My Mom, Step-dad, and Brother are on a plane right now headed to the Island. They'll be here about a week. It should be some stellar adventure. We'll embark on an All Nippon Tour. I just hope they like sleeping on the floor -> it feels so weird to say to your mother "You sleep on the floor." It feels like I'm exacting revenge for all those nights on Grandma's floor.

Well. while i have an exciting week, you can enjoy this small running list of things said to me over the past week or so...

- "the reason i stopped liking you was because you didn't reply to my emails"

- upon looking at a picture of me from a year and a half ago a person i more or less just met gasps: "skinny!"

- "you speak japanese well now, not like when you first got here. it was terrible."

- "we spend our whole lives locking the door at home so that the people we love the most can't watch us piss. then we walk into a room full of random strangers and start pissing and farting while shoulder to shoulder."

- "you're picky"

- a woman i haven't seen in two years puffs up her cheeks and tries to deflate them by squeezing but can't and points at me.

HAPPY CINCO DE MAYO AND HAPPY MY BIRTHDAY!

This past weekend I and 10 other people loaded up a couple of cars and drove south to Wakayama Prefecture, to a village called Ryujin in the middle of the mountains in the middle of nowhere. Bearing a trecherous name like "Ryujin" (龍神), meaning "Dragon God", it's no wonder that the water heats itself.

We travel winding, winding mountain roads (passing through, but not stopping in, historical Koyasan, which is quite a Buddhist's Delight). I may go back there someday to investigate more but it's probably not likely, since time here is dwindling.

We pass through cloudy roads at the tops of mountains and then rapidly descend to meet with the Dragon God. More winding roads lead us to cartoon dragon characters holding welcome messages, no doubt this insults the one true Dragon God, he will come in one of the pre-chosen forms. During the rectification of the Vuldrini, the traveler came as a large and moving Torg! Then, during the third reconciliation of the last of the McKetrick supplicants, they chose a new form for him: that of a giant Slor! Many Shuvs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Slor that day, I can tell you!

Exiting the car we all vomit simultaneously and are greeted by smiling old ladies happy to take our money. This little nook of Ryujin can't have a population of more than 100, which -as strange as it may sound- the only thing it has going on is it's baths. All checked in we don yukatas and go downstairs to go to the onsen. This particular one features a boy & girls section and a mixed bath outside that rests on the impressive river's edge and due to it's positioning, bathers in the outdoor bath are viewable from countless hotel rooms and the sightseeing bridge with spans the river not more 200 feet from the bath itself.

Waiting in line behind some old naked men, we foreign folk - Erikku and Dr.Rekishi (a 12 language speaking Francophone) - read the signs explaining about the 800 year heritage of the onsen.

The sign reads: "The spring has natural traces of the alkaline earth metal Radium." [end quote]

Let me give you an excerpt from the wikipedia article on Radium.

Radium is over one million times more radioactive than the same mass of uranium.

What the hell is it doing in the bath!? I ask my Japanese friend and she says "Oh... I think it's in a lot of baths in Japan." If so, why aren't all Japanese people dead!?? Isn't radon the stuff they came and checked everyone's basements for in the late eighties? Hypochondriac that I am, I believe I already have radon poisoning and that I'm dying this very instant. Amidst uncertainty, we shun common sense and enter the bath (I remind you, we paid money and there's nothing else to do, plus the natives don't seem to mind). In the bath we joke about it being really hot, glowing, complaining of bone ailments and the like - all the while warning eachother not to drink the water. In the bath a few pictures were snapped by a friend which will never make it on this blog but I'm sure will some day turn up in a wedding montage or something like that.

All in all the trip was good. I sure hope I get some superpowers out of this whole extravaganza. I was tormented by a terrible sleep, though. Not just my own snoring, but sleeping on a damn futon is getting worse and worse. I can't even talk about it without cussing. Everyday I wake up and my back hurts more and more.

The trip back home took some time as well. We stopped for food at this fishery on the coast. You'd think if it's a place on the coast selling raw fish freshly harvested from the ocean, it'd be cheap as dirt - like Dollar Fishes or something. But no. Since raw = fresh = more delicious, the price skyrockets to prices only mil-yen-aires like myself can afford. It was here I found my new appreciation for Cup Sake.

I had a good time on this trip and saw a lot of beautiful Japan that I haven't seen or somehow forgot existed - rivers not walled in concrete, beautiful mountains dotted with blooming sakura trees, and small communities that cling to mountains like mini-Tibets.

Well that's all the information here. Join me next month when I have an absolute panic attack at the thought of leaving Japan and coming home.

I'm not in the storytelling mood, but I'll tell this one and it might convey just a part of my depression/anger of late. Makkusu or Dan, if I mistell this story or it's too ego-centric, I apologize - I'm just trying to tell it how it went in my head.

