Slow Explosion

Road to Rising Sun 2011 in EZO Part 2→ Animal House Husbandry (there are like... 30 jokes embedded in that title)

2011-09-08T20:24:00.000-07:00

Dear Blog,
SUP.

So I've been in Yarpong for like... 2 months now, but I still have yet to tell you about my first few weeks here. Why bother reporting on events that have already transpired, when my real goal is to tell you about actual factual interesting events? Well, because I have this weird annoying obsession with documenting things in chronological order. It's why my flickr account is no longer used... once I fell behind by a month or event or whatever, they started piling up, until eventually it got all overwhelming, and now I don't have the patience to upload pictures from ANY event. Anyway... why are you criticizing the things I choose to report here? Just who are you? Is anyone even reading this thing? According to the comments posted on my last post, Trina is. Sorry Trina, I didn't mean to get mad at you. It's just that sometimes YOU MAKE ME SO ANGRY.

LOLOLOLOLOJUST KIDDING!!!!!!!

So yeah.

What?

Guhhhh....

What in the hell HAVE I been doing here in Yarpong, anyway?

Well, pretty much as soon as I got here, I went to a wedding. Asahi and Satoshi are part of my Rising Sun group o' frieands (aka "Sachikun Kingdom"), and I first met Asahi way back what when I was an exchanged students. So it was basically a pre-Rising Sun reunion for the Kingdom, and a good chance for me to see a a huge number of friends and be like "hey, I'm here now. What up."

Can you guess which one is me???

It was a nice wedding, but kind of hectic... the ceremony was at a chapel (no photographs, please), but then we all rode a bus to a building where the reception was held (where you pay 15,000 Yen per person, which is normal in Hokkaido, though it's up to as much as 30,000 per person in Tokyo). There were all kinds of music and displays and such every time we were suddenly supposed to turn our attention towards somethings new, and that happened like every five minutes. I would have liked a little more time to eat (just kidding I would have liked more time to get ripped dawg, do you know what I am saying???). After things wrapped up there, we took another bus to Susukino (the night distract area place zone in central Sapporo town city land) for the after-after party. Then we paid another 4,000 Yen, but it was all-ye-can-drink. Miwako had to work on this day, but was able to join the action at this point, so it was good to have her meet many of my friends for the second time, and many others for the first time.

Here's Yo-chan winning a raffle prize, as he often does.

After the after-after party, it was time to go (this time by foot) to the after-after-after party. This involved more drinking, but also a lot of eating. Interestingly enough, the freshly-married couple never showed up for some reason. They probably went to a different after-after-after-after party-party or something.

We were sitting in the middle, so you don't get to see the other side of the party SORRY STOP WHINING.

So yeah, now that I've dedicated several terabytes of Blogger server space to my description of the wedding, it's time to move on. It was a nice wedding, though way more fancy (and expensive-looking) than what Miwako and I want for our own. Still, it was a good first-wedding-in-Japan experience for me.

The next weekend, Miwako's family had a "welcome to Yarpong" thing for me. Everyone gathers at the parents' house fairly regularly, so I see her sisters and their kids a lot, but it was pretty neat that they gathered everyone together at an outside venue in my honor.

Here is my family now.

After the craziness and confusion of my first couple weeks in Japan, things started settling into what is now my normal routine. Basically, I'm a house husband. It's pretty great. I do a lot of cleaning and laundry, wash the dishes, go grocery shopping, and try to cook whenever possible. Miwako is way better at thinking up things on a daily basis than I am, and she can also create edible meals much faster than I can, so I've been trying to work on my skillz so that she doesn't have to do that every day after work. Also in the morning.

Here's the path from behind our mansion to the what I like to call the "Suspicious Supermarket"

I call it that partly because its actual name sounds a lot like the word for suspicious, but also because everything about it is weird. It only sells edible things (as in, no plastic wrap or diapers or solid-gold golden marmosets), everything is suspiciously cheap (or strangely expensive depending on the season), and the parking structure seen in the right side of this photo has very few lights, big piles of garbage, and the windows are all smashed out. Also, it shares the building with a video rental store and a gym, but you can't get to the other businesses from inside the building, instead you must navigate a series of dark elevators and corridors (or just go outside and walk around the building, which I never really thought about trying until just now while typing this). Anyway, it's pretty neat, and even though I see the same staff working there every time I go in, the background music playing is radically different on a daily basis. Our other choice for groceries (including things such as plastic wrap, diapers, and solid-gold golden marmosets) is the Seiyu attached to the train station. It's only slightly further away than "Ayashii Super", and way more convenient (though not necessarily as cheap), but I feel dirty shopping there because it's owned by Walmart. Jerks.

Here's a view looking west towards Otaru from a foot bridge near Teine Station. The green thing is a [golf] driving range, and the orangish building to the left of it is our mansion. Note the dismal grey skies... that's pretty much what it looked like every single day for my first month in Japan.

So besides being a house husband, I've spent a lot of time doing tedious paperwork. Like... a LOT. The Teine Ward Office is right next to the train station, so it's not terribly inconvenient, but I can't believe how much paperwork EVERYTHING in Japan requires. Even when you can see that everyone in the office (ANY office) is sitting in front of a computer, everything still has to be done by hand. So when I first got here, I had to register myself as an Alien Resident. That wasn't terribly complicated, but I still had to wait quite a while to get my actual Alien Registration card (which I'm required to carry with me at all times in case Johnny Law (or in this case probably something more like "Takukenji Law") decides he doesn't like my face). The next challege once I received that was for Miwako and I to get married. Besides her needing to submit her family register and various other things, I actually had to go to the U.S. Embassy in Sapporo in order to get a notarized document (i.e. I signed it in front of some American guy I've never met and then he signed it) stating that this is my first wedding and that I'm not secretly married to someone else back in the Motherland. I wish I could have taken pictures, but the security at that place was not surprisingly mega strict, and they took pretty much everything I was carrying other than my important documents away from me. Anyway, eventually we were able to submit our wedding documents and came to realize that the people at the Teine Ward Office probably had very little, if any, experience in dealing with foreigners doing these sorts of things. We officially got married on July 25th, but the REAL challenge came when I tried to change the visa on my passport from "temporary visitor" to "spouse or child of Japanese national".

The first challenge is that the English version of the Japanese Immigration website listed three things I needed to submit. Okay, great! But wait... the Japanese version of the website lists 10 things I need to submit. Okay... uh... great. So Miwako called them, and they gave her a slightly different list of things I needed to submit. Oh... okay.... what? I ended up calling them myself, and they walked me through the list of things (I still decided to go by the website and prepare everything, just in case). One of the items listed was "Japanese Certificate of Acceptance of Marriage notarized by US Embassy". I told the guy that the U.S. Embassy's website clearly states that I DO NOT need to submit anything of the sort, as a legally valid marriage in Japan is recognized by the U.S. government as being legally valid. Also, we're not planning on living in the Americraine, so what's the point? Also, going to the embassy to get yet another notarized document is expensive. Still, he said I needed it. Sure enough, when I called the Embassy to schedule an appointment, the guy told me I totally do not need anything of the sort, and the immigration office should know that. He told me that I should write a letter explaining why I'm not submitting their stupid notarized document, and if they don't like it they should call him directly. So I wrote that letter in both English and Chinese. I mean Japanese.

These are the documents I ended up submitting to the Immigration office. Especially note #8, photographs of Miwako and I together.

And here's en expansion of #7, and 8-page questionnaire that asks everything possible about us, our families, and our relationship, including an essay that I wrote explaining the time we've spent together. Good thing NONE of this was listed on the English version of the website.

So after gathering all of that crap (which took more MANY trips to the Ward Office, sometimes with Miwako's mom because they're only open on weekdays and Miwako has a job) and going to the Immigration office, sure enough, they hassled me about the notarized document. Also, one of the documents that Miwako submitted was slightly inaccurate, so she had to redo that one. But... about a week later they called me back in and my visa was changed. For one year. So next summer I presumably have to go through more trouble to get an extension. Great.

Okay, sorry about typing all of that. You probably didn't even read it. I KNOW BECAUSE I'M WATCHING YOU. GO BACK AND READ IT AGAIN.

Done reading it again?

Haha, sucker!

In other news...

Sometimes Miwako and I go out to eat.

Many times we borrow her mom's car (or just make her mom drive) so that we can go to Nitori to buy furniture/housewares. It's kind of like IKEA in that you have to build your own furniture and things are relatively, but it's way nicer quality.

Here is my step-daughter, Ann-chan (I always assumed it was "An-chan" for whatever reason).

Because we drink a lot of booze, we bought a thing(s) for drinking sake (not saki) at the famous glass-making place in Otaru.

Speaking of Otaru, one weekend we met up with our Otaruian frieands from college and camped out on the beach. In Otaru.

Some of my favorite people in Hokkaido and also some people I met for the first time (or at least I don't remember meeting them 9 years ago).

Here's a similar picture to the previous picture because I don't know how to delete the previous picture from this blog thing.

Le Ocean. Actually, Le Sea of Japan.

Then one day we got married and went out for dinner in Sapporo.

For the first time in nine years, I went to the Otaru Ushio Matsuri (festival thing, yo).

My "host" parents (I never actually lived with them).

I assume these fireworks were in honor of our marriage.

The next weekend, we met up with our mutual best friend Erina (what does that MEAN???) and her boyfrieand/soon-to-be-husband Shin-chan at the Sapporo Beer Festival in Sapporo of all places. Actually, only the one place. Sapporo. Odori Park. Actually.

After this thing, we went out for karaoke, which was probably a bad idea. They were going to stay with us, but they ended up going back to Otaru because Shin-chan drank way too much. The next morning, I discovered that I had also draunk too much, and unfortunately feeling nasty all day made me have to skip out on a concert featuring two Sapporo bands I've been wanting to see for years. Damnit. Oh well, it was still fun.

The next thing that happened after that thing, not including all the things that happened in between, was that it turned into the week before Rising Sun. It is tradition for Kutchan, Yo-chan, Asami and myself to hang out the night before, then wake up grossly early in the morning to go wait in line so that we can rush the gate when it opens and get the best possible tent spot possible (because we always go in a group of 30+ people, it would be impossible to get all of our tent sites in a block if we didn't do it this way). This time, a whole bunch of people met up for drinks and eats. On the way to the thing, I randomly ran into Yattaro in the subway. Remember that name because it will be important in a future blog post. Sort of. Not really. Anyway, this happened:

This. It happened.

We went back to Yo-chan and Asami's place for sleeping, and for some reason Hiropon also stayed (even though he didn't go with us in the morning). Yattaro also slept over because he and I ended up doing most of the waiting in line duties the next day (and he ended up being the one running to reserve our tent area when the gate opened). And even though we were planning on waking up at 4:30 AM and there wouldn't be much sleep to be had all weekend at Rising Sun, he and Kutchan stayed awake until about 2 watching comedy TV while I desperately tried to sleep.

And that brings us to Rising Sun, which is a separate blog post that I bet you're just DYING (not literally, hopefully) to read.

YES!

Backflip double fist pump!

I finally wrote about my damn adventures in damn Japan that I've been damn putting off for ass forever.

I doubt anyone will even attempt to read through this thing other than maybe Trina and/or my mom, but I feel better for having finally accomplished it. Now it is time to go do whatever it is that I do on a Saturday afternoon when Miwako is working. Thanks for reading, chump and/or chumpette!

Just kidding it's not over yet.

By the way, if you're still reading, I tend to compile mental lists of worthless information, and here's one that's kind of been going through my head since I got here.

Things that are hard to get used to living in Japan (or things that I have to re-get used to because I got used to them when I lived here 9 years ago but then forgot about them):
・ Whether there are bike lanes or not, every sidewalk in Japan is crowded with bicycles AT ALL TIMES.
・ I rarely speak English unless it's via the interweb, and it's kind of a weird feeling.
・ Seriously, why with all the tedious paperwork?
・ For some inexplicable reason, the theme song on the morning news is "Heaven is a Place on Earth" by Belinda Carlisle.
・ I miss having a drier for clothes, though our gigantic balcony kinda makes up for that.
・ Olives and peanut butter, two of my favorite things, are both expensive and come in very small qualities (thanks Mom for solving that problem!!!).
・ There are basically only two boring kinds of cereal in Japan, and they're NOT made from 100% high fructose corn syrup, as cereal is meant to be.
・ Japanese pop music (or "Jpop" if you're a gross nerd) never changes, and is always pretty terrible.
・ Not surprisingly, trying to find a job when I have no Japanese certification is wicked difficult. Damnit.

On the other hand...

Things about Japan that are pretty easy to get used to:
・ Booze is mysteriously cheap here.
・ The cost of living in Sapporo is freakishly cheaper than Seattle.
・ Mass transit here is just as awesome as ever.
・ Having both a mountain and the ocean within walking distance (well, less than 3 miles) of my home is pretty fantastic.
・ And many, many more!

2011.09.24

Road to Rising Sun 2011 in EZO Part 1→ Goodbye forever, Thee Americraine! Hello forever, Jaguapanther!

2011-07-26T22:27:00.000-07:00

Dear blog,
I wish you were a diary. How have you been? I have been fine. Thank you for asking. As you know, it has been weeks since the alien insect hive mind came to Earth and enslaved all humanity, forcing us to create grand works of art and science in their glorious names. It has also been several weeks since I moved to Japan. Exactly slightly more than one month's worth of weeks, in fact. Oh, what adventures you have missed. Please allow me to tell you about them in painfully tedious detail.

I slept approximately 3 hours during my last several days in Seattle as I tried to divide the past 30 years of my life into piles of things to take with me, things to get rid of, and things to sort of hope someone will ship to me later. Super sexy special thanks to Matt Smith, without whom I would have had approximately several thousand billion million tons of crap to try to take with me to Japan. He stopped by one last time as I left the key to my home of the last five years in the kitchen, locked the front door, closed it forever, then got in Kim Gold's car to head for the aerospaceport. MAN, that was a weird feeling. Not the feeling of Matt being there, I mean the feeling of leaving my home FOREVER.

Speaking of luggage, I wish I had a better picture of the luggage that I took with me, but I ended up with two suitcases, one very large duffel bag (with no wheels so that you MUST carry it on your shoulder), my backpack, and three massive cardboard boxes. In addition, I had two carry-ons... one was a normal sized thing but contained things such as my KORG Electribe, Wii, my USB hard drives, and various fragile pottery and/or glass objects that I didn't want to check through. I also had a "laptop bag", which contained my laptop, monitor, DVD player, and several other heavy objects that I'm fairly certain disqualified my laptop bag from being a laptop bag in the way the major airlines intend. At the airport, we had to disassemble several of my check-through bags to make sure they were under 50 pounds, so we ended up hastily throwing random objects into a plastic shopping bag which became my third carry-on. 7 checked bags and 3 carry-ons. And THAT'S how you avoid long lines at the airport. Speaking of which, terrible tarantula of tinnitus thanks to Kim, Jihee, Travis, and Ghostie for taking me to the airport and seeing me off. Had it not been for your help, I'm certain that I would have had the life crushed out of me by my massive pile of luggage. Especially the box filled with LEGOs. Did I mention that one of my massive cardboard boxes was filled with nothing but LEGOs? I'm pretty sure I did.

So hey, I made it on my plane. So long, Seattle/suckers. Then I got to Vancouver and I had to check in with Japan Airlines. There was all kinds of confusion about my checked luggage as I explained repeatedly that I had already paid a shit ton of money for my five extra bags to Alaskan Airlines and didn't especially want to pay it again (a hilarious side note to that is that they didn't actually debit my account for a couple of weeks). While they were figuring that out, the guy at the desk happened to notice how much crap I was carrying, and asked for me to weigh my carry-on luggage. Well, it turned out that all three of them weighed about 10 pounds each. Oops. After explaining that I didn't especially want to check through my fragile items, nor did I want to pay for yet another bag, he let me go and suggested that when I'm passing through security and onto the plane and such that I "pretend that the bags are light". 30 pounds in the form of bags with uncomfortable handles gets heavy really quickly when you're walking through various massive airports, but I did my best. At any rate, several hours I got on my plane and was on my way to China. Or Yarpong or whatever. Goodbye, Northern and Western Hemispheres. Thanks for all the oxygen and whatnot.

Many hours and a viewing of "Hankyu Railway" later, I landed at Narita International Airport. Not the one in Tokyo, but the one in Canada. JUST KIDDING AHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!! As the flight went on, I got progressively more and more panicky about my landing in Japan... I had no return flight, a shit-ton of luggage, and no visa to stay. I assumed I'd get asked a ton of questions by Immigration, but all they really cared about was the "length of stay" box on my disembarkation card, which I wasn't really sure how to fill in since it lists "__ days __ months __ years". But as a bonus for Customs being surprisingly easy to get through, I got to pick up ALL of my bags and re-check them in. I was actually able to drag my suitcases behind me with one hand while pushing everything else on a single cart, but fortunately an airport worker came to my rescue and helped me get to the check-in counter. Then I waited many, many hours, and after threats that our plane might have to return to Tokyo because of heavy fog in Sapporo, we took off and all went according to plan. Then I got to the airport in Sapporo and no one was waiting for me. Surprise! Just kidding, Miwako showed up with her sister Saeko and her husband Naoya (DEAR READER REMEMBER THOSE NAMES, DAMNIT) a few minutes later, so I didn't have to stand in the airport panicking for very long.

Then they drove us (also, it's a pretty long drive from the New Chitose Airport to... anywhere... so I had another whole hour to realize how ridiculously exhausted and badly in need of a shower I was) to our new home, "Light River Sanbankan", a literal MANSION (at least, according to the Japanese meaning), and my second life in Japan began. As opposed to my time spent playing Second Life in Japanese.

