Ouch. This person obviously chose the wrong career – I’m thinking Corrections Officer would have been more appropriate.
My second year in Japan, I got in a fairly serious accident while riding to work on my motor scooter. A small car ran a stop sign right in front of me. I crashed into its side and flew over the hood into a drained rice field, gasping for breath as the wind had been knocked out of me. I passed out and woke up during the ambulance ride to Tenri Hospital.
All in all, I felt relatively uninjured. They looked me over in the ER, checked especially for head trauma, and everything seemed fine until the doctor brought out the helmet I had been wearing and said I needed additional tests in broken English (I still couldn’t speak very much Japanese at the time). Looking at the helmet, I agreed: It had probably saved my life. The doctor took the dented, deformed hunk of plastic out of the room, and told me to follow him. When I asked where we were going, he looked back at me, dead serious, and said a single word: “Lobotomy.”
To this day, I have no idea if that fucker was joking or not (maybe – just maybe – he meant something else?), but at the time the shit wasn’t very funny.
Author: Justin
All In Your Mind
Even if you aren’t usually prone to motion sickness, don’t check out this link just after eating:
Akiyoshi’s illusion pages
Oh, man, I almost lost the tori negi-sauce don I had for lunch.
Doo doo doo doodoodoodoo
That goddamn line from “Under Pressure” is running around in my head again. An omen, perhaps.
Black Beauty RX7
Someone should just sit down and figure out the exact equation detailing the relationship of [number of times dropped on head as child] to [height of rear spoiler on car]. By the way, people with cars this expensive should not be spotted in the parking lots of recycle shops… A more affordable solution for cash-strapped Fast and Fuuurious wannabes is a haxx0red copy of Gran Turismo, aight?
The voice in my head just said, “Run away!”
A month or so back, my brother and I found a spot from which to escape from people. Most everybody, that is. It’s a dam up in the mountains just a few miles off a major road, but apparently not very well known. We went there both Saturday and Sunday for a few hours of fishing and just to get away from it all. Saturday I caught a reallyreally small largemouth which attacked a lure not much smaller than itself – and that was it as far as our catch for the weekend – but it was enough. Being out on decently sized lakes with no one else in sight was a reward unto itself. Last week was kind of a tipping point for me, you see. I’d had just about enough of the world, I think.
It all started out on Sunday, when I watched an old man collapse in a pool of his own blood and guts on a white tiled floor. I looked into his eyes after calling for help and saw neither fear nor acceptance – just confusion. That disturbed me on a level I hadn’t experienced since thinking about post-death consciousness every night when I was ten or so. His wife cradled his head and sobbingly pleaded with him to stay focused for the twenty minutes it took for the paramedics to arrive. When they came, they put on surgical masks and gloves before touching the old man. When they left, they tracked bloody footprints out the door. I left out the back exit and felt strangely sick when the sunlight hit my face.
Tuesday I left for a business meeting in Osaka as documented in my previous post. I feel more and more apologetic as the years go on for having to explain why so many of my fellow countrymen are brash, ignorant, racist dunderfucks. On a side note, do you know how much compensation I get from the company for having to spend a night away from home plus 6 meals? Around ten bucks. Ten bucks, as in, fuck me, may I have another? Fuck me. The really sad thing is, it used to be around twenty bucks and people feel really cheated about it having been cut in half. Shit, the last time the union reps came around, I contemplated throwing a handful of pennies at them and saying, “dinner’s on me, assholes.”
Wednesday I came back from said business trip on a bus directly through a fairly major typhoon. Luckily, I was tired as hell and the huge bus windows amplified the lightning into a trippy ambient light show. I zoned out to this and stopped watching the realtime destruction reports on the TV mounted in the center aisle. Crossing over the longest suspension bridge in the world to my island in heavy winds was kind of tense, though (Bus driver on radio to dispatcher: “Advise others to turn back. Brakes are sluggish and we are moving forward even though I’m not using the gas.”). Cool.
Thursday, the pipes under our kitchen sink decided to burst. Fortunately, my girlfriend and my little brother took care of it and I only saw the aftermath: Everything previously under the sink on my kitchen floor, cupboards being dried out with electric fan. Yes, Nam and Adam handled the crisis and my late arrival/presence was superfluous. Genuinely cool.
Friday I got in a huge fight with my girlfriend, but I sucked it all up because I was so tired and in a “gee this isn’t fair, but beat me up emotionally anyway” state of mind. (By the way, the whole fight was probably all my fault, even though I’ll never admit it.)
So by the time Saturday and Sunday rolled around, I was ready for 12-hour slumber sessions followed by the Nature Boy routine. Our new hideaway did not disappoint. Bunny rabbits, deer, and baby bass. And on Saturday, I even forgot to take my cellphone.
All Dressed Up But Nowhere to Whore
I’m on another business trip. It’s late, I’m sweaty. In a suit. Wasted from a day of picking up on the subtle nuances of Japanese corporate doublespeak, flipping the sentences backwards and into another language, then funneling it down the client’s ear.
Now I’m back at the hotel with several hours worth of work ahead of me and the shrill ring of an alarm clock not mine own to look forward to in the morn.
