inside the wonderful world of vee

CURRENTLY WATCHING… “Atonement” (HBO On Demand!)
I’ve got a lot to write about Portland. Here is my attempt to work my way backwards in time.

***
Thursday, October 16th, 2008.

Watched “Midnight Meat Train” because the title was funny. Really high while watching it. I don’t know if we watched it on this exact evening but WHATEVER. The first few nights, being all high, kind of blurred into one another D:***

Friday, October 17th, 2008.

Trader Joe’s sushi. Why would anyone try such a thing? FUCKING DISGUSTING!

Obama rally, March 4th Marching Band coverage.

***

Saturday, October 18th, 2008.

Watch TV with Dan and Jack high until really early in the morning. Lotta “True Blood” episodes…

Takes me a while to adjust to Portland life, but (and this is reaching in to the future) the trip home to San Francisco does wonders on helping to adjust to Portland life and life on the road. Strangely. It’s the needed boost of familiarity, I suppose!

***

Sunday, October 19th, 2008.

Get a ride to airport from Jack, ass early in the morning!

***

Monday, October 20th, 2008.

Home, dinner with Sherry and Xinlei at Lindo Sushi. Or Sushi Lindo? I don’t know.

***

Tuesday, October 21st, 2008.

Lunch with mother. Then I am off on the BART to the airport!

Then I am not able to get a ride back home, so I take the MAX and get home around 11PM but it works out. Very easy, straight shot from the airport!

***

Thursday, October 23rd, 2008.

Baked sushi at Mio Sushi with Jack. Actually, it was a sushi pizza. It was okay.

ZOO. NAKED MOLE RATS. BATS. BIRD FEEDING. TO BE UPDATED LATER.

New favorite bird: Carmine Bee-Eater.

***

Friday, October 24th, 2008.

This night was frankly rather ridiculous. Kelly came over and really wanted to fight some bitches. I wasn’t around, but apparently she kicked Dan in the face. Haha?

We were just all sitting around the dining room table… Cole had bought a fifth of whiskey and Kelly had bought a fifth of vodka. It was being split amongst everyone and everyone was getting hammered and lots of people were getting retarded. The boys started arm-wrestling and trying to see who was the biggest man or something. Jack was uber buff. I mean, Dan is buffest, but Dan is huge. Jack was deceivingly strong.

***

Saturday, October 25th, 2008.

In the daytime, Micah, Dan, and I head to the park nearby their house to watch Micah and Dan compete in holding themselves upside down on those playground rings and other inane shit. Kind of amusing and kind of ridiculous. Then we played some pool at Cooperstown. Same ol, same ol.

Later that evening, a buncha people head to Dan’s sister’s for a BBQ. There aren’t that many people who are there other than us, Dan’s sister, and Dan’s sister’s man, but it is primarily entertaining because Cole and Jeanette drunkenly perform a small show for us. Including their DRACULA song. Video to come, because the song is amazing and gets stuck in heads for DAYS. DAYS I SAY!! DAYS!!!

As far as everything else, though, we didn’t do too much other than played a little bit of Poker, socialized minimally, and blahblah.

After that, Jack and I head over to this house for a house party to film this artist named Mattress, and Micah comes as well. I knew from listening to 15 seconds of Mattress’ music that he was going to blow chunks. And, despite his suit with strings of Christmas lights wrapped through it, he did suck. Big time. His music was crap. But people liked him a lot so what can you do?

It was the house’s first time ever holding a show, and mostly everyone there was underage. They sure as hell looked like, older than I was, though. ~__~ Awkward! Not really sure what to do with myself in house party type scenarios haha. AWKWARD!

The rest of the acts were OK. Some kids were playing truth or dare and dared other people to kiss Jack and he kissed a guy and a girl I believe. It’s just funny because he was chosen and he wasn’t even playing!!! In the meantime, I pretty much hung out with Micah the whole time and listened to largely terrible musak. Jack got free drinks and lots of attention just cause he was carrying around a camera. That’s the way to go. People don’t really care about a person with a regular SLR or other camera, but someone with a nice video camera is instantly popular!!

***

Sunday, October 26th, 2008.

Jack and I go eat at Bluefin Sushi. It’s pretty good but kinda awkward upon first entering the premises.

Play pool with Jack, Dan, and Cole at Cooperstown. Get lectured.

We get home and all decide to have a TATTOOOOOOOO PARTTTTTYYYYYYYYY! Cole volunteers for half sleeves, and they look fucking DOPE!!

***

Monday, October 27th, 2008.

Play pool with Jack, Dan, Micah, and Cole at Cooperstown. Jack snorted a lot of Dexatrin and is high out of his motherfucking mind. Haha. As for me, I felt really HIGH all day even though I didn’t smoke. It was fucking WEIRD. SO WEIRD. Like I was seriously high. And it did NOT go away until I went to bed and woke up the next day. And then it was fine. And then I didn’t touch weed at the house ever again. Haha. Oh, not only that but this day and the day before my hands were tingling ALL DAY. It finally went away after I woke up on Tuesday morning, thank GOD. Twas starting to freak me out a little. It was like my hands did not belong to me!!!

***
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008.

Evan is here from Olympia. His sister dropped him off. He simultaneously cleans the living room while dancing. It’s fucking awesome.

Go to the Matador with Dan, Kelly, and Micah to shoot some pool. I think. Shit. Days are all blurring into one another. Haha.

***

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008.

??? WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED ???

Jack and I eat lunch at Mio Sushi.

***

Thursday, October 3ost, 2008.

Everyone was pretty much home today except for Cole and Brian I believe.

I washed dishes for more than an hour using a giant bowl and pot as wash basins because the basement is kinda flooded (or as Evan proposed, “puddled” because “flooded” is too extreme a word for such a scenario, since there was only an inch and a half of standing water). It was kind of a fun exercise of potential water conservation… I say potential because I’m not sure if it actually saved water or not haha. But either way, a shitload of water was used even despite my greatest efforts in water conservation!! It took forever, but it was kinda fun. Plumbing still isn’t fixed, though, which is kinda nasty considering it generally means no one can do laundry unless they’re doing laundry and simultaneously scooping water out of the basement………….. hrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. I think Dan’s the only one who has done that so far so basically everyone else is just a dirtball. Not that I’m not. But at least I’ll be able to get some clean clothes upon going back to Seattle…??

This evening was Last Thursday! Didn’t have many plans other than that. Portland has two major Art Walks that I know of — I reckon there are probably more — but there is the Downtown one and the one on Alberta St. Last Thursday is on Alberta St. and is more small boutique-friendly and more street performer-friendly. Not that the other one is bad at all (see next week for the write-up about the other one), but it is different for sure.

Jack came along and Dan was going to but then he flaked out! Jack and I started off by eating at some Mexican restaurant that was pretty good and fairly cheap. Pretty much my entire time in Portland I’ve been either eating Japanese food or Mexican food. Nothing else, really except for the occasional platter of American food and fries or something.

After food, we started the Art Walk. There were people in costume and some Dia De Los Muertos parade because well, Dia De Los Muertos was coming up obviously. There were people on stilts, people wearing masks, and people being people.

Some interesting art but nothing overwhelming as it was not too late into it when Cia and Micah asked Jack and I if we wanted to go see this band with them. Chervona was the name, and they were some kind of gypsy-punk band. Unfortunately, when we met up with Cia and Micah, Jack decided he didn’t want to pay $5 to see the show, so he went home (he actually couldn’t have gone anyway, since he’s under 21). When we got to that bar, though, we sat outside for a while while this cover band guy with a lead singer dressed up like Axl Rose sang. They were kind of terrible acoustic singer-songwriter type shit (despite the fact that there were three people, it still sounded like one singer-songwriter practically… go figure). So outside we sat, drawing on these picnic tables that were riddled with shit already. I had nothing that interesting to contribute, unfortunately.