Wasn't that a great story? Yes it sure was. Why would I tell you such a story? Let me tell you why. Now that I've written down my experience, I can someday look back at this blog (though in the future "reading blogs" will probably be something more like "taking your neurostim pill" or "attaching an infosquito to your eye socket"), and proudly think to myself, "no really, why DID I tell you such a story?" Haha, sucker - you read it, you can't unread it!

Oh hey, I went to Yarpong the other day...

2011-02-21T14:13:00.000-08:00

I know I've always been a rather cynical person, whether I choose to admit it and/or fight it or not, but recently I've found myself hating the Internet more and more. Part of the problem is that after years of sitting in front of a computer screen, I just don't want to do it any more. I spend all day at work in front of several computer screens, so why should I go home just to sit in front of one of those same screens until it's time to go to sleep? It's not just that, though... in an age of mindlessly clicking on "like", or where any person can mindlessly and anonymously comment on anything that they feel NEEDS their input, where there are no penalties or consequences for improper grammar or good ol' fashioned stupidity, I feel like there's no personality behind the internet. More and more, the people I know and care about seem to turn into faceless numbers that aren't much different than anyone else using the Internet that I don't actually know. It sounds like the plot to a million bad movies, but it really does kind of seem like the more time people everywhere spend using the Internet, the less meaning anything that appears on it actually has.

ANYWAY... the point of all this is that my blog and my flickr account have both fallen out of use because I don't like spending time in front of my computer unless I'm talking to Miwako. Even my website, kurtasbestos.com, which I had such fantastic visions for, is finally gone now that I've come to admit to myself that I'll never do anything with it (which has also resulted in a million broken image links on this here blog here). Friends and family who are actually interested in what's happening in my life tend to get the relevant information from me without depending on my blog or facebook status updates anyway, so I figure the world isn't missing out on much. But hey, I still have dumb old blog, and I would still like to make some sort of attempt to communicate with the outside world (at least, outside of Japan), so I'll try it today and see how long it lasts.

→ → → → ANYWAY2 → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → →

After going to Japan last winter in order to make up for the one summer I missed, I wanted to make it an annual tradition in the manner of my "Road to Rising Sun Rock Festival in EZO" series of visits to the land of the rising sun. Rock Festival. in EZO. I didn't think I'd be able to pull it off this year, though, so I instead tricked Miwako into coming to Seattle for New Year's Eve and such. But then between my birfday and Garstmarst, I got a bunch of money (that I had originally intended to put towards making one of my mopeds go faster than 30 mph), and I bought a ticket to Sapporo.

Not including my initial year-long stay in Otaru, this was my 8th visit to Japan in as many years. It was also the shortest trip I've ever taken to Japan, considering I didn't arrive in Sapporo until late Thursday night (after about 25 hours in transit), and I left late Sunday night. I didn't spend any time in Tokyo for the first time ever, other than at the airports where I had all kinds of time to kill in between flights (I had never actually had a connecting flight to Sapporo before.. I've always flown to Tokyo with one airline and bought my next ticket separately). I also didn't tell anyone I was going... we ended up meeting with Erina, but my other friends in Japan didn't know I was there until after I had already left. Of course I wanted to stay longer, but for various reasons I was unable to. That's okay, though, because I had a mission to accomplish on this trip.

Thursday

We had a nice dinner. I forgot how delicious horse is. To all you animal lovers (or, more specifically, non-animal-eaters, since Miwako and I both love animals), I feel like you shouldn't be any more offended by the idea of eating a horse than the idea of a cow or a goat or a lamb or a deer or some other similarly-shaped animal. They're all the same. It's equally sad when any one of them dies just to be eaten by humans. No, it's not. Horses are dumb. They deserve to get eaten more than any of those other animals.

Friday

In the morning, we made our way to Sapporo, and after some shopping went to the Sapporo Snow Festival. We didn't have a lot of time, but it was a lot of fun, and we both agreed that the best of show was this thing:

After that, we went to Zenibako to meet up with her family again. Expecting a casual dinner with the family, we instead walked into the house to have her sister & family go hide upstairs and her dad ask me to take a seat across the living room table from me and say "so I hear you have something to say to me". Then came the barrage of questions that were mega hard to understand because of his mega strong accent. Meanwhile, Miwako was kind of half-asleep and distracted by the dog, so I was mostly relying on Mom to be my interpreter. About 30 minutes later he said "okay" (though even that had to be clarified by Mom because I was so damn nervous and worn out by that point), and Miwako and I had her parents' blessing to get married. Dip!

Saturday

On Saturday, we headed to Otaru for the Snow Candle Road Festival thing. It was as beautiful as last year, though it was a little more crowded being the weekend and all, and there weren't as many igloos.

Eventually we found a place that wasn't crawling with people (possibly because it was behind a giant wall of snow overlooking the Otaru canal, which made it cold and windy as shit) and I presented her with the secret gift that wasn't at all a secret and that we had gone shopping for the previous day together. Then I put a ring on Miwako's finger and she "officially" became my fiancee. Success! After that we met up with Erina for some delicious ramen, then for some delicious cocktails at Bar Modern Times. Another first for this trip: I didn't go to karaoke because we ran out of time.

Sunday

On Sunday we relaxed around Miwako's place, walked to the onsen which I had been to a million times before during Rising Sun (but never before during winter), and had another nice dinner. At night, she took me to the airport, and I began the super long return journey to Seattle. Like I said, WAY too short. But I accomplished my main goal of the trip, and later this year Miwako and I will be married. FUN+1!!!

→ → → → EPILOGUE → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → →

So yeah, the whole point of this ridiculously long blog post that very few people will even see, and even fewer will actually read, is to announce my engagement. Ridiculous, yes, but isn't it better than something like:

KURT BEST is engaged to MIWAKO HATANAKA.
about an hour ago ・ Like ・ Comment
3 people like this.

I like to think so. Oh... get it?? LIKE?!?!?!?!? AHAHAHHAHHALOLOLOLOLINTERNET

HOW TO MAKE PUNKIN PIE

2010-11-03T15:10:00.001-07:00

① Carve a pumpkin into something ridiculous. For example:

② Toast the seeds, IDIOT.

③ Dump the pumpkin innards into your food processor. Add some things that seem like they might go in baked goods. Sugar is a good starting point. It might actually be all you need. Some other things to consider might be eggs, nutmeg, cinnamon, ground lamb, etc. Don't measure your ingredients. What is this, science class??? Just dump it all in your food processor and leave the thing running for a while.

④ Dump your orangeish sugar slurry into a pre-made pie crust because you're too lazy to attempt to make your own.

⑤ Set your oven to some temperature at random. It doesn't really matter because your oven will lie to you about the temperature anyway.

⑥ Bake your garbage pie until you're sick of getting up to check on it. Congratulations you are officially the best at cooking ever and will probably win a Nobel Prize for your efforts or whatever.

SERVING SUGGESTION: Don't serve your pumpkin pie with whipped cream because you can't afford whipped cream.

2010.11.02

CHAPPY CHALLOCHWEEN

2010-11-03T15:06:00.001-07:00

2010.10.30

Road to RSR10 in EZO → Sunrise Days 5~9

2010-10-20T15:16:00.000-07:00

I never finished bee-logging about my trip to Japan. There have been many things since then that I wanted to discuss with you, dear imaginary readers, but my love for chronologicity has me stuck thinking that I need to finish this thing before I do the next thing. Well, nuts to that. Here are the rest of the pictures from Sunrise (the days before Rising Sun) that I had ready to show you. You can use their filenames and your own imagination to fill in the story.

2010.08.08

2010.08.09

2010.08.10

2010.08.11

2010.08.12

Road to RSR10 in EZO → Sunrise Day 4

2010-09-12T21:40:00.000-07:00

My stay in Shizuoka was way too short, because it was pretty much time to head back to Tokyo as soon as we got up. We headed towards Shizuoka City, and I bought a ticket for the Shinkansen. We had a little bit of time to kill, so we decided to go visit the giant Gundam statue that I had seen last year in Tokyo with the moped kids, which was now located in Shizuoka. Kengo hadn't seen it before, but when we finally found it and stood in line to see it up close, I was running dangerously short on time before my train left. So we raced back to the station and I just barely made it in time. This visit was way too short... Kengo is one of my closest friends, and I love hanging out in Shizuoka, but with Miwako in the picture, I had to sacrifice Honshuu time for Hokkaido. If I hadn't completely forgotten that a brand new airport had opened in Shizuoka last year, I could have flown directly to Sapporo instead of having to go back to Tokyo, but I guess that's what happens when you spend very little time planning out your travels.

The Shinkansen was disappointing because (a) I didn't get a window seat, and (b) the guy by the window was asleep with the shade drawn the whole time. Oh well, I still got a pretty neat view of Mr. Fuji racing by. In tokyo, I made my way across the city to Haneda Airport, where I remembered that the monorail gives some pretty spectacular views of the city only after I had already sat down in an inconvenient place.

Originally when I was (sort of) planning this trip, I was going to stay in Tokyo for another day or two, but Miwako convinced me to come to Sapporo on Saturday. Then she found out that she had to go to Tokyo for some sort of work training on Friday. Her flight back to Sapporo was about 40 minutes after mine, and it was only like 3 gates over. It was a weird feeling knowing that she was probably in the same building as me, but we both decided that meeting up in Tokyo at the airport just wouldn't feel right. Also, she was with a coworker and we thought it would be awkward to meet for the first time in 6 months in front of her. So I boarded my plane and flew to Hokkaido. I could see at least 10 different fireworks shows going on in various parts of Tokyo and beyond, which was pretty badass since I'd never seen that before. Then I made it to Sapporo and waited for Miwa to show up and then she did and then I introduced her to my good friend Cheburashka. THE END.

2010.08.07

Road to RSR10 in EZO → Sunrise Day 3

2010-09-12T21:18:00.000-07:00

A fun thing about Tokyo in summer is that even if you didn't drink the night before, sleeping in an un-air-conditioned room with no fan can sometimes cause you to wake up feeling like you have a hangover. That was the case whenever I stayed at house of TAKMIZ, and that was the case after staying at Akazou's. After waking up drenched in sweat, taking a shower doesn't seem to help because the second you step out of the shower and start drying off, you're covered with sweat again. Or at least, I'm covered with sweat again. Gross. After packing up my things, I headed out for Musashiseki to see the new TAKMIZ house and to hang out with Mizue. She still hadn't fully recovered from the stroke, so I nearly headed out really far from where they actually live until Takkun called me and gave me proper directions. When I saw her in winter, we didn't really have all that much time to talk, so it was fun catching up. Her Japanese is about at the same level as mine, which was kind of funny, but also a little comforting. She showed me her various study materials, and although her reading and writing are probably a little better than mine was when I lived in Otaru and still tried to read and write, she felt the need to apologize for how difficult of a language it can be to learn, since she can now sympathize with every student of Japanese ever. So we hung out and had lunch, played with Tsukuru, and I got to spend some quality time with my old friend, TanTan the cat. GiGi, whom I helped rescue three years earlier when he was an abandoned kitten, didn't seem to remember me, but I guess being an abandoned kitten makes you scared of everything.

Eventually I made my way to Ueno so I could [barely] get on a bus headed towards Shizuoka. I can't go to Japan in summer without going to visit Kengo! This was my 6th summer adventure to Japan, and the 6th time I'd gone to Shizuoka (and the 5th time I forgot how to get to where Kengo lives). Traffic on the highways was super crazy due to whatever holiday was going on, so the bus took an extra hour to get to Shizuoka. Finally I arrived, and Kengo and I went and gorged ourselves on some pretty fantastic yakiniku. The food in Shizuoka never disappoints. It was disappointing, however, that ever since the police started cracking down on drinking and driving, people play it way too safe. So while I enjoyed delicious beer, Kengo had a non-alcoholic beer.

After eating, we met up with Chiaki and headed out to the ocean to play with fireworks. Just like last year, she was the designated driver so that Kengo and I could drink (including inside the car, which happened twice during this trip... another weird Japanese drinking cultural thing to add to my list). Good times. After that, it was back to Kengo's house to drink and/or relax, because Shizuoka is good for those sorts of things.

2010.08.06

Road to RSR10 in EZO → Sunrise Day 2

2010-09-06T16:03:00.000-07:00

DAY 2
Mopeds in Tokyo! Again! I didn't really have plans for today, and sora and Tsucchee! were both free, so I borrowed one of Akazou's mopeds so we could go riding around. Then it broke down several blocks from his house. So I got to ride Tsucchee's moped back to Akazou's house to borrow his other moped. Then we went on a short ride to find lunch, where we met up with sora. The three of us rode around for a bit until we found Hana Yashiki a weird tiny amusement park buried in the middle of Tokyo, where we were met by Tok. The place kind of reminded me of that weird tiny amusement park in Portland. The best part was when you first get on the tiny roller coaster which was CLEARLY meant for children. There's a diagram showing you not to drop things on the ride, including your camera, money, and cigarettes. Like, they made it really obvious that you shouldn't drop your cigarettes while riding the roller coaster meant for children.

Aaaanyway.... after being amused for a while, we rode around some more and ended up in one of my favorite places in Tokyo that I hadn't been to in many years, Kappa Bashi. Besides the fact that walking down the street makes you feel like you NEED to open your own restaurant as soon as possible, there are a couple of shops featuring the best thing in the world, plastic samples of food. I swear that someday I will buy an ￥8000 bowl of fake ramen and display it proudly in my front window.

After that, we headed back to Akazou's place to park mopeds, and my moped experience #2 in Tokyo was complete. We walked to a nearby Chinese restaurant, and met up with Sako, another one of the moped kids that I got to hang out with (and get drunk with) last summer. The food, of which there was a ton of, was awesome. Akazou kept insisting that I drink some sort of Chinese alcoholic beverage. It was strong and pretty easy to drink, but somehow it tasted very Chinese. After eating, of course, we went to karaoke. By this point, it was just Akazou and sora and I, but Tokyo Mopedder's president, Billy, made a cameo appearance. The three of us boys pretty much just sang Unicorn all night, and apparently the only song that sora sang I missed because you had to take an elevator to a far away place just to use the restroom. Oh well, I'll just assume she was a badass.

Also, HERE is Tsucchee!'s account of the day. Notice (or not since you probably don't read Japanese) that he didn't refer to me by name... he called me the American from Seattle. Weird.

2010.08.05

Road to RSR10 in EZO → Sunrise Day 1

2010-08-26T22:41:00.000-07:00

DAY 1
As I am prone to do every summer, I had Josh Smurr drive me to the aerospaceport so I could lose a day of my life in order to travel to China or Japan or whatever. Honestly, I didn't even really want to go. I hate that place.

SIKE!

When I made my first winter return trip to YARPON earlier this year, I told my friends that I was going to come back this summer and do the usual "travel around and see everyone" thing, because that trip was mostly all about spending time with Miwako. Well... I lied. Sorry, frieands. Or at least, frieands who aren't Miwako. So anyway, after a billion hours on a plane, I arrived at Narita Airport, only to meet Antique◇Cube (the coolest nickname ever) holding one of Los Dorados' shop rags! I sort of told sora (who came to visit Seattle for our moped rally a month earlier) that I was going to be in around 5, but I was planning on just taking a bus to the city like I usually do and figuring things out from there. Instead, she managed to use that information to figure out exactly what flight I was on. That's pretty damn impressive, because I didn't fly directly from Seattle, I had a layover in Portland. Also, my flight showed up 40 minutes early. Also, I didn't bother checking luggage (for the first time ever, actually), so I wasted no time getting through Customs because I had no idea what I was going to do that first night. But there was Cube, waiting to drive me around in his chariot. Wow! The moped kids also worked together to find a place for me to stay, since I hadn't really figured that out, either. So Cube took me to Akazou's ("Red Elephant") place. I took a desperately needed shower and we ate some korokke before Cube drove me to my next destination, Yukotopia. I didn't think I would have a chance to see Dachambo this time around unless I went to Kyoto, something I didn't really have the time or money to pull off. But then I found out they were doing a show my first night in Tokyo, so I couldn't miss it. I could have sworn Yukotopia was in Yokohama, so I was all confused when the address was in some place called Adachi-ku. Good thing Cube gave me a ride, I probably would have gotten lost trying to figure out how to get there by train. After a while it became apparent that I was thinking of Grass Roots, and that I actually had been to Yukotopia before. Five years previously, it was where I saw and met Dachambo for the first time. With that mystery solved... sorry about the boring story.

It was a good show. Dachambo's very own AO (who had cut off his beautiful dreadlocks due to having a child now and Japan being "dangerous") warned me that Dachambo's shows were getting more and more awesome. He wasn't kidding... they totally rocked out. This is good news, because it should make attempting to get them back to the States easier than promoting them as a "jam band". After the show, I hung out and got drunk with the band and other Dachambo Villagers (including a friend from Sapporo, which was random) for a while. They didn't have someone to drive their bus to the event in Kyoto on Friday, and knowing that I had my International Driver's License, they asked if I wanted to do it. Driving a tour bus, a free ticket to a wicked awesome show, a place to stay, and a chance to meet up with my old friend Brian before he comes back to The Americraine? HELL YEAH I'll do it! Later I realized that it was kind of a terrible idea. Between jet lag and never having had driven in Japan (on the left side of the road and everything), I would have felt really bad when I fell asleep behind the wheel during a 6-hour drive and killed my favorite band. Miwako would have been pissed about that, too.

