Sutras of a Winesoaked Buddha

Dispatches from the Rucksack Revolution

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Revisionist Living

A piece of paper came across my desk.. It had my name on it and a bunch of empty boxes. Ok. Just ask the Oracle (Kaneko-sensei) what to do.

“Kaneko-sensei, what am I supposed to do with this?’”
“Write about what you did during spring break. It’s for the PTA newsletter.”
“…in Japanese?”
“…of course, do you need help?”
“nah.. I can do it.”

Unwilling to rub in the fact that I did a fantastic tour down to Kyushu and partied my brains out with wine glasses full of tequila for a week while the rest of the teachers dragged ass a work, I wrote the following in hiragana and really easy kanji.

“During spring break I saw the 14th day of the Sumo tournament in Osaka. I saw many famous sumo. I enjoyed it.”

Naturally and patronizingly, everyone that saw me write these pitiful sentences hemmed and hawed over how good my Japanese was and how willing they were for me to marry into their families. Hurdle cleared. I was ready for my ticker tape parade though the streets of Kamiichi. Surely I’d be carried in a royal cart by the strongest men in town with only my arm hanging out of the luxurious curtains, like the rich guy in, “The Laorax”, actually more like Aladdin. Yeah just like Aladdin…with elephants and the whole troupe of…

The eacher in charge of PTA newsletter politely interrupted my Sunshine daydream: “Sumimasen, Max-san. Write Kimiichi town Yasumi please.” Please write about what you did in Kamiichi during break.

As the words, “but” threatened to escape, I kept my face (a Thai skill) and erased my previous entry and rewrote,

“Because there was no snow, I rode my bike in Kamiichi town and ate ramen and fish. I enjoyed it.”

Which is just stupid.


Revisionism is truly a hallmark of Japanese culture. The reality must fit in with the myth. I’m reading a book about wartime Emperor Hirohito, and it’s full of these examples. If he fucked up and (sort of accidentally) invaded Manchuria it was due to the ‘poisonous advise of his advisors’.

As the author shows, Hirohito was basically in near total control of every that happened in the lead up to the war and the invasion of Continental Asia, but was able to effectively whitewash the reality to avoid embarrassing the throne. Hirohito wore pure white silk (symbolic of purity in Shinto) when he “confessed” his role in the pre-war planning.

My guess is that he wasn’t really riding his bike around Kamiichi eating ramen and fish when the bombs started falling.

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

What's Going On? nothing

We talked about the war. Well not The The war (grandpa's), or The war (dad's) but our the war. The Iraq war. Before you know it, Im up on stage singin the beautiful antiwar anthem What's Goin On? And Im just diggin' and swawin' like down stud's dream (hustler supreme); the words are really getting to me and it..... just.....it just... makes me wanna halla, throw up both my hands... the Koda Kimi look-alike bar maid's heart is melting away the mascara layers, and she (too) thinks I'm terrific.. She absentmindedly traces the rope burns that won't heal. I really wanna be nice to her cause she deserves it. Kameda, noticing, tells me to go and talk to her, but I cant even tell her what foods I like, or when my birthday is, let alone be real real nice to her (nihongo de!!), plus “I, I I I I didn't have any money." And I tell him (Kameda) this fact (no$) and Kameda just whacks me on the head and tells me, "Ass~! How do you know she isn't out for love?" [last line stolen from Jack Kerouacs Beat Generation] And I just sit there like a jerk [also stolen same source, actually] and I feel bad, but He's right. And I know it and... wait but I'm on stage!! "We don't need to escalate, ya know, war is not the answer." The karaoke Golden Gate graphics on the screen can't break the spell-- cause Subarashi wonderful is on the tips of everyone's tongue. It’s the baggy construction boys at the bar, backs to me, who have no time! No time to decode foreign goofily goop regardless !REGARDLESS! of its meaning (which was, in fact, for only love can conquer hate). They have extra bridges and reinforced castles to span and they smug each other, for all the suitman in the room, they are the progressmen. Peacefully pushing forward. Even during the long du-du-du section (my high notes unable to...I dunno heighten.... as a high note should, but it passes in this land sooo un-high [and full of mayonnaise]). The whole bar is movin and its just real soulful even though I’m only feelin like I can sing! I can't sing. Why is this happening!! How is a white boy (with glasses) soulin' out, "What’s going on across this land," without being laughed off stage with a hook! JapanJake was right! Bluish-aura Jake (the snake) tellin’ me that, if you look like you’re diggin' it, then they'll dig it too but I've lost the point I was tryin' to make! See what I’m talkin’ about!! You get so siiiide tracked. And then the punctuation just slides out namely [shift+1] and you’re screamin' and just annoyin' and your use of commas is all out of wack and you put some in,,,,,,, ad hoc just for good measure [idea of comma use sort of stolen from Jack Kerouac's American Haiku].... But the song is gone.... and the gummy berry juice is gone...and the war is still on... and nothin's changed.

