sketchbook final 2

sketchbook final

illustrator's block

just a sketch i did when i was in a fit of the illustrator's equivalent to writer's block. enjoy

aka

in japan, it seems like the criteria for making things sacred is hanging other things from those things. trees and temples have shimenawa ropes, cell phones have one piece charms, and Jizo and other similar creatures have red bibs. the bib is hung by a grieving parent to represent their agony over the loss of a child. to read more on this little guy and why i think he's so damned cool (literally), check this post out:

http://benjicarpey.blogspot.com/2010/12/jizo-patron-saint-of-being-totally-boss.html

i drew this after i saw a cartoon cat wearing a jizo bib in kabukicho with Nats and Nick. i was walking quite fast at the time.

P.S. the word "aka" means red

visual journalism in shinjuku

I recently spent the afternoon in a commercial district called Shinjuku. i did these smug drawings. they are not meant to look finished, or even aesthetically pleasing for the most part. rather, they're just exercises, and expressions of being related to where at the moment i was.

sometimes i just like to observe. i don't really take a lot of pictures, because i figure that while most people fill memory cards up with every step they take, i like to just kinda explore. i have nothing against it, and i'm really glad my friends all do this, if for no other reason than that it gives me the luxury of not having to worry about doing it myself. i know it may be less personal in this sense, but when i go to an extravagant temple or a drum & bass club at 3:30 AM in shibuya, i don't want to be experiencing it through the lens of a camera. i feel like if i'm too worried about recording this moment and saving it for later, then that very compulsion stunts my excitement for what's happening in the present. instead, my thought process is a bit more detached: "so this is what i'm doing in the spring semester of my junior year in college.. i'm in shinjuku right now.. cool... who knows where i'll be in a year? i bet i'll be having fun.. it's a nice day out... yeah... word..."

kind of like, there needs to be no proof i chilled in shinjuku that day. i know i was there. and as for remembering my travels years down the road, thats why i write and draw. much like the photographer, my actions are the result of a compulsion. i couldn't tell you where it comes from, i just know it's something i gotta do sometimes. it's my way of becoming intimate with the space i'm interacting with, while simultaneously preventing myself from getting too caught up in making sure everybody (most importantly myself) knows i was there. after all, as you'll read in some of the passages below, it takes a lot more motivation even just to scribble something down than it does to push a button. and i am a lazy boy

the ikegami affect

Funny thing, when you're flooded with memories of things that haven't even happened yet. I know I won't be ready to go back by the time the sakuras start blooming. Truth of the matter is that I feel more at home here than anywhere else in the world. Sure, there are pros and cons to any society, but from as far back as I can remember, i've always felt a strange disconnect from the place I grew up, like it never wanted me there, and I didn't want to be there either. Like it was a dead end. I take things for granted there. And yet, none of that seems to happen here. But in the mean time, sometimes I feel like I'm going insane.

Ever hear someone talk about the acceleration of time? I never used to believe in it until I came here. The days are going by faster than I can even think, and trust me, I'm thinking pretty damned fast. It's like I can feel the minutes and hours rushing by me in a stream of metaphysical energy I always thought you either had to be a physicist or a hippy to understand.

I know this completely contradicts the last post I put up, but I currently feel quite sad. Or perhaps it's not so much sadness I'm experiencing, but rather a reluctance to submit. I know it's completely fucking self indulgent to acknowledge this, but I think that's kind of okay right now. In Eastern philosophy, this emotion is called resistance. Resistance is what happens when one's mind tires to displace the discomfort of being overcome by an unpleasant sensation, be it sadness, fatigue, laziness, regret, and just about any other negative emotion known to man.

I am well-versed in the volumes of resistance. In my short time on this earth, i've experienced just about every kind of resistance there is. Pangs of jealousy; stagnant laziness; burning lust; these are a few of my favorite things. But right now, none of that is what's bothering me. Rather, I feel the time that I spend here slipping through the cracks of my fingers like sand. It seems that with every second I spend in toyko, time gains momentum, my mind seemingly doing so with it. All I want to do is swallow this city whole, but it appears to be swallowing me instead.

Thing is, if you do enough stupid things in life (which I have), you learn to negotiate with this little devil. Monks deal with it by meditating until it literally hurts, and starving themselves of any desire whatsoever. Personally, I've always thought desire is way too much fun to just toss in the cosmic wastebasket, but seeing as how desire and resistance are close friends I am ever aware that if I choose to indulge one, I walk a paper-thin line of being consumed by the other. But hell, I like it that way. It keeps me out of my comfort zone. Like if I'm not on the verge of totally losing it at any moment, I must not be doing something right.

To put this all in perspective, think of resistance as like a rubik's cube that is constantly shifting its own algorithms, or a maze with multiple levels that's in a constant state of flux. You think you've conquered it, but then you gotta find another way out. But if you know the way it works, then you can figure out how to deal. In my experience, there is a common thread that ties all forms of it together: when you feel resistance, you feel completely overwhelmed.

When they say this place is overstimulating, they aren't kidding. Every time I step off of the train I am simultaneously coerced and enticed to participate in the sea of insidiously seductive consumerism which this metropolis seems to thrive on. My five senses fall victim to a hostile takeover, and I just let it happen. Sometimes I try to fight it, and thus the resistance is born, and more times than not, the higher power known to only some as TOKYU wins.

But to quote a friend, if you look at it this way, then there's just “no fucking horizon”. See, coming here was never about being a tourist. I've done that before, and yeah, it was totally dope. But this time I entered the country with one goal in mind: to see if I could live here and not only function, but prosper in a place that has such an incredible amount to offer; so much, in fact, that at times it can apparently be too much to handle. With this said, I have recently realized that if I'm going to pursue this goal, then it is essential to abide by a golden principle I had taken solace in the first time I was given this much freedom when I started college. It's pretty simple: consumerism is a hollow endeavor.

No matter how many different rice cakes you taste, how many mild sevens you smoke, how many naruto phone charms you purchase, and how much Kirin Lager you drink, you will never be full. We think of ourselves as humans, but we are really just hungry ghosts. We wander this plane of existence in search of something, never really knowing what that something is. And so we buy and spend and consume to try and fill the hole we have created by buying and spending and consuming, never stopping to consider, literally, where in the hell we are.

And I am no different. In fact, I am way worse in that my prerogative in life is to keep my romanticizing right lobe running on full blast all the time, making it virtually impossible for my mind to gain footing on any kind of solid mental ground. Think of tokyo as the gasoline to my fire.

