Placemeant

It has been decided. My beautiful wife and I are going to Kobe. I don’t know how these decisions are made, or by whom. So, like everything that I don’t understand and cannot be bothered adequately researching, I make up the answers!

The Selection Process

In a shadowy room, several ancient withered men sit cross-legged in a circle. They are surrounded by piles and piles of paper. This paper holds the names of those people who have been deemed suitable for JET. (That decision was a whole different thing.)

“We need to decide where we will put these dirty foreigners,” says the oldest amongst them. “Bring forth the ninjas."

In come the ninjas. Each one has a region, um, sticky taped to his back. Yeah, sticky tape.

“Right, let’s get started. Josh... wants Kobe. Ha! Foolish gaijin. Kobe-man, show yourself!”

A ninja steps forward. He is wearing black pants, a loose black shirt and black shoes. His hair is black. His underwear is green, but that cannot be seen under all the black.

“I am the Kobe ninja.”

“Do you want this Josh guy?” The wizened man holds up a photo of a young man, grinning crazily. Some would even say manically, but they can shut the hell up.

The Kobe ninja scrutinises the photo. “Not really,” he mutters. “We were... hoping for some of those gaijin women. With the big boobies.”

“Tough!” screams the old man. “You get this guy! Unless you can fight and defeat all these other ninja for the honour of not having him!”

And then it was on. Some dudes got their arms broken. There was some breaking of furniture: tables, windows and the like, maybe a vase. One ninja caught fire and ran outside to fall into the horse trough. Oh no, hold on. That’s westerns. Forget that last one. Um, a guy got decapitated. There were some smoke bombs and lots of those little knives that ninjas have. I love those things. Mental note: buy ninja knives.

After it is all over, the Kobe ninja cries softly in the corner. “Goddamit...” he whimpers. He cradles the bloodied corpse of the Chiba ninja in his arms, but is nevertheless defeated.

“It is decided. You must have him,” says the old master. But he is merciful too, and he takes pity on Kobe ninja: “This Josh has a wife. You can have her too.”

“Does she have-?” ventures Kobe ninja.

The master only nods.

So that’s how it was decided. Pretty cool, huh? Yeah. Kobe. It was our first choice (you had to specify three. Kobe, Chiba, Osaka, for those who care.) which means we were pretty lucky to get it. Hence my title for this post. I believe this was the placement were meant to have, and I couldn’t be more excited. I also think punning on word is much cooler than intentionally misspelling words or overusing acronyms, but that’s another blog post entirely.

The next step in my plan of world conquest is to learn all I can about Kobe. In such a situation as this, I find it is best to start with a summary of your existing knowledge. Here it comes.

Thing I know about Kobe:

1. Is in Japan.

2. Has a population of heaps.

3. Helped lead the LA Lakers to championship victory three years running (2000-2002)

4. Willing to employ people of dubious moral and intellectual value.

You are thinking that my knowledge of Kobe is so complete I probably don’t even need to go there, right? But I’m sure there are things to still be uncovered about this place.

Things I don’t know about Kobe:

1. Are there robots?

2. Are there ninjas?

3. Are there ninjas who are actually robots?

4. Because Kobe is the home of Kobe beef, will I have ready access to hamburgers?

"Am I a ninja or am I a robot? Only my binary techno-chuks know for sure!”

See? Heaps to discover! I hope that you, like the shoed primate to my Mexican immigrant child, will come along on this learning journey with me! Sayonara!

Breaking News

I have exciting news. If we were to live in a world where it was even possible for my blog to be more awesome than it already is, that world would begin sometime in the months of July or August.

Why, I hear you plaintively cry? Because that, dear reader, is the time frame for my emigration to Japan! That's right, Japan, where awesomeness was invented along with Godzilla, Nintendo, giant Tanuki balls and swords so sharp they can cut through an idea.

As a man, I think I would rather plummet to my death than try to use my balls to break my fall. But that's why I'm not an awesome tanuki.

My wife and I both applied to the JET scholarship for the opportunity to be placed in Japan - where, we aren't sure just yet. I'll keep you posted on that though, count on it! - and given employment as assistant language teachers. Needless to say we were accepted. It's been in the works for a long time. (What I think is long and what a nation that didn't even really talk to other nations until the mid 1800s are two very different things.) It's also the culmination of a lot of planning and not a few sacrifices to get to a place where we could do this, so it's extremely gratifying that the selection committee recognised our passion and our ability. And our awesomeness.

So as I said, it is entirely possible that we are on the cusp of a new world of awesomeness beamed direct to you through the magical powers of the interweb. As always this will be tempered by my laziness, my body's way of telling me to do something more important. But here's where you can help! Your comments are like the twigs that keeps the sputtering flames of my soul from dying out completely. I'm already anticipating being quite out of my depth. But I also know that an experience like this will be hugely inspiring for my writing.

I may even learn how to use words other than awesome.