This is no country for old men

How did things come to this?

Over the past week, I've been coming to grips with a rather horrifying realisation that I'm getting old. Off course I've always known intellectually, but it didn't really hit me emotionally until recently. When you're younger, you have a feeling of immortality and invulnerability. Now it's starting to wear off and I'm starting to look both ways when I cross the road again.

The fact that I live in Japan, a country so obsessed with appearance and youth that you're considered useless by the age of 17 isn't helping. By Japanese standards, I look over a decade older than I really am. By my standards, some of the 40 year old businessmen I teach look young enough to have gone to University with me.

Not that I was ever cool to begin with, but I'm certainly not getting any cooler as the years go by. My taste in music is already being called old fashioned by some of my younger students (to paraphrase 'Ministry of Sound is so 1999). My friends are either married, published or have (*shudder*) careers. Some of them have a combination of the two. I haven't seriously sat down and played a video game or watched some anime all year.

W
T
F
?

This was not how I hoped things would turn out...

-Blake

--

An open letter of apology

Hello everyone. I'm still alive in Japan, surviving anyway I can on the mean streets of Anjo.

I jut wanted to apologise to my mother for not doing anything for Mother's Day. I had my reasons (the main one being that I believed, contrary to all evidence that Mother's Day in Australia was in September) Which is bad in itself, if she had not been hospitalised that night as well.

So get better Mum, the get well package is already in the mail

-Blake

There are two things in life that scare me....

One is cleaning out my bathroom sink. The other are the masters of the shadows, otherwise known as the humble ninja

Here is a video I made when I was at a Ninja village in Ueno, Mie prefecture to Ninjas in their natural habitat



Enjoy!