Levels of Foodsanity

There are many examples of crazy cuisine in Asia. Perhaps there are some areas like China and Thailand that are rumoured to eat various seemingly revolting delicacies, such as monkey heads, cats, snakes, dragon flies, and so on and so forth.

Japan, however, has the best known “odd” cuisine – at least by western standards. Best known outside of Japan, of course, would be sushi in its various forms. Many people find the idea of eating raw fish to be a little unappealing.

Of course, if you’ve read my blog for a bit, or met me, then you will know that I happen to enjoy sushi very much. I even touched on whale and horse sashimi a few weeks ago. (Sorry, world. But that serves you right for serving up something that works as both lunch and a ride TO lunch. As for the whale, I won't make a habit out of it, but curiosity got the better of me.)

Next up the ladder would perhaps be fu-- … um… fu something. That blow fish that contains enough poison to kill you if it’s not properly prepared. I haven’t tried it yet, but I plan to. Mind you, I don’t intend to ask for it as take out or from some place with a dilapidated yellow sign that says something like “5%0 the price off! Good Here Eat!! ” But still… its on the list.

The next few rungs on our ladder of culinary craziness are perhaps less well known outside of Japan.

Most easily accessible to foreigners, at least in my book, would be Suzime (“sue-seh-mey”). This delightful dish is actually an izakaya (pub) specialty. Its very simple. Take a few sparrows (yes, barnyard sparrows) skewer them with a stick, and roast em whole. I think some places also batter and deep fry them, but I can’t confirm this.
Again, I haven’t eaten these yet. They may in fact be a myth that is used to frighten new teachers. If so, well, I’ll be disappointed – I’m up for eating them.

Next on the list is the dish that is perhaps the most famous gaijin repellant within Japan. “Natto” consists of fermented (aka “rotten”) beans. It is apparently quite potent smelling and potent tasting. I have some in my fridge right now, courtesy of my dear co-worker Mikiko. In fact, I am going to eat some right now (or…right as I was writing this…) and give you my first thoughts!

Haha!

….

OK! I’ve just eaten them! And the verdict is….

Meh.


They look a little nasty (gooey and stuck together), and they smell a little funky, kind of sweet and bean-ey… but nothing really awful. I’d honestly been led to believe that eating Natto would be kind of like pulling on a bib and diving head first into an outhouse after cheesy chilli night at the lactose intolerance support club.

Really, though…it wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t great, either, mind you. It was kind of like eating sticky, gooey, raw-ish brown beans. Which is shocking, considering that Natto is in actuality, sticky, gooey, raw-ish brown beans.



OK! Now that we’ve had that culinary experience. We are moving on to numero un-o! The big nasty, champion of sketchy Japanese cuisine. We are talking about something that is so famously nasty that most Japanese blanche at the idea. In fact, my Japanese friend tried to stop me from eating this, and the chef was both highly surprised and highly amused when I successfully ordered it.

Hrmm… I’ll give you a minute to think of what this could possibly be.


First clue: you order it at a sushi restaurant.


…


Second clue: eating it makes people question my heterosexuality.



….



Heh heh. What could that be???


…


Give up?



Third clue: you have to get it from a MALE fish.



Heh heh he hehehehehe…



Yep.


RAW COD SEMEN.


In a sushi roll, no less.


You can take a minute to really ponder that one…

…

I have to track down the name of this stuff in Japanese, but seriously, that’s what it is.

I’d heard rumours of this stuff from dear Nick Sensei, but I never really believed him until last week. You see, I went out for sushi with a female Japanese friend of mine last week. (This friend shall remain nameless, because I suppose it could be embarrassing for her to know that seven or eight nameless people on the internet have heard that one of her favourite foods is raw fish cum.) Anyway, this friend of mine ordered some sort of sushi from the sushi chef. Being the adventurous type, I also caught his eye and held up two fingers to indicate that I wanted the same thing.

The Chef’s eyebrows went up a bit, and my friend quickly pulled my hand down and said “no… no. you don’t want to eat this.” And to the chef “hitatsu…hitatsu..” (one, one). The conversation then went like this:

Her: umm… this is not something you will want to eat.
Me: Oh, come on. I’ll eat anything.
Her: Really. This is….kind of bad.
Me: Ok… what is it?
Her: umm… (giggles, covers her mouth)… um…. Its… ah… man…um….fish….um….ahh…..
Me: (laughing)…let me guess… .. sperm?
Her… (turning red… and laughed behind her hand)…um… yeah…fish…man….
Me: Raw Cod Semen!??
Her: ummm… yes…
Me: interesting… (to chef)… sumi-masen! Futatsu, kudesai. (Excuse me! Two please”)
The chef raised his eyebrows at me, and turned to my friend, as if to say “you didn’t tell him it was chicken or something like that did you? Does he really want fish cum for lunch??” To which she nodded…and he grinned at her and then at me.

What arrived was a single roll of sushi filled with about… oh… I dunno… 50 ml? say four or five ketchup packets worth…. Of creamy white fish cum. Yep. There was a hell of a lot of fish cum. It looked kind of like mayo. On a bed of rice and wrapped in

I am sorry, but I seem to have forgotten to bring my camera that day, so if you are going to get a picture, I’ll have to order it again.

Heh. So… stay tuned for more fish cum. Same bat time, same bat channel.


(pictures forthcoming)

UPDATE:

Yep. I went back.

Its the Lack-of-sensitivity Hoe-down!

So, fellow teacher and rabble rouser Sophie and I spent Sunday carousing around a part of Tokyo called Ueno. For proper pronunciation guide (as per the railway conductor), make a sound like you are about to be sick, then add “no”. Ueno has a great many cultural treasures, like national Japanese museums of modern art, classical art, science and history.

Fortunately for the patrons of those upstanding institutions, Ueno also has a zoo. With monkeys.

…

Anyway, on the way to the zoo, there are also a few interesting cultural treasures. Like a huge statue to a guy we can call “Samurai Hindsight’s-a-Bitch”. He started out supporting the imperial forces against the shogun, but ended up ritually disemboweling himself in protest when the emperor revoked the rights of the samurai class. OOpsy. Anyway, he got a nice statue out of the deal, so I figure... it's all good.






Hrmm…. The zoo had lots of fun stuff. Like Ling-Ling, the famous panda that they pimped around the world.

They also had about 839339 places to take photos. Like this panda that I enjoyed molesting!




Oh, and some aptly named penguins.





Hmm…. In other news, if Shintoists (Buddhists???) were like fundamentalist Muslims or fundamentalist Christians and issued official “bitch slap notices” (that would be “fatwas” and “republican legislation” respectively… ). I would probably get one for doing this.



In fact, they would probably have this crazy rhoided out stone lion deliver said “bitch slap notices".




Don’t worry… I made amends by giving them a shout-out at the shrine next door. You can drop 500 yen on a little wooden plaque and write a nice message to the spirits on it.





