Blood in the rearview mirror

Ok, ok ok. The last post was a cop-out, I'll admit it. I just pasted an old file that happened to be on my computer. I promise though new stuff is coming, and it's quite excellent. Before I break off an another massive, I need to take wednesday off to finish this story entry, I will leave you with a small anecdote about my drive to work today.

The day started at about 2 when I woke up on El Charro's couch, for reasons that will be explained in one or two entries, and walked down the Serene Path of Serenity, to the Mysterious Park of Mystery, eventually wandering back into my apartment. I quickly showered, got dressed, ate some left over patato salad, and got in my car to go to work.

When I leave my apartment for the spectacularly annoying main drag to the office, Route 2, I have to enter the flow of traffic in the wrong direction, which means everyday I have to bust a U-ey at the same spot. This spot is about 30 to 35 feet long, paralell to the highway, and maybe a little over a carlength wide. As I approach U-town, there is already one car waiting to make the turn, I pull up next to it. Immediately following me, an old man in a tiny car pulls up trying to turn in the opposite direction, blocking my view and the flow of traffic, then a woman in a huge mini-van pulls up next to the old guy looking to turn in the same direction. Then another huge van pulls up next to me going in the same direction I'm going in. What we have now is this little u-turn playground is a five vehicle mexican standoff, that ensured that absolutely nobody had a clear view of the two land highway they are trying to pull into. This is obviously the fault of women and old people, who upon seeing cars already waiting should have opted to wait another 30 god damn seconds, and turned around at the next traffic light. The day is not beginning well, after 3 to 5 minutes of sitting there, I went, it didn't seem like anyone was coming, the road felt clear.

Anyway, I got going, and simmered down a bit, then as the highway moves into one lane I look at the car behind me. Obviously it's a police car, it's a white sedan, with big red lights on the top, and the occupants look thirsty to nail some gaijin ass. Of course we're driving on the street that everyone speeds on, even grandma, and naturally as I slow down, the cop speeds up. The cop gets right on my ass, and as I look back I notice that there is a word, an English word, written on the hood; BLOODin big red capital shiny f*$k off letters. I am officially terrified. What the hell is this, what kind of police force writes blood is huge god damn letters on the hood of their car? Is it some kind of Enrish mistake, did they mean to write...ummm...brood, or blued, or brewed? What is the deal here, are they out for blood? Did an entire Koban (police station) have their minds poisoned by Chuck Bronson movies, we're they goth police on some kind of vampire trip? I have not been this LIT (lost in translation) in quite a while. The car is beating down on me, I'm imagining that I'm seeing fangs on the uniformed men in the car, and is that radiator grill tinted red? I can't be sure.

Finally, the road turns back into two lanes, and I get my ass over to the slow lane in a heartbeat. Which is as long as it took to read the English phrase on the back of the car as it sped away. Blood Transportation Vehicle was written neatly across the back panelling, along with a picture of a green hospital cross on a blue background.

Just one of those weird moments that stick with you for a while.

Jet-Lag in memory

This is kind of fun. I guess this would be my first travel story. I found it on my computer from the days in 2002, when I was planning on writing a travel book about my semester abroad. This is the story of leaving New York to go to London for a semester.

Jet-Lagged

I am not afraid to fly; in fact I always find it to be a giddy rush when a plane takes off. If you think about it, flying is nothing but riding a controlled explosion thousands of feet into the air, and then moving hundreds of miles an hour because you don’t have to compete with both gravity and friction. The whole fuselage of an airplane is built to shake and move because if it were completely rigid the forces acting on it would simply rip the plane to pieces. I always found the premise of a seatbelt on airplanes a little ridiculous, the plane is moving at a few hundred miles and hour, unless it crashes into a mountain made of marshmallows what good could a little piece of fabric possibly do? But I think what drew me to flying was the complete abandon you have to mentally embrace before boarding, you have to realize that if something happens to the plane at 30,000 feet there is absolutely nothing you the passenger can do about it. If lightning hits the engine, or a wing flops off, or the rudders stop responding, or a gremlin attacks, or the food is poisoned, or a disabled kid who needs an extra kidney and is tone deaf misses the high note in “loving you” and smashes his helmet through a window de-pressurizing the whole cabin, or any number of mechanical errors, all you can do is enjoy the most intense roller-coaster ever, just without the loop de loops. However, despite my attitudes about airplanes the flight to London would be by far the longest flight I had ever taken. But first I had to get out of the airport.

JFK international airport, one of the busiest in the world by all measures, and if it isn’t at least it feeds into the busiest city in the world, New York. New York is the behemoth of the post cold war world. It is one of the bastions of the dominance of capitalism. If the goal of creating a respectable city was to block out the sun, eliminate nature, and make every single human being it it’s lair seem insignificant, then New York City gets the nod. To most Americans New York is a city that has both incredible new-age technological and architectural achievements, and a city imbedded with all the bloody, and glorious history of America from the rise of the thirteen colonies, to the fall of the invulnerability of the superpower. New York is not an aesthetic city, however, it is frightfully intimidating, as are most of those who work within its financial district. In the city that never sleeps I guess that after nightfall the financial district is the doped up nursing home where the occupants sit in bed and stare at fuzzy television screens. The entire area is comprised only of office buildings and restaurants. Brokers like their food like they like their money, well suffice to say they like each a lot. I remember the first day I strolled into my office expecting a professional work environment fostered by the nexus of information, art, and culture of the big city, and I remember leaving the office angry at the Yankees’ general manager for blowing key trades in the off-season. “So Bill what do you think of the human cloning issue, I think It has a lot of potential especially with stem-cell research,” I would say trying to elicit a conversation and exchange ideas on the subject. To which the response would be, “Derek Jeter is a fucking pussy.” Indeed, I don’t know how I didn’t see it before, at that it was time for a lunch break.

