There's something really disturbing

about a woman pushing a baby in a stroller at the grocery store with "Schnizzle my Nizzle" emblazoned on her chest.

Really disturbing, or really clever.

Fudodo Beach

rocks the house! Yesterday, Trevor and I went for a long bike ride to the beach near Togane. It was such a complete 180 from Tokyo: we rode on old cruisers down a long country road, surrounded by golden fields that were heavy with rice ready to be harvested. We stopped at the conbini to pick up some tuna onigiri and a liter of cold green tea for a picnic on the beach. Subarashii!

By the way, Japanese people are sugoii about slowing down and giving a bicyclist right of way and a wide berth. Maybe it has something to do with driving as a privilege and not as a right? Hmmmm...

Anyhow, the beach was nearly deserted, save for the guys manning the shacks where you can roast monster clams on a barbecue while you sit on the sand and drink a cold beer (Ah, been there, and it is nice, but we didn't do it this time). We did a little shell hunting, took silly pictures, and poked a dead, donut-shaped jellyfish with a stick. Vacation bliss.

On the way home, we saw a different kind of roadkill than we're used to in California -- a flattened, dried up turtle!

We built this city on rock and roll

Went to check out the fireworks at Yokota Air Force Base. So weird -- the surrounding town is like a little America. I hadn't seen an apartment with a proper balcony, or proper English t-shirts until this day. The American soldiers IDed everyone who wasn't Japanese as they came through the gate. We got a laugh out of our German friend Alex being IDed then having his bag searched, while we breezed through. I guess an American passport has its advantages.

When we got on the base, they were selling steak, hamburgers, burritos, margaritas...and American beer! We were so excited at the prospect of drinking an American beer, thinking we might be able to buy a Sierra Nevada or Anchor Steam. But no, we had to go with MGD. It was hard to explain to our Japanese friends why we were so excited about a possible American beer when what we ended up drinking tasted just like Kirin.

It was strange because Trevor and I agreed that we felt like we were at some big American barbecue -- it didn't at all feel like Japan (except for all the Nihonjin). There were American military families, hugely muscled 'roid boys (a phenomenon that I nearly forgot about because you just don't see it in Japan), and English everywhere. The only things that made it feel Japanese were: 1) the fact that, let's face it -- if you got that many Americans together with that much beer, there would be fighting. Japanese just don't do that and 2) the Japanese hoochie-mamas in hot pants and stilettos out to bag a military boy. Creepy.

Actually, there was one more thing that made it distinctly Japanese. There was an American military band for entertainment, and they played some golden oldies. I don't know if there was drunken karaoke going on or what, but some Japanese chick was singing "We built this city on rock and roll" in the most off-key, horrendous voice I had ever heard. I also think she may have been just singing what she thought was being said, because it didn't make any sense. Horrified at first, I was gradually lured in by the sheer charm of Starship.

We left around 9 p.m., and while we waited to cross the street we watched a bunch of Japanese kids take pictures with some of the biggest American soldiers I had ever seen. We smiled when we saw them all make the ubiquitious "peace" sign while they posed with "our boys." Ah, the irony, I thought, but then these guys were happy and being really gracious, so I immediately discarded my pessimism in favor of "cultural exchange." Never let it be said that I am anything but generous.

Our friends Hiroko and Satoru

invited us to their house for dinner the other night. Trevor and I met Hiroko the day we came to Kunitachi and couldn't find our guesthouse. We just happened to stop her father on his bike and ask him for directions. He couldn't speak English and didn't know where the house was, but tried very hard to show us the best he could. He finally gave up, asked us to wait, and returned with Hiroko, who spoke English very well and got us to our house with no problems.

Hiroko and her brother Satoru are of the new generation of Japanese who I believe will save Japan from its destruction from within. Creative, outgoing, and interested in the global community and enriching themselves and others, they are the kind of folks who are needed to pull Japan out of an antiquated system of development and international relations (see _Dogs and Demons_ from Takaosan post). The world needs more people like the Osawas, and Japan is lucky to have them.

