Congratulations, Kristy and Terry.
--9:01 AM, EDT, Stroudsburg, PA, so much mine
The blessed day arrived, and I may have been a trifle worse for wear in the morning. As a result, I took it very easy during the time leading up to the wedding. I got up, got some breakfast, came back to the room, and relaxed. I figured I could navigate to the restaurant where the wedding would be, since I had been all over the area in the last couple of days, and I maps.google.com'd it, as well. I had a minor freakout over whether I had brought suitable clothes and toiletries, but it turned out I had it all under control. My suit was drycleaned, and I had enough personal cleanliness items between what I brought and what was provided with the hotel room. (I think I researched the current status of the "you're not allowed to bring shampoo on planes since it might be fruit-flavored liquid explosives" TSA rule, but ended up just buying a TSA-approved bag of toiletries. It was clear for their convenience, and nothing was so big as to engender the fear that I would try to blow up my plane with a can of Axe Body Spray.)
I headed out with plenty of time to get to the restaurant. Oh, wait, remember it's me we're talking about. In the time I thought it would take me to get there (and get there early) I had only reached what turned out to be halfway there. I kept going, since I had had good luck navigating up till then, and still had some confidence. Ten minutes later I was close to being late, and began to freak out.
And this is why you should visit Japan - I picked a person at random on the street and asked for help in my terrible, broken tourist Japanese. She didn't speak any English, but still helped me find my way with gestures and as much Japanese as I could fathom. This stranger saved my ass. Japan is a country full of strangers of this sort. Go visit, now.
So, I rush the rest of the way there -- I was going the right way, but hadn't counted on the distance -- and get there on time, if barely. The Waffle King tells me later that he was starting to worry when I showed, so that's a relief. And, I wasn't even the latest one there. The Australian delegation arrived after we were seated but before the proceedings.
Michael asked me how I was that morning, and I admitted to some corporeal weakness. They claimed none of their own, which I believe, though it makes me hate and fear them. I made introductions around the table, since I'd met half of them the night before and half that day: Akira, Kim, Darcy (though I think I called him Percy once or twice before he slapped it out of me) and Derek were the locals, folks Chris had met through his gig teaching English. I think they represented Japan, Australia, New Zealand and England. I was pleased Chris was in there on behalf of the States, though he might not enjoy that role.
The event was like so: we were at an Italian restaurant, taking up most of their first floor (and using the second for logistical purposes). Chris and Mizuki had a table to themselves up at the front of the joint, and the table in front of them seated their families. Two tables to their left were friends and Mizuki's extended family, and a table to the right was the English Speaking Ghetto Where We Put Whitey. You must forgive me, I've forgotten its proper name in Japanese. It sounds less oppressive in that tongue.
We were all seated and had some socializing, and then the Waffle King descended the stairs, resplendent in a wholly white tuxedo with some heft to it. Chris is a slight figure, and the tux bulked him out like a Kevlar vest. He looked pimp. However, his good looks were completely eclipsed, as were all other things in the room, when Mizuki entered the room in her gorgeous white dress and veil. Mizuki is already fairly adorable, and in her dress she was aesthetically devastating.
As far as ceremony went, it was direct and moving. There was no officiant, which I admire and respect. Chris proposed to Mizuki in front of everyone, and then they exchanged rings. Some goofy looking Westerner brought them the rings, and when Chris reminded him to actually open the box so he could get at the rings, he did. Stupid Americans. Mizuki's brother-in-law Ken did the announcing and did so bilingually, and Akira raised the first toast to the newlyweds. That was it.
Couture note: the couple changed from total killer formalwear into slightly less murderous formalwear midway through the evening, presumably for relaxation purposes. They still looked better than anyone.
Dinner was great. It was a little too rich for my poor ignorant tastes, but everything was tasty, and on at least one occasion I was able to make Amaya happy with my selective tastes. ("Are you not eating your pudding?" "No, would you like it?" [tortured pause] "Yes.")
The party broke up slowly, and we went out for more party, which is Japanese party style. That party was drinking and good times in increasingly-disheveled formal wear, and eventually featured karaoke ("it's not a Japanese wedding until..."). Mizuki, a former vocalist, blew the doors off the faux-English pub we drank in with her powers of song. I hit a few notes* myself, both there and the place we went afterward. Party after party after party is a good way to handle things, I think.
