 
THE FLOWERS OF KEIHWA

By S. Michael CHOI

Copyright 2011 by S. Michael Choi

Revised Edition, copyright 2013.

Revised Edition, copyright 2017

ISBN 9781465759894

Published at Smashwords

The moral right of the author to be accredited this work is asserted.

To: गणेश

ॐ) You are (the Trinity) Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesa. You are Indra. You are fire and air. You are the sun and the moon. You are Brahman. You are Bhuloka, Antariksha-loka, and Swargaloka. You are ॐ).
WEEK 1

After years of working in the dusty westlands of factory country China, the former English-major TUSK spends a few weeks in Seoul:

As soon as TUSK walked into the basement lobby of the graduate dorm, he knew something was up. There were thirty highly attractive Japanese girls standing around with luggage. The game had begun.

KANYE was a Black-American from Philadelphia, a graduate of Notre Dame and Fulbright scholar assigned to research fisheries in Eastern South Korea. In truth KANYE had no interest in fisheries, salmon, tuna, herring, whatsoever, but somebody in the highest reaches of the U.S. government had decided that this was the one missing piece of Fulbright-led research in existence, and with no otherwise qualified candidates, they picked KANYE out of the year's crop of three hundred successful applicants and told him to write as much about halibut as possible. With change in the air and managers rapidly floated through rotation, nobody bothered to check up much on KANYE. He spent most of his time listening to hip-hop and R&B on his iPod and looking forward to scholarship-paid for language studies at Keihwa in February.

JOHANN was a musician and economics-specialist from Hamburg , Germany. Orphaned early in life and brought up in a state home for children, JOHANN distinguished himself early in life with his academic talent and was assigned to the most prestigious Gymnasium in his Stadt/Lander. Perversely, the experience of growing up not fully German in Germany made JOHANN more German than German. Of all the Germans in the world, only JOHANN still thought every day about the Third Reich. Brilliant in analytical talent, trained to the highest possible degree at Germany 's best universities to just shy of the doctoral level, JOHANN, 26, was the middle-in-age of the three boys in the 2/1 Class at Keihwa that Februrary (TUSK is 30, KANYE is 22). He was the fulcrum of the group: events revolved around him. But it was not necessarily the fulcrum where the real action takes place; that is a question involving subjective judgment and the definition of success itself.

2/1 became the centre of activity the first year, and then the off-centre of activities the second. Although slightly repetitious in tone, it must be reported that the question of success itself is the question of this material; which permits full understanding engagement with the reader's conceptions and value judgments themselves.

"Um, are you seeing what I'm seeing?"

"Yeah, we're at a programme with the three hundred girls. There are no Japanese boys in sight. This is going to be awesome."

"Right, but listen. Japanese culture is actually pretty complex. I actually lived there two years; I can speak intermediate-level spoken Japanese. If you work with me, actually I can really help you out."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah, seriously KANYE. Believe me I have no ill will towards you whatsoever. We can just divide up these three hundred girls together and things are going to be pretty awesome."

JOHANN jumps in. "Okay if you're so good, TUSK, what has been said in class so far?"

"Thank you. When the girls of the 2/1 class walked into our classroom this morning, actually something pretty special happened. The Japanese language has three commonly-used suffixes to last names to indicate formality, respect, and degree of closeness: -san, -kun, -chan. When strangers meet in Japanese culture, they use the –san suffix with the last name and the polite but not formal level of language, a formality level that indicates basic respect and politeness and a crisp, business-like sense of efficiency and getting things done. Japanese learning Korean inevitably settle on an interesting compromise: they use the Korean –sshi suffix (a level which roughly translates to 'lord' or 'lady' in Japanese) but with the first name to moderate the formality impact of that unusual ending. Hence, two girls will call each other 'Akiko-sshi' and 'Masako-sshi' whilst learning Korean. In contrast to this compromise spoken solution, they write out their full names on their name cards. 'Watanabe Misako,' ' Takasaki Junko,' 'Nakata Akemi.' That is the normal practice of Japanese students anywhere— Germany , USA , Japan itself. Whereas two Americans call each other 'John' and 'Tod' immediately, two Japanese call each other 'Miss Tanaka' and 'Miss Furoda' at first, and then slowly, indeed unconsciously start using first names or less formal language.

"When our girls ('our' of course being merely a term of expedience); when our girls walked in, something immediately changed. Perhaps because KANYE has that funny looking name-card, perhaps because our teacher looks really little-girlish, perhaps because we seem to have most of the foreigners in the program in our class, our girls decided to 'let down their hair,' so to speak. Instead of spelling out their full names on their namecards, everyone is just going by first name. This is really positive."

"So," asked JOHANN, "what difference does that make?"

"What is means is that our class is going to be really special. This is literally the sixth hour of the program, but we're already in the catbird seat."

"This isn't really actionable information. What specifically has been said in class so far?"

So far nothing of real importance. Although the girls are loosening up to us, they are remaining on the –desu business efficiency level with each other, asking each other such things as 'May I sit here please?' or 'Which prefecture in Japan might you come from?' So far nobody has revealed anything about themselves; one might be the daughter of one of Japan's greatest industrialists and another might be a farmer's fifth child and dirt poor, but nobody can tell any of these things about anybody yet; everybody is just apparently upper-middle class so far as can be told. We have five girls: ERI, AKEMI, MIKI, SHINO, RITSUKO, but so far available information on them is limited to the fact that MIKI is really tall and AKEMI is especially small and cute.

KANYE looked at JOHANN. "It doesn't really sound like much."

JOHANN remained silent.

KANYE: "I think actually if you listen to me, things will go well for you."

"Come on, dude, okay you're black and you're fashionable, that doesn't mean you're the coolest dude here."

"But that's where you're wrong, 'dude.' Actually see that guy there?"

KANYE points at a tall, heavy-built blonde boy elsewhere in the study lounge.

"That's my best friend. We're on something called the Fulbright programme, meaning we're on nice fat scholarships to jump around Korea all we want and do research and teach at city halls. Just about every other foreigner here—and look carefully, there's eight or nine of us—is on Fulbright. So we all know each other, we all like each other, and you guys are actually the two odd balls out. Sorry you couldn't figure that out, but maybe you can hang with us if you're cool."

And KANYE got up and left.

"Shit," said TUSK.

JOHANN remained silent.

"He's right, don't you get it?" said TUSK.

JOHANN remained silent.

"We're not going to be playing by U.S. or even Western rules for the next three weeks; there are three hundred Japanese girls and twelve foreigners, so the dominant culture of this program will be Japanese. And those guys already know each other, they're all already pals, so we're going to be completely cut out of the action."

"I agree and I disagree with you. If you're actually interested in controlling things, yes; but if you just want to learn Korean and meet some new people, they're not going to dictate anything."

"I propose we work together. I think you believe things will turn out happily in the end for us, but Japanese culture is rigid and tightly-governed by rules. This advantage the Fulbrighters have is insurmountable, and if we don't cooperate, we're going to be suborned for three weeks."

"I respect your proposal. However, I will wait and see. In Germany, we look at a person for at least a month before we even consider becoming friends."

"Great. This program is three weeks."

"Patience, TUSK."

"I'll tell you one thing, though JOHANN. KANYE doesn't have every card. He wrote on his namecard, 'DOJO YOSHI' because he realized he was surrounded by Japanese girls."

"And the girls laughed."

"Yes, they thought it was cute. But the translation is something like 'House of Steven.' A Japanese guy writing that down on his namecard at a Spanish-language program filled with Americans is thought kinda cute, but not really cool per se."

ᴥ

The first meeting of the boys broke up with further ado, and the boys went their separate ways, observed as it were by AKEMI and SHINO. Actually circumstances are far more circumscribed than reported, TUSK managed to finagle his way unto the two flights from China only because he had no luggage whatsoever, and wearing only his PLA officer's sweater on top of green cargo pants, he's already been stared at more than once by the local Koreans and he needed to get more clothes, quick. He also needed to shave, to cut his nails, cut some nose hairs, wash some of the Xinjiang desert dirt out of his hair, and all the other basic hygiene habits expected out of First Worlders. China had made him slack. As if all this were not enough, Yale had asked him to alumni interview the entire three weeks: he had twenty consecutive appointments with Korean... girls. Oh god. From the pajama-clad and buck-naked coolies of western China , TUSK was now going to be surrounded by no less than four hundred girls in the next three weeks. Things had to be done.

JOHANN had his own agenda. TUSK is immediately proud and advertising of his hidden capability in Japanese, but JOHANN in addition to English and German speaks an entirely fluent, not even intermediate, MANDARIN. TUCK had not noticed, but there is a contingent of about twenty Mandarin speakers at the program, including two very attractive Taiwanese girls. JOHANN will play with J-girls--and he will play with C's and K's as well. This is going to be the full-court press, and not even a Fulbright Programme will stop him.

"Deutschland?"

"Yes, indeed," said CAROLINE.

"I think there's one other German at this programme."

"A Fachhochshuler."

"Yes."

"I believe he works in Events Promotion."

"The Americans here are very interesting though."

"How so?"

"Apparently one is American and gunning to find a Japanese girlfriend. He speaks Japanese, is trying to build some sort of alliance, and won't play nice with the other Americans."

"Sounds very petty to me."

"Yes, I suppose so. But I see you are married."

"Yes, I am married to a Korean."

"You might be entertained by the way things go over the next few weeks."

"Just studying the language."

The two Germans continued to speak, but much of the essence of their initial meeting had already been accomplished. In elitist German society, the third German at the programme, Sebastian, will already only interact with the other two so long as he does not forget that he is the most junior member. Whereas CAROLINE is a graduate of LUDWIG MAXIMILLIAN MUNICH and JOHANN has a master's degree from HEIDELBERG, Sebastian was streamed out of the top academic track at the age of eleven and ended up going to only what is the equivalent of a community college or polytechnic in Germany for his tertiary education. In this way his fate has been sealed before he even grew his first pubic hair and Germans, classist, cold, rational, see nothing wrong with this; they accept this feature of their culture as inevitable and appropriate. Yet simultaneously, as much as outsider observers feel slightly agog at this particularly Germanic nuance of culture, it still has yet to be proven that any Fachhochshuler has accomplished anything of great note; some have indeed ascended to high positions in business or even government, but none has yet in the last hundred years become a Nobel Prize winner, a creator of genuine literature, or a discoverer of fundamental science. Fate or self-fulfilling prophecy? Only time will tell.

"My last name is Von Bock."

"A Junker name."

"Awarded to my grandfather solely for artistic achievements in facade design."

"I do music myself."

JOHANN, orphaned at birth, parted ways with CAROLINE but not before exchanging contact information. They were assigned to different classes--JOHANN 2/1 and CAROLINE 2/2, but both would be useful to each other, if only for the moment's respite to speak their native language.

ᴥ

Having examined in close detail the first interactions of the three boys in 2/1 and then two of the three Germans of the program, it is time now to pan the field of vision outward and look on a macroscopic level at the program at large, the zeitgeist of the times, the overarching picture of the reality-frame rather than the detail. This is the year 20xx. For reasons of literary expedience, MIKI KAWABATA is hereby designated the prototypical student of the 2/1 class at Keihwa University Winter Intensive Korean Language Program (KUWIKLP). Aside from being abnormally tall, slightly more elite than average, generally better at English than average, and terrible at cooking, MIKI is for many reasons the "most average" student at 2/1. Her university (CHUO) is a bit better than average, but to contrast this, her age at 26 is a bit higher than average for a fourth-year student. The oldest of three children (one younger sister, one much younger brother), MIKI's education was delayed after her parents lost considerable money in the RECRUIT fraud scandal. Although graduating firmly in the top 20% of her decently-reputable high school, Miki had to work for three years at various temporary secretarial positions before beginning college. She was thus older beginning university, but once becoming a fourth year student, she felt that her increased maturity and exposure to the "real world" made her a more serious student, got her more out of her university years, and set her firmly on the track to a practical career in marketing after graduation, as compared to the aspiring poets, philosophers, painters or whatnot of the arts programs at CHUO.

Miki had heard about KUWIKLP through the student affairs office at CHUO. Aichi Shotuku University had a designated program for Korean language students that operated in cooperation with Keiwha and if the program had cost roughly the equivalent of USD 800 in years past, with the strengthening yen and the dramatically depreciating won, by some measures the entire three weeks at Keiwha would cost roughly the purchasing power equivalency of USD 250. Add another USD 200 for housing and the total cost of the program, USD 450, was less than what some students spent in a month on nights out drinking and singing karaoke. The relaxation factor of spring break would be lost, but in return Miki hoped to gain considerable skills in real-world communicative Korean, perhaps make some new international friends, see more of Seoul, and do a little shopping before she returned for her final year of university studies. She was not, repeat not, interested in making a Korean or other nationality boyfriend; if it happened she would not stop it, but she estimated (correctly) before the program that she would not meet anyone and she would not be engaging in active pursuit of any kind. Miki's final distinguishing characteristic was that she was a little better traveled than most. Through a student exchange program, she had been to the US for one semester and she had also visited Guam , Thailand , and actually Korea for one week. On arriving at Seoul, she was not infected with "first time abroad fever;" she knew enough to rest and relax her first few days because she would be abroad for three weeks and ultimately gain more out of those three weeks if she didn't burn out in the first 72 hours.

Fascinated in Korean language, music, and culture since an early age, MIKI belonged to a distinct minority of Japanese who actually liked the neighboring country. It is important to designate this particular category accurately, because one might err in both directions in characterizing the exact tenor of the relationship. To say that most Japanese disliked Korea is not an overstatement. To say that most Koreans disliked Japan is similarly not exaggerating facts on the ground. But to say that every Japanese despised Korea and every Korean hated Japan is without question dramatically erring on matters. To characterize matters accurate requires metaphor: how do Americans feel about Mexico? How do Germans feel about Poland? Japanese-Korean relations existed somewhere in between both models, in one sense, but dramatically less so in another. At time of program start, US GDP per capita was 343% of Mexican GDP per capita. German GDP per capita was 191% of Polish GDP per capita. But Japanese GDP per capita was merely 113% of Korean GDP per capita. Did Japanese people feel they were only 13% better than Koreans? Certainly not. But exactly that financial ratio underlay the stress-inducing dynamic of the relationship between the two countries; the one rising power on the one hand and the other gently-going-to-seed former imperial power on the other. During World War II, the Imperial German regime had managed to kill 322,000 Americans whereas Japan only managed to kill 159,000 U.S. military personnel. When the German and the Japanese met, the more senior of the two former Axis powers was clear.

Miki heard about the Keiwha program through her student affairs office and signed up more than two months prior, wiring the fees through a bank transfer at her local ATM and getting the confirmation less than two business days later. She then booked an airplane ticket through her family's trusted travel agent, paying about 40% more than she could have paid had she used an online booking site, but getting in return a flight from Haneda to Kimpo rather than Narita to Incheon (the travel time to Narita in particular being tiresome). On arrival at Kimpo Airport , she found a modern, well-organized airport, no less in quality than any First World airport. It is not until she is in Seoul proper at a subway interchange that she first felt a frisson of cultural difference.

This is a designation of boundaries, of linguistic and cultural differences. There are 604 800 seconds in a week, and this particular one is designated the most important one in Miki's week. The reason is that although Miki belongs to that 20% of the Japanese population with pro-Korean feelings, it is this precise moment, approximately 160 minutes after she landed at Kimpo, that Miku first feels an anti-Korean sentiment. The precise emotion is not antipathy, nor it is contempt, or even a feeling of "inappropriateness." The only possible English word that describes Miki's feeling is that of "disqualification." Miki feels that the street vendor/food vendors in the subway station should be "disqualified" from selling their wares. Association with the philosophical term "qualia" in unintentional. What is trying to be communicated is a certain delicateness of emotion: that the feeling does not rise to the level of dictation or certainly not action, but a vague sense of uneasiness, that a boundary has been inappropriate crossed.

If there were infinite space and reader interest, a novel could be written about the quasi-religious nature of the Japanese rail system; that inductees work sixteen hour days and live in company dormitories at the end of branch lines; that a discrepancy of a mere five or six minutes can throw chaos into the entire Tokyo train system. But of course such would be a digression resulting only in chaos. To understand that, read that; to become more involved, contemplate the arcing perfection of three hundred fifty mile trains running across an entire country without a history of a single fatality. Like the power system, 99.98% uptime since 1951, the trains in Japan are governmental and perfect. Food does not belong in a train station; that is the opinion of a culture and a nation, and this moment, this one second of more than half a million, reveals that frisson of cultural difference. It will be repeated, actually more strongly so, later that week, and that might be moment number two or four or five, the five most important seconds in a sea of onrushing time.

On Thursday, having gone out for lunch with a couple of the program attendees, Miki decided to walk around Seoul for a bit alone. A wrong turn sent her away from the main tourist areas around Seoul station, and ascending a hill, she found herself in a working class district up a steep hill and sufficiently shady for her to start thinking about finding a way back. Yet once more that same emotion of "disqualification" arose. Cabbage leaves; kimchee smells; such would inherently spill out across a city which both were part of the national cuisine. But to find a working quarter where the garbage was strewn out across a street: once again, there was the sense that in Japan , no matter how poor, the streets themselves were never full of food garbage. They may be rich; they may be getting richer; but something yet has not been reached in terms of cultural development.

This is not an elaboration on the inferiority of Korean culture. The precise point is that Miki is abnormally pro-Korean; most Japanese would have twenty or thirty anti-Korean moments in a week spent anywhere on the peninsula. Yet these were the moments of strongest emotion save one: something happened on Thursday that turned everything around. A gasp is elicited out of Miki--one extremely similar to the collective gasp exhaled by the three hundred Japanese girls during the campus tour when they are told a surprising fact at the orientation auditorium. (300 Japanese girls: ehhh!). Shared by all but one of the Japanese girls in the 2/1 class, this moment was one of the most special seconds of all, taking into consideration not personal perspective but social situation. It will be discussed shortly; it is offered here merely against counterbalance against perhaps moments 4 and 5, private phone conversations with her family back home that force certain resolutions or reveal certain states about her friendship circle at Chuo. But we have met Miki now, and we can slowly ease off; the set-piece is concluded.

We have accomplished a number of things. We have seen the two critical encounters between the foreign boys and between the Germans; we have learned the Japanese are a little more laidback, given that they are negotiating merely their own culture and withholding action in favor of first establishing basic politeness. Two Americans meeting: off like firecrackers, explaining their best qualities. Two Japanese: waiting in reserve, establishing initial codes. But time now to seize the bull by the horns and sketch out all principals, personalities that define and determine events; that guide the progress of things for three short weeks, constrained by location, time, effect. There were 300 Japanese girls present; there are a dozen foreigners, by chance mostly male. The age distribution of the girls is roughly 90% university students or a few years out plus a 10% of older women in semi-retirement or otherwise freely using time. The boys were all basically in their twenties, except there is one older American male, an English teacher (designation: HATTRICK). With fees being what they are, the total budget of the program was approximately a quarter million US dollars, roughly 40% of which will be profit. With twenty-five total staff members employed, (the precise number is hard to elicit; the security personnel at Keiwha and cleaners surely count something for the budget, but they are employed regardless of whether the program runs or not) Keihwa paid out something on the range of $70,000 in salaries and benefits for the month and that is the biggest expense per se, but there was a certain intangible cost in less than stellar-academic Japanese bouncing around the Keiwha name once they return home. Snobbery existed between the teaching staff (all Keiwha graduates, all roughly 30) and the students, but feelings sometimes ran both ways. The Americans tended to rate their teachers A or B, while Germans and Japanese gave more cynical reviews. All of these broad trends should be noted, as well as the new student centre carved into the Keiwha campus like a giant vulva, but Freud, Marx, Levi Strauss, whoever are not quite so important as the broad geographical, economic, linguistic concerns.

ᴥ

The principals of this story are TUSK, JOHANN, AKEMI, KANYE, ERI and SHINO, roughly in that order, after which there is a major drop-off in influence over collective events, although at certain points we will see the influence of QUARTERBACK, MIKI, HATTRICK, CAROLINE, LINGLING, NORWAY, MEDIA-CHAN, FARMBOY, TABUN, DEADBOLT and ROLLER. We have given a quick glance at the critical first meeting of foreign boys; we have seen the Germans meet which is more of a style introduction, more of a deliberate attempt to indicate the overall tone of Japanese communication style rather than a critical introduction. MIKI's first week illustrates certain overarching cultural values and a good "baseline" to the collective first week, but it is appropriate and simple now to note the overarching plot development. TUSK and JOHANN became friends; how they did so, in relation to the love-situations involving AKEMI, KANYE, and ERI; how QUARTERBACK, NORWAY, ROLLER did what they did defined that central 2/1 class. Facing each other, they began to shape the fabric of the programme itself and others stood up on tippie-toe to look in. By the end, all were getting drawn into the orbit and it is believed that eventually more and more domination would have occured, all though of course people would have acted different under different baseline circumstances. But we get ahead of ourselves here; we return to that topic of week one, which made everything happened, that forced all else to fall in its wake.

Quick a review. TUSK was a cynic, an American Yale graduate desperately searching for a Japanese girlfriend and using prodigious mental abilities to inflict chaos and unnecessary anxiety on the world. His psychological process might be basically summarized as: paranoia others are plotting against him, and then aggressive action to correct that mis-read situation, resulting in development of the social scene, never as intended. JOHANN was the orphaned German, the unreformed Third Reichest who produces classical music on the side. Trained as an economist, his psychological process was one of deviant manipulation and playing off of others against each other, fundamentally the attitude of a defeated power now destroying others all in the name of survival. AKEMI, upon reflection, was the girl of Firsts and Lasts. In the end, actually she was somehow involved with every single male in some capacity. What a slut! ROLLER had her down right. KANYE, Black American, provided entertainment value for how viciously he was treated by every other individual at the school. Fortunately, he was monotonal and had much to learn in his relative youth; we won't feel too sorry for him. ERI, employee of the Japanese Ministry of Defense, was perhaps the oddest principal, bringing as she does that third governmental contact. If TUSK is U.S. government/quasi-military and the Fulbrighters with their evil social dominance represented civilian cash, ERI was a true political nightmare, a Zainichi no less as her grandparents had immigrated to Japan from North Korea. God! This document is weirder and weirder by the second. Finally SHINO, that Fukuoka girl of all Fukuoka girls, maybe was top-dog by the end, although it's questionable whether we call her a principal. JOHANN never liked her; she was in fact not all that bright. But anyway she was there, as were the rest of that madcap group. We take note of the abnormal presence of governmental associates; we take better note that at least three of the people were abnormally sadistic. With bright young fresh and innocent faces, it was amazing the pain was that was dished out; the cynical, manipulative evil types surely did inflict such tortures on the weak, but of course they deserved it; they should be grateful they were taught such vicious lessons.

In reviewing the events of the first week, we must begin by examining the basics. Five days of morning classes 9 to 1pm, broken up by two breaks of ten to twenty minutes each, taught in succession by two different teachers (including ROLLER). Total class size of ten to fifteen students, in our particular case the six principals, plus LINGLING, TABUN, MIKI, RITSUKO, DEADBOLT the uninvolved Irish girl, and three older 'ajummas,' or middle-aged women. Attendance was roughly between 80-90% and overall the students were fairly similar in ability, although MIKI and JOHANN were probably a little better and TUSK, LINGLING, and RITSUKO perhaps a tad worse. Language was taught through examination of a two-person interaction, drilling of the grammar point in question, and practice modeling the interaction in front of the class. Students were expected to improvise a little off the model script and homework is assigned each day.

To begin to understand the processes requires some brief introductions of the girls. Set-piece MIKI KAWABATA introduced a girl who was probably central to the first week, but unimportant thereafter; a girl of average responses if abnormal height, pro-Korean, slightly more clever than average. Middle-class in background, responses, dress, she provided a good "first glance" at the psychologies/personalities in question. Yet far more possibility existed in the outliers; these were the ones who drove the process.

AKEMI came from Shiga-ken. Home of Japan's ninja clans, she herself was not a descendent of the ninjas, but nevertheless small and quick in her movements, a graduate of a Super English high school, and then a current student at a lower-middling international university. She was cute without being overwhelmingly stunningly cute, a fair '8' on the scale of 1-10, 22 years of age, and the "girl of Firsts and Lasts." She was the first girl hit-upon; by QUARTERBACK as it were; the first girl to go on a 'date' (with KANYE), and the very last girl to be involved in various romantic situations/farces. Bright enough without being stunningly intelligent, the most unusual psychological feature to notice was how different she was in Japanese and English. Surrounded by Japanese, she was quintessentially the cute Japanese girl, squeaky voice. Speaking English, she became a bit more forward, womanly, aggressive. One might think that she was almost two different people in the two languages.

ERI was a graduate of Ritsumeikan, a Fukuoka girl who was about to start a job at the Japanese Ministry of Defense. Also proficient in English, ERI had distinct right-wing, Japan-independence beliefs, yet she seemed to be attracted solely to foreign men. Eri lacked finesse in that she couldn't quite read men as fast as some especially cynical or clever ones could read her. Had she been a little less intelligent, she probably would have been quite promiscuous. Her family background, like Akemi's, was not very high; possibly even lower and her grandparents were originally from the mountains of North Korea.

SHINO came to 2/1 later; this point was later a minor point of issue with TUSK, who believed SHINO did so because of TUSK's behavior in public. With dyed blonde hair, SHINO at first sight appeared to be cheap and easy, but in contrast to this outside impression, SHINO was completely sexually sadistic/dominant. She loved nothing more than to watch some hapless male attempt to seduce her and then soundly reject him. She was not tall but varied her wardrobe interestingly. She used a sexually tinged email address.

TABUN, half-Korean, came from Osaka. A rock-musician by hobby, she was small and not especially creative in her work, but she was overall normally-adjusted and under certain circumstances could be quite endearingly cute. She was a little darker-skinned than the others, the so-called 'Polynesian' type rather than the classical pale-skinned 'Yayoi' type Japanese. TABUN lacked English, but understood it on a spoken level.

RITSUKO played little attention to the little social games. From Nara, she was previous friends with Lingling and went to a few lunches at the beginning but never concerned herself with the others thereafter. RITSUKO spent her evenings at museums or other cultural places; she might have come off a little slow for her complete lack of social involvement, but was in fact not significantly less capable than the others.

These brief descriptions will serve as useful introductions to the personalities involved. What the girls shared, other than the fact that they were almost all university students, (SHINO and TABUN both 19, but SHINO looking older whereas TABUN looked perhaps a year younger) was that they had grown up in a society that prized female coquettishness, trickery, submissiveness, and absolute training to an ideal of service and humility. There were no angry American personalities in this group; none of the girls ever raised their voices during all of three weeks. It was about seduction: that eternal, elusive quality, and one that only cynics could long endure. Did QUARTERBACK go after five girls his first week? Of course he would; he had to. Did KANYE try to slip in a little something three or four times? Exposure to such female perfection would only elicit such reactions. The girls were brought up in a sea of female beauty and quickly learned how to apply it themselves. All were fit; all disciplined. The outcome would depend on initial motivations and the randomness of social interactions themselves.

"I liked TUSK the moment I met him," commented ERI, whose behavior would later illustrate to socially-center individuals what kind of girl she was. "I'm just surprised that every girl doesn't like him."

"I came here to learn Korean," commented RITSUKO. Naturally both girls would have different experiences during their three weeks, but sometimes things got so uniquely awry that even the persons involved recognized that something fantastically wrong had occurred. But here we go, we are in the first week, the situation has unfolded.

Start with the assumption that there is some baseline "third culture," a compromise between the Japanese and Western, on in which speech is required at certain times but not at others, an extremely formal etiquette that also holds total formality as itself wrong in itself, keeping in note intonation and accent more than just words stated as they are. With this premise, the girls walked in (as did TUSK; he had attended the Japanese orientation), and they proceeded to write merely their first names on their namecards. This was exceptional; notable; we might give credit to the beaming teacher ROLLER, a natural fixer of things; we might say that QUARTERBACK, TUSK, KANYE, DEADBOLT, JOHANN's presence there (a statistical abnormality; this is more than a full third of the foreigners at the program) softens the normal East Asian culture, we had a UN here; we had true internationalism.

The time for introductions came. LINGLING was revealed as Chinese; JOHANN spoke a German-accented Korean; CAROLINE's accent is a bit harder to place; the surprising American TUSK spoke up—except that he spoke up oddly enough first in Mandarin 'Ni Hao.' This was odd; in the hierarchy of things, Mandarin Chinese were not higher than Korean Americans; the twist of presentation was also a beginning philosophy of things; an absurdist touch that would mark TUSK as a games-player, a mind-twister. JOHANN commented shortly thereafter, "I knew you weren't Chinese; you didn't walk that way, but I couldn't tell what you were." And the week showed German, English, Mandarin, Korean, Japanese all being spoken; the points given, according to JOHANN, were those who spoke the most. (And ROLLER knew Chinese; this capacity was never revealed at all.)

It is mentioned: QUARTERBACK was here. He was here for two days, just enough to miss the entry on the third of SHINO, who arrived, and who TUSK claimed he 'fished out' of the crowd, attending the Japanese orientation and striking various poses. "I figured out of three hundred girls there would be one, and not more than one, would be sufficiently intrigued/amused to actually switch classes for this; one who played social games all the time rather than concentrated on her studies. Day 4 confirmed this guess."

Possibly. Thursday TUSK discovered out of the corner of his eye that SHINO was looking at him and rather than ignoring it on the one hand or shooting the stare back on the other, he instead moved his eyes just enough to continue to look at SHINO without alerting her—at first—to what he was doing. It was only by holding his eyes just offset that he managed to stare back at her—slowly. A look of horror began to cross her face, and then suddenly abruptly realization! she realized it was exactly that look of horror he was trying to elicit. She immediately averted her eyes, trying ten minutes later to play the trick back on TUSK, but he had invented it; he would not be caught by his own trap.

With the exception of this odd moment, it becomes a bit more of a reach to declare that any particular happening deserves especial mention. As stated, if the assumption of baseline Third Culture infinite politeness is a simple and rational stating of things, perhaps TABUN seemed to make a bit much of the point that she was half-Korean during her self-introduction. Was this directed at JOHANN and/or TUSK? She would not, repeat, not be making any plays for KANYE. But in her little girl narcisscism, she surely considered herself the best of both worlds, Japanese refinement and Korean hot-blooded passion on the other, the clear catch of the program, it was unfortunate the boys would have to be educated in this fact, through wiles, trickery, deception, lies and the delicate application of make-up. After day 1, all the students were assembled in the auditorium for the opening speech; like peas in a pod the Japanese took each available seat in turn, filling up the rows exactly in order; the Westerns sprawled all over the place; JOHANN nervously took the seat next to AKEMI only after being prodded by TUSK. TUSK saw ERI trying to catch his eye and ignored her; the students sat around eating their cheese sandwiches and talking to each other, but also observing.

QUARTERBACK left and SHINO came. A single-digit percentage, certainly not as high as 15%, of the students program wide shopped for a different class. This was, objectively speaking, a mistake. From any individual's perspective, their assigned class was in error in either of being too easy or too hard, but nobody's ability, actually, was so far away from their assigned class that they would have wasted their three weeks in the original place. QUARTERBACK was 2/2; this was clear; but what he missed out on was that being the best student in the class offered a certain monopoly on teacher attention; he would have led his class in each model exercise but he would have learned on the side and picked up some Japanese as well. Conversely, those who went down a level just about invariably found that things became too easy. There was a big drop from basic grammar of the 2-level classes to the vocabulary-study of 1-level; apple, orange, banana, car, road, boat, train; in some senses the 1-level classes were not much more valuable than ten hours of independent study, and although they were socially and in some other senses valuable, without question no 2-level student should have dropped down to the first year classes. But people tried anyway, and SHINO shifted; she brought along an older woman who to first appearances was a relative or even mother. How can one deny the greater seriousness and social danger of Japanese culture when a girl feels a need to be accompanied by an older woman in negotiating a class change and her first three arrivals at the class? AJ-3 in any case proved to be pushy and controlling; by the end of the three weeks, she would be revealed as the odd-ball out of the older women, bitter in the end, unappreciative of her own flaws.

