I’m in Fort Worth, TX, now. Of course I miss Tokyo. So many little things. The United States is dirty, rude, ugly, and uncool. I’ll adjust.
Monthly Archive for July, 2008
I am sitting in the plane waiting to take off and return to the States from Tokyo. The two months went by so fast.
What’s that strong smell of smoke around me, you ask? Well… Let’s just say I was in a coffee shop in Tokyo.
I take diphenhydramine hydrochloride on a fairly regular basis to help me sleep.
Last night, as I sat at my computer chatting with friends and browsing my feeds, I yawned and thought to myself, “Ah, yes, there it goes.”
Then, when I woke up this afternoon, I noticed that my pills were still sitting next to the computer and that I hadn’t actually taken them at all.
That’s it.
(Here’s a post about Obecalp.)
I may only be interested in embodied experiences because they make a good story. Still searching for words to describe this feeling I had.
Shinjuku, Philosophy, Homeless, and Josh
In the early evening I met up with Josh at Shinjuku station. We got Starbucks and sat on the Southern Terrace. I talked to him about humans as nodal points in networks, and experiencing both direct and indirect cultural meta-levels of pleasure, such as when we enjoy the actual act of reading a book but also enjoy the fact or idea that we are reading a book.
While we were there a homeless man came and asked us for money in Japanese. Josh gave him some, and a while later he came back to thank Josh after, we presumed, he’d had his meal.
Taku and Izakaya
Josh’s friend Taku met up with us and we went to the Toho-Kenbun-Roku izayaka. Taku explained that this is the Japanese title of Marco Polo’s book, The Travels of Marco Polo.
They served us this lotus root that had a nice sauce but had the texture of and tasted like raw potatoes.
I told Taku that I was thinking about pursuing suicide as a future project, and he told me that many websites said to use charcoal. He also said that there are different “suicide fads” — the latest is to mix detergent with some other agent, that releases a deadly gas. Some people even put up signs to warn others of the gas. The Chuo line is also apparently a popular site for suicides.
Chris and Karaoke
Josh’s other friend Chris showed up, and we went to karaoke.
I was glad to have someone (Chris) with similar musical tastes in the room, though it did get quite smokey at times. I think we sang some Cure and Erasure “duets.” It would have been nice if there’d been some Joy Division.
Got My Phone
When I went to the Softbank store in Roppongi they told me they had the phones but were out of sim cards, so I decided to go to the Softbank in Shibuya instead.
Everything went fine, but, sadly, they were out of red phones.
Wandering Around Shibuya
I had dinner at KFC then strolled around. I saw the Hyakkendana area with all the love hotels. I also saw that they were opening a new Krispy Kreme.
Links
- This hard times for the rich article in the New York Times shows how the upper class is affected by the downturn in the economy.
- I haven’t read it yet, but Vanity Fair has this interesting looking “How the Web Was Won” article.
UltraSuperTube at Super-Deluxe
I went back to Super-Deluxe for this UltraSuperTube event, where they play YouTube videos throughout the night. I enjoyed it, but they didn’t play any of the videos that I submitted.
I talked to a technology recruiter and his British friend. The recruiter told me that the armpit hair fetish is gone, as a result of some changes in the censorship policy (when I first came to Japan in 2002 I remember seeing an erotic magazine that just had a woman holding up her arm so you could see her shaved armpit, with a close-up). I talked to his friend about old British music, and he told me to check out this movie Quadrophenia, about mod culture, and this band The Cardiacs. (Movie looks interesting, but the music ain’t for me.)
I also met a woman who lives in East Asia (can’t remember which country) and was in town for a gem and mineral fair. She goes all over the world. She spent a long time waiting for her friends to show up, and then they didn’t quite seem to understand the whole UltraSuperTube event when they finally did.
Minutiae
- I got the wiki up and running on my new domain, JasonCRomero.com. Now to set up the blog and the forums.
- Saw Teru from Glay in an ad on the subway to get tested for HIV.
- I saw a man on the subway in a gray suit digging in the pocket of his Moleskine.
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