Japan - Dining

Eating in Japan is an experience. We were fortunate enough to have some very nice meals with people that we knew or sort-of knew in Japan. In most cases, they were very eager to please and proud of their cuisine to the point that they often would not even ask us what we wanted to eat and they would just order the most expensive thing on the menu. That turned out to not be so good all of the time.

My g/f is mostly a vegetarian – not for health reasons so much as for ethical reasons. There are certain things she pretty much will not eat and things like beef, pork, chicken, and even some fish isn’t on the menu if you can’t show that it came from an organic farm where the animals were raised and treated well. The Japanese aren’t exactly known for their ethical treatment of animals as they consume a lot of endangered species and have pretty much fished out their oceans. Even now, they are fighting with political groups that want to ban Bluefin Tuna because it is becoming endangered to the point of extinction.

We found that the Japanese diet, at least what you could see of it, was a pretty standard fare of fish / seafood with some type of rice or noodle (or both) and usually some type of soup that is made during the cooking process. There wasn’t a lot of variance in this like there is in the U.S. You could find an Italian restaurant here and there, and there were some fast food places like McDonalds, but for the most part the food was pretty much the same everywhere we went. For my g/f this made eating a somewhat daunting in difficult process. In some cases, she ended up eating things she wouldn’t normally eat either out of politeness or to put food in her stomach. Many a day or evening we tried to make mental notes of places that looked like they had something she could eat.

Surprisingly enough, we couldn’t find a lot of meals with a bunch of veggies. In the U.S. most Japanese meals have a bunch of veggies, but there it was mostly sushi-type stuff and not many veggies. The few times we got veggies she was pretty happy because that is the mainstay of her diet.

Me? I pretty much eat anything. I always find it interesting when people call me a picky eater because I pretty much don’t like foods with a lot of saucy type crap on them and I don’t care for beans or really bitter veggies. But let’s see you eat some of the things I ate in Japan and in other parts of the world…. So eating in Japan wasn’t hard for me even if it was a lot of the same types of food.

In Tokyo we had dinner with Mitsubishi. It was our first full day in Tokyo and thus our first real Japanese dinner. Mitsubishi took us to a really nice restaurant where we had a traditional shabu-shabu dish. Again, they didn’t really ask us what we wanted and only discussed what we were about to order when we asked. For this meal they served about 6 courses. The first course was an appetizer course consisting mostly of some type of sushi. My appetizer plate had whole, uncooked smelt on it (think sardines), some other forms of sushi that I couldn’t identify and a giant snail. I thought my g/f was going to lose it when one of the Mitsubishi guys politely offered his snail to her “Here, I’ve had this before…you should try.” This wasn’t like escargot where they cook it and sauté it in garlic and butter. It wasn’t raw and slimy, but it wasn’t cooked much either. She ate it and managed to choke it down with her beer.

While we were eating our appetizers the servants put a large pot of broth on the built-in cooking surface of the table. The women serving the food were all dressed in traditional kimonos and unlike American dinning they assist you through cooking the meal at the table. Then they brought out the huge plates of raw beef to cook in the now simmering broth on our table. I thought she was going to die. The beef is sliced very thin and you basically grab a piece with your chopsticks and stick it in the boiling water for a few moments before you pull it out, dip it in your bowl of light sauce / spices and then consume it.



It was a lot of meat, and she only ate about a slice of it. Now, while this was going on, the servants were stocking the broth with veggies, rice cakes, and other goodies. Our next course was the broth and veggies along with some small ramen type noodles. After we ate all of this a large bowl of soba noodles was brought out and we consumed that. Now that we were completely stuffed they brought out the desert, which consisted of fresh fruit that was delightful.

But things didn’t get a lot better. My g/f was pretty much starving the next morning and we were trying to avoid the $30 breakfast buffet. Here are some shots of the Denny’s menu that we hit in Tokyo. Note that most of the meals include a salad. This seemed to be typical of a Japanese breakfast though we didn’t see them eating salads at any other time of the day unless it was a seaweed salad or something other than lettuce.



I tried this breakfast and it was OK, except the bean-things. I’m not sure what they were for sure, but I’m not a big of beans anyway.



While I was wandering around on my own I found a little noodle house in a back alley somewhere and had this for about $9 USD….



Sorry the photo is blurry but I was trying to take it without the flash and without drawing too much attention to myself. I have no idea what I ordered because I couldn’t read the menu:



What I can tell you is that it was very tasty. The main bowl is some type of spicy soup with noodles and baby octopus in it. There were other things in there that I couldn’t identify so who knows what I ate? It was also served with rice, dumplings, what I think was pears and peaches, and some type of dried fruit like a date.