On day 1, TUSK having had two conversations with KANYE played for a faint Japanese social play, calling him KANYE-kun in front of the girls and making them laugh. After this episode, KANYE was mistrustful of TUSK, but actually without reason; TUSK actually became impressed after a lunch conversation with KANYE's mind. KANYE studied History and could hold his own in any talk about culture. Day 3 AKEMI, the soft-hearted, the lover of oppressed victims but possibly self-deluder, openly picked KANYE when instructed to pick a speech practice partner; the girls noted it as just strong a signal enough to be noticeable; nobody who listened all the time rather than talked could help but notice it. DEADBOLT did very minor control interactions with KANYE and TUSK; but that about wrapped it up on the control and linguistic definitional matters; actually almost nothing was established by the end of the week.

"But actually..." TUSK smiled expectantly.

But actually there is one last hidden and devious plot, one that in a final twist of irony never even came out. All week long, Tuesday to Friday, when called upon to deliver a sentence illustrating use of the grammar point in question, TUSK had been slowly feeding the class the story of his "little sister" who had "bumped her head and needed to go to the hospital." At first the classmates couldn't tell if this is just a model sentence being said in immediate reaction (response), to the teacher demanding the student speak at point of moment. But he repeated several times and now the class has been fully astroturfed into an eventual meeting with said younger sister...if only! On Friday of that week, the class was scheduled to go to their first field-trip, a visit to the downtown district including artificial stream and then a martial arts dance show. With the timing of the first Yale interview corresponding exactly (a matter of chance, rather than planning), TUSK can bring out his first interviewee, a girl who is more likely than not to be pretty (intelligence is correlated with looks) and then sow whatever chaos he wants.

"But how long could that story be strung out?" wondered JOHANN.

"Possibly for an hour. In any case it would be amusing, more about chaos factor than anything else."

This is where narration falls into patheticness. Points played for were minor, small twitches on the scale, but despite three days of planning; despite all the dramatic internal events taking place only in the head of TUSK, that Friday right before the field trip the girl showed up and she was... plain. Ahh! What disappointment! Christian, the daughter of a minister, and homey, TUSK has the quick decision: drag her to the field trip, or skip out and wait for a possible interviewee in week two. He picked the latter, a decision JOHANN critiqued.

"Even a homely girl would have been amusing; shows easy-goingness and friendship with a wide variety of people."

"But I thought maybe in week two I could bring out one of the aces."

The decision, in retrospect, was clearly wrong. TUSK also missed the first half of the field trip; there is a subtle social diss the girls felt; they will be by the tiniest of fractions less sympathetic to TUSK. And though he had a cell phone and met up with the group again outside the martial arts theatre, the girls seeing him walked past him at first; the relationship is merely cordial, and he had missed all the lunches as well that week.

"That was a definite point off your reputation," commented JOHANN.

"True, but I had also gone to a non all-girl program once, and everybody made completely different friends the second week rather than the first."

"Still points off."

"I would critique other factors in your first week; primarily with regard to LINGLING."

At the martial arts theatre the students sat next to each other, naturally. Yet TUSK was aware of a feeling of awkwardness; he did some groundwork preparation for deviousity. When QUARTERBACK is picked by the performers to go on stage and be part of the show, TUSK as naturally as if he knew QUARTERBACK all his life tells KANYE to "Take a picture, take a shot!" Such commentary implied greater familiarity than actually existed, yet KANYE was free and easy. He took the shot. And JOHANN, encouraged later that evening after the show to "organize something. I know you're the fulcrum of our class!" at first suggested both wait and see, then indeed played into action, and the first evening's night out was begun.

"Karaoke? Anybody want to go out?"

It is AKEMI who did the organizing.

"Me!" "Me!" "Me!"

Analysis, symbolism, psychological profiling; all this will come later. What is recorded now is that AKEMI gathered around TUSK, JOHANN, LINGLING, KANYE, ERI and two other students from the 1-level of the program, never to be seen again, but enough for a mad night out at a cheap karaoke place. The youngsters sang. They drank alcohol. At the end of the night they hit up TUSK for a lion's share of the bill and then people went their separate ways, although JOHANN was seen leaving with LINGLING ("Are they previously boyfriend and girlfriend?") and KANYE slept over at TUSK's ("They said there was no more housing available, how did you get it two weeks ago?"). AKEMI, it is now learned, was at the neighboring university's dormitory, and the two 1-level students were seen to be pretty cool, but no phone numbers were exchanged.

"See this is where you went wrong," offered TUSK.

"How so?"

"To you, LINGLING improves your face because you are seen being chased by a girl. But you actually put your arm around her; you were seen disappearing with her. These are considered serious gestures in Japanese dating culture; the J-girls figure you guys are a couple, and after all, she is not totally beautiful."

"She is unfortunate looking."

"Indeed."

The story of this first week is not really, however, a socially-devious American and a cynical German's take on things. What is really is, of course, is that final crowning Saturday, when KANYE and AKEMI go out on a date. The gods, one thinks, smile down on the innocents of the world; this is the first date recorded—but it is also the very last time two innocents will meet. From this point on in the text, at least one of every two individuals comes from a cynical set of beliefs; at one and sometimes both are devious, emotionally distant, cold, controlling individuals. The karaoke night out on Friday was like the division of the kingdom by King Lear: two of the individuals (TUSK, JOHANN) are cynical and face-aware; one is the innocent, KANYE. We know Cordelia is the child of this world, eternally youthful, eternally naïve. But is she also something else? Freud said Cordelia was death. In that case, KANYE is also death; his death's head similar to the president of the United States' no less, a grinning death's head that reflects a subconscious desire to die. Have the American people become semioticians? Are we devious and more European? Politics is just conversation in circles...

TUSK and JOHANN, new humans, watch KANYE go off but both suspect nothing will come of the meet-up with AKEMI. They can't be sure, of course; human beings rarely can, but KANYE will not find a Japanese girlfriend this weekend. KANYE and AKEMI meet for black noodles; they laugh and converse and have coffee afterwards, but the sentiment has already begun to flow negative for AKEMI. She will reject him; the course was set. Yet although this happens, the fault for the failure to connect may in fact lie with AKEMI rather than KANYE. KANYE like most Americans failed; he did not pick up the subtle clues to the thinking of a subtle societist as AKEMI, but unlike AKEMI KANYE was exactly what he appeared to be, without artifice or design. AKEMI, small, quiet, controlled, almost doll-like, resented Japanese society and found in English a more natural way of interacting. Yet she never noticed how oddly different she was in the language; she never thought that she was deliberately deluding herself about foreigners because speaking in another language entails different rules and thinking patterns.

ᴥ

Although everything looks really great on the surface, everyone looks really happy on the outside, you walk around Myeong-dong, you see the crowds of people going to karaoke, going shopping, spending money, actually there's really so many problems inside, a lot of people are finding it really hard to keep going, they don't know what tomorrow will bring. I know. You hear things as the daughter of a minister. It's all superficial all this progress Korea has made. The last twenty years people have become rich, they think they're as good as Americans or Japanese now, but things have really peaked, it's not going to go on much longer.

It's hard being a girl, growing up in this country. We have to be perfect on the outside and then we have to be perfect on the inside too. My school is good and the teachers try hard, but we can't really get things started the way we should. I haven't learned as much as I liked; I know that, but I'm hoping you'll give me a chance anyway. I care about people. I want to make the world better. There's a lot of people in this world who just want to make money, impress others, get ahead. I think my role in life is to heal and counsel.

This is the thing about Koreans. On the outside, there is this new pride and growing awareness that they can do things just as well as other countries. SAMSUNG, LOTTE, HYUNDAI, LG. Every time a Korean company sells something in the U.S., every Korean person is proud. It's like, "we can do things better than our parents did. We can really be out there like France or Canada." But you know, right beneath all that, it's just the slightest of pushes and everyone is just 1950s again. Pushing, screaming, fighting Koreans while Japanese hide behind walls of polite faces. Americans standing around brash and confident, while Koreans feel inferior and then take it out inside their families, against people who won't fight back.

We have a pastorship of about two hundred families. At least forty of them are having severe marital problems, at least another forty are experiencing a son going bad or business failure. Eighty huge problems out of two hundred people! Now you know why all those people walking around Myeong-dong are just walking ghosts. The clothes on the outside is clean and stylish, but on the inside, they're thirty-thousand dollars in debt. Most of them live in houses they don't own or apartments that aren't paid for. No money whatsoever.

We can fix things, I think, if we just learn to work together. I don't think Korea is going to last much longer—maybe another ten or fifteen years and then economic problems will just eat up everything. But if good people get together, if they learn how to help each other rather than just try to impress others or try to push ahead of another person just for the pointless pleasure of it, we can build a new city on the earth. That's what fellowship is about, about community of people. I minister to families, I reach out to those who haven't heard the Word. But it's not just about Christianity. It's about building out that hole in the inside. A God-shaped hole, yes, but one people will fill piece by piece. We can do this by trying to be a better person, day by day. It's hard, it takes work, and then you fall back aways, but that's what it's all about.

ᴥ

This concludes WEEK ONE of the FLOWERS OF KEIWHA, first year. Of the tiny missing pieces and uncovered items, the biggest is probably LINGLING-JOHANN, which was elicited by JOHANN but initiated by LINGLING, and according to later commentary (believed), a cynical face-activity by JOHANN to show himself desired and sought after. LINGLING had little English. She spoke Mandarin with JOHANN but attended a Japanese university and thus could speak Japanese with TUSK. She was an extrovert. She was the first to immediately call everybody "a friend" and she in her unsophisticated way believed the world to be a fundamentally friendly place. TUSK was cautious with her, the first few days; but then relaxed his guard. KANYE and LINGLING had no common language between them. JOHANN and LINGLING sang a love duet on Friday's karaoke night, but they did not take their relationship beyond a few caresses at the door of the dormitory.

Second most important missing item was the impact of Facebook. To some degree JOHANN behaved different during the initial field trip because he saw the cameras around and knew photographs would eventually be taken. The foreigners were already beginning to friend each other and process friend requests; the American culture was to pretty much immediately friend any half-way decent person; the Japanese was to wait and see.

After this there are only little minor bits and scraps of facts to complete the portrait of the first week. AKEMI wore heavy eye make-up every day and continued this habit all three weeks. SHINO was similarly a good-dresser and all present carried off the task of looking presentable without being too fussy. Possibly TUSK was most self-conscious of the process; possibly RITSUKO was the least best dressed and LINGLING did not singularly impress. Most of the food eaten was Korean, although TUSK took advantage of being in Seoul to get the Western food he couldn't get in China.

A certain symbolic analysis was briefly touched at earlier and deserves just a tiny bit more elaboration. One theory of people as herein presented was that the dividing line is that TUSK-JOHANN-SHINO are the clear cynics, ERI is not a total fool, AKEMI is flawed and innocent for a Japanese, and LINGLING and KANYE are the true innocents. This is possible. But it does not capture the Symbolic possibility of KANYE being Death. If Kanye is Death (innocent but unyielding), then SHINO is without question Sex. TUSK would be Information, JOHANN Play, AKEMI the Child, and ERI War. TABUN could be Music or the Tree, and we can mine all of these symbols until Kingdom Come, Hallelujah.

KANYE, if he consulted either TUSK or JOHANN probably could have landed AKEMI. AKEMI's flaw was more structural, fundamental, putting an end-date to any possible relationship. But even a two year relationship would have taught both much. KANYE who was top 20% intelligence of Americans, could offer quite a sophisticated analysis of 19th century politics. It was only because TUSK and KANYE spoke totally sophisticated English they could argue on such a level. His position was also sympathetic because it's true that though he was a gentle looking guy, harmless, and intelligent, one's first feeling upon seeing him was "Black person." This was the ongoing reality of American culture and identity. A Japanese girlfriend would have taken some of the feeling of estrangement out of him; it would have helped him to gain a better appreciation of human difference. And AKEMI probably could have found a way to get a few years living in the U.S. out of it; she wanted to leave Japan as soon as possible. As they sat on Saturday amidst the whirring crowds of Ewha students, with the orange-warm incandescent lights landing on blondewood, single moment captured, so much was acting to tear them apart. If only they could have settled the differences! In some alternate universe somewhere, they are still lovers; there are physics theories that postulate worlds in which all possible outcomes have occurred.

At the end of the first week, there has been one date. LINGLING has latched on to JOHANN, TUSK has been busy getting all of his things done but played social manipulator with large crowds, AKEMI and KANYE have made initial passes at each other, SHINO has entered the main arena and felt superior to all, QUARTERBACK has passed around his Fulbright business card, and people have actually studied some Korean. International language programs are sort of one large love game, where the quintilinguals look down on the quads, and the tri's look down on the merely fully bilingual.

__

WEEK 2

We have reached a special point in the manuscript. This is point at which we say that the subject material of this work is

THE FLOWERS OF KEIWHA

and tip our hat to Jean-Luc Goddard, who taught us all to put the title about a fifth of the way into the work. The FLOWERS of course are the girls, aged 17 - 28, mostly tilting towards the younger end of that scale, with beauty fragile, evanescent, slowly disintegrating, a feminist understanding. If there is one message women have to men, it is this: "Look at our lives, our brief existence as desirable young girls and the ever so quick disintegration into Christmas Cakes, and then thirty-somethings, Office Ladies, then old hags. How can men ever understand the pain, the horror, the terrible arc of a woman's life? You who peak at thirty-five physically, who grow more desirable as you become rich, possibly even peaking at fifty! Gray-haired men playing with young twenty-something girls, ahh the root unfairness of it all."

This work is self-conscious. One of the benefits of being a literature major is that you study all the critique before you jump out into the world. It is understood this work is of limited appeal; its topic matter (young Japanese girls) is really only a matter of interest to a small percentage of the world's population, perhaps 5% of US Americans, and then on top of that the narratological voice is one of calculation, strategy, analysis interwoven with actual plot. Multiply the 5% interest in such narratological matters by the 5% interest in subject matter, and there, 0.25% of the English-speaking world can possibly be interested in this work, or a grand total of 750,000 possible U.S. citizens, most of whom will never hear of this work. So, readership of 15,000, should this work still have been created?

Yes, absolutely. The argument for this work's creation comes from the rareness of its positioning. First and foremost, five languages were spoken during the program, again, KOREAN, JAPANESE, ENGLISH, MANDARIN and GERMAN. The last two were of minor importance, not truly affecting people's reactions and final outcomes, but the first three decided who would become friends with whom and why. They determined alliances, support, decisions, dating, final outcomes, and social consensus. TUSK can never sink below a certain level of prestige because he translates Japanese to English and mediates Japanese-only people with English-only people. JOHANN and CAROLINE will always have a distant and private sphere because German dictates certain codes and value-systems, Germany is a First World nation, and Germany has the pride of a defeated major power (always more pure and unyielding than the pride of a victorious one). It is the thesis and premise of this work that the multilinguals manipulate the process and can see it all. KANYE can never even interact with LINGLING (although agreed, this is of minor importance), but more importantly, KANYE can't even see AKEMI in both Japanese and English to recognize her bifurcated view of the world. SHINO never learns why TUSK has a relationship with KANYE but then changes over to a pure alliance/coalition and eventual friendship with JOHANN. TUSK and JOHANN believe that between them both, they can see everything; it takes the voice of ERI to later reveal a girl's touch on events; to get away from the quantification, strategizing, Machiavelli, and restore the normality of things; the world without calculation, strictness and pure positional plays.

"I liked TUSK when I first met him, and JOHANN also turned out to be pretty cool. But I don't care that TUSK went to Yale or JOHANN has a Master's degree. Maybe if I went to Tokyo University I would be a diploma snob, but actually I would go out with a construction worker if he had a fascinating and complicated inner-world. If he had this really bright brain and could create universes during our evening conversations, I would much rather hang out with him than some completely rich, completely elite University of Keio Economcis major working at the Finance Ministry. What woman wants millions of dollars but a totally empty spiritual life?"

The fundamental critique to be made about this narration is that it believes itself to know more than it actually knows. Positional deviosity, the Regan-Goneril tight analysis of politics; these capture something about life. But although analysis of human beings can yield surprising truths, for the individual merely going about their day, they fundamentally and dramatically disagree with the 'zeitgeist' of the work. "I am just walking around, going to class, meeting people" reports TABUN. "What is this crazy talk about boys manipulating girls and girls manipulating boys?"

"To some degree."

The girls, including ERI and TABUN, are right in one sense. The Japanese are not constantly calculating and positioning themselves whereas Americans are casually interacting and becoming friends. If such were the truth, Japanese physical architecture would be filled with little bolt holes and bunkers as clans constantly warred with each other and Tokyo launched an assault, for example, on Fukushima. Both countries, of course, are in the end more similar than different, grand, unified, obsessive of minor differences within the nation, but all speaking more or less the same language and all more or less agreeing on certain, mutually-different social standards. Two Japanese bow when meeting each other in formal business situations, two Americans shake hands. But both are indicating a desired for a cordial progression of relations; both are demonstrating civilization, calmness, and respect.

The way the girls' interpretation falls is by outcome. The fundamental plot point of this session, these three weeks, is the application of knowledge, skills, cynicism, and observation on three hundred people. 2/1 became the fulcrum, the centrepoint of the program. 2/1 was driven by the Machiavellian strategizing of JOHANN/TUSK. The Cynic-German friendship was a friendship forged in blood; and weak, unskilled Japanese and Americans would all bow down before its overwhelming analytical power. But the friendship did not happen until this, week 2, and the fall of the almighty Fulbright Alliance could not occur any earlier than this week, involving as it did the central-most influence of numbers, people involved, and affect on total outcomes.

Narration Week 1 was a tightly-written piece of work and much of its power lay in the fact that it concentrated on essentials without regard for irrelevancies. It carefully put the important topics first: the fact that FARMBOY went to the first field trip with 2/1 and that the boys put on Korean court garments (the girls did, too, but they actually looked good), a click down in social prestige that TUSK missed because of his interviewing, were rightfully included at the end, while the beginning was about the key first interactions, the overall numbers and dynamics, and the "prototypical week 1" as introduction to the "most average" experience. So too this section will start with a general overview of the key events and then progress to the less important details, although paying some tips of the hat to chronology itself.

In essence, the story of week 2 at Keiwha, year 1, was the story of the programme itself that first year. In broadest possible terms, what happened was the breakdown of the Fulbright power monopoly to be replaced by a more subtle, more devious Cynic-German alliance. But, ding-ding-ding, truth has already fallen by the wayside, actually the story of week 2 was in all likelihood a private Japanese-only drama, something that will be the subject of part 2, but cannot be covered here because of how things unfolded within 2/1. Is this too obscure? What the narration is reporting is that in all likelihood the 180 Japanese girls had their own social situation worked out by week 2, but because the 2/1 space cadets are spying frantically at each other, they miss the larger programme around them, which has its own dynamic, logic, and pattern.

Let us deviate temporarily from this closet drama unfolding deep in the folds of Keijo and speculate about the "off-set drama" of a "functionally equivalent U.S. counterpart." 300 American girls go to a Spanish language program in Mexico City, Tijuana , or Monterrey. Here, deep within the Spanish-only confines of an alien culture, they meet a small coalition of Japanese students of Spanish, one of whom speaks fairly-good English and understands American culture. This individual chooses to associate with the Americans rather than his fellow Japanese, building an alliance with a German male also present at the school. Their one subsection becomes the more socially prominent group at the 180 American girl programme, but can their one class be said to dominate the life of the group?

The answer is yes and no. If the group all go to the beach one fine day and the international class also hangs out together making the most noise, that arguably that group is the social centre upon which all the American girls are paying attention. But within the 300 American girls, there were currents and social alliances; there were private dramas and more public ones; perhaps in another sense it was never about that international subsection to begin with; perhaps the 2/1 space cadets were deluding themselves.

So again, here is the thesis of the work: in week 2, JOHANN and TUSK became friends. The details of this precise friendship happen to coincide with the decline of the influence of the Fulbrighters. All separate phenomena will be talked about shortly, but because the JOHANN-TUSK alliance coincides with the final defeat of Fulbright from the social centre of the program, it gave the appearance to JOHANN-TUSK that they were the ones behind it. Actually had they not been present, Fulbright itself would have experienced the self-same decline. But because Cynic-GERMANY forged an alliance (out of desperation?) simultaneous to the drop of Fulbright, the two then become convinced they were the forces behind that broad, program-wide trend. Their beliefs, cynicism, prior experiences, skills, and linguistic talents were all unnaturally validated and they built up a false sense of triumph by program end, true only to the degree that things played out as they had wished. That is what happened.

On Monday of the second week the class reassembled in their designated room, sans TUSK, who was off watching the Super Bowl. Living abroad, adopting foreign customs, seeing things from the foreigners' point of view, TUSK had decided a while ago that the U.S. Super Bowl was the one unalterable, unavoidable thing he would pursue no matter what else was going on in his life. Or so he told himself. Actually in implementation he watched about 1 in 3, with some allowances being made for the teams involved, the run-up to the post-season, the post-season itself, and world events as they were. He had actually taken off from work a few years ago when the Eagles were at the Bowl, but missed the year thereafter in what was widely-known ahead of time to be a dud. Finding games in certain countries would have been a near-impossibility; in others, it was merely a matter of finding the closest sports bar.

The class met up. Grammar structures were studied, conversations were had during break, and FARMBOY started to slowly realize his class was less desirable in terms of extrinsic factors. The Japanese girls in his class talked merely to each other; there were no prospects on the dating front, and the English speakers seemed to be all concentrated in 2/1. QUARTERBACK was also mildly displeased at the lack of fun factor in his class, but as his primary focus at the program was language studies (and not the infinitely delightful Japanese girls), he did not visit 2/1 except to say hello to KANYE. Neither watched the Super Bowl, ironically; QUARTERBACK was solely interested in College Ball and KANYE had no interest in the sport.

As remarked, the primary thesis was the decline of Fulbright and the rise of Germany/Cynic. This phenomenon could be seen in purely visual terms: all of the first week, most of the second, the Fulbrighters were everywhere. Take a look into any corner of the campus, sit down in any convenient location, and all that could be seen were Fulbright American boys talking to Japanese girls, handing out their phone numbers, writing down their email addresses, meeting any of a infinitely delightful number of young Japanese maidens (and others). They were all over the place, mano! By week three, the Fulbrighters' physical posture had changed. Seeing the whole crowd of the program attendees, the American boys were now tightly-knit together with the American girls; all the Fulbrighters stood around talking exclusively to each other, and the boys' eyes, once darting over the place, were now only pointed at the American girls, two of whom were okay, but one of whom was a clear super-intellectualized girl and one of whom was forgettable. The experience of the American boys' had not been happy. But Germany/Cynic still looked outwards smirking at the world; they were pleased as punch at the way things had gone, and until the final closing ceremony, they felt even this twinge of elite superiority.

Tuesday was what started this process. All morning long, 9am to just shy of 1pm, they had drilled basic grammar structures. The choosing of study partners was done by the teacher, resulting in a statistically random distribution of conversation partners, more or less. JOHANN began preening and posturing, showing off his superior command of Korean by varying the sentence structures at will. All eyes were on the people at front at the time; it was the one opportunity people could be studied at will, one that would have been lost to loud, talkative Americans, but appreciated fully by the German-Japanese cohort.

At 12:52pm, ROLLER began the final language sequence, "the making of appointments." "KANYE, can you please use 'can you meet' in a sentence, pick anyone."

[in Korean] "DEADBOLT-sshi"

"Yes, KANYE-sshi."

"Can you meet Wednesday morning at the library for study?"

"Yes, no problem, I am free Wednesday morning."

"Okay DEADBOLT-sshi, now your turn. Pick anyone."

"RITSUKO-sshi."

"Yes, DEADBOLT-sshi."

"Are you free Tuesday morning for listening to music?"

"Yes, no problem, I am free Tuesday morning."

Around the class the choosing of conversational partner went, with nothing unusual and no undercurrent. But finally it was TUSK's turn.

"Okay, TUSK, you're the last one. Pick anybody."

TUSK looked up; there was a hush in the class.

"ERI-sshi."

"Yes, TUSK-sshi."

"Are you free Sunday afternoon for dinner?"

At once a gasp escaped the lips of every single Japanese girl there except RITSUKO. Sunday was Valentine's Day. The sexual dynamic between the foreign boys and the Japanese girls had become crystallized, perfected. And the brilliance was that it was done publicly, it was only the seventh day of classes and things had now been set in stone irrecovably.

"No, I am busy!"

"Nice work TUSK-sshi," said ROLLER, "Class dismissed. We meet in one hour for the Kim-chi field trip!"

JOHANN saw it. Every Japanese speaker understood, but JOHANN understood it from a Westerner's perspective. "You put blood on the table," he analyzed. "Anybody can go around and try to get a date furtively, but you were a political non-entity all week one, and then all of a sudden you become the most prominent of us three."

What JOHANN did not see, however, was that TUSK was motivated by pure desperation. "KANYE might have listened more to me had he been alone, but he's part of the scholarship program. And you were saying, 'let's wait and see,' not accepting that I had special insight into the Japanese."

"Why ERI?"

"She had been making eye contact with me all the first three days and was clearly enamored with me at first sight. I couldn't stand her."

"As events proved."

"As events proved."

One hour after class dismissal, the students reassemble at the language center main office and every 2/1 student present takes note that ERI has gone home and re-done her hair. She has spent the intervening hour completely on self-appearance improvement, and there is the quality of something rushed and frantic about her actions; the other Japanese girls maintain faces of calm impenetrability, but the more socially devious among them are hiding expressions of smirking sexual dominance. The knives have come out; the outcome only remained to be seen.

"Okay, to make kimchi you do this, you fold this, you sprinkle this."

At the Kimchi Museum the instructions are given, but TUSK and ERI sit next to each other. In support AJ-3 and then SHINO in turn comes to sit next to them, to observe, to make their observation obvious. The Japanese, once aloof and separate, now seek to question TUSK, to see how much he understands of what he has done. And in careful play with the politeness levels of the language itself, TUSK positioned himself as giving early signs of what will transpire in two days' time, although the question actually remained open; things were simmering for the two to be alone.

One of the staff members at the museum liked TUSK. TUSK saw it; so did ERI, who mysteriously forgot her watch and took the two of them back. The group went off to the historical site and TUSK and ERI have their first chat.

"You know, I think Japan should build its own atomic bombs. That way it doesn't have to listen to America."

The sentiment TUSK felt is not expressed, but went roughly OH GOD. Of all the things to say, of all the ways to begin a conversation, ERI has picked the absolute worst. SHINO would never begin a conversation this way. TABUN never even thinks of the word "atomic bomb." This is one of the strangest, most deviant psychologies out there, and completely unfeminine.

"I don't agree. Japan 's position is actually subtly powerful, as they have moral high ground in not building atomic weapons but Japan can clearly build the things in a few weeks if it had to."

ERI disagreed.

"But think, wouldn't Indonesia build atomics if Japan did? Wouldn't every country?"

"Hmm, I could see that."

The drama will play out. TUSK and ERI will talk more, will pose for pictures at the historical site with everyone else. But already he knew things would not happen; it was merely a question now of the wait.

ᴥ

In one sense this issue is not very complicated. Simple application of common sense--say, to the TIJUANA analogue--comes up with a fairly simple and correct explanation of what went on. A Japanese male in a Mexican university class filled with American girls says, 'Hey Lisa, do you want to go out for dinner Friday?' in Spanish when challenged to do so by the class teacher to illustrate use of 'want to meet...on Z day.' Instantly the American girls' posture changes; they go "oooh! so cool!" because the Japanese has confounded social expectations. Instead of being shy, socially withdrawn, he has merely asked a girl on a date, what's the anxiety, what's the fuss? Just like their Japanese counterparts, the American girls later surround the Japanese guy at the next convenient social occasion, trying to puzzle out this mysterious foreigner who can even speak English in addition to Spanish.

The TIJUANA analogue is useful. Yet certain things are missing. The Japanese in question might have to be Ainu or Russian-blood Japanese for an exact correspondence of race. Further, relative prestige levels are different; skill in English is almost expected out of international people and university graduates these days; the odd thing is understanding a local, limited-utility language (and what that might imply about the person's interest in the women of that culture). But TIJUANA also holds in that after the girl runs home to change her clothes and do her makeup, she has clearly lost face if the boy subsequently rejects her. Cold as ice; Machiavellian; yes, these things are true, and we now designate TUSK not TUSK, but TUSK', he has acted in accordance with societal expectations rather than his internal feelings, and although his status has risen, naturalness of internal motivation has been lost in favor of social devious and self-interested power play.

TUSK rejected ERI. This happened on Thursday, on a day when three things happened (Wednesday being quiet), but before we get there, it is necessary to deviate some more into analysis rather than narrative, this issue being at least worthy of observation as the KANYE-AKEMI affair. The first of course is the potential relationship itself. TUSK-ERI is a relationship with potential. Sharing certain values, their relationship might very well last a lifetime, a common family commitment to defend the West/Japan against the encroaching forces of Communism, Socialism, Islamic terror, etc. In such a right-wing family, children would be brought up with a firm hand, defense topics and the banking industry would dominate family discussion, and the cold, austere lines of an internal family philosophy would be reflected in a household decor itself that was rigid, austere, perfect. "Ah, the workers are agitating again in Korea ," might offer one of the spouses. "Koreans. And laborers," might be the simple response of a fellow rightist wife.

ERI, as discussed, is if not in personality, in status, situation, and background the oddest of the girls at the class. Politically right-wing, about to enter the Japanese Defense Ministry, she beliefs might roughly correspond to an Ann Coulter/neoconservative streak in the U.S. She said the words, "atomic bomb" because that is what she thinks about. She thought about SEATO, about Chinese submarines, about Star Wars SDI and Reagan. These were her belief structures. Nixon was a great President for the U.S. because he converted gold debt into dollar debt. That Greek speculator was right only in that the UK had misread the pound. These are her thinking patterns.

With regard to TUSK, the first analysis might be a comment on how things have diminished since university days. A Yale student, a member of Chicken's Leg, selected for a year abroad near Abingdon/Whitney, UK, and somebody who once had a seven year relationship with a black crack-addict, he is a force of nature in someways, somehow superhuman, more than man. To go from this to dating an ERI is such a dramatic fall down, we might feel a twinge of sympathy for this Machiavellian, we might find him more human would the thing go forward.

Yet there is one more analysis. Why should sexuality be pursued, is sex a good force for man? Later that week, there will be a "serious conversation" within the class about religion; but this perhaps is the more essential topic, even if it is not a topic for polite dinner conversation. Are we better off because we feel this urges to the opposite (and for some, same) gender? Would not asexual reproduction create a happier, more profound set of relationships between human beings? Yes, let us be sad that AKEMI-KANYE never happened; let us feel sorrow for the never expressed relationship of TUSK-ERI. But in a sense, solitude is the desirable state for man, the most truthful. The world is better off that these did not happen.

TUSK rejected ERI based on her lack of femininity. He didn't like her at the beginning, and he wasn' t physically attracted to her. ERI came from a fairly middle or lower-middle class background, her father an owner of an electronics workshop whereas TUSK's grandmother went to Ritsumeikan. But ERI has a steady job coming up and she is the most elite in terms of university education of the girls in 2/1. Actually JOHANN briefly felt a twinge of liking for her (short-lived) and in terms of total lifetime suitability, she might be the very best of the 2/1 girls, fluent in English, capable of political subtlety.

On Thursday everything unfolded. In the morning TUSK made public his refusal of ERI, doing a perverse mock-grab for RITSUKO of all girls to demonstrate his continued independence. ERI reacted within minutes, answering the teacher, "Ahn-nyong-ha-seh [pause] yoh," revealing only in barely perceptible pause her level of anger. TABUN noticed; so did JOHANN; the two made eye contact. KANYE also walked in carrying a gift bag with a cake. The disintegration of the KANYE-AKEMI axis had become clear by today (although the two did take the subway home together on Tuesday), and KANYE believed himself sophisticated because he had a backup lined up for Wednesday night's dinner. "Look," he said, "I got a gift from one of the Japanese girls." [Aren't I cool.]

Believing himself to be cool, this moment actually revealed the final collapse of Fulbright. Although by U.S. cultural standards, a boy receiving a gift from a girl means the relationship is deepening, in the curiously reversed world of Japanese dating culture, the gift from the girl to the boy marked the end of the relationship, an overly formal presentation of thanks for favors rendered (dinners paid for, against protest), a release of obligation, and a desire to become "just friends." "This is a relationship ending gift," commented TUSK. "You read the note," said KANYE. "Didn't even know there was one."

TUSK was fully prepared to advise KANYE, but the offer was rejected. Yet KANYE, too, had little choice; he could not be fully trustful of somebody he had just met.