Moving back to my flight to London, it was a sunny August day and I had decided to play it cool when making my first impressions with the 30 people I was spending the semester with, so I donned a bright yellow shirt with the face of Spongebob Squarepants dominating the front, with brown shorts to complete the ensemble. This wasn’t really so much for the fashion statement I was making but out of the shear fear of missing my plane because I had gotten lost and everyone had forgotten about me. I assumed that out of the group of thirty people a bright yellow cartoon character could not be forgotten. Hey where’d the weird kid in the Spongebob shirt go? That was really the look I was going for. Everyone else did not seem to have my foresight, and dressed as normal human beings. I suppose the first impressions were slightly awkward but we had plenty of time to make up for it. We waited to check our bags for what seemed like a few hours when suddenly we heard from somewhere above, “All passengers on flight 412 to Paris please step to the front of the line.” Now that was the bottom line, we’re in America, and we aren’t going to let those no good Frenchmen get ahead of us. But, despite our indignation JFK did not show much sympathy to our situation. Once we finally got to the counter we were pretty much given seats as far away from each other as possible, and only my friend Ryan and I were seated together, saving us hours of awkward conversation with strangers.

The good byes were not particularly teary from what I can tell, it was simply a bunch of college kids traveling slightly further than Binghamton University. To the old world, the motherland, ancestral roots, and drunken adventures. I myself looked forward to all of these things, it was a great escape from the American perspective. Not the American perspective that Europe copies, the post 1987 American perspective. I judge that for whatever emotion they felt my parents began to drink more heavily while I was away. If I lost me to Europe I know I would drink a lot more, and come to think of it that’s exactly what I did.

And with that we were on the plane without too much fuss. Some people got randomly checked but since no stereotypical Islamic men were flying they were forced to go back to the previously subscribed method of harassing Blacks and Hispanics. The plane ride seemed to go on forever, and although a few people sank their worries into alcohol I was too excited to really drink, after all I thought it would be better to at least approach this phenomenal experience sober. On the plane ride there one of the passengers had some kind of medical emergency, but unfortunately nobody asked me if I was a doctor, and I imagined myself reaching into the overhead compartment and getting that brown bag that most people use to carry bowling balls but stereotypical movie doctor’s carry professionally, and then in a calming voice approach the victim with a stethoscope swinging vigorously in front of a bright yellow smiling cartoon character, “It’s ok ma’am, I’m a child prodigy.” But unfortunately all I could do was sit back and stair blankly at the television screen.

It’s amazing what technology can do these days to keep humanity from reading. Seemingly endless tricks can be employed in almost any given situation to keep everybody from learning anything...ever. I’m not saying I don’t like to be distracted now and again from the more academic pursuits of life, but is it necessary to have 37 movie channels for a six-hour flight? During take-off and landing someone so much as sneezes wrong and a stewardess (flight attendant for those of us practicing political correctness, but if we were really politically correct they wouldn’t hire thin perky blondes and force them to wear mini-skirts while demonstrating how your god damned seat belt works) will fly toward your direction scolding you, but as soon as that baby hits cruising altitude 240 TV screens flick on immediately and Everybody Loves Raymond and Austin Powers and Jack Daniels all help to relieve the tension associated with flight.

I honestly couldn’t believe it when I overhead one of the stewardesses say the words, “we’re out of the chicken,” of course you are out of the chicken, because you idiots still offer people fish on these planes, in the decades since you started serving food on airplanes how many people have said, “oh the salmon that’s been freeze dried, vacuum packed, sucked of all flavor and nutrients, and covered with a sauce derived from curdled mayonnaise sounds delicious, I’ll have that.” Take a hint; offer beef and chicken.

Little did we know after that six-hour fiasco we had similar trials waiting for us on the island, customs and immigration. We were given three or four sheets of paper detailing the basics of our reason for travel; we were students of Binghamton University on a semester study abroad program from the month of September until mid-December. It was a pretty straight forward operation, I mean why would they ask us anything, the sheets of paper said Binghamton University right on them. I knew there would be a level of restraint needed here, that one so sardonically inclined, as me needs to employ when dealing with virtually any authority, and/or bureaucracy. So as a pasty white kid, wearing the clothes described earlier, I would have assumed that my presence in wondrous England would not be perceived as threatening. I was not here to praise the tenants of Islamic fundamentalism, I was here on an English program, that means I’m studying tyranny of the monarch, and colonial oppression, don’t these people know anything? They would ask us questions like:

“Oh, you’re a student?”

“Yes.”

How long are you studying for?

“About 3 and a half months.”

“What are you studying?”

“English.”

“What else?”

“Shakespeare, and umm there’s a class called the British experience, but I think that’s kind of a bullshit class where we just go to museums and visit parks and watch British television and stuff, but I doubt we’ll actually be in class learning anything about it, if you know what I mean, you know kind of how they consider lunch a class.”

Oh…Alright then, move along.”

Coincidentally we all made it through customs and acquired one of those airport push-carts which are required by the FAA and it’s international equivalents to have at least one wheel that can’t turn and brakes that don’t function, but after a few luggage casualties and a few well timed collisions with well-armed security officials we were met by the grandfather figure of our trip. A wizened Binghamton Professor who would be the voice of reason and experience to a gaggle of college students getting their feet wet in the currents of European culture.

As we packed out luggage onto the bus and started to get acquainted it finally dawned on me that I was actually in England. I had come to associate airports and that hassle of flying with America, and it took a while for the realization that I had landed somewhere else to settle in. The “flat” was some two hours away, and by the vague description of our living quarters all I could assume is that it would be no taller than one-floor. The bus ride progressed and as I looked out the right window of the bus to the other lanes of traffic I noticed that there were no drivers, in fact there were little girls sitting where the driver should be, and the car was passing us at near 70 miles an hour. What the hell was going on with this place? Yes, British people drive on the other side of the road, and yes they have the steering wheel on the other side of the car, but it doesn’t really hit you until your bus is passed by a speeding eight year old girl. At that point I knew, Jet Lag had set in, and I should prepare for a long ride.