But lucky for me, I'm a stubborn bastard. The fact of the matter is that as much as I'm predisposed to fall into the consumerist paradigm, I am even more prone to rebel against it. Call me a masochist, but I take a kind of sick pleasure in watching myself squirm as I refuse my commercial suiters with every fiber of my being. This is called right action; to force oneself to take action against a negative situation, even if one knows there may not be any immediate payoff.

However, because this goes against my natural tendencies, it confuses me, and reduces my capacity to think clearly to that of a monkey's. Soon I am no longer even a hungry ghost, but rather just a beast, too disoriented to even think about the fact that I only have a month and a half left here, which is the very thought that started this cosmic temper tantrum in the first place.

But I've done this before. It's the same story with a different title, published in Asia this time instead of the States. I know what happens at the end, and instead of becoming entrapped in my own existential “writer's block”, I think i'll just take right action and see what happens during the climax of this familiarly unpleasant arc. After all, I think that I can have enough faith that the resolution will lead to a decent epilogue. It always does.

Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!

today is february third, which means one thing in Japan: tomorrow is officially the first day of spring. they celebrate a holiday today called "Setsubun" to mark this seasonal paradigm shift. i don't quite fully understand it, but they throw roasted soybeans at invisible demons and shout the words "oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!" which roughly translates to "demons out! luck in!". Thing is, I don't know what's stranger: the custom itself, or the time which they choose to celebrate it? I mean, growing up in the northeastern corridor of the United States, i am only accustomed to February being one of the coldest snowiest, rainiest, slushiest, most depressingly grey months of the damn year! i fucking abhor february, save for the fact that my boy Stu was born on the 17th day of it.

Really though, who in their right mind would even consider celebrating the coming of spring this early? but the fact of the matter is that the Japanese aren't very good at bluffing in the first place, and Setsubun is definitely no lie. much to my seasonally self-indulgent delight, spring really does come early here. as much as january wasn't exactly humid, it still never got very cold. the sky was blue every day and most mornings i was more than warm enough in a relatively thin leather jacket. but being from both the place and the culture that i am, i spent the whole month on subconscious pins and needles, anxious as to when the other shoe was going to drop. after all, I'm usually not much of a fatalist, but when it comes to shitty winter climates, i have pretty much resigned myself to the inevitable dismal shit i have to acclimate to every year around this time, and although i know i shouldn't let the air in my lungs out just yet, things are lookin up and feelin warm. every day i walk out of class and my skin is confused as to why it feels like april so soon. but hey, never look a gift horse in the mouth, right?

this is all pretty positive, but to be honest, it floods me with all sorts of strangely familiar emotions i experience in some way for a short time every year. see, I have a strange relationship with seasons. i am hyper-aware of when they change, because of how they affect my morale and life while they, on the other hand, don't seem to notice me at all. they come and go as they please, never stopping to consider how they affect those around them. this doesn't bode well for me during the winter months in general, but something else occurred to me as i walked to tamachi station after class let out today: certain seasons remind me of certain people. at first i didn't pay close attention to this little detail, but it has been slowly creeping to the forefront of my mind ever since i figured out that the sun isn't going away any time soon. it isn't for any reason in particular, or at least not one that i know consciously, but i just get these feelings when i feel winter turning to spring, which makes me think about spring turning to summer, which makes me think of summer turning to autumn. when i first started to reminisce, only transparent memories flashed through my mind. However, when i began to meditate on these inclinations, i managed to match specific faces to each spell.

For starters, fuck winter. I know it's a little contradictory to my “appreciate every moment” sentiments, but I prefer to aprreciate the moment in a pair of sandals. there are a few people who tend to remind me of winter. i won't give out names, but judging by my rant about february above, you probably get the idea of which kind of characters might populate my mind when i think of this bleak season. But hey, just like bad gas, at least it always passes.

I never really thought about it, but Mima reminds me of fall. i think it has something to do with the red hair suggesting the changing leaves, as well as the fact that i spent a great deal of time at Hagy's Mill as a kid when school started up every year, watching the trees shed shades of orange, red, and yellow all over the grassy pennsylvania forest floor.

I associate spring, on the other hand, with Dulce. i know it seems strange to those in the know, as she should remind me of long days on 16^th avenue, at the beach, coming home with ocean water lodged deep in my ears and sand wedged between every crevice in my body, as well as late night barbecues, good surf, and kind herb every evening before bed. but she doesn't. rather, i always think of this one fragment of a memory in which we are sitting at a cafe on a beautiful day in late april, somewhere around the king of prussia mall. in this memory i am young, and have just discover boxer shorts, and the fact that sonic the hedgehog has his own comic book. we eat bistro sandwiches with my mom and sisters and i am as happy as i have ever been, basking in the newly warm 3:00 light coming through the large windows behind our booth. But the best part about this memory is that I remember anticipating summer, which was right around the corner.

There's really only one person i think of when it comes to summer. this may seem odd, because out of all of the seasons of the year (even including the indecisive little transitional ones which could almost be "micro-seasons" in their own right), summer is the season that is by far the most important to me as it has given birth year after year to some of the most profound experiences, habits, practices, and relationships, all of which have greatly contributed to the person I am today. With this in mind, logic would dictate that summer should lend itself to a plethora of different names and faces i have come across during my annual travels during these wonderful months. and yet, it is far more simple than that. The person i always think of is perhaps the only person i have ever met who appreciates summer more than me; the only person who can fully empathize with me when it is not here. Isn't that right, LM?

But to say that these people are just sort of there in my mind when I think of all this would be doing my emotions an injustice. Where to most, the changing weather patterns only really equate to changing wardrobe patterns, they speak to me in a very different way. I see them as an ephemeral progression of time, and it makes me feel a bit uneasy. It is as if the weather shifts to remind us that our lives are like that of the sakura flowers which have not yet bloomed on the tokyo cherry trees: beautiful and all-too short.

As I made this realization today, I came to another sad thought: my time in Nippon is almost like a mini version of my life as a whole. I arrived in this new world as an impressionable young being, blurry-eyed and overwhelmed. As time progresses, I mature in ways that help me better calibrate to the society around me. I go day by day, sometimes even forgetting how short my time is here, until today when I walked outside and was hit with the nostalgic sensation of warm sunlight on my face, and I realized that as elating as this is, it also means something far more sinister is taking place before my eyes: my precious time here is running out. And so I feel yet another jolt to my heart, and my mind turns to scrambled eggs. It seems like just yesterday I got here, and although I don't have to go just yet, I know that time looms over my head and it will come all too soon.