Later that day JOHANN publically signalled his alliance with TUSK. "Hyung-neem," he addresses TUSK, the Korean word meaning "older brother." The girls were amused. In Korean culture the relationship was now close, fraternal; in Japanese, the moment is more "senior-junior" without the conntation of fraternity. In either case, TUSK accepted the term, but JOHANN felt the cost in face was not sufficiently repaid. He laid in plans for a more devious shift on the alliance.

Other things happened. Just barely perceptibly, AKEMI snubbed TABUN. TABUN was trying to say, in ever so polite and subtle Japanese, that AKEMI was a loose woman, a chaser of foreign men. AKEMI, with just the hint of superiority in her voice, pointed out that TABUN, knowing no English whatsoever, could not possibly hope to understand what was going on; the relational matter was so subtle that the two actually remained friends.

That afternoon, the programme held "Sports Day." Consisting of Korean traditional physical games and activities, the third and final 'field trip' would take place on campus and save the programme money. Nobody complained. But there were some who felt the programme was already short-changing the students, 60 hours of promised instruction really came out to only 50 or so including speeches by the director, testing day, final day, etc. One of the activities, moreover, consisted simply of arm-wrestling. Yes, arm-wrestling.

2/1 (and the rest of the program) got to meet! It was interesting to see the other eleven classes or so, to perceive that 2/1 was just a bit more tightly knit. Other foreigners were now obvious, generally the only one or two in their classes, and the obvious dynamic, for example, of one tall Dane amidst ten nerdy looking Japanese girls became clear. COPENHAGEN. But in one sense, one of the classes had made more progress than 2/1, there was a thin Canadian boy protectively shielding a fairly good looking but slightly obtuse looking Japanese girl. She signalled "I am with him" to the Westerners, but "he is after me" to the Japanese all in one single way of holding herself. "They are definitely sleeping together," commented JOHANN. "Not in the least," noted TUSK.

There is literary reality. The events that have transpired have come so fast and heavy we must briefly review. 2/1 consists (now) of three Western boys and three socially active Japanese girls. The boys are JOHANN, KANYE, TUSK; German, American, American. The girls are SHINO, ERI, and TABUN. SHINO has a cute girl's voice and perfect girl mannerisms; it hasn't been commented yet, but she's already made sport in public of attracting men and then shooting them down. This has happened three or four times in the past week. ERI is the Defense Ministry girl, the one who said "atomic weapons" the moment after a pretend play by TUSK. Not unbeautiful, she was flawed; simple. TABUN is on the outside looking in. She missed the first night out and then this weekend she is going to visit her relatives in Pusan (as stated publicly in class). She will have to try to squeeze into the dynamic, revealed to be fascinating, cross-cultural, international. Musical, 19 years old, half-Korean, she has caught the eye of JOHANN, but doesn't know it yet.

Now 2/1 can see the whole program. FARMBOY's tendency to walk over to 2/1 after class is revealed to be understandable; his class is boring. JOHANN, meeting COPENHAGEN , sees the opportunity to twist around TUSK's failure to 'pay back' loss of face on the 'hyung-neem' issue. And TUSK sees the Canadian boy's ostensible "girlfriend" is being misread; there is still opportunity here.

Everyone did the little activities. COPENHAGEN, six feet tall and heavily built, gains face through letting TUSK win at arm-wrestling. TUSK, JOHANN, KANYE all do the arrow-tossing thing with first-round success. And LINGLING suddenly shoots to the fore, winning three of five of the sports (they are also Chinese games, it turns out) whereas SHINO is so left-footed (and she is left-handed too) that she can't complete any.

Sports Day was the last of the field-trips and taking place on day 9 of the 15 day program, it set the stage for the final development of things, being a time for people to see the whole. The half-Japanese at the program were noted; the lack of physical talent of the most cultured students offered a counter-thesis for things as they were, giving LINGLING face (and to some degree JOHANN as well); socially evil people clearly not having everything in life including a simple capacity to enjoy things. Some Fulbright girl actually won one of the competitions as well; this narration can't claim to have the complete picture.

KANYE commented that the events as transpired so far showed the essential racism of the Japanese. This remark extended to white Americans as well during lunch drew little support, and the one person who might have been sympathetic, TUSK, for political reasons sided with JOHANN. "You are the Robin, I am the Batman," said KANYE to JOHANN. "Why, because you're black?"

In 1944 and 1945 white and Black Americans had rained bombs down on Japan , setting ablaze paper-maiche cities. In one sense this was the victory of good versus evil, the Christian UK-US over the pagan SS and Japanese. In another it was the victory of materialism over spirit/idealism. Sixty plus years later the Japanese and Germans would win one minor victory over the organized Americans; even the Afro-American would be sent on his way.

ᴥ

On Friday, ROLLER decided the class needed to get to know each other better. She told the students to meet up for dinner, and JOHANN, AKEMI, KANYE, TUSK, AKEMI's new friend MEDIA-CHAN, ERI, LINGLING all did, whereupon TUSK with an air of superiority offered KANYE the rare opportunity to ask one question to the non-English speaking MEDIA-CHAN. (MEDIA-CHAN and TUSK immediately knew they would never be friends or girlfriend/boyfriend. They belonged to completely different ethos.)

"MEDIA-CHAN, which is cooler, Japan or America ?"

TUSK to MEDIA-CHAN, in Japanese. "Which is cooler, Japan or America ?"

"Does he mean boys or girls?"

"KANYE, she asked, do you mean boys or girls?"

"Both."

"Both."

MEDIA-CHAN responded immediately. "Japanese girls are clearly cooler than American girls because everywhere in the world, people want Japanese girls. Africans, Germans, French, Indians, Chinese-- all these people want Japanese girls. But American boys are clearly cooler than Japanese boys, because many girls in the world want an American boyfriend or husband but no nationality is making raves about Japanese boys."

TUSK translated. "See, it's a sophisticated response!"

MEDIA-CHAN to KANYE: "What do you think about the election of Obama?"

KANYE in English made five points.

"What's the problem?"

"Oh god, you sure said a lot."

"Can you translate it?"

"Give me a second."

TUSK is able to translate two of the five points. Point #1 is "This was an election of a Democrat over a Republican first, and then an election of a black man second." Point #3 is "This is not actually a very important matter." 2, 4, and 5, as expected out of a history major from an elite U.S. university entail extremely politics-specific vocabulary, being minute examinations of the political cliques in America. This three minute conversation stands as record of the limits of TUSK's ability, and an interesting examination of what an English-only American and Japanese-only Japanese find curious about each other.

The evening's discussion was about religion. ROLLER talked about the role of God in her life; offers KANYE a ride home (this is innocent; KANYE tries to sell it as not). ERI forcefully puts forth that the world would be better without religion whatsoever.

Following dinner, TUSK is able to make AKEMI laugh. Everyone goes their separate ways, but JOHANN has AKEMI's phone number, as a purely friendship matter. It is his strength; he is only after (and only mildly so) TABUN; he can be friends with the girls.

ᴥ

Saturday. TUSK had seen the Canadian tennis player go into the cute but somewhat dumb looking Japanese girl's room. This was disquieting, yet he still felt things hadn't been closed. He left his phone number on the door, which comes into play later that evening. JOHANN with AKEMI called up TUSK and the three met up for drinks; all conversation was honest, except at one point TUSK said to AKEMI, "Teach me love" (ai) and she replied, "No, you teach me love! Only one relationship in your life, seven years, sheesh!" This wasn't dishonest, per se, any more than 'Nihao!'said at the first day was dishonest; it was merely misleading.

From the quiet circle of three, the group then expanded with the arrival of COPENHAGEN , who hit upon a table of seven or eight disdainful Korean girls nearby. Then TUSK's phone rang. "Oh it must be ERI," said TUSK and handed the phone to AKEMI. It was not. It was the cute but dumb Japanese girl. AKEMI's heart sank; she politely told the girl the group was busy, please try again later.

TUSK had snared AKEMI by this point. She was a trifle narcissistic, but she knew enough to see that others were not standing still while she had explored the possibility of KANYE. ERI did arrive, to be hit upon by COPENHAGEN. The group of three boys and two girls went to M2, the standard and good nightclub; drunker and drunker, COPENHAGEN hit upon ERI and was accepted; TUSK and AKEMI danced quite close with each other.

There was one matter. "Oh that's so flirtacious," said AKEMI in one in-between dance conversation in response to something TUSK said.

In Japanese: "I just want to be friends. Just friends, promise!" Little finger extended.

The promise was not sealed.

TUSK had wanted AKEMI when he first saw her. He still remembered her first words to him (viz., "You shouldn't lie. Don't lie.) The two would also walk together with MEDIA-CHAN after class and look at the sun together as snow flakes fell down. But he had decided, after AKEMI went after KANYE, that she was unreachable. Now he began to suspect something was up, but his heart was set. There would be nothing but play from him now. AKEMI grabbed TUSK's hand as ERI went off with COPENHAGEN. "Oh no, we musn't interrupt." Everyone went off to their dorm rooms.   
ᴥ

I was twelve years old when the talent scouts came to our village. I had won the local singing contest at nine, and by eleven we had received letters from Seoul. At twelve I left my town and checked in to the AVIS training programme in Seoul. Seoul looked so big.

You can't ever know how hard my childhood has been. There were two hundred of us, all hoping to be the next pop-star. Every year there's a cut of about 20. So by the time we're eighteen and ready to debut in the music industry, we're whittled down to eighty. By age twenty one, it's down to the top 40. Maybe 10 will get a contract. 2 will become big names, sell a million records.

Do you know what happens to the rest of us? We can't try out for Korean university; we've been practicing singing, dancing, physical training for twelve hours a day, six days a week. There are different companies that come to us, offer us to work in bars or cabarets.

I had no choice. I worked every hour of every day since I was seven, training to be a singer. By sixteen, I had put in twenty-thousand hours of instruction in dance and none in history or mathematics. When I suffered a leg injury, my chance to be one of the top singers in Korea disappeared. But I still had thousands of dollars in debts to the record label. So I started working for an elite placement firm, being 'introduced' to CEOs and top government officials.

I lost my virginity at age sixteen to one of the top environment ministers in Korea. You can still see his name in the papers, he's considered to be capable of one day holding his own portfolio. There's no proof of this, of course; I couldn't tell my story to the papers even if I wanted, and it doesn't matter anyway, I'm just a farmer's daughter from a small village in the eastern mountains. But I worked off a full tenth of my debt with just that night, and I was able to pay for catch-up academic classes the next two years. Now I can take the APs next year.

I think I deserve a chance at Yale. I know I'm not the smartest at academics but I still put out a small record last year and people say I might be able to break out in a few years. I like hip-hop, R&B; I keep up with all the American artists. I'll sing for you later, I love to sing even if it's not for pay.

It's not really fair, this culture, Korea, Japan. Men just play and women have to clean up the messes.

ᴥ

At this point in the first chapter, it was necessary only to wrap up some loose ends and point out small details that did not truly effect matters, yet complete the whole picture. For week 2, the task here is a bit harder. We have followed a certain narrowly-defined narrative—and the problem is that so much happened, that actually this week is at once the hardest and the easiest to complete. So much happened, of course, that actually the rest of this chapter can simply be filled with odd little details and minor adventures unrelated to the main action. MEDIA-CHAN, for example, introduces herself as a '-CHAN.' Such behavior only comes from girls who feel themselves especially young and harmless in the world; conservative elements in Japan would just say "toothless." MEDIA-CHAN was a leftist; she believed in world peace, friendship between nations; perhaps even the idea of sending a Peace Boat all around the world communicating love and benevolence between man (before returning to industrialized Japan). Her mutual psychological aversion with TUSK is mutual. ("I think she gets bullied," commented TUSK later to JOHANN.) But we digress.

The central commentary/issue to deal with here is that the tone of the week has become a bit psychotically logical. This led to this; this led to this; this led to this. To some degree this issue is unavoidable. As stated, such an incredible surplus of events occurred this week that it is hard just trying to narrow things down to their essentials. At the beginning, KANYE was going out with AKEMI; the Fulbrighters were bright and optimistic. By 11:59:59pm Saturday, ERI has flirted not only with TUSK but is just about to dance very heavily, drunk, to techno music at M2 with COPENHAGEN. Among the more major unrecorded events, TUSK was approached by a thirteen or fourteen year old hooker at Keiwha University train station. "Older brother, older brother," she said, "do you have ten thousand dollars?"

A loose, more casual recording of events might go merely something like this: once upon a time, there were a bunch of Western young men and bunch of Japanese girls; the naïve innocent American one, who happened to be black, was cut out of the action through sophistication and word play; the infinitely cynical and devious American one briefly toyed with one (ERI) and was getting involved with another (AKEMI); the German, interested only in the asocial one (who was gone that weekend to visit her mother's family in Pusan), played social games for amusement sake and to keep attention distracted from that last. Or perhaps from the girls' point of view, once upon a time there were two girls ERI and AKEMI, both played with two guys in the second week of a program and thing were unresolved by the end of the week.

That is fine. There are those who have put this book down by this point. But in any case, though the narration being coldly rationalistic and even militaristic in tone, people interacted naturally and seemed carefree; in some sense only an autistic would prefer this style of text! TUSK asked TABUN, "TABUN, are you going home?" upon seeing her with her luggage. But in Japanese, the expression "kaeru no?" had another, implicit subtext for Korean-blooded Japanese; right at that moment TUSK picked up on it and seeing TABUN's hesitation, followed up, in a sarcastic voice, English language "Are you going back to Japan?"

This was the beauty of the four-language mess. TUSK had spoken almost nothing to TABUN, but the particular point amused her. She had been amused by him since the beginning. And JOHANN, after TABUN but officially denying it, may have even set things more in motion by pushing AKEMI on TUSK; he was now popular and involved whereas before he didn't even have her phone number. Neither JOHANN nor TUSK cared when COPENHAGEN started making moves on ERI. JOHANN noted that COPENHAGEN "seemed desperate;" TUSK wondered briefly if ERI was merely trying to make him jealous, but didn't care in the final analysis.

Coming from 1/4 or 1/5, was in one of the higher first year classes. Having graduated from the National Univ. of Denmark, he apparently had an offer to LSE and was involved with Seoul National, two facts he let people know within five minutes of conversation. Majoring in political economy, he talked incessantly. But he was smart and he had previous experience in Japan , including one night stands in Japanese night clubs; he was perhaps the most normally adjusted of the Westerners. Sex has been studied in this text; its influence on the human condition briefly considered. But alcohol + dance + music is just a strong combination and arguments have a way of breaking down during actual circumstances.

The older Japanese women in the class have also not been totally inactive. This is the week AJ-3 finally falls off the radar, bringing in her husband (good-looking) to lunch, but finally in the end coming off as too active, too eager and controlling. AJ-1 and AJ-2 both find some sort of relationship with two different of the younger girls, but AJ-3, after having shepherded SHINO to the class, is eventually seen independent of her. And SHINO, much commented about in context spent most of her nights watching TV (Korean language, remember; not just for entertainment—though she favored the music shows), witnessed at times by JOHANN who used the dormitory gym.

The most striking event of the week for some observers would be the 13 year old hooker. It was unusual for TUSK as well. He had been approached once before, in circumstances that eventually resulted in a narration of its own, but this girl, unlike the other, made her play verbal. She had a friend with her, a slightly gamy looking girl who found TUSK's response funny.

"Ten thousand dollars?" (Korean) "Oh my god, I am an American." (English)

He scrunched down his shoulders to avoid alarming the girl; he walked off... but looked back. Hooker was agog in confusion; hooker's friend was amused.

Why didn't TUSK grab the girl and take her to the police? The problem was that his Korean wasn't so good. He felt the girl might just as easily report to the cop, "Hey, this weird foreigner just grabbed me, arrest him!" And though he felt he could try to reform her, there was something impossible about the situation. If the girl was "wild-catting" (freelance prostitution on the street) at age 13, she was incorrigible. It was sad, but the situation couldn't be changed. TUSK also of course could have slept with the girl. He could have scraped up ten thou U.S. (or the fraction of that sum he could have negotiated it down) and such a sexual act would have been intense. The girl weighed no more than eighty pounds, she would have been the ultimate in 'spinners' and her adolescent frame would have arched back in passion as he entered her (motel, inevitably; the dorm was guarded 24/7). But then, what else to come in life? And what the consequences?

There was one third, final possibility. TUSK could have attempted to become the girl's (or both girls' manager). He could have had sex with her and then beaten her to take the money back. Or possibly the girls had stun guns and would have stunned him before taking the cash he withdrew. All of these were distinct possibilities, but it must be noted that in multiple months living in Seoul , TUSK was never before approached by a wildcat hooker. Hold back the attack dogs, Seoul Tourist Board, we know this was a real statistical aberration.

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I am interested in majoring in Economics, eventually working at a bank or in multinational business. In life there are many people who pursue frivolous things or are just addicted to pleasures. I think building a lasting business is one of the most meaningful things a person can do, and though it isn't easy to subordinate yourself to others, it's only through working hard in a tough environment that you really improve yourself.

My father is an employee at Ssangyong Motors where he is a line engineer and my mother is a housewife. We come from a respectable background and though we aren't rich, we believe in education and we are proud of Korea. This is a great and special time for all Koreans because our economy is finally becoming world-class. There are Korean microchips powering US computers and there are Korean designed cars on the streets of Paris , Berlin , London , Washington D.C. , Los Angeles. I am attracted specifically to challenge, to becoming my personal best.

My primary leadership experience has been as Officer of our Community Service group. This position entailed 5-10 hours a week of work and made me learn how to motivate others. One time a group member kept shirking his duty, so I met with him privately and told him exactly where he stood. At first he looked like he was going to blow me off, but by the end of our chat his shoulders slumped and he agreed to do what his responsibility was.

My hero is Bill Gates; the last movie I saw was 'Avatar.' I sympathize with the native people of course, but in real life communities sometimes try to take things that aren't theirs.

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It may not be unfair to say that when we become involved with someone, we then become extremely vulnerable to becoming involved with someone else. So in a sense TUSK brings together ERI and COPENHAGEN. This particular social phenomenon will appear later in this work, even in year 2. The second matter is ERI's estrangement from the class; she no longer really speaks with SHINO or AKEMI. The feeling of rejection is felt on both sides. ("Academic snobbery?" "No, I just don't feel like extending a tentacle, ha!")

Perhaps the most important uncovered topic is that Thursday's lunch, by which time KANYE has already come to realize his diminished status in the class and one in which TUSK said a few overtly dirty things in Japanese. ("Go back to Pyongtaek," says the girls, not all offended, though.) The conversation, as perhaps inevitable as including so many Westerners (FARMBOY is present, so is QUARTERBACK), turned to politics. But despite KANYE's excellent riff on race relations, TUSK wanted to talk about aesthetics.

"Don't you understand? You're just being overt about everything. You're like summer days, sunshiny days at the beach, definite truths and categories. Some people like the shadows; some people like cloudy days and indefiniteness."

"It's just that America is all about race in the end."

FARMBOY looked at QUARTERBACK; both looked at TUSK. He shook his head.

"You know what the problem is, KANYE?" said JOHANN. "It's those headphones. You put them on when someone is in the middle of talking to you. That's annoying. And you've missed so much in the class because you're just listening to music all the time."

JOHANN is also able to position TUSK awkwardly in terms of social dynamics. "You seem kind of over-sexed. Are you also gay?"

"No, man. That's a joke."

"Is kissing boys okay?"

"Dude, I'm from New York City. Be cool about kisses."

But of course none of the Japanese girls agreed.

"My philosophy," elucidated JOHANN later, "is about centering. TUSK was all about masks, truth and lies. KANYE ultimately had nothing to say in the end except about race. Put yourself between people, make them come to you. And watch out for photographs because they are amusing. But of course in Germany we would normally sit and watch for even six weeks before doing anything socially."

"Centering" along with repeating words back to the speaker was one of JOHANN's tricks. A person could be led to argue with themselves. A photograph of KANYE holding a knife in mock rage to JOHANN was published to Facebook—and Facebook itself took off this week, with perhaps the subtlest play being JOHANN's research on it to realize TUSK's elite academic background and motivate his 'Hyung-neem' play. "You should have brought it out; not like this" (hand pushed forward) "but like this." (hand coming in from the side.)

"The girls will learn about it in five years. And then it will be one last ding."

"You also need to lose a little weight. Cut those nose hairs."

"Thanks, boss."

One of the things JOHANN didn't know was that TUSK was getting better and better at interrogation. Some students applying to U.S. universities are actually in fact Korean but behave American or have American passports in order to get the better financial package. Repeated interrogation of one's name would sometimes break that individual.

"What is your name?"

"Sarah Park."

"What is your name?"

"Sarah Park."

"What is your name?"

"My name is Sarah Park, please stop asking me that question."

"What is your real name."

"Okay fine I am Bak Shim-yong, I use Sarah because it's more convenient."

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The first week's events lent themselves to Symbolic and Freudian analysis. Week two, having now covered status changes and relational matters, allows an easy Marxist interpretation that goes beyond the facile simplistic Marxism of calling ROLLER "Christianity-opiated worker who supports the very structures of her oppression" (ROLLER liked MB2) or merely pointing out that the security guards, the floor cleaners, the textbook writers were all speechless and unrecorded in twenty thousand words.

Here is the sophisticated Marxist interpretation: this work, as it exists, is a celebration of elite values written by a member of that elite. It is as if in the year 1010 two German aristocrats wrote a book talking about their last battle, noting how the revolting farmers made their mistake here, here, and here, ignoring the fact that the battle between the landed knights and the peasant farmers was not a collision of equals but a group of terrified pitch-fork wielding amateur fighters against a professional fighting class. The farmers didn't strategize incorrectly in placing their numbers on the hollow near the forest; they were scared out of their wits and wanted an escape route into the woods. The professional fighters knew the high ground was more important; took it; and then routed the band of agriculturalists. In this sense JOHANN-TUSK have already begun to win social warfare against the mass of Japanese-only Japanese and English-only Americans, but only because their educational background permitted them to have multiple languages in the first place. Similarly, critique of DEADBOLT and LINGLING as having "bad personalities" ignores the fact that both girls may have come from working-class backgrounds. Taught from an early age to obey rather than command, fearful of all the manifold dangers of the world, they were presented in manuscript as being introverted, fearful and uninvolved, but they were always vulnerable, they never could have tangled with the JOHANNs of the world without coming out on the bottom—every single time. The war is always determined before the first shots are fired and that is why class-consciousness and historical material dialectialism is important.

Marxist interpretation falls only in recourse to a universalist standard of beauty. Under this argument, LINGLING deserved to be cut out of the 2nd week's adventures because she was too extroverted, forward, and thus aggressive when she was not by any means a top 20% or even top 60% beauty. Even ROLLER picked on her. And the girls—at this point in the text by which some are demanding pictures of—were in the end only 6s, 7s and 8s (SHINO a possible 9?) and should be grateful to have been included in such sophisticated love gaming by the internationalist gentlemen of the world. Out of 180 girls at the programme, they were lucky enough to be in the internationalist class; in reality, neither TABUN, AKEMI, nor ERI really have a chance with JOHANN or TUSK, so a little emotional pain is a good thing, a present from senior to junior.

Marxism as it exists becomes more complicated when individuals live in a society that includes Marxism. LINGLING from a Marxist state made common cause with RITSUKO, months before the programme, and this alliance holds promise for a true internationalist proletarian position, one in which educational opportunities are equal. Against such a front, with sympathies from KANYE, AJ-3, MIKI, MEDIA-CHAN, COPENHAGEN and perhaps even TABUN, JOHANN/ROLLER/TUSK/ERI would quickly be put to paid. It's a simple matter of numbers after all 8 v. 4. Such is the implied strength of Marxism. To add one final complexity to the class war, RITSUKO wore a kaffiyah all week 2 and MIKI's sister majored in Islamic rather than classical finance at Kyoto University. A one-two punch of Sino-European Marxism and Islamic cell terror? That is the nightmare of the West and former Imperial powers, the anxiety that keeps them awake at night. In the new glorious aftermath of the fallen Colonialists, Red will fight Green, but the people will triumph regardless.

KEIWHA itself was not immune to these forces. The tallest building on campus (and at other elite Korean universities) was the labor building, built in the aftermath of those 80s student revolts that brought down the Fifth Republic. " Democracy Square " they called it over at Koryo; in KEIWHA the sentiment was a switch from Capital Economics to Labor Economics, the movement of certain professors from positions of power to positions of consultation. While the bus stop in front of Keiwha would continue to bear the name of one of TUSK's grandparents, in time the sign would grow weathered and old and eventually the laborists would triumph. Every summer Sunday brought out the crowds and the government of South Korea itself was becoming more and more riddled with Chinese informants. Massive bureaucratic power of the U.S. military would physically move its main base from central Seoul to Osan, but if one noticed carefully, there were half a dozen Chinese products stores and TCM franchises than a few years prior. Huntington —he of the 'Clash of Civilizations' hypothesis—would be proven right.

Finally there was one last irony. Nothing exists totally in a vacuum and these three weeks happened to coincide with TUSK reestablishing contact with his primary school best friend. The friend, only son of a Mitsubishi manager and housewife, got wildly drunk with TUSK just a few weeks prior and revealed something that had been hidden for a long time. "My parents are Communists. We voted Communist in every Diet election for the last twenty years." These lurking forces, to the naïve observer present only in the true working class or dispossessed, existed even in the highest reaches of Japanese elites. A Japanese princess, it is rumored, one whose name is sufficiently royal to have the 'no-miya' ending thinks of nothing but Red revolt. The Heian-era aristocrats listless in their Kyoto constructed gardens and dark-wood retreats would have toyed with Marxism—if only it existed in their era. Here was also the motivation behind Keiwha putting all three Chinese-residents in one class and having a Korean teacher who knew Mandarin in the class. Here was why LINGLING used no less than three names, despite her easy going familiarity, and why TUSK waited three days before even talking to her. Compared to the overt self-promotion of the U.S. or even the friendly stated positions of the Franco-British, Asia was riven with cliques, factions, layers, blackguards and Red, family clans and school loyalties. A Korean president seized power by first establishing a secret society at his military academy and TUSK's great-uncle was driven from power, to hide shivering in a convent, by a strict military revolt. But TUSK had no shame about the cowardice of his family. His grandparents were literaturists. His father was a literaturist. He himself, in the end, was a literaturist. "We hide with pride" was the family motto, and world wars, revolts, no political occurrence whatsoever could ever destroy the sheer asinine power of those who believed their only function in the world was to write about it. Come Red revolution or Green, come the rise of the Caliphate or the restoration of the Berlin-Tokyo axis, TUSK would always sing the praises of the current regime. Like the court physicians, his family line was needed by whoever occupied the Dragon Throne. All hail Mao, all hail Puyi, traitor to the Japanese dwarves. TUSK will still be here, desperately seeking out the color of your daughter's panties. They are pink, they are pink, but once revealed, all he will do back is point his erect phallus, ineffectual to actually sink in the damn thing.

WEEK 3

TUSK broke. Classical narratological theory suggests that action take a gradually rising curve, with subplots elegantly woven in and out of main narrative until the moment of greatest crisis, when all forces come together and the final showdown is unveiled. In this way plot mirrors the sexual act. But reality sometimes has its own timetable, and in this case, it did; the individual constituent elements of 2/1 did not conform to narratological theory; they did not all briefly consider every single possible amorous pair-up before dissolving into a orgiastic free-for-all, even ROLLER losing her Christian inhibitions to join in.

They couldn't in any case. 2/1's classroom, like many others, had one large wall that was opaque glass. Individual faces could not be discerned, but passerbys would instantly detect any sort of highly unusual activity. Although the room was in a giant edifice shaped like a vulva, this design elements of the structure did not inspire feelings of instant amorous action.

Tusk broke on Sunday, when in a clear afternoon recovering from the hangovers caused by Friday and Saturday previous's adventures, he went to pick up his second-to-last interviewee. His paperwork had been falling apart lately and the concept of trying to finesse one of the girls to meet his classmates had long been discarded, but he still made the meeting point for the girls the main gate of Keiwha University. The security guards finally cottonned on to the show being provided for them; they hailed him with glad waves of the hand.

2pm, however, revealed a surprise. This was not SHIM Jun-young, male engineering student and technical specialist, it was a girl. A very beautiful young girl. ROLLER struggled to pull out his scrap of paper. Something had gone wrong.

"Um, you're here for your university interview?"

"Yes, you must be TUSK!"

The character that revealed itself in the next few minutes proved to be the final esoteric universe force that broke TUSK (or TUSK', TUSK'' whatever his identity was at this point). Desiring to major in English, capable of fast and furious on-the-fly analysis of 'the Dramatic Situation,' and offering an elegant and unique twist on aesthetic theory, SNIPER dominated the interview as no other had before her. Finally a blush broke out across TUSK's cheeks. SNIPER wouldn't have done it by herself. Nor could dreams of the thirteen year old hooker from last week dancing through TUSK's head inspire such a reaction. It was only the one-two-three-four almost-five blow of ERI, hooker, AKEMI, and finally SNIPER that tore through TUSK's last defenses, leaving him agog, tongue-tied, helpless in the university cafe right in the pudenda structure's clitoris.

SNIPER began blushing back. "Moving right along, my relationship to my father has defined who am I because after he was fired from his corporate job (and Korea has a lifetime employment system at the highest levels, this meant he would never be hired again by a top company), we really had to scrimp expenses..."

As if in reaction to the two blushing youngsters (TUSK looks about twenty-five) and the apparent scenario of a Keiwha grad student or assistant professor blushing at a first year undergraduate student, another woman at the cafe began to blush. And various other tables made skeptical comments, one male even swinging by on his way to the cashier to personally wave his skeptical face at TUSK. Only one other interviewee had inspired any sort of cafe-dweller reaction--the Christian girl, actually, who looked young and made some onlookers believe compensated dating was in progress. But the cafe staff and most of the rest of the people at the cafe carried on their business without reaction and TUSK called an end to the interview after fifty minutes (his shortest yet).

There was, in essence, one major reason why this interviewee in particular inspired such strong feeling out of TUSK. About ten years prior TUSK had become involved with a statuesque black woman at Yale. But right before that moment, there had been another assault on his heart, a one year older transfer student who happened to be Korean-American, another literature major, from Seattle , Washington , who offered ironic literary commentary and rich-girl aestheticism and superior disdain for the Economics majors of the world. Right in the wavering period before what would be a traumatic seven-year relationship, TUSK almost fell for the Lit girl. It was the biggest unresolved decision of his life; he didn't regret what eventually transpired with crack addict (seven years is seven years), but of all the decisions he made in his life, he wondered most about what would have happened had he gone for Lit Girl.

So here she was again, magically seventeen again, magically capable in a fluid and supple English, magically September ten years prior. Of course she couldn't see it that way, but if she didn't have some attraction to TUSK too, why did that blood rush to her cheeks so easily?

What transpired over the next four days for TUSK can be best be described as a "very slow-motion train wreck." Like a stop-action movie simulation of a train crashing into an immovable wall, the excruciating pace of events had its own quality, the first crumple, the wheel shooting off to the side, the rear of the locomotive jumping up as the coal car plows underneath, etc. For onlookers, it was pathetic, in someways attention-seeking. For JOHANN it was the moment of triumph; the final victory of cold European strategy over American emotionalism. For the Americans it was vindication that one of their own was not immune to the general trend. But for TUSK it was identity-collapse on multiple levels, endurable only because he had the utmost of inner self-contempt.

Monday TUSK told the girls "Japan is a prison! You are free here, you are free!" as SHINO excitedly twirled her hair and TABUN giggled. AKEMI hadn't succeeded. AJ-1 denied the remark, "You're wrong, you're wrong," but TUSK only grunted. An hour later he said to AKEMI, it now becoming certain she was after him, "Let's go to Lotte World, let's go to Lotte World!" JOHANN felt TUSK should have stopped there; instead he repeated it twice more including once in Japanese and AKEMI, increasingly more angry, refused him each time. Tuesday AKEMI walked about in a daze, missing the welcome table of 2/1 students at lunch, feeling hurt and abused. JOHANN pointed it out. "Look, you've hurt her!" TUSK sent her a message on Facebook; it fell flat. Wednesday TUSK began blushing furiously during the first hour of class, seated as he was between AKEMI and TABUN (who he felt neutral about) who was right next to SHINO. By then the girls were paying full attention to every little detail of his behavior. They gasped at the peculiarity of fate that brought TABUN to the only available seat when it appeared he was trying to get closer to SHINO. TUSK continued even though she was there; but TUSK stopped blushing when ERI arrived; apparently her completely lack of sexiness was enough to deaden that impulse, and AKEMI refused to look at TUSK when TUSK turned his head to talk to her. He was about to say, "Look, stop mopeing around, I'm hurt too" in Japanese.