Samurai Indie Rock

After a busy day 1 of the vacation Daphney and I awoke at the crack of noon on Friday. We stumbled around the hotel room for a little bit, showered, and sallied forth into the afternoon. I broke with my typical traveling style of blundering into the sights worth seeing, and decided we should head to the infamous Osaka Castle. We had to take the subway to a different train line, and though I was becoming increasingly frustrated with the endless underground labyrinths of the large stations in Osaka, Daphney guided us toward the seven story white monster that loomed on the outskirts of the city.

The intense heat of the previous day had done some damage though, and everywhere my foot met my sandals yesterday was rubbed raw, so I went down to the convini (convenience store) and bought some band-aids for the sore spots which seemed to do the trick.

I’m going to bombard you with photos of the castle, which was breathtaking, until I was informed that the entire thing was fake. It had been completely razed sometime in the 19th century, and the exact exterior replica was rebuilt sometime after World War II. Defeated countries often cling to the glories of the past; see Italy or France for further details. This first, in my opinion the worst photo was taken a few hundred meters from the castle, and the second photo gives you a little better idea of the distance.

The castle itself was situated on a massive island of its own, which had in the absence of feudal lords, shoguns, serfs, and samurai become a kind of public park, complete with Japanese tourists walking around with giant clownfish hats from the movie Finding Nemo, I may never know why, but I don’t think I want to. The park was lush, and paths criss-crossed in every direction, but it wasn’t hard to head in the general vicinity of the castle, as we could see it from any angle, at every position in the park.
As we neared the castle I kept snapping pictures, it seemed to be the only actual photo worthy thing I’d seen in a while. Notice, there are no pictures of me standing bemusedly in front of the castle…tourist douches.




































Then as we approached the sprawling courtyard which would have no doubt held the lifeblood of any castle’s ecosystem, blacksmiths, markets, farms, animals grazing, everything was replaced by Coca Cola vending machines and dancing Korean religious cults. God I hate religious cults. However, these misled sheeple (that’s modern leftist slang combining sheep and people, it’s very chic in collegiate circles) provided abundant entertainment. As you can see from the picture, what should be a synchronized dance to promote the lord is a mish-mash of unattractive Asians in various states of totally arrhythmic disarray. If the thriller video was made with real zombies, it would look something like this.

After chuckling heartily we made our way to the vending machine for tickets into a recreation of a castle burned down before the declaration of independence was signed. As a general rule of thumb, if you enter something you think is a fortress meant to protect people from catapults and flaming arrows (which as I write it seems like the perfect name for the next big boy band) and that castle has…an elevator, something is wrong.

All of the signs that bothered to have English translations advised us that our phony castle viewing experience would be best if we began at the top and worked our way down. What this meant was that I had to try extra hard to have a good time working my way up. The entire interior of the castle had the feel of an under funded museum, it was well laid out, but hardly aesthetically appealing to someone who has more of an interest in how people killed each other hundreds of years ago.

The first stop on the first floor was a small dark room, showing an endless loop of a video about the construction of the castle…the original castle, sans gift shops and elevators. I’d by lying if I didn’t say after a few hours of walking in the sweltering heat I wasn’t more motivated by the darkness and the air conditioning than the video. I couldn’t exactly avoid watching the giant screen in front of me though. As such, through the tiny version of the movie off to the right with English subtitles I did learn a decent amount about the castle. So for those of you reading this because you’re taking a much needed break from writing that master’s thesis about castle construction in Tokugawa era Japan, I’ll enlighten you. The physical specimen of the castle itself isn’t very remarkable, other than the fact that you can see it’s entirely more decorative and less functional than a European behemoth of the same era. What’s interesting are the stone walls and the foundations of the castle. Unlike the Europeans, or even the Egyptians that constructed massive buildings from stone, the Japanese did not strive to create walls from thick uniform blocks of limestone that sealed together. The Japanese looked for the largest, most massive stones they could find, and then crafted the other stones individually to interlock with them.

Enough of that though, let’s move on to the second floor. I don’t remember anything about the second floor…

Let’s talk about the third floor, my favorite floor. Well I’ll just show you. I actually have no intention of explaining this floor; I think I’ll let you use your imaginations for this. Suffice to say the other tourists were wildly amused. However, since it is extremely rude to laugh at a Samurai, I was forced to go on a killing spree reminiscent of the scene in Monty Python’s search for the Holy Grail where Lancelot murders a few dozen wedding guests to rescue his flamboyant damsel in distress.

Umm, the fourth floor…I think there was a diorama. Are you excited? I sure as hell wasn’t…moving on.

The fifth floor was remarkable only for being ten feet higher than the 4th.

The 6th floor though, had a very large observation deck, and if I had a bow and arrow, and about two years to figure out how to accurately aim a bow and arrow I could have murdered me some Korean sheeple.

Would you like to see how a Samurai looks after he’s been drugged and his armor and sword have been stolen:


The next couple of shots were taken from the top, and you can see the fake gold plated fish in the foreground, and some random parts of the city of Osaka in the background, and possibly you will get an idea of the scope of the island the castle was sitting on. The photos of course do no justice to the amazing view from the top. After we’d had our fill of the castle we refused to take the elevators down and walked back down six flights of stairs.


As usual, and this rule applies to almost every square inch of Earth dubbed interesting enough to generate tourist revenue, “All Roads Lead to the Gift Shop.” Everywhere from the Alamo to Mt. Everest, all roads will invariable lead you to an overpriced novelty store full of crap that’s so far from genuine in any conceivable sense that buying one of the items will detract from any experience or connection you had with history or human culture. They are filled with only the most brainless of tourist douches, the bottomfeeders of cultural enlightenment. I bought some postcards and a kabuki mask.

On the way out of the castle we saw this sign. It is a perfect example of how badly English is butchered everywhere in Japan, and the central reason I’m somehow gainfully employed in this magical land. This sign is not advertising Samurai shaped cookies, or some kind of cake designed to help you escape prison by smuggling a samurai sword into your cell. What they were trying to say is that you could get a taste of what it’s like to be a Samurai Warrior if you pay money like I did to look bad-ass and murder people who disrespect you.