I know it sounds morbid, and i'll admit, the thought doesn't always fill me with white light, but just like anything else, it's all about the headspace with which you choose to approach it. I know that I am very tempted to feel sad about the fact that my life, as well as all of the various short lives within that life, is burning its temporal engine fuel with every breath I take, and sooner than I know it, there will be no more. But if I let this get to me, I would never get anything done. And so I figure, if my time in this place, and my life here will end in what seems to be a pretty short time in the grand scheme of things, then perhaps that is all the more reason to make the most of it. To be jovial, and content, and to offer value to those around me. To (fuck, try to) approach ever day like it's the last fun I'll ever have.

I know I say things like this a lot in this blog, but I truly feel that we are all, myself included, so busy running through our lives like there will always be a tomorrow, seldom ever stopping to appreciate today. The more time I spend in this city that never stops running, flashing, beeping, and working, the more I appreciate being able to just fucking STOP!..

...And chill. And smell the warm (go figure) February air. And when I think of this, it all becomes clear why I associate certain people with certain months of the year.

So to all those I have shared memory-worthy moments with as a traveler through my own young life and all of its various seasons, know this:

I missed you today. All of you. You guys make life worth living and home worth returning to.

Happy spring!

racing in place

There gets to a certain point at the end of everyday when the space between my eyes beneath the bridge of my nose starts to feel like a vacuum, sucking a good deal of my conscious awareness into it. My heart feels a faint jolt, and I have to remind myself to steady my breathing and calm down. This happens reliably at least once during the course of every night, and sometimes more. For those of you unfamiliar with such a sensation, it is the feeling of being incredibly overwhelmed due to all of your personal obligations whirling around your head at hyper-drive-ultra-speed. Now, I know that to the untrained eye, this would seem like a bad thing. Truth of the matter is that it's not particularly pleasant, but I have learned to welcome it because it's a sure fire sign that I am doing something right.

The fact of the matter is that there is not much worse for the human mind, body, and soul than boredom. Having nothing to do is depressing as all get-out. It zaps any motivation to do anything left in you, as I eats you from the inside out. But the opposite can be said for stress due to busyness. I mean, sure it IS totally awesome to have the occasional fuck-around time, when you can just kick back and be terribly unproductive, but this really only works in moderation. That's why you see folks who continue to work even after retirement living longer and more fulfilling lives.

I personally have found that I am always happier when I am barely able to tread water in the vast sea of life, rather than when I have nothing to do but float lazily by. The strange thing is that I have never been so motivated to be so free of all that used to hold me down in place as I have in Tokyo. Leaving behind my whole life for the umpteenth time just to start anew must have shocked my system in a stranger way than I had orginally thought. All of a sudden I find myself having in depth thoughts about the nature of my own tiny existence, as well as the social world that surrounds me. Perhaps burning my poor, stagnant, all-too-comfortable excuse for a life to the ground was exactly what I needed to start actually living. But living in this exciting new world of mine isn't as easy as it sounds. Just like any worthwhile thing, it requires care, thoughtfulness, devotion, and maintenance. For me, this means setting various goals having to do with all of the little lives that dwell inside me, forming an ecosystem all their own to make up my overall reality. These separate entities include, but are not limited to my athletic, romantic, artistic, social, and (for the first real time in two and a half years) my scholastic lives. It seems that although some work better together than others, each one competes in some way with the rest as to which is most vital to my overall well being.

Funny thing is, just like any ecosystem, a shaky balance must be respected in order for all of the life forms within it to survive and grow. I try to distribute my attention equally to all involved, doing my best to make sure not one aspect is overlooked. Now this would be an incredible amount of work anywhere, but in tokyo it is especially difficult. In a city that moves as fast as the self-seeking mind does, it is very easy to “miss a step and fall into the rapid river called fate” as Tite Kubo says. Basically, to stagnate and chode-ify. To be tempted by this boisterous technicolor beauty to just submit and spend the night at the local izakaya is sometimes too much to bear.

Luckily for me there is an unrest that I am quite familiar with which prevents me from giving into her. It starts as a knot in my chest and then works its way up my spinal cord until it reaches that space in the middle of my face that I mentioned before. Call it obsessive compulsive, or just plain restlessness, but for the life of me, I can't stop doing. My journals are filling up by the volume, my sketchbooks are falling apart at the seams (literally, I swear!) and my phone is blowing up with people trying to see what I'm gettin' into. For the first time in my life, I have found a purely positive form of busy.

The bottom line is that I have no free time anymore. I have so much life to live in what seems to be just a short amount of time to do so. Take from that what you will. And sure, would it be nice to be able to kick back every once in a while and watch a Kurosawa flick on my computer with no pangs of guilt creeping through every part of my body? No doubt, but fuck it, I'll sleep when i'm dead.

a trip to the ether

Last Tuesday night was incredible. My boy Wiggy and I decided to hop a train one stop over from Tamachi station to Hamamatsu to check out the Buddhist grounds of Zo Joji Temple. Wiggy had mentioned something about “wanting to do something cultural” and I figured this was our best bet. I had explored it with Zach and Max a night or two before, and we were blown away. Between the large sanctuary housing a bronze Amida Nyorai, the collection of 300 or more little Jizo shrines, and the beautiful ambience of the cemetery behind the main living quarters, this place basically had everything I had ever imagined the spiritual side of Japan to be. As I lead Wiggy around the temple, to be honest almost a little full of myself for being so familiar with both the particular temple, and the setting of what Wiggy referred to as “something cultural” in general, I began to explain the significance of Kannon, the Boddhisattva of compassion. Then suddenly, a hauntingly beautiful melody managed to penetrate the obnoxiously high volume of my vocal projection. I was immediately silenced by this ethereal beauty as she enticed us to follow her nocturnal resonance emanating from the single lit house to the side of the main hall. What we discovered when we crept up the wooden steps was surreal.