"Okay students last class. Let's review what we did for three weeks."

They gave a final in two parts; oral test on Tuesday; the written on Wednesday, but after a sleepless night, TUSK walked out of the written. One of the staff members, someone who never liked him, offered sarcastic sympathy.

Despite all this psychological turmoil, TUSK never broke completely. His university background had not yet come out; his living place and working conditions remained vague and undefined, but he never spilled details about his activities in China nor his mythical past, which had gone on over sixteen months in half-a-dozen cities in the Continental U.S. He remained continent; he did not toss cookies or lose his marbles completely; although contempt was now on the upswing against TUSK, he was able to rationally calculate that SHINO would never fold to him. Meanwhile JOHANN kept guilting TUSK, he kept pointing out how hurt AKEMI was and how much of a sadist TUSK was. Finally TUSK collapsed for almost-good at the closing ceremony, putting his head down on his arms, realizing that just as JOHANN had publicly given face to him the previous week, there could only be a public return of face to AKEMI; although SHINO was even more contemptuous and TABUN completely puzzled (later to transition to contempt as well), TUSK returned some honor to AKEMI, who hadn't asked for it and liked this development even less; ROLLER reflecting the return of sympathy to TUSK guilted AKEMI into sitting next to TUSK and going out with him that night, TUSK's mind went almost completely bonkers, he stalked SHINO for about an hour as well without her knowledge (this was never revealed; this never came out!), he drank, he walked about in a daze, he got to see some of Seoul.

AJ-2, as the closing ceremony, tossed TUSK a curious look and she seemed to think that TUSK had finally found guilt as a weapon, that AKEMI would actually have to do something. She was the dark one, a little quick in her manners, but with the most beautiful face. AJ-3 was not present, having been thoroughly pushed to the side, the rash on her cheek inflamed, and even targeted by MIKI who made a disappointed sound when AJ-3 started trying to mix Korean and Japanese as TUSK had been doing as a collective mind game for three weeks now. Lots of noise flew around that auditorium room; a previously unknown Japanese boy, nice-looking, talked briefly to AKEMI. (The other, older one but not the grandfather was seemingly not there; he had hit on SHINO but wasn't seen again.) TUSK reflected that AKEMI had very small hands, somewhat dry skin, and a fat black leather handbag. Let me remember this moment forever he thought. She was not dissimilar to a certain fond recollection of his earlier life. The girls went off to a private girls' only karaoke session, after forming a democratic circle to vote--HATTRICK, fond unmentioned HATTRICK, who had tried to enter 2/1 in the second week, who had loudly claimed he was only after AJ-1 or AJ-2, tried to insinuate himself into that group but was denied.

HATTRICK was just one more disappointed American. His behavior had offended Korean staff members at a bakery; his loud domination of the class had annoyed the Japanese-German continent of 2/1 (ROLLER had briefly considered it a welcome American note in a culturally Japanese class); his life as a sixty-year old English teacher seemed to him a failure. But sympathies for him should not be too high; what would Americans think of a sixty-year old Japanese who pretended to be interested only in middle-aged women at his language programme but at the last hour tried to join the eighteen year olds out for roller-skating?

As JOHANN and TUSK were later to agree, "everything is determined." Had not SNIPER appeared on Sunday, had not TUSK been propositioned to a criminal act, had not TUSK really needed one cute score (previous life history requiring this), he would not have acted the way he did. AKEMI was his symbolic victory, the girl seduced purely as a matter of concept, not even nudity required to know that he had finally mind-gamed a delightful Japanese maiden... err, 3-boy veteran into fornication. The sad thing was that TUSK was thirty before he finally got this score, future scores, if any, would be a tad more difficult, and he would have to spend more than the 13 USD he spent on karaoke (ERI) and 60 USD he spent on bar tabs (AKEMI) to win such good will.

"But why did you have to invest such resources into a Japanese score? Didn't you live there for two years?" wondered JOHANN.

"Well, that is a story in and of itself," replied TUSK. "Two minute precise would be 'two-year' quantitative finance programme that required living in company dormitory, 14-hour work days, six days a week, essentially I just go to see and see and see even pathetic English teachers get laid while I was always running to make curfew. Code of conduct signed also, strict behavior requirements as they accepted only 0.5%, qualitative/arts types unique opportunity to learn quant trading."

"But at least you got rich."

"I damaged a company VP's car, unfortunately, and in the end, only got the experience and connections out of it."

"Ahh, yikes."

A single hand placed on the back of Lit Girl in Kyoto: that was the final consummation of the Relationship That Never Was. Costs invested in these final four days also entailed loss of membership in a peer-to-peer invitation only web-based favor trading ring as TUSK made requests but not upload enough tasks of his own. And Yale kicked him out of alumni interviewing, his report on SNIPER was just a little too high-strung.

Week 3 was not all about TUSK. The beauty beauty beauty of narration of course is that everyone is the central character in their own mind's unfolding novel. TABUN is without question the other hero figure of that final week, the introverted withdrawn 19 year old (yet also some-time bass player for Tokyo City's indie group 'Zanzibar') who had elected not to attend the first weekend's get-together over drinks nor all that many 2nd week class lunches, made her decision slowly to go on the offensive and define something about herself other than the perpetual also-ran in classroom interactions. Her second week stiletto stab at AKEMI was an act of courage, after all, and though shot-down, she had succeeded in becoming something other than an almost SHINO or almost AKEMI. Now in week three, she calculated and launched another esoteric verbal characterization, this time against RITSUKO.

The action flowed naturally. The weekend's trip to Pusan to see her Korean relatives had inspired some amount of confidence in her Japanese upbringing, as once the KTX bullet train left Seoul it was instantly clear that Korea was far less developed than Japan. Parts of the down-town Seoul district were richer, even more developed than the best of Osaka or Tokyo, but just an hour outside the city, the Korean countryside was clearly far dustier, far less industrialized than its Japanese counterpart. In Japanese countryside towns of only one hundred thousand souls, video screens could be seen, gangs of various teenage tribes walked about. But in Korea, the dust rose: it seemed to infiltrate even the downtown core of secondary cities and the people walked about looked browbeaten, thoroughly countrified. The stores just looked cheap, covered with light dust, oldish signs in Hangul. "How about even an attempt at style?" TABUN thought.

Reception at the Korean family only confirmed matters. They took her out to a grand dinner; they showed off their car and their fairly decent house, family tomb, but it was obvious than three hundred meters from the dwelling place, there was just farmland. Nothing looked much different from raw nature five hundred meters away, and there was a sort of straitened air to things; even luxury here had a different quality, a bit cheaper in material, a bit less polished.

On Wednesday back in class TABUN launched her assault. Dividing vocabulary extremely esoterically between alternatives that lay on the exact shade of syllables, TABUN spoke with RITSUKO and characterized her in a way that was tilted just the aggressive side of normality. It was perfect. MIKI agreed with things; AKEMI nodded; and SHINO, though pretending not to pay attention, felt the same way. The best part of it was that RITSUKO did not even notice. She was lost in thought. She looked at TUSK; TUSK looked back.

Following TUSK's breakdown, TABUN thought she had a chance to score one on him as well. She felt the red-face incident could just as easily apply to her as it did to the obvious candidates AKEMI or SHINO and with MIKI confirming that things were going on exactly as one could see for oneself, she made a play to suborn TUSK. But although it was noticed, it was not reacted to, and her first reaction on the final breakdown at the closing ceremony was one of puzzlement. TABUN also felt cheerful enough to friend JOHANN on Facebook. It was the first girl to boy friending of 2/1 that year, and the last.

TUSK had told JOHANN she was "minority and therefore unable to express herself as a woman, for she will be criticized," but JOHANN had picked this one right. TABUN was, always was, on the table.

Matters as they developed leading up to the final night out, Friday, were simpler and purely psychological for the rest of 2/1. JOHANN, TUSK, ERI, COPENHAGEN all met up for a bright and sunny lunch one of the days, wherein JOHANN wore black German sunglasses that were in the aesthetic of the BMW Z3 or the Gestapo uniforms of the 1930s: sleek, black, evil. They met on a second floor restaurant, a kind of establishment that didn't exist in most European or American cities. ERI flirted back and forth with COPENHAGEN; she would not close the deal this particular week. They trooped down the stairs; they could have just as easily gone down a level to basement options, which were invariably politely staffed, gratuity free, and often frequently packed. Keiwha girls everywhere, sometimes very elegant looking, something naïve. KANYE, remembering that he had entered the program intending to learn Korean and not to meet 180 Japanese girls, returned with renewed focus to his studies; he was chosen as class leader at the closing ceremony and gave the representative speech, although more than one individual felt the hand of politics at work.

All forces converged. Disgusted with the social obligations thrown on her by TUSK, AKEMI texted QUARTERBACK, the very first American to pursue her and agreed to meet up with him and JOHANN for drinks that night before clubbing. She would choose the place: NB rather than M2, more closely packed, more highly recommended, more suitable for that final crazy night with the Americans, with the club kids, with all the forces that had met up that night. She began this thing; she would end it. And firmly pressing the "reject" button on Facebook, she closed off all possibility of future relationship with TUSK, though doing it just early enough for him to pick up on things.

Everyone met up that last night. The Fulbrighters, without the half-Swedish girl or KANYE, took up a corner at NB and QUARTERBACK was drawn out for one last ploy by AKEMI, who also took TUSK for a ride for at least 30 minutes, making him believe he still had one last ghost of a chance when in fact she would just dance with Korean boys and MEDIA-CHAN for the rest of the night. JOHANN read it instantly; he went off for solo hunting but would not achieve any kills that night.

Let us devote one last beautiful paragraph to the magic of that alcoholic beatbox. TUSK would never again see AKEMI. He would have taken her had she gone for him at the first; he would leave her his jacket as a symbol of remembrance. It had to happen this way; he had to draw out what was in her like he had with two American girls before for various reasons, but he would never forget her. She was, in purely structural terms, nothing physical, his first ever Japanese girl.

The months that followed would bring further phenomena, events, social occasions. Most of the 2/1 students left that weekend back to Japan, although JOHANN and TUSK went the other direction, met up a few weeks later in Shanghai, where the Expo was in full swing. JOHANN reminded TUSK he was owed favors; TUSK had a Korean Ministry of Trade contact take JOHANN out for a round of drinks, tried to get his bar-owner friend to do more than one drink for JOHANN (but he was Jewish). Trade official guy was a bit more generous and also wanted to give lots of advice; he was a small man and made himself feel important. LINGLING-RITSUKO remained friends, getting little of what happened the second half of the program, but at least completing the course, making new contacts. MIKI tried to convince TUSK she was just innocently willing to be friends; a year would pass before TUSK got the message.

COPENHAGEN-ERI become boyfriend-girlfriend. It was a surprise to JOHANN and TUSK. They had seen little that COPENHAGEN could offer, but then, their opinion of ERI wasn't so supremely high either. Completely unsurprisingly, however, the two were compatible. They went out for no less than a full year, COPENHAGEN eventually breaking it off, but ERI not too torn up in grief. COPENHAGEN stayed in Seoul for a few more weeks after program end, hanging out with Seoul National students. He felt this time even more fun. He claimed that he went out on weekends that were quite productive, as ERI had not quite committed to anything, but eventually they did, as the new fiscal year began and workplaces sprang into action all over the country.

The students generally learned Korean. Three weeks was not a tremendous amount of time, but certain structural changes occurred in the brain, the vocabulary poured out more easily, the familiarity with the everyday language shot up. With an estimated 600 hours required for Japanese speakers to learn Korean but an estimated 2000 for English speakers, the neighboring country citizens completed a full tenth of language acquisition during the three weeks whereas the various Germanics did only about a thirtieth. Final sunnyside weekend JOHANN-TUSK had a huge analytical talk session about specific details, spilling up a hill, down through the deserted gray buildings, to a wooden bar where meokoli was drunk, but TUSK wanted to bring up religion.

"I'm afraid I don't count it as a score if the elevator doors opened and closed between you and SHINO like a shoji panel," commented JOHANN cynically.

"But how about me saying on Friday, 'something unexpected will happen,' and then exactly at 2:14am, when I'm returning from the club, I run into SHINO exactly at the moment she's taking the elevator up from her constant TV-watching?"

"Coincidence."

"Jungian synchronicity."

"Same difference."

But it wasn't. Possibly TUSK's mind had broke. Possibly TUSK himself had broke. But elephantine imagery had flooded into that now subdued brain, and everywhere he looked, giant pachyderms marched down the streets of Seoul , swaying in their titantic majesty. Walking down the fashion street in front of Keiwha, a shopowner believed TUSK was attempting to shoplift; that item, a green backpack with two elephants, was purchased by TUSK, who was in turn ripped off the shopowner running a bill for 25 USD rather than 25000 KRW as on the price tag; he didn't make an issue of it seeing the bill a month later. In the plaza in front of Seoul station, an Indian pressed a green elephant into TUSK's hand. Walking off, she demanded neither payment nor acknowledgment.

"Have you lost your mind? Have you lost your mind?"

A homosexual hit on TUSK at the bathhouse.

"Come on, this is girls only," said AKEMI, and turned her back.

"Excuse me, that's quite a unique backpack," commented a stranger.

"I didn't ask you to talk to me," said TUSK. "I'm off to work on something."

"It's 1am," said JOHANN drily, "where would you be off to at this time?"

It was Keiwha'. Not Keiwha Womans University , the lack of apostrophe intentional, the Womans an archaic English usage. But Keiwha', which existed five minutes away, but orthogonally away rather than backwards or forwards in time. In this world, Japan and Germany had won World War II; spirit, geist, selfless spiritual yamato damashii―these had triumphed over British and American industry and mathematics, and although really in this world it was the increased influence of the Hindu gods that tipped the balance (India revolted; the Indian Legions broke the back of the British Middle East forces), the net result was Axis victory by 1955.

In Keiwha', history was about ten years retarded from Keiwha. The 1960s in Keiwha' were the period of conservatism and moral blandness, Axis Japan and Axis Germany both quietly building up their nuclear arsenals (Japan had built the first device, but the Sorge network brought blueprints to Vossstrasse before year's end), the 1970s erupting in sexual revolution, the 80s a time of Arab turmoil, recession, petrol station lines, societal decadence and the autonomy of India (Japan held on a little longer than the UK; they were initially seen as liberators); the 90s the advent of mass consumer affluence and personal technology. 3rd Germany fell in the year 2000―the conventional wisdom was that Germany was the stronger country compared to Imperial Japan, but in this world, heavy tanks and rocket planes were less important than the broad multiculturalism of the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere; heavy tanks were never used in an atomic world.

3rd Germany retreated to a Council of Europe. The flag, exactly similar to the E.U. flag of our world, represented a country that was a bit more racist and sterile-thinking than our familiar Community, but was still a significant divergence back to our world from the regime that preceded it (and the revolution was bloody). Africa, newly independent, began to develop from the Bantustans and Homeland Reserves the Germans had divided it into and the pressing social issue of the day was the exact status of its 20% white minority, a mix of German, Dutch, English, and French blood.

So we are here, 2010', in Keiwha', with the Commonwealth ( Japan ) stretching from Madagascar (IJA submarine base) through autonomous India (hotbed of espionage; the Germans still maintain curious ties throughout the north) down to neutral Australia (special status under Japanese-German treaty) to west coast USA (now metropolitan Japan ). East of the Rockies, Seaboard America is neutral but Europe-leaning; the South American countries were all German-aligned and now Europe-aligned, and the Keiwha' program has just drawn to a close in Keijo', capital of Japan 's first overseas territory.

Who were JOHANN and TUSK? Why were they there? The girls were all the same; learning Korean merely to administer a colony of forty million, they wore black uniforms with pink flower seals. Coming from nearly identical prefecture universities to top off their language in country, they would then be deployed to regional offices throughout the peninsula and look forward to careers of twenty years or more before rotation back to the Home Islands or further deployment to even more exotic locales. In such a program, there were 1800 students rather than 180; administrative and functionary needs were pressing and Keiwha'/Shinhak ties to Japan were completely overt.

In this world, a German student had just traveled to Keiwha' to briefly study Korean before returning to his commercial work in Beiping/Tianjin. Zainichi TUSK, still ironic, still aloof, a low-ranking Shanghai civil service functionary, was not particularly affected by rumors than in ten years there would be a Zainichi Prime Minister. The program's big point of unusuality was the presence, forty strong, of Seaboard or West Coast Americans, beneficiaries of a Tokyo-based international friendship program, the Japanese girls cooed and whispered to each other about the foreign boys, who were, truly, once-in-a-lifetime curiosities.

Would KANYE have gotten any in such a world? Undoubtedly not. But the problem with the differing political situation was that something else might have been implied entirely. India 's rising militancy, the growing power of syncretist Hindu cults: these were coincident with the mass importation of Indian labor to Korean factories; the Japanese were still controlling access to their Home Islands territory, but even there more and more dark faces could be seen in the universities.

This was where the elephants came in. Imagine a world hotter than this one, one taking place in summertime rather than winter. The great Divali festival is underway, the long line of elephants is reverently worshipped by the Korean-Indian population, as flowers are garlanded from street to street and water is sprinkled on the ground. TUSK saw those elephants; they had been transported through visionary-only means to this world, and as he walked about the streets of Seoul near the river, he knew they were as real as the world we were living in.

Philip K. Dick, author of one of the first counterfactual 'uchronie,' speculates in the German-Japanese world conspiracies and plots are rife. The Germans are planning a nuclear strike on Tokyo; factions in both empires are desperately seeking to uncover each other. But such extrapolation seems to reflect a purely American point of view; the real differences were as likely wholly cultural rather than merely an overlay of paranoia over normal U.S. society. Would Germany and Japan even build a materialistic society as America did? One would think automobiles would be a fraction of what they were in German-Japan led worlds. The caste (race classification) systems would be stiff, unyielding; though their contradictions would eventually lead to the downfall of 3rd Germany, nevertheless it would be taken for granted that certain biological lines were capable of leadership and others less so. And so in 1960s-era Volkswagen type cars, Keijo' would still plod along as it did, complete with Indian elephants but high definition television screens, the streets packed with swarming Third World Society but the overhead magnetic trains whisking the elite from skyscraper to skyscraper.

Why was JOHANN here? A trained SS assassin, his mission was to kill the Governor General of Korea , a notorious anti-German who diverted government funds to burn German farms in Pretoria. 3rd Germany had fallen, but like John Wilkes Booth, JOHANN would sacrifice his life to revenge the lives of colonists in white SudAfrika. [This is Philip K. Dick.] Alternatively, KANYE was the key political figure. A charismatic and rising Seaboard public speaker, the authorities wanted to more closely study somebody identified as critical to management of that neutral territory. JOHANN and TUSK were colleagues, pushing around KANYE merely to better understand his psychologies. Although KANYE constantly retreated to black music to avoid the socially-painful stimulus, nevertheless it was understood that in ten years' time KANYE would be Chancellor of Seaboard.

There are other, more divergent, possibilities. Perhaps KANYE was not black but Indian. He could have been either assassin, counter-terrorist, or rising political star. The stakes could have been surprise nuclear assault on Hiroshima, assassination of high government figures in Tokyo (a plot surely doomed to fail), or perhaps something more subtle, more aligned with events as they are.

We live in the post 9/11 world. The other possible read on the situation is that KANYE, JOHANN, and TUSK, all foreigners, are all members of a radical Hindu terror cell. If Imperial Japan Commonwealth (IJC) is the USA of counter-world, then KANYE, JOHANN, TUSK are cell leaders for the history-changing plot, controllers for a twenty-person team that will fly directly into the Mitsubishi buildings in Shin-Shinjuku. Neo-Tokyo erupts into flames; the great battle between Elephant and Red Sun Rising begins, and here reality planes collides into other planes; the result is only a line of commonality, after which everything falls away. It was a vision that had everything to do with Ganesh; and nothing to do with Shiva; the dance the electronic musicians played was the swan-song for a dying world, and in the aftermath, pieces or scraps of meaning would be collected like food by scavenging foragers; data had become manifest.

"Take Red team, Red team, Red team."

In hours, the counter-force police of the Kempeitai had reasserted control over Keiwha' campus. The terrorists, their plot exposed early, were now confined to three sites on campus, the grad dormitory, the giant underground student center, and then the undergrad dorm, all the way at the top of the hill. Each one was a unique problem.

"Gold team, we're barricaded and safe."

"Black; no movement."

Communicated by encrypted burst-transmission radio, the three terror leaders remained in constant contact throughout the whole ordeal. But they knew from the start they were doomed; it was a trade off of numbers versus global attention.

"We are transmitting live from Keijo', Japan where a radical Hindu terror cell RAKERJEE are currently holding over seven thousand college students hostage. Their demands include full independence for India , where demonstrations are continuing against Japanese rule."

The television screen showed the flashing strobe lights, the red and blue police blinkers that gave the salivating public its share of unfolding entertainment.

"Three separate elements of the terror group are holed up at Keiwha' Womans University , where they remain in possession of four different campus buildings including two dormitories, the student union, and the labor affairs building. Their actions are believed to be held in coordination with radical labor in Keijo' and the Chinese mainland. The Japanese government has promised a firm response..."

"Reports are trickling in that the hostages include a white Seaboardian educational delegation..."

"Conservative media in Japan are directly laying blame for the incident on the reforms of Prime Minister Fukuyama, whose Multicultural Reforms policy has unleashed Hindu nationalism across all of the Subcontinent..."

Of the three sites, the graduate dorm would be the first to fall. Far too open, far too many entrance and exit points, the students, sequestered in the basement, would be largely liberated through the use of stun-grenades and sleeping gas, with one particularly brave hostage actively fighting the terrorists before being shot and eventually martyred into a figure of legend. But sites 2 and 3 would prove far more difficult counter-raid targets. Indeed, the holding of Keiwha' Student Union would enter the annals of history as one of the most epic hostage situations ever.

Historical television show: "Of the three sites, the Student Union had the fewest hostages, but despite that reason, the terrorists would hold the building for no less than five weeks. In the end, the Black team made the largest impact for the cause of Hindu nationalism, holding summary executions daily for six weeks and eventually precipitating the downfall of the Fukuyama government. As the terrorists hoped, the next administration adopted draconian measures in India and that in turn inspired a mass populist backlash, forcing the Japanese out of India for good. The first Hindu empire was born."

Student Union was held for six weeks, but the imagery from the Grad dorm was ultimately that which lingered in public imagination for years to come. Its design facilitated piecemeal action; with pillars in the central quadrangle, but vantage points that allowed stretching of shooting from three hundred meters away it and the sniper-on-sniper skirmishing of the Student Union became the defining actions of urban terror for the unstable decades to come, and all sides believed that with "just one little extra push," things would be settled for good. And meanwhile in the working class quarters, where the light from workers' shacks spilled out onto soft evening streets, from time to time the festivals would be held, the sweet jasmine scene and incense a reminder of home away from home.

"We represent contacts from the Fifth Directorate."

"We know you are an officer for the Indian Liberation Army."

"Give us names, faces, places."

"This is your last chance for cooperation."

The thing of course is that they could have been control elements, pawns or proxies, or just simply the representatives of representative nations, peacefully attending a conference. Like the military delegation that was briefly seen on Student Union, ground level, week 2, there was always another conference to go to.

"So that was vision 1."

"That was vision 3. Vision 1 was the first week. An especially evocative dream that felt like an echo from the future, a cry-call for help from someone who never had a chance."

"Explain."

"Radical Islam had merged with a Latin-American guerilla movement. Busloads of women and children coupled to a huge gasoline bomb driven up to U.S. bases. An adopted Mexican boy living with U.S. soldiers just in time to see suicide planes crashing into cities and a NCO firing his anti-aircraft gun in the air, this is serious he wouldn't do that, wondering, 'did anyone in past years care? did anyone in past times ever want anything but cheap pleasures such that we had to live in this hellhole?"

"Seems a bit more realistic."

"Seems entirely possible. Thing was how real it felt; a cry from the future. It was about values; our present and our now, and how the choices of those in the past give us freedoms or limitations today."

"And vision 2"

"And vision 2 we discussed."

SHINO SUGIHARA took off her apron and walked out to her white cube car. She drove to her office, where her assigned tasks typically included light clerical work, scheduling, and occasional reception duties. She could see that her career at the company would last about ten more years, after which she would be moved to the back office as an embarrassment. Her implicit duty was to get married, but she had no intention of doing so.

Why was this. This was because SHINO SUGIHARA was a complete sexual pervert. She had a dungeon in the basement of the house she had inherited from her parents and in the basement of the dungeon was a little Zainichi American boy who had annoyed her very much during her studies in Korea. The little Zainichi had actually believed SHINO when she sent him an email inviting him to come to Japan to be her boyfriend, but as soon as she took him to her house, she stunned him with a zap gun and then put him into the cage. Every day she stuck little hot irons into the cage. He kept begging for mercy and finally to just be killed, but she would not let him off so easy.

"Ha, ha. How do you know it isn't true."

"Indeed it possibly may be."

The boys had agreed on end states, probable futures, but what remained undiscussed was why JOHANN in the end liked TABUN and why TUSK liked AKEMI (more than TABUN). AKEMI was unusual claimed TUSK; "she actually wants to leave the place."

"But that could just mean failure to adjust."

"Then again, we are expats also."

Then China, finally, came to the fore, the great unspoken white elephant that influenced everything, had a part in dreams, analysis, systems of thought. Even in the KEIWHA' scenario.

"Rumors have been reaching Home Island Japan lately of the existence of a radical labor moment in China's western provinces, where veneration for a mythical figure named 'MAO Zedong' has been renewed among the increasing tide of Hindu nationalism..."

"MAO Zedong, famed labor leader of the 1930s, disappeared into the Western mountains after the fall of Nanjing , but it is said that he has been converted into a quasi-religious figure, still alive although he would be one hundred ten years old..."

"The Japanese government, which together with the former 3rd Germany stamped out all insurrectionary labor movements earlier in the 20th century, is said to be deploying new forces into China, where some journalists are claiming a 'secret war' is brewing..."

"Casualties are said to be the low thousands, with the recent purchase of additional plastics by the Manchurian Force believed to be evidence of corpse disposal..."

Uchronie can go both ways. If TUSK's first settlement of things was a bit too generous to the Empire of Japan, perhaps it is too aggressive to envision IJC as a chemical empire, deliberately spraying biopesticides and chlorine gas to control vast swaths of Siberian, Chinese, and ultimately Indian territory.

"Can you imagine how that would change society?"

"At the very least fashions would be quite different."

"The fundamentals of the economy would be different; it would be more about control of chemical resources."

"Petroleum used more for plastics synthesis rather than automobiles."

The point of all this was not to just go over speculative histories. Its main point was to understand underlying values. The girls put themselves into neat rows and corridors because they were collectivist. JOHANN and TUSK spoke Asian languages overlayed onto a Western personality; they felt the dissonance when they spoke the languages. But they were again feeding into a Western-East Asian system where one believed the other the converse; the Indian/Hindu third leg of the tripod was what kept coming out; it was what made TUSK believe in the primacy of the elephantine.

"But why the elephant? Why always this animal?"

"Not always this animal. The monkey, too; the gorilla. This was the logo for a guerilla-based operation; this was the most sickening animal of all."

"And with a gorilla you would bring war, revolution, counter-terror?"

"With a gorilla I would merely observe."

TUSK was in line with a new psychological dimension of artificial television. First the auteur would make the standard high school series, then he would spin it into psychological introspection, and then finally at the very end he would offer a vision of alternative genres, the romantic comedy, the space opera; there would be little else to cover.

"Space opera?"

"University campus as strictly delimited no-space."

"And genres are just reflections of widespread interest; they can be read as psychological developments of the time."

The weather all program long had been good. As TUSK and JOHANN ascended their way to the undergraduate dorm, it was sunny, and it had been sunny with snow at the very end, a symbol of purity, a final closing to things. The campus was empty now; it seemed things had finally closed, and bereft of students, temporarily, Keiwha (not Keiwha') seemed to be temporarily holding its breath before March would bring its crop of temporary students, and then April brought the new year. Seoul was going on, unconcerned; it had had past history with TUSK, who had once been required to spend six unemployed months there. He turned when they reached the top of the hill.

"What exactly is the point of imperialism?"

JOHANN considered. "The ordering of things?"

"And girls are just the side-effect."

"Apparently so."

"I disagree. The women of a culture define its culture; it's the girls pleading the suicide bombers on that define the PLO, for example."

"Let's meet up again in China; I will go to the Expo."

"You should definitely look up my friend in Sanlitun as he's an old university close friend. Hey, strange, I never did ask you, what do you do in China?"

"I'm on a Chamber of Commerce exchange programme, but it's ending soon. Soon I have to find a real job. How about you?"

"I do university applications for the children of the local Air Force base senior officers and all the dusty little provincial governors. Actually I really impress people when I say that but they're all squat little monolinguals."

Tears, laughter, lies, and clever conversation could not elicit anything more than what happened, and everyone that attended agreed it had been a classic session. JOHANN, denying it later, said, "It feels like the center of the universe." AKEMI posted on her blog "Three magic weeks in Korea!" MIKI made similar sentiments; TUSK, for gone in his mind's storm, could not disagree in the slightest.

The pleasure of endings is that they allow final scavengings, summations, and analysis. The biggest unreported matter was a private drama that played out between SHINO and TUSK. TUSK had tricked SHINO into looking at him for an extended period of time in Week 1. In Week 3, the Monday after Valentine's Day, TUSK got chocolates for everyone and everyone ate them—but SHINO made a production out of it, first hiding it behind her namecard and then slowly drawing it out, implicitly communicating "Haha! I know I'm the one you really wanted to give this too. Nobody else matters!" It brought into mind the question of "balance;" that everyone managed to retaliate at least once.

So too KANYE. On Wednesday he brought winter melon (not watermelon) for his classmates. To serve it up, he also brought a very large and very shiny knife, which he waved around before inserting into the soft pale flesh of the melon. "I'm just joking guys, of course I wouldn't stab you all to death." JOHANN noticed. So did SHINO, who now felt just sympathetic enough (she had made a show of avoiding him a few days earlier) to accept his friend request on FB later on.

This became the topic of massive conversation later. JOHANN felt it marked the complete defeat of KANYE, who actually up to then only had suffered minor losses of reputation. "But with that knife, he was showing that he was actually toothless to defend himself socially. All of us were indeed tensing up a little inside in case he flipped out; it was the moment of final defeat."

"God he thought it was a joke."

"But everyone was just the tiniest bit on their feet."

Balance also played out in the dormitory the final night. One of the halfie girls and TUSK had a conversation; she had been interested in JOHANN, but there was no point in moving it forward now, the very last night of the program. TUSK, who had avoided participating in the scramble against KANYE, put up a picture of a gorilla on his Facebook and a very subtle semiotician would see it as commentary of the week's earlier happenings. And GREENEYES, the slightly previously hinted at half-Swede at the programme, looked up at the closing ceremony; she would become more prominent the second year (and both TUSK and GREENEYES knew the other would be there).

Is this about the song? Yes it is. Some details must be obscured, but if Ganesh is about learning, boundaries, language, Shiva is about the dance, the song, destruction. TUSK sang; his song was misinterpreted by nerd-girl of the Fulbrighters; music was prominent at both M2 and NB, and Lady Gaga was quite big this year, she dominated popular culture in the way Love Psychedelico's Standing Bird was complete full-spectrum for summer of '95. Absurdism, the philosophy; Dadaism, the aesthetic; these were hip; these were hot, and they would affect even the way people spoke, sang, dreamt, loved. "And you walk away," sang TUSK; and they walked away.

Week 1: Freud; Week 2: Marx; Week 3 then leaves Levi-Strauss and Jung, pop-psychology into a sea of glossy girl magazines and way-too-facile analysis. Bordering on the E of EI, the S of SN, the T of FT, and the J of PJ, TUSK interviewed for a career analysis firm upon return to Mainland, and all they could talk about was Myers-Brigg. He lost one major point in a power struggle with a native, but picked the right Indian middle-manager to support the next month. He was recontracted; he lost weight and became a vegetarian; he got his groove back. JOHANN took a job at the German stock exchange: they ate up the US markets in about a year's time and were underway to swallow up a secondary Chinese one as well. Germany was doing well. TUSK thought up ways to talk to people to elicit MBTI naturally; he considered the Five-Factor Model, he considered Neuroticism one of the most central axes.

