October 29, 2003

What Beer Best Complements A Fat Slice Of Beeg?

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China actually had good beer! Tiger, Tsingtao, and even some microbrews to boot! This .5 litre bottle cost something like 60 cents. However, drinks in the clubs and bars had prices comparable to those in Japan.

I wish I had more time in Shanghai. One full day and two days of travel to and from there were just not enough (we did have two full nights, though).

Things that didn't surprise me about Shanghai:
It's dirty. Most places smell like piss, that rotting essence of real Asian Markets and Chinatown, and cigarettes. Everyone hawks monster loogies and spit them out all over the place. At the end of the day I got black boogers of monster proportions.
McDonalds and KFCs were as abundant as in every other foreign country I have visited.
Many people spoke English, but appreciated the effort I went through to speak the little (read: aside from food, I know four words) Chinese that I could. It was like France in this respect, except the Chinese were forgiving if I spoke English.
There were many poor people begging on the street. It is so hard to ignore someone in distress, especially if they take their kids with them, and especially if those kids have congenital defects. Gives whole new meaning to the cliche "there are children starving in China, so eat your f**king broccoli muthafucka".
The Chinese merchants are ruthless and cunning when it comes to maximizing profit. I talked down a "legitimate" DVD set from 600 yuan to 100 (about 12 bucks), and I knew I was paying a little too much. Still, it does LOOK legit, and it cost very little. These people will physically detain you to keep you in their shop, and they are excellent actors.

Surprising things about Shanghai:
Chinese people think that I am Chinese, and they expect me to speak Chinese like a Chinese person.
It was hard to find good Chinese food, and easy to find good foreign foods.
I didn't hear anyone say "gweilo" and point as we passed (I understand why they didn't when I alone passed).
I ran into a lot of very nice Chinese people. I was expecting everyone to be rude, pushy, and loud but this turned out to be kinda wrong.
There were very few foreigners in China. Most that I saw during the day were between the ages of 50 to 70 and had European accents.
The city is HUGE, and there are more sky scrapers in one city than I ever imagined. And they continue being built at an astonishing rate.
The MagLev train is already complete. The bullet train is officially obsolete.
100% of the taxis and about 80 percent of the cars on the road are VWs. I was expecting Japanese cars, DaeWoos, or Hyundais to be crowding the streets, but this was not the case. VW is definetely making bank in Shanghai.
The smog is worse than LA. If breathing in LA for one day is equivilent to smoking a pack of cigs, then I smoked about four packs in Shanghai for the 48 hours I was there.

One day in Shanghai was a great time. Even though the time I had was way too short, I sort of prefer trips that I feel are too short. It means that I had a great time and wasn't dissapointed, tired out, disillusioned, or fed up. Sometimes not enough is better than too much.

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October 25, 2003

National Lampoon's Communist Vacation

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Well, tomorrow I am off to Shanghai! Got some cheap tix, so I gots to go. After reading about the Taxi service in Shanghai, I have been trying to polish up on my Chinese, but have since given up. But if we go eat Dim Sum I have a reasonable chance of being understood!

So, you want anything? Lemme know! SARS, penis of endangered animal, mail order bride, Polex watches... Don't say I didn't ask.

I promise plenty of pics when I get back...

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Jedi Mind Trick

Yo check this story from the Independent out!

I can think of some other possible scenarios in which memory can be morphed. For example, if something really bad happens to someone you didn't really like (violent rape, murdered, amputated limb, paralysis, cancer of the rectum, etc...), especially if they are unjustly killed, you are more likely to think less harshly of them. After something really bad happens, I think sympathy fucks with the mind, and can amplify the good things that a bad person has done.

So now that I am aware of this, it is time to introduce a new standard operating procedure to shield myself from committing unjust actions based on an altered memory. If a person that I don't like ends up having their colon removed, I will continue to dislike them as much as I had been. After all, if I can stop my memory from morphing, then it is my duty to take action against it. And if that person should cause me further reason to dislike them to a certain level, then I shall apply a kung-fu death grip on their colostomy bag and squeeze! On second thought, a colostomy bag is a fate horrible enough (damn! I succombed to pitying mine enemy even in this fictional scenario).

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October 24, 2003

The Brothers Yoshida

I demand a cut of the profits for using the sacred family name!

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Can these guys rock as hard as the band's name implies?

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This Blog Is Frequented By People With Erectile Dysfunction.....