We hid behind two pillars adjacent to each other, hoping to avoid being caught for the act of voyeurism we weren't quite sure we were actually committing. Being a foreigner in this land, there is often a grey area between what social rules we are expected to abide by, and the ones we can “bend”. Depending on the situation, the Japanese can either be militantly strict, or overly gracious. This particular time was one of the latter. Our presence was soon detected by a sharp-looking middle-aged Japanese man standing on the other side of the wooden sliding door. Having both only really been exposed to the western way of dealing with intruders and curious passer-bys, we fully expected him to start dictating to us in his native tongue something along the lines of “this is a private event, so fuck off”. But instead I watched as he did what to me is to date one of the most unfamiliar things i've ever seen anyone do: he invited us in. no entry fees, no grief for spying, not even a trace of minor annoyance; he displayed only the most welcoming smile I had seen in ages and the sheer kindness of utter inclusion as he slid the door open about two and a half inches to make clear that it was okay to enter. And so Wigs and I followed the man's lead, took our shoes off, turned off our cell phones and cautiously stepped inside.

As I tip-toed through the threshold, I stared out in awe of what was occurring before us. The small room was brightly lit and filled with the smell of some kind of intense I wish I knew the name of. In the center of the room stood a man, not much older than us, clad in a sharp white collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up, black pants, and a black vest. He gently plucked at a large traditional Japanese instrument that seemed to be carved straight out of a very large tree trunk. The most exotic and mysterious noises were summoned from the large device as he seemed to gently cox them out, one or two at a time in perfect harmony. He would finish playing a song, then step to the front after the applause to give what I am assuming to be either an explanation about the song he had just played, or an introduction to the song he was about to play. After about two more songs, the man who had invited us in crouched beside my friend and I. Again anticipating the boot of exclusivity, I began to regain my posture as I floated back down to earth to listen to what he was about to say.

“We will chant now”, he whispered as I began to pack, “will you join us?”

I couldn't believe my ears. Wiggy and I exchanged excited glances.

“H-huh-hai!” I whispered back, too ecstatic to even entertain any thoughts of the large mound of Hiragana homework that waited for me impatiently back in my dorm. I had seen this before in video, and in more obscure and less formal forms back home, but never had I even thought that I would get a chance to pray with an actual authentic Buddhist monastery in Japan.

I settled back down into a traditional Japanese sitting posture called “seiza” as the kind man tip-toed away, quickly returning with a small wooden drum for each of us with which we were to synchronize with the chanting. The next half hour was one of the most relaxing segments of time I have had since my late night hot tub dives with Cory back in Lafayette Hill. The room vibrated with the harmonized hymns of the faith of another tongue. At first only understanding bits a pieces, I began to catch my own rhythm as I let go of all of my inhibiting thoughts and focused solely on the mantra being hummed.

Then I noticed something not so strange happen to me.

Much like the recurring bad dreams, thoughts would intrusively float through the empty space in my mind that would normally by occupied by my daily distractions, and as hard as I tried to kick them out, they refused to leave. Every last little ambition I had was screaming to be heard. But like a good boy, like Eddy (Fotheringil) taught me, I breathed and one by one, drove all of my demons away. It was sometime between this and the free green tea and onigiri afterward that I felt truly and uninhibitedly liberated for the first time in months; to have visited the ether like a vacation spot (without the need of a passport).

I know it seems easy but it's not quite as simple as it sounds. Anyone who has ever meditated can attest to just how next-to impossible it is to actually give yourself the permission to stop doing; to stop thinking. Try as one might, all of the all too unimportant little details and obligations often continue to haunt the mind even, or perhaps ESPECIALLY during times of permissible rest. The more one chooses to entertain these thoughts, the more agitated they become, multiplying like rabbits and commandeering all of the ample space in the unoccupied mind until one has no choice but to give in to them, or exterminate them. But there is really only one way to effectively make happen the latter, and it is the one thing I have discovered to be almost universally impossible to accomplish. The endeavor I speak of is that of just letting go.

I know, pretty anticlimactic, right? But no truer words have ever been spoken. To let go of all of the anxious, impatient, jealous, driving thoughts and tendancies we are all possessed by is to truly free oneself of all the mechanisms that propel us to run ourselves ragged everyday, doing tons of busy little things that indulge our busy little lives. Then, and only then, are we truly free to float through the blissful void of our own cultivated nothingness. That is, for if only a short time, to be freed of all that we choose to let hold us down.

When the service concluded, Wiggy and I got a chance to mingle with our fellow worshippers. The one other american there, Russel, was cool enough to act as a middleman and translate for the conversations we had with the local color. It turns out the sharp guy in the sharp vest with the sharp instrument had an interesting backstory all his own. To paraphrase it, his name is Nakai Tomoya and he plays a 25 string instrument called a Koto. This particular kind of Koto is a bit of an endangered species, and playing it is a dying art, seeing as how all the kids are opting to learn the 13 sting Koto which is apparently much easier to manage. The difficulty curve of the 25 string koto is so steep, in fact, that Tomoya himself apparently almost gave up on it completely. But like any great artist, he pushed through his own limitations and wound up playing a song he wrote (the last song he played for us) and played for the emperor of Japan! Google this kid. He's insane.

We exchanged pleasantries with him, and I even gave him my own little contribution to the arts for that night: a small piece of visual journalism I captured of him playing music earlier that evening. He smiled widely, and bowed, asking (as if he even needed to) if he could keep it. Then we bowed, thanked everyone for the awesome memory, and slid through the sliding door, still almost spiritually comatose from the esoteric ecstasy of the events of the night.

Something I've notice when living in tokyo is that on what seems to be a pretty regular basis, I'll have pretty strange interactions with folks of all shapes and sizes. These interactions usually occur when I least expect them to, and they almost always lead me to things I thought I would only ever read about in travel guidebooks. Sometimes I'll catch a glimpse of a passing stranger who sticks out to me, or I catch the aroma of food that not even Anthony Bordaine has been lucky enough to have tried, or perhaps if I'm really lucky, my ears might just pick up the faintest sound of the most beautiful music I've ever heard coming from the only lit house in the middle of a huge buddhist monastery in the middle of the bustling district of Hamamatsucho. Every time this kind of thing happens, a little part of my inner adventurer starts to dance around in place and only one statement comes to mind. Only this one statement could be so bold and so accurate as to properly capture all of the little sensations I feel when I experience something new and incredible for the first time, and at the acknowledged and accepted risk of sounding completely cliché, I will leave you all with this little gem: this is truly the stuff dreams are made of.

