I get really turned on just looking at his wrists...

Der. I started this post ages ago and have never finished it. I have been having a real problem with insomnia since coming home, which sort of sucks balls. I sleep for a couple hours and then bam, wide awake. It also makes it very hard to wake up at a normal hour. Anyway, on to what I had previously written...

Omg. So D rented a bunch of 80s cartoons while I was in Japan. He saved a couple for me, and oh my. I recall Gummi Bears with a modicum of shame, but it's pretty bland and mind numbing, nothing special. Then there's Smurfs. The original Smurfs. That shit is messed up. But it's really badly done, too. Like Gargamel decides to freeze out the Smurf village the same day Smurfette gets a dragon? Wtf? But it would make a most excellent drinking game, that's for damn sure. Except it would be hard not to die.

And oh, Vanity Smurf is so wrong. And I'm sorry, but I was never a big fan of Papa Smurf. Old man just rubbed me the wrong way.

Anyhoo, continuing with last Friday, March 28th...

JAPAN '08, PART IV

After the morning of mind-blowing amounts of fish at a mind-blowing hour, we walked over to Shiodome, which is another new area of Tokyo that has popped up in the years since I moved. LOTS of huge skyscrapers and it's a big shopping/work area all compacted together. On our walk there, I saw this building. No idea what it is, but very cool.



And onto Shiodome. This sounds a little weird, but Tokyo isn't really all that full of skyscrapers. The buildings are definitely built UP, but it's one business on top of another on top of another. Not your traditional skyscrapers like you see here.



And it was even better to look at while in the park down the road by the Bay. Great park, except for a very persistent pigeon (no, we weren't feeding it)! Kind of reminded me of the James Woods story in Cat's Eye. (But our feet were spared).



I think that was a teahouse pictured below. We never did check it out. We had our Japanese munchies and then moved on to the subway to hit Shinjuku, since the park put us in the mood for a much bigger hanami-party park, Shinjuku-gyoen.



Stopped by my old noodle stand shop (you order your meal ticket from a vending machine and hand it to the guy, who reproduces it in minutes). It's a stand-up counter, no chairs, and was one of my favorite cheap places for comfort food on a bad day or just cold weather.

Then we hit the park, which has a big sign saying, "No Alcoholic Beverages In Park." (Kinda weird for Japan, but whatever). The first few times I brought in my beverages as surreptitiously as possible, but eventually just said fuck it, as everyone else is openly brazen about it. (I do try to be discreet since I am, after all, still a gaijin...) But I assume it's an exception for the time of year.



Lots of this:



Which is my kinda afternoon! There were a ton of kids running around, and one boy was so out of control he spilled right across my lap, right onto my beer. The chips went astray (ok, how embarrassing, you caught me eating normal Pringles, but sue me I already ate the J-snacks) and he dented the beer can in two. There was still beer in there, but not a single drop was spilt. Although I did have to finish it while it looked like this:



Cute kids, though. They were very apologetic. We offered them Pringles, but only one girl was bold enough to accept. And though I'm rarely partial to children not somehow related to me, little Japanese kids are really fucking cute.

Unless you have to teach them. Then they kind of suck sometimes.