We had a great time at their house. It's such a wonderful thing to be invited into a Japanese family's home, and the Osawas made it really memorable. Mrs. Osawa cooked all kinds of fabulous dishes, like homemade shumai and spring rolls, and Mr. Osawa told us about mushroom hunting (his favorite hobby) and was generous with the shochu and beer. But the best part of the evening was that Hiroko's friend brought her koto and entertained us with beautiful contemporary and traditional koto music. It was unreal!

I don't ever want to forget

Satoshi-san's father's bonsai garden, filled with minature plants of every type, viewed from the tatami-matted dining room where I sat and ate salty plums. Or eating watermelon on a packed earth floor at Yukiko-san's mother's house.

We're back in Togane

at the Horikawas' house. The Horikawas have been so incredible it is hard to believe it is humanly possible. They've allowed us the flexibility to do almost everything we wanted to do. Even though we had fun in Kunitachi, it's nice to be back "home" for our last two weeks here.

Trevor and I agree that we've been so fortunate to spend time with and live with the people we've met in Japan. So many of our gaijin friends have either no Japanese friends or have had awful experiences with awful people. We are so lucky!

Takaosan, we love you!

We took a day hike on Mount Takao yesterday and it was fantastique! So much better than Fuji, in my opinion. While Fuji is breathtaking from afar, in person Fuji is so commercial, with tons of people selling every plastic peice of crap that's ever been made with a picture of a mountain on it. Takao is a small town, and although there were souvenier shops, they were run from small local shops situated on one beautiful, quiet, clean street. On Takao itself, it was great to be surrounded by so much serene beauty, in a rainforest-like atmosphere, with nary another person around. And there was a shrine to Tengu -- what more could you ask for?

Okay, actually, there is more that you can ask for. We took the Chuo line to Takao and then transferred to a Keio line to Takaosanguchi. The countryside is beautiful -- mountains surrounding a gorgeous valley. But smack dab in the middle of of the end of the valley is a huge figure eight superhighway span. Is this really necessary for a town with a population of 20,000, if that?

If you haven't read _Dogs and Demons_ by Alex Kerr, about the systematic environmental and economic destruction of Japan, then it may come as a shock to you that Japan would do such a thing to a picturesque valley.

All I can say is, if you haven't read it, please read it, now. I recently realized that many of the reasons I had about deciding to come back to the States that I couldn't quite express in words are articulated in this book. Let me know what you think.

Women of Japan

are the future of Japan!!!!

We wanted to see Tsukiji Fish Market,

the Tokyo market that provides nearly all of the fish for Honshu. Unfortunately, as we are living in the proverbial boondocks of Tokyo, this type of trip involves getting up extremely early to catch the first train into town in order to catch the action that hits its peak around 6:30 a.m. Not gonna happen. Fortunately for us, there was an alternative -- staying out all night in Tokyo proper. That's how we ended up in Roppongi.

For the uninitiated, Roppongi is legendary -- the gaijin paradise that has an equal amount of worshippers and detractors. This is where the all-night parties happen, where folks don't close up shop until 9 a.m. Trevor and I had done the all-night Roppongi thing 6 years ago when we were here last, but Alex, our roomie from Germany, had never seen Roppongi. We knew he would not be disappointed in its sheer freakshow quality. For this reason, this is where we decided to set up camp.

I'm one of the gaijin that falls into the "love it and hate it" camp of Roppongi people. It's entertaining to grab a beer from the convini (200 yen, rather than the minimum 800 yen you'll pay at a nasty loser-infested bar), snag a spot on the sidewalk, and watch the circus sideshow that passes you by -- hawkers trying to get you to go into their "gentlemen" clubs, hookers/hostesses/strippers of all shapes, size, and nationalities (but Eastern European and Russian seems to rule), mobs of sararimen with said women draped all over them, Japanese trannies, pimps, madames, and gaijin from around the world. But this entertainment is also really nasty and sleazy, and the gaijin who frequent Roppongi tend to be what our roomie Stephen so aptly calls "LBH" -- losers back home.

