Check out the picture of this huge Mako caught off of Nova Scotia. I wonder what they were using for bait... Reminds me of the time when Brian, Steve, and I used some beef blood to make a bait slick when we went fishing off of the pier next to UCSB. We didn't catch a thing, but then again who catches great stuff off of piers anyways? At least we had a few 6 packs.

One good reason I don't want to go fishing for squid this winter (although half my island's population will be lining the shores): LINK

Even though it's way late, my complete and utter devotion to Neal Stephenson's writing compels me to point out his interview on Slashdot. That's the most interesting read I've had all year; I was watching the progression of the scroll tab on my browser and dreading its end.

Also, check out this article featuring Stross and Doctorow on the PopSci site:
Is Science Fiction About to Go Blind?

Between the damage done by the typhoon last week and a freak wave of work that slammed over my desk quite unexpectedly, I just haven't felt like writing lately.

It's kinda depressing driving around because the traffic is really bad - the drive to work usually takes less than 15 minutes, but now it takes up to an hour. Last week I mentioned that a couple bridges had broken, but it turns out that several more suffered structural damage that wasn't seen at first and have since been closed to traffic. Road conditions have been appalling - the thick layers of river silt on the asphalt dried out the first few days after the typhoon, which of course resulted in terrific dust storms kicked up by traffic. Then it started raining again yesterday, resetting the cycle of state change. The downpour lasted for a full day and had several predictable yet wholly unwelcome effects. Drying mud that had been piled to the side of roads and buildings for later removal (recycling?) slowly reverted to sludge, seeping outward once again. Great piles of trash consisting of shorted appliances, waterlogged tatamis, and soiled books, clothes, and furniture of every shape and size but of uniform color (cafe au lait), all the refuse discarded by the those whose homes were ruined, grew heavy with water and toppled into the streets, swimming in the pools of freshly liberated mud.

And that's about all I want to say at this point. What can I say? I can only wax mad about mud for so long before it starts affecting my mood since, you know, I feel like I'm living in it. But that's hardly fair - my house wasn't even damaged. I met up with my personnel manager today, and she really was living in caveman conditions until yesterday, when they used a firehose to clear her house of mud. I asked if I could lend a hand in some way, but she said that unless I had some brilliant way to make her insurance company cover damages instead of using the fine print to fuck her, no (but39-4asking).

The river overflowing had one positive effect that I can see, the rice paddies are positively EXPRODING with crop! Never mind that it's probably too late to harvest, the vibrant green patches dotting the muted landscape nicely break up the monotony and have gained my respect: Rice plants are some seriously tough, photosynthesizin'-ass playaz. And as an added bonus, I now know what an Egyptian farmer must feel like.

First off, me and mine are OK. I know the rest of the world can hardly be expected to notice yet another typhoon hitting our little island this year, but let me tell you, this one was by far the worst. It has caused destruction on a scale I have not seen in person since the Hanshin earthquake almost a decade ago (although, luckily, it wasn't nearly as destructive as that).

The big river that runs through Sumoto overflowed for the first time in anyone's memory (perhaps the first time, ever), as did most of its branches and tributaries. The city, for the most part, was not prepared for flooding on this scale as it simply had never happened before.

The peak of the flooding was around the time I made my last post yesterday, although in my house we weren't even aware of it save for news reports. Luckily, we live far enough away from the water and on a slight rise, which made all the difference. People living near the rivers, especially those on lower ground and geographic depressions were hit very hard. My brother and I walked around my neighborhood late last night after the typhoon had left, and were fairly shocked to see the extent of the flooding.

All of the bridges had soggy reeds and various other debris caught on the railings and lamp posts indicating the depth of their submersion at one point. People had started hosing and sweeping mud out of their houses and small shops, a sight we would see throughout the rest of our walk. Along the river bank, we came upon an old lady in tears, whose entire house had been inundated with river silt. She was fishing out what muddy possessions she could and hanging them on the frame of her ancient bicycle. We wanted to offer a hand, but she just glared at us and didn't want to be bothered. We walked on. Further upstream, a man was dumping plastic jerrycans filled with kerosene into the river (which at that point had receded somewhat but was still flowing much swifter than usual). I caught snippets of what he was saying to someone in the house and it appeared he was angry because the river water had contaminated the fuel. In a frustrated rage, he was tossing the tainted jerrycans in the river as if to say, here, just take it all you hungry bitch.

We came up to our recently-discovered neighborhood bar where we are on close terms with the master, Hirata-san. He was inside, so we stepped in to talk. The wooden floor was covered in mud, and the place had obviously been hit pretty hard by the floodwater. Hirata-san was in a daze, and just kept repeating, "I don't know where to start (the cleanup) from." His story of the flooding explained the state of mind we found him in:
Between 3 and 4 in the afternoon, he had been taking precautions just in case the flooding got much worse when all of a sudden he was standing waist-deep in the river of brown water that rushed through the front door. Right before his eyes, all of the refrigerators, sound system components, the DVD projector, almost everything was ruined.

