Babyfest 2007

Today was a beautiful day and I kicked it with some totally rad babies (even though I was gross and hungover). We've formed a gang and were gonna be patroling the streets, kicking ass, taking names, and taking naps. I want to introduce you to my new posse.










Itsuki's the leader. Don't tell anyone, but he's also my favorite. He's not afraid to be feminine either, and tried on my lipgloss. He's into screaming and running into people.














Mar-kun. While we were eating lunch, he poured tea on his pants. He does not give a fuck, that's how cool he is.
















Rei-chan is the sweetie-pie. While the other kids were bonking his head with plastic bats, he stood there smiling.




























Jun-kun's awesome. He ate my lipgloss.

We took over the park and ran around. We made plans to take over the Niijima Store candy aisle and to ride a bulldozer. It's gonna be the best summer ever.


















I'm a little out of order, but tommorrow I'll tell you about me weekend in Hokkaido. I'm gonna go take a nap.

Yuki Matsuri, yo!

In the second week of February, Sapporo has a big-ass snow festival. Since my friend Dan lives in nearby Hakodate, I thought I'd stop by his part of town as well. Now, I'm in the middle of the first season of Battlestar Galatica, so we're gonna make this short and sweet. (God bless you, Dan and your multitudinous electronic bounty!)

I hopped this magic Pokemon plane












to the northernmost island, Hokkaido. I got a chance to see snow-covered mountains and rice paddies (You know how dumb it is to try to take pictures through the airplane window, so I didn't even bother).
I landed in Hokadate and realized how fucking cold it is evrywhere else in Japan. Thank the Seven Gods of the Izu Islands I don't have to deal with snow tires and freezing rain. That's next winter (damn you, Chicago!)
Dan picked me up at the airport, we picked up his lady, Kate and then we went to this magical place of culinary delights.









It's this little plaza area with a bunch of little restaurants, each serving their own little specialty (sushi, ramen, yakitori..) with space for about ten or twelve people at a time. All in one convenient location! Now, this is a brilliant concept. I'm gonna build a little plaza like this in my backyard and everyone can come over for BBQ, Mexican, and then finish off at the frozen yogurt stand.
The next day, Dan made pancakes for the ladies and then we went sightseeing,


























got mauled by a bear,















and rode a tram to catch a little scenery.























Dan tried to get cute and pretended to toss me over the railing,














which only managed to enrage me. I chucked his body over,













laughed at his mangled corpse,















and then took Kate out to a lovely lobster dinner.

We hopped a train at Hakodate Station where, it should be noted, you CANNOT store a dead body in the locker storage.










It took three hours to get to Sapporo and we took in the beautiful scenery of Onuma Park. I broke my rule about taking pictures through windows, so now you can all enjoy these second-rate scenery shots:



























We got to Sapporo















and after we dropped off our stuff, we headed to Odori-koen (koen means park) to check out the ice sculptures.












































Meg Ryan was there and she was a bitch,










but then this fat dude showed up and ate her,












so we all kicked it with him at the snowfest.
Here's me and Kate being total dorks and pretending to be the Sapporo TV Tower.













Now, I don't know if the city of Sapporo doesn't believe in de-icing its streets, or it just takes great pleasure in watching tourists fall on their ass every five minutes, but it was slow going over snow covered streets. Luckily, they DO believe in having handy drink stations everywhere, where you could keep warm with hot sake or hot buttered rum or a chocolate covered frozen banana.














Because Hokkaido is known for its dairy there were also hot milk stations, but unless there's Bailey's or Kahlua involved, don't bother.
AND SPEAKING OF BAILEY'S, down a side street there were smaller ice sculptures










and ICE BARS!












Woo-hoo! Like an idiot child drawn to pieces of shiny tinfoil, I gazed adoringly at the igloos filled with bartenders pouring out yummy warm drinks. The Hennessy igloo was closed and so was the vodka one (WTF? Isn't that what you're supposed to drink whilst out in the land of ice and snow?) so that left the Bailey's bar. It was awesome: crappy techno and jubuilant gaijin crowded in a tiny space. The bartenders lovingly ladled out hot Bailey's like grannies at a soup kitchen.
Then we headed to a tiny alley famous for its ramen (Sapporo in general is famous for its ramen noodles).









Here in Japan, they have tons of shows where second-rate idols run around eating at restaurants. They pop their eyes wide and scream out "OI-SHIIII!!!" and now I know why. It's because they were in one of the alley restaurants! We met up with Dan's pals Kate, the lovely Brit and her Kiwi man Matt and slurped up some oishii noodles.








