Snake Sake

by Adam & Lara on 07/05/10

Osaka has a neighborhood called Dotonbory which is retardely awesome.

Fig 1: Awesomeness of retarded proportions.

One night we went into a bar there called Wack because, well, it was called Wack.

After an hour of poor attempts to yuk it up with the locals the bartender pulled out a giant jar from the back room containing a dead snake preserved in sake. This was either an attempt to communicate using the universal language of alcohol, or it was an attempt to kill us. Either way we were totally excited about it.

Um... close up, please.

Fuck.

It tasted and smelled disgusting and we were the only people in the bar who were willing to drink it. According to the bartender, another bartender at Wack took a shot of snake sake a few weeks ago and had to go to the hospital. We thanked him for that after-the-fact detail, and spent the rest of the night memorizing the "medical emergencies" section of our translation book. At least we knew that the jar had been stored with a piece of cloth covering the top and a rope loosely draped around it, thereby making it impermiable by bacteria.

Fig. 2: 3 Idiots.

We later found out that we had stubled into this bar on its last night of operation ever - it was closing for good the next day. We wondered why.

This could have very well been the last picture taken in Wack. That shit is wack.

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Engrish

by Adam & Lara on 06/27/10

It's bad Japanese translation time!

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Japanese Baseball

by Adam & Lara on 06/26/10

We are really starting to slip with this blog. But rather than sit here and give you lame excuses for why we haven't posted in over 2 weeks, we're going to take the first step in the blog neglect multi-step recovery program: admit we have a problem.

Now that we got that over with, let's get on with Japan before we sneeze/drink away too many braincells to remember it. Queenstown is a cold, damp town with lots of bars, so our current sneezing and drinking rates are astoundingly high.

On our first night in Osaka we scored tickets to an interleague Nippon Professional Baseball game between the Hanshin Tigers and the Orix Buffaloes. The fact that we got these tickets in the first place was a major triumph, since all online sources for Japanese baseball tickets are in Japanese. In addition, we were travelling with Derek Hall who is from Green Bay, Wisconsin, a town where they refer to baseballs as "small round white footballs." But even in the face of adversity, we emerged victorious.

To put it simply, watching a live Japanese baseball game is like watching a live American baseball game inside a giant spaceship full of Japanese people:

 The only way to destroy Kyocera Dome is to hit a baseball directly into the center of it's roof-mounted reactor core.

On the field Japanball is identical to American baseball. It's the goings-on in the stands that make it a truly foriegn experience.

Nothing satisfies the ballpark appetite like a box of Johnsonville soba noodles. Admittedly, you can get this at a baseball game in San Francisco too.

Japanese fans go apeshit for the entire duration of the game, but they do it in a very organized manner. Fans from opposing teams tend to sit on opposite sides of the stadium. Chants are always led by a band of horns, drums, and a guy on a megaphone. And all signage appears to be professionally printed.

The expensive seats have personal air conditioners, and are sat in by people who don't spend the entire game talking to the people behind them.

There are male and female mascots, so you get more off-beat pelvic gyration and less uncomfortable androgyny.

Undeniably, the best part of the game was the 7th inning balloon release. Fans of both teams blow up giant tube-shaped balloons with a bulge at the top end, and begin thrusting the balloons back and forth with their hands. All of a sudden everybody releases their balloons in the air, and seconds later thousands of deflated balloons that have recently touched strangers mouths begin to touch your head and shoulders. Magical.

All in all it was a completely Japanese experience since it made us think "this would never happen in America" just as much as it made us think "this would never happen outside San Francisco."

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The Nipple Song Hits Japan

by Adam & Lara on 06/06/10

And we got (some of) it on tape...

 

Next to being elected Speaker of the House for the 2000 Missouri Youth In Government mock legislative session, this was probably one of the greatest moments in Adam's life.

Adam, Lara and Derek found a sweet jam bar in Kyoto one rainy night using the "pop-in method." The pop-in method boils down to going down random alleys, up random staircases and into random hallways and opening up every door you see. Since we couldn't read Japanese characters and most bars in Japan are very small, horribly marked, and are below ground or several floors up, we spent our evenings performing pop-ins in order to find fun places to go. 9 out of 10 times we struck out, opening a door to find a room full of stacked furniture, an empty restaurant with owners pleading for us to come in, or some sort of seedy establishment who probably thought we were there to film 3 Americans 1 Cup.

So we found this sweet bar, and 5 minutes after we sat down half the people in the bar went up on a little stage and burst into a full-out show:



We ended up chilling there until Adam was sufficiently drunk enough to bust out the Nipple Song. The folks there gave us a bunch of demo CDs, making us certified hipsters in 2 countries now.

