Drunk on a school night isthe best kind ofdrunk

Kareoke Box, host of Ali's gala 25th birthday event is kind of a dump.
And by "kind of" I mean "complete and utter".
But it was still awesome, even of they didn't hve "Mr. Roboto".

i smuggled in my own beers and the owner didn't seem to notice or care. The songs for kareoke were sort of crappy, but being able to showcase my lack of talent made them worth it. Especially since being in a small room with only Ali's peeps made it fun and not intimidating. It also gave me the chance to encourage others to "sing it" or "testify", which I hardly ever get to do.

I can't believe i'm expected to be at school in a few hours.

In other news: oatmeal is the bestway to warm up from the 45 minute minus-18-where-the-hell is-the-bus walk. Oatmeal also soaks up excess beer for hangover prevention....I think...time will tell.

I've come down with a serious case of farmer

This case of Farmer I've got is raging out of control.
Last night I went to sleep at 9:30. I woke up this morning at 5:30 and cannot go back to sleep.
I guess there are still some jet lag issues. And general not-sleeping issues. Thursdays' trip to BDP was good, but I should have left before that last-metro cut off, given that I had to be at school at 8:30 the next day. I regret nothing. Except that my coat still smells. BDP has a much worse smell than any other bar. Katie likened it to a dead body.

Mornings are lame. There's nothing to do and it's cold and dark. The paper showed up at about 7:00. I knew Andrew would be awake and getting ready for work at 8:00 so I called him. He said I should go milk the cows or churn butter to entertain myself and my early-rising Amish ways. Meh.

Pantaloons is still at my dad's house, so I didn't have her to entertain me while I was waiting for the sun to rise. Poor Pantaloons - there was no one to take care of her over x-mas, so she had to go back to Ottawa to be terrorized by the other cats. I'll go pick her up as soon as I get a free weekend and a little space to breathe.

I think maybe I'll go swimming. But not for a while, because I refuse to get out of the apartment before 9:00 on a Saturday.

Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto

Tokyo is amazing because it feels like rush hour even at midnight. And the map for the subway system looks like one of those celtic knot designs. Also, I'm reasonably sure that you could find almost anything in the world there.

Without Mr. and Mrs. S. there to get everyone out of bed, we didn't leave Miwa until past noon. Adam, Miyuki, Andrew and I hauled ass to Tokyo and got there in the late afternoon. We met up with Miyuki's friend Naoki and she showed us around town, taking us to the lovely Ginza district of Tokyo where we acted like total otakus (nerds or "social retards") in the Sony showroom. Those robot dogs are far too creepy. We found the karaoke bar from "Lost in Translation", but Bill Murray wasn't there, so the scene wasn't happn'in.

We also wandered around "electric town" in Akihabara which was seedier than I'd expected. Or at least the store we looked in trying to find a Hello Kitty neck massager was full of school-girl themed porn and no Hello Kitty stuff. Sorry Kem. There were lots of stores that sold things like spy cameras and chopped computer parts. Or at least I think so; it's hard to tell when you can't read anything.

We finally ended up in Shibuya checking out the Japanese take on Mexican food, since it's always interesting to see where fish flakes, squid and fried eggs will turn up. Shibuya knows how to party. They put Montreal to shame. There's even a museum of Tobacco and Salt, but we got shit-faced on $40 pitchers of beer and missed it. Instead, we decided to check out the cultural attractions in the Kareoke bar (incidentally, "kareoke" means "invisible orchestra").

The Japanese are really not afraid of alcohol. Kareoke there is in small private rooms so there's none of that crooning shit we have over here. Most places have all-you-can-drink specials and you just hang out with some friends and get completely wasted and sing that Styx song - Mr. Roboto.
"Secret secret, I've got a secret!"
The rest is a bit of a blur, but instead of seeing more of Tokyo I spent the morning sleeping and trying not to throw up.

Incidentally, it turns out that when you have a blinding hangover, being on an airplane makes it 30% worse.

So now I'm back in Montreal, Andrew had to leave for Boston, it's 6:00 AM and I can't sleep. I feel like it's approaching dinner time. I think I need the kerosene fumes from the heater to lull me off to sleep (though my clothes stil reek of kerosene - I'd better keep away from open flames). It's nice to be back in the land of central heating and no squat toilets, but the vending machines here suck (there's no Pocari Sweat or hot canned tea), it's really cold and suddenly I'm below average height. I want to go back.

Happy year of the cock!

Hello from Kyoto!

On New Year's Eve-eve it was decided to check out the Japanese take on Indian food (it turns out it was smaller and more efficient). I had a chick pea mishap and spent all night and the next day getting violently ill in the hotel room as well as various rest stops and a McDonald's. They had sushi at McDonald's, as well as a teriaki burger, which I'm told was pretty good. I just had the gingerale, since I think the proper etiquette after throwing up all over the bathroom is to at least buy something and that was all I could stomach.

The hotel we were staying in was pretty swanky - there was a big cask of sake in the lobby. When I emerged in the lobby looking and feeling like death warmed over, I think it was assumed by most that I'd dipped into the sake a bit early.

That night Andrew went out to dinner with his brother and parents and came back just at the stroke of midnight. We spent a romantic evening of me being in (what felt like) a coma and staring at the TV and him drinking a few beers from the vending machines and reading. Thus new year's eve was spent sleeping and watching a TV show involving various Japanese pop stars dressed in kimonos or rooster costumes. I think it was sort of like that Dick Clark New Year's Eve thing, only with more jumping onto velcro walls and sing-a-longs. Japanese TV is everything I expected and more. Imagine how much better they would be if I had any idea what they were saying. I'm sure the speed-fish throwing thing I saw would be an instant hit on American TV.

For New year's day we went to the Fushimi Shinto shrine outside of Kyoto. It's dedicated to Inari, the god of rice and sake. Everyone was out celebrating the year of the cock. There was rooster-themed stuff all over the place and tens of thousands of people buying it. Many young ladies wore their kimonos and, for some reason, marabou-feathered stoles with them. The ground was really muddy and the cuffs of my jeans got pretty dirty, but they had their wedge sandals and seemed to be able to pick their way delicately trough the mud without getting the kimono dirty. They seemed to be exempt from the "let's all push each other" free-for-all that was going on everywhere else. More specifically, if you are in the way of someone older than you, it is perfectly acceptable for them to push you out of the way. Since many of the elderly Japanese stand barely four feet tall, it's hard to see them coming.

We climbed the path to the many smaller shrines. The whole path was covered by thousands of Orange Torii gates. They all had melting snow on them and the result was breathtaking. The hour and a half climb around the mountain more so.

Later we went to Nijo castle, which had the most beautiful garden. Those old shoguns really liked their gardens. Even though it has two moats that are at least 20 feet wide, fires from the city have burned down parts of the castle twice.

Off to Nara. But first to lunch at Bikuri Donkei ("Surprized Donkey") - sort of like Denny's but with fish flakes on everything.