Seven Years in Tibet

Or 1 year in Japan. Close enough. What a crazy year it has been. Fuck. When I came to Japan I was pretty much just hoping to jesus that I could stick it out, and beat the debilitating attention deficit disorder that has stopped me from finishing almost every other thing I have started in my life (PS if you are thinking "Ooooh! ADD! Now it all makes sense!" I was fucking joking.) I was totally excited and scared and all that shit, but now I'm coming to the point where I need to plan my escape and leaving Japan is a scarier thought than coming here in the first place! A lot of the time japan is totally fucked and makes me mental. Not being allowed into a bar because you cant speak Japanese is not cute. Either is only getting 10 paid holidays a year. Either is last trains at midnight. Either is Japanese coffee. But I still don't know why its so hard to even think about getting out of here! Maybe its all about the convenience? Maybe it's the amazing beer. Or the freshly harpooned whale flesh. No its definately not that.

During my first few months here I missed a whole bunch of stuff. This was mostly the usual things that will never change, e.g. family and friends (well actually, the friends thing can change especially when they die inside and send venomous messages of hate, but neough of that), and TV shows (im already watching the live feed of the new Big Brother), but I also missed heaps and heaps of things that I no longer care for! Mostly food, magazines, newspapers blah blah blah. Lately I have been catching myself feeling nostalgic when eating or doing my fave things here though! I know that when I leave I am serisouly going to miss some of the most amazing products and places in the whole wide world! Here are some of the things that keep me going...

You can't see what this is but its caleld Gyudon, and is sort of stewd beef and onions on rice. Matsuya is my favourite place fo this. The other hot-spot is Yoshinoya, and there is one in Sydney on Oxford St of you want to give it a try. Gyudon is typically for men without wives or who are drunk. That's the myth anyways and it works for me.

Love Freshness Burger! The burgers are tiny and expensive and amazing! And you can get beer here!

メロンパン！ This stuff is supposed to look and taste like melon and is called meron-pan, basically melon bread. They are like sweet sweet bread covered in sugar. Weird and fantastic.

Kind of like a gatorade sort of drink, but it tastes like grapefruit a bit, but sweeter. So good.

Starbucks will rot your soul. Except if you get a macha-shake. Macha is p0wdered instant green tea and when Starbucks combines its power for creating sickly-sweet, overpriced frappa-thingys with the sexiness of macha the result is odd-looking and totally dreamy! Think melted green-tea ice-cream covered in whipped cream. Amazing.

Living here is really like the longest holiday ever. At times its also the shittest holiday ever, but usually its just the weirdest. I'm worried that when it's all done and I do leave Japan, I won't be able to handle a life without craziness. If you are the kind of person who needs strange shit to happen in their lives regualrly then I recommend moving to Japan! Because here the looks of complete shock and disgust, and complete joy and excitement are expressions best worn daily!

Here are some quick flash-backs...

Molesting or being molested. Either way Tokyo Disneyland is hot.

Me and Carrie taking photos, as opposed to posing...a very rare experience.

How awesome is this picture! I love it.

Word. On top of Japan.

Foxing on Fuji during our descent.

Will hunting the legendary Pocari of the Pocari Sweat fame!


Loving myself sick (and reapling the rewards of Will's Pocari hunting prowess) in a hot purple Pocari-skin hat.


Kylie and Will foxing around at Freshness Burger in Harajuku. Hot gloves don't you think?

I love this particulr print-club photo more than any others from this year. And there are oh so many more!!!

Me and my UN badge on the border of North and South Korea. Angelina Jolie needs to try a bit harder. Didn't adopt any K-kids to abuse with mohawks. Next time though.

Me foxing around in Nagano.

I have some great freinds here, and its sad knowing that we will all part ways and probably never see each other again. I guess being pushed together in this sitatuion amplified friendships at the start, but I have certainly figured out who are the important ones! Love you bitches.

My wife Carol has everything sussed when she so perfectly says…"The past year has been an experience I will never forget. It’s had extreme highs and critical lows but never even remotely boring. I have the most gorgeous friends in the world. We live in the craziest city on earth and we know where to go to get free drinks. Why wouldn’t we love life?"

Oh wait is that a tear? Oh, no. false alarm.

I (sort of) Heart さくら.

So now it's totally nearly the end of April and the Sakura blossoms have come and gone. At one point last year when trying to hatch an escape plan I decided that I would stick around in Japan at least until I experienced the legendary お花見。The Kanji for Hanami are 花 meaning flower and 見 which means watch or see or look. Put them together and you get the basic idea of Hanami - going to the park and looking at cherry blossoms. Essentially anyway. I wouldn't go as far as say it is sooo much more, but it is more. A little bit more anyway. You do go to the park, and you do look at cherry blossoms. But you also get pissed. I certainly don't need cherry-blossoms in be inattendance for that that to happen, but they are maybe the gayest flowers on the planet so it kind of helps. Before I came to Japan, Kylie gave me a fantastic book called Hokkaido Highway Blues, and it tells the tale of a guy teaching English in Japan who decides to follow the line of Sakura north from the couthern most point of Japan to the most northen point in Hokkaido. The hottest part of the book is that he hitch-hikes the whole way (and tips from the book provided inspiration for my own little foray into hitch-hiking). The second hottest part of the book is that the sakura actually bloom in a line across the country and move nothways like an advancing army; the English name for this is called the Cherry-blossom Front. Apparently anyways. So there you have it. In Japan there are Sakura. In April they bloom. You get drunk in the park. Fun.

Ueno Park in Tokyo.

Sharon in the bottom corner is so ready for SARS. Michelle in the middle just likes Michael Jackson.

Everybody needs a favourite cemetary. This is mine, across the road from Toyko Tower.

Tokyo Tower from the cemetary across the road.

Who would have guessed there are people in the world who like tarps as much, if not more than my Dad. You could cover a thousand trailers with those bad-boys, couldn't you Dad.

A street in Sagamihara, the city where I live.

Gay.

Gayest. This is a sign that is hanging in the make-up section of the department store next to work. This is not make-up for men. It's normal make-up, but it's being advertised for men too. Fucking Jesus. Lots of people in the world are a few steps behind when squirreling in the Forest of Sexuality/Gender Equity (as opposed to the Suicide Forest). But it seems that the guy in the poster is squirreling around in a different forest all together!