FOLLOW the RULES, you Gaijin Monkey, and please don't burn down our Ducky Duck.

I wanted to take a moment to relate two instances where people showed a serious amount of stick-up-the-butt-edness. One of them made me laugh, and one of them made me very grumpy. We’ll start with Grumpy.

I was out for a quick lunch/wandering party with Jess, her friend Naru and my teacher buddy Sophie, when we decided to hit up an interesting place called Ducky-Duck. Eating out here with that crew is always a little wacky, as Jess and I are Lactose Intolerant and Sophie has a Gluten Allergy… so finding a milkless, breadless, cheeseless, butterless, pastaless lunch always takes a bit of time. We eventually found something that looked like it was edible by all parties present, and wouldn’t break the bank. While I couldn’t really find much, I spotted the fact that they had a decent salad bar for a mere 500 yen. Not too bad, thought I, and went ahead and ordered it.

A little while later, they brought us a tea plate sized dish (oh…well…extra trips are no problem, thought I), and I made my way to the bar to pick out some likely vegetable victims to power me through the rest of the day. I took about half a plate full, and joined the team for some chewing.

A little while later, I went up to the front again to snag some more salad, but was intercepted by a frantic waitress who spoke about as much English as I speak Farsi. (Again, I never get upset at this because, well, Japan is a place where you need to speak Japanese. English is just a useful thing for taking money from Americans who make crappy cars…ohh.. burrrn…. Hear that GMC? That’s what you get for making a shitbox like the Oldsmobile Alero! …but anyway… I digress)

So, she didn’t speak English, but she waved her arms around really well. So, I figured she didn’t like something, so I’d just say “excuse me” a lot in Japanese, bow a few times and leave. This tends to placate anyone who seems to be wincing and thinking “Pleasedon’ttouchmepleasedon’tspeaktomepleasedon’truinmydayyouhugeobnoxiousforeignerjustpleasegohomeandleavemealone” silently with all of their might.

So I waited for the crazy lady to stop lurking and tried to play my favourite card when I’m not sure about the rules: The Dumb Foreigner.

//Sidebar: The Dumb Foreigner
I’ve remarked on it many times, but the strangest thing about Japan is the odd mixture of frustration, dismay, disgust, fascination and awe that some Japanese folk have about foreigners. I want to point out that I do believe that these people are the minority. I think most people here are polite, friendly, courteous and mostly react in an analogous way to how YOU would if confronted with a brash, wacky person who spoke about 20 words in YOUR language.

//End Sidebar

So, after the crazy lady had vacated the premises, I simply marched up their again to try and get a second small bowl of salad for my five bucks.

I was again intercepted by a manager type person (aka, foreigner dragon slaying boss type person), who managed to get “one time only” out of his mouth and cross his arms in the universally accepted (Universe (n): Japan and surrounding Japanese areas). All of this finally led me to realize that I was about to pay five bucks for a salad that could fit in my hand and consisted of about six pieces of lettuce and some watery dressing.

It was then that I swore vengeance on Ducky Duck. For the rest of my time in this wonderful country, I will never again set foot in that vegetable pinching, overzealous cheapskate home of non hunger relieving jerks. I would pass on the tradition of hatred to my sons, and them on to their sons, until it would all reach a climactic martial arts battle, with missiles and lots of kung fu grip.

Ok, this is mad amounts of overreaction, and I’ve been watching too may cartoons.

Meh… at least I finally found something to get pissed off about.




The Video Store

Apparently the people at the video store get really really freaked out when you don’t return a movie on time. Its basically like the rental video version of the apocalypse to them. They make two phone calls in one day, and when you finally bring the video back (that day), they dig out a binder and show you the receipt.

They also look really really confused, like they’re wondering what sort of horrible crisis could prevent an honourable customer from returning the honourable video on time.

It was too funny. I love these guys. And besides, I’m not sparing them any ire that could be directed at the Evil Baby-Eating, Republican Voting Ducky Duck Corporation

I suck and I am still mending my evil ways… umm… yeah.

SO.

Where were we, faithful flock? As I remember it, we were about to drink some grape juice all at the same time, being careful not to spill any on our togas, and wait for the magic comet to carry us away from the evil CIA…

Crap. Sorry. That was from my other… blog.

Cough. AWK---ward… (with Apologies to Aizick Grimman)


So, Christmas was about a month ago… or exactly a month ago, so we need to do some serious blow-by-blow recovery to keep our shenanigans from getting dusty as they rattle around in my brain, lest they conspire somehow to make me look good, or tactful or culturally sensitive.

So… here is a further out-of-date update of silly adventures that I have had.