Sakura season and on Sunday (the only clear day this week) a lot of young people in the Sauce gathered at the river to break bread - and by "bread", I mean beef and alcohol. Lots of people and kids showed up and there was beef a-plenty. For the most part, I enjoyed the people there.

Makkusu and I watched this little girl get humped by a tiny dog for at least 30 minutes. Absolutely funny, but absolutely horrible to watch. I literally had to turn myself because it was too painful to watch as countless people tried to rescue her... Terrible.

At some point in the party Makkusu and I hear the word "gaijin" thrown around, and not in the good sense. Later on, Makkusu hails me from across the party and says "This guy hates foreigners!" (in plain English because, hey, no one there understands - secret languages are awesome).

The guy pointed out was a heavier fellow clad in an all white sport outfit w/ black undershirt, fake-looking silver chains and a shaved head. This outfit tries to communicate "badass" or "yakuza". However, knowing that none of these people have ever seen a gun in real life before, I really am not threatened by it - it looks much more like a costume.

So Hefty saunters up to Makkusu, Dan, and I and starts drunkenly spouting off about hating gaijin. I politely correct him, "Gaikokujin." on every instance in which he chooses to insult me/us. He's getting upset because of my/our corrections and asks if we speak Japanese - as if we had been speaking English. Happily, our Japanese friends come to our defense.

Hefty's speech is slurry and trying to sound like a yakuza and each time he addresses me he acts like he's my superior and has the social standing to do so. Since I don't deserve to be talked down to by a stranger, I just imitated what he said and spat back his insanely rude Japanese. It's hard to communicate how rude this is, but it's pretty bad to do. Escalating, he calls me an "Ahoyaro!" (fig. Asshole) and gets up out of his chair to punch me or something. I tell him to sit down (like a smart-ass, I admit) as well do others. Someone appropriately taped his mouth shut and since Hefty was inebriated he played along with the joke.

Freeing himself from the tape, he then launches off into an off color topic (that I'll spare readers until an "Adult" version of my blog is optioned). It had to deal with the superiority of Japanese females versus the rest of the world. At this point I quit the conversation. Truth be told, I left because I had to get away from that guy. It really ruined my day, and consequently as the days go on, my week.

This guys a prototype for the kind of people I run into all the time. If we hadn't run into him, it would have been some other guy two weeks later asking us if we like to eat "Bread or Rice?" It's guys like these who ruin it for me. I really love Japan. I love my friends. But it's guys like these who treat me/us as half a human being. Anger.

Well. No punches were thrown. No cars keyed. But I am left with hundreds of different imaginary scenarios in my head where I invented some kind of Kung-fu and I took him out in front of his friends and made him the laughing stock of the town. Passive-Aggressive? Probably. I'm really good at shadowboxing.

This is where I leave you. I'm going to the gym to try and shed off some of my 100kgs. OMG! Goodnight!

UPDATE: Call it what you will, at the gym I coincidentally ran into one of the nice people I met at the party. I suppose that's His way of saying, "It's not that bad. Calm down. Yo."

It's amazing how quickly one week flies by and then BLAM you're back to walking the crowded streets of Osaka feeling alone.

Saturday at about noonish I said goodbye to my girlfriend and I put her on a plane. I think we both had a good week, we stomped around most of Kansai and did some things I had never done. We saw tons of deer and watched one nuzzle a guy in the butt in Nara. Then we saw and were nearly attacked by monkeys in Arashiyama, Kyoto-fu (a town that previously unbeknownst to me is quite close to mine). Don't look them in the eyes.

At one point, I told girlfriend to scream if she was being attacked by monkeys so that I could have fair warning and run the other way back down the mountain. Don't look them in the eyes.

We drove a ton. I get frustrated when driving in Japan because the signs are so damn stupid. We also rode trains a ton.

She left our child, Flat Stanley, in a karaoke booth. But it's okay because we printed out another one. Speaking of Karaoke, I found a new "standard" in add to my repertoire - for those not in the know, few things compare to this feeling.

We did a lot and ate a ton. It even snowed, for a Texas girl that has to be nice. At this point to me, when it snows on March 30th it's just ridiculously cold and bitter.

Since all blogs are narcissistic, I don't mind saying that I was the best boyfriend in the world this week. I mean seriously, who can top monkeys, deer, snow and karaoke in the same week? (barring a trip tot he zoo and/or Thailand, I suppose) I would have secured my title as "Best Boyfriend Ever" if I hadn't been such an insensitive jerk all week. I slightly amazed myself at my ability to string together really heinous things to say and my inability to hold my tongue. Whoops. Blogs are also self-deprecating, so I don't mind saying that either.

Alright. That's all I'm going to tell you. Goodnight!