Off The Road

“This is real interesting stuff, I really like your work...uh…hhmmm….”
“But…?”
“…like I said this is great, but you’re just not Lonely Planet material. Thank you for your time.”
“How do Souls taste?”

So it’s obvious I’m no good at travel writing. Jack’s ‘On the Road’ was kind of boring too I’ll have you remember. I mean, what kind of comments can you really make to a travel blog (sounds like fun) anyway? I still want to bring out to you the feel of the trip. I’m in a bind here. You are bored. Emily actually told me that she’s no longer going to read my blog. Ouch. I’m a teacher, I know every variety of bored from the palm-to-chin fromp to the Hasidic head fade. Whenever my student’s feathery Japanese eyes start to turndown their lights down low anda pull down dey window curtains, I just yell: “Let’s PLAY A GAME” and they perk up ready for action.

so I want to play a game with you that we played extensively on our trip


From the people that brought you the Asian, White, or Jewish Venn Diagram its:

Is Falconry Sexy?

Materials: computer, Internet, imagination.
Number of Participants: any
English skills needed: typing, nouns, gerunds, and infinitives
Purpose: get people laid
Rules: we all know this game. It’s a Cosmo, Playboy standard: Is something sexy, not sexy?

Not sexy

Falconry,
Watching someone eat okonoiyaki,
Mustaches (on women),
A pouch of fat that actually goes over and droops from the belt,
Origami obsession (a guy who shows you his crane collection won't be getting any.....unless he is a super hot nihon boy),
Playing chess with old people (could be sexy if you said it right)
Saying "didju know that....." -

Sexy

Lighting a girls cigarette in the right way - not sleazy,
Playing any musical instrument,
Motorbikes,
Yoga,
Reading on a park bench,
Speaking foreign languages,
A woman pouring something correctly

Thursday, April 06, 2006

Osaka Beatbox and the Great Okayama sleep in

Man I gotta get this tale a’ woven, the work-a-day world of suits and ceremony is starting to make me forget my vacation already. I’m sure it’ll all come back to me for the storytelling festival that is the Toyama-ken weekend.

Ok so in Osaka after going around the loop expressway several times, we found our hotel…and it had roller coaster. Nah… just kidding we stayed at the annex to the annex of the roller coaster hotel. The place itself was pretty mundane. Parking the car wasn’t.

So the hotel fella’ gave us a map that at first glace looked pretty easy to follow. Go under the tracks and turn left make a right, park the car, no problem. He failed to mention that we would have to go through Crackdown (kuraku taun) Osaka. Seriously when we crossed those tracks it was like walking into City of God; this place needed a Shinto-class cleansing. At about 10:30 at night, grimy homeless Japanese people (who didn’t look Japanese) were constructing cardboard forts. It was pretty bad. We ended up getting a little lost and had to turn around. As we did, we found ourselves right behind a parked small car full of people. Jake and I both recognized instantly that a drug deal was going down. So we free-based with them and had some peyote and a generally good time. According to the Hells Angels rulebook, because they gave us drugs, we let them have first go with our women. Then we parked the car.

Actually Osaka was really fun, we caught a good beat box show (Sara drunkenly thought it was orgasmic, but it was just reallly good) where I got a bit too drunk and waxed sentimental, Jake hit on girls, guys hit on Francie, and Sara just freebased a bit more.

