I just typed the search string “nagoya late night stupid drunk motherfuckers” into the Yahoo Japan search box on a whim, to find a good pub out here tonight. Quite unexpectedly, this blog was listed 5th. Damn, I feel like I own this town already. Later: Why is Nagoya food so salty? It’s like a monkey got loose with a salt shaker in the kitchen or something. Bad, bad monkey.

My day started at home on monster island (Awajishima). Woke up at nine. Picked up my new cellphone at the nearby AU shop with Nam (will write review later – it’s a Sony/Ericsson A1402S, an upgrade from my trusty old Hitachi). Went to the high-speed boat terminal down the street and caught the hydrofoil to KIX. Met up with none other than deep thinking shitblogger extraordinaire, Kevin Kim, on a day trip from Big Hominid’s Hairy Chasms in the “sea of Korean tourists lugging many tape-patched boxes around” scenario alluded to in my previous post (link). Hopped on the very Nemo-esque Nankai rapi:t train to downtown Osaka. Feeling hungry, we…

If you are picking up someone with the last name “Lee” whose flight from Korea disembarks at the exact same time as three others, it might not be terribly helpful to hold up a sign with only “Mr. Lee” written on it. I’m partly saying this for the benefit of the tour guide who did so and got bumrushed by fifty different Lees today, although he eventually learned from his mistake and scribbled in a first name and flight number as well.

I was shootin’ the shit with a salesman from TUV (a safety standards certification company) a few years back and found out he was a long time student at a local Shorinji Kenpo (Japanese shorin = Chinese shaolin) dojo. We went out drinking soon after. A few too many beers and hours of talking about favorite kung fu movies and martial arts/fighting in general led to a sloppy session of chop-socky in the parking lot behind the bar. It was just good-natured fun and a testament to how well we got along, but ended with a bloody nose (his) and torn suit pants (mine) because, like I said, we were…

An absolute lifesaver. I must be spraying an equivalent of a full shot of the cherry-flavored stuff every night. It’s the only thing stopping me from scratching the inside of my throat with a wire coat hanger. I don’t take it to work with me because I’m afraid I’d accidentally leave it there, and then I’d have to go a whole night – or in the case of today, a whole weekend without it. I already suffer (and make those around me suffer) from apnea, so without my trusty blood red Chloraseptic spray, my girlfriend would probably smother me with a pillow halfway through the night. On a related note,…

Golden Week is what they call spring break in Japan. Why it’s golden is something I can’t quite recall, but it may have something to do with the millions and millions of people on vacation at the same time and highway rest stops overflowing with urine. Yesterday I went to pick up my girlfriend at Kansai International Airport. Driving from Nara to Osaka usually takes 30 minutes or so, but it took around an hour this time. Halfway there, I got a call from her saying that the flight was cancelled and she would instead fly in the next day (today, in around 21 hours). Since I was already halfway…

Last night, I ordered tickets to the Nagoya Sumo Tournament in July for myself and 11 other lucky peeps (You can order Sumo tickets for any of the Nihon Sumo Kyokai-sanctioned tournaments through English language websites by following the links on the official page. For unsanctioned matches, visit any university judo dorm after the mat-burned, caulifower-eared judo-ka are done with their circle jerks and herd into the baths for communal back rubs.). It’s gonna be an OG-style Cosmic Buddha roadtrip! I think the last time we did one of these was back in college! Characteristically, we are still lacking a good bass player. No worries, though, we always find someone…