Dude, where's my party?
When we left our hotel sometime around checkout the cash in our pockets was all but spent. On the way to and from “the island” we had seen the sign for a local post office, so we went to investigate. A post office is the only place in Japan where you can withdraw money from an international bank account. I had taken out around 7 or 800 dollars before we left, and I had maybe 200 of that left, El Charro was down to naught but his credit card. We pulled over and parked near the sign for the post office, there were no kilometer notations on the sign, so we assumed it had to be within walking distance.
After about a half hour of walking we walked to an overpass to get a crow’s nest view of the situation, and spotted the post office down the street. When we approached the entrance the doors didn’t open. And if it’s one thing I’ve learned about being white in Japan, it’s that all doors, automatic or not open for you here. The post office was closed. This was potentially catastrophic. An immediate panic crept over us, the first question El Charro asked was if we had enough cash to get home, which we did, but that was a horrible question to even put to words considering the next stage of the journey was to the active volcanic region where one of the biggest outdoor raves in the country was about to take place. We assumed that if this Post Office was closed for the holidays, it was a definite possibility that they were all closed for the holiday.
We got back in the car and high tailed it to Beppu, too distraught to even bother putting angry music on the ipod speakers. We dismissed our hatred of Let’s Go and managed to get a vague understanding of where the biggest post office in the city was located. We circled the runways for about a half an hour and finally spotted the monstrous white building that was Beppu’s central Post Office. We parked in an almost full parking lot and happily sauntered into the building, which was almost entirely closed, except for the ATM’s.
There were a few people on line for each machine but we expected within 5 minutes we’d have the cash in our hands and be able to continue on our journey. However, the ATM’s in Japan aren’t exactly just ATM’s, and the post office doubles as the largest banking agency in Japan. I have no idea what the other features of the post office ATM’s are, but I know you can pay your rent, water bills, phone bills, and electric bills at the ATM. I imagine you can acquire a mortgage, refinance your home, browse the internet, find a mail-order Russian bride, order pizza, and type your doctoral dissertation, because we waited 40 god damn minutes for three people to finish their transactions before I could spend 13 seconds grabbing my cash.
But we had money, so we left the Post Office in high spirits and a much lower bottom line on my savings account, as I had to take out money for myself, and El Charro, who you might recall forgot all of his money in a desk drawer at home.
It was nearing the time for the breakup of the fellowship, whereby our enchanting Canadian gal, El Angel Solo, would get on a train bound for home to go to her friend’s wedding, and El Charro and I would be headed for 2 days of reckless insanity. We parked Yama in the parking lot of the train station and asked for the nearest Starbucsu (starbucs). We also found a bookstore, because El Charro and I did not in fact have any god damn clue how to get to the party. So we purchased a very handy atlas, and poured over its pages while sipping yuppie starbucs drinks trying to figure out how to get to Aso. As it turns out we only had to take one road for most of the journey until the very end, so after figuring out where that road was we walked around the city for another few hours, enjoying each other’s company, pestering the natives, and finally dropped her ass off at the train station and boogied out of there.
We got on the road and out of Beppu without too much trouble, and the road almost immediately began climbing into the mountains, the road built to fit two opposing lanes of traffic was barely large enough for my tiny Suzuki Alto. This made driving along these beautiful vistas somewhat intense. But the views didn’t stop, it was an uninterrupted wall of incessant natural beauty for two straight hours. No rest stops, no hotels, no Onsens, hardly a car in either direction; nothing human and ugly to offer us a break from the mountains, flowers, rivers, and massive insects and birds.
It was as if there was a God, and he or she or it, was giving me this one long stretch of unimaginable beauty, seconds before he was going to throw my tiny car off of a cliff and send me packing straight to hell. But, as I’m still here to write this we know that there is in fact no God.
We finally stopped where there was some space for El Charro to take a pee break, and then it happened. As soon as I stood up to stretch my legs, my body full force let me know that I had to poo, and poo a lot. Apparently God just has a better sense of humor than I’d imagined. Naturally we hadn’t seen anything resembling a bathroom for a long damn time, so this was going to be a commando squat, something I’m not quite hippy, or commando enough to have much experience with, and I didn’t exactly have time to go through basic training right at that moment.
I opened the trunk, fumbled through my backpack, pulled out a notebook, and ripped out a half dozen white sheets of paper and then hobbled farther into the woods. What happened next could only be described as a poosplosion, the sound and the fury, Louie Armstrong meets hurricane Katrina. The Japanese however, now refer to it as the unknown ecological disaster that destroyed 3 square kilometers (1.8 miles) of natural habitat and forced 15 different rare plants and animals onto the endangered species list.
