Wow, I can’t tell you how goddamned wonderful it is to see a country for which I once had pride and respect being overtaken by right-wing conservative whackjobs. Way to go America!

Sarcasm aside, this country is seriously headed in a dangerous direction. The last time I was back here visiting, the big story on the news was the momentary exposure of Janet Jackson’s nipple on live TV — one of the most un-noteworthy non-events ever broadcast on national television. I saw the flash when it originally aired during the Super Bowl and it was nothing more than a brief WTF moment providing a bit of a chuckle in between ads featuring a horse releasing flaming flatulence on the face of an unsuspecting woman and old dudes talking about their rock-hard, multi-day-spanning boners.

Earlier this week, The Smoking Gun posted letters received by the FCC in response to the aforementioned nipple-revealing event. With a good number of them beginning with the line “I’m not a prude, but . . .”, the letters reveal just how brainwashed so many Americans are with nutty puritanical beliefs.

For example, one writer decries the national news media as being “anti American, anti Christian, [and] pro death for babies and seniors” and another laments about the entire halftime entertainment show consisting of “songs about Scotch, Methadone, Pimping, F–cking, and partying and having sex with anyone you can find” (which simply sounds like a fun Saturday night to me).

Further revealing the lunacy and perversion present in the mind of the average Bible-thumper, another writer proposes, “Maybe next years Superbowl can include Dr. Ruth and a discussion on group sex and Madonna humping a football.” Another writes “It starts out with just one boob at the half-time show and in a few years half the population will be walking around naked” (the religious right sure do love their slippery slope arguments).

The funniest aspect to me was that many of the writers expressed their concern that the rest of the world will think that the United States is a nation devoid of morals, yet ironically, America is one of the most religious countries on the planet, rapidly approaching Taliban-esque levels of religious extremism as the years go by.

There were also a number of letters from people expressing their outrage over the outrage over the Super Bowl boobie exposure, one of which managed to mention not only “galloping gazungas” and “camel toes” in a single sentence, but also ended with the line, “Pull the pine cone out of your collective butts, you bunch of misguided uptight puritans.” Even more humorously, one letter even posed the question, “Aren’t breasts a major food source for young children?” (in addition to being a source of entertainment for males of all ages).

The Smoking Gun website also features letters to the FCC regarding an episode of the daytime talk show Oprah on the topic of teen sexuality, in which the act of salad tossing (or “oral sex with the butt” as one angry viewer described it) was discussed in graphic detail. There weren’t as many comedic gems to be found in those letters, however the most hilarious one by far said simply this:

The Oprah show described with graphic detail a sexual term known as “tossing salad.” It was so offensive that my child’s head literally exploded. Please ban free speech so this never happens again.

It’s good to know that at least some people in this country still have a sense of humor.

You make the call.

The evidence for consideration: this video of a Japanese game show in which contestants play rock-paper-scissors and the winner tries to douse the loser with a bucketful of hot wax.

Words simply fail me.

Merry Chrithmas!!

‘Twas two days before Christmas,
And my friend Cary had volunteered
To collect donations for charity
And spread some Christmas cheer

When he told me he would do this, I had to ask why.
“It’s for the Salvation Army, won’t you stop by?”
“Sure thing,” I said. “I’ll do that for you.
“It’s not like I have anything better to do.”

At the supermarket, I arrived at ten past ten,
And there I saw Cary, my old friend.
Bursting with cheer, “Good morning!” he said,
With bells in his hand, a Santa cap on his head.

He was ringing the bells as people walked by,
Yet they paid him no attention, not even a “hi.”
We chatted together for twenty minutes or so,
But into the kettle, not one cent did go.

“Hold this,” he said, handing me the bells with a wink.
“I’m going inside to get something to drink.”
And with that, he turned and walked away,
Leaving me alone in the middle of the fray.

I couldn’t believe that he could be so cruel.
“He’d better come back soon, that rat-bastard fool.”
I stood there uncomfortably for a moment or two
And then did the only thing I knew I could do.

My palms all sweaty, my heart filled with dread,
I picked up some antlers and put them on my head.
I forced myself to make a smile, clenching my jaws.
“Ah, what the heck — it’s for a good cause.”

