Younger Brother is “studying” in Nanjing, China;

Older Brother left for Paraguay with a stopover in Brazil to help the less fortunate;

Mother and Father will spend time in Jejudo w/Grandmama;

Then Mother and Father plus Grandmama will go to Japan to visit Genie;

Then Mother and Father and Grandmama will go back to Jejudo;

Genie will fly out to LA the day after that;

Mother and Father will later fly back to LA.

Curious and with nothing better to do, I wondered how much mileage (and damage to the ozone layer) we were racking up…

60,866 air miles is equivalent to about 24,000 lbs. of carbon dioxide released into the air.  For comparison, Californians average about 23,000 lbs. of CO2 per year; my family is accomplishing that in a single summer (and we will likely have to travel a few more times this year).  My apologies to environmentalists (and the ozone layer)—but we gotta do what we gotta do.

On the other hand, the good news is that we have enough mileage to get free tickets for our next overseas endeavors OR upgrade to one of these babies:

Yay for more leg room!

I guess after almost a year of having had me as their ALT, they felt comfortable enough to start asking me more personal questions.  Things like:

“How old are you?”

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Who do you think is the worst teacher at this school?”

And finally,

“Why…do you have band-aids on your feet all the time?”

Good question.  Why do I have band-aids on my feet all the time? I frankly answered, “I’m covering up my tattoos.” Reaction(s):

“WhAAAAAaaaT?!?!??!?!”

“Are you YAkuZa?!?!??!!”

“Are teachers allowed to DO that?!?!??!”

…and other things of that nature.

Since tattoos are uber-taboo in Japan, I purchased every box of Band-Aid Extra Wide Sport Strips on the shelf at my local drugstore before I left for Japan.  They are the perfect size to strategically cover up my visible body ink and while they’re not completely opaque, they’re thick enough to erase any possible evidence of tattooage (see photo below and please forgive/ignore hideous pink Crocs that I must wear indoors at work everyday).

It’s an eyesore and a pain in the butt, but probably less distracting to my coworkers/kids than the actual tattoos themselves.  It also used to be a major waste of band-aids (about 1.5 band-aids—I cut one in half for my right foot—5 days a week for around 50 weeks) until I realized that I don’t have enough to hold me over for the duration of my contract.  I started panicking and shopping around for suitable Japanese band-aids but found none.  So, about two months ago, I got smart and started re-using them (eewww gro00sss she’s reeeeusing baaaand-aaaaids nyah nyah nyah, stop your pitiful whimpering because I’m not reapplying band-aids to open-wounds—I go home, rip them off, wash them, dry them, and reapply the next morning with eyelash glue.  Genie-us!!!).

Anyways, I leave you now with a Korean Grandma Story:

Grandma: “Genie, why don’t you get a tattoo?”

Genie: <Eyes bulge out of skull, am extremely confused and utterly disoriented, then lies> But Grandma, I don’t want any more tattoos…

Grandma: I just think it would be easier on you since you wouldn’t have to draw in your eyebrows anymore.

Genie: <Oh, eyebrow tattoos!!! That makes a lot more sense…whew, Grandma has not gone completely insane…>

*For those of you unfamiliar with this practice, Asian women sometimes opt to get eyeliner or eyebrow tattoos to save them the hassle of putting on makeup every morning.  I am not referring to this:

It’s something more like this:

Have a nice day!

Lots of changes are going to be taking place this summer—moving halfway across the world back to Los Angeles, living at home with my parents again, starting law school, signing away on a $100,000+ loan, and reverting back to a long-distance relationship as my boyfriend heads for St. Louis.

To start off this sea of changes, my boyfriend and I both got haircuts.

Jun has been enamored with Bear Grylls of The Discovery Channel’s Man vs. Wild as of late, and opted to shave off a good chunk of his long, Japanese pop-star locks for a more clean-cut and military look (I have secretly been wanting him to do this for a long time—2 years?—I just don’t dig dudes with long hair, unless those dudes are Johnny Depp, Anthony Kiedis, or Brad Pitt).

All in all, I think Jun looks quite dashing, and I am proud that he was able to let go of the uber-Japanese hair-in-the-face look that he had been holding on to for so long.

I, on the other hand…am completely responsible for the disaster that has become my hair.

