.:Transfer to Wordpress

To anyone who reads this blog via Bloglines or another RSS feed reader, please note that I am transferring the site from Movable Type to Wordpress, which means that after this post, you'll have to change the RSS address.

If you're not a RSS reader, don't worry, the site *should* all load cleanly in the same places... with a new look.

so yeah, go to the main page to find the new RSS feed.

.:Kobe

I'm in Kobe now, with all my possessions in tact.

Pictures and other goodies will follow as soon as my room is in tact.

.:The Future Mrs. Chopstick Sensei

Friends, meet Sonya:

Sonya Thomas is one of the top eaters in the International Federation of Competitive Eating. That's the kind of title a woman works hard to carve out in order to get me to marry her.

I know what you're thinking: She's a little older than you, Brent. Well... that's true, but that just means she has a lot of wisdom she can share with me. Besides, tell me you don't want me to be blogging from the road of eating competitions. That's the American DREAM for crying out loud!

Besides, I'm a man who loves his hamburgers, and check out this picture:

I have the biggest boner right now.

.:That was all she wrote

You're officially reading the blog of an unemployed man in Japan. Friday marked the last day of work for me, and having quit in order to move to Kobe, I'm now free of responsibility to hide my tattoos and dirty language from children.

This makes a combined experience of 2 years in Gunma, and while at times it's been great, at other times it hasn't. I'm looking forward to a new experience in Kansai, and hopefully it will be an opportunity to get out more, to be a little more connected to the world.

Tomorrow I try to get my driver's licence, then it's goodbye Gunma.

.:This is the Part Where I Punch That Camel in the Face

For years we used to joke about what the commentary on a Schwarzenegger movie would be like. The joke was that Arnold would just watch the movie and say exactly what's happening.

"This is the part where I punch that camel in the face"

"This is the part where that girl has the three tits"

While I consider myself a pretty big Arnold fan, and I've had all the DVDs for quite some time, I've never actually watched them with the commentary. Until last night. I threw in Conan the Barbarian while packing up my shit. I don't know if I'm happy or sad to report that the jokes were disturbingly accurate.

Basically what happens is that John Milius spends the whole time trying to explain things to the audience, only Arnold thinks that he's talking to him. So John Milius is like "Instead of laying it sideways and tilting the camera, we actually built this tower and they all climbed up it for real" and Arnold says very matter of factly "Yeah, I know."

Then, when Milius points out something funny that the casual viewer might not have picked up on, such as the scene where the wolves are trying to get Arnold on the rocks, and in the next scene he's wearing furs, Arnold laughs two big Austrian guffaws and proclaims "That's Funny!"

While John Milius does provide some interesting insight, the movie mostly goes on with Arnold talking about how "cool" certain shots look and mistaking Gerry Lopez for himself. Ah Arnold, you've both realized and shattered my dreams. Next up: Total Recall.

.:The Bog of Eternal Stench

While I love my roommates and enjoy life in the countryside, I do have one gripe about my house: The Bog. The Japanese call it a ボットン便所 (botton benjo), Benjo being a toilet, and botton being the onomatopoeic representation of poo splattering. That's right, we have an outhouse inside --an inhouse.

While none of us have gone to the effort of measuring it, I'd say there's about a 10 foot hole in the ground into which our communal shit and piss builds up until it burns our lungs and makes our eyes water, at which point we have to call in the poopsmith.

Yes. We have a poopsmith.

He's an unbelievably cheerful portly little fellow. He announces his arrival proudly and you've never seen someone so happy to stick a hose in other people's shit. He always has a big grin on his face as he watches our decomposing waste suck up the tubes into the septic tank on the back of his truck.

For the last couple of months we've had a live-in guest staying with us, Jo. Jo is a snappy Australian girl with a penchant for vulgarity. She also has spray-ass.

This all leads up to yesterday. I thought it would be a nice effort to scrub the toilet bowl down of it's crusty build-up. It wasn't too hot, so didn't seem to be too much fermentation building up, and the stench --while revolting-- was bearable. I'd scrubbed down the toilet right proper and I left the brush head hanging over the edge of the bowl so any extra drips might fall to the goblins in Hell below.

Seeing as how there's no running water, you can't actually flush the bowl clean. What you have to do is go to the shower, fill a bucket with water, and pour the bucket of water around the edges. This is where things went bad.

