Funemployed

That's me. Funemployed. This morning I went to the immigration office and downgraded my visa from a 3 year working visa to "temporary visitor." I packed up my things from my desk at school and at 4:30 this afternoon was escorted out the door by a hodge-podge group of teachers and a few students (there was hardly anyone in the building).

I came home and had a nice big cathartic cry, something I haven't done at all during the entire process of farewells and goodbyes. It's been overwhelming and surreal, and a large part of me is fighting the inevitable huge changes that lie ahead. I still have a couple days left in Japan so I'm going to enjoy myself and look forward and spend my time with the folks I care about.

Above all else I am dreading the loss of my social circle that revolves around Oldies. I went there for dinner last night - Miho made me a chimichanga - and we sat listening to the '80s satellite radio channel, uncomfortably skirting around the issue of me leaving. She is a dear friend, a sister, and possibly the kindest person I've ever met. Anyone who knows me knows that I don't fuck around pretending to care about people. I know of course we will see each other in the future and stay in touch, but it's not the same when I can't walk 20 minutes down the street to say hey.

Two lives, one heart, we all knew it was gonna be hard.

"Cafe" music and パリ syndrome

In Japan, "café" is its own music genre, and it is 99% either chilled-out bossa nova or some sort of quaint take on a French chanson. Essentially, all that is domestic and adorable is equated to France here. There are not enough fingers and toes on all the polydactyl cats in Asia to count the number of twee trinkets, clothing shops, kitchen accessory shops, notebooks, stickers, etc etc etc ad nauseum that boast meaningless French. I don't know what you would call it...with English it's Engrish. Furansuçais?

Either way, it doesn't take a genius to work out that Japan has a boner for France - ah, excusez-moi, "boner" is rather inaccurate - perhaps a giddy wetting of the vaginal walls in preparation for getting boned on tour packages to the French capital. I have done a little traveling in France - been groped and offered cocaine in alleys by its nationals, sipped wine in spectacular vineyards on a beautiful summer day, smoked Gauloises and downed strong coffee, taken that tedious day trip to Monaco - all those things you do in France should you find yourself there. There is romance everywhere and it is a magical place - the Japanese got that right. But it hits a lot of Feudal Nipponese tourists a bit hard when they actually put themselves on a plane to CDG.

パリ/Pari/Paris is every Japanese woman's fantastic candyland of love, and you can't go anywhere in the city without running into gaggles of J-ladies carrying hazardously wide open shopping bags draped over one arm. With so many beautiful buildings, quaint cafés, and incredible shopping and style, the appeal is a no-brainer. About a million Japanese visit Paris in a given year. Unfortunately, as with any enormous city built on tourism and political unrest, there are obstacles that get in the way of Japan's vision of perfect bossa-nova France - sexual harassment, a sizable crime rate, racial and ethnic tension between immigrant groups, bums upchucking on Le Métro, graffiti (heavens, no), etc.

I know this was all over the news five years ago, but as I see it, no modifications in the Japanese attitude toward "café" lifestyle and tacking French onto everything have been made. So I'll leave you with a link to an article describing "Paris syndrome," which basically amounts to "Japanese people going insane from culture shock because their dream visions of Paris have been shattered." It doesn't take a whole lot to make people go crazy here judging by the country's suicide rate, and Paris syndrome doesn't surprise me at all.

(...This all came up because I'm thinking I'd like to go to France again soon. Japan has infected me. I just downloaded half a GB of Putumayo world music albums.)

Awaken

"Awaken" as a word always reminds me of Metalocalypse, particularly of Mustakrakish the Lake Troll.

But awakening is pretty much exactly how I've been feeling over the past few days, as if I had just been dormant and lackluster for those couple cold winter months. I put on five pounds and now I'm taking them off, I feel motivated to do my hair and put on Outfits with a capital O, and overall life just seems pretty awesome. I've got things to do before I leave Japan, and I've got lots of things to do once I get back to America.