.....Is the conclusion you would most likely infer from the past 6 comments posted (which I have since deleted).

IP address: 65.77.116.28
Author: Viagra
Email Address: amir11@hotbox.com
Comment:
Hi! Nice site! Please visit our site also http://www.someviagra.info/ soon.

I suspect that this is payback for posting the previous entry by the person who bears a resemblance to the picture, or the very person whose picture is posted...

Damn! Its enough to get 10 spams a day that promise to "enhance your penis size" or to help you "gain several inches" or that will "set your libido on fire". If this was indeed posted by someone trying to make a profit, you are a sorry worthless bastard. Post comments on your own site... I am sure Boner Blog could be a big success. That being said, you are NOT WELCOME to post your ads here (especially if you don't ask you rude bastard! In the words of the immortal Ash: What were you, born in a barn?).

So I urge you, don't buy Viagra over the net from these bastards: Instead, why don't you support the Mexican economy and obtain it for a fraction of the cost while eating beef (most likely dog, cat, or rat if you really want to think about it) tacos, while you sip on a dos equis or corona in TJ. While you're at it, why not buy some M1000s, hammocks, and old school bottles of Fanta immersed in ice cold Montezuma's Revenge laden cooler carts... And just give that damn kid a buck for his 10 boxes of Chicle so that he will stop following you, in his squeaky voice calling "Meester, meester!". Don't forget to take pictures in front of the donkey that is literally painted black and white to look like a zeebra, and while were on the subject of donkeys...

Anyhow, switching gears, I heard this joke from a sick mofo from Saga-ken who almost got kicked off of the JET Programme from committing a felony during Summer Vacation:
Q. What do you get when you stick a knife in a baby? (If you are a sensitive person, if you are already uncomfortable with the question, if you are not allowed to read mature material on the web, or if you find such jokes distasteful you probably shouldn't click below)

A. A Boner.

Don't get it? Just think about it. What type of person would make up a joke like this?
Hey, don't look at me like that, I just repeated the joke that a sick, sick person told infront a crowd of shocked people. By clicking for the answer, you have proven yourself a sado-masichist.

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October 20, 2003

As Requested By Steve

We post, you decide: Does this look like the CP Dizzle? In the words of Mr. Steven Tsuda:

I pulled this one from monster.com. It's either Dempsey as a cross dresser, or Dempsey as a rock star for halloween.

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By the way Dempsey, what ever happened to http://www.luckyirish.net?

Wow, its almost Halloween already! Brings back memories of "The Adventures of the walking Keg and Bong" in IV. They must have been invited to every single party that night!

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October 17, 2003

Its About Friggin Time!

Hahahahaha! As of today, I have a working ISDN connection! Thats right, now I can connect from home for a fixed rate instead of paying 100 bucks per month just for the phone bill! Why am I excited about ISDN? Do you know what it feels like to have to read the newspaper while a simple email takes 5 minutes to load? You would be starved for bandwidth too if all you could get for a whole year was 56k.That being said, when is ADSL gonna arrive in my sparsely populated village? I know its gonna come right after I leave, because it wouldn't make sense any other way.

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October 15, 2003

I Swear My Bathroom Isn't That Bad...

...but I found another earthworm crawling around on the tile. Watching it inch around between the cracks as I took a shower last night made me nautious, and made me wonder; Where do they come from? How can they get into my bathroom? Are there latent annelid eggs spawning from the grout? Do my students sneak into my bathroom and plant them there? My guess is that they crawl up the drains, or that there is some small undetected crack that leads inside. About 4 months ago I found a millipede in my bath. I ignored it, and it died, and had a huge clutch of babies, which hatched. I found baby millipedes crawling all over the place for the following months, and stopped counting after 20. My advice: kill the mother and the eggs and save yourself the trouble of killing a lot of tiny monsters! Hahaha, the shiitake growing in my Sabado Tarde apartment shower no longer seems SO disgusting (It was a huge sucker!).

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October 14, 2003

Caffeine Withdrawl

This weekend I went up with Matt to visit with Lawton and Gi up in Fukuoka. Lawton is now known as "Rawton" because I know that his kids pronounce his name as "Rawton sensei" when they ask him what he thinks about the recent "Carifornia Erections".