And so I swung those bells with feeling, with grace,
And even managed to keep that stupid smile on my face.
Cary soon returned and joined me in the throng.
He picked up more bells and began ringing along.

At that moment and to our sudden surprise,
Up came a child with joy in his eyes.
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out some change
And dropped them into the kettle with a deafening clang.

And before we knew it, people passing began to stop
To make a donation on their way out of the shop.
First pennies then nickels then quarters and dimes,
The next thing we knew, people were putting in fives!

And so it went, until the end of our shift,
People giving from their hearts, what a nice gift!
At first I had been hesitant, but I gave it a try.
Hey, what can I say? I’m just a nice guy.

Earlier tonight I was looking through the website for a party that some friends are planning to attend up in San Francisco on New Year’s Eve, and being the unproductive guy that I am, I wasted a good amount of time browsing through some photos from last year’s event. They’re pretty standard party shots for the most part, but one or two certainly give the impression that some fun was had.

Especially, it appears, by the guy on the far right in this photo:

Damn, coppin’ a feel on two women at the same time — now that is what you call a tru playa fo’ real.

Today I met up with my friend Gilbert, who I’ve known ever since the fourth grade. Out of all of my friends, he was the first one to get married, the first to have a kid (well, his wife, anyhow) and the first to buy a house way out the in the middle of nowhere (just kidding, man).

Thus, in the morning I headed out for my epic journey 80 miles northeast to check out his new place. The drive up there wasn’t that bad; sure, I missed one exit ramp, but we all make mistakes. During the course of the day, we caught up on what has happened in our lives since we hung out, ate some delicious carne asada prepared by his lovely wife, watched Dodgeball on DVD and even played a selection of games on his Xbox. Good, harmless fun.

Or so I thought.

As I bid farewell and drove towards the freeway, I was surprised to see just how much fog had come in since my trip up in the morning. Once I entered the foothills, I quickly became enshrouded by cloud cover and had to struggle to make out the lane lines on the road ahead of me as I desperately tried to follow the twists and turns of the freeway. At one point I even contemplated pulling over to the side of the road just to get my bearings, but the visibility was so low that I couldn’t even see whether there was any space on the shoulder.

It sounds ridiculous, I’m sure, but for a guy who hasn’t driven in nine months, it was a pretty harrowing experience. Thankfully I made it home alive. . . although I probably wouldn’t be missed, my parents would have been rather upset had their car been totalled.

It’s hard to believe, but I’ve been back in California for a week already. During the past seven days, I’ve had some time to reflect upon things here a bit. Here are a random assortment of thoughts:

• Jet lag — I still have it. I’m sleepy all day long, but when I lie down in my bed at night I can’t fall asleep. It’s frustrating and I really need to hurry up and adjust my sleep schedule already.
• Brrr — It’s so frickin’ cold. For some reason, my parent’s home in California is colder than my apartment in Tokyo. I’m freezing all the time here and my mom keeps telling me to put on a sweater.
• Vroom — Driving is fun. I hadn’t driven for the past nine months, so it’s exciting (but at the same time, I feel lazy for driving everywhere).
• Make the voices stop! — It’s weird being able to overhear other people’s conversations. In Japan, I usually have to make an effort to keep up with what people are saying in Japanese, so it’s easy to block out conversations taking place around me. Here, I don’t have the luxury of doing that and have realized that people are having pretty banal conversations out there.
• Wide load — Americans are kinda big, eh? I don’t just mean the seriously obese ones either; everyone seems to have a bit more pudge than I’m used to. Or maybe I’m just a skinny, pencil neck loser. Anyhow, when did wearing low-rise jeans with shirts that barely reach past the navel come into style? That roll-of-fat-hanging-over-the-pants look certainly isn’t very flattering.
• White sneaks — Have middle-aged white guys always worn white running shoes with jeans? Am I some day going to wake up with an overwhelming desire to buy all-white Reebok shoes to wear with some Levi 501’s? My God, I hope not.
• “Do you have this in medium?” — It’s great being able to talk to salespeople in English. Back in Tokyo I can make simple inquiries in Japanese, but anything more than that requires more effort than it’s worth. That said, however. . .
• “What do you want?” — Many salesclerks here are impolite. I haven’t seen too many that are overtly rude, but the disinterested attitude and the lack of eye contact leave much to be desired. I hate to break it to you, but working at the mall doesn’t make you cool.
• Supermarket — Holy crap, supermarkets here have everything! A trip to Safeway is like a visit to an amusement park. I must look like an idiot wandering through the aisles with a slack-jawed expression of wonder on my face.
• VH1 — Wow, when did VH1 start showing entertaining programming? The last time I watched it, it was like the Michael Bolton and Celine Dion channel. Do they even show music videos anymore?

