Hiroshima and Miyajima

This post has nothing to do wtih either of those places. I went to Osaka, Hiroshima, and Miyajima this weekend and now I'm in an internet cafe in Okayama City. I paid an extra three bucks and instead of a chair, I'm writing this from a bed. Sweet cakes. I have 6 hours to sleep a little bit and then I'm off again to see this city's fancy-pants garden and maybe its castle. I hope to be back home by tomorrow night so I can get some real sleep, shave, and take a shower.

I'll post all of my pictures in the next few days.

I found a bookstore with a great English section in Osaka while I was waiting for my bus to leave. I picked up Pascal's Pensees only because its mentioned in this other book I'm reading and I found a quote that has been bothering me ever since (I'm paraphrasing): 'Curiosity is vanity. We only do things so that we'll be to talk about them later and if we didn't have friends to tell about our adventures we would never cross the sea.'

Ouch man, ouch. Especially since I have this blog that I like to use to just ramble on about what I'm up to. I suddenly feel so lame about everything I've done in the past 9 months. Maybe about everything I've ever done.

Fucked up Pictures

Yuka and I went to Hikone in Shiga Prefecture on October 19th and she just emailed me all of her pictures (I forgot my camera)............

your love it feels so good AND THAT WHAT TAKES ME HIGH

HIGHER THAN A (something something)

AND YOUR LOVE IT KEEPS ME ALIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

... sorry but the music in this internet cafe is BUMPIN'


Some of Yuka's pictures got all fucked up for some reason...

Hikone has a castle and some good restaurants but thats it. When we got out of the train station and looked at a map provided for tourists, it showed us how to get from the station to the castle and everything else was just erased off the map. I like the honesty. Dont waste your time guys: just see our castle and go home.

On our walk to the casle we passed a shoe store selling cheap bags of potatoes.

I've now seen two of Japan's four national treasure castles, so I guess I'll see the other two and check that off my to do list. We went to the castle's museum, got tea in the garden, and then saw the Donjon. We got dinner near the castle and went home. I guess that sounds boring, but we're both incredibly interesting and funny so it was a blast.

We stopped in a gift shop and they had a display of these good luck bears (I dont know what kind of animal its supposed to be, and Yuka didn't know the English word for what it is) that I've seen a million times but for some reason I had never noticed before how large the balls of the statues are. Its a smiling bear with one of those Vietnamese farmer hats on, but its got a huge cock and enormous balls. Its sack is larger than it's feet and maybe that's why its supposed to bring good luck...

So North Korea successfully tested its bomb. Congratulations, Korea. Talk has already started in this country about getting a bomb, but I dont think its serious yet. In addition to the bomb question, Japan's new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, made changing the constitution's language a cornerstone of his platform. The 9th Amendment prevents Japan from using its military for anything other than self-defense. The constitutional debate was recently renewed when the US told Japan that it would play an important role in its own efforts in Iraq, despite Japan's constitutional restrictions. So Japan's role in Iraq was the first time that Japanese troops have been deployed outside of Japan since World War II (so says SOMETHING I read), and now with North Korea in possession of a nuke and throwing missles towards Japan, China growing as fast and aggressively as it is (see oil drilling in the Sea of Japan), and Japan now playing a leadership role in international politics (Japanese polticians wrote the language adopted by the UN in response to North Korea's nuke test) I guess things may be changing in Japan as well as the rest of Asia. None of this means anything to me because on a day-to-day basis nothing has changed. I still have to go to my boring job and I still drink Chuhi on the weekends.

Miss you all.

More boring information

Going to Taiwan around New Year's is going to cost $1,000. I'm astounded. Its like flying to Florida from Boston or something. That grand includes hotels but still.

I looked into traveling around Vietnam after I leave Japan and I got intimidated. There were 3 to 4 pages in the Vietnamese Lonely Planet on diseases to be careful of, it advised travelers to not drink any water or use any ice, it said that scams and robberies are on the rise, and the underage sex industry is BOOMING. Apparently something like a third of all sex trade workers are under 16-years-old too, which makes the whole thing that much more appealing.