Yeah, so yeah. If I'm ever going to get through this adventure recap, I need to stop typing so much. I barely made the last train(s) back to Akazou's house, where Cube and Tsuchee! (also of Blood Drive 7 fame) and Akazou were waiting for me so we could continue drinking until I basically passed out due to exhaustion. Welcomed back to Tokyo, it was!

2010.08.04

Blood Drive 7 Moped Rally in Seattle, WA presented by Mosquito Fleet

2010-08-20T11:19:00.000-07:00

DAY 1

2010.07.13

DAY 2

2010.07.14

DAY 3

2010.07.15

DAY 4

2010.07.16

DAY 5

2010.07.17

DAY 6

2010.07.18

DAY 7

2010.07.19

DAY 8

2010.07.20

Road to Sapporo Yuki Matsuri 2010 in EZO

2010-07-28T20:44:00.000-07:00

2010.02.04 ~ 02.16
半年前に日本行ってきました。来週はまた日本行きます。やっと写真アップしました。
Six months after my last Japan and one week before my next trip, I've finally uploaded the pictures from my winter expedition to EZO.

Swimming at Greenlake

2010-07-09T14:59:00.000-07:00

2010.07.08

4 Years

2010-07-09T11:49:00.000-07:00

On July 6th, 2006, I first set foot in Seattle. In the four years since then I have become slightly more educated, joined a moped gang and have ridden bikes that are older than myself tens of thousands of miles all over the country (at about 30 mph), made a lot of great friends and bitter enemies (well... not really. just the one.), made slight progress on my own music, and I finally tricked my favorite person in the world into being my first legitimate girlfriend in a ridiculously long time.

But still, ever since I first left Japan 7 years ago, I've always said that I'll live there again someday. I've even gone back to visit 6 times since then. The whole reason I ended up in Seattle in the first place was so I could work towards that goal. So for a while now I've been saying that want to make it happen in the summer of 2011. Now I've decided to pick a date... July 6th. Seattle: please help me enjoy the hell out of my 5th and final year in this amazing city. Everyone else: come visit me in Seattle before I leave forever!

2010.07.09

Song of the Month 2010.04 - Portuguese Man o' Space

2010-05-28T13:17:00.000-07:00

Song of the Month 2010 #4

Song title: Portuguese Man o' Space
Audio files: http://kurtasbestos.com/ongaks/Panda_Left-Portuguese_Man_o_Space_(Gastrozoid).mp3 (plus version)
http://kurtasbestos.com/ongaks/Panda_Left-Portuguese_Man_o_Space_(Pneumophore).mp3 (original version)
Date Recorded: 2010.04.30 (plus version) 2009.09.22ish (original version)
Equipment: KORG DS-10 Plus (plus version), KORG DS-10 (original version), KORG D888

Concept: Two songs this month! Sort of. Not really. The day after I got my first KORG DS-10 in the mail, Tagen and I drove down to Portland to meet up with our friends for Brendan's birfday weekend. I played around with it in the car, sort of creating sounds that I could play along with whatever we were listening to at the time. Since the DS-10 was still so new to me, I kept experimenting with random sounds and trying new things, creating completely different synth sounds in every pattern. Eventually I realized that I could keep all the madness and turn it into an actual song, so my first full DS-10 song was completed in this way. Nearly a year after I started the first song, I got the updated KORG DS-10 Plus in the mail. You can't use all of its features (including the ability to double the total number of sounds you can use by loading two songs at once) unless you have a Nintendo DSi. So I pre-ordered a DSi XL, and as soon as it showed up I decided that my first DS-10 Plus song should be an updated version of my first ever DS-10 song. Hence, this month I'm presenting both versions so you can hear the difference for yourself.

Process: Like I said above, the original version came together as I was playing around with as many different sounds as possible until I eventually found a way to cobble the various patterns I had created together into a song. Creating the DS-10 Plus version was a more logical process, since I was mostly using the added instruments to create transitions that would help tie the random-sounding random sounds together into some kind of a coherent song. Along the way, I discovered a lot of the strengths and weaknesses of the DS-10 Plus over the previous version. In particular, the song mode which was previously next to useless is now EXTREMELY helpful (especially when it comes to things like muting multiple tracks at once). It almost feels like cheating to use it, since it makes it much easier to program in a song to do some things that are hard to do on the fly, while still giving the user a huge amount of freedom to improvise. Too bad they didn't increase the maximum song length.. It was hard to squeeze this song into 200 measures.

Comments: Here's another "hard techno"-ish song... not quite the kind of music that I WANT to make, but I had a lot of fun doing it. My songs seem to follow a pattern... they build up the excitement to a quiet section, which is immediately followed by a loud section (or the other way around), then it sort of reprises the first part of the song before working towards an exciting conclusion. I need to work on not doing that every time.

Song of the Month 2010.03 - 別れ霜

2010-04-17T17:19:00.000-07:00

Song of the Month 2010 #3

Song title: 別れ霜 ("wakarejimo")
Audio file: http://kurtasbestos.com/ongaks/Panda_Left-wakarejimo.mp3
Date Recorded: 2010.03.31
Equipment: KORG DS-10, KORG D888

Concept: I'm not really sure when I started this one, but I think it was just something I randomly started one day on the walk to work when whatever song I was working on was starting to get frustrating. It has a decidedly more "heavy" sound than the songs I usually make, and at some point I decided that I kind of liked it, so I started working towards completing it.

Process: One of the first things I experimented with on this song were sounds that span multiple loops. I got about as far as the first "breakdown" thing, and it wasn't until I realized the potential of that one drum sound that lasts several loops that I decided what direction I wanted to take the song. The rest came together pretty easily after that, and I was actually surprised to find that I was doing a good job of conserving patterns up until the end. I finished this song before the end of March, but having very little time left towards the end, the final transition and last section could definitely use some work. Oh yeah, and I haven't done anything about stereo effects and placement. Overall, though, I'm pretty happy with how quickly I was able to whip this song together.

Comments: Another month, another DS-10 song. As I mentioned previously, my DS-10 family has motivated me to spend more time working on music. My main hope was that besides working on these songs, it would encourage me to work on my much fancier songs that utilize my Electribe and Triton at home. The song of the month for March was supposed to be one of those songs, but the first half of the month was spent re-learning how to play that song, and after that I had a hard time continuing it. I think with the DS-10's songs only having 16 patterns, filling them up is a clear goal to work towards, and I don't have that with my other songs. Oh well... this screws up my plans for the next few songs of the month(s?), but hopefully I'll either finish two songs in one month, or finish March's song for April and go from there.

Song of the Month 2010.02 - ezo09

2010-03-11T23:07:00.000-08:00

Song of the Month 2010 #2

Song title: ezo09 ("ezonine")
Audio file: http://kurtasbestos.com/ongaks/Panda_Left-ezo09.mp3
Date Recorded: 2010.02.28
Equipment: KORG DS-10, KORG D888
Instruments: broken jaw harp

Concept: I started this song last summer during the 5-hour wait in line to get inside Rising Sun 2010. I continued working on it occasionally when I had time to kill (the train to Nayoro and the bus to Shizuoka), and on the plane back home at the end of the trip. Because February marks the halfway point between Rising Sun 2010 and 2011, I decided that would be the best time to release it.

Process: I actually finished this song pretty shortly after coming back to the States, but something wasn't quite right. The DS-10 only allows you 16 patterns per song, and I had already filled them all up, but I didn't have a good transition to lead into the ending. At the "quiet" part at 3:20, I also had a quieter pattern. Unfortunately, you can't set a separate tempo for each pattern, which is sort of what I wanted there (so the tempo would speed back up slowly during the transition into the end), so I ended up getting rid of that pattern entirely in order to make room for the transition at 4:30. I'm pretty happy with that decision. The jaw harp was pretty spontaneous... I thought about adding one about 2 days before I started practicing for the recording. Unfortunately, the only jaw harp I had in the right key is broken, which made it hard to play. Otherwise... some other things I tried in this song were messing with effects (as they fade in and out) and messing with the swing setting, which does... that. Swing. Actually, messing with that was the first thing I did with this song, so it ended up being pretty integral to the whole thing.

Comments: I had this recording done before the end of February, and even posted it up on my diary on Mixi, but I didn't want to post it here until I finished my traveblog. It was a lot easier to record than January's song, but still, I could have used more practice. There are a couple of fade-outs that end too quickly, and one cymbol that I didn't mute fast enough, but otherwise it turned out more or less like I wanted it to.

Road to Sapporo Yuki Matsuri in EZO 2010 → Day 11

2010-03-11T22:08:00.000-08:00

I guess there's not really much to say about my last day, other than it sucking. After getting up and getting ready, Miwako and I ate breakfast at about quarter after 5 in the morning. I wasn't very hungry, but it was my last meal with her until summer, so I ate.

Mom came downstairs shortly thereafter, and we went to the train station around 6. We were actually pretty early, but with my terrible luck I wasn't taking any chances. We were on a local train (meaning it stops at every little stop along the way, though there aren't as many between Zenibako and Sapporo as there are between Zenibako and Otaru), but it turned into a rapid train in Sapparo. Still, it took over an hour to get to the airport. We attempted to stay awake, but the awkward silence of the train and our absolute exhaustion made that impossible.

The first time I ever left Japan after my year-long exchange program, Mizue saw me off at the very same airport. We were both crying, but she wanted to stay with me until the last possible minute. That turned out to be when they called my name over the speakers. Oops. The next summer, when she and I weren't officially dating anymore, but also weren't really sure of our status, she saw me off again, and this time, they sent a person out into the main terminal to find me. Miwako and I had a little time to say goodbye, but not wanting to repeat the past, at some point I said "well... I guess I should probably go". We were okay up to that point, but when we made the walk towards the security area, that's when we were suddenly both on the verge of tears. Then I heard the final call for my flight. Oops.

It was probably better that way... we didn't have a long, drawn-out goodbye, and instead of crying, we were laughing. I booked it to my gate, and though there were people sitting around and the boarding supposedly started 15 minutes earlier, there was no one to be seen at the gate itself. Eventually someone showed up, and they started actually boarding. Jeez. Then my flight left, and I sadly said goodbye to Hokkaido for the 8th time in my life.

In Tokyo, I immediately took the highway bus from one airport to the next, and had enough time before my next flight to call Miwako and talk for a while. For some reason I didn't have a window seat on my flight home (I ALWAYS have a window seat), but the aisle was extra wide, so that wasn't bad. I mostly slept, but I decided to watch this ridiculous (yet entertaining) movie. Miwako had also prepared a sandwich and an onigiri for me, which was nice. After leaving Miwako's house at 6am on Monday, I arrived in Seattle at 6:30am on Monday. Huh? I spent the only Americrainian money I had on a ticket for the Link Light Rail, only to discover that you can't use those tickets to transfer to the Metro bus (even though you can transfer the other way). Damnit. So then I had to wander around downtown Seattle carrying all my luggage all grossly early in the morning trying to find an ATM and then somewhere that was actually open in order to find change. Damnit. Eventually I did and I got on the bus. Finally, at about 9:30am I returned to my normal life when I reached my destination... my office.

Man, talk about a disappointing end to an awesome adventure.

2010.02.15

Road to Sapporo Yuki Matsuri in EZO 2010 → Day 10

2010-03-05T12:35:00.000-08:00

After checking out of SUPER HOTEL SUPER EARLY in the morning, we once again headed towards the train station to drop our stuff off in a coin locker. We then headed to the Morning Market to search for food. We agreed that uncooked seafood was in order, and found a restaurant that served a bowl of rice covered with raw things, only you got to select the raw things. I opted for squid, ikura, salmon, and tuna. Miwako basically had the same thing, except scallops instead of tuna. I had seen all kinds of touristy seafood places like this in Otaru a million times before, and being sleep-deprived, I misinterpreted the menu to mean it would be really expensive. It wasn't, and it was tasty. Walking around the maze of streets filled with seafood and souvenir vendors, we couldn't help but wonder how people living that lifestyle manage to survive when it looks like everyone else is selling the exact same things within a very small radius. Weird.

After breakfast, we took the street car thing past good ol' SUPER HOTEL towards the actual factual downtown-like area of Hakodate (which I had assumed was around the train station until we saw the city from above), and to Goryokaku Fort, which is (or was, really) not only one of the very few castles in Hokkaido, but also shaped like a star for some reason. We went to the top of the air traffic controller-like tower first to get a view of the park first, which has a fantastic view of not only the park/fort/star, but all of Hakodate. Off to the south east where the onsen we stayed at was was mostly clear, and there was a clear view across the water to Aomori. The area around Hakodate Station and Mt. Hakodate was visible at first, but then was devoured by a giant series of clouds that dumped snow on the city, while the mountains to the north of the city kept disappearing and reappearing in the clouds. It was neat. The fort itself looked HUGE when seen from space, and there were a million billion sakura trees, which probably means there are a million billion people there in spring.

We then headed down into the park itself. Unfortunately, certain parts were blocked off, possibly because of some kind of winter festival, so we ended up getting trapped in a corner of the park near the winter festival of some kind. We were able to climb over a wall, and then down to the inside of the outermost moat, but at some point we hit a dead end and had to turn back. We really only made it about 2/5ths of the way around, but it was still pretty.

We took a break in a cafe at the base of the giant tower for some coffee and to exchange Valentine's Day presents before making our way back to Hakodate Station. We weren't at all looking forward to a 5-hour ride on the uncomfortabus back to hang out with Miwako's mom on our last night together, but the walk to the street car thing was awesome... the combination of ridiculously slippery sidewalks, lack of sleep, and our best inside jokes from the past few days probably made us look like complete idiots to people around us. I'm okay with that. When we got on the bus back to Sapporo, we lucked out and were placed all the way in the back where the seats are actually next to each other (seat-seat-seat-seat instead of seat-aisle-seat-aisle-seat). We alternated between enjoying the beautiful scenery and falling asleep until it was too dark to see anything outside, when we made our best attempt at napping. Stupid unfomfortabus.

Many hours later, we made it back to Zenibako, where Mom was patiently waiting for us with a steaming hot vat of nikujaga (literally "MEAT POTATO"). Although we didn't exactly want to spend our last night together with Miwako's mom, I do have to give her mad props for watching The Lost World: Jurassic Park. I didn't even notice until we were eating and all of a sudden I realized the sounds coming from the TV behind me were incredibly familiar. Man. Japanese voices dubbed over anything are so fake-sounding. Anyway, Mom of course hung out with us for a while, and when we realized that in order to make my flight in the morning, we would have to take the absolute earliest train possible, she offered to drive us to the airport. I straight up told her no, that was NOT going to happen. F'real, yo. Eventually she wandered off to bed, so Miwako and I had like... 2 hours together before it was time to wake up.

2010.02.14

Road to Sapporo Yuki Matsuri in EZO 2010 → Day 9

2010-03-05T00:15:00.000-08:00

On Saturday morning, we were sure to wake up at a decent hour so we could still enjoy the onsen before checkout. We made the tail end of breakfast in the dining hall, where I remembered that Japanese-style breakfast at places like this is always incredibly disappointing. I wish I could describe it better... it's always a collection of really weird Japanesey things that you don't see very often (a lot of mysterious slimy seaweed things), things that I wouldn't consider breakfast food (like one specific tofu dish I can't remember the name of which is good but would be way tastier as a side dish to a more substantial meal), or things that are just plain gross (remember when I told you about shiokara???). As a big fat Americrainian, I demand copious amounts of sugar first thing in the morning, and the closest thing I could find to something sweet was toast. Partway through eating, I started feeling kind of gross, and at first I thought it was just because of the disappointing breakfast selection, but then at some point I realized that I was incredibly dehydrated. Surprisingly, spending a lot of time in various bathtubs and drinking a lot of alcohol while drinking very little water will do that to you. I stocked up on fluids as best as I could (asbestos), because we wanted to relax in the tub in our room for a little while before it was time to check out.

After leaving the hotel, we had several hours to kill before we could check in to our next hotel, so we took a bus towards Hakodate Station. On the way, the combination of being dehydrated and the fact that the bus felt like it was a thousand degrees inside, I suddenly felt incredibly nauseous and we had to get off the bus. It turned out it wasn't a very long walk anyway. But that's when we discovered that even though there wasn't as much snow on the ground as there had been in Otaru and Sapporo, there was a thick covering of incredibly slippery ice on every surface in the city. We carefully made our way to the train station and stashed our stuff in a coin locker, then roamed around for a while checking out the town until I felt too gross to go on. We then found a cafe and looked at the guide book that Miwako had purchased and made a rough plan for the rest of our time in Hakodate.

By the way, at some point I took a picture of this alley because it was really neat looking. Then I realized what I was actually taking a picture of, and made sure to get a good shot of it. Can you guess what kind of meat the shop in the left side of this picture sells???

Don't worry, it's okay to hate the Japanese for the horrible things they do.

At some point in the afternoon, we were able to check in to our hotel, so we walked back in the direction from whence we came and checked into SUPER HOTEL. Considering it was incredibly cheap, it was actually really comfy, and had all kinds of good things going for it (like a wall of pillows in the lobby where you can select a pillow based on your personal preferences). The weird twin-sized bunkbed above our queen-sized bed was a little weird, though. After a much-needed nap, we headed back into the town. We took one of the street car things that prowl Hakodate and made our way to the red brick district. Like Otaru, there are a bunch of old brick warehouses that have been converted into shops and restaurants and such. Just like Otaru, most of the touristy shops were pretty ridiculous, but it was fun walking through the maze of buildings, and the night illumination was certainly pretty.