We charged back out of the gates and all semblance of the poorly orchestrated homage to the powers that be had disappeared. Walking back through the park, I heard this high pitched sound, and after a few minutes it began tunneling its way toward my brain. It felt like I was being stabbed with an ice pick through the ear drum. Eventually we identified the source of the sound; it was a Japanese woman with a really annoying voice, armed with a megaphone. I began talking to her so she would shut up, and eventually got her to pose for this picture for about 3 minutes as I fumbled with my camera, pretending it wasn’t working, and checking the batteries, to afford myself a few moments of peace from her paint peeling voice.

Walking away from the harpy I spotted these odd stone statues. I again made Daphney pose for a picture, as my only Japanese subject around. I like the giant monoliths dedicated to the old traditional appearance of Japanese woman juxtaposed with a modern Japanese girl. Yeah, that’s right, I said juxtaposed, about a picture, because I’m artsy like that.


We fled back to the hotel and picked up some sammitches to gnaw on. Afterwards I convinced Daphney that we should both get hair cuts, because I thought she’d look really hot with short hair. We headed back to Namba and began searching in vain for some able bodied homosexuals to make me look like less of a goon and for her to look stunning. The search was sadly coming up empty, but when I saw this wall outside of a café I just had to take a picture.

After wandering for a little while we stopped off at a burger joint for a late lunch/early dinner. After we finished eating she said her feet were bothering her a little bit, so I took off her shoes to have a look. It was god damn gruesome. Her feet looked like she’d been a leper for twenty years so much of her skin had rubbed off, she was completely calloused and almost bleeding in about a half dozen places. While I whined like a little girl about a few sore spots she’d endured what I can only imagine was excruciating pain and not made a peep. Herein lies one of the hidden strengths of Japanese culture, despite the fact that they have almost no outwardly confidence, they have an inner strength that radiates from this standoffish culture that no Western nation can come close to touching.

I ran off to a 7-11 that luckily had a huge assortment of large and small band-aids and ace bandages. Since I didn’t want anyone in the restaurant to vomit on me, I took her outside and played nurse for a little while as I bandaged and wrapped her feet. She went from leper to mummy in the span of a meal. Right before I left to get her supplies though a gorgeous stripper looking girl sat down in the table next to us. I told Daphney to ask her about a hair salon before I left, and by the time I got back she had a map with a small area circled and the name of a salon next to it.

I have no idea how big Osaka actually is, so I couldn’t very accurately gauge the distance, but a few inches on the map didn’t seem so insurmountable, we walked toward the dot.

On the way we passed a contraption that looked very much like the London Eye, attached to a mall in Namba. It was basically a huge Ferris wheel, but instead of the rickety carnie operated loveseats, each point on the wheel was a small observation bubble, completely encased, and air conditioned. While we were up top I took a bunch of pictures, but only two of them were worth anything. The first picture, if you look closely, shows what appears to be the demolition of a building, with bulldozers, from the top down. I’ve never seen anything like this before, and I’m not entirely sure how the process works.

The second photo is worthwhile because it gives you an idea of how insane the traffic patterns are in Osaka. If you look at the bottom right hand corner you can see a cab on the lowest level of streets. Above the cab in the middle of the picture are train tracks, a lot of train tracks. Further above the train tracks is a third level of traffic, an overpass that looks like it’s about level with the 8th floor of a nearby building. This picture made me happy I was not navigating this city by car.

We got out of our romantic little bubble and cruised back down to the city streets, looking for a hair salon. Maybe 20 minutes down the street I took what we might call the first of my purely artistic photographs. Since modern photographers tend to name their pictures as precisely as possible, I call this shot, “Abandoned bike meets lonely shed, under a street in Osaka, where two travelers were on the way to a hair salon, which would prove not only too expensive, but completely booked, and thus they were forced to abandon their plans for a haircut and begin binge drinking slightly earlier than the night before.”

It was getting dark when we got to Namba again, so not knowing where the good bars were, we stopped into a 7-11 and bought a beer for the walk. This was followed directly by another stop at another 7-11 for another beer for the road. Staggering randomly around Namba we came across this sign:

This seemed like as good an opening bar as any for the evening so we popped in. However, we later discovered that the sign was not intended as irony, the drinks were overpriced, watered down, the food was overpriced, and microwaved, and the bartender paid us no attention the entire hour and a half or so we were there. The score for the night was Osaka 1 – Samurai Steve – 0.

We boondocked outa there and veered toward the general vicinity of America Town, which despite the name, was by far the coolest part of the city we’d seen. The entire city was buzzing on this particular Saturday night, and the next bar we flowed into was jubilant in comparison. It was an Irish pub, filled with all sorts of Japanese and European patrons, wildly shouting, chugging, and rocking out to the…rock music playing. I was quite happy with our current decision. Osaka 1 – Samurai Buzzed – 1

As a general rule, any city that contains over ten bars will have at least one Irish Pub. This rule has never failed me, and the ratio usually maintains that consistency across the larger cities of the planet. This rule obviously doesn’t apply to Ireland, or Boston, otherwise known as “New Dublin;” or maybe, “Successful Dublin.” From what I’ve seen of Boston they could change the city slogan to “drinkers with a working problem.” It goes without saying that the slogan doesn’t apply to the Red Sox, who’ve hardly worked a day in their lives. Did I mention I was from New York?

We found a table for two near a wall that separate the serious, restaurant section of the bar, from the boisterous happy portion of said beer dispensing establishment. However, the amazing experience we had last night eluded us at this bar as well. It was loud, and filled, but it was nothing more than an ordinary bar filled with tourists, we had a decent enough time, we had a few drinks. Daphney ordered a drink that looked like a frozen rainforest. As we got up to pay the tab I went on a bathroom run, and when I got out, Daphney was in mid conversation with a giant, gangly, long-haired fellow, who turned out to be the drummer from a band called “Little Barrie.” This was one of the bands playing in the massive Summer Music Festival, and apparently there were more people like him out on the town tonight after the show. This folks is what we call foreshadowing.