Men rule in Japan, and Western men are arguably the supreme rulers when it comes to some Japanese women. For as many foreign girls there are stripping for drunken Japanese men and (very often) men from their own countries, there are just as many Japanese women out to bag a Western boyfriend or, frankly, a Western john. And while Japanese men who are pigs disgust me, there's still an element of difference in culture to give them a teeny-weeny crutch. But I can just never get used to Western LBH and gaijin pigs -- who should know better -- who are regulars in Roppongi simply because women will throw themselves at them and they can grope to their hearts' content. It's like a power that they never knew existed, and they are drunk on it. Eeew.

So, anyway, rather than drink bad Japanese beer for $8 a pop in a smoky, LBH-infested shithole, we struck up a conversation with one of the hawkers, sat on the sidewalk, and drank bad Netherland beer at $2 pop. Sam, our hawker friend from Ghana, has been in Japan for three years, speaks 7 languages, and wants to open his own bar (a nice one).

Dawn comes early in Japan in the summer, and by 4:30 the natural light cancelled out the artificial and the heat was already coming on. After an amusing encounter with a Japanese guy who, after hearing Alex was from Germany, gave him the Nazi salute and said "Seig Heil," we grabbed the Hibiya subway line to Tsukiji and wobbled our way to the gigantic hanger that serves as the biggest fish market in the world. Boats from Africa, Australia, and even the Americas make their way here around 3 a.m. to sell their catch. We arrived around 6 a.m. and were greeted by the buzzing of saws used to cut monster chunks of frozen tuna, the flashing of samurai-sword sized knives, and the smell of gasoline from the hundreds of motorized vegetable carts used to haul everything from trumpetfish to eel to giant tuna.

The market is a buzz of activity, and you have to be really careful, especially when sleep-deprived and tipsy, so as not to get run over by the speeding vegetable carts or get a bucket of guts dumped on your shoes. Great fun!

Afterward, we went to Tsukiji Sushi to have a fresh sushi breakfast. Nothing cures the "been up for 24 hours" blues better than thick slices of raw tuna, squid, and raw shrimp, washed down with hot miso soup. The couple next to us at the sushi counter bought the freshest of the fresh sushi though -- fish, caught from the tank at the sushi counter, filleted alive, and made into nigiri sushi. The remaining body was skewered onto a stick, and said nigiri was placed in it's body cavity. Delicious, I'm sure, but cruel, and it was creeping me out that the remaining body continued to spasm and the mouth gasp for air as they ate.

Slipped in and out of consciousness on the train ride home, but woke up in time to not miss our stop.

Dingo this Jeans...

"Keep him smiling because 100% nutrition"

Nothing finer on a lazy day

than to play frisbee with friends in Musashi Koganei Koen in a field full of dragonflies. Trevor found a bunch of cicada carapaces, and we ate green tea ice cream.

Took a jaunt to Yoyogi Koen in Harajuku

to take a look at the freakage that congregates there on weekends. Just outside Harajuku Station, at the mouth of Yoyogi Park is the famed hangout spot for the cos-play kids. They are misunderstood suburban kids who train into the city and spend their weekends dressed up like Little Bo Peep or uber-goth. I was really excited about seeing them in person, and I was expecting to be blown away by the getups, but I was more blown away by the circus of photographers surrounding them. These kids have been so fetished by the international media that everyone from tourists to old Japanese men come out to have them preen before their cameras. And yes, I was there to take photos as well, but I was so in shock it made it really hard.

There were tons of tourists queuing up to have a photo taken with the freakiest of the costumed. There was a Japanese guy there with a camera lens that was seriously a foot long. There were old Japanese men hanging out with and engaging in serious conversation with 14-year old cos-players. That was the freakshow. There were even gaijin cos-play kids there too! I'm so over it.

Better was a walk into Yoyogi Koen with our new German roomie Alex to check out Meiji-Jingu shrine. Quiet, immaculate grounds and gorgeous architecture. Classic Japan (well, rebuilt in the 50's after WWII bombing) still kicks 21st century Japan's booty.