The following day one her dad’s good friend Mr. Nisho (sp?) or Nisho-san took us to the fish market which was a real culture shock to us.





He took us to a hole in the wall sushi place off the beaten path that was serving fresh sushi from the market. This place might have been 250 sq. feet. Maybe. As Americans we were pretty big compared to everyone else and we had to squeeze in at the sushi bar. We were literally shoulder to shoulder and our host ordered the most expensive thing on the menu which was a fairly varied and eclectic combination of sushi including at least the following: tuna, yellow tail or snapper, raw eel, raw shellfish, raw sea urchin (uni), octopus, and some soup.

I might have ordered something slightly different as I know I don’t like some of those things. For my g/f I would have ordered very specific things for her, but it was too late and would have been insulting. So we ate what was placed in front of us, and in a couple of cases we traded some things – like the uni, which I can’t stand. That was acceptable.

The Japanese eat very fast and they eat sushi with their fingers. Don’t expect to see a lot of chopstick usage at the sushi house. I was about ½-way through mine and our host was done while some other groups and come in, ate, and already left.

My g/f was really struggling so I gave her anything of mine that she liked and she drank the miso soup. Still it was a tough meal for her. Later she said she was tired of looking at eyeballs looking back at her and I said there weren’t any eyeballs, and she said “no, the pink thing had eyeballs.” “are you sure,” I asked. “I’m sure.”

The next day our friend Hisashi took us to an out-of-the-way restaurant in the Akihabara district of Tokyo. This is kind of the east side of Tokyo and has a ton of shopping and electronic stuff. He treated us to lunch at a 200 year old restaurant that as been run by the same family for generations. Not a 200 year old building. A 200 year old restaurant.

The only thing on the menu? Cooked eel. They serve it teriyaki style over a bed of rice with soup and pickled veggies. My g/f ate it and said it wasn’t that bad. I ate all of mine and thought it was delicious. If you have ever had cooked eel nagiri style (sushi) you have an idea of what we ate.

Everyone told us we had to try the crab once we got to Saporro as it was in season. I talked with the folks at the hotel and got a lead on some crab houses. We weren’t sure which one was the best one to go to so we asked the bar staff at the hotel bar. They didn’t speak English too well so it was a bit of a struggle to communicate with them, but they all unanimously picked the same place to eat so that is where we decided to go. It was one of the best meals we had on the trip. The crab was served sukiyaki style. This is very similar to the shabu-shabu style we had earlier.

We sat on the floor without shoes on and managed to place an order by pointing as nobody spoke any English at the restaurant. We finally got our order in and the girl asked for how many people and we said “two” holding our fingers up. “One?” she would ask with her finger up (not that one!)? No, no…”two.” “One?” “two! Two!” holding more fingers up. She finally said OK (I think) and was off. Later on we would realize why she kept asking us if it was for two.

The meal started with appetizer of crab tofu….



And then the appetizer continued with both cooked crab….



And then some raw crab. This was one of the few things I really didn’t like and only ate a little of it. My g/f couldn’t eat it at all after trying a tiny bite. I was kind and tried to warn her when I thought it was something she wouldn’t like, but she was still willing to try it.



BTW – these are single portions and we each had one…



Next was the main course of veggies, more crab, and soup….. you would simply add the veggies and crab to the soup dish and cook it for a bit before using a ladel and / or chopsticks to scoop it out and eat it.





The carnage…..(note that there was another course of stuffed crab somewhere in there).



And just when we thought we were done they whipped up a rice porridge so we then ate that..




…and then there was desert!!! I don’t think I could move after that. We finally realized why she kept asking if we wanted two instead of one.


Paying for the meal was funny because we simply had difficulty communicating with the waitress. She was trying to tell us there was only one place to pay, on the first floor, and we kept trying to give her money. We eventually figured it out. Of course, like a chip off the old block, I had my 10% off coupon and that was a good thing as the meal was roughly $70 ~ $80 / plate. Dad would be proud:



BTW – here are a couple of pics of the crabs in the atriums ponds / tanks:



And this isn’t a great pic, but if you let your eyeballs relax you can see the huge crab bastard in the corner of the tank. He had to be at least 18” or more across.



Fortunately, we also found a few Italian type places here and there and my g/f was able to find some food to eat:



In Niseko we ended up eating a lot of noodles from the quick-mart type store. We’d grab that, a bottle of cheap wine, and go back to our room to eat. It was a nice change from all the fish and stuff that we were getting everywhere else.