When we had reached the city of Aso we stopped at ShopRite (Maxvalu) and bought some food, went over to the in store microwave, nuked it, ate it and continued on to the next town, which was supposedly where this gathering was taking place. I say supposedly because we didn’t actually have any idea what the specific location of the party was, we were helped out by the text message of one of the crazy ravers we met in Fukuoka a few days earlier. Since I had left this particular detail up to El Charro, I was markedly unhappy with our current predicament. In fact he hadn’t even remembered to bring the flyer for the party that we could have used to at least give someone an idea of where we were heading.
However, the party did go for 48 straight hours, and it wouldn’t even start for about 4 hours so, we relaxed and went into a vacation state of mind. We had reached the town that we knew was very close to the party, thanks again to the crazy Indian girl we met in Fukuoka, and El Charro’s plan was to stand in the parking lot of the convenience store at the town’s main intersection, and wait for someone who looked like they were ready for a drug addled 48 hour party to stop in and give us directions. Not only did we look ridiculous standing there, but the prospect of someone showing up hours early for a two day party was looking fairly grim at that particular moment in time. So we got back in the car and drove around for a little bit.
We had failed to procure a tent for ourselves at that particular moment due to some dramatic circumstances at home before our departure, but we knew there was a hostel not too far from the party we could crash at. We actually knew a lot of things about the “area” but not so much where anything actually was. Then low and behold, we drove right past the hostel, so we stopped and checked out the prices, found out they had about a million beds left and then left. We would have asked the proprietor about the location of said volcanic trance rave but she was about 173 years old, and very cronish looking so we thought better of it.
Back we went to stand outside of Lawson, the convini (convenience store) once more. We had stood outside for about an hour before we realized we’d only seen about three cars pass by, and none of them contained anyone looking like they were off to a rave. I looked inside the store and saw that the clerk was a twenty something with spiked hair, and a tattoo. I sent El Charro in to plug the bastard for some information. In literally ten seconds they both come walking outside of the store and the kid takes the map and makes two very small very specific circles of possible spots for the party. One was at least a 45 minute drive from where we were and the other was about 10 to 15. We bowed, said about 40 thankyous (the plural of thankyou, come on Microsoft word spell check) and blasted away in Yama.
The road was completely uphill, which was a good sign, since the party was supposed to be in the mountains, and we drove optimistically up the mountain, the party still two hours from beginning. Then all of a sudden we came to a campground, it was a YMCA campground believe it or not, whether the acronym translated or not, I don’t know, but as we drove around the parking lot it became pretty clear this wasn’t our destination. We kept going uphill, and eventually we came to a rather large intersection, and stared in confusion. We waited a few minutes, and a few cars passed us, coming from the left, then coming from the right, and going straight. We went straight for a few minutes and seeing nothing turned around. We drove for about ten minutes until we were stuck behind a cab going very slowly down the road, occasionally slowing to a crawl, with its two occupants looking around wildly. We felt this might be a good sign.
We followed the cab down the hill for a few minutes until it stopped completely and two Japanese twenty somethings got out to look at one of the signs on the side of the road, I glanced at El Charro and he immediately jumped out of the car to talk to them. I pulled the car over and got out after him. The two kids pulled out the flyer for the party that El Charro had forgotten at home, and pointed to the sun and then indicated that it was a sign for the party and that it was up the hill. We were very excited by the current turn of events. We offered to give them a lift, but they had their tents packed into the cab already and our tiny car was filled with our own travel remnants. So we followed the cab up the hill, when we got to the same perplexing intersection the cab stopped, one of the kids got out and ran across the intersection to a similar looking red sign on the other side of the road, he then indicated that we did have to go straight, so our intuition was right on earlier. Maybe 50 meters from where I had originally turned around, there was a huge purple sign that said “Mystical Village” in huge English characters. Common sense would tell most people that if they were looking for a huge campground full of dancing drug addicts in the middle of the woods, a sign pointing to a place called the “Mystical Village” is probably a step in the right direction.
The next time the cab stopped we were at the party, there was a table where tickets were being doled out, but it was still an hour and a half before the music started, and we were starving, so El Charro and I went all the way back down the hill to the Denny’s (joyful) down the street. After our meal, we went back up blasting psytrance from the Ipod speaker’s in joyful celebration.