We’ll close out the post by giving a shout out to one of my old flames from last week… the slutty pachinko bikini girl! Sophie’s careful eye spotted our barefoot Japanese girlfriend and boyfriend (she called shotgun on the guy with the purple speedo) as we passed the pachinko parlour. This time, (un)fortunately, they were wearing much more than last time.

I decided to say hello.

Nihonglish.... Part 1 of Many.

I’d like to spend this entry doing a quick run down of some of the best bits of English destruction that I’ve witnessed in my entire life.

(caveat)

I’d like to submit that making fun of English in Japan is like making fun of German Spelling in Quebec City. There’s really no reason that anyone ought to speak English here. Besides, my Japanese is around the level of scholarly ape-grunting with a lot of pantomime thrown in for good measure. Thus, I recognize the hard work that all these people have put in to learn a foreign language.

Plus, its dead hilarious.

(/caveat).



Lets start the day off with a few rudimentary typos.

This is a department store that really believes in connecting with customers. Unfortunately, they definitely erred on the side of "creepy" rather than "customer service". Especially if you were one of those people that saw "Evil Dead: the musical" when it was playing in Toronto...



Next up, more retail. Here, friend and fellow teacher Sophie Sensei shows off one store's awesomely enticing name.







next we have....

Chingis Kahn and Beer Stick. I honestly think this one can do without a wiseacre remark.




coming up next... I have attached a picture of the best menu ever. Check out How many mistakes can you find here??




hmm... a WHAT of Carlsberg???

Lets move from the public to the private domain…

Some of my friends sing the praises of cross language dating. One, in fact, declared that intermediate English skills make for the best relationships because you don’t really fight about something unless it is really really important. And you have to actually listen to each other, so there’s not really a lot of yelling.

And…well… I suppose that everyone speaks naked, so perhaps you can find some common ground.

Anyway…. There is a dark and awful(ly hilarious) aspect to it: the text-dump in broken English. Yikers. Its bad. In fact, I actually got permission from my dear friend to share this little gem with you all…

“i decided to leave from you. i want to concentrate new job & look for another guy. thank you for everything".

- verbatim.


It sure is a good thing that she softened the blow.

Lastly, I’d like to move on to the best homework submission I’ve ever received. I admit that the real comedy here is purely intentional (the dude is a funny guy), it was just so wickedly awesome that I had to share.


Class Homework Assignment:
Write an apology.

Student answer:
"Oh sorry, I like your wife. Because she is very beautiful and kindly. I need to her. but I yet hold nothing. So, I don't trouble you."

…word for word, thats it.

YES! (insert triumphant arm-pumping here) I love that guy.

I think we need a contest for this one. Please post the best word you can think of for the third sentence, between “to” and “her”. Try to be creative.


I think I'm going to start collecting awesome english instances.


Today's score:
Brent 10, culture shock 0.5

Yeah. thats right. I'm giving myself two points for beating down this little language party.

the Beer Fairy, the 'Perfect' Pint and a few thoughts on repression.

This weekend was mostly uneventful, that is, if you discount the fact that I happened to discover one of the greatest museum events in recent memory.

You see, people here like beer. As with most places that like beer, the Japanese have decided that by adding some “culture” and some “edjumicashun”, said beverage can become an all day event for the entire family! Of course, this being Japan, the idea of “beer museum” must include copious amounts of English typos, crazy cartoons, cheap beer and a little bit of silliness everwhere.

BEER!


Lets start with the Beer Fairy. She was actually part of a 3d holographic extravaganza. I can't really do this justice without a solid quote:

“This is a wonderful lovely 3d event that tells the story of the emperor of town. The emperor declared that the Yibisu brewman would have a contest with the evil beer wizard for the heart of the beautiful beer fairy. This alegorial tale tells the story of where the beer comes. The story is presented in magicvision.”




Oh yeah, they also had a quick presentation on the four things that go into beer. Water, Yeast, Barley and Hop. Apparently Hop is a lot more potent in the far east, because you only need one.


If I ever get sick of teaching, I might go into public copyediting major tourist attractions with a can of spray paint.

Hmm… anyway… the best feature by far at the museum was the bar. OF course the BEER museum has a bar! And although not free, I really can’t argue with $2 drafts. : ) I mean… they came with free beer nuts!! And this particular bar was actually very, very nice, there were two things of comedic note.

Firstly, on a beer note, the Bartenders here were pouring what I gleefully recognized as the best western-style (read, only about a centimetre of head, not the half-bloody-foam pints that the J-folk prefer). I stared in happy shock…until he smartly pressed the tap in the opposite direction and dispensed PURE FREAKING FOAM from a separate and dedicated head-tap.

NOOOOOOO…. Why? Sweet Beer Fairy… where are you when I need you!?! Come rescue these pints from foambliteration! Gaaaaaa!!!

Oh well.. if you let them sit for a minute or two, you get beer. And they came with free beer nuts!

Strangely what comes to mind is this bit of popular culture.

“…but it comes with a free frogert!.”
“That’s good!”
“the Frogurt is also cursed”
“That’s bad!”
“but you get your choice of sprinkles”
“that’s good!”
“The sprinkles contain potassium sorbate!”
“….”
“that’s BAD!”
“Can I go now…?”


Anyway, the other interesting thing is in this picture. Hopefully I’ll fire up a better version from one of my chums, but if you are reading this sentence, I haven’t yet.

Too bloody bad.



Anyway… its hard (impossible) to see from this picture, but there is a small girl of perhaps six drinking from a juice box. Perhaps you can see that the juice box is white…?



I’d like to tell you that that is NO juice box, but rather, a highly appropriate box of CAFÉ LATTE! Oh well. At least they weren’t serving her pints.



End Transmission.



.....


Sidebar Rant

This is extra crude and rude, so if you fall into any one of the following categories, please stop reading now.

1） Dear Mom & Dad. If you’ve found this website, well, this would fall into the category of “oversharing”. Please stop here. I’ll send you and granny some nice pictures later.
2） My Japanese Co-workers. STOP NOW. I mean it. You’ll start thinking that I’m a menace to students…I am, but you don’t realize it yet. (if you are a student in my class and you somehow found this, please note that this site is actually set up by an evil other Brent, who works for a rival English school. This site is designed to undermine the real Brent.) umm... I mean... Students: Teacher is being bad. Don't read this.
3) Dave and Raf. You will likely find this tame, so stop now or you’ll be disappointed.
4) Anyone else who expects this is actually going to be a) funny or b) shocking. I've now over-sold this post so much that you and I both might as well quit now.

ANYWAY… caveats aside.


I’d like to take a moment to address an anonymous reader. Apparently, a friend of mine showed this site to a friend of his, who promptly declared that I was a, silly, immature, sexually repressed man.