One of the other great meals we had was when our friend and her business associate Daisuke took us to a bar he would frequent. We had trouble finding bars. You just don’t see them there like you do in the U.S. Sure, there were plenty of places to go in and have a drink, but they were mostly restaurants. I found this odd because being in the big cities like Tokyo and Sapporo you would think bars would be everywhere, but they weren’t.

We asked Daisuke about this and he said he would take us to a bar upon our return trip to Tokyo. He picked us up at our hotel and we walked through some sketchy neighborhoods to arrive at a very tiny bar. This bar was normally closed on Sunday, but Daisuke told the bartender that we were important clients from the U.S. and that he wanted to impress us so the bartender opened the bar up just for us!! Try to find that in the U.S.!!

The bar was very tiny and packed full of stuff:



We saddled up to the bar and had introductions with the bartender who spoke no English. Daisuke translated everything for us. Here is a picture of us with Daisuke:



The bartender was a really nice guy and he was very proud to have us in his bar. He was a career bartender. None of this working his way through college crap. He had apprenticed under another guy who was noted as one of the first professional bartenders in Japan.

We discovered from talking to him that he’d been doing this a long, long, time and that Daisuke had been going there since he was 15, when his father took him. I asked if they had a lot of walk-in customers or more generally what was business like. I was told that this guy’s clientele were fairly specific and that if he didn’t know you he was likely to turn you away at the door. He said he would remember us, though, and we would always be welcome in his bar.

He made a very nice and very traditional meal for us:



Clock-wise from top-left: pickled veggies like a salad, pickled plumbs (very sweet), seaweed, chicken, egg-patty, ham, shrimp, raw scallop, raw whole squid, and an egg that had been pickled (?) in raw miso for a few days.

During the course of the meal he was vey attentive and seemed to appreciate watching us eat and asking us questions as we also asked him questions. He also made drinks non-stop for us but we never ordered them. He would just make something that inspired him from talking to us. Here is a picture of him with a painting that one of his customers did for him – he’s depicted in the painting.



Towards the end of our trip, while we were in Kyoto we found a few noodle houses that my g/f seemed to like so we hit them a couple of times:

Japan - Japanese Fashion

The Japanese are a lot more fashionable than we are. A lot of this stems from their culture, especially with regards to Japanese women. I wouldn’t go so far as to say they see women as a lesser class of people, but they definitely have a more subservient role in the Japanese culture. To this end, women tended to dress extremely feminine and the norm was some type of skirt (usually very short), leggings or nylons, some kind of fashion boot with high heels, and a dressy blouse / jacket combo. This was not an unusual in Japan…




Men were also more fashionable than here in the U.S. and we would tend to say they had the “metro” look, but somehow the Japanese men tend to pull it off without looking gay. In fact, I didn’t see hardly any flaming gay Japanese guys until we got to Kyoto.

One thing that men tended to wear more than women were shoes that were excessively long. Apparently there either was, or is, an Italian fashion trend to extend the length of the shoe slightly. In Japan, they took it to the next level and the shoe, or boot, might be at least a third again as long as it needed to be. This gave people’s feet a very awkward appearance and I was reminded of the images you see of court jester’s. We asked our friend Daisuke about it and he said he thought it looked pretty stupid.

On the flight over I teased my g/f when the female interpreter would come on and speak in a soothing Japanese voice – “Oh, that is really sexy” I’d tell her and she’d roll her eyes at me. When we got somewhere in Tokyo a good looking girl walked by us with an eye patch on her eye and I said “now that is really hot!” and of course my g/f said I was pretty much a sick bastard. Little did I know I was onto something and that is an actual Japanese fetish / sub-culture. Check this link out:
http://www.thethinkingblog.com/2007/08/latest-japanese-craze-bandage-fetish.html

I also saw a little old lady at one of the airports with an eye patch on, but I don’t think it had anything to do with the bandage fetish.

The other thing we noticed about the women that an extraordinarily large number of them were bowlegged, pigeon toed, knock kneed or some combination thereof. As it turns out this was another sub-culture fetish. The bowlegged chicks obviously had inherited this, but the huge amount of pigeon toed girls is apparently an affectation that is supposed to be appealing to Japanese men. Combine all that together and then throw a set of heels on them and you get a bunch of women that look like they have a lot of trouble walking with some kind of shuffling gate – we were reminded of the old practice of binding of the feet and wondered if this whole phenomenon was a throwback to this now illegal tradition.