It was kind of hard to say anything - what do you say when someone loses their livelihood like that - but I was kind of worried about him. So we stuck around for a while and discussed the merits of immediately washing out as much mud as possible before it dried vs. saying "fuckit," ripping out the floor panels at leisure, and starting all over. I think we' ll go by and check on him again tonight.

On the way to work today I wasn't so surprised to find that there were neighborhoods hit harder than mine, but the amount of devastation was unreal. All the streets are covered in slippery mud, causing serious traffic problems. Every house and every shop along both sides of the main river got flooded. The bad areas look like small lakes still. The places lucky enough to be on higher ground so the water could drain away after the storm were left with several inches of stinky river silt left on their floors.

The Self-Defense Force guys got called down from the base in Himeiji to help out, and they were out in numbers. What the fuck for I still don't know, because they were mostly just looking at cars that fell into the river and smoking cigarettes, just like everyone else. I suppose they might have brought some some engineers for damage assessment or something, but from their pressed and decidedly un-muddied uniforms, they obviously weren't getting their hands dirty. Maybe they are doing some good, though. We'll see.

It took me an hour to get to my office, and in that time I saw:
A broken bridge
A hundred people shoveling mud out of their front door
Several cars stuck in mudholes, some so deep only the roof was protruding
1 old man on a scooter slip on the mud and eat shit on a curve - the mud also saved him by padding his fall
A fleet of pump-mounted trucks draining the graveyard, which is very unfortunately shaped like a bowl
Two vans that had tipped over and fallen into a flooded rice paddy
A meter-thick stone pillar snapped in half by god knows what and laying across the road
A yellow 350Z being fished from the river
An empty showroom at the Nissan dealer (makes you wonder doesn't it?)

One of my coworkers was hit hard last night. His house is apparently "buried" in mud. I am proud of my company today because they sent most of the people from my office, including our section manager, to help him out. I wonder if this is standard practice or not. Either way, I'm proud they are taking care of their own in this case.

If you live in Los Angeles and you want to go fishing for squid, right now is the time to do it- apparently these large squid were spotted as far North as Washington state. If you want to go salt water fishing, then you have a free source of bait waiting for you on the beach. The seagulls must be having a feast! Fishing for Humbolts would kick the pants off of cuttlefish fishing on Awaji, but I still wouldn't go squid fishing even if I had the chance. They just can't fight that well, and there's always the possibility of being shot with a stream of brine, or even that nasty ink. Still, they are cool to watch as they hover around and hunt the baitfish in the harbor.

So typhoon Tokage (lizard) almost washed me and my poor car away (liveblogging posts are on my sidebar today; here is the permanent link), but after 2 hours of endless waiting at flooded intersections and negotiating some gnarly mudslides, I have gotten home safely. Unfortunately, not everyone was as fortunate, so I helped push one car out of a ditch and gave someone else a ride to their car.

I can't believe they turned us out of the office just in time to face such heinous weather and road conditions. "Why did we have work today at all?," was a common complaint overheard in the moments after the announcement to go home. Those people will really have a bone to pick tomorrow, I'm sure. As for me, I'm just happy I got back home and out of the rain. I'm gonna call some coworkers and see if they got back okay.

I always used to laugh when I saw somebody use an umbrella in high winds, seemingly being pulled around by an invisible donkey until the inevitable point where the umbrella is pulled outward like a double-jointed flagellate. No more. That shit happened to me today and I almost got my eye poked out. After so many close calls with BB guns in my youth, it would just be wrong to lose an eye any other way.

Yes, friends, it's another installment of this year's hit quiz show, Name That Typhoon!

Hint: Today's typhoon has a Japanese name.

What's that? I thought the Japanese didn't name their typhoons and simply numbered them.

That's absolutely true, today's typhoon is #23. Apparently what happened is that the Stupendously Hip International Typhoon-Naming Organization (SHIT-NO) ran out of English names. For the last typhoon, they just made some stupid ass name up. This time, they are honoring the kamikaze, or divine wind, that saved Japan from invading Mongol hordes not once but two times way back in history when there were samurais and fiefs and shit.

// ALERT! JUST ANNOUNCED ON COMPANY PA: WORK WILL END EARLY DUE TO TYPHOON! SCUTTLE BACK TO YOUR HOLES, LITTLE PEONS! LIVE TO SERVE ANOTHER DAY! //

Uh oh. It's really howling out there. Hope I don't poke an eye out.

My nomination for recipe of the year:
Hostess Twinkies Sushi

Must die.

Please God, make them go away. I asked one of the girls why she was all smiles today. She said it was because the new fax machine we ordered came in this morning. She said its sparkling newness was a good omen for the rest of the week.

Oh. Well then.

The thing is, I can't figure out if she was high on the reefer and making fun of me, or if this is just a sign that the Japanese take their trademark happy worker bee thing a bit too seriously.