Miss C apparently knows someone who is a chemist and makes drugs from scratch, so that is a very very exciting thing for me. D:

When lame singer-songwriter wannabe was done, we went to the concert room but Chervona still wasn’t on for another hour and a half, so we went to another bar and sat around. Blah, blah, watching people get drunk, blah, blah, walking back and forth between bars, blah, blah. Finally we left early instead of sticking around for the show when I realized I had no cash and neither did Micah, so we bummed $2.00 from Cia and took the bus back. GHETTO!!!!

***Friday, October 31st, 2008.

On Thursday, I received an email from Mute Records asking about Freak Night through Paul Van Dyke, so I decided to take them up on their offer and traveled up from Portland to Seattle for my once annual rave. Freak Night was also the first rave I ever attended, seven years ago, so it holds a good amount of sentimentality. Nonetheless, I must say that this Freak Night was not 100% worth the effort, and I probably would have had more fun just staying down in Portland. Oh well, though. Too late to change it now.

Left Portland and was picked up at the Seattle Amtrak station by Lingo, who was my +1 on Freak Night. We went back to my house for a little bit and then met up with Tony and this friend… Fred? at Maekawa Bar, which is sooo not my favorite restaurant in Seattle. I am not a huge fan of izakayas or wannabe izakayas for that matter. Whatever, though. Not to mention there was terrible communication and Lingo and I both thought Tony was coming to my house (”I’m amazed he knows how to get here,” I said to Lingo, upon recalling Tony’s horrible sense of direction.) but we realized that was not the case when Tony called us from Maekawa and asked where we were. What a motherfucking nubcake!!!

Food was mediocre, and I basically just watched those fools drink alcohol. Yayyyyyyyy. When we finally got to Freak Night (it was a short walk away from Chinatown), fucking had to wait in line for an hour to even get my Will Call pass (despite the fact that I was on the Paul Van Dyke guest list) and had to wait another motherfucking hour to get into the actual event. Two hours total to even step foot in the door, and by then it was 1AM, with the event ending at 4AM! What ridiculousness!!!!

The event itself was fine, apparently there were a lot of E-bombs going around that were subpar and, in Nate’s words, “made people feel like they are dying when they’re coming down.” So, I avoided them, not that I wasn’t going to avoid them anyway. Tony definitely asked me, “When was the last time you did E?” and I said, “Three years? Two years?” and he had to remind me that I was a big fat fat liar because apparently I did a half a pill at the last USC even though it didn’t work at ALL. “Snap,” I said, “I totally forgot!!!” Mmmm. E. It does a brain badly.

Andy C was quite a terrible DJ and he kept doing the motherfucking REWIND thing during non-REWIND worthy moments. He did it at least 3 times which is much too much considering I didn’t even see his entire set!! The other DJs after him were much better. FAILURE ANDY C!! FAILURE. YOU’RE THE FAMOUS ONE, TOO!!

The Trance room, with Paul Van Dyke, was big time suck. At least the people at Freak Night looked decidedly less douchey compared to the people at USC this year (they looked like total frat boys and girls… perhaps the costumes adequately disguised this fact during Freak Night). Even Lingo, who was rolling just so slightly, couldn’t handle the lameness that was the Trance room. Drum N’ Bass Room for lyfe. This was also like the smallest massive / smallest side room / smallest drum n’ bass room ever, because it had maybe, at its maximum point, like… 50 people. Haha. What the fuck. Not that I’m complaining because it never got hot (a rave rarity) and never got sweaty (a rave rarity) and never got crowded to the point where one could not find a space to dance (another rave rarity).

All in all, it was fairly fun, but not worth the trip up, and apparently I have hairier legs than Lingo. I’m not too surprised really, though.

***

Saturday, November 1st, 2008.

Woke up after sleeping not too many hours post-rave and was somehow OK as far as energy levels go.

I went to lunch with Alex at Flowers — vegetarian buffet style! The rice pudding was DELICIOUS as was this eggplant saucy dish. MMMM. I want to eat it again!!!! Then we had some bubble tea and sat around for a bit. When I got back to the house, I did some massive packing and then Alex dropped me off at the Amtrak Station in Seattle around 5:00pm.

Three and a half hours later and one boring ass screening of Wall-E later (yes, they show movies on the train, apparently!), I was back in Portland, and Micah picked me up at the train station. I reckon that was… 9:00pm ish? We went back to the house and then went to meet up with Cole and Dan at Biddy’s, where Dan and Jack apparently had some sort of problem. Jack had Britain, girl offa Craig’s List, over. Dan kinda slapped at Britain’s tat and she got offended and then there was miscommunication and all kindsa good stuff. ~__~

Frankly, Dan was being pretty weird the entire evening and was standoffish and barely talked to me once when we got there. I just kinda talked to Cole about HIS problems with Dan regarding Leeba… seems like everyone has some issues there. Fun.

***

Sunday, November 2nd, 2008.

Went to the Matador with Micah and Kelly, and we attempted to play pool on these tables that turned out to be EXTREMELY crooked. Everything would roll towards one side — so extremely that at one point all the balls were literally on one side of the table. Haha. Ghettooooo. I had this plan to put matchbooks underneath the table legs but that didn’t work out too well because the table was too heavy for Micah to really lift and the matchbooks were practically flattened instantly anyways. Instead we decided to sit at the bar and just chat, which felt remarkably comfortable despite the fact that I’ve never actually sat at a bar before. o__O I mean, for an extended period of time, anyway.

There was this old guy who kept talking to Kelly and was going to buy her a shot or something but she ended up buying a pitcher before that. There were also like 5 Alaskans in there at some point which was fucking weird, cause I mean, before I came to Portland I’d never met a godamn Alaskan and since I’ve been here I’ve met like a million thousand. But it’s all good, I guess. O__O

This guy Kelly made out with some previous weekend at a ’80s night thing came over for her for a date or something. He really wanted to bone her, I guess, despite the fact that at ’80s night, he had turned her down for bonings due to personal reasons. Evidently she looked up his MySpace and he was very much Christian and all about Christianity and she felt like she would be corrupting him or something. She kept saying stuff like, “I don’t want to corrupt you,” and, “Why would you want to do it now,” and, hilariously, “I believe in Satan yet you want to have sex with me?” Yet the man maintained and attempted to sex0r her, and eventually Micah gave them some condoms, and they went on their merry way. Actually, though, it wasn’t a very merry way, because their last words before leaving was her saying, “Fine, let’s just fucking go then,” and they didn’t even say bye to us!!!!

It’s also kinda lame for her that she left because there was a pretty good-looking guy there named Joel, who is, coincidentally, Micah’s brother’s best friend, and he thought Kelly was cute. But Kelly went off with Christian boy, so no Joel for her, I guess.

Later that night, Jack, Dan, Micah, and I sat around and attempted to watch movies I do believe. We started with “Night At The Museum” because Dan and I both had wanted to watch it. Jack and Micah had both seen it and thought it was terrible, and boy were they right. It was awful. Not amusing at all.

***

Monday, November 3rd, 2008.

