hair styling, fashion, and eyebrow shaving/plucking/bleaching/arching/shaping as females in this here country. It's just COOL. Take a look at a Japanese fashion magazine. Besides the female models, every male model will have Brow Power happening. How about some more real life documentation?

One of my students sporting the ultimate thin arches, as well as some eyebrow paintage (this kid is really cool)

This kid is a very popular bad-ass. He has chosen a tougher thickness, but still shows signs of some serious brow design and shaving. Ah, note the white hand towel wrapped around his head. Guys like to wear those here.
Now this kid moves in brainier/less cool circles than the previous two, but he gets big points for being on the soccer team. He's got the start-big-go-little...aaaarch! thang goin' on.

I had a Q+A session with one of my third year classes, and somehow eyebrow fashion came up. I told them that people don't shave their eyebrows in America, and that only girls had shaped stuff going on. Furthermore, Americans would go so far as to think that Japanese people were "weird" if they saw, say, the kid in the above picture's brow walking down the street. They all just stared at me agog. They asked again and again.... really? people don't shave their eyebrows off???? Honto ni????? They couldn't believe it, I mean these kids looked like they'd just found out they were adopted. Don't they watch American movies all the time? Aren't they obsessed with MTV? Did they never see that Brad Pitt and Puff Daddy don't sport the Mt. Fugi-Arch???

Yes, I shook them to the core that day, and some of them may never recover.

My good friend Yvonne-sensei has reported an intriguing brow pattern from her own school, which does not seem to be present at Ginowan High. A small clique of boys are plucking their brows into a short, straight line. She's still trying to figure out the social significance of it all. I myself am trying to determine the meaning of eyebrows altogether. While I do that, take a look at this short newspaper article:

Shaved eyebrows banned
By Kjeld Duits, Monday May 16, 2005

The Mainichi Shinbun reports today that four new junior high school students were banned from attending an opening day ceremony at a school in Kagoshima in April because they had shaved their eyebrows.

Officials from the Hishikari Junior High School said the four girls were excluded from the ceremony because “We wanted to show them how important it is to stick to the rules.”

The officials decided that shaved or short eyebrows were unacceptable.

“In a pre-enrollment meeting, I explained the school’s requirements regarding appearance and uniforms, but they did not abide by these instructions, so I decided that it would be difficult for the four to take part,” principal Toshinori Hoka was quoted in the article.

The girls were made to wait outside during the ceremony. They were allowed to take part in all other events that day to mark their entrance into junior high school.

Well, I hadn't realized it was controversial. Imagine them trying to pull that at my school. All the teachers would have to go home too. Who would be left?

Joy-su:
the Lone Gaijin Warrior!

お餅 (o-mochi)

What does Joyce rank almost as high on the Icky List as mouthfuls of mayonnaise? Mochi!!!! Mochi is a favorite traditional Japanese food. It's made from rice... just like everything else in this country. Mochi is described as a rice cake, but this description makes it sounds
1. hard in texture
2. rather pleasant (which fails to express mochi's true nature).
OK lets be fair, many, perhaps even most(?), foreigners DO find mochi to be a swell thing, but for a texture-sensitive palate such as my own (and I know my sister Sandi will heartily agree with me on the texture business) mochi is grossy. How can I help convey the texture of mochi to those of you who have yet to feel its charms? Some mochi is harder than other mochi, but generally speaking it is very soft. Perhaps the closest sensation I can compare the chewing of mochi to is chewing a big mouthful of the silky smooth wrinkly old sags of skin hanging from your grandmothers underarm.

Mochi can be presented beautifully (these pics are lifted from the internet, btw):
...and mochi can have its true nature disguised through the artful use of shape and flavor, such as in this gift box below:

Top row, from left: Nantu mochi (filled with an, dipped in soy-bean flour), sweet-potato mochi, traditional white mochi, yaki manju (baked) and tsumami mochi (green, filled with an). Row 2: Momo (peach) mochi, furusato manju (baked with sweet-potato filling), chi chi mochi (soft, milk-flavored), plum flower (red for good luck, with red azuki-bean filling) and sweet-potato mochi.