I'm stuck in this really funny place between wanting to savor the rest of my time here and just hurry up and get back and re-start my "new" life. It's unbelievable how easily and rapidly you accumulate plans and obligations; every weekend for the next month and a half has been spoken for in some capacity or another. I have concerts to play/attend lined up for every weekend from this Friday through the end of March; my mom is visiting Japan for two weeks during spring holidays, I have a road race to train for in early April, and there's a big gathering in Nagoya the weekend after the race. With all these things to be planning and thinking about, I am still just sitting around watching videos of people eating fried butter at the Texas State Fair and daydreaming about America.

America really isn't that great, but I've built it up in my mind as some kind of wonderland. Nothing makes you love home like living away from it, I guess. Obesity epidemic, tipping culture, culture of unjustified entitlement and all, I have to admit I feel a bit proud of the big honking eagle on my passport. Now if only I could get a nifty burgundy/purple European Union passport too...

Back to life after being dead.

Here it is, a song that lifts my spirits to the point where I grow little horns right out of my skull. It's like I woke up from a coma and suddenly remembered who I am. I cannot translate my feelings into words so please accept my terms unconditionally: everything is right in the world. The little part of my brain reserved for psychedelic drug experiences, eating delicious forbidden food and rocking the heck out has been stimulated. I believe this is "spiritual."

Yes I know Mercyful Fate did it first, but Ghost and their unabashed return to the roots of black metal (which is somehow "psychedelic" or "doom" in this confusing modern world of classification...?) are such a welcome breath of fresh air. I haven't gotten really excited about metal in months, but "Opus Eponymous" is an album that's going straight to loop on my playlist.

"Ritual" is probably my personal favorite due to the blissful simplicity of the keyboard and vocal harmonies present during the chorus and flawless guitar work throughout. There's no extraneous wanking anywhere - proof that "badass" can exist without the inclusion of 64th notes. I'm a huge fan of the spoken passages in goofy demonic voice too. If you can't appreciate cheesy soliloquies about sacrificing virgins and goat lords, get the fuck out of the hall.

I have thought about my fascination and relationship with metal, Satan, Satanism, evil and hellfire imagery. I do not actually believe any of it is real yet I do genuinely find it titillating and thrilling to imagine the situations painted on cautionary medieval murals, where naked and lost souls fall into the fiery pits only to be tortured by grotesque looking demons with two dicks each. I have considered the possibility that it is a disingenuous or ironic fascination, but it's really not and it never will be. If you don't get it, you probably won't.

Hail Satan!

scrambled think-eggs

I'm almost satisfied with my appearance. Almost. I still have gross shitty crooked teeth and a flopping gut, stretch marks and shit that jiggles some places, but I can almost overlook those. I was trying on boots at Uniqlo Shoes yesterday and I couldn't get most of the zippers halfway over my calves, but instead of getting discouraged I just felt like a major badass because my legs are so muscular. Seriously, if I flex and slap my thighs, nothing jiggles. There is space between them. It is a victorious state to be in.

I talk about weight loss and running and blah blah food food food exercise a lot, but it's only so I can catch up. I feel like people who have always been thin and in shape simply don't have to worry about it. For those of us late to the party aka former fat people, it's truly a gigantic lifestyle change that warrants laughter, tears, and a shifting identity. Some days you get bitter, tantrum-like notions of nostalgia and overromanticization of a less healthy past. It's just like culture shock and fatigue when you extend your stay in a given new locale beyond a month or two weeks' vacation honeymoon. Just like I am sometimes convinced I actually miss pasty, obese, ignorant retards aka the cream of the American crop, some days I feel like the world is a dog and I am a chew toy, and why the FUCK don't I get to eat plates of rice with lunch like my 45 kg colleagues?

This morning I weighed myself and I was heavier than yesterday despite eating less yesterday than I did the day before. But I'm going to quit using scales as the tell-all. A scale is after all just a measuring device that does not take into account that the miso soup was oversalted at Yayoiken. A scale can't tell that I'm getting JACKED (okay, not actually) because I want my shoulders and back to look awesome in my backless, mostly frontless New Year's Eve dress. The scale also does not take into account that I've come a fairly long way, beating nicotine addiction and a very strong conviction that I will never be able to run for longer than five minutes.