I want to travel but man. This sounds hard.

Strange Conversations

I saw a student on the train the other day, this cute girl that I don't frequently speak with but who I recognized easily. She seemed absolutely astonished to see me outside of Nova and actually let her mouth fall open when I sat down next to her. Off to a good start. The first thing out of her mouth when I sat down was 'What are you doing?' That kind of a statement doesn't surprise me anymore as she just isn't sure how to be polite or start a conversation in English. The second and fourth questions however were both 'where do you live?' I thought that sort of question could be answered once but I guess there were some details she wasn't clear on.

Her: What are you doing?
Me: Heading into Obu for dinner, you?
Her: Was with friends. Where do you live?
Me: In Kyowa.
Her: Oh KYOWA. Where are you going?
Me: I'm not sure, maybe this izakaya near the station.
Her: Ooh. Where do you live?
Me: In... ... In Kyowa? (Pointing back to where the train had just come from)
Her: Oh. I heard you have a girlfriend.
Me: ... who the hell did you hear that from?
Her: I'm not sure.

She clearly understood what I said the first time because she repeated it. I swear she repeated it. And since I haven't told anyone about having a girlfriend here (other than you all), how the hell did this student know about that as well? Man. The students must all talk to each other because I didn't tell her shit.

The other night I got dinner with Yuka and she told me a little bit about what her job is like. Since she speaks Japanese all day and we're in different parts of the building, I have no idea what goes on between the staff and the students. The students are a lot more strange than I was led to believe. I guess students telling the staff that they have feelings for teachers happens all the time and we just never hear about it. I knew that this high school Sophomore had a crush on a 26 or 27-year-old teacher at my branch. What I didn't know is that she had competition for him and the two of them even spoke about it. The second girl requested that the Sophomore inform her when she planned on talking to him, so she could be present and not miss anything.

Also, apparently some student who left to work in Canada admitted to something simliar about me. I can't remember who this girl was and I didn't ask for details, but where was she when I was lonely and looking for a girlfriend? She should have spoken up man. She could have gotten her ass ticked with a feather and her taint massaged with mayonnaise as one of my good friends from back home recently offered to do for me. You know who you are.

My name

So a long time ago I wrote that my name means poop in Japanes. That was sort of inaccurate. It can mean poop but only when combined with other syllables. One of the kanji with the 'ben' sound means something like poop, but not until you say 'benpi' or something like that does anyone find my name funny.

So I asked Yuka to write my name out in kanji a while back and she came up with 'Crown Snake People' for Benjamin and 'Food Rock' for Egan.

Tonight I asked her if 'Egan' was a word in Japanese. The sounds in my name have equivalent sounds in Japanese, so I figured there might be a word 'I-GA-N' and surprise, surprise, there is. It means stomach cancer.

Shit stomach cancer. Thats my name. Or Crown Snake People Food Rock. Whichever is funnier.

The future

I'm heading to Hikone-jo with Yuka tomorrow. Its about an hour and a half from Nagoya towards Osaka. Its one of the four national treasure castles and it should be alright. The castle itself doesn't really interest me but spending the afternoon with her should be a lot of fun.

I'm going to a Japanese wedding next week. Well, not an actual wedding but the after-party. This staff member, Aiko, has been dating the same guy for 12 years and they're finally gonna tie the knot (by the way, she's only like 25 or 26. She must have met this guy when she was about 14, and they've been together since... damn).

I'll have four days off in a row at the end of the month thanks to shift-swaps so I'm gonna head south. I can get to Osaka again pretty cheap (about $4 if I just lie about where I got on) and from there take a bus either to Hiroshima or even further to somewhere in Kyushu. I don't know what I'm gonna do in Kyushu but leaving the main island for the first time since I arrived has a certain appeal.

With Daniela's new job it looks like she's not going to be able to visit me around Christmas time. If that's the case, then I think I'm going to head to Taiwan with Yuka. We talked about it as a possibility tonight and she seemed really excited about the idea. We'll be able to discuss it tomorrow because she said she's gonna do her research tonight.