Restless Nights in the Neon Playground

Every once in a blue moon, I find myself in situations in which I lose complete and utter grasp of when night ends and morning begins, only to have said concept catch up to me in a sudden hostile takeover of my physiological being. Usually this process involves a three week long assignment, a pack of cigarettes (sorry mom), and some variety of inevitably work-stunting background noise, which almost always does more harm than good in distracting me from whatever it is that I am supposed to be creating. I have always found that I am actually more productive under an extreme time limit (for the most part anyway), and always seem to respond better to said time limit forcing me to not hyper-focus on all of the little details of the piece. So thus the process repeats itself, and somewhere between the hours of 11:00 PM and whothefuckiskeepingtrack:00 AM_ somewhere between the one-too-many times I pause my favorite self help seminars repeating for their third-and-a-half time to inhale noxious poisons into my already wrecked-tired body, I usually manage to produce a piece of relatively-fine art. Then my alarm rings, and I begrudgingly pack my things and head to school. About half way there, my vision usually gets fuzzy, my head starts to feel extraordinarily warm, and I become a blank slate, sinking into an almost dream-like state, wearing a look on my face akin to the white canvas I had recently violated.

I know it sounds pleasant, but take my word: it's fucking NOT. The bottom line is that being in class the morning after an all nighter is kind of like waking up in purgatory. You're not quite sure where you are, or exactly how you got there, but you know it had something to do with repenting for minor accounts of sloth. And much like being in purgatory, once you muddle through your time there, thus repenting for your sins, you will go to a soft, warm, heavenly state of what seems like eternal rest. This state of being has become pretty familiar to me, especially as I move up in rank and responsibility in the MICA curriculum. However, that doesn't make this physical abnormality any easier to deal with, especially when experienced on a friday night/saturday morning in a neighborhood none other than Shibuya after what was officially my first night of clubbing in Tokyo.

Last friday, as my new friends and I excitedly charged through the automatic glass doors out of temple university's main academic building in the middle of Minato-Ku, headed towards Tamachi station creating what I can only describe as a low roar through the city streets, as we discussed, (or rather shouted over one another) what we were going to do on this wonderful, and oh-so-welcomed Friday night to blow off the steam of the first week back in class. Seeing as how tokyo is one of the most lively and electric nightlife scenes in the entire world, we figured we would just pick a place in one of the notorious club districts, and go. So after we wolfed down a quick meal, and impatiently waited for the clock to reach 9:00 (some of us already half-passed wasted already having started pre-gaming shorty after class had let out), we hit the JR rollin 9 deep (that's nine people for all you old heads out there) until we finally arrived at Shibuya station.

After badgering about a half dozen japanese city workers and salarimen for directions in very broken japanese, we argued our way to a little gem near love-hotel hill called “Club Camelot”. From this point on, the night proceeded to unfold in a remarkably nonlinear fashion, in which each one of us faced a new set of trials and tribulations as it pertained to exploring yet another social ecosystem of modern Japan. Although I don't think anyone else dared or cared to chronicle their own unique findings of how best to navigate the incredibly daunting tokyo club scene, I did, and made another list. So here it is, a few suggestions of how not to fuck up when going out raging in tokyo on a weekend night:

1) figure out where you want to go before you leave for the night, and how to get there. The last thing on earth anyone wants to be doing when they arrive at a club district in a foreign place is to have to get oriented in a new neighborhood. You'll find that all of the excitement will quickly turn to impatience, breeding unneeded animosity between friends. The locals will give you directions only if they feel like it, and it is next to impossible to find someone willing to do so in a sea of wasted businessmen and J-poppers. Try doing this four or five times in a row, and you will quickly realize just how lost you all are, and just how frustrating being lost can be. So be preemptive, and get directions before you step out the door.

2) If you get lost (which will very likely happen, even if you have an address), then don't start arguing and bickering with your friends. Arguing never got anyone anywhere, especially to the dance floor. If need be, extract your crew from the rest of the crowd to sit, regroup, and form a new plan. Fighting amongst yourselves will only add to the confusion, further prolonging your eventual arrival at the venue, while simultaneously turning the happy-go-slumming mood sour.

3) If you're trying to pick up Japanese women, or just make a good impression in general, go out in small groups; not big ones. It is one thing to hit a place with two or three of your closest new friends. It is quite another to bust down the doors in a horde of gaijin (foreigners), with more heads in your crew than the US fuckin Marine squads in World War II. You will quickly (albeit falsely, perhaps) be judged by the company you keep, so make sure you roll in smaller numbers. It may be unfair, but unfortunately the more rowdy americans you come in with, the less receptive the crowd (especially the bouncers), will be towards your antics. If even one person in the group commits a discretion worse than the usual mash of party tomfoolery, then the whole lot of you will most likely have to answer for it. Try telling a group of nigerian doorkeepers that the other white men playing grab-ass with the helpless little Japanese clubrats are not connected in any way to you, just as one of them is loudly hollering your name. So do yourself and the schoolgirls a favor and keep it small, and under control.

4) Don't drink_ or at least drink in small increments. Basically, don't get sloshed. Getting loaded is for going out to bars with your buddies, not for socializing in clubs. It is a difficult enough environment to navigate while sober, let alone after four or five sake-bombs. Although I kept my shit together pretty well, my friends started drinking at our dorm in the afternoon. Drinking dulls the senses, and the wits, makes you tired faster, dehydrates you in the hot and sweaty pit, and basically makes you into a less potent, more obnoxiously rambunctious version of yourself. Instead of using it as a crutch to be social, maybe try getting your energy out on the dance floor. Nobody is actually watching you, so there is no need to be embarrassed, and the best part is that often times, it's way easier to meet people this way. Just remember, everyone in the club is way more concerned about themselves and what they are doing than what you are doing. The one who has the best time is the one who knows this and can exploit it. Alcohol does anything but help you do this. Plus, if you thought getting to the club was hard at the beginning of the night, try finding your way home when you're tired, spent, and half-passed gone.

By the way, I know few people even consider listening to this one, but I figured like it or not, this little tidbit was too important to leave out.

5) Go out on the last train, and not any time before it. The fact of the matter is that the club scene doesn't start to jam until about 12:00 or 1:00 AM. Arriving fashionably late is way more conducive to meeting more people. At the point that my friend Nats and I were leaving, it seemed as though swarms of all the coolest kids in town were just coming through, and although we met some cool people while it was still technically friday night, we could have met a lot more if we had waited until the earliest parts of saturday “morning” to make our grand debut.

