Career Change

I think I'm going to give up this medical school business after all. Or maybe become like Patch Adams or something....because I swear that by the time I leave Japan, I will have become some type of celebrity.

I was walking down the street in Matsuyama with a friend the other day, when a man came up to us and asked if he could take a picture for a magazine. A picture? Of me? For a magazine? Surely, I must not understand his Japanese, I thought, but since we had nothing to do that day, we had our picture taken and went off to karaoke.

I forgot all about it until three or four weeks later. This medical student, who I had never met before, came up to me in the hallway at school and said in an excited whisper, "Town Jouhou!! Town Jouhou!!" (Town Information! Town Information!) She was looking me straight in the eye with this huge smile like she expected me to understand exactly what she was talking about, but I had no idea. Finally, I asked her what was up, and she told me that she had seen a picture of me in the Matsuyama Town Information magazine. In the next few days, a whole bunch of random people -- medical students, secretaries, one of my bosses -- showed me the magazine, so I guess it's a pretty widely read publication and my beautiful picture must be all over Matsuyama by now. Perhaps I will become a model.

(Click on it to enlarge it.)

...Or perhaps I will become a pop star after all. One of my students brought me a flier about another American Idolish singing contest the other day. This one is a little bit smaller than the last one and probably won't lead to any big television appearances, but I figure I have to work on my publicity in any way that I can. ;) I sang in the preliminary round of the contest the other day, and found a postcard in my mailbox on Friday saying that I made the first cut, so in two weeks, I'll be singing at the semi-final during a festival in the middle of downtown Matsuyama. Watch out Kelly Clarkson! Watch out Clay!!

Oh, yeah. I was on TV again the other day when our jazz band's concert was locally televised. You can check out video of my guest vocal appearance here if you like. :) I was pretty nervous singing with a big band for the first time but didn't do too bad....except for a little part at the end when I ran out of air and was dying...and the part after I finished singing when I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to leave the stage. I kind of looked at the emcee and bowed a bunch of times because I wasn't sure what to do. It sorta looks like I was doing an impression of the bowing lady from the contest at the end of the Sound of Music (>_<);;