If you like (mostly science) fiction, you should definitely check out the Baen Free Library. On the home page you will find a mission statement by the head "librarian," Eric Flint, who explains why the books in the library, even though most of them are also available in paper form, are made available for free download. After ordering several paid subscriptions in order to read sequels to books I found in the free library, I can say that I agree with Mr. Flint's reasoning 100%. I greatly admire what these people are doing.

Over the past couple years I've read every book available for download in the Free Library (I prefer RTF format files, which I usually convert to text in Word and read on my laptops or cellphone), and although the Belisarius series and the 163x books, among others, are old favorites, the book I enjoyed the most is Sisters of Glass.

Mind you, a lot of the books in there aren't so hot, but then again, its all FREE so I can't really complain. Besides, half the fun of going through any library of books I don't know is separating the wheat from the chaff.

If you like the works you read for free, you might want to check out their paid Webscriptions and subscribe for their paid stories, as I have in the past, although there is no obligation to do so. One really cool thing about the webscriptions is that they will often offer a free download of the works you purchased to someone of your choosing. Like I said, checkcheckcheckcheckcheck-cha-check it out .

Note: I don't profit in any way from linking to these sites, I just think they kick ass and deserve more recognition.

Update: BTW, one of the reasons I liked Sisters of Glass so much is that it read so much like a Gibson novel (my first post today spurred this one) - so much so that I wouldn't be surprised if he actually did write it.

The gokai, AKA bloodworm, is a nasty looking worm that looks pretty threatening. In addition to its abundance of legs and segments, it has a vein running the length of its translucent body that pulses blood down from head to tail. Its mouth looks like the Predator's, and when you touch it the worm will whip around and try and bite you.

It only took me three days to work up the courage to pick up the whole worm without using pliers. Actually, I guess it doesn't really hurt if they bite you but it looks like it does. So what can you catch around here, along the coast where everyone goes to dip their lines? You can catch as many fish as you like, as long as you don't mind that they're all going to be small.

The Japanese fisherman has a different mentality than the casual American sports fisherman. When he goes fishing, he means business. Armed with his 20 foot rod, bucket of chum slurry, and 5 hooks on his line all baited with either krill or gokai, he methodically plucks 2-3 inch fish from the seawall and puts them in his bucket. Using his flourescent, multihooked squid jig, he tirelessly snags cuttlefish that occasionally protest by spitting out their oily ink. He stares suspiciously at the passing stranger carrying a fishing pole, practicing his telepathic "go away, dick" stare, sneering in contempt of his meager 6 foot freshwater rig. Yes, the Japanese fisherman plays for keeps- none of this catch and release nonsense for him. If it's edible, it's getting cooked and eaten tonight. The reason that there are few big fish out there is that they've all been caught and eaten already, most of them before they had a chance to get big.

That way of fishing is not good enough for me. Fishing is about going out and relaxing, having a good time with friends and about connecting with nature. Fishing is about catching fish in unexpected places and ways, developing your own personal methods. Fishing, done the right way, leads to epic adventures and ridiculous tales recalled over sizzling barbecues and beers. That's why were taking fishing back on Awaji-shima. Instead of going for two inch fish off of the seawall we are going to target the 20 pound carp, jumping mullet, and catfish that swim in the scummy river. We will hook the bass, trout, and char that lurk in the freshwater dams. We will close in on the big fish that eats the abundance of small fish that everyone at the seawall hunts relentlessly. Then, perhaps, the man with the 20 foot pole will look up and realize he has been missing out on something when he sees us having the time of our lives fighting to land something that we don't intend to eat. Perhaps the next time he catches one that is too small, he will release it to fight another day.

This strange looking horned-triggerfish, called a kawahagi, quacks like a duck. It will live to fight another day.

William Gibson is blogging again:
http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/blog.asp

It was bound to happen, right? I mean, many successful chains and brands have to put up with people ripping off their designs or ideas. In-N-Out was ripped by Volks in Japan (which doesn't even serve anything you can get at In-N-Out), Dr. Pepper has Mr. Pibb, Dr. Grip pens were copied by PHD, but the mother of these has to be The Original Tommy's World Famous Hamburgers. I wish we had taken photos, but when I was 10 years old, Kohei, my dad, and I took a survey of the Los Angeles area looking for Tommy's knockoff restaraunts, and what we saw was a wealth of not-so-subtle immitation: Tommie's, Tammy's, Timmy's, Tomy's, Tom's, and Sammy's are just some of the "Original World Famous" hamburger joints where we ate at. The amazing thing is that the buildings all copied the look of a Tommy's joint, but they all lacked the funky soul of the real thing. By the way, if you don't know what I'm talking about, the next time you're in So Cal do yourself a favor and stop by here, or make your own with this recipe and if you truly want the authentic recipe, refer to FAQ no.4 on the official site.

