Category: Exploits

It is three in the morning, and the port of Osaka is alive with the sound of street races.
The crowd is sparse for a Saturday night, perhaps because of the rumor of a police raid. As with all the other recent crackdowns, they will round up any spectators as well as racers, and accuse everyone of racing. This may seem ironic since most of the spectators show up in normal cars and minivans, a stark contrast with the ultra-customized rice rockets tearing up the race strip, but Japanese cops have the art of coercion down well – most innocent people will sooner confess to a misdemeanor and pay a fine rather than spend a night in a holding cell, no matter how cozy they may be (holding cells in Japan are reportedly clean and sometimes even carpeted).
For now though, there is no police presence and chaos reigns on the strip. The strip is a kilometer long, starting at the end of the shipping docks, leading through the security gate (which somebody has slid open and disabled) down to a four way intersection that has been turned into an ad-hoc drift pad. The racers start at the intersection, race to the end of the docks, tug on their parking brakes for a quick 180, race back to the intersection and pull long drifting turns right. Tonight is more of a practice night for local racing gangs, so there is no defined finish line. There are also no spotters or safety precautions in place like there would be for a competition, which is why we almost died coming here…
We had been driving around the area in T’s jeep looking for something to do when a white Toyota Crown came out of nowhere and almost fishboned us, then took off toward the (then) new ATC building. We followed, intending to pull the fools from the car and lay down the hurt, when we came upon the races. Intrigued, we parked a ways away and walked toward the sound of revving engines and squealing tires.
When we got there, the Crown we had followed was just lining up for a start. It took off down the docks, did an impressive 180 for a big sedan, and came back our way. As it turned right at the intersection, the front tire failed and it slammed into the guardrail at high speed, sending showers of sparks in the air and ripping off a door panel. Impressive performance, even though the Crown was the only normal car being raced that night. It stood out from the crowd of flashy RX-7s, riced-out GTOs, and elite hakogata Skylines, much as we college students did from the hardcore drivers observing from the sidelines.
We stood behind the guardrails, sipping on warm cans of cheap imported beer (Belgen Brau, around 160 yen at Lawson compared to cans of Kirin/Asahi at 250; these were the days before the happoshu boom) to wash the scent of burnt rubber and brakes down, and the cops never came.
It was one of the coolest nights I had ever spent in Japan, and we were eager to return at some point in the future, when we could afford the gas money and tolls from Nara again. Alas, it was not to be. T took some girl on a date to the ATC building a couple months later, and they happened upon a horrific sight – a man who had just hung himself and was dangling on the outside of the building. T swore never to return to that area, and the police cracked down on the races in that area hard, so they ceased to exist.
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Related link: Osaka Stories (part 1 of ???)
I should note that Part 1 has become quite a popular link in the blogosphere, for all the wrong reasons. Some shithead comment spammer included a link for that page in his spams, presumably in an attempt to pollute blacklists with innocent domains. Take a look at the comments for that thread – it just ain’t right.

Well, the Danjiri lived up to its reputation and was, in a word, exhilarating. In my free time, I’m looking through the hundreds of photos I took and will post the best ones here. I might have gotten five really killer pics, only half of what I set out for, but more than I expected. The main difference between my new D50 and the digital cameras I have used in the past is simply that I like a lot more of my own photos than I used to – and that’s a remarkable thing, really.
While I’m getting my best ten or so photos ready to publish on this blog, you can get a sneak peek of about 200 or so I posted in my Flickr photostream:
Kishiwada Danjiri Matsuri 2005

Tomorrow morning, Nam and I will ride the hydrofoil from Sumoto to Kansai Airport. From there we will ride the train a couple stops and step into the semi-controlled chaos of the Danjiri Matsuri. This is one of the few things I promised myself that I would do before leaving Japan (some of the other things include watching someone disembowel themself with a short, sharp sword, and just once not being told “but you look Japanese” after introducing myself as American).
I am taking a cumulative 2.5 GB storage space in memory cards, as well as my trusty micronote to transfer data to should this be insufficient.
I want to take at least ten really killer photos. That’s a lot, I know, but I will set my sights high since the weather should be nice and since I am, after all, ditching work to drink beers and watch gigantic wooden floats collide together in unrehearsed and seriously dangerous ways.
Wish me luck!

