Whenever someone of a different culture offers to cook dinner, I get excited. I mean really excited. During my time in Japan I ate dinner with two Japanese families in their homes. They were both amazing, but one had an extra, little twist.
Here is a surprisingly long account of what it took to buy a bike. It’s actually too long and probably not all that entertaining. Just pretend it doesn’t exist.
The last week has been a lot of fun, but it’s time to leave. I got a room in a house in Daly City so I’ll be moving both backpacks this afternoon.
The 3 people I share a room with came in at about midnight and started goofing around. Here’s a video.
This was spoken by an Irish traveler at an American diner to his hamburger.
I watched gay porn.
It was purely accidental that I saw a video of an ejaculating penis. Let me explain. As you may already know, I’m sharing a room in a hostel with 3 people from Geneva. One of them, as I alluded to in my last post, is gay. Apparently seeing a drag show in San Francisco was his dream. We fulfilled his dream the other night while reinforcing my own heterosexuality and possibly breaking my brain in the process. The show was at a club called “Stud.” Besides naming your bar “Men Have Sex On Each Other Here”, it’s about as gay as it gets. The inside didn’t disappoint either.
We arrived just in time to miss the first act, but we caught the rest. If we were in a movie where I was the small town hick who got tired of his boring life and decided to move to the big city, this would be the “gay bar” scene. There flashing lights everywhere, men dressed in leather, and enough useless decorative crap to put any theme restaurant to shame. Most of the acts were at least entertaining. There was only one really frightening act. Please be warned. This is pretty graphic. Imagine that I just came out of the bathroom and asked you to smell my finger. Those willing to throw caution to the wind and take a sniff should read on. So, the act started off with a group of 3 men dressed as sailors pretending to masturbate over a drag queen geisha. For those who don’t know, this is called “bukkake.” For any truly depraved sexual act, there’s a decent chance that it was invented or popularized by the Japanese or Germans. This one is Japanese.
These fine, young sailors finish their business to a chorus of overly-dramatic grunting played through the club’s sound system. The geisha emerges from her wild circle-jerk surreptitiously holding a fan in front of her face. As the music begins, she lowers the fan slowly so you get the full affect of seeing her pale white face dripping gooey gobs. It’s around this time when I notice a video playing on the wall to her right. It’s a shot of a naked man’s partial torso and waist. He has a firm grip of his penis and he’s furiously masturbating in front of a mirror as though it has the antidote and they need it now. The end result of his work is tossed across the mirror with remarkable force. At this moment I’m in shock. I did not go to a drag show to see a man ejaculate. If there’s anything more surprising than seeing a video man masturbate to climax onto a mirror it’s watching the same video in reverse. Meanwhile, the woman continues lipsyncing.
They played the video a few times in case you have a short attention span or missed the first showing. The semen would fly out, hit the mirror, then peel itself off and jump back in as though it saw its own shadow. The crowed went absolutely mental. It upstaged the actual drag queen. There were several other videos during the performance, but I learned to avert my eyes. The funniest one I remember is of another man masturbating. The image was cut in half with him facing a mirror image of himself stroking in time. They slowly altered the angle of the video so the two halves of the same masturbating man were touching penises as though he were caught in some sort of gay kaleidescope. If Willy Wonka had a gay factory where he mass-produced the gay, this club would be the boat ride.
This hostel would be fantastic if it weren’t for two major issues. First, they blast whatever shitty music is on the staffs’ iPods in every common area. It makes having a conversation a chore and leads to times, like now, when nobody wants to hang out in the areas designated to actually hang out. Their music selection is absurdly horrible as well. They’ll have Dave Brubeck rocking with some Take 5 one minute then turn it down to swap iPods so some band like the Arctic Monkeys can get airtime. The worst is when they play hip-hop. Whoever on staff likes the hips hops loves the hips hops. They feel like everybody needs to hear Eminem loud enough to drown out a jet engine. Especially in common areas where people may want to talk, or read, or write, or do anything other than have their eardrums pounded out by a depressed white man who wishes he were a black man ranting about his ex-wife. Second, is the Internet access. I just spent almost an hour writing a post. I felt quite good considering I had to tune out everything from jazz to rock to unknown foriegn band who loves the synth. The Internet connection was eerily stable for this place. It goes out regularly for extended periods of time and rarely comes back for more than a few minutes. Well, I guess I got lucky today because it has been usable. Little did I know that they randomly forward web pages to their homepage. That means the autosave feature of WordPress was thwarted when the autosave was instead redirected to the hostel’s homepage. I lost about an hour’s worth of text. Good show USA Hostel. You win this round.
So, with that out of the way, let me try this again.
These first couple of days in San Francisco have been rather strange. Maybe it’s to be expected considering how this all came about. I’m fairly certain that people questioning my sanity may be onto something. It might not be unnatural to leave home for something new, but this just feels really fast and somewhat unplanned. My only option now is stick to my loosely-throw-together plan of going to school. With that in mind, at least one really awesomely hindsight-hilarious thing has happened since I got here.
It has been a while since I updated this page. The reason is because I cannot update through my phone anymore. It is something that can be fixed, but I have not actually done it. I may not get around to it because I only have a week left in Japan.
I’m not entirely sure of the details, but a man went on a stabbing spree in the Akihabara district in Tokyo today. Today was a sunny Sunday so there were many, many people on the street. He apparently drove a car down the street where people were walking and ran a few people over before jumping out. Once out of his car, he started slashing indiscriminately with a knife. So far 7 are dead with 18 people total stabbed.
Here’s a link to the BBC article.
There’s a link on Boing Boing to some awesome fashion from the Harajuku district in Tokyo. These people officially gather every weekend, but it’s not uncommon to see toned down versions on the streets pretty much every day. From the few times I’ve seen these people, I’ve gathered that they really enjoy cameras. I guess if I spent as much time and money on a costume as they do I’d probably want to show off too.
Here’s a link to the gallery.
Today I had an interview with a headhunter in Tokyo. They have a position they’re submitting me for. It looks like a great fit. The only issue is that it’s a lead position and I’m not sure I’m up for that task. Maybe they will accept my Microsoft experience as adequate for managing people.
The company is quite small which is something I’ve been really looking for. Also, their product is an embedded device. Since working on the Windows Mobile team, I have developed serious gadget lust so I’m pretty stoked. We’ll see how this all turns out. I don’t have any expectations, but it would be cool to live in Japan for a while.
I'm not a robot.
