Pictures

This is Taisho. His name is Takashi Imada and he was quite honestly the coolest Japanese person I've met so far. I stayed on his compound for the past month and here are a few pictures I took from his camera.

Squid Fishing and Taisho got stung by a bee just below his left eye. He said squid ink was a local remedy.



We went to sell some of the products that they make on the farm at this market festival. In the tent next to us was a pair of guys who taught us how to make pizza dough with empty plastic bottles. We had to do a silly dance to mix the flour and water. Taisho is wearing the cowboy hat.




This is a picture of Taisho carving meat from a wild boar that he shot.



This is the fam. Taisho and his wife, Kishi. Ryo is behind me. Go ahead and try to guess what their respective ages are before I tell you in the next few words. I was shocked when I learned that Taisho is 58, his wife is 48, and Ryo is 41. This place must also have the same mystical qualities as that of Neverland, because apparently you don't age while living on this farm. I guess that's what happens when you eat only fresh grown vegetables and wild meat.

Robot Dreams

The population in towns like the one where I currently reside is rapidly dwindling. The government has dispatched teams of researchers and scientists to discover why. I recently was a part of an overnight tour group sponsored by an organization seeking to attract people away from the hustle and bustle of the city, and to acquaint them with the serenity of life in Japan's countryside.

Taisho told me that young people from Tokyo, Hiroshima, Osaka, etc. would be present, but he does have a tendency to exaggerate. I was part of a legit 'Tour Group' in every sense of the word when most of us hear that phrase. We had a couple in their 50's, a few unmarried women in their late 30's early 40's, an retired man who wore a fanny pack, a 62 year old dude who biked from the next ken over (approx. 300 km), and me.

When Taisho saw the make-up of the group I was apart of he gave me his cheeky look that said 'my bad, I thought there would be young people'. He then hopped into his car and sped off laughing after he told me he'd pick me up tomorrow.

The tour actually turned out to be quite nice. We went to a place that makes traditional Japanese paper, and I got to make my own sheet. Whenever you get to make something yourself, it doesn't really matter what it is, that object immediately becomes what I like to call a badass life token.

Then we climbed up a mountain to a shrine to have dinner. Of course there was alcohol. Of course by chance I sat across from the one dude who would teach me how to be a proper drinker, the 62 year old guy who rode his bike from Tottori ken. After we toasted he downed his beer in about 3 sips and smiled at me. I tried to keep up with his pace but struggled. Before the end of one hour we had finished 5 beers, and then he reached for the Shochu (Japanese whiskey).

I ended up losing to this guy who was a salaryman for Asics for 30 years, and now drives cabs part time in Osaka. He has enough money to do whatever he wants but prefers getting permanent bruises on his ass from riding his bike all the damn time. I confirmed this when we went into the Onsen (public bath) after dinner.

That night I had a strange robot dream. I can't really credit my sleeping brain alone for coming up with this idea. The alcohol helped me sleep through the night which is good if you want to see the crazy stories that you dream about actually resolve themselves. The robot story is probably from the remnant of an Isaac Asimov short story that I might have read some time ago.

In the near future they invented the first advanced robot that worked in office buildings and could do simple tasks like retrieving the mail, going on deliveries, and stocking the kitchen among other things. He would also respond to human commands like 'Tell me the weather forecast' or 'What's the spot price for one troy ounce of gold in the commodities market'. Reporters often followed him everywhere to ask him random questions in order to pick his artificial brain and get a sense of his demeanor.

He would politely correct people who would unintentionally call him a cyborg, and he amicably demonstrated a capacity for humor when a reporter asked him if he could dance. Among other moves that he expertly performed like a young Michael Jackson (rip) high on acid, he said 'This one I call 'the human'', and everyone laughed. They laughed because a robot did a dance called 'the human'. I can't really perform the dance myself, but in my head I see it perfectly. It's a combination of the Michael Jordan victory walk and the Twist.

Sadly, they shut him down the instant he responded to the question 'Do you dream?' He said yes and everyone was afraid that he would try to enslave the human race one day, which was probably somewhere within his faculty.