I never thought noodles I associated with college poverty would be soo good, but they are, especially when accompanied by beer and the best gyoza I have ever tasted. It's easier to face the cold when you've had a delicious meal. Next time you're in Sapporo, Ramen Yokocho (alley). Do it.
Other highlights of the trip included a trip to Gengis Khan (pronounced 'Jingis Khan' here in Japan), a restaurant where you grill your own meat at the table. It gets so smoky in there that you have to put your coat and other shit in a bag, so it doesn't smell like lard (afterwards, I kept licking my hand cuz it tasted like lamb).They have bibs and giant-ass beers









and drunk Japanese everywhere! Dan and Kate, being the whitest people in the room, were treated like celebrities and had Japanese peeps posing with them all night long.














I managed to snag a cow and make it sit on my lap.










However, there's a price to pay for such photo ops. Fucking cow drank all my beer while I wasn't looking! Eh well, it was all-you-can-eat anyways. Still....dick.

We missed out on the Sapporo Beer Museum (and all the chotchkis you could get your mitts on. Chocolates filled with beer jelly! OMG!) but consoled ourselves by going to a karaoke joint called Thriller.










Katie and Matt serenaded us with 80s tunes and Brit-pop.















Dan let everyone know that he would do anything for love but won't do that








and I told everyone wild horses couldn't drag me a-way. Later, me and the dudes went into Bar Noir for a whiskey nightcap and recounts of dates gone horribly wrong.

There was lots of other shit that went down like the totally dreamy boy band we encountered and the magical elf girls we found in the lobby,












but I'm getting hungry. I'm gonna go cook a pork chop with grilled shiitake mushrooms in ponzu sauce. Mmm, pork chop with grilled shiitake mushrooms in ponzu sauce...*drooooool*

Niijima Pretty Much Rocks

I've been here less than a week and Im already know I'm gonna have a bitchin' time here.
Niijima isn't that far away from Kozu (you can see it from here). They're about the same size and have about the same population. But while Kozu's more the sleepy hamlet type, Niijima is a boppin' little island with stuff going on pretty much every day of the week. The town is run by surfers and the cutest babies I have ever seen.
Let's see, in the past six days, I have:
-Met the local surfer crew. I'm determined to make them all my best friends because they throw cool parties. And they have all the weed.

-Danced on a table whilst singing 'Black Dog'. As part of building relations with the locals, I sometimes have to join them at the local hostess club and knock a couple back (Literally. I knocked over some drinks in my enthusiasm for Led Zeppelin. Not my best night, balance-wise)

-Scored a language partner. His name is Itsuki. His dad's my coworker. He's two. We talk about cool shit like farm animals and snacks.

-Learned how to slice sashimi from a local sushi master. Mmm, delicious mackarel.

-Went to yoga. Free yoga! Twice a week! Bitchin'.

-Ran three miles with the basketball coach WHILE having a conversation with him in Japanese. Coolest thing I've done in 2007 (Sorry, Tokyo conference)

Now, there are downsides. My apartment. Designed by Helen Keller. No, wait. If it had been designed by her, she would've had the sense to place the toilet next to the bathroom (not next to the kitchen) and added a sink and maybe a closet somewhere in the place. She's not stupid. The jackass who designed my studio is. But rent being 2,800 yen (about $23) a month, I can make it livable.
And there are a shit ton of crows here. I know they're all waiting for me to drop dead so they can pick the little meat there is off my bones.
OH, BUT THE STUDENTS! Now, I'm not dogging Kozu. The kids (little shits that they are) really grew on me and Kozushimamura was a cozy home for me in the past six months. But the students here actually like learning English. They don't fall asleep in class! They don't play with their ketais (well, not the whole period). They actually come up and talk to me, like, "Hey, Bu-renda, what's up? What's the deal with Bush wanting to send more troops or some shit. That's totally whack..."
I'm settling in quite nicely.
Tommorrow, I head to Hokkaido for the Sapporo Snow Fest and of course, debauchery. Yeah, you're gonna hear about it! Duh... When I get back, I'll do a little exploring and show you around the island.
Ja ne! (See you!)

Tokyo JET conference

Ach! Sorry. I've been busy moving to my new island of Niijima and it's been rather hectic. Those moving dolphins I hired aren't gonna steer themselves. Or maybe they will. They ARE the superspecies of the future that will soon dominate the earth in their merciless grab for- woah, tangent!
Anyways...

In mid-January, the Tokyo Board of Education throws us some money to come to a conference on team teaching and to learn new methods on teaching English. It’s also a chance to get to know your prefecture posse. Many other prefectures (sorta like counties) have like 20 or 40 or 100 JETs. We have nine. Four of them are cast out unto the islands like heathens or lepers. Let me introduce you:

Rebecca Lowson:






The sweetest girl from London I’ve ever met, she teaches two high schools in Oshima, the largest island of the chain. She says shit like ‘blimey’. Blimey! I wish I could say blimey. Instead I swear like a pirate. Sigh....