Hangover and sleepy, we woke up late and hit up the 14th day of the Osaka Sumo Tournament. Seeing Sumo live is kinda hard to describe (especially with the sake flowing). It’s very ritualistic and formal, but it’s fucking amazing. The crowd is polite and somewhat muted unless the fight lasts for a while then they get really into it.. The final bout we saw was between the Mongolian yokozuna Asashoryu and Kotuoshu and was fairly anticlimactic… and I was pretty drunk. That night was a full on karaoke/genki drink (here to referred to as gummy berry juice) blowout that to be honest I don’t really remember too well. But it was pretty damn sweet.

After Osaka we cruised into the lazy little city of Okayama, had a pleasant bento and casually strolled around the town and castle grounds, later had a good South East Asian meal, and promptly fell asleep for about 14 hours.

In the morning we went to the 3rd most important garden in Japan, it was lovely, I believe we enjoyed, but I'll have to check that... But this was no time for idily hoofing like a goof, so we loaded up our trusty steed and headed south up and over the Honshu-Kyushu bridge.

Next up:

A Beer at the Pier-side Fukaoka Snowboard Park and Grovin' like Gen. Grant in Nagasaki.

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

A Journey to the South Part I: Greetings and Calculations

“Ok Max-sensei, please greet the readers”
“Good morning everybody.”
“Thus ends the greetings, Max-sensei please continue with the blog entry.”
“Ok, but it’s gunna be long.”

For about 130,000yen (US$ 1300) you can get lots of great stuff. You could buy a sweet computer, a huge tv, or a mound of coke and a classy hooker. Proving that I will never break out of my college mentality, I blew it all on coke and hookers (American joke). Actually I spent it on an epic spring break road trip down to Kyushu and have physically little to show for it but a 100-yen ninja cell phone charm, two boxes of cheap omiyagi, and a chinaman's tai chi suit. But the stories told, heard, mumbled, and made we're worth every penny.

Like a Japanese museum, I’ll give you the quantifiables first:

Days: 10
Kilometers: unknown
Principal Participants: Jake (dad), Sara Ray (aunt), Francie (drunken daughter), me (hero)
Craft: Jake's white 4-door generic Toyota
Tanks of gas: 5
average cost of take of gas: 5500yen (US$55)
Cities visited: Osaka, Okayama, Fukuoka, Nagasaki, Hiroshima
Cost of tolls on expressways paid for navigation errors: 2000yen (US$20)
Total days of rain: 1 (on drive home from Hiroshima to Toyama)
Numbers of times around Osaka loop: 3 maybe 4
Nuclear Bomb Memorials: 2
Girls that Jake hit on: unknown
Creepy internet friends met: 1
Number or working legs on Jake's chair in Fukuoka: 3
Francie's suitors: multiethnic
Best story told: Sara's by far
Gay bars stumbled into: .5
female to male to ratio at concert staging area in Hiroshima: 400:2
Things that went wrong:0

I’d like to start this yarn with, “on a warm summers evening on a train bound for nowhere,” but that’s not at all how it started. It was a warmish early spring afternoon in a car bound for Osaka. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I wasn’t out of school yet. With about 15 minutes until school ended, I loosened my tie and downloaded some good road music... shit. What the fuck. Closing!!! Cannot read!! My iPod crapped out on my and I lost all my music save some last minute Notorious BIG and 2pac’s Greatest hits. Right before a 10-day road trip…damn Ok so redo:

Things that went wrong: 1

So after a hilarious trip to the bank where I exchanged 25,000yen (USD$250) worth of spare change, picking up Sara, pissing off a hair salon, picking up Francie, and ceremonially opening up new air freshener (deaths head brand), we were on our way to our first of 5 cities: Osaka

On our approach to Osaka we listened to the 90’s Rap ballad, “Put it in your mouth,” and, other classics on Sara’s sleazy Source magazine mix. Sex talk began. Unrecountably hilarious stories ensued. Little did we know that such an explicit tone had been set for the next 9 days.

What would happen!

coming soon... Beatbox Boys of Osaka and the Great Okayama Sleep In