Miwako's guidebook had a number of recommendations for food, so we ended up settling on a place called "The Very Very Beast" (we both thought it was "Bistro", but boy were we in for a surprise when we got there. Miwako had omurice and I had hambagu, both of which were ridiculously tasty. Thanks, guide book! The restaurant itself had a weird 1950's America theme going on it, so I'm not sure what the "Beast" was all about.

After dinner we walked up a big hill with that was all lit up and had an awesome view of the waterfront, as well as being incredibly treacherous to walk on from all the ice, and made our way to the Hakodate Ropeway, which took us on a ride to the top of Mt. Hakodate. From here, we had an amazing (and cold) view of the entire city squished in between the ocean on both sides. Hakodate turned out to be a lot bigger than either of us expected. What was also interesting was seeing the lights of civilization spread along the coast for a very long way in either direction. It was also neat walking to the other side of the observatory and seeing the lights from Aomori across the ocean or channel or sea or whatever.

When it got too cold, we made our way back to SUPER HOTEL and relaxed, buying beer on the way (naturally). We even saw a little of the opening ceremony for the Olympics.

2010.02.13

Road to Sapporo Yuki Matsuri in EZO 2010 → Day 8

2010-03-02T23:05:00.000-08:00

It truly wouldn't be a trip to Japan or a trip to see with Miwako without some kind of fantastic adventure involved. When Miwako asked what I wanted to do in Japan, the first thing I said was "go stay in an onsen", which is pretty much my favorite thing to do in Japan. Besides karaoke. And eating delicious things. And drinking in public. And going to shows. And CD hunting. And... okay fine, whatever, it's one of many things that I like doing in Japan. We tossed some ideas around, and then settled on going to Hakodate. I was excited about this for many reasons. Hakodate is one of the bigger cities in Hokkaido (I guess), and along with Otaru, one of the most attractive cities in Hokkaido to tourists. Yet, I had never been there. In fact, looking at a map of Hokkaido, that weird dangly peninsula-looking thing at the southwest part of Hokkaido is about the only part of the entire island [with stuff in it] that I haven't been to.

So we woke up grotesquely early and took the train to Sapporo, and then a taxi to the bus terminal (there are like.. 8 bus terminals in and around Sapporo station, so this was the first time I caught a bus somewhere else). I would like to mention that the taxi driver hung pictures of his cat up next to his driver permit license thing. Ready for an exciting 5-hour bus ride, we got on the bus and discovered that it was the least comfortable bus possible. Seriously... one row consisted of a single seat by the window, a foot-and-a-half-wide aisle, another single seat, a 2-foot-wide aisle, and the third seat, by the other window. We had reserved two seats together, and since they have assigned seating on highway buses of this sort, they placed us together. On either side of the wide aisle. Miwako sat in the middle so I could have the window. Then they placed another woman on her other side. Once or twice, the bus stopped to let other people on, but for the entire 5 hours, there was no one in the aisle in front of us, and no one in the aisle behind us. Not only was it the least comfortable bus possible, it was also the least romantic. We couldn't even hold hands. Jeez. Oh well, at least the scenery was incredibly pretty when we were awake to see it. We drove through heavy snow most of the way through rolling hills and mountains and tunnels, with snow-covered trees everywhere. When the mountains opened up, there were incredible views of the ocean and small towns on the coast. Getting closer to Hakodate, there was a very impressive double-peaked volcano that was solid white and dwarfed everything around it. When we got to Hakodate, I didn't notice much of the city because the bus took us straight to our onsen. I did, however, notice an amazing view of the ocean where you could see across to Honshu (aka mainland Japan). Nice.

After checking in at Yu no Kawa Onsen, we went to our room to check out the highlight of the place: we had a private bath in our room. I don't mean a bathtub... I mean a bath that is kept at a very high temperature, and is being supplied with water from actual factual hot spring in the area that also supplies water to the large community bath in the hotel. It's also located on our balcony. Fucking awesome (sorry Mom, I know you read this thing, too, but I can't think of a better way to express myself than with profanity).

We immediately changed into our Yukatas (aka "those things I stole from onsens many years ago that I often wear as pajamas") and... took a nap until dinnertime. I mean, besides being the most disappointing bus ever, the seats were uncomfortable and hard to sleep on. Anyway, just like how IDIOTS will go to a place like this and get a room without a private bath (though... I guess for families and stuff... whatever, they're IDIOTS), there was a banquet hall for IDIOTS. We, however, had our own private eating area in the in-hotel restaurant thing. There was a hot pot filled to capacity with tasty things (we couldn't eat it all) waiting for us, as well as various kinds of sashimi (Hakodate is famous for squid, and the squid we ate was AWESOME), and crap legs. There were also other random tasty things. Plus we had a sweet view overlooking the courtyard of the hotel, which was illuminated at night. The best part, though, was that right next to our dining room was the self-serve boozeohol room... and it was a nomihoudai. Miwako was ridiculously excited by this prospect, and before we even tried to start eating, she went and got us beer, then went back and got TWO things of sake, then went back again and got a thing of shochu. She's so adorable. So we ate a million tasty things, and drank a million tasty things, and it was great.

After dinner, we took some time to explore the hotel, which is one of my favorite past times. Considering that the place was filled to capacity, it was a Friday night, and there should have been a wave of tourists in Hakodate, it was pretty empty. Or everyone was in the bath or eating after we finished. We found a ping pong room that had no paddles, so we played with our slippers.

Then there was a game room where we proved to each other just how unskilled we are at games like Go and Shogi by playing Othello on the Go board, and Miwako's version of Jenga on the Shogi board. After exploring a kind of creepy wing of the hotel that looked like a museum's rendition of what a night life street looks like where we couldn't tell if the various establishments were just closed, or actually part of some weird exhibit, we took to the streets to find a convenience store to stock up on booze, and then hit up the hotel's actual factual baths. I feel like a jerk and a half for not secretly taking my waterproof camera into the bath with so I could show it to you, the viewer, because at first there was no one in there. It was also really steamy in the room and hard to see anything. There were only about four different baths, one of which was painfully hot. But the real draw was (of course) the rotemburo. I spent most of my time outside enjoying the cold air, the hot water, and the fact that I had an amazing view of Mars from where I was sitting. We didn't spend too much time in the big bath, of course, because we didn't need to. We met up and returned to our room, opened the windows on the balcony, opened our bottle of sake, and enjoyed our own private onsen.

Fucking awesome. Times a million billion.

2010.02.12

Road to Sapporo Yuki Matsuri in EZO 2010 → Day 7

2010-03-02T11:06:00.000-08:00

While the main point of this trip was to see Miwakorn, what kind of a jerk would I be if I spent thousands of dollars to fly thousands of miles and didn't bother seeing my other friends? That kind of jerk. I had contacted a few people beforehand, but I talk to Kutchan on a semi-regular basis, so I let him know what was up and figured he'd do the work of organizing everyone else for me. Sucker.

Last summer, I spent a lot of time with Kutchan, and we traded girlie stories. While I was getting ever closer to tricking Miwako into dating me, he also had a girl whom he'd had a giant crush on for a really long time, Pigutan (don't worry, at one point after meeting her I learned her real name but immediately forgot it). He started dating she around the same time Miwako started dating me. I knew I wasn't going to be able to get Miwako to meet the whole Rising Sun gang, but she was at least up to the challenge of a double date with Kutchan and Pigutan (I had never met Pigutan, Kutchan had never met Miwako). But... because Kutchan was reliable indeed, he scheduled a get-together with 10 of our Rising Sun frieands, and not surprisingly, I couldn't convince Miwako to go along. DON'T WORRY, I did spend most of the day with her, though.

Once again, we took our time getting up, and for some reason her mom insisted on driving us to Sapporo, even though she's afraid of driving both in the big scary city and during winter. We went to one of my favorite music stores, Weird-Meddle Records, where I picked up the newest releases from my favorite Sapporo band qodibop (which is pronounced by saying each letter individually), and also picked up a CD by another Sapporo band that I had previously only heard of, olololop, which turned out to be totally awesome. We then went to Tower Records, where I picked up, among other things that I couldn't afford back in August, the latest by OOIOO to complete my collection of bands with weird names. Sadly, when we were looking for a guidebook to Hakodate, we discovered that the bookstore on the floor below Tower Records had gone out of business since last summer, which is weird because it was the book store I most frequently frequented in Japan since I was an exchange student.

After roaming around for a while, we ended up in Susukino, which was hosting its own addition to the Sapporo Snow Festival, the Susukino Ice Festival. Instead of big sculptures made from snow, the big sculptures in Susukino were made from fire. I mean ice. Whatever. Perhaps the most perplexing was the big ice sculpture of Gundam entitled, "Gundam in Odaiba". Why was it named after the life-size Gundam sculpture in Tokyo? Why didn't they just name it "Gundam", or "Gundam's 20th Anniversary" or something? Weirdos. Another awesome series of ice sculptures featured actual factual delicious sea creatures preserved in blocks of ice (see below). When I went to this thing with Mizue a million years ago, the weather was warm enough that the ice was starting to melt and the fish were starting to drip various fluids, but this time around all of the ice sculptures were intact.

After Miwako saw me off at the subway station, I randomly ran into one of my favorite people in Sapporo, Nao, in the subway station on the way to hunt down my frieands. We met up with everyone at an awesome yakitori place, where we ate many tasty things and enjoyed a nomihoudai (I already posted an informative link to that one, right??). It was weird not only seeing everyone only 6 months after the last time, but also in winter. Yet another thing that made me feel at home in Hokkaido. Among those present were Chihirock, Asami and Yochan (whose wedding this coming July I REALLY wish I could attend), Nishio, Natsu (minus Yusaku, sadly), Hiropon, and a girl from our Rising Sun group whose name I can't remember. Oops. Oh yeah, and Pigutan, who I met for the first time. It was fun catching up with everyone, but not feeling like I had been away forever. I got asked a million questions about Miwako, and everyone was disappointed that they didn't get to meet her, but we're all hoping that I can get my two friend groups to merge for the Rising Sun 2010.

After our nomihoudai time was up, Nao, Natsu, and Asami had to leave, but the rest of us went to karaoke. It was like a small version of my going-away party last summer. Once again, I stuck to the ol' standbys. I sang Unicorn with Kutchan and Yochan, and a million Fishmans and Polaris songs with Chihirock. This time around, I went all out with the high-pitched wailing on Yurameki in the Air and couldn't stop smiling the whole time. Alas, the kids kept trying to get me to stay, but I had to catch the last subway to the last train back to Zenibako. So I said goodbye, and drunkenly made my way back home. Next time I will trick Miwako into meeting my friends. Next time.

2010.02.11

Road to Sapporo Yuki Matsuri in EZO 2010 → Day 6

2010-03-01T12:19:00.000-08:00

Today was our day of rest. For lunch, we walked down to a soba restaurant that Miwako had a part time job at for several years. She had a cold soba dish, and I had udon, which was another item on my list of things to eat on this trip. Miwako hadn't been back to that shop for a few years (in spite of it being about a 5-minute walk from her house), so all of the staff that was around came out to say hi.

On the way home, we picked up a selection of weird flavors of Chu-Hi that I'll never get to drink in The Americraine (by the way, I disagree with many things in that Wikipedia article, but I'm not about to do anything about it), and we watched Hachimitsu to Clover, a movie I've been trying to find forever that features a bunch of actors I like and a million others that I've seen in other good movies.

For dinner, we gathered with Maw and Paw and ate Jingiskan, one of my favorite Hokkaidoian foods. After dinner, Mom and Miwako and I went to an onsen in Asari near where I used to have a part-time job as a bartender a million years ago. Going into an onsen by yourself can be a little boring, especially when the women folk are on the other side (because they take longer, what with having to dry their hair and reapply their makeup afterwards, of course). There were 3 or 4 baths of varying temperatures inside, plus a smaller cold water bath (my favorite), a couple of therapeutic baths (one has you sitting on a bench with two super powerful jets of water dropping from the ceiling onto your shoulders, the other has you sitting in a bath in a cubbyhole-like section with underwater jets spraying at you from all directions), and two kinds of saunas (or maybe one was a steam room... they seemed very similar). But the main draw, and indeed one of the main reasons I've wanted to go to Hokkaido in winter forever was the Rotenburo. It was everything I had hoped for. It was really cold outside, and it started snowing big awesome flakes. The snow around the bath was carved into some character, and there were snow candles like in Otaru. There was even a nice (well, dark) view of the mountain behind the place. After a little while, the wind picked up, so there was a nice cold-ass breeze that felt awesome when immediately followed by a dip in the water. My hair even froze a little bit. Fantastic. I love Hokkaido.

An interesting side note, I didn't realize it until trying to find a link to information on what a rotenburo is, but we went to the very same onsen that gained media attention (sort of) for being discriminatory against honkey crackers like myself. The weirdo who sued the place even has his own Wikipedia article. I guess in the back of my mind, I knew about that case, and that it was somewhere around where we were going, but since they let me in I guess I didn't really think about it all that much.

Back home, Miwako's Mom of course wanted to drink with us some more. She had seen some of the various drawrings and painterings and such that I had given to Miwako in the past, and wanted to show off the art that she used to do. It was good, but she drew people and fashions to be used for newspaper advertisements, whereas most of my stuff is abstract. Then she challenged me to a drawing competition, where we each had one half of a big sheet of paper and went nuts. It was fun because her best attempts at being abstract kept failing because it's not something she does. I, on the other hand, like to let my mind go blank and just see what happens. Meanwhile, Miwako was trying not to fall asleep from the combination of bathing and beer. Eventually Mom went to sleep, though, so we could actually spend time talking to each other.

2010.02.10

Road to Sapporo Yuki Matsuri in EZO 2010 → Day 5

2010-02-26T12:55:00.000-08:00

Until I landed at New Chitose Airport, I did not realize that Otaru's very own winter festival, Otaru Yuki Akari no Michi (Otaru Snow-Light-Street or something) was happening at the same time as Sapporo's big snow thing. I WAS NOT EVEN AWARE OF THIS!!!

Miwako and I left for Otaru in the early afternoon, and my host family came to pick us up at the station near their work. I guess I was never all that clear on what they do... and I'm still not. But we drove past their office building in some weird warehouse district of Otaru that I've never seen before (or rather, have passed by plenty of times but never realize it spreads so far out into the bay) that was like a big maze of warehouses and parked semi trailers and gargantuan snowdrifts. I sort of knew that Papa Ueno was in construction, but it turns out he actually owns the company, and Mama Ueno works there, too. I guess that explains why they can leave work at any time to meet me for lunch. Also how they managed to raise four children and still travel all over the place.

Anyway, they took us to the Otaru Ferry Terminal (a huge building that hosts a ferry once a day that takes at least a day to get to mainland Japan), where it turns out there's both a restaurant and an onsen in the building. Who knew? They knew. The Uenos know every restaurant in Otaru. Papa Ueno had actually briefly met Miwako before, but that was a long time ago. We ate lunch and they told us stories of their adventures, including the ridiculously awesome story of how they met, and how they were in a long-distance relationship between Osaka and Otaru for four years before they got married. I LEARNED MANY THINGS TODAY!!! I think it's pretty awesome that they've been married for probably 20 or so years and are still a very loving couple. Also, they're the nicest people in the world. Sorry, everyone else in the world, but we are all jerks in comparison!

I forgot to include our double date photo in the pictures for today's blog, so you'll have to imagine what the four of us looked like with a sweeping view of the Sea of Japan behind us.

After lunch, the Uenos dropped us off in Minami Otaru, and Miwako and I began exploring the touristy district. In between the thousands of souvenir shops, vendors selling sea creatures in various states of living, and swarms of Chinese tourists were a bunch of neat little snow sculptures.

Walking through the various shops containing glassworks blown in Otaru (oh how I miss the sign that used to say "It blows, glass blowing experience!") always makes me sleepy, and today was no exception. We needed to wait until dark so the candlelit street would make sense, so we had our first real date at a cafe where the two of us have had millions of playdates at in the past.

When we decided we were semi-awake enough to continue on, we went to the park that was built on top of the now defunct site of the first rail lines in Hokkaido. The Sapporo Snow Festival is a really neat thing to see, but Otaru's festival sort of puts it to shame. For one, it's not nearly as crowded, but the people who are there are all taking their time wandering around enjoying the sights. Being in the middle of a big city, Sapporo's festival is also surrounded by the lights of the city (and at night the illumination on the giant snow sculptures is pretty but they kinda don't look like snow anymore), whereas the little railroad park thing in Otaru is mostly dark at night, which makes the various lamps and structures built out of snow look extra pretty and romantic.

When we started getting cold, we took a break to enjoy some hot sake and meat-on-a-stick from the various vendors that had set up festival-style shops. We then moved on to the Otaru Canal, where the canal was all lit up with floating candles, and the sidewalk that runs its length was covered with a million billion more snow and candle creations. Miwako and I have spent a million playdates walking along the canal, so just like the cafe, it was pretty awesome to finally get to have an actual factual date there.

As we got closer and closer to the favorite spot of every tourist to Otaru ever, we started getting really cold, and I had to pee really badly, so we picked up the pace and headed to Hanazono to go to my favorite place in Otaru, Owl's Bar, where I finally got to eat soup curry. Soup curry was just first starting to catch on in Sapporo when I was an exchange student, so Mizue got me hooked on the stuff, and even with only visiting Sapporo once a year, I'm still very knowledgeable about the various soup curry shops in and around Sapporo. Remember: I was into it WAY before it became popular.

