XIII: Level 10 Curry.

As I sit here on a Virgin Airline plane flying from NYC to LA I can't help but feel nostalgic for all the places and people I've been so fortune to be/meet this year. Appropriate to this feeling, the following is the final batch of pictures from my trip to Japan.

I type the following with a bit of sorrow...earlier today I sent an email to my Tokyo roommates, Tim and Jesse, whom replied with information that the company we worked for has been closed, no one has been paid, and teachers are now freelance teaching ex-students to try and make ends meet. Which is absolutely shocking, the company was of similar magnitude as something like It appears I left just in the nick of time, but it makes me pretty sad that all of the great people I be-friended were kicked to the curb and assumably in low-spirits...

To them I offer this, a little list I found while wandering the inte-rweb one day:

YOU KNOW YOU'VE BEEN IN JAPAN TOO LONG IF:
...you find yourself bowing while you talk on the phone.
...you don't think it unusual for a truck to play "It's a Small World" when backing up.
...you buy a potato and strawberry sandwich for lunch without cringing.
...you are not surprised to wake up in the morning and find that the woman who stayed over last night has completely cleaned your apartment, even though you'll probably never ever meet her again.
...you think the best part of TV are the commercials.
...you think wet umbrellas need condoms.
...you have mastered the art of simultaneous bowing and hand-shaking.
...when you find nothing unusual in a television commercial for candy in which a model dressed in a high school girl's uniform comes up behind another model dressed in a high school girl's uniform, grabs her left breast, gives a devilish grin, and skips away.
...you think 4 layers of wrapping is reasonable for a simple piece of merchandise.
...a new foreigner moves to your neighborhood and you know immediately you will get his mail for a while.
...when you get on a train with a number of foreigners on it and you feel uneasy because the harmony is broken.
...you think curry rice is food.
...when in the middle of nowhere, totally surrounded by rice fields and abundant nature, you aren't surprised to find a drink vending machine with no visible means of a power supply.
...and when you think nothing of it when that lonely vending machine says 'thank you' after you buy a coke.

All of the above is completely true. I swear by it.
The umbrella/condoms line is reffering to these plastic condom-like sheathes people slide over their wet umbrellas when they go in stores.
The 4 layers of wrapping is referring to the incredibly excessive amount of bags they will wrap around things you buy.

It's been a while since I've taken a look back at the old pics, but I'm sure this place has come up before in some previous post, it has become a watering hole of sorts. The lovely lady in the middle is miss Rachel, whom you might recognize as the girl covered in mud from a river...
You may also notice the Y1000 note on the table, someone's a high roller...

Tim on the left. Pitcher of bin-beeru in the middle. Everything is right in the world.

Yours truly. Except at this point in time my mop has been cut to a mohawk and I've been rockin' a mean beard. My how the times change so quickly.

Again, things are as they should be.

It was only a matter of time before the ties became our ninja apparel.

This is how the ninja crew rolls. (Apparently with one girl?)

Three sheets to the wind. Eh...let's make that four.

Things that are interesting about this picture:
-Umbrellas hanging above my head, ready to stab at the first earthquake.
-Out-of-focus cigarette butt in the foreground (bottom left).
-The Japanese girl growing out of Derek's armpit.

I love. Then I kill.

I look myself in the eye (as I stare at this picture) and silently ask myself how I could ever leave such a land...

Cacoy. (Cool.)

Eventually I was dragged out of my corner and ransacked by this group of un-ruley hooligans...

...who then proceeded to strip me of everything pure.

HOLD THE PHONE!!! Our airplane PA system just made an announcement asking for any medical practitioners on board to light their call button. I can't even imagine where this is going...

Girls + Cameras = Crazy.
Japanese Girls + Cameras = Ludicrous.

'shrug' I've got nothing.

The girl on the far right always had a huge crush on me. Then again, according to Tim almost every girl in every office he worked in (he traveled to different ones sometimes) had a crush on me. If it was true, I give all the credit to my power ties.
'sigh' Good times.

What can I say. We're a class act.

Class...act.

Yeah, I know. The one in the back. She's taken.