Updates

Now that I'm back in Kyowa and sober I'll fill everyone in about the trip that Tom and I took to Osaka. We basically just drank the entire time we were there with the Human Rights Museum and the Shin Umeda building used to waste daylight. I've posted all the pictures I took along with four videos. Osaka is a great city to wander around in and get drunk but I'm not sure how much else there is to do. Not really a sightseeing city in my opinion. There are two busy areas: the Northern (Kita in Japanese) area, and the Southern (Minami) part of the city. The northern part consists of Osaka Station and Umeda and the southern part is centered around Dotonbori and Nanba. We arrived at Osaka Station and after seeing the Human Rights Museum, spent the night in Dotonbori. We drank our weight in Chuhi for about $1.80 a can at convenience stores. I would compare Chuhi to things that I would be too embarassed to drink back home like Smirnoff Ice or Mike's Hard Lemonade. If you get the chance, drink the Freeze Orange variety. Kirin Lemon tastes like windshield washer fluid. We went to Amerika-mura and hung around with the cool kids in Triangle Park. We met this Indian guy named Umesh who works in a factory because he won't cut his hair to get a better job. His Japanese buddy had a tattoo of La Petit Prince on his forearm but seemed much cooler than that sounds. These girls who were also hanging around were too cool to talk to me. I was also pretty drunk and not as charming as I usually am.

We stopped in a lot of random places to piss and drink so we saw quite a bit of the nightlife but I remember only bits and pieces of it. I was vehement about going to this sushi place near the Dotobori Hotel where I stayed during my first night in Japan. After that we met some breakdancers on the sidewalk so I gave them some cookies I was eating and tried to speak Japanese to them. One of them spoke pretty good English so he helped us to find an internet cafe to sleep in. I updated this blog from that cafe (see the previous post) and the next day we headed back towards Osaka Station. Tom wanted to get out of Osaka as quickly as possible because he didn't really get any sleep and he was exhausted. I said that we should stop at the Shin Umeda Tower on the way out just to see one more thing and he thought it was a good idea. It turns out the Floating Observatory didn't open until 11 and we got there just after 8:30 or 9. We weren't going to wait so I got some shots from the 39th floor but nothing higher. The trip back was spent sleeping and smelling.

For two videos from an arcade, one from the sushi shop I love, and one from outsie of the internet cafe, click on the following links:

Arcade Video One
Arcade Video Two
No more sushi
Sawing Logs? Ha?

From Osaka... again

Ok I'm in Osaka and I'm really drunk. Tom and I were deciding between staying in a capsule hotel and paying for internet access so we can sleep in the chairs. Since I'm in an internet cafe, I guess we're sleeping in the chairs. This is more Tom's decision than mine, but its not the worst thing that could have happened. He also proposed sleeping in the train station. This guy is seriously trying to limit his expenses. I hope to pass out but I have a lot of shit to do, so we'll see.

We left for Osaka today at around 10:40am but didn't get here until 1:30. These internet booths have TV as well as　netto and there's like, the pole-dancing championships on so I don't think I'll be turning off the TV.

We saw a lot of random shit here but we also went to the place where I got my first sushi roll in japan. The place was across the street from the Dotonbori Hotel where Nova put me up and it was incredible all over again. The staff took our picture and posted it on the wall so i guess anyone who comes through Osaka will see me and Tom if they look hard enough.

We got lunch, drank a shitload of chuhi, hung out at the arcades, went to the human rights museum, and saw amerika-mura (American town).

...

Wow, ok, the plan was to sleep in this intenet cafe and I thought that was just about the worst idea ever... BUT, I just woke up and I must have slept for the past 5 hours. Hmmm. I just woke up to see this screen in front of me with its terrible grammar, most of which I just went back and corrected.

I wrote the 'human rights museum' sentence at midnight and the 'wow, ok' sentence at 5:47am.

