After my extensive hiatus, I would not be surprised to find that any semblance of a readership I had managed to accumulate since the beginning of this blog has moved on to more regular, consistent publications.  I can scarcely blame anyone for this, as I imagine it’s kind of an unspoken requirement that bloggers actually, y’know, BLOG more than once a decade.  For my severe tardiness, I can only offer my apologies and following picture of a kitten in a cup:

If you're still mad at me after viewing this, you're not human.

Seriously though, those of you that moved on probably had the right idea.  Recently I've discovered that both my written and spoken English have deteriorated to the point of near unintelligibility (evidenced clearly by the fact that I just made up the word unintelligibility.) I’ve realized that, when thinking, my thoughts now take the form of some strange and frightening amalgamation of Japanese and English, frequently punctuated by guttural grunts and onomatopoeic sounds that only make sense to me.   When I get back to the States, I’m sure I’m going to have to go through the same English rehabilitation program attended by Sylvester Stallone and Ozzy.

But I suppose you guys don’t really want to hear about that. You probably want to hear about, y’know, actual stuff.  As a dear Austrian nun-turned nanny-turned-family band leader once told me, the beginning is a very good place to start.  I’ll take her advice for the moment, but being the rebel and nonconformist that I am, afterwards I think I’m going to hop to the middle for a bit, back to the beginning, then bits of the end, then the late middle, flashback to the beginning, and then the actual end.  I attended the Christopher Nolan school of story construction, after all.

Although the fastest and coolest way to Tokyo would have been by bullet train, tickets for that are absurdly expensive, and I have better things to spend my money on.  Like Magic cards, video games, and a big ol’ box of Pikachu shaped chocolates.  Don’t judge me.  Anyway, that’s why my group chose to take the night bus, which was significantly cheaper.  Although I wish I could talk about how, since its Japan, we rode a Cat Bus all the way to Tokyo and had a fantastic and magical journey, that unfortunately was not the case.  No, if anything this was really more of a Dog Bus.  I mean we’ve all heard that “Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.” And it was definitely too dark to read on the bus. (To the three of you who got the reference, give yourselves a pat on the back. I mean that literally. No one ever actually gives themselves a pat on the back, and I’m sick of it.)

Soo…. Yeah. Night bus.  Really cramped.  My legs were screaming in agony the entire time because there was absolutely no space to put them, so I contorted myself into some strange position that probably was the single cause of my moderately unpleasant neck pain the entire trip, and crammed my legs in between me and the seat in front of me. This was excruciating at first, but soon the restricted blood flow to my legs caused them to go numb, and then I was able to maintain that position indefinitely. 

Typical Japanese couple. Or something like that.

The bus departed at about 11:40PM from Kyoto Station and arrived at Tokyo Station around 6:15AM the following morning.  My pals and I wandered around Tokyo station in a state of some deliria for some indeterminate amount of time, and looking back, I’m surprised that, what with my dull, leaden eyes, slackened jaw, pale complexion, and lurching movement pattern, I wasn’t mistaken for a zombie and subsequently kneecapped.  Lucky me!

I’ll fastforward a bit past the boring process of finding our hostel, because I realize now that if I kept up the current pace, I’d make it through the events of the first day in Tokyo sometime around November. 

Alright, so the first sight-seeing place on the itinerary was a Meiji shrine whose name I can’t quite remember.

 It may have just been Meiji shrine.  Iunno.  I didn’t find anything particularly impressive about the shrine itself (I’m probably spoiled by the wealth of super-special-awesome shrines in Kyoto), but was remarkable about the trip was that we happened to be in time to witness and old fashioned Japanese wedding ceremony. Typically only fairly wealthy and important people still have weddings like this, so it was kind of a special deal. Observe:

Whole bunch o' wine barrels. Not for the wedding, just there because.

After spending a little bit more time observing the wedding, we decided to head to Harajuku explore the area.  There were quite a few interesting stores scattered about, and there also seemed to be some sort of protest going on. I’m not completely certain how to embed videos, but here’s one I took of the protest:

Boosh! See that vehicle get nailed by the bus at the end? Had I recorded longer, you would have seen no expressions of frustration or anger expressed by either of the drivers.  Neither gave any indication whatsoever that anything remotely unpleasant had transpired. Why? Because Japan.

The highlight of the trip to Harajuku was when I got “discovered.” Yep, that’s right. There I was, typical, mild mannered Andrew, and a fellow came up off the street, told me I was really cool-looking, and asked whether or not I wanted to become a model. I was a little bit wary, and not quite sure how to respond, so I just explained to him that I wasn’t from Tokyo, merely visiting, and wouldn’t be able to contact him later.  As if my ego really needed any more flattery, 15 minutes later another guy from a different company approached me and told me much the same thing.  This time, though, I was a little bit more prepared.  I was still wary, and didn’t want to be pestered by anyone, so I gave him a fake email address and name, but took his card in case I wanted to contact him. He’ll be rather disappointed when he tries to contact Bruce Wayne at bwayne69@yahoo.com! In hindsight though, this deception was probably the right idea. Glancing over his business card now, I don’t think I’d want any part of a company called “Little Friends Management.”