After a slightly off key interaction, the night takes on a more optimistic note, something different had already happened, even if the rest of the night was a wash, we met a drummer from some band at an Irish pub in Osaka. If I met a really boring person somewhere I could probably embellish just that part of the evening to make myself sound exotic and adventurous. Luckily though, the rest of the night was not a wash.

We strolled around town for a while, America Town that is, and came around to the same concrete park that was crowded last night. Tonight it was filled to the brim, there must have been over a hundred people drinking and carrying on in the park. I immediately felt a little nostalgia for the experience I had in Budapest with a bunch of strangers sitting idly in the courtyard in front of St. Stephens Basilica, but I was not alone here. I probably would have sat there for hours if I was wandering around by myself, but Daphney isn’t what one would call a conversationalist, and I didn’t think she would enjoy this environment too much. So instead of popping a squat I asked a couple of girls who lived in Osaka for directions to a solid bar.

What came next was the most drunkenly convoluted series of directions I’d ever heard in my life. She was literally still talking 5 minutes later about how to get there. I thanked her for her thorough directions and made sure that she saw me start walking in the exact opposite direction of where she told us to go. In the end, it would prove better that I hadn’t stayed, but that’s purely speculation.

We aimlessly shot down the narrow alleys of America town until I had to stop to take a picture of the front of this hotel:


As we kept walking the streets were getting darker and darker, less and less businesses were open, and bars were very few and far between. I was still a little buzzed though so it didn’t bother me too much. Eventually we stopped at a familiar looking intersection. There was an ad for a J-Pop band called, “Dirty Old Man.” I thought it picture worthy.

As soon as I put the camera back in my pocket I realized exactly where we were. We were at the intersection where Peace Street was located, the crazy ass bar from last night. Even if the bar was dead, we definitely owed that bartender money for a couple of drinks to thank them for last night’s insanity.

The bar is completely and absolutely empty. I’m sure the douche douche bang bang club downstairs was packed to the rafters though. We had a drink and carried on a conversation with the Marijuana Cowboy, and Juggles the bartender. It was mellow but entertaining. Then I looked out the window, and down below on the street level 30 white guys were mulling around across the street.

30 white guys in a group anywhere in Japan is very suspicious. We immediately assumed that this must be a posse from the Rock Festival. As the group was all guys I immediately tried to send the cute Japanese girl down to fetch them, but she wouldn’t budge. I chugged my drink, I wasn’t going to miss this opportunity. I told the bartender he was going to owe me a free drink soon. I marched downstairs and across the street. I had to think now, I wanted to get 30 people to follow a strange white guy in Japan of their own volition. This would be much easier if I had breasts.

I tried to gauge if one of them was the ring leader of this walking boondoggle. I couldn’t find anyone taking charge of the situation, so I singled out the quietest one on the outskirts of the group.

Me: Hey are you guys with the rock festival?
Random Indie Rocker: No mate, we’ve got nothing to do with it.

Shit, ok that was stupid, I took the completely wrong angle with that one. I had to react now before they decided to move off. Some of the bigger guys in the middle of this circle were much more belligerent, and belligerent people usually win the tit for tat where should the group drink arguments. I decided to act wildly drunk, and try to go for the drunk ones.

Me: (charging through a couple of people to the middle) Yoooo! What the fuck is up guys!? Listen, are you guys looking for an awesome bar, it’s right up the fucking stairs, man…this bartender…he like fucking flips all the bottles all over the bar, and does crazy fucking shit. It’s like a one man Japanese version of Coyote Ugly, without all the tits.

Drunks: No shit? Guys let’s go to this fuckin’ bar.

I am a god damned genius. Though to be fair, I probably could have been laying in a pool of my own vomit and grunted “bar” while pointing my finger and it would have had the same effect.

I led the way to the bar which was previously empty, and the owner looked at me in total disbelief as thirty gaijin stormed into the bar ordering about a dozen drinks at a time. I was the patron saint of Peace Street. The lads are began boisterously drinking, here they are:


The two old guys said they were roadies, the guy with the cigarette in the corner is the drummer for a group called, “We are scientists.” The craziest part about meeting this fellow the drummer is that I’ve met him before, about three years ago in a tiny bar in New York City, while they were, low and probably not coming. The fellow in the blue shirt next to him is the bass player for the Arctic Monkeys, who have apparently made it pretty big recently, with MTV videos and such, despite the fact that they’re pretty damn horrible. The lead singer from the same band is somewhere to the left, he’s very drunk, and very British, and at one point while he was talking to Daphney she turned to me and said that in 15 minutes she couldn’t understand a single word he was saying. The awe of being in the same company as indie stars soon faded though as it became apparent they were a bunch of whiney bitches.

One guy behind complained about his record label for a solid two hours, until I turned around and asked him if he whined that much in his lyrics. He moved to the other side of the bar after that. Indie rockers aren’t the strongest guys in the world. I carried on a pretty solid conversation with the drummer and bass player in the picture for a while, they were still in control of their ego’s and had no problem talking to a mere mortal for a while.

During this entire interaction, various members of various bands were crawling behind the bar to mess around with the laptop off of which all the music was being piped through the bar. It made for some interesting sing-a-longs, and it was pretty funny when someone would find a song, belonging to one of the bands present. The band whom the song belonged to would always say, “turn this shit off,” and immediately look for a song from one of the other bands.

The all hell broke loose. The bartender decided it was time for a show, he put on a song he liked, dimmed the lights, and went to town. All the tricks from last night, were warm ups compared to the stuff he was doing tonight. The man had a flair for theatrics. He did the same thing with pouring the drink into the cup he was balancing on a small pole, then stood up on the bar, jumped off, spun around, and caught the drink in mid-air.

Then, after that, the bartender’s friend came in, took off his shirt, and proceeded to do BMX ticks…ON THE FUCKING BAR. What, you don’t believe me?






