But Japanese people like to eat mochi no matter how it comes, kind of like the Whos down in Whoville. Mochi doesn't need presents! Or ribbons! Or wrappings! The tags! And the tinsel! The trimmings! The trappings! Right. Mochi is happily devoured in the simple form of sticky rice mash rolled in soy bean powder. Absolutely no taste at all. Just grandma's jiggle, squishing between your molars. Oozing back and forth across your tongue. Clinging with sickly joy to the roof of your mouth as you desperately try to swallow the cloying mass.

Well, a few weeks ago we had a teacher`s New Years party. Mochitsuki is the name of the traditional mochi-pounding ceremony in Japan, whereby mochi is made. Except nowadays it's made by machines in large factories. But traditionally it was done in the way detailed below. This is a common activity at the New Year. For our Mochitsuki party, we rented a ginormous mochi-making mush kit! The photos below are all mine from mochi-making, but the 3 steps are not mine, I lifted them from the internet:

step 1. Polished glutinous rice is soaked overnight and cooked.

step 2. The wet rice is pounded with wooden mallets (kine) in a traditional mortar (usu). Two people will alternate the work, one pounding and the other turning and wetting the mochi. They must keep a steady rhythm or they may accidentally injure one another with the heavy kine. Below: me pounding mochi! That's the principle behind me!

step 3. The sticky mass is then formed into various shapes (usually a sphere or cube).
Well that was simple enough! Above are the hands of my teachers, grabbing globs of mochi, rolling it in simple soy bean powder, and then plopping it on plates. As you can see, homemade mochi is not as beautiful as mochi bought in the store. The dark red mash to the far left is sweetened adzuki bean paste, which is probably the top component to be found in a variety of Japanese sweets. We weren't nimble-fingered enough to encase the beans inside the mochi balls, but had no trouble getting them both in our mouths at the same time.

Lets have some more interesting mochi trivia from Wiki:

In Japanese folk tradition, rabbits living on the Moon produce mochi in the traditional method with mallets and mortars. (This legend identifies the markings of the moon as a rabbit pounding mochi).

After each new year, it is reported in the Japanese media how many people die from choking on mochi. The victims are usually elderly. Because it is so sticky it is difficult to dislodge via the Heimlich maneuver...some lifesaving experts say that a vacuum cleaner is actually efficient for [removing] stuck mochi.


Above, my supervisor Junko-sensei and her twin daughters pound away. Mochi making equals fun for the whole family!!!!

my 2 dolla mistake

I think I forgot to tell most of you that I chopped all my hair off by mistake in Vietnam. Though some mistakes can cost you a lot, this one ended up putting me back a lucky $2 (and some hair). The Vietnamese hairdresser nodded enthusiastically as Christina repeated, "trim! trim!" and showed her with her hands how far down my hair should reach. The hairdresser seemed to be doing an alright job at first, snip-snipping away. We allowed our attention to lag. Well, mine didnt lag, I kept up a steady babble of `oh my god why am i cutting my hair its going to be too short is it too short should i really cut it are you guys positive it feels like shes cutting a lot off`. But since I do that every time my hair is cut, people tend to block it out. Ha! The Joyce that cried wolf. Suddenly, she began grabbing massive handfuls of the hair on the right side of my head and hacking it off. HACK HACK!!! As the continuous stream of my chatter reached previously unheard decibils, Christina and friends finally decided to see what I was on about and come look at my head (they were sitting on the other side of it). Indeed, I was hairless on the right side, despite Christina stopping her as quick as could be. Alas. So she hacked off half as much on the other side. And I limped out, distraught and lopsided. The story ends on a happy note, however, as Christina fixed it all up so you'd never really know I only have hair on one side of my head.

Except you do, cuz i'm telling you.