Every time I pass this sign, I can’t help wondering what exactly a “fetish bar” is and what people do there. Can you order a Tom Collins with a stiletto-heeled kick in the nuts chaser? If you ask for a bottle of beer does the waitress ram it up your ass? Alas, I will never find out. My only fetish is for brainy geek chicks who wear wire rim glasses and can code in languages I’ve barely heard of.
Still no news to report from me. I work, I go home, lather, rinse, repeat. Next month, I turn 40 years old. It’s not fair. Not so long ago I was a teenager trying to grow a mustache in an attempt to look older. I can’t figure out what I did that was so horrible as to deserve this fate.
I don’t feel 40. I don’t think I look it either. People my age don’t look young anymore. They’re covered with wrinkles and cellulite and have specks of gray in their thinning hair. But at least they tend to have their stuff together. My stuff is lying in piles around the house. Am I allowed to have a middle aged crisis now? Because I think I’ve already starting having one. A very quiet one. Mostly. Until right now.
Changing the subject to the subject of this post, a bunch of bloggers who live in and around Tokyo meet at The Dubliners’ Irish Pub in Shibuya on the third Wednesday of every month at 7 pm. That’s tomorrow. I will be there, and I will drink (but not smoke) and probably moan a little about turning 40 because it stinks, although it’s not as bad as the alternative, which is dying.
And if anyone makes fun of me for getting old, I will beat them senseless with my stainless steel walker.
Thanks to a bout of nolo virus or salmonella or food poisoning I got from a plate of fried chicken about a week ago, I spent most of my winter vacation sleeping (and pooping), which provided the perfect opportunity to quit smoking for the 129th time.
So right after I post this message, I, for the first time in almost a year, will make the two-hour journey home without smoking the three ritual cigarettes I normally do. Nonsmokers won’t understand why this is such a big deal, but current and ex-smokers will. The cigarettes you associate with certain places and activities are the the most difficult ones to quit.
If I didn’t announce this publicly, I could easily picture myself buying a pack on the way home.
I’m turning into a workaholic hermit, it’s been 47 days since I last did anything social, and I finally got paid today. Anyone in Tokyo up for drinks tomorrow night (Friday)?
I wish I had something interesting or witty to say, but all I do these days is work, go home, tag base, then go to work again.
The Buddhist definition of true love, which to me sounds a lot like true friendship.
What I find interesting is what’s not on the list: passion, obsession, lust, obedience, dominance, jealousy…lots of things I’ve known people from all over the world define as true love (especially jealousy) but to me never seemed right.
And if you don’t believe it, that’s OK, because there is no dogma in Buddhism. There’s nothing that Buddha taught that you must believe or else be damned for all eternity. If it’s true for you, then it’s true.
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It sounds like there’s at least one policeman in Tokyo who wants to attribute as many crimes as possible to foreigners, according to a comment that was left on my blog a few days ago:
…several years ago we spotted a ‘Peeping Tom’ on our balcony watching my wife undress (on the 13th floor!) She said she had been followed home from the train a few times and felt like she was being watched in the past. I chased the guy down the street, but he got away. In my statement I told the police it was a Japanese man, but they said that was impossible – a Japanese man would NEVER do such a thing. They said he must have been Filippino. I told them I’d spent much time in the Philippines and the perv definately was not Filippino. The police then told me I probably couldn’t tell a Japanese man from a Korean, so they altered my official statement to say “he was an Asian man, possibly Korean.”
I don’t know why else he would claim there’s no such thing as a Japanese peeping tom. All he’d have to do is check their arrest records or go to any store that sells adult DVDs and see their collection of nozokiya videos. Maybe it was his first day on the job…
I deleted the last podcast because the HFJ editorial staff (my mother) thought I gave out far too much personal information. And I gotta do what my mother says. It’s an involuntary reaction.
BTW, I won’t be able to go to the video blogger event tomorrow night at the Pink Cow. My company is holding a going away party that night for a coworker who left the company at the end of last month. The nicest thing I can say about him leaving is that things won’t be the same without him.
Last night I spent way too much time putting together a wee video clip from my archive of old and unlabeled tapes. I threw it in the chumbucket because it’s more of a home video than something insightful about Japan. I don’t want to put too much stuff like that in the main feed because I think it might bore some people who for some incomprehensible reason aren’t as enamored with my kids as I am.
Every time I work on a video, I wonder how the pros do it for the evening news so quickly. Or how TV and movie editors manage to watch, edit and archive hours and hours of footage. Maybe they don’t watch over and over what they’re working on like I do.
Chumbucket access rules are to do one of the following:
Do one of the above, then e-mail me and I’ll give you the URL.
Why does every attention-whoring foreigner who stays more than a few months start calling himself “Tokyo” (yournamehere?) And why is it only guys? As far as I know, there’s only ever been a “Tokyo Rose” but never a “Tokyo Beth” or “Tokyo Christina.”
If anyone ever calls me “Tokyo Rich” I will kick their ass. You’ve seen me play Wii Boxing, so you know what kind of damage I’m capable of. You’ve been warned.
So, the subject of this post is TokyoCooney, a popular YouTube vlogger. I’ve only seen one of his videos so far, and it was only a few minutes ago. I might watch a few more.
On Oliver’s last night in Tokyo, he wanted to go to the Tokyo Comedy Store so we went, although I was skeptical that we’d witness anything actually funny, seeing as how Japan is as far from the English language comedy club circuit as you can get.
I was right. It was painfully, annoyingly, unbearably not funny. What was even worse was that people who were painfully, annoyingly, unbearably not funny were attempting improvisational comedy. Not surprisingly, it was a lot like watching people make complete asses of themselves on stage. When we could no longer take any more, Oliver and I paid the bill (over 10,000 yen for cover charge, a few beers and some meager finger food) then went to a convenience store and bought a bottle of whiskey to extricate ourselves from our lingering foul mood.
Perhaps you’ve noticed that I don’t normally complain about or insult people. But the no-talent hacks at the Tokyo Comedy Story really, really sucked. Neither of us could figure out why the audience was laughing at everything. It. Wasn’t. Funny.
The only exception was Kevin Cooney. He was genuinely funny and had an excellent stage presence. We quoted his jokes to each other as we passed the whiskey bottle between us. (Oliver drinks whiskey like a pussy, BTW. Can’t take a swig without scrunching up his face. Friggin’ lightweight.)
In summary, Tokyo Comedy Store: bad. Keven Cooney: good. Oliver: whiskey pussy.