There’s only so much you can cope with from a single bar, I’ve never been to a single place that has provided so many crazy experiences in the span of two nights. Eventually most of the whitey’s got too drunk to carry on much further, and I was pretty sandblasted myself. We stayed a little longer after they filtered out, and I did about a half dozen free shots with the bartender, who you can imagine was happy I showed up that night. He was actually about to leave for the night, but I made him stay 5 minutes when I went outside to gather the troops.

We paid our very modest tab, and headed out into broad daylight to go back to the hotel. We must have stayed somewhere in the vicinity of 4 hours in Peace Street, and if you happen to find this bar, look for the little book on the bar where patrons can leave a message. After the illiterate ramblings of a bunch of indie lyricists I wrote what I remember to be some kind of sappy message, but I have no recollection of what it was.

On the way to the main street to get a cab, I realized that some American bitch had followed me all the way here to Osaka. I think you can get a grasp of my feelings about my homeland from the tinge of vomit that rose in my chest when I saw this little icon proudly displayed in Osaka. We grabbed a cab, went back to the hotel, and immediately passed out.

Final Score: Osaka 1 ½ - Samurai Hangover – 387

Wheat Out

Watermelons in America Town

– A photographic Journey through Osaka – Day 1

After royally screwing up at work that day, I came home in somewhat of a funk, however, vacation had officially begun. That night I scrambled to pack 7 days worth of traveling into a single backpack…gonna pack it up nice (for you lazy Sunday fans). Luckily it’s unbearably hot, and Osaka and Tokyo are two of the warmest places in the country, so I only needed sandals, shorts, and t-shirts.

We met up at the office and left her car there because there were no classes during the break. Then we parked Yama back at my place and hoofed it 15 minutes to the Shinkansen (bullet train) station. We picked up some breakfast-like snackables and continued to the station, where everything progressed as it would at an American train station, except we were waiting for a train that travels over 200 miles per hour, and were surrounded by Japanese people.

The Shinkansen (bullet train) is amazingly spacious and comfortable. This comfort comes at a cost though, roughly 400$ (40,000 yen) for a round trip ticket to Tokyo from Tokuyama. In about three or four hours we’d arrive at Shin-Osaka, the train station. We got on a subway and headed to the stop according to the directions from our hotel’s website.

We looked at the map a few times, spun it around, turned it over, folded it up, unfolded it again, turned it into and origami crane, and then went left. The directions told us to go past a Lawson (convenience store) and a Family Mart (convenience store) and the hotel was on the next block. Unfortunately there are about 3,000 Lawson’s and Family Mart’s in Osaka, most of them within a block of each other. We walked straight, gave up, turned around, walked straight the other way, gave up, turned around, walked to another Lawson in a different direction, and finally got directions to the hotel.

When we got to the hotel it was a little after noon, and we couldn’t check in until 3:30 or so. So, after dropping off the bags at reception we ventured out into the city, back into the subway, and off to Umeda. Umeda very closely resembles downtown Manhattan, otherwise known as the boring part of the city. There are two types of buildings in Umeda, and in downtown Manhattan, office buildings and restaurants, where fat office workers eat and work respectively. The difference, of course, being that a fat person in Japan is about as rare as a thin person in America.

We walked through Umeda and I stopped to buy batteries, not so much for me, but for you people, my 3 to 7 adoring fans. Although I find myself hysterical, I felt bad constantly bombarding you with pages and pages of text about these amazingly visceral aesthetic experiences and denying you the pleasure of seeing any pictures. So I’ve endeavored to take as many pictures as possible of Osaka, and then kind of petered off a bit in Tokyo as I was way too drunk most of the time to operate machinery.

As we strolled down the 3 lane urbanity of Umeda, we saw a temple being gang raped by the collective shadows of towering office buildings. We stopped in for a picture or two. Here you’ll see Daphney in her typical, cute, shy posing. The funny thing about seeing a picturesque Temple is you realize, nobody gives a damn that it’s there. It was completely deserted. In fact the only people who entered the area while we were there were simply using the courtyard as a shortcut to the next street.

We flip-flopped down the street a bit and after asking a young man in a suit for direction headed straight toward Namba. Anything worth its salt in the city of Osaka is somewhere near Namba. We were also told that it’s quicker to take the subway one stop down, but I felt like walking, and I’d rather make sure I didn’t miss anything interesting on the way there.

As soon as we reached the border area of Umeda and Namba, the whole town exploded into a smorgasbord of terrible elitist yuppie crap. On one corner we have Louis Vuitton, an another corner Coach, on another corner Dulce and Gabana, on another corner etc…Just looking at the windows of most of the stores here made my wallet hurt. We casually strolled down the street until I saw this cartoon. Knowing this picture was taken in Japan would be a little odd in and of itself, now, imagine that this picture is about 40 feet tall and 25 feet wide on the side of a building…your guess is probably damn close to as good as mine.

We went into one hipster clothing shop where t-shirts cost about 7,000 yen (70 bucks) and then we gave up on doing any shopping while we were in Osaka. We walked through the streets of Namba and Daphney mentioned there was a popular place called America Town. I responded that wild dogs couldn’t drag me to a place called America Town while I was in Japan.

Eventually during our wanderings we came to a huge crowd of people, so we assumed naturally that it must have been a worthwhile area to be in. I haven’t mentioned yet how unbearably hot it is in Osaka in August, the temperature was probably only around the high 80’s Fahrenheit, but the humidity in Osaka approaches somewhere around 90%. It feels like swimming through the air, and I was bathed in sweat the entire day. This next picture shows about 400 Japanese girls, probably ranging in age from low to mid teens to low to mid 30’s, waiting in line, in the scorching heat, for a J-Pop band. In typical broken English fashion, the name of the band’s tour, or new album, is “Another’s Another.”

