Jay and Greg, who’ve been at my side since we were twelve years old, both happened to be in the Pacific Rim area for my birthday in January. They spent a couple of weeks touring Japan, usually without me as I was teaching. But we did have some good weekends. Greg then wandered off to explore just about every country in southeast Asia. The photo-filled travelogue that he emails us every week puts my updates to shame. After Japan, Jay wandered off to go to school in Australia. So far as I know, nobody has heard a thing from him. I can only hope that he’s too busy dating Kylie Minogue’s hotter younger sister to write us – and that he’s not in the belly of a croc.
In any case, here are some tales from the last time I could say with certainty that both Jay and Greg were alive: our blitz through Japan.

First, I have to congratulate myself for hosting. I was stuck with a 5am wake up schedule due to work. However, that didn’t stop me from partying with the boys until 1 or 2 am EVERY NIGHT. There were maybe one or two nights where we got to bed at a decent hour like 11. Peter, knowing how much I like my sleep, still can’t believe that I lasted the duration.



Here’s just a taste of what we did:


Of course, the first must-do was karaoke. Jay (left) and I observe James interacting with off-screen comrades.




We spent a long day walking around Kyoto – a normally tiring task, made worse by the fact that I’d sprained my ankle that morning foolishly biking into a fence. Kyoto started off with a walloping disappointment. Our Lonely Planet guidebooks had informed us that Kyoto’s train station had the escalator experience of a lifetime. We were supposed to be treated to a stunning Disneyesque ride. Instead, all we got was a long-ish escalator. I’d say it was nothing to write home about, but here I am…. Kyoto improved once we got into the city proper. The temples were great and all, but the icing was the ridiculously cheap and good Irish pub we found around dinnertime. In this shot Jay and I (the tiny figures in the foreground) approach one of Kyoto’s 5-story pagodas…the country’s full of them.




Jay and Greg (foreground) stretch out on this really cool bridge in Kyoto.




Jay and I at a former shogun’s estate in Kyoto.




One of the emperor’s residences in Kyoto. The building is very, very, very far from the main gate.




A peaceful pond/temple near the emperor’s palace.




Greg worked one of my shifts at the bar, People’s. He was instantly popular with the sararimen and sarariwomen. Some of them thought he was Leonardo DiCaprio (I don’t see it, but…)




We’d spent a day walking around Nara…my birthday in fact. Nara has quite a few temples but the real reason to come here is the free-roaming and generally friendly deer.




We found a few examples of this: deer chewing on chains. We didn’t know why they do it but we assumed it was a political message.




Peter and I along with a deer that refused to get in close for a better picture.




Later that night, we hit a popular martini bar. Greg, insisting on celebrating my birthday properly, managed to light a candle in one of my drinks.

Shortly after this, Jay left us to head to Korea and then to the mysterious upside-down world of Australia. Greg and I spent the next weekend in Tokyo – about which I will NOT write here. After Tokyo, we whiled away the last few days back in Osaka.


Peter, Greg and I celebrated Greg’s last night in Japan with a little more karaoke. The elevator in the karaoke joint inexplicably went to blacklight mode on us, and hidden speakers squawked out unsettlingly loud birdsong. Good thing there were only 6 floors in the joint.




Peter listens, apparently in pain, as I give it 110%. We were all in pain soon enough; after overstaying our time limit in the room and turning down the option to buy more time, the establishment reacted with force. An automated device pumped a nauseating gas into the room. Opening the door didn’t help. The windows were sealed. It was do or die. We tried to soldier on for a few more bars of our song (I think it was Eminem’s Lose Yourself) but the stench was beyond all tolerance. Big Karaoke won that round.



That’s an adequate sample, I think, of our Boys’ Week Out. Of course, there’s still Tokyo…Tokyo…Tokyo…. A lover’s kiss laced with poison: the madness and the glory that was Tokyo is still to come.