Paulette Waltz:






Sorry boys, this minx is taken.
Paulette looks like she would be comfortable walking the corridors of Capitol Hill (she’s a cool and collected DC girl) as well as running around in a gas mask on Miiyakejima, which they have to carry at all time because of the POISONOUS GAS that hangs around the island. AND they don’t have an onsen. AND they’re not allowed any dairy on the island because the gas curdles it. Ok, the last one is a lie. But still, I’m never bitching about my islands again.

Andrea Burnell:

(Son of a bitch, I couldn't find a decent picture of the lass in all my photos. Sorry, Andrea :( )

Sassy Australian chick who’s been living on Hachijojima for two years and hasn’t gone stir crazy (although she did cut the conbini clerk in the face for giving her incorrect change.)

The other five live in a suburb of Tokyo called Musashimurayama (I think I’m spelling it right. I never say it right, that’s for sure. How about MM for short.), where they have luxuries like a brand new mall and cinema and not having to carry gas masks all the time.

Melissa Chan:








She keeps everyone in line by snapping her fingers and yelling at them in either English, Japanese, or Chinese. Sure, she looks cute, but don’t cross her or she’ll throw her Hello Kitty ketai (cellphone) at your head.

Yan Sen Lu:











Also speaks three languages, which he uses to seduce the ladies. Every time we left him alone for like, two minutes, he’d be smooth-talking a lady. I think he's got at least two baby-mommas.

Benjamin Sharples:

(Ben believes that photos steal your soul and reduce your manna, so there's no pic of guy.)

He’s a straight up geek from London who spends his free time reading comics and working out and oiling himself up for the ladies at the local host club. He uses slang like ‘class’ (something that’s cool) and ‘tart’ (ladies, you do not want to be known as a tart. You may think it’s something cute like, “Ooh, I wear slutty lipstick and make out with boys at the bar.” No. A tart is with three different dudes a day, doesn’t shower, and cries herself to sleep at night.)

Angel Casiano:







A fellow Latino from NYC, he brings in a much-needed street style to the elementary and junior high schools (when he's not locked up for hustling). He’s also the prefectural advisor, so if I’m ever bummed about not having a brand new mall and cinema, I can cry on his shoulder.

Phillip Curran: An international man of mystery (from Ireland), Phil was the ninja of the group. As soon as meetings were done, he dissappeared to who knows where. There is much speculation as to where he goes (maid cafes, yakuza hangouts, the brand-new mall and cinema..) (and since you can't photograph a ninja, there's no picture of Phillip. Sorry, ladies.)

So, Wednesday. I got into Tokyo first and spent a long time trying to find what basically amounts to a business man’s tomb. I was in the tiniest hotel with only the barest necessities (porn and a bidet). It also was right in the middle of the Shinjuku gay district, which makes for fun nights but maybe not so clean sheets.
I bopped around doing a little shopping and met up with Andrea Burnell who was like, “Yo, let’s go catch a movie!”, except with a cute Australian accent. Apparently, movies in Tokyo stop aorund 8pm, which sucks balls. We were left with ‘Marie Antoinette’, which although beautiful, was boring as hell. If I wanted to see queens in decadent outfits and indulging their every whim, I would’ve stayed in the gay district.
The next day, everyone met each other. The conference was headed by Mr Kuge from the board of education. He’s a perfect example of a typical Japanese office worker: sweet, nice, overworked, and totally repressed. I wish I could take him with me on my time machine, drop him off in the middle of a Roman orgy and say, “Be free!”
We had a lecture by some dude who was like the Japanese Mr. Rogers: sweatshirt, slacks, sneakers. We did some dorky breaking-the-ice games and then he went to discuss paragraph structure blah blah blah. At one point I zoned out until I heard him say, “Shit! Motherfucker! Fuck You!” He was trying to make a point about...well, whatever. We were elated to hear such crass language. Kuge-san got a little hot under the collar and later apologized for the man. He used to be an English teacher and I can tell he misses it. I wish he would partied with us, but I'm sure he was busy rolling a rock up a mountain or whatever it is they do to keep poor salarymen busy.

After the conference, Phillip dissappeared and Ben went to go do pushups or something. We were gonna go check out the happy hour at the Shinagawa Prince Hotel (Wednesdays from 6-9pm, all you can drink for 2,500 yen. Who’s with me?), but we were having a good time polishing off too-small carafes of margaritas at El Torito.