Anyways, we met up with a bunch of friends and aquaintances and went out to Tenjin and Hakata (the happenin' night spots in Fukuoka that accept foreigners and aren't prohibitively expensive), and went somewhere where I had up until that point never had visited nor had any intention of visiting. That's right, we went to the Happy Cock (previously the Crazy Cock). Now there are two of those clubs downtown. The name pretty much sums it up.

The Happy Cocks are a good place to go if you fit the following profile:
*you are a Marine on shore leave.
*you are a Japanese girl (or boy, for all I know) looking to hook up with a Marine.
*you are an obvious (Caucasian or Black, or a really loud Asian) gaijin looking to get some action.
*you don't mind the bartender mixing you a long island with only two different kinds of liquor and Coke.
*you are a person who enjoys the company of Marines when they are hunting for tail and drinking (meaning, you are probably a Marine or a girl looking for one).

Basically, this is Fukuoka's version of a Roppongi bar (like GasPanic).

Don't get me wrong, I really appreciate everything that the Marines are doing and have done to protect our country and its interests, but they tend to be dicks towards anyone that they are not trying to get in the sack, especially when they are drunk.
A while ago, we went to a different club in Tenjin called "Vibe", where a good portion of the Fukuoka hip-hop community often hangs out. This night it was full of Marines and high school aged girls. Anyways, I was halfway into drainin the lizard when I hear a loud knock at the door. "Get the FUCK out of there! My friend needs to use the restroom!". So I opened the door to see what their problem was. Two big mean-looking guys were holding up their friend, and said "I'm sorry but our friend has to puke"(It was shocking to hear them use the word "sorry" because I was expecting to get punched in the face). "I understand, go for it." I said, and waited for them to finish.
He planted his hands onto the urine-soaked tiles, and hey made him puke. He washed his hands, regained his balance, and shook my hand. They all apologized once again and thanked me, inviting me to sit with them. We went over to their table and joined their group. One of them made the following observation:
"You know what? You look like Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park!" so for the rest of the night I was known as "Mike" or "Shinoda". I became their best friend for the night after they found out that I was from California (not just some Japanese guy who spoke great English!). My money was no good, because they insisted on buying me free drinks all night long. They even introduced me to the group of (ugly, underaged) girls they were chatting up, and wanted me to share in their love hotel adventures (but I wasn't quite THAT drunk). I met these guys right before they were deployed into Iraq, and hope that they are all safe right now. Marines can be great guys when you get to know them, although sometimes they are best avoided.

This weekend, I was talking with another Marine who said this to me:
Marine: "So what (nationality) are you?"
Me: "I'm American"
Marine: "Hey, I feel really sorry for what we did to your people during World War II".
Me: "Yeah, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were horrible, but I am American like you. OUR people did it."
Marine: "I know, but I'm sorry for what my country did to your country. That shit ain't right".
Me: "Uh, I'm gonna go get another beer."
Sometimes the meaning doesn't stick to your words no matter how many times you repeat them, and by the time it reaches someone else, all it is is noise devoid of a signal. At times like this it is best to drink more beer. Then it may SEEM like it is making sense, or at least you will forget about the whole deal.

Anyhow, after driving about 10 hours over the weekend, and lacking sleep (partially due to some loud snoring, partially to the Lipovitan, partially to staying out until 5 in the morning, partially to sleeping on linoleum, etc...) I looked like the guy on the can.

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Except my red eyes were barely cracked open. Thank God for Audioslave, on all of those long solitary drives back home.

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October 12, 2003

Strange Sleeping Habits

Gi with Matt's dirty sock on face (placed there by self).

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Matt with Matt's dirty sock on face (placed there by self).

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Truly disturbing.

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October 10, 2003

A Free Day At Oita's Sculpture Park

Yesterday I got to hitch along with the Middle School's fieldtrip to go look at pieces of artwork produced in Oita-ken. After watching a 30 minute video about some old dead Japanese dude of whom the premises were named after, we looked at his sculptures of people, monkeys, and cats (there were so many that Taro naturally came to mind) and took a short tour around the museum that was built in his honor. Then the kids were given a large 1.5x2 foot piece of paper and instructed to spend the next five hours painting anything that they wanted to in the vast grounds of the park surrounding the museum. This place was a nicely balanced microcosm, complete with mini-forest, a lawn with mini-rolling hills, a mini-mountain with a panaramic view, a mini-lake, and a mini-stream. The only thing that was missing, much to my dissapointment, were mini-people (but I guess that JHS students will do in a pinch). Anyways, scattered throughout the crafted landscape were sculptures created by students of Oita University. They ranged wildly in their degree of abstractness, size, and how they looked relative to the site upon which they came to spend the rest of their existance.