All this analysis failed to capture the real point, however. Language study itself altered people. From the Subject-Verb-Object structures of German and English, the Germanic-speakers went to Subject-Object-Verb, a more passive way of seeing the world, a more dissociated. "There is only one proper thing to say after every sentence in Japanese," commented one bilingualist, "but many in English." Limitations of freedom, paradoxically, could be liberating. Moreover, ways of command; suggestions of doing things; these couldn't not be precisely matched up. "Tell me your name," one said in English; "you tell me your name," was the almost-translation. "Jug-gee-yoh" said Korean speakers attracting a waiter; the Japanese felt a twinge of impoliteness. "New face!" announced ROLLER day four; the Japanese speakers all stared at each other.

All in all, people were improved. SHINO went blonder that year, but she made a close male friend back home who helped to balance her perversions. AKEMI, looking to be punished (and this is a whole other universe of relationship analysis, the sadist/masochist little sister/older sister model), got what she wanted and became more Japanese—though she persisted in wearing black leather boots and her handbag was still a bulky mass of black leather. MIKI became more skeptical of foreigners and ERI, as mentioned, ERI started a year long relationship. She acquired skills in psychological analysis, she went through her May blues easier this year, and her entry into the Ministry went off without a hitch. Airplanes flying through skies, tanks rolling in column; ERI was where she had always wanted to be. (Even as others just posted every single travel picture they had on their computer.) TABUN, still 19, went back to university; she continued her studies and felt more adjusted to her Korean background and more informed.

None of the Yale interviewees got in. The statistical outcome was not irregular, although perhaps TUSK sank SNIPER rather than finessed her in. TUSK, worrying for some time that he would be persecuted (okay, fine, he sent her one inappropriate text) escaped punishment except for being kicked off Alumni Volunteer Interviewing (AVI). Maybe the girls however could still continue to make MPGs (not SMGs) and other videos; that was entirely their business.

"Analysis, analysis, analysis!" This section cries out for its own capping logical system, something beyond that sun and snow simultaneously or AKEMI's sweet scent as they slowly peeled off from QUARTERBACK and then slowly peeled off TUSK. (So small, so perfect!) So we have structuralism, now; we have Claude Bernard Levi-Strauss, who lived among savages for ten years and then finally wrote a book.

The failure of the analytical systems to date is a failure of ideas in relevance to actual facts on the ground. If this document is a map and the events are the landscape, the document loses utility as it grows to the same size as the landscape but loses utility when it becomes too data-poor to offer any true cartography. Let's read this document as a set of encoded instructions to a GORILLA group. If that is the case, we see the major flaw as a lack of secondary support (at least one out of 180 should have backed up the main actor) although things in the end probably ended up as best as could be expected given initial conditions. If Seoul is not Tijuana and not Keijo', then maybe it is a European capital, at which festivities went off without a hitch and no lives were lost, contact was made with the Chinese, and higher echelons offered support for what was going on down below, but only in a moral sense. Where was management? ROLLER, the Christian, only precipitated events; the act of bringing together all the Chinese natives only added a third layer of complexity to the culture of the class, and what they never saw was two out of the three Chinese speakers didn't even see it as part of themselves.

"But Korean culture is clearly inferior," commented JOHANN.

Yes. The café was noisy. Yet in a sense, we are the ones who are flawed rather than ERI or COPENHAGEN since actually in the broadest sense, everything existed for them to get together. It was never about childhoods spent "learning the game," so we could apply it now. It was just about being natural.

"Yet we saw both lose face."

And this was a true fact on the ground as well.

Structuralism, compared to psychoanalysis or Marxism, would never have the same impact on academia or world culture as its two senior step-brothers. But it would enjoy a brief renaissance as pop-structuralism in a best-seller; it made closet semioticians out of everyone.

"Okay S is father, B is father', and all the various girls are merely relatives. The joining together of N and P signifies the birthing of a family structure where N and P are understood to be sibling forces (incest taboo) or just merely children in general. So actually we've conducted a huge marriage ceremony, out of which ERI and COPENHAGEN are now together."

"You're saying these entire three weeks were a marriage."

"Of course, it is comedy, not tragedy. Tragedy would have been JOHANN stabbing us all to death."

"Which I personally think was closer to happening that you realize."

"Maybe. But he was in the end the honor student; maybe all honor students are potential rage killers."

"The turmoil filled world of academia."

If these three weeks were a marriage ceremony, the key analysis would not be sexual forces or classes of political economy, but the distinction between raw and cooked; sacred and profane. And GORILLA team, now formed, would be ready for action in future years, action without movement, force without release, a potentiality. Events as they were resisted merely classification into signifier-signified; these theories were in any case only invented by monoglots (bilinguals at best); it wasn't until you bridged things completely to the Eastern aesthetic (and there was a structuralist who was frankly astonished by Japan) that you finally began picking up on things.

Without getting too deep into things, LINGLING is raw because she's good at sports and unselfconscious. SHINO is clearly totally cooked. But just as language has different words for raw and cooked food items, so we see that the cultural difference between the two can be characterized both as transition and states of being. LINGLING can become SHINO but SHINO can never become LINGLING. Evocation of the names of Hindu deities will make some clans clamor for destruction of this text but others believe a revelation is underway.

In the end, there was nothing but the dance. Not the last one, NB, the bodies pressing against each other so firmly one could barely squeeze against each other in some timorous undulation. Rather, M2, the Shanghai-named club somehow in Seoul, the drinks liquid and multicolored, the swarms flowing now here, now there, and COPENHAGEN pressed against ERI; everyone liquored up, AKEMI so sweet and small and perfectly coiffed, so perfectly prepared like a dish, made-up, sliced for consumption, fresh. She said, "well I never liked anyone enough to stay with them. though I've only slept with three guys." TUSK never knew why girls so frequently volunteered their count to him. The laser lights sparkled and the speakers shook.

[God, why do these Japanese girls chase so many foreign guys; reversal of normal gender relationships; aggressive Asian woman sexuality.]

It was all about the boundary. Writers could never understand; he had never come across good description of self-same. Tomorrow never existed, of course; it never did, and there never was certainty in life, that was the lesson of all that quant-qual back and forth, the job in media, the job in finance. When the DOW collapsed, you were responsible, no matter what. When things got back together again, it was your boss that got the credit. Friends would come and friends would go, but the ever-shifting boundaries of social awareness couldn't exceed an upper-limit of about 300, and your first circle of pals would never be more than 40, regardless of your use of technology.

It was house! 300 bpm meant dissolution of consciousness, meant the blurriness of now, meant you kept control only to keep things going. Her hips were firm against him, her cheeks was pressed tight to his face, she was soft, yielding, gentle. How many months and years had passed for this moment to happen, how many crises had to be resolved, how many red-faced Australians had to be sent skipping back to Australia for the noise finally to stop, the moment to become separated from all others, for the we of me to emerge, for time utterly to slow to a halt, for the meridian lines to emerge, tuneless, senseless, without reference point. Nobody ever said you had to leave Japan to find a Japanese girl; nobody ever taught you that fleeing something at full speed would bring you just full-circle in the end. It was the age of affluence; the time when media-generators would pour out light and sound, but the technicians would work the bolts and press the sliders forward; they laid down the beats and you surrendered yourself completely.

Sweet alcoholic daze. It came only in this town, perched on the riverbank, lacking in romance, purely functional and Nagoyaesque, business people eating spicy food and washing down beers; the crowds spilling out onto sidewalks, the smell of meats and smelts flowing pungently through the littered passageways. AKEMI knew what she was doing; she would be plunging into ferroconcrete housing projects, the bored housewife, the listless middle-aged woman, but until that day came, she was still AKEMI five foot nothing, ninety pounds, a strong chin but otherwise Japanese cutie. Perfectly eatable, thought TUSK, and realized that he would eat her out completely if she liked, the dorm rooms in Ewha with enclosed shower unit absolutely suitable for all sorts of play, the warmed raised floor hard but not too hard, the dorm bed narrow but not too narrow. Why were ERI and COPENHAGEN so over each other anyway? AKEMI pretended helplessness but then they too kissed; just once, as the music entered a new decade, slurring away into hypersonic beats, then slowing down again, speeding up into frenetic pace and then spilling back over and out all over the dance floor. The crowd surged.

AKEMI pulled away. It was happening too fast; becoming way too intimate, and the two danced close but not directly touching. JOHANN, seemingly amused by all proceedings, moved to another side, not interfering, his mind smug with the realization that TABUN would not be targeted. To one side, bemused threesome of K-girls watched as TUSK danced dirty-dirty-dirty, and then to another, one of those big-glasses boys looked mildly ticked off at TUSK but not COPENHAGEN, who knows why, and then TUSK and AKEMI danced just a little more together, before they pulled away for good.

"Okay, enough, go home?" Everyone was flushed.

Nodded assent.

That was the taxi ride back that characterized things. The neighborhood had eluded characterization before, but between the unexpected hill climb off the main slide down to Sinchon and the hills of Keiwha itself, what could only stand out were all those huge gates everywhere, Hongik itself one huge gate, the small park with the musicians, the crowds that surged, the sidewalk vendors that kept up trade up to the late late hours. Getting off, there was that brief pause as they collected their bearings, AKEMI's hand on TUSK's—just briefly—and then the decision to find AKEMI's dorm.

"You live in a hotel?"

"No, no, no. Just had to switch to like...a guesthouse."

"Strange you couldn't get housing."

"I only decided to come here last minute."

"Grab a quick bite, it's not good to sleep on an alcoholic stomach?"

"Okay."

Odd streetside architecture. But here a mom-and-pop place.

"So you're graduating next month? Wow that must be exciting."

"Yeah. But not sure how long I want to keep doing the Docomo job."

"You're in sales."

"More like just in the branch."

"Mmm."

JOHANN: "What do you really want to do?"

"Well I figure I want to work like TUSK, you know, in different countries. Leave Japan."

The three talked some more, and TUSK told his subway station encounter story.

"Wow, crazy."

"Of course had it been JOHANN here, he would have been like [Korean] ten thousand dollars? ten thousand dollars? that's way too expensive. I can do three thousand."

"Hahahah."

Then they parted ways, each to their respective places.

Week 4

"Your big...or rather, your only talent is to write love stories. So just write love stories, make a million bucks, live on an island somewhere."

It was good advice. But TUSK couldn't take it. He had to be a literaturist.

Of the topic materials covered in Year 1, the most undeveloped topic is without question the Relationship That Never Was, containing as it does the Relationship That Was. The Relationship That Was was a seven-year romance with a tall black statuesque crack-addict who made TUSK one of the most prominent students at Yale. Yale is sufficiently elevated that merely going there constitutes a sort of society life in itself, but although 90% of its graduates would be cut out of the action (secretly at least a hundred every year plotted to write a novel about life at Yale; it's harder than it looks isn't it), by this simple act of strategy TUSK was pulled into the action, he got invited to all the secret clubs, and then he got to go to Abingdon/Whitney for a year. Okay actually there's a little exaggeration. Death's Head did not tap TUSK. But Chicken Leg and Paper Scroll fought over him and he accepted the former.

This was why. Everywhere you looked those four years TUSK was at Yale, you saw this tall statuesque black woman who appeared to be constantly in histrionics and next to her, this calm, sedate slim Asian male who otherwise appeared totally normal. TUSK got good grades, he made speeches for Philoxology, he did a little snowboarding for the ski team, and he seemed completely and perfectly put together. But such a person would be completely ignored, whereas such as person plus a black crack addict made TUSK the toast of a hundred parties.

The black crack addict relationship had gone on so long that TUSK himself changed as a person. It is one of the most surprising but true recorded facts that people who have survived extremely long and terrible events do not after a few months have passed wished the thing hadn't happened. It has become too much a part of them to then reject. So we find Holocaust victims on tape saying that they don't necessarily wish that they weren't sent to the concentration camps (of course not all); the experience has been so horrific, has seared into them so much, they cannot at this point reject what is now essentially a part of them.

In this way, TUSK does not wish he had not gone out with the model girl. But if there is one central decision that he reflects endlessly on going the otherway, it was that Relationship That Never Was, the Seattle Korean-American girl who smoked cigarettes and sarcastically asked his opinions on literature.

"So you like Haruki Murakami better than Ryu Murakami?"

TUSK: "Yes. Haruki Murakami feels lived-in and real, whereas Ryu Murakami is writing about drug-users and psychotic people."

"See you're missing the point. Haruki Murakami is selling us the idea of love. His novels are about these people who are so deeply shaken up by love or by the act of love that they kill themselves or alter their entire lives or spend endless decades of their experience just brooding over some love affair gone awry. But in reality, he's just a businessman, see? He started a bar after college and then he realized he could get rich writing so he writes love bestsellers, makes millions of dollars, and lives quite well. Acute business skill!"

"No, that's too simplistic. Murakami is producing literature. He's shaking up people. It's the most profoundly moral act a person can do."

"So do it then, TUSK. Write love stories. Make a million bucks. Live well."

SEATTLE was profoundly skeptical about Haruki Murakami. She felt that Murakami was selling us a world that wasn't real, that he romanticized and blurred over the actual hellishness of ordinary existence, and then to top it all off, insulted student revolutionaries and leftists in his work, characterizing them as phonies when their feelings were in fact authentic. She preferred Ryu Murakami, who wanted to blow up Tokyo rather than save it, who sees the world in terms of sex and violence rather than love and friendship.

SEATTLE was a beautiful girl. "Love isn't real either, you know. Look at those couples walking around. Invariably, one hundred percent of the time and I mean 100% of the time, one of them loves the other more than the other. In fact, if you want a girl to fall in love with you, tell her you disbelieve in love."

"Ha! I get it. You're telling me that you don't believe in love. So now I'll fall in love with you."

"Yes, you will. But it will happen slowly."

Ten years later, TUSK was in love with SEATTLE. But SEATTLE had killed herself. So it was too late.

This was SEATTLE a/k/a "The Relationship That Never Was." She transferred to Yale after two years at Washington State, entering the same First Year Composition class mandated to graduate as the freshman TUSK. The two, both being English majors, talked literature constantly and eventually began seeing each other every few days for coffee, over which they argued quietly over every aspect of literature itself. TUSK liked Haruki Murakami; SEATTLE liked Ryu. TUSK felt Yasunari Kawabata the superior artist; SEATTLE nearly gagged and said Mishima Yukio was clearly better. Neither was too keen on Soseki (although TUSK revised his opinion as he got older). They didn't consider Banana Yoshimoto worth reading, and Natsuo Kirino did not appear in English translation until years later. Of course there were no Korean writers. Americans did not divide quite as easily into distinct separations; on the question of American and British literature, SEATTLE and TUSK had opinions that sometimes diverged and sometimes converged.

"Essentially I think I understand your philosophy being that the world is on the edge of chaos and that things are all on the verge of collapse. SEATTLE, you despise the writers that write about love because you don't believe in the existence of love, you see it as just a lie to sell more books and rock songs."

"You're kinda getting it."

"This theory is interesting to me because it would say something about relationships in general where one partner is submissive to the other. The senior partner is willingly maintaining a pretense of the existence of love even though he or she doesn't feel it, such that the junior partner can essentially hypnotize themselves and just get carried away in a sea of submission to another's will. The junior partner feels 'I am in love,' but really they are exploiting the generosity of the senior partner, who participates in the lie for some other advantage or perhaps just for the sex."

"It's something like that." But TUSK wondered if two people were never just simply in love.

SEATTLE, SEATTLE, SEATTLE. SEATTLE in the green of GREENEYES's eyes (although SEATTLE had brown eyes), SEATTLE in the literature major of BARBIEDOLL's academic studies, SEATTLE in the appearance (though not reality) of ICEPRINCESS's way of holding herself, self-presentation, and mannerisms, SEATTLE in Springtime's carefreeness, Alpha's surgency, GREENEYES's cleverness, GOAT's unfashionable fashionableness, THETA's artsy-ness, Leaf-1, -2, and -4's popularity; and SEATTLE's age, SEATTLE's age, oh so delightful nineteen, in IOTA, IOTA above all, tears in eyes, remembrance for things passed, the girl who is lost and can never be recovered, the conceit that explains itself through self-presentation of its own self-conscious self, the love affair that is better because less is said, the confusing document that throws fifteen names out but only remembers one, SEATTLE-THETA-IOTA-GOAT-ICEPRINCESS-BARBIEDOLL and SNIPER-AKEMI-TABUN-ERI, one hundred eighty Japanese girls, one hundred eighty Japanese girls, but this year no foreigners whatsoever, going in naked, going in alone, only what you can pull out of your own knapsack, a knife.

For purposes of this round around the significant personalities will be delineated by capitalized names. Less significant characters are named solely by one majuscule and the rest of the name in lower-case, hence, 'Springtime.'

For purposes of this round around the significant personalities will be delineated by capitalized names. Less significant characters are named solely by one majuscule and the rest of the name in lower-case, hence, 'Springtime.'

There is a book that has never been written but that shares rough correspondence with this one. This book is called 'September Haven' and is about not three weeks in Seoul where 180 Japanese girls and one foreigner take Korean lessons together but about New Haven, where twelve-hundred newly arrived Yale students settle into their dormitories, make new friends, and generally feel very pleased with themselves. Actually 'intense emotional gratification,' 'center of the universe,' or 'total overwhelming joy' might be better descriptions of that first thirty days. But the reason why this book can't be written are complex, having to do with the particular culture of secrecy around that mist-shrouded campus, the fact that finally understanding compels you not to talk about it, and because everybody wants to write that book so therefore it can't exist. The key themes of this book are that everything that happens in the next four years has to do with those thirty days—that girl who seemed a bit spacey and unstable the very first week was clearly anticipatable to drop out her second year (as she did) and the class divisions that existed in those thirty days were also those that would exist for all the remaining four years such that one graduate remembers four years of hiding out in his dorm room playing computer games and another had a black crack-addict girlfriend and quite possibly runs the risk of acute psychosis himself, because a cell phone is going off right now and it's making it impossible to write.

A'hem. TUSK remembers those thirty days quite well. The quintessential moment is not involving him, but a Hollywoodesque girl (tall, blonde-haired, quite attractive) deciding in the spirit of first month's democratic feeling to hang out with the engineers eating pizza in the student lounge. TUSK walks in just as the engineers crack a joke and Miss Hollywood says, "you guys laugh?!?!" Total silence ensues.

This was the problem with Yale, you know. Its social life was dominated by the senior societies and everything revolved so much around who was in who's circle that nobody actually bothered to study, it was Harvard that produced Facebook, Stanford that made Google, Princeton that produced Carly Fiorina, and Columbia that made a U.S. President or two. Yale's selectivity had gone down and down while every other elite American university was becoming better and better, and so it was the only one of the U.S. schools that was European in temperament; it alone was in decline, and if this decline was slow and measured and playing off against an old boys' connection with the highest reaches of the U.S. government, it was nevertheless a decline, a slow decline. Soon morons and freakshows would appear, but at least it had its history and august tradition; Yale which had Death's Head and Paper Scroll would still play its little mind games with each other and so thousands upon thousands of its graduates who were once the best of their class would be driven off into obscurity, incalculated through four years of education into total uselessness whatsoever.

The difference in the schools could be seen in the health of the respective entrepreneurial societies at each school. Harvard and Stanford had tightly run organizations that served as laboratories for eventual Silicon Alley or Silicon Valley dot-coms. Columbia's was politicized, accepting government funds that were then distributed cleverly to those who courted the administration rather than came up with genuine ideas; Princeton didn't even have one—though it had a private analogue that served much the same purpose; finally Yale did in fact have one, but it alone among the top Ivy schools did absolutely no work whatsoever. It just sat there. Yale's Entrepreneurial Society took in university funding but believed itself entitled to those funds merely for the fact of its very existence, culture the sine qua non of American universities.

This wasn't it, though, not by a long shot. You went to Yale. You were tapped by a secret society. You then proceeded to attend a party with three hundred other undergraduates, exchanging only through mutual glances the relationship with your fellow society mates such that nobody else in attendance at the party knew of your hidden relationship. Present also at the party with thirty other people who belonged to different secret societies. Could you then identify these people through careful observation? Of course not. To do so would require staring at one person constantly for the whole evening, and then reading into their expressions a possible relationship that was just your own imagination talking. There were six chances out of ten the person was staring at another person out of sexual interest. Three chances out of ten the person was staring at somebody just because they were blurry and drunk. Half a chance the individual was seeking some financial advantage. Several times lower in the spectrum of possible reasons was the possibility that said individual (a) belonged to a secret society, (b) was exchanging a glance with a fellow society member, and (c) you were not being noticed yourself.

No. The best things that unfolded did so accidentally. It was after some hugely secret affair (taking place in an underground location and only hinted at even to other fellow secret society members) that you by accident went to some campus bar, and there, other people not knowing of your affiliation, would walk amidst you, to be noticed, registered, completely examined without their knowledge, studied because they were the kind of people who gravitated to the center of action and did not contemplate the possibility that they were the only ones who did not know every other person in the bar. At such a constellation of events, you took another drink and thought about Proust; you thought about everything except the idea of generating your own ideas, and going to Yale became a sort of accomplishment in itself, whereas once it had just been preparation for actually going and doing work, now it was the end point of everything, the final culmination that justified your getting some highly paid sinecure, that meant you felt entitled for the rest of your life and that made you believe in the absolute primacy of your thoughts, your classification as an individual several orders up the evolutionary tree than mere homo sapiens.

So forget Chicken Leg, forget Death's Head, forget Paper Scroll, the real action was in the bulge bracket, only here could genuine innovation be fostered and only here in the constellation of other academic cliques, specialties, majors, disciplines, schools of thought, styles, fashions, and personal preferences could we find SEATTLE, girl that launched a thousand dreams. (And this work is self-conscious, as previously mentioned; we know we're only now really getting to what you really want.)

TUSK first loved SEATTLE the first year. It had happened without planning or expectation, just another drunken talk, but suddenly SEATTLE stood up straight in her chair and said to TUSK directly, "have you ever noticed that people always believe the confessions you make when you're really really drunk? of course when we are sober we are on guard and parse everything that arrives through our ear, but it is precisely at that fourth hour of the morning when you are trashed beyond trashed, when you are so drunken that everything is a blur, that if you lie, if you tell somebody a strange story or make some odd confession, especially one apparently damaging to yourself, it becomes instantly and totally believed. how odd people are!"

SEATTLE was confident. She believed that just as affirmative action brought less-talented blacks to Yale, it had self-selected only the very crème de la crème of asian students, that there were minds here among them, brilliant, undiscovered, the creative powers of this generation. "Think about it in terms of numbers. If you select one out of ten thousand, that individual is one out of ten thousand. If you pick only one out of a million, then that is one out of a million."

The conversation had flowed from there. SEATTLE and TUSK were able to agree that it was possible to feed another person a subtext; that words as they existed on the surface were always read, analyzed, and accepted only partially, but one could very well tell a long, long story that was completely disbelieved, while its subtext (e.g., 'I am gay' or 'I commit crimes') would be believed. The process could also be carried out with a positive subtext (e.g. 'I am rich' or 'I am in touch with royalty') but that was far harder. In this way relationships between SEATTLE and TUSK reached a new level; each was on guard, yet simultaneously transcendently pleased to find a like-mind. The differences that would emerge were only details.

"TUSK, your mind works in concentricities. You are instantly fascinated by the idea of an elite society and then within that elite society another even more elite society and then within that circle within a circle, still more layers of inner access. But what is that person at the very centermost point? And how much genuine freedom does that person have, now that they have centered themselves so elegantly? The element of play, the 'finesse,' it exists not in circles within circles within circles, but in the overlap between different elements that perhaps don't normally overlap. Take 'English lit majors' for example and 'Japanologists,' for example. Those are two usually exclusively categories, but that small overlap of people is the really fascinating subsection."

"Well, I just feel that inner-circles have the secrets, and people are just always fascinated by secrets. For example, if I were to say 'hey guess what, I heard one branch of the Japanese Imperial family is really pro-American and one branch is really pro-pre-war Japan, and the pre-wars are beating up the pro-Americans, then everyone would find that commentary really interesting and want to know more. Furthermore, some especially creative people might guess that I wasn't talking about the Japanese Imperial family but the British, and then it would all dissolve into this big guessing game which people I were talking about."

"I think you overestimate people's interest in imperial lives. Those people are... well, they don't really control things anymore. It's just all symbolic."

"Possibly. But okay, let's assume for a moment you're right. Which specific overlap people are we talking about in the English lit department that overlaps with the Japanologists? I will note that we could very well talk about elites in both departments as well, for example Ms. Britney Spears of Japan, who by the way..."

"No, no, resist that impulse TUSK. Let us contemplate the normals."

In the forty possible people who represented the overlap between 'English lit majors' and 'Japanologists' (and this was stretching it), maybe five were truly interesting, Jihadist, Sasquatch, Samurai, Turnkey and Poker. Jihadist, who was gay and internationalist, spoke fluent Japanese and actually finally switched over to EALL late his third year. Sasquatch was droll and distant. Samurai told everyone about his famous ancestors. Turnkey was an excellent cook and made preparations for the State Department. Poker was British; working-class.

"Okay, I'm sorry, I don't see it."

"The point is that these people are all 'Nietzscheans.' They invent their own value-systems and then live by it; everyone else—or rather many others—are just sheep. Followers."

"I'm sure everyone in their own head thinks of themselves as a Nietzschean. It's only that some people really do break new ground."

"Your analysis is kinda correct for Jihadist and Poker, maybe to the slightest for Turnkey, but I think everyone is just going to go off and live normal lives."

"But you would be wrong. For Jihadist is already original in the way he acts and Poker is more likely to turn to crime than get a mortgage."

In truth, SEATTLE knew what she was talking about; it was just that she was demanding too many specifics too early. These people, who existed at the intersection of Japanology and literature, understood things quite well—with their understanding to get even better as time passed—but as the Dean of the College said, 'eventually all subjects converge.' The fifty year old engineering major was much the same as the fifty year old drama student; they had just gotten to that place (that silence!) through different routes.

"Let me characterize our department more formally. We have eight hundred undergraduates in total. 20% are overlapping with History or Classics. 20% have vague Global/Comparative Lit sympathies. 5% each are Victorian, Medieval, Joycean, Germanic, Philosophy, Theater, or Sociology/Feminist. There is a distinct category of creative artists and a distinct category of marketing/business management people. Things overlap far more than one would like."

"Okay, I agree."

"The Classics-end of the English department are elitist, naturally. One is from Deep Springs; another claims to be initiated in the Eleusian Mysteries. But ultimately the department as a whole is about a slow process of specialization. Our first year classes are attended by as many as one hundred students (Shakespeare); the second year and third year classes are thirty or forty. Then the senior seminars are—at times—as few as two or three students, mostly ten or twelve, attended strictly by application. To write a senior's thesis takes a special relationship with one professor and total specialization in one topic—Joyce, Blake, Austen usually; sometimes Nabokov or modern lit. So, we can see, concentricity; specialization."

"Wrong; you concentrate on the academics, but the overlap is where the action is. Here." SEATTLE drew circles on a piece of paper. "We have English lit intersecting with 'people who fly to London.' These people, who have separate lives in both circles, play the two off each other and generate a whole greater than any part."

"Who the heck is flying to London regularly?"

SEATTLE reeled off a steady stream of names.

"Oh god, why don't you just say, 'people who have far more money than academic discipline."

TUSK visited SEATTLE in Seattle once; to see her great big house, her Mercedes that she always had either her foot on the accelerator or the brake pad. Her father, who had flown helicopters in the Vietnam War, was now a Boeing executive, now had heaps of money, and that was another nice thing about SEATTLE, she was rich, she was privileged, she would probably never work a day in her life.

"But that's a lie. I did work one day."

She had worked one day at a bakery; she had refused to sweep the floors.

In that Seattle trip, TUSK had drunk civet cat coffee, two hundred distinct flavor notes, so complex, so utterly mellow that he would finally get the concept of coffee; he would finally seek out better kinds. He stared out to the waters of Puget Sound which seemed distinct and unreal; he rode the public train to the Mission District; he argued with SEATTLE about the proper treatment of animals. Both despised law students. That final category of the English department, those who took words and made them apply to reality, were the great enemy; this was one conclusion on which TUSK and SEATTLE saw completely eye-to-eye. Poor A.J., who was so eager and so heralded; poor Dr. Ohning, who had two PhDs and finally one J.D. The fall into law school was a capitulation; worse than traitoring over to Morgan Stanley. But it only mattered when it was people you knew. If in later days you were to meet lawyers, you met them on an equananimous basis. Indeed, if you really wanted to finesse things, you hired them.

This was the world that had erupted; that had fallen to pieces in the intervening year. The North Koreans blew a South Korean frigate out of the water the very next month, and then followed it up with an artillery bombardment of Seoul. Huge sections of the city were set ablaze and tens of thousands died, but it was all covered up by the South Korean media, which was desperately trying to hold the Sixth Republic together. Then a tsunami hit Japan, covering all of its northern half of the main island and most of Hokkaido in three meters of water. The remaining section formally acceded to South Korea and the resulting unified country Korpan deployed nuclear weapons (as ERI had always wanted) and blasted K-pop across the border to starving North Korea. TUSK and JOHANN were there; living it up with the Kim Jong-il clan. They reported their doings to the Red regime and were feted for their cleverness and vicious treatment of the Japanese; TUSK got really excited by 4pm and SNSD (Shojo Jidai). He just wanted more Perfume PVs; the dissonance of the grating undercurrent made their girl-pop voices all the more sweet; it was the one thing he missed about the 'Free World.'

Everywhere else things began to heat up. Eruptions broke out all over Europe, the Arab World, as students demanded publicly funded education and the Arabs wanted freedom, democracy, the restoration of basic human rights. The Saudi regime fell; so did Iran; finally Egypt, Israel, Gaza, Libya, Algeria, and then the revolutions spread north, Italy fell as did Greece. The French had a coup d'etat, and then one by one all the various countries began skirmishing with each other, it was the Third World War; it was the Mother of all Crises, the infinite noise and exuberance of the Chinese began to make itself felt on the world stage, where stability reigned; the sole place in existence in the universe where economies continued to do well and careers continued to surge ahead. TUSK was promoted; JOHANN missed out a job to a friend no less, yet music was still composed, Korpan began to surge back, the Korpanian's treatment of its Japanese minority was criticized by the U.N. Security Council, but what outsider observers couldn't notice was that the Japanese continued to still look down on the Koreans, it would be all of one thing and half again of another; it was synergy and remixes and 'mashups.' That was new buzzword of the day; that was definitely it.

TUSK turned to the Voice of Conscience during these times. "Where are we going? What is happening to the universe?"

VoC considered. "Having lived three hundred and seventy years, I have noticed that human beings are constantly making decisions on the margin. Each reform they make is clearly appropriate to that time, but in the end the essence becomes lost."

"I can't believe that. Change is inevitable."

"Once Campbell's soup used to make extremely high quality artisanal soups. Every day under its first CEO it sought out the freshest ingredients and if one wasn't available, it simply wasn't put in. Some days they made two hundred servings other days they made only ten. But the product always sold out. Finally the company moved on to a publicly traded shareholder model. Each shareholder clamored for a slightly cheaper supplier. Each decision was approved and the bottom line incrementally got better. But suddenly one day they were just making red paint rather than soup, and a foreign competitor moved in and wiped them out."

"I don't think that's what happened."

"It's just an analogy."

"Does this apply to politics?"

"Only the sexual. For example, at one point a girl waited for a boy to get to know her over three or four months before he might dare to touch her hand. Today, every girl is guilted into sleeping with every single nationality in the world that feels a twinge of repression; hence you claim AKEMI should have slept with KANYE, but I think AKEMI should have rejected you all. This is 'new Japanese person' problem."

"Ah screw that analysis."

"You have been warned."

Voice of Conscience neglected to notice that intelligence, overall, was on the increase. It was true sexual mores had decayed since 1955, but then people were starving back then weren't they. If you went back to Heian Japan; if you went back to Stone Age Japan, it was surely a rocking concert free-for-all; that stiff conservative analysis could never be sustained, and moreover, it was provincial and limited anyway.

"Let's forget the moral temporalizing for a moment and predict outcomes. Will the revolution in Egypt succeed, given that protestors are being crushed under Army tanks?"

"Generally, what you do unto others will flip back onto you. You drove the truck over the innocent protestors; hence one day a giant truck will roll over you."

"I doubt that. I live no where near such things, and besides, I didn't give any direct orders for the truck mashing of protestor bodies; I just implied it should be done."

