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…

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. // 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…

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…

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…

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…

Exactly two weeks to go until I put my life in the hands of JAL and escape on a ten day adventure to Southeast Asia – I can hardly wait! My pal, T, is flying to Bangkok on the 25th, and I’m out on the 27th. We’ll meet up with Nam the next day and we have no plans other than hitting up the Chattuchak street market the first weekend, them joining up with T’s ex, Natty, for a nice, dusty drive to the border of either Laos or Cambodia… I’m leaning toward Cambodia at this point; I want to much around the ruins before the next wave of kidnappings…