I asked the teachers what they were going to do during the whole day, and they all said "ah, I have to work" or something in that vein. To translate this I had to use tried and true refined scientific methods. I broke out my linguistic bunsen burner, along with the graduated cylinder, titration set, beakers of various girth, and Erlenmeyer flask to set about distilling the scant traces of hidden true meaning from the words that actually spewed forth from their maws. After processing the raw input and passing it through filters and amplifiers, the following was yielded: "I am going to shoot the breeze with all of the other teachers (and occasionally a student) while sitting in the shade of the gazeebo, drinking tea and smoking many cigarettes, keeping a loose eye on the kids to make sure that they don't commit any felonies, and eventually spend the rest of the time sleeping, texting on the mobile telephone, or when the boredom becomes too overpowering, breaking out the easil and paintbrush to show these kids what watercolor painting is all about." I chose to hike around, take pictures of the art, sketch stuff, and to read a couple more chapters of Quicksilver . All in all, not a bad day at the office.

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Mental Block: This piece is the physical incarnation of my brain and its functions when I try too hard to have an honest conversation with most of the Japanese teachers with whom I work. I think that they experience something similar when I forget to mask what I really mean behind a couple of layers of opaque implication while at the same time slapping on some polite Japanese to give it a nice shiny gleen. Perhaps a precision expertly timed "bitchslap" can make them understand where mere words fail! Actions speak louder than words.

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This frog was chillin' in a piece of "Art". The sculpture looked more like a giant kiln or old fashioned oven, made from adobe, but apparently it was a hit with the judges. However, unlike a lot of art out there it seems to have fulfilled more of a purpose than just sitting there as a lump of aesthetically pleasing dead weight (although most likely unintentionally). It is now a nice castle for a very small frog, so that he can look down upon all the other lesser frogs that make their homes under the rotting logs, in the pond, or huddled under the leaf litter! Bow down!

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Over the day I completed this sketch with a student, doing a little at a time. it looks better from up close (you just have to take my word for it). Brought back countless memories of sketching stuff in class, throughout my career as a student. I remeber thinking "maybe one day these scribbles on my college ruled notebook paper will be worth some serious money...". Hahahahaha!

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Mini-stream with mini-islands and probably some mini-giardia and mini-chollera.

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Remains Of A Dream: This piece looks to be a Semi (Cicada) between the larval and adult stages, lying on it's back on top of a leaf. In my opinion, this Kafkaesque piece should have won the competition. What won instead? A long metal chrome tube painted red inside the bore, tied with steel cable to a chunk of granite upon which it rested! Uh, I think the judges had their berets on a little too tight during the competition.

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October 8, 2003

Blackboard Impressionisms

The whiteboard is over-rated. Back in the day, we learned on chalkboards, and we liked it. Chalk has many more merits than the erasable marker. First of all, chalk (AKA CaCO3 as the nerds like to say) is environmentally benign and there is no shortage of it. Also, sniffing chalk will not give you a buzz (trust me, Chris Dempsey has tried this)- it will only give you milky looking snot and make you sneeze . Also, there is nothing in the classroom that lends itself to harmless fun as a fully loaded blackboard eraser. In addition, chalk can be used to write graffiti anywhere there are bricks or concrete, which is pretty much everywhere in a regular school, and if you get caught taggin' they oftentimes don't care since its isn't permanent. Lastly, the blackboard was a rare, useful, effective instrument, efficient in its every use. When a teacher was pissed off, and could take no more noise from a crazed class- thats when she formed her right hand into a claw, bringing her talons of wrath chinking down and then screaching across the murky blackish green void.

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Anyhow, I now teach mostly using blackboards now that I am in Japan. Last week I drew this portrait of this student, and I think it came out rather well. I am yet to use my fingernails to get attention, but now that I remembered it I am bound to use this dreaded technique in the future (you think your Wu-Tang Style can defeat me!?!).

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October 7, 2003

Gubernatorial Thoughts

I want Arnold to win. Yeah, he is probably a big powerful chauvenistic guy who gropes people, but many men and women of action are. Look at James Bond, the Kennedys(the DKs and Jello Biafra rule!), Nina from 24, Face (from the A-Team), and powerful monarchs of past like Henry the 8th. Its all part of the job.