After visiting my favorite place in Otaru we then went to Miwako's favorite place in Otaru, Bar Modern Times, yet another place that Miwako and I have gone on a million playdates to. She hadn't seen the owner ("Master") since before she left for Canada about two years earlier, so they had a lot of catching up to do. Miwako keeps saying I need to move to Otaru and work as a bartender there, which would be TOTALLY awesome, except that I don't think he can afford to hire a second person. An interesting fact about Master (who probably has a real name, too) that neither of us knew... in spite of being an awesome and incredibly knowledgeable bartender, he doesn't drink alcohol! ANOTHER THING WAS LEARNED TODAY!!! Unfortunately due to Otaru being a small town, the last train to Sapporo leaves at 11pm, so we couldn't stay for long.

THE END...?

2010.02.09

Road to Sapporo Yuki Matsuri in EZO 2010 → Day 4

2010-02-23T13:34:00.000-08:00

Originally when I decided to go back to Japan in winter, I was planning on going for New Years. Besides the fact that I wasn't able to save up enough money in time, I would have had to meet her whole family, and that would have been weird. Oh wait, I guess I did that anyway. I found out that the Sapporo Yuki Matsuri (that's "Snow Festival" to you, Whitey) would be held from February 5th through the 11th, so that seemed like a perfect time to go, what with it also being half a year between Rising Suns. I had only been to the festival once before, so I was pretty excited about it.

We set out in the early afternoon after watching most of the rest of Ponyo (Miwako had taped it off of TV (what sort of weird futuristic technology is this?!?), but the tape cut out about 5 minutes before the movie ended). Today we took the 15-minute walk to Zenibako Station, which made me realize just how much I miss living in a place that gets buried in snow in winter. It was already starting to get dark out by the time we got to Sapporo, so we headed straight for Odori Park.

We followed the course of the park for about 4 hours, stopping at all the big giant snow sculptures and both being "too much shy" to ask anyone to take our picture for us after both of our cameras had a bad attitude of letting us do it ourselves. The sculptures themselves were incredible. They're made by hauling in big cubes of snow and stacking them up inside a wooden frame, and then carving the sculpture out from that. I didn't do a very good job of paying attention to what the various structures were... there was a Korean National something something, an American National something something, a Japanese something castle, and a really cool homage to the Asahiyama Zoo in Asahikawa, among other things. There were also a bunch of different series S of smaller sculptures of various themes, and a section that featured sculptures in an international competition, with teams coming from Sapporo's various sister cities around the world (one of which is Portland, Oregon, by the way). The weather wasn't too cold, but a nice medium snowfall made it extra awesome.

I had a list of things I needed to eat on this trip to Japan, and one of those things was ramen. We hadn't eaten since morning, but were afraid that if we went somewhere to eat, we'd miss seeing things all lit up. Also we were hungry and too lazy to try to hunt down food. Since there were a million vendors selling various things right there at the festival, we found ramen there (mine had crab in it, which is unusual but also AWESOME) and ate outside. Before heading back to Zenibako, we went used DVD hunting (I have music DVDs on in the background pretty much all the time when I'm home), and Miwako bought me Love Letter, one of my favorite movies, which was filmed almost entirely within Otaru (specifically, the main character lives in Zenibako, not far from where Miwako lives). Sadly, there were no Fishmans or Unicorn DVDs to be found this time around.

Doesn't that make you sad?

2009.02.08

Road to Sapporo Yuki Matsuri in EZO 2010 → Day 3

2010-02-22T00:58:00.000-08:00

Because I originally planned my trip around Miwako possibly having a job, I basically scheduled my time so that we'd have the weekends to hang out, and during the week I would try to meet up with other friends when I could. Since she didn't end up getting a job, I kind of didn't really bother contacting other friends. But I still wanted to see other friends, so on Sunday night we decided to gather with our other Otaruian friends from our college days.

Miwako's mom drove us to central Otaru, which took longer than the train would have because she was freaking out over the snow. We met up with Erina and discussed what we should do. There's not much to do in Otaru. We came to the same conclusion we have every time the three of us have hung out over the past 8 years... karaoke. So we stocked up on drinks and snacks and headed out for Toraemon, our favorite place to hang out at in Otaru. And then we discovered it was no longer there. We didn't just lose our favorite hang out spot, Otaru lost an institution. Toramon always gave out coupons for 500 Yen (which used to be like... $5, but is now probably more like... $100000) for the first hour of karaoke, but was still cheap after that (or even without a coupon). Besides this, you could bring your own food and drinks in. If you didn't bring your own drinks in, the drinks there were cheap. The place was awesome. But now it is gone.

After the girls convinced me to not burn the entire city to the ground, we set out to find a different karaoke venue. The other main choice was Thriller Karaoke. For some reason, about 5 years ago there was a sudden boom of horror-themed karaoke establishments in Japan. Why is karaoke in a building filled with Disneyland-like horror-themed objects more fun than normal karaoke? Exactly. But that place was too crowded, so we went to Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Do, which none of us had been to since my going-away party as an exchange student way back in 2003. It was fun, though. Once again, I focused on Unicorn, Fishmans, and Polaris. Since I've tricked Miwako into liking all three of those, it gives us a lot of songs that we can sing together. I also found out that Yurameki in the Air by Fishmans (I posted a link to a video of sorts in my first entry for this trip), which is a 17-minute-long song, actually works out really well in karaoke form. Everybody wins!

After karaoke, we slowly wandered our way accross town through the shopping mall arcade thing, which was filled with a preview of the Otaru Snow Light Festival. By which I mean "snow and ice things filled with candles". Some students from the Otaru University of Commerce had a booth set up where they were selling coffee and homemade candles, as well as offering free purikura-style printouts of pictures taken in front of the various snow sculptures. At first, we we all disgusted at the thought that the three of us graduated from their school at least 4 years before they even enrolled, but then we decided to support whatever it was that they were doing.

After this, we met up with Miina and Yuki, and arrived at Maruta, another Otaru staple. It's hard to accurately describe the atmosphere of Maruta. The booze is cheap, the food is cheap, there's a million things to choose from, there's crap all over the walls (which is mostly a list of the things you can eat and/or drink), and you sit on the floor in a big room at a table surrounded by other tables with other people doing the same thing. They had recently moved to a new building which none of us had been to. It wasn't exactly the same (it looked a little too nice to be Maruta), but it still had the same feeling overall.

At some point, Erina and I were talking, and she randomly said that she was happy that Miwako and I were dating. I guess that she probably could have figured it out (actually, she probably should have noticed my giant crush on Miwako years ago), but it surprised me to hear her talking about it for some reason. But then the other two overheard us and went nuts, and it was like a moment from Friends or something. Miwako, being incredibly shy, got all quiet and hid behind me. That's when Miina (who is always coining awesome new psuedo-English phrases) created my new favorite phrase to describe Miwako, "too much shy". Earlier in the evening, Miina and Yuki asked me if I was dating anyone currently, and I sort of dodged the question because I figured that Miwako would probably react exactly the way she did. But eventually she got over it, and now that it was common knowledge, our friends were super excited that the two of us were finally together after all these years.

Because the trains in Japan are stupid, we couldn't hang out for too long, so the five of us took some time to take some ridiculous pictures on our way to the train station, of which this is but one:

Then Miwako and Erina and I rode the train together, and Erina spoke more of how happy she was that Miwako and I were together before we got off at Zenibako and walked through an awesome little park completely buried in snow on the way home. I owe Erina a great deal of gratitude for making too much shy Miwako be slightly less too much shy that night.

2009.02.07

Road to Sapporo Yuki Matsuri in EZO 2010 → Day 2

2010-02-22T00:04:00.000-08:00

When we woke up in the morning, Taisho made us a fabulous breakcast of curry yakisoba. The four of us hung out for a while and took some pictures. They charted a course to Haneda Airport for me, and said I had plenty of time when we left. Little did they know how horrible my luck is with that stupid airport. By the way, there was a tiny bit of snow left over from when it snowed in Tokyo 3 days earlier (something that doesn't happen all that often), which already got me excited about experiencing a real winter.

Anyway, Minako and I rode the first subway together, then I transfered to my next train. I swear that it said Haneda Airport. I SWEAR. I kept checking to make sure (though the trains in Tokyo are confusing because they don't always follow a non-branching path between 2 points like in places like Sapporo and Chicago). But sure enough, by the time I was in the Yokohama area, I knew something was wrong, and got off the train to ask for help. I found out that when I got on the train, I only sort of had the right one. Two trains show up at the platform at the same time, and only the one in the rear actually goes to the airport, even though they both say they're headed in that general direction. It was the same situation on the train going in the reverse direction. With only about 30 minutes left before my flight left, I figured I was screwed. So I emailed Miwako (even in emergencies, the staff on trains are freakishly stubborn about people not using their phones) and had her contact SkyMark Airlines. Fortunately, they were able to cancel my flight and refund my money, and there was space on the next flight. I know that I once missed a SkyMate Airlines flight to Sapporo by a few minutes, and they let me on the next plane at the same price. But for some reason I feel like this was at least the third time it's happened.

Then I fly, fly, fly through the sky, sky sky.

Then I arrived in Sapporo at the super-familiar and super-tiny luggage claim, and reunited with Miwako after the first 4 month stretch of our long-distance relationship. It turned out it was a good thing I screwed up and flew to Sapporo later... originally she was going to drive to the airport to pick me up, but the weather was crappy (aka awesome) outside, and the highway shut down due to snow. So we took an hour-long train ride back to Kotoni, and she drove the rest of the way. Holy crap, snow everywhere! Holy crap, it was cold out, but not unbearably so! Man, I love winter.

At Miwako's house (I had stayed there twice before in the past, but never met her family), I finally met her parents. Her mom was most excited to meet me, and had a million billion questions (and a LOT of stereotypes about Americrainians). Her dad is retired and spends most of his time lounging around reading the newspaper and watching TV and never talking to anyone. After we started eating (sukiyaki, something I haven't had in years), everyone started drinking and things got a little less awkward. Her dad only talks when he drinks, and as the night went on, he gradually changed into a completely different person. He also has an incredibly strong Hokkaido accent, which made it extra challenging to understand the extra challenging questions he kept asking me.

So not only did I get to meet the parents, but the next surprise was when one of Miwako's two older sisters, Saeko, came over. With her husband. And their three kids. The kids mostly did whatever it is kids do, other than the youngest, Mi-chan, who was afraid of me at first. But Saeko and Naoya were awesome. Later on, the topic of arm-wrestling came up, so we took to the kotatsu. I've always been terrible at arm-wrestling, and Miwako used to always kick my ass. But after about a half-year or so of attempting to exercise regularly, I finally beat her. So after returning to Japan, Miwako started working out so that that wouldn't happen again. We were about evenly matched, but I still had the upper hand. What was really awesome, though, was hearing that Miwako's sister is comically weak, and then watching her lose to everyone, including her 10-year-old son. The kids all wanted to challenge me, and we all became friends after that. Mi-chan turned out to be adorable once she warmed up to me.

(Miwako is the one on the left, by the way)
(Also, the dog is An-chan)

Eventually, Saeko & Co. left, and Miwako convinced her parents that there would be plenty of time to barrage me with a fury of questions about my culture and such all week long. So we finally had some time alone, and we watched Ponyo until we fell asleep. And I immediately felt at home in Japan again.

2009.02.06

Road to Sapporo Yuki Matsuri in EZO 2010 → Day 1

2010-02-18T23:33:00.000-08:00

Because my dear frieand Tarbus demanded that I write a day-by-day (bidet) account of my most recent trip to Japan, and because my Flicker account is now something like... 15 years behind, I'm going to start that today.

When I go to Japan every year during summer (except for 2008, that jerk), my goal is to travel around to see as many of my friends as possible, to go to karaoke a lot, to eat a million tasty things, to waste time and money hunting CDs, and to see as many shows as possible (besides Rising Sun Rock Festival). Every summer, I tell my friends that I need to come back in winter, especially to Hokkaido. This past summer, I told Aya and her parents that I would for sure come back to visit. Probably.

Then Miwako and I "officially" started dating after a million billion years. Not only does she provide the motivation I really needed to start working on a plan to moving back to Japan to live, but it made going back in winter seem not just like something I really wanted to do, but like something I HAD to do. Because the point of this trip was to see Miwako, I barely told my other friends I was coming to Japan. Some of them didn't find out until they got an email from my Japanese cell phone when I was on the train from the airport to central Tokyo. And yet, a million of them still did whatever they could to find time to hang out with me, and to remind me of how much I love that place.

Okay so anyway, there's the rambling back story. The side stories (main stories?) for each day probably won't be so wordy.

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I won't count the day of life I lost due to travelling to the future. I watched a Japanese movie called "Kaiji" on the plane (which was pretty good), and I already forgot the other one, though I think it was also Japanese. A big fat man sat in the aisle seat next to me and had his arm well over the armrest for the entire 9-or-something-hour-long flight.

In Tokyo, I reactivated my phone, called Miwako, and then called Takkun, since he was basically the only person in Tokyo I contacted. I met up with TAKMIZ and Tsukuru in Shinjuku, and then we went to an izakaya and met up with a bunch of other people.

Mi-kun and Sachikun were there (two old friends I first met on the gyoza tour of '02 where Mizue first met Takkun and I woke up one morning and realized I could suddenly speak Japanese), as well as Yukari, my first Japanese friend at WMU, who first introduced me to Mizue. Then there were some people who's names I forgot, Minako (whom I first met in the hospital last summer when I went to meet Mizue), and Taisho and his wife. I also first met Taisho at the gyoza tour, but he is always at Rising Sun without fail. I met his wife Hitomi for the first time at RSR09. Got all that straight?

After eats + drinks + catching up, I presented TAKMIZ with some souvenirs of Mizue's favorite American junk food, and then as we were walking out I said "so, uh, by the way... I don't know where I'm staying tonight". After some discussion, Taisho and Hitomi decided to take me in. Ahhh, I love that I don't have to plan things when I go to Japan. I was a little disappointed that I didn't get to go with TAKMIZ to meet their cats, though. So when we got outside, everyone besides TAKMIZ and the people I didn't really know decided that karaoke was in order. Hell yes to that, I said. To that. To them.

So we went back upstairs into the same building and sang some karaoke. I pretty much eliminated everything from my repetoire besides Unicorn, Fishmans, and Polaris. Those are listed both in the order of number of songs you're likely to find at karaoke places (Unicorn a million, Fishmans a decent amount, Polaris very few), by the way, as well as the likelyhood that someone will sing with me. Everyone else sang a bunch, too, but Sachikun (she's a girl, by the way, even though "kun" normally indicates a boy) rocked out the most.

After getting drunk on cheap-ass-karaoke booze and singing until the last trains were in danger of leaving, Minako decided to join the myself and Taisho & Hitomi for a sleepover. So we went back to their place, where the former three of us (Hitomi was too drunk on cheap booze) continued drinking. Then I remembered that I was exhausted and that I get sick if I try to sleep while I'm drunk. Good thing the exhaustion took precedence over the drunkenness.

Okay I lied, this description was way longer than it needed to be. Maybe because I was drunk when I wrote it. Or maybe because I like typing, and it's way easier to do it this way than to email people individually.

2010.02.05

Song of the Month 2010.01 - VATLVA

2010-02-01T00:21:00.001-08:00

First, some back story (I know right, words on my blog! weird!) to what you're about to experience. You being... wait, does anyone even read my blog?

My biggest dream in life (or at least longest-lasting one that I haven't given up on yet) ever since high school has been to make music. I'm really good at starting songs... but I suck at finishing them. I'm sure it's because I'm too critical of my own work. I'll be happy with a song, and then get stuck somewhere and refuse to move on with the song until I've figured out how I want to proceed. I'm also not a fan of letting people listen to anything I've written unless I'm completely happy with it. Which never happens, of course.

I spend so much time thinking about how much I want to do music, that I decided it's about time I actually do something about it. So my plan for 2010 is to "release" a new song, one per month, every month of this year. They don't need to be perfect... in fact, I'm sure they won't be. They just need to have a start, a middle, and an end of some sort. I would like to make a demo CD at some point, but the first step of that process is having songs. So by forcing myself to examine some of the old songs I've started and attempt to finish them, I'll be slightly closer to that goal. It's ridiculous how ambitious of an idea this seems to me... all I have to do is just make demo versions of 12 songs, and keep on working on them until I've decided they sound the way I want whenever I'm able to. 12 songs in demo form is better than 12 unfinished songs.

I already have a pretty clear idea of 11 of the 12 songs I want to unveil this year (and when I want to unveil them). I will give advance warning NOW so it doesn't seem like I'm making up excuses later... my song for July is both a gift, and has lyrics... so there's a pretty good chance I won't share that with the public. If I'm able to, I'll have a public-sharing song in its place, but it's very important to me that I finish that song, so I'm going to focus on it whenever I can.

So there you go. Please cheer me on, I could definitely use the support. Feel free to comment on any of the songs I upload, but please, be gentle. You all know how I pretty much never stop crying. Most of all, enjoy!

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Song of the Month 2010 #1

Song title: VATLVA
Audio file: http://kurtasbestos.com/ongaks/Panda_Left-VATLVA.mp3
Date Recorded: 2010.02.04
Equipment used: KORG DS-10, KORG D888

Concept: I started this song on the Mosquito Fleet school bus on the way back from Atwater, California, where we had gone to witness the Polini Cup Finals. Travis had recently picked up a KORG DS-10 for his Nintendo DS, as had Alan of Landsquid fame. I brought both of my DSes and 2 copies of the DS-10 along for the trip, so during the 36-hour bus ride home, Zach from Portland and Travis and I played around with our music toys. I think this song started as a parody of that cake video that the Landsquids destroyed our brains with... but it slowly changed into a collection of me playing around with random weird things. Eventually I grew to like this song, and it became one of several songs that I would work on regularly while walking to/from work. The title is, like most things in my life, a reference to something that means nothing to anyone other than Chris Salmonson and Brian.