This post is dedicated to Nick Fogle (number 1 appreciator of the The Nipple Song) and Aimee Lehto-Schewe (genius who suggested pop-in method to us).

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Potty Talk

by Adam & Lara on 06/06/10

Japan has some of the greatest and worst toilets (loos) in the world.

The good toilets are the product of 5000 years of innovation in pee/poo technology. The seats are heated and raise and lower automatically or with the press of a button. When you're finished with your business a little wand sticks out from beneath you and sprays you with a stream of water, and you typically have some sort of remote control to manage the water pressure and temperature.  It is basically heaven, and it extended Adam's average toilet time from 45 minutes to 1.5 hours.

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Small Dogs

by Adam & Lara on 06/06/10

Japanese love small dogs and dressing small dogs up like people and pushing small dogs around in baby-carriagesque carts. The result is funny and smells like urine.

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What just happened?

by Adam & Lara on 06/03/10

We are back from Japan. It was ridiculous and hilarious, and it did not cease to entertain us with oddity. It was Heidi Montag's face.

There is so much to say about Japan that we're not really sure where to start. So we'll just throw some shit at you and hope that some of it sticks.

To describe it as concisely as we can, Japan - especially urban Japan - is like a bizarro USA on cocaine. Most aspects of western culture are well represented there, but they are often tweaked to some unexpected extremity. There are tons of different subcultures that seem hyper-obsessed with some particular niche of fashion or music. The pace of life is fast but always seems to be controlled and efficient. In fact this picture pretty much sums up Japan:

This guy was trying to face the camera for the picture but a last-second gust of westerly wind turned him right back around.

Like Japanese people, our Japan posts will be short and visually enchanting, and there will be many of them.

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You Got Blown, Chapter 4: We're Going to Japan

by Adam & Lara on 05/13/10

Our new lives have brought us way too much stress. We need a vacation from this vacation. So we're going to visit Shane and Derek in Japan for 2 weeks.

A San Francisco artist's conception of Japan, Bay To Breakers, 2009.

Sayonara, bitches.

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You Got Blown, Chapter 3: We Got Jobs

by Adam & Lara on 05/13/10

Sure we miss our friends, families, hometowns, etc., etc. But after 3 months of gallavanting around in paradise it's safe to say that the thing we really miss the most is working every day.  GAH, I'm getting pangs of yearning just typing this. PANGS OF YEARNING, I TELL YOU!

So we got jobs now. Lara is a waitress at a fancy-schmancy restaurant (at least the shaving paid off for one of us) and Adam is a laborer (labourer) for a construction company called Just Build It. Dialed.

For Lara, the benefits of working in downtown Queenstown are checked by the fact that downtown Queenstown has been under water for the last few weeks. It's fine now, but this was her morning commute last week:

Oh, that's nasty.

For Adam, the benefits of doing manual labor are countless. He gets to use mini grinders, regular grinders and even jackhammers at work. One time he got to install ceiling joists using a Ramset nailgun. Also, the job sites are outside of town and boast some decent views.

You can't get a view like this from a cubicle, but you can probably get a Successories poster in your cubicle with a view like this.

Rumor has it the owner of this site made all of his money laboring on construction sites during his working holiday.

Stay tuned for an update a month from now when Lara is carrying hot steaks around in a warm restaurant and Adam is carrying massive piles of shit around in the freezing cold.

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You Got Blown, Chapter 2: Cabin Fever

by Adam & Lara on 05/13/10

We finally live at a place that has a real address and everything.  Well, it doesn't exist on Google maps.  Or according to the New Zealand post office.  But we can get mail if you send it to the RV park down the street.

In late April Adam and Lara moved into a 2-bedroom cabin with Pat and Kim, thereby progressing their foursome relationship from "casually seeing each other" to "it's complicated."  The most complicated part is that it's not actually a 2-bedroom cabin, so Pat and Kim sleep in a tent in the kitchen/livingroom.

It's not a life of luxury, but we can always take pride in the fact that the cabins surrounding us are shittier.

It could be worse - Kim could still be sleeping in a tent outside.

Don't mind us, we're just burnin' shit in the livingroom.

Our kitchen is small, but big enough for self-proclaimed "Pizzaman" Pat to whip up some delightful creations that sometimes resemble pizza.

Perfect for morning coffees and raucous drinking games alike, the lounge area or "Club Scrumpy" is 27 square feet of fun.

Oh, wait a second, did we mention we live on MAN STREET? Well we do. Although the portion of Man Street that we live on "doesn't exist" according to Google Maps.  So here is a view of our crib looking from one street over.  Go ahead and explore our hood:

 
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