| 5 aug 2001 dude. i have no sense of time right now, so i'm gonna just put august 5th because that's what my watch says. heh. these japanese keyboards have a lot more keys than american ones, and the big fucking pain is that the apostrophe is shift-7, which is a pain in the ass to type. so if i don't contract my words, it's because i'm too lazy to hit the apostrophe. not much to say. the trip is going ok. yeah, not smashingly well, but fun enough to be a good time. i miss being online and writing in my journal every day. i'm right now in the port town of hakodate, and it's cool enough to have a cybercafe, so i'm waiting for dinner at 6pm, and i have an hour block to write this entry. so emi's family is pretty quaint. quaint is the word i'm using. it's good-natured and nice and everything, but every once in a while, i get the urge to yell out "FUCK" because i want to swear. strange, huh? we stayed in sapporo for the first few days, but it was mainly touring around in minivans to places like a botanical garden (*snore*) and other places like that. i was totally excited to get some time to roam around the city on foot with nothing but a map in hand. i think that is the BEST way to explore japan... just wandering around and making it an adventure that way. i don't particularly like the structure of visiting the touristy places on a set schedule. alas. it would have been SO much cooler to come here with some of my best buddies. oh well. that would be SO rad to come here with my best friends. i am literally drooling for the day when that happens. so how's my quest for my tare panda and the square watermelon? horrible, i say! there has only been one tare sighting, and they were really crappily made, in one of those game machines where you maneuver the big claw and try to pick up your prize. i think tare panda is passe here now. fuck me. and the square watermelon... the people here don't seem to know anything about it! a friend of mine says that it's a media ploy... they're so hard to find and so limited in supply that i probably have to find an andronico's equivalent or something in tokyo... you know, where the rich people shop or something. double fuck me. the quests are not going so well. and the BIG bummer was the taiko concert itself. i mean, the WHOLE purpose of coming here was primarily to see shoji/kris/maz's concert. by some fucked up happenstance, we thought the concert was at 8pm, but it actually started at SEVEN, so we missed pretty much the entire first half. i was pretty pissed. and sad. what little i saw, though, made me really think.... i don't know about my taiko future anymore. because i wanted to play with this group and this group only, but... they're just too good. too passionate. too dedicated. as much as i say i love taiko, i don't know if i love it _that_ much. enough to dedicated my entire life to furthering the art of taiko. the more i think about it, i think my stanford taiko days were special more because of the bond i made with the people... it's the people that i miss, more than playing taiko itself. i've given it some hard thought. and i think it wouldn't be right for ME to be a full-time performer. sigh. i broke my promise last night to stop drinking until at least my birthday. you know... i got trashed at my housewarming party, and i swore not to drink that much for a while. well, anyways, at the concert reception last night, i met up with old stanford taiko friends... and one fo them is supercool... david (or as i call him, dj). he's actually worked as a professional bartender in san francisco! well, we had this bottle of suntory whiskey on the table, and i just decided to mix it with some oolong tea. it's an actual drink, he says. i had two of those, kinda on the heavy side, and then i had some whiskey straight (fucking disgusting). then dj and i struck out across the street to a little hole in the wall bar. it was big enough to fit like 8 people. i had a big glass of vodka on the rocks. i was fucking buzzing. and feeling a little sick because i skipped dinner. so i was snacking on some fried chicken. blech. grease and alcohol. needless to say, i puked outside in some random parking lot. and i woke up feeling like shit, puking up water. heh. once again, i reiterate that we humans are fucking STUPID creatures who don't learn our lessons easily. funny creatures we are. i dunno. i've been here for a week now, and i don't have much to report. or at least, i don't have much to say. maybe it's because i was bored during much of the trip so far. or maybe it's because i'm in a foreign country, and i just feel like what i have to say has no relevance to my "normal" life back in the bay area. in either case, i'm kind of out of words. i've been smoking a lot. hell. i'll just light up right now. i love the fact that i can smoke indoors here. hold on. but, i don't smoke indoors much. and in fact, i hate it when other people do it. it's one thing to smoke yourself. we're responsible for the fact we're killing outself. but it's quite another thing to subject someone else to secondhand smoke. i think it's fucking rude. rude, i say! i am wondering how i'll feel in a few days. because i am kind of in the mood to go back home now. but the trip isn't even half over. i'm praying that my spirits will lift up a bit when i hit tokyo tomorrow. tokyo's fucking rad. but the problem is, i am no closer to having a travel buddy to explore the city with. the family's itinerary is pretty much all planned out, so... it's gonna be mainly daytrips around to other parts of japan outside of tokyo. i'm such a city boy. not that i'll ever move to san francisco, for example, but for me, i have the most fun when i'm surrounded by civilization. it's just so much more interesting to me to explore the streets of tokyo, as opposed to climbing some dumb mountain and soaking in the view. i know some views are beautiful, and i appreciate that, but... it only takes a little while for me to take it all in, and then i'm looking for the next thing soon after that. it's strange to say, but i miss the routine i've got back at home. i miss my roommate jay. i miss my daily AIM sessions with amms. i miss the feeling of being in a place where i feel like i belong. i guess you could call me homesick or something. vacations are nice and all, but only when i need them. i certainly don't need two and a half WEEKS in japan. that said, i was really excited when i first stepped off the plane into narita airport. i let out a loud whoop, and yelled out, "I'M IN JAPAN BABY!!!" it was kind of nostalgic, because i lived here for six months and all, but now the deja-vu-type novelty has worn off, and i just feel like i'm in a foreign land. i hate the fact that i don't understand all the buzz of conversation around me. and the fact that i can't just turn on the television and watch a show that i understand. i'm complaining a lot, aren't i? i should be happy that i'm here. it reminds me of the strange thing that times does to me when i was in japan... six years ago, when i was living here, i remember wanting to get out of here so badly after i got tired of the place. i even left my internship early to go home. but as time went by, all the boredom and loneliness just faded, and i looked back on my time with rose-tinted glasses. i think it'll be the same with this trip; the further removed i am temporally, the more i'll appreciate that i took the time to get away from my regular life. so i think i'll just shut the fuck up about complaining right now. oh yeah. i've been thinking about sex a lot lately. i don't know what it is; maybe it's the repressed culture here that makes me have fantasies about sexual escapades in with smokin' japanese babe in an onsen (hot spring). or hooking up with some girl at a club and romping heavily in a dimly lit tatami room. i dunno. i must say, though... japanese porn is pretty tame. i took a look at an issue of a japanese _penthouse_, and it's pretty disappointing. lots of pubes. nothing much else. one other thing... watching emi and shoji together really makes me jealous. well, it's mainly a positive thing to see a couple that's so in love... they're so good together. shoji was saying last night that one of the songs we missed at the concert was going badly, and he was thinking, "well, this piece is going to hell, but at least emi loves me." isn't that fucking sweet? sigh. i want some of that. their love is such good shit that i'm itching to find some of that stuff for myself. cute girls are hard to find here. there was one counter girl that was hella cute. i tried to get a good picture of her, but... well, i failed. too bad. ok. i'm off. |