Process: As my first song for this project, I realized that it's not going to be easy, but it IS going to be great for forcing me to work on what I want to work on. There are a few little details I need to work on, but overall I'm happy with how things sound. Various limitations to the DS-10 (for example, fading out a single instrument while changing patterns around is nightmarishly difficult) made recording the song difficult, but I also just need to practice it more. There is one more part that I want to add that will serve to tie various elements of the song together and provide a more interesting ending, but I ran out of time to practice it, so it didn't make it into the January version of this song. I'm probably going to be saying that a lot this year.

Comments: I almost had this thing out before February, but for some reason the "noisy" part on my DS-10 didn't work the way it was supposed to unless I stopped and started the song. So there are some choppy punch-ins in the song where I had to repeatedly re-record the parts I kept messing up. I suppose knowing how to use my mixer and practicing the song more would have made things easier. Oh well, I'm happy that I got through the end of a song, and I'm excited to continue working on this year-long project!

HAPPY BIRFDAY JIHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!E

2010-01-16T10:16:00.000-08:00

2010.01.14

harpy newt ear

2010-01-04T08:32:00.000-08:00

2009.12.01

2010.01.01

return to The Michicraine & merry Crimbo

2010-01-04T08:30:00.000-08:00

2009.12.23

2009.12.24

2009.12.25

happy my birfday

2010-01-04T08:28:00.000-08:00

2009.12.16

2009.12.18

I donated platelets today

2009-12-13T21:13:00.000-08:00

2009.12.12

ChrisS's annual winter visit

2009-12-13T20:34:00.000-08:00

2009.12.03

2009.12.05

Thanksgiving

2009-11-29T01:09:00.000-08:00

2009.11.26

Halloween

2009-11-29T00:26:00.000-08:00

"floating human head being carried by the scruff of the neck by a mother cat"

2009.10.31

Victoria with Miwako 7

2009-11-15T15:12:00.000-08:00

2009.10.24

Miwako visits Seattle... FINALLY

2009-11-15T15:06:00.000-08:00

2009.10.18

Plateav

2009-11-09T21:26:00.000-08:00

2009.11.09

桑園急

2009-10-27T17:25:00.000-07:00

2009.10.16
(souenkyuu)

Polini Finals in Atwater, CA

2009-10-16T11:19:00.000-07:00

2009.10.03

2009.10.04

Victoria with Miwako 6

2009-10-14T09:29:00.001-07:00

2009.09.19

2009.09.20

Road to RSR09 in EZO → Sunset Day 15

2009-10-08T21:55:00.000-07:00

Finally, it was time to go home. Fortunately, I was smart enough to not book a flight in the morning, so I had time to wake up and pack, then go out for lunch with Jai. I wasn't super hungover, which was impressive considering how much I drank the night before, and how grossly hot I was sleeping at Jai's place, but it was enough to be unpleasant. For my final meal in Japan, we walked to a place famous for uni (sea eel, probably my favorite incredible edible water animal), but they were closed. Damn. So we went to an Indian restaurant, which Jai said is the "second best in Tokyo". Since Jai wasn't about to let me stop enjoying my vacation just yet, he made me drink a morning after beer. Well, I choked it down (aahhh, I miss you already, Japanese beer), and the food was awesome. I kinda felt bad that I spent a week at Jai's place, but we had barely hung out. He was okay with it, though, understanding both that he had been busy at work, and that I needed to get as much out of my vacation without worrying about finding places to stay and the like. I hope we can hang out again soon... either he and his girlfriend come to Seattle (or more likely, Mt. Whistler in nearby BC, Canada), or I'll be back in winter to see him again. Either way, I look forward to seeing him again sometime/somewhere.

Not much can be said about today. It was a long, sad trip to Narita Airport followed by a long, sad flight back home (though actually, I love flying, so I was pretty entertained on the plane) via a short, confusing layover in San Franciso. Josh Smurr picked me up and took me home, and the next morning I went back to work to find out what all had exploded while I was out of the country for nearly three weeks.

I had an awesome time in Japan this summer, but it was way too short. Every time I go, I come back wondering why I'm not living there yet, and I felt that way more than ever this time. I miss my friends, I miss the food, and I miss feeling completely at home in a place that I should feel completely out-of-place in. I had hoped to move to Japan by this summer, but since that obviously didn't work... I'll just have to push it back a year. 2010 seems like a nice year to once again completely change my life. Of course I'll miss Seattle and all of my friends in the States, but it really is what I need to do with my life. Wish me luck, frieands.

2009.08.30

THE END

...

?

Road to RSR09 in EZO → Sunset Day 14

2009-10-08T19:55:00.000-07:00

Ahh jeez... this is gonna be long. I don't expect anyone to read it, but at least now I'll have a record of my thoughts and feelings on my last (full) day in Japan.

I woke up feeling pretty nervous, because today was the day that I would go see Mizue in the hospital. I skipped breakfast and made my way to Mitaka, which is on the western part of Tokyo, kind of near where TAKMIZ live. Takkun met me at the train station, and he gave me a more detailed description of Mizue's condition on the bus to the hospital. When we got there, she was away from her room, so we sat down and he prepared me as best as he could for what I was going to see. Shortly after Takkun said goodbye to Mizue and Tsukuru and left for work in the morning, he got a panicked call from Mizue saying that her head hurt really badly. The phone cut out, and he wasn't able to get back to her. Then he got a call from an ambulance saying that they had picked her up and were taking her to the hospital. She was lucky that they got to her as quickly as they did, but the stroke had caused some pretty serious damage in her brain.

So Takkun went on to explain that she's still Mizue... she still knows who people are, recognizes pictures and words and such, but her brain had basically wiped itself clean of all the neural connections she had spent a lifetime building. So she had a hard time talking because she could imagine what she wanted to say, but she just couldn't get herself to say it. Her reading skills were about the same as mine... she'll see kanji and vaguely understand the meaning, but she doesn't really know how to read it (this is probably a difficult concept to explain to someone using a language that doesn't use pictographs). She can't really write... she can scribble out a few letters and draw simple sketches. But she's been writing in a notebook every day, and that's how she and Takkun have been communicating when words don't work. The difference between the first days after the stroke and a month later was pretty drastic, but it still resembled a small child. Naturally, I couldn't help but wonder how much about me she remembered. We dated for three years, after all, and have remained very close friends ever since (we chat online all the time, and I could always count on her to help me in any sort of random difficult situation that came up). When Takkun said I was coming, she said it was really embarrassing, and that she didn't want me to see her like this. The more Takkun and I talked, the more worried I became for her. But he assured me that she's still herself. She hasn't forgotten all of the things she used to know... her brain just doesn't know how to access them. So every day, little by little, she's reminded of things, connections start to form, and she's slowly working towards recovery. Of course it was really hard for him at first, but between his job, going to the hospital to see her every day, and the baby, he didn't have much time to feel sad over her condition. Instead, he's gotten used to it, and is now enjoying helping her recover, waiting for the days (not any time soon) that they can travel together again, go to music festivals, and enjoy their new family life.

So then the moment of truth came. Mizue was wheeled into the room in a wheelchair, and they helped her wash her hands. She hadn't noticed me, and she wasn't saying anything. Well before Takkun had told me much of her condition, I was fighting back tears, but upon first sight, it got bad. Then she turned around, saw me, and let out this wailing sound like "uwwwaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh". Immediately I realized that Takkun was right, that she really is still herself, because that's pretty much the exact same reaction she would have had in a moment of embarrassment even without the stroke. So she kept making that sound while laughing and pointing to her headgear saying "..but I look like this!" Over the course of the next few hours, I got a good idea of just how little she's changed. She had a hard time talking, but would then suddenly say something surprisingly coherent. She kept saying things like "what's that??" and "I don't know what that means", but the way she said them was no different than it would have been normally. And she kept laughing at herself when she couldn't remember how to say something, or when she tried to write something and immediately realized that something was wrong, but she wasn't sure what. Mostly it was the sounds... even if she couldn't talk normally, her weird little grunting noises, sighs, and laughter were exactly the same as usual. So that was comforting. The three of us were able to laugh together at her state, because even she realized that this wasn't normal, but she would just have to keep working to return to normal. Or as normal as she could be. Takkun said that if it had been anyone else, it would have been incredibly difficult, but because of Mizue's strange sense of humor, her incredible self-reliance, and overall strong personality, she turned a difficult situation into something much more manageable. That doesn't mean I wasn't still struggling not to cry the whole time, but it was good to see that our friends were right, she really was doing well.

During the day at the hospital, some interesting things happened. Mizue's mom had come down from Sapporo, and was living at her and Takkun's apartment taking care of the baby and the cats. Just a day or two prior, her dad also came down to visit. So the two of them came to the hospital and brought Tsukuru. I hadn't seen Mizue's parents in 6 years. It was awesome. Nothing had changed... we chatted just like we used to, and they seemed just as happy to see me as I was to see them. Meeting Tsukuru (or "Tukuru", depending on who you ask, which only makes it even more obvious that you can derive MY NAME from his) for the first time was also neat. Seeing Takkun holding his son and talking about how much fun it was to be a dad did something horrible to me... all of a sudden there was like this crazy wave of emotions inside of me that made me think "ahhh jeez, I want one of these things. I want to get married and have a kid." Gross. I thought that only happened to women. But even with Mizue in the state she was in, seeing TAKMIZ with TAKMIZ, Jr. (when she first told me she was pregnant, this is the name she used for him, which I still find to be ridiculously funny) it just seemed to right to see them like that, and it felt like I should have a kid by this point to grow up with Tsukuru (or Tsukkun for short). That was weird.

Eventually Mizue's parents and Tsukkun left, and one of her friends, Minaco showed up. I then presented Mizue with a bunch of souvenirs I had brought with me. She had asked me for baby books in English, so I gave her a bunch. We assumed that if she couldn't really speak Japanese, there was even less of a chance of her understanding English. She was thrilled to receive the books, but didn't really understand what was going on, so we decided that it would be up to Takkun to teach both English and Japanese to both his wife and child. Better than the books, though, were the two years' worth of snow globes that I had collected from them from my various travels (mostly moped rallies). I had wrapped them loosely in newspaper, but as soon as she pulled the first one from the bag she immediately knew what it was, and reacted like "oh, you've got to be kidding me, another one?!?", which is exactly how she reacted two years ago when I gave them more for the collection I'm forcing upon them. But then she opened them and was struck by a wave of nostalgia. Some of the cities (Salt Lake City, Victoria) she had never been to, but they brought back memories of her adventures in the USA and Canada. Then she pulled out Detroit, and got really excited because she had lived in Kalamazoo for a year and a half, and it brought back all kinds of memories of Michigan. She pulled out her notepad and drew a picture of an explosion, and said that "it's that place which is abu". That was weird... "abu" is a word I invented (which means "dangerous"), and an inside joke among our friends, but she said it like it was nothing, and laughed that her memory of Detroit is that it was dangerous and she didn't want to go there. Even more impressive, she started writing "Detroit", and even though she couldn't quite get it right, even she was surprised that she remembered how to write in English. Then she opened the one from Los Angeles and got really excited, because it's always been one of her favorite cities in the world. She said "it's the place where everyone likes to do this" and drew a picture of a giant ice cream cone. She then remembered how much she loved American junk food, and said "everyone is like this because of the food" and drew a picture of a big fat guy. Clearly, Mizue is just as badass as ever.

We hung out for a while more, but eventually I had to get going to attend my going-away party. So I said goodbye to everyone, and Takkun walked me to the bus stop. I fought back the last few waves of tears (mostly because of Mizue, but also partly because, once again, I would be attending a going-away party for myself and going back to the Americraine, something that has happened far too many times in my life). All in all, I was glad I got to see Takkun, Tsukkun, and the parents, but most of all, I was glad that I got to see Mizue. Takkun is right... it's probably going to take a long time, but she'll recover, and she'll never stop enjoying life to the fullest.

In Shibuya, I met up with Shingo outside of Hachiko (soon to be an offensively American movie), the dog statue, while we waited for Minaco to show up. I had only met her for the first time a few hours ago, but she was coming to my going-away party. I guess that's just kind of how our friend group works. Actually, I didn't really know WHO was going to show up, so it was interesting. As we waited in the crowdedest part of one of the crowdedest wards of Tokyo, we noticed that our skin was becoming warm and sticky just from it being so crowded. Gross. So Minaco showed up, and we set out for the drinkery/eatery, a tiny little hidden place that was supposedly very good for how cheap it was. Shingo asked what I wanted to eat (by the way, I hadn't eaten yet today.. I was hoping to get to Shibuya early to find food so I wouldn't get super drunk, but that didn't work out), and I said "anything I can't find in America". It kind of seems like he ordered a selection of the grossest things they had to offer: Shiokara, chicken liver, some kind of fish roe, and other weird things. Good thing I can eat anything. Even the things I don't really like (for example, Shiokara were damn tasty. And of course, I ordered things I wanted to eat, too. I was already drunk by the time people started showing up. It was kind of weird.. there were 9 people there that I met for the first time that night. But every time one of my friends showed up, it was an awesome surprise. Ai-chan showed up, and it was neat not only seeing her and her brother in the same room, but also her boyfriend who was visiting from Shizuoka, who just happens to live in the same town as Kengo. And work for the same company as him. And know him. Weird. Also, she was awesome when she was drunk. The next pleasant surprise was Takkun... he's got such a crazy busy schedule that I didn't think he'd actually be able to make it out tonight. MAN, it made me happy that we could actually spend some time together (I mean, besides in the hospital). Hitomix also made a cameo appearance, which made me happy, especially after how much she and I had hung out 2 years ago when we were both studying Audio production. But especially awesome was that Mi-kun came out. I've been friends with him since way back in 2003 when Mizue and I met up with 8 of her friends and went on a 3-day tour of Utsunomiya, doing nothing but eating the gyoza that town is famous for. Not only was that trip the first time that either of us met Takkun, but it was because of Mi-kun that I learned Japanese. Seriously, I had an epiphany overnight, and it's because of him. It was too bad that his long-time girlfriend Sachikun couldn't make it out, but I was super happy to see him. So that was the going-away party. Kind of a weird mix, but we all ate a lot, drank a LOT, and had an awesome time.

I was glad my friends insisted on getting me really drunk, because otherwise saying goodbye to everyone would have been really sad. Especially Takkun. Naturally, Shingo decided it would be a waste if I didn't hang out more (also, Jai had told me that since it was my last night in Japan, I should hang out with my friends as long as possible and don't worry about coming back late), so he and two people whose names I of course don't remember and I went to... some place. As soon as we sat down, I realized I was super drunk, and that it probably wasn't going to end well. Then Shingo ordered me a beer. And when we looked at the menus, I got really excited about a dish which was basically a cocktail glass filled with blueberries and topped with soft-serve ice cream (something I crave ALL the time). So I ordered that. Then I saw pancakes, and for some drunken reason decided that it was tradition for me to eat them while drinking (which is only sometimes true, and definitely not while in Japan). So we ate and drank more, and then I went to the bathroom to puke. Normally when I vomit, that's it, I'm done for the night. By which I mean, I keep vomiting until I'm too tired to move. But because tonight was special, I cleaned myself out, went back to the table, and finished both of my meals and my beer. Gross man, gross.

Finally, I said goodbye to Shingo and my mysterious new friends, and I took a taxi back to Jai's place, which was pretty far away. $2000 yen away, in fact. Not only did I not get carsick (which I was sure I would, what with all the drinking and me not handling vehicles well when I'm drunk), but I had a really long conversation with the driver. Then I got back to Jai's place, and suddenly felt really sober as I told him about Mizue. What a weird last day. But it was good.

2008.08.29

Road to RSR09 in EZO → Sunset Day 13

2009-10-08T08:10:00.001-07:00

My second-to-last day in Japan was pretty crazy. Kengo dropped me off at the bus stop on his way to work in the morning, and I took a bus to Shizuoka City. I then took a highway bus back to Tokyo. It passes by pretty close to Mt. Fuji, and since it was a really nice day, I got a nice view of my old friend. Back in Tokyo, I decided to head out to Shimokitazawa to find Empty again, because there was a t-shirt I wanted to buy that I couldn't afford before. The owner kept hooking me up with free swag, so I felt like I should buy something to support my favorite clothing store in Tokyo. Ai-chan was there, so I got to hang out with her again. She also helped me figure out how to cross to the opposite side of Tokyo so that I could go to Nihombashi, where my friend Kounosuke was now the manager of the standing bar he started working at several years ago. I had a few drinks and ate his awesome food, and we talked about various things. I hope that next time, I'll have more time to hang out with him. Way back in 2004, on the last night of my trip to Japan I went to a club with Takkun, and I didn't have a place to stay for the night. I was having fun dancing with random people when Kounosuke asked where I was staying (what a strange yet convenient thing to ask), and invited me to come to his place. So it used to be that I could always count on either TAKMIZ or Kounosuke to give me a home while I was in Tokyo, but now that he's moved out of "Life House" (which was TTLY badass), it's not an option anymore. Anyway, I wanted to stay longer, but I was being summoned.