And of course, you can’t forget the catholic inspired school girls uniforms that the Japanese chicks wear. Seems they were always either coming or going to school, 7-days a week and perhaps in shifts. I never quite figured it out. Here is a “stealth shot” at some of the kids as they were let out of school one afternoon….



And almost nobody wears sunglasses…..ever. We read somewhere that this is a holdover from the Yakuza. Some younger people would wear them, but you won’t see many people wearing sunglasses no matter how bright it is outside. No wonder they squint all the time!

Japan - Getting Around

Bicycles were everywhere and like most large cities most people walked or took the subways. Japan has an extensive subway and rail system which makes getting around fairly easy if you are willing to try to read the signs and make some sense of them. Most of them had an English translation so it isn't that bad.



And while we never truly experienced being shoved onto a train by one of the Pushers we did have to pack onto a few trains during busy periods and I thought I was going to die. It was very hot and very stuffy. No moving air and sometimes I didn’t have room to get my jacket off. Needless to say I would be sweating my balls off by the time we got to one of our stops.

At one point, we were trying to get to the Narita airport and our train ticket said we had reserved seating on the N’EX (Narita Express), but every train that came through pretty much looked like the video above – they weren’t being pushed onto the train, but several people had trouble squeezing on and “sucking it in” so the doors would close. I told my g/f “Fuck that, I’m going back up (street side) to find a bar if it’s like that.” Fortunately, the N’EX was really nice and not crowded.

One thing that was a tad confusing is that there are two primary rail systems – the subway and the JR trains. To take a step further, we picked up JR rail passes but were only permitted to use them on certain trains. You end up switching between the JR trains and the subways quite a bit even though they may go to the same locations. BTW – if you go to Japan you need to get your JR Rail Pass certificate in the U.S. before you go. They will not issue one to you once you are in Japan. Once there, you have to exchange the certificate for the pass. It’s not hard but again, you have to get the certificate before you go or you are screwed.

But it really wasn’t that bad once you got used to it. The most difficult part of it was getting used to how crowded it was. Even at non-peak times some of the places were just outright packed. We saw a few exasperated European or Western travelers when we had to go through Tokyo station near rush-hour. We had been traveling for a week at this point so we were used to it, but you could tell the noobs were having trouble dealing with it.

Oh! And don’t forget the stairs. If you are handi-crippled or a fat bastard you are going to have problems navigating the subways and rail systems. It’s not that they don’t have any provisions for handi-crippleds, but there aren’t many. You would have to go way out of your way to find an elevator. Mostly it’s stairs. Up the stairs, down the stairs, up the stairs…etc. In some cases you would go down the stairs, do a u-turn, and go up another flight of stairs (not kidding). I saw this one guy in Tokyo station carrying his luggage and his snowboard bag and he was stuck in a throng of people hiking stairs behind a little old lady. He couldn’t get out from behind her and he was obviously tired of hiking stairs with all of his stuff. I wanted to slap him on the back as I was passing him and say “Welcome to Japan!”

We read that you should travel light in Japan, and that was good advice. Most of the trains (subway, JR, etc.) and other forms of transportation do not have much space for baggage. If you can keep it down to about two small bags you’ll be fine. One problem with this is that you will run out of clean clothes. I only found ONE public Laundromat the entire time I was there. Even the hotels don’t have them, but you can pay a fortune for laundry service if you want it. My advice? Take some laundry soap and do your stuff in the hotel sink, then let it dry on the rack / line for a couple of days.

Japan - Temples, Shrines, and Gardens

We hit a few temples as well as a few shrines. I think the temples caught my eye more than the shrines did. We even took off our shoes and spent a few minutes in front of the alters. The places were very simple and elegant with the exception of the alters that were blinged out…. Bling! would have been proud. Sorry, no pics of the alters as we were not allowed to shoot in there. Keep in mind most of these places, like most of Japan, have burned down about 50 times with the last re-builds happening sometime in the last 200 years.






A bad ass dragon!



...and a little baby dragon



Check out this tree in front of one of the temples:






This temple was under construction and is covered by this awning:








I also have some shots of the Japanese garden which is a staple of any temple, shrine or palace. The gardens were very simple with only rock, trees, and waters. Large groups of blooming flowers is not part of the Japanese style.

Japan - An Assault on your Senses

One thing about being in Japan is that you are going to be assaulted by sounds and people. There are a lot of people in a very small space and everything is going to make some kind of noise. We couldn’t even figure out why all the things were making noise but it started driving us nuts.