I know what I'm doing works and that if I keep it up, I'll be healthy, progressively able to lift heavier things, and my endurance and heart will be optimally functional. Maybe I'll even live to be old and hot. I hope when I'm fifty I can have an affair with a hot nineteen-year-old. Now that's a goal worth working towards.

Sushi

I prefer Westernized (some would call them "abortions") versions of sushi to the traditional Japanesey kind. Give me a Philadelphia roll - salmon and cream cheese - over sea urchin or raw squid any day. The more deep fried crap, dairy and mayonnaise, the better. A lot of people think sushi is health food, but it's really not when you break it down (Sashimi, the immaculate pure protein, is excepted from this rule). Maki (roll) or nigiri (sitting on top of rice) sushi is really just a little carb bomb that you soak in pure sodium, and since they're bite-sized it's plenty easy to eat them by the truckload. With that in mind, we should strive to make sushi as decadent and fattening as humanly possible.

At my old Vassar haunt, Sushi Village in Poughkeepsie NY, they had this one memorable sushi roll that my then-boyfriend Mike really loved. He was a cross country runner so he could eat whatever the heck he wanted. This roll was called the "Poughkeepsie Roll" and if I recall correctly it consisted of salmon, jalapeno pepper, fried onion straws, BBQ sauce, and cheese, all slapped on top of a sizeable hunk of rice. The Poughkeepsie Roll was $12.00 or something and each piece (there were six pieces) took at least 2-3 bites to wolf down. Even highly experienced binge eaters such as myself and Mike could hardly handle its rich greasy goodness. That's what sushi should be all about.

Another pointless anecdote...I recall fondly speaking with a Korean exchange student who visited Japan about conveyor belt sushi. The Koreans weren't big on Japanese food because of its relative lack of zazz as compared to Korean cuisine; however teenage boys will be teenage boys, and they got a little competitive when they went to a conveyor belt sushi restaurant in Osaka. Apparently the winner ate 25 plates (2 pieces per plate - 50 pieces of sushi). That's the spirit, fellas.

What am I trying to say? Well, for one thing I've arranged to meet a friend in Karlsruhe during my Germany trip for the near-sole purpose of chowing down on beautiful Westernized inside-out sushi rolls, hopefully containing cream cheese. I am irrationally excited about it - people ask "why would you go to Germany to eat Japanese food?" - but honestly the only German food that holds any interest is spaetzle and currywurst. Speaking to the "bigger" picture, I'm quite excited to move back home. Ironically, the "Japanese" food is often better there.

They Killed Romance For All Of Us?

In Chuck Klostermann's satire/humor piece "Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs," he lambastes John Cusack as singlehandedly destroying and rendering futile the efforts of all men in the United States to behave in a romantic fashion toward women. Squeezing into her seat at the multiplex, caramel popcorn and a 32 oz. Diet Coke in hand, the average American woman who wears a size 14 watches Sarah Jessica Parker find the truest love in Manhattan. Teenage couples finding themselves alone in parked cars in dark shadows switch on the radio in desperate searches for an "our song" that will define their magical moment - romance cannot happen in silence; it must have a soundtrack. Depending on who you ask, the sound of romance might be the Philadelphia Orchestra on a summer night as heard from lawn seats. It could be a German language dance song at an '80s night. Perhaps it's the most cliché of love songs, "Hey There Delilah" by the Plain White Ts as heard on Top 40 radio in a car somewhere. There is a carefully weighted order in which things must be done; falling in love is like building chemical compounds out of toothpicks and balls of clay.

