Day One

First, out of respect for the significance of this trip, I'll be breaking up the summary of where Im currently staying into several piecemeal posts. One for "The Locale", one for "The People", one for "The Field-Work", and so on as I see fit. This first post will be a brief summary of my first day on the farm.

6:00 AM

Ryo and I wake up and go to Taisho's house (Taisho means boss, and I wouldnt dare call him by his real name out of sheer respect) to walk his 8 hunting dogs. 8 divided by 2 people is 2.66 repeating, so that means we have to take more than one trip. I get to walk one dog, Ben, who also happens to be an androgynously-named female. Ryo tells me that once I prove myself I get to walk two dogs at a time. During the walk, we make sure each dog makes an unkou, and then we can go eat breakfast.

7:00 AM

Breakfast at Taisho's compound. Ryo goes over my daily duties and then promptly leaves for his part-time job.

8:00 AM

Armed with a Japanese version of a weedwacker, which looks like a regular one with a circular saw attached to the end instead of a plastic cord, I start cutting a patchy area of grass as well as near the edges of the fields. I work with two 80-year old women who look like they've mysteriously shrunk over the years. Their childlike mien makes me laugh sometimes.

12:00 PM

Lunch and rest.

1:00 PM

Taisho takes me through a path in the woods until we reach a clearing. He unfolds a hammock he made earlier with a canvas sheet and two wooden poles. We hang it up between two trees, and he asks me what I think of it. I tell him it could be better and he starts to laugh. Taisho carefully lays down to test it out, and I lie down on another hammock just because there was noting else I could think of to do at the time. Taisho closes his eyes to take a nap and I eagerly follow him to afternoon dreamland.

4:00 PM

We wake up and Taisho asks me to help him transplant a tree to another part of his compound. After digging a new hole and replacing the tree, we patch it up.

5:00 PM

I come back to check on the recently transplanted tree and the leaves are all droopy. I think its dying. 5:00PM also happens to be the time when the work day is officially over, though there's still much work left to do. I have to make a fire in the boiler which heats the water for the tub I'm supposed to bathe in after about two hours time.

6:00 PM

Dinner. Rest.

7:00 PM

Take the dogs for their nightly walk. This time I get Kotaro who stands on her haunches and high-five's me every time I approach. Kotaro also makes a very marvelous unkou.

8:00 PM

I take a bath and head home on my bike. Its hard to describe how dark it is. Take Danny Glover's face and mix with tar, then toss down into a black hole. Kate Winslet wouldn't even be able to see her hands in front of her out here at night. Luckily, I guide myself home by the recursive bursts of light coming from the thousands of lightning bugs in the vicinity. When I get home, I hastily throw my futon on the tatami mat and pass out from exhaustion.

True Story??

This is a long post, but I basically had to document my first day so far...

Arrival in Tokyo at 5 PM. 2 hours until my connecting flight to Fukuoka. I passed a couple of ATMs but I figured, hey, might as well hold out until I get where I'm going. I use up 100 of my 500 yen to surf the net for about 10 minutes, and wait for my flight to leave.

Arrival in Fukuoka at 10:00 PM. It's just as I remembered. Clean as hell, jacked up hairdo's, and random bursts of laughter coming from groups of hot girls walking down the sidewalk. Now I decided to finally get some cash from the ATM at the 7 Eleven in Solaria Plaza.

"Invalid Card" said the machine as I tried to withdraw 50,000 yen. No time to panic yet. Just go to another convenience store and try your card there. Turns out that 7 Eleven is the only store that will accept a card with a visa logo so now I'm officially fucked. Hmm, just try your credit card. The interest rate for withdrawing cash is ridiculous, but I have the money so I wouldn]t incur any financing charges during the grace period.

"Enter PIN" said the machine. Fuck! Do I even have a PIN for my credit card?? How the hell should I know that??! After 3 unsuccessful attempts to guess the PIN for a card i didn't even know there was a PIN for, I fumbled through the change in my pocket and knew I had only one other option...

I called Bank of America from a payphone. I deposited 4 of the 100 yen pieces, my absolute last exchangeable piece of currency, and dialed the number on the back of my card.

As soon as the recorded guy started talking about this and that, I started shouting "Operator!! Operator!! Operator you bastards!!" It's only been 1 minute and one of my 100 yen pieces just dissappeared on the computer screen that tracks how much money I put into the machine!!!

My hopes faded when the Japanese voice came on and said something about "No money", and I didn't even get so much as a breath from a living person on the other end of the line.

Evaluate the situation. I had 150 yen in my pocket, about 2 bucks, so I walk back to the park near the subway to strategize. It was late. I thought maybe I should go back to the airport. I went to the ticket machine and what do you know, the subway started closing down for the night. "Last train!!" yelled the station manager. I decided I would change my mind about going back to the airport. How would that even help me??

All I needed was a phone to call my bank, or to hook up my USB which has Skype installed on it so I could call someone from my bank to chew them out. I went to the internet cafes, but they all looked at me like and idiot and said they didn't take VISA. I went back to the park and sat down. I pulled out my guitar and started playing a few melancholy songs into the night, hopefully to blend in with the atmosphere and appear as just another random, wandering soul in a park.

I had less than two dollars in my pocket, a heavy duffel bag with enough clothes for 2 months, and a bookbag weighing me down as I walked probably close to 5 miles. I thought I should sit still from now on. Any further walking was gonna burn more calories and leave me with a horrible choice to make. I could use that last change to do my train scam and make it all the way back to Hagi, or I could buy something to eat in the morning.