My homeboy T is blogging it up during his month-long visit to Uzbekistan.
Is Tashkent the ultimate escape destination after a painful life decision?
FIND OUT HERE: JOMON NEWS

Just thought I’d show how low the demand for my mad graphic design skillz has fallen. I insisted on making a No Trespassing sign for our department, because it gave me a chance to leave my mark.
On a related note, I may start marketing custom-brushed t-shirts and bondage gear. Nam’s Japanese calligraphy sensei is keen on helping out with this project, and with me heading up the design effort, we are sure to appeal to at least one person… More on this as it develops.

It seems Big Dave and his wife are currently living one of my greatest nightmares, stranded in Formosa:
“michiko and i are stuck in taiwan thanks to the typhoon. should be back thursday afternoon at the latest. crap!!!”
That be major suckage, dude. Stay safe and don’t take cover in a Nike factory.

For those of you who are easily impressed, the following was typed out entirely on my keitai on the long bus ride home. I think I was slightly feverish.
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I’ve been away since last Friday, when Nam and I went to the US Consulate General and the Thai Embassy, both located in Osaka. Our purpose was to get Certificates of Competency to Marry (The fact that one must swear on their “competency to marry” on paper really bothers me for some reason, but it’s not really worth going into. Suffice to say that it’s stupid in concept, and completely meaningless in reality.), and I took the day off so we could ride the early bus from Awaji and get there when the doors opened at 9:00AM.
Imagine my delight when we got to the American consulate on schedule, only to find a it a complete zoo outside the front doors. People outside were trying to get in but were being pushed into semi-lines by a security guards, all being watched over by the cops assigned embassy duty. It was kind of a slap in the face after not having been to an American embassy for a while – in a crowd of unhappy people with problems, where the air smells of desperation. Luckily, I know what to do in that situation, I raised my absolutely beautiful US passport high up in the air, screamed I’M AN AMERICAN! MOVE, MOTHERFUCKERS!, which parted the crowd very nicely, and made a beeline for the front door, dragging my very reluctant and embarrassed future wife along by the arm. The door guard checked my passport and asked if I liked apple pie and Bruce Springsteen, to which I correctly responded, “a-la-mode! and the Boss fucking rules!” Hearing the secret words got him pumped up, and he gave me a high five. As we entered the building, I glanced over my shoulder to see him spraying mace over the crowd like canned confetti and cracking random heads with his baton while shouting AMERICA, FUCK YEAH!
On a more positive tip, the vice consul signed my documents and was a rather nice man. He gave me a tip for filling out a warden registration form: To make sure I wrote Nam’s name down as well, so that in an emergency situation he could “order the helicopter to pick up your wife as well, even though she’s not American.” FUCK YEAH!
With the American paperwork out of the way, it was time to tackle the Thai side of the equation. We had a sort-of appointment for the afternoon at the embassy, so we ate lunch first. I say “sort-of” because even though it was a real appointment, that kind of stuff doesn’t really matter in Thailand a lot of the time. People show up hours late for appointments, and it’s considered normal. Of course, this sucks when you need actually need something done on time, so we went in an hour earlier than scheduled. The Thai embassy was – how can I state this – so very laid back. The staff was friendly, the diplomatic bigwigs sat along with everyone else in a common workspace instead of getting fellated, or signing peace treaties, or whatever it is those dudes actually do in their offices.
The real surprise was the seemingly complete absence of security staff or protection details of any kind in the whole building, especially since the embassy is located directly above the Osaka branch of Bangkok Bank – if the ambassador is ever taken hostage there to cover a bank job downstairs, just remember that I predicted it first (and I also hereby reserve the rights for use of this plot in a really bad B-movie directed by Germans).
In the end, we successfully completed the first round of marriage paperwork. The rest of the weekend was basically spent cursing the miserable weather, which tainted everything we tried to do. For instance, T’s band opened for a rave on Mt. Kasuragi where they expected up to 2,000 people; the actual number was in the double digits, including staff. On a more positive tip, there was so much natural fog complimenting the rain that they didn’t need a fog machine. I felt slightly guilty for waking up my little brother in the morning and coercing him into go with us: But you GOTTA come man, it’s ROCK ‘N ROLL! FUCK YEAH!