Apparently we’d stumbled onto one of Osaka’s most famous streets. Its notoriety isn’t derived from anything as exciting as a red light district, secret Yakuza meetings, or a historic battle. It’s derived from this thing:

A giant crab mounted on the side of a restaurant. I mean the thing was massive, probably 5 meters wide by about 3 meters tall, and….and….get this, the legs moved. Sigh.

Another infamous piece of garbage on this street is this Harry Potter looking thing that drums at some irregular interval. I took the picture of these two gentlemen, because I had instantly judged them to be giant tourist douche bags. They just radiated douche and as such I snapped the photo. I just generally don’t like placing myself in front of famous things for pictures, unless the photo is somehow aesthetically enhanced by my presence in it. Most tourists, however, feel like taking a picture of something beautiful or famous somehow isn’t enough, as if they wouldn’t remember they were there if their face wasn’t in front of it.

“Oh man, I totally forgot that I took this picture of the Sphinx because nobody was around to take a picture of my jerk face in front of it.” If this sounds like you, please, stay in America, because when I meet you in a foreign country and you speak to me, I want to pretend that you’re Canadian.

Have I mentioned I hate tourists?

Anyway…we moseyed a little further down the street and I spotted an arcade. I was very excited, and you my fair readers are about to find out why. Japanese arcades aren’t too much like their American counterparts, despite the fact that almost all arcade games are developed in Japan. We’ll start with the size, this arcade was three solid floors of games, and almost all arcades also include Pachinko (Japanese slot machines). Don’t get me wrong, your standard zombie shooting games, racing games, and air hockey are pretty standard, but the other stuff is 100% goofy Japanese, multi-colored, seizure inducing robot fighters material.

As we walked around the arcade I spotted this little gem, and I was so excited I took 3 pictures of it. I shit you not, the original Super Mario Brothers was available to play at the arcade, for the low low price of…300 F%$!#ing Yen (3 F%$!ing dollars). This game was released in 1986, when I was 3 years old, and they had the balls to overcharge me for it. I somehow managed to curb my nostalgia enough not to throw the money in anyway.


The next beauty we saw was this neat little game. It was a video game with an attached guitar. You physically pick up the guitar and play along with the game. You can rock out 300% in Japanese arcades.














I also did not put money into this one, as I can’t play guitar, but it makes quite an amazing prop. Daphney was having a little trouble with my camera at this point, and though she kept saying the picture didn’t take, she managed to snap about 7 shots and about a 2 and a half second movie, of me posing with the damn thing.

Afterwards we climbed upstairs and got to the second floor. Half of the floor was devoted to various gambling, or token, or ticket, games, which all really amount to the same damn thing anyway. One of the unique features of the floor, and I’ve seen this in a few places now is this:

Maybe it’s hard to adequately understand from the pictures, but this is video horse racing. People sit at these little screens, and gamble on which horse will win, the video race. I’m calling it ORB, off reality betting.


We left the arcade after Daphney kicked my ass three times in a row at some racing game. I had officially been emasculated by a Japanese woman, and could only take solace in the fact that none of them can drive in real life.

We rolled out of the arcade and continued our sweaty meander around town. We came to a ginza street. A ginza is a sort of covered pedestrian alleyway, and both sides of the street are mostly floor level shops. They have them in every city and large town I’ve seen so far, even Tokuyama has one.

While in said ginza this photo was taken. The caricature is of some famous Japanese comedian.

As we strolled down the street a little longer I saw this gruesome scene. I know it looks cute, it looks like two little girls standing under a giant cat. However, a team of 6 men took about ten minutes to finish wiping the blood after this shot was taken. The little sister is kissing her big sister goodbye, because she’s about to be sacrificed to a Japanese Kawaii God. This is how the Japanese keep the population down, if you have too many daughters, one’s got to go, you have a few years to decide which one you like the best, and then a giant cute kittie paw comes down with Rapture force, and goes Gallagher on a little girl’s head.

Naturally we picked up the pace, feeling a little awkward after viewing our first human sacrifice. Ironically the next place we stopped was a cemetery. I am fascinated by the entire “burial” and treatment of the deceased in this country. It’s entirely different from Christian norms. In Japanese culture, which revolves around fitting a lot of small people on a small island, there is no burial, there is only cremation. Generally entire families are placed together, obviously over a period of time, which each family member being represented by a single stone pillar, around a central block with the family name, and possibly motto’s or quotes in the largest center stone. At this particular cemetery however, once a family had nobody left to visit them, or nobody had come for a long time to visit, the stones are dug up, and crammed together in a row, looking much like a tiered American, or European cemetery. I know this because I forced Daphney to translate a half hour interview between myself and the current caretaker of the cemetery, who was napping in a small building when I came in and woke him up. Naturally, as an American my curiosity is more important than a stranger’s comfort, but he did seem generally happy someone was taking an interest in what he does, because he looked like he was phenomenally bored with his job.

After the cemetery we got a little lost. We weren’t actually lost because we didn’t have a destination or a map, but we weren’t in a fun part of town, and we endeavored to get back there. We managed to get decent directions from a chap at a convenience store and wait…

Bar…What?

Anyway, we bee-lined back toward Namba, and on the way saw this monster. This crazy looking building is a jewelry store. You can see Daphney’s reflection in the bottom right hand corner. We didn’t enter the jewelry store, because there are only three good reasons to buy women jewelry; she’s your mistress, you haven’t had sex with her yet but know she’s a gold digging whore, or you’ve done something terribly wrong and know women are easily distracted by shiny objects. Some other incidental reasons for jewelry existing are that men often can’t think of a unique gift to buy a woman that somehow matches her personality and shows that they put thought and not just money into the purchase, or the woman is impossible to shop for.

We crashed into a Chinese restaurant for a lunch/dinner type meal, and then skedaddled back to the hotel to take a nap. By the time we got back to the hotel, we had walked around blisteringly hot Osaka for almost 6 hours.