Micah went to get his drug test done early in the morning. When he got back, we went bowling with Cole and Leeba. Leeba’s awesome. But young. Cole was fairly good and got I think over 150 the second game. I did worst and never broke 100! Fuck man, bowling is some expensive shit, too. Even at like 1:00pm on a Monday afternoon, it cost $11.00 each for shoe rental and two games. What kinda shady shit…

Then Trader Joe’s, where I ran into Andy Combs from Andy Combs and the Moth. Actually, Leeba saw him too, but they didn’t talk to each other. I opened my mouth before I could think and ended up having an extremely awkward conversation with him. I gave him a business card, though, and told him if he releases an album anytime soon that I want it!

Don’t remember what I did the rest of the night… at least at the moment.

***

Tuesday, November 4th, 2008.

November 4th is Election Day, jea jea!

Micah and I go attempt to eat some sushi, but Takohashi is closed, AGAIN, and so we walk around aimlessly. We finally find Dragonfish, which also has a branch in Seattle, and decide to consume that. They’re having Happy Hour, so it’s pretty good for the price. Chicken wrapped in lettuce, salmon katsu, smoked salmon and creme cheese sushi rolls, California rolls, and crab rolls.

Then we meet up with Dan at Washington Mutual (who dammit, also cannot exchange my godamn Japanese Yen… it seems nobody can, motherfuckers) and then we head to the Matador, where we meet up with Kelly. Tis a pretty chill bar. I’m a fan. They also have 25 cent pool and actual pretty decent pool tables… at least compared to those at A&L, which is right near the house in the Hollywood District. The Matador is near PGE Park. A very comfortable bar, for sure. I think I’ve been to more bars here than I have in my entire life otherwise. LOL.

Anyway, we played a few games of pool, watched some election television, and then headed back towards our house to go to Cooperstown. This was around 9:00pm, because after 9:00pm, food gets dirty cheap at Cooperstown. Got a cheeseburger and fries for $4.50 — I don’t really eat burgers, but it was the best deal for the $$ and well, better than nothing. I kinda already wrote about this evening, though, and you can see it by clicking here.

Later that evening, though, there was some more fun. Went to Kelly’s real quick prior to getting home to watch an episode of South Park and for the dudes and her to get stoned. She has three cats. When we got back in our neighborhood, we ate at Cooperstown but Dan left early. Kelly bought a 12 pack of Pabst from the Plaid Pantry, and I found out that Plaid Pantry has BANANA MILK. HELL FUCKING JEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. FIRST TIME I’VE SEEN IT IN THE UNITED STATES!!!!!!!!!!!! (other than in Paldo World, but that doesn’t count since it’s a Korean supermarket!!!)

Then Jack, Kelly, Micah, and I went to A&L to play some pool on their fucking TERRIIIIIBLE tables. And their cues are missing the rubber parts on the bottom, so they’re super light. Bleh. Playing pool there is kinda hard and terrible. But we played anyway. Jack initially got kicked out because he didn’t have his “ID” but he went back and got it… it wasn’t an official license of any kind, but after a brief lecture, the bar guy let him in. I mean, he is practically there daily, after all. Jack played a little and left early. Kelly had smuggled in some Pabst in her purse but Micah told her not to drink it there since we’re there so often or whatever. She bought a pitcher and then got drunk and proceeded to zone the fuck out. Like. Hugely. She was lost in her world of music and Jack and I would try and talk to her and she wouldn’t even realize we were talking to her. The only times she would snap out of it is when she would be wanting one of us to listen to one of her songs… odd. One of her cousins is a member of The Used so The Used is literally like her favorite band, alongside Senses Fail. Which is funny, because I haven’t really heard those bands be relevant in quite some time. Therefore, they are not relevant. PERIOD. Just kidding.

But yeah, Jack left early and Kelly was there zoning out and not really talking to anyone, so we decided to head back. We took a shortcut through a park, and Micah and I walked ahead of Kelly. When we actually turned arond, we noticed that she was dancing and twirling and dancing — lost in her own musical world. And they weren’t mini moves or slight shakes of hips. They were literal ballerina twirls and shit. It was um quite um interesting. At one point, we stop to wait for her, and she ducks under these trees and is like hiding out there for a bit. And we’re just waiting for her. She doesn’t reemerge until Micah calls her name, and then she just slowly creeps out of the shadows and then continues dancing behind us as we walk. What da fack. She’s a cool girl when she’s sober — just the right blend of rude and nice — but when she’s drunk, I don’t even know WTF to do with her!

As soon as we get back, Kelly passes the fuck out on our couch. We’re hootin’ and hollerin’ yet somehow she doesn’t wake up. No shite off my back.

Because Cole did acid the evening before, I asked him about it. Jack hears and asks if Cole would like to get higher than he has ever been, and Cole says sure. Jack busts out some 40x salvia divanorum extract (a legal drug, mind you, despite it’s ridiculousness and ability to fuck people up big time) in this black plastic container thing. Cole is skeptical and doesn’t believe that the drug could ever be anything more than say, doing 8 hits of acid, which he has done. But as the salvia kicks in, Cole can’t really even control himself. I mean, video of that shit to come as I did take video. But it was some amusingness for sure. Then Micah tried it (he’s done it a buncha times before) and had a totally different reaction — his reaction was one of a pretty straightforward hallucinogen — not like some time/spatial warp shit that usually happens on salvia. His reaction was generally positive. Jack tried to try some but he didn’t take enough for it to work, so he wa just a little off but not REALLY.

Videos to come. It was definitely AMUSING. I was offered some but I really have no desire to try salvia. Actually, I did the next morning, but not that evening.

As this is NOT shown in the video, though, Cole’s interpretation from his less-than-savory salvia trip was that life is just like a deck of cards folding onto itself and that who we are and what we do has already been done a million times in every different direction, and that life will be over in just a mothafuckin’ blink of the eye. WORD.

***

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008.

Was woken up by a phone call early in the morning (early being 10:30am) by a recruiter for Microsoft. Blah, blah. Then went back to sleep. Woke up late-ish as usual, and then went downtown with Micah and Dan to get some tacos from the lovely taco truck!!! It was cold as fuck today though, and we all froze to death while sitting outside and eating tacos.

Then we went to Powell’s Books for a couple hours. That place is so great it’s evil. It’s practically impossible for me to go there without buying SOMETHING… because they have EVERYTHING. We only went to 1/3 of the store (or maybe 1/4) and I left with one magazine that I hope to make collages out of and two books. One of the books is a Sociology type book about a 24 year old that acted like a teenager, with the permission of a school principal, and did an undercover story for a year. The other book is about voodoo, zombis, and shamanism.

When we were done there, we went to Dan’s friend Brian’s house and they smoked. I watched them smoke and play video games. No big deal. I tried playing Call Of Duty for like two seconds but I’ve always had a hard time playing FPS games on big maps where I can barely see the other player. So I died like 3 times and then said screw it, this is probably boring everyone, and handed it off to Brian.

We took the MAX back and there was this drunk Italian dude on it talking to this other older dude about legalizing marijuana when we first got on the MAX. Then Dan joined in and started talking to him about legalizing pot and they came to the conclusion that it didn’t matter when pot gets legalized as long as it gets legalized at some point. The Italian dude claims he grows weed and was extremely strangely accented. The busted out a fifth of rum on the train and like started drinking from it. The old guy, who was on his cell phone, said, “They’re watching,” pointing at the ceiling because there was supposedly CCTV on the train. Nonetheless… people do crazy shit on the MAX all the time so I hear. So they probably didn’t even care. I guess Micah was on the MAX the other day and some kids brought a boombox and started popping and breakdancing and everyone except for this one old dude was all bout it. AWESOME!