Well… hrmmm… silly?
--Yeah… can’t contest that.

Umm…Immature?
Farty fart!
….Heheheh.
--You be the judge of that one.

Sexually Repressed?
Now…well… most of you who have met me in person probably must figure that I spend a good amount of time editing these blogs for content. Perhaps you figure its about a six to one time ratio to bring the filth level down to the point where it is legally permissible on this-here inter-web. (that’s six parts editing to one part writing) I mean….. I know I can be crude sometimes, but, come-on, you’re a dirty person too. You know you love it. Especially you guys under “3” above, because I know you didn’t stop reading.

Seriously, you can fire under-sexed at me if you feel like it, or sex-y (you can have some beer first if you want, before you throw that one out…), or whatnot, but lets be straight about this. If I was any less sexually repressed, I’d be typing this blog by suspending my laptop from the ceiling of a crowded train and trying to hit the letters with my raging hard on while waving around 1950s Japanese nudie magazines and explaining what “pie-pan” is Japanese for. (the translation is “blank tile”… and I’ll leave that to you for homework.).

/ rant over.

Apparently I only get upset if you tell me I’m not dirty ENOUGH.



Oh… and to show that I’m an equal opportunity offender, I’d like to objectify some inanimate objects for you.





Ok ok… that last one looked kind of like a girl. But they had a dude in a purple speedo too.


Today’s score: Brent 8, Culture Shock 0.5.

Number of People Planning to Tune in Next Week, where X is the number of readers last week and y is the number of people who don’t know me personally: N = X – (y + 1) .
.

Mostly Dead, Entirely Delicious... REDUX!

I went back to the sushi joint that serves the uber fresh fish (and whale, and horse, and so on) for a nice dinner the other day. Of course, I decided to order up a platter that included that very same tasty fish as is displayed below.

Same tasty fish. Yep. Skewered carcass as garnish. Being me, I lapped it up, picked some bits off the skeleton and promptly ordered an entire squid grilled in the old school style…mmmm….. dinner that still looks like an animal….


Meanwhile, the waitress showed up to snag the fish remains, smiled, gestured to it, and offered some friendly Japanese that I figured would translate something like “did you enjoy your fish?” or “ Wow! You really enjoy sashimi!”. So, I gave her the big thumbs up, nodded enthusiastically and set upon my tentacled next course…

All was well in the land of B for a few minutes…. Until the waitress returned….
Bearing none other than the very same same fish carcass!!!

After a bit of staring in stunned silence, I quickly realized that I had mistranslated the Japanese phrase “Excuse me sir, do you want me to take this back to the kitchen, have it battered it and deep fry the shit out of it! (literally, I think that’s the technical term… or maybe it was “deep fly the shit out of it”… I’m not sure).

In any case, not wanting to admit my little bit of confusion, and in a big nod to those food chain bitch slappin ancestors, I decided to venture a bite.

It was YUMMY!!! Just as battered and way more deep fried than KFC, but without that pesky meat to interfere with the frying oil. The cartilage is actually quite tender and very tasty. So I ate it.

All of it. Even the head, backbone, fins and the rest of that fish thing.

I did leave the eyes behind, I have to say… so if any of you have ever eaten fish eyes that were attached to a live fish less than twenty five minutes prior to it arriving on your table…well… I bow to your Chuck Norrisesque awesomeness, and you can feel free to roundhouse kick both my dignity and my jugular as you see fit.

But the rest of you can shut the hell up. And remember, don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.


Today’s score…

Brent 7, Culture Shock 0.6

(I’ll give them a 0.1 for the shock value)


I’d like to close today by adding a verse to a classic song…

Fish heads…fish heads… rolly polly fish heads..
Fish heads…fish heads… fry them up… yum!

Fish heads…fish heads… rolly polly fish heads..
Fish heads…fish heads… eat them up… yum!

Its Absofuckinglutely a giant Buddha!

This weekend I managed to hit up one of the big tourist traps of the Tokyo area. A little town called Kamakura, which was the capital of Japan from about 1000 AD to about 1300, when the clan of samurai that were holding the town (and the empire) were bitch slapped by the emperor, who moved the whole government thing back to Tokyo.

The history of Japan has a whole lot of bitch-slapping… but I suppose no more than any other place on earth. Except here they used really cool swords, and cut out their own guts if they screwed up.

Anyway, the side effect of being the capital was the construction of a whole whack of temples, shrines and such. It thus makes a really great day trip, especially during autumn when the leaves are changing. This peace and quiet make it the ideal place to escape the crowds of Tokyo. Of course said crowds of Tokyo have long realized this fact… and thus ridiculously jam the place on weekends.



Nonetheless, the temples are beautiful and interesting. Of particular interest is a giant Buddha, called the Daibutsu, which stands about thirty or forty feet tall. It was originally housed in a huge temple, but a Tsunami washed the temple away in about 1400, leaving only the huge copper statue. You can actually go inside the statue (umm… if you…cough… get there before 4:30… that..er…is, sooo… I *hear* that the inside is an interesting shrine.)



We also caught some interesting temples during the day, and had some tasty sushi. By ‘we’, I mean my good friend Geoff (the one who has joined me for several such “wandering moron” days) and a Japanese ladyfriend of his named Emiko.

Emiko was very, very nice, and had a very good grasp of English. She was, however, typically very modest about her language skills and quite polite. She was also eager to learn new and interesting phrases… Now, this being outside of a professional school environment, she was very interested to learn such things as proper swearing form and dirty jokes.

The best mini English lesson that we put together was the fact that the word “fuck” has many, many meanings in English. She was already familiar with “you’re fucking with me!”, and “Fuck off!” I think the best thing we managed to teach her is the fact that you can put “fucking” into the middle of most words. For example, “Abso-fucking-lutely!” And “Fan-fucking-tastic!” were particular hits.

When she also offered “Good fucking job!” as an example of her knowledge of the word “fuck”. I was sure to also point out that word order is VERY important to the meaning of that sentence. Try switching around the second and third words… yeah… different meaning.

Did I mention that I like being a sensei??



... and that I found the triforce! Again!

Mostly dead. Entirely Delicious.

I would like to say that I am not a squeamish man in terms of what I eat. I figure that since my ancestors bitch slapped their way to the top of the food chain, the least that I can do to show them that I appreciate all the hard work. In my opinion, the best way to show this appreciation is to not shy away from eating things that said ancestors bitch slapped on their way to the eventual signing of the Kyoto Accord, formation of the WWF, etc. In short, I try to stick anything put in front of me into my maw.

With that disclaimer for the following tale out of the way, I can safely say that I love sushi very much. VERY much. And not just those sissy rolls that involve things like “cooking” in the preparation process. Thus, you can imagine that I live in Japan with quite a lot of excitement about the entire eating party. Occasionally, I even get some strange surprises. Like finding a place that offers uber fresh sushi near my apartment as the team was on the way home from Yomuriland-mae.