6) Just in case you do decide to leave before the first trains start running, it's a good idea to know in advance where all of the capsule hotels, cafes, and 24-hour ramen shops are located, lest you freeze your ass off in the frigid Tokyo air. This isn't such a problem in the spring and summer when it's nice and warm out no matter what time it is, but in the colder months the temperatures drop, and being stranded outside is no fun. Knowing where you can sit down and get a really early breakfast is your best bet because not only can you stay warm, but it also provides you shelter (for the most part) from all of the questionable characters mucking about in the wee hours of the AM. Nats and I knew we weren't in Kansas anymore at the point when we trekked down a sloped street in Shibuya looking for a place to decompress, only to be harassed by the hordes of shady bar hosts and Chinese immigrant night walkers offering all-too-convenient “massages” in the red light district of town.

Word to the wise: never take them up on their offer. I know what was common sense for me might look like a great opportunity to those new to the Asia travel game. Needless to say, it may seem like a happy ending to a great night, but these people are in cahoots with some of the most dangerous salarimen on the face of the planet, and trust me, these are not the kind of business men you want to encounter at any time during your stay in Japan, especially after dark.

7) Make friends with the gatekeepers. This is everyone and anyone who may temporarily have more situational power or social proof than you. Im referring to men in groups of women who will no doubt make a scene if they feel threatened by your presence (which, unless you befriend them, they almost always will); I'm talking about anyone and everyone wearing anything other than a cell phone that resembles a communication device. Whether they're holding a walkie-talkie or wearing a headset with a mic piece, if there's a wire or a red glowing button involved, and they look like they're not having fun, it probably means they're some form of security. In order to get IN the club, you gotta get through the door. Never underestimate the importance of the opinion of the guy who holds the line, especially on a cold January night; last and most importantly, I'm talking about the bouncers, because when all is said and done, these hulking creatures are the ones who have the actual physical power to “escort” you and your familiars out of the club.

Although making nice with these people doesn't mean you can get away with murder, it certainly doesn't hurt to have them in your back pocket, and the best part is, it's easy! Just walk up to any of the archetypes listed above at a high level of energy, high five them, and say some variation of the following words: “dude, this place is super tight! You look totally edgy wearing all-black! I'm Benji; what's your name?”. Fact of the matter is that at the end of the day, these gatekeepers are just people_ people who like to be given attention and compliments, just like any other chode does. A famous self help author by the name of Dale Carnegie says that successful people always take a genuine interest in those around them, because those around them would be much more inclined to be cooperative with a nice and thoughtful person. So basically, fake giving a shit about the men potentially in your way, and you're golden for the night!

8) Fellas, pay attention to the ladies-only parts of the club! Although the majority of us who hit this kind of scene are just honest fun-lovers looking to get down and blow off some steam, believe it or not there are some pretty sleazy characters out there. Dishonest people like these can be found scurrying about in all of the moist dark corners of the globe, and Japan is no different. In a country where the use of cell phones on silent mode has been outlawed on trains because of the rampant “schoolgirl upskirt camera photo” incidents occurring, you better believe there will be systems set up in the club to prevent things like this (or much worse than this) from happening. These come in the form of services such as separated sections of seating, escorted assistance for buying drinks, and my own personal favorite, the side-stage-dancing-platforms. I discovered that last one the hard way...

Although it's not crucial, it's still good to know where these areas are, and in some cases it may come in handy to know who isn't looking for THAT kind of attention, and as who's not just there to be seen.

9) CONSERVE YOUR ENERGY! Bypassing this rule was my biggest mistake of the night. At the point that I arrived, I immediately exploded like a bomb! I made the biggest scene you've ever seen, and whole ton of friends... in the span of about 15 minutes. Then I physically checked out. My energy output was so high that I depleted all of it way before I had a chance of hell in gaining any of it back. Trust me: one of the last things you want to be dealing with in an environment where the volume ranges from really loud to too-fuckin-loud is to try to regain your composure after it's been lost. On top of that you have to keep in mind that getting home is a bitch and a half, and the only economically smart way to do this is to wait for the first trains to start running on Saturday morning. In the mean time, you've got five or six hours to kill, and if you banish yourself before the club is even hopping, then you've wasted a potentially awesome night, not to mention the 3500 yen cover charge.

10) With all the above rules kept in full consideration, GET AMPED! You're in the club. The more you sit on the side lines, making small talk within your own little group of friends about how nice the light show is, or pounding the shots of tequila until your wrecked enough to forget how awkward you feel, the less opportunities you have to interact with the new and interesting people around you, or dance to the incredible house music being pumped though the oversized speakers at the front of each room.

Friday night was one of the strangest nights I've had in a while. By the time Nats and I stumbled out of the last warm place in the entire district still open, that all-too-familiar warm feeling began to expand slowly inside my head. We were almost frothing at the mouthes, both so spent that we could barely manage to communicate but in a series of slurred mumbles concerning which way the train station was, and how many transfers we had to make. I could barely hold my eyes open when I realized that once again, I had found myself in restless purgatory. Only this time, it took the form of an empty seat on the JR Yamanote line. But we made our way home and as I crept passed the dorm manager's den to the wonderful bliss that was my warm bed, I couldn't help but revel in the pure absurdity of our adventure that had unraveled piece by piece hours before.

In a city of over thirteen million strong (of which a large number populate the streets not too long after the sun goes down), at any given time you or your pals could be a razor's edge away from pissing the wrong person off, or walking down the wrong alley. The bottom line is that it's a fast world out there, and this scene runs at seemingly supersonic speeds, but with a dash of moxy (and ok, maybe a bit of the juice), anyone can turn this urban jungle into a neon playground!

when there's smoke...

I'm starting to get used to a lot of things here. The flashing neon lights around every corner and the octopus tentacles in the meat aisle of the grocery store don't really phase me anymore. I have even become accustomed to the way nobody in this culture seems to want to pick a fight with another person, no matter what the incredibly small and unimportant discretion, be it bumping into someone going the opposite direction in the train station, or even stepping on someone's shoe! (I know, right?! How could anybody possibly let that one go?!) Seriously though, western culture could learn a thing or two about the way these people deal with confrontation. But for that matter, so could my subconscious mind.

It's strangely fascinating what the mind does when it's adjusting to a new lifestyle in a new setting. Some people have crippling panic attacks, while others retreat into a shell of impenetrable introversion. I, personally, jolt out of bed every morning between the hours of 5 and 7 AM, just barely escaping the unpleasant faces of those who apparently want to cause me harm. Some of these faces belong to real people from my waking life, while others are completely fabricated, which I assume means they represent the intangible strife in my life. There were definitely certain things I expected to cause me discomfort while I was getting used to living in japan. Having recurring nightmares was not among them. But where there's smoke there's fire, and your subconscious mind never lies.