Yes, love it or hate it, Starbucks is a very successful company which you wish you had bought stock for 10 years ago. I wonder how many people sit down here, leisurely sip their coffee and read their newspaper, and walk out, only afterwards noticing that this place isn't Starbucks but a place that uses a very similar font and color and goes so far as to immitate the circular mark of Starbucks, replacing the crowned Medusa mascot with a stylized cup of coffee. I wonder how many people never notice this and continue to believe that they are drinking at Starbucks, when in fact they are doing no such thing. This immitator isn't even the best one I've seen. That one is called something like "Coffee Factory" but I think it has a slight edge because they also dip into the boba drink market (that would be "bubble tea"). If you are driving down Bolsa Avenue in Little Saigon, it is in the strip mall with Taco Bell and Hair perfection. Not that I recommend this place, as I have heard that their coffee sucks, but if you're going to Taco Bell anyways...

Immitation is not the highest form of flattery- it is a justified form of slight theft. Parody, is an outright bitchslap.

Damn, this is the funniest thing I've seen all week:
Absolutely hilarious eBay ad for motorcycle helmet

(First seen at Gen's blog, but the eBay page he linked to got taken down.)

Back in January, in this post, I wrote about Japan's de facto online price comparison site, kakaku.com. Much like Buy.com and other American equivalents, kakaku is constantly expanding their listings - from all manner of new and used electronics to insurance plans, hotel rates, and sports equipment. Even so, I was surprised to visit their page for the first time in quite a while this morning and find their newest listing: Funeral services.

Link:
http://www.kakaku.com/sougi/

I'll translate the instructions for you:
STEP 1: Select desired funeral plan and region. Plans available are Cremation Only (I assume there's a further choice of Regular or Extra Crispy), Family and Relatives, Standard (40 people), Standard (100 people), Company, or Special (musical themed or non-religious themed, etc.). Regions are currently limited to Tokyo and Kanazawa.
STEP 2: Make more detailed choices.
STEP 3: Receive a quote.

Quick! Easy! We'll only charge you half the price of a new car to think up a special Buddhist name for the afterlife! Yes, I know I will go to hell for writing this. Satan, beware.

On a more serious tip, though, there's a listing for a place in Tokyo that will burn a body for you for the modest sum of 136,500 yen ($1,250). Something to keep in mind.

Jen e-mailed about the newly-created Nick Nolte's Diary and asked why celebrities are "always writing about dreams and feelings and flowery shit."

Well Jen, that's simple. Celebrities are, for the most part, total fucking pansies with a shitload of free time between making horrible movies, getting jasmine-infused honey colonics, and modeling for "charity." As for the "vivid dreams" which are a trademark of their web writings, celebrities can obviously afford better drugs and booze than the rest of us.

It was a glorious sunset over the mountains and we walked the endless rows of fruitstands and tourist giftshops in search of seafood. As we neared the plaza concentrated with seafood stands, a young man approached and invited us over to one of his tables. Other stall owners caught movement out of the corners of their eyes as they performed various tasks - wiping down tables, setting out plates - and also came over to beg our patronage.

"Cheapcheap!"

"You want snapperfish?"

"You want crab?"

"Good seafood! Best!!"

We were the very first customers of the night in the whole plaza, and we were being greeted accordingly; we quickly became the center of a very large and growing crowd.

"We have freshest fish!"

"Lobster good!"

"Seafood stew!"

We were inundated with the pleas of a dozen business-hungry vendors. What a wonderfully empowering, yet embarassing sensation! How to choose among them all? We listened to more pitches:

"You like Tom Yum soup?"

"We have noodles, sir!"

"Japanese beer!"

"Kon-ni-chiwa!"

In a fit of desperation, the solution suddenly came to me:

"OKAY ALL Y'ALL NEED TO LISTEN UP! THE PERSON WHO CAN JUMP THE HIGHEST GETS OUR PATRONAGE!"

Nobody seemed to understand this brilliant concept, so I demonstrated, hands raised in the air, I started jumping up and down. My, how they got into it.

"HIGHER LADDIES, JUMP HIGHER!"

As the crowd got even larger, filling with jumping bodies wearing aprons and chef's hats, I glanced sideways at my companions. They both looked kind of shellshocked, and I admit, it felt a bit like being trapped in a House of Pain video.

A real asshole, at this point, would have led his companions away and made everybody feel stupid for performing tricks for free. I, however, was hungry, and judged the winner of the jumping contest on the spot. We ended up having a very mediocre seafood dinner at his stand, so I learned something valuable that day: How a high a person can jump is a poor indicator of their cooking skills. I learn new things every single day, I tell you.

For the next trip somewhere similar, I'll have to think of a new benchmark. Any suggestions?