The only thing that's for sure is that domestic violence victims aside, all women are completely jaded by mass and indie media when it comes to defining romance. The classical dateable guy in the '50s that everyone desired was a charming guy to bring home to your parents who opened the car door for you and paid for your dinner, blah blah blah. Chicks swooned over Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable and John Wayne. This idyllic and possibly nonexistent "perfect man" archetype oozed over and under the free love of the '60s and '70s into the hedonistic and complex '80s, where we saw a shift from "respectable" to "hunky and damaged" with Harrison Ford protagonists, coked-up yet sexy party villains, and affairs galore. The '80s, undeniably the turning point of modernity in Western society, gave us a ball of clay to mold to how we see fit through the '90s and into the millennial years starting with 20~. The formulaic romantic comedy (I dislike "rom-com" for obvious reasons) perfected its chemical compound-like structure.

Nowadays, everyone enters a first date expecting witty and gender-appropriate banter just like in the movies and TV. Carrie from "Sex and the City" and her courtship with Mr. Big are a star example of the bloated expectations and ideals today's woman searches vainly for. Song lyrics have moved increasingly from direct feelings to descriptions of situations that could be construed as romantic. Roy Orbison sang frankly about crying over you. New Order turned up the heat with open-to-interpretation allusions of a bizarre love triangle. Lady GaGa - well, she likes that fucked up shit and probably enjoys being spanked with hot irons. Social networking profiles offer universes of insight on what we want. Like me, I'm willing to bet at least 33% of the girls on your friends list have included this quote somewhere in their profiles:

“Find a guy who calls you beautiful instead of hot, who calls you back when you hang up on him, who will lie under the stars and listen to your heartbeat, or will stay awake just to watch you sleep... wait for the boy who kisses your forehead, who wants to show you off to the world when you are in sweats, who holds your hand in front of his friends, who thinks you're just as pretty without makeup on. One who is constantly reminding you of how much he cares and how lucky his is to have you.... The one who turns to his friends and says, 'that's her.'”

(Barf.)

Now, think long and hard about the most romantic scenarios you've experienced - those moments where you felt so adored that you almost peed. Ten bucks says the thought "it's like a movie!" popped up in your head. Which brings me to my final question: did romance inspire media, or did media invent romance?

Homesick?

I'm at home right now but I feel more homesick than I ever have. I'm homesick because I miss how things were, and of course I know I have to get on a plane in a week and fly back to my other life. I'm a completely transient, temporary fixture here and my friends are grown and no longer need me since I'm never around. It's a fool's hope to think life would screech to a halt and wait for me while I run around frantically "figuring myself out" or whatever it is I've been doing in Japan, and not surprisingly I'm finding that the gap between me and the people I consider bosom friends is widening with age. In the past two years I've been away, countless friends have gotten engaged, married, moved in together, started families, divorced, whatever. The economy has been in a rather hellish state of woe and the faces of the government have changed and my countrymen seem to have gotten fatter, sloppier and stupider than ever before. So it's not without considerable and significant changes in the environs that I'm finding myself just a bit stupefied and feeling like a fish out of water being back, but it is still weirding me out to feel like a stranger or alien in my own hometown.

Incoherent and a bit rabid, those are my thoughts. It's of course my own decision to have extended my stay in Japan for three years' total and to have been a shoddy correspondent via email and Facebook and whatever. Maybe that's just how I plan on going about creating a fresh start or a new life. Hurts like a breakup to see everyone changing and getting married off but it's that time in our lives and of course I'm a bad friend if I resent people for making a choice I will not personally make myself.

Cat People vs. Dog People

Generally speaking, dog people place a lot of value on home, the family, and pooping where you are not supposed to poop. They listened to "Want You To Want Me" by Cheap Trick a few too many times in their youth and are convinced that even though they have like 12 human saplings already, they need a Peter Pan dependent in their home - something that will never, ever grow out of the drooling, floor-shitting and inconvenient noisemaking characteristic of babies and just-barely-higher-than-vegetables adults. What better to fill this role than a dog who is bred specifically not to bite children who may pull its ears? How about one of the "Family Friendly" breeds with floppy ears: Golden Retrievers, Yellow Labradors, Chocolate Labradors, or any combination of those?