You will hear things chiming for no apparent reason. Elevators, doors, taxicabs, trains, busses, and even toilets would talk to you and then start beeping or chiming in some way.
You will smell fish and other things that you are not used to smelling. You will be visually assaulted by flashing lights, whirling thingies on traffic signs, and stuff moving around. And it’s all constant and non-stop.


And they have barkers, as in a carnival barker. People are constantly trying to get you to come into their store or place of business by standing by the door and yelling something…constantly. The worst was at the snow festival in Sapporo where we walked between two isles of food vendors. I swear, I think there were six people simultaneously yelling at us and I just wanted to scream and tell them we’d buy everything if they just shut up.

If you walk in, or out, of any place of business be prepared to have everyone in the store simultaneously greet you or wish you well on your way out – Gozaimasu!!. It’s kind of like going to CiCi’s Pizza on steroids.


We decreed when we got home that we would have a few days of absolute silence. It’s amazing how much we missed that

Japan - Odds and Ends

One of the things we loved about Japan was the crazy signs. Sometimes we wanted to ask who they got to translate for them.

Yes, we tried some sweat. It wasn’t too bad. Kind of like a clear form of Gatorade.




Ever had “brend” coffee?



On the side of a water heater / kettle:



On the door of a public restroom – that had glass all around it and that you could see into!









Do you really want to shop here?







And our all-time favorite. This was in a menu at a noodle house:



And the Japanese have a huge sweet tooth. I’ve never been anywhere that I noticed so many chocolatiers, café’s and bakeries. And while they had some “low end” stuff like green tea, ginger, or even wasabi Kit-Kats most of the sweets were high-end gourmet type stuff.

This is a terrible photo, but it’s one of the chocolate shops in the Ginza district of Tokyo. Note the lighting, woodwork, and money that was put into this place and this was not unusual. Don’t go in there expecting to buy a $5 box of chocolates either. You might spend $5 on a piece of chocolate.



And these places were all over the place!! Department stores, airports, subways, you name it. All in all, I originally estimated an average of 1.5 chocolate shops per block in Tokyo. I now think that figure was too low.
I asked one guy why there were so many sweets and he said that the Japanese like to drink really strong green tea with the sweets so the tastes offset each other. I tried the tea and couldn’t drink it, but I don’t like tea. My g/f tried it and didn’t like it and she likes green tea. She said it tasted like “grass.” I thought she said it tasted like “ass” but as far I was concerned it was the same thing.





We also tried our hand at Pachinko, which is very big in Japan. It’s the equivalent of a Vegas slot machine and the places that have them are large and very noisy and crowded. We quickly found out that we sucked at it and decided we were better off trying out other things.



Other oddities…

Giant golden sperm:



Seriously, WTF?



Air fresheners?



And we never figured this one out even though it was quite popular:



A very frustrating Japanese keyboard…





And of course, Japanese money (not to scale):




What else…

The crows were huge and laughed at you with a “HA! HA!” type call instead of a “craw! Craw!” type call. I guess it’s the way they do it in Japan.

We only saw one begger in the entire two weeks we were there even though we saw plenty of poor or homeless people.

Cell phone charms were all the rage. People would be carrying $300 tiny little cell phones and have 5lbs of crap hanging off of them.

Japan - Would I go Back?

Absolutely!! I loved Japan and would love to go back some day. I would do a few things differently, though.

For starters, I would take some cooler clothes so I wouldn’t be roasting whenever I was inside a building or on a train. I’d also spend more time in a ski area like Niseko and I would definitely spend a few more days in Kyoto. Tokyo? Not so much, though I’d want to visit with the people we met. And I’d try to spend just a little less time traveling once I got in the country.

I’d also like to see Japan in the spring as my friend’s photos all show it is quite beautiful with everything in bloom. I’ve heard to avoid it in the summer, though, as it can get quite warm and humid. I couldn’t imagine being stuck on a train with no air and my face pressed to the glass after sweating to death top-side.

It’s good to be back in the U.S.

Japan - Day 1

Well, it's day 1 and we haven't left the airport yet. My g/f made it over at roughly 2:00am and by the time we finished packing and checking that we had everything it was right at 3:00am....that gave us about 1.5hrs to get some sleep before we had to get up.

No problems getting here, and we pretty much waltzed right through security. Now it's almost 7:00am and I am dead tired, but at least I am chilling in the Admiral's club. The chick at the counter asked if it was too early for bar coupons. "Um...no, it's not too early."