On the walk back to the house, lots of hilarity ensued. There was this giant wheat stalk type thing — one I was fascinated with before when I was on shrOoms — that can be used as a wonderful feathery poking stick. The stick became a… penis… a “food on a stalk that animals chase after that are always in front of them but that they never reach” (with Micah and I being the animals)… and food Dan claimed to eat when he was a “soldier in Vietnam”.

Then Micah and Dan started throwing the stick like a javelin and counting out the winner by measuring with foot paces. Dan won. The stick provided many minutes of amusement

***

Thursday, November 6th, 2008.

Woke up at like 1:30pm or something ridiculous. Got ready and headed downtown with Micah with a “Talk To Us” sign. (”Talk To Us” will be described in another post.) The sign was pretty much the same as always, with block letters drawn in pen with those exact words on it. There was one difference, however. This time I decided to add a squarish robot on the bottom, and also put a lion’s mane type thing around it. Micah was fairly nervous about how the whole thing was going to go down. For good reason, I suppose. Newbies are often nervous about this strange project of mine.

Before embarking on talking to people, though, we went to go get tacos from the taco truck we’ve gone to a million times the past week and then headed to Rich’s Cigar Shop on Alder St., which is one of two locations which supposedly carries REDEFINE in Portland. Unfortunately, the last issue was Summer, and now it is practically Winter, and as a result, they no longer had any copies. I picked up the newest issue of COLORS Magazine and that was that. We also ate some truffles… and got two sampled for free! Then we moved onwards to Pioneer Square. Yupyup, Portland ALSO has a Pioneer Square. It’s more of a Square than Seattle’s Pioneer Square, however, as Seattle’s Pioneer Square is not really a Square!! EEP!

So like I said, the “Talk To Us” will be described later, but it was all in all a pretty good experience despite the fact that the array of people was NOT that wide and they were generally the same type of person: young, liberal, often homeless (or traveling?). I usually like diversity, but what can you do. Micah enjoyed hisself, which I am glad about.

Then we went to a coffee shop and just sat around for a while because both of our Vans leak water for some reason and our feet and socks were fucking SOAKED. My shoes are new, too!! WHAT THE FIZUCK. We attempted to do a crossword puzzle but let’s face it. Those things are like damn near impossible. I don’t see how my fobby uncle Roland can complete New York Times crossword puzzles so easily. Mind boggling.

After that we walked around for a bit and then decided to check out the Portland First Thursday Art Walk. It was actually quite excellent. Had heard things about it being sub-par or too hoity-toity and what not, but I enjoyed myself thoroughly. Here’s coverage I wrote on the Museum of Contemporary Art, which had the most AWESOME exhibit ever.

Came back, did some writing, went to bed.

One could have predicted Obama would have won, but I certainly would have never imagined how much he would have won by. Impressive.

The most exciting part, however, was being in downtown Portland as the 2008 Election results were being announced. We were on the MAX (or right about to get on it) when Dan first got the text message. Soon other people piled in on the MAX. One guy asked us, “Did Obama really win?” and we said, “Yeah. Exciting! Blah. Blah. Blah.”

Later, we passed by other MAX stops. At the first one, we heard groups of minority teenagers screaming for Obama. At the second one, a bunch of elderly white people were running to the MAX, smiling their fucking faces off. As soon as they got on, they started chanting and singing some weird song. They were on their way to the Convention Center, where some Obama party was going on. Weird crap. Blind Obama followers FOR THE LOSE. But it was cuter because they were old. Let’s just hope he really can make some fucking change.

This is written really terribly because Micah is harassing me while I am writing this ~__~

The fact that so many people were SO godamn happy about this election was really quite refreshing. The feeling in the air was like it was Christmas or something! I’ve never witnessed such excitement about voting, and I’m pretty sure most Americans my age have not. When we got to Cooperstown as the results were just being announced, the energy was insane. There were only a handful of people in the bar, but they were shouting, cheering, reveling in the great great victory. For once, it felt like everyone in a city was actually genuinely happy. Granted, it was fairly short lived, as later on that evening (maybe even like an hour later), people were decidedly less excited… but still.

I don’t know if Obama is the savior to all things like many Obama supporters believe. At this moment, it doesn’t really matter, though. He’s better than McCain. That IS what matters. It also matters that Americans finally elected a non-white man into office, and that alone is a symbol that perhaps we are not as idiotic as we 99% of the time seem. In fact, maybe on a global scale, we’ll actually become damn near respectable for once. Hopefully. Who knows. Let’s hope so

So, we stayed the night in Hiroshima at the same hostel and then checked out in the morning to head back to Tokyo. YAY! Not much time in Tokyo, so we had to make the most of it.

The shinkasen trip back was like 3 and a half hours or something. We prepared by getting a lunchbox in Kyoto, since we had to go there to pick up our luggage anyway.

SushiMonster scared of shinkasen!! Seriously, though, the first time I rode the shinkansen it definitely felt uncomfortable. The feeling went away after riding it for the second or third time, though.

My lunchbox! Lunchboxes are definitely the way to go as far as variety goes. MMM! Too much of it was sweet, though. I was a little disappointed by that.

Lenny’s lunchbox!

SushiMonster likes this fake tamago thing!

The Tokyo portion of our trip was no doubt the BEST portion simply because there was so much going on, with so much of it going on by CHANCE.

We just went to Akihabara right away and walked around. Went to an arcade where some dude was playing this CRAZY game where there’s like a million things on the screen at once and you pretty much just have to dodge the flying shit. He totally must play that game a lot, because he could maneuver past every little bead and only died once. Tons of people were entranced by him.

I also came to conclude it must suck to be a woman in Japan, because in the arcade, there was ONE other woman, and she was there with her boyfriend. It is absolutely not culturally acceptable for a woman to really play video games, other than maybe some music games (the playful kind with taiko drums or something, not even like guitar hero) or those stupid ridiculous UFO games which I STILL don’t understand the allure of. They are a trip, those UFO machines. They seem so completely and utterly pointless and have such stupid prizes you think that there couldn’t possibly be anyone stupid enough to pay money over and over again to play. But there are people who do. TONS OF THEM! WTH.

We also checked out an old videogame store, which had an old console we used to have at our house. Hollar!

There were also penguins in this window… :/

This waffle covered chocolate ice cream bar Lenny bought from one of the ice cream vending machines. DELICIOUS!!

We spent FOREVER in Don Quixote. At least Don Quixote always results in some interesting photos, even if it’s boring after floor 3.

Takoyaki hat, courtesy of Don Quixote. Actually, I think they spell it Don Quijote.

Hitler Halloween costume. I shit you not.

I also suggested we eat at Yoshinoya since Lenny hadn’t had it before and I needed to show off the cheapness that is yakiniku in Japan. I was the only woman in there, again. I also suspect that’s not fully acceptable, either. WHATEVER. They were all lonely singular men, in there by themselves. Pretty pathetic.

Then we went back to our hostel in Asakusabashi. There was this totally sketchy playground with like two of those springy horse rides or whatever and a bathroom that was open. I totally saw an old dude pissing… like TWICE. He was pissing twice, in full view of anyone passing by because that’s how the bathroom was designed. It was pretty fucking sick, I must tell you. Sick in a bad way.

Anyway, at the hostel, there was an amusing lady manning the front table when we first checked in earlier in the afternoon. Hehe. She had a funny voice. Lenny liked to impersonate her. I can’t describe what it was like, though, cept really high pitched, friendly, and scratchy. Haha.