Afterward we met up with our old friend Chigusa in Shibuya for a drink. She's working two jobs and is crazy to get back to the States. I always feel awful for my female Japanese friends who feel really trapped in Japan because they want something more out of life than Japanese tradition and second-class status. They don't want to marry somebody they have to wait on hand and foot, but unmarried and on their own they have to work themselves to death to get by. Not to mention the social stigma. Did you know there's a word for unmarried women in their 30's and up? It's called maki enu -- loosely translated as a desperate underdog. And the Japanese Parliment tried, but failed, to pass a law that prohibited retirement benefits to women who were unmarried or without children. Chigusa has a BA in Communications, works in a communications company full-time, and at a bowling alley part-time. She makes about $2500 a month. The average company salary in Japan is about $4500. So bunk! But she's doing things on her own, and making her own choices, which is better than a lot of people (even in the States) can say.

Chigusa took us to her work in Kawasaki to go bowling, which was super bitchin'. I won a sweet bowling pin clock, and Trevor received a consolation prize of 3 decades of J-pop hits.

I decided to take my friend Talitha's advice

and attempt some Japanese fashion shopping. Previous posts can attest to the fact that Japanese fashion is an otherworldly beast -- a shining god-thing (or hideous nightmare) made up of straight-off-the-runway and godawful-fads-of-yesteryear from around the globe, smooshed together into something that can exist only while firmly adhered to the earth of this island nation; indeed, I have often thought that the mere attempt to step onto American soil whilst attired in such a combination would short-circuit my brain and render me a fashion vegetable, barely able to blink my eyes for yes or no when presented with ballet flats or spike heels, white eyeliner or black kohl, Kenzo or Yohji Yamamoto.

I decided to take it slow and rather than attack the monster department stores like Tobu in Ikebukuro, I would stroll leisurely through the smaller and more youth-focused Lumine in Tachikawa. What I found was the 80's gone amok -- floors of sleeveless baggys in flourescent stripes, garish metallic shoes of every sort, a shrine on the fourth floor to some guy named Tommy, outrageously priced Gaultier, as well as whole floors dedicated to that ever increasing beacon of Japanese fashion -- the super-tanned, white-eyelined, fake-eyelashed, forever-white-capried and spike-sandaled bad girl. Bad idea, the department store, unless you want the same stuff you can get in the States, don't mind paying more for what you can get in the States, or just want to look 15-22. I actually got really depressed.

I find myself attracted to old-lady fashion. The old ladies here are dope! Everytime I'm stopped by a window of a little shop on the street and go inside, I usually find myself shopping with old ladies. But their stuff looks original and classic, not trendy or gaudy.

I made one purchase, the other day, in Shibuya, at an Indian-inspired shop. A blue skirt, with a varied hem and embroidery around the bottom. Simple. The Japanese love the East Indian does Rastafarian look. There's always usually one in every area, even departo -- Bob Marley on the radio, marijuana leaves everywhere, incense and...saris.

Two very disturbing things

that I experienced in the last two days:

1. Stephen "accidentally" bought a pay per view porn called Super Sarariman. Super Sarariman is a Japanese salaryman who has super powers and can give women orgasms with the power of the chi in his fingers. My verdict is that he needs the superpower because there is no way the women in this movie could have orgasms the way they were handled. There were also three women called "the Villaneses" (sic) but I have no idea what their point was. Maybe they were the three women who were manhandled by Super Sarariman after they successfully thwarted another man's attempt to fondle them. Eeew.

2. OIOI Mini in Shinjuku. A 7 floor departo dedicated to "alternative" clothing and cos-play. Wanna be punk? Go to the 4th floor. Wanna be goth? That's the 7th floor. Why they relegate the reggae look to the basement is beyond me. It was neat to see the goth floors all done up with dungeon and scary Hellraiser motifs. But ready-made -- where is the love?

crosswalks and clockwork

Crosswalks here use a melody to designate that the time for street-crossing has begun. The melody, were I a nationalist, might incite a patriotic fervor and sense of strong determination. Again, these notes mean that you can cross the street. As I was crossing today and humming along to this tune, it dawned on me: that by simply re-creating this melody, and broadcasting it loudly enough, a person might have the power to over-ride everyone's mind and cause them to begin crossing whatever street is nearest. Perhaps, I mused, Japan has long been one immensely complex piece of clockwork, controlled (likely tonally) by either aliens, robots, or highly evolved humans (perhaps from the future). I tried humming the cross-walk song louder; nothing happened, but this may be explained by my own inability to sufficiently mimic said song vocally.