I have found that Whenever you start a new relationship, whether it's with a new person or a new place, you tend to take all of the emotional and mental baggage with you from your previous relationships. It takes time to get comfortable in a new setting, just like it takes time to learn to trust another person. With this in mind, It is simply profound, the kinds of emotional walls that seem to separate the parts of the psyche, some of which you never even knew you had.

On one hand, there is the part of you that exists in your waking life, which only seems to generate excitement for all of the new possibilities around you, and all of the potential interactions you will have. On the other hand, there is the part of you that resides within your dreaming life, which is apparently only capable of picking at your emotional scabs, as it reminds you of all the sadness and regret you feel for leaving behind the life and the people you knew back home, as well as all the stress they brought with them. It's as if there is only so much space in you're head, and all of the positivity is trying to take over, but the negativity refuses to just pack its shit and leave. Thus, in the never more true words of Zach, it throws a series of temper tantrums like an immature child that thinks it deserves all the attention, attacking you in your sleep when you are most vulnerable; when you can't run from it, rationalize it, or suppress it anymore. Talk about fighting dirty...

But in the end, when I wake up in a cold sweat, and I feel my heart beating out of my chest, I quickly wade back into coherent thought and I recite the one mantra I seem to know all too well: “it's just a dream... It' just a dream... IT'S JUST A DREAM!” And that's just it- they ARE just dreams and within a few short minutes of waking up, all the unpleasant details start to fade to the back of the very machine that generates them in the first place, and soon only a few unpleasant details will remain, leaving me with what I can only perceive to be a warning of sorts. It's as if all the little things in my head are trying to say “we are the demons you couldn't negotiate with. So keep that the fuck in mind the next time you choose the people you let in your life, and the issues you're gonna obsess over. Now take your punishment like a good little douche!”

I suppose I should just let it be. After all, they say that the mind functions a lot like a computer, and dreaming is its way of dumping the recycling bin when the hard drive is overloaded. And right now my mind is about as population-dense as tokyo, inhabited by an array of thoughts as colorful and diverse as the people who live in this city. Perhaps as unpleasant as the job may be, my psyche has apparently decided that it's time to clean house, cause god knows it's LONG overdue.

Just Breathe

It's a bit peculiar how many little things can go wrong around you at any given time or place. At first you might literally wake up on the wrong side of the bed, or the ATM might be closed for a national holiday you didn't grow up observing. Sometimes the little things are big little things, like when your host school drops the metaphorical ball concerning your class schedule for the fourteenth time in the span of three and a half months, leaving you clenching every muscle in your body as you feel the blood rush to your face and you try not to break your four front knuckles on the school-issued bedpost in your dorm, all because you were sure_no, positive that you had dealt with the administration's incompetence for the last time three weeks before you left. but no matter what may befall you, at the end of your hissy-fit when you have tired yourself out, you realize that nothing has changed about your situation, save for your blood pressure and apparent awareness that you are currently screwed. these things, as petty as they may be, especially suck when they happen abroad. there is almost never a short and simple answer to the problem, and even dealing with your cell phone issues seems to be a bureaucratic nightmare.

now, I'm no psychologist, but it seems to me that when the shit hits the fan, you'll be able to deal with the spray way easier if you follow a few simple steps:

1) take a deep cleansing breath, and accept the fact that you are more pissed off than even the time your sister Julia dropped your board and broke a skeg when a perfect August wind swell was about to come up the coast of the jersey shore. if you need to, grab a pillow, or a shirt and either scream as loud as you can into either, or wrap your fists up like boxing gloves and pound a flat surface.

2) Let everything go. there's more than one way to accomplish this, but i always found that much to the dismay of my poor recipient, venting about my issues never failed to extricate all of the simmering negativity pent up inside my angry little heart. find a blank piece of paper, or start a journal or a blog, and start writing about whatever it is that's getting you down. don't stop until you feel better. If you're really lucky you can find a live victim to listen to you rag, or even better, someone who has been equally as slighted as you, and the two of you can have a mutually fueled bitch session about anything and everything under the sun.

3) form a plan. as nice as expressing all of the negativity may feel, truth be told it doesn't usually get you vary far in your endeavor. the only productive way to handle the problem itself is to formulate a plan, based on a number of best and worse case scenarios which may or may not pan out exactly as you think. it's better to make a couple different plans, just in case one falls through. make sure to think about all of the little details contributing to your dilemma as well as ways to deal with each. and remember, people tend to be largely incapable of being flexible and compassionate most of the time, especially when you are dealing with governments, school administrations, and other such large businesses. keeping this in mind has always largely impacted the way i have chosen to deal with things when they have gone awry.

4) as incredibly tough as it may be, try to remain patient. with the above considered, the old expression about catching more bees with honey than vinegar is terribly true. as much as it is true that the people you have to deal with in these types of situations are largely apathetic and incompetent, they are still usually the only people with the power and capability to help you out of whatever bind you have found yourself in. biting your tongue and approaching these devils with the utmost kindness and respect is ALWAYS more effective than confronting them with poison on your tongue. Remember to never approach any situation with a hot head. you will inadvertantly make mistakes, and in a world where our lives are connected to the walls by power cords and our vains seem to pump more oil than blood, only someone very self defeating would react emotionally to everything that flusters them. the E-mails we draft and the messages we leave are PERMANENT, and once they are sent out into the ether they will remain there until it is time for them to be summoned upon to be used against their makers. so basically, be nice. people will be more inclined to help you if you are.

last but not least, make sure to GET OVER YOURSELF. in the grand scheme of things, nothing that happens to us really matters. but every minute we spend feeling bad for ourselves, or worrying about what will happen if we CAN'T extract 40,000 yen to buy the nice pair of geta sandals for our wives and mothers are minutes we will never get back. this is especially true if the issue really is petty, and most issues are way pettier than they seem to the chode experiencing them. With that said,when all is said and done, sometimes it really IS just best to give up and live.