The honeymooners left after a good while, and despite my attempts to attract Mizuki's friend's attention with my karaoke skills, I headed home alone. Akira and I split a cab this time, to my feet's relief. I didn't mind walking around Osaka trashed at three in the morning, but I also didn't mind catching a lift once in a while.
--6:01 PM, EDT, Philadelphia, PA, and they like to roam the land
*: Johnny Mercer, "Moon River," Green Day, "Welcome to Paradise," Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash, "Jackson," Puffy Ami Yumi, "Teen Titans Go!" Dream Academy, "Life in A Northern Town"
Note that photographs from my trip to Japan are up on my Facebook page. This announcement is probably unnecessary.
--11:16 AM, EDT, Philadelphia, PA, I got this crazy teacher and he wears dark glasses
So, after dinner, we meet up with more of the wedding guests. They all happen to be from Australia. We all get alcohol and find a spot to loiter, riverside. Rather than drink beer (which you might know I don't traditionally elect), I found a hip flask of Suntory Whiskey, and thinking only of Bill Murray in Lost in Translation, I got a little wrecked.
We had a good time. Penny Arcade references were made, photographs taken, Japanese kids in clubgear were observed and rated for style and difficulty. However, before long, the wedding couple had visiting family members to tend to, wedding obligations to meet, and split. Chris's local friends either had work in the AM, or just had places to be. That left me and these Australians.
"We have a lot more drinking to do. You in?"
I mean, really, that's not fair. It's like a national challenge. I had to hope that my Irish heritage could support me through my more recent infrequent drinking schedule. It more or less did.
The Australians were: Amaya, a young lady with two-toned hair and a mad plan to purchase a computer for the wedding couple -- I plan I both endorsed and in which I became a willing accomplice; the Fiend*, whose beard was taller than most of the local girls and who wore a black jacket with the Sacred Chao painted on the back in gold; and Michael, a reserved sort who seemed like he had resigned himself to the fate of being forced to spend time with Amaya and the Fiend. This was hopefully to his ultimate benefit, as he and Amaya were an item.
So, I've been drinking whiskey, and Michael demanded food, which was passed by approbation. We went to a 280, which is a term for a restaurant where everything costs 280 yen, so you can just order tapas style and keep ordering if the first round doesn't do the trick. Amaya and Michael were ordering something called Calpiss (I could be mispronouncing or mispelling that) that came in a variety of fruit flavors, so I hopped on that train. Here's a spoiler: that is an alcoholic drink, and not the fruit juice I had perhaps anticipated. We had many rounds of this, with gyoza and some other things that the Fiend hoarded, snapping at any prying fingers with his chopsticks. I was able to show off some of my Nihongo by ordering "three of that" and "water," though the similarity of the terms (mitsu and omizu) made Amaya think I was ordering the other one.
This 280 gave way to another 280, where there was a Dharma Initiative sign on the bathroom. I forget whether I kept up with the Calpiss uninterrupted or switched back to the whiskey at some point. I also demonstrated Cousin Drew's lesson about sounding like an indignant old Japanese man in order to get service. Instead of saying "Sumimasen" like a polite person who is trying to get the attention of a waitress, you just yell "SUMIMA--", letting the last syllables trip and fall, while gesticulating rudely. When I showed off this talent, in a restaurant, mind you, a waitress ran to take my order. Well, duh. I felt badly about this summons and ordered another round.
Michael asked me to please explain why the Americans used proof when the rest of the world used alcohol content. I was unable to answer him sufficiently, so he instructed me to tell the rest of the country: stop it. There you have it, America. You want to keep using proof, please take it up with Australia (or their representative).
I was informed that I was not like Americans as they had come to expect. I did not know if this meant I was failing in some way, and accepted it at face value. I also finished the whiskey in my bag.
End of evening / early morning -- I'm trashed, walking about a mile home in dress shoes, delighted with the evening I'd had. Japanese cuisine, the Waffle King, new folks to hang with, and those adorable Ozzie accents. I don't think that being drunk made me pick the accent up. I think.
--3:45 PM, EDT, Philadelphia, PA, she says she'd like to meet a boy who looks like Elvis
*: No, really.
So, I'm in Osaka. I'm there visiting the Waffle King, and yet I haven't been in The Presence yet. You'd think that would start to wear on a body, two days into being in his domain. Well, it had. I stuck near my computer (most reliable source of communication since my phone died and I hadn't sussed out the use of the hotel phone yet) and arranged to meet that night, after figuring out how I'd failed to meet the night before.