"Nevertheless, higher vistas could see what you had done and they recorded it in the larger book of karma. The universal law, the practice of yoga; achievement of dharma, artha, kama, moksa, these were taught to you, but you chose not to listen. How much longer must we wait, TUSK?"

"Preferably until Voice of Conscience itself self-analyzes; Will without Reason; Action without Intent; I had been there, and here, all is one."

"But now record what really happened."

It's possible that what really should be recorded is ERI/COPENHAGEN, but one thinks attention has moved on now; those space cadets from year one have been recorded for posterity, and though TUSK gave face deliberately to QUARTERBACK at the very very end and JOHANN explained how he did in theoretical terms, really, what mattered was the millions and millions and not the few; if that big catastrophe had blown through this text, right exactly at the middle, this was coincidence and not Jungian synchronicity; it was true in the end some were grasping at straws, hoping beyond reason to provide a full and honest accounting of things but only succeeding in muddling things all the more. Korea and Japan grew closer together; they had to. But in truth they remained independent entities, even if Japan continued to tear holes in the fabric of reality (as did twenty other countries), and while anybody looking through those holes would see stars, that by itself was no reason to fear future outcomes, the world that would result, infinite supplies of cheap cheap energy. TUSK's friend returned the car in good shape; he recontracted and got good terms; he got his groove back, he lost ten kilos. The complete destruction of the rest of the world was microcosmed into a single street fight in El-alabai City, but your team or mine, the elites or bulge section, the heavily equipped or single snipers of the world, all were pulled into the maelstrom without hope for future redemption. Everybody was at war.

"Where did you go, the first week before the first week."

"Russia; I was called into action on a private contract, the study of a single region's separatist movement that was just a statistical blip in an election campaign. You would approve; you said it was all the numbers rather than individuals."

"Was anything discovered?"

"Traces of a prior inhabitation, but nothing too offensive or requiring further attention. Here in one valley they made carpets this way; there in the next, they made it that way. Henceforth, war would be required."

"But otherwise the Russians remained calm, collected?"

"More educated, more elite than ever. VICTORY was always pro-Western; after contact with me, they were cool, they continued holding their training camps; many went on to Masters' or PhDs, those there was always this sexual undercurrent between me and the girls."

"Quite pretty."

"Of course. The most beautiful in the world for some briefest of intervals."

"And educated, too."

"And highly educated."

The Iceland volcano erupted, shutting down air traffic over Europe for weeks. Several huge snowstorms shut down many north European airfields that winter, and the Shanghai Expo 2010 jumped off, giant fireworks heralding the launch of the greatly enhanced Chinese international world position, although generally 98% of visitors were Mainlanders and most Americans didn't care. TUSK began to fly in, once a week. He visited in the end almost every single pavilion; it was fun to switch languages between countries and surprise people. Germany's was good; the French were surprisingly friendly; Italy was stylish and chic, and Russia's perhaps the best organized. The U.S. barely put something together; Korea and Japan were decent.

"But what of the people? What of events?"

"Angola's representative was fairly clearly Socialist whereas Timor Leste leaned West. France handed out free buns while Palestine gave out pins and disbelieved I was not Chinese. Nigeria was lusty; Germany implicit, the Peruvians generous, the Chileans cool, Cuba alcoholic, Koreans image-enhanced; Japanese nervous; North Koreans aloof; and all the Mainlanders pushed and screamed and tried to cut in line. Although their national pavilions were probably all the best."

"Happenings, rumors?"

"Supposedly a fist fight broke out over a BigBang concert. I never saw it. Never saw the Chilean mine rescue shaft though I did catch World Cup games."

"Yes the World Cup."

"A first walk with the Chinese. But as could probably have been expected, they wanted all expenses paid, additional favors, kept asking for more and more service. Eventually we broke it off."

"I don't think your experiences are all that unusual."

"No, indeed not. It was merely surprising when I got funding at unexpected junctures. Somebody said, 'money comes from God;' if not, it certainly seems random."

Voice of Conscience, in truth sixty-three, an old man, at times talkative, leaned back and contemplated things. He wasn't totally about things at the margin: he understood there was potential in everything; that things were not all about decline. 'Maybe Britain is just over,' he once commented, but probably he didn't actually believe it. His experiences in the Middle East awakened his interest in the goings on in Libya; TUSK and VOC achieved such agreement on things, but VOC wanted in whereas TUSK was hesitant. It was about expenditure, gold, etc.

"Well, that about wraps up things, I suppose. Hard to characterize your own time, of course; just as it's impossible to know what things are like since we can only know our particular span of time."

"Such you are V.O.C."

"I think should you go to the Middle East, you would find it difficult to operate; they have their own preconceptions, and quite possibly they would resent your company with an unattached female; they might very well arrest you whereas they would let a clear British person go."

"Of course since I've lived around many places in the world, I'm not uncomfortable with structures as they are. But there's balance in things; things even out over time, and we live with the systems we have."

"It sounds philosophical."

"More like a philosophy of action. The people who talk aesthetics are the ones who ultimately offer the most complex responses to things; you know, 'asymmetry,' 'minimalism rather than absurdism,' 'beautiful rather than kimoi/kawaii.' These kind of characterizations are the groundwork for this world gone mad."

"You may just be better off saying, 'okay the world caught fire."

"The world caught fire."

Into the fold, spinning, unfolding, characterizing, giving birth to each pregnant moment after the next, light without sound; sound without quality; image divorced from meaning or interpretation. This work stands only because you don't actually have the pictures. So word-play, let go; float; it didn't happen because it did. It was SEARCH FOR SEATTLE.

So they came! They came! Out of the thundering, chundering skies they came, in VC-22 Osprey tiltwings, first specks in the sky, then noisy bumble-bees, then quite loud crow-shapes, and then finally, upon the Rezeption, huge twin-bladed tilt-planes that landed on Keiwha campus and disgorged their passengers. It was Keiwha not Keiwha'; it was delegation not assimilation, but they came in any case, the sole artifact from Other World, and the planes landed right in the middle of Keiwha campus, where a peculiarity of geography hid TUSK from the downdraft; his hair was flying and his jacket fluttering, but he was cheerful and looking forward, wide-eyed; the very first girl out of the plane was BARBIEDOLL.

She wasn't BARBIEDOLL back then, of course. She was big-blonde-haired floral print dress girl back then, and because it was winter she had on something underneath; so the net effect was that she first seemed a little fat; TUSK moved back a half-step, a habit picked up from one more year's living in China, where people kept bothering you on the streets, but he didn't move back all that much, just enough to politely offer a hand to BARBIEDOLL as she disembarked the Osprey, and he registered a handful of names here and there before the 180 students made their way to the placement test. As before, everyone would form little neat peapod rows; BARBIEDOLL actually ran into TUSK again at the end as they were among the last two to finish, and the fact of his Americanness came out; he learned her name from her test-sheet, but he thought he wouldn't see her again. But he was wrong.

2/1 class streamed in Tuesday. It was BARBIEDOLL (looking quite different; she had restrained her hair; her more close-fitting clothes revealed she wasn't in fact fat) and it was GOAT and it was Alpha and it was Rockstar and it was ICEPRINCESS and Brillopad and Linglingling and AnotherRitsuko and Farhome and Aj-4 and some other chubby Japanese girls; and that was it; that was everything; there were no boys whatsoever in 2/1 this year; there were no other boys at the program at all; minimal foreigners. TUSK was alone. But drama would continue on despite his changed circumstances; actually immediately day 1, Alpha and Rockstar would both be approaching-level friendly to TUSK, he subtly positioned Rockstar away and Alpha forward (and this was against type; Alpha was one of those small dark Polynesian Japanese girls, the younger and female equivalent of those thirty-something small dark Japanese right-wingers you saw in Kita-setagaya with Russian girlfriends), and now, with his attention focused on the program-at-large rather than the specific 2/1 all the time, TUSK noticed that half the girls were fat. This was degeneration from ten years ago, let alone twenty; the Japanese were becoming like the Americans; they were getting fat. Or perhaps his standards had changed. 2/1 the previous year had had no really fat girls; now that he had scored AKEMI, TUSK would divide all future J-girls into better or worse even though he was a year older.

That week began. TUSK was a little shy, not approaching as many people as he would have liked; but he was present at the lunch for both Wednesday and Thursday (first for Alpha's promise, then for general social reasons regarding Farhome). On Tuesday, for campus orientation, he hung out with the Japanese crowd; they divided themselves into groups of two to five, although three very cute girls apparently found each other to form a very small cute girls clique; and other 8's and 9's were scattered thereabout. Despite Japanese behavior to form groups, only three of the girls formed some group at the orientation; the group included ICEPRINCESS, but TUSK kept his eye exactly on the center of things (which perhaps was too, in the end, strategic).

So this, then, would be the theme of things. TUSK would for 2.5 weeks (program is shorter this year), always position himself as close to center or off-center as possible; he learned mad Japanese, mad Korean, he saw as much as physically possible but the really exciting drama of last year would not occur. Everything would just be more subdued. Yet here was also potential for things, for it allowed insight into what was going on. 3-cute girls clique bump into appreciative university boy photographers and allow their pictures to be taken; students generally hang out with their classmates at first and then explore; little peas in a pod do spend some of their time looking around and more generally pay attention to themselves. Then the slow drifting away of the crowd.

There is that problem, of course, in social observation or sociology even itself of merely pointing out the obvious. The "well, when two elites meet, oftentimes they recognize each other's eliteness, but they don't necessarily become friends." True for USA, true for Japan. BARBIEDOLL and ICEPRINCESS out of the group of eleven or so fairly easily establish that they are the high-quality girls in the class, but despite their unique skill-set or university affiliations (BARBIEDOLL is studying at Keio), the two don't become very close friends. Rather, they split up the atmosphere of the place; insofar as TUSK is there also; and then there is the "center" so to speak of the 2/1 class itself, which asserts itself in different ways first through Alpha, then to Farhome, then maybe even briefly to AJ-4 and even BARBIEDOLL, but then back to Farhome again, where it all ends up. Fortunately there is a Japanese-speaker there who is remaining completely silent about his ability; readership can now participate in a spy-exercise of sorts, listening in on the secret conversations of giggling Japanese schoolgirls who believe they are in the room with a monolingual English speaker.

"Think you might date him?"

"Nahh, I already have a boyfriend."

"He looks young for 30."

"Not my type..."

This was 2/1 as it played out; monocultural; monolingual, within a programme that was itself bereft of Americans, Germans, Danes. [The crisis had caught up with Fulbright.] South American Koreans apparently were present; an older British was there; but the sadly subdued tone of this section has to do with the completely inability to get a three-way culture free-for-all going. So goodbye Fasching! Goodbye Carnival! We are in the zone of the wabi-sabi, the utsukushii, the pretend-non-Japanese speaker. It was fun. The question was whether true chaos could be caused.

Tuesday: "You know, these cultures are kind of hard to understand. You could use somebody who really has the insight." "Thanks, I think I understand these cultures quite well." K-teacher: "Everybody get up now;" masculine-looking US-girl got up; wandered somewhere strange.

"Oh you're British." "You must be Korean." "Thanks."

"Watch out for this treat. It's greasy." "Abura."

Tuesday TUSK found a good Japanese coat; he was already experiencing hypo-mania; he would need four hours of sleep all programme long. Wednesday in the morning he ate a sticky bagel and answered Alpha in written down messages. University affiliations came out. BARBIEDOLL was wearing a strange middle-aged woman different floral print and an odd medallion. ICEPRINCESS said, "embarrassing," when TUSK looked at her at lunch that day. Thursday GOAT first lost face, coming into class fifteen minutes before it was going to end. There was something going on with a Korean boy, somebody at a coffeeshop, but everybody just thought it attention-seeking. The fat girls would just be the fat girls; although certainly there was differentiation between them; Farhome, who eventually become the sort of social centre, was first gently teased by TUSK and then became 'kohai' to BARBIEDOLL. Brillopad started low and just went lower. It was all of nothing, and nothing of another, and here the social observer, the obsessive and dreamer, would go on to note with all of his brain buzzing, the minutiae of such conversations as 'what did you have for breakfast this morning.' The sole significant classroom discussion to erupt was a plan to go out—as girls—to the sauna. TUSK was an add-on!

Since Rezeption team is of course not interested in bagels, donuts, coffee and other such topics (and even Tuesday lunch, Wednesday lunch; Friday class trip to Lotte world) generated the tiniest of incidents (ICEPRINCESS shakes her head at TUSK but is it deliberate, subconscious, or misinterpretation twice-fold?), actually text must resort not so much to absolute reporter-ship as psychological diving. For there is keen material here; it's just a matter of presentation and understanding.

Let us say that "what this was about" was conventionality. Like a whole other lot of language programs, there was a flurry for everyone to get to know each other at the beginning, and then a definite lag for Week 4. TUSK, who managed for 72 hours to hide his knowledge of Japanese, heard little surprising. But he noticed, in his silence, that Alpha wrote her nametag with straight brush-like strokes; it marked a conservative writing teacher. Farhome went the other extreme, using bubble-letters and her language as well was different. Most of the girls had distinct dialects; one could tell Fukoka from Nagoya from Osaka. But Farhome had an aggressive, 'gyaru' tone; it seemed almost non-Japanese. Called on to demonstrate his Japanese, TUSK first pointed this out; the girls were amused; they were completely unaware of how they did or did not come off to the foreigner's eyes.

Alpha and Rockstar are both immediately friendly to TUSK; ICEPRINCESS is the other extreme. Here in the breakdown of trilingualism, TUSK accidentally smiles confusingly to AJ-4, whose immediate response, a hand up in the air, is indicative of certain traditional Japanese attitudes. This reaction, once elicited, is then consciously repeated by AJ-4 as an explanation of her internal psychology. The girls generally avoid AJ-4; at once point it seemed Brillopad would be formally in her orbit, but that did not happen. TUSK has introduced himself with a Zainichi name; he then resented whoever adopted it too easily.

There was that weird vibe of Tuesday's lunch and Wednesday's lunch, with code-switching resulting in ICEPRINCESS rapidly blinking (but she had this habit, it would turn out, regardless); there was the fact of GOAT wearing the same stylized blue-doll coat day after day. The differences, even to the degree of calling GOAT 'working-class,' would be evident only to the Japan observer; to the outsider, they all seemed the same. Yet if Farhome refused to kiss her elongated bear soft pencil case proferred by TUSK, yet her accent would be insulted by the sparely-formed teachers of 2/1, who for the first time in this programme are understand to be manipulating the process as well. Their introduction of TUSK accelerates information flow; their commentary about him sets the pace. Yet tension and characterization go both way; as Week 4 will expose, certain dormant sentiments are recognized for exactly what they are.

"Girls only," said BARBIEDOLL.

"No worries," said TUSK.

"Okay, finished, thanks!"

"Cheers."

They ate at a rolls-place Tuesday, at which point Rockstar and ICEPRINCESS, already closer, briefly consider going to Wii with TUSK. Wednesday brings an underground place; Thursday morning reveals Alpha smells of kim-chee. (BARBIEDOLL discreetly sniffs herself.) Then on Friday everybody goes to LotteWorld.

It is everything and nothing at once. To put it all in perspective can be done by saying absolutely nothing at all.

"And my boyfriend..."

"So do you love him?" (=ai, not koi or daisuki)

"Of course!"

Brillopad wears high-heels, almost keels over several times. TUSK puts out a gentlemanly hand.

"Well okay, who is up for dinner?"

"Me! Me! Me!"

Here BARBIEDOLL talks of One Piece. It's ironically hip.

Having covered much of the events of this year's crowd, it is now appropos to dive into personality analysis, which begins at Rockstar's east of Tokyo country roots and goes to TUSK's rapidfire commentary about Keio's clear cool-ness advantage over the stiff Todaists finally to end up somewhere along Ritsuko-2's wearing of a cartoon-scribbled sweatshirt. BARBIEDOLL is the knife-edge of this program, of course; she is presented here in U.S.-centric terms because otherwise she would be lost to view. To the naive or first-time viewer, she is just another one of those silly 'dyed-hair types;' who would have thought that she was the final person to finish the entrance exam, that she could just sit--sit and study--for as long as her brain commanded her to, that she went to the elite Peers' school before going to Keio, that she was also a literaturist?!

Imagine, if you will, a blonde-haired American girl from a top Virginia prep-school then going to MIT or Princeton, but one who dyes that blonde-hair jet-black, wears Doc Martens or safety shoes, and affects large-plastic frame glasses. Then you would have the exact correspondence of BARBIEDOLL to Japanese society, commanding as she does that weird position between being the bluest-blood at the programme but still the ironic 'artiste,' one whose tastes runs towards anarchy and bloodshed rather than conventionality; familiar with German and Japanese artists TUSK brought up and capable of explicating on same in complex and rapidfire Japanese (but alas, not English).

Of the girls in the programme she is the only one who definitely would have been accepted to Keiwha; she was quite fluid and supple in her language ability; her one personality tweak (aversion to cameras) understandable in light of the thickly mascared false eye-lashes, dyed-blonde hair 1950s French actress look she affected that Americans sometimes read as "a parody of a white woman." BARBIEDOLL would pass unblinked at in a Tokyo street; in Seoul she was quite the object of fascination.

But not for TUSK. In reflection of the sentiment that 'opposites attract,' TUSK couldn't experience any frisson of desire for BARBIEDOLL. It's not just that he wasn't attracted to the Doc Marten set in the US, it's just that his tastes have turned ever more conservative, perhaps to the point of being middle-class. TUSK is beginning to feel something for ICEPRINCESS.

BARBIEDOLL was the most fascinating personality on the program. As stated in certain long-forgotten conversations, when two artistic people meet, what they talk about, of course is aesthetics. Liking 'One Piece' isn't just hipster-irony; BARBIEDOLL is a fanatic, her favorite character is (appropriately) Brooke, she may not quite read the anational gang of dynamic personalities against the world state as a metaphor for Japan's future itself, but she believed in the power of the personality. And herein lay tragedy of such personality types, for whereas a Keio Economics major had a 60% chance or so of a decent career and a Keio Engineering major had a 70-80% chance of a steady salary good job, becoming an arts major was a highly dubious prospect. BARBIEDOLL was more intelligent than most (although she did make one highly moronic expression that first week), she had supreme willpower to sit down and burn through any paper test in existence, and her easy-going chattiness with the 'regular' girls established her as a leader-type. It may not be going too far to claim that even here, in the first week, she was 'winning the programme.' Like 'winning the party' the phrase has the connotation of competition where none genuinely exists, but vocabulary must serve things as they are sometimes and not always the reverse.

In the 1990s Japan had been abuzz with the story of costumed sailor girls fighting a dark and supernatural evil. Such a story caught the imagination of middle-school aged girls and then spread to a larger public, although it was always a weird thing to behold the male 'Scout Fighting Crescent' fan. SFC captured something about the zeitgeist of the times, though: a new innocent Japan now free of the Cold War false dichotomy was represented by its young and feminine who then battled some otherworldly force governed by magic and fear. Now in the third millennium, the war would be about the oppressive world government, which tried to enforce conformity on others and put bounties on outlaw heads. Yet this too was artifactual; this too was a constructed reality. The students simply drank; they were stared at by other restaurant guests.

If SEATTLE had been a lone-wolf, a histrionic; BARBIEDOLL is team-leader, a Byronic hero whose interaction with others is to find the point of control and subvert it. She liked TUSK; she wished he would have paid his fair share of the tab. But TUSK was reeling in probability odds; he had a 10000 won bill and didn't want to break a 50000; he decided to be a cheapskate. There was perfume in his boots, and the girls had CDs given out by a possibly Christian group at the subway station. Myung-deung was abuzz.

"What do you think of the programme?"

"It's pretty good. I think my main problem is that I keep comparing things to last year."

"Oh, so you were here last year?"

"Yeah it was Germans and Canadians and Japanese and Korean-friends of people. Kinda more chaotic."

"More fun last year?"

"Maybe so."

"Well, every moment is unusual, so seize the day!"

An engineer has a 60-70% chance of getting what they want; the artist, even with all things going for him, has perhaps a 5% chance or less. But fortunately, when the engineer fails, they are wrecked; whereas the artist is already committed to poverty, so living amidst hipsters and punk musicians is no terrible loss. BARBIEDOLL has maybe a 3-5% chance of becoming a moderately successful artist; but at the very least, she is part of the magic of Keio at the time; she will be remembered by everybody there for those four years.

"What movie do you watch?"

"Wasn't there something recently about a girl from a Hokkaido fishing village who goes to Waseda, studies literature?"

"Something like that."

"I thought it was fun."

"It was okay."

"I listen to Love Psychedelico. Been listening to Perfume lately."

"I know both of them!"

We will break convention here and buzz into the future, as this year's draft can't merely mimic the first; information has to be organized differently so as to capture the essence of things and reflect psychic states and much more subtle positional matters which are the steak and potatoes of the year rather than the mad clash of seemingly random events that marked Year 1. TUSK spent much of this programme thinking about the previous year; he spent much of it mooning over SEATTLE. So, therefore, text that delves into the past and text that relates ongoing events to histories and prior occurrences. The ghost of SEATTLE hovers over these pages, dictating things to turn this way or that and forcing comparison of each girl, in turn (and there 180 of them, 30 of whom at least get registered on some level by TUSK's consciousness) to her and each, in turn, is found lacking. Yet TUSK is also found lacking; nobody or almost nobody feels a genuine frisson for him. The next week BARBIEDOLL is to snub TUSK—but just gently, just enough to keep things friendly—or even possibly to become friends. BARBIEDOLL is to snub AJ-4, who was unaware of her own limitations and whose even comment that she 'liked all equally' was a sign of weakness rather than all encompassing insight into who each girl was. But in the Week 6, boys (and aha, the mask has fallen, there were indeed a few Japanese boys present, although none were meaningful in any way) will come up to BARBIEDOLL, she has established a sort of student council leader position that is excellent and plays off well against artistic temperaments. Screw ministries or safe corporate jobs, BARBIEDOLL is on the war-path, rising through Keio, most distinct if not quite absolute top-dog of her school. She has a knife in both hands and a firm eye for analyzing other human beings, so represents the hope of an ascendant Japan, leaned and scarred by past wars, but impossible to write-off as irrelevant. She is Tokyo.

"The thing about Japanese society is that by definition you have no hope. If you bow your head and conform and get the lifetime job, by the time you reach what you are supposed to get, the Chinese have already invented a company that is stronger than yours or your company has already cut corners and began dumping industrial waste in some concrete casement somewhere such that you pick up the bag. This is why you have to be at war constantly; it's a lose-lose situation."

"Well, I don't know. Surely you could get a Biology PhD for example and do research..."

"Even there you are trapped. After you have your Biology PhD, a scrap of paper, the drug company comes up to you and gives you 5 million yen a year for the rest of your life if you work for them. But if you make your company a 500 million yen drug, you still only get your 5 million yen."

"5 million yen is a decent amount of money."

"Hardly for ten years of apprenticeship at a university, and then thirty years committed to one workplace, three weeks off a year."

"This program is three weeks, and I love every moment of it."

"If it were all you had, it would be like getting out of a jail, to enjoy for just a few days the spring flowers."

"There is literary precedent for comment you've made."

On the very last day, BARBIEDOLL will be chosen to make the class speech, just as KANYE was the year previous. Hers will be about aesthetics, the bright happy tones of Korea versus the discredited subdued Japanese. Both have written aesthetic essays for their placement tests, but BARBIEDOLL's is positive about Korea whereas TUSK openly claimed there was no Korean literature (nobody trusts you if you're relentlessly positive). Had he been more fluent in the language, he would have written about intertextuality, how references to other works can be both explicit or implicit, and Rezeption theory, that the author is dead and the reader creates the work. Both apply as well to sociology and situation. The girls are defined by TUSK's presence; he is defined by theirs. But intertextuality and interdisciplinary fall shy in the TUSK-BARBIEDOLL relationship.

"You don't speak English, how can we talk aesthetics?"

"Well you have 'kimokawa' written all over your Facebook."

"A modern concept; an aesthetic word taught to me only last year."

"Yet I don't know if it's fully you."

"I think trying to get one thing, I become kimokawa; trying to be kimokawa, I end up somewhere else entirely."

"And entire novels have been written that way."

"Sometimes to the detriment of both intent and outcome."

"But sometimes to unexpected success."

Roaring so. This work is being created in one single draft with minimal editing or revision. In fact, with the exception of some typo correction, this work has been more or less created in one-go, over the course of a few weeks of course, but still without any note-writing, pre-planning, or the subtraction or addition of text after the fact. Kerouac did this with On the Road (although an earlier proto-draft has been found); some of the Dadaists and other early Moderns tried similar projects though with little success. The writer is self-conscious this is not a major work, but it is fun to write and the little unexpected surprises which are minor joys to the reader are minor joys to the author. Literature, self-conscious and an entity, is now raising its immense head and ripping into the text because BARBIEDOLL is a literature major and TUSK is a literature major and one of the teachers this year is ALSO a literature major. ALSO is tall and thin and beautiful, but she is Korean and TUSK does not want her. ALSO majored in literature at Ewha, she is thirty and unmarried and so 'left on the shelf,' but her presence is some sort of implicit comment on TUSK's essay on the non-existence of Korean literature. Koreans cannot write literature so this book is a gift to them. The primary image of Korean art is the hammer-wielding madman of Oldboy, to be imitated and distributed worldwide by the Virginia Tech shooter, Seung-hui Cho.
Week 5

Week 4 was a lie, of course; like any good , all it had was elements of fiction confabulated with a thinly-disguised reality; where truth-finally did show up it had to be in the form of the actual existence of the Japanese boys—there were five, but TUSK tried to avoid them; TUSK tried to pretend them out of play, yet they harassed him anyway, they found it hilarious (not contemptible or frightening) that he would utterly ignore their presence as he scanned (quite openly) at 180 Japanese girls.

180 Japanese girls. What a sight. A number beyond comprehension, including such a complete perfect range of every type of Japanese face, from wide-faced to narrow; from high-cheekboned to fish-lipped; girls of every type and dimension possible, a fifth dyed-hair if not more; a fifth fully blonde, maybe half dyed-hair; 40% fat, another 20% definitely unattractive, but still leaving behind seventy possibles, forty truly nice-looking, twenty outright stunners. Yet out of these TUSK will in time speak to perhaps ten, each one will be recorded down to microscopic levels of gesture and that is this year's crux—this is Week 4, the full and fortunate and complete week, when the things that happened happened and 2.5 weeks (so short! the truncation Keiwha's greatest slack) compressing a lifetime of action. All that was possible was allegory.

It was stated in Week 4 that Yale was about the senior societies and the overlap of your department with others. This was a lie. In truth of course the years worked quite differently. SEATTLE arrives her junior year (TUSK's first) as a transfer student; therefore she is cut out of all the action of your first-year friends (and this is key; later on you are to be still in touch with a good fifth of the people in your first year college floor if you are very social) and this is partly why she is a lone-wolf. Then TUSK takes a year off so he misses SEATTLE's final year; when he returns, he is plunged immediately back into the social stir, completely with black crack-addict girlfriend, and later in the sophomore year he declares English Lit as his major.

Of eight hundred such Lit majors, there is no discernible "community" per se, except perhaps at the higher academic regions where certain students fall under the tutelage of particular professors. By doing so, they get access to special grants (a six week tour to study Cretan architecture not unknown), fellowships, and prizes. So in this sense there is a definitely English lit community, but of course by the time you reach this place you've already made your first year and second year friends; clearly life at the school is cross-disciplinary and more by personality choice rather than some insular group of Lits who then square off into separate affiliations and cross-departmental cliques. The question then is not one of concentricities (TUSK model) or overlaps (SEATTLE slew), but of that one particular unbounded strand of motion one is walking through a crowd that includes both concentricities, overlaps, as well as affiliations, societies, sports, and localities. Who is making a fuss about literature. Well Rainier, Ballhurst, Alki, and Northgate.

So nine names now. (Jihadist, Sasquatch, Samurai, Turnkey and Poker, Week 4) This is simultaneously word-game and trip down memory lane. Jihadist comes to mind as prominent, as he threw a Bjork-party once that entailed listening to nine consecutive hours of Bjork while everyone got drunk (TUSK felt he was going mad). The conceit was that you had to be there for the full nine hours if you wanted in and though "theme parties" just bring to mind cheap hipsters from Oshkosh, nevertheless this was clearly one of the weirdest parties to go through; afterwards you completely understood Bjork. Sasquatch once came to TUSK as he sat on the greensward in front of the main library, and she just seemed so droll, although she was a true literaturist as well. Samurai, as mentioned, was distinctly Japanese yet had also read Murakami and thought him okay (majoring in ichthyology, like the emperor). Turnkey, the future diplomat, would one day be depressed, had two related friends, TK2, TK3, TK2 of whom would sleep with Jihadist. A Murakami fan. Poker, loner, interacted mostly online.

Moving into the Lit department proper, the affiliations/crossover with Japan diminishes. Rainier is tall and senior to Ballhurst, who writes poetry and belongs to the school of absurdists. He isn't part of the drama clique per se but would be a natural addition. Alki represents an interesting fusion of Seattle-literature-Japan as she has something going on with all three, yet may be remembered predominately for being working-class and skeptical. And then Northgate is an elite Long Island girl who does a little part-time modeling but keeps to herself; her father an R&B singer; the precise "aesthetic war" between R&B and hiphop becoming known to TUSK only through her as representations of a struggle in which some things are understood in common but others are wildly divergent.

There is, therefore, no "English Lit Faculty" story. To write one would be a lie because the individuals are far more engaged with their main social circle and then their secondary before they are engaged with the department per se. For TUSK it is Chicken Leg and then the people who coalesce around an art-rock band whose lead is TUSK's close friend. Yet drama must be told; the filament-waving crowd demands close answers, microscopic examinations. So we find those who go after one year fellowships and try to get into the Master's program. Those who seek out the full PhD and get it; the even fewer who get tenure-track positions, and those after the career in Marketing. There were several competitions at play here and some made a sport of having a finger in all pools (although this is clearly impossible in some cases). Blind guy started a pornographic film series, yet all think at the back of their head had he just been normal, he would have found close friends, there was no need to degenerate like this. Conversely, others formed a political group around being pro-sex. Drama as such unfolds in the highly ironic development that pushing for pro-sex, trying to increase the profile of sex in public discourse and change society to become more sexual, the individual members started to become less and less interested in the act. One girl even entered a convent.

One guy wore 'Guys and Dolls' clothes all the time—yet was seen repairing an ATM machine, is he staff? Another sang opera constantly as he walked around, this was the magic of the place, the center of the world a truly global-class university. Several novels exist here: the story behind the suicide cluster (perhaps only the one involving the Hispanic girl invites true sympathy, it's a deeper matter than just being a Latina in a white man's world; the other possible was the Indian boy whose parents on the first day of school came up to the student security guard at the dorm and asked how they could choose his classes—a year later, the realization what they were). There's the Catholic community (and another convent-goer, though she picked a blueblood one and stayed), the entrepreneurs who started something that they managed to sell for a cool million (divided four ways); the actual run-in to the aforementioned pornographic film being filmed in progress (in a girl's bathroom no less); and then only minor scenes here and there, those things that appeared in the papers but were all messed up and confused in rendition; some of the dramatists got stuff into East Village theatres, one girl got plastic surgery to find a rich husband but is still looking; one girl slept with at least three hundred guys.

In truth, then, it was about the process getting to the end—the senior seminars that were ten or twelve students; and then the things that went on at Chicken Leg. There would be space here for five or six simultaneous dramas, but the time has come for a little close-in inspection. Rainier/Ballhurst, as mentioned, are two close male friends, one tall, the other small but slim, who had a piece of the action at the English Lit faculty (they had two moderately-close patrons, enough to win a gold medal and some cash at graduation). In the hard-to-get-into Francis workshop, they represented post-modernity, Dave Eggers, foot-noted text and wordplay, dominating about a third of the class until TUSK rallied the conservatives together. Week after week (once a week) they submitted poetry that subtly—oh so subtly—played off against each other. TUSK looked for support from Israeli Defense Forces paratrooper girl, who agreed politically with some of TUSK's statements and wrote poems glorifying the 1948 Liberation. But that was monotonal and shouted down, and then TUSK switched to a scrawny Russian, improvising a little cross-support from two or three guys (probably most notably French 'broccoli'), but Rainier/Ballhurst caught on. They fought back with an onslaught of densely written and archaic references, restoring the honor of Wallace Stevens, Raymond Carver, blue jeans, leather jackets, working class voices in opposition to Symbolists, Baudelaire, imagism, imagination and failed attempts at iambic pentameter.

