near my place

swamp butt

i am not big fan of neighborhood or city festivals. most of the big ones generally take place during the summer, when the heat is somewhere close to that of south-central hades. if you do go, you can see a lot of interesting and cool things, try some tasty food and drinks and enjoy some music and dance performances.

but if i can, i try to avoid these events. i find myself concentrating on my clothes drenched in sweat, the slow moving crowds, not being able to find a place to sit down and eat or drink something ( i often finding myself eating over a trash can), and the crowded subway ride home with my butt bumping into someone's face or with someone else's butt jammed in my face.

a lot of people over-romanticize these things, like cindy lange-kubick at a ribfest or shopping at ideal grocery on 27th street. i would just rather stay home and enjoy my fan, but i did go to nittaji temple's festival last sunday because i was in the neighborhood. this one was almost like a farmer's market in america, filled with hippies selling their own food and clothes except for the fact that no one died as a result of an old person, on their way to old country buffet, mistakenly driving his or her car right through the market.

abekawa fireworks from july

fireworks in 16s

fireworks in 16s

john,aito,dog in a bag, the hunger

crazy from the heat

i saw a middle aged guy shopping for bikinis in a visor, sports bra, with no pants and no undies either. then i came back to kanayama to see a guy laying on the ground blood spilling from his head. to add insult to injury, the poor guy was being yelled at by some other guys. a friend of mine asked if tv news crews showed up. but i said i dont think the tv news people like to do stories about homeless on homeless violence. it's just too hot.

people have asked me what kanayama is like. i usually say it's a place where adults come to play, urinate on fences and puke in the streets. maybe not the best place to raise a family.

last week, one guy was urinating on a fence outside my apartment building in the morning, i looked at him. he looked at me. in a strange way, he made me feel bad for looking at him. i like kanayama. just not some of the smells.

another weekend brings more visitors from osaka and...

...from shizuoka

last weekend

kanayama

hey justin

rainroots

john took these

check out his photo site

i love baseball

i love going to baseball games in japan. so much going on everywhere. and always a lot of stares, looks, and high fives because i am a foreigner singing the fight songs and wearing the jerseys.

a tip of the hat to john:

there was a boy behind us yelling out every single chant at the top of his lungs. but when tyrone woods, the chunichi dragons first baseman, struck out in the 8th inning. he went nuts, yelling out how they should get of all the foreign baseball players in japan. and how much better the dragons would be if they only got rid of all the foreign ball players. john went up to the boy after the game, and shook his hand and told the boy how impressed he was that he knew all the songs and kept cheering the whole game. john keeps spreading his nebraska values all over japan.

and would you know, the dragons had a sayonara chance in the 12th inning, and they came threw with a sayonara homerun blast to center. what a perfect game!

a big number two

john was the second person to come down to nagoya and visit me. man, this past weekend was fun.

J-Ro (Tha Alkaholiks) feat. Chords - U Call That Love?

i recently bought a whizz monthly from dj ue out of yokohama. i was a bit shocked to see j-ro and chords featured on it. j-ro's new record comes out later this month in europe. too bad i probably won't be able to pick it up here in japan seeing that they are on juju which is a relatively small label based out of sweden. but anyway, i found the video. oh and in case you are in the area, j-ro just recently opened up his own store in malmo, sweden.

winners cafe

i just found out about this cafe in my hood. ladies can get eat and drink for free. fellas pay 3000 yen.

why? you may ask.

from what i have been told, there is one of those tricky mirrors where the dudes can look in at the ladies, but the ladies only see a mirror. then, the guys can tell one of the employees which girl they want to talk to. after that the guy and girl can then go off and talk privately, and if there is some quaility chemistry or if the guy has enough money, the intelligent woman will then let the charming guy go out with her.

now, i am not entirely sure how that works. but i heard the guy a lot of times pays the girl to go out with him. i am not sure. these cafes also have separate areas for different ages. so you can choose from junior high girls all they way up to middle age office worker. recently, the nagoya city government has been trying to shut these places down, but i am not sure there is really anything they can do.

my first visitor!

like people tend to do, they say they'll visit. they often dont. and i guess i really dont expect them to. but being here less than a week, i was surprised, when a former co-worker of mine told me she was coming down to nagoya. and i think john is coming down later this week. so gosh! two people in one week. my confidence is soaring.

taking the words right out of my mouth

outside my deck

outside my door

i did move

i moved to nagoya which is about an hour by bullet train west of my previous place of residence in shizuoka. nagoya is the fourth largest city in japan. over 2 million people like me live in the city, but if you include the metropolitan area you get around 8 million. its bit of a culture shock coming from shizuoka. things move a bit quicker and the people arent quite as friendly. which should be expected of a bigger city, anywhere.

while other economies around japan are sinking, nagoya's ecomony is booming. thanks in large part to the toyota motor co. there is not much here in the way of tourist attractions. if you bought a japan travel guide, they might only devote two or three of the 385 pages to nagoya. nagoya also has some distinct food to offer, however, i would rather not eat it. people here often ask me if i like the local specialties, so of course, i say yes. all the while, i am hoping they dont actually invite me to partake in them.

i also commute the wrong way every day. not in the sense that i get lost. but i am the guy who lives in the city but works out in the burbs. when most people jam the trains and subways out in the suburbs for their morining commute into the city. i ride a relatively empty train from the city out into the burbs and take an empty train back into the city around 5pm when most people are commuting back in the opposite direction.

i did move, and i hope it was the right choice. it was pretty stressful and tiring. right now, i am looking forward to settling down a bit and getting into a routine. i feel like i have missed out on summer because of this move. my skin is pale and i am sure i put on a few pounds as well. there is a gold's gym near my apartment. and i cant wait to get over there. even thought its a bit late, hopefully now summer will begin for me.

i moved

i am still waiting for a internet connection and still unpacking. i have way too much stuff. i have started my new job. i am still trying to find someone who speaks english. but its probably better for me that no one speaks english. its about a 35 minute commute to the office. oh and my apartment is in the kanayama district of nagoya. so i went from being able to see mt. fuji and the ocean from my apartment in shizuoka, to now having a nice view of a light pole and a high rise hotel.

maybe i will have some internet this weekend. time running out at the net cafe...fading.