We have a flight to LA and then a slight layover before the long flight to Tokyo. I'll write more when I can, but I am not taking a laptop so I am not sure when I'll be back online. For most of you, this will seem quite normal (me not writing for a while).

Japanese Language Guide?

I am heading to Japan tomorrow. I’ve got almost everything wrapped up. We found a great travel agent that deals extensively with travel in Japan. Though there has been a bit of a language barrier they’ve been very helpful.

They even sent this cool language / translation guide:




Thank god they sent it, after reading it I am sure I’ll have absolutely NO problem while I am there….

Imagine Me Naked....

…going through airport security screening. Well, it isn’t going to happen. I know, I know…the government says that people polled indicated that they really don’t mind going through the naked scanners. Personally, I think that is a bunch of bull. Who did the survey? Besides, most of you…that’s right, you…are fucking sheep that will do whatever you are told to do.
Baaah….baaah…yes I’ll give up my rights
Baaaah…..baaaah…. search my bag and ask for my receipt it’s OK
….baaahh….baaahhh….let the government save me even if it’s unconstitutional….
Baaah…..baaah…. sure I’ll strip naked to get on airplane even if I don’t have to so much as pass thought a metal detector to ride a train or a bus.

What a crock of shit. And what really pissess me off is that it’s still the illusion of security. Think I am kidding? Think again! Many employees of the airport or third party companies like Sky Chefs don’t have to go through this crap.

Everyone is saying we need to do something!!! But we DID do something. We’ve made it harder and harder to get on airplanes. We have no-fly lists, and all kinds of stuff….but it was all ignored when homie got on the plane with his home made shoe bomb. The issue isn’t doing MORE, it’s simply following EXISTING policies!

People have asked me if I’d be willing to go through one of those things. Off the top of my head? Absolutely fucking not. I’ll take a pat down, and if they want to feel my junk then I’m just not going to fly.

Imagine what would happen if at even ONE airport everyone refused to go through this bullshit. You’d have cancelled and delayed flights. And it would quickly cripple the airline industry. They’d lighten up and be more sensible, but will it happen? No. Why? I already said it…your sheep! We’ve already shown that we like to be morons that can’t group together and fight for decent service from people.

Mandatory arbitration in contracts? Wouldn’t be a problem if we’d stop doing business with companies that demand it. Idiots that complain about Wal-Mart stopping them six and seven times to see their receipt? Hey fucktard! Go somewhere else!!

And this? Well, I’m quite sure I’ll be sitting next to someone on a flight bound for somewhere with them being pissed off because they had to go through one of those see-all scanners. Me? I’ll sit back, put on my iPod, smile to myself and try to adjust myself from the pat-down.

Japan Bitches!

…at least that is how it looks in my outlook calendar right now. In just a couple of weeks I’ll be in Japan on a well deserved, and very long, vacation. I’m pretty excited about it and a little nervous. It’s not like going to Europe where our own culture is largely derived from European culture. No, this should be completely alien.

Fortunately, we have several contacts over there and at least one of us has made many trips. That means that I’ll be with some people for a few days that know how to get around and understand the culture a bit.

I plan on getting some snowboarding in near Tokyo and at Sapporo, but we aren’t making this a ski vacation. We want to check out some of the more local cultures, towns and temples.

Right now, we are still trying to lay out or itinerary and who we will be traveling with and where. There are some logistical issues traveling in Japan – like how much luggage you can carry as apparently the trains don’t have much room for it. I think I can get down to one small bad provided I can find some place to wash clothes. We haven’t even decided if we will take a laptop, but I’m sure one would be beneficial.

My x-g/f used to tell me that I never liked to go anywhere and do anything. I always found this confusing since I could recall many times I tried to get her to go out and do things with me, but she wouldn’t ever go. Most of the times, she would go off on her own or with her friends.

Since we split up, I’ve been to Canada, Costa Rica, Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, Lichtenstein, and Jamaica. Inside the U.S. I’ve been all over the place as well…sometimes for work, and sometimes for vacation. So was it me, or was it the girl….

Mark McGwire is Also an Idiot!

I read in the paper the other day that he is sorry. Really really sorry that he used steroids. He was crying on the phone to the McPaper (USA Today) reporter….boo-fucking-hoo.

Give me a break. He’s not sorry he used steroids. He used them for YEARS and he became very successful because of them. He made MILLIONS of dollars because of them. He set world records and got endorsements and fans loved him.

He’s not sorry because of that. He’s sorry he got caught…..