"Well don't that beat all! I reckon there's more'n 15 people on this here train. Don't see that in my prefecture, no sir." *begins plucking banjo*

haven't blogged in...2 weeks or more? i've been busy, not just at school, which is of course a monday through friday commitment, but in the past 2 weekends i escaped the inaka and made it to 2 of Japan's most impressive cities, Tokyo and Osaka, so LET ME TOLD YOU SOMETHING about that

last week i met up with an old friend in Osaka. to get there from my side of the country is actually kinda complicated and expensive, but totally worth the effort. Osaka might be my favorite place in the world that i've been to so far, although it's hard to say why exactly. having said that, it's really a shame then that i left my camera at home isn't it? but, i more or less carry a computer with me wherever i go in the form of my iPhone (how many times do i have to tell you about how great it is before you just buy one already)



there's Osaka castle. it closes at 5, so don't show up @ 5:15 like we did thinking you can go up to the top. if you do go up, which i did 4 years ago, you can see the city of Osaka, which is famous for takoyaki (and other stuff) and here is a blurry picture of that



and heres hitachi tower



i think you can eat dinner up there? i don't really know what you can do there. it's too bad i couldn't spend more time in Osaka, but i had work on monday. still made time for a badass night of liver abuse in Dotomburi though. Osaka people stay out drinking there till the sun comes up, and i can respect that. i have a pretty lenghty vacation coming up, which i'm starting to plan out, and Osaka is certainly on the agenda.

this weekend was free, so i decided to go to Tokyo. i can get there by train, so i figured why the hell not. the world cup is on, and i'm not the biggest fan of soccer, but it only happens every 4 years so...watch it? that's actually not a good reason to watch something. but the world cup has been fun so far because the Japanese are using it as an excuse to go crazy (crazier than usual, that is) i watched the game in Tokyo's all night neighborhood, Shibuya, which looks like this



if you look in the bottom of the picture, you'll see the reason why i don't drive in Tokyo. that's a lot of road hazards? i've been to Tokyo before, 4 years ago, and certainly i've seen some pretty sizeable crowds in other places since then. still, exiting Shibuya station (which is also packed) and seeing what i can only describe as 'people ocean' still made me stop and say 'holy shit!!!! if only i knew how to make scrambled eggs, i could cook soborodon AT HOME' i also encountered a sound which I hadn't heard in 4 years



somewhere in the crowd here, a Japanese guy is screaming gibberish at everyone as loud as he can. everyone needs a hobby right? some people play tennis, or so i hear, while others may enjoy the underappreciated fine art of yelling at crowds.

you kind of get channeled in a big crowd like this, that is to say, you can't just move any direction you want because you will create an instant clusterfuck if you do. figure out how the crowd is moving before getting in there and trying to make your way to Freshness Burger, where a guy is licensed to make a Banana Cake



Japan tip #103: Don't buy banana cakes from anyone who hasn't been properly trained and licensed.

Japan tip #104: Don't buy banana cakes i mean what is that i dont even know

Japan lost to Holland 1-0, and for maybe 20 seconds things got pretty quiet. i only remember that because with all the constant background noise in Tokyo, it was hard not to notice the sudden quietude. then, i'm pretty sure i heard all of Shibuya yell 'Nippon!!!' at the same time, together. and i'm pretty sure they yelled it with 3 !!! rather than 2.

so Shibuya kept partying all night, either because they were still proud of their team or because they were still drunk. perhaps the answer is a little of column A, a little of column B. in any case good times were had by all, with the possible exceptions of a guy i saw dry-heaving over a trash can and the girl who couldn't stop crying for some reason (maybe crying is her crimefighting superpower though).

probably maybe the guy screaming at the Shibuya station crowd had the best time of all. i mean, who knows what's going on in his head?

but after the sun came up, the respectable crowd came out of hiding, the department stores opened, and while there will still like 10 million people crowded around me the mood had become much more subdued, by comparison. i ate some Hakata ramen before making my way out of the city back to the place where i can't buy Hakata ramen, a.k.a. the place where i live. my trips to the big cities was a really welcome break from life in the inaka. certainly there's fun to be had out here, but it's a different kind of fun, like climbing over 200 stairs to get to a temple on top of a mountain, going to some cool festivals and eating green tea icecream in the park. we might not have the energy of Shibuya or Dotomburi, but it's still not a bad place to live, i could think of worse. first thing that comes to mind would be caves, obviously. caves have bats, spiders, sometimes bears, and usually at least 1 werewolf. of course that didn't stop 3,500 Australians from choosing to live in caves, they can do as they like but i wouldn't want to live there



on the train home today, i looked out the window and watched the cityscape gradually change into wooded mountainsides, rivers and little mountain towns and i thought: "i really need to poop."***

THANK YOU FOR READING TOTALLY BONKERS GAIJIN ADVENTURES: KEEPING IT CLASSY SINCE 2009

--gaijin who writes this
signatures go here
***true story

Japanese iPhone saves the day (again)

well my laptop, which I can't really say has served me all that well, decided that it would be cool if the keyboArd stopped working, and so, now I can't type any words with c, v, or h.

since I'm kinda morally opposed to increasing my (English) vocabulary at this point in my spirit journey, Im not planning on learning a shitload of new words to avoid 3 letters plus whatever other keyboard keys decide to break in the next few days.

so I'm blogging on an iPhone, my iPhone actually. But that presents it's own problems as well. No matter which way you hold this thing, you have to hold a magnifying glass to the screen ifn you wanna see shit. A broken keyboard may actually be easier to type on than this virtual keyboard thing where you kinda type with your thumbs (that's how I'm doing it, is that right or wrong?). Oh, and the battery life sucks, probably because of all the fancy pants graphics on here, and using the phones Internet costs some yen as well.

it's a good thing that this new generation of cell phones does pretty much the same stuff I use a computer for, email and what have you. but blogging is a pain on the ass with this, as such all blogs will be short & infrequent until I figure out something I can do for my Korean laptop. But hey, 今、 私 は 日本語 で 書いてできる。don't know if those characters can even show on your screen or not. don't worry, it wAs entirely unimportant,

my final thought for today is, this is really fucking annoying

--gaijin who writes this from an iPhone
signatures go here

lose your erection

what can't you buy at hard off? it's a secondhand store with an unfortunate name. you could even buy shoes here if you wanted, but the idea of buying used shoes isnt that appealing to me. they also had quite a selection of fishing poles and video games, as well as a whole bunch guitars, clothes, furniture even. pretty cool place actually. i bought a rice cooker there, then promptly ordered a pizza when i got home instead of trying out my new buy. i lead a life of constant excitement and adventure...

...literally. i think i'm making a trip to Osaka next weekend (thought it'd be this weekend), so that's pretty damn exciting, cos I haven't been there in 4 years, but i remember it as being a ridiculously cool place. so I hope it works out, cos the rainy season is ending, and i'm eager to get out of the boondocks, even though there's a hard off here.

--gaijin who writes this
signatures go here