This sushi restaurant also had an amazing extra little thing on the menu that made the sushi even better…. a little special called “All you can drink for two hours” for UNDER ONE THOUSAND YEN. That’s 980 Yen… or about $9.80CDN at the current exchange rate. Draft or bottles, hard liquor, wine, you name it. Two hours to guzzle as much as you can. OK, raise your hands if you think that this would be the best thing ever…

Yeah. Me too.

To top it all off, they happened to serve a few things that would make a certain ex girlfriend of mine want to call the wraith of the heavens down on my head (…cough….uh…er…again…).

That’s right! This joyful place served both RAW WHALE and RAW HORSE!

The whale is held in my eager chopsticks, and the horse in Nick’s. Yep, they happen to taste pretty awesome, actually. Well, whales wouldn’t be so freaking endangered if they didn’t taste so good. Sheesh. And as for Mr. Ed, well, I now know that you can not only ride him to lunch, but eat him for it too! No cooking required. It was tasty-good!



Shocked? Offended? Hungry? Hopefully all three, because I hate to say it, but the real shocker actually came in the NEXT course.

Fish that was so fresh it was only barely dead. I mean BARELY DEAD. They pull it from a tank, slice off the sides, skewer it and serve it. Probably in not much more time than it took you to read this paragraph. This means that your fish is rather fresh.



So fresh, in fact, that it is still twitching on the table for the duration of your entire meal. A good twenty minutes of occasional jitters and fish flips. Seriously. The mouth opens and the fins jitter, the gills flip every few minutes….. all while you much away.

I wanted to show this poor fish just how much I appreciated his good work on the table, so I made a point of holding bits of said dinner up in front of said fish’s eyes before I ate, which understandably guarantees me the same fate if/when I am abducted by little green men with a taste for Burentomeat. But seriously, it was good, and I wanted the fish to know. It was So. Freaking. Good. Perhaps the best sushi I’ve ever had, and we snagged this little offense to western sensibilities for about 500 yen. I also snagged a few videos, so if you are interested, email me and you can watch us guzzle fish meat in fuzzy camera-phone-vision and drunk-stereo sound.

After we were suitably shitfaced and full of fish for under twenty bucks, we hit up the local karaoke bar, belted out our lungs and made it home incident free!

...


To prove how sober and incident free the night was, here is a picture of me being felated by Santa Claus.



Thank you and good night.

Gravity, Real Anime, J-Pr0n `57 and OJ . (Yes, Simpson)

part 1

Where do I start! What a day. Ok… this one is going to be two posts.

Part One – Birthday Porno and Yomurinanigans

So, I was rather passive about my birthday the other day. I was content to go out for a few beers with my coworkers and leave it at that. Some of my new buddies, however, would have none of that. So, dear Nick sensei booked us a night at a local Izakaya (kind of like a Japanese pub, but with better food.) and some other fine teachers joined us for a rabble rousing night.

This started off with a very thoughtful present from dear old Nick and his good friend (my good friend now too, I suppose) Atsushi. Showing a surprising amount of insight for having known me less than two years, these two fine gentlemen managed to track down a Japanese porno for me.

This isn’t really remarkable given the amount of sexual literature consumed every day on the train here in Japan… until I tell you that this magazine was printed in 1956. Yes, that’s right, classic Nihongoporn! Your grandfather was whacking off to this back during the 50s! woot!







Unfortunately, much like the other classic porno I received from a very thoughtful young lady (November 1979’s edition of Playboy) it is also full of articles. And while the Playboy boasts four separate ads featuring OJ simpson….



the Japanese porno has the benefit of being…well… even more classic. The Japanese “porno” is actually all cartoons, which is an interesting harbinger of things to come….




The Playboy, however, boasts the fact that the women are all really hot until you realized that you are looking at a woman who has a decent chance of being a grandmother by now.

mmm…miss November… She looks pretty good for being FIFTY!





In any case, it was a grand old time.

The next day, we roused ourselves at the crack of noon, met for lunch and headed for a theme park called Yomuriland-mae. Yomuriland is kind of like Disneyland, circa 1975 with a lot less investment. In short, it is just the sketchy kind of fun that the doctor ordered.

Here are a few of the highlights:

They have bungee jumping. This was made even scarier by the fact that it was designed for Japanese people, and that I was (with pockets empty and every last shred of extra weight shed) only about FOUR kilograms below the absolute maximum capacity of the elastic. Heh. Oooops. How about adding the actual possibility that the elastic is close to snapping to the fact that you are freefalling off a giant tower. Heh. And all for 900 yen! ($9Cdn).

They have an ANCIENT wooden coaster! In fact, each car has a roof bar, because it is built so close together that if you put your hands up, they will get sheared off! Seriously. There are signs everywhere not to put your hands up. This crazy thing shakes like an epileptic with a strobe light whose been stuffed into a blender and put on a small boat in the middle of the pacific.

All the staff bow at you! It’s an integral part of Japanese culture, so instead of waving, they bow. Heh. Tooo cool.

I’ve certainly saved the best for last….

It was ANIME COSTUME DAY! No shit. 50% of the park’s patrons were dressed up in crazy cartoon costumes! It was like being in a Japanese teenager version of Final Fantasy, with a solid bout of Sailor Moon and a side of Nintendo.

Here are some of the better shots.

These girls were extremely happy to see us. Please note the double arm grab onto my elbow from the girl on the right. The smiley one in the dress also managed to nearly break Nick’s hand in the process. I’m sorry to report that poor Takuya (far right) got none.



Here are some of the other gems.






And thats all for now folks... Tune in soon for how the rest of the EVENING went. heh. We're only at about 4 pm... the best is yet to come.

Cartoon Wonderland

Cartoon Wonderland

I wanted to share a certain little experience. This being, of course, my blog, I am allowed to do so.

(Interjection)
Fuck that’s a lot of commas. Fuck… I’ve started worrying about this gramahah shit ever since things like explaining the word “Experience” in one syllable words or defining the second conditional became part of my daily routine.
(/Interjection)

Anyway, I managed to catch the Corpse Bride the other day. It was wonderful, as can be expected of any movie that puts Jonny Depp and Tim Burton together in a mixing pot with a bunch of money and some guys who don’t mind spending a significant chunk of their lives moving little figures a millimetre at a time.

The theatre experience was rather more culturally entertaining then I expected, right from the get-go. Say “Corpse Bride” and they have no idea what you want. But, “Corpse-ew Bri-dough”, and you’re good. In fact, there are a number of surprising katakanaizations of English words (like may-oh-na-zew, ket-chu-pu and in-ta-net-to ack-ses-shi) that make it always worth a guess to just toss in a bunch of extra vowel sounds and hope you are understood. But anyway, I digress…

The Japanese have added a hilarious element to the movie theatre – assigned seating. They show you a little map and you pick out where you want to sit. Neat eh? Its just one more way to cram in as many people as possible, even when there are only about ten people in the theatre.