Hahahahahahaha...oh deary dear dear. I've never laughed so hard while alone on a plane lit with purple lights and mood music.
Um, remember that old post about our photo club adventure? Here are the pictures of the stickers I had kept. I think the top right one is my favorite...then again, the bottom right one is pretty fuckin' cacoy.

How bitching is that.

The pure definition of "Dreamy."

Remember when I bought a katana? This her :) And I'm glad to report that she did indeed make it back to the States safely (although not without lots of packing and unpacking inspections, as well as roughly 2 rolls of packing tape) and now resides in my storage unit.
Storage unit of awesome.

She's a 'bute Clark.

Well-known fact. I'm a ninja.

Well-known fact. I'm a skinny ninja.

If your eyes ever witness this view, you're already dead.

Dead in the face.

Anyone have any suggestions for a name? I'm thinking Allyson. Allyson McPointy Hannigan.

This is the part of the sword that isn't sharp. That's it's official name. Seriously.

This was my home office, complete with teaching books, laptop and cellphone.

Hallway to the conversation rooms.

My company's mascot.
We eat lunch together every day, but we never really hang out outside of work.

STATION BEER!!! Oh man...I miss station beers. Um, the name kind of nails it, but it's when we all get out of work at night and drink beer in front of the train station.

It's kind of hard to see (dark) but this is a picture of 3 sumo's hailing cabs. Each got his own.

You can vaguely make them out, standing there in their jinbo's.

Japan doesn't have a lot of graffiti, but what little there is is usually pretty impressive.

Emily. Um...this picture sums her up pretty well.

So Emily came over on this one particular night when we were all well "hydrated" and inevitably fell asleep in my bed.
Wearing my raccoon boxers.
This inspired Tim and Jesse's "Late-night Karaoke Kitchen" session into a most-hilarious song involving spreading STD's via borrowed boxers.

Emily then decided to attack Tim vampire style, then quickly retreating back to bed.

One night I was bored and popped an unlabeled VHS into our TV. The result, "Cube." One of the greatest movies ever.
In Japanese.

"Potato Cheese Gratin" flavored Pringles.

In case you couldn't tell by the extremely vague EngRish- this is a bucket with ice cubes in it (at a restaurant).

When you order food at restaurants/izakayas you never just wait around for the waiter, they'll never come around and their own. It's not how they roll in Japan.
Instead, each table has a button. You press the button when you're ready to order/need assistance, otherwise you're completely left alone (even on refills!).

Late-night 7 Eleven run. (Jesse is holding my acquired edible treasures)

A fresh roll filled with whip cream and strawberry jam, along with a vanilla ice cream cone covered with chocolate topping.
The essentials.

Two fine young men biding their time.

There has been much conversation about this poster. In lou of my soon departure I took a picture of it, it's one of the strongest iconic memories I have of Japan.
We never could figure out why "DRY" was in quotation marks...it wasn't a pun.

The weirdest things about this picture are that there are so many french fries (this is a triple order) and that there is ketchup instead of mayonnaise.
No. The chopsticks seem completely appropriate.

DAVE! Aw. I miss Dave.
Dave loved to watch football (soccer) while his girlfriend cuddled him. His girlfriend is the one that humped me like a zebra. If any of this confuses you then you haven't been reading my blog enough.

Again: No bell, no service.

This is the door to the above izakaya. I miss that place. I miss it hard.

That vertical sliver of plastic on the right side of the door is the part you touch to make it slide open. This is a Japanese standard.

FACT: People have to sign waivers before they shower with me. True story.

The reason I took these pictures is because I knew my hair would be shaved into a mohawk all too soon. These, my friends, are pictures for memories. Pictures. For. Memories.
Or something.

Damn that couch was shady!

Aw! It's our rice cooker and hot plate thingy (on the kitchen table). Some day we will eat dinner again guys, I swear by my ninja sword and ninja ties.

This was where we went for our last meal. Octopus pizza. AIN'T NOTHIN' WRONG WITH THAT. (Yes, that was a reference to that old Chris Rock song mentioning corn bread. I think it was called, "No sex in the champagne room.")