Yeah, so Tom and I saw quite a bit today. And I found the internet cafe's porn stash on my way to the bathroom, so there's that too.

Tom and Osaka

Tom had his last day of work yesterday (Sunday the 8th). He decided to add insult to injury and not shave for his last week either. Way back in February I got talked to by Cathryn because I forgot to shave one morning. She really chewed me out for it, so I think quite a few people noticed when he started showing up for work looking homeless. On his next to last day our quasi-boss Alan called him on the phone to make sure he would be clean-shaven for his last day (a student complained that he looked 'dirty'). Nothing happened and he wasn't sent home, so I guess it was a victory.

Amy's boyfriend is still visiting and she's called out sick for the past 4 days in a row. Apparently she caught something in Tokyo because she's actually sick and not just calling out to spend time with her boyfriend. The fact that Handa has to do without her is probably why nobody did anything about Tom's appearance.

I'm going to Osaka for the weekend with Tom because I told him that I would a while back. I don't know where we're going to stay yet, but I'm sure it will work itself out. Tom also wanted to go to Tokyo on the following weekend but I'm so confident that he's going to be broke by then that I've double-booked that weekend. Yuka and I are going to Hikone Castle on Lake Biwa. Hikone is one of the four national treasure castles, so it should be interesting, and pretty and... and... ... well, almost identical to Matsumoto I imagine.

I agreed to do a shift swap with Shannon for the end of the month so if I can get rid of a half-day on a Tuesday, I'll have a four-day weekend. I've been playing with the idea of going to South Korea or Taiwan since its so cheap to fly right now.

Lastly, with Tom leaving and the three girls on the other side of the tracks all disappearing, there's going to be a changing of the guard again in Kyowa. Carmen is moving into Freebell, Amy might leave the country at Christmas time, and The Mudge is moving to Tokyo but no one is going to miss her. The five of us (Tom, David, Carmen, Amy and me) agree on little, but we all hate The Mudge. That'll leave just me and David as the foreign population of Kyowa (not counting all the Brazilians) so hopefully we'll get some quality people to replace them.

Oh yeah, and we found a student's blog. This high school girl named Mamiko told one of the Japanese staff about it, so we were able to get part of it translated. I was especially interested in her entry talking about each teacher individually. She said that I'm polite, but distracted by something. Pat and Jerod think they're awesome and David seems older and more like an adult. She also has a psycho stalker crush on our quasi-boss Alan. His entry was the only one in English and it said 'I want to be your #1.'

Takeshima, Gamagori, and Okazaki

Yuka and I went out again last Thursday. We went to Red Rock on Wednesday night and crashed at a friend's place. We went to a small restaurant in her hometown of Okazaki at around 1pm the next day. Okazaki isn't so far from Nagoya or Obu. Its towards Toyohashi and Shizuoka (or Tokyo) on the JR. In Okazaki we went to this old temple that Ieyasu used to worship at (one of the three warlords from our area that, together, unified Japan). We got Japanese-style sweets as well, which has become something of a tradition.

After that Yuka and I drove out to Gamagori (it might have been 45 minutes from Okazaki) to walk out to Takeshima (shima = island) in the rain. We hiked to the top of the mountain and prayed at the shrines. Then we made our way in a loop around the island trying not to step on the hordes of bugs that were on the walkways. It looked like something out of the Temple of Doom. We got down by the water on the far side of the island and saw a crane or something in the water. Yuka got a picture, but I wanted to catch and eat it. She said we should wait until it caught a fish so we could eat them both. Then she said after I ate my share of the catch, she would eat me. I pointed out that she didn't have any fire to cook me with, but she said eating things raw is ok because she's Japanese.

Tsushimamire on the iPod. Trying to find mp3s of Ketchup Mania.

20 lbs.

I finally got a chance to weigh myself this past weekend. To clarify: whenever I say weekend I mean Wednesday and Thursday, my days off. I slept at Yuka's friend Danni's house and she has a scale. I've lost 8.6 kg (or something like that), and when we did the conversion we came up with 20 lbs. I now weigh around 165 lbs, down from 185 when I boarded a plane in February, and down from 197ish at graduation.