Went out to Osaka Castle (Osakajo) to get my touristy, samurai-interested, historical nerd fix in. Osaka Castle was the site of the ascendance of the Tokugawa Shogunate, where Tokugawa smacked down the prior rulers of Nippon and said, "nice place, think I'll keep it." It was a just a few blocks from my hotel, so I walked over and wandered for a few hours.
It's set up with the moats and protective groundworks in place. Apparently while setting up the area around the castle for renovation they discovered walls and moats which they subsequently unearthed and restored. This may have happened a few times, since as late as the 1970s more defensive structures were discovered and returned to seventeenth century appearance. It's really great, visually, and all the walls and moats make for a good walking tour of a lot of different views of buildings, shrines, and the surrounding cityscape.
The castle itself is eight floors high, on top of the existing mound of the castle, and is surrounded by wooded parkland. As a result, the view from the top is fantastic, even though the castle is technically not as tall as a lot of the tall buildings.
I tried some "local food." "Local food" turned out to be rice and barbecued chicken, so it really wasn't much of a stretch. Probably a good thing, because I'm a big picky jerk when it comes to food. Please note this sentence, as it will be relevant later, vis a vis octopus.
Picked up some souvenirs for the poor Americans, trapped in their Western Hemisphere, and got some more walking around done. Just walking around was great. I would walk through six blocks of standard commercial / residential Osaka and then find myself in a block completely occupied by a stone and wood Shinto shrine. Since I'm entirely ignorant of the Shinto religion, I'm glad there were other tourists there with cameras to reassure me that I had not missed a sign somewhere condemning me to prison for seven years for violating the holy precincts of the temple. The architecture and design were amazing. I wish I knew more about such things, but as is, I enjoy the hell out of it.
That night the King and his betrothed wrapped up affairs of state and came to find me, since I had proven myself incapable of finding them. They were well, and looking good -- it had been a few months since I visited them in upstate New York. We grabbed some alcohol and went to a nearby city park. CULTURAL NOTE: this does not make me a scumbag. Public consumption of alcohol is ordinary and acceptable, even to the extent of having beer and cocktails available in vending machine. So there.
After catching up till late that night, I sent the royal couple on their way. I went up to get some sleep and managed to find anime about Japanese girls playing baseball. This is a topic near and dear to my heart, as some know. I was really starting to enjoy Osaka.
The next day, I napped and walked some more. My hotel had sheets on the bed, but not a sheet for sleeping under. The only bedding was a thick comforter, which didn't kill me despite the summer heat. I did have to moderate how much I did, and at what part of the day, but that's just reasonable. Morning's good for wandering around, and midday for siesta. It was just awfully warm for a little nap. That evening, we met up "by the giant crab" near Shinseibashi, which was shockingly not specific enough, and I almost failed to find everyone again.
I did eventually find my dinner party. They were Chris, the Waffle King, Mizuki, the Waffle Intended, the Barbaro family (the House of Waffle), and a coworker of Chris's (and his adorable girlfriend). I want to say Chris's friend's name was Aubrey, but waiting a month to write about things is a bad practice and should be avoided. I do recall that he and his girl were moving to the Phillipines soon, and decided my life was essentially boring, because I was not moving from one Pacific island nation to another one with a gorgeous woman. I may be using the wrong metric here, but it made good sense at the time.
We hit a buffet fondue-style place, with the open oil cookers and the batter and food on sticks. I tried to moderate my intake, which I advocate at a buffet, but this proved ill-advised when everyone else finished up and was ready to leave. However, while there, I did try takoyaki. That is to say, octopus hush puppies. Maybe "hush octopi"? I doubt it. Anyway, they were pretty good. I would have stayed on and drank and eaten and eyed up the cute waitress further, but the Barbaro family was heading back to the hotel for some rest, and the rest of us had to engage in more public intoxication.
We were joined after dinner by a number of Australians. More on them later.
I don't know if this whole post will post, so I'm going to end here and resume after the break.
--1:14 PM, EDT, Philadelphia, I don't know why but I can't type lately
Right, there's a bit of a delay in getting more posted here, specifically about the trip to the Mysterious East. Sorry. I'm doing a bunch of stuff, some of it legitimate and time-consuming and some of it just goofing off, but it all takes valuable time.