They were, one might suppose, leading personalities in a department crammed full of them. Rainier, it turns out, is now a lawyer in Tokyo (this fact was just discovered); Ballhurst cannot be Googled and short of Facebook has disappeared from the face of the earth. Next to the Francis workshop, perhaps the McCullen seminar was the next source of quick jokes; it had two hipsters with chops, so one looked like an imitation of the other. Guy with feather in hat.

TUSK stood out already at Yale. He had his tall black girlfriend and for about three months, including the yearly Shulman lecture, he wore an academic gown. For being high-profile, he got to be addressed by people whose names he didn't know. A couple zingers on the Chicken Leg email list got his personality noticed, but Chicken Leg itself had surprisingly little drama, being composed, after all, of people who aspired to become professionals—highly boring, highly competent Economics majors, future lawyers, a doctor or two, a psychiatrist. When Death's Head needed temporary digs due to a restraining order, they picked Chicken Leg to hang out in as Paper Scroll was just close enough in prestige that the rivalry was bitter. Like Harvardites easily befriending Columbians, HYP would always be mortal enemies.

One girl from Farmingham was depressed and went out with a security guard. Very slutty girl was a fellow Chicken Legger. A short Jewish guy took up entrepreneurship, was very highly sexed, and seemed to find a strange balance between things. Finally there was girl who thought she could tame one notorious 'player;' she was just set aside like the rest, though she went out with another Chicken Legger and the two are now married.

"Why don't you write a tell all, TUSK; make some cash off your friends?"

Against such a backdrop, the Relationship-That-Never-Happened continued apace. As mentioned, there was a year gap as TUSK went off to backpack and SEATTLE finished her undergraduate degree. Letters flurried between New Haven and Europe. Then TUSK returned to school, still with the travel bug, still with a heap of frequent flyer miles (a hundred thousand, to be precise). Posting daily on FlyerChat.com, TUSK got the AmEx mileage six-up deal, missed out on Health Delight pudding runs, did some transpacific things just for the status points. He went to Japan.

"You're in Korea? You're in Korea, SEATTLE? Fly over! See me."

The flight was delayed. In those days, the airline then chartered a bus and put everyone in a hotel for the night, profuse with apologies. Today, the airline is just as likely to refuse a refund, try to fight you in AmEx customer service (and Lufthansa can therefore go to blazes). The old era of greeting people in the airline was long-gone, but now even peanuts are under attack.

"Okay, so we'll meet up in Tokyo?"

The city passed by in a blaze of drunken nights, two hundred dollar bar tabs, crazy swirling strangers. A silly Korean-American man tried to take SEATTLE away from TUSK; he got nowhere.

"But how about Kyoto?"

And so it was off, Japan Rail Passes validated, on the bullet train to Kyoto, where raven-haired maidens did not stream down lily pads on the Kawabata, but the motorcycle-revving Yankees did stream down mechanically on the Kawasaki. Black-haired streaming, SEATTLE was quite beautiful against the blue Japanese sky.

"Oh god, I took us the wrong way."

Disaster struck (as inevitably in travels) in the form of a bus incorrectly taken into the mountains. The two were stuck in rapidly approaching night somewhere deep in village territory. They found a shelter.

"Isn't it just so charming how that traffic sign buzzes?"

It had a horn; it tinkled as the minutes passed in the cool mountain air.

"Ah SEATTLE, I'm so so sorry about this."

"Don't worry about it TUSK. These things happen."

When they finally (finally) got back to the inn, they tumbled into the futons exhausted. Under a yellowed fluorescent light, SEATTLE let TUSK put his hand on her back. It rested there for about three minutes.

On Thursday of Week 4, the teacher was late. The conversation that ensued went something like this.

AJ-4: "So yesterday I went looking for [beauty or convenience store object] and couldn't find it anywhere. I walked and I walked and I walked but there was none to be found anywhere in front of the campus. Finally I got all the way down to a little creek maybe a whole kilometer or two down the road, and a little tiny store had one; they were asking 10000 won. It only costs 5000 won back in Japan. Prices here are killing me."

Recent arrival: "Oh god, sorry I'm late. Sorry guys."

Already here girl: "Hey GOAT, what's this I hear about some coffeeshop guy?"

GOAT: "Actually it's the barista at the coffeeshop. I've been going there every morning to pick up a donut and coffee, and he was smiling at me every day. So finally I spoke to him and he was delighted I did so. We're going to have a date on Sunday."

Girls: "Really!" "Wow, so cool!" "Nice work!"

GOAT: "He's pretty cute. Student here at [some] university, studying business or accounting. We'll see how this works out."

Girls: "Nice! Good luck!"

Recent arrival: "Hmm, teacher is late now isn't she."

Girl: "Teacher late!"

Farhome: "The teacher is late because she's Korean. They don't really have a sense of duty here, even though they're as rich as us these days."

A third of the class smiled, definitely including Brillopad and TUSK.

Girl: "What did you do yesterday Farhome?"

Farhome: "Oh I went shopping in Myeong-dong. It's really convenient, they have a lot more Japanese speakers now that a couple years ago when I was here. The yen is so strong now the stores are making a special effort and you can get some of those new hand-mixed cosmetics for a lot cheaper. 'Lush' really set the pace on that one."

Girl: Some tiresome shopping comment.

Farhome: "Yeah true. Hey you know what's weird. I think TUSK understands everything that's being said. He's just sitting there quietly, but I think he pretty much understands what we're saying. Kinda has a devious personality acting like a clown but fully aware of all that is going on."

A third of class smiled, again including Brillopad and TUSK.

The accusation was made that TUSK was disingenuous; that he pretended to understand less than he really did, but what the girls didn't know was that to get to this point, Week 4 Thursday 80% conversation comprehension entailed nothing less than 20 hours of cram Japanese study over the weekend and in spare evenings the previous week. So TUSK can't be judged too harshly; it is the irony of things that right when he can participate in conversation, he has just become too tired to want to do so, and nothing less than 80% of the conversations overheard are almost exactly like this one, or if anything far less interesting, talk about shopping shopping shopping the occasional flicker of a possible date possible date possible date. Ahh maddening.

This was Thursday, the perfect segue into a user's guide, ornithology, vexximology, floristry, whatever clever term can be appended, to serve as perfect textual reference, a set-piece, a concession now that the boundaries have all been crossed and we need Week 4 to be the pivot point, the action week. If we bring forward a few details from Week 4; if we jump ahead slightly to some facts of Week 6, this is essential to this task; the conceit of having the world catch fire and Yale intrude into Keiwha is a truth of its own, brought out by the teacher, brought out by events, and here we are, the user's guide.

BARBIEDOLL: Pride of place went to this top-most of top-mosts who not only perfected the entrance exam, perfected the 2/1 class speech, came from the perfect background, did perfectly well socially, had a boy come up to her at the very end of the program, and most perfectly of all, was definitely a particular personality type and so did not succumb to the flaw of being 'perfectly boring.' We cannot leave Miss Perfection (or Miss Virginia Prep-School Hipster-Ironist) without one final anecdote—she was a smoker; she even established a presence in the odd 5-7 girls (out of 180) who regularly hook out in the smoker's courtyard, and once, TUSK on the third floor looking in, deliberately pauses there to stare at her as a joke, and BARBIEDOLL accepts this as such; she recognizes the humor involved whereas a lesser girl would have pretended to be creeped out or indeed been creeped out.

BARBIEDOLL faces a 3-5% chance of break-out, of becoming some great person in the future such that this work then becomes mostly an analysis of her and everyone remembers it because of its brief portrait of "Prime Minister's wife" or whatever (or, unthinkable, 'Prime Minister' herself!). Faced with such perfection, TUSK ripped off BARBIEDOLL on a bar-tab, only to the tune of 5000 won or whatever but he had to, as a matter of principle. It would cost him reputational points; Alpha most of all would try to palm him off as a cheapskate based on this episode, but not all things can be planned out, and the seeming mistakes of one week are actually the great successes of another. There was no sexual tension between BARBIEDOLL and TUSK; BARBIEDOLL's fashion did alter slightly in the Korean environment, becoming a little more conventional and a little less space-alien. Future outcome unknown.

ICEPRINCESS: Love-interest of TUSK, slowly-developing in positive and negative directions ICEPRINCESS, 1/8th Brazilian, student at Singapore National University, best English of the group, was despite these odd characteristics the quintessential 'Kyoto bijin,' the 'otonashii Yamato nadeshiko' [Kyoto Beauty; Quiet Flower of Japan] who represented the complete fulfillment of quintessential Japanese values. Like the soft-ball playing blonde Girl Next Door, ICEPRINCESS was Winnie Cooper and Reese Witherspoon rolled into one, a very quiet, very implicit person who lived mostly in her own mind, maybe have had a very minor psychological episode (invisible) on Week 4 Thursday, suborned Rockstar as her 'kohai' (junior friend), and played around with TUSK somewhat in the manner of SHINO from last year. But she was not without sin.

This was what happened. Week 4's easy friendship with TUSK did not proceed naturally, mostly through fault of his own, and combined with some unfortunate timing of events, ICEPRINCESS then decided to play around back with TUSK, getting him to do things that were slightly awkward and positioning him in odd places during social outings. Unfortunately, in order to do so, she used the 'pinky promise,' licking her pinkie and promising to see TUSK on Thursday for dinner, and so this is the critical flaw in her personality, the thing that SHINO pulled off last year without a single word, but ICEPRINCESS did overtly, breaking a children's technique without a qualm and possibly angering the gods that are, for the pinky-promise is white magic, it is ancient and unknown in origin, it is entirely cross-cultural.

AJ-4, informed of events, agreed. "Look it's the new generation these days. I honestly can't find much to admire about anyone under the age of 25 these days. You can't break a pinky promise; it's sacred; you can't break it."

Let us not go too far here. There are people out there undoubtedly who might very well attribute natural disasters and catastrophes to the breaking of a pinky promise by Japan's best, a Yamato nadeshiko who with a laugh makes a child's promise and then breaks it as a child. That would be superstition. But she did what she did, and the consequences of that behavior are indeed unknown. The class passes a probability barrier; the dice the teacher rolls to choose conversation partners comes up boxcars boxcars boxcars and then snakeeyes snake-eyes snake-eyes; ICEPRINCESS is brought to TUSK several times in a row surrounding the breaking of the pinky-promise, but that may very well be just a statistical outlier; ICEPRINCESS tends to return to her dorm on the other side of the Han River every day after class, and though she eventually decides to befriend BARBIEDOLL (driven by TUSK's impulse?), she is actually not all that involved socially in the class.

Individual 3 would be GOAT. In the school of "information arriving too late," it turns out GOAT and TUSK live just down the hall from each other, a contributing factor to several fortuitous meetings and misunderstandings that lead to the scarce moments of pleasure in these three weeks. GOAT, as mentioned, wears a blue doll's coat, and such is the focus of the first (and what turns out to be only) all-Japanese casual conversation where TUSK delivers some back-and-forth repartee (as opposed to formal or mere informational conversation). TUSK's main question for GOAT went something like this: "GOAT, you're kinda unique among our classmates. You have this distinct doll look rather than BARBIEDOLL's mere dyed blonde hair. It's Japanese and very much cultured. Why do you adopt this look?"

"TUSK, I like myself. My mother also dresses like this. A lot of the other girls don't like themselves."

GOAT is, most probably, right. The cheap and easy rapid changeover of lovers is associated fairly tightly with low self-esteem, possibly but not fully 100% as a overall understanding of human beings in whatever culture, and the fact that she remains slim and neatly put-together (if not quite financially able to mix up her look again; she might even be characterized as 'working-class') speaks of some internal self-love. Yet she is also not all that different from the U.S. trailer-dweller who is in love with Jesus and neat and put-together that way while one day filling that trailer with Beanie Babies or some other lonely pursuit, the one failing in a life devoted to Christ. GOAT is cute; there is no question of that. There might even be a 40% breakdown that she is the cutest girl in the class. But she shared something with ERI from last year, a certain sureness about things that disguised the possibility of future breakdown. Could it happen that one day all of a sudden she would suddenly go on a sex binge with dozens of random guys? It was possible in a way it would never happen for Farhome or even Brillopad.

Final point of information is that GOAT is roommates with IOTA, another entry in the ledger of information coming out too late. She introduced IOTA to TUSK Tuesday evening during that one all-Japanese casual conversation, and it was fortunate that there were three girls present who were all interesting in their own way. It made for that one positive tweak in an engagement otherwise notable for its cool lack of familiarity. TUSK's legend is growing; he pulled off some things this week that make him such a blazing known quantity. Yet this success has the elements of negativity in it as well, a fascinating blend of the good and the bad and the just plain ugly.

GREENEYES: ha-ha, our first non-Japanese! GREENEYES, of Okinawese-Swedish descent from Oahu Hawaii came from a U.S. military family, had a Master's in Educational Research (note this distinction, please) from Teacher's College Columbia (and 120th Street is the widest street in the world), carried over from last year, was sung-to by TUSK, was dreamt of by TUSK, but never proceeded to a love affair with TUSK, who was at once agog with what he was doing and perfectly content.

His mother would have killed him.

GREENEYES might be the prettiest girl in the programme. With her green Swedish eyes inspiring such midnight reverie by TUSK (sleeping only four hours a night these days) combined with an ace personality trained in America's Ivy League, she would without question be a real catch, a find beyond delights. But that of course is exactly it. If love affairs proceed from rationality, then they are by definition not love affairs. Her perfection, her absolute beauty; these are actual points against her, as TUSK wants crazy impossibility. He did not make a move on GREENEYES because she was too perfect.

Is this believable? Okay in fairness GREENEYES is not quite perfect. She has the petulant American girl's accent. In the meet-down with 2/1 during the culture museum (Week 4; not the history museum Week 4), she did the quintessential American thing, talking down to the Asian girls (and Korean teacher) as social inferiors. As would be supposed, they responded in quiet deference—but that of course is the summit of female behavior, one would say, not assertive engagement. Even BARBIEDOLL did not rise up to the challenge of looking GREENEYES in the eyes, although TUSK and GREENEYES would then go off to discuss Goffman, the pounding of clothes in traditional Korean peasant village laundry-doing, and a little bit of the possibility of deliberately sowing chaos in the program.

"Nah, I don't think so," said GREENEYES. "I'm leaving this Sunday anyway."

"Oh, wha? That sucks. But I agree, there's less in this for you than me. I mean the boys here are just factory workers."

"Actually I don't mind that. It's just that I gotta take the final early so I can't really mess around."

"We could cause such chaos if we wanted."

"You're funny TUSK. I like you."

GREENEYES do you read this, in your safe career-established life? TUSK sang to you because of your physical beauty, your bright research Master's, your confident yet ever so-slightly vulnerable ways. Friend him on Facebook; those days slipped through fingers too fast, sand clenched in fists.

THETA, artsy girl, not of 2/1, present at the doll-making on Tuesday, flirted with to start, friendship-driven a few days later, meeting by chance every 72 hours, perhaps programme's most amused or bemused student, dressed Western-style artsy (not the distinct 'look' of BARBIEDOLL or GOAT, but sort of Honey-and-Clover art student or colorful patterned sarong yellow print) and a distinct self-walker, remembered here not as love interest but as mere object of play, most distinctive of programme (in some manners of thinking), came off as girl first two meetings and then woman next four or five, never more than brief conversation exchanged.

If analysis may be performed on someone not deeply known, perhaps THETA is GOAT in self-love but mixed together with a distinct art student rather than literaturist or objet d'art psychology, probably only 1-2% chance of breakout to success, yet confident, composed, promising in terms of life achievement rather than breakout potential. Bird-like in mannerisms, hobbled by her sarong, THETA was the very last encounter of the programme, another chance crossing of paths that she just might have skeptically read as deliberate. Was she art, artist, objet d'art, or artless? Any of these was actually possible.

IOTA, cutesy girl, one of the gang of three who found each other in the very first few days to form a coalition of cute, GOAT's roommate, with uniquely shaped eyes, formed a counter-point to TUSK's pursuit of ICEPRINCESS, the 'little sister' rather than the 'big sister.' She was "cute enough to eat," as GOAT put it; she responded with loud affection to TUSK's playfulness.

IOTA was a sort of antidote or counter-response to galaxy's seriousness. She had a boyfriend back home; perhaps this is what goes to explaining various personalities, that we are in the end affected deeply by our partners, but more so than this, she was carefree and lively, a unique epitome of her own, leading her group (which slowly dissolved into relationships based on more serious matters), befriending a slightly slow girl, responding to things as they happened. There is no long-term, life-changing potentialities in this girl: she is a girl of the now. But the now is the perfect in this situationist, the oblong eyes flashing with laughter in a morningside's bright.

EPSILON did her doll perfectly; Yoshitomo Nara.

We are on to lower-case names now, Farhome of course who is most prominent (lower-case merely representing complete lack of sexual tension, possibility and/or appropriateness), rising as she does from first target of very subtle bullying by TUSK (and one must, one is not trusted if one is friends with everyone) to becoming BARBIEDOLL's 'kohai' (junior). Farhome got laid. This was almost certain as TUSK had been a vegetarian for a year now and was continuing to diet, perhaps even a notch underweight this week and he could smell the smell of action as Farhome arrived, late on Tuesday, smirking. BARBIEDOLL smirking also.

It was great! These flowers, so refined, so deadly, could also put out, and though wearing a mask of propriety, Farhome clearly pulled a boy out of a club the night before and nailed him, the dominance factor was undoubted, despite being the actual vocalizer of sentiments contemptuous of Korea, Farhome with her gyaru-go vocabulary, her loneliness on Sunday morning (seen walking on the street), pulled off the first score of 2/1 (and this would be a girls' year), with an implicit middle finger to meddle-some AJ-4 who asked 'doshita no?' (what's wrong?) to girls who did not greet her in the morning.

It was probably some slim, low-confidence Korean boy. There was no further evidence of one thing or another, but alerted to these possibilities, TUSK now estimated 30-40 of the girls would pull during those three weeks (out of 180; and based on voices heard piling back into the dorm at 2am in the morning; certain evidence of people engaged in the 'walk of shame' at odd hours).

Brillopad liked things to be where they were. This reflected itself in a certain conservativeness in taste, despite her gyaru styles. She liked Takurazaka and saw the simulation of men by women as somehow superior than many examples provided by men. Lacking distinct social talent, she was probably the least popular of the group in the end, although respected enough for what she was. She categorized; she was dogged: this earned her a certain space.

Rockstar, short-side, slightly chubby, was the second girl to try to befriend possibly more than befriend TUSK. Discouraged by some non-sense talk about live bears in Tokyo, she nevertheless remained interested in friendship with TUSK until ICEPRINCESS put an end to it. It wasn't ICEPRINCESS's deliberate plan; rather, she was slightly put off by the refusal of TUSK to take initial liking into casual friendship, and so ICEPRINCESS texted and emailed Rockstar into despising TUSK a little, which was too bad but not unendurable. Questioned during a practice session, "do you like the country or the city better," Rockstar replied country; and 'mountains' for the 'mountain vacation/sea vacation' standard vacation-preference question. Rockstar was perhaps despite going to university in a city a country-mountain girl at heart, so the slight negativity about social drama was not hard to accomplish. In fact, it was precisely this social presence that made her switchover possible and desirable.

Rockstar blossomed! Like TABUN of last year she was into rock music, and Friday of the program's second week, she whipped out her Stratocaster, and publicized her concert of Saturday. This was the magic defining moment of the program, the girl with Stratocaster, the admiring crowd. Rockstar changed her hairstyle; she followed the music so that she evolved into artiste looks.

If the story of TABUN from last year was that of evolution and change, here 2/1 had generated its own heroine, a girl who came into her own once abroad, following that particular strand of artistic self-definition that an introvert and country-girl who willfully followed a city-path purely for its career purposes would unwind. The effect was estrangement from normal humanity: the look as she evolved was a first-step towards total weirdness ("nerd rock").

The choice to become an artist was not itself deserving of awe or admiration. Final judgment could only be reserved for outcome, what new ground was broken.

Monday TUSK went out and purchased chocolates. He waited at the early morning main gate and handed out about fifty, including Leaf4/5, becoming mildly the object of conversation that day. He made sure GREENEYES got one; he wore the cat ears from the previous week's excursion to LotteWorld, he said "nyan-nyan" (meow-meow) upon returning to class after first break, eliciting laughter. The class did verbs.

Tuesday the program went to doll-making. The event was great: dolls were making dolls, revealing inner-taste. TUSK sat with 1/4, was talked to by 4one, 4two, 4three, THETA. ICEPRINCESS did a doll with Mohawk; almost 90% of the girls did very similar almost identical standard models. EPSILON and only EPSILON (TUSK too) did a Yoshitomo Nara variant, widely-set eyes and no mouth. The boys mostly did boy dolls. Afterwards GREENEYES and TUSK talked; GREENEYES was revealed to be highly-educated, from a military-family (enlisted), born even in the same museum that treated the casualties from Pearl Harbor, and interested in traditional laundry (TUSK honored this choice by kneeling by the laundry diorama as GREENEYES pounded away). They left only pulled away by others.

Wednesday, a quiet day, saw slight shifts in alliance. ICEPRINCESS-Rockstar was now set in stone and then surprisingly BARBIEDOLL "adopted" Farhome rather than her old friend Alpha. Was it Alpha's crankiness? Was this the beginnings of a larger fissure? Probably just BARBIEDOLL approved of Farhome's treatment of certain things, and both girls snickered the day after Farhome got laid.

Thursday, relying on a pinky-promise, ICEPRINCESS positioned TUSK awkwardly, and then left him hanging high and dry during kimchee production (an old standby of K-language programs). At least everybody drank meogkoli and pretty sketches were examined by all, of high quality but not stunning. There was some slight disagreement between the two teachers at this event, but it did not rise to outright conflict.

Friday Rockstar ripped out her white Stratocaster and brought the week to a close on a high note, although the worm had turned and 2/1, which had been more tightly-knit even as late as Tuesday, had by now separated into different cliques and elements. The presence of a boy had destroyed female unity and both genders (though represented on one side only by a single speciment) felt critiqued and judged, driven by formalities and truisms rather than casual unification of minds. Or perhaps it was all the elite backgrounds. It was Keiwha management's hand here, concentrating things out of sheer curiosity for what would ensue. Yet things had been brought out too early; individuals would retreat to their private snobberies.

Largerly speaking, 1/3 fell into line behind a charismatic girl, whose influence was so strong that standing around in a group, nine of the ten girls tilted their head slightly towards the one leader. SocialNode scored major breakthroughs, becoming the most widely networked girl at the program, expected as she hoped to go into finance. A slightly lower-prestige group began to form around one of the more overtly cheerful Japanese boys, but people also began to disappear. GREENEYES as promised did her final early and started packing for a Saturday departure. Another US girl took off, may not have even lasted the first week. TUSK also began developing something with IOTA, she of the oblong eyes. Coincidence was that IOTA was GOAT's roommate; none of the parties knew they lived on the same floor. There were trend lines that were negative; there were trend lines that were positive. Encounters were sometimes a barely concealed mask of politeness over considerable malice, yet at other times new friends were being made.

The conceit now has been understood. This year, compared to last, was just a simultaneous catastrophe and unbelievable success story; it was learning about the 180 rather than the 2/1 Five, TUSK was simultaneously hero and individual too chicken to just sit in the floor kitchen all evening and see every single person walk by. The counter-point, the evolution of the SEATTLE affair, provided both commentary on ongoing realities as well as the suggestion of a three-week period dominated by nostalgia and remembrance, much to the detriment of TUSK's outcome. Like the tide coming in and out, there would be ebbs and flows; there would be cheap slaps of water across concrete or arsenic-wood pilings, there would be great currents that would move dozens to wherever they went. But TUSK was still back in university-student days; SEATTLE would still be there, everywhere, floating through the corridors at night.

It's possible to record everything and yet miss it all. Of course things at Yale had not divided down the faculties, this was exactly a matter of trying to record everything and missing the central story, an analysis ironically enough driven by a mathematician's obsessive take, yet at Yale during unfolding times, also inspired by the English-Math overlap, the relationship that was unexpected and therefore interesting.

Present day: "Mathematics is indeed the only true subject because it was the first subject ever studied and because only it breaks new ground in a purely abstract way."

"Oh we literaturists have a thing or two to say about that."

"English literature which only became an actual university major in the 1920s."

"But I took a third of the Classics curriculum as well, so eat that."

Years past: "Hey do you want to hear my concert?"

The story has been a lie. The story has been a lie. Yale was not about concentricities or overlaps, nor Chicken Leg dealing trouble to even Death's Head, but the story of individuals, humanities, personalities, charismatics, life being an art and not a science. It was not even the third month when shoe-gazer mathematician rock-star decided to produce music rather than pure research.

"M.C. Escher is the best artist ever; I can't look at anything else."

[Sound of gagging.]

"Wha—why? Who are you to determine what is Art?"

There were those who tried to be cool. There were those who almost could become cool. Yet the coolest was the one who made a spectacle of his uncoolness, it was Converse-wearing, dreadlocked half-Jamaican Shoegazer who from some New England prep school invented the idea of staring completely at one's shoes during a rock concert.

"Oh my god, is he ever going to look up?"

"Shuddup! Just listen to the music!"

It had escaped characterizers before. The process of creativity was itself impossible to fully elaborate upon, but while long stretches of Shoegazer's music were recondite and incomprehensible, at times a sparkling and ethereal beauty would erupt, leaving the dancers stock still, the crowd almost seemingly drugged up and effervescently stoned. He created all his music by mathematical function.

"Okay, so this is a zeta-function."

Bleeeee-bleeeee—bleeee. At the studio, the sound wave, a sine wave, arced up and trilled mercilessly. It was unmusical.

"And this is a Riemann function."

Bleee-blip-blee-blip-bleeep.

And such like this, Rockstar and his band would sit and listen for hour upon hour as homework was not done and Sunday's afternoon faded away into a cram session late at night to get assignments completed.

"This is it? This is freakin' it? You guys just sit here and listen to non-sense non-sound?"

"Welcome to Mathematica."

Shoegazer's reign was in a sense long-lasting, complex, unity-forming. It helped he was awfully handsome; he attracted the girlies; they, sticking around, attracted a further crowd of male friends-of-the-band, and so, beyond the Faculty of Literature, beyond the Faculty of Mathematica, there was a charismatic subcult around the musician-mathematicisn who produced sounds that were sampled, ultimately, by hip-hop producers and new-rock in the East Village. Shoegazer was a pioneer.

"Hey, are you his friend? Can I be his manager?"

"Is it true they might get a deal? Is this what he's going to do after college?"

"Is it true they're going to Russia to live in a cave? That there's musician mathematicians there too?"

There was one brilliant meeting between SEATTLE and the Shoegazer coalition. Beauty stared at beauty; one almost wanted the two to become platonic friends, but then SEATTLE sniffed and walked away with a sense of snobbery. "Not real creativity," was her comment, making hearts flutter yet others question sanity. "I think I'm going to break out to video-art," she tossed aside. "My father was friends with Nam June Park."

If there was a peak, a top of the function, top of the bell-curve, maybe it was that year and the next, the peak of Shoegazer, the overlap with SEATTLE. Coffee, new restaurants opening, gentrification of collegial neighborhoods resulting first in a three-star French bistro, then upscale Japanese, Colombian, another French, upscale American (two) places taking the funky beat to something too well-off, high-rent, maybe it was that middle section, unusually. One normally slumped sophomore year, clouds skudded across the sky, but even in city environments the change of seasons elicited memory, timelessness, certain countryside and seaside memoryscapes. Skyscarps could be climbed; lobster could be eaten, there was just the flutter and Ziemann-functions left, psychological changed elicited by pursuit of creativity dissolving into a sea of complex numbers, imaginary numbers, real numbers, cardinals, ordinals.

"Oh god, you are not bringing anything to this group with your numerical code functions. You have to actually just create from within."

Year three: first year's success had not been replicated, and the band was on the down-swing. The bassist starts to yell at Shoegazer.

"Dude, there's one lead in this band. It ain't you."

"This is just non-sense. I wrote half last year's tracks."

"The only reason why I don't sing is because I don't have a good voice. You're what you are."

"Then I quit. See you later! You'll see what I can do by myself."

Shoegazer's group had lasted eighteen months, but now bassist went off to start K.C., his own group, which would in time eclipse Shoegazer's meta-functions. But Shoegazer and TUSK remained friends.

"See the problem is that there's no room for ego in music. If you want to produce art, you just have to channel, do the exercises no matter how pointless they seem. The man lacks backbone."

"Still, I'm in the mood for hard rock this evening. Hope you don't mind..."

"There you go."

Perhaps in total a group of thirty inner-circlists had crowded around Shoegazer, including perhaps five girls who wanted Shoegazer and perhaps two or three who actually got him. Outside the thirty there were another hundred or so at least mildly associated, including a Thai princess, some historian girls, some blue-stockings, a book club or two, conceptual artists. It was farcical, perhaps, maybe even inaccurate, but TUSK could only remember that totality as being about the Shoegazer inner-core; the weekly if not three times weekly jam sessions taking place in a Math lab (and a Math lab being only terminals and blackboards in a sound-proof room).

"Here's a joke for you. The university president calls an all department head meeting and says, 'how much money do you need?' The Physics department needs $100 million for a cyclotron. The Chemistry department needs $80 million for a new materials lab. Biology wants $60 million for a supercomputer to study protein folding. Then the president says to mathematics, 'how much do you need?' Math answers 'Just $100 sir.' President says, 'Just $100? Why so little?' 'Well sir, mathematics is a totally pure subject. All we need is a desk, paper, pencils, and a wastebasket.' The president is extremely pleased and hands over the $100. He then says, 'look everybody, what a model subject. Perhaps the pride of our university.' Suddenly Philosophy jumps up. 'Sir, we don't even need $100. All we need is $50.' And the president is amazed. He says, 'what? How come you only need $50?' Philosophy answers, 'Like math, we need a desk, paper, and pencils. But we don't need a wastebasket!'"

SEATTLE calls from Seattle, the telephone conversation ends on a refusal to return to New Haven, live with TUSK in his airshaft room that he has drawn through housing division machinations, a continually high-on-marijuana basketball scholar from Los Angeles who takes more than his share of the place, but is too drugged up and high to comprehend SEATTLE's excited cries that TUSK is being disingenuous, that he shouldn't be openly accepted for how he presents himself. TUSK and girlfriend are going through one of their seasonal breakups again; sometimes they last a few hours, sometimes as long as a few months. SEATTLE is in turn still at home, unsure of her next move, possibly willing to write greetings cards for pizza and gas.

"Don't you think you are SHOEGAZER? No way, you couldn't be that cool. I think you're the bassist."

"I think these stories are just face-value, SEATTLE. Why is everything allegory or representation?"

"As I superintend to doze, thoughts of incipient hypomania, neuralgia, dementia praecox inspire me towards a developing post-high modernity, post-victorian steampunk-sliding new..."

She was going to do cutting edge steampunk. She loved Victoriana at this point, although shy of being a subculturist who wore gothic Lolita fashions. She would not be returning to New Haven.

"But be honest about what I said, because it wasn't quite that, was it TUSK? It wasn't TUSK."

Down the green fields of New Haven, some girls would make a show of showing their horses; nerd boys would play football at one point, eliciting an odd respect from the actual football players. Opera singer sang through the streets, and Shoegazer's new band would not go anywhere, his new genre no longer attracted the girlies. Yet it would be far longer lived; now he started to drive back and forth across the country, living the On the Road life if not achieving immortal success. Bassist would in turn become the next big thing; smaller and scrawnier, suddenly year 4 he was the hot item.

"Did you hear he has a part interest in a place in Tribeca now?"

"I heard Sony might sign up."

Bassist's reign, in turn, would last three years, and then suddenly Woodwork would come out of woodwork wouldn't he, were he what he would be he would work without working wood.

We have to be completely honest now, meet face to face, unblinking, eyes without tears, years sacrificed for the smallest of gains. SEATTLE-TUSK was in fact dozens of letters; mad screeds of love or adoration, and she was perfect because within her she had a zone of nothingness. There was no point in talking to those daughters of gas station owners, those bourgeois economics majors. Economics—from Greek Ekonomia—meant simply household. How could somebody go to Yale and major in household studies, with all the arcing creative possibilities out there, despite six years passage and the bankers going to the same rockstar's concert now out of a sense of irony.