I started reclining in the wooden chair I was sitting in, resolved to the point where I knew I was gonna sleep in that park that night. Before I left to come to Japan, my girlfriend pleaded with me not to do anything which would be on par with what a homeless person would do, and i was about to do just that.　Its not so bad, I thought. At least its Japan. Everythings cleaner here. Its not like sleeping in a park in America.

I found the darkest part of the park to lay down for the night. I began hoping that some Japanese wanna-be gangsters would try to mug me so I could beat the shit out of them and take all their money instead.　There are no guns in Japan, and to be quite honest there aren't many things a Japanese person can do that would frighten me in the least, except if they somehow morphed into The Predator.

I started playing music but I wasn't getting tired at all because of the jet lag. What the hell, I thought, and hid my duffel bag and guitar behind some bushes while I tried one last time to resolve the predicament I was in. I walked to a police station, and they called all the net cafes in the area that would accept VISA. There was one. In Japan you have to pay after you're done using the room, and knowing that my card was going to get rejected anyhow, I took a chance.

Conclusion

While in my room I took out my USB and plugged it in. Ok its recognized my device. Now to see if Skype works. BALLER!! Now to plug in my headset and see if the line for Bank of America is still toll free.. PIMP!! While I'm talking to the lady from the bank, the Japanese woman who works at the cafe knocks on my door and says that says that I'm not allowed to talk on the phone. Meanwhile the woman on the line from the bank is thinking, "WTF is going on," while I'm explaining to the Japanese woman in Japanese my situation.

We compromised that I would talk at a whisper, and now the woman from the bank really thinks I'm crazy because I'm whispering to her my account information. She never quite said it, but I could sense the change in the tone of her voice that let me know she was basically telling me, "You are a fu##ing douchebag-idiot!!"

On the phone she says there's no hold or freeze on　the account, and that the problem was that I can only withdraw $500 a day. Before hanging up the phone, I tell her to go screw herself for getting rude with me, leave my passport at the front desk so they don't think I'm leaving for good, and this　time tried to withdraw about $400 from the ATM. I was playing it safe.

"Invalid Card"

Here's the funny part. Because I chose to withdraw an amount that the bank would let me, NOW they decide to place a freeze on the account. I run back to the cafe and go through pretty much the exact same process, tell the woman on the phone to go screw herself for getting rude with me, leave my passport at the front desk so they don't think I'm leaving for good, and withdrew succesfully 40,000 yen.

All is well. In the future, before you go somewhere, always call your bank to let them know you'll be leaving the country so that they don't freeze your money. I've got a few hours on the room, and in the morning I'm off to Hagi.

Karate Kid

I had a dream last night about an old, wise Japanese man who was teaching me how to make a traditional, yet completely fictitious Japanese dish. It looked like a dumpling made of rice paste, with fresh green-colored pasta cut into small squares that I used to wrap it like ravioli.

I asked him how to make the two sides stick together and he dipped the ravioli in a bowl full of beaten eggs. Voila! Rice paste ravioli or something like that. I'm not sure it's even real. It's probably not real. If it was, I can't imagine it could taste much better than gnocchi.

I recall being genuinely interested in what the wise, old Japanese man was teaching me, and I was eager to learn how to make this interesting creation. Then when I woke up the first idea that popped into my head before I could unleash my stewing dragon breath into the unsuspecting air in my room, I realized that Daniel LaRusso from The Karate Kid was an ungrateful bastard.

If I was some punk kid getting my ass handed to me every day by some douche-thugs in a group called Cobra Kai, I would've been a little more willing to put up with an old man who taught me self-defense.

In my dream, i was learning how to make some crappy dish that doesn't even exist, but I didn't complain. Danny LaRusso on the other hand throws a temper tantrum when Mr. Miyagi tells him he's not ready to learn how to sweep yet, though in his own corny/sarcastic, yet endearing way.

Go to hell Danny LaRusso! You get free room and board, not to mention free ass-kicking sessions from a martial arts master, and you still manage to be more of a punk-bitch than Ralphie from Lord of the Flies.

~~

I'm getting on a plane Thursday to go back to Japan, which is probably the reason for the strange dream I had the other night.

During my stay I'll be on a farm near where I used to live in Hagi, learning the types of things Danny LaRusso learned, except how to kick someone's ass which I'm already well-versed in anyway.

The host I'm staying with says we'll probably go boar hunting, which not only is another reference to Lord of the Flies in this blog, but is an entirely badass situation in and of itself.

While I'm gone I'll be doing some writing/posting, song-composing, reading, lots of thinking, and all the other creative stuff I was unable to do while working for the man in NYC.

~~

Something funny I thought about while on the train.

Three middle-aged women were sitting in front of me in the last car of the Long Island Rail Road, talking about inane things middle-aged women talk about, when I heard one of them say, "Boy Louise, I really got a bad headache."

Just then, as I got ready to get off the train I pulled my journal from my bookbag, and a travel size packet of ibuprofen fell into my lap. I started thinking, "What if I were to be a nice gentleman and offer the woman the packet of ibuprofen as I left the train."

"Thank you young man.." she probably would've said along with other generalities about how there aren't enough nice young people like me left in the world.

She would've changed her mind though, when she found out that instead of the ibuprofen I had slipped her some acid.