Shinsekai means "new world", and I can only imagine how striking this area must have been when it was new, a long, long time ago. Giant puffer fish(not called fugu in this area) lounge around a dense arrangement of lights, some street looking Japanese people hanging around, dark alleys cutting between the subdivisions on the block, and attractions reminiscent of carnivals in their heyday. Glare and inky darkness create a dystopic atmosphere in Shinsekai, bringing back snippets of Chinatown, Blade Runner, The Replacement Killers, Idoru (William Gibson), and other Noir works. I wonder how the food was in those world's back alleys- Either Gibson or Stephenson wrote that most of the food available in his Shinsekai-like neighborhood was made of processed krill...

There must be about 10 different joints where they serve kushiyaki (skewered-fried food in the same family as shishkabobs and corndogs, but of different parentage) under the gaze of Tsutenkaku Tower, but the best looking one was the one where all of the locals were waiting to get in, right down this street. A huge counter surrounds the kitchen that runs down the middle of the length of the izakaya. The kushiyaki runs from 80 yen (regular fried pork cutlet and beef tendon- this item isn't kushiyaki- stewed in a miso stew) to just over 200 yen per skewer (for more expensive stuff). You can sample so much for quite a reasonable price. The majority of the kushiyaki are prepared by frying them in panco, the bread crumbs that are used to coat tonkatsu.

It is unusual in Japan to have one of those food experiences where you wonder "Is it safe and sanitary to eat this?" (unlike the typical uninitiated gaijin question "Isn't it supposed to be cooked/ not rotting/ dead when they serve it?"). Japan is typically the land where they will thourally package everything at least four different ways and use disposable wetnaps for every meal. Here, in the kushiyaki joints, the dipping sauce is shared in communal troughs with strangers and friends alike. Pools of swirling oil shimmer on top, and other random detritus can be seen floating, suspended in the collodial middle of the sauces thermoclamatic strata, or felt on the bottom by probing the benthosphere.

Like all wonderful late night culinary adventures, this place is best enjoyed over several mugs of beer. Beer tastes better with kushiyaki, and vice versa. And if you have any urge to satisfy your curiosity regarding something you would usually never eat, the beer will help you to go for it, and also serves as something to wash a bad experience past your mouth and into your gut. Using this very method, I was able to overcome killing, cleaning, and eating a live shrimp that quivered as it was digested inside my stomach, eat pig's feet (the best thing I ate in Okinawa BTW) and other parts of the hog in their recognizable states that are usually reserved for the production of sausage, develop an appreciation for hormone (intestines) and every other type of innard prepared the proper way (I will never like cooked liver or kidneys, ever), and started to crave basashi (horse sashimi), grilled horse meat, and basashi liver. If you are content with eating exclusively out of McDonalds and convenience store food and have a need to use wetnaps before and after every meal, you will probably never understand what I'm talking about.

Oh, and just in case:
*Basashi should be enjoyed by wrapping it in a shiso leaf with paper-thin slices of tamanegi (onion) and dippped into shoyu with shoga (ginger) mixed into it. Wasabi is optional.
*Basashi liver is best enjoyed with paper-thin tamanegi slices dipped into shoyu with a few drops of goma-abura (sesame oil, the reguar stuff), and wasabi is optional.
*Like any other type of food, there is high-quality hormone and low-quality. If you eat bad hormone you will definetely know it, and the same is true of the good stuff because it will taste pretty good.

*Thanks to J for pointing out the mistakes in this entry.

Have you ever thought that your presence in this world wouldn't be missed much if you suddenly died? You may be right. Whoever ran over the black cat and just left it there in the middle of my parking lot so all cars coming in or going out would run over it again and again, fuck you.

I wrapped it in my carwash towel and placed it in a nearby caged dumpster; luckily today was trash day.

This roadkill thing really gets to me, though. Roadkill is never cleaned up in Japan. When my pal Gatson's dad came to visit, he observed this is because "it's no one's job to clean up roadkill in Japan, so it just stays there." Pretty smart guy.

I remember a dachshund that got run over at the exit ramp of a highway in Osaka. The ramp had a traffic light that you almost always needed to stop at, so over the period of six months or so, I got to see this dog corpse in varying stages of decomposition. The most revolting stage was the maggot infestation, which happened fairly early on. Toward the end, it looked like a mummy with two big gaping eyeholes in the dessicated skin still stretched over its skull. The funny thing was that I never caught a whiff of it, even when it must have smelled really ripe, cause that's just how fucking rank certain parts of Osaka get all year round.

As in, mean ol' uncle Pete:
"New" giant ape found in DR Congo

Somewhere, Michael Crichton is raising a glass of wine and thinking, "I told you so." And I for one give him full props - he even got the country right! It sounds like the primatologist, Shelly Williams, got extremely lucky she didn't end up like Misulu:

Something struck him lightly in the chest. At first he thought it was an insect but, glancing down at this khaki shirt, he saw a spot of red, and a fleshy bi of red fruit rolled down his shirt to the muddy ground. The damned monkeys were throwing berries. He bent over to pick it up. And then he realized that it was not a piece of fruit at all. It was a human eyeball, crushed and slippery in his fingers, pinkish white with a shred of white optic nerve still attached at the back...