The next morning, we got up, and it was SUNDAY!! Sunday meant the day that supposedly, one could rent bikes to bike around the Imperial Palace with. Free bikes? SIGN US UP! Turns out it wasn’t as exciting as one might think, though, and the bikes were limited to a ‘track’ that was set aside for people. The Imperial Palace is also kind of a lame place that is completely not worth going to. You can’t even go in!!!

Before we got there, though, there was this antique garage sale in Ginza we passed when we were walking along. Weird. Didn’t know Japanese people were into antiques. Yeah, yeah, I like to generalize.

Bikes for rent! Guess we totally shoulda tried a tandem bike. DAMN!

“Booya. I need a haircut.”

After riding around the lame Imperial Palace and realizing there wasn’t much to do, we went to the Global Festa, which was this festival with some foods from represented countries (mostly African), and a lot of non-profit organizations. Cute event. Very cute.

See kid in orange on the right? Kid in orange was terribly scared of man and/or woman in robot suit. How can one be scared of that? Who knows!

Well, we didn’t really know what was going on at the event since mostly everything was in Japanese and pretty much everyone was trying to promote some non-profit cause like stopping world hunger and helping education in third world countries and blahblahblah. I settled on some food from I-forget-what-African-country. It was like this beef, potato, and carrot or something stew with couscous. Pretty delicious. Lenny got some samosas from Ghana. Mmm, food. He also got some beer which he thought was disgusting but felt obligated to finish anyway since he paid $5 USD for it. It was also expired. Haha!

After that, we headed on over to Harajuku, for the most interesting part of our entire trip!! We had only planned on going to see the dressed up women, but there turned out to be SO MUCH going on in Harajuku that day that we were extremely, extremely amused.

First up, at the Shibuya stop: weird man dancing with flag. YAY!

Then as we were walking down from the train station stop to the Hibiya Park where all the stuff in Harajuku goes down, we passed a SEAFOOD festival. Needless to say, Lenny was in lorv. There was a crab grilling area but the line was super long, so we didn’t try to go there… we would go back, we said.

Then there was some kinda taichi conference or something…

And across the street from the taichi conference, we heard the bustle of music. What is it? What was it?! ROCK MUSIC? OUTDOOR CONCERTS? SIGN US UP!!

The first thing we saw… greasers!!! TOKYO ROCKABILLY CLUB? WHAT THE FUCK?!!

There they had their boomboxes and they were dancing up a fucking storm. Poses, limber moves… some of these guys were fucking old, too! But one thing’s for sure: ALL OF THEM HAD FUCKING FABULOUS HAIR.

SUPERSTAR!

SUPERSTAR!

What else? Rice Riot was an AWESOME electro pop band.

These girls um, played these drums? It was pretty… but not that entertaining.

I forget the name of this band at the moment… Primal something… will update with their name later… but they had these fucking girls in the palm of their hands!!!

“We are robots!”

Headbanging women? YES!

White girl in maid outfit? YES!!!

Have to look up the name of this band too, but their guitarists were REALLY good… very reminiscent of old Incubus like during “Hilikus!” But the vocalist was just okay, unfortunately.

TERRIBLE TERRIBLE TERRIBLE girl band with a vocalist who wasn’t even REALLY singing. I mean, check it out. They have no amps. Their guitars are not plugged in. I FELT like something was amiss when we first walked by, and I said that, but when we walked by again, it became obvious. They weren’t REALLY playing their instruments at all. PATHETIC. I mean, REALLY pathetic.

When we finally finished looking at all the music, we finally headed over to check out the famous Harajuku girls. We were met by THREE!! OR MAYBE FOUR?!! BUT LAMENESS!! There was only one that was actually posing.

Went shopping for a bit. I bought a cool scarf and a cool pair of pantyhose. Lenny bought two fitted shirts and a tie! Good shopping, but lots of people!! And it started raining a little bit.

We then decided to go back to the seafood festival, but poopingly enough, most of the booths had closed and the crab Lenny wanted to eat was gone, gone, gone :[

We decided to go back to check out some more bands. Very good band, Stereo Lynch!! The drummer was AWESOME. Reminded Lenny of Lingo, I guess.

R&B group from America. Los Angeles area, to be exact. They were just OK.

Think we went home right after that… maybe ate some meals along the way. Twas a long day, twas.

—

The next morning, we thought about getting up at 4:30am to go see the Tsukiji Fish Market fish auctions, but then got lazy. That’s way too early. We woke up at like 8:00am instead and bummed around Tsukiji. It took a while to get there. It always does. More tuna than one could ever REALLY want to see…

Tank full of FUGU!!

They don’t REALLY take that kindly to tourists. Whatever, though.

I was slightly in love with these trays of blood and guts. Call me a sicko!

Check out that grain!

This guy was carving up the head of the tuna, and we saw him pick off a piece and eat it as he was cutting it. Haha!

Mmmm, bin of miscellaneous tuna parts. I’m fascinated.

More. Seriously, is there something wrong with me?

Let’s not forget that we had to try one of the dozens of sushi restaurants along the outskirts of the Tsukiji Fish Market. We didn’t want to wait, so we picked a small bar type restaurant with three old people working. It was a very small menu selection, and very very expensive for being so basic. I had wanted to take Lenny to a place like we went to last year, where there was HELLA selection, but this place catered only to tourists and ONLY had the basics. :/ Above is what I ordered… crab, scallop, and cucumber rolls.

Lenny ordered two very delicious toro, ama ebi, and salmon. Evidently the toro and ama ebi were amazing but the salmon was just okay, since that’s a Pacific Northwest thing anyway.

Knives on sale!

After that, we went back to the hostel to check out because it was still like 10:00am or something absurd. And then we were deciding between going to Asakusa to look at temples or to the Science Museum on Odaiba that I thought Lenny would REALLY like. Unfortunately, Odaiba is ass far from everything. So it took a while to get over there. It was worth it, though, and it cost only $5 to get in (it actually cost more than that to actually physically get there because we had to take the subway and then a new line that only services Odaiba).

Just some pretty ceiling decorations.

ASIMO, the famous Honda robot, happened to be there that day!

Giant cool glowing globe thing, plus walkway!

“A working model of the internet.” Kinda interesting.

Virtual videogame horseriding?!

Cool motion sensor thing, where the fish would be able to detect the pillows and would bounce offa them. COOOL.

Just another view of the globe.

An astronaut’s bedchamber.

An astronaut’s toilet.

Evidently all the components that make up the human body.

Toy that let people try performing surgery on their own. :0

Regular cup of noodle styrofoam cup versus styrofoam cup of noodle cup that has been brought into a submarine!!

Cool ass exhibit. Through the mirror, a face would appear in that blue circular thing, but when you just turned around and looked at the blue circular thing on its own, there was no face… just water. A total trip. AMAZING.

And this post is not done yet, but I’ll finish it later. Must go to bed now.

Lots to say about catching the flight back to Seattle, and about the crazy ass Chinese people on the plane. This photo is a partial note of what’s to come as far as crazy Chinese peoples go.

This guy was to Lenny’s right, and he seriously had his feet propped up on the TABLE while he was sleeping. How crazily unsanitary, man!!! And that is seriously only the beginning. CHINESE PEOPLE. THEY ARE INSANE!!!

After visiting the main Hiroshima sights, we took a ferry to Miyajima Island. First, we took the bus to get to the area where we should take the ferry. Then we decided to eat at some ghetto little cheap restaurant before we went on the ferry. Then we went on the ferry, where there was a baby with like the most hair EVER. He had such a huge head of hair. Or was it a she? We never could figure that out…

Well, Miyajima Island was only, like, a ten minute ferry ride away. We docked at the tourist station and then proceeded to walk around. Lenny figured out a route for us to go up (with some suggestion by me) and then we were immediately met with deer. MOO!