Anyway, as you can see, my time here hasn’t exactly been put to use in a very productive way, but hey, what do you expect? I’m on vacation.

Tonight I was going through some old folders on my parents’ computer and I happened to stumble upon my crowning achievement of the summer of 1998. Back at home after my first year of university, I took summer courses at a nearby community college and spent my spare time (well, my spare time when, um, not fighting off the ladies) with an HTML 4.0 book in hand, designing my first website. I initially started off with enough animated GIFs to make even your average Geocities member cringe, but I eventually settled on an ancient Egyptian theme of all things and created the following monstrosity:

Hosted on my mom’s Earthlink account, I think the site got no more than 20 visitors in total during the year or so that it was up. I even had a guestbook, too, filled with comments such as, “WTF is up with the Egyptian theme?” and “You told me to sign your guestbook, so I’m signing it. Happy now?”

Pretty dreadful, eh?

Well, I made it back to California safe and sound. After a hectic morning of packing and tying up all of the loose ends, I bid a sad farewell to Judy and headed to the airport. Like many people, traveling always puts me in a foul mood. The urgency and expected delays aside, there’s just something about being in such close proximity to masses of people that really rubs ones face in the true pathetic nature of human beings.

Maybe it’s because I’m in a state of complete exhaustion and barely awake, but I just have to get a few things off my chest about people’s annoying behavior when traveling (please bear with me):

• When boarding a plane, the idea is to get everyone inside as quickly as possible. Therefore, you need to stow your carry-on baggage as fast as you can and get the fuck of the aisle so others can pass. I don’t care if you absolutely need to get your neck pillow, your bottle of water and your favorite paperback out of your bag before you can sit down; the reason that the people standing behind you waiting to get to their seats are giving you looks that suggest that they hate you is because they do.
• Despite the fact that you get to stay up late and watch movies, an overnight flight is not a sleepover party. There’s no excuse for grown adults to go about in public in pajamas and stocking feet.
• If you need to get up to go the lavatory right before the meal service begins, don’t come back and force the flight attendants to move their cart 10 feet back so you can get to your seat and then demand your meal. It’s not their fault that the aisles are so narrow; maybe if your ass wasn’t so damn fat, you might be able to squeeze past them.
• Don’t be the asshat who opens his window shade in the middle of the flight while everyone else in the darkened cabin is trying to sleep. I don’t care how pretty the cloud are, if you do it again, you will get hurt.
• To the people who jump up out of their seats the moment the plane touches down on the tarmac, I have one question: What the fuck is your hurry? You know damn well that it’s going to be at least another 15 minutes before they even open the doors, and besides, us poor folks in the back aren’t going anywhere for a long time.

Okay. . . now that I’ve got that out of my system, I’m pleased to say that it’s good to be back home. Today I was able to chat with my parents for a bit and catch up, drive a car for the first time in nine months and even eat some yummy Butter Rum Lifesavers. Life is good. It was hard saying goodbye to Judy, but in a way it’s fun to talk on the phone again like the old days.

All right, methinks it’s time for me to go back to sleep. It’s a quarter past seven in the morning and I’ve been up since 3:30. Jet lag sucks balls.

Why is it that the time leading up to a vacation is so incredibly stressful?

I leave for California tomorrow, yet my bags have not been packed, my nengajo have not been written and I haven’t even told a few of my friends over there yet that I’m going back.

Tomorrow is probably going to be one incredibly hectic morning and afternoon, only to be followed by nine hours of sitting deathly still inside of a cramped airplane cabin. Although I’m seriously tempted to heavily overindulge in complimentary cocktails, I’m not even sure whether the cocktails are complimentary anymore. I guess I’ll just have to get loaded before the flight.

Okay, off to start packing. . . .