Not a few people have commented that I look like I'm not eating anything, so there are some numbers to help you out.

Another Video

Matsumoto-Jo. Do I really sound this nasally?

My Tiger with Yuka

Yuka and I caught the 7:40 shuttle to Matsumoto from the Meitetsu Bus Station. It was a 3 and a half hour ride but nice because its through the Japanese Alps and there are a lot of beautiful blah blah blah. We were thinking about renting bikes for the day but as the area we were going to explore was pretty small it seemed unnecessary.

Immediately after we arrived we found out that the local specialty is soba noodles, so we got a girl in the tourist office to recommend a place. The restaurant had aquariums at every table, filled with large stinking black bugs. Appetizing. We found one of the only tables in the place where you couldn't see or smell the bugs. I was the only person in the entire restaurant (it was a pretty small place) who ordered hot soba noodles. Everyone else, including Yuka, was eating them cold. I guess I have no idea how to order food here. To add to the delightful atmosphere, this androgenous-looking little kid would NOT stop staring at me from the time we arrived to the time we walked out the door. Its mom was nice enough to keep jabbing it with her elbow, but it wouldn't take the hint. Apparently Deliverance-country Japan doesn't get many foreigners. This is a part of Japan known for its horse meat. By the way, they (like the late, great ODB) like it raw.


After lunch we headed over to Matsumoto-Jo and checked it out. We took somewhere in the neighborhood of a billion pictures, but I managed to whittle it down to a manageable 120. These are all in Flickr now, so enjoy. The castle was cool. Its the oldest of the 5-tiered castles, and only Inuyama-Jo is older (I think). The only thing that seems worth mentioning about the design of the castle is that all the stairways are ridiculously steep. They were set up that way to make the castle easier to defend against invading armies and elderly Japanese tourists.

While Yuka and I were walking around I told her about one of my first blind-dates in Japan. This girl asked me if it was ok to call our meeting a 'date' and I told her she could call it anything she wanted to. I can't remember if it was her or I that decided to call our trip to Matsumoto a 'tiger' but it stuck because we both thought it was really funny. We've planned a puppy together for this Thursday and a giraffe at some point in the near future. She wanted to have a giraffe next but I told her that its customary in the States to wait a little while before giraffing with a girl. Not that I don't want to giraffe with her, its just kinda fast, thats all. I told her that I would panda her brains out though whenever she wants me to.

Not too far from the castle is the first Western-style school in Japan. I didn't think it was that impressive though because the curriculum at the school was still Japanese, just the architecture was Western. We were able to sit down at the tiny antique desks and play around with everything which was cool. The Japanese guy who was watching over the room encouraged me to get up to the front of the class and slam the teaching-stick down on the desk. Each desk had its own chalk and blackboard which we were allowed to play with too. In the above photo, my board says 'advertisement' and 'demon' because those were the first kanji that came to me.

After that we got some Japanese sweets at a cafe. The waitress/hostess brought us out a little box with 5 kinds of sweets inside and we were served black tea and matcha (thick and bitter green tea) with our selection. Matcha rocks because it hella cleanses the palette. It wasn't cheap especially considering Japanese sweets aren't much larger than my thumbnail.

We had exhausted Matsumoto's sights after the school and the castle, so we wandered around a little bit. There was a street lined with touristy shops by the river, so we hung out there for a little while. We found this awesome statue of samurai frogs killing a toad. The plaque on the front said (according to Yuka's translation) 'dirty frog samurai.' She thought it was an ugly statue but I think the lady doth protest too much.

We got curry for dinner and bought some alcohol for the ride home. The bus came at 7:10pm and because we hadn't had much to eat we both got blasted on single cans of chuhi. We counted up all the things that I had done for the first time and got to 10. We're going to Okazaki on Thursday and to Hikone on Biwa-ko at some point in the immediate future. I'll post pictures as I take them. Miss you all.