The deer wants Lenny! MOO!

Poor poor antlerless deer.

These deer will eat everything! There are notes EVERYWHERE telling people to watch their passports and tickets because the deer will eat them! I thought it was a joke… it certainly sounds like one… but one deer definitely ran off with one of Lenny’s flyers, and one can only imagine that it is really NOT a joke, and that it seriously happens ALL THE TIME!!!

The deer was totally facing Lenny til right before I took this photo.

“GIMMEE SOME!”

So we headed to the park first. Sorry, forget names of places here.

I scared of the scary horsey.

Dragonfly! Pretty cool when zoomed in. Unfortunately, this is NOT zoomed in.

Tree root!

One can take the gondola type thing up or hike up. We chose to hike up. Unfortunately, Lenny is much more in shape than I. He got kinda bored of waiting for me at times, I think, but shit, I needed to rest sometimes godamnit! I’m a weakling!

Cool flower I’ve not much seen before!

The view from halfway up. I have to admit, it’s pretty godamn nice.

Mt. Misen is the top. Supposedly, there were monkeys up here. I SAW NO GODAMN MONKEYS. Seriously disappointing. Seriously.

So there’s this guy with beads… but check out the little guys with beads!!!

One lone crane, in a thing of rock.

Not sure what this is for, but it looks freaking sweet!

I’m trying to look sexy. What?! This isn’t sexy at all.

His sexy pose is a little better.

His sexy pose is the best yet.

Again, the deer was looking at Lenny right before this photo was snapped!! REALLY!

A view from the top.

This raven was just chillin for a while.

Descending the mountain. It was getting late. Unfortunately, one of the shrines Lenny wanted to check out was closed ~__~

But at least we got to see the Floating Tori Gate at sunset, which was quite very gorgeous.

It also happened to be low tide, which means we could actually walk out to it. It was a helluva task getting photos where there were no humans around.

Sky and water blend into one.

Giant SPOON!

So on our ferry back, this younger hip-hop dressed type dude was sitting next to me. As it was time to get off, there was a bag next to me. Thought it was his, so Lenny ran after him and tried to return it. The guy ended up explaining that it was, “For you,” even though he seemed surprised by it at first and said, “Thank you.” So… I’m not sure if he intended to leave it there or if it was someone else’s, but we got a whole lot of momijis!! Which are these little cakes filled with different things. Flavors we got included the regular red bean, the green tea, and CHEESE! (Which we thought was cream cheese, but later found out was like… regular cheese… and it was hard whereas the other flavors were like, paste, so it was a little… odd.) I must say I was slightly scared of eating it initially and joked about it being poisoned! But hell, what’s the worst that could happen! Parents tell you not to accept candy from strangers?! We’re living proof that it’s perfectly OK!!!

That night, we ate at a sushi restaurant in Hiroshima, and next to us was this Chinese family. I decided to make conversation with them and ask them where they were from. They were from Northern California, of course. The wife was friendly but the husband pretty much like ignored my ass. The mom asked me if I was on post-graduation vacation, though, and I strangely (because I was nervous, I guess) answered YES. The answer was quite very much… NO. So, WTF.

We leave from Himeji and get to Hiroshima relatively late in the evening. It’s okay. People tell us there’s not that much to do in Hiroshima anyhow. We pretty much just get to the hostel and chill the first night. The hostel is within walking distance from the train station, so we walk. The map we have is a little shifty, but we make it without problems. It is K’s Backpacker Hostel. The front desk guy is so so so friendly, almost in a ditzy kinda way. Lenny lurvs him a lot. He’s Lenny’s favorite person on the whole Japan trip — tied with Shoji MAYBE. We originally have booked two nights at this place, but we’ve since decided to stay a night on Miyajima Island and decide to cancel one night at the Hiroshima hostel.

So we get our room, which is shared with two other people. They turn out to be two people from England, and they’re on a one year world trip. Just like everyone else, except for Americans. We head to the kitchen… just us and our food we got from a supermarket in Himeji! Yay! We had a whole smorgasbord of random foods to eat. Yay! Clean kitchen, and FREE LAUNDRY SERVICES! This place is crazay!

Bed bed.

Food food.

Left to right… Lenny, potato salad, crab legs (dammit, they turned out to be imitation! No wonder they were so cheap!!), croquette, and my autumn vegetable platter, which was delicious!!

Damn, that’s some real-looking imitation crab!

After eating, we decide we want to stay in Hiroshima after all, since ferries coming back from Miyajima Island run late. No need to stay on the island. So we get our second hostel day added back on… yay!

The next morning, we head out to explore Hiroshima. We start off by taking their local bus/rail thing. It’s $1.50 anywhere you go in the city center area.

We stop by the A-Bomb Dome first. It’s funny because the bus or whatever has all these stops, and all of them are only described in Japanese, except for this one, which is clearly a place only tourists go to… that stop is described in English and Japanese. Haha.

For some reason, birds seriously LOOOOOVED this godamn thing. I mean, like all kinds of birds. Cranes, pigeons, ravens, etc. ALL OF THEM WERE ALL OVER THIS SHIT.

There is a whole peace park in Hiroshima. For obvious reasons. This statue is based off that famous story of the girl who folded 1,000 cranes (yet still died).

Evidently this was also the week for remembering victims who died from the Atom Bomb. It was the anniversary of the bomb dropping.

There were all these colorful booths, filled with cranes from individuals in schools around the world. While we were there, there was a group of I think Australians who sang a song and then placed their string of cranes inside one of the open glass booths.

Monument with a perfect view to the A-Bomb Dome… planned, I’m sure!

We decided to go into the Hiroshima Museum because it only cost 50 CENTS. Which is like, the cheapest thing ever in Japan. They were really clever to make it so cheap, because that was pretty much the only reason we went in, and I’m sure that’s the case with many passerbyers. I didn’t think that the museum could possibly be all that interesting, but man. It affected me pretty deeply. It was definitely an amazing museum. Well put together, lots of useful information, etc.

Model of Hiroshima BEFORE the bomb. Japanese people fucking LOOOVE these godamn models.

Model of Hiroshima AFTER the bomb.

Well, there were a lot of disturbing things in the museum, and it made me feel really weird, frankly. The most interesting things in the museum were…

1) Letters written by the mayors? of Hiroshima to every country who ever runs a nuclear arms test or thinks about running a nuclear arms test, telling them that they should not.

2) The fact that they planned to drop three bombs but later whittled it down to two, and that Kyoto was on the list of places to possibly bomb. Lucky Kyoto and lucky Japan that it was not, but who knows just how many culturally rich places just like Kyoto were destroyed because of the bombings :/ Kyoto was also largely unscathed because all cities which they THOUGHT of A-Bombing were not regularly bombed, because they wanted to study the full effects of the A-Bomb.

3) The fingernails and stories of one boy who got bombed and then tried to suck the pus out of his own fingertips / fingernails because he was dying of thirst. Fucking. Worst. Imagery. Ever. ~__~

An image from a war or something protest in Germany.

Happy chair!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The previous night, the Indian dude at Shoji’s house told us that we should go to Himeji, since it was on the way to Hiroshima. We decided to go. It was just a simple train stop! And Indian dude told us… FREE BIKES!! SIGN US UP!! WE’RE SOLD! The bikes are available at the Info Center of the train station… you simply have to ask and then they give you a key. You exchange the key at the bike place, four blocks down the road at this bike parking lot area. We just had to go downstairs.