You must understand, as a friend of mine shared the other day, that modern day Japan doesn’t really make anything… they just make everything better. Consider the Car. Take an American car, then make it twice as reliable, more fuel efficient and cheaper to maintain. Voila. And Tokyo Tower? Its an exact replica of the Eiffel Tower, but about three feet taller. They’re just getting started on Indian Food, so its really not that great yet, but I am sure that they will be able to apply themselves soon and come up with something fantastic.

They have also really mastered the art of the previews. Not only were half of them for anime (particularly violent, frightening and therefore very exciting) but they also managed to more than double the number of previews to a very respectable 30 minutes.

They also happened to be showing previews for one of my personal favorites: Looney Tunes.

But imagine them speaking Japanese.

In fact, I have to give a particularly deep clueless foreigner bow to Sylvester the Cat, whose voice actor did about as good a job lisping around katakana as I can imagine. Unfortunately, this is only really funny if you grew up in North America and happen to be a native English speaker.

So, TWO people laughed really hard, and bunch Japanese people either thought we were really not paying attention, or just plain crazy. Of course, being Japanese, this is about their standard expectation of foreigners anyway, so really nothing was accomplished at all.

So, um.... Thanks or burning forty five seconds of your life on this post. I sure hope YOU thought it was worth it.

Juxtapositions...

We're going with the photo-focus post this time...


I wanted to put in a little thought for you all. Japan seems to be a country of many strange things coexisting side by side. Take, for example, the imperial palace, which is a very amazing, peaceful and closed-to-the-public-except-for-two-days-each-year kind of beautiful.

It looks kind of like this...




About ten minutes from there is the shopping metropilis of Ginza. This was Tokyo's first department store area... and is still home to Prada, Louis Vuitton and a host of other places where you can purchase small additions to your wardrobe for the equivalant of a two week european ski vacation.





OH yeah...

They also have a store called "Uni Qlo"...which is kind of like the Japanese Gap. I snagged a nice yellow sweatshirt in size XL (which you know in north america as "medium").... this store is only notable for its tasteful advertising displays that showcase a nice line of womens clothing...





OH oh... one more wonderful juxtaposition before I go.

the Delivery Ninja. You heard it here first folks... 22 minutes or free??? fuck that.

2 minutes or free... when you have a DELIVERY NINJA...

Ogling and "Holy Shit! Its America!!"

So, I spent some time running around downtown Tokyo with two very nice teachers. In fact, this weekend contained what can only be termed the FIND OF THE CENTURY, at least for the purposes of automotive trivia. You can slot this one in somewhere around “Einstien’s theory of general relativity plus a healthy dose of cold fusion.”

We have discovered what the letters C R and V mean, when referring to the compact Honda SUV. You can officially brace yourselves, sit down and/or conduct any small children or people with pacemakers out of the room.

Are you ready….TO ROCK?

CRV means “Comfortable Runabout Vehicle”.

Who knew that that bastion of North American university student transportation was actually a reasonably decent katakana engrishiztion??? Amazing.

Also on that note, I saw a halfway decent engrish shirt … “eat happy only meat!” but it sadly came only in medium. Medium, of course, is Japanese for “really bloody small”. But I still almost bought it.

Also of interest: Shinto Shrines serve free sho-chu! Its part of the operation of a temple apparently. And while I admit that my taking joy in this is kind of like going to church to chug red wine, I still think it’s cool to have people in traditional dress hand me paper cups of booze as I tour their faith-space.

I’d also like to submit the following man-sperience for general internet consumption.

I don’t know what it is about Japanese girls and shorts skirts, and while I am getting used to copious amounts of thigh-showing as a general fact of life, occasionally I am still shocked by the sheer volume of toned flesh being displayed. I say ‘toned’, because Japan seems to have largely escaped a North American phenomenon that I like to call “Ye Gods Woman!!! MORE Goodlife Fitness and LESS Belly Top!!" (or, if you ever visit Darien Lake, USA... "McDonalds Super-sized Women in NON-McDonalds Super Sized Bikinis"... BLEECH!... ... not that I am super fit, but I certainly don't wear fucking belly tops that display my fat, fat belly.)

ANYWAY... the other day when I was in Shibuya, … I actually had a verbal-expleditive-uttering, jaw-dropping, stop-in-my-tracks-curse-out-loud experience.

I was in middle of a friendly conversation with my good pal Geoff, and as we rounded a corner, we came face to face (ok, ok, it was face to face-body-legs-body-face, but who was counting???)…anyway… nearly face to face with more thigh than I'd seen since the last time I went out for swiss chalet. I actually stopped mid sentenced and gasped “Holy shit! Its America!” from about four feet away.

You see, this girl was wearing some sort of shoulder covering pseudo-top, thigh-high blood red leather heeled boots, “shorts” (waist denim) and a huge stars-and-stripes American flag cowboy hat. 'Double take' doesn’t even begin to describe the mental scratched-cd jump that went on in my head for about three full seconds.

Geoff told me after I’d regained my composure that she’d actually smiled at me and said “good evening”, but honestly, I was too stunned to notice. Yeesh. I mean, after thinking about it with my BRAIN, wearing an outfit like that seems to signify some serious attention-starvation, egomania, or who knows what else (and uber high maintenance, I guess?) By my word, what a show.

Incidentally, I should confess that one of my favourite activities after I see a particularly good looking young lady is to cast a quick glance around at all the other dudes. I find it vastly amusing to see that the rest of my gender is as helpless at preventing a horrifically obvious rubberneck as I am. I don’t know if anyone else cursed quite as loudly as I did, but it was still fun to watch.

Boys, try it some time. We look like schmucks, but we can all take solace that ladies have two options when avoiding schmucks – 1) each other (not that there's anything remotely wrong with if you are at all interested in said LGBT persuits) or 2) a battery powered friend, that while fun at parties, certainly can’t carry girls’ shit in ITS pockets when they take it clubbing.

Girls, shut up and stop sniggering. You should see yourselves when you see (insert famous boyish actor/rockstar-of-the-moment here – aka Orlando Bloom, Jonny Depp, and on back through the Backstreet Boys and N-Sync to “NKOTB”. And don’t pretend that you don’t know what that stands for.)

Crowd Surfing, Japanese Style

While I’m not sure where in the spectrum of cool Japanese people as a society have placed moshing, I firmly maintain that they would be much better at it than one would think—especially in a really, really crowded & enclosed space. I experienced the moshing talent of Japanese commuters first hand while riding home from teacher training last night on one of the more popular outer Tokyo rail lines.

You see, I firmly believe that public transit is the best thing ever, both for the earth in general and for commuting (to work, yes, but especially to drinking). Public transit, of course, depends pretty heavily on people actually using it. Some cities are fortunate enough to see enough riders to regularly fill all their seats. A few are even lucky enough to have enough riders to fill all the seats AND have enough riders to fill up all of the handholding/standing spots as well! I’m sure you are thinking that Tokyo is one of those cities.

Sadly, you are quite mistaken.

In fact, Tokyo has gone so far as to fill up all of the spaces BETWEEN the standing spaces with even more people! Holding on while the train jostles?? That’s for western sissies. Real public transit riders just jam the train so full of people that you don’t actually need to hold on. The whole population of the train just squishes together, jiggling like some sweaty, misshapen, cell-phone-texting, cartoon-porno-reading blob of human JELL-O. Only every fourth or fifth person holds on because they are the only ones that actually need to.

As a large, scary westerner, I took the obvious choice and braced my hand against the roof while some poor Japanese girl was crushed into my armpit by the six other business people seemingly trying to work their way into the same spot. Pretty awesome, let me tell you. Especially since westerners usually get the transit luxury of a handy bubble of awe/disgust/twisted fascination surrounding us on trains. While the “mass of Jello” philosophy of transit ridership doesn’t completely eliminate the bubble, it certainly reduces it to a much more equitable 3.2 millimeters.

I think the most amazing thing is watching people squeeze themselves onto a train car that should (according to the rules of physics) have people riding on the roof, hanging out windows, or lying across the luggage racks. The trick is pretty neat actually: saddle up to the people at the door butt-first, put a hand on the top frame of the door, and just press your rear into the train until you join the jello party. A little wiggle, and TA-DA…. everyone loses another few millimeters of breathing room, and you get home four minutes faster by not waiting for the next train.

I’m going to remember that trick.

Today’s score:
Brent 3, Culture Shock 0.5. They were letting in easy goals.

Japan vs. First Year University

I sometimes feel like I've been here before. Perhaps it was a younger, less ridiculous me, but I was certainly here.

Um... perhaps this is best presented in a handy chart format.

Things similar....


But, of course, there are a few differences.

Obviouspost 1.1: Tokyo is Crowded.

Yeah... I was down in Shibuya for some shopping/wandering. I can't really describe the ridiculous crush of humanity in any words, so I'll just post some pics from my camera phone.

I was originally set to work at this school before being moved to a school about 20 min from downtown. Something tells me that having this amount of humanity as an option rather than as the norm makes me think that I'll be lots happier in the burbs...

The options and the temperature…

So, I went for a walk today, because I had a sudden urge to play video games, and I happened to have left the cd on my desk at work. My school is about a 15 minute walk from my house, so I really don't mind the stroll. I took a peek outside, and opted for the classic Canadian combination of a large hooded sweatshirt, shorts and Birkenstocks. Seemed about right to me, given the temperature, barometric pressure and my general need to wear relaxing clothing.

Well, let me tell you… people here were muffled up in fur coats, hats and all that. I even saw one lady sitting in a chair with a BLANKET on. This, of course, meant that I garnered rather more stare-age than usual (as usual, when I'm not wearing replica samurai armour, that is). Especially when I got hot and doffed my sweatshirt.

Its seriously not that cold here.

Ok, ok, its seriously not that cold for anyone that's never seen -40 with wind chill.

I love being Canadian.

All national pride aside, coldness brings me to my next observation: fashion.

It seems to hold in Japan that most young people have the usual non-descript clothing for generall chilling out, but that when people want to dress up nicely each gender has two basic options.

For the boys, we have two fine selections. #1: something about halfway between urban rocker and cartoon character… lets call it the anime cock rock look. This includes such selections as tight jeans, spikey hair, slip on shoes and old metal shirts with random english words. Or, #2 for more work-related affairs, the young Japanese male seems to have the same selection as his older counterpart: Drunken Businessman. It’s a good look. My personal selection for best execution goes to that guy whos always doing solo karaoke near a vending machine on my way home… no music of course. He provides all the audio needed, and the well timed sway/stagger that some might mistake for drunkenness, well, that is a carefully studied charade, my friends. This man is an artist. Nay, a genius of body-based emotive expression.

As for the young ladies, we have two carefully considered and highly distinct wardrobe options. The Slutty Schoolgirl and the Slutty Inuit. Although experts have noted that there are some marked similarities between these two fashion expressions, notably the use of large boots (known in most of the world by their scientific name biggus bootus hookerus) as well as short skirts. It should be said that the word “skirt” is a slight misnomer… many researchers have suggested “waist napkin” would be a more appropriate moniker and one reengage fashion consultant that I spoke to in the Kawaski Area suggested that they could also be classified as “extended belts”. (the author would like to express his sincere thanks to one Geoff-Sensei, who generously donated his insights after making a long study of this phenomenon). Other schools of thought have also advanced "leather band-aid" as a counter-theory.

The parallels between these two fashion paradigms end there. The Slutty Schoolgirl look includes the use of collared shirts, and comes in many different forms. These include actual schoolgirls (j. jailus baitus), young university students (j. youngus skankus), and the subway residing (j. commuterus longalegas). I was fortunate enough to observe a very rare specimen about one week ago, a pale specimen since idendified as gaijinus ina japonesus skirtus!

As for the Slutty Inuit look (until recently the “Slutty Eskimo Look”, but since renamed out of consideration for the women of Canada’s north who identified themselves as “morally questionable” on their tax returns). It features the same skirt and boots combination as the Slutty Schoolgirl look, but includes the use of furs and large winter coats to demonstrate a contrast. Some scholars hold that the contrast contains a hidden code or perhaps even some language. While the author does not have the information to draw any conclusions, some cunning linguists have suggested that the symbolic language can be interpreted as “Its fucking cold out here. But I’m still wearing this tiny skirt. The least you can do is try to stare a little bit.”

Today’s score: Brent 2, Culture Shock 0.5

But it’s a good 0.5.

The Aftermath: adventures in karoke gone wrong

This post might have also been called Brent vs. 20 Gin and Tonics, if you want.

This post is dedicated, with apologies, to my dear younger sister, whose adventures in drunken self destruction surely left mine behind many moons ago. Please take that statement as a marker of comedy, not tragedy, and please take the following adventure in the same light…


Last weekend was an Icarus-like journey through the best and the worst of what a man armed with too much confidence in both his wallet and his liver can accomplish in about twenty-two hours. The shenanigans began with a genius amount of fun organized by one of my co-workers: a scavenger hunt across the entire city of Tokyo. We sought random landmarks, artistic destination, old ladies with purple hair, Beatles memorabilia, train station songs and goodness knows what else. It was also a brilliant way to sample some of the best that Tokyo has to offer at super high speed. I admit that we stooped to googling some obscure answers at one of the stops (a marketing-funded ode to the genius that is the Japanese phone and tech industry, called the KDDI design centre). On the other hand, I’m also happy to tell you that we had a near-illegal amount of fun in one of those pay photo booths that take portraits. See, you can add fifteen kinds of “hello kitty” cartoons to a picture of yourself and three other people you’ve just met. It sounds stupid, until you try it.

Of course, an empty bottle of sho-chu (Japanese booze, tastes like water but kicks like wine...) was on the list, and then we went to the bar, and things went, ah, downhill from there.

About three hours and a lot of oversized beer with too much foam after the hunt, I found myself with four other teachers in a karoke bar, belting out “Don’t Stop Me Now” at the top of my lungs into a microphone shared with three other people. Oh, and teaching both massage and swing dance to a random Japanese guy (at the same time, if my foggy memory serves)…. This scene was followed by walking to the next karoke bar (yeah, there was another one) with two people I’d just met on my arms, and the only thing I felt like yelling was “DRUNK!!!”

At the next karoke booth, we did some more singing, some chilling, and drinking (yeah, still drinking). The lowlight of this little adventure occurred on a brief jaunt to locate the little boys’ room. You see, my feet decided that this was the time to assert themselves as a centre for cerebral consideration as well as for locomotion. Specifically, they decided to begin their career as “thinky-feet” with a closer look at the ceiling.

Now, this decision, well thought out and carefully planned as it was, actually turned out to be rather ill-timed. You see, the rest of the team that makes up my body was busy trying to descend some narrow karoke-bar steps. I say internal debate and a conflict of interest, but you can probably call it “I fell down the freaking stairs” if that makes life easier.

After I was done inspecting the floor closely, (aka rolling totally head over heels) I rejoined my pals with one HELL of a black eye and only a vague recollection of its origin.

After some “OH MY GOD, WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU!!!?!?!”-s from them and some “uh, I don’t know”-s from me, my cohorts managed to find us some breakfast. Eventually, I managed to make my way to the train and slump my way home—restaurant-issued icepack pressed to my nearly-swollen-closed eye—and roll into my futon about 9 am.

Suffice to say that drinking for 13 or 14 hours straight means that the next day is dedicated to a meditative study in the number of times one can return to sleep.

This eye should heal up nicely for next weekend.

Computing and Commuting... with Beer!

In fact, I am actually committing a major cultural faux pas as I type this. Drinking beer while in transit is an activity that, by North American standards, falls somewhere around farting in front of your girlfriends parents. No, make that farting in a cupped hand and then putting that hand directly in your girlfriend’s father’s face. Heh.

Unfortunately for Japan—but fortunately for you, dear reader—I happen to love messing with people’s cultural expectations. The Japanese, on the other hand, happen to exhibit that peculiar blend of awe, admiration and disgust that is a uniquely Japanese reaction to crazy white people.

To put it all in a phrase… hmmm…. That’s a challenge. How about this:

Please buy our cars, cell phones and technology. We will be happy to litter our streets with the worst filth of America, particularly the food (McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Starbucks and Baskin Robbins are the ones that come to mind first.) We, the Japanese, hereby promise to integrate English words, if not necessarily in the same pronunciation, order or spelling. Multiculturalism, however, can suck our Japanese cocks.


Yeah… its fun here.

(topic change!!!)

So, I actually got some feedback about my lessons the other day. Apparently there have been a few complaints. Hrmm..

People who know me: Any wagers about the most common one??

Yeah… I’ve been talking too fast.

On the other hand, apparently students also think that I’m a fair bit of fun, and a damn sight better than the last guy. So, I have installed large yellow SLOW DOWN letters on the wall behind the students, and this seems to have fixed the problems. My dear boss also informed me, in no uncertain terms, that he would be dropping in for much drinking with yours truly, because he happens to enjoy that a great deal more than he does keeping my massive ego within reasonable Japanese proportions.

I am rea

…

That above was the point where two good friends burst from the train to scoop me, my laptop and my bag up and charge back onto the express before it sentenced us to a cruel, cold five minute break. We went drinking and to an arcade.

But not just any arcade – the greatest arcade EVER. $4 an hour gets you unlimited no-extra charge arcade games, including batting cages, soccer kicking, pitching, floor hockey, air hockey, pool, internet, comics and a partridge and a pear tree. You do need a free membership, though, so I registered with the proper spelling of my name, ‘in Canadian…’

“Burento Pimpo”

Heh… can’t wait for the junk mail.

Thoughts on being Samurai and on Locking Your Door

Today I discovered that there are ways for even crazy white people to become more of the centre of attention than we otherwise are here. I made this leap of scientific understanding on a nice little day trip to Odawara this week. Odawara is a nice little town/city at the non-Toyko end of the train line I live on, about an hour and twenty minutes by regular subway. Of course, my good man Geoff Sensei was good enough to come along too (or, well, I was good enough to go with him, because the trip was his idea…) Anyway, we caught one of about six different weird express trains and made it in 45 min.

Odawara is cool, mainly because it has an ‘ancient’ castle that samurai lords bitch slapped each other over for about 800 years during the Edo period. The Edo period might well be called the ‘Japan was the coolest place in the world*” period. This was when all that cool stuff was happening with honour, ass kicking and ripping out your own guts if you happened to do something silly like trip on your sword and fart when you landed.

*: for men, that is. Rich men who were good with samurai swords, and especially those who could put titles like Shogun or Emperor of Japan on their resumes. (In fact, during this period, the former title was the better of the two!) Women and commoners were shit out of luck. That is, in what I imagine to be the parlance of their times – “katana-target-practice”

Anyway, the ‘ancient’ castle (‘ancient’ because earthquakes and fires have leveled this thing about every hundred years or so, and they keep rebuilding it. The last rebuild was about 1920, so on the inside it’s rather swankily built with a large gift shop on the top floor.) ….

OK…the ANCIENT castle was full of katanas, wakazashis and tantous, along with a legion of arms, armour and tonnes of other super cool stuff. The bad engrish was out in force, of course, with great lines like “this is Usijui Wakanatabe, the fifth lord of the Donjo, until he was unfortunately removed through skill and trickery. His sword gift was Mr. Kobayashi, and school Odawara sword-make.”

Now for the good part….

For 200 yen (about $2), you could rent a samurai costume and dress up. The booth, aptly named “Lets try to be a samurai! Lets us have fun with us!”

Heh. If you think being a minority might get you some stares, you have no idea. This booth was also happily situated in the middle of the garden, which also happens to be a zoo, complete with birds, monkeys, an elephant, raccoons… you know, the works and the usual whack of Japanese tourists.

A good chunk of said whack of tourists (including some of those slick neon buddhists) found us to be among the funniest things ever. Two large white dudes squeezed into authentic samurai outfits by a guy whose only English seemed to be “ahh…very funny… you large. These are Japanese Sizes! Japanese Sizes!!”…. well… suffice to say that we became the centre of attention.
Strangers wanted their pictures taken with us, people stared, suddenly something was more interesting than the resident poo-flinging monkeys in the castle zoo, and that something was us.

Freak-show doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Of course, I learned much later that samurai traditionally only draw a weapon to kill someone else or to kill themselves. This might have been why everyone’s mouths dropped a little further when I mockingly drew my sword and threatened Geoff with it. Oops. Cultural faux pas… I think so.

On another note, the gas guy was supposed to come today. He came once before, but I thought he was the phone or cable guy (which apparently you have to pay for, even if you don’t have a TV or a Phone…but only if you actually talk to them, so traditional teacher practice is to not open the door for strangers. If they can’t find you, they can’t bill you!!!) In any case, I decided that, well, I wasn’t about to cancel my trip over this.

One thing you have to understand about Japan is that it makes Canada look like 1990s Harlem for crime. Thus, a logical step for me, given the low crime rate, is to hide my valuables (eg passport and a few hundred bucks of cash) lock up my computer (I opted for under the sink, as this is both out of the way and features a nice drain to lock things to), then leave my door unlocked, with a note to the gas guy to come in and check the number.

Heh. Sure enough, not only was nothing gone, but he’d clearly gone to the landlord and had him lock my door for me!!!

Ok, it was risky, I know, but I really wanted to go to Odawara. And if you really want to see why, fire me off a message and I’ll send you the video of me being accosted by locals who wanted photos.

I'm a Pi(r/l/)ote! Yaaaarrr!

I was invited to a costume party this weekend. Specifically a “P” party, where everyone had to dress up as something that started with the letter “P”. I learned later that this was basically an excuse for a guy with a really good pirate costume to get more mileage out of it. Incidentally, the general consensus was that with the fake moustache, he actually looked more like Freddy Mercury with an eye patch. Not a bad look actually. Could have been “Prince of Rock, 1979” or… “Partial to Men” or “…Poor boy, nobody loves me…He’s just a poor boy from a poor family..”

Ok. Now I’m stretching. Sorry.

Anyway… I was rather inspired by one of my students, who remarked to me… “Blent, I love Blad Pitt!” and decided that this glorious line deserved some costume-credit. (If you know much about Japanese, you will know that the difference between the /r/ and /l/ sounds are among the most difficult sounds to produce for Japanese speakers.)

So, I decided that it would be amusing for me to dress up as a Pi(/r/l/)ate, aka half Pirate and half Pilot. Not only would this basically save me too much investment in a wacky costume (since blue commercial pilot suits are remarkably similar to blue teacher suits), I rather thought it would be funny. I added a pair of pilot wings made out of a skull and cross bones, a bandana, a sash and a nice pair of tom cruisin’ aviators.

It was (funny... I think), and the party was good, but the most notable part of the trip was actually the train ride TO the party, courtesy of the last costume accessory: a small plastic sword. I realized while standing on the platform that the sword had a little speaker. After a bit of searching, I found a little tab and pulled it loose. Lo and behold, it made cheap plastic slashing sounds when you swung it! I would surely be an unstoppable force of cool at the party with my 300 yen sound effects!!!

Or so I thought, until I boarded the train and realized that the motion of the train as it sways around the tracks, stops and accelerates seems to be a close enough approximation of a slashing motion to set the thing a schwinging and ka-shinging like some sort of freak 80s cartoon about sword fighting.

Ok… no problem.. there has to be an off switch somewhere… ahh… no off switch…

Um…. There are about fifty salarymen and some Japanese girls staring at me, or as much as they can while jammed into the ten square metres on the car around me…

Ah… I’ll take out the batteries….that’ll stop it…ah…. Crap. Too bad I don’t have a freaking Phillips head screwdriver in my pocket… crap.


Maybe this little situation would best be presented in theatrical format:


Sword: schwingg…kachings…..schwing… ca-schiwnghshsssss… schwings….kaching…
Japanese Businesspeople: [laugh…laugh…chuckle…]
Sword: schwingg…kachings….. schwing…ca-schiwnghshsssss…schwings….kaching…
Japanese Businesspeople: …..glare…chuckle…..glare….]
Brent: sumi-masen…sumi-masen (excuse me! Excuse me!)
Sword: schwingg…kachings…..schwing… ca-schiwnghshsssss…schwings….kaching…
Japanese Businesspeople: [glare….GLARE….GLAREGLAREGLARE]
Brent: sumi-masen…sumi-masen (excuse me! Excuse me!)
Sword: schwingg…kachings…..schwing …caschiwnghsssss… schwings….kaching…
Japanese Businesspeople: [GLARE… mutter .. glareglare…MUTTER GRUMBLE GRUMBLE….]

And so on….. and so on… for, oh, about thirty minutes. Longest train ride in recent memory to be sure, and in the close running for the worst 300 yen ever spent.

woot.

The Dangerous World of "I'll have that!"

I'd like to start out this little adventure by relating my inspiration for this blog.

Food.

The food is amazing, and the beer (while OVERLY FOAMY - two inches is standard) is pretty tasty too.

Unfortunately, as a westerner, my knowledge of kanji (one of the three Japanese alphabets) is limited. And by limited, I mean that I can’t write my own name, and I need to dance like a monkey to order up a pint of beer.

Thus, my usual plot when in a restaurant is to find a tasty picture and point to it. I’ve upgraded to adding in an are-oh-kudesai (~Please give me that) or Kore oh onigaishimas (~I’ll have this, please) while pointing at said picture.

I ran into trouble when I went into a little sushi shop before work one day. I start work at noon, really, so I think very little of eating lunch-type food as my first meal of the day. See, I went into this little sushi shop near my office for lunch. All went according to plan until I realized that they didn’t have any pictures. Still, I figured I’d be adventurous and just order something at random. I picked something in the mid to high range for the place (1200 yen, or $12 Canadian) thinking that I couldn’t go wrong by upgrading. So I pointed, and used about 15% of my Japanese vocabulary to say that yes, I did want the thing that I was pointing to, and we were off on another culinary adventure.

I was pretty excited as I watched some nice bowls of sashimi (Yes, Grandma, that's raw fish, which I dearly love.) and some tempura lunches come out. I was in good spirits until the chef emerged--grinning ear to ear--and plopped in front of me…

A huge bowl of fish eggs. I mean huge. Like a half pound. Salmon Roe, Lobster Roe, and four or five other kinds of fish embryos tossed in on a bed of rice. Pickled vegetables and some miso completed the party.

Now, I am an adventurous man, I like these on sushi rolls, and most of all, I try to sleep in the beds I happen to make. With fierce determination, I dove in.

Thirty minutes later, I tapped out, unable to squish down a single more little ball of almost-fish. Still, in this case, I firmly and positively maintain that glass was half empty.


Today’s Score:

Brent 1, Culture Shock 0. (OT)

Bring it on, Baby.