While we wait for my brain to formulate what I want to talk about next in re: Osaka, there's the following:
1) Reading. Waiting for my copy of Norwegian Wood by Murakami from Amazon. Been waiting a while. Next time I will probably just buy a copy from an actual bookstore, because this waiting is a pain in the ass. I have to be able to read the whole thing and discuss it by the end of the month, because if you call it a "book club" people will hang out and discuss books with you. I never knew. I thought I just had to inconvenience them and talk about books whether they liked it or not. Last month: The Stuff of Thought by Steven Pinker. Month prior: Nation by Terry Pratchett. Please let me know what I should be reading, and what you are reading.
B) Projects. Bookshelves; ghetto, Ikea and otherwise. (Is IKEA an acronym or always capitalized for some reason? Am I confusing it with Project MK-ULTRA or something? Or is it just corporate culture of some kind?) Warhammer 40K starter set armies. Paint and glue and small detail work. Development of film library (I lost a lot of good movies when I switched from VHS to DVD.)
iii) Greed. So, I'm almost all paid up on my bills from the trip to Japan. I have replenished my savings account and accumulating liquid assets. I find myself in a position to make some purchases. New computer? I could just switch to using the laptop full time, since it has muy macho RAM and performance. I like having a PC and a Mac available, though. Is it worth the expenditure? And can I please not have to use Vista, ever? If I wait for Windows 7, I have to wait until October or something. And I know I said the next video game I buy will probably be StarCraft 2 (release date: "when we say, so stop bothering us, nerds" --Blizzard), but I would like to get a hold of Dawn of War 2 for the low-simmering Warhammer 40k yen with which I find myself. Also, I would like a bunch of Kevin Smith movies, the Venture Brothers season 3 and all the Boondocks seasons. I may do some price checking on these avaricious desires and then not actually get any of them. Because, you know, what if the world explodes and I need that money for buying a new world?
Right? This guy knows.
--11:31 AM, Philadelphia, PA, under the water to carry the water
I apologize if this is a bit scattery, but I was a bit corporeally disrupted by the whole readjustment to Eastern Daylight Time. Try to keep up, and if you can't, chalk it up to Magical Realism.
So, a few weeks back, I said to myself, "Self, what's America got to offer that Japan can't offer faster and with more crazy futurism?" Before I could respond with something about the majestic grandeur of the Dakotas or the amazing landscapes of the Southwest, I was already on the R2 train to the airport at 5:45 AM on a Sunday.
It's like this: Hatboro to PHL, PHL to Minneapolis-St. Paul, MSP to Tokyo Narita, Tokyo to Osaka, the JR train (Kansai Int'l Line) to Namba Station in Osaka. The trip there was pretty great. I was nervous about being in a plane for 13 hours (the Minneapolis-Tokyo segment) but that was no sweat. The worst part of this travel was Tokyo. When we landed, we weren't allowed to get off the aircraft until the Japanese Bureau of Health, Welfare, Bureaucrats and Bureaucracy - Needless Activities Division - had reviewed the health questionnaires we all filled out and looked at us with a IR camera designed to find people who had fevers. Swine flu will not find a foothold in the Land of the Rising Red Tape, damn it! By the time I was off the airplane, my connection to Osaka had up and left, and the next flight wouldn't get me to Osaka any sooner than 11:35 PM local time. The Waffle King and his Waffle Fiancee awaited me at the airport, but my phone did not work and the Waffle Phone was temporarily unavailable, so we missed one another for my first night in.
So, there I am, in a strange place, don't speak the language -- though, I tried to learn enough to politely explain that I was a stupid American and regretted my shortcomings -- in a train station fifteen minutes after all the trains stopped running. Using a combination of my awful Japanese ("excuse me, I don't understand Japanese, do you know Tokui (a city block that I misunderstood as a street") and my iPod (thanks Jen!) I was able to get some help from some train station employees. A short taxi (takshi) ride got me to my hotel. Japanese use of space was immediately apparent in my hotel room, which was a rectangular room with two beds, a desk and a small table. The bathroom was of a type that you might find onboard a ship or in a trailer. Yet I am reliably informed that this room was larger than some apartments.
I slept and got up around 6 AM local, which surprised me. I had no jet lag going from EDT to JST. I just got up and went walking. I cased my neighborhood, which was fairly commercial, but still had a lot of space for residences. I was near a fairly major road, which was in turn near a major city street. I was a few blocks from elevated highways in two directions. I was also very close to a number of subway stops.