BIKES!! ALL FOR US!!

So we paid however much money and went into Himeji Castle, which is like… one of the best castles in Japan, I guess. Go here and you don’t really have to go to any other ones again, because they’re all the same really!

Geometric fancy wall!

Inside the palace All wood.

The view from inside Himeji.

Apparently, they had guns then! Fancy ones. I forget when this shite was built. But I guess it was pretty late. Actually, it was also burned down at some point, so it was rebuilt. Cheaters!

Low ceilings. High Lennys.

Yet another view! MMM!

Himeji Castle!

VICTORIOUS!

This wall’s special, cause it’s made out of a lot of stones lifted from other places, including from gravestones! YAY!

Supposedly, a woman lives in that well. Or a ghost used to haunt it. Or something.

So after going to the castle, we decide to go back to return the bike. The bike needs to be back at like 5:00pm or something, but Lenny thinks it’s 4:30pm. We get to the bike place and I say it’s still early, so we decide to ride back around the ring around the castle. It’ll be fast, we say! Unfortunately, we get a little lost and make a wrong turn, so we have to furiously ride back the way we came. We had like 8 minutes to get back and we actually MADE IT. Man, bikes are CRAZY! IT’S LIKE TELEPORTATION! INSTANT RETURN!!!! MEEEEEP!

On the way around the castle.

Yet another

And so we furiously ride back, return the bikes, and head off again… train station! Hiroshima, here we come!

The train station. BEAUTIFUL!

Goodbye, Himeji!

WE LOOK LIKE WE’RE 12!!!!

We left Osaka early the next morning. Of course, we had to grab our baggage before we left. Unfortunately — and we did not know this — the lockers had a 24 hour reset, so we had to pay ANOTHER $6 USD to get our baggage back. BOO!!! Had we known, we would have… I don’t know what we would have done differently. Nonetheless, definitely worth bitching about

We headed one stop back towards Tokyo to go to Kyoto. GOOD STUFF.

First stop: dropping off luggage. We decided to ride the subway one stop to another subway station, where it would be easier for us to pick up our luggage later. Unfortunately, subways have smaller lockers than train stations do, and we couldn’t find one big enough for our luggage. So we had to ride back to the main Kyoto station again. There, we still had a helluva time and tried to stuff our baggage into a medium-sized thing because we couldn’t find a large one, but a couple elderly workers saw us and tried to tell us that was not OK. We didn’t understand though, and they left, and we kept trying to stuff it into the medium-sized one, and one came back and LED us to the bigger lockers. That surely helped quite a bit, because then we could drop off our backpacks, too. Ahh yes. So fresh and so free free.

Then we took some subway lines to Nishikujo Food Market. Or at least I think that was the name.

Here’s what it looked like. By now, it was around lunchtime, so what better to do than eat snacks from this place?! There were so many cheap, small, delicious things, after all!

Puffed rice cake covered with spices. Mmm.

Scallops, with spiced powder on it. Mm, not so worth it. Not so tasty.

After leaving Nishikujo, we saw this man. With cats O__O

Walked around the old town, and finally came to this area. We decided to start our exploration from here. There was a big park here, with lots of temples, but really, Kyoto has a million things to see and we only had one day to see it. So, we missed a LOT!

These girls were trying to feed these pigeons, but then were terrified when the pigeons actually started to fly around because, like, they’re birds. And birds fly. And stuff.

Caught some fake geishas on some of the narrower streets. Don’t believe they’re fake? One was talking on camera and a crew was filming her! What’s up with that!

This guy was making some snacks. I think made out of rice? Not sure.

CART MAN!

Gaudy temple.

Big-sacked cat.

Found some guy who loved feeding turtles. Don’t think he was too keen on us taking photos, though. ~__~

This was some palace or something in the outskirts, ish. We went here to kill time because it was nearby and we had to meet our CouchSurfing host in a little bit of time. Saw a lot of really cuteeeee doggiesssss! In particular a British Bulldog who was my homie. He liked me and didn’t want to leave! His owner was this old guy who was nice. Didn’t speak English really, though.

Lenny <3

After going to that place, we got ready to meet Shoji, our CouchSurfing host. We were supposed to meet him at the Rokujizo stop. But there was a JR stop (train) and a subway stop. We took the subway. Turns out we were supposed to meet him at the train stop… so there was some communication and confusion, but finally I called him (the first two times I called him, no one picked up) and he picked up. He came to find us. We followed him to his house.

Shoji is this like 40-something year old farmer with a family and kids. He also evidently plays bass? in a band and owns like 12? motorcycles. He has one house to live in with his family and one house, effectively dubbed the CouchSurfing House, in which CSers stay. That night, there were 3 other CSers. An Indian guy from Washington DC (I forget his name, unfortunately) who was traveling around Japan and then Taiwan, a French guy named Gael, who worked in this program in Korea and Japan, working on organic farms and in exchange getting free housing and such, and Rene, this Canadian dude from Montreal who I guess is like 35?! but looked quite young… to me, anyway. The place was NICE. It was like a hostel, but for CSers and for free! CRAZY. Shoji barely spoke English but he was still very kind and washed everything. Clean bedsheets, clean blankets, tatami mat sleeping arrangements. It was kinda in the outskirts but there was a 7-11 nearby, and that’s all you really need, I guess.

<img src=”http://lh6.ggpht.com/veez0ri/SOvcmCNa1eI/AAAAAAAAK4Q/KDN8UCd-9BA/s400/DSC_0220.JPG”>
The house!! People used dry erase markers to write on the walls!

The upstairs wall, right next to where I was sleeping on the floor! So comfy. So excellent.

My tempura udon from 7-11. It wasn’t very good. But it was CHEAP!

Bathroom at Shoji’s!

They don’t have hot water heaters. They just have instant hot water makers for the shower. Amazing! I forgot to turn it on when I hopped in the shower, though, but luckily Lenny saved my ass. I was wondering why it was only cold water!!

That night we had a good talk with the other CSers… and then we went to bed, comfortable, well-fed, and happy.

The next morning, we woke up, and Gael and the Indian guy were still sleeping. Rene had been long awake and gone. We packed up and prepared to leave. But not before watching some amazing kid show on TV!! Amazing!! Lenny’s favorite Japanese dance thing was on TV along with a song about onigiri. It was quite a catchy song. I sang it for a while.

We headed to Tenryuji Temple in the outskirts of Kyoto. Far, far from the heart. Here are some photos from it! Man oh man. Had we gone one month later, the trees would have been orange and yellow, and it would have been REALLY nice. :[ We got off the train and were walking around and came across a bike rental, so we rented one. YAY! I love riding bikes in foreign countries ^__^

Waited forever to take this godamn photo. People kept getting in the way. GET OUT DA WAY!

Geisha with a cellphone. SUCKA!

Bamboo forest

Spider may be larger than it appears. Much. Larger.

Cool ocean of these weird plants / roots. Not sure what’s going on with them, though.

And I will close with this pretty cool, albeit random, image.

The next morning, we get up early and go to Tokyo station. We take the train to Shin-Osaka, which is the Osaka city train station. I mean, way to make it confusing. Kyoto’s is called Kyoto station, Tokyo’s is called Tokyo station, yet Osaka’s is called Shin-Osaka station? I mean, come on! We’re foreigners! Make it easy on us, please!