The idea was to chop in some bangs, make my hair wavy, and hopefully look something like this:

I give you Zooey Deschanel, indie-it girl extraordinaire of the band She & Him and funny films including Yes Man, Elf, and 500 Days of Summer. She’s so darn cute.  Who wouldn’t want this haircut?

So with mission in mind, I head to the local salon. That was the beginning of Mistake #1.

Mistake #1: If I were still living in L.A., dropping in at local salon would have been no big deal—Los Angeles, fashionable metropolis and mecca not only for aspiring actors/models/rock stars, but actually home to the biggest stars in show business.  People are chronically obsessed with their self-image and appearance, so I can safely assume that any aesthetician in the city would likely put in at least of dash of effort to help me and my hairdo fit in to our narcissistic home.

And therein was my mistake—currently, “local” for me means boring town of bugs and rice fields where the most thought given to fashion might go something like “Hmmm, I wonder if these galoshes would match my dirt-encrusted farming pants” or “Wow! This T-shirt has totally incomprehensible English words on it! It must be in style.”

My “stylist” (if you could call her that) was a middle-aged skeleton of a woman lacking eyebrows but perhaps compensating for her lack of facial hair with a yard of bright yellow, heavily bleached tresses complete with 6 months worth of black roots emerging from her scalp.  I should have turned around and aborted mission right then and there.  But I am an imbecile, and I sat down to get shampooed instead.

Mistake #2: Oh yeah, I forgot, I am neither a Japanese person nor do I possess perfect fluency of the language. I can speak and understand enough to have survived visits to Japanese dentists, doctors, and physical therapists this past year—but my “stylist” seemed to only speak and understand the language of Japanese beauticians.  How do you say “No Jheri curls, please” in Japanese?  Someone teach me.  I’d really like to know for future reference.   

Mistake #3: Asking for a perm. You know, it’s pretty common for Asian girls to get perms.  They’re not dorky 1980′s perms either.  Perms in the Asian community have evolved from the one-stop, destroy-your-hair-and-look-like-your-Asian-mom perm to Digital Perms, Rainbow Perms, Wave Perms, an entire arsenal of high-tech, minimally damaging procedures that add volume and elegant spirals to normally stick-straight Asian hair.  Apparently, none of these are available as of yet in my corner of Japan—as a result, I now look like my Asian mom.

Towards the end of the debacle that was my trip to the salon, the “stylist” (I will continue to use quotation marks to emphasize the fact that this woman was not in fact a stylist, but assumed herself to be one) busts out a can of mouse and starts going wild on my hair.  I had already complained that the curls were too tight; she explained that they would loosen up in a week, but in the meantime there was nothing she could do—except unleash a gallon of hair product that only accentuates the too-tight curls that I hate in a crazed act of masquerading as a competent beautician.  I had to close my eyes and go to a happy place, one where I wouldn’t look like this:

In the end, I went home to commit harakiri, or ritual suicide by cutting of the abdomen.  Just kidding.  But I did indeed break Cardinal Law #1 of Perm-dom as soon as I humanly could—I washed my hair in a last-ditch effort to loosen Jheri’s power over my curls, and I am left with a haircut that I have to be satisfied with until I can go into hair-therapy back in L.A.

The end.  I leave you with a picture of my handsome boyfriend and a sneak-peek of My Infamous ‘Do.

…the beautiful scenery…

…the soothing sound of nature…

…and the cloud of gnats ready to be inhaled…

*cough, cough*

Instead of running away petrified, he actually tried to talk to me!

Milkboy: “Eh….uh….ah….miruku?”

Genie: “Yes, milk?”

Milkboy: “Ah! Hai! Miruku, eh-to…mmmm…takuhai?”

At this point I make a face like “as if I know what ‘takuhai’ means?!” (Which I secretly do…”home delivery”)

But he continues trying to make me comprehend what he’s trying to sell. (I’m impressed!)

He mimes an imaginary box filled with bottles of milk and makes like he’s a delivery man, carrying it to my doorstep:

Genie: “Yes! Milk delivery!”

Milkboy: “Hai! Yes! Miruku dereeburee!!”

Genie: “No thank you.” Closes door.

Sorry, Milkboy.  End of our evening game of charades.