Pouring the bucket of water around the edges, the water caught on the tip of the brush --which was already top-heavy-- and sent it toppling to it's doom in the fudge-sludge below.

Shit.

When you reach a moment like this in your life, you have to do some serious soul-searching.

"If the brush doesn't have to be used anymore, isn't that kind of like toilet-brush retirement?"
"Was the brush any happier up here than it would be down there?"
"When the poopsmith drains the shitter, is that gonna clog up his hose?"
"Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani!"

I had to get it out. The head was buried in excrement, but the handle was still sticking out. It wasn't sticking straight up like a fork in Dennison's chili, it was leaning against the wall. I guess we've been drinking too much coffee lately.

So how does one get a brush out of a shitstack about 5 feet down a hole? In my private journal that's actually on my list of Questions I Hope I Never Have to Ask Myself, right above "What do you do if your child dies before you?"

First I tried to wrap a coathanger around a pole and drop it down with dreams of hooking the loop on the end of the handle. As anyone who has ever been to a County Fair can attest, that's the kind of frustrating that leaves your penis sphincter tired. Additionally, once I put my head over the bowl, it was too dark to see much of anything except for faint reflections of piss puddles in the poo. And I sure as fuck wasn't gonna put a flashlight in my mouth.

Then I decided to bind two bamboo poles together to fashion some makeshift scissors. The dream being that I might be able to pinch the handle and lift out the brush. No such fucking luck.

While taping up the bamboo, I noticed that the tape was really sticky and might just be able to latch onto the brush. The problem was that the bamboo tips had already touched the crap pile down below. I had to be very careful.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!

I wasn't careful enough.

I touched someone's poo, and it was on my finger. It could have been anyone's poo. It could have been a combination of anyone's poo. Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-FUCK!!!

Fuck the brush, fuck the shit, and fuck all y'all.

I took a shower and used up 2 bars of soap. I still feel filthy.

In an effort to avoid anymore puns, I'll end with this: Worst Vernal Equinox Ever.

.:Learning to shred

This weekend was the last in my introduction to snowboarding. We went up to Fukushima (whose prefectural symbol is significantly more stylish than Gunma's) to find some decent snow, because realistically we're pushing it going into the end of March.

The snow was just a little bit wet which helped me master my s-curve so i could carve shit up and spray snow in the face of posers.

Fukushima is also home to Hideo Noguchi who unfortunately now graces the 1000 yen bill. I mean, it's nice that he discovered the agent of syphilis disease (I don't even know what that means, really) but what it doesn't say on Wikipedia is that he was also a swindler who took peoples' money and wasted it away on women and gambling. Bring back Soseki!!

Also, today I finally got my disc of the Pixies show i went to back in December. It took over 3 months, but the quality is fucking ti-ots. That show was totally worth getting a hundred degree fever for.

.:Love Hotels and Pachinko Parlors

For a while I've been wanting to start a photograpy project on abandoned Love Hotels and Pachinko Parlors. I was kind of waiting to get a decent camera, but last weekend my roommate let me borrow his, so I was able to get started.

Flickr Set

I hope to continue to add to this set over time... Any thoughts are appreciated.

.:Spam Box

Ah Google AdSense, how doest thou amuse me? Let me count the ways...

1:

.:No such thing as a free lunch?

Because of the Gout, I've turned down the opportunity to get on the lunch plan at my school. Additionally, I see myself as an adult who can choose what he wants to eat every day instead of a child who doesn't have any say in what slop is thrown in front of him.

That being said, good old Sekiguchi-san, the cranky janitor has seen it fit to give me a partial lunch, comprimised of some of the extra food left over after all the teachers have gotten their portions. Sometimes it's just a pudding. Sometimes a miso soup. Sometimes it's a part of the "main meal" which could mean a no-longer-warm spring roll, or a slice of mystery meat.

The irony is that every time he has this magical tendency to give me the part of the meal I don't want, leaving the leftover parts of what I DO want for the trash can. Usually all I ever want is a bowl of rice to suppliment my sandwich or onigiri.

But I've never gotten a bowl of rice.

No, I've watched them sit so close, yet so far away. As I specifically asked not to be on the meal plan, I see what I'm given as a gift, so I can't push it. But isn't it somehow better for me to take the cheap bowl of rice rather than the bowl of Konnyaku Soup and Fish Heads?

I've got 7 actual working days left on my calendar. No rice is coming my way.

.:I'm moving

It's official; I've made my decision. I'm moving to Kobe.