I've been a cat person since day one and I have observed throughout the years that dog lovers are often red-blooded Americans who resemble the disgusting hambeasts in my "MILFs of America" post and drive Dodge Caravans with "I LOVE MY YELLOW LABRADOR" bumper stickers on the back. Dog lovers tend to resemble their beasts of choice: loyal, conservative, and a little bit retarded. They are well suited to careers in sped handling, early childhood education and other jobs that involve lots of care with little to no progress. Their arguments against cats are that cats are cool and moody - why have a pet cat when you can have a dog who humps you fiercely the moment you walk in the door? Some dog people engage in behavior that straddles the line between "affection" and "bestiality;" letting their dogs lick them on the mouth like it's not gross. Also, and this is a big one, 9.9/10 adults who use the baby talk voice to interact with eight year olds are dog people. I don't even need to provide evidence because you know I'm right.

I like dogs better than children for sure, but I would never date someone who likes dogs better than cats. Sorry, I have standards.

belly dancing

I saw this porn once where this guy was banging Lela Starr and at one point he just yelled at her "OOOH YOU'RE SO FUCKIN SEXY!" That's pretty much how I feel when I am failing miserably at learning belly dance moves via Youtube and making the earth shake in my paper box house while wearing a wolf shirt, sweating all the while of course.

My latest crazed plot to weigh significantly less than right now is to incorporate copious amounts of dancing into my daily routine. This is a pretty recent thing; I'm tired of being stuck at a plateau for like a month straight so something's gotta give and dancing is fun. After I've humiliated myself thoroughly by not being able to follow Billy Blanks (who may be the king simpleton of all exercise videos) for 45 minutes, I'll fling myself at the ground and do pathetic knee push-ups because I can't do real ones, do 200 crunches all in rapid succession which I'm sure is not how they are intended to be done, and then dance. On Monday it was drum and bass. Today it was the song "Tangerine Speedo," with some Crazy Town and Wheatus and a little Lou Bega (mix CD from my teenage years). I also tried to do the Mashed Potato but it gives me really bad rugburn on the soles of my feet. Possibly unwise.

Meanwhile my insatiable fetish for Lebanon rages on. Inspired by Youtube videos of sexy bitches with fake tits wiggling around on Lebanese TV, visions of hedonistic nights clubbing in Beirut, and the fact that I ALMOST got a falafel on Saturday, I'm mapping out a trip in my mind. I'm looking at you, Wael Abifaker.

rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, raining, rainy, rain

If you've never walked 45 minutes from work to your house through rice paddies in a torrential downpour while listening to The Smiths and screaming along, you should. Never mind the occasional old lady who looks horrified at your atrocious squawking and wild umbrella waving, it's your world and no one can hear you sing if you can't hear them say anything.

I love headphones invincibility. It's why I pick my nose shamelessly on trains. If I can't hear them, they can't and are not judging me.

The glamour of flying

It doesn't get much more "back in the day" than this photo, does it?

One time on an American Airlines flight from Narita to Chicago I met Shirley the flight attendant. She was an overweight white woman in her fifties or so and was obviously a senior flight attendant. Let me tell you, Shirley does not take jack beanstalk from anyone. "You don't touch me, you TALK to me" in response to a Japanese passenger tapping her on the shoulder. I'm pretty sure she actually asked other passengers to help her stuff luggage into the overhead compartments. Shirley is not the living picture of long-legged glamour; she represents "service with a sneer" to a T, the archetypal complaint material of businessmen who only fly Asian airlines and still call them "stewardesses."

However, as cranky and culturally shocking as Shirley was to me (I'd gotten used to petite and demure Japanese cabin crews who bow to you), she inspired me in a huge way by snapping "Are you a flight attendant?" when I stacked the food trays before handing them to her. Puzzled and flattered, I asked why she thought I was a flight attendant, to which she replied curtly "I dunno, you just seem like you know what you're doing."

What if instead of settling down like a good adult after my homecoming, I ran off again, this time in hopes of snatching some residual glamour from the rare sparks and flashes that remain somewhere in the earth's skies? For every songless land whale requiring a seat belt extender or stinking pile of baby vomit, there must be SOME perk that keeps flight attendants from committing suicide every day. I think I'd like to find out what it is.

Melancholic.