The karmic debt had piled up, the social obligations, never to be understood by outsiders, had reached a breaking point, and the class, having been better than normal up to Tuesday, swiftly reverted to less than normal by Thursday, and sometimes groups of the students could be seen; other classes had jelled, but 2/1 was now focused on outside possibilities, even as a substructure evolved around BARBIEDOLL; even as social noder made her way through class after class.

Some truth has been captured; but another has been lost. Like overly detailed Dutch miniatures, one hopes for a Claude Lorraine grandeur but gets only details; this was fine, too, though; Rockstar turned down her amplifier; the crowd watched, entranced, as her friends casually packed up the gear; the show was over but still they might hope for me, or even that the shutting down was itself an object of fascination. Daytime gave way to evening; evening to full-on night, and a few actually assembled that Saturday for the week's close, a group of "nerd-girls" (low status), TUSK independent, Leaf 4 and 5, but no others, only seven therefore, whilst there was a group around some Taiwanese and another group around Boy-3. Music had the power to awaken long dormant memories: the lakeside kiss, the clouds skudding exactly as they would, the childhood experience that symbolized an entire way of life, but it could offer no more liberation than religious ritual, it too was cynically understood to just be what it was.

The crowd surged, then gave way. They were like the crowds that covered Hongdae that Saturday as the groups found their way. Two boys sat by the crowdside and offered commentary on what they were; a pancake griller was friendly, offered directions to anybody who wanted. There were encounters of long-parted friends, new acquaintainces that would be made, social groups that would be studied and analyzed for what they were. Finally however the location (obscure, the map poorly drawn) would be found and there was a group of sixty or seventy as the bands took the stage to begin their sets and be what they would have to be.

It is about lost opportunity that marks this week's fulfillment. Of course potential exists to ride along that wave of punk and angst, to make that song its own in text, but that would be set-piece-ism, that would be a false elation to deny the "swan song" characterism of what this event was. TUSK, using training-program trained ears, could listen to five conversations at once by remaining perfectly still. Wednesday revealed a group of Koreans trying to figure out his nationality as two Japanese girls discussed Shiseido cosmetics, a British woman talked to him about the Curious Incident of the Dog at Nighttime, the store clerk totaled up prices, and outside the café, a German called out to his friend to hurry up (Mach Schnell!). The simultaneity of this event, however, meant nothing, herein expressed textually; it was just the matter of the coolness of the individually experienced moment, which left little for the outside observer. Similarly for a crowd-sweep of seemingly one hundred eighty people, where no less than twelve people or cliques were dialed in in a matter of minutes. Did it matter that one could just about detect a traditional calligraphy instructor in Alpha, a intrinsic personality flaw in AJ-4, a pushy boyfriend in ICEPRINCESS, or Leaf-4/5 being seduced ever so slightly by a trick of posture and fashion? These things, to the individual observer a neat accomplishment, added up to mere three hundred binary characters, less than a kilobyte of encoded 0s and 1s, minimal information. As with TUSK, so too with Rockstar. For her, a world had changed, for she had finally committed herself to the music, "to following the music," but what was to her an earth-shattering and life-altering decision was almost invisible to the outside observer. She ripped out her Stratocaster, in a sea of dancing lights; she began her set; the crowd roared.

We reach textual limits, the limits of words describing music. Beautyrock chord progressions opened up her killer opening, seguing into something beyond post-math or post-shoegazer into true dream-rock or dream-song. An underlying punk profundo opened the ego-observer into an understanding of underlying anger to be constantly sated by streams and streams of beauty-flow overchords. It was battle between lead and secondary guitar for a few minutes, out of which that final understanding of the zeitgeist; of the immediate now awoke, leaving the audience rapturous, carried away, starting to dance, a roar caught in the throat. Hyperactive drum action showed there was more to come; the emotion had been caught and would not be let go.

This was Rockstar's personal perspective, as the lights danced, and the crowd began to surge: 'Into the flow of now I go, never letting go, never letting go, now to let go and be. Here I alternately fuzz and then chop down, rip right and three-seven-five bam bam bam. A good night, a good night, and kick in with the bassist, here we go.'

We can't end like this, of course. The neat piece of a rip roaring concert, one in which TUSK purchased Rockstar a drink, translated for her with the North American talent scout, has its own rhythm and legend, even if it were more than true, over-baked, the contract probably not going anywhere, and the jealous wingman of the show's producer, a Korean, trying to get them to go even though he wouldn't. Leaf -4 and -5 for the last time attempted to flirt with TUSK, and TUSK, though normally completely game, had surrendered to aesthetics as well and saw the underlying beauty, one in which desire had been floated away, and the outcome, now decided, was nevertheless a Beautiful and Wild Thing. Rockstar kicked up her guitar. She stared down at the strings as she thrashed out the chords and compared to the three Japanese boys with their band, she was consistent; she didn't have just one or two good songs and then fade. If BARBIEDOLL had 2-5% of pulling things off in literature, Rockstar would have 10-15% odds in the less demanding field of rock music—where although winners took all, the second rate still got recognition. Maybe this wasn't it, quite so, but the success curves were different, and even third-rate college bands pulled a lot of groupies. The hilarity would only be if Rockstar herself wanted to be a slut; then the normal gender dynamic would be reversed, even though things like so had been going on for quite some time, and the possibility of true originality would be pooh-poohed.

The artists, in any case, met up. In the soft glow of incandescent lights, the moment had come to move out to the patio that was semi-enclosed, and here, gay American band friends (boys and girls), the talent scout, the producer's crowd, the musicians would stand around two picnic tables and talk. TUSK had identified the moment right; at the best possible moment he intervened and began the translation work that would inspire looks of awe from three or four. This together with the ability to listen in on multiples of conversations and scan a crowd once or twice to identify no less than twenty interesting point were causes of self-amazement, but as alluded to, he realized in the end he would be completely ineffectual. It merely allowed things like this to be eventually known.

"The Korean music scene today is amazingly popular. But you know, it's completely controlled by Koreans. There's no way an outsider can get in."

"Well I think that's fair to say. It's that Koreans learn Japanese and English but American and Japanese don't bother learning Korean, so of course the Korean music industry people have a huge advantage. I mean, look here, they can bring two Japanese bands over, and these people have no chance of meeting U.S. contacts because they don't even speak English."

[Japanese] "What is she saying, what is she saying?"

[Japanese] "Uh, this person isn't very high in the music industry."

[Japanese] "That's fine, that's fine. I just want to know what she's saying."

[Translation]

"Who is that girl? She's the band member isn't she? Tell her I want us to be friends."

[Japanese] "I want us to be friends."

[Japanese] "We're already friends."

"We're already friends."

Slight moment of paranoia elicited, as American girl does not reciprocate Japanese's girl little dance.

"How old are you?"

[Japanese] "How old are you?"

[Japanese] "Twenty-five"

"Twenty-five."

"I'm twenty-seven."

[Japanese] "I'm twenty..seventh."

[Japanese] "Seven."

"Tell me your email address."

And the introduction was made.

The falseness of this moment (karma debt being settled aside) was that of course it was just a return to a normality that should have happened under any circumstance. In truth, week two was about the slow slow collapse of things, ICEPRINCESS's broken promise probably more emblematic of themes than the rockstar redemption. GREENEYES fixed TUSK's cheap tie; boy 5 the hidden talent made some inroads with his own country's contacts; the South Americans disappeared; the very cute Taiwanese girl showed that was only things to be gained by cross-cultural interaction with an outgoing people. But overall sometimes after class it would just be the least attractive and even bordering on repulsive that remained behind, standards had become so ridiculousness now (and personalities so wearied over) that even BARBIEDOLL would snub, and AJ-5, though pleasant and there with her daughter, would remain aloof and uninvolved. Things turned on the hinge of a phrase—and the phrase would just be some mad-cap extremity that invited defeat. This was tragedy; asked for and delivered according to strict schedule.

"Are you after the boys or the girls tonight?"

"Heheh, good question. Think after the bassplayer."

"You ever chase a boy?"

"I've kissed a boy. Only ever dated a girl."

"How uncool."

"Yeah buy us a drink."

Sure why not. But it would be held at the bar, waiting, and not delivered like a lackey's service.

Rockstar finished her set, swinging the guitar's band over her head and setting down her equipment. The nerdgirls, a group of four, pointed and tittered; it was amazing they found each other; their underlying conservativeness a commentary too on reality. Under certain circumstances, they knew themselves to be more than Rockstar; they knew they knew something even BARBIEDOLL could not pretend. And though they now had something on TUSK as well, still there was an underlying friendliness of sorts, a lack of fear, a aesthetic defeat that possible only for the highly civilized. They held hands; they gossiped.

"What do you think of Boy 3?"

"Oh he's so cool."

The provocation was deliberate. They didn't even necessarily feel like saying it.

"I heard...[etc etc etc]"

"I heard...[etc etc etc]"

"That's still cool he can speak three languages..."

"I heard five."

The night ended without special result. Nobody found each other, but nobody would have under any circumstances. What occurred was just some final communication between artist and artist, the stakes that were played for, the brief flurry of meaningless activity that disguised a private decision that had turned the corner. "I'm playing to lose," decided Rockstar. It wasn't about success, the contract, the breakthrough, or even the One Hit Wonder. It would be about following the path, wherever it took her, bad agent or good agent notwithstanding. Around and about the crowd she would flutter, 'Threebird,' a bird that had unfolded its wings. The key was not the commitment that had been made (although it was great it was made young), but the outcome that would follow in a lifetime of austerity. Everyone would get old, but some would get richer, some would become renowned. Rockstar was on the slow slow path down, and this was all right. Play to lose, and you'll never be disappointed. Play to lose, and even minor victories are treasured. Play to lose, and who knows, maybe the totality, seen afterwards, will actually almost simulate victory.
Week 6

If all the sadness of a "beautiful sad-eyed dark-haired girl" could be brought to its highest degree in some sort of characterization of a New Jersey suburb life, dark nights, rain-wet trees, the potentiality that was stifled and never expressed itself, en this would constitute a sort of half-seen vision, a over-romanticization that Shoegazer would call "wildly romantic visions of the decline of my romanticism." It was aesthetic theory and conversation all at once; it was wooden-walled saints bars, it was that sometimes talked about idea of "the girl of our fourteenth summer," before love ever existed, before we had words to describe things, before reality thundered in, took everything away, and went on without you.

The sad eyed German girl at Planckstrasse; the dark-haired mythical samisen-strumming Asian: who could decide between the two? Whose sadness was deeper? SEATTLE would show up one last time; there was space for one last waltz, and it happened, finally, a few years after graduation, in some statistically unlikely coincidence of a few weeks in Seattle proper, as TUSK nervously fumbled for coins in his pocket, found the payphone, and dialed the numbers scribbled on a wrinkled piece of paper. SEATTLE answered.

"Oh TUSK! Totally awesome! You're in Seattle for how long? We should definitely meet!"

The undercurrent of what had passed before them was the undertone for a couple of completely unawkward meetings at a Starbucks (and it was in in Seattle itself) that culminated finally in a long drive out to the eastern part of the state. Neither brought up the issue of past history; it was understood to be under the bridge, and what had changed was merely that SEATTLE had become more in touch with her life goals. he girl who had once refused to clean floors at a bakery was now a senior director at an arts foundation and with her Blackberry clicking away, she continued to manage her workweek even as the two drove in the dark Mercedes out to forest country. She seemed incognizant of her change; she was older, for sure, but if anything more beautiful, her long dark hair had shortened to shoulder length, but she was still somehow incredible, her features were just so refined and Angelina Joliesque that one's throat caught; one was enraptured by beauty.

"I don't know what this is all about," stuttered TUSK. "I mean we're just hurtling through space, to some unknown destination in time, and nobody seems able to stop anything, nobody seems to be in control."

SEATTLE was sympathetic. "But it's exactly that we're all in this situation that makes it able. What would be unbearable if you were the only one caught up like that, and everyone else was in control. So you work with what you have."

"I just feel like my future is even more unknowable than others'. It looks like I'm going to be working in China for a while, some industrial city in the westlands that's all black smoke belching out of coal burning plants and sticky sand-storms that coat everything in a blanket of pollution. It's that, or just be unemployed and sulking at home all day, no choice."

"I'm sure it will be a great adventure. You just have to think that few people actually get to live lives like that. And see, you even think in those terms; how remarkable."

This is what had finally become understood about SEATTLE. Whereas most girls had something inside of them—some punch or kick or desire for something, SEATTLE just didn't have anything inside of her. There was a black-hole—a lack of wanting things, that maybe could only come up when you were born into everything, and were standing to inherit so many millions in so many years, and this was beautiful, this was why she didn't strive after things or ride the corporate ladder; even the accession to director-level at a non-profit was something that happened accidentally, and she was doing it because it was a process of making the world a more organized place. She would leave—in a second, if asked to.

"We were thinking at the time that we were all going to be brilliant artists. We had this idea we'd be famous, we'd be Jack Kerouac, or we'd somehow manage to defeat all odds—all the econ majors, all the science dorks—and be something; be distinctive. But we're just middling successes."

"TUSK, you're worried too much about what you are and not about what you do. Just live each moment by the day; you come into work, you get that day done. What is driving this anxiety?"

It's not certain; or rather, it's certainly not the case that describing what happened that car-trip would make this description any more accurate. Nothing happened, of course; the two drove, they ate at a diner, they got into a canoe and paddled around looking at nature. Underneath was the undercurrent of sexuality; on some level they could have maddeningly ripped each others' clothes off and had frantic sex, but that would almost cheapen what had been going on for so many years, and in any case, the decision was already set. SEATTLE was dedicated to her work; TUSK wasn't going to bring up projects in distant Chinese provinces. He was going to be annoying, in fact; he was going to be insistent on the unfairness of things he was doing, although there was no possible reason for it. They smoked cigarettes at some night-time lamppost; they discussed long-forgotten people, and SEATTLE was maybe a touch narcissistic about things, sipping deliberately on sparkling wine from a local vineyard. Seattle had just decided, some long ago time, that she would just live out her twenties, and then at thirty not push things anymore, not really pursue matters, so her choice was something that was, well, destined, not even a choice really, rather a lack of choice to return. Like a certain other construct in a certain other Japanesque literature stream, she would leave this vale of tears and that would be the result of certain choices and actions, although in this particular case, there wasn't even a precipitating love act. It was just: the sea of nothingness, a data pool, television static.

"When I grew up here in the Pacific Northwest, I guess I always understood that I was different from other people. We had everything; they had nothing. We could never be poor or have needs, others would have to mold themselves into institutions in order to get by; they would have to play by the rules. Tusk was more pure poise, pure energy balanced but never releasing itself."

"SEATTLE is fascinating because she can be anything; she chooses not to be. The economics householders can't choose art; the arts person can choose to be a business manager."

"TUSK thinks of me as a certain type; I am the perfection of 'beautiful sad-eyed dark-haired girl.' It is a form of categorization to be perceived outside as such type; if we are 'Asian artists,' that itself is a value judgment, and that itself is a category that cannot in kind include the tenor of the artistic choice, the path selection that is the predominant motif of events until now. I couldn't be the groundbreaking artist myself—this was TUSK's goal, but then in turn he became silent; he withdrew into himself, he disappointed arguably more than I did, that unofficial non-sellout pack of his nineteenth year (I was twenty-one). Image, sound, memory, impression: these themselves would defy long-winded description. To drown yourself in a Nam June Park video. To lose yourself in regional studies. Even in the ride up, out to eastern Washington, there was coffee, there was a diner, there was those dark mysterious woods spinning past the windshield, an ache for experience or memory or loss, a source of dark creativity, of fears in the night, of the stories that would unfold wherever so they would, an answer to identity art."

"What we did was drive out for long distances, until the odometer ticking over was some kind of event in itself. 19,999 miles, then 20. I think she left, that last time, to get into her car, without looking back, a swerving, a capture in sunlight that would later constitute a memory. It was an episode; an interruption. I showed her the calluses on my palm from intensely gripping the steering wheel in bridge input tunnels in the city; then I showed the map, the distances crossed; that territory."

"You cannot capture the real things in narration. The play of moonlight on a field, that impression of the night drive's back from some favored destination: it was there; those people interacted; that thing was felt."

"Shopping mall, woman questioned, staff at McDonalds wondering at cash changing hands, people at dinner tables not wanting to be talked about openly. Lack of affect; narcissicism."

She was an 'older sister type.' That much was the crux of things, underlay why the relationship would go so far and then proceed no further. If she felt this overwhelming urge to protect TUSK, to keep him from all possible harm, he in turn felt that there was no other girl who could quite pull off things as well as her. And there were fake imitations. The Wellesley girl who thought Paris was the most exotic and appropriate destination for an heiress (please). The actually mentally unstable girl who thought newspaper articles were in reference to her; who criticized random other people at a reunion dinner table (uh, hi, they don't know you). Nobody else could just be pure artistic sentiment combined with an absolute black hole of lack of desire. There was one last swan song, one last flotation, a drifting away into a sea of stars, this game of love that ended just so. Taos would be like that; New York's art scene would be like this; but here, white paper, black ink words, you didn't need a penny more or a penny less, to be transported, transformed.

ᴥ

SEATTLE was beautiful beautiful beautiful. In Tokyo there had been drunken nights. In Kyoto they had both looked with awe at that huge train station with the stairs all the way to the top. And then TUSK had lost his wallet, and shared SEATTLE's sandwich. They argued in such a way that was unforgivable, and then they were all right to each other, and then she walked off at the airport. He had never had a chance; he was deluding himself. But she loved him, too; in an older-sister way.

"Those East Coast boys, so whipped by society, so unable to just be who they are. It's not even the real America really. The woods extend five thousand miles north from Seattle up to the very arctic circle, where they disappear into white snow conifers. The identity politicker, the accumulators; the dingy brown hand extended forward for hand-outs. What do they know of these depths; those silent frozen tundras and dark as night forests where the owls call and the wolves prowl? This is Pacific northwest temperate rain forests."

She graduated; she returned home; she tried to be an artist, but didn't produce anything that was stunningly good. She was all right; she was decent. She was respected. But she herself was beautiful; she herself was so untouchable, so ethereal. "We had one class together, taught by a thin Christian. We came together around the book 'Brideshead Revisited,' and I saw some things TUSK worked on, I thought he was clearly the recessive character. He only understood this by the very end." The road goes on and on. The two drive out to unknown destinations. Neither makes a play for the other.

That was the end of SEATTLE, to be remembered, most intensely, years later, at a program with one hundred eighty SEATTLE copies, but nobody quite comparing, the "" girl with no desires, no future, and no intent to stick around. The lump in one's throat, sticking, was a form of false nostalgia—and something hasn't been captured, either, the Japanese restaurant, the past stories, the one previous relationship that affected everything and made everything impossible. Cell phones, calculators, data pads, consumer electronics streaming in at highest possible velocity into everyone's lives and tearing us all apart.

Farhome tapped on her iPhone. Sunday.

Several years after separating ways with Seattle, Tusk found himself at a Japanese language program located at some time-space-culture nexus directly apposite the experience, and this is a narration or account of those six weeks, two different years of three weeks, taking as it does the institution of the novel, narration, plot, and language as its main theme. In this first and last final accounting of things, things would have to begin with the understanding that like last year and like other programs unfolding, the main play of action was over, and Week 6 could only be about accounting, tying up things, letting go others. Within the fourth floor kitchen, a drama unfolded between three Japanese girls, IOTA, GOAT, and TUSK, and here is a natural segue into that third and interesting personality, IOTA, who found and located her coalition of cute, and then led it at the orientation walkabout; what kind of girl looks for other cute girls and self-identifies with this value as a sort of aesthetic identification, to be little miss oblong-eyes at a program of one hundred girls?

IOTA, and this is what we are getting at, loved the 'kawaii' (cute). What she would do is deliberately buy some little small plate rather than a practical medium or large sized one, so that inconveniently for the next three years she would have to serve herself little tiny mountains of rice or little tiny portions of whatever else was served, while her family rolled their eyes and found their own daughter tiresome, that dinner would be turned into some kind of production, and she would then draw little girly eyes on her pencil sharpener and name inanimate objects; that she would live in a self-created bubble of cute, such that foreign girls especially would depise her, and the only tragedy being, of course, that it would be impossible to inhabit this value-system indefinitely, whereas one could be 'understated,' 'chic,' or even 'archetypical' almost indefinitely. The three Japanese girls stalked about, trying to call out the other. GOAT broke first, dissolving into Japanese, semi-hysterical. TUSK tried to convert this to full psychological dominance, but it was timing; that made everything impossible. IOTA had to return right at that moment, for a beautiful split second TUSK wondered he could convert things into a threesome, but no, that was delusional; that wasn't going to happen in a million years.

"I have a boyfriend!" screamed IOTA.

"Oh God, thanks a lot," muttered TUSK. He walked off, hands in pockets, returned with Rophynol and drugged up the little girl. Somehow magically without committing any improprieties...

But then that didn't happen, either. So many bloody occurrences and separate walkabouts that Seoul itself suggested itself as the next and next-to-last character. ICEPRINCESS was thoughtful. Her Korean boyfriend had finally--finally--made that leap into higher cognition that if he wanted to bring PRINCESS over, he would have to cough out for a private apartment. It didn't have to be big, nor did it have to be central, but something finally clicked that he and she were graduating; they would need some sort of game plan for the future. It only helped matters that ICEPRINCESS was graduating eight months before her boyfriend; he would have time to cook things together while she wrapped up things in Japan. She cooked dinner for him that Tuesday and thought deeply about events.

BARBIEDOLL and Farhome were off shopping in Gangnam. Rockstar walked, alone, by the Han River.

ᴥ

Seoul, the Nagoyaesque city lacking any sort of romantic possibility whatsoever, glittered in the night without comment. It was incapable of direct action, for it was just an abstract entity. Yet in metaphysical terms, it acted. What is to say is that it was particularly the geography of that city of hills and rivers that made up matters. Precisely due to the layout of the streets, the Gwak clan (PRINCESS's boyfriend's extended family) met up in sequence that decided that they would accept PRINCESS's demands for an apartment in hopes of an ultimate alliance. Boyfriend had to serve two years' in the K.A.; after that, the middle-class PRINCESS would be brought into the slightly upper-classish Gwak family, which now having a Japanese wing, could hope for more of a business compatible connection. The way it unfolded was unpenetrable to the Western mind: with simultaneous language in Korean and Japanese, unfolding Kansai-ben and upper-class Korean language, three or four insults and compliments were encoded in precise usage patterns and pauses between syllables that are impossible to represent here. But, for example, the half-millisecond pause before

"New Zealand university" (in Korean)

Was one defense mechanism the inferior culture could offer to the elite commentary offered by PRINCESS's older brother, who was in town for business.

It would be possible, in one sense, to attempt this impossible feat, to just record for whatever posterity's sake that infinitely complicated speech mechanisms by which that most serious of societal mechanisms, the marriage, was carried out. But that would be detraction, ultimately, from the final course of events, 2/1, the program at large, Keiwha drawing to a close in its final week with oral tests and then written. The program directors showed their hand: each question was designed to draw inferences about the class dynamic at large, such information then be unfolded into further class instruction design and the survey, being written out in Japanese and English, offering obvious identifying characteristics about each teacher and class. The Japanese family questioned the Koreans' ancestry; the Koreans commented on how cheap the material of PRINCESS's handbag and sweater were, but all of this was taking place under three layers of politeness, such that nobody looking on could have any clue whatsoever what was happening. Beneath mandarin like faces, the brokers of each family made their decision and then the date was fixed.

"Our family, being of ancestry line XYZ and distinguished lineage ABC, does most respectfully exist in the four thousand year neighborhood of G---, located on the I line..."

"Duty being what it is to our extended corporate ties to MNO chaebol/conglomerate, we do deign to..."

"Presumption being made, the assumption would be that such offer, having been considered in all possible lights, can only lead to..."

Yet this was of course exactly what didn't happen; it was all self-denial and self-family depreciation, underneath of which was only the malice and hopes for improvement. The deal was closed.

Keiwha year two, meanwhile, proceeded unopposed. Socialnode finally knit together her last contact, her excessive desire to be Miss Human Resources finally started sapping her energy and she took off for a sauna to bake in 110 degrees, as tourists from her country and mostly Korean families sweated into sauna-provided clothes. It was hot; these 'jimjjilbang' were great institutions, yet she would never stay in one overnight, that would be untold. Though ICEPRINCESS would be queen always of the appropriate knock-kneed pose at any given moment and Rockstar had clearly won basic aesthetic victory, program victory would actually appear in the end from Boy-4.

"Some of us are going out tonight; last night of the program. Meet up at the main gate."

Such was the laconic text he sent around, to twenty or so names who generated another forty or so followers. Ultimately a full third of the program was assembled at the gate, just in time to catch TUSK being dropped off by G.14 in a government car. (Both sides pretended not to see each other.)

"Guess he's all sizzle and no steak."

"A looker-on."

"Still he's cute..." and some girls did giggle.

It was odd. Boy-1, he of the elite background and best possible looks, was the obvious candidate to be final social leader, but in the end, the group of sixty, a little socially low, a little chubby, gathered around the sort of noisy Boy-4; and Boy-5, nerd and computer programmer, would have no chance whatsoever. So the fifty or so girls took off for a local grilled meat place, and though this was far less in terms of complexity than the previous year (involving three distinct groups, Japanese, European, American), still it made for the only appropriate ending for a monocultural session, one in which the program director folded her hands and felt smug. She signed off on the class leader choices and thought about aesthetics as well, pleased at financial outcomes if not at a lack of dramatic events.

Classroom outcomes: 1/3 coalesced around charismatic and well put together Sayuri; 1/5 class of THETA, Roughcut, and Leaf-3 was bemused at final attempts of flirtation by multiple boys. 1/1, as could be expected, went nowhere and 1/2 was possibly saved by the cheerfulness of its South American contingent; 1/6 had no drama to report.

2/1 saw the division between dynamic poles BARBIEDOLL/Farhome and ICEPRINCESS/Rockstar. It was interesting how both had elements of the other within them; BARBIEDOLL was the quintessential Tokyo mod rocker yet the beta group had the actual rockstar. BARBIEDOLL may have been ultimately socially most prominent yet Rockstar was the most distinctive "famous for fifteen minutes" individual, whose eventual subordination of the Nerdgirl coalition earned some kind of honors; Nerdgirl group of 4 was not entirely contemptible, because they clung to their own ways and would always vote LDP come what may. 2/1's final possible group GOAT + out of class IOTA remembered nothing about their abuse by U.S. government agencies or agency; one of the affects of Rophynol is selective amnesia, and though they wondered why they were so sore, they felt no residual ill will. In fact, they had certain fantastic dreams that week, a result of REM suppression by drug-induced sleep and then the rebound affect; some vision of a sunglass-clad Special Forces officer picking them up and flying them to their dormitory in a very quiet helicopter. And GOAT actually closed the deal with the coffeeshop smiler; they officially became a number, the only one of the program.

AJ-4, 5, 6 were friends, but possibly not to remain in touch after the program. AJ-4 was tall and had her daughter; easy-going. AJ-5 was true grandmother.

2/2, undiscovered territory, saw the earlier departure of first the masculine faced girl and then GREENEYES. Masculine-faced girl, with much male hormone, liked technical things, but felt had to some degree. There were complains: length of program, usage of classtime to do cultural speeches or whatnot. The program was accepting that it was increasingly a shopping and tourist boondoggle rather than serious academic inquiry, although both forces existed. Older British woman saw her husband arrive; they had discussions about a marriage as well in their extended family, and cultural/political anger would simmer but not erupt; the marriage was stable.

3/1, 3/2, and 4/1 and 4/2 populated by older students and more advanced speakers of language, did have one bright faced younger girl who was quite esoteric in her class representative speech, making some interesting points about history that took into account all perspectives. Here was true undiscovered territory, for only in the complexity of language could true political discourse begin. All else was fluff. 4/2 had one eavesdropper; he could be seen as well from the top floor of the new building, sipping coffee, thinking. Only once did he skulk off into a bathroom guiltily; it was just a coincidence of time and space.

The final week could be divided along cultural/linguistic lines. Something had had happened with regard to the Chinese group, which may have coincided to some degree with concurrent longer-term programs involving Malaysians or Cantonese and the young Anan, peppy nineteen year old, made it her point to go out to meet all sorts of random people, white fur hat bobbing, but this wasn't the real wrap-up: it was more esoteric.

THETA walked forward. "You know, you just gotta be what you gotta be!"

She was an artist; the last one to close out this ornithological field report, visual rather than musical or literary, a bright dresser, a wearer of embroidered patterned skirts and bird-like, bemused, a hint of a laugh always on the lips as she explored the visual situation unfolding before her. She had been present at the first conversation with IOTA and GOAT. It was perfect timing.

"Wha! You speak perfect Japanese!"

She crouched; that is, she literally crouched forward agog at hearing the fluidity of the conversation unfolding; it was some sort of important lesson on what a language sounded like to a native speaker when it was learned well rather than merely correctly. THETA was keen on TUSK after this moment.

"GOAT is kinda overstating her position because, you know, we both dress distinctly, but I improvise something differently while GOAT has the small doll outfit everyday. It's a nice dress, but it means she's conservative, you know; she just wants to live in doll world forever.

"It's possible painters are the worst possible commentators on things. We see everything in visual terms, which means that by definition we aren't people-people. In fact, maybe we're the worst to comment on things. But being a painter means taking your own path; finding your own way in the world.

"Things come from within! The answer lies within!"

THETA, more than anyone else, stood out from the crowd; although she was self-involved and individualistic. Between her and ICEPRINCESS, it would be hard to say who exhibited higher qualities, yet one lie already has been encoded since actually Week 6 really was all about ICEPRINCESS, that advanced speaker of polite language, that implicist who broke one little pinky promise and caused storms to erupt, yet still drew the pattern forward more, whose silence rubbed off on one, who communicated things without even trying. ICEPRINCESS wore a new sweater on Monday of the third week; it reflected exactly off classroom dynamics just do. But to call it out would have been like trying to catch a snowflake: it would have ruined it.

The variegated THETA, the 'Kyoto bijin' ICEPRINCESS; both were part of a dynamic of sorts, a counterpoint to the fat-girl coalition, the nerd girl quartet, the cool kids led by BARBIEDOLL, the cute as pie threesome (soon to fall apart) with IOTA at the apex. THETA stood for creation (with radical politics); ICEPRINCESS was concerned with pragmatic realities, and BARBIEDOLL liked revolution and revolt. This was the foundation for aesthetic difference, politely communicated distances between outlooks that could be overplayed but weren't. It would mean war.

"Be whoever you want to be! March to the beat of a different drummer!"

But the nerdgirls, THETA's nemesi, saw flaws to that approach.

"We are who we are we are because of our uniquely unique differences already. We cannot adopt colorful Korean prints; we like subdued colors, afternoon rainshowers and evenings rather than bright sunny summer days. This is Japan!"

"I didn't even spend much time speaking to this boring subgroup of people. Spend all your time at the art galleries, Seoul is alive!"

"Maybe THETA can almost pull it off, but if a boy ever wonder candy necklaces raver style, we'd vomit!"

"Architecture, design, drawing. What else is there in life?"

She was right on this matter, at least; the architecture of the new building had driven people towards the same collection point, on the ground floor, an unanticipated strategic difference. Yet TUSK was nonplussed.

"Leaf 27, Iota 38, variant 5 of nerdgirl 2, and 1/5's charismatic. Something is captured here; that swirl; that tumble; those partnerships of two or three that evolved. Even in the subway station; the nearby shopping mall; the movie that was seen for rest or to kill a few hours, now finally we understood. Yeah computer programmer boy said hello; and by yesterday's close fall, it had all been decided. But if there's one thing that missing from this sort of representation, it's only that things ultimately, were, indeed, unknowable. I don't know why the third teacher was so hostile; it's undiscoverable where rainbow colors entered the Korean aesthetic palette so long ago, and birdlike, THETA became more womanly by the hour. There could be no possible decisions made that weren't subject to retroactive review, and the things that weren't done were the best possible things of all. Compared to the sheer convertibility of last year's adventures, year 2 had buildings that rose out of unexpected corners, wide streets, the span of the Han River. Geography was indeed everything; it underlay it all."

This narration does or does not make absolute chronological or linear sense, but it's about capturing the flow of three hundred personalities, whose names can't all be deduced, with assigned code-names for people who will forever only be known by a certain glance of eye, toss of hair, or bone-structure of face. It may not totally subscribe to conventional standards of narration or linearity, but hopefully there's enough content in here or whatnot to capture some kind of higher truth.

The End
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Harajuku (+)

Dancer, Zero