We woke up a few hours later, and took the subway back to Namba, which we’ve heard is where all the bars are at. Daphney doesn’t so much dance, or sing, so Karaoke and clubs were out of the question. I decided the best course of action would be a bar crawl. After walking around a bit we found some decent looking streets, and as it turns out we had inadvertently entered America town. Well, if Osaka equates being American with drinking I could hardly do anything but comply with their stereotype.

The first bar we went to was a tiny hole in the wall, called Tako Tako King (octopus, octopus king). There was no standing room, just seats around the bar, which was square, and seats were on the left and far side of the bar. We sat at the far side of the bar, against the back wall, and ordered drinks. It was vacation, so Jack and Coke. The bar also had a kitchen, so I asked them if they could make Okonamiaki. If you tell Japanese people you’re going to Osaka, apparently it’s a rule that you have to eat this particular dish, because Osaka is famous for it. Through Daphney’s translation, the owner, Koshien, told us that it would take 20 minutes for the dish, and basically everything else could be cooked in 5, but we weren’t in any hurry. We had another drink.

After the second drink we were the only ones in the bar. Koshien related the exciting details of his life story, something like: college, blab la bla, here’s my food. We had another drink, and wished him a happy life before venturing out into the night. The food was by the way, delicious. Okanomiaki is some kind of pork based dish, which is elaborately put together and festively colorful.

We walked maybe half a block before I got thirsty again, so we walked down the stairs toward some American rock music. When we entered the bar, the only other people there were two German students on vacation. It’s ok though, as you may have forgotten, there is a classification for Europeans, and these two fell squarely in the goofy category. No blitzkrieg was happening in the near future at this particular establishment. Not only was the music good but low and behold, Guinness sprang forth from the taps.

I ordered a beer, and was politely chastised by Daphney for saying, “Hetotzu” incorrectly. I was saying, “Hatatzu” which sounded a lot like “Fatatzu” which is 2. As if to help make me look foolish the bartender came back with 2 and not 1 Guinness. Wait, what did I do wrong again?

Afterwards the owner of the bar and one of the German guys started jamming together, the owner on drums, german dude on guitar. They weren’t particularly good, but we were 2 for 2 as far as interesting bars go, and holy shit were we 3 for 3 by the end of the night.
Though the bar was interesting, it was hardly much fun and we paid our tab and buggered off.

So we stammered off into the hot city night, and decided to get a better view of our surroundings before heading into another bar. There is a small concrete park in the middle of America town filled with people, the streets at the nexus were buzzing, and none of the convenience stores had a bathroom. This is the only place in Japan to this day I’ve seen a 7-11 without a shimmering clean bathroom or indeed no bathroom for patrons at all. I like this part of town.

Eventually we come to an intersection, and we see a bunch of signs for the businesses in one of the buildings. There’s an obnoxious sounding club in the basement floor, and on the second floor was a bar called Peace Street. We went upstairs.

The owner is a Japanese guy with a shaved head, who studied for four years in the US, as such his English was stellar. His employee was a long haired Japanese dude in a cowboy hat, wearing a marijuana shirt, whose ambition was to learn English so he could be a bartender in LA.

We were the only people in the bar. The bartender was also the best bartender I’ve ever seen, but for now all he did was flip a couple of bottles around to make our drinks. We talked a little bit and had a couple drinks, when two other people came into the bar. One of them came into the bar toting a watermelon, her male friend was a bartender somewhere nearby, and everybody knew everybody’s name.

I will remark now upon the oddity of bringing a watermelon to a bar in Japan. A watermelon in Japan is like the Lexus of Cuisine. A watermelon costs more than a steak dinner here. One full sized watermelon will run the average consumer about 2000 Yen (20 bucks) even in peak season. This young lady, had one with her, and we learned the reason for which was that it was her birthday.

So the equation so far is us:

Aww, that’s a cute picture












+ birthday drunks













+ crazy ass bartender


+ watermelon

The oddest part of this whole deal is that they actually had no idea what to do with the watermelon. So I told them to fill it up with booze, and then drink/eat it. They thought this was a wondrously frivolous idea, and immediately complied.



The bartender cut open the top, and then inserted a lot of alcohol. The men of the bar then took turns shaking the thing for about 15 minutes. We couldn’t exactly wait 24 hours for it to soak in. The bartender then scooped out all the watermelon, and we ate copiously, and got copiously drunk. (shutup, it makes sense)

Afterwards the girl wanted the bartender to put the top of the watermelon on his head, and he did, and then suddenly took it into the bathroom. We were having a good time, and then all of a sudden ten minutes after he’d gone in the bathroom, the bartender comes out wrapped in so much toilet paper he looks like a mummy, and the watermelon top was wrapped on his head. I was totally LIT, I have no idea what would drive a person to do such a thing, but it was pretty amusing.

The bartender then inserted straws into said watermelon, and all of us drank of the remaining juice. Afterwards, we ordered another drink, and the bartender went to town. I’ve never seen anything like this in a bar. I’ve seen people flip bottles before, and it looks cool, but this guy put on a performance.

He would take a bottle of liquor and a gray container just big enough to flip the bottle of the bottle into it, and flip the bottle over his head and catch it in the container, then he would flip it from the container into the container again. He would juggle three bottles of liquor at the same time. At one point he jumped off the bar, flipped a bottle under his leg and caught it behind his back in the little gray container. He flipped a bottle 360 degrees off of a flat spatula, and caught it again on the spatula.

The coup de grace was when he balanced a glass on the end of a thin metal stirrer, and the part of the stirrer on his hand was shaped like a spoon. He then carefully poured ice in the glass, and made the drink, stepped up on the bar, flipped the whole drink in the air behind his back and…well…he dropped it, but he was pretty drunk and it was still god damn impressive.

After the show we ordered another drink, and the girl carved the Japanese characters for “Peace Street” into the Watermelon, which eventually ended up here.

Which in turn led to this picture, and this picture, and this picture.


























I don’t know exactly how long we were a part of this ridiculous little adventure at Peace Street but the sun was already up when we left, took a cab back to the hotel, and immediately went into a coma. Tomorrow was after all, the second day of vacation.