While many people around the world are currently enjoying the gleeful Christmas season (or perhaps, more appropriately, the Christmas shopping season), we here in Japan are now in the midst of the slightly less-enjoyable nengajo-writing season. Nengajo are special New Year’s postcards that people send out to literally everyone they know, and are delivered on the morning of the first day of the new year.

Commonly decorated with images of the Chinese zodiac character of the upcoming year (2005 is the year of the rooster), they usually contain messages expressing appreciation for kindness received during the past year and well-wishing for the year ahead. Like the distribution of Valentine’s Day cards in elementary school classrooms throughout North America, innumerable acres of forest are destroyed each year as a result of this ultimately frivolous custom.

In order to ensure timely delivery on January 1st, nengajo must be deposited at the post office by December 25th, however, since I will be returning to California long before then, I have just three days to write out approximately 40 more of those dastardly cards. With such little time, I’m seriously tempted to just print this out and send it off. I wonder if anyone would even give it a second glance.

In the middle of a last-minute Christmas shopping marathon weekend, Judy and I headed over to Matsudo last Sunday to visit the Bandai Museum on the recommendation of one of her friends.

Bandai is the third largest toy company in the world and is responsible for introducing the world’s children such wonderful toys as Gundam, Ultraman, Power Rangers, Tamagotchi and those little pink M.U.S.C.L.E. figures that I was unhealthily obsessed with in the second grade (the absolute best-smelling toys EV4R!) , among others.

Now, with a such a diverse and widely-known character base, I was expecting the Bandai Museum to be nothing short of amazing — in other words, the kind of place that brings smiles to the faces of young children and slimy goo to the underpants of children slightly older.

Thus, you can imagine my surprise when the “museum” turned out to be little more than five floors of gift shops, all selling the exact same selection of toys (mainly cheap Ultraman figures). Signs all over the place indicated that there were a couple of special attractions of some sort, but after our initial disappointment, we couldn’t be arsed to spend the extra ¥300 to see them.

Oh well, at least I got to take a photo of Judy chillin’ with the man himself:

Well, I found out the results of my TOEIC exam today. Unfortunately, despite being a university-educated native English speaker, I did not receive a perfect score. Hence, from this day forth until the day that I cease to exist on this earth, I will carry around the shame of my failure like a severely disabled evil Siamese twin whose encumbering mangled form frightens small children and eliminates all chances of intimacy with members of the opposite sex (or the same sex, for that matter).

Thankfully, however, I did manage to get the highest score in the company. . . so it looks like I at least still have a job (I hope).

Actually, because I got the highest score in the company, I was contacted by the General Affairs Department and asked to write up a brief statement offering my advice for the best ways to go about studying a foreign language to be sent out to everyone who took the exam. So yes, because I got a relatively high score on a test of THE LANGUAGE THAT I HAVE SPOKEN MY ENTIRE LIFE, I am now the expert on studying foreign languages. Funny how that works.

Well, all I can say is that it’s a darn good thing that no one in my company knows that there’s also a Japanese proficiency test. . . .

Despite nearly constant exposure to it, one aspect of Japanese popular culture that I have been unable to gain any appreciation for is J-pop. To say that I can’t stand the crap is a gross understatement; words simply cannot describe my extreme loathing of this genre of so-called “music.” In fact, the only thing that I could do to adequately express my feelings about this scourge on the earth would be to systematically smash in the faces of each and every talentless, squeaky J-pop “singer” on the planet.

However, the full brunt of my hatred of J-pop is reserved for one particularly annoying wench by the name of Otsuka Ai. Her whiny, nasally voice and her “Ooo~ watch me tilt my head and make a pouty face — aren’t I so cute?” poses inspire such a murderous rage inside of me that just the sight of her makes me soil myself.

Or maybe that’s an unrelated bowel problem — I can never be sure.

Anyway, on Monday night I was walking through Shibuya after work, and while stopped at a crosswalk I glanced up and saw a large billboard advertising a new Otsuka Ai album that was released a couple of weeks ago. Curiously entitled Love Jam, the album cover depicts Otsuka Ai’s face covered in what appears to be strawberry jam, evoking images of the fine Japanese tradition of the bukkake special.

Pure class. I’ve definitely got to give a pat on the back to whomever came up with the idea for that one.