Category: Exploits

The mosquito-free period in Japan seems to be shrinking every year: I clearly remember having stray skeeters bumbling about the house as late as the last week of January, and I was assaulted by a particularly thirsty one again just last night. For many years, November through April were completely mosquito-free, but I guess it was just inevitable that my nemesis would eventually evolve to torture me in all but the coldest periods of the year.
And this is important to me, see, because last night, I slapped myself across the cheek in my sleep, hard. I was dreaming that a giant mosquito, like in that old-ass movie Caveman had landed on my face, so I panicked and, in my state of nocturnal distress, tried to smash it. I must have hit myself really hard, because my girlfriend woke up and said, “what’s wrong?” I glanced at the clock – 4 o’ clock? On a Monday morning? Fuck! – and grumbled, “GODDAMN….mosquito…FUCKING BIT ME.” She rolled her eyes and coyly asked if I had slapped myself again (which didn’t make me real happy at the time, but seems mildly amusing now), then promptly fell back to sleep since SHE had nothing to fear. You see, ever since I was little, anybody in proximity of me has nothing to fear from mosquitoes – my blood is like VSOP in a sea of lite beers or something.
Anyway, to make a long story short, this fucking insect tortured me until 6AM, biting me on the cheek three times and once on the ear before I decided I’d had enough and decided to kill it, no matter how long it took. Sleep deprivation coupled with a madly itching ear drove me to eat its broken corpse after I finally got it.
So, no fucking with me please today, sirs and madams, I have absorbed the power to suck my own weight in blood and cause mad itching, and I ain’t afraid to use it.

This is my state of mind after 3 days of hitting the slopes in Hakuba (quite literally, I’m afraid). It was an awesome trip, overall. Nobody got hurt too badly (although general aches and soreness are shared by all), even the little girl in the pink helmet who Taro ran into at high speed and made cry. I’m burnt a nice shade of brownish-red, and the “racoon eyes” are a source of great joy for my colleagues. (I can’t believe I brought back cookies as a gift for these bastards – they don’t deserve cookies.)

Taking a three day trip up to Hakuba with Adam and T for some boarding – I haven’t been on one that long in ages. Time to unwiiiiiind… Should have some adventures to share when I get back.

The other day, Adam saw a school of fat mullet under a bridge near my house, so we decided to try and catch them with the only bait I had around, pickled grubs.
^*Note to self: Mullet could give a shit about pickled grubs. Idiot.
The stupid fish were ignoring the bait, so we decided to use a big seabass lure as a yo-yo rig (illegal in our home state of California). I felt kind of bad about snagging them since we weren’t keeping them, but Adam, being an inherently bad person, had no such compunctions:

MulletMania Magazine Photo Contest Winner:

Mullets are ugly up close:

You kiss your mother with that mouth?
All in all, it was good fun.

Recently, the combination of late nights and wet roads evokes memories so immersive, I often find myself halfway home before realizing that it’s raining and I really should slow down. (The weather affects me more than I care to admit, I guess.) The memories I speak of all have one thing in common, that is, they are all memories of other late, rainy nights. This is my most recent one:
Around six years ago, I was driving a coworker to her house in Moriguchi (Osaka), after a company drink-up. She had passed out and my boss asked me to take her home.
It was raining pretty hard that night, and the tinted windows on my Citroen made for poor visibility out of the side and rear windows. As it was before strict DUI laws existed in Japan, I was driving kinda sloppy, mostly because the crappy driving conditions were annoying me. In fact, I was pondering so heavily on the fact that “god must hate me because it always rains on the weekend,” I almost failed to stop in time at a train crossing. By almost, I mean, you know the striped fiberglass bar that lowers when the train is coming? When I came to a complete stop, my windshield was bending it forward. The crossing bells were ringing and the train was sounding its horn, and the slow motion adrenalin rush kicked in as I threw the car in reverse and backed away from the tracks – just in time.
I think I just sat there for a while.
All I really remember is thinking, rain be damned, God Must Fucking Love Me.