Time to sign off, folks, but before I go, let me give you the Buddha’s One True Way to get an annoying fat gaijin perv in a middle management position to leave you alone and quit dropping hints like, “so what are Jap girls like?,” and, “so what’s the deal with those hostess clubs we passed earlier?” over a business dinner:
When he gets all drunk and alco-sentimental with your boss later on and lays pictures of his kids on the table, echo everybody’s remarks about how cute they are and what a lovely family he has, then lean over the table and hiss, “God hates sinners.”
Note: It’s all in the 
Kobe License Plates
Today I changed my car’s registration from Nara to Kobe. I don’t like the new number plates as much as the old ones – Kobe plates are a kind of status symbol in Kansai, much as Shinagawa plates are in Kanto. I have this nagging feeling that these plates might get me pulled over more often than the old Nara ones, although I can’t really explain why, it’s just a feeling I have (that I hope is never proved).
A few months ago I heard that Kobe plates illicitly exported from Japan were selling in LA for a pretty sum, mostly because of the Kobe Bryant case. In retrospect, I think the high price is justified; the process to get new plates in Japan is a colossal pain in the ass if you do it yourself (Most people just pay to have car shops do it for them; I did it by myself partly just to see if it was as a big a hassle as I imagined and I was not disappointed.)
How to Rice
The official guide to rice is posted in front of the rikuun (equivalent of DMV) in Kobe. I was there today to change my Nara plates to Kobe ones. It was a major pain in the ass.
Shakoshomei
Even though I’ve lived here on Awaji Island for nearly five years, I was registered at my friend’s house in Nara until last month. Basically, there was no reason to change my address officially until this year, when the immigration laws got stricter, plus I fucking hate having to tell the government where I live just on principle…
Just one of the many pains in the ass involves re-registering my car out here (in Kobe, actually), and in order to do that, I need a shakoshomei, which is proof that you have an approved place to park. If you live in a house, this might be your driveway or garage, but if you rent an apartment, like I do, you have to provide proof that you are renting a space somewhere.
This is an incredibly irritating process that takes a trip down to the local police station at least twice, once to apply and once to pick up the actual document, which is issued after an inspector goes to visit the parking space you have specified in the application (you actually have to provide two maps, one of the parking space in relation to your home, and another, more detailed map of the parking area with dimensions, etc. Most people hand-draw this stuff, but I, uber-nerd, did the work in Illustrator – may post it later so you can come egg my Silvia).
Anyway, after this long, drawn out process had gotten to its final stage, I was ready to pick up the document late last week. Before work, I went to the police station (cue: oh happy day) with my trusty hanko (personal seal used in place of signature) only to be told that the guy in charge wasn’t in. The fact that just speaking to the police in Japan – about just about anything, really – always puts me in the foulest of moods, only compounded my irritation at being brushed off because the designated desk jockey (and public fucking servant I might add) decided to make a run for the bento shop during normal operating hours. Whatever. I decided to jump through all the hoops when I decided to make the move out here official, so I sucked it up and went to work.
I didn’t have time to go again until yesterday. I walked into the police station all pimped out in my spiffy work uniform (complete with nametag; this is a Japanese white-collar job, thankyouverymuch) and requested service at the desk. This time, the balding desk sergeant in charge was there (oh joy), fat ass parked firmly in a seat with a bead cushion draped over it. He looks over my approval forms, sees they’re all in order, then announces to no one in general, “the window for processing shakoshomei is from 3 to 5 PM, please come back then.”
Me: “fuck, as in what the?”
Cop: “3 to 5”
Me: “But there ain’t nobody else here now! C’mon! ”
Cop: “Morning hours are reserved for driver’s license-related issues only – COME BACK BETWEEN 3 AND 5!”
Me: “THERE AIN’T NOBODY ELSE HERE – c’mon, cut me a break already. Pleeeeeease. Pretty please with azuki on the top.”
Cop: “Ungh.” (loosely translated: “wutevaaaa”)
Grrrrr. So I had to take off work early and got back to the police station just before 5. As I approach the desk sergeant, who I swear has not moved a single fucking inch since I last saw him several hours before and is now half-heartedly playing with pencils and rubber bands, looks up at me, then glances at the clock, gathers the approval papers again and says, “hehheh, you made it just in time.”
Motherfucker!
And as he stamps my hanko in the logbook and gives me the magic papers, he replies “I wouldn’t have minded if you came in a little later. I’m here until 7:00 anyway.”
I bit down on my lower lip, hard, and concentrated on quietly exiting the building.
As a good friend once put it, “why are cops such fucking cunts?”
UPDATE:
Daihatsu Microbus
In Japan, there is a micro-subcompact class of cars known as “keijidosha,” or simply, “K.” Under current regulations their engine size is restricted to 660cc, and their appeal in this land of super expensive gasoline and narrow roads is fairly obvious. They are also cheaper than standard size cars, so it cracks me up when I see a lot of money put into their modification. This microbus mod has been getting more and more popular recently, and on my island alone, I have seen red, orange, yellow, black, tan, and lime green versions of it.