1) The craziest place on earth’

I found a place that shocked me, amazed me, and over stimulated my senses more than that time I watched a swiped copy of “Dickman and Throbbin’” at my friend Brett’s house when in Grade Seven. I am not a man for understatements, but the previous sentence may, in fact, be one.

I admit that while I have in no way grasped the worldwide insanity that is the human race, I have managed to meander to a number of parts of the world. I’ve gallivanted around Canada, the US, the Caribbean, around the UK, through Germany, France and the hazy, drug-and-sex-laden streets of Amsterdam. I have also seen a good bit of Tokyo, and of the world famous suburban paradise that is York Region.

I’ve seen some weird and wild stuff, and I do love a good amount of ridiculousness. But frankly, in a part of Tokyo called Ikebukuro, there is a city-within-a-city cheerfully known as “Rainbow Sunshine” mall.

I will define this place two definitions, one for the boys and one for the girls.

GIRLS: Shopping, living, eating, working, a world spanning antique store and an aquarium all together at last. You might know this as “heaven”, considering that there are 14 different shoe stores and a little restaurant on the 60th floor.

BOYS: “Rainbow Sunshine City Within a City” is kind of like one those Launch Arcologies from Simcity 2000 and the sequels, you know, the ones that had to blast of for you to win??? It looks kinda similar, too.

Crazy as this sounds…. Its really no more ridiculous than any semi-ridiculous part of Tokyo. In this comparatively normal place, however, is an indoor theme park called “NamjaTown”.

They have everything on earth you could ever want… that is, if you were the Evil B Movie Tacky-Monster. It is a mad warren of twisting, flashing hallways full of every kind of kitsch you can imagine.

They have a Gyoza Stadium, where 15 odd different flashy kiosks compete for your 300 yen. Gyoza are those little misc dumplings that are usually fried up somehow. Everyone goes crazy, but it’s a great place to eat.

Next to this is a seriously weird haunted house. Lanterns loll their tongues out, weird pseudo-bhuddist gods wave their arms, and (creepiest of all, seriously) twisted children’s laughter echoes through the whole place. This includes the bathroom, where the weird kids laugh when you turn on the taps. SERIOUSLY MESSED UP.

Outside this haunted house is a place where you can fish for eels. Yes, you read that right…. Fishing for eels. In a little tub. With a paper net. For 200 yen you can try to snag as many eels as you can and win little crappy stuffed animals that were surely fished out of someone’s garbage. I lost, but I’m honestly not bitter.

After passing through some velvet stairways where electronic zombie versions of famous dead rock starts anamatronicly rock it out (I’m seriously not making this up… they had Chuck Berry the Zombie doing a poorer impression of himself than Michael J Fox ever did). After that, you come to ICE CREAM CITY.

Logically, this place has about 500 different flavours of ice cream, including some that surely deserve to be treated to the dumpster from whence those crappy eel-prizes came from.

These include things like Black Sesame, Kiwi and my personal favourite for sheer wrongness: Curry Ice Cream. I even took a lactose pill and tested a bit, and yep, Curry still shouldn’t be frozen and served in a cone.

So, um.. it was f’in crazy. Check out some pics.




The Gateway to Crazy NamjaTown



Entrance to Haunted House.

Where's my mirror shield when I need it.
/Geek.





Creepy haunted cat




MESSED up heads.





Fishing for... EELS?!?!?






This is four feet from the haunted house. Aromatherapy, massage and scented oil rainforest-land





Look Everybody! Its Cameltoe Kitty!





Mmmm curry ice cream....




Geoff Sensei likey the kaa-ree ice cremeu.

I SUCK... but I will mend my evil ways. PART 2

OK! We are back, from outer space, we just walked in to find that sad look upon your face....

ANYWAY... THE DINNER.

Jessica and I spent the day of the dinner was spent hanging out at dear sophie's place. We also drank a boatload of wine and ate about three pounds of chocolate while deep frying yams (or as their known here, "ee-mo(s)")..


SIDEBAR #1: YaaaaaaaakeeeeMooooo

One of the most hilarious forms of nourishment in this country, I have to elaborate on, and I have to do it here and now.

Yaki, in Japanese, means "baked" or "roasted". If you've ever had "yakitori" that is where this comes from (tori is, I believe "chicken"... but you usually say "tori-niku"... (niku is like "meat"... as in gyu-niku - beef or buta-niku - pork)... but that is enough brackets for now)...

Anyway... these guys roll through the streets with a huge ass barbecue selling baked yams. And when I say huge ass, I mean that it is a barbecue pickup truck. They also pull this genius bit of attention attraction where they yell into megaphones. (having somehow eschewed anything like the north american ice cream guy or the knife sharpening guy that roll through the streets.)