So I got the call from the bank yesterday and they changed their minds about having me inside the bank, I guess. They offered to meet me on my lunch break in the union office next to our company cafeteria today. They told me to bring ID and my hanko (personal seal) to sign off on a receipt, to which I said, “no.” The guy replied I could sign my name instead of using a hanko (as if that was the problem), and I basically made up my mind to not sign a goddamn thing before going into the meeting today. I mean, I did nothing wrong, so why should I have to do anything to get back what is rightfully mine? I even mused over demanding they pay interest on the money they “borrowed” from me for 24 hours, but to be honest, I got tired of the whole damn thing and just wanted to end it quickly and painlessly.
But. The rep they sent today was a total fucking tool. First of all, he didn’t even apologize for the shit they put me through. Second, he sneered at me when he said my first name, as if it was a piece of foreign shit sullying the inside of his mouth. If you know me, you will be proud to hear that I didn’t strangle him on the spot. No, I was determined to get through this shit and forget about it as quickly as possible. However, bankboy slipped up – he didn’t check my ID and just asked me to sign a receipt. I took out a pen and pretended to read it over during which time he laid a cash envelope on the table. I counted the cash (all 25,000 was there), slipped it in my wallet, and stood up to leave.
As I exited the office, bankboy yells, “Yoshida – wait, you gotta sign this receipt!”
So now it’s Yoshida, eh? What happened to “Jasuchin,” you little bitch? I reply, “Is it gonna be a problem if I don’t? Will you be inconvenienced?”
“Yes, it will be an inconvenience!” he says.
“Good, now you’ll know how inconvenienced I felt yesterday” is the line I was waiting to drop all day, and now that I’ve used it to full effect, the girls eating lunch behind the counter are quietly cheering me on.
I walk out of the office and down the hall, and this is where the story takes a turn because – you guessed it – bankboy isn’t ready to let the matter drop. No, he decides it’s time for physical confrontation. He lets out a kiai, grabs my shoulder from behind, then gets in front of me, blocking my path with his body and grabbing the front of my work uniform. Then, he is grabbing for air and grabbing the wall, because somehow my body remembered how to be a defensive lineman after all these years and sent him flying without slowing down for even a second.
I did not look back.
It will be interesting to see if they come after me in some way – through my company or the union, or even the authorities (there’s my hard-wired paranoia circuit kicking in). But I won’t lose any sleep over it. Stupid fucks.
UPDATE: They DID come after me. Surprise, surprise. Luckily, my company LOVES me and stood behind me all the way. A couple of my supervisors came to see me and were as apologetic as the bank shoud have been. I explained the matter in detail and finally decided to sign the receipt (which the supervisors were passed from the bank) because it would have inconvenienced my company, who as far as I’m concerned is a completely innocent and unrelated party in this matter. However, I was adamant about having the bankboy reprimanded for being unapologetic and more importantly, physically assaulting me, and the supervisors promised to get on the bank’s ass about it for me. So… Closure. Sweet, sweet closure.
I FOUGHT THE LAW AND THE LAW GOT BODY-CHECKED.

During lunch break I went to one of the ATMs next to our company cafeteria and tried to withdraw 25,000 yen. The transaction went smoothly until the very last step – my bank card and the receipt came out of the machine, but when the cash drawer opened, the machine suddenly seized up with squeaking cacophony of bill-shredding grinds and the drawer slammed shut, leaving me empty-handed. The revolving status indicator spun sickeningly for a brief instant and finally landed on OUT OF ORDER. I glanced at my relection on the two-way glass panel from which I was doubtlessly being recorded and saw my jaw drop in a classic “WTF?” reaction.
I consciously shook off my surprise and picked up the service phone adjacent to the ATM. Twenty rings later, a sweet voice answered. The following conversation ensued:
“Hello, this is Roukin ATM Service Center”
“Hi, your ATM just died before spitting out my 25,000 yen and I’m on my lunchbreak…”
“Name, please”
(pause) “Justin Yoshida”
“OK, Yoshida-sama, please give me a number where we can contact you.”
“Say what?”
“Your phone number”
“Why the hell do you need my phone number? Just send someone out to give me my money.”
“That’s not the way it works – just go about your business and someone will be sent out to fix the machine later, after which somebody from the sales department will call about returning your cash. They will be calling you as soon as possible.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? I’m holding a receipt that says you paid me 25,000 yen which I NEVER RECEIVED and as far as I know is just stuck in the cash drawer and you think I’m gonna fucking WALK AWAY FROM THE MACHINE BECAUSE SOMEONE ON THE PHONE SAID IT WAS OK? You could be in Lagos for all I know! NOW SEND SOMEONE TO FIX THE FUCKING MACHINE AND GIVE ME MY MONEY!”
“Sir, all of repairmen are out at lunch righ-”
“DAMMIT! I’m on MY fucking lunchbreak, too! And I know this may be hard to comprehend, but you might consider the reason I needed some of that money was to buy LUNCH!”
“I’m terribly sorry sir, but standard procedure requires me to inform you that repair personnel will be sent as soon as possible and that a representative from sales will be in touch with you as soon as possible.”
“Now that you’ve mentioned it twice, just exactly when is ‘as soon as possible?'”
“Hmmm… Well, it will probably be sometime tomorrow.”
“MOTHERFUCKER SAY WHAT?”
“What, sir?”
“Now I’m fucking pissed – I want a repairman here right fucking NOW.”
“Sir, as I’ve stated before, standard procedure calls fo-”
“That’s it, I’m hanging up to go get a hammer.”
Instead, I hung around out of sight of the cameras (in retrospect, why?). The repairman showed up in five minutes. I felt sorry for the guy because he had a grain of rice hanging off his chin and really must have been called off lunch so I didn’t give him any shit. Plus, he was obviously a third party serviceman and not directly related to the stupid bank. He cleared the machine and called to confirm if he could hand me over the 25,000… At which point, the Bank from Hell decided to give me more shit and insist, again, even though the money was in my sight, that a sales rep would call me and they would handle it that way. I halfheartedly argued with the twats for a few minutes, but I really wasn’t getting anywhere… So I pulled the trump card.
I got a bank manager on the phone and started accusing them of racial discrimination, on the basis that their decision to wait a day before rectifying the situation was made only after they had asked my name and confirmed SOP for dealing with gaijin and couldn’t he make it easy on EVERYONE INVOLVED by doing the eight thing and authorizing the repairdude to hand me over the cash (that by the way I paid a nominal service charge to withdraw)?
Apparently not.
The manager said I’m going to have to go to the bank to get my cash, but not until after they find out what went wrong with the machine in the first place (like that’s my fucking problem).
Cunts.
So now I’m waiting for the call from the sales rep, who the manager has promised will call before the end of the day. They better not assign a newbie, because I swear on all that’s holy, I am going to make that motherfucker cry over the phone. Then if they really do force me to pick up the money at the bank, I’m going to…
– To Be Continued… –