Alright, that’s all I have time for today, but I’ll follow up as soon as possible with the following days trip to Shibuya! In the meantime, please mull over the following:

 I feel obligated to apologize for the tardiness of this post.  Last week I had 2 tests and 3 quizzes to contend with, and although that’s roughly .000014% of my daily Physics workload last semester, it somehow still managed to eat up a good portion of my time.

Alright, now let’s see if I can figure out where exactly I left off, and what the best strategy is for ACTUALLY getting you guys up to speed with my life. I suppose I can no longer delay some form of exposition regarding my daily life, even though I feel like that’s significantly less entertaining than the grandiose tales of sightseeing and adventure I’ve regaled you with so far.  Know what I mean? It’s like the obligatory middle boring stuff that you have to wade through to find the gems of amusement.  In other words, it’s like every part Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones that ISN’T a lightsaber fight. (BA-dunch!)

I think I’ll start off by mindlessly hurling some of the pictures up that I took of my room after several weeks of Mom’s demands.  Although, these were the last pictures taken by her camera before it inexplicably descended into some strange limbo dimension where it refuses to turn on but continues to make noises after I’ve attempted to turn it off. Y’know, those errhh-rrchhH-EERRCH noises that cameras make from time to time when the lens doesn’t know what the crap it’s supposed to be doing, and instead contents itself with sounding like a broken wind-up toy.

My goal is to leave this room with more bears than it started with.

Ahh, what better way to sleep at night than content with the knowledge that Ol’ Pooh is ever vigilant, protecting me from all manner of yokai, tengu, and tanuki. 

My personal favorite feature of the room. (Oh, and that robe-lookin thing that I’m wearing over my clothes is called a hanken. It’s what Japanese people wear about the house so they can justify keeping it as close to absolute zero as possible. My okaasan MADE it for me!)

The location where I spend the regrettable 5 or so hours a day that I can’t be DOING things.  Still comfy though. Oh, and there’s an electric blanket that has proved greatly beneficial to my survival as well.  (Except that I wake up every morning and for a brief second think I’ve urinated all over myself because my legs sweat so much. Sorry if that grossed you out or anything, but if it did… you’re reading the wrong blog.)

Clearly the most thrilling part of the room.  Nice up-to-date globe in the corner too! (Prussia is still a country, right guys? :P)

 Where I am currently sitting.  It took a second glance at this photo to make me realize that the yellow dog beast next to albino Pooh appears to be saluting me.  I approve, dog beast.  I approve.

Okay, now that that’s taken care of, I’m going to try to speed you through some more entertaining events.  I’m gonna up the pace a little bit in the interest of actually getting you guys up to date, which means more pictures and less words. Bear with me!

Went out for sushi with some folks last Friday.  Wait, crap, I think that was actually two weeks ago.  In any case, sushi happened, and it was on a Friday.

Automatic tea dispensers and disembodied hands at every table!

Daisuke and Brett, the former seemingly waiting for sushi to appear in his mouth of its own accord.

Don’t like raw fish? That’s fine, you can have BACON SUSHI instead.  

The whole gang.  By the way, the guy at the table across from us had a pile of plates greater than all of ours combined. Some people really chow down.

The following day I made my second sojourn to Osaka.  The early part of the day was spent in an amazing used book, manga, game and movie store.  I, however, was not about to go home without first visiting the Pokemon Center in Umeda.  Getting there was a bit of an adventure, but I took plenty of photographic evidence to document.

Upon arrival at the Pokemon Center, we found it absolutely PACKED. There were probably upwards of 400 people filling every nook and cranny of the store.  We had apparently arrived on some special day where they were giving out these free keychains (which believe it or not actually looked really cool) but the line for them did not seem to have any discernible end. I would have liked to get one to prove I was there on that day, but decided it wasn’t worth waiting so long that afterwards I’d probably head directly to a nursing home.

An inevitable fixture of my future home.

Unfortunately I’m blocking your view of an elderly woman playing Pokemon on 2 DS systems simultaneously.  She was probably the coolest person there, except for perhaps the mother with one child clutching her coat, one toddler held in the crook of her arm, and the lot of them playing Pokemon on 3 separate DSs with their spare hands.  If only I had had the gumption to blatantly and unabashedly take a picture.

And, of course, no sightseeing trip would be complete without some weird Japanese signs.

Who doesn’t love here?

So there you have it.  I won’t lie to you and tell you you’re up to date, but I think some amount of time lag is necessary for me to get my thoughts in order anyway.  I had to skip some events too, but like I said before, this just gives you more incentive to talk to me after I get back.  I’ll now leave you with this…

Whatever it actually is, I’m regretting my decision NOT to purchase it.