My next stop was Daimon, where I met up with 9 people from RUNS n' MOPEDS. We wanted to actually get to know each other, so we spent the night drinking. It was awesome. They brought me gifts! They also wouldn't let me chip in when it was time to pay. They talked about the rides they want to do around Japan, and I talked about some of my many moped (or otherwise) adventures in the states. They got really excited about the idea of coming to a moped rally, and asked how they can be part of the Moped Army. I of course told them that they have to come to rallies and get to know people, and probably also attempt to talk to people online. Too bad none of them speaks English. I told them that a few years ago, I came up with this crazy dream to tour Japan by moped, and several of us decided that we need to make that or at least Hokkaido happen in the near future. Man... I want to hang out with those guys again. If I'm living in Tokyo, I want to be a part of RUNS n' MOPEDS, and help them to make it even more awesome than it already is. And if I end up in Sapporo, I want to start my own moped gang.

When it got close to last call for the trains and everyone had to go home, antique◇cube and Akazou and I decided that since we (well, Jai in my case) all lived close, it was far too early to go home. So we went to the next bar and hung out for much longer. antique◇cube is the guy who loaned me a moped the other day, and he is a ridiculously cool guy. Any time I come to Japan, I have a moped waiting for me. I can even stay at his house (with his family, which is just a little weird) if I need a place to stay. What a guy. I of course offered them the same thing if they were to come to Seattle. The three of us continued to get drunk and discuss the crazy awesome moped adventures that we want to have in Japan, and maybe even in the States if they can find enough vacation time to come visit.

2009.08.28

Road to RSR09 in EZO → Sunset Day 12

2009-10-08T08:08:00.000-07:00

Shortly after Kengo left for work, Chiaki picked me up and we headed along the coast towards Shizuoka City. She had a secret appointment, so I wandered around the city, including a park (Sunpu) that was long ago a castle. Shizuoka felt a little like a smaller Sapporo to me... a [relatively] big city, but not everwhelmingly so, and with a much more relaxed pace of life than someplace like Tokyo. Oh yeah, I received the rest of my paycheck today, so I would be able to survive the rest of my time in Japan.

After Chiaki finished her secret appointment we met up and went for lunch. Two years ago, Kengo and a friend of his and I went to a CRAZY futuristic conveyor belt sushi place where the sushi doesn't just go around in circles. You select what you want from a screen, someone hidden behind a wall in the center of the room prepares it and puts it on the conveyor belt, and when it gets to your table it a sensor senses it and automatically sends it down a track of rollers onto your table. One of the last things that we ordered that night was anago (aka river eel), and I swear it was the most delicious thing I had ever eaten in my life. So anyway, this time in Shizuoka, Chiaki and I went to a restaurant in the same chain minus the hidden chefs and the table-specific track things. So we ate a bunch of sushi, and everything was fabulous. But I was afraid to order the anago. What if it wasn't good? What if it was good, but not the most delicious thing I had ever eaten? I was pretty happy with the memory I had from last time, so why chance it? But I told my story to Chiaki, and she insisted that I try it again. So I did. And I'm happy to say that it is still the most delicious thing I have ever eaten. HELL YES SHIZUOKA ANAGO.

After lunch, we debated what to do next, and I decided that we should do one of my favorite things to do in Shizuoka; go to the ocean. So we drove back along the amazingly beautiful coast and to Haibara (the part of Makinohara that Kengo lives in, for those of you keeping track (mostly I'm just proud that I was able to track down all the parts of Shizuoka that I've been to on Google Maps/Earth)), to pick up our bathing suits (I came prepared). Chiaki's house is kind of amazing... Haibara has a lot of hills and a lot of tea farms. Her house is on the top of one of these little hills, and it's completely surrounded by tea bushes. As in you can't see any other houses, you just see tea. Also, her family's cemetery. Freakin' awesome. I want to live there. Not HER house, per se, but a house in the country. Yeah, so yeah. We went to the ocean. It was one of those beaches where lots of young, kind of trashy (by Japanese or maybe just my standards) people hang out. But it was also late in the afternoon, so pretty much everyone was gone. The Pacific Ocean is one of my favorite things/places in the world, so it was fun to hang out with my waterproof camera and my new friend on the other side of the ocean. It was a little weird that not only did the beach close at 6, but there was closing music blasting over the speakers that were playing hip young generic beachy Jpop for the patrons of the beach houses. This picture I took underwater was wicked phresh:

After swimming, we stopped for ice cream on our way to meet up with Kengo and had a nice long conversation and bonded while waiting him to get his stuff. We went to my third onsen for this trip to Japan, Koumare Onsen. Chiaki went to the ladies' side by herself, while Kengo and I got naked and bathed together for the millionth time. What a great time to spend time with your friends. Japan is great. After the bath, we went to on-site cafeteria for some damn tasty soba and beer (except for Chiaki, who was driving, and according to Kengo a "bad drunk"). That was damn tasty. The next step on our tour was to some really tiny karaoke place that had weak drinks and a not very good selection of songs. It was great singing all our old favorites with Kengo, though, and Chiaki and I sang a lot of duets, including a lot of Unicorn. Eventually we ended the night at Kengo's house with more drinks and looking through pictures from my previous trips to Shizuoka.

2009.08.27

Road to RSR09 in EZO → Sunset Day 11

2009-10-01T23:42:00.000-07:00

Going to Japan for a length of time is an adventure in itself, but there are two subquests that I feel like I must accomplish every year. (1) go way the hell out in the country to visit Aya and/or Aki in Nayoro, and (2) go way the hell out in the country to visit Kengo. Today was my day to do the latter. In the morning, however, I met up with DJ HATA, aka HATA, the keyboard/synth player/booking agent for Dachambo. Aka my mentor. It was cool hanging out with him in a non-Dachambo context, though. We met up in Shinjuku in the morning and went to eat udon (delicious!).

I could have sworn that he said he needed help with something for their next DVD, but it turned out he just wanted help translating some emails. I've been translating stuff for Dachambo for a couple of years now, but I'm not very good at it. Or at least, I'm not good at thinking up interesting ways to talk about them in English. It also takes me damn forever to translate stuff (possibly because I always, ALWAYS type too much, no matter what I'm doing *cough*). But I was able to help him with his emails, and then he helped me figure out where to buy a bus ticket to Shizuoka.

After parting ways with HATA, I went to Shibuya to meet up with Mamiko, aka Shitoro (the name she's known as in Dachambo Village, their community of fans). The first time I ever saw Dachambo, I was super excited and rocking out. Some girl grabbed my hand and pulled me up to the front of the venue (it was a tiny place so there was no stage, but people left enough space in front of the band that we could easily go right up to them) and we rocked out together. We've been friends ever since. This was actually the first year since then that we weren't able to go to a Dachambo show together (every year prior, including the first year, we had gone to at least TWO Dachambo shows together), and my time in Tokyo was short, but I demanded that we meet up. So we went out to a cafe and had a couple of drinks and chatted about various things. She was one of the lucky people that I made a New Year's card for, so I gave her that (it contained CDs and all kinds of bonus goodies), and she gave me some "Best of Dachambo Live" CDs that a guy who records a lot of their live shows made. Incidentally, I just finished listening to them today when I posted this entry, and it makes me really sad that the "best" songs of the typical Dachambo fan are my least favorite ones. The jam band-ier, hippy-ier ones. That's not what makes Dachambo awesome. Oh well, I digress. Before Mamiko took the train with me back to Shinjuku, she decided that we needed to take a picture in front of Hachiko, because she had never done that. Being a foreigner and all, it was embarassing, but she's an awesome kid, so it seemed like a good idea.

Incidentally (again), I found out recently that they're making an AMERICAN movie about the dog Hachiko. After watching the trailer, I was filled with such angry furious rage that I vowed to never walk near the real Hachiko statue again. Actually, that's probably impossible because he's right by the main exit of Shibuya Station.

So... yeah. I took a bus for three hours to Shizuoka, two prefectures to the west of Tokyo. Out of five return trips to Japan, this was my fourth time visiting, which is really kind of incredible. Also, I swear that every time I go, I somehow end up on a different mode or route of transportation. By the way, the prefecture is Shizuoka, but the capital city is also called Shizuoka. Like how the capital of New York the state is not New York the city. Anyway... from Shizuoka Station, I had to take a highway bus back way out to Makinohara, or more specifically, the area that Kengo lives in, Haibara. It only took me four trips to Shizuoka to finally figure all these things out. Kengo picked me up from the rice field that I waited by, and we went out to a place called "This is Cafe". It really was a cafe. On an unrelated note, at this point I had only $3000 yen to last me until I left Japan. Sorry Kengo, I didn't mean to trick you into buying my drink and my dinner! Before returning to Kengo's house, we stopped at a random convenience store to buy drinky-drinks, and ran into Kengo's friend Chiaki. We talked for a while, and we decided that since she had the day off tomorrow, she could hang out with me. Which was good, because I didn't mind having no plans while Kengo worked, but I had no idea what I was going to do way out in the country. So then Kengo and I went back to his house, had a few drinks, and talked about life until 2am.

Crap... these things keep getting longer and longer. Well, there's only a few left. Thanks for reading, uhhh... wait, is anyone actually reading these???

2009.08.26

Road to RSR09 in EZO → Sunset Day 10

2009-10-01T23:20:00.000-07:00

Today was another slow day, which would have been okay except that I went to Shimokitazawa, which is probably my favorite part of Tokyo, and spent 2 hours trying to find my friend's shop. Shimokitazawa consists of a million tiny little roads filled with tiny little shops that all intertwine and twist all over the place. Plus they do that on both sides of the train tracks around the main train station, and it can get confusing as to which side of the tracks you're on. Anyway, after 2 hours of confusion, I finally found Empty (it turns out that one of their locations had recently moved), and my friend Ai-chan, who is Shingo's (one of my favorite dancing buddies from Rising Sun) younger sister. I was lucky that she was even there, since she's no longer working there full time. But I hadn't ever really seen her outside of Empty, so I didn't know how else to hunt her down. Ai is Shingo's younger sister. She gave me directions to the other Empty shop, where those belts I'm always wearing come from, as well as some of my favorite t-shirts. Even after two years, the owner remembered me, so that was cool. After Ai-chan got out of work, she met up with me, and we went out for some Okinawan food. This was my first time actually hanging out with her, so it was really fun. She introduced me to Awamori, which is the Okinawan equivalent of shochuu. Normally, I'm not a huge fan of shochuu (bad memories of terrible hangovers) because the cheap stuff is terrible. But the good stuff is exceptional, so I tried a class of aged awamori that was 45 proof. Or 45 percent alcohol. I guess I'm not really sure what "45 degrees" in Japanese means when it comes to rating alcohol.

Anyway... it was a really fun bonding experience with Ai-chan. Also, at some random point I came to realize that I had eaten at that very Okinawan restaurant at least once before, which was weird.

On the way back to Jai's, I decided to stop by to visit Gravity Free's office, since they weren't far away. I can't believe how incredibly lost I got in Shinjuku... actually, yes I can, because Shinjuku Station is unbelievably enormous. See this picture to get an idea of what I'm talking about.

Anyway... eventually I found their office. It's a shame that trains stop running so early in Japan (1am at the latest, but usually not much after midnight), because I would have loved to hang out longer. Oh well, It was awesome seeing them again, and especially awesome because Masa (he doesn't do the live painting, but he takes pictures of them, and does other... businessy stuff... I think) was there, and I didn't think I was going to get to see him on this trip. I really hope they (and Dachambo) can come back to the States again.

2009.08.25

Road to RSR09 in EZO → Sunset Day 9

2009-09-30T23:54:00.000-07:00

Today was mostly a day of recovery. Also it was a Monday so everyone had jobs. Also I was too busy having fun in Hokkaido to spend much time trying to plan my days in Tokyo. I slept in in the morning, and then wandered off to Shibuya for some CD/DVD hunting. Almost as soon as I arrived, I got caught in a sudden squall. I was stuck under an awning for about 30 minutes.

Eventually I decided to just cross the street and follow a trail of awnings until I found my favorite CD store and killed a couple of hours. Fortunately, I had received part of my paycheck while I was in Nayoro, so I could afford to buy a few things. Every year I have a big list of must-buy things, things I can't find online, and other fun stuff, but I was pretty good about not spending too much money this time around. Later at night, I met up with Hitomix, who wasn't able to go to Rising Sun this year. We hung out a little bit, and then went to eat kaiten-zushi (sushi on a conveyor belt). She didn't realize that it's the same place we went to last year. She also apparently doesn't realize that it's probably the least-tasty sushi I've ever eaten. Oh well, it's still edible, and it was nice to hang out with my very strange yet awesome friend.

2009.08.24

Road to RSR09 in EZO → Sunset Day 8

2009-09-30T22:13:00.000-07:00

(this description is mostly stolen from the one I posted in the Moped Army Members Forum)

Sometime a few months before I left for Japan, I somehow randomly got in touch with a group in Tokyo called “RUNS n’ MOPEDS”, and they decided to put together a mini-rally in my honor (“Welcome to Jap Run”). Even though I had never met a single one of them in person, I had three different people offer me up a loaner ped.

So in the morning I rode several trains to Koiwa, where Billy and antique◇cube (they all have crazy nicknames, by the way) picked me up and took me to antique◇cube's house, where he gave me a moped, and we left for our trip. Immediately after leaving I was smiling and couldn't stop, because it was like a dream come true for me (or at least, the first small step to a bigger dream... to tour Japan by moped). Also, the moped broke down a little bit, because that's what mopeds do. Somewhere in a more crowded part of Tokyo we met up with most of the rest of the group, and we went down to the Tokyo Bay to the Wakasu Campground. The ride to the barbecue wasn’t terribly exciting, but the fact that I was in Japan, I was on the left side of the road, and I had no international driver’s license (because I forgot to get one before I went) made it amazing.

The barbecue was grossly hot and humid, because Tokyo is disgusting in August, and the cicadas were loud as hell, but the food was great, and it was fun trying to explain what Moped Army is, and then pulling out the picture of my mopeds that I keep in my wallet and explaining what those things are. [WARNING] I must apologize to my non-moped readers for turning the rest of this paragraph into a moped blog. People mostly rode Tomosses ese se S, but there were a couple of Ciaos, a Sachs, and a Motebecane. One guy actually knew what Minarelli is, and that made me happy. All of their bikes were shiny and new. The Tomomomoses were mostly from the early 90’s, but that’s as vintage as they got.

After the barbecue, we rode through Odaiba, one of the busier parts of Tokyo, where I actually recognized my surroundings (which was a neat feeling). In Tokyo, you’re apparently allowed to make your own traffic laws, so we split lanes and cut in front of traffic to make weird 2-point right turns while avoiding cars that didn’t feel the need to stick to a single lane.

Our destination: Shiokaze Park in Odaiba to see a giant robot. A real one. I think it was Gundam's 20th or 30th anniversary or something, so we stuck around to watch it light up and move its head slightly (which was pretty cool, but it would have been WAY cooler if it had flown away or just started randomly punching buildings and trees). After Gundam, I gave them all the swag I could find before I went to Japan (mostly Mosquito Fleet and Guns t-shirts and stickers) and they played rock-paper-scissors (janken) to determine who took it home. Finally, there was a long night ride home, where I couldn’t stop smiling because I knew it was just a preview of future awesomeness to be had in Japan for me. I can't wait to start a moped gang in Sapporo!!!

2009.08.23

Road to RSR09 in EZO → Sunset Day 7

2009-09-29T22:52:00.000-07:00

Just for the record, Kutchan's real name is Kumei. Actually, that's his last name. Many years ago, Mizue and I went on an awesome adventure for her birfday to stay in an onsen somewhere in Hokkaido. We passed through a tiny town which is named after the Ainu word for the area, "Kutchan". A month later I met Kumei for the first time and immediately gave him the nickname Kutchan. The name stuck, as that's now the preferred name for him among our Rising Sun members. Anyway, he had somewhere to be in the morning, so we slept all of 4 hours, and after saying goodbye I wandered down to Odori Park to nap/plan my day/hunt for CDs/whatever. On my last day in Sapporo, I met up with Erina in the early afternoon, and we went to Globule to eat soup curry, where we met Erico. I ordered salisbury steak soup curry. On a scale of 1 to 6 for spiciness, I got a 5. When I order something that's nearly the hottest level in the 'States, it's almost never spicy enough, let alone spicy at all. When I get Sapporoan soup curry that's even in the middle of the scale, it's damn hot. Today's selection was murderously spicy. But that makes it murderously more delicious. Seriously, it was damn good.

Anyway, it was cool seeing Erico again, it was awesome seeing the gigantic painting that Gravity Free had painted in Globule (by the way, when I'm living in Sapporo, this will be my weekly hangout place), but it was especially awesome to get another chance to hang out with Erina. She was going to try to visit Miwako before she left Victoria, and of course I would have gone to visit, but it ended up not working out. I doubt I'll get her (or any of my friends in Japan) to visit Seattle, but I'm sure as hell going to try. After lunch, we met up with one of my favorite people in Sapporo, Nao. I said goodbye to Erina, and then Nao and I went to a cute little cafe for a cup of coffe before I (barely) made it to the airport.

During my far-too-short visit with Nao, she asked me if I really knew what had happened to Mizue, and I said no. A couple weeks before I left for Japan, there was a note on her blog written by Takkun saying that Mizue fell down, and she had to be hospitalized. About a week later, I was starting to worry because I hadn't heard anything. Eventually I got a hold of Takkun, who said that she was still in the hospital and that her head hurt. During Rising Sun and the following week in Hokkaido, people mentioned her occasionally, but they said things like "her head hurts", "she's doing much better", and "she's having a hard time reading." I thought it must be migraines or something... she's had health problems in the past, but those were mostly with her stomach. Well, Nao said she wasn't sure if she was supposed to say anything, but she decided I should know the truth. Mizue didn't fall down because she had migraines... she had a stroke. She was still in the hospital several weeks later because her brain had lost the various neural connections between things. She couldn't read (though looking at written words made a sense of vaguely knowing the meaning but not how to read it, which is pretty much exactly how it is for me trying to read Chinese characters ("kanji") in Japanese), she couldn't really speak because words didn't come to her, and she had a hard time understanding what was being said to her. But she was doing well. Naturally, I became extra worried, and decided that I needed to harass Takkun until I could at least meet him, if not Mizue or their 4 month-old baby Tsukuru.