California has many problems to deal with right now, and I fell that Schwartzanegger will take them out like he took out the drug dealers in Commando, the evil sorcerers and their hordes in Conan, and the expectations for his future movies like he did with Last Action Hero. The point is that I expect him to dive into the problems like he has in the movies. Either we will be totally screwed, or if he gets it right then we will vanquish all of our enemies and rule as kings over the West Coast!

So using manliness as the sole deciding factor of whom I wish to rule California, I have to side with The Terminator. If I were a secretary I think that I would bust out the whoop ass on Grey (or is it Gray) Davis if he threw a stapler at me. If Arnold threw his stapler at me, I would run away as fast as I could.

On another note: I like saying the word gubernatorial. Gubernatorial gubernatorial gubernatorial. I think when I teach my kids "American" (read, the superior form of) football, they will learn One Gubernatorial Two Gubernatorial Three Gubernatorial instead of "Alligator" or "Missisippi". That way they can discuss the gubernatorial "erection" with their english speaking friends!

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October 6, 2003

A Case of Lazy Espionage Or Honest Invasion Of Privacy?

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Those bastards! They killed Kenny!
No they didn't but they did open my mail and made it really obvious. The top of the envelope was roughly ripped open, stuffed into a plastic bag containing a note that said basically "uh, we opened your letter"- duh! I couldn't tell this from the disgustingly violated state in which it was received. And all it contained were a letter and some pics.
I understand that the post office has concerns about delivering drugs, explosives, chemical, and biological weapons, but I still don't like the way they opened my letter. They could have steamed it open and I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference, or they could've used a letter opener, but no- some guy used his hooked index finger to eviscerate my letter! I hope you got a bad papercut, and that it gets infected with gas gangrene, forcing you to use a letter opener like a civilized sneak in the future!

On a different note, I scared my students into using English today. My 2nd year JHS students refuse to verbally answer questions in class, so I forced them to change their ways. I explained that we were going to debate why I should or shouldn't give them more homework, everyone against me and Mr. Sato. This worked much better than I anticipated, and almost everyone came up with a counter-point to every point I could think up. They also displayed their potential for creative and critical thinking, which I have rarely encountered at school. The points that they brought up were actually very good, and they questioned the validity of some of my points! The debate went up until the last minute, and I had them scared, because we were tied. I argued the last point for their team, and they enjoyed a victory. If you make the stakes higher, they will step their game up a notch!
Also I believe this worked by putting things into perspective. It is a bit embarassing when you first start to speak in front of any group of people, but being assigned more mind-dulling work is a worse fate. I think this approach has many applications for others as well. For example, if you drop a group of rich self-centered Newport Beach kids into the heart of South Central at nighttime, they will work together and solve problems instead of throwing a fit and demanding that they deserve a new BMW instead of the old Mercedes that was handed down to them. If you stick a middle-class obese systems administrator in Guatemala, eating too much food will not be a problem anymore, nor will not having the time to exercise as they slave in the banana plantations to earn enough food to keep them alive for the day. The opportunities are endless, and at the end of the day you have real solid results.

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"Formula"

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This is my 1989 Civic Hatchback "Formula". I bought it for a mere 70.000 yen from Harvey, while other people got ripped off by their evil predecessors. Its sorta funny because my teachers always insist that he should have given me the car for free, since it is so old (maybe they will hook me up when shakken rolls around) but it was worth it.

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This weekend, I felt the urge to restore it to a state of quasi-cleanliness, and so spent four hours doing so. For the past year, I washed my car two times. As a result, there was moss growing on my car (this is all part of the Japanese aesthetic philosophy, in no part due to laziness). It really doesnt matter if I wash it because it rains all the time and gets dirty very quickly. Before I even considered doing exterior "restoration", the interior needed some major work. Months worth of trash had accumulated inside, and so I donned my hazmat suit, and extracted partially eaten moldy food, long lost reciepts from various places, Joyfull Powerpuff Girls adorned drink bar coupons, long lost email and phone numbers on small wadded up pieces of paper, and about 500 yen in assorted change. Also, I have never vacuumed my car. So I started from the bottom up. Years worth of dust and gravel were pounded from the mats (it took thirty minutes just to smack the dust out of them), and vacuumed from all of the upholstery. Then, I wiped down the whole car with cleaning solution (I had driven through a construction site doing donuts with the windows DOWN, so a thick layer of cement dust had settled onto and into everything, including yours truly. It smelled like I was making concrete after I finished). Next, I organized and bound the wires for the sound system, making everything nice and neat. After that, I was able to move on to the exterior. I washed it down with a potent mixture of hot water, soap, and lemon juice and let it sit in. The lemon juice ate away much of the oxidation and made the car smell like lemonheads. So now my car is in prime condition, probably for the first time since the first ALT who owned it bought it.