Pizza. The size of a plate. To it's left was a most delicious cup of apple spice tea.

Tim and Mayumi. Looking at them makes my eyes produce a slight layer of sad juice.

You're a fine young lad sir. A FINE young lad. (Perhaps you've noticed that both my roommates were red-headed gaijin?)

Tim's all about class.

Did someone say $10 carafe of wine? How could this idea POSSIBLY go wrong!? (The green liquid is a melon soda I was chugging all night. It tasted like bubble gum.)

ALL class.

I reckon this was our adventure to the hundred yen store. Those stores that are like dollar stores on more crack than a Buffalo ghetto.

At first glance you may not be able to make out what this ingenious product may be.

Low and behold, it is "Sexy mouse pad."

Louis Vuitton purses are quite the rage in Japan. They are also quite the wallet destroyer.
FACT: Japanese businessmen (a.k.a. Salary Man) that encourage secretaries (a.k.a. Office Lady) or school girls to perform sexual favors often repay them with expensive purses instead of money. So when you see a girl with a really nice purse...you kinda wonder where she got it.

This particular 100 yen shop had multiple levels. Most of them do.

Are you really that surprised?

Emily, I was going to buy this for you...but I had no idea what was in it.

Let me focus it for you so you can actually see the box.

Let the astounding EngRish begin!

I bought a pack for my dad, haven't had a chance to ask him how they hit. I would imagine they are most powerful.

Sexy high school gym girl. Sexy schoolgirl. Sexy maid. Sexy nurse. Frog.

OH NOES! It's the "Friday 13 day killer man mask socking horror!" HELP!

Seriously. Do I really need to keep telling you to go to Japan? Has the place NOT sold itself!?

Ron, this one goes out to you.

Fireworks. NEVER not a not bad idea. 'crazed look in eyes'
The night before I left Japan we fired a bunch of these off in the park near our apartment.
GOD DAMMIT I miss it there.

Liquor? I don't even know her!

How can you argue those prices? (They include tax!)

My liver quivers when I look at these pictures.

Quiver liver!

QUIVER!

Lime juice packaged with a Corona. Is there anything they haven't thought of?

Yakitori restaurant built into the side of an apartment building.

Jesse and I had a conversation about how it would be impossible for pictures to convey the awkwardness of where this place was located.
We were correct.

Plum wine.
If you've never had it, find it. (Yes, you can find it in the States. Especially at sushi places.)

Whatchya gonna do with all those plums! All those plums! In yo' bum!
'jiggles arms'
Can you tell I just made that up? Who has two thumbs and is a genius!? THIS GUY!

I have a pic of my gaijin card, but there's a bunch of personal info on it so I don't really want to post it. Ask me to show it to you sometime.
The gaijin card.

Cobra's. A little slice of unfiltered heaven. (Which also means you run the risk of getting tobacco all over your teeth.)

Tim was working one day and TXT'd me that these two girls were fighting over me. He then proceeded to take their picture and send this to me.

Haha, this is an old old pic that should have been in a few posts ago. That was the same night her (Eriko), Jesse, Hiromi and I went to the photo club place.

Battery vending machine. Jesse and I walked a few miles trying to come up with scenarios where you would need to purchase batteries from a vending machine.
We gave up and bought more chu-hi.

This was a "club" near our apartment that we frequented. They had a plasma TV hooked up to a computer with a shit-ton of music videos on it. We would put in requests for horrible horrible pop songs, they would abide. Otherwise they would play a lot of 90's rap.
Sean Paul is HUGE right now in Japan.

I think I knocked a button on my phone. But hey! It got a picture of a schoolgirl!

And THAT dude.

Ok, my phone had a lot of blurry non-sensical photos when I dumped it. Here's another one with some school girls though! (Yeah, they're THAT hard to find- that you can randomly hit the camera button on your phone and generally get a couple picks of them without even trying.)

Eli and Dudley, this one is all you.

I guess I've never mentioned it before but most public restrooms don't have toilets. They have this. You squat...and you lay one...in this...
I couldn't do it. FUCK, I didn't even know what way you were supposed to face!