Rainy season seems to be here.

A little cloudy, a little monsoony, a little sad. A little lonely, a little introspective, a lot of solitude. The absolute last thing I feel like doing is socializing with people I know. I'd rather chat anonymously to strangers or write escapist wank about fictional emotions.

Without the albums pictured above it would be much harder to keep myself in this artificially rendered fog. Thank you to the brilliant musicians out there who strive to capture the exact kind of melancholy that we all love to wallow in.

Tokyo then, Tokyo now, and coming to Japan

Ah, Tokyo. The biggest city on earth. For years I stared at photos of the Hachiko scramble crossing in Shibuya, longing desperately to just walk back and forth along the zebra stripes under the dazzling neon. I watched "Blade Runner" and fantasized about how incredibly advanced and how very 1980s Tokyo must be. I read the "Fruits" photo books, drooling over each and every mismatched and too-brightly-colored outfit. Spent hours lying on my bed with my eyes closed listening to J-pop - so foreign and so futuristic somehow. Developed highly detailed fantasies of the night when I could finally walk the streets of sacred Tokyo. I would have Sennheiser or some other unaffordable brand of noise-canceling headphones, and through said headphones would play the 1991 "The Mix" version of "Computerliebe" by Kraftwerk, "Rydeen" by Yellow Magic Orchestra, and "Depend On You" by Hamasaki Ayumi. I was to be 100% alone. Just me, the music I love, and a brand new megalopolis straight out of that Daft Punk anime movie "Interstella 5555."

When I applied for and was accepted into the JET Programme, a gateway into Japan through which all new English teachers would first stop in Tokyo, the reality of it all struck me. I had previously held similar fantasy-feelings about Berlin, and they were fulfilled 200% and then so much more; Berlin is my favorite city on earth. And so I went to Manhattan and pretended it was Tokyo, walking up and down Times Square after dark with my music and hyping myself up for the Big Pilgrimage.

The morning of my departure, I woke up next to Walter in a friend of a friend's spare bedroom. We kissed "see you later" goodbyes and I took a car service to JFK, which is possibly the worst airport of all time. I smoked a few nervous cigarettes with a gaggle of beautiful Saudi Arabian flight attendants and went inside to check in. As I always do no matter where I go, I made a friend who suggested we drink beers for breakfast. And so I boarded the flight completely flushed with inebriation, passed out before takeoff, and woke up about an hour and a half later with a hangover. No more sleep for the remaining 12 hours of flight, doped up on Dramamine, flight attendants tried to give me the Japanese customs forms, almost 100 new JETs on the plane but it was hardly a social butterfly experience.

Needless to say, I was feeling posthumous by the time we landed in Narita; in fact I have no memory whatsoever of the customs and immigration procedure. I remember a bunch of overenthusiastic greeters in obnoxiously bright colored t-shirts shouting "WELCOME TO JAPAN" at us, I remember dashing to the smoking area, and I remember boarding a bus that would take us to our hotel. It was 3 pm or so but I wanted the Tokyo fantasy to begin. Over the excited chatter of folks on the bus, I blasted "Rydeen" and stared at the beastly concrete overpasses and skyscrapers against the sandman's wishes. It was too daylight and I was too tired. Fantasy fail.

Fast forward through the orientation with its lectures and vegan lunch meats, somehow all my friends who were studying in Tokyo had contracted food poisoning and couldn't come out to play. This left just the professor, Hiraku Shimoda, who was the indisputable heartthrob of the history department at Vassar. He swung by the Keio to pick me up, and we wandered around with no particular objective. I said I wanted to go to Shibuya, so to Shibuya we went. Japanese summers, especially in concrete jungles, are oppressively hot and humid. I remember sweating my way across that scramble crossing while trying to get Prof. Shimoda to take flattering pictures of me and also snapping stalker photos of people I found interesting on sight. It was not unlike the first time I saw the Eiffel Tower: "Oh, so this is it."