We had driven three hours to a remote forested area of Japan’s southern island, both of us illiterate is spoken and written Japanese, with no idea where this party was, and yet somehow we’d managed to find it. Surviving it, of course, is a whole other story.
Wheat Out
After about a half hour of walking we walked to an overpass to get a crow’s nest view of the situation, and spotted the post office down the street. When we approached the entrance the doors didn’t open. And if it’s one thing I’ve learned about being white in Japan, it’s that all doors, automatic or not open for you here. The post office was closed. This was potentially catastrophic. An immediate panic crept over us, the first question El Charro asked was if we had enough cash to get home, which we did, but that was a horrible question to even put to words considering the next stage of the journey was to the active volcanic region where one of the biggest outdoor raves in the country was about to take place. We assumed that if this Post Office was closed for the holidays, it was a definite possibility that they were all closed for the holiday.
We got back in the car and high tailed it to Beppu, too distraught to even bother putting angry music on the ipod speakers. We dismissed our hatred of Let’s Go and managed to get a vague understanding of where the biggest post office in the city was located. We circled the runways for about a half an hour and finally spotted the monstrous white building that was Beppu’s central Post Office. We parked in an almost full parking lot and happily sauntered into the building, which was almost entirely closed, except for the ATM’s.
There were a few people on line for each machine but we expected within 5 minutes we’d have the cash in our hands and be able to continue on our journey. However, the ATM’s in Japan aren’t exactly just ATM’s, and the post office doubles as the largest banking agency in Japan. I have no idea what the other features of the post office ATM’s are, but I know you can pay your rent, water bills, phone bills, and electric bills at the ATM. I imagine you can acquire a mortgage, refinance your home, browse the internet, find a mail-order Russian bride, order pizza, and type your doctoral dissertation, because we waited 40 god damn minutes for three people to finish their transactions before I could spend 13 seconds grabbing my cash.
But we had money, so we left the Post Office in high spirits and a much lower bottom line on my savings account, as I had to take out money for myself, and El Charro, who you might recall forgot all of his money in a desk drawer at home.
It was nearing the time for the breakup of the fellowship, whereby our enchanting Canadian gal, El Angel Solo, would get on a train bound for home to go to her friend’s wedding, and El Charro and I would be headed for 2 days of reckless insanity. We parked Yama in the parking lot of the train station and asked for the nearest Starbucsu (starbucs). We also found a bookstore, because El Charro and I did not in fact have any god damn clue how to get to the party. So we purchased a very handy atlas, and poured over its pages while sipping yuppie starbucs drinks trying to figure out how to get to Aso. As it turns out we only had to take one road for most of the journey until the very end, so after figuring out where that road was we walked around the city for another few hours, enjoying each other’s company, pestering the natives, and finally dropped her ass off at the train station and boogied out of there.
We got on the road and out of Beppu without too much trouble, and the road almost immediately began climbing into the mountains, the road built to fit two opposing lanes of traffic was barely large enough for my tiny Suzuki Alto. This made driving along these beautiful vistas somewhat intense. But the views didn’t stop, it was an uninterrupted wall of incessant natural beauty for two straight hours. No rest stops, no hotels, no Onsens, hardly a car in either direction; nothing human and ugly to offer us a break from the mountains, flowers, rivers, and massive insects and birds.
It was as if there was a God, and he or she or it, was giving me this one long stretch of unimaginable beauty, seconds before he was going to throw my tiny car off of a cliff and send me packing straight to hell. But, as I’m still here to write this we know that there is in fact no God.
We finally stopped where there was some space for El Charro to take a pee break, and then it happened. As soon as I stood up to stretch my legs, my body full force let me know that I had to poo, and poo a lot. Apparently God just has a better sense of humor than I’d imagined. Naturally we hadn’t seen anything resembling a bathroom for a long damn time, so this was going to be a commando squat, something I’m not quite hippy, or commando enough to have much experience with, and I didn’t exactly have time to go through basic training right at that moment.
I opened the trunk, fumbled through my backpack, pulled out a notebook, and ripped out a half dozen white sheets of paper and then hobbled farther into the woods. What happened next could only be described as a poosplosion, the sound and the fury, Louie Armstrong meets hurricane Katrina. The Japanese however, now refer to it as the unknown ecological disaster that destroyed 3 square kilometers (1.8 miles) of natural habitat and forced 15 different rare plants and animals onto the endangered species list.