So we each have backpacks and then we shared a suitcase. We aren’t planning on carrying that shite around, so we stow it in one of the larger lockers at the train station. 600 yen / $6 a pop. We keep the backpacks. By the time we get to Osaka it’s kinda afternoonish, and we just walk around aimlessly.

Even their subway doors are exciting! YAY?!

Lenny’s a giant when compared with THIS subway door. ^__~

After dropping shite off, we decide to find some food in the subway. Oh, this is after I go to the Ladies’ room and find out that it’s gross ass squatters and that there is NO TOILET PAPER! So I decide to hold it and save some paper from lunch to wipe my cooch with. LOL. We walk down this aisle of relatively typical Japanese food and finally decide on this place with DORIA. MMMM. Only the plastic food doria outside the shop doesn’t really look like the doria I get inside the shop, but nonetheless. Shit was tasty. People were smoking inside that restaurant, and the restaurant had air filters throughout it. The air filters had three little bars… one for tobacco smoke, one for pollen, and one for something else. The pollen filter was at low. The something else filter was similarly at low. The tobacco smoke was in the red, completely full. This was the case for every filter in the place. Kinda amusing.

Lenny’s food at the place in the thing.

Some wooden boards at some temple right near all these shopping strips.

Find a lot of long, indoor shop type places such as shown in this photo below.

Those are expensive mushrooms! $580 - $600 USD a pop!! There was a “NO PHOTOS” sign right there, but I took a photo without noticeing, only to have a dude come by and point at the sign right after I took the photo. LOL.

What’s this? MINI FISHIES!

Tied to a chair. A fucking prisoner.

Poster on a sticky photo thing, where the girls look plastic. But wait, what’s this? ACRYLIC NAILS THAT LOOK LIKE HELL!!!

In this arcade, there was this ‘ride’ that looked scary. Had to do with puppets and mannequins and shit. I woulda liked to go on it but they only played it certain times of the day and there were all these warnings!! DUN DUN DUN!

For those who have not been to Japan, the convenience stores have pretty much anything you could possibly want.

ICE CLEAM!

Oh colonel… I heart you.

Shit, even their manhole covers are purdy.

Porn theatre in Osaka.

Frankly, though, there was not that much to do in Osaka, so we pretty much just walked around. There was a Universal Studios there, but that’s kinda expensive at $50 USD a ticket, and was also kinda in the sticks, so we didn’t go there. Instead, we did random walkings and also went to a mall. The mall was sooo expensive, but at least most of the malls have a top floor that is nothing but restaurants. That’s kinda exciting sometimes. Unfortunately, no clothes to buy, and we came to the conclusion that it was a bit sickening that EVERYONE and their MOMS in Japan gives a huge fuck what they look like. EVERYONE seems to feel the need to dress up and look nice. We probably only saw like 2 dudes in t-shirts. Lenny’s conclusion was that you can always pick out who the tourists are, because they actually wear t-shirts, and it’s pretty much true. And that’s a little freaky.

Hot vending machine! WEE!

As we were walking around frustratingly, I got cranky because I was hungry since we hadn’t eaten in a while. We finally stopped into one restaurant. BEST MEAL OF THE WHOLE TRIP. Here’s what we ate.

Takoyaki, with egg and green onion. SO GODAMN DELICIOUS. Like seriously. I wasn’t a fan of takoyaki before that, but man. That takoyaki. DELICIOUS.

Okonomiyaki. ALSO DELICIOUS. I was also using the hot plate to make our own mini omelettes and okonomiyakis from the leftover egg and green onion in the takoyaki dish. IT WAS AWESOME!

By the way, we didn’t book a hostel this evening in Osaka, because we wanted to find a sex hotel. Osaka supposedly has the best ones, but they’re pretty expensive. And really, we couldn’t figure out WHERE they were… and with the lack of internet access, we REALLY couldn’t find out. So we actually asked a couple English-speaking dudes in the restaurant we were at if they knew of a hostel we could go to, and they gave us really terrible directions, but somehow we found it (it helped that it was on the map in the subway… evidently Hostelling International has some… tricky mainstream shit going on… cause well, I guess Youth Hostels are more state-sanctioned than other hostels… SHIT, I DON’T KNOW!). The hostel was really nice, but I personally had to sleep in the ‘Japanese-style’ section (AKA NO MATTRESS) for the same price as the regular beds. I guess there were roll-out mattresses in the closet, but I didn’t know that, so I just piled blankets up and it was quite an uncomfortable sleep the whole night. Also, the hostel was kinda weird and no one — even residents — could enter after midnight or whatever. WTF. Weird. Youth hostels. Must do more research. But they’re weird. The whole place was also EXTREMELY clean but only had ONE shower in the WHOLE place for guys AND girls, and also, the whole place smelled like CHEESE. Would not go there again. Would NOT.

Common room.

Bedroom. Lenny’s, not mine. Oh yeah. No co-ed rooms. Everything was separated male / female. There were also a shitload of New Zealand kids there, some of whom apparently went to some music cover band show where some Japanese band covered a Saosin song of all things… amongst other things. I only eavesdropped a little bit. And I was blind at the time (no contacts), so I didn’t bother making conversation. And they were like, 12. Okay, maybe 14. Or 15. No idea.

SUSHIMONSTER LOVES SUSHI!!!!

We arrive at the Narita International Airport late in the afternoon, and then pick up our Rail Passes and exchange money. By the time we finish doing that stuff, it’s around 7:30pm. We have to check in at our hostel by 9:00pm. Will we make it?!!!!! Well. It seemed like an easy task (taking the subway is easy), but trains are way confusing. The train from Narita to Tokyo station, in the heart of Tokyo, takes an hour. By the time we get there, it’s around 8:30pm, which gives us only half an hour to get to the hostel. Not really possible, considering it takes two subway line changes because I thought the hostel was in ASAKUSA. Turns out we could have taken the train directly from Tokyo station to Asakusabashi station, because that’s where the hostel REALLY is. We stayed in Asakusa last year and I thought it was a good spot. Asakusabashi is decidedly LESS exciting of a place. ~__~ Close, but not close enough to walk to. We call the hostel from the train station at 9:00pm on the dot, and they say that they will have a note for me on the door. Thank GOD. There was lots of frustrations and bad attitudes and freaking out from my point of view, because I had to figure out all this directional shite and it was just a MESS! We end up not getting there until 10:30pm or 11:00pm, because there were all types of confusions with maps and subways. Bah. Japan. Confusing. Quite the foray into terribleness, especially when considering my relaxing time in Spain. Japan is GO GO GO GO GO all the godamn time.

The view from the Asakusabashi station… or was it Asakusa station?

We get to the hostel and then decide to go out for a meal at some ramen place. Luckily, in Japan, there are a lot of photos so you can just pretty much point at what you want to order. Quite helpful considering Lenny can barely read Japanese and I can’t really read it at all! We ate and ate and all there were were dudes and businessmen… and then we went back to the hostel and slept. YAY!

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 28TH - SEATTLE

Posa drops Lenny and I off at the SeaTac International Airport, and we head over to Japan! Only our flight is delayed two hours, so really, we wait for a couple hours. turns out someone clogged the toilet in the front of the plane. As a result, United gives us each a $250 voucher… (this was after we returned from the trip, but still!) SCORE! One un-score thing is that the airport totally is lacking in fucking electricity plugs. Why would anyone do such a thing?! The guy on the plane in front of me has an Asus EEE PC too. I borrowed my parents’ again for this trip. On the flight, there were some movies playing… yayeer. There were also MANY MANY babies, and one in particular would not stafu… and the mom babied the shit out of the kid, which probably added fuel to the fire.