The concert staff on Thursday were absolutely Gestapo about the “no recording” policy and screened for cameras, etc. at the door; they wouldn’t let people use their cellphones inside the hall (cameraphones) and admonished us even way up in the gallery seats for checking e-mails and such. Even though this is standard practice, I thought it was pretty wack since the concert kicked off late and the gap between the opening and main acts was so long (preventing Japanese from using their cell phones is like pulling cables to remove Neo from the Matrix). It made me happy to find out that my little bro managed to bring a camera in and snap off shots, possibly just out of spite for the rules (you gotta fight for your right…).

Overall, it was a good concert. Actually, since it may be their last gig here (there are rumours this is their last tour), and especially considering that we had free tickets, it was fairly awesome. Since it was a Wednesday night, the crowd was small, but it was good to see hardcore fans. Osaka-jo hall is an okay venue, acoustically, but considering the size of the crowd (1,500?) a better choice would have been, say, Mother’s Hall in Namba. There were some sound problems toward the end, but considering the Beasties’ varied set switching from hip hop to instrumental to guitar sound, it was understandable.
Opening act: Le Tigre. In my opinion, the Worst Opening Act for a Concert, Ever (second worst being a pop-locking mime act opening for the Cure many years ago). I know they are fairly popular right now in a pop chart flavor-of-the-month kinda way, so if you like them, sorry. I won’t even pass judgement on them from a musical aspect, but suffice to say they are not worthy of opening for the Beastie Boys. (One last thing about them – there are online reports that Le Tigre sounds like the B-52s. Get off the crack, people.)
The venue started with live video of some roadies pushing a crate toward the stage being projected against the main backdrop (the white square at the top of the photo). They stopped near the stairs to the stage and opened the crate to reveal… Mix Master Mike, who jumped out, vinyl in hand, got behind his turntables, and proceeded to rock the house all night.
He is definitely the favorite here in Japan, and for good reason – Japanese fans usually don’t know the names of the tracks, and most can’t understand the lyrics or references embedded within – but they all know the wizardry of Mikkusu Masuta Maiku. There are so many aspiring DJs/tablists in Japan (I even saw used 1100s on sale at a computer shop in Umeda yesterday), and they all know his name is earned. Among the other tweaks and tricks he put on display at the concert, I saw him bend a vinyl in half with both hands, throw it on the table, then bend the lip of it upward with his thumb, raising one side completely off the table as he scratched with it. Just fucking amazing and a complete joy to watch.
This is what I remember of the set:
All Lifestyles
Root Down
Sure Shot
Super Disco Breakin
Sabrosa
Pass The Mic
Gratitude
Ricky’s Theme
Lighten Up
Something’s Got To Give
Open Letter To NYC
Intergalactic
Right Now
Body Movin’
Three MCs And One DJ
Check It Out
So Whacha Want
Sabotage
There were others, and it was a longer set than I expected, maybe an hour and a half. I was happy. Thanks for the tickets, T.
UPDATE: Official photos

A very attractive…GIRLFRIEND I have. An attractive friend of the female persuasion is staying over as well. My girlfriend is reading as I write this over my shoulder. Fucking please, somebody help! Well, I guess I asked for it. Many beers. Fuck me. I’m a fucking idiot for even mentioning this shit.