So... this was all a shock to me, but I'm glad Nao finally told me SOMETHING, because it didn't seem like anyone else would, if they even knew. Anyway... more on that later.

So yeah, every iota of my being was telling me that I belong in Hokkaido, but it was time to go back to Tokyo. I knew there would be many fun adventures to be had and awesome people to meet, and maybe it was the weight of finding out about Mizue, but I wasn't looking forward to it at all. The second I got off the plan, I walked into a wall of hot, sticky humid air. I took a monorail to the city center, and as soon as it arrived, people started running because that's what people do in Tokyo. They're always in a hurry. But Jai (one of a million billion friends that Mizue introduced me to, but also one of my closest friends in the world, not just Hokkaido) came to meet me, we dropped off my stuff at his house, and went out for drinks. We walked through Roppongi, the part of Tokyo where all the gross foreigners and gross girls who want a foreign boyfriend hang out, until we found a yakitori place that looks like foreigners wouldn't hang out at. Jai is still working for the Hokkaido Newspaper, but they recently relocated him to Tokyo. He's slowly getting used to Tokyo life, but as a Hokkaido native, he feels incredibly out of place. I guess it's like if I lived in LA or New York (or even Chicago)... I like big cities, but there has to be a limit somewhere. A typical work day for Jai, just like everyone in Tokyo, lasts until 10 or 11 pm. His girlfriend is still back in Kushiro (a tiny town in eastern hokkaido; I went there to visit him three years ago), so they have to communicate using something called "the Internet". Well, he seemed out of place, but it was nice hanging out, and nice for me to know that I had a place to stay in Tokyo (every year prior I had stayed with Mizue and Takkun, but the baby changed that... and the hospitilization especially changed that). So we spent a few hours getting caught up, and it made me feel not as bad to have left Hokkaido behind.

2009.08.22

Road to RSR09 in EZO → Sunset Day 6

2009-09-28T20:23:00.000-07:00

Aya was able to get the day off today, so we hang out until I had to return to Sapporo. Which I didn't want to do. There's not much going on in Nayoro, but I love how relaxing it feels, and how pretty the Hokkaido countryside is. After breakfast, we went to the big new shopping mall to take a purikura (those little stickers that are typically covered with hearts and glittery text and a million Japanese girls and are too small to actually see what the picture is). Wait, actually, they sent two of them to our phones, so I uploaded them to my Flickr account:

Right, yeah. So after that we went to Sun Pillar park, which was still under construction when I went with Aki 2 years ago. We were lucky that the weather was nice, because that meant we got to play on the "Fuwafuwa Dome", the most amazing playground equipment in the world. Basically, it's a bunch of big vinyl lumps with some incredibly bouncy material underneath, like a big weirdly-shaped trampoline. We must have played on the thing for half an hour before we were all tired and sweaty. Aya even has the honor of being the cover photo for my post-RSR photo album on Flickr.

So after that, we went inside the relatively new activity center thing and played badminton. I hadn't played in a long time, and I sure wasn't dressed for it, but it was damn fun, and made me miss playing regularly. Besides the Fuwafuwa Dome, the activity center, and the incredibly cool playground that Aki and I previously explored, it turns out that Sun Pillar park is ridiculously huge... so next time I visit Nayoro I'm going to have to really check it out. On the way back to town, we stopped for soft-serve ice cream (something I had been craving for months), then at Aya's house so I could shower and say goodbye to Moco. We then stopped by her parents' cosmetics shop to take a family photo, and then Aya and I parted ways for the millionth time and I headed back to Sapporo. Back in the big city, it was time for my going-away party. 18 people from our Rising Sun group showed up, so it was like a really awesome after party. We went to Kirin Beer Hall for all-you-can-eat Jingis Khan (a Hokkaido dish involving lamb and a goofy-shaped grill) and all-you-can-drink beer.

What with it being Friday, a lot of my friends were fresh out of work, but everyone got drunk and had an awesome time. After we finished feasting, the plan was that people who still wanted to hang out would go out for karaoke. Well, it turned out that EVERYONE wanted to go. We even had a few more people show up. So we got one big room for our group, and went absolutley nuts for four hours.

At four in the morning, we stumbled onto the streets of Sapporo, and did what you're supposed to do after a night of heavy drinking in Japan... we went out for ramen. It was fantastic. I can't believe I didn't get a picture of Yuusaku (yes, that's his real name), who ordered an extra-large bowl of ramen, and fell asleep with his hair in the bowl. At 4:30 am as the sun was coming up over Sapporo, I said goodbye to my Rising Sun friends, and vowed that someday, I will be living in Sapporo and we will hang out like this every weekend.

...maybe not every weekend.

2009.08.21

Road to RSR09 in EZO → Sunset Day 5

2009-09-28T11:02:00.000-07:00

Aya had to work today, so I slept for 8 hours for the first time in at least a month. Breakfast was already waiting for me on the table, because Japanese people are awesome hosts like that. Eventually, Aya's dad picked me up (he was just as excited to have me come visit as she was), and I went to the "North Country History Museum" to kill a couple of hours and to learn about the history of Nayoro. Or at least infer information about the history of Nayoro, since reading the various informational tablets was far too difficult/time-consuming.

After I had pretended to learn everything, Dad picked me up and we went to an onsen (hot spring), which was actually the second time I've gone to one with him. This time we went to Gomi Spa, which means "five-flavor spa", but sounds like "garbage spa". Man, onsens are the best. By the time we left, Aya was done with work, so we met her back home, and went grocery shopping together. For dinner, we made temaki sushi. You know... like the "rolls" that everyone in America eats when they eat sushi. Only with an amazing assortment of fillings. And no avocado. Aya's parents demanded that I gorge myself, so I did just that. They also demanded that I fulfill my dream of eating a big chunk of raw tuna turkey-leg style after I mentioned it jokingly.

Aya's dad also kept force-feeding me Sake (not "saki"), or as I like to call it, "Japan-shu", while he drank from a big giant vat of shochuu. He kept saying we should have a drinking contest, but fortunately, Aya and her mom (and myself) didn't think it was a good idea.

After dinner, Aya and I walked through a torrential downpour through the streets of Nayoro which were devoid of life, and went to karaoke for a couple of hours to sing some of our favorite songs together.

2009.08.20

Road to RSR09 in EZO → Sunset Day 4

2009-09-28T10:42:00.000-07:00

After waking up and checking my bank account, I discovered that I had approximately 7000 Yen (or about $65.80) in my bank account, with another 1000 or so Yen in my wallet. My plan was to take a train to Nayoro to visit Aya, one of my bestest most awesomest frieands ever, but the train ticket alone was probably going to cost more than that. So I emailed Lena back home to find out what had happened, and tried to sort things out. It turned out that a large sum of money we were expecting in the office never showed up, so not only had I not received the paycheck I thought I would get on the 17th, but we couldn't even afford to pay rent at the office. Fortunately, Yoko loaned me 10,000 Yen, effectively saving my ass/vacation, and Lena worked out a plan that would get me at least some money to survive on. So Japan-Mom and I went out for an awesome lunch, I enjoyed her awesomely difficult yet eloquent manner of speaking, and then she took me to the train station, where she saved me a crapton of money on a route to Nayoro that I never could have figured out on my own. Thanks, Japan-Mom, you're the best!!!

I then began the exciting ~4 hour train adventure to Nayoro, located in the north-central part of Hokkaido, where I was met by Aya. This was my third trip to Nayoro. The first time was to visit Aya, and her best friend Aki whom I had met once before. For the second trip, Aya was in Tokyo at the time, so I went to meet Aki. This time, Aki was living in Okinawa, so it was just Aki. I would have loved to go visit Aki, too, but I'll have to save that incredibly challenging and expensive adventure for another time.

Also, I met the new puppy of the house, Moco. What an adorable little bastard.

2009.08.19

Road to RSR09 in EZO → Sunset Day 3

2009-09-24T13:29:00.000-07:00

Kutchan had some sort of business in Niseko he needed to attend to and wasn't sure what time he'd be back at night. Eventually Erina had to go home, so I went to a manga comic internet kisaten coffee house store thing. Basically you get a private booth with a tv and a computer, free drinks, access to all kinds of comic books (or "manga" if you want to be more accurate/nerdy), and they even have a shower room. I guess if you miss the last train home at night, it's a decent way to kill time until trains start running in the morning. But really, it's not all THAT much more expensive for a capsule hotel (which typically don't allow women, and are also typically only found in super crowded places like Tokyo), so mostly it just seems kind of creepy to me. Aaaanyway... I ended up staying there all day, and as soon as it seemed like businesses might be open (you pay by the hour so I didn't want to stick around longer), I wandered around Sapporo for a while, and eventually went to Otaru to have lunch with my psuedo-host parents, Tetsuji and Yoko Ueno.

Yoko got into some pretty difficult topics of conversation (difficult as in "put my Japanese comprehension to the test"), but she has a very easy-to-follow way of speaking, and it made me feel good that my Japanese ability probably hasn't decreased as much as I think it has. After we chatted it up for a few hours, I met up with Miina and Yuki (Miina said she was bringing "someone I've met before", but I've hung out with Yuki a million times before). We went to an okonomiyaki place that we've all seen a million times before, but only Yuki has actually eaten at. It was pretty damn tasty.

Next up was drinkering time, and I decided it that we had to go to Miwako's favorite bar in Otaru (it's one of my favorites, too, though), Modern Times. We drank pretty much nothing but gin, talked about Miwako's adventures (everyone is excited for her return to Japan... jerks), and how we really do need to start up a business of some sort. Eventually, Tetsuji joined us because he wanted to drink with me.

After the girls went home, he took me to one of his favorite drinking places for middle-aged men. It's the kind of place where there's only about 5 seats at the bar, you purchase your own bottle of whiskey or whatever which they keep at the bar, and they basically keep pooring drinks for you whether you ask for them or not. One of Tetsuji's middle-aged man friends and I talked about Big Sur, California, where he used to live, and along with the barkeeplady, they saw to it that I got quite drunk. Then the other guy decided I needed to experience a "snack" bar.. which was similar to the last place, except you're expected to flirt with a very young waitress/bartender. It was... weird. I had to make the pictures on Flickr friends-only so Dad wouldn't get in trouble (though he wasn't misbehaving because he and Yoko have an impressively strong relationship). But it was fun. Eventually we stumbled home at 2 am. I hope he didn't get in trouble.

2009.08.18

Road to RSR09 in EZO → Sunset Day 2

2009-09-24T12:56:00.000-07:00

Dachambo took off in their tour bus for the ferry to the mainland around 5am, so I hung out with Gravity Free and Erico, who works for the shop that ran the event. Eventually we went in her car to her place and took a much-needed nap. We then went out for ramen at a little-known place known for its selection of unusual styles of ramen (miso milk, cheese, etc.).

After Gravity Free took off for the airport, I wandered around Sapporo for a while, found a copy of Jurassic Park on VHS, and then took a train to Teine, where I met Aki and her family for dinner. Aki and I had a radio program called "Kurt's on Air" at FM Otaru back in my exchange student days. I have no idea what the point of it was, but it was awesome. I hadn't seen her daughter, Aoi since shortly after she was born. Now she's 4 years old and adorable.

After dinner, I headed back to Sapporo and met up with Erina, who I sadly didn't see other than a very brief encounter at Rising Sun. We had a few drinks and got caught up, and decided that within the next year or two we need to quit our jobs and start up a business of some sort in Sapporo. Erina will run the place, Miwako will make the food, I will apparently be in charge of music and bartending, and Miina will... I forgot what her job is. At any rate, Erina is super stressed out at her job and wants to do something new. None of us want to work REAL jobs, so something like this would be a dream come true for all of us.

2009.08.17

Road to RSR09 in EZO → Sunset Day 1

2009-09-24T12:17:00.000-07:00

Even though I came back from Japan nearly a month ago and already posted my travel diary to the interweb in Japanese, now it's time to do it in English. Sorry it took so long.

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After Rising Sun, Kutchan and I went to his place to sleep for a few hours, then we headed out to eat soup curry. Every year I want to eat soup curry as much as possible, and every year I end up at Picante for some reason.

After that we met with a friend of his and drove to Otaru Dream Beach in Zenibako (near where Miwako is from), where Dachambo and Gravity Free were performing an all night party. DJ HATA (aka HATA from Dachambo) hooked us up with staff passes, and though the others left early, I hung out all night/morning dancing, drinking, hanging out with random people, and participating in a drum circle where half of us joined in using whatever weird random objects we could find to make sounds with.

2009.08.16

Road to RSR09 in EZO → Sunrise

2009-08-18T22:30:00.000-07:00

2009.08.13
Road to Rising Sun Rock Festival 2009 in EZO (Sunrise)

Straight to Blackout moped rally in Portland, OR presented by Puddle Cutters

2009-08-10T02:55:00.000-07:00

2009.08.09

Welcome to Town Chris and Matt!

2009-08-06T10:38:00.000-07:00

2009.08.06
9-player Saturn Bomberman

104 degrees in Seattle

2009-07-30T11:40:00.000-07:00

2009.07.30

虹の夢の中で

2009-07-30T11:30:00.000-07:00

2009.07.24

2009.07.25

2009.07.26

2009.07.27

Bad Idea Beverages

2009-07-22T08:58:00.000-07:00

2009.07.21
4^4 Loko & Joooooooose

Mustache Ride moped rally in Reno, Nevada presented by Los Dorados

2009-07-16T11:18:00.000-07:00

2009.07.09

2009.07.10

2009.07.11

2009.07.12

Return to Port Townsend with the Mosquito Fleet

2009-07-07T23:18:00.000-07:00

2009.07.03

2009.07.04

2009.07.05

Sleepover with Dean

2009-06-28T12:10:00.000-07:00

2009.06.27

Playdate with Kim Gold

2009-06-27T11:21:00.000-07:00

2009.06.26
2nd playdate in as many days in the International District.

Playdate with Jihee

2009-06-26T10:38:00.000-07:00

2009.06.26

PAW Club Adventure #4: Windy Point, WA

2009-06-22T00:29:00.000-07:00

2009.06.20

チンジャオロース

2009-06-17T23:40:00.001-07:00

2009.06.17
(chinjao ro su)

MF Goes to the Coast! Westport, WA

2009-06-14T23:18:00.000-07:00

2009.06.13

2009.06.14

Victoria with Miwako 4

2009-06-12T07:54:00.000-07:00

2009.05.31
カナダのビクトリアまでモペット乗った時の写真はアップしました。
Pictures from my moped adventure to Victoria are up.

しあわせ

2009-06-06T10:24:00.001-07:00

2009.05.29

2009.05.31

2009.06.01
(shiawase)

Guess Where I Rode My Moped!

2009-06-02T10:56:00.000-07:00

2009.05.28

2009.05.29

2009.06.01

Omen?

2009-05-28T11:11:00.001-07:00

2009.05.27

Moped Sangwich

2009-05-27T01:49:00.000-07:00

2009.05.26

A Bright Day for Pancakes

2009-05-25T11:33:00.000-07:00

2009.05.24

烏一羽

2009-05-23T13:27:00.000-07:00

2009.05.23
(karasu i wwa)

March/2009

2009-05-23T11:32:00.000-07:00

2009.05.22
2009年3月の写真アップロードしました。今年の３月はよくなかった。なんだか毎年３月は憂鬱みたい。
My March/2009 pictures are up on Flickr. March was not a good month for me. March is never a good month for me, it seems.

Eggplant Ginger Chicken @ Thai Tom, Seattle

2009-05-23T04:04:00.000-07:00

2009.05.20

Such a Beautiful Yellow Sky Today

2009-05-20T11:14:00.000-07:00

2009.05.19

I Want to Be a Quasar

2009-03-06T19:38:00.000-08:00

2009.03.05

NEWRVBC

2008-09-05T04:51:00.000-07:00

2009.09.04

Solar

2008-06-13T03:37:00.000-07:00

2008.06.10

Named in 1914

2008-05-14T00:36:00.000-07:00

2008.05.12

Swimming the Australian Coast

2008-05-14T00:35:00.000-07:00

2008.05.08

Heirarchy of Stegosaurids

2008-05-14T00:34:00.000-07:00

2008.05.05

自分のダメさ

2008-04-18T09:06:00.000-07:00

2008.04.16
(Jibun no Dame sa)

No Matter What Happens...

2008-04-18T09:04:00.000-07:00

2008.02.11

Continuation (2 Years)

2008-02-11T01:19:00.000-08:00

2008.02.10

連続失恋

2008-01-05T03:33:00.000-08:00

2008.01.03
(renzoku shitsuren)

Pteramidactyl

2008-01-05T03:31:00.000-08:00

2007.11.07

Pink 2

2008-01-05T03:30:00.000-08:00

2007.11.06

Iteration

2007-11-04T19:03:00.000-08:00

2007.11.04

ただいま

2007-11-04T02:57:00.000-08:00

2007.11.03
(tadaima)

Nothing in Between

2007-08-08T12:47:00.000-07:00

2007.08.08

The Saddest Thing

2007-07-24T14:14:00.001-07:00

2007.07.24

★

2007-07-20T04:55:00.000-07:00

2007.07.19

流れ星

2007-07-13T00:46:00.000-07:00

2007.07.12
(nagareboshi)