Just remembered this from Sunday: Four of us got in a cab and headed toward the Hankyu department store to grab a bite on one of the upper floors, before the whole thing gets redone later this year. The cab driver was female. This was only the second time I’ve ever seen a female driver, and we all had fun asking her about the taxi business from her perspective, etc. We had one of those “friendly repoire with the cabbie” things going pretty well; in all, a very cool experience. I guess I got a bit too into the whole thing, though.
The question of why all cabbies, independents and company employees alike, have to wear black (or dark blue) was posed; our driver did not know. Then, as we passed a line of people dressed in black standing at a bus stop, someone from the back seat wondered out loud why they were all dressed that way (they were dressed a bit strange, kind of an Elderly Kansai Goth type of look). Someone offered the obvious, saying “funeral,” but I tried my luck with “because they’re all cabbies.”
The car became instantly silent, and the driver’s eyes visibly bulged out of her head as she bit her tongue.
In retrospect, I may have been lucky that she didn’t slam on the brakes, punch me in the mouth, and throw us out of the car right there. She was that pissed.
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Been in this country more than a decade; still haven’t lost the touch, I guess.

Through a fiendish twist of events involving Air France stewardesses and fresh squeezed lemon chu-hi, I found myself at a club in Umeda on Saturday night, actually their opening weekend. Basically, the whole experience made me remember why I stopped going to clubs:
– I’m too old for that shit
– Shitty music played by the wannabe rockstar Djs; from the sound of it, you would never guess that house music has actually progressed in the last ten years
– The “fog of war,” cigarette smoke so thick you have to light your own to make it bearable
– Insufferable wannabe yakuza penislickers who insist on staring down everyone that has the gall to walk by their group; strategically positioned next to the restrooms, of course
– New laser/LED lightshows with New! Improved! Dazzle! guaranteed to cause at least a few seizures in the pit every night
– Old women showing sagging tit
– Antibeer: Beer that is the antithesis of cheap, cold, and very un-urinish in taste and appearance
I just have to repeat how truly awful the music was: It was shit, shit, shit. If you were the DJ working CLUB SAZAE this past Saturday, please know that even a retarded chimpanzee could have mixed your Best of Ibiza CD collection better (and yes, I know you were mixing CDs on a shit setup because I heard the track flutter during your fagalicious “fade ‘n cues”).

I mean, is the guy hard up for cash, or what? I sure as hell couldn’t forgive him back in 1994 for whoring Nikita out to Hollywood for an effortlessly crapalicious remake starring Bridget Fonda, and titled, most appropriately, “Point of No Return” (presumably referring to the instant a person bought a ticket to see this shitfest at the theater). But now he’s really gone and done it with the US remake of his car-action masterpiece, Taxi.
For fuck’s sake, this is the movie that inspired me to request a white Peugeot 406 at Charles De Gaulle airport (and do multiple doughnuts in the parking lot in protest when all they had was a turbocharged Opel Vectra)! This is the movie that prompted me to drive from Mimizan to San Sebastian at the speed of holy shit! and make people in the backseat gasp quite audibly! In exhilaration, no doubt! And pass several cops on the way! After having a nice breakfast of wine and sangria!
…OK, maybe you should not see this movie if you like driving.
…And you definitely do not want to see the Hollywood remake of it. Unless your idea of a fast car is a Ford Crown Victoria, that is. I shit you not, in Taxi:NYC (its title overseas), the white 406 is replaced by a yellow Crown Vic. With blowers and a bunch of other shit copied from the original movie which can apparently enable a Crown Vic to outrun a custom BMW 760. Um, no. This movie, this premise, is just wrong. WRONG I SAY! DAMN YOU LUC BESSON! A POX ON YOU AND THE MERDE THAT FILLS YOUR VERY BEING! MAY A THOUSAND UNSHAVED FEMALE ARMPITS BEAR AUSPICIOUS LICE TO FILL YOUR LYING MOUTH!
Also:
FREEDOM FRIES, MOTHERFUCKER!