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The Civic is a great car. It handles well on the windy roads, accelerates acceptably fast enough (I can take some turns faster than the racers, because I don't care if my fenders drag on the asphalt!), can hold its own in the snow, and I have come to completely rely on it. If I didn`t have this car, I would surely have gone insane and probably would have hurt or killed myself or the others around me! I use a car way more over here than I ever did in California. A good public transportation center is one of the things bundled into the meaning of "Japan" as a concept, but clearly this notion is only true in some areas.

As a result, I have put in a Kenwood Sub and mids (compliments of Justin, and thus in some part due to Tatsuya- thanks bro!), a new CD head unit, and some tweeters. I daresay that I have the best sounding system in Kumamoto of all of the JETs, which I put together (with some help) by myself. I spent about an hour on tweaking the system this weekend, and as a result, it sounds much better!

I also have Justin's radar detector set up, and it has on a couple of occasions probably saved me from getting pulled over. Those Japanese cops find the best hiding places, no doubt inspired by playing countless rounds of kakurembo as children with foreign ALTs such as myself. Am I helping to raise some future facist cop, honing his skills? Or am I helping to raise those who will be pursued by the fascist cop, enabling him to perform crucial evasive actions?

If you haven't guessed, I really like my car. This makes me sad because I will probably get rid of it when its due for it's next inspection. But for now, I am happy, and will try to keep it in its present state for as long as I can (not lapse into laziness again).

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October 3, 2003

My Little Hanami

Huh???

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The mountain cherry tree in front of the Hokubu nursery school is in bloom again! Though the blossoms are rather few, it brought back the heavenly atmosphere of the many many cherry blossom viewing parties that we had thoughout March and April. I will take this as a good omen for the quickly approaching winter.
Got to chill with the geezers yesterday, because it was "Old People Appreciation Day" in Japan (But... She's so old!). Shout outs to Mom, Dad, Kohei, all the uncles and aunts, and Justin! Its funny to see how the grandparents and grandchildren bear strong resemblances. Looking down at the faces of kindergarteners and up at the geriatric crew, you know what each one will look like 60 or 70 years later! I predict I will look like Susumu Yoshida.

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October 1, 2003

The Haunted Hotel

There is an old abandoned uncompleted golf resort in my town, located right next to another swank expensive resort. This place used to be special to me, when me and Harvey were the only ones who knew of its existance.

