More weeks in Japan

Holy jangles, I am a bad person for taking so long to post another entry. I need to get my ass in gear more often. According to this blog-o-page, it’s been 17 days since my last post. UH-OOOOOOOH.

There was a small get-together at Dave’s place shortly after my last post. I forget when. One of Dave’s coworkers, John, was there with his Japanese girlfriend, along with another Japanese dude, Aki, and then three girls who arrived in stages. It turned out to be totally boring because barely anyone would loosen up and have fun. In other words, no one was drinking. Which sucks, because I dropped like $100 on spirits and buffalo wings for the occasion. Crap!

I can’t remember anything more fancy happening at Dave’s. That leads me to where I’m at now, which is Steve’s house. I think I’ve been here for a little more than a week? The trip was ass-tastic. It took me about five hours and tons of different trains to make the switch. Plus I was toting both my new suitcase, and my old backpack full of crap for Steve. I knew before it began that that day would be total sack. It didn’t let me down. Just suck on top of suck. I got lost a couple times and had to call both Steve and Dave several times to figure out wtf I was doing, even though I had the directions written down on a little piece of paper. I’m dumb.

Steve and a friend of his, Benji (who I quickly renamed “Banjo”), met me at the station. I was all tuckered out and wanted to sleep, but Steve had already made plans for us to go bar hopping with Banjo that evening. I mustered up all the courage I had, then we headed out.

This area has an EXTREMELY high concentration of Brazilian/Spaniards. Walking around, you can sometimes forget you’re in Japan in certain places. But anyway, we went to a Brazilian bar about a 20 minute walk away, where there were a bunch of people inside. It was crowded with a few girls sitting down with dudes. Then some other really hot girls dancing with dudes. It was mostly a raging sausage-fest though. And how. ZOMG.

There were some friendly Spaniards mucking about, who were happy to talk to us in Spanish/broken English/broken Japanese. One dude was ESPECIALLY friendly. Pretty touchy feely and whatnot, which none of us saw a to be a problem. We had rounds and sung karaoke and junk. Then migrated to an open table about 45 minutes in. The grabby dude followed us and sat down next to me where he proceeded to get even more handsy. I was drunk enough to not notice anything weird. When I actually did start to get uncomfortable, I made a note to Steve. He told me “he had a story” about that. Neat. So I told Banjo, who was sitting on the other side of Steve, that I would pay him a handsome bounty of 5 SHEEP (he’s a Canadian) if he got this dude away from me. After some mild cajoling, Banjo, like a total dude, got up and told the dude he wanted to sit down next to me. So the guy got up, and Banjo sat down. Then, when the dude motioned that he wanted to sit back down (next to Banjo now) Banjo strung a series of awesome words together about how that shouldn’t happen. But the dude was relentless and finagled his way in. THE GAME WAS ON. (Totally mad props to Banjo for willingly throwing himself in front of a giant, gay train. You’re aces in my book!)

By now, we all realized this guy was full-on gay. He wanted to have sex with at least one of us. Even after we had explained several times earlier that evening that we liked women and their subsequent vaginas. Seriously! I thought there was some kind of gay-dude-code about this kind of thing. Like, if a straight dude tells you he’s not into it, you go find some other gay dude who’s all over your junk. End of story? Not how it happened here.

Banjo got totally massaged and caressed by this guy! It was nuts! MAN NUTS. Took us about five minutes to decide that we needed to get the effing hell out of there. We finished our drinks, then literally RAN from the bar once outside. I’m pretty sure we lost the gay guy in the excitement.

It was only after we’d slowed down that Steve revealed to me his story, which I thought was like a “this one thing happened to me one time a while ago” kind of thing. I guess it was actually more directly related to what we just went through because, you see, that guy STUCK HIS TOUNG IN STEVE’S EAR… at the bar. ZOMGZ.

HahAAAAAAH. Of course we didn’t, and still haven’t, let him hear the end of it. Now he yo-yos through stages of acceptance, laughter, and horrification at the event.That’s gotta boost his self-confidence! Hooray for mental scars!

We all went back to Steve’s apartment and watched some shows, drank some more and laughed at Steve. Banjo left about about 5am, when the sun was coming up.

The next… evening? I think that’s when Steve and I pulled ourselves together and journeyed to a nearby recycle shop (second hand store) to find a lamp and maybe a fridge for Steve’s place. That place was awesome! Tons of all kinds of stuff. We ended up getting a nice fridge, a light, a two-burner range and got reluctantly tricked into getting a kick-ass oven that was sitting at the front counter. It cost $100, and we hadn’t planned on the purchase. But the we started thinking about all the cool stuff we could make with an oven and ended up getting it. Steve’s hella poor though because the salary system in this country is retarded to shit. They pay MONTHLY… A MONTH LATER. So Steve’s worked for a month already, but won’t actually get paid till the end of May. That is… incredibly insane. It means that, after dropping all of his money (about two grand) on getting into his apartment he wouldn’t get any more money for TWO MONTHS. The apartment didn’t even include any lights or appliances or anything. He had to get an advance just to buy a freaking washing machine. I keep telling him to get more advances because he’s living in desperate poverty right now. I had to pay for all the junk we bought, with Steve paying me back whenever he can. His work is really reluctant to give out advances too often though. From what Steve says, they assume you’re not budgeting properly, so it’s your fault. But Jebus Meridan Broseph! What’s a brutha supposed to do? It’s not like he’s spending money on crap he doesn’t need. Just shit to live like a human being. It makes me angry about all that.

The woman working the counter at the recycle shop was really cool though. With all the stuff we bought, she gave us the pans and utensils we were buying, and even told us to look through their vast selection of eating-ware and pick some stuff out for free. Bonus! Luckily they offer free delivery of big stuff. We waited around for about 20 minutes and got a ride home in a crazy old truck. I rode in the back.

Anyway, this place is pimped now. We’ve been baking up a storm since then. I made a couple trays of lasagna that kicked major ass. I’m gonna do it again tomorrow night too. There’s a brick of meat loaf in the oven as I type. Looking forward to slaying that ass because I haven’t eaten anything since I woke up (at 4pm… it’s 9:30pm right now. My sleep schedule’s all messed up). Steve’s made a couple batches of aborted brownies. Can’t seem to get the recipes right. Plus, we can’t find proper, unsweetened chocolate anywhere.

A couple days ago we went to a nearby dollar store to get some more utensils. I bought an ice cube tray, and impulsed on an “ice sphere” tray. I saw these things for the first time in “Paprika” (really bizarre anime) and had to buy this thing. It pretty much works too! Though we’ve not had a need for any ice at all yet. But we’re ready! I’ve already got six ice spheres sitting in the freezer.

Not been doing much else since. Hanging out in the TV room, working on several various projects. New websites and stuff. Honing in on bands that I want to join. I won’t say anything specific till… I know about it.

A couple nights ago I farted so loud in the tatami room that it woke Steve up from several feet away.

That’s a sizable chunklet of text up there. Hope that’s enough and, as always, that I didn’t forget too much.

Meat loaf time!