...And he saw Misulu. Misulu lay on his back, in a kind of halo of blood. His skull had been crushed from the sides, the facial bones shattered, the face narrowed and elongated, the mouth open in an obscene yawn, the one remaining eye wide and bulging. The other eye had exploded outward with the force of impact.

Yesterday we went to a capoeira meet at the Budokan at Sumiyoshi Taisha in Osaka. We were invited by Adam's pal from Kumamoto, Luke. We were supposed to meet other friends there, but they ranked because they are weak/married, etc.

Luke is a fascinating man who was born in South Africa and has travelled around the world studying various forms of martial arts. He has the kind of posture, a way of movement, that says: Hardcore. Basically, he was more focused than most of the instructors that showed up for the meet, and that impressed the hell out of me.

This being my first exposure to capoeira (commonly defined as an Afro-Brazilian dance form that incorporates martial arts moves), I brought along my aging camera and did some damage. Check out the extended entry linked below for the rest of the photos.

Come to think of it, the vampires had nice tits, too. Also, the vampire lord looked just like my friend Osaka Bill, with strandy Robert Smith hair and all. I highly recommend this movie to anyone who likes hearing other people snore during $20 million scenes.

A tribute to the Big Hominid. Don't strain too hard, man.

Anna had nice tits.

Huck is coming to Japan next week. I'm going to make everyone practice their greetings in English in big, loud voices so Huck will be happy to meet them!

I am such a good host. I feel like the future of East-West relations lies in my hands... CRUNCH! Ooops! I killeded it mama, I killeded it! Waaaa!

As a visitor to Japan, surely, the worst possible (nick)name you could have is "Huck."

Is it just me, or is God doing his best to wipe us pesky humans off the planet this year? This week's typhoon (the swirly white butthole above) is called #22 in Japan and my guess is that they ran out of semi-real name sounding names and are just making random shit up now because its official name is "MA-ON." Come on weathergeeks, that's not even trying. "MA-ON" sounds like what an oppressed Vietnamese sweat shop worker moans the morning after a full bottle of Mekong whiskey or something.

Speaking of which, I recently received a bottle of Johhny Walker Red as a gift. Some gift, huh? Maybe I'll dye the label blue and pass it off to some unsuspecting teetotaler as a housewarming gift or something... I won't even use bad scotch for cooking meat, that's how highly I rate Johnny, Chivas, Pipers, and the rest of that crap. And for all you Asian Scotch hounds, I must ask one question: If it tastes so fucking wonderful, why do you dilute it with water?

Real men drink Spirytus.

I caught a guy walking off with my umbrella during lunch break. I was like, hey yo what the fuck, that's my umbrella. The guy knew I had him, but decided to weakly claim it was his umbrella. Yet he did not protest when I snatched it out of his hands and left him in the rain. Asshole.

Check out this article on Slate today:
Historical Fiction

Quote:
"While a Medieval Times castle seats anywhere from 900 to 1,500 people a night, and the Excalibur's Tournament of Kings about 2,000 (a thousand at each seating), no present-day medieval feast comes even close to approaching the enormity of some of the Middle Ages' heavy-hitters. We don't know exactly how many people attended the marriage feast of Henry III's daughter in 1251, but we do know that they gorged on 1,300 deer; 7,000 hens; 170 boars; 60,000 herring; and 68,500 loaves of bread. Feasters at the enthronement party for England's Archbishop of Neville in 1465 consumed 1,000 sheep; 2,000 pigs; 2,000 geese; 4,000 rabbits; and 12 porpoises and seals. No less than 11,000 eggs were eaten at a 1387 feast for Richard III."

12 porpoises and 12 seals, or 12 combined? Greenpeace demands to know.

If you have ever had an accident with a cab in Japan, chances are you have been screwed. The reason? Cab companies often rely on mafia-controlled insurance vendors to do their negotiations. I won't hear any bullshit about this, either - if you don't believe me, try getting rear-ended by a taxi and see who ends up with the short end of the stick. I know a guy whose parked car was totalled by a speeding cab in Kyoto - he didn't like how the insurance companies settled things (he ended up receiving around 100,000 yen [around a grand] toward the purchase of a new car) so he took the cab company to court. He ended up dropping the case after having his new car burned, dead animals stuffed in his mailbox, and being threatened on the phone and finally, in person, by scarfaced thugs in black suits. Of course, the police were a big help through all of this and he had to pay a princely sum for repair of the parking lot and the mailbox, etc. The kicker, though, is that the cab company apparently sent him a pretty book of coupons for free rides after he dropped the case.

Ouch.

Needless to say, said acquaintance left Japan long ago. I dropped an e-mail to him last week and apparently he's having kinda-related problems in China now. Some people never learn (j/k dude!).

For all of you with experience in Japan, I'd like you to think about something:
How many times have you seen a cab pulled over by the cops in Japan?