For quite a few months I've been deciding whether or not to move. Weighing the good against the bad, sorting it all out, and i finally came to the conclusion that Kobe is where I need to be. My heart is no longer in Gunma.

While I'll be sad to say goodbye to some old friends and familiar places (no more hokka hokka tei), it'll be nice to get a fresh breath of life in a new town.

As of today I have 2 more weeks of work left, then it's on to Kansai. For those who don't know, here's where Kobe is.

Come visit me anytime.

.:Goodbye Piercings

A few years ago I got some piercings in my ears which I've always been quite fond of. A couple of times the cap has popped off, but I've always been lucky enough to find the tiny piece and get it back into one piece.

But a couple of weeks ago I got a bag thrown on my head, and it was lost forever amongst the feet of dancing Tokyoites. So I decided to finally pull them out for good. Though it's been over a week, I still feel really strange without having them; in a way it's a relief, I don't have to worry about them all the time, constantly making sure that my ears are safe, but in another way I feel a little naked without them... So goodbye piercings. You were always good to me.

.:Rad

Get RAD out on DVD, sign the petition here

.:"Why-Not Mikey"

Nobody had told me that Mike had thrown away his years of hard work at cleaning up his reputation as a dirty-dog. But when I called him on it, his response was simply "yeah, it's gone." So perhaps this story will come as a surprise to none, but it still took a lot of gall and deserves to be told properly.

Mike had warned me plenty in advance that he and Derek were coming to Japan. They planned to spend most of their time with Derek's cousin Melissa or out and about, but I made sure to get some Karaoke jams in with them.

Actually, it was Jess' birthday and she had gone to the effort to find out where the Karaoke booth from Lost in Translation was. Somehow we managed to get into the exact room that Bill Murray and Scarlett Johanson rocked, and while my old standby -Bon Jovi- blasted the speakers open, we failed to get Roxy Music's More Than Words in. Regardless, Bill's spirit was there.

Ever seen a Karaoke bill for $1,000?

Now you have.

We made a quick stop at a local pub so Anthea could throw up on a table and Mike could make friends with Hanako, who would soon become his beard, his wing-girl, and his sage.

Club Womb in Shibuya is not a seedy place like, say, any club in Roppongi, but if you make an effort, i'm sure you could make out with a girl there. I told Mike he had an 80% chance of getting kissed there if he made an effort, which was the selling point for him to go in. Derek didn't like the club (sorry dude...), but at least he got offered a "bra job" by a Tokyo hooker.

By the end of the night, Mike had managed to start chatting up a young Japanese filly, let's call her Yuka (which, i think, might actually have been her name), but was having some communication problems as her English was only slightly better than his Japanese. Enter Aya (which WAS her name) Yuka's English speaking, and considerably more attractive friend. Do you see where this is going? Yeah.

Mike is trying to explain "cheesy" (if anybody knows a good Japanese word for it, let me know, because I've been asked on many occasions, and have yet to find a good way to explain it) and you could literally see his mind working as his eyes started spending less time on Yuka, and more time on Aya.

It was 5 in the morning and the club was closing down, so he had to work quick. But the switch hadn't happened yet. He asked for Yuka's phone number, and that's where his break came. It turns out Yuka is from Hokkaido and was only down for the weekend, where Aya lives in Tokyo.

It was a little suspicious, but he managed to work it in:

"Oh, well, if you're in Tokyo, maybe I should get your phone number..."

So he got Aya's phone number too. A liiiitle uncomfortable, but a pretty impressive maneuver. Until he pulled a move that will embarass me for the rest of my life just for having seen it.

As the two girls are walking away you could see the conflict in Mike's eyes. He was pacing back and forth on the street muttering "No..." in a "this isn't what I wanted to have happen" kind of way. Then he made his decision: "Aya!" as she turned around Mike leaned in for the kiss. Me, Derek, and Yuka looked on in utter disbelief. Aya pulled back.

"No."

"Why not?" HA!!!!! Ha-HA!!!!! That MOTHERFUCKER had the balls to ask her WHY NOT?!?! Not only did he ask her, but he asked her twice. Mike, you motherfucker you.

So the girls disappeared and me and Derek spent a fair amount of time trying to explain why what he did was wrong. I don't think he ever bought into our arguments though, look at the shit eating grin on his face right after the incident:

You motherfucker you.

.:How to make soba