The first time I visited the hotel was in late September of 2002. Harvey had told me that the resort was an idea conceived during the peak of the bubble economy. A local entrepreneur pitched the project, including the creation of a full golf course and luxury hotel, to his fellow villagers. They all chipped in a fixed portion of their income and watched their guarenteed cash cow coming closer to completion with every passing day. The hotel was almost complete, and the earth moving equipment had pushed around the earth to accomodate a world-class golf course- there was every indication that from this point on, the cash would come a flowin, and everyone would be rollin in brand new luxury cars, soaking in champagne filled furos, etc... And then the bubble burst! The major capital that had been seeing the project through was suddenly cut off. Only a little more money had to be raised, but this proved impossible. No one had any money to invest, and if they did, they were very reluctant to do anything other than stash it away.
The project failed and the entrepreneur felt a heavy burden. He must have felt like the spectre in "The Rime of the Aincent Mariner" carrying a decaying albatross around his neck. There was only one way to lessen the dishonor that he had brought to his family and ancestors. And so he committed seppuku (so I was told). For those of you unfamiliar with this ceremony, it involves thrusting a knife into your stomach and slicing across from one side to the other. The longer cut you make, the more shame is erased. Pain through purification.
Anyhow, I made my first trip to this place alone close to dusk. I walked around, acutely aware of the total silence, broken occasionally by the buzzing of flies and the scurrying of frightened animals. The place was straight out of a Steven King novel, and I spent an hour exploring the three levels of floors and the clutter packed basement. I remember finding a balcony where I got reception, and calling Justin. It was a truly creepy experience, and he was shocked that I had gone in by myself. The more I described the eerie deja vu vibe mixed with the feeling of being watched, the less I wanted to stay in the hotel. I hung up, and tried to find my way out. The fading light of the late afternoon, filtered through the prisms of broken windows, through the stirred up dust, making richly hued beams of gold. Dusk would come soon.
I stepped up the pace and retraced my steps, or tried to. I had explored so many places that I had forgotten where I had started. The hallway that had come from the lobby spit me out at another hallway. The stairway that led to back to another exit took me to where I had just been. This was really creepy. I had a strong urge to run away, to get out as fast as possible, but I fought this. Ah, there it was, the unmistakable rotten mattress that led to the stairs ascending to the lobby. I dashed forward into the darkness and disturbed a couple of bats who flew almost directly into my face! That way was not going to work. Finally I worked out my orientation and got out of the hotel. Walking down the eroded road to my car, I had the feeling I was being watched from one of the many darkened windows (like Scooby Doo and the gang in any given adventure).
Over the course of time, I have taken many friends to share in the experience. They often are scared or at least unsettled, at the spooky environment. Soon, word got around and now everyone knows of this place. About six months ago I took a bunch of friends on a weekend and we ran into another group that had come to check it out. So the place has lost its charm. Its still a pretty fun place to go once in a long while. My friends like to go and kick down locked doors (there are no more of those now...), break glass, and smash anything that they can. However, visiting the site is done for a whole new reason than when I started.
What was mine has become everyones'. People always feel the need assert their braveness, to illustrate the size of their testicles. "That place isn't so bad", "The only thing I'm concerned about is the bats", "I was expecting it to be scarrier", etc... These people have also never gone in by themselves, and even if they had, they're not going to have the same surreal experience that I had. They can't. On my first visit, the place was unexplored by gaijin- a virgin chunk of wonder. Now, it is merely another curious place to visit in Aso.

I do know of other crazy abandoned places near my pad, but I think I will keep their locations to myself. One of them is the ruins of a partially burnt down love hotel. Again, I visited this place alone, and had a similar experience. Inside the pitch black rooms is old furniture and dusty relics from a time not too long ago. The beds are still made in some of the rooms, and there is a strange object that looks like a cross between massage and torture equipment (you can bet it was used to facilitate doing "the nasty" in various locations). I have not been back, and plan on keeping it that way, preserving the memory for only myself. It's mine!!!

Anyhow, the Aso JETs want to have a halloween party at the hotel (thats right, its gotten that well known). I had thought about doing so when I first visited, but its a really bad idea. If they do have it there, I predict disaster in some form.

Here is a copy of the letter that I sent to help inform the newbs and those who have not thought about the challenges posed by having a party at said location:

You guys are welcome to use the haunted hotel if you like, but I think that there has to be a better place to host a party. When I made my first visit to the hotel last year, it seemed like an ideal place for a party because it was a novel, unexplored place, had lots of stuff to break, was in the middle of nowhere, was large, and nobody other than my predecessor knew of it. However, after many trips back problems became apparent. Like Mark said, there is an abundance of bat (and various other vermin) guano and dead things (we found an owl in one of the rooms!), mixed together with several years worth of mold and dust (think allergies). To be frank, the place smells like moldy rotting bat shit. In addition after going there a few more times with Kelvin, the Fingerhut brothers , Joe Debiec, and several other crazy gaijin, there is a lot of broken glass forming the paths of our destruction. Kelvin and J. Fingerhut actually got pretty decent cuts as a result (and Joe also overextended his leg muscle after kicking down a door Cochise style, puting him out of action for a month). I'm just guessing that theres gonna be drinkin goin on at this party, and mixing drunk people with multiple sharp objects coated with dusty excrement in a dark room lends itself to the inevitability of puncture wounds, creating an easy entrance into the victime for the abundance of pathogens in residence. In addition, anything you want to bring (ex. lights, beer, music, inflatable dolls, etc...) must be carried up, as you can only drive your car to about 1/2 a kilo of the entrance. So the pros, as far as I can see include: large areas and a creepy ambiance, located in BFE, stuff you can break, and a well broken in matress located on the lower level of the hotel.
Cons include: allergens, pathogens, and other disease vectors (some bats are carriers of rabies), sharp stuff.
Heh, it looks like there are more pros than cons, but you get my point. Questions? Comments? lemme know...

Posted by Adam at 4:34 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack