I hope you all had a happy 4th of July. Strangely enough, the 4th was never a very big holiday for my family when I was in the States. Now that I'm here though, I miss its droning presence at the start of every July, as if the holiday itself were chiming the halfway mark of summer. To celebrate I bought fireworks. I ended up lighting them off with 5 Australians, a Scotsman, and one other American. It was the first time I had legally light fireworks.
This poem needs to be read.In closing, things are ok, life moves forward. Sam and Molly visit soon.
This is heartening news. I'm suppossed to be saving money while living in the world's most expensive city. Classic. At least my furnished apartment is only $590 US a month, and not $4,000, though seriously there are places not too far from where I live that cost that much. You should see the advertisements on the trains here for those...
I've been trying desperately to get the new album from Spoon, called Gimmie Fiction. My p2p application hasn't been able to find it yet. Any help?!
In other news, Blogspot has updated so that I can now post pictures directly onto my page. Check it out:
I've sort of been half shamed into and half yearning to do a less "matter of fact" style post for some time now, so here it is.
First off, this guy is hysterical. I'd start a site about the street dogs of Tokyo, but there are none. In fact, it's quite hard to say that there's any real dogs here at all, as the few ones you do see are all cooped up in ridiculous sweaters and are usually being carried by old ladies. It's fricking sad, really. Let the damned dog walk lady!!!
And now, an anecdote...
When I was younger, I was a very active kid. I was in no way a hyper little child, but really I just did a lot of things. At one and the same time, I practiced soccer, swimming, and did full days of school. This continued from grades 1 to about 4, after which soccer sort of fell away.
Anyways, tooting my own horn here is not the point. Instead I just want to get across the important fact that, from about 7 am to 8 pm, every weekday, I was doing something. However, this also meant that I was constantly burning up energy, and pounding down the food. I'd eat breakfast, a LARGE lunch, come home and eat a snack, go to practice, eat after practice and then later eat dinner. My parents thought that I was doing great, and I really was too taken aback by the sheer fun of running around, so I didn't really notice my dietary needs.
In fact, it wasn't until one day when I went to the bathroom that the sheer abuse I'd been inflicting on my body reared its ugly head. As most trips to the toilet start off, I was standing there and taking aim of the situation when, as I commenced my urinary barrage, I absolutely collapsed to the floor of the bathroom, writhing in pain. I remember thinking that my brother Brandon had gotten a kitchen knife and finally decided to really stab me. Only I immediately thought to myself "that can't be true, he'd have to get two knives"; one for each side of me, as I was sure that I'd been completely run through on both the right and the left.
About 10 seconds after I hit the deck, I got back up and looked in the toilet. I had literally pissed blood. Now blood is not the most comforting sight in the world. Even worse, blood from the genitals is quite disturbing, especially to a 4th grader. I wasn't sure what the hell I did to screw myself up, but I immediately put my drawers back on and ran to my mom. When she looked in the toilet she almost lost it. At first she seriously thought that I'd put red food coloring into the bowl of the toilet, but once she checked the cupboard and found that I hadn't touched the stuff, she changed her tune. In no more than 30 minutes I was in my pediatrician’s office, pants around my ankles with my mother discretely outside of the exam room.
The pediatrician had some very strange looks at my equipment, and asked me questions which at the time made no sense. Then he asked me to write down what I did during my days. Once he looked at the schedule, he just shook his head and literally laughed. After my mom was called back into the room, he looked at both of us and said; "Well, the good news is that I know what it is. The bad news is that it hurts more than anything most men ever have to experience. Congratulations son, you've got kidney stones."
KIDNEY STONES!? The image in my head was huge quartz crystals lodged somewhere in that neither region of internal organs, near the spleen and liver. My mom looked and me and flat out asked me "how did you do that?!"
Well, it turns out that, over the course of a day, I only was drinking about 20 ounces of actual water. I'd have milk for breakfast, milk with lunch, a coke with dinner and maybe a glass of water. And that was it, even though I was exercising about 3 hours a day. My pediatrician was absolutely astounded when I assured him that I was never thirsty. In fact, to this day, I've never been thirsty in my life.
From that day on, I had to bring a water bottle with me to school, and drink 100 ounces of water over the course of the day. I still occasionally had a stone or two, though they went away after a few months. Passing them was absolutely the most painful thing of my entire life, before or since. I was given a check sheet for each day, which was presided over by my teacher, Miss Hames. Every day that I drank my allotted amount of water I was given a sticker on the check sheet. By the end of the year, I peeled off all the stickers and put them on my binder.
The only good thing to come of this story is that my parents learned they literally had to check up on what I was doing with myself, since if I got too busy or interested in something I'd ignore 'trivial' things like eating and sleeping. My mom went so far as to make a sign, the wording of which is below:
Rob,
Are you grumpy or upset?
If so:
1 - Are you thirsty? Drink water.
2 - Are you hungry? Eat food.
3 - Are you tired? Go to sleep.She has not let me live that down to this day.
Victory!
I have at long last successfully navigated the worlds most beauracratic agency (the Japanese Telephone monopoly) and made it bend to my iron will. I finally and indeed have internet access. How sweet it is!
To celebrate, I set up the wireless network in the apartment.
I also am including this amusing link to a Japanese name generator, something that I know Vaala will love. Just don't waste too many hours on it man.Other than that, life here plods on. I've had to have my parents send me my archeic laptop because the awesome one that they bought me in November is busted, through my own dumb efforts. I really fucked it up, and I'm none too happy with myself. Looks like the next few months may be spent saving up cash to get a new one... I really feel like an asshole.
Still no word from Jes, and I doubt that there ever will be. Who knows, not me.
A big thank you too everyone who asked me to post pictures of my jackass haircut. You may be sad to find out though that after posting that wonderful story, I just went home and cut the top of my head myself. Sorry guys!
However, this does give me a great idea, so I`m starting a contest. As of today, Thursday June 16, 2005, I`m going to be taking suggestions for pictures in Japan here. Anything is an acceptable submission, though I`ll only be able to do some. Berg`s suggestion that I lift a Japanese person over my head is quite do-able, and in fact I`m going to try and do that this week. Should be an interesting proposition, asking someone if I can lift them over my head and take a picture, but hey, who knows. I`m sure that this country has "giants lifting women over their head" porno.
On that note, my roommate came home the other day with a HUGE smile on his face. One of his students, IN A CLASS, gave him 2 Japanese porno magazines. Anyways, besides that being EXTREMELY weird, if you want Japanese porno mailed to your house direct, drop me
an email. I`ll try and oblidge as many of you all as I can.
This stupid website has had 6,500 visitors. What is wrong with you people! Don`t you have anything better to do?!
Also, I`d appreciate pictures of all of you. Again, just email me them.
So, where to begin?
I'm still in Japan. That's a start.
Today I went bike riding along Yanasegawa river. I meet an older woman who found a turtle, that she claimed was 10,000 years old. No, this was not a misunderstanding, as I seriously asked her in Japanese. She proceeded to insist that I not only take the turtle, but keep it as a pet. She then gave me very detailed instructions on how to care for a turtle.
The shocking part came when, as she was telling me all this stuff, she started to pet the things head. The turtle did NOT enjoy this, and to let her know took a huge chunk of flesh right off her finger. Seriously. I mean this woman basically should have gotten stitches. She started screaming with a turtle hanging off of her finger, running around like crazy. Her corgi dog started barking like crazy and running around also.
You may be happy to know that we released the turtle into the river, after dislodgeing it from the old lady. The corgy was not yet settled down when we left.
There are pictures of this turtle, which shall be up. Maybe tomorrow.
This is the most romanticized version of this country I've ever read. Also, point of fact, Japanese people are not efficient. For instance, it has taken me, with my spotty Japanese, more than 2 months to get internet. Changing my cell phone bill from my American Visa card to a Japanese bank transfer would take more than three. These people take forever to do anything.