C’mon, Japan! When you gonna jump on the ‘bowl drinks’ train? I don't know why I try eating anything besides Japanese food here. The food was gross at best but it was fun being rowdy and pretending it was Paulette’s birthday (free flan IF you present your id. Boo)









We finished up too late to catch the happy hour and some of us were still looking to party. Paulette suggested this bar that she knew in Shibuya. You could tell she has a bit of an S&M streak, so we weren’t too surprised when we rolled into a bar called The Lockup.
The Lockup is a ‘science experiment gone horribly awry’-themed bar with food and drinks served in beakers and shit. One of our party (me!) was handcuffed and then led to our cell by a red-vynil clad warden. You could tell she was thrilled to have her picture taken with me (she probably gets asked 50 times a day).








We were enjoying our cocktails of redbull, mystery liquor, and pop rocks (we ordered what looked coolest, but most of didn’t know what the hell we were drinking). We were down with the whole kinky, locked up thing going on.






Rebecca fell in love with the accesories that came with her alcoholic chemistry set, including what she called a 'teat pipette' (we couldn't figure out what the hell she was calling it until she spelled it out for us.Over in the States, we call them turkey basters), and was using it for inappropriate science experiments:














All of a sudden, the lights go out and death metal started playing. I was already on my knees, so I just looked up to the sky and said, “Thank you, God.” There was some scary talk and screaming and then suddenly monsters and science experiments gone horribly awry came in to scare us.






They rattled the bars and reached for our feet. We got extra monster treatment because we were gaijin.






(Angel immediately reached for the monster's tits, mistaking them for the real thing.

We also joined in on ‘Happy Birthday’ with the celebrants in the next cell. I got walked in on in the bathroom. The Lockup is my new favorite bar. I’m gonna have my bat mitzvah there.

The MM JETs had an hour long train ride to get to, but we Islanders managed to bully them into one more drink. We stopped in at a bar that I’d been to before. It’s a meat market where gaijin go to pick up the local color. Sure enough, Mac Daddy Yan Sen started his magic with two cute Japanese girls. I avoided eye contact and guzzled my beer. We all parted ways and I made my way back to Kabuki-cho. I kept hoping the host boys (with their elaborate, large coifs) would try to cajole me into their clubs. But they never did. :(
I wasn’t ready to go back to my tomb (the porn wasn’t free), and there were tons of interesting little bars nearby, so I stopped in one that had darts and underwear for sale.







There werea bunch of gay men chillin’ and watching Jackass. They were all super friendly and we ‘chatted’ it up. They were all make-up artists or back-up dancers or drag queens and they showed me their moves and asked how big American dicks are. We did whiskey shots and I promised to catch them a Yankee with a big weiner.












It was a lovely evening.

The next day, we sat around and compared notes (Me: “Wait, you guys actually teach?”) and at noon we were cut loose.
Phillip dissapeared, Rebecca and her teat petite had to catch a boat, and Andrea had to renew her driver’s licence. The rest of ate some lunch, headed over to Harajuku for some shopping, (here's a nifty house I found)














and then finished off our evening at The Wine Cave. I was dissapointed to find it to be a very classy place and not a caveman-themed bar where scantily clad ladies in leopard prints serve us ‘Cave Brew’.
After a heated turf war, Angel and I told our gangs to stand down and we made peace over a bottle of Bourdeaux.










Melissa and Paulette tried the ghetto superstar pose but that only succeeded in scaring off the servers.











Paulette was snatched away from us by her hunky economic reporter boyfriend (hot!) and that left me slurring away at Angel and Melissa. I invited them and everyone in the Tokyo posse to come out to Niijima. I told Angel I would cut his pretty Puerto Rican face with a shochu bottle if they didn’t come out for a barbecue or something. They smiled and moved the cutlery away from me and said they looked forward to a reunion of the Tokyo posse.
Afterwards, we took our photos in a puri-kura (print club) booth. It's kinda like a photobooth, except you can pimp out your pics with cutesy little icons and drawings. They also come as stickers. Any student's ketai or notebook is covered with them. Then Melissa and Angel saw me off at the train. MM JETs tend to play host to the islanders and they made us feel pretty welcome. I’m gald the rest of the Tokyo JETs weren’t jerks or dickheads. I’m looking forward to the reunion. SPRING BREAK 2007!! WOOOO!!!

Yikes! That was a long one. If you made it this far, congratulations. Kids, feel free to comment. Anything from "My, how interesting' to 'You are a depraved individual' or 'That was too fucking long and lame' is greatly appreciated. How am I supposed to make this blog better without a little constructive criticism, eh?