It's hard for me to describe life here. At the risk of being too verbose, I will try to put into words the past 4 weeks...

When I came here, I was under the impression that Taisho was an all-business type of dude until the first time he snuck me a beer during lunch while Ryo was discussing with me my duties for the day. After Ryo left for his part time job Taisho gave me the cheekiest look I'd ever seen, and told me to hop into his car. (the fact that there is a beer tap at this place is badass in and of itself...)

That day we drove to his Udon Restaurant that he owns and operates in Hamada-shi (population 40,000), and after buying an apron and chef coat he told me that I'd be waiting tables for the day. We went through all the basic polite expressions that you use when working in a restaurant, and when opening time came I greeted customers and took their orders with a cheery "Irasshaimase!!!"

A few days later, just when Ryo was finishing another insightful yet boring description of the proper way to harvest a green bean, Taisho gave me the same goofy smile and I knew that something was brewing. "Nigeou!!" he said after Ryo departed. Nigeru is the word for "to escape!", but the way he said it roughly translates to "Lets get the fuck outta here!!" Taisho took me on a 2 hour trip through country backroads and tucked away mountain paths nestled in the rustic Japanese countryside. Afterwards I climbed trees like an adroit lemur and shook all the bayberries from them while Taisho stood beneath me holding a large vinyl tarp and wore that same goofy grin. We then fermented the berries and made a very delicious alcoholic drink that also takes on the most beautiful hue of the color red that I've ever seen.

We visited his friend, the badass honeymaker. I call him badass because when we went to his hive, this dude did not wear a bee suit. Apparently, 70 year old Japanese men that live in the country care less about being stung by a nest of around 300,000 bees. His lot was directly on the slope of a mountainside. I saw onions and garlic hanging on some bamboo poles near the structure where he keeps his machines. I look out in the distance and see nothing but groves of neatly planted cedar trees and plum orchards.

Taisho is now starting to be too good to be true. We meet a cute elderly woman (Taisho's age) at a weekend festival at the local beach, and she tells me I should come to her shop in Masuda sometime to play music. I say OK, thinking that I'll never see her again, but Taisho, after tricking his wife into thinking that we were going on a business trip to market the crazy-strong rice liquor that they make here, tells me that we are leaving that same night!!

More on this night and much more. I haven't updated in quite a while so left out a bunch of stuff. Tonight I played Futsal at the nearby Futsal park (a strange attraction in a town who's annual census reports a population of 1,589 people), and afterwards went to a newly acquainted friend's house for drinks. Am drunk now and cannot write much more without sounding incomprehensible. I have got a lot of catching up to do!

Good Night!

New Kicks

I started writing about the locale, the people, and all those other piecemeal posts I said I was going to, but it was just way too wordy and boring. Instead I'm going to do what I usually do which is start out with some of kind of ambitious plan and slowly back away from it.

June and July are part of the rainy season, so when it starts to pour the people here don't let me work out in the fields. Its funny because I can still see the 80 year old Obaachan (old woman) I work with continually plucking onions from the Earth's ripe bosom, or hoeing away at some patch of dirt, all during a torrential downpour while I'm sitting on a heated rug sipping on warm miso soup.

Because of today's rain, Taisho and his wife took me on a drive to Hiroshima city to do some shopping. Taisho wanted some new Timbalands, and his wife wanted to get out of the country and release some tension with a nice long drive. On the way to Hiroshima, I decided on my next pair of kicks.


They are called Jikatabi, and mostly construction workers, low wage laborers, or ninjas in the footclan wear them. During the entire time I've been in NYC, I have yet to see anyone wear these. Once I bring them back I'll be the baddest dude on the block for sure. And because of the stigma associated with people who wear this type of shoe in Japan, they are cheap as shit. Only $20 bucks!!

Once I get these kicks I'll have all I need to get the nod from The Shredder. Then I can freely distribute cartons of cigarettes to minors, steal television sets with the rabbit ears attached to them, and do all other types of hoodrat stuff with my friends.