Osaka is like this all over, it seems. The subway map is more complicated than NYC public transit maps I've seen. Neighborhoods have lines, the city has lines, there are (what looked to me like) privately owned railways that cover various routes alongside one another. It's all city, too -- the heavily populated parts of Japan are just city, through and through. It's not like a northeastern American city with suburbs, areas of greater or lesser development, tall office buildings here and low green neighborhoods there; a 30 minute train ride from Osaka to Kyoto was almost entirely a view of cityscapes. (Naturally, some areas are taller than others, but you'd be hard pressed to find undeveloped country anywhere in the vicinity. Build up when you can't build out.)
I walked like crazy this trip. Even the first day, which was just familiarizing myself with the area, getting some yen from an ATM, and getting food, I may have walked four, maybe six miles. It was great. I did, unfortunately, destroy the pair of dress shoes I brought - next time, I'll find room for a pair of sneakers in my bag. (I only brought one bag. I think that's how one should travel if at all possible.)
Osaka is a cool town. People were friendly and forgiving about my lack of faculty in Nihongo. I got good use out of sumimasen, which can mean "I'm sorry," "excuse me" or "I beg your pardon." It is also suitable for use as "Hey! You there!" particularly if one uses an indignant old man's intonation. Osaka has shrines and parks and old stone markers just hanging around. I like a town like that, where on this block you can have a place selling hot dogs and the next block is the site of a culturally relevant historic event.
I covered a lot of ground the first day, and the Waffle King got in touch and invited me out to dine with his family (also visiting from the States). Sadly, I failed my Wits + International Travel roll, and went to the subway station at Shinseibashi instead of the covered pedestrian way at Shinseibashi. Missed them entirely. After waiting a bit, I went home. Walked both ways, so I ended my evening soaking my feet and polishing off the airplane snacks I hoarded from my trip. Here's my travel tip: if you want to meet up with someone and don't know where you're going, have a phone or some other way of getting in touch with them. It took me another two days before I bought a phone card, because I'm stupid.
More soon.
--2:43 PM, EDT, Philadelphia, PA, they'll call me Freedom
Happy birthday, Carrie.
--1:55 AM, EDT, Hatboro, NC, all these buildings and mountains
Okay, I need about four or five posts to catch up on things I've said or wanted to get posted to this page. I'll start with the hard one.
My grandfather was my grandmother's second husband. He was not related by blood to me. I didn't know this fact for about half of my life, the formative half. So it's really not essential.
My grandfather was a sailor, and it is from him and my grandmother that I get my periodic desire to get the hell off land once in a while. He and I sailed his sloop from Maryland to New Jersey via the Intercoastal Waterway when I was young. It was great - my grandmom drove their car from marina to marina while we sailed, staying in a different place each night and seeing lots of the Atlantic coast and interior bodies of water.
He was a veteran of World War II and a Seabee. A Seabee is a sailor of the Navy's Construction Battalion, the guys who make beach landings possible. They were surveyors, construction workers, manual laborers. The motto of the Seabees is "Can Do" and my grandfather exemplified that motto. While perhaps not meeting certain modern safety standards (he once insulated the electrical wiring of our home with newspaper), he was amazingly capable and effective.
He was well-read. My first exposure to the Britannica was at his home, and it was a for-real Britannica - two complete volumes, one of brief articles and one of in-depth treatises. He helped me get interested in mythology with books and particularly with a National Geographic fold-out map of ancient and legendary Greece. He could accurately recite poetry which he had been obliged to learn in grade school, some forty years on.
He was not well in his advanced age. My grandmother predeceased him by some fifteen years, and in that time he lost some of his faculties. I prefer to remember him fixing truck engines by beating the hell out of them with a wrench, and I will do so. (True story. Ask me about it some time.)
We'll memorialize him on Saturday, and sometime soon after I'll start a project that will require me to work on things with my hands, something I'm not naturally good at. But I'm going to do it, and I'm going to finish it, and I'm going to think of my grandfather, who would have done it better, and probably in a way that no one would have necessarily thought of.
--1:39 AM, EDT, Hatboro, PA, by the shores of Gitche Gumee, on the shining Big Sea Water
Ongoing vital signs: check out okay. Geographical location: Hatboro, Pennsylvania, United States. Temporal designate: Current era, Eastern Daylight Time, after dark.
Basically, I'm not dead. More on this later.
--10:10 PM, EDT, Hatboro, PA, last night on the Mass Pike
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