In my decade of living here, I have never seen this once, and believe me, I've seen cabs do some pretty egregious shit. That tells me something. Yes, it does. All repeat after me: I bewieve it's a conspiwacy!

And don't give me that "cabbies need a special driver's license to operate" crap, I've seen truckers with the same licenses pulled over (albeit this is fairly rare, too); I've even seen a daiko unten car (a driving service that takes you and your car home - handy when you've had some drinks and don't want to pay the minimum $3,000 fine for DUI) get tagged for following the lead car and running a stop sign (daiko unten drivers also have a "special" license).

BTW, I am sympathetic to the cabbies themselves - they have a hard job and some of them do it with a special kind of passion that can change the outcome of an entire visit to other cities. I'm just sick of their criminal masters and the free passes they get from the cops. If there is any justice in the world, I will see a taxi getting a ticket from cops right in the middle of a red light district where the cops were turning hookers and mama-sans out into the street, sometime before I leave Japan.

To the old lady who decided to suddenly step out in front of traffic without looking first this morning: My parking brake saved your life, but I believe you may need to change those Depends.

This is not the first time my parking brake saved me from a collision, but I hope it's the last; the narrow streets of Japan call for this maneuver and I truly believe it should be taught in driving school, although the brunt of the natives have a hard time even remembering which is the "go forward" pedal, so...

Yes, I've been watching too much Band of Brothers again. All I can say is, what a damn fine series. Along with 24 (go Kief!), Freaks and Geeks (/lament), and Firefly (/sob), this series on DVD helped keep me a bit saner this year.

The subject of the spam I just got says:
More info on how to please your partner again, inside

For fuck's sake, I'm still working - I almost bust a nut trying to keep quiet here! Have some fucking mercy already... Besides, my pleasuring skills have never lacked, inside. It's the "help with cleaning" and "take me shopping" aspects that get me in trouble all the time...

Apparently this IS a forbidden subject since I got a dozen e-mails and exactly 0 comments on the post itself. Latitudes and Nichi Nichi linked to the post (thanks guys!) and the comments there were similar to some of the mail I received, and very insightful - they made me realize that I didn't explain my motive behind posting as well as I could have.

Also, I guess that I didn't clearly distinguish between a reason behind the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and a justification of it (and to reader Warrin' G: I dig your handle, but am still unconviced of the government's intentional role in delaying the receipt of the Japanese Declaration of War, hence "creating" a sneak attack). Let me make this clear: I care much less about the historical reason than I do the current day justification of it.

The Japanese wanted to cripple the Pacific Fleet because it was positioned to attack their interests (including oil supply)? Fine. I can agree with that without researching it much because it makes sense. But to use this argument in the way I heard it, as a justification, is a joke. Here is an approximation of the conversation I had yesterday:

Coworker: "The US is bad for starting wars all over the world."

Me: "O-tay"

Coworker: "There are many bad men like Saddam Hussein in the world."

Me: "Yup"

Coworker: "But the US chose to single out Iraq. Iraq cannot defend itself against the US military! Also, preemption is a dishonorable strategy."

Me: "Who the fuck are you to be talking about honorable strategies? Remember Pearl Harbor?"

Coworker: "No that's different, the USA forced us to attack by cutting off our oil!"

Me: "MmmHmmmm" (turns away and fires up MT)

It makes me sick to think that this guy actually thinks that there was no alternative to the ultimate "sneaky Jap" move (I use this abhorrent term to make a point - is this not where the term originated?), and like I said, I've heard this exact same sentiment from other people as well. I sincerely hope this is not what they are taught in school, and now I've garnered enough interest to dig a little deeper... I have a friend that used to run a cram school for junior high school students, so he should be a good starting point.

Then again, even if I find the words, "OUR PROUD NATION WAS A VICTIM OF THE WAR. THE END." printed in the schoolbooks, what will I have proved? That the Japanese have again changed history and are generally unapologetic about WWII?

Real groundbreaker there, eh?

I swear to God this came up in conversation again today and I realized I probably never wrote about it here, so:

I'm not sure what the hell kids are being taught in school today, but it seems to me that the average Japanese person in their 20's or above is of the opinion that the Japanese were forced to attack the US during WWII. Specifically, that the attack on Pearl Harbor was (perhaps) a ratbastardshitty thing to do, but the Americans forced their hand by cutting off the flow of oil.

The first time I heard this was from a close friend at my university, and I remember my jaw literally dropping. And I remember thinking, if that's what they think now, I can see why they needed nuclear persuasion back then.

Even though it's not funny in absolute terms, I sometimes wish there was an equivalent weapon to use on the Japanese educational system. Because to hear from a friend that the cowardly sneak attack on Pearl Harbor is somehow, to this day, justified in the minds of the perpetrators (as in, our modern-day allies) is a big slap in the face.

Then again, a popular excuse for Japanese not being able to pronounce English very well is that their "tongues are too short," so maybe I shouldn't take anything too seriously.