*******

I've been in Japan for almost two years now, and I do not "know" Tokyo as a city. I've been back twice since JET orientation, and I am not terribly eager to get back. The futuristic paradise of promise, robots and gothic lolitas is now synonymous with "transportation clusterfuck," "boring people," and "shitty nightlife." If I have money to spare and a free weekend, you can bet that I'll be spotted in Osaka, not in Tokyo.

Tokyo is the loneliest place on earth. I spent an hour or so alone in Shibuya last May, and it was such a long hour. It's not "Lost in Translation" lonely since I have been here for a while and the language barrier isn't a big problem - it's just lonely in the same way that New York City is lonely. No one knows you, no one has your back in case of an emergency, no one is going to approach you who isn't selling something, and there is no way you are going to run into someone you know unless God has been proven to have a bushy beard. Tack onto this the impossible-to-navigate system of trains and subways and the sheer number of neighborhoods and stations, and it's quite discouraging to "explore the city" when you have some time to yourself.

Loneliness aside, in being so massive and all-powerful Tokyo seems devoid of personality or defining characteristics aside from the fear and wonder surrounding it. There is no flavorful local dialect, most people range from lukewarm to frigid, and there are too many tourists and visitors. The freaks and goth kids on Takeshitadori in Harajuku are so well-known that there are now large Nigerian men hawking lolita outfits to rabid hordes of overweight white girls with lip rings. Go out for a night on the town, hit up Atom or Womb, and you will find unpleasantly strict doormen and a bunch of party people who are totally disinterested in speaking to anyone they didn't show up with.

Unfortunately, the magic of a place dies when you live in it. I am about 500 miles from Tokyo here in Tagawa, but Japan is the same all across the nation. Now that I understand Japanese people, I understand Tokyo well enough that it has ceased to be the fight scenes from "Kill Bill," Ridley Scott's 2019 vision of Los Angeles, or even a Yellow Magic Orchestra song.

Sometimes I hold a small funeral in my imagination, remembering the innocent days of yore before I ever laid foot on Japanese soil.

Manorexia

I always feel a little bad saying this, but James Malone of Arsis looks so much better now that he's thin. Yeah I know he's anorectic, crucify me.

Night driving in the mountain pass to mend a bruised heart and back

You know this would be a great place to get murdered.

You mean a great place to murder someone?

And then we passed from questionable civilization to none at all, just us and the heart heavy trees bent like grandmas over the road. Lurching and jerking we sped over mountains in the most inconveniently twisted path imaginable.

This is the shit Japanese postcards are made of!

Like the "Japan's Nature" ones?

Yeah!

It is so wonderful to be out here in no man's land like this. If we died up here no one would ever find us, would they? We could pass in a head-on, since the road is so narrow and curvy that staying in one lane feels like an unnecessary chore.

You know you're lucky I don't barf in cars.

Please don't barf.

Every so often while making a turn you can catch a brief glimpse of where you are - somewhere, lost forever, in some vast coniferous mountain range.

This is what the Black Forest is supposed to look like!

The Black Forest?

It's a real place?! I thought it was just the name of the cake.

DUH I've BEEN there.

It's like nighttime in here, with the setting sun behind rain clouds and thick fog like the Tenerife disaster takeoff you'd never know what is happening in the real world. Nor do you particularly wish to return to a place with houses, supermarkets, schools or hospitals. It's disappointing when you reach the summit because you know you're on your way out.

Oh we're halfway there. Now I can use my brakes again!

Oh.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Returning, after nursing a bruised heart with rich food and a fat man who tried to order our friend a pizza. It's pitch black, foggy, raining. This is better than primal, perhaps primordial. We are listening to "Fantasy" by Mariah Carey.

You know, with the music video and everything, this is strangely fitting.

At this point I don't ever want to leave. I can't see shit save for the plant debris on the road and the road reflectors but I know I am in a forest and right now a forest is the only place I want to be.

Bunny!

We switch to "Orion" by Metallica and then a string of Clan of Xymox and A Flock of Seagulls songs because I have totally hijacked the music. On our way down again it's disappointment all over again. I don't want to go to work tomorrow. I want to stay on this road forever.