8/31/05 – Wednesday 7:47 AM

Well I need to catch up on my writing. I just woke up, and I’m fairly proud of myself because getting up after 5AM when you just land in Japan is somewhat rare because of the complete upside down time zone that’s either 13 or 14 hours ahead. Day becomes night and night becomes day. I attribute my ability to sleep last night to the fact that I’ve been completely wearing my system down since I got here.

I spent a total of 11 hours yesterday at Expo waiting in lines and looking at pavilions. Then, after being completely exhausted, I went out to Karaoke with Nicole and met some of her friends. We had a blast. Karen and Dave were there who I met Monday night after arriving and John had taken me over to meet up with Nicole at Karen’s house, where we proceeded to drink cheap sake out of a four liter plastic jug with Asahi beer chasers. Sake looks like vodka, but it’s really only rice wine and it’s entirely possible to sip a large amount out of a cup. This resulted in me getting nice and tipsy and afflicted with a throat burned raw from all the harshness of the cheap sake. All day yesterday it hurt every time I drank a water or anything else. I’m seriously worried that I might be developing a cold, because it’s now the 2nd day and my throat still bothers me.

Ok, so back to karaoke. John and James had to go to a party for their group of pavilion workers only, so after some difficult miscommunications (I have no cell phone – very difficult to coordinate meeting up with friends without one), I managed to make it to the subway station outside the karaoke bar. There I met Nicole’s friend Rob, an interesting guy in his early 20’s about the same build and height as me and that apparently likes to drink whisky. Nicole and Rob proceeded to drink an entire bottle of 953 yen whisky while we sat on the steps outside to the station waiting for the rest of the group to show up. I bought a bottle of café latte to shake off the jet lag and spiked it with a shot of whisky. This was about all I could manage as far as alcohol was concerned. When it hurts to swallow, the last thing you want is pure 40 proof alcohol on your throat. Plus if I’m getting a cold I don’t want to share a community bottle of anything.

While waiting and drinking outside the station, a whole bunch of people ended up dropping by. Alex Scharf from my time at JCMU showed up randomly on his way home from actually climbing Mt. Fuji. He was with some Japanese girl I didn’t know and didn’t get introduced to. Not surprisingly, after just climbing Mt. Fuji he wasn’t up for a night of karaoke. I’ll have to catch up with him later.

We also met up with Nicole’s roommate Cindy (“Sin” for short) after Rob drunkenly called her and convinced her to drag herself out of bed to come join us. Apparently she had done what I wanted to do yesterday afternoon – nap for three hours. Well anyway I’m getting tired of writing about this, so let’s just skip right to the end. We ended up taking over the karaoke bar with about 12 people and it ended with lots of drinking cheap whisky and coke. Some of the highlight songs: bing crosby’s White Christmas sung by Nathanial (whom I embarassingly and mistakenly called Jeremiah earlier in the night – hey, it’s some kind of really long formal Biblical name with lots of syllables), and I sang renditions of Simple Minds’ Don’t you forget about me and Puddle of Mudd’s Blurry. A bunch of Japanese songs were put on by the Japanese girls who were with us whom I don’t actually know, so that was not fun for me but at least I got to practice my reading comprehension and sing in Japanese a little. We also sang wham’s “last christmas”. Christmas songs were real popular last night, as were slow Japanese love songs (in Japanese).

We ended the night singing Coldplay “yellow” and being drowned out by Rob, who was thoroughly drunk at that point. He was getting real friendly with everyone, I’m sure having to do with the half liter of whisky, and had taken to sing duets real loudly with everyone he could for the last hour of the night. All in all it was a blast. I felt bad for Karen who had to front a bunch of money for people when they left early because they were too drunk and for various other reasons, like they were tired. It seems to always be the case that people show up for Karaoke and don’t pay. I never figured that out, but I think it has to do with the student poverty mentality that a lot of people living I Japan seem to have. I don’t know why, because they get a $60 per day per diem, which should be more than enough to live on.

So that was yesterday. Today I wanted to sleep in and go to Expo late. It rained all day yesterday, so this time I’m bringing an umbrella. Then I won’t have to steal/ borrow one from the American Pavilion again. Now that I’m all rested, I think I’ll lesiurly get up and shower. I need to be nicer on my body so this developing cold goes away. Plus my back is still killing me from walking and standing for 11 hours yesterday. I had my new orthotics in my shoes that’s supposed to fix the pain that developed in my foot last fall when I played football with the Sunday football league. Anyway, my feet didn’t hurt too much except for my heels, but man I must be doing something wrong because my lower back is in excruciating pain whenever I use those muscles. It’s probably from slouching so much and leaning against walls. You try standing for 11 hours. The human body is not meant for it.
- posted by freestyle @ 7:47 AM

 
8/28/05 – 1:12 PM PST

So I’m sitting in the Portland airport nearing the end of my 5 hour layover here after leaving Seattle this morning. I left the house at 5:15 and said goodbye to my dog for probably the last time. She turns 15 in a week or so, but is in pretty bad shape now. She is basically deaf and mostly blind, but the spirit seems to have gone out of her except for just a few minutes each day where she obviously steels herself against pain and shows some of her former vigor. It’s sad for me because she seemed to ignore me as much as possible on the brief 3 days I spent in Seattle with her and my family.

My parents were still in bed at 5:15 in the morning, and I whispered goodbye and my Dad whispered bye. My mom apparently was still asleep despite all the ruckus of me getting ready to leave, and she continued snoring.

So that was my morning. Now it’s time to board.
- posted by freestyle @ 1:12 PM

 
I'm going back to Japan tomorrow to visit with people I know and see World Expo 2005. I'll try and post a bit...
- posted by freestyle @ 10:48 AM