Found In Translation

It's funny how we tend to form our opinions, both positive and negative, about a place before we even go there. This is especially true with places we really want to visit. You might watch moves set in this place, or read books and look at photos set there, and before you know it, you've already been there. Or at least you've been to the “ideal form” of said place. Then if you're determined enough, you may actually finally make it there in person, all the while expecting it to be everything and more you had ever hoped. Sometimes you may find that it turns out to be more than you could have ever fathomed, and sometimes you may actually be let down. I always found that when I traveled, it was a strange mixture of both. But after the initial shock had worn off that I actually was wherever I was, one thing always came back to me: it isn't what you think it will be before you go, but rather what you make of it when you're there. I didn't know it at the time, but I had visited japan way before my first summer out of college in the summer of 2009. In fact, I had visited a multitude of different Japans numerous times before that.

When I was a kid, my favorite thing to do on any friday or saturday night was to go to the movies with my dad. We would see a plethora of different films. Sometimes we would go to a comedy, and watch Ben Stiller or Ryan Reynolds make fools of themselves, only to end up getting laid at the end. Other times we would see gangster films like the ones directed by Guy Ritchie, (to this day, the two of us fools still quote Snatch more than any other film in the history of cinema). It didn't seem to ever matter to me what flick we caught because I always trusted my pop's good taste in movies and knew that whatever we saw I would dig on some level. Funny thing is that I was pretty much always right about that; funnier thing was that I didn't know just how right I was. In the fall and winter of 2003, we went to two movies in the theaters that would change the course of my young life far more than either my old man or I could have ever known. Those movies were Kill Bill, and Lost In Translation, respectively.

First I witnessed in a state of what I can only describe as pure boyhood ecstasy as I watched Uma Thurman kill her way through a yakuza-filled Japan in the blood-soaked hack 'n slash story of one very pissed off bride. Next came the story of Bob Harris and his young companion Charlotte as they sleeplessly traversed the sprawling dollhouse of a metropolis that is Tokyo, both as stranded in their own existential crises as they were in the city, due to their apparent inability to communicate with the locals. As I watched these two films, a little seed in my head started to grow more rapidly than kudzu, as it was nourished by the almost photosynthetic rays of neon light being emitted by the images of tokyo that flashed before me on the silver screen. In movie terms, Sophia Coppola and Quentin Tarantino performed real-life inception in my young and impressionable mind, without me ever even falling asleep.

Now fast forward 7 years, two trips, five 14-hour plane rides, and a whole cluster-fuck of foreign films, documentaries, guide books, and photo albums in between and here I sit again, writing another blog post as another new day begins full of promise and the undying curiosity with which to soak it up like a sponge, and I can't help but think about the closed-minded dispositions of poor Charlotte and Bob in Coppola's own Japanese lovechild. If only they could have stopped feeling sorry for themselves long enough to look up at any given point to notice the unbelievable amount of potential around them, maybe they could have skipped all the self-important bullshit and started enjoying themselves way sooner. But then again, truth be told I was once guilty of the same thing, and only later did I realize that as beautiful of a place as this can be, it will only be as beautiful as you let it.

Ha, guess it turns out I'm as dialogue-heavy as Tarantino. You proud dad? Wish you were here to see what I see dude. After all, this IS partially your fault

The super markets that actually live up to their namesake

I feel almost redundant in relaying how different it is here than any place I've ever been. Even the oranges taste differently from the ones back home! They're much less tart, and way more pleasant to eat just after waking up from an unsound, jet lag-induced night of almost sleep. They even have a different psychology than the oranges back home in that they have never fully grown up. They still can't decide whether they are oranges or clementines. They exist somewhere in the limbo of being not too big, and not too small. It's almost like this sweet citrus fruit is in its adolescent phase, trying to figure out who it is and where it fits in the world. You know, the awkward phase. I can almost relate.

I picked up a couple at the local market. What an amazing place. I have yet to enter a market in Japan that carries anything less than incredible quality meat and seafood. Even the fish markets don't smell like fish! To put it into layman's terms, the super markets really live up to their namesake: super! The best part about these markets is that if you wait to shop after a certain time, say 6 or 7:30 PM, the bento lunch sets (individual little meals with a variety of fish, tofu, veggies, rice, and other such pleasantries) are discounted to up up to 50 to 70 percent. Since Tokyo and the rest of Japan is so mind-numbingly expensive (one of its few impurities along with its almost military-like police state, and its complete aversion to certain herbal "remedies" easily come by back home), the prospect of getting your next day's breakfast or lunch for less than 1000 yen (about 12 or so USD) is enough in and of itself to geek out about.

Spend enough time in a place like this communicating with other foreigners and you start to pick up these little cheat-cheats on how to get by on less money and more love. Now if only I could figure out a cheap way to reach REM...

Greetings From God Knows When

You know you're gone when you know where you are but you don't know when you are. This is what happens every time I trek to the far east. It seems like I go to sleep on the east coast of the good old US of A, and wake up a while later somewhere far far away. Or maybe it's like I never quite went to sleep in the first place, and thus never really woke up.

This is what happened to me today_ or maybe it was yesterday. Or damn, for all I know it happened tomorrow. I can never really keep track of these things and I find it harder and harder to keep track of what time frame I am currently existing in. But I always know I've arrived when I walk down any random street and I notice people trying their best not to stare. They're never very good at hiding their burning curiosity, and I can almost always tell when I'm being watched, even when I'm actually not. But you do it enough times and you get used to it. Maybe you even start to like it, or at the very least learn to get a kick out of it. But it doesn't seem to matter how many times you make a trip like this, you can never seem to establish what day you arrive. And hell, with a fourteen hour time difference, who, other than a person of great discipline (which I am most certainly not) would be able to keep up with something as minor as the current date?

But that's just it. In the grand scheme of things, all things in Japan seem to eventually balance themselves out, including me. As jet lagged as I am right now, I sit here in my tiny single-room dorm in Ota, Japan, trying to muster up all the lucidity I have left to create the first of what will be a large collection of posts, informing anybody who's cool enough to listen about all of my incredible adventures through the land of the rising sun. For the next four months, this tiny little box, in its tiny little corner of its not-so-tiny city of Tokyo will be my home. And i've made two discoveries: 1) Having just come back from Seoul this summer, I'm beginning to think that I have more in common with this part of the world than my own, and 2) Asia's dope! So gimme your time and I'll give you stories worth a million yen.

And after all the traveling, and all the heavy suitcases filled with things I may find that I don't need as much as I thought, and all of the confusing strangers giving me wrong directions that inadvertently take me to all the right places, it's just me: little old me, in Japan again; half in and half forever out saying KONICHIWA! and enjoy the blog