If you're a Japanews Bloghound, you've doubtlessly seen this article linked to no less than five times today:
More Japanese men prefer sitting whizzes

I just want to know one thing: If you think so many Japanese men are sitting on Western-style toilets to take a leak, WHY DO I SEE SO MANY OF THEM PISSING ON THE STREET FOR JUST ABOUT EVERYONE TO SEE?

Then again, maybe I'm just seeing imaginary, urinating ojisans.

Ouch. This person obviously chose the wrong career - I'm thinking Corrections Officer would have been more appropriate.

My second year in Japan, I got in a fairly serious accident while riding to work on my motor scooter. A small car ran a stop sign right in front of me. I crashed into its side and flew over the hood into a drained rice field, gasping for breath as the wind had been knocked out of me. I passed out and woke up during the ambulance ride to Tenri Hospital.

All in all, I felt relatively uninjured. They looked me over in the ER, checked especially for head trauma, and everything seemed fine until the doctor brought out the helmet I had been wearing and said I needed additional tests in broken English (I still couldn't speak very much Japanese at the time). Looking at the helmet, I agreed: It had probably saved my life. The doctor took the dented, deformed hunk of plastic out of the room, and told me to follow him. When I asked where we were going, he looked back at me, dead serious, and said a single word: "Lobotomy."

To this day, I have no idea if that fucker was joking or not (maybe - just maybe - he meant something else?), but at the time the shit wasn't very funny.

Even if you aren't usually prone to motion sickness, don't check out this link just after eating:
Akiyoshi's illusion pages

Oh, man, I almost lost the tori negi-sauce don I had for lunch.

That goddamn line from "Under Pressure" is running around in my head again. An omen, perhaps.

Someone should just sit down and figure out the exact equation detailing the relationship of [number of times dropped on head as child] to [height of rear spoiler on car]. By the way, people with cars this expensive should not be spotted in the parking lots of recycle shops... A more affordable solution for cash-strapped Fast and Fuuurious wannabes is a haxx0red copy of Gran Turismo, aight?

A month or so back, my brother and I found a spot from which to escape from people. Most everybody, that is. It's a dam up in the mountains just a few miles off a major road, but apparently not very well known. We went there both Saturday and Sunday for a few hours of fishing and just to get away from it all. Saturday I caught a reallyreally small largemouth which attacked a lure not much smaller than itself - and that was it as far as our catch for the weekend - but it was enough. Being out on decently sized lakes with no one else in sight was a reward unto itself. Last week was kind of a tipping point for me, you see. I'd had just about enough of the world, I think.

It all started out on Sunday, when I watched an old man collapse in a pool of his own blood and guts on a white tiled floor. I looked into his eyes after calling for help and saw neither fear nor acceptance - just confusion. That disturbed me on a level I hadn't experienced since thinking about post-death consciousness every night when I was ten or so. His wife cradled his head and sobbingly pleaded with him to stay focused for the twenty minutes it took for the paramedics to arrive. When they came, they put on surgical masks and gloves before touching the old man. When they left, they tracked bloody footprints out the door. I left out the back exit and felt strangely sick when the sunlight hit my face.

Tuesday I left for a business meeting in Osaka as documented in my previous post. I feel more and more apologetic as the years go on for having to explain why so many of my fellow countrymen are brash, ignorant, racist dunderfucks. On a side note, do you know how much compensation I get from the company for having to spend a night away from home plus 6 meals? Around ten bucks. Ten bucks, as in, fuck me, may I have another? Fuck me. The really sad thing is, it used to be around twenty bucks and people feel really cheated about it having been cut in half. Shit, the last time the union reps came around, I contemplated throwing a handful of pennies at them and saying, "dinner's on me, assholes."

Wednesday I came back from said business trip on a bus directly through a fairly major typhoon. Luckily, I was tired as hell and the huge bus windows amplified the lightning into a trippy ambient light show. I zoned out to this and stopped watching the realtime destruction reports on the TV mounted in the center aisle. Crossing over the longest suspension bridge in the world to my island in heavy winds was kind of tense, though (Bus driver on radio to dispatcher: "Advise others to turn back. Brakes are sluggish and we are moving forward even though I'm not using the gas."). Cool.

Thursday, the pipes under our kitchen sink decided to burst. Fortunately, my girlfriend and my little brother took care of it and I only saw the aftermath: Everything previously under the sink on my kitchen floor, cupboards being dried out with electric fan. Yes, Nam and Adam handled the crisis and my late arrival/presence was superfluous. Genuinely cool.

Friday I got in a huge fight with my girlfriend, but I sucked it all up because I was so tired and in a "gee this isn't fair, but beat me up emotionally anyway" state of mind. (By the way, the whole fight was probably all my fault, even though I'll never admit it.)

So by the time Saturday and Sunday rolled around, I was ready for 12-hour slumber sessions followed by the Nature Boy routine. Our new hideaway did not disappoint. Bunny rabbits, deer, and baby bass. And on Saturday, I even forgot to take my cellphone.