They just yell what they're selling in one long drawn out word... yaaaaaaaaaaakeeeemoooooooooooooo... yaaaaaaaakeemooooooooooooooooooo... its pretty awesome.

The yams happen to be tasty too.


/end SIDEBAR #1


So, the dinner. I WILL get through this, no matter how many times I lose my train of thought and take you on a random Being John Malkovich-esque charge through my brain.

Yeah... it was full of boozing teachers, bad jokes and lots of turkey, which I even got to carve. I don't know why they thought arming a two-bottles-of-wine-to-the wind Brent with five inches of sharpened steel and the chance to reenact grade eleven biology dissection class, but hey, they did it, and boy did I make hella short work of that birdie. It was a smallish bird, perhaps half or less the size of the one your family usually gets, but by gum, I pulled enough meat off of that sucker to feed 10 people and have left overs to boot!

(admittedly, there were some chicken legs and some vegetarians, but it went over well all in all)

I'll leave it there, but for all of you geeks out there in otakuland (that crack is for dave mccallum, who swore he would never speak to me again if I started using that word), our cake was a spiderman cake.

pictures forthcoming.

I SUCK... but I will mend my evil ways. PART 1

So, umm...

happy new year and all that.

Especially to those nice people in Japan (... that's you, Atsushi) who made a point of asking me why I hadn't been updating.

I could offer some lamo excuses, like, "Sorry, Jessica has been visiting" or "I've been saving up some awesome stories for one huuuge mindblowingly amazing escapade of Japananigans" but really... I've just been being a lazy ass.

Anyway, we're going to run through a few highs and a lot of hilarious "lows".

Crazy incident-evening #1: Christmas Dinner


Christmas, as you may or may not know, is actually celebrated in Japan. By "celebrated", I mean that Christmas here happens in all of its consumeristic, neon riddled, soul draining depravity, and they skip the whole family, good cheer and fellowship parts. (I won't go anywhere near describing the murderous-death-penalty-cheering-for-not-teaching-evolution-until-the-college-level-and-then-only-with-a-stern-parental-warning-crazy the religious right of the deep south of the US would go about how much "Christ" there is in Christmas here, but hey... this is JAPAN after all... There are pockets of Christianity here, but so far it has mostly mainifested itself in really eager J-Jehovah's Witnesses knock, knock knocking at my door....)

GASP...

Anyway What we have here is a bunch of Japanese girls trading their trademark short kilts for fur lined short skirts. And then a lot of them stand outside their stores and holler "-RE-Kris-mas-soo" really loudly at all the passerby. Its freaking awesome.

They also have lots of neon lights. LOTS of neon lights. Anyway... Christmas and New Years here are kind of reversed, actually. Christmas is a time to paint the town red and white with your girlfriend/boyfriend/sex friends (fuckbuddyism is rather socially expected here, and well beyond the college years into the marriage years, from what I hear... but more on that later). New Years, on the other hand, is a time that Japanese people spend in the home with their families. So, basically, if you're a foreigner here, you're rather expected to get drunk at both Christmas and at New Years.

Then again, if you know the Merry family that I come from, then you know that this isn't really a departure from the annual standard. (except that...well...this year I don't get to see Granny get boozed and make some offhanded remark that makes 90% of the table bust a gut and 10% of the family shocked and appalled. ... Man do I miss those dinners.... )

To continue this wondrous monologue, we'll flash sideways to December 25th, which is not actually a state holiday here, but happened to be a weekend, much to the delight of we small, loyal cogs in the large and honourable engrishizing machine that is my sweet company.

Christmas dinner took place in the the apartment of my dear friend Sophie Sensei, who happens to live in an apartment complex owned by the company and thus packed with teachers. As you may or may not know, Japanese kitchens generally consist of a burner and a toaster oven. (The "Pearl Villa", the mould encrusted cesspit of an apartment that I a) call home and b) am moving out of next month, may be indeed mould encrusted, but also happens to have TWO burners, a toaster oven, a small oven AND a microwave, is basically considered to be a restaurant-volume kitchen by J-Standards)

This problem was well and happily surmounted by combining the resources of five kitchens to produce a singly reasonably good facsimilie of a North American style turkey-themed christmas dinner-saster.

But you, dear reader, will have to tune in later this week for more stories, because I have class in ten minutes. heh. heh heh heh.

At least I whet your appetite, and made this blog soooo much less ridiculously empty.

Coming next week:

-The Dinner!

-The Craziest Place On Earth!

-The Angriest Video Staff Ever!

-Cannonballing a Japanese Hot Spring!

-Sumo Wrestling!

-Lots and Lots of Bad English!


Ok that is all. Remember to tune in next week, same Brent Time, Same Brent Channel!