When we had reached the city of Aso we stopped at ShopRite (Maxvalu) and bought some food, went over to the in store microwave, nuked it, ate it and continued on to the next town, which was supposedly where this gathering was taking place. I say supposedly because we didn’t actually have any idea what the specific location of the party was, we were helped out by the text message of one of the crazy ravers we met in Fukuoka a few days earlier. Since I had left this particular detail up to El Charro, I was markedly unhappy with our current predicament. In fact he hadn’t even remembered to bring the flyer for the party that we could have used to at least give someone an idea of where we were heading.
However, the party did go for 48 straight hours, and it wouldn’t even start for about 4 hours so, we relaxed and went into a vacation state of mind. We had reached the town that we knew was very close to the party, thanks again to the crazy Indian girl we met in Fukuoka, and El Charro’s plan was to stand in the parking lot of the convenience store at the town’s main intersection, and wait for someone who looked like they were ready for a drug addled 48 hour party to stop in and give us directions. Not only did we look ridiculous standing there, but the prospect of someone showing up hours early for a two day party was looking fairly grim at that particular moment in time. So we got back in the car and drove around for a little bit.
We had failed to procure a tent for ourselves at that particular moment due to some dramatic circumstances at home before our departure, but we knew there was a hostel not too far from the party we could crash at. We actually knew a lot of things about the “area” but not so much where anything actually was. Then low and behold, we drove right past the hostel, so we stopped and checked out the prices, found out they had about a million beds left and then left. We would have asked the proprietor about the location of said volcanic trance rave but she was about 173 years old, and very cronish looking so we thought better of it.
Back we went to stand outside of Lawson, the convini (convenience store) once more. We had stood outside for about an hour before we realized we’d only seen about three cars pass by, and none of them contained anyone looking like they were off to a rave. I looked inside the store and saw that the clerk was a twenty something with spiked hair, and a tattoo. I sent El Charro in to plug the bastard for some information. In literally ten seconds they both come walking outside of the store and the kid takes the map and makes two very small very specific circles of possible spots for the party. One was at least a 45 minute drive from where we were and the other was about 10 to 15. We bowed, said about 40 thankyous (the plural of thankyou, come on Microsoft word spell check) and blasted away in Yama.
The road was completely uphill, which was a good sign, since the party was supposed to be in the mountains, and we drove optimistically up the mountain, the party still two hours from beginning. Then all of a sudden we came to a campground, it was a YMCA campground believe it or not, whether the acronym translated or not, I don’t know, but as we drove around the parking lot it became pretty clear this wasn’t our destination. We kept going uphill, and eventually we came to a rather large intersection, and stared in confusion. We waited a few minutes, and a few cars passed us, coming from the left, then coming from the right, and going straight. We went straight for a few minutes and seeing nothing turned around. We drove for about ten minutes until we were stuck behind a cab going very slowly down the road, occasionally slowing to a crawl, with its two occupants looking around wildly. We felt this might be a good sign.
We followed the cab down the hill for a few minutes until it stopped completely and two Japanese twenty somethings got out to look at one of the signs on the side of the road, I glanced at El Charro and he immediately jumped out of the car to talk to them. I pulled the car over and got out after him. The two kids pulled out the flyer for the party that El Charro had forgotten at home, and pointed to the sun and then indicated that it was a sign for the party and that it was up the hill. We were very excited by the current turn of events. We offered to give them a lift, but they had their tents packed into the cab already and our tiny car was filled with our own travel remnants. So we followed the cab up the hill, when we got to the same perplexing intersection the cab stopped, one of the kids got out and ran across the intersection to a similar looking red sign on the other side of the road, he then indicated that we did have to go straight, so our intuition was right on earlier. Maybe 50 meters from where I had originally turned around, there was a huge purple sign that said “Mystical Village” in huge English characters. Common sense would tell most people that if they were looking for a huge campground full of dancing drug addicts in the middle of the woods, a sign pointing to a place called the “Mystical Village” is probably a step in the right direction.
The next time the cab stopped we were at the party, there was a table where tickets were being doled out, but it was still an hour and a half before the music started, and we were starving, so El Charro and I went all the way back down the hill to the Denny’s (joyful) down the street. After our meal, we went back up blasting psytrance from the Ipod speaker’s in joyful celebration.
We had driven three hours to a remote forested area of Japan’s southern island, both of us illiterate is spoken and written Japanese, with no idea where this party was, and yet somehow we’d managed to find it. Surviving it, of course, is a whole other story.
Wheat Out
posted by Just1Wheat at
9:13 AM
